I thought it might be good to go through the Stanzas of Dzyan, line by line, and see what can be made of them.

Here are the entire Stanzas of Dzyan.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-01.htm

Here begins the interpretation of the meaning of the Stanzas of Dzyan.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-02.htm

The Stanzas of Dzyan, presented in the Secrect Doctrine, come from the same source as the Seven Days of Creation in the Christian Bible (SD Vol I page 21).

Stanza I:

"Stanza I"; The story of the state of the One (in Pralaya) before the beginning of manifestation (SD Vol I page 21)

"The flrst Stanza begins with the unmanifest origins of all things.
It seeks to describe what cannot be described, and therefore has
to proceed by a series of negations. These serve at the same
time to introduce us to some of the terms that are to take their
place in the scheme unfolded in subsequent verses.

"The manifestation of a universe is considered as a cyclic
event which has occurred before and will occur again. Between
manifestations all is withdrawn into the Darkness of non-existence. This is the point at which the story opens.

"From one point of view the new universe will be an ab initio
new creation; from another it will be a repetition of countless
previous creations. Contradictory though these two themes
may seem in theory, they are reconciled by our experience of
life. To each one of us life is forever new, notwithstanding that
we know it to be an endless repetition of well established
patterns." (Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish page 45)

Let's take a look at the first line of Stanza I:

STANZA 1 LINE 1
THE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.

"Eternal Parent" means Space (SD Vol I page 35)

"Invisible robes"; undifferentiated cosmic root-matter = Mulaprakriti = the primordial substance = the source of Akasa (SD Vol I page 35)

"seven eternities" = seven aeons = a total of 311 trillion years (SD Vol I page 36)

"This Eternal Parent is the great Matrix, the great Mother,
Universal Nature, known to Hindu philosophy as Mulaprakriti
and to Spinoza as Natura naturans. She is the Womb out of
which is born all that will be born in the Universe. Her being
must not, however, be conceived as an ocean of 'matter',
though it is often symbolised as the great dark Waters, the
waters of chaos-in Greek mythology the goddess Rhea, the
'flow'. Matter she is not, even by courtesy, for 'matter' does
not yet exist; yet she is that out of which what is called matter
will emerge and is, so to speak, the ontological basis of what
seems to us 'stuff'. It is useless to try and describe her in neat
intellectual counters for, even when not 'slumbering', i.e. even
when a cosmos is manifested, she is still what Hindu thought
terms avyakta, unmanifest. She is also known as Avidya, a word
which plays on the double meaning of the root vid, to know
and to be, for Avidya is the great non-knowing as well as the
great non-being. She is the great non-knowing because she is
the 'content' side of the unitary and ultimate Reality referred
to in this verse as the Ever-Invisible Robes: She is non-being
because in her is nothing defmite, nothing that exists in the
root sense of that word, i.e. to stand forth.

"She is not, for all existences are born from her, while she
herself is Aja, the great unborn. She knows not, for her whole
Being throbs with a passionate yearning to be known. If she
is sometimes termed unconscious, it is only in the sense that
she is not the bright forthshining awareness of the Father, the
Light of lights, who is her opposite pole; yet it must always be
remembered that it is she who, in her dark being, draws forth
that Light. But for her, that light would not shine forth, and
the tides that surge within her massive depths are tides of Life,
without which there would be no life at all. Devoid of form,
empty of forms, she holds within her darkly living heart the
potentiality of all forms. To consider her 'dead', as was done by
the later, intellectualised Sankhya in India and, tacitly, by much
scientific thought, is an entire mistake. If it is she who sends
us forth in fmitude, it is also she to whom that fmitude returns
to rest, and the ever-living universe around us is, as we shall
see, a Web of which She is one of the Weavers.
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 46-47)


The space of our solar system, slumbered through 311 trillion years of rest and non-activity, as Mulaprakriti (Root-of-Matter) rested in Pralaya.

~~~

This first line, then, concerns the unbelievably long time our solar system spent in Pralaya (rest, the time between solar manifestations).

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 1 LINE 2

TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.

"Here, we are face to face with the contradiction already
referred to. Time did not exist, yet seven eternities were
flowing past. Time obviously did not exist for there was
nothing to mark its passage, neither the revolutions of celestial
bodies which serve us as the measure of objective time, nor the
obscure psycho-physical events which give us our feeling of
subjective time, nor of course was there anyone to feel the
time pass. Nevertheless Time had not vanished 'into nothing'
but into that Timelessness of which Time is the moving image,
and which our Stanza terms Duration-that which forever is,
as opposed to that which forever becomes. Just as in really
dreamless sleep time vanishes for us, so in the Cosmic Night
time as succession vanishes with the events whose successive
nature it marked. The succession of events, physical or psychi-
cal, that are the experience of time had ceased; the experience
of time was therefore no more. Yet something remained, for
the One is no mere blank abstraction, even though in denying
its similarity to common experience many Seers have described
it in negatives. Even the Hindu affIrmative statement, that the
Brahman is Being, Consciousness and Bliss (Sat, Chit, Ananda),
may well be regarded only as contradicting an absolute negation....

"Even in the Cosmic Night, Time is not absolutely non-
existent. It lies 'asleep' because it is utterly unmanifest, but its
archetypal root is still there in the Divine Breath that ceases
not even in pralaya.3 We read in the Upanishads that there are
two modes of Time, the formed and the formless. These two
are assimilated to the two forms of the Brahman termed Time
and the Timeless. 'That which is "prior" to the Sun (here the
Universal Mind is meant) is the Timeless, without parts. But
that which begins with the Sun is Time which has parts."
Elsewhere we read of divided time (khanda kala) and undivided
time (akhanda kala). This latter, which may be considered as
the noumenal form of the time we know or can imagine, is
the same as the Duration of our Stanza. Its 'temporality' eludes
all description, yet somehow it is there and supports the sym-
bolic passing of the Seven Eternities."
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 51-52)

--> The succession of events, physical or psychical, that are the experience of time had ceased; the experience of time was therefore no more. Time lay 'asleep.'

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 1 LINE 3

UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT.

"Ah-Hi"; The Dhyan-Chohans (SD Vol I page 38)

"to contain it"; to cause it to manifest. (SD Vol I page 37)

"The Universal Mind is the all-embracing Consciousness
which enfolds the universe within its grasp. Viewed from
below, it may be regarded as the synthesis of all the individual
minds within the cosmos, but it is more than a synthesis, being
rather the prior existence from which they have developed by
differentiation. Its existence during manifestation is not
something to be established by speculative thought, but some-
thing which is directly experienced by the Seer. Speculative
philosophy can do no more than correlate such experience
with the partial experiences of the world, which are gained
by individual selves....

"The Universal Mind is the first manifested principle, the
farthest shore of the Cosmos. In Vedic times it was symbolised
as the god Varuna, the over-arching sky which embraces all
that is. It is the Store Consciousness (Alaya Vijnana) of the
Yogachara Buddhists, the Universal Intelligence (Aql-i-Kul)
of the Sufis, and also the Noetic World, the Spiritual Cosmos
of Plotinus. Perhaps the Extensive Continuum of Professor
Whitehead is also connected with this, though here one
speaks with great caution. In any case, it is a unitary and all-
embracing consciousness which has as content the Divine
Archetypes, the so-called Divine Ideas of Plato, from partici-
pation in which arise all the concrete forms within the cosmos.

Ah-hi is the same word as the Sanskrit ahi, a serpent. Here
the symbol of the serpent is used in its connotation of a
constricting power, a power that embraces or limits and thus
contains. Without limitation or demarcation of the area of
operation there can be no manifestation. 'No man,' says Hegel,
'ever achieved anything until he had first limited himself,' nor,
we may add, did the powers that created man. In endless space
there are no directions, no inside and outside, no here and
there, nor is there foundation on which to build. Many
creation myths begin with the search for a firm basis or a limit
to space, without which there can be no concentration of
energy and so no means of producing effects.

"The serpent emerges from its egg as does a line from a point.
When the head and tail meet, it forms a circle; linear expansion
is thus limited and becomes measurable, whether in terms of
time or space. The unlimited expansive power of creation is
embraced, and thereby the content becomes knowable....

"There can be no all-embracing consciousness without that
which is embraced, nor can there be any beginning unrelated
to an ending. Ahi, the serpent, is the vehicle of that all-embrac-
ing consciousness at the junction of whose head and tail is the
momentary 'now' which is becoming.

At the stage now being described, consciousness is inturned,
introverted, absorbed in the innate (sahaja) contemplation of
its own inner processes, like a child sucking its own toe with
that blank, withdrawn expression of the small baby-the child
Narayana as he floats on a leaf on the waters of pralaya, in
whose yawning mouth the Rishi Markandeya finds the entire
universe.

In another context later in the Stanzas, the serpents appear
as representing the Divine Creative desires that spiral their way
outwards and downwards through the levels of the universe,
the forces of pravritti or forthgoing."
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 55-57)

(Editor's note: The symbol of a serpent swallowing its tail, and in doing so creating a circle, is an important part of the Seal of the Theosophical Society. The serpent surrounds the other parts of the Theosophical symbol, symbolizing the limitation or demarcation of manifestation.)
http://www.austheos.org.au/symbol.htm

--> The manifested universe had not appeared, for Mulaprakriti (that from which
matter is made) had not yet appeared.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 1 LINE 4

THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT. THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM.

"Bliss"; Nirvana. (SD Vol I page 38)

"'The Way Up is the same as the Way Down', said Hera-
cleitus. In the terms of our verse we may say that the seven
ways to bliss are the same as. the great causes of misery, for the
former are the way up, the Ladder of the Soul, and the latter
are the way down. The actual ladder is the same in both cases.

"The ladder is made up of the levels of cosmic experience or
grades of 'outwardness' of which our physical sense world is
the outermost or lowest. As a knowledge of these levels is of the
utmost importance in understanding the Stanzas it is desirable
to give a brief outline sketch of them here, while the details
must be gradually filled in as the Stanzas proceed....

TABLE OF THE SEVEN COSMIC LEVELS

"The seven ways to bliss are in fact the means by which the
aspirant masters each of the seven successively. As such they
are identical with the seven paramitas or 'perfections' of which
an account is given in the third tractate in The Voice of the
Silence} The 'seven ways' are really the seven stages on one
Way, the text following in this the ancient Buddhist usage
which speaks of the four stages on the Path as the Four Paths."
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 58-61)

--> The Seven Ways (to both bliss and misery) are the Seven Planes of Existence. These Planes had not yet appeared.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 1 LINE 5

DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.

"Darkness"; We use the word Darkness to describe the Absolute because, to our finite understanding, it seems quite impenetrable, yet we recognize fully that our perception of such things does not do them justice. (SD Vol I pages 40-41)

"Father and Mother"; The Father-Mother are the male and female principles in root-nature, the opposite poles that manifest in all things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit and Substance, in a less allegorical aspect, the resultant of which is the Universe, or the Son. (SD Vol I page 41)

"They were once more one"; They are "once more One" when in "The Night of Brahma," during Pralaya, all in the objective Universe has returned to its one primal (SD Vol I page 41)

"The wheel"; That which is called "wheel" is the symbolical expression for a world or globe, which shows that the ancients were aware that our Earth was a revolving globe, not a motionless square as some Christian Fathers taught. The "Great Wheel" is the whole duration of our Cycle of being, or Maha Kalpa, i.e., the whole revolution of our special chain of seven planets or Spheres from beginning to end; the "Small Wheels" meaning the Rounds, of which there are also Seven. (SD Vol I page 40 footnote.)

"In the oldest traditions to which we have access the Ultimate
Reality, what in Hinduism is termed the Parabrahman, was
symbolised as Darkness. In the Rig Vedal we read, 'Darkness
there was; at first hidden in the Darkness all this was undis-
criminated Waters.' This same symbolism is to be found in
ancient Egyptian cosmogony and also in those verses of
Genesis that tell how Darkness was on the face of the Waters.
We may also note that SufiS sometimes use the term ama --
blindness -- for the same purpose.

"The use of such a symbol was not due, as some have supposed,
to a naive agnosticism on the part of those primaeval Seers,
but to the realisation that the state of the Unitary Reality before
its polarisation into Light and Forms, subject and object, if
it is to be referred to at all (and, indeed, most were reluctant to
do so), must be symbolised as Darkness since no words or
thoughts of ours can compass its being.

"At some period, however, on the edge of recorded history,
newer generations of Seers seem to have felt that the symbol,
appropriate as it was in itself, was liable to mislead by sug-
gesting to men of lesser insight that the Ultimate Reality was
a blank night of nothingness. Accordingly, we find in later
traditions, such as that of the Gita, the symbolism is changed
and we get the Parabrahman referred to as the Light of lights,
the Sun beyond the Darkness.2 The Stanzas of Dzyan, follow-
ing the earlier tradition, preserve the symbol of Darkness;
and it will be found as we proceed, and should be borne in
mind throughout, that tenns of light, radiance, etc., always
imply an at least relative decline from the Ultimate.

"... Here, a state is being described in which no
distinctions are possible. To us, therefore, the sense is better
conveyed by the image of all-pervasive darkness. Where light
is equated with knowledge and darkness with ignorance,
implicit in the distinction is the idea that that 'knowledge',
however divine, is not the all-inclusive consciousness of the
transcendent One....

"At this period, then, Darkness, the ever-unmanifested
Parabrahman, was all that was. It 'filled the All' for there was
naught but It.

"Father, Mother, and Son, were once more (after the preceding
manifestation) one within Its bosom....

"The Mother is that Eternal Parent of whom we
have already spoken, the Great Mother of so many religions
in the ancient world, She who, philosophically conceived,
appears as the Matrix, the eternal root of all objectivity and
womb of creation....

"The Father, on the other hand, is the subjective aspect of
the same Reality, the invisible Light of which we have spoken
before and which is destined to impregnate, i.e. illuminate, the
dark Mother, and so, by uniting with Her, to produce the
offspring who is sometimes described as androgynous, the
Universal Mind mentioned in verse 3....

"At this stage, however, those separate aspects symbolised
as Father and Mother were not separate, but united in their
Source, the Darkness. The Son, or Universal Mind, had not
therefore 'awakened', but existed only as an abstract possibility
and so could not bring forth the wheel of the new cycle in
which he himself would be the Pilgrim. The Son is goer,
traveller, pilgrim, in the sense that it is he who travels to the
furthest shore of the manifestation and returns to his home, for
he is himself the manifestation as it moves from its most subtle
phase to its most gross, and back to the subtle, in the cyclic
forthgoing and returning that is the pattern of his endless
movement."
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 62-64)

--> At this time, there was nothing but the Absolute. The basic duality of Nature (Father and Mother, also called Spirit and Matter) had not appeared. As a result, the Universe (the Son) had yet to appear. The pilgrimage of consciousness into the physical Universe (culminating in the manifestation of the Earth) had not yet begun.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 1 LINE 6

THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE, AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA, TO BE OUTBREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS.

The seven sublime lords are the Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyani-Chohan, who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same hierarchy of Archangels to which St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and others belong, in the Christian theogony. Only while St. Michael, for instance, is allowed in dogmatic Latin theology to watch over all the promontories and gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis watch successively over one of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary chain. (SD Vol I page 42.)

"Sons of Necessity;" The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of everything, worlds as well as atoms; and this stupendous development has neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our "Universe" is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them "Sons of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and being a cause as regards its successor. (SD Vol I page 43.)

"Paranishpanna" (also called Paranirvana, that which comes after Nirvana) is the absolute perfection to which all existences attain at the close of a great period of activity, or Maha-Manvantara, (SD Vol I page 42.)

By "that which is and yet is not" is meant the Great Breath itself. (SD Vol I page 43.)

"The seven sublime Lords are the seven levels of the Cosmos.
But when we have made this equation we have not said all
that is to be said. The seven levels are levels of consciousness,
and the consciousness of any given level has a unitary or
collective as well as a distributive aspect. It is not merely the
sum of so many individual consciousnesses, but a unitary whole
out of which those individual aspects have been differentiated.
It is therefore not inappropriately symbolized as a Sublime
Lord, a being which holds in its grasp the entire content of the
level in question; in fact, as ancient writers would have said,
it is the god of that level.... In terming them
gods, however, we must not suppose that they are anthropo-
morphic or even personal, at least, as we usually understand
the word. They are living, conscious powers or beings,
probably most easily thought of as impersonal. Mythologies
have doubtless symbolized them in personal form, but it
should always be remembered that such personality is not the
bundle of idiosyncrasies that we know here. They are not men,
but gods....

"Since the seven levels are also the very structure of the
cosmos, the very bed-plate on which it is built, and since they
remain throughout the manifestation, however much the
forms therein may change and pass, they are also referred to as
the seven Truths. All forms may pass away, but the levels of
consciousness in which those forms float remain for ever
throughout the Cosmic Day....

"The Necessity, of which the universe is here said to be the
son, is the Eternal Parent, the Matrix....

"In much the same way the Matrix, with all its buried poten-
tialities and its implicit structures, acts as a 'cycle of necessity'.
In the Gita, also, the Matrix, 'the emanation which gives rise
to the birth of beings', is referred to as karma, action and its
compelling fruits....

"The Universe, then, and its mother, Necessity, are still
immersed in Paranishpanna, the ultimate Darkness, to be (later)
out-breathed by the transcendent Subject or Light pole of the
latter when it comes into operation. That Light, the root of
what we shall later recognise as consciousness, both 'is' and 'is
not'. It 'is', because, like its opposite pole, the Matrix, it is
eternal, and, as we read in the Gita, 'Know thou, that Prakriti
and Purusha are both beginningless.' Even in the state of
pralaya which we are now considering, that Light exists,
because it is an eternal aspect of the one Reality. At the same
time it 'is not', because it is not yet differentiated from the
primal unity.

"Even when differentiated it still 'is not', for it is not 'mani-
fest'; the flrst manifest level of existence being the Universal
Mind of verse 3, which is the same as the Son of verse 5, here
called the son of Necessity. One term of the Subject-Object
relationship cannot by itself constitute a manifest level, and this
Light is, as it were, an abstract of pure subjectivity. When the
Son is born he unites in his own being the qualities of his
Father, of his Mother, and of the unitary source from which
both Parents sprang. The Father as a separate entity only
lived for, and died at, the conception so that the Son is the
Widow's Son. The Father as a half-way term between the
manifest and the unmanifest, between being and non-being,
both 'is' and 'is not'.

"Paranishpanna or rather parinishpanna is a term belonging to
the Yogachara school of Buddhists, who used it to signify the
highest and only ultimate truth.... H.P .B. has used the word
here to signify the ultimate Reality, the Darkness.

(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 62-64)

(Editor's note: The idea of non-existence and non-being is an important Theosophical concept. Perhaps it can be deduced from the above quotation that "unmanifest" means being at a level above the Manifest/Unmanifest split shown in the Table of the Seven Cosmin Levels on page 60. Perhaps, then, Mulaprakriti could be said to "be undifferentiated" yet not to "exist.")

--> The Dhyani-Chohan and the seven Planes of Existence (Adi, Anupadaka, etc.) had yet to appear. Our Universe (only one of a chain of successive universes) had yet to appear. All of these had yet to emerge from the Absolute. Nothing existed in a manifested, dualistic state.

Just wanted to thank the Pilot of this site for bringing the S.D. with commentary to the attention of his readers. Including brief definitions and commentaries is useful to new viewers and may indeed be an Invitation to the Secret Doctrine:

Many thanks for your attentive hours spent in setting up this approach.

All Best!!!

Dara-san!

Thank you very much! (I am starting to sound like Elvis....) Yes, it is hoped that this may inspire people to look at the ideas in The Secret Doctrine. I know of no other philosophy that makes so much sense.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 1 LINE 7

THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH; THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING — THE ONE BEING.

"The causes of existence"; The desire to exist, both physically and metaphysically. (SD Vol I page 44.)

This particular "cause" refers to the previous manvantara. (Transactions of the Blavatsy Lodge vol. I p. 34) http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sdcommnt/sdc-hp.htm

"The visible that was" refers to the previous manvantara. "The invisible that is" refers to the pralaya occuring at that time. (Transactions of the Blavatsy Lodge vol. I p. 35)

"In this verse we are introduced to the idea ... that this process of
cosmic manifestation has defmite causes. It might seem that
this is quite an obvious idea and one which is assumed by all
people, but in fact the majority of the religious cosmogonies
of the world have very little, if anything, to say on the subject....
... as the Buddha taught, the treading of the Path 'is
not contingent on the truth of the theories that the world
either is or is not eternal' and he who will not follow the Path
until he knows how the universe originally came into being
is like a man who will not have a poisoned arrow extracted
from his body until he knows by whom and why it was shot.

"Nevertheless, though the Stanzas do, in their symbolic
way, give some account of the origin of the cosmic manifes-
tation, this verse does not do more than enunciate the proposi-
tion that there are in fact causes for the periodical manifestation
of a universe. Those 'causes of existence' are the two poles
into which the one Reality divides. The Darkness (Para-
brahman) is not a blank unity out of which nothing ever
could emerge, but a living -- one could almost say organic -- unity
of which subjectivity and objectivity, Father and Mother, are
the two polar aspects which never vanish into nothingness,
but even in pralaya only become latent in mutual union. An
inner tension within the one Reality, the nature of which will
be discussed in connection with the next verse, causes the
differentiation or standing apart of the two poles which by
their interaction give rise to the whole manifested universe
and so are said to be 'the causes of existence'.

"In the present stage these causes were still only latent and the
subject-object division had not occurred. The Light of sub-
jectivity or awareness that had once been visible or manifest
in a previous universe is now invisible. It is united with the
Matrix within the Darkness of the one Being that yet, because
it is not and can never be an object for any consciousness, is
also termed Non-being. This last word, like all others in the
Stanzas, is used symbolically and must not be identified with
nothingness. The word 'being' was evolved to describe the
most abstract quality belonging to all the objects of our experi-
ence, a certain overtness or manifestness which, because it
pervades all our experience, is impossible to isolate in thought
or to define except by saying that being is what characterises
all manifest experience, that by which things 'stand forth'. We
need some other word to characterise the condition during the
cosmic night, a condition in which there is no standing forth
at all. The verse calls it non-being....

"It was in order to have some designation for the neutral
plane between being and non-being, or between extensive and
intensive being, that H.P .B. coined the word Be-ness, a word
which must be taken to refer to the most abstract quality
which inheres alike both in extensive being and intensive
being. At any rate ... the non-being (or intensive being) of the
Night is as 'real' as the being of the Day...."

(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 68-70)

--> This line emphasizes that our physical "existence" is an illusion. The only thing that is, is referred to by the tern Non-Being, which is the One Reality.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 1 LINE 8

ALONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE OPENED EYE OF THE DANGMA.

"Dangma means a purified soul, one who has become a Jivanmukta, the highest adept, or rather a Mahatma so-called. His "opened eye" is the inner spiritual eye of the seer, and the faculty which manifests through it is not clairvoyance as ordinarily understood, i.e., the power of seeing at a distance, but rather the faculty of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable. This faculty is intimately connected with the "third eye," which mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men. Fuller explanations will be found in Book II." (SD Vol I page 46 footnote.)

"The one Darkness alone Was, in a state symbolised as
dreamless sleep....

"The analogy, like all such, must not be pressed too far. Its
usefulness consists in pointing out a state, familiar to all of us,
in which the subject-object relationship is comparatively in
abeyance....

"In truth, neither the state of dreamless sleep nor its macro-
cosmic analogue, the Darkness (Parabrahman) during pralaya,
are in the least empty states, but conditions of massive bliss
which, because of their unmanifested nature, cannot at all
be compared with ordinary differentiated states of
consciousness.

"... Universal Space is another of the symbols of
the Darkness, and in Stanza III. 7 we shall come across it again
under the variant of Dark Space. The Darkness is that 'Space'
within which all is. All that exists, in manifestation no less than
in dissolution (pralaya), is within that one Reality; It does not
refer, of course, to the space of visual perception, nor even
to those abstract but still overt spaces or space-times beloved
by mathematicians.... In fact it is not the space of space-time
but the space of All-Presence; it is not space at all in our sense
of the word, but that from which all arises, in which it exists, and into
which it withdraws, the ever-invisible robes of the Eternal Parent of
verse I.

"It is now time to turn our attention to the 'pulsation' which
continues even in pralaya. Again, the verbal description is not
to be taken as a philosophical statement and dismissed as
nonsense because it is illogical to say that pulsation, which
involves time and differentiation, could not exist in the timeless
and undifferentiated state of pralaya. We repeat that the words
are symbolic and refer to something that cannot be expressed
in any other way....

"... We have already
referred to this eternal pulse, the archetype of all the rhythms
in the universe, as being something that does not stop even
in pralaya.

"The one Reality ... and the pulsation of its life continues ceaselessly even
in, what might seem to us to be, the frozen sterility of the
Cosmic Night.

"The pulsation is a rhythmic alternation of stress or tension
between the two poles which appear within the one Reality;
a pulsating relationship between Father and Mother, Subject
and Object, or Spirit and Matter. This polar division becomes
overt during the Cosmic Day, while during the Night the
two poles fuse together, sending the whole universe into
latency. Just as under verses 2 and 7 we saw that time and being
enter into their own hearts and, as it were, emerge in a nega-
tive form on the 'other side', so here we should note that the
subject-object polarity does not cease during the Night but
goes through itself and re-appears in a negative and, to us
incomprehensible, intensive form.

"... The 'Causes of Existence' are the
two great Poles of the Darkness, but it is the sheer life of that
Reality which brings it about that there should be a constant
pulsation or rhythmic alternation of tension between those
Poles. This pulsation or Breath is also termed Motion, since
it is the root from which all motion comes. We cannot do
more than say that it is the very life and Heart's Blood of That
which is the Root of all being. Because of it, nothing is ever
in a static state of rest, but is forever changing and 'passing
into its opposite'.... All we need do is to guard
ourselves against conceiving that Motion in a mechanical
instead of in a psychic manner.

"Forever and forever, that Life pulses within the heart of all
that is. Its ageless, tireless rhythm is sometimes strong and
sometimes faint as the cycles go through their appointed
courses....

"During the Cycle of the Cosmic Day, and to a lesser extent
during all its microcosmic epicyclic correspondences, the
emphasis-value is more upon the Object or matter, while,
during the Night, it lies upon the Subject, Spirit. When the
intensity of the object-value reaches a certain critical point, the
point of Dawn, it first annuls and then overpowers the subject-
value, so that the content of the one Reality bursts its banks and
overflows-that is Creation. When, after Midday, the Subject
begins again to assert its predominance, the flooded waters
ebb and, at the Evening Twilight, sink back once more into
the Primal Source from which they flowed."

(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 71-81)

--> The Great Breath continued, even during the Universal Pralaya. The Great Seers (Dangma) of the previous Universal Manvantara rested in Pralaya.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 1 LINE 9

BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE WAS IN PARAMARTHA AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA?

"Alaya"; The soul of the world. (SD Vol I page 48.)

"Laya" means "that which is not manifest." Therefore, "Alaya" means that which is not unimanifest, meaning, that which is manifest. (Transactions of the Blavatsy Lodge vol. I pp. 45)

"Paramartha, Samvriti, Paramartha-satya, Samvriti-satya Paramartha"; a compound of parama -- highest, and artha -- purpose or aim, is 'the highest goal' of attainment for an adept of the Earth. It is a Nirvanic state in which a man is self-consciously aware of his divine nature and has become all-wise because he has become at one with the Spiritual Hierarch of this Planetary Chain. The word Samvriti is derived from the verb-root vrit -- to turn, plus the preposition sam, meaning in combination 'to cover, to hide'; and hence in philosophy Samvriti is applied to 'False conception' brought about by the deceptive and limiting powers of matter, in other words, by illusion or Maya. Samvriti-satya therefore is the 'relative truth,' the satya or truth concerning the origin of that illusion which conceals from man the highest Truth and the true conception of Reality. This Highest Truth which sees beyond the illusive or mayavi appearance of things is Paramartha-satya. One cannot fully comprehend Samvriti-satya until one reaches Paramartha-satya. (Sanskrit terms from The Voice of the Silence, by H. P. Blavatsky, 1889.)

"The Great Wheel was Anupadaka" refers to the Universe in its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was fashioned by the "Builders". (SD Vol I page 52)

"In the last verse we read that the One, the All-Presence,
though never known is yet 'sensed' by the opened eye, the
so-called third eye, of one who is a <i>Dangma</i> or perfected Seer.
This third eye, symbolic representations of which are so often
found on Hindu images, is the eye of wisdom or spiritual
intuition, the eye that gives certain knowledge of the truth;
one, because it transcends duality. It is not, of course, the
subtle physical organ of ordinary psychic clairvoyance, it is
not in fact an organ at all, but is more nearly described as a
state of being.... Contrasted with this is the power of seeing
with the wisdom eye (<i>prajna chakshu</i>).... While the
'eye of the gods' ... is only operative
in the realms of form and is confmed to visual representations,
the 'wisdom eye', penetrating into the formless worlds, is able
to reveal truth directly and without the intermediacy of
forms.... The
clairvoyant user of the' divine eye' will see, for instance, the
inter-relatedness of things in terms of concrete, though subtle,
structures or entities, while the more deeply penetrating
wisdom-eye perceives the formless realities of which those
subtle entities, no less than the gross ones of the physical world,
are but appearances or symbols. The perfect Seer or <i>Dangma</i>
has command over both these modes of vision, being able to
see forms when he chooses, while at the same time perceiving
the inner significance which lies behind them. But, as verse 8
tells us, even the highest spiritual vision of the <i>Dangma</i> can
only 'sense', never see, the All-presence, since the latter can
never be an object for any consciousness, however sublime.

"At this stage, however, we can only ask where was there a
Seer to see or even 'sense' It?... The question may be asked, but scarcely
answered. The perfected Seers of the previous Day had all
entered the Darkness with the universe in which they lived.
The new universe was still unborn, its very Parents not having
yet become manifest."

(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 81-83)

--> Where were the Great Seers, the Dangma, from the previous Universal Manvantara? (They were resting in Pralaya.)

"Alaya"; The soul of the world. (SD Vol I page 48.)

"Laya" means "that which is not manifest." Therefore, "Alaya" means that which is not unimanifest, meaning, that which is manifest. (Transactions of the Blavatsy Lodge vol. I pp. 45

In this case, the SD meaning is correct, not the Transactions meaning. Aalaya (the first A has a diacritical over it) is Buddhist Sanskrit meaning "source" or " abode"or "treasury" or "storehouse" or "dwelling". For example, Himalaya - hima = snow, aalaya = abode.

While one could read the "a" as a negative particle, according to David Reigle, who knows Sanskrit, that meaning is almost never used in Hindu thought and for sure never used in Buddhism. If one studies the use, in context, throughout HPB & her gurus teachings, it becomes plain that the Buddhist meaning is what is meant.

Here is an extract from one of David's articles:

...The word âlaya, like parinispanna, is one of the characteristic technical terms of the Yogâcâra school of Buddhism. And similarly, the standard Sanskrit dictionaries do not record its meaning as a Buddhist technical term, because the Yogâcâra sourcebooks were not yet published when these dictionaries were compiled. This has led some to question whether the term in the Stanzas should be alaya or âlaya, the former being taken as a-laya, or "non-dissolution." However, Blavatsky's comments on pages 48-49 of The Secret Doctrine, I, as well as in The Theosophical Glossary, "The name belongs to the Tibetan system of the contemplative Mahayana School," leave no doubt that âlaya is meant. Blavatsky defines âlaya as "Soul as the basis of all," "Anima Mundi," the "Soul of the World," the "Over-Soul" of Emerson, the "Universal Soul." As can be seen from the Buddhist texts now available, âlaya is short for âlaya-vijñâna, which can be defined literally as the "storehouse consciousness." This is the eighth and highest consciousness posited by the Yogâcâra school, where it is indeed understood to be the universal consciousness, or "soul," as the basis of all...

The rest of this article and many other useful ones can be found at:

http://www.easterntradition.org/

Nicholas,

Thanks for the Alaya clarification. It is amazing how one word (actually two words similarly spelled) can really be two different things.

How do you explain the phrase, "BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA....?" I do not think I got it quite right.

Here is the article by David Reigle:

http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/reigle02.html

This is a great addition to the study of the Stanzas of Dzyan that is being presented here.

Nick:
--> But where were the Great Beings of the Universe, when Reality was the one Truth, and the Universe was in its formless, eternal condition?
or
--> But where was Knowledge, when Reality was the one Truth, and the Universe was in its formless, eternal condition?

Sounds fine to me. Neither the Knowers nor their Knowledge are existing in any form that we could understand. All is latent. The next few slokas all have these rhetorical questions like "Where was so & so" ? just to emphasize the transcendent nature of everything.

By the by, there is a great commentary on the SD by Ernest Wood, titled A "Secret Doctrine" Digest. Wood was a deep student of Theosophy as well as Indian spirituality.

Here are some sources for it: http://www.fetchbook.info/compare.do?search=0766140458

Line nine ends the first Stanza. Here are HPB's thoughts on the entire first Stanza:

"The First Stanza describes the state of the ONE ALL during Pralaya, before the first flutter of re-awakening manifestation.

"A moment's thought shows that such a state can only be symbolised; to describe it is impossible. Nor can it be symbolised except in negatives; for, since it is the state of Absoluteness per se, it can possess none of those specific attributes which serve us to describe objects in positive terms. Hence that state can only be suggested by the negatives of all those most abstract attributes which men feel rather than conceive, as the remotest limits attainable by their power of conception."
(SD Vol I page 21)

We now begin Stanza II. Stanza II is not easily understood.

"The stage described in Stanza II is, to a western mind, so nearly identical with that mentioned in the first Stanza, that to express the idea of its difference would require a treatise in itself. Hence it must be left to the intuition and the higher faculties of the reader to grasp, as far as he can, the meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed it must be remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain."

(SD Vol I page 21)

"LATENT POWER
In Stanza I the negations with which we have now become
familiar were framed in a way to suggest a deepening with-
drawal of all being into the night of non-being. Here, in
Stanza II it is as if the darkest hour of the night had passed, and
behind the negations we can sense the first stirrings of that
which is to be.

"The polarity is still the negative one of the Night, but the
increasing emphasis value of the Object Pole is approaching
the point where it will annul and overpower that of the Sub-
ject. There is still no manifest life or activity, but within the
imperishable darkness a negative, dream-like activity begins to
take place, and there, shining with a dark subjective light, is an
image of the Cosmos that is to be. The insistent and increasing
emphasis on the Two shows how the inner tension is increasing
and will shortly reach the threshold state. The coming Dawn
that is as yet below the horizon is being faintly felt."
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 58-61)

(The reader has probably already realized the difficulty in understanding Stanza II. Take a moment, and look at the Second Day of Creation in the Book of Genesis -- said to come from the same source as Stanza II. Note how the same difficulty in understanding Day II exists, as in understanding Stanza II. Note how a unique relationship exists between Day I and Day II, as well as between Stanza I and Stanza II. )

http://www.bibleontheweb.com/Bible.asp

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 2 LINE 1

WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN? . . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI PARANISHPANNA. THE PRODUCERS OF FORM FROM NO-FORM — THE ROOT OF THE WORLD — THE DEVAMATRI AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING.

The "Builders," the "Sons of Manvantaric Dawn," are the real creators of the Universe; and in this doctrine, which deals only with our Planetary System, they, as the architects of the latter, are also called the "Watchers" of the Seven Spheres, which exoterically are the Seven planets, and esoterically the seven earths or spheres (planets) of our chain also. (SD Volume I page 53)

"'The Luminous Sons of Manvantaric Dawn' are the primordial seven rays from which will emanate in their turn all the other luminous and non-luminous lives, whether Archangels, Devils, men or apes. Some have been and some will only now become human beings. It is only after the differentiation of the seven rays and after the seven forces of nature have taken them in hand and worked upon them, that they become cornerstones, or rejected pieces of clay. Everything, therefore, is in these seven rays, but it is impossible to say at this stage in which, because they are not yet differentiated and individualized." (Transactions of the Blavatsy Lodge vol. I pp. 45-46)

"Devamatri" ("The Mother of the gods"); cosmic space. (SD Vol I page 53)

Non-Being ... is absolute Being. (SD Volume I page 53)

" ... we may consider the power as residing in
the Matrix (Mother) out of which come all the moving forms of the
universe and, therefore, also all power. Like the earthly
mother who is her symbol, she is the root of all creation in the
sense of bringing forth' or emissive power.

"But the power of the Mother is not independent. Unless
she is fertilised by the Light of the Father, no creation takes
place. Hence, it is also not incorrect to speak of power (in its
fertilising sense) as rooted in the Father or transcendent
Subject.

"Even then, we have not said all. If the two Poles of the one
Reality remained isolated from each other, again no creation
would take place; it thus becomes clear that the real source of
power, potency, is the tension or interaction betWeen the two,
an interaction that, as we have seen, comes from the underlying
Unity in which the Two are differentiated. It is this inter-
action which gives rise to the Seven levels of being; and the
Builders referred to in this verse are the various differentiations
of this creative power.

"The particular aspect of power with which the verse is
concerned is 'building' or the production of 'form' from
'no-form'. As we shall see in Stanza IV the term arupa, formless,
is used in a technical sense to mean the subtle or invisible
universe and not the sheer transcendency of the Darkness. The
Builders, then, are the effectuating powers of the creation who
mediate between the formless (arupa) ...
the manifest or existent worlds of form (rupa). They are thus
intermediary powers or gods, neither of the unmanifest
darkness, nor of the bright manifestation, but luminous gods
of the dawn of creation. This is why the 'root of the world' -- a
rendering of Mula-prakriti -- is here called Devamatri, Mother
of Gods....

"The Builders, then, are the great powers of divine imagining,
they who 'call spirits from the vasty deep'. The spirits they
call forth are the Cosmic levels with all their varied content,
while the vasty deep is the great Matrix. The Builders not only
produce the levels, they become them, and each creatively
builds or shapes the content on the form of his own being in
much the same way as the ego-center in a man shapes for
himself the content of his experience into a whole. As the
tension or interaction aspect of Reality they are luminous or
conscious Powers beconling manifest at the very commence-
ment of the Cosmic Day or Manvantara. These 'morning
stars' had not yet begun to 'sing together', for they were still
latent in the Darkness of ultimate Being or Parinishpanna.

"We also learn from the phrase Ah-hi Parinishpanna that the
Builders are identical with the Ah-hi (I. 8) or Divine Serpents
of creative desire. We are thus enabled to understand why it
was that the 'Serpent', by tempting Eve, who in this context
is the Cosmic Mother, brought about the expulsion from the
Garden of Eden, and why also that Serpent was identified with
Lucifer, Son of the Morning. In Eden the serpent represented
the urging to a knowledge of the pairs of opposites, exempli-
fied as good and evil, without which no polar tension could
arise....

"The Builders are at this stage still in the darkness of latency,
since the two Poles between which they work, the Mother and
the Father, are still undifferentiated. These two are here
referred to as Devamatri, the Mother of the Gods, and Sva-
bhavat, literally 'becoming itself'. The latter is the subjective
Pole of Being, the Father who, becoming Self, says 'I am', the
transcendent Self of all that is....

"These two are still in the bliss of unity within the Darkness.
The Darkness is here called non-being to distinguish it from
the no-form of the noetic universe. Lacking the tension
arising from the separation of the Two, there can be no mani-
festation of power; consequently no 'building', no production
of form, can occur."
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 58-61)

--> Where were the Builders, the Sons of the Seven Rays? They rested in the Maha-manvantara. Even cosmic space and
pre-cosmic root-matter rested in absolute perfection and being.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 2 LINE 2

WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT.

"Breath"; The perpetual motion of primordial (indestructable) matter. (SD Volume I page 55)

The Eternal Breath does not cease, even during a Pralaya. (SD Volume I page 55)

"Again the two Poles are mentioned, this time under the
symbols of Silence and Sound; apt symbols for the Two, the
Silent Sky watching in calm the Sounding Sea below. Mystics
have often spoken (and still speak) of the great Sound (shabda)....

"From the midst of that radiance, the natural Sound of
Reality, reverberating like a thousand thunders simultaneously
sounding, will come....

"... the great creative Sound ... is symbolised by the Bell
whose sound pervades all space and whose image is often
found in the hand of Tibetan deities....

"But just as there was no eye of Dangma to sense the All-
Presence of the One, so there was no ear to hear the still
unmanifest mantras of the Sound. Only the ceaseless 'breathing
of the breathless one' went on in the Absolute Consciousness
which, to us, is no consciousness at all. It knew Itself not, It
was not self-conscious."
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 90-91)

(Editor's note. This is an important line, becauses it mentions an action that continues even during a Pralaya.)

--> The Father (Silence) and Mother (Sound) had yet to appear.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 2 LINE 3

THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM; THE MATRIPADMA HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN.

"Ray"; a ray of light from the Darkness (Absolute Consciousness). (SD Volume I pages 56-57)

"Germ"; The germ of the Mundane Egg. A ray of Absolute Consciousness flashes into a germ, to later becomes the Mundane Egg. (SD Volume I page 57)

"Matri-" (Mother); "Mother" is the passive, female principle of the Deity, which had not yet appeared. (SD Volume I page 57)

"The approaching Hour of Dawn has not yet come. The
universe is still a dream within the Darkness, and its secret
Night life is as unattainable to our thought as is the inner
fantasy world of the dreamer lying asleep at our side. The
Object Pole has not yet gained sufficient emphasis-value to
draw forth the creative Ray of psychic projection from the
Spirit or transcendent Self (Shanta Atman). During the Night,
as we have seen, the polarity is reversed, so that the Spirit,
'gone feminine', received into itself the centripetal onset or
rather inrush of Matter and utterly devoured it. At Midnight
this mystic ebb ceased, and the tide of objectivity began to
flow once more, entering the ambiguous state of dream;
though not until the Dawn does the flow gain sufficient!
strength to carry it through the zero point and beyond the
embrace of Spirit. Once through that zero point the objective
Pole expands into the outwardness of the Day, becoming
'female' in its turn and drawing forth the fertilising Ray of
the Spirit which is that Spirit's self-projection into the now
centrifugal tide of objectivity.

"That point however has not yet been passed, and the Ray
has not yet flashed forth to impregnate with its glance the
Mother Lotus (Matripadma), nor has the latter 'swollen'l in
preparation for the fertilisation.

"Following the analogy of birth, the Germ is the ovum which
will be fertilised by the male 'Ray', and it is within the Mother
in the form of the potential Universal Mind. The symbol of
the Mother Lotus derives its point, as H.P .B. explained, from
the saying that seeds of the lotus plant, if opened, reveal a
miniature lotus plant complete within them.

" ... the Universal Mind [was] already existing in germ as
a potentiality or possibility ofmanifestation within the Matrix,
awaiting that which shall call it forth, as the lotus awaits the
sun's rays to cause it to bloom.

"The nature of that potentiality is similar to the ego's complex
structures which pass into latency during sleep, but emerge
again on waking. In just such a way does the Universal Mind
go into latency during the Cosmic Night."
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 92-93)

--> The first event of our Universal Mavantara has been described as a ray of light flashing out from the Darkness (to fertilize matter). This had not happened yet.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 2 LINE 4

HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL, AS THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF MAYA.

"Her heart had not yet opened."; The Primordial Substance had not yet passed out of its pre-cosmic latency into differentiated objectivity. (SD Volume I page 58)

"The three into four"; The three are the Father, Mother, and Son (SD Volume I page 58). The fourth is the Life from the summits of the Unreachable (SD Volume I page 59).

~~~

"This verse ... gives the first fundamental list of the number symbols, for it anticipates that the one Ray will enter the heart of the Mother, thence to fall into the outer manifestation, the Lap of Maya or Magic Play ‘as three into four’. The first, the Father, enters the second, the Mother, who gives birth to the third, the Son....

"At this stage there can be no Four or even Three, for the ... Day has not yet come into being, and the Mother has not yet become receptive...." (Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 93-94)

--> Pre-cosmic root-matter had not yet differentiated into the precursors of physical matter. The Logos had not yet begun manifestating into its various aspects. The Seven Shining Ones had yet to appear.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 2 LINE 5

THE SEVEN SONS WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT; AND SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS.

The Seven Sons are the seven planetary Logoi (the creators) of our solar system. (SD Volume I page 60).

"Darkness"; We use the word Darkness to describe the Absolute because, to our finite understanding, it seems quite impenetrable, yet we recognize fully that our perception of such things does not do them justice. (SD Vol I pages 40-41)

[Svabhavat] " ... is itself without any other creator or ruler..."
[is] "... something eternal and infinite, for that which had neither beginning nor end, there can be neither past nor future, but everything that was and will be..."
[is] "... called by the Buddhists Svabhavat, by the Kabalists astral light."
(C. W.I, pp. 268/9 as quoted in Exploring The Great Beyond by Geoffrey Farthing)
http://www.blavatskytrust.org.uk/html/the_...beyond/ch10.htm

~~~

“ ... the Seven ‘was not yet born’ from the web of light which is the web of interaction between the two Poles [Father-Mother], the field of Power from which the whole Cosmos springs into being....

“ ... the verse says, ‘Darkness alone was Father-Mother’, the polar aspect; ‘(Darkness was also Svabhavat’, the non-dual aspect of the Absolute as incipient becoming; ‘and Svabhavat was in darkness’, the absolute darkness of non-becoming....”
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 92-93)

--> The Creators of our solar system had not yet appeared. Pre-cosmic root-matter was still in its undifferentiated Pralaya state.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 2 LINE 6

THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE BOSOM. . . .

The Divine Thought is not a Divine thinker, but Absolute Thought reflected in a manifestation (SD Volume I page 61).

~~~

“These two, Father and Mother, are the Germ or seed of Life, for it is from the union of the two that the universe springs. They differentiate from the One Darkness of the Self-Becoming and they unite in the one body of their Son; but as yet the Germ of what will be the Son, the future universe, is still concealed in the Darkness....

“The Darkness pulses with life; it quivers, as it were, with inner tension. Something must happen to resolve the strain. The Cosmic Dawn is near.”
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 92-93)

--> The Father and Mother were the Germ. The Son (the Universe) had yet to appear, but the Cosmic Dawn was near.

Stanza III

"Stanza III. describes the Re-awakening of the Universe to life after Pralaya. It depicts the emergence of the "Monads" from their state of absorption within the One; the earliest and highest stage in the formation of "Worlds," the term Monad being one which may apply equally to the vastest Solar System or the tiniest atom." (SD Vol I page 21)

“The unmanifest priniples of being separate from their state of primal fusion and give birth to the manifest glory of Universal Mind, the flame of living consciousness that burns in the core of all existent being.” (Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 93-94)

--> Finally, we will see the event so important to the world's religions — the appearance of that which is called God (The Universal Mind).

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 1


THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE. THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN WITHOUT, LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS.

Eternity refers to an aeon, not endless eternity (SD Volume I page 62).

"The mother swells" refers to the development of limitless subjectivity into limitless objectivity (SD Volume I page 62).

~~~

The seven Eternities that we met in the first verse of the
Stanzas has come to an end; their vibrations are the beatings
of the cosmic heart, with the last vibration a thrill goes
through the darkness, marking the awakening of movement
within that which is still utterly calm....

"The moment of the Cosmic Dawn has come....

"The tension has become so great that it can no longer be
contained but must burst forth....
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 100-102)

--> A new cosmos begins. Limitless subjectivity expands into limitless objectivity.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 2

THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES OVER THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE. . .

"Breathes" means moves (SD Volume I page 63).

"Breath"; The perpetual motion of primordial (indestructable) matter (SD volume I page 55).

"Motion is eternal in the unmanifested, and periodical in the manifested." (SD volume I page 97n)

"The Darkeness that breathes over the slumbering Waters of Life" means:
Absolute Consciousness moves over Mulaprakriti, causing Mulaprakriti to stir to life. Specifically, this means that Absolute Consciousness causes atoms to appear within Mulaprakriti. (Mulaprakriti is the basic matter of the universe, from which all atoms are made, basic matter that exists even during a Great Pralaya, when all atoms disappear).

"Waters of Life" means primordial matter, or Mulaprakriti (SD Volume I page 64).

~~~

"The last vibration of the preceeding seven eternities is the
first of the next, and its thrill sweeps through the whole of
being, rippling the waters of life and touching 'the germ that
dwelleth in darkness'.

"The verse reminds us that the Darkness is not dead or inert,
for it 'breathes over the slumbering waters of life'. The Germ
which dwells within it is thus its power to manifest its self-
nature; it is the dormant seed which will awaken to active
growth when nurtured by the warmth and moisture of the
cosmic Spring.

"The Darkness breathes over the slumbering Waters -- and
we become aware of an above and a below; directions have
emerged from an entirely unorganized and undimensioned
space....

"... we are reminded of the verse in Genesis, 'And Darkness
was upon the face of the Deep'....
(Man, the Measure of All Things by Prem & Ashish pages 103-105)

--> The new activity spreads, affecting all, causing all which is resting in Pralaya to awake. Physical atoms have not appeared yet, but pre-cosmic pre-matter stirs to life.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 3

DARKNESS RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE MOTHER-DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN EGG, THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL GERM, WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD-EGG.

"Darkness"; We use the word Darkness to describe the Absolute because, to our finite understanding, it seems quite impenetrable, yet we recognize fully that our perception of such things does not do them justice. (SD Vol I pages 40-41)

"Darkness" means Divine Thought (SD Volume I page 64).

"Light drops one ray into solitary light into the Mother-deep." Divine Thought impregnantes Chaos (SD Volume I page 64).

"The Virgin Egg" is that which is eternally becoming developed (SD Volume I page 64).

"The ray causes the eternal egg to thrill." The omnipresent spiritual ray fertilizes the cosmic egg, causing cosmic matter to begin its long series of differentiations (SD Volume I page 69).

"Non-eternal" means it is periodic, manifesting in a Manvantara. This will become the mundane egg (SD Volume I page 65).

~~

“... the initial spark ... leaps the gap between subject and object, as lightning leaps from sky to earth, while the accompanying thunder voices the First Logos, the Om, the source of all sound and order....

“The dropping of the ray is the Father's fertilising act that shoots through the virgin egg; yet, besides this, the ray is the Father himself whose quickening presence within the Eternal Egg causes it to thrill with the first tremors of independent life, the freedom which is the very nature of the Father. The two poles of the Darkness re-unite, not now in the massively fused condition of the Cosmic Night, but as complemetary aspects of being in manifestation. It was in this act that the ancients saw the death of the Father, the widowing of the Mother, and the birth of the Son who is his own Father....

“... the infinite potentiality of the Matrix has been exchanged for the limitation of number. ‘That Is’ has been exchaged for ‘They Are’. The Ray causes the Eternal Egg to thrill, the breath of life ripples the undifferentiated waters of the Mother, and the surface is covered with a myriad facets in each of which the Sun of consciousness is reflected....

“... each point is now aware of its location in relation to the others.... Not until they are urged by another increment of energy, the Third Logos, will Mind turn outwards dissociating the points and and projecting its ideal content into an external world of productive movement. Each point of subjective awareness must assert its ‘I am separate’, and each project that sense of separateness on to its environment, so that they are all separated from each other and separated from the content of their experience. Thus, the non-eternal Germ drops out.

“The non-eternal Germ is the living nucleus of self-related consciousness which, rooted in the waters of the Matrix, will become the temporal universe....

“It is this process of growth, this transition from potentiality to actuality, from subtle to gross, that constitutes the condensation of the Eternal Egg into the World Egg through the action of the non-eternal root of life or Germ.

“... Divine Mind is the Eternal Egg of our verse, and the points are the individualizations in and through which the ‘non-eternal’ Germ grows and condenses into the World Egg.” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 106-114)

--> From the Absolute comes a ray of energy, causing pre-cosmic pre-matter to begin its long series of differentiations, allowing Universal Mind and the physical universe to appear.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 4

THEN THE THREE FALL INTO THE FOUR. THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE. THE LUMINOUS EGG, WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE, CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN OF LIFE.

"Milk-white curds" are the beginnings of the Milky Way (primordial matter in its first form) (SD Volume I page 67).

"The curds are the first differentiation, and probably refer also to that cosmic matter which is supposed to be the origin of the "Milky Way" — the matter we know. This "matter," which, according to the revelation received from the primeval Dhyani-Buddhas, is, during the periodical sleep of the Universe, of the ultimate tenuity conceivable to the eye of the perfect Bodhisatva — this matter, radical and cool, becomes, at the first reawakening of cosmic motion, scattered through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth, in clusters and lumps, like curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the future worlds, the 'Star-stuff.'" (SD Volume I page 69)

"Throughout the depths of Mother" means throughout the depths of space (SD Volume I page 67).

~~~

“The Ray drops, the Germ drops, and the Three fall. Spirit descends into Matter....

“The ‘Three’ of the verse are the three transcendent terms, Source, Father and Mother, integrated as an experiencing Self in Universal Mind, the Person of the Universe, the Knower who both knows and has knowledge.... ‘The Enjoyer, the object of enjoyment, and the universal Actuator ... This is the threfold Brahma.’

“These are four; Father, Mother, their relationship, and now the Son himself, the bright image of the Darkness....

“... ‘Seven Inside, Seven Outside’ [come] from the interplay of its three modes of subjectively related awareness and four modes of pojected objectivity of content. The inner seven are the worlds or levels of the divine Archtypes, the living imaginal principles which precede the outer seven or worlds of form. ...our whole ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ environment is made up of the interplay of the Three and the Four.

“Fourness now becomes synonymous with outwardness and manifestation, what we know as the outer worlds of objective reality or sensible form....

“These four are the major modes in wich what is ‘inner’ and unmanifest can be projected as ‘outer’ and manifest.... They are the modes of the four-faced Brahmâ, the Creator....

“These four are at the same time both inner determinant patterns and the outer projections of those patterns. Within is the in-turned consciousness and its total content, the ‘seven-inside’. Without is the out-turned consciousness and its projeted content, the ‘seven-outside’. The Three have fallen into the Four.... No matter how ‘real’ outer objects appear to be, nor how significant seems the waking experience, they are as unreal as shadows when contrasted with the real being of Universal Mind....

“The non-eternal germ of the previous verse has been dropped, the egg is laid, but not until verse seven does the sun rise or the solar cock break the shell....

“And now this non-eternal germ of manifest consciousness spreads throughout the waters of life and they 'curdle'. The singleness of the Ray, uniting with the multiplicity of the Waters, gives rise neither to a single lump, nor to an infmitely extended homogeneous continuum, but to a £mite though 'countless' multitude of conscious individuals, or rather the rooted seeds or nuclei of what will become individuals, from atoms to stars, from amoebae to men. These are the milk- white 'Curds' which spread throughout the depths of the now delimited ocean of Life. And this is the 'condensation' of the eternal Egg into the World-Egg.

“Singleness and multiplicity have united. The Curds are a mass of separate individuals, numerous by virtue of the Mother's multiplicity and separate by virtue of the Father's singleness which delimits each one. Yet all are bound together into a whole by the universality of the Divine Consciousness from which they have sprung and in which they are held....

“These 'curds', then, by whatever name we call them, are the ultimate 'bricks' of the universe, conscious bricks which will build and be built into the numerous grades of being that go to make up the manifest worlds. Like the stones of Thebes obeying the music of Amphion's lyre, they will move themselves into position in accord with the cosmic harmony. They are the basis of 'matter', the only 'matter' in the universe, yet a 'matter' that will be composed of empatterned organisations of energy around these individualised points in or of consciousness. How the energy arises and the manner of its organisation is taken up in the later stanzas, in particular in Stanza VI.

“Thus the milk-white curds spread or diffuse themselves throughout the depths of Mother, of the great outward-turnedness of the Matrix which is the universal background of all manifestation. In this Mother, fertilised or illumined by the Ray of the Father, the embryonic universe takes root and 'grows in the Ocean of Life', out of whose maternal depths it draws its life energy....

“Out of the union of [the Father and the Mother] is born the Son, Universal Mind, in whom the three are joined in an inseparable trinity, 'the luminous Egg which in itself is Three'. The transcendant triad give birth to themselves in the body of their son, and with his birth the Darkness vanishes (III. 6) and Maya (illusion) is born (II. 4)....

“... The energy springing from the relationship of the two poles of the ultimate Darkness is now modified so that it has to return upon itself and be received by the Mind from which it flowed out. This 'returning' of the energy of relationship makes the content appear to be external to Mind and therefore manifest. For this reason the Son is said to be the first manifest level or principle, the manifest Son of unmanifest Parents. The field of the Matrix which was dark now appears to be bright.” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 116-133)

--> The Three fall into the Four — Spirit, Matter and Universal Mind are reflected in outwardness and manifestation. Primordial matter in its first form (the beginning of the Milky Way, the beginning of the seven Planes of Existence) appear. The non-eternal germ has been dropped, the egg is laid, the sun of manifestation is now ready to rise.

Take a look at Leadbeater's Chart of the Seven Planes of Existence:

http://www3.igalaxy.net/~nick/theosophy/le...ater-levels.gif

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 5

THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO IS ONE.

"The root remains, the light remains, the curds remain." means the Spiritual Ray (light), which has come out of the Unmanifested (root), causes cosmic matter (curds) to appear. (SD Volume I page 69).

“The embryonic universe is rooted in the Ocean of Life, the living womb of the Mother. Within the Oean is shining the creative effulgence, he Light of the Darkness. The unmanifest Waters of the Mother have themselves ‘curdled’ and become the Ocean of existence. Yet ‘Oeaohoo’, the One Darkness, remains one and undivided. It cannot be divided, it cannot suffer change. It is non-being and non-existene, yet it is the ground from which all consciousness and all forms take their rise....” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish page 134)

--> With all of these events happening, the Absolute is still the same, unchanging.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 6

THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY, AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE, AND HEAT, AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO MORE; IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OR FATHER AND MOTHER.

"Darkness" actually refers to absolute light, and refers to the universe during Pralaya or absolute rest (SD Volume I page 69).

~~~

“This stanza makes use of the symbol of water in a number of different contexts, each with its qualifying adjectives; slumbering waters, the Mother-Deep, the Ocean of Life, the Ocean of Immortality....

“... the now embryonic Germ has taken root ... in every drop of the Ocean....

“Darkness now vanishes as does the darkness of sleep to a man fully awakened. The Darkness of Non-Being becomes Essence, that which is. This is the radiant ‘body’ of the Son whose birth is described in the nextr verse, a diphanous ocean of Fire and Water. The dark and massive fused experience is gone, not to return till the next Cosmic Night....

“In saying that it has vanished, the verse means, of course, vanished from the point of view of manifestation....

“In themselves knower and known are now too outward turned, too full of energy to be able to see what is ‘behind’ them....” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 138-140)

--> The focus on the Absolute has now disappeared. All emphasis is now on the coming manifestation, the Son, to appear in the next verse.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 7

BEHOLD, OH LANOO! THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY: BRIGHT SPACE SON OF DARK SPACE, WHICH EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO THE YOUNGER, THE * * * HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SON; HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM; THE ONE IS FOUR, AND FOUR TAKES TO ITSELF THREE, AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA, IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASA (OR THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE VEIL AND UNFURLING IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE, AND LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR THE SHINING ONES, AND TURNS THE UPPER INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED INTO THE GREAT WATERS.

The Ray ("Bright Space") was dropped into the new Dawn (the new Manvantara), and descended into the cosmic depths, from which it emerged as Oeaohoo the Younger (SD Volume I page 71).

Oeaohoo the Younger is another name for Kwan-Shai-Yin (Kwan-Shi-Yin), also known as Avalokiteshvara, also known as the Logos (SD Volume I page 72).

~~~

“With this verse we come to the most dramatic point of the whole creation, namely the flashing forth into full and conscious manifestation of the Universal Mind.... This is the birth of that which the Greeks called the Cosmos, or the adornd one, and worshipped as God....

“Blazing with unimaginable Light, a Light that does not dazzle; vibrant with power, yet calmly peaceful as the eyes of Buddha; strong with the male, life-giving splendor of the sun; yet soft with the cool magic of the moon; the strength of man yet the grace of woman; such is this Universal Mind....

“The content of this Mind is a living content; the gleaming Archtypal Images are a hierarchy of living spiritual powers, each with its being mingled with that of the rest, for, above all, this is a plane of harmonious unity, the music of the spheres. It is here that, in the Biblical phrase, the morning stars sing together. The very thought of it fills the heart with with the sound of flutes, with the thunder of drums and of great waters, with the soughing of the wind among the pine trees, with the song of birds in the spring, and with the whispering of the Lover in the ear of the Beloved. Here is that Beauty which throbs in works of poetry or art; here also that which shines austerely in the sciences.

“The Universal Mind is referred to in this verse under three symbols. First it is Bright Space, son of Dark Space....

“Secondly it is referrred to as Oeaohoo the Younger. Oeaohoo the Elder was the One Darkness, the one all-embracing creative Unity; and in the Universal Mind we have the manifest image of that Dark One....

[Thirdly,] “ ... it is termed the Blazing Dragon of Wisdom, for, being as it is a bright image of the Dark One, knowledge of it gives knowledge of That which is beyond all knowledge....

“Up to this point the stanza has been dealing with the descent of the Spirit into Matter, but in this verse the Son 'emerges from the depths' in much the same way that our bright consciousness seems to rise up out of the depths of our psychic background, out of the darkness of the 'unconscioussed'....

[The Four mentioned in the verse are] “ ... the sacred Quaternary which plays so important a part in the symbolism of all religions. Among many other things it is the Tetraktys of the Pythagoreans, the four-faced Brahma of the Hindus, the four-square Heavenly Jerusalem of the Christians. It is also the four-lettered Tetragrammaton of the Kabbalists, knowledge of which, according to Rabbinical legend, gave Jesus his power of working miracles....

“The union of the Four and the Three constitutes the Sapta or Seven, the Seven levels or worlds of being ‘in whom are the Seven’, the inner Seven or Divine Archetypes. Those inner Seven have somewhat the same relationship to their outer counterparts as the soul has to the body. They are their fundamental motive power, their principle of life and movement, their inner being, in a word, their soul. Therefore they are said to ‘become the Tridasa’ or Thirty, a standard round number for the well known thirty-three gods of the vedic tradition. These Gods are the creative Powers of the Cosmos and they manifest to us in the elemental powers of nature which are their earliest snd most appropriate symbols; symbols apt to be confused with the ever-living Powers which are at once the referents of the symbols and the real basis of their overt manifestations.

“The finer Seven, then, or Divine Archetypes, become by differentiation the Thirty (or Thirty-three) creative Powers working on all the levels, and by still further differentiation, the ‘Hosts’ or archetypal inner Powers and the ‘Multitudes’, their concrete outer embodiments. We may note here how Hindu tradition also expands its list of the Thirty-three gods, saying that the final number is [330 million].

“We have still to ask why this enumeration should have been given just here. It is to indicate that the whole set of principles, inner as well as outer, is represented in the Universal Mind, the blazing Dragon of Wisdom, knowing which, one knows all....

“We are next asked to behold the Mind lifting the Veil and unfurling it from East to West; lifting, as a banner is lifted and unfurled for display, which is here the display of manifestation. This Veil, the Abyss of the Kabbala, is that which separates the manifested cosmos from the unmanifest principles beyond, namely the utterly unmanifest One and the, to us, unmanifest Parents. It is the firmament which divided the waters which were above from the waters which were beneath....

“... the whole gamut of manifested levels, from the highest to the lowest, is isolated from its background and emerges as a finite Cosmos. The Above, or unmanifest principles, are ‘shut out’, while the Below, or manifest principles, are left as the Great Illusion, the magic play or Maya.

“He, the Mind, is said to mark the places for the Shining Ones; that is to say, by means of the shaping Power derived from the Father he organises his content into the Hierarchy of Divine creative Powers, the ‘thirty‘ Gods that we have already referred to....

“Lastly, we read that Oeaohoo the younger turned the Upper into a shoreless Sea of Fire, and the One Manifested into the Great Waters. Those who have won the vision of this Mind know well that shoreless Sea of flaming Light and those turbulent Waters. All that is ‘above’ the Universal Mind (i.e. all that is unmanifested) appears simply as an impenetrable wall of Light, while the One Manifested (i.e. Mind itself) becomes the great ocean of manifested existence.

“In these two, the Sea of Fire and the Sea of Water, we can recognise the two Poles of the One Darkness as they manifest in the Universal Mind. Note, however, that although, in the One, they were side by side, they are now above and below, the Fire of Spirit ‘above’ and the Waters of Matter ‘below’....” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 138-140)

--> The Universal Mind blazes with unimaginable Light, flashes forth into full and conscious manifestation, and ‘emerges from the depths’ of the Darkness. The Four (the sacred Quaternary of all religions), together with the Three (Source, Father, and Mother), produce the Seven Divine Archetypes, which then differentiate into the Thirty-three, which then differentiate into the countless ‘Hosts’ or ‘Multitudes’. The Veil (that which separates the manifested cosmos from the unmanifest principles beyond) is the firmament which divides the waters above from the waters below. The Universal Mind turns the unmanifested Darkness (the ‘above’) into an impenetrable wall of Light, and manifested existence (the ‘below’) into the great ocean of manifested existence.


.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 8

WHERE WAS THE GERM AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT, THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK HIDDEN FATHER.

Sloka Eight is said to speak of things "... imperceptible to our physical senses which are of far greater importance, more real and more permanent, than those that appeal to these senses themselves." (SD Volume I page 77).

~~~

“The Germ, the potentiality of manifest and living consciousness within the Darkness, has become the radiant glory of Divine Mind. This is the white, brilliant Son of the Darkness...

“On the other hand, the flame of consciousness that burns in our hearts is the Flame which shines so brilliantly within the Universal Mind, the one consciousness that shines in all beings, the ‘Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world’. (St. John, I. 9)

“The solution to the mystery of Being is then to be found within or at the root of our own beings, within our own hearts. Every individual can fmd for himself the solution to the mystery, but he cannot convey that solution to others; he can only point out the way that he himself has travelled, and affirm the reality of his knowledge....

“This verse explains how it is that by knowing the blazing Dragon of Wisdom, the One Darkness is also known; or that, as Jesus put it, ‘he who hath seen the Son hath seen the Father’ (Gospel of St.John, XIV. 9.): and it teaches the disciple how, by searching in his own heart's core, he may come to learn for himself ‘the Existent's kinship in the Non-existent’, to know in very truth That which transcends all knowledge.

“Although, then, the veil has been drawn behind it, and the bright consciousness of Universal Mind is, as it were, turned away from the unmanifest parents, those powers which brought Mind into being are still there, and we have now to find in manifestation existent representations of those unmanifest beings....” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 150-152)

--> By knowing the Universal Mind, the Absolute is also known. And, although the veil has been drawn and the Universal Mind shines brightly, the sources of the Universal Mind are still there, in the background, unmanifested.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 9

LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH YIELDS WATER: THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER.

"Cold flame" is matter as it existed before manifestation began, before the formation of the first atoms (SD Volume I page 82).

~~~

“At the end of verse 7, the Son, the 'White Brilliant Son of the Dark Hidden Father' (III. I), turns the One Manifested into the Great Waters, those same Waters which in verse 6 were called the Ocean of Immortality, the Ocean of 'Radiant Light which was Fire and Heat and Motion'. This verse now summarises the successive stages by which the diffusion of the Light of Consciousness throughout the Space of the Matrix produces the field of manifest energies in which the ideal intellectual patterns of the Logos can be clothed in form.

“The Ray of the Father-Light is the cold, detached Flame of the Divine Reason. But this cold Flame is rushing out in the effort to unite with its opposite pole, the Matrix; and its uniting is a Fire, a Fire in which the energy of the light is absorbed so that it now manifests on a lower scale as Heat, the Heat of Desire.

“This Heat is the living energy which swirls around each individualised point in Mind, linking the whole into an impressionable sea of existence, the Waters of Life. It is into this fluid Matrix that Mind projects the patterns of its imaginings.

“These stages correspond with the levels of manifestation: the Light of Universal Mind, the individualised Flames ('the Flame that burns in thy Lamp', verse 8), the Fire of the lower or sense mind which unites consciousness to content, the Heat of Desire which seems to draw out consciousness into ever greater identification with its content, and the watery expanse of flowing energy which, as it cools under the Breath of the Mother (III. II), condenses into the World Egg (III. 3). Thus the fiery consciousness burns in the heart of the. Waters of existence — a fervent mating of opposites which leaves the atom in a state of tension and man's soul in unrest.” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 152-153)

--> (1) The Father's cold flame (the Ray that is emitted) merges with the Mother. (2) That act creates energy. (3) This living energy links each one of the individual points of light with the "sea" of existence.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 10

FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT — THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS — AND THE LOWER ONE TO ITS SHADOWY END, MATTER; AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SVABHAVAT.

"Father-Mother" (Brahmá) expands and becomes the universe. It weaves the universe out of its own substnace (SD Volume I page 83).

"Svabhavat" (Swabhavat) is the same as Mulaprakriti, the basic matter of the universe, from which atoms are made. (SD Volume I page 83).

~~~

[The] “ ... two poles are no longer the unstained light of the Father and the undifferentiated potentiality of the Matrix. They are the two principal modes of manifest being about which we have been speaking in the preceding verses: the subjective triad of conscious modes, 'Spirit', and the quaternity of modes of objective content, 'Matter', the Three and the Four. This is the warp of the web....

“Thus we get the ancient symbol of the cross within the circle which shows how the interplay of the Father with the Mother give rise to the Son with its four poles instead of the original two. This allocation of directions also gives rise to the usual psychological feeling that Spirit is 'above', Matter is 'below', while Subject and Object are, as it were, on one level with us.

“'Svabhavat' is not merely a name to which we can ascribe arbitrary meanings, nor is it a technical term describing a special stage of the creation. It can be translated as 'the self-becoming', a term that is as fitly applicable to the whole unity of Being as it is to certain of its parts. The verse says ‘This web is the universe. . . . which is Svabhavat.’ Just as the Source is the dark self-becoming, so is the Son the same self-becoming now manifest in bright self-consciousness. We could term the latter Svabhavat the Younger. These two, the unmanifest Father and the manifest Son, are the ‘Two forms of Brahma; the formed and the formless, the mortal and the immortal, the moving and the stationary, the actual and the yon’.” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 154-155)

--> Father-Mother ( & ) give rise to the Universal Mind , which is the web that the universe is made of.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 11

IT EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT THE END OF THE GREAT DAY, AND RE-BECOME ONE WITH HER; WHEN IT IS COOLING IT BECOMES RADIANT, AND THE SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE.

In this situation, "expand" refers to the initial expanding of the universe (SD Volume I page 83).

"Fire" is the Father (SD Volume I page 83).

"Mother" is the basic matter of the universe (SD Volume I page 83).

The "Sons" are the elements (SD Volume I page 83).

"The sons dissociate and scatter." Fohat gather groups of matter into nebulae, gives them an impulse, sets them in motion, has them develop the required heat, and leaves them to follow their own growth - into galaxies, etc. (SD Volume I page 84).

"A Great Day" refers to the length of an entire Manvantara. Our Solar Manvantara will last 311 trillion (311,040,000,000,000) years (SD Volume I page 36).

~~~

“The Web expands under the breath of the Father as manifest in consciousness of subjectivity; but contracts under the touch of the Mother as manifest in objectivity or form. This we can see in our own experience: in consciousness the universe expands into that wonderful vista, the great 'spread-outness' that extends in space till it is lost in the antinomies of infinity. The greater the range of our consciousness, the wider and vaster becomes the universe. On the other hand, from the standpoint of 'matter', man shrinks into the compass of a six-foot machine, and even humanity as a whole becomes what someone described as a mere minor crustal phenomenon.

“We may say that the expansion is the projective power of consciousness, joyously sallying forth into the universe of things, entering, knowing, and making them its own. The universe is its universe, existing as its content; it is the Lord of all it surveys.

“As opposed to this joyful, conquering, expansion there is the other movement, the contractive touch of the Mother. When this movement is dominant the emphasis is shifted from consciousness to things which, like a ring of sullen enemies, crowd in on man proclaiming their utter independence of consciousness. The universe is dead, dead lumps of matter, matter which is the mistress of everything; consciousness is nothing but an epi-phenomenon....

“But this analysis is inadequate as it stands. It reflects the ordinary duality between Spirit and Matter: the feeling that we must choose between one or the other, that the materialistic view of the universe cannot be reconciled with the spiritual. Yet these two movements, the expansive and the contractive, are necessary to each other, and it is by their reconciliation in a universe of alternating modes that a relatively stable manifestation of worlds in living movement is achieved.

~~~

“With the outbursting of the third Logos, the Sons assert their independence of the universality of divine Mind. The outflowing energy dissociates them from their source and they scatter far and wide into outwardness, borne onwards by the ever advancing tides of Light. Each point within that Light becomes a focus through which the Light streams forth again upon the forms. Projecting itselfinto those forms it seizes them and issues forth afresh in strivings towards other forms which it again seeks to grasp and master....

“He has objectified his own separateness and each of his selves 'contains all within itself, and at the same time sees all in every other'. Thus they 'embrace infinitude'.

“These Sons, too, scatter to the ten directions. Each is the whole level and each is a separate image. With their own light they dispel the darkness. At the end of the 'Great Day', when Subject and Object again merge and only the consciousness of the Dark remains, these Sons, too, will no longer shine with the light of self-conscious knowing but will re-become one with that dark Mother who, like the earth, absorbs the forms of her children back into her own being....

“While the universe is 'cooling', that is, while the expansive process of creation is in progress, it becomes 'radiant'....

“ ... each plane extending into a created infinity in which the Soul can wander, almost for ever, and then again contracting to its central point as the Soul's boat goes up the Stream of Life towards its Source.” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 155-161)

IT EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT THE END OF THE GREAT DAY, AND RE-BECOME ONE WITH HER; WHEN IT IS COOLING IT BECOMES RADIANT, AND THE SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE.

--> This verse can interpreted in two ways. (1) When we strive for cosmic consciousness, it has an expanding effect on us, just as contemplating our small place in the universe can constrict our self-image. (2) The universe literally expands and contracts. During the present expansion process, we joyously sally forth into the universe of things, entering, knowing, and making them our own. Then, when the universe contracts, we will become introspective, ready to return to a state of non-activity.

We are the Sons mentioned in this verse, scattering about during the universe's present expansion into matter, ready to return to the Source at the end of the Great Day.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 3 LINE 12

THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH IS A PART OF THE WEB. REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT LORD" LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.

Fohat "hardens" the atoms by infusing energy into them. Fohat also scatters the atoms during this process (SD Volume I page 85).

The "web" refers to the universe (SD Volume I page 85).

The "Self-Existent Lord" is Primeval Light (SD Volume I page 85).

--> The atoms of the universe are energized and scattered. Each atom, although unique, reflects the ideal of the Absolute.

~~~

“This verse introduces us to the term Fohat.... Fohat is indeed that aspect of the One Darkness which appears as Power or Energy.... it is the Divine and Fiery creative power and is particularly manifest on the plane of the One Life.

“It is now necessary to say a word or two about ‘Atoms.’ The word is probably misleading as it suggests a connection with the atoms of chemistry, whereas no such connection is here intended. As H.P.B. pointed out, to the ancient Initiates signified Souls ... [or] the analogous term Monad ... or, as we might put it, spiritual units, and particularly the point-like individual Egos or Jivas. At this stage, however, we are not concerned with but with alrger units....

“As the degree of self-consiousness increases, so the sense of separateness increases, and each image of Universal Mind becomes more clearly defined, with harder outlines. This process is similar to the hardening a man's psyche undergoes as he learns to replace the loose thinking of adolescence by the clear perceptions of ordered thought, and, again, when a man checks his thought from wandering, his psychic field at once becomes ‘harder’, more definite and charged with inital energy. Thus Fohat ‘hardens’ the ‘atoms’, the [Sanskrit term] anu, the fine points in space that are Him, who is ‘Smaller than the small, greater than the great’, in other words, Brahmâ, the same Universal Mind seen in another aspect....

“That Svabhavat sends Fohat implies that the act is now in self-consciousness, whereas previous to the emergence of mind there was no separate integration that could perform deliberate action....

“Each point is a part of the web, for the web is space, and the points are in space, though we are not yet speaking of the three-dimensional space Akasha of physical experience. Each point reflects the ‘Self-Existent Lord’, the Father who is the source of their being and whose unmanifest light they now make manifest. Each point is the image of the Father mirrored in the myriad ripples of the Waters of Life. Each point becomes a world, a sphere of experience in itself.

“Reflecting thus the unity of the Father, each point — however much its light may be thus defused and scattered in the world of forms and content — is yet a unity, a world, for it is held together by the unity of that which contemplates it.... ” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 162-164)

--> Due to Fohat (the energy of the universe), the Monads become more clearly defined. Each Monad is a part of the universe, reflecting the Unmanifest, yet each Monad is a world onto itself.

We now come to Stanza IV.

"Stanza IV. shows the differentiation of the "Germ" of the Universe into the septenary hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, who are the active manifestations of the One Supreme Energy. They are the framers, shapers, and ultimately the creators of all the manifested Universe, in the only sense in which the name "Creator" is intelligible; they inform and guide it; they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and control evolution, embodying in themselves those manifestations of the ONE LAW, which we know as "The Laws of Nature."

"Generically, they are known as the Dhyan Chohans, though each of the various groups has its own designation in the Secret Doctrine.

"This stage of evolution is spoken of in Hindu mythology as the "Creation" of the Gods. (SD Vol I pages 21-22)

“The preceeding stanza described the birth of the Universal Mind and gave a summary of the further stages of creation. In this stanza, the central one of seven, we are introduced both to the many energies which derive from the transcendent Principles and to the causal powers which organize those energies into the hierarchy of being. The inner aspects precede and have lordship over the outer and manifest aspects. (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish page 167)

We should take a moment, and acknowledge the appearance of the Dhyani Chohan (mentioned in the above post), the seven Creators of the Universe. Let's take a moment and see how this group of Creators are even mentioned in the Christian Bible.

“Then God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...” (underlines added.) (Genesis 1.26 ).

The Christian Bible confirms that the Creators of the Universe were a group, not a single diety. These are the same as the Dhyani Chohan of Theosophy.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 4 LINE 1

LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS — THE SONS OF THE FIRE. LEARN, THERE IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST, FOR ALL IS ONE: NUMBER ISSUED FROM NO NUMBER.

The "Fire" refers to the Central Spiritual Son of the universe (SD Volume I page 87).

"No Number" refers to the Unimanifest. "Number issued from No Number" means the Manifested came from the Unmanifested (SD Volume I page 88).

~~~

“The Sons of Fire are not ... great beings who, in some privileged way, have comand of truth and impart it authoritatively to men, backed by applauding thunder. The Sons of Fire are the teachings themselves....

“Subsequent stanzas frequently take us over the ladder of the emerging levels as if to stress the importance of this aspect of their message. No matter how many levels and multitudes of manifest forms may be described, ‘All is One Number, issued from No Number....’

“Ground between cycles of an endless past and of an endless future, entangle in a maze of ‘Rounds’ and ‘Races’, rooted on ‘Planes’ and ‘Paths’, too often the heart of the disciple is crushed and he forgets that the Eternal Peace is round him and within him here and now.... the unity and equality of man is not to be found anywhere in the levels of multiplicity but but only in the transparent unity of the Universal Mind, and that those who attempt to realize such ideal states in the outer world are but chasing shadows....” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 170-172)

--> We sometimes let our studies become too complicated. We must remember the one most important fact — that the Absolute is the source of everything.

STANZAS OF DZYAN

STANZA 4 LINE 2

LEARN WHAT WE WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNT FROM OUR FATHERS. . . .

"The Primordial Sevan" are the Archangels of Christianity, the Dhyan Chohan (SD Volume I page 88).

~~~

“A fragment of occult commentary quoted by H.P.B. likens the inner seven to ‘the embrasures of that black impenetrable fortress’, the Absolute, and the Outer Seven to ‘the light of eternity escaping therefrom’, and it is only through those seven embrasures that the universe can be shot forth or projected from the Darkness. To vary the metaphor: the inner Seven are reflected in the calm mirror of the passionless Witnessing Consciousness and then projected outwards upon the Heaven of the Universal Mind, there to become the shining Sons of fire, the windows of the palace of the Cosmos through which alone can come all light that is within it....

“From the one Darkness have come the Two Parents, and from these three fundamental moments of Reality have sprung all the myriads of patterns and sub-patterns that forms the worlds of our experience. These are the ‘Seven’, the possible number of combinations of ‘Three’. From the three moments spring the Inner Seven, and from that seven arise the ‘sevenfold’ nature of all manifestation....

“The Inner Seven, then, are the Fathers or seven moments of the primoridal flame, and their sons are the Sons of the fire, the seven or more aspects of those moments in manifestation. We may term them the unmanifest and manifest archtypes. These Sons of fire, sprung from the Light that Lights all worlds, share in the wisdom of their Fathers (the Inner Seven) which is incorporate within that light. Knowing that Light, they know the universe which that same Light reveals or manifests from out of the Darkness. They are not inanimate stages of an entirely material evolution, but conscious powers, manifesting in their different modalities what, in the human world, are know as planetary types....

“... we must strive to regard ourselves no longer as Sons of Earth, but to assimilate ourselves as far as may be to the glorious Sons of Fire who know the Truth because they are the Spirit in which it dwells.” (Man, the Measure of All Things, by Prem & Ashish pages 174-176)

--> This information has been passed from the Absolute, to the unmanifest Inner Seven, to the manifest Sons of the Fire, to the writers of these Stanzas. It is now offered by them to humanity.