April 1, 1999
It [the point in the center of the circle] is the Point in the Mundane Egg (see PartII., "The Mundane Egg"), the germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the ALL, the boundless, periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all returns. Its circumference - a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the limitation of the human mind - indicates the abstract, ever incognisable PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 1.

April 2, 1999
Only the face of the Disk being white and the ground all around black, shows clearly that its plane is the only knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is attainable by man. It is on this plane that the Manvantaric manifestations begin; for it is in this SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine Thought, wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and Theogony.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 1.

April 3, 1999
It is hardly necessary to remind the reader once more that the term "Divine Thought," like that of "Universal Mind," must not be regarded as even vaguely shadowing forth an intellectual process akin to that exhibited by man. ... Only those who realise how far Intuition soars above the tardy processes of rationcinative thought can form the faintest conception of that absolute Wisdom which transcends the ideas of Time and Space. Mind, as we know it, is resolvable into states of consciousness, of varying duration, intensity, complexity, etc. - all in the ultimate, resting on sensation, which is again Maya. Sensation, again, necessarily postulates limitation.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem footnote pages 1 to 2.

April 4, 1999
The personal God of orthodox Theism perceives, thinks, and is affected by emotion; he repents and feels "fierce anger." But the notion of such mental states clearly involves the unthinkable postulate of the externality of the exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the impossibility of ascribing changelessness to a Being whose emotions fluctuate with events in the worlds he presides over. The conceptions of a Personal God as changeless and infinite are thus unpsychological and, what is worse, unphilosohical.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem footnote page 2.

April 5, 1999
It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark mystery of non-Being; unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness; unrealisable, yet the one self-existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason."
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 2.

April 6, 1999
Its [the Absolute's] one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the "Great Breath," which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present SPACE. That which is motionless cannot be divine. But then there is noting in fact and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 2.

April 7, 1999
From the beginning of man's inheritance, from the first appearance of the architects of the globe he lives in, the unrevealed Deity was recognised and considered under its only philosophical aspect - universal motion, the thrill of the creative Breath in Nature.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 2.

April 8, 1999
As an eternal abstraction it is the EVER-PRESENT; as a manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction and the opposite, the two being the alpha and omega of successive reconstructions. Kosmos - the NOUMENON - has nought to do with the causal relations of the phenomenal World. It is only with reference to the intra-cosmic soul, the ideal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we may say: "It never had a beginning nor will it have an end." With regard to its body or Cosmic organization, though it cannot be said that it had a first, or will ever have a last construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its organization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it evolutes every time on a higher plane.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 3.

April 9, 1999
Indeed, if the Parabrahman of the Hindus may be taken as a representative of the hidden and nameless deities of other nations, this absolute Principle will be found to be the prototype from which all the others were copied.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 6.

April 10, 1999
Parabrahm is simply, as a "Secondless reality," the all-inclusive Kosmos - or, rather, infinite Cosmic Space - in the highest spiritual sense, of course. Brahma (neuter) being the unchanging, pure, free, undecaying supreme Root, ...
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 6.

April 11, 1999
There is no difference between the Christian Apostle's "In Him we live and move and have our being," and the Hindu Rishi's "The Universe lives in, proceeds from, and will return to, Brahma (Brahmâ)"
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem pages 8-9.

April 12, 1999
The occultist accepts revelation as coming from divine yet still finite Beings, the manifested lives, never from the Unmanifestable ONE LIFE; from those entities, called Primordial Man, Dhyani-Buddhas, or Dhyan-Chohans, the "Rishi-Prajâpati" of the Hindus, the Elohim or "Sons of God," the Planetary Spirits of all nations, who have become Gods for men.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem pages 9-10.

April 13, 1999
The oldest religions of the world - exoterically, for the esoteric root or foundation is one - are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes the Chaldean, the outcome of these - entirely lost to the world now, except in its disfigured Sabeanism as at present rendered by the archaeologists; then, passing over a number of religions that will be mentioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically, as in the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian Magism; exoterically, as in Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of allegorical legends.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 10.

April 14, 1999
Read by the light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters of Genesis are the fragment of a highly philosophical page in the World's Cosmogony. ... Left in their symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in the side of science and logic, an evident effect of Karma.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem pages 10-11.

April 15, 1999
To have let them [the first four chapters of Genesis] serve as a prologue to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better what their Pentateuch meant. It was a silent protest against their spoliation, and the Jews have certainly now the better of their traditional persecutors. The above-named exoteric creeds will be explained in the light of the Universal doctrine as we proceed with it.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 11.

April 16, 1999
It [the universe] expands and contracts (exhalation and inhalation). When it expands the mother diffuses and scatters; when it contracts, the mother draws back and ingathers. This produces the periods of Evolution and Dissolution, Manwantara and Pralaya.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem pages 11 to 12.

April 17, 1999
The secret teachings with regard to the Evolution of the Universal Kosmos [note the "K"] cannot be given, since they could not be understood by the highest minds in this age, and there seem to be very few initiates, even among the greatest, who are allowed to speculate upon this subject. Moreover the Teachers say openly that not even the highest Dhyani-Chohans have ever penetrated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that separate the milliards of Solar systems from the "Central Sun," as it is called.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 13.

April 18, 1999
Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number, and on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows. [continued tomorrow]
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 13.

April 19, 1999
The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions: - (a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought - in the words of Mandukya, "unthinkable and unspeakable."
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 14.

April 20, 1999
To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause - dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and "Unknowable " of current European philosophy - is the rootless root of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is "Be-ness" rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat, and is beyond all thought or speculation.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 14.

April 21, 1999
Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Mater, Subject and Object.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 15.

April 22, 1999
Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.... just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its differentiation.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 15.

April 23, 1999
But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is "that" which links spirit to matter, subject to object. This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the occultists Fohat. It is the "bridge" by which the "Ideas" existing in the "Divine Thought" are impressed on Cosmic substance as the "laws of Nature."
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 16.

April 24, 1999
Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation, the "Thought Divine" transmitted and made manifest through the Dhyan Chohans, the Architects of the visible World. Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualized and attains to self - or reflective - consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 16.

April 25, 1999
Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms: [not proposes] - (b.) The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically "the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing, called "the manifesting stars," and the "sparks of Eternity." ... "The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux."
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem pages 16 to 17.

April 26, 1999
This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 17.

April 27, 1999
Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches: [not proposes] - (c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal OverSoul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul - a spark of the former - through the Cycle of Incarnation (of "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 17.

April 28, 1999
In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, - or the OVER-SOUL, - has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha).
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 17.

April 29, 1999
The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 17.

April 30, 1999
For although the root of every atom individually and of every form collectively, is that seventh principle of the one Reality, still, in its manifested phenomenal and temporary appearance, it is no better than an evanescent illusion of our senses.
-Secret Doctrine Vol I Proem page 18.