In India these creations were described as follows:[743]
(I) The First Creation: Mahattattva Creation, so-called because it was the primordial self-evolution of that which had to become Mahat, the “Divine Mind, conscious and intelligent”; esoterically, the “Spirit of the Universal Soul.”
Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency (the potency of that cause), every producedcause comes by its proper nature.
And again:
Seeing that the potencies of all beings are understood only through the knowledge of That (Brahma), which is beyond reasoning, creation, and the like, such potencies are referable to Brahma.
That, then precedes the manifestation. “The first was Mahat,” says Linga Purâna; for the One (the That) is neither first nor last, but all. Exoterically, however, this manifestation is the work of the “Supreme One”—a natural effect, rather, of an Eternal Cause; or, as the Commentator says, it might have been understood to mean that Brahmâ was then created (?), being identified with Mahat, active intelligence, or the operating will of the Supreme. Esoteric Philosophy renders it the “operating Law.”
It is on the right comprehension of this tenet in the Brâhmanas and Purânas that hangs, we believe, the apple of discord between the three Vedântin Sects: the Advaita, Dvaita, and the Vishishthâdvaita. The first argues rightly that Parabrahman, having no relation, as the absolute All, to the manifested World, the Infinite having no connection with the Finite, can neither will nor create; that, therefore, Brahmâ, Mahat, Îshvara, or whatever name the Creative Power may be known by, Creative Gods and all, are simply an illusive aspect of Parabrahman in the conception of the conceivers; while the other sects identify the Impersonal Cause with the Creator, or Îshvara.
Mahat, or Mahâ-Buddhi, is, with the Vaishnavas, however, Divine Mind, in active operation, or, as Anaxagoras has it, “an ordering and disposing Mind, which was the cause of all things”—Νοῦς ὁ διακοσμῶν τε καὶ πάντων ἀίτιος.
Wilson saw at a glance the suggestive connection between Mahat and the Phœnician Môt, or Mut, who was female with the Egyptians, the Goddess Moot, the Mother, “which, like Mahat,” he says, “was the first product of the mixture(?) of Spirit and Matter, and the first rudiment of Creation.” “Ex connexione autem ejus Spiritus prodidit Môt.... Hinc ... seminium omnis creaturæ et omnium rerum [pg 487] creatio,” says Brucker,[744] giving it a still more materialistic and anthropomorphic colouring.
Nevertheless, the esoteric sense of the doctrine is seen, through every exoteric sentence, on the very face of the old Sanskrit texts that treat of primordial Creation.