Throughout the first two Parts, it has been shown that, at the first flutter of renascent life, Svabhâvat, “the Mutable Radiance of the Immutable Darkness unconscious in Eternity,” passes, at every new rebirth of Kosmos, from an inactive state into one of intense activity; that it [pg 696] differentiates, and then begins its work through that differentiation. This work is Karma.
The Cycles are also subservient to the effects produced by this activity.
The one Cosmic Atom becomes seven Atoms on the plane of Matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy; that same Atom becomes seven Rays on the plane of Spirit; and the seven creative Forces of Nature, radiating from the Root-Essence ... follow, one the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet in close embrace. What unites them? Karma.
The Atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn new centres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their work from within without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution and involution, form in their turn the roots or developing causes of new effects, from worlds and “man-bearing” globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of all the seven kingdoms, of which we know only four. For as says the Book of the Aphorisms of Tson-ka-pa:
The blessed workers have received the Thyan-kam, in the eternity.
Thyan-kam is the power or knowledge of guiding the impulses of Cosmic Energy in the right direction.
The true Buddhist, recognizing no “personal God,” nor any “Father” and “Creator of Heaven and Earth,” still believes in an Absolute Consciousness, Adi-Buddhi; and the Buddhist Philosopher knows that there are Planetary Spirits, the Dhyân Chohans. But though he admits of “Spiritual Lives,” yet, as they are temporary in eternity, even they, according to his Philosophy, are “the Mâyâ of the Day,” the Illusion of a “Day of Brahmâ,” a short Manvantara of 4,320,000,000 years. The Yin-Sin is not for the speculations of men, for the Lord Buddha has strongly prohibited all such enquiry. If the Dhyân Chohans and all the Invisible Beings—the Seven Centres and their direct Emanations, the minor centres of Energy—are the direct reflex of the One Light, yet men are far removed from these, since the whole of the visible Kosmos consists of “self-produced beings, the creatures of Karma.” Thus regarding a personal God “as only a gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space by the imagination of ignorant men,”[1096] they teach that only “two things are [objectively] [pg 697] eternal, namely Âkâsha and Nirvâna”; and that these are one in reality, and but a Mâyâ when divided.
Everything has come out of Âkâsha [or Svabhâvat on our earth] in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and after a certain existence passes away. No thing ever came out of nothing. We do not believe in miracles; hence we deny creation and cannot conceive of a creator.[1097]
If a Vedântic Brahman of the Advaita Sect, were asked whether he believed in the existence of God, he would probably answer, as Jacolliot was answered—“I am myself ‘God’;” while a Buddhist (a Sinhalese especially) would simply laugh, and say in reply, “There is no God; no Creation.” Yet the root Philosophy of both Advaita and Buddhist scholars is identical, and both have the same respect for animal life, for both believe that every creature on Earth, however small and humble, “is an immortal portion of the immortal Matter”—Matter having with them quite another significance from that which it has with either Christian or Materialist—and that every creature is subject to Karma.
The answer of the Brâhman would have suggested itself to every ancient Philosopher, Kabalist, and Gnostic of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the Delphic and Kabalistic commandments, for Esoteric Philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man was, is, and will be; his origin, life-cycle—interminable in its duration of successive incarnations or rebirths—and his final absorption into the Source from which he started.