The One

2000-8-4 09:36:00

Saul asks:
Do you have any problems with Lao Tzu's statements about one, two and three as referred to by Chris?

JJ:
I couldn't find such a quote by Chris, but overall Lao Tzu statements about the one and the many are harmonious with my thinking. Take this quote for instance:

"TAO produces Unity; Unity produces Duality; Duality produces Triplicity; In Triplicity all things have life, and from it they proceed."

Saul:
What did HPB actually say in regard to one and two and what was your interpretation of her words?

JJ:
She said quite a few things. If you have a specific quote I'll be happy to comment on it, but do not have time to expound on such a broad topic.

Here are several interesting things she said about the one life, creation etc.

It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark mystery of non-Being; unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness; unrealisable, yet the one self-existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason." Its one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the "Great Breath,"* which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present SPACE. That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul.

For, "just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the Solar System exists in seven different conditions". So does Fohat.* He is One and Seven, and on the Cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and is the "spirit" of ELECTRICITY, which is the LIFE of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the ONE LIFE; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable CAUSALITY, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while science speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point to intelligent LAW and sentient LIFE, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this.

The ONE LIFE is closely related to the one law which governs the World of Being ? KARMA. Exoterically, this is simply and literally "action," or rather an "effect-producing cause." Esoterically it is quite a different thing in its far-fetching moral effects.

Becoming through periodical manifestation, a manifold Universe or a multiple personality, that Unity would cease to be one. Locke's idea that "pure Space is capable of neither resistance nor Motion" ? is incorrect. Space is neither a "limitless void," nor a "conditioned fullness," but both: being, on the plane of absolute abstraction, the ever-incognisable Deity, which is void only to finite minds...