Proposition 1: Desire Proper Is Being

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 18 pages

Eighteen pages with a contents page of key concepts, carrying the subtitle To be or not to be are illusions. The epigraph, from a Master of Wisdom, states the working assumption of the whole file — that cosmology is the physiology of the universe spiritualised, for there is but one law.

The argument begins before the world does. Desire is said to slumber alone in the bosom of Eternal Truth, and the file quotes Sanchoniathon's cosmogony for the moment it wakes: when the wind, or spirit, became enamoured of its own principles, the chaos, an intimate union took place which was called Pothos, and from this sprang the seed of all — the chaos not knowing its own production, for it was senseless. Brahmā's soliloquy in consternation, Who am I? Whence came I?, is set beside it. The pregenetic or precosmic Triad is insisted on as a pure metaphysical abstraction, illustrated by a good simile: as fragrance affects the mind by its proximity merely and not by any operation upon mind itself, so the Supreme influences the elements of creation. Desire then awakens and polarises Spirit and Matter, and polarisation is defined as the outcome of a conscious turning away of Spirit from unconscious subjectivity — a period of self-reflection through objectivity in matter, called an illegitimate marriage, carrying the promise that the two will become one again in a true marriage and be resurrected to their heavenly abode. Between every pair of opposites there is said to be a Point of Impartiality or Not-Being, which is the Third Logos, the Heavenly Man or Conscious Universal Mind, and Spirit and Matter are treated throughout as two poles of one element, inseparable and readily convertible into each other. The last part is the practical one and the reason a general reader might want the file: it separates cosmic Will from worldly desires, distinguishes worldly desire, willpower and freewill from one another, and adds the distinction between obstinacy, firmness and will.

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