Last October, a group of us were privileged to see John Astin portray Edgar Allan Poe in a one man stage performance of Edgar Allan Poe - Once Upon a Midnight. (1) It was a marvelous collaboration of Astin in a part made for him, and the interesting interweaving of biographical story-line as presented from the perspective of the sole character with excerpts from Poe’s stories, poetry and, hitherto unknown to me, an essay called EUREKA: A PROSE POEM. It was an illuminating experience. After the play, we had the chance to thank Mr. Astin for his work in bringing to light this vision of a pantheistic, spiritual Poe to supplant the widespread image of a degraded, melancholic drug addict. Astin urged us to read Poe’s EUREKA for ourselves, it being possibly the most important literary contribution of Poe’s career and, probably, the least known.

In Poe’s Preface to EUREKA, he writes:

 “To the few who love me and whom I love… I offer this book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth, constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone… as a Poem. What I here propound is true: - therefore it cannot die; or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will “rise again to the Life Everlasting.” (2) 

Poe states his theme as consisting of “the Physical, Metaphysical,  and  Mathematical   –   of the Material and Spiritual Universe; of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition, and its Destiny”. He proposes a vast Unity- an Original, Infinite ONE which displays a cyclic nature, alternately expanding and collapsing in upon Itself infinitely. And further, that humanity, and indeed, all Things are part of this Unity, striving through eons of evolution to consciously merge with It, ever growing eternally. To theosophical students this will be familiar as the statement of the Three Fundamental Propositions as given by H. P. Blavatsky in the SECRET DOCTRINE [Vol 1 pgs 14 -18] (3).

Although Poe includes the term in his opening paragraphs, he goes to great pains not to “impinge upon the Cloud-Land of Metaphysics”. He begins with the word “Infinity” as the mere representative of an “impossible conception”. He does not attempt to prove this concept as such a proof would not be possible; and as he avows, to all human purposes, is inessential of proof. Therefore, in speaking of this Infinity, there must be implied Faith. He next proposes adopting the concept of  “Godhead”, about which he quotes the Baron de Bielfeld: “Nous ne connaissons rien de la nature ou de l’essence de Dieu: pour savoir ce qu’il est, il faut etre Dieu meme.” “We know absolutely nothing of the nature or essence of God: in order to comprehend what He is, we should have to be God ourselves.”(4) To this Poe replies: “With a phrase so startling as this yet ringing in my ears, I nevertheless venture to demand if this our present ignorance of the Diety is an ignorance to which the soul is everlastingly condemned.” He proceeds then with what he terms his only absolute “assumption”; though even this, he claims, is really more than assumption, having been so “rigorously deduced”. It is the thought that this Godhead, being Spirit, at some remote time and at some point in Space, created out of Itself, Matter  in a state of utmost Simplicity, that is, of one primordial nature and undivided.

Of this original Matter, he declares nothing more than Oneness. But this Oneness, he is prepared to show, is sufficient to account for “the constitution, the existing phenomena, and the plainly inevitable annihilation, of at least the material Universe.” This Primordial Particle, though at present undivided, is by nature capable of infinite division. Divine Will, in performing the action of diffusion, that is, the action of creating the Many from the ONE, sets in motion the ultimate Reaction of return to absolute Unity. Of these many Atoms, as Poe designates them, diffused, the only condition we are allowed to infer is that of difference from Unity. This must imply difference in form from atom to atom and inequidistance each from each; any other consideration being, as he says, “supererogatory, and consequently unphilosophical”. His reasoning for this is that in performing the action of Diversity from Unity, the simplest, most Perfect design would be difference in every aspect.

On the cessation of this Divine Act of dispersion, the tendency of the atoms to their normal state of Unity returns. But the
design of dispersion, in a sense, frustrates their aim. As each atom is in part the ONE, so each is attracted to each. Those
close in proximity may immediately unite before beginning their journey back to ultimate Unity. Thus are created individual masses of varying size and form and kind, interspersed seemingly at random throughout Space. Here he proposes that for the fulfillment of Divine Will, there must be a repulsive Force at work, the nature of which he declares is Spirit Itself, and beyond our present understanding. That the force does exist, we see. Poe, living before the era of atomic fusion, stated it thus: “Man neither employs, nor knows, a force sufficient to bring two atoms into contact”, hence there must be something which keeps them apart.

Further, he wrote:

“In fact, while the tendency of the diffused atoms to return into Unity will be recognized, at once, as the principle of the Newtonian Gravity, what I have spoken of as a repulsive influence prescribing limits to the (immediate) satisfaction of the tendency, will be understood as that which we have been in the practice of designating now as heat, now as magnetism, now as electricity; displaying our ignorance of its awful character in the vacillation of the phraseology with which we endeavor to circumscribe it.”

Poe goes on to say: “To electricity – so, for the present, continuing to call it – we may not be wrong in referring the various physical appearances of light, heat, and magnetism; but far less shall we be liable to err in attributing to this strictly spiritual principle the more important phenomena of vitality, consciousness, and Thought.”

The manner in which Absolute Unity diffuses Matter is through radiation. Looking at Unity as the center, the diffusion of radiation is directly proportional with the squares of the distances from it. But reality presents a picture of some general equability in the cosmos, which seems contrary to expectation - that is, that there should be a concentration of matter closer to the center. Poe, however,  deduced a determinate radiation, one that came in ever weakening pulses, depositing the radiated matter in a series of concentric rings until the time that the force was exhausted.

I would be very much out of my depth to try to condense and explain all the particulars at this point.   Poe cites Laplace and his  Nebular Cosmogony  (5),  describing how the meeting and pull of atoms upon each other would cause them to rotate, a
nucleus forming between them. Other atoms would join them forming an aggregation, the whole continuing to rotate while
condensing, no atoms ever touching because of the repulsive force, yet inexorably drawn together by the Attraction to Unity. Those atoms at the surface of the aggregation would be traveling at a higher velocity than those at the center, and in moving towards the condensing center would add to the velocity of the whole, increasing the rotation. The increasing centrifugal speed, having overcome the non-increasing centripetal speed, would then cause a loosening and separation of the outer strata of atoms. Irregularities in the then separated, still revolving ring would cause the formation of new clusters; inferior clumps being attracted to superior clumps which eventually would resolve themselves into a stellar body or planet. Lesser aggregated masses then left revolving around the planet, would resolve into moons; this process being repeated for each of the planets. (In the case of the asteroid belt, there were multiple superior masses, none of which was sufficiently larger than the others to affect their absorption.) Finally - in the case of our own solar system - having discarded that last known planet, Mercury, the original nebular mass condensed itself into that body we call our Sun. It does not follow, however - Poe tells us – that its condensation is complete or that it may not throw off yet another planet.

The above is my gross over-simplification of Poe’s condensation of Laplace’s theory. From here Poe goes on to make modifications to this theory, of which I will not attempt to give an account. He does add that he believes this Universe
is but one of a series of universes, perhaps an infinite number of them as yet invisible to us because of their great distance or because their light is of a nature we can’t perceive. Of them he states:

“If such clusters of clusters exist, however – and they do – it is abundantly clear that, having had no part in our origin, they have no portion in our laws. They neither attract us, nor we them. Their material, their spirit, is not ours – is not that which obtains in any part of our Universe. They could not impress our senses or  our souls. Among them and us – considering all, for the moment, collectively – there are no influences in common. Each exists, apart and independently, in the bosom of its proper and particular God.”

He also theorizes the existence of a vast Central Sun invisible to our eyes. He quotes an astronomer, Dr. Nichol, in his observations of distant nebulae:

“Now, there occurs a very remarkable circumstance in reference to these comparatively sweeping circular masses of
nebulae. We find they are not entirely circular, but the reverse; and that all around them, on every side, there are volumes of
stars, stretching out apparently as if they were rushing towards a great central mass in consequence of the action of
some great power.” (6)

Many students of occultism who might perhaps balk at the lengthy astronomical theorizing, and so turn away from the book, would do well to at least read the last several pages in which Poe, despite his initial disclaimer, does turn decidedly metaphysical. Having spoken before of the concept of “absolute reciprocity of adaptation” as being the stamp of the Divine (that is, that Cause and Effect of an object are mutually adapted or interchangeable, and that this exhibits a Perfection towards which Man can only aspire), Poe makes this startling claim:

“Up to this point of our reflections, we have been regarding the electrical influence as a something by dint of whose repulsion alone Matter is enabled to exist in that state of diffusion demanded for the fulfillment of its purposes… With a perfectly legitimate reciprocity, we are now permitted to look at Matter, as created solely for the sake of this influence – solely to serve the objects of this spiritual Ether. Through the aid, by the means, through the agency, of Matter, and by dint of its heterogeneity, is this Ether manifested – is Spirit individualized. It is merely in the development of this Ether, through heterogeneity, that particular masses of Matter become animate – sensitive – and in the ratio of their heterogeneity; some reaching a degree of sensitiveness involving what we call Thought, and thus attaining obviously Conscious Intelligence.”

He doesn’t stop there, however. He reminds us again that we are moving towards ultimate Unity at which time the purposes
for which all this Matter has been created would be fulfilled and Matter would cease to exist. But even this is not the end, as he says we may have hope in imagining, by virtue of that "omniprevalent law of Periodicity”, that then another Creation may begin and return into Itself, and begin and return endlessly, “at every throb of the Heart Divine”. And what does he say of this Heart Divine? That it is our own.

“…in a word, that God – the material and spiritual God – now exists solely in the diffused Matter and Spirit of the Universe; and that the regathering of this diffused Matter and Spirit will be but the re-constitution of the purely Spiritual and Individual God. …What you call the Universe of Stars is but His present expansive existence. He now feels His life through an infinity of imperfect pleasures; the partial and pain-intertangled pleasures of those inconceivably numerous things which you designate as His creatures, but which are really but infinite individualizations of Himself. All these creatures – all – those whom you term animate, as well as those to which you deny life for no better reason than that you do not behold it in operation – all these creatures have, in a greater or less degree, a capacity for pleasure and for pain (and) ...are all, too, more or less…conscious Intelligences…Think that the sense of individual identity will be gradually merged in the general consciousness; that Man, for example, ceasing imperceptibly to feel himself Man, will at length attain that awfully triumphant epoch when he shall recognize his existence as that of Jehovah. In the mean time bear in mind that all is Life – Life – Life within Life – the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine.”

NOTES:
(1) Edgar Allan Poe - Once Upon a Midnight – stage play written by Paul
Day Clemens and Ron Magid, directed by Alan Bergmann, and starring         back to text
John Astin. For more information, check www.astin-poe.com/play.html
(2) EUREKA: A PROSE POEM – Edgar Allan Poe.  Prometheus Books       back to text
1997.
(3) THE SECRET DOCTRINE – H. P. Blavatsky. Theosophical University      back to text
Press 1988.
(4) Baron Jacob Friedrich de Bielfeld – German statesman (1711?-1770).   back to text
(5) Marquis de LaPlace – (1749 -1827) French mathematician and
astronomer who wrote MECANIQUE CELESTE, a five volume work      back to text
considered the greatest treatise on celestial mechanics since Sir Isaac
Newton’s PRINCIPIA.
(6) Dr. John Nichol – (1804 –1859) Scottish astronomer and author of     back to text
VIEWS OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE HEAVENS.