Theosophical University Press Online Edition
With the renaissance of scientific thought out of the crudities and credulities of the Middle Ages, it was but natural and inevitable that men should seek for some universal standard or gage by which they might test through experimentation and otherwise, the ideas and intuitions that at various times appear; and in this search for a universal standard, inquiring minds turned in the only direction and to the only thing that seemed to furnish the requisite conditions of universality, of impersonality, which likewise was the physical basis on and in and from which all physical things exist -- to Nature herself. But approaching Nature as they did with the psychological burthens and preconceptions inherent in their age, what could they expect to find in such preliminary and as yet almost untutored study of Nature -- in this case untutored by previous centuries of observational study and reflexion born therefrom? Unguided and untaught by any other philosophy of life than that of the religious and scholastic thinking of the Middle Ages; indeed in a sense mistaught and misguided thereby, and due to the influence of the surrounding social milieu and the strong psychological force of their environment, their minds unconsciously approached such a study of Nature already set and crystallized in certain avenues of thinking. Thus it was almost inevitable that they should have misconstrued, and in later centuries continued to misconstrue, even the facts or truths, and the half-truths, and the quarter-truths, that their awakening minds discovered or laid bare. The influence of these truths, and of the half-truths and quarter-truths, brought to birth in men's minds various systems of philosophic and scientific thought which whilom prevailed in early scientific speculation, and which were in fact born of the various attempts to explain Nature's phenomena in what seemed to be at the time the most reasonable manner.
Thus arose, among other theories, what has been called the theory of Vitalism, which is not easy of description because of the various and differing ideas that were comprised under this term, but which seems to have been the general idea that behind or beyond or within the physical and chemical processes in animal and plant-bodies, there exists something different therefrom called 'life.' This 'life' was supposed, apparently, to be an active force existing apart from and quite different from matter; and death was supposed to be the withdrawal of this mysterious 'life' from matter or physical bodies. The deduction seems obvious and accurate enough that the basic idea of the conception of Vitalism was that the so-called 'life' is entirely immaterial, unsubstantial, and in no sense identical with or being anything that matter itself is, but which nevertheless worked through matter and gave to the latter its various and differing attributes and qualities -- outside of such inherent attributes or qualities that chemical elements of matter themselves might be supposed to have.
The philosophical and scientific problems and questions that very naturally arose out of such a theory as this, and which by many eminent minds were considered to be virtually insoluble, appalled and therefore repelled thinkers of another cast of mentality; and in the recoil of these latter from the Vitalistic theory, they became what were called Mechanists as opposed to Vitalists, the former saying that there is no such thing as 'life' per se, that there is nothing but physical and chemical forces; and that it is the interactions of these forces or 'energies' which produce the varieties of animal and plant-life -- men being of course included, at least in later times, among the animals.
This theory of 'Mechanism' was the dominant scientific belief down to a period which ended, let us say, some thirty years ago more or less, and which is still the belief of no insignificant number of men, who, because of their belief may properly be called Materialists. But just as Vitalism had its day, so all the signs are pointing to the conclusion that Mechanism likewise has run its course or has had its day.
Professor George C. Scott, PH. D., Associate Professor of Biology in the College of the City of New York, wrote in a work recently published:
Inseparably connected with physical and chemical ideas of protoplasm is the functioning of protoplasm. Inseparably connected with the societies of cells must be an integrative activity of the whole mass as a unit. This organization cannot be dissected; it cannot be seen with the aid of a microscope. It is not material in the ordinary sense of the word. This has led to the development of two general ideas or schools of thought -- Vitalism and Mechanism. The vitalist says that life is more than mere physical and chemical forces and that we have not yet been able to elucidate what life is. The mechanist claims that life-activities are no more or less than exhibitions of known physical and chemical laws. The biological mechanist who confidently asserts that life-processes are merely exhibitions of phenomena, taking place according to known laws of physics and chemistry is open to criticism fully as much as the vitalist. . . . When life-phenomena are really understood it may be that this so-called life-force or 'vital spirit' will be identified as a form of energy. (341)
The last sentence of this quotation in some respects is an approach to what the Esoteric Philosophy teaches, provided that to it one adjoin the fundamental concept as taught in the Esoteric Tradition, that all forms of force or 'energy,' whether general or particular, whether Cosmic or global, whether global or manifested in so-called 'animate' beings, are inherently not only 'vital' but intelligent -- intelligence, or more generally speaking 'mind,' being inherent in matter itself, and expressing itself in the bewilderingly various manners in which matter itself appears. This last statement itself shows clearly that Vitalism is in some respects nearer to the esoteric doctrine than is Mechanism; but the Theosophist absolutely repudiates the Vitalistic idea, if it has been properly understood, that 'life' is something radically -- i. e., in its essence -- different from the underlying substance out of which matter is formed and on which it rests.
Another quotation from The Encyclopaedia Britannica will serve to introduce still another view on this interesting controversy which is not quite so academic as some may think it to be. This quotation is taken from an article written by Dr. Max Verworn, Professor of Physiology in the University of Bonn, Germany. This eminent writer, after describing in a general way the growth in Europe of the ideas of Vitalism, and of the nature of 'soul' and of 'spirit' as held in European thought from the Greeks down to his own day, goes on to depict the further development of scientific ideas along these lines. He writes:
By degrees there emerged once more the tendency to explain vital phenomena by mystical means, finding expression in the Animism of Stahl, to quote an example; and in the second half of the 18th century Vitalism originating in France, began its victorious march throughout the whole scientific world. Again the opinion came to be entertained that the cause of vital phenomena was a mystical power (force hypermecanique) -- that "vital force" which, neither physical nor chemical in its nature, was held to be active in living organisms only. Vitalism continued to be the ruling idea in physiology until about the middle of the 19th century . . . by the second half of the 19th century the doctrine of vital force was definitely and finally overthrown to make way for the triumph of the natural method of explaining vital phenomena. . . . It would, it is true, appear as if in our day, after the lapse of half a century, mystical tendencies were again disposed to crop up in the investigation of life. Here and there is heard once more the watchword of Vitalism. (342)
The writer seems to think that fifty years is a very long time in human thought, and that because a theory has lasted for fifty years it has proved itself as a truth of Nature and therefore will evidently last for ever! This idea is both perplexing and unfounded because in no department of human thinking do changes follow each other with such bewildering rapidity, changes often amounting to diametrical oppositions or reversals in thought, as take place and have always taken place in scientific circles. This tendency to change is in itself an excellent thing, because it keeps scientific thought fluid, so to say, and prevents crystallization of scientific ideas into mere scientific dogmatisms. Yet for all this, as any collection of scientific text-books will readily show, scientific ideas tend strongly to become dogmatic; and although a scientific hypothesis or theory is proved by experience to be as transitory and as subject to changes in fashions as are the fads and theories in any other department of human life, nevertheless this does not seem to prevent the crystallization of ideas as strongly here as elsewhere.
Furthermore, one may well ask oneself whether the ideas imbodied in the theories of Occidental Vitalism, equally with the ideas imbodied in the theory of Occidental Mechanism, are not in each case contrary to the entire trend of ultra-modern scientific thought and discovery themselves; for one of the latest views and apparently universally accepted convictions of ultra-modern scientists is that force, or what they call energy, and matter are fundamentally and essentially one and not two different entities.
Nowadays the foremost men in the ranks of the scientists themselves tell us that there is no matter per se, i. e., that 'matter' is not something which exists absolutely, or as an entity, different essentially from 'energy,' or what the Theosophist would call Force or rather Forces. Everything in the view of modern science seems to be essentially 'energy'; and matter itself is but the forms or aspects of Cosmic Energy, which some at least of the most forwards-looking of the great men of modern science actually identify with Mind-stuff. In this last idea they are closely approaching the Theosophical conception, to wit: that what men call matter is in reality a concretion or a thickening or a crystallization of forces, or, to phrase it more accurately, a vast and incomprehensibly great concretion of Monads, which are Spiritual Centers, Individuals of consciousness, and therefore centers of life, aye, real fountains of life, because of being individual fountains of streaming force or forces. As has already been mentioned in the present work, H. P. Blavatsky wrote more than fifty years ago that matter is condensed or concreted radiation -- or what in those days was called 'light.' This statement, having in view the most recent scientific discoveries and the admirable deductions drawn therefrom, is immediately seen to be true; and yet when she made the statement, it was universally considered to be the declaration of an erratic idealist, and without any foundation whatsoever in Nature itself, susceptible of no real proof, and impossible of scientific or mathematical demonstration. Today this statement of hers would probably be considered to be not only scientifically probable but scientifically orthodox.
What is light? Light is an electro-magnetic vibration, our scientific Oracles tell us, who assure us, likewise, that there are many kinds of electro-magnetic 'waves' -- which seems to be the popular word used by scientific men in order to express the method of propagation of these electro-magnetic energies through space. When an electro-magnetic impulse, an electro-magnetic energy, vibrates at an extremely rapid rate, mounting into billions and trillions and even higher frequencies per human second, combined with a decrease in the length of the individual wave, it is obvious that such a compacting or condensation of moving force or 'energy' must produce upon any human sense-organ the exact and precise sense-impression which men call a form of matter. This illustration, briefly worded as it is, and apparently scientifically orthodox, at least conveys to the average man's understanding some notion of how a force vibrating at an enormously high rate can produce the impression of 'body' or material bulk; and one may add that it is undoubtedly true that this scientific conception of the nature of matter as hereinbefore outlined, is quite accurate enough.
The subjoined column of the different frequencies of certain forms of radiation as found in the scientific text-books as approximations to actualities, will be interesting and suggestive for those liking to contrast scientific thought with Theosophic teaching:
Wireless telegraphy vibrates from . . . 100,000 to 10 million times a human second
Hertzian electric waves vibrate from 10 million to 1 billion times a human second
Infra-red Light vibrates from....1 trillion to 400 trillion times a human second
Visible Light vibrates from....400 trillion to 770 trillion times a human second
UItra-Violet Light vibrates from 770 trillion to 6 quadrillion times a human second
Roentgen or X-rays vibrate from 6 quadrillion to 30 quintillion times a human second
Gamma-Rays of the atom vibrate from 30 quintillion to an unknown range of times a human second.
And still more rapid is said to be the frequency of vibration of the now famous Cosmic Rays of Kolhoerster, Dr. Millikan, and others.
Now what does this table of formidable vibrational activity really signify? Viewed from the standpoint of the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy, it means that there is a descending scale in matter running from the ethereal to continuously increasing materiality, as is evident enough from casting the eye over the column of vibrational frequencies above given; and we find the most interesting fact that the higher the frequency and the smaller the wave, the denser and more concreted the matter. It means, therefore, that from wireless telegraphy down to the 'Cosmic Rays,' we descend or plunge deeper and deeper into denser matter because the vibration increases in frequency or rapidity, the concretion thus becoming more perfect, the crystallization, so to say, becoming more complete; and as common light or visible light, which is but one section or octave of this scale of electro-magnetic vibrational activity, is thus shown to be matter, what can we call matter except that which we have called it before -- a concretion or condensation of forces or 'energies' vibrating with incomprehensible speed in scalar ranges? One might add that there is no apparent reason for limiting this series of octaves of radiation to include only wireless telegraphy at the one end and the 'Cosmic Rays' at the other end. It seems obvious enough that the list of ranges of radiation given above represents merely rays so far as known or discovered at present; and they are likewise estimates; and it would be highly improbable, indeed the mind cannot conceive, without doing violence to its nature, that these are the only vibrational activities that space contains, or otherwise expressed, that can be in the Boundless Universe, whether on inner planes or on outer. Human intellect becomes restive and dissatisfied at the idea that such a range of radiational activity can exist suspended or hung in so-called empty space, as it were, with 'nothing' at either end of it! The dissatisfaction is the voice of intuition.
The foremost exponents of ultra-modern science, if one may judge from their published pronouncements, seem to consider 'energy' as they call it, but which the Theosophist would prefer to call by the older term 'forces,' to be the sole existing entity, or aggregation of energy-entities, in the Universe, and to produce what we may call 'matter,' its child or alter ego. The Theosophist who is in any wise fairly well acquainted with the universal and extremely profound teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, is obliged to reject this ultra-modern scientific conception as being both inadequate on the one hand, and descriptive rather than truly explanatory on the other hand. Hence, when the Theosophist says 'energy,' or much more often 'force' or 'forces,' the term is equivalent or interchangeable in his mind with different forms of intelligent substance; and when he says 'matter' the term is equivalent or interchangeable in his mind with forces (or force) viewed as passing through special 'phases' of their activity or even of their essential being. He likewise employs these words, 'force' or 'forces' and 'matter,' because they are current and more or less familiar and therefore are convenient for popular usage in expression; but the two words which the careful theosophical writer prefers to use when he is seeking precision of expression and exactness in definition are, respectively, 'spirit' instead of 'force' or 'energy,' and 'essential substance' instead of 'original matter' -- although this last term has certain useful attributes which make it often advisable to employ it instead of the more abstract term 'substance.'
However, if we do use the scientific word 'energy' with its accompanying ultra-modern connotations as or for the so-called underlying reality, then in so doing we must positively repudiate the old-fashioned conception of the former materialism whose view of things was that of a fortuitously built or haphazard universe existing in space and time, winding itself up and unwinding itself, without purposive or teleological causal functioning and resultant action, and hence without intelligent causation derivative from gods or cosmic spirits -- or what we may otherwise call the intelligently active powers of divine beings. Such a thoroughly materialistic conception of the nature and structure and functioning of the Universe, to the Theosophist is like the nightmare of a madman.
Another reason for the rejection of this thoroughly unfounded materialistic and all-negating idea is the fact that, when closely analysed, it is seen to be a ne plus ultra conception born of the easy process of manufacturing ideas out of one's own imperfectly developed and wayward imagination, and the passing of these ideas off on a confiding and unsuspecting and credulous world of unscientific thinkers as proved truths of Nature -- which most emphatically such ideas are not. No wonder such materialistic theorizing and hypothesizing is now 'cast into the discard'; and no wonder it is that the Theosophist found his best manner of refuting such imaginative proceedings in 'inextinguishable laughter,' as Homer said. As a matter of fact, in any attempt to convey in words the structure and functions of the World, the name or names used in order to do so must correspond with some precision to reality. That reality must be all-inclusive: comprehending what is commonly called energy, matter, consciousness, inspiration, intuition, love, hate, and all the cosmic processes -- in short, everything manifested everywhere and anything manifested anywhere. It is impossible any longer easily and with the tolerant patience of former ages to accept the imaginative cosmical theories of the Sir Oracles of imperfect human knowledge and experience in the manner that has been fashionable since the rebirth of independent scientific discovery and research and thought at the end of the Middle Ages.
What then is life, per se, if we prefer to give this name to that which is the cause or originant of the processes involving what are called vital factors? Considering it no longer for the moment as a vital process, involving subsidiary or subordinate processes of up-building or composition, and its other aspect which men call 'death' -- the process of decomposition and a falling asunder of parts: what is this essential or fundamental reality, within, behind, and productive of, organic structures and their respective phenomena? The answer is brief enough. Life per se then is intelligent substantial spiritual Force -- manifesting in myriad forms as the various forms of 'energy,' to use the popular scientific word. Corporately considered it is the intelligent and ever-active and inherently vital force or forces of any being. Life is an ethereal fluid, very properly a vital fluid, therefore it is also substance, but ethereal substance; and life, furthermore, is inherently active on each and every one of the Planes or in the Worlds, visible and invisible, which in their aggregate compose the Universe -- and in fact are the Universe. Indeed, both force and substance, as is readily seen from the foregoing, are themselves fundamental or essential aspects or phases of the underlying Universal Reality, which Reality is the Cosmic Background of Being: the everlasting Cosmic Life-Substance-Intelligence.
Birth and death are obviously the beginning and the end of a temporary life-phase of any being or entity, human or other; whereas Life, per se, as the Cosmic Causal Originant, is the intelligent driving or urging force-substance behind and causative of both birth and death; and of which birth and death are only forms of expression. Some care should here be taken to remember that terms or verbal expressions such as 'life' are abstractions which it could very well be argued are not entities in themselves, but stand for abstract aggregates of living beings. Thus to illustrate: Humanity is no being or entity in itself, but it is composed of men, i. e., human beings; similarly, there is no such thing as 'Force' per se nor 'Substance' per se; but there are vast hierarchies of living beings whose manifestations or self-expressions appear as force and substance or forces and substances. The point is that we must be careful in our writing to realize that when we use abstractions in this manner we do not necessarily declare the actual existence of entitative individuals, but are merely using such words as abstractions intended to include the respective multitudes of living beings who imbody as inherent attributes or qualities the characteristics which we collect together mentally and thus abstract. (343)
Every being and thing that exists has its birth and has its death, has its beginning and has its end, because every being or thing that exists is a composite entity, a compound, and like all compounds, sooner or later when its term of so-called 'life' -- vital activity -- is ended, on this or any plane, its vehicle must fall apart, or in other words be decomposed into its component elements. But these beginnings and endings, as is thus obvious, apply only to bodies or vehicles, physical or ethereal as the case may be, which inshrine the respective and causative Monadic or Spiritual Rays.
These beginnings and endings are, in fact, dreams of illusion, when we turn to the grander scale of the Cosmic Life: when we turn not to life considered as a process, nor to death considered as a process, nor to composite organisms called bodies and vehicles, but to that inner, continuous stream of intelligent vital Essence which passes uninterrupted through the portals of birth into one stage of its evolution, or what men call earth-existence, and passes out by the other portal, which men call death, into another stage of 'life' on another and succeeding plane in another and slightly higher World. For that vital essence or Life-Stream is, so to say, a living and continuous Force of cosmic origin, and thus, just because it is of the essence of the Universe, it continues for ever -- which means until the end of the Solar Manvantara. It then vanishes out or from the planes of lower manifestation, or is indrawn into the Solar Monad, into a state which we may call the Solar Nirvana; but in due course of future time, long ages thereafter, it will reappear in manifestation in the various Planes and in the various Worlds, when that Nirvana has its ending and when -- to employ the graphic illustration of Hindu thought -- Brahman again breathes forth from its own essence the new Solar Universe, the 'production' or repetitive imbodiment of the former Solar Universe that was.
Beginnings and endings are thus indeed dreams of illusion, because not absolute. Can we ever reach, even in thought, an ending beyond which naught is? Never. Otherwise what a haunting horror would it be for both mind and heart. Nature strives ever for the unattainable, and so does man, a child of Nature. Nature likewise strives and reaches sublime ultimate after sublime ultimate, and abandons each when reached, and passes on to an ultimate still more sublime. This continuous passing or advancing into ever larger reaches of unfolding growth or evolution, leaving ultimate after ultimate behind one, is the striving for the ever unattainable. It is exactly so with us humans: when we reach what we think to be an ultimate, we find that it is but a stepping-stone upwards and onwards to something grander and loftier still.
One hears many men say, each one after his own manner of expression: "There is something in my heart so beautiful that I don't want ever to lose it"; and to this wonder-beauty in the heart, the human being clings and clings and clings -- for himself, making thus infallibly for himself a future path of grievous pain and sorrow. Ah! No! Beings do not grow in that way. While it is altogether proper and right to search for the beautiful and even to strive after the Unattainable, because this is giving rein to the divine hunger in our hearts and loosing the shackles of personality which bind us into the material realms, nevertheless the secret of success is never on any occasion enchaining our imagination to the Beautiful that we so dimly perceive, nor identifying our hearts' hunger for the unattainable with any relative accomplishment; for this is weaving around our spirits the webs of dire illusion, woven of our own yearnings to possess and to become. Strange paradox! It is right to strive for the Beautiful and the Unattainable, but only when in such striving we realize that it must be done with no sense of personal capture or gain, for this is an instant and immediate limitation, and the building of the prison around our souls. Strive for the Beautiful and the Unattainable continuously, but with the ever keener realization that behind our utmost imaginings of Beauty and all our loftiest soarings towards the Unattainable, there are always Beauties still greater and 'Unattainables' beyond. Herein lies the paradox spoken of, the reason why all the great seers and sages of all the ages have taught that we must not make prison walls around ourselves even by our loftiest soarings of thought and feeling, for this means self-identification with the prison-walls, the fatal error of all exoteric religions and of all philosophies born in the Pronaos of the Temple of Divine Wisdom.
Beings grow greater by gaining greater understanding, by larger expansion, by renunciations of what is imperfect for a more and a greater 'perfect.' Beings thus grow by renouncing, which is equivalent to saying receiving something greater. Never say that a thing is so beautiful that a more beautiful does not or cannot exist. Nature in her operations everywhere tears down in order to produce something better, although so devious at times do her ways seem to be to us imperfect men who have short vision, that the tearing down seems to be 'death,' i. e., an 'ending.' Nature tears down or dissolves in unceasing change because change is growth, the passing from phase to phase.
Even when times of grief and pain come to us, we can and should always remember that it depends upon us to see in them new portals opening into something better, something larger, something higher far. When the first tiny flame of impersonal love warms and cheers the heart of a man and he begins to feel for others and to sympathize with them, and something thereby inexpressibly beautiful and fine begins to take birth within him, it is all too human to hug the new and beautiful thing to oneself and fervently cling to it, just because perhaps all life then and all being seem less important than to have this new thing for oneself alone. (344) Yet it must be cast aside; otherwise the man is simply shutting himself out from receiving in time something inexpressibly grander. In order to grow he must change. In order to evolve, i. e., unfold, he must give up what he has for something better. Thus it is that Nature is in continual birth, in everlasting throes of reproduction, changing and re-changing, forming and re-forming, producing and reproducing, and always visioning, so to speak, the Unattainable. It is like the vision of the Seer, like the yearning of the poet, like the love of the lover. In all these there are the intuitions and intimations of the larger and the greater and the better. While the foolish one hugs the received revelation to himself and imprisons himself within it, fearing to let it go, the wise man accepts the bounties and beauties of life as cheering companions on the Path, but realizes keenly that they are born from himself, the children of his own soul. He realizes that unless he watch carefully, even what he loves may imprison him with adamantine walls, and he trains himself not only to strive for something better, and to do so continuously, but with deliberate hand breaks the illusion of relative completeness and satisfaction, knowing that outside the prison-walls of selfhood are the inconceivable glories which his spirit breathes into his attentive soul.
It would be awful if there were an end beyond which we could not go, if things stopped for ever, even if such stopping were caused by the fascination of the Beautiful and the Sublime already attained or achieved. Sooner or later, the human spirit, child of the Infinite as it is, would recoil in horror and in mystic fear from such enclosing illusions. Verily, where do we see any such horrible phantasms of utter endings? We see them nowhere. On the contrary, we are perennially conscious of change, of movement, of shifting scenes and opening visions everywhere. The Christian hymnist, seeing this wrongly, sang: "Change and decay in all around I see." This was considered very beautiful and profound once upon a time, but it is a pity that the cold hearts who saw no farther than this could not understand that the change and the decay were but a preparation and a giving up of something inferior for something incomparably better.
There can be no life without death. There can be no death without life. The twain are one -- two phases of the same process; they are two words for the two sides of the same thing -- incessant change -- like the obverse and reverse of a coin, the front, so to say, and the back, of the workings of the Cosmic Life; and no one dare say which is the more important, or the front, and which is the less important, or the back. For the wisest man who ever lived would find it impossible to say where true life ends and where it begins, or where death or change ends and where it begins; for it is only through blindness and customary habit, by a freak action of the mind and because of our ignorance, that we arbitrarily can separate the two. The decay and final dissolution of the physical body, making what we men call 'death,' is actually as strong an action of vital functions, and is as much life, as is the growth of the microscopic human seed to a six-foot man, which signifies the 'death' to the imbodying Ego out of the 'other' world into the here. (345)
There can be no building of body, no growth, no evolving activity of any kind, without the inescapable breaking up and dissolution of that which has been outworn and has served its purposes in the process, but only in order to make place for the newer, and, ultimately, for the better and grander; for this is 'progress' -- evolution. This process or procedure is the unceasing and ever-continuous unwrapping or unfolding of faculties and attributes and powers and organs succeeding each other as the former become inadequate and therefore are discarded, to make room for better and higher ones. In other words, as already stated elsewhere on other occasions, growth is change; growth means evolution; therefore change means evolutionary progress -- except in those relatively rare instances where the change is in a backwards direction and we humans refer to these rather rare occasions as degeneration or degenerative activity. (346) Progress is achieved by this alternation or pendulation from pole to pole, from so-called 'life' to so-called 'death,' and again backwards from so-called 'death' to so-called 'life' -- if we regard life-death as a process, which it emphatically is.
In view of the foregoing observations which no sane man would probably care to attempt to controvert, because they are so obviously true, we may well ask ourselves: How then can there be any real terror in facing so-called death? It is itself a mere construction or scarecrow or bogy of the many fantasies of human ignorance. There is, it is only fair to say, a minor reality about it, which is its only reality, and that is the natural suffering and pain of separation that the human hearts and minds of the survivors experience when they see some loved one pass on. A moment's reflexion, however, will show us that while this feeling is natural enough, and in one sense creditable, it nevertheless shows us with equal power how limited is the vision that we have as yet chosen to evolve forth. Give to men light on the matter, and in proportion as the light streams into the consciousness, do the pangs of sorrow, and the stings of temporary separation from those we love -- until the next reincarnation or some succeeding reincarnation -- lose all real point and permanent effect. Love suffers nothing from knowledge, for true knowledge is the child of true love, and being so closely akin to its parent never finds itself in opposition thereto. Hence it is that love grows greater because purer and nobler, when illumined by the light of Truth, expressed in the form of Knowledge well understood.
There exist Spheres and Worlds in the Universe where the beings and entities who live in and on them, the inhabitants of them in other words, do not die after the manner in which we men die, but pass by gradual and indeed imperceptible stages of change into a larger growth or unfoldment of hitherto dormant faculty and attribute and power, precisely, one may say, as in human life the baby passes into boyhood and the boy passes into manhood. When there occurs to such an individual or inhabitant of such a World or Sphere the terminus of his peregrinating sojourn there, he easily and smoothly passes out of 'his' visible into the invisible realms, without either break in consciousness or loss of the 'physical' vehicle; (347) and, further, as our human race progresses or evolves or unfolds into its destiny lying in the far distant aeons of the future, 'death' as a dissolution of the then existing corporeal encasement or body will no longer take place as it now does.
In those far future aeons of time, the bodies of ourselves, these future men, or men to be, when the end of what will then be called 'life' comes, will slowly disappear or perhaps rapidly vanish away with scarcely a break in or of the indwelling consciousness, and without a laying aside of the then physical vehicle, for the reason that as death approaches, that vehicle will grow itself progressively more ethereal and tenuous, thus fitting it for its passage or gliding into or blending with the inner realms.
Preceding this stage of the far distant future by long aeons, death will occur under the form of a quiet 'falling asleep,' at which time the then physical body will evaporate rather than decay, as our present gross physical encasements do.
The old Greek adage had it: upnos kai thanatos adelfoi, i. e., "Sleep and death are brothers," and there exists no small amount of truth of fact in this ancient Greek adage; yet the Esoteric Philosophy goes farther than this and points out that Sleep and Death are not merely brothers, born of the same womb of consciousness, but that the twain are one -- in every actual, strict, and so-called 'literal' sense of the term 'identity.' Death is a perfect Sleep, with its awakening, and its awakenings: an 'awakening' of a kind in the Devachan and a full awakening in the succeeding reincarnation into a new earth-life; whereas sleep is an imperfect death, Nature's prophesying of the future, which she attempts to teach us of and to acquaint us with by the fact that nightly we sleep, and therefore nightly we partially die. Indeed, one may go still farther, although verging here upon forbidden esoteric ground, and say that 'death' and 'sleep' and all the various actualities or facts of Initiation are but different forms of the same thing or process.
The only and sole difference between 'death' and 'sleep' is one of degree. Anyone who has stood at the bedside of a normal human being who is dying must at the time have been strongly impressed with the extraordinary similitude between the coming of death and what we men know as going to sleep. Precisely as in sleep the mind or consciousness of the sleeper becomes the seat or active focus of forms of inner mental activity which we commonly call 'dreams,' following upon a temporary period of complete oblivion or unconsciousness, just so is death followed by 'dreams' and for identically the same reasons, and supervening after a longer or shorter period of human time after the instantaneous but temporary and complete period of unconsciousness or oblivion which marks the moment of passing.
Death, even to us men, is indeed no enemy; on the contrary, death is a gentle friend, a great and strengthening helper: speaking poetically but without appealing to poetry as an adventitious help, one may say with perfect accuracy that even today among us men, and the other entities of the Beast Kingdom and even the Vegetable Kingdom, death is the helpmate of life, and inseparable from life.
Death in the far distant future, as it has already been described as one day to occur on this Earth, will be what it then will be because the human race, and the planet on which it lives, our present material Earth, both will have grown so much more ethereal than now they are, that there will then be no physical dissolution as we at present understand it -- in other words, no laying aside for decay into its component chemical elements of the physical body, and, much more important, no sudden breaking of the chain or connexion of individual and consecutive phases of consciousness; but there will then be a self-conscious passing on to something more beautiful. The 'human' being in those far future ages, on reaching its life-term, will vanish or disappear from this plane, but will do so as gently and softly and painlessly and as indistinguishably, as a wraith-mist of fog vanishes in the morning sun, but with no diminution of individual consciousness and with no breaking of it. (348)
Why does this method of passing on not happen now? For the simple reason that we humans now live on a very grossly dense and heavily material sphere: on the lowest globe of the Planetary Chain of Earth, and our bodies, which are the children or offspring of this grossly physical material globe, are of necessity correspondingly dense, otherwise they would not, in fact could not, be here as actively manifesting physical entities. Our bodies, as they at present are, are not fit for, and therefore cannot enter into, the ethereal inner realms of Nature. Nature has no such leaps from point to point. Throughout all her course and in all her worlds and spheres, she proceeds step by step in all her movements, and therefore in growth, in evolutionary development, and equally so in the refining processes of life. Furthermore, our material bodies are obviously mere vitalized organisms, highly composite and compounded entities therefore, and by nature and characteristics totally unfit for unchanging continuation as they are.
The whole process of death is a breaking-up process; but 'life' flows on uninterruptedly. Not only does the physical body die or dissolve into its component atoms, but the energic bundle, the sheaf of forces, which man is, i. e., his entire constitution, breaks up slowly in its lower parts after the death of the physical body. It is this sheaf or bundle of energies which during earth-life worked in and through the body, the body providing the field of fullest manifestation of these energies on this earth. But there is a core to this sheaf or bundle; and this it is which at death withdraws its vitalizing ray, thus freeing itself from its anchoring in this lowly and imperfect sphere. This withdrawn part or core comprises all the noblest, the highest, the finest, the best of the man: it is the inspiring and inspiriting vitalizing 'Monadic Ray' before described.
An ordinary illustration may help to make this idea somewhat more clear. In order to furnish ourselves with electrical power or electric light, we have need of a central station where the electricity is generated, and whence it is transmitted over wires, or it may be through the atmosphere, to outlying districts, and there distributed to the many units of consumption. We can use this electricity, and we can cut it off, by pressing a button or by turning a knob, and the current which flowed along the wire becomes respectively usable or stops when this simple operation is performed. Shall we say that instantaneously it is snatched back into the power-station when the current is switched off at the point of consumption? Or shall we simply say that the current ceases to flow? It matters not for the moment which figure of speech we use.
Now -- following this illustration, as an illustration only -- the Monad, the spiritual Essence of us, our Essential Self, may be called the spiritual power-station of our constitution. The Monad is most emphatically not in the body; does not dwell in the body; but it over-enlightens it; and its Ray, the Monadic Ray, runs through all intermediate portions of the constitution down to the human body, which thus is its ultimate vehicle or carrier: shall we say that it reaches it along some spiritual or psycho-electro-magnetic chain of communication, some inward psychic wire or channel? One may say so if one please; the idea is but a picture. Thus it is that as long as this spiritual electricity -- following our metaphor -- is active in the final or lowest unit, the process called 'life' continues; but the instant when death ensues, is equivalently the instant when this Monadic Ray is drawn back to its source, the Monad, as quick as thought, far quicker than lightning.
Death, as is plain enough from what precedes, is liberation; in each and every case it is the opening of a new door into Nature's invisible chambers and mansions. The tired body, the worn heart, the weary brain, now function no more. All the best of the man that was, at the instant of death is instantaneously withdrawn from its respective organs of expression in the body and enters into its own unfettered consciousness, experiencing the full realization of all the splendor of spiritual life, and all the grandeur of impersonal intellection; each of these functions being now unfettered and free in full activity, each in its own causal realm. This refers to the divine Monad; all beneath it becomes devachanic -- i. e., enters into the devachanic condition or state; whereas, as said before, the lower elements of the septenary or denary constitution of man have already by this time been dissolved into their component life-atoms whose history is 'another story.'
Life, whether considered as an entity or as a process, is therefore no mysterious thing: it is in fact the most familiar thing in the world to men, the most familiar in the Universe; because, if we consider the matter in its fundamentals or elements we become immediately sensible of the fact that Life is all that is, because it is the root or basis or essence of all that is. And this root or basis has neither imaginable beginning nor conceivable end. What is it that gives its 'life' to any one entity? It is the vital electricity in the entity itself; or, to turn our vision to more ethereal and causal parts of the entity's composite constitution, we could more truly call the 'life' of such an entity the spiritual electricity of its Monad; which spiritual electricity is but another name for the vital characteristic or vital individuality of the Monad, which flows forth from the Monad and in so doing unwraps or unfolds itself, and thus produces the swabhava or individual characteristics of such an entity, whether that entity be apple-tree or banana-palm or gooseberry or fig or plum, or beast, or mineral, or human being, or celestial body, or god or what not. Life, therefore, is in one sense spirit-substance.
Life furthermore is the carrier of consciousness. Life may truly be called the crystallization or condensation of consciousness, which is not an abstract and vague something: for consciousness, precisely like life, is what science, seeing but its manifestation in the physical universe, calls 'energy' in all its myriad forms. Consciousness and life are really one -- not twain. Consciousness is the Originant, and this Originant by its own inherent powers and energies, faculties and attributes, produces life out of itself: not at any one time specifically, but continuously forever, and coincidently with its own existing duration. Consciousness and life together originate and produce thereafter from themselves what men call the manifestations of force or energy, which in its turn deposits or lays down, so to say, the matters and substances of the Universe, much as wine will deposit its lees. This thought is one of extreme import, and of profound and far-reaching significance, and should not be slurred over in study. We must be exceedingly careful never to imagine that consciousness is a separate thing from life, and therefore can exist apart from it; or equivalently that life is a separate thing from force or 'energy' and therefore can exist apart from it; or that matter is a separate thing from force or 'energy' and therefore can exist apart from it. All these entities or elements are but names or counters used in order to differentiate and thereby more accurately to express the all-various forms of unceasing activity of the Primordial Basis of Kosmic Being -- indeed, Cosmic, or Entitative as applicable to individuals composing the various hierarchies, as the case may be.
This Primordial Basis of Being we may thus otherwise call the Kosmic Life, or equivalently the Kosmic Consciousness: infinite, boundless, without frontiers, the carrier and the bearer of all the nobler and higher parts of the Cosmic Entity which holds the Cosmic Figure in equilibrium and in perpetual existence throughout endless duration. Yet 'Cosmic Entity' is but a generalizing expression, and is not 'God' in the sense in which that word has been misunderstood in Occidental countries. It is rather the aggregate, the sum-total, the vast Cosmic Ocean composed of all the individual droplets of life, the innumerable Cosmic Lives, or individual Entities, which in their incomprehensible sum or totality make and indeed are the Universe. It is not however in any wise denied that this Cosmic Aggregate can have an Individuality of its own, for indeed it has such; but even so, when compared with the Boundless Infinitude, immense and vast in magnitude as the Cosmic Aggregate is, it is but a cosmic speck lost in the Ocean of Infinity and is only one of countless other multitudes, incomputable hosts, of Others similar.
Man in his own smaller makeup or constitution is but a little world, a microcosm of the Great World or Macrocosm. The basis of his individual being as a human being is the background or the heart of his individual Monad. This Essential Self of each one of us, the source of the life and consciousness and intelligence within us, and the functioning of our inherent moral sense, our inner god, passes through, or is 'stepped down' through, the intermediate planes of increasing substantiality belonging to our inner and invisible constitution; and therefore (and now cosmically speaking) also through the inner and Invisible Worlds of Boundless Nature, until that descending current of consciousness-intelligence-life-energy reaches our own physical plane -- up to then non-existent -- and produces from its own substance or being the physical world that we know and in which we live and have our conscious existence as individuals -- Flowers of the indwelling and ever-enduring Monadic Essence.
FOOTNOTES:
341. The Science of Biology, pp. 38-9. (return to text)
342. Vol. XXI, p. 554 (ed. 1911). (return to text)
343. It may be of interest to many readers to make a concrete application of this fact to one or two of Nature's most familiar phenomena. Take light for instance. Visible light is a form of radiation, streaming forth or emanating from a radiating body, which is thus not only its causal parent, but without such body thus expressing its vital force in radiation, the light would not exist. In other words, light is the vital fluid of a living entity, streaming forth from that entity, and if the entity did not exist the vital fluid could not emanate from it, and light would be non-existent.
It is a mistake to suppose that light as radiation is an entity which 'just happened' and 'just exists' in so-called 'empty space.' Sooner or later the vital fluid called light which has emanated from the sun, and after it has undergone almost innumerable changes or modifications of integration and disintegration, will return to the parent-body which originally gave it birth or sent it forth -- "the life returns to the source which gave it," somewhat to modify the well-known saying of the Christian mystic: "the soul returns to God who gave it."
Or, again, consider electricity, which is but radiation of another kind or of a different octave in the radiation-scale. Can we truthfully say that electricity is any other than the emanated entity or parent-source which gave it birth, and that if the parent-source were non-existent, the electric radiated fluid could have appeared? In the Esoteric Philosophy, the answer is a decided negative. Electricity as we men use the term is an abstraction or abstract term collecting under this name the various 'electric' vital radiations from one or different sources as the case or cases may be; it is, in fact, one of the forms of Cosmic Vitality. It is thus an entity because having existence as a temporarily enduring vital-fluid which we cognise as radiation of a kind; but its origin is in and from the secret vital heart or fountain of living beings of cosmic magnitude -- in other words, the various suns in space.
It should be added, however, that although these suns are collectively the main source or fountainhead of cosmic electricity, nevertheless every being of the innumerable hierarchies which fill space and indeed make space, is likewise a fountainhead of smaller magnitude, which in its turn likewise during its term of manifested existence pours forth, from its vital font within, its own streams or currents of electric and magnetic flow or radiation. It must not be forgotten that behind all such vital activities, and within them and presiding over them, there is the all-permeant Cosmic Intelligence, and in the cases of minor beings, the intelligences of minor magnitude of which they are the evolving imbodiments. (return to text)
344.
"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise."
-- William Blake
(return to text)
345. Lest the sentences in the above paragraph be considered to imply a passage of an unchanging soul or of an unchanging 'ego' or of a human mannikin of ethereal type from life to life or from world to world or from sphere to sphere, it seems necessary to refer the reader back to previous portions of the present chapter where this misapprehension or mistake with regard to the nature of the eternally changing, because evolving and revolving, Reimbodying Ego is explained at least in part.
It is above all things not the Reimbodying Ego which does not change, for change is of the very essence of its being. It is the processes through which it passes to which the observations in the above paragraph refer. These processes, or generalizing, this process, is an incessant whirling of the Wheel of Life, passing through many phases and thereby bringing about many and incessantly varying changes of scenery and environment: and it is just these repetitive and reiterated changes which constitute what men in their short or purblind vision call respectively 'life' and 'death.' The proper terms are rather 'birth' and 'death,' birth being the opening scene in a new act and death the ending scene in the same act; the drama of life proceeding meanwhile in its slow and majestic circulations throughout the remaining acts, until the last word is spoken, the last scene shifted, and then at the end of the Cosmic Manvantara, the Spirit or Monad, returns to rest into the Bosom of the Solar Divinity which did not 'give' it, but from which it issued forth in the beginning of the cosmic term aforesaid.
The mistake of Vitalism or the Vitalistic hypothesis, alluded to in previous pages, and despite its many attractive and philosophical features, lay, or seems to have lain, in the narrowing or restricting of the term 'life' or 'vital activity' to what it is customary in Western lands to call 'animate' beings, i. e., humans, beasts, and probably the plants. It is on this point and just here that the Esoteric Philosophy finds the Vitalistic hypothesis faulty; for in the view of the former, of the Ancient Wisdom, nothing is 'dead': everything is alive or living, and what European science, and its ultra-modern representatives call 'dead matter' is as fully infilled and as compacted of 'life' or 'vital activity' as are the so-called 'animate' beings. Indeed, one may even go much farther, and rejecting with the contempt it deserves the animadversions upon and misunderstandings of what it is popular to call 'animism,' state without mincing of words and with perfect openness that if 'animism' means merely that all beings and entities possess or are 'souls,' each of its own evolved type and each occupying its own particular place or position on the Wheel of Life, then animism is one of the fundamental truths of Nature which no amount of shilly-shallying with words or psychological inhibitions of customary belief can ever argue away.
On the face of it there is no sensible reason whatsoever why certain parts of Nature should be 'alive' or 'animate' and other parts of Nature 'dead' -- i. e., deprived of vital activity of its or their respective kinds. This were indeed an insoluble problem -- and that is just what it has become because wrongly accepted as a truth of Nature, The 'animism' of savage peoples needs explaining. (return to text)
346. The present writer has on a number of occasions been charged with being verbose in his published works because of his liking for 'repetitions.' To the charge he pleads absolutely and positively 'guilty,' and would like to state once for all that such repetitive insistences upon fundamental and most important key-teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy are in each and every case deliberately done and the policy followed with full intent. It is a matter of some wonder that intelligent people have not yet grasped the fact, which one would think was well understood today, that repetition is of the very soul not only of learning but of teaching; it is, likewise -- and this fact may fire the imagination of certain people -- it is the very soul of advertising! Successful advertising does not consist so much either in the beauty of the advertisement, nor even in the clever manner in which it is presented, though undoubtedly both these factors contribute largely to success; the true secret of successful advertising lies in hammering home what the advertiser has to say, and such hammering is accomplished by repetition. The more beautiful and clever, or beautiful or clever, advertisement may catch the imagination, but will soon fade from the memory of most people; but if repeated constantly the effect of suggestion becomes tremendously accumulated and finally 'brings results.'
The present writer is quite well aware that repetitions or repetitives are often displeasing both to the literary critic and to the superficial observer, for it seems to suggest that the reader is not over-intelligent, and has to be hammered at; but after all, books of the present type are not written for the purpose of securing a reputation for literary elegancies and for neatly and well-turned and rounded literary expressions, but for the purpose of insuring the success of the work which is undertaken.
The matter has been well expressed by a recent writer, Tobias Matthay, in his book The Visible and Invisible (Oxford University Press, England):
"While reiteration may be resented by the casual reader, it is imperative for the true student. It is only by repetition of the same point under various aspects that facts are eventually brought home and grasped, and the vision of the whole not lost sight of in pursuit of the details of the structure. A genius may not need such treatment; he may see things in a flash of intelligence. . . . A work of the present nature, however, is designed as an endeavor to help the ordinary worker and seeker after truth; the genius, himself, may also save years of time and feel surer of his ground by taking the trouble to master the facts thus intellectually, as well as by intuition." (return to text)
347. This statement may seem incredible to many; it will seem perfectly natural and simple to others -- perhaps to the few; yet experience of what takes place around us on even our physical Earth should show us familiar examples, or at least adumbrations, of what is here referred to. The meaning of the statement is, that as 'death' or the termination of the imbodiment draws near, the 'physical vehicle,' pari passu with the etherealizing of the inner constitution of the imbodied being, itself etherealizes or grows progressively less 'material' or 'physical'; so that actually there is no 'death' or dissolution of the 'physical' encasement whatsoever, and this process is replaced by a gradual merging into or blending into the substance and matters of the superior World, or Sphere -- which we may perhaps figurate to our imagination as the vaporizing of water, the passing of water into invisible gas; or the change of ice into water and the change of the water into vapor.
These to us 'favored' individuals, however, may and doubtless do have their own opinion as to whether such a process is superior to that which happens to us men. For all we humans know they may long or yearn to have the interim of the blessed rest or repose that we humans gain when we pass through the mystic portals of death into the Devachan. It is readily conceivable that these beings mentioned in the text may grow heartily tired of what may seem to them -- unless far wiser than we as indeed some of them are -- to be an unending continuation of 'personal' consciousness; and for all we can say to the contrary their voices, if any, may rise to 'heaven' in plaintive prayers for a surcease of their apparently unending existence, because coupled with the yearning for rest and the happy oblivion of the imperfections pertinent to all manifested beings and inseparable from imbodied existence.
Let us not then, we men, complain of the 'dreadful' fate which overtakes us when the Great Liberator gives us at least some of that ineffably sublime and beautiful repose which is an inherent characteristic of certain phases of spiritual activity. One of the most amazing things, philosophically speaking, in human life, is the manner in which we men hug to our hearts the stings and pains and poisons and goads which bring about all our sorrow and all our woe. We continuously and unceasingly exclaim against them, and yearn for release; then when it comes, we exclaim against the coming and for the time prefer to embrace our sorrow and the keen kiss of pain rather than the peace and bliss which we had been yearning for. These are all signs of imperfect beings who, when all is said, really do not know what they want, nor what is best for them, for human life is inseparable from grief and sorrow simply because it is imperfect and illusory.
With regard to the entities mentioned in the first part of this note which undergo no 'death' as humans do, we must nevertheless remember that like all entities imbodied in worlds of manifestation they have a term, or a termination, of what is equivalent to the human life-span, after which they also may be said to 'die' and enter into higher spheres or worlds than those in which they now find themselves, and in which 'death' as we understand it is non-existent. (return to text)
348. In Paradise Lost, Bk. V, Raphael describes Humanity's future:
"Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and wing'd ascend
Ethereal, as we, or may at choice
Here or in heavenly paradises dwell." (return to text)