The Secret Doctrine vol. 1, Stanza II.5
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Darkness alone filled the boundless all, for father, mother and son were once more one, and the son had not awakened yet for the new wheel, and his pilgrimage thereon. (a)
(a) The Secret Doctrine, in the Stanzas given here, occupies itself chiefly, if not entirely, with our Solar System, and especially with our planetary chain. The “Seven Sons,” therefore, are the creators of the latter. This teaching will be explained more fully hereafter. (See Part II., “Theogony of the Creative Gods.”)
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Svabhavat, the “Plastic Essence” that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. Svabhavat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindu philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the former. Chinese mystics have made of it the synonym of “being.” In the Ekasloka-Shastra of Nagarjuna (the Lung-shu of China) called by the Chinese the Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original word of Yeu is “Being” or “Subhava,” “the Substance giving substance to itself,” also explained by him as meaning “without action and with action,” “the nature which has no nature of its own.” Subhava, from which Svabhavat, is composed of two words: Su “fair,” “handsome,” “good;” Sva, “self;” and bhava, “being” or “states of being.”