Chapter VI (2)

When the “Night of Brahma” When the active period had
was ended, and the time came arrived, En-Soph sent forth
for the Self-Existent to from within his own eternal
manifest _Itself_ by essence, Sephira, the active
revelation, it made its Power, called the Primordial
glory visible by sending Point, and the Crown,
forth from its Essence an _Keter_. It is only through
active Power, which, female her that the “Un-bounded
at first, subsequently Wisdom” could give a
becomes androgyne. It is concrete form to his
Aditi, the “Infinite,”[553] abstract Thought. Two sides
the Boundless, or rather the of the upper triangle, the
“Un-bounded.” Aditi is the right side and the base, are
“mother” of all the gods, composed of unbroken lines;
and Aditi is the Father and the third, the left side, is
the Son.[554] “Who will give dotted. It is through the
us back to the great Aditi, latter that emerges Sephira.
that I may see father and Spreading in every
mother?”[555] It is in direction, she finally
conjunction with the latter encompasses the whole
female, Force, that the triangle. In this emanation
Divine but latent Thought of the female active
produces the great principle from the left side
“Deep”--water. “Water is of the mystic triangle, is
born from a transformation foreshadowed the creation of
of light ... and from a Eve from Adam’s left rib.
_modification_ of the water Adam is the Microcosm of the
is born the earth,” says Macrocosm, and is created in
Manu (book i.). the image of the Elohim. In
the Tree of Life עצחיום the
“Ye are born of Aditi from triple triad is disposed in
the water, you who are born such a manner that the three
of the earth, hear ye all my male Sephiroth are on the
call.”[556] right, the three female on
the left, and the four
In this water (or primeval uniting principles in the
chaos) the “Infinite” centre. From the Invisible
androgyne, which, with the Dew falling from the Higher
Eternal Cause, forms the “Head” Sephira creates
first abstract Triad, primeval water, or chaos
rendered by AUM, deposited taking shape. It is the
the germ of universal life. first step toward the
It is the Mundane Egg, in solidification of Spirit,
which took place the which through various
gestation of Pūrūsha, or the modifications will produce
manifested Brahma. The germ earth.[557] “_It requires
which fecundated the earth and water to make a
_Mother_ Principle (the living soul_,” says Moses.
water) is called Nara, the
Divine Spirit or Holy When Sephira emerges like an
Ghost,[558] and the waters active power from within the
themselves, are an emanation latent Deity, she is female;
of the former, Nari, while when she assumes the office
the Spirit which brooded of a creator, she becomes a
over it is called male; hence, she is
Narayana.[559] androgyne. She is the
“Father and Mother Aditi,”
“In that egg, the great of the Hindu Cosmogony.
Power sat inactive a whole After brooding over the
_year of the Creator_, at “Deep,” the “Spirit of God”
the close of which, by his produces its own image in
thought alone, he caused the the water, the Universal
egg to divide itself.”[560] Womb, symbolized in _Manu_
The upper half became by the Golden Egg. In the
heaven, the lower, the earth kabalistic Cosmogony, Heaven
(both yet in their ideal, and Earth are personified by
not their manifested form). Adam Kadmon and the second
Adam. The first Ineffable
Thus, this second triad, Triad, contained in the
only another name for the abstract idea of the “Three
first one (never pronounced Heads,” was a “mystery
aloud), and which is the name.” It was composed of
real pre-Vedic and En-Soph, Sephira, and Adam
primordial _secret_ Kadmon, the Protogonos, the
Trimurti, consisted of latter being identical with
the former, when
Nara, Father-Heaven, bisexual.[561] In every
Nari, Mother-Earth, triad there is a male, a
Viradj, the Son--or Universe. female, and an androgyne.
Adam-Sephira is the Crown
The Trimurti, comprising (Keter). It sets itself to
Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the work of creation, by
the Preserver, and Siva, the first producing Chochmah,
Destroyer and Regenerator, Male Wisdom, a masculine
belongs to a later period. active potency, represented
It is an anthropomorphic by חה, jah, or the Wheels of
afterthought, invented for Creation, אפּוַים, from which
the more popular proceeds Binah, Intelligence,
comprehension of the female and passive potency,
uninitiated masses. The which is _Jehovah_, יהוה,
_Dikshita_, the initiate, whom we find in the _Bible_
knew better. Thus, also, the figuring as the Supreme. But
profound allegory under the this Jehovah is not the
colors of a ridiculous kabalistic Jodcheva. The
fable, given in the _binary_ is the fundamental
_Aytareya Brahmana_,[562] corner-stone of _Gnosis_. As
which resulted in the the binary is the Unity
representations in some multiplying itself and
temples of Brahm-Nara, self-creating, the kabalists
assuming the form of a bull, show the “Unknown” passive
and his daughter, En-Soph, as emanating from
Aditi-Nari, that of a himself, Sephira, which,
heifer, contains the same becoming visible light, is
metaphysical idea as the said to produce Adam Kadmon.
“fall of man,” or that of But, in the hidden sense,
the Spirit into Sephira and Adam are one and
generation--matter. The the same light, only latent
All-pervading Divine Spirit and active, invisible and
embodied under the symbols visible. The second Adam, as
of Heaven, the Sun, and Heat the human tetragram,
(fire)--the correlation of produces in his turn Eve,
cosmic forces--fecundates out of his side. It is this
Matter or Nature, the second triad, with which the
daughter of Spirit. And kabalists have hitherto
Para-Brahma himself has to dealt, hardly hinting at the
submit to and bear the Supreme and Ineffable One,
penance of the curses of the and never committing
other gods (Elohim) for such anything to writing. All
an incest. (See knowledge concerning the
corresponding column.) latter was imparted orally.
According to the immutable, It is the _second_ Adam,
and, therefore, fatal law, then, who is the unity
both Nara and Nari are represented by _Jod_, emblem
mutually Father and Mother, of the kabalistic male
as well as Father and principle, and, at the same
Daughter.[563] Matter, time, he is Chochmah,
through infinite _Wisdom_, while _Binah_ or
transformation, is the Jehovah is Eve; the first
gradual product of Spirit. Chochmah issuing from Keter,
The unification of one or the androgyne, Adam
Eternal Supreme Cause Kadmon, and the second,
required such a correlation; Binah, from Chochmah. If we
and if nature be the product combine with _Jod_ the three
or effect of that Cause, in letters which form the name
its turn it has to be of Eve, we will have the
fecundated by the same divine tetragram pronounced
divine Ray which produced IEVO-HEVAH, Adam and Eve, יחוה,
nature itself. The most Jehovah, male and female, or
absurd cosmogonical the idealization of humanity
allegories, if analyzed embodied in the first man.
without prejudice, will be Thus is it that we can prove
found built on strict and that, while the Jewish
logical necessarianism. kabalists, in common with
their initiated masters, the
“Being was born from Chaldeans and the Hindus,
not-being,” says a verse in adored the Supreme and
the _Rig-Veda_.[564] The Unknown God, in the sacred
first being had to become silence of their
androgyne and finite, by the sanctuaries, the ignorant
very fact of its creation as masses of every nation were
a being. And thus even the left to adore something
sacred Trimurti, containing which was certainly less
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva than the Eternal Substance
will have an end when the of the Buddhists, the
“night” of Para-Brahma so-called Atheists. As
succeeds the present “day,” Brahma, the deity manifested
or period of universal in the mythical _Manu_, or
activity. the first man (born of
Swayambhuva, or the
The second, or rather the Self-existent), is finite,
first, triad---as the so Jehovah, embodied in Adam
highest one is a pure and Eve, is but a _human_
abstraction--is the god. He is the symbol of
intellectual world. The Vâch humanity, a mixture of good
which surrounds it is a more with a portion of
definite transformation of unavoidable evil; of spirit
Aditi. Besides its occult fallen into matter. In
significance in the secret worshipping Jehovah, we
Mantrâm, Vâch is personified simply worship nature, as
as the active power of embodied in man,
Brahma proceeding from him. half-spiritual and
In the _Vedas_ she is made half-material, at best: we
to speak of herself as the are Pantheists, when not
supreme and universal soul. fetich worshippers, like the
“I bore the Father on the idolatrous Jews, who
head of the universal mind, sacrificed on high places,
and _my origin is in the in groves, to the
midst of the ocean_; and personified male and female
therefore do I pervade all principle, ignorant of IAO,
beings.... Originating all the Supreme “Secret Name” of
beings, I pass like the the Mysteries.
breeze (Holy Ghost). I am
above this heaven, beyond Shekinah is the Hindu Vâch,
this earth; and _what is the and praised in the same
Great One that am I_.”[565] terms as the latter. Though
Literally, Vâch is speech, shown in the kabalistic Tree
the power of awakening, of Life as proceeding from
through the metrical the ninth Sephiroth, yet
arrangement contained in Shekinah is the “veil” of
the number and syllables En-Soph, and the “garment”
of the Mantras,[566] of Jehovah. The “veil,” for
corresponding powers in it succeeded for long ages
the invisible world. In in concealing the real
the sacrificial Mysteries supreme God, the universal
Vâch stirs up the Brahma Spirit, and masking Jehovah,
(_Brahma jinvati_), or the exoteric deity, made the
the power lying latent at Christians accept him as the
the bottom of every magical “father” of the initiated
operation. It existed from Jesus. Yet the kabalists,
eternity as the Yajna (its as well as the Hindu
latent form), lying dormant _Dikshita_, know the power
in Brahma from of the Shekinah or Vâch,
“no-beginning,” and and call it the “secret
proceeded forth from him as wisdom,” חכמח־נסהדח.
Vâch (the active power). It
is the key to the The triangle played a
“Traividyâ,” the thrice prominent part in the
sacred science which teaches religious symbolism of every
the Yajus (the sacrificial great nation; for everywhere
Mysteries).[567] it represented the three
great principles--spirit,
Having done with the force, and matter; or the
unrevealed triad, and the active (male), passive
first triad of the (female), and the dual or
Sephiroth, called the correlative principle which
“intellectual world,” little partakes of both and binds
remains to be said. In the the two together. It was the
great geometrical figure _Arba_ or mystic “four,”[568]
which has the double the mystery-gods, the Kabeiri,
triangle in it, the central summarized in the unity of
circle represents the world one supreme Deity. It is
within the universe. The found in the Egyptian
double triangle belongs to pyramids, whose equal sides
one of the most important, tower up until lost in one
if it is not in itself the crowning point. In the
most important, of the kabalistic diagram the
mystic figures in India. It central circle of the
is the emblem of the Brahmanical figure is
Trimurti three in one. The replaced by the cross; the
triangle with its apex celestial perpendicular and
upward indicates the male the terrestrial horizontal
principle, downward the base line.[569] But the idea
female; the two typifying, is the same: Adam Kadmon is
at the same time, spirit and the type of humanity as a
matter. This world within collective totality within
the infinite universe is the the unity of the creative
microcosm within the God and the universal
macrocosm, as in the Jewish spirit.
_Kabala_. It is the symbol
of the womb of the universe, “Of him who is formless, the
the terrestrial egg, whose non-existent (also the
archetype is the golden eternal, but _not_ First
mundane egg. It is from Cause), is born the heavenly
within this spiritual bosom man.” But after he created
of mother nature that the form of the heavenly
proceed all the great man אדמעלאה, he “used it as
saviours of the a vehicle wherein to
universe--the avatars of the descend,” says the _Kabala_.
invisible Deity. Thus Adam Kadmon is the
avatar of the concealed
“Of him who is and yet is power. After that the
not, from the not-being, heavenly Adam creates or
Eternal Cause, is born the engenders by the combined
being Pouroucha,” says Manu, power of the Sephiroth, the
the legislator. Pouroucha is earthly Adam. The work of
the “divine male,” the creation is also begun by
_second_ god, and the Sephira in the creation of
avatar, or the Logos of the ten Sephiroth (who are
Para-Brahma and his divine the Pradjapatis of the
son, who in his turn _Kabala_, for they are
produced Viradj, the son, or likewise the Lords of all
the ideal type of the beings).
universe. “Viradj begins the
work of creation by The _Sohar_ asserts the
producing the ten same. According to the
Pradjapati, ‘the lords of kabalistic doctrine there
all beings.’” were old worlds (see Idra
Suta: _Sohar_, iii., p. 292
According to the doctrine of b). Everything will return
Manu, the universe is some day to that from which
subjected to a periodical it first proceeded. “All
and never-ending succession things of which this world
of creations and consists, spirit as well as
dissolutions, which periods body, will return to their
of creation are named principal, and the roots
Manvântara. from which they proceeded”
(_Sohar_, ii., 218 b). The
“It is the germ (which the kabalists also maintain the
Divine Spirit produced from indestructibility of matter,
its own substance) which albeit their doctrine is
never perishes in the being, shrouded still more
for it becomes the soul of carefully than that of the
Being, and at the period of Hindus. The creation is
_pralaya_ (dissolution) it eternal, and the universe is
returns to absorb itself the “garment,” or “the veil
again _into the Divine_ of God”--Shekinah; and the
Spirit, _which itself_ rests latter is immortal and
from all eternity within eternal as Him within whom
Swayambhuva, the it has ever existed. Every
‘Self-Existent’” world is made after the
(_Institutes of Manu_, pattern of its predecessor,
book i.). and each more gross and
material than the preceding
As we have shown, neither one. In the _Kabala_ all
the Svâbhâvikas, Buddhist were called sparks. Finally,
philosophers--nor the our present grossly
Brahmans believe in a materialistic world was
creation of the universe _ex formed.
nihilo_, but both believe in
the _Prakriti_, the In the Chaldean account of
indestructibility of matter. the period which preceded
the Genesis of our world,
The evolution of species, Berosus speaks of a time
and the successive when there existed nothing
appearance of various new but darkness, and an abyss
types is very distinctly of waters, filled with
shown in _Manu_. hideous monsters, “produced
of a two-fold principle ....
“From earth, heat, and These were creatures in
water, are born all which were combined the
creatures, whether animate limbs of every species of
or inanimate, produced by animals. In addition to
the germ which the Divine these fishes, reptiles,
Spirit drew from its own serpents, with other
substance. Thus has Brahma monstrous animals, which
established the series of assumed each other’s shape
transformations from the and countenance.”[571]
plant up to man, and from
man up to the primordial
essence.... Among them each
succeeding being (or
element) acquires the
quality of the preceding;
and in as many degrees as
each of them is advanced,
with so many properties is
it said to be endowed”
(_Manu_, book i., sloka
20).[570]

This, we believe, is the
veritable theory of the
modern evolutionists.

In the first book of Manu, we read: “Know that the sum of 1,000 divine ages, composes the totality of one day of Brahma; and that one night is equal to that day.” One thousand divine ages is equal to 4,320,000,000 of human years, in the Brahmanical calculations.

“At the expiration of each night, Brahma, who has been asleep, awakes, and through the sole energy of the motion causes to emanate from himself the spirit, which in its essence _is_, and yet is not.”

“Prompted by the desire to create, the Spirit (first of the emanations) operates the creation and gives birth to ether, which the sages consider as having the faculty of transmitting sound.

“Ether begets air whose property is tangible, and which is necessary to life.

“Through a transformation of the air, light is produced.

“From air and light, which begets heat, water is formed, and the water is the womb of all the living germs.”

Throughout the whole immense period of progressive creation, covering 4,320,000,000 years, ether, air, water and fire (heat), are constantly forming matter under the never-ceasing impulse of the Spirit, or the _unrevealed_ God who fills up the whole creation, for he is in all, and all is in him. This computation, which was secret and which is hardly hinted at even now, led Higgins into the error of dividing every ten ages into 6,000 years. Had he added a few more ciphers to his sums he might have come nearer to a correct explanation of the neroses, or secret cycles.[572]

In the _Sepher Jezireh_, the kabalistic Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated the words of Manu. In it, the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless and absolute; and emitted from itself the Spirit. “One is the Spirit of the living God, blessed be His Name, who liveth for ever! Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit;”[573] and this is the kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the Fathers. From this triple ONE emanated the whole Cosmos. First from ONE emanated number TWO, or Air, the creative element; and then number THREE, _Water_, proceeded from the air; _Ether_ or _Fire_ complete the mystic four, the Arba-il.[574] “When the Concealed of the Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a point (primordial point, or the first Sephira, air or Holy Ghost), shaped it into a sacred form (the ten Sephiroth, or the Heavenly man), and covered it with a rich and splendid garment, _that is the world_.”[575] “He maketh the wind His messengers, flaming Fire his servants,” says the _Jezireh_, showing the cosmical character of the later euhemerized angels,[576] and that the Spirit permeates every minutest atom of the Cosmos.[577]

When the cycle of creation is run down, the energy of the manifested word is weakening. He alone, the Unconceivable, is unchangeable (ever latent), but the Creative Force, though also eternal, as it has been in the former from “no beginning,” yet must be subject to periodical cycles of activity and rest; as it had a _beginning_ in one of its aspects, when it first emanated, therefore must also have an end. Thus, the evening succeeds the day, and the night of the deity approaches. Brahma is gradually falling asleep. In one of the books of _Sohar_, we read the following:

“As Moses was keeping a vigil on Mount Sinai, in company with the Deity, who was concealed from his sight by a cloud, he felt a great fear overcome him and suddenly asked: ‘Lord, where art Thou ... sleepest thou, O Lord?’ And the _Spirit_ answered him: ‘I never sleep; were I to fall asleep for a moment _before my time_, all the Creation would crumble into dissolution in one instant.’” And Vamadeva-Modēly describes the “Night of Brahma,” or the second period of the Divine Unknown existence, thus:

“Strange noises are heard, proceeding from every point.... These are the precursors of the Night of Brahma; _dusk rises at the horizon_ and the Sun passes away behind the thirtieth degree of Macara (sign of the zodiac), and will reach no more the sign of the _Minas_ (zodiacal _pisces_, or fish). The gurus of the pagodas appointed to watch the rās-chakr (Zodiac), may now break their circle and instruments, for they are henceforth useless.

“Gradually light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabitable spots multiply on the earth, the air becomes more and more rarefied; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers see their waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom, and plants die. Men and animals decrease in size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets can hardly gravitate in space; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp which the hand of the chokra (servant) neglects to replenish. Sourya (the Sun) flickers and goes out, matter falls into dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma merges back into Dyäus, the Unrevealed God, and his task being accomplished, he falls asleep. Another day is passed, night sets in and continues until the future dawn.

“And now again re-enter into the golden egg of His Thought, the germs of all that exist, as the divine Manu tells us. During His peaceful rest, the animated beings, endowed with the principles of action, cease their functions, and all feeling (manas) becomes dormant. When they are all absorbed in the SUPREME SOUL, this Soul of all the beings sleeps in complete repose, till the day when it resumes its form, and awakes again from its primitive darkness.”[578]

If we now examine the ten mythical avatars of Vishnu, we find them recorded in the following progression:

1. Matsya-Avatar: as a fish. It will also be his tenth and last avatar, at the end of the Kali-yug.

2. Kurm-Avatar: as a tortoise.

3. Varaha: as a boar.

4. Nara-Sing: as a _man-lion_; last animal stage.

5. Vamuna: as a dwarf; first step toward the human form.

6. Parasu-Rama: as a hero, but yet an imperfect man.

7. Rama-Chandra: as the hero of Ramayâna. Physically a perfect man; his next of kin, friend and ally Hanoumā, the monkey-god. _The monkey endowed with speech._[579]

8. Christna-Avatar: the Son of the Virgin Devanaguy (or Devaki) one formed by God, or rather by the manifested Deity Vishnu, who is identical with Adam Kadmon.[580] Christna is also called Kaneya, the Son of the Virgin.

9. Gautama-Buddha, Siddhârtha, or Sakya-muni. (The Buddhists reject this doctrine of their Buddha being an incarnation of Vishnu.)

10. This avatar has not yet occurred. It is expected in the future, like the Christian Advent, the idea of which was undoubtedly copied from the Hindu. When Vishnu appears for the last time he will come as a “Saviour.” According to the opinion of some Brahmans he will appear himself under the form of the horse Kalki. Others maintain that he will be mounting it. This horse is the envelope of the spirit of evil, and Vishnu will mount it, invisible to all, till he has conquered it for the last time. The “Kalki-Avataram,” or the last incarnation, divides Brahmanism into two sects. That of the Vaïhnâva refuses to recognize the incarnations of their god Vishnu in animal forms literally. They claim that these must be understood as allegorical.

In this diagram of avatars we see traced the gradual evolution and transformation of all species out of the ante-Silurian mud of Darwin and the _ilus_ of Sanchoniathon and Berosus. Beginning with the Azoic time, corresponding to the _ilus_ in which Brahma implants the creative germ, we pass through the Palæozoic and Mesozoic times, covered by the first and second incarnations as the fish and tortoise; and the Cenozoic, which is embraced by the incarnations in the animal and semi-human forms of the boar and man-lion; and we come to the fifth and crowning geological period, designated as the “era of mind, or age of man,” whose symbol in the Hindu mythology is the dwarf--the first attempt of nature at the creation of man. In this diagram we should follow the main-idea, not judge the degree of knowledge of the ancient philosophers by the literal acceptance of the popular form in which it is presented to us in the grand epical poem of _Maha-Bharata_ and its chapter the _Bagaved-gitta_.

Even the four ages of the Hindu chronology contain a far more philosophical idea than appears on the surface. It defines them according to both the psychological or mental and the physical states of man during their period. Crita-yug, the golden age, the “age of joy,” or spiritual innocence of man; Treta-yug, the age of silver, or that of fire--the period of supremacy of man and of giants and of the sons of God; Dwapara-yug, the age of bronze--a mixture already of purity and impurity (spirit and matter), the age of doubt; and at last our own, the Kali-yug, or age of iron, of darkness, misery, and sorrow. In this age, Vishnu had to incarnate himself in Christna, in order to save humanity from the goddess Kali, consort of Siva, the all-annihilating--the goddess of death, destruction, and human misery. Kali is the best emblem to represent the “fall of man;” the falling of spirit into the degradation of matter, with all its terrific results. We have to rid ourselves of Kali before we can ever reach “Moksha,” or Nirvana, the abode of blessed Peace and Spirit.

With the Buddhists the last incarnation is the fifth. When Maitree-Buddha comes, then our present world will be destroyed; and a new and a better one will replace it. The four arms of every Hindu Deity are the emblems of the four preceding manifestations of our earth from its invisible state, while its head typifies the fifth and last _Kalki_-Avatar, when this would be destroyed, and the power of Budh--Wisdom (with the Hindus, of Brahma), will be again called into requisition to manifest itself--as a _Logos_--to create the future world.

In this diagram, the male gods typify Spirit in its deific attributes, while their female counterparts--the _Sakti_, represent the active energies of these attributes. The _Durga_ (active virtue), is a subtile, invisible force, which answers to Shekinah--the garment of En-Soph. She is the Sakti through which the passive “Eternal” calls forth the visible universe from its first ideal conception. Every one of the three personages of the exoteric Trimurti are shown as using their _Sakti_ as a _Vehan_ (vehicle). Each of them is for the time being the form which sits upon the mysterious wagon of Ezekiel.

Nor do we see less clearly carried out in this succession of avatars, the truly philosophical idea of a simultaneous spiritual and physical evolution of creatures and man. From a fish the progress of this dual transformation carries on the physical form through the shape of a tortoise, a boar, and a man-lion; and then, appearing in the dwarf of humanity, it shows Parasu Rama physically, a perfect, spiritually, an undeveloped entity, until it carries mankind personified by one god-like man, to the apex of physical and spiritual perfection--a god on earth. In Christna and the other Saviours of the world we see the philosophical idea of the progressive dual development understood and as clearly expressed in the _Sohar_. The “Heavenly man,” who is the Protogonos, Tikkun, the first-born of God, or the universal Form and Idea, engenders Adam. Hence the latter is god-born in humanity, and endowed with the attributes of all the ten Sephiroth. These are: Wisdom, Intelligence, Justice, Love, Beauty, Splendor, Firmness, etc. They make him the Foundation or basis, “_the mighty living one_,” אלחי, and the crown of creation, thus placing him as the Alpha and Omega to reign over the “kingdom”--Malchuth. “Man is both the import and the highest degree of creation,” says the _Sohar_. “As soon as man was created, everything was complete, including the upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms” (iii., p. 48 a).

But this does not relate to our degenerated mankind; it is only occasionally that men are born who are the types of what man should be, and yet is not. The first races of men were spiritual, and their protoplastic bodies were not composed of the gross and material substances of which we see them composed now-a-day. The first men were created with all the faculties of the Deity, and powers far transcending those of the angelic host; for they were the direct emanations of Adam Kadmon, the primitive man, the Macrocosm; while the present humanity is several degrees removed even from the earthly Adam, who was the Microcosm, or “the little world.” Seir Anpin, the mystical figure of the Man, consists of 243 numbers, and we see in the circles which follow each other that it is the angels which emanated from the “Primitive Man,” not the Sephiroth from angels. Hence, man was intended from the first to be a being of both a progressive and retrogressive nature. Beginning at the apex of the divine cycle, he gradually began receding from the centre of Light, acquiring at every new and lower sphere of being (worlds each inhabited by a different race of human beings) a more solid physical form and losing a portion of his _divine_ faculties.

In the “fall of Adam” we must see, not the personal transgression of man, but simply the law of the dual evolution. Adam, or “Man,” begins his career of existences by dwelling in the garden of Eden “dressed in the celestial garment, which _is a garment of heavenly light_” (_Sohar_, ii., 229 b); but when expelled he is “clothed” by God, or the eternal law of Evolution or necessarianism, with coats of skin. But even on this earth of material degradation--in which the divine spark (Soul, a corruscation of the Spirit) was to begin its physical progression in a series of imprisonments from a stone up to a man’s body--if he but exercise his WILL and call his deity to his help, man can transcend the powers of the angel. “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” asks Paul (_1 Corinthians_, vi. 3). The real man is the Soul (Spirit), teaches the _Sohar_. “The mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery of the heavenly man ... the wise can read the mysteries in the human face” (ii., 76 a).

This is still another of the many sentences by which Paul must be recognized as an initiate. For reasons fully explained, we give far more credit for genuineness to certain Epistles of the apostles, now dismissed as apocryphal, than to many suspicious portions of the _Acts_. And we find corroboration of this view in the _Epistle of Paul to Seneca_. In this message Paul styles Seneca “my respected master,” while Seneca terms the apostle simply “brother.”

No more than the true religion of Judaic philosophy can be judged by the absurdities of the exoteric _Bible_, have we any right to form an opinion of Brahmanism and Buddhism by their nonsensical and sometimes disgusting popular forms. If we only search for the true essence of the philosophy of both _Manu_ and the _Kabala_, we will find that Vishnu is, as well as Adam Kadmon, the expression of the universe itself; and that his incarnations are but concrete and various embodiments of the manifestations of this “Stupendous Whole.” “I am the Soul, O, Arjuna. I am the Soul which exists in the heart of all beings; and I am the beginning and the middle, and also the end of existing things,” says Vishnu to his disciple, in _Bagaved-gitta_ (ch. x., p. 71).

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.... I am the first and the last,” says Jesus to John (_Rev._ i. 6, 17).

Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are a trinity in a unity, and, like the Christian trinity, they are mutually convertible. In the esoteric doctrine they are one and the same manifestation of him “whose name is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose power is too majestic and infinite to be imagined.” Thus by describing the avatars of one, all others are included in the allegory, with a change of form but not of substance. It is out of such manifestations that emanated the many worlds that were, and that will emanate the one--which is to come.

Coleman, followed in it by other Orientalists, presents the seventh avatar of Vishnu in the most caricatured way.[581] Apart from the fact that the _Ramayana_ is one of the grandest epic poems in the world--the source and origin of Homer’s inspiration--this avatar conceals one of the most scientific problems of our modern day. The learned Brahmans of India never understood the allegory of the famous war between men, giants, and monkeys, otherwise than in the light of the transformation of species. It is our firm belief that were European academicians to seek for information from some learned native Brahmans, instead of unanimously and incontinently rejecting their authority, and were they, like Jacolliot--against whom they have nearly all arrayed themselves--to seek for light in the oldest documents scattered about the country in pagodas, they might learn strange but not useless lessons. Let any one inquire of an _educated_ Brahman the reason for the respect shown to monkeys--the origin of which feeling is indicated in the story of the valorous feats of Hanoumā, the generalissimo and faithful ally of the hero of Ramayana,[582] and he would soon be disabused of the erroneous idea that the Hindus accord deific honors to a monkey-_god_. He would, perhaps, learn--were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an explanation--that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he should: the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family--a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter.[583] He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the educated “heathen” the spiritual or _inner_ man is one thing, and his terrestrial, physical casket another. That _physical_ nature, the great combination of physical correlations of forces ever creeping on toward perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the Divine spirit. But the latter circumstance does not give man the right of life and death over the animals lower than himself in the scale of _nature_, or the right to torture them. Quite the reverse. Besides being endowed with a soul--of which every animal, and even plant, is more or less possessed--man has his immortal _rational_ soul, or _nous_, which ought to make him at least equal in magnanimity to the elephant, who treads so carefully, lest he should crush weaker creatures than himself. It is this feeling which prompts Brahman and Buddhist alike to construct hospitals for sick animals, and even insects, and to prepare refuges wherein they may finish their days. It is this same feeling, again, which causes the Jaïn sectarian to sacrifice one-half of his life-time to brushing away from his path the helpless, crawling insects, rather than recklessly deprive the smallest of life; and it is again from this sense of highest benevolence and charity toward the weaker, however abject the creature may be, that they honor one of the natural modifications of their own dual nature, and that later the popular belief in metempsychosis arose. No trace of the latter is to be found in the _Vedas_; and the true interpretation of the doctrine, discussed at length in _Manu_ and the Buddhistic sacred books, having been confined from the first to the learned sacerdotal castes, the false and foolish popular ideas concerning it need occasion no surprise.

Upon those who, in the remains of antiquity, see evidence that modern times can lay small claim to originality, it is common to charge a disposition to exaggerate and distort facts. But the candid reader will scarcely aver that the above is an example in point. There were evolutionists before the day when the mythical Noah is made, in the _Bible_, to float in his ark; and the ancient scientists were better informed, and had their theories more logically defined than the modern evolutionists.

Plato, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, the Eleatic schools of Greece, as well as the old Chaldean sacerdotal colleges, all taught the doctrine of the dual evolution; the doctrine of the transmigration of souls referring only to the progress of man from world to world, after death here. Every philosophy worthy of the name, taught that the _spirit_ of man, if not the _soul_, was preëxistent. “The Essenes,” says Josephus, “believed that the souls were immortal, and that they descended from the ethereal spaces to be chained to bodies.”[584] In his turn, Philo Judæus says, the “air is full of them (of souls); those which are nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, παλινδρομοῦσι αὖθις, return to other bodies, being desirous to live in them.”[585] In the _Sohar_, the soul is made to plead her freedom before God: “Lord of the Universe! I am happy in this world, and do not wish to go into another world, where I shall be a handmaid, and be exposed to all kinds of pollutions.”[586] The doctrine of fatal necessity, the everlasting immutable Law, is asserted in the answer of the Deity: “Against thy will thou becomest an embryo, and against thy will thou art born.”[587] Light would be incomprehensible without darkness, to make it manifest by contrast; good would be no good without evil, to show the priceless nature of the boon; and so, personal virtue could claim no merit, unless it had passed through the furnace of temptation. Nothing is eternal and unchangeable, save the Concealed Deity. Nothing that is finite--whether because it had a beginning, or must have an end--can remain stationary. It must either progress or recede; and a soul which thirsts after a reünion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it immortality, must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations, onward toward the only Land of Bliss and Eternal Rest, called in the _Sohar_, “The Palace of Love,” היבל אהבת; in the Hindu religion, “Moksha;” among the Gnostics, the “Pleroma of eternal Light;” and by the Buddhists, Nirvana. The Christian calls it the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and claims to have alone found the truth, whereas he has but invented a new name for a doctrine which is coëval with man.

The proof that the transmigration of the soul does not relate to man’s condition on this earth _after_ death, is found in the _Sohar_, notwithstanding the many incorrect renderings of its translators. “All souls which have alienated themselves in heaven from the Holy One--blessed be His Name--have thrown themselves into an abyss at their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on earth.[588]... Come and see when the soul reaches the abode of Love.... The soul could not bear this light, but for the luminous mantle which she puts on. For, just as the soul, when sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment to preserve herself here, so she receives above a shining garment, in order to be able to look without injury into the mirror, whose light proceeds from the Lord of Light.”[589] Moreover, the _Sohar_ teaches that the soul cannot reach the abode of bliss, unless she has received the “holy kiss,” or the re-union of the soul _with the substance from which she emanated_--spirit. All souls are dual, and, while the latter is a feminine principle, the spirit is masculine. While imprisoned in body, man is a trinity, unless his pollution is such as to have caused his divorce from the spirit. “Woe to the soul which prefers to her divine husband (spirit), the earthly wedlock with her terrestrial body,” records a text of the _Book of the Keys_.[590]

These ideas on the transmigrations and the trinity of man, were held by many of the early Christian Fathers. It is the jumble made by the translators of the _New Testament_ and ancient philosophical treatises between soul and spirit, that has occasioned the many misunderstandings. It is also one of the many reasons why Buddha, Plotinus, and so many other initiates are now accused of having longed for the total extinction of their souls--“absorption unto the Deity,” or “reunion with the universal soul,” meaning, according to modern ideas, annihilation. The animal soul must, of course, be disintegrated of its particles, before it is able to link its purer essence forever with the immortal spirit. But the translators of both the _Acts_ and the _Epistles_, who laid the foundation of the _Kingdom of Heaven_, and the modern commentators on the Buddhist _Sutra of the Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness_, have muddled the sense of the great apostle of Christianity, as of the great reformer of India. The former have smothered the word φυχικος, so that no reader imagines it to have any relation with _soul_; and with this confusion of _soul_ and _spirit_ together, _Bible_ readers get only a perverted sense of anything on the subject; and the interpreters of the latter have failed to understand the meaning and object of the Buddhist four degrees of Dhyâna.

In the writings of Paul, the entity of man is divided into a trine--flesh, psychical existence or _soul_, and the overshadowing and at the same time interior entity or SPIRIT. His phraseology is very definite, when he teaches the _anastasis_, or the continuation of life of those who have died. He maintains that there is a _psychical_ body which is sown in the corruptible, and a spiritual body that is raised in incorruptible substance. “The first man is of the earth earthy, the second man from heaven.” Even James (iii. 15) identifies the soul by saying that its “wisdom descendeth not from the above but is terrestrial, _psychical_, _demoniacal_” (see Greek text). Plato, speaking of the Soul (_psuché_), observes that “when she allies herself to the _nous_ (divine substance, a god, as psuché is a goddess), she does everything aright and felicitously; but the case is otherwise when she attaches herself to _Annoia_.” What Plato calls _nous_, Paul terms the _Spirit_; and Jesus makes the _heart_ what Paul says of the _flesh_. The natural condition of mankind was called in Greek αποστασια; the new condition αναστασις. In Adam came the former (death), in Christ the latter (resurrection), for it is he who first publicly taught mankind the “Noble Path” to Eternal life, as Gautama pointed the same Path to Nirvana. To accomplish both ends there was but one way, according to the teachings of both. “Poverty, chastity, contemplation or inner prayer; contempt for wealth and the illusive joys of this world.”

“Enter on this Path and put an end to sorrow; verily the Path has been preached by me, who have found out how to quench the darts of grief. You yourselves must make the effort; _the Buddhas are only preachers_. The thoughtful who enter the Path are freed from the bondage of the Deceiver (Marâ).[591]

“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.... Follow me.... Every one that heareth these sayings and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man” (_Matthew_ vii. and viii.). “_I can of mine own self do nothing_” (_John_ v. 30). “The care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word” (_Matthew_ xiii. 22), say the Christians; and it is only by shaking off all delusions that the Buddhist enters on the “Path” which will lead him “away from the restless tossing waves of the ocean of life,” and take him “to the calm City of Peace, to the real joy and rest of Nirvana.”

The Greek philosophers are alike made misty instead of mystic by their too learned translators. The Egyptians revered the Divine Spirit, the One-Only One, as NOUT. It is most evident that it is from that word that Anaxagoras borrowed his denominative _nous_, or, as he calls it, Νοῦς αυτοκρατης--the Mind or Spirit self-potent, the αρχητης κινησεως. “All things,” says he, “were in chaos; then came Νοῦς and introduced order.” He also denominated this Νοῦς the One that ruled the many. In his idea Νοῦς was God; and the _Logos_ was man, the emanation of the former. The external powers perceived _phenomena_; the _nous_ alone recognized _noumena_ or subjective things. This is purely Buddhistic and esoteric.

Here Socrates took his clew and followed it, and Plato after him, with the whole world of interior knowledge. Where the old Ionico-Italian world culminated in Anaxagoras, the new world began with Socrates and Plato. Pythagoras made the _Soul_ a self-moving unit, with three elements, the _nous_, the _phren_ and the _thumos_; the latter two, shared with the brutes; the former only, being his essential _self_. So the charge that he taught transmigration is refuted; he taught no more than Gautama-Buddha ever did, whatever the popular superstition of the Hindu rabble made of it after his death. Whether Pythagoras borrowed from Buddha, or Buddha from somebody else, matters not; the esoteric doctrine is the same.

The Platonic School is even more distinct in enunciating all this.

The real selfhood was at the basis of all. Socrates therefore taught that he had a δαιμόνιον (_daimonion_), a spiritual something which put him in the road to wisdom. He himself knew nothing, but this put him in the way to learn all.

Plato followed him with a full investigation of the principles of being. There was an _Agathon_, Supreme God, who produced in his own mind a _paradeigma_ of all things.

He taught that in man was “the immortal principle of the soul,” a mortal body, and a “separate mortal kind of soul,” which was placed in a separate receptacle of the body from the other; the immortal part was in the head (_Timæus_ xix., xx.) the other in the trunk (xliv.).

Nothing is plainer than that Plato regarded the interior man as constituted of two parts--one always the same, formed of the same entity as Deity, and one mortal and corruptible.

“Plato and Pythagoras,” says Plutarch, “distribute the soul into two parts, the rational (noëtic) and irrational (_agnoia_); that that part of the soul of man which is rational, is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity, but that part of the soul which is divested of reason (_agnoia_) dies.”

“Man,” says Plutarch, “is compound; and they are mistaken who think him to be compounded of two parts only. For they imagine that the understanding is a part of the soul, but they err in this no less than those who make the soul to be a part of the body, for the understanding (_nous_) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner than the body. Now this composition of the soul (φυχη) with the understanding (νοῦς) makes reason; and with the body, passion; of which the one is the beginning or principle of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and vice. Of these three parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man.

“Now of the deaths we die, _the one makes man two of three_, and the other, _one_ of (out of) two. The former is in the region and jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the Mysteries τελειν resembled that given to death, τελευταν. The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to Demeter. As for the _other death_ it is in the moon or region of Persophoné. And as with the one the terrestrial, so with the other the celestial Hermes doth dwell. This suddenly and with violence plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpina mildly and in a long time disjoins the understanding from the soul. For this reason she is called _Monogenes_, _only-begotten_, or rather _begetting one alone_; for the better part of man becomes alone when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Faith that every soul, whether with or without understanding (νοῦς), when gone out of the body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying between the earth and moon. For those that have been unjust and dissolute suffer there the punishment due to their offences; but the good and virtuous are there detained till they are purified, and have, by expiation, purged out of them all the infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the body, as if from foul health, living in the mildest part of the air, called the Meadows of Hades, where they must remain for a certain prefixed and appointed time. And then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such as they principally receive who are initiated into Sacred Mysteries, mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one’s proper and peculiar hope.”

The _dæmonium_ of Socrates was this νοῦς, mind, spirit, or understanding of the divine in it. “The νοῦς of Socrates,” says Plutarch, “was pure and mixed itself with the body no more than necessity required.... Every soul hath some portion of νοῦς, reason, a man cannot be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh and appetite is changed and through pain or pleasure becomes irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort; some plunge themselves into the body, and so, in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed as to some part, but the purer part [nous] still remains _without the body_. It is not drawn down into the body, but it swims above and touches (overshadows) the extremest part of the man’s head; it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. The part that is plunged into the body is called _soul_. But the incorruptible part is called the _nous_ and _the vulgar think it is within them_, as they likewise imagine the image reflected from a glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent, who know it to be without, call it a Daëmon” (a god, a spirit).

“The soul, like to a dream, flies quick away, which it does not immediately, as soon as it is separated from the body, but afterward, when it is alone and divided from the understanding (_nous_).... The soul being moulded and formed by the understanding (_nous_), and itself moulding and forming the body, by embracing it on every side, receives from it an impression and form; so that although it be separated both from the understanding and the body, it nevertheless so retains still its figure and resemblance for a long time, that it may, with good right, be called its image.

“And of these souls the moon is the element, because souls resolve into her, as the bodies of the deceased do into earth. Those, indeed, who have been virtuous and honest, living a quiet and philosophical life, without embroiling themselves in troublesome affairs, are quickly resolved; because, being left by the nous, understanding, and no longer using the corporeal passions, they incontinently vanish away.”

We find even Irenæus, that untiring and mortal enemy of every Grecian and “heathen” heresy, explain his belief in the trinity of man. The perfect man, according to his views, consists of _flesh_, _soul_, and _spirit_. “... carne, anima, spiritu, altero quidem figurante, spiritu, altero quod formatur, carne. Id vero quod inter haec est duo, est anima, quae aliquando subsequens spiritum elevatur ab eo, aliquando autem consentient carni in terrenas concupiscentias” (_Irenæus_ v., 1).

And Origen, in his _Sixth Epistle to the Romans_, says: “There is a threefold partition of man, the body or flesh, the lowest part of our nature, on which the old serpent by original sin inscribed the law of sin, and by which we are tempted to vile things, and as oft as we are overcome by temptations are joined fast to the Devil; the spirit, in or by which we express the likeness of the divine nature in which the very Best Creator, from the archetype of his own mind, engraved with his finger (that is, his spirit), the eternal law of honesty; by this we are joined (conglutinated) to God and made one with God. In the third, the soul mediates between these, which, as in a factious republic, cannot but join with one party or the other, is solicited this way and that and is at liberty to choose the side to which it will adhere. If, renouncing the flesh, it betakes itself to the party of the spirit it will itself become spiritual, but if it cast itself down to the cupidities of the flesh it will degenerate itself into body.”

Plato (in _Laws_ x.) defines _soul_ as “the motion that is able to move itself.” “Soul is the most ancient of all things, and the commencement of motion.” “Soul was generated prior to body, and body is posterior and secondary, as being, according to nature, ruled over by the ruling soul.” “The soul which administers all things that are moved in every way, administers likewise the heavens.”

“Soul then leads everything in heaven, and on earth, and in the sea, by its movements--the names of which are, to will, to consider, to take care of, to consult, to form opinions true and false, to be in a state of joy, sorrow, confidence, fear, hate, love, together with all such primary movements as are allied to these ... being a goddess herself, she ever takes as an ally NOUS, a god, and disciplines all things correctly and happily; but when with _Annoia_--not _nous_--it works out everything the contrary.”