“Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number, and on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself familiar with them first, before entering on the perusal of the work itself.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 13)

In this way, H. P. Blavatsky introduced the three fundamental propositions of the Secret Doctrine. When she was later asked by Robert Bowen how to study The Secret Doctrine, she reiterated this, adding the somewhat alarming words, “even if it takes years”: “The first thing to do, even if it takes years, is to get some grasp of the ‘Three fundamental principles’ given in the Proem.”

After reading the first fundamental proposition of the Secret Doctrine, “an omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle,” our first reaction might be something like: “That makes sense. Of course. What else would it be?” However, I think that some of the implications of this apparently simple idea may be surprising, and this may explain why it could take years to get a clear apprehension of these fundamental propositions. In order to get these fundamental ideas as directly as possible, and with the least distortion, it will be necessary to quote the primary sources extensively.

“The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions:

“(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought—in the words of Māṇḍūkya Upanishad, ‘unthinkable and unspeakable.’

“To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause—dimly formulated in the ‘Unconscious’ and ‘Unknowable’ of current European philosophy—is the rootless root of ‘all that was, is, or ever shall be.’ It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is ‘Be-ness’ rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought or speculation.

“This ‘Be-ness’ is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolizes change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the one Reality, is also symbolized by the term ‘The Great Breath,’ a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute—Be-ness—symbolized by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity.”

“(b) The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically ‘the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,’ called ‘the manifesting stars,’ and the ‘sparks of Eternity.’ ‘The Eternity of the Pilgrim’ is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan.) ‘The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux.’

“This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.”

My comment: While no one would doubt that the law of periodicity is true, none of the known systems of philosophy and religion make it a fundamental proposition of their system.

“(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul—a spark of the former—through the Cycle of Incarnation (or ‘Necessity’) in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term.”

My comment: Take note of the tacit acceptance of the “Universal Over-Soul,” which is by no means widely accepted in the philosophical and religious systems of the East.

“In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle—or the over-soul—has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyāni-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations.”

(All of the above quotes are from The Secret Doctrine, as edited by Boris de Zirkoff, 1978, pagination the same as in the original 1888 edition, vol. 1, pp. 14-17.)

The implication of this third fundamental proposition is that one cannot attain enlightenment without going through the whole series of rebirths. So the Secret Doctrine does not accept instant or sudden enlightenment, as this is commonly understood in the philosophical and religious systems that teach it. Rather, this third fundamental proposition of the Secret Doctrine makes the gradual or graded path an absolute necessity.

The first fundamental proposition of the Secret Doctrine makes the philosophical doctrine of non-duality or radical unity an absolute necessity. If there is an “omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle,” there can be no real plurality. As Blavatsky explained to Robert Bowen (reported by him):

“No matter what one may study in the S.D. [Secret Doctrine] let the mind hold fast, as the basis of its ideation, to the following ideas:

“(a) The Fundamental Unity of all Existence. This unity is a thing altogether different from the common notion of unity—as when we say that a nation or an army is united; or that this planet is united to that by lines of magnetic force or the like. The teaching is not that. It is that existence is One Thing, not any collection of things linked together. Fundamentally there is One Being. This Being has two aspects, positive and negative. The positive is Spirit, or Consciousness. The negative is Substance, the subject of consciousness. This Being is the Absolute in its primary manifestation. Being absolute there is nothing outside it. It is All-Being. It is indivisible, else it would not be absolute. If a portion could be separated, that remaining could not be absolute, because there would at once arise the question of comparison between it and the separated part. Comparison is incompatible with any idea of absoluteness. Therefore it is clear that this fundamental One Existence, or Absolute Being must be the Reality in every form there is.

. . . . . . .

“The Atom, the Man, the God (she says) are each separately, as well as all collectively, Absolute Being in their last analysis, that is their real individuality. It is this idea which must be held always in the background of the mind to form the basis for every conception that arises from study of the S.D. The moment one lets it go (and it is most easy to do so when engaged in any of the many intricate aspects of the Esoteric Philosophy) the idea of separation supervenes, and the study loses its value.”

(“The ‘Secret Doctrine’ and Its Study,” cited from An Invitation to The Secret Doctrine, pp. 3-4)

In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky had stated this succinctly:

“The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature—from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyāni-Chohan to the smallest infusoria, in the fullest acceptation of the term, and whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or physical worlds—this is the one fundamental law in Occult Science.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 120)

The teaching of radical unity or non-duality has been criticized by philosophical and religious systems that do not accept it. They say that if we are all ultimately one, the implication is that we would all already be enlightened. In reply, two levels of truth are posited: one ultimate and one conventional. It is only in ultimate truth that all is one. In conventional truth, where we live our conventional lives, we are obliged to strive for enlightenment over a long series of lives.

The truth of the first fundamental proposition of the Secret Doctrine, that might have seemed so self-evident, becomes much less so when compared with the teachings of other philosophical and religious systems. Thus, an “omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle” is greatly at variance with God as taught in theistic religions. God is there usually transcendent, not immanent, as the word “omnipresent” would imply. Even in a non-dualistic system that posits a God who is immanent rather than transcendent, we still have a problem. God as the Creator, or a God that can be prayed to for granting favors, cannot legitimately be described as “immutable.”

How, then, can we legitimately describe this “omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle” without using this whole phrase each time? What can we call it with accuracy? The “esoteric Senzar Catechism,” or the “Occult Catechism,” puts the question and answer as follows:

“‘What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or not; whether there be gods or none?’ asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the answer made is—space.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 9)

“The Occult Catechism contains the following questions and answers:

“‘What is it that ever is?’ ‘Space, the eternal Anupapādaka.’ ‘What is it that ever was?’ ‘The Germ in the Root.’ ‘What is it that is ever coming and going?’ ‘The Great Breath.’ ‘Then, there are three Eternals?’ ‘No, the three are one. That which ever is, is one, that which ever was, is one, that which is ever being and becoming, is also one: and this is Space.’”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 11)

Seven years before these extracts from the catechism were published in The Secret Doctrine in 1888, the same thing had been said in the “Cosmological Notes” by the Mahatma Morya in 1881:

“What is the one eternal thing in the universe independent of every other thing?

Space.”

(The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, Appendix 2, p. 376)

In the following year, 1882, Blavatsky had explained this in her “Notes” to T. Subba Row’s article, “The Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets on the Sevenfold Principle in Man,” using phrases from the catechism:

“Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated unconsciousness (so to translate), of an element (the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods or none; whether there is a universe or no universe; existing during the eternal cycles of Maha Yugas, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara: and this is Space, . . .”

(H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 3, p. 423)

The consistent use of the term “space” in the primary sources from 1881 to 1888 indicates that this is what the first fundamental proposition of the Secret Doctrine describes as “an omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle.” This principle can more simply be referred to as “space.” The question now is: What is space? Is this empty space?

As Blavatsky’s words were reported by Robert Bowen, spoken not long before she died in 1891:

“(b) The second idea to hold fast to is that there is no dead matter. Every last atom is alive. It cannot be otherwise since every atom is itself fundamentally Absolute Being. Therefore there is no such thing as ‘spaces’ of Ether, or Akasha, or call it what you like, in which angels and elementals disport themselves like trout in water. That’s the common idea. The true idea shows every atom of substance no matter of what plane to be in itself a life.”

(“The ‘Secret Doctrine’ and Its Study,” cited from An Invitation to The Secret Doctrine, p. 4)

Blavatsky earlier had written in a footnote to T. Subba Row’s 1882 article referred to above:

“. . . Space filled with whatsoever substance or no substance at all; i.e., with substance so imponderable as to be only metaphysically conceivable.”

(Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 3, p. 405 fn.)

In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky had quoted a secret commentary:

“Extracts from a private commentary, hitherto secret:

“. . . As its substance is of a different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing through it, believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space. There is not one finger’s breath (angula) of void Space in the whole Boundless [Universe]. . . . .”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 289)

No, it is not empty space. It is substance, imponderable substance, living substance. The following quotes show that this space, this imponderable living substance, is the one eternal thing, and it periodically produces the visible cosmos.

Book of Dzyan, stanza 1, verse 1:

“The Eternal Parent (Space), wrapped in her ever invisible robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities.”

Blavatsky explains this:

“Space is the one eternal thing that we can most easily imagine, immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by either the presence or absence in it of an objective Universe. It is without dimension, in every sense, and self-existent. Spirit is the first differentiation from That, the causeless cause of both Spirit and Matter. It is, as taught in the esoteric catechism, neither limitless void, nor conditioned fullness, but both. It was and ever will be.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 35)

Further on in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky quotes what is apparently a commentary on the Book of Dzyan:

“‘The ever (to us) invisible and immaterial Substance present in eternity, threw its periodical shadow from its own plane into the lap of Māyā.’”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, pp. 62-63)

Then later in a footnote, Blavatsky writes:

“‘Creation’—out of pre-existent eternal substance, or matter, of course, which substance, according to our teachings, is boundless, ever-existing space.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, p. 239 fn.)

Not only is space described as imponderable living substance, the one eternal thing, it is also called darkness in the stanzas on cosmogenesis from the Book of Dzyan (and once dark space in contradistinction to bright space, stanza 3, verse 7).

Book of Dzyan, stanza 1, verse 5:

“Darkness alone filled the boundless all, . . .”

Blavatsky elsewhere quotes this verse and explains darkness as space:

“This, then, is the meaning:

“‘Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were once more One.’

“Space was, and is ever, as it is between the Manvantaras. The Universe in its pre-kosmic state was once more homogeneous and one—outside its aspects.”

(The Secret Doctrine, 3rd ed., vol. 3, p. 180; Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 186)

Blavatsky then quotes what is apparently a secret commentary, which uses divine substance in place of darkness or space:

“Says the Secret Doctrine:

“It is called to life. The mystic Cube in which rests the Creative Idea, the manifesting Mantra [or articulate speech—Vāch] and the holy Purusha [both radiations of prima materia] exist in the Eternity in the Divine Substance in their latent state

—during Pralaya.”

(The Secret Doctrine, 3rd ed., vol. 3, p. 181; Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 187)

These three designations of the omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle, namely, space, substance, and darkness, are put together in the following quote, which uses primordial matter in place of divine substance:

“Space filled with darkness, which is primordial matter in its pre-cosmic state. . . . and Space is the ever Unseen and Unknowable Deity in our philosophy.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 336 fn.)

In the recapitulation of the teachings in the “Summing Up” section of The Secret Doctrine, the centrality of the teaching of the one fundamental substance-principle is stressed:

“The fundamental Law in that system, the central point from which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine Substance-Principle, the one radical cause.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 273)

So we have seen the terms space, substance or matter, and darkness used to designate the one fundamental principle. Blavatsky’s Mahatma teachers also called it the one element, as did Blavatsky after them:

“However, you will have to bear in mind (a) that we recognize but one element in Nature (whether spiritual or physical) outside which there can be no Nature since it is Nature itself, and which as the Akasa pervades our solar system, every atom being part of itself, pervades throughout space and is space in fact, which pulsates as in profound sleep during the pralayas, . . . (b) that consequently spirit and matter are one, being but a differentiation of states not essences, . . . (c) that our notions of “cosmic matter” are diametrically opposed to those of western science. Perchance if you remember all this we will succeed in imparting to you at least the elementary axioms of our esoteric philosophy more correctly than heretofore.”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #11, 3rd ed., p. 63; chronological #65)

“Yes, as described in my letter—there is but one element and it is impossible to comprehend our system before a correct conception of it is firmly fixed in one’s mind. You must therefore pardon me if I dwell on the subject longer than really seems necessary. But unless this great primary fact is firmly grasped the rest will appear unintelligible. This element then is the—to speak metaphysically—one sub-stratum or permanent cause of all manifestations in the phenomenal universe.”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #15, 3rd ed., p. 89; chronological #67)

“If the student bears in mind that there is but One Universal Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying, and that all the rest—as in the world of phenomena—are but so many various differentiated aspects and transformations (correlations, they are now called) of that One, from Cosmical down to microcosmical effects, from super-human down to human and subhuman beings, the totality, in short, of objective existence—then the first and chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 75)

In the earlier Theosophical writings the one element was sometimes referred to as matter, before substance was chosen as a better term than matter:

“. . . the Eastern Occultists hold that there is but one element in the universe—infinite, uncreated and indestructible—matter; which element manifests itself in seven states . . . . Spirit is the highest state of that matter, they say, since that which is neither matter nor any of its attributes is—nothing.”

(Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 602)

As in Blavatsky’s commentary on Book of Dzyan, stanza 1, verse 1, where she says, “Spirit is the first differentiation from That, the causeless cause of both Spirit and Matter,” so here she says that Spirit is the highest state of the seven states that that matter, the one element, manifests itself in. The idea of ultimate substance or matter rather than ultimate spirit or God was hard for one of the Mahatma’s correspondents to accept. In a forceful reply, Mahatma K.H. makes it clear what they mean by their teaching of the “one life,” saying that “we believe in matter alone”:

“If people are willing to accept and to regard as God our ONE LIFE immutable and unconscious in its eternity they may do so and thus keep to one more gigantic misnomer. . . .

“When we speak of our One Life we also say that it penetrates, nay is the essence of every atom of matter; and that therefore it not only has correspondence with matter but has all its properties likewise, etc.—hence is material, is matter itself. . . .

“Matter we know to be eternal, i.e., having had no beginning (a) because matter is Nature herself (b) because that which cannot annihilate itself and is indestructible exists necessarily—and therefore it could not begin to be, nor can it cease to be (c) because the accumulated experience of countless ages, and that of exact science show to us matter (or nature) acting by her own peculiar energy, of which not an atom is ever in an absolute state of rest, and therefore it must have always existed, i.e., its materials ever changing form, combinations and properties, but its principles or elements being absolutely indestructible. . . .

“In other words we believe in MATTER alone, in matter as visible nature and matter in its invisibility as the invisible omnipresent omnipotent Proteus with its unceasing motion which is its life, and which nature draws from herself since she is the great whole outside of which nothing can exist. . . .

“The existence of matter then is a fact; the existence of motion is another fact, their self existence and eternity or indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit as a Being or an Existence—give it whatever name you will—is a chimera, a gigantic absurdity.”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #10, 3rd ed., pp. 53-56; chronological #88)

So the unceasing motion of matter or substance that is its life is what they call the one life. Thus, as stated in The Secret Doctrine’s explanation of the first fundamental proposition, we conceive of the omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle under two aspects: as absolute abstract space, and as absolute abstract motion. Either of these terms (or their synonyms) may be used to refer to this principle, because they both refer to the same thing. We in fact find both used in the Theosophical primary sources. Nonetheless, we find a clear preference for “space,” as best illustrated in the esoteric or occult catechism, quoted above. The reason for the preference for using space (or its synonyms: substance, matter, darkness, the one element) is that there can be no motion if there is not something to move. The Mahatma K.H. writes:

“Motion is eternal because spirit is eternal. But no modes of motion can ever be conceived unless they be in connection with matter.”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed., p. 139; chronological #90)

The Mahatma Morya had also addressed this in the “Cosmological Notes,” in reply to queries, again referring to motion as the life of matter:

“Your all-pervading supreme power exists, but it is exactly matter, whose life is motion, will, and nerve power, electricity. Purusha can think but through Prakriti.”

(The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, Appendix 2, p. 381)

The Mahatma K.H. explained this more fully in the article, “What is Matter and What is Force?,” using the phrase, “matter in motion”:

“Light, then, like heat—of which it is the crown—is simply the ghost, the shadow of matter in motion, the boundless, eternal, infinite space, motion and duration, the trinitarian essence of that which the Deists call God, and we—the One Element; Spirit-matter, or Matter-spirit, . . .”

(Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 220)

The same phrase, “matter in motion,” was repeated in The Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky:

“. . . we must seek for the ultimate causes of light, heat, etc., etc., in MATTER existing in super-sensuous states—states, however, as fully objective to the spiritual eye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and heat are the ghost or shadow of matter in motion.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 515)

And matter or substance is always in motion:

“It is a fundamental law in Occultism, that there is no rest or cessation of motion in Nature.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 97)

“We say and affirm that that motion—the universal perpetual motion which never ceases, never slackens nor increases its speed, not even during the interludes between the pralayas, or ‘nights of Brahma,’ but goes on like a mill set in motion whether it has anything to grind or not (for the pralaya means the temporary loss of every form, but by no means the destruction of cosmic matter which is eternal)—we say this perpetual motion is the only eternal and uncreated Deity we are able to recognise.”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed., p. 135; chronological #90)

“What things are co-existent with space? . . .

“(iii) Motion, for this is the imperishable life (conscious or unconscious as the case may be) of matter, even during the pralaya, or night of mind.”

(“Cosmological Notes,” The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, Appendix 2, p. 377)

Matter or substance is always in motion, even during pralaya or while asleep, because motion is its life. As its life, “the one life,” it is also referred to as its breath, “The Great Breath”:

“‘The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing.’”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 143, apparently quoting a secret commentary)

“This latter aspect [absolute abstract Motion] of the one Reality, is also symbolized by the term ‘The Great Breath,’ a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 14)

“It is the one life, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations, . . . Its one absolute attribute, which is itself, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the ‘Great Breath,’ which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present space. . . . Intra-Cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic motion (the visible, or that which is subject to perception) is finite and periodical.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, pp. 2-3)

“That, which is neither Spirit nor matter — that is IT — the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the ONE LIFE or the Intra-Cosmic Breath.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 258, quoting a secret commentary)

“The ‘Breath’ of the One Existence is used in its application only to the spiritual aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic esotericism; otherwise, it is replaced by its equivalent in the material plane—Motion. The One Eternal Element, or element-containing Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in every sense; co-existent with which are—endless duration, primordial (hence indestructible) matter, and motion—absolute ‘perpetual motion’ which is the ‘breath’ of the ‘One’ Element. This breath, as seen, can never cease, not even during the Pralayic eternities.”

(The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 55)

So motion, the unceasing motion of substance or matter, its life, is also called its breath, “The Great Breath,” the breath of the one element. Besides life and breath, this motion was referred to as svabhāva by the Mahatma K.H., and equated with force:

“Their [the Swabhavikas] plastic, invisible, eternal, omnipresent and unconscious Swabhavat is Force or Motion ever generating its electricity which is life.”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed. p. 136; chronological #90)

The word svabhāva means the “inherent nature” of something. For example, heat is the inherent nature of fire. Here, the something that motion is the inherent nature of would of course be the one element, living substance. The inherent nature of living things is to breathe; and substance or matter, the one element, is taught in the Secret Doctrine as living. Its life or breath is its motion, and this is its inherent nature. So motion can be described as the life of the one element, or the breath of the one element, or the inherent nature of the one element. The equation of svabhāva and motion is important for understanding the stanzas we have from the Book of Dzyan, where the term svabhāva [svâbhâvat] occurs seven times.

We here have yet another term used for motion, namely, force. The Mahatma K.H. uses “force” very much like “the force” from the Star Wars movies. It is the sole force in the universe:

“Yes; there is a force as limitless as thought, as potent as boundless will, as subtle as the essence of life, so inconceivably awful in its rending force as to convulse the universe to its centre were it but used as a lever, but this Force is not God, since there are men who have learned the secret of subjecting it to their will when necessary. Look around you and see the myriad manifestations of life, so infinitely multiform; of life, of motion, of change. What caused these? From what inexhaustible source came they, by what agency? Out of the invisible and subjective they have entered our little area of the visible and objective. Children of Akasa, concrete evolutions from the ether, it was Force which brought them into perceptibility and Force will in time remove them from the sight of man.”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed., pp. 136-137; chronological #90)

The Mahatma K.H. had begun the letter speaking of the universal mind, or infinite mind. In the next paragraph he comments:

“. . . the ‘infinite mind,’ which we name so but for agreement sake, for we call it the infinite FORCE . . .”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed., p. 134; chronological #90)

He concludes:

“The world of force is the world of Occultism and the only one whither the highest initiate goes to probe the secrets of being.”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed., p. 140; chronological #90)

In another letter the Mahatma K.H. brings many of these synonymously used but potentially confusing terms together:

“We will say that it is, and will remain for ever demonstrated that since motion is all-pervading and absolute rest inconceivable, that under whatever form or mask motion may appear, whether as light, heat, magnetism, chemical affinity or electricity—all these must be but phases of One and the same universal omnipotent Force, a Proteus they bow to as the Great ‘Unknown’ (See Herbert Spencer) and we, simply call the ‘One Life,’ the ‘One Law’ and the ‘One Element.’”

(The Mahatma Letters, letter #23B, 3rd ed., pp. 155-156; chronological #93B)

The Mahatma K.H. similarly concluded his article, “What is Matter and What is Force?,” by making it very clear that to speak of force or spirit is to speak of matter or substance, because these are in essence not two different things. Whether we speak of space or substance or matter or the one element on the one side, or motion or spirit or force or the one life on the other side, these are only different descriptions of one and the same thing. It is the same one fundamental principle symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects, the same one eternal element with its unceasing motion which is its life, the one life. The Mahatma K.H. could say that “we believe in matter alone” because spirit is the motion or life of matter or substance. Again stressing the indispensable side of the equation that is usually left out, but which cannot be separated from spirit because the two are one, he here concludes by referring to the one as indestructible matter:

“Therefore do the Occultists maintain that the philosophical conception of spirit, like the conception of matter, must rest on one and the same basis of phenomena, adding that Force and Matter, Spirit and Matter, or Deity and Nature, though they may be viewed as opposite poles in their respective manifestations, yet are in essence and in truth but one, . . . This is why . . . the Occultist . . . claims . . . that Life, whether in its latent or dynamical form, is everywhere. That it is as infinite and as indestructible as matter itself, since neither can exist without the other, . . . ‘Purush’ is non-existent without ‘Prakriti’; nor, can Prakriti, or plastic matter have being or exist without Purush, or spirit, vital energy, Life. Purush and Prakriti are in short the two poles of the one eternal element, and are synonymous and convertible terms. . . . Therefore, whether it is called Force or Matter, it will ever remain the Omnipresent Proteus of the Universe, the one element—Life—Spirit or Force at its negative, Matter at its positive pole; the former the Materio-Spiritual, the latter, the Materio-Physical Universe—Nature, Svabhavat or Indestructible matter.”

(Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 225-226)

In summary, we are asked to get some grasp of the three fundamental propositions of the Secret Doctrine, before proceeding to the study of the stanzas from the Book of Dzyan. They appear to be simple enough: (1) an omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle, symbolized under two aspects: absolute abstract space, and absolute abstract motion; (2) the law of periodicity; (3) all souls are one with the universal over-soul, itself an aspect of the unknown root, and the obligatory pilgrimage for every soul throughout the whole cycle of incarnation.

When we follow this out, comb through the primary sources and put together the references, a somewhat unexpected picture emerges. As expected, we find the teaching of radical unity, or non-duality. Then when we might have expected the one omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle to be described as spirit, we instead find it described as space, as substance that is imponderable, immaterial, invisible, indestructible, and most notably, living, as darkness, as the one element, and as matter with its life which is its motion. When this one fundamental principle is symbolized under the aspect of absolute abstract motion, we do find it described as spirit, and as unconditioned consciousness, although more often as the one life, and as the great breath. Here spirit, however, is not something distinct from and above matter, but is only a way of referring to the life or motion of imponderable matter or substance.

Additionally, the motion or life or breath of substance or matter may be called the svabhāva or inherent nature of the one element. This has important philosophical ramifications. The motion of living substance may also be called force, which is the cause of light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and all other such manifestations. Modern science studies these manifestations without being able to reach their invisible cause, super-sensuous matter in motion. The philosophical and religious systems that posit ultimate reality as spirit, or pure consciousness, or the one mind, are seeing only the aspect of the one fundamental principle that is symbolized as absolute abstract motion. According to the Secret Doctrine, they are missing the aspect symbolized as absolute abstract space. There can be no spirit distinct from substance, because the two in our conceptions are actually one and inseparable.

In brief, ultimate reality as taught in the first fundamental proposition of the Secret Doctrine, an omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle, is space (Sanskrit dhātu), the one element, imponderable living substance with its motion which is its life.

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(continued and concluded)

The water-men, terrible and bad, were not dense physical men like those of today, as The Secret Doctrine tells us. The immediately preceding verse from the Book of Dzyan, verse 4, gives the time explained as the first of “the seven geological changes which accompany and correspond to the evolution of the Seven Root-Races of Humanity,” and at the beginning of the fourth Round (SD 2.47). Dense physical humanity would not appear until the middle of the third root-race, eighteen million years ago, while “the first Root-Race was as ethereal as ours is material” (SD 2.46; see also 2.156). This was in accordance with the ethereal state of our globe at that time, since “man’s organism was adapted in every race to its surroundings” (SD 2.46). Hence, the water-men would have left no physical traces. Moreover, they would have preceded even the ethereal first root-race. They are not described in our history books because the time when they lived was pre-history, and the only records we now have of pre-history are myths.

The two stories that involve water-men given earlier from the Kathā-sarit-sāgara, “Ocean of the Streams of Story,” are useful to this inquiry only insofar as they preserve the idea of water-men, and provide Sanskrit names for water-men from among many possibilities. The Sanskrit names they use are jala-mānuṣa and jala-pūruṣa (and these forms rather than jala-manuṣa and jala-puruṣa). These stories, even as myths that might preserve dim memories or echoes of the past, would not pertain to the prehistorical water-men described in the Book of Dzyan.

The account given by the Babylonian priest Berossos is in quite a different category. It purports to be based on very ancient records, much like the Book of Dzyan. Like the Book of Dzyan, the Babylonian account is said to have come from a divine instructor, a being who is not of earth’s humanity. Only such a being could know the (pre-)history of our globe prior to the time of humanity. Such beings are said, both in the Babylonian account and in the Book of Dzyan, to have taught infant humanity all the arts and sciences necessary for civilization, and also the (pre-)history of our globe. The Babylonian account provides us with the only parallel source to the Book of Dzyan so far found on the time of the water-men, terrible and bad. It will therefore be worthwhile to see what has been learned about this account since Blavatsky quoted it in 1888 from an 1832 translation.

The history of Babylonia by Berossos (written about 280 B.C.E.) remains lost. The book by Greek historian Alexander Polyhistor (who lived circa 105 to 35 B.C.E.) that quoted or summarized it remains lost. The book by historian of the Christian church Eusebius (who lived circa 260 to 340 C.E.) that quoted or abridged it from Polyhistor, remains lost. The account by Berossos has reached us in the book by Byzantine Christian historian George Syncellus (written 808-810 C.E.) that quoted it from Eusebius. This is the source that Isaac Preston Cory translated it from in his 1832 Ancient Fragments, which is the source that Blavatsky used. Thus, for the Babylonian account by Berossos we have no new source material. We now have newer editions of the Greek text and newer English translations of it,¹ although these do not substantially differ from the 1832 edition and translation by Cory.

In the case of the very fragmentary Babylonian clay tablets giving The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876), a book that Blavatsky used and cited along with the related account by Berossos, the situation has changed greatly. These seven ancient cuneiform tablets have now been almost entirely recovered.² The text that they contain, called the Enūma Eliš (Enuma Elish), has come to be known in modern times as the Babylonian “Epic of Creation.” This is because it includes an account of creation, often taken to be the standard Babylonian one, and comparison of this to the Biblical book of Genesis has been of much interest. However, this epic is better described as “a narrative myth composed to assert and justify the status of Marduk as head of the pantheon,”³ and its account of creation is only one among others, although it is the best preserved one. The Enuma Elish appears to have been in widespread use from around 1100 B.C.E. until the end of Babylonia as a nation, even being recited during the annual new year’s festival at Babylon.⁴ It is clearly an exoteric account, written for the general public in the form of an epic poem.

Berossos is now usually thought to have based his account of creation on the Enuma Elish. The truthfulness of his account had been doubted since early times, especially by his two Christian transmitters, Eusebius and George Syncellus. The discovery of the cuneiform writings in the mid-1800s, and in particular the recovery of the Enuma Elish with its similar creation account, showed that Berossos was a faithful recorder of Babylonian traditions. A comparison of the two shows that the broad lines of the creation account do indeed agree in both. However, there are a number of significant differences between the two.

Berossos, in agreement with the Enuma Elish, wrote about the great god Bel (Marduk) cutting the primordial woman in half to form the earth with one half of her and the heavens with the other half. He then says, as reported by Polyhistor, that this is allegorical. The Enuma Elish gives this as a straightforward narrative (tablets 4 and 5), culminating in Marduk forming the heavens with half of her (tablet 4, lines 137-138), and the earth with the other half of her (tablet 5, line 62), with no indication that it is allegorical. The statement by Berossos that this is allegorical was presumably based on esoteric texts that he, as a Babylonian priest, would have had access to. The assumption that Berossos had access to secret texts was confirmed by the research of G. Komoróczy presented in his article, “Berosos and the Mesopotamian Literature” (Acta Antiqua, Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 21, 1973, pp. 125-152), where he writes (pp. 128-129):

“It is a fact known for a long time that part of the literature written in cuneiform was regarded as secret science. Tablets originally prepared in a cryptographic system of writing have been preserved, but much more important and characteristic than these are those texts, which are qualified as secret by their colophons. . . . From the investigations of R. Borger we also know that the secret tablets were accessible for the priests. Initiation, priestly education and priestly office were prerequisites for the survey of the whole of the tradition. Berosos, who was a priest, on account of his position could reach the whole literature of the age, the fresh copies just like the «closed», library material.

“. . . In the prologue, among the remarks on the sources used by Berosos we read that Berosos found numerous «recordings» (ἀναγϱαφή) in Babylon. These recordings were preserved there from time immemorial, «with great care». The remark expresses exactly the same thing as the colophon of the tablets in cuneiform writing, when for example it writes as follows: ki-ma gaba-ri labiri (LIBIR.RA) bābili ^ki šaṭir (AB.SAR), «Written on the basis of an old Babylonian specimen». However, beyond this, the whole formula of Berosos, especially the phrase μετὰ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας, points to the same thing as the colophon of the secret clay tablets. That is, Berosos used the ancient, carefully preserved, secret texts of the Babylonian temple.”

The carefully preserved records that Berossos used covered a period going far back in time, he reports. As his text has come down to us through Polyhistor to Eusebius to Syncellus, he says that they covered a period of more than 150,000 years. His text in the Armenian translation of the still lost chronicle by Eusebius here has 2,150,000 years. While this discrepancy cannot in our present state of knowledge be rectified, the first number appears to be too short. It should be more than 432,000 years, since in the second part of his history Berossos gives the reigns of kings covering 432,000 years up to the time of the flood. Thus, regarding the number 150,000, the newer English translation by Verbrugghe and Wickersham notes:

“The manuscript reading of this number is in doubt. Pliny the Elder says Berossos had records going back 490,000 years; Khairemon of Alexandria, who was the emperor Nero’s tutor and was most likely referring to Berossos, says that Babylonian records go back over 400,000 years; and Cicero de Divinatione (On Divination) 1.36 gives the number of years for which Babylonian records supposedly existed as 470,000.”⁵

Likewise, the newer English translation by Burstein notes:

“Since the chronological data scattered through books two and three total almost 468,000 years, it is clear that neither the 150,000 years of the Greek nor the 2,150,000 years of the Armenian text can represent Berossus’ total for the period of time supposedly covered by these records. Unfortunately, no solution to the problem is possible although figures given by authors dependent on Berossus for the age of the Babylonian astronomical records—490,000 years according to Pliny the Elder; 480,000 years according to Sextus Julius Africanus; and 400,000 years according to Chaeremon—also point to a figure somewhat over 400,000 years.”⁶

Thus, Berossos had access to records reportedly covering a period of more than 400,000 years that he said had been preserved at Babylon with great care. He had access not only to the public ones but also to the secret ones, as confirmed by the research of Borger and Komoróczy. While the Christian transmitters of his text (Eusebius and George Syncellus) regarded him as a fabricator because of these unbelievably high numbers of years, students of Theosophy with its even higher numbers of years will be more sympathetic to Berossos.⁷

We had noted that there are a number of significant differences between the account by Berossos and the Enuma Elish. Since the parts in which the account by Berossos differs from the Enuma Elish have not so far been found in other Babylonian or Sumerian creation accounts, it is reasonable to think that they come from the secret texts that he had access to. What, then, are the parts of the account by Berossos in which he differs from the Enuma Elish, and do these agree with the Book of Dzyan?

In the account by Berossos, the creation story is told by the fish-man Oannes, a divine instructor who brought civilization to the people. In the Enuma Elish, the creation story is an integral part of the epic, not told by someone else. In the account by Berossos, the primordial woman or sea is simply there when the great god Bel (Marduk) comes and divides her in half to form the earth and the heavens. In the Enuma Elish, the primordial woman or sea (Tiamat) engages in an epic battle with Marduk that Marduk wins and then divides her. In the account by Berossos, at the beginning there was only darkness and water. In the Enuma Elish, at the beginning there was Apsu, the subterranean waters, and Tiamat, the primordial woman or sea, who had mingled their waters together, with no mention of darkness.⁸ In the account by Berossos, unusual creatures were produced in this water without a stated reason. In the Enuma Elish, the primordial woman or sea (Tiamat) creates unusual and fearsome creatures to help her in her fight against Marduk. Since this occurs later in the story, the unusual creatures are not said to be created in the water, nor are they said to dwell in the water. Moreover, the unusual creatures described in the two sources differ significantly. In all these cases, the account by Berossos agrees with the Book of Dzyan, while the Enuma Elish does not.

The water-men, terrible and bad, are described in the Book of Dzyan (stanza 2, verse 8) as “the forms which were two- and four-faced”; “the goat-men, and the dog-headed men, and the men with fishes’ bodies.” The unusual creatures in the account by Berossos are described as follows (Burstein translation, 1978, p. 14):

“It (sc. Oannes) says that there was a time when everything was darkness and water and that in this water strange beings with peculiar forms came to life. For men were born with two wings and some with four wings and two faces; these had one body and two heads, and they were both masculine and feminine, and they had two sets of sexual organs, male and female. Other men were also born, some with the legs and horns of goats, and some with the feet of horses and the foreparts of men. These were hippo-centaurs in form. Bulls were also born with human heads and four-bodied dogs with fish tails growing from their hind quarters, and dog-headed horses and men and other beings with the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fish and still other creatures with the forms of all sorts of beasts. In addition to these there were fish and creeping things and snakes and still further amazing (variously formed) creatures differing in appearance from one another. Images of these also are set up (one after another) in the temple of Bel.”

We notice that most of these are unusual kinds of men, or hybrids of men with animals. They well agree with the kinds of water-men, terrible and bad, of the Book of Dzyan. Only a few are unusual kinds of animals, animals that are not hybrids of men with animals.

The unusual creatures in the Enuma Elish are listed only by their names; their descriptions are not given (tablet 1, lines 133-143). Since the Babylonian language has been extinct for two thousand years, what these creatures are had to be determined by other means. While the identifications of some of them remain uncertain, it can be said that only three, four, or five of the stated eleven are unusual kinds of men, or hybrids of men with animals.

The Enuma Elish says that there are eleven of these unusual creatures (line 146), after giving only eight individual names. If we take the eight names that are listed, and add the generic-sounding name that is used in this grouping, “fierce demons,” and then add the two generic-sounding names that are mentioned in the preceding lines, “giant serpents” and “fearful monsters,” we can arrive at eleven: giant serpents, fearful monsters, the Hydra, the Dragon, the Hairy Hero, the Great Demon, the Savage Dog, the Scorpion-man, fierce demons, the Fish-man, and the Mighty Bull (Lambert translation, 2013). As may be seen, only three of these are unusual kinds of men, or hybrids of men with animals: the Hairy Hero, the Scorpion-man, and the Fish-man. Additionally, the “Mighty Bull” could be a “Bull-man,” and the “Savage Dog” might be a “Lion-man.”⁹

The account of the unusual creatures in the Enuma Elish is given in the following lines, along with some preceding lines for context (Lambert translation, 2013, pp. 57-59):

110       The gods took no rest, they . . . . . . .
111 In their minds they plotted evil,
112       And addressed their mother Tiāmat,

“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
123 Make battle, avenge them!
124       [ . . ] . . . . reduce to nothingness!”
125 Tiāmat heard, the speech pleased her,
126       (She said,) “Let us do now all you have advised.”
127 The gods assembled within her.
128       They conceived [evil] against the gods their begetters.
129 They . . . . . and took the side of Tiāmat,
130       Fiercely plotting, unresting by night and day,
131 Lusting for battle, raging, storming,
132       They set up a host to bring about conflict.
133 Mother Hubur, who forms everything,
134       Supplied irresistible weapons, and gave birth to giant serpents.
135 They had sharp teeth, they were merciless . . . .
136       With poison instead of blood she filled their bodies.
137 She clothed the fearful monsters with dread,
138       She loaded them with an aura and made them godlike.
139 (She said,) “Let their onlooker feebly perish,
140       May they constantly leap forward and never retire.”
141 She created the Hydra, the Dragon, the Hairy Hero,
142       The Great Demon, the Savage Dog, and the Scorpion-man,
143 Fierce demons, the Fish-man, and the Mighty Bull,
144       Carriers of merciless weapons, fearless in the face of battle.
145 Her commands were tremendous, not to be resisted.
146       Altogether she made eleven of that kind.

As is clearly evident, the Enuma Elish is an epic poem written for the general public. By contrast, the account by Berossos was intended as history, being part of a history of Babylonia written for educated Greeks. Berossos may have realized that there would be no more Babylonian priests. He may have wished to preserve some of his esoteric knowledge in Greek before it was lost forever. Whatever the facts of this may be, he has given us an account that is unique in the annals of history. Although what we have of the history by Berossos is only a brief summary, passed from one writer to another, it is extremely valuable. It is our only window into ancient sources that apparently agree with the Book of Dzyan on the pre-history of our globe at the time of the water-men, terrible and bad.

Notes:

1. Newer editions of the Greek text of Berossos, in chronological order starting with the most recent:

De Breucker, G. “Berossos of Babylon (680).” Brill’s New Jacoby. Editor in Chief: Ian Worthington. Brill Online, 2010. Reference. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-jacoby/berossos-of-babylon-680-a680>

Mosshammer, Alden A. In Georgii Syncelli, Ecloga Chronographica, pp. 28-40. Leipzig: BSB B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1984. See: Berossos, Greek, Mosshammer 1984

Jacoby, Felix. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Teil 3, Band C.1, Numbers 680 and 685, pp. 364-397 and 398-410. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1958. See: Berossos, Greek, Jacoby 1958

Newer English translations of the text of Berossos, in chronological order starting with the most recent:

De Breucker, G. “Berossos of Babylon (680).” Brill’s New Jacoby. Editor in Chief: Ian Worthington. Brill Online, 2010. Reference. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-jacoby/berossos-of-babylon-680-a680> Brill’s New Jacoby, started in 2007 and expected to be completed in 2017, is a new expanded version of Felix Jacoby’s multi-volume collection of the fragments preserved by Greek historians (listed above). While Jacoby often included German translations, this collection includes English translations. The Greek text and English translation of Berossos by Geert de Breucker were added to this database in 2010. See: Berossos, English, de Breucker 2010

Adler, William, and Paul Tuffin. The Chronography of George Synkellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. This is the first complete translation of the Greek book by Synkellos or Syncellus that includes the account by Berossos from Polyhistor by way of Eusebius. The Berossos account begins on p. 38. See: Berossos, English, Adler and Tuffin 2002

Verbrugghe, Gerald P., and John M. Wickersham. Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,1996. About their translation they write, p. 10: “We want to add that it is not our goal to present a complete and scholarly commentary on Berossos’s and Manetho’s histories. . . . Rather, we want to present in one volume an accurate translation of what remains of Berossos’s and Manetho’s histories in a form that will appeal to the student interested in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt as well as to one interested in Hellenistic Mesopotamia and Egypt.” See: Berossos, English, Verbrugghe and Wickersham 1996

Burstein, Stanley Mayer. The Babyloniaca of Berossus. Sources and Monographs: Sources from the Ancient Near East, vol. 1, fasc. 5. Malibu: Undena Publication,1978. About his translation he writes, p. 11: “The basis of the translation is the excerpts from Eusebius’ abridgement of Polyhistor’s epitome preserved by Syncellus . . . . Like all compromises, the resulting translation is not perfect, but it does make it possible for the first time for scholars and students interested in the content of Berossus’ work to read it in a form as close to the original structure of his book as can now be determined.” See: Babylonaica of Berossus

A partial English translation is found in: Heidel, Alexander. The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942; 2nd ed., 1951, pp. 77-78 (the excerpt on creation). https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/publications/misc/babylonian-genesis-story-creation

A partial English translation from the 1923 German translation by Paul Schnabel is found in pieces in: Brandon, S. G. F. Creation Legends of the Ancient Near East, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1963, pp. 111-113, 117.

It may be noted that there were three editions of Isaac Preston Cory’s Ancient Fragments. The 1832 edition that Blavatsky cited is the 2nd edition, greatly expanded from the 1st edition. The 1st edition, 1828, nonetheless also included the Berossos text in Greek and English. The third edition, 1876, prepared by E. Richmond Hodges, was called “a new and enlarged edition,” although it omitted the Greek text, Cory’s lengthy “Introductory Dissertation,” and what Hodges regarded as “the Neo-Platonic forgeries which Cory had placed at the end.”

2. The most complete editions of the Akkadian text of the Enūma Eliš (Enuma Elish), in chronological order starting with the most recent:

Lambert, W. G. In Babylonian Creation Myths. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2013. https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_4MQ0W1WZY.HTM

Kämmerer, Thomas R., and Kai A. Metzler. Das babylonische Weltschöpfungsepos Enūma elîš. Alter Orient und Altes Testament, Band 375. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2012.

Talon, Philippe. Enūma Eliš: The Standard Babylonian Creation Myth, Introduction, Cuneiform Text, Transliteration, and Sign List with a Translation and Glossary in French. [Helsinki]: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2005.

Lambert, W. G., and Simon B. Parker. Enuma Eliš: The Babylonian Epic of Creation, The Cuneiform Text; text established by W. G. Lambert and copied out by Simon B. Parker. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.

The most complete English translations of the Enūma Eliš (Enuma Elish), in chronological order starting with the most recent:

Lambert, W. G. In Babylonian Creation Myths. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2013. https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_4MQ0W1WZY.HTM

Lambert, W. G. “Mesopotamian Creation Stories.” In Imagining Creation, ed. Markham J. Geller and Mineke Schipper, pp. 15-59. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

Foster, Benjamin R. In Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. 1st ed. 1993; 2nd ed. 1996; 3rd ed. 2005. The 1st and 2nd eds. are in two volumes, and the translation is in vol. 1. Foster’s translation is also in The Context of Scripture, ed. William W. Hallo, vol. 1, Leiden: Brill, 1997, but omitting tablets 6 and 7. See: Enuma Elish, English, Foster 2005

Dalley, Stephanie. In Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989; revised edition, 2000.

Speiser, E. A., revised and supplemented by A. K. Grayson in the 3rd edition. In Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James B. Pritchard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1st ed., 1950; 2nd ed., 1955; 3rd ed., 1969. See: Enuma Elish, English, Speiser and Grayson 1969

Heidel, Alexander. In The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1st ed. 1942; 2nd ed. 1951. This translation was made before the publication in 1966 of what became the standard edition of the cuneiform text, by Lambert and Parker, and remained so for four decades.

King, L. W. The Seven Tablets of Creation, 2 vols. London: Luzac and Co., 1902. Volume 1 is “English Translations” of the Enuma Elish, and Volume 2 is “Supplementary Texts,” consisting of facsimiles of the cuneiform text fragments. At this point in time, the text was still quite fragmentary, even though King had identified many more fragments of it than George Smith was able to use in his 1876 book, The Chaldean Account of Genesis.

3. Lambert, “Mesopotamian Creation Stories,” 2008, p. 17. See also the chapter titled “The Rise of Marduk in the Sumero-Babylonian Pantheon” in Lambert’s 2013 book, Babylonian Creation Myths, which begins (p. 248): “Since the purpose of the Epic was to show that Marduk had replaced Enlil as head of the pantheon, . . .” Lambert had earlier attempted to clarify what the Enuma Elish is in relation to previous ideas that it is “the” Babylonian Epic of Creation in his article, “A New Look at the Babylonian Background of Genesis” (The Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., vol. 16, 1965, pp. 287-300). He there writes (p. 291): “The first major conclusion is that the Epic of Creation is not a norm of Babylonian or Sumerian cosmology. It is a sectarian and aberrant combination of mythological threads woven into an unparalleled compositum. In my opinion it is not earlier than 1100 B.C. It happens to be the best preserved Babylonian document of its genre simply because it was at its height of popularity when the libraries were formed from which our knowledge of Babylonian mythology is mostly derived. The various traditions it draws upon are often perverted to such an extent that conclusions based on this text alone are suspect. It can only be used safely in the whole context of ancient Mesopotamian mythology.” Foster agrees, saying in the introduction to his translation of the Enuma Elish (2005, p. 436): “This poem should not be considered ‘the’ Mesopotamian creation story; rather, it is the individual work of a poet who viewed Babylon as the center of the universe, and Marduk, god of Babylon, as head of the pantheon.”

4. For the dating, see Lambert, “Mesopotamian Creation Stories,” 2008, p.17. Interestingly, G. Komoróczy provides good evidence that the Enuma Elish was not a re-working of earlier Babylonian or Sumerian accounts, as we might expect, but was imported from outside in the latter part of the second millennium B.C.E. See his article, “‘The Separation of Sky and Earth,’ The Cycle of Kumarbi and the Myths of Cosmogony in Mesopotamia,” Acta Antiqua, Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 21, 1973, pp. 21-45, especially pp. 30-33. For the new year’s festival, see Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, 2nd ed., 1951, pp. 16-17, and Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, rev. ed., 2000, p. 231.

5. Verbrugghe and Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho, 1996, p. 40 fn. 13.

6. Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus, 1978, p. 13 fn. 3.

7. Theosophy teaches that our current fifth root-race humanity has been in existence for about one million years (The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, p. 435), and that the cradle of humanity, meaning our current fifth root-race humanity, is India. At present, Sumer is often regarded as the world’s oldest civilization, going back to somewhere around 4000 B.C.E. See, for example, Samuel Noah Kramer’s History Begins at Sumer (3rd rev. ed., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981; first published in 1956), and his The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). At the time Blavatsky wrote Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, Sumer was just being identified as distinct from the later Mesopotamian civilizations of Assyria and Babylonia, on the basis of the cuneiform writings that were discovered in the mid-1800s. The term “Sumerian” for these early people and their language and civilization, proposed by Jules Oppert in 1869, had not yet come into general use. Henry C. Rawlinson, who in 1852-1853 was the first to definitely identify Sumerian as a distinct language, called it Akkadian. Other scholars of that time, including Joseph Halévy whom Blavatsky referred to, followed him in using this term for the language and the people. However, the term Akkadians later came to be used for the Assyrians and Babylonians as distinguished from the Sumerians, and is so used today. (For this history, see Kramer, The Sumerians, pp. 20-21.) Using the term Akkadians in the old sense of the earliest civilization of Mesopotamia, now called Sumerians, Blavatsky wrote about them (first in Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 576, and then repeated in The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, p. 203): “They were simply emigrants on their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate a barbarian people.” According to this, the old records that Berossos said were preserved at Babylon with great care ultimately came from India.

8. Regarding “darkness” in the account by Berossos: The Enuma Elish had shown that the creation account given by Berossos was not fabricated by him, but rather that it agreed in general with this “standard” Babylonian creation account. So much so that the Enuma Elish was sometimes used in textual criticism regarding the Berossos text that was transmitted to us. This was done in the 1923 book by Paul Schnabel, Berossos und die babylonisch-hellenistische Literatur, described as “the great summarization closing down the earlier investigations” (Komoróczy, “Berosos and the Mesopotamian Literature,” p. 126). In his book Schnabel concluded (p. 156) that the Greek word skotos, “darkness,” must be an interpolation by a Jew or Christian in the Berossos text, influenced by the Biblical book of Genesis (chapter 1, verse 2: “darkness was upon the face of the deep”), partly because “darkness” does not occur in the opening of the Enuma Elish. The Berossos text has: “It (sc. Oannes) says that there was a time when everything was darkness and water” (Burstein translation). Burstein (1978 translation), and Verbrugghe and Wickersham (1996 translation), and Adler and Tuffin (2002 translation), and de Breucker (2010 translation) all have notes here saying that “darkness” is or is most likely an interpolation, agreeing with the influential conclusion of Schnabel, which was also accepted by Felix Jacoby in his 1958 standard Greek edition and accompanying German translation (p. 370). However, one must wonder why a writer such as Eusebius or Syncellus would want to make the account by Berossos sound more like Genesis, when their purpose in quoting the account by Berossos was to show how false it was for the very reason that it did not agree with scripture. De Breucker (2010) adds to his note about “darkness” being an interpolation: “In a sense, it is true that according to Enuma Elish, the universe was initially dark: Bel-Marduk had yet to create the light-giving heavenly bodies. Since Abydenos (BNJ 685 F 1), however, only mentions water, we accept that ‘darkness’ is an interpolation.” The parallel account of Berossos by Abydenos would provide weighty evidence, if it was not so very brief. Abydenos sums up all of the first book by Berossos in not even a full sentence, and in the same sentence moves on to the material from the second book by Berossos. Thus, the omission of “darkness” in his too brief account means little. Then, if “darkness” is an interpolation here at the beginning of the account by Berossos in his first book, it must also be an interpolation later in this book where he says (de Breucker translation, 2010): “Belos, whom they translate as Zeus, cut the darkness in half and separated earth and sky from each other and ordered the universe.” Indeed, Schnabel so regarded it. Now comes the next sentence: “The creatures could not endure the power of the light and were destroyed.” At this point, we have to assume not only the interpolation of a word, “darkness,” but of a whole sentence. Indeed, Jacoby (but not Schnabel) regarded the whole paragraph that includes this sentence as an interpolation. Yet he does not regard the sentence after this paragraph as an interpolation: “Belos also completed the stars and the sun and the moon and the five planets.” We may note that the Burstein translation and the Verbrugghe and Wickersham translation were based on Jacoby’s Greek text, and the de Breucker translation in Brill’s New Jacoby followed it in bracketing off these alleged interpolations. As opposed to this now widely held idea that “darkness” is an interpolation, there are yet more reasons. Berossos did not base his account solely on the Enuma Elish, as had been assumed after its discovery, nor is the Enuma Elish even primarily an “Epic of Creation,” as it has come to be called, let alone “the” Babylonian Epic of Creation. We do not have, by any means, the whole of the Mesopotamian literature, whether the Babylonian, or especially the older Sumerian. Komoróczy has shown that Berossos must have drawn upon Sumerian sources, already ancient in his time, and not just on Babylonian sources (“Berosos and the Mesopotamian Literature,” pp. 140-142). Berossos also drew upon “secret texts of the Babylonian temple,” as confirmed by Komoróczy. The absence of “darkness” in the public Enuma Elish, or in other fragmentary Babylonian creation tales that have so far been recovered (see Lambert, “Further Babylonian Creation Tales,” in his Babylonian Creation Myths, 2013), does not prove its absence in the secret texts that Berossos could draw upon, or in other public texts that have not yet been recovered. For all the above reasons, I do not find the idea that “darkness” is an interpolation in the account by Berossos to be convincing.

9. The Mighty Bull had been translated by Lambert earlier as the Bull-man (2008, p. 40), in agreement with the Dalley translation (2000, p. 237) and the Foster translation (2005, p. 444). For “the Savage Dog” in the Lambert translation (2008 and 2013), which is “a rabid dog” in the Dalley translation (2000), the Foster translation (2005) has “lion men.” Foster has put these all in the plural (2005, p. 444): monster serpents, fierce dragons, serpents, dragons, hairy hero-men, lion monsters, lion men, scorpion men, mighty demons, fish men, and bull men. Two detailed studies of these creatures in English can be found in the two-part article, “Mischwesen,” by F. A. M. Wiggermann and by A. Green in Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie, Band 8, 3./4. Lieferung, 1994, pp. 222-264. Wiggermann provides more background on these creatures and their identifications in his 1992 book, Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts, “Inventory of Monsters,” pp. 143-188.

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Although our history books do not tell us of any such beings as water-men, a history book from long ago does. This is the lost history book by the Babylonian priest Berossos (Berossus, Berosos, Berosus), which was quoted by later Greek writers. Berossos lived circa 300 B.C.E., and as a Babylonian priest he was heir to a long tradition of Babylonian knowledge. Berossos lived just after the conquest of Babylonia by Alexander the Great, so he learned the Greek language and wrote in Greek. Part of his history book was quoted or recounted by the Greek writer Alexander Polyhistor, who introduces it as follows:

“Berossus, in the first book of his history of Babylonia, informs us that he lived in the age of Alexander the son of Philip. And he mentions that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon with the greatest care, comprehending a period of above fifteen myriads [150,000] of years: and that these writings contained histories of the heaven and of the sea; of the birth of mankind; and of the kings, and of the memorable actions which they had achieved.”

(Isaac Preston Cory, Ancient Fragments of the Phoenician, Chaldaean, Egyptian, Tyrian, Carthaginian, Indian, Persian, and Other Writers, 2nd edition, London: 1832, p. 21; also in new and enlarged edition, revised by E. Richmond Hodges, London: 1876, p. 56)

Alexander Polyhistor then recounts from the history book by Berossos the beginnings of Babylonia. Babylonia was originally a lawless country. There appeared from the sea a being named Oannes, who had the body of a fish. He taught the people all the arts and sciences. He gave them laws, writing, mathematics, building, agriculture, etc. Oannes thus brought civilization to the country. As part of the knowledge that Oannes brought, he wrote an account of the generation of humanity. The purport of what Oannes wrote is given by Berossos via Alexander Polyhistor as follows:

“There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced of a twofold principle. There appeared men, some of whom were furnished with two wings, others with four, and with two faces. They had one body but two heads: the one that of a man, the other of a woman: and likewise in their several organs both male and female. Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats: some had horses’ feet: while others united the hind quarters of a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise were bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with fourfold bodies, terminated in their extremities with the tails of fishes: horses also with the heads of dogs: men too and other animals, with the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every species of animals. In addition to these, fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other monstrous animals, which assumed each other’s shape and countenance. Of all which were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon.”

(Cory, Ancient Fragments, 1832, pp. 23-24; rev. ed., 1876, pp. 58-59)

The accuracy of the account given by Berossos as truly representing Babylonian tradition was confirmed by more ancient cuneiform tablets or inscriptions. One of these is a tablet discovered at Cutha (or Kutha). It was described by George Smith and A. H. Sayce in the book, The Chaldean Account of Genesis, as follows:

“This is a very obscure inscription, the first column, however, forms part of a relation similar to that of Berosus in his history of the Creation; the beings who were killed by the light, and those with men’s heads and bird’s bodies, and bird’s heads and men’s bodies, agree with the composite monsters of Berosus, while the goddess of chaos, Tiamtu, who is over them, is the same as the Thalatth of the Greek writer. It may be remarked that the doctrine of the Greek philosopher, Anaximander, that man has developed out of creatures of various shape, and once like the fish was an inhabitant of the water, is but a reminiscence of the old Babylonian legend.”

(The Chaldean Account of Genesis, by George Smith, new edition, revised by A. H. Sayce, London: 1880, p. 97; corresponding to the 1876 edition, pp. 106-107, but with the addition of the last sentence)

These are the sources that Blavatsky was referring to when commenting on Book of Dzyan, stanza 2, verses 5 and 6 (The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, pp. 52-56). She took for granted that the reader had this information when making some of her comments. Since then, newer translations of this material have been published, the latest of which is: Berossos and Manetho: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, Introduced and Translated by Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John M. Wickersham, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

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Book of Dzyan (Anthropogenesis), stanza 2, verses 5-6:

“5. The Wheel whirled for thirty crores (of years, or 300,000,000). It constructed rūpas (forms): soft stones that hardened (minerals); hard plants that softened (vegetation). Visible from invisible, insects and small lives (sarīsṛpa, śvāpada). She (the Earth) shook them off her back whenever they overran the mother. . . . After thirty crores of years, she turned round. She lay on her back; on her side. . . . She would call no sons of Heaven, she would ask no sons of Wisdom. She created from her own bosom. She evolved water-men, terrible and bad.

6. The Water-men, terrible and bad, she herself created. From the remains of others (from the mineral, vegetable and animal remains) from the first, second, and third (Rounds) she formed them. . . . .”

The idea of water-men, whether terrible and bad or not, is strange. Our history books do not tell us of any such beings. There is in India an old collection of old stories, the Kathā-sarit-sāgara, “Ocean of the Streams of Story,” that speaks of water-men (jala-mānuṣa, jala-pūruṣa). This extensive collection has only been translated into English once, by C. H. Tawney, published in two large volumes, 1880 and 1884. It was revised by N. M. Penzer and published in ten volumes, 1924-1928. In book 12, chapter 4 (chapter 71 of the whole book), we find a brief episode involving three water-men, who are indeed terrible and bad. Here is the story as translated by Tawney:

“Then, as Mṛigānkadatta was journeying to Ujjayinī, with Śrutadhi and Vimalabuddhi, to find Śaśānkavatī, he reached the Narmadā which lay in his path. The fickle stream, when she beheld him, shook her waves like twining arms, and gleamed white with laughing foam, as if she were dancing and smiling because he had so fortunately been reunited with his ministers. And when he had gone down into the bed of the river to bathe, it happened that a king of the Śavaras, named Māyāvaṭu, came there for the same purpose. When he had bathed, three water-genii* rose up at the same time and seized the Bhilla, whose retinue fled in terror. When Mṛigānkadatta saw that, he went into the water with his sword drawn, and killed those water-genii, and delivered that king of the Bhillas. When the king of the Bhillas was delivered from the danger of those monsters, he came up out of the water and fell at the feet of the prince, and said to him, — ‘Who are you, that Providence has brought here to save my life on the present occasion? . . .’

* Literally, ‘water-men.’ Perhaps they were of the same race as Grendel the terrible nicor. See also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Märchen, p. 185 and ff., Grimm’s Irische Märchen, p. cv, Kuhn’s Westfälische Märchen, Vol. II, p. 35, Waldau’s Böhmische Märchen, p. 187 and ff., and the 6th, 20th and 58th Jātakas. See also Grohmann’s account of the ‘Wassermann,’ Sagen aus Böhmen, p. 148.”

(C. H. Tawney, Ocean of the Streams of Story, vol. 2, p. 154; N. M. Penzer, The Ocean of Story, vol. 6, p. 36; Sanskrit: Kathāsaritsāgara, edited by Pandit Durgaprasad and Kasinath Pandurang Parab, fourth edition, revised by Wasudev Laxman Sastri Pansikar, Bombay,1930, p. 367)

In another story, we read of a water-man who is not terrible and bad, but was condemned to be born as a water-man because he broke his commitment in undertaking the vow of an upoṣaṇa fast. It is in book 10, chapter 7 (chapter 63 of the whole book). Here is part of his story as translated by Tawney:

“‘Noble sir, if it is not a secret, tell me now, who you are, and why, though you possess such luxury, you dwell in the water.’ When the man who lived in the water heard this, he said, ‘Hear! I will tell you.’ And he began to tell his history in the following words.

“There is a region in the south of the Himālaya, called Kāśmīra; which Providence seems to have created in order to prevent mortals from hankering after Heaven; where Śiva and Vishṇu, as self-existent deities, inhabit a hundred shrines, forgetting their happy homes in Kailāsa and Śvetadvīpa; which is laved by the waters of the Vitastā, and full of heroes and sages, and proof against treacherous crimes and enemies, though powerful. There I was born in my former life, as an ordinary villager of the Brāhman caste, with two wives, and my name was Bhavaśarman. There I once struck up a friendship with some Buddhist mendicants, and undertook the vow, called the fast Uposhaṇa, prescribed in their scriptures. And when this vow was almost completed, one of my wives wickedly came and slept in my bed. And in the fourth watch of the night, bewildered with sleep, I broke my vow. But as it fell only a little short of completion, I have been born as a water-genius, and these two wives of mine have been born as my present wives here. That wicked woman was born as that unfaithful wife, the second as this faithful one. So great was the power of my vow, though it was rendered imperfect, that I remember my former birth, and enjoy such luxuries every night. If I had not rendered my vow imperfect, I should never have been born as what I am.”

(C. H. Tawney, Ocean of the Streams of Story, vol. 2, pp. 81-82; N. M. Penzer, The Ocean of Story, vol. 5, pp. 123-124; Sanskrit: Kathāsaritsāgara, edited by Pandit Durgaprasad and Kasinath Pandurang Parab, fourth edition, revised by Wasudev Laxman Sastri Pansikar, Bombay,1930, p. 331)

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Book of Dzyan, stanza 3, verse 7:

“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.”

I am always trying to find the Sanskrit terms that might lie behind the English terms used by Blavatsky in her translation of stanzas from the “Book of Dzyan.” When the Sanskrit terms can be identified, we can then search for them in extant Sanskrit texts and see how they are used there. This will often allow us to learn more about the sometimes obscure ideas found in the Book of Dzyan.

“Bright space son of dark space,” is an unusual phrase. While looking up the word rajas in A Practical Vedic Dictionary by Suryakanta a few years ago, I saw that he referred to “dark space,” kṛṣṇa rajas, and he contrasted this with rocanā dyauḥ, which means the shining or bright (rocanā) sky or heavens or space (dyauḥ). Further investigation, utilizing A Ṛgvedic Word Concordance by Alexander Lubotsky, showed that the phrase kṛṣṇa rajas occurs only four times in the Ṛg-veda, and three of these are in a single hymn.¹ This hymn, Ṛg-veda 1.35, is addressed to Savitar, who is the divinity associated with the sun. The famous Gāyatrī mantra, Ṛg-veda 3.62.10, invokes Savitar. Ṛg-veda 1.35 seems to describe the sun in its course through day and night, where kṛṣṇa rajas describes the night sky. About rajas, R. N. Dandekar in his article, “Universe in Vedic Thought,” writes, “The word rajas in the Ṛgveda usually denotes: when used in singular, the midregion; and when used in plural, the worlds or regions in general.”²

The ancient Ṛg-veda is a very obscure text, being written in poetic verses, and its meanings are far from certain. For long ages Indian tradition has regarded this text as being the most sacred of all, suggesting that it may have more than surface meanings. In another part of the ancient world, Plato has Socrates saying that the ancients “concealed their meaning from the multitude by their poetry” (Theaetetus, Loeb Classical Library, p. 143).³ Whether or not there is any other meaning in Ṛg-veda 1.35 than a description of the sun in its course through day and night, it will be worthwhile to look at how the phrase kṛṣṇa rajas, “dark space” or “black realm,” is used in this hymn. In verses 2 and 9 it is found in the singular, where the general meaning “midregion” or “mid-space” for rajas would be applicable as referring to the night sky. In verse 4 it is found in the plural, rajāṃsi, which is glossed in the Nirukta, an ancient text explaining Vedic words (at 4.19), as lokāḥ, “worlds.” Worlds or realms beyond our own, being invisible to us, are often thought of as being somewhere up in the sky, which perhaps explains why rajas is often translated as “sky, atmosphere, mid-space,” etc., even when it may refer to the (invisible) worlds postulated in Indian cosmology. These rajāṃsi are also referred to in a secret commentary quoted in The Secret Doctrine.⁴

Because the meanings of the Ṛg-veda words and verses are often uncertain, I cite this hymn below in the original Sanskrit and then from all six available complete English translations of the Ṛg-veda. As may be seen, there are significant differences between the translations. In verse 2, the first verse in which the phrase kṛṣṇa rajas occurs, four of the translations say that Savitar arouses or establishes or inspires the immortal and the mortal, while two say that Savitar lays to rest or brings to rest the immortal and the mortal. The Sanskrit word is niveśayan, a present participle. Yet the same basic word as it occurs in verse 1, the noun niveśanīṃ, is translated there by all six in the sense of brings to rest. The parallel passages in Ṛg-veda 4.53.3, 4.53.6, 6.71.2, and 7.45.1, contrasting niveśayan or niveśana, “bringing to rest,” with prasuvan or prasava, “bringing to life, arousing,” show that brings to rest is the correct meaning of niveśayan.⁵ Then, for the phrase, ā kṛṣṇena rajasā vartamāno, “coming through the dark realm,” the same verse as it appears in the Black Yajur-veda Taittirīya-saṃhitā 3.4.11.2 has the noteworthy variant satyena in place of kṛṣṇena, “coming through the realm of truth.”

There are also differences of translation in verse 4, the second verse in which the phrase kṛṣṇa rajas occurs (here in the plural: kṛṣṇā rajāṃsi), and uncertainty of meaning. We have a double accusative in the fourth metrical foot, kṛṣṇā rajāṃsi, “dark realms,” and taviṣīṃ, “strength, power, might.” Since the present participle dadhānaḥ is from the verb-root dhā (“put or place, bear or hold or support”), which does not take a double accusative (two objects), we know that some other grammatical case was intended for one of these but could not be written because of fitting the meter. The various translations take this phrase variously, usually supplying a different grammatical case for kṛṣṇā rajāṃsi, and taking taviṣīṃ as the actual accusative and object of the participle dadhānaḥ. None of the six translations takes kṛṣṇā rajāṃsi as the actual accusative and object of the participle dadhānaḥ, and supplies the instrumental case to taviṣī, as does the commentator Veṅkaṭa-mādhava: “Savitar . . . supporting the dark realms with [his] power.” This understanding agrees with the parallel passage in Ṛg-veda 1.166.4, where rajas is in the accusative case and taviṣī is in the instrumental case: rajāṃsi taviṣībhir (both plural).⁶

In verse 9, the third verse in which the phrase kṛṣṇa rajas occurs, the meaning is also uncertain. The phrase in which it occurs, abhi kṛṣṇena rajasā dyām ṛṇoti, is again taken differently in the different translations. Is it that Savitar “overspreads the sky with gloom, alternating radiance” (Wilson), or “spreads the bright sky through the darksome region” (Griffith), or “overspreads the sky, extending from the dark interspace to the celestial region” (Sarasvati and Vidyalankar), or “From the dark lower worlds, he attains the supreme station” (Kashyap), or “He inspires Soorya to cover the black, dark sky” (Gautam), or “he reaches to heaven through the black realm” (Jamison and Brereton), or something else? In relation to the verb ṛṇoti, “goes,” is the separated verbal prefix abhi here to be understood in its meaning “over, all around,” thus giving the sense of “overspreads, pervades”? So the commentator Sāyaṇa understands it, sarvato vyāpnoti, “pervades all around,” followed by Wilson, Griffith, Sarasvati/Vidyalankar, and Gautam. Or with “goes” is it to be understood in its meaning “to,” thus giving the sense of “reaches, attains”? So Kashyap and Jamison/Brereton understand it. Also, is there some reason why the phrase kṛṣṇena rajasā, which is declined in the instrumental case, “through the dark realm,” should be taken in some other sense? Half of the translations do this: Sarasvati/Vidyalankar and Kashyap take it as “from the dark realm,” while Gautam appears to take it as if in the accusative case.

Complete English Translations of the Ṛg-veda

The first ever English translation of the Ṛg-veda was made by Horace Hayman Wilson and published in six volumes starting in 1850. It closely follows the Sanskrit commentary thereon by Sāyaṇa, who lived in the fourteenth century C.E. Although Sāyaṇa lived long after the time of the Vedas, his commentaries on the Vedas became the standard ones because earlier commentaries were lost.

The next English translation of the Ṛg-veda was made by Ralph T. H. Griffith and published in four volumes starting in 1889. By then, Western scholars had largely rejected Sāyaṇa’s commentary as being an untrustworthy guide to what the much older Ṛg-veda words and verses actually meant, and had attempted to interpret the Ṛg-veda by internal word studies, comparative linguistics, etc. Griffith utilized this Western scholarship on the Ṛg-veda as well as Sāyaṇa’s commentary in his translation into metrical English. Note that, just as the Vedic Rishis sometimes had to sacrifice correct grammar and clear meaning in order to fit the meter, so Griffith sometimes had to adapt his wording in order to have the number of English syllables required for his metrical translation.

An English translation of the Ṛg-veda by Satya Prakash Sarasvati and Satyakam Vidyalankar was published in India, 1977-1987, 13 volumes in 12 (vols. 5 and 6 are bound in one). It follows the Arya Samaj understanding of the Vedas, in which the various Vedic gods, Agni, Indra, Varuṇa, etc., are merely various names for the one God. Thus it substitutes simply “God” for the various Vedic gods. Other than this and a relatively small number of other things, this translation to a large extent copies Wilson’s translation, sometimes adopting his wording and sometimes re-phrasing it.

An English translation of the Ṛg-veda by R. L. Kashyap was published in India, 2004-2009, 10 volumes in 12 (vol. 1 is in 3 parts). It incorporates the psychological interpretation put forth by Sri Aurobindo and used by T. V. Kapali Sastry in his unfinished Ṛg-veda commentary. Kashyap provides a descriptive English title to this hymn, “Savitṛ Establishes the Worlds,” indicating that he understands it differently than as a description of the sun in its course through day and night.

An English translation of the Ṛg-veda by a team of six scholars in Nepal led by Prasanna Chandra Gautam was published in Nepal in 2012, and then in India in 2014, in four volumes. It is titled, Modern English Translation of the Rig Veda Samhitaa, since it tries to use contemporary language. It is the first translation to accompany the Sanskrit text and English translation with word by word meanings, thus showing how each word was taken in this translation.

Not until 2014 was another English translation of the Ṛg-veda produced by Western scholarship. In the meantime, Western scholarship relied on the 1951 German translation of the Ṛg-veda by Karl Geldner. The 2014 English translation by Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton, in three volumes, is now the standard translation of the Ṛg-veda.

Below is Ṛg-veda 1.35 in the original Sanskrit, followed by, in sequence, the English translations of H. H. Wilson (1850), of Ralph T. H. Griffith (1889), of Satya Prakash Sarasvati and Satyakam Vidyalankar (1977), of R. L. Kashyap (2009), of Prasanna Chandra Gautam (2012), and of Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton (2014). The phrase kṛṣṇa rajas, translated as “dark space” by Suryakanta in his Vedic dictionary, occurs in verses 2, 4, and 9. As may be seen, Wilson translates this phrase as “darkened firmament,” “darkness,” and “gloom,” Griffith as “dusky firmament,” and “darksome region,” Sarasvati/Vidyalankar as “obscure regions,” “darkness from the regions,” and “dark interspace,” Kashyap as “dark path,” “inertia of the worlds,” and “dark lower worlds,” Gautam as “dark heavens,” and “black, dark,” and Jamison/Brereton as “black realm.”

Ṛg-veda 1.35, to Savitar

hvayāmy agnim prathamaṃ svastaye hvayāmi mitrā-varuṇāv ihâvase |
hvayāmi rātrīṃ jagato niveśanīṃ hvayāmi devaṃ savitāram ūtaye || 1 ||

1. I invoke Agni first, for protection: I invoke, for protection, Mitra and Varuṇa: I invoke Night, who brings rest to the world: I invoke the divine Savitṛi, for my preservation. [Wilson]

1. Agni I first invoke for our prosperity; I call on Mitra, Varuṇa, to aid us here. I call on Night who gives rest to all moving life; I call on Savitar the God to lend us help. [Griffith]

1. I invoke the foremost adorable God for well-being; I invoke Nature’s other bounties such as the pair of lightning and clouds for protection. I invoke the night which brings rest to the world and I invoke the sun for prosperity. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

1. First I invoke Agni for our happy state. I invoke Mitra and Varuṇa to guard the yajña. I invoke the night, the support of the mobile world. I invoke Savitṛ for our increase. [Kashyap]

1. I call Agni first for our welfare. I call Mitra and Varuna for protection. I call the goddess Raatri, the giver of rest to the world. I call god Sabitaa for protection. [Gautam]

1. I invoke Agni first, for well-being; I invoke Mitra and Varuṇa here, for help. I invoke Night, who brings to rest the moving; I invoke god Savitar, for aid. [Jamison and Brereton]

ā kṛṣṇena rajasā vartamāno niveśayann amṛtaṃ martyaṃ ca |
hiraṇyayena savitā rathenâ devo yāti bhuvanāni paśyan || 2 ||

2. Revolving through the darkened firmament, arousing mortal and immortal, the divine Savitṛi travels in his golden chariot, beholding the (several) worlds. [Wilson]

2. Throughout the dusky firmament advancing, laying to rest the immortal and the mortal, Borne in his golden chariot he cometh, Savitar, God who looks on every creature. [Griffith]

2. The refulgent sun, springing through the obscure regions, arousing mortal and immortal, beholding the several worlds, comes as if mounted on a golden chariot. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

2. Moving along the dark path, duly establishing the immortal and the mortal, God Savitṛ comes in his golden car, beholding the worlds. [Kashyap]

2. The god Sabitaa comes continually on his golden chariot from the dark heavens, looking at all the regions, inspiring the mortals and the immortals (to righteousness). [Gautam]

2. Turning hither through the black realm, bringing to rest the immortal and the mortal, with his golden chariot Savitar the god drives here, gazing upon the creatures. [Jamison and Brereton]

yāti devaḥ pravatā yāty udvatā yāti śubhrābhyāṃ yajato haribhyām |
ā devo yāti savitā parāvato ‘pa viśvā duritā bādhamānaḥ || 3 ||

3. The divine Savitṛi travels by an upward and by a downward path: a deserving adoration, he journeys with two white horses: he comes hither, from a distance, removing all sins. [Wilson]

3. The God moves by the upward path, the downward; with two bright Bays, adorable, he journeys. Savitar comes, the God from the far distance, and chases from us all distress and sorrow. [Griffith]

3. The self-effulgent sun travels by an upward and by a downward path, deserving adoration. It journeys on two white horses (northern and southern solstices); it comes hither from a distance removing all darkness. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

3. The God Savitṛ moves by the downward path, and the upward. Master of yajña, he comes with his two white horses. The god Savitṛ comes from the realm of beyond, destroying all evils. [Kashyap]

3. The venerated god Sabitaa comes from far by two white horses, destroying the entire misery. He goes through the slope. He goes through the incline. [Gautam]

3. The god drives on a downward slope; he drives on an upward one; he drives with two resplendent fallow bays, he who is worthy of the sacrifice. God Savitar drives hither from afar, thrusting away all obstacles. [Jamison and Brereton]

abhīvṛtaṃ kṛśanair viśva-rūpaṃ hiraṇya-śamyaṃ yajato bṛhantam |
âsthād rathaṃ savitā citra-bhānuḥ kṛṣṇā rajāṃsi taviṣīṃ dadhānaḥ || 4 ||

4. The many-rayed adorable Savitṛi, having power (to disperse) darkness from the world, has mounted his nigh-standing chariot, decorated with many kinds of golden ornaments, and furnished with golden yokes. [Wilson]

4. His chariot decked with pearl, of various colours, lofty, with golden pole, the God hath mounted, The many-rayed One, Savitar the holy, bound, bearing power and might, for darksome regions. [Griffith]

4. The many-rayed effulgent sun, having power to dispel darkness from the regions, comes mounted on a lofty, high-standing, well-decorated golden chariot, and furnished with golden yokes. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

4. Savitṛ, the master of yajña, rich in lustres mounts the vast car. The golden car with universal form, with golden yoke is nearby. He bears the might to disperse the inertia of the worlds. [Kashyap]

4. The venerated Sabitaa with unique glow, with all his might aiming at the dark heavens, ascended the gold plated big chariot of many forms with golden yoke. [Gautam]

4. (It is) covered over with pearls, having every beauty, with golden yoke-pins, lofty—his chariot has bright-beamed Savitar mounted, (he) worthy of the sacrifice, having assumed his own power throughout the black realms. [Jamison and Brereton]

vi janāñ chyāvāḥ śiti-pādo akhyan rathaṃ hiraṇya-praugaṃ vahantaḥ |
śaśvad viśaḥ savitur daivyasyôpasthe viśvā bhuvanāni tasthuḥ || 5 ||

5. His white-footed coursers, harnessed to his car with a golden yoke, have manifested light to mankind. Men and all the regions are ever in the presence of the divine Savitṛi. [Wilson]

5. Drawing the gold-yoked car his Bays, white-footed, have manifested light to all the peoples. Held in the lap of Savitar, divine One, all men, all beings have their place for ever. [Griffith]

5. White beams, swift like the white-footed coursers, harnessed to the car with a golden yoke, have brought light to mankind. Men and all regions are ever in the close presence of this effulgent sun. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

5. The tawny steeds with white feet reveal the light, to the peoples who stand continuously near the divine Savitṛ; the persons in all other worlds (continue to be in the darkness). The steeds draw the car with the golden yoke. [Kashyap]

5. The entire regions and men live in the lap of Sabitaa of the heavens. The white footed horses, pulling the chariot with the golden joint of yoke for harnessing, always illuminate the men. [Gautam]

5. The dusky (horses) with white feet have looked out across the peoples, while drawing his chariot with its golden forepole. The clans, all the creatures ever abide in the lap of divine Savitar. [Jamison and Brereton]

tisro dyāvaḥ savitur dvā upasthāṃ ekā yamasya bhuvane virāṣāṭ |
āṇiṃ na rathyam amṛtâdhi tasthur iha bravītu ya u tac ciketat || 6 ||

6. Three are the spheres: two are in the proximity of Savitṛi, one leads men to the dwelling of Yama. The immortal (luminaries) depend upon Savitṛi; as a car, upon the pin of the axle. Let him who knows (the greatness of Savitṛi) declare it. [Wilson]

6. Three heavens there are; two Savitar’s, adjacent: in Yama’s world is one, the home of heroes, As on a linch-pin, firm, rest things immortal: he who hath known it let him here declare it. [Griffith]

6. Three are the luminaries—two (terrestrial and celestial) are in the proximity of the effulgent sun, and the third one somewhere beyond the space for the liberated souls. These first two luminaries depend on the sun as a chariot upon the pin of its axle. Let him who knows (this truth) declare it (to others). [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

6. Of the three worlds of light, two are in the proximity of Savitṛ. The third is the dwelling of the all-ruling Sūrya. The immortal Gods stay resorting to Savitṛ, as the car on the linchpin. Let him who knows declare the secrets of Savitṛ. [Kashyap]

6. There are three heavens; two are near the sun; one is in the region of Yama. Let him, who understands that the immortal constellations surround the chariot of Sabitaa like the pin of the axle, declare this here. [Gautam]

6. There are three heavens: two are the laps of Savitar, one is the hero-vanquishing one in the world of Yama. Like a chariot (wheel) on the axle-pin, the (creatures) have taken their place on his immortal (foundations?).—Whoever will perceive this, let him declare it here. [Jamison and Brereton]

vi suparṇo antarikṣāṇy akhyad gabhīra-vepā asuraḥ sunīthaḥ |
kvêdānīṃ sūryaḥ kaś ciketa katamāṃ dyāṃ raśmir asyâ tatāna || 7 ||

7. Suparṇa, (the solar ray), deep-quivering, life-bestowing, well-directed, has illuminated the three regions. Where, now, is Sūrya? Who knows to what sphere his rays have extended? [Wilson]

7. He, strong of wing, hath lightened up the regions, deep-quivering Asura, the gentle Leader. Where now is Sūrya, where is one to tell us to what celestial sphere his ray hath wandered? [Griffith]

7. The solar ray illuminates the three regions (celestial, interspace and terrestrial), is deep-quivering, life-bestowing and is well-directed. Where now is the sun, the source of these radiations? Who knows to what sphere his rays have extended? [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

7. The happy-winged ray (of Sun) lights up the higher region. (Rays are) profound of sight, powerful, and lead to the felicities of light. Where is now Sūrya? Who knows? What heavenly regions are pervaded by this ray? [Kashyap]

7. Soorya, the giver of life, vibrant, the guide showing the best way, with fine rays illuminated the heavens. Where is he now? To which region have his rays spread? Who knows thus? [Gautam]

7. The eagle has surveyed the midspaces—the lord possessing profound inspiration, who gives good guidance. Where now is the sun? Who perceives it? To which one of the heavens does his rein extend? [Jamison and Brereton]

aṣṭau vy akhyat kakubhaḥ pṛthivyās trī dhanva yojanā sapta sindhūn |
hiraṇyâkṣaḥ savitā deva âgād dadhad ratnā dāśuṣe vāryāṇi || 8 ||

8. He has lighted up the eight points of the horizon, the three regions of living beings, the seven rivers. May the golden-eyed Savitṛi come hither, bestowing upon the offerer of the oblation desirable riches. [Wilson]

8. The earth’s eight points his brightness hath illumined, three desert regions and the Seven Rivers. God Savitar the gold-eyed hath come hither, giving choice treasures unto him who worships. [Griffith]

8. He (the sun) has lighted up the eight points of the horizon (east, north, west, south, and the four at corners), the three regions of the living beings, the seven galaxies. May the golden-eyed sun come hither. May he bestow worthy riches on the Nature’s lover. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

8. He lighted up the eight quarters; illumined the three terrestrial desert regions, and the seven streams. Thus arrived, God Savitṛ with the golden sight, gives special ecstasies to the giver. [Kashyap]

8. The god Sabitaa illuminates the three heavens connecting all eight quarters and also the seven oceans. The golden-eyed comes bearing superior wealth for the generous giver. [Gautam]

8. The eight humps of the earth he has surveyed, the three wastelands three wagon-treks (wide), the seven rivers. Golden-eyed god Savitar has come hither, establishing desirable treasures for the pious man. [Jamison and Brereton]

hiraṇya-pāṇiḥ savitā vicarṣaṇir ubhe dyāvā-pṛthivī antar īyate |
apâmīvāṃ bādhate veti sūryam abhi kṛṣṇena rajasā dyām ṛṇoti || 9 ||

9. The golden-handed, all-beholding Savitṛi travels between the two regions of heaven and earth, dispels diseases, approaches the sun, and overspreads the sky with gloom, alternating radiance. [Wilson]

9. The golden-handed Savitar, far-seeing, goes on his way between the earth and heaven, Drives away sickness, bids the Sun approach us, and spreads the bright sky through the darksome region. [Griffith]

9. The gold-handed, all-beholding luminary travels between the two regions of heaven and earth, dispels diseases, and this, verily, is known as the sun, and it finally overspreads the sky, extending from the dark interspace to the celestial region. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

9. Golden-handed, all-beholding, God Savitṛ, moves between the Earth and Heaven. He dispels distress and attains the supreme Sun. From the dark lower worlds, he attains the supreme station. [Kashyap]

9. The golden handed, all-seeing Sabitaa goes to the middle of heaven and earth. He dispels disease. He inspires Soorya to cover the black, dark sky. [Gautam]

9. Golden-palmed Savitar, whose boundaries are distant, shuttles between both, both heaven and earth. He thrusts away affliction; he pursues the sun; he reaches to heaven through the black realm. [Jamison and Brereton]

hiraṇya-hasto asuraḥ sunīthaḥ sumṛḷīkaḥ svavāṃ yātv arvāṅ |
apasedhan rakṣaso yātu-dhānān asthād devaḥ pratidoṣaṃ gṛṇānaḥ || 10 ||

10. May the golden-handed, life-bestowing, well-guiding, exhilarating, and affluent Savitṛi be present (at the sacrifice); for the deity, if worshipped in the evening, is at hand, driving away Rākshasas and Yātudhānas. [Wilson]

10. May he, gold-handed Asura, kind Leader, come hither to us with his help and favour. Driving off Rākṣasas and Yātudhānas, the God is present, praised in hymns at evening. [Griffith]

10. May the golden-handed, life-bestowing, well-guiding, exhilarating, and affluent sun be present with us at the place of worship. The solar radiations drive away worms and germs, particularly in the evening, if duly utilized. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

10. May the golden-handed and mighty person, well-guiding and rich, come in front, making us happy. Repelling the demonic Yātudhāna-s, the God is present (in the house) accepting the lauds every night. [Kashyap]

10. May the golden handed, giver of life, the guide, pleasant, rich, god come before us. He is prayed every night. That god remains driving away the hurtful demons. [Gautam]

10. The golden-handed lord of good guidance, of good grace, of good help—let him drive in our direction. Repelling demons and sorcerers, the god has taken his place facing evening, while being hymned. [Jamison and Brereton]

ye te panthāḥ savitaḥ pūrvyāso ‘reṇavaḥ sukṛtā antarikṣe |
tebhir no adya pathibhiḥ sugebhī rakṣā ca no adhi ca brūhi deva || 11 ||

11. Thy paths, Savitṛi, are prepared of old, are free from dust, and well-placed in the firmament. (Coming) by those paths, easy to be traversed, preserve us to-day. Deity, speak to us. [Wilson]

11. O Savitar, thine ancient dustless pathways are well established in the air’s mid-region: O God, come by those paths so fair to travel, preserve thou us from harm this day, and bless us. [Griffith]

11. O sun, your paths are set from olden days; they are free from dust, and well-determined in space. May you travel along these paths, unobstructed and preserve us day-to-day. O effulgent, may you bless us. [Sarasvati and Vidyalankar]

11. O Savitṛ, (come) now to us by the ancient paths, (which are) in the midworld, perfected and dustless, well-laid and easy to traverse. O God, guard us and speak to us. [Kashyap]

11. O Sabitaa! Your ancient dust free ways in the sky have been made well. Come for us today through these ways which are easy to travel. O god! Save us and give blessing to us, too. [Gautam]

11. Your age-old paths, Savitar, dustless, well-made in the midspace, along these easily passable paths (come) to us today. Both guard us and speak on our behalf, o god. [Jamison and Brereton]

There is another Ṛg-veda verse that has both words kṛṣṇa and rajas, but separated. This is verse 1 of hymn 6.9 addressed to Agni. Here rajas is twofold (rajasī, in the dual), the dark half of a day and the bright half of a day.

ahaś ca kṛṣṇam ahar arjunaṃ ca vi vartete rajasī vedyābhiḥ |
vaiśvānaro jāyamāno na rājâvâtiraj jyotiṣâgnis tamāṃsi || 6.9.1 || (to Agni)

6.9.1. One half of day is dark, and bright the other: both atmospheres [rajas] move on by sage devices. Agni Vaiśvānara, when born as Sovran, hath with his lustre overcome the darkness. [Griffith]

The usage of the phrase kṛṣṇa rajas as apparently the night sky in hymn 1.35, verses 2 and 9 (in the singular), agrees with the usage of rajas as the dark half of a day. Ṛg-veda 6.9.1 also applies the word rajas to the bright half of a day. As is well known, the days and nights of Brahmā spoken of in Indian tradition refer to the manifestation and dissolution of the cosmos. The phrase “bright space son of dark space” from Book of Dzyan 3.7 refers to the manifestation of the cosmos from its period of dissolution, its night. Neither Ṛg-veda 1.35 nor Ṛg-veda 6.9 are cosmogonic hymns, which we have very few of in the Ṛg-veda. When speaking of cosmogony, the phrase kṛṣṇa rajas could easily be used in an ancient such text, alluding to the night of the cosmos. I think that kṛṣṇa rajas is very likely the Sanskrit phrase behind “dark space” in Blavatsky’s translation of Book of Dzyan 3.7.

Notes

1. The other occurrence of the phrase kṛṣṇa rajas in the Ṛg-veda is in hymn 8.43, addressed to Agni, verse 6. Here the two commentators Sāyaṇa and Veṅkaṭa-mādhava gloss the plural rajāṃsi as pāṃsavaḥ, “dust.” In accordance with this, five of the six available English translations take rajas here in its meaning “dust” rather than “space, firmament, region, world, the heavens, realm.” Thus, for example, Griffith translates: “the dust is black beneath his feet.” Only the Jamison/Brereton translation remains consistent with the meaning given for kṛṣṇa rajas in hymn 1.35, “black realm”:

kṛṣṇā rajāṃsi patsutaḥ prayāṇe jātavedasaḥ |
agnir yad rodhati kṣami || 8.43.6 || (to Agni)

8.43.6. Black are the realms at the feet of Jātavedas on his advance, when Agni grows on the earth. [Jamison and Brereton]

2. Universe in Vedic Thought,” in India Maior, 1972, p. 100, fn. 4.

3. This reference was provided by my friend Eric Fallick.

4. The word rajas is specifically used in an excerpt from the secret “Commentaries” given in The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, pp. 621-622 (the reference to Atharva-veda 10.105 should be Ṛg-veda 10.105.7). There it refers to the three worlds, as it sometimes does in the Vedas. See, for example, Ṛg-veda 4.53.5 and 5.69.1:

trir antarikṣaṃ savitā mahitvanā trī rajāṃsi paribhus trīṇi rocanā |
tisro divaḥ pṛthivīs tisra invati tribhir vratair abhi no rakṣati tmanā || 4.53.5 || (to Savitar)

4.53.5. Savitar thrice surrounding with his mightiness mid-air, three regions, and the triple sphere of light, Sets the three heavens in motion and the threefold earth, and willingly protects us with his triple law. [Griffith]

4.53.5. Savitar (encompasses) the midspace three times in his greatness; he encompasses the three dusky realms and the three realms of light. He speeds the three heavens and the three earths. With his three commandments he guards us by himself. [Jamison and Brereton]

trī rocanā varuṇa trīṃr uta dyūn trīṇi mitra dhārayatho rajāṃsi |
vāvṛdhānāv amatiṃ kṣatriyasyânu vrataṃ rakṣamāṇāv ajuryam || 5.69.1 || (to Mitra-Varuṇa)

5.69.1. Three spheres of light, O Varuṇa, three heavens, three firmaments ye comprehend, O Mitra: Waxed strong, ye keep the splendour of dominion, guarding the Ordinance that lasts for ever. [Griffith]

5.69.1. The three realms of light and the three heavens, the three airy spaces do you two uphold, o Varuṇa and Mitra, strengthening the emblem of your lordship, protecting your unaging commandment. [Jamison and Brereton]

Elsewhere in The Secret Doctrine, in a footnote (vol. 2, p. 385), Blavatsky refers to the six worlds, using the word rajas in the plural, rajāṃsi. This is as in Ṛg-veda 1.164.6:

acikitvāñ cikituṣaś cid atra kavīn pṛcchāmi vidmane na vidvān |
vi yas tastambha ṣaḷ imā rajāṃsy ajasya rūpe kim api svid ekam || 1.164.6 || (to the Viśvedevas)

1.164.6. I ask, unknowing, those who know, the Sages, as one all-ignorant for the sake of knowledge: Who is that Mysterious One, in the form of the Unborn, who has established these Six Regions. [translated by Vasudeva S. Agrawala, Vision in Long Darkness, 1963]

1.164.6 Unperceptive, I ask also the perceptive poets about this in order to know, since I am unknowing: What also is the One in the form of the Unborn [=the Sun] that has propped apart these six realms (of heaven and earth)? [Jamison and Brereton]

5. Savitar niveśayan prasuvan:

āprā rajāṃsi divyāni pārthivā ślokaṃ devaḥ kṛṇute svāya dharmaṇe |
pra bāhū asrāk savitā savīmani niveśayan prasuvann aktubhir jagat || 4.53.3 || (to Savitar)

4.53.3. He hath filled full the regions of the heaven and earth: the God for his own strengthening waketh up the hymn. Savitar hath stretched out his arms to cherish life, producing with his rays and lulling all that moves. [Griffith]

4.53.3. He has filled the heavenly and earthly realms. The god makes his signal-call to support his own. Savitar has stretched forth his two arms, at his impulsion causing the moving world to settle down and impelling it forth through the nights. [Jamison and Brereton]

Savitar prasavītā niveśano:

bṛhatsumnaḥ prasavītā niveśano jagata sthātur ubhayasya yo vaśī |
sa no devaḥ savitā śarma yacchatv asme kṣayāya trivarūtham aṃhasaḥ || 4.53.6 ||

4.53.6. Most gracious God, who brings to life and lulls to rest, he who controls the world, what moves not and what moves, May he vouchsafe us shelter,—Savitar the God,—for tranquil life, with triple bar against distress. [Griffith]

4.53.6. Possessing lofty benevolence, the one who impels forth and causes to settle down, who exerts his will over both the moving world and the stationary, let him, god Savitar, hold out to us shelter providing threefold protection against distress for us and for our dwelling place. [Jamison and Brereton]

Savitar niveśane prasave ca:

devasya vayaṃ savituḥ savīmani śreṣṭhe syāma vasunaś ca dāvane |
yo viśvasya dvipado yaś catuṣpado niveśane prasave câsi bhūmanaḥ || 6.71.2 || (to Savitar)

6.71.2. May we enjoy the noblest vivifying force of Savitar the God, that he may give us wealth: For thou art mighty to produce and lull to rest the world of life that moves on two feet and on four. [Griffith]

6.71.2. May we be (there) at the best impulsion of the god Savitar and for his giving of goods—you [=Savitar] who are (busy) at bringing to rest and at impelling forth the whole two-footed and four-footed creation. [Jamison and Brereton]

Savitar niveśayañ ca prasuvañ ca:

ā devo yātu savitā suratno ‘ntarikṣaprā vahamāno aśvaiḥ |
haste dadhāno naryā purūṇi niveśayañ ca prasuvañ ca bhūma || 7.45.1 || (to Savitar)

7.45.1. May the God Savitar, rich in goodly treasures, filling the region, borne by steeds, come hither, In his hand holding much that makes men happy, lulling to slumber and arousing creatures. [Griffith]

7.45.1. Let god Savitar drive here, possessed of good treasure, filling the midspace, journeying with his horses, holding many things meant for men in his hand, bring the world to rest and impelling it forth. [Jamison and Brereton]

6. The Maruts ā avyata, “traverse” (Wilson, Kashyap), or “have stirred up” (Griffith), or “move through” (Sarasvati/Vidyalankar), or “cover well” (Gautam), or “enveloped” (Jamison/Brereton) the rajāṃsi, “regions, realms, worlds,” by or with their taviṣībhir, “strength, power, might”:

yasmā ūmāso amṛtā arāsata rāyas poṣaṃ ca haviṣā dadāśuṣe |
ukṣanty asmai maruto hitā iva purū rajāṃsi payasā mayobhuvaḥ || 1.166.3 ||
ā ye rajāṃsi taviṣībhir avyata pra va evāsaḥ svayatāso adhrajan |
bhayante viśvā bhuvanāni harmyā citro vo yāmaḥ prayatāsv ṛṣṭiṣu || 1.166.4 || (to the Maruts)

1.166.3. To whomsoever, bringer of oblations, they immortal guardians, have given plenteous wealth, For him, like loving friends, the Maruts bringing bliss bedew the regions round with milk abundantly.

1.166.4. Ye who with mighty powers have stirred the regions up, your coursers have sped forth directed by themselves. All creatures of the earth, all dwellings are afraid, for brilliant is your coming with your spears advanced. [Griffith]

1.166.3. To whom the immortal helpers have given riches and prosperity—to the man who does pious service with oblation—for him the Maruts, like (steeds) spurred on, sprinkle the many realms with milk—they are joy itself.

1.166.4. Of you who with your powers enveloped the realms—your spontaneous dashes swooped forth. All creatures and habitations take fright. Brilliant is your course when your spears have been extended. [Jamison and Brereton]

Category: Book of Dzyan | 1 comment

The Source of the core teachings (Secret Doctrine & The Voice of Silence) transmitted by H.P.B. are said to emanate from an « Archaic Manuscript »¹ . Many references to the Book of Dzyan, or the Book of Kiu-te are made throughout H.P.B. writings. A compilation of all H.P.B.quotes to these books is proposed here.

What do we learn from it ?

• The book of Kiu-te is spelled with many different ways : Khiu-ti, Khiu-te, Khiu-tee, Kiu-ti, Kiu-te, Khinti

• Quotes are sometimes very accurate regarding content and chapter numbering. Examples : “From Book IV of Kiu-ti, chapter on “the Laws of Upasana”, we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were : 1) Perfect physical health, 2) Absolute mental and physical purity, . . .” This looks like a Buddhism Vinaya text (Book of the Discipline).

• Many quotes are extracted from the Commentaries. This is also a very common practice in Tibetan Buddhism Tradition to always provide with commentaries to all the core texts (sutra or tantra). In fact, “the Book of Dzyan – from the Sanskrit word “Dhyana” (mystic meditation) – is the first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven secret folios of Kiu-te, and a Glossary of the public works of the same name” (BCW XIV, page 422).

• There are direct reference to book and chapter numbering, like :” To force oneself upon the current of immortality, or rather to secure for oneself an endless series of rebirths as conscious individualities – says the “Book of Khiu-te” volume xxxi” ; and Master K.H. added : “Chapter III” (H.P.B. Letters to A.P.Sinnett, page 372).

So, we have at least references to Book IV and volume xxxi, chapter III. Researches have not yet corroborate these informations with existing known books of the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition. But many more are surfacing in the Western world, including esoteric ones, previously unreachable. Latest example is “The Profound Inner Principles” by Rangjung Dorje, the Third Karmapa, with Jamgön Kongtrul Commentary. (2014). This text is giving extensive teachings on Inner Principles, with many references to key tantras like the Kalachakra, the Guyasamaja or the Hevajratantra.

Let’s keep digging ang digging,…

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An article titled, “The Book of Dzyan, The Current State of the Evidence,” was published in Brahmavidyā: The Adyar Library Bulletin, Supplement, 2013, pp. 87-120.* Because of its direct relevance to the purpose of this blog, it is posted here, and may be accessed by clicking on the title. The Brahmavidyā Supplement is a special issue “Commemorating the 125th year of publication of The Secret Doctrine by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,” which includes the following articles:

1. Why Study The Secret Doctrine? by Radha Burnier.
2. Cosmogony in the Stanzas of Dzyan, by Pablo Sender.
3. Reading the Book of Knowledge, by Doss McDavid.
4. The Secret Doctrine in the 21st Century, by Shirley J. Nicholson.
5. Keys to The Secret Doctrine, by Chris Bartzokas.
6. The Book of Dzyan: The Current State of the Evidence, by David Reigle.
7. The Essence of The Secret Doctrine, by Harvey Tordoff.
8. The Secret Doctrine: To Be Read Wholly, by John Algeo.
9. Beyond the Sevenfold Schemes, by Dara Eklund.
10. Annie Besant and The Secret Doctrine, by Pedro Oliveira.
11. Interpreting The Secret Doctrine, by Joy Mills.

Brahmavidyā: The Adyar Library Bulletin was started in 1937. Since the mid-1950s it has been solely an Indological journal, not a Theosophical journal. This Supplement is the first of its kind.

* A pre-publication version of my article, without the inevitable typos incident to publication, is also available here: “The Book of Dzyan, The Current State of the Evidence, pre-pub.“

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The evidence shows that: (1) “Book of Dzyan” is not the actual or proper name of the book in question; (2) of the two meanings given by Blavatsky, “dzyan” would be “wisdom/knowledge” rather than “meditation”; (3) therefore the “Book of Dzyan” is a generic name signifying only “Book of Wisdom” or “Book of Knowledge.”

1. That “Book of Dzyan” is not the actual or proper name can be seen from this quotation from The Secret Doctrine (vol. 1, p. xxii): “The Book of Dzyan (or ‘Dzan’) is utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by them under its present name.”

2. Blavatsky gives two meanings for the word “dzyan.” The most well-known one is “meditation,” the meaning of the similar-looking Sanskrit word dhyāna. It is found in “The Secret Books of ‘Lam-rim’ and Dzyan” (The Secret Doctrine, vol. 3, 1897, p. 405; Adyar edition, vol. 5, p. 389; Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 422):

“The Book of Dzyan—from the Sanskrit word “Dhyâna” (mystic meditation)— . . .”

The other meaning given for “dzyan” is “wisdom,” or “knowledge,” the meaning of the similar-sounding Sanskrit word jñāna. It is found in these places:

(a) Footnote to Book of Dzyan* in her French article, “Notes su «L’Ésotérisme du Dogme Chrétien» de M. l’Abbé Roca”; English translation, “Notes on Abbé Roca’s ‘Esotericism of Christian Dogma’” (Collected Writings, vol. 8, p. 361 fn.; p. 380 fn.):

“*Mot tibétain, du mot sanscrit djnyana: sagesse occulte, connaissance.”

“*A Tibetan word, the Sanskrit Jñâna, occult wisdom, knowledge.”

(b) In “‘Reincarnations’ of Buddha” (The Secret Doctrine, vol. 3, 1897, p. 386; Adyar edition, vol. 5, p. 373; Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 400):

“. . . on the ‘Path of Dzyan’ (knowledge, wisdom).”

(c) In The Theosophical Glossary, under “Dzyn or Dzyan (Tib.). Written also Dzen.” (p. 107):

“A corruption of the Sanskrit Dhyan and Jnâna (or gnyâna phonetically)—Wisdom, divine knowledge.”

The last quotation, although defining dzyan as “wisdom” or “divine knowledge,” gives as equivalents both the Sanskrit words, dhyāna (meaning “meditation”) and jñāna. In another place, she combines their two meanings when giving the meaning of “dzyan” (The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 434):

“Says the Book of Dzyan (Knowledge through meditation)— . . .”

However, the word “dzyan” cannot be the Tibetan equivalent of both the Sanskrit dhyāna and jñāna. It must be one or the other. Fortunately, as noted in my 1983 book, The Books of Kiu-te (pp. 46-47), we do not have to guess about this. Since dhyāna is translated into Tibetan as bsam gtan, and jñāna is translated into Tibetan as ye śes, “dzyan” is not a translation; it is a transliteration. Which one is made clear by the fact that when transliterating Sanskrit words into Tibetan, the Tibetan translators always transliterated the Sanskrit letter “j” as the Tibetan letter “dz”, even though Tibetan has a letter “j” of its own. Thus, Sanskrit jñāna is transliterated into Tibetan as dzñāna.

Then, as is well known, the word jñāna is often pronounced gyana in India. Thus, for example, we find a book on Jñāna Yoga titled Gyana Yoga. The palatal “ñ”, a “nya” sound, disappears after the initial “j”, leaving a “y” sound. So phonetically, we now have dzyāna. Lastly, in North Indian pronunciation, a final short “a” is very frequently dropped. Thus, for example, the name Shiva Kumara is pronounced Shiv Kumar. So our dzyāna becomes dzyān. This is a reasonably good phonetic rendering of the Sanskrit word jñāna as transliterated into Tibetan letters, dznyāna, and then pronounced.

The meaning, too, can only be one or the other. As we saw, “wisdom” or knowledge” is given for “dzyan” by Blavatsky on three occasions. This is the meaning of jñāna. On one occasion she gives “meditation,” the meaning of dhyāna. In addition, she gives a combined definition, “Knowledge through meditation.” While jñāna no doubt most often arises through meditation, this is not part of its meaning. So where did Blavatsky get the meaning “meditation” for “dzyan”? Apparently from Rev. Joseph Edkins. In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky writes (vol. 1, p. xx and footnote):

“Indeed, the secret portions of the ‘Dan’ or ‘Jan-na’* (‘Dhyan’) of Gautama’s metaphysics—grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom Religion of antiquity—are but a very small portion of the whole.”

“*Dan, now become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch’an, is the general term for the esoteric schools, and their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as ‘to reform one’s self by meditation and knowledge,’ a second inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the ‘Book of Dzyan.’”

Compare Rev. Joseph Edkins, Chinese Buddhism, 1880 (p. 129, fn.):

“The word Ch’an (in old Chinese, jan and dan), originally signifying ‘resign,’ had not the meaning to ‘contemplate’ (now its commonest sense), before the Buddhists adopted it to represent the Sanscrit term Dhyana. The word in Chinese books is spelt in full jan-na, and is explained, ‘to reform one’s self by contemplation or quiet thought.’”

Rev. Edkins further writes about what he called the esoteric schools, and their founder Bodhidharma (pp. 155-156):

“He became the chief founder of the esoteric schools, which were divided into five principal branches. The common word for the esoteric schools is dan, the Sanscrit Dhyana, now called in the modern sound given to the character, ch’an.”

The Chinese word ch’an does indeed render the Sanskrit word dhyāna, “meditation,” and this became the name of the school that made meditation primary, the Ch’an school, which in turn became the Zen school in Japan. Rev. Edkins, writing with the scanty information available before 1880, for some reason called this school and its subdivisions the esoteric schools. This is apparently how Blavatsky associated the name dan with the esoteric schools, and equated it with “dzyan.” But as we have seen, the other information given by Blavatsky shows that “dzyan” is from jñāna, not dhyāna.

3. “Book of Dzyan,” then, is a generic name signifying only “Book of Wisdom” or “Book of Knowledge.”

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“Book of Dzyan” is the name given to a hitherto unknown book that is said to contain the secret wisdom of the world. It is supposed to have been written in Senzar, a lost sacred language that preceded Sanskrit. Stanzas on the genesis of the cosmos and the origin of humanity were allegedly translated from it to form the basis of H. P. Blavatsky’s 1888 book, The Secret Doctrine. Our only source of information about the “Book of Dzyan” is what Blavatsky wrote. The information she gives sometimes disagrees, so that it appears to describe two different books. In fact, she does speak of “Books of Dzyan” in the plural (e.g., SD, vol. 2, p. 46). It will be worthwhile to try to sort out this information.

The Secret Doctrine opens with a description of what is presumably the “Book of Dzyan” (volume 1, page 1):

“An Archaic Manuscript—a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific unknown process—is before the writer’s eye. On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following page, the same disk, but with a central point. The first, the student knows to represent Kosmos in Eternity, before the re-awakening of still slumbering Energy, the emanation of the Word in later systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is the Point in the Mundane Egg (see Part II., ‘The Mundane Egg’), the germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the ALL, the boundless, periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all returns. Its circumference—a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the limitation of the human mind—indicates the abstract, ever incognisable PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one. Only the face of the Disk being white and the ground all around black, shows clearly that its plane is the only knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is attainable by man. It is on this plane that the Manvantaric manifestations begin; for it is in this SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine Thought, wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and Theogony.”

Blavatsky goes on to describe further symbols, the disk with a diameter, and then with the diameter crossed by a vertical line, etc. (pp. 4-5):

“The first illustration being a plain disc [figure], the second one in the Archaic symbol shows [figure], a disc with a point in it—the first differentiation in the periodical manifestations of the ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinite ‘Aditi in THAT’ (Rig Veda), the point in the disc, or potential Space within abstract Space. In its third stage the point is transformed into a diameter, thus [figure]. It now symbolises a divine immaculate Mother-Nature within the all-embracing absolute Infinitude. When the diameter line is crossed by a vertical one [figure], it becomes the mundane cross. Humanity has reached its third root-race; it is the sign for the origin of human life to begin. When the circumference disappears and leaves only the [figure] it is a sign that the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and the FOURTH race begins. . . .”

Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, published eleven years earlier (1877), likewise opens with a description of what is presumably the “Book of Dzyan” (volume 1, page 1):

“There exists somewhere in this wide world an old Book—so very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult learning—the Siphrah Dzeniouta—was compiled from it, and that at a time when the former was already considered in the light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations represents the Divine Essence emanating from Adam* like a luminous arc proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest point of its circumference, the ineffable Glory bends back again, and returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in its vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation becomes more and more shadowy, until upon touching the ground it is as black as night.”

*Corrected in Mahatma letter #9 to Adam emanating from the Divine Essence.

This paragraph from Isis Unveiled is quoted in the “Introductory” to The Secret Doctrine (vol. 1, p. xlii), introducing it with “Volume I. of ‘Isis’ begins with a reference to ‘an old book’—‘So very old that . . . .” The Secret Doctrine then continues (p. xliii):

“The ‘very old Book’ is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah, the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China’s primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Puranas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races.”

The book that Blavatsky has so vividly described is clearly a book of pictorial symbols. She confirms this when describing the language that it is apparently written in (The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, p. 574):

“We have now to speak of the Mystery language, that of the prehistoric races. It is not a phonetic, but a purely pictorial and symbolical tongue. It is known at present in its fulness to the very few, having become with the masses for more than 5,000 years an absolutely dead language.”

We would naturally assume that this book of pictorial symbols is the “Book of Dzyan” from which she said she translated the stanzas that form the basis of The Secret Doctrine. But is it? Apparently not. We notice that nowhere in these descriptions has she called this picture book the “Book of Dzyan.” Elsewhere she provides the information that allows us to distinguish the two. This information is given in “The Secret Books of ‘Lam-rim’ and Dzyan,” a chapter that was originally intended by her to precede the stanzas in The Secret Doctrine, but upon the advice of the Keightleys was moved to volume 3 of that book. Volume 3 was not published until 1897, six years after her death, where this chapter is found on pp. 405-406. This chapter is now also found in her Collected Writings, vol. 14, pp. 422-424. It begins:

“The Book of Dzyan . . . is the first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven secret folios of Kiu-te, and a Glossary of the public works of the same name. Thirty-five volumes of Kiu-te for exoteric purposes and the use of the laymen may be found in the possession of the Tibetan Gelugpa Lamas, in the library of any monastery; and also fourteen books of Commentaries and Annotations on the same by the initiated Teachers. Strictly speaking, those thirty-five books ought to be termed ‘The Popularised Version’ of the Secret Doctrine, full of myths, blinds, and errors; the fourteen volumes of Commentaries, on the other hand—with their translations, annotations, and an ample glossary of Occult terms, worked out from one small archaic folio, the Book of the Secret Wisdom of the World—contain a digest of all the Occult Sciences.”

As may be seen, the book of pictorial symbols that she described would be what is here called “the Book of the Secret Wisdom of the World.” This “one small archaic folio” is the “one small parent volume” (SD 1.xliii), the “Archaic Manuscript” (SD 1.1), the “old Book” (IU 1.1), the “very old Book . . . the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled” (SD 1.xliii), here further described as “the seven secret folios of Kiu-te.” The Book of Dzyan that she translated stanzas from is the first of fourteen volumes of commentaries on this book of pictorial symbols, not the symbol book itself. This is, I think, clear. Yet her prominent descriptions of the book of pictorial symbols have made such an impression that most readers today regard this symbol book as the Book of Dzyan that she translated stanzas from. Since this is so widely accepted, it will be worthwhile to pursue this further, and to cite the evidence at some length.

In addition to her statement differentiating the two books, there is much evidence indicating that the Book of Dzyan from which she translated stanzas is a commentary written in phonetic language rather than in pictorial symbols. In brief, this evidence is: (1) Blavatsky refers several times to the words of the Book of Dzyan, phonetic words and names; (2) she says that she has tried to give a verbatim or word for word translation; and (3) she refers several times to verses and to specific numbers of verses in the original Book of Dzyan that she has omitted. These, of course, would be phonetic verses, consisting of phonetic words, not pictorial symbols. This evidence may be found in The Secret Doctrine itself, and was fully confirmed in The Secret Doctrine Commentaries: The Unpublished 1889 Instructions, first published in 2010. Before citing this evidence, we must take note of Blavatsky’s statements showing Senzar as a phonetic language, and not just a language of pictorial symbols.

Contrasting her statement quoted above that the Mystery language “is not a phonetic, but a purely pictorial and symbolical tongue,” she tells us in her Notes on the Esoteric Papers that Senzar has an alphabet consisting of letters, obviously phonetic letters: “The Senzar and Sanskrit alphabets, and other Occult tongues, besides other potencies, have a number, colour, and distinct syllable for every letter, . . .” (The Secret Doctrine, vol. 3, p. 530; Adyar edition, vol. 5, p. 505). In describing the development of language, she tells us that what is “now the mystery tongue of the Initiates” is “the inflectional speech,” which was the first language of the fifth root-race (SD 2.200). It was preceded by the monosyllabic speech that arose at the close of the third root-race, and the agglutinative languages that developed in the fourth root-race (2.198-199). The inflectional speech is, of course, phonetic language, language that had developed past the monosyllable stage, and past the stage of agglutinating or putting monosyllables together to form words, to the stage wherein the words themselves undergo change in order to give grammatical information. This is usually done by the addition of inflectional endings, namely, verb conjugations and noun declensions. Thus Senzar is not only a language of pictorial symbols but also a developed phonetic language. We may now proceed to the quotations.

1. References to words and names in the Book of Dzyan:

SD 1.22-23: “. . . the archaic phraseology of the original, with its puzzling style and words.” (in full: “The Stanzas which form the thesis of every section are given throughout in their modern translated version, as it would be worse than useless to make the subject still more difficult by introducing the archaic phraseology of the original, with its puzzling style and words.”)

SD 1.23: “. . . using the Sanskrit and Tibetan proper names whenever those cannot be avoided, in preference to giving the originals. The more so as the said terms are all accepted synonyms, . . .” (followed by: “Thus, were one to translate into English, using only the substantives and technical terms as employed in one of the Tibetan and Senzar versions, Verse I would read as follows: — ‘Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not; Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna), &c., &c.,’ which would sound like pure Abracadabra.”)

SD 1.23: “The untranslateable terms alone, incomprehensible unless explained in their meanings, are left, but all such terms are rendered in their Sanskrit form.” (followed by: “Needless to remind the reader that these are, in almost every case, the late developments of the later language, and pertain to the Fifth Root-Race. Sanskrit, as now known, was not spoken by the Atlanteans, and most of the philosophical terms used in the systems of the India of the post-Mahabharatan period are not found in the Vedas, nor are they to be met with in the original Stanzas, but only their equivalents.”)

SD 1.32 fn.: “Verse 1 of Stanza VI. is of a far later date than the other Stanzas, though still very ancient. The old text of this verse, having names entirely unknown to the Orientalists would give no clue to the student.”

SD 1.237 fn.: “Useless to repeat again that the terms given here are Sanskrit translations; for the original terms, unknown and unheard of in Europe, would only puzzle the reader more, and serve no useful purpose.”

SD 1.471: “Of course the name given in the archaic volume of the Stanzas is quite different, . . .”

SD 1.478: “A great number of names referring to chemical substances and other compounds, which have now ceased to combine together, and are therefore unknown to the later offshoots of our Fifth Race, occupy a considerable space. As they are simply untranslateable, and would remain in every case inexplicable, they are omitted, along with those which cannot be made public.”

SD 2.34 fn.: “The term Pitris is used by us in these Slokas to facilitate their comprehension, but it is not so used in the original Stanzas, where they have distinct appellations of their own, besides being called ‘Fathers’ and ‘Progenitors.’”

SD 2.401 fn.: “For the Stanzas call this locality by a term translated in the commentary as a place of no latitude (niraksha) the abode of the gods.”

2. Statements by Blavatsky that she is translating verbatim or word for word:

SD 2.1: “As far as possible a verbatim translation is given; . . .” (in full: “The Stanzas, with the Commentaries thereon, in this Book, the second, are drawn from the same Archaic Records as the Stanzas on Cosmogony in Book I. As far as possible a verbatim translation is given; but some of the Stanzas were too obscure to be understood without explanation. Hence, as was done in Book I., while they are first given in full as they stand, when taken verse by verse with their Commentaries an attempt is made to make them clearer, by words added in brackets, in anticipation of the fuller explanation of the Commentary.”)

SD 2.15 fn.: “Not every verse is translated verbatim. A periphrasis is sometimes used for the sake of clearness and intelligibility, where a literal translation would be quite unintelligible.”

SD Comm. pp. 30-31: “I cannot go and invent things; I am obliged to translate just as the stanzas give it in the book.”

SD Comm. p. 31: “How can I put that it was not? I am obliged to translate as it is, and then to give all the commentaries. I didn’t invent them. If I were inventing it, I might put it otherwise.”

SD Comm. p. 33: “I cannot put things out of my own head; I just translate as it is.”

SD Comm. p. 141: “I limit myself to that in the commentaries. Not in the stanzas, because I have rendered them just as they are.”

SD Comm. p. 203: “These are the words, I do not know how to translate better— . . .” (the 2013 online edition has “no” for “know,” p. 195; the 2010 edition omits this word)

SD Comm. p. 233: “I tried to translate as well as I could, you know, as close to the original as possible.”

SD Comm. p. 278: “It is translated word for word, this, and it is all certainly figurative, and metaphorical, and so on, therefore you must not take in the literal sense everything; because you must allow something for the Eastern way of expressing it.”

SD Comm. p. 279: “I try to translate word for word.”

SD Comm. p. 301: “You must make some allowance for the Eastern mode of expression. I tell you I have been translating word for word.”

SD Comm. p. 325: “. . . (why it should be weight, I do not know; I simply translate you what is said in the occult books), . . .”

3. References to verses and to specific numbers of verses omitted:

SD 1.152: “Among the eleven Stanzas omitted . . . .”

SD 1.478: “A gap of 43 verses or Slokas has to be left between the 7th (already given) and the 51st, which is the subject of Book II., though the latter are made to run from 1 et seq. for easier reading and reference.”

SD 2.15 fn.: “Only forty-nine Slokas out of several hundred are here given.”

SD 2.46: “Thus the only reference to it is contained in one verse of the volume of the Book of Dzyan before us, where it says: . . .”

SD Comm. pp. 33-34: “There are many, many verses that come between, that I have left out altogether.”

SD Comm. p. 38: “I have just taken two or three just to show the general idea, and then skipped over whole stanzas and came to the point. I have said there are some 60 stanzas passed over.”

SD Comm. p. 114: “There are breaks of forty stanzas, and there are stanzas that I would not be permitted to give.”

SD Comm. p. 141: “. . . after that, where I come and say that so many stanzas are left out, then it begins with the solar system.” (apparently referring to SD 1.151-152: “With these verses—the 4th Sloka of Stanza VI.—ends that portion of the Stanzas which relates to the Universal Cosmogony after the last Mahapralaya or Universal destruction, . . . All the Stanzas and verses which follow in this Book I. refer only to the evolution of, and on, our Earth. . . . Among the eleven Stanzas omitted . . . .”)

SD Comm. p. 342: “But you forget I have been skipping an innumerable number of times not only lines, but whole stanzas.”

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The term Oeaohoo is found in Book of Dzyan, stanza 3, verses 5 and 7, and stanza 4, verse 4. Despite the wide prevalence of Sanskrit texts on mantras found in India, such a term has so far not been found in any of these texts. Similar vowel terms have, however, been found in Gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi library, discovered in 1945.

About the term Oeahoo, we read in The Secret Doctrine:

“Let it be understood that the terms Brahma and Parabrahman are not used here because they belong to our Esoteric nomenclature, but simply because they are more familiar to the students in the West. Both are the perfect equivalents of our one, three, and seven vowelled terms, which stand for the One All, and the One “All in all.”” (S.D. vol. 1, p. 20)

“Oeaohoo is rendered “Father-Mother of the Gods” in the Commentaries, or the six in one, or the septenary root from which all proceeds. All depends upon the accent given to these seven vowels, which may be pronounced as one, three, or even seven syllables by adding an e after the letter “o.” This mystic name is given out, because without a thorough mastery of the triple pronunciation it remains for ever ineffectual.” (S.D. vol. 1, p. 68)

Attached are the three relevant Nag Hammadi texts in the two or three published translations (Nag Hammadi, vowel text 1, 1977, Nag Hammadi, vowel text 1, 1987, Nag Hammadi, vowel text 1, 2007, Nag Hammadi, vowel text 2, 1977, Nag Hammadi, vowel text 2, 2007, Nag Hammadi, vowel text 3, 1977, Nag Hammadi, vowel text 3, 2007). These are:

1. The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit (earlier titled: The Gospel of the Egyptians).

2. The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth.

3. Marsanes.

The references are:

The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 1977, pp. 197, 204, 294, 296, 421, 422.

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, 2007, pp. 255, 267, 415, 417-418, 642, 643.

The Gnostic Scriptures, 1987, pp. 107, 118.

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Prof. Giovanni Hoffman wrote in 1909 that the origin of the Book of Dzyan is the Chinese Taoist book entitled Yu-Fu-King, or The Book of Secret Correspondences (The Theosophist, vol. 31, Oct. 1909, pp. 64-65, attached as Book of Dzyan Giovanni Hoffman). There is a typographical error in the first syllable of this title. As given by James Legge in vol. 40 of the Sacred Books of the East, The Texts of Taoism, Part II, 1891, this title is Yin Fu King, or Classic of the Harmony of the Seen and the Unseen. In the Wade-Giles system of Chinese transcription, this title is Yin-fu Ching. In the currently used pinyin system it is Yinfujing, and the fuller title is Huangdi Yinfujing.

A couple of months ago a new HPB biography came out, Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality, by Gary Lachman. It mentions this idea on p. 257, where we read: “The sinologist Giovanni Hoffmann believed that the ‘Stanzas of Dzyan’ originate in the Book of the Secret Correspondences (Yu-Fu-King) of the fourth-century Taoist Ly-Tzyn.” This is referenced in a note to Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s 1996 book, New Age Religion and Western Culture, p. 453. Turning to that book, we there read:

“Karl R. H. Frick has called attention to an article by the sinologist Giovanni Hoffmann, who points to the teaching of a Taoist of the fourth century named Ly-tzyn, or Dzyan in Tibetan. His book, Yu-Fu-King or “The Book of Secret Correspondences”, was published in Florence in 1878. It seems probable that Blavatsky knew this book but incorrectly interpreted its contents as Vedic. If these suggestions are correct, Isis Unveiled was inspired by a kabbalistic source transmitted to Blavatsky in the context of Knorr von Rosenroth’s Christian kabbalah; and The Secret Doctrine by a Taoist treatise interpreted as Vedic.”

Dr. Hanegraaff is a leading scholar of western esoteric traditions, so he approached his subject from this perspective. He is not a Vedic scholar or a scholar of Chinese. I, too, am not a scholar of Chinese, but I had been studying Sanskrit for several years when I read the 1909 article from The Theosophist in the mid-1980s. That was sufficient for me to discount Prof. Hoffman’s statement made therein about Blavatsky and the Book of Dzyan that: “She has therefore the merit of having re-arranged the shapeless mass of the aphorisms of Dzyan or Tsian; but the doctrine exposed in these applies entirely to the Lao-ze School, and in no wise to the vedic, as she wished it to be believed.” So I filed the article away. Now that some attention has been called to it, I have gotten it out and scanned it and posted it here. Incidentally, the book published in Florence in 1878 is not the Yu-Fu-King or Yin Fu King as such, but rather is Il Buddha, Confucio e Lao-tse: notizie e studii intorno alle religioni dell’Asia Orientale, by Carlo Puini.

There are several English translations of the Yu-Fu-King or Yin Fu King or Yinfujing available today, and sufficient information on these is given in the Wikipedia entry, Huangdi Yinfujing. The 1891 translation by James Legge is now in the public domain and is available online. Since this is a very short text, I have here pasted in the entire translation. Readers can judge for themselves whether they think the Book of Dzyan is based on this Chinese Taoist text. I hardly need to call the attention of readers of this blog to the many Sanskrit parallels to the Book of Dzyan that have been here discussed. I would, however, like to add a word of appreciation to both Gary Lachman and Dr. Wouter Hanegraaff for their helpful and non-hostile approach to the work of Blavatsky.

Yin Fû King, or ‘Classic of the Harmony of the Seen and the Unseen.’

Ch. 1. 1. If one observes the Way of Heaven 1, and maintains Its doings (as his own) 2, all that he has to do is accomplished.

p. 258

2. To Heaven there belong the five (mutual) foes 1, and he who sees them (and understands their operation) apprehends how they produce prosperity. The same five foes are in the mind of man, and when he can set them in action after the manner of Heaven, all space and time are at his disposal, and all things receive their transformations from his person 2.

p. 259

3. The nature of Heaven belongs (also) to Man; the mind of Man is a spring (of power). When the Way of Heaven is established, the (Course of) Man is thereby determined. 1

4. When Heaven puts forth its power of putting to death, the stars and constellations lie hidden in darkness. When Earth puts forth its power of putting to death, dragons and serpents appear on the dry ground. When Man puts forth his power of putting to death, Heaven and Earth resume their (proper course). When Heaven and Man exert their powers in concert, all transformations have their commencements determined. 4_1

5. The nature (of man) is here clever and there stupid; and the one of these qualities may lie hidden in the other. The abuse of the nine apertures is (chiefly) in the three most important, which may be now in movement and now at rest. When fire arises in wood, the evil, having once begun, is sure to go on to the destruction of the wood. When

p. 260

calamity arises in a state, if thereafter movement ensue, it is sure to go to ruin.

When one conducts the work of culture and refining wisely we call him a Sage. 5_1

2. 1. For Heaven now to give life and now to take it away is the method of the Tâo. Heaven and Earth are the despoilers of all things; all things are the despoilers of Man; and Man is the despoiler of all things. When the three despoilers act as they ought to do, as the three Powers, they are at rest. Hence it is said, ‘During the time of nourishment, all the members are properly regulated; when the springs of motion come into play, all transformations quietly take place.’ 1_1

2. Men know the mysteriousness of the Spirit’s (action), but they do not know how what is not Spiritual comes to be so. The sun and moon have their definite times, and their exact measures as

p. 261

large and small. The service of the sages hereupon arises, and the spiritual intelligence becomes apparent. 2_1

3. The spring by which the despoilers are moved is invisible and unknown to all under the sky. When the superior man has got it, he strengthens his body by it; when the small man has got it, he makes light of his life. 3_1

3. 1. The blind hear well, and the deaf see well. To derive all that is advantageous from one source is ten times better than the employment of a host; to do this thrice in a day and night is a myriad times better. 1_1

2. The mind is quickened (to activity) by (external) things, and dies through (excessive pursuit of) them. The spring (of the mind’s activity) is in the eyes.

Heaven has no (special feeling of) kindness, but so it is that the greatest kindness comes from It.

p. 262

The crash of thunder and the blustering wind both come without design. 2_1

3. Perfect enjoyment is the overflowing satisfaction of the nature. Perfect stillness is the entire disinterestedness of it. When Heaven seems to be most wrapt up in Itself, Its operation is universal in its character. 3_1

4. It is by its breath that we control whatever creature we grasp. Life is the root of death, and death is the root of life. Kindness springs from injury, and injury springs from kindness. He who sinks himself in water or enters amidst fire brings destruction on himself. 4_1

p. 263

5. The stupid man by studying the phenomena and laws of heaven and earth becomes sage; I by studying their times and productions become intelligent. He in his stupidity is perplexed about sageness; I in my freedom from stupidity am the same. He considers his sageness as being an extraordinary attainment; I do not consider mine so. 5_1

6. The method of spontaneity proceeds in stillness, and so it was that heaven, earth, and all things were produced. The method of heaven and earth proceeds gently and gradually, and thus it is that the Yin and Yang overcome (each other by turns). The one takes the place of the other, and so change and transformation proceed accordingly. 6_1

7. Therefore the sages, knowing that the method of spontaneity cannot be resisted, take action accordingly and regulate it (for the purpose of culture). The way of perfect stillness cannot be subjected to numerical calculations; but it would seem that there

p. 264

is a wonderful machinery, by which all the heavenly bodies are produced, the eight diagrams, and the sexagenary cycle; spirit-like springs of power, and hidden ghostlinesses; the arts of the Yin and Yang in the victories of the one over the other:–all these come brightly forward into visibility. 7_1

Category: Book of Dzyan | 1 comment

…..IN THE MATRIX OF THE PRIMORDIAL DEITIES

“…in the night of Sun-chan.”

– Michael Lewis and Ken Small

Blavatskys’ final version of  Stanza one and also her  Tibetan phonetic source is indented from the original in the Secret Doctrine Proem, p. 23.  The earlier version from Blavatsky’s 1886 manuscript is given after the later one under sub a.
(Michael Lewis translation / interpretation and comments follow in bold italics and plain type. I have made the arrangement and editing. K.S.)

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

1a.  THE Eternal Mother (space) wrapped in her ever invisible robes (cosmic prenebular matter had slumbered for seven Eternities,

Tho-ag in zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo

The Potential of Spatiality as the Fundamental Cause [or Causal Ground]  slept for seven cycles

Tho-ok = the ‘boundless all’ equivalent to Parmenides apeiron = boundless

Tho = above and ok = below (see example of this usage in the Throma sadhana). Tibetan often makes use of two extremes to create a definition, in this case ‘above/below’ giving the meaning of ‘spatiality’.

Zhi gyu = uncaused cause or fundamental cause ( Zhi-ma would negate this)

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

2a. (identical rendering)

Zodmanas zhiba.

Patiently the One Mind peacefully  abided

Zhipa = patient     Manas = mind in Sanskrit   Yeh Zhi =  primordial ground or original foundation = Dharmakaya. This would be ‘aja-sakti, the unborn, a Dzogchen term which Blavatsky references in her article on ‘Tibetan Teachings’ give ref.)

            All Nyug bosom.

All was in [the bosom of] the Ultimate Natural State.

Nyug is the same as Nyuk. The nyuk that David Reigle is referring to is spelled snug and means quite correctly duration. However gnyug(ma) which is usually short for gnyug ma’i sems means the genuine innate, interrupted ongoing, perpetual, original natural state or nature or the authentic original untouched nature which is virtually synonymous with Dzogchen. It is said to be ‘ma sam gur pay nur lay day’ = inconceivable and ineffable and cannot be an object of intellective consciousness. As Joseph Campbell says “no tongue can soil it with a name.” The secondary meaning is of continuously residing or indigenous = Sanskrit nija. ‘Nyuk me sems’ is a synonym for rigpa, the uncontrived untouched natural complete awareness spontaneously present. The original, indigenous ‘resident’ of the universe, the mandala of Samantabhadra. The ‘ma’ in gnyugma’ = the motherly underlying empty essence and refers directly to the prajna paramita – the motherly wisdom of the Buddhas.  Blavatsky conveys this by her use of the word ‘bosom’ as a poetic metaphor to convey the correct feeling tone for this meaning.

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

3a. Time was not, for there were no Dhyan Chohans to contain (hence to manifest) it.

Konch-hog not;

There was no separate existence of Deity;

Konchok – when the Moravian missionaries translated the Christian Bible into Tibetan they used the word ‘Konchog’ when translating ‘God’. It could be translated as ‘supreme superiors’.

Regarding ‘AH-HI’, the expression ‘Ah-hay’ = ‘hadewa’ which means the awe surprised wondering awareness, uncontained. It is also similar to ‘ATI’

            Thyan-Kam not;

Everything was non-dual and was absorbed in the primordial state;

[alternative] Nor was there meditative absorption with formal substratum

[alternative] The one elemnt was absorbed in the primordial state.

Tian Kham = Dhyan = meditative absorption and Kham = formal substratum

or Thyan-Kam = element.

Lha-Chohan not;

There were no gods or exalted ones;

Lha = gods and Chohan = exalted ones

1. 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.

4a.  (identical  rendering)

Tenbrel Chugnyi not;

There was no twelvefold chain of interdependent arising

1. 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.

5a.  (Identical rendering with only without the ending phrase “and his pilgrimage thereon.” is not in this earlier version.)

Dharmakaya ceased;

Dharmakaya ceased

Cho lon yang me = Dharmakaya also was not

“A very profound  view.  I don’t believe this is discussed or elucidated anywhere as a philosophical concept in Buddhist philosophy. Perhaps in Dzogchen, but I do not know of any reference at this time either translated  or in Tibetan.” (M.L.)

Tgenchang not become;

Anything having specific characteristics had not yet become.

Tgenchang  could be rgyen chang = ornament holder. The ‘T’ is not a correct prefix.

            Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj

The blazing forth of experience and its ground in shear essentiality was what was.

Barnang = blazing appearance. Nang = the same meaning as Pleroma in Greek = ‘lighting up’  and implying objects of cognition.

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.

6a.  The seven sublime Truths, and the Seven Srutis—had ceased to be, and the Universe, the Son of Necessity, was plunged in Paranishpanna (absolute perfecton, Paranivwana, which is Jong-grub)—to be outbreathed by that which is, and yet is not. Naught was,

Alone Tho-og Yinsin in night of Sun-chan

The potential of spatiality alone held existence in the night of Sun-chan

 [or alternative  rendering]

The matrix from which would arise the primal deities alone held existence

Sun – chun – according to Chandra Das quoting de Koros, Sun-chun means ancestral spirit or tutelary deities and chan means possessed of.  It would be useful to look for this term in a Zhang-Zhung dictionary.

and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna)

and everything was already accomplished there.

Category: Book of Dzyan | 4 comments

A short presentation of the context of the Book of Dzyan, as described by H.P.Blavatsky and other theosophists has been put together by David Pratt, and, thanks to his agreement, it is reprinted here as a brief introduction to the subject. More on Theosophy Exploration can be found on David Pratt’s web site .

o-o-o-o-o

The Book of Dzyan

H.P. Blavatsky begins the first chapter of Isis Unveiled (1:1) with the following words:

There exists somewhere in this wide world an old Book – so very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult learning – the Siphra Dzeniouta – was compiled from it, and that at a time when the former was already considered in the light of a literary relic.

She goes on to describe one of the illustrations in the book, which shows Adam emanating from the Divine Essence.(1)

    In The Secret Doctrine (1:xliii), Blavatsky writes:

The ‘very old Book’ is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah, the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China’s primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Purânas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race . . .

    In an article entitled ‘The Secret Books of “Lam-Rim” and Dzyan’, which was not published during her lifetime, Blavatsky says that the Book of Dzyan, on which The Secret Doctrine is based, is one of the volumes of Kiu-te:

    The Book of Dzyan – from the Sanskrit word ‘Dhyâna’ (mystic meditation) – is the first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven secret folios of Kiu-te, and a Glossary of the public works of the same name. Thirty-five volumes of Kiu-te for exoteric purposes and the use of the laymen may be found in the possession of the Tibetan Gelugpa Lamas, in the library of any monastery; and also fourteen books of Commentaries and Annotations on the same by the initiated Teachers.
Strictly speaking, those thirty-five books ought to be termed ‘The Popularised Version’ of the Secret Doctrine, full of myths, blinds, and errors; the fourteen volumes of Commentaries, on the other hand – with their translations, annotations, and an ample glossary of Occult terms, worked out from one small archaic folio, the Book of the Secret Wisdom of the World – contain a digest of all the Occult Sciences. These, it appears, are kept secret and apart, in the charge of the Teshu-Lama, of Shigatse. The Books of Kiu-te are comparatively modern, having been edited within the last millennium, whereas, the earliest volumes of theCommentaries are of untold antiquity . . .(2)

    G. de Purucker makes the following comments on the Book of Dzyan:

    The Book of Dzyan, as a physical roll or book or manuscript, . . . is, as H.P.B. says, not very old, probably about a thousand years, and is part of a well-known, more or less common Tibetan series of works, well-known even exoterically, called Kiu-ti . . . The substance, however, of the Book of Dzyan, which is simply the Tibetan or Mongolian way of pronouncing the Sanskrit Dhyâna, is very ancient, even highly archaic, goes right back into Atlantean times, and even beyond as regards the doctrine taught. . . .
The Book of Dzyan is written in Tibetan, at least part of it or most of it, is interspersed with a lot of exoteric stuff, but the real occult part of the Book of Dzyan is one of the first of the Kiu-ti volumes and deals mainly with cosmogony, and later on to a less extent, I believe, with anthropogony or the beginnings of mankind.(3)

    Blavatsky states that the Stanzas of Dzyan as presented in The Secret Doctrine are a modern translation that blends together texts and glosses to make them more comprehensible. She speaks of Tibetan and Senzar versions of the stanzas, and says that extracts are given from the Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar commentaries and glosses.(4) She also explains that Senzar, the mystery language of the prehistoric ages, is ‘the language now called SYMBOLISM’.(5) An example is the series of glyphs from ‘an archaic manuscript’ which are described in the first few pages of the Proem (SD 1:1-5), and represent the dawn of a new manvantara.

    In the Introductory to The Secret Doctrine (1:xxii), Blavatsky writes:

One of the greatest, and, withal, the most serious objection to the correctness and reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary STANZAS: ‘How can the statements contained in them be verified?’ . . . The Book of Dzyan (or ‘Dzan’) is utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by them under its present name.

Despite all the information provided by Blavatsky, the actual identity of the public books of Kiu-te remained a mystery for over 80 years after her death. The existence of such books was called into question, and they were often dismissed as figments of her imagination. However, in 1975 H.J. Spierenburg (6) identified the Books of Kiu-te as the Tibetan Buddhist Tantras – the correct transliteration of the Tibetan title is rGyud-sde, but ‘Kiu-te’ is a good approximation of the pronunciation. In 1981, another theosophical scholar, David Reigle, independently came to the same conclusion regarding the identity of the Books of Kiu-te.(7) He writes:

As [Blavatsky] said, they are indeed found in the library of any Tibetan Gelugpa monastery, as also in those of the other sects (Kargyudpa, Nyingmapa, and Sakyapa), and they are indeed highly occult works, being regarded by the entire Tibetan Buddhist tradition as embodying the Buddha’s secret teachings. . . . [O]nly the spelling of the term foiled previous attempts to identify them.(8)

    The spelling ‘Kiu-te’ (or Khiu-te) is taken from the writings of the Capuchin monk Horace della Penna. Blavatsky quotes his extremely negative views on the Books of Kiu-te in her article ‘The Secret Books of “Lam-Rim” and Dzyan’, and they are refuted by the ‘Chohan-Lama’, ‘the Chief of the Archive-registrars of the secret Libraries of the Dalai and Ta-shü-hlumpo Lamas-Rimboche’, in an article entitled ‘Tibetan Teachings’, written at Blavatsky’s request but not published until after her death.(9)

    The Tibetan Buddhist Sacred Canon is divided into two parts: the Kanjur, containing the Buddha’s Word, and the Tanjur, containing commentaries. Reigle believes that the Book of Dzyan may be the Mûla (Root) Kâlachakra Tantra – which is missing. Rather than being ‘lost’, it was probably withdrawn from the outer world, just as various other esoteric works have been either withdrawn or abridged.(10) Given Blavatsky’s remark that the Book of Dzyan is ‘the first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven secret folios of Kiu-te’, it is significant that the Laghu (Abridged) Kâlachakra Tantra, which is still available, is always placed first among the Books of Kiu-te in editions of the Kanjur. The Kâlachakra Tantra is the only Buddhist Tantra whose subject matter resembles the cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis of The Secret Doctrine. According to Reigle, ‘Dzyan’ is a Tibetan phonetic rendering of the Sanskrit jñâna (wisdom), the result of dhyâna (meditation), and ‘Jñâna’ is the title of the fifth and last section of theKâlachakra Tantra. However, none of the stanzas that Blavatsky quotes from the Book of Dzyan has so far been located in the abridged Kâlachakra Tantra or in verses from the root Kâlachakra Tantra quoted in other Buddhist writings.

    Blavatsky states that the Kâlachakra is the first and most important work in the Gyut (rGyud) division of the Kanjur, the division of mystic knowledge.(11) The Kâlachakra Tantra is considered to be the pinnacle of the Buddha’s esoteric doctrine, and is the only Tantra said to have come directly from Shambhala – which in theosophical literature is regarded as the headquarters of the Brotherhood of Adepts. Furthermore, the Panchen (or Tashi) Lama is the special protector of Kâlachakra, and his monastery, Tashi-lhunpo, near Shigatse, has been the major centre for Kâlachakra studies in Tibet. Blavatsky states that the secret volumes of Kiu-te are in the charge of the Tashi Lama, with whom her adept teachers were closely associated. In a letter to Franz Hartmann in 1886, she writes:

There is beyond the Himalayas a nucleus of Adepts, of various nationalities; and the Teschu Lama knows them, and they act together, and some of them are with him and yet remain unknown in their true character even to the average lamas . . . My Master and K.H. and several others I know personally are there, coming and going . . .(12)

    In the preface to The Voice of the Silence, Blavatsky states that the work is a translation of extracts from The Book of the Golden Precepts, which is part of the same series as the Book of Dzyan. In The Voice it is asked: ‘Wouldst thou become a Yogi of “Time’s Circle”?’ (p. 29) – ‘time’s circle’ or ‘wheel of time’ is the literal translation of kâlachakra. The Voice goes on to say that to become such a yogi, one must not retreat into selfish seclusion, but follow the path of compassionate service to mankind:

    Sow kindly acts and thou shalt reap their fruition. Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin. . . .
Shalt thou abstain from action? Not so shall gain thy soul her freedom. To reach Nirvâna one must reach Self-Knowledge, and Self-Knowledge is of loving deeds the child. (p. 31)

    In 1927 Alice Leighton Cleather and Basil Crump issued a reprint of The Voice of the Silence under the auspices of the Chinese Buddhist Research Society in Peking. In their editorial foreword they state that they undertook the work at the request of the (ninth) Panchen Lama, ‘as the only true exposition in English of the Heart Doctrine of the Mahayâna and its noble ideal of self-sacrifice for humanity’. The Panchen Lama contributed a brief message on the path of liberation. David Reigle says that the time of the ninth Panchen Lama (1883-1937) seemed to mark a new period of growth for the Kâlachakra teachings. During his extensive travels he established new Kâlachakra Colleges in monasteries in Tibet and Mongolia.

While living in Peking, China, he presented the editors of The Voice of the Silence with a small Kâlachakra treatise, and a few years later, in 1932, he there gave the Kâlachakra Initiation to an immense gathering. These large public Initiations are meant to qualify candidates to begin the study and practice of the Kâlachakra Tantra, or, according to the present Dalai Lama, at least to establish a karmic relationship with the Kâlachakra teachings.(13)

The Dalai Lama gave the Kâlachakra initiation in Madison, Wisconsin, in July 1981, the first time it had been given in the West.

    Reigle hopes that a Sanskrit or Tibetan manuscript of the Book of Dzyan will be made available in the not-too-distant future, as this would have a major impact on the academic world and undermine its scepticism towards theosophy.(14) We can be confident that The Book of Dzyan will be released as soon as the time is ripe, for the mahâtmas ‘know best what knowledge is best for mankind at a particular stage of its evolution’.(15)

References

1. See The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, TUP, 2nd ed., 1975, p. 45; H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, TUP, 1977 (1888), 1:xlii.
2. H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, TPH, 1950-91, 14:422.
3. G. de Purucker, Studies in Occult Philosophy, TUP, 1973, pp. 452-4.
4. The Secret Doctrine, 1:22-3.
5. Ibid., 1:309. See also: Studies in Occult Philosophy, pp. 442-3; John Algeo, Senzar: The mystery of the mystery language, Theosophical History Centre, 1988.
6. H.J. Spierenburg, The Buddhism of H.P. Blavatsky, PLP, 1991, pp. 135-50.
7. David Reigle, The Books of Kiu-te or The Tibetan Buddhist Tantras: a preliminary analysis, Wizards Bookshelf, 1983; David Reigle & Nancy Reigle, Blavatsky’s Secret Books: twenty years’ research, Wizards Bookshelf, 1999. See also Robert Hütwohl, ‘The Practical Vision of Sri Kâlacakra’, The High Country Theosophist, April 1997, pp. 9-19, Dec. 1997, p. 13.
8. Reigle, The Books of Kiu-te, p. 1.
9. Blavatsky Collected Writings, 6:94-112. See also Jean Overton Fuller, Blavatsky and Her Teachers, East-West Publications, 1988, pp. 111-2.
10. See The Secret Doctrine, 1:xxiii-xxxv, 68, 269-72.
11. Blavatsky Collected Writings, 14:402; The Secret Doctrine, 1:52fn.
12. Charles J. Ryan, H.P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Movement, TUP, 2nd ed., 1975, p. 85. See also: Blavatsky Collected Writings, 14:425; Theosophical Glossary (1892), Theos. Co., 1973, p. 305.
13. Reigle, The Books of Kiu-te, p. 37.
14. The High Country Theosophist, Feb. 1995, pp. 29-32, Dec. 1995, pp. 246-9.
15. Blavatsky Collected Writings, 6:265.

by David Pratt. November 1998.

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