(1) Now on the subject of a “Void,” —which seems to almost all a thing of vast importance,—I hold the following view. Naught is, naught could have been, naught ever will be void. For all the members of the Cosmos are completely full; so that Cosmos itself is full and [quite] complete with bodies, diverse in quality and form, possessing each its proper kind and size. And of these bodies—one’s greater than another, or another’s less than is another, by difference of strength and size. Of course, the stronger of them are more easily perceived, just as the larger [are]. The lesser ones, however, or the more minute, can scarcely be perceived, or not at all—those which we know are things [at all] by sense of touch alone. Whence many come to think they are not bodies, and that there are void spaces,—which is impossible.

(16) Buddha speaks of the transient, the creator of consciousness, as being the fundamental truth of religion. And, in our Taoism, the expression " to produce emptiness " contains the whole work of completing life and essence. All three religions agree in the one proposition, the inding of the spiritual Elixir in order to pass from death to life. In what does this spiritual Elixir consist? It means forever tarrying in purposelessness. The deepest secret in our teaching, the secret of the bath, is confined to the work of making the heart empty. Therewith the heart is set at rest. What I have revealed here in a word is the fruit of decades of effort.

(3) Ever illuminated, receiving light unfailing, the All-Soul imparts it to the entire series of later Being which by this light is sustained and fostered and endowed with the fullest measure of life that each can absorb. It may be compared with a central fire warming every receptive body within range.

Our fire, however, is a thing of limited scope: given powers that have no limitation and are never cut off from the Authentic Existences, how imagine anything existing and yet failing to receive from them?

It is of the essence of things that each gives of its being to another: without this communication, The Good would not be Good, nor the Intellectual-Principle an Intellective Principle, nor would Soul itself be what it is: the law is, "some life after the Primal Life, a second where there is a first; all linked in one unbroken chain; all eternal; divergent types being engendered only in the sense of being secondary."

In other words, things commonly described as generated have never known a beginning: all has been and will be. Nor can anything disappear unless where a later form is possible: without such a future there can be no dissolution.

If we are told that there is always Matter as a possible term, we ask why then should not Matter itself come to nothingness. If we are told it may, then we ask why it should ever have been generated. If the answer comes that it had its necessary place as the ultimate of the series, we return that the necessity still holds.

With Matter left aside as wholly isolated, the Divine Beings are not everywhere but in some bounded place, walled off, so to speak; if that is not possible, Matter itself must receive the Divine light .

(19) Understand and consider it aright, O Man! God the Father made Man; the Beginning of whose Body is out of the [one] Element, or Root of the four Elements, from which they proceed, which [one Element] is the fifth Essence, [or Quintessence,] hid under the four Elements, from whence the dark Chaos [Mist, Cloud, or Dust] had its Being, before the Times of the Earth; whose Original is the Spring of Water, and out of which this World with the Stars and Elements, as also the Heaven of the third Principle, were created.

(9) Moreover, what has proceeded from the four Elements may be perceived in the Fierceness of the Fire, how instantly the strong Air goes forth from the Fire; and the Stone or Wood is nothing else but a Sulphur from the Water and from the Earth; and if the Tincture be consumed by the Fierceness, then the [Wood or Stone] would come to Ashes, and at last to nothing; as indeed, at the End, this World with the four Elements will come to nothing, and there shall remain nothing else of them in the eternal Element, but the Figure and the Shadow in the Wonders of God. How then canst thou think that God has created the eternal Man out of the four Elements, or what has proceeded from them, which are but corruptible?

(30) Man only has Understanding, and his Senses reach into the Essences and Qualities of the Stars and Elements, and search out the Ground of all Things in the Region of the Stars and Elements: And this now has its Original in Man, in the eternal Element, he being created out of the [eternal] Element, and not out of the Out-Births of the four Elements. And therefore the Eternity sees into the beginning Out-Birth in the Corruptibility; and the Beginning in the Out-Birth cannot see into the Eternity, for the Beginning takes its Original out of the Eternity, out of the eternal Mind.

(20) But this World being created (as a Principle) in the fourth Form as an Out-Birth, and the Paradise [being] between the fourth and fifth Form, and the Element [being] in the fifth Form, and therein the eternal Light of the Deity having opened another Center, and the Soul having reflected back again into the fourth Form, and entered thereinto, it made all Essences predominant in it, which stood in the fourth Form.

(25) In that state wherein thou art existing, there is being experienced by thee, in an unbearable intensity, voidness and Brightness inseparable — the Voidness bright by nature and the Brightness by nature void, and the Brightness inseparable from the Voidness — a state of the primordial [or unmodified] intellect, which is the Adi-Kaya. And the power of this, shining unobstructedly, will radiate everywhere; it is the Nirmana-Kaya.

(25) That Voidness is not of the nature of the voidness of nothingness, but a Voidness at the true nature of which thou feelest awed, and before which thine intellect shineth clearly and more lucidly; that is the [state of] mind of the Sambhoga-Kaya.

(5) Still more unreasonably:

There are men, bound to human bodies and subject to desire, grief, anger, who think so generously of their own faculty that they declare themselves in contact with the Intelligible World, but deny that the sun possesses a similar faculty less subject to influence, to disorder, to change; they deny that it is any wiser than we, the late born, hindered by so many cheats on the way towards truth.

Their own soul, the soul of the least of mankind, they declare deathless, divine; but the entire heavens and the stars within the heavens have had no communion with the Immortal Principle, though these are far purer and lovelier than their own souls- yet they are not blind to the order, the shapely pattern, the discipline prevailing in the heavens, since they are the loudest in complaint of the disorder that troubles our earth. We are to imagine the deathless Soul choosing of design the less worthy place, and preferring to abandon the nobler to the Soul that is to die.

Equally unreasonable is their introduction of that other Soul which they piece together from the elements.

How could any form or degree of life come about by a blend of the elements? Their conjunction could produce only a warm or cold or an intermediate substance, something dry or wet or intermediate.

Besides, how could such a soul be a bond holding the four elements together when it is a later thing and rises from them? And this element- soul is described as possessing consciousness and will and the rest- what can we think?

Furthermore, these teachers, in their contempt for this creation and this earth, proclaim that another earth has been made for them into which they are to enter when they depart. Now this new earth is the Reason-Form of our world. Why should they desire to live in the archetype of a world abhorrent to them?

Then again, what is the origin of that pattern world? It would appear, from the theory, that the Maker had already declined towards the things of this sphere before that pattern came into being.

Now let us suppose the Maker craving to construct such an Intermediate World- though what motive could He have?- in addition to the Intellectual world which He eternally possesses. If He made the mid-world first, what end was it to serve?

To be a dwelling-place for Souls?

How then did they ever fall from it? It exists in vain.

If He made it later than this world- abstracting the formal-idea of this world and leaving the Matter out- the Souls that have come to know that intermediate sphere would have experienced enough to keep them from entering this. If the meaning is simply that Souls exhibit the Ideal-Form of the Universe, what is there distinctive in the teaching?

(9) "Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting-point. Existence without limitation is Space. Continuity without a starting-point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which one passes in and out without seeing its form, that is the Portal of God. "The Portal of God is Non-Existence. All things sprang from Non-Existence. Existence could not make existence existence. It must have proceeded from Non-Existence, And Non-Existence and Nothing are One. Herein is the abiding-place of the Sage. "The knowledge of the ancients reached the highest point,—the time before anything existed. This is the highest point. It is exhaustive. There is no adding to it. "The second best was that of those who started from existence. Life was to them a misfortune. Death was a return home. There was already separation. "The next in the scale said that at the beginning there was nothing. Then life came, to be quickly followed by death. They made Nothing the head, Life the trunk, and Death the tail of existence, claiming as friends whoever knew that existence and non-existence, and life and death were all One. "These three classes, though different, were of the same clan; as were Chao Ching who inherited fame, and Chia who inherited territory. "Man's life is as the soot on a kettle. Yet men speak of the subjective point of view. But this subjective point of view will not bear the test. It is a point of knowledge we cannot reach. "At the winter sacrifice, the tripe may be separated from the great toe; yet these cannot be separated.

(10) In this manner you must understand the four Elements, which yet are not four divided Things, or Essences, but one only Essence: And yet there are four Differences, or Distinctions in this Birth; and each Element lies in the other, as in a Chest, and it is its Receptacle, also it is a Member therein. Understand and consider the Ground aright, which follows. The P Sourness is the Matrix, and a Cause of all Things, which in its own Substance is very dark, cold, and as nothing; but the Eternal Deity being there, and speculating or beholding itself in the Sourness, therefore the dark Sourness is desirous after the divine Virtue, and attracts; although there is no Life or Understanding in the Sourness, yet it is the Ground of the first Essence, and the Original whence something comes to be: Here we can search no further into the Ground of the Deity, for it troubles [disturbs, or confounds] us.

(24) Well hast thou taught me all, as I desired, O Mind. And now, pray, tell me further of the nature of the Way Above as now it is [for me]. To this Man-Shepherd said: When the material body is to be dissolved, first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change, and thus the form thou hadst doth vanish, and thou surrenderest thy way of life, void of its energy, unto the Daimon. The body's senses next pass back into their sources, becoming separate, and resurrect as energies; and passion and desire withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.

(3) Then Knowledge said to the Yellow Emperor, "I asked Do-nothing Say-nothing, but he did not answer me. Not that he, would not; he could not. So I asked All-in-extremes. He was just going to tell me, but he did not tell me. Not that he would not; but just as he was going to do so, he forgot what he wanted to say. Now I ask you, and you tell me. How then are you wholly wrong?" "Of those two," replied the Yellow Emperor, "the former was genuinely right, inasmuch as he did not know. The latter was near, inasmuch as he forgot. You and I are wholly wrong, inasmuch as we know." When All-in-extremes heard of this, he considered that the Yellow Emperor had spoken well. The universe is very beautiful, yet it says nothing. The four seasons abide by a fixed law, yet they are not heard. All creation is based upon absolute principles, yet nothing speaks. And the true Sage, taking his stand upon the beauty of the universe, pierces the principles of created things. Hence the saying that the per fect man does nothing, the true Sage performs nothing, beyond gazing at the universe. For man's intellect, however keen, face to face with the countless evolutions of things, their death and birth, their squareness and roundness,—can never reach the root. There creation is, and there it has ever been. The six cardinal points, reaching into infinity, are ever included in Tao. An autumn spikelet, in all its minuteness, must carry Tao within itself. There is nothing on earth which does not rise and fall, but it never perishes altogether.

(1) All this is Brahman (n.) Let a man meditate on that (visible world) as beginning, ending, and breathing in it (the Brahman). Now man is a creature of will. According to what his will is in this world, so will he be when he has departed this life. Let him therefore have this will and belief:

(3) The Lord Buddha thereupon declared unto Subhuti, “Belief in the unity or eternity of matter is incomprehensible; and only common, worldly-minded people, for purely materialistic reasons, covet this hypothesis.”

(4) The four castes were created by Me according to the division of gunas and karma. Though I am their Creator, yet know that I neither act nor change.

(32) As Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, lie in one Case, [or Chest,] and they four are but one Thing, and yet of four distinct Differences, and none of them can comprehend, nor retain the other, and something of one of the four being fixed in every Creature, that Creature cannot bind itself as to that, but is manifested therein, and according to that Spirit is comprehensible and perceptible, and yet is incomprehensible to the Spirits of the other Elements.

(13) First, the four Elements break off from the [one] Element, and then the Source [or working Faculty] of the third Principle ceases; and that is the most horrible Thing [of all,] when the four Elements break in themselves; and that is the Death, when the Brimstone- spirit (which has its Original from the Gall, and kindles the Tincture of the Heart) is choaked; where then the Tincture with the Shadow of Man's Substance goes into the Ether, and remains standing with the Shadow, in the Root of the one Element; from which [one Element] the four Elements were generated and gone forth; and therein only consists the Woe in the Breaking, where one Source-house is broken off from the Soul.

(7) That this world has neither beginning nor end but exists for ever as long as the Supreme stands is certainly no novel teaching. And before this school rose it had been urged that commerce with the body is no gain to a Soul.

But to treat the human Soul as a fair presentment of the Soul of the Universe is like picking out potters and blacksmiths and making them warrant for discrediting an entire well-ordered city.

We must recognize how different is the governance exercised by the All-Soul; the relation is not the same: it is not in fetters. Among the very great number of differences it should not have been overlooked that the We lies under fetter; and this in a second limitation, for the Body-Kind, already fettered within the All-Soul, imprisons all that it grasps.

But the Soul of the Universe cannot be in bond to what itself has bound: it is sovereign and therefore immune of the lower things, over which we on the contrary are not masters. That in it which is directed to the Divine and Transcendent is ever unmingled, knows no encumbering; that in it which imparts life to the body admits nothing bodily to itself. It is the general fact that an inset , necessarily shares the conditions of its containing principle , and does not communicate its own conditions where that principle has an independent life: thus a graft will die if the stock dies, but the stock will live on by its proper life though the graft wither. The fire within your own self may be quenched, but the thing, fire, will exist still; and if fire itself were annihilated that would make no difference to the Soul, the Soul in the Supreme, but only to the plan of the material world; and if the other elements sufficed to maintain a Kosmos, the Soul in the Supreme would be unconcerned.

The constitution of the All is very different from that of the single, separate forms of life: there, the established rule commanding to permanence is sovereign; here things are like deserters kept to their own place and duty by a double bond; there is no outlet from the All, and therefore no need of restraining or of driving errants back to bounds: all remains where from the beginning the Soul's nature appointed.

The natural movement within the plan will be injurious to anything whose natural tendency it opposes: one group will sweep bravely onward with the great total to which it is adapted; the others, not able to comply with the larger order, are destroyed. A great choral is moving to its concerted plan; midway in the march, a tortoise is intercepted; unable to get away from the choral line it is trampled under foot; but if it could only range itself within the greater movement it too would suffer nothing.