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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
"Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.
“ Universal Mind was not, for there were no intelligent beings to contain it.
“ The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce and to get ensnared by them.
"Darkness alone filled the Boundless all, for Father, Mother, Son were Once more one, and the Son had not yet awakened for the New Wheel and his pilgrimage thereon.
“ The seven truths had ceased to be and the Universe, the Son of necessity, was immersed in the Absolute to be out-breathed by that which is and yet is not. Nought was.
“ The causes of existence were no more; the visible that was and the invisible that is, rested in the Eternal Non-Being-One Being.
"Alone the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in dreamless sleep, and life pulsated unconscious in Universal space throughout that all presence which is sensed by the opened eye of the Seer.
"But where was the Seer when the Over-Soul of the Universe was absorbed in the Absolute and the great Wheel was parentless ? (In its formless, Eternal, Absolute condition)!”
The above is a fairly accurate description of the state of Nought or “Nothingness.” That which really and truly exists, in and for itself, can never cease to be ; and even when the form of a thing lapses into the condition of non-manifestation and we say 'it is not,' the material of which it was made remains in existence, in some form or other. To put the same thing in different words, all things are causal possibilities before and after manifestation, and perceptible realities during manifestation, while the true cause, or causes, which give them rise, remain unaffected by their transformations. It is thus obvious that there could never have been a moment of time, in the history of duration, with reference to which
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