Theosophical University Press Online Edition
The theme of study of the present chapter and of the one which follows turns around what is really one of the most wonderful teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, otherwise the Esoteric Tradition, but the difficulties involved in any even tolerably adequate elaboration of it are simply enormous, mostly because of the novelty of this theme to Western minds.
It is of course true that every portion of the human race in its philosophical or religious literatures has an opportunity of knowing something of what the ancients thought concerning the denizens or inhabitants of the worlds both visible and invisible, but such presentation of the Archaic Philosophy is almost always highly metaphorical, and has become so involved in orthodox religious teaching, that minds have crystallized around these forms, and are therefore unready to receive what appears to be offhand a new and indeed unheard-of explanation of these philosophical and religious fragments.
Nevertheless, an attempt will be made, however imperfect, to draw aside the veil as to the inner meaning of this portion of the archaic Theosophy; and it is hoped that the results of the study contained in this and in the succeeding chapter will provide at least a framework of material upon which the reader or the student may erect a more satisfactory superstructure builded of his own deductions, once his attention has been directed to the source to which he may turn.
Just as one of the fundamental teachings of all the great Sages and Seers was the existence of hierarchies within hierarchies forming the structure of the Universe, and of the worlds both visible and invisible in which these hierarchies of beings lived and worked, so likewise did their teaching contain in more or less elaborated formulation the corollary that all these beings inhabiting these interlocking hierarchies were evolving, growing, progressing -- a strictly logical and necessary corollary; for if one postulates a static universe, one must further reason that each and every hierarchical range of beings has existed in its present stage during all past time, and will continue to so exist into an endless future; or, that each class of such beings was at some time 'created' to its present status by the whim of a Deity entirely outside of the universal scheme.
The present writer was once jocularly asked the question why he so often used the expression 'evolving souls' rather than 'revolving souls.' The question, however, was not so unimportant as it might appear to be to the casual thinker. Indeed, the difference between these two verbs, as is shown throughout the entirety of the Jewish Qabbalah, in other words the difference between the evolution and revolution of spirit into matter and of matter again into spirit, is but slight, so far as the two words alone go; so that one may truly say that souls revolve along the pathways of life from the eternity of their past into the eternity of the future, yet such revolving obviously involves the idea of evolving; and that therefore the doctors of the Qabbalah were right when they used the term Gilgulim to signify this revolution in destiny of an un-self-conscious god-spark -- a life-atom of the spirit, so to say -- through all the ranges and stages and planes of illimitable duration, and on all the planes and worlds of being, unto perfection, or at least unto relatively perfected unfolding of their innately divine-spiritual capacities.
Yet despite the apparent slight distinction between these two words, a study of the Esoteric Philosophy shows clearly that profound questions of evolutionary growth are involved in this distinction. (94)
When one speaks of the relative perfection that may be and certainly will be in due course of the revolving ages attained by the evolving Monads, this term 'perfection' must not be misunderstood to imply either static immobility after its attainment, or, on the other hand, the reaching of an absoluteness in evolutionary unfoldment beyond which further evolution is impossible. Such attaining of a purely hypothetical 'absolute' ultimate is impossible, because there are no utterly absolute 'absolutes' anywhere in the Boundless. How can there be such? How can an evolving Monad reach an end, whence there is nothing further in the way of growth or farther progress? Could such a one reach an absolute and final end, then he must have started from a beginning; for a sempiternity of an entity or a thing -- in other words a thing which is eternal and endless in one direction, the future, but has beginning in the other direction, its commencement -- is a logical monstrosity. If we, as examples, being imbodied Monads, had a beginning -- speaking of 'we' in the sense of the immortal monadic element in us -- then we sprang from something other than ourselves, something other than our highest; but our highest is the highest in the Kosmos, for that highest is indeed that aggregate of divine Powers, logically a Unit, which enlivens and inspirits the Universe, and which is endless in both past and future, and of which we are monadic sparks, growing monadic essences, evolving Monads, revolving Monads.
In order that there may be no misunderstanding as regards the two words evolution and souls, it may be well to explain what is here intended by the use of the terms. Lamentable ignorance is betrayed everywhere in Occidental minds when they attempt to define what they mean by 'soul' and by 'evolution,' for almost invariably those nouns are used in a manner that shows that the ideas connected with them are as indefinite and uncertain as they are inchoate and elementary. The great majority of Western thinkers rarely even stop to analyse what they mean in using these words, yet accept them and employ them in consequence as mere verbal counters, because other people have used them.
But the uncompromising and inflexible logic of the Theosophical philosophy does not permit us to use words with such vague and nebulous meanings, for the student of the Esoteric Wisdom has discovered that it is necessary to speak with care and due consideration of the import of the terms which are employed in all studies appertaining to subjects so profoundly philosophical as well as mystical in character. Furthermore, the student is always obliged to remember that words, in the language of Homer, are 'winged' transmitters of living thought, and consequently are more than mere counters; and although the student naturally has to employ the vernacular of the time in which he lives in order to be understood and to pass ideas into waiting and intelligent minds, nevertheless because of the paucity in European tongues of words of abstract philosophical import, it is frequently necessary not only to invent or to 'coin' adequate words, but also to employ well-known words of accepted currency in their original or etymological significance. The latter usage is exemplified in such words as 'evolution' and 'revolution.' Both these words are of Latin origin. 'Evolution' means the 'rolling out,' the 'unwrapping' of that which previously had been inwrapped or infolded. Its significance, therefore, is self-expression, expression of the Essential Self, the latter being what the Theosophist otherwise calls swabhava, a word derived from the Sanskrit. 'Revolution' is likewise a word of Latin origin, with the same etymological meaning and derivative usages that the word evolution has, but because of the preceding particle represented by the letter 'r,' the meaning is intensified, pointing to repetitive action.
It is obvious that the vast multitudes of beings which compose the Hierarchies of growing and progressing entities infilling the spaces of Space, are not in a state of quiescence or inactivity, but contrariwise, are all of them without exception and without regard to degree of spiritual and intellectual unfoldment, in a state of continuous motion both in time and in space, as well as in evolutionary growth. Nothing in the Universe stands still, for this is contrary to the fundamental impulses of Cosmic Life, the most marked of whose attributes is unceasing activity -- at least during the course of a Manvantara or World-Period.
Now this unceasing motion of these armies of beings, both collectively and distributively as individuals, is growth: commonly growth forwards in evolutionary unfoldment, or in what it is customary to call progressive development, and, much less frequently, activity in a retrogressive line or direction; but it is activity or movement in either case. It is for the foregoing reason that all these beings which for the purpose of easy understanding and simple expression we may speak of as 'souls' -- imperfect and ambiguous as this term certainly is -- are described as 'evolving,' i. e., as being engaged in an incessant process arising in inherent impulses of unfolding or unwrapping or unrolling, i. e., 'evolving' innate or hitherto latent forces and substances within themselves.
Considered from this standpoint, these evolving 'souls,' or more accurately stated, these evolving Monads, are working out their destiny through the process of evolution just briefly depicted; but at the same time they are likewise following courses of repetitive action in time and space which seem to be best described by the word 'revolving.' They are not merely 'evolving,' i. e., growing in unfoldment, but are likewise engaged in 'revolvings' or 'whirlings' in and through the different worlds and planes and spheres not only of our Planetary Chain, but of the Solar System. Just as evolution, or growth in the unfolding of latent faculty, is both continuous and progressive, so are the 'revolutions' of these evolving monads continuous and likewise progressive in the sense of rising or falling into higher or lower worlds or spheres respectively. (95)
Biological researchers in European countries from and indeed before the time of Lamarck and Darwin have speculated far and wide as to the meaning and the cause of the undoubted differences in the families of so-called animate beings, these differences presenting a picture of a Ladder of Life or scale of creatures which in some manner are linked together by close bonds of similarity, and yet present equally marked and often confusing differences as among themselves. Faithful study of these similarities and differences long since brought thoughtful biologists to the conclusion that living beings are closely related, or more distantly related as the case may be, yet related in both instances; and there slowly grew into almost universal acceptance the conviction that all nature was under the sway of a primal impulse, urging on creatures towards progress through growth. This is the so-called evolutionary law or law of evolution; and the word is both apt and descriptive.
It is not the intention in this work to embark upon the otherwise fascinating topic of the differences that exist between the Theosophical teaching of evolutional emanation and the still more or less materialistic biological teaching about evolution which even today holds the field in modern thought -- although indeed it is only fair to say that modern scientific ideas about evolution are beginning to wander far from the rather crude, because new and imperfect, ideas that the great Darwin himself taught. It will suffice here to state briefly that the teaching concerning evolution as given in the Esoteric Philosophy is primarily one of unfolding from within and the releasing of infolded or innate forces and faculties which as time passes seek their expression in and through organisms in the form of developing faculty followed by the appearances of consequent organ and organic activity thereafter.
The Theosophist conceives evolution as a process of unfolding beginning within the entity and expressing itself outwards; and it is just here where the Theosophist is obliged to part company with the Darwinian or the quasi-Darwinian or still more modern conception of evolution as being mere accretion following accretion in the bodies of growing beings.
The source of evolution therefore lies within each evolving entity or being itself: within its character or 'soul,' what may here be briefly described as its swabhava, i. e., its character expressing itself in equivalently characteristic forms. To illustrate: why is it, even on the physical plane and as seen in cases of animals and plants, that a seed, animal or vegetable, which is sown produces always its like? An apple-seed produces an apple-tree always and will not produce a fig-tree nor a banana-plant, nor a strawberry-vine, nor anything else but an apple-tree. The fact is so common and so familiar that it is apt to be passed over without comment. Similarly through all manifested existence. Why? At the heart of that seed, behind it and within it, is its own minor Essential Self, its individual characteristic or swabhava, which is what the ancient Stoics called a 'spermatic logos' (a seed-logos): in other words a psycho-spiritual essence or Monad, an individuality, which obviously can produce nothing but itself and from itself, because, obviously, if it produced seeds from other than itself, those seeds would not reproduce or grow into similar individuals closely alike to itself. What is there within this seed which governs its direct path in growth? We cannot see this invisible factor; we cannot analyse it in the laboratory. It is the inner latent powers, capacities, forces, energies, i. e., the 'soul' of the being, expressing itself in the new generation or rebirth. Itself expresses itself. The 'evolving soul' reproduces itself in the new life, and does so because it is 'revolving' through the spheres.
This is evolution, 'revolving' as well as 'evolving,' both signifying and implying the coming forth of what is within -- and nothing can come forth except that which is within. The rule applies not only to the human kingdom, nor to the beast-kingdom, nor to any other single kingdom of beings, but applies to everything everywhere throughout the entire ranges of the Cosmos, for evolutionary growth is universal. It is in all cases the interior self self-expressing itself.
The innate powers or faculties or capacities, whatever they may be, in the long pilgrimage of human evolution, and indeed of the evolution of every other entity and thing in the Boundless All -- all these faculties and powers are not added unto the being evolving in growth, after the fashion of Darwinistic transformism, but are the outward expression of interior causes. Evolution, therefore, is not the accretion unto an evolving individual of parts from without, nor the improvement of organ or faculty by the impact of exterior forces arising in the environment only, which thus form or change the imperfect organ into a better one, but is the throwing outwards of forces and indeed faculties and powers latent in the being or entity itself.
The principle of evolution is well illustrated in the small in the ordinary processes of physical growth, as that of the infant into the child and of the child into the man, with a consequent improvement in expression of faculty met by an increasing usefulness of the organ through which the faculty expresses itself. In living he grows, and in growing he advances by pouring forth that which was in him before, but improved nevertheless at each new going forth into manifestation, at each new age of such rolling out or 'evolution' of latent and sleeping capacities. This is, in brief, what the Theosophist means by evolution.
Theosophists, in addition to being evolutionists in their own technical sense of that word, are also decided emanationists, perhaps even more so than they are evolutionists. This word 'emanation' is also from the Latin, with a meaning very closely akin, at least mystically so, to the meaning of evolution as above described. 'Emanation' is a Latin compound meaning 'the flowing out' of what is within, and one can here see immediately that the difference between the flowing out of what is within, and the unrolling or the unwrapping of what is already inrolled and inwrapped as the substance itself of a being, is very small indeed.
There is a distinction, nevertheless, between these two terms. The Theosophist speaks of emanation of the gods from their still more divine parents; yet one might just as correctly speak of the evolution of the divine beings governing the cosmos as to say that they 'emanated' from their divine forebears; notwithstanding this, the word evolution is employed more particularly to signify the process of the unwrapping or coming forth into manifested activity or into energic manifestation of the divine into less ethereal parts which are innate and as yet non-expressing within the growing being. (96)
Now these growing or evolving beings, thus emanated from their more spiritual forebears, are the causal factors in evolution. They are what we may call 'souls,' adopting a familiar word. They are likewise compounded beings -- not pure Monadic Essences. They evolve because they pass through stages: they pass from the imperfect to the relatively more perfect, from the young in evolution to the more mature in evolution, and from the mature to age; and then when the Grand Round of peregrinations or revolvings in the Solar System is accomplished, and the Solar Manvantara comes to its end, these Evolving Souls, thus having reached relative perfection, are withdrawn into the Cosmic Oversoul, and therein remain for the entire term of the Solar Pralaya or period of Cosmic Rest. When the Solar Pralaya in its turn has reached its end, and a new Solar Manvantara is about to open in a new period of Cosmic Manifestation, these perfected Monads then reissue forth to begin a new course of life and activity therein but on higher series of worlds or planes than the aggregate in which they had formerly been involved as evolving beings.
In frontierless space there is a perfectly incomputable number, an infinite number, of evolving Monads, which one may here speak of as 'souls' using this word in a very general sense without any technical significance. These 'souls' are expressing themselves in all-various forms, and they exist everywhere and are the causal factors, as above stated, in the complexity and diversity which surrounds us everywhere in universal Nature. Some armies or hosts of them express themselves in matter as material beings and entities; others in the invisible ranges of the Cosmic Ether, or rather in the Cosmic Ethers, as ethereal entities. Other hosts express themselves in the still higher spiritual realms; other hosts again, which through evolution have reached higher ranges of Cosmic Life, express themselves in the fields of super-spirit. One stops here in this enumeration, not because there is any limit at all in the Universe, but simply because human intelligence fails to reach higher than spirit, its parent, or, on the other hand, to anything much lower than physical matter, although in very truth there are endless reaches of inhabited worlds in both these directions of space as well as time.
We see diversity everywhere around us; we never see utter uniformity anywhere, which fact means that the consciousness-centers, the conscious force-centers, which interiorly or inwardly infill and actually are Universal Nature, are manifesting in all the various and diverse manners which collectively produce the diversity spoken of: gods, Dhyani-Chohans or spiritual beings, human beings, beasts, plants, minerals, and the beings of the three Elemental Worlds -- call them by these names or by any other names one likes -- all of them are hosts, families, multitudes, armies; and those which are the nearest akin collect together because of psycho-magnetic attraction as naturally as drops of water or particles of quicksilver will flow together and to a certain degree coalesce.
It is therefore evident enough that if we speak merely of conscious force-centers in the Universe, or if we speak of 'consciousness-centers' as such, or again, if we speak of 'souls,' and do not limit this word as applicable to human beings alone, then the number of them is infinite; because the whole Universe is full: the Universe is nothing but they, a vast aggregation of them. One may say: Where are they? The answer is: Where are they not? Everywhere. Their number is simply unthinkable in any terms of human numerical mensuration.
The number of souls, however, in any particular Host or Family is limited, because that particular Host or Family itself is finite; but the Hosts or Families themselves are infinite in number, ex hypothesi, because they fill all space, and we cannot place a limit to Universal Nature or abstract Space.
Space in the conception and teaching of the Esoteric Tradition is not a mere extension of material dimensions, which is but one of the attributes of matter, which is, so to speak, the body of Space. Space is far more than this; Space is the ALL -- whatever is, was, or will be, throughout limitless duration; and in addition to this, Space as conceived of in the Esoteric Philosophy is, in consequence of the foregoing postulate, of endless expanse 'inwards' as well as 'outwards,' therefore comprising everything that human intuition even vaguely envisages as the frontierless Plenum or Pleroma of all Being or rather Be-ness, including the limitless Hierarchies of worlds and planes and spheres from the divine or the super-divine downwards through all intermediate grades to the physical and what is beyond physical matter in further continuation of the spacial concept.
Indeed, SPACE, just because it is whatever is in both Infinitude and Eternity, can otherwise be called the shoreless Life-Consciousness-Substance, at once abstract Being and all Causation, over the fields and in the fields of which pulsates throughout endless time the abstract ideation engendered in and born of ITSELF. It is THAT from which all comes, THAT in which all is and exists, and THAT to which all finally returns.
Such therefore is Space, everything that is; and therefore the number of 'souls' which infill and in a sense compose Space is like Space itself, limitless, frontierless, without beginning and without end. All the wonderful phenomena that we humans sense around us in this our material sphere, in the starry heavens, even in the infinitesimal worlds of the atoms, and all between, are simply the outward expressions of these inner causal individuals, infinite in number, as said, and composing the infinite Hosts or Families of beings manifest and unmanifest.
Even the atom is a 'soul' in a sense, although of course not a human soul, nor an animal soul, nor a plant-soul, nor a mineral soul; but an atomic soul, precisely on the same grounds on which we speak of an animal soul or of a plant-soul. It is an atomic soul because its consciousness-center is manifesting in the atomic or infinitesimal spheres or realms, and the physical atom of chemistry, is merely the physical body of it -- a merely temporary vehicle truly, because the incessant repetitive reimbodiment of these atom-souls occurs so frequently when compared with human reimbodiment that they seem to take place with scarcely a perceptible interval of time as human beings understand time.
Perhaps it is as well to state once for all that although the term 'soul' is used in this and the succeeding chapter as descriptive of these Hosts or Families of beings and entities, nevertheless this descriptive term is obviously open to many well-founded objections; and this is so because of the strong color of significance which the word 'soul' has acquired in Western minds. The exactly proper descriptive appellation for the individuals composing these Hosts or Families, as hinted in a preceding footnote, is the Pythagorean term Monas, which in European languages is usually spelled Monad. The value of this word, philosophically, is the implication of individuality which it suggests; for these Monads are distinctly individuals throughout the entire term of their manifested existence, or cycles of revolvings or circumrotations or transrotations in a Cosmic or Solar Manvantara.
They may be looked upon, albeit in somewhat metaphysical fashion, as individualized spiritual droplets or 'atoms' of SPACE as hereinbefore described: component drops of the shoreless Ocean of spacial Being. They are the causal Agents, collectively speaking, of all the diversity in the Universe around us; and in their incessant motion or unceasing action, both collectively as a Host or distributively as monadic individuals they not merely compose but actually are both the instrumental as well as the substantial causes of the Hierarchies of the Worlds.
They exist in all-various or multi-myriad stages or grades of evolutionary unfoldment or development; so that with this correct picture, brief as it is, in mind, the student may at once see how it is that the Esoteric Tradition speaks of certain aggregates of these Monads as spiritual beings, others as intellectual or Manasaputric, others again as life-atoms, and others again as being in that particular grade of their monadic peregrination which makes them appear or manifest or show themselves as the particles of material substance.
Let us try to imagine the immense numbers of these beings or monadic entities existing even in our own small realm of space-extension. A cubic inch of air is a small portion of matter, yet the American scientist Langmuir has calculated that the number of gaseous molecules in one cubic inch of air is so immense that if each molecule were enlarged and changed into a grain of fine sand, these grains of sand would completely fill a trench one mile wide and three feet deep and would reach from New York to San Francisco! How on earth is it possible to pack that number of molecules into one cubic inch of air, one may well ask in bewilderment. And air is only a gas, and the molecules are supposed to be relatively far distant from each other, otherwise they would not have the molecular freedom and mobility that makes a gas what it is.
Again, take the human physical body: it has been estimated that it contains some twenty-six thousand billion cells -- each one a fairly large physical entity, for each is composed of entities still more minute which give to that cell all its physical being, all its characteristic shape and even size -- which make it all that it physically is. These smaller entities are the atoms, each enshrining a force-center, a consciousness-center, a 'soul.'
We are told that the physical atom is mostly holes, 'vacancies' so called, so-called empty space, and that if we could collect the electronic and protonic centers composing the atoms of which a man's body is builded into one point, that point would be invisible to the physical eye! Why then do we see each other? Because -- strange paradox -- we are mostly 'empty spaces,' vacancies, which produce upon us similarly composed, the illusion of dimension and bulk. Just exactly as the celestial bodies are seen in the abysmal deeps of Solar Space, so, relatively speaking, are there equivalent distances between electron and electron, of which the atoms are composed, and between atom and atom which again build the molecules, which again make the cells, which again form the physical body of man. Just as these celestial orbs are ensouled, so likewise are the atoms of man's body; for there is one fundamental Law, therefore one fundamental individuality or spiritual characteristic, running through every aggregative body or universe, greater or minor; and thus it is that every part of the greatest universe that our imagination can figurate feels the sway and impulse and compelling sanction of that same fundamental Law: in other words, is instinct with the life and consciousness of that same fundamental all-embracing abstract Individuality of which the said Law is the activity.
We can therefore with strict logical accuracy call an atom a soul, because the atom is a transitory event in the life-history of a force-center, or consciousness-center, or Monad, which is a growing, learning, evolving as well as revolving being. The electrons and protons of the atom are but the bodies or veils of still more infinitesimal force-points, or consciousness-points, which make or form or compose these electrons, or protons, and express themselves through these electrical infinitesimals in the sub-atomic worlds. The number of these protons and electrons in a tiny bit of matter, so small as scarcely to be visible to the naked eye, is so great that we must count them in octillions; that is to say, 10 raised to the 27th power, or, in other words, 1 followed by 27 zeros!
Dr. Robert A. Millikan a number of years ago estimated that the number of electrons which pass every second through the filament of a common 16-candle-power electric lamp is so enormous that it would take the two and a half million people living in Chicago, each person counting at the rate of two per second, and working twenty-four hours a day, twenty thousand years to count them; 3,153,600,000,000,000,000 -- 3 quintillions, 153 quadrillions, 600 trillions -- of electrons and protons pass in one second through the filament of a 16-candle-power electric lamp! Yet each one of these electrical infinitesimals is the physical expression of an evolving and revolving soul -- so incomputably vast, so incomprehensibly numerous are they!
It baffles the imagination and surpasses the utmost reaches of it to attempt to form any mental conception of the quasi-infinite magnitudes, so far as numbers are concerned, of these countless whirling circumrotating entities in a single ordinary human body. Here is literally a case where the infinitesimal merges again into the so-called 'infinite,' much as an inverted cone, after passing the point of its origin again spreads forth into a new 'infinite.' The figure is not so bad, because it may be looked upon as an actual schematic or diagrammatic representation of natural facts.
Furthermore our scientists now tell us that these electronic infinitesimals are the substantial basis of all physical life; that they are the physical building-bricks of the Universe, being at once either force or matter, according to the way in which one looks at it; and each one of these infinitesimals is an incarnate imbodied force-entity, or, in its last analysis, a 'soul'; otherwise, and yet more accurately, a Monad. To such infinitesimals, the body in which they live and move and have their being -- our human physical body -- is no doubt a mathematically infinite universe, and the human soul, overlording this vast multitude, is to them a god.
The human soul itself is composed of hosts of minor 'souls,' the life-atoms in and through which it expresses itself: hosts of young and learning entities, just as are the cells, and the atoms of the cells, and the electronic infinitesimals of the atoms, all going to make man's physical body. These hosts of minor souls it is which give to the physical body its form and shape, and endow it with consistency and coherence, and enable it to transmit to the outer world the sublime spiritual and intellectual messages passing down through the intermediate vehicles or inner bodies to the mind of the physical man: love, mercy, compassion, pity, knowledge, the teaching of wisdom: all those noble and beautiful things that spring forth from the very core of man, from the heart of his heart, from the core of his core -- from his Monadic Essence, the spiritual Center which is his deathless spiritual individuality.
According to the beautiful Hindu picture or figure or metaphor, man is a living tree of consciousness growing with its roots in the spirit above and its branches bending downwards into the material world. Many souls, one spirit: that is the picture of the nature of the human constitution. For the undying force-point or Monadic Consciousness-Center from which the soul, itself a host of minor souls, issues, and which gives to the soul individuality, thus enabling it as an entity to issue forth as a ray: this inmost point is deathless because it itself is one of the host of consciousness-centers or Monads born from within the bosom of the Mother-Spirit: it is a spirit-center, which has not yet become manifested in this sphere, in this world, on this plane. This spirit-center is breaking through, as it were, on its evolutionary journey, new spheres and planes, and therefore it manifests on these lower planes at first but feebly its latent transcendent powers. We must not misunderstand the meaning of this to be that the Monad is something which is destined in the future to become spirit, and now at this present stage of its evolutionary journey is not yet a spirit; that is not the idea. It must be considered to be a spirit-point, which, during the course of its evolutionary journey in the realms of matter, clothes itself in its own rays of light, and these rays of light are what we call the 'souls' in which it vestures itself. But as each such soul or ray is rooted in this spirit-center, the soul or ray has in the core of its being the very nature of the mother-spirit.
Universal Nature, it will therefore be seen, is the vast aggregate of these infinite Hosts or Families of souls or Monads in infinitely varying grades or degrees of development, a flowing stream of evolving entities, as Herakleitos would have said. They are not all alike, these souls or Monads; if so they would all be one. Each one of them is an individual expressing itself; yet they group together naturally into classes or hosts or families, each individual in a class holding certain characteristics in common with all other members of the same class; and for this infinite variety of them obviously all the infinite spaces of Space are needed for their imbodiment.
This fact of natural being, i. e., that certain monads are linked together by similar attributes due to evolutionary unfoldment, is the source of thought whence many modern mystics have drawn their idea of families of souls, which families they call group-souls. The idea is true enough as viewed in the light of the foregoing; yet one must not suppose that these group-souls compose groups or bodies essentially distinct or different from each other, but are aggregates of evolving beings which because of similar karmic unfoldment in evolution are brought together in the same relative times and places.
Moreover, when souls aggregate together in nations, for instance, thus forming a body of human beings, or in animal groups, thus forming a family of beasts, we must not suppose that either such nation or such animal group is distinctly oversouled by a unit mother-soul which thus lasts through eternity. It is the karmic similarities of such individuals of group-souls which bring them together into these groups; although no mystical mind would deny the obvious fact that the collective impulses or qualities which such groups have, together form a sort of psychical atmosphere which these group-individuals breathe and live in. Such an oversoul of a group, however, is not a true entity or Individual. (97)
Understanding clearly the above, the student will not be tempted to confuse such aggregates or groups with another mysterious and yet most common fact of universal nature, to wit, the working of individualized monads, call them spirit-souls if you wish, through groups or aggregates, using these groups or aggregates as vehicles. For instance, a tree is an entity, and among the old Greeks its ensouling Monadic Essence was called a dryad, or hamadryad. A tree, thus, is composed of groups of entities, each aggregate group consisting of individuals closely resembling each other. And yet in and through these aggregated aggregates lives and works the tree-soul. So man's body, for instance, is composed of aggregates or groups of evolving monads or life-atoms, the members of each group closely resembling each other and yet all together forming the physical vehicle through which the human soul works. The human soul, being an individual, could not be said to be a group-soul, obviously, nor could the individualized evolving monadic consciousness or life-atoms or paramanus of any one such subordinate group be said to be portions of a group-soul, because each individual is an individual, but each works with others more or less in its own line of evolution and more or less of the same evolutionary status.
Here then is the picture: Aggregates of life-atoms closely resembling each other combine with other aggregates of life-atoms closely resembling each other in order to form a vehicle -- such as the human body -- for an evolving soul of a far higher grade. These aggregated individual entities are groups, but they do not form a group-soul, but are themselves ensouled by a soul higher than the aggregates and higher than any individual members of such aggregates.
Now the endless chain of lives, above spoken of as being karmically divided into racial or national families, where humans are concerned, or into other family-groups or hosts: this endless chain of lives, when all is stated, is but an immense congeries of 'event' succeeding 'event' in the unbreakable chain of cosmic causation, acting as the latter does both in the large and in the small, in the group as well as in the individual. Through the eternities this Chain of Necessity passes, 'event' succeeding 'event.' Man is but such an event also, in his case a consciousness-event, a spiritual event, a psychological event, and a physical event, according to the plane of his being that may be considered at any moment. The gods in the highest heavens are but events of consciousness. The heavens themselves, the celestial spheres pursuing their regular courses above our heads, the worlds visible and invisible, and indeed, all beings and things -- all are but events of consciousness; for consciousness is the fundamental thing or basis of all manifested existence; and our phenomenal universe of substance or matter, with all its manifestations of force, or what modern science calls energy, is but the expression, to the minor consciousnesses of the beings passing through it, of the invisible, immensely great workings of the underlying Cosmic consciousness-sphere.
Consciousness, or mind, if the word be better liked, comes first, and out of it flows everything else into manifestation. This, therefore, as is abundantly obvious, is in no wise the old doctrine of scientific materialism, nor in any sense of this word; but is the direct converse of it. The advocates of the old materialism, which is now moribund if not dead, who made consciousness arise in some perfectly inexplicable way out of dead, insensate, unconscious matter, are disappearing -- their number is diminishing rapidly; our modern-day scientists are becoming mystics, and our philosophers are becoming scientists. Let our most brilliant and able scientists say what they may or like, the fact is that the whole tendency of modern science, as is clearly shown in the scientific deductions made by the most prominent scientific men, is directly towards metaphysics if not indeed mysticism. Certain of our modern scientists are openly voicing statements based on their researches into Nature, and upon their deductions drawn therefrom, which are as metaphysical, if not as mystical, as many things that may be found in metaphysical philosophy.
Each Hierarchy, each Universe, each god or 'angel,' each man, each animal, each atom, is but a passing phase, fugitive, non-enduring, however long its individual existence; a passing phase of the eternal evolutionary journey of the respective monadic essences which inspirit and inform these different units. A spark of the Cosmic Essence, each such monadic essence works through that particular veil or garment which we call in its passing form a man, or a beast, or a world, or a plane, or a sphere, or a universe; all are 'events' existing, in the words of the modern philosophical scientist, in space-time or time-space, which really is a continuum of consciousness-substance.
What then does all this mean? It means that abstract force, or still more abstractly, conscious Motion, is at the root of every thing, in and behind every being and every thing, at the heart of every thing; and consciousness is the purest form of Cosmic Force-Spirit, in other words. Matter itself is but a vast aggregation of monadic particles: monads, latent, sleeping, passing through that matter-phase; but each and all of them, every individual of them, sooner or later will express itself in individualized action: all will thus self-express themselves, and thus grow; and each phase of this evolutionary growth is an 'event.'
We live our little life and pass. It is an event. We go into a larger life, and live it, and pass by transrotation to the next phase. Both such life and the succeeding phase is each one an event. We go into a phase still more sublime, into invisible worlds, and live there and pass, and these too, collectively are but a larger event. Thus are all things and phases of things events, passing stages through which the evolving entity circumrotates. All these events, therefore, comprise the totality of the adventures of evolving and revolving souls, or more accurately monadic centers, consciousness-centers, throwing forth from within themselves what is locked up within themselves.
There is ever something new. The manifestations-to-be of man's spirit are as great as are the opportunities of boundless infinitude; because his spirit is a child of the Boundless All. It springs forth from it; it is a part of it, it is inseparable from it. It is he and he is It. Tat twam asi is the marvelous manner in which the ancient Sanskrit writers of the Hindu Upanishads put it: THAT THOU ART.
The reader is requested ever to keep clear cut and prominent in his mental vision the distinction which the Esoteric Philosophy makes between the Spirit in man and the evolving human child of that spirit which is correctly and accurately called the human soul -- itself a projection into active manifestation of the recondite human monad. This distinction has been referred to or pointed out in previous paragraphs of the present chapter where it is more or less definitely stated that the term 'soul' is so ambiguous that its usage is here somewhat protested, but that, nevertheless, and just because it is a useful word because commonly known, it has been adopted as a generalizing term in order to describe the Hosts or Families of learning entities who and which in their immense aggregate form the Evolving and Revolving Souls, the theme of the present study.
By 'souls,' therefore, and speaking with strict accuracy, we do not mean entities or beings immortal, thanks be to the immortal gods! It is the spirit or Monadic Essence in man which alone is immortal; and the human soul, itself a projection of its own Monadic Essence, as just stated, is the partly self-conscious vehicle receiving the spiritual illumination as its guidance from the spirit within. Every human being as a partly self-conscious and more or less adequately thinking creature is a human soul; but as every human soul, as at present manifesting itself, is very obviously an imperfect entity, as above pointed out, it is not immortal as 'soul.' Who would want to live as he now is in an immortality of soul-imperfection, lasting through endless Duration? Certainly not the present writer. To him such an immortality would be an endless hell. It means that the soul would exist in illimitable eternity, relatively changeless, with all the prospect of possible future growth consisting solely in merely ringing the changes of the small cycle of development experienced by that soul in the physical body in which it had lived in the previous life.
But outside of anything else, what we may wish or not wish has little or nothing to do with Nature's operations. Nature in her majestical procedures is as impersonal as the falling of the rain or the shining of the sun, and it should be perfectly clear that an imperfect being or thing can no more be immortal throughout eternity with continuous and uninterrupted and, as it were, crystallized consciousness, which is an obvious contradiction, than can any other contradiction involving imperfections exist for ever in Nature.
Immortality in imperfection finds no place in eternal Nature; and every human soul is an imperfect entity, because it is a growing entity, i. e., a learning thing, an evolving thing; and therefore it should be quite clear that no imperfection can put on the garments of immortality. Therefore is it again repeated: thanks be to the immortal gods that we grow and learn and advance steadily ever towards a goal which in Nature's illimitable expanses we can never finally reach; for the reaching of such a final goal would mean the sinking into a crystallized immobility of consciousness which is as horrifying in conception, when it is once understood, as it is also revolting to our instincts of truth. The pity of it all is that men want the universe to be as their imperfect brain-minds think it ought to be. If such could be the case, then we should have immortality for arrogant and increasing selfishness, a typical attribute of the lower part of the human soul: immortality for a composite and de facto imperfectly evolved entity, which composition signifies ultimate dissolution and precedent suffering and pain.
It is our foolish because undeveloped minds, and hungry because imperfectly satisfied hearts, which dream of 'immortality' for themselves as if it were the greatest boon that could be conferred upon wretched and erring because imperfect entities, such as human beings in their present evolutionary state most certainly are. What ignorance we humans show when we arrogate to ourselves in our presently imperfectly evolved state, an immortality lasting throughout endless duration! Why should we imperfectly developed humans be such only exceptions in an infinite universe, which teaches on all sides, and in every possible manner and way, that human beings are collectively but one group, one family, one stock, among innumerable multitudes, countless hosts of other beings and entities, all of which are growing, all evolving, and some of which hosts are incomparably superior to us humans in developmental or evolutionary unfoldment. Why should we be the only exceptions? Is there anything in Universal Nature that permits us to arrogate to ourselves this supposed immortality -- as human souls, be it carefully noted -- an immortality towards which, blind as most humans are, they aspire?
It is, of course, on the other hand, perfectly true that this yearning for self-conscious continuity in existence is founded on a clear and ever-flowing stream of intuition taking its rise in the bosom of the Spirit within us, and reaching down to our brain-minds and touching them with its holy fire; but continuity in ever-lasting life as the Esoteric Tradition teaches it, is a far different thing from the quasi-static 'immortality' as this word is invariably misunderstood in the West. If there is one thing which the Esoteric Philosophy teaches with an emphasis that is surpassed in no other part of its sublime Message, it is that LIFE is not only all-permeant, i. e., universal, but that every being, entity, and thing, in Boundless Space is at once permeated with this Cosmic Life and is of the very essence of this Cosmic Life.
Yet the reader is earnestly requested to note the vast difference between an unending but ever-changing continuity in life and existence, and the quite impossible, because utterly unnatural, idea of a changeless or eternally more or less static human ego or soul supposed to be immortal in its imperfections. The point is that if such ego were to change one iota, it would no longer be the same ego but would have been altered; and the truth is that it is precisely the ego, or self-conscious center, which is undergoing incessant, continuous, and unbroken changes.
The unceasing continuity of consciousness as taught by the Esoteric Tradition signifies the losing of the human ego into its becoming a spiritual ego -- no longer the human ego that it was -- and proceeding for ever with such 'losing' in an unceasing betterment. The Occidental supposititious immortality is like the possible yearning of the beast, a tiger for instance, to be eternally immortal in its tigerishness, hunting, ravening, slaying, and glutting its appetite with the blood and flesh of its unfortunate prey. Indeed, we humans in the sight of the divinities would be considered unholy denizens of the spiritual spheres were it possible for us to attain them with all our present imperfections, our gross if not animal appetites, yearnings and tendencies, incredibly stupid mental biases and prejudices. Continuous immortality for such beings! Would it not be even unto themselves an everlasting hell?
The average Westerner, the average Occidental, does not even know what true immortality is, or what we have just described as being unending continuity through ceaseless change in progress in the Cosmic Life. It means an unbroken continuation of the self-consciousness of the thing that presently is, that is at present, but unceasingly enlarging through boundless time its ranges of activity and expansion. What men call their 'self-consciousness' is but a feeblest glimmer of the life and mind of the Spirit, i. e., of the Monad, within and above it; so that as these changes in enlargement and expansion continue, we pass from the less to the greater light, from the greater to a light still more splendid, so that what is now but a flickering and imperfect point of brilliance in time expands into the noon-day glory -- only to embark into greater glories beyond.
The point of distinction, therefore, that the Westerner desires, although quite unconsciously to himself, is immortality or continuity of his imperfections; whereas the Esoteric Philosophy shows clearly that it is precisely these imperfections, these flickering lights of the imperfect mind, which must be abandoned so to speak, or expanded, speaking more truly, into the greater. The idea is admirably illustrated by considering the differences of understanding as between man and man, two men: each has a feeble ray of self-consciousness; each prefers his own feeble ray to the ray of his brother, were it possible to exchange them; each yearns for immortality in his own limited understanding of the situation, fearing to lose himself, forgetting that only by losing his own imperfections, whose aggregate he calls 'himself,' may he enter into greater things.
This is the lesson that in human concerns is taught to us so clearly by Love. The lover yearns to lose himself in the thing loved, intuitionally feeling and realizing that by so doing he expands himself, widens his sympathies, becomes co-sentient with the thing loved and finally with others; until one day as the process continues he realizes that he has lost himself by becoming the All.
The truth therefore is that there is but one SELF, of which all the hosts of minor selves are but greater or smaller ray-selves. The 'dew-drop' finally slips into the Shining Sea -- not to become 'lost' in the Occidental sense of this word, but to expand the dewdrop into the Sea itself. This was the secret teaching of the great Gautama the Buddha; it is the teaching likewise of the noblest spiritual effort in Hindusthan, the Adwaita-Vedanta of Sankaracharya; it is likewise the intuition of every great Mystic that the world has ever known.
It is strangely difficult for the Westerner to grasp this sublime thought that by losing himself in the greater, he becomes that greater because the twain are in essence one. The Westerner imagines that when this grand consummation of the Cosmic Manvantara is finally reached, then and there for ever afterwards will ensue an immortality in static crystallization of perfection -- which is just what will not take place; and just here again we see how grossly the teaching of continuity of consciousness is misunderstood. For, marvel of marvels, wonder of wonders, when the new Cosmic Manvantara opens its great Drama of Life, after the Cosmic Pralaya, all these individuals composing the uncounted myriads of the Monadic Hosts will reissue forth for a new evolutionary pilgrimage in the new series of Worlds that will then flow forth from the heart of being -- worlds which are the reimbodiments of the worlds that were. (98) Is it any wonder that the Theosophist speaks of the ages-long peregrinations of these individual Monads as being, in their operations in manifestation, evolving or revolving Monads or Souls?
One of the main objections that may be strongly urged against the Western misconception of continuity in a more or less static but imperfect consciousness is the fierce egoisms that it arouses. Instead of a man's being taught that his humanity is but one stage, and a very imperfect stage at that, on the endless pathway to glories unspeakable in the future, this Western misconception implants in his consciousness the idea that he must 'save' his soul at all costs, bringing about small consideration for others. It offers to him no soul-enlarging views of the future, and fixes in his mind the totally wrong idea that his imperfect self or soul is his first concern. It makes a man egocentric and selfish, and induces into his mind the feeling that it is not necessary to look far within himself simply because there is no 'distance' within himself to look into. This erroneous conception makes him a spiritual pauper, and works to deprive him of that noblest form of self-respect which is born by discovering one's own grandeur, inner grandeur, spiritual grandeur, in recognising soul-kinship with all others around him, seeing in those others limitless wells of beauty, and genius.
A man must learn above everything else to look upon all surrounding Nature, his fellow-human beings first and foremost, with the all-penetrating eye of the spirit. This prevents crystallization of his mind, giving birth to endless prejudices, misconceptions, and egoisms.
When the conviction comes upon a man, no matter what his age, that he has little more to learn either about himself or about the souls of others around him, it is then time that he bestir himself. Not only is it egoism in its most dangerous form, it is the beginning of the crystallization of his inner, ethereal, intermediate nature, which is the wanton parent of all human evil and trouble, and is more productive of even physical disease, and more certainly a leading to an early and perhaps painful death, than any other thing that can affect a man. Every Sage and Seer of the past has told us: "As a man thinks, so is he."
There is an old Sanskrit saying which is often quoted in the Hindu writings. It is this:
O Yadyad rupam kamayate devata, tattad devata bhavati (99),
which means: "Whatsoever thing a divine entity yearns to become, that very thing it will become." It is most important to note that this same principle of natural law applies to all conscious beings. A man can deprive himself of his own inner spiritual illumination: he can shut the door against the entrance into his mind of the light from his own inner god, by refusing to believe his own higher instincts and intuitions; on the other hand he can know that he is the manifestation, at present unconscious or more or less conscious, of his own inner god; and that if he can ally himself with that inmost Center of his being, knowledge without bounds then can be his. It is thus that the Great Seers of the past got it.
Katherine Tingley wrote:
It is that nobler part of our nature that rises to every situation and meets it with patience and courage, -- the power that often sweeps into a man's life unawares and carries him out beyond all brain-mind thought into the great broad road of service. . . .
The knowledge of it comes not in any world-startling or magical way, and is not to be purchased save by the surrender of a man's passionate and lustful nature to the God within. (100)
We human beings are composite creatures: we are souls when in the body, and then a dissolving and breaking-up compound after the dissolution of the body, in order that the truly immortal and continuing element in us, our individualized divine and spiritual sparks may then be freed and pass to their own respective spheres of post-mortem rest and experience, each attracted to its own and attracted nowhere else. Thus it is that we build for ourselves after physical death what the exoteric religions, in their imperfect rendering of the original Verities communicated to each religion by its great founder, call the Heavens and Hells. (101)
A 'soul,' then, and correctly speaking, is a growing entity, a composite being, which is builded or constructed around what is called a 'Monadic Ray' -- an efflux from the Monad its source; that is to say, a soul is a compound of forces and substances; but the divine-spiritual ray, around which the soul-structure is thus builded, that indeed is immortal as human beings should properly understand immortality, because it lasts from the beginning of a Solar Manvantara to the end of a Solar Manvantara -- in other words, from the beginning of our Solar System to its end: and this Monadic Ray lives as a spiritual being in the bosom of its parent Monad with unbroken continuity of consciousness: it endures throughout without interruption or lapses of continuity.
But 'souls' are not this. Souls, being composite things, must have rest, as all composite beings or entities must; they must have periods of peace and repose for recuperation; and it is in this recuperation that they gain strength for the next expression of themselves in their next incarnation on earth. A familiar example to us humans, which may perhaps make the idea more clear, is the rest and recuperation which our compounded physical body needs at the end of each day. We then sleep and rest and recuperate, and awake in the morning refreshed and ready for the new day's duties.
In view of what has been said about the mortality (102) of the human soul, certain unthinking people may ask: What, then, is the difference between a human being and a beast? That is often a knotty question to one who does not understand Theosophy. There is, of course, a great difference, indeed an immense difference, between man and beast; but so far as the lower or lowest parts of the human constitution are concerned, there is very little difference in origin and in destiny between a physical human being and a beast.
As the human has a soul, and as the human has a divine or Essential Self, so likewise has a beast a soul -- but a beast's soul, not a human soul; in other words, a highly evolved elemental, which has, however, evolved less far than has the human soul, which likewise in its origin was an elemental; but that beast-soul, a highly evolved elemental and in its primal origin a life-atom, is nevertheless a soul, the structure of which will reassemble itself around its own inmost Monadic Ray at each reinfleshment, even as occurs in the case of man. This Monadic Ray inspires the higher and quite latent parts of the humble beast exactly after the manner that the Monadic Ray, which is the innermost of man, inspires him. Yet in the beast this Monadic Ray is practically unmanifest in the sense of self-consciousness, whereas in man it has so refined its vehicular soul-structure, through which it works and acts, that this structure has been evolved into retaining self-consciousness in incarnation.
The beast thus in a sense is automatically conscious, or directly conscious; the man is self-conscious or conscious through reflexion from above; and this difference, as has been said, is simply enormous. The beasts are indeed composed of all the elements of Nature, of Universal Nature, that compose man: yet between the human kingdom and the beast-kingdom there is a truly impassable psychical and intellectual gulf brought about by the inclusion in the human inner economy of the higher intermediate nature of the human being -- a self-conscious and self-consciously thinking and choosing entity, while self-consciousness in the beasts is as yet quite unexpressed -- at least relatively so. This is a gulf so great that nothing in Nature can bridge it, except the gaining by the beast of self-consciousness through the conscious imbodiment of the Monadic Ray in the soul-structure; but this will happen also for all beasts in the far distant future of another great Planetary Manvantara or great Planetary Life-Cycle. (103)
It should be quite clear, however, that the Theosophist does not put himself upon the evolutional level of the beast; and the pious Christian should be the last to assert this of a Theosophist, if he is sincere in his own beliefs, because in one of the canonical books of his own Bible, that is to say, in the book of Ecclesiastes, occurs the following, which the author purposely translated from the Hebrew original himself rather than use the more or less biased translation that the accepted European rendering of the Hebraeo-Christian Bible contains:
I debated in my heart concerning the condition of the sons of man, as Elohim [the god or the gods, if you like] made them, and seeing how themselves are beasts, they themselves. For the destiny of the sons of man and the destiny of the beast are one destiny to them both; even as dieth the former so dieth the latter; for there is one spirit in them all; so that the pre-eminence of the man over the beast is nothing; for all is illusion. All goeth to the one place; all is from the dust; and all returneth to the dust. Who knoweth the spirit of the sons of man which riseth upwards, and the spirit of the beast which descendeth under the earth? (104)
This book of Ecclesiastes is supposed to have been written by one whom, in the days of the writer's boyhood, he was taught to consider 'the wisest man who ever lived': the mythical King Solomon. At any rate, the book is entitled Qoheleth in the Hebrew, which means 'the Teacher.' This Hebrew book is a mystical work, and in the passages quoted we are told that 'even as the beast dies, so dies the man: they both go to one place; both came from the dust and both return to the dust.' If these words are taken carelessly in their surface-meaning, they teach a crass materialism; but this the Theosophist denies as the intent of this Hebrew work; and a close study of the text, especially in the Hebrew original, shows that another meaning is to be drawn from it than what appears outwardly. But the point is that beasts in modern times are usually, and falsely, considered to be soulless; and all antiquity, while denying that idea, nevertheless made a very great distinction between the intellectual and spiritual powers and faculties of man, and the interior psychological apparatus of the beast. Is it not obvious that Solomon, or the writer of this treatise, whoever he was, taught under cover of superficial words and meanings a hid and secret sense? All the sages of antiquity followed this method of using the metaphorical, the figurative. Their reasons were several, but the main one was that it was universally considered to be an abominable sacrilege to promulgate this sacred and secret lore to those unprepared, who would only abuse it because they could not understand its profound reaches of meaning; and such abuse would work to the positive harm and mischief of one's fellow-men.
In the first part quoted above, the allusion is obviously to the lowest parts of us; and it is true, thank the immortal gods! For who would want or desire or wish for a continuance in endless immortality of these lowest parts of us, imperfect, trifling, foolish, stupid, and ignorant!
Then at the end we are told: "Who knoweth" the difference between "the spirit of the sons of man which riseth upwards, and the spirit of the beast which descendeth under the earth" -- showing by this comparison that there is some very real and important difference between man and beast; and indeed there is! -- a real gulf in moral and intellectual development, which evolution alone can bridge.
The difference is briefly this: that man is a self-conscious being, which, as before stated, signifies consciousness reflected upon itself, thus producing self-consciousness, and this is a distinctly spiritual quality, for thus does consciousness know itself. This is an unfolding or unwrapping of latent faculty and power brought about by and through evolution -- it means not the mere adding of experience to experience, or of emotion to emotion, or of thought to thought, or of idea to idea, as evolution is commonly mis-supposed to be, for this would amount to an accumulation of scraps into a mere heap or pile without inhering coordinating and unifying power. This is materialistic Darwinism applied to intellectual and psychical evolution; and the Esoteric Philosophy positively rejects this scheme as being both utterly inadequate to explain the facts that are, and, on the other hand, as being but an attempt a posteriori to apply the unproved evolutionary scheme or hypothesis to the facts of Nature. To accept such an hypothesis it would first have to be proved that it is true in Nature and to Nature, both as causal agent and effectual product. Neither has been proved. (105)
In man the process of unfolding has proceeded so far, that the psychical life-atoms which make the structure of the human soul are of a much higher grade than they which compose the structure of the soul of the beast, and therefore in man they express much more fully the faculties and powers of the Monad, of the Monadic Ray, which flow through them -- yet not fully expressed. If the structure of the soul of man were capable of expressing all the faculties and powers of his spiritual Monad, then man indeed would be a true human god walking on earth; and that in very fact will be his destiny in time to come; but he is not it yet.
If the student examine himself, and if he examine his fellow humans without prejudice or parti pris, he will find many interesting things, which if he has at all a philosophical mind, will demand a more satisfactory explanation than merely the fact that the discoverer has found them. He will find understanding, judgment, discrimination, will, love, compassion, pity, and many other such noble and very beautiful attributes. He will likewise find that his consciousness is colored with other energies -- passions, hates, envies, jealousies, malices, and many more such evil attributes.
Pursuing his examination still farther into his own inner make-up (and what study can possibly be more interesting than this to any thoughtful man or woman?) he will find yet other things: instincts, intuitions, illuminations; also blindnesses, wilful ignorances, perversities of various kinds. He will sometimes find his nature so contrasted with itself, so torn among its own qualities, as it were so at war with its own elements, that, if these states or conditions exist in large degree, he has what modern psychology rather absurdly calls 'double' or 'multiple personality' -- actually seeming to be one person at one time and another person or persons at other times; and indeed the facts are thus, though the ascription of this title -- 'double' or 'multiple personality' -- to these facts is hardly one that a Theosophist would accept. Man indeed is 'legion,' to use the figure of the Christian New Testament, only he is not alone the legion of imps or of elemental forces therein supposed, but likewise a legionary host of elements of light and inspiration; for in his inmost he is essentially a 'creator' in the sense of being a producer, continuously sending forth from within himself all-various powers and streams of ethereal substances which eventuate in ordinary human consciousness expressing itself in these legions of manifestations which have just been sketched. These are all from him and of him, for he is their parent; but none of them is he, for he is above and superior to them in his essence.
We immediately see here one great psychological reason why the entertaining of these vagrant impulses and wandering thoughts and more or less incoherent ideas which tramp through our consciousness, can be productive of no good, for they distract the attention away from the Central Fire of the man, which is his Essential Self, the Monadic Ray.
All the above is but another proof of the old, old saying touching man, that he is a microcosm, copying in the small all and whatever the Universe or the Macrocosm itself contains, for he obviously is an inseparable part or portion of the Universal Whole, and with equally obvious reason again, he, the part, cannot contain something that the Whole lacks. Man is manifold precisely because the circumambient Universe is manifold. Conversely, man the microcosm is to the philosophical and clear-seeing eye of the Sage a living proof of what the Universe is in the great.
What is lacking in such cases of 'double' or 'multiple personality,' is that the individual sufferer's own egoic stream of consciousness seems at times to be submerged or overwhelmed with these other and phantasmal apparitions of 'personality.' It would be wrong to say that anything is 'lacking'; it would be more correct to say that the man or woman has not yet found himself or herself; and one sees an exemplification of this imperfect psychological state of mind and consciousness in the growth of little children into youth, and how easily they follow the distracting influences of what is called 'the world.' No, nothing is lacking in such cases of dissipated or dislocated consciousness, for the central egoic Self is always there; but the man has not yet learned to ally himself -- his lower ordinary human self -- with his own spiritual Self, and hence follows psycho-mental will-o'-the-wisps of impulse and thought and emotion instead of the central Light. It is the benign and calming and unifying influences of the spiritual Self, which any man may ally himself with if he will, which produce the great and strong and virtuous men and women. All these lower psychological affections that have been mentioned belong to man's lower nature.
Now there exist in the beasts -- but nevertheless exhibiting only in the rarest cases the psychical dislocations observable in man, because they have not man's mental and emotional apparatus governing them -- there exist in the beasts passions, memories, instincts, strange operations of the beast-consciousness, which almost seem to approach to intuition at times, also limited knowledge of things, likewise hates, loves, and contrarieties of various kinds, just as man sees them and feels them in himself. If they were not in him he could not understand them in others; he could not understand them in the beast. But one does not find in the beast, judgment for instance, as man knows it so well, nor discrimination, nor creative intellectual power, nor recognition of abstract truth, nor impersonal love. The love of a beast is very beautiful sometimes; but it is a purely personal love, and therefore limited.
Pondering upon these similar or differing attributes and qualities, one descries the cause of the difference between man and beast -- a difference of degree in evolutionary growth, but nevertheless not of kind, nor again of spiritual origin. The beast has everything in it that the man has, but mostly latent, unmanifest. In the man it is more or less manifest; and the destiny of man in the future, of course, is more and more so to ally himself with the higher parts and faculties of his nature that he in time becomes self-conscious of so doing, and therefore becomes conscious of entering 'into his own kingdom.' He becomes his own master instead of the slave of his whims and fugitive passions, and no longer eats of the 'husks' that the swine eat of. Becoming thus self-conscious, he begins to recognise himself for what he truly is; and coming to know himself for what he is, he acts in accordance with this knowledge, and verily becomes more and more a Man.
Everything is interlocked and interlinked and interblended with everything else. We are bound together by bonds which can never be broken. We of the human host, leaving aside the other incomputable numbers of hosts which infill and indeed make the Universe -- we of the human host alone, limiting our attention to ourselves for the moment -- have duties to perform to each other, which the Theosophist in particular never dares to be blind to -- however inadequately he may fulfill these obligations. We are bound together by unbreakable ties; and no man can live unto himself alone, nor think unto himself alone, nor feel for himself alone. He may cheat himself into imagining that he does this; but he inevitably suffers from it. Nature, which is infinitely merciful in its widest operations, because it is inwardly controlled by Divine Beings, nevertheless and for that very reason, is inflexibly and ineluctably just.
We Westerners are extremely egoistic, for we imagine that we as human beings are favored creatures in a Universe where no favor exists -- because infinite mercy involving ineffable justice cannot contain either suggestion or actuality of favoritism of any kind! How much greater and grander is the other view, the view of the entire world of ancient times! This view we can understand so clearly and have our understanding greatly enlightened by it, if we use one simple key. What is this simple key? The realization of our oneness with the All. It is a wonderful and sublime thought, and is the root, the foundation, of all the greatest philosophies and religions that human Genius, inspired by the inner god of the first promulgator of each one such philosophy or religion, has given to the world.
One is reminded in this connexion of a well-known passage in the Christian New Testament, the deeper significance of which passage is rarely grasped. Here in the Christian New Testament a story is told about a certain lawyer who was questioning Jesus, the Syrian Sage and Avatara, in an attempt to catch him tripping, if possible, in his interpretations of the Jewish Scriptures. This lawyer asked Jesus:
Teacher, what is the great injunction in the Law? Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God in all thy heart, and in all thy soul, and in all thy consciousness.
This is the prime and great injunction.
The second is exactly like it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
In these two injunctions hang all the Law and all the prophets. (106)
A man who loves the Divine -- called in this New Testament passage the 'Lord thy God' after the manner of speaking in those days -- is a lover of All. In loving all, he loses all self-love, and self-love, as is obvious, is a limited and restricting emotion and consequently is the root of all selfishness and evil in the human world. Self-love narrows the vision, and cripples the wings of the Soul, which in this case is the true Self; but the All-lover loses the small in the infinitely great; he loves all and sees even the glimmering good behind the seeming or actual evil that exists in the world. This is the real meaning that Jesus had in mind when he uttered this noble doctrine. The man who loves the All, obviously loves all beings and everything; and it is therefore not wonderful at all that the great Syrian pursued the path of his thought in saying that the second injunction was exactly like the first: 'Love thy neighbor as thyself' -- for this is precisely what a lover of the All would necessarily do, because his neighbor in his inmost essence is the same as he in his inmost essence. The man who loves his neighbor, necessarily loves himself -- but his best, highest, and finest and loftiest Self.
Our study has not carried us far from the theme of the present chapter 'Evolving Souls' because the reflexions which have occupied the last few pages have been illustrative of how Nature is knitted together in all her parts -- infinite variety living in a fundamental unity; and that this infinite variety is but a manifestation on this plane of the ever-active workings and movements of the Hosts of beings and things marching steadily forwards and upwards on their evolutionary path, a path whose beginning is lost in the immeasurable past of Time and Space, and whose continuance is discerned as losing itself in the immeasurable vistas of the Future.
Consciousnesses everywhere, of multi-myriad grades or stages in evolution, very high, high, intermediate, low, and very low, from gods to life-atoms, yet all progressing, all evolving, all revolving through the worlds and planes and spheres visible and invisible: all engaged in following one general path of evolutionary progress, yet as individuals pursuing roads which most intricately cross and recross each other, thus bringing about the interlocking and interblending karmic destiny of all things.
Intuitions in the minds of great men, whether we accept or reject their particular and individual contributions to human thought, occasionally break forth in noteworthy statement, and the devoted student of the Esoteric Tradition finds it a fascinating study indeed to compare, to analyse, and to examine, the published convictions of great men of today with the teachings of the great Sages and Seers of the past. The similarity as between the two, often very striking, is of the nature of proof that man's essential selfhood will not be crippled by current philosophies or sciences, but expresses itself in kindred subjects in all ages and everywhere. Modern scientific men in particular seem to be casting off the fetters of intellectual confusion and to be striking out new pathways for themselves into the unseen worlds, often boldly declaring their inmost feelings as to the Divine Consciousness which is all-permeant in the Universe. As Einstein, the well-known author of the modern Relativity-Theory, is reported to have said:
It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity -- to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifest in nature.
Einstein's voice is but one of many others in our days, all proclaiming, some more boldly than others, some with more timid conviction, the same or similar ideas. What a welcome change is all this in scientific outlook from what existed in the days when the Messenger of the Masters, H. P. Blavatsky, wrote her great work, The Secret Doctrine!
FOOTNOTES:
94. In order not to interrupt the intricate and indeed extremely complicate theme of the line of thought followed in the present chapter, it seems wise to append this footnote as an explanation, however brief, of the difference between 'evolving' and 'revolving' Monads -- or what, for purposes of simpler exposition, are called 'souls' in the present chapter. Monads, of course, is the correct term for these beings, but this latter word is uncommon in Western thought except for those who are acquainted with the philosophy of Leibniz for instance.
The reader is requested to remember that the Universe is a vast organism, a living organic Entity composed of myriads of invisible and visible worlds, each populated with inhabitants or races of beings or denizens appropriate in type and character to the respective worlds which they inhabit. All these hosts of beings are in unceasing states of developmental growth. These hosts of beings are divided into great Families which follow paths of experience from the spiritual down through all the intermediate ranges or stages of substance to the physical, and then backwards again to the spiritual. These families may be called life-waves. As these life-waves descend from the spiritual, the process comprises an evolution or rolling forth of matter and a coincident infolding or involution of spirit. This continues until the lowest possible range is reached that any one such life-wave can attain in that Manvantara or World-Period, whereupon the process is reversed and the ascent along the Luminous Arc is begun, comprising a process the converse of what the former was: i. e., an evolution or unfolding of spirit again, and an involution or inwrapping of matter.
This process continues for the life-wave until it reaches the spiritual realms again plus all the vast treasury of garnered experiences, and after a period of Nirvanic rest, the units composing such life-wave begin a new course similar to the last but on somewhat higher grades all along the line.
Now this process of passing through these different worlds or spheres or planes may be likened to the rolling forwards or revolving of the great Wheel of Life, the individual units of this life-wave thus being properly spoken of as revolving Monads or 'souls.' These revolvings might likewise be called gyrations or cyclings or circlings or wheelings; or again, on account of the travelings through time and space, the process may be called a series of circumrotations or transrotations. The old term for this process was transmigration -- a word grossly misunderstood in the West. It could likewise be called metempsychosis, as comprising changes in the 'souls' which follow this long course of developmental unfolding of faculty and power and consequent organ.
Thus then, 'evolving' means unwrapping or unfolding the faculties and powers already in the being or entity but in a latent or sleeping condition; whereas the path pursued by these evolving entities being of the nature of a cycling or wheeling or revolving, the entities following such path may be said truly to be 'revolving souls.' The two terms, therefore, are seen to be not only cognate in etymological meaning, but also to express two pictures of the entire manvantaric course of growth and experience that the growing beings pursue. (return to text)
95. See note No. 94, above. (return to text)
96. It would seem advisable to attempt briefly to clarify by a few distinctions the difference which lies between the two words emanation and evolution, both so important in their respective ways. These two words approach each other closely in meaning, yet are not only distinct but different. Emanation, as said in the text above, signifies an outflowing of a Monadic Essence or a Monad from a parent source; evolution signifies the unwrapping or unfolding of what lies latent or rather unmanifest in the constitution of a being. Emanation, therefore, may be illustrated by the case of the Sun which is, during the entire Solar Manvantara, emanating or throwing forth from itself innumerable octaves of radiation. These different forms of radiation are at once force and substance combined, and considered analytically each such form or class of radiation is compounded of radiation-units, force-units, which at one and the same time may be considered to be discrete particles or compounds of energy and equivalently compounds or wavelets of substance. Modern science which is so rapidly approximating to conceptions which are fully as metaphysical and indeed as mystical as anything of its kind that the Theosophical Movement has uttered, speaks of these units of energy as quanta of energy or photons -- which is an exceedingly good description for the quasi-astral and quasi-material plane where these energy-quanta or photons are placed by scientific thought.
Consider, therefore, these vast numbers of photons which have been emanated or radiated from the Sun, as individuals, undertaking, if you please, individual peregrinations or pilgrimages throughout the solar system. Each one when radiated begins a cycle of experience precisely as the Monads of the Theosophical Philosophy do when first emanated from their Divine Parent. Each such Monad or spiritual force-unit, if the term can be used, once emanated, has begun its cycle of evolution, rolling forth or unwrapping from itself by karmic necessity its own latent powers or faculties which in time develop forth appropriate organs through which it expresses itself.
We have, then, first the emanation or flowing forth from the Originant or Source of these hosts of individual Monads which immediately begin their ages-long peregrinations through the different realms visible and invisible of the solar system; and from the instant they are once radiated or emanated from their divine source, they begin to evolve, first by automatic unfolding or unwrapping of innate forces or energies, and at a later stage continuing the process through self-devised efforts in bringing out the inner or superior and as yet unevolved parts of their essence.
The reader should note two or three important points in this marvelous process of birth or emanation, and of unfolding growth or evolution. First, each new evolutionary impulse that such an evolving Monad experiences is itself a minor emanation from the heart of the evolving being; second, each such expenditure of evolving energy which in its first form is an emanation, is itself but giving birth to a minor entity which we may call a life-atom, which in its turn begins its evolutionary pilgrimage through the same process of unfolding growth or evolution; and third, it is at once seen from the foregoing that emanation and evolution are really but two forms of the same activity: one the emanative or original, and the other the unfolding or evolutive. So that each emanation can likewise be considered to be a form of evolution, and each new evolutionary impulse can equally well be looked upon as an emanational outflow. Thus it is that the twain are essentially one activity manifesting after two different manners, and it is this difference of manners which is the distinction between the two forms of the fundamental process of developmental growth. (return to text)
97. While what is said in the text above is strictly accurate and concordant with the facts, it must nevertheless be stated that there is another and more esoteric aspect to this which it is extremely difficult to outline satisfactorily in a published work. However, it is possible that the following observations which are appended here may be helpful. Let it be clearly understood that these groups, last spoken of in the text above, whether national or racial, are not manifestations of an actual entitative evolving and revolving being called the Overmonad, or more popularly the racial 'soul'; such groups, however, whether racial or national, are the representatives on earth of what the ancient Latins called a Genius, which is not an individualized entity pursuing its own individual peregrinations through time and space, but is a vague or diffuse energy or rather force in the ideation of the Planetary Spirit, and which is actually evoked into manifestation because of the combined intellectual, psychical and astral, as well as spiritual, forces engendered by racial or national units incarnating more or less contemporaneously.
Such a Genius, whether racial, as Chinese or Scandinavian as examples, or national, such as French or Russian for example, nevertheless exists as above said in the ideation of the Planetary Spirit, and in far distant ages of the future will find itself again in manifestation when the intricate and complicate combined karman of the same individuals once more brings these individuals together, thus creating more or less the same 'atmosphere' which brings about the manifestation of the same Genius, national or racial, between these two epochs latent in the ideation of the Planetary Spirit.
So far as the individuals or human units of a race or even of a nation are concerned, it must never be forgotten that their simultaneous or contemporaneous incarnation in a race or nation is a matter only of similar karmic characteristics thus drawing these units together into temporary unity. These human souls themselves very quickly wander from such national or racial atmosphere to find the next or the next succeeding embodiment in some other nation or race to which their karmic proclivities attract them. This is an exceedingly important point because, among other things, it shows the inherent folly, if not stupidity, of blind and unreasoning prejudices based upon mere nationalisms or racialisms.
As illustration: two Greeks of the time of Pericles or Plato in their next reimbodiment, may, as individuals, find themselves, the one incarnated as a Frenchman, and the other as a Chinese, a Hindu mayhap, or a Russian, or what not. (return to text)
98. A new world-system, indeed, but everything is on a higher plane, worlds as well as their respective inhabitants. Each individual entity of the hosts on and in this new World-System thus then begins a new Cosmic Pilgrimage, a new series of evolvings and revolvings, but like the worlds themselves on higher planes than those that last it left. (return to text)
99. Yaska: Nirukta, x, 17. (return to text)
100. The Wine of Life, p. 12. (return to text)
101. This matter of heavens and hells will be dealt with at greater length in a subsequent chapter. (return to text)
102. A more correct phrasing of the thought would be: the conditional mortality of the human soul; otherwise, the conditional immortality of the human soul. It should be clear enough from what has gone before that continuance in consciousness or true immortality consists solely in the human ego's (of which the human soul is a ray) allying itself in self-conscious union with its own divine-spiritual parent, the Monad.
The Monad, per se, is unconditionally immortal; the human lower triad, comprising the physical body, the Linga-sarira or Model-body, and the vitality, unconditionally mortal; that which is intermediate between these twain, to wit, the human ego and its soul, are conditionally immortal, or immortal depending upon whether the soul ally itself with its spiritual immortal source, or so enwrap itself into the mortal triad that its composition is affected thereby and disappears with the disappearance of the mortal triad. In this case a new human soul has to be evolved so that the human ego may express itself therein. (return to text)
103. This future Planetary Manvantara referred to in the text above is the next and succeeding reimbodiment of our entire planetary chain. (return to text)
104. Chapter iii, verses 18-21. (return to text)
105. The fascinating teaching of the Esoteric Tradition dealing with evolution as it is taught in the Ancient Wisdom will be more fully unfolded and elaborated in later chapters of this work. Nevertheless, for the purpose of avoiding possible misunderstanding on the part of the reader, as to the basic urge or impulse or force causing and bringing about the evolutionary development of beings and things, as Evolution is thus explained in the Esoteric Tradition, it may be as well briefly to state the fundamental principle here. This fundamental Principle or Cosmic Urge, is conscious Mind -- or still more accurately expressed, an unfolding of individual Minds from life-atoms to gods, through inner propulsion -- from the urge to self-expression rising within evolving entities themselves. Evolution is, therefore, no chance, or fortuitous, or hap and hazard process; it is distinctly an unfolding of faculty, developing the appropriate organ, and both brought about by the working of conscious minds -- the as yet unexpressed conscious mind in every living being or thing. It is therefore a process of development originating within an organism, all organisms; instead of being, as Darwin and other later materialistic theorists taught, blind chance operating to bring about the dominance of superior over inferior creatures.
This materialistic conception of one of the grandest and indeed most sublime processes in Nature, is, as elsewhere stated in this work, already moribund if not dead; and modern biology, keenly alive to the mistakes of its former propagandists, is now searching with relatively unveiled vision for an evolutionary theory accordant with all the facts thus far known of manifested life -- and lives. The change that has come over biologists in this respect during the last twenty or thirty years has been revolutionary; and it would be a simple matter to cite the opinions on the point openly proclaimed in recent years of the foremost and cleverest of biologists. Let it suffice here to cite the opinions of three well-known men, biologists and other, as illustrations of the amazing and most welcome change in the manner of viewing the evolutionary process that modern research and deduction have brought forth.
Professor C. Lloyd Morgan, University of Bristol, England, has recently stated very plainly that in his view, Evolution throughout and in all directions, and from the beginning of time to the present, is a "great scheme," which statement is of course obviously true if we take the word scheme, as Professor Lloyd Morgan intends it to be taken, as meaning a process of purpose and objective -- for a scheme to be a scheme must be purposive, otherwise it is mere chance action.
Dr. Hans Driesch of the University of Leipzig is equally emphatic in his statements, just recently made, to the effect that the theories of both Lamarck and Darwin are insufficient, because chance and contingency in these theories are taken as the 'causes' of both phylogenetic and evolutionary procedures in Nature; and although he states that he does not consider either the Darwinian or Lamarckian theories to be completely wrong, and admitting natural selection as a fact, he qualifies the latter as being wholly negative and a mere factor in the evolutionary process. He affirms with emphasis his conviction that evolution is certainly not due to chance but to purposive design and planning in Nature which are due to intrinsic mind.
Finally, it was the late Professor Sir J. Arthur Thomson, University of Aberdeen, who exclaimed when writing of the marvelous mechanisms so universally found in the bodies of both living and so-called inanimate entities, that if these marvelous mechanisms were to be ascribed to an automatic machine, our ideas as to causes would have to be shifted to the designer of such supposedly automatic machine. (return to text)
106. Matt., xxii, 36-40. (return to text)