Theosophical University Press Online Edition
The all-inclusive philosophy-religion of the Esoteric Tradition, and therefore likewise its modern representative, Theosophy, divides the Universe, and consequently Man who is an inseparable part of that Universe and who therefore also has in him everything that the Universe has, into four general, basic Planes, so to say, or perhaps more accurately Worlds of Manifestation; and these Planes or Worlds of Manifestation should not be considered or conceived as being in the shape of or constructed after the manner of a rising (or descending) stair; but rather as being interior to or inwards of one another: that is to say that these four Worlds or Places are -- counting from the grossest and most material 'inwards' or 'upwards' -- each one finer and more ethereal than the grosser and more material one which incloses it and thus imbodies it, and through which it therefore works and manifests.
These four great Planes or Bases or Worlds are the spheres or domains of operation of the four lower basic or elemental principles of the septempartite Kosmos or Universe; and the same rule of partition in consequence holds true for the human being.
These four are as follows:
The first and highest is the Divine, the domain or world or sphere of activity of the gods -- the highest spiritual entities belonging to the Universe, in this case our own Home-Universe, which includes all within the encircling zone of the Galaxy or Milky Way; but there are vast numbers of other Universes, some far higher than our Universe, and some far lower than our Universe. In all these Universes the countless hosts of beings which infill them and populate them are ranged, more or less as they are in our own Universe, in four general divisions having their respective habitats according to their respective grades.
There is no beginning and there is no ending in this hierarchical Chain of Lives; and if the student will pause a moment for reflexion, he will readily see the reason for this. How can there be an ending, how can there be a beginning, of Infinity, of the Boundless All? -- for these hierarchies are countless in number and fill the Boundless All. Probably no sane man in these days would say that the human species, the human race, with its habitat on this speck of cosmic dust which we call our planet, is the only race or species of beings in the Boundless All which has unique capacity for thought or of consciousness, and of self-consciousness in particular -- a divine quality in its origin. We do not know, we cannot therefore say, where such powers and faculties begin in their development on the endless hierarchical Ladder of Life, because obviously such beginning is without existence, except at best illusory, and then only by comparison; and we do not know, and therefore we cannot say, where such hosts of evolving and revolving beings end, simply because we know of no ending -- an idea equally illusory and for the same reason. All we know is that we ourselves are here, as conscious, self-conscious, thinking entities, thus proving the existence of such beings in the limitless fields of Space -- inner Space and outer Space. For it were but a vain speculation and a dream of empty fantasy to suppose that we humans are exceptions, unique, without peers, in all the rest of Boundless Space! The idea is grotesque, and admitted as an argument would immediately call for an explanation as to why we humans should be the sole exception in infinity. If a man sees a sunrise and thereafter goes blind and never sees a sunrise again, he has a perfect right, as a logical being, to say, "What I have seen must come again and must have been before; for it is."
As said, the highest of the four Worlds or Planes or Bases above spoken of is the Divine, the domain or habitat of the most evolved beings existing contemporaneously in any one period of our own Home-Universe. The next lower of the four Worlds or Planes or Bases is the Spiritual, or the domain or habitat of the Monads. This word Monad, as before stated, is a Pythagorean term, and it should not frighten one by its supposed strangeness. It is a descriptive term of the nature or character of those entities who have attained self-consciousness in relative or hierarchical fulness -- especially so far as all the beings below them in the same hierarchy are concerned. The word Monad is Greek, and means a 'unit,' an 'individual' -- therefore what the Esoteric Tradition calls a self-conscious individual life-center or Jiva. The Monads are embryo-gods, in fact, or perhaps more accurately speaking young gods at school, the school-house in this instance being the Universal Solar System in all its ranges of visible and invisible worlds -- or indeed we may speak of the school-house and now term it the Cosmic University, and identify it with the Galaxy or Milky Way.
The third World or Plane or Base, and next below the Monadic or Spiritual, is the realm or field of operations of Souls of various kinds. They are rays from the Monads and can thus be re-called, withdrawn, into the parent-source. There are, as already said, countless multitudes of these Souls in our Home-Universe. They may properly be called embryo-Monads: entities growing towards re-becoming their own inner and as yet unevolved monadic essence, just as the Monads or embryo-gods are growing towards divinity, towards becoming divine beings or gods by evolving in the manner in which evolution has been explained in preceding chapters, i. e., by unfolding or unrolling the inner essence.
Fourth and last of these Worlds or Bases or Planes, and below the preceding, is the habitat or domain of other countless hosts of entities, which, for lack of a better term in European tongues we may call 'life-atoms' or even 'atoms,' provided that we adopt this last term also from the ancient Greeks of the Atomistic School, such as Leucippus and Democritus, and give to this their term the significance which with them it originally had. These atomic entities are not the physical atoms of chemistry, necessarily, which last are but the material reflexions or mirrorings, so to say, of the real life-atoms just mentioned. These atoms, or more correctly 'life-atoms,' are the energic centers within and behind the physical atoms which thus ensoul these physical atoms, and which therefore make the physical atoms what they actually are, and hold them in coherency as the individual units of physical matter. The physical atoms are the concretions of substance around the energic outflow from these life-atoms. Furthermore, these life-atoms are called in Sanskrit also by the term we have given to the Monads, i. e., Jivas; though it should be stated in passing that this Sanskrit word jiva, thus used in two senses because of its appositeness, is properly used in strict accuracy to mean only the fundamental monadic life-center itself -- which term is therefore applicable to entities on the other and superior Worlds or Planes or Bases equally as well as it may apply as above stated. Thus the intrinsic meaning or significance of jiva is life-center, provided that we include in this conception the containing of mind and consciousness.
For the present moment one could perhaps, without wandering too far from strict accuracy, say that the life-atom is virtually the same as the ensouling vital force of the electron of modern chemical physics (107), with this most important condition or proviso, however, that this life-atom, as just stated, is in itself ensouled by an elemental soul -- a proviso which of course the modern chemist would probably boggle at before admitting because he knows nothing whatsoever of 'elemental souls' or elementals; or at any rate, if his thought occasionally wanders away from his laboratory into the realms of philosophy, and he has adumbrations of this idea, he very rarely incorporates his philosophic reflexions in language or textbook!
It may be just as well for the sake of clarity, and in order to round out even this brief presentation of this aspect of the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition, to define with somewhat greater particularity just what it is that is called an Elemental in our Cosmic Philosophy. First and foremost, then, and as a statement of first importance, an Elemental should be considered to be an evolving and revolving 'soul' in its earliest or elemental stages -- a life-center in its appearance in this material sphere; and attention should be drawn away from any ideas about form or 'shape' that the elemental may or may not have. The form or shape is a matter of no importance whatsoever, at least in this definition, because, as a matter of fact, the elementals or elemental lives, as being the nature-sprites of the elements, change their presentations of form or shape with a rapidity which can only be likened, and truly likened, to the rapidity with which the 'forms' or 'shapes' of forces manifest themselves.
Indeed, the elemental is just that: an elemental force or energy which is ensouled by a jiva.
Every ray of sunlight, every little 'whirling devil,' as the Arabs call them, on a dusty road, every water-spout, and even every rain-drop, imbodies an elemental or group of elementals; every electric spark is one elemental or a collection of elementals; every twitch of a nerve in the body is the effect of the action of one or more; but this does not mean that the elementals are miniature entities of human form pulling a nerve, or whirling water, or throwing rain-drops down, or with a tool making the miniature cyclones of whirling dust that are seen on the road.
Every atom in a physical body, such as man's body, is the physical encasement of a psychic elemental or nature-spirit, itself more highly ensouled with a jiva. We talk by the aid of elementals; we digest by their aid; breathe by their aid; love by their aid; write by their aid; live by their aid; sin by their aid. In fact we are surrounded with them; they actually form every part of us, and take part in every thought or emotion we have and in every action we do -- and this is because they are nature-forces, nature-sprites, therefore even individuals in a certain true sense. They exist as individuals and are of immensely different kinds and of immensely many classes. There are some of them that are titans in size, loftier than the loftiest mountain, miles high; and there are others that are atomic in size; and between these two extremes there are all-various sizes and varieties of them.
Think of the varieties or kinds of radiation that modern scientific discovery is so cleverly unveiling to our knowledge and for our use, these ranging from the extremely small, infinitesimal, vibratory forces called cosmic rays, then X-rays, towards others passing through the radiative ranges that we call heat and light, and increasing in amplitude or size until we have the long waves used in 'radio' -- a mile or so in length.
There are other ranges which scientific men suspect but have not yet subjected to experimentation and proof. These different rays may illustrate the point of the differences in quality and kind of these elementals, because each such ray is the activity or function, or is brought about by the activity or function, of an elemental, which thus expresses its own characteristics in the type of radiative wave which it produces.
Elementals are simply nature-spirits or nature-sprites, in all-various degrees of evolutionary unfolding. A stroke of lightning is a cosmic elemental at work, in action. What Occidentals, translating the word Maruts of the East-Indian Vedas, quaintly call 'wind-gods' or 'storm-gods,' are cosmic elementals but of exceedingly high class; indeed these Maruts, it may be said in passing, are really elementals evolved or unfolded to so high a degree that they may verily with truth be called self-conscious spirits of Nature.
Man was himself an elemental which through evolution or unfolding inner capacities has grown from un-individuality to monadic individualization -- at least so grown in part, because there is no end to the same growth before him. Man is at the same time a mass of elementals subordinate to him, just as he himself is subordinate to the gods, who also formerly in far past Cosmic Periods were then elementals, but who now have evolved and revolved through the stages of 'evolving souls' into being gods. This bare and brief statement is true indeed, but it is only a microscopic fraction of the truth about the subject.
The elementals, therefore, are the great and semi-automatic communistic workers or quasi-conscious agents in Nature, imbodying not only their relative proportions of mind and consciousness, but likewise the hierarchical ranges of the higher minds and consciousnesses who use them in this manner, and thus bring about the multi-myriad forms of work in the Universe. Consequently, these ever active and, from the human standpoint, incessantly 'industrious' nature-sprites, are everywhere, and are the instrumental means or causes for bringing about the doing of whatever is done anywhere, and this is the case equally with works of high intelligence or in works of low. A man writing a book does so by and with the aid of elementals that he temporarily enslaves to the mandates of his mind and will; the same man lounging in a chair or swimming in the sea, or riding a horse, or a bicycle, or driving an automobile, or sitting in church or in a meeting, or in the seance-room studying the so-called 'phenomena' that are present there -- all these actions are performed by and with and through the aid of elementals.
When certain mediumistic humans are present in these seance-rooms, it happens that at times the elementals go out of control, as it were, and then they show their presence by twitching things or jerking things, or making strange and unusual noises. A house where such things happen is a house containing what the Germans call a Poltergeist, or what is sometimes called a spook, or what other peoples call a bhuta, or a jinni, or what not; and most people then would say that the house is 'haunted.' In the presence of certain mediums whose human principles are so poorly co-ordinated and controlled that these principles are, as it were, loose and do not function properly -- in other words, when the human principles do not automatically obey the higher mind and will of these individuals -- the elementals sometimes go 'out of hand,' and occasionally so much so, that the most astonishing things may happen, such as raising or tipping of tables, or throwing down crockery in a closet if the 'medium' be near, or tripping him up and making him fall, or making his bed shake or rise on a leg -- indeed it is possible for them to work all kinds of pranks in such cases. It is all a matter of nature-forces flowing from the 'medium' in unregulated and quasi-anarchic fashion. Once that the rationale and nature and cause of these phenomena are understood, it is at once seen that there is nothing at all 'weird' or 'uncanny' about them, no more so than is an attack of hysterics, or an attack of rheumatism, or a bad stumble when walking -- all of which events are instances of the facts just outlined.
The word 'elementals' is simply a generalizing term meaning 'nature-forces,' whether cosmic or infinitesimal in magnitude; and it is most important to remember that all elementals are undeveloped, i. e., unevolved, entities because arising in the Cosmic Elements. As said above, the gods are self-conscious beings who in past Cosmic Periods were elementals, but who now have passed out of that stage into the divine stage, and at present are the powers of Light and the typical relatively fully evolved exemplars of self-conscious beings in the universe. A human, also relatively evolved as he is but in a lower degree than the gods are, in far past time was also a nature-sprite or Cosmic Elemental. (108) What else could he have been? He is a part of Nature; he is a spiritually and intellectually individualized nature-force; he has gained a certain degree of self-consciousness; in other words, he has brought forth from within his Monad, out of his Monadic Essence, into manifestation, some of the divine and quasi-divine powers for ever living there.
Yet every time when a man is overcome with either a human or a beastly passion, for that series of moments he is more or less in the grip of, under the sway of the dominating power of, an elemental or group of elementals which normally belong and function in the lower parts of his constitution and which he uses when in full control of himself as forces automatically following the mandates of his mind and will for higher purposes.
So, taking into account the ensouling elemental, the life-atom may properly be called an embryo-soul, because it is an individualized vital force, each one a center of consciousness of its own specific type and quality, having a cohering individual form, yet withal linked with the mightiest as well as with the feeblest by innumerable tendrils of vital cohesion in the Boundless All. For universal Nature in all her divisions or hierarchical ranges is by them interlocked and interlinked in every way and in every 'direction' and in every 'dimension,' by unbreakable bonds of Cosmic Vital Essence.
All these four main Classes of beings, here reckoned as four, are not only evolving but likewise are revolving, and not only as aggregated classes but equally so as individuals. The Atoms, or life-atoms, the invisible partly conscious lives which infill the Universe and which in very fact compose the so-called 'matter'-side of the Universe, grow slowly by evolving through the aeons, and steadily thus become greater and ever more perfect expressions of the locked-up potencies or powers or faculties which from eternity are in the essence of their core. As this revolving evolution proceeds, self-consciousness begins to appear, thus unfolding, growing steadily in ever greater degree. Self-consciousness, it must be remembered, is reflective or reflected consciousness -- consciousness reflected upon itself as it were, and therefore consciousness knowing itself as consciousness. When self-consciousness is finally reached, these life-atoms are then become Souls; and these Souls, likewise in exactly similar manner, are evolving and revolving and thus growing in unfolding, becoming ever more and more fully what is lying within themselves, in their own core. Each entity anywhere can manifest forth only what is inherently and intrinsically itself; but of course as this 'self' is rooted in its turn in the Boundless All, it is obvious that evolution or self-expression is at once endless and beginningless, and also gradually unfolds in both growth and change, the pathway of development reaching into and progressively expanding with the limitless fields of Boundless Infinitude. What a sublime thought! In this idea lie the keys of the whole of the Esoteric Philosophy, in so far as this portion of its teachings is concerned.
That particular Monadic Ray which manifests through the composite which in life we call the human soul is our Essential Self; and the human soul through which it so manifests was in far past time, aeons upon aeons agone, a life-atom, a life-center; in other words it was then an elemental soul, evolving and revolving through the spheres towards its goal, humanity.
Thus, then, these 'souls' as they evolve, as they grow or become more and ever more their Essential Self, become in course of the flowing of endless time what we call Monads: not because a soul changes into a Monad by growth through accretion, as before explained, but because of unfolding, unrolling, bringing out what is already within itself, in the Monadic Essence. These Monads, again, evolving and revolving through the spheres, as the aeons pass on into the frontierless ocean of the Past, finally become Divinities, or gods, or super-spiritual beings, by precisely identical unfolding of the inner essence.
Does then evolution end here? How is such an ending possible? It has already been said that logical absolute beginnings and absolute endings are unthinkable, except as of conditions and states of entities; for such conditions or states are always but the results of compositions and of component and temporary passages through space and time, no matter how long a time any such composition may endure.
In our own Home-Universe or Galaxy, which of course is here taken as the type of all other Universes or Kosmical Hierarchies, we see that when the evolving and revolving entities reach, through unfolding of the inner essence, the stage of divinity which is the highest state in our Universe, then their course of long evolutionary development, their Cosmic Pilgrimage, is run. What then happens? Progress they no farther? How can they stop or stay for ever there? Such an idea is logically both meaningless and intellectually absurd, in view of the nature of things as already set forth in the present and preceding chapters.
We humans are now where we are, and are what we are, having become such, in the beginning more or less unconsciously to ourselves, by exercising our inner faculties and powers of intelligence, of will, of judgment, of choice, of discrimination, and of such parts of wisdom as we have. In other words, as Katherine Tingley has phrased it, we have become what we are by more or less conscious 'self-directed evolution'; and as we progress more and more, and become greater and greater in the Cosmic Scheme of things; as our faculties expand from within and come forth into manifestation in ever increasing and larger degree: thus the more shall we use our divine faculty of will, this divine faculty of choice and judgment, and thus carve our own destiny more grandly towards becoming divine beings, as and how we will to do so. (109)
We are moving towards that divine destiny now as self-conscious human beings, for even now we are as embryo-gods, evolving and revolving Monads essentially; but it will be long, long ages yet before men even know with relative fulness what and who they essentially are. (110) We are passing now through merely the present temporary stage of our long, long, aeonic Cosmic pilgrimage, always advancing to greater stages and larger degrees of perfection: coming out of the visionless past, a past so far distant and mysterious with its hid secrets of bygone time, that no system of human thought throws any light upon it save the Esoteric Philosophy, which in very truth gives as satisfying an explanation of the road over which we have thus traveled as it does of the distant future towards which we in common with all others are steadily marching.
There is neither caprice nor favoritism in Nature and its controlling and governing Spiritual Powers. Man is the architect of his own soul, the builder of his own bodies, the shaper of his own mind, the maker of his own destiny. Obviously the realization of this fact confers true dignity and self-respect upon the individuals of the human species; for it implies that man has the power of free will and choice, however limited it may be in the present because of his past karman. This faculty or power of discriminative will is godlike, because only the gods, those divine beings who have passed through the human stage in aeons long gone by and have now gone beyond us: only they have this wonderful power of acting in full and untrammelled will and consciousness in carving out the destiny of themselves, that a man in his present stage of evolution does more or less imperfectly and more or less without discrimination.
Obviously, the exercise of free will and its employment to carry these operations into effect, imply instant and immediate responsibility in the human agent, and this all along the line between causal thought and effectual act. The life-atoms in which we live and work on all planes of our being -- not merely the life-atoms of this physical body, but the life-centers, the life-atoms, of the intermediate and more ethereal vehicles which 'step down' the tremendous energies of our spiritual nature -- all these life-atoms are beings on their upward way for which we are more or less responsible, in so far as our thoughts and acts more or less mold their future. By our thoughts and acts we bind ourselves to these life-centers by bonds of ineluctable destiny, bonds which are unbreakable, and which become part of the fiber of our being and affect us powerfully until we have straightened out the tangles and smoothed out the knots.
These life-atoms, whence came they? Came they to us by chance? Nay, they came to us because we are their parents, and in consequence are responsible for them. The meaning of this may be illustrated by a very simple fact. Put an acorn into the soil and let it grow. In time it will produce a noble tree, an oak, and this oak will give birth to many other acorns proceeding from its heart, from itself. In a somewhat similar manner these life-atoms are our own children, the offspring in their essence of our spirit. For what are they, really? Not only elemental souls, but, if one may adopt the terms of the physical body, they are blood of our spiritual blood and bone of our spiritual bone. We are to them as gods. They come into manifestation from the highest parts of our nature originally, as our spiritual thoughts; for a thought is a force or energy, and being a force it is a substance; therefore it is a thing; and being ensouled by a spiritual energy it too is what we call a soul.
Yes, these life-atoms sprang from us, even as we sprang from the gods in a somewhat similar way. Here is the reason explaining why man has a divine nature, because each one of us, as individuals, is rooted in one of these gods, each one of us springing forth from that evolving god in the beginning of our own present Cosmic evolution: coming forth from that divinity as an un-self-conscious god-spark, in the highest part of that divine being when formerly it was evolving in a past Universe, in other words when that divinity was a man or some other being equivalent to a man, or mayhap inferior or superior to a man.
Even as the life-atoms of our own bodies and of our own intermediate nature have sprung from us, from our own essence, so we sprang forth from the higher nature of such at present divine beings in far past aeons, as thoughts colored with the attributes of the mind and emotion, doing so as the emanation of a force or as a ray; and we then ourselves began to grow and evolve along the Cosmic Pathway upwards which now has culminated in our present humanity and will continue to be our way of evolutionary growth into the dim vistas of the incognisable future.
Universal Nature works after the same manner everywhere -- for there is but one universal rule and law of natural existence involving many changes. The birth of a little child from the physical mother on earth is an exemplification of precisely the same rule of action that prevails everywhere in the Great and in the small. Details of the rule differ very widely indeed; but the details are nothing as compared with the rule itself. It is the principle or the law that is important for consideration in the present theme.
Progress through evolving and revolving is the great course of Cosmic Life -- growth, evolution, evolving out that which is within, pouring forth that which is locked up within: and in exact proportion as any entity is enabled to self-express itself, to express its own inner faculties and powers, just in the same proportion can it be classified as inferior, intermediate, or high. Even the life-atoms which compose the human body, being themselves the embryo-souls or elemental souls mentioned above, are centers of consciousness, and therefore also are they conscious forces; for force and matter are fundamentally one thing: in other words, Spirit and Substance are fundamentally and essentially one. Were they not, then we would have in the Infinite, two Infinites -- an absurdity: an infinite extension of forces on the one hand, and a correspondingly infinite extension of matter on the other hand, but, ex hypothesi, eternally different and not springing forth from the same incomprehensible Reality back of both and within both.
The Boundless All would then contain two Infinites -- one which we may call the light-side or day-side of Nature, consisting of the incomputable hosts and multitudes of beings which have grown to divinity, to godhood, through all the intermediate stages; and on the other hand, another infinite of material beings and things. This is a logical and also a natural impossibility. The two sides of Nature, the light-side and the matter-side, are essentially and for ever one.
So, then, any such life-atom is, on its lower or vehicular side, the body-side, substantial; and on its superior side or energic side, it is really a center through which pour out into manifestation, through which are unfolded, are unwrapped, are sent forth, all the powers and substances inherent in the being or entity, innate in it, and belonging to an inner stream which is the Monadic Ray, otherwise the characteristic individuality of the spiritual being. It is a thought to pause over and to try to comprehend: the marvelous manner in which Universal Nature is builded, and consequently the manner in which man's constitution is builded; for man is an inseparable part of the Universal All, a microcosmic copy of the all-inclusive Macrocosm.
Everything works for everything else; everything helps everything else. There is in Theosophy, in the Esoteric Tradition, but one 'heresy,' to use a popular Western term, which we call 'the heresy of separateness' -- the idea that anything can stand alone and be essentially different from the Universe of which it is an inseparable part. No, everything is interlocked, and interlinked, and bound together with everything else. Nothing is absolutely alone in the Boundless.
The Universe, then, actually is imbodied consciousnesses. This is a wonderful idea, a real key to knowledge and wisdom. The Universe is full of consciousnesses; and indeed, there is naught but consciousnesses in the Universe, for the macrocosmic aggregate of these consciousnesses is the Universe itself. There is no matter per se; there is no spirit per se; they are two phases of the underlying REALITY. Yet these two phases manifest spirits on the one hand, and matters on the other hand. Nor by the former word is meant excarnate human beings only -- nothing so childish as that. Divine entities are here implied, also entities less than divine, entities still more inferior to these last, also human beings, and the hosts of evolving and revolving souls beneath the human stage, and also those other hosts again higher than the highest we can conceive of, when we speak of 'the gods,' and those above the gods.
Matter is, according to the dicta even of our greatest ultra-modern scientists, naught but concreted forces so to speak, and this is an old idea among students of the Esoteric Tradition everywhere on earth, an idea which is older than the enduring hills.
Now these imbodied consciousnesses just spoken of are the vast armies or hierarchies containing their respective subordinate hierarchies which infill and in very truth compose the Universe, and in exactly analogical fashion infill and compose the substance of subordinate parts of the Macrocosmic Whole, such as the solar system.
As was stated in the beginning of the present chapter, the Esoteric Tradition, in addition to other manners of dividing the Universe into its component parts, likewise divides it into four great Planes or Bases or Worlds, respectively called the Divine, the Spiritual, the World of Souls, and the physical-material Spheres. These four generalized Planes or Bases are the four lower Cosmic Planes of the septempartite solar system; the three higher Planes or Bases being technically called the Arupa-worlds, even as the four lower planes of the Cosmic Septenary are called Rupa-worlds. (111) H. P. Blavatsky, in her literary master-work, The Secret Doctrine (112) gives an exceedingly interesting and suggestive schematic diagram of the manner in which the Ancient Wisdom has divided these seven basic Planes or Worlds of the Solar Universe. She speaks of the 'highest' three of these seven Cosmic Planes as being arupa or what to us humans is 'formless' -- not that they are formless to their own inhabitants, which would be absurd, but formless in the human manner of looking at things.
The four lower Planes of the Cosmic Seven she names as follows, beginning from the fourth and running downwards to the lowest or Plane of the physical material World:
As said above, these four or Rupa-worlds, being thus the worlds of 'form,' are in consequence the four Cosmic Planes on which the seven manifest globes of the planetary chain exist, and consequently it is in these four lower Cosmic Planes that are found the larger part of the visible and invisible worlds which, in man's present evolutionary stage, most closely are involved in his destiny because of the peregrinations he makes in and through them as an evolving and revolving Monad.
This same teaching of these four generalized Cosmic Planes or Worlds is mentioned with more or less clearness in many if not all of the ancient religious and philosophical literatures of the world. They are particularly spoken of in the Hebrew Qabbalah -- the Theosophy of the Jews, a Theosophy, which, however much it may have been modified by later Christian hands and minds, is a derivative from the archaic Qabbalah of Chaldaea, the form that the Esoteric Tradition took in Mesopotamia.
The Qabbalah, as above stated, is perhaps unusually clear and outspoken among ancient Traditionary Schools in its descriptions of the nature and characteristics of these four basic Cosmic Planes. The Qabbalah calls these four Cosmic Planes, counting from the highest downwards to our physical-material plane, by the following names:
1. Olam Atziloth -- World of Emanations
2. Olam-hab-Beriah -- World of 'Creation'
3. Olam hay-Yetzirah -- World of Formations
4. Olam ha-'Asiah -- World of Labor or Works
These four Qabbalistic worlds are a faithful copy in systemic form of the teaching of the Ancient Wisdom, and as will be seen from the foregoing are identic in all essentials with the four lower Cosmic Planes that H. P. Blavatsky has in The Secret Doctrine as stated.
Be it carefully noted that the Qabbalah likewise contains in its teaching of these four worlds, the hierarchical structure of the Universe as taught in the Ancient Tradition, since it gives to each one of these four basic Worlds a hierarchy of ten Sephiroth. (113) Thus there are ten Sephiroth in the first World or World of Emanations, although these highest ten are rarely alluded to. The next succeeding world in the descent likewise contains ten Sephiroth, thus forming a hierarchy belonging to this second World, but inferior to the ten Sephiroth of the preceding World of Emanations: yet the ten Sephiroth of the World of Emanations work in and through their offspring, the ten Sephiroth of the second World. The Third or World of Formations likewise contains its hierarchy of ten Sephiroth, with their own individual characteristics, but yet imbodying and 'stepping down' the characteristics of the ten plus ten Sephiroth of the second World superior to it. Finally, the lowest of these Qabbalistic worlds contains also its hierarchy of ten Sephiroth which not only has its own characteristics belonging to its own world, but likewise imbodies and 'steps down' the ten plus ten Sephiroth of the three superior worlds above itself.
It might be added that the last or lowest or fourth world of this Qabbalistic series is also called Olam haq-Qeliphoth -- the World of Shells: this last being but another way of describing the fourth or lowest world of the Qabbalistic world-system of four. The student should note very carefully that in this Qabbalistic hierarchical World-System, each superior world reproduces itself in the world inferior to it, which is its emanation, so that there is a Chain of forces and substances and hosts of evolving and revolving 'souls' working by Circulations throughout this Qabbalistic world-system of four divisions -- thus reproducing here again with fidelity one of the most sublime teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy.
Says the Zohar:
The Divine animated all parts of the Universe with characteristic and appropriate spiritual beings, and thus all the hosts exist. (114)
It is further to be carefully noted by the reader that this ancient Qabbalah thus makes the essence of the Universe Divine as the source from which all proceeds, with which all and everything is permeated with mind and consciousness and forces, and into which everything and all beings in the distant fulness of time will return -- a faithful reproduction of the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition as regards the periods of Cosmic manifestations called Manvantaras and the periods of Cosmic rest called Pralayas. (115)
Fundamental unity underlies all things and all beings and all worlds throughout eternity; and this fundamental unity is not what the West calls 'God,' for this word because of its conventional Western coloring is deplorably inadequate to express the Illimitable Vast and the Incomprehensible and utterly Unthinkable Life-Consciousness-Substance which this Fundamental IS. But the numberless multitudes and armies of evolving and revolving beings are, as said before, divided into Individuals in all-various stages or degrees of evolutionary unfoldment, and all advancing on the upward Way. So that each such individual being or Monad by unfolding from its own essence more and more what therein lies, grows steadily into larger reaches of Mind, into ever-expanding ranges of Consciousness; for each such individual Monad is but a life-center, a droplet, in the shoreless Ocean of Infinite Life.
Every being or entity that is, therefore, is a part, as it were a life-atom, of a Being or Entity still more great than it, yet all evolving and revolving upwards; and these hosts of evolving and revolving beings are not only limitless in their numbers, but even as aggregated hosts are incomputable, so numerous are they. Where indeed can one stop, i. e., find an ending? Where can one say: "Here a being begins, and there it must end?" Has anyone ever seen an absolute beginning of any being or thing with 'nothing' preceding it: or an absolute ending thereof, with 'nothing' following it? The mere statement would show us clearly that such are logical monstrosities -- fleeting pictures of the mind brought about by the working of that imperfectly developed faculty within us which Plato called the 'phantasy.'
There are of course beginnings and endings of conditions and states of beings and things, but only to these beings or things as traversing certain and particular conditions and states. Thus is the human soul to be viewed: it has a beginning as a condition or a state of the vital soul-structure, inclosing its portion of the divine Monadic Ray; and it has an ending as a human soul, because it had a beginning as a soul. This is obviously true because it is an evolving entity, therefore subject to continuous change, implying a passing from change to change, until, from being a merely human soul it has unfolded or unwrapped or evolved a larger portion of the Divine Essence within itself. Then it is no longer a 'human' soul but either becoming or already become a spiritual soul, later to unfold itself into becoming the full self-expression of the Monad which is its own core of being or heart of hearts, thus attaining divinity.
Thus as a human soul it is an imperfect entity, a composite thing, builded of force and matter, more accurately of spirit and substance -- the twain in either case fundamentally one. It, the human soul, functions as a vital soul-structure around the Monadic Ray, during the period when man is in his physical existence on Earth, Globe D of our Planetary Chain. This soul-structure is built of hosts of life-atoms which, in fact, in their aggregate are this Soul-structure, as a structure or composite. It is this composite Soul-structure that the Monadic Ray uses to work through, to self-express itself through, just as the human soul in its turn uses and works through the life-atoms which compose man's physical body, which of course is just such another composite, vitalized organism or structure, but on a much lower plane, the physical.
Similarly, everything everywhere in our own Home-Universe, when considered as a vehicular entity is a composite builded of smaller entities inferior to the being or entity which uses them by working through them, after having first emanated such composite vehicular structure.
One of the most fascinating teachings of the Esoteric Tradition is that which deals with the interlocking and interworking and interblending hosts of lives which, as above said, not only infill any one Universe, but in point of fact are that Universe. Yet -- and this is a point of the first importance -- any such Cosmic Hierarchy or Universe, considered as a unit in the Boundless All, has its own characteristic swabhava or individuality, the all-permeant, intelligent, Life-essence which pervades and inspirits every part and division of such a Hierarchical Unit, and which, therefore, for such Hierarchical Unit is the Oversoul thereof, to adopt Emerson's term. Such Oversoul again is but a unit in a hierarchical aggregate of still vaster magnitude, both in time and space, and this interlocking and interlinking and interblending of hierarchies within hierarchies, or conversely, of hierarchies inclosing hierarchies, is the rule throughout Infinitude.
Thus, and by strict analogical reasoning, any subordinate being or entity which is an Individual in such a parent- or inclosing hierarchy, is itself compounded or composed of hosts of beings or entities inferior to itself, which we may inadequately but descriptively generalize under the appellative term 'life-atoms,' themselves in manifold degrees or stages of evolutionary growth. For each such minor being or entity, here called life-atom, is itself an evolving and revolving and therefore changing because growing unit. For in such Individual, the hosts which it incloses form and compose its various vehicles or bodies, or sheaths of its consciousness; and the far larger number of them are the offsprings or 'children' of the inclosing Individuality itself.
As an instance in point, or illustration, consider the case of an individual man. Man is the parent of all the minor beings or lives or life-atoms which compose his various vehicles or sheaths of consciousness -- with the exception of those migrating or transmigrating, i. e., revolving minor lives or life-atoms which, following their own evolutionary courses, are at any instant passing through his various vehicles or sheaths, and this throughout all time. His very body is born of and composed of the entities, the 'invisible lives' -- with the exception of the migrating lives or monads just mentioned -- which have flowed forth from his own heart of hearts, from the core of his own being, from the inmost of the inmost of his own nature in past lives on earth as well as in the present life; and each one of these subordinate and inferior lives or monads is in itself a more or less progressed life-atom, or psychic atom or evolving and revolving soul -- the name does not matter much, provided that the idea is clear that they are life-centers, partly evolved consciousness-centers or monads, and therefore are distinctly evolving entities themselves.
This may be illustrated, perhaps, by the nutrition of the physical body. The food that we take into our bodies: the water, which is also food, that we drink: the air, which is also food, that we breathe: -- what do we take out of these things? A certain portion is rejected; as, for instance, as regards the air, a part reissues from the lungs, a part has been absorbed; and the same rule holds good with regard to solid food and drink. In other words, we absorb and assimilate, we take into ourselves, only that which is or has been parts of us -- and have been parts of us because belonging to us as once having issued forth from our essence; and the parts which are not native to us, which we, electromagnetically, to use popular scientific language, cannot assimilate: which are not drawn into us by the alchemy of astral electromagnetism, so to speak: we reject and cast thus forth again.
One may suppose that there is not a particle of physical matter on our earth which has not been through our bodies in this and in other incarnations, and many times so. Through air, through water, through food, and on each taking of a meal, the body is nourished only by those portions which are native to it; in other words, its own atomic children, so to say, its own offspring, which are the 'souls,' the atomic souls, which originally came forth from the vital center which man is, and which are now drawn back to him and which he takes again temporarily into his being. It is they which build him up, nourish him; and in doing so, they re-enter into their parent, abide for a while within the sphere of his ethereal or electro-magnetic nature, reissue forth again on peregrinations particular to themselves, and again return to him, only to repeat the same cycle endlessly, although as individuals they are steadily growing because evolving, which means unfolding. The same rule applies with equal accuracy to the invisible sheaths or bodies of man's composite constitution.
Again, the same rule of peregrination, or of migrating and transmigrating or circumrotating and transrotating beings and entities, applies throughout the Universe, so that every being or entity which is, is in a continuous and unending series of revolvings through the various worlds or ranges or spheres which form our solar system, whether these worlds and spheres be visible or invisible. Yet these revolvings through the spheres invisible or visible are not in any sense working at hap or hazard, nor by chance or fortuity, but strictly according to natural laws, among which some of the most important are the spiritual, intellectual, psychic, astral, and physical, magnetic attractions or repulsions which direct the 'revolving souls' hither or thither at all times and everywhere. Yet each such peregrinating and evolving and revolving Monad, is a 'child' or offspring of some one of the countless Hierarchies which infill the Universe in the manner hereinbefore sketched.
In precisely the same manner is man a child of the hierarchical Home-Universe or Galaxy in which he lives: in his highest nature, a spiritual offspring or child or emanation of the Divine Hierarch that is the Self-conscious Divine Heart of our Universe.
All this may seem very mystical and abstruse to those who are unaccustomed to the philosophy of the Esoteric Tradition, but even a modicum of serious investigation will show the earnest student how fascinatingly coherent and logical and therefore satisfactory these teachings are.
Modern scientists in their researches and discoveries are approaching the frontiers of some of these strangely beautiful teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, and in so far as they do this one can render due homage of admiration and respect to their labors, which in many cases are the fruit of self-forgetful and self-sacrificing devotion to what to them is the search for Truth.
A modern scientific writer, Geoffrey Martin, recently voiced thoughts in the daily press that are extremely familiar to every student of the Esoteric Tradition, as the following brief citation illustrates. He says:
Every scrap of nitrogen in our bodies once floated in the primeval atmosphere ages before man or beast or plant arose. Every particle of nitrogen in every living thing that creeps upon the earth, in every flower that nestles on the ground, in every tree that grows aloft to heaven, once streamed in the primeval winds of our planet. There is no atom of nitrogen in the air that has not at some time or other in the course of its existence throbbed through the tissues of a living plant or animal, not once but many times.
The writer here speaks of nitrogen as an instance in point, but the Theosophist applies the same principle or rule to every kind of substance of physical matter, and indeed likewise to all the various kinds of mental substances, and to the spiritual ethers as well. Yes, our wondrous philosophy goes much farther, goes to the roots of things, and tells us that though we take things into our bodies as nourishment, they cannot throb with the pulses of the heart and in the tissues of our body unless they are essentially a part of and belong to it; otherwise they are cast out or rejected after a temporary sojourn therein. Nothing can enter the soul and abide there unless it is native to that soul. And what is more, each such entrant or life-atom, or peregrinating monad, enters and leaves the body or the soul at its own stated times. This is one of the minor aspects of the wonderful teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy called the Circulations of the Universe, about which it is hoped to say something more anon.
All these infinitesimal entities, call them monads, or life-atoms, or 'evolving souls' of minor degree, that come back to their respective parents and issue forth again, can be called 'souls' therein in exactly the same way that this Universe of ours is filled with the souls of the Monads which infill it and make it what it is, and of which limitless multitude our own human host is but one family.
The reach and import of this teaching is simply immense. It shows that a man, or indeed any other being or entity whatsoever, is a well-spring of 'creative' activity, pouring forth, as in the case of man, from the unfathomable deeps of his own nature -- which is the same thing as saying from the unfathomably deep womb of the Universe -- a continuous and ceaselessly flowing stream of invisible lives: let us call them life-atoms, as before. Physical Nature, which is but the copy or the mirror of invisible Nature, pictures the same marvelous fact to all men who are not inwardly blind; pictures this same wonder to every truly seeing eye: and does so in the well-known fact that all beings and things produce from themselves their likenesses. Even the plants, for instance, as long as lasts their state of existence on this physical plane, produce seeds, which grow into other plants of the same exact type, which in their turns produce other multitudes of seeds anew. Every being or entity is continuously doing the same on every plane of its existence, for every being or entity is a well-spring of 'creative' activity.
Turning our thoughts now to a previous portion of the study of the present chapter, containing, as this chapter does, one of the most difficult to explain of all Theosophical doctrines, and concentrating our attention for a few moments on the matter of the soul-structure previously mentioned, and its evolutionary progress, we may ask a question that must have occurred to many students: If, as has been stated, the nature of an evolving human soul is a compounded structure, a composite entity, and therefore mortal in character, going to pieces when its life-term is ended: what part of it persists and enables it as a continuing entity to evolve?
The answer to this question has been dealt with, albeit briefly, in a previous chapter wherein is discussed the Secret Doctrine of Gautama the Buddha, to which the reader is now again referred. Here, it may be said that while the facts are as above stated in this question, nevertheless it is not the composite soul-structure itself which was ever said to persist beyond the portals of death, but the individual life-energy, or power, or spiritual ray or influence, which works through each compound entity or structure and holds it together in coherency -- it is this individual Monadic Ray which endures; for it is this inworking power or life-energy, individualized as a force, which gathers together the life-atoms of that compound structure of the human soul at each new incarnation on Earth, and, having thus gathered them together again, self-expresses itself anew through such new-old compound; and does so as the Ego of the new incarnation.
Thus also is it in the case of the physical body of that new incarnation on Earth, for this physical body is obviously a compounded entity or structure, and yet precisely the same rule prevails with regard to the physical body as prevails with regard to that structure of far more ethereal matter, of psychical substance, which we call the human soul. The rule of Nature is the same in both cases. The physical body is composed of its own component elements, the physical life-atoms and their vehicles the chemical atoms which form the physical vehicle through which the human soul works and manifests itself on this physical plane: and this human soul is itself the expression, the individualized Force, of the spiritual ray which is the Reincarnating Ego.
In other chapters of this work the manner in which the life-atoms of both the soul-structure and of the physical body are gathered together again in order to compose the new complete vehicle in each case for the new incarnation of the Ego will be more clearly elaborated. Here let it suffice to say that this new gathering together is a new vehicle, it is true, yet composed of the same identical life-atoms that composed both the soul-structure and the physical body of the last preceding incarnation or life on Earth. If it were possible to dissolve our physical body at will, to disintegrate the life-atoms of which it is composed so that it vanishes, and if it were possible to collect by an effort of the will the same identical life-atoms anew into the same human bodily shape, we would have the entire picture of the process of incarnation before us, for that is precisely what happens when a new incarnation on Earth takes place -- although such 'effort of the will' is virtually automatic rather than self-conscious in this case.
Yet both these vehicles, soul-structure and body, are in the new incarnation improved somewhat over their state or condition of development of the last preceding incarnation, for evolutionary growth by stages and changes is Nature's first law.
Thus therefore is it that the human soul, although a composite or compounded entity or structure, formed of the life-atoms belonging to the psycho-mental plane or world, or what is often called the psychological sphere, through which the spiritual or Monadic Influence or Power before spoken of works, albeit mortal in structure, yet provides the field of activity or of operation for the Reincarnating Ego; and, furthermore, the soul-structure itself improves and rises in the evolutionary scale by means of the refining influences and work upon its structure of the Reincarnating Ego, so that the time will come in far distant future aeons when the human soul itself will have evolved forth into an individualized and durable center of consciousness -- in other words will have become through evolution a Monad -- surrounded with a host of subordinate entities which were its former life-atoms and which are now, at this stage, human souls in their turn: the Master-Center being the thus evolved Monad, still overshadowed or enlightened by the Divine Monad which formerly worked through it when it was the human soul.
Now this compound entity which we call the 'soul' is composed, as has so often been said before, of the psycho-mental life-atoms which are native to the plane or to the world or to the sphere -- call it what you will -- which is the habitat or the domain of such evolving soul, even as the physical body is similarly composed of the life-atoms belonging to the physical habitat or domain wherein such physical body takes its rise. The soul then is not formed of the physical atoms of chemistry, as is the physical body; yet the body is a copy or a mirroring of the soul: the body mirrors the soul of man -- an old saying of the poets and philosophers (116); and this saying is essentially true, though, doubtless, if we desired to be punctilious we might find fault with the various ideas which the poets and philosophers have used in order to express this great truth. The body mirrors forth that more subtil and ethereal entity which we have called the soul.
Yet even the physical atoms of chemistry which build the physical body are, as it were, but the secretions and consequent excretions, or manifested parts, of that same Monadic Ray from which the soul itself takes its life and structure, thus building around itself its own garment of ethereal matter thrown out or emanated from within itself. Just as the sun clothes itself in its own light emanating from itself, flowing forth from its own heart, so does the Monadic Ray secrete and excrete from itself these different groups of life-atoms, each group native to one of the planes through which the Monadic Ray passes, thus building around itself its own different garments of light, as we may call them, for light is force, and force is substance, and substance is matter, of course.
As the body builds its own flesh and bones, surrounded with the outward shell of skin, so in much the same manner does the Monadic Ray when it descends into incarnation anew upon the Earth, throw forth from itself, emanate out from itself, and likewise gather and collect around itself, a concretion of its own most material substances on any one of the various planes through which it descends, and this structure of life-atoms on the psycho-mental plane we call the human soul -- the vehicle of the qualities and attributes and powers of the essence of the Monad, working through the Monadic Ray, that Monad's child, which Ray in other words is the Reincarnating Ego.
The above, however, gives but one-half, more or less, of the substances or aggregated life-atoms composing the structure of the human soul; the other half, more or less, being the vast number of life-atoms thrown forth or secreted and excreted from the Monadic Ray in other lives, and which return by psycho-magnetic attraction to the Monadic Ray when it descends to reincarnation anew on Earth.
This thought also gives the key to a most important matter, which is the generation of new-born elementals by the evolving and revolving soul-entity, these new-born elementals becoming at their generation parts or portions or native individuals of what is called the material planes or spheres (117); and thus building up from the light-side of Nature, in other words the spiritual part of Nature, that flowing river of energic substances which manifest as the material or substantial or dark or night-side part of Nature.
Many students doubtless have asked themselves where and how the material side of Nature, considered as an aggregate of evolving individuals, is recruited, if throughout the endless eternity of the past every individualized being or entity has been progressing and evolving towards divinity or the light-side of Nature. Obviously the thought involved in the question is a pertinent one, because the endless eternity of the past seems to give time enough to have refined all the substantial side of Nature into divinity. The foregoing then is the explanation of this most fascinating and profound subject, although it should be obvious to every thoughtful and reflective mind that the brief and rather sketchy explanation just hereinbefore given is at the very best the mere outline of what is in itself a fundamental doctrine of the Esoteric Tradition.
The root-thought of this question, pertinent as it is, is the illusory belief in the mind that at the beginning of the cosmic manifestation all possible emanation for that Cosmic Period once and for all took place, and that thereafter the entities thus manifested and thus beginning their aeons-long pilgrimage through the visible and invisible worlds, have but to continue evolving and revolving until the vast aggregate thus originally emanated, both individually and as a collectivity, reaches the divine perfection from which it all originally sprang. As said, this idea is entirely illusory and therefore wrong. The truth of the matter is that emanation or origination is a continuous process even during the Cosmic Time-period, and it is precisely this unending stream of newly-born monadic units which provides the amazing and fascinating and endless variety in Universal Nature that the most unobservant intelligence discerns everywhere: beings in the lowliest stage of their evolutionary journey, beings farther advanced in their pilgrimage, higher states or stages still of other evolving and revolving beings and entities -- these grades rising along the Cosmic Ladder of Life until the mind staggers in an attempt to follow its reaches into the dim vistas of both space and time.
All this, however, must not be supposed to exclude the equally important fact of Nature that these countless hosts of evolving and revolving 'souls' are divided, as indeed they obviously are, into Families or Groups or aggregates; and it must be remembered also that Nature's processes of growth or evolutionary unfolding take place by means of secular or periodic or cyclic impulses or surges, like the waves of the incoming tides, following each other, both waves and tides, in regular and unending succession.
Every entity is a self-contained being, an energic 'engine,' to use a term borrowed from mechanics, whether that engine be on the divine plane, or the spiritual plane, or the intellectual plane, or the psycho-mental or emotional plane, or the vital-astral plane, or the physical plane; and being such a vital 'engine,' it produces what is within itself, constantly throwing forth streams of vital force -- these streams themselves composed or builded of units which we may call life-atoms, each such life-atom imbodying an elemental. Everything thus works for everything else. No man nor indeed any other being can be in Nature a complete and isolate law unto himself or itself. Man, for instance, must obey overruling natural powers which intrinsically and in their essence are likewise his own spiritual constitution. Obedience in this sense is the noblest rule in life, because the highest; and upon this fact is founded the teaching as well as the human intuition of what men call substantial ethics or morals. Man's obedience is a duty to these controlling powers of the Universe, divine-spiritual in their originating operations, which gave him primal birth in the Universe, and towards reunion with which he is now evolving and revolving on his long, long, long cosmic pilgrimage. He began as a life-atom, ensouled by an elemental in the beginning-time of the manifestation of our Universe; during its changes he grew; he evolved; he poured forth those qualities and faculties from within himself at this or at that or at the next and at each succeeding stage; and by so pouring forth and exercising his innate powers, he grew from the inferior to the better; and the process continued until he became what he now is -- a human soul, a composite entity formed of other life-atoms: a soul to which the Monadic Ray of his inner constitution has given birth and in which soul he is now self-expressing himself, as that Monadic Ray: doing so in this soul formed of these hosts of life-atoms, teaching them, his own children, and leading them also on and upwards: which is a godlike thing to do.
And he, this human, this man, where may he stop on the pathways of destiny? Where can he stop? There are no beginnings and ends, considered as absolutes; there are only relative beginnings and ends of equally relative conditions or states. A man is continuously in growth, even as the life-atoms are growing: the life-atoms composing all his vehicles -- invisible and ethereal, and exterior and visible -- which are likewise entities on the upward path. In time to come, the human, by continuously more and in larger and fuller measure pouring forth from within himself the spiritual attributes of his own divine-spiritual source, over-enlightened by his own god in proportion as he so pours forth from his heart of being, from his heart of hearts, his own inner capacities and powers, causes the life-atoms of his body likewise to respond ever more quickly, more magnetically, more electrically, to the impulses which impel him forwards; and in this manner elevates also, and aids in their evolution, the minor monads or ensouled life-atoms. Thus it is that man grows by evolution or unfolding on all planes, becoming more and more, as endless time flows on, a fuller and more perfect exponent and manifestation of the inexpressibly wonderful faculties locked within his own heart of hearts, the divine core of his being.
FOOTNOTES:
107. This statement, however, being subject to a future modification when our scientists shall have acquired greater knowledge of precisely what the chemical electrons are. (return to text)
108. "In sober truth, as just shown, every 'Spirit' so-called is either a disembodied or a future man. As from the highest Archangel (Dhyan Chohan) down to the last conscious 'Builder' (the inferior class of Spiritual Entities), all such are men, having lived aeons ago, in other Manvantaras, on this or other Spheres; so the inferior, semi-intelligent and non-intelligent Elementals -- are all future men. That fact alone -- that a Spirit is endowed with intelligence -- is a proof to the Occultist that that Being must have been a man, and acquired his knowledge and intelligence throughout the human cycle." -- H. P. Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine, I, 277 (return to text)
109. "The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: . . . Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is CONSCIOUS: i. e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. . . . The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man -- the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm -- is the living witness to this Universal Law and to the mode of its action. . . . The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform, and who -- whether we give to them one name or another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels -- are 'messengers' in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence; and to call them all pure Spirits without any of the earthly alloy 'which time is wont to prey upon' is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was, or prepares to become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past or a coming cycle (Manvantara). They are perfected, when not incipient, men; and differ morally from the terrestrial human beings on their higher (less material) spheres, only in that they are devoid of the feeling of personality and of the human emotional nature -- two purely earthly characteristics." -- H. P. Blavatsky in her The Secret Doctrine, I, 272-4. (return to text)
110. J. E. Boodin, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, at Los Angeles, has no hesitation in using plain words without mincing them when referring to certain varieties of human egoism, one of the chief of which is the tendency of certain human beings to look upon themselves as virtually perfect imbodiments of the Absolute, if not the Absolute itself. Such a human egoist Professor Boodin plainly calls a "stupid ass."
Very true words, indeed, and one may apply them with distinct effect to those shallow philosophasters who preach that the 'Absolute' -- whatever this highly debatable term may mean -- is but a few removes, at most, from the comparative insignificance of even man's human monad.
Yet how vastly more comprehensive is the sublime and subtil doctrine of the Adwaita-Vedanta of the Avatara Sankaracharya -- an echo in this matter, faithfully stated, of the Esoteric Philosophy -- that the eternally Ineffable Kosmic SELF-hood is the Root of All and of all beings and entities and their Goal, for ever receding into increasingly sublimer vistas as the progressing and evolving Monadic Hosts, throughout endless Duration, unfold towards it ever more and more for ever! (return to text)
111. See ch. vi, 'Worlds Visible and Invisible -- II.' (return to text)
112. Vol. I, p. 200. (return to text)
113. The Hebrew word Sephirah (plural Sephiroth) means a spiritual or angelic being, and likewise the spiritual or angelic quality or attribute which such being imbodies. The Sephiroth, ten in number, of any such scale or cosmic plane, are, collectively, the divine beings active on such plane both 'creatively' or rather formatively, and also substantively or substantially. They correspond to the Hierarchies or Classes of spiritual-divine beings in other world-religions or world-philosophies, in which various names are given to them. In the Esoteric Tradition they are most commonly called Dhyani-Chohans. (return to text)
114. Zohar, iii, 68a. (return to text)
115. Goethe had the same conception of the origin of the Universe in and its ultimate return to the Divine:
"Die ganze Schopfung nichts ist und nichts war als ein Abfallen und Zuruckkehren zum Ursprunglichen." -- Wahrheit und Dicktung, 8 (return to text)
116. As evidenced by Spenser, the English poet who, citing a common opinion of antiquity, writes in An Hymne in Honour of Beautie, lines 132-3:
"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make." (return to text)
117. Quite so; and expressed with sufficient accuracy. But this statement of the generation of those especial Elementals whose native realm is karmically placed in the material planes or spheres, in no wise precludes or takes the place of the other equally true and equally important fact that the evolving and revolving soul-entity generates other classes of Elementals on the other planes and spheres through which it passes in its evolutionary revolvings or pilgrimage.
In other words, the Monad through its various sheaths or vehicles, including the soul-structure, is a continuously emanating or so-called 'creative' center or focus, producing or generating or emanating on each plane through which it passes Elementals karmically appropriate to and fit for each such plane or sphere. (return to text)