Theosophical University Press Online Edition
It should be obvious from a careful perusal of the contents of the preceding chapter, of which the present chapter is a continuation dealing with somewhat more technical aspects of the theme under consideration, that the basic conception of the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition in this manner of visible and invisible worlds is, that the Universe in all its parts, which is equivalent to saying in all its hierarchical structure, is fundamentally and throughout alive. It is a living Organism, builded in every part or range of interlocking and interworking forces, playing upon, in, and through, the various grades or degrees of ethereal substances, which last, even from the standpoint of ultra-modern science, are themselves but concreted or crystallized forces.
Each and every one of these forces, considered distributively, is itself a manifestation of an intelligence; and these forces, considered collectively, thus compose the energic aspect of that equivalently vast aggregate of intelligences which in their unity themselves form the collective Third Logos of the Cosmos. These Cosmic Logoi, again, each one the formative or so-called Creative Logos of its own Hierarchy, are actually innumerable in their activities in the fields of Infinitude. Thus, when the Theosophist speaks of a Universe, of a Hierarchy, of a Logos, it is always pertinent to ask oneself: 'Which Universe, which Hierarchy, which Logos is here intended?'
As has so often been stated during the course of the study imbodied in the preceding chapters of this work, the small -- whatever its degree of infinitesimal or cosmic magnitude -- mirrors the Great, whatever its scale of cosmic magnitude may be; for throughout all Being there runs one universal identic Consciousness, one universal common Life; and in consequence of the foregoing, that fundamentally unitary system of Cosmic Law thus of necessity pervades all manifestation, and reduces all, thus of necessity subordinate to it, to its sway.
It is upon the foregoing grand truth of Universal Nature that is based the sublime principle of analogy throughout the UNIVERSE, inclusive as this last is of all minor universes, hierarchies, systems of worlds visible and invisible, and the countless hosts of living, sensate, conscious and self-conscious beings and entities which are the denizens, inhabitants and populations thereof.
The Esoteric Tradition recognises no so-called 'dead matter' anywhere in Infinitude, for from what precedes it is at once clear that whatever is, and all that is, is de facto, in greater or less degree, not only intelligent, i. e., conscious, and often self-conscious, but first and foremost is alive.
The Cosmic Logos has been alluded to as an aggregate, and so verily it is. Yet it is something more than a mere aggregation of entities which in their inseparable union or unity thus form an entity comprising them all and greater than them all. The Logos itself is an Individual, a Cosmic Spirit, and for this reason is called a Cosmic Hierarch -- i. e., the 'Supreme Spirit' for its own Hierarchy; for it is the source and origin thereof, as well as the all-inclusive Individual which comprehends within the compass of its own being the hosts of minor beings and entities and things through which it lives and expresses itself.
Just here is one of the most difficult problems of the Esoteric Philosophy: How the One becomes the Many during the course of its manvantaric manifestations, remaining withal apart, and throughout manvantaric time superior to its various component portions. As Krishna phrases it in substance in the Bhagavad-Gita: "I manifest this universe with portions of myself, and yet remain separate and superior thereto." (77)
Just so, as another illustration, is man in his septempartite or decempartite constitution a hierarchical aggregate of hosts of beings over which the spirit of his constitution presides as the Hierarch or Logos, remaining separate and distinct from its children which it emanates during each incarnation; and yet these hosts of beings form in their aggregate man's constitution or the vehicle of his spirit.
It is a fact difficult for most Western minds to grasp that consciousness is both essential or unitary and yet is during manifestation divisible into minor or children consciousness-points. Just as the cosmic consciousness, which one may figurate to oneself as an ocean of conscious life, almost automatically divides itself into droplets, these droplets being the minor component individuals of itself and forming the various hierarchical classes, so is man, the mirror of the Universal Great, an essential or unitary consciousness which, during its manifestations or incarnations, extrudes from its own being or essence hosts of consciousness-atoms, so to speak, droplets of itself, each one of such droplets or atoms nevertheless having its own inherent and innate individuality.
It was this idea which the Buddha-Gautama had in mind when, as his thought has been transmitted to us by later ages, in describing the final resolving of the minor into the greater, the Great Teacher said, "the Dewdrop slips into the shining Sea" -- here adopting the beautiful phrasing of Sir Edwin Arnold. (78)
Man, therefore, like every other unitary or monadic being in Universal Nature, is composite, a compound entity, at least during the periods of evolutionary manifestation; and the respective portions of this composite aggregate exist on different planes, or in different worlds, because of differing degrees of ethereality or substantiality or rather of materiality. Thus it is that six-sevenths or seven-tenths -- according to another method of enumeration -- of man's constitution is invisible, unseen, because resident upon and in, and functioning upon and in, planes of cosmic being far more ethereal than is the physical sphere thereof, upon and in which man's physical body lives.
Following exactly the same line of thought, the teaching tells us of the invisible spheres of the Universe which thus are six-sevenths -- or seven-tenths -- of the Cosmic Whole, and are therefore invisible and intangible to the sense-organs of physical man.
There are two manners of viewing the Universal Aggregate or Cosmic Whole. The first is visioning the All as an immense and individual system of interlocking and interworking worlds or realms or spheres or planes, from the divine of the Universal Hierarchy through all intermediate planes and worlds and spheres, downwards to the physical; and this is the simpler and easier way. The second, and somewhat more difficult of mental visualization or picturing, is retaining the foregoing as the background or framework, and then upon this background or in this framework, mentally viewing the manner in which the Universal Aggregate as an Individual sub-divides itself into hierarchical details of structure.
We have then, first, the invisible and to us humans intangible worlds and spheres of the general Kosmos with which we are in kosmic relations only; and second, and as an example of what exists elsewhere, our own Earth-chain of seven distinct and individual globes which are likewise inextricably connected and bound up with the so-called 'Seven Sacred Planets' of the solar system, and the respective sevenfold worlds or globes belonging to each one of these Seven Sacred Planets. These latter, the Sacred Seven, together with the Earth-chain, form a particular Hierarchy within the general solar realm or kingdom, because they are closely united in origin and destiny; and in evolutionary growth and development they form a closely interconnecting body corporate, an especially aggregated part of the solar system.
Every one or the physical globes that we see scattered over the fields of space is accompanied by six invisible and superior globes, forming what are called a Chain. This is likewise the case with every sun or star, and, as said above, with every planet, and indeed with every moon of every planet. It is likewise the case with those wandering radicals both of the Galaxy and of our own solar system, respectively called the nebulae and the comets: all are septiform entities, i.e., all have a sevenfold constitution even as man has, because the Great, as stated above, of necessity mirrors itself in each part of itself. The Esoteric Teaching is, in fact, that there are twelve globes to any chain, though the number seven is commonly used for study and exoteric or open exposition, for the reason that these seven are the lower septenary of the duodenary whole, and because it is obviously easier to study and understand the interconnexion and interworkings of seven things than it is of a larger number.
Each such chain is a cosmic unit or individual, as for instance, the Earth's planetary chain. The other six globes of our Earth-chain are of course utterly invisible and intangible to our physical sense-apparatus or organs, because these organs were evolved to cognise this earth-plane and none other, and the other six globes being existent two by two on three planes of the solar system higher than and superior to, and consequently more ethereal than, our physical plane, where our Earth-globe is. These three higher or inner planes or worlds are each one superior to the world or plane immediately beneath or inferior to it. Thus our Earth-globe is the lowest of all the seven globes of our Earth-chain. Three globes precede it on the downward arc, and three globes follow it in the ascending arc, of evolution.
Now in order more clearly to set forth the schematic delineation of this hierarchical structure of the solar system, or, indeed, of our Home-Universe, the following diagram is given, the names in this case appropriated to the respective planes or spheres being those used for that purpose in Brahmanism. In the Vishnu-Purana, one of the most interesting of ancient Indian works, the invisible worlds are divided into fourteen lokas of which seven belong to the superior class or range, and seven to the inferior. Another name for the seven inferior worlds is talas; and in this scheme of enumeration the earth is taken as the midway-point, and is reckoned as the first in the ascending scale, and also the first in the descending scale. There are other methods of placing our own world-system in a hierarchical succession of steps or stages, but the enumeration that is almost always found is either seven of any range or class, or nine, or ten, the differences depending upon the manners of viewing the hierarchical succession of worlds, and therefore of enumerating them as ascending or descending.
The Sanskrit word loka means 'place' or 'locality,' or, as a Theosophist would say in this connexion, a world or sphere or plane; whilst the word rupa means 'form.' Now 'form' is here employed technically -- not in the strictly popular sense in which it is used in European tongues; and it signifies an atomic or monadic aggregation about the central indwelling consciousness, thus forming a vehicle or body or transmitter thereof. arupa, equivalently, means 'formless,' but this word 'formless' is not to be taken so strictly as to signify that there is no 'form' of any kind whatsoever; it means only that the 'forms' in the spiritual worlds, as outlined in the above scheme, are of a spiritual type or character, and of course are far more ethereal, indeed spiritual, than are the 'forms' of the rupa-lokas.
The technical meaning might better be expressed by saying that rupa-lokas are lokas or worlds where the body-form or vehicle is more or less definitely outlined in, and composed of, matter, ethereal or physical; whereas in the arupa-lokas, or the spiritual worlds or spheres or planes, the vehicle or body or transmitter is to be conceived of rather as an enclosing sheath of energic substance. If one were to speak of the entities in these arupa-lokas, at least in the higher portions of them, as being clothed in bodies of light, doubtless this expression would more closely convey the real idea, because even in modern physical science, light is substantial -- as the Ancient Wisdom likewise teaches it to be, although obviously not the light-substance or light-stuff of our physical world. While the three highest rupa-lokas are relatively immaterial to us inhabitants of the lowest or Bhur-loka, and even more so the three higher or arupa or spiritual spheres, nevertheless they are in all cases as substantial or seeming solid to their respective inhabitants as is our physical sphere to us.
It should be noted further that the seven lokas of this schematic diagram, which include the three of the arupa and the four of the rupa, include all the manifested universes -- that is to say, the universes subject to manifested imbodiment, counting from the spiritual down to the spheres of most material density, and therefore actually including -- though it is not sketched in this diagram -- even what is alluded to by the Theosophist as the mystery of the 'Eighth Sphere.' Concerning this last or Eighth Sphere, nothing further can be said in a published work, except the passing statement or incidental comment that it is a sphere even more material than is our Earth, and may perhaps be best and most briefly described as the sphere of 'absolute' matter: in other words, the lowest possible stage or step of our own Home-Hierarchy, in which last stage matter has reached its ultimate in density and physical concretion.
Beneath this last stage begins a new Hierarchy; just as on the highest stage, in other words above our own present Home-Hierarchy, could we consciously ascend along the various stages or degrees or rungs of this Ladder of Life, we should pierce through the laya-center there existing and enter into the lowest existent or prevailing stage of the next Hierarchy superior to our own.
As regards the 'triangle in radiation' or radiating triangle, which the above diagram also presents, and which there is called the Pararupa-lokas, this triangle represents in symbolic form the aggregative summit or acme or top of the Ladder of our own Home-Hierarchy, and is to us children of this Hierarchy our Divine World. This Divine World is not only to be considered as the divine Living Seed whence flow forth in the cosmic periods of manifestation the seven grades or steps below it, but it is also the spiritual Goal towards which and into which all shall again be ultimately resolved when such a hierarchical or cosmic period of manifestation shall have concluded its course of evolution in self-expression.
It is seen from the above, that, strictly speaking, any Hierarchy is composite of ten degrees or stages or steps; or, if the highest of all counting downwards, or the first, is considered to be the same as the lowest of the next superior Hierarchy, we have nine degrees or stages or steps descending in successive ranges of worlds or planes. The difference, therefore, between seven and ten, or again seven and nine, is merely a matter of viewpoint and enumeration, and has no significance in itself. Any reader conversant with the theogonical mythological aspect of ancient and present-existing Oriental religions and philosophies, knows how frequently the numbers ten, nine, seven, five, four, and three, occur therein in relation to the various families or groups or hierarchies of the worlds and of the beings and things which respectively inhabit them.
It might be added here in passing that there are certain Oriental Yogins who teach of the Lokas and Talas rather as centers in the human body than as planes or spheres in the universe, which centers, if stimulated under proper training, enable one to attain greater knowledge of all planes of existence. But this teaching is inadequate because imperfect, and is true only because these inner centers are organs, or, as it were, the ends of living wires, to use an electrical metaphor, of which the other ends are fastened in the cosmic fabric, and are of the same substance as that fabric is. It is the teaching of the great Sages and Seers that the cosmical Universe, or the universal Cosmos, exists in a mayavi sense exterior to man, although it is likewise the teaching of the great Sages and Seers that the essence of man and the essence of the Universe are one. This last teaching is one which should be emphatically stated.
Theosophy uses the terms given in the preceding table in a larger sense than that employed in the Brahmanical system. It places not only our physical sphere in the lowest or seventh degree or stage of the above scheme, the Bhur-loka, but includes therein also our solar system and, indeed, our entire physical Home-Universe.
In order that the reader of this work, or the student of the Esoteric Tradition, may have at least an outline in his mind of the manner in which Nature is builded by and through and of and from the lokas and talas, the following observations are written with the desire to contribute something that may be helpful to that end.
The first thought to have clear in the mind is that these various lokas and talas are not separate from or distinct from the universe, and that they do not merely exist in the universe as a complex structure different from it. This idea is all wrong. The universe itself in its vast aggregate is these lokas and talas, which are mere names or descriptive appellations picturing the manner in which the universe itself is builded. The idea, therefore, is vastly different from the notions prevailing in the Occident about heavens and hells which exist within the body corporate of an ethereal or spiritual cosmos.
Were it possible, which it is not, to annihilate the lokas and talas, this would annihilate the universe itself; for, as said above, the lokas and talas are the universe.
The next thought to retain clearly in the mind is that these lokas and talas are not, distributively considered, water-tight or rather spirit-tight compartments of nature; the truth is the exact contrary of this. The lokas and talas from the highest to the lowest interpenetrate, interwork, interblend, and all of them together form the cosmic organism. Thus they are an organic unity.
Furthermore, because the Great mirrors into the small, every subordinate hierarchy, or series of subordinate hierarchies, repeats in itself or in themselves with perfect fidelity whatever exists in the Great, and this is because of the all-permeant Cosmic Life and fundamental or essential Cosmic Law, which, whatever its various ramifications in these subordinate hierarchies may be, works in identical fashion throughout them all. Thus it is that we have here again the same structural system that has been alluded to in other parts of the present work. Every subordinate hierarchy is an integral part of the Cosmic Whole, and therefore, as said above, repeats in itself and contains in itself all the laws, substances, functions, attributes, whatever it may be, that the Cosmic Whole contains.
As an illustration, our Galaxy, otherwise our Home-Universe, is a Grand Hierarchy mirroring all that is within a Hierarchy still more vast; similarly, in converse order, as our Galaxy is builded of groups of celestial bodies, i. e., the various suns with or without companion-planets, in other words of solar systems, therefore each such solar system is a subordinate Hierarchy faithfully repetitive in laws and substances and functions and of whatever exists in the all-inclusive Galactic Hierarchy.
Now then: Just as the Galaxy is builded of these lokas and talas, all interacting, all interblending, all interconnected, on a galactic scale, thus likewise every solar system in the Galaxy, our own solar system as an example, is likewise builded of lokas and talas, functioning, working, and structurally builded on the pattern set by the Greater Hierarchy, the Galaxy. Again, and following the same rule of repetition, which is but another way of saying the same rule of analogy, every planet in our solar system repeats in the small the same structural system of lokas and talas, such planetary system living within, and functioning within, and builded from, the same substances and forces, and controlled by the same laws that work in the larger Hierarchy, the solar system.
As above stated, every visible planet of the solar system is merely a representative, on this lowest or physical plane of the solar system, of a planetary chain composed of seven manifest globes and five relatively unmanifest globes. The seven manifest globes are to be considered as belonging to the Rupa-lokas or material worlds, as outlined in the schematic diagram hereinbefore given, whereas the five relatively unmanifest globes are to be considered as belonging to the Arupa-lokas or spiritual spheres, likewise designated in the diagram just mentioned. (79)
Thus it is seen that of the seven manifest planes or worlds of our Solar Systemic Hierarchy, each such solar plane or world comprises two globes of our own Earth's planetary chain, and identically so as regards the respective structures of the other planets of our solar system, except that the lowest globe, the fourth, is alone on its plane.
The following parallel columns of the Rupa-lokas and the seven manifest globes of our planetary chain will be instructive, and should be carefully studied.
In the above suggestive comparison of lokas and globes, it is of the first importance to remember that no single solar plane is a single loka acting alone, as for instance in the above comparison where it is stated that Globes A and G belong to the Mahar-loka. It is not to be understood that on this plane wherein function Globes A and G, the quality of Mahar is the only quality active or functioning therein. The truth is that these lokas interpenetrate each other; so that on every Cosmic Plane every single one of the seven lokas and the seven talas is not only manifest, but highly and strongly functional; but on each such solar plane, one of the lokas and one of the talas is predominant in its influence -- i. e., one pair of loka and tala is predominant thereon by and through the respective characteristic of each.
Thus our Bhur-loka of the physical world or of the physical solar system, or of the physical galaxy, nevertheless contains, interconnected with it, and contemporaneously and co-ordinately working through it, all the other lokas and talas, albeit the Bhur quality is predominant here; and thus it is that because of this predominance of the Bhur-characteristic, it is commonly called Bhur-loka with its correspondential tala called Patala. The same rule applies on the other cosmic planes.
Or again, let us take Globes A and G existing on and in the Mahar-loka with its corresponding tala. These two globes, A and G, have the predominating Mahar-loka characteristic; but nevertheless they are shot through and through with the influences and functions and characteristics of all the other six lokas and six corresponding talas, each loka, i. e., every one of the lokas, having its corresponding nether pole, so to speak, which is its corresponding tala.
These lokas and talas, furthermore, grow progressively more material in substance, functions, and characteristics, as they run down the scale from the Satya-loka to the Bhur-loka; yet, as emphatically stated above, the Satya-loka has its corresponding physical attributes because the Bhur-loka in its highest or most ethereal portions interpenetrates it; similarly the Bhur-loka has the functions, attributes, and characteristics, of the Satya-loka, because the Satya-loka in its 'lowest' aspects interpenetrates in and with the Bhur-loka. Every world, every plane, every sphere, is compounded of all the seven lokas with their corresponding talas, but nevertheless is characterized by the predominance of the functions and substances and forces belonging to the particular loka and tala which are most strongly manifest therein.
And, finally, before leaving this sub-theme of our chapter, the foregoing contains the reason, philosophically expressed, why even the lowest of beings or entities or things contains relatively latent within itself all the attributes and possibilities belonging to the higher realms or spheres -- i. e., the higher lokas and talas. Man himself is a luminous example in point. In his present manifested life he is a Bhur-loka-patala being, yet the ethereal portions of his constitution contain likewise the essences belonging to all the other lokas and talas. The Macrocosm repeats itself in the microcosm -- one of the grandest and most sublime generalizations of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Esoteric Tradition, wholly based as the latter is on Universal Nature herself in all its unimaginable beauty of symmetry in substance, force, and structure.
Ultra-modern science is coming with every lustrum, or five-year period, closer and closer to certain age-old teachings concerning the nature of matter and force and their origins in and from a common divine-spiritual prima essentia or primum substantiale. Thus it is the tendency of the minds of our greatest men of science today to derive the Universe and all in it from a pre-cosmic substance-energy, which men like Jeans, Eddington, Einstein, Planck, Younghusband, etc., attempt to describe their conception of in human terms such as 'a Cosmic Mathematician' or 'a Cosmic Artist,' which terms, nevertheless, when analysed, and the somewhat anthropomorphic coloring discarded, verge or tend towards a conception deriving the Universe and all in it from Cosmic Ideation.
Consider this vastly important point faithfully for a few moments. Our best minds thus derive the Universe and all in it from Mind or Consciousness possessing, obviously, intelligence and artistry in operation of cosmic magnitude. And from Mind, thus varying the strictly metaphysical thought of idealistic philosophers, they derive not only the gross physical universe and all that is in it, but all intermediate stages between. A most significant deduction indeed! It is strictly in line with, and as far as it goes, is faithful to, the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Esoteric Tradition, that all manifested being and life evolved itself forth, or unfolded itself, from Cosmic Thought. Thus the atom itself and all the minutiae of atomic structure from which our gross physical world is builded can with strict logic and propriety be spoken of as imbodied THOUGHT -- or, as the Esoteric Tradition would phrase the matter, Cosmic Thought expresses itself in innumerable hosts or armies of imbodying and imbodied entities and beings and things.
Following, therefore, the key-thought lying in the preceding paragraphs, we shall more readily understand how the entire structure of the universe is unfolded, unwrapped, i. e., evolved, stage by stage and degree by degree 'downwards' from the Cosmic Originant: or, what comes to the same thing, from the highest of the lokas and its corresponding and accompanying twin-tala. From Satya-loka with its accompanying twin-tala, therefore, in the beginning of manifested life, whether it be galaxy, or solar system, or planet, came or unrolled or evolved forth all subsequent or succeeding lokas in the downward arc of manifestation, each such loka in inseparable union with its accompanying tala or nether pole. Thus from Satya-loka rolled forth or evolved itself in manifestation the next succeeding loka on the downward arc, which is Tapar-loka; in exactly similar fashion, from Tapar-loka, containing likewise the reflected forces and essence of its parent the Satya-loka, rolled forth or evolved itself the Janar-loka, which thus contains not only its own swabhavic characteristics, but likewise includes in minor degree the swabhavic characteristics or essences or forces of its parent, the Tapar-loka, and its grand-parent, the Satya-loka.
Thus the unrolling or evolving forth of the universe -- or the solar system, or a planet -- proceeds in identically similar fashion through the succeeding lokas and talas, i. e., through Mahar-loka, Swar-loka, Bhuvar-loka, finally reaching the lowest of the hierarchical ladder, the Bhur-loka, our gross, physical World. When the bottom of the Ladder of Life is reached, when evolution in that particular hierarchy, be it galaxy, solar system, planet, etc., has concluded its unrolling matter-wards on the downward arc, then the converse procedure begins to take place: involution succeeds evolution, and all the vast and fascinating pageantry of the manifested hierarchy begins to inroll itself, to ascend what in Theosophy is called the Luminous Arc. This procedure takes place by the lowest portions of the Bhur-loka beginning to radiate away their energy into finer forms, such radiation gradually ascending through all the scale or degrees of the Bhur-loka, until finally the Bhur-loka disappears in radiation, and, what comes to the same thing and is perhaps more carefully expressed, the Bhur-loka is indrawn into the next higher Bhuvar-loka. The Bhuvar-loka then in its turn begins the process of disintegration, of dissolving, of radiation, and so proceeds until it is withdrawn into the next higher loka, or Swar-loka. Thus the process of indrawing continues steadily until finally, all the lower lokas and talas being indrawn, the Satya-loka is reached, and the same process begins there, until it too finally passes out of manifested existence into what in Sanskrit is called the Amula-mula, that is, into Mulaprakriti or Root-Nature, the substantial-spiritual Originant which in the beginning of manifestation was the fons et origo of all.
This process of rolling forth and then of inrolling of a universe or solar system or celestial body has been variously described and picturated in ancient literatures, but all have the fundamental conception, derivative originally from the Esoteric Philosophy. The Stoics taught this identic process of the universe being unfolded into its bewildering variety and maze and intricate patterns until the end of possibilities for that cosmic period was reached, when there immediately ensued the beginning of the return journey towards spirit, which took place by the exact reversal of what had produced the unrolling or unfolding. The Universe and all in it thus is inrolled, infolded, involved, finally reaching the period where the Universe that was and all its host of beings, entities, and things, pass back into the essence and life of the Cosmic Spirit, there to rest in unimaginable felicity, consciousness, and peace, until the time comes for a new world-period to begin a new evolution but on a higher plane.
Even in the crude statement of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures may be found very definite allusions to this process, especially to the process of involution, which the Christians called the Last Day or Day of Judgment, when everything shall have vanished and the last accounts shall be settled.
And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scrowl . . . . (80)
Or again, in the Christian New Testament is the same teaching:
And the heaven departed as a scrowl when it is rolled together. . . . (81)
Here the somewhat crude yet graphic symbol is used to picturate evolution as the unrolling of a scroll, consisting of one volume of the Cosmic Book of Life or one page thereof; and the reverse process or involution is figurated as a rolling up of the Book of Life or of the page thereof, whereby all things pass away, and what was is no longer to be seen.
The Seven Sacred Planets, alluded to in previous paragraphs, were called such by the ancients because they form with our Earth a Planetary Family. These seven and our Earth are much more closely connected among themselves than they are with the innumerable hosts of other worlds existing both in the solar system and in the general Kosmos. For there are literally scores of planetary chains in the solar system, some much higher than the planetary chain of Earth, some much lower than it. There are entire planetary chains within our solar system, of which we do not even see the lowest globe, for the reason that in these cases these lowest globes are above our Fourth Cosmic Plane, just as there are planetary chains so far beneath our Fourth Cosmic Plane that even the highest globes of these last are below our Fourth Cosmic Plane.
Yet all these planetary chains are as much component parts of the Universal Solar System as our Earth is, or as are Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc. Each such planetary chain, however invisible it may be to us, is an integral part of an organism, or organic union of chains playing their respective roles on the multi-myriad stages of the cosmic life, and are all of them the habitats of beings -- some of them far higher than we, some of them far inferior to us men, in evolutionary development.
All physical bodies in the sky that we see are fourth-plane globes, i. e., globes existing on the Fourth Cosmic Plane, and this statement is without exception, at least so far as our solar system is concerned. Even Father-Sun, which is not really a physical body, i. e., the Sun that our physical eyes can see, is a fourth-plane globe. But it is nevertheless a material body of highly ethereal character, and is matter in the sixth and seventh, or highest, states of matter, manifesting as light, hence as radiation.
Now the Seven Sacred Planets above referred to are those which we men know as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun as a substitute for a secret planet, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon also reckoned as a substitute for a secret planet. They are all most intimately and intricately connected not only with human destiny, but with the destiny of every entity of whatever kind or grade or class that the Earth contains. Including Earth, these eight planets, or in other words eight planetary chains, are the sacred Ogdoad of the ancients, so often referred to in the classical literature of Greece and Rome. As a matter of fact, however, there are not only Seven Sacred Planets, there are twelve of them, although because of the extremely difficult teachings connected with the five highest of this twelvefold system, only seven were commonly mentioned in Greek and Latin literature.
In the same manner exactly the globes of any planetary chain should be reckoned as twelve in number, of which five are rarely if ever mentioned in the exoteric literatures because of the extremely abstract and recondite character of the teachings connected with them. Thus it is that seven globes of a chain are the ones mentioned and partially described by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine.
Thus then there are twelve globes of our own planetary chain of Earth, and every one of the globes of this our chain is builded by one in especial, but by all in general, of the Twelve Sacred Planets or Planetary Chains that the ancients in their mystical writings at least hinted at. Our Earth, that is to say the physical globe, Earth, which is the fourth globe of our planetary chain as usually counted, has been especially builded and formed, and is watched over, and in a sense guided by, the planet Saturn assisted in such function and operation by our own physical Moon. Similarly, every other one of the twelve globes of our planetary chain has been builded by in especial, is watched over in especial, and is guided in especial, by one of the Twelve Sacred Planets of the ancients. Nevertheless, although each one of the twelve globes of the planetary chain of Earth is the particular ward of one of the twelve Sacred Planets, every one of the other eleven Sacred Planets has combined or co-operated in the past in forming such particular globe of our chain, the predominant influence, however, in such work and guidance flowing forth from that one of the twelve Sacred Planets which is the main Guardian of the globe it guides.
When we speak of the Seven Sacred Planets we must think rather of the ensouling divinities of them than merely of the physical bodies which are seen as spots of light, or with telescopic aid as disks of light. The Planetary Spirit of our own Earth is not the physical body, this rocky earth, although this last has life, the vital force which keeps it together, which makes it what it is -- which ensouls it, in other words. This life is the vital manifestation of the Planetary Spirit of Earth, which likewise infills our globe through this permeant life with seeds of mind.
Our Earth is a globe, the Sun is a globe, the stars are globes, because each one of these is the visible or physical body expressing and manifesting the operative vital and mental energy within and behind it, which latter makes it what it is. The interior elements or principles of every such physical globular body are themselves globular, and the outer or physical shell faithfully reflects or mirrors the inner or causal compound structure. Forces are poured into our world or globe constantly from within, and our world or globe in its turn by the same token is constantly pouring forces out of itself. The same may be said regarding the operations and functions of the vital forces in any globe of a planetary chain, and likewise applies and appertains to the precisely similar circulations of substances and matters. These last enumerated circulations of energic substances or matters may be called, if it be so desired, the different forms of radiation, involving radio-activity in all its various phases.
Modern scientists are today beginning to talk of the possibility of 'matter' vanishing or disappearing or dissolving in a burst of energy -- or what the Theosophist prefers to call force. In order to realize how subversive this is of the old science of our boyhood-days, it is sufficient to recall to mind one of the main pillars of the physical science of thirty or more years ago: the so-called Law of the Conservation of Energy, which states in substance that the Universe contains a fixed amount of energy, to which nothing can be added and of which not an iota can be subtracted, the energy within such a universe merely changing its forms.
This is a scientific doctrine which the Esoteric Philosophy has never been able to accept in the purely mechanistic or materialistic form in which it was enunciated; and in consequence, students of the Esoteric Tradition recognise with extreme gratification the newer light thrown upon this matter by the more recent discoveries in science, and the revolutionary deductions drawn from these new discoveries made by scientific men. While it may be relatively true, in a universal cosmic sense, that every cosmic body is a closed system, sufficient unto itself, more or less, as regards the forces and substances working within it, yet it has always been the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition that each such cosmic unit or organism, however vast, however small, is but a drop, a particle, a part, of a still vaster Cosmic Life in which such drop or part or minor closed system exists, and from which vaster Cosmic Life the minor unit is constantly receiving streams of forces and substances in continuous and unending flow, and which it, in equal degree, surrenders or returns to the surrounding or inclosing Cosmic Reservoir.
As an illustration, consider the constitution of man himself. Here we have a complex or compounded being, consisting of divers and diverse substances and forces, ranging from the divine through many intermediate degrees or stages to man's physical body. He is thus, in one sense, a closed system, yet he is constantly receiving from the circumambient universe an unceasing inflow of both forces and substances which feeds him and builds him, and which throughout the range of his constitution he thus uses; at the same time, he constantly and in the same unceasing manner returns to the circumambient sphere the forces and substances which he has received and used and which he finally rejects, excretes, or returns whence they came.
Or again, in the same manner, and following the same general rule of analogy operative everywhere, any planetary chain of the solar system, although each one as a unit is a closed system, nevertheless receives from the circumambient solar system, i. e., from the Sun and the different planetary chains other than itself, constant, unceasing, inflows of both force and substance, which are used for purposes of building and experience and are finally ejected or returned to pursue their interplanetary and intersolar circulations.
From these two examples or illustrations, which can be extended indefinitely to each larger inclosing system, such as Solar System and Galaxy, or as between Galaxy and Galaxy, the general reason is easily seen why the Esoteric Philosophy has always looked askance at the old scientific doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, which scientists themselves are at the present time equally suspecting of being at least inadequate. (82)
To put the matter briefly in other words: the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that every such closed system, whether it be universe, or galaxy, or solar system, or individual sun or planet, is an individual, possessing its own unitary mind, character, life, and type. Being rooted with divine-spiritual roots in the Boundless Universe, it receives in its highest parts a constant inflow of divine-spiritual forces and substances, which permeate throughout its structure or fabric, building and stimulating and inspiring, and which finally in various forms are radiated away from the system in streams of influence or energy -- call these streams by what name one please.
We thus have a picture of Individuals, fundamentally spiritual, growing from forces and substances welling up from within-above, and withal communicating their energies or rather forces to all other entities in the circumambient universe. Hence, every sun, every planetary chain, is a Spiritual Individual, fundamentally and essentially a Cosmic Spirit, to use a well-known phrase, appearing through karmic law or necessity at the beginning of every period of world-manifestation, running its evolutionary course therein, and sinking again into ineffable rest and peace when, the world-period has reached its culmination and final end -- only to reissue forth again from the bosom of the Universe when the time strikes for a new world-period to begin.
It was the guiding Souls or Spirits of the Seven Sacred Planets -- let us call them Seven, because H. P. Blavatsky wisely enough when she wrote disguised or hid the truth about the Twelve -- it is their guiding Souls which are the Kosmokratores, or World-Builders, so often mentioned by the old Greek philosophers. It was these Kosmokratores who builded our world, our entire planetary chain. In just the same way and following the same rule of action, our own planetary chain, including our own globe thereof, is a Kosmokrator or World-Builder aiding in the building and guidance of some other septenary (or duodenary) planetary chain: action and interaction everywhere throughout the Universe: everything interlocked and interworking. All the planetary chains, from the beginning to the end of the Solar Manvantara, or Solar World-Period, co-operate in the solidary work of building each others' respective structures, and infilling each other with the respective characteristic energies and radiations particular to and belonging to each such formative unit or Kosmokrator.
Thus it is that all the planetary chains throughout the solar system work together, aid each other, build each other; and all thus work out their common destiny together. As has been seen from the foregoing paragraphs, the Esoteric Tradition teaches that the solar system is alive throughout -- as indeed all solar systems are. The solar system is a living organic entity, its heart and brain combined in the Sun; and this system is composed of organs, just as, in the small, man's body is an organism composed of organs and incidentals such as flesh and bones and sinews and nerves and what not.
Likewise, and by the same tokens and following the same rule of reason, each planet of the solar system is an entity, a living entity. Our Moon, however, is an apparent exception, because it is a corpse and therefore cannot be called a living being, albeit its particles as particles are as much alive and as active in their small spheres as are the particles of the human corpse. But although a dead and dissolving entity, it is nevertheless septenary, because it is a chain, although a dead chain, of seven moons which were once a living system or organism. The Moon-chain, therefore, has seven bodies, seven dead bodies, which now represent what was the once living Moon or Moon planetary chain. The planetary chain of which the Moon in its first appearance was the reimbodiment aeons and aeons agone, had itself disintegrated into its component life-atoms, into the atoms of 'blue ether,' which ages and ages later re-collected by psycho-magnetic attraction to re-form, to become, to rebecome, the then new Moon-chain in its entirety. Long before we of Earth shall have attained our Seventh Round, our Moon, and all the globes of the Moon-chain, will have dissolved utterly away. This simply means that their component life-atoms will have then disintegrated and fallen apart, as do the atoms of every decaying physical corpse, and all those then disintegrated Moon-atoms will be drawn to the Earth and into the Earth, because attracted hither by the same psycho-magnetic forces which once builded the Moon-chain and later builded the Earth-chain.
When our Earth shall have reached its Seventh Round and have become ready to project its life-essences, which means its hosts of life-atoms, into 'neutral' or laya-centers in space in order to form the (future) Child of the Earth-chain, this Earth will then be or become the Moon of its (future) Child, the chain-to-be, the offspring of the Earth-chain. But our Earth-globe then will be dead, as the moon now is; and as the ages pass, dropping one by one into the ocean of bygone time, our Earth-chain will in its turn thus slowly and slowly disintegrate, dissolve, losing atoms by uncounted millions of millions every day, every year, to speak in human terms of time: until finally the dead body or corpse of this our Earth, and the dead bodies or corpses of all the globes comprising our present Earth-chain, will have in their turn disappeared into blue ether, and all the life-atoms composing them will have flown to rejoin this new reimbodiment, the chain-to-be. The planetary chains thus succeed one another in a regular series, exactly as the reincarnations of a man succeed one another in an identically similar and regular series.
The teaching about the reincarnation of the human Monad makes this matter of the reimbodiment of worlds very clear, for Nature in her operations repeats herself everywhere, although obviously no two processes in any series are identical in all details. Take a physical body: Every atom that is in a man's physical body -- excepting those that are in his body as guests, i. e., in it in transit, just passing through it -- every atom, which means practically all atoms composing this physical body, was the same atom, and all were the same atoms, that at one or another time helped to make or form his last physical body in the man's last imbodiment on Earth. Every atom that helps to make this physical body, when the man dies and again returns to Earth will go to form that new human body. The rule is fundamentally the same with the celestial globes, therefore with the planetary chains, and likewise the same with the Solar Chain, the septenary or more accurately the twelvefold Globe-chain of the Sun.
Father-Sun, said the ancient Greek and Roman poets, was encircled with seven radiating forces, with seven rays: twelve rays indeed, being the twelve great powers, the twelve great radiant forces flowing forth from its heart and brain; and each one of these rays, although aided by each one of the other eleven rays, is the spiritually active agent in building a globe in the planetary chain.
We thus see how intimate and intricate are the connexions combining all beings and things together. Every entity, every force, every substance, in the solar system, co-operates after its own fashion and with its own life and substance in building the bodies of every other being or entity in the solar system. In precisely the same manner, the solar system itself is interconnected and involved with the vital processes and structural framework of the surrounding Cosmos or Universe. Thus, our solar system and all in it is interconnected because interlocked with all the other solar systems of our Galaxy.
Hence there is the closest line of connexions as among the twelve Houses of the Zodiac, the twelve Sacred Planets of our solar system, the twelve globes in any planetary chain in the solar system, and indeed the Universal Solar System itself. Cosmic Nature being an organism, an organic entity, it is obvious that nothing within it is exempt from or can be excluded from whatever is or takes place within its encompassing range. Therefore each one of the globes of our own planetary chain, called the Earth-chain, is ruled over by, and is under the especial guidance of, its own particular or most closely linked portion of the Zodiac, just as in identically similar manner, each one of the twelve Sacred Planets also is.
Among the twelve Sacred Planets neither Neptune nor Uranus are counted, although these two latter planets of course belong to the Universal Solar System. (83) It should not be supposed that Neptune and Uranus are among the five superior planetary chains which are connected with the five superior globes of our Earth's planetary chain. (84)
Just as six of the Houses of the Zodiac are psycho-magnetic and even spiritual opposites or contraries of the other six Houses of the Zodiac, being in a sense reflexions of them, so are the lower five globes of the Earth's planetary chain copies or rather reflexions, which perhaps is a more accurate term, of the superior five globes of the twelve which make the Earth's planetary chain, working around the two middle globes which thus form as it were the hubs around the central axle.
Furthermore, as already hinted at in the preceding paragraph where an allusion is made to opposite signs of the Zodiac and the opposite globes of a planetary chain, planets are at times in esoteric astrology used as convenient substitutes for others, because in such case of substitution the spiritual and psychical resemblances are very great as between the components of any two such powers.
However, in what is said above, only hints are given because it is all a matter of difficult teachings in esoteric astrology. It may here be said in passing that there is indeed a genuine astrology; there is a great and noble Science based on Nature's recondite and sublime operations, which in ancient times was the genuine 'science of the stars,' but it then included vastly more than what now passes current in the Occident as 'astrology.' This Occidental astrology is but a relic, a fragment thereof, a few tattered remnants of the ancient astrological Wisdom combined with quite recent astrological hypotheses born of the imagination or intuition, as the reader will, of modern students.
The ancient Wisdom-Astrology dealt not only with the influences of the planets and the Sun and Moon and the stars on earth and therefore on human life, but it dealt with those celestial bodies primarily as being wholly animate entities; it showed in a conclusive, and what would be called today a scientific, manner our common origin with them and all other beings in the Universe; it showed not only how they affect us, but it showed also what relations we have with them, karmically and otherwise and both in the past and in the future.
There is, indeed, a genuine Astrology, and it is in very truth one of the main branches of the Archaic Wisdom, the Esoteric Tradition. As to consulting modern astrologers: even the tattered modern astrological remnants contain some elements of truth; but modern astrologers themselves are usually reduced mostly to guess-work, despite all their earnest sincerity and good will. The expert among them, all have a certain mathematical machinery which they manipulate more or less cleverly, and from the different ways in which this machinery works in any one instance they deduce, strive to deduce, the true and proper answer to their questioning, but, when all is said, the results are largely guess-work. If they knew the ancient and sublime Science, they would realize how relatively unimportant the modern descendant of the ancient Astrology is. Yet they believe, as does every student of the Esoteric Tradition, that we are intimately linked with the stars and the sun and planets, and all other celestial bodies, including, as the Esotericist believes and avers, nebulae and comets, not only because they act upon us, but because we act and react upon them, and likewise because we come from them and go to them in our peregrinations along the circulations of the Universe in a manner that is as fascinating as it is marvelously beautiful.
As a modern poet, Francis Thompson, says:
All things by immortal power
Near or far
Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star. (85)
It is a very truth that even the thought of a human being can touch with delicate tendril of force the corresponding body of every celestial globe; for in the grand organism which Universal Nature is, each feeblest vibration or flow of energy produces its corresponding effect, and the originating agent experiences a reaction therefrom in magnitude precisely equal to the originating causative act or impulse. This thought contains in itself the substance or essence of the teaching of Karman.
With reference to the statement that was made in a preceding paragraph to the effect that neither Neptune nor Uranus belongs to the twelve Sacred Planets which are most particularly connected with the building and evolution and therefore with the origin and destiny of the Earth's planetary chain, it may be well to add here a few observations, which, although of a more or less fugitive character, it is hoped will be of some value to the reader or student. Uranus is a member, as said above, of the Universal Solar System -- actually an integral part thereof, otherwise, an organ within the organism of the solar system. But Neptune is not such by right of origin in this Solar Manvantara. The planet Neptune is what we may perhaps call a 'capture.' One hears in these days of interesting recent discoveries along the lines of scientific chemical research and consequent theory, and of equally recent scientific deductions drawn from these discoveries and theories, to the effect that certain chemical atoms, composed as they are of points or 'wavicles' of electrical energy, at times become electrically hungry, probably due to the loss of an electron; and any passing electron is then captured by such an atom and with the capture the atoms become stable, electrically satisfied. Atoms sometimes lose electrons, which for some strange reason seem to be torn out of the atom and become vagrant in the atomic spaces, and for vast distances outside of the atom. Then the atom becomes 'hungry' again.
Now it is curious that according to modern chemical theory, when an atom captures a wandering or vagrant electron and thus becomes electrically satisfied, its electrical polarity changes. This idea the student of the Esoteric Tradition would call a true idea, true to Nature, and it is really a marvel how some of these physical chemists are approaching with each passing year ever closer to some at least of the doctrines of the Ancient Wisdom. Neptune we may call a capture in somewhat the same manner. It is no proper planet of our solar system. It would be correct, doubtless, to look upon Neptune as a captured comet of a certain age; for 'comets' in the Esoteric Philosophy can be of more than one kind. As a matter of fact, comets are merely the first stage in the evolutionary development of all planets, and of all suns too for that matter, because there are planetary comets and solar or cosmic comets -- that is, comets which become planets around a sun, and comets which become suns.
As examples, Encke's comet, if it still exists, de Vico's, and Biela's, are three comets that belong as natives to our solar system. They have through the ages, in elliptic orbits, followed regular paths around the Sun; and as time goes on these ellipses should tend to become more circular, and then these comets, if they are not destroyed before reaching this period in their development, will finally settle in life as respectable infant-planets, young planets. They are what one might call planets in a condition preceding their first Planetary Round. To speak plainly, they are reimbodiments of former planetary chains which are now returning to a new manvantaric course in the solar system.
Since Neptune is a capture, it is not connected with the twelve Houses of our Zodiac after the manner that are so connected the true and proper planets of our solar system. Neptune, furthermore, has no genetic connexion with our solar system, but it does influence our solar system, nevertheless, and that strongly, and will continue to do so as long as it remains one of the bodies thereof. Not only does it change the entire polarity, electrically speaking, of our solar system, but it influences everything within the solar system by that fact. Every cosmic body whatsoever is a living being. As an illustration take a family; introduce a new element into that family by importing into its sacred family-circle an outsider, thus giving a stranger a home in the family-circle. Of course the stranger will affect, and perhaps powerfully affect, every member of the family.
It is just so with the planet Neptune. He exercises an influence, astrologically speaking, upon all men, upon all beings and things on Earth. Yet it is an 'outside' influence, although strictly karmic of course. Indeed, everything that is is karmic; it cannot be otherwise than karman. The cause of all such karmic relations or ties, intimate and close, or more distant and less strong, but karmic in every case, is that all things that are, sprang originally from the same great Heart of Kosmic Being, and thus are not only identic in origin and closely related in all the complicated conditions of existence, but ultimately pursue, although by myriadfold changes of pathway, the same course to ultimate reunion with the Divine Source whence all in their origin sprang.
To repeat: Neptune does not belong to our own Solar System, in the sense that the native and congenital planets do belong, or as the embers of a family properly belong to the family; thus it is not one of our Solar family; nevertheless it is a living entity through whose veins, so to say, courses the same cosmic life-blood that courses through ours. We have relations with it, karmic relations, otherwise it could never have been captured by our Sun and its attendant family of planetary chains. It should be remembered also that Neptune likewise is a planetary chain exactly as all other celestial bodies are; but with our physical eyes we see only that globe of the Neptunian Chain which is on the same plane of perception where we ourselves are.
Now, not only is each planetary chain of our solar system a living entity itself, but each is the home of vast, characteristically differing populations. Every globe visible or invisible, of the seven (or twelve) globes forming each such chain, has its own population, inhabitants, or denizens. These seven differing classes or families, which we may equally well call life-waves, are all closely linked together in karmic union and destiny, thus forming a distinct Group of closely allied entities; and therefore, each such Group is most closely connected in evolutionary development and growth with its own particular planetary chain.
Furthermore, the various substances and energies which compose each such globe, are the actual product of the hosts of evolving populations or denizens which work in and use these globes, just as the substances and energies which compose a man's body are the products of his own inner and invisible substances and energies which in their aggregate compose his constitution, sevenfold likewise -- plus such peregrinating life-atoms or monadic entities which at any time may be passing through his various vehicles or bodies and thus helping to build these last.
During the course of their common evolutionary journey through time, these seven families or life-waves pass in succession, and following each other, from globe to globe of the chain, thus gaining experience of the forces and matters and consciousnesses on all the various planes and spheres that each such chain lives in and itself comprises.
Our own Earth-chain will illustrate this: All the Monads which came over from the Moon-chain were -- and are -- divisible into seven great classes, or indeed, more accurately into ten; but the three highest classes of the ten we need not further refer to here. These seven classes of Monads compose the grand Life-Stream divided into seven smaller rivulets, each such rivulet being a monadic family, so to speak; and yet they are all connected together because all belong to the grand Life-Stream or River of Lives just spoken of.
The human family or life-wave, which is one of these seven monadic Families or Classes, passes scores of millions of years on each one of the seven globes of our Earth-chain. Then the life-wave leaves such a globe in order to pass to the next succeeding globe, and continues to do so through all the globes in regular serial order; and on each succeeding globe, after a relatively short inter-global period of rest, the life-wave passes another long term of scores of millions of years; and thus the majestic course of evolutionary development or growth proceeds step by step all around the planetary chain, and through each of the seven (or twelve) globes which compose it.
On each one of these globes the human life-wave functions in a manner appropriate to the conditions and circumstances prevailing on each one of these seven globes, precisely as we now function on, or exist on, or live on, our present globe, the Earth, in a manner strictly correspondential with conditions and circumstances prevailing here. This earth being a material world, the circumstances and conditions correspondingly are material. On the higher globes of our chain, circumstances and conditions are much more ethereal; and on the highest are actually quasi-spiritual.
Furthermore, the time-periods passed by any life-wave on the more ethereal globes on the descending and ascending arcs respectively, are much longer than the time-periods passed by such a life-wave on the more material globes, such as is our Earth.
It must also be remembered that the other six rivulets or Monadic Families, belonging to the grand Life-Stream of Monads which came over from the Moon, are, as just outlined in preceding paragraphs, also evolving on all the seven (or twelve) globes of the Earth-chain; but they do not all evolve on any one globe during the same period of time: in other words, their appearances on any one globe are not contemporaneous. There are life-waves or rivulets which have preceded us, and there are other life-waves or rivulets of entities which are following us, and in both these cases on other globes of our chain. But every rivulet, in other words every one of the seven Classes or Families composing the grand Life-Wave, must pass around all the seven globes of the Earth-chain, and each such passage around all the seven globes of the Earth-chain constitutes for such particular rivulet or life-wave a Planetary or Chain-Round.
These seven Life-Waves, the populations of our Earth-chain, pass around the Earth-chain seven times during the course of their immensely long evolutionary journey; and to complete this planetary evolution requires several billions -- that is, thousands of millions -- of human years.
Because the populations of the seven globes of our own Earth-chain are so closely connected in origin and in destiny, they form a distinct Group, as above stated, of closely allied entities; and therefore such Group is most closely connected in evolutionary development and growth with our own particular chain, naturally. Man, the individual, is connected with and is evolving with his own essential or particular life-wave; such a life-wave in its course of evolution on a globe, is broken up into smaller bodies which we may call nations; the nation is connected with other groups or other nations, forming one human Family; the Families of the earth all are connected and evolving together and forming the Earth-population; the seven populations of our Earth-chain all are connected and evolving together, forming one Planetary Hierarchy; and with the seven Hierarchies of the Seven Sacred Planets, likewise all connected together, forming one Solar Hierarchy, this is a Kosmic unit on a still larger scale. This is one part of what the Hebrew Prophet, Ezekiel, meant, when he recounted his vision, so called, of 'wheels within wheels' -- all revolving, all in motion, as individuals, yet forming a unity of beings in movement on a larger scale.
The Solar Hierarchy, considered as an aggregate, will not combine more closely in evolutionary development with the other or second great division (86) of the Universe and its Kosmic hosts, until this aggregate of planetary populations shall have evolved, as it were, out of present vibrational rates of substances and matters and forces. But the time will come in the immensely distant future when this vast aggregate of beings in manifold ranges of consciousness and evolution shall have evolved out of its present planes or systems of vibrational rates, or, more accurately speaking, of states of consciousness; and then they, including of course ourselves as humans, shall have expanded through evolution into wider and more universal cognition and experience of forces and substances, entering into wider as well as profounder phases, of evolutionary growth.
The Universe constitutionally is built, as before said, of various worlds and planes and spheres, invisible and visible, extending endlessly in both these directions of being and existence: endlessly towards what we may call Spirit, and endlessly towards what we may call increasing materiality. Therefore the evolving entity, when it has finished one of these cosmic states, or worlds, or planes, enters a higher state or condition of evolutionary growth; or in other words, enters into and upon a higher world or plane of the Cosmic Hierarchy. But it enters such higher world as a beginner, a 'little one,' as the Christian New Testament puts it, as a spiritual child therein, so to say, as an infant in this to it new and higher world; and this evolving entity's destiny it is to receive such expansion of consciousness there as had occurred in smaller degree before in the preceding and inferior world from which it now has graduated.
One may ask: If we have been growing through eternity, why are we no greater, why are we no farther advanced in evolutionary development, than now we are? The question really answers itself. Kosmic Life, working through the Universe, does so not through the physical Universe alone, but through endless stages or degrees or steps of substances and forces, varying greatly in degrees of ethereality or materiality; and with this working therein of the Cosmic Life which manifests itself in armies or hosts of progressive beings, there naturally follows a constantly growing expansion in the perception-range of psychical and physical sense-apparatus.
The human host, when it shall have attained the highest stage of this present World-System or Hierarchy, will blossom forth as full-blown gods, Dhyani-Chohans, and, after a long period of release from anything that partakes of even the shadow of the suffering and pain or trouble and trial that belong to the material spheres, they will make ready to enter into another and higher system of worlds, which will be -- or indeed already is -- to them a Universe far more spiritual, far higher in every sense, than this present Universe is to them.
This is the destiny of all evolving lives, man included: endless growth, endless duration in which to learn to know and to understand all parts of all the world-systems, first of the Solar Universe, then of the Universe of the Galaxy, then throughout future time, and in due serial order, the world-systems of Boundless Space: learning through individual experience, and leaving nothing behind to which they must return; for Nature never tolerates wide leaps ahead in irregular evolutionary development as such evolutionary 'jumps' would be.
It is all a matter of expansion of consciousness. For instance, our human consciousness limited to this Earth and possessing vague concepts and dreams of a solar life, enables us to look outwards through our telescopes into the Galaxy and towards the Island-Universes beyond the Galaxy, and have thoughts about them; but they are thoughts; they are not the actual becoming of our consciousness into those wider spaces filled with Worlds. But our consciousness expands continuously through evolution: it expands self-consciously, first to comprehend all in the solar system, and then still later in aeonic time to embrace the Galaxy, and finally to embark upon still vaster fields within the limitless ranges of Kosmic Space.
Kosmic Space, however, is in a sense limited, however vast, because the Boundless consists of, and in fact is, limitless aggregations of such Kosmic Spaces or Kosmic Universes; but sheer, pure consciousness per se is free of limitations in its essence, and thus it can be expanded to cosmic dimensions, or conversely, can be, as we humans say, shrunken to electronic magnitude. A man can constrict, can shrink, his consciousness to the point of being suited for inhabiting an electron, and yet in still deeper profundities of his being be as free as the wild winds or the free bird, because consciousness is not and cannot ever be bounded by material extension, subject to mensuration.
On certain ones of the electrons composing even our physical matter, there actually are entities as conscious as we are, it is quite possible thinking divine thoughts, thinking about the Universe, just as we humans do. The cause or reason of this is that all forms of manifested substance, however small, however great, are offsprings of the Cosmic Intelligence; and hence every particle of the Universe, indeed every mathematical point, is as infilled with Cosmic Consciousness, because rooted in it, as is the Universe itself. Thus it is that consciousness is as functional and as active in the electron and its inhabitants if any, as it is functional and active in any other portion or spacial extension, be it even of galactic magnitude or of reaches still more vast.
We humans are still very imperfect in our evolutionary growth. There are beings on other planets of our solar system -- one would not call them 'humans,' and yet they are actually more evolutionally advanced than we human beings are -- who think diviner thoughts than we do. There are also beings or entities inhabiting the Sun, and its system of globes in its own chain; and consequently the Sun and its globes have inhabitants thinking god-like thoughts, because having a godlike or solar consciousness.
Turning our eyes from the world of infinitesimals, by the same argument that held in the preceding paragraph, we can aver with equal truth that there are 'electrons' also, of kosmic magnitude. Such might our Earth be called. Consider briefly the scale of entitative beings: first there is the Universe, which we may call a kosmic cell, then aggregates of such Universes consisting of star-clusters and nebulae, which one may term kosmic molecules; then in the other direction in our own Galaxy we have groups of solar systems, each one composed of a sun or suns and companion-planets, which we may represent to ourselves as kosmic atoms -- the sun or suns being the kosmic protons, and the planets the kosmic electrons; and, as we know, our Earth, which is such a kosmic electron, is builded up of hosts of entities and things formed of the chemical atoms which in their turn are formed of atomic protons and electrons, thus exemplifying the kosmic pattern or rule of repetitive manifestation; and with the chemical atoms we enter on a minor scale of magnitudes, comprised within the kosmic scale. The little mirrors the Great everywhere and in all things; the atom mirrors and duplicates the Universe. The Universal Life, which is another name for Kosmic Consciousness-Force-Substance, which latter is the inner and all-sufficient cause of our own Home-Universe in and through which this Kosmic Life works, is the vital activity of some vast and incomprehensibly great Kosmic Entity, even as the life or vital activity which runs through and in man's physical body is the lowest form of the vital-conscious cement linking all of man's constitution and powers and faculties together into an individualized unit.
Now such a vast Kosmic Entity of super-Galactic magnitude, might consider us in his thought, and wonder, and think: "Can such infinitesimals have thoughts as I have them? Is their consciousness free like mine? Can it reach into the abysmal bosom of things?" The answer would be, Yes, because Consciousness or Cosmic Mind, is the very heart of beings and things, the essence of beings and things; and when a man allies himself with pure or sheer consciousness, he then enters into the Heart of the Universe, the Heart which is nowhere in particular because it is everywhere, as Pascal said, quoting the thought from previous philosophers. The Hindu Upanishads nobly express this thought: aniyan aniyasam, "Smaller than the smallest atom"; which in Hindu philosophy is equivalent to saying, vaster than the Universe. It is verily so; for this is Consciousness-Mind-Life-Substance.
How is it that the Heart of the Universe is everywhere? It is because our Home-Universe is a Kosmic Hierarchy, to wit: a self-contained entity reaching from its highest, that is to say, its divine Root, through many intermediate grades of consciousnesses and substances and forces extending to its lowest, which is the bottom or end of that Kosmic Hierarchy and which is likewise matter for that Kosmic Hierarchy. The Divine Root is its Divine Hierarch, the Divine Heart of Things; and the worlds visible and invisible combine to form the body of this indwelling Divinity, whose heart-beats make the diastole and systole of the Universe. How does it all work? It works wholly through beings and entities -- which thus become the vehicles of its multiform action -- on the highest rungs of the Ladder of Life, which beings and entities in their turn and after a similar manner, live in and work through other beings and entities still more material than they themselves are; and so forth and forwards and downwards to the grossest matter of that particular System of worlds, or Hierarchy, or Universe -- in our own case, our Home-Universe, the Galaxy.
Moreover, each entity within that Kosmic Hierarchy is itself a minor and therefore subordinate hierarchy, because of being a self-contained entity or 'closed system' having its own highest and its own lowest and all the intermediate grades of matters and forces, thus faithfully copying its pattern, the Kosmic Hierarchy, in which it moves and lives and has its being. The Solar System is one such inferior hierarchy, builded withal as a repetitive copy of its grander and larger Kosmic Parent. Furthermore, in any solar system, every individual planet as well as the central luminary, the sun itself, is an exemplification of a hierarchy still smaller, but patterned and builded as is its containing hierarchical parent. And on any such planet, our Earth for instance -- in order to particularize more completely -- every self-contained being or entity is a hierarchy still smaller, and this is so just because it is a self-contained entity.
A man is such an instance, for he is a being or entity having his highest and his lowest, which last is his physical body, and having all intermediate grades of consciousness and substance which together comprise his spiritual and psychical and passional and emotional and vital activities. But throughout all of it and in all of it there works and lives and dwells the Dominant Self, the Overlord of all, man's highest, his own Spiritual 'Wondrous Being' -- this last word being a technical term of the Esoteric Tradition. This Wondrous Being is the supreme Chief, the fountain and origin of the fundamental-law or consciousness or conscious life of his hierarchy which is in itself an aggregate of his constitutional structure.
As the Hierarchies in the Universe are virtually infinite in number, the Wondrous Beings therefore are also virtually infinite in number, because every such Wondrous Being is such only for its series of lives beneath it. There is the Wondrous Being, the Silent Watcher, for the Holy Order or Brotherhood of Compassion; there is a Wondrous Being for our Globe, the supreme spiritual Chief, who is identic in this case with the Hierarch or Wondrous Being of the Brotherhood of Compassion. There is a Wondrous Being or Silent Watcher for our planetary chain. There is a Wondrous Being or Silent Watcher for our solar system, whose residence, whose habitat, is the Sun. There is a Wondrous Being or Silent Watcher for the Milky Way, for our own Home-Universe, and so forth forever.
In the other direction of thought and following the same rule of invariable repetitive action in Nature, there is a Silent Watcher or Wondrous Being for every atom; and, as before said, there is a Silent Watcher or Wondrous Being for every man or woman, for every human entity, man's own inner god -- the Buddha within him and above him, the Christ immanent, which is the core of his being. This core of his being is a god-spark from and of the divine Solar Entity which vitalizes and overlives the entire solar system, and in whom, as Paul of the Christians said, "we live, and move, and have our being." (87)
Children of the Solar Consciousness-Life are we, even as the innumerable lives composing the cells and the atoms and the infinitesimal corpuscles of man's physical body live and move and have their being in man, their overlord: his vitality, their vitality. So we are linked through this Solar Entity of cosmic magnitude with spaces still more grand, with Forces and Substances, far-flung over and in and through Kosmic Space.
Each link in a hierarchy is essential to that hierarchy. Consider Father-Sun: all within his kingdom are subject to his jurisdiction, and yet all are individually relatively responsible. From his heart are sent forth all the currents of mind and life into the outermost fields of the solar system, and every atom responds instantly and spontaneously and inevitably and continuously to the voiceless mandates flowing forth from the heart of Father-Sun. Yet are not the planets individuals withal, and therefore responsible, each within its own sphere? Are we men not bound to mother-planet as mother-planet is bound to the solar system? And is not Father-Sun but a link in the ascending Chain of Beings comprised within the directing and administrative sway of some Kosmic Intelligence still more grandiose than the Sun? (88)
As Vergil, the initiate poet and visioner, says in his Aeneid:
Know first, the heaven, the earth, the main,
The moon's pale orb, the starry train,
Are nourished by a soul,
A bright intelligence, whose flame
Glows in each member of the frame,
And stirs the mighty whole. (89)
The great Latin poet goes on to tell us that: "Hence also spring the races of men and of beasts, and the lives of the flying things, and the monsters that the ocean bears beneath its crystalline surface." (90)
There, indeed, is the spirit of the ancient Pantheism, differing so greatly from what modern European philosophers mistake true Pantheism to be: comprising no personal supreme divinity responsible for all the evils and the woes which, according to mediaeval theory, 'he' has created his unfortunate children to undergo, and has then abandoned them, mayhap, to eternal torment because they were created by him too feeble to resist the temptations of surrounding nature, also created to be stumbling-blocks, according to the theory. Archaic Pantheism, in its original sense, is the teaching, the belief, the intuition, that back of all, behind all, within all, beyond all beings and things, there is a Divine Essence which lives and moves and operates in billions and trillions and quadrillions and indeed in innumerable multitudes of life-consciousness rays, through all Being: the eternal Consciousness-Life-Substance, super-spiritual, from which the entire Universe flows forth, and back into which it will in due course of the revolving ages return -- that is archaic Pantheism, the Pantheism of the ancients, of the Ancient Wisdom, of the Esoteric Tradition. (91)
There is no similarity except a wholly superficial one between the Christian God and this ancient conception of an ever Unknowable Principle from which all flows forth, and into which all returns: both, it is true, are said to be beyond the range and reach of any human conception, imagination, or similitude; and it should be obvious that the Christians would have to say this also of their divinity, because if such supposititious divinity is not infinite and eternal, both of which attributes are unthinkable by human beings, he would be a finite deity, a mere small god. But the Christian God is a Creator, demiurge, and this is, after all, a big-small god in the boundless spaces of Infinitude, since creation or demiurgic activity instantly implies limitation because restricted activity within something greater; whereas the THAT of the Theosophist and of the Vedic Sages, indeed of all religions of the Archaic World, is no more a creator than IT is a non-creator.
The usage of the word THAT, the Vedic tad, is simply the usage of a word implying abstraction without qualities or attributes suggesting limitations of any kind, thus expressing the utmost abysms of infinitude and of frontierless duration, and we let it go at that -- Boundless Space and Boundless Time; because if we limit IT by attributes or other limiting qualifications, we thereby introduce an illogical conception into our first postulate, that IT is unthinkable and ineffable, and in consequence cannot be described in any fashion. IT IS for ever and for ever.
Lest there be confusion of thought, and the reader suppose that this Ineffable is any one, however great, of the Hierarchs mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, it will be well to say that any such Hierarch is but one unit in the mathematically innumerable Hosts which in their incomprehensible Kosmic aggregate form the various Divinities or active Demiurges -- all comprised within the limitless encompassing SPACE of THAT. (92)
The teaching imbodied in the immediately foregoing paragraphs, does not mean that all the vast ranges of Space and Duration between the Unthinkable and us humans, for instance, is Kosmic emptiness, devoid of Mind and Consciousness and Life and Substance. The truth is emphatically the contrary: these endless realms of Space are infilled with innumerable Hierarchies of beings and entities, Divine Atoms so to say, ranging all the way from the gods through the various Hierarchies of minor beings and entities to men, and extending beneath men to other smaller hierarchies of beings and entities and things. Everything and all throughout is instinct with life and thought and intelligence. Every tiniest atom that sings its own keynote (for every atom is in eternal vibration, and every vibration produces a sound), every entity everywhere, and in all the abysmal deeps of boundless Space, and all the orbs of heaven, as they run along their paths, are, each one and all, but children of the Kosmic Life, offsprings of the Boundless.
What do we see when we look around us? Do we see one man for humanity? There is no such thing as 'man,' but there are men. There is no such thing as vegetation, but there are plants. 'Man' as a term is an abstraction describing a host of human individuals. 'Vegetation' as a term is an abstraction describing a host, an army, of plants. The word 'God' is an abstraction, unfortunately with great limitations, properly to be used only in the same way. The Universe is instinct and filled full with intelligences and lives; and it is this diversity in Cosmic Manifestation which causes the diversity so wondrous, so sublime, in everything around us, so that not even two leaves of a tree are alike, so that not even two atoms are identic. If they were they would be not two but one.
The Christian deity is an evolution for the better from the thundering Jehovah of the Jews, who liked the smells of the sacrifice and whose heart waxed wroth in anger. It is in many ways similar to the exoteric Zeus of the Greeks or the Jupiter of the Romans -- yet an evolution, through the mediaeval periods, to the modern theological Christian divinity, who seems to be about as colorless as any timid human conception could make him to be.
The Christian trinitarian idea, or the idea of their God being three persons in one Godhead, is but an echo of the old mystical teachings of the Mystery-Schools. There were many Triads in ancient days, and the Christian Triad or Trinity is but a copy thereof -- and an imperfect and distorted copy at that. So little do the Christians know or agree upon the attributes of their own Divinity that the question of the procession of the persons from the Godhead was a rock upon which the earlier Church split in twain, the two parts becoming the present orthodox Greek Church and the Church of Rome. The Greek Church taught that from the Father proceeded the Holy Ghost, and from these two proceeded the Son. The Roman Church followed the belief that from the Father proceeded the Son, and from these twain proceeded the Holy Ghost; and this latter is the historic origin of the famous 'Filioque-clause,' meaning 'and from the Son.'
Returning to the teaching regarding the hierarchical structure of Space, and to the collateral doctrine that the summit or origin or fountain of any such Hierarchy is the monadic essence of a Cosmic Spirit, of high or low degree evolutionally speaking, it may be well to reiterate this teaching in once more emphatically remarking that what men call 'Spirit' is the summit, as just stated, or acme or root, or again the seed or beginning or noumenon, of any particular Hierarchy existing in the innumerable hosts of the Cosmic Hierarchies. Equivalently, what men call Matter or Substance, is in one sense the most developed or the most evolved form of expression of the same Spirit in its radiation downwards, in any one such Hierarchy. This is but another way of saying that matter is the inherent forces or inherent powers or inherent faculties of that same Spirit which in their journey downwards into manifestation have been unfolded, rolled out, and self-expressed, and in consequence -- and this is the important point of thought -- is the nether pole of what the original and originating Spirit is; for Spirit is the primal or original source of departure of the evolutionary activity which brought forth through its own inherent and spontaneously arising energies the appearance or manifestation in the cosmic spaces of such a Hierarchy. Between first, the Originant or Spirit, and second, the resultant or Matter, there is all the intermediate range of hierarchical stages or steps, thus forming the Ladder of Life or the Ladder of Being of any individual Hierarchy of the Host of Hierarchies.
Thus it will be seen that these Hierarchies do not exist 'merely in' the Kosmos, nor in any sense do they exist apart from the Kosmos; nor are they merely expressions of the Kosmos. But they are in very fact the Kosmos itself, because not only do they infill it and inform it, but what the Kosmos or Universe is, it is, because it is they. They are the bone of the bone and the blood of the blood, as well as the form of the form, of the Kosmos. Nevertheless, while the Universe is correctly to be thought of as a vast and incomprehensibly great aggregate or collection of Hierarchies, extending into and through the vast ranges of the invisible worlds, in each such Hierarchy, and a fortiori as concerns the Kosmic all-inclusive Hierarchy itself, the inmost of each and every one, the highest of each and every one, never itself departs from its own realm or divine-spiritual condition or state; but unrolls forth from itself the descending stages or degrees of the hierarchical Ladder of Life. Thus as Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita, in substance: "I establish the whole Universe with a portion of myself, and yet remain distinct therefrom." (93)
Just so in the case of a man, his spirit is the primal Originant from which his constitution flows forth in descending degrees of substantial concretion, until the physical body is reached. Nevertheless the spirit in a man is not his physical body, but, as Krishna says, the spirit establishes the whole man with portions of itself, after the meaning hereinbefore outlined, and yet remains on its own plane and distinct. This is the heart or genuine substance of the archaic pantheistic idea.
Yet every human being, to mention one hierarchy, is in his essence a spark of the divine fire of consciousness in and of the Universe -- divine, spiritual, intellectual, ethereal, astral, as well as physical, in its farthest reaches. A great loss of esoteric and mystical truth in the Occident, a loss due to miseducation in religious thought for nigh upon two thousand years, has been the supposed separate existence of the individual human being from the Divinity which infills the Universe. How is this possible! Nothing is so near as Divinity, nothing is so intimate, nothing is so familiar; for the Kosmic Divinity is that Kosmic Consciousness, that Kosmic Life, frontierless and indivisible, which fills everything and throughout boundless duration infills everything, and of which everything and every being is an offspring -- not only human beings, but every other entity and thing in boundless Space.
There is an infinite and a universal brotherhood among all beings; there are no radical separations, no root-divisions, anywhere; what man thinks, he thinks because the god within him thinks, and his human brain receives the divine thought, and interprets it feebly because humanly, and as we human beings evolve, we shall interpret these divine thoughts of the divine thinker within, more and more perfectly, as evolution, growth, development, bring them forth.
The Universe is our Home. We are brothers, we also are essentially akin to the gods, for their life is our life, their consciousness is fundamentally our consciousness, their being is radically our being, their origin is our primal source, their destiny is ours; and what they are, we in essence are -- Children of the Gods!
What a wondrous field of thought this opens to the reflective mind! When man feels himself thus at-one with all that is: when he feels that the consciousness which he calls his own is but a god-spark, so to say, of some vaster Consciousness, in which he lives; and that the very atoms which compose his own body are builded of infinitesimal lives which infill those atoms and make them what they are; when he feels that he can pass along the pathways of his own spirit ever more and more inwards into a closer and straiter union with some self-conscious Entity still more sublime than his own highest: then he feels not only a keen sense of his own high human dignity, but he looks out upon the universe around him, and his heart then broadens, and his mind expands, in sympathy, love, and benevolence towards all other beings and entities and things. Vast sweeps of consciousness open up for him as being his own future; duty takes on a new and gloriously bright aspect; right becomes the law of his living, and ethics no longer are a more or less tiresome code of abstract teaching, but very living and vital maxims of conduct; for he instinctively knows that by living in harmony with Nature's Harmony, he becomes self-consciously ever more at-one with it, and instead of opposing and battling with other entities and things, as the totally wrong ethic of all modern scientific thinking has it, his new vision makes him to become helpful, and he obtains a growing understanding of all others, because in proportion as he understands himself, he understands other beings and entities, also recognising that they are derivatives from the Fountain of Life and Mind and Consciousness which are his own fontal source.
Now, what relation has this expansion of man's consciousness with the invisible spheres and worlds of the Universe? When man, either through evolution in the far-distant future, or by special occult and esoteric training which our Great Teachers can give to those well worthy and qualified to receive it: when man rises above the magnetic and psychical attraction of this our earth-sphere of astral and physical matter, and functions in his higher principles and elements, which are his inner forces and substances making up his composite constitution: then he will be able to function and live and act on and in the inner and invisible worlds and planes and spheres of the entire solar system, as easily as he does on the visible earth today; because then he will be an inhabitant of those inner planes or worlds or spheres, with bodies and senses fit and adequate for life there, and with ever strengthening faculties making him progressively fitter there to live and to act. This high state mankind will reach, as a human host, when in the far, far future, evolution shall have brought man to be, self-consciously in thought and in function, the inner god that he even now actually is in his inmost essential Self.
When personality vanishes into individuality, in other words, when the corruptible becomes the incorruptible, when the dissoluble is transformed into the Indissoluble, into the Undecaying, into the Undying: then man shall have attained his final growth in evolution in this present System of Worlds. He then shall have knowledge and vision and consciousness in all fulness, because he shall see and feel that he actually is one in his essential Selfhood with the DIVINE.
FOOTNOTES:
77. Ch. x, sl. 42. (return to text)
78. The Light of Asia, Bk. VIII. (return to text)
79. If the reader will turn to H. P. Blavatsky's master-work, The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 172, he will find an interesting and useful diagram there of the manner in which both the Lunar chain and the Earth-chain are connected as regards the traveling of the life-forces and monads from the former to the latter. This diagram, of course, is highly conventional but very suggestive.
Or again, if the student is desirous of understanding the manner in which the seven manifest globes and the five relatively unmanifest globes of the complete structural system of our Earth's planetary chain are interconnected and interworking, it is suggested that he turn to the author's Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, on page 487, where he will find a schematic diagram giving the information sought for.
It should be remembered that this latter diagram is likewise conventionalized, and it must not be forgotten that a conventional diagram is not a picture or photograph of the position in space, nor of attributes and qualities of bodies occupying such positions, but is suggestive of the interworking and interconnected units of any one planetary chain of the many such that exist in the solar system. (return to text)
80. Isaiah, xxxiv, 4. (return to text)
81. Revelation, vi, 14. (return to text)
82. The argument in the above paragraphs, involving the rejection by the Esoteric Philosophy of the scientific doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, is of course wholly based upon the fact that this doctrine is entirely mechanistic, is the child of the materialism of the now outlived scientific age, and deals with the universe as a closed system of energies and matter which in their aggregate are unensouled, forming an insensate, unintelligent mechanism. Such a universe is but the physical universe and recognises no spiritual source or background of mind and consciousness.
There is, however, one manner of viewing the mere scientific doctrine which no Theosophist, probably, would refuse to accept. It is the view which would consider utter Infinitude as the 'Universe,' as the home and limitless field of boundless consciousness, dividing itself into literally an infinite number of hierarchies of minor consciousnesses; and that from this limitless infinitude spring forth into manifested and multi-myriad forms of living existence, the ineffably grand and sublime pageantry of the divisions of Kosmic Life.
Considered after this fashion, the so-called 'Doctrine of the Conservation of Energy' would arouse no particular objection in the mind of the student of the Esoteric Philosophy, although it is probable that he would consider its enunciation in the scientific manner as lamentably short of the reality, and as halting and imperfect in expression.
The 'closed system' called the universe, in this latter view, would be simply Boundless Infinitude, inclusive of all possible energies as well as substances that Infinitude can contain; and it then becomes obvious that with such a conception no forces can be added to Infinitude from outside, because there is no outside: nor can it lose any of its store of forces because there is no 'outside' to which such outgoing forces could flow.
Obviously, to speak of a 'closed system' in connexion with Infinitude is in every way a misnomer as well as a logical absurdity. The term is here used as illustrative and not descriptive. Furthermore, what is here said of the so-called Law of the Conservation of Energy applies likewise to the so-called scientific Law of the Conservation of Matter, because in the view even of modern science, force and matter are fundamentally or essentially one.
In similar manner the student of the Esoteric Philosophy can recognise the other so-called scientific Law of the Correlation of Forces or Energies only with immense reserves; and the same remark applies with equal emphasis to the scientific speculation called entropy, or the theory that the available stock of energy in the universe is steadily flowing to lower levels, so that ultimately the available forms of energy will have vanished and there will be no further possibility of inherent movement in the system, for all will have become a dead energic level.
However, these different scientific teachings, briefly sketched above, are workable enough in 'closed systems' such as are found everywhere, because such 'closed systems' are limited both in extent and time.
Methinks, however, that even the idea of a 'closed system' which is inherent in, or the foundation of, the scientific laws above mentioned is fallacious and not true to Nature. Such a system would be like a clock which once run down or 'entropized' cannot wind itself up again -- a picture adequate for the four walls of a study or a laboratory, but totally unlike what is found in Nature herself. At the best, a natural organic system or so-called 'closed system,' is an energy- or substance-system of the second order, because whatever its own inherent or creative flow of energies may be, it is surrounded by an inclosing system of the first order, with whose energies and substances it is permeated throughout.
Of course such inclosing system of the first order becomes itself a system of the second order on account of a still larger system by which it is surrounded and fed. This is Nature: system within system, each necessary to all and each interacting with all.
The doctrine of entropy is derivative from the so-called scientific laws hereinbefore enumerated. But if it is true in the Universe, why is it that entropy has not yet brought about the cosmic death or 'heat-death' talked of, since it has had eternity to do it in? The question is unanswerable from the standpoint of the materialistic science of forty years ago, with its various laboratory-laws created in the study, many of them now sinking into disrepute.
At best, therefore, the scientific hypotheses or theories respectively called the Conservation of Energy, the Conservation of Matter, the Correlation of Energies, and their dependent hypothesis or theory expressed in the term entropy, are all secondary or contingent 'laws,' so-called. It would seem from the observations and deductions made in the present note that they apply as such secondary or contingent laws to closed systems or organic units only, and become mere speculations without foundation in natural facts of cosmic magnitude, when any attempt is made to apply them to the Universe, the Boundless All. (return to text)
83. The reader should remember to make a clear distinction between what is called in the Esoteric Tradition the Universal Solar System, meaning every thing or body or being within the Sun's realm, on the one hand, and that particular group of planets in the solar system most closely connected with the destiny of Earth and its inhabitants. Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy contains some valuable hints as to this point of study, and the reader is referred to it. (return to text)
84. See the diagram of the twelve globes composing the Earth's planetary chain given in Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, p. 487. (return to text)
85. 'The Mistress of Vision.' (return to text)
86. This 'second great division,' the reader may be reminded, refers to one of the 'two main divisions of invisible worlds and spheres' to which allusion is made in the first part of this chapter. (return to text)
87. Acts, xvii, 28. (return to text)
88. The 'Sage of Concord,' the great American philosopher, Emerson, voices the ancient thought of the archaic East, as more or less feebly transmitted to us through great Greeks such as Plato, Empedocles, Iamblichus, Plotinus, and others. In his 'Plato; or the Philosopher,' Emerson writes of the Divine Unity which he calls by different names, as for instance here both Soul and Spirit:
"Soul-one in all bodies, the pervading, uniform, perfect, pre-eminent over nature, exempt from birth, growth and decay, omnipresent. . . . The knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one's own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of one who knows the unity of things. As one diffusive air, passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of a scale, so the nature of the Great Spirit is single, though its forms be manifold. . . ."
Or again in his treatise on 'The Over-Soul':
". . . that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; . . . We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE."
And again, from the same treatise:
". . . the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one.
"Let man, then, learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind. . . ."
And finally, the same deep thinker, who in so many passages strikes a note which almost persuades one to believe that his brain had been touched by the thought of the Nirmanakayas, writes, in his essay on 'Intellect':
". . . that lofty and sequestered class who have been its prophets and oracles, the high priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age. When, at long intervals, we turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these great spiritual lords, who have walked in the world -- these of the old religion -- dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of Christianity look parvenues and popular; for 'persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect.' This band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius, and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry, and music, and dancing, and astronomy, and mathematics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature. The truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope and applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and inventory of things for its illustration."
What Emerson saw in these great men of Greece and Rome, was what he likewise clearly discerned in the majestic and stately thought of ancient India, as in the Upanishads, with which it is certain that Emerson had at least some acquaintance, and this that he saw was precisely those dazzling rays from the body of the Esoteric Tradition which these titan Intellects of the past had been taught and in their turn taught to others.
Finally, Plotinus, in his treatise: 'The Three Primordial Essences,' V, i, 2, 3, 4, makes his thought still clearer:
"It is by the Cosmic Spirit that the system of the world, so myriad-formed and various, is one vast whole. Through this spirit the Universe itself is a divinity; and we ourselves and all other things are whatever we are in our noblest by virtue of this all-permeant Cosmic Spirit. Our individual spirit is identic with this Cosmic Spirit through which also the gods themselves are divine beings. . . . Thus the essence of the spirit is incomparably higher than anything which has form. Honoring the Cosmic Spirit everywhere, it leads us to honor our own individual spirit . . . but over this Spirit Divine there is something loftier and still more divine, the origin and source of the former. . . . In this diviner still all that is eternally alive is contained. Naught is there in it but the Divinest Intelligence; all is Divinity; and here indeed is the home of every individual spirit in peace eternal." (return to text)
89. Book VI, vv. 742-7. Translation by Conington. (return to text)
90. Book VI, vv. 728-9. (return to text)
91. The Esoteric Philosophy of necessity is substantially Pantheistic from one point of view, but assuredly never so in the manner in which Pantheism is so consistently, and, it would seem perversely, misunderstood in Western lands, but solely in the sense of the ancient philosophers, which sense has been briefly set forth above. Indeed, every philosophy or religion which contains in its theological structure the fundamental conception of all-permeant Divinity, which is at once everywhere and is outside of time and spacial relations in its essence, but which nevertheless is limitless Infinity -- any religion containing the conception in its philosophy of infinite divinity is, de facto, basicly pantheistic.
Even Christianity, despite the manner in which its God has been set forth by its theological exegetes, is nevertheless pantheistic in basic idea, as much as any other one of the great religions, although this basic idea has been so cloaked and disguised and emasculated that it is reduced to little but the vague statement that 'God is Infinity.'
Obviously, if Divinity is Infinity, it cannot be a Person, because personality implies limitation; and although the Christian God is stated to be 'without body, parts or passions,' being nevertheless considered to be Infinity, it must be as all-permeant, ex hypothesi as could be desired by the most rigid of abstract Pantheists.
All modern European philosophy seems to be tending in its vision towards some sort of pantheistic type of expression, and the same may be said of the dreams of the most forwards-looking men of modern science. The Holism of Smuts, which apparently is the Holenmerism -- or Divinity everywhere in all parts -- of ancient Greek philosophy, and the rather vague but interesting pantheistic speculations of the mystically-minded Younghusband, or again the metaphysical dreams of scientific luminaries like Jeans and Eddington who discern 'a Mathematician,' or 'an Artist' at the 'back of beyond': all these and other examples that might be cited show clearly enough that the human mind is incapable of conceiving Divinity as existing otherwise than as being all-permeant, everywhere pervading, in the spiritual worlds as well as in the physical, and thus as being throughout essentially and typically pantheistic in character. (return to text)
92. "SPACE, . . . is, in reality, the container and the body of the Universe with its seven principles. It is a body of limitless extent, whose PRINCIPLES, in Occult phraseology -- each being in its turn a septenary -- manifest in our phenomenal world only the grossest fabric of their subdivisions. 'No one has ever seen the Elements in their fulness,' the Doctrine teaches." -- H. P. Blavatsky in her The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 342
The reader's attention is directed to the manner in which SPACE is here treated as being not only a 'container' of all things, but vastly more than a mere container, because SPACE in the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition is the Eternal and Boundless ALL considered as infinitely alive in itself, and therefore containing a limitless plenitude of consciousness-life-substance expressing itself in the fields of Space in interlocking, interblending, interworking, Hierarchies of the Hosts of consciousnesses. These Hierarchies are virtually infinitely numerous. (return to text)
93. Ch. x, sl. 42. (return to text)