Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Compassion - The Spirit of Truth
By Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Deity Is Life And Law And Vice Versa
When turned inwardly, the Point in the Circle stands for Compassion Unmanifested, or the LAW of Laws, i.e., Divine Thought in a state of Homogeneousness or Oneness.
When turned outwardly, the Point (Adi-Buddhic Monad) radiates through Abstract Nature (Maha-Buddhi or Mahat) as the Great Law of Universal Sympathy and Sacrifice. This is a dynamic state of Heterogeneousness, or Manyness, heralding a simultaneous evolution of Spirit-Matter or Duality.1 The process is supervised by Spiritual Intelligences above (DhyaniChohans 2 of the Hierarchy of Compassion) that enact Divine Compassion through the Intelligence of Nature and Her dual forces below.
LAW or “Deity” will now be examined philosophically as Compassion Unmanifested below and as Compassion Manifested in the remaining sections in preparation for the next chapter which is an expansion of The Secret Doctrine’s Second Proposition.
Order is heaven’s first Law. — Alexander Pope
Deity is a boundless and infinite expansion of Consciousness, The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature — from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyani-Chohan to the smallest infusoria . . . and whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or physical worlds — this is the one fundamental law in Occult Science. “The Deity is boundless and infinite expansion,” says an Occult axiom.
Governed by ONE LAW, Plato having been initiated, could not believe in a personal God — a gigantic Shadow of Man. His epithets of “Monarch and Lawgiver of the Universe” bear an abstract meaning well understood by every Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law that governs the Universe, recognizing it at the same time as immutable.
The LAW of the Universe. Cosmology is . . . the physiology of the universe spiritualised, for there is but one law.
The Operating Law, The Fundamental Law, The One radical Cause, The Omnipresent Reality, Latent in every atom. The Universe Itself! [Esoterically,] “The first was Mahat,” says Linga-Purana; 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); . . . Esoteric philosophy renders it “the operating LAW.”
The fundamental Law in . . . [the “accumulated Wisdom of the Ages”], the central point from which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogenous divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause. . . . It is the omnipresent Reality: impersonal, because it contains all and everything. Its impersonality is the fundamental conception of the System. It is latent in every atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself.
The Infinite can only will, think, and act, by becoming finite and physical: its ray penetrates the Golden Egg and expands from within outwards. The immutably Infinite and the absolutely Boundless can neither will, think, nor act. To do this, it has to become finite, and it does so, by its ray penetrating into the mundane egg — infinite space — and emanating from it as a finite god. All this is left to the ray latent in the one. When the period arrives, the absolute will expands naturally the force within it, according to the Law of which it is the inner and ultimate Essence.
First come the SELF-EXISTENT on this Earth. They are the ‘Spiritual Lives’ projected by the absolute WILL and LAW, at the dawn of every rebirth of the worlds. These LIVES are the divine “Sishta” [the seed-Manus, or the Prajapatis and the Pitris].
Guided by Fohat, Logos evolves to omnipresent mind and life immanent in matter. “Just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions.”
So does Fohat. He is One and Seven, and on the Cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and is the “spirit” of ELECTRICITY, which is the LIFE of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the ONE LIFE; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable CAUSALITY, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in every Atom of Matter. Thus, while science speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point to intelligent LAW and sentient LIFE, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this.
Unknowable Causality, its phenomena, and the LAW that governs the World of Being are inseparable and interdependent. [The Absolute] is absolutely incognizable and non-existent outside its phenomena, and depends entirely on its ever-correlating Forces, dependent in their turn on the ONE GREAT LAW.
Therefore Deity is LAW and LAW is Deity. It is idle to speak of “laws arising when Deity prepares to create” for: (a) laws, or rather LAW is eternal and uncreated; and (b) Deity is LAW, and vice versa.
