Causeless Cause, Omnipresent and Eternal, and having the Substance, Force, and Conscious Aspects to which reference has already been had, and upon the correlations and permutations of which all evolution depends. The late Subba Row, in his lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, regarding this Absolute, Causeless Cause, writes:

"Even the so-called atheists have never denied it. Various creeds have adopted various theories as to the nature of this Causeless Cause.* All sectarian disputes have arisen not from a difference of opinion as to its existence, but from the difference of the attributes which man's intellect has constantly tried to impose upon it. Is it possible to know anything about the Causeless Cause? No doubt it is possible to know something about it. It is possible to know all about its manifestations, though it is next to impossible for human knowledge to penetrate into its inmost essence, and say what it really is in itself. We know that it is subject to periods of activity and passivity. When cosmic pralaya comes, it is inactive; and when evolution commences, it becomes active. But even the real reason for this activity and passivity is unintelligible to our minds.

"This Causeless Cause, or Parabrahmam of the Vedantin philosophers, is not matter nor anything like matter. It is not even consciousness, because all we know of consciousness is with reference to a definite organism. What consciousness is or will be when separated from a vehicle in which to function is a thing utterly inconceivable to us, and not only to us but to any other intelligence which has the notion of self or Ego in it, or which has a distinct, individualized existence.

"Of course, every entity in this Cosmos must come under the head of Ego, Non-Ego, or Consciousness. But Parabrahmam, the Causeless Cause, does not come under any one of them. Nevertheless, it seems to be the One source of which Ego, Non-Ego, and Consciousness are manifestations, or modes of existence. In the case of every objective consciousness, we know that what we call matter, or Non-Ego, is, after all, a mere bundle of attributes. But whether we arrive at our conclusion by logical inference, or whether we derive it from innate consciousness, we always suppose that there is an entity - the real essence of the thing upon which all these attributes are placed - which bears these attributes as it were, the essence itself being unknown to us.

* The learned lecturer throughout termed this the First Cause, but as he evidently meant that which Theosophy, following the Secret Doctrine, recognizes as the Causeless Cause, reserving the term First Cause for the creative energy in manvantaric activity, I have accordingly taken the liberty to change the original reading in accordance with this, to avoid unnecessary confusion.

"Now, this Parabrahmam, or Causeless Cause, which exists before all things in the Cosmos, is the one essence from which starts into existence a center of energy called the Logos. In almost every doctrine is formulated the existence of a center of spiritual energy which is unborn and eternal, and which exists in a latent condition in the bosom of the Causeless Cause at the time of pra- laya, and starts as a center of conscious energy at the time of Cosmic activity. It is the first Ego in the Cosmos, and every other Ego and every other self is but its reflection or manifestation. It is the great mystery in the Cosmos, with reference to which all the initiations and all the systems of philosophy have been devised. It is not material nor physical in its constitution, and it is not objective; it is not different in substance as it were, or in essence, from the Causeless Cause, and yet at the same time it is different from it in having an individualized existence. It exists in a latent condition in the Causeless Cause at the time of pralaya, just as the sense of Ego, or 'I am I,' is latent in man during sleep.

"It must not be supposed that this Logos is but a single center of energy which is manifested by Parabrahmam, or the Causeless Cause. There are innumerable others. Their number is almost infinite. This first manifestation of Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti."

That is to say, the first conscious Beings in the Universe awaken to self-consciousness to find themselves in material forms or vehicles, precisely as we awaken to consciousness to find ourselves encased in these physical bodies. We know that our "I" is not the same as the matter which clothes it; similarly, the Logoi know that the "root" of matter which clothes them is only a clothing, and what the real nature and essence of that Causeless Cause, which calls into objective existence both the "I" of the Logoi and their material base, is as unknowable to the great and primal Ideation expressed in those First Logoi as is the source of" I" and its physical vehicle to us.

At the first dawn of differentiation and consequent evolution matter has impressed upon it, from these First Logoi - the primal manifestation of Consciousness in the Cosmos, - that impulse and directing energy which will carry it through all the successive and myriad phases of its succeeding evolutionary manifestations, to the time when the Great Pralaya, or Rest, shall interpose another period of inactivity, as certainly as that Niagara will carry over its sublime cataracts all the water which flows into it from the great lakes. Remember, there is no evolution of consciousness; but only an evolution of matter into forms fitted to express higher and higher states or reflections of that Absolute Consciousness, which it is just as absurd and unscientific to predicate any additions to through evolution, or in any other manner, as it is to assume the "creation" of new matter. The matter of the Universe is a whole, which can not be added to nor taken from; Consciousness is also a whole, alike incapable of addition to or subtraction from.

The relation of the one to the other is, as already pointed out, all that falls under the law of evolution; the real essence of both remains forever untouched, resting in the bosom of the Causeless Cause. This does not bar from our consideration intelligent supervision over the evolutionary impulse by those high, Creative Logoi above referred to. For the whole scheme of evolution, so far as it seems comprehensible to finite beings, consists in and has for its motive the changing of the relations between matter, force, and consciousness, so that through this change undifferentiated consciousness shall "evolve" into self-consciousness. It is only necessary that these Creative Beings should act in conformity to those few primal and underlying laws which apparently limit the Absolute itself, of which the law of cycles, the law of karma, and the law of infinite Unity rendered manifest by infinite diversity, or variation, are examples. The "I" in a man can and does take control of his body, for instance, and transport it wheresoever it pleases, so long as it acts in accordance with the underlying and basic laws of mechanics and gravitation pertaining to this plane.