ce 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 Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara,
and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and
natural Law, the basis (as Mr. Subba Row rightly calls it) upon which
take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasa-Prakriti; guided by
the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti, the breath or power of a
conscious deity, the theists would say; the eternal energy of an
eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space, then, or "Fan,
Bar-nang" (Maha Sunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness,"
is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute. (See Confucius' "Praise of the
Abyss.") The word jiva, then, could never be applied by the Arahats to
the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or
contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can
develop active conscious life; and that to the question "how can
unconsciousness generate consciousness?" the answer would be: "Was the
seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?"
Note V.
To our European readers, deceived by the phonetic similarity, it must
not be thought that the name "Brahman" is identical in this connection
with Brahma or Iswara, the personal God. The Upanishads--the Vedanta
Scriptures--mention no such God, and one would vainly seek in them any
allusions to a conscious deity. The Brahman, or Parabrahm, the absolute
of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has no connection with
the masculine Brahma of the Hindu Triad, or Trimurti. Some Orientalists
rightly believe the name derived from the verb "Brih," to grow or
increase, and to be in this sense the universal expansive force of
Nature, the vivifying and spiritual principle or power spread throughout
the universe, and which, in its collectivity, is the one Absoluteness,
the one Life and the only Reality.
--H.P. Blavatsky
Septenary Division in Different Indian Systems
We give below in a tabular form the classifications, adopted by
Buddhist and by Vedantic teachers, of the principles in man:--
Classification in Vedantic Classification in
Esoteric Buddhism Classification Taraka Raja Yoga
(1.) Sthula sarira Annamaya kosa Sthulopadhi
(2.) Prana
Pranamaya kosa
(3.)The Vehicl
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