THE SECRET DOCTRINE by HP BLAVATSKY: what does it all mean?by John P. Van Mater. 

H.P. Blavatsky’s [henceforward referred to as HPB] great work The Secret Doctrine in two volumes was issued in the Fall of 1888. The first volume is titled Cosmogenesis and treats of the birth of worlds – universes, suns, planets – but more particularly our Earth with all its kingdoms, stretching from the elemental lives or forces, up through the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms. Above these HPB speaks of the ‘Dhyani-chohanic’ kingdoms; and beyond these the great cosmic gods whose immanent activities constitute the law and harmony not only of our Earth, but of the cosmos as well. All these lives are born with and form part of the expression of the larger being in which we live and move and have our being. The second volume treats of Anthropogenesis, the origin and destiny of the human race in conjunction with all the other kingdoms with which we are familiar. This volume discusses the three rounds of life that preceded our present or fourth round. As Earth and its kingdoms awakened from its ‘Pralaya’ or rest period, it started at a very ethereal or spiritual level, gradually solidifying into the physical globe we see around us. Prominent in this second volume is a discussion of the awakening of man’s mind and the part the ‘Mānasaputras’ or ‘Elohīm’ played in bringing this about.          The universe surrounds and enfolds us on every side. It has a structure. It operates in certain unerring ways. It was born as we were born, has its life, and one day, like us, will die, rest, and, as the old tradition has it, will then, after a lapse of cosmic time, seek its rebirth. It therefore has a history and a destiny over and above that which we now see and investigate; and the same is true with man. What is the relationship between man and the all-embracing cosmos, man the microcosm of the macrocosm? This in brief is The Secret Doctrine.Man in a very real sense is a universe: an over-dwelling consciousness that in mysterious and wonderful ways emanates and organizes billions of atoms, molecules, cells, into tissues, organs – a functioning system. A system which to one living on an atom would appear to be as extensive as our universe appears to us as we look out over the fields of space from our small planet.                                                                  How little we really know about human physiology, especially human birth, from the consciousness standpoint. Our observations and deductions are constricted by our limited senses. The human being who is incarnating seems unaware of the transformations taking place as a single fertilized cell proliferates into a vast system, thus achieving its own incarnation. There comes a time after birth and during growth when our human consciousness has built for itself a vehicle, a brain and other faculties, which allow us to explain how to speculate on our own genesis. Even so, we cannot either remember or explain how the complicated structure of ourselves was built or even how it functions.                                                                             Turning now to the birth of worlds, let us now consider the three propositions given by H. P. Blavatsky in volume I of The Secret Doctrine. These deserve our most careful attention, for they summarize the basic thoughts wrapped up in the so-called creation stories found the world over, which describe how the cosmos was born out of chaos, and how man was born from the cosmos.                                                                     The First Proposition projects a picture of the ALL, the ultimate eternally unknowable Cause, from which everything is born and to which all things eventually return. Quoting from The Secret Doctrine:   “An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought –in the words of Mandukya (Upanishad) “unthinkable and unspeakable.” (Secret Doctrine Vol.1 page:14) Ancient peoples refused to give attributes to this principle. The Jews called it ‘Ain-Soph’, the Boundless. The Hindus THAT or TAT. It is all things, and in all things, and the cause of all things, and all things are in IT. It is the unknowable God of Paul, which he refused to personify. IT cannot be called beautiful or ugly, good or evil, for these terms apply to finite things. It is BENESS rather than Being.  The Second Proposition HPB phrases as follows:  “This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.”  (Secret Doctrine Vol.1, page:17) The first proposition conveys a picture of the boundless source of ALL, aspects of which are given as Infinite Space, Eternal Duration, and Unending Motion. The second proposition sets the pattern for all manifested existence, whether atoms, men, gods, universes. These issue forth or manifest from their inner essence, live out their life-span, and then withdraw, rest, only to reappear again. Many of the old traditions speak of a ray from the Unknowable that fecundates chaos or the Mother principle, and out of chaos is born the cosmos, the manifested worlds. Here we have the trinity — Father, Mother, Son; Father, Holy Ghost, and Son (as correctly given in the Greek Church); Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt; Parabrahmnan, Mulaprakriti, and Brahman (or the manifest universe) among the Hindus. Against the background of unending time and space these ‘Manvantaras’ [times of manifestation/life] and ‘Pralayas’ [times of non-manifestation/death], these comings and goings of worlds, would seem like twinkling lights. In this setting there can be no ultimate beginning or ending. All births, therefore, no matter how cosmic or super cosmic, are rebirths; and all deaths are intervals between reimbodiments, or as in the case of man reincarnations. From out of the infinite unknown, how is the finite born. Why are we urged to try to picturate or grasp the infinite if it is beyond the finite mind? It is because, in the words of Katherine Tingley:  “Thinking towards the unthinkable is a wonderful, spiritualizing force; one cannot think toward it without a disposition either to think more or feel more –without opening up the inner consciousness of man. And when that inner consciousness is awakened, the soul finds itself closer to the infinite laws, closer to THAT, to that Great Centre that no words can express.” G. de Purucker: Fundamentals, page:14. In the heart of our hearts there resides a Spark, a link with the unutterable. Reaching towards it we seek to transcend our ordinary selves and gain insights that are more in the nature of experience than mental concepts. What we aspire towards are larger understandings, and understanding is the ‘buddhic’ principle flooding the mind. The Third Proposition may seem like a mouthful – which it is. Yet it pertains to those aspects of life with which we are the most directly involved. Quoting HPB:  “The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, and the obligatory pilgrimage for every soul – a spark of the former—through the Cycle of Incarnation (or “Necessity”) in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic Law…In other words, no (divine soul) can have an independent conscious existence before the spark…has passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world and acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts, (checked by its karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest Archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric Philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations.” (Secret Doctrine Vol.1, page:17) Let me try in a small way to elaborate this basic statement of the cosmic ladder of lives. The range of beings stretches from the tiniest sub-atomic particle and below to the grandest universe or clusters of universes and beyond. And since every unit is a consciousness, according to ancient thought, a monad of infinite potential, we see the cosmos as infilled with divine intelligences of every conceivable type, all seeking to unfold themselves through evolution by means of repeated reimbodiments. The higher beings, call them gods, if you wish, form the inner planet, sun, etc., just as man’s spirit, intelligence, consciousness, mind, emotions, life, infill and make up what we know as Mary Jones or Frank Smith. Without these inner qualities and forces and substances there would be no Mary Jones or Frank Smith, nothing but the material shell. And so it is with the universe. It too is ensouled with hosts of informing intelligences at all levels. HPB sought to re-introduce the concept of the living universe governed by cause and effect or ‘Karma’. When we humans are born, we come freighted with karma out of the past. We are that karma. In previous incarnations we have made ourselves what we now are, and are in the process of making ourselves what we shall one day become, in future incarnations. Now when a universe, a sun or a planet is reborn, it seeks its rebirth by means of all the lesser lives of which it is composed, just like man and his atoms and lesser units when he reincarnates. The new universe is the karma of the old universe. Its newly awakened lives at all levels bring themselves, each such lesser life being the karma of its own past. Collectively they form the expression of the vaster being of which each living atom is an integral part. All beings, then, are sparks of the universal essence or over-soul at various stages of this Cycle of Necessity, various levels in their self-unfoldment or evolution, which takes place through repeated reimbodiments. When the scroll of Earth unrolled (as the Hebrews would phrase it), all the lives of Earth were unrolled with it, starting at a very ethereal level. How could it be otherwise? Earth was reimbodying itself, and achieved it by means of all the lesser lives, which includes ourselves. Just as man incarnates by means of all the atoms, molecules, cellular, and other lives which form his ethereal and material bodies, so when Earth commenced its long process of reimbodying, all the kingdoms of Earth took part. However neither Earth nor the kingdoms of Earth resembled even remotely what we see about us today. For then everything was ethereal, spiritual, astral, not physical as now. With each succeeding pulsation or cycle or round, however, Earth and the lives of Earth grew more material until its most material phase, which is roughly where we are today. We call our present Earth-cycle the fourth round. In this round on this physical globe of ours each of the kingdoms has successively dominated Earth. At one time mineral activity was most intense, for millions of years producing world-changing volcanism, followed by long intervals of metamorphism, then volcanism, then change, again and again. As the mineral efflorescence subsided, the lives of the plant kingdoms began to come in, eventually becoming dominant, covering the globe with its greenery, and for millions of years successive generations died and renewed themselves, thus laying down the fossilized energy from which we are still benefiting and paying a heavy price for with global warming. Overlapping and gradually superseding it was the incursion of the animal life-wave or kingdom of multi-myriad types. The reptilian era of gigantic creatures and insects climaxed and declined, giving way to a new resurgence, our own human life-wave. At this point it would clarify the picture to quote from The Secret Doctrine, volume two, where H.P.B. sets down some guidelines, three additional propositions, regarding human evolution on our physical globe during this present or fourth round. We shall be going into some detail about the root races. This is necessary in order to illustrate how truly remarkable are H.P.B.’s second set of propositions. Quoting HPB: “As regards the evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three new propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to modern science as well as to the current religious dogmas: it teaches (a) the simultaneous evolution of seven human groups on seven different portions of our globe’ (b) the birth of the astral before the physical body: the former being a model for the latter; and (c) that man, in this Round, preceded every mammalian – the anthropoids included—in the animal kingdom”  (Secret Doctrine Vol.II, page:1) The first three propositions given in volume I of The Secret Doctrine deal with the birth of worlds. Now from the unknown darkness finite worlds are born – cosmic entities which achieve their reimbodiment by means of all the lesser lives of kingdoms of which they are composed. In the case of planets like our Earth, this takes place in a series of pulsations or rounds. H.P.B. speaks of seven or possibly several more of these rounds. As planets like Earth proliferate outward over a certain portion of inner and outer space, they grow more and more physical until a climax has been reached, and then they begin to etherealize stage by stage until eventually they die, withdraw, together with all their lives onto higher planes, sometimes leaving moons or remnants called ‘Kāma-rupas’, on the various cosmic planes they once occupied. Our own moon is an example in point. These moons have an enormous influence on their parent planet now reimbodied, and H.P.B. speaks of this in several places in The Secret Doctrine. [Please see the lecture: THE MOON: Queen of the Night, available at this website for more detailed information on the Earth’s Moon from an esoteric perspective] The three new propositions given in Volume II of the Secret Doctrine have to do with life on this physical globe of ours in this fourth round. As said earlier, our globe in this round has seen various kingdoms dominate one by one: the mineral, vegetable, animal; and now the human life-wave is dominant, all the other kingdoms being recessive. HPB speaks first of the seven great root races that were born simultaneously. As the chapter continues we note that although the seven primeval races did appear simultaneously, they did so in seed or germ, and one by one flowered, each on its own continental system. These are described by H.P.B. When we study these accounts of earlier races, we should bear in mind that we are reading about ourselves. For those past races were the scenes of our previous striving. We were the Hyperboreans, the Lemurians, the Atlanteans. It is the story of our own past. The second additional proposition of Volume II is most important, for it explains that the astral body is formed before the physical and is a model for the physical body. This principle may be applied to individual human or other birth, as well as to the entire series of root-races, or for that matter to the planetary chain as a whole. As pertains to the individual, we learn that physical birth takes place as the nascent physical body follows on the physical plane what is ensuring on the astral plane, as the astral or pattern body unfolds cell by cell. This key given by HPB speaks to the question raised earlier as to how the single germ cell proliferates into a full-grown adult. As applied to the seven races, H.P.B. asserts that the individuals of the first race were more astral than physical, like gigantic cells. The second race was also astral, but the rudiments of the organs began to appear. These two races extend back many millions of years. Each race flourishes upon its own system of continents. The first race continent was termed the “Sacred

Imperishable

Land” and was located at the North Pole. The second race, called Hyperboreans by the ancient Greeks, occupied a horseshoe shaped continent in the far north. The Lemurians and Atlanteans, the third and fourth races, inhabited continents large portions of which may now be under the oceans, buried under deserts, or may be still in use as parts of existing continents. Because root races endure for millions of years, the continents they live upon varied greatly during their own lifespan. Each race is born from the midpoint of its parent race, from its dark age or kali-yuga, as the Hindus term it. When a race has entered its kali-yuga or most material cycle, the seeds of the next race begin to appear and come on in increasing numbers. Eventually as these seeds become numerous, they are separated geographically, and portions of the old continents become unliveable and begin to break up or submerge. In the case of our own fifth race,

Central Asia was the cradleland for those fleeing from Atlantean depravity. There in

Central Asia our young race enjoyed its Golden and Silver ages in a series of splendid civilizations. Our own race is now entering its kali-yuga, its midpoint. Returning to our theme, the first race reproduced by simple cell-division, hence it is said that its individuals knew no death. The second race towards its end reproduced by budding. The third or Lemurian race as it grew more and more physical commenced reproducing by what the Puranas describe as being sweat-born, that is, by casting of, or sweating, vital cells. Later these vital cells congealed and the third race became for a time oviparous, egg laying. And finally, with the division of the race into the two sexes, the present form of procreation commenced. We see how the patterns are laid down by nature. For the embryo human being starts out as a single cell (1st race), and as it unfolds it undergoes procedures that are memories not only of former races, but back into previous rounds when the human kingdom, seeking to build an appropriate body for itself, went through a series of forms that we now associate with the lower kingdoms. This is all remembered in the embryonic stages. Perhaps the most important evolutionary event insofar as humanity is concerned took place in the third or Lemurian race, and it is remembered in all the world’s religions and legendary histories almost without exception. When the human vehicle or body was ready, there occurred the awakening of man’s heretofore slumbering mind. You will recall the story of Prometheus, who stole the fire of the gods, the fire of mind, and brought it to man. In the Far East there were the ‘Mānasaputras’, sometimes termed the ‘Sons of Mind’, who incarnated in man and thus awakened him into mental life and self-awareness, qualities which distinguish the human from the animals. In Christianity we have the story of Lucifer, the Light-bringer, who was on the right hand of God and was (symbolically) cast out, the War of the Gods, so to speak; and who made his way to the Garden of Eden: Lucifer, the Christian Prometheus, who tempted Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Thereafter humans possessed the power to choose; they could sow and reap karma in a far more potent manner than heretofore. There could no longer be an

Eden or idyllic mindless life, for man now had self-conscious mind. An interesting sidelight: Dr. Eiseley, the famous anthropologist, while going through a museum wherein the supposititious ancestors of man were depicted on the walls, found himself strangely disappointed. Somewhere along the line, he felt, there must have occurred a sudden mitosis of the brain – one moment a higher mammal and in the next, thinking man. Alfred Russel Wallace felt that man’s evolution was not so much bodily as mental; his evolution took place primarily in the mind and its vehicle the brain. Wallace also believed that no evolution could take place without the intercession of superior beings. The legends of superior beings, divine teachers, instructing early mankind in the arts and sciences – legends found all over the world – taken in conjunction with the incarnation in man of his mānasaputra, or higher self, would certainly have brought about spectacular physiological changes, separating man from all the other mammals. This is confirmed by embryology, for the human brain trebles in size during the first year after birth, something no other mammal succeeds in achieving. A memory from the far past. We see here how physiology confirms man’s history. How the old myths can be found to have a basis in scientific fact. We have no time to develop these intriguing topics, including all the attendant activities that took place in human evolution just prior to and following the awakening of mind, such as how the ancient teachings describe the origin of the mammals, who in a strange and interesting fashion took their initial physical birth by means of man’s cast off vital cells. It is suggested by H.P.B. that before mind was awakened, men united with certain of the higher mammals, thus producing among other creatures, the simians or monkey-like races –  this act was called by H.P.B. “the sin of the mindless”. Later, elements of the 4th or Atlantean race united, consciously so, with some of these simians, and this depraved act produced the anthropoids, which thus have two or more drops of human blood in them, so to speak. Hence the Anthropoids came from man, not the reverse. Thus, as H.P.B. suggests, man preceded all the mammals, including the apes. The common ancestor in this case was man himself. The newly “created” mammalian creatures by reason of their own nature became physical more rapidly than the human stock. Hence some geological finds may show certain mammalians seemingly older than man, which was not the case, however. I must close. We have made a long journey here today, from kosmos to atom to man, taking thoughts from these two wonderful volumes. My earnest hope is that these remarks will convey some small idea of the scope of HP Blavatsky’s magnum opus. It should be added that HPB was not content merely to voice these principles, but she culled the literatures, sciences and mythologies of the world to illustrate that the principles she was re-expressing have been known and taught throughout immemorial time. She insisted that these ideas were not her own; simply what she had been taught. Here and there in The Secret Doctrine, in both volumes, re interspersed wondrous insights into sciences now asleep or only partly awake in the modern consciousness, such as the many-layered interpretation of legend, myth and symbol. The sciences of Alchemy, Augury, and Divination. The story of initiation and the Mystery Schools which existed in all parts of the world, places where stage by stage, first by instruction, discipline and purification, and later through actual experience, the aspiring disciple might achieve within himself the birth of his inner god or ‘Christos’, an achievement which over the many rounds and races every man may aspire to, and will in time succeed in bringing about, if not in this cycle or manvantara, then in a subsequent one. The theme of this lecture has been to illustrate by analogy how the history of mankind and the globe on which, or, in which he lives, may be read in the story of how a single human being achieves his birth. Our past is compressed. All of it is engraved upon nature’s secret processes, unseen, but part of Earth’s memory. And our futures may be discerned in the patterns of the life waves as they pass through the various globes in the unfolding rounds.  

This is the text of a lecture given by the author at a public meeting of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena) in Melbourne, Australia. The ideas expressed in all our public meetings are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the TS (Pasadena). 

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