Section XLVI. Nirvana-Moksha.
The few sentences given in the text from one of Gautama Buddha's secret teachings show how uncalled for is the epithet of “Materialist” when applied to One Whom two-thirds of those who are looked upon as great Adepts and Occultists in Asia recognize as their Master, whether under the name of Buddha or that of Shankarâchârya. The reader will remember the just-quoted words are what Buddha Sanggyas (or Pho) is alleged by the Tibetan Occultists to have taught: there are three eternal things in the Universe—the Law, Nirvâna, and Space. The Buddhists of the Southern Church claim, on the other hand, that Buddha held only two things as eternal—Âkâsha and Nirvâna. But Âkâsha being the same as Aditi,[700] and both being translated “Space,” there is no discrepancy so far, since Nirvâna as well as Moksha, is a state. Then in both cases the great Kapilavastu Sage unifies the two, as well as the three, into one eternal Element, and ends by saying that even “that One is a Mâyâ” to one who is not a Dang-ma, a perfectly purified Soul.
The whole question hangs upon materialistic misconceptions and ignorance of Occult Metaphysics. To the man of Science who regards Space as simply a mental representation, a conception of something existing pro formâ, and having no real being outside our mind, Space per se is verily an illusion. He may fill the boundless interstellar space with an “imaginary” ether, nevertheless Space for him is an abstraction. Most of the Metaphysicians of Europe are so wide of the mark, from the purely Occult standpoint, of a correct comprehension of “Space,” as are the Materialists, though the erroneous conceptions of both of course differ widely.
If, bearing in mind the philosophical views of the Ancients upon this question, we compare them with what is now termed exact physical Science, it will be found that the two disagree only in inferences and names, and that their postulates are the same when reduced to their most simple expression. From the beginning of the human Æons, from the very dawn of Occult Wisdom, the regions that the men of Science fill with ether have been explored by the Seers of every age. That which the world regards simply as cosmic Space, an abstract representation, the Hindu Rishi, the Chaldæan Magus, the Egyptian Hierophant held, each and all, as the one eternal Root of all, the playground of all the Forces in Nature. It is the fountain-head of all terrestrial life, and the abode of those (to us) invisible swarms of existences—of real beings, as of the shadows only thereof, conscious and unconscious, intelligent and senseless—that surround us on all sides, that interpenetrate the atoms of our Kosmos, and see us not, as we do not either see or sense them through our physical organisms. For the Occultist “Space” and “Universe” are synonyms. In Space there is not Matter, Force, nor Spirit, but all that and much more. It is the One Element, and that one the Anima Mundi—Space, Âkâsha, Astral Light—the Root of Life which, in its eternal, ceaseless motion, like the out- and in-breathing of one boundless ocean, evolves but to reabsorb all that lives and feels and thinks and has its being in it. As said of the Universe in Isis Unveiled, it is:
The combination of a thousand elements and yet the expression of a single Spirit—a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.
Such were the views upon the subject of all the great ancient Philosophers, from Manu down to Pythagoras, from Plato to Paul.
When the dissolution [Pralaya] had arrived at its term the great Being [Para-Âtmâ, or Para-Purusha], the Lord existing through himself, out of whom and through whom all things were, and are, and will be, ... resolved to emanate from his own substance the various creatures.[701]
The mystic Decad [of Pythagoras] (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10) is a way of expressing this idea. The One is God;[702] the Two, matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad and partaking of the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all, involves the entire Cosmos.[703]
Plato's “God” is the “Universal Ideation,” and Paul saying “Out of him, and through him, and in him, all things are,” had surely a Principle—never a Jehovah—in his profound mind. The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the key to every great Philosophy. It is the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the One evolving the many and pervading the All. It is the archaic doctrine of Emanation in a few words.
Speusippus and Xenocrates held, like their great Master, Plato, that: