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Volume 1:588-610

In Chapters XIII and XIV, H.P. Blavatsky analyzed Immanuel Kant's Nebular theory.

  1. (Chapter XIII). SCIENTIFIC AND ESOTERIC EVIDENCE FOR, AND OBJECTIONS TO, THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY: In 1755, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant published his Nebular theory in Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. He argued that the universe developed from widely scattered material (through attraction and repulsion) that eventually clumped together, rotated, and flattened out to produce the sun and planets. A nebula is a cloud in Space in which this sequence of events occurs. On pages 43-45, Kant expounded, "Nature, on the immediate edge of creation, was as raw and undeveloped as possible." H.P. Blavatsky confirmed this view that "a nebula exists in a state of entire elemental dissociation." Kant continued, "The difference in the types of elements by itself was the most important factor contributing to the movement of nature and to the development of chaos." H.P. Blavatsky disagreed, arguing instead for a "homogeneity of original diffuse matter." For Kant, a "point" appeared in a "very large space" which exerted a "stronger influence than at any other points around it," causing the "surrounding area" to "sink toward this point." H.P. Blavatsky endorsed this perspective for "immense distances" in relation to the "outskirts of a solar system." Kant resumed, "The first effect of this general sinking" was the "development of a body at this mid-point of the attraction" which "proceeded to grow from an infinitely small seed in rapid stages" by attracting "surrounding particles to unite with it." H.P. Blavatsky qualified this statement by suggesting that the limitations of "centrifugal" force in the expansion of the solar field had to be considered. For Kant, this "central body" grew "so extensive" and with such attraction that other particles began to "move in a circle around the central body." H.P. Blavatsky corroborated his findings, emphasizing that the Solar Sun only evolved out the "life-principle" of the planets, not the physical bodies; the physical bodies of the planets clumped together from previously exploded solar material in a former Manvantara. Kant concluded that "large vortexes of small particles" developed "which all intersected one another" across a plane and transformed over time into planets. H.P. Blavatsky concurred, affirming in The Secret Doctrine 1:597 that it was an "incomplete yet faithful repetition" of the esoteric teachings. The Solar Sun and the various planets formed from the clumping-rotating effect within the nebula. In The Secret Doctrine Commentary on page 230, she explained, "We say everything comes from the Milky Way, and that it begins when the Manvantaric dawn of the solar system begins, and that goes on. And they show Fohat running like a thread, and these threads sometimes get entangled in a knot, and the central star, the solar system, begins the little knots, and so on." A Laya-center shoots out a comet, the comet radiates from the immaculate white disk of the Milky Way, cosmic materials begin to concentrate together, the dominant knot of a Central Sun forms, the secondary knots of Solar Suns appear and establish their electromagnetic vortexes with the planets circling in their ring-waves.

  2. (Chaper XIV). FORCES--MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES?: H.P. Blavatsky repeated her position that centrifugal force was not sufficient enough to account for the planets in their orbits in the ring-waves. In The Secret Doctrine 1:602 they are the "direct emanation of the Universal Mind" which "formed the nuclei of all the 'self-moving' orbs in Kosmos." Reminding her reader in The Secret Doctrine 1:604 that there are both centrifugal and centripetal forces, she traced them to their source in the "MANIFESTING MIND." Just as an atom encompasses an interior and an exterior, a secondary universe is also dual. The central point as the 3rd Logos is the interior or the "ELEMENT" within the Mundane Egg as a cosmic "ATOM." This combination is the Manifesting Mind. The 3rd Logos reveals itself in the 7th cosmical principle of Paramatman.

Sources:

H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 2019).

H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Dialogues (Los Angeles: The Theosophy Company, 2014).

Immanuel Kant, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, trans. Ian Johnston (Arlington: Richer Resources Publications, 2008).

(Photo by Guillermo Ferla on Unsplash)

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