the Equinox - The Hermetic Library

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING
viduality, a self-consciousness—I am! This is explained in
Brihadâranyaka, 1. 4. 1. as follows:
“In the beginning the Âtman alone in the form of a man* was this universe.
He gazed around; he saw nothing there but himself. Thereupon he cried out at
the beginning: ‘It is I.' Thence originated the name I. Therefore to-day, when
anyone is summoned, he answers first ‘It is I’; and then only he names the other
name which he bears.Ӡ
This Consciousness of “I” is the second veil which man
meets on his upward journey, and, unless he avoid it and
escape from its hidden meshes, which are a thousandfold
more dangerous than the entanglements of the veil of words,
he will never arrive at that higher consciousness, that
superconsciousness (Samâdhi), which will consume him back
into the Âtman from which he came.
As the fall of the Âtman arises from the cry “It is I,” so
does the fall of the Self-consciousness of the universe-man
arise through that Self-consciousness crying “I am it,” thereby
identifying the shadow with the substance; from this fall arises
the first veil we had occasion to mention, the veil of duality, of
words, of belief.
This duality we find even in the texts of the oldest
Upanishads, such as in Brihadâranjaka, 3. 4. 1. “It is thy soul,
* “There are two persons of the Deity, one in heaven, and one which
descended upon earth in the form of man (i.e. the Adam Qadmon), and the
Holy One, praised by It! unites them (in the union of Samâdhi, that is, of
Sam (Greeek sÝn, together with) and Adhi, Hebrew, Adonai, the Lord). There are
three Lights in the Upper Holy Divine united in One, and this is the foundation
of the doctrine of Every-Thing, this is the beginning of the Faith, and Every-
Thing is concentrated therein” (“Zohar III,” beginning of paragraph. She’meneeh,
fol. 36a.)
† It is fully realized that outside the vastness of the symbol this “Fall of
God” is as impertinent as it is unthinkable.
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