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the bigot would have tossed into the flames. Books which held the key to
thousands of others yet extant, she alleges, unaccountably disappeared from
view-but are not lost. There was a "primeval revelation," granted to the fathers
of the human race, and it still exists. Furthermore, it will reappear. But
unless one possesses the key, he will never unlock it, and the profane world
will search for it in vain. The Golden Legend traces its symbolic pattern
mysteriously through the warp and woof of the oldest literatures, but only the
initiated will see it. A strange prophecy is dropped as she passes on.
"The rejection of these teachings may be expected and must be accepted
beforehand. No one styling himself a 'scholar,' in whatever department of exact
science, will be permitted to regard these teachings seriously. They will be
derided and rejected a priori in this century; but only in this one. For in the
twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the Secret
Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but on the contrary, simply
outlined; and finally that its teachings antedate the Vedas."5
Her book is not the Secret Doctrine in its entirety, but a select number of
fragments of its fundamental tenets. But it will be centuries before much more
is given out. The keys to the Zodiacal Mysteries "must be turned seven times
before the whole system is divulged." One turn of the key was given in Isis.
Several turns more are given in The Secret Doctrine.
"The Secret Doctrine is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but
contains all that can be given out to the world in this century."6
She is to deal with the entire field of life, in all its manifestations, cosmic,
universal, planetary, earthly, and human. Omnipresent eternal life is assumed as
given, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations.
It is always in being for Itself, yet for us it comes into and goes out of
existence with periodical rhythm. Its one absolute attribute, which is itself,
is eternal causeless motion, called the "Great Breath." Life eternal exhales and
inhales, and this action produces the universes and withdraws them. It is in
regular and harmonious succession either passive or active. These conditions are
the "Days" and "Nights" of Brahm, when, so to say, universal life is either
awake or asleep. This characteristic of the One Life stamps everything
everywhere with the mark of an analogous process. No work of Life is free from
this law. It is the immutable law of the All and of every part of the All. It is
the universal law of Karma, and makes reincarnation the method of life
expression everywhere. Life swings eternally back and forth between periods of
activity and rest. Upon inaugurating an active period after a "Night" of rest,
life begins to expand, and continues until it fills all space with cosmical
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creation; in turn, at the end of this activity, it contracts and withdraws all
the energy within itself. The Secret Doctrine is an account of the activities of
the One Life from the beginning of one of these periods of reawakening to its
end, treating the cosmic processes generally, and the earth and human processes
specifically. It is the cryptic story of how the universe is created, whence it
emanates, what Powers fashion it, whither it goes and what it means.
The period of universal rest is known in esoteric circles as "Pralaya,"7 the
active period as a "Manvantara."8 A description of the Totality of Things is
nothing but an account of the Life Force alternating, shuttle-like, between
these two conditions.
The universe comes out of the Great Being and disappears into it. Life repeats
in any form it takes the metaphor of this process. It vacillates forever between
the opposite poles of Unity and Infinity, noumenon and phenomenon, absoluteness
and relativity, homogeneity and heterogeneity, reality and appearance, the
unconditional and the conditioned, the dimensionless and the dimensioned, the
eternal and the temporal. What Life is when not manifest to us is as
indescribable, as unthinkable as is space. The Absolute-God-is just this Space.
Space is neither a "limitless void" nor a "conditioned fulness," but both. It
appears void to finite minds, yet is the absolute container of all that is.
Where the universe goes when it dissolves-and still remains in being-is where
anything else goes when it dissolves,--into solution. Not in a purely mechanical
sense, yet that too. It goes from infinite particularity back into the one
genus, from form back to formlessness, from differentiation back to homogeneity.
Matter goes to bits, finer, finer, till it is held in solution in the infinite
sea of pure Non-Being. It goes from actuality to latency.
Occultism is the study of the worlds in their latent state; material science is
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