2. ...Where was silence? Where the ears to sense it ? No, there was neither silence nor sound; naught save ceaseless eternal breath, which knows itself not.

3. The hour had not yet struck; the ray had not yet flashed into the Germ; the Matripadma had not yet swollen.

4. Her heart had not yet opened for the one ray to enter, thence to fall, as three into four, into the lap of Maya.

5. The seven sons were not yet born from the web of light. Darkness alone was father-mother, Svâbhâvat; and Svâbhâvat was in darkness.

6. These two are the Germ, and the Germ is one. The Universe was still concealed in the Divine thought and the Divine bosom. ...

Madame Blavatsky attempted to explain this enigmatic phrasing in The Secret Doctrine. A sample of two of her explanations for this stanza are given below:

Verse 5:

Svâbhâvat, the "Plastic Essence" that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. Svâbhâvat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindu philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the former. Chinese mystics have made of it the synonym of "being." In the Ekasloka-Shastra of Nagârjuna (the Luing-shu of China) called by the Chinese the Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original word of Yeu is "Being " or "Subhâva," "the Sub-stance giving substance to itself," also explained by him as meaning "without action and with action," ,the nature which has no nature of its own." Subhâva, from which Svâbhâvat, is composed of two words': Su "fair," "handsome," good; " Sva, "self; " and bhava, "being " or "states of being."

Verse 6:

The "Divine Thought" does not imply the idea of a Divine thinker. The Universe, not only past, present, and future - which is a human and finite idea expressed by finite thought - but in its totality, the Sat (an untranslateable term), the absolute being, with the Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is that Thought itself reflected in a secondary or manifest cause. Brahma (neuter) as the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus is an absolute mystery to the human mind. Brahma, the male-female, its aspect and anthropomorphic reflection, is conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though rejected by human intellect when it attains its majority. (See Part II., "Prlmordial Substance and Divine Thought.")

Copyright © 2008 Harvey Tordoff.
H. P. Blavatsky photographs courtesy of Colyn Boyce.