The Eternal Motion

THERE is a magnificent poem on Pralaya, written by a very ancient Rishi, who compares the motion of the Great Breath during Pralaya to the rhythmical motions of the Unconscious Ocean. The "Great Breath" is ceaseless, and is, so to speak, the universal and eternal perpetuum mobile. WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT. Infinity cannot comprehend Finiteness. In the occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable MOVER, or the Self-Existing, is the absolute divine Essence. And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion -- to the limited senses of those who describe this indescribable -- it is unconsciousness and immovableness. Yet there were great seers and prophets in olden times who were enabled to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion retrospectively, when the systems of worlds were at rest and plunged in their periodic sleep.

It is Motion which begets the Logos, the Word, in occultism. Motion, which is the ONE LIFE, or Jivatma. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY, AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE, AND HEAT, AND MOTION. "Heat caused by the descent of FLAME into primordial matter causes its particles to move, which motion becomes Whirlwind." MOTION, which, during the periods of Rest "pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom" assumes an ever-growing tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos to a new "Day," to circular movement. The "Deity becomes a WHIRLWIND," a change from eternal vibration in the unmanifested, to Vortical Motion in the phenomenal or manifested World. The most perfect figure of a Motion ... must be the perpetually circular, that is to say, it must proceed from the center to the periphery and from the periphery to the center. This motion is the spirit itself. The word atma (universal soul) itself carries the idea of eternal motion, coming as it does from the root, AT, or eternal motion; and it may be significantly remarked, that the root AT is simply another form of the roots AH, breath, and AS, being.

The active Power, the "Perpetual motion of the great Breath," only awakens Kosmos at the dawn of every new Period, setting it into motion by means of the two contrary Forces, and thus causing it to become objective on the plane of illusion. The centripetal and the centrifugal forces, which are male and female, positive and negative, physical and spiritual, the two being the one Primordial Force. "Father" is the term for the centrifugal and "Mother" for the centripetal force. When the breath of fire or Father, is upon it (the web of ever-existent primordial substance), it expands. When the breath of the Mother touches it, and it has to come into objectivity of form, it contracts. (Besides the force acting in matter there is also a force acting on matter). The worker within, the inherent force, ever tends to unite with its parent essence without; and thus the Mother acting within, causes the Web to contract; and the Father acting without, to expand. Their product is the "Son" which is also the Sun, which is not the cause of either light or heat, but merely the focus, or, as we might say, the lens, by which the rays of the primordial light become materialized, are concentrated upon our solar system, and produce all the correlations of forces. Fire -- motion is the eternal, dark, invisible Fire, the invisible Deity -- is the father of light, light the parent of heat and vital air. Light sets in motion and controls all in nature, from that highest primordial aether down to the tiniest molecule in Space.

MOTION is eternal per se, and in the manifested Kosmos it is the Alpha and Omega of that which is called electricity, galvanism, magnetism, sensation -- moral and physical -- thought, and even life, on this plane. Thus fire, on our plane, is simply the manifestation of motion, or life. Light and heat are the ghost or shadow of matter in motion. Force is the passage of one state of motion into another state of the same: of electricity, into heat and light, of heat into sound or some mechanical function, and so on. The pulsing of vital matter in the central Sun of our System is the source of all that life which crowds the earth and overspreads the other planets, to which the Sun is the mighty Minister. The Sun has but one distinct function; it gives the impulse of life to all that breathes and lives under its light. The sun is the throbbing heart of the system; each throb being an impulse: which is not mechanical but a purely spiritual, nervous impulse. The Pleiades are considered, even in astronomy, as the central point around which our Universe of fixed stars revolves, the focus from which, and into which the divine breath, MOTION, works incessantly during the Manvantara.

To the follower of the true Eastern archaic Wisdom, to him who worships in spirit nought outside the Absolute Unity, that ever-pulsating great Heart that beats throughout, as in every atom of nature, each such atom contains the germ from which he may raise the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits give life eternal and not physical life alone. Atoms fill the immensity of Space, and by their continuous vibration are that MOTION which keeps the wheels of Life perpetually going. It is that inner work that produces the natural phenomena called the correlation of Forces. As described by Seers -- those who can see the motion of the interstellar shoals, and follow them in their evolution clairvoyantly -- they are dazzling, like specks of virgin snow in radiant sunlight. Their velocity is swifter than thought, quicker than any mortal physical eye could follow, and, as well as can be judged from the tremendous rapidity of their course, the motion is circular ... the intensity of their motion produces flashes like the Northern lights during the Aurora Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that, as the Seer gazes into this inner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is filled with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie beyond, and within, this radiant ocean.

COMPILER'S NOTE: The following is a separate item which followed the above article but was on the same page. I felt it was useful to include it here:

We sometimes in sleep lose the beginning and end of a dream, and recollect the middle of it, and one dream has no connection with another, and yet we are conscious of an infinite variety of dreams, and there is a strong analogy for believing in an infinity of past existences which must have been connected. ... Human life may be regarded as a type of infinite and immortal life, and its succession of sleep and dreams as a type of the changes of death and birth to which from its nature it is liable....
--SIR HUMPHREY DAVY
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