Theosophical University Press Online Edition
There is a vast field of thought brilliantly illuminated by the teachings of the Archaic Wisdom, manifested as the Esoteric Tradition, which has scarcely been pressed by our feet as yet, even on its frontiers. In preceding chapters, no small amount of thought has been given to an elucidation of some of the fundamental teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy so far as concerns the constitution of man and his peregrinations, involving almost innumerable revolvings and cyclings, but fairly little as yet has received definite formal statement concerning the very wonderful and intricate living fabric of the Universe itself -- and reference is here particularly made to the Solar System, in which as evolving beings we find our habitat and cycles of manvantaric activity.
Everyone knows the ordinary or commonly accepted notions of astronomical science concerning the Solar System and the bodies which compose it; and as far as astronomical science goes, and having due regard to its ever-enlarging views, one can have only deep respect for the work of the devoted men who consecrate themselves to this branch of knowledge; but nevertheless it is as well to state here at the outset, and without circumlocutions of language, that astronomy as understood today is but a study of the 'skin' of Nature, of its outer rind, which we call the physical universe. Astronomy, or Astrology -- to give it the old name by which the magnificent doctrines imbodied in the term were called in ancient days -- then comprised incomparably deeper, wider, vaster, and far more sublime ranges of ascertained fact -- knowledge or scientia -- than are known today or possibly even suspected to exist by even our most intuitive astronomical adepts.
Astrology, to retain its ancient name, was indeed a vast and sublime Science of the Celestial Bodies on the one hand, and of the inner and causative sides of Nature on the other hand. While modern astronomical knowledge limits itself to otherwise admirable studies concerning the celestial bodies as physical entities, their distances, spacial and cosmogonic relations, chemical constitution, movements, and similar things, ancient Astrology looked upon each and every celestial body as a Living Being, an Animal in the Latin sense of this word as meaning an animated and sensate entity; and not only so looked upon celestial bodies, but realized furthermore that each and every one of them in the planetary and stellar spaces -- excepting the mere drift-particles of space, such as meteors, stellar dust, etc., -- was the habitat or locus operandi of a Spiritual, or even possibly Divine, Being, invisible utterly to us humans, but each one expressing its transcendent powers and faculties through its physical integument or vehicle or body. (376)
In consequence of the foregoing, as citing a few only of the fundamental postulates of ancient Astrology, the Wise Men of ancient times who were all Initiates, knew not only from inner experience derived from initiation, but from their studies, that the entire Universe itself was likewise an ANIMAL -- i. e., a living and sensate Entity, in its turn inspirited and informed by an invisible Spiritual or Divine Entity of cosmic magnitude whose essential nature was at once Intelligence-Consciousness and Spiritual Substance.
The archaic Astrologer-Initiates, having this view of the Universe which surrounds us and which to them was but one in a Kosmic Hierarchy of many similar Universes scattered over the fields of the Boundless, therefore looked upon all parts of Nature as not merely interacting and interworking, but because of their spiritual background in the common invisible cosmic continuum of universal being, as mutually affecting each other and working upon each other, so that every celestial body was seen to be affected by all other celestial bodies, in a greater or less degree according to distance, time, and environment, and in its turn acting upon and therefore affecting in greater or less degree all other celestial bodies which influenced itself. It is this fact of intercommunication of intelligence and consciousness on the one hand, and of ethereal as well as physical influences on the other hand, which was the basic or fundamental thought in Astrological Science as it was understood of yore; and it is this thought, although deprived of nearly all its best portions of philosophy and religion, which has lived on and prevailed even into our own day and still exists in very feeble and washed-out manner in that poor tattered fragment of the ancient sublime science of Astrology, which fragment men today call by the same old name -- 'astrology.'
Modern astrology is but the feeblest echo of its once mighty Parent. Our Archaic Astrology was one of the main departments and exalted and inspiring subjects of study of the Archaic Wisdom, the Esoteric Philosophy; whereas modern astrology, albeit cultivated by no small number of intelligent men and women, is more or less contemned today as at best a pseudo-science, and at worst, and in the eyes of many thoughtless people, as a hardly reputable means for gaining a livelihood. Astronomy, which in ancient times was but one smaller branch of archaic Astrology, today sits in the seats of the mighty and the highly respected, while the degenerated descendant of a once sublime parent is scorned and derided by the former.
Modern astrology is itself largely to blame for this state of affairs; and equally so was the astrology so widely studied and publicly practised in the degenerate days of the Roman Empire. The reason was, or rather is, that both now and under the Roman Imperium, whether of the Republic or of the Empire, all thought of the loftiest and best and sublimest of true Astrology has been utterly forgotten, except perhaps as lingering intuitions in the minds of a few; and both in Rome itself and in our own time it degenerated into a mere system of divination, of 'reading the future' -- often to the peril and danger of those who consulted its practitioners. The laws that Rome passed at different times against the work of astrology and the calling and operations of the 'Chaldeans' as they were then called, show clearly enough to the modern student how low true Astrology had fallen, and that the fault was its own. Yet this is not saying that in the Roman Empire there were no sincere, truthful, and even clever and successful practitioners of the art of astrological divination, for we know there were, and relatively speaking, many of them, even as there are today.
But all this is beside the mark, albeit it does show to the thoughtful mind that there is something, aye, a good deal, even in astrological divination; for otherwise it would never make the appeal that it does so nearly universally, nor would it ever have received, or receive now, the quasi-respect which men and women throughout the ages have more or less grudgingly given to it.
'The fault is its own,' as said above, because retaining only its divinatory aspect or part, it otherwise lost nearly if not entirely the philosophy-religion-science which once gave to archaic Astrology premier rank in the Esoteric Philosophy. What modern astrologer, unless indeed he have reinforced his slight knowledge of astrology with the majestic teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, knows the full meaning of what true Astrology imbodies: how vast its field, how sublime its principles, how deep its philosophy, how profound and consoling its religious implications!
Archaic Astrology taught not only what is now called astronomy, as before stated, but included likewise all that modern Theosophy teaches in those branches of its doctrine dealing with the inner and outer nature of the Cosmos as an Organic Entity; it traced the origin, present and changing habitats, and post-mortem destiny of all peregrinating Monads, as these last pass through the spheres along those mystic yet very real Pathways which are called the Circulations of the Cosmos; it taught the nature and the characteristics and the functionings of the forces and influences which planet exercises upon planet, and the sun upon planets, and the stars upon stars, and therefore upon our sun, and vice versa; it taught the nature as well as the coming into being of the Solar Systems; it described how the moons of the various planets became moons, and what their function is in the economy of the respective Planetary Chains, to which they are attached either as individuals or as groups; it taught the nature of the invisible and ethereal Worlds, Spheres, and Planes, of the Solar System; it told what the Sun is as a living being and as the dwelling of a Solar Divinity; it taught of the nature of the many Planetary Chains forming the Sun's Planetary Family, and of the nature and characteristics of the Globes composing these different Planetary Chains; it taught of the revolvings and journeyings of Monads in and through the Globes of the Planetary Chains, and of how these peregrinations along the Circulations of the Cosmos are of different kinds, some of them belonging to the Planetary Chain alone of which the Monad happens at the time to be a denizen, calling these 'Inner Rounds'; and it also taught of those other vaster peregrinations of the same Monads to certain ones of the different Planetary Chains, to which peregrinations the name 'Outer Rounds' is given -- all the above, and vastly more. What modern astrologer knows anything of these ranges of ancient astrological teachings? What modern astrologer can correctly and almost infallibly interpret the positions and influences that the movements of sun and moon and the planetary bodies have to each other and exercise upon each other? Did modern astrology teach all these things, and the much more hinted at, and had it done so continuously from the days of its pristine glory, it would today occupy a place in human thought than which none other would be more universally respected nor more highly revered. Instead, it has become a mere system of attempted divination, in which even its most thoughtful and expert practitioners kow-tow to the changing ideas of modern astronomical science, and scarcely dare ever to voice their inner intuitions for fear of losing what modicum of public respect they already hold. Its influence in public life is shaky indeed, and the respect and reverence and even awe that it should receive, and formerly actually did receive, it has not. The fault is its own. (377)
To take an instance in point of how little modern astrology can say concerning some of the most important facts, problems, and ideas that should be typically its own field of thought: What has modern astrology, as voiced by its modern exponents, to tell mankind of the nature of death and of the after-death states of the human Monad in the astral realms, in the Astral Light? Nothing; absolutely nothing. And yet this in ancient times was one of its special fields. Or, again, what can modern astrology through its exponents -- unless they be indeed studious Fellows of the Theosophical Society -- tell us of the peregrinations of the human Monad through the spheres, the Worlds and Planes of the invisible ranges of the Solar System? Nothing; absolutely nothing. At the very best in these and in other matters, there is only guesswork, and usually guesswork without philosophy worth the name; and where there should be a noble fulness, there is not even a voice, but silence and confusion and ignorance.
The above reflexions are in no wise intended to cast unkind aspersions upon the character of the many undoubtedly sincere men and women who practise the modern astrological art, for probably the majority of them are as eager for more light and as hungry for more truth as any decent human being can be; and the present writer feels that certain ones of them at least are endeavoring to supply from the intuitions of their own spirits, and from the whispering intimations of their own souls, something greater to add to their art which will contribute to fill the void which they themselves perhaps sense more keenly than others. Yet facts are stubborn things, and it were foolish to attempt to find a greater light in the places whence this greater light long ago fled.
The first thing, then, which the reader must clearly understand in his study of the theme of the present chapter, is that the Universe is not only an Organism, an Organic Entity, in which every part responds spiritually and intellectually and magnetically and even physically to every other part, but that the outward 'skin' of Nature which we sense, is but the garment of vast and inner and invisible Worlds and Spheres; and, therefore, that the entire solar system is absolutely and most emphatically not what modern astronomers seem to think it to be -- emptiness, except perhaps for a very hypothetical 'ether' filling the interplanetary spaces -- but is in every sense of the word a Plenum, a Pleroma, as the ancient Gnostics taught. In other words, the solar system is not mere 'emptiness' with the sun and a few planets whirling around it through 'empty space,' but is solid -- 'solid' in the sense of being filled full with substances and forces in many grades and phases of activity all interacting and interblending and thus composing a true and living Being or Entity.
Were our organ of vision adapted to receive vibrations different from those which evolution has brought it to perceive, in other words, vibrations, or what comes to the same thing, radiations, other than those which it can sense, we should see what appears to us to be 'empty space' between our Earth and Sun and between the Earth and the outermost planets, to be filled with 'matter,' substances, forces. It is precisely because of the impossibility of any actio in distans, or action at a distance without intervening media, that we see in the above conception of the solar system as an organism containing both visible and invisible parts the reason and cause why forces or influences or emanations or effluxes can be and actually are transmitted to and fro among the bodies of the solar system, including not only the few that we see, but the scores of other planets which we do not perceive because they are on other planes of the Solar System and therefore our sense-apparatus cannot cognise them.
Now it is just through this Plenum, whether in its minor part called our own planetary chain, or in the major part called the entire solar system, that the human Monad wings its way, when, during its peregrinations after death it follows the Circulations of the Cosmos, which Circulations we may, if we please, call the net-work of nerves linking the entire solar kingdom into a unitary whole; or with equal correctness, we can say that these Circulations of the Cosmos are the channels transmitting the vital streams throughout all parts of the Sun's kingdom, much as the arteries and veins in the human body are the vehicles or pathways of the blood -- the vital fluid of the body. (378)
Now then, after the event called death, what becomes of and where is the Monad -- this essential self of us? Questions of locality are without particular importance just at present. The Monad after death can be anywhere within a certain limited range of space, in each case depending on Pathways which it follows along the Circulations above stated. If the writer were pressed for a more particularized answer, he would state that the apex or hyparxis actually is in the stellar spheres, or rather in a single stellar sphere, for its native home in each case is in a localized part of the spiritual range of the Universe. The Monad is a breath of pure spirit; (379) it is essentially a consciousness-center, eternal by nature, itself tasting never of death nor of dissolution during our manvantaric or great evolutionary period; in fact, as long as our Universe endures, because it is per se essential Consciousness-Substance. The Monad is not a composite or a compound thing, as our bodies are. It is a focus, a center, a point, of pure spirit, of homogeneous substance. Death is but dissolution of component or compounded things, as the Great Sage, Gautama-Buddha told his disciples as his last message to them before his passing.
The Monad, therefore, is not the man; it is not the 'soul'; for neither the man nor the 'soul' can in any wise be considered to be pure spirit or pure consciousness. The Monad is the ultimate source, nevertheless, of all that we as individuals are. Each one of us is essentially his own essential or Spiritual Monad. Everything that we are as individuals derives from the Monad, and just as the sun of our solar system gives us light among the vast multitude of other radiations, and through a certain range of these radiations generates heat on earth, or at least by such radiation provides for us heat indirectly, so all forces and substances of the human constitutive entity, including a wide range of powers and attributes and qualities and faculties, may be traced back or upwards and inwards to the Monad as their ultimate or original source of emanation.
The Monad is like a spiritual sun at the root of, or in the essence of, our being, constantly, continuously, incessantly, always, from beginning to ending of our great Manvantaric Period, pouring forth streams or flows of intelligence and life-substance, which produce by their interacting and interwoven energies, the various 'knots' or foci of consciousness alluded to on other pages, and which thus are the offspring or the children, so to say, of the Parent-Monad.
Where is the habitat or dwelling of this Monad, whether reference be made to our composite constitution or to the solar system of which at present it is a spiritual denizen or inhabitant? Where is it during earth-life? Whither goes it at the dissolution of the physical body -- or at death, which is equivalent to saying at the beginning of the break-up of man's sevenfold manifested constitution?
In order to understand the journeyings of the Monad along the Pathways of the Universe, or its following of the Circulations of the Cosmos as they have been otherwise called, it is first necessary to know something of the ranges of consciousness of the various entities -- or Egos or 'souls' -- composing man. The divine part of man's constitution, the Divine Monadic Spark or Flame, ranges in its self-consciousness and functional activity over and through and in the Galactic Universe, our Home-Universe: meaning by this last phrase all within the encircling zone of the Milky Way; not at all over and through the physical part alone, because it is obvious that the Monad is and exists functionally on the spiritual or spiritual-divine Planes of the Galaxy, and hence its more especial ranges are over and in and through the inner and invisible Worlds and Planes and Spheres, but active and functioning most particularly in its own native Sphere or Plane, which is the highest or the Divine. From this divine plane or sphere do the spiritual, and the intellectual, and the etheric or astral, and the physical, in regular serial order 'downwards' all hang as pendant-jewels on a chain. This Divine Spark or Flame is unconditionally immortal for as long as our Galactic Home-Universe endures, at the termination of which Galactic Universe the Monad or Divine Spark or Flame goes onwards and inwards to still higher and to us humans incomparably sublime super-divine realms of Kosmic consciousness. Here it remains until the Galactic Universe reappears in its own Manvantaric manifestation, even as it is now at the present period of duration in reappearance from its preceding manvantaric galactic appearances -- the present one being the karmic fruitage or results or consequences of those former appearances in manifestation.
The second or Spiritual Monad, a Spiritual Ray or Radiation from the Divine Monad or Spark or Flame, in its turn ranges over and through our solar system, and just as the Divine Monad endures as long as the Galaxy endures, so does the Spiritual Monad endure as long as the solar system endures; and at the end of the solar system's period of manvantaric manifestation, the Spiritual Monad in its turn, goes or 'ascends' upwards and inwards into higher realms of abstract Spiritual Space, and into a condition or state of consciousness which we may call Paranirvana -- or super-Nirvana -- where it remains until the solar system, after the long Solar Pralaya, in its turn reappears for a new Solar Manvantaric Period of activity in manifestation.
The Higher Ego or Spiritual Soul, which is the real Reincarnating or Reimbodying Ego of a human being, and which is a Ray or Radiance from the Spiritual Monad, ranges in consciousness and functional activity over and in and throughout the seven Globes or sub-planets of our own Planetary Chain: that is to say, the Chain of our planet, Terra, of which this our earth is the physical vehicle or body and the fourth or lowest of the seven globes composing this Chain. This Higher Ego or Spiritual Soul lasts as long in self-conscious functional activity in and through the seven Globes as does the Planetary Chain itself, and at the termination of this Chain's long life-period, the Higher Ego or Spiritual Soul goes or ascends upwards into its Nirvana, and remains in this relatively sublime condition of abstract consciousness until the Chain reappears anew, after the Chain-Pralaya, in its succeeding reimbodiment or manifestation in the ethereal and material realms or planes of the solar system, whereupon the Higher Ego or Spiritual Soul, now greatly evolved over and above what its former 'self' was, enters into self-conscious functional activity of a higher order in the new reimbodiment of our Planetary Chain, doing so as an individual of one of the highest classes of the Dhyan-Chohanic Host whose destiny is inseparably linked with the Chain in and through which it lives and acts.
The Human Monad or Ego, which is a Ray or Radiance from the Higher Ego of the preceding paragraph, endures as long as one incarnation of a man, ranging over the fields of ordinary human consciousness and the self-conscious functional activity of one earth-life. At the end of this earth-life its higher or more spiritual essence ascends, as we say, or goes into the state or condition of consciousness that is called the Devachan or the Heaven-World -- its essence or 'aroma,' please understand -- and remains there in this spiritual-intellectual felicity and rest until the time approaches for its succeeding reincarnation on earth, that is to say, until the next reappearance of the inner man in a physical body on this Globe. (380)
The same universal plan or scheme of periods of manifestation followed by periods of withdrawal into rest which the Monad undergoes, these periods succeeding each other throughout endless time, runs or is operative throughout the entire Universe; for Universal Nature follows one general rule of action throughout every component part of itself. The reason of this is the primordial functioning of Cosmic Ideation, which thus lays down the Cosmic Plan, and may be said to do so as much in the particular as in the general. Thus it is that not only any Monad itself is, as Leibniz taught, a mirror of the whole, but every Monad, and in consequence every being or entity or unitary individuality throughout Cosmic Space, must follow the cosmic processes and operations originating in the Cosmic Ideation. It is upon this fact that is based the wonderful Law of Analogy, and consequent analogical reasoning, both of which were so highly respected in antiquity but receive such scant attention and slight respect in our far more sophisticated and far less wise age. Our sophistication lies in our over-confidence in the powers of our brain-mind and its overtraining with consequent loss of spirituality. The twain should work together, spirituality as master, and the well-trained and active brain-mind as the servant. (381)
Every celestial body in space, whatever it may be, precisely because it is the vehicle or enfolding body of a Monad of high or inferior degree residing at its spiritual heart, follows of necessity and by Nature's fundamental Plan and law the same repetitive courses in alternating periods of manifestation and withdrawal into inner and higher realms that any Monad elsewhere in the Universe does. Not only celestial bodies, but groups of them considered as individual units, likewise of necessity obey Universal Nature's fundamental and ineluctable mandate; so that not only sun or star, nebula or comet, or planet of any solar system, but groups of these such as a solar system itself, as for instance our own, follow the same tracks of destiny and after the same repetitive manner: not only our Globe, Terra, not only our Sun, not only every planet in our solar system, but the solar system as a whole, each manifests itself in the visible spheres, and when its life-term in cosmic manifestation is ended as a unitary or bodily whole, it 'dies' and its inner principles are withdrawn into superior and more ethereal or indeed spiritual realms, therein to rest in paranirvanic conditions until the time comes in the whirling of the cosmic Wheel of Life for the said solar system to reissue forth again from the inner and more ethereal and spiritual realms for imbodiment as a solar system anew -- a cosmic Phoenix, so to speak, reborn from the ashes of its karmic past. This process of repetitive imbodiment and repetitive withdrawal of groups of entities linked by karmic destiny into units, or of any individual thereof, continues from eternity unto eternity, albeit that after each such Cosmic Pralaya or period of withdrawal the System or the Individual issues forth to follow a new life-term but on planes of the Boundless somewhat superior to those which it had previously occupied. It is therefore by these repetitive reimbodiments and withdrawals from 'visibility' that evolution or unfolding in never-ending growth from within outwards continues in serial progression for ever.
Our Planetary Chain, which we may perhaps call the Chain of Terra, like man its child, it will be remembered, has a sevenfold composition consisting of seven globes, of which our physical earth is the one visible and tangible to our present physical human senses, and the other six globes invisible and intangible to human sense-apparatus for the perfectly obvious and natural reason that, being more ethereal and composed of substances and forces less material than our grossly material earth is, and therefore existing on other and 'superior' Cosmic Planes, our poor weak sense-organs can take no cognisance of them. The reason is that our physical senses and their respective organs of action have been evolved solely and only for purposes of cognising forces and substances on the cosmic planes on and in which our bodies live and in which they are native. (382)
Returning now to a consideration of the monadic element in the human constitution: the Monad, any Monad, just because it is a Force or Energy of Spirit-Essence -- which is equivalent to saying a Spiritual Entity or a consciousness-center -- from the very fact that it is what it is, is never resting, never in repose -- at least during the long term of the Cosmic Manvantara. Withdrawal of one Ray of the Monad from physical incarnation affects the Monad not at all. The Monad is a Spiritual Life, in movement always; and this movement is not only continuous but is of the very substance of Cosmic Intelligence. From the moment of a man's death on earth, through the post-mortem and devachanic periods, through the next life until physical death again supervenes, when begins another phase of its endless activity, the Monad is always fully self-conscious in its own lofty sphere. Furthermore, during its activity after the post-mortem existence for the man is commenced, it passes from sphere to sphere, going the rounds anew on its ceaseless peregrinations during the Manvantara. It passes through the spheres not merely because it is native to all of them and is therefore drawn to them by its own magnetic attractions and impulses, but likewise because it itself wills to do so; for free will is a godlike thing and is an inherent and inseparable attribute of itself. (383)
But what are these spheres which have just been mentioned? Leaving aside for a moment the more important interior or invisible realms, let us turn to the path of the Monad through more material worlds, namely through the 'seven sacred planets' of the ancients -- called sacred, these seven, because they are so closely connected with our earth, and its origin, its destiny, and its humanity, that even the outer connexions that they have with earth and man were taught in their fulness only in the holy Mysteries, and, as it were, with mouth to ear and finger on lip. These seven sacred spheres of the ancients are the seven celestial bodies mentioned in their astronomical and mystical works. The ancients unquestionably knew of other 'planets' of our solar system than the seven sacred ones, but these seven only were called 'sacred,' their bonds of destiny with our earth originating in the very origin of the solar system, and coming over from the preceding solar system of which our present one is the karmic fruitage or result. Their names have already been given as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Sun and Moon. As regards Sun and Moon, these were substitutes for two other planets unknown to modern astronomy; and from one point of view this characterization of the Sun and Moon as substitutes is perfectly correct; yet from another point of view they were not substitutes; and because of this second reason Sun and Moon were called 'planets,' because they formed part of a septiform Chain, a Chain of seven 'links,' each link a planet, through which the Monad passes upwards on its cosmic journey, and through which it returns when the new reincarnation of the Higher Ego is to take place again on Earth. (384)
The planets likewise are the 'seven spheres' of the ancients which at some far past period in now long-forgotten history gave their names to the days of the week; and it is a matter of great archaeological and antiquarian interest that these same names are, and from immemorial time have been, the names of the days of the week wherever the seven-day week prevailed in ancient European lands, as well as in Babylonia, Persia, Assyria, Hindusthan, and elsewhere. Just how and why the week was formed after this fashion is another exceedingly interesting question, but one which would take us, in our present study, too far afield. (385)
Now, during the peregrination of the Monad through the 'Seven Sacred Planets' of the ancients, the said Monad must of necessity follow those pathways or channels or lines of least resistance which the Esoteric Philosophy has called the 'Circulations of the Cosmos,' or by some similar phrase. These Circulations of the Cosmos are very real and actual lines of communication between point and point, or locality and locality, or celestial body and celestial body, as all these exist in the structural framework, both visible and invisible, of the Universe. These Circulations are not merely poetic metaphors, or figures of speech; they are as real in the inner economic working of the visible and invisible Worlds of the Universe, as are the nerves and the arterial and venous blood-vessels in the human physical body, and just as these latter provide the channels or canals or pathways of the transmission of intellectual and psychical and nervous impulses and directions, as well as of the vital fluid called the blood, so in identical analogous fashion, the Circulations of the Cosmos provide the channels or canals or pathways followed by the ascending and descending Rivers of Lives, which Rivers are composite of the never-ending stream of migrating and peregrinating entities of all classes back and forth, hither and yon, 'up' and 'down' throughout the Universal Structure.
It of course goes without saying that just as human physical bodily tissue is permeated throughout with suffused nervous and blood-vitality, just so is the structural framework of the Universe likewise suffused throughout with analogically identic permeations of the vital essence. In fact, as already several times before stated in the present work, the Universe is a vast Organism, alive in all its parts, and infused and suffused with vitality from the highest to the lowest thereof, everything in the universal body corporate being thus bathed in the Vital Essence as well as permeated with the Cosmic Intelligence.
All the various phenomena of Universal Nature are thus to be traced directly back, as derivatives, to their spiritual, intellectual, psychical, and astral-vital causes in the Cosmic Organism, and these 'phenomena' include the so-called 'forces of Nature' as well as all the substances and matters -- the seven interworking and interblending prakritis -- which as imbodied intelligences we humans observe to be functional and operative all around us. As an instance in point we may take the case of gravitation -- something the cause of which is as yet entirely unknown by modern science, and concerning which a vast deal has been written since the days of the great Englishman Newton. Yet, from him to the present time, as to just what gravitation is per se no scientific philosopher, or philosophical scientist, has as yet given even an adumbration of a true explanation.
What is gravitation? We may admit, and gladly admit, that Newton and the scientists who followed him are perfectly correct in stating that it is a force operative throughout the Universe affecting all matter, and that its functional activity may be expressed as being the product of the masses of two or more bodies and varying in intensity inversely according to the square of the distance which separates body from body or body from bodies. Quite true, or very nearly exactly correct; but this statement of the so-called 'Law of Gravitation' is merely descriptive of its action or operation and is in no wise explanatory of what it is in itself. We see the phenomenon or the phenomena which it produces, and our great men of science have reduced its action to the well-known law above briefly stated; but more than this nothing is known about it. It is not known what it is in itself, nor whence it originates as a cause producing the well-known phenomena of gravitational attraction, nor is it exactly known why it should differ from magnetism -- another still unexplained force of Nature -- which in some respects it so strongly resembles and in other respects it is different from.
The Esoteric Philosophy explains that what we call gravitation or the universally felt and observed operation of attraction between and among bodies, apparently operative throughout Boundless Space, is as the noumenon -- i. e., in its causal essence or self -- what we humans, employing familiar human analogy, call vital magnetism. Yes, this is precisely what gravitation is: Vital Cosmic Magnetism; the efflux or outflow of cosmic vitality from the heart of the celestial bodies, where its activity makes its presence most easily discernible. Yet even the atom, nay, the various sub-atomic particles and wavicles today called electrons, and perhaps protons, etc., are as much under the sway of this cosmic vitality as is the most dense or the least dense of the macrocosmic bodies wending their way in splendid apparent isolation over and in the fields of unending Space. It is this Vital Electricity or Vital Magnetism in the Cosmic Structure which attracts in all directions, thus uniting all things into the vast body corporate of the Cosmos. Furthermore, some day it will be discovered that this Cosmic Magnetic Vitality contains or includes in itself as powerful and as greatly functional an element of repulsion as it does of attraction; and that behind all its phenomenal workings, in fact, behind and within itself, lie the still higher and incomparably more potent principles or elements of the inner and invisible Universe which thus infallibly guide its activities everywhere. (386)
One who is acquainted with the religious and philosophical systems of other lands and of other ages can easily enough find the same teachings everywhere, and identical in substance everywhere, which are briefly outlined in the preceding paragraphs. The Orient, ancient India for instance, has and had religious and philosophical systems which are replete with the same and closely similar philosophical and religious speculations -- and verities. Even the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea of course had their own Schools in which the same or very closely similar speculations were stated and widely accepted. An example of such a religious system was Mithraism, which had such far-flung and profound influence at one time in all the lands acknowledging the sway of Rome.
The following quotation from the Christian Father Origen, in his attempted answers to the criticisms of Christianity written by the great Pagan philosopher, Celsus, is a clear proof in point. Celsus in his writings had been comparing the Mithraic religion with early Christianity and doubtless called attention to many and various points of resemblance and identity as well as numerous points of difference and distinction between these two faiths. Origen wrote in his treatise, Against Celsus, as follows:
Celsus states, like Plato, that the path of souls from earth to heaven and from heaven to earth passes through the seven planets. . . .
This doctrine Celsus says is sacred among the Mithraists of Persia, and is represented in symbolic form in the Mysteries of the god Mithras. In those Mysteries, says Celsus, the Mithraists had varied symbols representing the seven planets as well as the spheres of the so-called fixed stars, and also the path that the souls took through these eight spheres. The symbolic imagery was as follows: They used a ladder supposed to reach from earth to the heavens, which ladder was divided into seven steps or stations, on each of which was a portal of ingress and egress; and at the summit of the ladder was an eighth portal which was without doubt the representation of the passage into and from the stellar spheres. (387)
Origen then alludes to the 'Ladder of Jacob' as given in the Hebrew Bible in the book of Genesis. (388) Jacob's 'Ladder' is there described as reaching from earth to heaven, up and down which 'angels,' so called, were constantly passing.
This citation from Origen and his statements with regard to Mithraism, are quoted here, not at all because Theosophists are modern Mithraists, which supposition is wide of the mark, but simply because Mithraism was so important a faith in the days of early Christianity. It was one of the most faithful, even in its widest diffusion, to at least a certain few of the early Mystery-teachings which from time immemorial have prevailed in the Hither and in the Far Orient, and by so much was one of the most faithful representatives in that period of the same archaic Wisdom-System modernly called Theosophy. In other words, Mithraism in its time proved to be a more or less successful form of presenting certain doctrines of archaic Theosophy in a manner acceptable and pleasing to the better spirits and profounder intellects of that era of Graeco-Roman history. Therefore it is no wonder that the reports which we moderns still have regarding the teachings of Mithraism bear in certain respects a close and interesting analogy with the teachings of modern Theosophy, whether of its public, whether of its esoteric, schools.
The Mithraic Religion in the third century of the Christian Era had reached such a stage of development that it all but became the dominant state-religion of the then wide-flung Roman Empire. In fact, it had so much that was similar, both in doctrine and in certain forms, to early Christianity, that this fact was commented upon by all intelligent writers of the time, both Christian and 'Pagan.' As it happened, Christianity, by reason of a number of interesting causes, finally prevailed over Mithraism as the dominant religious system of Europe, and it would seem that the main reason of the Christian success was that, although Mithraism was at first preferred at the Imperial Court and had imperial support, and also was the dominant faith in the army and navy, and among the well-to-do and better classes, and even among the slaves, yet its formal presentation to the public of that period contained one very serious psychological defect -- at least so in the view of men of our modern times. What was this defect? It was essentially a mystical religion for men and much less so for women: much as modern Freemasonry is -- or as some think it is; and, furthermore, any formal religion, or system, that is to say, any religion of ceremonial and formal type such as Christianity has always been, always makes a larger emotional appeal to the general populace than does one which requires some amount of abstract thinking and no small searching of the heart, as Mithraism did.
This Mithraic system, in its course of instruction, had seven degrees of initiation, corresponding to the seven stages or rather grades of dignity in the Mithraic Brotherhood. They were as follows -- and in each case will first be given the original Graeco-Latin name, as it has been transmitted to us, and then the translation: The first and lowest was called Corax or Raven, signifying the degree of Servant; the second degree of initiation in the Mithraic Brotherhood and somewhat higher than Corax was the Cryphius, or the Occult, signifying Neophyte; the third degree was the Miles or Soldier, signifying Worker; the fourth was called Leo, or the Lion, and with this degree began the deeper and more mystical teaching; the fifth degree was called Perses, the Persian, signifying the Human; the sixth degree was called Heliodromus, the Runner or Messenger of the Sun; the seventh and last degree was called Pater, or Father, signifying the state of a Full Initiate or Masterhood.
The various doctrines, open and secret, exoteric and esoteric, which comprised what is known as and which actually was Mithraism, were not held alone and singly by that philosophico-religious system of belief, because the same doctrines are to be found in more or less open exposition in many places in the ancient literatures, although it is probably perfectly true that each Greek or Roman School, either philosophical or religious, or religio-philosophic, had its own method or manner of teaching the same general truths of Nature. As an instance in point, Macrobius, the Graeco-Roman writer, treats of the 'ascent' and 'descent' of the Monad through the spheres, and such references are found for instance in his Saturnalia, and in his Commentary on the Vision of Scipio. (389)
It is to be remembered that although Macrobius told the truth in what he wrote, and all of it that he openly dared to tell, a great deal of what he says is more or less obscure in meaning; and to anyone acquainted with the very rigid rules forbidding revelation or divulging of any of the doctrines taught in the ancient Mysteries, it is apparent enough that Macrobius could have written in no other wise than as he did write. He was unable, on account of his oath of secrecy taken at initiation, to say all that he could have said. It is interesting indeed to note here how almost perfectly the secrets of the Mysteries were kept even in so late and degenerate an age as that in which Macrobius lived, for while the date when he flourished is not known, it is plain enough from the extrinsic and intrinsic evidence of his writings that he lived some good time after the beginning of the Christian Era and possibly even in the third and fourth century thereof. So well was this secrecy observed, and so universally was this secrecy respected, not only by individuals but by the various Greek and Roman States themselves, that even today with all the remarkably fine critical apparatus which modern scholars have, and with their argus-eyed search for information, often backed by astute minds, one may state that almost nothing of real informative value is today known of the Ancient Mysteries, beyond the fact that they existed, had an enormous and wide-flung influence in ancient political and social life, and that the oath of secrecy was exacted from every neophyte before initiation. Speculation has been keen for centuries past as to just what the doctrines were which were taught in the Mysteries; but no one today knows or can say just what those doctrines were. A good deal of foolishness, when all is stated, has been written by various scholars about the Ancient Mysteries -- and the present writer qualifies it as foolishness because these speculations seem to be little else than the theories of individuals elevated by repetition and emphasis to the rank of positive statement or assertion; and it would seem certainly foolish to consider one's own opinion about something utterly unknown to one as worthy of any other name than 'speculation.'
Whatever the Ancient Mysteries were, and whatever the doctrines taught in them, we know that they were deeply and universally revered and that the greatest men whom antiquity ever produced, virtually without exception, were among the number of those who had passed through, in greater or less extent, the different degrees of the initiatory rites. Consequently, the larger part of the field of ancient esoteric and mystical thought is not openly treated in the writings of Macrobius and at best is but alluded to. This reticence, as said, in matters concerning doctrines taught in the Mysteries, will be found in all mystical writings of the ancients; and because of that reticence modern scholars misunderstand, and have consistently misunderstood, those remnants of the old mystical writings very greatly. For this of course they are not blameworthy, for how on earth could modern scholars properly understand something, in any degree of fulness, to which they have no sort of key, and, in not a few cases, the existence of which they both formally and intellectually disbelieve!
It is of course obvious, that the teachings given, such as they are, in Greek and Roman writers about the journeyings or peregrinations of the Monad are not derivatives of the Greek or Latin genius only, because the same teachings are essentially identic all over the world, although the verbal or philosophic or religious forms in which they are couched have necessarily varied according to race, age, and country. Whence then, one may pertinently ask, came this universality of one primitive wisdom-knowledge unless there originally had existed with mundial prevalence, a pre-historic pristine religion, a primeval philosophy, a primordial esoteric science?
Returning now to the main theme of the present chapter: The Monad, liberated and released by the death of the man, and into whose (the Monad's) bosom the Human Soul has rendered or rather surrendered all of whatever was noblest and finest and purest and holiest of itself, and which, thus freighted with the 'aroma' of the Human Soul, we may call the Spiritual Soul -- the Monad enters upon its wonderful post-mortem Adventure, including its peregrination to and through the seven sacred planets of the ancients. This peregrination or journey of the Monad involves the reaching and the temporary sojourn or revolving in each and every one of those seven sacred planets, the one after the other, and in regular serial order, according to the set and predetermined Pathways which closely follow and are regulated by the lines of cosmic forces or energies -- the Circulations of the Cosmos.
It is to be understood that no Monad whatsoever is 'on its own' in its post-mortem journeyings or peregrinations, because every such Monad can follow only those certain channels or canals of vital inter-communication as among the celestial bodies of the solar system, which, as before explained, play the same part in the structure of the solar system that the nerves and the blood-vessels do in the human body.
It should be further recalled that the different planes or worlds or spheres, and sub-planes and sub-worlds and sub-spheres, are interrelated by innumerable centers or points of intercommunication: centers or points through which the forces and substances of one plane or sphere pass upwards -- or downwards -- into the next succeeding plane or world or sphere. These are the laya-centers which have been more or less adequately described in a former chapter. The important thing to note just here is that every celestial globe, i. e., every sun, every planet, every atom, has at its heart, or in its central core of essence, such a laya-center or point of individual intercommunion, which is the individual's pathway of communication with the next succeeding inner plane or world or sphere and in either direction, 'upwards' or 'downwards.'
From above or the superior planes, through these laya-centers, whether it be of a celestial globe, of a human being, or of an atom, etc., the lowest or densest matter of that particular superior plane or world can pass downwards into the next lower or inferior plane or world, and thus manifest itself on and in this inferior plane or world as its most ethereal force or forces -- which force or forces, taking our own world or plane as an example, is or are equivalent to highly ethereal substance or matter even according to ultra-modern scientific teaching. Co-ordinately, and taking our own plane or world as an illustration in point, our most ethereal force or substance can and does pass upwards through these laya-centers or laya-points into the next superior plane or world or sphere. What is our most ethereal, because highest, when passing through such a laya-center, enters into and becomes at one with the very densest substance of the next superior plane.
Thus is the passage from plane or world to plane or world accomplished, not after death alone, but even during life -- what we humans call 'life' when using ordinary human language.
The Monad on reaching the next planet in order after it has left this sevenfold Earth-chain, thereupon produces or forms a Ray or Radiance from itself during its passage in and through such planetary chain, a psycho-mental apparatus or 'soul' of temporary existence, which takes in consequence temporary imbodiment in a correspondingly fit vehicle or body there, the such body being of a spiritual, an ethereal, an astral, or a physical type. This Ray, sent forth by the Monad, and 'native' to the planet on which it manifests, passes through its various cyclical periods of life learning lessons of experience and understanding there, until this new manifestation of monadic activity on this next planet reaches the end of its cyclical life-term, when it in its turn, just as had previously happened, is withdrawn into the bosom of the Monad, where it rests in its Devachan in the felicity of this its own heaven-world. Meanwhile the higher principles pendant from the fundamental Monad, so to speak, are released anew to proceed farther to still another planet, to which they are carried by the psycho-magnetic karmic attractions of their own substance, and following the pathways laid down for them in the Circulations of the Cosmos.
As Oliver Wendell Holmes sang:
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past! (390)
We see here even in this brief sketch of the post-mortem journeyings of the Monad, the usual change, the progress, the evolutionary unfolding, that accompanies every activity of the Monad. Where do we find 'death' as an absolute thing, implying the utter annihilation or extinction of the essential being of any entity? The lesson these studies teach us, among many other most interesting and fascinating matters, is that Life is everywhere, and manifests itself in living beings and things, who or which are in continuous and everlasting movement -- at least it is so during the Cosmic Manvantara.
Having thus completed its cyclical life-term on this planet, the Monad then passes to the planet next in order, thereon repeating the general course of its evolutionary activity; and thus does the Monad act through and on each of the Seven Sacred Planets of the ancients, until finally it reaches the last of the seven, whereupon the Monad, thus having completed its Outer Cycle, in due course is drawn into the psycho-magnetic line of attraction impelling it along the Circulations of the Cosmos back to the planetary chain of Earth.
The teaching as given in the preceding paragraphs has reference to what are called technically the Outer Rounds which must not be confused with the Inner Rounds, the latter dealing solely with the up and down journeys of the Monad, and of all the hosts of similar Monads, in the seven (or twelve) globes of any one planetary chain -- our own Chain of Earth, for instance. The difficulty in giving an outline of the teaching regarding the two kinds of Rounds as above stated, lies in the fact, first, that both the Inner and Outer Rounds are analogically alike unto each other. While this is very helpful in one way, it is likewise extremely apt to cause confusion in the mind of the inattentive student. Another difficulty of real magnitude is the fact that the post-mortem journey of the Monad of a man perforce follows the same lines or peregrinations that the Monad follows during the course of the Outer Rounds, but does so in incomparably smaller periods of time, and merely stops temporarily in the various planetary 'stations' so to speak.
The student must therefore remember that the phrase 'Outer Rounds' can refer to two different things, although the twain are closely alike: First, to the fact of what we may perhaps call the Grand Outer Round, comprising the whole period of a Solar Manvantara, during which the Spiritual Monad makes a stay in each planetary chain; and second, to the other fact that its post-mortem journey takes it likewise to each of the seven planetary chains, but in this last case its sojourn in any such individual chain is temporary only, lasts but a relatively short length of time, and its various emissions of Rays belonging to each one of the respective planets is likewise brief and temporary only. We may call this latter the Minor or Small Outer Round.
Have, then, at least the two following statements clear in the mind: (a) the Outer Rounds deal with the passage of the Spiritual Monad from Planetary Chain to Planetary Chain, and this seven times, and over the Solar System, these seven planetary chains being the seven sacred planets of the ancients; and (b) the Inner Rounds refer to the long manvantaric sojourn of a Monad in any one of these planetary chains during which Planetary Chain Manvantara the Monad undergoes its aeons' long journeys on and in and through the seven (or twelve) globes of that planetary chain.
It thus should be clear that the Minor or Small Outer Rounds are followed by the peregrinating Monad after the death of the man on earth; and its sojourn in any planetary chain other than the Chain of Earth, is, as stated above, relatively short in time-period, and its emanation of the Ray corresponding to each 'new' Chain that it visits is of transitory and temporary character only.
The purpose of the passing of the Monad post mortem through the various planetary chains is to allow it to free itself on each such planetary chain of the integument or habiliment or vehicle which belongs to the vital essence of such planetary chain. It is only thus that the Monad strips off from itself one after the other the different 'coatings' with which it has enwrapped itself during its long evolutionary journey; and thus when it has freed itself from all the seven 'coatings' it is then ready, because freed and in its pure and 'unclothed' state, to enter into its own native spiritual Home. When the return journey towards Earth's planetary chain begins, the Monad then passes through all these same seven planets, but in reverse order to that by which it had ascended through them, and in each such planet that it visits in the reverse order on its journey back to Earth's planetary chain it picks up and re-assumes or clothes itself in the life-atoms forming the 'coatings' that it had previously dropped or cast off in each one of these seven planets respectively. Thus on its journey of ascent towards spiritual freedom it unclothes itself; and on its descent or journey back into the realms of the lower spheres of manifestation, it clothes itself in its old life-atoms anew, and thus is ready and able to work out the karmic consequences or results that were held over in abeyance when death came upon the man previously in his last earth-life.
Thus then, the Monad pursues its pilgrimage through the entire planetary chain of each of the seven planets, remaining on each of these planets, one after the other and in regular serial order, long enough to evolve forth there a series of temporary or transitory imbodiments of the appropriate Spiritual Ego on each such planetary chain. This procedure takes place on each of the seven sacred planets until the encircling minor Outer Round of the seven sacred planets by the Monad brings the Monad, on its marvelous interplanetary pilgrimage, back to our Earth's planetary chain where it proceeds to do on this our planetary chain precisely in all general characters what it had done on the other planetary chains, as just outlined; but because the Monad of a man at the present time is 'fixed' to the planetary chain of Earth, its stay in this planetary chain is immensely longer than its temporary stoppage on the seven sacred planets during its post-mortem pilgrimage.
The Reimbodying Ego evolved forth or emanated or emitted forth and in this Earth's planetary chain is the Reimbodying Ego or Soul 'native' to this planetary chain. This is because such Reimbodying Ego is the fit and appropriate vehicle through which the Spiritual Monad can express itself on and in the globes of our planetary chain: in other words, in this particular variety of matters and energies of the Cosmos which we call our planetary chain of Earth.
Thus the Monad, our Spiritual Self, our Essential Self, the next to the highest part of us, the focus of the Divine Monad or Spark or Flame, gathers at each one of the seven sacred planets a new harvest of soul-experiences only to be gained in each such planet, each such 'harvest' being the aggregated experiences in imbodiment acquired by the Spiritual Monad which belong in essential characteristics of substance and energy to each such respective planet. How otherwise could the Spiritual Monad reap any harvest unless there were the fit and appropriate intermediate links between it and the various planetary chains? The Reimbodying Ego evolved forth by the Monad in and on each such planetary chain is one of these fit and appropriate intermediate links. Thus the Monad is evolving, growing greater as time passes, and follows its own pathway of evolution through the spheres, carrying its load of individual consciousnesses -- each Ray or Individual holding the various fruitage of each incarnation on earth or of imbodiments on other planets. (391)
The journeyings of the Spiritual Monad through the spheres are due to several causes, some of which have already been outlined in preceding pages, and among these causes one of the most important is the fact that, to use the words of the old proverb, "Like attracts like." It is because of this law that the higher spheres or worlds attract or pull, so to say, the higher part of man's nature which is cognate with them to themselves, the while the man's higher part itself feels a corresponding inner urge thither. Thus the Monad rises through the worlds and spheres, higher and higher, because with each step upwards, there occurs ever stronger the attraction to still higher, still more spiritual, still more consciousness-like worlds or spheres. The Monad passes through each one on its upward journeyings, staying awhile on and in each such world or plane, somewhat as a traveler will put up at an inn for a day-night; and then when the Monad reaches the highest plane or sphere or world to which its attractions have drawn it, and to which its own inner impulses and aspirations impel it -- these very aspirations and impulses being the resultants or consequence of the accumulated spiritual and intellectual thoughts and feelings of the human entity during incarnation -- the Monad there pauses for a while before turning the goal, as it were, to make the beginning of its re-descent through the same worlds or planes or spheres which it had previously traveled when ascending.
Note carefully that no outside power puts this evolutionary course upon the evolving Monad either impelling or compelling it thereto, but its innate attractions to this or to that or to some other superior world or plane, which come into activity after death, are evoked forth from the fabric or 'stuff' of the Monad's own essence during the man's sojourn in earth-life, and are caused by the human being's spiritual and intellectual activity when alive on Earth.
Furthermore, the Monad turns back and retraces its steps because the attractions and compelling inner aspirations which had previously caused this rising of the Monad through the spheres have now exhausted their energies, and the latent seeds of thought and feeling that imagination, spiritual yearnings, lofty intellectual aspirations, had stored in the Monad in the previous earth-life and earth-lives, because of their very origination in material spheres now begin to pull or attract the Monad downwards until the Reimbodying Ego, the Ray or Radiation of the Monad, as before explained finds its opportunity in its impulse earth-wards to project its own incarnating Ray into the karmically appropriate human seed-germ which thus in time will grow to be the body of the new-born babe.
As has already been stated, every cosmic plane or world or sphere or planet has, or rather provides, its own appropriate bodies or vehicles for the self-expression of the hosts of entitative Monads journeying or peregrinating upwards and forwards along the Circulations of the Cosmos; and consequently no such body or vehicle appropriate to its own world or sphere can leave the plane or sphere or planet to which it belongs. Hence, as death means the dropping or casting off of bodies or vehicles, so birth means the re-assuming of such vehicles. All such bodies or vehicles are, as before stated, builded of life-atoms, most of which for any individual are its own psycho-spiritual offspring, the Monad thus enwrapping itself in its own living effluvia which form its sheaths or transmitters for the purposes of self-expression. In consequence of the foregoing fact, all these hosts of life-atoms on the different planes of the human constitution are karmically and forever most intimately related to the Spiritual Monad, their original parent; and the Monad when returning to earth at the end of its long post-mortem pilgrimage attracts back to itself these same life-atoms which it had previously dropped or cast off, and thus with their help forms anew for itself not the identic sheaths or bodies which it previously had dropped, but the identic life-atoms which had previously formed these sheaths or bodies; so that one might almost say by using the merest suspicion of exaggeration in statement that the Reimbodying Ego actually 'resurrects,' or lives again in, the old bodies, intellectual, psychical, astral, and physical, which it had in its last earth-life as a fully imbodied human being. This wonderful and most suggestive fact is the esoteric explanation of that certain teaching of the Christian Church regarding the 'resurrection of the body' -- so ludicrous in its orthodox presentation, and so perfectly logical and natural when properly understood in the light that the Esoteric Philosophy throws upon it.
Thus on its round through the spheres during its interplanetary pilgrimage the Monad finally reaches the spiritual-magnetic 'atmosphere' of the planetary chain of Earth. At this point of time and space, the former Reimbodying Ego, hitherto sleeping its long devachanic sleep in its own heaven-world of consciousness, and resting in bliss in the bosom of the Spiritual Monad, begins to feel -- if this is indeed the proper word -- on account of the influence from the magnetic atmosphere of the Earth's planetary chain, a resurgent in-rolling, although in the beginning extremely faint and diffuse, of old memories, former attractions, and instincts, which had lain dormant during the Devachan, and which albeit of the most spiritual type as yet, nevertheless, and indeed precisely for that reason, affect it in its present relatively high spiritual condition. Unconsciously impelled by these ancient memories and recollections resurging ethereally into its consciousness, it seeks to renew the psycho-magnetic contacts of its former spheres, the globes of our Earth's planetary chain; and is thus impelled towards or attracted by this Chain somewhat as a man living long in a foreign country yearns to return home, and feels his heart beat with a stronger pulse when he sees once more familiar sights and scenes of former days, and senses anew the old atmosphere of the things that were.
Vague and fleeting memories of the former earth-scenes that the indrawn Reimbodying Ego once knew and loved begin to pass panorama-like across its field of consciousness; and this combination of awakening memories of the former earth-life and earth-lives draws it steadily towards the other spheres it formerly inhabited, and it begins to 'descend' towards them, through any intermediate spheres or planes or worlds, and as time passes these impulses grow ever stronger as the Monad sinks, until finally, drawn towards our Globe Earth, it is ready and prepared for its new rebirth into earth-life.
It is evident enough that the cause of reincarnation on Earth is 'thirst' for material existence, an acquired habit. This 'thirst' for ages past in India has been called trishna, a technical Sanskrit word which means 'avid longing for,' as a man who longs for water 'thirsts.' This 'thirst' is a composite instinctual habit, compounded of a host of things -- as all habits are, if we analyse ourselves -- of loves, hates, affections of various kinds, magnetic attractions of the hosts of life-atoms composing man's constitution, both visible and invisible, and of longings and yearnings of many types, all of which collect during the various life-terms on earth into the human soul and mind, and which for these reasons are briefly called by Theosophists 'thought-deposits' -- emotional and mental and psychic tendencies and biases. All these are energies, being at any time either active or quiescent as the case may be; and they will energize the reincarnating entity's destiny until evolution and expanding consciousness and the purification of suffering finally transfer man's consciousness as an individual being to higher planes or spheres than what we know here; and when this finally occurs, then the human entity will inhabit those higher and superior planes or worlds or spheres.
Now the 'descent' of the Reimbodying Ego towards incarnation on earth takes place through the various planes or worlds of the planetary chain of Terra, each plane or world of increasing materiality; and thus there is here a natural 'descent' of the Reimbodying Ego through the globes of the descending arc of this planetary chain, in each of which globes, several in number, there is a temporary and transitory sojourn for the purpose of re-collecting the appropriate life-atoms which had been previously cast off by the Monad during its ascent and which life-atoms in their turn had been peregrinating hither and yon for ages.
No step along the journey may or can be omitted. Just as the Reimbodying Ego 'ascended' to the Spiritual Monad at the end of its former earth-life, by passing along the ascending arc composed of several globes of our Terrene Planetary Chain, so now, every intermediate plane or world must be traversed in order to span the gap between the inner worlds and this our physical earth. A traveler cannot go anywhere without taking the necessary steps to cover the distance, or without using the necessary mechanical apparatus to carry him thither. Every inch must be covered over the earth or through the air: the principle is the same in the two cases. One is reminded of the old Latin proverb, so often quoted by the scientific luminaries whose great work so largely sways our mind: Natura non facit saltum. 'Nature makes no jumps.' Nor does she allow any individual to reach maturity without passing through and over the years intermediate between childhood and adulthood.
The life-atoms which the Reimbodying Ego reincorporates into its constitution at this stage of its descent earthwards are actually waiting on Globes A, B, and C because they belong to the three planes traversed by the previously ascending Ego, and being the planes whereon the said Ego had dropped them. It is after this manner that the Reimbodying Ego -- the incoming Man, the Man coming into physical, material birth -- builds for himself a constitution of seven elements or principles anew, which elements and principles however are identical with the constitution of the man in the preceding earth-life because of the re-aggregated life-atoms thus taken up again.
It is this reassumption, or building again into its own fabric, of the life-atoms previously used in the last earth-life that makes the Reincarnating Ego become in all respects virtually the same man it was before, the same compounded constitution in fact, but improved, bettered, refined, because of the lessons learned in the higher globes -- the invisible and more spiritual globes of our Earth's Planetary Chain; and, last but not least, because of its absorption or spiritual digestion, as it were, of the lessons and experiences of the preceding earth-life, which spiritual assimilation or digestion had taken place while the Ego was resting and dreaming in its devachanic heaven-world in the bosom of the Monad.
The reimbodying entity therefore rebecomes anew a composite bundle of forces and substances as it 'descends' through the intermediate planes and globes of the descending arc of our Earth's planetary chain on its way back to physical incarnation on earth. Finally it reaches our earth-plane again, and here it begins to reassume or to take up anew the same life-atoms that formerly it had left behind on this plane of physical matter, and which had composed its physical body in its last earth-life. In due course of time an infant is born on earth, karmically destined to take up again the duties that it had laid down at the death of the former physical body, carrying in fact once more in itself all the energies and powers and forces and substances that had once made it what it was, and which make it what it now is. As formerly it reaped what it had sowed, so now it is preparing to reap again the harvest that itself last sowed; it is attracted to the fields of life where that harvest was sowed, by the psycho-magnetic interactions of the field itself and of the human Monad's own character. (392)
What deductions, spiritual, intellectual, and moral, are we compelled to draw from the teachings which have been outlined in the present and preceding chapters? First this: There are no heartaches coming to those who remain behind as to what shall happen to their loved ones at death. All is most wonderfully and beautifully cared for by the Great Mother, Nature. When death comes to us, as in time it most certainly will, it means release, more life, a far larger life, an inexpressibly wonderful Adventure, all by far more fascinating than anything that this gross globe called Earth can give us. It means passing along the Circulations of the Cosmos to other Mansions of the Universe -- along the ineluctable circulations or pathways which from the beginning of the Manvantara have been followed by the Monads of all past manvantaric time, during the course of their marvelous pilgrimages.
The second deduction that we may profitably draw is that there is not a new soul 'created' for every human being born on Earth. Every human entity appearing in incarnation, that is, every 'human soul' appearing in a human body, is simply a reincarnation of a Human Ego which had been incarnating and reincarnating from ages and ages past; and next, and not unimportant, that we ourselves, living today, are the reincarnations of the ancients. Verily we are the ancients, existing in this present time, just as those ancients existed in their times, and as they had existed in other times far earlier still. The old theological idea that 'Almighty God' created a human soul for each new baby-body born, carries with it implications of divine responsibility, which error even Christian theologians today are beginning to see, and, seeing, to realize; and realizing their error, they desire in many cases no longer to hold to this idea. Furthermore the human family as a Monadic Group is a minor hierarchy or 'host of souls,' only about one hundredth part of which is represented by the human beings alive on Earth at any one time. Millions upon millions are in the invisible and interior worlds, going the rounds of the worlds, so to say, the while evolving cyclically, visiting the different planes of interior Nature.
A third and perhaps the noblest deduction that we are compelled to draw is that the whole work of evolution is to bring the self-conscious part of us, the self-consciously perceiving and feeling part, to become ever more fully self-conscious of the higher and highest parts of our constitution; or in other words, bringing us slowly to ally ourselves self-consciously with the highest part of the individual stream or flow of consciousness which each one of us essentially is, instead of groveling here in the dirt of Earth, down in the murk and mire of material existence, where most of us still live, centering our thoughts and will and feelings in objectives not so greatly different from those followed irresponsibly by the beasts. The secret, therefore, of this evolutionary inner growth or unfolding is a self-conscious transferring of our consciousness from the lower to the higher and the holding of it there; and it is to be remembered that the time to begin this work is for ever -- NOW!
Man in his inmost essence, as already stated in these pages, is a Divine Monad or Spark or Flame, unconditionally immortal, and of Kosmic Range in function and active self-consciousness. As a sevenfold entity, man's constitution comprises both will-power and intelligence, two wonderful spiritual instruments with which he may carve for himself a most sublime destiny -- a destiny making of him, if he will, to become in the distant future a self-conscious god. He is destined in the far, far, distant aeons of future time to ally his self-consciousness with his 'over-shadowing' Spiritual Monad, which is his essential Self; and the destiny of the Monad, in enormously more distant future time -- time here to be reckoned in kosmic figures -- is to become at one with its Parent, the Divine Monad or Flame, which means to ally its self-consciousness with this Divine Monadic Flame; thenceforward to take a self-conscious part as a higher god in the grand Kosmic Work of the Galactic Universe.
FOOTNOTES:
376. Even the unfortunate Giordano Bruno, a Neo-Platonist born centuries out of time, had the same intuition and re-echoed the same archaic teaching, as is evidenced clearly enough by the following extracts from him:
"It is not rational to believe that anything in Nature is without mind, life, sensation or organic structure. . . . From this infinite all, full of beauty and splendor, from the vast worlds which circle about us, to the sparkling dust of stars beyond, we must conclude that they represent an infinity of Creatures, a vast multitude, each of which mirrors forth, in its degree, the splendor, and excellence of divine harmony.
"Everything in Nature is alive. The celestial bodies are animated beings. All things on the face of the earth and under the earth have in a certain measure and according to their state, the gift of feeling; the stone feels in a fashion which escapes the definition of man." -- GIORDANO BRUNO
377. One of the greatest losses that Astrology underwent in its passage from the sublime and starry Science to the feeble and decrepit art which it is in our day, was that of the secrets of esoteric computation -- esoteric mathematics. It is true that astrological art today employs a modicum of more or less simple mathematical science in its casting of horoscopes and computations of astronomical times, etc., but this at its best is but the exoteric garment of ancient esoteric knowledge of time-periods and of what these time-periods signify when applied to the cyclical destinies of beings, whether the solar system, the sun, the moon, the planets, or beings of other classes and types such as man.
A footnote is no place in which to embark upon even the sketchiest outline of esoteric mathematics, but it may nevertheless be stated for those who are interested and able to understand it, that just because the processes of Nature are governed by Cosmic Intelligence, arising out of primordial Cosmic Ideation, and because Intelligent Ideation by its very nature operates in harmonies, or what comes to the same thing, mathematical processes, therefore everything that takes place in the Solar Universe proceeds according to quantity or quantities whether of matter or of time. Hence it is that quantitative relations prevail throughout the solar system, whether as touching bodies or as touching the cycles of time. The secret figures, as discovered aeons and aeons agone by titan spiritual intellects, which are basic or lie at the root of the psychical or substantial operations of Universal Nature, are they which the great sage of Crotona, Pythagoras, imbodied in what is known as his Tetraktys, the emblem of which is here given thus:
These dots or points symbolize or are emblematic of the birth from the Monad or single point, of first the Duad, then the Triad, then the Quaternary, the series thus being 1, 2, 3, 4; and their sum is 10. The 10 represents the entire body of Universal Manifestation, derivative as above stated, from the Primordial or Originating Monad, and hanging therefrom somewhat in the manner that the emblem above given symbolizes. This is not a picture, but an emblem. The idea is to be understood intellectually as a flowing of manifestation or differentiation forth from the primordial or originating Point.
Now the basic numbers used in esoteric computation from time immemorial are the 2, 3, 4, or conversely, the 4, 3, 2, imbodied in the above emblem as being derivative in regular serial order from the Originating Monad, this Monad, in beginning its cosmic processes of differentiation or manifestation or reproduction, existing in or passing through for the time being what the Esoteric Philosophy calls a laya-center.
These three numbers, 4, 3, 2, are important because they pervade and guide the quantitative relations, as numerical factors, of all the solar system, and in all probability, of the surrounding Galaxy also. Not only do they form the quantitative process of all Nature's productions, did we know enough to discover this fact, but they are, because of it, the keys by which most of Nature's secrets may be laid bare to the discerning eye -- and all this is precisely because Nature is not haphazard nor crazy, nor builded fortuitously, but is constructed rigidly according to mathematical principles originating in Cosmic Ideation, as above stated, and therefore permeating Nature throughout.
As H. P. Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, pp. 73-4:
"The sacredness of the cycle of 4320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making 7, or again the three added together and yielding 9, all these numbers have their application in the most sacred and occult things, and record the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reaction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from one end to the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric, and endexoteric, so to say."
All the above is most admirably and lucidly stated, and merits the reader's careful and thoughtful perusal -- and reflexion. It is of course evident to the instructed reader that these same numerals or digits 4, 3, 2, given above, are just the ones which the ancient records of Chaldaea and Hindusthan contained as the basis of the computation of all time-periods. In India they have been for innumerable ages past, with the necessary zeros added, i. e., the 4, 3, 2, 1, as key-digits, the respective lengths of the different yugas or Ages. (return to text)
378. As said elsewhere, the teaching of man's essential oneness with the Universe, and this indeed on all cosmic planes, was and is found everywhere; yet it may be said that wherever one finds a direct statement of this fact it emanates from one who had passed at least the Third Degree in initiation. The following extract from Vergil's Georgics, IV, lines 220-7, of which the English translation immediately hereunder follows, exemplifies or illustrates how universally familiar the idea was. It is to be remembered of course that due to the oath of secrecy taken, the doctrine had to be stated when publicly promulgated in more or less figurative or metaphorical language, but such language is only the garment, and the reader should hunt for the inner sense.
Vergil wrote:
"Esse apibus partem divinae mentis et haustus
Aetherios dixere; deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque maris, coelumque profundum;
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas;
Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri
Omnia; nec morti esse locum; sed viva volare
Sideris in numerum, atque alto succedere coelo."
"They have said that bees have a portion of the Divine Mind and aetherial streams therefrom; that Divinity permeates the whole earth, the ocean's tracts, and the deeps of Heaven, that thence the flocks, the herds, men, and all the classes of beasts, individually draw the tender streams of life; that, furthermore, all beings return to the Divine Source after their dissolution here; that death has no place anywhere; but that they ascend conscious and alive to high Heaven, each to its Star" -- or Constellation.
Now there is a world of esoteric teaching contained in the above lines which it is obviously impossible to elaborate here; but two or three words may be helpful and useful. In the first place, then, it is evident that, as voiced by Vergil and practically all the greater minds of antiquity, all Nature was considered to be alive, and forming in its myriad families and ranges of things a vast organism or organic entity. This thought when pondered upon destroys immediately the utterly foolish and preposterous assertion so often made by late Christian writers that the ancients -- the reference by these writers is usually to the ancients of Greece and Rome -- had no philosophical and profoundly religious conception of a spiritual continuation of consciousness after death; and no statement could be more divergent from the fact.
Next it is likewise clear that, as illustrated in this extract from Vergil, the consciousness continuing after death was not the petty, weak and often foolish self-consciousness of the average man, but was what is called the Spiritual or Monadic consciousness. This is evident enough from the language here used by Vergil, who speaks as a type of the initiates of his time in saying that after dissolution "all beings return to the Divine," doing so "conscious and alive," for obviously the merely imperfect human mind or self-consciousness sinks into the temporary oblivion of the devachanic sleep because utterly unfit, as being insufficiently unfolded in evolution, to rejoin divinity -- which is exactly what the Monad, the purely spiritual being, does.
The third and last comment is the following, and what is here said bristles with difficulties of many kinds. Vergil refers to 'bees' in particular; and it would seem rather trifling to say that singling bees out for particular mention was merely a poetic whimsy in view of other statements made by ancient writers treating of archaic zoomythology who likewise particularly mention bees -- and this both in Rome and in Greece -- as being a name used for disciples, or what in India are frequently called chelas. In Greece, Melissai or Bees, was a title given in certain cases to priestesses having certain recondite functions to perform; while frequently 'honey' or 'honey-dew' is spoken of by some ancient writers as signifying or symbolizing Wisdom, or wisdom gained from life's experiences: just as the bees collect and digest the nectar of flowers, turning it into honey, so do human beings collect knowledge from life and spiritually and mentally digest it into Wisdom. We are reminded of the 'ambrosia' and 'nectar' on which the gods, the spiritually wise ones, feed, and which nourishes them.
Evidently, then, Vergil had, for those who could understand him, an eye to the Mystery-teaching just briefly outlined, and singled out bees therefore in especial as having "a portion of the Divine Mind and aethereal streams therefrom."
Some lines farther on in this same Book IV of his Georgics, Vergil recites a tale, fascinatingly interesting to those who understand his esoteric meaning, of how 'bees' may be produced from the carcass of a young bull. This has caused no small amount of merriment and possibly of derision among wiseacres of our more modern days; yet some knowledge of ancient zoomythology and of the Esoteric Teaching shows one clearly to what Vergil had reference. Let it suffice here, then, to state briefly that just as the horse was an emblem of the Sun or Solar Powers, so were the bull and cow universally considered as emblems or symbols of the Moon and of the very mysterious functions that the Moon plays in nature and on Earth generally, as well as her functional place and activities in the experiences of the neophyte undergoing the dread trials of initiation. One is likewise reminded of the well-known picture supposed to represent Mithras slaying the Bull -- a collection of esoteric hints of deepest significance. We see here what Vergil meant as to 'bees' being born from the conquered bull -- in other words, the neophyte prevailing over the dread lunar influences after 'slaying the Moon' and rising therefrom as a 'Bee.' Verbum sapienti. (return to text)
379. The fact of the fundamental or essential identity of the Monadic essence within every human being -- and the same rule applies to all entities great or small in the Cosmic Universe -- in other words, our essential oneness with the Spiritual Universe, is one of the oldest of human intuitions, and forms, as before said, an important doctrine in the Esoteric Philosophy. The teaching is found among initiated and mystical writers in every land of the globe and among every race of men.
Our essential oneness with the Universe, involving the teaching that man comprises within his constitution, at least in potency, what the Universe contains is well set forth, as an illustration in point, by the Greek Neo-Platonist philosopher, Plotinus, who, in his Enneads, 'On Providence,' III, iii, 3, wrote in substance as follows:
"Now although it be that the Ego (the Monad) is free and untrammeled in choosing what it will, nevertheless by that choice itself the Ego plays its part in the perfectly arranged Universe. One's individuality does not enter from outside into the universal plan, but one is an intrinsic part of it all -- oneself and its special disposition."
380. The extremely difficult, recondite, and intricate teaching contained in the preceding four paragraphs of the text above is perforce given only in outline, and the author takes it for granted that the thoughtful student will fill in for himself, by working along analogical lines, a good deal of the doctrine which otherwise it would require volumes to elucidate. We have here, it may however be stated as a help, the four basic or fundamental portions of the human compound constitution, to wit: (a) the Divine Monad, whose range of consciousness and functional activity is over and in the Galaxy; (b) its Ray, the Spiritual Monad, whose range of self-consciousness and functional activity is over and in the Solar System; (c) the Higher or Spiritual Soul, the Ray from the Spiritual Monad, whose self-consciousness and functional activity is over and in the Globes of the Planetary Chain; and finally (d) the Human Ego, the Ray from (c), whose self-consciousness and functional activity belong to our Earth and last for the duration of a single incarnation.
In all the above statement, the usage of the verb 'endures' or 'lasts,' or any similar term, does not mean that the entity so enduring or lasting is annihilated when its term of activity is ended, but only that it passes at the end of such term of activity into inner and spiritual realms for its repose, recuperation, and from which felicitous repose in due course of the cycling ages it reissues forth to begin a new 'life-term' on higher planes -- all of which has been more or less described elsewhere.
It should likewise be remembered that each one of these four fundamental or basic Monads of the human constitution is a derivative or ray or child of the Monad just 'above' it in spiritual power and unfoldment. Furthermore it is to be remembered that each one of these four Monads is itself an evolving entity, and consequently is pursuing its own pathways in ever-unfolding evolutionary development or growth. Thus we have four 'contemporaneous' lines of evolution followed by the human constitution considered as a unit-composite: to wit, the Divine, the Spiritual, the Manasic or Egoic, and the Human. Added to these, it should not be forgotten, is the physical body which in a very real sense is the 'soul' or carrier of all the other elements of the constitution when Man is in incarnation, and thus it is that the human body itself is slowly evolving, i. e., unfolding, due to the unceasing spiritual and intellectual-psychical and astral urge within it impelling it forwards on the evolutionary pathway. Just here it is seen that the Theosophist is a strict evolutionist in the etymological sense of this word as teaching unceasing growth or unfoldment by means of forces working in the being from within outwards, although it would be more correct or accurate perhaps to say that the Theosophist is an emanationist, or an emanational evolutionist -- or an evolutional emanationist, if this be preferred. (return to text)
381. There are many signs in modern literature, as is well exemplified in scientific works of recent publication, that the whole spirit of our modern era is moving back towards the ancient appreciation of the value of analogical reasoning and study in dealing with matters which concern the universe as well as man's place therein. Such signs of the times, proving the shifting of mental outlook, appear on every hand. One such sign is a clever little work just published (1934), entitled The Descent of the Atom: A Layman's Creation, Anonymous, which is both novel and refreshing in many respects, as well as being curious and interesting. Although written apparently by a layman and not by a professional scientist, the writer of this booklet has quite intuitively grasped the basic factor in the proper understanding of Nature, to wit, that any comprehension of the universe that is aught more than mere guesswork must be based on analogy and analogical reasoning. Although the writer is not a Theosophist, there are certain ideas which he elaborates which are fairly well in line with similar thought in the Esoteric Philosophy, and he has certain intuitions of Theosophical truths which are highly creditable to him, although he probably has no knowledge of this himself.
The Cosmic Spirit permeates the constitution whether of atoms or of man, whether of star or planet, whether of God or Elemental, and each one of these entities and any entity anywhere in Boundless Space has its modicum or manifested portion of the Cosmic Will, Cosmic Intelligence, and Cosmic Substance. The differences are differences of degree in evolutional unfolding; so that one may say with perfect truth that even the atom or one of its component parts, an electron, has as much 'will' or even 'free will' as it has unfolded from the spiritual essence within itself.
The attributing to the atom or to its component electrons of a certain modicum of 'will' or of 'free will' is not intended to be in any wise an approval of or assent to the modern scientific doctrine which for a time at least seems to have gained no small popularity, the doctrine or idea of 'indeterminacy.' Whatever the scientists who have uttered this idea and are responsible for its parentage may have had or may have in mind by the use of this term 'indeterminacy,' it is not to be forgotten that this term involves conceptions of a purely materialistic character, which is but another way of saying that any such 'indeterminacy' is not so much the ascription of a tiny intelligence or a tiny portion of free will to the atom or its electronic constituents, as it seems to be a vague and nebulous notion that whatever may be the cause of such action by the electron, it is 'chancy' or haphazard, or otherwise fortuitous. If this deduction is correct, as it certainly seems to be, the ascription of indeterminate action to the constituents of the chemical atom is apparently but the old materialistic 'determinism' under a new name and with a new face.
The main difficulty in judging or even in understanding will or intelligence as working either on the macrocosmic or universal scale, or in the infinitesimal worlds, seems to lie in the fact that on the one hand the scale is so great in magnitude that the human intelligence finds difficulty in following the processes of cosmic will and intelligence in their operative details; and in the other scale, the infinitesimal, the forces at work are so minute and operate with such smallness of field and rapidity in function that the details are bewilderingly confusing. Thus, while the nature of the will or of the intelligence in all three is identic in essence, the human brain-mind on the large scale cannot see the trees on account of the wood, and in the small scale cannot see the forest on account of the bewildering detail which surrounds its observing vision. It is therefore just here that the value of correct analogical reasoning based upon general principles applicable throughout Nature becomes so valuable as a luminous guide, although it should be likewise said that there are such things as false analogies, or false analogical reasoning, which can be very misleading because departing from principles of general character. Against this one must be constantly on guard. (return to text)
382. Lest there be any confusion in the wording of the paragraph to which this present footnote is appended, and the reader suppose that the other six globes of Terra's Planetary Chain are the other six 'Principles' or 'Elements' of our physical globe Earth, the reader is requested to bear in mind that each one of the seven globes of Terra's Planetary Chain is a complete septenary individual in and for itself: i. e., that each of the seven globes has its own seven principles just as a man has. It is these seven Globe-individuals which form together what is termed a Planetary Chain, thus providing an example of one of the groups or aggregates or unions spoken of in the preceding paragraph where mention was made of the repetitive imbodiments of all things in the Universe.
Nevertheless, there is a certain analogy, and indeed a very strong one from one aspect, between the seven globes of a planetary chain and the seven Principles of any one globe, for the reason that every one of the seven globes of the planetary chain helps to make or to form the composition of any one globe, each contributing to all, and all contributing to each. The analogy with man's own septenary constitution is likewise exceedingly strong, because just as in man's constitution there are the seven principles or elements, in which actually work seven Monads, or Monadic centers, each to each and of differing grades of evolutional unfolding, so the seven globes of a planetary chain, are, each one, representable as a Globe-Monad, all the seven globes thus combining to produce the sevenfold constitution of the planetary chain.
Yet despite these analogies, the truth first above stated in this footnote must not be forgotten, that each one of the globes of any planetary chain is a unitary Individual in and for itself, and therefore has each one its own seven principles.
The matter is complicated enough indeed, and needs no small amount of careful thought and study on analogical lines for the complex picture to be grasped even in outline.
Finally -- and the following statement it is sincerely hoped will not discourage the average reader -- the situation is rendered still more difficult of clear understanding without adequate study because of the fact that the 'seven Principles' above spoken of, whether referring to globes or to any unitary individual such as man, are the manifested portions of the constitution, there being in strict truth twelve globes in a planetary chain, and either ten (or twelve) principles in the constitution of a human being, but as the uppermost five globes of a planetary chain exist on Cosmic Planes almost impossible of comprehension of ordinary human intellect, and as the same observation applies with respect to the principles of the human constitution, the highest parts whether globes or human principles, belonging to the 'unmanifest' portions of a complete entity, are usually omitted in exoteric or popular writings. The reader is referred to the author's Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, passim, for further details of positive interest in this complex picture if he be interested in them. (return to text)
383. Plotinus, in his Enneads in the section entitled 'Our Guardian Daimon,' III, iv, 5, writes on one phase of the post-mortem destiny of the human Monad or Ego or Soul, having an eye at the same time fixed upon the characteristic functions of the Spiritual Monad. The following is a paraphrase of this difficult passage of his:
"Our souls have their respective destinies according to their different capacities and powers, and when freed from this life each soul will dwell in a celestial body (or planet) agreeing with and consonant to the disposition and faculties which in their aggregate constitute the characteristic principle of individuality of each soul.
"Truly freed souls are they which have risen above the bonds of personality and therefore all the fatalities of earth-life and all that appertains to the material world."
The great Greek Neo-Platonist in the second paragraph of this citation has reference to what the Esoteric Philosophy calls 'freed Monads,' Jivanmuktas. (return to text)
384. The mysteries concerning the Moon, Earth's satellite, are very many and exceedingly recondite. Our satellite, whom poets have praised as a pale goddess of night or as the inspirer of human affection, etc., etc., utterly failing to grasp the part she plays throughout all nature on Earth, is intimately connected with everything that happens on Earth, not only as intermediary but very often indeed as the direct causal agent; and this observation applies not merely to such things as many meteorological phenomena, but also to the various Root-Races of mankind, and to many other things besides these, such as the physical and even moral well-being of human beings collectively and distributively.
Her influence is dual; at one time positive and at another time negative according to circumstances and contingent causes. We can understand why the ancients, as for instance the Romans, called her either Deus Lunus, the god Moon, or Dea Luna, the goddess Moon.
So great indeed is her influence on Earth and so maleficent as a rule, despite the fact that the lunar emanations are tremendously instrumental in such matters as growth, that the secrets of the Moon have always been most carefully guarded in the esoteric schools and at the same time are the secrets which are the first to be most carefully explained as precautionary warnings to disciples undergoing spiritual training.
The Moon was once far closer to the Earth than at present, and also a good deal larger than she now is. Since then she has been gradually receding in place from the Earth, although exceedingly slowly, and gradually dissolving into her component life-atoms. Before the Earth shall have reached her seventh round our Moon will have entirely vanished, as the processes of molecular and atomic decay are proceeding steadily. (return to text)
385. For further information concerning the seven-day week and its history and reasons for being, the reader who is interested is referred to Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, where the matter is treated at some length. (return to text)
386. It may be as well to advert briefly to certain modern speculative theories -- or to one among them at least -- which very recently has gained scientific prominence due to the admirable work, in at least one respect, of Einstein of Relativity-fame. The present writer has more than once expressed his sincere admiration for the sometimes intuitive and always more or less metaphysical mathematical labors of this famous scientist, who seems to be not only an exceedingly able man but one of genuinely kindly and altruistic spirit; but in so far as Dr. Einstein's recent work on the nature of gravitation seems to go, one is bound to say that it wanders widely from the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy. There is no possible question that the fundamental idea in Einstein's relativity-hypothesis, to wit, the relative nature of all things that are, each to each and all to all, and that none of the phenomena of Nature is absolute in character, is unquestionably true, and it is one of the basic principles of the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy. Yet his mathematical demonstrations or studies are quite another thing, and are to be accepted or rejected according to the intuitions or mathematical skill of others. In particular his ideas with regard to the nature of gravitation as being, if the present writer has grasped his thought properly, a warping or distortion of space in the proximity of material bodies seem to be a mathematical pipe-dream, purely and simply, although doubtless very creditable indeed to the gentleman's mathematical ability and skill in the use of this instrument of human thought.
It must never be forgotten that mathematics itself cannot show truth or proclaim truth unless the original idea already exists in the mind of the mathematician; in other words, the mathematical chopper will only produce at its spout what has been cast into the mathematical machine. Mathematics cannot invent truth nor produce it, for mathematics is an instrument for demonstrating or exposing relations and quantities in proper logical order. It can do naught else. Furthermore, it is a logical incongruity to suppose that Space -- an abstraction -- can be 'warped' or 'distorted,' for we must constantly bear in mind that it is only material entities or things themselves which are subject to warping or distortion.
Now the foregoing concluding observations do not mean that spacial extension -- which is doubtless what Dr. Einstein has in mind rather than abstract space -- cannot be affected and even tremendously affected when it forms the 'field' or 'neighborhood' of some aggregation of cosmic matter, such as a sun or planet, for such 'spacial' extension is matter itself. It has been stated elsewhere in the present work that so-called 'empty space' is anything but empty; it is absolutely full; it is 'solid,' after the fashion that has already been set forth. Of course a sun or a planet or any other celestial body affects most powerfully all things in its immediate or more distant neighborhood, according to gravitational and electro-magnetic laws; but to say that this effect produced by vital magnetism or gravitation is gravitation itself is a logical hysteron proteron, a mistaking the effect for the cause.
Lastly, even were our scientific big-wigs to accept the Einsteinian hypothesis that gravitation per se does not exist, but that it is only caused in appearance by the 'warping' or 'distortion' of space in the vicinity of aggregated material bodies, we should then immediately be faced with the same old problem under a new mask, to wit: why should aggregated material produce 'warping' or 'distortion,' bringing about merely apparent gravitation? Thus then, far from solving the nature of gravitation or explaining it, the new Einsteinian theory merely displaces something which is real, by a new notion descriptive merely in other words of the same thing we already knew, and would itself need some Einstein of the future to 'explain' it. How long will the new theory last? (return to text)
387. Contra Celsum, Bk. VI, ch. xxi, xxii. (return to text)
388. Gen., xxviii, 12. (return to text)
389. The said Vision may be found in the great Roman orator and statesman Cicero's work, The Commonwealth, at the beginning of the Sixth Book thereof. It may be said in passing that this is one of the most interesting and mystical relics of Graeco-Roman antiquity, and well merits the careful reading, indeed the study, of everyone who is interested in not only the substance of, but the manner in which initiated Greek or Roman writers treated of, mystical subjects in their public works which they could not, because sworn to silence, elaborate in fulness in any published writing. The oath of secrecy was carefully observed. (return to text)
390. The Chambered Nautilus. (return to text)
391. What is briefly said in the text above concerning the passing of the Monad to the various ones of the seven sacred planets is of course only a sketch, the barest outline, of what is in very truth a teaching of indescribable wonder and philosophical and religious import. The author is deeply sensible of the fact that so brief an outline is open to all the critical attacks of various kinds that any sketch is subject to; but this is not his fault.
The main point, however, is to direct the attention of the reader to the fact that there is a vast fund of information concerning these matters which is comprised in Esoteric Theosophy, and which is withheld from public exposition not from any motives of selfishness, but solely because, without previous and adequate study, it is impossible to understand the deeper lines thereof.
It would seem well to add the following comment also: what has been given out in exoteric or public treatises or books on Theosophy by modern Theosophical writers who have followed faithfully the teachings of H. P. Blavatsky, is true, and hence it should not be understood that anything contained in the present work is subversive or contradictory of these earlier and illuminating Theosophical thoughts which first came from the pen of H. P. Blavatsky and which have been popularized by her faithful followers. The present writer has consistently labored to do his best to give in each one of his books a somewhat larger and fuller instalment from the same source whence H. P. Blavatsky drew her own teachings; and consequently whatever he has written or said orally has been amplification but in no sense substitution thereof. These earlier Theosophical teachings which began with the publishing of Isis Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky, and which she continued to give until her death in 1891, were really a revelation to the age to which they were delivered, and still contain the same noble truths that they did then, as is obvious enough; but forty years more or less have passed since her death, and what was new to the generation for which she wrote has become familiar enough to the generation or two living since her time. The efforts of the present writer are to support and enlarge. (return to text)
392. As the great Plotinus wrote, his remarks here being condensed:
"Each and every 'soul,' each in agreement with its own character, follows an inescapable and overruling law of drifting to that to which its tendencies (or character) urge it, which is the type (or image) of its constitution and preference. No outside force or god convicts it to the appropriate imbodiment. Each 'soul' has its own destined hour, and when this hour arrives it falls and enters the body thus fit for it, obeying the instinctive urge. Thus like always enters like. One descends now, but another later."
-- Enneads, 'On the Soul,' IV, iii, 13 (return to text)