The concept of Mahat is presented in many different ways in the Third Stanza. H.P. Blavatsky said, "Mahat has several aspects, just as the logos has."
First, Mahat is called "the Lord" in the "Primary Creation" and it is "Thought Divine." Mahat is Avalokitesvara as the 3rd Logos of the Kosmos, the central point, the receptacle of Divine Thought in Universal Mind.
Second, this 3rd Logos is also Brahma, but before it appears as "Brahma" or "Siva" it is "Vishnu." Vishnu is the potential point in the immaculate white disk, or the Ever-Darkness hiding its light. Therefore, Vishnu is the constancy of Father-Mother (1st and 2nd Logos inter- blended) who resides apart from the destruction of the lower worlds at the close of the Great Age. H.P. Blavatsky remarked in The Secret Doctrine 1:379 that Vishnu, with the Lotus flower growing from his navel, is the "most graphic allegory ever made: the Universe evolving from the central Sun, the POINT, the ever-concealed germ." But this "central Sun" is the central point before it manifested the seven lower worlds. H.P. Blavatsky recognized the distinction in The Secret Doctrine 1:381 by indicating that Vishnu is a first Logos and Brahma a subsequent Logos, or "ideal and practical creators" who are "respectively represented, one as manifesting the logos, the other as issuing from it." In the Secret Doctrine Commentary 1:31, the logoic light exists in two senses: 1) "eternal, absolute light, in potentia, ever present in the bosom of the unknown Darkness, coexistent and coeval with the latter in Eternity" 2) "a Manifestation of heterogeneity and a contrast to it." Vishnu represents the first light; Brahma the second light. Vishnu must necessarily be higher than Brahma because, when Siva (Rudra) destroys the manifested Brahmanic energies of the 3rd Logos as that secondary light at the close of the Great Age after the 311 trillion-year Maha-Manvantara, there has to be a force or power preserving that Individuality. Vishnu is that potential power beyond the productiveness of Brahma and the destructiveness of Siva. So Brahma, after Siva destroys the seven lower worlds to throw the universe into the darkness of Maha-Pralaya, re-emerges preserved as the manifested central point of light in a lower form of Vishnu, or the potential point within the Supreme Light now extended as the Mulaprakritic Father-Mother plane of Darkness on which "lie crossways" (the horizontal line across the immaculate white disk) all the "gods, creatures, and creations born in Space and Time," per The Secret Doctrine 2:549. Thus, Mahat is often referred to as Maha-Buddhi in the Mundane Egg, a reflection of the 2nd Logos as Vishnu in the Kosmos.
Third, there is also a Mahat produced in the "second Creation" when it is born as "I" or "Ego-ism." This is the Mahat of the Mundane Egg, per G. de Purucker's diagram in Fountain-Source on page 437. It is Svabhava and develops into the "feeling of Self-Consciousness." This Mahat of the second Creation is the 3rd Logos or Avalokitesvara for the solar system (and its cosmical principles) but not for the Kosmos. In mankind, this Mahat transforms into the "human Manas" of the human principles.
Fourth, there is a Mahat above the Manas of the human principles, just as there is a Mahat of the primary universe above the secondary universe for the cosmical principles. H.P. Blavatsky spoke of this Mahat of the human principles when she referenced the Hermetic Pymander (100 AD-300 AD), "I am the germ of thought, the resplendent Word, the Son of God. All that thus see and hears in thee is the Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought (Mahat) which is God, the Father." She then equated Mahat as God the Father with the "seventh principle in Man." It may be the 7th human principle, but it is the 7th human principle tinctured by the streams of the Central Sun. To understand this, one must turn to G. de Purucker's diagram on page 435. In this diagram, the Atman or Divine Monad of the human principles is the Solar Sun. But what is above it? Since the Solar Sun corresponds to Cosmic Kama for the cosmical principles, Mahat as the Equatorial Sun stands directly above it. This Mahat as a cosmic sun can be transposed onto G. de Purucker's diagram on page 435 above the Atman. While G. de Purucker did use the term Paramatman as a signifying pointer to the three types of suns beyond the Solar Sun, it might be most technically correct to use the term Mahat or Equatorial Sun. In one sense, this Mahat is also Avalokitesvara and, as G. de Purucker stated in Studies on page 310, a "cosmic sun." The rays of this cosmic sun allow Avalokitesvara to tincture the solar principles of man.
Sources:
H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 2019).
H.P. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine Commentary (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1994).
G. de Purucker, Fountain-Source of Occultism (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1974).
G. de Purucker, Studies in Occult Philosophy (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1973).
(Photo by David Wright on Unsplash)
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