Theos-Talk Archives (December 2005 Message tt00007)

A recap on the last four topics we inquired into. 

We started with vibrations and illustrated how everything in this 
universe is formed by vibrations. We introduced the idea that even 
our thoughts and emotions are vibrations created in subtle matter 
which is not physical. Then we moved on to the physical and 
spiritual atoms. We noted that forms in the physical world are made 
of chemical elements which are in turn made of chemical atoms. 

The chemical atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. The 
protons and neutrons are in turn made of quarks, three in each. And 
the quarks are in turn are made of three numbers of the Anu, which 
is the ultimate physical atom of the physical plane (UPA). Science 
is yet to discover the Anu or the UPA. 

The most surprising part of it all is that the UPA is only the 
ultimate atom of the physical world, and that it is made of nearly 
14 million bubbles of matter! Called ParamAnu, these bubbles are the 
ultimate atom of matter of any plane. Yogis make use of the Anu and 
the ParamAnu to materialize and dematerialize forms and for the 
invisible travels that their tasks involve. 

Next we turned out attention to the nature of the One God whose 
manifestation is this universe and all the forms inside it. We noted 
that this One God in his unimanifested state is known as the nirguna 
brahman and that he manifests as saguna brahman, ensouling matter 
with his consciousness or spirit, creating the Trinity and the whole 
lot of the hierarchy of devas and other divine beings. 

We noted with caution that the manifested forms create the maya. The 
maya is not totally unreal but has a time frame for its reality. The 
Ultimate Reality is the Brahman in his unmanifested form. The time 
that limits the forms of maya flows in cycles, starting with the 
conditional khanda kala known to us in the scale from seconds to 
years and the cosmic cycles of time of yugas, mahayugas, 
manvantaras, kalpas, pralaya and the ultimate mahapralaya, at which 
time the Great Brahman would breathe back into himself all the forms 
that he breathed out as manifestations. 

Today we are going to inquire into the formation of the universe and 
our solar system as manifested forms of the related deities, who in 
turn are the manifestations of the One God Brahman. 

Parabrahman-Mulaprakriti 

"There are, assuredly, two forms of Brahma: the formed and the 
formless. Now, that which is the formed is unreal; that which is the 
formless is real, is Brahma, is light. That light is the same as the 
sun." 

-- Maitri-Upanishad, VI, 3 
The name Brahma in the above quotation refers to Parabrahman. 

A universe is both Parabrahman and Mulaprakriti in essence. 
Parabrahman is the life or energy, Mulaprakriti his form. Without 
Mulaprakriti, Parabrahman, the pure consciousness, or pure energy 
would remain, but this is not possible. Without Parabrahman, the 
Mulaprakriti would be lifeless and this is also not possible. 

Therefore, energy and matter are two sides of the same thing. 
Parabrahman and Mulaprakriti are two sides of the One God, who is 
Parabrahman Himself, popularly called Brahman. 

Call it space or koilon or mulaprakriti, Brahman is ultimately that 
mulaprakriti. Call it energy or life force or spirit and 
consciousness, Brahman hides it inside the mulaprakriti. Since 
Brahman is the mulaprakriti, he is referred to as That in the 
Upanishads. 

Our body is essentially Mulaprakriti, manifesting in form. 
Everything else is so: a star, a piece of wood, a beast, bird or 
bacteria. As above, so below. 

And there is a hierarchy. Everything is contained in something 
greater. Every atom has its home in a molecule, every molecule in a 
cell, every cell in a body, every body in a greater body, the 
greater body, such as our earth, in the solar ether, the solar 
system in a galaxy, the galaxy in a universe, and the universe in 
THAT, the ultimate Space or Parabrahman. 

Besides, there is a cycle of time or duration that determines the 
life of a form. This we saw, originates from the Great Breath, and 
operates in a constant secular cyclical diastole and systole, 
similar to that of the human heart. In other words, the Cosmic Time 
which is infinite, is the duration between Braman's breathing out 
forms and breathing them in. The Costimc Time is infinite because 
the creation cycle starts all over again after the mahapralaya. 

The forms manifested by the Great Breath divide cosmic time into 
conditional events of the solar and other discrete units of time. 

The pure consciousness of Parabrahman activates our body and 
everything else that has form. But this pure consciousness in us 
humans is clouded by our tendency to associate our Self with our 
body. This tendency is due to the cycle of births and deaths we 
undergo, and the carried over samskaras. 

We think that the night and day and week and month and year flows in 
discrete units of time, its stream originating from the future, 
gliding along the present into the past. The same sort of ignorance 
we have and cherish, in thinking ourselves as apart from the 
Creator, and keeping up that status. 

We cherish this ignorance of association with our body and lower 
self because we fear that as otherwise we will lose our identity. We 
lose our bodily identify anyway when we die, but maya and our 
samskaras send us back on a cycle of reincarnation by which we 
acquire a new body and start associating with it. 

A number of earthern pots are kept for sale by the potter. The pots 
divide the aakaasha or space among themselves. Each pot has its own 
share of space. Break all the pots and the aakaasha is seen to be 
the ultimate reality, whether inside or outside the pots. 

In the same way, we in our bodies think of ourselves as discrete 
entities of Parabrahman, sharing a little each of his space, time 
and consciousness. If we think beyond the body, we would realise the 
Reality. The pot-body analogy is a famous teaching from Sri Adi 
Sankara. 

Trinity in Divine and Human Forms 

As we noted earlier, Brahman manifests as the Trinity Shiva, Vishnu 
and Brahma. These three forms have the names the First Aspect, the 
Second Aspect and the Third Aspect in Theosophy, while Brahman 
himself is known as the Logos. Other religions have corresponding 
names for the three forms. 

Every god and human in the hiearchy of creation has a trinity: atma, 
buddhi, manas. The Shiva aspect is Atma or Consciousness or Will 
power that ensouls all forms. The Vishnu aspect is Buddhi or 
Intution or Wisdom that persistently guides souls that are in and 
out of forms during their evolution. The Brahma aspect is the Manas, 
the thinking and creating mind that spawns both good and evil. This 
may be the reason why our Puranas say that both Devas and Asuras 
were spawned by Brahma. 

Koilon and the Bubbles 

Before the universe and our solar system came into existence, there 
was only the root-matter Koilon (Mulaprakriti). The term Koilon 
derives from the Greek Koilos, meaning hollow. 

The Koilon is roughly the ether of the Science, but it should not be 
confused with the etheric matter that composes the first four of the 
seven sub planes of the physical plane. 

The space occupied by Koilon appears empty to the physical senses. 
In reality, it is far denser than anything we know. Professor 
Osborne Reynolds, whose theory agrees with occult investigation, has 
defined its density as 10,000 times greater than that of water, and 
its mean pressure is 750,000 tons to the square inch. Koilon is 
perceptible only to highly developed clairvoyant power. 

Koilon filled all space and was at rest. The One God changed this 
condition by pouring out His spirit or force into a certain section 
of the matter, a section the size of a whole universe. 

The effect of the introduction of this force is like the blowing of 
a mighty breath. It formed an incalculable number of tiny spherical 
bubbles in Koilon. These bubbles are the ultimate atoms, out of 
which everything we call matter is manufactured. 

H.P. Blavatsky in her book The Secret Doctrine calls this force 
(that originally formed the bubbles) Fohat. She speaks of it as 
"digging holes in space". 

A modern equivalent of "digging holes" to create the primitives of 
matter is the way audio/video data (songs, pictures, movies and 
computer data) is recorded on a compact disc (CD-ROM) or a digital 
dideo disk (DVD). In this case, a laser beam burns holes called pits 
on a smooth surface of the disc. The pits and the raised surface 
bits grouped together, create patterns of data read by a computer or 
an audio/video player. 

Man, in his creations, imitates his Creator, whose consciousness is 
active in him. As above, so below. 

The bubbles are not like a soap-bubble, which is a film of water 
with an outer and an inner surface, enclosing air within it. They 
are like bubbles in soda-water, or boiling water, which have only 
one surface, where the air meets water. 

To the highest sight available, the bubbles appear to be empty, with 
no apparent, inherent motion or rotation. Each bubble in reality is 
a point of His consciousness, and persists only so long as He wills 
to keep the enveloping Koilon in tact. These bubbles are the 
ultimate atoms of which what we call matter is composed. 

Even though the bubbles appear to have no motion of their own, they 
can be moved as a whole from without, singly or en masse, by an 
exertion of the will. No two bubbles ever under any circumstances 
touch each other. 

Having marked a spherical limit for His activity, the One (called 
Logos in Theosophy) builds the universe inside the sphere, using His 
manifested form Brahma (the Third Aspect). 

This sphere where Brahma lived to form the universe is called 
hiranyagarbha in Hinduism. The Upanishads describe it as a huge 
golden egg, resplendent as the sun, where Brahma lived for a year, 
and then divided it into two parts by his mere thought, and with 
these two he formed the heavens and the earth; and in the middle he 
placed the sky, the eight regions, and the eternal abode of the 
waters. 

Hiranyagarbha literally means the golden womb and is symbolic of the 
birth of Brahma from this womb by immaculate conception. Hindu 
Puranas state that Brahma was born out of Vishnu, and this is 
symbolised by the umbilical cord that protrudes from the navel 
(nabhi) of Vishnu and carries Brahma on a lotus flower. 

Annie Besant in her book The Ancient Wisdom, sums up the teachings 
of the sages about the One that created the universe, in this 
beautiful passage: 

"Within that sphere the universe is born, is evolved, and dies; it 
lives, it moves, it has its being in Him; its matter is His 
emanation; its forces and energies are currents of His Life; He is 
immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, all-evolving; 
He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, its centre 
and circumference; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it 
breathes in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything and 
everything in Him." 

Birth of the Solar System and the Planes 

When the Solar Deity (a manifested aspect of the One God) begins to 
make his system, he decides to use the bubbles ready at hand. He 
first defines the limit of his field of activity, a vast sphere with 
a circumference far larger than the orbit of the outermost of his 
future planets. 

Within this limit of his activity, he sets up a kind of gigantic 
vortex, sweeping together all the bubbles into a vast central mass. 
Into this stupendous revolving sphere he sends forth, acting through 
His Third Aspect, seven impulses of force, gathering together the 
bubbles into even more and more complex aggregations. 

The seven impulses or "breaths" of the Solar Deity, coming one after 
another, over long perioda of time, create the seven planes of the 
solar system. 

Each impulse sets up tiny vortices all through the sphere. Each of 
these tiny vortices draw into itself bubbles in multiples of 49, 
depending on the plane created. The bubbles drawn together are 
grouped in a certain shape, which forms the ultimate atom for the 
plane created. 

The Hindu method describes this process as follows: "Each plane has 
what is called a tanmatra (literally, a measure of That), and a 
tattva (literally, the inherent Thatness). The tanmatra is the 
modification in the consciousness of the Logos: the tattva is the 
effect produced in matter by that modification. Thus every atom has 
its "Thatness", the divine consciousness. 

Science admits that the physical atoms do not touch each other, even 
in the densest element. Actually, the space between the atoms is 
proportionately much larger than the size of the atoms. In the same 
way, there is a large space between the nucleus and the electrons in 
orbit. Each atom of Science is like a speck of dust in a large hall, 
such being the proportion of space around it. 

Therefore, the ultimate atoms of the seven planes interpenetrate 
each other and the physical atom, occupying the same space. Every 
planet in our solar system has seven planes, occupying an identical 
space, interpenetrating each other. 

These ultimate atoms of the planes are freely intermingled, so that 
specimens of each type would be found in the smallest portion of the 
sphere taken at random. 

The grossest of these ultimate atoms of the planes are the ultimate 
physical atoms (UPA), containing nearly 14 million bubbles! These 
are drawn together into certain aggregations, thus making a number 
of different kinds of what may be called proto-elements. These again 
are joined together into the various forms which are known to 
Science as chemical elements. 

The process of formation of proto-elements and chemical elements 
extended over long periods of time. As ages rolled on, the stage of 
a vast glowing nebula was reached. As the sphere cooled, still 
rapidly rotating, it flattened into a huge disc and broke up into 
rings surrounding a central body which later formed our sun. 

The Deity then set up in the thickness of each ring a subsidiary 
vortex, collecting therein a great deal of matter of the ring, which 
formed a planet round the central body. The collision of the 
gathered fragments caused a revival of the heat, with the result 
that the planet formed was for a long time a mass of glowing gas. 
Graudally it cooled once more until it became fit for human 
habitation, in the case of the Earth. 

Each planet of our solar system is thus composed of the ultimate 
atoms of the seven planes, interpenetrating each other, and sharing 
the same space. The planes are called the seven planes of nature. 

We shall discuss the details of the seven planes relating to our 
planet Earth, in the next instalment. 

Sources:
1. Theosophy Explained in Questions and Answers by P. Pavri. 
2. The Solar System by Arthur E. Powell 
3. Fountain-Source of Occultism by G. de Purucker 

Vedantic Assertions:
prajAnam brahma - Consciousness is Brahman. 
aham brahmAsmi - I am Brahman. 
Tattvamasi - That thou art. 
ayamAtmA brahma - This Atman is Brahman. 
sarvam khalvidam brahma - All this, indeed, is Brahman. 

Regards,
saidevo
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