The Secret Gate of Reality

The Mystery of Water

“THE idea that things can cease to exist and still be, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology.

“Under this apparent contradiction in terms,” wrote H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, “there rests a fact of Nature to realize is the important thing.”

“A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination,” she pointed out.

“The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form water, is still a moot one.”

“Some [argue] that since they are found again when the water is decomposed, they must be there all the while—others contending that as they actually turn into something totally different, they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being.”

Neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which has become something else, and yet has not ceased to be itself.

“Existence as water may be said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which is ‘more real being’ than their existence as gases. And it may faintly symbolize the condition of the Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be — “to awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new [Universe] recalls it to what we call existence.”

Padma – Lotus

This masterful treatise on reality and illusion by Mme. Blavatsky might have been written by one of today’s  quantum physicists or frontier cosmologists.

Instead, they are her words, the ideas of a master Theosophical thought leader, excerpted from the Fundamentals of her magnum opus  The Secret Doctrine [1:54-5] — the  quintessence  of physics, metaphysics and ethics.

The Lotus Symbol

“There are no ancient symbols, without a deep and philosophical meaning attached to them; their importance and significance increasing with their antiquity. Such is the Lotus. It is the flower sacred to nature and her Gods, and represents the abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive powers of both spiritual and physical nature.”

Vishnu and Padma, the lotus.

“The lotus flower, represented as growing out of Vishnu’s navel — that God resting on the waters of space and his Serpent of Infinity — is the most graphic allegory ever made: the Universe evolving from the central Sun, the point, the ever-concealed germ. Lakshmi, who is the female aspect of Vishnu, and who is also called Padma, the lotus, is likewise shown floating at “Creation,” on a lotus flower, and during the “churning of the ocean” of space, springing from the “sea of milk,” like Venus from the froth.”
– H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine 1:379

Now is the Only Time We Have

“THE idea that things can cease to exist and still be, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology.

“Under this apparent contradiction in terms,” wrote H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, “there rests a fact of Nature to realize is the important thing.”

“A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination,” she pointed out.

“The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form water, is still a moot one.”

“Some [argue] that since they are found again when the water is decomposed, they must be there all the while—others contending that as they actually turn into something totally different, they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being.”

“Neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which has become something else, and yet has not ceased to be itself.”

“Existence as water may be said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which is ‘more real being’ than their existence as gases. And it may faintly symbolize the condition of the Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be — “to awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new [Universe] recalls it to what we call existence.”

This masterful treatise on reality and illusion by Mme. Blavatsky might have been written by one of today’s  quantum physicists or frontier cosmologists.

Instead, they are her words, the ideas of a master Theosophical thought leader, excerpted from the Fundamentals of her magnum opus  The Secret Doctrine [1:54-5] — the  quintessence  of physics, metaphysics and ethics.

Auguries of God

SCIENCE now realizes that mother nature was ahead of her time in understanding the quantum universe.

A red rose, the dance of honey bees, spiral galaxies, Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, and Yogi Berra all get it right.

It’s back to the future all over again. Poetry, plants, religions, even materialists and atheists—all have a lot more in common as we’ll see.

Even celebrated artist and poet William Blake sensed he saw “a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower,” and how you could

“Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.”

∞

Children at play—left to their own instincts and intuitions unsmothered by parental intimidation—engage the delights of spontaneous imagination. Theirs is an unselfconscious, non-ideological purity of intent.

Genius of originality in the young child is  hardwired, and when not managed by disapproving, arbitrary rule makers, their creations are joyful and  unpretentious. “The true sign of intelligence,” Albert Einstein once said, “is not knowledge but imagination.”

Mme. Blavatsky’s closest colleague, William Q. Judge, wrote of imagination as “the King faculty,” (Ocean of Theosophy, 139), because “the Will cannot do its work if the Imagination be at all weak or untrained.”

All life forms, like kids at play, are inseparably intertwined — yet consist, as does the radio wave spectrum, of  infinite individual frequencies .

(The Secret Doctrine)

Ω

“Would to goodness the men of science exercised their ‘scientific imagination’ a little more,” Blavatsky wrote in her article Kosmic Mind,  “and their dogmatic and cold negations a little less.” 

Soul and Shadow

NEARLY all of us humans, occult teachers say, are inexorably reincarnated into new lives of earth, yet invisibly clothed in myriads of memories from the past.

These include snippets of our innate ideas, haunting images of unrealized aspirations and desires, and our unresolved fears.

These torn pages of personal history are the underlying drivers that steer our reincarnations. This is Karma, reincarnation’s unerring “twin doctrine.”

This post has been edited and updated, and republished at:

Karma

Nothing to Lose

THE classic struggle between hero and villain, the “good guys vs the bad guys,” is a staple of our entertainment and literary culture.

Without this persistent duality, there would never have been Hercules, Batman, Spiderman or Superman — or the Lone Ranger on his white horse Silver.

Nor would we be enjoying productions of Macbeth or Hamlet, or any of the riveting psychological dramas of Shakespeare.

Daytime television, also, would be soap-free. (Hey, can’t you leave us with something?)

Neti Neti

THE idea that things can cease to exist and still be, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology.

Under this apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a fact of Nature to realize is the important thing.

A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination. The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form water, is still a moot one.

Some [argue] that since they are found again when the water is decomposed, they must be there all the while—others contending that as they actually turn into something totally different, they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being.

“Neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which has become something else, and yet has not ceased to be itself.”