The Monads of Leibniz Are the Jivas of Occultism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 50 pages

*Fifty pages, the longest study in this batch*, opened by a full abstract and train of thoughts. Its cover title carries the whole thesis: the monads of Leibniz are the jivas of occultism, a unity of mathematical points in boundless space.

It begins with space itself. Primordial substance is called the vehicle of luminous Æther, and boundless space is defined against the obvious misreading — not a void resulting from the absence of forms but, on the contrary, the foundation of all forms, and the noumenon of evanescent matter. From there the file makes a claim about method that recurs through it: the esoteric doctrine not only reconciles seemingly conflicting systems but checks the discoveries of modern exact science and highlights those which the ancient records corroborate. The tone toward science is sharp but not dismissive — esoteric science is said to strive to enlarge the domain of physical science by trespassing on the forbidden ground of metaphysics, and modern scientists are warned that all their wonderful discoveries would go for nothing, and they themselves remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of matter and strain their eyes to see beyond. A similar even-handedness governs the treatment of belief: the beliefs in hosts of invisible intelligences of various grades are said to have the same foundation everywhere, but truth and error are mixed in all of them, and the file draws a line between blind faith evolved by theologies and knowledge compiled and validated by generations of eastern adepts — between faith and true philosophy, which it glosses as the Wisdom of Love rather than the love of wisdom. The Pythagorean material forms the second half. The ten precious cosmic seeds brought to Magna Graecia from India by the great Ionian sage are said to have eclipsed every theogony and angelology that ever came out of the theological brain; the ten mathematical points inscribed within the Pythagorean triangle are held to transcend the limits of the lower mind and lift the spiritual thinker into the realm of primal causes; and the abstract triangle, with the plane cube and circle, is named the cornerstone of cosmic philosophy and the symbol of the manifested universe. The conclusion drawn is a strong one — that philosophy could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal and yet absolute Deity had it not had the mathematical point within the circle to base its speculations upon.

Read the full text (PDF, 3.3 MB, 50 pages)