The Theosophical Seal - Canadian Theosophical Association

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The Theosophical Seal by Arthur M. Coon source and reality behind the physical universe" Science answers, "Evolution". Religion answers, "Creation". Somewhere between these two answers- perhaps embodying something of each- lies the truth. We shall begin by considering a few concepts taken from an ancient scripture, concepts so fundamental as to defy contradiction either by science or religion. Unknown ages before the Book of Genesis was written there appeared among the peoples of Central Asia a "book" so ancient that no one today knows its origin or its author. It is called the Book of Dzyan ("Dzyan" meaning "divine wisdom"). This "book" consists of palm leaves, treated with a secret preservative, upon which were inscribed in "Senzar" (a secret sacerdotal tongue known only to Initiates) a treatise on cosmic evolution, the origins of man and of the human race [The Seven Stanzas of this work called "Cosmogenesis" became the basis for The Secret Doctrine by H.P.Blavatsky] Tradition has it that this book is so ancient that the sacred books of all civilisations - Hindu, Egyptian,Hebrew, Chaldean, etc. - were taken from it. As one reads, he is carried backwards, or inwards, in imagination until he seems to touch the consciousness of the Creator. He senses as in a dream universes yet unborn, and seems to envision things-to-be before they are conceived in the womb of time. For time itself has not yet come into being. We read: "The Eternal Parent, wrapped in her ever invisible robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities." Note here the suggestion of a recurrence of manifestation and non-manifestation. Note also that the "Parent" is referred to as "her". It is only as the Absolute or Pure Being is expressed as a duality, "Father-Mother", can Being become Manifestation and therefore knowable. To continue: "Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration. .... Darkness alone filled the boundless all." In our own scriptures we read, "And the earth [universe] was without form and void; and darkness [night] was upon the face of the deep" (Genesis 1:2). We cannot help but note the points of similarity in these two ancient formulas of creation: one Hebraic, the other from the earliest Aryan peoples in central Asia. The Stanzas continue, "Naught was.... Alone the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in dreamless sleep... There was neither silence nor sound, naught save ceaseless eternal breath." "Naught" is the circle of infinity within which all-that-is-to-be exists potentially. Manifestation had not come into being. Symbolically "naught" is synonymous with "night" of Genesis. "Breath" is the indication of potential motion or sound and the first act of creation. This "breath" is not yet vibration, but the source of vibration. It is the "Word which was in the beginning". The Genesis account covers the next stage in one brief sentence: "And the Spirit (breath) of God moved upon the face of the waters." And from the "Stanzas", we read: "Vibration... thrills through infinitude... sweeps along, touching with its swift wing the whole universe, and the Germ that dwelleth in darkness: the darkness that breathes over the slumbering waters.....". This "Germ" is the "Seed" of Genesis, the divine "idea" of Plato, which was implanted in this primordial sea, this "virgin" substance called by the ancients Mulaprakriti. Here in all the beauty of imagery is pictured the first act of creation. Could any statement of Jeans, Bergson or Einstein so thrill the imagination or so accurately state the process of creative-evolution in the coming to birth of a universe What other words could so describe that state of primordial substance out of which all forms were to appear as, "the Deep", "the Waters", "the Sea" This is truly the "universal mother", the "virgin matter", the "Eternal parent", symbolically expressed by the horizontal line of the Cross. The time has come to awaken the slumbering "virgin" from her sleep. That which philosophers call energy or life-principle - Father or Spirit - moves. "Vibration thrills through infinitude". "The spirit [breath] Page 44
The Theosophical Seal by Arthur M. Coon of God moved upon the face of the waters." Truly and reverently, we may think of this in a universal sense as the "Immaculate Conception"; and the phrase "born of the Virgin Mary", so dear to Christians everywhere, has cosmic as well as creedal significance. In a philosophical sense thus we interpret Mary (Latin - Mare, meaning the Sea) as the Universal Mother of all living forms, beautifully dramatised in many religions as the Virgin Mother. This movement or descent into matter has been referred to as the "Eternal Sacrifice" of God whereby life and form come into being. God Transcendent has become God Immanent. Thus the vertical line cutting across the horizontal line forms the cross, the cross of sacrifice whereby all things become truly sacred. To record this "descent" of spirit into matter in all its ramifications would fill many volumes. Here we cut swiftly across aeons of time. The universe had already gone through its periods of condensation and solidification forming in the process seven worlds or planes of Nature consisting of denser and denser matter, down to the very lowest or densest. This is our physical universe. The process took unknown ages of time beyond the possibility of measure. We might think of spirit or life as becoming more and more clothed in the matter of the planes, until upon reaching the densest, the lowest physical, it lies buried or entombed in rock and crystal. We might also envisage the "images" or "germs" (in the above quotations) as being clothed in ever denser material, becoming on the higher mental levels the archetypes of all things-that-are-to-be, finally to be buried as "seeds" within dense physical matter. We know that the first chapter of Genesis was not written as history or as a biography of our first parents. Rather was it an ancient formula of a cosmic creative-evolutionary process, a process so vast that its "days" or ages must be measured in billions of years. The fire-mist forming into great whirling clouds of gaseous vapours became in turn dense fogs obscuring the face of a planet coming to birth, condensing gradually into boundless oceans, from which vas continents were eventually thrown up by belching volcanoes. "An He called the dry land earth and the gathering of the waters seas." Where are now those divine ideas, images of all living things-that-are-to-be which took shape so freely in those rarer, more spiritual realms Those living emanations of the Creative Mind now lie embedded in rock, earth and water, to all appearances, dead. Spirit truly has died, symbolically crucified upon the cross of matter. The foremost minds today accept as truth the idea that matter and energy have a common origin, they are the positive and negative poles of a single, though unknown, substance. They see a dual process taking place: energy or force solidifying and becoming matter, and matter in turn being converted into energy. The most logical step must be the discovery that the whole universe as we see it is the condensation of a substance so rare that it must be considered pure spirit. Moreover, it must be recognized that this rarer medium is endowed with form-creating and life-giving power. Religion has all but forgotten this formula and has substituted the idea of "creation" out of nothing, On the one hand we have the Bible story of creation as interpreted by many exponents of religion to mean that all things came into being by divine fiat or "word". On the other hand we have the theory of evolution as the origin and source of all living forms from matter only. Between these two orthodoxy's there is, or seems to be, an impassable chasm. When science discovers and religion remembers this involutionary process, there shall be built a bridge between religion and science, and creation and evolution shall be recognized as two phases of the one process. Deeply significant therefore become the words of Genesis 2: 4-5, "The Lord God made... every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew." Herein lies the secret overlooked by both religion and science, namely, that in order for living forms to evolve, that is, to progressively move toward a higher type or form, these same forms of life must first have been implanted Page 45
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