The Law of Karma is Unknown and Unknowable

Book excerpt: The Unknowable is neither a “force behind phenomena,” nor some kind of energy storehouse. It is essentially the same as our Consciousness, persisting unchanging in quantity, but ever changing in form. It has no kinship of nature with Evolution. Only the First Cause and its direct emanations, our spirits (scintillas from the eternal central sun which will be reabsorbed by it at the end of time), are incorruptible and eternal. All else is illusion, corruptible and ephemeral — the heresy and legacy of separateness. Divine thought cannot be defined, or its meaning explained, except by the numberless manifestations of Cosmic Substance in which the former is sensed spiritually by those who [if intellectually and ethically fit] can do so. Out of an Unknowable and Ever-Concealed Centre, Consciousness keeps unfolding, and infusing through the totality of artefacts: the mental agitates the molecular and mixes itself with the magnificent corporeal. Spirit and Matter are emanations of the One Reality, That Perfect Unmanifested Consciousness, or Non-Being. It is and It will remain forever unknown and unknowable. Personal consciousness is a differentiation in space and time of a ray of Universal Consciousness. On the subjective side is the One Life. On the objective, myriads of lives “immanent in every atom of Matter.” Matter is ever becoming, according to ideal forms. The Kabbalists never cease to repeat that primal intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be comprehended, nor can it be located, therefore it has to remain nameless and negative. When Logos reposes in the bosom of Parabrahman, It cannot see Parabrahman other than as Mulaprakriti, that “mighty expanse of cosmic matter” which veils Parabrahman from even the highest Logoic perceptions. Parabrahman is ever unknown to Logos, as It is to ourselves. Over and around, higher and lower, within and without, Unknown Intelligence sustains the Great Architect of the Universe, the Creative Deities, and all creatures. It is the “Spirit” of “God” that keeps moving upon the face of the waters of “Creation.” The “Eternal Breath” cannot know Itself by Itself because it is devoid of self-consciousness. Neither can the Infinite know the Finite, for that matter. It can only know aspects of Itself through Its acting powers. Nor Scripture lays down a set of definitions any more than Nature does. Karma is one with the Unknowable, an Absolute and Eternal Law in the World of manifestation. Karma is the Unknown Deity of the old Athenians, the One Law for All, and vice versa. The highest Deity is subject to this Law, or rather it is the Law of the Deity.