stanza 3, slokas 2-4

STANZA III.

2. The vibration sweeps along, touching with its swift wing the whole universe and the germ that dwelleth in darkness: the darkness that breathes over the slumbering waters of life. . .

3. Darkness radiates light, and light drops one solitary ray into the mother-deep. The ray shoots through the virgin egg the ray causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non- eternal germ, which condenses into the world-egg.

4. Then the three fall into the four. The radiant essence becomes seven inside, seven outside. The luminous egg, which in itself is three, curdles and spreads in milk-white curds throughout the depths of mother, the root that grows in the depths of the ocean of life.

 
“Mr. B. Keightley:  Sloka 4 (reads from The Secret Doctrine).  Question 5:  “Is the ‘Radiant Essence’ the same as the Luminous Egg?  What is the root that grows in the Ocean of Life?”

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  You see, this is again the same thing. You don’t make the slightest allowance for the metaphorical mode of expression. You are all the same, if you please. There must be a certain solidarity. What one says another will say. I don’t make any distinction whatever there, so you are answerable one for the other.

 
Of course the Radiant Essence is the same as the radiant or Golden Egg of Brahma. “The Root that grows in the Ocean of Life” is the potentiality that transforms into objective differentiation, like the universal, subjective, ubiquitous, undifferentiated germ, or the eternal potency of abstract nature. Now, is it so? Is it plain?

 
And the “Ocean of Life” is the “One Life”, “Paramatma” when the transcendental supreme and secondless soul is meant. “Jivatma” when we speak of the physical and animal, or rather, differentiation of Nature’s soul – expressions all found in the Vedantin philosophy.

 
Now try to remember, Paramatma and Jivatma are the same identically, and even the soul of a man and of an animal, a Nephesh, is just the same; but there is a distinction.

 
One is the supreme subjective soul of the secondless, and the other is already in the manifested universe. Jivatma, that is to say, is the life that gives being to the atom, and the molecule, and the man, and everything in creation – plant, mineral and so on.

 
The President:  And the other is the potentiality; potency and potentiality express the difference.”

 
H. P. Blavatsky