secret-doctrine-dialogues
Author: Unknown
Date: 2018-06-01T07:33:34.912851+00:00

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H. P. Blavatsky

THE SECRET DOCTRINE DIALOGUES

H. P. Blavatsky’s Talks With Students

Contents

Introduction Page

1. Meeting January 10, 1889 1

2. Meeting January 17, 1889 27

3. Meeting January 24, 1889 59

4. Meeting January 31, 1889 95

5. Meeting February 7, 1889 129

6. Meeting February 14, 1889 153
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7. Meeting February 21, 1889 191

8. Meeting February 28, 1889 223

9. Meeting March 7, 1889 257

10.Meeting March 14, 1889 295

11.Meeting March 21, 1889 323

12.Meeting March 28, 1889 341

13.Meeting April 4, 1889 371

14.Meeting April 11, 1889 403

15.Meeting April 18, 1889 429

16.Meeting April 25, 1889 457

17.Meeting May 2, 1889 491

19.Meeting May 16, 1889 523

20.Meeting May 30, 1889 549

21.Meeting June 6, 1889 575

22.Meeting June 20, 1889 607

Appendix 1 635

Appendix 2 636

Appendix 3 639

Introduction

In 1890 the an intended series based on stenographic reports of the meetings
at London’s Blavatsky Lodge of the group had formed after H.P.B.’s move to

London in 1887, and these Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge contained

H.P.B.’s answers to questions relating to the cosmogenesis put forth in her
recent book, The Secret Doctrine. Mme. Blavatsky gives a behind the scenes
glimpse into the proceedings in a letter to her sister, Vera:

Every Saturday we hold a reception and every Thursday a meeting, with al
its scientific questions, with shorthand writers at my back, and with a couple of
reporters in corners. Does not al this take time? I have to prepare myself for
every Thursday, because the people who attend the meetings are not
ignoramuses, but men as Kingsland, the worker in electricity, as Dr Wil iam

Bennett, and the naturalist, Carter Blake. I have to be ready to defend the
theories of occultism against those of applied sciences so that it wil be
possible to print them straight away from the shorthand reports in our new
special monthly magazine under the title of Transactions of the Blavatsky

Lodge.

The first instal ment (1890) carried the note that the printed version was
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“somewhat condensed from the original discussions,” and presented the
material in an anonymous question and answer format. Another volume was
published in 1891, and though others were indicated, nothing further
appeared. The recorded weekly meetings went from January 10 to June 20,
but the published account only covered the meetings up to March 14.

The version printed here is a word for word transcription from the original
handwritten reports of the meetings, now published for the first time. The only
editing has been in the uniformity of punctuation and spel ing of words. Al

Sanskrit terms are given with their diacritical marks. Any additions, which are
few and provided for the sake of readability, are indicated by the fol owing
parenthesis { }. Sometimes the text contains a blank space left where the
stenographer was unable to get a word or term, and this is indicated by
brackets [ ]. Al footnotes are by the transcriber.

The report of the first meeting of January 10th is unique in that it bears

H.P.B.’s handwritten editorial changes, which differ from the published one.

The reader wil find it here for the first time in its entirety, and wil therefore be
able to catch H.P.B.’s authentic voice in her delivery and comments as she
responds to questions about material in The Secret Doctrine. The discussions
at this meeting covered the first two verses of stanza 1 in the first volume of
the book.

Among those present who played a part in the discussions, Thomas H.

Harbottle, who chaired the meeting, was the Lodge’s President, elected at its
formation in 1887. Wil iam Kingsland (1855-1936) had supervised the
instal ation of electrical light in England, and Wil iam Ashton El is (1852-1919),
though trained as a medical doctor, had devoted his energies to introducing

Richard Wagner’s writings to the English reading public. The name of B.

Keightley is introduced at the beginning of the text; al other references are
simply to Mr. Keightley, whom one supposes to be the same person (Bertram

Keightley, who acted as H.P.B.’s secretary at the time) though his nephew,

Archibald Keightley, was Secretary of the Blavatsky Lodge.

M. G.

1.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting on Thursday, January 10th, 1889
at 17 Lansdowne Road, W.

{T.B.} Harbottle Esq. — President.

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Mr. B. Keightley: In the Proem to to the Secret Doctrine speaking of space,
this is said (reads quotation, Volume I, pp. 8 et seq. 1). That is just the few
words on the subject of space in the abstract: but the first Śloka of the first
stanza run as fol ows: “The eternal Parent Space wrapped in her ever invisible
robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities,” and on this the first
question that strikes one to ask is why is the Eternal Parent, or Space, cal ed
feminine here?

Mme. Blavatsky: Perhaps it is a mistake to do so. But since it is impossible to
define Parabrahman or that which is beyond human conception, therefore
once that we speak of that first something which can be conceived, we had
better say “She.” In al the cosmogonies it is the goddess and goddesses that
come first the former one becoming the al immaculate mother from which
proceed al the gods. We have to adopt either one or the other gender, as we
cannot say IT. From IT nothing can proceed, strictly speaking, neither a
radiation nor an emanation.

Mr. Keightley: Is that the Egyptian Neith?

Mme. Blavatsky: In truth, it is beyond Neith. But it is Neith in one sense.

1 [“Space is called in the esoteric symbolism ‘the Seven-Skinned Eternal Mother- Father.’ It is composed from its
undifferentiated to it differentiated surface of seven layers. ‘What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there
is a Universe or not; whether there be gods or none?’ asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the answer made
is — SPACE.”]

2. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Keightley: Then the IT itself is not the seven skinned Eternal father-mother
in this stanza?

Mme. Blavatsky: Assuredly not. The IT is beyond the meta the Parabrahman.

This which “is”, is the female aspect of Brahmâ the male.

Mr. Keightley: And that is what is spoken of in the Proem that I read as the

“seven-skinned Father-Mother”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, it becomes that at the first flutter of differentiation. Then
the subjective proceeds to emanate—or fal s into the objective and becomes
what they cal ed the Mother Goddess, from which proceeds the Logos or

Father God, the unmanifested. For the manifested Logos is quite a different
thing again and is cal ed the “Son” in al cosmogonies.

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Mr. Keightley: Is the first differentiation from the Absolute IT female always?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is sexless; but the female aspect is the first it assumes.

Take the Jewish Kabbalah. You have “Ain-Soph” which is also the IT, the
infinite, the endless the boundless, the adjectives used in conjunction with IT
being negatives of every kind of attributes. From IT the negative, the zero, O,
proceeds number One, the positive which is Sephira or the Crown. The

Talmudists say it is the “Torah,” the law, which they cal the wife of “Ain-Soph.”

Now see the Hindu cosmogony. There you find that Parabrahman is not
mentioned; but only Mûlaprakriti: there is Parabrahman and there is Mûlaprakriti
which the latter is the lining so to say or the aspect of Parabrahman in the
invisible universe. Mûlaprakriti means the root of matter, but Parabrahman
cannot be cal ed the “root,” for it is the rootless root of al that is. Therefore you
must begin with Mûlaprakriti the veil of Brahman as they cal it. Take any
cosmogony in the world: you wil always find it begins thus; the first
manifestation is the Goddess the reflection the root or the first plane of
substance. From or rather in that Mother-Goddess is formed the unmanifested

Logos her son and husband at

3. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

once, as he is cal ed the Concealed Father; and from these two the
manifested Logos which is the Son itself—the Architect of al the visible
universe.

Mr. Keightley: The second question is, what aspect of space, or the unknown
deity, “That,’ of which you speak further on, is here cal ed the Eternal Parent”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , it is just this androgynous something; the Svabhavat of
the Buddhists. It is non-differentiated, hence—an abstraction. It is the

Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântins if you proceed to make it correspond with the
human principles it wil be Buddhi, Âtma corresponding with Parabrahman.

Then comes Mahat which corresponds with Manas.

Mr. Keightley: And so on downwards.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes.

Mr. Keightley: Then what are the seven layers of space. You speak in the

Proem of the “seven-skinned Father-Mother.”

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Mme. Blavatsky: It is what Aristotle cal ed the privation of matter; that which
wil become the seven planes of Being, beginning with the spiritual and
passing through the psychic til it comes down to the material plane. Then
there

[page missing in original see Appendix 1, page 655]

has named the protyle; that which he would like to find, which he does not find,
and which he certainly he cannot find on this plane or earth. It is the first non-
differentiated substance or spiritual matter.

Mr. Keightley: Is it Laya?

Mme. Blavatsky: “Robes” and all are in the Laya condition, up to that point
from which the primordial substance begins to differentiate and thus gives birth
to the universe and al in it.

Mr. Keightley: Are they cal ed “invisible” because they are not

4. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

objective to any differentiation of consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: Say rather “invisible” to consciousness, if any differentiation
were possible at this stage of evolution. Most assuredly it cannot be seen. Do
not you see in the book that even for the Logos Mûlaprakriti is only a veil? And
it is a veil that Logos sees, this veil or the robes in which the Absolute is
enveloped, but cannot perceive the latter.

The President: Is it correct to cal it Mûlaprakriti?

Mme. Blavatsky: If you speak to a Hindu you wil find what a Vedântin cal s

Mûlaprakriti is cal ed Aditi in the Vedas. The Vedânta philosophy means,
literal y speaking, “the end of al knowledge.” The great difficulty in studying the

Hindu systems esoterical y is that in India alone there are six schools of
philosophy. Now if you analyse these you wil find that they agree perfectly in
substance. Fundamental y they are identical; but there is such a wealth of
names, such a quantity of side issues, of al kinds of details and
ornamentations; of sons being their own fathers, and fathers born from their
own daughters, that you become lost in al this, as in a jungle. State anything
you wil from the esoteric standpoint to a Hindu, and if he only wants to he can
contradict and prove you in the wrong, from the standpoint of his own particular
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sectarian view, or the philosophy he accepts. Each of the six schools of India
has its own views and its own (to it) peculiar terms. So that, unless you hold
strictly to some one school and say so, your special terminology is sure to be
misunderstood. It is nothing but splitting hairs, and quarreling about things that
have no importance in reality.

Mr. Keightley: Then the same term identical y is used in quite a different
sense by different philosophies; for instance Buddhi has one meaning in the
esoteric philosophy, and a different meaning in the Sânkhya?

Mme. Blavatsky: And quite a different meaning again in the Vishnu Purânas
in which there are seven Prâkritis that come from Mahat and the latter is cal ed

Mahat-Buddhi.

5. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Keightley: That is again quite different.

Mme. Blavatsky: No it is not; fundamental y it is perfectly the same thing,
though in every philosophy you wil have some other name and meaning given
to it.

Mr. Kingsland: Yet we must cal it something. Are we to have our own terms?

Mme. Blavatsky: I think the best thing you could do would be to coin new

English words. If you want to ever become Western philosophers, you had
better not take from the Hindus, who wil be the first ones to say; “Behold the

Europeans! They take from us al they can, disfigure everything and do no
good.” Find equivalents for al these terms, coin new English words, and do
not depart from them; and then there wil be no confusion.

Mr. Kingsland: Does protyle come near the term Laya?

Mme. Blavatsky: There it is. You are obliged to throw yourself on the tender
mercies of ancient Greek and other ancient languages, but the modern
languages are real y too materialistic and I doubt whether you can get any
words to express that which you need.

Mr. Ellis: We may as wel get it from the Greek as the Anglo-Saxon; al our
scientific words are coined either from the Greek and the Latin, and become

English only by use. Such a word as protyle is not real y English at al .

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Mr. Keightley: It is just adopted.

Mme. Blavatsky: How long? Hardly two years ago?

The President: If we have one word that answers the purpose why not use it?

Mr. Crookes2 probably used the word protyle on the most materialistic plane of
al .

Mme. Blavatsky: What he means by it, is primordial homogeneous matter.

2 [William Crookes, English physicist, 1832-1919, who coined the term protyle for a hypothetical primordial
substance.]

6. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Ellis: Perhaps, just when it is about to enter into the state of differentiation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then certainly it is not “the robes” that he wil ever discover,
because they are on the seventh plane of matter and that he is searching on
this one, which is the lowest.

Mr. Keightley: His protyle is “prehydrogen.”

Mme. Blavatsky: Nothing else, and yet no one wil ever be able to find it. How
many times have the scientists been disappointed. How often have they
thought they had come at last to a real atom, protylic and homogeneous, to
find it each time a compound thing of two or three elements! But let us go on.

Mr. Keightley: Is there, so to speak, on each of the seven planes,
homogeneous matter relatively to that plane? Is it the root of every particular
plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is, only it must be homogeneous only for that plane of
perception and for those who are on that plane. If Mr. Crookes is ever able to
find the protyle he is after, it wil be homogeneous for only him and us. The
il usion may last for some time, until the Sixth Race perhaps, when mankind wil
be entirely changed. Humanity is ever changing, physical y and mental y and
perfecting itself with every race more, as you know we are acquiring learning,
perception and knowledge that we did not have before. Therefore, the science
of today is the ignorance of tomorrow.

Dr. Williams: I should think it would be a great mistake to adopt any word that
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has been already adopted by a scientist with another meaning. Protoplasm has
once come almost to mean the same thing as protyle does, but they have now
narrowed it down.

Mme. Blavatsky: And quite right; because protyle, after al , comes from the

Greek word (Hyle) and the Greeks used it not as a word belonging to this
plane. Besides which it was used in the Chaldean cosmogony, before the

Greeks.

7. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

The President: And yet is not (hyle) used to mean “the root matter” by certain
writers?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is; but these writers are not very ancient.

The President: No, but they used it in a sense which rather transcends that.

The word (hyle) is now used real y as giving very much the same idea that we
endeavoured to give when we used the word Mûlaprakriti.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I do not know. There’s Dr. Lewins3 who cal s himself a

Hylo-Idealist, if you please; so there is the metaphysical meaning of the word
desecrated entirely. So you certainly had better use another term. Laya does
not mean anything in particular, on that plane or the other, but means a state, a
condition. It is a Sanskrit word conveying the meaning of something entirely
undifferentiated and changeless, a zero-point wherein al differentiation ceases
that is what it means and nothing else.

Mr. Kingsland: The first differentiation would represent matter on the seventh
plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: I believe, you can say so.

Mr. Kingsland: That is to say, I suppose that Mr. Crookes’ ideal protyle would
be matter on its seventh plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not know Mr. Crookes’ ideas about that. I am not sure,
but what I understand he wants to find is simply matter in that state which he
too cal s the “zero-point.”

Mr. Keightley: Which would be so to speak the Laya point of this plane.

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Mme. Blavatsky: I doubt whether he has any idea about other planes at al ,
and suspect he is perfectly satisfied with this one. What

3 [Robert Lewins, developer of the philosophical movement Hylo-Idealism, described as material idealism; hence,

Hylo-Idealist.]

8. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

he wants to find here is the protyle atom, this is plain. But what can even he or
any one else know of atoms, something that no one has ever seen. What is an
atom to scientists but another “working hypothesis” added to al the rest? Do
you know, Dr. Wil iams?

Dr. Williams: No, indeed I do not.

Mme. Blavatsky: But, as a chemist, you must know what they mean by it?

Mr. Kingsland: It is a convenient definition of what they think.

Mme. Blavatsky: But surely they must have come now to the conclusion that it
is no convenient definition no more than their elements are. They speak about
some sixty or seventy elements, and laugh at the old honest nomenclature of
the four and five elements of the ancients, and yet where are their own
elements? Mr. Crookes has come to the conclusion that strictly speaking there
is no such thing known as a chemical element. They have never arrived yet at a
simple or single molecule, least of al , at an atom. What is it then?

Mr. Kingsland: An atom is a convenient term to divide up a molecule.

Mme. Blavatsky: If it is convenient to them I have no objection to it. You cal
also iron an element, don’t you?

Mr. Ellis: I think we ought never to forget that it is cal ed the atomic theory. It
has never been claimed as anything more.

Mme. Blavatsky: Aye, but even the word “theory” is now used in a wrong
sense, by the modern schools, as shown by Sir W. Hamilton.4 Why should
they, once they laugh at metaphysics, use a purely metaphysical term when
applying it to physical science? And there are those to whom theory and axiom
mean the same thing. So long as their pet theory is not today upset—which
happens more often than the leap year—they regard it as an axiom; and woe
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to him, who dares doubt or even touch it, outside the sacred precincts of the
fanes of science!

4 [Sir William Hamilton, Scottish metaphysician, 1788-1856.]

9. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Ellis: It is its inventor, Dalton,5 who cal ed it atomic theory.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , let us proceed.

Mr. Keightley: You speak of seven eternities. What are the seven eternities,
and how can there be such a division in Pralaya when there is no one to be
conscious of time?

Mme. Blavatsky: The modern astronomer knows “the ordinances of heaven”

stil less than his ancient brother did. Yet the fact, that if asked whether he
could bring forth Mazzaroth6 in his season, or was with “him” who spread out
the sky—the astronomer would reply in the negative prevents him in no wise
from speculating about the ages of the sun, moon, and geological times, when
there was not a living man with or without consciousness on earth. Why could
not the ancients speculate or cognize backward and forwards as moderns
do?

Mr. Keightley: Why should you speak of seven eternities? Why put it in that
way?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because of the invariable law of analogy. As Manvantara is
divided into seven periods so is Pralaya; as day is composed of twelve hours,
so is night. Shal we say because we are asleep during night and are not
conscious of time, that the hours do not run the same? They pass on and the
clocks strike though we may not hear or count them. Pralaya is the “Night” after
the Manvantaric “Day.” There is no one by and consciousness is asleep with
the rest. But since it exists and is in ful activity during Manvantara, and that it is
ful y alive to the fact that the law of analogy and periodicity is immutable, and
being so that it must act equal y at both ends, why cannot the sentence be
used?

Mr. Ellis: I should want to know how you can count an eternity.

5 [John Dalton, English physicist, 1766-1844, noted for his ideas about atomic theory.]

6 [Mazzaroth, mentioned in Job 38:32, interpreted as the constellations.]

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10. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mme. Blavasky: Here we are! Because we Westerners are foolish enough to
talk about and to speculate on something that has neither beginning nor can
end, therefore the ancients must have done the same. I say they did not. No
people in days of old has ever meant by “Eternity” beginningless and endless
duration. Take the Greeks, speaking of Aeons. Do these mean something
eternal? No more than their Neroses 7 did. They had no word for eternity we
give it. Parabrahman and Ain-Soph, and the Zervana Akerne 8 of the Avesta
represent alone such an eternity—al the other periods are finite. Al these
were astronomical, moreover, based on tropical years and other enormous
cycles—withal, not eternities, but a way of speaking of eternity. It is the word

Aeon in the Bible that was translated as eternity; and yet it is not only a period
but means an angel and a being as wel .

The President: But is it not true to say in pralaya there is the Great Breath?

Mme. Blavatsky: Assuredly, for the “Great Breath” is ceaseless; it is the
universal perpetuum mobile.

The President: If so, it is not possible to divide it into periods? It does away
with the idea of absolute and complete nothingness. It does seem
incompatible that you should speak of any number of periods; but if you have
the Great Breath you might say there are so many indrawings and outdrawings
of the Great Breath.

Mme. Blavatsky: And this would make away with the idea of absolute rest,
were not this absoluteness of rest counteracted by the absoluteness of
motion. Therefore one is as good as the other. There is a magnificent poem
on the pralaya, I forget the name of its Hindu author. It is written by a very
ancient Rishi and he writes and compares that motion of the Great Breath
during the Pralaya to the rhythmical motions of the ocean. It is a most
magnificent picture. It is the only reference on this subject that I know or ever
heard of.

7 [Neros, a cycle of 600 years.]

8 [Zervana Akerne, Persian: boundless, limitless time.]

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Mr. —: The only difficulty is when you use the word eternity instead of the word

Aeon.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why should I use the Greek word when I can use an English
one? I give the explanation in The Secret Doctrine by saying the ancients had
no such thing as eternity—as commonly understood.

Mr. —: Aeon, to the ordinary English reader, would not mean eternity.

Mme. Blavatsky: We have quite enough of foreign words; I have tried to avoid
and put them into English.

The President: Aeon, to most European Christian readers, does mean
eternity, as they have translated it as “for ever and for ever.”

Mr. Ellis: That always involves a beginning at least.

The President: No, “for ever and ever” backwards and forwards.

Mr. Ellis: It is sempiternal. It has a beginning, but it has no end. If you make a
thing plural you divide it. There you make a point of beginning and a point of
end. You wil always make a division.

The President: Then you agree with the seven eternities.

Mr. Ellis: I think it is only a word that may be taken up by one of the daily
papers. I do not think there is any difficulty in the least. The meaning of it is that
there are seven concurrent phases going, on at the same time. It is division of
time lateral y. That is what I meant, if you can understand it. That is what I
wanted to know if you count, it in that way.

Mme. Blavatsky: I count it in such a way as to translate as best I can the real
meaning of a very difficult and abstruse text and then to give the interpretations
that I was taught and have learned. It is just as you say; because if you read
my explanations, there you wil find the same thing.

12. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Keightley: Before we leave the subject, I would ask, is the relation of

Pralaya and Manvantara strictly analogous to the relation between sleeping and
waking?

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Mme. Blavatsky: In a certain sense only, of course. It has that relation, if you
take it in the abstract. During night we al exist and we are, though we sleep
and may be unconscious of so living. But during Pralaya everything disappears
from the phenomenal universe and merges in the noumenal. Therefore
defacto there is a great difference.

Mr. Keightley: You remember you gave us a very remarkable thing about
sleep, saying that “it was the shady side of life.” Then is the Pralaya the shady
side of cosmic life?

Mme. Blavatsky: You may cal it so. It is a time of rest. Even cosmic matter,
indestructible though it be in its essence, must have a time of rest, its Laya
condition notwithstanding. The absoluteness of the eternal al -containing one
essence has to manifest itself equal y, in rest and activity.

Mr. Keightley: The next question is on Śloka two “Time was not for it lay
asleep in the infinite bosom of duration”. The first point is what is the
difference between time and duration as used here?

Mme. Blavatsky: Duration is: it has neither a beginning nor an end, nor time,
as its very name implies, though we may divide it into Past, Present and

Future. What is time? How can you cal that “time” which has neither beginning
or an end? Duration is beginningless and endless; time is finite.

Mr. Keightley: Duration is the infinite, and time the finite conception?

Mme. Blavatsky: Time can be divided, duration cannot; therefore the word
duration is used.

Mr. Kingsland: The only way you can define time is by the motions of the
earth.

13. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: But you can define time in your own conception also can’t
you?

Mr. Kingsland: Duration, you mean?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, time; for as to “duration” there is no such thing as
splitting it, or putting landmarks on it. It is impossible.

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Mr. Kingsland: But we can define time by certain periods.

Mme. Blavatsky: But not duration, which is the one real eternity. In this finite
and phenomenal universe, of course you can. Al you do is to divide time in
duration and take il usions for realities.

Mr. Kingsland: But without that you would not be able to define time at al .

Mme. Blavatsky: Why not? The natural division of time is night and day.

Mr. Kingsland: The essential idea of duration is existence, it seems to me.

Mme. Blavatsky: Existence has limited and definite periods and duration is a
thing which has neither a beginning nor an end. While it is something perfectly
abstract and contains time, time is that which has no duration. Duration is just
like space. Space as an abstraction is endless; but in its concreteness and
limitation, space becomes a representation of something. Of course you can
cal space the distance between this book and that table or between any two
points you may imagine. It may be enormous, or it may be infinitesimal, yet it
wil always be space. But al such specifications are divisions in human
conception. In reality, space is what the ancients cal ed Deity itself.

Mr. Keightley: Then time is the same as space they are one in the abstract.

Mme. Blavatsky: As two abstractions they may be one; yet I would say
duration and space, not time and space.

14. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Keightley: You get time and space with differentiation, time being the
subjective character corresponding to space, the objective, one being the
objective and the other being the subjective side of al manifestation.

The President: They are the only attributes of the infinite, real y. But attribute is
a wrong word, inasmuch as they are coextensive with the infinite; but that is
also a difficult word.

Mr. Ellis: How can you say that? They are nothing but the creations of your
own intel ect. They are nothing but the forms in which you cannot help
conceiving things. How can they be cal ed attributes? Take cause and effect,
they are nothing but the way in which you think of things. If you had a different
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brain you would think about things in a different way.

Mme. Blavatsky: And now you speak as a Hylo-Idealist would. We do not
speak of the phenomenal world, but of the noumenal universe. It is without
space and time, but stil there is duration and abstract space. In the occult
catechism it is asked: “what is the thing which always i s, which you cannot
imagine as not ‘being’, do what you may.” The answer is—Space. For there
may be not a single man in the universe to think of it, not a single eye to
perceive it, not a single brain to sense it, but stil space is—and you cannot
make away with it.

Mr. Ellis: Because you cannot help thinking of it.

Mme. Blavatsky: My or your thinking has nothing to do with it. Space exists
there where there is nothing and must exist in ful vacuum as elsewhere.

Mr. Ellis: The Philosopher have reduced it to this. They say they also are
nothing but attributes, nothing but accidents.

Mme. Blavatsky: Buddha says better than this stil . He says speaking of

Nirvâna that Nirvâna, after al is also an il usion.

Mr. Ellis: You would not cal eternal space and duration the only attributes of
the Inifinite?

15. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I would not give to the Infinite any attributes at al . That only
which is finite and conditioned can have attributes.

Mr. Keightley: You touched upon a question that is put here. Time and space
in modern philosophy are conceived of, as you said, simply as forms of the
human physical brain, and as having no existence apart from human intel ect,
as we know it. Thence arises this old question: “We can conceive of no matter
that is not extended” (in consequence of that faculty or that peculiarity of
mental faculty), “no extension that is not extension of something. Is it the same
on the higher planes, and if so, what is the substance that fil s absolute space,
and is it identical with that space?” You see, that brings to a focus the
question.

Mme. Blavatsky: “Is it the same on another plane?” Now how can I answer
your query? I never travel ed in absolute space, as far as I know. Al I can give
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you is simply the speculations of those who had a thousand times more brains
than I, or any of you have. Some of you would cal them vagaries. We don’t.

Mr. Ellis: Does not he answer his own question in the question itself?

Mme. Blavatsky: How?

Mr. Ellis: He presupposes that, that is the only way in which the intel ect can
think.

Mr. Keightley: I say on this plane our intel ect is limited. In this way we only
conceive of matter extended.

Mr. Ellis: If your soul or anything else could conceive, we wil imagine for a
moment, in another form. You cannot get an answer in words to that, can you?

Your intel ect has to understand those words. Therefore intel ect, not being
able to conceive in any other way, cannot get an answer in any other way.

16. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: On this very same plane, there are not only the intel ects of
men. There are other intel ects and intel igences cal them whatever you like.

The minds of animals highest to the lowest, from elephant down to the ant. I
can assure you that the ant has in relation to its own plane just as good an
intel ect as we have. If it cannot express it to us in words, it yet shows high
reasoning powers, besides and above instinct, as we al know. Thus finding on
this plane of ours so many and such varied states of consciousness and
intel igences, we have no right to take into consideration or account only our
own human consciousness, as though there were no other. Nor can we,
beyond accepting it as a fact, presume to decide how far animal and insect
consciousness goes.

Mr. R. Hall: Why not? Natural science can find it out.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it cannot. It can speculate and guess but wil never be
able with its present methods to acquire any certitude for such speculation. If

Sir John Lubbock9 could become an ant for awhile, and think as an ant, and
remember it when returning to his own sphere of consciousness then would he
know something for certain; not otherwise.

Mr. Keightley: The ants conceptions of time and space are not own
conceptions.

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Mme. Blavatsky: And therefore, if we find such conceptions that are not our
conceptions and that are entirely on another plane, we have no right to deny a
priori the existence of other planes of which we may have no idea but which
must exist, nevertheless, planes higher and lower than our own by many
degrees.

Dr. Williams: May I suggest on that point that every animal is more or less
born with its faculties. Man is born the most helpless and ignorant of al and
progresses, so far as we know, forever, in acquisition of the enlargement of
his intel igences. That seems to be

9 [Sir John Lubbock, English politician, banker and archeologist, 1834-1913, was also author of the popular book,

Ants, Bees, and Wasps, 1882, which was reprinted again in 1888.]

17. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

the most practical differences between the intel igence of al animals and man.

Mr. Ellis: Have you ever seen a dog taught to sit on its hind legs?

Dr. Williams: Whenever animals are put beyond the in civilization they always
return without exception to the primitive and prior condition into which they
were born. This shows that they have no capability of holding on longer than
they are under the influence of civilization.

Mr. Ellis: They would lose a great deal. But how are we to know they have not
developed before? If they were put in different circumstances, of course they
lose a great deal.

Dr. Williams: So far as our experience goes, we know the terms on which they
were, and very clearly too.

Mr. Ellis: We know they can be taught, therefore they resemble man. If we put
man back out of civilization what does he become? Nothing but the animal.

Mme. Blavatsky: To say that animals have no intel igence is the greatest
fal acy in the world. How shal science explain to us the facts that there is no
animal or insect which cannot be taught to remember, to obey the voice of the
master. Why, take a flea. He wil fire a gun, and he wil draw water, and he wil
do al kinds of tricks.10 If a flea has an intel ect, what must it be with others
more developed? How can we say that the animals have got no intel ect?

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Mr. —: They have not got the quality of thinking.

Mme. Blavatsky: They have not got the quality of reasoning, and yet they
have.

Mr. —: A horse wil pul a string and fire off a cannon, but he does not know
anything about the objects of it.

10 [“Flea circuses,” where trained insects played instruments and moved objects, were a great attraction of the
nineteenth century.]

18. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: This is a question that has never been satisfactorily
answered, because it is simply our organization and our human conceit that
causes us to make of man a king of al the animals. I say there are animals
compared to which a mortal man is the lowest of the animals. There is not a
dirtier animal in the world than man and I say it is a great insult to any animal to
go and compare him to a man. I would object if I were an animal. You cannot
find any man who is as faithful as a dog. It shows feeling and affection. It does
not show reasoning power, but it does show intel igence, feelings and
memory. It is just the same as a man.

Mr. —: Look at the birds that pul up their own water.

Mr. —: But you cannot compare that with human intel igence.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think in al probability an ant has a thousand times more
intel ect than a man, if we take the proportionate size.

Mr. —: It is wel known that any intel igent donkey, if he is left with only a door
between him and the garden where he can get the things he might have to eat,
wil open it; he wil pul down the handle of the door. Again, look at the way cats
that are out at night act. In many a house that I have been in, the cats knock at
the window pane with their heads on the balcony in front; and look at the way
dogs wil pul the bel sometimes. Surely that is reasoning enough.

Mme. Blavatsky: Go and compare a child and a kitten, if you please, when
they are born; what can a child do? And a cat, immediately it stands on its legs,
goes eating.

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The President: That is, I think, what Dr. Wil iams meant just now when he said,

“the animal is born more or less with al its faculties, and general y speaking
does not gain on that, while man is gradual y learning and improving.” Is not
that real y the point?

Dr. Williams: That is exactly the point.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of course man is a perfect animal. He is a progressive
animal.

19. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Ellis: Is not it a question of degree and surroundings?

Mme. Blavatsky: We look upon the animals, as the men of science look upon
us.

The President: I think it is fair to say that the animal intel igence cannot be
denied, and simply to add that the intel igence of the animal is of a different
plane to anything we humans can appreciate. And so wil it go higher and
higher. That which transcends human intel igence we cannot pretend to
understand in any way. That answers that question as put there.

Mr. —: But does not one of the great distinctions between the animal and the
human intel igence be in the fact that human beings can, to some extent, work
with abstract thought, while the animal can only work in the concrete? That is to
say, that the animal can largely be taught and apparently wil reason from it in
conjunction with the fact that it may get food or something that it likes; whereas
a human being can actual y argue from facts and by means of imagination
create the surroundings.

Mr. Ellis: How do you teach a child? By giving it a lump of sugar stick, or else
smacking it. The child passes as you know by physiology through al the
stages of every other class of animals, and therefore they are passing through
the same stages as the animals are in now.

The President: We have rather wandered from the point I think.

Mr. Keightley: The question is, is there any consciousness or conscious being
to cognise and make a division of time at the first flutter of manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: I should think not.

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Mr. Keightley: In the way that Subba Row11 speaks of the first Logos he
implies—

11 [T. Subba Row, in the metaphysical aspects of the Bhagavad-Gita.]

20. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: That the Logos kept a diary or what.

Mr. Keightley: He implies both consciousness and intel igence.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel I am not of Subba Row’s opinion. You forget one thing,
he spoke about the Logos without saying whether it is the first or the second
he spoke about, the unmanifested Logos or the Logos. Several times he cal s
it Iswara so it is not the unmanifested Logos, because Iswara was never

Nârâyana, you may cal it what ever you like, but it is not the highest Logos,
because that from which the manifested Logos is born is that which is
translated by me there “the Eternal Father-Mother.” In the Vishnu Purâna they
cal it the egg of the world, and this egg of the world is surrounded by seven
skins or layers or zones—cal it whatever you like—it is that which is given in
the Purânas as the Golden Egg. This is the Father-Mother and in this Golden

Egg is born Brahmâ the male, which is in reality the second Logos, or the third,
according to the enumeration adopted, not the highest—that is to say the point
which is everywhere and nowhere. Mahat comes afterwards. Mahat is
something between the third and fourth, it fluctuates, you understand, because
it contains the physical germs in it and the whole roots of al the physical
universe. At the same time it is a universal Divine Mind.

Mr. Keightley: It is the first manifestation, then?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the third but it overlaps the fourth.

The President: Then the first Logos is the first point in the circle.

Mme. Blavatsky: The first point because there is the circle, the circle which
has neither limit nor boundaries, nor can it have a name nor attributes, nor
anything, and this point which is put there, is the unmanifested Logos. Which is
simultaneous with that line you draw across the diameter. The first line is the

Father-Mother and then comes from that Father-Mother the second Logos,
that is to say, the manifested word. For instance in the Hindu Purânas it is said

(and the Orientalists have said a good deal about that also)

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21. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

that the first production of Âkâsa is sound. Now Âkâsa is just what is cal ed
there the Mother or the Father-Mother (cal it whichever you like), and sound
means there simply speech or expression of the unuttered thought; and it is
the Logos, that which the Greeks and Platonists cal ed the Logos, and is just
that which is sound and which made Dr. Wilson12 and many other Orientalists
say, “What fools these Hindus are!” They speak of Âkâsa, which is according
to our showing, Chaos, and from this Chaos they make sound proceed. It
means just that which was adopted subsequently by St John, the Evangelist,
who speaks about the Logos, saying just the same thing in other words.

Mr. Keightley: On this subject of time this question has been put “What is the
consciousness which takes cognizance of time?” Is the consciousness of
time limited to the plane of waking physical consciousness or does it exist on
higher planes? Is the consciousness of sense of succession, is that limited
purely to our present plane? Or does it exist on higher planes?

Mme. Blavatsky: Whose consciousness? Why, you must tel me, of whom
you are talking—whose consciousness is limited?

Mr. Keightley: Our own. Al our consciousness is succession. We have a
succession of ideas or succession of thought. Haven’t we?

Mme. Blavatsky: Then who is there to think like that?

Mr. Keightley: You speak of time. “Time was not.” Time to our minds conveys
this idea of succession.

Mme. Blavatsky: And if time was not, it can convey no such idea. Time was
not means that there was duration only and not time, because no one was
there to make time or the division of time. That which was not, how can it have
any consciousness or any aspect of consciousness? What does it mean, al
this?

12 [Probably Horace Hayman Wilson, English Orientalist, 1786-1860, whose translation of the Vishnu Purana,

Mme. Blavatsky used.]

22. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Keightley: This question real y applied to a latter subject you speak thus of
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time: “Time is only an il usion produced by the succession of our states of
consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist
where no consciousness exists.” Then the question which is put is, is the
consciousness of time, in our sense of the word, limited only to our present
plane of waking consciousness, or does it exist on any other planes?

Mme. Blavatsky: It cannot exist because even in sleep it does not exist. You
have been answering it to yourselves how many times, when we have been
talking about dreams.13

Mr. —: Seeing that the “Gods” have a beginning and an ending, they must exist
in time.

Mme. Blavatsky: They exist in space and time. Duration cannot be divided.

The President: But the word succession applies to them.

Mr. —: But is there not a consciousness which can take cognizance of it?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly the universal mind can.

Mr. —: Then the idea exists there.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t think so. In the Absolute there cannot exist the same
division of time as in our conception. I would say there is a consciousness
there, but I don’t think time has got anything to do with it. Can you say that the
sea has also a conception of time in its rhythmical striking of the shore, in the
movement of the waves and so on? To my mind, the Absolute can have no
consciousness, or not a consciousness such as we have here, and that is why
they speak as they do about the Absolute. It has neither consciousness, nor
desire, nor wish, nor thought, because it is absolute thought,

13 [The preceding meetings in December 1888, had dealt with the subject of dreams and can be found as an

Appendix to Transactions of the Blavatsk y Lodge, Part 1, 1890.]

23. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

absolute desire, absolute al —just what the Daily News 14 laughed at from not
understanding the true definition of the absolute said—I don’t remember how
the phrase went there in the Daily News, do you,

Miss—?

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Miss—: I do not.

Mme. Blavatsky: They laughed at “Be-ness” and yet there is no other way in
this world of translating the word Sat but by Be-ness, because it is not
existence, for existence implies something that feels that it exists. Existence
must give you the idea of having a beginning, a creation, and an end, it is just
what Gautama Buddha says about Nirvâna, or if not Buddha it is [ ]. He says

Nirvâna does not exist but it is. Try to make what you can of this Oriental
metaphysical conception. Stil it is there, it exists and al the philosophy is built
on it.

Mr. Ellis: The Hebrew Jehovah was “I am”.

Mme. Blavatsky: He cal s himself so. So is the Ormuzd of the Persians, too.

Every one of us is [ ] the “I am that I am.”

Mr. Duncan: Be-ness has some connection with the word “to be.”

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but it is not that. No word, my dear Mr. Duncan, can
apply better than that, better than the word Be-ness. It is a word we have
coined, and we have coined it correctly, I think. It is the only thing that renders
the Sanskrit word Sat. It is not existence, it is not being, it is absolute Be-ness.

The President: It is both being and non-being.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel then, how can you explain that better? We cannot
conceive it. Our intel ects are limited and language is far more finite and
conditioned than we are. So how can we explain that which we can only
conceive by our highest intuition?

14 [The London Daily News of January 10 had just published a notice of The Secret Doctrine as “The Secret of all

Things”.]

24. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. Ellis: The Germans understand this at once because they have a word
they use every day, that is the word “sein.” “Sein,” of course, means “to be,”

and “das sein” means, of course, what you mean by the word Be-ness. I am
sure nobody would have said that was absurd, only you cannot use German
words. No German would cal this word absurd, but a frivolous Englishman
would.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Wel now, you Englishmen invent a word that would answer
to that “sein” there.

Mr. Ellis: One is constantly meeting with the absolute poverty of our language
for purposes of translation. In German one or two words may require twenty
for perfect translation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now look at Max Mül er.15 Why, he makes a mess of it
positively, as the English language must have at least 40 or 50,000 words
more invented or coined to express a part of that which the Sanskrit language
expresses.

Mr. Ellis: We have no methods of doing what they do in the Sanskrit. They
couple two words together and you have the whole meaning of a sentence. If
we want to express that same quality I have found over and over again you
have to put about twenty words. You cannot do it in one or two.

Mr. Duncan: I think that last question had reference to the consciousness of
time.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, this is al finite beginning and ending so you cannot find
any correspondence between that and real duration or real abstract space, for
it is not, it cannot be localized. There is such a thing as time; it has a beginning
and an end.

Mr. —: Yes but are we conscious of it?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, even the Devachanî is not conscious of it.

15 [Friederich Max Müller, German Orientalist, 1823-1900, editor of the 50-volume Sacred Books of the East
series.]

25. I. Meeting January 10, 1889

Mr. —: But he is conscious of a succession of states of consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, al is present to the Devachanî there is no past, because
he would recal it and regret it, and there is no future because he would be
anxious to have it. Devachan is a state of bliss in which everything is present;
that is why they say the Devachanî has no conception and no idea of time; to
him everything is just a real and vivid dream.

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Mr. —: He can have no idea of time in as much as there is nothing to measure it
by.

Mme. Blavatsky: To him it is not a dream, but to us it is a dream. When we
dream everything is present and we enjoy the greatest bliss.

Mr. —: In a dream also we may dream a lifetime in half a second, yet we are
conscious of succession of states of consciousness. Events take place one
after the other.

Mme. Blavatsky: After the dream, not during the dream. During the dream you
wil be conscious of nothing of the kind. You wil perhaps forget there is such a
thing as succession of states of consciousness. You wil forget it surely.

Mr. Ellis: If you were describing a picture to somebody you could not give him
al that picture at once, you have to give him part of the picture then another,
although you have it al in your mind.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, you have it al before you al the time.

Mr. Keightley: That is the last question.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

2.

Blavatsky Lodge of the

The Theosophical Society

Meeting held January 17th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 1 continued, Śloka 3: Universal mind was not, for
there were no Ah-hi to contain it.”1 This Śloka seems to imply that the universal
mind has no existence apart from the Ah-hi, but in the commentary you state
that during the Pralaya, “the ‘universal mind’ remains as a permanent possibility
of mental action, or as that abstract absolute thought, of which mind is the
concrete relative manifestation,” and that the Ah-hi are the vehicle for divine
universal thought and wil . “ They are the intel igent forces that give to Nature
her ‘laws,’ while themselves acting according to laws imposed upon them by
stil higher powers....(they are) the hierarchy of spiritual beings through which
the universal mind comes into action.”2 This commentary suggests that the
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Ah-hi are not themselves the universal mind, but only the vehicle for its
manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Universal mind and absolute mind are one. Are they not?

Very wel , that only implies that as there are no finite differentiated minds
during Pralaya therefore it is just as though there were no mind at al , if there is
nothing to contain it, or to perceive it. That is the meaning. There is nothing to
reflect or contain the ideation of the absolute mind, therefore it is not, because
everything outside of the absolute and immutable Sat, or the Be-ness, is
necessarily finite and conditioned sense it has a beginning and end, and here
is something with no beginning and no end. Therefore sense the Ah-hi were
not , there was no universal mind, because you must make a distinction
between the absolute mind

1 The Secret Doctrine I:37.

2 The Secret Doctrine I:38.

28. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

which is ever present, and its reflections in the Ah-hi at the first flutter of

Manvantara. The Ah-hi are on the highest plane; they are those who reflect the
universal mind col ectively, and begin the work of evolution of al the lower
forces until they come, throughout the seven planes, down to our lowest plane.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the Ah-hi and the universal mind are necessary
compliments of one another?

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al . Universal mind, or absolute mind, always is,
whether during Manvantara or during Pralaya; it is immutably one. But since the
term Ah-hi means the highest Dhyâni—the Logoi perhaps—those which begin,
which are the creation—or evolution, not creation, because everything is an
emanation; since the Ah-hi were not, there was no universal mind, because it
was the absolute dormant, latent mind, and it was not differentiated in the
col ectivity of these Dhyânis.

The President: It was rather absolute consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: It was absolute consciousness which is not consciousness.

What is consciousness? Further on you make a question: “Can
consciousness exist without any mind?” But it wil come in time. You had better
proceed, unless you have some other questions to ask. For instance, let us
represent to ourselves, if you can do such a thing, that universal mind is a kind
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of vacuum, but vacuum with latent consciousness in it. You just suppose you
pump out al the air you can from some vessel, there is a vacuum. You cannot
represent yourselves in that particular vessel as a vehicle: there is the vacuum;
but break these vessels that contain this soi-distant vacuum; where shal you
look for it? It has disappeared, it is everywhere and nowhere. It is something,
yet it is the absence of something. It is entirely a homogeneous thing. This is
what is supposed to be a vacuum, I think. Dr. Wil iams, how would you
describe vacuum?

Dr. Williams: Absolute vacuum is a figment real y.

29. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is a figment which is a negative thing. It is the supposed
place where nothing exists.

Dr. Williams: It is absence of air, I should think.

Mme. Blavatsky: You break those vessels and nothing exists, therefore
universal mind is not, because there are no vehicles to contain it.

Mr. A. Keightley: The first question is, can you give us a definition of the
universal mind, which wil solve the difficulty?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I think I have just done so.

Mr. A. Keightley: Quite so. Then number 2. What are the higher powers which
condition the Ah-hi?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel I don’t cal them powers at al ; it is simply a
manifestation of the periodical law, the universal law, which becomes by turns
active or inactive. This that law of periodical manifestation which creates them,
which emanates them. I always use the word create, which is a very bad and
wrong word to use, for there is no creation.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the power which is higher than the Ah-hi is the law
which necessitates manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so; periodical y, when the hour strikes, it comes, and
they appear into manifestation. They are on the first rung of manifestation, after
which it goes on gradual y shaping itself more and more.

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Mr. B. Keightley: It should real y be THE law, and not A law.

Mme. Blavatsky: The law and not a law. I give it [to] you from the standpoint of
esoteric, or eastern teaching. If physical science objects, just say so, and I wil
try to repent. Who of you has an objection to make?

Mr. Kingsland: The grand difficulty is to account for this law.

30. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: You want to go beyond even the first manifestion, beyond
what they cal the Supreme Cause; you want to go beyond that. You try to
understand and I can assure you, you won’t understand it; it is al a our
imagination. We try to do the best we can, but it does not stand to reason at al .

We do not even approach this absolute, this merely logical speculation which
dates from thousands and thousands of years. If physical or modern science
can say or invent something better, let it do so, but it has not done it yet. There
are gaps and flaws everywhere, and at every moment one thing breaks its
nose, and another comes, and then they jump over the wal and imagine some
other speculation; that again in its turn breaks its nose, and that is al it is.

Mr. Kingsland: Would not cosmic mind be a better term than universal mind in
this case?

Mme. Blavatsky: No; cosmic mind would take in the third degree. Cosmic
mind is simply confined or limited to the manifested universe.

Mr. Kingsland: Quite so. In that sense it seems the passage is intended.

Mme. Blavatsky: Cosmic mind is quite a different thing from universal
ideation. It is just the manifestation of that mind during the Manvantaric period
of activity. But universal ideation knows no change. It was, always was, is, and
wil be. I never said it does not exist: it does not exist for our perception,
because there were no minds to perceive it. Universal mind was not because
there was no one to perceive it. One is latent and the other is active. One is a
potentiality.

Mr. Kingsland: The universal mind was in the absolute, but it was cosmic mind
that was not.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but we speak here about manifestation. I cannot go and
invent things; I am obliged to translate just as the
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31. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

stanzas give it in the book.

Mr. Kingsland: That is the manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , let us cal it cosmic mind, if you like it better.

Mr. Kingsland: I only think there is a confusion between universal mind and
absolute mind.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you say universal mind, it is absolute, but if you say cosmic
mind, that is another thing.

Mr. Kingsland: Then you can’t say that it was not.

Mme. Blavatsky: Cosmic ideation was not, but universal mind was.

Mr. Kingsland: Quite so.

Mme. Blavatsky: How can I put that it was not? I am obliged to translate as it
is, and then to give al the commentaries. I didn’t invent them. If I were
inventing it, I might put it otherwise.

Mr. Kingsland: If you say universal mind was not manifested, you get over the
difficulty.

Mme. Blavatsky: Those who have written this do not concern themselves with
the manifested universe. This relates to the highest, and does not deal yet with
the universal matter, it deals with the universe of ideation of consciousness
and so on.

Mr. Kingsland: It deals with the first manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: You had better send your protest to those who have written
this thing, because I can’t help it.

Mr. Kingsland: No, it is the English translation. Do you see what I mean,

Harbottle?

The President: I see what you mean.

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Mr. Mead: It is the same thing looked upon from different points of view.

32. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

The President: I think we are apt to use the word cosmic as applied to the
manifested universe in al its forms. This does not touch anything of the sort.

This is the first absolute consciousness, or non-consciousness and I think it
real y does mean that the absolute consciousness could not be that universal
mind because it was not to be expressed, it could not be expressed, there
was no expression for it. That is what I take the meaning of it.

Mr. Kingsland: There is no expression for it; but it was there.

The President: It was there and it was not there.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because the Ah-hi were not, to the persons who can
conceive of it; since there was nothing and no one to conceive of it, how could
it be? It was not. You must remember the peculiar mode of expression used
by the Easterners. They express it always al egorical y, always figuratively. You
can not ask them to express in scientific language which says so much, and
means so little.

Mr. Kingsland: When you say it was not, you mean it was not in the absolute.

Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon. I say it was not, simply.

The President: If you can say it was, that would be taking a very one-sided
view of what we mean by Sat. It would be equivalent to saying that Sat was
being.

Mr. Mead: I think the question hangs on the time referred to altogether. It
involves the question of time, and no time then existed.

The President: I think it goes even further back than that. I think it is al inherent
in the meaning we attribute to the word Sat, which is as I say both being and
non-being.

Mr. Kingsland: I don’t think there is any confusion in our minds, it is in the
terms.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just read this over again, wil you?

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33. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: “What are the higher powers which condition the Ah-hi?”

Mme. Blavatsky: No, no, not that. I mean the thing to which Mr. Kingsland
takes objection.

(Mr. A. Keightley then read the passage: Secret Doctrine, Stanza 1, Śloka 3
and commentary [ quoted at the beginning of the meeting]. )

Mme. Blavatsky: It ought to be higher “power” not “powers.”

Mr. Kingsland: First you say it was, and then it was not.

Mme. Blavatsky: I didn’t say that. The absolute must be always, it is a perfect
impossibility for it to be otherwise. The absolute is a thing which must be taken
tacitly. If there is such a thing as absolute something and not something, an
absolute unknown or unknowable, then it must always have been and always
be. It is impossible it should go out of the universe. This is a tacit assumption.

Mr. Kingsland: But if you take it as it is written there, “universal mind was not,”

it treats of it as if it were a manifestation. But mind itself is not a manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Mind is a manifestation, universal mind is not the same thing;
let us cal it an ideation. Cosmic ideation was as soon as the Ah-hi appeared
and continues throughout the Manvantara. But this is universal absolute
ideation, and is always and cannot get out of the universe, whereas cosmic
ideation was not and the only mistake is that I did not put cosmic. But why
should I? I cannot put things out of my own head; I just translate as it is. There
are many verses that come between, that I have left out altogether. It may be
this would be better.

Mr. B. Keightley: Also, I think the term cosmos is used almost throughout The

Secret Doctrine in reference chiefly to the solar manifested universe, and is
not taken in the sense as referring to that which precedes.

34. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think we shal only deal with “cosmos” as our solar system.

I think I say it in some place there, at least I so remember. I have a recol ection
that I have been writing about it.

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Mr. A. Keightley: I think I see Kingsland’s objection, he means to say this
expression is liable to cause a certain amount of confusion because, just as

Madame Blavatsky has now expressed it, the universal mind always is and
never can be. But that which is identical with what we cal cosmic ideation was
not, because the Ah-hi were not there to perceive it.

Mme. Blavatsky: And, as there was no manifestation, it was an impotentiality.

Mr. A. Keightley: First you say universal mind was not and then you say
universal mind is always a permanent thing and always is.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because I try to explain the stanza. I know the meaning, I
know the spirit too, not the dead letter, I don’t take the dead letter; I give it as it
is, and then I give the spirit of it.

Dr. Williams: Does not the expression, “universal mind,” convey, itself, that
idea?

Mr. B. Keightley: I think it is implicit in the word, “mind.”

Mme. Blavatsky: We are obliged to use it.

The President: Unless you cal it consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is absolute consciousness. But it is not consciousness as
we understand it.

Dr. Williams: If you get rid of al predicates, everything has been done that can
be done. You say the Absolute is. If you say more than that you approach
perception, and that is manifestation.

The President: You cannot attribute mind to the absolute until you have got
something capable of perception radiating from the Absolute, in which case it
is correct to say that the universal mind was not.

35. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mr. Kingsland: It is correct in one sense but creates confusion.

Mme. Blavatsky: But what can we do? Do you want to change it? Now it is
printed, what can you do?

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Mr. Kingsland: We cannot do anything, now it is printed.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then why do you break my heart? (Laughter)

The President: You asked him to object, real y.

Mme. Blavatsky: But what can we do now? I think about 20 persons have
broken their heads about it when they were preparing the thing, even the great
metaphysical Fawcett,3 because I have been asking al of them. Is there
anything according to Herbert Spencer4 or any of your scientists which you can
object to? “No,” they said “it is perfect,” and now you find flaws! Wel , let us
pass.

Mr. A. Keightley: “To what cosmic plane do the Ah-hi here spoken of belong?”

Mme. Blavatsky: To the first the second and the third. Because it is a triad, a
manifested triad, a reflection of the non-manifested. Taking the triad in the
sense that Pythagoras gives it, it disappears in the darkness and the silence.

Taken in this sense it is the only thing, as there is Âtma, Buddhi, Manas—wel
al , the first, second, and third planes—the Ah-hi belong to these planes.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is to say the Ah-hi belong to the cosmic planes which
correspond to Âtma, Buddhi, Manas.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so, they correspond.

3 [Edward Douglas Fawcett, 1866-1960, English journalist who helped H.P.B. with The Secret Doctrine and went
on to write on metaphysics. He was the brother of Col. P.H. Fawcett, the explorer, who left to discover a lost city
in the Amazon in 1925 and never returned.]

4 [Herbert Spencer, English philosopher and sociologist, 1820-1903, who posited the “Unknowable” as the basis
underlying the phenomenal world.]

36. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then this question cannot arise that Âtma, Buddhi, Manas—

Mme. Blavatsky: I know, the two are on the same plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: They are successive emanations; you get the Âtma, Buddhi
in man, before Manas makes its appearance.

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Mme. Blavatsky: But we do not speak of man now, if you please, we speak in
general that these correspond. Don’t you go and mix up man with it now. We
speak of the macrocosm simply, at the beginning when there was the first
flutter of the manvantaric dawn, and then evolution begins.

Mr. B. Keightley: The question I want to put exactly is this: are those three
planes simultaneous emanations or do they emanate one from the other?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose one from another, but I could not tel you that.

Don’t ask me questions I cannot answer.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is the question that is now meant here.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you real y want to apply mechanical law to cosmogony as
it is in the metaphysical minds of the Orientals? You won’t get much if you
come to apply space and time because there was no space and no time, so
how can you ask me this question?

Mr. B. Keightley: Wel , then, that’s settles the question.

Mme. Blavatsky: After this comes the question of the reflection of the triad in
space and time, therefore, how can you apply anything mechanical?

Mr. B. Keightley: That is what I wanted you to say. I got what I wanted.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 4. “Have these Ah-hi been men in previous

Manvantaras or wil they become so?”

Mme. Blavatsky: They wil become men in a subsequent manvantara.

37. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: They do they remain permanently on this very exalted plane
during the whole period of the Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: Of the 15 figures? 5 No, they pass through al the planes
until they become on the third plane Manasaputra, the sons of Manas or mind.

They are arûpa. On the higher planes these Ah-hi are arûpa, that is to say
formless, bodies, without any substance, without anything, they are breaths.

On the second plane they approach to rûpa or to form. On the third they
become Mânasarupa, those who become incarnated in men.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Then is that stage taken in one manvantara or are those
various stages?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is. It is al the same thing, only a distinction is made. On
every plane they reach they are cal ed by other names.

Mr. A. Keightley: Quite so.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is more and more differentiation because what we talk
about is the homogeneous substance, which we cal substance from our
conceit, because it cannot be any substance which we can conceive of. Later
they become substance, if you like.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the Ah-hi of this manvantara—

Mme. Blavatsky: They do not exist any more, if you please. They have
become long ago [ ].6 Read The Secret Doctrine you wil see the thing there.

Mr. A. Keightley: I understood you to say they did not become men in this

Manvantara.

Mme. Blavatsky: The 15 figures apply to the solar system. The first answers
relate to the beginning of the whole objective universe, but after that, when you
begin to speak about Father-Mother, then it

5 [The manvantaric life cycle that relates to the solar system “a duration of time which extends over over fifteen
figures.”]

6 [This passage is left blank in the original. The published version of the Transactions gives “Planetary, Solar,

Lunar, and lastly incarnating egos.”]

38. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

relates to our objective universe and to the solar system only because our
teaching does not busy itself at al with things outside. At least those things that

I have selected. I could not go and select the whole thing. I have only taken
that which relates to our solar system. I have just taken two or three just to
show the general idea, and then skipped over whole stanzas and came to the
point. I have said there are some 60 stanzas passed over. I would have had
compliments from the Daily News if I had translated the whole of it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then on the re-awakening wil the men of one Manvantara
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have to pass through a similar stage to the Ah-hi stage in the next Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: In many, many Manvantaras at the end of the tail of the
serpent; when the tail wil be in the mouth of the serpent, I might say. What
have you got the ambition of becoming? An Ah-hi, or what? You wil have time,
my dear fel ow, to do many things before you become an Ah-hi.

Mr. A. Keightley: “A man can choose what he shal think about, can the
analogy be applied to Ah-hi?”

Mme. Blavatsky: No, because a man has free wil and the Ah-hi have no free
wil . They have col ective wil . They are obliged to act simultaneously. It is one
law that gives them the impulse and they have to act just according to that law.

I do not cal it free wil . Free wil can exist only in man, in a man who has a mind
with consciousness, which acts and makes him perceive things not only within
himself but outside himself also. These Ah-hi simply are forces ; you don’t
take them to be men, do you?

Mr. A. Keightley: No, but I take them to be conscious agents in the work.

Mme. Blavatsky: Conscious in so far that they act within the universal
consciousness. The Mânasaputra is a different thing when they come on the
third plane.

Mr. Hall: Can the Ah-hi be said to be enjoying bliss?

39. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why should they enjoy bliss or enjoy non-bliss? What have
they done to do so? I don’t think they enjoy anything of the kind. They cannot
smoke cigarettes even when they like. Why should they enjoy bliss? What
extraordinary ideas you have! You can enjoy bliss only when you have known
what suffering is.

Mr. Hall: I was making a distinction in my mind between bliss and happiness.

Mme. Blavatsky: I thought it was the same thing; you can have neither
happiness nor bliss if you have not known suffering.

Mr. Hall: I was thinking of bliss as the state of the Absolute.

Mme. Blavatsky: You suppose the Absolute is bliss? The Absolute can have
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no condition, no attribute, nothing at al . The Absolute is conditionless; that is
the first thing to learn about the absolute. It is only that which is finite and
differentiated which can have some attribute or something of the kind.

Dr. Williams: How can they be said to be conscious intel igences in as much
as intel igence is such a complex thing?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because the English language does not furnish us with a
better word. I admit the word is very inadequate, but the English language is
not the Sanskrit language. If it were written in Sanskrit you would not find a
single objection. But what can you do with the English language or any other

European language?

Dr. Williams: There may not be one word, but I think a col ection of words
would express anything.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, then try, if you please, to do so!

Dr. Williams: It seems to me from what I can gather from your elucidation that
it real y means a force which is a unity, not a complex action and reaction of
several forces—which would be implied in the word intel igence or anything
which implies complexity—but rather it is that simple force, almost. The
nouminal, the aspect of

40. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

phenomenal force, would at least express better what is meant by that.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I don’t know. You take one flame and represent
yourselves a flame and it wil be unity. But the rays which wil proceed from that
flame, they wil become complex and do al kind of things and wil be seen to
act each one on its own line.

Dr. Williams: But they only become complex when they find receptacles in
lower forms.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just what they do find? The lower they descend the more
they find it. But it is al one; it is simply the rays which proceed from one; and
more and more do they proceed to differentiate until they become ful y
conditioned and fal down here in this world of ours, with its thousands and
mil ions of inhabitants—as Carlyle7 said, “most of them fools.”

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Dr. Williams: Wel , the Ah-hi, then, considered as a primary essence, would
be a unity.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, because they proceed from unity. It is the first of
the seven rays, as they cal it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then they are the reflection of unity.

Mme. Blavatsky: What are the prismatic rays, if you please, if not one single
white ray? From the one they become three, from the three they become
seven, because there is a prismatic scale of colors.

Mr. A. Keightley: Seven, but they are stil one when they are moving rapidly
over each other.

Mme. Blavatsky: To our perception, quite so. They become seven just in the
same way, there if you please take the analogy.

Mr. A. Keightley: Next question. You say that during deep sleep “mind is not”

on the material plane; but it is implied that during this period mind is active on
another plane. Can you give us a definition

7 [Thomas Carlyle English author [1795/1881.]

41. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

of the characteristics which distinguish mind in the waking state from mind
during the sleep of the body?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I suppose there is a great difference between the two.

You see, the reason in higher minds sleeps but the instinctual mind is
awakened. That is the difference. The reason of the higher mind, in the
physical man, is not always the same. Today I have been looking at a book
and I learnt at last the great difference between cerebrum and cerebel um. I
was always mixing them up in my mind, I was not sure of them, and this
morning I on purpose went to look and I at last learnt that this is the cerebel um

(pointing to the head) and this the cerebrum. The one sleeps when the other is
awake and if you ask an astrologer, he wil give you a magnificent idea. I don’t
know where it is stated, but the brain is al in seven, and he separated them
and put al the planets that answer to those portions. Now here you wil find the
earth, the sun, and the moon, here at the back of the head; and this part sleeps
and rests when the other is awake.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Then what do you mean by instinctual?

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, it passes from a plane which we regard as an
il usion. Now, for instance, this plane in which we are proceeding is cal ed
reality; we cal it il usion, but we say that this part going to sleep, and this part of
the brain having no more a definite function, it is the other one that begins and
carries away man on the Astral—which is stil more deceptive, because it is al
the emanations of everything that is bad. It preserves no record. The great
serpent it is cal ed. Now if the higher mind sleeps there you wil have a
perception of the dreams and you can bring back when you awake the
recol ection of them—this pretence of dreams, but I think we have been
discussing dreams quite enough—and unless it is that, you wil have al these
chaotic dreams because you have al these dreams with this peculiar part of
your brain, the cerebel um.

Mr. B. Keightley: One thing that question was meant to cover was this: for
instance, the fundamental conditions of the mind in the waking state are space
and time.

42. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes.

Mr. B. Keightley: Do they exist for the Manas, the mind, during the sleep of the
physical body?

Mme. Blavatsky: No.

Mr. B. Keightley: So there you get at any rate one very marked distinction
between the manifestation of man on the two planes of consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: There may be something approximate some hal ucination of
space and time; but certainly it is nothing real. We have been talking about it
many times, and have seen that in one second you may live through the events
of thirty years, as some dreams prove to you. Therefore there is no
conception, no possibility of conceiving of division of time.

Mr. B. Keightley: Or of space.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are both in duration and eternity; they are not in time.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Next question: It has been stated that Manas (mind) is the
vehicle of Buddhi, but the universal mind has been spoken of as Maha Buddhi.

Can you define the difference between Manas and Buddhi as applied in a
universal sense, and Manas and Buddhi as manifested in man?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , cosmic Buddhi is the vehicle of Mahat, that is to say, in
the sense of Buddhi being Prakriti and this is Prakriti; at least it descends in the
seven planes, that is the difference, and the Buddhi of man proceeds from the
highest Âkâsa. He does not go on the highest plane until he comes to the
most objective plane. Maha-Buddhi is used there in the same sense as Prakriti
in its seven manifestations.

Mr. B. Keightley: But is the vehicle of Mahat, the universal mind? Does the

Manas in man proceed from the universal mind too?

43. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes it proceeds from Âkâsa—Buddhi, I mean, or Manas. on
a lower plane. The Mânasa-Dhyânis are the same Ah-hi I just told you of on a
lower plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: Because, of course, one would natural y think, as Mahat is
the universal mind, that Manas in man proceeds from the universal mind.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is just the same Prakriti in its last manifestation. It is what in
the Kabbalah is cal ed Malkuth, the Bride of Heavenly Man—wel , earth,
everything earthly, or atomic.

Mr. B. Keightley: I.e., the plane of objective consciousness, in fact, waking
consciousness.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 8. “Can there be consciousness without mind?”

Mme. Blavatsky: There we come to the great question. Consciousness—what
is it not? It is only the faculty of the mind, is not it? It is that which permeates
the mind or the Ego, and causes it to perceive that such a mind has action, that
such a thing is so—is not that it? How do you explain it otherwise?

Consciousness is not a thing per se. It is a faculty of the mind. That is what

Hamilton wil tel you and what al the Eastern idealists wil tel you. They cannot
tel you anything else. It is a thing inseparable from mind—unless it is the mind
of an idiot, of course you won’t have any consciousness.

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Mr. A. Keightley: You say the fashion now-a-days amongst philosophers is to
speak slightingly—

Mme. Blavatsky: We know that, of course.

Mr. A. Keightley: —of the idea of making mind an entity.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of course, but mind is stil the soul. It is perfectly
synonymous with soul. Those who don’t believe in soul certainly wil tel you
that there is no such thing as consciousness apart from brain, and once the
brain is dead and the man is dead, there is no

44. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

consciousness. The Nihilists, and Atheists, and the Materialists wil tel you so.

If you believe in mind, mind is the soul or the Ego. What kind of a soul is that if
it has not any consciousness?

Mr. A. Keightley: But they accept consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: But not after the death of man, while we accept
consciousness after death, and say the real consciousness and the real
freedom of the Ego or the soul begins only after the physical death of man. It
is then that it is no longer impeded by terrestrial matter that it is free, that it can
perceive everything.

Mr. A. Keightley: Because they confine there consciousness to sense of
perception.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is what they do, and we don’t. That is the difference
between us.

Mr. Hall: When you say the physical death of man, do you mean the
permanent death?

Mme. Blavatsky: What other death is there for a man?

Mr. Hall: I don’t know whether it is the fact that you meant us to take it that after
each death the soul is free and can proceed without being hampered by the
body.

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about?

Mr. Hall: If you mean when a man ceases to incarnate, that is another thing.

Mme. Blavatsky: When does he cease? When he becomes Nirvânî when you
are dead and no Hal wil exist any more, but your Ego wil . The Roger Hal wil
have become one of the dresses your Ego has thrown off to assume another
in a certain time.

Mr. Hall: But then why should the Ego be anymore able to perceive things than
it is at present?

45. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because it is not impeded by matter, by gross matter. Can
you see what is behind that door unless you are a clairvoyant? There is no
impediment of matter, and the soul sees everything. It goes into Devachan, its
own place, and afterwards it must reincarnate. But there are cases when they
don’t go into Devachan, that is what we are fools enough to believe in.

Mr. Hall: It would not apply to every physical death.

Mme. Blavatsky: We do not speak about exceptions, they only prove the rule;
we speak about the average death.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is a moment of freedom of that mind. I take it,
between the actual death and the time when the Ego proceeds to the

Devachanic state.

Mme. Blavatsky: We can only go by analogies? When I am dead, I wil come
and tel you, if I can. I do not think I wil , but there are others who have been in
trances, which is just as good as death, and there are those yogis who were,
for instance, 40 days buried.

Mr. Hall: Those are al exceptions.

Mme. Blavatsky: There consciousness can live and the body is—I do not say
dead, but any doctor wil tel you, it is dead.

Mr. Hall: But these are al exceptions. I was asking whether it applied to every
physical death because, if at the ordinary physical death of ordinary man his

Ego must go along of its self, then it is not impeded by Devachan by the
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il usory bliss as it is by the il usory matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: Don’t let us mix up these things or we wil never end here.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then we come to the fourth Śloka. “The seven ways to bliss
were not. The great causes of misery ( Nidâna and Mâyâ) were not.” The
question, is what are the seven way to bliss?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , they are practical y faculties, of which you

46. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

wil know more later on, perhaps, if you go a little deeper into esotericism.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the seven ways are not mentioned?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, they are not mentioned in The Secret Doctrine are
they? They are not, I should say not.

Mr. A. Keightley: I don’t think they are. Then the question is: Are the four truths
of the Hînayâna School the same as the four truths mentioned by Edwin

Arnold in his book “ The Light of Asia?”8

Mme. Blavatsky: Almost the same. He mentions something which is
somewhat different from it.

Mr. A. Keightley: The first is of sorrow, the second is of sorrows cause, the
third of sorrow’s ceasing and the fourth is the way.

Mme. Blavatsky: What do you understand by Edwin Arnold’s explanation?

Mr. B. Keightley: Read the passage please, Arch. (Mr. A Keightley then read
the passage indicated, Light of Asia.)

Mme. Blavatsky: Al this is theological and al this exoteric; this is what you can
find in al the volumes that any Buddhist Priest wil give you; but there is far
more explanation, of course, in Aryasanga’s9 works, though that is the esoteric
too. Arnold took it from the Singhalese Buddhism.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then do these four truths; the first of sorrow, the second of
sorrow’s cause, the third sorrow ceasing and the fourth the way, do they
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represent the four noble truths esoterical y?

8 [Edwin Arnold, 1832-1904, author of the popular life of the Buddha in verse, The Light of Asia.]

9 [H.P.B. indicates in The Secret Doctrine that there were two Aryasanga’s; one a pre-Christian adept, the other,
the Buddhist philosopher, known as Asanga, connected the formation of the Yogâcâra school during the fourth
century of our era. SD 1: 49-50 fn.]

47. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, I think they do. You wil find Buddhism al about them.

Mr. B. Keightley: What do they real y stand for?

Mme. Blavatsky: It would take too long and it has no relevancy to this Śloka. It
would take much to long. It is impossible to tel you now. It would take several
evenings to explain to you one of them thoroughly.

Mr. B. Keightley: I am not sure it would not be a profitable thing to take up next
time.

Mme. Blavatsky: I am not sure that it would be. You had better fol ow the

Ślokas. You are not going to fol ow that, because the four noble truths meant
one thing for the priests of the yel ow robes, and meant different things to the
mystics. The one acts on the dead letter, just the same as our priests wil act
on the canons of the Church, and the mystics have got nothing to do with it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Can you give us any idea for the moment?

Mme. Blavatsky: I cannot, I am not an exoteric Buddhist. Ask Olcott.10 He is
the man to know al these things. He is a very pious Buddhist and I am not. I
am nothing pious.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then I put this question now, is “The eight fold path the
same as the seven ways to bliss?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes.

Mr. A. Keightley: “Are Nidâna and Mâyâ the (great causes of misery) aspects
of the Absolute?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Is that number 4?

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10 [Henry Steel Olcott, President-Founder of the Theosophical Society, 1832-1907. Olcott had publicly converted
to Buddhism on a tour of Sri Lanka in 1880, and had written an influential

Buddhist Catechism for the schools there. ]

48. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is number 4.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now what can Nidâna, I ask myself and Mâyâ have to do with
each other? Nidâna is the concatenation of cause and effect. The twelve

Nidânas are the enumeration of the chief causes which produce material for

Karma to strike you very heavily. Mâyâ is simply an il usion. Now what has

Nidâna to do with Mâyâ? I cannot understand what analogy, what idea one has
in common with the other. If you take the universe as an il usion, a Mâyâ then
certainly the Nidânas as being in the universe are included in the Mâyâ, but
apart from that, what has one thing to do with the other.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then why do you class them together in that way?

Mme. Blavatsky: They are two distinct things. Mâyâ is an il usion. You think
yourself a very grand fel ow, that you can go and compete with any Ah-his, and
any of the [ ]. But you make a fool of yourself and then comes Nirvâna and
shows it to you. It is just then, I think that the man cannot take into his own head
that he is not separate from the one and he goes and thinks himself a very
great man in his own individuality, and he is nothing at al . He is stil one in
reality. It is nothing but Mâyâ, an il usion; but taking this Mâyâ it is il usion or
ignorance that brings us to commit al the acts which awaken the Nidânas,
which produce the first cause of Nidâna; this cause having been produced, the
effects fol ow and there is Karma. Of course Nidânas and the production of
bad Karmic effects and Mâyâ are at the root of every evil. If we knew what we
are we would not do such things. Every one of us thinks he or she is a unit and
something very grand in the eyes of al the authorities up stairs that you may
think of; we are simply a drop of water in the ocean not to be distinguished
from another drop, that is al we are. This sense of separateness is at the root
of al evil. You know there is no correspondence, no analogy, except the one I
gave just now.

The President: The only possible is that they both of them are synonymous
with manifestation, inasmuch as there cannot be any manifestation without the
production of Nidânas on the one hand and Mâyâ on the other.

49. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

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Mme. Blavatsky: You think you can produce something but in reality you
cannot produce anything at al .

The President: The instant one single chain of a causation is started by any
manifestation, whatever, there is the Nidâna.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now let us say: I have dressed myself in a red dress, I go
out and because I am dressed in a red dress I have produced a cause, and a
bul goes for me because I irritated his nerves; there is the Mâyâ of the bul
and there is the Nidâna I have produced so you can put two and two together.

It is just an il usion which makes us produce the most Nidânas.

The President: “Are Nidâna and Mâyâ aspects of the Absolute?” is the exact
form of the question.

Mr. B. Keightley: The question real y ought to be separated; the question, is to
ask, first of al , is Mâyâ an aspect of the Absolute?

Mme. Blavatsky: It cannot be an aspect of the Absolute. It is {an} aspect of
the differentiation, if you put it this way. If Mâyâ means an il usion, everything
that is differentiated is an il usion also, but it cannot be an aspect of the

Absolute.

The President: Mâyâ is a manifestation surely.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly; the Absolute cannot have any manifestation
whatever, it can have reflection at best.

Mr. B. Keightley: In one of the old articles in The Theosophist, Mâyâ is
described as the cause of manifestation. I forget by who.

Mme. Blavatsky: Perhaps by some Hindu.

Mr. B. Keightley: By some good Hindu metaphysician. I am not sure if it was
not Subba Row himself. He describes Mâyâ as the cause of differentiation.

Mme. Blavatsky: If there were no Mâyâ, there would be nothing——

50. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

no differentiation.

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The President: But if there were no differentiation, there would be Mâyâ so
you cannot put one before the other, can you?

Mr. B. Keightley: But you are taking Mâyâ as the cause of differentiation,
therefore the moment you get behind differentiation where is the Mâyâ. Mme.

Blavatsky said that even Nirvâna is a Mâyâ.

Dr. Williams: Mâyâ is a col ective term meaning al manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly; they say that every thing is an il usion, because,
first of al no two persons in the world see things in the same way. They may
see it alike on general principles, but they won’t see it altogether in the same
way. And secondly, that which has a beginning and an end is not a reality, and,
being less than the wink of the eye, it is an il usion, a momentary deception of
the senses. This is why they cal it an il usion. They cal reality only that which
was, is, and wil be, which cannot be, now, that absolute consciousness or
what they cal Parabrahman, or what in Kabbalah is cal ed Ain-Soph.

Dr. Williams: The term, it seems to me, applies to the complex points of
differentiation. Differentiation applies to the unit, and the other term applies to
the col ection of the units.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, that is the way to explain it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now I must ask Mr. Kingsland to bring in his objections.

Mr. Kingsland: It is Dr. Wil iams’ turn.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do make it a little lively. Don’t go to sleep, al of you.

Dr. Williams: I notice one thing as you passed along the explanation. I do not
quite understand what the idea was at the back of it. I think the expression
would lead to a misunderstanding of what the real facts are. That is to
reference to the cerebel um and cerebrum as being, respectively, the organ of
the higher mind and lower mind.

51. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: I never said higher mind and lower mind. I said this one
acted during the waking hours; for instance, with everyone of us now, what acts
is the front part—I think you cal it cerebrum. Wel , the other is active simply
when this part sleeps and rests and becomes, so to say, inert—wel , it is
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paralyzed. Then the dreams begin and the mind begins to live and to feel and
to be conscious with that part of the brain that is astrological y. I don’t know if it
is so, scientifical y, and I don’t presume to say, because there is no atom of
science in me; I simply say that which the Occultists say and which the

Kabbalists say, and al kinds of hal ucinated lunatics in general.

The President: You have described the back part as the instinctive.

Dr. Williams: That is the word I wanted.

Mme. Blavatsky: “Instinctual.” Yes.

Dr. Williams: Of course, I want to avoid if possible making the appearance of
any discrepancy. I stand as a go-between, between the two to reconcile, if
possible, the two statements. Leave that for a moment or so and take an
animal. An animal is supposed to have an instinctive mind, but the cerebel um
is the organ of vegetative life. It simply controls the functions of the body,
nothing more.

Mme. Blavatsky: But yet it acts during sleep.

Dr. Williams: The sensual mind is the mind which the senses open, and there
can be no thought, no ideation, no anything of which we predicate intel ect or
instinct anywhere, except in that part of the brain into which the senses do go,
and that is the cerebrum.

Mme. Blavatsky: I said it is the organ of instinctual animal function and these
functions wil reflect themselves in dreams and produce the dreams. And
unless the higher Ego takes in hand the plane of the material, the dreams wil
have no sequence, even, because those dreams that we remember and that
real y have something in them are produced by the vision of the higher Ego.

They are not produced by anything else. Every dog dreams, and certainly we
cannot say a

52. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

dog has prophetic dreams.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is not the cerebel um what you may cal the organ of habit?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , if I say instinctual, it comes to the same thing.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Except that habit is very often referred to what we may cal
the present phase of existence and instinct to a past phase of existence.

Mme. Blavatsky: Whatever its name, the only thing that functions during night
is cerebel um and not the cerebrum, because the dreams or the emanations—

I don’t know how to express it—wel , those instinctive feelings which are felt
here are just recol ections of what took place. I told you my dream the other
day. The thing gets distorted, and at the moment you awake, you have a
dream, and you have a thing that is half mixed up with al those feelings that
were acting during sleep, and so on. If this part (the front brain) acted during
sleep, then we would have consecutive dreams, because now we sit here we
do not dream. We think, you understand, and we have al kinds of dreams
awake, but there is some consecutiveness in them; we can think what we like
and just make it clear. We can invent pictures, or, for instance, a man wil be
writing a novel; but in a dream you don’t do that, just because it is that part
which acts.

Dr. Williams: The consecutiveness is brought about entirely by the
coordinating faculty. I do not know that scientific men have attempted to
determine what part of the brain it is.

Mme. Blavatsky: It does not act in sleep.

Dr. Williams: But the cerebrum certainly does act, and the proof of it is this:

that the nearer we approach the waking sleep, the more vivid our dreams
become.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so; when you are awakening, but not before.

53. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Dr. Williams: When we are awakening, it is cerebrum which is coming into
consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is just like something that has been very much heated
during the day and which wil emanate or irradiate during the night, but not at al
because there is something acting there; it is the energy of the brain that
comes out unconsciously.

The President: Didn’t you describe it just a moment ago as being that portion
of the brain which received the impression of the senses? Is not it exactly
during sleep when we receive such impressions of the senses? The reception
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of a very vivid impression.

Dr. Williams: Of course, you cannot reproduce anything except from that
portion of the brain where it has been registered. The cerebel um does not
receive and register impressions through the cerebrum.

The President: It because the senses are producing no impressions at al
when we sleep, real y.

Mr. B. Keightley: Not quite “no impressions at al ,” because if you make a
noise over a sleeping man he wil awake, and very likely wil be able to trace his
dream to the sense of oppression which awoke him.

The President: Don’t you think that seems to show, from the very fact that
brain activity is required to register it, that the brain must be brought into activity
again? Or in other words, he must be woke up.

Dr. Williams: Al that you are describing is the function of the cerebrum.

Mme. Blavatsky: You have no consciousness of the activity of the cerebrum
and it acts mechanical y.

Mr. B. Keightley: One notices it often in ordinary life.

Mme. Blavatsky: In dreams, in the same way the memory comes

54. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

into play. You must have a memory and perception of this thing, and if you
catch one glimpse of it, maybe you wil be able to reconstruct the dreams. I
knew persons who could reconstruct their dreams in the most extraordinary
way; if they only caught one little bit, it was enough. They would just throw
themselves into a kind of negative state, and little by little it would come to
them again, so that they could pump out again these things that were present
unconsciously; but those persons are very rare. The average person dreams
what is perfect nonsense, dreams of digestion, of nervous disturbances, etc.,
but I speak with respect to dreams that real y are dreams.

Dr. Williams: It cannot be a matter of any importance. Stil , I think if it should
go out as it is, it would be very severely criticized. Whether this is a matter of
any consequence, I don’t know.

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Mme. Blavatsky: If we were to write like al the blessed sages in the world, we
should be pitched into. “The Theosophical Society” they say,“ is absurd.” It is
a jumble, it has hal ucinations, it is this, that, and the other; what can you do?

Dr. Williams: I suppose the Theosophical Society and yourself, as wel , desire
so far as possible to avoid giving them occasion for such remarks.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is no use to sit under an umbrel a the whole of your life.

Mr. A. Keightley: One does not want to give them a handle they can seize hold
of.

Mr. B. Keightley: Your old simile for the sleep of the brain was a very good
one, the flickering embers of the fire dying down. If you reverse that and
suppose a current of air passes over the slumbering embers—

Dr. Williams: That would be a beautiful il ustration of it.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is the true analogy; then you get it.

55. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not know if this is put down.

Mr. B. Keightley: The point of it is this; you get a factor or two, as it were.

These waking sparks in the cerebrum, the brain just beginning to awake,
combined with the activity that has been going on al night in the cerebel um,
which in its turn is fading below the plane of consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: Were you here, Dr. Wil iams, when we talked about that? I
have it al in the little book. I have been writing considerably in it. It is not notes
such as I have taken here. There I have been writing whole pages.

Mr. A. Keightley: Does the cerebel um ever permanently stop working?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, but it is perfectly lost in the functions of the cerebrum,
which is, just as Dr. Wil iams says, connected more with—what do you cal —
vegetative life.

Mr. B. Keightley: The stimuli which proceed from the cerebel um during
waking life fal , al of them, below the waking consciousness. The field of
consciousness being entirely occupied by the cerebrum til it goes to sleep,
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when the stimuli from the cerebel um begin to form the field of
consciousness.

Dr. Williams: You say al consciousness must necessarily reside in the
cerebrum. I am speaking now of the ordinary dream state, that the ordinary
dream state must always be connected with more or less activity of the
cerebrum. Of course, when we say it sleeps, there is not an absolute paralysis,
there is circulation of the blood. It is simply the withdrawal of the ordinary,
normal amount of blood that occupies it during waking hours. Just in that state
there are a great many stages.

The President: Then if dreams are the beginning and end of sleep they occur
practical y at the particular moment when the cerebrum is going to sleep, and
deep sleep is temporary paralysis.

56. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t think it is strictly true that the cerebrum is the only seat
of consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, but it is that which polishes the ideas and makes them
perfect—coordinates them. But the other does not. It simply gives
consciousness desire and so on.

Dr. Williams: They say a sensitive plant has consciousness. I meant
coordinating consciousness.

Mr. B. Keightley: Du Prel11 cites some very curious experiments showing
there is a kind of local consciousness.

Dr. Williams: That is what they cal reflex connection?

Mr. B. Keightley: He goes further than that in the cases of clairvoyants who
perceive through the stomach. He cites a number of wel authenticated cases
that were experiments of his own in that direction, in which he shows that the
threshold of consciousness is capable of a very wide range of variation, very
much wider than we are accustomed to attribute to it, both upwards and
downwards.

Mr. A. Keightley: The point I was about to raise was this. You get your
cerebrum acting from the point of your consciousness at the beginning and
end of sleep. Very wel then, in the intervening period, a period of deep sleep,
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the consciousness of the man is not lost; what goes on?

Mr. B. Keightley: The consciousness of the man is then inherent in the higher

Ego.

Mr. A. Keightley: But the brain is not a sufficiently sensitive registering organ
under those circumstances.

Mr. B. Keightley: No; except what is impressed upon it at the moment of
awakening, and that is liable, of course, to get mixed up with the suggestions
and stimuli and sensations that have been going on during the night in the
cerebel um.

11 [Baron Carl Du Prel, German philosopher, 1839-1899, who was a member of the Theosophical society.]

57. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: Now, query: the cerebel um has sometimes been cal ed the
coordinating organ of the physiological senses.

Mr. B. Keightley: Of the sense of sight, do you mean?

Mr. A. Keightley: Coordinating organ—I want to query whether it is possible for
the cerebrum to be the coordinating organ of ideas?

Mr. B. Keightley: As opposed to sensations?

Mme. Blavatsky: Sensations. I suppose the animal also wil have its
sensations coordinated. If you give it a name in man, it is a different thing. In
man there are the ideas, whereas an animal has nothing of the kind. It is simply
an instinctual feeling; the animal does not think.

Mr. A. Keightley: Wel , but roughly speaking, you have the animal with his
sensation, which sensation is transmitted to the brain, if there is anything to be
done with it for the first time. That process is repeated, until finely there is a
sort of course of action determined, giving a repetition of the sensation.

Ultimately, the end of it is that the cerebel um appears to act as an organ which
wil entail a definite course of action fol owing a similar sensation without the
creature taking a conscious part in the process. Is not that supposed to be the
function of the cerebel um?

Dr. Williams: Yes.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Then, you see, the cerebrum has taken it part and the
cerebel um takes its part during the waking hours. Very wel then; then we
come to another part of it. Is it possible for the cerebrum to be a coordinating
organ of ideas, as the cerebel um is a coordinating organ of action?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , real y, I don’t know physiology enough for it, I can tel
you. I don’t know al the scientific things and I have read

58. 2. Meeting January 17th, 1889.

a good deal of what Huxley12 was saying about the evidence of one lobe and
another lobe. I say he has a theory which I cannot make head or tail of, just to
reconcile it with occult theories, with what we are taught.

Dr. Williams: I don’t think you could understand him. I think Huxley is ultra
materialistic.

Mme. Blavatsky: He speaks about things most peculiarly. I read him several
times and I think if I read it ten times, I could not understand it either. It may be
very scientific physiological y but in reality, as wel as I could check it by my
own experience in dreams, al that I see in sleep etc., I could not make head or
tail of it. I don’t see it is that at al .

Mr. B. Keightley: If you tickle a sleeping man gently, he wil make a movement
to brush it away, but without waking. Therefore the stimulus goes to the
cerebel um and the mechanical action is produced. Arch’s point was this: does
the cerebrum, the forebrain, act in the same way with regard to the ideas?

Does that establish a coordination between ideas?

Mme. Blavatsky: I believe it does. It cannot be otherwise.

Dr. Williams: I should say it could not be otherwise.

The President: Wel I think we might make it now general.

12 [Thomas Henry Huxley English Biologist 1825-1895.]

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

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3.

Blavatsky Lodge of

The Theosophical Society

Meeting January 24th, 1889
at 17, Lansdowne Road W.

Mr. A. Keightley: The first question arises from what was stated at a previous
meeting, when you said that it would take too long. We want to know if you wil
give us some explanation of the four and seven truths, even if it takes al the
evening, as you said it would be too large a subject to deal with at the same
time as others.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I wil answer as fol ows: Everything about the four truths
you can find in the Buddhist Catechism 1 or any of the exoteric books, but I
do not think you are ready, anyone of you, for the esoteric explanation of them;
therefore I had better ask you to postpone this.

Mr. A. Keightley: Can anything that is esoteric be found in these exoteric
books?

Mme. Blavatsky: You can find it in any manual of Buddhism; in Olcott’s book,
for instance.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then how far is that exoteric side to be taken for anything
real?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is real, because in the Buddhist church they practice it, and
certainly the high priests know the truth about it,

1 [H. S. Olcott’s A Buddhist Catechism, according to the Canon of the Southern Church, a discussion in question
and answer form of the basic tenets of Buddhism, was originally printed in Ceylon in 1881 in English and

Sinhalese for use in Buddhist Schools. It was reprinted ca. 1888/89 by the Theosophical publishing Society of

London.]

60. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

and they do not take the exoteric forms literal y. As to the smal fry and the
laymen, they do.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then how far has that any value?

Mme. Blavatsky: It has a great value, because it is a discipline and it helps
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them to lead a good life and to have their mind on the spiritual.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then we pass on. The Secret Doctrine Stanza 1, Śloka 5.

“Darkness alone fil ed the boundless Al .” Is “darkness” the same as the

“Eternal Parent: Space,” spoken of in Śloka 1?

Mme. Blavatsky: How can it be the same thing? To me, Space is something
already with attributes, at least in potentiality; it is differentiated matter, and

“darkness” is something of which no attributes can be predicated, surely, for it
is chaos; it is the absoluteness. How can it be the same?

Mr. A. Keightley: But then is “darkness” there used in the sense of the
opposite pole to light?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, the opposite pole to manifestation. “Darkness” means
something that is perfectly void of any attributes or qualities— al negative.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is not opposed to light, then, but opposed to
differentiation?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is no light yet.

Mr. B. Keightley: But it is real y taken as the symbolism of negativeness.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is taken as that which you can find in the Bible the void,

“Tohu-va-bohu”2 as they cal it, the “chaos”; as it is said: “everything was
darkness, and on the darkness the spirit of God was.” Just the same as in that
sense. There was nothing in it—in the Universe.

2 [Genesis, 1:2, “And the earth was without form, and void.”]

61. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. Kingsland: Is it that there is no light, or simply nothing to manifest it?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is nothing to manifest it. It is not darkness as absence
of light, but it is darkness as absoluteness in the absence of any manifestation.

Mr. Kingsland: Quite so; just the same as the Universal Mind we were
discussing last time?

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so.

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Col. Chowne: Then is says: “Light proceeds from Darkness.”

Mme. Blavatsky: After that. First comes light. Light is the first Logos—cal it
whatever you like—it is the non-manifested Logos. In the second Logos it is
not the Creator, but the light. In the Vishnu Purâna they do not cal it even

Brahmâ, because Brahmâ is an aspect of Vishnu in the Vishnu Purâna. What
they say is it is Vishnu—al . Vishnu is and it is not.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what is the difference there between the derivations of

Vishnu and Brahmâ, the spreading and pervading?

Mme. Blavatsky: I the Vishnu Purâna you wil find Vishnu spoken of as the

Absolute “No-Thing” as the Ain Soph, That which is perfectly unknown,
endless and incomprehensible. The Heavenly Man is its vehicle to manifest
itself in the Universe when the Ain Soph becomes that celestial man. Just in
the same way we deal with Vishnu in the Vishnu Purâna, who wil be spoken
of as the Absolute; and then one of his aspects wil be Brahmâ, the male not
the neuter. And after that he becomes everything. In the Veda you won’t find

Vishnu prominently mentioned, nor Brahmâ. Vishnu is named in the Veda, but
is not mentioned as anything of a high order. As to Brahmâ he is not
mentioned at al .

Mr. A. Keightley: Then that quotation, “For Father, Mother and Son were once
more One”?

62. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Means that al that, the creative forces and the causing
forces—if I may use the expression—and the effect of this cause is the

Universe. Again, in the undifferentiated condition al was merged into one and
was One. The Absolute is during the Pralaya, always.

Mr. A. Keightley: Second. What are the different meanings of the terms:

Father, Mother and Son? For in the Commentary you explain them (a) as Spirit,

Substance, and the Universe; (b) as Spirit, Soul and Body; (c) as the Universe,
the Planetary Chain, and Man.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , so they are. I think I have explained entirely. What can I
say more? Unless you anthropomorphize them and make ideals of them, and
deities, and put them as the Father, Mother and Son, as put al kinds of
goddesses and gods. I do not see how I can explain it in any other way.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Then take the last items of the series: I suppose “Son,”

“Substance,” “Body” and “Man” correspond?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly they do.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then why are “Father-Mother” linked together? And then the
correspondence comes, “Spirit and Substance”; “Spirit and Soul”; and the

“Universe and the Planetary Chain”; and the third term in the series seems to
proceed from the other two.

Mme. Blavatsky: I put al the examples because it can be applied to anything.

It can be applied to a planetary chain, it can be applied to the solar system, it
can be applied to the whole Kosmos or anything you like. It is simply a figure
of speech—a metaphor.

Mr. A. Keightley: But I think the point that I was meaning was this: you have

Father and Mother and then you have the Son. The sentence seems to mean
that the Son is distinct from the Father and the Mother, and that ultimately, in

Pralaya, the Son is merged back again into the Father and Mother in a closer
union.

Mme. Blavatsky: Remember, I do not speak about the period

63. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

preceding what they cal in common parlance “Creation.” I speak about the
time after matter was differentiated, but before it began to assume form. I say
in The Secret Doctrine I do not touch the thing which was pre-natal—if you can
say that of the Kosmos. I do not touch this at al . Father-Mother simply means
here the differentiated primeval substance, protyle, when it began to
differentiate became positive and negative, the active and the passive, and the

Son, the production of the two, is the Son of the Universe, that is to say, of the
universal forms.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the ultimate state is the Laya state of Father Mother
and Son?

Mme. Blavatsky: Laya is that which remains during Pralaya, but also that
which, in the manifested universe, is at the terminus of al matter. It is the zero-
point. Now ask Mr. Bulaki Rama what Laya means. He knows and wil explain it
to you a great deal better than I. I say it is non-differentiated matter, the zero-
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point as Crookes cal s it. I don’t know how to describe in any other way, that
point where indestructible substance becomes homogeneous, entirely and
absolutely homogeneous, that is to say, and not objective.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then is that the point you are speaking of here, just at the
time when the Father, Mother and Son become once more One?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but I don’t know, I don’t think it is in The Secret

Doctrine. I simply make reference to that which was before the Father-Mother
period. If there is Father-Mother, then certainly there is no such condition as

Laya.

Mr. B. Keightley: Father-Mother are later than the Laya condition.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, individual objects may be in Laya, but the universe
cannot be in Laya when Father-Mother appear there, as it is said in this stanza.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is the point I was meaning. Where the Son and the

Father and the Mother reunite, there can be no differentiation at al .

64. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, it is the Laya, but not at that point you are talking
about.

Col. Chowne: You explained it once as the essence.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the essence, it is that which exists and does not exist, it
is space. Now, for us, space is a word which has no meaning unless we limit
and condition it; but in reality, space is the most abstract thing, and space
containing al is just that unknown deity which is invisible and which we cannot
understand, which we can but intel ectual y sense. What do they cal it in

Sanskrit, “dis,” isn’t it? The ‘ten divinities” that are in space. It is written “dis.”

Mr. Bulaki Rama: “Desha,” you mean, the “Ten Divinities” of space.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is just what I have been talking about. They pronounce like

“sh” what we pronounce as “s,” for instance, they would say “shloka” for what
we cal “Śloka.”

Mr. B. Keightley: Is Fohat one of the three—Father, Mother, and Son—or what
is it?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Fohat is a manifestation. You mix up in the most
extraordinary way the first Logos and the second Logos. The first is the
unmanifested potentiality of Father, Mother and Son and of everything. It
makes a triangle, that which is so dealt with by the Pythagoreans. You mix up
the second Logos, which is the col ectivity of the creators, or what they cal in

Greek Demiurgi, the builders of the universe, or simply the masons.

Mr. B. Keightley: I only want to get as clear as we can the sense in which the
term is used in The Secret Doctrine.

Mme. Blavatsky: I use it in many senses in The Secret Doctrine. If you ask
me such a thing I cannot remember in what sense I use it in such and such a
page, but I can tel you in general what it means.

65. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 3. Can you give us the equivalents of these terms

(Father, Mother and Son) in (a) the Vedântic and (b) in the Sankhya
phraseology?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, Sir, I do not teach you the Vedânta, or the Sankhya. It wil
only confuse you, and make matters worse. Let us hold to the esoteric
philosophy, without mixing up the Sankhya and other philosophies with it.

There many things which are identical, but now, since we learn Occultism, I do
not see why I should go and speak on it. This is, I know, a knotty question. I
am perfectly sure of it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 5. During Manvantara, when the “Son” is in
existence or awake, do the Father and Mother exist independently, or only as
manifested in the Son?

Mme. Blavatsky: This is a thing which tickled me very much when I read it. I
cannot understand, unless you want to become polytheists and idolaters, how
anyone can offer such a question as that. How can a Father and Mother be
independent of the Son? Are the Father and Mother two entities of the male
and female persuasions and the Son the product of these two entities? Why, it
is al one, it seems to me. How can we anthropomorphize in such a way in
metaphysical questions? Wel , look here, I cannot tel you any better than this,
that they are, if you like, centripetal and centrifugal forces. This is the Father-

Mother. That which they produce, is the Son I can not say it any better,
because this gives you the whole thing.

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Mr. B. Keightley: And that is the point; because in our mental conceptions we
had conceived of the centripetal and centrifugal forces as existing
independently of the effects they produce. We regard the effects in ordinary
thinking as secondary to these two forces.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , you are very wise in the West. You are great pundits, a
thousand times more so than any of these benighted pundits in the East. (I am
not one of them, but I am very near to them in my heart.) But stil you do not
know anything about it, and

66. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

you cannot bring me any of your Herbert Spencers, or your other scientists,
who know anything about it. They do not understand the thing as we do; they
do not understand it aright, because you think about centripetal and centrifugal
forces not as to any effect they produce. Therefore you think when there are
no effects they wil exist the same, do you, and they wil produce no effects?

They wil be effectless. But why should you go and conceive a thing upside
down? If these centripetal and centrifugal forces exist they must be producing
effects, because there is nothing aimless in nature, and if they exist they
produce effects. When there are no more effects the Forces do not exist
either.

Mr. Kingsland: They exist as separate entities for mathematical purposes.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, for mathematics, but in nature and in science it is a
different thing. We divide also man into seven principles. We do not mean that
in man there are seven skins or seven entities, or seven souls or, as Gerald

Massey3 thought, seven devils. They are only aspects of the one and nothing
else. It certainly does not mean that. I see that you have been reading a good
many books in your British Museum, but you are not accustomed to the way of
expression—wel , to this metaphorical form of speech of theirs. I do not know
how it is, but I have been brought up from childhood in this way; and in the

Georgian and Armenian times there was always this metaphorical mode of
expression. In Persia they won’t say a single word.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then pass on to Śloka 6. “The universe the, Son of

Necessity, was immersed in Parinishpanna. The causes of existence had
been done away with.” If the “causes of existence” had been done away with,
how did they come into existence again? For you state in the Commentary that
the chief cause of existence is the desire to exist, and it has been just stated
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that the Universe is the Son of Necessity.

3 [Thomas Gerald Massey, English poet and 1828-1907, who argued for ancient Egypt as the homeland of
western civilization.]

67. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: What a contradiction indeed; it is extraordinary. “The causes
of existence had been done away with.” Refer to the past Manvantaras or age
of Brahmâ, but the cause which makes the wheel of Time and Space run into
eternity, which is out of time and space (now try and understand me) has
nothing to do with finite cause or that which we cal Nidânas. What has one
thing to do with the other? There is a little bit of criticism which I could not
understand. I received it very humbly with very great gratitude, but I thought to
myself of the person who wrote it. I do not think he wil ever be a rival to

Schopenhauer,4 or anyone like him. That was my intimate opinion. What is
contradictory there.

Mr. A. Keightley: Nobody has said it is a contradiction.

Mme. Blavatsky: But read it, if you please. It is a very great contradiction. I
want al of you to remark that.

Mr. A. Keightley: It is the contrast here. If the causes of existence had been
done away with, how did they come into existence again? And there you
answer that by saying that one Manvantara had disappeared into Pralaya and
that the cause which led the previous Manvantara to exist is behind the limits of
space and time, and therefore causes another Manvantara to come into being.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, because that cause is immutable and has nothing to do
with the causes of this terrestrial plane produced by finite and conditioned
being. And we say that cause is immutable and it can be in no sense a finite
consciousness or desire. It postulates an absurdity to give to the Absolute
desire or consciousness or necessity. If you don’t understand it, read it, and
you wil see it is so. I say it is no more natural to predicate of the Absolute, or
to charge the Absolute with desire or thought, than it is to say, for instance—
how did I put it here—than the striking of the hours in a clock proves the desire
of the clock to strike. Now you say: “Yes, the clock is wound up.” I say the
universe is wound up. The only difference is that this one is wound up in space
and time, and the other is out of space and

4 [Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher, 1788-1860.]

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68. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

time, that is to say, in eternity; therefore, it is one and the same thing. Whoever
has something to say against it, let him come and say it, and I wil see what
objection there is. There I am charged positively with the most absurd idea, as
if the Absolute could have any desire or feel necessity, is not it so? Read it al
over again.

Mr. A. Keightley: Wel , it is divided into two or three different headings (reads
again).

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel I don’t find the blind wil of Schopenhauer so very
stupid; it is a thousand times more philosophical than the philosophy of the
ruler who created man. Doesn’t it accuse me of contradiction? Wel , not me,
but the Śloka there.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, I don’t think so. It seems to me to ask for an explanation.

Mme. Blavatsky: How can I explain why, when I am sitting down, I am not
standing up? What can I say?

Mr. A. Keightley: It practical y reduces the whole matter to “what is the cause
in the Absolute of differentiation.

Mr. B. Keightley: The difficulty is you can not postulate—

Mme. Blavatsky: Ah! It is a very easy question to ask, you understand. I know
you don’t ask, but many ask. Fawcett asked it. He wants to ask what is the
cause that propels or compels Parabrahman to create. Parabrahman is not a
cause. It is not even the Absolute, as I say, but absoluteness. Now, how can
we know the cause that propels Parabrahman to create? That which is behind
al the veil of matter is incomprehensible, and no finite intel ect can conceive it.

Wel we can perhaps have a slight conception in our hazy ideas that there may
be such a thing, but we don’t understand it, and to come and ask for the cause
is perfectly ridiculous. Look at what Subba Row says in his lectures; it is
perfectly true. He says that even the Logos—the first not the second—cannot
see Parabrahman. He see simply the veil of matter, Mûlaprakriti. So you see
what it must be; then how can you know the cause, when we have no idea of

Mûlaprakriti,

69. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

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even? It is simply a conception. And it is just as Buddha said: “What is

Nirvâna? It is no where.” “Then it is not, it does not exist?” “No it does not exist
but it is.” Wel , just the same with that. Nirvâna itself is a Mâyâ. You wil come
always to the old question, unless you can conceive of such a thing as an
eternal, endless, perpetual motion machine which you wil cal the universe—
though properly we cannot cal it a machine. We cannot cal that a machine
which is unlimited, limitless. But if you can conceive even of such an idea, you
wil never conceive of the Absolute in the way you do. You just try to imagine [?

space] in nature without giving it limits or form or anything. Understand my idea,
and just try to imagine two forces: the centripetal and the centrifugal, which
periodical y must emanate from IT. Just as the clock must strike so this strikes
and emanates periodical y. When it has done striking it goes to sleep again.

Try to imagine that and then you wil have perhaps a notion. I tel you what was
in my conception in the beginning. I had the perpetual motion machine. Mind
you, it is not that I say, and certainly not that I would go and advocate, the
automatic creation of the materialists; never. But it is for the purpose of giving
a shape to it, and to al ow people to conceive of it, because otherwise, you
cannot.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is a peg to hang your mind upon.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, you must have a peg, therefore, imagine a perpetual
motion machine which has no form and which is endless. Wel , you can, with a
little imagination, have these two forces which appear and disappear
periodical y.

Mr. Gardner: What portion of the machine is Parabrahman?

Mme. Blavatsky: What! Put him to bed! Please give him a pil ow! Mr. Gardner,
my dear man! Shame him, if you please, let him blush—Parabrahman, why, it
is al . If there is one mathematical point in the universe where Parabrahman is
not, then you had better go to bed, because it does not exist. It is not the
present it is eternal. Oh! Do explain, somebody else, wil you, please? Tel him
some verses from the Veda to refresh him—anything you like.

70. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: Supposing you take your conception of a machine. If
ultimately you work out your conception of the universe, you bring yourself
back to plain, simple, centrifugal and centripetal forces.

Mme. Blavatsky: With intel igence, plus intel igence; that wil be another kind
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of “machine.”

Mr. A. Keightley: Very wel , cal that the primary differentiation and get that
back to Parabrahman.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why should it get back to Parabrahman? It wil get back to

Parabrahman when the universe has finished its Age of Brahmâ its cycle.

Mr. A. Keightley: Very wel , then, you get your primary differentiation and you
postulate then that you must have a cause, the great first cause, the Absolute.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, I beg your pardon. The great First Cause is not the

Absolute, never cal it that; the great First Cause is the unconscious radiation
or emanation. Cal it what you like, you know English better than I do. That
which manifests itself as light. {crossed out: its delight}

Mr. B. Keightley: The unmanifested Logos, in fact.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, the unmanifested Logos, if you like, but never

Parabrahman. It is the causeless cause of al , and Absoluteness cannot be a
cause. That is the great difficulty.

Mr. B. Keightley: Look at the paradox. You wil say on the one hand that

Absoluteness cannot be a cause, and you cal it in the same breath a
causeless cause.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because, in the first place the English language is very poor,
and in the second place, human language is almost as poor. And then, with our
finite language, our finite brains, our finite conception, it is impossible to put in
form that which is formless. How can you go, and presume to put it in
language? Look at Herbert

71. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Spencer, he also cal s it the First Cause, and he mixes it up with

Absoluteness. Why, this is a very great philosophical mistake, at least in the
eyes of the Vedântins. Certainly it is the greatest mistake.

Mr. A. Keightley: What I am getting towards is this, that you get back to your
unmanifested Logos, and behind that, whatever attribute you chose to apply,
you have Parabrahman.

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Mr. B. Keightley: As the root.

Mme. Blavatsky: Look here, if you want to have the Vedântin theory, there is

Parabrahm and Mûlaprakriti. They are the same only Mûlaprakriti is an attribute

—it is a primordial, undifferentiated matter. We can conceive of such a thing,
knowing there is such a thing, if we take it a little limited, that is of limited size
or space; but we cannot conceive of that which is beyond that matter, that is to
say, which is not even spirit, which is meta-spirit, and is a thing inconceivable to
the human intel ect, and we can only barely sense it in our conceptions. We
cannot put it in any definite words. This is the thing I want to impress upon you.

Now Mr. Gardner thought Parabrahman was something; Parabrahman is no
thing. Not nothing, it is Ain-Soph, the Endless. It is not a thing which is al and
nothing, for it is Be-ness, and not non-being. Now try to understand this
philosophical y.

Mr. Kingsland: But it is stil the First Cause, isn’t it?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the root of al , the causeless cause, the root of
everything. And the First Cause, the unmanifested Logos, is that which wil be
the cause of everything in the universe.

Mr. Kingsland: You don’t use the term “causeless” in the sense of cause-that-
is-not-a-cause for anything else, but you use it in the sense of a cause that is
not a cause behind it.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is a universal potentiality of that which wil become
potency. That is to say, if there is a difference in the English language between
potentiality and potency. Is there?

72. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. B. Keightley: Certainly there is, distinctly.

Mr. Kingsland: That overcomes your objection then.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, I only put it as a paradox of expression.

Mme. Blavatsky: They cal it the rootless root; that is to say, it has no root
because it is causality itself—causation.

Mr. Kingsland: It has no root, but it is the root of everything.

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Mme. Blavatsky: It is the spiritual basis of al cause, which Mûlaprakriti
certainly is not. They say Âkâsa has only one attribute, and it is sound, in the

Vishnu Purâna. What is sound? It is Logos that is to say, the sensuous
representation of something. You see, it is very difficult for me to tel you. I
speak English like a Spanish cow, and I am very sorry for it, but I cannot speak
better, though I try to explain it as wel as I can.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is it possible, as a speculation, as an entirely speculative
thing, to conceive that after the universe has gone back into the Parabrahmanic
condition, that there should be to that Parabrahmanic condition a

Paraparabrahmanic.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is what they say—Paraparabrahmanic, that is the
expression they use in philosophy. Don’t they?

Mr. Hall: It is the old story about veil behind veil.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it is not that. It is the {? that} nothing is behind the veil but
nothingness—the root of al .

Mr. A. Keightley: Otherwise, you don’t get back to infinity.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , infinity is Sat, and Sat is Parabrahman, and

Parabrahman is Absoluteness; it is immutability.

Mr. B. Keightley: You see, you can’t have the fal acy of an endless chain of the
hen from the egg, and the egg from the hen and so on backwards. You must
come to a stopping point somewhere.

73. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: Must you? That is the question.

Mme. Blavatsky: You can conceive of it. If you train your intel ect to be always
aspiring and striving after the beginning of things, then you can.

Mr. B. Keightley: Can you go back?

Mme. Blavatsky: If you take the Aristotelian method you cannot go on, and
you wil be lost in a maze of al kinds of speculations which wil be fruitless. But
if you begin with the universals, taking the method of Plato, then I think you
can, because then having once traveled on that road you can far more easily
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backtrack, and beginning from the particulars ascend to the universals. Then
your method wil be splendid; not quite on the lines of the men of science, but
stil it is good for something.

Mr. B. Keightley: But what I understand Arch was putting was this: behind that
cause you have one cause, and behind that another cause, behind that
another, and so on ad infinitium.

Mme. Blavatsky: Is it so, Arch?

Mr. A. Keightley: It is partly that. Wel it is this: the subject seems to me so big
that you can’t get the right expression.

Mme. Blavatsky: But “causeless cause” puts a stop to it, because that means
there is no cause behind it and that it had no cause, because it is cause itself.

Why, for instance, do we say that the Absolute cannot think, nor can it desire,
nor can it have attributes? Why, I have been saying to you a thousand times it
has no consciousness. It has no desire because it is absolute desire; “IT”

being the Absoluteness. How can you have the smal est thing that is not in IT?

But we can’t say that anything is an attribute of IT.

Mr. B. Keightley: Certainly not.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because an attribute is something finite, and this is infinite.

So a stop is put to your speculations, by these words:

74. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

“causeless cause” and “rootless root.” And I think it is the most remarkable,
suggestive and graphic expression I ever saw.

Dr. Williams: I think it says everything that can be said.

Mme. Blavatsky: Take the Vedânta. I don’t know of any philosophy in the
world higher than that philosophy.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then we come to section b (of) question 6.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think you can pass over those; they have been practical y
dealt with. We have just been discussing them. Pass on to the next one.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh no, he has not done. There is a, b, c, and d of that.

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Mr. A. Keightley: (Reads) “To conceive of either a necessity or a desire in the

Absolute is to destroy the Absoluteness of the Absolute, or to reduce it to the

‘blind wil ’ of Schopenhauer.“

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I have answered that question. It is not at al to reduce
it to the “blind wil ” of Schopenhauer, but the “blind wil ,” as far as I can express
it, it is expressed perfectly; that which appears to us as “blind wil ” is absolute

—wel , not intel igence; but yes, absolute intel igence, absolute wisdom or
knowledge, or absolute consciousness.

Mr. A. Keightley: (b) “If this desire is attributed to the Logos, it can only exist
subsequent to the emergence of the Logos.”

Mme. Blavatsky: I say no desire is attributed to Logos number one. That is
what I said to you before.

Mr. A. Keightley: (c) “If it is said to exist as a latent potentiality in the Logos
during Pralaya, then there must be a cause that makes it pass from latency into
activity. Whence then the impulse to manifestation?”

Mme. Blavatsky: That is the old original question. We come again

75. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

to the first principles. It is old Fawsett who wants absolutely that someone
should leave their visiting card at the door of Parabrahman and ask him what
impels him to such capers, to create the universe. How can we answer that? It
is a perfect impossibility. The potentiality, it says, if it exists in the Logos, it
exists in everything. It exists in you, it exists in this fan and everywhere. Once
we have approached the Pralaya—wel , certainly we are in it, and it exists
everywhere—but why should “the impulse” be absolutely limited to the Logos?

There is again a thing which shows he has not been thinking on these Eastern
lines.

Mr. A. Keightley: “The visible that was the invisible that is rested in eternal non-
being, the One Being.” Question 7. What is the meaning of the expression,

“the visible that was, and the invisible that is”?

Mme. Blavatsky: “The visible that was means the universe of the past

Manvantara, which had dropped into eternity and was no more. Very wel ; and

“the invisible that is” means the eternal, present and ever invisible deity. It is
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abstract space, absolute Sat, and then we go over again what we have been
talking about. It is very simple, that; I don’t see why the question is asked.

Mr. B. Keightley: It was real y to find out from what point of view you were
speaking in that Śloka, whether of the past manvantara or not.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, the past Manvantara. “The visible that was,” was no
more, “and the invisible that is” in this is certainly that which was, and that which
wil be in everything.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then we get to Śloka 8. “ Alone the one form of existence
stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in dreamless sleep; and life pulsated
unconscious in universal Space, throughout that Al -Presence which is sensed
by the opened eye of the Dangma.” Does then this “eye” open upon the

Absolute, or is the “one form of existence” and the “Al Presence” here
mentioned other than the Absolute?

76. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , but the eye of Dangma being open and al that—I
suppose everyone ought to see that it is again a metaphorical way of
expressing the thing. You may open your eyes, and anyone can open his eyes
on the Absolute, but the question is, “shal we see It”? It is not said that the
eye saw, it says it “sensed.” Now, if it is said that on opening the eye Dangma
saw the Absolute, then it would be a fal acy and an absurdity, but it is said

“sensed,” if you please.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is not taken in that sense. What was meant by the question
was, is it through this open eye that we do receive such sense, or such feeling,
or such consciousness, whatever you take it to be?

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you take it for your own eye?

Mr. B. Keightley: No, for the highest spiritual faculty.

Mme. Blavatsky: There was no Dangma at that time therefore nobody could
see it. What other questions have you, then?

Mr. A. Keightley: What is “dreamless sleep”?

Mme. Blavatsky: “Dreamless sleep” is a sleep without dreams, I suppose. I
certainly cannot give you a better definition. Who can?

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Mr. A. Keightley: What does it mean?

Mme. Blavatsky: A dreamless sleep means a sleep without dreams.

Mr. B. Keightley: But that simply describes its state in relation to waking
consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: In what particular is it? What is it about the dreamless sleep?

I would like to know to what page it refers, what I have been talking about.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is part of that Śloka.

Mme. Blavatsky: I remember very wel . I use the expression, only I don’t see
what there is. It means that there can be no presentation of

77. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

the objects you can see in the universe, and therefore it is a “dreamless
sleep.”

Mr. B. Keightley: What you say here is this (reads passage from The Secret

Doctrine, Vol. 1).

Mme. Blavatsky: I think that I have explained it, and what can I explain more?

Mr. Kingsland: It implies there is something very active going on in that state
of dreams. I think what you want to know is, what is that which is active going
on?

Mr. B. Keightley: A greater degree of activity.

Mr. Kingsland: What they want to get at is, what is that activity?

Mme. Blavatsky: I surely cannot give you what is the activity of the causeless
cause. I can tel you what is the activity in man. I am obliged to say I did not
graduate as high as that. Man is a microcosm of the macrocosm. It means al
the spiritual faculties behind matter. Matter being asleep and resting, we are
more active than ever, though we cannot see with our spiritual eyes. But this
belongs to the question of dreams, it does not belong at al to this series of
questions.

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Mr. B. Keightley: It is deeper than a state of dreams; it is further back stil .

Mme. Blavatsky: There are no dreams on the physical plane. I said to you
here that it is when we do not dream about anything that we dream the most.

Not only that, but we act the most, and we live on an entirely different plane
from this one, and our life is a thousand times more active. Our existence,
rather, is a thousand times more varied; and it would be a nice thing if we could
bring it back.

Mr. Kingsland: How do we act?

Mme. Blavatsky: We cannot take it, certainly, as we act on a physical plane,
since that plane we are then on is Arûpa when here we are Rûpa.

78. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. Hall: Do we generate Karma in that condition?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, we do not. A man generates Karma every time he
moves, with the exception {of} the activity of his highest faculties.

Mr. Hall: Therefore it is the higher faculties which operate.

Mme. Blavatsky: And therefore you come to the dreams again. If you dream,
for instance, you slew somebody, and you slew him asleep, that even affects
your idea, and you dream you are kil ing a man. Do you know, it may so
happen that you wil real y kil a man, and the man wil die, if you see it in the
dream. Don’t try it, because you may do a nice little bit of black magic if it
succeeded. If you had success, it might kil the man.

Mr. Kingsland: Now we are speaking about dreams that come back to
consciousness?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, you can begin in consciousness and end unconsciously.

The more it goes into the regions of the spiritual, the more it wil be potent, and
the easier you wil kil the man.

Mr. B. Keightley: And the less you wil remember about it.

Mr. Kingsland: Do you mean to say you can dream you have murdered a man,
and not remember it at al , and that dream would be a potential force which
might make you murder the man?

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Mme. Blavatsky: It is your desire in the dream to hurt somebody. If you are
neither an adept nor a black magician nor anything of the kind, nor a Jadoo,5
you cannot do it while you are awake, but in the dream life you are no more
impeded by the limits of matter and of your senses, and that which limits you
when you are awake. Then you can produce efects just the same as a
hypnotizer could kil one of his subjects. You have such a potency in you that
you can kil a

5 [Hindi term for magic or wonderworking, usually applied to traveling conjurers.]

79. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

man at a distance, by thinking you are kil ing him.

Mr. Hall: But he must be asleep.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not a bit of it. You must be asleep, not he.

Mr. Kingsland: Then the question is do those actions produce Karma.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is what I say. On the lower plane, they wil produce

Karma; but if you are in your higher spiritual senses, you won’t kil a man at al .

There you have not got those passions, and where you have not got them, by
wanting to kil a man in the high spiritual regions you would kil yourself—
because you are not separate from any man in creation, as your mind is not
separate from the ALL.

Mr. Kingsland: In these dreamless sleeps it is only the higher principles which
are active.

Mme. Blavatsky: We are talking about what Hal asked about, potentiality.

Mr. Kingsland: In every case we were referring to dreamless sleep.

Mme. Blavatsky: Dreamless sleep you may not remember. But from the next
lower state you may remember, and do a good deal of mischief.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then question 10. What portion of the mind and what
principles are active during dreamless sleep?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, please, leave this. This wil make us go on til twelve
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o’clock, wool gathering. It belongs, my dear fel ow, to these other things. We
discussed dreams for four or five evenings you know.

Mr. A. Keightley: We have no record of it.

Mme. Blavatsky: I have a record, excuse me. I can repeat it to you. I wil take
the same things and answer you.

80. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then that closes these questions.

Col. Chowne: Then there is one thing you talked about: you said there was no
other way of expressing how light came except by a cause, and that cause
was darkness.

Mme. Blavatsky: Darkness so far that we don’t know anything about it, and it is
perfect darkness for us; we cannot discern anything behind that, it is
impossible.

Col. Chowne: But how does the light come?

Mme. Blavatsky: In consequence of an immutable law which manifests itself
periodical y. Just as I say the clock strikes and shows the hours without being
conscious of it at al . Now, the clock is an automatic thing, and the other is a
thing which has absolute consciousness. Therefore it is no better then
clockwork because we cannot see how the intel ect works.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then darkness and light in that stanza are not used as pairs
of opposites.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, no; I use darkness because there is no other word
suitable. If you say chaos and take that, immediately you create al kinds of
confusion. Immediately you wil have thoughts of chaotic matter and al kinds of
anomalies. Therefore I use the word darkness, which is a great deal better.

Col. Chowne: The light that you refer to is not the physical light that we think
of?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, no! The light means the first potentiality of al —the first
flutter in undifferentiated matter which throws it into objectivity and into a plane
which is nearer to manifestation than the other. That is the first light. Light is
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figuratively used.

Mr. A. Keightley: But then, also later in The Secret Doctrine the a more
scientific part, you state that light is only made visible by darkness, or rather
darkness is the original thing and light is the

81. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

result of the presence of objects in the objective world.

Mme. Blavatsky: If there is no sun, there would be no light, certainly, in the
objective world.

Mr. A. Keightley: But I mean if there were no objects, there would be nothing
to reflect the light.

Mme. Blavatsky: Take two rays of light, and they wil produce darkness.

Mr. A. Keightley: Take a globe of water and pass an electric beam through it.

The electric beam is perfectly dark, unless there are objects in the water, in
which case you get specks of light.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, that is a good il ustration.

Mr. B. Keightley: You cannot see the light, it passes through the water
perfectly invisible.

Mr. Kingsland: You cannot see light itself. But light may be manifested to
another sense, as something quite different may it not?

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, because, after al , the light is only differentiation of
vibration.

Mme. Blavatsky: You can have the sense of light in the taste or hearing; in al
your senses you can have it, or you can, for instance, in the hearing have the
sense of taste and have the sense of seeing; why, look at the clairvoyants,
they are perfectly asleep. They are in trance, moreover, and they {you} come
and put a letter {upon them} and the clairvoyant reads {it}. How is that?

Mr. A. Keightley: That is a extra sense.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not an extra sense. It is simply that the sense of seeing
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can be shifted. It passes into the sense of touch.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is not the sense of perception the beginning of the sixth
sense?

82. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, yes, but that goes a little further. This is simply the
shifting of the physical sense of sight into the sense of touch, nothing else.

Now those clairvoyants wil , blindfolded, read to you a letter; but if you ask
them what wil be the letter that I wil receive tomorrow, that is not written yet,
the clairvoyant wil not tel you. But the sense you are talking about (the sixth
sense) wil , because it is there before you. That is quite a different thing. One
is manifestation on the physical plane, and the other on the spiritual plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: You have an instance of this shifting of one sense into a
another when you happen to take some very fiery extract into your mouth. It wil
produce the sense of a flash of light before your eyes.

Mr. A. Keightley: For instance, if you put the two poles of an electric battery
together in your mouth, you wil get a flash of light in your eyes and you get a
metal ic taste in your mouth.

Col. Chowne: If you knock your head against a wal , you get a flash of light in
your eyes, too.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is the sense of touch transferred into the stimulation of
the optic nerves.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is very interesting, and you ought to col ect as many
facts as you can about those phenomena on the physical plane. Then you
could go higher and use the phenomena which are in correspondence. You
know what I mean, until we come to the highest that we can have.

Mr. B. Keightley: Now a blind man, too, gets practical y the sense of sight
transferred into the sense of touch. And besides that, he develops a very
definite sense of locality which is independent of the sense of touch. For
instance, he wil find his way about a town or about a house which he knows
without touching the objects to localize himself.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, he sees by the other senses.

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83. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. B. Keightley: But how does he see? Which of the senses helps him to get
at it?

Mr. A. Keightley: But even when in possession of al the senses, physiologists
have worked on the idea of a sense of direction.

Mr. Hall: Yes. There certainly must be one.

Mme. Blavatsky: Dr. Wil iams, what do you say to that?

Dr. Williams: I don’t know anything about the sense of direction. I have not
heard anything of it.

Mr. A. Keightley: It is supposed to refer to the semi-circular canals in the ear.

Dr. Williams: Senses of direction—that one might hear a sound, do you
mean?

Mr. A. Keightley: No. Suppose that part of the brain is removed in an animal.

As long as the animal is standing stil and not moving, every function goes on
perfectly natural y. If it once begins to move, even in places where it is most
familiar, the idea of direction is lost. For instance, a canary in which this has
happened, or there is some disease of the semi-circular canals, or any, wil not
be able to find its way to its food if these canals have been interfered with. The
sense of direction is entirely lost.

Mr. B. Keightley: But al the control over the muscles is perfectly intact; it does
not stagger about.

Mr. A. Keightley: No; it simply cannot go straight. That is very interesting. You
wil wil find it real y in any physiological book of late years which deals with the
functions of the brain.

Mr. B. Keightley: Where are they situated?

Mr. A. Keightley: Close behind the ear.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then it must be connected with the sense of hearing.

84. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

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Mme. Blavatsky: I am afraid physiology is very much at sea as to the most
elementary questions about the senses and so on; it goes and denies à priori
the possibility of super-senses, if I may cal them so, and does not know a
single thing about the most simple matters, about that which one has
experience of every day of one’s life. It does not know anything about the
touch and the sight.

Mr. A. Keightley: Don’t you think it would be a thing for some future Thursday,
if you would take the sense and so on principles to work upon?

Mme. Blavatsky: I would have al the physiologists sitting on me, if I did. Not in
public you know.

Mr. A. Keightley: But you are not in public. You are only in Blavatsky Lodge.

Mme. Blavatsky: I am not learned enough to undertake such a thing as that.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think you could do it, if you tried. We should be content with
the little elementary things, but I think you could give us the others, if you tried.

Mr. A. Keightley: At present, one works blindly in connection with these things,
and often sets about working on matters which real y are of no use, and have
to be completely unlearned again.

Mme. Blavatsky: What does physiology say about it? You see, I am more
capable of detecting mistakes if I see them; if I read a book on physiology, or
if I hear somebody talk. It is a great deal easier for me to find the mistake then
to come and tel you anything about the thing, because not knowing physiology
or your technical terms, and not being sure how far they have progressed with
their il usions and hal ucinations, I do not know where to begin.

Mr. A. Keightley: I shal be very happy to supply you with books.

Dr. Williams: He can supply il usions enough.

85. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: Can you tel me, Dr. Wil iams, what they say in physiology
about it?

Dr. Williams: They say a great deal.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Do they say anything about this?

Dr. Williams: The only thing they say worth consideration is—or rather the
deduction that may be made from what they do say is—every sense may be
resolved into the sense of touch. You may cal that the coordinating sense, and
the deduction is made from their embryological investigations, which show that
the sense of touch is the first and primary sense and that al the others have
been evolved from that, since sight and sound and taste, everything, are
simply more highly specialized or differentiated forms of touch. I know nothing
worthy of consideration.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you go to the trouble of reading the Anugîta6 and the
conversation between the brahmin and his wife, I can assure you, he teaches
very good things to his wife there, and very philosophical y. You won’t lose
your time. He (Mr. Keightley) can lend it to you, if you like. Real y, it is worth
reading, and the brahmin speaks there about the seven senses. Al the time he
talks about the seven senses. It is translated by Max Mül er.7 “Mind and

Understanding” are the two extra senses, and I say it is very badly translated,
because it does not mean that in Sanskrit at al . I think the sense you
understand, is sound, on the top of the latter, on the last rung on the terrestrial
plane. Maybe they wil win their case by touch, but I do not think it is so.

Mr. B. Keightley: By touch they mean skin, sensibility.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do they cal skin, also, the eye that sees?

Mr. B. Keightley: No, they say the eye that sees is formed of one of

6 [The Anugîtâ is the discourse between Krishna and Arjuna that forms part of the Mahabharata. It was delivered after great battle described in the Bhagavad–Gîtâ.]

7 [Edited by Max Müller, it was translated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang as volume 8 of The sacred Book s of the

East (1882).]

86. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

the nerves of the skin.

Mr. A. Keightley: No, the eye is the outgrowth of the brain.

Mme. Blavatsky: And that is al that they say, the physiologists. They do not
make much progress, it appears.

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Dr. Williams: I meant that, that to me seems to be the only thing worth thinking
very much about. That deduction is founded on the beginning of the very
lowest forms of life, the first differentiation of that which results in the organ of
sight, a simple pigment cel which is more sensitive to light than the other cel s.

I am not sure that there is no harmony between the most advanced physiology
and that proportion of yours.

Mme. Blavatsky: The sense of sound is the first thing that manifests itself in
the universe. Then after that, sound, is certainly, is in correspondence with
colors or sight; that is the second thing. Wel , I think you have got enough for
tonight.

Dr. Williams: I think the sense of sound always passes into the sense of sight.

I do not think we can have any conception of anything unless it does.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you could only see clairvoyantly a person playing a piano,
you would see the sound as plainly as you hear it. If you al ow yourself to sit
there in your own normal state and listen, of course you wil hear the sound, but
if you only can concentrate your ideas; just paralyze your sense of sound—you
can even put cotton in your ears—you wil see the sound and how much better
you can see it, and detect every little note and modulation that you could not
do otherwise. You cannot hear at a distance, but you can see at a distance.

Dr. Williams: Do you mean you see it as a sort of rhythmic movement?

Mme. Blavatsky: You see it if you are accustomed to it. Now let us take an
il ustration. For instance, to hear a person sing on the

87. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

stage, you must be within a limited distance from the stage, in a place where
the acoustic properties are good and where the sound travels freely. But now
you just imagine yourself that you have a very good sight, and you sit there and
a prima donna wil sing, say in Kensington Gardens; you can see it if there is
no impediment. You wil hear it with your sight better than you wil see with your
ears.

Mr. B. Keightley: Supposing you stop your physical ears and watch
clairvoyantly the plane, and al ow your clairvoyant hearing, so to speak, to
operate at the same time. Clairvoyant sight would translate itself into hearing
on the same plane.

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Mme. Blavatsky: One would merge into the other. You can taste sound, if you
like, too. There sounds which are exceedingly acid, and there are sounds
which are exceedingly sweet, and bitter, and al the scale of taste, in fact.

There is no nonsense, I say it seriously, and you wil find it so if you want to
know about the super-physical senses.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then, do you get the same extension in smel ing into touch?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, you may reverse entirely and shift one sense into the
other, and you may make it a great deal more intense and do anything you like.

Now in the Vedas it is said—or is it in the Upanishads, I think it is the

Upanishads—they speak about seeing a sound. I don’t know if I did not
mention it in The Secret Doctrine. Oh! I wrote an article in The Theosopphist

8 about it. There is something either in the Upanishads or the Vedas.

Mr. Bulaki Rama: Yes, there is several times a mention of seeing a sound, but
we think it is in the metaphorical sense.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now you want to take it so, because you are in the England
universities.

8 [“Occult or Exact Science?” The Theosophist, vol. 7, April, May 1886 where she quotes the Book of Kiu-te that

“sound is seen before it is heard.”]

88. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. B. Keightley: Instead of being the sons of Brahmâ!

Dr. Williams: I wonder if anyone has read a story in the last number of

Harper’s Magazine,9 a story of a sailor who had been cast away on an island
in one of the Archipelagoes, in the South Seas, and finds a race of people
who have entirely lost the art of talking. They understand each other, and see
what they think, but they regard sound as a very gross way of communicating
thought. It is a very interesting little sketch.

Mme. Blavatsky: It would be a “Palace of Truth.” You could not say then, “How
happy I am to see you,” and send them to al kinds of disagreeable places in
your mind. They communicated in such a way as that in the olden times. There
thoughts took objective form.

Mr. A. Keightley: They hit each other in the eye with the thought.

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Dr. Williams: He says he found it a powerful incentive to moral elevation

(laughter).

Mme. Blavatsky: They could not fib then. You could not say a falsehood. How
nice it would be to go into a drawing room of Mrs. Grundy’s10 and just to know
that they must communicate their thoughts. It would be the sweetest thing in
the world! How many compliments would be exchanged! Wel gentlemen, what
else? Once I am dead I won’t be worth much, so take your last chance before

I die. Gardner has subsided.

Mr. Gardner: No, I was thinking, “before you took your dreamless sleep.”

Mme. Blavatsky: We should know more about the senses and could just
exchange thought and al kinds of things simply by scratching our noses. We
would understand each other. This business would be thought transferring. It
would be a very nice thing.

9 [“To Whom this may come” By Edward Bellamy Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 78 (February 1889), pp.

458-466.]

10 [Mrs. Grundy was a personification of British propriety during H.P.B.’s time.]

89. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is a very curious thing, that transference of sense localities
in parts of the body. For instance, as a rule, with the mesmeric clairvoyant, the
sense of sight is transferred to the pit of the stomach and it won’t operate in
any other part of the body.

Col. Chowne: There is some center of nerves.

Mme. Blavatsky: You wil learn that.

Mr. Gardner: Sometimes it works through the forehead.

Mr. B. Keightley: General y the pit of the stomach or the back of the head.

Mme. Blavatsky: They never tried it here, at the back of the head (pointing).

A Lady: They tried it through the feet.

Mr. B. Keightley: I never heard of seeing through the feet, though certainly the
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sense of sight is one they have experimented with the most.

Col. Chowne: You mean a blind man is supposed to read colors. I do not see
how he distinguishes red from blue.

Mme. Blavatsky: The colors, you see, he can know. For instance a deaf man
can be looking at the sounds; he can see because it gives him a kind of
sound. Of course he does not hear it as a sound, but it is transferred to his
mind as a something that is sound, real y. Though it cannot be expressed. You
could not understand it, of course.

Mr. Hall: Deaf and dumb people very often like to put their hands on a piano
while it is being played, so that the vibration may be communicated to their
brains.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then there is a wel -known case of a blind man, who always
associated sounds with colors. He had a conception, red, which he associated
with brass instruments, the trumpet particularly. Red always suggested to his
mind the trumpet.

90. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is extremely interesting, this association of sounds and
colors by vibration, and then it is a very scientific thing, as I think somebody
speaks about it. Now, for instance, the sounds have got so many modulations
and vibrations. And light is just the same way.

Dr. Williams: Sound begins at fifteen vibrations a second and runs through a
very limited scale, so far as the ear is capable of conceiving it. The sounds
increase in intensity, and then comes the sense of heat. The different senses
seem to take up one scale of vibration, of which al these different
manifestations consist. You go on with the sense of heat until you get a dul
redness, and there you get light, and so you run through the whole gamut. It
passes out of light, then cal it the chemical rays that passes beyond color and
produces chemical changes.

Mme. Blavatsky: Isn’t there a difference in prismatic colors? They are seven
then there is something, I forget how they cal it, a measurement.

Mr. B. Keightley: A wavelength.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know how they cal it. There are only five of them
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seen, or three. Is it an instrument that was invented, that these seven colors
reduce themselves to one?

Mr. B. Keightley: No, there are three primary colors. These other seven are
formed from combinations of those. First you get five—

Mme. Blavatsky: No, I speak about some instrument.

Mr. Kingsland: Perhaps the spectroscope.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, not that. I read that they had invented an instrument
which could give not only the radiation of colors but the reduction of colors,
and that seven colors passed through some 77

91. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

shades until merged into one white, you know.

Mr. Hall: Is that the helioscope?11

Mr. Kingsland: It is only a matter of combining again after they are once
dispersed by means of the prism.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, but it is the seven colors, where in their, so to say,
gradation or shading, instead of being seven they become perhaps seventy-
seven times seven.

Dr. Williams: I think it was some adaptation for showing the ratio, rather, of
wavelength and color to rate vibration. That would be almost indefinite number
of vibrations, of course.

Mme. Blavatsky: But they must be counted. I speak about that because it wil
always come back to the three and the four and the seven.

Mr. Hall: Some people associate the different kinds of color, with different
kinds of pain.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is very easy. When you have neuralgia, there must be
some color you cannot look at without terrible pain.

Dr. Williams: Insane persons are treated sometimes by means of color.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Now did you ever think why bul s are irritated at the red
color? Do you know it gives them terrible pain? It enters somehow or other
through their sight into the brain, and makes them perfectly crazy. It gives them
physical pain.

Mr. Gardner: Is that why they wear red coats in hunting?

Mr. Kingsland: Oh! I thought you said “wolves.”

Mme. Blavatsky: Some colors do give pain. There are some sensitive
persons who cannot look at very bright colors, they feel positively

11 [A helioscope was an instrument used for observing the sun.]

92. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

nervous at some combinations of colors, they cannot bear it.

Dr. Williams: I think it is the most interesting question of science.

Mme. Blavatsky: But I think the far more interesting question is to see the
result of various combinations in the occult spheres. Now you wil see one
result on the terrestrial plane; but if you were to fol ow it up and see what are
the results produced in the invisible sphere, wel , it is invisible but stil , some of
the effects wil become objective. Though the causes which are set in motion
wil be invisible, you wil see the effects.

Dr. Williams: It is always far more interesting to investigate any question from
the point of view of principles before descending into particulars.

Mme. Blavatsky: I believe the only exact science that you have is
mathematics, and mathematics proceeds in this way.

Dr. Williams: Yes, from first principles to details.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, it is not quite the Aristotelian way that you can use
in mathematics.

Dr. Williams: I do not think science would object to this more than this: “Be
sure of your first principles, If you know what they are then there would be no
difficulty.”

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Mme. Blavatsky: But how about they who don’t know what they see before
their noses? They only see that which they think they see, and then they are
obliged to give them up, because they see they are mistaken. Why are the
men of science so very, very conceited?

Dr. Williams: Wel , I think it al grows out of the idea that man in a certain way
creates everything from himself, that he has no relation to any higher power
than himself, and he regards himself as the highest power in the universe.

Mme. Blavatsky: Is it conceit?

93. 3. Meeting January 24th, 1889.

Dr. Williams: I should say almost supreme conceit.

Mme. Blavatsky: How about our grandfathers? For the scientists want us to
have a grandfather common with the ape; that is supreme degradation.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, they may think this: “Look how gloriously we have
progressed in a few thousand years.”

Mr. Hall: Like a self-made man who is always referring to the time when he
came to London with two pence in his pocket.

Mme. Blavatsky: How do you know there are not self-made apes in the
forest? We do not know anything about it. I have seen apes who are very wise.

I have seen many; I love apes. I have a great tenderness for them, and I think
they are better than men are. It is a fact.

( The proceedings then came to a close. )

4.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting at Blavatsky Lodge
on Thursday, January 31, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: The first question is in connection with Śloka 6, stanza 1

(reads passage from The Secret Doctrine. ) Now, with reference to the “Seven

Lords,” question 1 runs: “Since confusion is apt to arise in the correct
application of the terms, wil you please distinguish between Dhyâni-Chohans
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Planteary Spirits, Builders, and Dhyâni-Buddhas?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes; but you know, real y, it wil take a volume if you want to
know al the hierarchies and every distinct class of angels among the Dhyâni-

Chohans, Dhyâni-Buddhas, the Builders, etc. Now, Dhyâni-Chohan is a generic
name for al Devas, or celestial beings. They are one and al cal ed Dhyâni-

Chohans. Now, a Planetary Spirit is the ruler of a planet, a kind of personal

God, but finite; that is the difference you see. A Planetary Spirit is the one that
has to rule and watch over each globe of a chain, or every planet, and there is
some difference between those over the great sacred planets, and those over
smal chains like ours, because the earth has never been one of the sacred
planets—never. It was simply taken as a substitute, like the moon and the sun,
because the sun is the central star. And the moon has never been a planet. It
is dead long ago.

Mr. A. Keightley: But does the earth belong to a chain which belongs to the
train of one of the sacred planets?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh no, not at al . The earth has its own chain. There are six
companions which are not seen, which are on three different planes.

96. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Are none of those other six, one of the sacred planets?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, sir, not one, and it is not feasible.

Mr. Kingsland: Then how are we to distinguish between them?

Mme. Blavatsky: The seven sacred of antiquity were the planets which
astrologers take now, minus the sun and the moon, which are substitutes.

The Chairman {T. B. Harbottle}: And plus two that we do not know.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, of which one is an intra-Mercurial planet, which they are
trying to find and cannot. They wanted to cal it Vulcan, or to give it a name
before it was found out; they think they have found it, but they are not sure.

Some say there are several, others one, but they do not know. When they find
out they wil know that it is one of the secret planets. And the other one is what

I cannot explain. It was as the substitute of this planet that the moon was taken,
and it was seen at a certain hour of the night just as though it was near the
moon, but it was not; it is this planet which was not known at al . I think
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sometimes they do not give the name, but as to my astronomical ideas, I
would not trust them.

The Chairman: Its not Herschel 1 is it?

Mme. Blavatsky: I thought it was at one time, and yesterday evening I was
thinking a good deal about it, but I am not sure. If I were to see, or if it were
possible to have a planisphere2 of the heavens to see at certain hours of the
night, as astronomers must have it, I would have recognized it; but if it is not

Herschel, I could not tel you.

The Chairman: But the modern astrologers say about Herschel that it is a
planet which has an almost unexpected and what we should cal an occult
influence upon things; and they, having recently

1 [The planet Uranus was at one time referred to as Herschel’s planet after its modern discover, the English
astronomer, William Herschel, 1738-1822.]

2 [A star chart.]

97. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

discovered Herschel, assign exactly the sort of attributes to Herschel in
astrology that one should expect of the secret planet.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is way I thought it was so, but I am not sure and I cannot
tel you until I have seen the planispheres. But as far as the name is
concerned, you cannot go by the Sanskrit in order to know what is the name. I
do not know wel enough beyond this, that it is an occult planet, which is seen
at a certain hour of the night, directly, as though near the moon.

Mr. Kingsland: Every night?

Mme. Blavatsky: I am not sure whether it is every night. I know it was so, and
that it had a sacred day, also.

Mr. Gardner: It moves very slowly.

Mme. Blavatsky: And, mind you, the motion is retrograde. I do believe it is

Herschel; but I would not swear to it.

Mr. B. Keightley: If you do away with the moon as one of the astrological
planets, you would have to attach to one of the others the influence which is a
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present ascribed to the moon and the question is, whether that can be done.

Mme. Blavatsky: What is said is this, that the influence of this secret planet
passes through the moon, i.e., the occult influence of this secret planet; but
whether it passes so that it comes in a direct line, or how, I cannot explain.

That is for your mathematicians to know better than I can.

The Chairman: Then if that were so, you would find the influence of Herschel
would be very strong indeed when it was in conjunction with the moon, as the
astrologers cal it.

Mr. Kingsland: Are these seven planets al on the same plane as ourselves?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly.

98. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Then I presume there is a separate plane belonging to each of
those.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, you find it in The Secret Doctrine.

Mr. A. Keightley: Are there minor chains belonging to these sacred planets?

You say the earth has never been one of the sacred planets, and it has a
chain.

Mme. Blavatsky: It has a chain and many others have chains, which have not
been discovered, but wil be discovered just as much as the earth’s.

Mr. Kingsland: What makes the others sacred or secret?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose because they have occult influences.

The Chairman: But then the seven are on a different hierarchy, as it were, to
the planetary spirit of the earth?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, yes. The planetary spirit of the earth is what they cal the
terrestrial spirit and is not very high. The planetary spirit has nothing to do with
the spiritual man. It has to do with the things of matter with the cosmic beings

—they are cosmic rulers, so to say, and they form into shape and fashion
things. They have everything to do with matter, but not with spirit. With spirit it is
the Dhyâni-Buddhas who have to do. It is another hierarchy that has to do with
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that, and I am explaining it to you here.

The Chairman: These planetary spirits, as we should use the phrase, have
real y nothing to do with the earth, except incidental y.

Mme. Blavatsky: They have every thing to do with the earth, material y.

Mr. Kingsland: They have to do, in fact, with man in his higher part.

Mme. Blavatsky: They have nothing whatever to do with spiritual man.

99. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Have they anything to do with the fifth principle?

Mme. Blavatsky: They have something to do with the fourth principle but with
the three higher principles they have nothing to do whatever. I have not
finished yet. You asked me what were the things, and I tel you. First, Dhyâni-

Chohans was a generic name for al the celestial beings. Second, the Builders
are a class cal ed by the ancients kosmocratores, the builders. They are
builders simply, like the celestial masons who shape under the orders of the
architect, so to speak. They are but the masons to the grand architect of the
universe.

Mr. Kingsland: Are they not the planetary spirits, then?

Mme. Blavatsky: What, the Builders? Wel , they are, but of a lower kind.

Mr. A. Keightley: Do they act under the planetary spirit of the earth?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , no. The planetary spirit of the earth is not a bit higher
unless he is one who has attained his rank, so to say, earlier than the others,
and therefore he is considered the chief of them. Mind you, I tel you that which
is said not in the exoteric religions (though in some, of course, you may learn
it), but in the esoteric teaching.

The Chairman: But are not the builders of various classes when considering
the solar system or the universe as a whole or any one particular planet? I
mean, are there not Builders absolutely terrestrial, in the same way that there
are builders of the solar system and the universe?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly.

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Mr. Kingsland: Then the terrestrial Builder is a planetary spirit?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but a very low kind. What is our earth compared to

Jupiter, for instance (wel , we won’t speak of the solar angels)? It is nothing but
a speck of dirt or mud.

100. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

The Chairman: But it has its hierarchy.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of course it has, al of them have. This wil be shown to you
here. They are reflected in the intel igence of the G.A.O.T.U., 3 which is simply

Mahat, the Universal Mind. There comes again the third. Wel it is said distinctly
the planetary spirits are those who watch over planets and globes of a chain
such as that of our earth. Now, fourth, you spoke about Dhyâni-Buddhas. They
are the same as the higher Devas. In India they are what are cal ed

Bodhisattvas in the Buddhist religion, but exoterical y they are given only as
five whereas there are seven. Why they do so is because exoterical y they
take it “à la letter,” but they represent the Seven. And it is also said in The

Secret Doctrine “the five Buddhas who have come, and two who are to come
in the sixth and seventh races”. Now, esoterical y, their president is [ ],4 and
he is cal ed the Supreme Intel igence, and the Supreme Buddha, and [ ]5
which is again higher than the [ ], because he is as much above [ ] as

Parabrahman is above Brahmâ or Mahat. It is the same difference. Or, as for
instance, the Dhyâni-Buddha is higher then the Manushi Buddha, the human

Buddha—which is the same difference. The Dhyâni-Buddhas are one thing
exoterical y and another thing in occultism. Exoterical y, each is a Trinity.

(continues reading from her own notes.) That is the difference between the

Dhyâni-Buddhas and the others. The Dhyâni-Buddhas are those who remain
from a previous Manvantara on a planet which is not as high as ours, which is
very low; and the others have to pass through al kingdoms of Nature, through
the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and the animal kingdom.

Mr. Kingsland: Then the Dhyâni-Chohans are prehuman, and the Dhyâni-

Buddhas are posthuman.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are al Dhyâni-Chohans.

Mr. A. Keightley: Wel , the planetary spirit.

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3 [The Masonic formula meaning “ Grand Architect of the Universe.”]

4 [The published Transactions Vajrasattva though stating this is exoterically so.]

5 [ Transactions: Vajradhara.]

101. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: That is a creature in this period.

Mr. A. Keightley: Prehuman?

Mme. Blavatsky: How do you mean prehuman?

Mr. A. Keightley: Wil be a human.

Mr. Kingsland: Dhyâni-Buddhas have been men.

Mme. Blavatsky: And the Dhyâni-Buddhas were before and they wil not be
men on this, but they wil be something higher than men, because at the end of
the seventh race it is said they wil come and incarnate on earth.

Mr. Kingsland: Wil they be what corresponds to man on a higher plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know, but they wil come in the seventh round,
because al humanity wil then become Buddhas, or Devas. They are the
emanations or reflections of the Manushi Buddhas, the Human Buddhas. Not
necessarily Gautama Buddha, for he is a Manushi Buddha, a human Buddha, a
saint—whatever you like to cal it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 2. “Does the planetary spirit in charge of a Globe
go into Pralaya when his Globe enters Pralaya?”

Mme. Blavatsky: The planetary spirits go into Pralaya at the end of the
seventh round, not after every one of the rounds, because he is in charge of
the Globe, and has to watch the workings of the laws even during the statu quo
condition of the Globe when it goes into its time of rest, that is to say, during its
inter-planetary Pralaya. I explain everything in The Secret Doctrine and this is
explained somewhere there.

The Chairman: I don’t remember it.

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Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t think you put it in print.

Mme. Blavatsky: Maybe. Then they must have left it out. Or

102. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

perhaps it is the third or fourth volume. I remember I have written it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Wel then, if anything is missed out of The Secret Doctrine,
we wil say it is in the third volume.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, real y, I could show it to you, it is in the third volume. I
know I have written it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then question 3 does the Dhyâni whose province it is to
watch over a Round, watch over, during his period of activity, the whole series
of Globes, or only over a particular Globe?”

Mme. Blavatsky: I have explained this just now. Each of them has his own

Globe to watch, but there are seven planetary spirits, and it is Dhyâni-Buddha.

You make a mistake there.

Mr. A. Keightley: I said Dhyâni.

Mme. Blavatsky: Here it is said when the Al and planetary, and the Dhyâni-

Buddhas and al who wil appear on earth in the seventh Round when al
humanity wil have become Buddhas {and} Devas, their sons, and they wil be
no more trammeled with matter, there is a difference between planetary and
the other ( continues reading from her own notes). Mind you, in the Kabbalah
you wil see always mention of the three higher planes, of which they speak
with great reluctance. Even there they wil not go as far as that, they simply give
you the Triad: Chokhmah (or whatever they cal it) and Binah, the male and
female intel igence, or wisdom and intel igence. And this Binah in the Kabbalah
is cal ed the Jehovah, and a female, if you please.

Mr. Kingsland: It says here that the Dhyâni is to watch successively every one
of the rounds. A little confusion arose there.

Mme. Blavatsky: But Dhyâni is a generic name, as I said to you. It is an
abbreviation of Dhyâni-Chohans that is al , but not of Dhyâni-Buddhas. Dhyâni-

Buddhas is quite a different thing. If I said it, it is a very great mistake, a lapsus
linguae to which I plead guilty very
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103. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

often—as I have just said 28 was 5 times 7.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 4. Is there any name which can be applied to the

“Planetary Spirit,” which watches over the entire evolution of a planetary chain?

Mme. Blavatsky: Which one is it?

Mr. A. Keightley: Number 4.

Mme. Blavatsky: I had two or thre e pages written out, but perhaps it is better
that I should not read it. There is nothing at al , it simply explains why we do not
worship them.

The Chairman: Wel , let us have it; it is a very interesting point, that.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is why we go against the idea of any personal extra-
cosmic god. You cannot worship one such god, for “the gods are many,” is
said in the Bible. Therefore you have to choose to worship many, who are al
one as good, and as limited, as the other, which is polytheism and idolatry; or
do as the Israelites have done——choose your one tribal god. (continues
reading from notebook.) Now this, in the Bible, is what is said: “The gods are
many, but the God is one.” Why? Because it is their own god that they have
chosen. With the end of Pralaya he disappears, as Brahmâ does, and as al
other Devas do. That is to say, he is merged into the Absolute, because he is
simply one of the rays, which, whether the highest or the lowest, wil al be
merged into the Absolute. And therefore we do not worship and we do not
offer prayers, to them because if we did we should have to worship many
gods; and if we address our prayers to the one Absolute, then I do not think
the one Absolute has got ears to hear us. That is my opinion. It may be
atheistical and I may appear a very great infidel but I cannot help it.

Mrs. Williams: What objection would there be to worshipping many gods?

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not see any objection, but it would be a

104. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

tiresome thing. You would not have time to pay them al compliments. It would
be rather a monotonous thing.

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Mrs. Wil iams: You spoke of it as being idolatrous. I wanted to find out whether
in your mind it was so.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al . I say if we have to offer prayers to some personal
god, then we must believe in many gods, and we must offer prayers to many
or none, because why should we have a preference? We do not know whether
it is the best or the worst we may fal upon. It may be one who is not at al very
perfect.

Mr. B. Keightley: Besides, we should make the others jealous.

Mme. Blavatsky: Besides, we have a god within us, every one of us. This is a
direct ray from the Absolute; every one of us is the ‘celestial ray from the one

— ”, wel , I do not find any other word but the Absolute and the Infinite. Now
then number 4.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is there any name which can be applied to the Planetary

Spirit, which watches over the entire evolution of a Planetary Chain?

Mme. Blavatsky: No name, unless you make of it the generic name since he
is not alone but seven. (continues reading from her notebook.) If you give him
this name it wil be a very good name, I think. It wil be scientific and it wil
answer the purpose, but you are at liberty to give any name you like. What is in
a name? “Choose you the daily gods you duly worship,” says Joshua.6

Mr. A. Keightley: Is there any name applied to it in the Sanskrit?

Mme. Blavatsky: Look here, the Vaishnavas worship Vishnu, the Śaivas
worship Śiva, the other—how do cal them—the [ ] worship Krishna, and so on.

Everyone has a god of his own. Everyone chooses his own tribal god, or
anything they like, or their racial god, and they are happy.

6 [This is a paraphrase of Joshua 24:15]

105. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

The Chairman: But such a God as Vishnu is the synthesis of the seven.

Mme. Blavatsky: One is the creator, so cal ed, though he certainly did not
create matter out of nothing, but the universe out of something. The other is
preserver and the third is a destroyer, but being that, he is the highest,
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because that which destroys, regenerates, and because you cannot have a
plant growing without kil ing the seed. Therefore, he destroys to give a higher
form, you understand.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then these three questions; the name of the “Planetary

Spirit,” and “is there a name which can be applied to the Planetary Spirit
watching over a Round?” Also, “is Brahmâ the correct term to use concerning
the Planetary Spirit of one Globe during one Round, or would Manu be the
more correct term?” In this sense is Manu identical with Brahmâ.

Mme. Blavatsky: You have jumped to number 6.

Mr. A. Keightley: I put those three together, because they real y practical y
come together. We wanted to distinguish a Planetary Spirit in a Chain of

Worlds from the Planetary Spirit over one Globe, which real y rules one Globe,
and thirdly to ask whether Brahmâ is the correct term to use.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of the universe they would never say Brahmâ. They would
say Manus, and they are the same as Brahmâ; and then the rest of them,
sometimes they are reckoned the seven, sometimes ten, according to what
they are talking about. And this is in the esoteric meaning in the Purânas.

Mr. A. Keightley: There is a special class of Planetary Spirits which deal with a

Chain.

Mme. Blavatsky: There are Rishis, and the Manus are those who watch over
every Round.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then are the Rishis and the Manus the same?

106. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: They are just the same Rishi or Manu. What is Manu? Manu
comes from Man, to think—the thinking intel igence. Now just the same as this

[ ], which is the intel igence, or this [ ] is considered the supreme
intel igence, and he and Brahmâ one. Take the Vishnu Purâna; take any

Purâna which wil give you exoterical y these things. They give the real thing,
and they invent many things just as blinds. But you wil find a good many things
which you wil never find in other scriptures. They wil come and ornament
things, and yet the fundamental truths are there.

Mr. A. Keightley: I want to avoid, if possible, al these blinds with regard to
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these names.

Mme. Blavatsky: The brahmins wil pitch into us after that. Why shal I give
them names? Am I a Roman Catholic priest, to come and baptize them, and
give them al different names? To me they are ideations. I am not going to give
them names. If I told you the real occult names, it would not make you any the
wiser. You are sure to forget them the first moment.

The Chairman: But it helps us to place them.

Mme. Blavatsky: Let us take the prismatic idea; let us cal them the Red God
and the Orange God and the Yel ow God and the Blue and the Green.

The Chairman: Very wel . But in what regard, for instance, to that seven in one,
what relation do they bear to the Sephiroth?

Mme. Blavatsky: They are three and seven. They are ten in al , but the higher
is considered the greatest, and the seven, the god descending into matter.

The Chairman: What relation is there between that seven and the seven we
were speaking of?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Planetary Spirits? None.

The Chairman: Are they the Planetary Spirits?

107. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I would not cal them that. You never find a single name
which is not Angelic. Take the Kabbalah. They cal it the third Sephirot, as
being intel igence; his angelic name is [ ], and he is cal ed Jehovah, and this,
that and the other, and the book goes on and gives the thing. How it is cal ed,
you cannot understand it. But, you see, al of them start from one point, and
make a kind of broken ray, coming from one focus. Shal we then in this way
give names to al of them?

The Chairman: No, but I think we might understand what they are, and what
relation they bear to names which we do know at present. The Sephirot is a
name which is particularly familiar, and if one can have an idea that they are in
the seventh Sephirot, we might know.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are just the kosmocratores on a higher plane, but yet
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the last hierarchy, Malkuth coming to earth. And this is the perfect hierarchy.

The Chairman: Then the sevenfold or prismatic gods which preside over the

Planetary Chains wil be something lower.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly they wil be; because they are not the Watchers,
you know.

The Chairman: I have got what I wanted.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you tel me what you want, I wil say, but why are you so
inquisitive, tel me?

The Chairman: Only because I think one looks for these analogies al through,
and when the analogies do not seem to fit, you are puzzled. The only way to
attempt to understand them is to see one analogy running through them.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you want to compare them with the Kabbalah?

The Chairman: Yes, but not in details, because I do not know enough its
details. One wants to know the relation, as it were, of the Planetary Chain to the
cosmos, and secondly, of the spirits ruling

108. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

the Planetary Chains to the spirits of the cosmos, and so on.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the [ ] in its col ectivity, and this includes the seven
lower Sephiroth. And it becomes another thing, for it becomes the bridegroom
of the bride, Malkhut.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then we pass on to the stanza fol owing; “But where was the

Dangma when the when the Âlaya of the Universe (Soul basis of al , Anima

Mundi) was in Paramârtha ( Absolute Being and Consciousness which are

Absolute Non-being and Unconsiousness) and the Great Wheel was

Anupâdaka?” Does Âlaya mean that which is never dissolved, being derived
from “a” and “Laya”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Âlaya is the living sentient or active Soul of the World.

(continues reading from her notes.) Now, the Laya means the negation or

Layam, as they cal it, because it is that which is perfect non-differentiation. It is
perfectly homogeneous and it is negative, inactive, and has no attributes. And
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Âlaya is the Soul of the Universe.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then practical y this stanza means “Where was the Dangma,
when the Âlaya of this universe was in Laya”

Mme. Blavatsky: There is Bulaki Rama, who wil give you the true explanation.

Because I give you the Hindu things simply on analogy. I do not profess to
teach it. What I give is occultism and the occult doctrine and I try to make, for
example, to the Hindus and those who have read Hindu books, the thing more
clear. I just give you the analogy, but there is a Sanskrit scholar. How would
you explain it?

Mr. Bulaki Rama: Laya means that which is absolutely nothing, from the root, {
li }, to disappear. And Âlaya is the one active life in Jîvâtman.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just what I give you here. One is manifested and ful y active
and the other has disappeared from the realm of manifestation and fal en into

Non-Being. So, then, I have given them correctly.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then it is different exactly from what we put

109. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

down in the question as being, e.g., never dissolved.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly not, because it is non-differentiation. Âlaya means
latent. At the end of the manvantara, when pralaya sets in, certainly the Âlaya
wil become Laya and fal into nothing. There wil be the one Great Breath only.

It is most assuredly dissolved. It is eternal y, throughout the Manvantaras, but
the Laya is nothing, it a thing which is the thing which is a negation of al . Just
the same as the Absolute, the Parabrahman; it is and it is not.

Mr. B. Keightley: Âlaya is simply two negatives put together to make a
positive. You can get at it in that way.

Mr. Bulaki Rama: Laya means to disappear forever, and therefore it is not
negative.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is to say it is nothing; it is just like Ain-Soph. What is

Ain-Soph? No-thing. It is not a thing; that is to say, it is nothing, the zero point.

The Chairman: It is neither positive nor negetive.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Hence Âlaya is the one active life in Jîvâtman, while Laya is
the life, latent. One is absolute life and Be-ness, and the other is absolute non-
life and non-Be-ness. So you see it is perfectly the opposite.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the next question is asked in these words, “Page 50,

Âlaya is the one life, the one life is Jîvâtman. Are then Âlaya and Jîvâtman
identical?”

Mme. Blavatsky: I should say that they were. I do not see any difference

Anima Mundi—that is Jîvâtman, the Soul of the World the living soul. Jîva is
life. For the matter of that, every life has got its Jîva, but this is the Jîvâtman
the one Universal Soul. I think so at least. May be you wil tel me otherwise, but
it seems to me that Âlaya and Jîvâtman are one.

Mr. Bulaki Rama: Certainly.

110. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: How would you translate “Âtma”?

Mr. Bulaki Rama: Wel , it means that which is present.

Mr. A. Keightley: What is the difference between Âtma and Jîvâ?

Mme. Blavatsky: Jîvâtma is the life everywhere, that is, Anima-Mundi, and

Âtma simply is—Wel as he explained it.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is your Al -presence?

Mr. Kingsland: Then it can only be Jîvâtman during Manvantara.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. At least, the Vedântins say so; after that al
becomes Parabrahman, and Parabrahman is beyond our conception. It is
something we cannot certainly go and speculate about, because it has no
attributes. It is al and nothing, nothing in our conceptions, or our ideas.

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 2: “Where were the Builders, the luminous sons of

Manvantaric Dawn? In the Unknown Darkness in their Ah-hi (Chohanic Dhyâni-

Buddhic) parinishpanna. The producers of form (rûpa) from no form (arûpa)

the root of the world—Devâmatri and Svabhavat, rested in the bliss of non-
being.” Question 9. “Luminous Sons of Manvantaric Dawn.” Are these the
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perfected human spirits of the last Manvantara or are they on their way to
humanity in this or a subsequent Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: They are the primordial seven rays from which wil emanate,
in their turn, al the other luminous or non-luminous lives, whether angels or
devils, men or apes. These are the seven rays from which wil come al the
world of il usion. The seven Logoi.

Mr. A. Keightley: Yes, exactly. Then question 10.

Mme. Blavatsky: There you go again. Because I wanted to explain to you here
that some are this and some are something else. “Some have been, others
wil become” (continues reading from her notebook). Everything, therefore, is
there in the seven rays. You cannot say

111. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

which, because they are not yet differentiated and therefore are not yet
individualized.

The Chairman: And within these are both prehuman and posthuman?

Mme. Blavatsky: Exactly. That is a very much earlier stage. This belongs al to
the precosmic times, it does not belong to the after state. It is precosmic,
before there was a universe.

Mr. A. Keightley: What puzzles one is talking of the negation, [ ], first of al ,
and then speaking of the luminous sense. One gets accustomed to the
recurrence of terms which are intracosmic, in contradistinction to precosmic.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is only after the differentation of the seven rays and after
the seven forces of Nature have taken them in hand and worked on them that
they become one, the cornerstone of the temple; the other the rejected stone
of clay or piece of clay. After that begins the shifting and the sifting and the
differentiation and everything, and the sorting of things, but this al belongs to
the precosmic period. Therefore it is very difficult. These answers are for
those who are perfectly familiar with the occult philosophy, and as they
proceed, I do not take them one after the other. There are breaks of forty
stanzas, and there are stanzas that I would not be permitted to give. What can

I do? I do the best I can. There are things they would not permit for anything to
be translated. I wish I could. It is no fault of mine. Therefore are our teachers
cal ed egoists and selfish, because they do not want to give the information to
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the Fel ows of the Royal Society, who would appreciate it so much! Who
would sense it, and who would drag it in the mud, and laugh at it as they do
everything else. Now then, question 10.

Mr. A. Keightley: “Builders—our Planetary System.” By our Planetary System,
do you mean the solar system, or the chain to which our Earth belongs?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Builders are those who build or fashion things

112. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

(continues reading from her notebook). By Planetary System, I mean the solar
system. I suppose it is cal ed the solar system. I would not refer thus {to} that

{as} the Planetary Chain. I would cal the latter simply a chain. And if I say

Planetary System, it is the solar system; if I say Planetary Chain, it is the Chain
of Worlds. I do not know whether I am right in so using it. This one is our
planet, the root, the lowest one, but the others are not, because they are not
seen. They are are spheres, globes; they are not on our plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is the old mistake about Mars and Mercury.

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear sir, I have shown it in The Secret Doctrine. If Mars
and Mercury belonged to our chain, we would not see them, we would not
know anything about them. How would we see that which is not on our plane? It
is perfectly impossible. Now, then comes a thing which pertains more to
physics and chemistry and al that than anything else, but stil you can, I
suppose, learn something from that.

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 2. In reference to what is said on page 54 of oxygen
and hydrogen combining to form water, would it real y be correct to say that
what we perceive is, in reality, a different “element” if the same substance?

For example, when a substance is in the gaseous state, it is the element of air
which is perceived; and when combined to form water, oxygen and hydrogen
appear under the guise of the element of water. Would it be correct to say that
when we get it in the solid state—ice—we then perceive the element of earth?

Would a clairvoyant perceive oxygen and hydrogen separately in the water?

Mme. Blavatsky: There are two or three things I do not recognize at al . It must
be Mr. Harte,7 who has put his finger in the pie. You remember at the
beginning you wanted to make it more plain, and I have been crossing it out as
much as I could. I can recognize in a

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7 [Richard Harte, an American member who was one of Mme. Blavatsky’s many helpers with The Secret

Doctrine. He left to work at the headquarters, in India October 1888.]

113. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

minute what is mine and what is not. He begins to make comparisons, and I
don’t see at al the object of the comparison. I think it is al correlations, and I
don’t see how we can say this or the other. They have made a most absurd
objection to cal ing the earth and water and fire and air elements, because they
say they are composed of elements. Now they begin to find out that they do
not approach even to an element in their chemical analysis, and that such a
thing as an element can only exist in their imagination. They can not get at an
element which is real y an element. Do what they wil , they wil find more and
more that the element of today wil become the two elements of tomorrow.

This is a world of differentiation; therefore, if we cal water an element, we have
a perfect right so to do, because it is an element. It is something which does
not resemble anything else, it is not like fire or air or earth. These are al states
of one and the same element, if you like, of the one element in Nature. These
are various manifestations in various aspects, but to our perceptions they are
elements. Now they go and quarrel: “Shal we cal it an element?” and then
they say that oxygen and hydrogen do not exist any more, since they have
correlated and become something else; but if you go and decompose water,
immediately you have the two elements reappearing. Do they pretend to
create something out of nothing?

Mr. B. Keightley: No, they say they do not understand.

Mme. Blavatsky: It proves that they are latent, and it is a fal acy to say they do
not exist. They disappear from our plane of perception from our senses and
sight, but they are there. There is not a single thing that exists that can go out
of the universe.

Mr. Kingsland: Oxygen and hydrogen are al differentiated states of
something. When they are combined to form water we lose sight of them as
distinct differentiations, but if we could fol ow them with our inner sight, should
we stil see them?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, because the test gives it to you. Not a very
experienced person is required to test water, and if that person knew
something of oxygen and hydrogen, that person would

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tel you immediately which predominates. That is the test which wil give you
the real thing, but of course it must be an occultist. But they are there. They
may be al the same—but they are not if you please. They wil take a drop of
water and decompose it and they wil find so and so, but then the analysis or
instrument cannot detect which is more intense than the other. The proportion
wil become the same, but it won’t be the same in the intensity or taste. This is
an occult thing—I mean the intensity of one thing or the other. An occultist, if
he were real y so, would tel you even the plane from which it comes, too. Wel ,

I don’t want to tel you more, because it would seem like a fable, and you
would not understand.

Mr. Gardner: For instance, the water when I was going up Snowdon8 tasted
very pure.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, that water which you wil get on the

Himalayas wil be quite different than the waters you drink in the val eys and the
plains. There is nothing physical with out its subjective moral and spiritual
aspects, and so on.

Mr. Kingsland: We cannot decompose the water without getting a definite
quantity of oxygen and a definite quantity of hydrogen. You say one may be
more intense than the other.

Mme. Blavatsky: Intense in quality, not in quantity.

Mr. Gardner: The quality of oxygen?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, sir.

Mr. Kingsland: But that is not perceived.

Mme. Blavatsky: You don’t perceive the presence of the soul in man, at least
the men of science don’t, but we do; that is the difference. How can you go
and argue with a man of science?

Mr. Kingsland: We are dealing with the most physical plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: Never mind. The physical plane cannot exist

8 [ The highest mountain range in Wales, with numerous footpaths.]

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nor give you any correspondence nor anything without having the spiritual
mixed with it, because otherwise you cannot go to the root of things. When
your men of science tel me they are acting on the physical plane, and say
metaphysics is al nonsense, I see that their science is real y perfectly
honeycombed with metaphysics. The scientists cannot go beyond matter;
beyond the things they perceive, it is al speculation,

The Chairman: The reason we can not distinguish in this way as to quality and
intensity is because we have no perception of the three higher elements. If we
had, we should at once distinguish.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. Mr. Harbottle has just hit the nail on the head. I
don’t want to enter into it, because I shan’t be understood.

Mr. Gardner: What do you mean by the term intensity?

Mme. Blavatsky: I mean intensity.

Mr. B. Keightley: You know whether a taste is intense or not.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, you wil take a drop of vinegar—let us come on the
lowest plane—and you wil know this vinegar weighs so much. You wil take the
same weight of another vinegar, and it wil be quite different. But the weight wil
be the same.

Mr. Gardner: Wel , the strength.

Mme. Blavatsky: Cal it strength, if you like. I cal it intensity.

The Chairman: It shows itself in the absence or presence of the essence.

Mr. Kingsland: That can be analyzed chemical y.

The Chairman: Yes, but there is something behind that.

Mr. Kingsland: There is nothing corresponding to that intensity in the molecule
of oxygen and hydrogen, in the case of these we can analyze with our
chemical methods.

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Mme. Blavatsky: I wil tel you a better thing yet, if you go on the occult
principle. We are not Christians, we do not believe in the doctrine of
transubstantiation as it is taught in the church, we are occultists, and yet, I say
there is such a thing as transubstantiation on the occult plane, and that if it
comes to this, if the priests, the Roman Catholic priests, were not such stupid
fools, they would give a very good reply. They would say; ‘We take bread and
wine, and we say that it changes by a kind of miracle or a mystery into the flesh
and blood of Christ.” Very wel then; once they take Christ to be one with the

Absolute (which they do, I don’t know how they arrange it), then they are
perfectly right. In this bread and wine there is as much of the Absolute, and I
tel you that in every drop we swal ow, and every morsel we eat, there is as
much of Parabrahman as there is in anything, because, everything coming
from the one Absolute it is impossible it should not be there.

Transubstantiation is that which takes away for the time being—whether on the
plane of il usion, or on the plane of senses—which takes away one quality of a
thing, and makes it appear as though it were another. The bread and wine
changes, and becomes flesh and blood. With a hypnotized person, you may
give him a tal ow candle and he wil exclaim, “What delicious chocolate.” If he
were not hypnotized, he would be choked unutterably. And if we go on to the
plane of realities, then real y, once they say their Christ is one with the

Absolute, they are logical in maintaining the doctrine of transubstantiation, for
the bread and wine becomes his flesh; because it is flesh and blood; if you
want to anthropomorphize. Certainly a Vedântin would not say such a thing, but
they act very logical y, and that is al . Now I have told you a thing of which I did
not like to speak, because I may hurt the feelings of any Roman Catholic who
may be among you. I don’t like to hurt the feelings of anybody.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is this question possible to answer? Is it utterly nonsensical
to say, when you speak of a gas, you perceive the different elements in that
gas, as distinguished from its liquid condition?

117. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It is in the liquid condition, and yet you detect the gas in this
liquid condition, you detect it clairvoyantly.

Mr. A. Keightley: For instance, oxygen ordinarily is in a gas; by various
processes it is reduced to a liquid and solidified. The question real y means
this: when you find it in the gaseous condition, is it the element of air in the
oxygen, the occult element of air which is perceived; and again the occult
element of water which is perceived in the liquid condition, and the occult
element of earth in the solid?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. You have first of al fire—not the fire that
burns there, but the real fire that the Rosicrucians talk about the one flame, the
fire of life. On the plane of differentiation it become fire in whatever aspect you
like; fire from friction, or what ever it is, it is fire. Very wel , after that it produces
heat in the liquid and then you pass through the element of water and from the
liquid it becomes gas. You must know better than I, speaking of the physical
things. Then from the gas the two gases mix up and produce water. You take
simply a drop of water and fol ow it. When solid it becomes ice. When ice is
liquefied it becomes water, this water becomes vapor, ether, anything you like;
and then it entirely disappears in the universal flame, which of course you
physicists won’t speak about. The universal flame—you cal it [? Inter] ether but
fol ow it like that and there it is. It is the element which appears to you here,
and to say that this gas is not there or these two are not there I should say is a
fal acy. The only thing we can say is that the gases have passed from the
plane of the objective into the plane of the subjective.

Mr. Kingsland: It seems to me that it is only possible with the physical senses
to see one element at a time, and therefore we are quite right to say if anything
is in a liquid state that what we perceive is the element of water.

Mme. Blavatsky: Perfectly. There you are perfectly right and an occultist wil
answer you so. He wil say as I tel you: it has disappeared from the plane of
the objective and appeared on the

118. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

plane of the subjective.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then al substances on the physical plane are real y so many
correlations or combinations of these elements and ultimately of the one
element.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, if you only realized this: how many times I
have spoken to you about this, that the first thing to realize is the existence of

One and only One, i.e., of the Absolute. You have to start from universals to
the particulars. You cannot proceed on your Aristotelian system, you wil never
come to anything. You wil come to grief and confusion, and you wil be always
knocking your heads against stone wal s, and your heads wil come out second
best.

Mr. Kingsland: How could we do that before we are initiates?

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Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon, there is no need to become initiates.

There is something beyond matter, but the men of science laugh at
metaphysics, and they say, “ fiddlesticks to your metas,” and yet I say they are
always dealing with metaphysics; that is what they do.

Mr. Kingsland: You can start with that hypothesis.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you permit metaphysics in your hypothesis, and you do not
believe in metaphysics, what is your hypothesis worth? Take, for instance,
ether. Now, in Webster’s Dictionary, what do they cal it? “A problematical or
hypothetical agent of so and so, which is not yet believed in.” They take it as
just a necessity and yet you build on that ether the whole theory—axiomatic,
mind you, your axiomatic teachings of light, and your vibrations. What right
have you to do it? If you base yourself on a phantom of your imagination, a
physical consciousness that it is such a thing, I cal it humbug and sham.

Mr. Kingsland: You want us to go further back.

Mme. Blavatsky: I want men with something like brains, but not men with
brains only on the physical plane that they cannot see beyond. They have not
got feelers or antennae.

119. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: How can you, by getting a something which is hypo-
hypothetical, so to speak, arrive at more knowledge by working on what you do
not know?

Mme. Blavatsky: You don’t work on your own inventions, you work on the
wisdom of the ages. And if during these 100,000 years or so al the men of the
best intel ects said al the same and found out this, and their adepts and their
wise men said the same thing over and over again, there must be more truth in
that than in the speculations of the few.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think the position is summed up in this way. Physical
science is—

Mme. Blavatsky: Nothing but a conceit.

Mr. B. Keightley: The whole bases of occultism lies in this, that there is latent
within every man a power which can give him true knowledge, a power of
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perception of truth, which enables him to deal first hand with universals if he
wil be strictly logical and face the facts and not juggle with words. Thus he can
truly proceed from universals to particulars by the effect of the innate spiritual
power which is in every man, and with certainty, not as a hypothesis. It is a
hypothesis only as regards our physical senses.

Mr. Kingsland: But how is he to get at that except through initiation?

Mme. Blavatsky: He has it inherent in him, it is simply the method of your
education together with these ideas that they took into their heads “that we wil
not proceed in such a way, that we wil take the Aristotelian method and the

Baconian method, and there never was a man in antiquity who was capable or
worthy of untying our shoestrings.” And therefore you see they do take one
hypothesis after the other. There is not a single thing that wil be said in
science

120. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

that is not purely hypothetical. From your Sir Wil iam who said of something: “I
have come to the conclusion that it does not exist more than 50,000,000 years
ago,” and then said: “I am of opinion it existed 80,000,000 {years} ago.”

Between 80 and 50,000,000 there is a difference. Huxley goes and says a
certain thing takes 1000 years; another one wil go and say something else,
while another says, “I am not disposed to admit such a thing.” Why, my dear
sir, Plato was a match for any one of your greatest philosophers of the day.

Such sages as Plato—I don’t speak about Socrates, but I think Plato could
beat al the Schopenhauers, and Herbert Spencers, and Hartmanns10 and al
the tutti quanti that the nineteenth century is so proud of. And if he proved that
you could not get at knowledge unless you began from universals and
speculated down to particulars, and found the thing on the terrestrial plane, I
suppose he was more right than you are. We had intel igence, we had
knowledge, we had most extraordinary knowledge before. What have we got
now?

Mr. Kingsland: It is only in the last few years that we have had the privilege of
learning this.

Mme. Blavatsky: You had the privilege nearly 1,900 years ago. You knew it al .

It was only in the fifth century that you succeeded in destroying every temple.

You have been hunting the occultists and have been acting so that those who
knew went away, hid themselves and never came near the civilized minds.

Everything was destroyed; your poor scientists are nothing but the children of
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the reaction, and the men of science who have eyes wil not see, and wil not
permit that anyone in antiquity was greater than themselves. You go and read
your best men from Oxford and Cambridge. When they speak about Plato,
they say, “Oh! He did not know anything about the circulation of the blood.

Pythagoras—wel , he knew a little bit of arithmetic, but we are the kings, you
know, and the gods in the nineteenth century.” And it has led to something very
beautiful, your civilization—the highest morality, to begin with.

9 [Sir William Thomson, Scottish physicist 1824-1907. Raised to the peerage in1892 as Lord Kelvin. There is a
extensive footnote about him SD 2:10. ]

10 [A reference to the German philosopher, Eduard von Hartmann, 1842-1906.]

121. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: The whole point lies in this: as to the way you are going to set
to work to build your hypothesis. Suppose you are hypothesis building, which I
don’t expect. I am quite sure, not by the physical senses, but by the use of
strict logic and strict reasoning. You can form a basis of thought. If you look at

Schopenhauer and read him careful y, and Hartmann and others, you wil step-
by-step they have come to the same bases of thought as have been adopted
in India, particularly in the Vedântin system.

Mr. Kingsland: By the inductive method?

Mr. B. Keightley: No, though they pretended to do it by the inductive method.

They started by an intuition. Schopenhauer got the idea, it came upon him like
a flash. He then set to work, having got his hypothetical idea and started with
the broad basis of facts. He got his facts together, and so, you reading his
book are nicely led up to reach the point which came to him as a flash. But he
did not get it by the inductive method. He says he did not.

Mme. Blavatsky: Every fact you get you do get by intuition, you get it by a
flash.

Mr. B. Keightley: Every scientist of the nineteenth century, from the time
science has become anything like science, has said the same thing, that he
has made his great discoveries not by a system of classifying facts in the nice

Baconian method, but by having the facts in his mind.

The Chairman: Darwin especial y says so. He gives you the moment at which
the idea first came to him and it was in comparing some of the physical and
flora and fauna.

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Mr. Kingsland: But they had been working for years, if the idea came to them
apparently in the form of intuition—

The Chairman: But they might have been quite unconsciously working up to it
in various ways. If you read what Darwin says himself, you wil come to the
same conclusion as I did, that the thing came to him almost as a finished idea.

122. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Al of them come just in that way: intuitional y.

The Chairman: I cannot quote it, I wish I could, but I wil turn it up.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is somewhere a book that says that al the greatest
discoveries that have ever been made in the world came just like flashes of
lightning, everything even the law of gravitation. How did Newton discover that?

Through the apple.

Mr. Kingsland: If you have no knowledge of universals, how are you to
proceed from universals to particulars? What knowledge of universals has this
century, we wil say? They have got no knowledge of the law of God, that is the
highest ideal of the universe.

Mme. Blavatsky: A very high one, yes.

Mr. B. Keightley: But they have not carried out the canon which was laid down,
that their ideas should be tried by strict logic.

Mr. Kingsland: Excuse me, Herbert Spencer does not.

Mme. Blavatsky: Herbert Spencer cal s it the First Cause, and he cal s it the

Absolute and I wil show it {to} you in his First Principles.11He cal s the

Absolute “the First Cause” in three lines. Wel , the First Cause cannot be the

Absolute because the First Cause is the effect.

Mr. Kingsland: That only proves to me that a man who may be considered to
be one who has the highest intel ect has no knowledge of universals.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because he has been made to study on your methods.

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Mr. Kingsland: How can the poor fel ow help that?

11 [ First Principles (1862) was the first volume of what would become a nine-volume work under the title of A

System of Synthetic Philosophy covering biology, sociology, ethics and politics.]

123. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You take Solomon Ben Judah,12 the great philosopher, who
was a Jew, one of the greatest men living, he whose works have been refused
by the French Academy—I don’t know what you cal it, the French University.

They proclaim them heretical, because they say he was an Aristotelian, and

Aristotle was not then in odor of sanctity. This Aristotelian has more spirituality
in him than any of the great men of science that I ever read about. Because he
explains Kabbalah just in the way that The Secret Doctrine would explain it. In
the most spiritual way he explains it, and yet he is cal ed an Aristotelian, and
why? Because he had an intuition. He is one of the greatest of the poets.

Mr. Kingsland: But you are not real y answering my objection. There maybe a
man here and there who has this intuition, but the ordinary mortals who treat of
our political economy, and our methods of improving our dwel ings and al the
rest of it, how can they obtain the knowledge of these particulars, when they
have practical y no idea of universals?

The Chairman: It seems to me that the real objection to the lines adopted by
modern science lies in the fact that in every case when they make a so-cal ed
discovery, they jump at it. They go a long way ahead and argue downwards,
and they are very often completely wrong. What I mean is this, most of their
detail work comes after the idea of their main scheme has occurred to them,
and they then make the details taking the logical test and commencing with
universals and then seeing if it agrees with the particulars, they work
backwards and they make the particulars agree with the false conception, and
they won’t permit anybody to start a little higher up and argue down to them,
and according to their particulars. That is real y why occultism and science are
at loggerheads.

Mme. Blavatsky: The thing that they say is: “Oh! look at science;

12 [Eleventh century A.D. Jewish philosopher and poet, known also as Solomon ibn Gabirol. His works being
interdicted by the University of Paris is mentioned in Isaac Myer’s Qabbalah, 1888, p. 9.]

124. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

everything they have said is perfectly correct. Everything is brought there and
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the cases are shown and so on and they are dovetailed together”—I say
because they are syl ogisms. They begin if you please, by inventing a
proposition; they wil come to the conclusion that it is dovetailed, but it is not.

That the first proposition is the correct one. It may be anything. I may come
and say: “a horse has the head of a serpent, therefore al horses are with
serpent’s heads,” and it would be a scientific proposition because I put it
myself, which is perfectly incorrect.

The Chairman: You see, they, most of them, start with a universal, only it
happens to be a negative.

Dr. Williams: I think Mr. Kingsland’s point is this, that while it is a perfectly true
principle, yet before the mind is open to receive universals, it must have facts
as a basis for the universals, otherwise it could not exist.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , mind being a microcosm, I suppose he would have
some means of getting to the microcosm.

Dr. Williams: It seems to me that the two go always hand in hand.

Mme. Blavatsky: I touch this thing. Why do I touch it? Because I have a hand.

What makes the hand to move? Wil power, whatever you like. From where
does it come? Go and fol ow it out in that way, and if you fol ow from these
particulars to your own universals, then after a few times you wil be perfectly
able to begin and take universals, and then having come to something, make
your hand the head of it.

Dr. Williams: That is what I say; you first have to trace your hand and from that
you may predict many things; but you must have your facts first. If you begin
with a child , you do not begin teaching him as the very first thing some
universal fact, because you cannot.

Mr. Kingsland: You see, H.P.B. blames the scientists of today. I instance

Herbert Spencer as a man who has got as near the Absolute as any of our
modern men, and she is down on him; if a man like he

125. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

is so far wrong, what are al the rest of us to do?

Mme. Blavatsky: Shal I tel you, and give you good advice? Try to be a little
less conceited, you men of science, that is the way to begin. Try not to think
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yourselves the only intel igences that have ever been developed in this
universe and that al the rest are fools, and that the ancients did not know
anything at al , and don’t go and consult what the ancients said, because they
study classics very wel . How many ideas have I traced in your modern
science which have never been acknowledged to their proper source and
which were stolen bodily from ancient science? I could write, if they only took
one of my articles, in one of your great reviews, I can assure you, and I would
put them to shame. I have traced inventions which I can trace as easily as you
like to the old men of science who existed thousands of years ago.

The Chairman: There is a great deal in Lucretius 13 Lucretius is ful of modern
science.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think the practical answer to your question is this: not to
deny with quite such dead certain as your modern men do.

Mr. Kingsland: I do not say they could not find universals if they tried to look
for them.

Mme. Blavatsky: Let them be agnostics, but don’t let them be bigots.

Mr. B. Keightley: You take a man like Huxley. The first thing he wil say is: “I
know that, that is not so.” You say to him anything—that, for instance, in every
material thing we see there is a psychic side; in another way, that the thing
exists on a different plane of consciousness. He wil say, “I know that is not so”

before you have got the words out of your mouth, almost.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a man of science—and he is a great man

13 [Probably Titus Lucretius, the first century B.C. Roman Poet known for Dererum natura (On the Nature of
things.)]

126. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

of science in America—who pitches into me in the American. 14 He says it is
al chaos, and he goes on and he is obliged to say: “Yes, it is true, but why
does she show such animus to the men of science, if she quotes them?” But I
quote them just to break their heads with the weapons furnished by the older
men of science. He sends to us the most stupid things. He sends his journal in
which he speaks about it. Some men of science who write in the journal
wanted, it may be, that I should be exposed, but they only showed their own
ignorance.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Does not the difference between the men of science who
talk about the particulars and you who talk about universals consist in this: that
the man of science, as a general rule, depends purely upon his reason and his
observation to deal with the facts of his physical consciousness? The practice
of working from universals depends upon the intuition, which proceeds from a
higher plane of consciousness, but as the man of science declines to admit
anything but that which he can touch with his physical senses, he wil insist on
negativing anything else.

Mme. Blavatsky: He steps off the platform of agnosticism, which is perfectly
his right, but he has no right to come and dogmatize on his own plane of
matter. If he said: “It is not the province of physical science to go beyond
physicals; it may be, or it may not be on the physical; to every appearance it is
so and so,” then we should say: “Very wel ; we bow to you; you are a very
great man; you find every faculty in the hind leg of a frog, and al sorts of
things”; but why does he say: “There is nothing beyond that” and everyone
who comes and says beyond that there is knowledge he wil come and pitch
into? Mind you, I had a very great respect for science when I was in my green
age, between twenty and thirty. The men of science were then my gods.

Dr. Williams: I do not think the great representative men of science take that
ground. They did in the past, and there are some who occupy a lower sphere
who do today. Spencer, for instance, whenever

14 [ Scientific American ?]

127. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

he is brought face to face with {a} thing which may be true or not true simply
says, “it may be.”

Mme. Blavatsky: But you take the best of them. He certainly is one of the
greatest intel ects; I do not mean to say at al because he says something
flapdoodle somewhere that he is not a great man of science—he is. But when
you say that Huxley does this thing or Tyndal ,15 or when you say any fel ow of
the Royal Society, I say no, I have seen a good many of them, and with the
exception of Crookes and of Wal ace16 I never found one who would not cal
the other a madman. Do you suppose the others do not cal Crookes a
madman? They say: “ He is cracked on one point.”. So they say about

Wal ace. Have they the right to say that of such a man of science, that he is
cracked because he believes in things beyond matter? They have no such
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right at al .

Dr. Williams: I do not know what the smal er men say because I never care to
read what they write.

Mme. Blavatsky: Look at Huxley; look at the tone of regret he adopts. Didn’t
they say that Zöl ner17 died a madman? Look at the French scientists, they al
say he did. Al the Germans say the same: “Softening of the brain.” “He died in
consequence of the fact that he happened to believe in the phenomenal form.”

Mr. Kingsland: But that is something like blaming a schoolboy for not applying
the calculus.

The Chairman: That is equivalent to saying that the scientist is deficient in
principles.

Mr. B. Keightley: They are only that because they choose to make themselves
so, and they choose deliberately to be dogmatic.

15 [John Tyndall, Irish physicist and popular writer and lecturer on science, 1820-1893.]

16 [Alfred Russel Wallace, English naturalist, 1823-1913, who like William Crookes had advocated for a scientific
investigation of spiritualism.]

17 [Johann Zöllner, German scientist, 1834-1882, who took an interest in trying to validate mediumistic
phenomena and whose career suffered accordingly.]

128. 4. Meeting January 31, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: The best of them do not deal in dogmatic negatives.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not know. Look at Huxley and such men. They deal
greatly in dogmatic negatives. I do not cal Tyndal a very great man of
science. He is a popularizer and a compiler. I cal Huxley a great man of
science, and there is not one more bitter than Huxley, not one.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

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5.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting held at Blavatsky Lodge
on February 7, 1889.

Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 3, stanza 2 “ The hour had not yet struck; the ray had
not yet flashed into the germ; the Mâtri-Padma had not yet swol en.” “ The ray
of the “ Ever-Darkness becomes as it is emitted, a ray of effulgent life or light,
and flashes into the ‘Germ’—the point in the Mundane Egg, represented by
matter in its abstract sense.” {Question} 1. Is the point in the Mundane Egg the
same as the point in the circle—the unmanifested Logos?

Mme. Blavatsky: Never; the point in the circle is that which we cal the
unmanifested Logos. The manifested Logos is a triangle, and I have said it
many times. Does not Pythagoras speak of the never manifested Monad which
lives in solitude and darkness, which, when the hour strikes, radiates from itself
number 1? This number 1, descending, produces number 2, and number 2,
number 3, the 3 forming a triangle, the first ful geometrical figure in the world
of forms. It is this triangle which is the point in the Mundane Egg, and which,
after gestating, starts from the egg and forms a triangle and not the point in the
circle, for the point in the circle is the unmanifested Logos.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is what I thought.

Mme. Blavatsky: Brahmâ-Vâch-Virâj in the Hindu philosophy, and it is Keter,

Chokhmah and Binah in the Sephirotal tree. The one Logos is the potential, the
unrevealed cause; the other the actus, or in other words, the Monad evolving,
from its invisible self, the active effect which in its term becomes a cause on a
lower plane. Now discuss the matter. Who has any objections? Col ect your

130. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

combativeness and go, gentlemen. Has no one any objections to offer? Do
ask The President.

The President: Wel , in one sense, the second question bears upon it
because it il ustrates, or at least it wil settle the question, as to the exact plane
of differentiation with which the whole of this Śloka is dealing as I take it. Ask
the second question.

Mr. A. Keightley: 2. “What is the Ever-Darkness, in the sense used here?”

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Mme. Blavatsky: Ever-Darkness means the ever-unknowable mystery, behind
the veil even of the Logos.

Mr. A. Keightley: Parabrahman, in fact.

Mme. Blavatsky: Parabrahman; even the Logos can see only Mûlaprakriti. It
can not see that which is beyond the veil; that is the “Ever-Unknowable

Darkness.”

Mr. A. Keightley: What is the ray, then, in this connection?

Mme. Blavatsky: The plane of the circle whose face is blank, and whose point
in the circle is white; but white figuratively, because certainly it has no color.

The first possible conception in our minds of the invisible Logos. Ever-

Darkness is eternal and the ray is periodical y flashed out of its central point
through the germ. The ray is withdrawn back into the central point and the

Germ grows into the second Logos, the triangle within the Mundane Egg. If
you don’t understand stil , you just offer me any questions and I wil try to
answer them.

The President: The difficulty we were al in when we were reading this Śloka
the other day and considering that we were doubtful whether it real y referred
to the same epoch of manifestation as the earlier portion, as the first stanza—
for instance.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is the beauty of these stanzas. And I wil tel you
afterwards, later in the questions.

131. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

The President: I may say I think most of these questions are intended to bring
out this point, that is to say, whereabouts we are.

Mr. B. Keightley: Because the Mundane Egg seems to be real y the third
stage. At any rate, not earlier than the third.

Mme. Blavatsky: The first stage is when the point appears within the dark
circle, within that unknowable darkness.

The President: May I interrupt you for one moment—that point being the
unmanifested Logos?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. The second stage is when from the white point,
proceeds the ray which darts and produces the first point, which in the Zohar is
cal ed Keter or Sephirâ, then produces Chokhmah and Binah, the Logos. And
yet, from this manifested Logos wil go the seven rays, which in the Zohar are
cal ed the lower Sephirot, and which in our system are cal ed, wel , the

Primordial Seven, from which there wil proceed innumerable series of
hierarchies. They simplify the thing and take simply the four planes and the
worlds and so on. That is al . This does not explain anything.

Mr. Kingsland: What you say is that the triangle is what you here refer to as the

Germ in the Mundane Egg?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes.

Mr. B. Keightley: The Mundane Egg being used in a very much wider sense
than that of terrestrial—being the Universal Egg, so to speak.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is the Universal Egg, and the Solar Egg; they refer to
it, and of course you must qualify it and say what it is.

Mr. B. Keightley: Abstract form is the same, whatever scale you take it on.

The President: Being the eternal feminine, real y.

132. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: No, no. There is no eternal female principle, and there is no
eternal male principle. There is the potential of both in one only, a principle
which cannot be even cal ed spirit.

The President: Put it thus, then; abstract form being the first manifestation of
the female principle.

Mme. Blavatsky: The first manifestation, not of the female principle, but of the
ray, that proceeds from the central point, which is perfectly sexless; this ray
produces first that which is the potentiality united of both sexes, but is not yet
either male or female sex. That differentiation wil come later when it fal s into
matter, when the triangle becomes a square. The first tetraktys.

The President: Then the Mundane Egg is as sexless as the ray?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is undifferentiated primordial matter.

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The President: One is in the habit of associating matter with anything to which
the name of female is applied.

Mme. Blavatsky: Matter certainly is female, because it is receptive of the ray
of the sun which fecundates it, and this matter produces everything that is on
its face; but that is quite a different thing. This is on the lowest plane.

The President: This is substance, rather than material.

Mr. B. Keightley: And substance is of no sex.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you know what is matter? The synonym of matter is
mother, and mother comes from matter, they are interchangeable.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what I want to understand is this; you have the ray,
which ultimately starts the manifested Logos, or the Germ within the Mundane

Egg. Does the Mundane Egg exist, then, in any way, excepting potentiality,
before this first triangular—if you may cal it so—Germ is started by this ray?

133. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: What is the egg, the Mundane Egg, or Universal Egg, cal it
whatever you like, whether on the principle of universality, or on the principle of
a solar system? The egg means the ever-eternal, existing, undifferentiated
matter, which is not strictly matter as we ordinarily use the term, but which, as
we say, is the atoms. The atoms are indestructible; and matter is destructible
in form, but the atoms are absolutely indestructible.

Mr. Gardner: Do you mean to say that the atoms are not yet crystal ized?

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not speak about chemical atoms. I speak about the
atoms of occultism, which certainly no chemist has ever seen. They are
mathematical points. If you read about the Monads of Leibniz,1 you wil see
what it is, this atom.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then may one say the Germ is the active point within the

Alayic condition of substance?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Germ is just a figurative way of speaking. The Germ is
everywhere just as one speaks of the circle, whose center and circumference,
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is everywhere and nowhere; because, given the proposition that the circle is
endless, surely it is infinite and you cannot place the circumference anywhere,
or put any center to that which is limitless. It is simply a way of talking, just to
bring to your conception something more clearly than you could otherwise
imagine it. Just the same with the Germ. They cal it the Germ, and the Germ is
al the Germs, that is to say, the whole of Nature: the whole creative power that
wil emanate, that they cal Brahmâ or any name you like. For every plane it has
got another name.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then you practical y answer the third question. “What stage
of manifestation is symbolized by the Mundane Egg?”

Mme. Blavatsky: I say the Mundane Egg is on the plane of

1 [Gottfried Leibniz, German philosopher and polymath, 1646-1716. His 1714 work, Monadologie, outlined his
thesis of the monad as ultimate unit that is a free, independent agent.]

134. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

differentiation the first stage if you like, but from the plane of non-differentiation
it is the third, as I just told you. The egg represents the just differentiated
cosmic matter in which the vital creative germ receives its first spiritual
impulse, and potential y becomes potency. I think that is answered.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is a very good phrase, “potential y becomes potency”; it
just expresses the difference between the first and the second stanzas.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is my difficulty, you see, I don’t know English wel
enough to come and explain it to you.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 4. “Is the Mâtri-Padma here spoken of the eternal
or the periodical Egg?”

Mme. Blavatsky: The eternal, of course, it wil become periodical only when
the ray from Logos number one wil have flashed from the latent Germ in the

Mâtri-Padma, which, you understand, is the Egg, the womb of the universe, as
it is cal ed. You would not cal eternal the physical germ in the female, but
rather the latent spirit of the Germ concealed within the male cel in Nature. In
al the creations of plants or animals, it is just the same. Take it on analogy or
on the method of correspondence, it is just the same.

Mr. B. Keightley: Śloka 4. “But as the hour strikes and it becomes receptive of
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the Fohatic impress of Divine Thought ( the Logos or the male aspect of the

Anima-Mundi Âlaya )—its heart opens.” Question 5: Does not “Fohatic impress
of Divine thought” apply to a later stage of differentiation, strictly speaking?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now look here, this involves a very difficult answer. I wish
you would give al your attention to it. Understand once for al , for if you
understand clearly this thing, it wil prevent your putting many, many questions
which are perfectly useless, and you wil understand them better also. You
see, I have explained to you as wel as I can, now try and correct me, if you
please, if I don’t

135. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

explain clearly. They want to say that Fohat is a later manifestation. Very wel . I
answer that Fohat is, as a ful -blown force or entity, a later development.

Fohatic as an adjective may be used in any sense, Fohat as a noun springs
from a Fohatic attribute. Do you understand this now? No electricity wil be
developed or generated from something where there is no electric power. But
before electricity, or a certain kind of electricity, is developed, you can speak
about the electric impulse and electric impress, cannot you? I say Fohatic,
because Fohatic has got a special meaning in the esoteric teaching; and I wil
first give you the meaning here. It comes afterwards, you know. The Divine

Principle is eternal and gods are periodical.

Mr. B. Keightley: In other words, the Fohatic principle—to translate it into a
different term the Fohatic principle is eternal, but Fohat an entity or a god.

Mme. Blavatsky: Or, as a synthesis of this force on our plane of
differentiation, it is periodical and is limited, and it comes later.

The President: The Fohatic principle produces Fohat in stead of, arising from
it.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the Śakti or force of the Divine. Fohat and Brahmâ are al
one thing. There are various aspects of the Divine Mind.

Mr. B. Keightley: Have you written nothing more about that there?

Mme. Blavatsky: Not here. It is too easy a thing to write anything about. It
comes in the next question.

Mr. A. Keightley: “In the commentary on stanza 2, is it not your aim to convey
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some idea of the subject by speaking of the correspondences on a much later
stage of evolution? For instance, is not ‘Fohat’ in the sense used here the
synthesis of the primordial seven, and therefore appearing at a much later
stage than that of the first manifestation of the Âlaya.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is so, most assuredly; but then you were told

136. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

more than once that the commentaries busy themselves but with the evolution
of our solar system in this book. The beauty and the wisdom of the stanzas are
in this, that they may be interpreted on seven different planes, the last
reflecting in its grossly differentiated aspect, and copying on the universal law
of correspondences, or analogy, al that it sees before in the beginning. Every
plane is a reflection and a copy of another plane. As it took place in the definite
undifferentiated plane, so it took place on the second, on the third, on the
fourth, and so on. Now these stanzas represent al of them, and the student
who understands wel the gradual development, so to speak, and the
progressive order of things, wil understand perfectly to which it applies. If we
talk about the higher divine world, we shal talk just in the same way, because in

The Secret Doctrine I give to the world and to your great critics, I certainly give
it as applied to the solar system, and even this they do not understand. They
cal it idle talk, so why shal I go and bother my brains to go into something
more on the higher plane? This is not for the profane, let us make a difference,
we must draw a line of demarcation somewhere.

Mr. Forsyth: Then are we to understand, Madame, that the whole of the writing
in The Secret Doctrine has reference only to the solar system, as we
understand the solar system?

Mme. Blavatsky: It has reference to that chiefly. The second volume is simply
the development of life on our earth, not even in the solar system, for the thing
is so tremendous that it would require 100 volumes to write al this. Sometimes

I make remarks about larger questions, but as a whole the exposition begins
and ends on this earth and with the development of life from the first day of
manvantara. You see how they are confused even on this terrestrial plane; so
what would it be if I mixed up the evolution of life on Neptune, or beyond the
solar system? Why, they would not understand a word. The esoteric doctrine
teaches al that, but then it is not in months you can learn. You have to study for

20 or 30 years, and according to your capacity it wil be given to you, because
a man may be spirit-blind just as he is color-blind on this plane, and I

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137. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

know unfortunately too many of those who are perfectly spirit-blind.

The President: But the stanzas up to the point we have reached them do deal
with the awakening from the Pralaya.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. But after that, where I come and say that so
many stanzas are left out, then it begins with the solar system.

The President: That is real y the point I wanted to get at, whether the second
stanza was stil entirely dealing with that awakening from the Maha Pralaya. We
have not come to the point you mention yet, have we?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly not, but as it deals with this awakening on al the
planes, you can apply it to any plane, because one covers the other.

The President: Because we are feebly and vaguely attempting to apply it to
the highest plane of which we have the faintest idea.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is also this, that the stanzas deal with the abstract, and
the commentaries are applied more particularly to the solar system.

Mme. Blavatsky: But the stanzas contain seven meanings, and every one of
them may be applied to the highest, and the second, the third, and so on to the
seventh plane of matter. But certainly I speak more about the four lower
planes. As you wil see there, when we come to the part about the moon and
the evolution of the stars and so on, there I speak more about the solar
system. I limit myself to that in the commentaries. Not in the stanzas, because

I have rendered them just as they are.

Mr. Kingsland: I think we are making a little mistake in this way. Instead of
fol owing the process entirely out on the first plane and then taking it on to the
lowest plane, we are supposing it takes place on the higher plane, and we
immediately jump down on the lower, instead of fol owing the whole process
on one plane.

138. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Perfectly so; but it did not begin on a Thursday and it won’t
end on a Thursday. The creation begins on Monday, didn’t it—because

Sunday is the day of rest?

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Mr. B. Keightley: Because he took his day off on Sunday.

Mme. Blavatsky: Sabbath breaking, I cal it.

The President: No, Sabbath is Saturday.

Mme. Blavatsky: You cal it Sabbath, it is no fault of mine. Wel , then, we wil
go on. Moreover, you have to learn the etymology of the word Fohat. There is
where it becomes difficult to understand. It is a Turanian compound word.

“Pho” is the word. “Pho” was once and is derived from the Sanskrit “bhu,”

meaning existence, or rather the essence of existence. Now, “Swayambhû” is

Brahmâ and man at the same time. “Swayambhû” means self-existence and
self-existing; it means also Manvantara. It means many, many things according
to the sense in which you take it, and one must know exactly whether the
accent is on the “m” or on the “u”, or where it is, for therein lies the difference.

Take “bhu.” It means earth our earth. Take “Swayambhû.” It means divine
breath, self-existence, that which is everlasting, the eternal breath. To this day
in China, Buddha is cal ed “Pho.”

A Lady: Is not the first meaning breath?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not. It is self-essence. It is very difficult for me to
translate it to you. Look at the Sanskrit dictionaries. They wil give you 100
etymologies, and they won’t know what it is. It is existence, it is self-evolution, it
is earth, it is spirit, everything you like. It depends on the accent, and how it is
placed. That is a very difficult thing. In this sense certainly it comes from bhu
and sva. Now, they don’t pronounce the “b” general y, it is “Pho”, which is bhu
or Budha, which means wisdom. Fohat comes from Mahat, and it is the
reflection of the Universal Mind—the synthesis of al the seven and the
intel igences of al the seven creative builders or kosmocratores. Hence the
word, you understand—for life

139. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

and electricity are one in our philosophy. I told you, I think, Mr. Kingsland, that
they say life is electricity, and the one life is simply the essence and the root of
al the electric phenomena that you have in this world on this manifested plane.

The President: If “Sat” the potentiality of being, “Pho” is the potency of being

—the very next thing.

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Mme. Blavatsky: That is very good. Just repeat it.

The President: If “Sat” the potentiality of being, “Pho” is the potency of being
itself, the next to “Sat.”

Mme. Blavatsky: That is so, and it is a very good definition indeed.

Mr. A. Keightley: Can you explain more ful y the process by which Horus or
any other god is born through and not from an immaculate source? Can you
render in clearer language the distinction between “through” and “from” in this
sense? The only explanation is rendered in the unintel igible mathematics of
the Source of Measures.2

Mme. Blavatsky: If mathematics is unintel igible, what can my poor,
unfortunate English teach you better? Because mathematics alone can
express that which it is impossible to express in words, in such poor words as
mine are.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think I should prefer your words to the mathematics.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is a compliment, of course.

Mr. B. Keightley: I quite agree with it.

Mme. Blavatsky: The author of the Source of Measures is a very great

Kabbalist. I have got a very great regard for him, and he is one of my pupils,
and he knows a thousand times more than I do. In mathematics I am the
biggest fool that ever was created. Two and two wil seem to me five. I labored
under the impression that five

2 [ The Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery in the Source of Measures, Cincinnati, 1875, by James Ralston

Skinner, 1830-1893.]

140. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

times seven was 28.

Mr. Kingsland: Then do not be surprised if we cannot make anything of it.

Mme. Blavatsky: I get mixed up sometimes on this plane, but you have not
got always to pul yourselves down by the tail as I have. I have got my own
region. Now listen to this, and I wil try to give it as wel as I can. On the first
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plane of differentiation there is no sex but both sexes exist potential y in the
primordial matter, as I have before explained to you. Now that mother which I
just told you was the same as matter is not fecundated by any act in space and
time, but fertility or protectiveness {productiveness} is inherent in it. Therefore
that which emanates or is born out of that inherent virtue is not born from but
through it. That is to say, that virtue is the sole cause that the something
manifests through it as a vehicle, whereas on the physical plane the mother is
not the active cause but the passive effect rather and the agent of an
independent cause. Now listen: even in speaking of the mother of their God,

Christians wil show her first fecundated by the Holy Ghost and say Christ is
born from her, whereas Christ is not born “from” but “through” her. Lightning
may manifest itself through a board, pass through it, but the chip of wood from
the hole made by the thunderbolt proceeds from the wood plank. Do you see
the difference? “From” implies and necessitates a limited and conditioned
object from which it can start, from which something starts, this act having to
take place in space and time. “Through” applies to eternity as much as any
thing else, as much as to something limited. The Great Breath, for instance
thril s through space, which is endless, and is “in” not “from” eternity. Do you
understand the difference?

Mr. Kingsland: Would not a good il ustration be the case of a ray of light
passing through a crystal and becoming seven colors? You say it is an
immaculate medium?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is an immaculate medium. It is not that this medium is
fecundated, it is not that, it passes through, it is the

141. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

vehicle, therefore the Mâtri-Padma; the first scene is cal ed born from an
immaculate matter {mother}, which is the root of the immaculate conception in
the Christian religion, because it is taken from that the immaculate matter. He
is not born from her but through her, and Christians if they understand wel
their own dogmas would not say he is born from the Virgin Mary, but through
her, if they wish to make an incarnation of Jesus; there is the great difference.

But for instance, the Roman Catholics have materialized the idea in such a way
that they positively made a goddess of her, and drag her at the same time in
the mud; and made of her a simple woman, instead of explaining. They don’t
preserve the orginal idea. They do not say, as they should, that she was such a
virtuous woman that she was chosen to be the mother of that in which God
incarnated. But by saying she is a goddess, they imply a false idea, and that
they do consider her as a goddess is shown by their adoration. And as a
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goddess, what merit has she got? No merit at al . She need be neither
virtuous, good, bad, nor indifferent. It is supposed that she gives birth to gods.

I say the religions have materialized this divine abstract conception in the most
terribly materialistic way. Speaking of spirituality, there is nothing more
materialistic and coarse in this world than the religions, Christian, Brahmanical,
anything—except the Buddhist, which is not a religion but a philosophy. They
have al dragged down divinity to the lowest depths of degradation. Instead of
trying and rising to a divinity, they try to drag down the Logos, just as in

America I have seen the negroes in Methodist Churches get into such a state
of excitement that they wil jump up and do al kinds of things, and then with
their umbrel as they wil try to catch Jesus and say, Come here, Jesus! Come
here, Jesus! It is positive blasphemy. I have seen it once, and it disgusted me.

Mr. Forsyth: And they fal down on the floor.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh! You have seen it too. I am very glad you can corroborate
my statement.

Mr. Forsyth: Yes, they fal down and foam at the mouth.

142. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Now comes a question, gentlemen, a strange question, a
mathematical one.

Mr. A. Keightley: “ How does the triangle become the square; and how does
the square become the six-faced cube?”

Mme. Blavatsky: In occult Pythagorean geometry, the tetrad is said to
combine within itself al the materials of which kosmos was produced; that is
the Pythagorean rule. The point or 1 extends to a line that make 2, the line to a
superior triangle is converted into a solid or 4 or the tetrad, by the point being
placed over it.

Mr. B. Keightley: A pyramid, it is a four-pointed figure.

Mr. Kingsland: It is a four-sided figure.

The President: It is a four-sided figure.

Mr.—: Is it pyramidical?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but it must have something on it. We wil see how it is
transformed into the pentagon and the pentagon into the six.

Mr. A. Keightley: But a pyramid is not a square.

Mme. Blavatsky: The base of it is.

The President: No, it is a triangle turned into a pyramid.

Mme. Blavatsky: Excuse me, there are four faces. My dear sir, I don’t speak to
you about the figures. They asked me about the square. They do not speak
about the cube here, they speak about the cube afterwards.

Mr. Kingsland: Isn’t it built on a square, and then it becomes the four things.

Mr. Gardner: The four sides coming up to the apex.

143. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

The President: You may have a three-faced pyramid.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t speak here of that, it wil come later. You can take

Pythagoras by the beard if you can get him.

Mr. Kingsland: Do you mean a triangle becomes a tetraktys?

Mme. Blavatsky: I say it becomes the tetraktys because matter is square
always. It is always a plane square, and once that the triangle fal s into it, you
have the seven. Al ow me a pencil and I wil draw it for you.

Mr. B. Keightley: We shal see as we go on. You get a plane square, then the
moment you add another point, a you get your pyramid or square-based
pyramid.

Mr. Kingsland: We want to know how you get your square, first.

Mr.—: How do you get from the triangle to the square?

Mme. Blavatsky: I can’t show it to you, but in mathematics it exists. It is not on
this plane of matter that you can square the circle. We know what it means to
square the circle, but the men who spent years trying to square the circle are
shut up in lunatic asylums. On this plane you cannot think of squaring the circle,
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but we can. It is quite a different thing.

The President: Eliphas Lévi 3 takes it in this way: he takes the first eternal as
representing the triangle, and the synthesis of the three forming a fourth point;
but I don’t see myself how that brings one any nearer to matter. I think he puts
it that way in his works. Does he not?

Mr. B. Keightley: The point becomes the line two, the line become a plane
superficies three, then you have the triangle or the first plane figure.

Mme. Blavatsky: And the supercies or triangle is converted into a solid of
four, or the tetrad, by the point being placed over it.

3 [Pen name of Alphonse Louis Constant, French occult writer, 1810-1875.]

144. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Then that is a triangular pyramid.

Mme. Blavatsky: But then it becomes again another thing to make the cube
out of the square. It wil become a triangular pyramid, but it wil come on the
base of the square.

The President: At the same time, what one was wanting to get at was that the
first four stages ought to have produced, and according to that process did
produce four dimensions—if you take the point, line, superficies, and solid,
you have 1, 2, 3, and 4. But of course, if you take the ordinary plane square,
you are simply altering a mathematical figure, stil of the same dimensions.

Mme. Blavatsky: You can’t understand the thing unless you have this
conception very clearly in your mind: that the first real figure that you can
conceive of and that can be produced in this world of ours is a triangle. The
point is no figure at al nor the 2 for which the Pythagoreans had the greatest
contempt, because it cannot form any figure. You can do nothing with them,
you can not make of two lines a figure. The first one then is the triangle, and
this is taken as a symbol of the first manifested Logos; the first in this world of
manifestation. I think this is as plain as can be.

The President: And further, the first possible solid is the four-sided figure, with
four angles, four sides each plain side contained by three lines. It is not the
square, it is the pyramid; it is the three-sided pyramid.

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Mme. Blavatsky: [ ] which is the point itself [ ] produces, or is one. It goes
to the left or the right, it produces Chokhmah, the wisdom. He makes this
plane, which is a horizontal plane of matter, and produces intel igence, Binah,
or the Mahat, and then returns back into the quaternary; I don’t know these
names. It is stil the tetraktys, and this is cal ed the Tetragrammaton in the

Kabbalah. It is cal ed that, because it is the first thing. The triangle fal ing
matter, or standing on matter, makes the four, that is to say, spirit, matter, male
and female. That is the real significance of it. This number contains both the

145. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

productive and the produced numbers; this is why it is sacred. Now, it is the
spirit, wil , and intel ect which form {the} triangle animating the four lower
principles, and then come the seven principles which we speak of in

Theosophy. They are the same that Pythagoras spoke about, the seven
properties in man, and even the Rosicrucians took it. The square becomes the
cube when each point of the triangle becomes dual, male and female. The

Pythagoreans said once 1 twice 2, and there ariseth a tetrad having on its top
the highest unity, which becomes the pyramid whose base is a plane tetrad;
divine light resting on it makes the abstract cube. Now take six solid or
concrete squares, they make a cube, don’t they? And the cube unfolded gives
you the cross or the vertical four, barred by the horizontal three. Four here and
three wil make seven, because you count again the central square, as you
know (I have given it in The Secret Doctrine), making our seven principles or
the Pythagorean seven properties in man. And this is the cross, the symbol of

Christianity, which is the vertical male and the horizontal female. It is spirit and
matter, and at the same time it is the most phal ic symbol there is.

Mr. B. Keightley: Isn’t that rather excluded, because the vertical is four, while
the horizontal is three?

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear sir, that which is above is itself below, but the below
is seen as in a looking glass reversed. I told you it is four and divine; on the
divine plane it becomes four, and material on the plane of matter, for matter is
four also. That which is three and divine here is, for instance, the three higher
principles in man becoming the nothing yet. It is nothing yet, it is simply the
thing which wil become something. You must always take this, that it wil be
reversed and wil be like the reflection in the looking glass, for your right arm
wil appear to your left.

Mr. B. Keightley: Therefore you get your three and your four interchanged.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Just so.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 9: “What is meant by Astral Light in

146. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

the middle paragraph of page 60?”

Mme. Blavatsky: It means an infernal misprint of the printer, who just put “has”

instead of “lies,” and also carelessness of the bright but not quick-eyed
editors. They just ask in the most innocent way what it means. It means an
infernal mistake of the printer and an oversight on your part for which I ought to
have skinned you if I had seen it.

Mr. B. Keightley: You saw the proofs too; you are in the same boat.

Mme. Blavatsky: Read it; see if it has any sense.

Mr. A. Keightley: (reads the passage: Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. {60}.)

Mr. B. Keightley: That has means lies that is what it is.

Mr. A. Keightley: But “has” has distinctly a meaning.

Mme. Blavatsky: It has not, because Astral Light expands. What is “has,”

then, if you please?

The President: You can say that a thing has something between it and another
thing.

Mr. Forsyth: What do you wish to say then, madam?

Mme. Blavatsky: I would say it expands. It is a misprint, I can assure you.

Look at my manuscript.

Mr. Forsyth: I would like you to think of a word and let us know decidedly what
word it is.

Mme. Blavatsky: If they say it is correct, they are English and I am not.

The President: “ Is spread.” It has that meaning to me.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Wil you kindly read this, Mr. Forsyth, because I take it for a
misprint, and I know I would never put this sentence.

Mr. B. Keightley: You would often say this room has a door between it and the
next.

147. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: But there is nothing there relative to “has.”

Mr. B. Keightley: The tetragrammaton.

Mr. Forsyth: “Has” means possession.

Mme. Blavatsky: What is meant by Astral Light is explained in questions 10
and 11. Why are you so very impatient, al of you?

Mr. Kingsland: I don’t think we misunderstood the meaning of that.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh you are very, very pundit-like, al of you.

The President: I don’t understand what it means, but I understand what you
mean to convey.

Mme. Blavatsky: What can be meant by Astral Light? The Astral Light is the
great deceiver.

Mr. B. Keightley: We seem to have gone suddenly from the stage of the first
manifested Logos, and landed ourselves on the other side of the plane of

Astral Light and Tetragrammaton.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, what do you mean? Al ow me. “ Thus is repeated on
earth the mystery enacted, according to the seers, on the divine plane.”

(continues reading from passage in The Secret Doctrine. ) That is to say the
second Logos becomes a Tetragrammaton, the triangle and the four. I think it
is as plain as can be. “It is now in the ‘Lap of Mâyâ” and between its self, and
the Reality Has the Astral Light,” etc. Now, why did you come and pitch into me
in my old age and dishonor me? I believe this thing is the most clear of al the
blessed paragraphs that are here in the book. Is it, or not? I put it to the justice
of those here. You see how I am il -treated.

Mr. Forsyth: It is a shame, madam. I think your interpretation, “lies” in place of
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“has,” has a somewhat different meaning to the general reader. It certainly to
me has a slightly different meaning.

Mme. Blavatsky: Maybe it is more English, but I would not put it.

148. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

Mr. Forsyth: If you put it in classic English, “has” is strictly a matter of
possession.

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose they understand it just as it is. What is it Mr.

Kingsland just proceeded to scold me for?

Mr. Kingsland: I do not think it has been perfectly made clear yet how the
three becomes the four.

The President: Yes, I think it has. I think the explanation of that is that the

“four” real y and truly means what we cal the third dimension of space, and
consequently is Mâyâ—Tetragrammaton, in one sense. You mean a different
sort of four, and if it can do that, obviously there is Mâyâ and the highest
triangle. It answers its self, that use of the pyramid to explain the four.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so.

Mr. Kingsland: Is the Astral Light used there in the sense of Mâyâ.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. When you come there to a certain passage
where I speak of the seven principles and the moon and al that, I show there
are only four planes, that the three which are above do not belong to our
terrestrial chain or to the chain of any planet. You do not know anything about it.

You can’t speculate. I am not a high adept. I am a poor old woman very il -
treated here. We speak only of the four planes that we can conceive.

Mr. B. Keightley: We apologize to you, but the explanation of the whole thing
is the pyramid.

The President: It explains it al , because we get in that four what we could not
see at al , the third dimension of space, and consequently Mâyâ. One is apt to
look on the Tetragrammaton as above Mâyâ.

Mme. Blavatsky: Did you read my article in The Theosophist on the
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Tetragrammaton? 4 The Kabbalists say something else, but in my sight the

Tetragrammaton is not very high. I have been just answering Mr. Subba Row,

4 [Blavatsky, “Tetragrammaton,” The Theosophist, 1887, November pp. 104-116.]

149. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

He said: “How can it be seven principles?” I said: “I am not going to worship
the Tetragrammaton. I do not see why I should. I do not worship different
things. I know only of the Absolute and perfectly homogeneous. I can invent
for myself any kind of conceptions and flapdoodles.” The Tetraktys of the

Pythagoreans swore was quite a different kind of tobacoo, if you please, quite
another thing. You just take the third chapter of Genesis and the beginning of
the fourth and you find there the Tetragrammaton. You find Eve, and Adam

Jehovah who becomes Cain. That is what you find. There is the

Tetragrammaton. That is the first one which is symbolized. Then comes at the
end of the fourth chapter already the human conception, and there is Enoch
and there is Seth, and to him was born a son, Enos. And it is written in the real

Jewish scrol s, “From that time man began to be male and female,” and they
have translated it in the authorized—James’s version—“From that time man
began to cal upon the Lord.” I ask you if you can translate it like that, when in
the real Hebrew you see men began to be cal ed “Yod-he-vah.” That is always
so, you know. They say one thing in the Hebrew scriptures and they translate it
as another. They do not take into consideration the fact that the people had al
symbolical and figurative language. Then they wil never come and see the
difference: it is always “Lord God” or “God” or Jehovah” and al that, nothing
else, and even “Jehovah” says to Moses that he never was cal ed by the name

Jehovah. Centuries and thousands of years before that there is Abraham, who
builds an altar to “Jehovah.” Is it so, or not?

The President: In the revised version, they translate Elohim as “Lord” in the
first chapter.

Mme. Blavatsky: They have no right translating Elohim as God” in the
singular. It means “Lords” and “Gods.” Everything there is in the plural. They
can not go against the facts. They translate Abel and say it is the “son of Eve.”

I say fiddlesticks! I say it was a daughter of Eve for Abel is the female aspect
of Cain. When they separate, the first separation is shown in the first verse of
the fourth chapter,

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when Cain was born unto Eve, and she said there, it is translated: “I have
gotten a man from the Lord,” though it doesn’t mean this. It means what

Ralston Skinner showed perfectly; it means Jehovah, male and female kind.

Abel comes afterwards and is female, and then comes the separation of
sexes. And then they say he kil s Abel, and he doesn’t kil him at al —he
marries him. That is the whole of it. I am obliged to tel you these things, if you
are to learn. History is history and facts are facts.

Mr. A. Keightley: How does Astral Light come between Tetragrammaton and

“reality”?

Mme. Blavatsky: How do I know? It is there.

Mr. A. Keightley: What is “reality” in this context?

Mme. Blavatsky: That which has neither form, color, limitation, attributes,
nothing. A number that is nothing, it is al ; it is the Absolute. Now, this, if I have
not said it 120 times, I have not said it once.

The President: The whole of these questions have arisen out of a
misunderstanding of the word Tetragrammaton. Now I think we understand
what Tetragrammaton is.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is simply humanity, as far as I know it. Man.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it is rather different—I do not cal it so. It is Malkhut, when
the bridegroom comes to the bride on earth; then it becomes humanity.

Mr. B. Keightley: After the separation.

Mme. Blavatsky: The seven lower sephorot have to be passed through. The

Tetragrammaton becomes more and more material.

Mr. B. Keightley: And then after the separation he is completely

Tetragrammaton.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then he becomes M.P. or a Grand Master of

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al the Masons.

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Mr. Kingsland: In one sense the Astral Light is between the four lower planes
and the three higher ones.

Mme. Blavatsky: Between Tetraktys and Tetragrammaton there is an
immense difference. The difference is because Pythagoras swore by the

Tetraktys of the invisible Monad, which comes and having produced the first
point and the second and the third retires afterwards into the darkness and
everlasting silence, i.e., into that of which we cannot know anything. It is the
first Logos and this is the Tetraktys. There is the point. The point comes that is

1. He produces the first point, the second, third, and fourth. Or if you take it
from the point of matter, there is the horizontal plane of the triangle and there is
the second side, the third and the point. Eliphas Lévi says many things to
which certainly I wil never consent, and he knew very wel he was bamboozling
the public. He simply laughed at people.

The President: At the same time he gives that idea of the formation of the
four, inasmuch as he suggests it is the synthesis of it. You may perfectly wel
take the Monad which forms the 1, the 2, the 3 and retires into the darkness. At
any rate it is not a great extension of the idea, and therefore I say he is real y
describing the tetraktys.

Mme. Blavatsky: And I just showed it to you. You take the point in the circle
and you proceed and make a triangle from the lower point and take the plane
of matter and you proceed like that, it become the reverse. He takes it on a
lower plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is how the confusion has arisen in our minds. Eliphas

Lévi is speaking of the tetraktys as the Tetragrammaton.

Mme. Blavatsky: In the preliminary rules to the Esoteric Section5 I

5 [H.P.B. founded the Esoteric Section in London, October 1888, as an inner section of the Theosophical Society
for those who wanted to make a greater commitment to the movement.]

152. 5. Meeting February 7, 1889

said: “please, al those who want to study the eastern esoteric science, have
the kindness not to belong to any society except the Masonic societies, which
are perfectly harmless, to the Masonic societies or to the Odd Fel ows, but you
must not belong to any of the occult societies, that teach you after the western
methods.” Very wel ; this morning I received an insult. Mr. Westcott6 writes to
me and says: “I am a fel ow of the Theosophical Society and I’m going to be
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blackmailed and sent like a black sheep out of the fold because I have
belonged to a society.” I said: “My dear fel ow, I have got nothing to do with
you. You don’t belong to my Esoteric Section; you are welcome to belong to
anything you like.” Now you see the enormous confusion it produces in you,
simply because you have read Eliphas Lévi. What shal it be with others who
study in other societies, which wil go and say that the Tetragrammaton is the
highest divinity? You wil have such a confusion that you wil never learn
anything of the one or the other, and the consequence wil be that you wil be in
the most fearful state of confusion. I said you may belong to the Masonic
societies, but not to the occult societies. I am perfectly sure I have got enough
to do. Whether there are 300 members or 30, I don’t care. It wil be useless
trouble to teach and teach and find they won’t understand it.

The President: We have no more formal business tonight.

6 [William Wynn Westcott, 1848-1925, Freemason, hermeticist, and one of the founders in 1888 of the occult
group, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.]

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

6.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

Thursday, February 14, 1889

Mr. Kingsland ( in the absents of Mr. Harbottle ) took the chair.

Mr. A. Keightley: The first verse stanza 3 “ The last vibration of the seventh
eternity thril s through infinitude. The Mother swel s, expanding from within
without like the bud of the lotus.” (Commentary, the first three sentences.1)

Question 1. Does the commencement of time as distinguished from duration
correspond to the appearance of the second or manifested Logos?

Mme. Blavatsky: Is it the first question, this?

Mr. A. Keightley: Yes.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, it was not there. I answer the question which was
written there. It doesn’t seem to meet it. You say: “How is it that the mother
swel s,” and so on, if there is a difference between duration and time, or to
what time it corresponds, to what period? That is the question isn’t it?

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Mr. A. Keightley: (reads question again.)

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly it does not correspond, because you see that when
the Mother swel s, it is a good proof that the differentiation has set in; and
while, when Logos number one radiates through primordial or undifferentiated
matter in Laya, there is no action in chaos. Thus there is a great difference
between those. There is no time at this stage. There is neither space nor time
when the first thing begins, and it is al in space and time once

1 [ The Secret Doctrine 1:62 ]

154. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

it is differentiated. The last vibration of the seventh eternity is the first
announcing dawn and it is this last vibration which is the synonym of the
unmanifested Logos at the time of the primordial radiation. It is Father-Mother,
potential y; and when the second Logos emanates the third, has it become the

Virgin Mother. Then only. Do you understand the differentiation.

Mr. A. Keightley: I understand the difference between these two, but I do not
see how it applies to time and duration.

Mme. Blavatsky: When the first Logos appears, there is neither time nor
space. Duration is always; it is eternal; but there is neither time nor space; it is
outside time and space. This last or seventh vibration means just the same as
if it was said: the first Logos radiated. That is to say, the ray emanated from the

Absolute—or radiated rather, because nothing emanates from the Absolute.

Therefore, this term, the last vibration of the seventh eternity, applies to the
moment or period, whatever it is, when the light appears. Therefore it is
certainly not the time of the second Logos.

Mr. B. Keightley: The question as put there was whether time appears;
whether you can speak of time from the moment when the second Logos, the
unmanifested-manifested Logos, appears.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, because then time begins. It is what he told
me that made me answer, because I could not understand your question when

I read it first. I though you meant that the word “time” could not be applied to
the seventh vibration, or you mixed up the first and the second Logos. It was
written in a way that I could not understand. Certainly there is an immense
space of time between the two. One is just at the last moment when it ceases
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to be outside of time and space, and the second is when space and time
begin—periodical time.

Mr. B. Keightley: Space and time as periodical manifestations begin with the
second Logos.

155. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: When it is said the Mother swel s like the lotus or the bud, it
means that it has begun already—because it could not have happened before.

Before there is no action possible and no quality applied to anything. It is
impossible to see it here, at least in our philosophy. The divine ray Logos
number one, is the abstract parent, while Logos number two is at the same
time his mother’s son and her husband. Now, if you go and study the
cosmogonies and the theogonies of al the peoples you wil in the Indian and
the Chaldean, everywhere, that the second Logos, the creative Logos, is
spoken of as his mother’s husband and his mother’s son. Now, for instance,

Osiris is the son and husband of Isis, and Horus is the son and the husband
and the father too. It is al interchangeable. Just the same with Brahmâ;

Brahmâ is the father, the husband and the son of Vâch. You understand the
difference—when he differentiates.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is to say, that the first differentiation is everything,
practical y.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. It is only on the second plane that this

Mother becomes the Virgin Mother, because before that it has no
qualifications, non what ever no adjective.

Mr. Kingsland: In other words, you would say there is no differentiation with
the first Logos. The differentiation only begins with the second, and therefore
the first Logos is outside of time and space, and time and space begin with
the second.

Mr. A. Keightley: The second question refers to the words: “One is the
abstraction or noumenon of infinite time (Kâla).” Is this the “duration” referred
to in stanza 1: “Time...lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration,” or is it the
potentiality of time?

Mme. Blavatsky: I have been just explaining it. Duration has always potential
time in it, in itself. Duration is eternal time which had neither beginning nor end.

Time is something, and that is why they say in the eastern philosophy, “Time is
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the son of duration, its child.”

156. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Yes, exactly.

Mme. Blavatsky: Infinite time.

Mr. A. Keightley: At once with the second Logos you proceed out of duration
into time, and time is therefore periodical, while duration is eternal.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so, as I have just been saying. Periodical time is the
child of eternal duration. Wel , has anyone questions to ask? Let them ask, if
they have anything, because after that it won’t be understood again. Have you
anything to ask, Mr. Kingsland?

Mr. Kingsland: No, I think I have not.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: You mentioned radiation and emanation. One has never any
distinct idea. What is the difference—the difference between radiation and
emanation?

Mme. Blavatsky: Enormous. Radiation is the unconscious action, so to say, of
something from which something radiates, but emanation is—wel , it supposes
already something that emanates out itself consciously. Now radiation can
come from the Absolute; emanation cannot. Nothing can emanate from it.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: Radiation comes from the Absolute.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, the first radiation when the Logos radiates. The first ray,
that of which is said in the bible: “Let there be Light and Light was.” The first
divine Light, this is radiation. It radiates; but emanating means emanating one
from the other—how shal I say—from one being to another being, that is the
difference. I make this difference because I don’t know how to translate in any
other way. We have a word for it in the occult language, but it is impossible to
translate it into English.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: Then there is a closer connection between that which has
emanated and that from which it emanates than there is between that which
radiates and that from which the radiation takes place.

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Mme. Blavatsky: No. You see, the radiation—if it radiates, it is sure, sooner or
later, to be withdrawn again. Emanation emanates and may run into other
emanations and it is separated; that is a different thing. It may be, of course,
that at the end of the cycle of times it wil also be withdrawn into the one

Absolute. But meanwhile, during the cycle of changes and the cycle of change
of forms, this wil be an emanation. And it is in my mind the same as evolution

—of course, in another sense, but it is exactly the same thing. One thing
evolves from the other and one thing emanates from the other, with the change
of forms and substance and so on.

Mr. A. Keightley: Number 3. Page 63, line 5 {of The Secret Doctrine}. Is not

Astral Light used here in a different sense from that on page 60, line 22?

Please enlarge upon this idea of prototypes existing, before becoming
manifest upon the material plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, certainly. Wel , Astral Light is a very wide term. As I
said, I use this because to use another would be to make the book stil more
incomprehensible, and heaven knows that they are complaining quite enough
of its being very difficult already. I have tried to avoid al such words, and I
have put Astral Light in general. Now suppose I had said and given to you the
difference—that Astral Light is used here as a convenient term for one very
little understood, “the realm of Âkâsa or primordial light manifested in the
divine ideation.” Now, suppose I had to use this very long phrase. Very few
would understand it, I would have to explain what is divine ideation, I would
have to explain what is the Âkâsa; have to explain the difference between

Âkâsa and Ether and so on. Therefore I use it as a term that everyone
understands. Astral Light is everywhere. It may be from the highest plane to
the lowest plane, it is always Astral Light, at least according to the Kabbalists.

Al the Kabbalists cal it so, from the days of the alchemists and the

Rosicrucians. Astral Light must be accepted here as a generic term for
universal and divine ideation reflected in the waters of space or chaos, which
is the Astral Light proper. That is to say the Astral Light

158. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

is like the mirror of the highest divine ideation, but it is al reversed, because it
is a plane of il usion and everything is topsy-turvy there. In the divine thought
everything exists and there was no time when it did not so exist, so that it is
impossible to say that anything came out, because this divine mind is

Absoluteness and everything was, is, and wil be in it. At least, according to our
philosophy, it is the undifferentiated—I wil not say field—but the nouminal
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abstract space which wil be occupied, the field of primordial consciousness. It
is the field, how ever, of latent consciousness which is coveal with the duration
of the first and unmanifested Logos—which is the light which shineth in
darkness, which is in the Gospel, is the first word used there; which
comprehends it not. When the hour strikes for the second Logos then from the
latent potentiality radiates a lower field of differentiated consciousness, which
is Mahat in the Vishnu Purânas and al the other Purânas, or the col ectivity of
those Dhyâni-Chohans of which Mahat is the representative. Now do you
understand the thing that you have been asking the last time?

Mr. Kingsland: Not altogether. What is the relation between Astral Light used
in that sense and Fohat?

Mme. Blavatsky: Fohat is in the Astral Light because it is everywhere until the
fourth plane, but the Astral Light doesn’t go to the fifth plane. Then begins the

Âkâsa, You see, we cal the Astral Light that which mirrors al the upper planes
of consciousness, matter, being, cal it whatever you like.

Mr. Kingsland: When you say that the Astral Light contains the prototype of
everything, does it contain not only the prototype, but does it contain it in a
sequence of events in the same way that we have sequence of events on the
physical plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a great difference between how this Astral Light
reflects al kinds of things and how the other reflects them, because the first
one, the highest ones are eternal. The Astral Light is periodic. It changes not
only with the great Manvantara but it changes with every period, with every
cycle. The Astral Light wil change with every tropical year, if you like.

159. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Then every thing that exists on this plane exists first of al in the

Astral Light?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it exists, first of al in the divine eternal consciousness
and nothing can exist or take place on this plane if it does not exist there.

Mr. Kingsland: And then, further, it is reflected on the Astral Light.

Mme. Blavatsky: But it is reflected topsy-turvy; that is why we cal it il usion. It
is from the Astral Light that we take our prototypes. The evolution takes its
prototypes from the Astral Light, but Astral Light takes its representation from
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the upper ones and gives them entirely upside down. Just like a looking-glass,
it wil reverse everything. Therefore we cal it il usion.

Mr. Kingsland: Therefore, both we ourselves and nature get our ideas from
the Astral Light in whatever we produce?

Mme. Blavatsky: They cannot get them. And those who go mental y beyond
the Astral Light, those are they who see the truth and can sense it. Otherwise
they wil never see it. If they do not go beyond the Astral Light they wil be
always in that ocean of il usion or deception, of self-ideation which is good for
nothing. Because once we begin to think we see things real y with our eyes of
senses, with our physical eyes, we won’t see anything at al .

Mr. B. Keightley: There real y seems to be three stages. First divine ideation
reflects its self in [ ], the highest Âkâsa beyond the Astral Light.

Mme. Blavatsky: Which is the eternal, ful of divine consciousness, which
being Absolute consciousness cannot differentiate, cannot have any qualities,
cannot act, but it is only that which is reflected from it or mirrored that can act,
because the unconditioned and the infinite can have no relation with the finite
and conditioned.

2 [A cyclic period of 25,868 years, SD, 2:505.]

160. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Therefore it is our medium from which we take our “middle Heaven”, as the

Gnostics cal ed it, the middle space, on which is Sophia Achamoth. The

Gnostics al spoke about the middle space, which was the region of Sophia

Achamoth, not the Sophia the Divine Sophia, but the Sophia Achamoth, the
mother of al the evil spirits, the seven spirits, the builders of the Earth. And the

Gnostics said it was these ones that built, and that therefore the God of the

Bible was one of those wicked spirits. This is what they said the Gnostics,

Valentinus and Marcion and so on.

Mr. B. Keightley: They had three heavens, then?

Mme. Blavatsky: I wish somebody could translate this thing. I have it entirely in

Latin. It is the Pistis of Sophia.3 If only somebody could translate this!

Mr. B. Keightley: I think Roger Hal knows it.

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Mme. Blavatsky: But it must be given entirely in the Kabbalistic language. You
know nothing of the Kabbalah, and you won’t be able to do it; it wants

somebody who knows Kabbalah wel . I can’t ask Mathers4 to do it, because he
wil do it in his own Kabbalistic way. There wil be eternity in the way and there
wil be St. Joseph and everything. Therefore I can’t give it to him. I must get
somebody who knows Latin and at the same time who knows Kabbalah wel
enough to translate. There you wil see this middle space and the upper
middle space and the seven heavens that they spoke about. You see, if you
only study the early Christian Fathers and compare that with what is said now
with the theological teachings, why, you see there is just the same difference
as there is between the teachings of Ammonius Saccas5 and the teachings of

Mr. Spurgeon.6 They

3 [ The Pistis Sophia ( The faith of Sophia ) an important Gnostic text that was eventually translated in Mme.

Blavatsky’s magazine, Lucifer, in 1890-1891.]

4 [Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers, English occultist, 1854-1918, one of the founders of the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn.]

5 [Ammonius Saccas, third century A.D. Greek philosopher in Alexandria, Egypt, whose ideas influenced the
development of Neoplatonism.]

6 [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, English Baptist preacher, 1834-1892.]

161. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

believed in the seven heavens and the seven planes, they talked about the
incarnation. I wil show it to you in the teachings of the Church Fathers,
beginning with Alexandrinus7 and ending with any of them. Then, after the sixth
century, there begins our own flapdoodle church, theology which disfigures
everything, which becomes more and more pagan. Which takes not, mind you,
the pagan ideas of the higher initiates, but of the mob, the rabble. You see
they always come and say I go against Christianity. I never go against Christ or
the teachings of Christianity of the first centuries, but I go against this terrible
perversion of al the truths. There is not a single thing they have not disfigured,
and in such a way you can not name a rite, whether in the Roman Catholic or
the Episcopal or Protestant Churches, that cannot be traced directly back to
the rites of the pagan mob. Not at al of the mysterious initiates, but the pagan
mob, simply, at the time when they were so persecuted, and when they wanted
to save the scriptures of the initiation, and they had to compromise and come
to terms. And they had come to terms with the fathers of the church, who were
very ignorant. They were very learned or very ignorant. Now let us take

Augustine; they cal him the greatest man and the wisest. I say he is as
ignorant as can be. And then they went and made a kind of olla podrida out of
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these pagan rites and the little things of the initiations. I am going to give it al in

Lucifer,8 the rites of ritualism in masonry and the church, and I am going to
give it in five or six numbers. I think it wil be very interesting for the masons,
and for others too, because I show the origin, and I show it on the authority of
the manuscripts and the old classics, and they cannot say I have invented it.

Dr. Williams: I was talking with a bishop of the Church of England last week,
and he admitted that if the Church wanted to continue its integrity it would have
to go back to the teaching of the early Christian fathers.

Mme. Blavatsky: But they wil have to give up the temples and everything.

7 [Clement of Alexandria, leader of Christians in Alexandria, c. 150-c.215.]

8 [“The Roots of Ritualism in Church and Masonary,” Lucifer, March, May, 1889. The May installment ended with
the words to be “continued” but never was.]

162. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

The early Christians until the beginning of the third century would not hear of
temples, or rites, or ceremonies, or churches or anything of the kind. That
which is cal ed a church in Paul is simply a gathering and an assembly in a
room; there were no churches, no rites, nothing at al . You know what this

{Minucius} Felix says: he says, “you say that we are not pious because we
have not temples, and this, that, and the other, but we cannot have a temple,
for where is the temple that is large enough to contain the Almighty and the

Absolute?”9 This his argument that went dead against the temples. Therefore
if your bishop wants to return he wil have to make away with every church and
temple, and every chapel. They have to go to the endowment of Jesus. When
you pray don’t go into the synagogues and do as the Pharisees do. Go into the
room and pray. This is the meaning of it. Surely there is not the slightest
comparison between what Jesus or Christ taught you, and what the Church is
doing, not the smal est similitude. It is like two different things. It says one thing
and you do another; and you cal yourselves Christians, when you are al
nothing but the most paradoxical people in creation. I mean al Christendom, I
don’t mean only England.

Dr. Williams: I think the world is coming to it very fast now.

Mme. Blavatsky: If I can help it a bit, I am perfectly ready to do anything. I can
assure you I am perfectly ready to do anything, even to be cut into a thousand
pieces, I don’t care; for this is the curse. It is Church cant!

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Mr. Kingsland: They would have to have meetings on the model of the

Blavatsky Lodge.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , at the Blavatsky Lodge they don’t teach anything but
good. They don’t teach you anything of the vices. It is not a self-admiration
society. At the Blavatsky Lodge you hear from me very disagreeable truths,
but I think they do not do you any

9 [These words are a paraphase of the third century Roman Christian apologist Minucius Felix’s Octavius, 32.1.]

163. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

harm, do they? I say I am a very poor specimen of anything good, but I wil say
as the Lutheran preacher did: “do as I tel you, don’t do as I do.”

Dr. Williams: What is the first manifestation of the Astral Light proceeding
downward toward matter?

Mme. Blavatsky: From the Astral Light? Already it wil be on the fourth, third
and second planes, from which of the planes do you mean? You take The

Secret Doctrine and you see the four planes. I is useless to speak about that
which cannot be given in any language.

Mr. Kingsland: I think what Mr. Wil iams means is, what is that which makes the
reflection become potentiality?

Mr. Williams: What is the first manifestation proceeding out from the Astral

Light toward the plane of manifestation? I mean manifestation on the material
plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear Dr. Wil iams, I must ask you do you speak about
theogany {theogony?}? Do you speak about the physical forces? On what
plane do you want me to tel you this? Because, if you speak about the
theogany, I may say there are al the builders that proceed from it, the builders
of the cosmic terrestrial world.

Dr. Williams: But the different planes are al inter-reality are they not?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. But what is this Astral Light? Al these
intel igences, which are already from the sun of chaos, in matter and al these
builders of the lower world proceed from it. Al the seven elements, of which
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you know only five so far, or four.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then, there you are speaking of two distinct planes: the
cosmic plane, and that which applies particularly to our earth. I suppose you
would say, then, there were as many divisions of the Astral Light, if one may so
speak of it, as there are planetary systems.

164. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly.

Dr. Williams: Did you use the term there in our abstract sense, in the sense of
unity?

Mme. Blavatsky: I use terms mostly in that sense. At least, in my mind it al
comes to that, I am afraid. But when we begin talking about the plane of
differentiated matter and the evolution on earth, of course I am obliged to go
into details.

Dr. Williams: Real y, the idea at the back of the question was whether it
manifests simultaneously in many different ways, or whether there is some sort
of emanation from the Astral Light which constitutes a higher degree of
potentiality from which various forms in the physical universe proceed, or the
physical forces proceed. Or whether they proceed simultaneously in many
different forms from this unity.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think the question wil be answered in the fol owing
question.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think it is covered by the question of the prototypes.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, question 4 is answered in the third.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 4 is: “Is there an evolution of types through the
various planes of the Astral Light or do al possible types exist in the Divine

Thought?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, no possible types, nothing can be there, that does
not exist in the Divine Thought.

Mr. A. Keightley: In that case (that there is an evolution) would it be correct to
say that actual Astral prototypes of physical forms only exist on the lowest
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plane of the Astral Light?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, because this is the world of forms, and there, there are
no forms. You cannot come and make the comparison there. It is the world of
forms, and there is the world Ârupa.

165. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: You have not read the keynote of the thing.

Mme. Blavatsky: Number 4 is answered in the third. Number 5 is answered
here. The existence of the physical forms on the Astral Plane—their
prototypes can best be compared to the nouminal germ from which wil
proceed the phenomenal germ which wil final y become the acorn. Now, do
you understand this thing?

Dr. Williams: No, I am afraid I do not.

Mme. Blavatsky: That first it can be compared to a nouminal germ; from the
nouminal germ there comes the phenomenal germ and that germ becomes
the acorn. Now, just to show you the different prototypes on different planes
and how one thing is evolved from the other. From the acorn wil grow an oak
and this oak as a tree may be of a thousand forms, al varying from each other.

You see, al these forms are contained in the acorn, and yet from the same
acorn the form that the oak wil take depends already on extraneous
circumstances, on physical forces at work, and al kinds of things. You know it
is impossible to speak about this. The germ is there, but you cannot speak
about form. And it is contained in the phenomenal germ and the nouminal
germ.

Dr. Williams: Does the nouminal germ exist in the Astral Light? Can that in any
way be said to be an emanation from the Astral Light?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is. The nouminal germ does not exist in the Astral Light but
beyond, above. It is already a physical germ that exists in the Astral Light, the
physical germ. That is to say the prototype, what Aristotle cal s the privation of
matter.

Dr. Williams: Do you understand this prototype of the developed oak tree
exists or does it develop with the physical oak tree? And is not the
development of the physical oak tree the result of the developed prototype?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Surely it is, but we cannot give it a form and expression here.

We know that nothing can be here unless it is

166. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

found in another higher plane, and from one plane to another it must proceed.

From the highest it comes to the lowest and must have its development; only
here it has its last consolidation of forms and development of forms. And this I
tel you further: it is such a difficult subject that I do not think any one of you,
even those who study Occultism, can understand it, and this is that the real

Vedântin philosopher wil tel you that even the oak or the tree that grows from
the germ has its karma, and that whatever way it grows it is the result of karma.

Now, try to understand that.

Mr. A. Keightley: Does that mean, then, that supposing you have an oak tree,
the privation of the oak tree is a perfect example of a tree growth?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes; but who had done the privation; who has traced it out?

Mr. A. Keightley: That is the Divine Thought as I understand it.

Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon. It is the Dhyâni-Chohans, the builders on
the lowers plane, and as they draw it, it is their karma for having drawn it.

Mr. A. Keightley: But I thought they could not draw, apart from the natural
evolutionary law.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is sometimes in such extraordinary forms that it is a thing
of intention. We can’t see it, but it is so.

Mr. Kingsland: Do you mean they actual y draw it as it wil be when the tree is
ful grown, before the tree is ful grown?

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so, as the astral body of every man, woman, and child
must exist before the physical body takes the shape of the astral form. The

Hindus wil tel you the gods, Brahmâ, Vishnu, Śiva are al under karmic law.

They al say the same. You read the Hindu books, you wil find it. Al that which
is at the end of Pralaya to die so to say, to end in a certain form, is under
karmic law.

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Mr. Kingsland: That is closely connected with the phenomena of prediction.

How is it that somnambulists are able to predict certain events that take place?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because they see it in the Astral Light.

Mr. B. Keightley: You can get this state. The Dhyâni-Chohans first of al takes
that, the nouminal idea of it, or reflects it from the Divine Mind, as I understand;
that, of course, is perfect in the Divine Mind, it is perfection. But as the Dhyâni-

Chohan reflects it in himself and transmits it again in the astral plane he
modifies it of course, either intentional y or otherwise—according to what I do
not know, but either intentional y or otherwise—so that you get then the oak
tree modified from perfection.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is why the Rosicrucians and al the Kabbalists of the

Middle Ages spoke about spirits, that every species, every tree, everything in
nature, every kingdom of nature has its own elements, its own Dhyâni-Chohans
or what they cal elemental spirits.

Mr. Hall: Would the Dhyâni-Chohans be the Hamadryads?10

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the Greeks who cal them so.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then, when you have, for instance, oaks, you have many
different variation of oaks, each differing very considerably from each other.

Are they, so to speak, differentiations of a single idea in the Divine Mind,
differentiated in a thousand forms?

Mme. Blavatsky: They are the broken rays of one ray, and on every plane they
are broken. As they pass through the seven planes they are al broken on each
plane into thousands and mil ions, until they come to the world of forms; and
every one breaks into an intel igence on its own plane, because every plant
has an intel igence. It is no use to come and say that there are only sensitive
plants which feel, and al that. If botanists could have the slightest—we won’t
say Kabbalistic ideas, but real clairvoyant powers or intuition—they

10 [Spirits of trees in Greek mythology.]

168. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

would see that there is no plant that has not got its own intel igence, its own
purpose of life, its own free wil . It cannot, of course, walk or perambulate or
move, but it has its own purpose of life. It can do this, the other, or the third. It
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can close its petals or unclose them, it has its own ideation—each little blade
of grass.

Mr. B. Keightley: Its own intel igence on its own plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: And this intel igence is not the plant, it is that Dhyâni-Chohan
or let us cal it elemental, that incarnates in it. It al seems as though we are a
pack of fools, believing in al this. The Kabbalists laugh at this belief of nymphs
and sylphs and gnomes and al that, but this is perfectly true, this is an
al egorical way of talking; there is not a thing in this universe that is not
animated, and al these atoms go to form a thing. They are a produce of a kind
of intel igence of its own, a cosmic intel igence that acts.

Mr. Hall: I think botanists practical y admit al that.

Mme. Blavatsky: Only for the sensitive plants.

Mr. Hall: Look at the way they admit plants wil grow towards the light; that
implies it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Look at the great piety of the solar flower—of the sun-flower.

It wil always turn to the sun. Why, it is considered in the East a very pious yogi
among the flowers, especial y as it is clothed in yel ow, and they have a great
respect in some parts for it.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: But surely the words Dhyâni-Chohan and elemental are not
convertible. We have always understood Dhyâni-Chohan as referring to the
providers of the whole system.

Mme. Blavatsky: Dhyâni-Chohan applies to everything. You cal it Dhyâni-

Chohan, but you cannot cal them Dhyâni-Buddha.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: I have always understood it to be a Dhyâni-Buddha.

Mr. Kingsland: We had it al explained last Thursday.

169. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. Scott-Elliot: Then these elementals, al creation, are they on their way to
animal life, those that animate plants, say?

Mme. Blavatsky: Just the same, and the animals are on their way to humanity,
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and humanity on their way to Devas or the highest Dhyâni-Chohans. We have
used the words promiscuously because no one has taken the trouble to learn it
from the A.B.C. to the last letter. We always have spoken of the Dhyâni-

Chohans with out going into details, and these are the details that wil give you
the correct idea. Otherwise you wil be at sea, and you wil never understand it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then I suppose you speak of evolution from the prototypical
world, through the elemental kingdom up to minerals and animals and human
beings in the elemental world, as wel as on the other parts.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just the same below, so it is above.

Mr. A. Keightley: But at the same time, are they separate or are they one and
the same thing?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , they are separate as you are separate from another
man who may be walking now in Regent’s Street.11

Mr. Hall: Is it not that we are just the material shadows of our astral
prototypes?

Mme. Blavatsky: We are; and the astral prototypes are the shadows of their
higher prototypes, which are the Dhyânis, up to the Dhyâni-Buddhas.

Mr. A. Keightley: Could you use the term in this way: that there is an elemental
which is connected with us in the astral world, we ourselves being separated
from that elemental in the astral world; that the elementals are represented in
this astral world, and so are we, but we are in addition represented in the
physical?

Mme. Blavatsky: We are in the Divine World also.

11 [Fashionable thoroughfare in London’s West End.]

170. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: No, I wil tel you how it is. Our body—the cel s of our physical
body—have of course their astral correspondence, which you might cal
elementals. Those are not our selves, but we must have as human beings our
humanity, so to speak, on the astral plane, apart from the animal elementals
which are the correspondencies of the physical body.

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Mr. A. Keightley: That is what I meant.

Mr. B. Keightley: The animal elementals on the astral plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: These are questions of immense difficulty. They are such
abstruse questions that one answer wil elicit another question and then this
question elicits ten questions more. It is a thing to which you Europeans are
not at al accustomed. It is a train of thought that you could not fol ow unless
you began from the beginning, and were trained as the Eastern people are
trained, especial y now the yogis, who begin a systematic course of training for
the development of metaphysical ideas, and so on. It is a very difficult,
abstruse subject, this. You see it is not enough to come and have a very
flowery tongue, and to express yourself wel and have a flow of language. You
must first of al pass into the heads or the brains of those who listen to you a
clear representation of what a thing is in reality. Unless you do that you wil be
listening to a very nice metaphysical speech, as I know many friends of ours
have done and get nothing out of it. You have to know and understand
everything and how it stands in relation to another thing, and you have to begin
from the beginning and proceed from the universals to particulars. And then it
wil be extremely difficult to understand anything on the higher planes. This is a
question that we had already.

Mr. A. Keightley: There is another question arising out of that, that I wanted to
ask you. I was talking to a man not very long ago who said that there had been
a communication from a sort of intel igence which signed itself “Chela,” and it
was written by means of a medium. That medium according to the intel igence
was not very amenable.

171. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

It varied, the condition varied, and so did the communications. But one
sentence which was used struck me as rather curious. It said: “First of al you
have to get the brain in a proper receptive condition, then when that brain is in
a proper receptive condition, it stimulates the muscles of the hand to fol ow out
the letters which are traced in a subtle medium.” Probably he meant the letters
in the Astral Light; that is to say, there seemed to be a double action. First,
there was a tracing of the letters. Secondly, there was an impression on the
brain to stimulate the nerves and the muscles and al the rest of it, to fol ow the
tracings with pen and ink or pencil of that which was traced in the Astral Light.

Is that a true representation of the way such things are done?

Mme. Blavatsky: When you trace it from the Astral Light, your brain may go to
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sleep, and need simply have the wil to copy that without giving it a thought,
whether it is good, bad or indifferent wise or foolish.

Mr. A. Keightley: But that is an actual thing. Supposing for instance that this
physical writing here was previously traced in the Astral Light. Were I a
medium, my hand would fol ow the tracings with the pencil in the Astral Light
with the physical pen and ink.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. But certainly you must see it, and seeing, of
course you must have a certain process going on in your brain.

Mr. A. Keightley: According to this explanation, apparently there was the
double process going on—not only the sight but the stimulation of the brain to
fol ow this tracing.

Mme. Blavatsky: “Stimulation”—I don’t understand the use of it. If you don’t
want to do it, then perhaps your brain would be stimulated to do it. I cannot
understand it.

Mr. A. Keightley: That was the explanation of the medium not being particularly
amenable.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , let us have question 6.

172. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Page 63, line 22 {of The Secret Doctrine, vol, 1)” Is Manu a
unity of human consciousness personified into one human comprehension, or
is he the individualization of the Thought Divine as applied for Manvantaric
purposes?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh! It is about the root Manus and the Seed Manus. It is
about the fourteen {Manus} you are talking.

Mr. A. Keightley: (repeats the question.)

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , didn’t we speak of it last time, or the time before last?

You asked me, I think, whether Manu and those builders were the same. This
is at least the Spirit, and whose duty it was to watch over the planet; and I told
you then there were seven of them. Don’t you remember this? It is just the
same. Wel , do you want to know what Manu is, and what he represents, or do
you want simply, metaphysical y, to know what kind of consciousness he has
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or how many consciousnesses he represents? Again, I don’t understand that.

Mr. A. Keightley: It means this—is Manu what you may cal the primary
thought, which is separated into a variety of intel igences in the physical world?

That is to say, is Manu the thing from which intel igences proceed on earth in
diversity, or is he the synthesis of divers intel igences?

Mme. Blavatsky: He is not. He is the beginning of this earth; from Manu
humanity is born. He was the only one who remained, and the others, who
came with him, they have gone somewhere else. And, you see, he creates
humanity by himself. He creates a daughter to himself, and from this daughter
there is the evolution of humanity of the soul, mankind. Now, Manu is a unity,
which contains al the pleuralities and their modifications. The name “Manu”

comes from the word “man,” to think; it is a Sanskrit word, and thought in its
actions and human brains is endless. So it is Manu which is and contains in
itself al these forms that wil be developed on earth from the particular Manu.

Every Manvantara has its own Manu. Every [ ] has its own Manu. From this

Manu, the Manus of al the Kalpa Manus wil be such.

173. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Then, practical y, Manu is in the position with regard to
humanity as a prism is to a single ray of white light.

Mme. Blavatsky: I would cal it the white light which contains al the other lights,
and then passes through the prism of differentiation and evolution.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then, that is the decomposing prism. Then Manu has no
relation to a uniting prism, if we may so use it, the prism of re-union.

Mme. Blavatsky: Going to one Manu, no. The Manu is simply the Alpha of
something differentiated, which when it comes to the Omega, that something
disappears. It is Omega, and then you pass onward.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then, that is practical y what I mean.

Mme. Blavatsky: Except, perhaps, Swayambhu.

Mr. Kingsland: Can’t you say it stands in relation to each Manvantara the same
as the first Logos?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, on the physical plane it is just in the same relation as if
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you take it on this, on the physical plane. It wil be just that as it stands on {the}

universal plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: Now, look at it for a moment. From the side of
consciousness, you may say al the cel s of the human body have each their
own individual consciousness, but yet there is the unit of consciousness which
is the man—wel , is the analogy applicable to the Manu?

Mme. Blavatsky: I think it is—very wel .

Mr. B. Keightley: Is the Manu a unit of consciousness which remains a unit?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the latent, or it contains in itself al that.

Mr. B. Keightley: Which remains a unit in spite of differentiation.

174. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

There the unit of consciousness a man, but stil there are al the cel s of his
body which are individualized to a certain extent. But the unit of consciousness
of man stil persists.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, just that. I think it is a very good analogy.

Mr. B. Keightley: Because I want to get at the point whether the Manu
represents a single consciousness—if I may make the phrase, one, a unit.

Mme. Blavatsky: But do you suppose that your consciousness is a single
consciousness? Why, your consciousness is a reflection of thousands and
mil ions of consciousnesses.

Mr. B. Keightley: But stil it is united in a focus.

Mme. Blavatsky: But stil this contains al consciousnesses which you have
absorbed, and no one has got one alone. I don’t know what you mean by that,
that your brain is a focus. Of course, it is there. Manu is, as I say, meaning to
think. It is the thinking man.

Mr. Hall: Has Manu, then, an individuality?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I don’t know. It has no individuality in the abstract
sense.

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Mr. Scott-Elliot: Al the consciousnesses that you have been talking about, are
they the hosts of the Dhyâni-Buddhas who are concentrated in the ray of the
one man?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, no. The Dhyâni-Buddhas are on the higher plane. They
have nothing to do with our dirty house-hold work of our earth. It is just as you
wil put, for instance, somebody as a great governor in the house, and then this
governor wil have nothing to do with the work of the kitchen maids. Of al that
he does not know anything. He governs simply a place. Or let us take the

Queen, if she were not a constitution, or anyone, an emperor. In such an
example, that is the thinking man, it has nothing to do with what the subalterns
do. If you understand me, this is a thing which

175. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

belonged to that mind. To that ruler, they are under the sway of that ruler, and
yet that ruler is not cognizant of them. So it is with the Dhyâni-Buddha that has
come and emanated from him and al that. But he has nothing to do with them.

It is just like the mil ions of cel s that do something automatical y or the foot
which steps there without thinking about it. Every one thing has got its al otted
duty to perform, but the Dhyâni-Buddhas is the supervisor. I gave it al to you
about two Thursdays ago.

Mr. B. Keightley: Not quite what you have given now.

Mme. Blavatsky: Very wel , then. Of course, if we go on with the conversation
you wil hear new things for 365 days in the year, because the subject is
immense. I cannot express myself. My dear Mr. Scott-El iot, I tel you, as I
grow older the worse I begin speaking English. I begin to be in despair. I have
the thoughts in my head and I can express them less and less. It is very
difficult for me to express it. I can write it but to speak it is very difficult.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then, Manu is a unit of consciousness which differentiates
into a multitude.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then is Manu pre-manvantaric? What I am wanting to get at
is this.

Mr. Kingsland: What becomes of Manu at the end of the Manvantara?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Manu is not individuality. It is not one. It is the whole of
mankind.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: The whole of man kind?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, it is not an individual. The Hindu wil come and tel
you man {Manu ?} is an individual, but I say it is perfect nonsense. Manu is that,
the forefathers, the Pitris, the progenitors of mankind, as it is cal ed.

176. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: In other words, it is a name applying to the Monads which
come from the Lunar Chain.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why are they cal ed the Lunar? Because the moon is said—
of course, in defiance of al astronomy—to be the parent of the Earth; and
these are the Monads. They progressed and passed through the First Round;
and then it is they who, having become the first men, the Manus give birth to
others by evolving there astral selves. They give birth to humanity, they give
birth to the animals, and to al kinds of things. So in the Purânas they say for
instance such and such a high yogi gave birth to al the serpents or al the birds

—this, that, and the other—you see it there.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: What I wanted to express was the perfected humanity of one

Round becomes the Dhyâni-Chohans or the Dhyâni-Buddhas of the next
manvantara, and are the guiding rulers of the universe.

Mme. Blavatsky: But what do you cal Manvantara? We cal Manvantara seven

Rounds; and this is a smal , little Manvantara, of our globe.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: What bearing has Manu on the hosts of the Dhyâni-Buddhas?

Mme. Blavatsky: He has no bearing at al . The hosts of Dhyâni-Buddhas
evolve a lower set of Dhyani-Buddhas, these Dhyâni-Buddhas a third, and so
on. There are seven of them though in Tibet they take only five Buddhas—
after that they begin to be Kosmocratores, the builders (cal them whatever
names you like, they have al got special names in the Sanskrit)—then the
builders of the Astral Light; and it is an endless hierarchy of one kind of

Dhyânis evoluting another kind of Dhyânis. Everyone becomes more
consolidated, more material, until it comes to the builders of this universe,
some of which are Manus, the Pitris and the Lunar ancestors. It has a task, to
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give birth to men; and they give birth by projecting their astral shadows. And
the first humanity (if humanity it can be cal ed) are those Châyâs of those lunar
ancestors over which

177. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

physical nature begins building the physical body, which begins to be
formless; then the second race begins to be more and more {formed}. Then
they are sexless, then they become bi-sexual; and they hermaphrodites, and
then they separate and go al kinds of ways for the propagation of mankind.

This is al given in The Secret Doctrine.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: Then, talking of Manvantara, the Manvantara is the period
which is embraced by the seven rounds of seven planets.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Manvantara of our planetary chain.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: But I see you talk in The Secret Doctrine of a minor

Manvantara.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a minor Manvantara, and there is a major

Manvantara, and there are various kinds of Manvantaras.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: Or rather, I thought Manvantara meant the circle, a single
round of the seven worlds, and that Kalpa represented the total seven rounds
of the seven worlds.

Mme. Blavatsky: Minor Manvantara means between two Manus, but as I show
also there, there are fourteen Manus in reality. There are seven Root Manus at
the beginning of the round and Seed Manu, as it is cal ed, at the end of the
round. Therefore they make fourteen. There two Manus for each round, but
these Manus are simply figures of speech—they are symbols the beginning of
humanity and the end, and the Manus are simply synonymous with the Pitris,
the fathers, the progenitors of mankind, the Lunar ancestors. These are

Manus.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: What would you cal the duration of a minor Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: If you take the exoteric duration, it is one thing. I could not
tel you.

Mr. B. Keightley: Manvantara simply means the period of activity. You may
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speak about it as twelve hours of daylight and Pralaya of the

178. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

night, or you may speak of Manvantara as the individual life of man.

Mme. Blavatsky: There are seven kinds of pralaya and seven kinds of

Manvantara, and they are al mentioned, from the Vishnu Purânas to the last
ones; al kinds of Pralayas and Manvantara also.

Mr. B. Keightley: It simply means a period of activity and it is not limited in any
of the Theosophical writings. It is never used in a definite sense as meaning a
definite period of years; you have to gather from the context what period is
spoken of a specific period of time.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: During which the rays circle round the seven globes.

Mr. B. Keightley: You have to gather from the context what the extent of the

Manvantara that is spoken of is, but you cannot go very far wrong, because
what applies on one scale applies to the smal er scale, just as you take it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 7, page 64, second paragraph. “Is ‘water’ as used
here purely symbolical or has it a correspondence in the evolution of the
elements?”

Mme. Blavatsky: I speak about the water here simply in this way. You see, you
make a great mistake, al of you, in confusing the universal elements with the
terrestrial elements. Now, again, I do not speak about the chemical elements, I
speak simply about the elements as they are known here, that we have been
talking the last time about. We had a long conversation about it. But the
universal elements, I would cal them the noumena of the terrestrial elements.

They are kosmic elements. Kosmic does not apply to our little solar system.

Kosmic is infinite. I have in my head always the infinite.

Dr. Williams: Are they identical with the elementals, or is that something
entirely different?

Mme. Blavatsky: Elementals are simply the creatures produced for the
various species in differentiation. That is to say, every

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differentiation of matter produces and evolves a kind of a force an intel igence

—wel , anything you like—that which the Kabbalists and the Rosicrucians
cal ed elemental spirits, nature’s spirits. They chronloized {chronologized ?}

those things. But we say there is an intel igence, in every one there is a force.

Hartmann12 there writes about undines, and he believes they are real
creatures. It is a little bit too much to believe in sylphs, they are creatures of
our imaginations,
and they do not exist by themselves.

Mr. Hall: Would not they exist to the person who believes in that seriously?

Mme. Blavatsky: Every one of us can believe in elementals which they create
for themselves. There are some who create this and that. This is what the
spiritualist do, if you please. You can create an elemental, but this elemental
wil have no existence outside your vitiated imagination. It wil be an
intel igence, but the form you wil give it, and the attributes you wil give it, wil
be of your own creation, and this is the horrible thing.

Mr. Hall: And it weakens you physical y.

Mme. Blavatsky: It wil make a lunatic of you. It evaporizes you. This is why
most mediums end in the lunatic asylums or get drunkards for life. Look at

Kate Fox.13 Look at Charles Foster14 and al the great mediums, in fact.

Mr. A. Keightley: But then there, “water” is used as actual y the kosmic
element.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is. It is cal ed water, darkness; chaos is cal ed

12 [Franz Hartmann, German Theosophical writer. 1838 to 1912. He dealt extensively with the creatures of the
elements, and especially with the female water-spirits, the undines, in his 1887 life of Paracelsus, and An

Adventure Among the Rosicrucians.]

13 [Kate Fox, one of the Americans pioneers of mediumship, 1837-1892, who ended her days as an alcoholic.]

14 [Charles H. Foster, American medium, 1838-1888, whose alcoholism led him to the insane asylum and a
vegetative state.]

180. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

water. “The waters of space” means you can have water. What is water? What
is matter? Matter is in one of the three states: solid, fluid, or gaseous. Very
wel , and in occult things there are four more, there are seven states. But if you
only speak and you say I shal limit our conversation only to this plane, if you
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take it as water in three states, as matter in its three states, you wil understand
perfectly what I mean.

Mr. A. Keightley: But what I am working at is this: water is used as the one
element original y in the cosmic sense, and then the terrestrial plane, water is
preceded by ether, fire, and air.

Mme. Blavatsky: But ether contains in itself fire and water and air and
everything, al the elements, al the seven. And this ether which is the
hypothetical agent of your physical science is the last form of Âkâsa.

Therefore you can judge.

Mr. B. Keightley: But the point, real y, of that question was this: as to whether
the term water is applied to the kosmic, first matter apparently from which
everything evolves.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because it is not yet solid matter. That is why, as we know it,
we cannot go and speak about that if we do not show it on this plane—
something that we know, that we can conceive and understand. Now, space
instead of water in the scriptures of any Bible some other word was used that
we cannot understand, some word that has no meaning to us. That is why they
cal it water, because it has not the solidity of matter.

Mr. B. Keightley: Supposing that we knew anything about ether, it might just as
wel be cal ed ether.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, the moist principle—what is it the
philosophers cal it? “The hot and moist principle” from which proceed al
things. “The waters of space” —you read this expression in al the scriptures
and the Purânas and even in the Bible, and everywhere it is the same thing.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is from the “waters of space” that Sophia

181. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Achamoth proceeds.

Mme. Blavatsky: It proceeds from this Astral Light.

Mr. B. Keightley: Sophia Achamoth proceeds from the “waters of space.”

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Mme. Blavatsky: Moses says it requires earth and water to make a living soul.

Understand it, if you like—and it is very easy—that is to say that man is a living
soul, that the Nefesh is of a dual element. It partakes of the middle pre-astral
of the psychic and of the metaphysic.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is real y, then, the root, the Astral Light.

Mme. Blavatsky: That which is al the prototype of everything on earth.

Mr. A. Keightley: Verse 2, stanza 3. Are the virgin-egg and the eternal-egg the
same, or are they different stages of differentiation?

Mme. Blavatsky: In its prototypal form as the eternal-egg and not the virgin-
egg, the virgin-egg is already differentiated.

Mr. A. Keightley: You say in one sense it is absolute eggness.

Mme. Blavatsky: In one sense it is, but not in another sense. In this sense of
the inner nature of its essence, it is the eggness, just as I say; but in the sense
of its form in which it appears for its purposes of differentiation and evolution, it
becomes a virgin-egg. It is al a metaphorical way of speaking. I say it is just
the same. The eternal egg is a pre-differentiation in a Laya condition, at the
moment (before differentiation) it can have neither attributes nor qualities. The
virgin-egg is already qualified therefore differentiated, but it is the same, just
as I told you. Everything is the same, nothing is separated from the other in its
abstract essential nature. But in the world of il usion, in the world of forms, of
differentiation we seem al to be various persons and to be different things and
al kinds of subjects. Wel , whoever has got questions to ask, let them. I think
there are many questions, I think, that you ask me over and over

182. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

again, questions from another aspect; and it is the same aspect.

Mr. A. Keightley: When we ask you questions from the different points of view,
it al serves to explain things. Then we are able to put them before you in the
light in which we may understand them.

Dr. Williams: When you were speaking of writing from an appearance which is
the Astral Light, can you explain anything more of that phenomena? If there is
a writing in the Astral Light from which the medium writes, does not that imply
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form in the Astral Light?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, I would not say it is a form. It is something that assumes
a form for the time being and takes a form which is comprehensible to the
medium.

Dr. Williams: The medium perceives or sees something, other wise there
would be nothing from which he would write.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. It takes that, the potential energy—the
essence of the thing assumes a form which {is} comprehensible
to the medium.

Mr. Hall: It assumes form in his own brain only.

Mme. Blavatsky: And he sees it. Now, for instance, a sentence wil be uttered
in a language which is perfectly unknown to the medium, which the medium
has never heard. The medium wil see the thing repeated in the Astral Light not
in the language that he or she does not understand, but in the language which
is its own language. When two persons speak, let us say an adept speaks with
his chela, that chela does not understand the language of the adept or the
adept the language of the chela on the physical plane, yet they understand
each other because every word that is uttered is impressed on the brain, if you
like—no language, the language of thought.

Mr. Scott-Elliot: No language is necessary.

Mr. Hall: You ask anybody who knows one or two languages

183. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

equal y wel , you nearly always find he is unable to tel you in which he thinks.

Mme. Blavatsky: I am perfectly unable to say in what language I think
sometimes. Very likely I can just perceive, you know, that I think in some
language.

Dr. Williams: Is not that a lack of concentration upon the subject of thought
itself? If one were to concentrate their minds it seems to me they must
inevitably think in one or other of the languages in which they are equal y
familiar.

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Mr. B. Keightley: No, because the more concentrated your thought, the less
you think in words.

Mr. Hall: It is only when the man reflects afterwards, and then he has to give a
certain form to his thoughts. And then he takes one of the languages, which he
knows.

Dr. Williams: Is thought anything until it assumes form?

Mr. B. Keightley: You can certainly have formed thought apart from words.

Mme. Blavatsky: How do the dumb and the deaf think, in what language?

Dr. Williams: Wel , there is something which stands with them for words. The
signification in there minds is precisely the same.

Mme. Blavatsky: Sometimes deaf and dumb persons wil be taught a
language by the process that they have invented. And after that, when they are
able to communicate their thoughts to people, they cannot say in what
language they thought. They had no guide.

Dr. Williams: But words are simply symbols to express qualities. We perceive
the qualities in various ways and the words simply stand as symbols for the
qualities. Now, they have another set of symbols and those symbols convey to
their consciousness the same qualities that words do to ours, so that it actual y
comes to the same thing.

184. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: But you said one must think in a special language.

Dr. Williams: And they think by their sign language.

Mr. Hall: I think not. Because you cannot think the language until you have
formed it.

Mme. Blavatsky: When you speak, do you fol ow the ideas that take form in
your thinking? You don’t think, you just speak as it comes to you, especial y a
man who is accustomed to speak easily.

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Mr. Kingsland: You general y think too rapidly for speech at al .

Mme. Blavatsky: But this thinking does not at al take place in a language.

Dr. Williams: Do we think at al , then?

Mme. Blavatsky: We could not speak and give expression to thought if we did
not think.

Dr. Williams: That is what I am trying to analyze. There is something which
precedes, and speech is the external symbol which first exists in the mind.

Mr. Hall: That is real thought.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is abstract thought.

Mr. Hall: A man would never have to look for words. When he thoroughly
understands his subject, he knows al the things he wants to talk about; and
then he is at a loss for words to translate the idea.

Miss Kenealy: Speech is precipitated thought, just as one may have chemical
solution, and thought is that solution. Speech is solution precipitated.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think this is a good defination.

Miss Kenealy: One thinks ideas, not words.

Mme. Blavatsky: What form do these thoughts take in the brain? I

185. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

know I could not fol ow, I could not say what I think. I think and I wil say it, but I
cannot say in what form they have come in my brain.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then you don’t think in symbols.

Mme. Blavatsky: If I want to think something, I want to meditate it, but when I
talk simply, as I talk now, I don’t give a thought to that—thought!

Dr. Williams: I don’t mean that you watch the mechanical processes that are
going on in your brain, but I mean thought must take a concrete form until it is
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used in speech; otherwise, natural y, there could be no speech.

Mme. Blavatsky: I can only judge by my own experience.

Mr. Kingsland: But when you are meditating—for instance, without any attempt
to put them into words—when you simply think about a thing, meditate about it

—that is the question.

Dr. Williams: Then I should say we are thinking or we are not thinking. We may
make the mistake that was attributed to a certain extent to Washington, who
went always about with his head down and his hands behind his back.

Somebody said he was a very deluded man, he thought he was thinking. And it
seems to me we are either thinking or not thinking. And in meditation we either
have thoughts or we do not have thoughts. Now the moment we have a
thought, that is a concrete form in the mind, but it is, as the lady remarked, a
precipitation, so to say, from the realm of idea. An idea is not a thought, it is
something entirely different; and ideas precipitate themselves into thought.

Mr. B. Keightley: But I think you can certainly have thought that is not
expressed in words.

Dr. Williams: I don’t think you can. The moment ideas are precipitated into
thought, then you can speak. We fail to distinguish between the realm of
feeling and emotion and thought. Feeling and emotion is only one of the
sources. They are real y identical. Feeling

186. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

is only one of the sources of ideas which are precipitated into thought.

Mr. Hall: [ ] takes entirely a different idea of what thought is from what I think
the rest of us would take it.

Mr. Kingsland: You classify thought in a different way.

Mr. B. Keightley: (to Mme. Blavatsky) When you are thinking out an article, do
you think it out in words?

Mme. Blavatsky: Never.

Dr. Williams: If you don’t think in words, where do the words come from?

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Mr. B. Keightley: They come afterwards.

Dr. Williams: From what do they come?

Mr. B. Keightley: For instance, Mme. Blavatsky writes an elaborate article like
one she has been writing now. Wel , I know from the way in which that article
was written, the draft of that article, the outline of it, the distinct sequence of the
ideas and so on must have existed in her mind—not in words, before she put
pen to paper.

Dr. Williams: Oh, of course. I understand there exist in memory the materials.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, no. The plan, the idea of the article—how it was to be
put, what facts were to be brought in. But not if you asked her to write down on
paper the plan on which she was going to write her article.

Mr. Kingsland: Dr. Wil iams wants to draw a distinction between an idea and a
thought.

Dr. Williams: I have something else, that was simply this—there is a time in
the evolution of thought when things become manifested to consciousness;
now what exists prior to that? That was the point I was after al the while. Prior
to anything taking form in human consciousness, can we predicate anything of
it at al ?

187. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , let us say I am a carpenter, and I want to build or
construct something—wel , let us say a cabinet—how do I do it unless I am
told to do so and so? If I am left to my own resources, I begin thinking it wil be
so and so. But this thought is not created in my brain; it is that I have put myself
en rapport with a certain current which makes my thought draw from that
privation of the thing which I am going to do in the Astral Light. Now, do I
express it so that you understand it?

Mr. Kingsland: Supposing a person finishes his argument. You know in a
moment what you are going to say. You know exactly what it is. Though you
take five minutes to answer it, you thought it in five seconds.

Dr. Williams: The thought is instantaneous. You have got to go through what
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takes time when it precipitates itself, so to say, in the realm of space and time.

Then the movements of the mouth take the time.

Mr. Kingsland: But surely you knew in a moment what answer you were going
to give.

Mme. Blavatsky: Dr. Wil iams, believe me, perhaps I wil say a very great
absurdity, and perhaps not. As I understand the thing, it seems to me that
thought is a perfect sponge, and that it imbibes into itself from the Astral Light.

And the more the capacity of this sponge to imbibe, to absorb ideas that are in
the Astral Light, the more you wil have ideas. Now, persons who are dul , it is
because their brains are not sponge-like as that of others. They are very hard
sponges through which it passes with great difficulty. But our thoughts—we cal
them our own, it is only the form into which you put them that is our own—but
the beginning, the origin of that thought, has existed from al eternity. It must be
somewhere either in this or on the plane of divine ideation. We cannot invent
anything that was not or is not.

Mr. Kingsland: It is just that your brain has managed to catch it.

Mme. Blavatsky: A man who is very intel igent and a man who is

188. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

very stupid, it is simply the capacity of his physical brain; and he is capable to
start his ideas. I am speaking now occultly.

Dr. Williams: What then would be your definition of a thought?

Mme. Blavatsky: You must ask me something easier. I am not a speaker, I
cannot give it to you in good language. I see it and understand it, but I cannot
express it.

Miss Kenealy: Thought is the faculty of the higher brain and speech is a
faculty of the lower brain, to a great extent automatic and mechanical.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but there is something beyond that. It is the definition
on the physical plane. But you must go beyond.

Mr. B. Keightley: You get to this question: what is the power in speech which
makes it convey ideas? Because it actual y exists. I know in reading other
languages, and you might see it in English. It often happens to me in reading
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German. If I am reading German, particularly out-of-the-way books, I come
across a word I have never seen before. It is not a compound of any words
that I know, yet in reading that I shal get an accurate idea of the word. I have
often tested it by hunting it up and found I have got from the word itself—

Miss Kenealy: A sort of correspondence.

Mr. Kingsland: It is the word standing in the context.

Mme. Blavatsky: Tel me another thing. How is it that a person of average
intel igence, or very intel igent, who wil be able to speak and write and al that,
comes to an il ness, there comes something—wel , physiological reasons, and
the brain is so plugged up that it is impossible—it cannot evolute a single idea,
the person can neither think nor write nor express anything. That shows that
there is something, that there is a physiological reason which shuts up the
avenues through which al the ideas from the Astral Light pass. Is it so or not? I
ask these ladies who have been studying physiology.

189. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Everyone feels sometimes that one’s brain is packed with
cotton wool, and there is not an idea of any kind in it.

Dr. Williams: I remember several years ago an article of mine was criticized
by a scientific materialist, and he said it made him feel as though ants were
crawling through his brain. It must have been congested through his effort to
understand it.

Mr. Hall: Don’t you think when a person sees a word which he does not know,
and yet gets a clear idea of it, that it is because he is in a certain way in a
magnetic rapport?

Mme. Blavatsky: With the man who wrote, or what?

Mr. Hall: With the ideas of the man who wrote it; and that he gets it from the

Astral Light.

Mme. Blavatsky: But as Mr. Kingsland says just now, it is perhaps because of
what precedes and fol ows. The general sense of the sentence makes one
guess at the word.

Miss Kenealy: Is there not a direct correspondence between thought and
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words? I think there is.

Mr. B. Keightley: Between thought and sound. Not necessarily between
thought and words, as there is an element of the arbitrary in words.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, this is why I say that human testimony is such an
unreliable thing. For instance, we are talking and there are two persons in the
room. A person may be saying to me something. In 99 cases out of a 100 that
person wil be saying to me one thing and I wil understand it in my own way.

And though perhaps I wil understand the thing and remember, yet there wil be
something that wil not represent in my brain that which that person said. That is
why it is impossible to go and repeat what another said to you, because you
wil not repeat the very words, which you do not retain in the memory; but you
repeat simply the suggestions of your own thought, with variations.

190. 6. Meeting February 14, 1889

Dr. Williams: Some individuals remember words and repeat them verbatim.

They used to do that in ages past, much more then they do now, the necessity
for that having passed away. We remember now the first principles, which
underlie communications and we may use different words in expressing those
principles, but yet we do correctly convey the principles which were
communicated to us. I think it has grown out of the necessities of the times, of
the changed way in which we acquire knowledge and communicate it. But I
think the test of every human mind, the test of truth, must come back to a
knowledge of its own constitution. I do not say any other possible test for the
truth to the individual mind, except a greater or less degree of knowledge of its
own constitution. And this very subject of thought and mind seems to me goes
right back to the very root of it al . If we listen to beautiful music or if we look at
a beautiful picture, we may not have a thought about them; and yet we are
thril ed, and that is al emotional. That is pure feeling. And so I think it is very
often we mistake a thril of feeling for a thought, or a series of thoughts. So I
would make that distinction between feeling and thought and between ideas
and thought. The moment anything comes into thought, the mind having
coordinated the material out of which that comes into thought, then it takes
form; and then it {is} capable of speech. And therefore, when we think
anything, we can express it in speech.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

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7.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge
at Lansdowne Rd. Hol and Park
on Thursday February 21 1889

Mr. Harbottle in the Chair

Mr. B. Keightley: First are some additional questions on some points that we
just touched upon last time. Stanza 3, Śloka 2: “The vibration sweeps along,”

etc. (Reads from The Secret Doctrine.) The first question is; How are we to
understand the expression that the vibration touches the whole universe and
also the germ? For does not the germ mean the germ of the universe not yet
cal ed into existence?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, wil you put me this very long speech in very short
sentences, for I don’t understand what you mean here. Maybe I have
misunderstood you far more than you have misunderstood me.

Mr. B. Keightley: Not having put the question, I cannot say.

Mme. Blavatsky: Whoever has put the question, let him rise and explain.

Mr. Kingsland: I think the question has reference to the explanation with
reference to the germ, that the universe has not yet come into existence,
because the germ being only the germ in the primordial triangle—

Mme. Blavatsky: Then what do you mean when you say the unmanifested
universe? Is not the universe eternal?

Mr. Kingsland: We do not use the term here—unmanifested universe.

192. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you say manifested? No.

Mr. Kingsland: We do not use either.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you do not use either, it means unmanifested universe, for
here both are purely abstract terms. The universe does not mean the Kosmos
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or world of forms, but the formless space, the future vehicle of the universe,
which wil be manifested. Otherwise how could we speak, as we do, of the
unmanifested universe? The same for the germ. The germ is eternal and must
be so if matter—or rather the undifferentiated atoms of future matter—are said
to be indestructible and eternal. That germ therefore is one with space, as
infinite as it is indestructible, and as eternal as abstract space itself. Now do
you understand? The same again for the word vibration. Who can imagine that
the term is meant here for a real audible sound? Why, it is figurative.

Mr. Kingsland: Yes, but is it not figurative in the same sense that the
emanation from the first triangle is figurative.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al . It is figurative; but speaking of the universe, how
can I say anything else? Shal I say, “the space in which wil be the universe”?

Mr. Kingsland: Does not the vibration correspond to the point, the
unmanifested Logos?

Mme. Blavatsky: It does. But it is from darkness, which means here the

“beyond,” beyond the first Logos even. That is what it means.

The President: Is it the ray from the eternal Logos that is the vibration?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, no, no. Read the thing again and it wil make them
understand.

Mr. B. Keightley: The first Śloka was this: ( Reads again from The Secret

Doctrine, stanza 3, Śloka 2).

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , al this is figurative.

193. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: And the whole Śloka refers to the period before there is any
manifestation whatever.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. It refers to the abstract things, to the
potentiality of that which wil be. Space is eternal, as is repeated many times in

The Secret Doctrine. Space is something that wil be whether there is a
manifested universe or an unmanifested universe. This space is synonymous
with the universe. It is synonymous with the “waters of space,” with everything,
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with eternal darkness and with Parabrahman, so to say.

Mr. Kingsland: Then this vibration is before even differentiation begins.

Mme. Blavatsky: There I am just tel ing you. You read this second question.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 2. Is not the germ here, the point in the circle, the
first Logos?

Mme. Blavatsky: Precisely, and the central point being everywhere, the
circumference of the circle is nowhere. This means that al such expressions
are simply figures of speech. I think this proves it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Is that al you have?

The President: I think one sometimes does not quite see how apparently
fresh terms are to be referred back to the old ones; but I think that explains it.

Mr. Kingsland: It seems to be jumping back a little bit. Whereas we began to
be catching on to differentiation, now we seem to go back.

The President: The first stanza is negative and the second positive in a sense.

Almost the whole of the first stanza says: “There was not this there was not
that, nor the other. It is simply a description of the nothingness or the al ”;
whereas with the second stanza we begin at once with that which precedes
differentiation, the first movements as it were.

194. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Speaking of that which will be positive, in fact.

The President: Is not it rather that?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Perfectly so, just so, that is what I have
been saying.

The President: But it real y refers to the same points.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then the third Śloka: “Darkness Radiates Light.” Question 3.

Is this equivalent to the first Logos becoming the second Logos?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Now, you see this question, if you only look back over the
transactions, has been answered more than once. Darkness as a general rule
refers only to the unknown totality, the absoluteness. It is al a question of
analogy and comparisons. Contrasted with eternal darkness, the first Logos is
light certainly; contrasted with the second, or manifested, Logos, the first is
darkness and the second is light. Al depends upon where you locate that or
another power, on what plane and so on. Now, is this clear?

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, and I am very glad the question has been asked
because it has brought a general explanation.

Mme. Blavatsky: If I were to answer from every standpoint, it would not be two
but twenty-two volumes. How is it possible to answer more than in general
terms?

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 4. The phrase is: “Darkness radiates light” and
light, drops one solitary ray into the waters.” Why is light represented as
dropping one ray? How is this one ray represented in connection with the
triangle?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because howsoever many powers may appear to us on this
plane, brought back to their first, original principles they wil al be resolved into
unity. We say seven prismatic colors, don’t we, but they proceed al from the
one white ray and they wil be drawn back into this ray, and it is this one solitary
ray which expands into

195. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

the seven rays on the plane of il usion. It is represented in connection with the
triangle, because the triangle is the first geometrical figure on the third
dimentional plane; and we cannot come and give figures which can only be
represented on planes of which we have no conception or idea. Therefore we
are obliged to take that which has a certain aspect on this plane. It is stated in

Pythagoras, as also in the oldest stanzas, that the ray which Pythagoras cal ed
the Monad descended from no place, a-loka, like a fal ing star through the
planes of non-being into the first world of being and gave birth to number 1.

Then descending to the right fol owing an oblique direction, it gives birth to
number 2. Then, turning at a right angle, it begets number 3, and from thence
re-ascends at an oblique angle (do I make use of the right expression?) to
number 1 back again; from whence it disappears once more into the realm of
non-being. These are the words, I do not no how to translate better—that is to
say, it starts, it shoots, then having passed through innumerable worlds of non-
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being and formless worlds, where no form can exist, it proceeds and creates
the point first. Then it proceeds to the right in an oblique direction and creates
number 2. And having created number 2 it returns and creates number 3,
thence returns to number 1, and from this it disappears into non-being again.

Mr. B. Keightley: Where does the right angle occur?

The President: Is there a right angle? It is a equilateral triangle.

Mr. Kingsland: It is an acute angle.

Mme. Blavatsky: What do you cal , if you please, a horizontal like that (drawing
with pencil on a sheet) when it arrives here (indicating), is it not a right angle? I
meant that obliquely. I had in my mind a different thing.

Mr. Gardner: It would be 450.

Mme. Blavatsky: (Describes the angle meant with a pencil on paper.)

Mr. B. Keightley: The point real y to get at is this; in the conception of it, are
the sides of the triangle imagined as being equal, so that it

196. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

is a perfectly symmetrical triangle?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is a triangle just as Pythagoras gives it.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is rather an important point, because you know that the right
angled triangle is a very important geometrical science, and Pythagoras was
the discoverer of that very wonderful proposition.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of the hypotenuse, but that is not this. Then we wil please
put horizontal instead of right.

Mr. Hall: But horizontal what? You cannot have an imaginary horizontal.

Mme. Blavatsky: In this I cannot fol ow you. I am no pundit in geometry,
mathematics, or anything like that.

Mr. Kingsland: It is a line at right angles to the radius, starting from the point.

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Mr. Hall: Is it an equilateral triangle?

Mr. Kingsland: Yes.

Mr. B. Keightley: The moment you think of a point and the line descending
from it, you have an imaginary horizontal right angle to the first line.

Mr. Hall: Then this ray first of al descends.

Mr. B. Keightley: Not vertical y.

Mme. Blavatsky: First of al it descends vertical y. It shoots like a fal ing star,
as is said, and then it goes in the oblique direction; and then it goes in the
horizontal direction, and then it returns like that, obliquely, as he says, and rises
again.

Mr. Hall: I understand that.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is just what Pythagoras gives in the old books,

197. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

for Pythagoras studied in India and he was cal ed the Yavanâchârya.1 Al the
books are ful of the traditions of the Greek teacher, because he was a teacher
in many things for them also and he learned with the Brahmins, with the
initiated, and he taught the uninitiated a good deal. Everyone says it was

Pythagoras. Many traditions speak of him as going again into the country and
the west and teaching this, that, and the other. I have been reading many
things. He is cal ed the Yavanâchârya, the Greek teacher.

Mr. Kingsland: Do you say when this one ray forms a triangle that it has begun
to differentiate?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. The triangle is the first differentiation of the
one ray. Certainly, it is always the same ray, and from this ray come the seven
rays; and the seven may be as the one that started from the unknown to the
known, and then produced the triangle.

Mr. Kingsland: After it has got to the apex and formed a triangle, do you say it
has begun to differentiate?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Then it begins to differentiate.

Mr. Kingsland: Then the solitary here is simply equivalent to the point.

Mr. Hall: I want to put one question. You say: “al the planes of non-being”;
how can there be planes of non-being?

Mme. Blavatsky: There are, but it is too long to explain it now. There are
planes of non-being. I understand your objection perfectly, but it is so.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then again in a sense there is something (of course in a
sense course quite in a different sense from the way we use the word here),
something you can cal differentiated, though not as we know the term.

1 [Sanskrit: “The Greek Teacher.]

198. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I understand that is the whole question. It is not

“differentiated” but there are planes. To us the lowest appear differentiated,
but there, it is just that which is non-being to us, which is being and matter to
others. It is al analogies. We cannot come and reach with our finite intel ect
that which is pure, undifferentiated first principle. It is perfectly impossible, not
only on this plane, but on the 77th plane.

Mr. Hall: Then you can say in an instance of this kind, you never can reach any
plane where there would not be a higher.

Mme. Blavatsky: I can assure you, you won’t. You must get disembodied first,
and then you must again be embodied 77 mil ion times. I would like to know,
how can something finite understand that which is infinite? It is al human
speculation, my dear sir, let there be the highest intel ect in the world, the
highest initiated adept. It is as Masters said: that the highest Dhyâni-Chohans
of the solar system can have no conception of what is in the higher systems—
in those stil higher than our solar system. It is a perfect impossibility, because,
however high they may be (we may cal them personal gods and far more than
personal gods), stil they are finite. They are not the unity—the Absolute. And
the time wil come when they have to dissolve, in whatever manner they may
do so, whether cremated or buried, I don’t know, but there wil be a time when
the end comes for them.

Mr. Hall: Then is there a finite point you might cal , in a sense, the absolute
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finite point of the journey of al ?

Mr. B. Keightley: Final point? You see, you cannot bring in any way whatever
the Absolute in connection with the finite.

Mme. Blavatsky: It makes me despair that most of them must go beyond,
they must touch, they must hear, they must sense, and in a way conceive it with
one of their five physical senses otherwise very few wil understand. It is, my
dear sir, the effect of your education from your childhood. Al of you are
brought up in a kind of material atmosphere, and you must have everything put
before you so that

199. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

it speaks to one of your senses, otherwise you cannot understand it. Even the

God you believe in, you make something finite, you make him feel anger, you
make him feel goodness, you make him smel sweet, and you make this, that,
and the other of him and al kinds of things, just as though this God was a
gigantic man and nothing more.

Mr. Hall: I mean this: when at the end of the Manvantara for the whole
universe, so to speak, when everything gets reabsorbed into the Absolute,
then when Maha-Pralaya is over, and a fresh Maha-Manvantara begins, might
you not say in a sense there was, if I may use the term, a special point?

Mme. Blavatsky: But al this depends on which Maha-Pralaya you speak of. Is
it that which refers to this little speck of dirt which we cal our planetary chain, or
is it the Maha-Pralaya of the whole universe?

Mr. Hall: Of the whole universe.

Mme. Blavatsky: What do we know of it? Why, in comparison with the Hindus,
nothing. They just put fifteen zeros to show it.

Mr. B. Keightley: How can you answer the question? How can you ask it?

Mr. Kingsland: Have you read this last pamphlet on Parabrahman? 2

Mr. Hall: No.

Mr. Kingsland: You would not ask it if you had. Read that and then you have
the question answered. It is al there.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, it is al there.

Mme. Blavatsky: Let us hold to that which we can conceive. Don’t let us go
beyond the limits, not only of the universe, but the Kosmos;

2 [ Parabrahm by Amaravella (Edouard Coulomb), translated from Le Lotus by G.R.S. Mead. London:

Theosophical Publishing Society 1889, vol. l, no. 18 of Theosophical Siftings.]

200. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

and let us hold to our solar system. And that is more than we can understand
or conceive of in al our lives. As everything is “as below, so above,” and as
this is the first axiom in the occult sciences, therefore you can draw your
analogies as much as the power of every man wil al ow him. That is al the
advise I can give you. Some may go far beyond this, others cannot go as far
as that. Everyone can conceive, but let us hold to this solar system, and it wil
be enough for the time being. Otherwise we wil go wool-gathering, and
nothing wil come out of it.

Mr. Kingsland: After this last pamphlet, I real y think we ought to draw a line at
this particular subject.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because the first thing wil be that some of you gentlemen
wil have brain fever, and then I shal have the misery of seeing some of you
shut up in a lunatic asylum. I can assure you it is so, and this thing can happen.

Mr. B. Keightley: I wil give Hal a prescription. If he wants to understand the
meaning of his own question, I wil ask him to sit down for half an hour and
write the figure one, and then go on for half an hour making zeroes after it.

When he has done that I wil ask him to state in words the figures he has
written down, and when he has done it, I wil tel him that is the first and second

Manvantara he is talking about.

Mr. Hall: But in theory would not there be—

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, theory! There you are.

The President: Take analogies not theory.

Mr. B. Keightley: Śloka (reads from The Secret Doctrine). Question 5: “Is the

‘Radiant Essence’ the same as the Luminous Egg? What is the root that grows
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in the Ocean of Life”?

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, this is again the same thing. You don’t make the
slightest al owance for the metaphorical mode of expression. You are al the
same, if you please. There must be a certain solidarity.

201. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

What one says, another wil say. I don’t make any distinction whatever there, so
you are answerable one for the other. Of course the Radiant Essence is the
same as the radiant or Golden Egg of Brahmâ. “The Root that grows in the

Ocean of Life” is the potentiality that transforms into objective differentiation,
like the universal, subjective, ubiquitous, undifferentiated germ, or the eternal
potency of abstract nature. Now, is it so? Is it plain? And the “Ocean of Life”

is the “One Life,” “Paramâtma” when the transcendental supreme and
secondless soul is meant. “Jîvâtman” when we speek of the physical and
animal or rather, differentiation of Nature’s soul—expressions al found in the

Vedântin philosophy. Now try to remember that Jîvâtman and Paramâtma are
the same identical y. And even the soul of man and of an animal, a Nefesh, is
just the same; but there is a distinction. One is the supreme subjective soul of
the secondless, and the other is already in the manifested universe. Jîvâtman
is that so to say that gives being to the atom, and the molecule, and the man,
and everything in creation—plant, mineral, and so on.

The President: And the other is the potentiality; potency, and potentiality
express the difference.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then you say in the commentary, speaking about the Radiant

Essence: “from an astronomical point of view,” etc. (reads from The Secret

Doctrine page 67, b.) Question 6. “Is the Radiant Essence, Milky Way, or

World-Stuff, resolvable into stars or atoms, or is it non-atomic?”

Mme. Blavatsky: In its precosmic state, of course, the Radiant Essence is
non-atomic, if by atoms you mean molecules or compound units. For where
have you seen a real atom that you could show me? An atom is simply a
mathematical point with regard to matter. It is what we cal in occultism a
mathematical point.

Mr. B. Keightley: It has position, it has location.

Mme. Blavatsky: It has location, certainly, but not a location as you understand
it, because a real atom cannot be on this plane.

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202. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: That I understand.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then how can you ask? Just when you go on to this plane,
you must go outside time and space.

Mr. Kingsland: An atom cannot, but a molecule can.

Mme. Blavatsky: What do you chemists cal an atom?

Mr. Kingsland: This ought to be “resolvable into stars or molecules” not “into
atoms.” Now if you read it in that sense it wil be al right.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then, “is it resolvable into stars or molecules, or is it non-
molecular?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, because this world stuff from one plane to
another goes and forms everything that you see, al the stars and al the
worlds, and so on.

Mr. Kingsland: Then when may it be said, to be sufficiently differentiated to
become molecular?

Mme. Blavatsky: Molecular, as you cal it, is only simply on this our globe. It is
not even on the other globes of our planetary chain, it does not exist in the
same way. The others are already on another plane.

Mr. Kingsland: Is not the ether, for instance, molecular?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know. It may be molecular; yes, in its lower or lowest
strata, then it may be. But the ether of science, that science suspects, is the
grossest manifestation of Âkâsa. When it penetrates something, or forms
something, it may be molecular, because it takes on the shape of it. Now,
remember that ether is in every blessed thing that you can think of; there is not
a thing in the universe where ether is not. Therefore we say it takes a shape,
but not out side of the gross matter, which is also that ether, only crystal ized.

What are we, what is matter, but crystal ized ether? This is what matter is.

Mr. Kingsland: Then the ether is on its way to a lower differentiation,

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203. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

on its way from Âkâsa, and it wil become ether in this manvantara or a future

Manvantara—what we now know as the physical atoms.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly that is so, but not in this Manvantara.

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t know if I am right, but the difference as I understand it
between atom and molecule, strictly speaking, is this: that a molecule must be
composed of several atoms. The idea that it conveys to one is that.

The President: It need not, there are also non-atomic molecules.

Mr. Kingsland: That is only a chemical term.

Mr. B. Keightley: And an atom is only one.

Mme. Blavatsky: May I tel you a thing and try to impress it upon you? You
take a molecule, and fancy to yourselves that this molecule is an independent
being per se. The seventh principle of every molecule wil be the atom of
which you speak. But you cannot catch it in your scales or your retorts or your
chemical combinations. Now do you understand what we mean by atom? The
atom is the seventh principle of every molecule, the [finest], the smal est that
you can find in this world. Why, what is one of the names of Brahmâ? It is

“atom”. He is cal ed atom, and at the same time that he is an atom, he is the
whole.

Mr. Gardner: Is it Âtma?

Mr. Kingsland: Now you are saying it in a purely metaphysical sense. It is very
important it should be distinguished from the way in which chemists use it.

Mme. Blavatsky: But you are al taking your ideas and the correctness of your
language from how the chemists use it. I am the biggest ignoramus in the
world in regard to chemistry. Why should I go and stuff my head with the
speculations of today, when tomorrow I may have to throw them off, and take
up some other speculations?

204. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

You have [not] come to that point that there is one single thing you can feel
perfectly sure of, that it is there, and that the truth wil remain. It is an axiom that
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the truth, or the axiom of today, is the error of tomorrow.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think it would be a good thing if you can give us—not from
our standpoint, but from the occult standpoint—the definition of atom and
molecule, simply that we may understand.

Mme. Blavatsky: Look here, to do such a thing as that you have to make a
glossary and dictionary of occult terms. For instance, such a glossary as we
have now, trying to give some correct conception of words which the

Orientalists use without knowing what they mean; and therefore enlarge the
ideas, giving them more definitions more meanings, and trying to do
something for the better and clearer comprehension of the people. But, if we
began now to use the terms from the occult standpoint, none of you would not
understand a word, because you have not got a conception of the thing itself.

You have to study the science and just penetrate yourself with al these things
that do real y exist on the occult side of Nature, before you can understand
those terms. What is the use? Now give one question please, and let me try to
see if I can answer you, so that I may see whether you understand it or not.

What is it that you want?

Mr. B. Keightley: We want to know about this atom.

Mme. Blavatsky: I am quite ready.

Mr. Kingsland: If the atom is such an abstract metaphysical conception of a
single metaphysical point, how is it that we can speak of molecules as being
composed of atoms?

Mme. Blavatsky: I never said that. A molecule, one of these that you speak of,
is composed of an enormous quantity of other molecules that you cannot see,
and each one is composed of as great a number again and the atom is—that
which you cal atom, I don’t know in what sense, is some fiction of your
imagination. But what we cal an atom is simply the seventh principle of the
molecule, as of

205. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

everything, else—of the smal est molecule you can find.

Mr. Kingsland: On this plane, take one of the metals. Take iron. There is such
a thing as the smal est molecule of iron, that is to say, a thing which cannot be
divided without losing its molecular properties.

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Mme. Blavatsky: What does it become, and why do you cal iron an element?

Why do you cheat the public and cal it an element?

Mr. Kingsland: What does it become?

Mme. Blavatsky: If it loses its molecular property and becomes something
else, what is that something else?

Mr. Kingsland: I suppose—

Mme. Blavatsky: But science must not suppose. I ask science.

Mr. Kingsland: No, no, we are talking occultly, we are trying to get at what
occultism teaches.

Mme. Blavatsky: When it becomes non-molecular, it becomes resolved into
one of its principles, of which you know nothing. There is not the smal est
speck in this world, which has not got its seven principles. Mind you, what for
us is the smal est atom on the plane of reality is something very objective
indeed.

Mr. B. Keightley: You see, the scientific idea of atom or molecule, particularly
of a molecule (because the idea of atom is very vague), has not got anything
to do with bulk, whether it is visible under a microscope or not. Their definition
is this; if you break up a molecule of iron, it wil no longer show the properties
on the physical plane that we know have characterized it. It enters a certain
chemical combination in a particular way.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certain, certain and certain, that is al .

The President: Because they do not know.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then why should they go and dogmatize. We say

206. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

it is the principles; let us say the astral body.

Mr. B. Keightley: I am not speaking of what happens beyond.

Mme. Blavatsky: The chemists wil not see the astral body of that which is not
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molecular.

Mr. B. Keightley: The chemical idea of the thing is entirely—and we
understand it to be entirely—limited to this point. And they do not know what
happens to the thing afterwards, and that is what I am trying to get some idea
of, what occultism says about it, because there science simply folds her hands
and says, “I don’t know.”

The President: Isn’t it just as much of a death of the molecule of iron as the
losing of the physical body is cal ed death on the physical plane? The
remaining principles being there al the same, but minus the body. So the
molecule is the earthly principle.

Mr. B. Keightley: Iron is not itself properly and occultly an element at al . It
does not deserve the name.

The President: It is an element in one sense. It is not an element in the sense
in which we speak of the four or seven elements. It is an element in the sense
in which Crookes uses it. It is an element in the scientific sense—formed in the
protyle or the undifferentiated matter. In that sense it is an element because it
has certain definite properties.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the elemental principle; therefore it is that they do not go
beyond that. If you told me at once that they analyze or break up any molecule
of iron and that it becomes two other things, that you could cal elements. I
would say: very wel then, we have only to give a name, and then you wil have
something to speak about. But if they come and tel me it becomes nothing,
why, go to bed!

Mr. B. Keightley: So far, science has not succeeded in breaking up the
molecule of iron.

207. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Then if it has not succeeded, why then does it speak about
it? They don’t do so, and they speak of what could be done.

Mr. B. Keightley: Crookes says there is a probability that some day or another
they wil succeed.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then we wil talk of it. So far they have not done it, and why
should we talk about it?

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Mr. Kingsland: Occultism says it is possible to do it; we want to know what wil
become of it when it is done?

Mme. Blavatsky: It won’t be one principle; it wil be several principles. It
passes from the plane of objectivity to the plane of subjectivity.

The President: The molecule is the final production in the differentiation of
matter, and if you can destroy that said molecule, in the sense in which the
scientists would use that phrase, you are simply going back into the
undifferentiation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Take the smal est grain of sand and try to break it up and
see what it is. You cannot get at the origin of things on this plane, and Crookes
wil be looking for it for 30,000 years, and he won’t be able to find anything, for
it is impossible to see anything of the kind on this plane.

The President: It can’t be done on this plane. You must be on another plane
before you can do it. What Crookes has done with certain other metals is a
very different thing. He has simply found there that people have been mistaken
in thinking they were homogeneous.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, no! His theory—whether it is true or not I have no means
of judging—goes a great deal further than that. He says that what are cal ed
elements—iron and so on, oxygen, hydrogen and so on—are, if I may use the
phrase, points of stable equilibrium in the differentiation of protyle. He gives
that curved picture, and he

208. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

shows how al these elements representing different stages of more or less
stable equilibrium succeeding each other in density or in some property come
one after the other. Then the question is, what idea is it proper to attach to
these points, which go at present in chemistry by the name of elements,
looking at them in Crookes’ sense? That is to say they are not elemental
bodies, but they represent these points of stable equilibrium, certain stages in
the evolution of matter on this plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: I am not able to coin a word.

The President: You said something to us about the three first gases the other
day, some little time ago, which may bear upon it. There is something in The
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Secret Doctrine about it.

Mr. B. Keightley: We want to agree upon some word we can apply to these
things that at present are cal ed elements.

Mme. Blavatsky: Shal we cal it Anu? That means atom, but it is the name of

Brahmâ.

Mr. B. Keightley: What I want is to name these bodies, which exist on this
physical plane which possess these characteristics.

The President: If we say chemical elements, that answers the purpose.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think so; what name can we give? People wil say we have
a jumble.

The President: If we say chemical elements, we know perfectly wel we don’t
mean fire, water, earth and air.

Mr. B. Keightley: As long as it is said that the term chemical elements is not
used with any idea that they are elemental bodies, but simply these stages of
evolution, according to Crookes’ view. We can adopt that phrase.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are the false noses of the molecule.

209. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: That is rather a idea that.

The President: You could not exactly cal them the false noses of the
elements.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , it is not a mask, it is a false nose.

Mr. B. Keightley: The whole position is we don’t know what they are.

Mr. Hall: They are considered apparent, anyway, by chemists.

The President: I think the phrase best for them is, “chemical elements.”

Mr. B. Keightley: Have you got any more about the radiant essence, or did you
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read it al ?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, I read it al . It is number 7 already we are at.

Mr. B. Keightley: You refer here, speaking about the World-stuff and the
primordial matter, to the Hindu al egory of the “Churning of the Ocean of

Space.” Question 7. Can you give us an idea of how the analogies of “churning
the ocean,” “the cow of plenty,” and “the war in heaven” are related to each
other and to the cosmogonic process?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now fancy only this: I have got to give a thing which begins at
non-being and ends at the end of the Maha-Pralaya, and I have got to give it in
one of the séances at the Blavatsky Lodge in five minutes. How is it possible
to put such a question as that? If you gave me one-twentieth part of the first
question I am able to do it. In the first place do you know what the “ churning of
the ocean” means with the Hindus?

Mr. B. Keightley: I know the story, the al egory.

Mme. Blavatsky: But what does it mean in reality? It simply means an
al egorical representation of the unseen and the unknown primeval
intel igences, the atoms of our occult science, fashioning

210. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

and differentiating the shoreless ocean of the radiant essense. It means that it
is the atoms which are churning the ocean, and that they are differentiating the
matter. It is simply an al egorical representation.

Mr. B. Keightley: It refers also to a process you mention later on, of the
vortical movements.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly; but this is one of the details. I speak of the
general aspect of the thing. This is an al egorical representation of that period.

Now to give the analogies between the “churning” and “war in heaven” is rather
difficult. This war began at the first vibration of the manvantaric dawn and wil
end at the blast of the last trumpet. That is to say “the war in heaven” is going
on eternal y. Theologians may have taken one period and made of it al kinds
of things, e.g., the fal of man— the picture that is given in the Revelation,
which has entirely another meaning in reality—but this war in heaven is going
on eternal y.

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The President: As long as there is differentiation, there must be war.

Mme. Blavatsky: You cannot say otherwise. It is just as light and darkness
fighting and trying each to over come the other. Differentiation means contrast
and contrasts wil always be fighting.

The President: But there are various stages of the war in heaven referred to
under different names.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. There is the astronomical and the physical, and the
war in heaven, when the first manvantara begins in general; then for everyone every time
there is a war in heaven. There is a war in heaven of the fourteen Manus who are
supposed to be the presiding geni of our Manvantaric plane, the Seed Manus and the

Root Manus. The war in heaven means there is a struggle and an adjustment, because
everything tends to harmonize and equilibrate; everything must equilibrate before it can
assume any kind of shape. The elements of which each one of us is composed are
always fighting one crowding out the other; and we change every moment, just as some
of your men of science say. Or as one says when he is sick:

211. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

“I am not anymore the man I was; I am quite a different man.” It is quite true.

We change every seven years of our lives, sometimes becoming worse than
we were before.

The President: Then there does not real y seem to be much analogy between
that churning and the other, because that is a special process.

Mme. Blavatsky: It refers to the churning by the Gods, when the Nâgas came
and some of them stole of the Amrita, and there was war between Gods and

Asuras, and the Gods were worsted. This refers to the first portion, to the
extension of the universe and the differentiation of primordial, primeval matter.

Mr. Hall: Even literal y, “churning” means differentiation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, my dear Hal , you are a pundit! But churning means also
something else. There are seven symbolical meanings to everything, not one.

This is only cosmogonical y speaking. That is what it refers to, but there are
others, too. You can remember in Revelation that there is a thing in the twelfth
or the eighth chapter when the woman comes.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, and Saint Michael and the dragon.

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Mme. Blavatsky: This I do not want to deal with now. Ask as many questions
as you like.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 8. In what sense can numbers be cal ed entities?

Mme. Blavatsky: When there is no intel igence, when they are meant for
digits, then certainly they are nothing but symbols, signs to express an idea.

They must be intel igent entities. Then what is your idea of asking this? What
did you think about it?

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t know who put the question, real y.

Mme. Blavatsky: Whose question was that?

Mr. Coulomb: Mine. I wanted to know what was the meaning of numbers.

212. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Why don’t you look at the fingers of your hand? You would
see that you had five on one hand and five on the other.

Mr. Coulomb: But they are not intel igent. (Laughter)

Mme. Blavatsky: You do lose your time in making useless questions.

Mr. B. Keightley: Those are al the written questions.

Mr. Hall: I should like to know how you vivify numbers.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not vivify them at al . That is how I vivify them.

Mr. Hall: How do you attract the intel igence into them?

Mme. Blavatsky: Ask another time, early in the morning. No doubt there are
many things you would like to know.

Mr. Hall: That can be done.

Mme. Blavatsky: How they do like to ask questions that are positively—wel ,
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they begin nowhere and end nowhere!

The President: I fancy Mr. Hal wants to know wherein lies the occult value of
numbers.

Mme. Blavatsky: Have patience, and you may learn it.

Mr. Hall: I did not ask so much as that.

The President: But you express your question in that direction. That is a very
interesting question.

Mme. Blavatsky: You had better go and begin by the A.B.C. of the question,
and just ask the first questions, and I wil answer. Don’t come and ask me right
in the middle of a thing. You must ask me in order, and I am perfectly ready to
answer you.

The President: Are al numbers that we have or can get al to be

213. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

reduced to their various relations to the first seven rays? They al do fit in, don’t
they, in some way.

Mme. Blavatsky: Al , yes, al ; because the seven are seven principles, but the
first one counts for ten. So it is with the Sephirot; if you take the seven lower

Sephirot and the three higher, it makes ten. That is the the perfect number.

The President: So that al those combinations, al possible combinations, wil
belong to one or other of the rays.

Mme. Blavatsky: Surely. The white ray, and then after that, its gradations
come and form the first one. You take the prism; in what order do you have the
colors, do you remember? The colors are given. So it begins and you can see
how it is.

Mr. Kingsland: Why is the radiant essence here spoken of as seven inside
and seven outside?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because it has seven principles on the plane of
manifestation and seven principles on the plane of non-manifestation. Can I
say to you anything better? What cross-examiners you are.

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Mr. Kingsland: Not cross!

Mme. Blavatsky: No, cross-examiners.

Mr. B. Keightley: There you get back to the planes of non-being.

Mme. Blavatsky: I can assure you if you only took the trouble to read the
things and immediately form a conception in your head, it would bring you to
the correspondences and analogies, and you would understand it without
putting any of these questions. Because, as I say, it is an axiom and a rule you
must not depart from: as below so it is above, as above so it is below. Only put
it on another plane and it comes to the same thing.

Mr. B. Keightley: To my mind this idea has become absolutely plain, that what
we refer to as non-being and non-manifestation is to be understood as only
referring to our intel igence and our

214. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

intel ect and to us. It is very evident you cannot speak of and you don’t refer in

The Secret Doctrine to absolute non-being and absolute non-manifestation at
al .

Mme. Blavatsky: I refer to absolute non-being from the standpoint of our finite
and relative intel ects. This is what I do. But not at al what it would be, because
that which is for us absoluteness, perhaps if you go on the plane higher, it wil
be something relative for those on the plane above.

Mr. B. Keightley: And if you go more above, it wil become something more
relative. In fact, with our intel ects we are in too great a hurry to get to the

Absolute and so draw a line.

Mme. Blavatsky: You are al in too much of a hurry, and if you go on splitting
hairs your brains wil become like a homogeneous jel y. It is a very dangerous
thing, this. Try to go one after the other and not miss any of the rungs of the
ladder, or else it wil lead you into some very extraordinary places.

Mr. Kingsland: I was wondering how far that would apply to the molecules that
we were just discussing.

Mme. Blavatsky: It applies to the molecules just the same. The lowest one wil
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apply to that plane where the molecules are seen and tested by your chemists.

Mr. Kingsland: But the seven outside would not refer only to this plane of
matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: It does, and the seven inside. Those that are beyond are
beyond. We might just as wel say 49, or multiply the seven ad infinitum. It is
simply said to cover the ground. And so there are seven outside and seven
inside—seven outside, that is to say, those that go down below; and seven
inside, those we are not concerned with, because we would not understand
much, because we do not know anything about them. But it does not at al limit
the thing to fourteen. (after a pause) Wel , everyone waits and nobody speaks.

215. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mr. Johnston: I did not clearly understand what was meant by the war in
heaven. Can there be something in a place of bliss which can amount to war?

Mme. Blavatsky: War in heaven means simply in space. If you talk of heaven
from the Christians standpoint, of course, it wil be heaven and the golden
harp.

The President: Or if you take it even the Latin caelum.

Mr. Hall: Or take the original vehicle—it means space.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is only in England, particularly in the churches, that the idea
of heaven as a place of bliss exists. The word itself has no such meaning
attached to it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why, the Most High in heaven means simply the sun. It has
meant it before Christianity, and it meant it after Christianity. For four or five
certuries they had no higher idea of God, I can assure you, than the sun. Let
them come and say now that it was a symbol and a visible sign and so on. I
say that they had no higher conception. I do not mean the initiates, I mean the
people—the hoi pol oi—the masses. There is no fitter symbol in the world than
the sun; the sun gives life and radiance and everything, light and being and
health, and it is the Most High in heaven.

Mr. Johnston: I thought it referred to the Christian conception.

Mme. Blavatsky: After that the sky, which is the Dyaus, the Sanskrit Dyaus,
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became the God, and this God was as the Lawgiver. Son and the sun in the
heavens became the Father in heaven, while “Heaven” became the abode of
the Father, and he was humanized or anthropomorphized.

Mr. Johnston: I see now in what sense it is used.

Mr. B. Keightley: You wil find out al about the war in heaven in The Secret

Doctrine, second volume.

Mme. Blavatsky: You wil see what it is, because it has great reference

216. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

to the evolution of mankind, of the intel igence of mankind, when man sprang
from the animal—not from an animal, I mean not from one of the Darwinian
ape-ancestors, but simply from an instinctive mass of matter—and when he
became endowed with intel ect. Then you wil see the meaning of the war in
heaven, when it is said that the angels fought, or in other words, they
incarnated in humanity.

The President: Now you have a special aspect of it, one of many.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, the metaphysical aspect, one of the seven. There is the
astronomical aspect and al kinds of aspects. Why is it if you please, that they
give in the churches bread and wine? Why is it that you have the Communion
of bread and wine? Simply because it was an offering to the sun and to the
earth. The earth was supposed to be, metaphorical y speaking, the Bride or
the wife of the sun and the sun fecundated the earth, and there was the wine
and the bread. It is one of the oldest pagan ceremonials and festivals, which
came to be adopted by the theologians in the church. It was a purely pagan
festival. It was in one place cal ed the mysteries of Proserpine, and in another
place cal ed by another name and so on. And then it came and landed in the
church, and became a sacrament. There is the sun, there is the earth, there is
humanity—the humanity which is not sun but son, which is the third. And there
they made al these ceremonials and these mysteries. I am going to give in

Lucifer the roots of ritualism and modern masonry, on church ritualism and
modern masonry, and you wil read it al in the next Lucifer. I begin a series of
articles.

Mr. Gardner: Do you mean the sun represented it?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, I don’t mean that at al . The sun represented the father
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and the moon the mother. And after that humanity represented the Son and the
wine and the bread were productions of the earth and were made sacred, if
you please, in those solar ceremonies. They were offered to al the solar
gods, to Bacchus, to Apol o and to everyone; “this is my flesh and this is my
blood”, and so it is. Perhaps I hurt the feelings of some Christians here.

217. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Which of you is a Christian? I think you are al blue infidels, as far as I can see,
and nobody is hurt much. Speak, any of you who feel hurt in their Christian
feelings.

Mr. Hall: No, there is no Peter here.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because you ask me and I am obliged to tel you what I
know. If there was a clergyman, here perhaps I would abstain. No, I don’t think

I would, because he has no business to come here if he does not want to hear
things not to his advantage.

Mr. Gardner: There is a question I should like to ask you. You referred to it in
the second volume of The Secret Doctrine on the Pyramids.

Mme. Blavatsky: The pyramid then has something to do with the Son.

Mr. Gardner: You say man is represented by 113, numerical value. Do you
mean that is the Hebrew of the word man?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, in the Kabbalah, it is. It is Kabbalistical y the value of the

Hebrew characters.

Mr. B. Keightley: According to Mr. Ralston Skinner.

The President: But 113 adds up to five; and the five pointed star represents
man always.

Mme. Blavatsky: It represents man by the letters, because the Hebrew word
means man; if you take every letter and if you take the corresponding number
and if you put these numbers together, it gives you 113.

Mr. Gardner: The numerical value of the Hebrew letters.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, of the Hebrew letters. It does not mean at al the
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Sanskrit letters. I never said it did. Every system has got its own calculation. In

Hebrew it is quite a different thing, If you take al the signs of the Zodiac and if
you put them together and sum up

218. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

the numbers, every sign of the Zodiac wil give you a name of the twelve sons
of Jacob.

Mr. Gardner: It is man in Hebrew. It is not man in English.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, but the English language has not invented the language
of the Kabbalah. It takes the property of other persons and then sets itself up
as very high.

Mr. Gardner: And then I fancy there is a misprint here. You say 113 over 2. It
has got 133 over 2.3

Mme. Blavatsky: Maybe there is a misprint. I am not answerable for that.

Mr. Keightley: I think it is in a quotation from Ralston Skinner.

Mme. Blavatsky: Ralston Skinner is a Mason and an extraordinary Kabbalist.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is a mistake reproduced from a mistake of his.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just as I have taken it, so it is. If I had paid attention to it, I
would not have done it.

Mr. Gardner: Then you take from the top of the great step to the ceiling {of the

Great Pyramid}.

Mme. Blavatsky: These you can al find from Smyth.4 Ralston Skinner has
elaborated it, but yet Ralston Skinner is perfectly mistaken in this, because he
speaks of things as though real y such a thing as the temple of Solomon ever
existed, or the ark of Noah, and so on. Why, it never existed in those
measurements.

Mr. Gardner: And that coffer in the King’s Chamber has never been removed.

Mme. Blavatsky: I saw it there a few years ago. It is one with the floor as far
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as I could see. I am not sure, though.

3 [ The Secret Doctrine 2:466]

4 [Charles Piazzi Smyth, 1819-1900, Astronomer Royal of Scotland.]

219. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Mr. Gardner: And do you know whether that is anything occult, that niche in the

Queen’s Chamber?

Mme. Blavatsky: Everything has got its significance and everything relates to
mysteries, to the mysteries of initiation. It was the great temple of the official
initiation.

Mr. B. Keightley: Smyth’s opinions are completely knocked on the head. They
are not correct because of Petrie,5 who was rather a pyramidalist before he
went out there, spent months most careful y verifying al Piazzi Smyth’s
measures, and he knocked them on the head by proving al the measurements
are wrong.

Mme. Blavatsky: But Ralston Skinner does not take Smyth, and I have taken
him out of it. For the last three years I have been in correspondence with him,
and I said take care. It is so and so. I gave him the correspondences as it was
in the Chaldean and as it was real y in the Indian teaching, and he took my
suggestions and he found three or four mistakes. And I have got any quantity
of his manuscripts in which he gives his ideas; but he is not sure of his facts,
and he is carried on by an idea. Now he has changed his ideas in the new
book that he wants me to write an introductory chapter to.

Mr. B. Keightley: You see, al these fel ows are very apt to get crazy after a
fixed idea.

Mme. Blavatsky: You cannot learn anything unless you are perfectly impartial
and have not got a hobby. Otherwise you are sure to get mixed up and you wil
come and not bring your speculations to fit your facts but your facts to fit your
speculations.

Mr. Gardner: Isn’t it true that some of these men were seeking to find out other
chambers in it, and one of them held up a light in such a position that no
breeze from outside could touch it, and yet the candle fickered and he came to
the conclusion that there must be other chambers. And shortly afterwards a
message came from the
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5 [William Flinders Petrie, English Egyptologist, 1853-1942.]

220. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

Khedive6 to tel him to discontinue his researches.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Khedive is a donkey in these sciences; he is not even a

Mason. He is a very nice young man.

Mr. Gardner: He might have the idea of doing so.

Mme. Blavatsky: The idea of what?

Mr. Gardner: These ideas coming at the right moment.

Mme. Blavatsky: I knew him when he ran about without trousers, a child of five
years. I know him perfectly wel . He was a very nice child, and he is become a
very nice young man. But I can assure you he has nothing mystical in him.

Mr. Hall: I think Mr. Gardner means he might have been put up to do it by
somebody.

Mme. Blavatsky: His father, yes. His father with al his great vices, with al his
immorality, Ismail Pasha,7 was a man who had a streak of mysticism in him. He
always had the Bedouins with him and the monks, and he knew some men who
were extremely learned. But this one knows nothing; he was brought up by

English and French nurses in the harem of his several mothers.

Mr. Kingsland: And he is not even a Mason.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is an interesting question to know this, whether these
secret places, these chambers, do exist underneath the Pyramids.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly they do.

Mr. B. Keightley: They must be protected in some way.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are protected in al kinds of ways. They are protected
by the greediness of the Arabs and they are protected in many, many ways.

And the thing is that unless they go and turn off

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6 [Title of the ruler of Egypt, meant here for Tewfk Pasha, 1852 -1892.]

7 [1830-1895, deposed in favor of his son in 1879.]

221. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

the Nile at a certain spot, they wil never get to them. They have to turn off the

Nile and get to the iron door that exits to the present day, and has not been
opened for two thousand years. There is a Mason that knew it, a Mason named

[text left blank], who was a Venerable of the Lodge.

Mr. Gardner: At the Cairo Lodge.

Mme. Blavatsky: One of your Lodges, your real true blue Masonic Lodges.

Mr. Hall: How could an iron door last 2,000 years?

Mme. Blavatsky: Why could not an iron door last not only 2,000 years, but

20,000 years?

Mr. Gardner: Would not it rust?

Mme. Blavatsky: It would not rust. Perhaps there are several incredulous; I say
it exists.

Mr. B. Keightley: His point is any iron door however thick would {have} rusted
through in a thousand years.

Mme. Blavatsky: It would not be destroyed.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, eaten through, perfectly porous.

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear sir, I tel you it is protected. It is not a door of such
iron as you would take from a smith. Just as they do with their mummies, if
mummies have lasted, then I suppose an iron door could.

Mr. B. Keightley: What is interesting is that the others are so infernal y greedy;
if they knew anything about it they would go for the things that are there.

Mme. Blavatsky: They do not know it. I spoke with Maspero; 8 he is a Fel ow
of the Theosophical Society. I passed the whole day with

8 [Gaston Maspero, French Egyptologist, 1846-1916.]

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222. 7. Meeting February 21, 1889

him in Cairo. I asked him about al the papers that he ever found. Maspero is
the Director of the Boulaq Museum.9

Mr. B. Keightley: Which, by the by, is to be no more at Boulaq.

Mme. Blavatsky: He was there, then, and we sat there between the tombs and
the old mummies, and he was tel ing me of some of the things he has
discovered. And he said, “never could I give it to the world, because I would
lose my situation.” Because Marriette Bey10 tried to do it, and he was not
listened to, and the academy said some very disagreeable things about al
kinds of secrets that are there. He found a whole room, he told me—and this
thing is known, by the by—and this room was ful —Maspero discovered it—it
was ful of al kinds of retorts and alchemical things and those utensils that the
alchemists used; and several parchments he found that he has read and
deciphered; enough to see that they had al these alchemical secrets. And he
found even some powders and things that he feels sure was the powder to
make gold. He found it in this room which exists there to this day. I was going
there, only Mrs. Oakley11 could not stop.

Mr. Gardner: That is near Luxor.

Mr. B. Keightley: What is he going to do with al his col ection when he dies?

Mme. Blavatsky: He is a very young man about 38 or so. He is no more than

38 years of age.

Mr. Gardner: What post does he hold over there?

Mme. Blavatsky: Director of the Museum at Boulaq in Cairo. He is one of the
most learned of the Egyptologists.

9 [The former home of the museum of Egyptian Antiquities, located in the district of Boulaq in Cairo.]

10 [Auguste Mariette, French Egyptologist, 1821-1881.]

11 [Isabel Cooper-Oakley, 1854-1914, English Theosophist who accompanied H.P.B. to India in 1884.]

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

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8.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge,
at 17 Lansdowne Road, Hol and Park, S.W.

on Thursday, February 28, 1889.

Mr. Harbottle in the Chair

Mr. B. Keightley: Stanza 3 continued, Śloka 5, “The root remains” etc. (reads
from Secret Doctrine). What is meant by saying that these remain?

Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon. Those are Kingsland’s. Wel , let them be
first. It is Mr. Kingsland that asks this and I am going to answer him first. Al
right, let them be. Now, “that these remain.” It means that whatever is, and
whatever the plurality of the manifestation is, is al one element, one, that is
what it means. It is always summed up in one.

Mr. B. Keightley: It real y means they are different aspects of the one element.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of the one, certainly.

Mr. Kingsland: It would appear from that, that it means almost that they remain
without differentiation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, no, don’t pitch into the style if you can’t say anything
better. You see, I tried to translate as wel as I could, you know, as close to the
original as possible.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then speaking in the commentaries of Curds you say: “ You
say the curds are the first differentiation,” etc. (Reads from Secret Doctrine).

Are we to suppose that the Milky Way is composed

224. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

of matter in a state of differentiation other than a state with which we are
acquainted?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly it is; it is the storehouse of the materials out
of which the new stars, planets and al bodies are produced. You cannot have
matter in that state on earth here. It is impossible; it is quite a different kind of
matter.

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The President: It is Protyle.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, no, it is not protyle. It is less but it is quite different. It is
positively a storehouse of al kinds of materials, which when it comes on to the
earth, let us say, or into our solar system, it is entirely differentiated. Besides
that, the matter you have beyond the solar system is entirely in a different state
of differentiation.

Mr. Kingsland: The matter we see here we see entirely by reflected light. Do
we see the Milky Way by the light we make ourselves?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly; you cannot see otherwise; it is impossible,
you cannot. When they come and take the measurements of stars, and the
distances, and al that, I say it is impossible it should be correct, because you
must always al ow a certain margin for the effect of opitical delusions and so
on.

Mr. Gardner: Refraction.

Mr. Kingsland: Then from an astronomical point of view is the Milky Way
outside altogether of the stel ar system?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is real y and entirely another state of matter, and matter is,
as I say to you, the material out of which everything wil be made.

The President: But outside as regards state, not as regards position?

Mme. Blavatsky: No.

Mr. B. Keightley: Because, for instance, they have just been making very
wonderful photographs of the nebulae, the great nebula of Andromeda, etc.

225. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Is that matter in the same state as the Milky Way?

Mme. Blavatsky: I could not tel you; I am not learned enough for it. But it is
quite a different state of matter althgether.

Mr. Gardner: What about the planets?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, the planets are a different thing. You can not find
anything in the planets that there is not on earth.

Mr. Kingsland: Then the Milky Way, we may take it radiates its own light. It is
analogous to the state of matter that is in the sun.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the “World-stuff as I cal it. You cannot cal it by any other
name. I say to you again I am not learned enough to tel you the difference. I
do not think there is a difference between the nebulae and the real Milky Way
which you see, just as though it was like a highway of dust, like a film.

Mr. Kingsland: In other words, the nebulae are more differentiated.

The President: But some of the nebulae are resolvable.

Mr. B. Keightley: But they are clusters of stars; they are not true nebulae at al .

The President: It has never been proved there is no nedulae.

Mr. B. Keightley: The amdromeda.

The President: In other words you have not succeeded in resolving it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , yes; but I cannot believe in it. I think if it is not today,
tomorrow it wil be proven that it has not been resolved or resolvable. It seems
to me it is al simple theory—that it turns out something else, as many times we
have been mistaken already.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then this matter, “Radiant and Cool”?

226. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You just forgive it, if you please.

Mr. B. Keightley: As it stood original y, it is “This matter which according to the
revelation received in the primeval Dhyâni-Buddhas,” etc. (reads).1

Mme. Blavatsky: “Radiant” it ought to be, and it is put “radical.” They have
made of primordial matter something political. They have got politics on the
brain! I never put “radical.” I put “radiant and cool,” I can assure you. I could
find the manuscripts and I could show you it is so. It is one of these mistakes
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of the printers and sub-editors and so on. There is another thing I wish to ask.

Why does Mr. Kingsland say this was seen probably by the First Race, and so
on?

Mr. B. Keightley: He says—this matter appearing “when seen from the earth,”

etc. ( Secret Doctrine, {1:69})—Mr. Kingsland asks: Would not this be to the
perception of the First Race and not to our present physical senses?

Mme. Blavatsky: I say no.

Mr. Kingsland: No; that is answered now by the first question.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, because we see just in this way.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then Śloka 6 ”The root of life”, etc. (Reads Secret

Doctrine). The first question is: what are the various meanings of the term ‘fire’

on the different planes of Kosmos?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, you see, there is a question again that they put me! I
have to give about {the} 49 fires on every plane, and there are seven times
seven—seven planes. I have got to give this very easy explanation, if you
please. Now, how is it possible? Hold to something and ask a definite
question. Fire is the most mystic of al the elements, as the most Divine, and to
give even a smal percentage of its meanings in their various applications on
even one plane, let alone on the different planes of Kosmos, is perfectly
impossible. Now, shal I give you on one plane, in the solar system?

1 [ The Secret Doctrine, l:69.]

227. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Please.

Mme. Blavatsky: Very wel ; take, for instance, the solar our plane alone. Fire is
the father of light, light the parent of heat and of air, vital air, says the occult
book, and the absolute deity can be referred to as darkness, the dark fire.

Then the first progeny of Light is truly the first self-conscious God, for what is
light but world-il uminating and life-giving deity? Light is Time, what from an
abstraction has become a reality. Now, this is what you could not understand.

Do you understand the meaning of it? Light is Time, which Time from an
abstraction has become a reality. If there were no light you would not have
time.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Because you would have no point.

The President: Darkness is duration.

Mme. Blavatsky: And there is no time in duration except in Manvantaras. No
one has ever seen real primordial light, the one true light, but what we see is
only its broken rays or reflections which become denser and less luminous as
they descend into form and matter. Do you real y think with the physicists that it
is the sun which is the cause of Light? We say (see Secret Doctrine) that the
sun gives nothing from himself, because he has nothing to give. He is a
reflection and nothing more; abundle of electro-magnetic forces, one of the
countless mil iards of knots of Fohat. Now, I want you to remember this
expression, “knots.” Fohat is cal ed the tread of primordial light, the thread of

Ariadne,2 indeed, in this labyrinth of chaotic matter. This thread runs down and
down through the seven parent planes and ties itself occasional y on its way
into knots. This is is how they explain it in the occult books. Every plane being
septenary—hence the 49 mystical and physical forces—the big knots form
stars and suns and systems, the smal er planets. It is, of course, a metaphor,
but the electro-magnetic knot of our sun and its forces are neither tangible nor
dimensional, nor yet material or even molecular,

2 [Daughter of King Minos of Crete who gave Theseus the thread that led him out of the Labyrinth.]

228. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

as, for instance, common electricity is. Now, saying not molecular, I say that
which Helmholtz3 says, but I wil just say what we mean by saying electricity is
molecular. It is a reflection as I say the sun is; the sun absorbs, psychicizes,
and vampirizes his subject within his system. He gives out nothing per se.

Now, how unutterably foolish it is to say that the solar fires are being
consumed or extinguished. Were it so, would not the sun, while losing its heat
and flames be also losing something of its dimensions or magnitude? Do you
think so? Is it possible? Must we think, then, that the sun is at the bottom a kind
of round disc, made of some inconsumable asbestos, which, once the pitch
around it is consumed, wil get extinguished? Why, it would be that. If the solar
fires were to go out you would see the sun shrinking or diminishing.

Mr. Kingsland: We need not necessarily suppose that would take place within
any observable time.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not know if they say it goes with such rapidity as that.

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Listen to Sir Wm Thompson and you wil learn what he says. The sun, it is said
does not give out anything, it dosen’t take anything; it feeds and works within its
own system; it vampirizes from al the planets and from everything that comes
within it, and sometimes very likely it is almost impossible that anything should
come into the sun from without the solar system. This is what is taught now. I
do not give you my ideas; they are very heterodox, they are perfectly
unscientific. I show you what the occult sciences say. They do not al ow that
the planets have been formed or ejected out of the sun, as the modern theory
goes. They say it was not so that the sun is not even what they say. There are
no fires there is nothing tangible in it; it is merely a reflection, a reflection of
this. It is cal ed a bundle of magneto-electric forces.

Mr.—: Do not the occultists accept Laplace’s theory? 4

3 [Hermann von Helmholtz, German physicist, 1821-1894.]

4 [Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician, 1749-1827, famous for his probability theory.]

229. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: That the solar system is original y a nebula, more or less, an
enormous spherical mass of very diffuse matter which is revolving round its
axis at a very great rate. There are differences because according to

Laplace’s theory, you get this globular mass spinning very fast. In
consequence of its rotation it breaks up into rings. Gradual y, owing to smal
changes, those rings get condensed and form planets. If they do not form
planets they form meteors.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you mean to say he says it is from that Milky Way we
have been talking about just now? Then it the “World Stuff,” and it goes into
eternal rotation. It begins by suns and after having made the big knots it comes
in the smal er ones, and so on.

Mr. B. Keightley: ‘The point of that theory is that al these planets’ round the
sun are formed from these rings; but elsewhere, in The Secret Doctrine, you
state that before a heavenly body of any kind settles down to sober family life
as a planet it is first a comet and goes careering through space. Wel , that is
quite contrary to Laplace altogether.

Mme. Blavatsky: Laplace is not an occultist, but yet there is something very
near what you state. I never studied Laplace in my life.

Mr.—: This is the nucleus of the whole system.

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Mr. B. Keightley: No, no, no, that is not Laplace’s theory.

Mr.—: Yes, he thought al those rings were thrown out from the periphery of the
mass.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, in consequence of the rapid rotation. There are points of
minimum and maximum velocity. These are not shown mathematical y. There
certain points at which the strains (?) are unequal. The space between two
rings is left void by this process of condensation. Then if there is anything of
that kind which disturbs the equilibrium of one of those rings it wil gradual y
break up. But there is no idea of things being thrown off from the sun.

230. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mr.—: I do not mean it exactly in that sense; I meant outside.

The President: May I ask one question which I think bears upon that? Does
the sun survive several series of planetary existences? For instance, in The

Secret Doctrine you say the present earth is the daughter of the moon.

Mme. Blavatsky: Daughter, yes. I know what you want to say. Of course it is.

Our Pralaya is quite a different thing, a very different one from the Solar

Pralaya, of course.

The President: Because that in itself answers the suggestions that the present
planets are thrown off from the sun during the formation of the sun itself, and is
itself a contradiction of Laplace’s theory.

Mme. Blavatsky: I say that Laplace’s theory looks like ours, because we say
everything comes from the Milky Way, and that it begins when the Manvantaric
dawn of the solar system begins, and that it goes on. And they show Fohat
running like a thread; and these threads sometimes get entangled in a knot,
and the central star, the solar system, begins the little knots, and so on.

The President: Then the theory must be taken very general y and certainly not
specifical y, as applied to our solar system as it at present exists. In that case
that would simply mean the sun was, so to say, slightly older than the rest of
the planets.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is said elsewhere that al the planets have been comets. I
am not sure, but there is a suggestion, and I am not certain how far it is
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intended to go, that al the planets have been suns before they settled down to
planetary life.

Mme. Blavatsky: And every planet wil become that which the moon has
become now. And every time it wil become like the moon: it wil shoot out its
principles and make another planetary chain as ours is. Our earth is very, very
young, and such moons as ours there are but we don’t see them because they
are nearly faded out. This one is quite old. When they come and tel me that,
that moon is a bit of the earth, and that it was shot out, I say it is perfect

231. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

nonsense. “When the day was only two hours old,” I think that is what they say.

And now they have been making the calculation that to make the day 23 hours
instead of 24 would require something like 600,000,000 of years.

Mr. Kingsland: You say the electromagnetic emanation from the sun is neither
molecular nor dimensional.

Mme. Blavatsky: I wil just explain this here. The sun has not but one distinct
function. He gives the impulse of life to al that moves and breathes and has its
being within its light. It is stated in Secret Doctrine that the sun is the throbbing
heart of the system. You remember, each throb is an impulse. Very wel , but
this heart is invisible: no astronomer wil ever see any more than you, I, or
anyone else, that which is concealed is that heart. And that which we see and
feel are simply the apparent flames and fires, and they are only the nerves that
govern the muscles of the solar system. Now, did I express myself wel ? They
are not the muscles, they are the nerves, the impulses.

Mr. Kingsland: But now there must be the material base in the sun.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is, but we do not see it. The sun as we see it is simply
the reflection of that which exists, a bundle of electromagnetic forces—
whatever it is. You see, they cal it the heart, but it is not the heart, the heart is
concealed. What we see is simply—wel , let us say al the planets and
everything are the muscles, and that which we see are the nerves that give the
impulse, you understand.

The President: Actual y we don’t see the core, the center but simply, its
surroundings, its envelope.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so, the radiance that it throws off. But we can never see
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the real thing.

Mr. Gardner: And the sun spots?

Mme. Blavatsky: That I have explained in The Secret Doctrine. Now,

232. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

for the impulse; I speak of it not as a mechanical impulse, but a purely spiritual
one. What I would cal nervous impulse, if I make use of the right word.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes. That is to say, not a impulse thought as a vibration on
the physical plane, of the physical nerve fiber, but that which underlies that in
the same way that a sound is different from the vibration.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now you ask about the various meanings of the term “fire” in

The Secret Doctrine. Under this term the occultist comprehend al . Fire is the
universal deity and the manifesting God life; fire is ether and ether is born of
motion, and motion is eternal, direct, invisible fire. Again, light sets in motion
and controls al in nature, from that highest primordial ether down to the tiniest
molecule in space. Remember this occult axiom: motion is the Alpha and the

Omega of that which you cal electricity, galvanism, magnetism, sensation,
moral or physical thought, and even life on this plane. It is motion which is the

Alpha and the Omega of al that, and motion is simply the manifestation of fire,
what we cal the dark fire. Al Kosomical phenomena were therefore refered to
by the occultists and the Rosicrucians as animated geometry. You wil find it
always refered to as animated geometry—every kosmic phenomenon, every
polar function is only a repetition of primeval polarity. Every motion begets
heat, and ether in motion is heat. When it slackens its motion, then cold is
generated, for cold is ether in a latent condition. Mind you I give you the

Kabbalistic terms and simply translate the things. Within the seven principal
states of nature are the three positive and three negative principles
synthesized by the primordial light. There are six states. The three negitive
starts are: first darkness, second cold, third, vacuum or nothing. The three
positive states are: first, light on our plane, second, heat, third al nature or
everything in nature. Thus fire is the unity of the universe. Pure fire without fuel
is Deity at the upper rung. Kosmic fire or that which cal s it forth is everybody
and every atom of nature in the manifested nature. Name me one thing which
does not contain

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latent fire in itself, and then you can contradict me, everything is fire but fire,
under various forms.

Mr. Kingsland: In fact, it has as many differentiations as matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because fire you can never come and analize as you do with
air and water and say that is composed of such and such things. You know,
broadly speaking, it is combustion, but fire is the one great mystery of this
universe, and it is everything. And fire is what they cal Deity. And I say that the
fire worshippers who worship the sun are a thousand times more philosophical
than we, for this is the one great symbol that can be understood. I do not say
the sun is such a very great unity in the universe, but in our solar system it is
the ambassador, the representative of the real creative force or Deity,
principle, cal it whatever you like; you understand my meaning. Now listen:

when we say that fire is the first of the elements, it is only the first in our visible
universe. This fire of which we speak, which everyone of us knows under its
various forms, and that fire we al know even on the highest plane of our solar
universe, the plane of globe A and G. In one respect fire is only the Pho

{fourth}, for the occultists say, and even the medieval Kabbalists say, that to
our human perception and even that of the highest angels or Dhyâni-Chohans
the universe, deity is darkness, and from this darkness the first appearance of

Logos is—what do you think? It is not light; it is weight, air, or ether, the first
thing that weighs, that cannot be seen, and yet it weighs in its primordial state.

Then the second is light, the third heat, and the fourth fire. The fire that we
know mind you; I don’t speak about the universal fire that is a different thing.

Now, wil you please put the questions plainly, because I am rather tired of
them. I want real y serious questions. I get mad over these questions and I
want to put things that I can only put when I am mad.

Mr. B. Keightley: Now that question of weight suggests a thing that would be
very interesting. It is said over and over again in the [ ] theosophy that the
scientific theory of gravity is untrue. Wel now what do you mean, what does an
occultist mean when he speaks of

234. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

weight? Does he mean attraction?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel I don’t know, weight is weight, how can I explain it
otherwise?

The President: Does weight exist without gravity?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Wel it is gravity in the occult sense; it is not gravity as you
cal it on the Newtonian principle. We can explain it and do simply as attraction
and repulsion. This weight is al because it throws out, it goes in circuit and
absorbs again and it al proceeds to create al the universe and everything that
is below. It always is this weight which you cannot say is above or below or on
the right side or the left. This weight is something within, but not within as to
size, but within as to perception, differentiation and everything.

Mr. Kingsland: It is the same thing as we had previously, the expanding from
within, without.

The President: The real point seems to be that if gravity is simply attraction
and repulsion, that it must be the first of attributes, so to say, of any
differentiation what ever. As soon as you have two things, they must be
pulverized.

Mme. Blavatsky: Surely.

The President: And therefore they may be pulverized in darkness.

Mme. Blavatsky: How can you explain otherwise the comets that go against
the law of gravitation, how can you? It has been seen hundreds of times,
comets in most cases go with their tails right against gravitation.

Mr. B. Keightley: They go and flip there tails in the face of the sun, in fact.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is an insult to the sun and the sun sits quiet.

Mr.—: I thought those tails were a certain gas.

Mme. Blavatsky: Even gases have some weight. I know it from the

235. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

blood poisoning. Wel , what is the fourth question?

Mr. Gardner: I should like to ask about the question of weight with regard to
that triangle. You told us—

Mme. Blavatsky: This is out of the programme.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Number 3, you have practical y answered. It is this, what are
the meanings of “water” in the same applications?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , water being composed of 1/9 of hydrogen (a very
inflammable gas, as we are told and without which no organic body is found),
of 8/9 of oxygen (which we are told produces combustion when too rapidly
combined with a body), what is water but one of the forms of primordial fire, in
a cold or latent and fluidic form? It is nothing else. This is reality what water is.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is the cold state.

Mme. Blavatsky: The cold and fluidic state of fire. It is the female aspect of
fire, as matter is the female aspect of spirit.

Mr. Kingsland: Is there any connection between the numbers?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Numbers and colors, everything is
connected. This, if you please, is esoteric.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 4. Are fire and water the same as Kuan-shih-yin and

Kuan-yin?

Mme. Blavatsky: Reverse the question and ask are Kuan-shih-yin and Kuan-
yin the same as fire and water or rather are the latter the symbols of these, and

I wil say yes: but what does it mean? The two deities in their primordial
manifestation are the Diadic or dual God, the sexual nature and Prakriti.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then Śloka 7: “Behold O Lanoo,” etc. (Reads form The

Secret Doctrine). The question is number 5. Wil you give us the terms
corresponding to the three Logoi amongst the words Oeaohoo, Oeaohoo, the
younger, Kuan-shih-yin, the Kuan-yin, father-mother, fire and water, bright
space and dark space?

236. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: No I won’t (laughter). Have you not just read it is Oeaohoo,
the younger, the three stars? Why did I put the three stars “whom thou
knowest now as Kuan-shih-yin”? You know it is that, wel enough—or shal I
give you a series of quadruple stars? If I put three stars it is not that I did not
know the things, it is because I cannot give it. What is the end of Śloka 7,
stanza 3 (Reads from The Secret Doctrine), the one manifested into the great
waters? Think it over and you wil understand al that is permitted to you to
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understand here, is there. Fire is spirit matter. This water stands for matter.

Fire stands for the solid spirit, water for the one manifested element. Fire is
heat, water, moisture; you understand the difference between heat and
moisture. One is male, the other, female, the creative element here on earth,
or the evolutive principles within, or the innermost principles. “Within,” we say;
al of you il usionists would say above, I just said to you there is no above. I
believe the qualificative terms, dark space and bright space, give you the key
quite sufficiently. I cannot give you any more. Therefore there are the stars. I
don’t know it myself.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 6. What is the veil which Oeaohoo the younger lifts
from East to West?

Mme. Blavatsky: The veil of reality, the honest and sincere curtain or act drop-
lifted or made to disappear in order to show the spectators the il usion we cal
stage scenery, actors and al the paraphernalia of the universe, which is a
universe of il usion. Is this clear?

Mr. B. Keightley: The veil of Mâyâ, in other words.

Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon. It shows us Mâyâ and lifts up and shows
us the veil of reality. He makes it disappear, just to show us the il usions that
are on the stage. Mr. Smith playing Othel o or anything else is a sham; it is only
il usion and nothing else. I think this perfectly clear.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 7. What is the “upper space” and “shoreless sea of
fire”?

237. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: The “upper space” is the space within, as I just said, or the
universe as it first appears from its latent state, a “shoreless” expanse of spirit
or “sea of fire.”

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 8. Are the “great waters” here the same as those
on which “darkness moved?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I wish to say one thing, that “darkness moved,” you put
here in quotes. I don’t remember to have put anywhere that darkness moves. I
don’t know on what darkness can ever move. I don’t know what they have been
doing. I have heard of a darkness which was upon the face of the deep or the
great waters, but even in chapter 1 Genesis it is distinctly stated, verse 2, that
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darkness was, and that, that which moved upon the face of the waters was not
darkness but the Spirit of God. Now see esoterical y the meaning of these two
verses in Genesis. They mean that in the beginning, when Kosmos was yet
without form, and chaos, or the outer space, that of il usion, was stil void,
darkness alone was. Now if you take Kalahamsa, the dark swan or the swan of
eternity (it is interchangeable), and at the first radiation of the dawn the spirit of

God, which means Logos number 1, began to move on the face of the great
waters of the deep; therefore, if we want to be correct, and if not clear, let us
ask are the great waters the same as the darkness spoken of in The Secret

Doctrine? I wil answer in the affirmative. Kalahamsa reads in a dual manner.

Now, exoterical y, if you speak about Kalahamsa, I took them to task in The

Secret Doctrine (and I was perfectly right) for putting such a thing as that, that

Kalahamsa was Parabrahman. It is not so, but esoterical y it comes to that.

Exoterical y it is Brahmâ which is the swan or the vehicle in which darkness
manifests itself to human comprehension, but esoterical y it is darkness, itself
the ever unknowable absoluteness which becomes the vehicle of Brahmâ the
manifested. For under the il usion of manifestation—that which we see and
feel and which comes under our sensuous perception, as we imagine—is
simply that which we neither hear, feel, see, taste or touch at al : a gross
il usion and nothing else. Now, is this too metaphysical?

238. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: I fol ow it.

Mme. Blavatsky: But I want the others to fol ow it. You are here always.

Mme. Tambaco: I think it seems clear.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 9. In what sense can electricity be cal ed an entity?

Mme. Blavatsky: In what sense shal I explain once for al so as not to have
the same question repeated over and over again every every Thursday? In
what sense can I explain it to you? How many times have I explained it, and yet
you come back? Electricity in a lamp is one thing. Fohat is the cause of that
one spark in its mil ions of aspects, or the said spark in the lamps is quite
another thing. Which do you want me to explain? Fohat is not electricity and
electricity is not Fohat. Fohat is the sum total of the universal cosmic;
electricity is an entity, because entity is that which is from the word [ ]5 to be
and which exists for us, if not independently, by itself, apart from us. Fohat is
an entity, but electricity is a mere relative signification. If taken in the usual
scientific sense, Fohat is spoken of as Kosmic electricity as the sun is said to
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get in one’s eyes or face, or in one’s garden, but surely it is not the sun that
gets into one’s eyes or face. The sun is an entity, and you would hardly cal the
effect of one of its beams an entity. Electricity is the molecular principle in the
physical universe, and here on earth, because, being generated as it is in
every disturbance of molecular equilibrium, it then becomes, so to say, the

kâma-rûpa of the object in which such disturbance takes place. Rub amber
and it wil give birth to a son whose name is Fohat, if you like it, on the lower
plane, because in one sense Fohat means birth or life from an apparently
inanimate object. Rub a nettle between your thumb and finger and you wil
obtain by the grace of that Fohat an effect or a son in the shape of boils and
blisters on them. That is

5 [The plublished version of the Transactions gives; “Entity comes from the Latin root ens, “being,” of esse, “to
be”.]

239. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

also Fohat. Al is electricity, it is al an electric thing, from the nettle up to the
lightning that kil s you, it is just the same. It is simply the aspect of that one
universal fire and this one aspect is electricity. It is everything, but in various
shapes.

Mr.—: Do you mean to say there is only one force in Nature?

Mme. Blavatsky: In reality there is only one, and on the manifested plane it
shows itself in mil ions and mil ions of various forms.

Mr. Gardner: Is the electricity in the nettle the same as what we have in the
batteries?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly not.

Mr. Kingsland: The electricity that you generate, for instance, in rubbing
amber, would you say that was both molecular and dimensional?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , it is molecular, because it is the Kâma-rûpa of the
amber that acts; and certainly if it is to produce some distortions of the
equilibrium it must produce something, because you cannot produce
something in nothing. Mind you, electricity you wil cal an effect. I say the
effect is molecular.

Mr. Kingsland: On the amber?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Very wel ; but electricity, what is it? It is the effect of that
which is molecular by itself. It is an entity, for electricity is the whole world of
atoms in a certain state and under certain conditions.

Mr. Kingsland: Is there, for instance, emanated from the amber, matter in any
state of differentiation?

Mme. Blavatsky: That which emanates from the amber is that which,
unfortunately, your microscope won’t see. But it is molecular.

Mr. B. Keightley: But it is visible to the appropriate senses.

Mme. Blavatsky: Positively. It is estimated that there are some insects that
would see it and you would not. If you had, for instance,

240. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

the white ants6 that are in India, the most impudent of al creatures—and
nothing in the world wil make them get out of your way—they immediately wil
scatter like I don’t know what, because they perceive that.

Mr. Gardner: Simply rubbing a piece of amber?

Mme. Blavatsky: Or there is a tree in India which you wil rub, and if you rub it,
they wil never approach it.

The President: If you can describe it as a kâma-rûpa, that answers the
question.

Mme. Blavatsky: I cannot explain it in any other way; it is the kâma-rûpa, the
disturbing influence which comes and disturds the equilibrium. I cannot explain
it any better than that.

Mr. Gardner: You mean the astral envelope of the amber?

Mr. B. Keightley: No, no, the fourth principle. Now, question 10. “You say that

‘Fohat is cosmic electricity’ and the son. Is electricity, or Fohat, then, the same
as Oeaohoo the younger, or the third Logos?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Electricity is the work of Fohat, but Fohat is not electricity.

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The throwing in one shape or the other of molecules into new combinations of
forms into new correlations or disturbances of the equilibrium, as you cal it, in
general is the work of Fohat, the emanation of the seven sub-logoi. I advise
you not to talk much of the seven-voweled deity. I am sorry I wrote and
published it at al , I am very sorry, for there they began to tear it to pieces and
speak about it just as though it were a potato. It is the combined active
principle, the electric force, life, everything that comes out and emanates from
those entities.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 11. Śloka 8: “Where was the Germ,” (reads from

The Secret Doctrine) The question is: “Is the spirit of the flame that burns in
thy lamp our Heavenly Father or Higher Self?”

6 [Termites.]

241. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It is neither the Heavenly Father nor the Higher Self. “The
spirit of the flame” is simply speaking about the real bona fide lamp, and not at
al metaphorical y. It is neither one thing nor the other. He asks simply, the
teacher, “where is the spirit of the flame that burns in the lamp”—any lamp, but
not of gas, certainly.

Mr. B. Keightley: Now question 12. “Are the elements the bodies of the

Dhyâni-Chohans”?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is a perfectly useless question, because, read the
symbolism in The Secret Doctrine and you wil find the question. I cannot give
it to you in talking as wel as I have written it. Why don’t they read it; why come
and ask this?

Mr. B. Keightley: Then question 13. “ Are hydrogen, Oxygen, ozone, and
nitrogen the primordial elements on this plane of matter?”

Mme. Blavatsky: They are, on other planes even volatile ether, I think you cal
it that—never mind. I want to show that which is the most volatile would appear
as the mud at the bottom of the River Thames, or on the bridges. Every plane
has its own colors, sounds, dimension of space, etc., etc., quite unknown to us
on this plane. And as we have, for instance, the ants, they have quite other
perceptions of color and sounds, those who are intermediary creatures, a kind
of transitional state between two planes. So on the plane above us, there are
creatures, no doubt with senses, and faculties unknown to the inhabitants
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there, but known to us. They wil probably play the same part as the ants play
here, because the ants come from a lower sphere.

Mr. B. Keightley: Just emerging.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is the last of these questions.

Mr. Kingsland: Does not the perceptive power of the ant—for instance, the
way in which it differs from our perceptive powers of color—simply depend
upon conditions, physiological conditions?

242. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It may be, but the wise people say otherwise. They say they
can hear sounds we can certainly never hear; therefore, physiology has
nothing to do with it whatever, because they do not hear with the ears as we
do.

Mr. B. Keightley: They haven’t got any?

Mr.—: You can scarcely say they hear them, they sense them.

Mme. Blavatsky: They have a perception of that which we have not, on
whatever plane it may be, whatever thing it may be.

Mr. Kingsland: Then we have a perception of which they have not?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, you are higher than they, but I say we wil be
the ants on the sphere above.

Mr. Kingsland: But how do you use the terms higher and lower in that sense, if
they see and hear something that we do not, and we see and hear something
that they do not?

Mme. Blavatsky: I mean high in general. I do not say in this particular instance.

I simply say we are higher in general, that the earth is on a higher plane than
the one from which the ants come.

Mr. Kingsland: Are they not on the same plane?

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Mr. B. Keightley: I think it simply means earlier and later in the history of the
evolution, a later and in one sense more advanced stage of evolution. The
ants wil pass through a stage, passing through the human stage we are in
now, whereas we shal not. In that sense we are higher.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think that for you gentlemen who are electricians it is the
most interesting thing, occultism, on account of its suggestiveness. It gives
you ideas that you can never get from physical science.

Mr. Kingsland: I thought you meant that the ants might have the

243. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

perception of a higher plane than we have.

Mme. Blavatsky: I never said that. I said they had perceptions of sounds
which may be perhaps—wel , I won’t say how many mil ions, but which are
within—which are not at al on our plane, which we could not hear under any
circumstances.

Mr. B. Keightley: But I think we might fol ow up that amber and the idea of
electricity as a particular state of matter. It throws a great deal of light on the
subject.

Mr. Kingsland: Wel , of course there is a molecular disturbance of the amber.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is to say, of the molecules on the physical plane.

Mr. Kingsland: But then, electricity to be manifested must be manifested
outside the molecular substance of the amber.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is a point that is rather curious to get at. We imagine we
create the electricity by rubbing the molecules of a physical piece of silk
against the molecules of a physical piece of amber; that is the way we look at
it.

Mme. Blavatsky: We simply give the conditions to the electricity, which is
latent in it, to come out.

Mr. Kingsland: Is there anything corresponding to an emanation from amber?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is.

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Mr. Kingsland: Or is it a molecular disturbance causing a molecular
disturbance in the aura of the amber?

Mme. Blavatsky: No. I say it is latent in amber as it is latent everywhere, and
giving it certain conditions, that which is within and which is latent in the amber
wil get into a fight with the electricity which is outside, and then there wil be a
disturbance produced. You

244. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

simply change the conditions.

Mr. Kingsland: Is the electricity intermolecular, and is it manifested in the
same way that you could have a sponge which is perfectly molecular? Does
the amber contain electricity in the same sense?

Mme. Blavatsky: I am afraid to answer. I don’t understand the question. I
cannot answer you. I cannot take it in wel .

The President: It seens if you use the phrase kâma-rûpa, that would be the
best. I should consider that would be the same thing as saying it was
intermolecular.

Mr. B. Keightley: But, you see, you have got your sponge and water—both
matter on the same plane—but your electricity and your amber are matter on
three different planes apart. That is to say if you take the physical molecules of
your amber as the first or lowest the molecules of your electricity are on the
same plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, the kâma-rûpa what I tried to explain to you: kâma-
rûpa. I am not at al an electrician or anything of the kind.

Mr. Kingsland: I thought you were using kâma-rûpa metaphysical y.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al ; perfectly physical y.

Mr. B. Keightley: The great difference that I notice in the whole view of
physical phenomena taken by occult science as distinguished from physical
science is this: that in ordinary physical science we are in the habit of looking
for the cause of things that we see. We rub a piece of amber and electricity is
produced. The occult science wil say by rubbing a piece of amber you
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produce conditions through which electricity, which exists latent and ready to
manifest itself, can manifest itself on your physical plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: I find a far greater mistake that you al make in science, and it
is the most vital mistake. It is by dividing animate from inanimate things and
saying that there is such thing on the

245. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

earth as a perfectly inanimate object. There is not an atom which is inanimate,
not one. It is simply the most vicious kind of expression that I ever heard.

Mr. Kingsland: It is a very sensible distinction on our plane.

The President: Organic and inorganic.

Mme. Blavatsky: But there is nothing inorganic in this world; organic from your
point of perception, but it is occultly speaking.

Mr. B. Keightley: Let us go into that question. What is the scientific definition
or distinction drawn by science between organic and inorganic?

Mme. Blavatsky: Occultism would say to you, a dead man is more alive than
ever.

Mr. B. Keightley: Please don’t suggest to Kingsland.

Mr. Kingsland: Ask Dr. Wil iams.

Dr. Williams: I think he wants to get Mr. Kingsland’s idea of the matter. I
suppose he has got some particular motive.

Mr. Kingsland: But it is al pro bono publico.

Dr. Williams: I don’t know but what you thought he had some personal idea.

Mr. B. Keightley: I thought he probably had some clear notion in his mind.

Mr. Kingsland: If you carry it down to the lowest forms, one shades into the
other.

Mr. B. Keightley: Is there any definition to be given what distinguishes it? What
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is the characteristic according to modern science?

Mr. Kingsland: What is the characteristic between you and a lump of wood?

246. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

The President: ¥ou take the two extremes. Science has got to admit there is
the possibility of an entity or a substance to which they cannot assign either of
the words with confidence. I say entity or substance.

Mr. B. Keightley: The only distinction I have ever heard put forward is this, the
distinction of nutrition. Science wil general y show—Mr. Wil iams, wil you
correct me if I am wrong?

Dr. Williams: That is purely an arbitrary one.

Mr. B. Keightley: But simply, the only criterion that is put forward as real y
distinguishing organic from inorganic is the function of nutrition.

Dr. Williams: I think the latest scientific view recognize no dividing line
anywhere. There is no place where you may draw the line, and so this belongs
on one side and that on the {other}.

Mr. B. Keightley: Even if you go down into the mineral kingdom, because you
find in the phenomena of producing crystals you get some which is to al
intents and purposes nutrition.

Mme. Blavatsky: I should like to know, if there was no nutrition for the
inorganic substances, how they could change. The fact of there changing and
crumbling down shows to you there is a growth, and that it is perfectly organic,
as organic as anything else, only under other conditions. Have you ever
thought that on this plane of ours there are seven planes? It is subdivided.

This perhaps you have never been taught yet, that even on this plane of
physical perception there are seven planes.

Mr. Kingsland: There are seven planes of matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: I define it so in the mineral kingdom and in the animal
kingdom. There are planes for al . Just as I spoke of the ants, just in the same
analogy there are the other things. When they come and speak to me about
inanimate things, I say no such thing as that, it is impossible, because there is
not a thing in this world that is perfectly inorganic—I don’t say it in the dogmatic
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247. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

sense, I mean inorganic—that is not susceptible to decay and ending.

Everything grows and changes. Everything that changes is organic; it has the
life principle in it, and it has al the potentiality of the higher lives.

Dr. Williams: It certainly seems to me to be the universal idea, that there are
various manifestations of life on the physical plane, and the quality of that
manifestation depends entirely on the molecular relationship of the matter
itself. There is no such thing in any abstract sense, as putting matter in one
plane under one condition and in another plane under another condition.

Mme. Blavatsky: What is matter? Matter is simply a form of more or less
crystal ized and objective spirit, that is al , nothing else; and what is spirit?

There is neither spirit nor matter there. There are al kinds of aspects of one
and the same element in this life, if life is universal. I say there is not a point in
the shoreless universe. How can there be such a thing as an inorganic atom or
anything. I think Kant7 says perfectly correctly (he is one of the physiologists I
prefer the most, because he is so very fair in his matters, he opens so many
doors to everything, to the possibilities. There is nothing dogmatic about him. I
read very little of him, but the little makes me think he is one of the fairest I
know) when he speaks about the distinctions between organic and inorganic.

He says just as we occultists say, that there is no such thing in this world as
something inorganic. And you take, if you please, Huxley or any of the big
bugs of science, and they wil come and talk about the organic and inorganic,
just as though they were the fathers of everything and they had created the
universe. It is perfectly ridiculous.

Dr. Williams: What would you say was the relationship of of fire on the
different planes? Could you say anything of the relationship which fire on the
lower planes bears to fire on the highest?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is beyond our fine perceptive faculties. There is an
unbroken relation, because one proceeds from the other. It is a

7 [Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, 1724-1804.]

248. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

fal ing into matter and a forming into density.

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Dr. Williams: That is precisely the point I was after, if the one was the inner
essential life of the other. If fire on the fourth plane was the inner essential life
of fire on the third plane, and so on downward.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you speak on the planetary chain, then it wil be the
seventh on our plane. That is to say, it wil become the Âtma. It corresponds to

Âtma on our plane, and we cannot see Âtma, but if you can imagine yourself
living on the A and B planets, so it is on the spheres A and Z, then it wil
become Pho.

Dr. Williams: I was thinking more especial y of the seven planes into which
human life was divided.

The President: Speaking to reference to what was said about electricity
being the fourth principle; the kâma-rûpa of the amber.

Dr. Williams: Yes.

The President: There one would say the change from planet to planet was a
molecular change, probably.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then the molecules of the change also on the other planes.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is a great deal of that in Keely’s inter-etheric ideas.8

Mme. Blavatsky: He cannot bring it out altogether, because he is neither an
occultist nor an orthodox scientist, and he wil keep to his own prejudices, but
other wise he is a very grand man and discoverer. What do they say of him,

Mr. Ful erton 9 in America?

Mr. Fullerton: There have been difficulties growing out of the constitution of
his company, and various things of that kind which led to a suspicion of
dishonesty. That is the popular impression.

8 [John Worrell Keely, U.S. inventor, 1827-1898, who claimed to have discovered a new form of energy or force.]

9 [Alexander Fullerton, American Theosophist 1841-1913.]

249. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: He was too sanguine in his expectations. He thought he
could just take Parabrahman by the coat-tails and show him to the public. It is a
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perfect impossibility. I said it from the first it could not be. I said it always. It
was perfectly useless.

Mr. Gardner: He won’t stick to one thing.

Mme. Blavatsky: He wants to go on too much and too high, and therefore he
wil have failures always, because if he were to hold only to those few things he
has found out, real y he would have the greatest success, and he could bring
to himself and on his side al the men of science. But he won’t do it. He wants
to go so much into the metaphysical that although the physicists don’t want to
confess it, they cannot fol ow him on to the plane of science. It is impossible,
because then they wil become Roger Bacons,10 not Crookeses.

Mr. B. Keightley: He says if you make the proper conditions, you can cause
the manifestation of something which lies concealed between the molecules
of the most attenuated physical bodies. And then he gets a series of these
attenuations with this matter, whatever it is, which is inter-molecular. For
physical matter is molecular itself, and between its molecules there is again
something which is also molecular.

Mme. Blavatsky: Ad infinitum.

Mr. B. Keightley: And so you get exactly what we say about the ether; that is
four stages up his ladder, and the conditions we produce in the manifestations
of ordinary electricity are simply paral el to those he employs for his.

Mme. Blavatsky: Unfortunately for us, the physicists wil not accept anything of
the kind. Otherwise, they have only accepted the possibility that there must be
something so attenuated and so invisible to our objective eyes that goes on
living after us. Then they would see how very easy it is to conceive of those
astral bodies who live in their astral body, and live just as much as we do, and
they

10 [Roger Bacon, Franciscan friar, 1214-1294, known for his scientific approach.]

250. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

have al their principles put together and they can travel very easily to the fourth
plane and act in this little universe of ours just as easily as we do without any
body. And I can assure you it is the most blessed condition in the world, for
there you have neither gout nor rheumatism nor anything.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Nor clothes, nor breakfast to eat, nor anything.

Mme. Blavatsky: And every time that there are mediums, as the spiritualists
say, they are real y not so. I can assure it is, because there wil be

Nirmânakâyas and then they wil know the truth. But here they are a little bit
perplexed and they wil go into their own habits and so on. It is physical matter
which is in their way. It is the easiest thing to understand, this.

Dr. Williams: Has not Sir Wil iam Thompson got very near Keely’s idea in his

“Extra Mundane Corpuscles”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, he has read a very great deal of the ancient and Greek
classics, but he wants to bring them al to his own ideas, to his own established
theories. You see, the trouble with him is he jumps from one conclusion to
another. Today he says the incrustation of the earth begins 15,000,000 ago;
after tomorrow he wil come and say something else, and laugh at himself. I
judge from lectures. I never read yet three consecutive lectures without Sir

Wil iam contradicting himself on every point. Is that exact science? I cal it
exact flapdoole. Its not exact science at al .

Dr. Williams: It always seems interesting when such a man gets hold of such
a simple truth.

Mme. Blavatsky: He disfigures it in such a way, and he wriggles it so that he
distorts it out of recognition. Crookes is a thousand times more hopeful than
he. Crookes is magnificent as a man of science.

The President: Crookes dosen’t real y speak out. For the scientist he has to
dress up in materialistic language what is to him something very much
metaphysical.

251. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Dr. Williams: I have no doubt about that.

The President: If one reads those lectures of his, especial y “Genesis of the

Elements” and others, with a little insight into it and into his own way of thinking,
you see that at once.

Mme. Blavatsky: I am very sorry we departed without any cause; but you see
there is a black cat between us, a black cat on two legs, and I know him.

Crookes has been giving ideas that are not quite orthodox about me. He says:

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“Oh, the old lady is getting old and is fal ing into her dotage. She used to know
something, but now she has given out everything and knows nothing.” I am
very glad he thinks so, because he would otherwise have bothered me out of
my life. I made him ring the two astral bel s himself. Just the last time I touched
him myself. He had his hand in the glass that stood there and they produced
two distinct astral bel s, and therefore he knows this thing which he can do
also, but he wanted me to give him the key to it. I said: “If you behave yourself,

I wil ,” but he did not behave himself, and so he did not get it. And on that he
was made to believe—

The President: That you hadn’t got a key?

Mme. Blavatsky: That I was a poor medium.

Mr. B. Keightley: Did you ever see, Dr. Wil iams, those il ustrious Elihu

Vedders?11 Do you remember that frontispiece, that great wal ? Does it
suggest the idea of the knots of Fohat?

Dr. Williams: Yes; it was not so much a wal as a skein.

Mr. Keightley: It was the quatrains of Omar Khayyam.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is an occult thing, about the knots.

Mr. Keightley: The frontispiece is a great skein.

11 [Elihu Vedder, an American symbolist painter, 1836-1923. His illustrations refered to are for the 1884 edition of

Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.]

252. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Dr. Williams: I think I could draw it for you. (draws the “skein.”)

Mme. Blavatsky: It is something like centripetal and centrifugal action.

Dr. Williams: I daresay the nebulae do assume the same forms, but he has
taken that as the author of an opera does. It runs through the poem as the
motif, so to say.

Mr. B. Keightley: An extraordinary effect it produces, drawn with a beautiful
sweep.

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The President: Curiously enough, it is the ordinary Japanese representation, in
their rough sketches, of cloudscapes; single lines running into a sort of knot,
both in carving and in drawing. I have plenty of their woodcarvings, in which a
bank of clouds is given in that way.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the old occult idea, what we cal ed Fohat; they give it
another name, and the Parsis give it another name, but he is the knot-tier.

When he has made the Laya point, he begins in another place; and al the
visible universe is formed like that, and al come dragging from that Milky Way,
al this world-stuff dragging out, and beyond the Milky Way they say it is the

Father-Mother.

Mr. Kingsland: Does that Milky Way stuff get drawn into our stel ar system, that
being more differentiated in forming new systems?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the inexhaustible storehouse, and this cannot be
exhausted.

Mr. Gardner: The quantity is a consistent one?

Mme. Blavatsky: Always. There is not a given quantity, but it is inexhaustible,
for it has neither beginning nor end.

Mr. B. Keightley: It emerges at one side to Father-Mother.

Mme. Blavatsky: Al these are words, but if we speak from the physical
standpoint, it is everywhere—not above our heads, our

253. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

globe revolving. We say it is everywhere.

Mr. B. Keightley: Why do we see it as a limited thing running across a
particular tract of the sky?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because we see that which can be seen; that and the other
exists nevertheless; We see that which is more contracted, and the rest we do
not see, because it is lost in such immensity that certainly no eye—even a

Dhyâni-Chohan, or one (of) the Salvation Army that has a golden harp and
plays—can see; no one.

Dr. Williams: Did I understand you correctly in speaking of the sun and the
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planets and the moon? At one time you spoke of them al in connection, that
the planets had at some time been in the same condition that the sun is now in,
and that they would at some time be in the condition that the moon is now in.

Mr. B. Keightley: They pass through the sun stage, then they become comets,
then planets, then dead bodies, etc.

Dr. Williams: That would give the idea that the sun itself is approaching the
state of the planet, and by and by it would reach the condition that the moon is
in, and real y lose its heat.

Mme. Blavatsky: The sun is not a planet, it is a central star.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is a different stage of things al together.

Dr. Williams: Then the planets were real y not suns in the same sense that our
sun, the center of our solar system, is a sun?

Mme. Blavatsky: They were suns, but it is a different kind of suns. This one is
a reflection simply.

Dr. Williams: If you were considering the close of the solar Pralaya might it not
be that as it approached the consummation of that period it might be effected
in that way.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, it wil . It wil begin by getting less and less
radiant and giving less and less heat; and it is not that which

254. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

we see. That wil lose fire, but it wil be that behind, and these are the flames
and the nerves, which is merely a reflection, and they wil die out and
disappear, because it has no consistency, the sun. It is nonsense to come and
speak about the sun in this way; it is perfect fancy, because we see simply a
reflection of al kinds of magnetic forces—the real furnace of the solar system,
where al the fires are. And these forces are Life and Light, Heat, electricity
and everything, al the different correlations, that which we give different names
to. This is one thing. They are just the same as the one thing of the whole
universe is there. This is only in our solar system.

Dr. Williams: They must be evident, certainly.

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Mr. B. Keightley: After the next solar Pralaya, that which now is the sun wil , if I
understand The Secret Doctrine correctly, become in a fol owing Manvantara
of some kind, a comet.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, in the fol owing Pralaya, but it wil never become a
comet during the life of our little planetary chain.

Dr. Williams: The point I was after was that this out-breathing and inbreathing
is not sudden, but a gradual process. There is no point between the beginning
of the out-breathing and the end of the inbreathing, and therefore the sun might
approach to the ful ness of its forces and then would begin as gradual a
decadence of its forces.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a magnificent thing described in the Vishnu

Purâna. It is an exoteric thing, ful , of course, of al egories, which on their face
show themselves very ridiculous and absurd. But it is ful of very philosophical
meaning, and this thing—when the Pralaya comes and when the seven rays
begin to be absorbed—it is described in the most superb way. I wish
somebody would translate it into English verse. Wilson gives it, but he makes
the most terrible mistakes, and such that poor Fitzedward Hal ,12 his editor,
gives more footnotes than text. “Dr Wilson’s mistakes, but he didn’t have

12 [Fitzedward Hall, American Orientalist, 1825-1901. He edited Horace Hayman Wilson’s five volume translation
of the Vishnu Purânas published 1864-1877.]

255. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

the benefits in his time that we have” and this, that, and the other. And certainly
being a Reverend he could not do it otherwise. He had always to fight for

Jehovah.

Dr. Williams: Wel , there is, is there not, matter in its elementary state?

Mme. Blavatsky: Behind, not in what you see; that is merely a reflection. Wel ,
imagine yourself that this canot be seen, and you see only the reflection in the
looking glass.

Dr. Williams: In star analysis they get the lines showing—I do not know how
many—elements they have succeeded in isolating in the sun, but a certain
number.

Mr. B. Keightley: The question was answered by saying it was the effect of the
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atmosphere of finely divided cosmic dust, which has now been recognized by
science as fal ing gradual y to the earth, and which acts upon the light of the
sun; that according to occult science the formation of the solar lines takes
place in the earth’s atmosphere and is not a phenomenon due to the sun at al .

The President: Would not the same thing apply to every star spectra?

Mr. B. Keightley: Certainly, al round.

Mr. Gardner: But they differ very much.

Mr. B. Keightley: As far as I understand what was said in those letters, they do
not say that the emanation, whatever it is, the vibrations proceeding from the
sun and the stars are of the same nature, but they say that the phenomena that
we take to prove the presence of iron and sodium in the sun are not due to the
presence of those substances in the sun, as we know them, but due to the
action upon the sun’s rays of the atmosphere, of cosmic dust which surrounds
the earth.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because they say this atmosphere is three miles forming.

256. 8. Meeting February 28, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Three hundred.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh! I imagined it was two or three miles.

Mr. B. Keightley: I tel you how they have got to that. meteorites are at least

200 miles.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, it is three miles where you can breathe, I think, three
miles of breathable air, but not atmospherical. When it approaches it, of
course it differentiates and it gives quite different optical il usions. This I
remember.

Mr. B. Keightley: They say they do not know what the atmosphere is, but it is at
least 200 miles, because these meteorites get inflamed. It is very difficult to
see where the boundary line real y is.

The President: It depends upon what you mean by atmosphere.

Mme. Blavatsky: I thought the atmosphere was what you could breathe. What
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is the other?

Mr. B. Keightley: Al that they say is that these meteorites are observed to take
fire at a certain height, at least 200 miles above the surface of the earth, that
means to say there is something that produces friction; they rub against
something.

Mme. Blavatsky: Too much Fohat.

Mr. B. Keightley: That would be another way of explaining the same thing.

Mr. Kingsland: Then it is pure hypothesis that it is the friction of the
atmosphere?

Mr. B. Keightley: Purely, but that is the accepted hypothesis at the present
moment.

Mme. Blavatsky: For today, and on Saturday it wil be changed.

Mr. B. Keightley: That one has been helded the longest.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

9.

Theosophical Society.

Report of the

Weekly Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge
held at 17 Lansdowne Rd W

March 7, 1889.

President: Mr. Harbottle

The President: Stanza 7, Śloka 10. “Father-Mother spin a web,” etc. (reads
from The Secret Doctrine).

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 1. “You state that Spirit and Matter are the opposite
ends of the same web; last Thursday you spoke about such opposites as light
and darkness, heat and cold, void and space and ful ness of al that exists. In
what sense are these three pairs of opposites associated with matter and
spirit?”

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Mme. Blavatsky: I think in that sense everything in the universe is in
association with it, with every spiritual matter, because there is always either
one or the other that predominates in every subject that you can think of.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then do light, heat, and void correspond with matter,
darkness, cold, etc.?

Mme. Blavatsky: What is it, which question do you put now?

Mr. A. Keightley: The first question.

Mme. Blavatsky: Pure matter is pure spirit. It cannot be understood even if
admitted by our finite intel ects. Of course, you cannot see other {either ?} pure
matter or spirit, because they are perfectly one in occultism.

258. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

The President: They are the noumenoi of the opposites.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is but one thing, cal it element, force or god, anything
you like, it is always one. This is what occult science teaches; and after
differentiation comes al and everything that is. With regard to this question I
can only say that neither light nor darkness as optical effects are matter nor are
they spirit, but both are qualities of ether, the intermediate agent in the
manifested universal, for ether is dual. Ether is not as science knows it, but
ether, as it real y exists—that ether of which the ancient philosophers speak—
is dual, because it is the earliest differentiation on our plane of manifestation of
consciousness. It is dual in the objective, and dual as the middle Âkâsa in the
subjective universe. In the former case, it is pure differentiated matter; in the
latter elemental. In other words spirit becomes objective matter, and objective
spirit eludes our physical senses—

Mr. A. Keightley: Are the other elements beyond ether more differentiated
then either. Are they triple or quadruple?

Mme. Blavatsky: What {do} you cal beyond ether? Ether is universal.

Mr. A. Keightley: For instance, the five elements are ether, air fire water and
earth.

Mme. Blavatsky: Ether which is an element, is certainly not the ether that
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science speaks about.

Mr. A. Keightley: No, I am not al uding to science in this particular. You stated
there are five elements developed in accordance with the races.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. The fifth is not developed yet, that which the ancient

Greeks cal ed Zeus, that they cal the deity of al . Of course, if they spoke in
one sense, it was; if in another sense, it was not. Now the Zeus of Homer
certainly was not Âkâsa in al his Don Junic peregrinations.

The President: Isn’t it rather true to describe those elements as different
stages.

259. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Of course. Now that physical science has given the name of
elements to everything it believes to be homogeneous and finds after a time it
is esoteric, of course this is different; but otherwise I don’t see it. The
elements are those which are manifested here as the element of fire the
element of water, or the element of earth and so on. They are certainly
elements because they are entirely distinct from each other, though there is
not an element that has not got some other element in it. It is simply that one
aspect predominates.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is the point I was meaning. Are there three main
aspects, say, in Fire?

Mme. Blavatsky: What three main aspects? You may make three. Ether is
dual, certainly, because ether is the first celestial fire, as we cal it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is there a triple aspect in the element next below ether in
differentiation?

Mme. Blavatsky: You must not mix ether with the others. Ether is an element
which fol ows the four elements that we admit and accept, and the aether is its
abstract or general sense. One you wil spel “ether” and the other “aether.”

The President: When you speak of the dual ether, you speak of the [Ithea?] of
the Greek.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. That is why they made al the other gods
androgenous. They made the god or goddess just as the Hindus had: it is the
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two aspects of the deity, and every one of them is certainly or does certainly
belong to ether. You may cal them solar or lunar gods; they are the gods of
the ether.

Mr. Kingsland: Do you cal that dual because it is the middle point, so to
speak, between spirit and matter that is mentioned in the stanza?

260. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, because otherwise it wil be no more on the higher
planes, it wil become Âkâsa.

Mr. Kingsland: It is exactly the intermediate point.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. It plays the same relation between the cosmos and the
moon, our little earth, as Manas plays between the Monad and the body, just in
the same way as it is mentioned in The Secret Doctrine.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then what were you driving about the triple aspect?

The President: That was only I think, because Arch was somewhat
misunderstanding the way in which H.P.B. was using the word ether.

Mme. Blavatsky: You look at the Orientalists—they translate invariably Âkâsa
that, because ether is something which science suspects of being particled or
something equivocal. What do they cal it? Some strange name—“hypothetical
agent” and so on. And of course it must be something particled, since it says if
it were not matter it could not do the functions that it does in the eyes of
science. And Âkâsa a perfectly homogeneous thing. It is the rootless root of
al , it is Mûlaprakriti, it is the rootless root of Nature, that which is perfectly
unknown to us.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is the Âkâsa in its highest aspect.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but not ether. Ether is the Astral Light of the Kabbalists;
it is devilish infernal sight, as they cal it. It is Astral Light in its earliest aspects.

The President: Arch is confusing again aether and ether.

Mr. A. Keightley: No, I am not. There we get a distinction ether the fifth
element of those five.

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261. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not yet developed, and therefore you can hardly cal it an
element. It is to be developed with the fifth race.

Mr. Kingsland: Then that is the lowest aspect of Âkâsa.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. It is the lowest aspect to us who are the lowest aspect
of al kinds of beings and of the celestial aristocracy. Of course it appears very
grand, because as the proverb says: “a little eel by itself imagines itself a

Himalaya.” So we do in our conceit, but it is a very low thing.

Mr. Kingsland: But that ether you were speaking of is actual y what science
cal s the hypothetical medium which transmits light.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, and poor science does not know whether to believe it
or not.

Mr. Kingsland: Stil , there it is.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , what is question 2?

Mr. A. Keightley: In stanza 3, Śloka 10, it is said; “Brahmâ is the germ of
unknown darkness’ is the material from which al evolves and develops.”

Goethe is quoted as expressing the same idea in the lines “Thus at the roaring
loom of Time I ply, and weave for God the garment thou see’st him by.”1 It is
one of the axioms of logic that it is impossible for the mind to believe anything
of that of which it comprehends nothing. Now, if this “material” above
mentioned, which is Brahmâ, be formless, then no idea concerning it can
enter the mind, for the mind can perceive nothing where there is no form. It is
the “garment” or the manifestation in the form of God which we see or
perceive, and it is by this and this alone that we can know anything of him.

Question 2: What is the first form of this material which human consciousness
can recognize?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , do you direct the question psychical y or
physiological y, or as a question coming from materialistic science, physical
science?

1 [Goethe’s lines quoted are from his Faust, and would have been familiar to readers of Thomas Carlyle’s 1838

Sartor Resartus, where it was cited.]

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262. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Dr. Williams: Purely as a question of no significance to me whatever
materialists or any sect believe. I use the word “materialists” in quotation
points, desiring you to use the word just as you did in your own sense.

Mme. Blavatsky: In my sense I would not pay the slightest attention to
materialistic science. I do not believe in this materialistic science. I say they
are very great in smal details, but on the whole they do not satisfy anyone.

Dr. Williams: I don’t use the word material in the sense in which Huxley uses it,
or any of those.

Mme. Blavatsky: I want you to say in what sense you use it. I say the first
sense we can imagine matter, or that which is in our conception of matter—
that is to say, the most refined of al , the mother as we cal it, the primordial—I
wil say it is a circle. Because in al the occult books, in al the teachings and
philosophies, it is impossible to imagine one’s self any other first form than
that of a circle. It is impossible in the Aristotelian logic, it would be a [ ] of that;
but as we deal with metaphysics, and from the standpoint of the adepts in the
occult sciences, then I must answer you just as occultism says. If you take, for
instance, in the physical science, we wil say the first geometrical figure is a
triangle but this is on the manifested plane. It is not in the world of abstraction.

The first thing that you see is certainly a circle. Now this circle you can either
limit or take it just according to the capacities of your conceptions and of your
intuition, and you can make it limitless, al depends upon your powers of
conceiving things. You can expand it ad infinitum, make of it a limitless circle—
not only in words, in which you wil say a circle is something, the circumference
is everywhere and so on, you know the wel -known saying—but I don’t use any
other figure than that. Does that satisfy you? They make us conceive of a
circle first of al , and this circle which is al , and embraces al and has no plane.

Let us imagine something that is—wel , as large as we can imagine

263. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

it—and you might expand and extend ad infinitum. If we contract it to our
conceptions, it is because we want to make it conceivable to the finite
intel ect.

Dr. Williams: I suppose it would be a safe thing to say that the finite intel ect
cannot conceive of anything except what is finite.

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Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon: there are moments that you can conceive
far beyond that, which your physical brain can conceive. Certainly you cannot
conceive it if {you} simply hold to the matter and to this manifested universe,
but there are moments that you can conceive far more; in your dreams you can
conceive of things that you cannot when you are awake.

Dr. Williams: I understand that. But my point was after al it would be a finite
conception, because the the conception of a finite being.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, because this circle of light and of everything is not a
being; and then you can conceive it limitless, certainly. If it is limitless you can
go and search for limits, but you can conceive it is limitless. Let us say it wil
only apply to the manifested universe, to the objective; even that, certainly, to
the astronomer must appear limitless, if they are accustomed to look through
their telescopes, and do as they have to do. It must appear limitless to them.

Dr. Williams: They always think from the stand point of space and time. That is
why they say it is not limitless.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is where they limit their intel ect. Once they go beyond
that, they break their noses and nothing comes out of it.

Dr. Williams: When you get beyond space and time, have not you got beyond
al circles of form?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Then you have no need for symbols and
signs. Everything is in such a way then that it is impossible to express it in
words.

Dr. Williams: Then that just brings us right back to the point of the

264. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

question, and that was what the first form was which comes within the range of
human consciousness and finite consciousness. It is not it seems to me, so
much a question of what we may imagine as what we are bound to think by the
loss of the constitution of the human mind.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is a circle, I say again. It is proved Kabbalistical y and
occultly that the first thing you may imagine, when you want to imagine
something is a circle.

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Dr. Williams: That is exactly the point I wanted to reach.

Mme. Blavatsky: Those who tel you the biggest absurdity in science tel you,
you can square the circle, positively square it, and make of it any figure you
like for its in al in al .

Mr. Kingsland: Isn’t it a sphere, rather than a circle?

Mme. Blavatsky: Circle or sphere, cal it what you like. Of course it is a sphere

—it has circumference but no plane.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what is the next figure you get after the circle?

Mme. Blavatsky: If you begin, the first figure wil be a triangle.

Mr. B. Keightley: The circle is the central point first then the triangle.

Mme. Blavatsky: The figure is no figure: the circle with the point; it is simply
primeval germ, and it is the first thing you imagine at the beginning of
differentiation. But the triangle is the one you have to conceive of, once that
matter begins to differentiate, once you have passed the zero point, the Laya.

It is this I wanted to say, it is just this. Brahmâ is cal ed an atom Anu, because
atom could not be an atom. Because it is for us an atom that we don’t see, we
simply imagine it is a kind of mathematical point and so on, but in reality an
atom can be extended and made absoluteness. It is the germ. It is not the
atom from the standpoint of the physicists or the chemists,

265. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

it is from the occult standpoint. It is the infinitesimal y smal and total ic Brahmâ.

I maybe the unknown limited quantity latent atom during Pralaya, active during
the life cycles, but one which has neither circumference or plane, only limitless
expansion. Therefore also the circle is but the geometrical symbol in the
subjective world and it becomes the triangle in the objective. That is my
answer, and it is finished. So do you understand now?

Mr. A. Keightley: I don’t see how it becomes a triangle in the objective. That is
what puzzled me always.

Mme. Blavatsky: If that circle is limited it would be a very difficult thing. Then
there would be two things having no relation to each other, unless you put the
triangle in the circle.

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Mr. A. Keightley: That of course is a figure one has always seen.

Mme. Blavatsky: How is it in The Secret Doctrine. It is a circle and the point
then becomes the plane and with that the triangle; and this plane has nothing to
do with what we imagine. It is that boundary from which begins the manifested
universe. When you want to fol ow into cosmogony and theogony then you
have to imagine the triangle, because from this first triangle, if you take this

Pythagorean definition, it begins descending, as I explained to you last time
when coming back on itself, making the plane and then going up again and
disappearing in darkness.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then Śloka 11, Question 3. Is the word “expand” here used
in the sense of differentiating or evolving, and “contract” in that of involution?

Or do these terms refer to Manvantara and Pralaya? Or again, to a constant
vibratory motion of the world-stuff or atoms? Are this expansion and this
contraction simultaneous or successive?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is translated word for word, this, and it is al certainly
figurative, and metaphorical, and so on, therefore you must not take in the
literal sense everything; because you must al ow something for the Eastern
way of expressing it. There stanzas are as

266. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

old as man, but this is thinking man.

Mr. A. Keightley: (reads question again.)

Mme. Blavatsky: The Web means here, the ever existent primordial matter—
pure spirit to us—the matter out of which the objective universe or universes
are evolved. It means that when the breath of fire of father is upon it, it
expands. That is to say, a subjective material, it is limitless, infinite, eternal and
indestructible. When the breath of the mother touches it, when the time for
manifestation comes, and it has to come into objectivity and form, it contracts,
for there is no such thing as something material and with a form, and yet
limitless. You understand, the fire, here stands for father. It is that ever
unknowable principle, which fecundates that matter, this primordial matter or
the mother. And then taking a form—of course it wil take a form and become
limited. The universe is limitless, but yet everything that has form in it is finite.

Wel , this is why it is said to contract, contract—that is to say, become
something less— maybe the expression is not a happy one.

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Mr. B. Keightley: It means to become limited.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is what I want to say. Now, the critics many, but the
helpers were few when I wrote the thing. That is the mischief of it.

Dr. Williams: It is not the literal interpretation of any of the stanzas, but only the
ideas that are underneath them that we want.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, yes, the literal; I try to translate word for word.

Dr. Williams: But it is not that I insist upon, at al ; it is the ideas that are
underneath that.

Mr. Kingsland: What we took it for is this, that when the breath of mother
touched it, then the sons dissociated and scattered, and returned to the
bosom, the end of Pralaya; but it is the opposite way about.

267. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You can take it in any way. You can take it as the end of

Pralaya, or the other way.

Mr. Kingsland: It is when the breath of mother touches it they contract and
come into manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, and at the end of Pralaya they contract again and
become less and less and less. And then they become dissociated and
disintegrated and they fal into that which they were at first.

Mr. Kingsland: Wouldn’t you say at the end of Pralaya they expanded?

The President: The “contraction” here is the same as thing as scattering.

Mme. Blavatsky: I always took it in one sense.

Mr. Kingsland: We thought dissociating and scattering referred to the Pralaya.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh no, it refers to the differentiation.

Mr. B. Keightley: “To return into their mother’s bosom at the end of the great
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day.”

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, you have to know the inherent powers of every
atom. You have to know what real y matter is on this plane, and what matter is
before it is differentiated. Now, there, I have tried to give you the explanation. I
don’t know whether I have succeeded or not. Now, for instance, take that
proposition of Sir Isaac Newton, viz. that every particle of matter has the
property of attraction for each other particle, etc. You know the wel -known
proposition. Very wel . It is correct from one aspect. Then also there is Leibniz.

He speaks about the Monads and says every atom is a universe in itself, which
acts through its own inherent force. This is also true. But one speaks from the
standpoint of psychology, and the other from that of physical science; and
both say that which has neither beginning nor end, because it does not explain
anything. It is a perfect impossibility. It is only occultism that comes and
reconciles the two and shows

268. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

that there is something else in it. They are incomplete. Man also is an atom
having attraction and repulsion in him, because he is the microcosm of the
microcosm {macrocosm}. But it would be true to say that because of that force
he moves and acts independently of every other—or could act and move,
unless there were a greater force and intel igence than his own to al ow him to
live and move. I speak about that high element of force and intel igence. That
is to say, your physical science says that every atom has its inherent force in
itself, and that there is no extra cosmic matter—a thing for which you pitch into
me, Dr. Wil iams, because you say science wil not al ow the extra cosmic
force.

Dr. Williams: I didn’t mean to put it in that sense.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, but you wil read it afterwards. Your physical scientists,
as far as I understand them—it seems to me I understand them to say that
every atom has its own inherent force in itself, and this is what makes Haeckel

2 say, for instance, that matter has created itself, that it gave itself a kick and
did everything by itself. There is nothing else. Very wel , I have no objection to
that. But there is something else, therefore there is a force inherent in the
atom, and one which acts on the atom, and this is that which I wanted to
explain to you. Now one of my objects in The Secret Doctrine is to prove that
planetary movements cannot be accounted for satisfactorily by the sole theory
of gravitation, and this leads me to say that besides force acting in matter there
is also that other force which acts on matter. Take, for instance, a sponge
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(maybe the sponge wil be a very bad simile, but stil it wil give the idea of what

I want to show). Take a sponge, it is soaked through and through in seawater.

Every atom of it is, so to say, a dried atom or particle of seawater, yet the
waves around it wil toss and guide it. Now these waves are the same as those
inside it, as those which created it, and which even have created that sponge
which has become objective matter and perfectly specific matter. It is just the
same with every atom in the universe. What I seek to express then is this:

when we

2 [Ernst Haeckel, German biologist, 1834-1919.]

269. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

speak of modified conditions of spirit matter, which in reality is force, and cal
them by various names, such as heat, cold, light, darkness, repulsion,
attraction, electricity, magnetism and so on, al these for the occultists are
simply names and expressions of difference in manifestation of one and the
same force, which is always dual, at least in differentiation, but not in specific
differences of force. For al such differences in the objective world result only
from peculiarities of the differentiation of matter on which the one free force
acts, helped in this by that portion of its essence which we cal imprisoned
force. Now I must tel you that the force is one, but it differs in its aspects
according to whether it is on the manifested plane, where it is encased and
imprisoned in an atom or in any form that you can imagine, or whether it is this
free force which I have just tried to show you, as in the il ustration of the
sponge. There is this other force which is absolute totality: that force is not a
force only, it is al , it is life, it is consciousness. But al this is absolute. And al
this not having any relation to the finite, certainly of course we cannot regard it
or compare it with the things that we see in the manifested universe. You
understand my idea, Dr. Wil iams?

Dr. Williams: Yes, I think I do. This is rather anticipating the questions which
are to fol ow.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is not my fault.

Dr. Williams: But how are we to know anything about the universal force which
lies behind or above or outside of them?

Mme. Blavatsky: We can never know it on the physical plane.

Dr. Williams: How are we to get any idea of it?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Study occultism.

Dr. Williams: That is it? What has occultism to say about it?

Mme. Blavatsky: It says that everything you see around, that you can
comprehend or conceive of, al this comes from that one absolute force. You
have either to believe in a personal God who does so and

270. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

so—wel , of course, as the good clergyman teaches—or you have to believe
that there is one absolute totality, incomprehensible, which Herbert Spencer
cal s the unknowable and refers to it as “He” and the “just cause” (which is very
philosophical!), or you have to choose. Logical y, it cannot be anything else,
because nothing can come out of nothing; everything must come from
something. This something cannot be limited; if it were, it would be a personal

God.

Mr. B. Keightley: It would come from something itself.

Mme. Blavatsky: It would just be the fairy hen that lays the egg, and the egg
has existed before that hen, and it has produced that hen. Go on if you can
understand that.

Dr. Williams: I quite see the logic of that, and I also see that it is absolutely
necessary to postulate the “Absolute,” something which is back of al
manifestation which has no relation to us; but having postulated that, how is it
possible to go any further than that? Because the moment we go further than
that we begin to talk about manifestation. We can postulate an Absolute of
which we can conceive absolutely nothing.

Mme. Blavatsky: Philosophy postulates nothing. It postulates its existence,
not its being. It does not say it exists, it does not say it is a being, it simply
says it is. Now remember what [ ] said to the king, that great [ ] when he
asked him about Nirvâna. He said it is nowhere. It exists nowhere. What is

Nirvâna? It is nothing. Then Nirvâna, he says, does not exist. No it does not.

Then he says, what are you talking about? He said it is, but it does not exist, it
is a state; imagine one absolute state, and this is that consciousness.

Dr. Williams: I see that as a necessity of logic when it applies simply and
solely to the Absolute, or to that which forever transcends human
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consciousness. But the moment we leave that it is different. I want to know
how it is possible to talk about the condition of a thing which is not a thing. That
is what I cannot comprehend.

Mme. Blavatsky: “Nights and days of Brahmâ,” have you ever studied them?

271. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Dr. Williams: Yes.

Mme. Blavatsky: Very wel . How do you imagine, for instance, a dark night and
a man or men sleeping in a kind of dead sleep—let us say that dead men are
like that, let us leave aside al other men. Let us say that a man is like in a dead
faint, in one of those swoons; there is no remembrance. You maybe five or six
hours and it appears one second. Let us think of that. And yet there it comes:

there is no consciousness, nothing at al , but from that consciousness of non-
being a man becomes and begins thinking immediately what he is. Can you
imagine that? It is very unsatisfactory analogy, but there is something in it.

Dr. Williams: Yes, I can imagine anything which comes within the range of
human consciousness, but that does not seem to me to touch the point at al .

We first postulate an Absolute, of which we admit we can have no conception
whatever; then we begin to talk about qualities—of this which transcends
human consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, we do not begin to talk about that at al ; it is that
absoluteness, according to the Eastern philosophy. It is that absoluteness,
which, when the hour strikes of the life-cycle of the day of Brahmâ which has
qualities which were latent in it, and dormant, which were in the Laya condition,
at the zero point of everything, al negative, which awaken, so to say. And from
that they begin gradual y one after the other to form the one whole what we cal
the divine ideation. We cal it the divine thought, that which Plato cal ed the
eternal idea. Then after that begins the differentiation. How many times have I
been explaining it is not one? That is why the Brahmins, who are certainly the
greatest philosophers in the world, postulate seven creations and at the end of
the seventh begins that which I tried to explain to you here. And they have a
name for every creation. I speak of those in The Secret Doctrine on al the
planes and through al the planes of consciousness. And until it comes there—
and then you may say from the seventh creation, our creation (I cal

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it creation, it ought to be cal ed evolution)—then, only begins the differentiation
and the fal of spirit into matter. But this goes on gradual y, mil ions and mil ions
of years; and when they come and speak to me about seven thousand years, I
say fiddlesticks and that is al I can say, because seven times seven mil ions
would not cover it.

Mr. B. Keightley: It strikes me, Dr. Wil iams, that the logic of the position is
this, if the Absolute is the abstract totality in some form or another. Every
object of our consciousness, whether, so to speak, an idea or anything else,
must have its root in that Absolute, must come from that, in some way or
another. Therefore ultimately there must be latent, or merged in the Absolute
during the time of Pralaya, the essential roots of everything which ever is, has
been, or wil be
manifested.

Dr. Williams: Oh, I quite grant al that.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then comes in what H. P. B. was saying, that you take up the
first thing of those qualities. Behind that manifestation you cannot say anything
at al .

Dr. Williams: Is not that just what has been done al through The Secret

Doctrine? Are not there postulates made there of that which has no form, of
that which is above form and yet which is in the first absolute, the Absolute?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, I speak of it as eternal darkness, then on the
second plane begins the motion; this is right that motion begins something
else, and so on, until it descends, until the seven. Finite intel ect cannot reach
that; therefore, it has to come to begin on that stage when the first flutter of
differentiation begins in the primordial matter, which is eternal.

Dr. Williams: That is the point; what the first manifestion was and how we
came to have any consciousness of it, and how it is possible to have any
consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the experience of ages and ages, of al the seers. Either
you have to admit that there are such people in the world as

273. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

seers or there are not. If there are, then the experience of one checks the
other. They never said to each other how it was. Those who had the capacities
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of seers were put to the test, and if they happened to say in their utterances
that they know how to produce it, and if the later one happened to say just the
same things as the other said, I suppose there is some probability that it is so.

Dr. Williams: I am quite wil ing to admit that there is not much that comes
within the range of my consciousness, but that which does, if I would be
honest with myself, I must hold to, quite irrespective of what anybody has said
about it.

The President: It seems to me the difficulty between these intermediate
stages is this: in a sense, they are positive conceptions. The conception of the

Absolute is a negative one, and therefore, it is comparatively easy to us. The
intermediate stages are not within the range of our finite intel ects, but
nevertheless they are positive conceptions.

Mr. Yates: Everything which is within the range of the Absolute must be within
our consciousness?

Dr. Williams: Yes, that is exactly the point. The gentleman has stated it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of course, you don’t study here the esoteric things. But
those who study the esoteric instructions3 wil understand what I mean. Isn’t it
said, if we go on a lower analogy—the birth of a child, if you take, or the birth of
any animal—take this and you wil find it corresponds admirably. There is not a
missing link. It corresponds with things which are known to science—you
understand what I mean—and these are facts which are not to be gainsaid. It
is impossible; it is a perfect proof because it dovetails with every{thing} that
science has so far had any proofs of.

Mr. Kingsland: It seems to me that Dr. Wil iams’ questions amounts to this: he
wants to know how we can get at or appreciate what it is that acts upon matter.

3 [The instructions issued to members of H. P. B.’s esoteric section, of which Instruction No. 1, dated January
and February 1889, had just come.]

274. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the inherent force which covers the whole ground of
consciousness and life and everything that you can think of; and at the same
time there is a consciousness which acts on it. And these are the things I am
going to give you the proofs of, now that your science is at loggerheads with
itself.

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Dr. Williams: Here is another way of putting it. We have to begin at the
beginning, at the Absolute. Then we have next the manifestion of the Absolute.

The moment you have the manifestion of anything, you have an idea, you can
predicate something about it; but if you go back to anything in which you can
predicate nothing, you wil never come to the Absolute. Now how is it possible
to say anything or predicate a condition of that which transcends
consciousness?

Mme. Blavatsky: But we don’t postulate anything about it. We say this
transforms itself through the planes, the various planes of manifestation, until it
reaches this plane of objective scientific perception—even scientific—and that
those things that you know are forces in nature, as they can prove to you.

There is something beyond; and this is proven by that, that even the laws of

Newton and Kepler 4 can be perfectly contradicted and proven to be wrong.

And this is what I have been preparing here, because with your question I felt
like an old war-horse that gets the smel of powder. And I just put to you the
explanation.

Mr. Kingsland: I think Dr. Wil iams seems to suppose that if you pass our
plane of consciousness you get to the Absolute.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, no, not at al . This passes through a plane that we can
have some idea of. For us it is perfectly invisible. The men of science don’t
want to admit it, just because they cannot smel it or touch it, or hear it, or bring
it to be perceived with their senses.

Dr. Williams: I daresay the fol owing question wil help us somehow.

4 [Johannes Kepler, German astronomer, 1571-1630.]

275. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: This imprisoned force and the free force—the worker, within,
or the inherent force—ever tends to unite with its parent essence, that which is
outside. And thus the mother acting within causes the web to contract, and the
father without to expand. That is another explaination for you; this it is which
your men of science cal gravity, and we men of ignorance, or fel ows, cal the
work of the universal life-force, spirit-matter, which is one outside space and
time, and dual within space and time. This is the work of eternal evolution and
involution or of expansion and contraction. There: I answer everyone of your
objections and questions. Do I or not? This is that dual force; and then you wil
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come to the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which wil prove to you it must
be so, simply because I base myself on the mistakes of science, which are
glaringly demonstrated by al the astronomers and physicists, and yet they
won’t admit them. But they are, if you please, like the Church clergyman—they
know the mistakes and the impossibilities, but won’t admit them. So your men
of science, they find something that does not dovetail that upsets entirely their
theory, but they are too lazy to go and invent another theory. It is very
comfortable to go and invent some flapdoodle and then go on ad infinitum.

Anything they say the hoi pol oi wil swal ow.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then question 4.

Mr. B. Keightley: Before you pass on to that there is this. You say the inner
force, the imprisoned force, causes contraction, and the father or external
force, expansion.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is to say, that force which works inside or something
which has form works, and has always to unite itself with that other force which
is absolute; and therefore this force tends to take a form. By that action it
assumes a form, whereas the other tries to expand and has no form.

Mr. Kingsland: Would not a very good example be the case of a lump of ice in
water? It is an expansion of the same material as the water, but the force
makes it contract and form into ice, which is

276. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

something in the manifested plane; and it is always tending to go back again.

Mme. Blavatsky: And what forms the ice, your scientists don’t say. They are
right in the detail, but not in the general explaination.

Mr. A. Keightley: (reads again question 4.)

Mme. Blavatsky: That is a nice question. “when” When the imprisoned force
and intel igence inherent in every atom of differentiation (as of homogenious
matter) arrives at a point when both become the selves {slaves} of that
intel igent force which we cal Divine free-wil , represented by the Dhyâni-

Buddhas. When the centripetal and centrifugal forces of life and being are
subjected to by the one nameless force, which brings order in disorder and
establishes harmony in chaos then. I cannot tel you anything else. How can I
name to you the precise hour and time in a process, the duration of which is
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perfectly, and which the Hindus and the Buddhists, as you know, put in figures.

Mr. A. Keightley: The object of the question was at what stage of the process.

Now, question 5. What is meant by the web becoming radiant when it cools?

Mme. Blavatsky: Just that which is said in the paragraph two of the comments
which fol ow the stanza. (The President reads the passage from The Secret

Doctrine.)

Mr. A. Keightley: Then, question 6. Stanza 3, Śloka 11. The paragraph of the
commentary needs elucidating in reference to the part which heat plays in the
forming and breaking up of the element, and also of the worlds in globes. In it
is stated first “great heat breaks up the compound elements and resolves the
heavenly bodies into their one primeval element.” This heat is already existing
in a “focus or center of heat (energy) of which many are carried about to and
fro in space.” What are these centers of heat? Are they visible or invisible in
our plane of matter? What is the “body” referred to, which may be either

“active or dead?” Is the

277. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

disintegration by heat, here referred to, that which takes place in our plane and
with which we are familiar in chemistry?

Mme. Blavatsky: Then you see I went to the other thing, and then I answered

Dr. Wil iams entirely on that—the thing where you say something that is in your
question 6. That is what I say you have mixed up. You go on to the end, and it
wil be a great deal better—to the end of that number 6.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is the end of number 6.

Dr. Williams: I think it has relation to Fohat.

Mme. Blavatsky: (After reading question 6.) No, it is not that which I answered.

There is the confusion that I spoke of to you, because I know I speak of
science here.

Dr. Williams: It is the second statement, Madame, that you refer to. I
remember it.

Mr. A. Keightley: (Reads the second statement.)

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Mme. Blavatsky: I have just answered til then. I say that science is so afraid
to raise her theories into her axioms. And why does she play Penelope 5 and
do today that which she would not do yesterday? Show to us that the law holds
good with regard to the entirety of planetary representatives, and that they can
be and are produced in accordance with the law, and then I may say that you
are right. We maintain that in this case neither the laws of Newton nor of Kepler
wil hold good. Take the the Newtonian law as given to us by Herschel, as just
stated. He says that under the influence of such attractive force you wil urge
two spherical gravitating bodies towards each other; they wil , when moving to
each other and each other’s neighborhood, be deflected into an orbit concave
to each other and describe, one about the other regarded fixed, or both
around the common center of gravity, curves, whose forms are those figures
known in geometry by the

5 [The faithful wife of Odysseus in Homer’s epic, the Odyssey.]

278. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

general name of conic sections. It wil depend upon the particular
circumstances of velocity, distance and attraction which of those curves shal
be described—whether an el ipse, a circle, a parabola or a hyperbola—but one
of these it must be. Now, there is one of the theories of science which you
have raised into an axiom. Now this axiom of science can be upset in the most
easy way possible, by proving that of these things that take place in the
phenomenon of the planetary motion, that everything goes against that. This
wil make you smile, of course, but when everything is given to you and proven
to you, you wil say this is not a vain boast but it is perfectly that which
occultism claims. Now, what science says is that the phenomenon of the
planetary motion results from the action of the two forces, the centripetal and
the centrifugal. Is it so? And they assure us that a body fal s to the ground;
first, in a perpendicular line to stil water; and secondly, it does so owing to the
law of gravity or centripetal force. Do they say so? Now, I am going to prove to
you this axiom—to prove to you what a fal acy it is. Now, a very learned
occultist shows the fol owing: that if we trust these laws, we shal find as
obstacles in our way among other things, first that the path of a circle is
impossible in the planetary motion—perfectly impossible, if left to that inherent
force. Second, that the argument as to the third law of Kepler, namely, that the
squares of the periodic atoms of any two planets are to each other in the same
proportion as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun, gives rise to this
curious result of the permeated {permitted} libration on the eccentricities of
planets. Now, the said forces remaining unchanged in the nature, this can only
arise, as he arose {says?}, from the interference of an extraneous cause. He
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also proves that the phenomenon of gravitation or of fal ing does not exist
except as the result of a conflict of forses. It is not gravity, it is a conflict of
forces. It can only be considered as an isolated force by way of mental
analysis. He asserts moreover that the planet’s atoms or particles of matter are
not attracted towards each other in the direction of right lines connecting their
centers, but rather forced towards each other in the curves of spirals closing
upon the centers to each other; also that the tidal wave is not the result of
attraction, but simply of this conflict of forces. Al this, as

279. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

he shows, results from the conflict of imprisoned forces from that which in the
eyes of science is antagonism, and what is affinity and harmony to the
knowledge of the occultists. Now, these things, if you wanted me to prove
them, would take me about two days to prove, but I wil draw for you al the
geometrical things to prove to you that these things are not rare exceptions,
but that they form the rule in the planetary motions. Where is, after that, your

Newtonian and your Kepler propositions?

Mr. Kingsland: Is that esoteric, or is that public.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al ; some of the things may be exoteric.

Mr. Kingsland: Is it sufficiently exoteric to be proved to the satisfaction of a
man of science.

Mme. Blavatsky: The men of science laugh at it, and won’t except it. I think I
have given it quite enough in The Secret Doctrine.

Mr. Kingsland: Can it not be demonstrated mathematical y?

Mme. Blavatsky: Mathematical y, I think it can. Look at those proofs I have
given in my “tugs of science” in The Secret Doctrine. Have you read them al ?

Mr. B. Keightley: You have not given a detailed proof of that, of this particular
point; it would be an awful y good thing to do.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, thank you! If I were to give you al the proofs I could
give, life would not be sufficient.

Dr. Williams: I think {you} misunderstood my position; I quite understand why
you got mad now.

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Mme. Blavatsky: I thought you laughed at me, saying science would say so
and so.

Dr. Williams: I am not here for that. I don’t care what any astronomer thinks. I
know very wel they quarrel among themselves.

Mme. Blavatsky: I quarrel not with you, but with science. It was

280. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

what was suggested to me by you. You say so cool y, science wil say this or
that. I say fiddlesticks to science.

Mr. A. Keightley: You have not answered Dr. Wil iams’ question at al .

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear sir, I tel you, you have mixed up the things. I have
answered the whole of it. I felt very much excited and mad. Very wel now, put
the question.

Mr. A. Keightley: This is question 8. Statement to this question: In the
commentary on Śloka 11 of the same stanza, it is stated that: “Fohat, gathering
a few of the clusters of Cosmic matter (nebula) wil , by giving it an impulse, set
it in motion anew, develop the required heat, and then leave it to fol ow its own
new growth.” Such a statement as this makes it necessary for us to abandon
al of those great generalizations or conclusions which modern science prides
itself upon having reached, viz: the persistence and uniformity of force and the
consequent orderly changes in the universe by antecedent and sequence.

Science would say that it is inconceivable that an extra-cosmic force, that is, a
force not forever imminent within matter, should break into the cycle of
evolution on any point, and after a period of activity, again leave matter to its
own devices. Science would say that creation, or the bringing of form within the
range of our conscious perception, is the result of that something to which it
has given the name Force. It would further say that the force which must
persistently remain within that matter as its sustaining and actuating principle,
otherwise it would instantly pass from the range of perception or cease to be,
so far as we are concerned. If it is once admitted that there is such a force
imminent in matter, then the introduction into it of that which has not always
been within it is an inconceivability of thought. Moreover, such an hypothesis
would be whol y unnecessary, because al of the movements and activities of
matter are completely understood without it. Question 8. Is Fohat to be
understood as synonymous with force, or that which causes the changing
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manifestations of matter? If so, how can Fohat be said

281. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

to “leave it to fol ow its own new growth,” when al growth depends upon the
indwel ing force?

Mme. Blavatsky: Al growth depends upon the indwel ing force, because on
this plane of ours it is this force alone which acts consciously in our senses.

The universal force cannot be regarded as a conscious force, because you
would forthwith make of it a personal God. It is only that which is enclosed in
form, and limited as to form and matter—I don’t know how to express myself
wel —which is conscious of itself on this plane. That which is limitless and
absolute, as this free force or wil is, cannot be said to act understandingly, but
has but one sole and immutable law of life and being. Fohat is therefore
spoken of as the synthetic motor power of al the imprisoned life forces put to
give a medium between the Absolute and the conditioned forces. He, so to
speak, is the cement between the two, as Manas is the connecting link
between the gross matter of the physical body and the Divine Monad which
animates it. It is powerless to act upon it directly in the First Race.

Dr. Williams: That bears directly upon the question.

Mme. Blavatsky: Very wel , now, 9.

Mr. A. Keightley: Are you not going to touch upon number 6, then?

Mme. Blavatsky: Six? I have been al uding to al the time.

Mr. A. Keightley: (Reads question 6 again.)

Mme. Blavatsky: No sir, it is not that. It is a thing which cannot be explained to
you. On the things that take place here, it is a perfect impossibility.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what are those centers of heat?

Mme. Blavatsky: They are the centers, those from which for instance, Keely
draws his inter theoric {etheric ?} force, Laya centers. Heat is paradoxical. It
would not be heat to us. There is the negation of heat.

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Mr. Kingsland: I thought they might be related to the knots of Fohat that you
spoke about last time.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is quite a different thing. Now, 9.

Mr. A. Keightley: Wil you do anything with question 7?

Mme. Blavatsky: I gave you al this about question 7.

Mr. A. Keightley: This is question 7. Could extreme cold produce the same
dissociating effect, as extreme heat, as Mr. Sinnett seems to convey in

Esoteric Buddhism, page 200? I wil read the passage in Esoteric Buddhism.

(Reads passage, page 200.)

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , this is correct enough.

Mr. A. Keightley: The question actual y is, “would the effect of cold be
sufficient to cause a conglomerated mass like the earth to fly apart into
separated particles.”

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it would not.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is not a question of cold but a question of death—loss of
life.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is Flammarion 6 whom Mr. Sinnett quotes as being
correct.

Mme. Blavatsky: Correct in some things, but I remember perfectly wel that
the Master said he was not correct in other things. But Sinnett wants to bring al
under the sway of science; and Flammarion, perhaps, is more for him than
anyone else. I have been answering this question that he has been asking
about Sinnett. It is question 11, because I find it 11 here on your type thing.

Now you must go to 9. This wil lead to eternal confusion.

Mr. B. Keightley: Al these things must be put into the report.

Mr. A. Keightley: (Statement to question 9.) Fol owing out the

6 [Camille Flammarion, French astronomer, 1842-1925.]

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thought already presented in the foregoing statements that Force is unity or

One manifesting in an unlimited variety of ways, we find it impossible to
understand another statement in the commentary, viz: that “there is heat
internal and heat external in every atom,” or as it is sometimes spoken of,
latent and active heat, or dynamic kinetic heat. From my own standpoint these
terms involve a contradiction. We have a perception of matter actuated by
force in a peculiar way and to this particular phenomenon we have given the
name heat. Heat, then, on the physical plane, is simply matter in motion. But
there is heat in a more interior or occult sense. Yes, and how is it perceived on
these higher planes of consciousness? By virtue of the same law which
prevails here, because the truth of the unity of force is a universal truth, and
therefore perceived in the same or similar way on al planes of consciousness.

If there be heat in a more interior or occult sense than physical heat, it must be
perceived by some higher or more interior sense than over present physical
senses, and it must be perceived by virtue of its activities on whatever plane
it manifests. That there maybe activites and perception of activites on any
plane there must be both percipient and objective forms. We thus see that the
law of heat, on any plane of existence, is the same. Three conditions are
necessary, viz., the actuating force, the form which is actuated, and that which
perceives the form in motion. The terms latent heat, potential heat, or dynamic
heat are misnomers, because heat, whether on the first or the seventh plane
of consciousness, is the perception of matter or substance in motion.

Question: Is the discrepancy between the above statement and the teaching in

The Secret Doctrine apparent or real? If real, at what point in the scientific
teaching does the error come in?

Mme. Blavatsky: He who offered this question, and regards them as
contradictions and discrepancies, can certainly know nothing of occult
sciences. Why should heat be on another plane than ours, the perception of
matter or substance in motion? Why should an occultist accept the conditions
as a sine qua non? First of the actuating force, second the form which is
actuated and third that which perceives the forming motion, as this of heat? Al
this is

284. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Spencerianism,7 pure and simple. An occultist would say on the seventh plane
the form wil disappear, and there wil be nothing to be actuated upon. The
actuating force wil remain in solitary grandeur—that is to say, according to the

Spencerian phraseology. It wil be at once the object and the subject, the
perceiver and that which is perceived. How can you imagine on the seventh
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plane it would be the same thing? The terms used are on discrepancies or
contradictions, but so many symbols borrowed from physical science in order
to render al the processes more clear to the student. I am sorry I cannot go
into this tonight, or any Thursday night but a practical occultist wil understand
wel my meaning. These questions are, I suppose, met before the end of The

Secret Doctrine. In the third part I explain everything and if you read this, al
these questions wil be answered. They are met before you come to the third
part; there I answered them entirely. There is no error there at al . Those who
understand the symbols used know wel what is meant; in fact, al the
speculations of heat and force relate to and correspond with every principle in
man, and this why I brought them. Because every one of them corresponds
with one of the principles, and I use them simply as symbols. Because if I
used other expressions, nobody would understand me.

Dr. Williams: Very wel . Of course, connected with every expressed word or
thought, there are certain ideas, and it is only the ideas which underlie them
that I want. I don’t care for the form of expression at al . It is only the idea that
underlies the words I wanted to get at. Let us take the fourth or fifth plane there
is something which corresponds to heat on the material plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: As you go and descend on the planes, you find that
everything merges more and more into unity, and therefore on the fourth or
fifth plane certainly there is no such thing as heat and no contrast between heat
and cold. Because it becomes more and more one; it tends to unity.

7 [The system of thought developed by Herbert Spencer setting forth the idea that evolution is the passage from
the simple, indefinite and incoherent to the complex, definite, and coherent.]

285. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Dr. Williams: You speak of heat centers.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, for instance, when I speak of heat centers, they are the
centers which in the physical science would be the zero point, the negation. It
would be nothing, and yet these are just that, because they are spiritual,
because it is spirit.

Dr. Williams: Wel , on whatever plane we speak of anything, it does not make
any difference; we speak of it because we perceive something that we know; if
we don’t perceive it, we have nothing to say about it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Which changes entirely.

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Dr. Williams: Is there anything on the third plane which anyone can perceive,
which the occultist wil perceive?

Mme. Blavatsky: With his mind’s eye; and then he wil need no form and no
symbol or objective thing, because he does not see objectively. He sees only
the essence and the root of things, and with senses that do not pretend

{pertain ?} to this plane. Those are the senses that I have been speaking
about, when we spoke about dreams.

Dr. Williams: I admitted al the third, that the perception of anything on any
plane above matter must proceed on some sense which is higher than matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: The word “percieved” is a word which conveys the wrong
impression. It is “sensed” and not “perceived.”

Dr. Williams: Do you wish me to understand it is impossible to gain any idea?

Mme. Blavatsky: On the physical plane, no; but if you go one plane higher,
then you wil perceive in another way. On the third plane you wil “sense” the
thing with those senses that you have no idea of on the fourth, and so on, until
you come to the last plane where the higher adept cannot penetrate.

286. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Dr. Williams: I can perceive things which have no relation to this plane at al ;
but anything I can perceive, I can predicate something of, but it has no relation
to space and time.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly it has none, and yet it is linked, it is united
and linked indissolubly with this plane—that which has no relation to space or
time.

Dr. Williams: Wel , the apparent discrepancy (to go back a little into the
second statement of the question) is this: there is brought before the mind’s
eye the beginning of the creation of the physical universe; there is matter in a
homogeneous condition, and it was brought into that homogeneous condition
because of an actuating force, otherwise it never could have reached that
condition. Let us make a comparison. Let us suppose I have a trough or
groove constructed for the rol ing of a bil iard bal , and I know if I strike with a
mal et on that which would turn the scale at two ounces, it is sufficient force to
send that bal eight feet. What is the necessity of our introducing as an
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explanation any force (which I compare to a extra-cosmic force) to that which
has already received an impulse which wil send it eight feet?

Mme. Blavatsky: And do you suppose it would proceed to act in this way if it
did not have an inherent force which you represent, and which has an analogy
to the force outside.

Dr. Williams: But you speak there of Fohat coming in at that point, and doing
something and then leaving.

Mme. Blavatsky: I have no right to say more. There are things I cannot
explain, which I try to make you understand—that there is force outside and a
force inside; that no bil iard bal is just that.

Mr. Kingsland: Is that force outside acting continuously?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. If you leave a bil iard bal , and if it is there
three or four years. I don’t think you would find much of it at the end.

287. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Dr. Williams: In our conception of the universe, and it seems through al the
investigations of the ages, this one thing remains true, because it is a universal
truth—it has no reference whatever to the discrepancies of science, it is a
universal truth—and that is this: the persistence of force, that force is
everywhere persistent, though you never get the manifestation.

Mme. Blavatsky: This proves what we say. Because it is absolute, because it is
ever present. But they don’t know the force, they don’t know what it is. Can they
explain to you what is force? If they want to gainsay what we say, let them
explain what is force. Let them explain why their theories are a bundle of
contradictions.

Dr. Williams: I am only speaking self-evident truth.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is what they wil come and speak to you about the
persistence of force—which no occultist wil deny—but what is that force?

They are perfectly unable to tel you. Before it was al matter, matter reigned
supreme. After that, matter has been kicked out—there was a revolution, if you
please, among the scientists. They rebel ed and enthroned “Force” and now
they look at force and say, “Who are you?”

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Mr. Kingsland: The occultist wil say; force is not persistent on this plane.”

Speaking of science, he says that science says, force is persistent on this
plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is persistent, certainly, because it is eternal and absolute;
and it is given here under various forms and aspects, but it is not the force as it
is on the seventh plane. But it certainly is persistent. But what is that force, I
ask you? We say what it is. It is an absolute totality; it is the “unknowable” of

Herbert Spencer. But then you see science wil not admit that there is a force
which acts outside of the atom, that there is an intel igent force; they wil say it
is al blind force. This is what they wil say—force inherent, a mechanical force.

Dr. Williams: I cannot conceive of anything blind, or intel igent

288. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

force, but I must conceive of force acting on matter.

Mr. B. Keightley: But that is not the point Dr. Wil iams was after. Dr. Wil iams is
stil troubled about the statement in The Secret Doctrine Doctrine: 8 if Fohat
leaves the nuclei, the nebulous masses, to fol ow their own growth.

Mme. Blavatsky: This the fault of your learned brother. I have got the things
here, and I answer it.

Mr. Kingsland: Fohat wil set it in motion anew, and then leave it to fol ow its
own growth.

Mr. B. Keightley: That Dr, Wil iams understands to be in contradiction to the
law of forces.

Mme. Blavatsky: I tel you, al the questions here are mixed up, and I cannot
find where it is. But I can tel you without looking because I know very wel what

I have been writing about. It is not a contradiction at al , it leaves everything.

How is it expressed? It leaves the—

Mr. Kingsland: It leaves it to fol ow its own growth.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I must show it to you, because I have been writing it.

Al growth depends upon the indwel ing force, because on the plane of ours it
is this force alone—it is not that it leaves them to themselves, but Fohat acts
consciously, and it is only that which acts in the inherent force which acts
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consciously. It cannot be expressed in any other way. It is not that the forces
cease to act, but it is that one acts consciously and the other unconsciously.

The universal force cannot be regarded as a conscious force, because it
would forthwith make of it a personal God. It is only that which is enclosed in
form and a limitation of matter, which is conscious of itself on this plane of
ours. That which, is limitless and absolute, has the free force, or wil , cannot be
said to act understandingly, but has one immutable law of life and being. And
therefore it is said that Fohat leaves them alone

8 [ The Secret Doctrine, 1:84.]

289. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

to do as they please. That is to say, that henceforth—this force acting in every
atom wil be in the eternal conflict with the force outside—wel , not conflict, but
harmony as we would cal it. Therefore, there is no discrepancy at al .

Dr. Williams: I did not say there was.

Mr. B. Keightley: When Fohat gives them an impulse and leaves them to
themselves it means, in other words, that the outside force, or Fohat, the
universal force, becomes limited in form.

Mme. Blavatsky: It does not become limited in form.

The President: It becomes differentiated.

Mme. Blavatsky: The universal force cannot be said to act consciously
because it acts everywhere as an immutable law. Therefore they are said to
act for themselves. I don’t know how the expression goes—“the indwel ing
force.”

Mr. B. Keightley: The phrase used is, that Fohat gives them an impulse.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, it is the atom, the medium between that unconscious
force and that conscious force. Having established the centripetal and
centrifugal forces, he leaves them. Now, this is no discrepancy; without Fohat,
it is impossible, because one is the absolute, and the other is the limited. They
are the two extremes—there would be no connection, and Fohat connecting,
being the universal force of life in that which puts into motion the things, and
gives the impulse, he is said to come. You must make some al owance for the

Eastern mode of expression. I tel you I have been translating word for word.

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The President: But Fohat is not the absolute immutable force, it is the
synthesis of the seven rays.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al ; he is the connecting medium between the absolute
and that, since he represents al the Divine mind.

290. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: I asked that question; whose agent is Fohat in this case? The
agent of the law. He is the representive of that, of al these Dhyâni-Chohans as
we cal them, Mânasaputra, which means the eternal mind.

The President: It is quite clear but difficult to express, and not very easy to
see.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , it is my unfortunate English, but I defy any man with the
greatest command of the English language even to come and express these
abstruse things so that people could understand them.

Mr. A. Keightley: Statement to question 10. It is then further stated in the
commentary that under the influence of Fohat “the required heat” is developed
in order to give “it” the necessary impulse to fol ow a new growth. If “it” has
already been dissociated by heat, how does it require more heat for the new
growth? What is this new growth? What is the “it” here referred to, is it the

“body” mentioned a few times before, or is it the “few clusters of cosmic
matter” which Fohat has gathered together? Under what guidance does Fohat
act in these cases? What is the process by which a globe passes into

Pralaya? Does it do so in situ so to speak, that is to say, stil remaining part of
a planetary chain and maintaining its proper position in relation to the other
globes? Does the dissociation by means of heat play any part in the passage
of a globe into Pralaya?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I answer here, al this has reference to disrupted atoms
from forms becoming Ârupa formless—from forms becoming formless. It has
no reference to a special thing or some phenomenon here. It refers simply to
the disruption of atoms, and once that they return to their primordial element,
then Fohat begins again to turn them into use, that is to say, the vital electricity.

The President: To build them up into their aggregations.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly just the same as anyone does here. The
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291. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

atoms fly off and half becomes a cabbage and so on.

The President: Until that combination is built up. It is no conscious force in
itself. It requires Fohat to combine it.

Mme. Blavatsky: It requires Fohat to put it into form, to give it a number, a
geometrical aspect, a color, a sound; al these that it should acquire
consciousness.

The President: I think that explains it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then question 11. In the passage of a globe into Pralaya,
does it remain “in situ,” i.e. stil being part of a planetary chain, and maintaining
its proper position in relation to the other globes? Does the dissociation by
means of heat play any part in the passage of a globe into Pralaya?

Mme. Blavatsky: I think this is in Esoteric Buddhism, and it is explained there
in the obscuration of the planets. Of course, when one of the globes of a
planetary chain goes into obscuration, heat retires from it—it remains statu
quo. It is just like the sleeping beauty: it remains so, until it is awakened by a
kiss. It is like a frozen paralyzed thing, it remains as it is. There is no disruption
but there is no correlation going on, no renovation of atoms, no life.

Mr. Kingsland: And does it pass through the stage in which the mind is now?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, no; it wil return again when its time comes, because,
mind you, there is the planetary chain in every globe. One after the other
passes into obscuration.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is that period of obscuration real y and genuinely what is
ordinarily meant by Pralaya?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the Pralaya of the globe, but the globe above us wil go
on into activity.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is it a Pralaya of the globe, or is it a Pralaya only of the things
upon the globe?

292. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889
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Mme. Blavatsky: No, it is a Pralaya of the globe, when it goes into obscuration

—Pralaya of everything, of every atom.

Mr. A. Keightley: Take, for instance, the earth at the present moment,
supposing this member of this particular chain went into obscuration. At the
present moment it probably is visible to Mars. We wil say, would the earth stil
continue to be visible?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, it would continue to be visible. It would be just like
the moon. You think the moon is a dead planet, because it has no more trees
and that. It is a soul ess planet, dead spiritual y, but not dead—wel , if you
please, do not speak to me about it. It is a thing that Sinnett received on his
fingers for asking to many questions. I know you are al dangerous fel ows.

Mr. Kingsland: When our earth goes into Pralaya, it wil become like the moon.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think it has become like the moon already. We are al
lunatics, everyone of us here; mankind has become a perfect lunatic.

Mr. A. Keightley: Statement to question 12. In Śloka 11, the sons are spoken
of as dissociating and scattering, and this appears to be opposed to the action
of returning to their mother’s bosom at the end of the “Great Day.” Does the
dissociating and scattering refer to the formation of the globes from the
universal y diffused world stuff. In other words, emerging from a state of

Pralaya? What is meant by the expanding and contracting through their own
selves and hearts, and how is this connected with the last time {line?} of the

Śloka “they embrace infinitude”?

Mme. Blavatsky: That has been answered. The dissociating and scattering
refers to Nitya Pralaya in general. I explained to you what Nitya Pralaya is, so
you may explain it in your turn. You brought it to me the other day. I explained
to you what it was. It is an eternal and perpetual Pralaya which took place ever
since the worlds were created, ever since there was something on the globes.

It is going

293. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

on always, and ever wil be going on.

The President: It is death, simply—death in the sense of change.

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Mme. Blavatsky: We are al of us in Nitya Pralaya. None of us has got the
atoms that he or she had on entering the room an hour ago, and in an hour
more, we wil al be entirely changed.

Mr. A. Keightley: It is atomic change and nothing else.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. Nothing else. Al the change is Nitya Pralaya.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 13. What is meant by the expanding and
contracting “through their own selves and hearts,” and how is this connected
with the last line of the Śloka: “they embrace infinitude?”

Mme. Blavatsky: It is just an eastern metaphor in language, meaning that
which was already said—through their own inherent force imprisoned and each
striving col ectively to join in the universal forces, “embraces infinitude.” This is

I think very clear.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 14. What is the relation between density and the

“weight” of which you spoke last Thursday as the first quality manifested in
matter?

Mme. Blavatsky: Density even in its first degree has a film, imparts weight. I
believe one cannot exist without the other. If there is density, there is weight,
certainly; that is the relation. Now 15.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 15. What is the relation between electricity and (a)

physical magnetism, (b) animal magnetism, and (c) hypnotism?

Mme. Blavatsky: I think this is a very long question, and we had better
postpone it. One can be applied to the physical things, and the other is a thing
which you could not apply. You could not apply hypnotism to this box, but you
could apply electricity to it. The relation between them is that electricity is the
mother of al these on the plane of manifestation, and Fohat is the father of al .

Electricity is the mother of al the forces in mental and physical phenomena.

294. 9. Meeting March 7, 1889

First of al , and on what you cal phenomenal matter, neither can act on a
mineral or chemical element without Fohat, who turns about and acts upon the
molecules, and the molecular cel s of your brains. I think that is quite enough.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

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10.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

17 Lansdowne Road, Hol and Park W.

Thursday, March 14, 1889.

Mr. Kingsland in the Chair

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 4, Śloka 1.

Mr. B. Keightley: (Reads the passage from The Secret Doctrine.)

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 1. Are the “Sons of the Fire” the subdivisions of the
third Logos, or are they subdivisions of the Universal Mind? Are these two
synonymous?

Mme. Blavatsky: You mean to say that you understand that the “Sons of the

Fire” are simply a hierarchy of angels, or what?

Mr. A. Keightley: I understand that the “Sons of the Fire” are the various
hierarchies comprised in the subdivision of the third Logos.

Mme. Blavatsky: The modern “Sons of the Fire,” that is to say of the Fifth

Race and sub-race, are cal ed so simply because by their wisdom they belong
to the hierarchies, which are nearer to it, of the “divine sons of the fire mist”,
the highest Planetary Chohans or angels. But the “sons of the fire mist.” Who
are spoken of here in the stanza as addressing the “sons of the earth,” {are}

the royal king’s instructors, who incarnated on this earth to teach nascent
humanity. They belong as kings to the divine dynasties of which every ancient
nation—India, Chaldea, Egypt, Homeric Greece, etc.—has preserved the
tradition in some form or another. The subdivision of the second Logos are
unknown quantities, my dear sir, and those of the first or unmanifested Logos
never existed except as a unity.

296. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: My question was the third Logos.

Mme. Blavatsky: What is it you ask?

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Mr. A. Keightley: I say, are these subdivisions of the third Logos?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly; they must be, because the subdivisions of the
second Logos are unknown quantities. Those of the first never existed except
as a unity, therefore, they must be necessarily of the third. They cannot be
anything else. It is the first manifested point.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what relation do they have to the universal mind?

Mme. Blavatsky: What relation have they? Which ones?

Mr. A. Keightley: These hierarchies.

Mme. Blavatsky: They belong to the hierarchies that I have been explaining to
you many, many times, beginning by the “fire Chohans,” and the “fire angels,”

then the “ether angels,” the “air angels,” the “water angels,” and the “earthly
angels.” The seven lower sephorot are the earthly to the seven hierarchies of
the seven elements, of which five you know and two you don’t.

Mr. Kingsland: It would appear from what you say there, they also correspond
to the races?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, they correspond to the divine dynasties.

Where would be the intel ectual races with brains and thought if it were not for
these hierarchies who incarnated it?

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the “Sons of the Fire,” are these divine instructors?

Mme. Blavatsky: In this sense they are. They are king’s instructors—those
divine dynasties that the Chaldeans and the Egyptians and the Hindus have
thus taken; even to the Greeks they are divine dynasties.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then so far as the human beings are concerned, the “Sons
of the Fire” are the highest incarnated on earth, as the “son of

297. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

the fire mist” are the hightest in the celestial sphere.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but they are also the “Sons of the fire mist,” as the

Hierophants were cal ed in the days of old.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Are not they and the “divine dynasties” almost identical? That
is to say they must have been in this connection; they were king initiates.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, and they were moreover [ ], al of them; they were
incarnations. So the occult doctrine teaches of those celestial hierarchies who
came and incarnated in man, that they were the highest of those. You see the
most puzzling thing before an audience that has been brought up in the belief
that for every baby that is born there is a soul, immediately produced by God,
and this is a thing which is extremely puzzling: nobody seems to take in that
philosophical idea that nothing can come out of nothing, not even the breath of

God, at least not of an anthropomorphic God. Of a deity, of course, I
understand, because everything is breath, divine essence; but I mean this God
that comes and breathes over a child that is born, even a child of sin, this is a
thing which is most puzzling.

Mr. A. Keightley: I think the great difficulty in that case is to realize that the
underlying soul is one, as distinct from the separated bodies.

Mme. Blavatsky: How is it distinguished? It cannot be distinguished {from} that
underlying soul, because it permeates every atom of the human body, and
everything in the universe. There is not an atom of mud that is not permeated
by the divine soul. If it were otherwise, it would not be infinite or you cannot
admit the other thing.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is the difficulty—the idea of the individuality as
compared with the one underlying reality.

Mme. Blavatsky: Can you tel me about this lamp? This fire in it, is it an
individual fire?

Mr. A. Keightley: So far, yes. Certainly, I should say so.

298. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, it is not. It is individual so long as it is in the lamp
and it is confined to a vessel; but if you take it from there, it is not in any way
any other fire than the one universal fire which is on earth—at least in our solar
system. This you can bet your bottom dol ar upon, there is no other. Mind you,

I don’t say it is of the same essence. It is of the same, though in another form.

Just the same for the souls and for the monads.

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Mr. A. Keightley: There I get the analogy, but the difficulty in al distinctions is
to disabuse one’s mind of the idea that, that is a separate piece of fire.

Mme. Blavatsky: He who wants to be an occultist has not to separate himself
from anything in this world. And the moment he separates himself from any
vessel of dishonor, he cannot belong to any vessel of honor. It is a perfect
impossibility. You must either think of yourself as an infinitesimal something
not even individual but a part of the one whole; or you are il usions, you are
nobodies, and you wil go out like breaths and leave no trace behind you. You
are separate, so far as il usions are concerned. You are distinct bodies, every
one of you, and you are marching about in masks furnished to you by “Mâyâ.”

Can you claim one single atom in your body which is your own? Can you stop a
set of atoms? You do not pay even the slightest attention to them. What are
you? Is it your own intel ect or soul, or spirit? Everything from the spirit down to
the last of the atoms is a part of the whole. It is a link. You break one and then
everything goes into annihilation. A link cannot be broken, it is impossible.

Mr. B. Keightley: You see, you get a series of vehicles increasing in
grossness, so to speak, as you proceed from spirit into matter, so that with
each step downward you get more and more the sense of separateness
developed, until you get lower down. And yet that cannot exist, because if
there was a real and complete separation between any two human beings they
would not be able to understand or communicate with each other in any sort of
way.

299. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Certainly; I am not arguing against the fact.

Mr. B. Keightley: But I am only putting that forward as a fact.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 2: Are the “Sons of the Earth” simply human
beings? If not, what?

Mme. Blavatsky: This question has just been answered. It is covered by the
first answer.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then there is the passage: “The Fire, the Flame, Day, this
bright fortnight, the six months of the Northern Solstice departing (dying) in
these, those who know the Brahman (yogis) go to Brahman,” etc, p. 86.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is from the Anugîtâ.1
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Mr. A. Keightley: Question 3. Wil you give an explanation of these terms?

What is the meaning of the sentence?

Mme. Blavatsky: The meaning is given plainly enough in the commentary of

The Secret Doctrine. If you did not pay attention to it, you tel me and I wil try
to explain it to you more ful y. Wil you read this thing?

Mr. B. Keightley: (After reading from ( The Secret Doctrine.) And then you go
on to speak about the different hierarchies, but you do not explain the
statement in the quotation, that those departing at that period would go to

Brahman, or in the other case would go to the [ ].

Mme. Blavatsky: It means that the “devotees” are divided into two broad
classes, those who reach Nirvâna, and either accept or don’t accept it

(because they have the option of remaining on earth, at least in the
atmosphere of doing good, or they have the option of

1 [After the Great War described in the Mahâbhârata was over Arjuna asked Krishna to instruct him again—the teaching given in the Bhagavadgîtâ having been forgotten with the concerns of war. The result is the chapters known as the Anugîtâ. H.P.B. was familiar with the translation of K.T. Telang published in 1882 as volume 8 of the

Sacred Book s of the East.]

300. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

going selfishly to plunge themselves into Nirvâna and not caring for the world),
and those who do not do so and have not reached Nirvâna. Now the first ones
wil never be reborn in this [Mahâkalpa] or the hundred years of the age of

Brahmâ (and which means fifteen figures); and those who don’t reach Nirvâna
on earth, as Buddha and others did. It is al symbolical and metaphorical and
easy enough to understand. I suppose “the Fire, the Flame, the Day, the bright
fortnight of the moon” are al symbols of the highest absolute deity; those who
had any such state of absolute purity as this symbol shows to be go to

Brahman, that is to say, they have a right to {Moksha}. On the other hand,

Smoke, Night, dark fortnight, etc. are al symbolical of matter and of ignorance.

And those who die in such state of incomplete purification must of course be
reborn. Only the homogeneous or pure and unal oyed spirit can become spirit
and go to Brahman. It is as plain as can be that these are nothing but
metaphors.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what is the meaning of saying that they are the highest
deities or names of various deities?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Because the hierarchies belonging to such are there
connected correspondential y with the dark fortnight and the bright fortnight
and the others that you read. Besides, I say it al pretends to esotericism. I
never heard esotericism talked on a Thursday night before.

Mr. A. Keightley: It is a sort of transcendental astrology.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is para-metaphysics. Now question 4.

Mr. A. Keightley: You have already answered that. Question 4. What is the
distinction between the yogis who do not return and the “devotees” who do
return?

Mme. Blavatsky: Such is the distinction of the yogis who do not return on this
earth—oh, I have answered this.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 5.

301. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: (Reads Śloka 2.)

Mr. A. Keightley: Then there are the two questions in the commentary which
fol ow: “The First Primordial are the highest beings on the scale of Existence.”

“The Primordial proceed from Father-Mother.” Question 5. Is Father-Mother
here synonymous with the third Logos and not with Svabhavat in Darkness, as
before, since it is now manifested and differentiated existence, whereas the
other manifested Quarternary and the seven proceed from the Mother alone”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now you have put there two questions, to which I wil give
you two answers. The first primordial seven are born from the third Logos.

This is before it is differentiated into the mother when it becomes pure
primordial matter in its first primitive essense—father, mother, potential y. Al
this is explained very plainly in the comment (a) of Śloka 2. Read it over every
word is explained there.

Mr. B. Keightley: (Reads passage from Secret Doctrine.)

Mme. Blavatsky: Now I wil tel you. You asked what is synonymous there.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is Father-Mother here synonymous with the third Logos and
not with Svabhavat in Darkness, as before, since it has now manifested and
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differentiated existence. “Where as the other manifested Quaternary and the
seven proceed from the mother alone”?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is synonymous now with the third Logos. And Svabhavat is
light, or manifestation. It is cal ed both; it is perfectly interchangeable. As it was
synonymous earlier with darkness, there it is Svabhavat in light. And in
darkness the “first primordial” are always to be understood as the rays of the
third Logos, not otherwise. They are the direct emanations of the secret [ ]

because we reckon twice over. Father-Mother, Parabrahman, Mulaprakriti, the
eternal ideal, the dual ideal potency in our mind and the Logos born from it are
eternal. It is simply the difference between the existence—or

302. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

simply the idea in esse and the idea in actu. I thought I had explained it
perfectly wel there.

Mr. B. Keightley: But one wants to come back, to know whether he
understands it correctly.

Mme. Blavatsky: I thought you understood it correctly. Now, 6 is a continuation
of this.

Mr. A. Keightley: Yes; question 6. What is Mother and what is Father in this
sentence?

Mme. Blavatsky: Mother becomes the immaculate Mother only when
differentiation is complete, otherwise there would be no such qualification. No
one would speak, for instance, of pure spirit as an immaculate something, for it
cannot be otherwise. Immaculate spirit becomes simply matter. So the
immaculate mother shows to you that where qualification is possible, it is
matter and it is lower; therefore the mother is the immaculate matter which
begins the hierarchy. That wil end by humanity and man, because it must
begin by something which Father-Mother cannot be. They are in the beginning
ideal y potential; then in potentiality; it becomes mother alone. Because what is
mother? Take the etymology of the word, and you wil find it is simply matter,
and this matter is the primordial matter which is alone, and after that, of course,
the immaculate mother. The idea of the immaculate mother comes from that,
because the spirit is invisible.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then one gets into difficulties in trying to understand the
thing, because here you have the third Logos, which is Father-Mother in
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manifestation, isn’t it?

Mme. Blavatsky: You wil have time, if you please, to be confused and
perplexed. You wil find something more difficult, yet they are al
interchangeable. Now, you see, it is just the same as though you were to take
to task a chemist because he would show to you some compound or chemical
preparation, and he would give you this name, and then he would cal
something by another name; but they

303. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

are al one and al different. This is a thing you have to learn. It is the order of
proceeding. You cannot go further because you would simply cobweb your
head with perfectly useless things, unless you want to become a metaphysical

Vedântin and go and give lectures upon it. I tel you, you wil only confuse
yourself and nothing more.

Mr. A. Keightley: My only object is to find out what it meant.

Mme. Blavatsky: What are you? You think you are—you are not at al . It is
conceit. You are a part of humanity, though you are Archibald Keightley; and
what is humanity? Humanity is a part of thousands of mil ions of humanities that
passed away. It is a piece of dirt, nothing else. And what is the world? It is a
little speck of dirt in the Universe. You cannot come and have this spirit of
separateness— though you be an Englishman and a Conservative.

Mr. A. Keightley: When one is an il usion one wants to understand one’s
relation.

Mme. Blavatsky: An il usion is an il usion. If you thought you understood it, you
would be perfectly disenchanted.

Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 3, page 91, question 7. It is on page 91 that the
sentence occurs. (Reads.) Can you explain to us the principle of permutation
by which 13514 becomes 31415? Page 92.

Mme. Blavatsky: I tel you everything is possible to God, and that if it is his
sweet wil that 2 and 2 should make 5 you know he wil do it in a moment.

Mr. B. Keightley: (Reads passage from The Secret Doctrine.)

Mme. Blavatsky: As I said in my comment, we are not concerned at present
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with the process, which means that it cannot be given exoterical y and publicly.

That is said in so many words before on the page that you have just read the

Śloka from, yet I don’t mind explaining a little more, which I wil do as much as I
can. The set of figures must have the same meaning as the various cycles and
ages of the first born, the fifteen figures. 311, a great many more or less,

304. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

and I don’t know what. Never mind. I wil try to give it to you and make you
understand. Now, the Rabbis cal ed the circle (what we cal Parabrahman)

Achod {Ehad}, the One or Ein Sof. On the lower plane of the fourth it becomes

Adam Kadmon, the manifested seven and the unmanifested ten, or the
complete Sephirotal tree, which are the three and the seven lower ones, and
the synthesis which makes the perfect ten. The Sephirot, therefore are the
same as the Elohim. Now, the name of the latter written in Hebrew {Alhim} is
composed of five letters. These letters or there values in numerals being
placed upon a circle can be shifted or transmuted at wil , as they could not be,
were they applied to any other geometrical figures. The circle is endless and
has neither beginning nor end. Now, the literal Kabbalah is divided into three
parts, as al know, or methods, the third of which is cal ed Temurah, or the
permutation. According to certain rules, one letter is replaced by another. The

Kabbalistic alphabet is divided into two equal parts, each letter or numeral of
one corresponding to the same number or letter in the sister half. It is a difficult
process, and by changing alternately the letters one from the other, there are
about, some say, twenty-two combinations. I have heard there are far more
than that. In one case there are twenty-two; there are four more in other
combinations within combinations, at least as my Rabbi. Now if you make a
circle in such a way (if I had a table, I would just draw it here), if you make the
circle, the perfect circle, and inscribe within these letters, A L H E or I and M,

Elohim, and take their numerical values, it wil yield to you either 13514—I left
out something. Read this whichever way you like. And you may read it as

13514 or 31415, which is the value of the astronomical pi or the constant
qualificient number, value, circumference of a circle whose diameter is one.

That is a very plain thing in astronomy. That is to say, the five males-females,
or ten (because each one of them is a male-female and it makes five) are ten
resolving themselves into one. Not only can the numbers be replaced at wil by
the Temurah, but the Sephirot, being synonymous with the Elohim, and of the
ten words or [ ]. These are al found inscribed numerical y in the circle. Look
at this for instance: there is the circle, which is the one, and there is the line,
the straight line, the perpendicular line, which is the

305. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889
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line of the first Logos. Then if you make another, and if you draw this line, this
wil be the plane of matter where wil be the second Logos, and then there is
the third. They are the seven creations. Nobody has ever remarked it, because
they take literal y every word of the Kabbalah, and they take literal y every word
of the Bible. Whose fault is that? It is perfectly wel defined and I promised to
show to you my answer to prove it. It is the same thing, but nobody has read it
to the present day. They have taken it positively, literal y, the circle and its
dividing line and the prototype of ten, the sacred number—that is to say,
infinite or passive unmanifested, or the infinite active or the Logos. The
numerals of the [ ], the Sephirot which are in Hebrew Sephir, which means
cipher or figures, which are inscribed within the two, and yield the values of
their names. It al comes out anagrammatical y, and so it does with al the

Sanskrit names. You may take the circle, and if you put al the letters in

Hebrew, of course, of the Sephirot, Elohim, or our Dhyâni-Chohans or of the

Builders, anything, it wil just give to you the same thing always. It wil come out
the pi. Why? Because those digits, or the smal figures, if you take out, of
course, the noughts they are subservient to the circumference and the
diameter to the one in the circle. This is very plain; but how extraordinary it is
that they should have adopted for the astronomical thing such a thing as that,
which if you translate them, they make Elohim. If you translate it (not as we take
it, geometrical y), it gives the number and the names of the Dhyâni-Chohans,
their real secret esoteric name, with al of them. But only, instead of putting in
letters and numerals as the Hebrews do, we put them in geometrical figures it
comes to the same—a line a triangle, a [ ], and a cube, 1234—until it comes
to the digits 9 and 10, the three higher ones, and the seven lower ones. So, do
you understand it now?

Mr. B. Keightley: I suppose the actual transformation is one of those
anagrammatical transformations, in the way which the order of the digits has
been shifted here.

306. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Dr Westcott has done it very nicely here.2 Now you should
take this, because you can see it very nicely.

Mr. Gardner: When you say it represents the name of the Dhyâni-Chohans, do
you mean to say the names in Sanskrit?

Mme. Blavatsky: Also in Sanskrit just the same, because it al comes from

India through Chaldea.

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Mr. Gardner: You mean the numerical value of the name.

Mme. Blavatsky: Al the numbers are the same. You take it in Greek, and it wil
give you the same value, because it has been adapted so cunningly, so
ingeniously, that it is impossible to do it better. If you are inclined to believe
that the Patriarchs and the Jews were the first ones, then of course you are
welcome to do it. I keep to my own views, and I am for the Hindus. Being a
true blue heathen myself, I am for the Hindus.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 8. Wil you give some explanation concerning the
various hierarchies mentioned here? The terms are frequently used later on,
and explanation in contrast as here would be very useful.

Mme. Blavatsky: I believe I have done so now quite enough. I have given it
quite enough. You pass on to 9, because you are very fond of repeating the
same questions over and over again.

Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 4, Page 95.

Mr. B. Keightley: (Reads passage from The Secret Doctrine.)

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 9. “What is the connection between the life-winds
and the senses, and the connection of the intel igences with the latter?”

2 [In the Preface to Numbers: Their Occult Powers and Mystic Virtue, published by the Theosophical publishing

Society, 1890. William Wynn Westcott mentions that the manuscript had been in circulation among “students of
mystic lore and occult meanings” for some time.]

307. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: There’s a question to answer for one woman alone! Life-
winds, or the various modes of in-breathing and out-breathing and changing
thereby the polarity of one’s object and state, and consciousness, and
principles and so on is al esoteric, of course, but what can I tel you more? It
being esoteric, the connection between the intel igences (and I suppose by
the intel igences, you mean the Dhyâni-Chohans) and the senses is al given in
the esoteric Instructions, numbers 1 and 2, if you know what that means. It is
al given, the correspondences. Now, why should you come and make me
speak here of things that are perfectly explained? I don’t know.

Mr. A. Keightley: Because it is elucidation of points in The Secret Doctrine.

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Mr. B. Keightley: One point is that in the Theosophist the life-winds have been
explained not as breath at al but as forces operating in the body, having
nothing to do, apparently, with the actual in and out breathing.

Mme. Blavatsky: I never heard that the Theosophist was anything but an
exoteric exposition of things. You won’t find in the Theosophist the [ ],and he
who thinks that the [ ] can perform miracles, and find a yogi, wil find himself
very much mistaken because here where they wil cal a thing, perhaps, a table,
it wil mean a kind of juice of a plant; and when he says put your right leg in
such a posture, it means you have to turn your cheek or your eye to a certain
star. It is perfectly al blind and nothing else. You have to take yogi theosophy
and give it word for word, and he who relies upon it wil make a sore yogi, I can
assure you.

Mr. A. Keightley: Now 10. What is the meaning of “The Sparks of the Seven
are subject to and servants of the first second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth, and
the seventh of the seven”? Page 93.

Mme. Blavatsky: I have explained it to you. The sparks means here sparks or
monads or the higher intel igences as much as the human sparks, or monads,
or the higher intel igences. It means just as I told you. It can be applied on the
plane below or the plane above;

308. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

it relates to the circle and the digits I have just shown you. It is the equivalent to
saying in mathematical astronomy that the 31415 are al subject to the
circumference and diameter, as I told you, of a circle. Think over it and I
suppose you wil see it. It is no use going over the old ground again; they are
al subjects, that is what it means. And in the same way, al these hierarchies
are subject to the circle which represents the symbol I. It is the symbol I of the
absolute infinite circle that is al .

Mr. A. Keightley: Now 11. Why is Sarasvatî (the Goddess of Speech) also
cal ed the goddess of Esoteric Wisdom? If the explanation lies in the meaning
of the word Logos, why is there a distinction between the immovable mind and
movable speech? Is mind equivalent to Mahat, or to the higher or lower

Manas?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because and for the same reason that Logos or word is
cal ed incarnate wisdom in the Holy Bible, in the Book of God. “Light shining in
darkness,” also. Is it so? The distinction lies between the immovable or eternal
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immutable al , and the movable speech or Logos, that is to say, the periodical
and the manifested. The Logos is not an eternal, [ ]. It becomes manifested
only in the Manavantaric periods periodical y; therefore it cannot be referred to
as the one eternal or the immovable, for he is very much moveable, but moves
from the subjective and the unknown. Mind is an abstraction. It can relate to the

Universal or the individual Mind, to the Mahat or the higher human Manas,
because that which is desire or instinctive impulse in the lower Manas
becomes thought in the higher, and consciousness. The former finds
expression in act the latter in words. Do you understand? Therefore, even in
your laws, the assault is more severely punished than mere thought. That is a
very unpoetical simile, but stil it wil open your eyes. This again is food for
thought to the wise. Do you understand the difference? It is a perfect
impossibility not to. You find it in the fourth gospel in the first chapters, which
are Platonic and esoteric.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then does this mean that there is a further meaning to that
al egory that you put there, to speech and mind

309. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

going and having a dispute?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, it is from Anugîtâ again. Certainly it is, and the Brahmin
gave the definition and shows what it is, and he reconciles them.

Mr. A. Keightley: He says neither is superior to the other; but speech having
been uttered, and going and asking the question was rare also.

Mme. Blavatsky: And he snubs very prettily the speech.

Mr. A. Keightley: And then he talks about moveable and immoveable speech.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, it is purely esoteric, al this. Now 12.

Mr. A. Keightley: Page 92. We know that “God geometrizes,” but, seeing that
there is no personal God, wil you explain why the process of formation should
be by dots, lines, triangles, cubes, and why a cube should then expand into a
sphere? Final y, why, when the sphere leaves the static state, the inherent
force of Breath sets it whirling.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. There is God standing here simply (as with Plato)

for the plural forces or rays emanating from the one and the Absolute;
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therefore, law is meant here. We say here law geometrizes, but in the day of

Plato, “[ ]”3 would not certainly have been understood, and therefore they
used the word God. Why it should be so, I cannot tel certainly, because the

Absolute did not unfortunately take my counsel; or perhaps, as I was part of
him, if I had not been such a lazy woman, I might have heard. But I didn’t, so
how can I tel you such a thing as that? I don’t think anyone in any book of
wisdom would tel you such a thing as that. Now for instance, where you speak
about the cubes and lines, and triangles: if you forget what you have learned in
the simple, elemental physics, you just observe the snowflakes, the only things
besides crystals which show you al the geometrical aspects existing in Nature.

This

3 [Greek: hoi polloi, the masses.]

310. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

you certainly cannot contradict. Look at the water, if you would observe [ ] that
is one thing you can do; and if you open any book of Tyndal you wil find it.

Now heat effects the atomic particles of matter in a liquid state. What is heat,
but the modification of the particles? It is a physical, or perhaps a mechanical
law, that particles which are in motion of themselves become spheroidal. This
is a law from a globe or planet down to a drop of rain; as soon as motion
stops, the spheroidal shape alters and becomes a flat drop. But if it is passing
through al the previous forms, that is to say, as soon as action ceases, as

Tyndal teaches you, the drop becomes invariably an equilateral triangle, a
hexagon, then cubes or squares coming out of the ends of the hexagon. You
wil see the six-pointed plane you see immediately forming cubes, and al
kinds of things like that. In a lecture of his—something on ice, on the formation
of particles in the ice, if I remember right—Tyndal , having observed the
breaking up of ice particles in a large mass of ice through which he passed
heat rays by electricity, assures us that the first and primary shape that the
particles assume is always triangular or pyramidal. Then they become cubical,
and findly assume the form of a hexagons etc. etc.; I could not tel you where it
is, but I know I know it, because it is just the thing that is taught in the occult
doctrine. It is a law, and certainly there is no mistake about it—a law in Nature.

Or take a snowflake and you wil find al these geometrical shapes in it.

Mr. Kingsland: Then as to that experiment of breaking up the piece of ice with
a ray of heat. Can you tel us how it is that in examination through the reflection
on a screen you see vegetable forms, the forms of ferns and plants?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. They only show there astral bodies which
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are preparing to form plants and al that. Ice is a species of matter which
contains al the prototypes of matter in its future forms. It would not be seen
there if you observed it on the surface, but when it comes to their forces and
everything which wil be, then you find that one ring throws off the ring that wil
become the future ring. This is al one link into another. I am very glad you
know this experiment.

311. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Yes, but it requires something else besides water to make
these forms. He takes a large block of ice, and throws a very powerful ray on
this ice and onto a screen, and this ray dissolves through. And on the screen
you see these ferns and plumes.

Mme. Blavatsky: Don’t you see triangles, hexagons, and cubes, and you see
the ferns and plants, because it throws off the astral bodies—that which is
contending in those particles of ice, because ice is matter? You see, if you
think about it, you remember that ferns, that, that class of plants, particularly
ferns, that you most commonly see on a screen are to a large extent built up of
geometrical figures. It is in Nature. It is impossible otherwise. Law
geometrizes or God geometrizes. Why could we not cal Law God, or vice
versa? It is just the same.

Mr. B. Keightley: The fact of the matter being that these geometrical figures or
mathematical figures are a part of the human law of thought, because they
exist in the universal mind from which they proceed, and of which human mind
is itself a reflection a microcosm, I suppose.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, 13.

Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 5, page 99. Do numbers and geometrical figures
represent to human consciousness the laws of action in the divine mind?

Mme. Blavatsky: They do, most assuredly. How can it be otherwise? There is
no chance evolution of forms, nor is there any so cal ed abnormal appearance
or cosmic phenomenon due to haphazard circumstances, but is always a stray
something on our earth, either at its beginning or its end (not of the earth, but
of its phenomena). For instance, meteors. Now, what are meteors? What does
science say about them, that they fal from the moon or the sun, or what?

Mr. B. Keightley: One of two hypotheses. One is that they are the fragments of
a broken-up planet, and the other is that these
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312. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

rings of matter from which the planets are supposed to be formed, on the
hypothesis of Laplace, instead of the ring forming a single planet, owing to
various circumstances, the matter consolidates into comparatively smal
lumps, and the meteor streams are the tracks of these rings of more or less
diffused matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of course, because the breath is always at work; even during

Pralaya it never stops—that breath that I cal motion. Perhaps during Pralaya it
produces no results because there is no one to see those results. And if there
were they would see results perfectly unexpected and which their finite
intel ects would not comprehend, surely. We cal this very proudly Pralaya, but
we do not know what we are talking about. We say there is nothing worth
blowing for that breath.

Mr. Kingsland: Can’t you tel us something more about meteors?

Mme. Blavatsky: Perhaps I may tel you at the end here. I think I have been
writing at the end about it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 5, page 99.

Mr. B. Keightley: Which is (reads passage from The Secret Doctrine).

Mr. A. Keightley: Astronomical y, is there an explanation of Mârtânda’s
rejection?4

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not believe that there is. Astronomers can hardly look
beyond their direct mathematical calculations, let alone what takes place in or
around our sun at the beginning of his young life. The sun is several

Manvantaras older than al these planets. His rejection means that when bodies
or planets begin to form from his rays or his magnetic rays, or heat, then that
attraction had to be stopped, for otherwise he would have swal owed back al
his progeny, like Saturn is fabled to have done. I do not mean by progeny that
al the planets were thrown out from the sun; it is simply under his

4 [The sun in Vedic mythology, in The Secret Doctrine, 1:9,9 it is referred to as the “One Rejected.”]

313. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

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rays that they grow. Aditi is the ever-equilibrizing Mother Nature, or Space, on
the purely spiritual and subjective plane; she is the the female power or
potency of the fecundating spirit, and it is for her to regulate the behavior of the

Sons born in her bosom. The al egory is a very suggestive one. Now, if you
turn to question 15, I wil tel you what these things mean.

Mr. A. Keightley: Were al the planets in our solar system comets and then
suns?

Mme. Blavatsky: They were not comets, certainly, nor planets in our solar
system, but comets in space in the beginning. They begin life as wanderers
over the face of the infinite cosmos. They detached themselves from the
common storehouse of already prepared material ready for use, which is the

Milky Way, for the Milky Way is nothing more nor less than that World-stuff, al
the rest in space being crude material as yet. Now let me explain to you this.

This Milky Way is just the prepared material ready for use. Whereas al the
other that we do not see, which consists in these clouds of particles that we
can never see any of the atoms of, that is the crude material not prepared yet.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the process of formation is going on at the present
time from the Milky Way.

Mme. Blavatsky: Positively. And having set on their long journey, those
comets first settle in life where there conditions are prepared for them by

Fohat. That is to say, where the conditions of equilibrizing and polarity were
and beginning actual y to form themselves into suns, each of them (mind you,
in space, not in our solar system, it didn’t exist then) then, each sun, when its

Pralaya arrived, disrupted into mil ions and bil ions of fragments. Each of those
fragments rol ed to and fro in space, col ecting fresh materials as it rol ed on
like an avalanche does until it was stopped by the laws of attraction and
repulsion and its own weight (why it should be weight, I do not know; I simply
translate you what is said in the occult books), and became a planet. After
having disrupted, each fragment became

314. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

a planet in our or some other system—beyond our telescopes, of course. The
fragments of our sun wil be just such planets after our solar Pralaya. He was a
comet once upon a time, at the beginning of Brahmâ’s age—not day, don’t
confuse; then he fixed himself where we see or perhaps, rather, ought to see
him in London. When he dies he wil burst asunder, and his atoms wil be
whirled in space, eons upon eons, as though of comets and meteors until
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each is caught up in the vortex of the two forces and placed in some higher
and better system. Now, this is a thing which I told you last Thursday, when I
was tel ing you about these two forces acting, the imprisoned and the free
forces, that which produced the thing. And this you have to learn the
correspondences of and how it acts—that it begins, for instance, by color and
goes on to sound and so and so—I need not detail. When it reaches the earth,
when the two forces begin to act, and everything, it is just the same; as it is
above so it is below, and as it is below so it is above. Let us hope that the
astronomers of the future systems wil be more fitted to appreciate Nature than
they do now. Thus the sun wil live in his children as a parent—as each one of
us wil live in his children (if we have any, of course). This wil show to those of
you who are prepared to accept the occult teachings that the modern
astronomers who have brought out that hypothesis to which they refer as the

Nebula Theory have begun by the wrong end. Had they said that the future
planets or planetary systems wil be the fragments shot out from the body of
our sun, they would be right; as it is they are wrong. Moreover, when the day
comes, the semblance or reflection of the sun’s ray therefore, wil first of al fal
off like a veil from the true sun—for no mortal wil see it, because every being
with eyes wil become blind. It is an impossibility to see the real sun, because
there would not be such a thing as an eye left in the world, and everything
would be burnt in a moment. This reflection or veil is a kind of safeguard of
nature, and a very wise one; take it off, disperse this veil for one second and
al the planets in the system—everything—would be reduced to a handful of
ashes. Because, take the sun’s rays and explain to me—you wil speak about
reverberation and al that—why is it that you catch the most terrible sunstrokes
when there is the most foggy weather? Of course, on the

315. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

physical plane I know what you wil say.

Mr. B. Keightley: I do not think anybody does know or has properly explained
that.

Mme. Blavatsky: Those able men of science wil say it is the most ignorant
thing in the world, but you wil see it is a thousand times more probable and
logical than to accept those 397,000 hypotheses which are only born to die,
and which do not dovetail and do not cover the whole ground; and this, as I
show to you, if you work out the system, you wil find it covers the whole
ground. This is a known fact. Now, gentleman, you may ask me any questions
you like.

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Mr. B. Keightley: As you have traced the stages of comet and sun and then
the fragments of the sun becoming planets, when the planets have lived their
life and die, is that their final dispersion.

Mme. Blavatsky: We wil bury them and write a magnificent epitaph, and we
wil ask George Washington Childs 5 in Philadelphia to prepare some verses.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then practical y, the planets in the solar system are very
much older than the sun itself?

Mr. Kingsland: It is the opposite way.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the sun which is a great deal older, because the sun is
the sun yet. When it becomes disrupted you just go and put together the
figures.

Mr. A. Keightley: I understood you to say that the planets in this particular
system are fragments of suns that had previously existed.

Mme. Blavatsky: They have been suns; they have been disrupted and every
fragment of such a disrupted sun has become a planet.

Mr. Kingsland: That sun might have belonged to any other system far away.

5 [George Washington {William} Childs, American publisher, 1829-1894.]

316. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: There mil ion and mil ions of systems. What is the use of
your talking about this little horizon?

Mr. Kingsland: Do you say this earth of which this is composed came
original y from the Milky Way?

Mme. Blavatsky: But mind you, you know what it is: there was the focus, that
was prepared material, and it was in the Milky Way; and when it throws off its
principles, it comes and animates, so to say, one of those things from the
ready material.

Mr. A. Keightley: And these are the results of building on the imperishable
centers.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, on the Laya centers.

Mr. Kingsland: Then is that Milky Way, as astronomers suppose, so far
outside the limits of the solar system, or is that only an appearance? The
astronomers suppose that the Milky Way lies far beyond the distance of the
furthest fixed stars that we can see; is that actual y the case, or is that a
deceptive appearance?

Mme. Blavatsky: My idea is it is a deceptive appearance; it is very deceptive,
because this thing that we see, it is only because it is at a distance that we see
it, but this thing actual y exists everywhere, in the atmosphere and everywhere.

It is not that there is a particular thing at such and such a distance, so many
miles away; it is perfect nonsense, because it is everywhere, though only at a
certain distance we see it.

Mr. Kingsland: If you take only a foot section you do not see it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just that. It is the same with every bit. This is what we cal the
prepared world-stuff which is ready for use, which has been differentiated, or
re-differentiated and combed out and everything has been done to it. And the
other is simply everything that is otherwise. And the space which is between
this inter-Milky Way space is nothing but ready material.

317. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Can you tel us why they should appear more or less in the
shape of a ring, instead of al round with equal density?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose there must be some reason. It must take
absolutely some geometrical figure in space. You know this is why with

Pythagoras, geometry was the first sacred science which had to be studied
and known before one could join the Pythagorean school; they had to study
geometry and music, first of al . Now, they ask, why music? Because of the
sounds, you understand, the correspondences, that is why. You go and read
the sacred science and you wil find they had to know, among other things,
mathematics, geometry and music. They had to know al these.

Mr. Kingsland: We want something more about the meteors.

Mme. Blavatsky: They ask me as though I were first cousin to the meteors, or
the mother-in-law, or something like that.

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Mr. Kingsland: I thought you had something more about it in your notes.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not want any notes; I know what you are going to say
without notes. It is only a few “happy thoughts” I book there.

Mr. Kingsland: I want to know what is the occult explanation of the meteors.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why, didn’t I explain to you enough? Who is it that is
dissatisfied?

Mr. B. Keightley: Are the meteors these fragments streaming through space,
or what are they?

Mme. Blavatsky: In my humble opinion, I do not make much difference
between a comet or a meteor. A meteor is something which is a dead comet,
or something like that.

Mr. Kingsland: Are we right in supposing the meteors get their incandescence
by coming into contact with out atmosphere?

318. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Wel , there is one of the things: meteors have no
tails.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are corpses.

Mr. Kingsland: What makes them incandescent?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the nature of the beast, I suppose.

Mr. B. Keightley: We only see them when they come very close to the earth.

Mme. Blavatsky: You tel me why the comets are the cheekiest people you
ever met with. They always cheek the sun and snub him; they wag their tails
against the sun in al defiance of gravity, and the poor sun stops and looks
there in amazement and cannot help it. You tel me that, you gentlemen
physicists and men of science.

Mr. A. Keightley: Perhaps it is a tone of contempt.

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Mme. Blavatsky: They wil penetrate through the most terrible way, and go into

his drawing room and bedroom and come out of the kitchen and then go and
wag their tails in defiance of al gravity. And the men of science wil come and
say: “Gravity! It cannot be; it is an immutable law.” Is it? I am glad to hear it.

Mr. B. Keightley: What is the explanation of this extremely light-minded
behavior?

Mme. Blavatsky: You make their acquaintance and ask them. I have no right to
give out their secrets. It only puts there is no gravity, there is no such attraction
and repulsion.

Mr. A. Keightley: Why should the tail be repel ed?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because the sun is not congenial to the tail. It has got quite
enough of its own electricity and its own magnetic heat and doesn’t want to
spoil its complexion.

Mr. A. Keightley: You speak in The Secret Doctrine of the mysterious planet
in connection with the moon. Does the moon act to that

319. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

planet as a kind of veil in the same way as the things of the sun?

Mme. Blavatsky: I think there is something—not behind the moon, because
the moon is not motionless as the sun, the sun is always on the same spot—
but the moon has not got such an electric thing. The moon has only magnetic
power over the earth.

Mr. A. Keightley: I thought it might be an analogy.

Mr. B. Keightley: The moon has its own independent orbit; it doesn’t cover any
one point of space constantly.

Mme. Blavatsky: There are some planets or something (I do not know what)

they do not pay much attention to, because it is not their time yet to appear.

They may appear.

Mr. Kingsland: Between Mercury and the sun?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, it is surely the planet between Mercury and the sun. It
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was the beginning of the fourth race and then it went off. Just the same as if
you take the Pleiades; it was seen very wel once, and now it is seen no more.

You can hardly see it in the telescopes, but it was a bright one and a chief one,
the nurse of [ ].

Mr. Gardner: That was the seven Pleiades.

Mme. Blavatsky: They say it because she married below her station and she
was ashamed to show herself. They say it in the Greek mythology, that she
made a mésal iance; she was a kind of Princess Louise, she married one of
her subjects.6 But these Pleiades are the most occult constel ations that exist.

Mr. Gardner: More than Mercury?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, more. They are connected with nearly al the aristocracy.

They are very occult, because they are connected with al the Rishis, too; they
have an interchange of thought with the Rishis.

6 [A reference to the marriage Louise, 1848-1939, fourth daughter and sixth child of Queen Victoria, to John

Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Marquis of Lorne, in 1871, considered beneath her station.]

320. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

Mr. Hall: “ The sweet influence of the Pleiades.”

Mme. Blavatsky: If you read those al egories of the Hindus in the astronomy
books, you see they had secrets and knowledge which real y the moderns
cannot think of approaching.

Mr. Gardner: Which old books do you refer to?

Mr. Keightley: The Purânas.

Mme. Blavatsky: Even the Purânas. But you read the old astronomical books.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then about the sun fol owing slowly after the planets, turning
upon itself, the actual revolution of the sun itself.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, there is a thing! This is the most extraordinary thing,
how they knew this. See what Bail y says about that.7 There is not one
second’s difference if it is so, it is as the Hindus gave it, because it is so
mathematical y correct; they have remarked it and they said because such and
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such constel ations were in conjunction, and so on.

Mr. Hall: Why do we only see one side of the moon?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because she doesn’t want to show the other; because
perhaps she has not combed her hair. I can only tel you what I have learnt, I
can’t invent.

Mr. A. Keightley: You don’t tel us al you know.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not see why I should. We should have nothing
for next Thursday.

Mr. Gardner: You were saying something about the Rishis of the Ursa Major.

Mme. Blavatsky: The seven stars, and they are married. The Rishis

7 [Jean Sylvain Bailly, French astronomer, 1736-1793, whose Traité De L’Astronomie Indienne Et Orientale, 1787,
is cited in The Secret Doctrine.]

321. 10. Meeting March 14, 1889

are the husbands of the Pleiades.

Mr. Gardner: But which one made the mésal iance? (Loud laughter.)

Mme. Blavatsky: The one who hides her self.

Mr. A. Keightley: Gardner, you must not talk celestial scandal!

Mme. Blavatsky: It was Electra? [Added to text: Qy. Should this not
be Merope?]8

Mr. Gardner: Is he the one?

Mme. Blavatsky: It was a she! What an infidel! Wel , I think you ladies and
gentlemen can al talk now, and I wil faithful y answer your questions.

8 [Both Electra and Merope are among the seven sisters known as the Pleiades.]

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

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11.

Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

17 Lansdowne Road, Hol and Park

Thursday, March 21, 1889.

Mr. Harbottle in the Chair

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 4, Śloka 6. “Then the second seven who are the

Lipika produced by the three (Word, Voice, and Spirit).” Question 1. Can you
explain to us the relation of the Lipika, the “Second Seven,” to the “Primordial

Seven,” and to the Four”?

Mme. Blavatsky: I think it is rather a difficult thing to do. I think if I explain to
you, who know very little of the Sanskrit books, that which you have access to

—for instance, these various systems of the Gnostics that you can easily get in
the British Museum—you would understand it better. Now, I have taken from
one something just to show to you this difference, and to make you understand
better. If you study the Gnostic system of the first certuries of Christianity,
from that of Simon Magus 1 down to the highest and noblest systems—the

Valentinians 2—you wil comprehend better the relation you want me to explain.

Al these systems are derived from the East. That which we cal the Primordial

Seven and the Second Seven are cal ed by Simon Magus, for instance, the

Aeons. The Valentinians cal ed them the Aeons, and many others, the
primeval—the second and the third series of Syzygies, 3 I think it is—it is a

Greek name. They are graduated emanations ever descending lower and
lower into matter from that primordial principle that is cal ed fire. Simon Magus
cal s

1 [First century A.D. magus whose system included a series of divine emanations.]

2 [Followers of the second century Gnostic teacher, Valentinus.]

3 [Male-female pair of Aeons, or divine emanations.]

324. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

it fire and we cal it Svabhavat, as behind that fire the manifested, the Silent

Deity, stands with him as with us—that which is, was and ever wil be.

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Therefore take this fire, as he cal s it, and that wil be the root from which al
these various powers and hierarchies descend. Therefore sense his doctrine
in almost one with our cosmogony (and that you don’t seem to see to this day,
the philosophy or process of emanation), permit me to quote to you the words
of Simon Magus, as quoted from his work by the author of Philosophumena.

He says: “From the permanent stability and personified immutability, fire and
this manifested principle, which immutability does not preclude activity, as the
second form is endowed with intel igence and reason, who are (Mahat), it (the
action itself. From those series of evolutions were formed six beings, or the
emanations from the infinite potency they were formed in Syzygies. That is to
say they are radiated out of the flame two by two one being the active and the
other the passive principle.” Then Simon named Nous and {Epinoia}, or spirit
and thought, and many others; and Logismos and Fumesis {Enthumêsis},
reasoning and reflection. Now, Simon shows the relation you want to know by
saying as fol ows: “In each of the six primitive beings, the Infinite potency was
in its totality, but it was there in potentiality only, not innate. It had to be
established therein through an image, that of paradigm, in order that it should
appear in al its essence, virtue, grandeur, and effects; for only then could it
become unto the parent potency, infinite and eternal. If on the contrary it was
not conformed by or through the image, that potentiality could never become
potency or pass into action but was lost for lack of use, as it happens to a man
who, having an aptitude for grammar or geometry, does not exercise it; it gets
lost for him just as if he never had it” (page 250).4 Now, one of these, which he
cal s Nous, spirit, and the other are one, he says, and inseparable. The system
is to long and to complicated to give it here. Suffice it to say that he shows that
whether his Aeons

4 [The page number refers to the addition of Philosophumena or Refutatio Omnium Haeresium (“The refutation of
all Heresies”), believed to be by the schismatic St. Hippolytus, a third century bishop of Rome, translated from

Greek into Latin by Patrice Cruice and published in Paris in 1860, where the passage appears.]

325. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

belong to the superior, middle or lower world, they are al one except in
material density, which determines their outward manifestation and the results
produced and the real essence which is from their mutual relations, which are
established from eternity, as he says, by immutable laws. The same,
therefore, for the Lipika and the second Seven or the Primordial Seven,
whatever name we may give them for the sake of our own comprehension,
which seems to necessitate a name or label in each case to enable us to
recognize one from the other. Now, this first, second, third or primordial seven
or Lipika is al one; therefore, how can I tel you what relation they are in? When
once they emanate from one plane onto another it wil be just the same, the
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repetition—as it is above so it wil be below. That is the only relation. They are
al differentiated in matter in density, but not in qualities. And the same qualities
descend unto the last plane, which is our plane, and which shows man
endowed just with the same potentiality, if he knows how to develop it as the
highest Dhyâni-Chohans. I quote it just on purpose to show you because you
can go and read it. In the British Museum you have the book, and there are
many things which real y wil show to you that our doctrine is as old as can be.

It is perfectly the occult doctrine in many things. Of course, it changes its name
and al kinds of things; but it gives a very good definition of the nature and
essence of these Aeons only. For instance, he gives six of them, that is to say,
six pairs of each—the seventh being that four which descends from one plane
to another.5

Mr. A. Keightley: Then practical y, the synthesis is on the plane above.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, just that.

The President: Then real y these sevens are al identical, except that they are
manifest on different planes. So that the Lipika are the same things as the

Primordial Seven, except that the Primordial Seven are not manifest. They are
the potentiality of manifestation.

5 [The published Transactions gives this passage as: “In the Hierarchies of the Aeons, Simon gives three pairs of
two each, the seventh being the fourth which descends from one plane to another.”]

326. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: They are the first but they are fourth, mind you, and have
proceeded from Mahat, as I wil show you. The Lipika are those who, in the

Kabbalah, are cal ed the four recording angels. In India they cal them the four

Maharajahs, those who record every thought and deed of man. It is the book of
life, as St. John cal s it in Revelation.

The President: But they are cal ed the seven in that passage, I think of The

Secret Doctrine. But that real y means that the four are on the plane of the
second seven. It does not mean that they are precisely the second seven.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just so. And the seven are simply seventy times seven; it is
the seven hierarchies, the seven various degrees. And at the four corners of
the world, these Lipikas are posted just to put down on the superior Astral

Light the record of al our actions, deeds, words and everything.

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The President: On the lowest plane of al , they are the cardinal points.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are directly connected with Karma, and they are
connected with what the Christians cal the Last Day of Judgment. And in the

East it is cal ed the Day after Maha-Manvantara, when they come al to receive
what is cal ed in Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism the Judgment.

Mr. A. Keightley: “ The Day Be With Us,” isn’t it?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, when everything becomes one. But with every

Manvantara they become more and more, the Absolute becomes more and
more. Not only is it absolute intel igence, absolute consciousness and
everything (because on our plane it is non-consciousness, non-being), but
everyone wil feel himself more; stil every individuality knows itself. This
maybe a mysterious thing, but I tel you that which we are taught. Very often we
are confronted with the statement: “you talk about Nirvâna. What is Nirvâna? It
is

327. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

an extinction, it is just like a flame that was blown out from a candle; there
remains nothing. Nirvâna—‘The flame out’.” I had how many times to have
disputes and discussions about that. I said it is not that at al . It is that every
particle of matter, of that which may have form in our conception or be
conditioned or limited, everything disappears to make room for one
homogeneity, and for the one absolute spirit. But this spirit is not at al ; it is
non-consciousness for us, but it is absolute consciousness there.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 2. What relation have the Lipika to Mahat?

Mme. Blavatsky: That relation, that the Lipika are division of the four degrees
taken from the septenates that emanated from Mahat. This is what we have
been talking about. The latter is as Simon Magus’s four, the Mahat, the secret
and the manifested or the divine ideation made to witness for itself in the
subjective universe through the subjective forms we see upon it. You may cal
it evolution or creation or whatever you like. What other relation can they have,
except that of being wheels within wheels? They are workers on their own
plane. If you ask me what relation the Lipika have with humanity, with men, then

I have just told you what it was: they are the recorders.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the Lipika are on the same plane as Mahat?

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Mme. Blavatsky: They are the sons of Mahat, as they cal them. Certainly, they
are immediately under the absolute plane of divine ideation. But even that is a
very risky thing to say, because immediately it suggests to you that it is like a
staircase, and there are stories in the house, one below and the other above.

But it is not so at al ; it would be a very erroneous conception. It is everywhere
and nowhere, just as when we were speaking about the circle and the point
and circumference and al that. Because, it is not a thing above or below, and
the right or the left. It is as I have been explaining many times, something
which is—wel , it may be in one place and yet they are the seven planes, they
are states. And being states other than ours, of

328. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

course they are invisible and perfectly incomprehensible to us, and each state
does not know the people of the other state.

The President: But stil it would not be right to describe them as being on the
same plane as Mahat.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly not.

The President: Mahat is the synthesis of the plane above the Lipika.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, and the Lipika are in the middle of the plane on the
four quarters, that is to say, the higher ether or the higher Astral Light and the
lower Âkâsa. Âkâsa certainly goes beyond the seventh.

The President: Can you tel us how they would exactly correspond with the
archetypal worlds of the Kabbalists? Is it between that and the next?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Kabbalists only have four worlds and we have seven,
because they leave out entirely the three upper ones and begin counting
simply the archetypal world, which is the highest Astral Light. Just the four,
there it is; but the others are left in silence, and they are not spoken about.

The President: The Lipika real y on the plane which is above the archetypal
world.

Mme. Blavatsky: Together they are on that plane, because their world begins
where our globe A begins. And if you take The Secret Doctrine, you find there
the division of the four planes: You see four planes: it begins just above our
sphere. There archetypal world goes down, they have got only four worlds.

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Mr. B. Keightley: That places, so to speak, the Lipika in relation to the
kabbalistic conception and to the evolution perfectly. They are on the highest
plane corresponding to the highest plane of our chain of globes.

Mme. Blavatsky: What is the use of talking a language no one

329. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

would understand and cannot even conceive of?

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 3. What is the difference made here between

Word, Voice and Spirit?

Mme. Blavatsky: The same as between Âtman, Buddhi, and Manas. In one
sense, spirit emanates from the unknown darkness into the mystery of which
none of us can penetrate. The spirit—cal it the Spirit of God that moves on the
face of the waters, if you like, or primordial substance—the spirit mirrors itself
in these waters and produces thereby the first flutter of differentiation in
homogeneousness of primordial matter. This is the voice the first flutter of
differentiated matter, if you like, in this sense manifestation number one. And
from that voice emanates the word or Logos, that is to say, the definite and
objective expression of that which has hitherto remained in the depths of the
concealed thought. Of course we cannot begin here about colors and sounds
and al that, but I tel you kabbalistical y, and kabbalistical y you wil find that.

And mind you the one that mirrors itself in space is the third Logos; they cal it
the unknown.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then speaking there as you spoke, the Logos there is the
subdivided seven Logoi.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes.

Mr. A. Keightley: And the voice is the synthesis of the Logos?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is just like saying, as we say in the esoteric thing, the color,
the sound, and numbers. Wel , the Logoi ought to stand for numbers, then, in
this sense, or the numbers wil come after that when they divide the
hierarchies.

Mr. Gardner: What stands for the color?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , you try to dream of it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 6, continued etc. “The rejected sun is One, the ‘Son-

Suns’ are countless.” Question 4. Is this sentence to

330. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

be understood in the light of the explanations given on page 99? (c) And if so,
why is the “Rejected One” mentioned again here in contention with the

“Second Seven”?

Mme. Blavatsky: I have been reading the whole page, and I don’t know what
you mean. Where do I speak of the second seven? Unless it is the planets
that you mean, in which case it would not be the second seven, it would by the
seventy-seventh seven, because they are on the material plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is in this stanza. The stanza speaks of the second seven,
and then goes on in the next sentence to speak of the “Rejected One,” and
you have been speaking about the “Rejected One” in an earlier part of the
stanza.

Mme. Blavatsky: But you forget I have been skipping an innumerable number
of times not only lines, but whole stanzas. You know perfectly wel I have given
you only about twelve in the first and about forty-two in the second.

Mr. B. Keightley: The thing is to find out whether there has been a gap there.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly you wil find gaps. I just explain as much as I can. It
says there the Son is one and the “Sons-Suns” are many. It does not mean
our sun. It means the spiritual sun. You read it there.

Mr. A. Keightley: Is the spiritual sun also the Rejected One?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, no, no. I say here it is said somewhere there that the

Son and the “Son-Suns” are countless.

Mr. A. Keightley: It is the “Rejected One.”

Mme. Blavatsky: But it is this “Rejected One”; they are not the “Son-Suns.” I
don’t cal the planets the “Son-Suns.” I speak in general. The spiritual sun is
one but the Son-Suns are countless. And it does not refer at al to the planets.

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331. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Then has not it an equal application, to the planets as wel ?

Mme. Blavatsky: It may be something like that, but they are not any more suns
now. They were suns. In other places I speak about this. I have read it very
wel .

Mr. B. Keightley: It was in the stanza, that quotation; that is what puzzled me
about it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh yes. You wil be puzzled more than once, you know.

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 5, Śloka 1. “The Primordial Seven, the first Seven

Breaths of the Dragon of Wisdom, produce in their turn from their holy
circumgyrating Breaths the Fiery Whirlwind.” Can you explain in any way the
necessity of each entity in becoming divine to pass through matter to self-
experience?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel perhaps a sufficient reason might be found for it in the
very nature of your question. This progress to a Divine state is but the first
step, from our earth, at least, to Divine absorption. Now, the latter means that
each entity wil become Absoluteness when it reaches it—that is to say, that
which contains al , and therefore every earthly experience, including the very
strange question which is now offered (because it is real y a very strange
question.) How could that Absoluteness become one, unless it contained
every experience—that is to say, every stage and state of mind on the scale or
ladder of col ective experiences of beings? When you answer this, then I shal
be able to proceed. Now answer me, how is it possible that Absoluteness,
once that you reach it, there should be one single experience that would not be
contained in it, including even the question that you put to me? It must be
there.

Mr. A. Keightley: But it was there before.

Mme. Blavatsky: It was there in [ ], as Simon Magus would say. It was in

Divine ideation. When in Divine ideation it comes into Absoluteness. Divine
ideation is not Absoluteness,

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it is the first manifestation of Absoluteness, and is the Absolute. It is not the

Absoluteness.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then the whole process of one Maha-Manvantara, that Divine
ideation, after the previous Maha-Pralaya, shal become Absoluteness to again
emanate another Divine ideation?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, because we al change. With every Maha-

Manvantara we become entirely different, and everything becomes different.

We cannot say we wil be alittle better or have more rosy cheeks, or longer
noses. We shal be entirely something we cannot conceive of. We are that
which we are only in this Manvantara, which lasts some tril ions and tril ions of
years. That is the teaching, at least. I don’t know anything about what we shal
become.

Mr. A. Keightley: That introduces a curious idea, that the absolute of one

Maha-Manvantara is different from the Absolute fol owing it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al . It is the same Absolute, only from this

Absoluteness there are things which have been and things which are, but have
not yet been, you understand, that which was is in that; that which wil be is not
yet, but it is stil , it exists, but has not returned into Absoluteness. I don’t see
how you cannot understand it?

Mr. A. Keightley: It sounds as if there was in the Absolute a series of
paradigms.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is on our manifested plane that I speak to you, about the

Mahat which is born. Mahat has a beginning in the beginning of a Manvantara,
therefore it must have an end. I speak to you about Divine ideation, not in its

Absoluteness before manifestation, but the first flutter of manifestation the first
differentiated, when this Mahat was born of Brahmâ as they say in the Vishnu

Purâna. Now, that is quite a different thing. Absoluteness does not
differentiate the one-never-to-be known ideation. We speak now on the plane
of manifestation at every Manvantara.

Mr. Kingsland: Then Mahat is ever becoming, but never does become the

Absolute.

333. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: The Mahat is the Absolute of our Manvantara, if you like to
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say so. Perhaps you wil find a better expression. I don’t say that I am Herbert

Spencer, to come and invent new words. I simply try to tel you as I understand
it.

The President: It is an Absolute which is not an Absolute. It is an Absolute
which is limited.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Absolute cannot be limited.

The President: I know it cannot, real y; at the same time it is not the Absolute

Absolute: there is that behind which contains the past, present, and future.

Mme. Blavatsky: That which they cal fire, which is deity, from Simon Magus to
the last, and we say in our philosophy it is this which was, is, and wil be; and
yet this which was, is and wil be, is yet, has a beginning in every Manvantara
before emanation begins. Now, every Aeon becomes also, and is cal ed in its
turn that which was, is, and wil be. So you take Philosophumena, you read the
definition given by Simon Magus. Then take a better thing, Valentinus, who was
one of the highest philosophers, and one who explained it the best. You wil
see he cal s it that which is, was, and wil be. Every Aeon wil thus have a
beginning, and an end. Therefore they are al emanations of the Absolute; they
are not themselves Absolute.

Mr. Kingsland: Then in what sense do they become the Absolute?

Mme. Blavatsky: We are the Absolute, too. The spirit in us becomes the

Absolute, but it is on its pilgrimage, it is this circumgyration.

Mr. Kingsland: In what sense do they become Absolute? Because it would
appear from that in the next Manvantara, they have to pass to an experience.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because you cannot have anything which does not contain
the Absolute. If it did not contain the Absolute it could not

334. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

be anything and could not exist. There is not an atom in this world that has not
got the Absolute in it.

Mr. Kingsland: When you speak of the Absolute in that sense, you don’t mean
the rootless root.

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Mme. Blavatsky: I do mean it.

Mr. Kingsland: But this Mahat becomes the rootless root?

Mme. Blavatsky: Mahat is but a name which people have invented to show the
emanation of a certain Manvantara in the Divine ideation. Now, we must cal it

Absoluteness, we cannot cal it anything else, because the philosophy of such
terms is not very easy.

Mr. Kingsland: What is it that has to evolve?

Mme. Blavatsky: The il usion and nothing more, and that il usion more or less
il usionary.

Mr. Kingsland: Then that has no relation to the Absolute?

Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon, it has. It is because the Absolute evolves
one thing, and we with our finite and little brains see another thing. We are not
only color-blind, we are truth-blind, and we are everything-blind, and we must
take these things as they present themselves, but it is not the Absolute.

Mr. B. Keightley: Did you ever think out, Kingsland, the mathematical point of a
limit?

Mme. Blavatsky: What is a mathematical point? Does it exist? Is there such
an animal in nature as a mathematical point? You see, we are obliged to use
such expressions. How can you come and—wel I cannot invent a phraseology

—how can you express that which is inexpressible?

Mr. Kingsland: Wel , of course, to our finite minds it is, we admit that, but we
try to elucidate that one point. What is it that evolves?

Mme. Blavatsky: A Vedântin would tel you that it is an il usion, a

335. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

Maha-Mâyâ. That is way they cal it an il usion, because it lasts but for a “wink of
the eye,” though it may last mil ions of years for us. What is there in Eternity
which has a beginning and an end which is of consequence? It is expressed in
the Bible that a thousand years is as a “wink of the eye” to the Lord, but I say it
is perfect nonsense to speak of thousands of years. You speak of tril ions and
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even higher than that, and then you won’t be nearer the truth. Eternity is
eternity, it cannot be divided, so as to say: half eternity and quarter of eternity,
for then it cannot be eternity.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 6. Are the atoms—in the occult sense of the term

—eternal and indestructible, like the Monads of Leibniz, or are they dissolved
during Pralaya?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now look at this question, if you please. This proves that the
atoms are in your conceptions somethings, when there is no such thing in this
world as atoms, except as mathematical points, as I say. The atoms whether
representing the Monads of Leibniz or the eternal indestructible mathematical
points of substance which our occult doctrine teaches, can neither be
dissolved during Pralaya nor reform during Manvantara. The atoms do not exist
as appreciable quantities of matter on any plane. They are mathematical points
of unknown quantity here. And whatever they are or may be on the seventh
plane, each is and must be logical y an absolute universe in itself, reflecting
other universes and yet it is not matter and it is not spirit. Now, wil you
understand this? This is to say that which is Mahat or divine ideation, a sum
total, and is a conceived fraction. Now when I speak of fraction, please don’t
al ow your materialistic conceptions to imagine that Absolute can be divided
into parts or pieces. The Absolute is everywhere, even in the smal est
molecules of matter. It can neither be pressed into the infinitesimal part, nor
enlarged into a limitless cosmos; it is both. And so much the worse for us who
have not enough of the metaphysical element to understand the explanation.

How could Brahmâ be cal ed, Anu for instance—an atom—if it was not
something of the kind that I tried to explain to you? If it could be conditioned or
limited by

336. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

space or time or anything? The atom is and is not. The atom is the
mathematical point, the potentiality in space; and there is not, I suppose, a
space in this world that is not an atom. If you cal it molecule, it is a different
thing. But if you speak about the atoms of Democritus 6 it is a different thing.

Maybe he has been giving in it a very materialistic way, but if you speak about
the atom, that which we cal Anu, then certainly they have no substance that we
know of.

Dr. Williams: Then what would you say was the ultimate constitution of the
ordinary gases, like hydrogen and oxygen?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Everything is an atom, but what are these atoms? We cannot
see them, we cannot smel them or divide them; atoms are something science
has accepted simply as hypothesis.

Dr. Williams: Most of them are detected by some one or other of the senses,
if you admit that the gases do exist in the atomic form.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, if you cal them molecules—the molecules that you
have not yet come to, that Crookes has tried to divide and subdivide and he
could not catch them, because every one of them might be divided ad
infinitum—but when that becomes homogeneous, then you find these
molecules become atoms. They may be the atoms of Democritus or
somebody else, but they are not the atoms of esoteric science. It is quite a
different thing.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 7. In Occultism, are the true atoms conceived of as

“particles” or as something nearer to what we may cal “Vortex-Atoms”?

Mme. Blavatsky: I know nothing of “Vortex-Atoms,” first laughed at by science
when they were talked of by [ ]; and now, it appears, Sir W. Thomson,
accepts them. If you mean those of Sir W. Thomson I don’t know anything at
al about them. Pass to 8.

6 [The stenographer transcribed this as Democritus, possibly the Pyphagorean philosopher of whom little is
known, but the context implies that the reference is to the fourth century B.C. philosopher, Democritus, known for
his atomic theory of the universe.]

337. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 2. “They make of him the messenger of their wil . The

Dzyu becomes Fohat; the Swift Son of the Divine sons whose sons are the

Lipika, runs circular errands.” Question 8. Does this mean that the Lipika are
the Sons of Fohat, or are they the Sons of the Primordial Seven?

Mme. Blavatsky: This means that they are the Sons of Fohat as a
personification of Mahat, the Mânasaputras or “sons of the universal
intel igences,” and it means that the Lipika are the Sons of the “Primordial

Seven.” Whether the Lipikas’ marriage certificate is il egal wil be next asked, I
suppose. I would not wonder, because, for instance, what can I answer you to
this? They are the sons; They cannot be the Sons, it is simply an expression
used. “The Sons of Fohat” means just as the sons of Lipika, it is simply one
coming down from above to below, and that is al .

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Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 3. “He is there guiding spirit and leader. When he
commences work he separates the sparks of the lower kingdom ( mineral
atoms) that float and thril with joy in there radiant dwel ings ( gaseous clouds),
and forms therewith the germs of wheels...” Question 9. What is meant by the

“mineral atoms” spoken of here? For the stanza seems to refer to a period
before even the “Wheels” were formed or placed.

Mme. Blavatsky: It means that which is to become in this Manavantara; and
the “mineral atoms,” that which was set apart for it in eternity; that is what it
means and nothing else. You see, if the writers of the stanza were not born out
of time they would learn to express themselves better; but real y, I think it is
impossible to satisfy you and to give you al these explanations. Now, those
who wrote the stanzas wrote them just as they would write them in those times;
they are perfectly philosophical, but if you come and ask every little thing, and
want it to be expressed in Macaulean English,7 it cannot be done.

7 [A reference to Thomas Babington Macaulay, English writer and politician, 1800-1859, whose literary works
were considered exemplary of the English language.]

338. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Have not those “mineral atoms” been through a previous state
of evolution in a previous Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Nothing is lost, and they have been in
thousands and mil ions of forms.

Mr. Kingsland: In this Manvantara they have reached the mineral kingdom.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, and they have been modeled and remodeled in the
furnace of nature for mil ions and mil ions of years.

Mr. Kingsland: Can you tel us what wil be the next stage of those “mineral
atoms” in the next Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: No. I don’t know anything at al about them.

Mr. Kingsland: Wil they remain as “mineral atoms” al through Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know. They have got to evolute like everything else, to
something else.

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Mr. B. Keightley: I wish we could get at anything like a definite conception of
what is meant in occultism by the term, atom.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 10. Commentary (a). Do the six stages of
consolidation here mentioned refer to six stages of matter on each plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes they do. I suppose so. I wish you would meet on

Tuesdays and try to ask some questions which should not be always going
round and round the same thing. I believe al these questions I must have
answered dozens and dozens of times. You al present the same questions in
other forms, and it is an eternal squirrel’s work around the wheel. Now, if you
go over what has been written, you wil see it is so. It is impossible, if we want
to have it from al aspects, we must have hundreds and hundreds of volumes.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is that question we have been on the verge

339. 11. Meeting March 21, 1889

of a number of times, as to the true conception from the point of view of
esoteric philosophy of atoms. It real y lies at the root of a great deal of the
difficulties. That is what I thought we should have spent most of the time over,
because it is a very wide subject.

Mr. Kingsland: What distinction is there from the occult standpoint between an
atom and a molecule?

Mme. Blavatsky: I have told you, and I cannot say anymore. Molecule you
know, and atom you don’t know. I cannot say anything more than what I have
said.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

12.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

17 Lansdowne Rd., Hol and Park W.

Thursday, March 28, 1889.

Mr. Kingsland in the Chair

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Mr. A. Keightley: On page 101, line 18, it is stated that the sun is merely the
elder brother of the planets—but on page 103 it is stated that the planets were
al comets and suns in their origin, and would therefore appear to be older than
the sun. What is therefore the real meaning of these statements?

Mme. Blavatsky: So far as our planetary system is concerned, the sun is the
oldest member in it. His place was fixed—as is seen by the language of the
stanzas—at a very early period of the Manvantara, but the planets reached
their places at a much later period. These planets dethroned suns, comets,
etc. Each of them was at some time the central star, the sun in its own system,
but of a lower order than this one, and in a previous Manvantara. In the same
way so wil our sun become a planet in another Manvantara, only and also in
another and higher system than ours. First he wil be broken into innumerable
fragments, which wil form comets and meteors; these wil be scattered
through space to be ultimately drawn together by the Fohatic affinity. Wel , any
questions?

Mr. Kingsland: Then what becomes of these planets in this planetary chain?

Are they absorbed in the sun?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, they are not.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what wil become of the physical basis of these
planets?

342. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: What do you mean by “They wil be absorbed in the the

Sun”? They are not thrown out of the sun. Occultism teaches there is no such
thing as that. Why, it is the modern theory of science that the planets are
thrown off from the sun. They were never thrown off—and then they wil be
absorbed again in the sun. They wil be disintegrated in the Manvantara. They
wil scatter into fragments and go into some higher life, into a higher system.

Mr. A. Keightley: Wil the solid bodies of the planets in our system
disintegrated into smal er fragments?

Mme. Blavatsky: Just the same as the earth. Of course they wil .

Mr. B. Keightley: You say somewhere, in speaking of the moon, that the other
planets have also had satel ites, which stood to them as the moon stands to
the earth, but they faded out or disappeared altogether.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Some of them on the secondary plane. I told you many
times that there were seven sacred planets in the occultism, and that these
seven sacred planets had nothing to do with us. There are seven, two of which
or three of which are not known yet, and I suppose wil never be known,
because two of them wil never appear; they have disappeared since that time.

I told you the sun was not a planet, because it was a central star. Our earth is
not, because we are living on it. It is a planet for others, but not for us; but it
was the star which is seen between Mercury and the sun. I don’t know whether
it is this one which the astronomers have seen.

Mr. B. Keightley: But when the moon final y disappears it is not so to speak,
broken up violently according to the modern scientific idea, but rather
disintegrates slowly, fol owing the analogy of the human body.

Mme. Blavatsky: If the Pralaya does not catch it; but if the Pralaya sets in, then
there is an end of it.

343. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Is it exactly as if it had a charge of dynamite inside and al
burst up into fragments.

Mme. Blavatsky: Everything goes into space, and there is al the material of
which one world is composed—not the world, the earth only, but the planetary
system. Al this, of course, wil go into chaos again and begin its wanderings in
space until it reforms in another Manvantara, a higher world, and the sun itself
wil be even nothing but a planet in some higher world.

Mr. Kingsland: But not necessarily the integral parts of it as it now stands.

Then how near is that expression in the Esoteric Buddhism, that particles of
matter greatly lose their force of cohesion?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose it is speaking about the temporary Pralayas.

Mr. Kingsland: Just as we have a tidal wave which becomes an earthquake,
because the particles lose their force of cohesion and disintegrates in that
way.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t remember it. I mean to say as I don’t think that the

Pralaya is meant.

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Mr. Kingsland: In what way does the material go off into space?

Mme. Blavatsky: It scatters, I suppose.

Mr. Kingsland: By reason of their losing their force of cohesion?

Mr. B. Keightley: That, of course, is due to from the violent explosion, so to
speak, which disintegrates the sun at the end of the solar Manvantara. It is a
different process. Is that so H. P. B.?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose so. Now the next.

Mr. A. Keightley: Can you also add to this by explaining what you state in SD
as to the behavior of comets to the sun?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , the behavior of comets to the sun is caused by the
difference of density of the head and the tail. If science did not

344. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

insist so dogmatical y on its pretended laws of gravity, it would accept our
explanation, which satisfies every condition. That is to say that we do not
believe in the law of gravity as it is, but in attraction and repulsion. And if it is
once accepted, then we should find it leaves no gaps and it explains many
things that are not to be explained now on the hypothesis of science. Postulate
instead of gravity the twin forces of attraction and repulsion, and many
phenomena wil be explained. In this case the sun exerts a very much more
powerful in attraction upon the head of the comet, which is approximately solid,
than it does upon the tail of the comet, which though enormous in size is a
phenomenon of vision, not of our perception. Consequently, it is perfectly that,
that which is most attracted wil always be nearest to the sun. You know what
we spoke about, that the comets act most impudently towards the sun, and
that instead of fol owing the law of gravity they turn tail and go off making faces
at the sun.

Mr. Kingsland: And actual y flip there tails in the face of the sun.

Mr. A. Keightley: They almost stare him out of countenance.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just in the same fashion, a man endeavoring with bladders
upon his feet to walk upon the water wil be drowned—his legs, which are
necessarily the heaviest, wil be buoyed up by the bladders. In addition to this
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is the fact that the tail of the comet is so attenuous, corresponding to the soul
or spirit of gas, that it approaches in condition to the radiant robes of the sun.

Hence there is also a repulsive force exerted upon the tail of the comet by
reason of the somewhat smal er polarities. Now you understand what I mean
by this. You see, I don’t know what the men of science say about the matter of
the comet’s tails. I know it is not matter, and it cannot be cal ed matter. It is not
matter that fal s under the perceptive faculties, so to say, of the men of
science here; they could not, if they had a bit of it, do anything with it. It is
perfectly impossible. It is the spirit or the soul of gases, if that expression can
be al owed. Certainly it is dreadful y unscientific, and al those who have been
brought up in scientific reverence, of course, wil be much shocked. Many wil
be; but I don’t teach it out of my head. I teach simply that which

345. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

the occult sciences teach. It remains now to be proved who is right, ancient
wisdom or modern wisdom. It is a duel between them.

Mr. B. Keightley: A rather daring representative of modern wisdom suggested
the idea that the tail of the comet is not matter at al , but is an optical il usion,
produced in some way (which he did not attempt to explain) by some electrical
action of the solid nucleus of the comet—

Mme. Blavatsky: Whoever he is, he is a very wise man, because it is almost
what we say. It is a phenomenon of vision.

Mr. B. Keightley: Upon the matter through which the head of the comet was
traveling, and its direction, was dependent upon some other things that I do
not exactly remember.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not quite so, because there is something; but it is not
matter.

Mr. B. Keightley: But then, that is it. The difficulty of the explanation is in this:

supposing, however, ethereal y, and then you suppose the matter of the
comet’s tail to be the velocity with which it travels when, for instance, it
approaches the sun—and the tail is streaming away from the sun—the body of
the head of the comet reaches a point there, and the tail must move with
enormous velocity, something too much to be expressed by figures.

Mr. Kingsland: Like a ray of light flashed round your eyes.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Just as if you flashed a ray of light through a mirror.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not to the velocity or vibrations of the violet ray of which we
spoke the other day.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is our vibrations in an actual transference of matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: How does motion manifest itself—the eternal motion, the in-
breathing and the out-breathing which never wil

346. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

begin and never had an end? Those vibrations are certainly one of the causes
of that manifestation of the motion in its various phases.

Mr.—: How should we take the tail of the comet as visible, if it does not consist
of matter?

Mme. Blavatsky: How would you say if you were shown a kind of thing—how
do you explain those things the astronomers show—a shadow? It is not
tangible and yet you see it; it is a reflection.

Mr. B. Keightley: How do you see the image of the moon and the star?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is one thing that occultism teaches and it is this, that
there is not a single body in that part of the universe which is or which may be
perceived by astronomy under the strongest telescope that is not a reflection.

There is not a single planet which they see, real y, as a planet. It is simply a
reflection, neither is the sun seen. It is simply the reflection, and the screen, a
veil thrown over it; and so it is the same with the planets. They may go and
speculate tel Doom’s Day and say they see canals and they see mountains
and rivers and al kinds of things, but al this is optical il usion, nothing else;
nothing but reflections, because the real ones are not seen.

Mr. Kingsland: But to have a reflection you must have something which is
reflected from it and that must in every case be matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Everything is matter.

Mr. Kingsland: Then is the tail of the comet matter in that sense?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, because the tail of the comet is rather a reflection thrown
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off. There is the enormous size of it, and this is more of optical il usion than
anything else.

Mr. Kingsland: Is it not self-luminous?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not.

Mr. A. Keightley: What is the relation of the tail of the comet to the nucleus?

347. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, don’t ask me this. I am not a man of science, and I could
not come and tel you this. I cannot go and invent. You wise men of the West
ought to tel me what it is. And once you tel me the cause, I wil proceed and
give you a little more. I suppose you astronomers ought to know better.

Mr. A. Keightley: I don’t see that.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then I am not ashamed to say I don’t know, either. I am glad
they confess they don’t know. There are , how ever, a few things they say they
don’t know.

Mr. Atkinson: Is not the relation rather like that of a ship traveling through the
water, leaving a luminous trail behind her?

Mme. Blavatsky: That is a very good suggestion. It leaves a luminous trail
because this friction produces it. This is a very good suggestion.

Mr. Kingsland: Then the tail of the comet does not always correspond with its
orbit?

Mr. B. Keightley: This has brought back to my mind the suggestion I was
speaking about before, that the luminous appearance caused by attraction in
the other is owing to some peculiarity in the action of the sun upon the waves,
upon the vibrations so produced. They are so affected by the sun that they
appear to us to be an extension of the line which joins the nucleus of the
comet at any moment. But the detailed explanation of that I do not know.

Mr. Atkinson: The head of the comet, the nucleus of the comet, acts simply
like a lens; and where the tail is curved it is simply due to refraction through the
nucleus.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Refracted through the nucleus and forming a long tail; real y
refracted from fire particles of matter.

Mr. Atkinson: Round the substance of the sun.

348. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 5, Śloka 1. “The Firery Whirlwind” Question 2. On
page 107, the “Fiery wind” is stated to be the kosmic dust, etc., and in this
sense one would understand it to be the nebula—is this correct?

Mme. Blavatsky: Kosmic dust and nebula are one. We say the reason why
there seem to be aggregations, which we cal nebula, is that in those regions
the force of affinity is at work on the formation of the future suns, planets and
worlds. What you cal nebula is not only in the region known as the Milky Way,
but it is everywhere. Didn’t I tel you last time that it was in this room and
everywhere? It is ’round dust here in the streets of London as much as it is
beyond the most distant and visible stars. It is universal stuff, cal ed world stuff
by some astronomers. To il ustrate my meaning by physical examples, we
don’t see the dust in the air of a room at ordinary times, but supposing that the
floor is swept so as to largely increase the amount flying in the air; it becomes
at once visible, forms itself into clouds according to the currents of air,
etcetera. Now pass a beam of sunlight into a dark room through a shutter, and
the whole of the room is at once alive with the movements of the dust. In
exactly the same way as the dust moves, and is col ected by the currents of air
in the room, so is the kosmic dust moved and col ected by the Fohatic
currents of affinity and attraction in the higher space, until it appears at the
distance from us as the nebula with which science is familiar. Truly these
calculations are described as the fiery whirling wind, and why you should
object to the name I don’t know. It is just the name which fits it the best: “fiery
whirlwind.”

Mr. Kingsland: The reason why that question was put is that Fohat is cal ed a
little later on, the “ fiery whirlwind.”

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes sir, and so it is explained here. Fohat may be cal ed
anything you like.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is one point you might ask there, Kingsland, as to
whether the kosmic dust when undergoing the process of col ection is self-
luminous, or like the dust you are comparing it to, by virtue of the light.

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349. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: By virtue of al your respective Mâyâs and nothing else.

Because there is nothing luminous except the sun. Al is borrowed light, and it
is by virtue of the optical il usion and Mâyâ.

Mr. B. Keightley: I thought that was the case, because it has been proved
possible to photograph the nebulae. Consequently, if that is the case, they
must be visible, I should think, by reflected light not by dark light.

Mr. A. Keightley: On page 108, Fohat is cal ed the “fiery whirlwind (as
mentioned in the previous Śloka), and is refered to as the vehicle of the

Primordial Seven. In what sense is Fohat identical with the fiery whirlwind of

Śloka 1?

Mme. Blavatsky: Fohat is everything, he is the life principle, the vital air we
breathe. He is in al the elements. Fohat is the symbol of the root of
manifestation, and as such is necessarily the fiery whirlwind in synthesis.

Fohat, in short, is the root and soul of motion. What do we cal Fohat? It is not
entity. It is cal ed an entity. Fohat is not a gentleman of means or a young man
of beauty or anything of the kind. Fohat is simply a force in nature. We may
use, as the ancients did, al kinds of euhemerization, but it does not mean,

Fohat is any “thing”, real y. Fohat you have in your blood, every one of you.

Fohat is the primal motor of everything, from the beginning of the Manvantara.

Mr. Kingsland: Then Fohat is a generic term like, Dhyâni-Chohan.

Mme. Blavatsky: No. Without Fohat, the Dhyâni-Chohans would not be much,
anyway, for it is the cohesive force of everything; and it is the vivifying force
and the force of vital action. Wil somebody help me and give me a better
word?

Mr. B. Keightley: You express that very wel . You say somewhere in The

Secret Doctrine, you say actual y, what Fohat is, and you say it is an entity, of
which our electricity is the emanation.

350. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Is the universe that you see an entity, since it is?

Mr. A. Keightley: Do you see the universe?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , that which you see, never mind; is it an entity or not?

What is an entity, wil you tel me? Something that is. Wil you give me the
etymology and definition, of an entity, before you criticize?

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes. Strictly and etymological y, it means something which is.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , then what have you got to protest for? If Fohat is not, it
is no use speaking about him or it or whatever it is. And if Fohat is, I cal it
entity—and why should I not? Invent some other words I may use. I am
blessed if there are words enough in the English language to express the
quarter or the mil ionth part of the ideas that are given in the occult teachings.

The English language is inadequate. I don’t say there is another better,
because they are al in the same predicament.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is why we raise these questions.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Sanskrit language is a thousand times richer than the

English language, and yet Sanskrit is ful of symbols and figures of speech.

Why? Because human language has not grown to say that which is in the
human mind. The human mind is far more developed than the language.

Thought I mean.

Mr. Atkinson: Is Fohat in the Chinese represented by two Chinese syl ables?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is from those parts something I have been asking many
times. Fo means bril iant.

Mr. Atkinson: I know the root and the character of the Chinese syl able “Fo.” If
you could get the Chinese characters, I could turn it up in the Chinese
dictionary.

Mme. Blavatsky: And in the Japanese, too. I don’t think it is a real

351. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

word, because some of them cal it Fohat.

Mr. Atkinson: It would be “Ho” in Japanese. And it would represent the idea of

“Ho,” as “Ho” was a [ ] part of the phoenix. If it is the same as the Chinese, I
mean. It becomes “Ho” in Japanese, and then becomes the “Ho” of the
phoenix, as part of the compound name of the phoenix.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Fohat is also a relation to the cycles, because the intensity of
this vital force changes with every cycle.

Mr. Atkinson: It is in the celestial cosmogony of China. It is in the celestial
beginning and the cosmogenesis.

Mme. Blavatsky: I wish you would look somewhere where you could find it,
because I have been looking for it in India.

Mr. Atkinson: If you wil only give me the Chinese characters, I wil find it at
once.

Mme. Blavatsky: I have got it somewhere, but not in the Chinese.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 4. What are the sparks (atoms) which Fohat joins
together?

Mme. Blavatsky: The particles of the Fiery World stuff, or dust of which we
just spoke, nothing else.

Mr. B. Keightley: You might ask about what is real y meant by the epithet

“Fiery,” if it is not the idea of being self-luminous.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, don’t be so very dogmatic, for I cannot tel you anything,

I am a poor, ignorant old woman, I cannot say anything at al . I cannot come
and invent for you whether it is self-luminous or non-luminous. I don’t care, I
have not been at its birth, and I tel you I don’t know.

Mr. B. Keightley: If you would explain it in any degree—the sense in which the
word “ fiery” is used—It would be helpful.

Mr. Kingsland: It is purely occult there.

352. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Fiery is fiery, because it is not watery.

Mr. B. Keightley: Exactly, I see.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you!

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Mr. A. Keightley: Question 5. Are we to regard the atoms as purely
metaphysical conceptions, even on the lowest material plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: I have just explained this very point. Now let me, if you
please, remind you of what I read last Thursday, because I see I read one
day, and then the fol owing Thursday you forget it. This is what we said on

Thursday: “the atoms whether as representing Monads of Leibniz or the
eternal, indestructible mathematical points of substance, can neither be
dissolved during Pralaya nor reformed during Manvantara. The atoms do not
exist as appreciable quantities of matter on any plane.” When they come here
they are not atoms, they are erroneously cal ed atoms, “they are mathematical
points of unknown quantity here, and whatever they are or may be on the
seventh plane, each is and must be logical y, as Leibniz says, an Absolute
universe in itself, reflecting other universes. This is to say that each is Mahat or

Divine Ideation,” etc, etc. This I need not read any more, because I told you
last time.

Mr. Kingsland: Just before, you speak of the atoms Fohat joined together as
particles of the atoms of cosmic dust.

Mme. Blavatsky: Have patience and it wil be here explained to you. Those
atoms that we speak about do not exist, at least for us. They are simply
mathematical points. There is not a man of science who can come and say to
you that he saw the atoms or that he traced them, or that he smelt them or
touched them or anything; it is a perfect impossibility. Now, what they cal
atoms they wil find out are not atoms. If they ever find out, in I don’t know how
many thousand years, a little bit of homogeneous molecule or elements, they
wil be very happy. To this day they don’t find a single speck or element. They
have about sixty and seventy elements, and have they ever found molecules
that are homogeneous? I do not think they have. Did they, Mr. Atkinson?

353. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mr. Atkinson: I think not.

Mme. Blavatsky: Very wel , then; what is the use of cal ing them atoms and
putting false noses on things, simply to confuse and perplex the mind? Why
should we cal elements that which are not elements and may be divided ad
infinitum, and yet the chemist won’t know what it is? They wil come and mount
on stilts and say we know everything. Elements, what are elements? There is
one element, and it is the most tremendous conceit of modern science, such
as I have never heard or read the like of in my days. They dogmatize and do
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everything, it appears. I am not at al learned, I have never studied; what I know
is simply what I had to read in relation to the book that I had to write. But I say
that, real y, they give names which are positively ridiculous; they have no
sense. Why should they go and cal elements that which does not exist? And
why should they go and pitch into the ancients about the four elements,
speaking of earth, air, water and fire saying we are al ignorant fools when our
modern men of science act a thousand times more foolishly? They had not a
raison d’être except only their fancy and whim. Now, do somebody take the
part of the men of science. What silence! Wel , 6.

Mr. A. Keightley: In what sense is electricity atomic?

Mme. Blavatsky: Electricity as an effect at work must certainly be atomic.

Nothing that exhibits energy is non-atomic, or can be. Atoms confined to our
world system are not what they are in space, or mathematical points. These
latter are certainly metaphysical abstractions, and can only be considered in
such terms; but what we know as atoms on this plane are gradations of
substance, very attenuated. This wil be easily understood by those that think
over the occult axiom which tel s us that spirit is matter, and matter spirit, and
both one. Those who study esoteric philosophy wil understand this better than
those who do not. Now spirit does not become suddenly a lump of matter, any
more than vapor becomes suddenly a lump of ice. To use again an il ustration:

the clairvoyant who can

354. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

distinguish always, wil see an occult atomic effect in any energetic, intense
feeling in man or animal—such, for instance, as anger, fear, joy, etc. But these
things are non-atomic to our sensuous perception. And if they are not such,
how can science explain, for instance, the effects produced on persons and
animals by patients in there neighborhood? If, for instance, anger, love, joy or
anything, any passion expresses in the most intense way, if that were not
atomic, how is it that it produces effects not only on men, but in animals? How
is it that the man who is very reserved and won’t show his anger, and wil be
perfectly calm in his bearing and his features, won’t show his passion or
anything, yet you feel that this man is terribly hurt, and that he is angry or that he
is rejoiced? Don’t you feel it, is it though your eyes you see it; and how is it
sometimes anger affects a person in the most terrible way, though it is not
even directed against that person? This may seem a foolish question; but I
ask you how can anything be felt without it being an energy—atomic—I mean
atomic in the occult sense, not in your sense of being molecular?

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Mr. Kingsland: As I understand you, then, you say it is atomic as soon as a
primordial substance begins to differentiate. Then you cal it atomic.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, I cal ed it atomic, perhaps before, because what I cal
atoms are the whole on the unmanifested plane. It would be mathematical
points as soon as it is on the manifested plane. You cannot cal it atoms; you
cal it world stuff, or anything you like. You have a definite idea of the word
molecules, and therefore I cannot use that word.

Mr. B. Keightley: Material particles, you might say.

Mme. Blavatsky: Let it be material particles—the infinitesimal, but they have
size.

Mr. Kingsland: We have got altogether out of the metaphysical conception.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t want to do that, because on the physical

355. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

plane your men of science are a great deal wiser than our metaphysical
teachers, assuredly. They know al on the external plane. Now, whether they
know as wel that which underlies, I don’t.

Mr. B. Keightley: Now, on that analogy of anger, you cal it atomic; it is more of
a vibration?

Mme. Blavatsky: Vibration of what? What is that which vibrates spirit?

Mr. B. Keightley: That is what I want to get at.

Mme. Blavatsky: Nothingness vibrates. If there is something to vibrate, it is
something.

Mr. Kingsland: And that must be atomic.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Now listen to the end. Another il ustration.

How would science have explained twenty years ago the contagion of
disease? Now they have found out bacteria and bacil i, one of the most
attenuated forms of matter, but atomic stil . In another twenty years, perhaps
they wil discover the contagion of mental passions. Some people cal it
magnetism, a mesmeric power. Speaking of a lecturer, they say he electrifies
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his audience; we say that this electrification is purely atomic. The clairvoyant
whose senses are opened in advance to the physiological, psychic condition
of his age wil perceive the stream of atoms proceeding from the lecturer to
the audience, which wil be colored in various hues, according to his inner
condition, and assuming different hues as it comes in contact with the various
individuals in the audience, according to inner conditions and temperament.

Do you see? Now, you wil see a preacher who wil be preaching most
intensely about something; he wil be preaching something, and he wil be
electrifying. They say Spurgeon produces a most extraordinary effect upon his
hears. Now, take the Salvation Army. Once that there are hundreds of
thousands of them who wil begin dancing and emanating al kinds of
emotionalisms and everything, do you suppose it is not atomic? It sets the
people crazy, it is infectious, it psychologizes them, it

356. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

makes them lose al power over themselves, and they are obliged to think as

General Booth,1 once that they become perfectly under the influence. And
they wil give money, and believe in Jesus, or anything you like. If General

Booth went and preached instead of Jesus, H. P. Blavatsky once, everyone
would believe in me, everyone would be a Blavatskyite. I can assure you he
has the power, it is simply because it is a magnetic power. I wish I were
friends with him. It is a good idea of making him preach me, and they would al
come and believe in me.

Mr. Kingsland: Somebody must volunteer to become a General Booth.

Mr.—: Then you hold that this atomic energy that emanates from the preacher
has the same power upon al persons he addresses.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh no, there is a great difference, some won’t be affected at
al . Now, some of us wil go there and laugh. He could not affect us, because
we have not got the temperament of others to be affected by his preaching.

Those it would affect in an extraordinary way, and especial y sensitive people.

Mr. Kingsland: And then, they in their turns psychologize the others.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is an immense inter-psychology al around.

Mr. B. Keightley: You get a very good analogy from a lot of tuning forks
varying in key. If you struck one it would be taken up by the whole mass, and
get at last a whole volume of sound.

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Mr.—: Is that so? I think not.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think there is something of that kind, or how do you get a
reverberation?

Mr.—: One tuning fork wil strike its octave.

Mr. B. Keightley: But I am supposing the other forks are on the same key.

1 [William Booth, English Methodist preacher, 1829-1912, who founded the Salvation Army in 1865 and became
its first “General.”]

357. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mr.—: Oh, yes.

Mr. B. Keightley: I was thinking of the intensification of the sound, for instance
as a sounding board intensifies. You put a tuning fork onto a sounding box, the
sound becomes much louder.

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 5, Śloka 3, p. 118. In speaking of the six directions of
space, is the term direction used in its ordinary sense, or does it mean here a
property or attribute of space?

Mme. Blavatsky: Simply figuratively. It means the macrocosm is divided in
occult philosophy, just as the microcosm. That is to say into six principles,
synthesized by the seventh. And space here is not limited to any particular
area.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then space is used in its widest metaphysical sense.

Mme. Blavatsky: In its widest metaphysical sense. I would speak manifested.

Every time I say space without the word manifested, it means in its widest
metaphysical sense. If I want to speak about space in this universe, I would
say manifested space, or something like that, just to make some qualification.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 8. Are the six directions the six rays of the Logos?

Mme. Blavatsky: Just as I have explained. Just the same.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 9. Śloka 4: “Fohat traces spiral lines to unite the six
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to the seventh.” Is there any special meaning in the word spiral, and is spiral
action special y connected with Fohat?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is. Now in order that the neutral line, or zero point as Mr.

Crookes’ cal s it, and the centrifugal and centripetal must be made to run
spiral y, otherwise they would be entirely neutralized. I don’t know how
otherwise to cal it. The neutral point can be destroyed. Now, see, if you
please, in the volume, Gods, Monads and Atoms, page 550 where the

Caduceus of Mercury is

358. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

represented.2 Now, anyone who wants to know the explanation, let them read
it. This spiral is represented in the Caduceus of Mercury. If you have a central
point or a central line, for instance, like that (drawing), this must be the central
line. As soon as you touch it, anything that is differentiated, becomes
undifferentiated again, and fal s into the perfect Absolute. Then certainly, you
must have the spirals go in such a way. One force goes in such a way

(il ustrating), and this is the Caduceus of Mercury which produces those
miracles and marvels in the hands of [ ]. You look at this, and you wil see that
the healing powers and everything, that is what it means. And now Mr. Crookes
finds—he speaks about number 8 perhaps you read it—he speaks about
number 8, that he has found out that these forces go like that and make the
figure 8, and the middle line is the central line. Therefore, we are perfectly at
one with ordinary science, of which I feel very proud. This is page 550 { of The

Secret Doctrine}.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then does that mean that by reason of a centrifugal and
centripetal force, any force affected by that force must move in a spiral line?

Mme. Blavatsky: I believe it is a law that everything proceeds spiral y, it never
goes in straight lines. Science says something about gravity that goes on
direct lines.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is one of the points I wanted to ask.

Mme. Blavatsky: I would never believe it. I can’t give you my reasons, but I,
knowing occultism, say it is impossible. There is nothing in this world that can
proceed otherwise than in spirals, or on such things as that, but never in the
direct line, never.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then the same thing would be true as to the conception of
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the action of the two forces of attraction and repulsion. You would not think of
them as acting in direct lines, but always in spirals. I don’t mean to say the
effect, but as an abstract conception.

2 [ Secret Doctrine vol. 1; “Gods, Atoms and Monads,” refers to the page, not chapter, heading.]

359. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Not only as an abstract conception, but I think you wil find it
in physical science that they must act something like that. They cannot act on
direct lines.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is the effect they produce.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now look at the pranks that electricity plays with you. Put it on
a sounding board. Does it do every straight line? A straight line is a thing
unknown in the laws of Nature. Because that is why Pythagoras never would
admit the straight line or number 2—because he says number 2 is not a
creature that ought to exist in the Universe. We know the point which is not a
point, but the point which is everywhere and nowhere, because it is absolute
and universal, or it is the Triad or the Trinity.

Mr. B. Keightley: This is where the scientific idea comes in. They say the
effects would be spiral. I think I would ask Mr. Kingsland if he agrees with this.

The scientist woud conceive as an abstract conception of the centripetal and
centrifugal as acting in straight lines, combining together that would produce
the spiral action—even in the abstract conception. I should think that occultism
would stick to the spiral idea, if considered as abstractions.

Mr. Kingsland: They would not be conceived of as straight lines, and the two
combined would produce the spiral.

Mr. B. Keightley: The abstract idea is, of course, the force acting in a straight
line.

Mr. Kingsland: Oh, I see. In that sense, it is.

Mr. B. Keightley: Or any of the forces acting in a straight line. Suppose a force
occupying a given point. It would be conceived to act upon any other point
situated anywhere else in the room along the straight line joining the two
points.

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Mr. Kingsland: That is, for mathematical purposes.

Mme. Blavatsky: Whether for that or for anything else, I don’t believe in it. That
is al .

360. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 10. “If Fohat is the uniting power, while at the same
time differentiation is going on what is the disintegrating force which is at work;
or is Fohat bipolar, i.e., does he produce both attraction and repulsion?”

Mme. Blavatsky: He does. I would like you to find me, as I said before,
anything in this world that would not produce this bipolar action. Everything in
creation is bipolar. Is there anyone very religious in the room, because I have
to talk about personal God? Who of you is very religious?

Mr.—: I am.

Mme. Blavatsky: You are not, I never would believe it, that is a blank denial. I
want to say even your personal God is shown one moment infinite, and al
kindness, and mercy, the creator and Preserver, and at another moment one
of infinite anger, the destroyer and the annihilator. Al this is bipolar, al this
cannot be without, and if you take the God of your conception to be such a
bipolar being, then how there can be any force, or anything that is not, I don’t
know. You cannot have a force absolutely good or absolutely bad, there is no
such thing in Nature, therefore they must be bipolar. You take a little speck of
something you wil find the two poles in it, the negative and the positive.

Mr. A. Keightley: They does that mean to say the action of Fohat on any
substance is alternately first one and then the other—first constructive and
then destructive?

Mme. Blavatsky: I told you that. Take the trinity of the Hindus. There is Brahmâ
the creator, Vishnu the preserver, Śiva the destroyer, and al the three are one;
and if you can conceive of one without the two others, then there remains no

God but the flapdoodle, not good for anything. That which you cal destruction
is simply renovation, it is simply that. Wel , I have explained it to you so many
times: there is no such thing as Death, there is transformation. Now, if you

361. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

sow a seed, as St. Paul says, in order—I forget how he says it.

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Mr. B. Keightley: “In order that the seed may bear fruit it must fal into the
ground and die.”

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, that is perfectly true. That is to say, it must be
transformed. It wil not die, because there is no such thing as anything that is
destructible, because it simply passes into something else. This even science
has discovered 20 or 30 years, it is the conservation of energy, and this is the
greatest truth and the greatest thing they have discovered; real y, the greatest
truth that they ever wil , because this is the law on which everything is based.

The whole of occultism it is that nothing is lost and everything transformed.

They found it 20 or 30 years ago. I advise you to take the books which existed

4 or 500 years ago, and there the conservation of energy is positively proven.

Because, it is said plainly. Look in the Anugîtâ where it is said that nothing is
lost, that Vishnu transforms himself and becomes [ ] in humanity, but it wil
become always Vishnu; that every atom becomes something else, but it is stil
the sole atom, it is stil the same thing. I cannot repeat it, because I have not
got a good memory, but if you read the several pages, I am sure you wil find
that the conservation of the energy is perfectly wel described there, and 3 or

400 hundred years ago. Let it be 100 years before science, I am perfectly
satisfied it is proven that they knew it, and that they know it now. I don’t care
whether it was many thousand years old. We speak about the manuscripts.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then is the idea of Vishnu, the preserver in that Trinity, is that
the idea of the conservation of energy?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is. He preserves everything, but he can preserve nothing
without Śiva. Remember that Śiva must come and transform one thing into
another, and he is, so to say, the helper of Vishnu. And every time that Vishnu
is left in the lurch, as is shown in the Purânas, they cal on Śiva to his help. And
it is Vishnu who must come and help to transform one thing into another.

Mr. B. Keightley: And if I remember aright, Brahmâ is always appealing to

Vishnu for help.

362. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: He cannot move or do anything without Vishnu. You may say
what you like, but it is highly philosophical, I assure you.

Mr. A. Keightley: Śloka 4, continued. They (the Lipika) say: “This is good.”

Question 11. What special meaning is this phrase of the Lipikas intended to
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convey?

Mme. Blavatsky: Why should not the Lipikas say this is good, when the Lord

God in the first chapter of Genesis says it is good many times? And if he can
say it, why cannot the Lipika say it?

Mr. B. Keightley: Certainly they can. It is not an objection. It shows that phrase
has some special meaning, or it would {not} appear both in the old source from
which you have taken the stanza and the Bible of the Jews. And the question is
what is the special meaning?

Mme. Blavatsky: In the Bible, you know, there is as much philosophy as
anything else, though half of it was thrown out. If you could have the whole

Elohistic chapters you would see, if you please, what the philosophy is; but out
of perhaps fourteen there remain now only one and a half, or something.

Mr. B. Keightley: The question is what is the meaning?

Mme. Blavatsky: That this is good, what meaning do you want more? If it were
bad they would not say a word, but they would proceed to correct their mistake
and create it better.

Mr. Kingsland: But they might find out there mistake afterwards.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , so did God also find his mistake afterwards, because
he repented that he made man. Even a God repents, so why should not a

Dhyâni-Chohan?

Mr. Kingsland: Then it is only good, relatively?

Mr. A. Keightley: Is the “Chhâya-loka—as the

363. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

shadowy world of primal form, or the intel ectual—the same as what is cal ed in
the diagram on page 200 {of The Secret Doctrine} as the “Archetypal World”?

Or is it what is there cal ed the intel ectual or creative world?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Archetypal World and the intel ectual world; and of that,
you can see in the Kabbalah, it shows four planes. Take Mathers’ Kabbalah,3
there it is shown. Don’t show it to me. I know it by heart. The Archetypal World
may be compared to the thought of man precedes action; this is the kind of
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individual Manas in the light of the universal intel igence. The artist conceives
his idea first of al before he begins to work, but before he can paint his picture
he has to gather and prepare his materials in accordance with the plans that
are in his mind. He stretches his canvas and grinds his colors. This is on the
intel ectual or creative world. Then he roughly sketches his idea on the canvas,
and this may be compared to the presentment in the substantial or affirmitive
world. If you wil fol ow there, you wil see what I mean. He fil s in al the details
and the picture is ready. In the physical aspect there, they are the four planes.

So it is in nature. I do not speak about the three higher, because they cannot
be expressed in human language. The universal mind is above what they cal
the Divine ideation. This is a thing which cannot be expressed, but this Divine
ideation fal s, so to say, from the beginning; and when I say from the
beginning, it means there is no beginning and no end. And the light of it wil fal
on the Archetypal World where are the antetypes or prototypes of everything.

There would be nothing, not even this old carpet, if there was not an antetype
or prototype. You understand my idea?

Miss Kenealy: Yes, I think that is very clear.

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 5, Śloka 5. Question 13. What are the

3 [ Kabbala Denudata: The Kabbala Unveiled containing the following book s of the Zohar. 1. The book of
concealed mystery. 2. The greater holy assembly. 3. The lesser assembly. Translated into English from the Latin
version of Knorr von Rosenroth, and collated with the original Chaldee and Hebrew text, by S. L. MacGregor

Mathers. London: George Redway, 1887.]

364. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

influences proceeding from the four corners of the world? Why are some,
such as that from the East, injurious to life?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because it is; and do not ask me any more questions. North
and East are good, West and South are bad. West is bad because the

Egyptians and the Hindus and al the Chaldeans and the Phoenicians and
everyone had the idea that the Devil came from the West; why it should be, I
don’t know, because it is the presentment of western civilization in the present
century. The Devil comes from the West in the Egyptian sacred books, in the

Chaldean, in the Phoenician; in al he comes from the West. And everything
that is good comes from the East, because the sun is the regenerator and
comes every day at the appointed time; and the sun is our creator and friend
and everything.

Mr. A. Keightley: If the evil influences are suppose to come from the West,
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and if the East is supposed to be good merely because the sun, which is the
regenerator, appears from there, what is the meaning of the sun disappearing
in the West? Is there any connection there? Is it merely an absence of good,
or an actual presence of evil?

Mme. Blavatsky: It appears there, from whence comes darkness.

Mr. A. Keightley: But darkness does not come from the West.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, but light disappears in it, and therefore I suppose they
made it bad. But they must have had some other occult influences. There is
not a country that did not have West in there abomination positively, so that you
must be mighty proud, al of you!

Mr. B. Keightley: Yet the islands of the blessed were always supposed to be
in the West.

Mme. Blavatsky: Geographical y. But it is quite a different thing real y. Just as
it speaks of the east wind in London, and he asks me how is it the east wind is
the most pernicious wind, and al good comes from the East. I say it is
geographical y. It may be so in your

365. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

little island, but it is not so in space universal.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what is the meaning of it in space?

Mme. Blavatsky: In space there is neither East, West, North, or South, if you
take infinite space; but if you take a limited space nature has so ordained it that
everything evil comes from the West.

Mr. A. Keightley: Take the solar system. What is the meaning of it?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what are the four corners?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is flapdoodle, as there are no corners in that which is
spherical.

Mr. B. Keightley: I am afraid, Arch, your cross-examination won’t bring you
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much.

Mme. Blavatsky: I am not afraid of cross-examination, to tel you the truth.

Mr. A. Keightley: What is the meaning of the evil influences coming from the

East {West}?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because evil influences are il ness, and it appears that they
thought the Devil lived there.

Mr. A. Keightley: Why should it be the West and the South which are bad?

Mme. Blavatsky: From the South Pole come al the evils of the world; that is
why you are not al owed to go to the South Pole, it is evil. To the North Pole
you are not al owed to go because it is the land of the Gods. And if you went
there you would be desecrated. Seriously speaking, there is some magnetism,
something magnetic coming from the South and the West, that is a very bad
magnetism, the magnetism of the emanations of the earth. It depends on the
earth. Now, let us speak of the earth. Why is it that the Hindus tel you to sleep
in a certain way, with your heads so and so, that the

366. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

magnetism should pass through you in a certain direction? I have read several
men {of} science who say that it is not at al a foolish idea. When you have
calculated where it comes from, then you wil see there is some philosophy in
the way the evil influences come from the west and the good ones from the

East.

Mr. A. Keightley: But supposing, for instance, you placed your body in the
direct currents of magnetism, which are supposed to proceed from the
magnetic pole in the North? That is not in the actual axis of the earth.

Mme. Blavatsky: I never said it was. What do you want to know? What are you
driving at?

Mr. A. Keightley: I wanted to find out where these magnetic bad influences
come from, with regard to the earth?

Mme. Blavatsky: When you are older you wil know more; you need not come
and burden your young brain with that, because you could not retain it, and it
would become like a sieve and it would run through.

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Mr. Atkinson: Is it magnetic North, or the geographical North?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, magnetic.

Mr. Atkinson: Because they are opposite to the other?

Mme. Blavatsky: I tel you more. I have just had the honor of tel ing you we
don’t believe in anything going in straight lines. Now, if you put 2 + 2 together,
you wil see what I mean; it does not go in straight lines. Therefore you may
say what you like, but unless you know occultism and al the points and
everything you cannot know from where it comes and what is meant by it.

There is simply the statement that it comes from such and such a thing. It is
not meant for those who have {not} learnt occultism and who do not know there
remained so many points into which the occultists divide the earth. And whilst
you do not know it, how can you know how it

367. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

passes, when it always goes either in a diagonal line or like that, in spirals, and
never in a straight line? Therefore, it is extremely difficult to answer it; it is
impossible.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then there is some special relation to the currents meant by
the words East and West.

Mme. Blavatsky: Maybe there is, and maybe there is not. This is the sort of
thing I am subjected to each Thursday. They wil come and cross-examine me
and pump out everything they can til Doomsday. I cannot say more than what I
know.

Mr. A. Keightley: But you don’t say al you do know.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is a different thing you have no right to ask it.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 14. Have the four Maharajahs and the four
elements a special terrestrial application, as wel as a kosmic one?

Mme. Blavatsky: Except in karma, nothing at al . Maharajahs produce karmic
effects, certainly, because there the Lipika Maharajah is a title they have,
simply.

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Mr. A. Keightley: What is the meaning of the four elements, then?

Mme. Blavatsky: In what respect?

Mr. A. Keightley: As related to those four Maharajahs.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know what you are talking about. I didn’t see the last
question. I don’t understand what you mean.

Mr. A. Keightley: We had better ask another time.

Mme. Blavatsky: I told you to take out the 15th.

Mr. A. Keightley: That is al there is then.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think that my fate or my karma is to live al

368. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

my life surrounded by points of interrogation. Sometimes I have the nightmare,
and it seems to me I am surrounded by points of negation.

Mr.—: Points of admiration, I hope, as wel .

Mr. A. Keightley: Wel , you should not convert yourself into such a perpetual
conundrum.

Mme. Blavatsky: I am a very simple-minded old woman. I come here and
offer to teach you what I can. You except, very wel ; I cannot teach you more
than I can, you know.

Miss Kenealy: You say so much we want to know.

Mme. Blavatsky: You al are discreet. It is this immediately in the house, I am
sorry Dr. Wil iams is not here. He puts questions beautiful y.

Miss Kenealy: I think you are rather hard on us al .

Mme. Blavatsky: In the first place, you ask sometimes questions that trespass
on forbidden ground. What is the use of my tel ing you one thing, and then
shutting the door in your face? It wil only be vexation of spirit, and it won’t
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teach you much. And I cannot say certain things. I tel al that is permitted me
to give. It may be very foolish, very exclusive, very selfish. You may think what
you like; I have not made the rules, I never made the laws. I have not so
received it, nor shal I so impart. What I promised not to reveal I cannot, it is
impossible.

Miss Kenealy: You know so much that what is very simple to you is often very
hard to us.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, you always continue to ask things that real y I
cannot give ful y. So what is the use of saying it by bits?

Mr. Kingsland: We have a dim perception there is something behind, so we
keep pegging away.

369. 12. Meeting March 28, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You cannot complain, because you have the explanation of
many things.

Mr. Kingsland: I am speaking now general y, for the company.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

13.

The Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

17 Lansdowne Rd., Hol and Park. W.

Thursday, April 4, 1889

Mr. Kingsland in the Chair

Mr. A. Keightley: Stanza 5, Śloka 6, Commentary. Question 1. How do the

“Recorders of the Karmic ledger” make an impassible barrier between the

Personal Ego and the Impersonal Self?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, it seems to me it is very easy to understand that. I think
that whoever understands the real nature of Nirvâna, or even of the Christian

Kingdom of Heaven, where it is said no one marries or is given in marriage,
etc., ought to see very wel what is the meaning of it. Because, what is Rûpa?

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What is “Personal”? It is always something objective or material, and how can
it then pass there beyond the point where everything is formless and Ârupa? I
think it is not given in symbolical language, but quite plainly. Now, I ask you:

who is it that goes into the state of Devachan? Is it spirit, spirit-soul, or the
monad loaded with spiritual consciousness and intel igence, or is it the lower
principles of the personal man? Which is it that goes? You know perfectly wel
that the “Personal” was the Kâma-rûpa. Therefore they cannot go even on this
plane. The principles remain to fade out in time in Kâma-loka. The Lipika is
said to circumscribe within the egg—which is the magnetic aura or manifested
kosmos—man, animal or any concrete object in the universe, or those objects
which have form. It is an al egory, and is stated in al egorical language, this
enchanted ring or circle. No such ring exists in nature, but there exists the
plane of matter and spirit and consciousness. The Personal Self consists of a
triangle in

372. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

a square, man’s seven principles, of which only the upper Triangle is left; it
cannot pass beyond the plane of even the primitive differentiated matter.

Every atom of the seven principles—even the refulgence of Âtma-Buddhi, for
refulgence is an attribute and related to absoluteness—every atom must
remain outside the portal of Nirvâna. Alone divine ideation—the
consciousness, the bearer of Absolute memory, of its personalities now
merged into the one impersonal—can cross the threshold of the Laya point,
which lies at the very gate of manifestation, of the human soul and mind in
which facts and events, past, present and future, were alike during their joint
pilgrimage. There remains as is said at the dawn of the great day, but that
which is left of the various foods in a copper vessel when the latter is wel
washed out and dried. This is a quotation from the book. But if this is so at its
dawn, what shal we say becomes of the same soul and mind during the great
day itself? Why, that which remains of the said copper vessel when it is melted

—the memory alone. (You understand there is an enormous difference
between Devachan and the Great Day, or that plane which only is reached
during the Mahâ-pralaya after al the cycle of existence is done away with.) How
is it possible, then, that anything personal should come into it? We are unable
to represent to ourselves such an entirely formless, atomless consciousness.

During ecstasy we can imagine something approximate to the fact. We say the
subject in this state of Samadhi is beyond his everyday world of limits and
conditions, and now al is one motionless day and state for him. The past and
future being al in his present, his spirit is freed from the trammels and
changes of the body. The highest and most spiritual parts of his Manas only
are united to his own particular monad, which, like the monad of Leibniz,
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reflects that and is the whole universe in itself. The yogi, is become the
partaker of the wisdom and omniscience of the universal mind; but can we say
that of the mind when it crosses beyond the Laya point? If you can, gentlemen
of Oxford and Cambridge, I cannot. For I cannot speak the language of the
gods; and if I could you would not much understand me, I suppose. I cannot
make out what you mean by it. Who put such a question?

373. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

What does it mean—to draw the line between the personal and the
impersonal? You al of you ought to know it.

Mr. Kingsland: Is the state of Nirvâna beyond the Laya point?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly; why, the Laya point is simply, only for the
planes of matter. This is the Laya point as we cal it which goes beyond the
material manifestation.

Mr. Kingsland: You would not say Devachan was beyond the Laya point?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly not. Devachan is one thing, and “the Great

Day Be-With-Us” is another. For it is not simply planetary Pralaya, it is
universal Pralaya.

Mr. Kingsland: We are to cal that Nirvâna, are we not?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it is Pari-Nirvâna; pari, which means Meta.1

Mr. Kingsland: In the state of Samadhi, that is only Nirvâna?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is simply Nirvâna.

Mr. Kingsland: There is a certain amount of individuality attached to that.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a individuality of spirit and soul, Âtma-Buddhi.

Mr. Kingsland: You say the highest part of the Manas is assimilated with the

Monad; you cannot say that of Nirvâna.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, you cannot. I explained it afterwards there,
further on, because there are many places where you say things which I
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cannot make out. I cannot make out how you, who know al about the personal
remains in Kâma-loka apply the same thing when you speak of the “Great Day

Be-With-Us.” I don’t mean at al about our partial, short, little lives here. That

1 [The orginal has para- , but the prefix should be pari-.]

374. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

is quite a different thing. You see, if I had some of those who put the questions
to be there when I answer them, it would be a different thing.

Mr. A. Keightley: It is said here the esoteric meaning of the sentence is that
those who have been cal ed Lipikas and the recorders make an impassable
barrier between the personal ego and the impersonal self.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly.

Mr. B. Keightley: The pharse almost looks as if it were the line of demarcation
and division between the four principles and the three. I think there is a
question after that on that.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think you have a very erroneous opinion about the three
principles or the upper triangle. You don’t take into consideration, or make a
difference, when we apply the seven principles on this plane as in man or in

Devachan, or the same seven principles after the cycle of life is finished—
which is a perfectly different thing, entirely different.

Mr. Kingsland: There is nothing in that stanza to guide us to that.

Mme. Blavatsky: I could not write more than there is there.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is why these questions are asked.

Mme. Blavatsky: Don’t you see very wel that the Lipika, “the Great Day Be-

With-Us,” means when everything—when the cycle is finished? I am perfectly
sure there must be some reference to it.

Mr. B. Keightley: This is plain; but then is there anything that can be spoken of
as a “personal self” stil remaining?

Mme. Blavatsky: I wil tel you a thing which wil settle the whole difficultly. This
is what volume?

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Mr. B. Keightley: The first.

Mme. Blavatsky: How is it cal ed.

375. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Cosmogenesis.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then why should you make me speak of Anthropogenesis?

The “personal self” is quite a different thing. There is a thing, which has a
relation, but no personal gods wil have anything to do with it. It does not mean
personal in the sense of our personality. It means objective individuality.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, but that is different from what the phrase would
suggest.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 2. Does “personal ego” here stand for the Upper

Triad, Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, or for the lower quaternary?

Mme. Blavatsky: There it is. It would stand for al , if the principles of a stil
living man on earth were meant; it stands for none in the case of the Lipika. It is
said (I quote further) they circumscribe the triangle, the first one; the cube
quaternary, the second one; therefore al the seven contain in the triangle
three, the quaternary or four within the circle. This is quite plain. No principles
can cross the ring “pass not,” only the memory of these in the eternal divine
ideation, which ideation itself from something manifested becomes the

Absolute on that “Day Be-With-Us.”

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 3. By “manifested plane of matter,” do you here
mean the four lower planes of the diagram on page 200, i.e., the {four ?}

planes of the globes of our chain, or only the lowest of the four, that of our
earth?

Mme. Blavatsky: I mean what I say. Nothing manifested or having form or
name or number can cross beyond the ring which divides the immutable and
the manifested from the ever-present and immutable. Now, do put this into
your wise heads, my dear children. There is the difference between the
immutable and the manifested, and the ever-present and the immutable; and
you cannot cross this line and you cannot—it is impossible—nothing that is
within this domain can pass into the other, the beyond. It is impossible, at least
in our philosophy. I don’t know how it is in your conceptions, but in our
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376. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

philosophy, it is impossible. Where does our miserable atom of dirt, which
gossipy conceit cal ed the earth, stand, once the Pralaya and universal
destroyer and disappearance of the whole universe—the ideal as much as the
physical—is concerned? How can I mean the earth in one breath with
absoluteness? Is it not said of the abstract elements on page 130 (which,
please, look up) that even they, when they return into their primal element, or
the one and secondless, can never cross beyond the Laya or zero point? Isn’t
it as plain as can be? Why do you torture me, then? There are seven
meanings to every symbol. Astronomical y, the ring “Pass-Not” means one
thing, and metaphysical y, quite another.

Mr. A. Keightley: You state here—you quote from the Visishtâdvaita

Catechism 2 (reads from The Secret Doctrine, page 132). Can you explain
the esoteric meaning of the sentence: “Then it goes through a dark spot in the

Sun”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, do you know what a Visishtâdvaita is? They believe in a
personal, in a personal God, and they are dualists. They are Vedântins but
they have got no right to the name of Vedântins. There are three sects among
the Vedântins: the Dvaita dualist, the Visishtâdvaita, which are more then
dualist, and the Advaita, who are humanitarian, so to say, who believe only in
one science. Therefore, I answer to this that you had better ask the [ ],
because I don’t understand what it means. The “dark spot in the sun” must be
on par with the Angel standing on the Sun. I could never understand what was
meant. I even took the trouble of writing to the Pundit himself,3 and I
commissioned Harte to ask him what it meant, and he could not tel me; so
what can I do?

Mr. B. Keightley: Then you cannot blame us for asking the question.

Mme. Blavatsky: I cannot, I don’t know myself what it means. I

2 [ A Catechism of the Visishtâdvaita Philosophy of Sri Ramaujchara by N. Bhashyacharya compiled by N.

Bhashacharya and S.E. Gopalacharlu. Madras: The Theosophical Society 1888.]

3 [N. Bhashyacharya, Director of the Adyar Library of the Theosophical Society,who died in December 1889.]

377. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

have a dim idea, because for them the sun is that Parabrahman; they
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don’t know any better; and I do think, you know, that it means the heart of the
sun.

Mr. A. Keightley: Does it correspond at al with the point in the circle?

Mme. Blavatsky: I quote that simply to show the different systems in the

Hindus. I don’t blame you. I simply quote it to show what it says. Now comes a
pretty question—number 5!

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 5, page 135. Can you tel us anything more as to
the esoteric meaning of the 3,000 cycles of existence?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, immediately! Yes, of course! In the first place I am not a
mathematician—I say there it is perfectly impossible for me to go into figures.

Secondly, you know perfectly wel Mr. Sinnett has written already in his

Esoteric Buddhism, that the powers that be and who have in their pockets the
secret wisdom don’t like to go into figures; they never do. The 3000 thousand
cycles may mean any number of figures; it al depends upon the duration of
each 3000 cycles, which is, in short, the period of the whole Manvantara.

Mr. A. Keightley: Maha-Manvantara or minor?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, Manvantara; that is to say, when the seven rounds are
accomplished.

Mr. A. Keightley: But is there any meaning attached to the idea of 3,000?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know; it may be.

Mr. A. Keightley: I am not asking the question numerical y, but what is the
idea?

Mme. Blavatsky: They say in many places 3000; it has a Devachanic
meaning, that is al . Every defunct who goes and crosses the Nile in the boat

(you remember that ceremony) is Osirified, he becomes his own spirit, and the
spirit goes into the field of Aanroo. That is what it means.

378. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 6. Stanza 6, Śloka 1. Can you further amplify this
explanation as to the four kinds of Vâch?

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Mme. Blavatsky: In other words, can you analyze Subba Row’s two lectures
and once that it is published, to have al the blessed [ ] on my head. It is a
quotation from his lectures in the [ ], he divides [ ] and speaks of four forms,
as a Vedântin who lays stress on the four-faced Brahmâ, the one who
manifests on our plane and is identical with Tetragrammaton also. If not four-
faced, then the four numbered. He divided Vâch into seven parts, and speaks
of the seven faces of our Avalokitesvara, that is to say, the seven forces
manifested in nature. Our Vâch is the female Logos. Now read Vishnu

[ Purâna]; and I need not ask you, because I know you have read this several
times. Or again, in Manu, or in any other work in which Vâch is mentioned, and
you wil find that Brahmâ had divided himself into two persons, male and
female, and they created the seven Manus. Now this is the exoteric version of
the esoteric, or that which I have taught you many times. We are Vedântin so
far that we maintain seven, Vâch being the female aspect of the seven logos.

You must understand what it means. They are al androgynous. Even the first
one, ethereal as he may be, might be made out of nothingness, but stil he is
androgynous—he has the feminine aspect in him, and because he emanates
the second logos. Now the fol owing question wil give you more.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 7. In speaking of the “Seven Sons of Light and

Life” as being beyond the Laya centers, do you refer only to what may be
termed the “negative” Laya centers which limit our solar system? For the term

Laya center seems usual y to be used of the absolute limit of al differentiation.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is so, indeed, in the limit of differentiation in the manifested
kosmos. What is meant may be absolute darkness for us, but certainly it can
be neither differentiation nor Laya as we conceive of them, in that beyond.

When I speak of the “Seven Suns

379. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

of Light and Life” as being beyond the Laya centers, it only means this: they
are subject neither to Laya nor differentiation—during the cycle of their life, at
any rate, which lasts a Maha-Manvantara. If you had only remembered the
order in which the Dhyâni-Chohans emanate, or theogamy, which is there
explained in many places, you would not have asked the question. I thought
you knew by this time that logos number one radiated seven primeval rays,
which are as one, and are cal ed the septenary robe of destiny; and that from
that one is ultimately born logos number three, whose seven rays become the
kosmic builders and whose aggregate is Fohat. How, then, can the sons of

Light and Life, the septenary robe of immutable destiny, be otherwise than
beyond the Laya centers? It is just what I had the pleasure of explaining to our
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dear President, Mr. Kingsland. I think it is very conceivable, that. You cannot
take Laya as referring to anything but matter, manifested matter, differentiation,
even finite manifested differentiation. And beyond this Laya point, which is the

Zero point of matter, is matter which never differentiates, and nothing. It is not
that it is a question of heat or anything, it is simply the within—how shal we
explain this—as I have been explaining to you many times. Everyone of them
is endless, shoreless, limitless, and yet there are seven. Wel , there is a riddle
for you! If not a mathematical one, it is not a physical one; and yet I suppose
everyone ought to try and conceive of that—that it is not a question of right,
left, up, top, below, or beneath. It is simply a question of the state of matter or
state of consciousness. Matter is everywhere, because matter and spirit are
one, but the Laya point, or beyond the Laya point, you cannot cal that matter
nor spirit; it is neither matter nor spirit, it is both and nothing.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then, real y, that looks as if the Laya point would divide the
four planes which you may cal more especial y manifested—the planes of the
globe and solar system, and so on— from the three upper planes of which we
have been speaking.

Mme. Blavatsky: They do not the three planes and the four are just in one
cosmos as the seven principles are in you; but it is simply

380. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

this: if we cannot understand or realize that we have these three principles in
us, such as the higher intel igences, or Manas, and Buddhi, the spiritual soul,
and Âtma, the soul that is the synthesis—if we cannot realize this, how can you
pretend to go and conceive that which is perfectly inconceivable for human
intel ect, the three higher intel igences? That is why I only give the four,
because they represent the planes on which our planetary chain is. But I can’t
go beyond, because it would be perfectly incomprehensible; and moreover
my knowledge of the English language would not tel me, nor any language, for

I could not explain it.

Mr. Kingsland: You must look upon the three higher principles as
differentiations of the Absolute one, whereas beyond the Laya point you have
no differentiation whatever.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is just what it is.

Mr. B. Keightley: But you have the seven hierarchies.

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Mme. Blavatsky: You have no seven. Al is one after that.

Mr. B. Keightley: It was seeing the phrase used—“the Seven Sons of Light.”

Mme. Blavatsky: Never mind what we use; we have a language to say many
things, and we cannot say more than what the philosophy has evoluted. Try to
understand it, if you please, that there are no differentiations, no spirit, nothing,
it is the absolute darkness for us. The highest Dhyâni-Chohans could not tel
you anymore than could Mr. Herbert Spencer. It is a thing on which human
intel ect cannot speculate. It is perfectly ridiculous and absurd for us stupid
men and women to go and speculate upon such a thing as that. When I speak
of stupid men and women, I include al those who possess the highest
intel ects in the world.

Mr. Kingsland: At the same time, do you not speak relatively of a Laya point of
matter beyond which there is no differentiation?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, no.

381. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Relatively.

Mme. Blavatsky: Look here. Try to understand me. We have seven planes of
matter. On each of these planes there are seven again, and each has its Laya
point. When we are on our plane, there is a Laya point which is the seventh of
our plane; but when you have gone beyond those seven planes or seven
divine ideations, as they are cal ed sometimes, then there is nothing. You
cannot speculate, because there, where there is nothing to grasp at, you
cannot conceive of it; it is a perfect impossibility.

Mr. Kingsland: That is exactly what I meant, that there are certain relative Laya
points.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but those that come from the first Logos are beyond
any Laya point, because they do not belong yet to differentiated kosmos. They
cal it the septenary robe of destiny; I don’t know why it is, but it is so. Mind you,
though they are seven they are one; they are, so to say, the privations, the
ideations of the seven that wil be, of the second Logos—those that wil be the
seven from which wil emanate the seven forces of nature. Please do ask me if
you don’t understand something, because I want to begin very seriously al
these instructions.

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Mr. A. Keightley: ( Reads from The Secret Doctrine, page 138.) Question 8.

Does Fohat stand in the same relation to the Hierarchy of Seven that Mâyâvi-
rûpa does to an adept ie., as the intel igent, formless, active thought power or
energy?

Mme. Blavatsky: Whoever put the question has put an excel ent definition. It is
perfectly as you say. Who of you evoluted this? Let me give him the laurel
wreath.

Mr. B. Keightley: It was Arch.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , for once I must pay you the compliment; it is perfectly
wel defined. It is the Mâyâvi-rûpa. You cannot make a better il ustration. (after
a pause) Now comes again a flapdoodle.

382. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 9. Śloka 3, page 140. After Mahâ-Pralaya or any of
the lesser Pralayas, does “Matter” remain in statu quo of progress, to re-
emerge in Manvantara and take up differentiation and evolution at a
corresponding point to where it was left at Pralaya?

Mme. Blavatsky: Matter remains statu quo, that is to say, in the form it is found
in at the hour of Pralaya, only with regard to the spheres or globes of our chain.

Then the globe, going into obscuration (as Mr. Sinnett perfectly cal s it, a name
which has been given to him), becomes, in the words of a Master, like a huge
whale or mammoth caught in the masses of ice, and frozen. The moment

Pralaya catches it, it remains statu quo, everything. Even if a man happens not
to be dead, he wil remain just as he is. But now listen. Otherwise, and at the
hour of any other Pralaya, save this planetary one in the solar Pralaya, for
instance, when our sun goes into sleep, the matter of that system which is to
die and go out of existence is scattered in space to form other forms in other
systems. Every atom or molecule of it has its Karma and its destiny, and
everyone has worked out his way, unconsciously, or according to the little
intel igence it has; or it wil , if you please, go into other and higher systems
when there begins the new Manvantara. But the planetary Manvantara is the
only one where everything remains statu quo. There are superb things in
some Sanskrit books, the description of it: when the Pralaya is near, when you
have to expect it, and al kinds of kosmic phenomena—most magnificent. I
quote a passage of it, but it is a long thing of about seventeen or eighteen
pages.

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Mr. Gardner: Is it in the Purânas?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not in the Purânas; it is in a philosophical book by one of
those Rishis. I have had it here, but I don’t know what has been done with it. I
had one of the greatest pundits to translate it for me word for word, and I was
for about two weeks putting it down, because it is a magnificent thing. I wanted
to have it in The Theosophist.

Mr. Gardner: Do animals exhibit any peculiarities?

383. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: There are not many animals left. They are what they cal the

Śishta that remain, the seeds; they say they are great adepts who become

Manu when the time comes, when the obscuration is ended and this wave of
life again reaches that particular globe or planet. Then they say they are the
seed of life, the seed Manus.

Mr. Kingsland: Then the planet that is in obscuration wil stil be visible from
other planets.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, certainly; we see many dead planets.

Mr. Kingsland: The term obscuration gives us some idea, under the
impression that in obscuration it would not be visible.

Mme. Blavatsky: It means from the standpoint of that which is on it, and not
others.

A Lady: Is not the moon in obscuration?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it is not. The moon is perfectly dead as a doornail.

Mr. Holt: Don’t we understand obscuration by this paralytic condition?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is there that they are not asleep. “Not dead but sleeping.”

Mr. Gardner: Suspended animation.

Mr. A. Keightley: There seems to be three stages then. There is obscuration,
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death, and dissolution.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes.

Mr. A. Keightley: Progress towards destruction. There is the one you point out
as the frozen state of paralysis; then there is the total death, like the moon;
final y the solar death, when the whole thing bursts up and goes on.

384. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: But there are seven states, if you take not only planets but
everything there is on them. Take sleep and take the trance state and take the
yogi hibernation—for forty or fifty days buried and then coming into life.

Mr. A. Keightley: Do the states of the planets correspond?

Mme. Blavatsky: Everything corresponds. There is nothing that happens to
man that does not happen to everything else.

Mr. A. Keightley: Then what state does that sort of paralysis correspond to?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh! This is not for you. Give your question. Don’t you begin
jumping.

Mr. Gardner: Can you tel us any of the planets that are in obscuration?

Mme. Blavatsky: We wil tel you another day when you put the question. As
the question is not there, I won’t. Kindly learn a little more method.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think it is stated somewhere in Esoteric Buddhism. I think

Mars is just emerging from obscuration and Venus is just passing into it. I don’t
remember exactly.

Mr. A. Keightley: Page 143. Can you give us a short sketch of “The Life and

Adventures of an Atom?”

Mme. Blavatsky: That is the question I was expecting. “Can you give us a
short sketch of the Life and Adventures of an Atom?” No, but I offer you two
questions instead. Now you have to answer them. Which do you believe is
larger, your body or that of the whole kosmos? You wil say, of course, it is the
kosmos.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Wel , wait a minute.

Mme. Blavatsky: And secondly, which of you has a greater number of atoms
or molecules, you, or that kosmos? Choose.

385. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. Holt: I should say exactly the same number.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you? And how about men who are smal er and men who
are a great deal bigger?

Mr. Holt: It is a matter of the size of the atoms.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, the distance between the atoms. That is from the
scientific point of view.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh! But we are anti-scientists here.

Mr. A. Keightley: A man is commensurate with the whole of the kosmos.

Mme. Blavatsky: I wil tel you why I put this question. Now, supposing in view
of the hopelessness of the task you offer me, and while I confess myself
incapable of enlightening you with a sketch of the life and adventures of every
atom, I seek to give you a biography of one of your personal atoms. Let us
see now: am I generous and kind, that I consent to give you the life and
adventures of only one?

Mr. A. Keightley: I asked for one.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now we wil see if it is possible. How many years wil it take
me, do you think, to give you an accurate statement even about that one atom?

For occult science teaches that from the moment of birth to that of death (and
after death stil more so) every atom, or let us say particle, rather, alters with
every seventh fraction of something far less than a second; that it shifts its
place, and proteus-like travels incessantly in the same direction as the blood,
external y and internal y, night and day. Now you are 28, 29, or how old are
you? Thirty, let us say. Then let us say, if you please, that I wil take an atom of
your body, and from the moment of your birth I wil begin giving you the life and
adventures of that blessed atom in al its transformations, in al its gyrations, in
al its metempsychosis. How long wil it take me, gentlemen mathematicians?

Tel me how much. Count and I wil give it.

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386. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. A. Keightley: Roughly, though; a short sketch.

Mme. Blavatsky: Go to bed!

Mr. Kingsland: If you ask a person to give a sketch of their life and history, you
don’t expect them to give the history of what they did every day of their time.

Mme. Blavatsky: An atom is not a man. An atom does not get into flirtations,
and courtship, and marriage and pass through Bankruptcy Court, and become
a magistrate, and the Lord Mayor; nothing of the kind. An atom is a very wel -
behaved being, and what one atom does almost every other atom does. There
are certain little variations, but it is nothing. But to come and tel you what I
mean there, and give the life and adventures of an atom—which means, simply
an impossibility. Because I said a chemist would be astounded and take it for
the biggest nonsense for an alchemist to give him the life and adventures of
an atom; and yet he comes and puts this question. Real y and seriously, al of
you, you must al ow a margin, you must leave some possibility for a poor
author to exercise his imagination.

Mr. Kingsland: We must have something to hang a discourse on.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, if it is only pegs you want, that is another thing.

Mr. B. Keightley: The question of atoms is consistently cropping up in The

Secret Doctrine.

Mme. Blavatsky: It does. And I had the honor of tel ing you what I meant by
atoms, that I used them in that sense of cosmogenesis. I said they were
geometrical and mathematical points.

Mr. B. Keightley: Haven’t you got something definite in your mind when you
write that?

Mme. Blavatsky: There are very many things I may have in my mind, and
which I don’t like to make public. There may be such.

387. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: I think Mr. Holt ought to tel us why he says there are the same
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number of atoms in the body as in the kosmos.

Mr. Holt: I was regarding the earth and the solar system as but an atom; it was
relatively. Each system might be regarded as but an atom of the whole
kosmos, just as we are but atoms of our permanent earth with respect to our
bodies.

Mr. Kingsland: Do you say every individual is an atom?

Mr. Holt: The mathematical idea of the atom is the least conceivable, not the
least demonstrable—so that you see I am not begging the question. We may
conceive the great and the smal , and they are the same size in the noumenal.

Are they not?

Mr. Kingsland: But you compare the individual cosmos. You are not working
on that plane, you are working on the plane of manifestation.

Mr. Holt: I use it in that sense, but it was not until H. P. B. gave us her definition
of the atom that I thoroughly understood what was intended. If it is the
mathematical atom, then I say just as many. I mean metaphysical y.

Mr. B. Keightley: The peculiarity of the mathematical point definition is, it has
not got a size at al , neither bigness or smal ness.

Mr. Holt: Therefore, it may be al , or it may be nothing. So that is real y why I
said the man has so many atoms.

Mme. Blavatsky: You said it simply, kabbalistical y, as “the microcosm of the
macrocosm.”

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 11. Footnote, {p. 143, implies} force is a state of
matter. Are forces atomic and molecular, though supersensuous? The phrase
used appears to imply the Occultist make no distinction between force and
matter. Is this the case? Please enlarge and explain.

Mme. Blavatsky: Stil I say force as manifested on this plane is a

388. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

state of matter. What would you cal radiant matter, if not a state of matter? But
the energy which produces the state of matter is perfectly the same as force.

Cal it force or energy, we consider it as a state of matter on this plane, for it
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cannot act without matter being present, and these two cannot be {diverse ?}.

What force is on the other plane is quite a different thing. But I mean on this
one. I say it is an electric state, that is what I say. Every force that is produced,
to whatever it is applied, we cal an electric force. It is a function of the whole
universal electric ocean which acts. Do you understand my meaning?

Mr. Kingsland: Not thoroughly.

Mme. Blavatsky: As I don’t know how science regards it this year, I am unable
to make a comparison. I know how it regarded it last year, but it changes, you
know, like an atom.

Mr. Holt: You admit of primordial substance, with the one absolute life moving
or energizing in that substance?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly.

Mr. Holt: Then we may regard that as distinct ideal, but always co-existent and
omnipresent.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. I say that force on this plane is matter, a state of
matter, at least; it has a function, a quality of matter—not of that matter on
which it acts, but of the matter in general, of the Universal matter of the
substance of the universal substance. Cal it life, cal it electricity, cal it Fohat,
cal it whatever you like; it is always Fohat.

Mr. Holt: Would you then say that al cosmical force, as for instance planetary
influence, is nothing else than the radiation of matter?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the radiation of something, though for us it may not be
matter, and we have no right to cal it matter; yet it is matter on that plane,
substance. Cal it if you like.

389. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. Holt: That would agree with the statement you made to me the other night,
that everything is touch; thus, for instance, we might cal light which is
perceptible to the optic nerve, we might cal it a force.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think it is more physical science, that wants to make the first
one; but touch is something else than what is meant here. Who spoke to me
about touch? I think Mr. Kingsland. One night here when we were talking about
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the first sense, which must be touch.

Mr. Kingsland: Dr. Wil iams.

Mme. Blavatsky: But the way he explained it was not at al as we explain it. It is
touch, everything is touch. Taste and smel are touch, because everything
must be touched in some way to produce or to put that particular sense into
function or vibration, or whatever you cal it—into activity. Therefore, I say that
force is certainly a state of matter. And what objections have you to what I say?

In that question I mean.

Mr. A. Keightley: What I wanted to understand is this. Supposing we see, for
instance, a matchbox. That is force manifested on this plane, isn’t it? It
represents force.

Mr. Holt: It is force taking form, perhaps.

Mr. A. Keightley: But it is force.

Mme. Blavatsky: Nothing can manifest itself without force.

Mr. B. Keightley: Crystal ized force.

Mr. A. Keightley: It is force, in the static state.

Mme. Blavatsky: You should say better as the Buddhist philosophers say, the
concatenation of force and effect. It is force.

Mr. B. Keightley: You see, the ordinary idea of force is that which changes or
tends to change. The state of matter which moves matter

390. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

shortly.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is the inherent energy, the inherent motion, which tends
to change, and not at al force. Force is everything, because you cannot
produce the smal est little effect without the cause of it being some force used

—intel ectual, moral, physical, psychical, any way you like. And what is force? It
is the incessant action of what we cal the one life, the one motion, the great
motion which never ceases, which always goes on in the universe.

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Mr. Holt: Then you would say it was always moving in primordial matter?

Mme. Blavatsky: Always. Even during Pralaya it is going on. There is no one
to see it, or take notice of it, of how many vibrations, but stil it is.

Mr. Kingsland: Now, take light, for instance, and radiant heat. Is that an actual
movement of particles of matter from the object which emits the light and heat
to us?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know. You see, our ideas of light are quite different.

Mr. B. Keightley: Let us leave light out and deal with heat.

Mme. Blavatsky: You have your own preconceived ideas furnished you by
science. You have science as the grand priest, the high priest and initiator of
al your ideas. You are obliged and in honor bound to accept everything that
the Royal Col ege or Royal Fel ows tel you. We, on the other hand, are, so to
say, the ostracized ignoramuses, the occultists; we have our own ideas, our
own science; therefore I, being one of the humblest and most ignorant of
those ignoramuses, cannot come and base what I tel you and give you always
il ustrations from science, because I don’t know anything about it.

Mr. B. Keightley: But I think what Kingsland is driving at is this: we have certain
erroneous ideas put into our heads, and we are obliged to use the same
language which is familiar to us.

391. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: But if I don’t know it?

Mr. B. Keightley: What I think he wanted to get at was, wanting you to explain
as far as you could, the way in which occultism would teach about this
communication of heat, for instance, from, say, a red hot lamp or anything that
is hot.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just in the same way as color or sound is produced or any
force which becomes manifested and apparent. We teach it as al coming
from the Dhyâni-Chohans.

Mr.—: Isn’t it molecules, though?

Mme. Blavatsky: It may be; everything is molecular if you cal molecular that it
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is something. Of course I know what you mean by molecular, even in science.

Mr. Kingsland: What I wanted to get at was this: science conceives of the
transmission of light as a transmission through a certain medium. Supposing
you have a long stick, and you hit one end of it without the stick as a whole
moving—you have the transmission of the knock from one end to the other.

There is nothing transferred from this end to the other end. We wish to know
whether it is the same in the case of light, or whether there is actual y a transfer
of particles from the radiant object to us.

Mme. Blavatsky: I say there is transfer of particles.

Mr. Holt: Are they transmitted as light shines through glass? Do these
transmitted particles pass through the glass?

Mme. Blavatsky: These particles can pass through anything. Al these things
are nothing to them. It is just the same as the spirit passing through a wal .

Mr. Holt: It does not partake of the nature of matter. It is matter, but on another
plane?

Mr. Gardner: Although it manifests on this plane.

392. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It manifests—not in particles, because they are not particles
in our sense, but they are rays, they are radiant energies. It is very difficult to
explain. They are emanations or breaths. I am afraid you won’t understand me.

Mr. B. Keightley: There was a great dispute that went on between somebody
and Newton, who had this theory, the corpuscular theory; he formulated it.

Then that has been suspended in the opinion of modern science by the [ ]

theory of waves and vibrations along the stick.

Mme. Blavatsky: The corpuscular theory as it was presented by Newton, and
the wave theory—the one that stands now through the ether that they were
obliged to admit they took them from the ancients, however disagreeable it
was for them—both of them are wrong. In both, according to occultism, there
are right premises, and yet wrong conclusions. The thing is al muddled up
both ways. It is excessively difficult, but perhaps in time we wil come and coin
words for things that you wil have understood wel ; but until we have coined
these words—upon my word, it seems almost hopeless to explain to you. For
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instance, I have had an idea perfectly clear and perfectly true to me; I know
what it is. How can I explain it to you, even if I had at my command al the
technical expressions used in physical science, and so on? I cannot, because
there are not such expressions in existence.

Mr. Kingsland: No, but there are always analogies.

Mme. Blavatsky: But the analogy is very different for me. I am not at al of a
scientific mind. I never learned modern science in my life. Al that I know is
simply by reading, and sometimes not paying great attention to it. I know in
some cases I had to learn, because I had to refute and I had to disprove it. But
in general, I don’t know; it does not interest me, because I know it is a
flapdoodle which wil change tomorrow. Why should I go and cobweb my brain
by learning al the lucubrations? Every day they invent something else, and on
the fol owing day you have to modify it or make away with it, or insult

393. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

it in some way or other. I don’t want to learn anything more, because one has
the trouble of learning and unlearning. For you men of science who fol ow it, it
is very easy—you remember the things you give up—but upon my word, I have
too much of the occult theories that I have to learn and explain to you to go and
bother myself with the physical science, which I hate.

Mr. Holt: May we pass on to the second part of that question, and ask whether
this matter in its various forms is contactible on any plane, providing we have
the requisite senses? And then I may supplement the question by: “Do we
have the relative senses, even in the Nirvâna?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , for the Nirvânic effect certainly; but they cal it Nirvânic.

What does it mean? It means “a flame blown out” —Nir-vâna no more nothing.

It is like a wind that passes and blows out everything. There is an entire
disappearance of everything like the matter we know of on earth. Not only
matter, but even of our attributes, functions, feelings, everything. Nothing of the
kind can go on in Nirvâna. Therefore they misunderstood the thing and they
said it was annihilation, which is perfect nonsense.

Mr. Holt: But there is individual consciousness stil retained, is there not?

Mme. Blavatsky: Not the individual consciousness of the present, but
universal consciousness, in which the individual consciousness is a part. You
see, it is quite a different thing, that. When you reach Nirvâna you are the
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whole, the Absoluteness.

Mr. Gardner: But you are differentiated al the same?

Mme. Blavatsky: Absolute differentiates? My goodness!

Mr. Holt: What then is Para-nirvâna?

Mme. Blavatsky: Para-nirvâna differs from Nirvâna because we are in the

Absolute, which is just beyond the plane where differentiation begins. And

Para-nirvâna is something which is beyond the meta, of

394. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

which you can know nothing. You come from Nirvâna back into a new Mahâ-

Manvantara, when there is Para-nirvâna. Then there is the end of al ; and
nobody has ever calculated what shal be afterwards. That is the whole
difference philosophical y.

Mr. Holt: What is the Buddhist name of the state where individual
consciousness first manifests itself, coming out of Nirvâna towards the plane
of matter?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t what you mean.

Mr. Holt: You say that individual consciousness is annihilated, except as it is
preserved in the Absolute. So far as individuality is concerned, the sons of the

“I am” that is apart from the absolute, that is annihilated in Nirvana?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly it is annihilated. The “I am that I am” that is to say, I
am al , I am absolute. You are not then old, but you are every blessed thing
that there ever was, is, or wil be; for what is it? You just make for yourself an
idea of Absoluteness.

Mr. Holt: Does the identity merge itself into the Absolute?

Mme. Blavatsky: On our conceptions, it is no longer, but it is identity. It is a
very abstruse metaphysical problem, this. You must understand this. If you
conceive of deity as Absoluteness, or if you conceive of deity with attributes,
then this deity cannot be infinite. It would be everlasting; it had a beginning and
it had an end. Such are the Manvantaric Gods, those which are during the life
cycle. Absoluteness is that which is, to our minds, at least, immutable— which
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never had a beginning nor wil ever have an end, which is omnipresent, which
is absolute everything. And when we say of that Absoluteness that it is
absolutely unconscious, absolutely without any desire, without any thought, it is
because we mean and must mean that it is absolute consciousness, absolute
desire, absolute love, absolute everything. Now you see how difficult is this
thing to conceive. Those who have been brought up in a theology which limits
and conditions everything, and makes and dwarfs everything

395. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

that there is—the grandest things in the world—and those who, like the men of
science, don’t believe in anything but the limited and conditioned—they cannot
conceive of anything which is not that. Therefore, occultism has to struggle
with science and the more materialistic theologies yet. Because the man of
science holds to his department and he does his duty. He says: “I am
incapable of understanding or believing; I am going to hold to that which my
five senses show to me”; But the theologians who, at the same time claiming
the God is infinite, God is endless, and God is absolute mercy and justice,
gives to that absolute attributes, makes his God to be revengeful and make
mistakes, repent that he has made man, do al kinds of things, and yet he wil
cal him absolute and endless. This is where comes in this terrible,
unphilosophical and il ogical thing, which has neither head nor tail, which is a
perfect, flat contradiction of everything. If you want to have it in a philosophical
way, you have to take the Vedântin way of seeing things, but if you come to the
theologians of the West, you are lost.

Mr.—: Those are accommodations of truth.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not they, because you can do just the same as they do in

India: they had to make accommodations for the minds of the poor Hindus,
who are ignorant but there are no such contradictions. They say God. One wil
worship Vishnu, the other Shiva, the other anything you like, but they wil never
say these gods are endless and never had a beginning or an end. They wil
say the gods die, and Brahmâ at the end of manvantara goes into pralaya, and
there remains only the one, to which they don’t give a name, but they cal

“That.” Because, they say “they cannot give it a name, it is that which ever was,
is and wil be and cannot be.” So you see how philosophical they are, much
more philosophical than we are. I cannot understand even Herbert Spencer,
speaking of the one deity and then cal ing it the “ first cause” and cal ing it the

“supreme cause.” How is it possible?

Mr.—: They are trying to comprehend things that are beyond the plane of their
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capacities.

396. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. That which is absolute, which is infinite,
cannot have any attributes or anything; it is perfectly unphilosophical to speak
of it in such a way as that. You cannot come and give any relations to that
which is absolute, because the Absolute positively can have no relations and
nothing to do with the conditioned; al this must be a thing entirely apart. When
they ask me how is this, that this emanated, I say it emanates not at al .

Because if the supreme or the Heavenly father wants to emanate, it is simply
because it is the Eternal law, the law of nights and days, as they speak of

Brahmâ. There it is the breath, that principle, that law—and there is something
which appears, the universe appears. I say it is a most magnificent and
sublime conception of the Deity.

Mr.—: The highest conceptions of truth we have, are not absolute truth. We
can only take in what we are capable of taking in.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is why I say there is no one thing that is absolute and
that, we cannot speculate upon.

Mr.—: And we are trying to talk about, things which we have no words.

Mme. Blavatsky: On this plane it may be speculation, but that which has no
relation whatever to any ideas we have in our heads it is a perfect impossibility
to speculate upon. That is why the Hindus cal it “That”; they cal it the one
darkness when it manifests in it but the rays. Then there is the manifestion and
the creation, as they cal it, the evolution of the world.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 12. “Seven smal wheels—one giving birth to the
other.” In view of the diagram on page 172 of Earth and Lunar chains, does
this mean that globe A gives birth to globe B within our planetary Ring?

Mme. Blavatsky: It does most decidedly. One principle goes out after another
from the dying planet and generates a globe, as each principle generates
another, except the physical body; for both are the productions of the Lunar

Kâma-rûpa. Now that which I mean

397. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

to say is, it means our planetary chain. And in Esoteric Buddhism, you wil find
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that this wave of life, as he cal s it, as it passes on, and when one is formed,
then the other begins forming; and then one goes into obscuration, and they
go one after the other. They emanate. Because, if you have to believe what the
occult sciences teach, namely, that our earth is a production of the moon that
is a little bit of mud—wel , it is a question of preference. But if you have to
believe the occult doctrine, then every principle goes one after the other.

There comes the first principle, that lives when the moon begins dying, which
produces globe A; then the other can produce globe B, and so on. It goes in a
round, the middle one begins the Lunar Kâma-Rûpa, that is to say, the seat of
material things.

Mr. B. Keightley: You see the diagram as it is drawn; you remember how it is,
the two chains side by side. Then A projects its principles into A of the earth
chain. But the phrase used there in the commentary seems to suggest that
instead of going that way, that A being established, then from A came the next
planet on our chain B and A of its own plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: A produces A, B produces B, and so on.

Mr. B. Keightley: The words of the stanza seem to suggest that A produces B.

Mme. Blavatsky: It must have been done by some of you six or seven editors.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is the words of the stanzas, but there are no alterations
made. It looks as if in English it meant each wheel of a succeeding wheel.

Mme. Blavatsky: Don’t be so very fine, I may give it and then you can change
it if you like.

Mr. B. Keightley: It was only to find out whether anything wanted explaining.

Mme. Blavatsky: No; one wheel it means, one globe giving birth to the other.

398. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: In two successive chains?

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 13, page 145. With reference to what was said last

Thursday about nebulae being col ectively Fohatic affinity, what is the relation
of a Laya center to such nebulae?

Mme. Blavatsky: Here comes Laya center again. None whatever. A Laya point
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is a little absoluteness of its own and can have no relations to differentiated
things, so far as I know. It is a state in a point moreover. It is neither a point nor
a triangle nor any geometrical figure at al . It is simply cal ed the Laya point to
show the Laya state. It is a state—Laya—and not at al anything that can be
indicated by any geometrical figure what ever.

Mr. A. Keightley: Question 14, “...four and one Tsan (fraction) revealed—two
and one half concealed...” Is there a distinctive separation into two parts of
manifestation of the fifth element, corresponding to the separation of the

Higher from Lower Manas?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes there is. But you know this is a very abstruse question, in
which you cannot go tonight. This is a thing which certainly it is, because if
there is any analogy in nature it must be so; but we certainly cannot go into it
tonight.

Mr.—: Were the occultists aware that there were eight planets?

Mme. Blavatsky: They knew a great deal more. They simply speak about the
seven planets. They took the earth and the sun as substitutes, because they
had planets of which our science now has vaguely and dimly an idea. There is
one of the most sacred planets, the second one, which corresponded {to} that
body which they take Mercury for. And it is the one between Mercury and the
sun.

Mr.—: Is there one there?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly there is. And they searched for it, and they
suspected it, and they cannot find it.

399. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

Mr.—: That is to say, it is not visible to the physical sight.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is visible, but it is in its last obscuration. It wil be seen from

Mercury. It wil be a moon, when there wil be some other planet produced.

There are figures for it.

Mr. Gardner: By what name was it known?

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh, you would like to know it! Ask your instructor. I don’t
know it, so I cannot tel you. They wanted to cal it Vulcan; they say that they
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suspected. I don’t know what some of them said; others deny it.

Mr. Gardner: When the eclipse came?

Mme. Blavatsky: They thought there was something. I don’t think it is anything.

Mr.—: Does that make it invisible, being in obscuration?

Mme. Blavatsky: It may come again, you understand, but it is in its last
brightness. It is as the moon was before, because the moon was far less
visible than it is now. Now it vampirizes the earth, but before it didn’t have to
vampirize anything; and it was in its last degree of consumption.

Mr. Holt: I don’t think its luminosity would have anything to do with its visibility to
this earth. The darker it were the better for us, because we should see it
against the sun’s disc.

Mr. B. Keightley: But they do fancy they caught a glimpse of it during the
eclipse.

Mr. Gardner: Do you say the moon vampirizes on us?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, it does. Al the moons and al the parents vampirize
on their children in this space.

Mr. Gardner: Saturn’s moon and Jupiter’s too?

Mme. Blavatsky: They are al the same, no altruism among them. It

400. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

is the survival of the fittest in nature. It is only [ ] who ought not to have this.

Mr.—: Have you any theory as to the numerous minor planets?

Mr. B. Keightley: 178 or more of them. Planetoi, it is.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is not the smal est star that is not personified. You
may believe how many when, even exoterical y they give 330 mil ion of gods,
and every one of these gods, is a star—a visible star or planet.

Mr. B. Keightley: And has a story.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Now the astronomers have not got more than 60,000 stars.

Mr. B. Keightley: They have got some mil ions.

Mr. Holt: Taking the zodiac, 218,000,000.

Mme. Blavatsky: And the Hindus have 330,000,000, and every one of them
has its history and its place and space.

Mr. Kingsland: Has its life and adventures.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes; I bring it in, because every god is connected with a star,
that is why. Oh, they knew al ; I can assure you they are a wonderful people.

Why is it that they knew perfectly, without any telescopes or instruments, the
seven Pleiades—the seventh sister which now has disappeared, and you can
hardly see it with the best telescope? And they knew it perfectly, and it had not
disappeared in their day. Therefore, calculate how many thousand years they
must have had this astronomers’ knowledge.

Mr. B. Keightley: There tables for the moons motion, which have been
absolutely proved to have been obtained by independent data, are more
accurate than the very best modern tables.

Mme. Blavatsky: Surely, it is wonderful, and they have no telescopes. What
had they? The most rudimentary things, yet see how they knew

401. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

it, because in the temples and the hierophants, the twice-born, they had al the
things a thousand times better than we have now. But they don’t speak of it; it
is gone. It was sacred with them. They did not make a speculation of it simply
on the material plane, as they do here. It was their religion, their most sacred
doctrine. Certainly they did not give it to the hoi polloi.

Mr. Holt: They would not have needed telescopes to see these things. Could
not they have seen them astral y?

Mme. Blavatsky: In the Pleiades, they disappeared. You cannot see them
now without a telescope.

Mr. Holt: It has its astral counterpart. It is double. Then they could see.

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Mme. Blavatsky: They could see not only that. They had there seers, but they
had astronomers likewise.

Mr. Gardner: They had there instruments, as wel .

Mme. Blavatsky: They are what proctors4 write about—the knowledge of the

Chaldeans and the Egyptians.

Mr. Gardner: Did they have any force like Keely’s force?

Mme. Blavatsky: That is not much. I suppose every yogi could produce

Keely’s force.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is not anything wel -confirmed about this idea. I think it
is flapdoddle. He might use it in some way to increase the power of
perception, but I don’t see how he can use his vibrating ether as a telescope.

Somebody asserted that Keely could make use
of his vibratory forces as a telescope.

Mr. A. Keightley: Hartmann5 said he had seen it. He said that he could just be
looking down the tube after reflecting this force or

4 [R. A. Proctor, English astronomer, 1837-1888. H. P. B. cites his Myths and Marvels of Astronomy, 1878, in

The Secret Doctrine.]

5 [Franz Hartmann.]

402. 13. Meeting April 4, 1889

getting it in some way on to it, he could make a bacil us the size of an orange.

Mr. Gardner: What magnitude is that?

Mr. A. Keightley: I don’t know how many thousandth parts of an inch it
measures. I mean the microscope. If you can get Keely’s power to magnify
that sort of size, you can surely apply the same principle to a telescope.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, if you can do it.

Mr. Holt: I don’t see the application of it.

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Mr. A. Keightley: Hartmann said he had seen it.

Mme. Blavatsky: He says only one thing that has attracted your attention, and
he says one thing which sounds very much like our theory, only he expresses it
in other words. He says that the sun is a dead planet. I say that it looks very
much like that, that we say. The sun, nobody has ever seen; it is simply the
shadow of the real sun, which is perfectly invisible and certainly in this sense,
you can cal it dead. You have rays of light, and the shadow is strong.

Mr.—: It throws up enormous fountains of molten matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: He gives his reason for it, and I say that which occultism
teaches. I say, it is not the sun we see; we see the shadow, the screen, the
phantom; the real sun is not seen at al .

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

14.

Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

17 Lansdowne Rd. Hol and Park W.

Thursday, April 11, 1889.

Mr. Kingsland in the Chair.

Mr. B. Keightley: Page 142, line 7 of The Secret Doctrine, you say: “Neither

Water, Air, Earth (synonym for solids general y) existed in their present form,
representing the three states of matter alone recognized by Science; for al
these are the productions already recombined by the atmospheres of globes
completely formed—even to fire—so that in the first periods of the earths
formation they were something quite sui generis. Now that the conditions and
laws ruling our solar system are ful y developed; and that the atmosphere of
our earth, as of every other globe, has become, so to say, a crucible of its
own, Occult Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange taking place in
space of molecules, or of atoms rather, correlating, and thus changing their
combining equivalents on every planet.” Question 1 (a): This long sentence
requires further elucidation. What, for instance, must we understand by “the
productions already combined”? How recombined? How do the atmospheres
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of globes effect this recombination? Why “even to fire”? In what aspect are
they sui generis in the first periods of the earth’s formation?

Mme. Blavatsky: Why do you ask such long questions? Can’t you put them
like that—you know, A, B, C, D—as you used to do before?

Mr. B. Keightley: Because it is real y al referring to the same subject.

Mme. Blavatsky: I wil answer about the productions. The

404. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

productions referred to are the differentiations of the primordial elements,
water, air, fire matter or earth, etcetera, which have al been very natural y
combined in new forms in the atmosphere of the many globes they came in
contact with—globes certainly anterior to our earth by long eons of time. That
is how they are recombined. How recombined, you ask? By the special
crucible of each particular globe, recombined by heat, of course, by the
internal fire latent in every form of every element, whether on this or the highest
plane. Fire is spirit, the soul of things, whether in the form of Fohat or electricity
or that magneto vital force which makes the plant grow. The term atmosphere
in occultism does not mean the air we breathe;
it applies to that Fohatic radiation or aura, which extends far beyond the limits
of respirable air. This atmosphere is almost homogeneous being the purest
ether, or the seventh principle of that which on our earth is the first or lowest
principle, namely, breathable air. Wel ?

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 1 (b): How is the atmosphere of our earth a crucible
of its own?

Mme. Blavatsky: Between any two planets—say between the earth and the

Moon—there is a regular gradation of density and purity in the etheric
atmosphere which lies between the two. It commences on a planet with the
densely material air, which is the rûpa or body of ether, and is as opaque to the
light of its higher principle as the body of man is to the light of the Divine Spirit.

From that material darkness the etheric atmosphere shades off gradual y, tel it
reaches a point of—say, the perfect brightness or luminosity. This is the Laya
point, or line on our plane, of the atmosphere between two planets. It is the
condition of Laya which preserves the due equilibrium between the planets
and prevents them being precipitated one upon the other. Therefore in occult
science it is impossible for anything in the shape of a material body to pass
from one planet to another. From the occult standpoint, the fal acy of the
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meteorite theory is great indeed. Now have you got any questions, if you
understand that which I said?

Mr. Kingsland: It would almost appear from that first answer to

405. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

that question that the chemical elements as we know them now have not been
differentiated, so to speak, but they have gone through a lot of processes on
other globes.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. I believe these diagrams drawn by Crookes
are very fine on this plane, but certainly they have no rapport at al , no relation
to the differentiation from primordial matter. This I have never regarded.

Mr. Kingsland: Our idea—or rather mine—has been that the chemical
elements have been differentiated from the cosmic fire mists in citu, so to
speak, on this globe.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, not on this globe; every one of them has passed. Matter
is eternal, and al this whatever-it-is that goes and whirls about is once
concerned with one globe, then with another body on this plane, on the other
and so on, until it goes down to our plane, which is the lowest.

Mr. B. Keightley: So that al the matter that we know and perceive practical y
has passed through an endless series of combinations before it reaches our
plane of perception state?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, because you could never see it; you could
never perceive or sense it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Even, for instance, when Thomas Vaughan1 said: “no man
had ever seen earth,” he was not speaking of earth in the sense of the
primordial differentiation.

Mme. Blavatsky: He was speaking about here. “No man had seen earth.”

Don’t forget that—that it has to pass from the seventh or the highest to the
lowest, which is our earth, to the first. Why our earth was created—this
planetary chain—mil iards and mil iards after others. This is one of the things;
and you see how many mil ions they give in the occult science. If you look at
their calculations of the yogis in the Manvantara and so on, why it makes the
brains whirl, so
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1 [Thomas Vaughan Welsh philosopher and mystical writer 1621-1666.]

406. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

to say, and get giddy to read those things.

Mr. Kingsland: On the last plane of al , take iron, for instance. Has that
become iron on this globe, or was it iron before this globe?

Mme. Blavatsky: Take iron or take anything you like; it was, and al comes,
from one and the same essence. One has become iron in reaching our globe,
and another thing has become something else, and the third something else,
and so on. But al these were the same thing.

Mr. Kingsland: But the material substance only became this on this globe?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, it can only be within our atmosphere. Therefore, the
occult sciences say, it is a perfect impossibility, the speculation of this
science, that the meteorites fal sometimes from a planet; because they
cannot pass the Laya point. There is the thing which begins: it is dense, it is as
black as night in comparison; it is between the moon and the earth. It begins
quite black, then grey, then lighter and lighter, and lighter, until it reaches the

Laya point. And from the Laya point it begins to be darker and darker and
darker, until it becomes as black as possible. Therefore, between every plane
there is the atmosphere and that which is beyond—not the breathable air, but
the atmosphere. Nobody breathed it, because you could not. If you went into a
bal oon you could not pass a certain point; there would be a certain stage
where you would immediately die and be suffocated.

Mr. Kingsland: Then the “atmosphere” there is used in the purely occult
sense. Whereas, natural y, anyone reading it would take it as the ordinary
atmosphere?

Mme. Blavatsky: I try to put in the words that everyone would understand. I did
not use occult words there.

Mr. Gardner: Then we real y see the stars through this atmosphere?

Mme. Blavatsky: But we don’t see them as they are; it is a Mâyâ. It

407. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

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is a regular Mâyâ of vapors and things that prevent us from seeing. It is al
nothing but hal ucination and il usion.

Mr. Gardner: Are not they real y the distance off that the astronomers say?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t believe in it.

Mr. Gardner: How about these meteoric signs?

Mme. Blavatsky: Have patience, and I wil tel you. The meteors are, as a
general rule, fragments of broken planets or comets. Once a planet is broken
up, the Laya centers, which separate it from other planets, or the Laya line
rather, I would say, disappears. It shifts its position so as to find itself between
two planets which remain intact. You understand? You put our earth, then there
is a planet and then there is a third planet; the atmosphere begins dense here;
it comes here, and there is the Laya between the line, and then it becomes
dark here (il ustrating). When this is broken up, and immediately it goes and wil
form this between other planets, the next planet and the earth.

Mr. Kingsland: It wil spread out on the Laya point?

Mme. Blavatsky: It shifts its position so as to find itself between two planets
which remain intact. The result is that some fragments of the broken planet
remain in the old orbit of the destroyed planet. Thus of course, when the earth
crosses the former orbit of that planet, any fragments that are brought within its
attraction fal to the earth as meteors. Did you understand, Mr. Old?

Mr. Old: I merely wish to ask whether this planetary disruption, which is the
cause of cometary masses, is contrary to the general rule? It appears that the
general rule is, in the formation of a body, gradual y to transfer its vitality to
another and thus to die out; but here we have a case where a planet coming
between the equilibrating forces upon both sides goes into a state of
disruption and splits up.

408. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it is not. Because, the moon it wil happen to, as soon as
it has nothing more—no force even to try to vampirize the earth. The moon wil
be just in that position then it wil be disrupted. It is most probable that the earth
wil have some other moon, or we wil go without, so that the poets wil not be
able to compose their pretty verses to their beloved; and everything wil go on
as usual.

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Mr. Gardner: Some of the pieces of the moon wil come down on this earth.

Mme. Blavatsky: I hope it wil not come on my nose. I wil be dead and gone
by that time, though.

Mr. B. Keightley: As a rule, the cometary state of a planetary body is before it
becomes a planet.

Mr. Old: Yes, but we are talking of the meteors now, not of the comets.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, it differs so much from real, official science that
real y, a man of science, a physicist, or an astronomer, if he were here
listening to us, would say we are al lunatics. But I teach you the occult
doctrine, and I think it is on the whole—if you learn it from A to Z—you wil find
it is certainly worth the speculations of science, and that it gives far more
rational explanations, and even fil s up al the gaps and missing links.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is one point about the meteors you find in meteorites
exactly the same minerals, metals and so on that you find on earth, and
indistinguishable by any of the tests that chemistry, at any rate can apply, or
spectroscope analysis.

Mme. Blavatsky: You wil remember the passage from The Secret Doctrine,
that a planet only breaks up after life has entirely left it, when it is even more
dead than the moon is now; that is to say, only after seventh and last round.

Witness the moon. Mind you, it is long eons after the seventh round; not
directly. This accounts for the complete absence of any traces of life, or
organic remains in the

409. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

meteor; is it that, what you want?

Mr. B. Keightley: You said a little while ago, in speaking about the elements,
that they were so completely differentiated from any of our terrestrial
elements. When a meteor fal s to the earth, you find it contains [in] its
constituents, the minerals and so on, and they are almost without exception the
same as we find on earth.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Because as soon as they get on the
atmosphere they change, and there is a kind of correlation, transformation—
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say what you like. This is what the Master taught Mr. Sinnett, of al these things.

As soon as it comes, it goes beyond our atmosphere; it comes within the
advantages of our atmosphere, and this atmosphere is a crucible (to which you
just objected), because it changes everything that comes within it.

Mr. Old: When a planet is disrupted (and you say part of it may remain in the
same orbit after the other planet died), does it continue to revolve round in just
the same way as the original planet did, this fragment that remains?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, it has a motion of its own, but I don’t think it dies; it fal s
in a kind of chaotic whirl.

Mr. Gardner: Supposing, for example, Jupiter was to come within the orbit of
this disrupted meteor. That would leave a certain portion of it, the same as it
does here.

Mme. Blavatsky: What applies to our planet applies to every planet.

Mr. Gardner: Would they have the same chemical combination?

Mme. Blavatsky: This I don’t know. I can not tel you what I don’t know.

Mr. B. Keightley: The point raised before was the elements—the substance of
the matter—differed from one planet to the other.

Mme. Blavatsky: They wil be remodeled according to the atmosphere.

410. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mr. Gardner: It does not change very quickly through the Laya point.

Mme. Blavatsky: Through the Laya point they cannot go; it is impossible. That
is why I say this theory, “that Mars fel down from some planet,” is from the
standpoint of occultism perfectly untenable, for it cannot pass the Laya point. If
it did, it would be dissolved, it would exist no more. In the Laya point it cannot
move, it is a negation of al movement.

Mr. Gardner: I cannot see that. You have potash and lime, and so on.

Mr. B. Keightley: Why should not they perform in the earth’s atmosphere?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is the occult student (Mr. B. Keightley), ask him.

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Mr. B. Keightley: If you take a mineral out of a smelting furnace, you find al
sorts of chemical combinations, lime and al sorts of things formed there,
which are formed out of other substances which have been exposed to violent
heat. Wel , you get combinations, al sorts of combinations, formed out of what
are to us unknown elements.

Mr. Gardner: You get different metals in these meteorites.

Mr. B. Keightley: Which enter into the material of the earth. It is not a pot made
of fire-clay, you know. It has the function of a crucible.

Mr. Hall: Then these meteors may be said to have in them potentialities,
which, when they come within the crucible of this earth, produce the metals that
we know?

Mr. B. Keightley: Precisely. At least, that is the way I understand that.

Mr. Gardner: Then if they get into the crucible of another planet?

411. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: They would form others.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is something I took from the first question. “In what
aspects are elements sui generis?” I answer, first, because no one period
resembles the other, and secondly, because the first round of every chain
differs entirely from the subsequent that wil appear subsequently. There is a
greater difference between the first and the second rounds of a Manvantara
than between any two subsequent rounds. Then question (b) is: “How is the
atmosphere of our earth a crucible of its own?” That has already been
answered as far as it can be done, so that this settles the first question.

Mr. Keightley: Had you anything more about the meteors which you have not
read?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, I have read everything about the meteors; I just
answered as much as there was there.

Mr. Hall: Wil you give any explanation of the reason why there is so much
more difference between the first and second manvantara?

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Mme. Blavatsky: No, I won’t, because it wil take us til tomorrow morning.

Mr. B. Keightley: It comes into the thing we go into about the moon later on.

Question 2. (a) Can you give us any instance of the atoms correlating and thus
changing their combining equivalents? (b) What is meant by “combining
equivalents,” in this sense?

Mme. Blavatsky: I use the word “atoms” here not in the occult sense, but in
that given to it by physical science, which speaks of an atom of iron, of
hydrogen, and so on. The Secret Doctrine is not an occult book, as I told you,
but a printed work for the public. What is meant by the terms “correlating,” or

“molecules changing their combining equivalents,” is that the relations
between what science cal s atoms and molecules of our elements differ from
planet to planet, therefore “b” in question 2 is also answered. That is al I can
tel you. Has anyone to ask any questions—some of the physicists? Mr.

Wil iams, have you nothing to say? Mr. Wil iams does not.

412. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mr. Williams: No, thank you, I have no questions to ask. I thought you were
speaking of the other Mr. Wil iams, the doctor.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 3. Page 143, line 10. Can you explain at al what is
meant by “a current of efflux”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Which means that I am sat upon for using the word efflux.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, no, you are asked to explain what you mean.

Mme. Blavatsky: In physical science a current of efflux is a current of matter
on one and the same plane, whatever its attraction. In occult science a current
of efflux means a current passing from one plane to another, whether higher or
lower. This efflux is not an objective movement in our third dimensional space,
but a change of state from space without to space within, or vice-versa. Do you
understand that? You see, in occult language it means quite a different thing.

Mr. Kingsland: It is change in differentiation.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is change from one plane to another.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 4. Is the Laya center that condition of primordial
substance at which, or in which, Absolute Motion takes the specific name of
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Fohat? Or is Fohat the sum of the seven radiant1 forces, in the same sense
that Mahat is the sum of the seven intel igences of the Manvantara, cal ed the

“Seven Sons”?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Laya center of Primordial Substsnce has everything
else the side of it, or is the reflection of Absolute Motion, which adjective
implies that it is equal y Absolute rest or Non-Motion. In occult philosophy the

Absolute can have no attributes; therefore the adjective, Absolute, permits of
no nouns. Fohat is the col ective radiation of the Seven Sons, but the Seven

Sons are themselves the third degree of manifestation. Fohat is not the
synthesis or the sum of the seven radiant2 forces, but their col ective radiation.

That which has a right to the name, or the synthesis of the sum of seven
radiant3 forces, is the second Logos, considered as the unity of the seven

1 [Originally transcribed as “Radical” and changed to “Radiant” in the text.]

2 [Originally transcribed as “Radical” and changed to “Radiant” in the text.]

3 [Originally transcribed as “Radical” and changed to “Radiant” in the text.]

413. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Logoi, or the seven primordial rays, which we cal the Seven Sons. Mahat, in its
turn, is a reflection on a higher plane2 of the divine ideation; on a lower one,3

Mahat corresponds to the higher Manas in man, and divine ideation is Buddhi.

One is the mind, whether of cosmos or man, the cosmic and human soul; the
other the spiritual soul in the universe, the macrocosm of man, its microcosm.

Now, ask questions about that, because I see you do not understand that, Mr.

Old.

Mr. Old: I had conceived, from my reading of The Secret Doctrine the idea
that Fohat stood in the same relation to the seven radiant forces as Mahat did
to the seven rishis or Logoi.

Mme. Blavatsky: So it does on this plane, but on the others not. Because I
say to you that Fohat is simply not the synthesis, he is the
col ective radiation of the seven—what we cal Builders. But on the higher
plane, Fohat is no more that. He is also a col ective radiation, not of the

Builders, but of the Seven Sons of Mahat. What is Mahat? It is the intel igent—
how shal I say—reflection of what we cal the ideation, that which Plato cal s
divine ideation, just in the same sense, because Plato gives the purely
esoteric oriental doctrine. So you understand, now, the difference. If you ask a
question, you must always ask whether it is on this plane or any other, because
on every plane it changes, it alters its name, its functions and everything; that is
why it is so difficult for someone who does not know the things.

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Mr. Old: It was understanding that which made me ask the leading question: Is
it at the Laya point of this sphere that Fohat is cal ed Fohat, or is it cal ed so on
any higher plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is so cal ed everywhere. About the Laya point, I am going
to answer you here.

Mr. Old: There is something else attached to that.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is question 5.

2 [Originally transcribed as “lower” and changed to “higher” in the text.]

3 [Originally transcribed as “higher” and changed to “lower” in the text.]

414. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 5. Why are the Laya centers cal ed “imperishable”

(page 145)? For if the Laya centers are “conditions,” they must, as such,
perish in passing into the conditionless—as in the Mahâpralaya—must they
not? Are they so cal ed only in relationships to any given Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, there is again a mistaken notion about the thing.

The Laya centers are imperishable and eternal, because they are no
manifestation, but simply rents in the veil of Mâyâ or manifestation. Do you
understand? The Laya centers are that which are no reflection, but the reality,
the one absolute substance, so to say, which has al the negative qualities and
none of the positive, which is Absolute al , the Absoluteness; therefore it is the

Laya point.

Mr. Old: It is merely a relative matter as to how you use this.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, mind you, everything has a Laya point. If you want the

Laya point in this matchbox you wil find it. There is nothing in this world that
has not got its polarity and its seven principles, from the highest to the central
one, which is the Laya point. Not that it is somewhere inside, within, but, as I
say to you, everything has so many degrees. If you take the thinnest thing that
you can conceive of, say the cobweb, it wil have its seven planes. You see the
one that is visible, which answers to our perceptions, which is sensed by us;
and the second, which wil be less sensed, and so on, until you do not see
anything. And the last one wil be the Laya point. It is not a thing that one is
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without and larger and the other is within and smal er. It is simply the degree of
density and of state of the substance, of the universal substance.

Mr. Old: Yes, I understand now, thank you.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Laya centers are not conditions per se anymore than the

Absolute is a condition; but it is said of objects, subjects, men and things that
they pass into the Laya-like condition. You see, much depends also on the
way. In some places it ought to have been written more explicitly. The
universe, strictly speaking, dosen’t emerge or re-emerge from or into the

Absolute Laya, which is only

415. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

another name for the Absoluteness of Parabrahman, after [ ] or Manvantara,
but it is reflected in you from the eternal on the now differentiated substance.

You see what I mean?

Mr. Old: But it was reading the sentence where you tried to explain what the

“Laya centers” was. You said it is not any point at al , but a condition, and
therefore you qualified it with the idea opposed to the conditionless. I quote
the passage.

Mme. Blavatsky: I must say I had too many editors for it. Now, I have
remarked a mistake today, that it is said there “it is thrown into the Laya.” You
cannot throw anything into the Laya; I ought to have said “onto” the Laya—
around the Laya, you understand. There are many such things that there may
be. I am not English and I do not perceive immediately the mistake; and
afterwards when I read it with a little more attention, I see there is something
which might have been expressed better. You know very wel under what
difficult conditions I wrote this book. I asked two or three there and they helped
me; they had to type it out. You had better put a mark for the second edition,

“onto” and not “into.”

Mr. Old: We shan’t complain so long as it draws forth so much intel igent
instruction. Even mistakes give rise to intel igent interest.

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear ladies and gentlemen, if I knew English, I would
hold meetings. I have not got the talent for the gab. If I could only put into

Olcott’s head that which I know, or have his eloquence (because he speaks
beautiful y), I could do something.

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Mr. B. Keightley: You might take each chapter of The Secret Doctrine as it
stands and make a volume of it, and not go further than explain the things you
say in good English. Question 6. In what sense are the seven sons of Fohat
also his seven brothers (page 145)?

Mme. Blavatsky: There we come to a most metaphysical thing; that is a thing

I want you to remember wel , now. I wil tel you better than that, that the sons of

Fohat are not only his brothers; they are his aunts, his grandmothers, his
mothers-in-law, everything.

416. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Because I am going to prove to you what it is, why they use this phraseology in
the Oriental metaphor, in the Oriental philosophy. In that sense they were sons,
brothers, fathers, mothers, etc., only in our evanescent and personal states on
this earth and plane. In our origin we are al one essence, therefore at once
fathers, mothers, sons, brothers, what you like. Thus we find in Indian,

Egyptian, and other cosmogonies that wives of gods, such as Isis and Aditi
and others, cal ed their mothers and daughters. Take the Egyptian
cosmogony, or pantheon; you wil see that Isis is cal ed the Mother of Horus,
the wife; she is the mother of Osiris, the wife and sister and everything. That is
just the reason why, because they are al and everything. You understand it is
only on this plane that we assume personalities and play our parts in this world
of Mâyâ and become something to somebody else; there we are al one.

Mr. Old: But don’t you think when you use a qualificative term like “sons,” you
immediately set this said Fohat in relation to some other part of itself?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly; and I wil give you the explanation. I have
given you a rather lengthy thing about Fohat.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 7. Can you explain more ful y what is intended by
the expression “Fohat is forced to be born again time after time whenever any
two of his son-brothers engage in too close contact, whether an embrace or a
fight”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now remember what I have given you two Thursdays ago,
about the two forces, the two opposite forces, and what I told you about the
centripetal and centrifugal forces. Now I am going to explain to you. Fohat is
the symbol of universal, unpolarized electricity, you understand, his sons being
the seven radicals of electro-magnetism, which are polarized forces. Electricity
on this plane of visible Fohat is thus their brother of his sons. But relatively to
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that he is non-polarized, since he contains them al , and therefore he is their
father. Now is this sufficiently explained to you?

Mr. Kingsland: It is al a question of the aspect in which you look at it.

417. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: The Fohatic brothers are everywhere, one in each kingdom
of nature. Now, take a piece of glass. To produce electricity you have to rub it
with an animal or vegetable product. Fohat’s sons are brought into close
contact, and their father, Fohat, becomes now their son, because he is
generated by them. Is not it so? He is the father on another plane, or in another
aspect. And when you come to that friction business—take anything you like—
then where electricity is generated, he becomes their son.

Mr. Old: Then Fohat is real y not only electricity.

Mme. Blavatsky: He is unpolarized electricity, universal; it is the radiation of
the seven highest Logoi of those seven rays that come from the second

Logos, as we cal it, or this manifestation that comes from the never-
manifested.

Mr. B. Keightley: Now that I think about it, the more I think that the English word
which best translates the word Fohat is Energy.

Mme. Blavatsky: Energy is everything.

Mr. B. Keightley: So is Fohat.

Mme. Blavatsky: In the Kabbalah you have grand expressions. I have never
met a good Kabbalist that wouldn’t understand the real philosophical things.

Mr. Hall: Why not cal Fohat the agent?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because you are an insurance agent we must cal him agent!

Why not cal him prime minister? I won’t, I have too much respect for Fohat.

Mr. B. Keightley: Fohat is al force, he is the causer, the mover, the radiator,
everything. The only thing we have in English with anything like such a wide
range is Energy.

Mr. Hall: Energy, is what you might cal the unapplied force. He is the applier
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of Energy.

418. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear sir, I wil kick this thing and it wil be energy that I
use. Is it Fohat? Not at al . If I rub it, it wil produce Fohat. You can’t cal that
energy which applies to many other things. Energy is simply a force used. The
word, Fohat, is the only one I have found.

Mr. Kingsland: Cal it unpolarized electricity.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but it means also the self-moving and that which forces
to move; the brightness or the radiancy that moves and moves everything. This
is the real, long translation of the word Fohat.

Mr. Hall: Activity.

Mme. Blavatsky: Activity! No, your European languages wil never express
that which is expressed in Sanskrit.

Mr. Old: Five simple letters convey a great deal to you, but to us it is far from
expressive under the name of Fohat.

Mme. Blavatsky: I explained it to Mr. Sinnett seven years ago. Rome was not
built in one day. You have got to learn. There are thousands and thousands of
things there, but if I were to come and speak in relation to these two forms
there would be ten volumes and nobody would buy it, and they would put me
into a lunatic asylum.

Mr. Keightley: You say here—speaking of the death and rebirth of planetary
chains—you describe at the end of the seventh round on a planetary chain how
the planets die, one after the other, and their principles and energies are
thrown out from the dying planet and thrown upon a Laya center, and then
proceed to evolve round that Laya center a new planetary chain. And you give,
as an instance, that the earth proceeds, so to speak, from the moon in that way

— that the earth is the child of the moon. Question 8, page 155 {of The Secret

Doctrine}. Under what law may we account for the production by the moon of a
child (the earth) much greater in point of size than its parent?

419. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I have seen sons that were six-footers from very smal
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parents. This is nothing. But it is not the question. What do you want to know?

Mr. B. Keightley: Is it that in the transfer of the astral principles from the
material body of the moon to that Laya center which becomes the earth there
is produced a fal ing in upon itself of the gross matter of the lunar body? And if
so, may we say that the life-current, passing from the Laya center of the parent
to that of the offspring, contains the potentiality which is afterwards manifested
in the development of the child-orb?

Mme. Blavatsky: The materials of earth were there in undifferentiated
condition, for substance is eternal. There was never a moment when they were
not a substance, the materials of which the earth now is created, the whole
chain; there was never a time when it was not. They were only awakened by
the moon’s principles when one after the other they were transferred from the
moon to the nascent earth when its turn came in the awakening of the chain.

The phrase would run better in The Secret Doctrine , where it is said, al this,

“the moon’s principles are sent out onto,” instead of “into” the Laya center.

Because a Laya center is just as I told you, not differentiated though
everything around it can be differentiated. The Laya center is the Âtma, in this
case, of the body that forms. The moon shrinks after the loss of her principles
as the dead body of a man shrinks after its vital and other principles have
quitted it. And as it is so, the occultists say that, of course, the life current of
the parent carries with it a potentiality of al that wil be developed in the new
planet. In the moon there are no more principles, there is a kind of—how shal I
say it? It is ridiculous to say vegetable—the life planet. There is a kind of a
shadowy life. That is to say, you just think about a body in a trance condition:

some of those bodies that are for 20, 30, or 40 days and live. There is the kind
of life going on, but everything is dead to al appearances. Only there is
something in the body that keeps up the vitality, and if certain substances are
brought in contact

420. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

with that body, that body wil absorb it notwithstanding, by osmosis. You can
perfume a body which is in such a condition as that. If you go and burn incense
then the body for many hours afterwards wil smel , which shows it absorbs.

Now a thing which is perfectly dead wil not, it wil absorb nothing. Therefore
the moon in the same way is said to vampirize. Now look at the terrible
il nesses that are produced through the moon. Look at the effects produced
when you are in the Red Sea. Not a single sailor is al owed, when it is ful
moon, to sleep on deck without covered head, because he is sure to have his
face paralyzed and burnt. I have seen two cases like that. I have seen a man
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become perfectly insane, and he kept so for six months; simply moonstruck
during the passage in the Red Sea.

Mr. Gardner: Is there no remedy to obviate that? Is there nothing in nature?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly Nature herself wil perhaps restore her equilibrium.

The doctors don’t know anything. The yogis have a plant, the moonplant. I
have seen the Lascars,4 but then you must go to a yogi who knows it, a

European doctor wil not know anything at al .

Mr. Hall: Then the moon is cataleptic?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is something like that. It is very wicked.

Mr.—: Is that a sort of reactory effect it has?

Mme. Blavatsky: See what an effect it has on vegetation. It has an enormous
effect. There is not a plant, not a body in heaven that exchanges so much, or
interchanges effects so much as the moon and the earth. There are not two
such planets. It is always interchanging that is going on, and there the Laya
point won’t prevent it; it is quite a different thing. It is a most occult thing.

Mr.—: But the earth in the end has greater power over the moon than the moon
over the earth.

4 [Indian workers on British ships, usually recruited from Bengal or Assam.]

421. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, because the earth is a moving thing, and the moon
is a dead one, or is dying—it is in a cataleptic condition.

Mr.—: Does that apply to other planets, as wel ?

Mme. Blavatsky: Just the same. As above, so below, at least on the same
plane to everything visible—stars and suns, and planets and everything.

Mr. Old: I might just mention that with respect to that vampirizing influence that
the moon has upon the earth, it is strange that just those principles, or rather
those elements, which it lacks, it most powerful y attracts from the earth, for
instance, the atmosphere and water. It has plenty of dense matter, of course,
but has little influence upon the dense objects of this earth, far less than the
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solar influence. But upon the water and upon al fluids in the human system, it
is known to have a most powerful effect; the determination of the fluids, the
humors to the head in the case of lunatics, and in the case of those who are
moonstruck.

Mme. Blavatsky: But it is a most extraordinary thing in the occult science. I
have been putting the question several times to the Masters, I have asked:

“How is it possible, if these meteors cannot pass or anything, how is it that the
influences pass the Laya point?” They say it is quite a different thing. The
conditions are given by the radiation of the moonlight, which shows to you that
it passes with its seventh principle, and not with the first—not with the bodily
elements of the principles, but with the seventh, you understand.

Mr. B. Keightley: And therefore passes through the Laya point in the same
order.

Mr. Gardner: Then its first principles do pass through it eventual y?

Mr. B. Keightley: No, no. The influence passes, not the matter; you may cal it
matter, in the same sense that everything is matter.

Mr. Kingsland: In the same sense that one magnet affects another, there is
nothing passes between then material y.

422. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You can put between two magnets a dead wal , a glass wal
for instance, an iron wal , and yet it wil pass. Put any wal you like it wil pass,
and it does not prevent it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Did you ever see a very curious experiment showing the
presence of something, whatever you can cal it, between the poles of a
magnet? If you get a copper disc, so arranged that it is between the poles of a
powerful electro-magnet, and there is no electricity passing, therefore, it is not
a magnet, it is just a plain piece of iron. You can make the disc revolve as fast
as you please; the disc feels as if it were passing through butter, and it wil
become heated red hot, if you force it to revolve between the poles of the
magnet, just as if there were actual y matter between. Don’t you know that?

Mr. Kingsland: I think a very good il ustration of the Laya point, a practical
il ustration, would be that common experiment of scattering iron filings over a
glass plate under which you have two poles of a magnet. The filings arrange
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themselves in circles; there is a certain influence circling round the one and the
other. They separate as it were, they won’t coalesce; you see distinct dividing
lines; that would il ustrate the Laya point between the two planets.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is a good il ustration.

Mr. B. Keightley: What is there between the poles of a magnet in an
experiment of that kind? Can you answer that question?

Mme. Blavatsky: Don’t you ask me, if you please, things which pretend to your
physical science, because I have told you hundreds of times I don’t know
anything. I don’t say I feel proud of it, but I feel perfectly indifferent.

Mr. B. Keightley: I can say with perfect confidence you can answer if you like.

Question 9: From what source does the earth draw its active vital principle in
order to persevere in its own line of physical development, and at the same
time to meet the vampirizing demands
of its lunar parent?

Mme. Blavatsky: It draws its life from the universal and al -pervading

423. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

ocean of life and also from the sun, the great life giver. The child receives its
first stroke of life from the mother, but once born, it grows and develops by
assimilating life from everywhere around it. The child could not grow and live,
did it depend only on the incipient life principle which it derives from the
mother. It receives a certain thing; she starts him in life with a little capital, and
then he goes and makes speculations himself. Doesn’t everything live? We
live in the ocean of vitality. It is only the men of science who wil tel you that life
is not at al an entity, or something separate, but simply a certain combination
of organs. Oh, heavens! There is Al an Grant {Grant Al en}5! I wish you could
see this new book of his, Force and Energy,6 and the flapdoddle the man
says about the birth of the first man, and how he was born from the earth, and
some gasses and other things. Why, it beats anything I have ever heard in my
life. The Pall Mall [ Gazette}7 laughs at him in the most extraordinary way. You
ought to go and get his book.

Mr. Kingsland: I think that is a point that ought to be enforced a little more.

There is rather a tendency to suppose the earth became ful y formed by the
influence from the moon.

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Mme. Blavatsky: It received its principles, my dear sir; it is not said as you
say. Once that it was started and was born, so to say, then it began to live; just
the same as a child, it receives its vital principle from the mother. Once it is
born, it has to receive its influence and to be taken into the air and be
promenaded. It takes its life from everything, from the air it breathes, and the
food it eats.

Mr. Kingsland: It shows that the person who put that question seemed to think
that the earth ought not to be bigger than the moon.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, I suppose he wanted to elicit an answer. No. The size is
nothing.

5 [Grant Allen, Canadian born writer on science and popular novelist, 1848- 1899.]

6 [ Force and Energy: a Theory of Dynamics London: Longmans, Green and Co.,1888.]

7 [London evening paper, edited at the time by William T. Stead.]

424. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mr. Hall: Even the child before it is born, isn’t it nourished by outside
influences?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is what I said, but I am not going to speak about this
question now. Why should I?

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 10. Page 155, line 7. As suggested by the analogy
of the planets with man, does the female ovum constitute a Laya center, and
the fructifying male element correspond to the energy and principles thrown
out by a dying planet?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a Laya center in the ovum, as in everything else, but
the ovum itself represents only the undifferentiated matter surrounding this
point, and the male germ corresponds to the vital principle of the dying planet.

As above, so below, again; the Laya point is there, and it remains. The Laya
point cannot be touched, but it is the matter around it. The Laya point for
instance is there, where the principles of the moon wil migrate or pass;
transfer this from a planet that is dying, it goes and fal s into another, just like a
woman who has a child and dies. Just in the same way the planet wil transfer
its principles, but it is not into the Laya center, but on the matter which is
around that. The Laya center is not seen it is there. It is again my fault to have
said into instead of onto it. It is very difficult.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Onto would not express the thing.

Mr. Kingsland: Around.

Mme. Blavatsky: Around means that the Laya center is smal er, and it is not.

There’s again a difficultly. It is not like I told you, like a Chinese nest—that one
is smal er than the other and another stil smal er. It is not that. It is al one.

Mr. Kingsland: It is the metaphysical point in the circle.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is simply the degree—the same thing on another state of
consciousness, on another plane.

425. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Now the eleventh. You say a bit further on, speaking about
the moon and the satel ites and so on—you explained this. Question 11, page

165. Can you give us any further explanations as to the meaning of a planet’s
two or more satel ites?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I am going to answer you that which wil make you, not
laugh, but think I have avoided the question. Now, real y and indeed I cannot
answer any better than what is. Prepare to laugh, if you like—because, I
suppose, one planet has more magnetic attraction than the others. Just as a
medium wil attract spooks, which become his satel ites, according to the
degree of his mediumistic powers, so a planet may, besides its parent when
the parent is not dead and faded out, have similar parasites attached to it.

They are what I cal poor relatives, the genteel hangers-on. I cannot tel you
anything else, because it depends on the magnetic attractions. There are
those planets that wil attract more, and those that do not attract so many. Now
the earth has got only one, because the earth is not capable of attracting
anything. There is to much sin on it and fibs. Mars is a powerful fel ow, and he
has more.

Mr. Gardner: Saturn has seven.

Mme. Blavatsky: He may have as many as he likes. He would have more if the
law permitted, but it doesn’t.

Mr. Keightley: Then the other question is practical y the same. Question 12.

Can you give us any explanation as to why Mars has two satel ites, to which it
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has no right?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the same thing, ditto. I tel you, what can I answer you?

Wil you give me an explanation why England has, besides India, Burma? She
has no right to India any more than to Burma, and yet she has them. Can you
give me an explanation? Or why Russia has Poland and Siberia, and she has
no right to them?

Mr. B. Keightley: They happened to be handy and she took them.

Mme. Blavatsky: Might is right. And so it is in this world. A planet which is
stronger wil have more satel ites and more things.

426. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Are al these satel ites in a similar condition to the moon? Are
they al dead?

Mme. Blavatsky: Not al . Some are more alive, some are ready to die. The
moon is dead because she has passed her principles; the others appear to us
moons, but they are simply forming something.

Mr.—: What are the rings of the planet Saturn?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is nothing objective—at least, objective it is; it is nothing
solid.

Mr. Gardner: Is it gassy?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose it is; I could not tel you what I have not learned.

Mr. B. Keightley: More optical.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t believe they exist at al . It is al Mâyâ. Mars is a fiery,
strong planet which attracts to itself more than the others do. Once we accept
the occult statement, it is easy to account for the rest. What is difficult and
almost impossible is to make a European, trained in physical science see that
the occult sciences are far more logical and satisfactory than the former. Wel ,
have you got anything else to ask?

Mr. Old: I should like to have asked, without intruding on time, whether these
other satel ites attached to the different planets are in the same relationship to
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these centers—that is to say, when they serve as satel ites, as our moon is to
the other?

Mme. Blavatsky: I think they are the same, but not that they have any influence.

I think they are fed by some planets but they do not give out the interchange of
influences on the moon.

Mr. Old: They are not fading, the planets?

Mme. Blavatsky: No; it is only those who are parents, so long as they are not
dislocated and disrupted, that have such influence. But

427. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

the others, as far as I remember, are fed, so to say, on meteors. That is why I
spoke about the power of the parents.

Mr. Old: It would be il ogical to say that any one planet had half a dozen
parents.

Mr. B. Keightley: Two are quite enough for any respectable planet.

Mme. Blavatsky: Quite enough!

Mr. Old: The case is different then with regard with the moon, which is not only
our satel ite, but our parent.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, it is.

Mr. Gardner: Is that the only case in which we have them in a dual capacity?

Are some of Jupiter’s moons?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. One of them is a parent. Now, it depends on
the priority of the planets; it depends on their age. Some of the planets’ fathers
and mothers died long ago, as with Venus, and faded out entirely, in the case
of one of them. It is said it was one of the sacred planets that disappeared,
and this was the mother or father of the moon. I am not sure—either the moon
or Venus; I think it is the moon. This is a thing that I did not learn, sense it
doesn’t exist. I was very anxious simply to learn about the existent.

Mr. Gardner: How about that other planet between Mercury and the Sun?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Ask Tyndal or Huxley. Proctor is dead—wel , somebody
else.

Mr. Gardner: Is the parent dead of Mercury?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know. I know one thing, that there is a very funny thing
in the Path which I think you had better read to them, and then we wil just talk
about it. There is something that is said, from the Purâna. Where he gets it
from I cannot understand. “The

428. 14. Meeting April 11, 1889

Origin of the Planet, Mercury” it is cal ed. It is in this month’s Path. 8

Mr. B. Keightley: (Having read the extract referred to, the proceedings shortly
afterwards closed.)

8 [The extract, “Origin of the Planet, Mercury” is in the Path April 1889 p.6, under the subject heading “Culled from Aryan Science.”]

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

15.

The Theosophical Society.

Report of Proceedings,
held at Blavatsky Lodge,

April 18, 1889.

Mr. Kingsland in the Chair.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 1 (a). In connection with the seven relative Laya
points, are we to conceive of matter existing simultaneously on al the seven
planes, or does it pass through the seven Laya centers from one state to
another, actual y? Or only relatively to our perceptions, or to the perceptions of
beings on the other planes?

Mme. Blavatsky: During Mahâpralaya there are no planes of matter, of course
as nothing exists. For the absolute Laya point is infinite. It cannot be. Who put
the question?

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Mr. Kingsland: I did.

Mme. Blavatsky: During Manvantara the seven planes of matter emanate, the
one from the other in a regular order and succession, and embraces very
natural y unto {untold?} series of eons, with the exception of Manvantaric
deities—a mystery, if you please. The beings on other planes must come
down in the natural order of evolution, and to our plane, someday. Al beings
begin and end at the Laya point. Happy those who merge into it (I wish to
goodness I was one of them!), for they wil have no rebirth during that

Manvantara. They begin on the higher plane and descend in regular sequence
from plane to plane, the planes of al being pari passu with their descent. And
let us add these planes of divine substance and consciousness are but the
creations of these very beings. Now do you

430. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

understand, from the first the highest to the seventh or the lowest state of
consciousness? It is the divine being, the macrocosm, which ends in the man
form, which is the creation of the corresponding plane of the microcosm. For
the whole universe of matter is, as philosophy teaches, but an il usory
reflection—as you know. Now, are there any questions to this?

Mr. Kingsland: There is another question relating to the same thing.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes. Question 1 (b). For instance, take a piece of iron, this is
perceived by us on this plane as iron. Is it perceived by a consciousness
acting on other planes as something else than iron, or is it absolutely non-
perceptible?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, how can it be? Most assuredly, there cannot be the
same piece of iron for every plane; otherwise, why should we not perceive as
easily beings from every other plane, and they us? I mean the globes of the
planetary chains. Or why should the globes of our chain be concealed from
us? The visual way of measuring the spiritual development of an adept among
the disciples is to ask what plane of consciousness or perception he has
reached; and this perception embraces the physical as wel as the spiritual
thing when you want to know what degree an adept belongs to, how far he has
developed; what plane of perception is his. That is a kind of Masonic formula.

But how can we see a piece of iron in the same way?

Mr. Kingsland: Not in the same way, but in a different way. What I wanted to
elucidate was in reference to Laya centers, which we had before. You stated
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there are seven relative Laya centers—that is to say, corresponding to the
transition from one plane to the other.

Mme. Blavatsky: So there are, on every one of the seven planes. Only, of
course, the Laya center is Laya in accordance with the perception of that
plane. That is to say that our plane being the grossest, the Laya point which
exists for us would perhaps, be there no Laya point at al , and would be
something a great deal more gross and perceptible. The Laya point is of
course, more refined on the fol owing plane, and so on.

431. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Then we may say that on the next plane iron is non-existent.

Mme. Blavatsky: Absolutely non-existent in the shape in which we see it here,
because their perception is quite a different kind of perception. No
comparison can be established.

Mr. Kingsland: But is it not perceived as something else?

Mme. Blavatsky: It may be, but I cannot tel you what.

Mr. B. Keightley: It would be translated into the terms of our consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: Matter is matter, and substance is substance, but it takes
such various forms that certainly, that which would appear iron to us, may
appear gooseberry jam on the other plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: It must exist on every plane, because we know the smal est
atom existed on every one of the seven planes.

Mme. Blavatsky: But it exists in an atomic scattered condition. Once that you
suppose a thing may fal from one planet to another, passing through the
atmosphere of our earth, it would change chemical y al its constituent parts. It
would become quite a different thing. It would become a thing of this plane; in
fact, we could not see it if it didn’t.

Mr. Kingsland: In fact, it exists, as substance but not as matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: Perfectly. And not as a definite form, or the definite form
that it takes on our plane; it is quite a different story.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Question 2. On page 150 {of volume 1 of The Secret

Doctrine}, it is stated that “each atom has seven planes of being or existence.”

Are we right in supposing that each corresponds with one of the seven globes
of a planetary chain?

Mme. Blavatsky: No sir, most assuredly not. These seven globes are on four
planes only, as you know.

432. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 3. In connection with this, how is it that in the
diagram on page 153, the seven globes are represented as existing on only
four planes?

Mme. Blavatsky: There you are because the triangle, the quaternary or square
are the symbols of the microcosm, or man. The globes are seven, but out of
seven there are three pairs, or what the Gnostics cal Syzygies, the couples,
male and female—positive and negative, respectively. Our globe lies solitary
on the fourth, or seventh, or first plane—just as you like to give the numbers;
combines in itself the material by dual nature. The for of the globe of our
planetary chain corresponds exactly to the esoteric diagrams of the principles,
as every esoterist here knows—of the human principles, I mean. Âtman stands
for the triangle, remember, and the physical man, for firstly, the globe;
secondly, the quaternary; and, final y the pentagon, the five-pointed star. You
must try to find out the eternal riddle of the Sphinx, without being blinded for it
like Oedipus. Do you see what I mean by it, why it is so, why the seven are on
the four planes?

Mr. Kingsland: Simply because they correspond to the quaternary in that
respect.

Mme. Blavatsky: First there is our earth, then comes the second plane, and
there, too, they are couples; then come two again, and then two again—six in
al .

Mr. Yates: 1 Are these the material, astral, sidereal planes of the diagrams?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes; cal them what names you like, I know it is. Ours is the
lowest plane; then comes the more ethereal, and more ethereal, and stil more
ethereal, until no human conception can conceive of the three planes. And
therefore we leave them alone,

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1 [So spelled in the transcription, but it could be the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, who was in

London at the time, especially because of his later questions about William Blake, whose poems he was to edit a
few years later.]

433. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

because it is perfectly ridiculous with our finite minds to try to understand and
unriddle the infinite. It is quite enough to take what the seers can see.

Mr. Yates: Are not the seven planets that exist only on four planes, a
microcosmic representation of the whole seven?

Mme. Blavatsky: They are. Most assuredly they are. Now see if you take the
principles of man in a diagram, you see just the same thing as that; you see
the physical body of man; then comes the vehicle of light and life; then comes
the Manas and the Kâma-rûpa the lower Manas, I mean. And then comes the
higher Manas, and Buddhi, and Âtman. I speak for you who know better, not for
those exoteric, but for al those who have studied esoterical y. You know

Âtman is not a principle in fact.

Mr. Yates: There was a sense, then, in which the seven planets were
represented as existing upon the seven planes.

Mme. Blavatsky: They exist on four planes.

Mr. Yates: Do they correspond to the seven planes?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but stil it is four and seven.

Mr. Yates: I was simply trying to get that clear, that they did not exist—

Mme. Blavatsky: The globes pretend to matter, to form and to shape, and
there is nothing that exists on the third, remember, or higher planes that can
have form or shape: they may have it, but not according to our conceptions. It
does not exist in Nature, there are not any such things, as though you would
put staircases, or ladders, or rungs. Al this is metaphysical, and al this is
symbolical; but stil , to come and to try to precisely give a form, shape, to that
which we cannot understand, is perfect nonsense.

Mr. Yates: The whole seven correspond to the seven planets, not only four.

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Mme. Blavatsky: They do.

Mr. Kingsland: I put that question in order to elucidate that point a little more. It
is stated that these planets did correspond to the states of matter.

Mme. Blavatsky: Seven states of consciousness, yes, and not to the seven
states of perception.

Mr. Yates: You have again confused me. Though they do not exist on the
plane, yet they correspond?

Mme. Blavatsky: In the first place, we cannot think with our lower four states of
consciousness. We can hardly begin perceiving them with the fourth, and then
come the others; therefore it is a perfect impossibility. You cannot see with
your physical eyes, you cannot see with the state of consciousness which is
located in the [ ], can you? You cannot, til you come to the upper Manas, to
the fifth so to say; then you can perceive them. But not with the lower Manas,
or the Kâma-rûpa, or any of those principles, because these are purely
physical—

Mr. B. Keightley: And pertain entirely and exclusively to the earth, in fact.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 4. “What is the relation of these four planes to the
seven states of matter?”

Mme. Blavatsky: None, except that each of the four planes has its own seven
states of matter. That is al . It seems to me that al these questions are the
same, under various forms. If they are made under the impression that the
seven states of universal substance are identical with the planes of the globes
in our chain, then I answer, it is not so. I don’t know, you see, what your
thoughts are. They are correspondential, but not consubstantial; the one
belongs to a tiny solar system stil denser in the degree of their materiality; the
others are universal. It is our system which is stil denser.

435. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 5, page 172, footnote. “Can you give us any idea
of the states of consciousness corresponding to the various Pralayas: viz.

between two globes, between two Rounds, and after the seven Rounds?”

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Mme. Blavatsky: There I am asked to deliver the keys of esoteric philosophy
in about five seconds, on two pages, and on a Thursday! Now suppose we
first studied thoroughly the nature of the pralayas on our present plane, and
within the limits of our present states of consciousness. How can one
understand anything about states of consciousness without the limits of purely
physical consciousness, when even the latter is in a state of most chaotic
confusion as to itself and its own capacities? Don’t you think we are often
trying to mimic those frogs who wanted to become bul s, and they “busted
up”? I don’t want to bust up; I know I can go and speculate upon things that are
within the possibility; but how can we? Sometimes they make such questions
that positively I open my mouth and say: “real y now, what is that?” I look at
them about 4 o’clock, and I say, “what can I answer?” So I leave them to the
grace of God. This is very flattering, you know, because it shows you think I
know more then I do. I cannot speak about things which it is impossible to
speculate upon.

Mr. B. Keightley: (Reads from The Secret Doctrine.) The Monadic hosts may
be roughly divided into three classes,” etc. Question 6, page 174. “Do the
highest class of Monads, which attain the human stage on globe A in the First

Round, appear at once in the human stage on that globe in the Second Round,
or do they have to pass through any lower forms?”

Mme. Blavatsky: I cannot answer anything more than what I said in The Secret

Doctrine. Pass on to question 7. Then I have something for you.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 7, page 174. “Does the first class of Monads here
mentioned consist of those who attained adeptship on the Lunar chain, or
simply of the intel ectual y developed races of that chain?”

436. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: How can anyone know whether there are adepts on the
moon? If there were adepts, they would cal themselves lunatics, that is a fact!

I ask you if it is possible? How can we know that? How can I answer you, so as
to satisfy you? Now listen wel to this, because it is very important. Of al the
mysterious globes in our present Manvantara, the moon is the most
mysterious—not in relation to her physical formation, but to her psychic and
spiritual functions. Now, do you remember, any one of you who read Five

Years of Theosophy,2 that there are some questions there by an Englishman,
and how poor Mr. Sinnett was snubbed for this moon question? So never
touch questions of this kind. There are many mysteries that they don’t want to
speak about; it is the most mysterious of al . The moon is our sidereal power
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of silence and the Venetian Piombi3 thrown into one. Better never ask anything
about the moon, except that which relates to its half-dead body. Now pass to
the eighth, because there is a continuation.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 8. “What law is it that determines to which of the
three classes named, a particular Monad wil belong?”

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose Karmic law, of course. What law is it which
determines whether a child wil be born the eldest son of a lord, and thus grab
al the family estates, or as a penniless younger son having to take refuge in a
family living, or to try to make money out of Jesus, as they general y do?

Karma, of course. Yet very often the younger sons inherit al the brains of the
family, whilst the former are but brainless bags of money. Therefore there is
no law except Karmic law. What law can it be? It is simply an accident brought
on by past incarnation; by merit or demerit, who knows? There are so

2 [ Five Years of Theosophy: Mystical, Philosophical, Therosohical, Historical, and Scientific Essays selected
form “The Theosophist” was published in London 1885; though no name is given we know that it was edited by

Mohini Chatterjee. Englishman referred to was Frederick W.H. Myers.]

3 [The dreaded prison cells in the Palace of Doges in Venice; among those held there was Giordano Bruno.]

437. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

many thousands of things. We see the most terrible injustice done in this of
birth. You see men who ought real y to be on thrones, and we see them
starving miserably, and we see them kicked. And we see the biggest fools,
and they are royalty and dukes and al kinds of things. Look at our emperors.

Look at the Russian emperors. Oh, Lord! They were nice fools al of them.

Mr. Yates: How far does the col ective Karma control the individual beyond his
own actions? Can an individual receive results he does not deserve, which are
forced upon him by the Karma of the race?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose I do understand you, but it seems to me that the

Karma of everyone and everything affects you just the same. You may be an
excel ent man and not deserve to have the measles, but if you go near a
person who has it, you may have it, too.

Mr. Yates: How far the Karma of another may affect it is what I wished to know.

Mme. Blavatsky: You cannot touch pitch without being black. You cannot
come into rapport with a person that can give you some disease without
catching it. You wil be rewarded for that injustice and the other man may not
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be punished, because it is not his fault. You see, the Karma is a question of
such difficulty; it is such an abstruse thing that if we begin talking about Karma,
we must not ask other questions. It is too abstruse, Karma.

Mr. Mead: Then the question with regard to the first Monads that come in?

Mme. Blavatsky: You wil find it there.

Mr. B. Keightley: There are some questions on that subject. Keep your
question clear in your head to the end, and if it is not answered then, you might
mention it. Question 9 (a). Wil a Monad belonging to one particular class
always belong to that class?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly not. How can it be that? Because, if nature were
stationary and never moved, it would be a different

438. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

thing; but how can it be in this case? Because, there would be neither
progress nor Karma nor anything, if it were such a thing as that.

Mr. Mead: I suppose that question means, would a Monad go on evolving in its
own class?

Mr. B. Keightley: That I think is a fair question—whether a Monad in its
evolution would remain together with the other Monads that formed the same
class, or is it free to get ahead of the others or drop behind them?

Mr. Kingsland: Only during one cycle.

Mr. B. Keightley: If not, what law determines his rate of evolution, or the length
of time he remains in that class?

Mme. Blavatsky: Again, Karma. I cannot answer you anything more. His own
actions and previous existence; the col ective existences of nations and races,
of persons that are round—of everything.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 10, page 175. Can you explain what is meant by
the Monad’s “skipping two planes and getting direct into the third”?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Monad, though meaning strictly one, is in its
manifestation always Trinitarian—being one only in Nirvâna. When it is in its
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Laya state every ancient philosophy proves it to be so. Now remember the

Monad of Pythagoras having to descend and forms the first triangle, after
which it subsides again and disappears in darkness and silence. Take, for
instance, the Kabbalistic Sephirotal tree; you find that first it forms the triangle.

Just the same in the Pythagorean [ ]; it produces the triangle and then leaves
it to do the further business. So it is in the Kabbalah, just in the same way;
there is the first, Keter, Chokhmah, Binah; or the crown, wisdom, and
understanding. Wisdom and understanding are on the same horizontal plane.

It cannot be otherwise than Trinitarian. How can Monad manifest, unless it is

Trinitarian and capable of acting only on the third plane, as the second and the
first are to spiritual to be regarded in our perceptions as planes of any activity?

Take the

439. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

human septenary. Âtma alone is nothing; it is not only not a breath, but it is
simply an idea, nothing, because it is absoluteness; it is the essence of Ain

Soph or Parabrahman; Buddhi is its vehicle, and yet Buddhi, even in
conjunction with Âtma, is stil nothing on this plane. In Sankhya philosophy,

Buddhi is represented by Purusha, who has no legs; he has to mount on the
shoulders of Prakriti, which is Buddhi, who has legs but no head, to form a
manifested Monad with the potentiality of becoming rational and self-
conscious. This is a most beautiful al egory, showing Purusha, who cannot
walk; who, having no legs, is obliged to mount on the shoulders of Prakriti, and
therefore the two produce a rational being.

Mr. Yates: Does the al egory refer to the silent one?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is Prakriti that gives the legs. Therefore it is said that the

Monad skips the first two planes and gets direct into the plane of mentality.

Mr. Kingsland: Skips the two highest planes, that is. I think the question has
been put on the supposition that it was kept to the two lower planes.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, it was the meaning of the phrase—why two higher planes
are used.

Mr. Mead: “Further, when globe A of the new chain is ready,” etc. (Reads
from The Secret Doctrine.)

Mme. Blavatsky: We wil come to that further on. It comes here.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Question 11, page 176, last paragraph. Can you name the

“ten stages” here referred to? And what stage do you cal “the first real y
manward stage”?

Mme. Blavatsky: I can. I name the first real y manward stage when the third
race, being at the threshold of the fourth, the racial stage, as it is cal ed,
becomes a potential septenary through the incarnation in it of the Manas, or
sense of wisdom. Hence with the three sub- elemental, or the sub-mineral
kingdoms, we have certainly ten, al

440. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

the ten that are mentioned there. Man is a septenary, arrived at the end of the
third race, entering upon the fourth; he is potential y septenary. The fifth yet is
not quite developed in us; it wil be because we are only on the fifth race, and
with every race there is one higher, and higher that develops. But stil it is
potential y a septenary, and this, with the others, we say we are ten.

Mr. Yates: The fifth you say. Is that counting from above or below? You say it
is not yet ful y developed.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the Manas.

Mr. B. Keightley: Page 181: “It now becomes plain that there exists in nature,”

etc. (Reads from The Secret Doctrine. ) Question 12. Does the ful y
developed man embody the perfection of each of the three schemes of
evolution? Please enlarge on this idea.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, for a perfect man has to be: 1, perfect in physical
form, as regards the organism and health; 2, perfect intel ectual y; and 3,
perfect spiritual y. At any rate, he must have al the schemes of evolution
sufficiently represented to produce perfect equilibrium. An absolutely healthy
man, ful of vitality, but deficient in intel ectual powers, is an animal, not a man.

A perfectly spiritual man with a sick limb, or weak body, is no man, but a spirit
imprisoned, looking out of the window. A perfectly healthy, intel ectual, wel -
developed man, without corresponding spiritual consciousness, is— his
intel ect not withstanding—an empty shel , and nothing more. If al three
qualities are present, so as to produce equilibrium, the man himself wil be a
perfect man. On his particular plane, I mean— meaning by the latter not the
universal planes, but his own personal or individual plane of the septenary
scale of perfection. Do I explain it to you sufficiently wel this?

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Mr. Kingsland: Yes.

Mr. B. Keightley: For each man, so to speak, as an individual, wil have seven
planes of activity, or seven degrees. Wel , he may be perfect on one plane. He
is a perfect man on that plane, but if, in his

441. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

development, he has not reached one of the higher planes, he is not on that
plane at the time you are considering.

Mr. Mead: I understand this about the harmony.

Mr. B. Keightley: You can take that perfect equilibrium on the plane in which a
man happens to be, for the time being.

Mme. Blavatsky: Let me read to you, again, this thing. A perfect man is not.

He can be a perfect man on the first and the second and the third plane; it is a
degree of perfectibility. Now, what I say is, that to make a perfect man, he is to
be: 1, perfect in physical form, as regards his organism and health; 2, perfect
intel ectual y; 3, perfect spiritual y. Al these must be equilibrized. At any rate,
he must have al these three schemes of evolution sufficiently represented to
produce perfect equilibrium. An absolutely healthy man, ful of vitality, but
deficient in intel ectual powers is an animal, as I say, not a man. A perfectly
spiritual man with a sick limb and a weak body is not a man, but a spirit
imprisoned, looking out of the window—an unfortunate spirit. A perfectly
healthy and intel ectual, wel -developed man, without the corresponding
spiritual consciousness, is (his intel ect notwithstanding) an empty shel and
nothing more. If one of these things is deficient there is no equilibrium, if al
these three qualities are present so as to produce equilibrium, the man himself
wil be a perfect man on his particular plane—I mean. Meaning by the latter, not
the universal planes, but his own personal or individual plane of the septenary
scale of perfection. Now that is very easily understood.

Mr. Mead: I understood it perfectly up to the last.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why, look here—we have seven planes of perfection,
everyone individual y; every man has seven states of consciousness. A man
may be, if he have al these three equilibrized in him, a perfect man in his own
plane. If he is stil more so, he wil be a perfect man on the second, and then
on the third and fourth, and so on.

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Mr. Mead: I understand.

442. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mr. Yates: These three things—intel ectual, physical, and spiritual—of course
correspond to three of the four planes quarternary, do they not? Which, then,
wil the fourth be?

Mr. B. Keightley: Those three are taken as representing, the body, soul, and
spirit.

Mme. Blavatsky: You mix up the planes in the most terrible way. We spoke
about the four planes of the globes—of the seven globes.

Mr. Yates: This is my difficulty. Of course, I see perfectly plainly that a man
must have a triple harmony; I am not confusing it in that way. I know the triple
harmony applies to each separately. That triple harmony itself, does it not
correspond to the three planes of the four. In Blake’s4 system it does.

Mr. B. Keightley: How can it? Because the spiritual is the highest, the
intel ectual is the Manasque {Manasic}, and the physical is the lower.

Mr. Yates: But Blake has it in his.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know anything about Blake. I never read a single word
about him. I am sorry, you know, that we disagree with him.

Mr. Yates: He considers it is the fourth plane which is higher.

Mme. Blavatsky: I speak about the Eastern system.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 13, page 182. Do the “Sishta,” the Seed-Humanity,
remain on a globe during its Pralaya, while the rest of humanity has passed on
to the next globe?

Mme. Blavatsky: The esoteric books say they do, and esoteric philosophy
corroborates it. Otherwise, the Monads—or egos rather— would have to
recommence again, in the same Round, every time they reached a new globe,
the same process of evolution through the lower kingdoms as they did only on
the First Round. Let us not

4 [William Blake, English poet, and illustrator, 1757-1827.]

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443. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

misunderstand the thing. I mean by egos only those Monads which reached
the human stage of globe A and become Lunar Pitris on the fourth, and those
later arrivals who reached the human stage before the middle of the Fourth

Round; al the egos of the third and fourth races, I mean, and not any others.

Because after the Fourth Race—after the middle of the Fourth Race, there
stops everything; there are no more Monads coming for this Manvantara.

These are the younger sons we have just been talking about. You said that Mr.

Sinnett was interested in the Sishta. You came out very cunningly, you
remember, with that “Noah’s ark theory,” as you cal it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 14. Is the suggestion correct that, even during the
depths of Pralaya, life remains active around the North Pole—the Land of the

Gods?

Mme. Blavatsky: If you mean the Planetary Pralaya, then I say, “yes,” esoteric
science teaches us so; but not in every Pralaya. I mean that while one globe is
in obscuration it remains, but when there is the whole chain certainly it does
not; because they are al dissipated then.

Mr. Yates: Does esoteric philosophy imply that, as the Greeks believed, Mount

Meru is inhabited at this moment?

Mme. Blavatsky: We see in the esoteric philosophy there is a Meru. What the

Indians mean by the Meru is one thing, and what the Greeks mean is another.

They cal it the thigh, and they said that Bacchus was born in India. Because he
was born out of the thigh of his Father Jupiter, he is the Motherless, and that is

Miros, which means the thigh in Greek;5 therefore, being born on Mount Meru,
he was an Indian.

Mr. Yates: I know nothing of the Indian at al , so I think I must be right. They
suppose a region existed in the North Pole inhabited by a blameless people.

5 [A similar etymology is given in the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, Collected Writings edition, p. 609, where
she follows E. Pococke’s India in Greece, 1856, p. 266.]

444. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Blameless people! Why, it is the gods. You read it in The

Secret Doctrine and you wil find it al . You read it in the second volume. In the
second volume I have got al that—the Eternal Land, the one finite that never
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goes down.

Mr. Yates: Is it meant to be actual y, physical y located in the North Pole?

Mme. Blavatsky: We won’t talk about it; it wil take us into too high
metaphysics.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 15. Can you tel us anything more about the Sishta?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Sishtas are the highest adepts which happen to be on a
globe when Pralaya reaches it. They sacrifice themselves for universal human
good and cosmic purposes, too esoteric to discuss now. Let it be known only
that they are the living and now objective Nirmânakâyas—that is to say, that
when the hour of the Pralaya strikes, some of the highest adepts, whether
living objectively or subjectively, become the voluntary custodians of the
sleeping planet. When it is morning dawn then these Terrene Pitris play the
same parts as the Lunar Pitris did in the Fourth Round (that is to say, when
there is the dawn for the globe). They surrender or give there three lower
principles as a ready, prepared vehicle for the incoming egos of the new
round; then only are their Monads reached. They have done their duty and won
a long, long rest. They wil remain in Nirvânic bliss until the manvantara of the
successor in this planetary chain, until the dawn strikes for the successor {in}

this chain. The successor wil be the two globes on our plane above which wil
unite and form the androgynous earth of the new chain. For then the two
uppermost globes wil have descended to the plane which is now below them.

Another planet shooting its principles into{onto}? the Laya of the empty place
wil give birth to a globe which wil replace one of these two, and stil another to
replace the second. There is certainly a mystery, and raison d’être of which
mystery it is too early for us to know anything. Nor wil the principles of the

Earth be lost. As the

445. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

egos, I mean, are incarnated on earth, so are the principles of egos or
departed globes incarnated in sidereal space. As above so below. As with the
moon, so with the earth; and as with Father, so with Son. These are immutable
lines of nature. Now, this is a thing I tel you that is perfectly new to you.

Mr. Kingsland: That is the most interesting thing we have had for a long while.

Mme. Blavatsky: I had very many interesting things for you.

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Mr. Sinnett: I should like afterwards to see what passed before I arrived.

Mme. Blavatsky: I wil read it again. It is very difficult to say much more about
it, because it is such a vast, but such a mysterious thing,
that.

Mr. Sinnett: The point there is about the reincarnation of the earth principle.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , listen again. The Sisthas are the highest adepts which
happen to be on a globe when Pralaya reaches it. Now, those who wil be the
highest are the voluntary—how shal I say— self-immolators or self-sacrificers.

Do you remember what I say in The Secret Doctrine? They sacrifice
themselves for the human good, and cosmic purposes, too esoteric to
discuss now. Let it be known only that they are the living and now objective

Nirmânakâya. You know what that means? Nirmânakâyas means, for instance
you become a great adept. You don’t want to live any more, but you are not
selfish enough to go into Nirvâna (because it is selfish: you wil benefit no one
by it but yourselves, and this selfishness is to be avoided); therefore, instead
of going into Devachan (you cannot go into Devachan, because it is yet an
il usion for an adept; for mortals as we are, but not for a high adept), therefore
he leaves his body, and lives in al his six principles. Wherever he lives, of
course, it is subjectively and in space; but he lives and helps humanity, and
sometimes he wil inspire people, or communicate with them, and so on. I
know several

446. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

cases like that. Very rarely of course, but it is because they do not general y go
for individuals; but they wil protect a nation, or protect a community, or
something like that, and help as much as Karma permits them. That is to say
when the hour of the pralaya strikes, some of the highest adepts, whether
living objectively or subjectively, as Nirmânakâyas become the voluntary
custodians of the sleeping planet, etc. (reads as before). The moon gives its
principles so wil every planet do it. It goes with a great harmonious
succession. There is not a single gap in Nature.

Mr. B. Keightley: From that it would fol ow, I think, that there are no Sishta until
the Fourth Round. Until after the Fourth Round, real y.

Mme. Blavatsky: Active Sistha, those that have to act, certainly, because man
begins only on the Fourth Round. There are in the Third Round al kinds of
astral shapes and things that we cannot speak about, or know anything about.

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The regular men as we know them, begin on this round only. I don’t suppose
there were any adepts there before. I don’t know. An adept has a definite
meaning for us—it is on this plane, and that which is within our conception.

How can we know they are adepts there?

Mr. B. Keightley: It again brings out into prominence the great importance
which the Fourth Round plays.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Forth Round is the adjustor; it adjusts al the things and
brings matter and spirit into equilibrium. It is that which in the middle of the

Fourth Round makes everything settled. And already, instead of spirit fal ing
into matter, it is matter which begins to evolve into spirit.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 16, page 184. What are we to understand by the
phrase, “astral human forms (or the highest elementals)” in the fol owing:

Monads of the anthropoids, “the highest mammals after man...wil be liberated
and pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of the sixth
and seventh races, and then into the lowest human forms in the Fifth Round.”

447. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: By the time the Sixth Race comes on the scene, al the
animal egos now inhabiting the highest anthropoid forms wil have been
liberated and wil exist. Some exist now in sidereal spaces in astral human
forms, as I say. This is what I cal here highest elementals—they have not
been human yet. These wil incarnate in the lowest men of the Sixth Race. The
young men of the Darwinians truly have dreamed dreams, and there {their?}

old men seen visions, for their founder must have caught from the astral a
glimpse of that which wil be; and forthwith dragging it down to his own material
plane, he made of it that which has been in his own imagination. This is the
most curious thing, and I don’t think it is Darwin; I think it is Haeckel who took
the astral forms. The Master says himself there were gigantic astral forms in
the Third Round. They were like gigantic apes. But they were not speaking of
the dumb animals—they were men, ape-like, from which individual evoluted the
apes. Mil ions and mil ions of years after, when there came the reversion to the
primal type again, they produced the monsters for which they fel .

Mr. B. Keightley: What happens to the anthropoids is, when they die, they
remain as semi-human elementals until the Sixth Race begins to come.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are not yet human, because they were not human.

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Mr. B. Keightley: The elementals that wil be human.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just as the egos of men are their past elementals.

Mr. Kingsland: But that is not in the Sixth Race, it is in the Sixth Round.

Mme. Blavatsky: There wil be a few already in the Sixth Race like the
chimpanzees, they do not come from space, but these are already
imprisoned.

Mr. Kingsland: You don’t cal them human Monads, yet.

448. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: They are semi-human, because they are due to the Fourth

Race. Do you suppose, real y, that they are men? It is al very fine to listen to
our missionaries, who say al the savages are our brothers. They are not. They
have the potentiality; the mineral has the potentiality. But the savages are not—
especial y some of those who died out—they are not the same as we are.

Mr. Kingsland: Then they wil come in at the Sixth Race?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. What I say is, that not a single Monad wil come any
more from space, so to say, unless it is here: that al that which had the time to
settle in some of the higher shapes, til the middle of the Fourth Race, these
wil remain on this earth til the end of the Manvantara, but certainly not
afterwards. If you go and believe this absurd thing, that for every child that is
born, there is a new soul breathed and created—that I cannot understand at al .

Mr. Kingsland: Then as a matter of fact, the Monads of some of the
anthropoids are sufficiently near the human point to come within the Sixth

Race.

Mr. B. Keightley: The expression is expressly made here, and insisted upon.

I speak of the class of Monads that one expresses as emphasized.

Mr. Yates: The population of the world is unchanging.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Monads are unchanging in the middle of the Fourth

Race.

Mr. B. Keightley: You may have any number of Monads in Devachan, and so
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on.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is unchanging. Otherwise, there would be no Karmic
possibility of adjustment.

Mr. Yates: Take any time in the history of the world, and contrast it with any
other period of 3,000 years. There must, of course, be variations; but stil , go
back—according to that theory, the population of the world was then the same
as it is now.

449. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You don’t know anything at al about population. What it was,
and what I have learned, is that the population was almost twice as great as the
one we have now—nearly twice as great. There was not a corner on the globe
that was not populated, and that is why sometimes it must come, that some of
you must be drowned. Look at China; it is the most providential occurrences,
those tidal waves.

Mr. B. Keightley: And everywhere in the Atlantean times was twice as
populated as China is now.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not twice; a great deal more than it is now. I remember one
thing: there was a time when Africa was al inhabited (in times after that, when it
had emerged from the ocean). And now, why, how many parts of Africa are
inhabited? I suppose not a twentieth part. You cannot cal those savages
inhabitants, those that Stanley6 has been meeting with.

Mr. B. Keightley: A very sparse population ever, at that. But Yates’ point is a
curious one.

Mme. Blavatsky: They say the continents were greater look at the continent
that went from India to Australia. It was one continent unbroken, and now it is
al seas and seas.

Mr. B. Keightley: What I want to get at is, look at the population of the earth
now: The population of the earth then was very much greater. It fol ows that a
large number of the Monads which were then on earth at the Atlantean period,
incarnated, are stil in Devachan.

Mr. Sinnett: I don’t think it necessarily fol ows. Assume for the moment that a

Devanchic period was 200 years, instead of 2,000. The change from a
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condition of things in which there were simply 200 years spent, to a condition
in which you have 2,000, spent would reduce the population to a tenth of what
it was, without giving any Monad a period of longer than 2,000 years.

6 [Henry Stanley, born John Rowlands, Welsh journalist and explorer, 1841-1904, who had gained fame for his
locating the Scottish missionary David Livingstone in Africa. At the time of H.P.B.’s reference, Stanley was in the

Congo.]

450. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: That is to say, the general period then was shorter than the
general period is now.

Mr. Yates: That explains that so many great nations of the world have been
very smal in number.

Mme. Blavatsky: We had last time a very interesting thing about the planets,
and I think Dr Berridge7 was very much interested. It was al about planets and
stars and astronomy in their astronomical bearing.

Mr. Sinnett: Taking the chimpanzees, the chimpanzee monad would be a
more advanced creature than some of the human savages. For he belongs to
the Fourth Race, and the savages belong to others.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you took the savage and brought him up as a chimpanzee,
he would develop intel ect just as much as a chimpanzee. It is because they
remain there, entirely shut out from al civilization or anything to see, that they
are ignorant. And the chimpanzee, when we take him, he sees the world, he
lives in cultured localities, and so on, and becomes very intel igent. So would
the poor savage be. Mind you, the savages wil be more intel igent in the Sixth

Race than these are now. I don’t think we shal have one soon remaining from
the old race; they are al dying out. I mean the direct ones, such as the
flatheaded Australians were.

Mr. Sinnett: Some of the Chinese are a very early race.

Mme. Blavatsky: Some, but they are in the mountains. They are not real y

Chinese; they are extraordinary creatures.

Mr. Yates: There was that curious tribe in Southern India. In Isis Unveiled you
have something about them.

7 [Edward W. Berridge, homeopathic physician, 1843-1923. He joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in

May 1889.]

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451. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I say that the Todas8 were the most mysterious race in al

India. And I say what I said in Isis Unveiled, because there were three men
who assured me of the same. I knew that they were that, and they assured me
of it. They had lived years with them. They are very dirty, if you like, but they
look like Grecian gods. It is about 70 years ago that they were discovered, and
in these 70 years they found six or seven hundred of them. They are now the
same number. They never vary, notwithstanding the panthers, and the tigers
and the leopards, they never lose a single buffalo. The buffalos of others wil
be stolen every night, especial y by the leopards, but never one of their cattle.

They have not got arms, not even a knife. They sit there with a little thing like a
kind of wand in there hands. I have watched them for years, when I was there
with Mrs. Morgan.9 They are the most extraordinary people you ever saw and
there is not a bit of the Indian in them. You see the round Dravidian race, and
the flat-nosed and al kinds of types; this type is the most pure type that you
can find. They are tal ; they have got most regular features, most handsome;
and their women are ugly. Did you see them, Mr. Sinnett? Now, the
missionaries did everything in creation to try and convert one.

Mr. B. Keightley: Don’t you say that their wives are taken from the Dravidian
tribes?

Mme. Blavatsky: No one knows what it is. Sometimes there are women that
come there that are not of that tribe. A missionary went there, and he prided
himself that he was the first one to have learnt the language of the Todas. He
remained with them 18 or 20 years.

8 [The Todas are a pastoral people living in Nilgiri, or the Blue Hills of Tamilnadu in South India.

There culture is centered around raising dairy-buffalos. H.P.B. writes about this mysterious tribe in Isis Unveiled,
vol. 2: 614-616, and devotes one of her Russian travel tales to them in The enigmatical Tribes of the Blue Hills.]

9 [Ellen H. Morgan, who with her husband, Maj.-Gen. Henry Morgan, had founded a theosophical branch in

Ootacamund, a popular hill station in the Nilgiris. H.P.B. was their guest in the summer of 1883. A short record by

Mrs. Morgan, “Witchcraft on the Nilgiris,” detailing her experiences there is included in Five Years of Theosophy.]

452. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

When he came out he began talking with a Toda and he said, “Where have
you learnt [ ]? Isn’t it the [ ] language?” Now, they don’t work, they don’t sow,
they do nothing whatever, except have buffalos, live on milk and cheese, and
so on. It is the Badagas10 who are their voluntary tributaries; they bring them
everything, corn and the fruits of the earth, etc. They do everything for them.

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They serve them just as priests would serve the gods, if the gods came on
earth. They are afraid of them, those Mulakurumbas;11 and they are the most
vile race of dwarfs that you can meet with. They are the enbodiment of fiendish
cunning. Ask Mrs. Morgan and General Morgan, who lived for years there. It is
something awful, their black magic. They wil do the most atrocious things. Mrs.

Morgan lost about 23 men in one month, the best of her laborers and
workmen. One would come and point out a man, yet never approach him; and
in a few days he would be a dead man. There was a commissioner who never
believed in them. The [ ] are fearful y afraid of the Todas; when they see them
they wil run away; they are just like a frog under the look of certain serpents; it
is something terrible. Now Mrs. Bachelor,12 whom we went with, speaks al
these languages beautiful y; and we went with Mrs. Morgan, and we passed
days there. I have watched them, and it is something extraordinary. They don’t
pay any attention to you.With the long hair they have, they look like Roman
senators in togas. For a painter, it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Such
grace and dignity—wel , they look like gods.

A Lady: Are they great magicians?

Mme. Blavatsky: They say that they are good men, and that the [ ] are
mortal y afraid of them.

A Lady: They have superior magic then?

Mme. Blavatsky: They have the most extraordinary power. There was 30
years ago a terrible lawsuit there. There were [ ] who had

10 [Largest tribal group in the Nilgiri Hills. H.P.B. in Enigmatical Tribes describes them as the vassals and
worshippers of the Todas.]

11 [Dwarf tribe in the Nilgiris.]

12 [Rhoda Bachelor, daughter of Maj.-Gen. and Mrs. Morgan.]

453. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

done such awful things that the [ ] went and made a conspiracy to burn them,
and they roasted them in their vil age. And it was said that they could not burn
their houses unless there was a Toda present. The legend goes that they
brought a Toda with them, though they swore always that they never did that.

Because I don’t think in 70 years there was one Toda who was ever
imprisoned, except on the testimony of one of these women. I have read al
the things General Morgan gave me. This Toda disappeared and nobody knew
where he was gone to, and that was the only Toda who was in prison. You may
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put mil ions of money, coins and everything in their way—they never were
known to take a thing. You never saw such honesty as they have.

Mr. B. Keightley: Are they intel ectual y intel igent?

Mme. Blavatsky: General Morgan said to me: “They are very intel ectual.”

Claud Vincent says they are amazingly intel ectual, that they wil talk on
everything; but their dignity and manner and way is something extraordinary.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think you hinted somewhere that they are real y of Greek
descent?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, they are of Lanka descent, not Greek. They have got
their own things. I have written al these legends that they gave me
themselves, and what I heard of al these I have written in Russian.13 They say
by the calculation of the moon it comes to something like 22 thousand years
that they came on the hil s, the blue hil s of the gods, and that their forefathers
were in the service of Râma. This is there story, and that they come from

Lanka; but it was not what it is now. It was enormous. It was a part of the
continent of the Atlanteans when it sunk. But they are the most mysterious
race. I wish you had an opportunity to see them, what handsome men, al with
long, beautiful wavy hair, even their old men.

Mr. Sinnett: Do they speak other languages besides their own?

13 [ The enigmatical Tribes of the Blue Hills of India, published in the Russian Messenger of Moscow in 1884/85.]

454. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: They speak [ ]. Nobody in the world would know their rites,
that they have—some of the rites, that they perform in their crypts, that they do
in every one of their little houses, which are just like beehives, with a little door
where they must come out bending. They have there buffolaes there, and
among ther buffaloes there is a leader with the silver bel s, and one of them
has golden bel s, and he is a superb animal; but tel me how it is that never a
tiger or leopard touches them? This is a thing that Webster told me. His father
was one of the first to go there 70 years ago when it was discovered. A man
who was in trouble a few years ago in Madras—he was on the Council of the

Governor together with Webster there, and his father was one of the first who
went there, so he has enormous {narratives?} of them. He was born there, and
he has been tel ing me many things. And he says never was there a case
known that one of their cattle was carried away. But these Badagas number
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about 10,000; the Mulakurumba are many thousands; but they {the Todas}

never vary between 600 and 700.

Mr. Sinnett: Do they come under the operation of the senses?

Mme. Blavatsky: They are nomadic people. But how can you cal them
nomadic, when they go from one place to another and they have their own
chief priests—those that are set apart, and who never marry, and who have got
some ceremonies for the burials and the cremation, such customs as nobody
knows of, entirely sui generis— and they say their forefathers served Râma,
and went to Lanka and after that were rewarded for services rendered to

Râma. When [ ] was kil ed, they sent them there to take possession of the
blue hil s of the gods. And they say even the most curious thing, that the

Government tried to coax from them (and they would not give) a kind of stone.

Morgan tel s me he saw it several times in his youth, and it was al with the
most extraordinary characters. Nobody had the key to it. And this was the thing
given to them by Râma and others.

Mr. B. Keightley: Wil they go on living and living there until something
happens?

455. 15. Meeting April 18, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I know this man was the only one. When they roasted about

40 men, they said they had to have the Toda to preside over the operation, or
else they could do nothing. They hung a good many of those Badagas; but that
single Toda that was there disappeared. Speak [ ] of the curious nations, I can
assure you, that there are nations that are very little known in India. Those who
served them are the Badagas, and the others are the Mulakurumba. Mrs.

Morgan knows al about them, and they like her very much, and they treat her to
magnificent milk and buffalo cream, and so on. Very rarely they eat meat; they
don’t do anything; they are kept and served by the Badagas, who work for
them perfectly voluntarily.

Mr. Kingsland: Do they practice some kind of yoga?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, they don’t, not apparently. I never heard of one. I know
they have got their men who know a good deal—I suppose they are priests. I
conversed with some of them, but only through an interpreter. I don’t know
their language. Two of them always looked at me with a kind of grin and with a
good-natured smile, and I returned the compliment. And when I went away
they gave me a kind of a petrified fig, and he said, Keep this because it is a
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good thing if you ever have fever,” and so on. I lost it.

Here the proceedings closed.

16.

Theosophical Society.

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

17 Lansdowne Rd. Hol and Park W.

April 25, 1889.

Mr. Kingsland in the Chair

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 1. Why should rotation cease on a dead planet?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because the life of a body as a whole is nothing but motion,
a reflection of that one life which is cal ed in The Secret Doctrine absolute
motion. When a man dies his body as a whole ceases to move, although the
individual activity of its cel s, and ultimately of its molecules, increases
enormously. This is proved by the rapid and violent changes that take place in
a decomposing corpse. In the same way when a planet dies, its rotatory
motion about its own axis ceases, though its activity in its constituent particles
is increased rather than diminished. Now, if I am asked if the moon moves—it
is in relation to the moon that this is asked—if I am asked why the moon
moves in an orbit round the earth, I reply that this is caused by the vampirizing
action of the moon upon the earth—not as science teaches, owing to an
attraction exerted by the earth upon the moon, but rather the reverse: the moon
is so saturated with the magneto, vital emanation of the earth that she is carried
along by it like an over-ful sponge in a current of water. It is not the water that
attracts the sponge in the case, but the sponge is carried along by the stream
in its own movement. Does this explain satisfactorily, or did you want to know
something very occult?

Mr. Kingsland: No, I only wanted to know why the mass of the moon should
cease to rotate as a mass of matter when the principles

458. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

had left it—what was the relation between the principles having left it and the
mass of the matter of the moon ceasing to move.

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Mme. Blavatsky: It did not cease to move; it moves.

Mr. Kingsland: But, as a whole, on its own axis.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because it cannot move, because the spirit has fled
because the principles are gone; so how can it move?

Mr. B. Keightley: I think you are answered by the analogy.

Mr. Kingsland: It is only removing the difficulty one step further.

Mr. B. Keightley: When a man is dead, when his principles have left him, the
body as a whole does not move.

Mr. Kingsland: That is to say, that a man is walking consciously.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not consciously that they move. They don’t know what
they are about. Take an idiot, a complete idiot: he wil be moving and running
and grinning and jumping, but he wil not know what he is about.

Mr. Kingsland: Then it is purely internal force.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is simply vital impulse.

Mr. B. Keightley: The scientific idea of the thing, is that it is a purely
mechanical movement, because the large mass of matter having once been
set spinning, there is no friction and nothing to stop it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Don’t speak to me about science, because science and I
are on cool terms.

Mr. Kingsland: The astronomical idea is that there is friction.

Mr. B. Keightley: Wel , it is so slow that no calculation has found any trace of it.

Mr. Kingsland: They have found traces of it.

459. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: It is supposed to take 300,000,000 of years to make the
difference of ½ hour.

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Mr. Mead: Are you right in saying the moon does not move at al ? Doesn’t it
revolve once?

Mr. B. Keightley: Not on its own axis; I don’t think there is any rotation of the
moon about its own axis.

Mme. Blavatsky: It rotates {revolves} because it vampirizes and is carried
away.

Mr. B. Keightley: Swept along, so to speak, in the current.

Mme. Blavatsky: It vampirizes—not by conscious action, but there is a kind of
dead matter, which by its own inherent attribute or quality attracts.

Mr. B. Keightley: You cannot say a sponge absorbs water consciously, but it
absorbs.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, it is carried up by the current.

Mr. Mead: In another way that is rather analogous, because it does rotate for
some time—for instance, near the rocks.

Mme. Blavatsky: There are no rocks in space.

Mr. Kingsland: That gives us rather a different idea as to the planetary motion

—the planets revolving by means of their own inherent force. If anything
revolves in that way it must have something to revolve against, so to speak.

Mme. Blavatsky: One is a satel ite, and the other an independent entity.

Mr. Kingsland: I mean to say it must be able to pul itself round by something,
unless it is set going at the beginning, and goes on until it gradual y stops by
means of friction or some force acting upon it from outside. A man cannot lift
himself by his own waistbelt, and you can hardly conceive of a planet revolving,
and continuing to revolve, by means of its own axis.

460. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Has it ever occurred to you that the Laya center is real y, if
you come to fol ow it out, the idea of rotatory motion, the center of a vortex.

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Mme. Blavatsky: It is.

Mr. Kingsland: This Laya center does not correspond to the center of the
planet.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is a Laya center. It is not in three-dimensional space,
of course, but it must be the center of the planet.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Laya center is the Âtman, so to say, the spirit of the

Âtman.

Mr. Kingsland: It is not a mathematical center of a circle.

Mr. Old: There must be such a mathematical center, I think must there not?

Mr. B. Keightley: It must be the center of rotation of the earth. That is to say, if
you locate it anywhere, then of course the Laya center is not a point in our
three dimensional space.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is out of space and time, the real Laya center.

Mr. Ingram: Each atom of the whole world has it own Laya center?

Mme. Blavatsky: It has.

Mr. B. Keightley: Each body as a whole is formed of such particles.

Mr. Kingsland: Do the globes revolve in virtue of the circulation of their
principles?

Mme. Blavatsky: I believe so; I could not tel you with certainty.

Mr. Kingsland: Take the analogy of a globe of some kind of substance—
metal, or anything you like, immersed in water; that globe could not revolve in
the water if it were only exercising an

461. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

internal force. But if it emitted something that acted against the water, then it
could cause it to revolve.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Al the planets are exercising attractive and repulsive forces
upon each other.

Mr. Mead: In the present state of affairs, it would be impossible to introduce
any internal power to make it revolve. It would be outside al experience. Take
the case of a sphere revolving in water. You could not introduce an internal
rotary motion into such a sphere.

Mr. Kingsland: The sphere as a whole could rotate if you had some gas which
emanated from it. That is the conception I want to get at.

Mr. Old: We have such cases in mechanics where a body revolves for a long
time after the cause of its revolution has ceased, as for instance the flywheel
of a large piece of machinery. Or take the ordinary peg-top of our youth. After
the first lash, after it is delivered from its cause of motion, it goes on
manifesting that cause for a long time after the immediate cause has ceased.

It seems to have a mediate cause in itself, a potency to retain the same
motion.

Mr. Kingsland: That does not correspond to the planets; they are continual y
revolving in virtue of an inherent force. When the Pralaya comes, the planet wil
continue to revolve for some considerable time after its principles had left it.

Mme. Blavatsky: When the real Pralaya comes, the planets won’t exist at al ,
because they wil al disintegrate and fly asunder.

Mr. Old: And in the case of the moon, which is considered as a satel ite to us,
it has a Pralaya, you know, its individual planetary Pralaya. And it has ceased to
have any axcedal {accedal ?} motion. The moon has ceased to have such a
motion on account of those principles having discharged themselves.

Mr. Kingsland: What is it—what are those principles, and what is the action
that causes a life planet to revolve?

462. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose the light, but there is a great difference between
planets and the moon; the moon is a dead planet.

Mr. Kingsland: And that is why it has ceased to revolve.

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induced motion, so to say, from that emanation from the earth.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is swept along in a current of the earth, in fact.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, where the earth goes it wil go. That is what I
understood. As far as I remember what I have learnt, it is so.

Mr. Old: There is the ordinary circulation of the interplanetary plenum. Is that
taken into consideration by you, Mr. Kingsland, in your thoughts?

Mr. Kingsland: That is what I want to get at and elucidate.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do you mean that there is nothing but stil ness in space?

Why there is a tremendous hurricane of al kinds of rotary motions going on,
even outside of any visible planets, or existing planets, because al these
currents of air are always in motion; there is the eternal breath which never
ceases.

Mr. B. Keightley: You have not got an empty place ful of a sort of semi-rigid
jel y.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly not. It is al alive with al kinds of currents and
counter-currents, and wheels within wheels and rotary motion, and so on. This
is that which certainly may help to solve the difficulty.

Mr. Ingram: In some part of of The Secret Doctrine it is treated of in length,
the genesis of rotary motion, and the different scientific hypotheses.

Mr. B. Keightley: In the first volume, I think it is.

Mr. Mead: Is not the original rotary motion part of the original life

463. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

of a planet? And doesn’t it gradual y decrease?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, but this has nothing to do with the impulse which is
given to that which goes on and becomes a comet, and after a comet it
becomes al kinds of things. The first thing is given to that particle which starts
by Fohat.

Mr. B. Keightley: Fohat says, he col ects the them into boards {bal s ?}.

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Mme. Blavatsky: And this Fohatic force is outside the planets, not only inside,
as I explained in the case of centripetal and centrifugal forces—space is ful of
that.

Mr. B. Keightley: You always have that element which must apply equal y to
man as to everything else, the two forms: the internal force, which is limited
and confined, so to speak which is always seeking to free itself; and then the
free force outside, which is again acting upon the body al the time, and, as it
were, in correlating with the confined motion. That, of course, would tend to
produce a rotative motion.

Mr. Ingram: Then there are forces at work now, producing the rotary motion of
the earth?

Mr. B. Keightley: Wel , of course—not solely because of the rotation must be
kept up. Clearly we know, if we take the analogy and fol ow it out strictly, that a
human being does not go on living and moving and expending energy simply
in virtue of the life impulse which he receives from his parents, but he grows,
and is nourished and takes in food and assimilates it and keeps up his strength
in that way. And some process analogous to that must take place in the case
of a planet.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. I cannot tel you anything more, because I don’t
know anything about science.

Mr. Kingsland: I think there is something in Lucifer this month which bears
upon that by Keely about the magnetic circulation of

464. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

the earth.1 Has the rotation of the earth anything to do with these magnetic
currents that are always circling around it?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly.

Mr. Kingsland: And these currents cease when the earth is dead?

Mme. Blavatsky: They won’t cease but the earth won’t be able to feel them
any more because there wil be no receptive hold upon them. They never
cease; they are always going on, but the earth cannot receive any more. Just
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the same if you have a hurricane, and it comes to Lansdowne Road,2 and if
you have got a dead cat there, the dead cat wil be swept away. But once it
touches it when it is dead, it cannot do anything.

Mr. Mead: And the moon is unresponsive to these forces?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, because I have just explained why the moon moves.

Mr. B. Keightley: The earth is unresponsive to these forces, to the magnetic
currents, but the moon is swept on, carrying on a sort of vampirized life
through absorption from the earth.

Mr. Mead: It does not receive whatever it has of motion from the influences
from the earth.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not entirely dead. It is paralyzed. It has no more its
principles.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is dead, but not corrupted yet.

Mme. Blavatsky: Therefore, there is the motion, but not its particles.

Sometimes the motion is so great in a dead body that you wil find it

1 [ Lucifer (the Lightbringer) was the name of the journal started by Mme. Blavatsky in London in September 1887.

The article refered to is in the April, 1889 issue, pp. 137-140, “Comments of John Worrell Keely on Dr.

Schimmel’s Lecture: ‘The unity of the forces’ by C.J.B-M. (Clara Jessup Bloomfield-Moore, a great supporter of

Keely).]

2 [17 Lansdowne Road in London was the location of the Blavatsky Lodge where H.P.B. was domiciled.]

465. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

turned; and then some wil say: “the man was not dead,” and came to himself

—which is nothing at al but the work of the disintegrating forces.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 2, page 171, last paragraph. What are the seven
classes of monads here mentioned? Are they simply the mineral, vegetable,
animal, etc? Can you give them seven distinctive names by which we may
refer to them afterwards in the order of their appearance on a chain of globes?

Mme. Blavatsky: The seven classes refered to here are the seven classes of

Lunar Pitris or fathers, al of which have reached the human stage of
development on the lunar chain. They are therefore not the monads, or rather
elementals, of the seven kingdoms of nature, but are the subdivisions of what
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we may term the lunar mankind—the (lunar lunatics). Of course, when they first
arrive on the earth chain they are very nearly in an undifferentiated condition,
and as they descend into matter they differentiate even more and more til at
last they form seven distinctly marked types or classes. Therefore how can we
give them distinct names when these names indicate their attributes, and these
are perpetual y changing? They may be described by the names of the seven
lower Sephirot of the Kabbalah, or by the seven Amshapends of Zoroaster;
but this is only in their primitive differentiation from homogeneity. Everytime
they are transformed they go down lower on the hierarchy, or higher. They
change names.

Mr. Kingsland: These human monads, lunar monads, have to pass through the
mineral kingdom, have they not?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, on the globe A.

Mr. B. Keightley: On globe 2.

Mr. Kingsland: On the whole of the first round?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. They don’t pass anymore on globe B; it is only the
latest arrivals. Stil , there are some monads, and they wil be those who wil
come. And at the threshold of the fourth round

466. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

and the fourth globe, which is ours, they are perfectly ready. And after that,
having evolved their astral images, and so on—which are those images which
become men, hereafter—they merge into that mankind. It is they themselves.

It is not that they create, like the Lord God out of nothing, but it is simply that
they evolve their Châyâs, and little by little they evolve into it.

Mr. Kingsland: Take the first class of Lunar Pitris they have to go through the
first round on our planetary chain, in one of the elemental kingdoms.

Mr. B. Keightley: No, they go through the three elemental kingdoms—mineral,
animal, vegetable kingdoms—up to the human stage, and just enter it on globe

A. Then they repeat the same process on globe B, on globe C, D and al
round through the first round. The second class of monads arriving from the

Lunar chain are a stage behind. They don’t reach the human stage, they stop
one stage short of that al through the first round; the third class of monads, a
stage stil later, and so on. So that if you take the second round, the first class
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have reached the human stage already, but the remaining classes each have
one or more stages to complete in that round or subsequent rounds.

Mr. Kingsland: It is rather difficult to fol ow.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is the way it seems to be stated here.

Mr. Mead: But if al these seven classes of Lunar Pitris had reached a man
stage on the Lunar chain, had they—al the seven classes— reached a human
stage, so to speak?

Mme. Blavatsky: The human stage on the moon is far inferior to that of the
earth, because every time that the principles of a plane go to form another
plane, it is always on a higher scale.

Mr. Ingram: But they had, al of them, reached that stage, but they differed
from themselves in order of merit.

Mme. Blavatsky: You don’t think that the principles shot from

467. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

the moon in one day created the whole chain? It certainly required mil ions and
mil ions of years to do such a thing as that. Once that globe A was ready, then
the Lunar Pitris of the globe A passed into it. Then the others remained yet,
there during the time that the second B, was produced; then the principles
began shooting out from globe B of the Lunar chain, on to our earthly chain,
and then the second ones came in. During the first round when it comes to the
last globe then only it is that you can say the whole lunar chain is at an end, you
understand, that it is dead, as it is now. But to the last moment they come.

Mr. B. Keightley: You say in say in The Secret Doctrine that only when the first
or highest class of the monads leave the last globe of the lunar chain, that is
the moment of death of the first globe.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is what I say. It is al explained there.

Mr. Mead: Yes, but I don’t understand it.

Mme. Blavatsky: What don’t you understand there?

Mr. Mead: The first class on the lunar chain have past off the whole of the lunar
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planetary chain into a Laya center, have not they?

Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon; the monads go when the globes are
ready.

Mr. B. Keightley: The monads are not the principles of the globe.

Mr. Old: Is it stated how long since the moon ceased to give off monads to
the earth?

Mme. Blavatsky: I could not tel you. You are a mathematician: reckon. I
cannot tel you, because they don’t give the correct figures at al ; they say
simply it is 300,000,000 of years since life appeared on this earth, and there
they stop. I speak to you about the Hindu chronology. And then they leave you
to whistle and infer for yourselves. They won’t give it to you. Mr. Sinnett tried it
several times and he met a Chinese wal . You must go by the Brahmanical

468. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

calculation, and it gives a Manvantara of fifteen figures. It gives it to you
certainly quite correctly. It is given in the second volume. Everything is given—
how long it is since the universe was evolved; how long it is that such and such
a thing happened; how many years the Manvantara consisted of, and the

Pralaya, and when the Manu period was. It is 18,000,000 of years—that is to
say, 18,000,000 of years is given to the appearance of the real man, and not
the Châyâs. It begins, therefore, in the fourth round—or rather, in the middle of
the fourth {third?} race. This is when they begin their 18,000,000 of years, so
you may count. Our fifth race is a mil ion of years; take into consideration, if
you please, that there are several kinds of Pralaya, that Pralaya is not only that
which you think, when everything is dissolved and disappears. There several
kinds of Pralayas and unless you learn al these, it is very easy for you in
reading the Vishnu Purâna to take one Pralaya for another. And they don’t go
to the trouble of qualifying the Pralayas, and they let you lose yourselves as
much as you like. That was always a game of the priests.

Mr.—: With regard to the first class of the Lunar Pitris, directly as it leaves the
seventh globe, does it reincarnate?

Mr. B. Keightley: No, it passes into Nirvâna.

Mme. Blavatsky: And then it comes in time for the second round. Because
between every life and evolution there is a temporary Pralaya between them,
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an obscuration. And then take into consideration that after every round there is
the same period, the same duration, that lasted, for instance, for the

Manvantaric day of the chain. It wil be the same Pralaya, you understand—the
night wil be as long as the day. Mind you, I don’t speak about the cosmic days;

I speak simply about the days of the chain.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is to say, between the going to sleep of the last planet-
chain, and the re-awakening, you have the time of the awakening of the whole
chain.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you are a mathematician you can go and do it very easily.

For instance, if you take a given period of time

469. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

approximately, and be guided by the Hindu chronology, you can do it. They say
to you that 12,000 human years and 12,000 divine years make quite a
difference, and they give you a proportion of how much more it is. There are
divine years and human years and manvantara years and al kinds of years. So
if you are a good mathematician, you won’t be lost in it.

Mr.—: The first class goes through the different kingdoms right up to the
human stage, and fol owing after the steps come other classes in such a way
that when the first class leaves the first globe A, the seventh class appears on
the first globe, and passes on.

Mr. B. Keightley: Passes into the interplanetary.

Mr.—: Do they al fol ow it and go into the two planets?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but now comes algebra—that the duration of the lunar
days and nights are in proportion a great deal shorter3 than those of the earth,
and that during, for instance, four and a half rounds, the whole seven come.

That is a very great thing: the whole seven have the time to have their Pralayas,
so that of the four rounds there is not a single monad that can come. Every
one of us is a Monad of the true blue stock; there is not a single Monad that
has come since then. It is only, you see, the pious people who teach that God
breathed a soul into every baby that appears. We say: “Fiddlesticks!”

Mr. Mead: These seven classes incarnated, we have said. When the first
leaves globe A, does the sixth class—or rather wil the next one after it, the
second class, which has reached the sixth kingdom, stop short of the human
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stage, because that class does not go into the human stage til the second
round? Therefore it leaves that planet and goes into the Pralaya or the animal
kingdom.

Mme. Blavatsky: It seems to me, if my recol ection is right, that the first class
of Pitris, those who become the Lunar Pitris, have passed through al the
kingdoms on globe A, and they don’t pass through

3 [The Transcription originally had “longer” but it was corrected to “shorter”.]

470. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

al the kingdoms on globe B.

Mr. B. Keightley: You are mistaken in your recol ection.

Mr. Mead: If that is so, and they being the pioneers, when they incarnate they

—being the first, into what kingdom do they go straight away? Into the human
kingdom?

Mme. Blavatsky: That is what you have got to read. I have simply written and
tried, without a single mistake, to give that which is in The Secret Doctrine. But
when it comes to those calculations, after a time I don’t want to remember it,
even.

Mr. Kingsland: There is one point which is making a little confusion al
through. The first class comes over from the lunar chain to globe A and they
are fol owed by the second, third, fourth, and so on. Now, are al those seven
classes on globe A at the same time, before the class goes on to globe B?

Mr. B. Keightley: What is stated here is this, in this paragraph which we are
just passing. (Reads from The Secret Doctrine.)

Mr. Kingsland: Has that first class been al round the chain by this time?

Mme. Blavatsky: No. It must be placed so that he who would like to know the
time and calculate, would have to take into consideration the greater shortness
of the Pralayas and of the Nirvânic state of the lunar classes. That is what you
have to do.

Mr. Kingsland: You see, from that statement, class one are leaving globe A,
just when class seven are coming onto it; therefore, in the meantime, two,
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three, four, five and six are al on globe A.

Mr. B. Keightley: But, you see, when the Pralaya comes, as far as I can
understand from this, the development of the several kingdoms is stopped
short at the point they have reached for that time, and then they have to go on
al round the chain.

Mr. Mead: I want to know if it is at the moment of that Pralaya

471. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

when the last monad of the of the first class is passed on.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is not stated.

Mr. Kingsland: Does that obscuration come before al the classes have
passed on globe B?

Mme. Blavatsky: No. There are those who remain, the last ones, and then they
come after that, because they have only just come in, and it must be timed in
such a way that the seven come into the space of the rotation or formation of
the first globe, of future humanity. Til the fourth round they are not real y
humans.

Mr. B. Keightley: This is what seems to be implied here, that the development
of the other classes, as it were, reaches a point when the obscuration sets in,
in which they cannot go any further. On that globe, the hour of the obscuration
has struck, and they are developed on that globe and everything is stopped.

Then they have to go on to globe B and repeat the process, and so on al
round the chain.

Mr. Kingsland: We ought to have a board with seven rows and seven heads,
as they have in the schools.

Mme. Blavatsky: And what good would it do to you? It would be loss of time,
and nothing else.

Mr. Kingsland: My difficulty is to see how it is that a half of these do not come
in, in time to reach the human stage. Isn’t that your difficulty Mead?

Mr. Mead: No, I understand that. My difficulty is when this pralaya, this
obscuration, overtakes it. When does it?

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Mr. B. Keightley: It comes at a moment, and then al these Monads who are
cycling have to leave that planet.

Mr. Mead: In a rush?

Mr. B. Keightley: At that moment, apparently.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is so timed that they al enter into their Nirvânic

472. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

state, there {their} time of rest, between the two planets. Nature does not make
mistakes in this case.

Mr. B. Keightley: Her time pieces do not require cleaning, you know.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, in mathematics, I was never a Newton in my life.

Mr. Mead: If this if this first class goes through al the kingdoms up to man, the
second class wil have been worked up once with the first class, so that the
seventh class coming in, it wil have been six times differentiated by the six
class that have gone before.

Mr. B. Keightley: So that it is able to work up by degrees. That is how it is that
al the seven classes reach the human stage of the fourth round.

Mr. Ingram: Have we been Lunar Pitris?

Mme. Blavatsky: We are the Lunar Pitris.

Mr. Ingram: Then we are talking of ourselves when we are talking of these?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is “we,” if you please, but we do not remember it. To think
that we have been angels and have become—what— such pumpkins, knowing
nothing at al ! To think we have been ornamented with beautiful wings and
pinions, and where are they? Gentlemen, you are very much addicted to
questioning, and you real y ought not to pry into the mysteries of God!

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 3, page 172. What are the seven principles of the
globes which are transferred one after the other to the globes of the new
chain?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Each globe has seven principles which are correlative with
the seven principles in man; but this must not be understood to mean that the
seven principles are represented by the Monads which are performing their
cyclic pilgrimages through the seven kingdoms of nature. For example, the
seventh or highest

473. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

principle of the planet is not the Monads which have reached the human stage
of development, but the planet as a whole has its own seven principles, as any
other body has. To make it clear. The earth has its physical or material body,
its astral body, its life principle, its animal nature, its instincts, or lower Manas,
its higher intel igence which it imparts to and shares with some of the animals,
its Buddhi, composed of the gnomes, or earth elementals, and its Âtman
represented by an intel igence cal ed the spirit of the Earth, which some

Kabbalists have identified with Jehovah. This latter belief was a dogma with the

Valentinians and the Ophites, who said that the God of the Jews was simply
the spirit of the Earth. You wil find this if you read the Valentinians. They al say
that the God was the spirit of the last terrestrial plane which created this, and
then you can read the corrections that are there, with this Bahak-Zivo, and

Fetahil and so on. Did you ever read this? It is the most interesting thing in the
world, only, unfortunately, it is not translated and you can only get it in Latin. It is
one of the oldest gospels, and one of the most interesting.

Mr. Mead: Would you mind reading that again? Not the explanations of the
principles, but the last principles of the earth upwards.

Mme. Blavatsky: (Reads again, “The earth has its physical,” etc., etc.)

Mr. Kingsland: Then what we having cal ing the planetary spirits in the
previous discussions are simply the Âtman of each of the planets?

Mme. Blavatsky: Some of them. Because they are again divided into seven.

This is the great mysterious number of of this manvantara so you had better
not mix up too many things, because you wil be terribly confused, that is sure.

Mr. Kingsland: Then are we to understand that the monads, although
independent of these seven principles, are necessary for the completion, so
to speak, of the animal life of the planet?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly.

Mr. Kingsland: Of the individual animal life of the globe or planet?

Mme. Blavatsky: You mean the elementals which precede the other
kingdoms?

Mr. Kingsland: I mean the Monads in their whole career.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, they are necessary.

Mr. Mead: Wouldn’t it be convenient to give some name to these three sub-
kingdoms?

Mme. Blavatsky: Cal them Smith or Brown or anything you like, because I am
not going to bother myself. They cal ed me by a name when I was young, but
they would not cal me by that now that I have changed.

Mr. Kingsland: Can you tel us at al in what way the seven human principles
are necessary for the completion of these seven principles?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because it is a link. Because every one of them radiates
something which corresponds in some other principle, in anything, in any
being. If you break one link, the whole goes to nothing.

Mr. Kingsland: But they are not identical.

Mr. B. Keightley: As far as I gathered, as far as I inferred, it was that the
development of the earth, of the principles of the earth, is assisted and carried
on, or very largely assisted by the development of humanity after it has once
made its appearance on a globe.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, because the sins of humanity affect the
earth, and the joys of humanity affect the earth. And you wil see that when
humanity is at its worst, then they wil have neither harvest nor anything
growing, and the earth wil be in perfect sterility and despair.

Mr. B. Keightley: You must have this intimate connection between

475. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

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man and the earth, or else you would have no relation at al .

Mme. Blavatsky: The ancients were wise when the cal ed the earth the
mother of man.

Mr. Kingsland: What is the difference between the mineral kingdom before
these Monads have come over from the other chain and after?

Mr. B. Keightley: Greater perfection.

Mme. Blavatsky: Everything grows. That which we see now has not existed at
the beginning of the round; and that which was at the beginning of the round
did not exist and was not entirely different at the third round, and so on when
we reach the point at the fourth round, then everything is adjusted. There is a
total y complete adjustment of matter and spirit. And then, til that point we
were fal ing into matter, but from that point, once it is reached, it is matter that
goes and ascends into spirit.

Mr.—: Has not the worst point of human life been passed, yet?

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not know, physical y. I say we wil have worse days than
we have had yet, because we have been sinning so much.

Mr.—: Then we have not reach the lowest point, yet?

Mme. Blavatsky: We have not reached the lowest point.

Mr. B. Keightley: The greater the responsibility, the heavier the sin. While we
were fal ing into matter, and while the spiritual consciousness was entirely
obscured by matter, we had not anything like the responsibility that we have
now, not in the same way. Because now we passed that point to a
considerable extent, and we are beginning to become more spiritualized. With
that comes at the same time a possibility of much more far-reaching sin or
breach of the law, which would be very much farther reaching in its effects, and
something more serious.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is perfectly logical and comprehensible.

476. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mr. Ingram: Isn’t there, at the same time, on the other side, a greater
acquiescence and obedience to law, as against the disobedience? Isn’t there
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a larger part of mankind that obeys the law and whose accumulated Karma
neutralizes the bad Karma of the others?

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not know. I do not think so. Nothing can neutralize the
bad Karma of individuals. Col ectively there may be some equilibrium, but I am
afraid it is al the wrong way. You see, evil predominates everywhere. It is not
good. Go where you like, you find there is not a thing that is done that is not
done with selfish motives and so as to benefit al one’s self, or nation, or
individual, and that the others would be the losers thereby. It is something
terrible when you come to look at the present state of business, of life, and of
civilization. This civilization is the cancer of humanity; it wil be the ruin of
humanity in the way it is conducted. I do not say civilization as it ought to be. It
is the most gigantic development of selfishness that ever was known. And I
can assure you that the fifth race wil go out with a great flourish of trumpets,
which wil be other than the trumpets of the war cry.

Mr. Ingram: Is the selfishness greater now than it was in the fourth race?

Mme. Blavatsky: A thousand times worse, because they are just descending
into spirit, and they cling to matter with the utmost desperation, that is why.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 4. Are these principles al transferred from each of
the globes of the lunar chain to the earth chain, and the latter made complete
in al the seven principles of each of the seven globes, before the Monads
emerge from the Nirvâna into which they pass after leaving the lunar chain? Or
does the evolution of the new chain, as regards the transfer of the principles
and the evolution of the Monads, proceed pari passu?

Mme. Blavatsky: The question is answered in The Secret Doctrine, so why
should you ask? Of course the principles of the globe of the lunar chain are al
transferred, each septenary, to its corresponding

477. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

globe of the earth chain. And the earth chain globes have attained their ful
septenary constitution before the first Monads make their appearance on
globe A. From that time onwards the evolution of the globes and the Monads
proceed pari passu, not before.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is to say, each globe in its turn has attained its ful
septenary constitution before any Monads make their appearance on it.

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Mr. Kingsland: But that is only the starting point of the evolution of the globe; it
is not the obtaining of these seven principles, but something further beyond.

Mr. B. Keightley: The child attains his ful septenary constitution at the age of
seven years, but you can’t say the evolution of the man is complete.

Mme. Blavatsky: You can’t say the evolution is complete, ever. It is complete
only an instant before the final Pralaya. Nature is always evoluting, always
transforming itself and going higher and higher and higher. Once Nature stops
it is death, it is stagnation.

Mr. Kingsland: In what does the evolution of the globes consist, apart from the
evolution of the Monads?

Mme. Blavatsky: In its own external evolution and everything.

Mr. B. Keightley: It has got to form itself into a globe. Of course, it has to be
done up to a certain point, so there is a complete septenary.

Mme. Blavatsky: The evolution must proceed.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 5. “Nature, the physical evolutionary power.” What
does “Nature” represent?

Mme. Blavatsky: “Nature, the physical evolutionary power,” stands here for al
the forces which are innate in the four lower Kosmic principles, or the Kosmic
quaternary. For Kosmos has got its seven principles, as we have—e.g., my
hand in conjunction with my brain makes signs on this paper which convey an
intel igible meaning (I am

478. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

not sure of it, though!). But if my brain were partial y paralyzed, as has been
observed in certain cases of disease, my hand may stil , by sheer force of
habit, make signs on this paper, or pretend to write, but these signs would
convey no meaning whatever. In the latter case, only the lower quaternary or
physical evolutionary power is acting. This I suppose answers sufficiently. That
is what I mean by it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 6. What class or classes of intel igences are
included here under the term “Nature”?

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Mme. Blavatsky: The four lower classes or principles, as I have just said.

There is no need to repeat it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 7. “The Châyâs of the Lunar Pitris.” What is a

Châyâ?

Mme. Blavatsky: Did I not tel you 29,000 times, Châyâ is a Sanskrit word,
meaning shadow, or image, or what we cal astral body? {Sañjña},4 the wife of

Sûrya, the sun, becoming tired of the too ardent love of her husband, left him
her handmaiden, Châyâ that is to say, her own astral image, or body, and took
herself off to the jungles to become a yogi. So runs the tradition. Somehow or
other, as Vishnu Purâna narrates, the Sun deceived by the likeness managed
to have two children from this astral body—so it is stated in Vishnu Purâna—
and that is the orgin of Châyâ the astral body.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 8. Has a planet an individuality as a man has an

Ego?

Mme. Blavatsky: It has. Its ruling spirit, or governor, as it is cal ed in

Pimander,5 is self-conscious. Any questions to that?

Mr. Kingsland: That has been partial y answered before.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 9. Is there any analogy between the Monad of man
and the vital essence of a planet?

4 [ The Secret Doctrine 2:174 supplies the name and the story.]

5 [Or Poimandres, the title of one of the books in the Corpus Hermeticum, often used to refer to the entire
collection.]

479. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You do offer very funny questions! Certainly not. There is an
analogy—I would cal it a perfect correspondence—between the Monad of a
man and the ruling spirit or governor of a spirit. But the vital essence of that
planet corresponds to the vital essence of man, therefore to the Kâma-rûpa.

For Prâna (or life) has strictly speaking, two vehicles, as Manas is double:

Linga-sarîra, or astral body, is the vehicle of the life principle, or spirit life; while

Kâma-rûpa is the vehicle of the material essence. In other words, the three
higher principles of the septenary of Prâna reside in the astral body, while the
four lower principles have their seat in Kâma-rûpa. You have learnt something
new tonight, because I discovered, to my great surprise, that Mr. Bert
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Keightley did not know what I meant, that Kâma-rûpa was the vehicle of the life
essence and that there was a difference between it and Prâna which has
seven principles. Therefore, as Kâma-rûpa is the grossest of that form, that

Prâna the astral body has got is a vehicle of the spirit of the life principle,
because it is connected with the higher principles of the triad and not with the
quaternary.

Mr. Kingsland: That is certainly a new idea.

Mme. Blavatsky: I did not know it was a new idea at al .

Mr. B. Keightley: Nobody had ever stated it in any theosophical work.

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear sirs, I say to al you, “Not Guilty,” who do not live in
the house; but those who live in the house and from morning to night speak
and live and have their being in occultism ought to know it. I absolve everyone
who does not live here, but not Mr. Bertram Keightley, because he ought to
know.

Mr. Kingsland: It has not been done in any published work so far.

Mme. Blavatsky: My dear sir, it was said to Mr. Sinnett before he wrote

Esoteric Buddhism (whether he put it there, I don’t know), but it is a thing
which is an axiom, and it has been put, I am perfectly sure, in The

Theosophist— that there is not a thing in nature which

480. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

has not got its two poles and seven principles. That is one of the fundamental
axioms of the occult sciences and the esoteric doctrines,
that every blessed thing has its seven principles and polarity.

Mr. Kingsland: If you can divide each principle into seven you get 49, which is
confusing.

Mr.—: And then divide each of those 49 into seven.

Mr. Mead: One understands that everything is subdivisible into sevens like
that, but that Prâna principle having two vehicles is difficult to fol ow.

Mme. Blavatsky: Prâna in man has two vehicles because there is a spiritual
life and there is a material, physical life. Now, that which is in the Kâma-rûpa is
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the grossest sub-principle, so to say, and al that, but that which is in the astral
body is the pure spiritual life. Now, if you do not understand this, how wil you
understand the 49 fires of occultism? If you don’t understand them, you are
simply a flapdoddle, and he who wants to be a flapdoddle, let him neglect the

49 fires. That is al I can tel you. The astral body being the shadow or the
image of man is in direct communication with the higher principles, whereas

Kâma-rûpa is the animal. It is the seat of everything animal.

Mr. B. Keightley: If you look at the diagram of the planet in the human
principles which is given a few pages back, you wil get exactly the explanation
of the two vehicles.

Mme. Blavatsky: You cannot expect me to give everything; something must
be left to the intuition and to human intel igence. If I had written everything I
would have had to make 25 volumes and it would not have been enough. I told
you hundreds of times, stick to analogy here.

Mr. B. Keightley: If you look at page 153 {of volume 1 of The Secret

Doctrine}, you get it. That diagram gives the key if you make the substitution, if
you put it in its proper order.

481. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I have remarked you must not number them. The number

“one” is that principle which is predominant in man. Now, if you happen to have
your fourth principle predominant, it wil be the first. They want to have
everything put straight for them. They won’t shake their own brains.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 10, page 192: “The holy youths refused to
multiply...” If these “sons” could once refuse to inhabit the Châyâ-rûpas, why
could they not continue to refuse? And what was the necessity which final y
compel ed them to incarnate in even less pure rûpas?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because they were not independent Englishmen, but simply
poor celestial beings, and they were not as obstinate as your nation is. And
what prevented them was Karma. Not a single word more can I say. Let us not
forget that there is a limit to the freedom of action of every differentiated being
in the whole universe. Karma, being the absolute adjusting law, whether in
heaven or on earth, says to the proud waves: “So far shalt thou go and no
farther.” If it says this to the waves, it says it to the angels, and anything you
like. It is Karma, and they cannot go against Karma. It is the whole thing. They
may kick as much as they like, but they have to do it. Instead of pure and
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wholesome bodies, they had to enter into defiled bodies.

Mr. Mead: Then free wil is always circumscribed?

Mr.—: Did these beings that refused to incarnate know they were doing
wrong?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose they did, but it was disagreeable to imprison
themselves into those bodies once more, and they delayed and delayed. And
if you read The Secret Doctrine, you wil see what occurred.

Mr.—: How did the law of Karma act on them?

Mme. Blavatsky: It acts on everything that is differentiated under the sun—not
our sun, but the spiritual sun.

482. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Al these classes and hierarchies of divine beings are these
evolutions of previous Manvantaras, and they have an infinite line of Karma
behind them.

Mme. Blavatsky: They do not come created by anything, or make a
simultaneous appearance with the universe.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 11, page 193: You say that the Jewish Kabbalists
argue “that no Spirit could belong to the divine hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit)

was united to Nefesh (living soul).” That is to say that “it is necessary for each
ego to attain ful self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious being.”

Mme. Blavatsky: They do belong to the divine hierarchy, because they had
been men in the preceding Manvantara. Now, whether it was on this earth or on
other earths, I do not know; never mind they were men or human beings. I do
not know whether they had two arms and two legs and a head, but they were

Manus—thinking beings. As the sons of divine hierarchy, which wil represent
divine creators in the Manvantara to come, wil be those men of this earth who
wil have attained the highest perfection, everyone of us, ladies and
gentlemen, has before him or her a chance. If we behave wel we wil become,
every one of us, one of these gentlemen—the Kumâras they cal them, the
youths. Perhaps they too wil in their turn hesitate to inhabit very unsavory
bodies and be imprisoned in them; but they wil have to do it in order to atone
for the unpaid bil s of the total of their past existence. Every one of us has to
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act according to law and Karmic law.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 12 (original y question 14), page 194: “Bahak-

Zivo...is ignorant of Orcus.” What does “Orcus” symbolize? You say in The

Secret Doctrine that it is the “rebel ious angels” who refuse to create, that are
the intel ectual saviors of mankind, and you prove that the fal through pride is
only a theological libel on these, our true deliverers from ignorance. Yet what
you have just said in answer to question 10 seems to imply this latter view.

Please explain.

483. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It is true they have fal en in one sense, but not through pride;
only through unwil ingness to imprison themselves, as I have just said, in finite
limited form. But this is quite a different thing from what the Theologians say.

They aver these angels sought to become gods and dethrone gods, which is
an absurdity. We say they were gods whom the law of evolution compel ed to
descend into matter, that is to say, to fal , but instead of submitting quietly to
the law and incarnating at the proper time, they delayed until man had

brutalized himself in his ignorance, and thus defiled themselves and the
bodies which the law compel ed them to inhabit. The Theologians now speak
of a hel into which they were hurled; and the occultists say the hel means
simply the human body, and there is no other hel than earth. The fact that

Christ and so many other solar gods—Hercules, etc.—descended into hel is
an al egory pointing to just such imprisonment in the physical body. They are
certainly our saviors, because without them we would be simply senseless
animals. Therefore what the Theologians say is a perfect lible. They speak of
angels who wanted to become gods.

Mr.—: Is there no limit to the cycle of necessity after the egos attained the
state Nirvâna? Is there a possibility of having to go through succeeding
rounds?

Mme. Blavatsky: The universe that they wil inhabit wil be immeasurably
higher than the one they have inhabited, and therefore it is one more step to
perfection—more and more and more.

Mr. B. Keightley: One question that suggests: When there is one more step to
perfection, does it mean to carry with it the idea that as it is analogous to this
universe, so, on the higher universe, there wil be pleasure and pain?

Mme. Blavatsky: As the Absolute has never taken me into his confidence (for
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which he is to be blamed) I cannot answer such questions as that.

Mr. B. Keightley: The question is whether pleasure and pain are real y limited
to our plane of consciousness.

484. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I would ask you, if you please, what is pleasure and pain? Is
it an eternal entity, or eternal entities?

Mr. B. Keightley: Why I put the question was this. For instance, we know there
is differentiation—

Mme. Blavatsky: We know there is differentiation? We understand, there is
differentiation and are very proud of it, but whether there wil be a
differentiation of the same kind or another in other Manvantaras, this remains a
secret. Even between the Absolute and the Logos.

Mr. Kingsland: Isn’t it possible that during another Manvantara everything may
be arranged into nines or sixes, instead of sevens?

Mme. Blavatsky: It may be in the fol owing Manvantara that two and two may
not make four any longer, but it may make twelve. Something wil happen we
cannot expect.

Mr.—: Has there ever been number one evolved?

Mme. Blavatsky: Number one would be a difficult thing. It dosen’t yield to any
combination, it is unity. We must have two, at least, and two wil never make a
figure. Two is a despised number. Despised the Pythagoreans. They were two
straight lines that started from nowhere, and did not know where they went to.

Two we must not take, also.

Mr.—: Then three is the lowest number?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the first one that you can make anything. You cannot
make of one anything, or of two. One is unity. It may be endless and infinite.

Mr.—: That is al from the point of view of the seven?

Mr.—: Unless it is a circle.

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Mme. Blavatsky: The circle if you please is “the” the root of number one,
which is no number.

485. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: You speak a good deal about various Gnostic systems; there
are one or two points that wanted clearing up a little. Question 13, page 194: If

Fetahil, as stated later, represents the host of the Lunar Pitris who created a
senseless man, and if he is “a stil purer spirit” than Bahak-Zivo, what does the
latter correspond to?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Nazarene business is not at al plain, and is ful of
metaphor, chiefly directed against the God of the Jews and their opponents.

Therefore it is so mixed up that nobody wil know which is which. He is
represented sometimes as a higher spirit, and sometimes as a lower. Bahak-

Zivo corresponds sometimes to Christ, and sometimes to other things. I have
been bringing this in, not at al that you should come and ask me to learn it,
because everyone can go and read it in the original, who reads Latin. But why I
have quoted it here is, to show that in every system, high or low, the “Secret

Doctrine” was repeated, and there were things which were al based on truth.

But you need not go out of your way to make me teach you the Nazarene
system.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 14, page 194: “Bahak-Zivo...is ignorant of Orcus.”

What does “Orcus” symbolize?

Mme. Blavatsky: Orcus symbolizes many things: Death, Hel ; it symbolizes
what the Buddhists would cal Mâra—many, many things. Orcus is a place of

Darkness and Desolation, and since Bahak-Zivo was not acquainted with

Orcus, that is to say, with the corresponding contrasted pole of life, he could
not create beings, because he could not make a finite being. It is just the same
as the thing which Śiva throws out, which is more necessary then the Prince of

Denmark to “Hamlet.”

Mr. B. Keightley: That is al in the questions.

Mr. Old: I was trying to evolve that idea which was generated with me, which
you cal wisdom. A thought did strike me a short time ago, that was in respect
to the numerical basis of a Manvantara, or order of creation. There was the
number seven as the root basis of this Manvantara. Do you speak of our
limited Manvantara, or the

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486. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Maha-Manvantara?

Mme. Blavatsky: Of al the Manvantaras that the Hindus speak about. Maybe it
is of the solar system only.

Mr. Old: You speak of it in The Secret Doctrine as root number of nature.

Mme. Blavatsky: In this Manvantara.

Mr. Old: You say in another Manvantara we may have five.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly we may, because Nature changes entirely in
her manifestations and forms. Now go and see, if you please, and ask
medicine, ask botany—you find in every department the septenary
everywhere. Even the diseases can be septenary, 7, 14, 21, and so on. Here
is a doctor; he wil tel you everything is in seven. Take the flakes of snow you
wil find in it the septenary number. You find six little spots and a seventh in the
middle. You take a drop of water, it splashes, and becomes a pentagon, and a
six-pointed star. See what Tyndal writes about it. Once we had a discussion
about it. There is not a thing where you can escape it. Al this goes by the
weeks of the moon, weeks by septenates and everything.

Mr. Old: Of course that is quite true, but our scope of observation is so limited,
that it is tied down to this plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then extend it. Try to see it with your third eye, and don’t
look only with your two eyes. And try also to think with your spiritual brain.

Mr. Old: I want to identify myself with somebody or some Monad outside our
solar system altogether.

Mme. Blavatsky: You cannot fail to identify yourself because it wil identify you
if you don’t. Every one of us, we were before and wil be afterwards—not in our
personalities, but in our higher selves. We may defy those selves as much as
we like, yet they remain immortal. We cannot get rid of them, but they can get
rid of us. Every and each

487. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

consciousness of ours wil feel it, and wil see that it is entirely linked to it. It
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cannot be separated.

Mr. Old: Then the number of changes in mere units for the basic number
would be seven. 2 you do not count, 1 is Absolute, 2 is nothing, and you have

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 as possibilities, that is to say, you have 7 possibilities.

Mme. Blavatsky: But the 7 are the principal forces in Nature. The 7 are al the

7 planets, the 7 planes of consciousness. It is the great mystery number. Take
the Kabbalah; you know yourself how the name is written, even the name of

Tetragrammaton. If you put it in the Jewish letters, you make of it 3 and 4. Out
of these, the 4 represent the 7 lower Sephirot, and the 3, the 3 higher

Sephirot. If you add Shekhinah and Ain-Soph, you wil have 9, not the 12,
because the 3 are apart. Even the year is divided, because it divides itself
natural y. Everything is divided into that.

Mr. Old: Then the term nature—does that apply to everything in the solar
system, or right away to infinity.

Mme. Blavatsky: It occurs in our solar system. At al events, I can’t say to
anything outside of it, and you won’t find high adepts who wil tel you much
outside of the solar system.

Mr. B. Keightley: You said just now number 7 is found in the solar year. I don’t
see quite how it comes in. It does not divide into 365.

Mme. Blavatsky: Ask Old, he’l tel you.

Mr. Old: There was a difference. It was a matter of 360, the difference
between 360 lunar, and 370 solar—that is to say, reckoning by digits or the
degrees in the zodiac, apparent degrees—mathematical degrees, I should
say. And the difference between these two was 365, which gives a solar circle
roughly.

Mme. Blavatsky: Very roughly, because in the tropical year it won’t agree.

488. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: So the true solar year is 365 and a quarter, about and a
fraction less than a quarter; but then I don’t think that divides into 7.

Mr. Old: No, certainly not. Not unless we proceed to minutes or seconds. I
don’t know how it would work out then.

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Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t see the 7.

Mr. Old: I wil try and work it out.

Mme. Blavatsky: You wil have 7 always, because 7 Manvantaras go in that,
and the 7 in the tropical year, and the 7 in the solar year and the cycles. Wel if
you reckon or calculate you wil see that the cycles come to number 7.

Mr.—: Just now, madam, you were speaking of the word Nature as applying
only to the solar system. Do you mean the planetary chain?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, the whole of the system.

Mr.—: The surely it includes the other ever-invisible planet.

Mr. B. Keightley: Certainly I think so.

Mr.—: That is divisible by 7.365 days 4 hours 49 minutes, 49 seconds.

Mr. Old: The latest calculation is 365 days 5 hours, making nearly 6 hours. And
if you add one leap day, you get beyond this, so that in about 213 years you
would require to drop a day.

Mme. Blavatsky: That shows that you have to calculate as the Hindus do,
because they calculate, and sometimes they drop out, and sometimes they
bring in. They always bring them to sevens. Look at their old astronomical
works, the buildings in Benares, and in the old cities, they are al worked on
that system. They were most curious machines for their buildings, instruments,
and so on. The chief constel ations are al septenaries. The seven Pleiades
and the

489. 16. Meeting April 25, 1889

Great Bear and everywhere are al seven. When I come to think about this
blessed Sabbath and the seventh day and rest that is taken bodily from the
periods, the Manvantaric periods, the seven races and so on, I say they don’t
understand it. That is the day of rest, that is to say the Pralaya. They come and
they make in this blessed England a regular Pralaya on the Sundays, so that
everyone is ready to go and cut off his head and die; because to begin with
the ancient Jews did not have a week at al , they did not have names for days
of the week. They had only one, it was the seventh day, they knew and nothing
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else. They were calculating by the moon, the lunar calculation.

Mr. Old: How far back do the Jews’ days date? We have 300 B.C., we have
the seven days of the week given according to the planets. I
suppose it would be a period quite anterior to that you refer to?

Mme. Blavatsky: They never had a week.

Mr. Old: Was it the Assyrians?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Chaldeans had. The Athenian week was ten days, the

Roman eight days. It was only the Hindus who had seven days, and had a
planetary name for each day of the week, and it is from the Hindus that it
comes. They went and began calculating, and took the names of the solar
angels, which belong to the solar calculation, and they shoved them and stuck
them on the weeks which belong to the lunar calculations, so they made a
mess of it. It is a terrible mess in astronomy; they have mixed up the colors,
the metals, they have mixed up everything, as you know yourself.

Proceedings closed.

17.

Theosophical Society.

Blavatsky Lodge, May 2, 1889.

Meeting at 17 Lansdowne Road, Hol and Park W.

Mr. Kingsland in the chair

Mr. B. Keightley: You quoted this passage: “And there was war in heaven.”

etc. (reads from The Secret Doctrine). Question 1. “Michael and his angels
fought against the Dragon and his angels” (page 194). What is the “Dragon,”

exactly?

Mme. Blavatsky: The “Dragon” is so many things, my beloved brethren, that
my answer depends on what you mean by the question. In which of the seven
symbolical meanings do you want me to explain it? If your answer refers to

Revelation, then I cannot answer it, as I would have to tread on forbidden
grounds—not because I am a Christian, St John’s Revelation is not a Christian
work, but is simply the Christianized form of prophecy, which is universal—and

I can assure you it is one of the most occult things for anyone who
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understands it. Now, astronomical y, of course, in one sense—for there are
several—the “Dragon” is the moon producing an eclipse over the sun. This
you al know, and astrologists, more than any anyone else. Mystical y, in
general, it is matter or the lower self. It was cal ed the “Dragon” over which the
sun’s spirit, or the higher self, triumphed during the trials of initiation. Now the
third meaning, also an occult meaning, is in The Secret Doctrine, and in
connection with the al egorical “fal .” The “Dragon” symbolized the sons of
wisdom incarnating in humanity, and thus hurled into the Hel of matter, which is
our bodies, because there is no Hel outside of our own dear persons here. It
is humanity, and on this earth, that is Hel , and nowhere else. Four, in esoterical
al egorical history the

492. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

“Dragon” represents the secret wisdom which was obscured and driven from
the field by the dead letter of dogma in ritualism; while five, Christian theology
has availed itself of al these Pagan legends to build up the dogma of “Satan,”

the foremost pil ar of the Christian religious scheme, because if there were not
devils there would be no Christian religion. Take away the Devil, and what wil
remain? Why should Christ come to have saved, and who would he have
saved? So that the Devil real y is the great prop of Christianity, and so you
must, everyone of you who feels like it, have a great reverence for the Devil.

This is my advise to you al ; I do not suppose any of you wil accept it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then further on you compare the cosmogony of the old

Gnostics with that of the “Secret Doctrine,” and you speak about the “Seven

Stel ars.” Question 2, page 195: The “Seven Stel ars,” being the product of the

Astral Light and blind Matter, must be evil. Is, then, the influence of the seven
planets al evil as far as man is concerned?

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not think so. Why should you go and insult the poor
planets? The term planets here does not refer to the seven sacred planets at
al , but means simply they are planetary bodies within our system. If the
expression is erroneous or leads to any equivocation, in the second edition
you have only to make a mark there and change it. But this is what it means.

The seven bad stel ars are the progeny of Saturn and the moon. That is to say,
corruptness in the Nazarenes representing in one sense blind, frantic matter
ever devouring its own progeny, is identical with Saturn; while [ ], the mother
of that [ ], in the Nazarenes is the moon, at the same time that she is the lower

Astral Light. Some mystics assert that these seven bad Stel ars are
represented by seven moons, though there are eight. There is a old Coptic
legend which related how the mother or the moon, after her union and junction
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with her son, Saturn, in order to prevent him from devouring his own children
cast him down on to the earth, where they became the seven capital sons. It is
they who are credited with the building of everything material on

493. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

the earth. Even western astrologers are familiar with the evil effects of the
junction of Saturn with the moon. Now, Mr. Old, tel us something about that. In
what way is it bad?

Mr. Old: It has so many renderings, and the influences are so various, it
depends entirely upon the radical tendency to take that particular form of evil—
as for instance the corrupt tendencies at birth which you understand is nothing
less than the Karmic horoscope. If the tendency were towards martial or
inflammatory evils and diseases and rash precipitous forms of mind, then of
course they would not come in the same degree under the influence of Saturn.

But if you were predisposed to melancholia and so catch cold and so suffer al
those evils which arise out of adjustion and contraction, frigidity, then you
would come remarkably under the influence of Saturn at the time of this
junction and according to the position in your own Karmic map. Then you
would suffer accordingly. So that you see it depends entirely upon the angular
distance with respect to the space of the birth, and then also the sign of the
zodiac from which it transpires.

Mme. Blavatsky: In astrology I believe there are many good things, only
somehow or other they do not reckon as we do. Of course it comes to the
same results; but there is a difference.

Mr. B. Keightley: Saturn is regarded in astrology as the most evil- producing of
al the planets.

Mr. Old: Certainly. And at the same time, you know, it has been said that the
origin of the name is [ ], the pure fire. So that he has a reverse aspect also;
whereas he is the great evil, he is also the great good, in this sense.

Mme. Blavatsky: Just like the Hindu Śiva. He is destructive because he is the
regenerative power; because a seed cannot come to life unless it first
perishes, he destroys only to regenerate.

Mr. Old: I noticed that particularly when you spoke of the

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Dragons—that is to say, the [ ], the eighth sign of the zodiac,1 which
corresponds to the eighth house of death; and know you eight is a very bad
number.

Mr. B. Keightley: Wel ! It is al matter, matter, matter.

Mr. Old: And while you said that, I have no doubt they also noticed it was also
the symbol of archaic wisdom.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , the “Dragons” are, which I wil give you here by and by

—al the “Dragons” were the emblems. They cal ed the sons of the “Dragons,”

the initiates. In China, also where the “Dragon” is the symbol of power and the
symbol of the Imperial family, the “Dragons” are considered very high beings.

It is an al egory.

Mr. Old: I suppose the New Testament assertion is a Gnostic assertion?

(Quotes from the Testament.)

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 3, page 199: “The older wheels rotated downward
and upward...” Does the expression “rotated downward and upward” refer to
the outbreathing, which occupies the first half of any Manvantara, and the

“inbreathing,” which takes place in its second half? Or does it refer to the
direction of the rotation which takes place about the Laya centers, upon which
the wheels are formed?

Mme. Blavatsky: It refers to neither and to both and so much more, which I
cannot give out now. You wil have to wait for it. Have patience a little.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 4. You say that man must awaken the three “seats”

to life and activity. Do you mean by this phrase that the three “seats” have no
life and activity on their own planes, i.e. per se, or, merely, that our human
consciousness on this plane must be awakened to perceive and reflect their
activity?

1 [Scorpio.]

495. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It refers to what is said in The Secret Doctrine, and very
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plainly; whatever the three higher “seats” in cosmos may be, the three
corresponding higher “seats” in man—whether we cal them states or seats of
consciousness, or principles—have to be awakened before they can be
attuned to the three higher planes in cosmos. And once they are so attuned,
the knowledge wil {reveal} sufficiently what their sources and fons et origo are.

It is knowledge enough. Besides which, The Secret Doctrine teems with this.

And I am not going to answer things that The Secret Doctrine explains. If you
who put the questions do not chose to read The Secret Doctrine, I am not
going to repeat it like a pol parrot, because it is perfectly useless asking me
questions that are impossible of explanation. Ask me questions that are dark
then I am perfectly ready and at your service, but not to say things which have
been a great deal better put in The Secret Doctrine than I can give you.

Mr. Old: You see, H.P.B., I had some little hand in formulating that question.

You see, it leaves us in the dark to a certain extent; because, although perhaps
reference is found and ful information given elsewhere, stil in confining
ourselves to respectable limits one evening it did not give me the idea that
there was any activity per se.

Mme. Blavatsky: Where? In the human “seats,” or the cosmic “seats”?

Mr. Old: In the human, because you speak of that being awakened.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly, there are none. But once that they are awakened,
they must be attuned to the seats of the cosmic planes, or else I can assure
you it won’t produce good results, because the man wil become a

Frankenstein Jr.—everything that is horrid. For those are the rare cases when
the higher powers are awakened and put to bad use by matter, which is so
intensely stronger that it forces a man into the worst of vices and black magic
and therefore he ends in Avichi. These are the rare cases spoken about in

Esoteric Buddhism.

496. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: It is what Sinnett cal s “evil spirituality.”

Mr. Old: Does the elevation of the spiritual consciousness precede or come
after the awakening? Or is it the cause of the awakening?

Mme. Blavatsky: The cause of awakening depends a good deal upon the
higher Manas, and how it perceives the universe, and how it can discern right
from the wrong—for the man has the faculty in him of discerning, real y, that
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which is wrong universal y (I do not mean about Mrs. Grundy’s code of honor).

Then he can attune his seats with those on the higher cosmic plane. And then
he becomes at one with Nature; he becomes a co-worker with Nature, he
helps Nature, and therefore Nature helps him. But, gentlemen, unfortunately,
the three—excepting persons who lead very high lives—this certainly don’t
awaken. There is the higher manas, the intel igence in man in the physical
brain. We see plenty of intel ectual men, but they are nothing but—they are
higher intel ectual animals. They have no spirituality in them.

Mr. Old: Would not you rather say then it is the men, the individuals, who don’t
awaken to the existence of these three higher principles—not the principles
which awaken?

Mme. Blavatsky: I never said the cosmic seats have to be awakened.

Perhaps it is badly put; it is the fault of the editors. You see, I don’t understand
the value of the English language, and I had about six or seven editors, and
they have made a nice mess of it. For me it is perfectly written. Now, if I
happen to have written it in such a way as to lead into error, it is the right thing
to make a sign or mark and correct it in the second edition.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think it is to a certain extent expressed, because she says
here: it remains with him to attune the three higher states in himself, but before
he can attune these states he must awaken the “seats” to life and activity.2

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not the “seats” at al in cosmos. It is just the same as if
you told me that a mosquito could influence the Himalayas.

2 [ The Secret Doctrine, 1: 199.]

497. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mr. Old: You mean to say their correspondences on this plane have to be
awakened.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly.

Mr. Kingsland: If you said, instead of “seats,” “sense” or “principles,” there
would be no confusion. I don’t think seats is quite a good word.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why don’t you put it for the second or third edition.

Mr. Kingsland: Even “sense” would be a better word than “seats.”

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Mr. B. Keightley: It is the occult words.

Mme. Blavatsky: “Seats” means vehicles.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is put in converted commas.

Mr. Old: We are quite right in saying that whether we know it or not, these three
principles—Âtma-Buddhi, and Buddhi-Manas—al have activity on their own
planes.

Mme. Blavatsky: They have but not with respect to man. They don’t influence,
so to say the lower quaternary, which is the personal man.They have certainly
there activity, but it does not influence, and therefore the lower quaternary
remains the animal, the personality, that is for eating and drinking, and
selfishness, and money-making, and political things and so on. I wish them joy.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 5, page 200: In the diagram, Hod and Netzach are
figured as laying on two planes at once, which is not the case for the
corresponding “globes” in the eastern system. Is this intentional?

Mm e. Blavatsky: It is done not intentional y, but because it was a thing of
necessity. We live in a three-dimensional space, and a certain limited set of
geometrical figures are given to us. The Hod and Netzach are not on two
planes at once; but as a sphere cannot be

498. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

wel put astride on a straight line otherwise than by seeming on two planes,
how could I do it? The diagram could not be done otherwise, if the orthodox

Kabbalistic arrangement had to be retained at al . I tried to retain it, and I could
not do otherwise. Mind you, I take the seven lower sephirot, I do not take the
whole ten. I leave others, as I don’t mention them here. They put the whole ten
on four planes: the archetypal world, the intel ectual, and so on; I could not do
it because we have a thing of seven, therefore I had to come and cram these
in. Moreover, remembering that the sephirot letter is on four planes, and
composed of ten sephirot and in the Kabbalah, how could one arrange the
thing otherwise, when only the seven lower sephirot were used? The Chaldean

Kabbalah, moreover, the book of Numbers, agrees perfectly with the eastern
arrangement, and disagrees with the present orthodox Kabbalah in its
diagrams. This is no fault of The Secret Doctrine. Now look here. I had a rabbi
who had the real Book of Numbers—and there is another; I have only seen two
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in my life, and I don’t think there exist more. He had fragments of the Chaldean

Kabbalah. With that, when I came to take notes (I had large books), when I
came to compare with the Rosenroth translation,3 I saw they had changed it in
the most wonderful way. How can you have the Kabbalah of [ ], when the

Kabbalah was entirely lost in the thirteenth century? Moses de Leon, who is
accused of forgery (which is perfect nonsense), took al he could find. 4 What
did he do? He had, as so many links were missing, and so many things were
lost, to go to the eastern Christians, and to the Chaldean Gnostics to ask them
to help, since they had their own Kabbalah. And the result is, you find more of

Christian eternity—the Virgin Mary, Joseph, etc.—than the wisdom of the old [

]. That is the result. Now, in the Chaldean Kabbalah, in the Book of Numbers,
you have the wisdom of the Hebrew initiates, but you have not got it in this;
they have been so interfering with it, that

3 [Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian kabbalist, 1631-1689, known for his Latin translation of Hebrew texts,

Kabbala Denudata, three of which were rendered into English by S.L. Mathers in 1887.]

4 [Spanish rabbi and kabbalist, 1250-1305, who published the Zohar, which was attributed to the second century

A.D. rabbi, Shimon bar Yohai.]

499. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mr. Isaac Myer may say what he likes, and Mr. Mathers also; I say there is
more flapdoddle then truth. There is a thing just as Isaac Myer says; did you
hear about him, Mr. Cobb,5 of Mr. Isaac Myer, who wrote the Qabbalah?6

Mr. Cobb: I did not.

Mme. Blavatsky: He writes perfectly truly that the Kabbalah written there is one
of the eleventh century, which is written by Ben Judah.7 They thought the man
an Arabic philosopher. Very wel , he has these things perfectly. Many of his
fragments are perfectly Kabbalistic, and just the same as the Chaldean

Kabbalah; whereas you don’t find it if you compare it with the other. I say it is
more than that.

Mr. Mead: These Chaldean Gnostics are they the Gnostics of [ ]?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. They had dogma enough to throw everything into
confusion, and that is why you find now by the methods, by these Gemara,8
you can do anything you like; you can find in Kabbalah Washington and the

President of the United States: you can find anything in the Kabbalah.

Mr. Kingsland: Are there any more questions with reference to this diagram?

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Mr. B. Keightley: There is a question relating to the note to the diagram.

Question 6. (Note to diagram.) Can you define more clearly the term “Cosmic

Consciousness”?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is an easy question, this. “Cosmic Consciousness” has
been defined hundreds of times in The Secret Doctrine as the

5 [John Storer Cobb, 1842-1904, one of the original Councilors of the Theosophical Society from its New York
days.]

6 [Isaac Myer of Philadelphia, 1836-1902, whose 1888 Qabbalah H.P.B. cites in The Secret Doctrine.]

7 [Solomon ibn Gabirol.]

8 [Gemara is that part of the Talmud dealing with rabbinical law; perhaps Gematria, which deals with the
relationships between words and their numerical values, is meant here.]

500. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

col ective or aggregate consciousness of those Dhyâni-Chohans, cal ed the
builders of the universe, physical and spiritual, or that which the Masons cal

(making a plurality of unity) the architects or the G.A.O.T.U.,9 so that the

Cosmic Consciousness wil come after.

Mr. Kingsland: There is a question which I had here.

Mr. Keightley: Page 199, last paragraph. You have spoken of “these seven
planes (which) correspond to the seven states of (human) consciousness in
man,” and in the note {on page 200}, the second note to the diagram, you say

“the seven states of human consciousness pertain to quite another question.”

Speaking of the diagram you say, “these are the four lower planes of Cosmic

Consciousness...the seven states of human consciousness pertain to quite
another question.” These two quotations appear to contradict each other. What
then is the connection between the seven planes as given in the diagram, and
the seven states of consciousness? And what is the “other question”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Ah! But you see, you want me to give you three volumes,
and I cannot give it to you. Remember only one thing, that the seven states of
consciousness in man are not only states of consciousness as Herbert

Spencer understands it, but also the feeling, the consciousness of the ego.

For instance, I am smoking a cigarette, and I am pitching into you, and so on.

There are many states of consciousness. Those states of which I speak
belong to one order, and others to another. I don’t mean to say they are not the
same, but there is an infinite gradation of al of them. Now, there are the higher
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states of metaphysical consciousness. Can you compare it with the
consciousness I have of having taken a cigarette, and smoking it?

Mr. Kingsland: What is the order of those states of consciousness, which
refer to those seven planes? It wil al come in analogy. If you read it
afterwards, you wil find it al dovetails.

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t know whether this is legitimate, but it

9 [Great Architect of the Universe.]

501. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

is what struck me. The seven states of human consciousness are practical y
seven states of consciousness on the terrestrial plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a consciousness while we sleep—during sleep,
and a consciousness while we are awake. There is a consciousness when we
look mechanical y at something. There is one consciousness {that} takes in
external objects, and the other goes wool-gathering. There are many degrees
of consciousness; you cannot go and cal consciousness al one.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yet get to this, the seven planes of Cosmic

Consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is consciousness that I am positively in India with this
lamp, and here I am in the North Pole.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think there is where the distinction lies, that the seven
human states are analogous to the seven cosmic states, but they cover a very
much smal er range.

Mr. Kingsland: The fact of the matter is there are seven states of
consciousness on each of the seven planes.

Mme. Blavatsky: You remember what Cobb said the other day. He began to
give us the mathematical series that never ended. There was some seventh
question that I got mad over, and which has been asked hundreds of times. I
said this has been stated very clearly in The Secret Doctrine, and I refuse to
answer questions that have been already in previous writings, and are in The

Secret Doctrine, been stated on Thursdays. I refuse to pass time on

Thursday nights in more repetition.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Wel , question 8. Question 8, page 200: In occultism, are the
terms “seed” and “atom” synonymous?

Mme. Blavatsky: There, there! Isn’t that the same thing?

Mr. B. Keightley: You give a hint there as to the question we have been
hunting after a good deal: the real meaning of the word “atom.”

502. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You are the most inquisitive people I ever met. If it were not
your unmentionables that protect you, you would al be Mother Eves, every one
of you! You are the most inquisitive people I ever saw in my life, and you are
the most impertinent. You cannot come and ask one thing after another,

Tuesday after Monday, Wednesday after Tuesday, and so on. You want to
jump from Monday to Saturday and from Saturday to Halifax. Upon my word, I
have no patience.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 9, page 201: Can you give us some more definite
idea—ie., an analogy on the physical plane—of what is meant here by “Cosmic

Desire” which “evolves into absolute Light”?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now there is a question for a modest young woman. The
answer is found in Hesiod’s cosmogony. What is the use of attempting to learn
occultism and eastern esoteric philosophy, if one is not acquainted with the
exoteric classics? The reply to this is stated in The Secret Doctrine. Now I am
going to examine you. Have you read Hesiod’s cosmogony, Old?

Mr. Old: No.

Mme. Blavatsky: Have the goodness to go to the British Museum, and read it.

Mr. Cobb has read it. If you have not read it, what I do. Nevertheless, I wil
attempt to explain it again in a few words. Take Hesiod, and try and understand
what he says, and better stil , [ ] Phoenician cosmogony. There you wil find
that what [ ] cal s pure force is the principle of creation. It is identical with

Brahmâ’s wil to create, which you have read many times in the Vishnu

Purânas. In the primitive world cosmogonies, Chaos is not what it became
later on, or that on which the Spirit of God moved on the waters. It is not the [ ]

of Ovid, matter in its inert and confused or chaotic state. Chaos was space,
according to Aristotle, gaping space or the void—[ ].10 And after Hesiod,
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Chaos is absolutely limitless, it is the dark shoreless cloud of vapors, which
gives birth to the universe.

10 [In the original transcription ( chino) which dosen’t relate to the discussion; probably [ ]

Greek for vacuum or void, was meant.]

503. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Now, if you remember that the first of the three primordial elements at the first
flutter of differentiation were and are with Hesiod, Chaos,and, with Eros,
elements that were never conceived (as they were co-existent potentiality in al
eternity), you wil perhaps understand that which I say, that no more than
primordial Venus was Eros—that which both became in later ages. Now, Eros
means simply human love, and worse; but then, it meant the most solemn
metaphysical and divine thing. Eros was not at the beginning the wily God of

Love and passion with wings and arrows to wound the hearts of sentimental
ninnies with. There were no such fools, nor yet men enough; but he who is now

God of human love was simply an abstract idea, and image of the Divine
creative force—that universal force of attraction which causes particles to
congregate, combine, and correlate, and to produce a triad. Wel , that creative
force is our Fohat, who neither creates, nor does he produce anything per se
and by himself, but in virtue of his action, elements, as wel as beings, seek to
unite in polarity; from which unison results life. Remember that in the first
cosmogony out of Chaos are born Erebos, and Nyx, primordial and already
differentiated darkness divided into two principles, male and female, from
which two emanate the other two, Aether and {Hermera}, in the light of the
superior regions and that inferior or terrestrial atmosphere. Light is born of
darkness number two, darkness on the differentiated plane, and that darkness
begets light under the influence of creative love, or that which is cal ed there

“cosmic desire”; or again Fohat, the electric creative principles which make of
al one, and which produces the three, the correlation.

Mr. B. Keightley: What you have said there is very good, and it is a great deal
more than you have said anywhere in The Secret Doctrine.

Mme. Blavatsky: But I thought you stood there over me when I was writing.

Mr. Mead: Eros was always the first born of the Gods.

Mme. Blavatsky: Eros is the first born—he is not the first born, he is coeval.

Chaos, Eros and {Gaia} are coeval, therefore none of these

504. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889
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three elements are conceived, they are simply co-existent in eternity; only at
the moment of differentiation they manifest themselves. That is to say, out of
the subjective and the non-being comes being, and then after that they begin
to come on each other and react. This is the polarity, this electrical force, to
which belongs our blood and life and anything. It is life, in short.

Mr. Mead: Cupid is simply the lower aspect.

Mme. Blavatsky: Take Hesiod’s cosmogony, and see the enormous
difference there is between what Hesiod says and what latter on the
mythologies have invented. Even a few hundred years before our era, then it
was a most sublime thing, and pretended to the mysteries. And now they
made of it—I don’t know what.

Mr.—: How can Gaia be said to be coeval?

Mme. Blavatsky: Ask Hesiod; take him by the beard.

Mr. B. Keightley: It means the abstract.

Mme. Blavatsky: The female portion in Chaos.

Mr. Mead: The earth that know one has seen.

Mr. Old: There was just that word “absolute” that I have not, and if they made it
in connection with that, this absolute appears to be the effect of cosmic desire.

Wel now, the idea of the absolute as we postulate it—

Mme. Blavatsky: Why do you use the word absolute?

Mr. B. Keightley: It evolves into absolute light.

Mme. Blavatsky: On the manifested plane; if we take it metaphysical y again, I
say the Christians can make it into perfect light. When I say “Absolute” I quote
it or underline it. But when I put absolute, I just use the expression as perfect.

Mr. B. Keightley: Absolute light of the manifested plane.

505. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mr. Old: But Eros, or Lucifer, any one aspect, is that light?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly it is.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then you go on to say this: “now light without any shadow
would be absolute light,” etc. (reads from The Secret Doctrine). Question 10.

The idea of “fire” has usual y been associated in mystic writings with Spirit
rather than Matter. Can you tel us why you associate it here with the latter?

Mme. Blavatsky: Because I am not a mystic writer, and I try to make you
understand things a little less misty than they are. And you instead in thanking
me, criticize me. The physical, or the material and finite universe, is the
shadow thrown on the screen or il usion or Maya by eternal light, or the
universal fire. It symbolizes with every nation the creative deity. Primordial
matter is not our dense matter, but spirit; hence the spirit of creative desire
again. How can you dissociate spirit from matter? Can you do it, when the latter
spirit or matter is materialized spirit, and spirit is potential y matter? That is what
we say in occultism. If mystic writings held less to poetry and fantastic
imagery, and a little more to plain statement of fact, they would be less misty,
and those who study them more positive than they are now about the real end
of things. Fire is spirit and fire is matter and if a particle of the London slush
can be found without the two qualities, fire and spirit then mankind had better
except at once the anthropomorphic idea of the Church Fathers, and the dead
letter of the Bible, and not its philosophy. You cannot come and say what the
mystic writers could write in those days, when for every truth it was said there
was immediately an inquisition, and so many cardinals to burn and roast you.

Now you won’t find mystic writers; now it is time to state plain facts, because
there is no one to burn them any more—except after death.

Mr. B. Keightley: In this little extract from the commentaries, speaking about
the world germs and so on, you say (reads from The Secret Doctrine).

Question 11. It is said that “the older (bodies)

506. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

attract the younger, while others repel them.” What are these “others” here
spoken of, and why should it be the older bodies that attract?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose they are wiser, less green than others. On this I
can say no more than is given in The Secret Doctrine. There is such a thing as
attraction and repulsion, and in occultism it stands in the place of gravity, the
scientific teachings about which we reject. This belongs to occult physics,
before the turn of which comes for us on Thursday evenings the twentieth
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century must have dawned. I give you everything I can give; don’t you ask me
for more.

Mr. Old: Then I suppose occultism recognizes an attraction which has no
relation to bulk. It overthrows the accepted Western idea.

Mme. Blavatsky: If I have one thing wel in my memory it is the 20, 30,
perhaps 100 conversations we had with Mr. Cobb, sitting there. When it came
out here with the fourth-dimensional space—which was ridiculous, because the
fourth-dimensional space, taken simply, means the fal of matter through
matter, the impenetrability of matter—and we had many conversations; and he
knows perfectly wel in occultism no one believes in this gravity question. We
believe attraction and repulsion. Is it not so, Mr. Cobb?

Mr. Cobb: I believe it is so.

Mme. Blavatsky: You remember what conversations we had in New York?

And you were the first one who said it.

Mr. Cobb: I do not know about that, I am sure.

Mme. Blavatsky: You said always it was attraction and repulsion.

Mr. Cobb: I did not know I was the first at al .

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , it is the old occult axiom.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 12, page 202: In these pages you distinctly state
that, even in the higher phases of cosmic evolution, there rages a “struggle for
existence.” Now it is on this struggle for existence, regarded as a universal
law, that the materialists base

507. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

their justification for human selfishness. We would therefore ask: (a) Where
does this “struggle” for existence” cease: (1) in reference to the cosmos; (2)

as regards humanity? (b) How is it that this cosmic law is suspended by that of
altruism in the case of human beings?

Mme. Blavatsky: The struggle for existence rages universal y in sidereal as in
terrene spaces. This is the first fundamental law in nature, the visible effects of
which materialistic science has cal ed correlation of physical forces in matter.

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But this applies only and solely to differentiated matter; it has nothing to do with
individual or even personal units, which ought to be, if they are not, guided by
the higher laws of the upper triad and not by the instinctual impulses acting on
the plane of the lower quarternary. The struggle for existence begins with the
physical molecules and ends with those animals which are quite irrational. This
is therefore no justification for human selfishness as man is an animal on a
higher plane of being and consciousness than is the animal. The man is a
higher animal on a higher plane of consciousness than the animal; even the
most abject savage is. I answer with regard to physical cosmos; the struggle
wil come only with the coming of Pralaya. With respect to its living and
conscious beings, however, the [ ] ceases to operate at that human stage
where consciousness and reason make their appearance. It is in man alone
that the higher divine triad may be ful y active, but this triad is trinity in unity, and
unity or homogeneity characterizes the plane of its action. In the four lower
planes of cosmos, on the contrary, it is the law of diversity and heterogeneity
which reign supreme. Hence those beings who are endowed with the higher
triad come under its laws, not under those of the lower quaternary, which act
only upon those beings, atoms or things in which rationality is stil an
underdeveloped potentiality. Therefore since the law of being is unity, the
higher self in him, it fol ows that the individual human being can only attain his
complete and perfect development by acting in perfect unity, that is to say
harmony, with al other men. Now (b). The struggle for existence which exists
today among men proves only that firstly, man has not yet ful y emerged from
his savage animal condition, his Manas not yet being ful y developed in

508. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

this our Fourth Round, for it wil be only in the fifth; and secondly that the great
men of learning who proclaim selfishness as the great law of human life are,
their learning and intel ect notwithstanding, not on a much {higher} plane
themselves. In other words, these learned gentlemen are stil animals.

Whoever wants to go and tel them, let them. What have you got to say? Are
you going to take up the defense of the men of learning—of the F.R.S.’s11 and
so on?

Mr. Kingsland: There is a question of mine that rather bears upon that, if I
might read it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Do please.

Mr. Kingsland: Is it the case that no human being, adept, or initiate can
progress during the present round beyond what humanity wil be at the close of
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the Seventh Race, or can they progress as far as what humanity wil be at the
close of the Seventh Round? Is there not some limit beyond which they
cannot progress as individuals, but must wait for the development of humanity
as a whole?

Mme. Blavatsky: Assuredly, the Seventh Round. They cannot— greatest
adepts cannot. When I say the word adepts in the plural, it is too bumptious. I
have heard of one only, or two—one at the beginning of each age that may
progress and be in that state in which man wil be in the Seventh Round;
beyond that they cannot. No one can go beyond his Manvantara, not the
highest adepts.

Mr. Kingsland: Then that is real y the basis of everyone helping humanity. It is
real y helping themselves?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. It is the most logical thing and the plainest in
the world. People wil not understand that by hurting their neighbors they hurt
themselves. If it is not now, it wil be in another incarnation. Of course if you
don’t believe in it, it is another thing. But if you believe in it, it wil be so,
because if I hurt this finger the whole of my body wil feel it. I may neglect it,

11 [Fellows of the Royal Society, England’s oldest scientific body, founded in 1662.]

509. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

but it may come in five years, because not the smal est little things remain
without effects. Our universe is a concatenation of causes and effects. There
is not the smal est thing that we can do to our brothers or neighbors—or even
persons—that we won’t suffer for, and the whole humanity also. It is just the
same when you disturb an enormous pool of water; if you disturb but in one
place, then every drop of water in that pool wil feel it; there wil be reaction. I
say that this selfishness of races, of individuals; of diversity of religion; of
everything, this is the great curse not only of the nineteenth century, but it wil
last so long as we do not change or become a little better than we are. But this
humanity here, nothing can be compared with. No imagination can create
devils in hel as bad and as wicked as humanity is on the whole. Every race
hates the other. One race goes and spits on the other; another says: “I am the
one.” It is something terrible to look at. Man, instead of becoming better
spiritual y every day, becomes worse and worse and worse. This selfishness
that you think—“everything for me”—it is a thing which hurts you most; this wil
be proven to you logical y as 2 and 2 make 4; it cannot fail to do so. When they
come and speak to me about a struggle, I say, the materialists go and say:

“The struggle for existence is the great law; therefore let us go and annex a
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country, as the Russians go and annex places”; but you begin by putting stuff
in your guns and shooting out of them at these unfortunate people—as they
did last year in Burma, where about 200 were shot. That is the brotherly love;
and they cal themselves Christians. Good Heavens! Why, they are devils, al
of them! They are not human beings, al those who go and make war and kil
people and hurt everyone.

Mr. Old: But apart from any effects we may make either individual y or as a
race, is there not a law in the human universe which prescribes our making a
certain advance? Is there no law which limits our advance during a certain
age?

Mme. Blavatsky: There are certain boundaries; you cannot go further.

Nobody expects you to become omniscient gods al at once, or angels and
the kindest men; but there are limits, that the more

510. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

civilization progresses the more man becomes wicked and selfish and the
more it is the poor who suffer on account of the rich. The misery and the
suffering never was greater on this earth than it is in the nineteenth century,
which is the accursed age among al ages.

Mr. Hall: I suppose there wil be a reaction?

Mme. Blavatsky: And the reaction wil be a terrible one. Look at the socialists.

It is the highest and the noble-minded; notwithstanding their efforts it is the
anarchism that is produced. And when the time comes that the people starve
wholesale everywhere, I can assure you there is no law that wil be able to
impede the movement.

Mr. Hall: Do you think it wil ever come?

Mme. Blavatsky: You have great faith in your 10,000 policemen. Fortunately
the time has not come yet. If they go on as they do it is something terrible. I
don’t mean England alone. Show to me the country where people are not
starving. With every new invention that comes, there are several who become
mil ionaires, and in proportion there are so many thousands who starve. That
seems to be the law.

Mr. Hall: I should not think the reaction wil be quite so severe as that. It wil be
met through legislation.

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Mme. Blavatsky: I invite you to read my editorial in Lucifer. 12 I have poured al
my heart there, and I can assure you I did not pay them compliments. They
may abuse me as much as they like. For me and for every Theosophist there
ought to be no distinction between races, color, creed, ideas or anything.

A Lady: There ought to be.

Mme. Blavatsky: But there is, unfortunately. Look at the Anglo- Indians;13 look
at the supreme contempt they show for the Hindus

12 [“Our Cycle and the Next,” Lucifer, May 1889.]

13 [The term in H.P.B.’s day meant the British domiciled in India: it has come to mean those in India of British
and Indian parentage.]

511. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

who are intel ectual y and spiritual y a thousand times higher than we are.

“Inferior race.” Inferior for what? Why, Englishmen were not even in the state
of molecules in space when India was old with wisdom, and they come and
speak about the Hindus being an inferior race! Now this is that pride of which it
is spoken in the Bible, and I verily believe al you English say you were the
fal en angels. Every one of you are devils from your wickedness.

Mr. Kingsland: Is it not possible for the different races to incarnate in another
race? May we not have been Indians on previous incarnations?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes; or you would not be as you are. You are sure to be, al
of you who are so proud—I tel Sinnett every day that I see him, he is sure to
be an outcast in India for his sins. And he does not like it at al .

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 13, page 204: The nuclei of cosmic matter after
generation take el iptic and parabolic courses. The former, owing to their
inferior velocity, are general y absorbed by suns, [ ] the latter escape
absorption by their greater velocity. Can any explanation be given of this
original difference of velocity, on which the whole future evolution of the

“nucleus” depends?

Mme. Blavatsky: The velocity with which a nucleus starts on its sidereal
career depends in the first place on the “hour” of its birth. By hour I mean the
stage or period of the universal life cycle at which it starts upon its life
pilgrimage. Of these stages there are seven to which the Brahmins refer as
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the seven creations, and which in Genesis are cal ed the six but ought to be
cal ed the seven days of creation. Now, if you ask me why the seven days and
not the six, I answer because the seventh day which is described in Genesis
as the day of rest real y represents the seventh stage of creation. It is not one
of ful rest or inactivity, but simply represents that period when everything has
been harmonized and came into equilibrium, and when the evolutionary
impulse has slackened down to a uniform rate of motion and everything
assumed an orderly and uninterrupted

512. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

and regular course, as is exhibited to us in the regular succession of years,
seasons, months, weeks, days, etc. Al those chaotic forces which have been
in their impulse struggling for life came down and settled; and there is the first
day of rest when everything went in the orderly way. That is what I mean. Now,
the seventh day real y, taking it occultly, means the seventh Manvantara; that is,
the day when everything has evoluted in this life cycle, and everything wil
come to a point and everyone wil be as good as the other, and there wil be no
more backbiting and no more hitting of each other’s noses, and we wil be
decent people, then. The Pralaya is the seventh day. The Pralaya, is cal ed
general y the evening of the day of the seventh Round; and then it wil last as
long as the whole. If you go and read the old rabbinical books and al those
things of Babylonia, you wil find the idea stated perfectly wel . Why is it that the

Saducees did not believe as the Pharisees did? Because they were learned
occultists and kabbalists; they observed Sabbath, but they understood what
the meaning of Sabbath was perfectly philosophical y. Because look at this

Babylonian treatise and you wil find that it means the seventh period and that it
means—wel , it is a perfectly astronomical thing, but it is just what the Brahmins
cal ed the seventh creation, as it is seventh day and nothing else.

Mr. Kingsland: In Genesis it says the evening and morning were the seventh
day.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the Manvantaric dawn and Pralaya, as wel .

Mr. Kingsland: Just the same as we count the day as the day and the night.

Mr. B. Keightley: Have you not got something more?

Mme. Blavatsky: The creative impulse has settled down to quiet family life for
a time. Consequently, the initial velocity of the nucleus depends upon the
place it occupies in the series of descending generations from the primordial
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mother or matter. Mother and matter are the same, and now some dark
disciples who know what I mean may explain further. There is one (pointing to

Mr. B. Keightly)

513. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

who has learned enough to have forgotten half of it, but I would like to know if
he has forgotten the other half.

Mr. B. Keightley: What that means is this: if you take the very beginning of the

Manvantara, you get from the descendants of primordial matter the first
animated cosmic nuclei; then after that they pass through their Manvantara, and
they become, first comets then suns and then planets; then they die and their
principles are transferred to a fresh Laya center, which are like the children of
the first generation. Then they pass through their series of evolutions and are
reborn again as the grandchildren, and so on through innumerable
generations.

Mme. Blavatsky: You had better to have also about the mother-in- law!

Mr. B. Keightley: In each of these stages the impulse, as it were, gradual y
diminishes to a certain extent so that the velocity with which the Laya center or
cosmic nucleus starts on its career is diminished.

Mr. Mead: What was puzzling there was the el iptical and the parabolic orbit.

Mr. B. Keightley: Many comets have el iptical orbits. It is simply a question of
the velocity, as it is stated here. Entirely a question of the
initial velocity with which a nucleus starts. There are comets which have both
el iptical and parabolic orbits.

Mme. Blavatsky: In the beginning there is always the impulse, and it goes
quicker.

Mr. B. Keightley: There are several comets the return periods of which are
wel -known. They expect them back at certain periods and look out for them.

They have very elongated and el iptical orbits of enormous concentricity. Other
comets have arrived in parabolic orbits, and we shal never have the pleasure
of seeing them again; they are gone. Look at any map of the sun.

514. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

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Mme. Blavatsky: I would like them to understand why the impulse is greater at
the beginning and then slackens—because it sets into respectable form, and
there are laws; and periodical y it goes on seasons and years and so on which
it did not before. Therefore it slackens. The motion is always there.

Mr. B. Keightley: “‘The abodes of Fohat are many,’ it is said,” etc. (reads from

The Secret Doctrine {1: 204}). Question 14. “The ancients made the polar
circles seven instead of two.” Are we to assign four of these to the North Pole,
and three to the South; or are the seven lokas counted from the equator, north
and south?

Mme. Blavatsky: If I were you I would, every one of you, go and ask to
become a critic in The Saturday Review, 14 because you are so crotchety. I
now say this is not my fault, but as the proverb says: “seven cooks spoil the
broth,” so I had seven editors. I wrote and wrote and they took it and
corrected; and so, if you please, there would be no mistakes. And the result is
that they have al owed to pass such flapdoddles and corrected some which
were wel written, only “to better the English,” and they have made a flapdoddle
of it. And this is one of the flapdoddles, because it is not in this way that it
ought to read. The sentence should be: “The ancients counted seven circles
and at each pole” instead of one at each—instead of two; or to have said: “at
every pole there is one”; but the Brahmins have counted seven at each.

Mr. Kingsland: Counting from the equator?

Mme. Blavatsky: The seven circles which are the seven steps of Meru are
the seven below—are the seven hel s, as they cal them.

Mr. Mead: The seven silver ones down, and the seven golden ones
up.

Mr. B. Keightley: They divide the twenty-eight degrees from the Pole to the

Arctic Circle into seven sets, each four degrees apart,

14 [ The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art was a weekly London
newspaper published until 1938.]

515. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

which is not the whole space from the equator to the pole. From 0° to 28°
latitude, that space is divided into seven circles, each four degrees apart.

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Mr. Kingsland: I understood H.P.B. to say from the equator.

Mme. Blavatsky: The seven in the north and the seven in the south; not at the
equator, at the poles.

Mr. B. Keightley: I wil tel you where the expression is derived from. She is
real y referring to speculations by a man named Mackay.15 Where you speak
about Mackay is another place in The Secret Doctrine.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is written in such a way that it leads to entirely another
thing. Modern science gives one ring, or pole, and the Brahmins gave seven to
the top and seven to the South Pole. The southern pole represented the
seven Arakas in Patala; but their idea of hel was not our idea. There it was a
place of rejoicing. When [ ] went to hel he said he never had a more pleasant
time, just like one going now to the Paris Exhibition;16 and he learned his
wisdom, his astronomy there from Śesha, the serpent of eternity on which

Vishnu sleeps; and that serpent gave him hospitality and taught him
astronomy magnificently. That is where you aught to go and learn.

Mr. Old: I want to know something about the division of the globe by the

Hindus. Do they count five of our degrees to one of theirs, making 72 degrees
instead of 360? Are you counting from the equator to the pole according to our
degrees?

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes. You know the present Arctic Circle is 28 degrees. That
space they divide into spaces of four degrees each; this is according to

{Sampson} Arnold Mackey.

15 [Sampson Arnold Mackey, 1765-1843, was a Norwich shoemaker with a passion for astronomy and mythology
who self-published the results of his studies in his books and pamphlets. The work H.P.B. refers to in The Secret

Doctrine in his The Mythological Astronomy
of the Ancients Demonstrated, 1822-1824.]

16 [The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was held in Paris France, from May 6, to October 31, 1889. The Eillel

Tower served as the entrance arch to the fair.]

516. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: But Mackey is perfectly wrong there. He is only right about
the seven. But this fourteen is a flapdoddle, because he takes fourteen Manus,
and these Manus have nothing to do with it. It is the seven steps of Meru.

Mr. B. Keightley: Mead has an idea in his head that these are counted from the
equator.

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Mme. Blavatsky: It is the land of bliss—and after that, when Asia was entirely
formed, the last races of the Third Race, those that separated into males and
females.

Mr. Kingsland: It was at that time the North Pole.

Mme. Blavatsky: It was simply the Meru, the land of bliss, the land of the
gods, and you find references to this in Hesiod, where Apol o is said to go to

Eternal Light and Eternal Day. It was a tropical country then. Where Greenland
is now you had palm trees, laurels, and I don’t know what.

Mr. B. Keightley: Remember this, Kingsland, that the axis of the earth relatively
to the earth is fixed; it has the inclination to the ecliptic.

Mr. Kingsland: The inclination you thought [ ] the tropics.

Mme. Blavatsky: Al this changes twice every tropical year; everything is
shifted, if you please. Every 12,500 or 12,600 years it changes.

Mr. Mead: Twice every tropical year, do you say?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, sir. Every 12,500 or 12,600 years.

Mr. Kingsland: Does this change take place gradual y?

Mme. Blavatsky: Gradual y! To what do you attribute the fact that the seas
more and more encroach upon the earth? Al this is that action. That there are
continents that are sinking and the sea that is rising.

517. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: That is why we always get spring a month later.

Mme. Blavatsky: Twelve thousand years ago, the earth was not as
it is now.

Mr. Kingsland: I think twelve years ago it was not, either.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now it goes very rapidly. And it is time it should go and rest
and give room to something better.

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Mr. Mead: How much does this angle change by?

Mme. Blavatsky: This I could not tel you. I am not learned enough.

Mr. B. Keightley: Four degrees, I think, every sidereal year of 25,000 years.

Mme. Blavatsky: Old has studied it wel .

Mr. Old: I gave it as wel as I could in the [ ]. What Mackey says would
agree, because there are 28 degrees to be divided.

Mr. B. Keightley: Question 15. “As soon as a nucleus of primordial substance
in the Laya state is informed by the freed principles of a just deceased
sidereal body, it becomes a comet, then a sun, then a world.” Is the term

“sidereal body” used in a general sense, as applying to al bodies in cosmos,
or technical y, to distinguish it from a planetary body?

Mme. Blavatsky: I use the term “sidereal body” in a general sense, as
applying to bodies in cosmos in general. I do not give it any technical or
special signification.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then page 205 you have a very important note about the
stages in the evolution of the cosmic bodies (reads from The Secret

Doctrine). Question 16, page 205, note. In the order of evolution of globes
with respect to their material transformation, does the Laya state correspond to

(1); the cometary to (4); the solar to (5)? If so, to what do (2) and (6)

correspond?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, look here. You just answer me a question

518. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

frankly and sincerely, as I would to a mother-in-law. Do you ask me these
things because it is so obscurely put in The Secret Doctrine or is it that you
want to pump me out?

Mr. B. Keightley: It is for this reason, to make quite certain that we get a right
basis of correspondence and analogies to go upon. Because if we get that
wrong, we shal go making mistakes al through.

Mme. Blavatsky: You corroborate that statement, Mr. President?

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Mr. Kingsland: I think so.

Mr. B. Keightley: If we once get a wrong idea, we continue to go wrong.

Mme. Blavatsky: It seems to me you want to pump me out.

Mr. Old: You don’t suspect us of wanting to know anything, do you?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes! I do. Wel , the Laya state corresponds to the atomic or
ethereal, and the solar to germinal and the fiery.

Mr. B. Keightley: That being so what do the second and the sixth and
seventh, that is to say, the aeriform and the radiant or gaseous— wel , that
first.

Mme. Blavatsky: The aeriform or gaseous transformation does not write a
distinct stage in the cosmic evolution; but, rather, a link connecting the
homogeneous with the nebulae or curd-like stage, a correlation of one into the
other.

Mr. Mead: That is what you cal matter in a critical state.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, sir. Four fold vapor represents the stages through
which the earth has past {passed} to reach its present condition. The earth is
materialized vapor, as ice is materialized steam. The seventh or depending
stage describes the stage the earth wil reach at the end of the Seventh

Round. Then men wil depend on no other sustenance than their own divine
natures.

519. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

There wil be no need of food or drink; they wil have no more clubs or lawn
tennis, or anything. The principles of the earth wil have almost entirely left her
physical body, save the upper triad, just as this moon had done at the close of
the lunar Manvantara; and its principles wil be ready to shoot, each in its turn,
on to a new Laya center to form a new globe, which wil {be} the earth’s

Septenary Only Begotten Son. Do you want to know anything more? You are
the biggest pumpers I have seen in my life. My notes are at an end, and I open
my brains to you, and you may ask what you like.

Mr. Hall: Wil this new earth be constructed and worked on the same
principles as the old one?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Behave yourself, Hal . We had a very great philosopher in

Russia, some of whose aphorisms and axioms I have been translating for

Bert’s gratification, and he is cal ed [ ]. Wel , [ ] has got a magnificent
aphorism, and he says: “Plug thy fountain if thou hast one, because even the
fountain needs a little rest.”17 That is one of the best things I have read. So I
wonder when anyone of you wil know when to plug your fountains and to give a
little bit of rest?

Mr. Kingsland: They rest for six days, they are only open on Thursdays.

Mr. Hall: It is always leaking at other times.

Mr. Kingsland: I have got one question that has not been asked. It would
appear from analogy that there should be seven chains of planets (each
consisting of seven planets—total 49) in which humanity develops, the lunar
chain being one, and our earth chain another. Is this so, and is our chain the
fourth in the series, lunar chain being the third?

Mme. Blavatsky: It may be. I am not sure of it, but I would not destroy your
il usions.

A Lady: I thought it was good to destroy il usions.

17 [This has not been traced.]

520. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, because everything is il usion on this plane of
existence. I have been thinking myself about this.

Mr. Kingsland: Are the seven sacred planets, the planets which correspond to
our earth, in the above-named seven chains?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, I don’t think so. Real y, I do not know. There are very few
things that I know, real y.

Mr. Hall: What is the meaning in the fable of Jason going to fetch the Golden

Fleece, and his having to sow the Dragon’s teeth?

Mme. Blavatsky: What does he mean?

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Mr. B. Keightley: You know, the fable of Jason and the Argonauts. One of the
labors he has to undertake is to sow Dragon’s teeth. First of al he has to plow
the ground with fiery Bul s; then, having plowed the ground, he sows the

Dragon’s teeth from which grow a crop of armed men.

Mr. Mead: Cadmus does the same.

Mr. B. Keightley: Hal wants to know what the interpretation is.

Mme. Blavatsky: Exercise your own imagination. You know what a “Dragon” is;

I told you just now.

Mr. Hall: It was in connection with that, that I asked the question.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know. I could not tel you.

Mr. Hall: Is it a symbol of initiation?

Mme. Blavatsky: I have plugged my fountain. It may be.

Mr. Mead: The armed men that spring up from the teeth Cadmus sows al fal
to fighting one another.

Mr. Hall: That is only because he tricks them.

Mr. Mead: They straight away fal to work to fight one another.

521. 17. Meeting May 2, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: He throws an enchanted helmet among them.

Mme. Blavatsky: I have been on that spot,18 and if you want an interpretation of
it, there are again seven legends, each relating to one of the keys.

Mr. Mead: Simon gave one in the—

Mme. Blavatsky: Take the alchemical, if you please, in connection with the
expedition of the Argonauts. Al alchemy is there, if you could only understand
it; the philosopher’s stone and everything is in that expedition of the Argonauts,
there in the Golden Fleece.

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Mr. Hall: I wish I could understand why Jason deserts the deer {Medea?}.19

Mme. Blavatsky: If we begin about these al egories, we wil never end.

The proceedings here closed.

18 [Colchis, the modern Black Sea coast of Georgia.]

19 [An example of the dangers inherent in the stenographer’s report. taking it down heard “the deer” but obviously

“Medea” was meant.]

19.

Theosophical Society.

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

Held at 17 Lansdowne Rd, Hol and Park

May 16, 1889.

{W. Kingsland in the chair}

Mr. B. Keightley: This is an attempt to put fourth in plain simple language the
principal ideas of Theosophy that we believe in and what we don’t believe in, in
the form of question and answer between a Mystic and an Enquirer. It is just
divided into sections—fourteen sections—each of which again is subdivided
under headings—not numbers—but headings with titles, just to indicate the
subjects that are dealt with. The whole idea of the thing is to make it practical,
simple and straightforward, and not very metaphysical or abstruse. It is more
of the nature of a popular book.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, the people ask such extraordinary questions.

Anyone who speaks of Theosophy wil ask you if you are a Buddhist.

Theosophy is not a religion, it is not a sect, and nobody is forced to believe or
not believe. A Theosophist may belong to any religion, and to no religion, if he
likes. What does it matter? He may be a very good man and justify his name of

Theosophist more than anyone else; but people wil not take this in their
heads, they wil come and say al of them that we are esoteric Buddhists,
without understanding what esoteric Buddhism means. So it is time to give
them answers to the most simple questions as to what we believe and don’t
believe, and this thing is one of the chapters. Of course, it is impossible to
read the others, but I have taken one of them—for instance, “Theosophical

Duties” —and I want everyone to suggest what wil be the needed thing. What
questions are the

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524. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

most necessary? Al of you go about, and you ought to know what it is that
which the public misunderstands the most, what is that which wil do the most
good; because it is something terrible, the misconceptions that are in the world
about Theosophy. They do not seem to know what Theosophy is.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think the best plan would be that as I read it, anybody who
has suggestions to make should stop me—because they wil not be able to
fol ow me, otherwise. The section, as a whole is cal ed “What is Practical

Theosophy,” and the first subdivision is on “Duty” (reads from manuscript).1

Mr. Williams: Is it proposed that this should be circulated about?

Mr. B. Keightley: This is part of a book that H. P. B. has written.

Mme. Blavatsky: I wil finish it in a day or two. It has been announced
yesterday, “The Key to Theosophy.” Everyone complains that The Secret

Doctrine is so abstruse and difficult, that we wil give this and perhaps they wil
say this one is too difficult. I don’t know what to say. I am putting al the
questions I have had over and over again; therefore, I am answering these.

A Lady: I think that is most useful.

Mme. Blavatsky: But now we must have suggestions, if there is anything
more to say; because, when it goes to press we cannot put anything more, and
we have to explain as much as we can al that Theosophy is and is not.

Afterwards people may come and say why didn’t you put this and that? And
then it wil be too late.

Mr. Old: There is a statement that the attainment of freedom of individual
progress and eventual happiness can only be attained by life experience.

Might this not be logical y proven without going very far into words?

Mme. Blavatsky: How would you do it?

1 [Published as Section XII in The Key to Theosophy, London, 1889.]

525. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mr. Old: You need a logical necessity. It is a bare statement, and not
satisfactory, perhaps, to the inquirer. It has to be shown how individual
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happiness—which, in the altruistic sense, of course, is based in the happiness
of the whole body, of which that ego is only an atom—it has to be shown how
this happiness can be attained only by life experience. For myself, I should
first go to show that the earth plane upon which we live—or perhaps, this would
be entering rather deeply into the matter—by showing this earth is the ultimate
of spiritual action, it is that plane on which action ceases and reaction
commences, and therefore the dual action is only manifest here. That is to
say, the descending and ascending, and therefore it is the only point at which
evolution can take place. There is a decided motion or progress of spirit
towards matter from the standpoint of the spiritual planes; that is, they are al
downward, and there is—or, as H.P.B. puts it in The Secret Doctrine—the
angel has desired to be man, and man desired to become an angel. You can
quite see what I mean, perhaps? The personality, the incarnating ego, is the
only point of differentiation—of individual differentiation—at which mankind are
interblended; and, therefore, co-mingle and produce individual evolutions.

Mme. Blavatsky: Would you put this there?

Mr. Old: Do not put my words.

Mme. Blavatsky: We avoid putting metaphysics. This is the complaint of
everyone, that they don’t understand half or two thirds in The Secret Doctrine.

What I tried to avoid was metaphysics in this little book, because if you do put
metaphysics it wil confuse them, and they won’t understand anything, and
there wil be complaints again. These thing as I have put them, are as plain as
can be.

Mr. Kingsland: I think you want a little more connection.

Mr. B. Keightley: Your statement is open to this objection: on the three planets
preceding our own, there must be evolution of some kind. You must be careful
not to land yourself in subsequent [ ].

526. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: What he said is very valuable, but does not touch that point in
reference to the question which has been asked, it is in reference to
incarnation. The questioner may grant al that, and then say: “wel , the man has
passed through his earthly life into another plane.”

Mr. B. Keightley: The drift of the question is this: a man finds no satisfaction
or peace as the result of his life. He has left 2 unsatisfied. Then he asks, where
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is the necessity for reincarnation, if you don’t attain peace during one life?

Then the answer is, because it is only attainable by a series of life
experiences.

Mr. Kingsland: That is the point Old wants to prove.

Mr. Old: I was a bit too metaphysical, perhaps.

Mr. Williams: It would be a good thing to give examples of lives that have not
shown any experience.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not think I have ever met a truly happy man. To
everyone life is a burden, there is something they cannot find—any interior
satisfaction, or peace of mind. I have never met one man yet who was
perfectly satisfied.

Mr. B. Keightley: The conclusion to be drawn from that would seem to be that
no permanent satisfaction is possible in material life.

Mme. Blavatsky: If evolution progresses in such a way as that, then they wil
most certainly go pari pasu with physical evolution; and what matters it, now
that we have al the joys and blessings of civilization? They come and say to
us; Christianity has soften the customs. I say, did it? Why, the more civilized a
country is, the more cant it has, and the more miserable are the people. Look
at England. Where is there more wealth, and every blessing in the world? If
they only thought a little bit about the people! Where is there more misery than
in England?

Mr. B. Keightley: That is not a direct answer to this question; your

2 [The original has “lived,” which was changed to “left”.]

527. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

assertion is perfectly general here, that the goal, or peace, can only be
reached through life experiences. That applies broadly al round, whether you
speak about a civilized country or a Buddhist country. Then you want to give a
general answer.

Mme. Blavatsky: I do not answer it on the paper. As we speak now, it is quite
a different thing. I simply answer to that: there is no man that is satisfied;
because civilization brings outward blessings, but that civilization shows there
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is every day more and more immorality, corruption, and selfishness. And what
does selfishness lead to? It leads to the thing that half of mankind have
become: the Cains of others, which are the Abels.

Mr. B. Keightley: Would you say you have found amongst the Buddhists,
people who would say they were perfectly happy?

Mme. Blavatsky: Perfectly. They die with as great serenity as they get up in
the morning.

Mr. B. Keightley: But are they happy?

Mme. Blavatsky: I never saw happier people than in Ceylon where they don’t
believe in god or soul. They believe in incarnation simply. They don’t think
anything of the previous man passes into this. They are perfectly incapable of
talking metaphysics; and, yet, see the effect it produces upon them. Every
man is taught that whatever he does he wil be either punished or rewarded for.

Whatever the cause he produces, it wil have the same effects; therefore if he
does something bad, he wil have bad results; if he does anything good, then
good results wil ensue from it, whether it is in this life or another. Now, look
here! You just ask every one of yourselves—you have al been little boys—is it
not a thing, that when you know you have deserved something, that you don’t
murmur as you would otherwise? You don’t feel this terrible feeling of injustice.

Don’t you know that, every one of you?

Mr. B. Keightley: That is absolutely and entirely true.

Mme. Blavatsky: You may swear at it and be angry, but you wil

528. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

say I have done it. This is the only thing that can lead people to happiness. I
don’t know what you are driving at now.

Mr. B. Keightley: What Old is after is the purely general statement here: that
the goal of peace is only to be attained by life experience.

Mr. Old: Might I have another try? I think it might be done on the ad absurdum
principle, by proving that happiness cannot be attained elsewhere. For
instance: a person dies; he hopes to go to heaven. Ask him his definition of
heaven. He says: “The place of happiness”. Ask him what “happiness” is; he
says: “it is a relative thing.” (Happiness, I suppose, in heaven would be to have
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everything you want, and nothing you don’t want.) Consequently, it is nothing
else than an expression or ful realization of Kâma, desire, of individual desire.

Can this be a condition of progress?

Mme. Blavatsky: Even Devachan is a state of exalted selfishness, but this is
finite. It is not as theology says, that because a man has been “goody-goody”

he wil be given a golden harp and be very happy for eternity; there is no logic
in it. A man says very wel , if I only believe what I am told, I may have the
golden harp and sit—I don’t know what they do there; I think, recline on the soft
clouds! This is the most absurd thing in the world. A man is taught thus to
believe: that, do what he may, if he only believes that because another man
has been put to death on his account, his sins are pardoned to him. I say it is
the most pernicious doctrine in the world. It forces every man to lose self-
esteem and self-reliance. It makes him lose sight of this terrible injustice, that
because I may go and steal cherries another wil be flogged for me. This is an
absurdity.

Mr. Old: Moral responsibility is lost sight of.

Mme. Blavatsky: However, I want you to hear to the end, and after he has
read al this, then we wil have a general conversation, because I want you to
see if anything is forgotten.

Mr. B. Keightley: The second section is on “Self-Sacrifice.” (Reads.)

Mr. Old: That section is very beautiful.

529. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

A Lady: I don’t think there is anything to be added to it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Did I make it comprehensive enough?

A Lady: Perfectly clear.

Mr. Johnson: 3 I thought the attack on the Roman Catholics was rather severe,

Madam, to single them particularly.

Mme. Blavatsky: The priests are self-sacrificing. It is not against any particular
priest, but such a pernicious system.

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Mr. Kingsland: Say simply missionaries, not Roman Catholic missionaries.

Mr. Old: Cal them Christian missionaries.

Mr. Kingsland: I think you are quite right not to single out one particular sect.

Mme. Blavatsky: Were there any Christian missionaries who were kil ed in

China?

Mr. Old: Any amount of them.

Mme. Blavatsky: This Damien, I tel you I was going to start for a col ection
among we Theosophist, just to send to him, and the poor man dies.4 I just got
some shil ings, and he died. Let him be any religion, such a man is the highest

Theosophist possible. I am perfectly sure the Roman Catholic Church wil not
recognize it. They recognize Labre, who for forty years al owed himself to be
devoured

3 [The identity of this individual is not apparent. We print it as it is given, noting that there were members of the

London Lodge named Johnson, but it could also be misprint for Charles Johnston (1867-1931), who had married

H.P.B.’s niece in October 1888, and left for India at the end of that month to join the Civil Service there. This is the
only appearance of Mr.Johnson/Johonston at the meetings.]

4 [Father Damien (Jozef De Veuster), 1840-1889, a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium, devoted his life to
ministering to the leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. He eventually contracted the disease and died
there on April 15, 1889. He was canonized a saint in 2009.]

530. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

by vermin.5 I say it is positively ridiculous. They make a saint of this Labre, and
the unfortunate Damien they won’t make anything of. You won’t find a Jain who
does not lie in the sun and al ow vermin to come upon him, because they say:

“They are our younger brothers.” They al ow al the vermin to come upon them,
fleas , and al the less comely animals.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is carrying the point too far.

Mme. Blavatsky: We have Jains among our Theosophist in India, and they
plead to me, saying it is a very sinful thing that I permitted our Malay to kil
cobras. But, I say I am not going to al ow the cobras to sting.

Mr. Kingsland: Better a dead cobra than a dead Theosophist.

Mme. Blavatsky: He says: why don’t you throw some powder? He wants me to
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throw salt on his tail. They could not pardon me, and many of them left
because I had two or three cobras kil ed.

Countess Wachtmeister: Mr. Johnson thought you had taken the Jains’

advice when we saw al the cockroaches about here.

Mr. B. Keightley: I am afraid that is il egal; that would not stand before law.

Mme. Blavatsky: We laugh at this, but real y it is a most sublime thing—
because they are so sincere, they would not breathe. They wear those things
so as not to breathe the air and swal ow those unfortunate insects, those
animalculae; and they sweep as they go along not to walk by chance on some
insect. It appears ridiculous;

5 [The glossary attached to the second edition of The Key ot Theosophy describes him as “Labro, St. A Roman

Saint solemnly beatified a few years ago. His great holiness consisted in sitting at one of the gates of Rome night
and day for forty years, and remaining unwashed through the whole of that time, the result of which was that he
was eaten by vermin to his bones.” He is cited as an example on pp. 239 and 259 of that book. The transcription
gives the spelling as Laboreux. Probably Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, 1748-1783, known for his subsistence
living, is meant. He was canonized in 1881.]

531. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

but, real y, if you analyze the thing, it is the most sublime thing. They do it with
the greatest discomfort in the world, and they believe in it.

Mr. Kingsland: The principle thing is to force out how Altruism, like everything
else, can be abused. And the only question for us to decide is whether that is
pointed out forcibly enough, or whether anybody can suggest a more forcible
il ustration.

A Lady: I think it is the most forcible you can find.

Mr. Kingsland: I don’t know anything about Labre, but the majority of people
won’t know.

Mme. Blavatsky: He is the last saint who was beatified. For forty years he was
sitting on the Piazza di Spagna.6

A Lady: I read a piece in the American newspaper about him. A

Nonconformist was cal ing him over the coals so cruel y because he was not a

Protestant, because he was a Catholic, and would not recognize his work.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see how these Christians love each other? Just as
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much as Theosophists love each other.

A Lady: As much as you love the Roman Catholic.

Mme. Blavatsky: I speak against the system, not against the Roman

Catholics. I say, pitch into systems but don’t touch personalities. We have
quite enough to do with pitching into systems, because systems are
abominable.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then this is on “Charity” (reads).

Mr. Kingsland: I think it is better to eliminate al reference to any special sect
or creed whatever, and I should eliminate Spurgeon’s name.

Mme. Blavatsky: Oh Lord! I must not, because it is a personality,

6 [Piazza di Spagna, a square in Rome.]

532. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

but I do despise the fel ow. Very wel , we wil take out “Spurgeon” and put
simply “Fashionable Preacher.” Now I have made two concessions. I have
taken out for Mr. Johnson the “Catholic,” and for you, “Spurgeon.”

Mr. Old: Someone wil ask you to take out Buddha’s name, presently.

Mme. Blavatsky: “ The Most Popular Preacher.”

Mr. Kingsland: I think if you refer to the “Asbestos Soul,” everyone wil know
who it means.

Mr. Keightley: “Theosophy for the Masses. (Reads) Then the last is: “How

Members Can Help the Society.”

Mme. Blavatsky: This is where you have to give your suggestions.

Mr. B. Keightley: (Reads.)

Mme. Blavatsky: Give us suggestions what to put more, because I put only
that which comes into my head, and I may forget hundreds of things which you

Theosophists ought to think about, and is what could be added. Mr. Cobbold
came too late, and did not hear the beginning.

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Mr. Kingsland: Mr. Cobbold as a practical Theosophist wil give us his views.7

Mme. Blavatsky: What can Theosophists do?

Countess Wachtmeister: Theosophist should try and not backbite their
neighbors.

Mr. Old: I think there is a negative aspect to action, H.P.B. I was thinking the
same as yourself, Countess. I thought there was a negative side to

Theosophical Duty—what the Theosophist should not do; that is to say, he
should not create any obstructions—which very often he does, unconsciously
through ignorance, or consciously through spleen.

7 [Arthur Westhrop Cobbald, a member of London Lodge of the T.S. since 1887.]

533. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Personality is the curse in the Theosophical Society, as it is
everywhere.

Countess Wachtmeister: I don’t think it is put strongly enough there, that every
evil springs from personality, and that personality is the great curse.

Mme. Blavatsky: You have not heard the whole thing. This is only a chapter,
and I have eleven more.

Countess Wachtmeister: The first duty of a Theosophist is to forget his
personality.

Mme. Blavatsky: Exactly. How few do it. You just make a footnote, and mark it
there. Are not these Buddhist precepts beautiful! I can assure you, if I one day
translate them, you wil say they are splendid.

Mr. Old: They are very poetical.

Mme. Blavatsky: And written so beautiful y.

A Lady: They are indeed sublime.

Mr. Johnson: It says there that “attacks made on the Society should be
defended by any means in one’s power.” I think that is rather loose.

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Mme. Blavatsky: We cannot oblige anyone to do anything. We cannot create
penances.

Countess Wachtmeister: I think Mr. Johnson meant “legitimate means,” that is
what he meant.

Mr. Kingsland: Not in the doctrine of the Jesuits.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, gentlemen, please, some more.

Countess Wachtmeister: You put down your negative points, that Mr. Old was
just saying, of what Theosophists should not do. That is later on in the book.

534. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: I have covered al the tenets of Theosophy. I have spoken
about Karma and Devachan and the states of afterlife—not that we are obliged
to believe in it, but only Theosophist who study Occultism believe in it. This is
what I have been putting. A Theosophist may believe in anything he likes.

Mr. B. Keightley: Another thing which has been slightly touched upon is a thing
which I have very often been asked, whether vegetarianism is a tenet of the

Theosophical Society, and whether abstention from alcoholism, and so on?

Countess Wachtmeister: And then, also, you should distinctly state that

Theosophy has nothing to do with Spiritualism.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is stated.

Mr. Kingsland: I think, in reference to this objection, this must be ful y
answered. He thinks al the literature is not of much practical value. I think I
would point out that right thinking is the basis of right acting, and we are not a

Charity Organization Society to merely al eviate misery on the surface. Each
one does that as much as he can. We believe that by promulgating these
doctrines that, that wil in time natural y work out on the physical plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: I say literature wil reach ten thousands, where al the money
we can get wil reach one hundred.

Mr. Kingsland: The Charity Organization, and even legislation, is only working
on the surface of things.

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Mme. Blavatsky: We don’t take any concern in politics, because what is the
use of making political reforms with men who are not yet reformed? Let them
be Conservative or Liberal, it is six of one, and half dozen of the other.

Mr. Johnson: Theosophy cannot be preached to a man who has an empty
stomach.

Mme. Blavatsky: Among Theosophists there are far more with

535. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

hardly fil ed stomachs, and yet they try to do what they can. I know many of
them who have hardly money enough to get food.

Countess Wachtmeister: They would starve in India to enable them to join the

Theosophical Society. On joining formerly they had to pay a certain fee. Some
of these Hindus have starved themselves for a week, so as to enable them to
join the Theosophical Society. They have done it, not only once or twice, but
again and again.

Mme. Blavatsky: What I want to put are the rules of the Theosophical Society
at the end—rules and so on. A selection, of course.

Mr. Kingsland: You mean the objects?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, the rules as they are in India.

Mr. B. Keightley: Only a selection.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then to give how many branches we have and their names,
and everything.

A Lady: I think that would make a very good impression, the immense
number of people that have joined the Society, and the number of branches.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see, we have one-hundred and seventy-three branches,
but in India alone there are one-hundred and twenty-nine or one-hundred and
thirty. Now, in America we have about twenty- four, and six which are forming;
here, we have six or seven branches in England. It is growing very rapidly, and
real y, there are as many Theosophist who don’t know what the Theosophical

Society is, as they are outsiders.

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Mr. Johnson: I think that book wil do splendid work for the cause.

Mr. Kingsland: Most undoubtedly.

Mr.—: What is the Theosophical Society good for? Wel we might say to
promote Altruism, the answer to that would be. A Christian has done the same
thing, taught the same thing.

536. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: They speak a good deal of it in Christianity, but they act
mightily little.

Mr.—: And that puts a stop to progress.

Mme. Blavatsky: These people would be just as good Buddhists.

Mr. Old: It is the best thing they know of.

Mr. B. Keightley: They al go for this fal acy, that their idea of helping other
people is almost in al cases confined to the physical. They don’t try to give
them actual moral stamina; it is always, “your sins have been wiped out and
washed in the blood of Jesus,” and so on.

A Lady: They teach them sectarianism.

Mr. B. Keightley: They teach them hardly anything which has any basis in it.

Mr. Old: The man who trained the fleas to do tricks did a good deal more than

Labre, because the one only educates the physical idea—

Countess Wachtmeister: And the other develops the intel igences.

Mr. Old: It shows there is a ray of intel igence in the smal er parts of humanity.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Roman Catholic Church did not have that superb
contempt for animals always that it has now, saying they have no souls. Read
the Golden Legend:8 you wil see any number of wolves who have been
converted, a dragon who had some sore in his eye, and some saint drew it out
of his eye, and he immediately shed tears and became a Christian. It is a fact
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—animals of al kinds, wolves, dragons, and hyenas.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is the story of St Francis’s preaching to the

8 [ Legenda Sanctorum (Readings of the Saints), popularly known as Legenda Aurea, was complied by Jacobus
de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, about 1260.]

537. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

animals.

A Lady: And the Jackdaw of Rheims became a saint.9

Mr. Kingsland: When the barn was removed.

Mr. Old: I have seen a more Christian spirit in some faithful dogs, than I have
seen in man.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are the most respectful fel ows I have ever met with.

Under any circumstance they wil remain faithful.

A Lady: Even with a master as bad as Bil Sykes.10

Mr. Old: Martin Tupper11 says: “What if they cannot rise so high? They can’t
fal so far.” Which is quite true.

Mme. Blavatsky: What are we to do more? Because there are two sections
more, representing 30 or 40 pages.

M r. Old: I think something might be said as to what constitutes happiness.

Mme. Blavatsky: With me, to sit and never move.

Mr. Kingsland: And never have anyone asking questions.

Mme. Blavatsky: This young creature sitting here cannot live without air, and
air kil s me.12

Mr. Old: That is not happiness. I think a person who has suffered physical y,
intense tortures, may stil be happy.

Mme. Blavatsky: One man is very fond of money.

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9 [The tail of “Jackdaw Rheims” was known to the Victorians through the poem of Richard Harris Barham (1788-

1845) published in 1837. In it a crow gains religion and is eventually made a saint. It was included in the popular
collection, The Ingoldsby Legends, written under his pen name Thomas Ingoldsby.]

10 [A violent character in Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist.]

11 [Martin Tupper, English writer, 1810-1889.]

12 [Mme. Blavatsky had a dislike of drafts and kept her rooms sealed and heated.]

538. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mr. Old: It depends where the individual consciousness happens to be
gravitating for the time being. If it is in the body, physical ailments cause
misery. But otherwise he would stil be happy.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is a certain amount of truth in the old saying: “What
philosopher was ever able to bear a toothache?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Now what are you going to do with this Burgoyne, who writes
a book against us?13 It shows to you the perseverance with which they act
against the “Theosophical Society” I have just received this. Burgoyne as a
young man, Mr. Johnson wil tel you about him, was two and a half years away
for some swindling.

Mr. Johnson: He had to quit the country. He victimized me; he was two years
in Bradford Gaol.

Mme. Blavatsky: I have got a portrait of him that was sent from Scotland

Yard, and he has got on the handcuffs; and {there} he was taken before {he}

was handcuffed, where he appears very smiling, and there he appears with
handcuffs—and he dosen’t smile—and this is the bright and shining light of
esotericism in America.

Mr. Johnson: I know perfectly wel he is an enemy of the Society, and
especial y about you.

Mr. Kingsland: How long is it since he was in England?

Mr. Johnson: Three and a half years ago.

Countess Wachtmeister: He had to leave the country quickly.

Mr. Kingsland: For the country’s good.

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Countess Wachtmeister: The police said it would be the greatest

13 [Thomas H. Burgoyne, alias Thomas Henery Dalton, 1855-1894. He had been imprisoned in Leeds, England, in

1883, on fraud, and eventually settling in California where he died. H.P.B.’s ire was directed at him because of his
connection with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, an occult
organization that she considered a swindle. He published his major work, The Light of Egypt, in 1889.]

539. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

swindle England had ever known. They were col ecting money to purchase
land out in America, and the whole thing was a bubble, and they went off to

America with al that they had col ected. They intended to swindle the

Theosophist out of his land and not pay for it.

Mr. Old: I think the best thing the “Theosophist” can do is to prepare a
counterblast.

Countess Wachtmeister: There are numbers of people who lost money.

Mme. Blavatsky: But this is a Religio-Philosophical Journal.14 It is the same
paper that for years and years has been putting in letters about my habitual
drunkenness. You know, they said that I habitual y every morning danced on a
tightrope for an hour—I never even tasted liquor in my life, because I hate it;
there is no virtue in it at al .

Mr. Kingsland: I would like a few suggestions as to letting Theosophist know
of these scandalous things. For instance there are the monthly papers, there
wil be some notice of it in these journals, but al Theosophist do not take these
journals.

Mr. B. Keightley: There is this objection to be raised against it, that you only
advertise a book of that nature.

Countess Wachtmeister: Yes, everybody goes and purchases it. I think the
best plan is to take no notice.

Mr. B. Keightley: The thing that wil be done, if Judge is wise, is to simply not
to refer to the book, but show up Burgoyne as a fraud.

Mme. Blavatsky: Then, if there are the same laws in America as here, you
told me the more a statement is true, the more it is libelous, and he may bring
an action against Judge.15 It seems if you speak the truth you are taken up as
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a confederate. You are always nicely situated.

14 [Chicago weekly Spiritualist journal.]

15 [William Q. Judge, 1851-1896, General Secretary of the American Section of the T.S. and editor of the New

York Path.]

540. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mr. Old: I think if Judge were to just write to some of the local papers and
make a thorough exposé of the man, and just conclude by saying he proposes
to publish a book—which wil be his book—you could stil mention the book,
and everybody would fly at it, but they would know how to take the contents in
the face of these facts.

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t think anybody wil take any notice of the book.

Mr. Kingsland: Unless any paper puffs it up; then we should write a
counterblast.

Mr. Old: I think the great question in America today is, what is a Theosophist?

Here is this man and that man, al pseudo-theosophists, who claim to be the

Theosophists, representative of a society which does not exist, but which
nevertheless is Theosophical. I don’t wonder at al at the Americans raising the
question, what is a Theosophist?

Mme. Blavatsky: Hiram Butler founded the Esoteric Society, and al owed
people to believe he was a Theosophist.16 Now he has been pounced upon
by the police for al kinds of very queer-looking tricks, and he had to run away
from Boston, and he went to California.

Countess Wachtmeister: I think al Theosophists ought to protest when they
see anything of the kind.

Mr. B. Keightley: They say some astrologers used to say that the stars ruled
human destinies and were active agents in control ing human destinies. Others
put it that, that was not the case, but that there was a sympathetic relationship
between human beings and the stars, so that they moved paral el to each
other; that you can predict

16 [Hiram Bulter, 1841-1916, American occultist who started the Esoteric Society in Boston in the 1880s. He
moved it to California where he died. Judge reviewed his career in The Path, march, 1889, “Occultism for Barter:

esoteric Colleges and False Prophets,” and a long letter from H.P.B. exposing Butler was published in the Boston

Daily Globe, Mar. 8, 1889. The April 1889 issue of her magzine carried further notice from newspaper accounts of
what she termed “The Boston
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Frauds and Delusions.”]

541. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

the conditions under which a human being would find himself from the stel ar
aspects, but it was not inferred that there was any cause of relationship
between them. Those are, broadly speaking, the two different views put
forward by the astrologer. The old one is the orthodox.

Mr. Old: There is almost a third class of thinkers on this question. That is
those who believe in planetary spirits—you know, that there are legions under
them who directly influence the minds of us, the thoughts, desires, and actions
of individuals. But my own personal opinion is—and also that which seems to
me to be reflected dimly in the Hindu works on the subject, in both North and

South Hindustan—that there is a relationship between the terrestrial body, of
which man’s body is but a differentiation, and the material bodies of al the
planets. There is also a sympathy between his astral body, and the whole
astral plane to which he belongs, in which—or of which, I might say—and the
astral principles animating the planetary bodies. Themselves are the
composites, that is, that the astral bodies of planets and of men al enter into
and are integral parts of the universal astral plane. Material atoms either
col ectively or individual y make up the material universe; so with respect to the
individual or col ective astral. Now, it would appear that the life current, cal ed
by the Hindus Prâna, radiates, permeates, acts, and moves in this astral plane,
and that it is in passing through this astral that it becomes stranded, as it were,
and thrown off, just as a ray of light.

Mr. B. Keightley: Reflected?

Mr. Old: Wel , I don’t mean that exactly; spread out, I mean, into
its different parts and principles.

A Lady: Refracted?

Mr. Old: And this severance of the one Prânaic ray causes the different
aspects of life. Thus we might have a single ray of light coming from the sun
entering the earth, and, as you know, immediately stranded off into so many
other rays—refraction is the word, of course. So

542. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

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which is in the material universe, and is part of it, although it is the most
sublimated kind of matter; but it is with respect to the Prânic plane that is to
say, the plane above the astral plane. They say that the various astral planets
corresponding to the material planets receive the rays of the sun and reflect to
the earth, first of al to the astral plane, then precipitated on the plane on the
astral planets receive the life rays of the sun. I am speaking of the sun on the

Prânic plane. And the astral planets receive these rays and reflect them to the
astral body of this earth, which is in the astral plane, and thence they are
precipitated on to the earth, and so into individuals. Now as every person is
born [of?], as it is said, wel through the astral plane, it hence fol ows that the
moment of birth is that time when the individual existence commences, and the
person is brought under an individual law, and in the general law which controls
the revolution of the planets, both in the astral plane and in the physical plane.

And I believe myself that planets only exert an influence upon us through the
astral plane itself—that is to say, that it is not the material planet, Saturn,

Jupiter, Mars, or any other—which affects us except physical y. But we know
they do affect us in our desires; for it can be without a doubt predicated that at
any particular time a person wil be actuated by desires which are, to a certain
extent, foreign to the general tenor of that person’s life. If that can be done

(and it certainly can), that at certain times people shal be moved by influences
not general y characteristic of theirs, then we can refer these, of course, to a
plane which is certainly higher than the material plane. And therefore these
forces—not being physical forces, but psychic forces acting on the psychic
plane on the individual and of nature—must necessarily originate in the
psychical plane. That is to say in a plane higher at least, than the physical
plane. And thus its seems there is a necessity for planets existing in planes
higher than the material plane, and yet corresponding to the material planes
which are visible to us on this physical plane. I think you wil see that necessity
yourself, because life in itself is homogenous. It has but one quality and that is
life; it is only when it becomes refracted or differentiated that it has a quality,

543. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

that it can be said to have any particular quality. The modifications of life,
hence, would be what constitute individual life, very much like, of course, the
colors on the prism: they are al light, but it is the aggregate of al degrees of
colors, al tones in equal proportions, that would make up the white. It is when
one predominates that the white becomes tinged with a tone or a distinct color.

Thus, if more pink were in the aggregate, then the white would be no longer
white but it would be pink; so, whatever principle happens to be in excess in an
individual, so that person is cal ed either Saturnian, Jovian, Martian etc. I am
speaking, of course, of the ultimate effects of planetary influences on
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individuals and how it would operate.

Mme. Blavatsky: Occult astrology says that, just as you explain it, but that
colors having, each of them, a particular tendency or a faculty of impressing
one way or the other what ray that individual wil be, so are his passions or
desires affected. It is the color of the ray that impresses. For instance, if such
a color comes Saturn or Venus, if he happens to be born under this planet,
then certainly every time that a certain color—by passing through this astral
plane that you have been talking about, and passing through other certain
things— assumes a certain color, this color it is which affects the individual
mental y, and psychical y, and spiritual y, and al kinds of ways. Is it like that?

Mr. Old: Yes. Of course, we know that we individual y are impervious to certain
colors. Thus some people show an instinctive liking for this color, and a
distinct hatred for the other; at any rate, they feel a psychic influence arising
from the presence of these colors.

A Lady: What do color-blind people feel, a psychic influence?

Mme. Blavatsky: No. It happens to be a color which is of a planet which is
perfectly contrary to theirs.

Mr. Old: They would feel it on a psychic plane.

Mr. B. Keightley: Al that color-blind means is that there is something wrong
with the physical y registering apparatus. A man

544. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

cannot be occultly color-blind.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is the keynote of Occultism, to know the true relation of
sounds, colors, and numbers. There so many. There seven rays but what are
they? They have got seventy-seven thousand times seven, al kinds of
combinations; it takes a lifetime to learn them, and you cannot do it by
registering al these in your physical memory. It is a perfect impossibility. You
have to use your intuition, and your psychic memory, the memory of your ego,
of the astral. You have to register it on your astral form.

Mr. Cross: It appears to me the books you circulate on astrology are rather
written above the heads of the people. As an outsider, I can tel you that real y,
the people who want to know about Theosophy want to know the first steps,
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rather then these advanced theories. These are very wel known for your own

Society; but, if these books which come out from time to time are supposed to
spread the doctrine, I don’t think, speaking from experience, that they real y do
so much good. They come out along with the others.

Countess Wachtmeister: Could not you give us a series of questions, such
as outsiders ask themselves?

Mr. Cross: I should like to know why the person who so very clearly answers
the questions so clearly is cal ed a mystic.

Mme. Blavatsky: There you are. Mr. Keightly wanted “Mystic” I said put “Q”

and “A.” I wanted to put “Theosophist” but that is such a name which is
arrogant.

Mr. Kingsland: Put “Teacher.”

Mme. Blavatsky: No! No! No! It is worse, yet.

Mr. Cross: That is real y the objection that outsiders have, that it is vague.

Does not the use of the word “Mystic” go to build up that idea?

Mr. B. Keightley: You are perfectly correct.

545. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: What name would you suggest?

Mr. Cross: Why won’t you put your own name?

Mme. Blavatsky: “H.P.B.” stinks in the nostrils already.

Mr. Cross: But people look to you as the kind of oracle of the movement.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is my name there already; everyone would know I
have written this. But I would like throughout the book not to put so many times
my name. I know that “Mystic” was not good. Now please give me some good
advice.

Mr. B. Keightley: “Q” and “A” as an alternative would be good.

Mr. Cross: I suppose there is an objection to using “ Theosophist”?

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Mme. Blavatsky: It is very arrogant, because “Theosophist” we cal men who
are real y holy, saintly men, whoever they be, whatever nation they belong to,
or whatever religion. Now, I don’t think myself holy, good, or even learned
enough to cal myself a “ Theosophist.”

Mr. Cross: If you are not a Theosophist, who are the Theosophists? Are we
going to do away with the term Theosophist, simply because nobody can live
up to the ideal? “Theosophist is an ideal not what he real y is, the same as

Christian might be.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think “Theosophist” is better than “Mystic.” They wil only
say it is very mystic. Let it be “Theosophist”.

Mr. Cross: I feel I am not competent to speak, not knowing enough.

Mr. Kingsland: Then you can just give us advice.

Mme. Blavatsky: We are so immersed in this Theosophical Society business
that we cannot see things as those who surround us can.

Mr. Cross: It would be better if you could have a line drawn—a more definite
line—between Occultism and Theosophy.

546. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: We have it, a very great line. I am going to {have} a chapter
on the difference between Occultism and Theosophy. Theosophist may be
any member of a Theosophical Society. They may study or not as they like; it
obliges to nothing; you have not to change your religion, or give up anything.

But those who study Occultism, who study esoteric Theosophy, those have, of
course to believe. They must have one belief. Certainly Theosophy and

Occultism are different. For a Occultist must be a Theosophist if he would not
be a black magician, but you may be a Theosophist without being an Occultist.

Mr. Cross: But why do you bring out these books together? Now, I got hold of
a book cal ed The Higher Science, that did me a great deal of good. Another
time I had a book cal ed The Black Art, and it was something I knew nothing
about.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you know about the light side, you must know the dark
side. If you know anything about night, you must know what day is.

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Mr. Cross: You are handicapping yourself before the British public by bringing
these things together, because we know that astrology in the ordinary man is a
good deal connected with fraud. No doubt there is a great deal of truth in these
old sciences, but you are real y doing yourself harm. You are handicapping
yourself, so to speak.

Mr. Kingsland: You cannot help that, because Theosophy is based upon

Occultism. Occultism is the theoretical study of the laws upon which

Theosophy as an exoteric thing is based.

Mme. Blavatsky: And the laws of nature.

Mr. Kingsland: You must have some law to which you can point as the reason
for your Theosophical tenets, and that is Occultism. It is necessary for those
who are the leaders in the movement to have this in our knowledge, so that
they may meet the opponents of Theosophy on al planes., on the intel ectual
as wel as on others.

Mr. Cross: Then pray let us have it in plain terms. We want no such

547. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

scientific terms, we want everything clearly defined.

Countess Wachtmeister: Learning Theosophy is not like going to a
schoolmaster. Learning Theosophy is by developing your intuition; it is not like
having your lesson, just made easy. What Theosophy real y is, is the
development of the inner man.

Mr. Cross: True. But before you know anything about composition, you must
learn grammar. What I say is we should know something about the more
simple things.

Mme. Blavatsky: I have tried to put it in as simple language as I could.

Everyone throws it at my head; the outside public certainly does not. I took it
into my head to write this “Key to Theosophy”; two weeks ago I began writing
it, and I am finishing it, and it wil be about 250 pages.

Mr. Cross: Let us have books on astrology, by al means. Let us have books
on Occultism, but begin at the ABC.

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Mr. Kingsland: There are ABC Theosophical books. We are sending out
books which are both ABC and the most metaphysical books.

Countess Wachtmeister: There are so very different minds.

Mr. Kingsland: If a man wants only the ABC of Theosophy, a Theosophist wil
tel him: “what you want is such and such a book.” Another man comes and
says I want to find the scriptural basis of things; there is The Secret Doctrine,
for him. The only practical way is for a man to go to a Theosophist.

Mme. Blavatsky: Theosophy is a very easy thing if you happen to meet a

Theosophist who can give you an exposition of it clearly, wel , so as to make
you understand; but sometimes you happen to meet a Theosophist who wil
appal you with al kinds of metaphysical terms. Now, for instance, for myself I
speak very indifferent English but stil I am accustomed to use Theosophical
terms that every Theosophist wil understand. But other people wil look at me
and take me for a lunatic. For us it is perfectly comprehensible. And you

548. 19. Meeting May 16, 1889

must understand that a person accustomed to talk a certain language cannot
come and speak to children. Take a mathematician: he could not. It is
extremely difficult for a Theosophist to come and speak plainly to those who
have never heard of Theosophy, and therefore there is the difficulty. I wrote

The Secret Doctrine. It seems to me every word is comprehensible; many of
our Theosophists understand it, and that which they cannot, they come to me
about it and I explain to them. Every Thursday I explained that which was not
clear enough. But look at those newspapers; they don’t understand it, they say
it is al bosh.

Mr.—: You must not take any notice of what the Telegraph says.

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, has The Saturday Review even given a single word?

Mr.—: You must take into consideration it is their business.

Mme. Blavatsky: What, to sit on every book that appears?

Mr.—: It is not a fair criticism, and you must not take it as such. If you write
anything new in music or art they sit on it, because they like a thing that they
know. That is why music is so popular, because it is like so very many other
things.

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Mr. Kingsland: Mr. Cross’s contention is perfectly valid; but it seems to me
there is a remedy for it. It is not supposed you could select what you could
best read, but you wil find that you wil want to read these very books that you
are now condemning.

Mr. Cross: I want a book that wil tel me what to read.

Mr. Kingsland: Only someone who has been over the ground can help you.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

20.

Theosophical Society

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

Held at 17 Lansdowne Rd., Hol and Park, W.

Thursday, May 30, 1889.

W. Kingsland in the Chair

Mr. Old: The first question this evening is: Jîva is sometimes used as
synonymous with Prâna, or simply “life”; but it appears also to be used in the
plural as synonymous with the Monads, and in some other senses in the

Commentary on this and the fol owing Śloka. Please throw a little more light on
the meaning of the word “Jîvas in The Secret Doctrine.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I said many times that there are six schools of
philosophy in India; each school has its own terms, and uses them sometimes
in a different sense. What a Vedântin of Visishtâdvaita sect wil cal “Jîva,” that,
for instance, the Advaita, also belonging to the Vedântin school, wil say it is a
great heresy, because they cal “Jîva” “One,” which cannot be plural—that is to
say, which is Parabrahman; it is the one universal principle. Therefore, it is very
difficult to know which to use, and you must know in the light of what
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philosophy you use it, otherwise there wil always be confusion. “Jîva” Is real y
the incarnating ego, the fifth principle in our school, in the esoteric school.

Mr. Kingsland: Jîvas in the plural are very often used for the Monads.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, you cannot use Monad, because Monad is one thing
and Jîva is another. If you take Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, then it wil be another
thing; but, if you use them in distinction, it is impossible to say that, because

Monad is Âtma, what is Monad?

550. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: It appears often to be used there in the same sense.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Monad is from Greek, “One” the unit, whatever it is. If
we cal it Monad, it is simply because it is with Buddhi. And that Âtma in reality
is not a unit, but the one universal principle, and it is simply a ray. That which
uses Buddhi as a vehicle is that ray of that universal principle. Therefore, in
reality it is Buddhi which is the Monad, the one unit.

Mr. Kingsland: The Monad. But it is used in reference to the Monad in the
lower forms of life.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is a different thing. Leibniz uses it in quite a different
way.

Mr. Kingsland: But, is not it used there in the same sense as in The Secret

Doctrine?

Mme. Blavatsky: The Monad is that which incarnated in Châyâ in the image, in
the first image projected by the Lunar Pitris; but it is perfectly senseless,
because it has not got the cementing link, so to say, the Manas which comes
after that. One comes in the first race and the other in the third. So you see the
difference?

Mr. Old: In reading through The Secret Doctrine I have been lead to conclude
that Jîvâ was always used in the sense of the individual life principle.

Mme. Blavatsky: You must pay attention to what part of the book it is used in,
and when. For instance, if you see that I quote something there from some
sectarian book, then it wil be a different thing; or if I quote Leibniz, I wil say the

“Monads”; but I don’t think you wil find it is used simply when I speak from my
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own philosophy, that I mix them up. Because it is impossible to mix up the two.

Mr. Old: May we conclude, then, that Jîvâ is the individual expression, and

Prâna is the universal?

Mme. Blavatsky: Prâna is simply physical life, that in which animals

551. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

and men and al the animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom are; but Jîvâ
can only be applied to the one universal principle, that is to say, the
unknowable Parabrahman. Prâna is the Sanskrit for the life principle. There are
no “Prânas” for you cannot use it in the plural. Life is indivisible; but it is used
sometimes as a synonym for Jîvâ, when Jîvâ is applied to the one life or the
universal living essence—another term for the unknowable, yet self-
manifesting and evident principle, the first emanation, or that which you
ordinarily cal the first Logos—not the second the manifestation from the one
universal.

Mr. Kingsland: Are not the Jîvâ synonymous with what are cal ed the

“Devourers,” later on in the stanza?

Mme. Blavatsky: Every life has a Jîvâ in it. Every little insect has a Jîvâ. Every
microbe, every speck of dust, wil have its Jîvâ, but that is a different thing.

“Jîvâs” mean “the lives.”

Mr. Kingsland: That is identical with Leibniz’ idea of the Monads.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, wel , but it is not that. It can be cal ed the same. The

Monads of Leibniz are quite a different thing. In one sense it is, because

Leibniz cal s the Monads, every atom; so there is a great difference.

Mr. Old: Whether your Monad has intel igence or not, of course it has a
sentient intel igence of its own, peculiar to its degree.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a great difference between a Monad, a unit, like an
atom, and a Monad which is an intel igent Monad. Such a one as reflects the
whole universe is the Monad of Leibniz. One is on the plane of manifestation,
and of gross matter, and the other is on the plane of pure spirituality. The two
planes are quite different. You take the two, and at one end of the pole is pure
spirit and at the other pole there is gross matter. So you see you cannot mix it
up. You must always see in what sense it is used. One is the Unknowable, as I
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say, and the other is what I have said. This is a mistake which is very often
made.

552. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

Mr. Old: Question 2. You speak of the Unknowable. “Is the Unknowable of

Occultism the same as the Unknowable of {Herbert}

Spencer?”

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , that is just what I want to tel you, because there is a
very great difference. It is not. Herbert Spencer’s “Unknowable” is that which
we Occultists would simply cal the “unknown,” or that first invisible, and
intangible yet logical y necessary, existing principle which some cal the first
cause. Now, the Unknowable of Herbert Spencer is that which he cal s the first
cause, and we would never cal the first cause, but the first Logos. We do not
cal Parabrahman the first cause, because Parabrahman is the al -cause, the
universal cause, or the causeless cause, which is quite a different thing. The
first cause has a cause preceding it, and from which it emanates. The cause-
less cause has no cause because, it is the Absolute Cause itself. The
unknowable or Parabrahman the Vedântin philosophy cannot manifest sense it
is Absolute, hence the immutable; it can undergo no change whatever. To
understand this Occult doctrine one would do wel to study critical y the quarrel
between Harrison, the Positivist,1 with Herbert Spencer, in regard to this term.

Now, as I understand it, Unknowable, which to Harrison means Unknown—has
anyone of you read this thing between Harrison and Herbert Spencer?

Mr. Burrows: Yes.

Mme. Blavatsky: So you know it then. You wil tel me, if you please, if it is as I
understand it. The “Unknowable” Harrison would replace by the word

“Unknown.” Neither Spencer nor Harrison makes this abstract doctrine any
clearer by their discussion and coined terms, for both of them are right, and
both are wrong. It is as if one insisted that the diurnal period of 24 hours
should be termed day, and the other would insist upon cal ing it night; it is both
a day and a night that make up in our perception that period, and one without
the other would at once become meaningless. It is both the Unknowable

1 [Frederic Harrison, English author, 1831-1923, who publicized the Positivism of the French philosopher Auguste

Comte in England.]

553. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

and the Unknown. If then you blend together the Unknowable of Herbert
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Spencer and the Unknown of Harrison, the sum total wil give you a relative
idea of what we Occultists mean by the term, and why the words Jîvâ, Prâna,

Monad—the latter in its universal application of aggregate—are in reality al
one; but yet on this plane of manifestation we are obliged to differentiate them
and give a name to each and not mix them up. Now, Herbert Spencer thinks
that the final aim and expression of the deific idea is an unconditioned
il imitable absoluteness, and he is right. For us there exists only one absolute
certitude, viz. this: that the human spirit or consciousness uninterruptedly in the
presents of infinite and eternal energy, whence emanates (or rather, radiates)

al that which exists, or is. Is the idea of Herbert Spencer this?

Mr. Burrows: Yes, in the main.

Mme. Blavatsky: This is then the Unknowable, and this contains more than a
simple negation. It is the confession of our human ignorance; but also the tacit
or virtual admission that within man there is that which feels that energy which
is the universal substance; it is fabric, so to speak. Now, Spencer repeats very
often that Unknowable is that energy which manifests itself simultaneously in
the universe, and in our consciousness, and that it is the highest existing
reality, only concealed in the ever-changing progress of physical
manifestation; and yet spirit for Herbert Spencer is simply the invisible cosmic
cause of these phenomena. As I understand him he does not see in spirit
anything more. He attributes to this essence, as we do, unity, homogeneity,
and a limitless existence outside space and time, whose means of activity are
universal laws. We say so, too, but we add that above that essence and
plurality of the laws whose manifestations are only periodical, there is the one
eternal law, the causeless cause, as we cal it. Spencer places the

Unknowable face to face with the abstract and the cosmic phenomena, and
sees in this Unknowable the cause of the manifestation. The Positivist, on the
other hand, while admitting the existence of a certain fundamental or basic
energy, speaks, nevertheless, of the Unknowable as being

554. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

simply a negative quantity, which is a contradiction in terms. Now, you
understand the idea. One cal s it the Unknowable, and the other the Unknown.

It is positively a contradiction in terms, and both mean quite a different thing;
and yet, the same thing. Because Herbert Spencer cal s that which we would
cal the First Logos—or the first manifestation, the radiation from the eternal—
he cal s it first cause; and then he speaks about the Unknowable. The other
one speaks of the Unknown and wants to make of the Unknown the

Parabrahman.

You
understand?

But
the

Parabrahman
entirely
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unconsciousness, that is to say, a negative quantity, as he cal s it. Now, what
we Occultists say is that neither Spencer nor Harrison offers anything like a
complete philosophy. The Unknowable or the Unknown could not exist for our
perceptions, nor could our perceptions for it. It is the Unknown, or the Invisible
manifesting the Logos, which we place face to face with every phenomenon—
abstract, physical, psychic, mental, or spiritual—because the Unknown wil
always contain in itself some portion of the Unknowable, that is to say, some of
the laws and manifestations which elude our perception for a time. On the
other hand, Unknowable, being the sum of al that which owing to our finite
intel ectual organization may elude forever our perceptions, is the

Parabrahman, or the causeless cause. Now, if I have succeeded in making
myself understood, then I say if you study Spencer’s Unknowable, and take

Harrison’s Unknown, instead of accepting either one or the other, seeing the
necessary complements of each one life, then our one abstract Monad, and
our one universal Prâna, whose eternal, immutable, causeless cause, is our

Vedântinic Parabrahman, at one end of the line, and the great being, the
human race or humanity at the other, then you wil have the true idea of what
the Occultists mean. You see it is this humanity and each unit in it which are, at
one and the same time, the Unknowable, the Unknown, and the To-Be-Known.

This is what occultism says: as it is impossible for the human mind to know
anything definite even of the unknown essence, so let us turn our whole
attention to its highest manifestation on earth, mankind, and say as is said in

John: “In it we live and move and have our being”—“Il o vivicuus moveuur et
sumus”.2

2 [Acts 17:28, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being—in illa enim vivimus et movemur et sumus.”]

555. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

Mr. Old: There is one point that I don’t quite understand—perhaps it is not
understandable—but that was that the Unknowable could not differentiate.

Mme. Blavatsky: I should say it could not, if it is the Absolute.

Mr. Old: But that Absolute, as the Absolute, is this, and that, and everything.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes.

Mr. Old: Wel , we are a differentiation, certainly; we are the being in that non-
being. Humanity is the being, the one end of the [line ?] of life, and

Parabrahman is at the other, and yet Parabrahman comprehends them both.

He is not only the center, but the radius and also the limitless circumference. It
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looks like a contradiction in terms.

Mme. Blavatsky: I wil say, if you please, the Absolute cannot differentiate.

You don’t take the philosophical idea. You cannot say in philosophy that the

Absolute differentiates, that the unconditioned has any relation whatever to the
conditioned, or the finite; the infinite can have no relation to it. So you cannot in
thinking about cosmos, or the universe in its manifestations—perhaps you may
use your argument—you cannot, if you talk pure philosophy and Vedântin
philosophy, fix it up and say the Absolute can differentiate.

Mr. Old: Of course I see in the true idea of absolute being is lost in non-being.

Mme. Blavatsky: We say that Parabrahman is perfect, absolute
unconsciousness. By saying that it is absolute unconsciousness, we say it is
absolute consciousness. Now, can you imagine absolute consciousness? The

Vedântins wil . If it is absolute unconsciousness, it must be absolute
consciousness; but, as it is absolute, it can have

556. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

no relation to the consciousness or finite unconsciousness. Do try and
understand that difference. You see those enormously difficult and abstruse
ideas in the occult philosophy.

Mr. Old: I think it is high reasoning, which our language scarcely portrays at al .

Mme. Blavatsky: Herbert Spencer has tried it, and made a mess of it,
because he takes the Unknowable for a kind of transcendental first cause
which appears a little less than anthropomorphic. It is simply invisible, and he
does not give it a personality. I don’t think that he is at al a Vedântinic
philosopher.

Mr. Old: I believe that the pure idea can be conceived, but I do not think it can
be expressed.

Mme. Blavatsky: Everyone must feel it, certainly. Let me tel you, and
perhaps it wil help you. The unknowable as absoluteness, is eternal,
immutable; had neither beginning, nor wil it have an end. The unknowable as a
manifestation is periodical. The one is immutable, outside of space and time;
the other is finite, because it is periodical—that is why the Parabrahmanic
period or the Manvantaric period is separated or divided into days of Brahmâ
and nights of Brahmâ. The days are the periods of activity, in which this
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periodical manifestation, or the Unknowable manifested, puts in an
appearance; and the night of Brahmâ is a period when everything merges in
this one non-entity. Now, when the age of Brahmâ has finished the hundred
years, but which it takes about 17 or 18 figures to express, mil iards and
mil iards, I think about 17 mil iards—then it is a period which wil take as many
years as it took years of activity. Do you understand this division? The
unknowable is always the absolute unknowable, the abstract unknowable, or
what Harrison cal s the negative quantity—which, for our perceptions, it may
be.

Mr. Old: Then you might say that the unknown, is in reality, that which is to be
known.

557. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: The unknown cannot be; because the unknown has always
some potentiality of the unknowable in it, whereas the unknowable cannot have
such a potentiality.

Mr. Old: But I, like yourself, distinguish here between the words “unknown”

and “unknowable.” I should cal Herbert Spencer’s first cause “unknown.”

Mme. Blavatsky: Harrison is perfectly right. But, don’t you cal it Unknowable,
because that is what we cal Parabrahman.

Mr. Kingsland: It is the difference between Brahmâ and Parabrahman.

Mr. Old: Question 3. In reference to the whole of paragraph (e), and to some
points which were raised last Thursday, it would be as wel to devote a little
more time to the subject of reincarnation. And then there are several clauses
which I think it would be wel to read separately. Unfortunately, the paragraph is
omitted.

Mr. Kingsland: “The fourth order are substantial entities, etc. (reads
paragraph e).

Mr. Old: (a) For example, we have been accustomed to think of the

“Imperishable Jîvâs” or “Monads” as the Âtma-Buddhi-Manas (exoterical y),
and that this “Monad” incarnates at some period or other in the newly-born
child—not, however, ful y incarnating until seven years after birth.

Mme. Blavatsky: I told you that “Imperishable Monads” are not at al what you
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think. It is that which I have told you already, that the “Imperishable Jîvâs” are
the incarnating individualities not personalities; and they are not the Monads.

The Monads take immediate possession of the astral images, the Châyâs of
the Lunar Pitris; the Jîvâs or Mânasaputras, only at the end of the third race.

With the child it is just as it is with the First Race. The Monads Âtma-Buddhi,
are said to have ful y incarnated only when ful consciousness is developed in
the child mankind—that is to say, the The third race—and so it is with the child
unit, or man. Take always analogy, then you wil find invariably the key to the
occult explaination. As it is

558. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

with the First Race to the Third Race, so it is with the child because the child is
microcosmos of the macrocosm, and it repeats, stage by
stage, everything. The whole evolution of the universe is found in the evolution
of the fetus and of the child. That is a wel -known fact, which the Occultists
ought to know, more or less.

Mr. Old: Then you say that the Monad does not incarnate.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Monad incarnates the Monad, so to say, of a shadow. It
is not united, because Châyâ—or this image the astral form—is not conscious
of the presence of the Monad, because there is no Mânasic element to
appreciate, or to be conscious of that Monad in it. Therefore, it is just the same
as if he did not have it. So it is with the child.

Mr. Old: It is merely the vehicle of the individual life.

Mme. Blavatsky: Nothing else. But when the Manas comes, or the mind, then
there is the union of al the principles, and al the principles appear al about
between seven or eight years when the child becomes conscious.

Mr. Old: Manas is a connecting link. Then (b). it was suggested by Mr. Sinnett
last Thursday, and also apparently by the paragraph before us, that the Monad
is real y necessary as a potentiality denominating, and being in fact the “germ”

which causes the development of the entity from the germinal cel onwards.

But can we real y say that the Devachanic entity or upper triad has anything to
do, as an entity, with the purely physical evolution of that form in which it wil
presently incarnate? Are not the four lower principles derived entirely from the
parent and fol owing broadly what we usual y cal heredity? And may we not
say that this affects the four lower principles and not the three higher
principles?

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Mme. Blavatsky: Now, I wil try to answer you seriatim. Mr. Sinnett probably
cal s Monad that which we cal the image, Châyâ, unless he misunderstood the
teaching—which I don’t think, because he understood it wel . And I think you
misunderstood Mr. Sinnett. He

559. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

did not say this about the Monad, because it is the first thing that is taught, that
the Monad does not come but at a certain stage of the life of the child—the

Buddhi, especial y.

Mr. Old: He has prescribed that seven years in his Esoteric Buddhism.

Mme. Blavatsky: The germinal cel contains the seed or astral form only. The
father plants the seed in the soil of matter. This seed is like a flame without
wick or fuel; it neither decreases or increases, and whether he has one or a
hundred children, each of these children wil be like a rush candle3 to which
was imparted a light from the same inexhaustible flame. There is a thing which
goes for mil ions and mil ions, from the time when mankind began. It al passes
from father to son, from father to son, and so on. You understand the meaning.

And certainly it cannot decrease.

Mr. Old: But for how many principles is the human parent responsible?

Mme. Blavatsky: I wil tel you al this which is written here. The Monad
overshadows the fetus only in the seventh month, and enters ful y the child
after he reaches consciousness. The Devachanic entity envelops, so to
speak, the new entity, lights it up, but begins its process of assimilation only
after the frist ray of consciousness say at seven or eight months. Thus it does
not enter it. It begins to overshadow it, it is there, it is led by Karmic law to it,
but it cannot enter immediately. It is perfect nonsense to say the child has a
soul, and is a human being before it is born.

Mr. Kingsland: Then it is attracted by the astral shadow?

Mme. Blavatsky: Just in the same way.

Mr. Old: It is rather dangerous against the law of infanticide.

Mme. Blavatsky: It cannot be taught to the masses and the people. But
unfortunately the Hindus know it, and therefore they get rid of
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3 [Candle made from rushes dipped in grease drippings and set alight from a flame.]

560. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

their children very easily. But this is certainly Karma. But whether the child has
got a wil or not, it is a human being, and there are other laws in the code of
philosophy which prevent infanticide; that wil always be a crime. From the
parents the child receives only the astral and physical bodies and the kâma-
rûpa, the animal soul. It receives life from no one. It does not receive life from
father or mother; it is born, and therefore it is in life. I ask you, do you receive
the ocean? Can it be said that you receive the ocean when you bathe in it, or
does the sponge receive it? You and the sponge have your being, and that
ocean because you are in its water. The child receives life from no one. The
life is there, it is the universal principle. Of course, science wil tel you it is
nothing of the kind. It is nonsense, that life is not an entity. Life is just that deity
of which we know nothing.

Mr. Old: You think the physical parents have the power of focusing this life
and bringing it into distinct channels.

Mme. Blavatsky: The form is made which, as soon as it is born receives, or
as soon as it begins developing, receives life; just the same as you breathe air
unconsciously. Nobody gives you the air that you breathe. Without air you
would die, that is al .

Mr. Old: Then you real y mean to say that the endowment of life is the result of
certain physical development which has led up to that stage when the
reception of life is a necessity.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. You are born, you are formed to come into
being, and you live because life is there. You are in life. When you die, it is not
that life leaves you; you are in the life. It is you who leave the life, and not life
that leaves you.

Mr. Kingsland: Life begins to function and manifest through you.

Mme. Blavatsky: And once that your organs are destroyed, it won’t function. It
is like the force in the clock. You wind it up; so long as it is wound up it wil
work, but once that this force is exhausted—not the force that made it—but
once the thing has been wound up and

561. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889
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runs down, there is an end of it, it cannot function. And this force cannot
function where there are no conditions.

Mr. Kingsland: It is more like a tree moving about in the wind. You see the
effect of the wind by the tree, but if you take away the tree, the wind is blowing
past there, just the same.

Mme. Blavatsky: The three higher principles are the human trinity, the three in
one. They do not come to the child through the parents. If somebody objects
to this and asks: how about the heredity intel ect and its absence? You know,
as they said the other time when somebody here thought the heredity the al . I
say it is perfect nonsense. Neither this heredity intel ect or dul ness rests with
the higher ego or Manas at al . There degrees are dependent on our physical
organism and brain, the size of which, by the bye, does not always go pari
passu with the quality of the brain. Now, some persons wil say: “He has got an
enormous brain, and it shows the intel ect.” Not at al . I have been reading
things in medical books. The pig has a far larger brain than the man, and yet it
is not quite so intel ectual.

Mr. Old: They say the depth of convolutions, rather.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, they weigh the brain. Such a one has got so many
ounces or pounds or tons. I say it is the quality, not the quantity. If the father or
the mother were intel ectual people, they wil sometimes pass by inheritance
an organism as theirs was to the child. Thence, the son wil have the same
capacities in receiving into and reflecting in his physical brain the same amount
of light from Manas or the mind principle. But how often do we stupid sons of
intel ectual parents, and vice versa? This is not heredity. Do you understand
this? The parents may give by heredity there organism, their convolutions, or
whatever it is, the physical material, which wil have the same capacity of
reflecting the light from Manas as they had, therefore the child wil be as
intel ectual; but Manas is not at al that. It is always the same, it is omniscient. It
becomes dul or stupid only in its personalities and incarnations upon earth.

You can’t say of Manas that one ego is more intel ectual than the other.

562. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Does not one ego bring back more Manases from the

Devachanic state than another?

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al . One ego wil have a better Karmic development
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than another, but it does not bring back at al . Once it is passed its period of
il usion in Devachan—when it is in Devachan or anything, it becomes the
omniscient ego.

Mr. Kingsland: But that portion which we have always understood to be
assimilating, is not that brought back again?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is. But in Devachan it is not itself. It is very difficult to
explain; it reflects the human personality, because if it did do that, it could not
have the bliss that it has. Because Devachan, after al , is an il usion, the Fool’s

Paradise.

Mr. Kingsland: But then that portion of Manas surely develops with every
individual.

Mme. Blavatsky: It does, because the personality differs, but the Manas per
se is the incarnating ego.

Mr.—: Manifestation depends upon the perfection or the imperfection of the
instrument.

A Lady: It would real y be, then, from the parents you have a certain
development or non-development of mechanism. And it is according to that
the Manas is able to manifest itself in ordinary life. And that is where heredity
wil come in.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Manas is always the same. It is the stem the eternal
stem around which cling the personalities, so to say, those that come and go,
and so on. It is cal ed the Sûtrâtman, the silver thread on which are strung
those pearls as personalities. You know the expression. In its own inherent
nature, or essence, it is omniscient, for it is part of the Divine Mind. But once
that it has been brought to incarnate on earth, it takes up al the materiality and
al the finite attributes, so to say, and the qualities of the personalities it
incarnates in. And moreover, these personalities are subject to the perfections
of the material form.

563. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

A Lady: Supposing during the human life, the spiritual nature has been
developed up to a very considerable extent, and then death comes. When that

Manas returns to a fresh incarnation, wil the progress that has been made in
the past life settle the type of humanity that it wil then take up, so that its past
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life wil carry it on further?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. If the Karma was good, it wil go higher and
higher, and al the experiences of the past life wil come in this life. Because,
when you find children who are not at al like their parents—no musicians in the
family—and you see little boy phenomenons, Hofmann,4 or some such things,
this is a thing which comes from the previous life. It comes to him as easily as
water to a duck.

Mr.—: How does it happen that the mechanism he gets from his parents does
not retard that? Because, if his parents are non- musical, then their
mechanism, so far as regards music, must be stronger than his.

Mme. Blavatsky: It overpowers blind matter.

Mr. Kingsland: In many cases, I fancy it is retarded?

Mme. Blavatsky: Look at little, blind Tom, who is in America—a little nigger of
four years, who is perfectly blind, and yet see the wonderful things that he
does.5

A Lady: Would it be attracted, rather, towards the musical mechanism?

Mme. Blavatsky: Heredity is a Karmic effect. Therefore, if an individuality
has to incarnate in Karma in a person, then the frame

4 [Child prodigy, Josef Hofmann 1876-1957, who played piano concerts at the age of 10, and was very much in
the public eye in 1887 and 1888.]

5 [Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins, 1849-1908, born blind slave in Georgia in the U.S., by the age of four he evinced
a talent for playing the piano, for which he had no training, and was put on tour by his owner.]

564. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

wil be given to him, which wil give to him this musical mechanism.

A Lady: There wil be a sort of affinity?

Mr. Old: And then has not an astral body the power of impressing its own
image upon the gross matter supplied by the physical parents?

Mr. Kingsland: The other way about.

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Mr. Old: The antitype which exist previous to the child’s birth.

Mme. Blavatsky: This astral is nothing at al with the Manas that incarnates.

This belongs to the lower matter, and this is given by the father and mother, by
the parents, and around this astral then forms the physical child. But this astral
is nothing to do with that. It is nothing to do with the ego, which is one and
continuous, unbroken.

Mr. Old: The Monad in incarnating, projects its shadow Châyâ.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, no, not at al .

Mr. Old: Does not it overshadow? It is said to overshadow the child.

Mme. Blavatsky: It overshadows the child that has its astral self in it, and its
body. Then it begins overshadowing when the child is born. The Monad

Buddhi, this immortal principle, gets into the child and overshadows it as soon
as the child begins to be conscious—as conscious as a kitten, for instance. It
is there already, but the Manas is cal ed a different thing. The Manas is mind.

That is why the child wil never become intel ectual before five or six years. It
depends upon how precocious he is. Read in the second volume of The

Secret Doctrine and see how the Lunar Pitris project their Châyâ and having
projected their Châyâs, this is the vehicle of the Monad.

Mr. Old: That is just what I understood, and it carries it towards the child—the
as yet unintel igent child.

Mme. Blavatsky: I tel you again that til the Third Race it does not link itself
entirely.

Mr. Kingsland: It has nothing to do with the development of the

565. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

germ, either physical y or astral y, but it is attracted afterwards at a certain
period to the already partly developed germ.

Mr. Old: How much of the individuality, then, shapes the organism?

Mr. Kingsland: That is the point I don’t think has been quite elucidated yet.

Where does the individuality of the reincarnating Monad come in?

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Mme. Blavatsky: The individuality is the reincarnating ego, the Manas. Manas
is a thing, it is Sûtrâtman. The personality and individuality are quite different.

You make the same thing out of personality and individuality.

Mr. Kingsland: Where does the musical quality come in? How does that
belong to it?

Mme. Blavatsky: It belongs to it because every personality that passes gives
a certain color, and gives more and more and more to the incarnating ego; and
then it remains, this talent for music, and it brings it back. Very wel . Al that
remains on the individuality, on the ego being reincarnated, is brought back on
earth. And therefore it is an inherent sole quality.

Mr. Kingsland: I understood you just now, the intel ectuality does not depend
upon Manas at al , but upon physical qualifications.

Mme. Blavatsky: Intel ectuality and music are quite different things. I have
known idiots who played beautiful y. I said the parents did not give to the child
anything but the form, and certainly there is the lower Manas and the higher

Manas. If they made the form fit enough to receive this higher light, or to have
untrammeled this light from the Manas, he wil be intel ectual. If the Kâma-rûpa,
or the lower Manas, predominates too much, then he won’t receive, because
he wil be dul . There wil be no light coming from Manas. Manas, itself,
depends upon Buddhi.

Mr. Kingsland: Then, as a matter of fact, there is a large portion of everyone’s

Manas, that does not incarnate at al , that always remains

566. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

undeveloped, unrepresented, in the present personality of the person.

Mme. Blavatsky: Remember that we are in the Fifth Race and only at the end
of the Fifth Race wil Manas be entirely developed, and we are yet on the

Fourth Round only. I cannot tel you al that I would like to. There are three
more rounds.

Mr. Kingsland: Take the case of the person who has got this inherent quality.

Suppose he doesn’t find the physical conditions?

Mme. Blavatsky: Then he won’t be a musician. There is Karma that wil always
find that.

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Mr. Kingsland: Surely the whole of your Karma does not find al the
development. Where is it during the present incarnation?

Mme. Blavatsky: I can’t understand what you mean.

Mr. Old: I understand your question, because it was one that arose in my
mind.

Mr. Kingsland: Instead of saying music or intel ectuality, let us say the
character. Isn’t it the Manas or distinctive quality that gives character to the
person?

Mme. Blavatsky: To give character to the person, do you mean that the Manas
would have to change and become a different Manas every time? Where
would be, if you please, the incarnating ego, the Sûtrâtman?

Mr. Old: Then you think character is only an expression of the mind?

Mme. Blavatsky: I only know one thing. Let us say this pair of spectacles is
the Manas. It is always for ever eternal y the same. Now, I put the spectacles in
mud; something wil remain on it of this mud. Then I wil put them in jam, there
wil be some jam left. Then I wil put in something else. Every incarnation gives
to the Manas some personality, and at the end of the Manvantaric round, that is
to say, at the end of the cycles of incarnation, there wil be the Manas with al
the experiences it has acquired. Every personality dies. It is

567. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

only the secret of spirituality, of the spiritual qualities, of the eternal qualities,
that wil survive. You read Esoteric Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism is wel -
enough written. You read it, Dr Berridge. I can’t explain it any better.

Mr.—: Putting it into very bold English, supposing you always dropped them
into jam?

Mme. Blavatsky: It wil be very sweet then.

Mr.—: Taking an analogy of jam and music—supposing it wil be always music

—Jozef Hofmann wil have so much by and bye that it wil be bound to come to
the front.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly I like somebody who can speak plainly.

A Lady: He wil also incarnate into a body in which the mechanism is likely to
go towards music.

Mme. Blavatsky: I say that the Karmic-sense heredity is governed by Karma.

Therefore, when the musical entity is to reincarnate, then certainly this law wil
take care, that the body wil be musical and fit for it—that they should not be
born with stumps instead of fingers.

Mr. Old: You would say, real y, that individual character is nothing else than
expression of mind through different organisms, and the organisms control the
expression of character?

Mme. Blavatsky: For instance, you put some intel igence under blue glass. It
wil appear to you blue. Or under red, and so on. It wil go like that.

Mr. Kingsland: If that is so, if Manas as we find it here depends upon the
quality of the organism that it functions in, where does the development of

Manas come in?

Mme. Blavatsky: It develops through the personality. Manas does not come to
be happy and to be developed. Manas comes because it is too pure; and
being too pure, it has neither merit nor demerit. Therefore, it must come and
suffer a little bit, and have the

568. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

experience of everything that can be got in this cycle of imagination. And
therefore, the same experiences wil make it fit to merge in the Absolute. It
contains al the experiences in this blessed world, and the worlds that have
been and wil be.

Mr. Kingsland: It appears from that, that Manas is something that is to be, stil
qualified by the individual [lives?] with no life.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. In the Key to Theosophy I give al this.

Read the Key to Theosophy. It wil come out in two or three weeks. I think I
answer every question there. It is extremely difficult for me, “unaccustomed as

I am to public speaking,” to come and explain this. Real y, I want to say one
thing, and I say quite a different thing—or you take it as such.

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Mr. Old: The next paragraph clears it up I think. Question 3 (c). According to
this view, the “spiritual plasm” referred to in the paragraph in question is not the

Devachanic Entity, though it is liable to be confounded with it. There is of
course a mystery within a mystery here, but it is very desirable that we should
have as clear a view of the matter, in connection with the more immediate
derivation and evolution of the seven human principles.

Mme. Blavatsky: You see what I said. You are right, and Mr. Sinnett or
somebody else spoke also of this heredity business as being an obstacle. Do
you remember, Mr. Burrows, who spoke about it, that it was an obstacle?

Mr. Burrows: I don’t remember.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is just that which enters into Karmic attributes. Heredity is
governed by Karma, in short. Therefore you see, Karma wil take care to bring
it into a musical, physical body.

Mr. Old: Then we may say that the law of heredity applies to the four lower
principles of the law of Karma, operates in the plane of the three higher.

Mme. Blavatsky: The law of heredity has nothing to do with life.

569. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

Remember what you learn, if you please, apart from the Thursdays.

Exoterical y it is, not esoterical y.

Mr. Old: (d) From what is said on page 224, line 10 et seq, the above view
would appear to be supported, with the further addition that the parent is also
responsible for Manas—perhaps we should say, some portion of Manas?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now, how can the parent be responsible for Manas? You wil
say next it is responsible for Âtma.

Mr. Old: It is the animal mind we refer to, perhaps?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the reflection from the higher mind. We say it is dual
simply because on this plane the ful Manas cannot manifest; and in relation to
its lower Manas, it is just the same as Parabrahman’s relation to the first

Logos. It radiates. Very wel . And the rest depends upon the more or less
perfect organisms—on education, on environment, and on everything—on the
vices that are inculcated; al these things that come, and are so many
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obstacles.

Mr. Kingsland: Then Manas stands there in the same way as Prâna does in
reference to the lower, to the life on the physical plane. It is universal, so to
speak.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Manas is universal. These are distinct entites which
incarnate, which in other Manvantaras have finished there cycle, and it is their
time to incarnate in this cycle.

Mr. Kingsland: It says here the five lower principles in the four.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not the five principles of the seven, it is the five principle
of the lower principles. It is perfectly correctly said there. Man must have the
fruition of al the five, it is said, and this fruition carries within it no responsibility
to anyone. You look there on the page that you have been mentioning, page

224, line 10. You find there the phrase I have quoted: “Man must have the
fruition of al the five, and this fruition carries with it no responsibility to

570. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

anyone.”6 How can the parents be responsible for Manas, where Manas is a
defined and independent entity? The parents may in some way be karmical y
responsible for the physical organism of the child, but certainly not for Manas.

Mr. Kingsland: Not responsible for Manas any more than they are responsible
for Prâna.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly.

Mr. Old: Question 4 (page 233). Since each round, globe, etc., is under the
guidance of a “Creator,” “Builder,” or “Watcher,” can you tel us what part, if
any, these Manus play in polity of nations on the terrestrial plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: None at al . The “Watchers” or “Builders” are commissioned
by law to guide and animate, so to say, the elements of which our globe is
composed; but they have no power to interfere with Karmic law, because they
are not anthropomorphic gods. They are simply powers, cosmic powers, of
which we have no ideas. Not what you men of science and naturalists would
cal cosmic powers, but what we Occultists would cal cosmic powers.

Mr. Old: Question 5. During the reign of one Manu or Race, have the other six
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any direct influence on human affairs?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I would say to you with the French. When the king dies
they say: “The King is dead; long live the King!” How can the six Manus have
anything to do with the Manus now? When an age or race has passed away,
nothing that has caused the Nidânas or the concatenation of causes of the
previous, act on the new one. It is only the Karmic effects that develop. When

Victoria7 dies, and you have your next royal—ninny, shal I say—shal the four

Georges have any direct influence on the forces of England? You see, I am a
very great Republican.

6 [This is a paraphrasing of what is found on page 224 of volume 1 of The Secret Doctrine.]

7 [Queen Victoria died January 22, 1901. Her son, Albert Edward, who became King Edward VII, and ruled until
his death in 1910, succeeded her; his son became King George V.]

571. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

Mr. Old: Question 6, page 238, Śloka 5. “Sacred Animals” Elsewhere you
explain the term “Sacred Animals” as referring symbolical y to the signs of the
zodiac. How is this meaning of the term connected with the explanation given
here of it as “the first shadow of the physical man”?

Mme. Blavatsky: How many times shal I have to repeat that each symbol has
a septenary significance? Did I tel you one, or twenty, or a hundred times, that
everything has seven meanings? In astronomy, the “Sacred Animals” mean
the zodiacal signs; in geology, they mean the globes, which are also the
planets (which may be taken astronomical y), or geological y, as worlds; in
zoology, they are sacrificial animals; in anthropology it is the physical man. It
has in every department, some meaning, just as you apply it.

Mr. Old: Question 7, page 250: It would be interesting to have a clearer
definition of the three “waters”—“solid water,” “liquid moist, watery,” “third
world-element water”; also, to know the order of the development of the
senses in the races of the Fourth Round. We are in the Fourth Round, but Fifth

Race, and therefore are developing a sense which cannot reach its ful
expansions til the Fifth Round: 1. Fire (sight); 2. Air (touch); 3. Water (taste); 4.

Earth (smel ); 5. Ether (sound); 6. Âkâsa (intuition); 7. Kundalini sense

(includes al others).

Mme. Blavatsky: We are, for the first time in this Four Round; and we are, for
the first time men. In the three previous Rounds we were mere intangible
phantoms; then ethereal; then ethereal, fluidic creatures; then jel y-like animals;
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and only in the Fourth Race we have become real physical men, haven’t we?

Then take the analogy, and look at what I have written there, and go to bed.

You must ask this question with your initiation of the masters, not of me (see
footnote on page 252). You put me questions that are—wel , extraordinary. Al
this is esoteric, but I don’t mind tel ing you something of it. If you have air in
seven states of density, why cannot you have water in such seven states of
degree, and everything else, including fire? I ask you the question.

572. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

Of course, if we represented and analyzed them, we shal find in each al the
other elements, in one form or the other. Now, let us take earth, and we wil find
in it that we wil divide it into seven. We find in its lowest and most material end
granite rock, the hardest that you can think of, which wil become softer and
softer as it passes through each of its states until it becomes mud, and what
you would cal simply dirty water. It wil be matter, stil . Now, in the rock, matter,
or earth, you wil find fire concealed. That is to say, it contains fire potential y,
as it contains air and everything else. The same with air which begins at the
third stage above radiant matter, and ends with ether and Âkâsa and so on. Al
this wil show to you that whether four or seven, these are cal ed elements, are
correlative, and each becomes a definite element only on our plane of
perception and by one of its seven aspects. Because that aspect which
predominates over the others wil give that qualification to that element. We
cal it water because that aspect is more developed than air, or fire; but you wil
find al the seven in every element occultly, in reality, in their final essence. And
on the plane of manifestation they are al one element. And when they have
achieved their cycle of evolution in the world of manifestation, this one
disappears and they merge back into their primal cause, and from the one
element they become no element again, absoluteness. I did not create the
word. I cannot explain this to you. I must not.

Mr. Old: Question 8 (page 260—end of second paragraph). If our globe is in
its Kâma-rûpic state, in what state was it during the first, second, and third
rounds?

Mme. Blavatsky: That is a modest man, and he asks very easy things to
which extremely easy answers can be given. Count from what you wil , it is
always the Kâma-rûpic state, sense it is right in the middle. From above or
below it wil become rûpa. It is in the middle thing.; but if we count from the
races—for the evolution of the globes has to begin by the highest, or seventh

—the second wil correspond to the second, and so on. We cal it Kâma-rûpic
because there are no words to express the corresponding states. If from
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round we turn to races, it

573. 20. Meeting May 30, 1889

wil be easier, and it is explained in The Secret Doctrine, everything is
explained there, how with every race you acquire new facility. In the Fifth Race
we have attained the highest intel ectuality in this round; but in the Sixth Round
or the Fifth Round, the Fifth Race wil be a thousand times more intel ectual
yet. Take it al on analogy. Now, gentlemen, let us have questions, and I am
ready to answer you.

Mr. Old: What is the meaning of the second plane mentioned here (page 262
note)?

Mme. Blavatsky: That is what I say. You ask me in three years that! Now, you
had better ask questions, and we wil make the conversation general.

(The Proceedings here closed)

21.

Theosophical Society,

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

Held at 17 Lansdowne Rd., Hol and Park, W.

Thursday, June 6, 1889.

{W. Kingsland in the Chair}

Mr. Old: These are questions such as would come from a person beginning to
search out Theosophical truth and I thought myself that it would be a leader to
the issue of this new book, The Key to Theosophy. I thought a consideration
of some of the elementary questions would not only fil up a very pleasant
evening, but at the same time, would excite some interest in the book which is
now approaching completion. They are mere elementary questions on Karma,

Devachan, and Reincarnation; the How, When, and Where of Theosophy.

Question 1. What is Karma?

Mme. Blavatsky: Am I real y expected to answer this?

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Mr. Old: You are.

Mme. Blavatsky: Karma is the law of retribution. Now, Mr. Bertram Keightley,
go on.

Mr. B. Keightley: They would much rather listen to you then to me. However,

Karma is, as H. P. B. began to say, the law of retribution—that which is
recognized by modern science as the law of cause and effect. But although
that law is absolutely universal, the law of Karma is more frequently used in a
narrower sense as applying more particularly to the law of cause and effect
acting on the moral plane. Literal y, it means simply action, and it expresses
the idea that every action is productive of consequence, and so the chain

576. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

of causation goes on infinitely. But, it is not simply that causes operate blindly,
because in the Theosophical view the law of Karma is absolute intel igence;
and it also has to be remembered that the law of Karma applies to the
individual. It is not merely that a man performs certain actions.

Mme. Blavatsky: Stop. You say that the law of Karma is intel igent.

Mr. B. Keightley: I said “intel igence.”

Mme. Blavatsky: I say it is not. It is neither intel igence nor non- intel igence.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is absolute intel igence.

Mme. Blavatsky: Because you wil make of it immediately a personal god, and

I protest against that. That is to say that everything that fal s under the sway or
the influence of that ever-present law wil have certain effects, in the physical
world there is a concatenation of causes and effects always. For instance, if I
do like that, I wil hurt my hand; the pain I feel in my hand wil be the effect of
having done that; so it is in the world of moral causes. But you cannot and must
not say it is intel igent or intel igence. Is it simply the absolute harmony,
absolute—wel , cal it intel igence, wisdom, anything you like. There again I am
stuck for a word.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is true to say it acts with intel igence.

Mme. Blavatsky: It does not act. It is our actions that act, and that awaken into
al kinds of influences. Look here, if you say that Karma acts and you say it has
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intel igence, immediately you suggest the idea of a personal god. It is not so,
because Karma does not see and Karma does not watch, and does not repent
as the Lord God repented. Karma is a universal law, immutable and
changeless.

Mr. B. Keightley: But you cannot conceive of a law which does not act.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , I say it does not act. In my conception, it

577. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

does not act. Wel , Karma does not act any more than water drowns
you.

Mr. B. Keightley: But water does drown you.

Mme. Blavatsky: Water does not drown you. You drown yourselves in the
water. Don’t go into the water and you won’t get drowned.

Mr. Old: Is it possible to get outside the law of Karma, then?

Mme. Blavatsky: You cannot.

Mr. Old: The analogies scarcely fit.

Mme. Blavatsky: I beg your pardon. It does, as much as it can in this world of
physical symbols—or whatever you may cal them— because it is the way that
you act. It is not because you act wickedly or sinful y, or with or without a
motive, you produce an effect. You strike a note in the universal.

Mr. Ralph Sneyd: Is not ignorance the cause of al evil action?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is, but Karma does not take stock of it, does not concern
itself whether you do it from ignorance or from too much learning. It is simply if
you do a certain thing, so the effect wil be on a similar line. For instance, you
wil strike one note, and you know perfectly wel what wil be the consequence
of that note. That is why I simply wanted to stop Mr. Keightley, because he
said it was intel igent and it acted. Certainly we must say that it acts; but, I want
you at the same time to understand that in saying it acts, we use the same
expression as if we said the sun is setting. The sun does not set at al .

Mr. Burrows: If our action is a note which we strike, that real y is the echo of
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some previous note which has been struck somewhere in the universe.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly. It is not the first time that you struck this note.

Whether you strike it in the ordinary way, or otherwise, it depends on that
whether it wil be flat, sharp or something else.

578. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Karma is, so to speak, the absolute equilibrium; and however
we act we disturb that equilibrium one way or another, and Karma adjusts.

Mr. B. Keightley: The analogy that dwel s in my mind is this—it almost
presents itself to me under this form: If we conceive ourselves as beings
absolutely surrounded and penetrating everything in fluid of such a nature that
every action we make in that fluid produces a series of vibrations which
eventual y react upon ourselves. If you imagine a body suspended in a perfect
fluid, no movement is possible without disturbing the fluid. That sort of
pressure pressing in on you from al sides, that substance—if you like to cal it
that—is Karma. Or rather, Karma describes the relation of that subject.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is simply one way of getting outside the influence of

Karma. It is the yogis who do it, only—it is by merging oneself more and more
in the Laya state. That is to say that you are just like in a vessel out of which air
has been pumped—a perfect vacuum. In that vacuum, of course, you cannot
go either left or right or any way; there is no point of attraction, and there you
are. You understand the analogy?

Mrs. Besant: Then it would always be the striving after equilibrium?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly! Every action produces a Karmic effect on the
spiritual plane, on the psychic, on the spiritual, and everything. And the only
thing is to be in this neutral point where there is no differentiation, where there
is no action.

Mr. Old: Then we understand Karma to be the law of equilibrium.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is perfect harmony and equilibrium.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think you want to add to it one thing. People get an idea
very often that Karma only applies to bad actions. Karma is simply the action,
the law of the consequence of action of al kinds, whether good or bad, and it
is, entirely apart from that, the inevitable sequence of cause and effect. It wil
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fal upon you whether the action is good or bad.

579. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. Sneyd: But would not you say that al that arose—every evil consequence
which decreased happiness—arose from ignorance on the part of the
conscious being that did the action? However learned a person may be,
supposing he does an action which results in the decrease of his happiness,
should not you say that action was caused by his ignorance in some respect?

Mme. Blavatsky: But ignorance won’t save you from the effects of Karma.

Mr. Sneyd: Don’t you think ignorance is the cause of bad Karma?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is.

Mr. Sneyd: And that knowledge is the cause of al good Karma? Supposing
you did a thing and it increased your happiness; would not it be the reason of
that would most likely be that you had done something with knowledge, as it
were?

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t think so, because the effects produced by a given
cause are not always of the same character. You see, a man who uses his
knowledge to do good, to make good Karma for himself, acts fundamental y
from a selfish motive, at the back of his good action.

Mr. Sneyd: Would not the reason be that he was ignorant in so far as he did
not know the interest of one conscious being was the interest of al ?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wait a moment, there is another question about Karma here.

Mr. Old: I thought it would not do to let each question go too far into the
discussion, otherwise it might overlap some of the other questions. The
second question is: How far does this law operate in this life, and how far in

Devachan?

Mme. Blavatsky: In Devachan, it does not operate at al . It is the law of Karma
which sends a man to Devachan with a program

580. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

already prepared beforehand, which program is the consequence of his
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suffering and of the miseries that he had in this world, and it is already there; it
is cut and dried for him. Karma waits on the threshold of Devachan at the
moment of reincarnation, and then it pounces upon the individual when he is
rewarded. There is no punishment in the hereafter, in the other world, as you
cal it.

Mrs. Besant: It only works then, real y, in this world?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the hel , and the purgatory, and everything— and the
paradise.

Mr. B. Keightley: The good effects are reaped in Devachan.

Mme. Blavatsky: Reaped for those who want a consolation, and want a rest,
and bliss, and care for it; those who don’t care for it won’t have it.

Mr. Gardner: The fools paradise.

Mme. Blavatsky: For instance, you are perfectly indifferent to everything.

Mr. Kingsland: There is a question which might be put with reference to very
wicked people who don’t go into Devachan.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are born almost immediately after a kind of sleep in
which they won’t have very nice dreams.

Mr. Kingsland: That is what I wanted to say.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is nothing, you see, like Devachan; there is Avichi, but
that is quite a different thing.

Mr. Kingsland: In the state of Kâma-loka.

Mme. Blavatsky: There it is, no more the man, the entire man. He has been
left and abandoned by one of his principles. He has no more of the Âtma over
him; he has simply his intel igence and his consciousness. That is why I say
those creatures you see in the séance rooms are so very dangerous. It is not
the man, it is the

581. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

shadow of the man, and his reflection; but with al the wickedness and with al
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the wicked influences; the utmost fear of al that which he has committed in this
life. And certainly he wil inoculate it in those present as though a living man
came with the smal pox and gave it to you al . Al this idea of spiritualism is
perfectly ridiculous.

Mr. Old: Then Karma does not operate, or has no active operation, only a
reflex operation, in Devachan?

Mme. Blavatsky: Merely sends a man into Devachan and stops on the
threshold. Al egorical y speaking, it waits when the man comes out of the state
of bliss, during which he wil be rewarded for al the unmerited suffering and al
the things he had—for after al a man is a very miserable creature. A man does
not want to be born, and does not know he is born.

Mr. Burrows: Is there such a thing as unmerited suffering?

Mme. Blavatsky: If you suffer from causes you produce, it is merited; but very
often you have sufferings that are caused by other persons, of which you are
not guilty at al .

Mrs. Besant: For instance, national Karma.

Mme. Blavatsky: Very often you suffer for things you have never committed,
but you simply happen to fal under this current, and there you are. You suffer
tremendously, and you suffer that which is not merited, and then you have to
have an adequate bliss and reward for it.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is the personal Karma. The suffering has a conscious
personality—Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown, who is not aware he has committed any
of these crimes, how shal we say? Take for instance now, this accident in

America;1 it wil be a very good instance. Now, you could not suppose that al
the people that have been drowned or have suffered in various ways, and al
the children

1 [The Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania, May 31, 1880 killing over 2000 in a matter of hours when the dam
broke.]

582. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

in that catastrophe, were al , as it were, brought under its influence by their
personal Karma, so to speak, would you, H.P.B.?

Mme. Blavatsky: No. It is just that, you know.

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Mr. B. Keightley: There a damn bursts and people are swept away.

Mr. Sneyd: Would not you say it was the result of a sort of ignorance on the
part of those people being there and not knowing the train would come to a
smash?

Mr. B. Keightley: Of course it is, in one sense.

Mr. Old: This is what you cal diffused Karma. A person comes under it by
virtue of being an atom of a body. He cannot have a law separate from the
body to which he belongs.

Mr. B. Keightley: The distinction I drew between the personality and
individuality of a man is of special importance, because as a personality he
has not perhaps a responsibility for that; he is one of a race, and he suffers the

Karma of the Race.

Mr. Burrows: And then the justice comes in afterwards.

Mr. B. Keightley: Because he has suffered personal y more than he has
merited, he receives his reward in Devachan in the shape of a personal
reward. Is not that so, H. P. B.?

Mr. Old: Then our third question is: how far can this law of Karma be diverted,
deferred, or prevented—diverted in the sense of turning off one track onto
another?

Mme. Blavatsky: You meddle with Karma, and then it wil be just a thousand
times worse. You can defer it and you can stop it for a while, but it wil come
always.

Mr. Old: You cannot prevent it, then?

Mme. Blavatsky: You cannot. It wil become worse.

583. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Can you divert it in the sense of changing the character of its
manifestation? Can you neutralize bad Karma by subsequent good action?

Mr. Old: Can an individual take on the Karma of half a dozen people?

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Mme. Blavatsky: He cannot. No! Sir.

Mr. Kingsland: But you can make new Karma for half a dozen people.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, but you cannot take it any more than you can take the
il ness of a half a dozen persons. Now, if it is not Karmic, of course you may
stop it—this thing which has been produced by someone else—but if it is

Karmic, nothing wil stop it.

Mr. Old: A person who al eviates suffering only generates good Karma for
himself.

Mme. Blavatsky: He does temporary good to the persons, but the Karma
must come in some other shape.

Mr. Old: Because I was wondering how far Karma was worked out, or worked
off in physical suffering?

Mme. Blavatsky: Who told you that? I don’t know what you mean.

Mr. Old: Wel , you know, some people suffer tremendously in this world, they
undergo physical suffering. Wel , I presume that is one of the effects
comprehended under the law of Karma.

Mme. Blavatsky: Or perhaps the Karma of your parents.

Mr. Old: Wel , that is a diversion of Karma.

Mme. Blavatsky: But you can’t take it voluntarily. Your parents have been
creating a bad Karma for you in the shape of heredity, disease, and therefore
for this you are going to be rewarded in Devachan, and consoled for it, and
your parents when they are incarnated wil have to pay for it. For instance, there
is one kind of Karma that nobody

584. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

thinks of: it is for statesmen and kings and al the blessed autocrats. If they
wanted to do any good, they ought to do the fol owing: to have the strictest
laws not to permit diseased persons, consumptive people, those with anything
like insanity or scrofula2 in them, to get married and to have children, because
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this is the greatest crime that can be. They have know right to do it, and this is
the thing that brings the worst Karma, and changes whole populations. I know I
was forty years ago in England, and I saw of every ten men, there were seven
or eight who were magnificently and stoutly built. I come here now, if you
please, and I see the population altered. Look at the army. You have no more
of those men you had forty years ago, there are none, it is changing entirely.

You see sometimes tal men, and that is al ; but certainly it is not what it used to
be.

Mr. B. Keightley: How far is it that the Karma of the reincarnating egos in those
diseased and unhealthy bodies—how far does their Karma attract?

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose it does attract them, but sometimes it does not. It
is very difficult to come and tel you of these workings of Karma.

Mr. B. Keightley: It is one of the very great points.

Mr. Old: I want to know if it is any good al eviating suffering?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is good if you distribute suffering, so that you wil have a
little today and a little tomorrow. When you suffer terribly you lose your head;
but on the other hand, you get accustomed to suffering. Now, don’t remark my
pains and aches, but if I had them al at once, I don’t know what I would be.

Mr. Kingsland: Is there not al along the tendency to refer Karma too much to
the physical plane? We are al making that mistake, I think.

Mme. Blavatsky: Surely.

2 [A form of tuberculosis.]

585. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: People are apt to imagine that you do an act, and that that act
produces a certain effect in the next incarnation. Wel that act, as an act on the
physical plane, can only produce a physical result on the physical plane. What
is carried over in the next incarnation, which becomes your Karma, is the effect
produced in you. The state of consciousness is, so to speak in doing that act;
it is not the act itself. The mere act of kil ing a man is a physical act on the
physical plane, and won’t result in Karma on the physical plane.

Mme. Blavatsky: But see the moral effect it produces—and that goes for a
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thousand times more than the physical act. The man that dies today, dies
instead of dying two or three days later, but he may leave orphans. By the act
of kil ing the generations wil be thrown entirely in a new track. They wil be
scattered. Every one of them wil go into other creations they never thought
about. Others wil go into other parts. Physical y it is nothing; only, the physical
produces moral effects and results.

Mr. Sneyd: Supposing we say there is a man that is blind, and he runs in the
way of a railway train, that train runs over him. Is not that the result of a sort of
ignorance, or absence of knowledge and perceptions?

Mme. Blavatsky: Again this may be merited or unmerited, as the case may be.

Mr. Sneyd: Supposing we say that the driver stopped the train in time?

Mr. B. Keightley: The driver saw him and stopped the train?

Mr. Sneyd: How would it be then?

Mr. B. Keightley: It was the man’s Karma to be saved.

Mr. Sneyd: You could not say that he was ignorant, then, to a certain extent?

586. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Oh yes. He was not saved by his own act, but by the act of
somebody else.

Mr. Old: Question 4. How far does the general belief in Karma operate
towards the acceptance of fatalism?

Mme. Blavatsky: If you are ignorant, you see fatalism.

Mrs. Besant: But the way it comes from outsiders sometimes is, that
supposing you believe in these evils, why should you go against them?

Mme. Blavatsky: That is what the Easterners do. We don’t do it , but the

Eastern people do it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Is it right to do that?

Mme. Blavatsky: Not always. When it is done as the Muslim does it, it is bad,
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because it is crass fatalism.

Mr. B. Keightley: Take the people in Burma. They practical y, until they were
brought under the influence of Olcott and yourself, sat down under the state of
things.

Mme. Blavatsky: They accepted it not on account of Karma, but on account of

[ ].

Mr. B. Keightley: Wel that is Karma in another form. It is real y an important
question, what is the right spirit to develop, to cultivate in yourself in reference
to the action of Karma.

Mme. Blavatsky: To do your duty on this plane. Not to go and kick against

Karma, any more than what a Christian wil tel you—don’t fly in the face of

Providence, to a certain extent. But it {is} your duty when you see any evil to try
and avoid it, not only for yourself (which would be very little), but for anyone
else.

Mrs. Besant: And try to help other people out of it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, more than you help yourself.

587. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. Burrows: Is not the true solution that we should separate “it” from
humanity?

Mr. B. Keightley: Here you get this: Before the last 25 years, the population in

India, broadly speaking, sat down and submitted to European rule and
domination—I am speaking very broadly—but now what they do is to try and
wake themselves up from their sloth and apathy, and to reorganize and to start
a fresh current of activity in which the Theosophical Society has had a very
large share. They are reacting, and are doing their best to react against the
condition into which their past history in Karma had brought them. Is that right
or is that wrong?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is right, because a life of inaction is worse than a life of
action.

Mr. B. Keightley: If a man feels the impulse in himself, it is a part of the law
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working through him.

Mr. Old: It is like Bailey’s definition, Freewil in man is “necessity in play.”3

Mme. Blavatsky: Individual y, there is free wil , but once you take it col ectively,
there is no free wil . It operates only with personalities. But speak of a nation or
think of a nation, what kind of a free wil has it? It is simply a dry leaf that is
blown hither and thither, and sent by the wind everywhere. You have no right to
sit and do nothing. You are obliged to be coworkers with Nature. But otherwise,
as is said in the Apocalypse, “Nature wil spew you out of the mouth.”4

Mr. B. Keightley: The law of progress is as much a part of the law of Karma.

The thing to get out of the idea of Karma is not the idea that you have to sit
down and accept things as they are—though you should not resent things—but
you should strive your level {best} to

3 [Philip James Bailey, English poet, 1816-1902. The quote is from his 1839 poem Festus where the line reads

“Freewill is but necessity in play.”]

4 [Revelation 3:16, “because thou art lukewarm...I will spew thee out of my mouth.”]

588. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

make those things right, without the feeling of bitter resentment.

Mr. Burrows: If we try to alter them now, it wil be better in the future. It is not
selfishness.

Mr. B. Keightley: Then that again is productive of evil.

Mrs. Besant: So that real y you strive against the evil.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes. Without resentment.

Mr. Burrows: That is a very important point, because the tendency now is get
angry and bitter.

Mr. Sneyd: How do you say about free wil ? How can one prove there is such a
thing, when everything is the result of cause and effect? (I don’t say that
exactly.) Wel , I can see one thing I suppose, you are the cause—the
individual is the cause.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, the primary cause. The conditions under which he
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operates the Karma, so to speak, that is working out. As an individual, he is a
cause.

Mr. Burrows: But would it be right to say that we can real y create fresh
causes?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Every one of you creates fresh causes from
morning to night. That is where the free wil comes in, because if there were no
free wil you would not create causes, you would simply be under the thrashing
of this law.

Mr. B. Keightley: Under the blows of the law.

Mr. Gardner: The results of past Karma. If the actions are happening by
accident, they are the result of past Karma.

Mme. Blavatsky: The accidents are commas and semicolons. That is al they
are.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, the accidents are the punctuation of life.

589. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. Old: Things from which we measure off theories.

Mme. Blavatsky: Accidents are not things that are preordained, if you please.

Mr. Old: Then we branch off on to the subject of death.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is why we say we are our own punishers and rewarders
and saviors.

Mr. Old: Then come questions on Devachan. It opens up with the orthodox
question: What is Devachan—a state, a place, or both?

Mme. Blavatsky: A state. It is no more a place than your dreams.

Mr. Old: Has it any corresponding loka?

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it has not. We may be in Devachan, I can be in this chair,
and you can be on yours. It is a state, not a locality.

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Mr. B. Keightley: That is one of the things that strengthen its analogy to sleep.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is a dream—the most vivid, so vivid that even in this life
there are dreams that sometimes you awaken and are not sure whether it was
reality or not. You just imagine yourself a dream as vivid as life.

Mr. Kingsland: Now we think of an entity in Kâma-loka, which is attracted at
certain times to a séance room.

Mme. Blavatsky: They are not entities, they are reflections they are spooks.

Mr. Kingsland: For the time being, they are to a certain extent individualized.

We have been accustomed to talk of the Devachanic entity.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, because it is the three higher principles; but would you
think of an entity of a personality? You would not cal the reflection of a
personality in a looking glass entity.

590. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mrs. Besant: But the one in Devachan is the three higher principles.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is consciousness.

Mr. B. Keightley: The three higher principles, at any rate, have some sort of

Upâdhi, or basis. Where is the Upâdhi of the three higher principles during the

Devachanic period?

Mme. Blavatsky: Upâdhi is the consciousness of it and nothing else. It is the

Manas.

Mr. Old: Is there no form under which this Monad is identified?

Mme. Blavatsky: No form at al . It has a form in your own consciousness, and
everything else that it sees are forms, created by the consciousness.

Mr. B. Keightley: Can you say that your thought is anywhere? That is the
analogy.

Mr. Old: No, but you can embody it.

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Mme. Blavatsky: No, you cannot.

Mr. B. Keightley: If the thought or Manas is the Upâdhi of the Devachanic
entity, then you can’t say your thought is located anywhere.

Mme. Blavatsky: Remembrance wil not express the thing. It is the
recol ection of your personality, the feeling of the ego, that you were the
personal ego; and that is the Upâdhi of Devachan. Because if you are Mr.

Smith, Mr. Smith wil be in Devachan as Mr. Smith and wil have the little Smiths
around him, if he loved them, and his Mrs. Smith and everything. Therefore the

Upâdhi is the consciousness of this personality for the time being. After it
leaves Devachan, it is no more Mr. Brown.

Mrs. Besant: But would Mr. Smith be visible to a higher intel igence?

Mme. Blavatsky: Why should a higher intel igence look at him, what is there to
see in the consciousness of another personality?

591. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

The higher intel igence has got something better to do. What do you mean,

Mrs. Besant, by higher intel igence—a Deva, a god?

Mrs. Besant: Yes, in al those higher instances.

Mme. Blavatsky: We are not concerned with them. During the Devachanic
period the personality becomes, for the time being, so to say, merged in the
individuality. It is immortal, for the time of the cycle of life and, so to say, the
individuality plays the part of that personality that he or she was during the life
period. And this is the Upâdhi. This is the basis of which the whole Devachanic
experiences and thoughts of bliss go and act.

Mrs. Besant: Suppose we take it as a state of sleep. A bystander would see
the person, but not the mind. Then if that body is gone, there is nothing left to
see.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly that is what it is. It is consciousness, just that.

Mr. B. Keightley: I suppose you could only say it was the center of
consciousness in the Âkâsa?

Mme. Blavatsky: Now what has Âkâsa to do with it. Neither Âkâsa, nor ether,
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nor air has anything to do with it. It is simply a state of consciousness. It is a
state, and not a locality.

Mr. Kingsland: But it is an individualized state of consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes, for a person that is in a Devachanic condition. My

Devachan won’t be yours, and yours won’t be mine. It is that a person dies and
suddenly finds itself in Devachan, where the separation of the principles takes
in a moment—or several days or weeks or months. Al this depends upon the
previous life of the personality, on the statement, on the degree of
intel ectuality, on the degree of everything.

Mr. Burrows: Then if Mr. Smith has Mrs. Smith there, it does not fol ow of
necessity that Mrs. Smith has got Mr. Smith?

592. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. If Mr. Smith loved her he would have Mrs. Smith, but if
he did not, he won’t even remember her.

Mr. Burrows: But suppose Mrs. Smith did not love him.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is another thing.

Mr. Burrows: He wil have her, and she won’t have him.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is that which we loved. In Devachan there is a perfect
oblivion of everything that was disagreeable or that caused any pain, or of
anything but an eternal bliss—which must be, by the way, exceedingly
monotonous and stupid.

Mrs. Besant: It is real y, then, the fruition of our desires.

Mme. Blavatsky: Al the aspirations you had which were unsatisfied al that
which you could not have here through divers circumstances, you wil have in

Devachan. You wil have al your desires realized, everything that you loved
and could not have—perhaps that from which you are separated—but
spiritual y. Nothing that pretends to the earth. For instance, if you had some
vicious love or something like that, you wil have nothing of the kind there.

Mr. Burrows: Supposing three or four people had the same desire.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Every one of them wil have it, so long as it is not vicious.

Now, for instance, a man who drank himself to death wil certainly nor have his
whiskey there.

Mrs. Besant: It is only Buddhi-Manas that goes.

Mme. Blavatsky: Âtma is nothing; it is al absolute, and it cannot be said that it
is this, that, or the other. It is simply that in which we are—not only that we live
and breathe and have our being, but in the whole universe, and during the
whole Manvantaric period. Therefore Âtma is said to have Buddhi for a vehicle,
because Buddhi is already the first differentiation after the evolution of the
universe. It is the first differentiation, and it is the Upâdhi, so to say, of Âtma.

Then the Buddhi is nothing, per se, but simply the first differentiation. And

593. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

it is the consciousness in the universal consciousness, but it is non-
consciousness in this world. On this plane of finite consciousness it is
nothing, for it is infinite consciousness. Understand me, Âtman cannot be
cal ed infinite consciousness. It is the one absolute, which is conscious non-
consciousness. It contains everything, the potentiality of al ; therefore, it is
nothing and al . It is Ain Soph, and it is the Parabrahman and so on; many
names you can give it. It is “No Thing,” you understand? Therefore, Buddhi
being the first differentation, the first ray, it is universal consciousness, and
could not act on any one plane, especial y on the terrestrial plane. And to be
conscious of something, of somebody, it must have Manas, that is to say, the
consciousness of this plane. If you read The Secret Doctrine you wil see that
men had nothing of the kind until the Mânasaputras (the son of the mind)

incarnated in the forms that were projected by the Lunar Pitris. There was
nothing but matter and the nothingness of Buddhi and Âtma, therefore they
had to be cemented, so to say, between this Buddhi and themselves. They
had to have this Manas, which is the finite consciousness of our plane of
existence and their incarnating ego. This incarnating ego which goes from our
personality to another, col ects the experiences of every life. After having
col ected al the experience of mil ions and mil ions of incarnations, then, when
the Manvantaric period ceases, and this world goes into dissolution, this ego,
having had al this experience, approaches more and more of the Absolute,
and, at the end of, I do not know how many Manvantaras, certainly it wil
become—before it merges into the one, it must have the experience. Then it
approaches more and more and more that which is al and nothing. Final y it
emerges. When we say that we speak about the state of Nirvâna, that is
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nothing. It is Para-Nirvâna that we are speaking about. Nirvâna is simply a high

Devachan.

Mr. Burrows: When does the memory come in of al the previous incarnations?

Mme. Blavatsky: To have a memory you have to live. You can have the
memory of what? If you have never been anything, you cannot

594. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

have a memory. You must have a memory of something.

Mr. Kingsland: Mr. Burrows asked at what point it came on.

Mme. Blavatsky: Every life is a peg on which you hang that memory.

Mr. Burrows: When does the universal memory come in?

Mme. Blavatsky: That is a thing which is the whole Manvantara; it is the Mahat,
as they cal it. It is the universal intel igence, and al these incarnating egos are
simply rays of that.

Mr. Keightley: When the ray has succeeded in merging itself into the universal
mind, it then recovers the knowledge.

Mme. Blavatsky: When there is an end of al , there is the Mahâ-Pralaya—not
what wil come after our little earth is destroyed. Then Mahat itself disappears
and is merged in Parabrahman, and is merged in the Al .

Mr. Burrows: Then does reincarnation go on again on the higher plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. You see, the butterfly wil never become the chrysalis
and the grub again. It goes on, and nature never goes back, but always goes
progressing higher and higher. It may become, for instance, mental y, and in
its acts, a thousand times worse than it was before, but it wil be higher on the
plane of physical manifestation— physical y.

Mr. Old: What gave me the opinion that the Devachan had some particular
form and a place corresponding to its state was this. I think on page 235 {157},

Volume 1, where those tables are given and the scheme of the different
schools of thought in the East, it says: Upâdhi is a basis and in a
corresponding system of philosophy it is translated by the word {kosha}, which
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means a sheath. That word is very confounding, especial y when we see that
opposite Manas. Thus: one of the Devachanic principles is put [ ] or [ ], the
causal basis or sheath. You see, that is what gives one an incorrect opinion.

595. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: Are not you confusing the idea of basis with the idea of
form? They are not the same. For instance the water you may consider the
basis of something, but you could not say it has a form, per se.

Mme. Blavatsky: You consider gas the basis of something.

Mr. B. Keightley: Upâdhi and form are not the same thing.

Mr. Old: Has this monad a diffused consciousness into the whole universal

Devachan? Has it a locus? Has it a distinct place? Has it a limitation?

Mme. Blavatsky: It has not. Consciousness has no limitation.

Mr. B. Keightley: How can it have, when three belong to the Ârupa world?

Mme. Blavatsky: Of which two are nothing.

Mr. B. Keightley: I was quoting The Secret Doctrine.

Mme. Blavatsky: You take the three systems of philosophy {in The Secret

Doctrine, 1:157}, one of which shows what the Theosophist give, one what the

[ ] give, and the other what the Vedântins; it is not at al that it corresponds. It
corresponds to one as a sheath, and the other does not. It is only our [ ], or
the occult system, because that is a thing which is confined to the three
principles and we are dividing it into seven principles, because it is a great
deal easier to explain. The Vedântins have got five sheaths and the sixth the

Âtma and the Buddhi, of which they don’t speak at, because what they mean
by [ ] does not mean at al the Buddhi, but simply the astral form.

Mr. Old: The next question is: What determines the length of the Devachanic
state?

Mme. Blavatsky: Your actions.

Mr. Old: In the previous life?

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596. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: In the previous life.

Mr. Old: It is not, then, the aggregate?

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not the aggregate, unless there is some surplus
that has to be worked out.

Mr. Old: Then you consider that at the end of Devachan, we are quits?

Mme. Blavatsky: We are quits with that personality of Mr. Smith and Mr.

Brown, and there is the end of it.

Mr. Gardner: Stil , it is possible to spread it over a series of Devachans. For
instance, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Devachan—that would be spread over
several.

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. I think he wil have a nice Karma for the people he has
kil ed.

Mr. Old: It is such an accumulation of energy. It is quite an event to have a man
like Bonaparte in the world, and in order to have reaction in the next life, it
would be quite a different thing.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t suppose he has much to do in Devachan. He was the
most materialistic man that ever was. He had no Devachan. If he had a

Devachan after his own mind he would have al you English and try that you
should have one head, and cut it off.

Mr. Gardner: I suppose he was the embodiment of the nation?

Mme. Blavatsky: No.

Mr. Old: What seems to determine the length in my mind is the activity of the
nature, the rate at which the monad runs.

Mme. Blavatsky: The intensity of your aspirations or desires, and the degree
of your sufferings unmerited—those that you have not deserved directly, but
through the Karma or the bad actions of somebody else—that is what
determines it.

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597. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mrs. Besant: The more desires you have the longer you wil be there?

Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. But if you have desires that were perfectly on the
spiritual plane, then you are sure to be a spook.

Mr. Sneyd: When the individuality becomes merged in Parabrahman, then in
that state, why do they cal it the nothing, if it is the reality?

Mr. Old: It is not cal ed nothing; it is no thing.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the Al .

Mr. Sneyd: But they only mean when they say nothing, no thing.

Mr. Old: Nothing is the wrong pronunciation; it is no thing.

Mr. Sneyd: It seems a contradiction.

Mme. Blavatsky: Ain Soph—No thing.

Mr. Sneyd: It is, real y, I suppose, the state of intense happiness?

Mme. Blavatsky: That cannot be unless you feel intense unhappiness—a
contrast. Parabrahman is not to be either happy or unhappy, and does not feel,
because feeling is a finite thing.

Mr. Sneyd: Then why should we wish for it.

Mme. Blavatsky: I suppose on account of our stupidity, which is great.

Mr. B. Keightley: Or because we have learned that you cannot have happiness
apart from suffering. Why do you go in for differentiated existence? Why do
you desire pleasure, or happiness? You desire by that very fact the
corresponding pain or suffering, the two being differentiated aspects.

Mr. Old: Everything exists by relation of its own opposites.

Mr. Sneyd: For instance, I can go to a beautiful picture gal ery.

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598. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You won’t have them in Devachan.

Mr. Kingsland: The more your mind is attuned to happiness the more it is
subject to the shock of discord; and the more intense your pains are in one
direction, the more pleasure in another.

Mr. Sneyd: Why should we say that is Parabrahman?

Mr. B. Keightley: May I put this question to you? Can you imagine this
condition as lasting permanently? Can you real y suppose every desire that
you conceive of, gratified? You wil find it uncommonly slow when you try it on
for about five minutes, because the very fact of having a desire produces
suffering until it is fulfil ed.

Mme. Blavatsky: To have a desire is already suffering, because it is
something ungratified. The fact of desiring is suffering.

Mr. Sneyd: But you know you would have it soon, that there is something new
coming, something coming on extra, as it were. You are satisfied with what you
have got. But you are very glad of this extra.

Mr. Kingsland: You can go piling the extras up until there was nothing left of
extras.

Mr. Old: Parabrahman is a state of absolute indifference.

Mme. Blavatsky: Please don’t cal Parabrahman happiness, because it is
lowering to the idea of the happy god who sits and rejoices and something
smel s sweet to his nostrils.

Mr. B. Keightley: If you think about it you wil see you cannot have one without
the other, real y and truly.

Mr. Sneyd: But why should we wish for it? Supposing we say it is absolute
indifference. Why should we wish for it?

Mr. Kingsland: You think that over, and in the meanwhile we wil go on.

Mr. Old: What is the impulse which determines the Devachanî to incarnate?

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599. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: It is Karma that makes him incarnate. He won’t have more
than he deserves. There is no impulse in him, but he dies out. His dream is at
an end.

Mr. Old: When a man takes a meal, he satisfies his hunger. When the

Devachanî has assimilated the experiences of his past existence, then there is
reaction which takes place.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think that gives the impression on the mind that the

Devachanî is actual y desiring to reincarnation, which is not the case.

Mr. Kingsland: He has no choice.

Mr. B. Keightley: If he did, you do away with one of the first great causes.

Mr. Old: But you must get rid of the sense of individual desire, because the
monads have no such desire. Then how would you define that impulse?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is no impulse on the part of the Devachanî; it is no
impulse at al . Karma takes him by the nape of his neck, and there is no
impulse at al , just as when a policeman comes and takes you.

Mr. B. Keightley: In which case, there is a strong impulse to take to your heels
and run away.

Mr. Burrows: Does he know that he is going to be reincarnated at al ?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , it is a poetical expression.

Mr. Sneyd: I think you said it had no effect in Devachan?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is no new effect produced. It has placed the

Devachanî into the state of happyiness; it gives him his fil of what he deserves
and stands and whistles at the door. When that is finished

600. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Karma takes him by the nape of the neck and puts him into the new
body.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Then you come to the question which Mr. Burrows raised—
when the Devachanî knows he is reincarnated.

Mme. Blavatsky: You wil see it in the Key to Theosophy. There are two
moments when the reincarnating ego returns to its pristine omniscience,
because, since it is Mânasaputras (meaning the son of wisdom or universal
intel igence), it is omniscient—or it is at the moment of death, just at the
moment when a man dies. When he is dead, he is dead, and it is finished, and
he see everything.

Mr. B. Keightley: He sees the life he is going to enter into.

Mme. Blavatsky: He is real y himself and knows everything.

Mr. Gardner: Does he see his past lives?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly he does; it is what the Buddha saw.

Mr. B. Keightley: He does not forget, but the impression is not transferred.

Mme. Blavatsky: It cannot be transferred, because the instrument cannot
receive it. Sometimes you have it, in moments of high vision. What is it, for
instance, the states the sensitive persons have? It is simply by some
circumstance, some physiological cause or reason or nervous condition. The
faculties that were impeding the man to receive this light from his Manas, from
his higher ego, are suddenly
taken away.

Mr. B. Keightley: Occasional y the light is reflected upon our physical brain.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is like a cobweb. For a moment he says: that is what it is,
because the ego is omniscience per se, not omniscience in the body. It is an
extremely interesting thing, if only one could put it into language. If I had your
gift of speech, I can assure you I would make al London Theosophists. It is
one thing to be plain, because

601. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

I sit and explain, and another to say in one sweeping, magnificent phrase the
whole thing. I have not got “the gift of the gab.”

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Mr. Old: Is it possible to escape Devachan, say from pure aversion to its
useless inactivity?

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Don’t desire anything and you won’t have

Devachan. You wil have nothing to hang your consciousness on. You wil be
asleep and snore and have no dreams.

Mr. Old: That is worse then ever, let us dream out of preference.

Mme. Blavatsky: But there are persons who reach to such wisdom that once
they are dead they are perfectly done with. I have taken off my dress and here

I am. What am I going to do? Shal I go to sleep, and so on. And the person
shal do as he likes.

Mr. Old: Could you predetermine those which should be your experience?

A Lady: Then you want another body?

Mme. Blavatsky: You live in your five principles.

Mrs. Besant: You keep on getting in your five principles.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is just what the adepts do. They have a perfect right to

Nirvâna, but they won’t go. They think it is selfish to do so, and they won’t go.

They refuse the Nirvânic condition. That is just like Gautama did. He wants to
be present, but he has no right to interfere with Karma.

Mr. Burrows: That would be the highest form of unselfishness.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly, because it is suffering. Every Nirmânakâya
does suffer because it is terrible to be there, and see the misery and
sufferings of people, and not be able to help them.

Mrs. Besant: Stil , you are a force for good.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. This is the most glorious thing,

602. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

and that is what they say that Buddha did and many of the adepts.

Mr. Old: It is cal ed the great renunciation.

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Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. Remember what I speak about with reference to the
silent watcher.

Mrs. Besant: That is the great sacrifice.

Mr. Sneyd: Is not Gautama now in Nirvâna?

Mme. Blavatsky: The orthodox Buddhist wil tel you he is, but he is not.

Mr. B. Keightley: Besides the Nirmânakâya, others escape. There are
numerous cases of speedy reincarnation without Devachan.

Mme. Blavatsky: For instance, children who died before the age of reason.

Immediately they are reincarnated. Persons who did not have a glimpse of
spirituality in them. It is a degree of consciousness. If he is Gautama, of
course he wil have a kind of Devachan of his own, but there are children who
have had no consciousness at al .

Mr. Burrows: What form wil their incarnation take?

Mme. Blavatsky: A child who dies is but a mistake of nature, a failure.

Mr. Gardner: It is sometimes the same with parents.

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t think so.

Mrs. Besant: Suppose you had a very noble type who had not evolved
sufficiently to refuse Nirvâna. Would he be obliged to reincarnate? He who had
not reached quite far enough to remain?

Mme. Blavatsky: An adept who has not even reached and who may not reach

Nirvâna, may remain as a Nirmânakâya. He may refuse the higher state of

Devachan, simply if he reached that point of consciousness in what there is no
il usion possible for him—that he knows too much.

603. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. Old: I thought perhaps there was a middle way.

Mme. Blavatsky: No sooner they are dead than there are some who step into
another body where they can do good.

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Mr. Burrows: And the more we eliminate desire the more we escape from

Devachan?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly.

Mr. B. Keightley: The man I was thinking of was Dramar.5 I think I heard you
say he would incarnate very speedily.

Mr. Old: This is the last question on Devachan. Physical rest may be
accomplished in the same and even less time than the period of wakeful
consciousness and activity. Why then should Devachan extend to twenty or
more times the short span of life?

Mme. Blavatsky: You had better ask Karma this question, for I cannot answer
you.

Mr. Old: Is not there any theory then in the Vedântin philosophy?

Mme. Blavatsky: I teach you the occult philosophy. Real y, I don’t know; it is
too difficult.

Mr. Old: Then we go on with questions on reincarnation. Can any reason be
given for the necessity of reincarnation?

Mr. B. Keightley: The first great reason is ; on no other hypothesis can you
account for the inequalities of life—not only of condition and of circumstances
under which a man is born, but inequalities in the actual inborn faculties and
powers of the man himself, his mental powers, his moral force, his
development in al respects—unless you have some antecedent existence. In
the first place, whether you assume it to be on this earth or some other state,
unless you assume some other existence for the man, it is impossible to
account for the varying conditions of life, with any appearance of justice
whatever.

5 [Possibly Louis Dramard, 1848-1887, President of the Isis Lodge of the T.S. in Paris, France.]

604. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. Burrows: You wil never get your equilibrium.

Mr. B. Keightley: The great thing to my mind is, you don’t account for the
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different stages of development in which the people are obviously born. If
neither preexisted, how does that difference come in? I have always thought
the fundamental idea of the Christian heaven was injustice in this respect. They
say there the poor man who has had little or no chances, is to be rewarded by
heaven for the very little good he has done; the man who has had very little or
no temptation owing to his low state of development. But a very highly
developed man is exposed to much more temptation, yet he is to be weighed,
so to speak, in the same scale as the other man.

Mr. Burrows: They take the other side of it though—they rather teach the poor
that because of their suffering they are going to be rewarded by and bye. Of
course, that is the pastoral idea.

Mr. B. Keightley: If you make an eternal idea, where is the proportion?

Mr. Sneyd: Supposing we say Parabrahman is a state of indifference. Do you
think it is a state to be desired? Do you think a state which is not a happy state
is a state we should desire?

Mme. Blavatsky: I can’t understand this. How can you be happy, if you are not
unhappy? You won’t appreciate happiness unless you have the contrast.

Happiness or unhappiness is a thing which is of very little moment indeed,
which begins this moment and ends three moments afterwards. How can you
have such transitory and such evanescent ideas, which can have no relation
whatever to the finite?

Mr. B. Keightley: Anyone who studies the facts of their own consciousness
must have found his active, definite consciousness is neither happiness nor
unhappiness.

Mr. Sneyd: Is it to be desired?

Mr. B. Keightley: It is eminently to be desired, because it is a great deal more
permanent and useful condition than either happiness or unhappiness.

605. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

Mr. Sneyd: It is a quietude, a sort of peace.

Mr. B. Keightley: I should not cal it quietude or peace. It is a thing for which
we have not got any very good expressions in the English language.

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Mr. Old: How do you account for the association of persons on this earth plane
as an apparent result of reincarnation?

Mr. B. Keightley: Karma.

Mr. Old: Then we may always presume that we have met before.

Mme. Blavatsky: You may.

Mrs. Besant: And does the mental condition influence that at al ? Supposing
people have reached something of the same mental state, wil there be a
tendency, then?

Mme. Blavatsky: Don’t you always experience when you meet a person for
the first time whether you like that person, whether you are drawn towards him
or have an antipathy? Even the dogs have their sympathies and their
antipathies. It must be some reason, some cause.

Mr. Old: It must have been a past cause, if you have not met before. Then can
a person of strong wil , by a persistent effort, determine conditions of the next
incarnation?

Mme. Blavatsky: You go, my dear sir, into the domain of the adept, into the
region of creation.

Mr. Old: That is the only person who has the strong wil ?

Mme. Blavatsky: Of course, desire has a great deal to do with it. An intense
desire creates the circumstances, and creates the conditions.

Mr. Old: Then the last question is: how far do the psychic, mental, and spiritual
attainments of the past incarnations advantage the ego

606. 21. Meeting June 6, 1889

in its new life?

Mme. Blavatsky: There is always the reflection that if you worked you cannot
become an adept in one life. It is impossible. You must have begun desire for
adeptship and for knowledge many, many previous incarnations before.

Because you may have a great desire for it, and you may be born in a man
whose circumstances and conditions make him forget that and lose sight of
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that desire. You wil be incarnated ten times, and then these desires and
longings for knowledge come in. Then again you go perhaps to a life where it
cannot be gratified. There are no conditions to develop this thing and then you
become al that which you had in the previous life, and it al comes in the
present life.

Mr. B. Keightley: Until you go to several successive lives in which by effort the
man has worked himself into a favorable condition.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

22.

Theosophical Society.

Meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge

Held at 17 Lansdowne Rd., Hol and Park W.

Thursday June 20, 1889.

Mr. Kingsland opened the proceedings by reading a paper on [ ]

Mme. Blavatsky: Now you have got to study for yourselves. The only thing I
can give you is just to put the “Key” in your hands and say: “This opens this
way and this that way,” and so on. You understand that whereas one person
wil understand wel , another wil understand less.

Mrs. Gordon: Because you must have the possibility of understanding
transcendental ideas.

Mme. Blavatsky: No, it is not that. You have been many years in India and yet
you have never taken any pleasure in those ancient religions; others have
given their practice to the study of it. Now, if al these Orientalists were not
such terrible materialists, with the knowledge they have—I speak about the

Max Mül ers, not the Sir Monier Wil iams,1 because he has no more spirituality
in him than this chair—but about him and others, they would understand
perfectly; but they won’t, they are materialists. Even that which they understand
they would not accept. They would not permit themselves. But I don’t see what
there is that you don’t understand. Mr. Kingsland, you have summarized it
beautiful y. What are al complaining of?

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Mr. Old: That is a broad question, H.P.B.

1 [Monier Monier-Williams, English Orientalist, 1819-1899, professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University at the time.]

608. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: You wil end by saying it is al flapdoddle, and that there is
nothing to understand.

Mrs. Gordon: I don’t think we can expect to understand it al .

Mme. Blavatsky: But these ladies and gentlemen who have been here

Thursday after Thursday for I suppose, a year, I don’t see that you don’t
understand it. How is it possible?

Mrs. Gordon: You may accept things intel ectual y without saying you
understand them. You may accept them as being true theories.

Mme. Blavatsky: Take it vice versa. Take it there are persons who feel it is a
truth, and yet intel ectual y, on scientific grounds they would not take it.

Mr. B. Keightley: Take the one point Kingsland touched on.

Mme. Blavatsky: You have to use your high faculty; intel ect has nothing to do
here. Materialistic science would step in.

Mrs. Gordon: It is a spiritual conception, as it were.

Mr. B. Keightley: Take that point you touched upon, Kingsland, for instance,
how to conceive of the relation between these celestial hierarchies of Dhyâni-

Chohans and the physical forces or what we cal physical forces, if you like,
with which we are ordinarily familiar. Of course, these physical forces,
according to The Secret Doctrine are the effects produced on the plane of

Mâyâ, the plane of objectivity proceeding through or caused by these
hierarchies; but the difficulty is how to understand, how to form to one’s self a
conception of what that means.

Mr. Kingsland: I confess I have not been able to form a conception. I have
only got the general idea.

Mme. Blavatsky: Every hierarchy relates to some force in nature. There are
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seven fundamental forces in nature; there are seven hierarchies. Now, to
come and say that I wil undertake to explain to you every one of the seven,
which may be subdivided ad infinitum,

609. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

is impossible. In the first place, if I know what it means I am not scientific
enough to come and give you the correspondences in scientific terms. I only
know that not only every hierarchy and the Dhyâni-Chohans, but every one of
those that have been mentioned correspond; and it may be shown how they
correspond, to the forces in nature. That would necessitate ten volumes, not
two.

Mr. B. Keightley: Take, for instance, this question: There is a wel -known
property of matter which is cal ed chemical affinity, the combining power which
varies from substance to substance; certain things you can take hold of and
touch and our physical senses respond to them. How to conceive
corresponding relations of things on the next plane above our own, to the next
plane behind the objective plane? Because those combinations, I take it, in the
objective plane—say, of oxygen and hydrogen to form water—can only take
place because the things on the next plane behind ours are also related in
some way which corresponds to the relation that we see in the physical
substances of oxygen and hydrogen, and so on.

Mme. Blavatsky: To whom did you address this speech? To Mr. Kingsland, or
me?

Mr. B. Keightley: To you and Mr. Kingsland.

Mme. Blavatsky: I did not hear half of what you said. I want a definite question,
and I cannot afford to answer about two pages of uninterrupted speech. This
may sound, very pretty, but I want to have a definite question. Otherwise,
before you end, I forget what you began.

Mr. Kingsland: These forces, what we cal natural forces, are simply
emanations from one or other of these hierarchies. That is the term you use

—“emanations.”

Mme. Blavatsky: I have not any better word.

Mr. Kingsland: How can we dissociate that as an emanation from a hierarchy?

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610. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: With physical means, you cannot. Mr. Crookes has done the
best he could, and certainly he is the greatest chemist in the whole world.

Mr. Kingsland: Bert has taken one particular thing, chemical affinity. How are
we to connect that with an intel igent entity on a higher higher plane?

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , look here! If you are prepared to tel me that everything
that shows some action is an action which has its laws, and a scientist may tel
you beforehand how such and such a thing may become definite and fixed
affinity; if you are prepared to tel me there are no intentions behind it, I wil say
alright. I say there is not the smal est thing in the universe—there is not the
contact of two atoms, take any two things in nature—there is certainly an
intel igence in them, behind them, and they act through intel igence, in
intel igence, and we are al immersed in intel igence.

Mr. B. Keightley: That is what we believe is at the basis, but Kingsland’s
difficulty is how to think intel ectual y of the relation between that intel igence
and the physical facts that we observe.

Mme. Blavatsky: To drop entirely your scientific and your inductive methods
and become not a physician but a metaphysician, that is the only thing I can tel
you. Once that you become instead of a metaphysician a physician, and take it
from the standpoint of physical nature and mix up orthodox science, you wil
never arrive at anything.

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t think that is what Kingsland was doing.

Mme. Blavatsky: By knowing better than you do everything from the first
beginning, from the first flutter of differentiation. Learn it, just as I learned. I am
not a scientific person at al . I am simply a metaphysician. I have been looking
at it; I know it, I feel it in me, I see it before me. I could not put it in scientific
terms, because I am not scientific enough; but I say that it is the easiest thing
in the world to trace it if you begin by the beginning. But if you do as the

611. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

men of science do, and begin by the tail, and by that which appears here on
this plane of il usion, you wil never arrive at anything.

Mr. Sargeant: It seems the question is very simple. If there is no
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correspondency between the seven hierarchies and the manifestations of
these physical forces on the physical plane, then there can be no
correspondency between cause and effect. We know effect proceeds from
cause; and we should know that the seven manifestations on this physical
plane must proceed from one of the hierarchies.

Mr. Kingsland: You can’t always trace the effect to a theological cause.

Mme. Blavatsky: Shal I tel you a mistake, gentlemen, that you fal into? It is
because you take independently al these causes that you want to cal
intel igent, that you take them one by one, instead of taking the whole. You
cannot come and take this affinity. Let us take the Fohatic hierarchies, which
are al for the electrical phenomena. You must take them in conjunction with al
others, and take them as a whole; because, you see, science is perfectly right
from its physical standpoint to say that they are blind forces of nature, because
science does not see farther than its nose, and it does not permit itself to go
farther than its plane of physical manifestations. But, if we go from the
beginning, and if we imagine to ourselves this one life, this eternal,
omnipresent homogeneity, that which underlies every phenomenon in nature—
which underlies nature itself—which I won’t cal spirit, because it is far more
than spirit (spirit is something definite in our perception, and then only when we
are perfectly diverse {divorce?} from matter)—but you have to take the whole
thing and then proceed from the universals to the particulars. Otherwise you
cannot grasp the thing. It is impossible. You have to skip many things, or to
embrace it in a general sense, and then begin it in the first manifestation that
you can; otherwise you cannot make to yourself a clear representation. To me
it is as clear and intel igible as can be. It may be because I am an innocent
fool, but it has never presented to me any difficulty.

612. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mr. Sargeant: Is it because ladies and gentlemen must first seek the kingdom
of heaven?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t know, but it is quite on a different plane.

Mr. Sargeant: That would be from universals to particulars.

Mme. Blavatsky: If there is anything like a middle heaven, then it must be in
the clouds, represented by those seraphs with the golden harps. That is what I
understand by the Kingdom of Heaven.

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Mr. Sargeant: Unfortunately, that in twelve hours time wil be the kingdom of
hel , because it wil be below.

Mr. Old: It is not the general law that causes do proceed into effects that we
wish to know.

Mr. Sargeant: Cal it a fortuitous combination of circumstances.

Mr. B. Keightley: What Old was after was that here are a lot of effects; wel ,
when we talk about the higher intel ectual hierarchies, they are only
represented to us by words, at the present moment.

Mme. Blavatsky: They cannot be represented by words. They must be
represented by the feeling of intuition. If they are represented by words, you
have nothing, you have a flapdoddle. You have to represent them to
yourselves in your intel ectual perception, in your spiritual perception. It is
impossible. It is with your higher self that you must understand, and not with
your brains and intel ectual perceptions, which are al sensuous perceptions,
and wil not help you. You have to reach to that point when you feel yourself
one with the whole, and perfectly inseparable from it—from the one and the
eternal, which has no end and no beginning. Otherwise, it is impossible.

Mrs. Gordon: The higher consciousness.

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , the higher consciousness. Maybe I speak to you

Greek and Hebrew, but to me it is perfectly clear, and I don’t know how to
explain it better.

613. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mr. B. Keightley: The thing has to be understood by direct consciousness, the
direct contact—your consciousness having been attuned to the universal
consciousness. Then you are in direct contact with those hierarchies, and you
perceive them or sense them.

Mme. Blavatsky: Why should not you put yourself as these hierarchies?

Mr. Kingsland: Which in fact you are.

Mrs. Gordon: Then we have a dual consciousness. The higher
consciousness, it is, that we must cultivate, and in some way bring it en rapport
with our inner consciousness. That is what of course the men in India do—they
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bring their higher consciousness into outer consciousness.

Mr. Sargeant: Are not al higher truths which can be perceived through the
universe perceived through the automatic flow of thought?

Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t think so. I don’t believe it.

Mr. Sargeant: It is a thought of which we are partial y conscious on the higher
plane, but not on the lower plane.

Mr. Kingsland: But what is that but the intuition? You are only giving it another
name. It is intuition, is it not?

Mr. Sargeant: I don’t think we can cal it so. We may intuitively know a thing
without understanding it.

Mme. Blavatsky: You may intuitively know a thing without being able to give it
expression, but you must understand it. You understand it in your spiritual
understanding, but very likely you cannot give it an expression, because the

European languages cannot convey it; not even Sanskrit, which is certainly a
thousand times richer. These are things you have to use your soul language
for, as it is cal ed—the inner perception and the unspoken language.

Mr. Sargeant: May we not intuitively know that a certain cause wil

614. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

yield a certain effect, without knowing the way in which that effect wil be
yielded?

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly there is not the smal est effect that can be
produced without a cause, and certainly if there is an effect there must be a
cause.

Mr. Sargeant: Then intuition can exist with partial knowledge?

Mr. Old: I don’t think you can cal that the inner aspect of Manas or the mind,
because, you see, we identify the faculty of intuition with Buddhi, which is a
separate principle.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not quite; it is Manas that you have to identify first.

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Mr. Kingsland: No, intuition is.

Mme. Blavatsky: It passes through the incarnating ego.

Mr. B. Keightley: If you had Buddhi by itself, without any conjunction with

Manas on this plane, you would have no intuition at al .

Mme. Blavatsky: The mission of Buddhi is simply to shadow divine light on

Manas, otherwise Manas wil be always fal ing into the Karmic {Kamic}

principle, into the principle of matter; it wil become the lower Manas, and act
as the lower Manas or mind. But the incarnating ego is certainly the mind, the

Manas.

Mr. B. Keightley: And intuition is the recol ection.

Mme. Blavatsky: Of al the past accumulated experiences.

Mr. Old: But they would be sublimated.

Mr. Kingsland: How is it that one man’s intuition wil make a Theosophist of
him, and another man’s wil make him a Roman Catholic of him?

Mr. Sargeant: Because a Roman Catholic is a Theosophist. It must

615. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

necessarily be so, if Theosophy embodies al the wisdoms of known religions.

Al the Roman Catholics are real y Theosophist.

Mme. Blavatsky: So far, I know of only one real Theosophist among the

Roman Catholics: it was poor Father Damien. But not at al because he was a

Roman Catholic, but because he was a real Christ-like man.

Mr. Old: Don’t you claim St Aloysius2 as such?

Mme. Blavatsky: Fanaticism we cannot believe in, and we must not believe in.

We say there is truth in everything, for it is impossible a thing should exist
without having some leaven of truth.

Mr. Sargeant: And consequently there is Theosophy in everything, even in
fanaticism.

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Mr. B. Keightley: Fanaticism is the negation of the first principle of Theosophy,
which is universalism.

Mme. Blavatsky: Fanaticism is nothing but concentrated selfishness and
vanity. A man says: “I believe in it, and therefore it must be so. I am the one
wise man and everyone else must be a fool.” He who is a fanatic shuts himself
out of the universal truth. He simply sticks to a little thing like a fly sticks to one
of those medicated papers. It is just that and nothing else.

Mr. Sargeant: What about Peter the Hermit,3 whose fierce preaching stirred
up the whole of Europe? Was he a Theosophist?

Mme. Blavatsky: Not a bit of it. He was an anti-Theosophist. He forced people
to make fools of themselves and led them to death, and made them ridiculous
to posterity. He represented to them the goose as the Holy Ghost.

Mr. Sargeant: And yet with the views these people came back with

2 [Saint Aloysius (Luigi) Gonzaga, Italian Jesuit, 1568-1591, who gave up his inheritance and died working with
the sick.]

3 [Late eleventh century priest who instigated the People’s Crusade that traveled from Germany to Jerusalem.]

616. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

from the Holy Land, Christianity became something grand. Our ancestors
never knew the principle of toleration on the battleeld until Saladin taught
them.4

Mme. Blavatsky: There was more Theosophy in Saladin then there ever was
in Peter the Hermit. Perhaps you wil say Louis XI5 was also a Theosophist.

You are a paradoxalist.

Mr. Kingsland: It is a universalist. But then you must make a distinction in
terms.

Mr. Sargeant: There is no distinction in spirit.

Mr. B. Keightley: But you see, we are not in the spirit, but in the flesh.

Mr. Sargeant: The great error of today in that man imagines he is a body
possessed of a spirit, instead of a spirit possessed of a body.

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Mme. Blavatsky: My dear Sargeant, you would appear to me the embodiment
of wisdom, if you spoke in a way that I could hear.

Mr. Sargeant: If it is that I speak low, it is because of those internal breathings.

Mme. Blavatsky: You are a humbug! Perhaps he wil say there is real

Theosophy in humbug.

Mr. B. Keightley: Perhaps I might quote the lines of Olcott: “There is a spirit
above, and a spirit below; A spirit of love, and a spirit of woe; The spirit above
is the spirit divine; The spirit below is the spirit of wine!”

Mr. Sargeant: And yet the “spirit of wine” is only an expression of the “spirit
divine.” If you read your esoterical works, you wil see what affinities there were
between these things.

4 [Twelfth century Sultan of Egypt who led the Muslim resistance to the Crusades. He gained a lasting reputation
as a chivalrous knight for his treatment of prisoners.]

5 [Louis XI, 1423-1483, King of France from 1461 to 1483.]

617. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mme. Blavatsky: Now this man’s intuition tel s him you are trying to humbug
me; he does not understand English, and yet his intuition tel s him that. You are
trying to tease me, he says.

Mr. Old: I wanted to say I didn’t think I was agreeable to the proposition. But
unconscious thought, cerebration—no, ratiocination—not the physical action
which is cal ed cerebration, but the higher, the metaphysical correspondence

—this unconscious thought is not in itself intuition, because, reasoning from
analogies, we have these two things represented on the lowest plane which we
can apply to every one of the seven principles. There is in the nerves the
automatic arc of nerves and the influential arc of the nerves—the voluntary and
involuntary. Exactly the same with the vital process; there is the voluntary and
involuntary. There are functions over which we have voluntary control, and
there are those over which we have none, except in strange, complex cases
like Capt Townsend and others who are able to control the vital processes as
wel as the muscles. Seeing there is the unconscious and the conscious, the
dark and the light side of every bifacial monad, might we not argue that there is
the conscious and the unconscious cerebration, both identified with Manas?

Because I have seen instances precipitated in the form of automatic writing
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where a person has been holding a conversation on one subject and writing on
another.

Mr. Kingsland: Supposing we say that intuition is the unconscious action?

Mr. Old: I wish to say it is not.

Mr. Kingsland: You take the unconscious vital action, for instance. The action
goes on without your wil . How does that come about? Is not that the
accumulation of numerous past experiences?

Mr. Sargeant: No.

Mr. Kingsland: What is it, then?

Mr. Sargeant: It is simply owing to the action of a universal flood on nerves
which are termed involuntary. They affect these nerves in

618. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

such a manner that they restore any equilibrium which has been lost.

Mr. Kingsland: How does it arise that we have certain physical functions? You
are simply tracing it back. I say those functions develop through innumerable
ages by means of evolution; these things act through the Kâma-rûpa of past
action.

Mr. Sargeant: You don’t mean that the past experiences are the very
causes that set these influences at work?

Mr. Kingsland: I don’t. I carry that analogy up to what Old says about the
conscious and the unconscious ratiocination. I say that the unconscious is
simply that same result. By analogy you can put it in the same way: that your
intuition is the result of al the past stages you have gone through in the stages
of consciousness—in fact, your evolution.

Mr. B. Keightley: I think it works out from the known experience of the training
of the muscles. You learn to do certain very complicated muscular actions at
first with great pain and difficultly, such as writing. Gradual y the thing becomes
automatic; you do it without thinking of the different steps. You think of the
sense you are going to express, and you do not think of the individual
movement of your hand.

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Mr. Kingsland: There is nothing you can do at the present moment but what is
the result of your past experiences.

Mr. Old: I can trace it in what the physicists cal inhibited action. If one gets into
the way of nursing his thumb in his pocket, it is a strange thing how this wil
become habitual. First of al , it is general y voluntary, but it becomes a habit,
and it is then cal ed an inhibited action. And the seat of the cerebral forces is
the [ ]; it is supposed to be the lieutenant of the thinking brain. Then when you
have decided to walk home, you don’t have to think of putting more than the
first foot foremost; the rest wil fol ow. What I wish to say is this: I find some
difficultly in tracing this inhabited inhibited action which has once been
voluntary action. How can you say that vital action was ever inhibited, was ever
involuntary? If you can

619. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

prove that each pulsation of the aorta of the heart was control ed voluntarily,
then you prove the case.

Mr. Kingsland: Your present physical body is the result of several influences
which can be traced back to a previous incarnation.

Mr. Keightley: The point is this: whether for instance, the involuntary action of
the muscles—as in the beating of the heart—is the result of evolution. I
contend it is the result of the evolution of the molecules forming the heart.

Mr. Old: But not of conscious experiences.

Mr. Kingsland: Not in your present lifetime.

Mr. Old: I merely wish to show, reasoning by analogy, just as there was the
conscious and unconscious action of the physical body, and there were
conscious and unconscious systems of nervation and so forth on the physical
plane, so there was in every principle this conscious and unconscious, this
dark and light side.

Mme. Blavatsky: I think you confuse the material things with the spiritual.

Mr. Old: We know every one of those principles has a manifesting and an
unmanifesting side.

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Mme. Blavatsky: If you speak of one of the acquired habits, as nursing your
thumb, it is a different thing. It is not a thing which is natural and normal. The
beating of the heart is a thing which pretends to the physical, the habits of
men. This has nothing to do with acquired things.

Mr. Kingsland: It has nothing to do with the acquired habits in this incarnation.

But you can trace back the beating of your heart, which takes place
automatical y; you can trace that back to the evolution, where it was first.

Mme. Blavatsky: Certainly.

620. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mr. Old: I cannot go so far as that.

Mr. Kingsland: Suppose we take your analogy?

Mr. Old: Reasoning from this by analogy, on this line I wanted to show that
there would be conscious and unconscious thought, both identified and
peculiar to Manas.

Mr. Kingsland: Very wel , let us say that. Then I say that the conscious thought
you are going through now is your present intel ection.

Mr. Old: We have already identified with Buddhi. Now you wish to identify

Buddhi with the higher aspect of Manas.

Mr. B. Keightley: You are taking that from Sinnett, Old.

Mr. Old: Is not Buddhi the sixth principle, and is not intuition the sixth sense?

Mme. Blavatsky: You argue on the line of what? Do you bring the thing as it is
given to you in the esoteric instructions, or the exoteric? There is the
difference. You know what I mean. Exoterical y, there is another thing. Of
course the Buddhi wil be the sixth, for the Buddhi is quite a different thing
exoterical y. The Buddhi per se has nothing to do with any qualification of
anything; it is simply the vehicle of Âtman, of spirit; and spirit is nothing. It
cannot be said it is something. It is that which has neither beginning nor end. It
is the one thing.

Mr. B. Keightley: Old’s identification of the Buddhi’s intuition is derived from

Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism.

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Mme. Blavatsky: That is certainly not esoteric.

Mr. Kingsland: You cannot identify Buddhi with intuition, because intuition, after
al , is only the intel ectual process of the very highest order.

Mr. Old: I understand there are two facets to Buddhi?

Mme. Blavatsky: One thing you may say about Buddhi. Intuition

621. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

is in Manas for the more or less light shed on it by Buddhi, whether it is
assimilated much or little with Buddhi.

Mr. Kingsland: It must pass through Manas. It is derived from Manas.

Mr. Old: Ultimately it is from the brain; it can flow down. The brain is the
instrument of thought.

Mme. Blavatsky: My poor Old! I never thought you were as materialistic as
you are.

Mr. Old: You have put me off the track by asking me the question whether I
was speaking esoterical y or exoterical y. I was talking on my ground, and you
told me to get off.

Mme. Blavatsky: Was I wrong?

Mr. Old: No, you were right.

Mme. Blavatsky: There are esotericists here, and exotericists. The
esotericists wil be terribly confused if we speak in this way, and the
exotericists stil more.

Mr. Old: I ought not to have mooted it.

Mme. Blavatsky: Buddhi by itself can neither have intuition, nor non-intuition,
nor anything; it is simply the cementing link, so to say, between the higher spirit
and Manas. What goes into Devachan? What reincarnates? It is certainly the
ego, the Manas, the higher portion of Manas. Once in Devachan we cal it the
eternity, but it has no eternity at al , because Buddhi and Âtma are nothing but
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obstructions, in the strict sense of the word. It is the reincarnating Manas that
goes; and therefore intuition belongs to Manas, because it brings it through al
the reincarnations that it passed through. Al this is more or less defined
through the amount of light shed on Manas by Buddhi, but so far as regards
this life. You understand? Because the intuition is one. You have learned
enough about that, Mrs. Gordon.

622. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mr. Old: What is your distinction, Kingsland, between unconscious cerebration
and intuition?

Mr. Kingsland: Unconscious cerebration is a thing belonging purely to the
physical plane, and the other thing is different.

Mr. Old: So is unconscious thought, then?

Mr. Kingsland: Take the extreme case of the lad who could solve the most
difficult mathematical problems that were given to him immediately without any
reference to figures at al . That you wil say was a purely intel ectual process.

He must have had it in previous times; he had assimilated that knowledge at
some time or other, and it was owing to certain combinations of astral
influences that he was able to make use of that information, for the time being,
in that rapid manner. His physical senses overclouded this, in time.

Mr. Sargeant: That is the product of unconscious thought.

Mme. Blavatsky: Unconscious cerebration is something that was suggested
to the brain unconsciously to yourselves, though perhaps you heard it or saw it
and had no remembrance of it; and there it comes out. But, intuition is a
different thing.

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t think such a term as “unconscious thought” can mean
anything.

Mr. Sargeant: The “unconscious cerebration”?

Mr. B. Keightley: “Unconscious thought”—what meaning can you attach to the
phrase?

Mr. Old: Cal it ideation, if you like.

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Mr. B. Keightley: It is conscious enough on the right plane.

Mr. Old: There is nothing unconscious as a matter of fact. Because if you only
identify your consciousness for the time being with that plane, you would be
perfectly conscious you were so engaged; therefore, I think the term is a bad
one, and I only wish to use it

623. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

relatively, in contradistinction to relative thought.

Mrs. Gordon: It seems to me that the experiments that have been made in
regard to hypnotism show that there is this higher consciousness which may
be brought forward occasional y under exceptional circumstances—that is,
with exceptional natures. It is not everyone in whom it can be developed. Don’t
you think so, Madame? I am speaking of the latent soul. The other half which is
not unconscious can be, as it were, more or less exhibited under some forms
of hypnotism, in which the higher self becomes clairvoyant, and the other
faculties always develop.

Mme. Blavatsky: Don’t you use the term “higher self.” That is the Âtman.

Mr. B. Keightley: Say the higher ego. In most cases, that consciousness or
ego refers to the personality in the third person speaking, for instance, of the
name.

Mr. Kingsland: I take it in this way: that we have stored up, so to speak, in our

Manas an enormous amount of experience that we have passed through in
past incarnations, and we are not able by certain reasons of our physical
constitution to assimilate and give expression to al that in our present lifetime.

But the act of making use of your intuition is simply the act of getting at this
storehouse that you have already in your Manas. And what it is that clouds our
intuition is our connection with physical plane. And if we can get rid of that, we
can make use of our intuition.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is the amount of weeds and parasites that we have
col ected in our life which makes us positively fools.

Mrs. Gordon: You always see children much more intuitive than adults.

Children have the intuition much more prominent than we who live in the world
and are more of the world, and our minds are exercised in connection with
worldly things.

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Mr. Kingsland: I think that also is the case.

624. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mrs. Gordon: I have seen it myself, among friends of my own. They had a
sixth sense, as I may say. They lived in another atmosphere altogether, you
see.

Mr. Kingsland: There are a great many cases in which that is brought forward

—abnormal cases, such as I have mentioned. Take the case of Josef

Hofmann, the young pianist. Where does his musical knowledge come from?

It is nothing but intuition. He is able to give expression to that on the physical
plane through his physical body.

Mrs. Gordon: Of course the child has not learned it intel ectual y. He has not
brain enough to do it. He has brought it with him.

Mr. Kingsland: The basis of al our actions is simply intuition.

Mme. Blavatsky: Is it your Buddhi, Old, that made you what you are?

Mr. Old: It is my Âtma.

Mme. Blavatsky: You have got no Âtma, distinct from others.

Mr. Old: There is the divine spark in me.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not yours; it is common property. It is your ego, and your
incarnating ego. It is that which you were in past lives that makes you what you
are, a young man of 25 that has such a wonderful capacity of grasping al
these things.

Mr. Old: There are certain things—as, for instance, these abstract meditations

—which are not the result of experience. What experience, what self-
consciousness have I when I am in Devachan? I have no relative
consciousness except my own that forms the creation in my own mind.

Mr. Kingsland: And yet you believe that Devachan is the result of your
experiences that you have passed through in your previous life.

Mr. Old: Certainly. But there are other abstract problems which are thinkable
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and cognizable by me which it is perhaps impossible

625. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

to formulate, but which I can feel; and I say that these laws, this
consciousness, belongs to Âtma. It is related to Manas by its vehicle Buddhi,
and therein this absolute consciousness is, to a certain extent, capable of
being appreciated by the Manas, the monad.

Mme. Blavatsky: You are a heretic, because you speak entirely against not
only the occult philosophy, but against the Vedântin philosophy.

Mr. Kingsland: Does Âtma accumulate experiences?

Mr. Old: No! But you have got hold of the idea that it is only accumulated
experience that we know.

Mr. Kingsland: It is only accumulated experience which is our intuition.

Mme. Blavatsky: How can you give experience to that which is absolute? How
is it possible to fal into such a philosophical error as that? The Âtma no more
belongs to you than to this lamp. It is common property.

Mr. Old: Every higher self is, so to speak, the manifested end of a ray.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is not. It is the Manas itself.

Mr. Old: There is the individual logos, as wel as the universal logos.

Mme. Blavatsky: Not at al . It is simply that Âtma and Buddhi cannot be
predicated as having anything to do with a man, except that man is immersed
in them. So long as he lives he is overshadowed by these two; but it is no
more the property of that than of anything else.

Mr. Old: This is identifying Âtman with Jîvâ.

Mme. Blavatsky: I beg a thousand pardons. Jîvâ and Âtma are one, only Jîvâ
is this end, and Âtma at the highest end; but you cannot make the difference in

England. It would have a meaning

626. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

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for the Sanskrit, but not in the European languages, or any of them. Because
there is but one essence in the universe, and this has neither beginning nor
end, and the various shadows or rays of that absoluteness during the period of
differentiation this is that which makes it the final essence of everything, and of
man.

Mr. Old: Then would you say that al this which is written of Nirvâna of Brahmâ,
of Para-Nirvâna, of Para-Brahman, is the result of experience?

Mr. Kingsland: Al that you can understand of it, that is the result of
experience.

Mr. Old: I take it as the result of intuition.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is simply a symbol expressed in the best language in
which man is capable of expressing it, that is al .

Mr. B. Keightley: Try to formulate your idea more clearly by explaining what
kind of meditation you refer to, because I think you wil find that the very
highest meditation you can conceive of is real y Manasic, and nothing more.

Manas and experience are not synonymous.

Mr. Old: Kingsland wishes to identify intuition with experience. According to

Kingsland, intuition is one aspect of Manas.

Mme. Blavatsky: Look here, you Europeans ought never to have been given
the seven principles. Wel , perhaps in a hundred years you wil understand it. It
would be a thousand times better to hold to the old methods, those that I have
held to in Isis Unveiled, and to speak about triple man: spirit, soul, and matter;
then you would not fal into the heresies, in such heresies as you do. Why do
we divide this into seven parts or aspects? Because ours is the highest
philosophy. But, for the general mortal, certainly it is a great deal easier to
understand if they say man is triple: he has got spirit, soul, and matter. What is
spirit? Spirit then becomes the ego. Soul is simply the Nefesh, the living soul
of every animal, that is to say, the lower Jîvâ, and matter is his physical body.

Now, we, having divided

627. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

it, as al esoteric philosophies divide it, have simply confused the European
mind, because it has not been trained in that direction. It is too early for them,
and there are very few men who wil real y understand the seven divisions.

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And, therefore, we are cal ed lunatics or frauds—one of the two—and nobody
wil understand what we mean. I say it is a thousand times better not to
understand it, and not to go and speak about this septenary number, and
simply take it on the old ground of spirit, soul and matter. There would be no
heresy, then.

Mr. Kingsland: It has been broached abroad now, this seven principle, and we
have to clear our ideas of it.

Mme. Blavatsky: You must never say: “my Âtma”; you have no Âtma. This
idea is the curse of the world. It has produced this tremendous selfishness,
this egotism [ ] we say, “we are”, “my Âtma”, “my Buddhi”. Who are you? You
are nobodies; you are something today, and tomorrow you are not. Even that
disappears at the end of the Manvantara in the one.

Mr. B. Keightley: To go back to what Kingsland was saying. Intuition as we
know it is defined in this way: The memory, the action, the reflection on our
lower plane of the hierarchies. It is not the higher aspect of the hierarchies, nor
does it exhaust the Manas.

Mme. Blavatsky: The incarnating principle simply. It is not something that is an
individual or entity. It is simply the highest mind.

Mr. Old: That incarnating ego consists of what?

Mme. Blavatsky: What do you want it to consist of? Plums, or oranges, or
what?

Mr. Old: How do you formulate it? Do you say it is Âtma-Buddhi?

Mme. Blavatsky: I say it is Âtma-Buddhi certainly. Because in every
incarnation, it is under the direct ray of Buddhi, if he wants to assimilate. If he
does not want to, it is his look out; his personality

628. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

wil drop out. It is only in the case which assimilates Buddhi that it real y lives
throughout, and wil belong to that string of personality which forms
consciousness after the Manvantara is at an end—the direct, immortal ray.

Mr. Old: I thought I was quite right in saying Buddhi was a ray from Âtma; it is
that vehicle.

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Mme. Blavatsky: You would not cal this lamp a ray of the flame that burns in it,
would you?

Mr. Old: Certainly not.

Mme. Blavatsky: That is Buddhi, if you please—the vehicle. It is not a ray; it is
only that through which that ray passes. It is the agent of that light that it throws
on Buddhi. How is that we read in al those books about Nirvâna and Âtma,
when they say: “Does Parabrahman exist? It does not. Yes it is, but it does not
exist.”

Mr. Old: You say the incarnating ego consists of Buddhi-Manas, or
rather Âtma Buddhi.

Mme. Blavatsky: It consists only of itself.

Mr. Kingsland: In the aspect in which we are discussing, it is simply the
assimilation of the higher Manas.

Mr. Old: What assimilates it?

Mme. Blavatsky: Consciousness. It is universal consciousness, which fal ing
into matter becomes personal consciousness in its last manifestation on earth.

And when it gets rid of al the matter that impedes it, when it becomes more
and more pure, and it reaches its highest manifestation, or whatever you cal it,
then it gradual y fal s into the universal consciousness; it is again reabsorbed
into universal consciousness. That is what Manas is. But as it fal s lower and
lower, it would be nothing but a material entity—I don’t mean material
physical y, but material de facto, nothing but a bundle

629. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

of nothing—if it were not under the ray of this Âtma Buddhi. But Âtma Buddhi
certainly does not fol ow the reincarnating ego. Simply once it is reincarnated,
they are again in the region of the universe in which there is Âtma and Buddhi.

Therefore we say Âtma and Buddhi exist in every man.

Mr. Old: It is a contradiction between the undifferentiated Âtman and Buddhi.

Mme. Blavatsky: It is simply that Âtma is beyond the seventh plane. Buddhi is
one of the planes; you understand that. Therefore, if Âtma which is beyond the
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seventh plane, fal s on the ego through seven planes, it wil fal a great deal
weaker. You understand what I mean? It depends on our ego to draw it
immediately on itself, or to have a kind of wal between it and the other planes.

This depends on the degree of assimilation. I don’t know if you understand my
meaning.

Mr. B. Keightley: Yes, you put it very wel .

Mme. Blavatsky: Wel , it is extremely difficult to do so. Because those who
don’t understand what I mean by planes wil not understand me. It has seven
degrees of spirit-matter, and certainly it depends on the force or degree, the
intensity with which it assimilates. And if it is too opaque, and too dul , then
certainly it won’t reach it.

Mr. B. Keightley: I don’t know whether you ever studied that problem, Old, the
definition of liberation. There is always that rather puzzling explanation: the soul
is neither bound, nor is it ever liberated. It is a very intricate problem, which has
never been real y satisfactorily explained.

Mme. Blavatsky: What do you take Purusha to be on this plane? Which of the
principles? To which of the principles does it belong?

Mr. B. Keightley: They talk about Purusha mounting on the shoulders of

Prakriti.

Mme. Blavatsky: Prakriti is simply a body, and therefore the body would be a
perfectly blind animal if Purusha were not there; and

630. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Purusha without the body could not manifest. Purusha emanates from Brahmâ
and from [ ], or from what ever school he belonged to.

Mr. B. Keightley: I could show passages in which Purusha is not taken in that
sense, but in the higher sense.

Mme. Blavatsky: If you speak about mind, Purusha corresponds with the ego.

If you take it in the universal sense, then it corresponds to the universal soul, to
the Anima Mundi.

Mr. Kingsland: I think you might look at it in this light: by analogy, it is exactly
the same as the way in which we require to postulate for the descending scale
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of manifestation—first the manifesting spirit, then the first Logos, and then the
second. Isn’t it the same?

Mr. Old: Who is your first Logos in this case?

Mr. Kingsland: It is Buddhi, and the second is Manas.

Mr. Old: A short time ago I ventured the remark that Buddhi was the Logos,
and I was told that I was incorrect.

Mr. B. Keightley: You spoke of an individual Logos.

Mr. Old: Of an individual ray—because Âtma has to radiate in order to function
any particular—

Mme. Blavatsky: Âtma has to radiate! It cannot radiate anything. Âtma, if you
take it of the third Logos, then yes, but not Âtma in the universal sense of

Parabrahman.

Mr. Old: We are not teaching Parabrahman here. If we entered Parabrahman,
or if we entered into the consideration of Parabrahman, here would come in
that intuition which I speak of.

Mme. Blavatsky: I thought I knew pretty wel the philosophy, and I don’t think I
know it. I never said that Âtma or Parabrahman could radiate. If you take it in
the sense of the third Logos, then I admit it radiates.

631. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mr. Kingsland: Correspondential y, Âtma is Parabrahman.

Mr. Old: There is a source of confusion to a occidental mind; just the same
with your juxtaposition of the two words Jîvâ and Prâna which throws
everybody into confusion. I mean to say, your repetition of the language.

Mr. B. Keightley: The juxtaposition was sensed, and nobody ever took it up.

Mme. Blavatsky: The Brahmins have given it to us and they al fel on me as to
why I permitted Sinnett to do this. Sinnett never asked me my permission, and

I did not know until Esoteric Buddhism came out. It is not my fault.

Mr. Old: Oh! No; only, in some parts of The Secret Doctrine it is difficult to tel
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if Jîvâ is to be taken on the nouminal plane or on the phenomenal.

Mme. Blavatsky: When you speak about the objective things then it is Jîvâ (at
least it is Prâna.) When you speak about the universal life then it is Jîvâ. In
some schools of philosophy they cal it Jîvâ; the Vedântin wil cal it Jîvâ; the

Sankhya wil never cal it that, and the six schools are entirely distinct. That
which the Vedântins cal Jîvâ, others wil cal Prâna and vice versa.

Mr. Old: One conceives of abstract ideas apart from the formula. The formula
is the matter of experience; it belongs to Manas.

Mr. B. Keightley: Don’t you conceive that it is the Manas which conceives the
abstract ideas? Because, how do they exist, otherwise?

Mr. Kingsland: You cannot conceive of abstract ideas without the experience.

Mr. Old: Who was Hermes?

Mme. Blavatsky: If you mix up the Greek gods with the philosophy, then we
are lost.

632. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mr. Old: I wil bear it.

Mr. Kingsland: But our brains won’t.

Mme. Blavatsky: Let us leave in quietude al these analogies.

Mr. Old: But this is our only key.

Mr. B. Keightley: Your argument is open to this reply. If abstract ideas can only
be received in virtue of experience, how do you ever get your chain started?

Mr. Kingsland: By the first emanation. When you first emanate from the

Absolute, it is when you begin your cycle of experiences.

Mme. Blavatsky: There is a potentiality of everything past, present, and future.

Mr. Old: That is better. This is not experience.

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M me. Blavatsky: If you take the present Manavantara for the only one, then, of
course, granted you are right.

Mr. Old: This is making two square wal s meet, that the past, present, and
future are comprehended in the now. It is a matter of experience. There are
the future manvantaras.

Mme. Blavatsky: What do you make of the past Manvantaras? If you were in
the first you would be right.

Mr. Old: You have no individual consciousness, in Parabrahman, in which you
enter at the Mahâpralaya. I mean in Nirvâna.

Mme. Blavatsky: You don’t understand what Nirvâna is. It is absolute
consciousness.

Mr. Old: There is no individual consciousness. How do we know anything
about Nirvâna?

Mr. Kingsland: Do you believe that the future Manvantara wil be an
improvement upon the present one, or not?

633. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mr. Old: Yes! I do, because my experience has told me from what little I have
seen that the law of nature is progression.

Mr. Kingsland: Is not that the same as saying it is experience?

Mr. Old: Plus analogy.

Mr. Kingsland: I am drawing the analogy now. I say you can carry it not only
from your past life to the present, but from the past Manvantara to the next

Manvantara.

Mr. B. Keightley: If you ever read Frounde,6 he talks about the faculty of
apprehending abstract ideas. H.P.B., answer this, if you can, from the point of
view of exotericism. Is the apprehension of highest abstract ideas the function
of Manas, or of Buddhi?

Mme. Blavatsky: Buddhi can have the apprehension of nothing.

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Mr. B. Keightley: There you are answered, Old.

Mr. Old: Yes! Certainly.

Mme. Blavatsky: If we agree or discuss about the universe we had better
leave the first two things— Parabrahman and the first Logos cal it; and when
we speak of men, let us remember that it is a perfect analogy—that that which
we cal Parabrahman in the first Logos is in man, Âtma and Buddhi. Then as
we begin by the third or the second Logos, so we must begin by Manas,
because there it is where the point of differentiation begins. Otherwise you are
lost. You wil only make confusion, otherwise.

Mr. Old: It is having to keep paral el texts before you al the time. Knowing
certain teachings on the one side of the book, and trying to keep them paral el.

Mme. Blavatsky: He wil come and reproach us that he knows too much.

6 [Perhaps James Anthony Froude, English writer, 1818-1894, whose multi-volume biography of Thomas Carlyle
had just been completed.]

634. 22. Meeting June 20, 1889

Mr. Old: I refer to the esoteric teaching.

Mme. Blavatsky: Most assuredly. Therefore everytime you put this question, I
say, do go to bed, let us talk of something else. Let us talk about exoteric
subjects, of which we can discuss as much as you like. But the others—wel , it
is very difficult to speak of that which we had better keep silent about.

( These remarks closed the proceedings )

Appendix 1

[In the transcription of the meeting of January 10, 1889, page 15 is missing.

An edited version of what it may have contained is supplied from pages 5-6 of
the original 1890 printed edition of Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge
below.]

Q. What, then, are the seven layers of Space, for in the “Proem” we read
about the “Seven-Skinned Mother-Father”?

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A. Plato and Hermes Trismegistus would have regarded this as the Divine

Thought, and Aristotle would have viewed this “Mother Father” as the

“privation” of matter. It is that which wil become the seven planes of being,
commencing with the spiritual and passing through the psychic to the material
plane. The seven planes of thought or the seven states of consciousness
correspond to these planes. Al these septenaries are symbolized by the
seven “Skins.”

Q. The divine ideas in the Divine Mind? But the Divine Mind is not yet.

A. The Divine Mind is and must be, before differentiation takes place. It is
cal ed the divine Ideation, which is eternal in its Potentiality and periodical in its

Potency, when it becomes Mahat, Anima Mundi or Universal Soul. But
remember that, however you name it, each of these conceptions has its most
metaphysical, most material, and also intermediate aspects.

Q. What is the meaning of the term “Ever invisible robes”?

A. It is, of course, as every al egory in the Eastern philosophies, a figurative
expression. Perhaps it may be the hypothetical Protyle that Professor Crookes
is in search of, but which can certainly never be found on this our earth or
plane. It is the non-differentiated substance or spiritual matter.

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Appendix 2

Blavatsky Lodge Meetings:

Participants in order of appearance

1. January 10, 1889: Bertram Keightley, HPB, Thomas B.

Harbottle (President), Wil iam Kingsland, Wil iam Ashton El is,

Dr. Wil iams, Mr. X, {Roger} Hal , Mr.—, Miss.—, Mr. Duncan

2. January 17, 1889: Archibald Keightley, HPB, T.B. Harbottle

(President), Dr. Wil iams, Bertram Keightley, Wil iam Kingsland,

G.R.S. Mead, {Roger} Hal

3. January 24, 1889: Archibald Keightley, HPB, Bertram Keightley,

Wil iam Kingsland, Col. Chowne, Bulaki Rama, F.L. Gardner,

{Roger} Hal , Dr. Wil iams, A Lady

4. January 31, 1889: Archibald Keightley, HPB, Wil iam Kingsland,

T.B. Harbottle (Chairman), F.L. Gardner, Bertram Keightley, Mrs.

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Wil iams, Bulaki Rama, Dr. Wil iams

5. February 7, 1889: Archibald Keightley, HPB, T.B. Harbottle

(President), Bertram Keightley, Wil iam Kingsland, Mr. Forsyth,

A Lady, Mr.— , F.L. Gardner

6. February 14, 1889: Archibald Keightley, HPB, Bertram

Keightley, Wil iam Kingsland (Chairman), Mr. W. Scott-El iot, Dr.

Wil iams, {Roger} Hal , Miss Kenealy

7. February 21, 1889: Bertram Keightley, HPB, Wil iam

Kingsland, T.B. Harbottle (President), {Roger} Hal , F.L. Gardner,

Eduoard Coulomb, Mr. Johnston {Charles Johnston?}

8. February 28, 1889: Bertram Keightley, HPB, Wil iam Kingsland,

T.B. Harbottle (President), F.L. Gardner, Mr.—, Mme. Tambaco

Dr. Wil iams, Alexander Ful erton

637

9. March 7, 1889: T.B. Harbottle (President), Archibald Keightley,

HPB, Wil iam Kingsland, Bertram Keightley, Dr. Wil iams,

Mr.Yates {W.B. Yeats?}

10. March 14, 1889: Archibald Keightley, Bertram Keightley,

HPB, Wil iam Kingsland (Chairman), F.L. Gardner, {Roger} Hal

11. March 21, 1889: Archibald Keightley, HPB, T.B. Harbottle

(President). Bertram Keightley. F.L. Gardner, Wil iam Kingsland,

Dr. Wil iams

12. March 28, 1889: Archibald Keightley, HPB, Wil iam Kingsland (Chairman),

Bertram Keightley, Mr.—, Mr. Atkinson, Miss Kenealy

13. April 4, 1889: Archibald Keightley, HPB, Wil iam Kingsland

(Chairman), Bertram Keightley, F.L. Gardner, A Lady, Mr. {Robert

B.?} Holt, Mr.—

14. April 11, 1889: Bertram Keightley, HPB, Wil iam Kingsland

(Chairman), F.L. Gardner, W.R. Old, {Roger} Hal , Dr. Wil iams,

Mr.—

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15. April 18, 1889: Bertram Keightley, HPB, Wil iam Kingsland

(Chairman), Yates {W.B. Yeats?}, G.R.S. Mead, A.P. Sinnett, A Lady

16. April 25, 1889: Bertram Keightley, HPB, Wil iam Kingsland

(Chairman), G.R.S. Mead, W.R. Old, Mr. {Charles?} Ingram,

Mr.—

17. May 2, 1880: Bertram Keightley, HPB, W.R. Old, Wil iam

Kingsland (Chairman), {John Storer} Cobb, G.R.S. Mead, Mr.—

{Roger} Hal , A Lady

18. May 9, 1889. No record

19. May 16, 1889: Bertram Keightley, HPB, Dr. Wil iams, A

Lady, W.R. Old, Wil iam Kingsland (Chairman), Mr. Johnson

{Johnston?}, Mr.—, Countess Wachtmeister, Mr. Cross

p. 638

May 23, 1889. No record

20. May 30, 1889: W.R. Old, HPB, Wil iam Kingsland (Chairman), Herbert

Burrows, Mr.—, A Lady

21. June 6, 1889: W.R. Old, HPB, Bertram Keightley,

Ralph Sneyd, Wil iam Kingsland (Chairman),

Herbert Burrows, Annie Besant, F.L. Gardner, A Lady

June 13, 1889. No record

22. June 20, 1889: HPB, Mrs. Alice Gordon, W.R. Old, Bertram

Keightley, Wil iam Kingsland (Chairman), Mr. Sargeant

Appendix 3

A Paper read before the Blavatsky Lodge of the T.S.

by Wil iam Kingsland, President
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In the course of our systematic study of The Secret Doctrine , which we have
now pursued for nearly six months, we have arrived at the conclusion of the
stanzas of the first volume. It would be wel to pause and ask ourselves what is
the net gain which we have derived?

In what respects are our ideas altered or modified, what have we learnt
which is new, and how much do we recognize the value of the
book?

It has been no easy matter to form a clear and concise idea of the modus
operandi of cosmogenesis as set forth in the stanzas and the accompanying
commentary. They do not profess to do more than to lift the corner of the veil.

Large numbers of intermediate slokas we are told are omitted, and certain
occult keys, which it is not yet permitted to make public, are withheld. Those
who are members of the Esoteric Section of the T.S. have a better chance of
understanding the matter than the ordinary reader, but since numbers who
have attended our Thursday evening meetings are not esotericists, it has been
impossible to treat the matter from any but an exoteric standpoint.

In order to present an abstract principle in anything like a comprehensible
manner, it is necessary that it should be represented in some form having
reference to our ordinary methods of intel ectual apprehension, and our
ordinary states of consciousness. Some kind of form is indispensable for the
conceptions which arise out of our present state of consciousness, and the
one great fal acy which we should constantly guard against, is the mistaking of
the form for the reality, the effect for the cause. It is this self same il usion of
form, Maya, which is the great deceiver, the great tempter. It deceives our
physical senses and our intel ectual faculties. It is the cause of al the il usive
forms of superstition and religion which have prevailed in al ages. Let not the
student of The Secret Doctrine fal under the same il usion, and mistake the
form which is there presented for the

p.640

principles which underlie the form, or materialize into a dogma the priceless
treasure of wisdom and knowledge therein contained. I know that some have
come to grief over the various celestial Hierarchies of Dhyâni-Chohans, being
total y unable to connect these with the physical forces with which they are
familiar, or to see any connection whatever between them and the physical
universe. Perhaps if they wil dematerialize their ideas of celestial beings,
disconnect them from al preconceived ideas of Angels and Archangels
derived from Biblical fairy tales, instil ed into their youthful minds—not an easy
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matter, by the way—and give free play to their intuition, they wil be able to
surmount what at present appears to them such a formidable obstacle. The
mysteries of Parabrahman have been touched upon more than once, and it
has been pointed out that this term is not used to designate either a God or a
machine, but as a purely metaphysical abstraction—albeit the one reality, the
absolute. Nevertheless Parabrahman appears to have been a very hard nut
for some to crack, as also the first and second Logos, Brahma and Brahmâ,

Fohat, and a host of other personified forces. We can hardly be surprised if
the casual and superficial reader should be lost in the vast pantheon of The

Secret Doctrine, and should fly for comparative intel ectual safety to the
orthodox doctrine of the trinity.

But let us not, as students of The Secret Doctrine be hasty in forming either
our conceptions or our conclusions. We must bear in mind that we are dealing
with the imaginative powers of the Eastern mind, and with the deepest and
most subtle of metaphysical and philosophical systems. Let us try and
understand The Secret Doctrine in its materialized form, and then, when we
have mastered the form, we may be the better able to understand what that
form represents.

Setting aside now al concrete ideas having reference to the form in which
the teachings are moulded, I imagine that those who have fol owed closely the
course of instructions, cannot have failed to have grasped some general
principles of the utmost importance. They cannot have failed to have obtained
such a broad and comprehensive view of the law of evolution, of the essential
unity and oneness of nature—including in that term both the visible and the
invisible universe—and of the law of correspondences and analogy, such

p.641

as could not have been obtained by them by the study of half the scientific
books in the world. Science prides itself upon its generalizations, such as the
law of the conservation of energy and the doctrine of evolution, and these two
doctrines have certainly been responsible, more than everything else that
science has done, for the breaking down of the narrow and superstitious
conceptions of the government of the universe by the personal fiat of a Biblical

Jehovah.

But The Secret Doctrine carries these generalizations immeasurably further
than even science itself has yet ventured to do. The The Secret Doctrine, in
fact, proceeds by an opposite method to that of science. The methods of
science are inductive, proceeding from particulars to universals; the method
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of The Secret Doctrine is deductive proceeding from universals to particulars.

Now each of these methods has its own particular application and value.

Implicit faith should not be placed in either the one or the other, but each
should be used in a legitimate way. Science ignores altogether the deductive
method. Her generalizations and theories are built upon a vast mass of
accumulated facts, which scientific men are ever adding to, while at the same
time they endeavor to piece them together so as to form a connected whole.

The generalizations of science are the result of numbers of isolated
observations and experiments. It may fal to the lot of some one man to
enunciate some particular law of nature, which he is therefore said to have
discovered, and which is labeled with his name; but it is seldom the case that
the discovery is due to his own unaided and original observations. He is
indebted to numberless other experimenters, it may be to a line of research
which has been carried on for centuries, but it has fal en to the lot of this
particular individual to crown the efforts by the enunciation of a law which binds
together and shows the essential relation of phenomena, which have hitherto
appeared to be isolated and arbitrary.

But we may wel doubt whether science by means of the inductive method
can ever teach us anything respecting the deeper problems of our
consciousness, can ever reach such generalizations and principles as are to
be found in The Secret Doctrine. Science refuses to deal with metaphysics, or
even with such physics as psychical phenomena,

p.642

and we certainly cannot, as individuals, afford to wait until science shal have
seen fit to offer a solution of certain problems with which we are more
immediately acquainted. Let us recognize the value of inductive science in its
own proper sphere, but meanwhile let us also use the deductive method, and
see whether we cannot arrive at general principles without having to spend our
lives in accumulating innumerable facts, or in labeling with learned names the
minutest subdivisions of every insect or plant which we can meet with in the
remotest corners of the globe.

If we push back our enquiries respecting the phenomenal universe, and the
causes which are operating to produce the effects which we see around us,
we very soon reach a point where physics cannot help us, and where we must
resort to metaphysics and abstract ideas. We cannot employ the inductive
method here, for we have exhausted our knowledge of facts. We stand before
the great ocean of the unknown, that strange il usion which we cal time and
space. What is to be our guide here; how does The Secret Doctrine help us?

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By analogy. By showing us the past, the present and the future, contained in
the highest possible metaphysical abstraction, in the Absolute or

Parabrahman, and then proceeding downwards through the various
manifestations in time and space of this one absolute reality—always by
analogy, and in lines that never vary in principle— until we reach those finite
manifestations which constitute our present physical universe, and our human
consciousness.

Analogy is the great law of The Secret Doctrine. As above so below. The
microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm. These occult axioms are to be
found elsewhere, but in no other book are they so exemplified or worked out in
such detail, or made to cover such a vast area as in The Secret Doctrine. Truly
this is a key which is worth having, a universal key with which we can unlock
one by one every mystery of our being. We must first of al learn to grasp
firmly this principle of analogy, and if we do this I imagine that we shal soon
discover its value in every department of those regions which we are
endeavoring to penetrate.

And now we stand face to face with the greatest question of al . Thus far we
have been dealing with cosmogenesis, and having only incidental y touched on
the deeper problems of life and

p. 643

consciousness. Stanza VII opens with these words: “Behold the beginning of
sentient formless life.” “Formless life!” What can we apprehend of life without
form? And yet as we read and reread the stanza it impresses us with a
sublimity of philosophic thought which surely is nowhere else to be found.

It presents itself to our mind like a ray of the one Divine Life itself flashed
into the darkness of our materiality; or like the lightning in the blackness of the
night it suddenly il umines the earth, enabling us to discern the outlines of our
surroundings—then leaves us in deeper darkness.

What is this deep mystery of Life, these countless myriads of lives “the
beams and the sparks of one moon reflected in the running waves of al the
rivers of earth?”

Tel us, oh, Sphinx, of the three letters and the nine! Tel us—lest the
insatiable desire to know which you have instil ed into our minds pursue you as

Nemesis through countless reincarnations.

What is life, mind, consciousness, man? Are not al these conglomerated,
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col ected, distributed, permutated, annihilated, in the stanza before us, til our
brain becomes a fiery whirlwind and our reason sinks into the deep waters of
space. We stand before the mystery of Life; we catch a glimpse of the awful
depths of our own being, and those heights to scale which we must become—

Gods! We stand for a moment on the verge of that infinite consciousness
where there is neither great nor smal , being or non-being, time or space, light
or darkness, sound or silence.

The stanza reads like the great diapason tone of nature; it swel s into a
harmony that seems the very source of our being. Who but a great musician or
magician can analyse these tones, or fit them to the scale of our earth-bound
consciousness. Let us pause and listen, if perchance we may attune our
minds to the divine harmony, and carry some portion of it with us into our daily
life. Truly our task has been no light one thus far, but with the strength we have
gained we wil stil push forward, and master these deeper secrets of life by
which alone we can hope to free ourselves from the great il usion. Lucifer,

4: 23 (July 1889): 416-20

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