In closing the First Stanza, there are "Seven Creative Spirits" because there are seven layers of the Mundane Egg. This means there are different stages of inner consciousness that each evolving entity can experience. In The Secret Doctrine 1:48, H.P. Blavatsky alluded to a division between "Alaya" and "Paramartha." Alaya is a secondary condition of "Voidness" compared to Paramartha's primary condition of "absolute perfection" (in relation to the Mundane Egg), but both these stages can be reached in our theosophical visions.
In his Occult Glossary on page 5, G. de Purucker defined Alaya as the "universal soul" or the "basis or root or fountain of all beings and things--the universe, gods, monads, atoms, etc." The "universe" in this case refers to the 6th principle, just as H.P. Blavatsky set out with her notion of the "Universal Over-Soul" in the Third Fundamental Proposition in The Secret Doctrine 1:17. If we review G.de Purucker's diagram in Fountain-Source on page 437, Alaya is Adi-Buddhi or the Polar Sun at the top of the Mundane Egg. The "Cosmic Gods" or "Dhyani-Buddhas" at the heart of a Solar Sun are united with Alaya during the Maha-Manvantara. As the darkness of Voidness, Alaya is like "clear tranquil water" in Space, but the light of Mahat (the Equatorial Sun) breaks through "like the moon" to propel "every object in the Universe" on its evolutionary journey. But Paramartha is even beyond this stage. In G. de Purucker's Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary under the definition of Paramartha, it is the "highest part of the upper triad" of a man's "seven-fold constitution." In terms of human principles, it corresponds to the Divine Monad appurtenant to the Solar Sun (which is why the Dhyani-Buddhas are said to reside in it during Nirvana) and in terms of the cosmical principles it corresponds to Paramatman or the Central Sun.
In The Secret Doctrine 1:49, H.P. Blavatsky explained that the Buddhist Yogacharya tradition taught that the "progressed adept" could "introduce at will his Alaya by means of meditation into the true Nature of Existence." In one sense, Alaya is "Pradhana" (in that each inferior principle gradually blurs and blends into the superior principle above it) or what G. de Purucker labels as the matter side of Paramatman (Brahman-Pradhana) in his diagram on page 437. Therefore, the progressed adept, living in his Alaya aspect, can lift himself into Paramartha, or Nirvana as the "true Nature of Existence."
The First Stanza of The Secret Doctrine ends with three main points: 1) the Great Breath of the immaculate white disk, the dull black ground, and the central point produce the Mundane Egg 2) the Seven Creative Spirits of the Mundane Egg provide the stages of consciousness as the framework for the evolutionary ladder of evolving intelligences 3) the unfoldment of Alaya serves as the springboard for evolving intelligences in the Mundane Egg to reach upwards to Paramatman before the close of the Maha-Manvantara.
Sources:
H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 2019).
G. de. Purucker, Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary. Retrieved from theosociety.org.
G.de Purucker, Fountain-Source of Occultism (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1974).
G. de Purucker, Occult Glossary (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1996).
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