Theosophical University Press Online Edition
Eternity stretches in one direction behind and in another direction in front of us, and along and within this eternity the numberless multitudes of beings and entities which have been studied in the preceding chapters have been evolving -- and will evolve -- for ever. This progressive growth or development is continuously in action throughout Universal Nature -- nebula or comet, star or planet, atom or electron, all exemplify it on one side of the picture; and, on the other side, gods, cosmic spirits or Dhyani-Chohans, men, the beasts, and all so-called 'animate' entities of whatsoever kind and wheresoever situated.
Universal Nature itself may be thought of as being in two divisions: first, countless hosts of beings and entities of widely varying degrees of development in evolution and possessing proportionately self-consciousness in accordance therewith -- that is to say in widely varying degrees; and, second, countless hosts of beings and entities in inferior evolutionary development, and composing in their endless aggregates what is popularly called the material side of Universal Nature -- these being the habitat or home of the self-conscious beings and entities of the former division.
Technically speaking, this essential carpentry of the Universe with its inspiriting Hosts may be called Monadism and Atomism, (118) signifying the consciousness-side of Nature and the so-called 'unconscious' side of Nature. These two form the evident dualism of and in Nature, but it must be remembered that this dualism exists in the periods of Cosmic Manifestation only.
However, these two divisions just mentioned grade off into each other imperceptibly, so far as our own Home-Universe is concerned; and the intermediate parts or portions of the Cosmic Whole between the two relative extremes or divisions comprise the hosts of beings and entities in whom spirit and matter are more or less evenly balanced, and who and which are called by different names in the Esoteric Philosophy -- verily offsprings of heaven and of earth, our Human Family being one of such hosts. Elsewhere than on Earth in our own Home-Universe or Galaxy the same intermediate parts or portions of the Cosmic Whole consist of beings and entities occupying the same relative positions that the various stocks or groups of beings and entities do on our Earth itself. Like the human race on this Earth, beings corresponding to men on other planets aspire towards divinity and are evolving out of the darkness of imperfection of the material side of nature into becoming gods, capable of taking a relatively fully self-conscious part in the Great Work of the light-side of the Universe.
Inspiring principles of religion, philosophy, and science, have been taught in all ages and among all races of men: they have governed the lives of men and have made these men better therefor because they satisfy the intellect as well as the heart and soul; they give hope, and are therefore inspiring.
For example, let us take from a Celtic people, the Welsh, two Druidic Triads. The first runs:
Animated Beings have three states of Existence, that of Inchoation in the Great Deep or Lowest Point of Existence [the atoms]; that of Liberty in the State of Humanity [the self-expressing monad in man]; and that of Love, which is happiness in Heaven [the gods, rays from whom exist in humankind as the divine part of us men].
The second Triad runs thus:
There are three necessary occasions of Inchoation [beginning]: to collect the materials and properties of every nature [the aggregation of atoms in order, for the formation of corporeal vehicles or bodies, small or great as the case may be, and on different planes]; to collect the knowledge of everything [the intrinsic and natural function of the learning monad, the learning soul, the growing human conscious entity]; and to collect power towards subduing the Adverse and Devastative, and for the divestation of Evil [which is the work of the gods]. (118a)
Let us turn now to the Latin poet Lucretius. Lucretius has been greatly misunderstood in modern times. He was a disciple of the Greek philosopher, Democritus, or rather, perhaps, of that other Greek atomistic philosopher, Epicurus, who was a follower of the Democritan atomistic system. In connexion with the latter name, the very adjective, 'epicurean,' in our modern ears, rings unpleasantly. To Europeans it seems to signify a man or a woman who follows naught but pleasure, making that an end in life. But this misunderstanding is downright unfair. These men were two really great thinkers, who, one may say in passing, actually laid the foundation of the modern scientific doctrine of the atomic structure of the material world.
From their theories, only a few hundred years ago European chemists and physicists obtained the fundamental ideas of modern physical chemistry; and the latter even adopted the early Greek exoteric meaning of the word 'atom' -- which, of course, is from the Greek -- as signifying an indivisible, something that can no longer be divided: although since the most recent discoveries of physical chemistry, it is known that the atom is indeed a true divisible. These early European chemists did not understand what those two men, Democritus and Epicurus, who were really great in their way, actually meant. They meant indivisibles, as the Greek word 'atom' itself shows, as signifying that which cannot be cut or divided. In other words, Democritus and Epicurus and their early School meant precisely, although in physical-astral relations, what the Theosophist calls Monads. It is quite likely, indeed probable, that Democritus taught a Monadism identic with that taught by the Esoteric Tradition. They indeed taught Monadism -- the existence of spiritual consciousness-centers, spiritual Individuals; and they have been misinterpreted as teaching the existence -- as earlier European chemists did -- of little hard round bodies, incompressible and virtually eternal, which until very recently were supposed to be indivisible, and moreover the ultimates or originals of matter.
Lucretius, then, in his noble poem, De rerum natura ('On the Nature of Things'), most eloquently describes the Democritan and Epicurean system of philosophy. A few citations are hereinunder given:
I shall proceed to tell thee of the entire system of celestial things, and of the gods, and to unfold to thee the first principles of all things, from which Nature produces, develops, and sustains everything that is, and into which Nature again resolves all things at their dissolution: these first principles in explaining our theme we are accustomed to call matter, and the generating elements of things, and to call them the seeds of all things and to give to them the name of 'primary bodies,' because from them as primaries all later things are derivatives -- (119)
In other words, in all important points, this is a fair approach to the Theosophical doctrine of Monads ensouling Atoms.
And again:
Reason and the study of Nature must be the dispellers of the terrors and darknesses of the mind . . . of the human soul -- and our first philosophical principle is this, that NOTHING IS EVER DIVINELY PRODUCED FROM NOTHING. (120)
Somewhat later in the same first Book, he declared:
Furthermore, Nature resolves every single thing into its own fundamental elements, and DOES NOT REDUCE ANYTHING TO NOTHING.(121, 122)
If the reader be under the sway of European orthodox religious teaching, he might say readily enough that this ancient Roman Epicurean was teaching personal immortality; on the other hand, the Epicurean philosophy has been mistakenly supposed to teach that man is a bundle of physical atoms only, which bundle or aggregate falls to pieces when he dies; and that hedonism, or the doctrine of seeking mere pleasure in life, is a natural and logical outflowing consequent therefrom. But Lucretius did not teach either idea. He taught in this respect somewhat as the Theosophist holds: to wit, that the central spiritual core of man is an indivisible entity, an Atom, or indivisible Individuality, an indivisible consciousness-center, which expresses itself necessarily through lower atomic aggregates, inferior to it, because in no other wise can it have contact or contactual relations with this physical sphere.
This continuous process of ever greater self-expression on the part of each and every spiritual Monad is true evolution as taught in the Esoteric Tradition, Nature furnishing but the surrounding stimulus, thus calling out the latent powers and faculties of the indivisible spiritual Monad in its aeons-long peregrinations through the visible and invisible spheres, and therefore during the course of its equally long evolvings and revolvings. These lower atomic aggregates, just spoken of, in their turn of necessity also self-express themselves as aggregates, because in some degree they are alike to the inner Monad, governed each one or guided each one by its own monadic core, enlightened and illuminated by that divine-spiritual Monadic Center within each. But this is not all the doctrine alluded to here, this enlightenment or illumination actually being a flow of primordial force expressing itself through the intermediate nature of the being or entity and therefore ultimately through the physical body in which all these beings or entities respectively live and are imbodied, and thus experience the relativities of the physical world.
Deduction: Having this indivisible Essence and Center or Monad in ourselves -- which in its own nature is immortal -- therefore, as before stated, being the droplets of the Cosmic Essence, we are in this respect deathless; which means that the essence of us is deathless, and being deathless that essence is logically birthless, because there is no such thing as an infinity which begins -- an infinity having only one end, so to say. That spiritual-divine part of us never had a beginning and it never shall have an end. It is the living spiritual-divine Monad, of which Cosmic Life is the essence; and Cosmic Life is eternal. For Intelligent Life, after all, is but an expression of the finest and noblest form of Cosmic Consciousness-Substance.
Our whole inner nature is, as has been said, a sheaf or bundle of force-substances, which in their aggregate form the entire constitution of man; and through this composite sheaf or bundle the divinity at the heart of us expresses itself -- expresses itself therefore through our human selfhood, which is the intermediate part of our constitution, i. e., of this sheaf.
The entire constitution of man, as should be sufficiently obvious from what precedes, is an integral and inseparable part or portion, not only of the surrounding Kosmic Whole, but likewise an integral and inseparable albeit compounded part or portion of that minor division of the Kosmic Whole which is the solar system. Not only this, but the human constitution, which means obviously the constitution of every individual human being, is an equally integral and inseparable part or portion of a still smaller division of the Kosmic Whole which we may call the Earth-system or the planetary chain of Earth. These statements should be clear enough because if a being is a portion of a grand whole, a portion integral and inseparable thereof, such being is obviously likewise an integral and inseparable part or portion of any minor but inclusive subdivision of the Kosmic Whole, in which such minor division the being lives.
We thus come to an exceedingly beautiful, profound, and suggestive deduction, to wit: every such being, or integral and inseparable part, is not only builded of the essences and substances and forces and attributes and qualities of its inclusive hierarchy -- whether subdivisionally or larger -- but is likewise coeval with the beginning of the Universe itself: nay, not merely coeval with the beginnings thereof, but because it is of the very substances of the Universe itself, it is coeval and identic with the Universe.
This entire Earth-system includes those Monads (or spiritual centers) which individually, i. e., distributively for the hierarchy of the Earth-system, are each one a human being now, and on whatever globe of the planetary chain, and also all other beings which such Earth-system incloses. All have existed since the very beginnings of our planetary chain in time and space; nay, more, as already stated, we are coeval not only with our solar system, but likewise with the Galaxy; and in a still grander sweep of being we are coeval with and identic with however vast a range of the Boundless Kosmos we choose at any moment to look upon, for purposes of convenient thought, as the fields of our destiny in the future.
We were with the Sun, with the Earth, in the very morning of Time, though not then in bodies of flesh; and we helped to build this planetary chain as well as this Earth of ours, because, not only are we its children but we are collectively and individually integral parts thereof. This last fact is obvious. Even our bodies, our physical bodies, are of the substance of which our Mother-Earth itself is composed; and every atom that now sings its musical hymn or note in our bodies has likewise sung its paean in the Sun and in other planets and in the inter-planetary spaces during its unceasing peregrinations -- in this case as a life-atom -- in ages past during the course of its evolving and revolvings.
In thus emerging from spirit, as stated above, Nature proceeded steadily and systematically to enshroud itself in veils or garments of increasing materiality, as has already been stated when sketching an outline of the teaching concerning the Cosmic Worlds or Planes or Spheres; and continued so doing until it reached the limit possible, in that direction of increasing materiality, for this present great evolutionary Period or Cosmic Adventure. Turning this lowest point, the evolutionary stage of grossest materiality possible for the planetary chain in this Cosmic Manvantara, the entire Earth-system or planetary chain began to reascend towards spirit once more, but now with incalculable fruits of experience gained by every being and entity and thing composing the Earth-system: experiences gained, furthermore, by sojourning in the matters and qualities and attributes of this presently existing Cosmic System of planes of substances and forces.
So that in the present stage of evolution on earth, developmental or evolutionary growth takes place from without inwards, because, having begun the ascent towards spirit, the procedure henceforth will be the involution of matter into spirit and the evolution of spirit, just as on the Downward Arc or descent into matter the procedure of developmental growth was the involution of spirit and the evolution of matter. That is to say that at present we are advancing towards and into the inner and invisible planes and worlds and spheres which we passed through on our Downward Arc. This means that not only every more progressed being, such as man, is so evolving, but also that the entire manifested Nature on our Earth (elsewhere likewise, but here for the moment the discussion concerns our planetary chain alone) is doing so likewise.
In other words, the idea is that henceforward there is a gradual, secular, and steady dematerialization of matter towards ethereal tenuity, and finally the mergence into Cosmic Spirit of all beings and entities and things, comprising a veritable River of Lives carrying with it all results of this Cosmic process in the shape of experience, bringing about evolved faculty or developed power.
Having thus merged into Cosmic Spirit, for a vastly long period of time in these highest or spiritual realms or worlds or spheres, the Evolutionary Wave or River of Lives ceases its pulsing progress for aeons, reaching as it has the merging of the 'River' into the Kosmic Ocean of being -- and in this case the reference is to the Cosmic Spirit of the Solar System. The entities and beings of all-various classes composing such Wave or River re-enter into the ineffable Mystery of the Divine-spiritual, where they take their rest and repose through the ages of the ensuing Chain-Pralaya, or resting-time, and there assimilate and build into the fabric of their respective monadic essences the fruitage of the vast evolutionary experience gained in the period of cosmic manifestation which as a Wave or River of Lives they have left behind for their interval of spiritual rest and recuperation.
When the cosmic clock again points its hands to the time for a new evolutionary period of manifestation of the planetary chain, then this same Wave or River of Lives, composed of these almost incomputable hosts of entities or beings, begins a new evolutionary course, but on planes higher than or superior to those of the preceding Life-Period through which the Evolutionary Wave had passed -- planes of more refined substance than those of the preceding life-cycle.
It is quite possible for an imbodied human being to get some adumbration of the state of things or rather of the state of consciousness, if we can so phrase it, during the Pralaya of a Planetary Chain or even during the Solar Pralaya -- the resting-time of the entire solar system. This is done by remembering that Pralaya is dissolution or death; and the Pralaya of a solar system or of a planetary chain, the Earth-chain for instance, signifies that its higher principles have gone into still loftier and more sublime spiritual realms and spheres for their periodic rest; and that the lower quaternary of the solar system or any other system such as a planetary chain, is then dissipated into its component life-atoms, which likewise then rest during their long dreamless sleep. Thus stay all things and beings until the reawakening comes for the new Manvantara, whether of a solar system or of a planetary chain, though it should be remembered that the rest-periods of the life-atoms are vastly shorter than is the rest-period of highly evolved spiritual beings, because the life-atoms within a relatively short time again become active and pursue anew their ceaseless peregrinations of evolvings and revolvings hither and yon through larger spaces still, until the reawakening of the resting System, whether of solar system or of planetary chain, magnetically attracts them back to such new reawakened System.
Thus it is that during such Pralaya of a system, the higher principles thereof, i. e., the spiritual and intellectual parts, are in their Nirvana -- equivalent to the Devachan of the Reincarnating Ego of the human being after physical death; while the life-atoms of such system follow their peregrinating wanderings in precisely the same manner in which the life-atoms of man's physical body follow their peregrinations while the Reincarnating Ego of the man is in its Devachan. These hints thus do indeed give us some adumbration of the state of things or of consciousness when such a Planetary Chain is in its rest-period.
Again, some idea of still greater clarity may be had of what takes place in the Pralaya of a system, by a human being who is trained through initiation to 'see,' and this vision may be had by such trained ego self-consciously entering into what the egoic human consciousness experiences during what the average man calls dreamless sleep. This state is technically called turiya -- a Sanskrit word meaning 'fourth,' and is the highest state of Samadhi, which is indeed a Nirvanic condition of human consciousness. Putting the matter in other words, the Turiya-condition of human consciousness is a virtual attaining of spiritual self-conscious unity with the Atman or essential Self of the Man, and implies a virtual identification of the Ego thereby with the Cosmic Spirit. Otherwise phrased, this condition is a becoming at one with the essence of the Monad.
Thus the initiated Adept can at will reach this state of spiritual consciousness with fair ease. But the average good man, whose higher principles are to a certain extent at least active, may also get some, however faint, understanding of the consciousness existing in the Pralaya of a system; but it is obvious that his power and ability to do so are incomparably feebler than are those of the trained and initiated Adept.
The fact of the mergence into Cosmic Spirit of all beings at the time of the Solar Pralaya, or dissolution of the solar system, is what H. P. Blavatsky referred to, at least in part, when she says: "Theosophy considers humanity as an emanation from Divinity on its return path thereto." When Divinity is thus reached it is obvious that the individual Monads merge their respective monadic consciousnesses into their Divine Source, and thus, at least for the period of the Pralaya in question, partake of the character and vast reach of the Consciousness of the Divine Originant -- only to re-emerge therefrom, again as Monads, when a new Manvantara opens.
These ideas were taught even in early Christianity -- in the very origins of that particular religion. Those who have not examined the evidences for this statement -- evidences both historic and theologic -- probably have no idea what immense changes came into the understanding of Christian fundamentals, and therefore into the method of the presentation of the Christian religion, since the time of its first and greatest propagandists.
Take the case of Divinity as an instance in point. Clement of Alexandria, a very early Greek Father and indeed one of the greatest, and all his school for a long time after his period, talked and wrote of the gods as actual beings, and only sometimes called them 'angels.' Origen of Alexandria, who was almost contemporaneous with Clement and who was an even greater man, did precisely the same thing after the same manner more or less.
Origen, in his polemical writings against Celsus, (123) says that there are passages in the books of the Hebrew scriptures where the 'angels' therein referred to are spoken of as being 'gods'; and any Hebrew scholar knows that this statement is verbally true.
The very Christian Arnobius, who lived in the fourth century, refers to the matter as follows:
Gods, angels, daimones, or whatever other name they possess -- (124)
-- thus identifying, and confusing, these divinities under the different names which different schools of pagan thought had called them by.
Augustine, also of the fourth century, and one of the most important and influential of the Christian Fathers in later centuries, speaks of the spiritual beings whom the ancients called 'gods,' as being identical with the beings whom the Christians then called 'angels.' (125) This was undoubtedly the consensus of opinion of the fourth century -- a hundred years, more or less, after Clement and Origen. Already the decay of original or primitive Christianity had begun, and as time went on, the word 'gods' was dropped from theological usage. It first became unpleasant to the orthodox ear and then was considered to be positively heretical.
Lactantius, also of the fourth century, another greatly considered Christian Father, who refers to the famous Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca's account of the spiritual beings directing the world and holding their spiritual posts or positions by, through, and from, Divinity, contends only that it were better to call these spiritual beings 'angels,' as being a term to be preferred to that of 'gods'; and he protests against worship of these Christian 'angels' as gods. He further quotes an oracle delivered by the Pythoness at Delphi -- the famous ancient Greek oracle, as everyone probably knows -- in which oracle the gods are called the 'Messengers,' that is to say, the 'angels' of Zeus.
'Angel' is a Christian term adopted from the Greek word angelos. The Greek meaning of this word is 'messenger,' and this word originally signified the 'messengers' between states, or between man and man; and in one department of Greek philosophy also signified the intermediaries or messengers between the gods above and the beings existent in the lower spheres, i. e., the messengers passing to and fro, carrying messages from men to the gods, and equivalently, carrying the gods' messages to intelligent beings below, thus forming, in fact, one of the 'Circulations of the Cosmos' (126): one of the methods of union and intercommunication between the invisible worlds in all their ranges and the outer or material worlds in all their ranges. This of course has nothing whatever to do with modern 'spiritism.'
The word 'angel' was early taken over or adopted by the primitive Christians and employed to signify those spiritual intermediaries between Divinity and the human species whose function was that of messengers or envoys between man and 'God' or 'God' and man.
In connexion with this term 'angel,' it may be as well to state that it has been used more or less constantly in the Occident from the beginning of the Christian 'dispensation' to signify certain spiritual beings who not only were 'angels' in the original Greek sense of the word, as Messengers, but also as including hierarchies or families of spirits intermediate between man and Divinity. All this is but a feeble echo of the archaic teaching, common to all the ancient world, that between the spiritual realms and the material world in which man lives, there are indeed different hierarchical families or hosts of spiritual beings, of which hosts or families the human race itself is really one -- but a 'fallen' host, fallen because sunken or descended from an original spiritual state into fleshly incarnation on earth. Thus it is that European mystics from very early times, re-echoing the archaic doctrine which is one portion of the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition, have spoken of men as being 'fallen angels' -- a statement perfectly true in itself, but entirely inadequate in descriptive power because lacking the background of the profound philosophical teachings which the Esoteric Tradition alone gives.
The subject of 'fallen angels' is a very interesting one indeed, and provided that we change the noun 'angels' and substitute in its place the noun 'gods,' we shall have a meaning which in its philosophical and religious implications and reach of significance is simply immense, one which lies in the background of all the great world-religions of the past, and which indeed, in its philosophical meaning, lies also in the background of the great world-philosophies of the past.
But what then are 'fallen' gods or angels? We find in all the religions and philosophies, legends given in a mythological form of the existence of beings of spiritual nature who 'fell,' that is to say who 'lost' their spiritual status and condition and became beings of nonetheless continuing individuality in the lower or material worlds. Thus they are actually Wanderers or Searchers for knowledge and wisdom in those lower worlds, and are likewise beings and entities possessing individual wills: beings in fact who form the different hierarchies of the lower spheres, which is but another way of saying the different world-systems: these are the 'fallen gods,' the 'fallen angels' so called.
One may see here a direct reference to the 'Garden of Eden' mythos in the Hebrew Testament of the Jews. Adam and Eve living in their paradise represent one aspect of this more or less universal mythos, for it was only when they ate of the 'Tree of Knowledge' that they lost their original spiritual status of innocence and quasi-un-self-consciousness, and left their paradise in order to become the seed, according to this curious Hebrew legend, of the humanity of the future. But there are of course other aspects of the general theme, that is to say, other secondary mythoi or legends having this general theme as their common background.
The Christians have called these beings 'fallen angels'; and Milton, in his great poem, Paradise Lost, uses the typical Christian, in fact the Puritan, ideas of his time in Britain, in order to write anew the age-old mystical teachings regarding beings who were originally sparks of cosmic divinity, lights of the Central Fire of Life, who had become individualized, and therefore who had become learners, growers, evolving beings.
Therefore are the 'fallen gods,' the 'fallen angels,' those who have left the pure spiritual condition or state in which no personalized individuality exists -- and which state is the bare, sheer, pure, un-self-conscious life in cosmic consciousness -- in order to become individualized entities, evolving individuals, growing and thinking beings, with a developing will and with developing individualized intelligence.
See the contrast: from being sparks of divinity, sparks of the Central Fire of Life so to say, they become bright, fiery intelligences, each one destined in the future to carve out its own individual career. How? Through growth, through evolution, through unfolding or unwrapping innate and latent capacities: through becoming.
Thus then are the legends or mythoi concerning the 'fallen gods,' the 'fallen angels,' the kernels of many of the ancient mystery-doctrines. The Christians had the legend. One may read about it under one form in the Book of Revelation so called. The ancient Greeks had it in their mythological legends concerning their Titans, who were cast into the lowest deeps of Tartarus by the decree of the almighty ruler of Olympus, Zeus, the meaning being that they had begun to exercise independently their own innate powers of intelligence and will, by contrast with the ocean of Cosmic Intelligence and Life, which from our human individualized standpoint, is un-individualized, pure, sheer consciousness.
The verity of this fact, this growth towards an individualizing consciousness, starts into instant prominence before our vision, as we trace the armies of manifested beings and entities and things backwards to realms beneath the human stage. The families of beasts are less individualized than are men. The vegetation has a more general and still less individualized consciousness than have the beasts. The rocks exist in what may be called a unitary form of consciousness with but slight individualization; and beneath the rocks we have the various atomic elements; and back of these, the hierarchies, usually graded into three classes, of the Elemental Kingdoms, existing in a quasi-individualized way, and manifesting the generalized cosmic forces.
The ancient Persians, copying the Babylonians who had preceded them, likewise had their myths of a War in Heaven, of a Rebellion against the Mighty Powers of Heaven; and these 'rebels' were they who in the Perso-Babylonian mythic cycle 'fell' or were 'cast out.' They were the 'fallen gods,' the 'fallen angels' of the religions and philosophies of the Mesopotamian and high-land countries surrounding the great plains of the Euphrates and the Tigris.
So likewise, in ancient India, in archaic Hindusthan -- the Motherland of religions and philosophies, as it has been called -- do we read of the Asuras, who had rebelled against the Suras or 'gods.' Indeed, the Asuras or 'not-gods' -- for thus we may translate the word asuras -- were originally Suras or gods; but they 'rebelled' and fell, and thus found themselves in a never-ending struggle with the Suras, who, so to say, were crystallized in impassive 'purity.'
So this 'fall,' this 'rebellion,' is really nothing but the entering upon the pathway of evolutionary progress, the beginning of all these numberless hosts who 'fell,' or were 'cast out,' to use mythological terms -- the beginning, indeed, of the exercise of individual will-power, individual intelligence; the beginning of the exercise of 'self-directed evolution.'
Such then are the 'fallen gods,' the 'fallen angels.' We humans are they, at least one host of them; but we do not compose more than one host of them, for the human army is but one multitude, one family, of the almost boundless aggregate of hosts which form the entire Universe that is perceptible by sense or conceivable by mind.
When the stirrings in the heart of each Monad, of each divine spark, in their aggregate forming these hierarchies, first began in an impulse for self-manifestation, for self-growth: when the first impulses towards the exercise of individual will-power and intelligence began to stir in the core of the core of these monadic intelligences, of these bright shining lives: then they 'fell' or were 'cast out,' which words really mean, as the ancient tradition explains them, that they 'descended' into the material worlds in order to learn the lessons that the worlds of manifestation could give to them. Leaving in the beginning of time their high spiritual status and condition as un-self-conscious god-sparks, so to say crystallized in impassive purity, cycling down through the worlds visible and invisible, they entered upon the sublime Adventure of self-evolution, of self-growth, of self-becoming, and of bringing to each one of their enshrouding quasi-conscious veils or sheaths of consciousness, an ever expanding consciousness of each one's own inner being; for the most wonderful thought in the archaic evolutionary scheme is this: that not only is the spiritual Monad itself evolving, revolving in unceasing peregrinations, but it thus aids in the evolution of every one of these enshrouding garments or veils in which and through which it expresses its own transcendent powers.
In using the word 'fall' or 'cast out,' the reader should not misunderstand these phrases to mean so much the idea that superior intelligences spurned beings below them and thus drove them into lower spheres, for this is entirely wrong; the truth is that the phrase 'cast out' or the word 'fell' merely signifies that when the karmic evolutionary stage had arrived in which these beings seeking further experience had to begin a new evolutionary course, they embarked upon it from their own inner impulses, karmically brought about by the seeds of action and attraction gathered up in previous world-cycles before these beings entered into their last pralayic rest-period.
Taken in conjunction with the other Theosophical teaching of the course of Nature's working, involving the passings or peregrinations of the hierarchies of beings from higher to lower spheres, so that these beings may learn in each new Manvantara or World-Period new lessons appropriate to the new conditions, we see at once that the so-called 'rebellion' is but a somewhat poetic and graphic way of expressing the fact that their urgings impel them downwards in their evolutionary course, which brings them into immediate opposition, so to speak, with the already more fully developed spiritual agencies in the higher spheres.
Evolution takes place on every one of the planes which form the inner constitution of every composite being or entity; and we have, therefore, (a) divine evolution; (b) spiritual evolution; (c) intellectual evolution; (d) the evolution of the psycho-mental human soul; (e) astral evolution; and (f) evolution of the physical body. This is but another way of saying that man is a Microcosm or Little World containing in himself hosts of inferior entities through which he manifests himself, each one of which inferior entities is a learning and evolving being; even as the Macrocosm or Great World of the Universe contains in itself its own hosts of learning and evolving beings and entities in their almost endless series of hierarchies.
Moreover, evolution is teleologic, that is to say, it is purposive, working towards a destined end. But this purposiveness in evolution, this inherent urge or drive to betterment, is in the entity itself, and is not imposed upon it from without, either by a god or gods existing outside of and separate and different from the evolving entity, or, on the other hand, by physical nature alone. Nevertheless, all these hierarchies exist each within the vital compass or sphere of a still larger and grander hierarchy, so that the encompassing influences of these larger hierarchies flow constantly through the minor hierarchies which each such larger unit contains. Thus is Nature in all her divisions and compartments mysteriously and most wonderfully and inextricably interlinked and interlocked and interworking and interblending.
Physical nature furnishes one phase of the environment or fields of possible experience within which the various hosts of monadic essences work; and it is in these physical fields of experience that the various races of physical bodies which biological science calls by various names such as Classes, Orders, Families, Genera, and Species, of physical living beings, exist, and are the means for the continuous self-expression of the evolving hosts of Monads or consciousness-centers.
It is the realization of this inner focus of energy, inherent as an individual in every evolving unit, which is lacking in the scientific conception of evolution -- an ignorance likewise of the existence of inner and invisible spheres in which the physical world is rooted, and from which the forces which infill this physical universe flow.
It was because he lacked this fundamental conception in his theory, that Darwin could see no farther than his vision of the evolutionary process as a series of mere additions to, or in some cases subtractions from, the physical equipment of, or bodies of, evolving entities brought about by what he called 'natural selection' or the 'preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.'
That teaching, while it prevailed as the last word of science, and because it was more than half imperfect, destroyed a proper viewing of the universally working forces in Nature as all striving but in different manners towards a common end -- for greater perfection in the self-expressing activities of the inner inspiriting lives; and because Darwinism was thus essentially materialistic both in conception and in outlook, its moral effect on the human soul was disastrous on the one hand and crippling to the ever inquisitive researches of the human intellect on the other hand.
It taught that man was but a developed beast, more accurately a developed ape; that there was naught but gross physical matter in the world, uninspirited, insensate, and indeed dead; that fortuity or chance was the basic law or rather procedure -- if such it can be called -- bringing about improvements in bodies by means of haphazard adaptations; that spirit and spiritual ideals were but dreams; that these did not exist in themselves, but were the results, in some mysterious and unexplained mode, of chemical action in the cells of the brain; that when a man died that was the utter end of him, as a well-known English biologic evolutionist said in substance in a letter printed some years ago in the Westminster Gazette:
The only immortality that modern biologists believe in, is the immortality of man's descendants
-- which of course is no immortality at all to the individual, and is equivalent to teaching utter individual extinction or annihilation, and therefore is a preaching of most gross materialism. It is absurd in any case to speak of 'immortality' in connexion with physical bodies which are obviously but transitory and very impermanent vital-chemical compounds; and in a sense still more ridiculous to misuse the word immortality merely to signify that living bodies have offspring which in their turn have offspring which again produce offspring; and thus as long as the stock endures. This is not immortality in any sense. (127)
The effect of the teachings of Darwin on the human mind has been disastrous, as above stated, not only because it tends to destroy the vigor of man's innate moral responsibility, but also because it is less than half true; and the result has been a progressive increase in the dying of ideals in the modern world; that is to say, and otherwise expressed, the gradual loss of spirituality. The baneful influence of materialism as such has laid its pall of hopelessness and human despair over the entire civilized world; and it is only within comparatively recent times that biologists, through honest study and much deeper investigation of Nature than ever before was made, have, almost in despite of their own scientific prejudices, rescued because of their present greater knowledge some still glowing embers of Truth from what at one time threatened to be the ashes of human hope.
In reference to Darwin's so-called scientific principle of 'Natural Selection,' it is interesting to examine, however briefly, some of the pronouncements which upholders and propagandists of this biological teaching have uttered, as being significant of what is to the Theosophist a soulless and morally dangerous teaching, for many years past abroad in the world, and permeating the thought-life and consequent outlook and activity of those who fell under its sway.
First then, a paragraph from a book written by Professor George McCready Price, The Phantom of Organic Evolution. Professor Price very possibly is a Christian (?), and of course his outlook is colored by his private convictions, but nevertheless what he says is true enough.
The merest tyro in the study of organic evolution can see that the doctrine of survival of the fittest, or natural selection, makes some of the most morally objectionable characteristics manifested by animals and men the ladder by which all true progress has been attained. In other words, those qualities among the lower races of men, or among the animals, which we rightly regard as objectionable and blameworthy, such as selfishness, vindictiveness, and a heartless disregard of the feelings and desires of others, have been made by Darwin and his followers the chief factor in their scheme of organic evolution. (127a)
Professor Price here uses language which some people may think rather severe, but those who thus think have certainly not studied the case which he thus so clearly and truly arraigns. Another writer could have used language even more graphic and far stronger, and yet have fallen short of stating the whole truth.
Turn now to John Fiske, the great American Darwinian Evolutionist, who says:
Those most successful primitive men from whom civilized peoples are descended must have excelled in treachery and cruelty, as in quickness of wit and strength of will.
Professor J. Arthur Thomson writing on heredity, says the following:
Tone it down as you will, the fact remains that Darwinism regards animals as going upstairs, in a struggle for individual ends, often on the corpses of their fellows, often by a blood-and-iron competition, often by a strange mixture of blood and cunning, in which each looks out for himself and extinction besets the hindmost.
Huxley joins the chorus in the following words:
For his successful progress as far as the savage state man has been largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with the ape and the tiger.
It is small wonder indeed that the world is in the perilous state in which it now finds itself, if its shaky ethical sense is founded on no more stable and stronger foundation than that derived from a materialism which bases the loftiest and noblest intuitions of the human spirit upon appetites, impulses, and the beastly qualities which man shares with the most savage representatives of the animal kingdom! The causes of such materialistic nightmares, for they are nothing but scientific nightmares, have arisen in a complete, and in certain cases it would almost seem in a wilful, ignoring or turning aside from every noble quality and impersonal attribute which the human constitution contains. One might well ask the scientific gentlemen who write in the above strain, whether they have never known of other qualities, attributes, impulses, powers, and faculties in the human constitution, besides those beastly instincts which we share with the beast, and which, when unleashed, sink man to depths of depravity that even the beasts are incapable of reaching.
The argument becomes immediately preposterous, because it wilfully turns its face away from everything that the human constitution contains which makes man man, that has built the great civilizations of the past, that has brought about the efflorescence of all the activities of human genius, that has established the great works of moral splendor and intellectual light which have given hope and inspiration and inestimable comfort to the human race for ages past. On the basis itself that these materialistic evolutionists lay down, they fail to show any origins for such sublime qualities in the human soul as self-forgetful devotion, impersonal love, the strong ethical instinct of altruism, and the spiritual and intellectual fruits of its activity which the human spirit has produced in the world.
The snarlings and growlings and yelpings and shriekings of jungle beasts have nothing in common with these, and, on their own showing, their origin cannot be traced to something so radically different.
It should never be supposed -- and one cannot see how it ever could be supposed -- that the Theosophist is a disbeliever in evolution, for he most certainly is one of its strongest propagandists and upholders; but it is evolution in the sense that has so frequently been outlined in Theosophical literature, and which has on several occasions been briefly set forth in this present work. Darwinism at best -- and the phrase is here repeated, at best -- teaches an imperfect and secondary or even tertiary aspect or portion of the great Evolutionary Drama of life; nor is the Theosophist ever forgetful of the years of self-sacrificing study and labor that Charles Darwin, Russel Wallace, and others of their school have devoted to the study of the physical bodies of beings. Yet no scheme of evolution, no evolutionary hypothesis or theory, which throughout ignores ninety-nine percent of the factors in the problem, as Darwinism does, can be accepted by any thoughtful Theosophist as a comprehensively inclusive explanation of the otherwise undoubted fact that development in growth and consequent unfolding of both faculty and organ are among Nature's fundamental laws and operations as regards the so-called animate kingdoms, including the plant-world; and the Theosophist, furthermore, looks upon the entire Universe in all its parts and portions or kingdoms as undergoing the same process of developmental unfolding.
The reason is that the Cosmic Spirit, the abode of mind and consciousness, is all-permeant and therefore the ultimate impelling urge behind the evolutionary process which operates everywhere. Of course it is obvious to any thoughtful mind that Nature which is fundamentally conscious does make selections, not through fortuity nor by chance as the Darwinistic hypothesis alleges, but more or less consciously; but all such 'natural selection' is, at every turn and instant of time in the evolutionary course of the evolving entity, governed and controlled by the spiritual impulse or urge within the evolving entity itself.
Nor again does the Theosophist deny in totality the truth of Darwin's idea of the survival of the fittest, because ordinary observation shows us that the fittest in a set of circumstances is by far the most probable to be successful in it; but we must remember that this reasonable understanding of these two secondary or tertiary 'laws' are not what is meant in Darwinism, which preaches, when all is said, a sheer materialism and that entities evolve haphazard, by chance, without an inner spiritual urging power, leading to unfoldment of faculty and consequent organ. Darwinism recognises no indwelling impelling spirit urging its vehicles towards progressive unfoldment; and just here is where the Theosophist and the Darwinist part company. (128)
No Theosophist would deny that ape and tiger and shark and fox and wolf and ox and parrot and all the rest of the animate hosts of life have qualities which men possess also; but the former have them because ultimately these creatures were derived in their primordial origin from primal man himself. The Darwinian scheme is in many respects an actual inversion of what took place in the past. So it is small wonder that man should have characteristics of the beast in him, such as those of the ape and the tiger, but it would be truer to say that the beasts have these characteristics in them, because derived in far past aeons from imperfectly evolved humanity itself. But man's moral sense, his dominating intellect, his aspirations soaring on the wings of the spirit, are qualities which no beast ever yet has shown -- only because no beast is as yet a Man, which means that no beast has yet unfolded from within itself the spiritual and intellectual and psychological powers and qualities and attributes which are there latent indeed, but not yet unwrapped, unfolded, as they occur in man, albeit even in man more or less still imperfect.
As an example of the effect of biologic and other materialism upon the minds of even the relatively great men who lived when the materialistic theories were completely dominant over men's souls, more or less from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards to its end, one might cite from the works of a number of such noted characters, and in all cases in their writings trace the soul-destroying influence of these materialistic vagaries. As an instance in point, one might refer to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, the German philosopher who died in 1900 in an insane asylum. He was an evolutionist according to the materialistic biologic teachings of his time, and his otherwise really brilliant mind would certainly seem to have been distorted and warped by the Darwinian and Haeckelian teaching of humanity as arising out of beasthood. Undoubtedly in the course of his philosophical studies and writings he said many beautiful things and therein lay the danger to his readers, because all beauty is magnetic and sways human souls by its power.
In this first quotation that is hereunder made from Nietzsche, he adopts the style and manner of a self-appointed prophet -- but fortunately egoism of this character always in the end destroys its own effects. He wrote:
Here is the new law, O my brethren, which I promulgate unto you. Become hard; for creative spirits are hard. You must find a supreme blessedness in imposing the mark of your hand, in inscribing your will, upon thousands and thousands, as on soft wax. (129)
This teaching seems to be little short of monstrous, and in flagrant violation of all the spiritual instincts of compassion of the human heart, which instincts raise man among others above the level of the savage. In this second quotation, made from him, which follows hereinunder, Nietzsche attains the ultimate reach of his egoistic vision:
Such ideas as mercy, and pity, and charity are pernicious, for they mean a transference of power from the strong to the weak, whose proper business it is to serve the strong. Remember that self-sacrifice and brotherliness and love are not real moral instincts at all, but merely manufactured compunctions to keep you from being your true self. Remember that man is essentially selfish. (129a)
Such are, first, the result of false religious teachings, and second, of false scientific teachings, upon the minds receptive to them, and especially subject to the voice of authority. Contrast this brutal egoistic animalism with the Theosophical conception of all existence as a continuous stream of imbodied lives and consciousnesses, of living beings following a pathway which ultimately through future ages of evolution will lead to wisdom and knowledge unspeakable, also to impersonal love without bounds, without encompassing frontiers, which takes in not merely all humankind and all below humankind and all the Earth and all on it and in it, but the entire Universe!
This teaching, as has already been set forth, is based upon the fact that the Universe is intrinsically and essentially conscious and what man would call moral in its operations, because the Universe is founded in and is the evolution from the Cosmic Mind and Cosmic Life.
Has this evolutionary pathway to the gods an ending? Nay. As said before, there are no absolute ends in very truth, because such absolute ends and beginnings are dreams of illusion, and at best are but the beginnings and ends of the transitory conditions or states of consciousness through which the evolving hosts of beings progress throughout endless time. Evolution nevertheless is cyclical, and in this cyclical sense only it may be said to have a beginning, a culmination, and an end -- which temporary end is but a new beginning along higher lines.
This fact is so perfectly obvious that even the most recalcitrant Darwinist, or the most positive and determined materialist, is not blind to the fact. Even from Darwin's day, it was noted and commented upon that as the geological record is progressively uncovered and becomes better known, there is one very interesting fact which is observed with greater clearness and more fully, and it is this: there seem to have been in past ages on Earth evolutionary waves or cyclical periods during which one or another stock apparently 'suddenly' appears in the geological record, advances steadily to its culmination or maturity of development of form and power and size, and then fades away and apparently, in some cases, as 'suddenly' disappears, while in other cases remnants are carried on over into the succeeding age.
Such cases of succeeding evolutionary waves are very noticeable in three instances -- possibly because these three are the best known -- first in the Age of the Fishes, which took place during what it was once usual to call the Primary or Palaeozoic Era. (130) This was the geological era when the sea swarmed with fishes of all-various kinds and sizes, which fishes then represented, as far as the geological record shows, at least the supposedly highest known forms. This last supposition, the Theosophist does not admit as a fact.
The second of these waves, which occurred during the so-called Secondary Era or period of time, is what is called the Age of Reptiles, when reptilian monsters of many kinds and often of huge body, were, so far as the geological record shows, the masters of the Earth.
The third instance occurred during the Tertiary -- or perhaps it began in the last period of the Secondary, and continued into the Tertiary -- and this third evolutionary wave or cyclical period we may call the Age of the Great Mammals, which then in their turn, succeeding the Reptiles, were the masters of the Earth -- and still are in their presently existing forms.
In each of these three cases, as the geological record is studied, we can see the respective beginnings of a kind: we can discern the growth in size and physical power, the culmination or the maturity or full efflorescence of the particular stocks. Then we see decay and a final passing of the bulk of the animate beings belonging to each particular evolutionary life-wave, thus making place for the new and succeeding stock, which in turn has its relatively complete dawn, appearing with a certain suddenness in the geologic record. The new stock reaches its fulness in the expansion of its physical powers and size, and then again in its turn passes away, and so forth. Wave succeeds wave, each wave reaching a higher level of evolutionary unfolding activity than did the preceding wave; and each wave in its turn is followed by another succeeding wave, bringing on the scene beings or entities and things of a 'new' and different evolutionary type.
This itself has always been one of the mysteries of geology, and, as far as the present writer knows, no adequate explanation has ever yet been given of the relative suddenness with which some of these stocks appeared on the scene, and apparently, after having passed ages on Earth, seemed to disappear with equal suddenness. Whence came they and what brought about their sudden appearance and relatively evolved forms? We do not know, say the geologists.
It has been customary to say that the fishes gave birth to the reptiles, and that the reptiles gave birth to the mammals, to the great mammalian beasts, and these great beasts -- or at least a certain line of them -- brought forth man through the highest of their own type, which, as supposed, was the anthropoid ape. But the difficulties in the way of the acceptance of this theory are far greater than any arguments which have been advanced in favor of it.
The Theosophical teaching runs directly to the contrary. It sets forth that while it is perfectly true that these evolutionary waves succeed each other, each such wave represents or manifests the coming on the scene of physical existence on our Earth of a 'new' Family or a 'new' Host of evolving entities. It says, furthermore, that each one of these hosts has its dawn, its noonday, and its evening, and that the physical bodies in which these monadic hosts of evolving entities dwell, die or pass away in due time, and that the hosts of monads, having used these bodies, thereupon pass on to inhabit vehicles or bodies of a higher evolutionary character which these monadic hosts themselves bring forth from within their own respective monadic essences by emanation.
Thus if we consider, by way of illustration, an evolving entity in that phase of its evolutionary journey, on and through our Earth, called the Mineral Kingdom -- which means a spiritual Monad passing through its temporary mineral phase -- we find the teaching to be that in the course of long ages, through the process of unrolling or unfolding the innate qualities and attributes and powers flowing forth from the Monad itself, the intermediate or psychological nature between the Monad and the Mineral Kingdom becomes a fitter and more perfect vehicle of self-expression for the evolving Monad, so that ultimately the peregrinating monadic unit creeps out of that temporary phase of its journey called the Mineral Kingdom, perhaps as a lichen, then perhaps later, as the ages pass, appears as the lowest of the higher plants. Constant perfecting of the intermediate or psychological vehicle between the Monad on the one hand, and the plant-body on the other, brings this intermediate vehicle into a still more sensitive and quasi-conscious condition, so that this intermediate vehicle becomes fit for inshrining the Monad in that temporary phase of its evolutionary journey called the Beast-Kingdom.
Thus the Monad working through its intermediate vehicle passes on into the Beast-Kingdom, where there is a larger measure of progressive unwrapping in higher or more spiritual qualities and attributes and powers flowing forth from the inner and 'overshadowing' Monad itself, till the thus sensitized beast-nature becomes more fit to express in still larger degree, still higher and nobler qualities and attributes and forces flowing forth from the Monad; and at this point, we find the journeying, evolving and revolving, Monad manifesting in the Human Kingdom. (131)
The foregoing, therefore, does not mean as in the Darwinian theory that the mineral turns into a plant, the plant turns into a beast, and the beast turns into a human being. It would be entirely wrong to imagine the Monad of a Newton or of an Einstein, for instance, having been at some remote period in the past but a speck of mineral substance with no previous spiritual history behind it, which slowly through the evolving aeons grew to humanhood, unimpulsed by a spirit, and as the growth in some utterly mysterious manner of lifeless, insensate matter, according to the ideas of the old and now dying fatalistic determinism. The esoteric teaching of evolution means that the soul of the life-atom manifests in different bodies on different planes, both contemporaneously and in succeeding time-periods. The soul of a life-atom, for instance, which really is an elemental, is at one phase of its evolutionary journey a mineral life-atom -- or expresses itself thus. The soul of the same life-atom at a later date expresses itself in physical life as a plant life-atom. The soul of this plant life-atom after a long while imbodies itself in a phase of its evolutionary unfolding from within in a beast-body. The soul of the same life-atom later self-expresses itself by means of imbodying its radiating qualities in a human body. The soul of the same life-atom later self-expresses itself as a god; and so forth. This must not be misunderstood to mean because of the repetitive use of the phrase 'life-atom' that the evolving ray from the monad mentioned in the previous footnote is always a 'life-atom.' The idea is that the tip of this ray, so to speak, enters the physical sphere as a life-atom in the Mineral Kingdom, and that the same monadic ray in a later age expresses its still further unfolded powers as a life-atom in the Plant-Kingdom, and thus onwards up the scale. (132)
A god is a being which, as an original life-atom, has attained divine self-consciousness. Every god has, as a journeying psycho-spiritual Entity, passed through the man-stage; every man, as a journeying psycho-spiritual Monad, has passed through the beast-stage; and here is the especial point to remember: every man as a psycho-spiritual Monad has manifested as a beast in some manvantara, but not in this. In exactly similar way, every beast, manifesting as a psycho-spiritual Monad, has passed through the plant-stage in some manvantara, and finally in like manner, every plant, manifesting as a psycho-spiritual Monad, has passed through the mineral life-atom stage, just as every mineral life-atom had previously been an elemental life-atom, and so forth.
Words, those 'winged messengers' as Homer calls them, can mislead thoughts so easily; and here we must not misunderstand these words or these phrasings of the thought to signify that the higher stage has been the lower stage. This is wrong. As explained before, evolution as taught in the Esoteric Philosophy shows a countless host of Spiritual Individuals, called Monads, pouring forth from themselves qualities and attributes and powers which build up bodies in the lower realms of progressively increasing sensibility and power of response to the inner monadic urge, and thus it is that the monadic ray, thus shot down into the lower realms, builds around itself vehicles at each stage more or less fit for the Monad's efforts at self-expression in these different spheres. From this it should be abundantly clear that the man actually has not been the beast, but the ray passed through the beast-stage first, and when it had finished that series of circumrotations or revolvings, it had brought forth from its own being the already latent human qualities, and thus built up human bodies for their expression. In an exactly identical way will the god already within the core of the human being finally be brought forth into manifestation as a self-conscious divinity. Thus similarly with all the other classes of beings which fill the Universe full.
Evolution, according to the Ancient Wisdom, is fundamentally the activity of spiritual powers manifesting throughout the spheres of Universal Being. It is entirely a spiritual process, being the manner of working of the indwelling hosts of consciousnesses which are the fabric or framework or web of the Universe itself.
Everything that is, is an aggregate, a composite, of these hosts of Monads, of Divine Sparks, offsprings from the Cosmic Central Fire of consciousness which exist in all degrees of evolutionary unfolding, from what we humans call gross matter, and even beneath the gross matter that we know, up through the beings beneath man, through man, through the beings higher than we humans, which higher beings in the Christian religion are called 'angels' and 'archangels,' etc.: and in other religions these superhuman entities are called gods, or devas, or by other names: the names changing in the various religions or philosophies. And where shall we, where can we, stop in following this hierarchical ladder of life? There are no endings, just as there are no beginnings; for the hierarchical series ranges, cyclical-fashion, through and over the fields of boundless infinitude.
Man is man because of his divine faculties of lofty intelligence, of spiritual intuition, of understanding, of capacity for knowledge, of love, of his sense of duty, of his moral sense -- a godlike thing this last also; he is such indeed because he represents better and in larger and fuller degree than does any one of the inferior Kingdoms, the innate spiritual powers which are self-expressing themselves through his psycho-mental and physical apparatus, built up through ages past from the incessant evolutionary urge working from within.
We humans are 'fallen gods,' 'fallen angels' with capacities divine, active or latent, enshrined within our minds and souls. We shall return to the high spiritual status or condition which we left in the beginning of the present period of cosmic evolution, in other words, to our former status of divinity which we had left, but in doing so reaching higher levels than those from which we departed. We shall in time re-enter -- and one may here use the mythological phraseology of the ancients -- the Bosom of the Divine in far distant future aeons, but then we shall no longer be un-self-conscious god-sparks, as we were when we began our aeons-long pilgrimage, but shall re-enter that Divine as fully self-conscious gods, having gained fulness of character, vast experience, and the full blooming of individual will-power and wide self-consciousness.
Fallen gods! But not 'fallen' in the ordinary human sense of evil doing. Nay, but only in the archaic mythological sense is this word here used; not in the sense of any modern religion crystallized in formalisms, nor in that of any of the priesthoods, ancient or modern; but in the sense of the true spiritual Visioner, of the Seer. This 'fall' is really an entrance upon the evolutionary path of constantly unfolding progress which originates in the Heart of Things, and results ultimately in bringing out, from within the individuals of the countless monadic hosts, that which is within, and manifesting it and developing it, in order to become, first, beings beneath man, then through various stages to become man and, passing through the human stage, ultimately to become something superhuman, until divinity is finally attained once again, but as self-conscious freed Monads -- Jivanmuktas!
We fall to Earth; but we rise again! Indomitable is the spirit within us. Nothing can daunt it nor conquer it, if only we do use it. It is indomitable, for it is the energy pouring forth through our own individual wills from the very heart of the Universe; and all evolution, all growth, all achievement, depend upon the degree with which we ally ourselves with this spiritual river of consciousness and force flooding our inmost being. All evil will pass away when men understand this and act accordingly, for evil is the running contrary to the operations of Spiritual Nature -- the setting of the individual will against the mighty and impassive consciousness of the Universe. Thus do we fall, thus are we 'cast out'; but blessed be the immortal gods, it is thus also that we poor humans learn through pain and suffering and distress. Evil is the man who chooses evil for his god, and evil will be his ways; great will be his suffering and tribulation; but sooner or later the divine spark of impersonal divinity in universality will stir in his soul, and then will he hear the voice of his inner god. Far distant it may be for most, but growing more compelling and more insistent as time flows on. Indeed we are fallen gods, fallen angels, learning, growing, evolving god-sparks.
The urge behind evolution, and the objective which this urge is impelling us towards, is simply the divine hunger in the Universe to grow greater, to advance, to unfold: Excelsior! It is innate in the Universe. Why this is so, no one can say. Perhaps the gods do not know. All we men can aver is that it is so. Everything grows and yearns to grow greater, to become grander, to rise, to advance, to evolve, and the objective is to become at-one self-consciously with the Boundless -- something which never can be reached! Therein is infinite beauty, for there is no final ending for growth in beauty and splendor and wisdom and love and power. The Boundless Universe is our home.
What we may call a blind striving or struggle for betterment in the atoms, becomes in man a self-conscious yearning to grow, to unfold, to become ever more the divinity within himself, arising in a recognition, now quasi-conscious, that man is a son of the gods. This same urge becomes in the gods a divine knowledge that they are inseparable parts of the Universe, and are growing to take a vaster self-conscious part in the Universal Labor.
All possible things are latent in the core of the core of the being of each one of us; they are like sleeping powers of the Universe; and this core of the core of the being of each one of us is man's own inner god, the Cosmic Dhyani-Buddha within him, the Divine Christ immanent within him: the living Osiris of the ways of Infinity.
FOOTNOTES:
118. These two terms, 'Monadism' and 'Atomism,' are placed in opposition merely for purposes of illustrative description. Actually, Monadism and Atomism are but two words descriptive of the same essential fact -- the inherent and unceasing urge in Universal Nature to manifest or self-express itself in and through Individuals. When these Individuals are viewed as belonging to the higher or so-called divine and spiritual worlds, they are called Monads; and when these Individuals self-express themselves in the worlds or realms of substantial being or matter, and because they therein express themselves as discrete or individual points, they are properly referred to as Atoms in the original Greek sense of the word as used by Democritus and Epicurus as signifying Indivisibles. The point is important, and should not be overlooked.
It might be added in passing that some of the great religious philosophies of the ancient world, such as the archaic religion-philosophy of Zoroaster the Persian, were positively dualistic in type and character for purposes of formulated teaching and definition to the masses. Yet even these so-called dualistic religion-philosophies were, without exception, founded upon an esoteric doctrine or basis -- a faithful echo of the archaic Esoteric Tradition -- which taught the primordial Unity of Cosmic Being with a voice as insistent as was that which taught the public formulation of cosmic dualism in manifestation. (return to text)
118a. In Barddas (a collection of manuscripts in Cymric) the Rev. J. Williams ab Ithel, M. A., translates these triads as follows:
"13. The three states of existence of living beings: the state of Abred in Annwn; the state of liberty in humanity; and the state of love, that is, Gwynvyd in heaven.
"17. The three necessary occasions of Abred: to collect the materials of every nature; to collect the knowledge of everything; and to collect strength to overcome every adverse and Cythraul, and to be divested of evil; without this traversing of every state of life, no animation or species can attain to plenitude." -- p. 173 (return to text)
119. Book I, lines 48-56. (return to text)
120. Op. cit., Book I, lines 149-51. (return to text)
121. Op. cit., lines 249-50. (return to text)
122. Note the echoes of this thought in more modern times:
"Kein Wesen kann zu nichts zerfallen." -- GOETHE
"All that is at all
Lasts forever, past recall." -- BROWNING (return to text)
123. Contra Celsum, Bk. V, ch. iv. Celsus was an erudite 'pagan' philosopher who criticized -- and criticized very successfully -- the new-fangled religion then being popularized in the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. (return to text)
124. Adv. Gentes. (return to text)
125. De civitate Dei (City of God), xix, 3. (return to text)
126. For a clearer understanding of the high signification of the expression, 'Circulations of the Cosmos,' the reader is referred to later portions of this book wherein an attempt is made to set forth the vastly important teaching which goes under that title, and its wide and profound meaning. (return to text)
127. It is really too absurd, when the facts are carefully scrutinized, to talk of 'immortality' in connexion with the physical body. One can only express one's amazement that scientific men of supposedly sober mind and acquainted with the impermanent and utterly mortal nature of flesh should use the term immortality in connexion with man's physical integument even in the sense of its application to generations succeeding each other. Outside of the fact that immortality means something which is not mortal, as flesh most certainly is mortal, it is misuse of graver import to employ a term applicable in religious philosophy alone, to describe not only a biological fact but one merely signifying a series of physical beings.
But setting the foregoing reflexion aside as obvious enough, had the West even the remotest understanding of what true immortality is, such misuse would have been impossible even in the distorted sense in which it is commonly employed either in religion or in philosophy as these two are understood in the Occident.
True immortality signifies unbroken continuance or continuation of an individual consciousness of whatever grade or degree of evolutionary development; and the only instances where such immortality becomes possible are the cases of Jivanmuktas, or 'freed Jivas' or equivalently, 'freed Monads.' Now the Monad can be 'freed' in the technical sense of liberation from the whirling changes of the wheel of life in material existences with its concomitant series of imbodiments only when such Monad or Jiva in its evolution reaches a state where it becomes self-consciously able to pass at will from body to body with retention of full consciousness, and employing such series of selected bodies for the purpose of fulfilling its chosen mission in the world of 'shells' -- our material spheres.
This is real immortality, as signifying that the Jiva is expressing its own transcendent powers which, whatever else they may be, in their grandeur are certainly not mortal. Yet even here, in these cases of 'freed Monads,' such immortality can endure only for the period of Cosmic Manifestation in which the Jiva or Monad finds itself in its evolutionary course. Once 'freed' in the sense above described, it has immortality for the remainder of the Solar Manvantara, but when this enormously long time-period itself comes to an end, then even the Jivanmuktas or freed Monads must follow the River of Rising Lives sweeping all with it into spheres of spirit loftier still than those which are the spiritual spheres during the course of the Manvantara of the solar system last passed. In accordance with Cosmic Law, when the next Cosmic Manvantara begins its course, after the long Solar Pralaya or rest-period, then these Jivanmuktas, in common with all other individuals of the River of Lives, re-issue forth anew for a still vaster and grander cyclical Pilgrimage in the then opening great Drama of Life.
It is this seizing of the Kingdom of Heaven by strength on the part of an imbodied Jiva or Monad -- i. e., the entering the Path of Immortality, which is the true road or Pathway to the Gods. (return to text)
127a. Page 180. (return to text)
128. But why belabor the matter which already is dead and well-nigh a detail of biologic history? Materialistic Darwinism is moribund, i. e., dying if not dead; and the newer views held by most modern biologic researchers, even of the more materialistic type, differ greatly from the Darwinism so loudly voiced by men like Haeckel and Huxley.
In another great branch of modern science, that of Physics, voices are being raised in the teaching of a most welcome departure from the old materialistic ideas of a bygone time; and a host of men, headed by such great figures as Einstein, Jeans, Eddington, Planck, Bohr and others, make little hesitation in stating that in their best considered judgment, back of and within all material existences there is a cosmic Cause or Causes, which they variously describe as Mind, Mind-stuff, or by some equivalent term. This is a far cry, and a welcome one to hear, from the dogmatic preachments of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, which century was the heyday of materialism, and in which period H. P. Blavatsky wrote her master-work The Secret Doctrine. (return to text)
129. Also sprach Zarathustra, 'Von alten und neuen Tafeln,' p. 287. (return to text)
129a. Also sprach Zarathustra, 'Vom hoheren Menschen,' p. 417. (return to text)
130. The names of these different geological ages used in the present work, and as shown probably with greater clarity in the succeeding chapter, were the popular names in scientific vogue when H. P. Blavatsky wrote her great work, The Secret Doctrine, but due to the greatly changed opinions concerning the time-periods of the geologic record which have taken place since 1888, it is quite possible that the names of the three periods alluded to in the text do not correspond with strict exactitude to the more recent pronouncements of geologic science.
This is a matter, however, of indifference, for it is solely a matter of nomenclature and of placing these three evolutionary waves, mentioned in the text, in accordance with whatever geological age the most recent deductions of geological science would claim for their appearance. The days of Lyell and Geikie and others -- great names in their time -- have passed, and the geologic time-periods which the most eminent geologists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century considered to be sufficient for these respective geological eras, the geologists of our later times find to be entirely inadequate.
The Theosophist is concerned solely with the facts in the case, and pays but little attention to time-periods or geological nomenclature, to both of which he is perfectly willing to adapt himself once that the more modern views in geology have proved their worth.
It should be stated, however, that from the standpoint of the Esoteric Tradition, the lengths of the time-periods called for by the latest geological researchers are in most if not all cases greatly excessive. (return to text)
131. It is imperatively necessary at this point for the reader to avoid misunderstanding this teaching to mean or to imply, that it is the spiritual Monad -- in itself a divine and self-conscious being -- which itself becomes, let us say, a stone, and after its peregrinations in the Mineral Kingdom passes out of it and becomes a plant, and after peregrinating in the Vegetable Kingdom later becomes a beast, and after peregrinating in the Animal Kingdom finally becomes a Man -- i. e., enters the Human Kingdom. This is not the idea, although some countenance could be lent to this mistaken conception by the well-known Qabbalistic axiom so familiar to students of the Esoteric Tradition, that "the stone becomes a plant, the plant becomes a beast, the beast becomes a man, and the man becomes a god." This axiom is literally true, but it must be understood in the light of the teachings of the Esoteric Tradition.
The Monad, which is the Originant and continuously impelling spiritual urge back of all evolutionary unfoldment of an evolving entity, is, as said above, a self-conscious divine being, but due to the karman of its past lives in the former Cosmic Manvantara, it is inextricably involved as a unit in helping to make and to guide the entire body of evolving beings and things in the present Cosmic Manvantara. This it does by what may be called an emanation of a ray from itself, shot down from itself into the lower and even into the lowest of the interlocking hierarchies forming the body corporate of the Universe, which now is itself these rays, thus individualized as a stream of quasi-conscious force-substance which manifests itself first in the Mineral Kingdom; then each ray working out of it, after doing its work therein, enters the Vegetable Kingdom, and working through this it enters into the Animal Kingdom, and after its revolvings therein have been completed, it enters the Human Kingdom. When its evolutionary peregrinations in the Human Kingdom have been completed it finds itself entering still higher Kingdoms as a divinity -- which is rejoining its Parent Monad, plus its vast wealth of experiences. The aggregates of individual rays make the different Kingdoms.
These experiences are not gained in the Darwinian sense by accretions from the various Kingdoms through which it has passed or is passing or will pass, but by a constantly progressive unfolding, or unrolling, or unwrapping, of its own inherent and innate monadic essence -- the various Kingdoms thus giving the ray not only opportunity for its own unfolding, but likewise the ray aids in developing or evolving the various Kingdoms through which it passes.
The difference, therefore, between the esoteric teaching of evolution and that taught by Darwinism and the newer forms of evolutionism is thus seen to be simply enormous; and it is precisely to this difference of such immense import, that the student's attention is called with emphasis. The difference or distinction, therefore, is the contrast between evolving spirits building themselves bodies in the material worlds through which they express themselves, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the materialistic teaching that matter unaided and mistakenly supposed to be insensate or dead produces from its own inherent incapacities spirituality, the noble powers of the intellect, the delicacy of the psychological nature, and the wonder and to science deeply mysterious adaptations which physical bodies exemplify and display in such profusion. (return to text)
132. In a later chapter of this book the reader will find a closer study made of the septenary constitution of an evolving entity, and the matter therein contained should clarify this teaching still further, for those interested. (return to text)