Part 3: Comparison of Ṛg-veda 10.129 with the Book of Dzyan

Now that we have what I consider to be an adequate basis for comparison, with the translation choices and the reasons for them explained at length, we may proceed with the comparison of Ṛg-veda 10.129 with the Book of Dzyan. We should keep in mind that the Ṛg-veda hymns are poems, not philosophical or scientific treatises. About the handful of Ṛg-veda hymns that may be considered cosmogonic, C. Kunhan Raja writes (Poet-Philosophers of the Ṛgveda, 1963, p. 221):

“They are primarily poetry and they are poetry with a philosophical topic. In the other places we have poetry with a philosophical back-ground. We have only poetry in the Ṛgveda and we never have a text book on any philosophical topic.”

Among the Ṛg-veda hymns that may be considered cosmogonic, e.g., 10.90 to puruṣa, 10.121 to hiraṇya-garbha, 10.81-82 to viśva-karman, and perhaps a few others, 10.129 is unique. It gives a more or less straightforward account of cosmogony, without mythology. It therefore provides us with quite the closest comparison from the Vedas to the Book of Dzyan.

RV 10.129.1. [It] was not non-existent, nor was [it] existent then. There was no world, nor sky, [nor] what is beyond. What moved incessantly? Where? In the abode of what? Was [it] water, dense [and] deep?

“Book of Dzyan,” stanza 1, śloka 6: “. . . the Universe, the son of necessity, was immersed in pariniṣpanna, to be outbreathed by that which is and yet is not. Naught was.”; 1.8: “Alone the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in dreamless sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, . . .”; 3.2: “. . . the darkness that breathes over the slumbering waters of life.”

In particular, we may compare Ṛg-veda 10.129.1a, “[It] was not non-existent, nor was [it] existent then,” with the phrase in Book of Dzyan 1.6, “that which is and yet is not,” which is further clarified in the following stanza 1.7, “eternal non-being—the one being.” For Ṛg-veda 10.129.1c, “What moved incessantly?,” the “incessantly” is only an attempt to render the sense of “repeated” in the intensive verb “moved,” which sense was rendered by Geldner as “back and forth” (hin und her), by Gonda as “intermittently,” and by Hock as “kept on” moving. The parallel phrase in Book of Dzyan 1.8 is “life pulsated unconscious,” where “pulsated” well shows repeated movement. The “water, dense [and] deep” asked about in Ṛg-veda 10.129.1d may be compared with “the slumbering waters of life” that darkness breathes over in Book of Dzyan 3.2, called in 3.3 “the mother deep.”

RV 10.129.2. There was not death nor life (“non-death”) then. There was no distinguishing sign of night [or] of day. That one breathed without air by [its] inherent power. Other than just that, there was not anything else.

“Book of Dzyan,” stanza 2, śloka 2: “. . . No, there was neither silence nor sound; naught save ceaseless eternal breath, which knows itself not.”

According to The Secret Doctrine, “The Great Breath” is “absolute Abstract Motion” (vol. 1, p. 14), which along with “absolute abstract Space” are the two aspects under which the one ultimate principle is symbolized. This breath or motion, the eternal cause, can also be described as force (SD 1.93 fn., speaking of the eternal nidāna or cause, the Oi-Ha-Hou): “. . . it is a term to denote the ceaseless and eternal Cosmic Motion; or rather the Force that moves it, which Force is tacitly accepted as the Deity but never named. It is the eternal kāraṇa, the ever-acting Cause.” This motion or force can also be described as svabhāva, something’s “inherent nature” (The Mahatma Letters, #22, 3rd ed. p. 136): “Their plastic, invisible, eternal, omnipresent and unconscious svabhāva is Force or Motion ever generating its electricity which is life.” The svadhā, “inherent power” or force by which “that one” breathed without air in Ṛg-veda 10.129.2c, is apparently the svabhāva or “inherent nature” of “that one.”

RV 10.129.3. Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning. All this was water without distinguishing sign. That one germ which was covered by the void was born through the power of heat.

“Book of Dzyan,” stanza 1, śloka 5: “Darkness alone filled the boundless all, for father, mother and son were once more one, . . .”; 2.3: “The hour had not yet struck; the ray had not yet flashed into the germ; . . .”; 2.5: “. . . Darkness alone was Father-Mother, svabhāva; and svabhāva was in darkness.”; 2.6: “These two are the Germ, and the Germ is one. . . .”; 3.2: “The vibration sweeps along, touching with its swift wing the whole universe, and the germ that dwelleth in darkness: the darkness that breathes over the slumbering waters of life.”; 3.3: “Darkness radiates light, and light drops one solitary ray into the waters, into the mother deep. The ray shoots through the virgin egg; the ray causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal germ, which condenses into the world-egg.”

To this we may add a quotation from the “Occult Catechism,” cited in The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 11: “What is it that ever is?” “Space, the eternal aupapāduka (“parentless”).” “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.” This goes along with Book of Dzyan 3.8: “Where was the germ, and where was now darkness? Where is the spirit of the flame that burns in thy lamp, oh Lanoo? The germ is that, and that is light; the white brilliant son of the dark hidden father.”

The parallels with darkness and the germ are self-evident. The “water without distinguishing sign” spoken of here in Ṛg-veda 10.129.3b, “All this was water without distinguishing sign,” may be compared with “the great dark waters” in Book of Dzyan 3.7, “Bright Space Son of Dark Space, which emerges from the depths of the great dark waters,” as opposed to “the great waters” at the end of that stanza that are manifested. In the Book of Dzyan it is light rather than the closely related heat in Ṛg-veda 10.129.3d that produces the cosmos. But in Book of Dzyan 3.6 light is heat, “. . . radiant light, which was fire, and heat, and motion,” and in 3.9 light produces heat, which in turn yields the manifested water: “Light is cold flame, and flame is fire, and fire produces heat, which yields water: the water of life in the great mother.” The manifested water symbolizes manifested matter (SD 1.82), which constitutes the manifested cosmos.

RV 10.129.4. Desire in the beginning came upon that [germ], which was the first seed of mind. Sages, having searched in the heart with inspired thought, found out [desire to be] the link of the existent in the non-existent.

The parallel of “desire” (kāma) here in this cosmogonic hymn to Eros in the Greek cosmogony has long been noted by Vedic scholars. In The Secret Doctrine, what is parallel to Eros is the otherwise unknown Fohat (vol. 1, p. 109). Fohat is there described as “the mysterious link between Mind and Matter” (1.16). “Fohat, in his capacity of Divine Love (Eros), the electric Power of affinity and sympathy, is shown allegorically as trying to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable from the ONE absolute, into union with the Soul, the two constituting in Man the Monad, and in Nature the first link between the ever unconditioned and the manifested” (1.119). This is apparently what the sages found out desire to be in Ṛg-veda 10.129.4, “the link of the existent in the non-existent.” How Fohat or desire functions as the link between the non-existent or ever unconditioned and the existent or manifested is poetically pictured in Book of Dzyan 3.12: “Then svabhāva sends Fohat to harden the atoms. . . .”

RV 10.129.5. Their cord was extended across. Was there a below? Was there an above? There were seed-placers, there were powers; inherent power below, impulse above.

“Book of Dzyan,” stanza 3, śloka 7: “. . . Behold him lifting the veil and unfurling it from east to west. He shuts out the above, and leaves the below to be seen as the great illusion. . . .”

RV 10.129.6. Who really knows? Who here can say? From where has [it] been born? From where [has come] this manifestation? The gods are later than the manifestation of this [cosmos]. Then who knows from what [it] has come into being?

RV 10.129.7. From what this manifestation has come into being, whether [it] was made or whether not, its overseer who is in the highest heaven, he surely knows; or else [he] knows not.

As I hope will be obvious to all who read this, there are close parallels between Ṛg-veda 10.129 and the Book of Dzyan; e.g., what is neither non-existent nor existent, its breathing, darkness, etc. It is true that Blavatsky had access to the anonymous translation of Ṛg-veda 10.129 published by Max Müller in 1859, and even quoted five of its seven verses in The Secret Doctrine facing the opening of the stanzas from the Book of Dzyan. However, a reader not knowing the source of either would far more likely conclude that the brief Ṛg-veda 10.129 was derived from the extensive stanzas of the Book of Dzyan than that the latter were elaborated from Ṛg-veda 10.129.

Now, what can be gained by this comparison? The fact is that the meanings of many Vedic words given in our European language Sanskrit dictionaries are guesses, and likewise the meanings of many Vedic words given in the Sāyaṇa Sanskrit commentaries on the Vedas are also guesses. Comparison with the Book of Dzyan clarifies some of these meanings, providing a new source of information that is no less helpful than guesses based on context or guesses based on late Indian tradition. Conversely, comparison with Ṛg-veda 10.129 shows us the oldest known formulation of what are obviously many of the very same ideas. These ideas, according to ancient Indian tradition, are not the speculations of fledgling philosophers, but rather are the result of the direct spiritual vision of advanced sages, coming down to us from an age of truth.