1nCnVqgFI

696 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
differentiates, and then begins its work through that differentiation.
This work is Karma.
The Cycles are also subservient to the effects produced by this
activity.
The 07ie Cosmic Aiom becomes seven Atoms on the plane of Matter, ana
each is transformed into a centre of energy; that sa^ne Atom becomes seven
Rays on the plane of Spirit; and the sevei creative Forces of Nature,
radiatingfvm the Root-Esseyice follow, one the right, the other the
left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet in close embrace.
What unites them Karma.
The Atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn
new centres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat,
begin their work from within without, and multiply other minor
centres. These, in the course of evolution and involution, form in
their turn the roots or
developing causes of new effects, from worlds
and "man-bearing" globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of
all the sevei kingdoms, of which we know only four. For as says the
Book of the Aphorisms of Tson-ka-pa :
The blessed workers have received the Thyan-kam, in the eternity.
Thyan-kam is the power or knowledge of guiding the impulses of
Cosmic Energy in the right direction.
The true Buddhist, recognizing no "personal God," nor any
"Father" and "Creator of Heaven and Earth," still believes in an
Absolute Consciousness, Adi-Buddhi; and the Buddhist Philosopher
knows that there are Planetary Spirits, the Dliyan Chohans. But
though he admits of "Spiritual Lives," yet, as they are temporary in
eternity, even they, according to his Philosophy, are "the Maya of
the Day," tlic Illusion of a "Day of Brahma," a short Manvantara of
4,320,000,000 years. The Yin-Sin is not for the speculations of men,
for the Lord Buddha has strongly prohibited all such enquiry. If the
Dhyan Chohans and all the Invisible Beings—the Seven Centres and
their direct Emanations, the minor centres of Energy—are the direct
reflex of the One Light, yet men are far removed from these, since the
whole of the visible Kosmos consists of '' selfproduced beings, the
creatures of Karma." Thus regarding a personal God "as only a
gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space by the imagination of
ignorant men,"* they teach that only "two things are [objectively]
• Buddhist Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society, p. 51.