BN-Basic Course Syllabus

for

The Ancient Wisdom Tradition

III - The Source of Life: The Unseen World

1.) Beyond Time & Space - Unconditioned Consciousness

Related References

(HPB, The Secret Doctrine; Vol. 1., pg. 14)
The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions: --

(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought -- in the words of Mandukya, "unthinkable and unspeakable."

To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause -- dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and "Unknowable" of current European philosophy -- is the rootless root of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is "Be-ness" rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought or speculation.

This "Be-ness" is symbolised in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolises change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the one Reality, is also symbolised by the term "The Great Breath," a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical ONE ABSOLUTE -- BE-NESS -- symbolised by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity.

(HPB, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, pg. 15)
Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol.

( HPB, "The Mind In Nature")
Of such "presentiments" the whole literature--or what remains of this sacerdotal literature--of India, Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, Greece and even of Guatemala (Popul Vuh), is full. Based on the same foundation-stone--the ancient Mysteries--the primitive religions, all without one exception, reflect the most important of the once universal beliefs, such, for instance, as an impersonal and universal divine Principle, absolute in its nature, and unknowable to the "brain" intellect, or the conditioned and limited cognition of man. To imagine any witness to it in the manifested universe, other than as Universal Mind, the Soul of the universe is impossible. That which alone stands as an undying and ceaseless evidence and proof of the existence of that One Principle, is the presence of an undeniable design in kosmic mechanism, the birth, growth, death and transformation of everything in the universe, from the silent and unreachable stars down to the humble lichen, from man to the invisible lives now called microbes. Hence the universal acceptation of "Thought Divine," the Anima Mundi of all antiquity. This idea of Mahat (the great) Akasha or Brahma's aura of transformation with the Hindus, of Alaya, "the divine Soul of thought and compassion" of the trans-Himalayan mystics; of Plato's "perpetually reasoning Divinity," is the oldest of all the doctrines now known to, and believed in, by man.

Additional Related References of Interest

HPB, Key To Theosophy, ch. V, pg.61.
HPB, Secret Doctrine, vol. 1 proem, pgs. 1-24.
HPB, Transactions Of The Blavatsky Lodge, pg. viii (Bottom half).
HPB, Secret Doctrine,Vol. I, pgs. 14-15, 21, 120, 167, 175-76, 178, 570, 619-20, 632-33
HPB, Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, pgs. 185-86
HPB, Key To Theosophy pgs. 18, 39, 41, 45, 61
HPB, Isis Unveiled, Vol. I p. 258
HPB, Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, pg. viii, 4
HPB, "The Mind In Nature"