The Theosophical Forum – June 1942

LIVING ON A STAR — Irene R. Ponsonby

G. K. Chesterton once wrote: "Among all the strange things that men have forgotten, the most universal lapse of memory is that by which they have forgotten they are living on a star."

Verily a key to the Cosmic Philosophy, Theosophy, which teaches that Earth is the most material plane of one of the most material planets in the Solar System. It is the point on this planet where involution and evolution interchange, where matter and spirit equilibrize, where the duality of manifestation is most marked, hence the extremes in conditions of life.

Earth is the focal-point for all the forces of the Solar System, a vital life-atom in the body of a Solar System which is in its turn a solar-atom in a Galaxy.

A child of the planetary Moon, it is the sphere where man expresses his egoity as a complete septenary, where he has the power to attain the sublimest goal or, because of the lure of materiality, to do the greatest mischief. Here man came as an unconscious god-spark; here he received self-consciousness; here he has consorted with Buddhas and Christs, and will again consort; here man may, if he will, attain self-conscious Godhood himself. That is what living on a star means.



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