The Secret Doctrine vol. 1, Stanza II.1
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Commentary.
1. . . . . Where were the Builders, the luminous sons of manvantaric dawn (a)? . . . . In the unknown darkness in their Ah-hi (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic) Paranishpanna, the producers of form (rupa) from no-form (arupa), the root of the world — the Devamatri* and Svabhavat, rested in the bliss of non-being (b).
(a) The “Builders,” the “Sons of Manvantaric Dawn,” are the real creators of the Universe; and in this doctrine, which deals only with our Planetary System, they, as the architects of the latter, are also called the “Watchers” of the Seven Spheres, which exoterically are the Seven planets, and esoterically the seven earths or spheres (planets) of our chain also. The opening sentence of Stanza I, when mentioning “Seven Eternities,” is made to apply both to the Maha-Kalpa or “the (great) Age of Brahma,” as well as to the Solar pralaya and subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System on a higher plane. There are many kinds of pralaya (dissolution of a thing visible), as will be shown elsewhere.
(b) Paranishpanna, remember, is the summum bonum, the Absolute, hence the same as Paranirvana. Besides being the final state it is that condition of subjectivity which has no relation to anything but the one absolute truth (Para-marthasatya) on its plane. It is that state which leads one to appreciate correctly the full meaning of Non-Being, which, as explained, is absolute Being. Sooner or later, all that now seemingly exists, will be in reality and actually in the state of Paranishpanna. But there is a great difference between conscious and unconscious “being.” The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramartha, the Self-analys-
Footnote
* “Mother of the Gods,” Aditi, or Cosmic Space. In the Zohar, she is called Sephira the Mother of the Sephiroth, and Shekinah in her primordial form, in abscondito.
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ing consciousness (Svasamvedana), is no bliss, but simply extinction (for Seven Eternities). Thus, an iron ball placed under the scorching rays of the sun will get heated through, but will not feel or appreciate the warmth, while a man will. It is only “with a mind clear and undarkened by personality, and an assimilation of the merit of manifold existences devoted to being in its collectivity (the whole living and sentient Universe),” that one gets rid of personal existence, merging into, becoming one with, the Absolute,* and continuing in full possession of Paramartha.
Footnote
* Hence Non-being is “Absolute Being,” in esoteric philosophy. In the tenets of the latter even Adi-Budha (first or primeval wisdom) is, while manifested, in one sense an illusion, Maya, since all the gods, including Brahma, have to die at the end of the “Age of Brahma”; the abstraction called Parabrahm alone — whether we call it Ensoph, or Herbert Spencer’s Unknowable — being “the One Absolute” Reality. The One secondless Existence is adwaita, “Without a Second,” and all the rest is Maya, teaches the Adwaita philosophy.