Boundlessness in Ancient Cosmogonies

Nowhere, and by no people, was speculation allowed to go beyond those manifested gods. The boundless and infinite unity remained with every nation a virgin forbidden soil, untrodden by man's thought, untouched by fruitless speculation. The only reference made to it was the brief conception of its diastolic and systolic property, of its periodical expansion and contraction. In the Universe, with all its incalculable myriads of systems and worlds disappearing and reappearing in eternity, the anthropomorphised powers, or gods, and their Souls, had to disappear from view with their bodies: "The Breath returning to the eternal bosom which exhales and inhales them," says our Catechism…

In every Cosmogony, behind and higher than the creative deity, there is a superior deity, a planner, an Architect, of whom the Creator is but the executive agent. And still higher, over and around, within and without, there is the unknowable and the unknown, the Source and Cause of all these Emanations.

— H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, pp. 42–43

In the ancient literature there are names given to the spiritual and divine realms within which all things eternally abide, and to which countless small beings, or macrocosmic units of space, ultimately return.

The Tibetans called this ineffable mystery Tong-pa-nid, in the sense of the bottomless Abyss of the spiritual realms. The Buddhists of the Mahayana school describe it as Sunyata, the Void, because no human imagination can picture within itself the Fullness in Space. In the Eddas of ancient Scandinavia the Boundless is called by the suggestive name Ginnungagap, a word meaning the "yawning," expanding or boundless void. The Hebrew Bible says that the earth was without form and void, and that darkness was upon the face of Tehom, the Deep, the Abyss of Waters, and hence the great Deep of cosmic Space. This has the same meaning as the "Womb of Space" conceived by other peoples. In the Chaldeo-Jewish Kabbalah the same idea is conveyed by the term Eyn (or Ain) Soph, expressing the boundless. In the Babylonian creation records it is Mummu Tiamatu, meaning the Great Sea or the Deep. Ancient Chaldean cosmology speaks of the Abyss under the name Ab Soo, the Father or source of knowledge. In ancient Magism (the teaching of the Magian priests) it is Zervan Akarana; in later times the term was used not for "Boundless Time" but for "Boundless Essence," in the original sense of "Spirit."

In Chinese cosmogony Tsi-tsai, the Self-Existent, is the Unknown Darkness, the root of Wu-liang-sheu (Boundless Age). Lao Tse's concept of Wu Wei, usually mistranslated as "passivity" and "inaction," carries a similar idea within it. In the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya people of Guatemala, the "Book of the Azure Veil," there are references to "the void which is the immensity of the heavens" and to "the Great Sea of Space." The ancient Egyptians spoke of the Infinite Depth. The same idea is embodied in the concept of Celi-Ced in ancient Druidism, where Ced is spoken of as the "Black Virgin," that is, Chaos, the state of matter before Manvantaric differentiation.

The Orphic Mysteries taught of the Thrice-Unknown Darkness, or Chronos, of which nothing could be said except its timelessness. In Gnostic schools such as that of Valentinus this teaching continued under the name Bythos, the Deep. In Greece the school of Democritus and Epicurus called the void Kenon; Leucippus and Diagoras expressed the same idea. But the two most common terms for the Boundless in Greek philosophy were Apeiron and Apeiria, as used by Plato, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras and Aristotle. Both words mean an expanse that knows no limits.

Chaos

Another word used for Space in ancient Greek writings was Chaos.¹ The word at first meant void, as it is used in Hesiod's Theogony (line 116): "Verily first of all did Chaos come into being." Even Milton, a more or less Orthodox poet, held closely in Paradise Lost to the conception of the "void and formless infinite." In time, however, for most Greek thinkers Chaos came to denote a later stage in the evolution of a given cosmos. This corresponds to another phrase Milton uses, "matter unformed and void" (Book VII), for here we are dealing with a matter already in existence, in its primordial or elemental stage, by way of emanation or diffusion. The resemblance between this concept and the Second Cosmic Logos of the Theosophical philosophy is striking.

Yet the oldest understanding of Chaos is a state of cosmic space, or the cosmic expanse, almost inconceivable to the human mind: the infinite and empty extension of the primordial Aether in the stage before the formation of the manifested worlds, the expanse from which everything that later exists is born. Gods, men and all celestial beings are within this expanse as well. Here we see a faithful echo of the ancient esoteric philosophy. For the Greeks, Chaos was the cosmic mother of Erebos and Nyx, Darkness and Night, which were two aspects of the same primordial cosmic stage. Erebos was the spiritual or active aspect, corresponding to Brahman in Hindu philosophy; Nyx was the passive aspect, corresponding to Pradhana or Mulaprakriti, both meaning "root-nature." Later, from Erebos and Nyx, Aither and Hemera, Spirit and Day, were born as a pair. In this later stage Spirit represents the active aspect, and Day the passive, substantial or vehicular-material aspect. The idea here is this: just as in Hindu cosmogony things unfold into active, manifesting existence in the Day of Brahma, so in the cosmic Day of the Greeks light and activity are born, manifesting from the elemental substance through the abiding impulse of cosmic Spirit.

When the first philosopher-initiates spoke of cosmic beginnings they were extremely reticent because of their oaths of secrecy. So although ancient Greek literature, like the literatures of all other ancient peoples, is full of references to primordial cosmic beginnings, these are concealed in carefully veiled language. There was always the fear that very abstract and difficult teachings, if announced too openly, would be distorted and vulgarized and become the common property of minds that had not passed through the discipline and teaching of the Mysteries. The common misunderstanding that Chaos means merely confusion, or atoms heaped together at random in cosmic space, is nothing but a corruption of the original philosophical meaning.

The Womb of Nature

First, then, in the beginning, there is Chaos, meaning the Boundless. As a later development, Chaos is conceived as the mighty womb of nature, which develops its own seeds in order to shape and bring forth the manifesting worlds. These seeds are the sleeping Monads (the immortal spiritual unit at the core of every being), spiritual and divine in nature, which come from the previous period of cosmic manifestation (Manvantara) and abide in their own Nirvanic or Paranirvanic states.

Chaos may therefore be seen as an expanse of Spirit-substance, every point of which is a center of consciousness, or Monad. This expanse is wrapped in a Paranirvanic stillness and bliss, awaiting the time of its awakening to a manifested period of cosmic life. The human Monad resting in the peace of Devachan (the state of bliss between death and rebirth) is an exact analogue of this on its own lower plane.

From all this we see that Chaos is the same as Brahman-Pradhana in the state of cosmic Pralaya (the period of universal rest and dissolution), and hence identical with Space in the primordial state of abstract Spirit-substance. This is why many peoples have seen the Divine not only as absolute Fullness in itself, but also as the infinite Abyss, the boundless Void, the endless Deep, the ocean of the cosmic Waters of Life.

Water, because of its suggestive qualities, was a favorite symbol of Space: it is both translucent and material, both crystalline and dense. This makes it a perfect symbol of the cosmic aether. This lofty conception has been universal on our earth in this cycle since the beginning of consciously thinking humanity. Whether people were of the Lemurian, Atlantean, Ural-Altaic or Aryan race, the same intuitive understanding has guided the thought of them all.