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Volume 2:191-226

In Stanza Nine in The Secret Doctrine 2:197, the gradual process of transformation of the sexual from the astral into the physical is revisited. H.P. Blavatsky wrote, "It is evident the units of the Third Race humanity began to separate in their pre-natal shells, or eggs, and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes ages after the appearance of its early progenitors [ed. the close of the Triassic some 25,000,000 years ago]. And, as time rolled on its geological periods, the newly born sub-races began to lose their natal capacities. Toward the end of the fourth sub-race, the babe lost its faculty of walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and by the end of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions and by the same identical process as our historical generations." This process "required, of course, millions of years." With the corruption of the 2nd Sub-Race in the Third Root-Race now extending into the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Sub-Races with human-animal mating, the "Satya (Yuga) was at an end," per The Secret Doctrine 2:201. The purity of the First Root-Race ceased with these subsequent Sub-Races. Seeing the need to retain the purity of the First Root-Race, a group of Third Root-Race humanity during the Fifth Sub-Race divided itself out from these corruptions to re-create in a new geographical location the "primitive cradle of humanity," though only "one" of many and only a "copy of the cradle" of the "first thinking divine man" of the Imperishable Sacred Island.

In The Secret Doctrine 2:204, this new geographical location extended from "lake Aral" of present-day Kazakhstan into the Gilgit region of "Baltistan" or "Little Tibet" adjacent to Pakistan. Here, the "Dragons of Wisdom" or the "primitive adepts of the Third Race" organized in Shambala, per The Secret Doctrine 2:210. These "primitive adepts" of Shambala are symbolized as divine serpents in the Gnostic tradition because they stream the consciousness of Ennoia and Ophis within themselves. In this commentary, Ennoia has already been presented as the light of the 3rd Logos. Ophis is the shadow of that light. But they are both the 3rd Logos, like Purusha and Prakriti. In The Secret Doctrine 2:214, Bythos (the 2nd Logos) "issues forth a circle formed of spirals." The serpent or "the dual Androgyne" is coiled within these spirals. The pulsing "cycle" from the potential point activated from within the immaculate white disk is "Ennoia, or the divine mind" while the serpent as the "Agathodaemon" or "the Shadow of the Light" is Ophis. Together, "Ennoia and Ophis are the Logos," but "when separated, one is the Tree of Life (spiritual), the other, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." Therefore, Ennoia is the Tree of Life because he is the central point directly emerging along the eternal plane of the immaculate white disk whereas Ophis is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because she is "non-eternal" in that she must drop into the "material production" of Ilda-Baoth with its "forbidden fruit." But she advises Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit (sex) since it is endowed with the "divine Wisdom" through Sophia-Achamoth in her descent from Sophia as the 6th cosmical principle. Once again, sex and transcendence are mirrored in one another.

In the Nag Hammadi treatise, The Gospel of Thomas (50 AD-250 AD), Jesus speaks mystically of these ideas. In Verse 11, he queries, "When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?" He cryptically continues in Verse 22, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female . . . then will you enter [the kingdom]." That is, the individual will be streaming the consciousness of "the dual Androgyne," or Ennoia-Ophis, into himself. Finally, Jesus says in Verse 61, " I am he who exists from the undivided. I was given some of the things of my father." Jesus exists "from the undivided" because the central point emerges from the immaculate white disk; he receives "things" from his father because even the immaculate white disk possesses a darkened underbelly as the shadow of Mulaprakriti-Bythos (2nd Logos) just as the central point possesses the darkened underbelly of Prakriti-Ophis (3rd Logos).

In Pistis Sophia in 2.99, Jesus demonstrates that he is in possession of both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. He advises, "Of the rest of the lower mysteries, therefore, ye have no need; but ye will find them in the two Books of Yew, which Enoch hath written whilst I spake with him out of the tree of gnosis and out of the tree of life in the paradise of Adam." The name "Yew" is actually "Jeu," a form of "IAO" from which "YHVH" is derived. Therefore, Jesus gives to Enoch the two books of "IAO" relating to the cycles of the 3rd Logos. In 4.126, Yew is the "First Man, the overseer of the Light" or Ennoia. Around him in the "outer darkness" is a "great dragon" or Ophis, "whose tail is in his mouth, outside the whole world and surrounding the whole world." Describing Yew in 5.139, Jesus asserts that he is "the father of my father." Since Yew is the "First Man," this makes Jesus the "Son of Man." As the 3rd Logos, Yew functions as the most direct father over Jesus's own Manasaputra. But since the 3rd Logos is never really independent of the 1st Logos, Yew can also be identified with it in the same way that the Third Root-Race can be identified with the First Root-Race.

If one turns to the The Books of Jeu 1:23 (ascribed to the 3rd century AD), Yew is called the "true God" emanated from the "Father" as the Unknown Deity. Jesus explains on 1:27, "A power of my Father moved the true God. It radiated within him through this small idea (thought) which came forth from the treasuries of my Father. It radiated within the true God." In other words, the potential point (Unknown Deity) in the immaculate white disk vibrates the central point (true God) into activity. On 1:103, the disciples of Jesus ask him how "places" and "ranks" in their emanations on the uncoiling of Ophis's spiral come into existence. He replies, "They came into existence because of this small idea . . . I radiated forth in this small idea as one originating from my Father. I bubbled up and I flowed forth from it. I radiated forth from it. It emanated me forth and I was the first emanation from within it. And I was its whole likeness and its image. As it emanated me forth I stood in its presence." Here, Jesus is identified with one of the many Paramatmans (7th cosmical principle) that "bubbled up" and "flowed forth" from the central point into the secondary Universe at the outset of the Great Age. The Auric Egg of the secondary universe is not unlike the sweat-drops of the Second Root-Race.

Now, Jesus shines as the triple "Son of the Light"--the immaculate white disk, the central point, and Paramatman. His disciples ask him how to become a"Son of the Light" on 2:163-165. He answers that they must "receive the mystery of the forgiveness of sins." This mystery pertains to the "twelve aeons of the "invisible God," which means the twelve talas and lokas of the lower six cosmical principles headed by Adi-Buddhi (6th cosmical principle) in G. de Purucker's diagram in Fountain-Source on page 437. Once the mystery is received, the "light of the treasury purifies the twelfth aeon so that all the pathways of which you come forth are purified. And the Treasury of the Light is revealed. And you will look at the heavens from below." Then the "nine watchers" open "to you the gates of the Treasury of the Light, and you go into the Treasury of the Light." The "nine watchers" guard the entrance to the immaculate white disk, but it is possible to plunge in. Jesus clarifies, "when I come to roll up all the aeons [ed. extending from below up to Adi-Buddhi], I will give the mystery of the forgiveness of sins [ed. the 6th initiation when the Initiate untethers himself from the personal self in the Great Temptation or the close of the Great Age when the deeps of Alaya swell and wrinkle inwardly to cover and protect Brahma in his manifest death from the karmic crimes of the previous Maha-Manvantara] to these three higher archons of the light [ed. 8th, 9th, and 10th cosmical principles] which are the last of all the aeons, because they have believed in the mystery of the kingdom of the Light [ed. because the light of the 1st Logos is hidden behind Ophis as the 3rd Logos and Bythos as the 2nd Logos, therefore demanding belief from the start of the journey]."


Sources:

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

Violet Macdermot, trans., The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978). Retrieved from scribd.com.

G.R.S. Mead, trans., Pistis Sophia: The Gnostic Tradition of Mary Madeline, Jesus, and His Disciples (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2005).

G. de Purucker, Fountain-Source of Occultism (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1974).

James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990).

(Photo by Amoh on Unsplash)

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