"There are, assuredly, two forms of Brahma: the formed and the formless. Now, that which is the formed is unreal; that which is the formless is real, is Brahma, is light. That which is light is the same as the sun." (Maitri Upanishad, VI, 3)
In Theosophy, as in Advaita Vedanta (the non-dualist teaching of Indian philosophy), Parabrahman and its cosmic veil Mulaprakriti are two sides or elements of one fundamental idea. This idea generally signifies the boundless expanse of both space and time beyond Brahman, together with the veil of our own universe, its Pradhana. It is a mistake to think of Parabrahman as a being, however vast or exalted. For every being, of whatever magnitude, is in fact limited. Parabrahman, on the other hand, means "beyond" Brahman; and Brahman is the Absolute, the head of the hierarchy of a universe, in other words the highest divine-spiritual being of a universe or cosmos. Parabrahman, therefore, is not a being. It is Infinitude, the incomprehensible All; with its shoreless spaces it is something that neither human nor divine consciousness can reach, for it lies beyond them.
The Absolute is a relative term. It is the philosophical One, the cosmic Origin. From the One comes two, from two comes three, and from the triad the cosmic tetrad; and this leads to the multitude of differentiations that manifest through emanational evolution (evolution that takes place by flowing forth or welling out). The philosophical One is therefore the cosmic Absolute; but it is not the mystic Zero, which represents Infinitude. Because the Zero is Infinitude, it contains an infinite number of cosmic Ones, that is, cosmic Monads, and the many lesser Monads that derive from each of these cosmic Ones. There are no Absolutes in the sense of Infinitude.
Every being or thing, however exalted, is relative; it is related to something else and to everything else. Every Absolute is the head of its own hierarchy; all subsequent differentiations flow from it, up to the limit of that hierarchy. Every such Absolute is a cosmic Jivanmukta (a liberated being), that is, a being who has reached a state of relatively perfect freedom. The Moksha or Mukti of Brahmanism and the Latin word absolutum both mean "to set free"; in their essence or origin they express release from bondage in all the lower planes. Thus the Absolute is the supreme divinity or Silent Watcher of the Hierarchy of Compassion, which forms the luminous side of a universe or cosmic hierarchy.
There is an immense difference between the Absolute, the cosmic Jivanmukta who is a cosmic "freed one," and "THAT." If we call the Infinite the Absolute, we err; for we at once create the mental picture of a finite Being, however exalted. It is philosophically impossible to attribute absoluteness to Infinitude. Infinitude is neither absolute nor non-absolute. Absolute is an adjective that expresses certain logical qualities and therefore implies limitation. Such qualities cannot be attributed to Infinitude. It is neither conscious nor unconscious; for these and all similar human qualities belong to beings and things that are manifested, and therefore not infinite.
The misuse of the word Absolute, and the inability of European philosophers to do without it, arise from Christian psychology, which rests on the idea of a personal God, an infinite Person (Individual). These philosophers followed a logical line of thought born of a true intuition; but the term they used is wrong. A person cannot be infinite; that is a contradiction in terms. An absolute person may be the summit of a hierarchy; but that hierarchy is only one among an infinite number of hierarchies. The Infinite, which is numberless, without qualities, without quantity and without form, is not absolute. This error goes back to old theological and philosophical superstitions. Although H. P. Blavatsky often used the word Absolute in its ordinary and mistaken sense as well, she was keenly aware of the correct grammatical and logical use of the word. In the Theosophical Glossary, under the entry "Absoluteness," she says:
"When predicated of the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE, it denotes an abstract noun, which is more correct and logical than to apply the adjective 'absolute' to that which has neither attributes nor limitation, nor can it have any."
As for Mulaprakriti: this is a Sanskrit compound made up of the words mula (root) and prakriti (nature); it therefore means root, fundamental or primordial nature. It is the other side of Parabrahman, but more particularly it is the fundamental substance of every hierarchical system.
A universe is both; in its essence it is Mulaprakriti as much as it is Parabrahman, for it is composed of countless individual Monads. The heart of a Monad is boundless Space, and boundless Space has two aspects: life or energy, and matter or form. The one cannot be separated from the other.
Life or energy is what we may call Parabrahman; the matter aspect is Mulaprakriti. If you could wipe out Mulaprakriti, which is impossible, you would have pure consciousness, pure energy; and this too is impossible, for energy and matter, like force and substance, are two sides of the same thing. Electricity, for example, is both energy and substance; and consciousness too is both energy and matter.
Our body is fundamentally Mulaprakriti; it is root-substance, the fundamental essence, manifested in form. So is everything else: a star, a tree, a stone, an animal, a leaf floating in the air. Their essence is Mulaprakriti; in their bottomless depths they are Mulaprakriti, but at the same time they are Parabrahman.
In the words Parabrahman and Mulaprakriti we find a conception entirely different from the vague Western abstraction of Infinity, which is merely a negation (in-finite, without end). All that human consciousness can put forward is that Parabrahman is exactly what we see around us, in the form in which our physical senses can convey it to us, but without bounds. That is why Parabrahman is not a being; it is a descriptive adjective turned into a noun and simply means "beyond Brahman." "As above, so below"; there is no fundamental difference between what is above and what is below. Every atom has its place within a molecule; every molecule has its place in a cell, and every cell in a body. Every body exists within a greater body, and that greater body within a still greater space. The living space of our earth is the solar ether; the home of the solar system is the galaxy, the home of the galaxy is the universe, the home of the universe is a vaster universe, and so on forever. What we call Parabrahman is this ad infinitum. But with a deep and fundamental difference: this basic idea also embraces the inner, invisible, spiritual worlds that Western thought has almost entirely ignored.
Everything exists within something greater than itself and contains countless beings below itself. When H. P. Blavatsky called Parabrahman Space, she did not mean emptiness; she used the word in a way similar to the concept of "Duration." Just as Duration is filled with time, with moments, with slices of time, so Space is filled with manifested Monads, with hosts of Monads, and with highly advanced Monads, that is, Absolutes, which hold within themselves countless hosts of relatively lower Monads that are still evolving.
This is the whole meaning of Parabrahman; Mulaprakriti is its other side (the emanating and changing side). We may say that Parabrahman is the consciousness aspect and Mulaprakriti the matter or space aspect. Parabrahman is not some kind of god; it is simply Space. Like the word "Infinite," it is a wholly generalizing term; it is an admission that human consciousness stops here. The term "Boundless" is likewise a kind of placeholder. The Boundless is full of finite and limited beings and things. We deceive ourselves when we use these concepts, which are pure abstractions, as though they were concrete facts and build up thoughts about them.
Everything, even what we call "THAT," is within something greater. Yet the word "THAT" is enough to express the whole scope of this idea. A galaxy is a cosmic cell; so are the other galaxies, the so-called "island universes." These cosmic cells float in the intergalactic ether and are united in an incomprehensible, supra-cosmic Being. It is just as the cells of the human body, though they appear separate from one another under the microscope, come together to form a body that can live on earth.
As an interesting scientific expression of the same idea, I quote two passages from Consider the Heavens (1935) by the well-known American astronomer Dr. Forest Ray Moulton:
"The basic units of which we are composed are molecules and chains of molecules. Our life processes are expressed in terms of their properties, and our thoughts are conditioned by their interactions. But perhaps in the infinite series of cosmic units there are others that play the part of molecules in living organisms. Sub-electrons of the hundredth order, so to speak, may be the molecules of conscious beings that live a million generations in what is for us a second. Super-galaxies of the hundredth order may similarly be the molecules of conscious beings whose life cycles span intervals of time of unimaginable length. In any case, it would not be right, on the strength of our ignorance, to assume that among the infinite possibilities life exists only on our own level." (p. 300)
"Let us suppose once more, then, that there exist intelligent beings whose constituent elements, their atoms so to speak, are super-galaxies made up of galaxies or stars. The life cycles of these beings are measured in millions of billions of years, because significant transformations in super-galaxies of high order require such long periods; such beings may be only the cells in their bodies or the corpuscles circulating in their veins. When they breathe, super-galaxies may pass in and out of their nostrils; when their hearts beat, galaxies a billion light-years across may vibrate. For these beings the galaxies we know, with their gravitational expansions and contractions and their oscillations of form, are nothing but electrons or photons that can be described only vaguely by wave packets. To their coarse sense organs, physical units as small as galaxies have no precisely determinable positions or motions; yet these units persist and have a quantitative property. For them, galaxies are the basic units of a chaos from which the order of super-galaxies emerges through statistical averages." (p. 330)
To sum up, Parabrahman and Mulaprakriti mean boundless Space together with all the beings that dwell within it. At any point, here, there or anywhere else, a Logos (the divine principle that brings a universe or system into manifestation) may be emerging from its Pralaya (the period of rest and dissolution between manifestations) and coming into manifestation. Millions of these Logoi may at the same moment be unfolding into new Manvantaras (periods of active manifestation), while millions of others are passing into their Pralayas.
The ancient cosmogonies generally describe cosmic evolution and its beginning thus: "In the beginning was THAT." Let us note in passing that this beginning did not mean an absolute beginning of all Infinitude, but one of the countless beginnings of a system within boundless Duration. At the beginning of time the Logos appears; the Logos is one of the countless Monadic points in "THAT," and from that beginning it evolves into a hierarchy. Whether this is a cosmic hierarchy, a solar system, a human being or an atom, evolution goes on. These points are numberless; every mathematical point in space is a potential Logos.
Within and around such manifestations of cosmic Logoi or universes there is the mystery of mysteries, of which the ancient sages, out of reverence, seldom spoke even by allusion, and to which the Vedic Rishis of ancient India gave the name "TAT" (That). This is the "Nameless," beyond human comprehension and beyond the intuition even of the highest gods in all the manifested universes. It is boundless Infinitude; beginningless, eternally existing in endless duration, wholly incomprehensible, boundless life.
