ss you
answer questions about the One Existence, the Para-Brahma, whom sages
revere in silence, not daring to speak even with illuminated mind that
knows nirvanic life and has expanded to nirvanic consciousness. The more
ignorant the man, the more he thinks he can grasp. The less he
understands, the more he resents being told that there are some things
beyond the grasp of his intellect, existences so mighty that he cannot
even dream of the lowest of the attributes that mark them out. And for
myself, who know myself ignorant, who know that many an age must pass
ere I shall be able to think of dealing with these profounder problems,
I sometimes gauge the ignorance of the questioner by the questions that
he asks as to the ultimate existences, and when he wants to know what he
calls the primary origin, I know that he has not even grasped the
one-thousandth part of the origin out of which he himself has sprung.
Therefore, I say to you frankly that these mighty Ones whom we worship
are the Gods of our system; beyond them there stretch mightier Ones yet,
whom, perhaps, myriads of kalpas hence, we may begin to understand and
worship.

Let us then confine ourselves to our own system and be glad if we can
catch some ray of the glory that illumines it. Vishnu has His own
functions, as also have Brahma and Mahadeva. The first work in this
system is done by the third of the sacred great Ones of the Trimurti,
Brahma, as you all know, for you have read that there came forth the
creative Intelligence as the third of the divine manifestations. I care
not what is the symbology you take; perchance that of the _Vishnu
Purana_ will be most familiar, wherein the unmanifested Vishnu
is beneath the water, standing as the first of the Trimurti, then the
Lotus, standing as the second, and the opened Lotus showing Brahma, the
third, the creative Mind. You may remember that the work of creation
began with His activity. When we study from the occult standpoint in
what that activity consisted, we find it consisted in impregnating with
His own life the matter of the solar system; that He gave His own life
to build up form after form of atom, to make the great divisions in the
kosmos; that He formed, one after another, the five kinds of matter.
Working by His mind--He is sometimes spoken of as Mahat, the great One,
Intelligence--He formed Tattvas one after another. Tattvas, you may
remember from last year, are the foundations of the atoms, and there a