The Days and Nights of Brahma

The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute — Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When the "Great Breath" is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity — the One Existence — which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos (see Isis Unveiled). So also is it when the Divine Breath is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of "the Great Mother," who then sleeps "wrapped in her invisible robes."

— H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 43

H. P. Blavatsky used this image to describe passages she quoted from ancient Hindu scriptures such as the Vishnu Purana, which speak of the cosmic Days and Nights as the outbreathings and inbreathings of Brahma.¹ Brahma may be defined as an individualized aspect of the cosmic Oversoul or Brahman: the individual root-deity of any cosmic unit, whether a solar system like ours or an individual greater or smaller than it. Brahma is therefore the vivifying and expanding consciousness of nature in the eternally recurring cycles of periodic manifestation. In this respect he is truly distinct from Mulaprakriti, the shadow or material side of the cosmos, or more precisely from the root-nature called Pradhana.

In general Brahma is the cosmic deity; but in modern Theosophical writings the word is also used to denote the entity that forms, in other words manifests, the seven principles of a planetary chain.² Each globe of such a planetary chain (and on a larger scale the same holds for the whole solar system) not only corresponds to one of the principles of the chain's Brahma but is also a focus or "knot": a place where Brahma's consciousness is localized.

In exactly the same way, in man's sevenfold constitution there are different knots or centers where the consciousness issuing from the god within is localized and works. In fact, during the periods of activity in the Manvantara, that is, in this case during man's incarnations, the inner god is man's Brahma.

In manvantaric manifestation, each appearance of a solar system (and likewise of a planetary chain) is an outbreathing of its Brahma or cosmic deity. Similarly, each inbreathing of the same Brahma is its Pralaya, its period of rest, and means the disappearance of the manifested being toward higher planes. It is the same with man. When he is embodied on earth, he is like a column of light descending from spirit through all the planes until it reaches the physical body. When he dies and his constitution dissolves, this column of light is slowly withdrawn from below upward until it reaches the spiritual realms again; and this means his disappearance from the lower cosmic planes.

Pralaya

Pralaya comes from the root li, "to dissolve," with the prefix pra, "away." It is a general term for the state of rest or pause between two Manvantaras or life cycles, whatever their magnitude. During the great Pralayas or Mahapralayas every differentiated individual or unit vanishes from the phenomenal universe and returns to the noumenal (the reality behind appearances) essence which, throughout endless Duration, periodically gives birth to all the phenomenal manifestations of nature.

Pralaya, then, is the dissolution of the visible into the invisible, of the manifold into the homogeneous. In other words, the objective universe returns to its underlying primal and eternally productive cause, to reappear at the next cosmic dawn as a new universe, the karmic fruit (the former "self") of the old universe. To our finite minds Pralaya seems a state of nonexistence; and this holds true also for all existences and beings on the lower etheric and material planes.

When a solar system emerges from cosmic latency at the end of a solar Pralaya and begins to manifest from spirit toward matter, this is the outbreathing of that cosmic individual or Brahma. Likewise, when the solar Manvantara ends, all the parts and portions of the solar system slowly vanish from the lower planes and are withdrawn in turn into the spiritual realms; then follows the solar Pralaya, the inbreathing of that cosmic individual. Where once there was a sun with its planetary chains, in the immense realms of star-filled space we would now see only the cosmic aether that exists among the stars and seems "empty" to us.

Systole and Diastole

Pralaya and Manvantara are other names for the systole and diastole of a cosmos. Systole (the contraction of the heart muscle) is the gathering in, the drawing inward, the disappearance of all that exists. Diastole (the relaxation of the heart muscle) is the reverse: the breathing forth or manifestation of the planes of the expanding being along the cosmic ladder of life, from the Spiritual level down to the grossest matter; this being may be a sun, a planetary chain, or even a galaxy. Systole and diastole are also used for the sunspot periods, which represent the pulse of the solar heart.

When a being manifested on any plane enters Pralaya, the life-atoms it leaves on that plane remain in deep sleep as long as the Pralaya lasts. What science today regards as empty space is in reality cosmic aether in a state of Pralaya. Every part of this space, wrongly called "empty," has been from beginningless time a field from which manifesting beings have emerged, and will be so in the infinity of the future.

Aether and Ether

Aether (aether)³ must never be confused with ether. The two differ in essence and meaning as much as man's Spiritual soul differs from his astral body. Aether is almost identical with the Sanskrit term Akasha; both are the highest layers of the Anima Mundi.⁴ Ether, on the other hand, is the grossest or physical aspect of aether and can often be used as a synonym of the astral light, that is, of the dregs of the Anima Mundi or (meaning the same thing) of aether. In the case of man's auric egg (the egg-shaped aura that surrounds man and contains all his principles), its highest part is likewise pure Akasha, aether, or Spiritual soul; in its astral and physical parts are found ether and the Linga-Sharira (the astral model body), which corresponds to the lower astral matter. The physical body is their dregs or precipitate.

During the Manvantara, through forces working both inward and outward, a cosmic being manifests on the different planes of boundless Space. During the Pralaya the same being vanishes from these planes, and its higher principles abide in an inconceivable Nirvanic bliss. The same holds, on a much smaller scale of course, for man, who lives and continues his existence after death.

Nirvana and Paranirvana

Nirvana⁵ is a state of complete and unimpeded consciousness within pure cosmic Being; it is the sublime destiny of those who have attained superhuman knowledge, purity, and spiritual illumination. In reality it is personal-individual union with the spiritual Self, the highest Self. Nirvana is also the state in which the Monadic beings concerned find themselves during the periods between the minor Manvantaras or the rounds of a planetary chain. More important still, it is the state between the end of each period of seven rounds, a Day of Brahma, and the next Day or new kalpa (cosmic age) of the planetary chain.

Nirvana has different degrees; one of them is so high that it effortlessly embraces the present state of the cosmic hierarchy of our universe. Nirvana has also been called the vanishing point of differentiated matter. The pure Nirvanic state is "the laya⁶ of the spirit in Parabrahman, identification with Parabrahman"; it denotes the return of Spirit to the abstraction of ideal Being, which in this manvantaric cycle has no modifying relation whatever to the manifesting planes of our universe.

Paranirvana means "beyond Nirvana" and is the period of cosmic rest or Mahapralaya: the Great Night of Brahma, the state that arises at the end of the Saurya Manvantara, the Manvantara of the solar system.⁷ Just as man can attain Nirvana by reaching self-conscious union with the divine Monad, the root of his being, so the solar system and all the self-conscious beings within it attain, at the end of the Saurya Manvantara, an entirely similar but far higher union with the hierarchy of the galactic universe. We may describe this as the Paranirvana of the solar system.

Again, when the universal solar system reaches its manvantaric end and the Maha-Saurya Pralaya begins, the three Dhatus (the three realms of Buddhist cosmology: the realms of desire, form, and formlessness), that is, the general groups of cosmic planes which in their structural unity make up any solar system and any universal solar system, pass away like a dry leaf in the autumn wind; nothing remains but the "fullness" of the void.

Every being that manifests in the universe is a consciousness or Monad. Our sun too is a solar Monad; in its higher parts it is a divine being. Likewise every planetary chain is an individual; though spiritually somewhat lower than a sun, it is still a cosmic individual. Every atom, too, is an embodied individual for the duration of its manifestation: in its heart a god, in the intermediate part of its constitution a life-atom, and in its body a chemical atom.