Theosophical University Press Online Edition

Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy

G. de Purucker

First Edition copyright ©1932; Second Revised Edition copyright ©1979 by

Theosophical University Press (print version also available). Electronic
version ISBN 1-55700-048-4. All rights reserved. This edition may be
downloaded for off-line viewing without charge. No part of this publication
may be reproduced for commercial or other use in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without permission of Theosophical University Press. For ease of searching,
no diacritical marks appear in this electronic version of the text.

Contents

Foreword

PART ONE

Chapter 1. The Three Fundamental Propositions. The Self:

Man's Inmost Link with the Unutterable. The Esoteric
Philosophy: Taught in all the Ancient Religions.
Chapter 2. Where is Reality? Truth can be Known. Man's
Composite Nature according to Different Systems: Threefold,
Fourfold, Fivefold, or Sevenfold.
Chapter 3. The Doctrine of Maya; Objective Idealism the Basis
of Morals: Rooted in the Spiritual Unity — the Divinity — of
the All. The Self and the "Selves."
Chapter 4. From Primordial Point to Universe and Man. How
does Manifestation Arise? Manvantara and Pralaya.
Chapter 5. The Esoteric Teachings and the Nebular Theory.
Gods behind the Kosmos: Why Nature is Imperfect.
Chapter 6. The Dawn of Manifestation: Laya-centers. A
Conscious Universe — Spiritually Purposive. Stoic Doctrine of
the Intermingling of All Beings: "Laws of Nature."
Philosophical Polytheism and the Doctrine of Hierarchies.
Chapter 7. Hierarchies: One of the Lost Keys of the Esoteric
Philosophy. The Pythagorean Sacred Tetraktys. The Ladder of
Life: The Legend of Padmapani.
Chapter 8. Traces of the Esoteric Philosophy in Genesis.
Chapter 9. Outline of Esoteric Cosmogony. Globes, Rounds and
Races: Cosmic Time Periods.
Chapter 10. The Doctrine of Swabhava — Self-becoming —
Characteristic Individuality. Man, Self-evolved, his own
Creator. Monadologie of Leibniz contrasted with Teachings of
the Esoteric Philosophy.
Chapter 11. The Cosmic Pilgrimage. From Unself-conscious
God-spark to Fully Self-conscious God.
Chapter 12. Psychology: According to the Esoteric Philosophy.
Immortality is Conditional: the Loss of the Soul.
Chapter 13. The Process of Evolution. Self, Ego, and Soul: "I
Am" and "I am I."
Chapter 14. "Heavens" and "Hells": Teachings of the Esoteric
Philosophy and of the Exoteric Religions.
Chapter 15. The Evolution of the "Absolute." Generalized Plan
of Evolution on all Planes. Seven Keys to Wisdom and Future
Initiations.
Chapter 16. Atma-vidya: How the One Becomes the Many.
"Lost Souls" and "Soulless Beings." Man, a Composite Being: No
Abiding Principle in Man.
Chapter 17. The Silent Watcher.
Chapter 18. The Spiritual-Psychological Hierarchy of Adepts.
The Wondrous Being, the Buddhas, Nirmanakayas, Dhyan-
chohans.
Chapter 19. The Seven Jewels and the Seven Stages of
Initiation.
Chapter 20. The Higher Aspect of Human Psychology.
Initiation and the Mysteries: Avataras, Buddhas, and
Bodhisattvas. Their Relation to Globes, Rounds, and Races.
Chapter 21. Initiations and the Ancient Mysteries. Root-races
and Their Subdivisions. Globe Rounds. Planetary Rounds.
Solar Kalpas: How Calculated. Racial Cataclysms.
 Chapter 22. The Hierarchy of Compassion. The Incarnation of
the Manasaputras.
Chapter 23. The Sun and the Planets. Their Role in the
Evolutionary Drama.

PART TWO

Chapter 24. The Ten Stages of Being according to the Syrian

System. Esoteric Method of Teaching: Paradoxes, Intuition.
Chapter 25. The Mysteries of Septenary Nature.
Correspondences: Globes, Elements, Human Principles. The
Seven Sacred Planets of the Ancients. Racial Time Periods and
Catastrophes.
Chapter 26. The Microcosm, a Mirror of the Macrocosm.
Elements, Principles, Manifestations of the One Life. Relativity:
a Fundamental Conception of the Ancient Wisdom.
Chapter 27. The Two Fundamental Kosmical Hierarchies:
Matter and Spirit-Consciousness. Chaos-Theos-Kosmos: Gods-
Monads-Atoms.
Chapter 28. The Adventure of an Atom. Laya-centers: Sun,
Comets, and Planets; Soul and Monad. The Keynote of
Occultism.
Chapter 29. Space: the Boundless All. Infilled with
Interlocking, Interpenetrating Universes. One Action, One
Hierarchical Intelligence, One Course of Operation throughout
Nature: One Organism, One Universal Life.
Chapter 30. The Interrelation of Gods, Monads, Atoms — a Key
to the Doctrine of Evolution. Successive Emanations: Sheaths.
Higher Beings Emanating and Clothing Themselves in Hosts of
Lower Beings. Morality Based on the Structure of the Universe.
Chapter 31. The Building of the Kosmos. The Same
Fundamental Law throughout Life and Being: an Endless
Ladder of Progress. Analogical Processes of Kosmical and
Psychological Development. The River of Life.
Chapter 32. Out of the Invisible into the Visible. From the
Visible into the Invisible. The Magnum Opus.
Chapter 33. The Life-wave and the Seven Elements. The
Esoteric Philosophy as Taught by the Stoics.
Chapter 34. The Spaces of Space. The Secret Doctrine, a
Unifier: Universal Keys. Doctrines of the Void and of the
Fullness Contrasted.
Chapter 35. Occultism and the Mystery Schools. Seven Degrees
of Initiation: Man Becomes a God. Seven Kosmic Planes: our
Planetary Chain of Seven Globes on the Four Lower Planes —
the Passage of the Life-wave therethrough.
Chapter 36. Interpenetrating Spheres of Being. Lokas and
Talas: Bipolar Kosmical Principles and Elements. The "Heresy
of Separateness."
Chapter 37. The Framework of the Kosmos. Lokas and Talas:
Principles and Elements, Worlds — Not States Merely. Space
the Ultimate Reality.
Chapter 38. Degeneration and Closing of the Schools of the
Mysteries. Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic Systems: Main
Sources of Christian Theology. Esoteric and Exoteric
Teachings: Symbolism.
Chapter 39. Theosophy and Occultism. Occultism: the
Quintessence of Truth, Reality; a Complete Whole. Occultism
and Moral Responsibility. Our Solar System: a Kosmic Atom,
Egg of Brahma.
Chapter 40. Definitions of Deity: Atheism; Pantheism. Is there a
Supreme Personal God? Kosmic Architects and Builders.
Really to Know, One Must Become.
Chapter 41. The Doctrine of the Spheres. The Universal Solar
System and Our Solar System. The Seven Sacred Planets: Why
"Sacred"?
Chapter 42. The Doctrine of the Spheres in its Four Aspects.
The Seven Sacred Planets and their Rectors: their Relation to
our Earth-chain. The Circulations of the Kosmos: Outer Rounds
and Inner Rounds; Sishtas. One Universal Basic Law: As
Above, So Below. The Eye and the Heart Doctrines.
Chapter 43. Analogy: the Life of Man and the Life of a
 Planetary Chain. Occultism and Ethics: "Live the Life if Thou
Wouldst Know the Doctrine.
Chapter 44. Principles of Thought and Study: can Occultism be
Taught? Ancient Astrology a True Science. Our Earth-chain of
Globes, the Seven Sacred Planets, and the Twelve Zodiacal
Signs. Life-Atoms: the Building Blocks of the Universe.
Chapter 45. Physiology, Psychology, and Pneumatology of the
Universe. Ten and Twelve Planes of the Universal Solar
System: Intermediate Critical Planes. All Manifested Being a
Graded Continuum of Interrelated, Interlocked Hierarchies:
Each with its own Beginning and End. Sishtas and the Surplus
of Life.
Chapter 46. The Chela Life. Seven and Ten Life-waves: the
Course of the Monads around the Seven Globes; Laws of
Acceleration on the Downward and of Retardation on the
Upward Arc. Fifth and Sixth Rounders. The Sacred Word.
Chapter 47. Teacher and Pupil. Requisites of Chelaship.
Chapter 48. The Heart of the Universe. The Way to Peace, Bliss,
Understanding, is Within. The Great Quest — Know Thyself —
the Whole Secret of Initiation. Our Responsibility: Ethical
Values and the Laws of the Universe; Harmony.

Foreword

In 1924 Katherine Tingley inaugurated within the esoteric body of

the Theosophical Society a series of studies in The Secret Doctrine
by H. P. Blavatsky, with Gottfried de Purucker as lecturer. In spite
of the fact that he had not studied under Mme. Blavatsky, as had
several among those present, she knew of none better prepared
than he to interpret this work "from the esoteric standpoint."
Moreover, she felt assured that after she was gone he would be
there to "carry on these lessons," which ultimately would be
published "for later generations."

At the first meeting on January 4th, Katherine Tingley set the tone
of the gatherings by appealing to all present to cast aside
everything of a personal and limiting nature and "get more in
harmony with our higher self — with that part that is eternal and
that is trying to open the way for us." Those attending should
enter, "as did the neophytes of ancient days, in the spirit of self-
forgetfulness," remembering that these studies were not being
held primarily to enlarge the intellectual understanding of the
student, but rather as an "earnest spiritual effort" to open the
heart to the higher consciousness and stimulate the intuition for
service in the daily life. After the lectures Katherine Tingley spoke
for a few minutes and usually called upon different ones for their
comments, herself giving the closing remarks. The members then
left as they had come, in silence, which to her had marvelous
potency for inner growth.

It was in this atmosphere of reverence for truth and for the

lightbringers of mankind that G. de Purucker elucidated the
spiritual principles upon which the "secret doctrine" of the ages
rests. Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy represents the
stenographic record of those lectures given from 1924 to 1927,
with periodic interruptions during Katherine Tingley's absence
on lecture tours in the United States or Europe. In 1931 the
transcripts were turned over to A. Trevor Barker for editing prior
to publication in London, the quotations heading the chapters
having been selected by Joseph H. Fussell, friend and colleague of
the author.

What makes this book significant among the many expositions of

The Secret Doctrine that have appeared since 1888? Not least,
perhaps, is the inspired treatment of the vast evolutionary
process that encompasses the rhythmic rebirth of worlds, of
humans, and of every living being, for the purpose of bringing
into actuality the fullness of godhood infolded within every god-
spark. Propelled by ancient habit we too, in our cyclic descent
into earthly life, follow the same cosmic routes traveled by all
monads until, the lessons of planetary experience mastered, we
graduate as self-evolved divinities. How the One becomes the
many, how spirit irradiates every particle of matter, is the old
story — now retold with a wondrous clarity so that the reader
discovers he has at hand those key-teachings that will enable him
to test for himself whether or not any religious or philosophic
concept, ancient or modern, is in harmony with "that primeval
spiritual and natural revelation" accorded the first
thinking
humans on earth. Throughout, like a golden sheen on the far
horizon of time, he perceives the oneness of humanity's spiritual
inheritance and our commonality of divine origin and goal.
Further, there is wide scholarship here: not only are the terms
from the Sanskrit, Hebrew, and other ancient literatures
explained etymologically, but they are given richer interpretation
in the light of Dr. de Purucker's knowledge of our early racial
history and of the traditional lore and sacred scriptures of Orient
and Occident.

For many, however, the greatest gift of all is his restorative trust
in the dignity and nobility of man. We are indeed knights errant
of eternity, bent on the ancient quest for a wisdom we know
exists but which seems ever to elude our grasp. In being
reminded of that quest, there is generated a devotion to truth and
to the compassionate line of teachers — a devotion that has
power to move the soul, to lead us life after life toward those
encounters that will purify and strengthen the character and fit
us better to serve humanity's cause.

The revision of this second edition has been undertaken with

exceeding care and, while the few passages that pertained strictly
to the esoteric nature of the sessions have been deleted as have
some of the repetitions that are inevitable when a series of
addresses is published almost verbatim, the lecture material has
been left practically intact.

To have condensed and systematized the presentation would

have foiled the intent of the author. Intangibly, yet step by step,
he builds atmosphere as he touches on this teaching or that,
carries the thought for a distance and then turns to another
teaching, seemingly different, yet relevant to the larger picture he
is unfolding. In a later chapter or two he may return to the earlier
themes, develop them for a time, then again move on to other
doctrines. Dr. de Purucker remarks more than once that in this he
is deliberately following the ancient esoteric method of imparting
sacred truths: repetition of the salient thought, but always with
sufficient variation and enlargement of vision to draw the student
on so that the mind will not set itself in molds. The mind that
remains fluid is more responsive to intuition and the flow of light
that may spontaneously illumine the soul when the inner nature
is attuned.

It is of interest that the original edition of Fundamentals of the

Esoteric Philosophy published in 1932 did not include the first two
lectures, but began with the third one. Their omission no doubt
was inadvertent; but, providentially, a few years after the
author's death Kirby Van Mater, archivist for the Society, turned
up the two missing lectures among papers which presumably had
been returned with other material to headquarters from the
European centers to which Katherine Tingley had sent them in
1924, to be shared with "appreciative minds." The pertinent
portions of these meetings are now incorporated as sections i and
ii of chapter 1, preceding section iii which originally appeared as
the first chapter of the 1932 edition. The present volume is
enhanced by their inclusion, for they amplify and deepen Dr. de
Purucker's interpretation of the three fundamental propositions
with which H. P. Blavatsky opens her magnum opus and which
"pervade the entire system of thought" she
proceeds to outline.
We acknowledge with gratitude the efficient help of all in our
printing and editorial departments, with a special word of
commendation to Raymond Rugland for his meticulous care in
resetting the entire book in a more readable typeface; to James T.
Belderis for redrawing the many diagrams; and to William T. S.
Thackara for maintaining excellence in every phase of the book's
physical production; for the several proofreadings required, deep
appreciation to Elsa-Brita Titchenell, Manuel Oderberg, Ingrid
Van Mater, and A. Studley and Eloise Hart; likewise to John P. Van
Mater, librarian, for assistance to Mrs. Titchenell and Mr.
Oderberg in checking the numerous quotations and references
from original sources. It goes without saying that the close
cooperation of the editorial committee, A. Studley Hart, Ida P.
Moffett, and Sarah Belle Dougherty (who also prepared the
enlarged index), made the task of editing the text for publication
incomparably lighter.

After a near half-century, Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy

remains an excellent introductory study of theosophy for today's
readers in search of the very truths that disciples of olden times,
holding the fuel of devotion in their hands, sought to learn of
sages and rishis.

GRACE F. KNOCHE
April 27, 1979
Pasadena, California

Contents

Theosophical Society Homepage

Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter One
The Three Fundamental Propositions. The Self: Man's Inmost Link
with the Unutterable. The Esoteric Philosophy: Taught in all the
Ancient Religions.

Part I

. . . neither the collective Host (Demiurgos), nor any of the

working powers individually, are proper subjects for
divine honours or worship. All are entitled to the grateful
reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought to be
ever striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by
becoming to the best of his ability a co-worker with nature
in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and incognizable
Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should
have its shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden
ground of our heart — invisible, intangible, unmentioned,
save through "the still small voice" of our spiritual
consciousness. Those who worship before it, ought to do so
in the silence and the sanctified solitude of their Souls;
making their spirit the sole mediator between them and
the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and
their sinful intentions the only visible and objective
sacrificial victims to the
Presence. — H. P. Blavatsky, The
Secret Doctrine, I, 280

WE SHOULD all feel deeply and gratefully sensible of the occasion

which is here given to us to approach along the paths of thought
the doctrines which from immemorial time have enlightened the
intellect of our fellow students, have given courage to strong
hearts under persecution, and have directed the forces of the
world along the lines which men hold dearest — the lines of
religion and the ethical principles which govern human conduct.

Personally I am deeply sensible of the responsibility which

Katherine Tingley has put upon me, to say words which shall be
simple, condensed, clear, helpful. Her instructions are to take the
literary masterpiece of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's life, her
Secret Doctrine, and from beginning to end of it touch, if possible,
upon every main doctrine therein contained, and produce a
record and interpretation of its teachings which all minds can
understand and which will be helpful to all members of the
School both here and throughout the world.

The subject is a great one: great in scope, great in possibilities. I

approach the duty given me with a true awe, with my heart filled
with reverence for these venerable doctrines which from times so
far back that "the mind of man runneth not to the contrary" of
them have provided the world with its religions, its philosophies,
its sciences, its arts, its ethics, and therefore its governments.

The Secret Doctrine is accurately named. It is the teaching which

in all times has been held secret and esoteric. The world religions
of the past and present may be proved to have sprung from it; the
great religious philosophies of the Indian Peninsula, most easily
so. The teachings of pre-Spanish America, of Europe in pagan
times so called; the legends, the myths, the fairy tales in all the
countries of the world, which we may exemplify by the teachings
in the Scandinavian Eddas and the Anglo-Saxon Epics — these
great works which so many people think to be only sagas or
stories — are sprung in their origin from the secret wisdom
which H. P. Blavatsky has imbodied and outlined in her masterly
work.

These things are important to remember. The human mind has

never produced in any part of the world merely wild and
unbased, unfounded or merely mythical statements of religion.
Religion, like everything else, begins with ideas and ends with
dogmas and myths. In all dogmas may be found the seed of the
esoteric root from which they sprang. In the Christian religion —
whose dogmas have been man-made and have been christened
God-made — its dogmas too are founded to a large extent upon
the ancient pagan teachings, and therefore ultimately upon the
esoteric truths imbodied in this vast collection of teachings which
H. P. Blavatsky has called The Secret Doctrine. In it she has
attempted to bring back in outline only, rarely in detail, some
fundamental principles of this archaic doctrine, the same all over
the world, the same in all times; interpreted variously by various
men in various nations.

H. P. Blavatsky opens her work by enouncing three fundamental

propositions, three basic facts. It seems to me that a correct
understanding of these postulates would eliminate the many
misunderstandings that exist today among men regarding the
basic truths in religious thought. They unify, they separate never.

First, is her enunciation of an inscrutable Principle; the second

postulate in the proem of The Secret Doctrine is that the universe
is the playground, as it were, the field, the arena, the scene, of
incessant, eternal, never-ceasing periodicity: that is to say,
cyclical movement, the manifesting of the eternal life in the
cyclical appearance and disappearance of worlds — stars,
planets, and the other celestial bodies in the cosmic container
which men so vaguely and inaccurately call space. She tells us,
voicing the teaching of the ancient wisdom, that these worlds
come and go like sparks, mystically called the "sparks of eternity."
The life cycle of each of the greater bodies is of necessity of
immense duration; and when we speak of time, human
understanding demands that we shall have some measure by
which we can understand what we mean by time, and by
common consent the period of the earth's revolution around the
sun, which we call one year, has been taken as an arbitrary
measure.

The third postulate — by no means the least in importance, that

which is easiest to understand and which for us perhaps is most
pregnant with truth — is that the universe and all in it are one
immense, eternal organism. Let us be careful here lest we fall into
the doctrine called monism which teaches, briefly, that
everything in the universe is ultimately derived from one
material cause. Equally must we avoid falling into the erroneous
doctrine of monotheism, or the teaching that the universe and all
in it are the creation by the fiat and caprice of an infinite and
eternal personal God. The former doctrine is simply materialism;
the latter almost equally materialistic.

This third fundamental proposition tells us not merely that the

universe is one with all that is in it, but more particularly that the
being of man — his body, his bodies; his soul, his souls; and his
spirit — is but the offspring, the fruitage of forces. Here we come
upon one of the teachings most necessary for us to understand in
the magnificent sweep of theosophical philosophy, that of
hierarchies; that is to say, that the kosmos, the universe, while
one organism, is nevertheless formed of steps or gradations of
beings, consciousnesses or intellects, of all various kinds, in which
the universal life manifests, and that these are interrelated,
correlated and coordinated, and work together in one unity
towards one common object and end.

We see thus that we are not merely children of earth, beings like
butterflies, born of a day; but verily sparks of the heart of being,
of the central fire of the universal life. If we could feel this
wonderful truth in our hearts, and if we could carry our feeling
into our daily lives, no force would be greater to govern our
conduct than it; nothing could better mold our destinies or put us
upon a nobler path of achievement and service.

Realizing that we are one unity with all that is; that universal
brotherhood is a fact of being, rooted in the very heart of things,
unescapable, not to be avoided; and that our acts and thoughts act
and react with inevitable consequence in all that we think and do
— not only upon ourselves, the thinkers and actors, but on all
other beings everywhere — how different might the lives of men
be! Here, more than in the first two fundamental propositions, do
we find the true religious, scientific, and philosophical basis of
morals. No man can work unto himself; inevitably, inviolably he
works unto others likewise. What he does affects others. These
teachings are realities, real things.

Let us have the knowledge of it, let us realize that every thought is
a thing which eventuates now or at some later day in an action;
that the accumulation of thoughts along any one line shall
produce its proper effect or effects; that in the chain of being one
thing leads to another, and that our moral and physical
responsibility is precisely something that we can never escape.
When man realizes that he is responsible and inevitably will be
called to an accounting, and that at any instant selfishness of
motive or godlike love and compassion direct his acts, then we
shall have every right to look for a regenerated mankind.

Part II

In resuming our talk of last week, in which we considered the

three fundamental postulates of the esoteric philosophy which H.
P. Blavatsky outlined in the first pages of The Secret Doctrine, we
must remember that we are dealing with subjects so abstract, so
abstruse, that to attain to a simplification of them is a task beset
with many difficulties, surrounded as it is with the forces of
prejudice, and demanding also the use of such words that all
minds will understand at least the main thought imbodied in our
talks.

With regard to this question of words, no science or philosophy,

no religious thought, can attempt to interpret itself to the world
without having its own complete technical vocabulary; otherwise
it is faced with misconstruction, misunderstanding, frequent
needless opposition. For this reason certain words have been
used, largely drawn from the Oriental religions, because there
and there only, as regards religions which still live, do we find
thoughts and the proper treatment of them which also exist in the
ancient wisdom, today called theosophy. Scarcely one of these
terms, however, has been properly interpreted or understood,
precisely because they are for the most part Sanskrit words — not
merely words from that language, but words which have also
received color and meaning and application in religions which
still use them. Even English terms have meanings varying
according to the places where we find them. Hence, as said
before, it will be necessary in studying The Secret Doctrine
carefully to set forth the meaning in which these words are used
— a meaning philosophic, a meaning religious, and a meaning
current in the popular walks of life. But first it would seem good
to quote from H. P. Blavatsky the paragraph occurring at the
bottom of page 13, preceding her treatment of these fundamental
propositions:

Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the

Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of
the present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should
be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions
which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to
which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in
number, and on their clear apprehension depends the
understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is
required for asking the reader to make himself familiar
 with them first, before entering on the perusal of the work
itself.

These three propositions may be called a synopsis of the entire

system of esoteric philosophy. They are an epitome of the
religious and philosophic reasoning of the human soul from times
vanishing into unknown antiquity. Necessarily, therefore, are
they very difficult to understand, and in some of their reaches
they cannot be understood fully by the human mind. For
instance, while we cannot say with reference to this first
proposition what this Principle is, nevertheless we can talk about
it, talk around it, say what it is not, as H. P. Blavatsky herself does
when, after saying that in the words of the Upanishad it is
"unthinkable and unspeakable," she proceeds to speak of it and to
give the ancient teaching about it as it was understood by the
greatest minds of olden times.

This first proposition is expressed by her as follows:

An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable

PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since it
transcends the power of human conception and could only
be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is
beyond the range and reach of thought — in the words of
Mandukya [Upanishad] "unthinkable and unspeakable."

What do we mean by principle, as a word? It has many meanings:

it may mean a rule of conduct; it may be used in the sense of
cause; or in its etymological meaning as beginning. The word
prince is from the same Latin root, meaning the head of the men
of his state, the beginning of justice, the fountain of law and
order.

Now what does H. P. Blavatsky mean in choosing the word

principle Are we to understand that it is used in the sense of a
pure abstraction, as when one says six or long? Six what? Or what
is it which is long? Words so used are pure abstractions; they
have no application and no meaning unless connected with some
object. In other words, they signify nothing in especial; and
therefore if we choose to understand H. P. Blavatsky's use of this
word principle, in the sense of a pure abstraction without
application to any subject of thought or thing, then we must
conclude that the Principle of which she speaks is pure
nothingness — not no thing, but nothing in the ordinary sense.
When she speaks of a Principle, however, she uses it with a
purpose and a meaning; hence Principle does not mean
nothingness. Yet we cannot call this All, this Mystery, this Space —
which are other words that she gives it — by the name of any
thing. On the other hand, it is
not a being, it is not an entity, it is
nothing limited, no matter how great or how apparently
boundless.

Properly to understand why and how ancient thinkers used

words such as this, we introduce here a key to ancient wisdom,
and it is this: the thought of ancient times the world over was
anthropocentric, not as defined in dictionaries today, meaning
that man is the highest goal of creation in the ordinary Christian
sense, or that the universe revolves around man as the most
important thing in creation. This sense is by usage a permissible
one, but it is not the sense in which the word is used when we
apply it to this ancient key. Here is the meaning, difficult to
understand, but very important for the proper interpretation of
the wisdom set forth in The Secret Doctrine. A man thinks. He
thinks with his own thoughts from what is in himself. He cannot
think in the mind of another man. Perforce, by the necessities of
his own being, his thoughts follow the cast or bent of his own
nature: spring from within him, as from a fountain, and this, as
applied to the religious and philosophic thought
of the ancients is
the meaning of the word anthropocentric, as we shall use it.

The word itself is from the Greek, anthropos, "man" in the general
sense, like the German word Mensch, not man in the individual
sense. It means that the ancients looked upon their religious
philosophy and their philosophic systems as springing from
within man himself, hence they were anthropocentric. Similar to
this was their treatment of the phenomena of nature, which was
based on the phenomenal fact that the earth was the apparent
center of the solar system. So is any other planet. We have
remnants of this system in our own languages today, when we
speak of the "rising" and the "setting" of the sun, and so forth.

Now, then, treating the ancient wisdom from the anthropocentric

position, the ancient thinkers realized that to render forth the
thoughts which sprang up within them they must use human
language, human similes, human metaphors. Only in this fashion
could they receive some degree of the attentive consideration
which they, as teachers of this ancient wisdom, merited. Hence
we find the application of the anthropocentric idea to this word
principle — a word which can be used both as an abstraction or in
a concrete material sense.

Obviously H. P. Blavatsky did not use principle in a material sense.

What, then, did she mean to convey? That this Principle beyond
the reach of human thought must be all that which passes human
understanding and which for that reason we can only call the All
— a word simply expressing our ignorance, it is true; but it does
express the fact that this ineffable Principle is All. Ultimately from
it we sprang, back to it we are journeying through the aeons of
illimitable time. All thoughts ultimately came from it, but by no
fiat of a thinking mind, however great. The ancient philosophy
tells us that we may liken the first stirrings of being in this All to
the life germ in an egg. How marvelous it is that a thing which,
when chemically analyzed, consists of but a few elements of
matter, yet if not disturbed or destroyed, under proper
conditions, brings forth a living being!

Many are the religions which have treated of this Principle in

varying ways. Let us first take the Hebrew in illustration of the
thought, because from it, largely, sprang the Christian doctrines.
Since most of us were born in Christian countries, the doctrines
which that church has had are most familiar to us, and this,
perhaps, is a sufficient excuse for choosing it as our first
illustration. "In the beginning," that is to say, "In the Principle,"
and so translated in the Greek Septuagint, "God made the world
and the world was without form and void, and the Spirit of God
moved upon the waters." Now here is a wonderful thing. The
thought in those lines is by no means well expressed
philosophically, but it does contain the esoteric teaching as we
have it here in The Secret Doctrine: "In the beginning" — "In the
Principle" — "In the All." The next statement is that "God" (the
original Hebrew is
Elohim) made the earth and the earth was
formless and void. What does void mean? Let me remind you that
the word here means more than "empty"; it means properly, in
this application, intangible, immaterial, as we would say, an astral
world, a spiritual world, even.

"And the spirit of Elohim moved upon the waters." What waters?
Where were the waters upon which "Elohim" or the "Gods"
moved? Why should they move upon the "waters"? Water is a
term used in the ancient religions as signifying space, the waters
of space. We have here a treatment of an immaterial world,
brought forth from the All by powers, by gods if you like — the
word matters nothing — and of the spirit, the force of these
beings, moving over or within this intangible and immaterial
globe or world.
Turning to the Farther Orient and taking up the Sanskrit
teachings as expressed in the Veda — the most ancient and highly
revered religious and philosophical works of Hindustan — we
find in the translation of Colebrooke the following:

Nor Aught nor Naught existed; . . .

Think of the thought in this. Neither some thing nor no thing

existed.

. . . yon bright sky / Was not, nor heaven's broad roof

outstretched above. / What covered all? what sheltered?
what concealed? / Was it the water's fathomless abyss? /

Again the reference to the waters of space.

There was not death — yet there was naught immortal, /

There was no confine betwixt day and night; / The only One
breathed breathless by itself, / Other than It there nothing
since has been. / Darkness there was, and all at first was
veiled / In gloom profound — an ocean without light — /
The germ that still lay covered in the husk / Burst forth, one
nature, from the fervent heat.

See the marvelous attempt to render into ordinary human

language, into commonplace figures of speech, however
beautiful, thoughts whose subtility and profundity the human
mind can reach towards, grasp for, attempt to reach — and yet
must largely fail. And nevertheless we sense, we feel, as it were
by an inner consciousness, the existence, the reality, the actuality,
of that which we know is, and fail to tell.

Here we have a statement that "no thing" was and "not no thing"
was. To this, by reason of our anthropocentric understanding, we
can give no human name; yet, as the mind works analogically, the
Veda tells us that the germ of life arose in It as It then was. So is It
now, nothing less, nothing gone, nothing added; always the same
so far as we can see, and yet changing ever. Utter immobility is
death. In It death exists not. Motion, as we understand it, is life,
and yet in It such life in reality exists not. It is in reality neither in
motion nor motionless. All we can liken It to, following the
anthropocentric rule, is utter space, containing unending motion
as we understand it, in infinity, in eternity — and all these are but
words, an open confession of the inability of the human mind to
reach it. Yet how noble, how proud, a statement it is of the mighty
forces of the human spirit which can reach up, and even get some
intimation of the unutterable.

On page two of the first volume of her work, H. P. Blavatsky says:

"It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without
beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations, . . ."

Is it possible inwardly to conceive the immensity of this spacial

All and our kosmos, our universe, as hanging from It by a thread
of spirit — our universe, not alone our dust speck of earth, but the
universe comprised within the encircling zone of the Milky Way
— and the numberless other universes hanging from It? So, when
we read "Periodical in its regular manifestations," we inevitably
follow the anthropocentric law of our being and reason as men.

The All itself never manifests; It is the Unmanifest; but it is true

nevertheless that from It manifestation proceeds. To what can we
liken It then? What were the pictures, the metaphors, by which
the ancients explained the manifest proceeding from the
unmanifest — the material from the immaterial, life from not-life,
personality from nonpersonality, being, entity, from nonbeing
and nonentity? Here is one figure: the world-principle is the sun.
The sun sends forth innumerable rays of light; we may assume
that the sending forth is eternal and in all directions; and that the
rays of light are part of that which sends them forth. Thus did the
ancients liken the sun to this All. The sun itself in their philosophy
was but the material manifestation on this plane of a hierarchic
series which had its roots again inmeshed in something still
higher than itself, and so forth. How did they describe this
Principle, this Unspeakable, in the Vedas? Silence and darkness
surrounded the thought and they
simply called it Tat; the English
translation is "that" — not even "God," not even "the Shining One";
it was limited by no adjective, simply That.

Another figure was the World Tree, even more universal than
that of the sun, found in the Hindu scriptures, in the ancient
American Maya, Inca, Toltec symbols, found also in ancient
Europe and preserved to this day in the Scandinavian Eddas. The
World Tree — how is it imagined? It was figured as growing from
above downwards, its roots rooted in That, and its trunk, its
manifold branches, and its twigs, and its leaves, and its flowers,
stretching downwards in all directions and representing the
manifesting and manifested life, the incalculable things into
which this cosmic river, this spiritual flood of being, runs.

Suppose a tip at the end of the lowest, utmost branch, the tip of a
leaf: it draws its life from the leaf, the leaf from the twig, the twig
from the branch, the branch from a larger branch, the larger
branch from a larger one still, it from the trunk, the trunk from
the roots, the roots — why proceed further? We can continue
indefinitely. But the ancients, with their deep religious faith,
simply said That when referring to that which transcends human
power of conception. Thus, when H.P.B. says here, "yet periodical
in its regular manifestations," so must we understand it. It is her
own teaching that It manifests never, but from It springs all life.
"Between which periods runs the dark mystery of non-Being" —
what is this state? Is it dark per se? Is it an unsolvable mystery? Is
it nothingness? What right have we to think so, so to conceive it?
These are words used of necessity anthropocentrically, following
the ancient rule, knowing that man can use no terms
understandable by himself and his fellows except those which
follow the psychological laws of his own being. Therefore, and we
quote further:

. . . between which periods reigns the dark mystery of [to

us] non-Being; unconscious [to us], yet absolute
Consciousness; unrealisable [by us], yet the one self-
existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the
reason." Its one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal,
ceaseless Motion [to us], is called in esoteric parlance the
"Great Breath," which is the perpetual motion of the
universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present SPACE.

Part III

In our last two meetings we studied the three fundamental

postulates in H. P. Blavatsky' Secret Doctrine. Therein we are
taught that there exists in man a link with the Unutterable, a cord,
a communication, that extends from It to the inner consciousness;
and that link — such is the teaching as it has come down to us —
is the very heart of being. It arises in that supersensory Principle,
that unutterable Mystery which H. P. Blavatsky defines in the first
fundamental proposition as above human mind. Becoming one
with that link, we can transcend the powers of ordinary human
intellect, and reach (even if it be by striving out, upward,
towards) that Unutterable, which is, we know — though it is
beyond human power to express it in words, or beyond human
thought — the concealed of the concealed, the life of life, truth of
truth, the ALL.

Here is the thought, it seems to me, which illustrates so well

Katherine Tingley's words in this regard. They struck me as very
beautiful, profoundly suggestive. She said:
 Thinking towards the unthinkable is a wonderful,
spiritualizing force; one cannot think toward it without a
disposition either to think more or feel more — without
opening up the inner consciousness of man. And when that
inner consciousness is awakened, the soul finds itself
closer to the infinite laws, closer to THAT, or that Great
Center that no words can express.

By striving towards this inwards, towards the Inmost, we can

attain to some conception, if not understanding, of the infinite
Principle of all that is. From It, in the course of endless duration,
there spring into manifestation at the end of the great universal
or cosmic pralaya, the beginnings of things. These beginnings
eventuate in the forms of life and being described in the second
and third fundamental propositions.

This inmost link with the Unutterable was called in ancient India
by the term self, which has been often mistranslated "soul." The
Sanskrit word is atman, and applies, in psychology, to the human
entity. The upper end of the link, so to speak, was called
paramatman or the "supreme self," the permanent self — words
which describe neatly and clearly to those who have studied this
wonderful philosophy somewhat of the nature and essence of the
thing which man is, and the source from which, in that
beginningless and endless duration, he sprang. Child of earth and
child of heaven, he contains both in himself.

We pass now from considering the first proposition to the second

and the third. And in order that we may understand what we
mean when we use certain words, it will be useful to illustrate
our usages of such words. Let us take up the remarkably well-
translated book entitled The Song Celestial, the work of Sir Edwin
Arnold. It is a translation into English verse of the Bhagavad-Gita.
That work is an episode or an interlude found in the sixth book of
the Mahabarata, the greater of the two great Hindu epics; and in
the style of the Hindu writings it comprises a dissertation on
religious, philosophical, and mystical subjects. Sir Edwin's Song
Celestial, in book the second, has the following:

. . .The soul which is not moved, / The soul that with a

strong and constant calm / Takes sorrow and takes joy
indifferently, / Lives in the life undying! That which is / Can
never cease to be; that which is not / Will not exist. To see
this truth of both / Is theirs who part essence from
accident, / Substance from shadow. Indestructible, / Learn
thou! the Life is, spreading life through all; / It cannot
anywhere, by any means, / Be anywise diminished, stayed,
or changed. / But for these fleeting frames which it informs
/ With spirit deathless, endless, infinite, / They perish. . . .

Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;
/ Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are
dreams! / Birthless and deathless and changeless
remaineth the spirit for ever; / Death hath not touched it at
all, dead though the house of it seems!

Now these words are exquisitely beautiful. They nevertheless

contain a mistranslation, a misrendering of the text of this
wonderful little work. In the first place, Sir Edwin translates the
Sanskrit word tat, first by the word "soul" and next by the word
"spirit." Of course, analogically, it has a reference to the soul and
the spirit of man; but the Sanskrit of it does not point particularly
to the soul of man. I will read a translation in prose of these same
verses, made with no attempt at poetic thought, no attempt to use
beautiful language, but simply to express the thought:

The man whom these do not lead astray, O Bull among

men! who is the same in pain and pleasure, and of steady
soul, he partakes of immortality.
 There is no existence for the unreal; there is no
nonexistence for the Real. Moreover, the ultimate
characteristic of both these is seen by those who perceive
true principles.

Know That to be indestructible by which this whole

universe was woven.

The Sanskrit word for "That" is tat, as already explained. The

figure is that of the weaving of a web.

The destruction of this Imperishable, none is able to bring

about.

These mortal bodies are said to be of the imbodied Eternal,

Indestructible, Immeasurable One. . . .

He who knows It as the slayer, and he who thinks It to be

the slain: both of them understand not. It slays not, nor is it
slain.

It is not born, nor does it ever die; It was not produced, nor
shall it ever be produced.

It is unborn, constant, everlasting, primeval. It is unhurt

when the body is slain.

The application that the writer in the Bhagavad-Gita makes is to

the link which we have spoken of, the deathless, undying
principle within us, and he describes it by the word That, and
contrasts it with the manifested universe which, following the
ancient teachings of India, was invariably spoken of as This — the
Sanskrit word is idam.

The sages of olden times left on record the inner teaching of the
religions of the peoples among whom they lived. This inner
teaching was the esoteric philosophy, the theosophy of the period.
In Hindustan this theosophy is found in the Upanishads, a part of
the Vedic literary cycle. The word itself implies "secret doctrine"
or "secret teachings." From the Upanishads and from other parts
of the Vedic literature, the ancient sages of India produced what
is called today the Vedanta — a compound Sanskrit word
meaning "the end (or completion) of the Veda" — that is to say,
instruction in the final and most perfect exposition of the
meaning of the Vedic tenets.

In ancient Greece there were various schools and various

Mysteries, and the theosophy of ancient Greece was held very
secret; it was taught in the Mysteries and it was taught by
different teachers to select bodies of their disciples. One of such
great teachers was Pythagoras; another was Plato; and this
theosophy was more or less clearly outlined and imbodied, after
the fall of the so-called pagan religions, in what is today called the
Neoplatonic philosophy. It represents actually the inner teachings
of Pythagoras, Plato, and the inner sense of those mystical
doctrines which passed current in Greece under the name of the
Orphic poems.

Of the theosophy of Egypt we have but scanty remainings, such as

exist in what is called "The Book of the Dead." Of the theosophy of
ancient America, of the Incan, the Mayan, empires we have next
to nothing. The theosophy of ancient Europe has passed away. All
that remains to us is a certain number of mystical writings such
as the Scandinavian Eddas, and the Germanic books, which are
represented, for instance, in the sagas found written in the old
High German and in the Anglo-Saxon tongues.

A study of the doctrines contained in the Upanishads, in "The

Book of the Dead," in the Neoplatonic philosophy, in the
Scandinavian Eddas, and elsewhere, shows that they had one
common basis, one foundation, one common truth. Various men
in various ages taught the same truth, using different words and
different figures, different metaphors; but underneath always
was the ancient doctrine, the secret wisdom.

The theosophy of the Jews was imbodied in what was later called
the Qabbalah, from a Hebrew word meaning "to receive"; that is
to say, it was the traditional doctrine handed down or received
(according to the statements of the Qabbalah itself) through the
prophets and the sages of Jewry, and was said to have been first
taught by "God Almighty to a select company of angels in
Heaven."

We must remember, when we approach the teachings of the

ancient wisdom, that the ancient teachers spoke and thought and
taught anthropocentrically; that is, that they all insisted on
following the psychological laws of the human mind and
therefore taught in human figures of speech, often using quaint
metaphors, very odd, and yet so instructive as figures of speech.
How wise that was, because thus they were able to carry on the
teachings, and did so in such fashion that least of all did this
anthropocentric system encourage the dogmatic rulings that have
most truly blasted all that was best in the teachings of the
Christian Church. These tropes, these metaphors, were so quaint
that the mind understood almost instantly that they were but the
vehicle imbodying the truth. Let us remember this, and our work
becomes immensely more easy.

Now let us take the Qabbalah as a sample of the manner in which

one theosophy — the Jewish — approaches the mystery of how
the Unmanifest produces the manifest, how from that which is
endless and beginningless duration sprang forth matter, space in
the sense of material extension, and time.

But first let me quote from another Sanskrit work, the

Kena-Upanishad. Speaking of this unutterable Mystery, it says:
 The eye reacheth it not, language reacheth it not, nor does
thought reach to it at all; verily, we know not nor can we
say how one should teach it; it is different from the known,
it is beyond the unknown. Thus have we heard from the
men of olden times, for they taught it to us. — 1, 3-4

The great Sankaracharya, perhaps the most famous of Indian

commentators on the Upanishads and the marvelously beautiful
system of philosophy drawn from them called the Vedanta, says,
commenting on the Aitareya-Upanishad:

There is the One, sole, alone, apart from all duality, in

which there appear not the multitudinous illusory
presentments of unreal bodies and conditions of this
universe of merely apparent reality; passionless,
unmoving, pure, in utter peace; knowable only by the lack
of every adjective epithet; unreachable by word or by
thought.

The Qabbalah, the traditionary teaching of the sages among the

Jews, is a wonderful teaching; it contains in outline or in epitome
every fundamental tenet or teaching that the Secret Doctrine
contains. The teachings of the Qabbalah are often couched in very
quaint and sometimes amusing language; sometimes its language
rises to the height of sublimity. What does the Zohar, the second
of the great books that remain of the Qabbalah (the word Zohar
itself meaning "splendor"), have to say of the manner in which
the Jewish religious books should be studied? It says this (iii,
152a):

Woe be to the son of man who says that the Torah [the
Hebrew Bible, especially the Pentateuch, or rather the first
four books of the Bible excluding Deuteronomy, the fifth]
contains common sayings and ordinary narratives. If this
 were the case we might in the present day compose a code
of doctrines from profane writings which would excite
greater respect. If the Law contains ordinary matter, then
there are nobler sentiments in profane codes. Let us go and
make a selection from them and we shall be able to
compile a far superior code. No! Every word of the Law has
a sublime sense and a heavenly mystery. . . . As the
spiritual angels had to put on earthly garments when they
descended to this earth, and as they could neither have
remained nor be understood on the earth without putting
on such a garment, so it is with the Law. When it
descended on earth, the Law had to put on an earthly
garment, in order to be understood by us, and the
narratives are its garment. . . . Those who have
understanding do not look at the garment but at the body
[the esoteric meaning] beneath; whilst the wisest, the
servants of the heavenly King, those who dwell on Mount
Sinai, look at nothing but the soul —

i.e., at the ultimate secret doctrine or sacred wisdom hid under

the "body," under the exoteric narratives or stories of the Bible.

In these days, when modernists and fundamentalists quarrel —

quarrel unnecessarily about exoteric superficialities, about things
which arise out of the egoism of men, about the dogmatic
teachings of the Christian Church, every one of them probably
based on ancient pagan esoteric philosophy — it is an immense
pity that they do not know and understand that this teaching of
the Qabbalah as expressed in the Zohar is a true one; for under
every garment is the life. As Jesus taught in parables, so the Bible
was written in figures of speech, in metaphors.

Chapter 2
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Two
Where is Reality? Truth can be Known. Man's Composite Nature
according to Different Systems: Threefold, Fourfold, Fivefold, or
Sevenfold.

The fundamental Law in that system, the central point

from which all emerged, around and toward which all
gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy of the
rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE-
PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.

. . . "Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led

From cause to cause to nature's secret head,
And found that one first Principle must be. . . ."

It is called "Substance-Principle," for it becomes

"substance" on the plane of the manifested Universe, an
illusion, while it remains a "principle" in the beginningless
and endless abstract, visible and invisible SPACE. It is the
omnipresent Reality: impersonal, because it contains all
and everything. Its impersonality is the fundamental
conception of the System. It is latent in every atom in the
Universe, and is the Universe itself. — The Secret Doctrine,
I, 273

It is the True. It is the Self, and thou art it. — Chhandogya-

Upanishad, 6, 14, 3

The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal

Tao; the name which can be uttered is not its eternal name.
Without a name, it is the Beginning of Heaven and Earth;
with a name, it is the Mother of all things. Only one who is
eternally free from earthly passions can apprehend its
 spiritual essence; he who is ever clogged by passions can
see no more than its outer form. These two things, the
spiritual and the material, though we call them by different
names, in their origin are one and the same. This sameness
is a mystery — the mystery of mysteries. It is the gate of all
spirituality. — The Sayings of Lao Tzu (Lionel Giles, trans.)

WE OPEN volume I of H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine at page 13,

to the second paragraph, which is as follows:

The reader has to bear in mind that the Stanzas given treat
only of the Cosmogony of our own planetary System and
what is visible around it, after a Solar Pralaya. The secret
teachings with regard to the Evolution of the Universal
Kosmos cannot be given, since they could not be
understood by the highest minds in this age, and there
seem to be very few Initiates, even among the greatest,
who are allowed to speculate upon this subject. Moreover
the Teachers say openly that not even the highest Dhyani-
Chohans have ever penetrated the mysteries beyond those
boundaries that separate the milliards of Solar systems
from the "Central Sun," as it is called. Therefore, that which
is given relates only to our visible Kosmos, after a "Night of
Brahma."

We choose this as the general text of our study this evening, as it

seems not only appropriate but necessary to open our study of
the more secret matters of which The Secret Doctrine treats, by
asking in what manner or by what method do we obtain an
understanding and a realization of these doctrines? Do they come
to us as dogmatic teachings, or are they derived, following the
definition that Webster gives of theosophy in his dictionary, by
inner spiritual communion with "God"? There is something in
Webster's definition which is true. The theosophist does believe
that man has within himself the faculty of approaching divine
things, of raising the inner man so that he can thereby obtain a
more accurate mental representation of things as they are, or of
reality.

On the other hand, if everyone did this, without proper and

capable guidance and leading and teaching, extreme vanity and
human conceit as well as many other forces in the human
economy would inevitably lead to an immense diversity of
opinions and teachings and doctrines, each man believing that he
had the truth and he only, and hence that those who followed him
and preached his views should form with him a special "church"
or "sect" of their own. The words themselves would probably be
avoided, but it would amount to that.

Therefore, here we find the use, the benefit, the appositeness, of

the theosophical doctrines, to the effect that these teachings have
come down to us from immemorial antiquity — transmitted from
one Teacher to another — and that originally they were
communicated to the nascent human race, when once it became
self-conscious, by beings from a higher sphere, beings who
themselves were of divine origin; and further, that this
communication or emanation of their spiritual and higher
intellectual selves into us, gave us our own higher principles. For
the Teachers have told us that these doctrines have been checked
or proved age after age, generation after generation, by
innumerable spiritual seers, to use H. P. Blavatsky's own words —
checked in every respect, checked as to fact, as to origin, checked
as to operation on the human mind.

Now then, the faculties by which man can attain a knowledge of

truth, of the real, can be called upon or evoked at any moment in
any place, provided the right conditions are made, so that the
striving soul may thus reach successfully upward or inward, and
know. Sometimes in the most simple teachings are found the most
divine truths. And why? Because the simple teachings are the
fundamental ones.

Consider for a moment, therefore, the seven principles of man in

their connection with the seven principles of the universe. The
seven principles of man are a likeness or copy of the seven cosmic
principles. They are actually the offspring of the seven cosmic
principles, limited in their action in us by the workings of the law
of karma, but running in their origin back into That which is
beyond, into that which is the essence of the universe or the
universal; in, beyond, within, to the Unmanifest, to the
Unmanifestable, to that first Principle which H. P. Blavatsky
enunciates as the leading thought of the wisdom-philosophy of
The Secret Doctrine.

These principles of man are reckoned as seven in the philosophy

by which the human, spiritual, and psychical economy has been
explained to us in the present age. In other ages these principles
or parts of man were differently reckoned — the Christian
reckons them as body, soul, and spirit, and does not know the
difference between the soul and the spirit; and many say that the
soul and spirit are the same.

Some of the Indian thinkers divided man into a basic fourfold

entity others into a fivefold. The Jewish philosophy as found in
the Qabbalah teaches that man is divided into four parts:

The highest and most spiritual of all, that principle or part

which is to us a mere breath of being, they called neshamah.

The second principle was called ruahh or spiritual soul,

spelled sometimes ruach according to another method of
transliteration.

The astral soul (or vital soul) was called nephesh, the third
 next lower, which man has in common with the brutes.

Then comes the guph or physical vehicle, the house in which

all these others dwell.

Over all, and higher than all, higher than the neshamah — which
is not an emanation of this Highest, not a creation, not an
evolution, but of which it was the production in a sense which we
shall later have to explain — there is the Ineffable, the Boundless,
called Eyn (or Ain) Soph.

The Sanskrit terms which have been given to the seven principles
of man in the theosophical philosophy are as follows, and we can
get much help from explaining the original Sanskrit meanings of
them, and illustrating the sense in which those words were used,
and why they were chosen.

The first principle is called the sthula-sarira. Sthula means

"coarse," "gross," not refined, heavy, bulky, fat in the sense of
bigness. Sarira comes from a root which can best be translated
by saying that it is that which is "easily dissolved," "easily
worn away"; the idea being something transitory, foamlike,
full of holes, as it were. Note the meaning hid in this: it is very
important.

The second principle let us call the linga-sarira. Linga is a

Sanskrit word which means "characteristic mark"; hence
model, pattern. It forms the model or pattern on which the
physical body is built — this physical body, composed mostly
of porosity, if the expression be pardoned; the most unreal
thing we know, full of holes, foamy, as it were. We will revert
to this thought later.

The third principle, commonly called the life-principle, is

prana. Now this word is used here in a general sense. There
are, as a matter of fact, a number of life-currents, vital fluids.
 They have several names. One system gives the number as
three; another as five, which is the commonly accepted
number; another as seven; another twelve, as is found in some
Upanishads; and one old writer even gives them as thirteen.

Then there is the kama principle; the word kama means

"desire." It is the driving or impelling force in the human
economy; colorless, neither good nor bad, only such as the
mind and soul direct its use.

Then comes manas; the Sanskrit root of this word means "to
think," "to cogitate," "to reflect" — mental activity, in short.

Then comes buddhi, or the spiritual soul, the vehicle or carrier

of the highest principle of all, the atman. Now buddhi comes
from a Sanskrit root budh. This root is commonly translated
"to enlighten," but a better translation is "to awaken" and,
hence, "to understand"; buddha, the past participle of this root
is applied to one who is spiritually "awakened," no longer
living a living death, but awakened to the spiritual influence
from within or from "above." Buddhi is the principle in us
which gives us spiritual consciousness, and is the vehicle of
the most high part of man. This highest part is the atman.

This principle (atman) is a universal one; but during

incarnations its lowest parts, if we can so express it, take on
attributes, because it is linked with the buddhi as the buddhi is
linked with the manas, as the manas is linked to the kama, and
so on down the scale.

Atman is also sometimes used of the universal self or spirit which

is called in the Sanskrit writings Brahman (neuter), and the
Brahman or universal spirit is also called the Paramatman, a
compound Sanskrit term meaning the "highest" or most universal
atman. The root of atman is hardly known. Its origin is uncertain,
but the general meaning is that of "self."

Beyond Brahman is the Parabrahman: para is a Sanskrit word

meaning "beyond." Note the deep philosophical meaning of this:
there is no attempt here to limit the Illimitable, the Ineffable, by
adjectives; it simply means "beyond the Brahman." In the Sanskrit
Vedas and in the works deriving therefrom and belonging to the
Vedic literary cycle, this beyond is called That, as this world of
manifestation is called This. Other expressive Sanskrit terms are
sat, the "real"; and asat, the "unreal" or the manifested universe;
in another sense asat means "not sat," i.e., even beyond (higher
than) sat.

This Parabrahman is intimately connected with Mulaprakriti,

"root-nature." Their interaction and intermingling cause the first
nebulous thrilling, if the words will pass, of the universal life
when spiritual desire first arose in It in the beginnings of things.
Such is the old teaching, employing of necessity the old
anthropocentric tropes, clearly understood to be only human
similes; for the conceptions of the seers of ancient times, their
teachings, their doctrines, had to be told in human language to
the human mind.

Now then, a man can reach inward, going "upward" step by step,
climbing higher as his spiritual force and power wax greater and
more subtil, until he reaches beyond his normal faculties, and
steps beyond the Ring-pass-not, as H. P. Blavatsky calls it in her
Secret Doctrine. Where and what is this Ring-pass-not? It is, at any
period of man's consciousness, the utmost reach that his spirit
can attain. There he stops, and looks into the Beyond — into the
Unmanifested from which we came. The Unmanifest is in us; it is
the Inmost of the Inmost in our souls, in our spirits, in our
essential beings. We can reach towards it. We can actually reach
it never.
Now where is reality? Is the real, is the true, to be found in these
lower vestures of materiality? Or is it to be found in the state of
being from which everything came?

The ancient Stoics in their wonderful philosophy taught, and the

same teaching originated in the esoteric philosophy of Hellas or
Greece — as found later in the Neoplatonic teachings — these
ancient Stoics taught that truth can be known; that the most real
thing, the greatest thing, was to be found in ever-receding vistas,
as the spirit of man strived inward and beyond, veil after veil
falling away as the "wise man" (their technical term) advances in
the evolution of his soul. They taught that the material universe
was illusory precisely as the Hindu speaks of maya; and the Stoic
understood that this apparently dense, gross, heavy, material
universe is phenomenally unreal, mostly built up of holes, so to
say — a teaching which is reechoed today in the writings and
thoughts of the more intuitional of our scientists.

The Stoics taught that the ether was denser than the most dense
material thing, fuller than the most full material thing — using
human words, of course. To us, with our human eyes, trained
only to see objects of illusion, it appears to be the most
diaphanous, the thinnest, the most ethereal. What was the reality,
the real, behind this All? The real thing? They said it was God, life
of life, truth of truth, root of matter, root of soul, root of spirit.
When the Stoic was asked: What is God? he nobly answered:
What is God not?

Turning now to the ancient wisdom of Hindustan, to the

Upanishads — going back far beyond the time when the ancient
Brahmanic teachings and the Brahmanas became what they are
today, to the time when real men taught real things — let us take
from the Chhandogya-Upanishad,mainly in the sixth lecture, a
conversation between a father and his son. The son asks:
 "If a man who has slept in his own house, rises and goes to
another village, he knows that he has come from his own
house. Why then do people not know that they have come
from the Sat?" [A Sanskrit word meaning the Real, the
Ineffable, of which we have spoken.]

And the father teaches his son as follows:

"These rivers, my son, run, the eastern toward the east, the
western toward the west. They go from sea to sea. They
become indeed sea. And as those rivers, when they are in
the sea, do not know, I am this or that river,

"In the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when

they have come from the True [that is, the Real] know not
that they have come from the True [on account of the
maya]. Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion,
or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a
mosquito, that they become again and again."

Now listen:

"That which is that subtile essence, in it all that exists has

its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu,
art it." "Please, Sir, inform me still more," said the son. "Be
it so, my child," the father replied.

Now the son is supposed to ask, "How is it that living beings,

when in sleep or death they are merged again in the Sat, are not
destroyed? Waves, foam, and bubbles arise from the water, and
when they merge again in the water, they are gone."

"If someone were to strike at the root of this large tree

here," says the father, "it would bleed, but live. If he were
to strike at its stem, it would bleed, but live. If he were to
strike at its top, it would bleed, but live. Pervaded by the
living Self that tree stands firm, drinking in its
nourishment and rejoicing;

"But if the life (the living Self) leaves one of its branches,
that branch withers; if it leaves a second, that branch
withers; if it leaves a third, that branch withers. If it leaves
the whole tree, the whole tree withers. In exactly the same
manner, my son, know this." Thus he spoke:

"This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living Self
has left it; the living Self dies not. That which is that subtile
essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is
the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it."

"Please, Sir, inform me still more," said the son. "Be it so,
my child," the father replied.

"Fetch me from thence a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree."

"Here is one, Sir." "Break it." "It is broken, Sir." "What do
you see there?" "These seeds, almost infinitesimal." "Break
one of them." "It is broken, Sir." "What do you see there?"
"Not anything, Sir."

The father said: "My son, that subtile essence which you do
not perceive there, of that very essence this great
Nyagrodha tree exists. Believe it, my son. That which is the
subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True.
It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it." "Please, Sir,
inform me still more," said the son. "Be it so, my child," the
father replied.

"Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in the

morning." The son did as he was commanded. The father
said to him: "Bring me the salt, which you placed in the
water last night." The son having looked for it, found it not,
for, of course, it was melted. The father said: "Taste it from
 the surface of the water. How is it?" The son replied: "It is
salt." "Taste it from the middle. How is it?" The son replied:
"It is salt." "Taste it from the bottom. How is it?" The son
replied: "It is salt." The father said: "Throw it away and
then wait on me." He did so; but salt exists for ever. Then
the father said: "Here also, in this body, forsooth, you do
not perceive the True (Sat), my son; but there indeed it is.

"That which is the subtile essence [that is, the saltiness of

the salt], in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is
the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it." "Please, Sir, inform
me still more," said the son. "Be it so, my child," the father
replied. — 6, 10-13 (Max Muller trans.)

Let us turn to another part of this Upanishad, to the eighth

lecture. And we read as follows: "Harih, Om." Hari is the name of
several deities — of Siva and Vishnu — but here, apparently, it is
used for Siva, which is preeminently the divine protector of the
mystic occultist. Om is a word considered very holy in the
Brahmanical literature. It is a syllable of invocation, and its
general usage — as elucidated in the literature treating of it,
which is rather voluminous for this word Om has attained to
almost divinity — is that it should never be uttered aloud, or in
the presence of an outsider, a foreigner, or a non-initiate, but it
should be uttered in the silence of one's heart. We also have
reason to believe, however, that it was uttered, and uttered aloud
in a monotone by the disciples in the presence of their teacher.
This word is always placed at the beginning of any scripture that
is considered of unusual sanctity.

The teaching is, that prolonging the uttering of this word, both of
the O and the M, with the mouth closed, it reechoes in and
arouses vibration in the skull, and affects, if the aspirations be
pure, the different nervous centers of the body for great good.
The Brahmanas say that it is an unholy thing to utter this word in
any place which is unholy. I now read:

There is this city of Brahman [that is, the heart and the
body], and in it the palace, the small lotus (of the heart),
and in it that small ether.

The Sanskrit word which Muller, the translator, has not given
here for "small ether," doubtless because he knew not how to
translate it, is antarakasa, a compound Sanskrit word meaning
"within the akasa." I read again:

Now what exists within that small ether, that is to be

sought for, that is to be understood. And if they should say
to him: "Now with regard to that city of Brahman, and the
palace in it, i.e. the small lotus of the heart, and the small
ether within the heart, what is there within it that deserves
to be sought for, or that is to be understood?"

Then he should say: "As large as this ether (all space) is, so
large is that ether within the heart. Both heaven and earth
are contained within it, both fire and air, both sun and
moon, both lightning and stars; and whatever there is of
him (the Self) here in the world, and whatever is not (i.e.
whatever has been or will be), all that is contained within
it."

And if they should say to him: "If everything that exists is

contained in that city of Brahman, all beings and all desires
(whatever can be imagined or desired), then what is left of
it, when old age reaches it and scatters it, or when it falls to
pieces?"

Then he should say: "By the old age of the body, that (the
ether, or Brahman within it) does not age; by the death of
the body, that (the ether, or Brahman within it) is not
 killed. That (the Brahman) is the true Brahma-city (not the
body). In it all [true] desires are contained. It is the Self,
free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from
hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought
to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to
imagine. Now as here on earth people follow as they are
commanded, and depend on the object which they are
attached to, be it a country or a piece of land,

"And as here on earth, whatever has been acquired by

exertion, perishes, so perishes whatever is acquired for the
next world by sacrifices and other good actions performed
on earth. Those who depart from hence without having
discovered the Self and those true desires, for them there is
no freedom in all the worlds. But those who depart from
hence, after having discovered the Self and those true
desires, for them there is freedom in all the worlds." —
Ibid., 8, 1

Chapter 3
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Three
The Doctrine of Maya; Objective Idealism the Basis of Morals:
Rooted in the Spiritual Unity — the Divinity — of the All. The Self
and the "Selves."

Maya or illusion is an element which enters into all finite

things, for everything that exists has only a relative, not an
absolute, reality, since the appearance which the hidden
noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his
power of cognition. To the untrained eye of the savage, a
painting is at first an unmeaning confusion of streaks and
daubs of colour, while an educated eye sees instantly a face
or a landscape. Nothing is permanent except the one
hidden absolute existence which contains in itself the
noumena of all realities. The existences belonging to every
plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in
degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on
a colourless screen; but all things are relatively real, for the
cogniser is also a reflection, and the things cognised are
therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things
possess must be looked for in them before or after they
have passed like a flash through the material world; but we
cannot cognise any
such existence directly, so long as we
have sense-instruments which bring only material
existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever
plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the
things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our
only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we
perceive that during the stages through which we have
passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward
progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings,
 each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we
have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have
reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own
with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by
Maya. — The Secret Doctrine, I, 39-40

The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA,

because all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life
of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to the eternal
immutability of the ONE, and the changelessness of that
Principle, the Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing
forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a philosopher,
no better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is real
enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as
it is itself. — Ibid., I, 274

IN TAKING up again our study of The Secret Doctrine at the point

we reached a fortnight ago, I open the first volume at page 17,
and read the third fundamental postulate — at least a portion of
it:

The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal

Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown
Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul — a
spark of the former — through the Cycle of Incarnation (or
"Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law,
during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual
Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious)
existence before the spark which issued from the pure
Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, — or the over-
soul, — has (a) passed through every elemental form of the
phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired
individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-
induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma),
 thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from
the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant,
up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha).

Paul, the Apostle of the Christians "to the Gentiles," as they call
him, according to the Christian Gospels in Acts 17, verses 23-28,
spoke to an assembly of the Athenians on mars Hill, commonly
called the Areopagus, and he said the following (the translation
being ours):

For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an

altar with this inscription: "To the Unknowable God." . . .
For in It we live and move and have our being, as certain
also of your own poets have said, "For we are also of Its
line."

The poets of whom Paul speaks were probably Cleanthes the

Stoic, and Aratus. It is perhaps well to mention that the sense of
"unknowable," as used in connection with this word agnostos, is
that employed by Homer, by Plato, and by Aristotle. This Greek
word agnostos also permits the translation "unknown," but
merely because the Unknown in this connection is the
Unknowable.

The Athenians had raised an altar to the Ineffable, and with the
true spirit of religious devotion they left it without further
qualification; and Paul, passing by and seeing it, thought he saw
an excellent chance to "make hay while the sun shone," and
claimed the Unknowable, to which this altar had been raised, as
the Jewish God, Jehovah.

A fortnight ago we stated how it was that man could form some
conception of that ineffable Principle of which H. P. Blavatsky
speaks as being the first of the three fundamental postulates
necessary in order to understand the true teachings of the
esoteric wisdom; and we saw that man has in himself a faculty
transcending the ordinary human intellectual power —
something in him by which he can raise himself upwards or,
perhaps better, inwards, towards the inmost center of his own
being, which in very truth is that Ineffable: from It we came, back
to It we are journeying through the aeons of time.

All the ancient philosophers taught the truth concerning this

same fundamental principle, each in his own way, each with
different terms, each in the language of the country where it was
promulgated, but always there was taught the central truth: that
in the inmost being of man there lives a divinity, and this divinity
is the offspring of the Highest, and that man can become a god in
the flesh, or he can sink lower even than the common average of
humanity so that he becomes at first obsessed or beset, and
finally possessed by the daemons of his own lower nature and by
those of the lower sphere; and by these particular daemons we
mean the elemental forces of life, of chaotic life, or of the material
sphere of being.

Again, how is it that man cannot see these truths intimately and
immediately? We all know the answer is, on account of the
illusion under which his mind labors, the illusion which is a part
of himself, not cast upon him from the outside: he sees, for
instance, and his mind reacts to the vision, and the reaction is
conducted along the lines of the illusion which, taking the ancient
Sanskrit word, is called maya.

This is a technical term in the ancient Brahmanical philosophy.

Let us examine its root. What does the word maya come from? It
comes from a Sanskrit root ma, meaning "to measure," and by a
figure of speech it comes to mean to effect, or to form, and hence
to limit. There is an English word mete, meaning "to measure out,"
from the same Indo-European root. It is found in the Anglo-Saxon
as the root met, in the Greek as med, and in the Latin also in the
same form.

Now maya, as a technical term, has come to mean — ages ago in

the Brahmanical philosophy it was understood very differently
from what it is now usually understood to be — the fabrication by
man's mind of ideas derived from interior and exterior
impressions, and hence the illusory aspect of man's thoughts as he
considers and tries to interpret and understand life and his
surroundings — and thence was derived the sense which it
technically bears, illusion. It does not mean that the exterior
world is nonexistent; if it were, it obviously could not be illusory;
it exists, but is not. It is "measured out" or it stands out to the
human spirit as a mirage. In other words, we do not see clearly
and plainly and in their reality the vision and the visions which
our mind and senses present to the inner life and eye.

The familiar illustrations of maya in the Vedanta, which is the

highest form that the Brahmanical teachings have taken and
which is so near to our own teaching in many respects, were such
as follows: a man at eventide sees a coiled rope on the ground
and springs aside, thinking it a serpent. The rope is there, but no
serpent.

Another illustration is what is called the "horns of the hare."

When a hare is seen at eventide its long ears seem to project from
its head in such fashion that it appears even to the seeing eye as
being a creature with horns. The hare has no horns, but there is
then in the mind an illusory belief that an animal with horns
exists there.

That is what maya means: not that a thing seen does not exist, but
that we are blinded and our mind perverted by our own thoughts
and our own imperfections, and do not as yet arrive at the real
interpretation and meaning of the world, of the universe around
us. By ascending inwardly, by rising up, by inner aspiration, by
an elevation of soul, we can reach upwards or rather inwards
toward that plane where truth abides in fullness.

Bernard of Clairvaux, the French mystic of the Middle Ages, said

that one way of doing this, and he spoke truly, was by "emptying
the mind," pouring out the trashy stuff it contains, the illusory
beliefs, the false views, the hatreds, suspicions, carelessness, etc.,
and that by emptying out all this trash, the temple within is
cleansed, and the light from the god within streams forth into the
soul — a wonderful figure of thought.

It may be asked: what relationship has our philosophy to the

many so-called idealistic systems of Europe, particularly in
Germany, and represented by Bishop Berkeley in Britain? The
answer is that there are points of contact, naturally, because the
men who evolved these systems of philosophy were earnest men,
and no man can earnestly think and strive upwards without
arriving at some visions of truth, some faint perceptions of the
inner life — but none of these systems of idealism is exactly the
idealism of theosophy. Theosophy is not an absolute idealism; it
does not teach that the external universe is absolutely nonexistent
and that all external phenomena merely exist in the mind.

Theosophy is not exactly either the idealism of Kant nor the

wonderful pessimistic idealism of Schopenhauer — wonderful as
this great thinker was, and wonderful precisely because he
derived his knowledge (and confessed it openly) from the Orient.
The idealism of theosophy is nearest to the philosophy of the
German philosopher von Schelling, who taught (principally) that
truth was to be perceived by receding inwards and taking it from
the spirit, and that the outward world is "dead mind" or perhaps
rather inert mind — not the mind of the thinker obviously, but
the mind of the Deity. Now this is called objective idealism
because it recognizes the external object as having existence: it is
not nonexistent, as absolute idealism would put it.

H. P. Blavatsky says on page 631 of the first volume of The Secret

Doctrine:

Esoteric philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism —

though it regards the objective Universe and all in it as
Maya, temporary illusion — draws a practical distinction
between collective illusion, Mahamaya, from the purely
metaphysical stand-point, and the objective relations in it
between various conscious Egos so long as this illusion
lasts.

The teaching is that maya is thus called from the action of

Mulaprakriti, or "root-nature," the coordinate principle of that
other line of coactive consciousness which we call Parabrahman.
We remember that from the moment when manifestation begins,
it acts dualistically, that is to say, that everything in nature from
that point onwards is crossed by pairs of opposites, such as long
and short, high and low, night and day, good and evil,
consciousness and nonconsciousness, etc., and that all these
things are essentially magic or illusory — real while they last, but
the lasting is not eternal. It is through and by these pairs of
opposites that the self-conscious soul learns truth.

What is the basis of morals? This is the most important question

that can be asked of any system of thought. Is morality based on
the dicta of man? Is morality based on the conviction in most
men's hearts that for human safety it is necessary to have certain
abstract rules which it is merely convenient to follow? Are we
mere opportunists? or is morality, ethics, based on truth, which it
is not merely expedient for man to follow, but needful? Surely
upon the latter.
And in the third fundamental postulate which we read at the
opening of our study this evening, we find the very elements, the
very fundamentals, of a system of morality greater than which,
profounder than which, more persuasive than which, perhaps, it
would be impossible to imagine anything.

On what, then, is morality based? And by morality I mean not

merely the opinion which some pseudophilosophers have, that
morality is more or less that which is good for the community,
based on the mere meaning of the Latin word mores, good
customs as opposed to bad. No; morality is that instinctive hunger
of the human heart to do righteousness, to do good to every man
because it is good and satisfying and ennobling to do so.

When man realizes that he is one with all that is, inwards and
outwards, high and low; that he is one with them, not merely as
members of a community are one, not merely as individuals of an
army are one, but like the molecules of our own flesh, like the
atoms of the molecule, like the electrons of the atom, composing
one unity — not a mere union but a spiritual unity — then he sees
truth.

Every one of us belongs to, and is an inhering part of, that

sublime and ineffable Mystery — the ALL — which contains and
is individual and spiritual unity.

We have all of us one inward universal self, and each one has also
his individual ego. The ego springs from the self and the self is the
Ineffable, the Inmost of the Inmost, one in all of us — giving each
one of us that sense of selfhood; although by extension of
meaning we also speak, and properly speak, of the lower self,
because this is a tiny ray from the Highest. Even the evil man has
in himself not merely the spark of the divine, but the very ray of
divinity itself: he is both the selfish ego and the universal self.
Why then are we taught that when we attain selflessness, we
attain the divine? Precisely because selflessness is the attribute of
the Paramatman, the universal self, where all personality
vanishes. Paramatman is a Sanskrit compound meaning "highest"
or "supreme self."

If we examine our own spirits, if we reach inwards, if we stretch

ourselves inwards, as it were, towards the Inmost, every one of us
may know that as he goes farther, farther, farther in, the self
becomes selfless, the light becomes pure glory.

What a thought, that in the heart of each one of us there dwells,

there lives, the ever-unfolding, the constant, the eternal, the
changeless, knowing no death, knowing no sorrow, the very
divinity of all! How it dignifies human life! What courage does it
give to us! How does it clear away all of the old moldy
superstitions! What unspeakable visions of reality, of the truth,
do we obtain when we go inwards, after having emptied the
mind, as Bernard says, of all the mental trash that encumbers it!

When man has reached the state where he realizes this and has
so emptied his mind that it is filled only with the self itself, with
the selfless selfhood of the Eternal — what did the ancients call
this state? What did they call such a man himself? They called the
state, bodhi; and they called the human, buddha; and the organ in
and by which it was manifested, buddhi. All these words came
from a Sanskrit root meaning "to awaken." When man has
awakened from the living death in which we live, when he has
cast off the toils of mind and flesh and, to use the old Christian
term, has put on the "garments of eternity," then he has
awakened, he is a buddha. And the ancient Brahmanical
teachings, found today even in the Vedanta, state that he has
become one with — not "absorbed," as is constantly translated —
but has become one with the self of selves, with the Paramatman,
the supreme self.

Turning again to the Chhandogya Upanishad, one of the most

important of the 108 or more Upanishads — the very word
upanishad signifies esoteric treatise — we read from the eighth
lecture, seventh, eighth, and ninth sections:

Prajapati said —

We interrupt by saying that prajapati is a Sanskrit word meaning

"governor" or "lord" or "master of progeny." The word is applied
to many of the Vedic gods, but in particular to Brahma — that is
to say, the third step from Parabrahman — the evolver-creator,
the first and most recondite figure of the triad consisting of
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Brahma is the emanator or evolver,
Vishnu the sustainer or preserver, and Siva, which may be
translated euphemistically perhaps as "beneficent," the
regenerator. This name is very obscure. However:

Prajapati said: "The Self which is free from sin, free from
old age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst,
which desires nothing but what it ought to desire, and
imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that it is
which we must search out, that it is which we must try to
understand. He who has searched out that Self and
understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires."

We interrupt to ask why? Because this self of selves, this Inmost,

is all worlds: it is all, it is everything. Now to quote:

The Devas (gods) and Asuras (demons) both heard these

words, and said: "Well, let us search for that Self by which,
if one has searched it out, all worlds and all desires are
obtained."

Thus saying Indra went from the Devas, Virochana from

 the Asuras, and both, without having communicated with
each other, approached Prajapati, holding fuel in their
hands, as is the custom for pupils approaching their
master.

They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. Then

Prajapati asked them: "For what purpose have you dwelt
here?"

They replied: "A saying of yours is being repeated, viz. 'the

Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death
and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing
but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what
it ought to imagine, that it is which we must search out,
that it is which we must try to understand. He who has
searched out that Self and understands it, obtains all
worlds and all desires.' Now we both have dwelt here
because we wish for that Self."

Prajapati said to them: "The person that is seen in the eye,

that is the Self. This is what I have said. This is the
immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman."

Interrupting: the self that is seen in the eye is a figure of speech

not infrequently found in the ancient Sanskrit writings; it
signifies that sense of an indwelling presence that one sees when
he looks into the eyes of another.

They asked: "Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he

who is perceived in a mirror, who is he?"

He replied: "He himself indeed is seen in all these."

[Eighth Section] "Look at your Self in a pan of water, and

whatever you do not understand of your Self, come and tell
me."
 They looked in the water-pan. Then Prajapati said to them:
"What do you see?"

They said: "We both see the self thus altogether, a picture
even to the very hairs and nails."

Prajapati said to them: "After you have adorned yourselves,

. . . look again into the water-pan."

They, after having adorned themselves, having put on their

best clothes and cleaned themselves, looked into the water-
pan.

Prajapati said: "What do you see?"

They said: "Just as we are, well adorned, with our best

clothes and clean, thus we are both there, Sir, well
adorned, with our best clothes and clean."

Prajapati said: "That is the Self, this is the immortal, the

fearless, this is Brahman."

Then both went away satisfied in their hearts.

And Prajapati, looking after them, said: "They both go away

without having perceived and without having known the
Self, and whoever of these two, whether Devas or Asuras,
will follow this doctrine will perish."

Interrupting: they saw maya and not the self.

Now Virochana, satisfied in his heart, went to the Asuras

and preached that doctrine to them, that the self (the body)
alone is to be worshipped, that the self (the body) alone is
to be served, and that he who worships the self and serves
the self, gains both worlds, this and the next.

Therefore they call even now a man who does not give
alms here, who has no faith, and offers no sacrifices, an
Asura, for this is the doctrine of Asuras. They deck out the
body of the dead with perfumes, flowers, and fine raiment
by way of ornament, and think they will thus conquer that
world.

[Ninth Section] But Indra, before he had returned to the

Devas, saw this difficulty.

Interrupting: the difficulty now comes which Indra saw.

As this self (the shadow in the water) is well adorned, when

the body is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is
well dressed, well cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that
self will also be blind, if the body is blind, lame, if the body
is lame, crippled, if the body is crippled, and will perish in
fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good
in this (doctrine).

Taking fuel in his hand he came again as a pupil to

Prajapati. Prajapati said to him: "Maghavat (Indra), as you
went away with Virochana, satisfied in your heart, for
what purpose did you come back?"

He said: "Sir, as this self (the shadow) is well adorned,

when the body is well adorned, well dressed, when the
body is well dressed, well cleaned, if the body is well
cleaned, that self will also be blind, if the body is blind,
lame, if the body is lame, crippled, if the body is crippled,
and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes.
Therefore I see no good in this (doctrine)."

"So it is indeed, Maghavat," replied Prajapati; "but I shall

explain him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me
another thirty-two years."
Indra was able to see beyond the maya of the personal self, and
therefore was searching for the real, for the true, the self itself.

The translation is Max Muller's. It may be well to add in

conclusion that all translations which have been made and may
hereafter be made are made by ourself, from any one of the
ancient languages, and if any quotation is taken from another
translator, his name will be given.

Chapter 4
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Four
From Primordial Point to Universe and Man. How does Manifestation
Arise? Manvantara and Pralaya.

The Scintillas are the "Souls," and these Souls appear in the three-
fold form of Monads (units), atoms and gods — according to our
teaching. "Every atom becomes a visible complex unit (a molecule),
and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the Monadic
Essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal
kingdoms, becomes man." (Esot. Catechism.) Again, "God, Monad,
and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body (Atma,
Manas, and Sthula Sarira) in man." In their septenary aggregation
they are the "Heavenly Man" (see Kabala for the latter term); thus,
terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. . . . "The
Monads (Jivas) are the Souls of the Atoms, both are the fabric in
which the Chohans (Dhyanis, gods) cloth themselves when a form is
needed." (Esot. Cat.) — The Secret Doctrine, I, 619

Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute

Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to
conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a
conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to
us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit
(or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded,

not as independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the
Absolute (Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of conditioned
Being whether subjective or objective. . . .

Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the
Absolute is essential to the existence of the "Manifested Universe."
Apart from Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as
 individual consciousness, since it is only through a vehicle of matter
that consciousness wells up as "I am I," a physical basis being
necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of
complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance
would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of
consciousness could ensue.

The "Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which

is, as it were, the very essence of its EX-istence as "manifestation."
But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter,
are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in
the manifested Universe, there is "that" which links spirit to matter,
subject to object.

This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is

called by the occultists Fohat. It is the "bridge" by which the "Ideas"
existing in the "Divine Thought" are impressed on Cosmic substance
as the "laws of Nature." — Ibid., 15-16

BEFORE WE OPEN our study this evening, it should be said with reference
to the nature of these studies, that they are a simplification of The Secret
Doctrine in the sense of an explanation and unfolding of the meaning of the
teachings that the book contains. In order to achieve these ends, it will be
of course necessary to bring to bear upon these doctrines, for comparison
and in order to show analogy or identity, lines of thought from the great
religions of the world and from the great minds of ancient times; because
these, in their essence, have sprung from the central source of man's
thought and religion which we today call theosophy.

Yet before we can really embark upon the study of The Secret Doctrine
itself, as a book, it will be necessary during the course of our studies to
clear from our path certain stumbling blocks which are in the way of each
of us; certain ideas and so-called principles of thought which have been
instilled into our minds from childhood, and which, on account of the
psychological effect they have on our minds, really prevent us from
grasping the truths of being that H. P. Blavatsky has so masterly given us.

In addition, it will be necessary to investigate certain very ancient

principles of thought, and to penetrate more deeply into the real meaning
of the ancient religions and philosophies than has ever been done in any
modern books, because those books have been written by men who know
nothing about the esoteric philosophy, men who were mostly rebels
against the barren ecclesiasticism of the Christian Church; who, in order to
gain freedom from those chains of ecclesiasticism, actually went too far the
other way, and saw nothing but priestcraft and evildoing in these old
religions and in the acts and teachings of the men who taught them, priests,
philosophers, or scientists.

Another point always to keep in mind is, that we are actually undertaking
the study of the very doctrines which formed the core of the heart of the
teachings of the Mysteries of ancient days. These Mysteries were divided
into two general parts, the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater.

The Lesser Mysteries were very largely composed of dramatic rites or

ceremonies, with some teaching; the Greater Mysteries were composed of,
or conducted almost entirely on the ground of, study, and later were
proved by personal experience in initiation. In the latter was explained,
among other things, the secret meaning of the mythologies of the old
religions, as for instance the Greek.

The active and nimble mind of the Greeks produced a mythology which for
grace and beauty is perhaps without equal, but it nevertheless is very
difficult to explain; the Mysteries of Samothrace and of Eleusis — the
greater ones — explained among other things what these myths meant.
These myths formed the basis of the exoteric religions; but note well that
exotericism does not mean that the thing which is taught exoterically is in
itself false, but merely that it is a teaching given without the key to it. Such
teaching is symbolic, illusory, touching on the truth: the truth is there, but
without the key to it — which is the esoteric meaning — it yields no proper
sense.
We now read from The Secret Doctrine, volume I, page 43:

The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of

everything, worlds as well as atoms; and this stupendous
development has neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end.
Our "Universe" is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of
them "Sons of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of
Universes, each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards
its predecessor, and being a cause as regards its successor.

The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as

an outbreathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is
eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the
Absolute — Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When
"the Great Breath" is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is
regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity — the One
Existence — which breathes out a thought, as it were, which
becomes the Kosmos. (See "Isis Unveiled.") So also it is when the
Divine Breath is inspired again the Universe disappears into the
bosom of "the Great Mother," who then sleeps, "wrapped in her
invisible robes."

A fortnight ago we were studying the question of maya and the

relationship of the inner being of man to the ineffable Essence; it remains
for us briefly to study how man, who has a personal element in him, sprang
forth from the very essence of impersonality, if one may so call it. We can
say at once that the Infinite and Impersonal never becomes finite and
personal. How, then, does the spirit of man (already the first film over the
face of the Absolute, as it were) come into being? Let us remember that the
manifestation of worlds and, deductively, of the beings who inhabit those
worlds, took place in the extension of matter popularly called space. A
center, first, is localized — a very poor word to use! — and is, de facto, not
infinite, not eternal; if it were, it could neither manifest nor come into
outward existence, for this is limitation. The Eternal, the Ineffable, the
Infinite, does not ever manifest at all, either partially or in toto. Words
themselves are
misleading in treating of these subjects; but what can we
say? We must use human expressions in order to convey our meaning.

How then arose manifestation? The ancient wisdom tells us the following:
in the seeds of life remaining in space from a planet which had previously
run its manvantara and had passed into latency or prakriti-pralaya, there
came (when the hour struck for manifestation to begin again) into being in
these seeds of life the activity called in Sanskrit trishna ("thirst," if you like,
desire for manifestation), thus forming the center around which was to
gather a new universe. It had by karmic necessity its particular place in
space and was to produce its particular kind of progeny — gods, monads,
atoms, men, and the three elementary, or elemental, kingdoms of the world
as we see it around us — from the karmic seeds which were brought over
and which were lying latent from the preceding manvantara.

The universe reimbodies itself (it does not "reincarnate," which means
coming into flesh), following precisely the analogical lines that the soul of
man does in reincarnating, making the necessary allowances for varying
conditions. As man is the product of his former life, or rather of his lives, so
is a universe, a solar system, a planet, an animal, an atom — the very great
as well as the so-called infinitesimal — the fruitage, the flower, of what
went before. Each of these bears its load of karma precisely as the soul of
man does.

The teachings relating to the evolving of the inner planes of being, which
precede and produce the outer planes, are very esoteric and belong to a
study higher than we venture to approach at the present time, but we can
form some general idea of how it is done, by analogy and by comparison
with the life of man.

When manifestation begins, what is called duality supervenes. It would

seem to be a procession something like this, were we to symbolize it by a
diagram.
Consider this uppermost straight line a hypothetical plane: it may be,
humanly speaking, immeasurable miles in depth or in extension, but mere
extension has nothing to do with the general concept. Above it stretches the
infinitude of the Boundless, and below the diagram is the Boundless, and
inwards through it is the Boundless, interpenetrating everywhere; but for
purposes of our present illustration we will say that it is above.

Let us place anywhere we may please a point A, another one A', and a third
A". We have now reached, after a long period of latency or pralaya has
passed, a period of manifestation or manvantara. Such a point as A, or A' or
A", we will call the Primordial Point, the first breaking-through into the
cosmic plane below; the spirit-force above arising into activity in the seeds
of being and forcing its way down into the lower life of manifestation —
not pushed or moved by anything outside of itself — is driven into
manifestation by the karmic life of its own essential being, by the thirst of
desire or blossoming forth, like a fresh upspringing in early summer of a
flower, in which the tendency in manifestation is outward. This first
appearance is conceived of in philosophy as the first or Primordial Point;
this is the name given to it in the Jewish theosophy called the Qabbalah.
From the moment that the point, the seed of life, the germ of being — all
these are but names for the one thing, the spiritual atom, the spiritual
monad, call it what you will — bursts through into the lower life as it were,
differentiation or duality sets in and continues thenceforward to the end of
the Great Cycle, forming the two side lines of the diagrammatic triangle.
We may call one AB, the Brahma (masculine), and the other AC, the Prakriti
or nature (feminine). Brahma is frequently also called Purusha, a Sanskrit
word meaning "man," the Ideal Man, like the Qabbalistic Adam Qadmon,
the primordial entity of space, containing in Prakriti or nature all the
septenary scales of manifested being.

At all times, from the very first instant when duality sets in, there is an
unceasing attraction between these two lines or poles, and they join.
Remember that this symbol is merely a paradigm or representation.
Absolutely, it would be absurd to say that life and beings proceed into
manifestation as geometric triangles only; but we can represent it
symbolically to our minds in this fashion. When these two join, the Father
and the Mother, spirit (or reality) and illusion (or maya), Brahma (or
Purusha) and Prakriti (or nature), their union produces the Son. In the
Christian scheme they give the spiritual or primordial Son the name of
Christos; in the Egyptian scheme Osiris and Isis (or her twin sister
Nephthys, which is merely the more recondite side of Isis) produce their
son Horus, the spiritual sun, physically the sun or the light-bringer; and so
similarly in the different schemes that the ancient world has handed down
to us.

From the interaction of these three, by interpolar action, by the spiritual

forces working in and out, two other lines fall downwards — according to
the mystical way in which this scheme of emanation is taught — and they
also join and form the square, or the manifested kosmos.

Now from the central or Primordial Point is born or proceeds the sun of
life. By it and through it is our union with the Ineffable. Man may be down
here a physical being on earth, or anywhere else a luminous, ethereal
entity, but it matters not where he is or what his body: for once the seven
principles of his being are in action, man the thinking entity is produced,
linked by his seventh principle, and his sixth, with that sun of life.

To every "man" of the unnameable multitudes of self-conscious beings

belonging to this kosmos or universe, there extend respectively upwards or
downwards two natures: one of which is a ray of spirit connecting him
with the divine of the divinest, and from that extending upwards in all
directions and linking him in every sense of the word with the Ineffable,
the Boundless, which is, therefore, the core of his being, the center of his
essence.

The appearance and evolution of man as a human being on this planet

Terra follow the same line of nature's wonderful analogical working that a
planet does in space, or a sun does with its brothers of a solar system, the
planets. Man, thus being in very truth a child of Infinity, the offspring of
the Ineffable, has latent within himself the capacity of the universe.

And on this fact depends what we have so often been told of the getting of
powers. The very method by which we do not get them, the very way of
missing and losing them, is to run after them, strange as it may sound,
because this is the impulse of vanity and selfishness. If we, then, selfishly
seek them, what do we get? We get the action of the lower powers upon us;
it is a growing thirst for sensation which we do get, and this leads us
towards and into the nether abyss of Matter, the opposite pole of the
Boundless, if it is followed.

But in the great soul who has passed by and thrown off this thirst for
personal acquisition, in whom the grasping spirit for self is no longer
dominant, who feels his oneness with everything that is, who feels that
every human being, yea the very pismire that laboriously crawls up a sand-
knob only to tumble down again, is himself — no metaphor but an
actuality: a different body, but the same life, the same essence, the same
things latent in it as in him — in him indeed lies the power of ascending the
ladder of being, drawn by the link with the Highest in his innermost
nature. He and they are both filled full of latent powers and forces, and he
and they may become in time very gods, blazing, as it were, with power
like the sun; and the only way is utter selflessness, because selflessness,
paradoxical as it may sound, is the only way to the self, the self universal.
The personal self shuts the door before us.

Of course we cannot crush out of our being the sense of selfhood, nor is
that desirable; but in the lowest aspect it takes upon itself the forms of all
selfishness, until the being of the man who follows the left-hand path, or
the path downwards, ends in what the early Christians — stealing from the
Greeks — called Tartarus, the place of disintegration.

When man ascends beyond the reach of matter, he has cast off the bondage
of maya, or illusion. Let us remember that when manifestation opens,
Prakriti becomes or rather is maya; and Brahma, the Father, is the spirit of
the consciousness, or the individuality. These two are really one, yet they
are also the two aspects of the one life-ray acting and reacting upon itself,
much as a man himself can say, "I am I." He has the faculty of self-analysis,
or self-division; all of us know it, we can feel it in ourselves. One side of us,
in our thoughts, can be called the Prakriti or the material element, or the
mayavi element, or the element of illusion; and the other, the spirit, the
individuality, the god within.

Yet as man sees life, as he runs his eye down the scale of beings, he sees it
through maya; in fact, he is the child of maya on one side, as he is of the
spirit on the other. Both are in him. His lesson is to learn that the two are
one and that they are not separate; then he no longer is deceived. His
lesson is to understand that maya, the great deluder, is the famous snake or
serpent of antiquity, which leads us out from the Garden of Eden
(employing a Biblical metaphor), through experience and suffering to learn
what illusion is — and is not.

Also matter, which is the mayavi manifestation of Prakriti on this plane

(and I mean here physical matter), itself is not substantial. The most dense
and rigid things we can think of, perhaps, are the metals, and actually they
are, perhaps, the most porous, the most foamlike, the most evanescent, as
seen from the other or higher side of being, from the other side of the
plane. So well is this now understood that our more intuitive scientists are
telling us that space, which seems to us so thin and tenuous, is in reality
more rigid than the hardest steel. Why is it that electricity prefers metals as
a path to common wood, or cotton wool, or some other such thing?

Before we go further, it would seem necessary to study a little what we

mean by the words manvantara and pralaya. Let us take manvantara first.
This word is a Sanskrit compound, and as such means nothing more than
between two Manus; literally, "manu-between." Manu, or dhyani-chohan,
in the esoteric system, is the entities collectively which appear first at the
beginning of manifestation and from which, like a cosmic tree, everything
is derived or born. Manu actually is the (spiritual) tree of life of any
planetary chain, of manifested being. Manu is thus, in one sense, the Third
Logos; as the Second is the Father-Mother, the Brahma and Prakriti; and
the First is what we call the Unmanifest Logos, or Brahman (neuter) and its
cosmic veil Pradhana.

Pradhana is also a Sanskrit compound, meaning that which is "placed

before"; and from this, it has become a technical term in philosophy, and
means what we would call the first filmy appearance of root-matter,
"placed before" or rather around Brahman as a veil. Root-matter is
Mulaprakriti, root-nature, and corresponding to it as the other or active
pole is Brahman (neuter). That from which the First or Unmanifest Logos
proceeds is called Parabrahman, and Mulaprakriti is its kosmic veil.
Parabrahman is another Sanskrit compound, meaning "beyond Brahman."
Mulaprakriti, again, as said above, is a Sanskrit compound meaning mula,
"root," prakriti, "nature."

First, then, the Boundless, symbolized by the [[circle]]; then Parabrahman,

and Mulaprakriti its other pole; then lower, Brahman and its veil
Pradhana; then Brahma-Prakriti or Purusha-Prakriti (Prakriti being also
maya); the manifested universe appearing through and by this last:
Brahma-Prakriti, Father-Mother. In other words, the Second Logos, Father-
Mother, is the producing cause of manifestation through their Son, which
in a planetary chain is Manu. A manvantara, therefore, is the period of
activity between any two Manus, on any plane, since in any such period
there is a root-Manu at the beginning of evolution, and a seed-Manu at its
close, preceding a pralaya.

Pralaya: this is also a Sanskrit compound, formed of laya, from a Sanskrit

root li, and the prefix pra. What does li mean? It means "to dissolve," "to
melt away," "to liquefy," as when one pours water upon a cube of salt or of
sugar. The cube of salt or of sugar vanishes in the water; it dissolves,
changes its form; and this may be taken as a symbol of what pralaya is: a
crumbling away, a vanishing away of matter into something else which is
yet in it, and surrounds it, and interpenetrates it. That is pralaya, usually
translated as the state of latency, state of rest or repose, between two
manvantaras or life cycles. If we remember distinctly the meaning of the
Sanskrit word, our minds take a new bent in direction, follow a new
thought; we get new ideas; we penetrate into the arcanum of the thing that
takes place.

Now there are many kinds of manvantaras; also many kinds of pralayas.
There are, for instance, the universal manvantara and the universal
pralaya, and these are called prakritika, because it is the pralaya or
vanishing away, melting away, of Prakriti or nature. Then there is the solar
pralaya. Sun in Sanskrit is surya, and the adjective from this is saurya;
hence, the saurya-pralaya, or the pralaya of the solar system. Then, thirdly,
there is the terrestrial or planetary pralaya. The Sanskrit word for earth is
bhumi, and the adjective corresponding to this is bhaumika: hence, the
bhaumika-pralaya. Then we can say that there is the pralaya or death of
the individual man. Man is purusha; the corresponding adjective is
paurusha: hence, the paurusha-pralaya, or death of man. So, then, we have
given examples of various pralayas: first of the prakritika, or dissolution of
nature; next the solar pralaya, the saurya; next the bhaumika, or the
passing away of the earth; and then the paurusha, or the death of man. And
these adjectives apply equally well to the several kinds of manvantaras or
life cycles.

There is another kind of pralaya which is called nitya. In its general sense,
it means "constant" or "continuous," and can be exemplified by the
constant or continuous change — life and death — of the cells of our
bodies. It is a state in which the indwelling and dominating entity remains,
but its different principles and rupas, or "bodies," undergo continuous
change. Hence it is called nitya. It applies to the body of man, to the outer
sphere of earth, to the earth itself, to the solar system, and to all nature.

It is likewise represented by a symbol that H. P. Blavatsky has given us

from the Oriental wisdom, the outbreathing and inbreathing of Brahman.
This symbol, by the way, is not solely Indian. It is found in the ancient
Egyptian texts, where one or another of the gods, Khnumu, for instance,
breathes forth from his mouth the cosmic egg. It is also found alluded to in
the Orphic Hymns, where the cosmic serpent breathes forth as an egg the
things which are to be, or the future universe. Everywhere, especially
where ancient religion or philosophy has longest retained its hold, there do
we find the symbol of the cosmic egg. Religions of less age and of less
influence do not so often employ it. The cosmic egg was found as a symbol
in Egypt; it was found in Hindustan; it was found in Peru, where the
"Mighty Man," the Sanskrit Purusha, the Ideal Man, was called Manco
Capac, and his wife and sister was called Mama Ocllo, which means
"Mother Egg": these brought the universe into being, becoming
later the
sun and the moon respectively.

Why did the ancients symbolize the beginning of manifestation under the
form of an egg? Let us ask: is it not a fine symbol? As the egg producing the
chick contains the germ of life (laid by its mother the hen, and fructified by
the other pole of being), so the cosmic egg, which is the Primordial Point,
also contains the germ of life. The egg itself also can be called the germ of
life, and the germ of life within the egg can be called the inner germ — that
more subtil point which receives those impulses of which we have spoken
before, coming down from the highest center of communication between
the outward world and the inner, the lines of inner magnetic action and
reaction. And when the chick within the egg is formed, it bursts its shell
and comes forth into the light of day, precisely as we saw was the case with
the Primordial Point. When the karmic hour had struck, it burst forth, as it
were, into other spheres of manifestation and activity. The ancients,
carrying the figure still farther,
even spoke of heaven as a domelike affair,
as the upper part of an eggshell.

Let us think more deeply of these ancient symbols. The ancients were not
fools. There is a deep meaning in these olden figures of speech. Why did
Homer speak of his Olympus, the abode of Zeus and the gods, as being
brazen, like brass, one of the hardest and most intractable things that the
Greeks knew? Why did Hesiod speak of the same as made of iron? Because
they realized that the life here in matter and of matter, was based upon an
evanescent substratum, and that the lower world of matter is, as has been
so often said, evanescent, foamy, full of holes, as it were, and unreal.

Chapter 5
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Five
The Esoteric Teachings and the Nebular Theory. Gods behind the
Kosmos: Why Nature Is Imperfect.

To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed,

the study of spiritual and psychic, as well as physical
Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the anatomy of man,
discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of
his shell-side and in ignorance of the interior work. . . .

The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of
Cosmic Space, not merely with its illusive appearance and
behaviour. That of official physical science is to analyze
and study its shell — the Ultima Thule of the Universe and
man, in the opinion of Materialism.

With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with

the theories of such men of learning as Kepler, Kant,
Oersted, and Sir W. Herschel, who believed in a Spiritual
world, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a
satisfactory compromise. But the views of those physicists
differed vastly from the latest modern speculations. Kant
and Herschel had in their mind's eye speculations upon the
origin and the final destiny, as well as the present aspect, of
the Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic
standpoint; whereas modern Cosmology and Astronomy
now repudiate anything like research into the mysteries of
being. The result is what might be expected: complete
failure and inextricable contradictions in the thousand and
one varieties of so-called scientific theories, and in this
theory as in all others.

The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the

 existence of a primeval matter, diffused in a nebulous
condition, is of no modern date in astronomy as everyone
knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already
taught that the sidereal bodies were formed through the
progressive condensation of a primordial pregenetic
matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was
spread out through Space in an extremely sublimated
condition. — The Secret Doctrine, I, 588, 589-90

THERE ARE three points which it would seem necessary to touch

upon slightly before we begin our evening's study.

The first is with regard to the question of morals, that is to say,

right conduct based upon right views, right thinking. We have
touched upon this matter at nearly every meeting because the
line, the path, of duty — of right conduct based upon right views
— is the path of all who would tread onward to the ancient
wisdom and to the ancient Mysteries. The great thinkers,
philosophers, and religious men, of all ages, have told us the same
thing.

These meetings are not for purposes of intellectual study only, or

to amuse ourselves with abstruse and mystic knowledge; but
mainly, firstly, principally, for the purpose of gaining a right
foundation for right views which shall govern human conduct.
When we have this foundation we have the beginnings of all
laws. We can affect the world by our own views and by our own
acts; and, further, we shall be able in time to affect for good even
the governments of the world, not directly and immediately
perhaps, but at least indirectly and in the course of time. All the
horrible things that perplex and confuse and distress mankind
today arise wholly, almost, out of a lack of right views, and hence,
a lack of right conduct. We have the testimony of the Greek and
Roman initiates and thinkers that the ancient Mysteries of Greece
taught men, above everything else, to live rightly and to have a
noble hope for the life after death.

Next, the second point: in our last meeting we touched upon the
ancient Mysteries, and we took as examples those of Greece from
which the Romans derived their own Mysteries, but we touched
upon one point only, the mythological aspect; and this
mythological aspect comprises only a portion — a relatively small
portion — of what was taught in the Mystery Schools, principally
at Samothrace and at Eleusis. At Samothrace was taught the same
Mystery-teaching that was current elsewhere in Greece, but here
it was more developed and recondite; and the foundation of these
Mystery-teachings was morals. The noblest and greatest men of
ancient times in Greece were initiates in the Mysteries of these
two seats of esoteric knowledge.

In other countries farther to the east they had other Mystery

Schools or "colleges," and this word college by no means
necessarily meant a mere temple or building; it meant
"association," as in our modern word colleague, associate. The
Teutonic tribes of northern Europe, the Germanic tribes — which
included Scandinavia — had their Mystery-colleges also; and
teacher and neophytes stood on the bosom of Mother Earth,
under Father Ether, the boundless sky, or in subterranean
receptacles, and taught and learned. We state here at once that
the core, the heart, the center, of the ancient Mysteries was the
abstruse problems dealing with death. These teachings we still
have, and they will be forthcoming.

The third point is with regard to the paradigms or diagrams

which we may find necessary to use from time to time in order to
illustrate certain teachings. Remember that these paradigms are
relative and changeable; they are not hard and fast or absolute
things. This fact must be kept always clear in the mind, and
around them the mind should never be allowed to crystallize.
Why? Because any paradigm, any particular combination of
geometrical lines, can illustrate different thoughts or things: for
instance, the paradigm of the triangle from which hangs the
square (as used at our last meeting) can apply equally as well to
the highest combined principle in man, the spiritual-mental
monad, as to the lower principles into which the monad falls at
the beginning of incarnation or manifestation, and from which it
will resurrect when the first chimes of the pralayic bells are
heard in the akasic spaces.

We will now resume our study. We take up, as our general theme,
the same two paragraphs on page 43 of volume I of The Secret
Doctrine, which we read at our last meeting:

The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of

everything, worlds as well as atoms; and this stupendous
development has neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable
end. Our "Universe" is only one of an infinite number of
Universes, all of them "Sons of Necessity," because links in the
great Cosmic chain of Universes, each one standing in the relation
of an effect as regards its predecessor, and being a cause as
regards its successor.

The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured

as an outbreathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which
is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of
the Absolute — Abstract Space and Duration being the other two.
When the "Great Breath" is projected, it is called the Divine
Breath, and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity
— the One Existence — which breathes out a thought, as it were,
which becomes the Kosmos. (See "Isis Unveiled.") So also is it
when the Divine Breath is inspired again the Universe disappears
into the bosom of "the Great Mother," who then sleeps "wrapped
in her invisible robes."

It was the intention to take up this evening the dawn of

manifestation as it is found in the Hebrew Book of Beginnings
called Genesis, and to study this and to show its similarity and
likeness, and the fundamental identity of truth on which it is
based, as compared with the other religions of the world. But in
view of the fact that we were obliged at our last study to touch
upon the first coming-into-being of the veil cast over the face of
the Ineffable, it would seem best this evening to undertake, if we
have time, a short sketch of what in science is called the nebular
theory, how far the esoteric teachings run with it, and where and
when they part from it.

The nebular theory, as originally taught in science by the

Frenchman Laplace — but derived by him from the great German
thinker and philosopher, Immanuel Kant — stated that the space
which is now occupied by the planets of the solar system was
originally filled with a very tenuous form of matter, in a highly
incandescent or burning state. Let us say just here that this
particular theory of Laplace as regards incandescence has never
been proved, that it is not subject in all respects to mathematical
demonstration, and cannot be, and that it itself, if taken as a
whole, forms one of the greatest proofs against the truth of the
nebular theory as it was then stated, and as it has since been
modified in some degree by modern thinkers.

Laplace further stated that this nebula was in a condition of slow

rotation, or circular moving, in the same direction in which the
planets now move around in their orbits, and in the same
direction in which the planets and the sun now move around
their axes. In other words, the present orbital revolution and
rotation of the planets are derived from this mechanical, original,
circular motion of the primal nebula.
Laplace likewise stated that this hot, immense object cooled, and
as it cooled it shrank, according to a certain law of heat, and this
shrinking, according to a law of dynamics, increased the velocity
of rotation and the momentum of any point on its surface. Now,
as everyone knows, the parts of a wheel which are nearest the
periphery, the circumference, move with the greatest momentum
and the greatest speed, though no faster, in another sense, than
do the particles at the hub. This increase of rapidity in whirling
around grew so great that a time came when the centrifugal force
overcame the centripetal or cohesive force, and then this whirling
nebula threw off a ring, and this ring also continued going
around, and condensing, and finally formed a sphere or ball
which became the outermost planet, Neptune. And so
progressively the other planets came into being, the core of the
nebula remaining as our sun. In brief, as the nebular body
contracted and condensed its matter, the same phenomenon
occurred
again in the same way, and thus the second outermost
planet, Uranus, was thrown off, and so on until all the planets had
come into being as spheres. Now some of these tenuous, still
nebulous planets, by contracting and thus increasing their
rotational velocity, themselves evolved rings around themselves,
which in their turn were thrown off from their parent-planets,
and following the same course as their parent-planets became
spheres, which thus became the satellites, the moons of the
respective planets; while the center of the original nebula
condensed into the (supposedly) incandescent or fiery ball which
is the sun.

When H. P. Blavatsky first brought the theosophical teachings to

the Western world, questions of cosmogony, or the beginning and
primal development of the universe, came much to the fore and
she was asked, and her Teachers were also asked through her, in
what respect the nebular theory ran side by side with and
"corroborated" the exposition of the theory of the occultists, the
esoteric theory; and the answer then given was called "an evasive
answer." It aroused criticism and some angry language.

Why, it was asked, if the Teachers know these wonderful truths,

had not they illuminated the world with the splendor of their
teachings? Why did they keep them and other things hid? No
teaching can be bad for man if it is true, it was argued — which
was a very foolish argument, indeed, so far as it goes, because
many teachings are true, and are yet utterly unfit for the average
man to have. However, we are going to investigate that question
tonight.

The nebular theory, the Teachers said, was in its main outlines,
and in certain respects only, fairly representative of what the
esoteric teaching was, but it yet, for all that, had vital defects; and
these defects they did not entirely specify nor did they fully
outline them. But they gave clear hints where the defects lay and
what they were; and they also gave a clear, logical, and concise
reason for their reticence, which was obligatory and unavoidable.

Now the main defect in the theory of Laplace was that it was a
purely mechanical, purely mechanistic, purely materialistic
hypothesis, in some respects uncorroborable even by
mathematics, and based upon nothing but the fact that in the vast
abysses of space, astronomers, investigating wastes of stellar
light, found nebulae and nebulosities and, adopting Kant's idea,
argued dogmatically upon it. But, nevertheless, there was truth in
the nebular theory — there was some truth. Now what is that
truth? And what was the most vital defect? The most vital defect,
first, was the fact — as hinted above — that the theory omitted all
action of spiritual beings in the universe as the drivers, the
agents, the mechanics or mechanicians of the mechanism which
undoubtedly exists. We are taught that the esoteric philosophy
does not deny mechanical action in the universe, but declares
that where there is mechanical action there is government or,
specifically, mechanicians at work, producing the
movements of
the mechanism, in accordance with karma. There must be "law"-
givers or "law"-makers or "law"-impulsors, if the expression may
be used; and behind these there must be the universal life. In
other words, the vital defect was that this nebular theory omitted
the first truth of all being — that the gods were behind the
kosmos, spiritual beings, spiritual entities — the name matters
nothing. Not God, but gods.

"Nature" is imperfect, hence of necessity makes "mistakes,"

because its action derives from hosts of entities at work — what
we see around us all the time is proof of it. "Nature" is not perfect.
If it had sprung from the "hands of the immutable Deity," hence
perfect and immutable like its parent, knowing no change, it
would be a perfect work. It is much to the contrary, as we know,
and its imperfections or "mistakes" arise from the fact that the
beings existing in and working in and controlling and making
nature extend in endless hierarchies from the Inmost of the
Inmost, from the Highest of the Highest, downwards for ever,
upwards for ever, in all degrees of imperfection and of perfection,
which is precisely what we see in the scenes of manifestation
surrounding us. Our intuition tells us the truth concerning this,
and we should trust it.

This was well known to the ancients. The Stoics expressed it and
taught it in their magnificent philosophy. The Stoics of Rome and
of Greece originally expressed it by what they called theocrasy.
Theocrasy has a compound meaning — theos, "a god," "divine
being," and krasis, meaning "an intermingling" — an
intermingling of everything in the universe, intermingling with
everything else, nothing possibly separable from the rest, the
Whole. It is the cardinal heresy of the Oriental religions today,
notably in that of the Buddhists, if a man thinks that he is
separate or separable from the universe. This is the most
fundamental error that man can make. The early Christians
called it the "sin against the Holy Ghost." If we look around us and
if we look within, we realize that we are one entity, as it were,
one great human host, one living tree of human life, woven
inseparably into and from nature, the All.

The next defect of the nebular theory was that the nebula was
declared to be in its earliest stages incandescent, burning. The
esoteric teaching is that it is indeed glowing, but glowing with a
cold light, the same as, or similar to, that of the firefly, if you like.
There is no more heat in a nebula than there is in the light of the
firefly. This light in the nebula, this luminosity, is not from
combustion of any kind; but, then, what is it from? It is from the
indwelling daivi-prakriti, "divine nature or light," in its
manifestation on that plane, the same light which in sentient
beings manifests in a higher form as consciousness in all its
degrees, running from dull physical consciousness up through the
soul and the ego; through the self up into the selfless self of the
Paramatman, the "supreme self" — a mere expression of
convenience as meaning the acme or summit of a hierarchy,
because really there is no supreme self, which
would mean a
limit, hence finiteness. If there were, there would be a lowest self.
Self is boundless, endless, the very heart of being, the foundation
and dimensionless core of all that is.

Next, the third vital defect: the planets and the sun were not
evolved or born in the manner stated by the nebular theory. How
are the sun and the planets born? (Let me say here by way of
parenthesis that this subject should come much later in our study,
but there is a reason for referring to it now.) Every solar or
planetary body, the sun and planets in our solar system and
analogically everywhere else, is the child or rather the result or
reimbodiment of a former cosmic entity which, upon entering into
its pralaya, its prakritika-pralaya — the dissolution of its lower
principles — at the end of its long life cycle, exists in space in the
higher activity of its spiritual principles and in the dispersion of
its lowest principles, which latter latently exist in space as
skandhas, in what is called in Sanskrit a laya-condition, from the
root li, meaning "to dissolve" or "to vanish away." Hence, a laya-
center is a point of disappearance
— the mystical point where a
thing disappears from one plane, if you like, and passes onwards
to reappear on another plane.

To repeat an illustration which we used in our last meeting: pour

water on a cube of sugar or salt, and watch it dissolve — vanish
as a cube or discrete entity. It has entered its laya-state as a cube
or entity of sugar or salt. The form of it has gone, and itself — the
sugar or salt — has entered into something else. When the higher
principles of a cosmic body enter into something else, what is that
something else into which they enter? They enter into the highest
cosmic aether first, and in due course go still higher into the
intense activity of the spiritual planes; there long aeons are
passed in states and conditions to us almost unimaginable. In due
course of time they begin their downward course into matter
again, or reimbodiment, and finally, by attraction, re-collect their
old skandhas hitherto lying latent, and thus form for themselves a
new body, by passing into manifestation through and by the laya-
center where those skandhas were waiting.

Those lower principles were meanwhile in nirvana, what we

would call devachan after the death of man, for devachan as a
state applies not to the highest or heavenly or divine monad, but
only to the middle principles of man, to the personal ego, or the
personal soul, in man. Applied to us this condition is the state of
devachan — the "land of the gods," if you like; but applied to a
cosmic body it is the state of nirvana. Nirvana is a Sanskrit
compound, nir, "out," and vana the past participle passive of the
root va, "to blow," i.e., literally "blown out."

So badly has the meaning of the ancient Indian thought (and even
its language, the Sanskrit) been understood, that for many years
very erudite European scholars were discussing whether being
"blown out" meant actual entitative annihilation or not. I
remember once talking with a Chinese savant (he happened to be
a Buddhist) and he told me that the state of man after death was
"like this" — and he took up a lighted candle which was on the
table and blew upon it, and the light went out. And he said, "That
way." He was right, because he was referring to the lower
principles in man. They (not we, our monadic or entitative
essence) are merely the vehicle in which we live; and when we
die, our physical body is "blown out," breaks up, enters into its
pralaya or dissolution, and its molecules, its particles, go into the
laya-state, and pass a certain time there until nature calls them
forth again; or, to put it more accurately in another way, until
the
indwelling impulse in each physical monadic particle through the
thirst for active being rises forth into manifestation again, and it
reenters some body of appropriate kind and of similar
evolutional degree.

This is one — and only one — facet of the secret of the much
misunderstood doctrine of transmigration into animals. The
lower elements, the astral body and the astral dregs of the animal
or physical man, become the principles — not the latent higher,
but the intermediate principles — of the beast world. They are
human dregs cast off by man.

The cosmic dust resulting from the dissolution of a former world

rests in a laya-center; while the highest principles of that world or
planetary chain are in their paranirvana, and remain there until
the divine thirst for active life on the highest plane of descent,
which rearises in the cosmic monad of a planet or sun, pulls,
pushes, or urges, or impels, that monad to the spiritual frontiers
of manifestation; and when it arrives at those frontiers, it bursts
through them as it were, or breaks through, or goes through, or
cycles downward through, into the plane below it, and thus again
and again through many planes, till finally the cycling monad
reaches and touches or lightens all those lower elements which
are remaining in the laya-center: awakens them, reawakens them,
revivifies them, recalls them into being, reilluminates them from
within; and this produces the luminosity or nebulosity seen in so
many parts of interstellar space. Therefore, it
is, actually, daivi-
prakriti, "divine nature," divine light, in one of its lowest forms —
the seventh, counting downwards — and this same light, or force,
on this our plane in one of its very lowest forms is electricity and
magnetism. Our Teachers have told us that the physical universe
here in which we live — the stones, metals, trees, etc. — is
corporealized light. They are all formed of atoms, and these
atoms, so to speak, are the mystic atoms of this light, the
corpuscular part of light, because light is corpuscular: it is not a
mere mode of motion or a wave or something else. Light (our
light) is a body, as much a body as electricity — one of its forms —
is a body, i.e., material, or subtil matter.

Now, then, when this nebula of which we have been speaking —

let us give it the scientific name — has attained the point of
development or evolution downwards into manifestation where
the reimbodying principles of the former world or cosmos or sun
or planet, as the case may be, have sufficiently entered into it, it
begins to rotate by a characteristic energy, similar to
electromagnetism, inherent in itself. Plato tells us that circular
motion is one of the first signs of entitative, free, existence — a
saying which is often laughed at by our young savants of science
and quondam bigwigs of a transitory era of dogmatic thinking.
Plato defines being as a "body which is capable of acting and
being acted upon." It is a good definition to remember, for it
implies both passive and active existence — or manifestation. He
said that with reference to the highest essence of the cosmos —
the primal Principle of which H. P. Blavatsky speaks as the
ineffable
That — it is not "a" being, hence limited, possessing
bounds, because neither does it act nor is it acted upon. It is All,
eternally, endlessly All.

So this cosmic nebula drifts from the place where it first was
evolved, the guiding impulse of karma directing here and
directing there, this luminous nebulosity moving circularly, and
contracting, passing through other phases of nebular evolution,
such as the spiral stage and the annular, until it becomes
spherical, or rather a nebular series of concentric spheres. The
nebula in space, as just said, takes often a spiral form, and from
the core, the center, there stream forth branches, spiral branches,
and they look like whirling wheels within wheels, and they whirl
during many ages. When the time has come — when the whirling
has developed pari passu with the indwelling lives and
intelligences within the cosmic nebula — then the annular form
appears, a form like a ring or concentric rings, with a heart in the
center, and after long aeons, the central heart becomes the sun or
central body of the new solar system, and the rings the planets.
These rings condense into other
bodies, and these other bodies
are the planets circulating around their elder brother, the sun;
elder, because he was the first to condense into a sphere.

The idea of modern scientists that the nebular sun threw off the
planets, and that the earth after partial solidification threw off
the moon, and that the other planets having moons did likewise,
is not the teaching of the esoteric philosophy. It has never been
proved, and it is criticized daily by men as eminent as those who
propounded these theories. The nebular theory as propounded
and modified from time to time, science has never proved;
scientists have never been able to prove why so much heat could
develop and be retained in so tenuous, so diaphanous an object.
Why, if the luminosity arises from combustion of gaseous matter,
does it not burn itself out? It had billions of years, countless ages,
in which to burn out, and the sky is dotted with nebulae which
have not burned out yet; and similarly with regard to the sun. The
sun is formed of the same matter as the nebulae, later becoming
cometary matter. The sun does not burn; it has no more heat in it
than has a pane of glass which transmits the
solar ray.

The sun is not in combustion: it is the generator and storehouse of

the mighty ocean of force and forces which feed our entire solar
system. Matter is corporealized or crystallized force; force,
inversely, may be called subtil matter — or matter in its fourth,
fifth, sixth, and seventh states, for force and matter are one. The
sun is a storehouse and generator of forces, and is itself force in
its first and second states — i.e., matter in its sixth and seventh
states, counting upward. We shall study this subject more fully in
a later lecture.

This is a bare outline of the teachings that we have received on

the subjects treated of. The moon comprises another subject,
which will merit in due time very particular study, indeed.

First a nebula, then a comet, then a planet; but the above sketch
outlines the state of a solar system in the first era of the solar
manvantara. Now let us take any one planet and shortly, briefly,
touch upon the nature of a planetary manvantara. The sun, of
course, remains throughout the solar manvantara. It began with
it, and when the solar system comes to an end, the sun's pralaya
will also come. But the planets are different in certain respects.
They have their manvantara also, each one of them, lasting
usually many billions of years; and when a planetary chain or
body has reached its term, when its hour strikes for going into
rest, or into pralaya or dissolution, the manvantara ends and
pralaya begins, but in this case it is not a prakritika-pralaya
which, you remember, signifies or means the dissolution of
nature. The planetary body remains dead, as is now the moon
itself, but it sends its principles (precisely as the former solar
system did) into a laya-center in space, and
they remain there for
"innumerable ages." Meanwhile the other planets of that solar
system go through their cycles; but the planet which we have
picked out for illustration, when its time comes again to descend
into manvantara, follows its line of development in precisely the
same way as outlined before. It descends again into manifestation
through the inner divine planetary thirst for active life and is
directed to the same solar system, and to the same spot, relatively
speaking, that its predecessor (its former self) had, attracted
thither by magnetic and other forces on the lower planes. It
forms, in the beginning of its course or journey downwards, a
planetary nebula; after many aeons it becomes a comet, following
ultimately an elliptic orbit around the sun of our solar system,
thus being "captured," as our scientists wrongly say, by the sun;
and finally condenses into a planet in its earliest physical
condition. The comets of short periodic time are on their way to
rebecoming planets in our solar system, provided they
successfully elude the many dangers that beset such ethereal
bodies before condensation and hardening of their matter shield
them from destruction.

Chapter 6
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Six
The Dawn of Manifestation: Laya-centers. A Conscious Universe —
Spiritually Purposive. Stoic Doctrine of the Intermingling of All
Beings: "Laws of Nature." Philosophical Polytheism and the
Doctrine of Hierarchies.

(a) The hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into seven

(or 4 and 3) esoteric, within the twelve great Orders,
recorded in the twelve signs of the Zodiac; the seven of the
manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the
Seven Planets. All this is subdivided into numberless
groups of divine Spiritual, semi-Spiritual, and ethereal
Beings.

The Chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the

great Quaternary, or the "four bodies and the three
faculties" of Brahma exoterically, and the Panchasyam, the
five Brahmas, or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist
system. — The Secret Doctrine, I, 213

The refusal to admit in the whole Solar system of any other

reasonable and intellectual beings on the human plane,
than ourselves, is the greatest conceit of our age. All that
science has a right to affirm, is that there are no invisible
Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It
cannot deny point-blank the possibility of there being
worlds within worlds, under totally different conditions to
those that constitute the nature of our world; nor can it
deny that there may be a certain limited communication
between some of those worlds and our own. To the highest,
we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine
Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can
 occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do
communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which
progeny is indissolubly linked with them, each principle in
man having its direct source in the nature of those great
Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible
elements in us. — Ibid., I, 133

WE OPEN our study this evening by reading from The Secret

Doctrine, volume I, page 258:

"Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active life; it is

drawn into the vortex of MOTION (the alchemical solvent
of Life); Spirit and Matter are the two States of the ONE,
which is neither Spirit nor Matter, both being the absolute
life, latent." (Book of Dzyan, Comm. iii, par. 18). . . . "Spirit is
the first differentiation of (and in) SPACE; and Matter the
first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is neither Spirit
nor matter — that is IT — the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit and
Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call
the ONE LIFE or the Intra-Cosmic Breath."

In our study of a week ago we embarked upon a brief discussion,

or rather a short excursus, with regard to certain astronomical
factors which enter very largely into the occult or esoteric
teaching which leads to a proper comprehension of cosmogony or
world building, and also of theogony or the genesis of the gods or
divine intelligences who initiate and direct cosmogony, as these
are outlined in The Secret Doctrine. Within the time at our
disposal we shortly reviewed the esoteric formulae in which the
ancient wisdom is imbodied, and the effectual agencies which act
at the dawn of manifestation; and this evening we shall
undertake briefly to review the causal agencies or aspects of the
same subject.

The dawn of manifestation, as The Secret Doctrine tells us, begins

in and with the awakening of a laya-center. The Sanskrit word
laya, as we saw before, signifies in esotericism that point or spot
— any point or any spot — in space which, owing to karmic law,
suddenly becomes the center of active life, first on a higher plane
and later descending into manifestation through and by the lower
planes. In one sense such a laya-center may be conceived of as a
canal, a channel, through which the vitality of the superior
spheres is pouring down into, and inspiring, inbreathing into, the
lower planes or states of matter, or rather of substance. But
behind all this vitality there is a driving force. There are
mechanics in the universe, mechanics of many degrees of
consciousness and power. But behind the pure mechanic stands
the spiritual mechanician.

It would seem absolutely necessary first to soak our minds

through and through with the thought that everything in our
cosmical universe, i.e., the stellar universe, is alive, is directed by
will and governed by intelligence. Behind every cosmic body that
we see, there is a directing intelligence and a guiding will.

If theosophy has one natural enemy against which it has fought

and will always fight it is the materialistic view of life, the view
that nothing exists except dead unconscious matter, and that the
phenomena of life and thought and consciousness spring from it.
This is not merely unnatural and therefore impossible; it is
absurd as a hypothesis.

On the contrary, as we may read in The Secret Doctrine, the main,

fundamental, and basic postulate of being is that the universe is
driven by will and consciousness, guided by will and
consciousness, and is spiritually purposive. When a laya-center is
fired into action by the touch of these two on their downward
way, becoming the imbodying life of a solar system, or of a planet
of a solar system, the center manifests first on its highest plane.
The skandhas (which we described in a former study) are
awakened into life one after another: first the highest ones, next
the intermediate ones, and lastly the inferior ones, cosmically and
qualitatively speaking.

In such laya-centers the imbodying life shows itself first to our

physical human eyes as a luminous nebula — matter which we
may describe as being of course on the fourth plane of nature or
prakriti, but nevertheless in the second (counting downwards) of
the seven principles or states of the material universe. It is a
manifestation in that universe of daivi-prakriti, i.e., "shining"
prakriti or "divine" prakriti. As the aeons pass this laya-center,
now manifesting as a nebula, remains in space steadily though
slowly developing and condensing (following the impulses of the
forces that have awakened it into action on this plane). As the
aeons pass, I say, it is drawn towards that part or locality in space,
if we are speaking of a solar system, or towards that sun, if we are
describing the coming into being of a planet, with which it has
karmic — skandhic — affinities or magnetic attraction, and
eventually manifests in the latter case as a comet. The matter of a
comet, by the way, is entirely different from the matter we have
any knowledge of on earth, and which it is impossible to
reproduce under any physical conditions in our laboratories,
because this matter, while on the fourth plane of manifestation
(otherwise we should not sense it with our fourth-plane eyes), is
matter in another state than any known to us — probably in the
sixth state, counting from below, or the second state counting
from above.

Of such matter is the sun, or rather the solar body, in its outward
form composed. It is physical matter in the sixth state, counting
upwards, or in the second state counting downwards or outward;
and its nucleus which, as H. P. Blavatsky tells us in The Secret
Doctrine, is a particle or a solar atom of primal matter-stuff, or
spirit-stuff, is matter in the seventh state counting upwards, or
the first or highest counting downwards.

This comet in time, if it succeed in pursuing its way towards

becoming what it is destined to be, becomes finally a planet; it so
becomes unless it meet with some disaster, as when it is
swallowed up by one or another of the suns which it may pass in
its far-flung orbit. Some comets have already in our solar system
so nearly reached the planetary state in its first stages, on the way
to becoming a full-grown planet of the solar system, that their
orbits lie within the confines or limits of this system. Such, for
instance, is Encke's comet, having an elliptical orbit, and moving
around the sun in a closed curve in the space of a little over three
years. Another one is Biela's which, I believe, has not been seen
again, after it appeared to break into two, I think in the 'fifties of
last century. Another one was Faye's, having the largest orbit of
all these three. Two others are de Vico's and Brorsen's.

It would seem as if all those comets which are drawn into

elliptical orbits around our sun, were so drawn because they
were karmically destined ultimately to become planets of our
system; but others, again, suffer another fate. They perish,
absorbed or torn to pieces by the inexpressibly active influences
which surround not merely our own but all other suns, because
each sun, while being the center of its own system of planets, and
their life-giver, from another aspect is a cosmical vampire. There
is much more on this subject that must be said, but it is very
doubtful whether, at the present stage of our study, it would be
wise to embark upon a wider exposition now.

We desire this evening to take up again the same thread of

thought, continuing with a study of the beginning of things as
outlined in Genesis, and as illustrated more particularly by the
Jewish theosophy called the Qabbalah. If the time allotted to us be
insufficient to do so this evening, we hope to begin that study at
our next meeting.

Nothing in the universe is separate from any other thing. All

things hang together not merely sympathetically and
magnetically but because all beings are fundamentally one. We
have one self, one self of selves, manifesting in the Inmost of the
Inmost being of all. But we have many egos, and the study of the
ego in that branch of our thought which is embraced under the
head of psychology is one of the most inherently necessary and
one of the most interesting and important that can be
undertaken.

Around the ego, so far as we humans are concerned, center some

of the most important teachings of the esoteric wisdom. Without
going into this study at some length, it is impossible for us to
understand certain of the teachings in The Secret Doctrine. The
ancient Stoics (the very wonderful philosophy originating with
some of the Greek philosophers, and which became so deservedly
popular among the deeper thinkers of Rome) taught that
everything in the universe is intermingled or interwoven, not by
fundamentally distinct essences or entities interpenetrating each
other, nor in what theosophists today call "planes of being,"
merely, but by various aspects or differentiations of one common
substance, the root of all, and they expressed the principle
through the three Greek words, krasis di' holou, "a mingling
through everything," an intermingling of all the essences in the
cosmos, arising out of, and differentiated from, the root-substance
common to all. This
is also the teaching of the esoteric wisdom. It
is the manifestation, in other words, of all beings: of all thinking,
unthinking, and senseless beings, and of all the gods giving
direction and purpose to the complex universe which we see
around us today; and in this varied life was placed the primal
cause of all the beauty, the concord, as well as the strife and
discord that do exist in nature, and which is the cause of the so-
called mistakes that nature makes. The origin of what many
people call the "insolvable riddle" of the "origin of evil." What is
the "origin of evil"? The ancient wisdom says that it is merely the
conflict of wills of evolving beings — an inevitable and necessary
phase of evolution.

Properly to understand this intermingling involves another

important subject of study which we shall take up at a later date,
and this is the doctrine of hierarchies. Hierarchy, of course,
merely means that a scheme or system or state of delegated
directive power and authority exists in a self-contained body,
directed, guided, and taught by one having supreme authority,
called the hierarch. The name is used in theosophy, by extension
of meaning, as signifying the innumerable degrees, grades, and
steps of evolving entities in the kosmos, and as applying to all
parts of the universe; and rightly so, because every different part
of the universe — and their number is simply countless — is
under the vital governance of a divine being, of a god, of a
spiritual essence, and all material manifestations are simply the
appearances on our plane of the workings and actions of these
spiritual beings behind it. The series of hierarchies extends
infinitely in both directions. Man may, if he so choose for
purposes of thought, consider himself at the middle point, from
which extends above him an unending series of steps upon steps
of higher beings of all grades — growing constantly less material
and more spiritual, and greater in all senses — towards an
ineffable point, and there the imagination stops; not because the
series itself stops, but because our thought can reach no farther
out or in. And similar to this series, an infinitely great series of
beings and states of beings descends downwards (to use human
terms) — downwards and downwards, until there again the
imagination stops merely because our thought can go no farther.
The eternal action and interaction, or what the Stoics also called
the intermingling, of these beings produce eternally the various
so-called planes of being, and the action of the will of these beings
on matter or substances is the manifestation of what we call the
laws of nature. This is a very inaccurate and misleading phrase;
but it seems justifiable in a metaphorical sense, because as a
human legislator or a human lawgiver will set forth or set down
certain rules of conduct, certain schemes of action, which are to
be obeyed, so the intelligences behind the actions of nature do the
same thing, not in a legislative way, but by the action of their own
spiritual economy. So man himself, in similar fashion, lays down
the "laws" for the less lives which compose his essences — the
principles under the center which he governs — and which
comprise even the physical body, and the lives building it. Each
one of these lives is a microcosmic universe or cosmos, that is to
say, an
ordered entity, an entity ruled by inescapable or
ineluctable habit, which our scientists, applying the rule to
universal cosmical action, call the laws of nature.

And they in turn, these less lives, have similar universes under
them. It is unthinkable that the series can stop or have an end
because, if it did, we should have an infinity that ends, an
unthinkable proposition. It is merely the paucity of our ideas and
the feebleness of our imagination which make us to suppose that
there may be a stop at certain points; and it is this feebleness of
thought which has given birth to and promoted the rise of the
different religious systems; in one case the monotheism of the
Christian Church, and in another case the monotheism of the
Mohammedan peoples, and in another case still the monotheism
of the Jewish people. Of these three, the Jews have had the longest
history and the wisest history, for the Jews originally were never
a monotheistic people. In their early history they were convinced
polytheists — using the term in the philosophical sense, lest
people imagine when they hear of polytheism that it means our
absurd modern Western misconception of what we
think the
cultured Romans and Greeks thought about their gods and
goddesses, or what we think they ought to have believed, which is
conceited nonsense.

The popular mythology of the Greeks and Romans, as also that of

ancient Egypt or of Babylonia, and that of the Germanic or Celtic
tribes of Europe, was understood in a different way from our
gross misconception of it; and conceived of in a different way by
the wise men in those days, who understood perfectly well all the
usual symbols and allegories by which the esoteric teachings
were outlined and taught in the popular mythologies. And we
must remember that "exoteric" does not necessarily mean false. It
means only that in exoteric teachings the keys to the esoteric
teachings have not been given out.

We often hear the claim made by monotheistic believers that the

great "prophets" of Israel, the so-called wise men of that people,
knew better than their ancient predecessors what their people
ought to know and believe. These prophets taught monotheism,
we are assured, and redirected the thoughts of the people away
from the ancient beliefs — indeed, the multiplicity of beliefs —
towards one tribal God whom they called Jehovah, a word, by the
way, which the later orthodox Jewish religionists held, and still
hold, so sacred that they would not even pronounce it aloud, but
in reading aloud substituted for it another word when this word
Jehovah occurred in a sentence in the Jewish Bible. Now this
substitute word is Adonai, and means "my lords" — in itself a true
confession of polytheistic thought. Judaism is replete in its Law or
Bible, at least, with polytheism; and so prone is the human heart
to follow the instincts of its spirit that when the Christian
Church
in its blindness overthrew philosophical polytheism as an error in
religion, the reaction, fully to be expected as a consequence, very
soon set in, and that Church answered the cry of the human heart
by substituting "saints" for the injured and banished gods and
goddesses, thus inaugurating a cultural adoration of dead men
and women for powers, intelligences, in nature! They had to give
them saints in order to supply the places of the forgotten deities;
and even gave to these saints more or less the same powers that
the ancient gods and goddesses were reputed to have exercised
and to have had. They had a saint as a patron or protector of city,
state, or country: St. George for England, St. James for Spain, St.
Denis for France, and so on. The same thought, the same function,
the same desire satisfied — the instincts of the human heart
cannot be ignored or violated with impunity. But how greatly
different was the initiate view of the wise men in pagan times!

When the ancients spoke of the multiplicity of gods they did so

with wisdom, understanding, and reverence. Is it conceivable that
the great men of the ancient days who then discovered and
established the canons of belief followed by us — usually
ignorant of our great debt to them — even today in all our lines of
thought, and which we value like little children and have valued
since the rebirth of literature in our Western world — is it
conceivable, I say, that they had no conception of cosmical or of
divine unity, something which even the average man of
intelligence today will come to? How absurd! No! They could
think, and they knew as well as we do, but they also knew, yea,
even the degenerated thinkers in the early ages of the Christian
era, that if "God" made the world, being a perfect and infinite
Being, his work (or its work) could be only a perfect and infinite
work, worthy of its perfect and infinite Maker, free from vanity,
free from limitations, free from sin, free
from decrepitude and
ceaseless, gnawing change. Yet, as we see and consider the things
around us, as we know that the world, being an exemplar of
change and hence of limitations and decay, therefore cannot be
and is not infinite, we know — the instincts of our being tell us —
that it is the work of less beings, of minor and limited powers,
however exalted spiritually. And as we penetrate into our own
thoughts and study the life of the beings and of the nature around
us, we see also that there is life within life, wheel within wheel,
purpose within purpose, and that behind the outward
manifestations or action (the "laws of nature") of the so-called
gods, there are still more subtil powers, still more exalted
intelligences at work — verily, wheels within wheels, lives within
lives, and so on forever — an unending and boundless unity in
multiplicity, and multiplicity limitless and unbounded in unity.
So, as said before, when we speak of the
unity of life, or of the
"divine unity," we merely mean that here our penetrating spirit
has reached the limit of its present powers, a point at which
human thought can go no farther. It has run to its utmost limits,
and from the feebleness of it we are bound in truth to say: here is
as far as our thought can go. It is our present "Ring called 'Pass
Not!'" But this honest confession of human limitation does not
mean that there is "nothing" beyond. On the contrary, it is a proof
that life and space are endless.

Now the Neoplatonists who came into prominence in the early

centuries of the Christian era — and who, with the Stoics,
provided Christianity with most of what it had that was
philosophically good and spiritual and true — taught that the
summit, the acme, the flower, the highest point (that they called
the hyparxis) of any series of animate and "inanimate" beings,
whether we enumerate the stages or degrees of the series as
seven or ten or twelve, was the "divine unity" for that series or
hierarchy, and that this hyparxis or flower or summit or
beginning or highest being was again in its turn the lowest being
of the hierarchy above it, and so extending onwards for ever.

Change within change, wheel within wheel, each hierarchy

manifesting one facet of the divine cosmic life, each hierarchy
showing forth one thought, as it were, of the divine thinkers.
Good and evil are relative, and rigidly offset and equilibrate each
other. There is no absolute good, there is no absolute evil; these
are mere human terms only. "Evil" in any sphere of life is
imperfection, for it. "Good" in any sphere of life is perfection, for it.
But the good of one is the evil of another, because the latter is the
shadow of something higher above it.

Just as light and darkness are not absolute but relative things.
What is darkness? Darkness is absence of light, and the light that
we know is itself the manifestation of life in matter — hence a
material phenomenon. Each is (physically) a form of vibration,
each is, therefore, a form of life.

Various names were given to these hierarchies considered as

series of beings. For instance, let us take the standard and
generalized Greek hierarchy as shown by writers in periods
preceding the rise of Christianity, though the Neoplatonists, as we
have seen, had their own hierarchies, and gave the stages or
degrees thereof special names. It is often asserted by those people
who know everything — I mean the bigwigs of the modern day,
who even believe that they know better what the ancients
believed than the ancients did themselves — that Neoplatonism
was evolved merely to oppose and overthrow, and to take the
place of the wonderful, soul-saving, spiritual doctrines of
Christianity, forgetting that from Neoplatonism and
Neopythagoreanism, and Stoicism, early Christianity drew nearly
everything of religious and philosophic good that it had in it. But
the Neoplatonic doctrine was, in sober fact, actually the setting
forth to a certain degree only of the esoteric doctrine of
the
Platonic school and was, in its esoteric reach, the teaching which
Plato and the early Pythagoreans taught secretly to their disciples.
We now resume our thread. The hyparxis, as we showed, means
the summit or beginning of a hierarchy. The scheme started with
the divine, the highest point of the series or its divinity:

(1) Divine; (2) Gods, or the spiritual; (3) Demigods, sometimes

called divine heroes, involving a very mystical doctrine; (4)
Heroes proper; (5) Men; (6) Beasts or animals; (7) Vegetable
world; (8) Mineral world; (9) Elemental world, or what was called
the realm of Hades. As said, the divinity (or aggregate divine
lives) itself was the hyparxis of this series of hierarchies, because
each of these nine stages was itself a subordinate hierarchy. The
names mean little, you may give them other names; the important
thing is to get the thought. Now, as said before, remember that
this esoteric wisdom taught that this (or any other) hierarchy of
nine, hangs like a pendant jewel from the lowest hierarchy above
it, which made the tenth counting upwards, which we can call, if
you like, the superdivine, the hyperheavenly, and that this tenth
was the lowest stage (or the ninth, counting downwards) of still
another hierarchy extending upwards; and so on, indefinitely.

Now when the Christians finally overthrew the ancient religion,

when the karmic cycle had brought about an era of what Plato
called spiritual barrenness — and we remember to divide the
work of evolution into two parts, epochs of barrenness and
epochs of fertility — when the Christian religion came in as part
of an epoch of barrenness, the Christians took over very much of
this ancient thought, as was only to be expected: history merely
repeated itself. And they derived it, as was said before, mainly
from the Stoics and the Neopythagoreans and the Neoplatonists,
but mostly from the Neoplatonists. This was done in very large
part at Alexandria, the great center of Greek or Hellenistic culture
at that time; the chiefest thinkers of the Neoplatonists also lived
in Alexandria. This Neoplatonic stream of beautiful thought in the
Christian religion entered into it with special force around the
fifth century, through the writings of a man who was called
Dionysius the Areopagite, from the "Hill
of Ares" or Mars at
Athens. The Christian legend runs that when Paul preached at
Athens, he did so on Mars Hill or the Areopagus, and that one of
his first converts was a Greek called Dionysius; and Christian
tradition goes on to say that he was, later, the first Christian
Bishop of Athens. Now this may all be fable. However, the
Christians claimed it as a fact.

In the fifth or sixth century, five hundred years more or less after
Paul is supposed to have preached in Athens, there appeared in
the Greek world a work calling itself the writings of Dionysius the
Areopagite — claiming authorship from this same man. It is
evidently the work of a Neoplatonist-Christian. That is to say, of a
Christian who, for reasons of his own, perhaps policy (social or
financial), remained within the Christian Church, but was more
or less a Greek pagan, a Neoplatonist at heart. This work, by
coming out under the name of the first (alleged) Bishop of Athens,
Dionysius, almost immediately began to have immense vogue in
the Christian Church; and it remains to this day, not indeed one of
the canonical works, but one of the works which the Christians
consider among the greatest they have on mystical lines, and
perhaps their most spiritual work. It very deeply affected
Christian theological thought from the time of its appearance.

One of the works comprised in this book, attributed by the

Christians themselves to Dionysius, Paul's first convert in Athens,
is a treatise on the Divine Hierarchies, in which the teaching is
that God is infinite and therefore did the work of creation
through less abstract and spiritual beings; and a scheme of
hierarchies is here set forth, one lower than another, one derived
from the other — which is exactly the teaching in the Qabbalah;
which also is exactly the teaching of the Neoplatonists and
essentially that of the Stoics, and of the old Greek mythology. It is
a pagan teaching throughout, and merely became Christianized
because adapted to the new religion, and because Christian
names are used: instead of saying and enumerating gods, divine
heroes, demigods or heroes, men, and animals, etc., the names
are God, Archangels, Thrones, Powers, etc. But the schematic or
essential thought is the same. Furthermore, there are actually
passages in the works of this Dionysius which are taken word for
word, wholesale, from the writings of the Neoplatonist Plotinus,
who lived and flourished and wrote voluminously on Neoplatonic
subjects in the third century.

Now this work, particularly in the field of dogmatic ecclesiastical

thought, formed the basis of much of the theology of the Greek
and Roman Churches; we may even say that on it their medieval
theology was actually based. It formed the main source of the
studies and writings of the Italian Thomas Aquinas (13th
century), one of the greatest medieval doctors of the Christian
religion, and of Johannes Scotus, called Erigena, an Irishman (9th
century), and probably of Duns Scotus (13th century), a
remarkable Scot; and of many more. Spenser, Shakespeare, and
Milton, to speak only of English literature, are full of the spirit of
these writings. They provided much of the mystical thought of the
Dark Ages, and ultimately in a degenerate form helped to give
rise to the hairsplitting and quibbling and squabbles of the quasi-
religious writers known as the Schoolmen. But these men had lost
the inner sense or heart of the thing through the ecclesiastical
growth and political power of the Christian Church, and they
began to argue about things of no spiritual consequence
whatever, such as: which came first, the hen or the egg? or, how
many angels can dance on the point of a needle? or, if an
irresistible force meets an immovable obstacle, what then
happens? These most pragmatical and useful diversions and
intellectual vagaries lasted for a certain time, and then, with the
renaissance of thought in Europe, due largely to the labors of the
devotees of science and natural philosophy, the European world
gradually began to pull out of this mental slough, and brought in
an era which is now in full and strong current, and which has
inaugurated and continued for good or for ill (perhaps both) the
streams of human thinking as we see it today.

In conclusion, we may call attention to the fact that just about the
time when the first 5,000 years of the Hindu cycle called the kali
yuga (lasting 432,000) came to an end, there also came to an end a
certain "Messianic" cycle of twenty-one hundred years —
(actually, if we come to exact figures, 2,160), which is, note well,
just one half of the Hindu-Babylonian root-cycle of 4,320 years.

Chapter 7
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Seven
Hierarchies: One of the Lost Keys of the Esoteric Philosophy. The
Pythagorean Sacred Tetraktys. The Ladder of Life: The Legend of
Padmapani.

Theophilosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very

beginning of AEons — in time and space in our Round and
Globe — the Mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which
it is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the
pupils of those same now invisible "heavenly men," in
geometrical figures and symbols. The keys thereto passed
from one generation of "wise men" to the other. Some of
the symbols, thus passed from the east to the west, were
brought therefrom by Pythagoras, who was not the
inventor of his famous "Triangle." The latter figure, along
with the plane cube and circle, are more eloquent and
scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of the
Universe, spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, than
volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed
"Geneses." The ten points inscribed within that
"Pythagorean triangle" are worth all the theogonies and
angelologies ever emanated from the
theological brain. For
he who interprets them — on their very face, and in the
order given — will find in these seventeen points (the
seven Mathematical Points hidden) the uninterrupted
series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to
terrestrial man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so
they reveal the order in which were evolved the Kosmos,
our earth, and the primordial elements by which the latter
was generated. Begotten in the invisible Depths, and in the
womb of the same "Mother" as its fellow-globes — he who
 will master the mysteries of our Earth, will have mastered
those of all others. — The Secret Doctrine, I, 612-13

"It is that LIGHT which condenses into the forms of the

'Lords of Being' — the first and the highest of which are,
collectively, JIVATMA, or Pratyagatma (said figuratively to
issue from Paramatma. It is the Logos of the Greek
philosophers — appearing at the beginning of every new
Manvantara). From these downwards — formed from the
ever-consolidating waves of that light, which becomes on the
objective plane gross matter — proceed the numerous
hierarchies of the Creative Forces, some formless, others
having their own distinctive form, others, again, the lowest
(Elementals), having no form of their own, but assuming
every form according to the surrounding conditions." —
Ibid., II, 33-4

WE OPEN our study this evening by reading from The Secret

Doctrine, volume I, page 274:

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).

When we ended our study last week, we left unmentioned a

number of very important things, which we shall have to take up
this evening. First, a few words more concerning the nebular
theory or hypothesis and the planetary theory deriving from it, as
considered from the theosophical standpoint, and consequently a
further explanation or rather development of the doctrine of
hierarchies, which will lead us to the study towards which we
have aimed, that is to say, the consideration of cosmogony or the
beginning of worlds as outlined in the Jewish Book of Genesis or
Beginnings.

About one hundred years ago, more or less within a few years of
each other, there died three remarkable men, namely Kant,
perhaps the greatest philosopher that Europe has produced; Sir
William Herschel, the astronomer; and the Marquis de Laplace;
the first a German, the second an Anglo-German, and the third a
Frenchman. All these three men in some degree were responsible
for the enunciation and the development of the theory of world-
beginning which eventuated in the nebular hypothesis of Laplace.
It is interesting also to note that all three men were of humble
birth, and by the force of their own intelligence and character
became, all three of them, remarkable men. Kant was, I believe,
the son of a saddler; Sir William Herschel was also of humble
origin, and was in youth an oboist in the Hanoverian Guards; and
Pierre Simon Laplace was the son of a farmer; Laplace was
ennobled, and upon him was conferred the nobiliary title of
marquis.

Now the nebular theory really originated with Kant; he it was

who laid down the basic lines, the fundamental ground, as it
were, upon which the theory was later developed mathematically
by Laplace. Coincident with Kant's work and writings was the
astronomical work of Herschel in England, and those two men
were responsible for the fundamentals of the nebular theory.
Laplace took it up after they had more or less laid down the main
lines, developed it into what is called the nebular hypothesis or
theory of Laplace, and on account of its explaining in
mathematical form the mechanism of the universe, that is to say,
of the solar system and the planets and their satellites, it has been
called a "magnificently audacious" hypothesis. It was Laplace who
carried the theory a good deal farther than the work of Kant and
Herschel; and, in a sense, Laplace materialized it. As H. P.
Blavatsky tells us, if the nebular theory had remained at the point
where Kant and Herschel had left it, there would be
little for the
theosophical writers and thinkers to do except to develop it and
explain it in accordance with the esoteric philosophy.

It is very interesting to note that another great man, Swedenborg

in Sweden, also worked upon the same theory and apparently
had very nearly the same ideas that Kant and Herschel had as
regards a nebular genesis of cosmical systems. Now these two
latter men had a spiritual idea back of the theory which they
enunciated, and it was the abandonment of that spiritual idea by
Laplace, and the substitution by him of a mechanico-
mathematical theory in its place, which furnished those
influences which directed the nebular hypothesis away from the
line and thought and teachings as laid down in the esoteric
philosophy, as taught by the ancient teachers.

The nebular hypothesis has in some respects been much changed

since the day of Laplace; scientists have thought more about it, a
fact which was also true in 1887 or 1888 when H. P. Blavatsky
wrote The Secret Doctrine. There has been an attempt by later
astronomers of our own day, Sir Norman Lockyer and the
American astronomer and mathematician See, to replace a
nebular origin of cosmical bodies, at least in part, with what has
been called a planetesimal hypothesis or a planetesimal origin —
that is to say, that the bodies of the solar system have been built
up of and by cosmic dust and tiny planets drawn together by the
force of gravitation. Now this theory is, philosophically speaking,
at an immense distance from the teachings of the esoteric
philosophy, although this philosophy does admit and teach that at
a later stage in the evolution of cosmical bodies collection and
concretion of stellar dust is, actually, one of the phases in the
growth of worlds.

Theosophy admits that a planet or a solar system, in the course of

its formation, does gather to itself stardust and vagrant bodies
dispersed in space; but this factor in its growth is not its origin.
The origin of a sun, of a solar system and of the planets in it, and
consequently of the entire universe within the encircling zone of
the Milky Way, has a spiritual background, has spiritual essences
or gods behind it, who form such a system and direct it, and are
the mechanicians in it and of it. Their work is carried on (more or
less) along the main lines of the nebular theory as enunciated by
Kant and Herschel: that is to say, space is eternally filled with
matter in a certain state or condition of being, and when this
matter, as Kant and Herschel would have said, receives the divine
impulse, it is concreted and becomes luminous, and this
concretion is further (and later) strengthened by its drawing into
itself, from the immense spacial expanse in which it is, material
stardust and larger bodies.

When we look up at the sky we see material bodies, fourth-plane

bodies seen with our fourth-plane eyes, but behind these fourth-
plane bodies there are spiritual intelligences, which are called in
the esoteric philosophy, dhyan-chohans, or "lords of meditation."
As the ancients put it, every celestial body is an "animal." Now the
word animal comes from the Latin, and means a living being.
Commonly, in speech, we speak of animals when we should say
beasts or brutes; that is, a brute is an entity which has not yet
been raised to the level of a self-conscious entity; it is brute in the
original Latin sense, i.e., "heavy," "gross," hence irrational and
incomplete; it is not yet finished. But an animal really means a
living being, and in that sense the word applies to human beings.

Likewise, in the view of the ancients, it applies to the stellar, solar,

and planetary bodies — they are animals in the sense of being
living things, with a physical corpus or body, but nevertheless
animate or insouled: in the mystical teachings of the esoteric
philosophy they are insouled things, as indeed every atom is,
every tiny universe, or tiny cosmos.

Now this insouling is done by (or is the action of) what is

commonly called hierarchies. There is not for every individual
entity in kosmos, whether atom, beast, man, god, planet, or sun,
one concreted soul, as it were, derived from the universal world-
soul, with nothing — no connecting links — above it and nothing
below it; not at all. There are no true vacancies in nature,
physical, astral, or spiritual; there are no vacuums. Everything is
linked on to everything else, by literally countless bonds of union,
which is another master key to the teachings of the esoteric
philosophy. As in man, so in every other unit of being, in every
other entity, the universal life manifests through a hierarchy; the
multiform and varied qualities of beings are but the life-rays of a
hierarchy, that is to say, grades or steps of consciousness and
matter, ascending from below upward or, if you like, coming
downwards from above, through all of which the center of
consciousness — call it soul or ego for
the moment — must pass in
its evolution towards godhood.

This teaching of hierarchies is fundamental. It is one of the

present-day "lost keys" of the esoteric philosophy. Nothing can be
understood adequately without a clear comprehension of it. As
man is in our ordinary psychology considered to be a triad or a
triform entity — body, soul, and spirit — so he may be considered
from another point of view as a fourfold entity, or as a fivefold, a
sixfold, or a sevenfold, or (the most esoteric of all) as a tenfold
entity. Why ten Because ten is the key number which explains the
compound fabric of the universe. The universe is built on a
denary scale, that is, on a scale counting by tens. In a few
moments we shall develop in outline the philosophical import of
seven and ten. Let us say now that man is septenary in our view
only because we reckon in, as principles, two elements of his
being which are not, strictly speaking, human principles: one, the
physical body which really is not a "principle" at all; it is
merely a
house, his "carrier" in another sense, and no more belongs to man
— except that he has excreted it, thrown it out from himself —
than does the house in which his body lives. He is a complete
human being without it.

The second strictly nonhuman principle is the highest of all the

seven, the higher self, the atman, the seventh — nonhuman
because it is universal. The self no more belongs to me than to you
or to anyone else. Selfhood is the same in all beings. But beyond
the atman, there is the Paramatman, which we have briefly
studied before, the supreme self. The atman is, as it were, the star
of our own self-issue, the root of our selfhood, the point where we
cling, as it were, to the Highest. If we can conceive of an ocean of
superspiritual ether, so to speak, and in that ocean — call it
consciousness — a vortex, a laya-center, a point, a Primordial
Point, whence the six principles below it flow forth into concrete
manifestation through its vehicles — the souls or egos — we
obtain a very crude conception of the root of our being. It is the
atman, the channel or spiritual point where the superspiritual
breaks, as it were, from and through a barrier downwards into
individualized life. This process we shall more fully explain later,
and shall then illustrate it by diagram.

Now this matter of hierarchies is dealt with in the different world

religions virtually in the same manner but under different names
and in different paradigmatic schemes. For instance, you can
think of the ten parts or grades or steps of a hierarchy as one
under the other, like the floors in a house or like the flats in an
apartment house, a very gross simile, it is true, but having the
advantage of suggesting steps or planes, and of suggesting high
and low. We can think of a hierarchy in another, more subtil,
manner, as consisting in triads of spheres, or living centers, three
triads hanging from the tenth or highest point; and that highest
center is, as already explained, the point beyond which our
thought and imagination can soar no higher, and we merely say
that this center is the highest that the human intellect can reach.
But we know that beyond this tenth which is our highest there is
also the lowest center or plane of another hierarchy still higher
from which our hierarchy hangs as a pendant;
and so on
endlessly. We cannot say of infinity that it begins here and ends
there: if this were so, it would not be infinite, it would not be
boundless. Our doctrine of universal life, of universal
consciousness, of one universal "law" working everywhere,
means that that "law" manifests in every atom, and in every part
of universal being, and in all directions, and for all duration, and
in the same manner everywhere, because it cannot manifest in
radically diverse ways; if so, it would be many fundamental
"laws" and not one "law."

For instance, in our last study we considered the hierarchy of the

Neoplatonic philosophy, which is really the esoteric teaching of
ancient Greece in the form that Plato gave to it. And there were
nine stages, nine degrees, hanging, as it were, from the topmost,
the spiritual sun or the central sun. We can conceive of these
hierarchies as seven concentric circles around and deriving from
a central point, the highest triad, which we can call the infinite or
the Primordial Point; or, again, we can call this Primordial Point
the atman or self of the thinking entity, man, and then the other
spheres or circles of being around him will stand for his six other
principles, somewhat in this fashion:

This is one way of representing a human individual hierarchy,

the different spheres or concentric circles, six of them, all flowing
forth from the center, or seventh element, the self. All hierarchies
are divided into seven, nine, or ten. The reason for this is a
question that we shall have to go into by and by. There is no need
to represent all these methods or paradigmatic schemes, but the
idea is the same in all. Another way of representing a hierarchy
by paradigm is by like lines, ten of them, in this way:

or by representing the nine stages or spheres as three triads on

three planes, and the tenth on its own fourth plane:
We have studied the system of the Neoplatonic hierarchies in
brief outline; and, if we have time, we shall take up this evening
two other paradigmatic schemes by which hierarchies are
variously represented. Let us call earnest attention here to the
important fact, before going farther, that these schemes, these
paradigmatic representations on a flat surface, do not mean that
the grades or steps or planes of being are either flat surfaces, or
are like nests of boxes; they merely show by analogy, by hints, the
relations and the functions of the grades among themselves.

It is obvious to any thinking man that the hierarchies of being do

not rise one above another like the floors of a house. It is perhaps
true that all over the world they are so represented by different
systems; but this is merely to show that there is a high and a low,
a series of conditions or states of spirit and matter. Just as we
would teach children, so the ancient teachers taught us, in simple
ways. Nor are we to imagine that the hierarchies actually extend
somewhere in space in the form of triangles or circles. We
represent them in this way in order to show their intermingling
relations and their interpenetrating functions among each other.
Why, however, do we separate the grades into triads? Because
certain ones of these grades or planes are more nearly related,
intermingle more easily, function more easily together, since
their conditions or states are more closely akin. (1) The first triad,
the highest; (2) the intermediate; (3) the lowest triad; and all
overshadowing the corpus, the
physical body. Or we can take
another scheme, and have the three lowest centers forming the
bottom triad; the three intermediate centers next; and then the
three highest; all the three triads hanging from a point, the
Primordial Point, "God," if you like.

Now let us consider the question: Have the Christians a hierarchy

in their theology? They have; and by this I mean that the
Christians had one, apparently from the earliest times, till the
natural resiliency of the human mind began to exert itself in
rebellion against the dogmatism and materialization of the
Christian teaching which reached its climax in the epoch
preceding the renaissance of thought, when the discoveries of
science freed the human mind from its dogmatic shackles.
Nevertheless, up till that time this teaching of hierarchies
controlling living beings flourished in the Christian Church, and it
originated in the form it then had, as we pointed out in our last
study, in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. One of his
works was called On the Celestial Hierarchy, and it showed how
all spiritual being was divided into a hierarchy of ten degrees or
stages, the tenth or highest being God. This mystic writer followed
this work with another called On the Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy, and
he claimed as a good Christian, or in order to please his good
Christian friends — there is every reason to believe that he copied
the hierarchical scheme of the Neoplatonic philosophy, which
was purely pagan, of course — that on earth the celestial
hierarchy was reenacted or reflected or repeated in an
ecclesiastical hierarchy, which was the Christian Church, topped
by Jesus as the highest representative thereof and as the "Logos of
God."

What were the names that Dionysius gave to the grades or stages
of his hierarchy? First, God, as the summit, the Divine Spirit; then
came the Seraphim; then the Cherubim; then the Thrones,
forming the first triad. Then Dominations, Virtues, Powers,
forming the second triad. Then Principalities, then Archangels,
then Angels, the third triad counting downward.

It is interesting to note that this hierarchy is syncretistic, that is,

composite, taken from different sources and built up into a unity.
Seraphim and Cherubim are from the Hebrew. This plural word
Seraphim comes from a Hebrew root meaning to "burn with fire,"
hence, to be inflamed with love. Cherubim is a curious word, but
scholars generally think that it means "forms." The Seraphim are
mystically believed to be red in color, and the Cherubim dark
blue. The Thrones, the Dominations, the Virtues, the Powers, the
Principalities, are all taken from the Christian teachings of Paul in
the Epistles, Ephesians 1:21, and Colossians 1:16, and are
distinctly mystic. The two last, the Archangels and the Angels, are
not at all Christian in their origin, but are derived in indirect and
tortuous descent from the ancient Greek and Asiatic — especially
old Persian — system of thought which recognized messengers or
ministers or transmitters between man and the
spiritual world;
the Greek word angelos (angel) originally meant "messenger," and
the highest type of these were called Archangels, or Angels of the
highest degree.

The fault, or rather inadequacy, of this Christian system is that its

highest point reached no higher than this God here, a
modification on Greek lines of the Jewish Jehovah; and it went no
farther below in reach or extent than man himself. The Ineffable,
Unthinkable, on the one hand, and the immeasurable spheres of
beings below man, on the other hand, are ignored. It was merely
a chapter torn out of the ancient wisdom and taken over into
Christianity; but small and imperfect as it was, it provided
Christianity with all the mysticism and spiritualizing thought that
saved it from utter materialism in religion during the Middle
Ages.

Let us now take up another hierarchy, the Jewish scheme of the

Qabbalah. You see that there are nine degrees here, nine degrees
all pendant from the supreme self or God. Now the Jewish
Qabbalistic hierarchy, or hierarchies, or system of hierarchies, is
an outgrowth of the teachings and thinkings of the Jewish doctors
or rabbis from a time very far back, and is actually a reflection of
esoteric Babylonian teachings.
As the Book of Genesis (the first few chapters of it at least) is very
largely taken from the Babylonians, so the Jews derived their
angelology, or system of angels or angelical hierarchies, from that
same source. Now this teaching found its finest expression in the
Jewish theosophy called the Qabbalah (this word, as said before,
meaning "to receive" — i.e., traditionary lore handed down from
teacher to teacher), and the teaching of the hierarchies in the
Qabbalah is fundamental, the whole system being based on it: it
implies the intermingling and the interchange of all life and all
beings, between low and high. Hence the Qabbalah is, so far as it
goes, a faithful reflection of the esoteric philosophy. The
Qabbalah as outlined in the book Zohar, a word meaning
"splendor" — this book is often called the Bible of the Qabbalists
— is in large part exoteric from the theosophical viewpoint,
because all our teachings, with regard to certain things, are
in the
Zohar, but not all the explanations are there, and this fact makes
the book exoteric, in so far as the keys are lacking.

The teaching in the Qabbalah with regard to the hierarchies and

the ladder of life is that from the Boundless, or Eyn Soph, down to
infinity below, the ladder of life consists of steps, or degrees, or
grades, of consciousness and of consciousnesses, and of being and
of beings, and that there is a constant interchange, an interflow of
communication, between these innumerable grades of the
various hierarchies or worlds. Precisely our teaching — naturally.
The Qabbalistic hierarchy consists of, or more accurately is
typified by, nine grades or planes or spheres hanging from a
tenth (or a first, if you like), all together making ten. They bore
the following names. The first is called the Crown, the Primordial
Point, the first and highest of the Sephiroth (sometimes spelt
Sefiroth) or the grades, steps, planes, or spheres, before spoken of.
The next Sephira is called Wisdom. (We have no time now to give
the Hebrew words here; they may be found in any book on the
Qabbalah; see Isis Unveiled,
II, 213, and Theosophical Glossary.)
The next, the third, is called Understanding or, perhaps better,
Intelligence. These form the head and two shoulders of the Adam
Qadmon, or Archetypal Man, or Ideal Man. According to the
thinking of the Qabbalists, as these hierarchies are particularly
and sympathetically related to certain respective parts of the
human body, so these three just spoken of have each its
respective relation: certain parts about the crown of the head, or
in or from the head, or belonging to the head, for the first
Sephira; the right shoulder to Wisdom; the left to Understanding.
The right arm is called Greatness, or sometimes Love; the left arm
is called Power, or sometimes Justice, and is considered a
feminine quality; the breast or region of the chest or heart is
called Beauty. The right leg (remember I am speaking generally of
the Archetypal Man) is called Subtility; the left leg is called
Majesty, and is considered a feminine quality. The generative
organs are called
Foundation.

Now these make nine. Each of these grades is assumed to

emanate from the one above it. First the Crown; from the Crown,
Wisdom; from the Crown and Wisdom, Understanding; from the
three — Crown, Wisdom, and Understanding — comes the fourth;
from the four all together comes the fifth; from the five all
together comes the sixth; and so on down to the ninth; and the
ninth, with all the forces and qualities of the others behind it,
produces this round being, an egg-shaped container or "carrier"
or vehicle, an auric egg; and this auric egg, as the tenth, is called
Kingdom, or sometimes Dwelling Place, because it is the fruit or
result or emanation or field of action of all the others,
manifesting through these different planes of being.
Why should the hierarchies sometimes be numbered or reckoned
as seven, and sometimes as ten? Because ten is the most sacred
fundamental number in occultism. It is that upon which the
universe is built. The fabric of being is built along the lines of the
decad or ten. The Pythagoreans, members of one of the most
mystic of the ancient Greek schools of thinking, had what they
called the sacred Tetraktys, a word referring to the number four;
and how did they represent the Tetraktys? In this fashion: first a
point above and alone, the Monad; then two points below that, or
the Dyad; then three points below these, or the Triad; and then
four points below these, or the Tetrad — ten points altogether.
They had an oath which they considered the most sacred
adjuration of the Pythagorean School, which they uttered when
they swore by the "Holy Tetraktys." What is this oath? It is worth
remembering: "Yea, by the Tetraktys, which has supplied to our
soul the fountain containing the roots
of everflowing nature."
This is just full of profound thought. Finally, the Tetraktys
emblematized (among other things) the procession of beings into
manifestation. First the Primordial Point, then the line, then the
superficies, then the cube: 1+2+3+4=10.
What, finally, is the difference between the system of seven and
that of ten? The seven is the fundamental number of the
manifested universe; but over the seven hovers eternally the
infinite and immortal triad, the Unmanifest. This is the key. Some
religions specialize in sevens; but all religions have the ten, also,
in their various numerical schemes.

As H. P. Blavatsky says, the number ten is the secret or sephirical

principle of the universe, because on and through this denary
system the universe is formed and built. Man (as a whole) is
tenfold, the universe (as a whole) is tenfold, but both are
septenary in manifestation. Every atom, every living being, and
every universe is a complete hierarchy of ten degrees: three
highest considered as the root, and seven lower in active
manifestation. This root, or highest triad, is a Mystery-teaching,
concerning which very little open explanation is to be found even
in the ancient literatures.

In The Secret Doctrine, volume I, page 98, H. P. Blavatsky first

enumerates certain things in the Stanza there printed, to wit:
"The Voice of the Word, Svabhavat, the Numbers, for he is One
and Nine," to which she joins the following as a footnote:

Which makes ten, or the perfect number applied to the

"Creator," the name given to the totality of the Creators
blended by the Monotheists into One, as the "Elohim,"
Adam Kadmon or Sephira — the Crown — are the
androgyne synthesis of the 10 Sephiroth, who stand for the
symbol of the manifested Universe in the popularised
Kabala. The esoteric Kabalists, however, following the
Eastern Occultists, divide the upper Sephirothal triangle
from the rest (or Sephira, Chochmah and Binah [that is, the
Crown, Wisdom and Understanding]), which leaves seven
Sephiroth. . . .
Then on page 360 she says in relation to other matters: "The 10,
being the sacred number of the universe, was secret and esoteric .
. ."; and on page 362: ". . . the whole astronomical and geometrical
portion of the secret sacerdotal language was built upon the
number 10, . . ."

It may be interesting and well worth while to point out here that
these quotations give the reason why the numerical computations
of the esoteric philosophy have not yet been satisfactorily solved
by students with a mathematical turn of mind — because they
will persist in working with the number seven, alone, in spite of
Madame Blavatsky's open hints to the contrary, for she says
openly that the number seven must be used in calculations in a
manner hitherto unknown to Western mathematics. The hint
ought to be sufficient in itself alone, because the seven,
considered as a basis for computation, is a very unwieldy and
awkward number with which to calculate. The subject is alluded
to in veiled manner in her esoteric Instructions, number I, page 9,
in speaking of Padmapani, or the "Lotus-handed" — one of the
names in Tibetan mysticism of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. H.
P. Blavatsky says, after narrating a legend concerning this
character:

He vowed to perform the feat before the end of the Kalpa,

adding that in case of failure he wished that his head
would split into numberless fragments. The Kalpa closed;
but Humanity felt him not within its cold, evil heart. Then
Padmapani's head split and was shattered into a thousand
fragments. Moved with compassion, the Deity re-formed
the pieces into ten heads, three white and seven of various
colors. And since that day man has become a perfect
number, or TEN.

In this allegory the potency of SOUND, COLOR AND

 NUMBER is so ingeniously introduced as to veil the real
esoteric meaning. To the outsider it reads like one of the
many meaningless fairy-tales of creation; but it is pregnant
with spiritual and divine, physical and magical, meaning.
From Amitabha — no color or the white glory — are born
the seven differentiated colors of the prism. These each
emit a corresponding sound, forming the seven of the
musical scale. As Geometry among the Mathematical
Sciences is specially related to Architecture, and also —
proceeding to Universals — to Cosmogony, so the ten Jods
of the Pythagorean Tetrad, or Tetraktys, being made to
symbolize the Macrocosm, the Microcosm, or man, its
image, had also to be divided into ten points. For this
Nature herself has provided, as will be seen.

One more citation, in order to finish the subject. On page 15, H. P.

Blavatsky writes shortly as follows:

As the Universe, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, are

ten, why should we divide Man into seven "principles"?
This is the reason why the perfect number ten is divided
into two, a reason which cannot be given out publicly: In
their completeness, i.e., super-spiritually and physically,
the forces are TEN: to-wit, three on the subjective and
inconceivable, and seven on the objective plane. Bear in
mind that I am now giving you the description of the two
opposite poles: (a) the primordial triangle, which as soon as
it has reflected itself in the "Heavenly Man," the highest of
the lower seven — disappears, returning into "Silence and
Darkness"; and (b) the astral paradigmatic man, whose
Monad (Atma) is also represented by a triangle, as it has to
become a ternary in conscious Devachanic interludes.

Chapter 8
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Eight
Traces of the Esoteric Philosophy in Genesis.

The oldest religions of the world — exoterically, for the

esoteric root or foundation is one — are the Indian, the
Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes the Chaldean, the
outcome of these — entirely lost to the world now, except
in its disfigured Sabeanism as at present rendered by the
archaeologists; then, passing over a number of religions
that will be mentioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically,
as in the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian
Magism; exoterically, as in Genesis and the Pentateuch, a
collection of allegorical legends. Read by the light of the
Zohar, the initial four chapters of Genesis are the fragment
of a highly philosophical page in the World's Cosmogony.
— The Secret Doctrine, I, 10-11

The first lesson taught in Esoteric philosophy is, that the

incognizable Cause does not put forth evolution, whether
consciously or unconsciously, but only exhibits periodically
different aspects of itself to the perception of finite Minds.
Now the collective Mind — the Universal — composed of
various and numberless Hosts of Creative Powers, however
infinite in manifested Time, is still finite when contrasted
with the unborn and undecaying Space in its supreme
essential aspect. That which is finite cannot be perfect. . . .

The Hebrew Elohim, called in the translations "God," and

who create "light," are identical with the Aryan Asuras.
They are also referred to as the "Sons of Darkness" as a
philosophical and logical contrast to light immutable and
eternal. . . . The Zoroastrian Amshaspends create the world
 in six days or periods also, and rest on the Seventh;
whereas that Seventh is the first period or "day," in esoteric
philosophy, (Primary creation in the Aryan cosmogony). It
is that intermediate Aeon which is the Prologue to creation,
and which stands on the borderland between the
uncreated eternal Causation and the produced finite
effects; a state of nascent activity and energy as the first
aspect of the eternal immutable Quiescence. In Genesis, on
which no metaphysical energy has been spent, but only an
extraordinary acuteness and ingenuity to veil the esoteric
Truth, "Creation" begins at the third stage of
manifestation.
"God" or the Elohim are the "Seven Regents" of Pymander.
They are identical with all the other Creators. — Ibid., II,
487-8

THIS EVENING we commence our study with the following

citation from the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, page 224:

Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the

offspring of the Elohim of Life (or Pitris); in its qualitative
and physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the
"Ancestors," the lowest Dhyanis, or Spirits of the Earth; for
its moral, psychic, and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a
group of divine Beings, the name and characteristics of
which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the
handiwork of hosts of various spirits; distributively, the
tabernacles of those hosts; and occasionally and singly, the
vehicles of some of them.

And on page 225, second paragraph:

Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of

the "Lord God"; but he is the child of the Elohim, so
arbitrarily changed into the singular masculine gender.
The first Dhyanis, commissioned to "create" man in their
 image, could only throw off their shadows, like a delicate
model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. (See
Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out
of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners
were many.

It seems advisable first to speak of two things, a less thing and a

greater thing; we take the less thing first. As has been seen from
the beginning of our studies, we have been bringing forward for
our consideration at every one of our meetings teachings found in
the great religions of the world, mostly of the past, which are
similar to or identical with our own. This has been done in order
to join all these teachings, as found in the old religions, with the
teachings as given by H. P. Blavatsky, that is, with theosophy. This
shows the universality of thought in religions and thereby
induces a spirit of kindliness and brotherhood, and leads to the
accentuation of the moral sense which so greatly lacks in the
comparative religious study of the doctrines of the predominant
ancient religions by the mass of scholars in the Occident today. It
does away at one sweep with the egoistic opinion that "we are
more perfect and morally better than you are," with the idea that
we Occidentals are a
superior people, and with the idea that a
certain race and a certain religion are, by the fiat of the Deity, the
chosen receptacles or vehicles for the only truth; that all the other
religions are false, and that those who professed them in ancient
times were merely brands prepared for the burning!

The second thing and the greater is this. We have constantly been
bringing forward certain religious or philosophical analogies and
certain points of view thereupon which are veritable doctrinal
touchstones; our aim being that those who may read these studies
shall be enabled to have at hand, and — through the thoughts
therein expressed — to have clear-set in their own minds, keys by
which to test the truth and reality of the essential or fundamental
doctrines of these ancient religions, because all these doctrines in
their essence and in their inner meaning, in those old religions,
are true. In this sense Brahmanism is true, in this sense Buddhism
is true, likewise Confucianism, and the doctrines of Lao-tse called
Taoism. They are all true in that sense.

But all of them have been, in greater or less degree, subject to the
influences of certain creations of human fancy; and for one who
has not been trained in these studies, it is often difficult to
separate the merely human fancies from the nature-true
teachings of the ancient wisdom-religion. All the ancient religions
sprang from that same source — theosophy, as it is called today.
But it is, as said before, sometimes difficult to know what is the
original teaching and what the merely human accretion or
creation. These creations of human phantasy and irreligious fear
are very evident in the two modern monotheistic religions which
have sprung from Judaism, that is to say, in Christianity and in
Islam. In these two the human accretions of phantasy are very
marked; but in both of them there exists a solid substratum of
mystical thought based on the ancient teachings of the wisdom-
religion.

In Christianity it is particularly in the Neopythagorean and the

Neoplatonic forms, as Christianized somewhat and as manifested
in the teachings of Dionysius, called the Areopagite; and in the
later Mohammedan religion it is manifested somewhat more
distantly in the borrowings from Greek thought mainly, though
also from other sources, as we find them outlined by the
Mohammedan doctors and thinkers, such as Ibn Sina, commonly
called Avicenna in Europe, a Persian, who lived and wrote at the
end of the tenth century; by Averroes in Cordova, Spain, properly
called Roshd, who flourished during the twelfth century; and by
another eminent Mohammedan scholar (mentioning these three
out of many) Al Farabi, of the tenth century, by descent a Turk.
The ancient wisdom also affected the teachings of Mohammed in
a highly mystical form, though greatly changed, as shown in the
Sufi doctrines, which are particularly and manifestly of Persian
origin, owing their rise to that spiritual-minded and subtil people,
the
Persians. These doctrines are a very welcome contrast with
the hard and mechanical religious beliefs which arose out of the
egoism of the crude Arabian tribes of that period.

The main theme of our study this evening is the consideration of

the opening verses of the Book of Beginnings called Genesis — the
first book in the Law of the Jews. We shall first read the English
translation of these verses as found in the "authorized version,"
and of the same chapters we shall make a translation ourselves,
in which you will be enabled to see the difference from the
former; and we will explain what the difference is, and how it
comes to be, and for this purpose we shall have to go into a brief
exposition of certain peculiarities of the ancient Hebrew tongue.

In the authorized version of the English Bible, called the version

of King James, the Book of Genesis opens as follows:

1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness
was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters.

3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided
the light from the darkness.

5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called
Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of

the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
 7. And God made the firmament and divided the waters
which were under the firmament from the waters which
were above the firmament: and it was so.

8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening

and the morning were the second day.

9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be

gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land
appear: and it was so.

10. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering
together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it
was good.

26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth.

27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of

God created he him; male and female created he them.

In the first place, Hebrew is a Semitic tongue, one of the company

of languages of which Arabic and Ethiopic and Aramaean (or
Aramaic) and Phoenician and Assyrian are other members. The
Hebrew in which the Bible is written is called the Biblical
Hebrew. It is ancient Hebrew. The language spoken in Palestine at
the time when Jesus is supposed to have lived upon the earth in
Jerusalem and around that district was Aramaean, and not
Hebrew, which was then extinct as a spoken language, and of
course when he spoke to his disciples he spoke to them in
Aramaean.

The Hebrew language as found in the ancient manuscripts of the

Bible — none earlier, probably, than the ninth century of the
Christian era — is written with "points," taking the place of
vowels, because Hebrew writing is a consonantal system; its
alphabet is wholly consonantal. It has the aleph or a, which is
nevertheless reckoned as a consonant. It has the waw or w, and it
also is reckoned as a consonant; and it has the yod or y, also
reckoned as a consonant, but it has no vowel signs proper.

Thus, the language is written without true vowels. Furthermore,

in the most ancient manuscripts — and certainly it was so in the
original or pre-Christian era texts — the letters are all run
together, following one after another, without separation of
words. There were some marks possibly, by which certain things
in the text were pointed out as of particular importance; but the
letters followed one another interminably, with no separation
into words, and without vowels. So, you see, there is an open field
for many kinds of speculation, even for very able Hebrew
scholars, as to what any certain combination of letters found in
this endless stream may have originally meant. This way of
writing was universal, practically, in ancient times; the earliest
Greek and Latin manuscripts of the New Testament are written in
this fashion, which merely followed the ancient custom, as may
still be seen on the ruins of public buildings in Greece and Rome.
Obviously, interpretation, or correct reading, was
often dubious:
the reader might be very doubtful of the original sense of a
passage in a manuscript so written.

So much was this the case that there arose in Palestine at an

undetermined date — but we know that it may go back to about
the time of the fall of Jerusalem before Titus or, say, about the
beginning of the Christian era — a school of interpreters, who
interpreted by what they were pleased to call "tradition,"
masorah, that is to say, "traditional" knowledge, how the Hebrew
Bible should be read, how these streams of consonants should be
divided up in reading into words, and what vowel points should
be put there in order to fix the pronunciation in accordance
therewith. This system of "points" was probably not introduced
into the text till the seventh century. This school was called the
School of the Masorah, and its expounders and followers were
called Masoretes.

This School of the Masorah reached its fullest development and

completion probably in the ninth century of the Christian era. But
while this school depended upon what it called tradition, there is
no certainty of proof that their interpretations of their own
combinations of letters into words were always correct. They
seemed to have got, however, and to have passed down to
posterity, some knowledge of the general original sense.

In order to illustrate this matter, let us take the first five English
words of Genesis: we drop all the vowels, retaining only the
consonants, and we have this: nthbgnnnggdcrtd. You could here
insert vowels almost ad libitum in seeking a meaning. "In the
beginning God created," and now imagine endless lines of such
consonants!

Add to it the fact that Hebrew writing begins at the right hand
and runs to the left. Furthermore, it begins at what we would call
the end of the book, and runs to the front, as writings in other
Semitic tongues do. This fashion of writing was not uncommon
with other peoples in ancient days. Greek and Latin writing in
ancient times sometimes followed this system, but later, as you
can see today if you have been in Greece or in Rome, in the old
inscriptions on the temples and elsewhere, it usually began at the
left and went to the right, usually with no breaks for words. In the
very old Greek writings (and elsewhere too) they also had what
they called boustrophedon, from two Greek words meaning "ox-
turning," taken from the path followed by the plowing ox: when it
starts, let us say, from one end of a field it goes to the other end
and then turns and goes back in the opposite direction, parallel
with the other line, in plowing its furrows. This method is not
followed in the Hebrew
manuscripts of the Bible that we possess.

Now, in beginning our translation of the first verses of Genesis,

we are met in the very first two words by a difficulty. These
words can be translated in two or three different ways. The
translation as given in the European Bibles, and as found in the
authorized English version, is a fairly correct rendering so far as
mere words go; but anyone who has undertaken translations
from a foreign language and particularly from a dead one, and
more especially again from a religious tongue and one evidently
written more or less in cipher, can realize the difficulties there lie
in picking out the various meanings which any one word may
have, in choosing which is the word that is best for the
translation, which word carries the meaning nearest to the
intention of the writer. The first two words as usually read are be
and reshith; and so divided, their meanings are as here follow: be
means "in," reshith means "beginning," this second word being a
feminine
form and coming originally from the masculine word
resh, or rosh, meaning (among several other things) "head," "chief
part," "first part." Hence we may translate be reshith as "in first
part," or "in highest part," etc.

But this same combination of letters — brashith — could also be

translated (by dividing differently) as bore, one word, a verb, and
shith, another word, a noun: bore meaning "forming," and shith,
an "institution," "establishment," "arrangement." "Forming the
establishment (or arrangement)" — of what? The text goes on to
say what is arranged or established — by arranging "formed the
Elohim heaven and earth."

Furthermore, the word resh, or rosh, above selected, may also

mean "head" as before said, signifying "wisdom," or "knowledge":
hence, "in wisdom the Elohim formed heavens and earth."
Remember, it is permissible to put in vowels almost at choice,
because vowels do not exist in the original text of the book, in the
Bible, itself; hence the opening for more than merely one
interpretation.

Resh or rosh, then, also means "head"; it also means "wisdom"; it

also means "host" or "multitude." So here we may select still
another — a fourth — translation: beresh, "in multitude," or "by
multitude." Yithbare would then be the next word, "formed
Elohim." Here comes again another remarkable change in
meaning — and I am making these remarks in order to point out
how the Hebrew text of the Bible may bear many translations.
Supposing then that we divide the first fourteen Hebrew letters of
the text into the following word-combinations: be-resh yithbare
elohim, we get (by using yithbare, which is one of the forms of the
Hebrew verb, called the reflexive form, meaning action upon
oneself) the following translation: "by multitude," "through
multitude, the gods formed themselves." What follows in the text?
"into the heavens and the
earth"; that is, "in a host (or multitude)
the gods formed (made) themselves into the heavens and the
earth." See the vast difference in meaning from the authorized
version. This last translation we believe is the best; it shows at
once the identity of thought with all other ancient cosmogonic
systems.

"By multitude formed" (or "evolved": this word bara means to

fatten," "to shape," "to become heavy or gross," to cut," "to form,"
"to be born," "to evolve") — "by (or in) multitude" or "through (or
in) multitude evolved Elohim themselves into the heavens and
the earth."

Now the fourth word, elohim: this is a very curious word. The first
part of it alone is el, meaning "god," divinity, from which comes
the second, a feminine form, eloh "goddess"; im is merely the
masculine plural. So, if we translate every element in this single
word it would mean, "god, goddess, plural" — showing the
androgynous essence of the divinities, as it were: the polar
opposites of the hierarchy, the essential duality in life.

Verse 2: "And the earth became ethereal." Now the second word, a
verb, in the Hebrew text of the second verse answers to two Latin
verbs: esse "to be," and fieri, "to become"; but almost always its
original sense is fieri, "to become," like the Greek gignomai,
meaning "to become," to grow into a new state of something. "And
the earth became" or "grew into ethereality." The two next words
(tohu and bohu) of the text, which we here translate "ethereality,"
are very difficult words rightly to interpret. They both mean
"emptiness," "waste, immateriality," hence "dissolution"; the
fundamental idea means something unsubstantial, not materially
gross. We continue our translation: "And darkness upon the face
of the ethers. And the ruahh (the spirit-soul) of the gods (of
Elohim) (fluttered, hovered) brooding." The word we translate
"brooding" is derived from and means the action of a hen which
flutters and hovers and broods over the eggs in its nest. How
graphic, how significant is this figure of speech!

You see the same thought here that you see in practically all the
ancient teachings: the figure or symbol of the cosmic soul
brooding over the waters of space, preparing the world egg, that
of the cosmic egg and the divine bird laying the cosmic egg. "And
the spirit-soul of Elohim brooding upon the face of the waters,"
says the Hebrew text. Now "waters," as we have shown before,
was a common expression or symbol for space, the ethereal
expansion, as it were. We continue our translation:

And said (the) Elohim (the gods) — light, come-into-being!

 and light came-into-being. And saw (the) gods the light, that
(it was) good. And divided Elohim between the light and
between the darkness. And called Elohim the light day, and
the darkness called they night. And (there) came-into-being
eve, and (there) came-into-being morn. Day one. And said
Elohim, (let there) come-into-being an expanse in (the)
midst of the waters, and let it be a separator (divider)
between waters and waters. And made Elohim (or the
gods) the expanse, and they separated between the waters
which (were) below the expanse, and between the waters
which (were) above the expanse, and (it) came-to-be so.
And called Elohim (the gods) the expanse heavens, and
(there) came-into-being eve, and (there) came-into-being
morn. Day second. And said Elohim (the gods), (let there)
be-gathered-together [i.e., solidified, condensed] the waters
above the heavens into one place, and (let there) be-seen
the dry-part [the solidified or
manifested part — the word
means "dry," in opposition to humidity; humidity means
water, standing for space, therefore, the collected matter of
a planet to be, of a solar system to be, or a universe to be],
and (it) came-to-be so. And called the gods the dry-part
earth, and the solidification (gathering-together) of the
waters called they seas. And saw Elohim (the gods) that (it
was) good.

Now turn to verses 26, 27, 28 of the same, the first, chapter:

And said (the gods) Elohim, Let us make humanity [the

word is Adam] in our shadowy image [in our shadow, in
our phantom; the word is tselem], according to our pattern
(or model). And let them descend into the fish of the sea
and into the flying creatures of the heavens, and into the
beast, and into all the earth, and into all moving creatures
which move upon the earth. And formed [or shaped or
 evolved, the same verb as above, bara] Elohim (the gods)
humanity in their phantom, in the shadowy image of
Elohim, formed (or evolved) they him.

Now come two very interesting words, usually translated "male

and female," which are two of the meanings respectively found in
the dictionaries; but the root-meanings of these words are
"thinker and receiver" (or receptacle): "thinker and receptacle
evolved they them. And blessed them the Elohim," that is, the
Elohim blessed them, "and said to them the Elohim, be fruitful,
increase, and fill the earth," and so forth.

You see, therefore, that here, merely by using other words than
those usually chosen by Christian translators, or later Jewish
translators, and yet recognized dictionary words, and by forcing
no meanings, we have found the identical meanings of the
esoteric teachings as outlined in The Secret Doctrine when
treating of these subjects. First the hierarchy and its manifested
divinities evolving the universe or kosmos out of themselves,
using the reflexive form of the Hebrew verb bara, as shown
above. Furthermore, a study of the first verse of Genesis will
show us that the evolution treated in it has no relation solely and
especially to the creation of this earth or of any other particular
earth, but is a general doctrine having reference rather to the
first manifestation of material being in ethereal space, and that
the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea and the beasts, which
are spoken of, do not necessarily refer (although they could) to
the particular animals which we
know under those names on
earth, but do also refer (in accord with a well-known fact of
ancient mythology) to the "animals of the heavens," of which we
spoke in our last study, i.e., to every globe of the starry spheres, to
every nebula and to every comet, each such being considered in
the ancient teachings to be a living being, an "animal," having its
physical corpus or body, and having behind it its director, or
governor, or divine essence, or spirit.

Furthermore, we see that the Elohim evolved man, humanity, out

of themselves, and told them to become, then to enter into and
inform these other creatures. Indeed, these sons of the Elohim
are, in our teachings, the children of light, the sons of light, which
are we ourselves, and yet different from ourselves, because
higher, yet they are our own very selves inwardly. In fact, the
Elohim became, evolved into, their own offspring, remaining in a
sense still always the inspiring light within, or rather above,
according to the interpretation authorized by the very words
chosen from the dictionary and flouting no rule of Hebrew
grammar. For, following the ancient teachings of the esoteric
philosophy, and strengthened by exactly similar thought in the
Babylonian religious teachings from which these Hebrew
teachings originally came, we see that the Elohim projected
themselves into the nascent forms of the then "humanity," which
thenceforward were "men,"
however imperfect their
development still was.

What were these Elohim, these divinities, these gods? In the

hierarchical system of the Qabbalah they are the sixth in
derivation from above, from the first or the Crown, and thus are
by no means the highest. They were, cosmogonically, the
manifested formers or weavers of the web of the universe.
Jehovah, spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis, is the third
angelic potency, counting downwards from the Crown — the
summit of the hierarchy of the Qabbalah.

In chapter five of Genesis, verses 1 and 2, there is an interesting

expression. We translate:

This (the) book of the generations of humanity (Adam). In

the day of Elohim (of the gods) evolving humanity, in the
pattern (or model) of the Elohim, made they him. Thinker-
 and-receptacle made they them, and blessed them and
called their name humanity (or Adam) in the day of their
making.

Evidently, it is not here a question of a single human pair, of a

man and a woman in our sense, but of nascent androgynous
humanity, and they had one name, Adam, and their attributes
were thinker and casket (or receptacle): ethereal beings —
children of the Elohim, who are themselves — capable of thinking
and of receiving and understanding and developing under the
lessons which were to follow from their incarnations in the lower
fleshly beings they themselves evolved, and signified under the
terms as set forth here: the "fowls" of the "air," and the "fish" of
the "sea," and every living thing which moveth upon the face of
the earth.

These ancient writings have more than one mystical or esoteric

application or, as H. P. Blavatsky says, they have more than one
key. But, again, what or who were these Elohim? They were our
monads — as the term is used in theosophy. It is curious, by the
way, that Leibniz, the great Slavic-German philosopher, evolved a
theory of monadic evolution which is singularly like our own in
some respects. For him, the universe was replete with progressing
entities, which he called monads, spiritual beings which evolved
through the forces innate in themselves, yet acting and reacting
upon each other — a faithful echo, in so far as it goes, of the
ancient wisdom-religion.

Again, what do we mean when we speak respectively of

emanation, evolution, and creation? Emanation and evolution are
closely similar in meaning. Emanation is from a Latin word
meaning "flowing out," and in all the ancient teachings of
importance the idea was that the gods actively, transitively,
"flowed out" from themselves their offspring or children.
Evolution is also a Latin word and means "rolling out,"
"unfolding," something which is unfolded; and obviously a thing
which is "flowed out," using the words transitively, is also
unrolled out, unfolded out.

Now creation originally in its Latin sense meant practically the

same as does this Hebrew word bara. It meant "making,"
"shaping," "carving," "cutting" — of course out of preexisting
material or matter, and the Christian theory (which was more or
less that of the Jews in their later days) that God made the world
"out of nothing" is preposterous, absurd, both historically and
linguistically. It is founded on no ancient teaching whatever, and
it arose naturally enough, in a sense, from the monotheistic
mania which endeavored to make God extra-cosmic, apart from
the universe, and above it, a pure spirit, having no relation of
ineluctable union with his creatures, God the "Father and Maker"
of them, and yet an absolute personal nonentity — having no
"body, parts, or passions," yet a Person withal! Of course the two
concepts are contradictory and mutually destructive, and had we
the time it would be
easy to dilate further on the preposterous
absurdity of which we speak.

We can see, therefore, in closing our study this evening, that it is

very difficult to say which of these three, emanation, evolution,
creation, is first in the order of procession. Was it emanation,
followed by evolution, followed by creation; or was it evolution,
followed by emanation, followed by creation? Certainly, creation
— in its original sense of shaping, forming — comes the last of the
three, as is easily shown. The difficulty lies in the fact that in
every cosmic act of emanation we immediately perceive an act of
evolution or unfolding; and in every act of evolution we
immediately perceive an act of emanation. Every monad pari
passu passes from one into the other, just as all mankind evolved
pari passu from one into the other. We should, probably, say that
emanation, evolution, creation, work simultaneously and
coordinately, during manifestation.

But taking the question from a purely philosophical standpoint, it

is probably accurate and best to say that the first step from what
we call the Unmanifest into the manifest is emanation, a flowing
out from its source of a monad or rather a host of monads which,
as they in turn follow the pattern set for them by their source and
their karmic past, grow darker, and more material,
proportionately as they recede from their central fount of life;
and, again, as they emanate, they also evolve, bringing out from
within that which they innately are or have, and they do this in
accordance with the karmic lines or patterns upon which we
have faintly touched in previous studies, when speaking of the
skandhas, because every act of emanation and of evolution
begins a new life cycle following the pralaya or rest period of a
former life period or manvantara. Then finally, when the period
of self-consciousness is reached in the cyclical progression of
evolution, comes a period of will, conscious choice, when man
begins to "create" or fashion voluntarily; that is, through the
exercise of his will and his intuition and his intellect he carves his
own destiny and likewise affects the world creationally which
exists around him.

Chapter 9
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Nine
Outline of Esoteric Cosmogony, Globes, Rounds and Races: Cosmic
Time Periods.

Can one fail to recognise in Creuzer great powers of

intuition, when, being almost unacquainted with the Aryan
Hindu philosophies, little known in his day, he wrote: —

"We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk

of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, the
natural good sense and the upright judgment of the ancient
peoples, quite foreign to our entirely material ideas upon
celestial mechanics and physical sciences . . . could not see
in the stars and planets only that which we see: namely,
simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits
in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction
or repulsion; but they saw in them living bodies, animated
by spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature.
. . . This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to
nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and
unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and
the political aspects were all blended together . . ."
("Egypte," pp. 450 to 455.)

It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a

correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of
everything in the universe — of Heaven and Earth,
between which he is a living link. Without such a
psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no
science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge
must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only. —
The Secret Doctrine, II, 369-70
WE OPEN our study tonight by reading once again from pages 224
and 225 of The Secret Doctrine, volume I, as follows:

Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the

offspring of the Elohim of Life (or Pitris); in its qualitative
and physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the
"Ancestors," the lowest Dhyanis, or Spirits of the Earth; for
its moral, psychic, and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a
group of divine Beings, the name and characteristics of
which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the
handiwork of hosts of various spirits; distributively, the
tabernacles of those hosts; and occasionally and singly, the
vehicles of some of them.

And the second paragraph on page 225:

Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of

the "Lord God"; but he is the child of the Elohim, so
arbitrarily changed into the singular masculine gender.
The first Dhyanis, commissioned to "create" man in their
image, could only throw off their shadows, like a delicate
model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. (See
Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out
of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners
were many.

In continuation of our study of the esoteric sense underlying the

first chapter of Genesis, we must point out that this chapter does
not deal with man as we now know him. The "man" spoken of
therein is the spiritual being which descended into matter in the
first round of this manvantara, as a spiritual, or rather ethereal,
being; and consequently, when in verse 27 we translated the
peculiar phrase, "thinker and receiver formed (or evolved) they
them," we must understand that this allusion does not refer to
sexual man and woman of the present time. These words, thinker
and receiver, refer to the spiritual nature of the then ethereal
vehicles of humanity, not to our present-day man or woman; and
the word receiver can also be translated receptacle, the vehicle or
house of the higher nature. Also, at the period dealt with in this
verse 27, man in the general sense — humanity — was of double
sex, or androgyne; hence, obviously, there was no
"woman" then.
This first chapter practically ignores the first, purely sexless, state
of ethereal Adam, and enters upon its description of "man" when
the latter was already sinking into material existence as a semi-
self-conscious ethereal androgyne. In other words, the first
chapter does not detail the separation of the sexes, which
occurred far later. This general statement is plainly shown by
even the exoteric rendering of the teaching; but let us read from
another chapter of Genesis, verse 5 of chapter 2:

And every plant of the field before it was in the earth and
every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had
not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a
man to till the ground [italics ours].

"Man" had not yet come. Let me preface future explanations by

saying that this second chapter of Genesis deals with the third
and the fourth rounds of our manvantara, the latter or fourth
being our present round, and more particularly with the third
root-race of our fourth round; whereas chapter first is a highly
generalized and succinct Jewish epitome of early cosmogony, and
ends with a similarly brief allusion to rounds first and second.

And in verses 19, 20, 21, and 22, we find the following:

19. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast
of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them
unto Adam to see what he would call them: and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the
name thereof.
 20. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of
the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there
was not found an help meet for him.

21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon
Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed
up the flesh instead thereof;

22. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man,
made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

As in verse 5 above, I use here the ordinary English translation of

the so-called authorized version, although, as a matter of fact, a
very luminously different translation could be made of these
verses. It would lead us too far from our main point to do so now.

In the first place, this second chapter records a different method

from that recorded in chapter 1, and a change as regards the
evolving of the ethereal being from the Elohim, having reference
to the making of physical humanity, or "man," from the "dust of
the ground" (verse 7). In the second place, this English word rib of
verses 21 and 22 should be translated "side," the allusion being to
the separation of the androgyne or dual-sexed humanity of race
the third of our fourth round into sexed humanity as now
existent.

Now Plato in his Banquet (§ 190), alludes to this same historical

physiological fact of prehistory, and says that (one of) the early
races of mankind was bisexually formed; that they had great and
terrible powers, and that their wickedness and ambition waxed
very great, so that Zeus grew angry at their wickedness and
decided to cut them in two, as one would divide an egg with a
hair. This Zeus did; and bade Apollo to render the two halves
more shapely, etc. Apollo so did, and he closed up the flesh of the
two halves. Since then all mankind was man and woman. A
typically Platonic tale, imbodying actual facts of forgotten history.
This deals with the earliest portion of the fourth root-race, and
much more especially with the middle period of the third root-
race of the fourth — or present — round on this planet.

We will now leave for the present, with a few more words of
explanation, the outline of emanation and evolution as found in
the Jewish Bible; but before leaving it, it will be well to say a few
words on the question of the Elohim.

Elohim is a word frequently found in the Jewish Bible and is, as

stated in our last lecture, in itself an evidence of the polytheistic
bias, teachings, and beliefs, of the ancient Jewish people. The
Bible itself shows it. Usually this word — a plural common noun
— is to be translated as "gods." But in most places where it occurs
in the Hebrew text it is translated in the English authorized
version as "God." There is no true or solid reason for such a
translation; the proper rendering is gods. But the monotheistic
and Christian tendencies of the translators made them set the
translation for what they considered to be the best interests of the
Christian Church, and their God Almighty; so they translated it in
various places by various names, as, for instance, "judges" in
Exodus 21:6, 22:8-9, and in many other places; but the essential,
intrinsic meaning is always gods, or beings having divine
standing.

We now approach in our studies very difficult and, indeed, highly

esoteric matters. In the first place, let us never forget that the
Elohim, the gods, who are spoken of under various names in the
various religions of the ancient world as the creators or rather
evolvers or parents of mankind, are spiritual beings -- who are
ourselves. And the key to this apparent riddle is found in the
doctrine and exposition of the hierarchies of individualized life.

A hierarchy can be considered as an aggregate unit, as a collective

entity in the same sense that an army is; nevertheless, an army is
composed of units; and yet, again, this army of beings in any one
hierarchy is indeed from another aspect more than a mere
collective entity, because it is united in its apex, in what is
actually the fount of that hierarchy. This fount is the hyparxis or
spiritual sun from which all the other nine planes or classes of the
hierarchy emanate and evolve down to the lowest, thence
beginning a new hierarchy; even as the hyparxis of any one
hierarchy is the lowest class or plane of a superior hierarchy, and
so practically ad infinitum.

Man is a spiritual being throughout, through and through and

through. Matter itself is but one manifestation of spirit. We live in
a universe of spirit and, although matter exists, it exists as maya,
illusion; not as a mere illusionary nothing, but as something, as a
modality, so to say, of spirit. But as we grow higher into the upper
planes of the hierarchical scale, the maya, for the sphere of life
embraced by that hierarchy, fades away from before our eyes,
and we see truth in greater degree and progressively more widely
the higher we go.

With regard to the descent into matter, or falling into matter, of

mankind, that is to say, the descent into manifested being of the
spiritual entities, the spiritual hierarchy which man actually and
properly is, we must remember that we cannot understand this
profound subject very well without undertaking an outline or
sketch, more or less complete, of what are the rounds and races;
yet before doing this, we must clear away from our minds certain
scientific conceptions, or rather misconceptions, which have been
implanted in us by intensive teaching from childhood, and which
have for that reason become a part of our mental life.

Two main pillars of our modern science are the following: first,
the doctrine of the conservation of energy, that the amount of
force or of energy in the universe is constant, and no increase can
be created to add unto it, and no amount can be taken away from
it. The second great pillar is the doctrine of the correlation, or the
convertibility, of forces, that any force can, at least theoretically,
be converted into some other force, as mechanical motion into
electrical and electrical into mechanical, and so forth as regards
the other forces working in matter.

Now these two theories or doctrines of science do make an

approach in certain respects to the esoteric conception of the
wonderful element back of and causative of all the changes in
nature, but nevertheless the conception of the esoteric philosophy
cannot accept either of these two doctrinal pillars of science as
thus conceived. First, the doctrine of the conservation of energy:
it is perfectly true that no "new" force can be "created," and it is
likewise perfectly true that no energy or force can ever be utterly
lost. Forces are not converted or transformed, as the twin doctrine
of science has it; it is possible, however, for a force to pass from
one plane of being into another — to come into one plane from a
higher or, indeed, from a lower. In other words, it is possible for a
force- or energy-element outside of some plane to enter into being
and manifestation upon it. Hence, the materialistic doctrine of a
universe of dead, lifeless, nonvital matter —
nothing above it or
beyond it or below it or through it — cannot be accepted by
students of the esoteric philosophy.

As regards the correlation or convertibility of energy: it is true, in

one sense, that all the forces in the universe are correlated. It is a
fundamental axiom of theosophy that the universe, our universe,
any universe, is a living organism, and hence that its energies or
forces, and all of them, are correlated; but this does not mean that
one force can become another. The idea offends the very essence,
the very foundation of the esoteric teaching with regard to
manifestation, its hierarchies, and individual lives — all offspring
of the ONE LIFE. What happens is rather this: that one force is not
turned into or converted into another, but evokes or calls forth or
arouses into active life or manifestation a "force" which was not
"latent" — a curious contradiction of sense — but which was in
equilibrium. When the modern scientist speaks of latent or
potential energy, it is to the occultist a consummate logical
absurdity,
the very name energy or force meaning activity, and to
talk about a "latent force" is like talking about "latent activity" or
"dead life," or a square triangle, or a flat sphere. It is impossible
as long as we base our conception on the scientific postulates. But
— and note this well, please — an occultist could use this phrase
"latent force," because in his mouth the phrase has a meaning and
sense.

For instance, a spiritual — hence latent or nonmaterial — force is

not "converted" into matter; a material force is not "converted"
into spirit. Why? Because spirit and matter, or force and matter,
are not two, but fundamentally and essentially ONE. Throughout
the long period of manvantaric time there is a gradual evolution
of one thing into another, but this procession of life is not
accomplished along the lines or by the methods of the scientific
theories which apply in the doctrine called the convertibility of
material energy. The latter is a dream; it does not exist.

This is, in fact, a subject which we shall have to develop more

fully at a later period of our study, but we come now to the
question of the descent of spiritual and then ethereal man into
matter, down the ten steps of the hierarchical scale. We saw in a
former study that this descent was begun by the entrance through
a laya-center of the spiritual entities seeking manifestation on
lower planes, the time having struck for them to open their great
maha-manvantara or the world period which was to follow. As
soon as the spiritual essences touched the highest degree of the
lower plane, our fourth-matter plane, it stirred the particular
laya-center therein, to which they were directed by karmic
energy, into corresponding activity or sympathetic life. This first
manifestation thereof as seen from the same plane was the
nebula, a cloudy nebula; the second stage, aeons later, was a
spiral nebula; and the third, aeons still later, was an annular
nucleated nebula, like a ring with a globe in the center; the
latest
stage, before the evolving body settled into life as a planet, was a
comet, directed or drawn to that particular solar system or sun to
which it was karmically related in the former planetary
manvantara.

Now the life cycle or manvantara of a planet consists objectively

of seven rounds, or smaller manvantaras, around seven globes;
but this is preceded by three elemental cycles — ten in all. The
first three stages or cycles, call them the three elemental rounds,
if you will, are on the three archetypal planes above the seven.
This period is not yet really ethereal manifestation: it is the first
descent of the arupa (or bodiless) beings of spiritual nature into
subspiritual manifestation; but when the third or lowest of the
three archetypal planes has been traversed, by that time the life-
wave or life-essence has consolidated sufficiently in ethereal
matter to form an airy shape or ethereal globe. This globe thence
starts on the manvantaric cycle down into matter, a cycle which
proceeds in several stages, actually seven, and upon and in seven
globes, as already stated.

During the first round, upon the first globe, the life-wave has to
complete a ring consisting of seven root-races on that globe; after,
or rather at, the end of the evolution of each root-race,
respectively, the root-race's surplus energy is thereupon exploded
or protruded into the sphere lower and there forms the first,
second, third, etc., element of the second globe of the first round.
The life-energy or life-wave has to run a ring of seven root-races
in and upon that second globe, and when each such root-race has
reached its end there, its surplus energy is thereupon exploded or
protruded exactly as before into a magnetic center below it, and
the seven there, after all have arrived, form the third globe, and
so on till the seven globes are formed. This is the first round.
Beginning with the second round on the seven globes, the process
is altered in important particulars, because all the seven globes
are already formed, as globes.

At the end of the first round there is a planetary obscuration or

rest period, when the entities leave the last globe, the seventh,
and enter into a (lower) nirvanic period of manvantaric repose,
answering to the devachanic or between-life states of the human
entity between its respective lives. And so also at the end of the
second round, and of the third, when we reach the fourth, which
is our present round.

As the life-wave cycles down into matter, it grows with every

yuga (or age) grosser and more material, until the middle of the
fourth round (ours), when it begins to ascend. Every round is
grosser than its preceding one until the present, our fourth, the
most material, is reached. This descent is called the shadowy arc,
or cycle of darkness. We have, already, passed the lowest or
middle period of the fourth round, and in consequence now have
begun the ascending arc, or the luminous arc. We have three and
a half more rounds to run before we reach the end of the kalpa,
or planetary manvantara, when the great nirvana or paranirvana
of the entire septenary planetary chain of the seven globes takes
place.
Now as regards the geometrical outline of the course followed by
this descent into matter, we may consider it to be in the form of
an epicycloid. Let me try to explain diagrammatically what is
here meant by an epicycloid. An epicycloid is formed when a
point on a small circle, which runs around and upon the convex
side of the circumference of a larger circle, traces a curve which
touches the circumference of the larger circle at the beginning
and end of each revolution of the smaller circle thereupon, as at A
and B in the figure. The curve AB is the epicycloid. For instance,
this figure shows the two circles: we will say that the point on the
smaller circle begins its curve at A, rolling upwards to the left; at
B the point on the smaller circle has completed a full revolution;
the curve AB is the epicycloid.

Any point on this smaller circle as the latter rolls along the
outside of the circumference of the larger circle will describe or
generate a curve, which is an epicycloid. There is a geometrical
relation between the commensurable radii of any two circles: for
instance, if the radius of this smaller circle is one and the radius
of the larger circle is seven, the proportion being 1 : 7, the rolling
point will describe or generate seven arcs or cusps around and
upon the circumference of the larger circle.

Each one of these seven arcs represents here, geometrically, a

globe of a round. (Equally well does it represent geometrically
one of the seven root-races on each globe during any round.) In
the first round, the life-wave, starting from the seventh or highest
plane, after its third full elemental cycle of and in the arupa
world, begins to form the rupa or form world; and as the smaller
circle rolls along the circumference of the greater cycle, so to say,
the life-wave (or globe) progressively grows more material, each
one of these arcs which the cycling smaller circle makes on the
circumference of the greater, representing a sphere of being, and
also geometrically represents the life-wave of the planet
beginning the evolution of material existence, "rising upward" or
increasing in material density until it reaches its maximum of
materiality, and then "descending" or decreasing in materiality
until it again touches the plane of departure, the circumference of
the
greater circle (or cycle).

The process by which the spirit descends into matter is called in

Sanskrit pravritti (which we may paraphrase into English as
"earth-birth," or "earth-day"), practically the same word as
evolution or emanation in our modern tongues; and the process
of entering upon or ascending along the luminous arc, ultimately
to find itself home again in the spiritual world, is called nivritti.
Both words are from the Sanskrit root vrit, meaning "to revolve"
or "to roll." The prefix pra answers to the preposition "forth" or
"forward," and the prefix ni to the prepositional phrases "out of,"
"away from," hence backwards, or reverse action. Pravritti is
therefore used to mean the evolution or emanation of matter,
which is equivalent to the involution of spirit; nivritti, the
evolution of spirit — the reverse process.

What are the durations of the time periods during which the life-
wave manifests in the manvantara of seven rounds, and in the
seven respective planets of each round? As H. P. Blavatsky has
told us, the doctrines concerning the time periods have been from
immemorial time considered too esoteric to be given to the
outward world in anything at all approaching fullness of teaching
or detail, but throughout the teachings that have been openly
given there are many hints of immense value. For instance, the
time required for one round — that is, the cycle from globe A to
the last globe of the seven (we will call it Z), starting from the
root-Manu or collective "humanity" of globe A and ending with
the seed-Manu or collective "humanity" of globe Z — is called a
round-manvantara, and its period is 306,720,000 years. It is called
manvantara because it is the "reign of one Manu" — say, a certain
quality of humanity. Now this word manvantara
is Sanskrit and
means "between Manus," i.e., between a root-Manu on globe A
and the seed-Manu on globe Z, for a round-manvantara. Now to
this period of 306,720,000 years must be added the length of the
sandhi, meaning "connection," or "junction," or interval,
according to a certain method of calculation, necessary in order
fully to complete the evolution of the planet for the round; this
sandhi is of the length of a krita yuga, or 1,728,000 years, which
brings the complete period or term of a round-manvantara to
308,448,000 years of mortals. As has already been stated, there is,
after the end of every round, an obscuration which also lasts for a
certain period which we do not here specify.

But how long a period do the seven rounds take for their course?
What is the period of a maha-manvantara, or great manvantara,
sometimes called a kalpa, after which the globes no longer go into
mere obscuration or repose, but die utterly? The period of the
maha-manvantara or kalpa is also called a Day of Brahma, and its
length is 4,320,000,000; and the Night of Brahma, the planetary
rest period, which is also called the paranirvanic period, is of
equal length. Seven rounds, as said, form a Day of Brahma.

These figures are the Brahmanical figures, and they are also the
figures of esoteric Buddhism (for we insist that Buddhism has an
esoteric doctrine). The root-number 432, as any student knows, is
also found in the chronological doctrines of ancient Babylonia; it
is likewise the real meaning in the chronological line of the
Pythagorean Tetraktys, 1--2--3--4, the 432 springing from the unity
or monad, a subject of which we spoke in our last study.

We are also told that the duration of a planet's life, i.e., of a

planetary chain of seven globes, is one of 360 divine Days,
corresponding to a divine Year, and that Brahma's Life (or the life
of the universal system) is one hundred of those divine Years —
expressed in 15 figures of years of mortals. A planetary
manvantara is also related to the duration of life of a solar
system; a planetary manvantara (or seven rounds) is a Day of
Brahma, as already said; each of these Days lasting 4,320,000,000
years of mortals, which really means the lifetime of a planet
during its seven rounds, and corresponding to one incarnation of
a human life on earth.

How long, then, does Brahma live in any one of his manifested
universes, which we know are called the "outbreathings of the
Self-Existent"? We can calculate it — 4,320,000,000 times 100,
times 360, or in other words, 36,000, lives has any planet to live
before the prakritika-pralaya (or the elemental pralaya) sets in,
the end of that life (or pravritti) of the universal system.

What happens when comes the end of a solar system? At a former

meeting we spoke of the "bells of pralaya." It was with no
intention of attempting to be rhetorical, or of employing
oratorical phraseology that we used this phrase. We have no such
ambition. We chose the words because the teachings are that
when the great (or maha-) pralaya comes upon the planets of any
system and their sun, then strange noises of various kinds are
heard in the air of a planet belonging to such a solar system; and
these noises are repeated in miniature, so to say, not only at the
end of the planetary manvantara (or the lifetime of the planet),
but also in still smaller miniature at the end of every round.
These phenomena are also alluded to in other religions than the
Indian, as for instance in the Christian and Jewish: in Revelation,
6:14; and in Isaiah, 34:4. The Christian writers speak of the time, 2
Peter, 3:10, 12-13, when the "elements shall melt with fervent
heat," and "the heavens shall
pass away with a great noise," but
they "look for new heavens and a new earth" — or a new
planetary manvantara — and allude to pralaya as the time when
"the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together," etc.
These allusions to pralayic disintegration are figurative to a
certain extent, but are sufficiently along the lines of the ancient
Eastern thought to show us whence they came — from the
archaic wisdom-religion (theosophy) of the Orient. We are told
that some of the strange noises that will occur towards the end of
the prakritika-manvantara, before the cosmic or prakritika-
pralaya sets in, are strange hollow boomings, strange cracklings
as of musketry fire, strange bell-like ringings as of the snapping of
immense metallic belts.

Now the sun is both the heart and the brain of our solar system,
and sends seven-faceted life into every atom of its universe, the
solar universe of which we and our planet Terra are a part. The
sun itself is in some respects a vampire, but it is also
preeminently and essentially a life-giver. It is, cosmogonically,
our elder brother, and not at all our physical parent as modern
scientific wiseacres would have it. It is also in a vital sense our
father-mother, because through it, from planes superior to our
own, come down the life-streams from worlds (systems) above
ours — yet our planet, as all the other planets, also in a relative
degree receives these life-streams, as every individual atom and
every human being, in the smallest miniature thereof, receives
the same individually from the Inmost of the Inmost within itself
or himself. This is, as you will remember was stated in former
studies the same spiritual life; but cosmically, that is to say, with
regard to the universe, the sun is
the brain and heart of our
system, vitalizing and informing the endless hosts of beings under
its systemic sway.

We do not see the (true) sun. The sun is not burning, or

incandescent. Heat exists around the sun, but it is not from
burning gases or incandescence. We see the sun's robes, or
reflection, but we do not see the sun itself. It is, in very truth, a
spiritual thing, and we think we receive our entire supply of heat
and light from it because the forces flowing from the sun act in
conjunction and reactively with the forces on our own earth —
forces working in the universal nature around us. If most of our
light is due to the sun, this is not the case with 75 percent of the
heat which we receive, which comes — most of it — from our own
globe and its forces, and especially from the immensely thick
clouds of cosmic dust which fills all space. The electromagnetic
forces at work between this cosmic dust and our earth furnish
most of the terrestrial heat.

I wish this evening before closing to call your attention to the fact
that the ancient initiate-astronomers, when speaking of the seven
sacred spheres of our universe — the seven or nine in which the
bodies of the solar system and the stars were set, beyond which
was the Empyrean or the fiery sphere — desired to convey a
meaning which is now lost, for the masses. There was a meaning
of deep and wide significance also in their geocentric teachings.
They knew as well as do we (and we have proofs of it), that the
earth and the other planets whirl around the sun in elliptical
orbits, but they had a reason for teaching the geocentric doctrines
in public, and some day we shall have need to go into an analysis
and proof of this assertion.

Let us close our evening's study in calling attention to the fact that
theosophy is a doctrine of hope; it is a doctrine of spirituality; it is
a doctrine which refines and elevates man; it is a doctrine in
which there is room for the humblest to understand something
and for the brightest and highest and most spiritual of us to put
our feet on the lowest steps of that spiritual stair along which we
may climb in hierarchical ascendings up to the highest, not only
in our own planet, hand in hand with the great Buddhas of
former times and of the times to come, but beyond our planet and
beyond our own solar system into those illimitable spiritual
spheres in which the solar system now exists, and through which
we derive our life — spiritual, mental, psychical, pranic, and
physical.

Chapter 10
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Ten
The Doctrine of Swabhava — Self-Becoming — Characteristic
Individuality. Man, Self-Evolved, His Own Creator. "Monadologie"
of Leibniz Contrasted with Teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy.

The MONAD emerges from its state of spiritual and

intellectual unconsciousness; and, skipping the first two
planes — too near the ABSOLUTE to permit of any
correlation with anything on a lower plane — it gets direct
into the plane of Mentality. But there is no plane in the
whole universe with a wider margin, or a wider field of
action in its almost endless gradations of perceptive and
apperceptive qualities, than this plane, which has in its
turn an appropriate smaller plane for every "form," from
the "mineral" monad up to the time when that monad
blossoms forth by evolution into the DIVINE MONAD. But
all the time it is still one and the same Monad, differing
only in its incarnations, throughout its ever succeeding
cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or the partial
or total obscuration of matter — two polar antitheses — as
it ascends into the realms of mental spirituality, or
descends into the depths of materiality. — The Secret
Doctrine, I, 175

In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul)

can have an independent (conscious) existence before the
spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal
Sixth principle, — or the OVER-SOUL, — has (a) passed
through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of
that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by
natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised
efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all
 the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest
Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel
(Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric
philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man,
save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and
merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and
reincarnations. — Ibid., I, 17

The general text of our study this evening is found in The Secret
Doctrine, volume I, page 83, stanza 3, verse 10:

10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS

FASTENED TO SPIRIT (Purusha), THE LIGHT OF THE ONE
DARKNESS, AND THE LOWER ONE TO MATTER (Prakriti)
ITS (the Spirit's) SHADOWY END; AND THIS WEB IS THE
UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN
ONE, WHICH IS SWABHAVAT (a).

(a) In the Mandukya (Mundaka) Upanishad it is written,

"As a spider throws out and retracts its web, as herbs
spring up in the ground . . . so is the Universe derived from
the undecaying one" (I. 1. 7). Brahma, as "the germ of
unknown Darkness," is the material from which all evolves
and develops "as the web from the spider, as foam from the
water," etc. This is only graphic and true, if Brahma the
"creator" is, as a term, derived from the root brih, to
increase or expand. Brahma "expands" and becomes the
Universe woven out of his own substance.

The same idea has been beautifully expressed by Goethe,

who says:

"Thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply, /And weave for

God the garment thou see'st Him by."

In the course of our studies we have been advancing stage by

stage, step by step, from general principles, and our course has
been always towards that point of emanation and evolution
which finds itself at the dawn of manifestation, or the opening of
manvantara. We have touched upon many subjects but lightly,
because the intricacy of the theme did not at the time permit us to
go into and to follow side-avenues of thought, however attractive
and important they might be; but these avenues we shall have to
explore as time and opportunity bring once more before us, in the
course of our study, the portals which we have passed and
perhaps have merely glanced into.

We have brought to the attention of those who will read these

studies certain fundamental natural principles, as fundamental
and important in their respective bearings as the two foundation
stones of popular theosophy today, called reincarnation and
karma. One of these principles is the doctrine of hierarchies,
upon which much more could be said, and will be said in due
time.

Another such fundamental principle or doctrine — a true key

opening the very heart of being and, besides other things,
reaching into the root-meaning of the so-called origin of evil and
of the inner urge towards right and righteousness, which man
calls his moral sense — is that which flows forth from the
philosophical conceptions behind the word swabhava, meaning,
generally, the essential characteristic of anything. The medieval
scholastics spoke of this essentiality of things as their quidditas, or
quiddity — the "whatness" of anything: that which is its heart, its
essential nature, its characteristic essentiality. The word
swabhava (a noun) itself is derived from the Sanskrit root bhu,
meaning "to become," or "to be," and the prefix sva (or swa) is
also Sanskrit and means "self." The word thus translated means
"self-becomingness," a technical term, a key word, in which
philosophical conceptions of immense and wide-reaching import
inhere. We shall develop some of these more fully as we proceed
with our studies.

In the quotation from the stanzas which we have read this

evening, you will have noticed the word swabhavat, from the
same elements as is swabhava, from the same Sanskrit root.
Swabhavat is the present participle of the verb bhu, meaning "that
which becomes itself," or develops from within outwardly its
essential self by emanation, evolution; in other words, that which
by self-urge develops the potencies latent in its nature, in its self, in
its being of being. We have often spoken of the Inmost of the
Inmost as implying that inmost link or root by which we (and all
other things) flow forth from the very essence of the heart of
things, which is our UTTER SELF, and we have spoken of it
sometimes with the hand placed upon the breast; but we must be
exceedingly careful not to think that this Inmost of the Inmost is
in the physical body. Let me explain just what I mean. The
Qabbalists divide the planes of nature into
which the ten
Sephiroth became — queer English this, but very accurately and
correctly expressing the thought — into four during
manifestation, and they were called the four `olam, a word
having originally the meaning of "concealed" or "hid" or "secret,"
but also used for "time," likewise used almost exactly in the sense
of the Gnostic teaching of "aions" (aeons) as spheres, lokas in
Sanskrit. The highest of the Qabbalistic `olams, or spheres, was
`olam atsiloth, meaning the "aeon" or "age" or the "loka" of
"condensation." The second was called `olam hab-beriah,
meaning the aeon or age or loka of "creation." The third in
descent and increasing materiality was called `olam ha-yetsirah
or loka of "form." The fourth, last, most material and grossest, was
called `olam ha-'asiah, meaning the aeon or world of "action" or
"causes." This last plane or sphere or world is the lowest of the
four, and is sometimes called the world of matter or, again, of
"shells," man (and other physical entities) sometimes being
considered a shell in the sense of being the garment or the vehicle
or corpus of the indwelling spirit.

Now psychologically these four spheres were considered as being

copied, or reflected, or as having a locus (place) in the human
body; and in order to correspond with the four basic principles
into which the Jewish Qabbalistic philosophers divided man,
neshamah (or spirit) was supposed to have its locus in the head,
or rather hovering thereover; the second, ruahh (or soul), was
supposed to have its locus or center in the breast or chest; the
third, the lowest of the active principles, called nephesh (or the
animal-astral soul), was supposed to have its locus or center in
the abdomen. The fourth vehicle was guph, or the inclosing shell
of the physical body. The neshamah, the highest of all, from
which the others emanated stage by stage — the ruahh from
neshamah, the nephesh from ruahh, and the guph from nephesh
(the guph actually is the linga-sarira, esoterically, and secretes the
human physical body) — should not be considered so much in the
head as
overshadowing, as it were, the head and body. It may be
likened to a solar ray, or to an electric ray, or again to the so-
called Golden Chain of the great Greek poet Homer and the far
later Neoplatonic philosophers, which connects Zeus and all
lower entities; or to the chain of beings in a hierarchy linked by
their hyparxis with the lowest plane of the next higher hierarchy.

This Inmost of the Inmost is in that part of us which overshadows

us, which is above us physically, rather than in us. And it really is
our spiritual monad. Therefore, before we can know what we
mean by swabhava, and the wonderful doctrine fundamentally
emanating therefrom, we must understand what we mean by
monad and the sense in which the word monad is used. Those
who were students of H. P. Blavatsky while she was alive with us,
and who have studied under W. Q. Judge and Katherine Tingley,
will realize the necessity of making our sense clear by choosing
words which shall convey clearly and sensibly, and without
possibility of misconception, the thoughts which lie behind the
words. In European philosophy, monad, as a philosophical word,
seems to have been first employed by the great Italian
philosopher, the noted Giordano Bruno, in thought a
Neoplatonist, who derived his inspiration from the philosophy of
Greece now called Neoplatonism. A more modern use of the word
monad, in a
spiritual-philosophical sense, was that of the Slavic-
German philosopher, Leibniz. Monadism formed the heart of all
his teachings, and he said that the universe was composed, built
up, of monads: that is to say, he conceived them to be spiritual
centers having no extension, but having an inner and inherent
energy of development, the respective hosts of monads being of
various degrees and each one achieving its own development by
an innate characteristic nature (or swabhava). The essential
meaning of this, as it is at once seen, is characteristic individuality,
which is self, pursuing its own unfoldment and growing by stages
higher and higher through self-unfolding or self-becoming (or
swabhava). Leibniz taught that these monads were connected,
spiritually, psychically, and physically, by a "law of harmony," as
he expressed it, which is our swabhavat — the "Self-Existent,"
developing during manifestation into the hosts of monads, or
monadic centers.

Leibniz seems to have taken (at least in part) the main

philosophical conception as regards his monads, as developed in
his philosophy — in his Monadologie — from the Flemish mystic,
Van Helmont. This man Van Helmont, however, took it from
Bruno or, perhaps, directly, as Bruno did, from the Neoplatonic
philosophers. As far as the basic ideas of Bruno, Van Helmont,
and Leibniz go, they very much resemble each other; they
resemble also the teaching on this subject of the esoteric wisdom,
esoteric theosophy, but only in so far as we consider
manifestation, because the monads themselves, in their ultimate,
enter into the "silence and darkness," as Pythagoras would have
put it, when the great maha-pralaya or cosmical dissolution
begins. A monad in the ancient teachings now called theosophy —
remember that "theosophy" really means the wisdom which the
gods or divine beings study, a truly divine thing — means a
spiritual atom (we are compelled here
to use popular language),
and a spiritual atom is equivalent to saying pure individuality,
the selfness of the self, the essential nature or characteristic or
swabhavic core of every spiritual being, the self of itself. This
esoteric wisdom derives this self — not its ego, which is an
entirely different and lower and inferior thing — it derives this
divine monad, this divine substance-consciousness, from the
Paramatman, the so-called supreme self, not that this supreme
self is God in the curiously contradictory Christian sense, but
supreme in the sense of absolute, unconditioned, and all-
pervading universality for and in a single cosmical aggregation of
hierarchies, for it is the summit, acme, pinnacle, and source
thereof.

If we remember what we have studied in this connection, and the

conceptions that we figurated on the blackboard by means of
diagrams, we shall recollect that we represented the highest that
we could intellectually conceive of as a triangle, figuring it thus in
our minds. Not that this highest actually is a triangle, which
would be ludicrous, but we represented it diagrammatically to
ourselves in that fashion; and the highest sphere — in the
mathematical sense of being without physical extension as we
conceive of such — from which all the succeeding ten steps,
planes, degrees of any hierarchy radiated, we called the
Boundless, the Without Bounds, the Eyn Soph as the Qabbalists
said; and the two aspects of the Boundless formed, so to speak,
the two sides of this divine triangle, one of these two aspects
being Parabrahman (beyond Brahman), and the other being
Mulaprakriti (or root-nature). It must be remembered, in this
connection, that any diagrammatic
representation may and often
does figurate different conceptions when the premises differ. And
next, that from this divine triangle there was a reflection, as it
were, an emanation, into the lower shadow, into the substance or
matter below, the rays of the upper sun shining into the lower
atmosphere, so to say, and illuminating it, and that this lower
illuminated atmosphere or substance was called the lower
monad, and the upper was called the higher monad; and that, as
the energy or life-waves swept downwards through the second
monad or the lower monad, the square or manifested nature
came into being as the third stage of evolution. With the premises
before stated, therefore, this upper triangle, which may be
considered as one, or a trinity in unity, is the upper monad, or the
Inmost of the Inmost, the self of the self; and the lower triangle is
its emanation, its three lines representing Father, Mother, and
Son. The Father, again, may be considered as the primal point of
the second or lower triangle,
that is to say, the point forming the
apex of the triangle, which is a laya-center through which stream
down into our sphere the manifesting forces which themselves
become the universe.
Herein we may see an example of the philosophical value of the
hierarchical system considered as a representation of nature's
symmetrical architecture, because each stage of the downward
progress, each step or plane downwards, is informed, insouled,
by the upper parts which remain above; while the lower planes or
parts are spiritually and ethereally and physically secreted and
excreted step by step, plane after plane, and cast forth like foam
on the substratal waves of life. The physical nature as we see it
even on this our own plane is, so to speak, concreted divinity, and
it actually is concreted light, because light is ethereal matter or
substance.

Some day we shall have to study this question of spirit and

substance, force and matter, and their relations and interactions,
more thoroughly than we have been able to do thus far in our
lectures.

Now, from the highest of the highest, from what is to us the

unknown of the unknown, the Inmost of the Inmost, through all
these planes, there streams down, as it were, the divine ray,
passing from one hierarchy to another hierarchy below it, and
then to another still lower, and then to a third yet more material,
and so on till the limit of the cosmical aggregate is reached, when
it begins to ascend along the stupendous round, returning
towards its primal source. Note carefully that as it descends it
evolves these various hierarchies from itself; and on its ascending
round draws them back into itself again. Surrounding this
immense spiritual aggregate, we are taught to conceive an aura,
as it were, taking the shape of an egg, which we can call,
following the example of the Qabbalists, the Shechinah, a Hebrew
word meaning "dwelling" or "vehicle," or what the esoteric
philosophy calls the auric egg in the case of man, and
representing in this paradigmatic
scheme the universe which we
see around us in its highest aspects, for this aura is the very
outgrowth of Mulaprakriti; while this mystical line which we
draw in the figure as running down through all the various
grades of the hierarchy is the stream of the self, the
Unconditioned Consciousness, welling up in the inmost of
everything.

To come back to the word swabhavat, the "self-becoming," the

"self-existing": it is, in the superspiritual, following the above
paradigm, the second divine monad or second divine Logos; or,
looking at it in another and lower way, it is the first cosmic
monad, the reflection of the primeval or primal divine monad
above it, and is the first manifestation or quiver of cosmic life
when, the end of universal pralaya having come, the cry goes
forth, so to say, on the watchtower of eternity, "Let there be
manifestation and light!"

The Elohim in a former stage were monads; and you remember

that we made our own translation of verses 26, 27, and 28 of the
first chapter of Genesis, and we saw that these Elohim said, "Let
us make man in our own shadow or phantom (in our own
shadow-selves or matter-selves), and in our own pattern," that is,
they made man by becoming him; stated in other words,
humanity is the lower principles of the Elohim themselves as
monads.

So the monad is the inmost of ourselves, not as a soul, as a "gift of

God," but as the highest part of ourselves; and our very bodies are
concreted spirit, which is on this plane the lowest, the shadowy
end, the matter-end, of the self-hierarchy which each one of us is.

Let us remember again that each hierarchy has its swabhava or

specific characteristic. To exemplify it by colors, one hierarchy is
predominantly blue, another is predominantly red, another
green, another yellow or golden, and so on; but each one has its
own forty-nine roots or divisions, forty-nine aspects of the one
underlying root-substance common to all, so that of necessity each
one of these forty-nine in its turn develops one of the other colors.
So that, if we could perceive it spiritually, we should see all
nature around us everywhere flashing and coruscating in a most
marvelous interplay of colors — a wonderful picture! This is
sheer fact, not a metaphor. And, furthermore, there is for every
kosmos a cosmic hierarchy which includes all the lesser
hierarchies thereof, and each hierarchy, large or small, is linked
on, above and below (or outward and inward), to other
hierarchies, higher and lower, and each separate, individual
hierarchy consists of nine (or ten) planes or degrees.
Seven of
these are, throughout, on the manifesting planes. Hence, a
hierarchy, strictly speaking, consists of ten planes housing ten
states of matter and ten forces, but seven thereof are manifesting
forces; the seven in manifestation run from the arupa (or
formless) to the rupa (or form) worlds, and they are all linked
together, coordinated together, combined together, beyond
present human conception or understanding.

It is along these lines of spiritual thought that the dogmatic

religious or scientific system quarrels, if we may use this
expression, with the esoteric philosophy, because that system is
based — at least as regards the scientific view — upon purely
mechanical and materialistic hypotheses invented by the
scientists of the last century concerning the nature and action of
what is called matter and force, as if there could in reason be a
true definition or explanation of these two on a basis of fortuitous
mechanicalism arising out of utterly lifeless "matter."

Let us say now, although it is departing a little from our main

theme, that force is simply matter on a higher plane — ethereal
matter, if you will; and that physical matter is simply force on our
plane. Matter actually is naught but concreted force; or, to
reverse the idea, force is nothing but sublimated or etherealized
matter, because the two, matter and spirit, are one. It is best and
truest to say that matter is concreted or compacted force, just as
nature (matter as we know it) is equilibrated spirit.

We may once more return to this wonderful teaching of

swabhava, after this rather long but necessary explanation or
introduction. The monad is our inmost self; each man has his
own, or rather is his own, monad. Each being of whatever degree
or kind has its particular characteristic nature — not merely the
outer or vehicular characteristics that change from incarnation to
incarnation, and from manvantara to manvantara — but every
entity, high or low, has, so to say, a keynote of its being. This is its
swabhava: the selfhood of the self, the essential characteristic of
the self, by the urge of which the self becomes the many selves,
producing and manifesting the hosts of varied qualities and types
and degrees. Now note carefully: the urge behind evolution or
development is not external to the evolving entity but within
itself; and the future results to be achieved in evolution — that
which the evolving entity becomes — lie in germ or seed in
itself;
both this urge and this germ or seed arise out of one thing, and
THIS IS ITS SWABHAVA.
Remember what we said in our former study about the nature
and evolution of the universe. What is a — or any — universe? It
is a self-contained and self-sustained and self-sufficient entity in
manifestation, but is merely one of countless hosts of other
universes, all children of the Boundless. There is, for instance, an
atomic universe, and a terrestrial or planetary universe, and a
human universe, and a solar universe, and so on indefinitely; yet
all hang together, interpenetrate each other, and form any
cosmical aggregate. And how and why? Because each universe,
great or small, is a hierarchy, and each hierarchy represents and
is the development of and is a part of the spiritual urge and
evolving germ arising out of the self thereof, of the self of each,
each developing and evolving its own particular essential
characteristic; and all these forces taken together are the
swabhava of any entity. Swabhava, in short, may be called the
essential
individuality of any monad, expressing its own
characteristics, qualities, and type, by self-urged evolution.

We should note also in passing that perhaps the most mystic

school in Buddhism, which H. P. Blavatsky says has practically
kept most faithfully to this one of the esoteric teachings of
Gautama Buddha, is a school still extant in Nepal, which is called
the Swabhavika school, a Sanskrit adjective derived from the
noun swabhava; this school comprises those who follow the
doctrine of swabhava, or the doctrine which teaches the
becoming or unfolding of the self by inner impulse — the self-
becoming. We do not, according to it, become "through the grace
of a God." We become whatever we are or are to be through our
own selves; we make ourselves, derive ourselves from ourselves,
become our own children; have always done so, and will forever
do so. This applies not only to man, but to all beings everywhere.
Herein we see the root, the force, the meaning, of morals.
Responsible for every act we do, for every thought we think,
responsible to the uttermost farthing, never anything
"forgiven,"
never anything "wiped out," except when we ourselves turn the
evil we have done into good. We shall have to discuss more fully,
some time, the question of the origin of evil which is involved
herein. We may note in passing that this school is called
"atheistic" and "materialistic," simply because of two reasons:
first, the profound thought of this doctrine is misinterpreted by
Occidental scholars; second, many of its followers have, in fact,
degenerated.

You see immediately the ethical force of such a doctrine as this of

swabhava, when it is properly understood. We become what we
are in germ in our inmost essence; we also follow and make a
part of, likewise, the type and the course of evolution of the
particular planetary chain to which we belong by affinity. We
first follow along the shadowy arc down into matter, and when
we have reached the lowest point of that arc, then, through the
inner impulses of our nature, through self-directed evolution —
which is the very heart of this doctrine of swabhava, one of the
most fundamental doctrines in the esoteric philosophy — when
we have reached the bottom, I repeat, then the same inner
impulse carries us (provided that we have passed the danger
point of being attracted into the lower sphere of matter) up the
luminous arc, up and back into the higher spiritual spheres, but
beyond the point of departure whence we first started downward
on our cyclical journey into
material experience for that
manvantara.

We make our own bodies, we make our own lives, we make our
own destinies, and we are responsible for it all, spiritually,
morally, intellectually, psychically, and even physically. It is a
manly doctrine; there is no room in it for moral cowardice, no
room in it for casting our responsibility upon the shoulders of
another — God, angel, man, or demon. We can become gods,
because we are gods in the germ even now, inwardly. We start
upon our evolutionary journey as an unself-conscious god-spark,
and we return to our primal source of being, following the great
cycle of the maha-manvantara, a self-conscious god.

Let us say here that we have come at this point to what is a great
puzzle for most of our Occidental orientalists. They cannot
understand the distinctions that the wonderful old philosophers
of the Orient make as regards the various classes of the devas.
They say, in substance: "What funny contradictions there are in
these teachings, which in many respects are profound and seem
so wonderful. Some of these devas (or divine beings) are said to
be less than man; some of these writings even say that a good
man is nobler than any god. And yet other parts of these
teachings declare that there are gods higher even than the devas,
and yet are called devas. What does this mean?"

The devas or divine beings, one class of them, are the unself-
conscious sparks of divinity, cycling down into matter in order to
bring out from within themselves and to unfold or evolve self-
consciousness, the swabhava of divinity within. They begin their
reascent always on the luminous arc, which never ends, in a
sense; and they are gods, self-conscious gods, henceforth, taking a
definite and divine part in the "great work," as the mystics have
said, of being builders, evolvers, leaders, of hierarchies; in other
words, they are monads which have become their own innermost
selves; which have passed the Ring-pass-not separating the
spiritual from the divine. Remember and reflect upon these old
sayings in our books — every one of them is pregnant with
meaning, full of thought.

This, therefore, is the doctrine of swabhava: the doctrine of inner

development, of bringing out that particular essential
characteristic or individuality which is within, of self-directed
evolution; and you must perforce see the immense reach that it
has in the moral world, in the theological world, in the
philosophical world, yea, even in the scientific world as regards
the knotty problems of evolution, such as the evolution of species,
inheritance, development of root types, and many more.

We shall one day have to study more carefully than the mere
sketch we have given here these divine, very divine, doctrines,
especially in their bearing on questions of human psychology; for
upon these doctrines depends the further (and a better)
comprehension of the very tenets which we have outlined this
evening and at former meetings. We cannot understand the
universe or the working and interplay of the forces therein until
we have mastered at least to some degree, and followed out, the
injunction of the Delphic Oracle, "Man, Know Thyself!" A man
who knows himself truly, knows all, because he is,
fundamentally, all. He is every hierarchy; he is gods and demons
and worlds and spheres and forces, and matter and
consciousness and spirit — everything is in him. He is in one
sense built of the roots of everything, and he is the fruit of
everything; he has endless time behind him and endless time
before him. What a gospel of hope, what a gospel of wonder, is
this; how it raises the human
soul; how the inmost part of us
aspires when we reflect upon this teaching! No wonder that it is
called the "teaching (or wisdom) of the gods," theosophia — that is
to say, the teaching which the gods themselves study. How does a
man become a mahatman or "great self"? Through self-directed
evolution, through becoming that which he is in himself, in his
innermost. This is the doctrine of swabhava.

And here we should at least allude to the mystery of individuality.

Remember that personality is the "mask" (persona, as the Latins
said) or reflection in matter of the individuality; but being a
material thing it can lead us downward, although it is in essence a
reflection of the highest. It is an old saying that those things are
most dangerous which have reality or truth in them; not those
things which are truly unreal or false, because they of themselves
fall to pieces and evanish away in time.

Monads, psychologically (we have the four monads, the divine,

intellectual, psychical, and astral, corresponding to the four basic
planes of matter, but all four monads deriving from the highest)
from the standpoint of generalization, are spiritual atoms,
buddhic atoms, being universal principles so far as are concerned
the planes below, the buddhi being perhaps the most mysterious
of the seven principles of man and, from our present viewpoint,
the most important. But the human monad as contrasted with the
divine monad above it, the potentially immortal man, comprises
the three principles, atman, buddhi, and the higher manas. These
three principles are required in order to make a self-conscious
god. Atman and buddhi alone cannot make a self-conscious god;
they are a god-spark, an undeveloped or unevolved god-spark.
We have to use in this connection human terms; we have not the
terms in English or in any other European language properly to
express these subtil thoughts.

In conclusion, let us remember that while each man has the

Christ within himself, and can be "saved" only by that Christ, he
can be saved by that inner Christ only when he chooses to save
himself; the initiative must come from below, from himself. And
while some people, through misunderstanding of this wonderful
doctrine of swabhava, may speak of fatalism, we can do no more
this evening than to say emphatically that this doctrine is not
fatalism. It is absolutely the contrary of the fatalistic hypothesis,
which asserts that there is a blind or unknown or conscious or
unconscious force outside of man, directing him, driving him, in
his choice, acts, and evolution, to annihilation or heaven or hell.
That is not the doctrine of swabhava and it is not taught in the
esoteric philosophy.

Chapter 11
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Eleven
The Cosmic Pilgrimage. From Unself-Conscious God-Spark to Fully
Self-Conscious God.

Unveil, O Thou that givest sustenance to the Universe, from

whom all proceeds, to whom all must return, the face of
the True Sun, now hidden by a vase of Golden Light, that
we may see the Truth and do our whole duty on our
journey towards thy Sacred Seat. — Paraphrase of The
Gayatri

ON PAGE 605 of the first volume of The Secret Doctrine we find

the following:

But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism

before criticising what it asserts. For example, the Doctrine
refuses (as Science does, in one sense) to use the words
"above" and "below," "higher" and "lower," in reference to
invisible spheres, as being without meaning. Even the
terms "East" and "West" are merely conventional,
necessary only to aid our human perceptions. For, though
the Earth has its two fixed points in the poles, North and
South, yet both East and West are variable relatively to our
own position on the Earth's surface, and in consequence of
its rotation from West to East. Hence, when "other worlds"
are mentioned — whether better or worse, more spiritual
or still more material, though both invisible — the Occultist
does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our
Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for their
location is nowhere in the
space known to, and conceived
by, the profane. They are, as it were, blended with our
world — interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it.
 There are millions and millions of worlds and firmaments
visible to us; there still greater numbers beyond those
visible to the telescopes, and many of the latter kind do not
belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as
invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our solar
system, they are yet with us, near us, within our own
world, as objective and material to their respective
inhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation of these
worlds to ours is not that of a series of egg-shaped boxes
enclosed one within the other, like the toys called Chinese
nests; each is entirely under its own special laws and
conditions, having no direct relation to our sphere. The
inhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all we
know, or feel, passing through and around us as if through
empty
space, their very habitations and countries being
interblended with ours, though not disturbing our vision,
because we have not yet the faculties necessary for
discerning them.

THIS SEEMS to be a very appropriate general text for us to choose

in closing our sketch of the hierarchies, and more particularly our
development of the doctrine of swabhava, upon which we
touched in our last meeting: the doctrine of the characteristic
nature, of the individuality, or type-essentiality, of each
individual monad, growing and manifesting and becoming itself
in the manifested world in which it is itself the seed of its own
individuality. The bearing of this concept on the doctrine of
evolution — "rolling out or unfolding of what is within" — and
especially on the mooted and knotty problem of the so-called
origin of species, is simply immense, for it is the key thereof.

We can use the word individuality for the meaning of swabhava,

provided that we do not use it in contradistinction to personality.
It is individuality in the sense of signifying the being and the
unfolding of that particular quality or essential characteristic
which distinguishes one monad, one human entity, one cosmos,
one atom, from another of the same kind. Fundamental as is the
doctrine of hierarchies, and illuminating as is the light that it
throws upon other problems, it itself cannot be properly
understood without its complementary doctrine of swabhava;
and, vice versa, we cannot properly understand the doctrine of
swabhava without understanding the doctrine of hierarchies.

We hope this evening to develop the true meaning of swabhava,

and thus to finish this part of our study, having now reached the
frontiers, as it were, of cosmical manifestation; and in beginning
our study of it in detail, we are obliged to touch upon a very
essential aspect of the doctrine, another aspect of it which is
fundamental for the proper understanding of this portion of the
teaching of the ancient wisdom; it is a portion which pertains to
psychology. Indeed, this doctrine of hierarchies and this its
complementary doctrine of swabhava, are both in a very large
measure fundamentally psychological.

Swabhava is a Sanskrit term, a noun derived from the root bhu,

meaning "to become," and hence "to be," a psychological concord
which is found also in several other languages, as in both Greek
and English for instance. In Greek the word is gignomai; and in
English it is be. In old Anglo-Saxon we have this word with the
essential future sense completely retained and psychologically
distinctly felt, to wit: ic beo, thu bist or byst, he bith or biath, etc.,
meaning "I, thou, he will be," in the future sense of "become." It is
obvious that the psychological force of this means that being is
essentially a becoming — a growth or evolution or unfolding of
inner faculty.

English, as a matter of fact, had originally and still has only the
two natural grammatical tenses — the imperfect tense, or the
tense of imperfect or incomplete action, commonly called the
present; and the perfect tense of perfected or completed action, or
the past.

Now what constitutes one hierarchy as different in essence — or

swabhava — from another hierarchy? It is its swabhava, or the
seed of individuality which is it and is in it. It is that seed which,
developing, makes a hierarchy, and that seed in developing
follows the laws (or rather nature) of its own essential being, and
this is its swabhava. In The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky often
speaks of one particular quality or plane of universal being,
which she calls swabhavat, the neuter present participle of the
same root bhu, and used as a noun. Like swabhava, it is derived
from the same root, with the same prefix, and means that
particular thing which exists and becomes of and in its own
essential essence; call it the "Self-Existent," if you like. It is, though
a Sanskrit word, a Buddhistic term, and its Brahmanical
equivalent in the Vedanta would probably be the cosmical side of
Paramatman, supreme self, the individualized
aspect of
Parabrahman-Mulaprakriti: superspirit-root-matter.

Swabhavat is the spiritual essence, the fundamental root or spirit-

substance, the Father-Mother of the beginning of manifestation,
and from it grow or become all things. It can be conceived of as
did Spinoza, the Netherlandish Jewish philosopher, as God, as the
one underlying being or substance; though in our studies we have
eschewed the use of the term "God," for a reason hereinafter to be
set forth. Or it can be conceived of as Leibniz did, as a collective
unity of an infinitude of emanated monads or "entelechies," to
use Aristotle's term. Spinoza was an absolute idealist, while
Leibniz was an objective idealist, which we also are, by the way.
Swabhava is the characteristic nature, the type-essence, the
individuality, of swabhavat — of any swabhavat, each such
swabhavat having its own swabhava.
The main and essential meaning of the doctrine of swabhava is
the following — and it is so fundamental, so important in order
properly to understand what follows, that we are going
emphatically to urge it upon the attention of everyone. When
cosmical manifestation begins or opens, it does not open helter-
skelter, in disordered confusion, or by chance; it begins in
conformity with the characteristic seeds of life, called, commonly,
laws, which have been in latent existence through the period of
the maha-pralaya preceding the beginning of the new
manvantara, and these laws — we use the term under strong
protest — are really the intrinsic and ineluctable karmic habits of
nature to be this or that, its swabhavas, in short, its hosts of
innumerable entities or essential natures; and these laws are
actually impressed, stamped, upon ethereal and physical matter
by the monadic essences or the monads. The swabhavas of the
monads give their swabhavic natures
to nature! The monads are
individuals, and conceiving them as collected together in a unity
and forming a body of a still greater monad, Leibniz gave to this
greatest monad the Latin term Monas monadum — the "Monad of
monads." This monad is, in short, our hierarchical summit, of
which we have several times spoken before. But where is there
any need to call this "Monad of monads," this hierarchical apex or
summit, God? We can conceive of something still higher, and so
forth almost at will. To stop at any point and call it God would
simply be creating a deity — a God man-made, truly!

However, a man must pause somewhere in thought. So we begin

with swabhava which, being an abstract term, is not a limit or
boundary in itself. It is pure individuality working in spirit-matter
of which it is the highest part or summit. Now this essential
nature (or swabhava) of a monad develops and becomes in matter
a hierarchy, whether that hierarchy be an atom, a man, a planet,
a sun, a solar system, or a cosmical universe (or a universal
cosmos) such as we find within the encircling zone of the Milky
Way. The monad does so following the driving essential urge of
its own inner essence, its individuality, its swabhava. Hence it is
that as the monads are individuals, so are the resultant
hierarchies individualized. And generalizing, as the monad grows
into or becomes the hierarchy, descending the shadowy arc —
that is, descending into matter — as it becomes matter in its lower
parts (the upper portion of the monad remaining always in its
own pure unadulterated state) it
reaches a certain point which is
the end of its cyclical development for that period of evolution or
manvantara, and then it begins cycling upward and back again,
and this part of its journey is called the luminous arc, because its
tendency is towards light, or spirit, following the phraseology of
the ancient sages.

We studied some time ago in the Hebrew Bible, chapter 1, verses

26 and 27, how the Elohim said: "Let us make 'man' in our own
shadowy image (in our own shadow), and in our archetypal
pattern." These Elohim who so "spoke" were monads, together
forming a hierarchy, each one of them, again, a hierarchy by
itself. As each individual man is a subordinate hierarchy of the
greater hierarchy of humanity, so humanity is a subordinate
hierarchy of the still greater hierarchy of the planet, and the
planet Terra a subordinate hierarchy of the still greater hierarchy
of the solar system; and so forth, as long as you care to follow the
thought. Man is himself composed of less beings; he himself is a
microcosm or little universe; he to these less beings is as a god —
he to them is the Monas monadum, the Monad of monads. We
shall later see reasons of great force why we have sedulously
eschewed using this word God. It is a colored word, spoiled with
the thoughts which have been tacked
on to it; colored by them all,
and it is for these reasons a dangerous word to use, because both
misleading and inadequate.
As this monad in the beginning of manifestation in cosmos breaks
through the laya-center, that is to say, through the neutral point,
the vanishing-point where spirit becomes matter, or vice versa
(you can call it the atman of the six lower degrees or principles
which are to follow in sequential evolution) — as the descending
monad breaks through the encircling matter of the cosmos
around it, it follows in its course its own inner urge or, rather, is
driven thereby; it is self-expressive, but still self-unconscious. But
when any particular "atomic" part of this cosmic monad reaches
self-consciousness and becomes a man, the path that its evolution
follows thenceforward is consciously self-directed. Up to the time
of the entrance of the self-conscious mind into man, the evolving
entity is under the impulse, the propulsion, of dire and
implacable necessity which, however, is most emphatically not
fate; and this is because, up to this critical point in
evolution, the
evolving entity is an imperfect being still: it is not a self-conscious
thing, but an unself-conscious god-spark. It cannot as yet direct its
own destiny on the planes of manifestation, but automatically
follows the course of the hierarchy to which it belongs. This
spiritual-mental impotency ceases when the self-conscious state
has been reached, which is in man. From this moment, in
growing degree, man becomes himself a creator — a creator, self-
consciously, of himself; he reaches upward or inward or outward
(the adverb matters not) and becomes that which he essentially is
within, continually aspiring toward the Inmost of the Inmost; and
he finally reaches the point, at the end of this Day of Brahma —
after seven planetary rounds — where he blossoms forth into a
self-conscious god, not yet "God," or the summit of the hierarchy
to which he belongs by karmic descent, but a god. No longer is he
a nonself-conscious monad, but a
self-conscious monad, a
planetary spirit, a dhyan-chohan, to use a beautiful Buddhistic
term, a "lord of meditation," one of that wondrous host of
spiritual beings who are the full-blown flowers of former world
periods or manvantaras. This wondrous host are the perfect men
of those former world periods; and they guide the evolution of
this planet in its present manvantara. They are our own spiritual
lords, leaders, and saviors. They supervise us now in our
evolution here, and we follow the path of the general evolution
outlined by them in our present cyclic pilgrimage.

When we first started on this pilgrimage as unself-conscious god-

sparks, destined to become self-conscious men in this our
manvantara, it was these dhyan-chohans — flowers of the former
manvantara — who opened the path for us, who guided our
uncertain steps as we became men, incarnations of our higher
selves. But when we became self-conscious entities or men, we
began to guide ourselves; and to work consciously with them
according to our evolution, to "work with nature," as H. P.
Blavatsky nobly expressed it, is our highest duty and our brightest
hope. It is our future destiny to become such godlike beings
ourselves, thereafter in our turn to inform, inspire, and guide less
evolved entities in future manvantaras, as we have been
informed, inspired, and guided by them; and finally, after many
kalpas, after many Days of Brahma — each one of such Days a
period of seven planetary rounds — we shall become a conscious
part of the cosmical Logos, the Brahmic Logos, using the
phrase
Brahmic Logos as meaning the highest conscious entitative
intelligence of the solar system; thence upward and upward
forever.

We return to our main theme. When the monad has reached the
first point of cosmic manifestation, it has already descended
through the first three of the ten planes or degrees or steps, i.e.,
through the three planes or degrees or steps forming the upper
triangle or triad of the ten planes in and on which the universe is
built. It now begins definitely to cycle downward, and its
entrance into cosmic manifestation, as already said, is the laya-
center which is the atman or universal spirit, no more belonging
to any particular entity or man than does the atman of any entity
or man in any other planet of any other solar system. Atman is
ourselves merely because it is the link which connects us with the
higher. As a matter of fact, the human being or man consists of
five principles, because the atman is not his except as a "plank of
salvation"; and his gross physical body is not really a principle at
all. This matter of component principles in man we shall have to
go into more fully when we take up
our study of human
psychological composition.

Now the upper triangle of the ten above alluded to actually is

extended or developed out from the monad itself, as the petals and
leaves of a flower are extended or evolved out of its seed: it draws
its life and being from within itself. It is the elemental world,
spiritually speaking; as the three worlds below our mineral
kingdom are the elemental worlds of ourselves, materially
speaking, forming an elemental world, "spiritually" speaking, of
the hierarchy below our own.

This inner urge driving the monad to express itself in

manifestation and form is the will of higher beings, working
through itself, of which higher beings it forms an integral part —
just as our brain, or our body, follows the implacable law of
necessity which we impose upon brain or body by our thoughts
and our will, yet both brain and body are parts of ourself in
matter. The monad must reach self-consciousness in order to
"free" itself and thus become a self-conscious, self-directed god.

These things are so important for properly understanding our

future study that we feel necessitated again and again to return to
them. They are basically fundamental, lying at the very root of all
our teaching. Understand clearly and well that this is not fatalism.
That doctrine runs directly contrary to the doctrine of swabhava,
the doctrine of self-expression.

As an egg unfolds within itself the germ which is to become the

future chick; or the human egg, the ovum, unfolds the germ
within it which is to become the future child of man, similarly
does the universe develop, similarly does an atom develop, thus
also does a monad develop. It is unfolded within the auric egg.
The human ovum, the seed of the plant, each is nothing but an
egg. The shape may differ, the life form may differ, but this has
nothing to do with the principle of unfoldment of which we are
speaking. The encasement within the auric egg envelops the germ
of individuality — or swabhava — which is destined to follow its
course along its own characteristic line of unfoldment: what is in
the egg or seed comes out, each species according to its own kind,
and this is its swabhava. The Greek Stoic school taught the
existence, both cosmically and infinitesimally, of spermatic logoi,
"seed-logoi," each such spermatic logos producing creatures after
its kind and according
to its own essence — like the Hebrew
Biblical Elohim — and this is again swabhava.

We saw in our study of the Qabbalah how the highest world

unfolded itself and from itself emanated or evolved the second
world, thus actually becoming the second world: being thus both
parent and child. The second world was thus the child of the first;
the third was the child of the first and the second; and the fourth,
the "world of shells" — or of beings living in gross bodies, or
"shells" — was the child of the first, the second, and the third, all
working together in order to produce this fourth. Note well,
however, that each superior sphere or world remains intact on its
own plane, though evolving from itself the next succeeding
inferior world.

The Stoics had a doctrine of development which in its essence is

the pure teaching of our own philosophy, though expressed in
different form and under different names. They expressed it in
this wise, following the mechanical mode so agreeable and dear
to the Greek mind. It is curious, by the way, that the Oriental
mind has always preferred to follow the psychological and
spiritual lines of thought, rather than the mechanical or, as we
would now say, the scientific. But the Stoics taught in Greece, and
later in Rome, that the mechanism of the essential nature of the
Deity — and this essential nature is our swabhava, what we
would call Father-Mother — was tension, and slackening of this
tension, this slackening of tension being the first act of world-
building. They took as an analogy in illustration of the idea the
well-known fact that when a metal grows hot it then expands, and
finally is vaporized; and using this simple matter-of-fact analogy
they said that the
"natural" state of pneuma ("spirit" = the Deity) is
fire — not physical fire, but the seed of that cosmic element from
which physical fire springs. The slackening of this tension
produced the first differentiation of the primal substance (or
pneuma = "God"), and this differentiation then awoke to active
life the life-seeds, slumbering or latent, which came over from the
previous period of manifested life; the life-seeds, or seed-lives —
their spermatic logoi — thus awaking, proceeded to build and
guide the forthcoming world period and all the entities in it, each
such seed-life bringing forth from itself its essential species, or
characteristic essence, i.e., swabhava. This is the teaching in
miniature, but as the Stoics gave it, of the esoteric philosophy.

Now when the universe was to come forth from its own being,
taught the Stoics, the tension of the primal substance or divine
fire slackened, or contracted as it were, and this contraction, by
condensation, gave birth to the aether; next, as the tension
slackened in the aether, this gave birth to air; and it, next, to
water; and it, finally, to earth. We are not speaking of the
material fire, air, water, earth, that we see around us, but we
refer to the elements or seeds of these, the earth and the water
and the air and the fire that we see around us being merely
material samples or the last progeny, as it were, of the elemental
seeds from which these respectively sprang. "Fire" gave birth to
the "aether," the latter being its shadow, the shadow of itself. The
"aether" gave birth to its shadow, or "air," its encasement or body;
and the "air" to "water"; and the "water" to "earth." The
Stoics
taught further that all these things can be respectively
transformed one into the other — the dream of the alchemist, and
also the dream, psychologically, of initiates who aim and strive to
transform the base into the pure, the material into the spiritual.

Returning once more to our main theme, it is to be noted that

naturally, as the monad — the root or the individuality of a
hierarchy of any kind — cycles down into matter, it produces
from itself, it expands outwardly from itself, its own shadows (or
lower vehicles) which grow constantly more dense in direct
proportion to the greater descent of the monad. In this connection
the question arises, that as there are certainly worlds of
happiness, worlds of peace, in the higher spheres, how about
those nether worlds; how about those lowest states of being of
which H. P. Blavatsky speaks as the avichi There is no hell in the
Christian sense. Such a hell is a vague bogey of the imagination;
but there are, in very truth, lower spheres: just as there are
higher, so there must be lower. There cannot be good without
evil, for the one is the shadow of the other and balances it in
nature. These lowest spheres have a well-defined part to play in
the great cosmic drama. They are the cleansing
houses, so to say,
of the souls of those who persist in evildoing. Like attracts like.
These lower spheres are necessarily entered into by those who
willfully, through a prolonged series of incarnations, refuse to
follow the spiritual light within themselves. Like attracts like, we
repeat it. As a matter of fact, such souls, so stained and weighted
with evil, are actually pursuing their own cyclical pilgrimage,
drawn by attraction to like spheres and dwellings. During the
cyclic pilgrimage of the atom-souls down into matter, many
millions and millions have failed to pass the danger point and,
instead of thereupon beginning their journey homeward up the
luminous arc, are swept into the terrible maelstrom of the
current that goes downward farther into matter! Therefore, into
relatively greater suffering. These must wait until their time
comes again in the next manvantara, and another chance in the
future kalpa of the earth. For this Day of Brahma, for this
manvantara
of seven rounds, all is ended for them as regards
their conscious journey back to their divine source.

These are doctrines (such as that of the avichi-nirvana, just hinted

at in the preceding few sentences) which were taught in the
ancient esoteric schools. From them, by misunderstanding and
corruption of them, have been derived the bogey doctrines of a
fiery, material hell in which are, for eternity, to burn the ethereal
souls of willful sinners! These souls are said to be of an asbestos-
like nature, forever burning fiercely yet never consumed, like
pitch burning for utter eternity in utterly endless fire! What
frightful nightmares of a gross and materialistic "religious"
teaching! It is amazing how the mind of man will invent things to
torture itself with. But it also shows that back of all these fearful,
nightmare doctrines and dogmas there is some fundamental fact
which the untaught mind sees through thick clouds darkly and
falsely, and distorts; some element of truth which needs only
proper explanation for understanding.

And how the human heart must melt in pity! Do we realize how
real these doctrines were to our ancestors of only a few score
years ago? And that in some backward-looking churches today
these same horrible doctrines are still taught as actualities,
though more or less secretly as if in utter shame, and that there
are misguided and unhappy men who believe them, and on their
deathbeds suffer in anticipation the tortures of the damned,
tortures worse, certainly, than any which nature has prepared for
them as guerdon for their mistakes and sins? Think of the horror
of it! Think of the duty that we owe to our fellow men to teach
them the proper explanation and meaning of these distorted and
tortured doctrines in all their sanity, in all their beautiful hope!
There is a moral element involved in it for us. People sometimes
ask what is the use of studying The Secret Doctrine What is the use
of spending so much time in studying the rounds and races? Here
is one of the uses. Essentially you cannot change
men until you
have changed their minds. Teach men properly and nobly to think,
and you teach them properly and nobly to live, and properly and
nobly to die. There is nothing like a noble thought to lift a man. It
is sheer folly and egoism that says, "What is the use of these so-
called noble thoughts? My thoughts are good enough for me."

After all that has previously been said, nevertheless, we have just
begun our exposition of swabhava. We shall not have this
evening the time and opportunity to touch upon the very
important psychological aspects of it which we had hoped to do.
We have still a few moments of time, however. Let us then try to
illustrate more clearly this doctrine of swabhava on the line of it
chosen before. Imagine an individual monad sending its ray, or
descending, through that sphere which becomes the spiritual-
atomic* plane of the six planes below it. This ray forms it itself
into respective principles and planes as time passes, and it
gathers and gleans the experiences of each separate plane.
Leaving that spiritual-atomic* or atmanic plane, it evolves out of
itself its shadow, which is like an encasement, an aura, thus
forming its auric egg there, and this second plane or principle we
call our buddhi, and as the monadic life or ray passes still farther
down into that shadowy life, this buddhic plane and principle
become to it the real and the true. As cycles of time pass on, the
descending monadic ray (or seed) evolves another shadow,
another encasement, another subtil body, another aura, another
auric egg, out of itself, and this is our manas. Each of these three
principles — as indeed have all the seven — has seven degrees,
seven stages, from the "atomic"* of any one of the three down to
its lowest, which is its corpus or body. And so on with the
remaining four lower planes and principles of man. Each one of
these principles is "fully" developed on our globe in the respective
and similar one of the rounds of the seven of the Day of Brahma.
Further, on each one of the seven globes of the planetary chain,
one of the seven principles especially is developed. Again, as just
shown, at the end of each round, one plane and one principle of
the seven is developed, preparatory to evolving the succeeding
one in another round. It takes fully two rounds, for instance, to
bring out
two planes and two principles in full; but during the
first and the second rounds, for example, the other planes and
principles have been coming up by degrees, evolving little by
little, developing step by step. The chick does not grow in a day;
the child does not become a man in a week; his soul does not
develop within him in a fortnight. If a man lived the life he
should, he would be at his best and noblest at the time when he
thinks it is time for him to draw up his legs in bed and die. The
physical body may be then ready to die, but the man within, that
which is the real being, should be growing greater and nobler and
grander. It is for this that we really live.

[*atmic? — Ed.]

And so runs the course of evolution to the end of the seven

rounds, each round bringing out one principle and one plane, as
said; in each round, each one of the remaining principles is
brought out or evolved in less degree, there being thus, to use
Ezekiel's figure, "wheels within wheels." At the midpoint of the
fourth round, which is the middle round, there comes a time
when the monadic ray reaches the very acme of materiality —
when the life-wave reaches a point where it branches both
downward and upward, and then, in the words of Ezekiel,
chapter 18, "the soul that sinneth, it shall die," meaning that the
monadic ray courses downward and loses all chance for ascent
back homeward along the luminous arc, for that manvantara. It
follows the downward path. But those others that can and do
follow on, they indeed pass the danger point.

A Day of Brahma is composed of seven rounds, a period of 4,320

million solar or rather terrestrial years. Seven of these Days,
again, are required to make a solar manvantara, which is a term
used in the esoteric philosophy in a peculiar sense, because seven
times seven rounds are needed in order to bring out to their
fullest each of the seven principles and seven planes of which the
manifesting hierarchy is composed. Of the Life of Brahma, we are
told one half is already passed, one half of 311,040,000,000,000,
plus some few more billions of our years! I refer to the Surya-
Siddhanta, an ancient Sanskrit cosmogonical and astronomical
work which, from the statements and facts given within it, claims
an age of somewhat more than two million years, according to
popular interpretation. I think our modern orientalists give its
origin as occurring more or less around the beginning of the
Christian era or later, simply on the one ground that the Greeks
brought to northwestern India certain forms of
computation
which are found in the Surya-Siddhanta, a theory which is purely
arbitrary, and based upon no certainly ascertained fact except the
self-evolved or "swabhavic" theories of the orientalists
themselves!

Chapter 12
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter 12
Psychology: According to the Esoteric Philosophy. Immortality Is
Conditional: the Loss of the Soul.

Stoop not down, for a precipice lies below the earth, /

Drawing under a descent of seven steps, beneath which / Is
the throne of dire necessity. — Psellus, 6 (Cory, Ancient
Fragments, p. 278)

Devilish (asurya) are those worlds called, / With blind

darkness (tamas) covered o'er! / Unto them, on deceasing,
go / Whatever folk are slayers of the Self. — Isa-Upanishad,
3 (Hume, trans.)

IN OPENING our study of the holy science which we are

privileged here again tonight to investigate, let us begin by
reading from H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, volume I, the last
paragraph on page 272:

(1) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the

Ages . . .

Next page, second paragraph:

(2) The fundamental Law in that system, the central point

from which all emerged, around and toward which all
gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy of the
rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE-
PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.

Last paragraph:

(3) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this

unknown Absolute Essence.
Next page, second paragraph:

(4) The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA,

because all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life
of a fire-fly to that of the Sun.

Last paragraph:

(6) 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. We see that every external
motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical,
organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal
feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind.
As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man's
external body can take place unless provoked by an
inward impulse, given through one of the three functions
named, so with the external or manifested Universe. 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.

And on pages 21 and 22, beginning in the middle of the sentence:

. . . the differentiation of the "Germ" of the Universe into

the septenary hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, who
are the active manifestations of the One Supreme Energy.
They are the framers, shapers, and ultimately the creators
of all the manifested Universe, in the only sense in which
the name "Creator" is intelligible; they inform and guide it;
they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and control
evolution, embodying in themselves those manifestations
of the ONE LAW, which we know as "The Laws of Nature."

Resuming our thought from our last study of two weeks ago, we
shall take up this evening an outline of the psychological nature
of man, because if man understands himself, he understands that
from which he came, and which he is — he understands the
universe proportionately with his own development of spirit and
of mind and of the percipient faculties that go with the
development of spirit and of mind in man. In order to enable us
more easily to understand and more clearly to set forth the
essential characteristics of man's psychological economy, we shall
endeavor to show how closely these are related to two
fundamental theorems, or principles, or doctrines, of the wisdom-
religion; and these two are (1) the law or rather the fact of
hierarchies; and (2) the law (we use the term again under strong
protest) of the essential nature of things called swabhava,
meaning, as said before, self-evolution, self-formation, self-
development,
self-becoming. In it inheres the foundation of the
law of morals. As is obvious, man is responsible to himself and,
because man is a part of other things, he is therefore responsible
to other things also. Likewise, as a corollary of the foregoing, after
death man does not "meet his Creator," but verily he has to meet
and to reckon with his creature, that which he has built up in
himself during his life — his astral self.

What makes a rose bring forth a rose always? Why does the seed
of an apple invariably bring forth apples? Why does it not bring
forth thistles, or daisies, or pansies? The answer is very simple;
very profound, however. It is because of the swabhava, the
essential nature in and of the seed. Its swabhava can bring forth
only that which itself is, its essential characteristic, its own inner
nature. The Stoics of Greece and Rome expressed this fact of
evolution by saying that in the opening of a period of
manifestation, it is the pneuma — "spirit" — which relaxes its
tension, condensation or concretion thereupon ensuing of the
said pneuma or spirit, and evolution begins, emanation and
evolution both begin, following the causes set up and active in the
preceding period of manifestation. There spring into life
coordinately with the opening of the new period the spermatic
logoi, the seed-logoi, an expression translated from the Greek
spermatikoi logoi, "spermatic
reasons," "seed-reasons," logos
meaning "reason," hence "cause," among other things. It was
these seed-logoi which were the fruits or results, the karmas, of
former periods of activity. Having attained a certain stage of
evolution or development, or quality, or characteristic, or
individuality in the preceding manvantara, when the next period
of evolution came, they could produce nothing else but that which
they were themselves, their own inner natures, as seeds do. The
seed can produce nothing but what it itself is, what is in it; and
this is the heart and essence of the doctrine of swabhava. The
philosophical, scientific, and religious reach of this doctrine is
simply immense; it is of the first importance.

The habit or, if you like the word, the "law" of swabhava can work
only in that which is itself, because only its own vehicle, its own
self, is appropriate for the manifestation of itself — obviously!
Hence, the manner of evolution and emanation, and the progress
of the hierarchies, are as set forth before; that is, that from the
highest, evolution and emanation proceed downward into the
more material, and so on down the line of the shadowy arc into
matter, until the turning point of the descent is attained,
whereupon begins the ascent along the luminous arc.

We must note well, however, that the higher does not leave its
own sphere in this process; the higher does not wholly become
the lower, and the lower wholly become the still lower, leaving a
vacuum or an emptiness above. The higher spheres remain
always. It is like the flame of a candle laid at the wick of another
candle; and from that one candle you can light all the candles of
the universe, without diminution of its energy or of its force or of
its characteristic essence. The highest remains always the highest;
it is that part of itself, as it were, that is the developing energy
acting from within; its skandhas it is which produce, as the Stoics
would have said, this "relaxation of tension," this condensation or
concretion of parts of itself. A perfect analogy is found in the
intrauterine development of man and his descent into
incarnation. His spiritual nature does not come down and
become his actual body; it remains always his spiritual nature.
But from it, it throws out parts of itself,
its lower aspects or
principles — if we may so put the idea — and each one of these,
as the manvantaric cycle proceeds, in its turn secretes, protrudes,
and excretes something lower. So that the physical man, the body,
is in very truth the "temple of the living God," which is itself the
glory thereof, hence a part of the temple; the temple, verily, is the
lowest manifestation of the living God within.

Now swabhava works through the hierarchies. We have returned

to these two capital matters time after time, because it is all-
important from the philosophic, from the spiritual, and from the
ethical aspects that these things should be as clear as possible in
our minds. Take, for instance, the cosmogonical relation. We are
not created by an extracosmic God; karma, on the other hand, is
not an extracosmic entity which said, "I create," and the world
sprang into being. The highest essence, the inmost of the essence
of every hierarchy, of the practical infinitudes of hierarchies,
interlocked and co-related and working together and forming the
universal cosmos in which we live — the highest part of each one
of these hierarchies is a superdivine monad, which we can call
Parabrahman-Mulaprakriti. And its first manifestation or
downward-looking energy, its first breaking-forth into the plane
below, is Brahman acting in turn through its cosmic veil,
Pradhana, as you will remember we have before
studied; and
then comes Brahma-Prakriti, otherwise called Purusha-Prakriti,
which is the cosmic soul or individual, and the nature or the
vehicle in which it manifests; the Logos and its universe; the
monad and its sheaths, and so on.

Having these things clearly in mind, we can now take up directly

and more easily, more comprehensibly, the study of what we
mean by the psychology of man. The word is ordinarily used to
signify in our days and in the seats of learning in the Occident a
study more or less cloudy, mostly beclouded with doubts and
hypotheses, actual guesswork, meaning little more than a kind of
mental physiology, practically nothing more than the working of
the brain-mind in the lowest astral-psychical apparatus of the
human mind. But in our philosophy the word psychology is used
to mean something very different, and of a nobler character: we
might call it pneumatology, or the science or the study of spirit,
because all the inner faculties and powers of man ultimately
spring from his spirit. But as this word pneumatology is an
unusual one and might cause confusion, let us retain the word
psychology. We mean by it the study of the inner economy of
man, the interconnection of his principles, so to speak, or centers
of
energy or force — what the man really is inwardly.

Man, like everything else in the universe, is founded upon the

decadic skeleton or numerical framework of being — the number
ten. Three of these ten elements or planes or principles belong to
the arupa or formless world, and seven belong to the world of
manifestation and form. These seven latter principles produce
each other on a downward scale in the process of manifestation,
exactly as the hierarchies do, each one emanating or evolving a
lower, and this lower evolving or emanating a still lower one, and
so down to the seventh or lowest.

Man can be considered as a being composed of three essential

bases; the Sanskrit term is upadhi. The meaning of the word is
that which "stands forth" following a model or pattern, as a
canvas, so to say, upon which the light from a projecting lantern
plays. It is a play of shadow and form, compared with the
ultimate reality. These three bases or upadhis are, first, the
monadic or spiritual; second, that which is supplied by the lords
of light, the so-called manasa-dhyanis, meaning the intellectual
and intuitive side of man, the element-principle that makes man
man; and the third basis or upadhi we can call the vital-astral-
physical, if you please.

These three bases spring from three different lines of evolution,

from three different and separate hierarchies of being.
Remember that each hierarchy possesses in itself in embryo
everything that the entire universe is and has, the least as the
greatest, if we can say "least" and "greatest" of that which is
endless — at any rate the least and greatest of any period of
manifestation. This is the reason why man is composite. He is not
one sole and unmixed entity; he is a composite entity, he is a
thing built up of various elements, and hence his principles are,
to a certain extent, separable. Any one of these three bases can be
temporarily separated from the two others, without bringing
about the death of the man physically. But the elements, so to say,
that go to form any one of these bases cannot be separated
without bringing about physical dissolution or inner dissolution.

Now these three lines of evolution, these three aspects or qualities

of man, as said, come from three different hierarchies, or states,
often spoken of as three different planes of being. The lowest
comes from the earth, ultimately from the moon, our cosmogonic
mother; the middle, the manasic or intellectual-intuitional, from
the sun; the monadic from the Monad of monads, the supreme
flower, or acme, or rather the supreme seed of the universal
hierarchy which forms our cosmical universe or universal
cosmos.

It depends upon a correct understanding of the general

interconnection or the interworking of these three separate parts
of the economy of the inner man, whether we shall obtain a
proper grasp of our future studies. We meet, as we have seen, at
every step new ideas, new thoughts, new links with the universe
of light and being around us, and of which we also are children.
How terrible it would be if we were to reach the limit of all that it
was possible to know! On the contrary, endless vistas of growing
knowledge are always before us, and we cannot attain them
otherwise than by mounting the steps of knowledge one by one.

We have heard it said that immortality is conditional. This is a

certain truth. Immortality is not unconditional, and why? For the
reasons just pointed out. Man is a composite being and, as the
Buddha said in the closing words of his life, "Brothers, all that is,
is composite and transitory. Therefore work out your own
salvation." This contains the core of the whole philosophy of
evolution, and occultly designates ultimate immortality or
annihilation for any one manvantara for man as a thinking
entity.

Immortality is assured if the central principles which compose

the intellectual-intuitional man have succeeded in rising to the
monadic plane where they become one with the monad, shining
upon them as a spiritual sun. And the loss of a soul for the
manvantara is assured if its swabhava, its essential, characteristic
energies are directed downwards into brute matter.

However, the loss of the soul cannot ensue as long as even one
sole, single, spiritual aspiration remains functionally active. Only
when the unhappy entity has arrived at the point where it can
say, "Evil, be thou my God!" when not one single, quivering
aspiration spiritward remains, is it "lost" for the manvantara,
when its essence, as it were, is inverted, and its tendency is
downwards, downwards into the avichi, where circumstances
may bring about an almost immediate annihilation of it or,
perhaps, a manvantara of avichi-nirvana, a fearful state indeed
contrasted with the wondrous nirvana of the dhyan-chohans or
lords of meditation.

On the one hand we may raise ourselves to become a god, yea,

even while dwelling in the flesh. On the other hand we may allow
ourselves to sink to the Eighth Sphere, where we pass into the
yawning portals of the Planet of Death. Has it ever occurred to
any one of us to ask: Why are we here? Why, having had an
infinity in which to evolve, are we not higher than we are now?
Has it ever occurred to any one of us to ask whether we may not
be the "fallen angels," those very spiritual "athletes" who in a
former great manvantara failed to win onwards to the goal, failed
to rise, failed to make the goal intended for them, and were "cast
down" to work our weary way upward again?
Again, what do we mean by soul as contrasted with spirit? We
speak of the human soul and the spiritual soul, and we speak of
the astral soul, and we speak of the animal soul. But we do not use
those terms in connection with the word spirit. Does it not teach
us that the meaning of soul is that of a vehicle, an upadhi, in
general; that vehicle, or any vehicle, in which the monad, in any
sphere of manifestation, is working out its destiny? But these
vehicles are conscious vehicles, they are living and sentient
vehicles having each one its own consciousness and its own
thinking faculty; even these gross physical bodies of ours are not
merely insensible stocks. The physical body has its avenues of
dull consciousness and life; it can feel and, after its own poor dull
manner, it can think.

So, then, the loss of the soul is the loss of that which we, through
interminable ages, very, very laboriously have built up as our
inner temple, our home, in which we should rise to meet the gods,
to become one with them; and more, it is the vehicle through
which we should carry up with us entities below us at present,
but through us approaching our own dignity of humanity —
entities of which the soul is actually composed, even as the atoms
in our physical bodies are infant-souls, physical entities,
embryonic things which we are informing and inspiring, if,
indeed, we are not sentencing them to a cycle of woe.

With knowledge comes responsibility. The moral law will not be

thwarted. It cannot be played with. At every step, with every
morn, at every turn, at every choice, we face the right- or the left-
hand path, and we are forced to choose. We must see to it, every
time, whether our feet are to be set upon the luminous arc, or
upon the path of shadows leading us downwards.

Chapter 13
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirteen
The Process of Evolution. Self, Ego, and Soul: "I Am" and "I Am I."

Nothing in nature springs into existence suddenly all being

subjected to the same law of gradual evolution. Realize but
once the process of the maha cycle, of one sphere, and you
have realized them all. One man is born like another man,
one race evolves, develops, and declines like another and
all other races. Nature follows the same groove from the
"creation" of a universe down to that of a moskito. In
studying esoteric cosmogony, keep a spiritual eye upon the
physiological process of human birth; proceed from cause
to effect establishing . . . analogies between the . . . man and
that of a world. . . . Cosmology is the physiology of the
universe spiritualized, for there is but one law. — The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, pp. 70-71

WE OPEN our study this evening by reading from page 178, and a
small portion from page 179, of the first volume of The Secret
Doctrine, as follows:

Now the Monadic, or rather Cosmic, Essence (if such a term

be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and animal,
though the same throughout the series of cycles from the
lowest elemental up to the Deva Kingdom, yet differs in the
scale of progression. It would be very misleading to
imagine a Monad as a separate Entity trailing its slow way
in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms, and after an
incalculable series of transformations flowering into a
human being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates
back to the Monad of an atom of horneblende. Instead of
saying a "Mineral Monad," the more correct phraseology in
 physical Science, which differentiates every atom, would of
course have been to call it "the Monad manifesting in that
form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom.". . . As the
Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by
Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in
their degrees of differentiation, which properly constitutes
the Monad
— not the atomic aggregation, which is only the
vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower
and the higher degrees of intelligence.

It will perhaps be well to preface our remarks by reminding

ourselves of the two general desires which Katherine Tingley had
in mind in inaugurating our studies: first, the elucidation of the
teachings contained in H. P. Blavatsky's wonderful work; and
secondly, the providing of tests, doctrinal tests, as it were, not
tests in a dogmatic sense, but doctrinal or mental tests which each
one of us may have in mind to remember and to apply when he
takes up some book treating of the ancient religions of the world,
or of the modern theories concerning those religions as given out
by some modern thinker.

The world at the present day is simply overwhelmed with books

of various sorts treating of quasi-spiritual, and of so-called
psychic and quasi-psychic matters, and to one who does not know
the key doctrines of theosophy, who has not, as H. P. Blavatsky
had, at his mental elbow, so to say, the teachings of the ancient
wisdom-religion by which all these various matters may be tested
and proved, there is place for much mental confusion, indecision,
and doubt as to what the real sense or meaning thereof may be,
because many of these books are written very ably. But ability in
writing well is no sign or proof that an author understands
properly the ancient thought; such ability is merely the capacity
of presenting certain thoughts — the writer's own views — clearly
and often very praiseworthily; but merely praiseworthy writing
is certainly no proof that a writer possesses an adequate and
sufficient criterion of the ancient truth itself.

Having therefore these doctrines of the ancient wisdom-religion

(theosophy) in mind, and properly understanding them, we have
tests by which we may prove to ourselves whether such and such
a doctrine of any religion, ancient or modern, or such and such a
teaching of any thinker, ancient or modern, is in accord with that
primeval spiritual and natural revelation granted to the first
members of the first human and truly thinking race by the
spiritual beings from whom we likewise derived our inner
essence and life, and who are, really, our own present spiritual
selves. Not being tests in a dogmatic religious sense at all, they are
not "necessary to salvation." Heavens and hells do not depend for
their reality upon their acceptance or rejection by men, for
instance; but we mean that theosophy provides us with tests
which are tests in the same way as are the facts which an expert
in mathematics, or in chemistry, or in any other branch of science
or natural philosophy, is enabled to employ in order
to ascertain
when something new comes under his eye, or under his hand,
whether this new thing agrees with the truths already established
by himself and his collaborators in work.

At our last meeting we treated perforce only vaguely, and in a

mere sketch, of the difference existing between the spirit and the
soul. The spirit is the immortal element in us, the deathless flame
within us which dies never, which never was born, and which
retains throughout the entire maha-manvantara its own quality,
essence, and life, sending down into our own being and into our
various planes, certain of its rays or garments or souls which we
are; and furthermore, that these rays, in descending, constituted
the life-essences of a hierarchy, whether we treat of our own
selves as individual human beings, or whether we think of the
atom, or of the solar system, or of the universal cosmos.
We have this evening to consider more particularly the nature
and differences of self and ego; and if we have time we shall have
need to remark at some length upon a doctrine which is very
strange to Western ears, and yet which contains in itself the core,
the very heart of what emanational evolution is, and which also
shows to us what our destiny is. It is that destiny which leads us
both downwards and then upwards, back to our spiritual source,
but possessing — rather being — something more than we
possessed — or rather were — when we began our great
evolutionary pilgrimage.

Now before we start upon a sketch of the nature of, and the
difference between, self and ego, let us undertake very briefly an
analysis of what we mean when we speak of karma, for it is
necessary here. As we all know, karma is a Sanskrit word, and it
is derived from the Sanskrit root kri, a verb meaning "to make" or
"to do"; by adding the suffix ma to the root kri or the stem kar,
which comes through one of the rules of Sanskrit grammar from
the root kri, we have the abstract noun, karma. Literally it means
"doing," "making," hence "action." It is a technical term, that is to
say, it is a term from which hangs a whole series of philosophical
doctrines.

We can consider it best from the standpoint of translating it by

the word results, because this word "results," or "fruits," seems to
be its most general application in the technical sense of the
esoteric philosophy. Now karma is not a law; no God made it. A
human law, let us remember, is a maxim of conduct or order of
right laid down by a lawgiver, forbidding what is wrong and
inculcating and commanding what is right. Karma is not that.
Karma is the habit of universal and eternal nature, a habit
inveterate, primordial, which so works that an act is necessarily,
by destiny, followed by an ineluctable result, a reaction from the
nature in which we live. It was called by Mr. A. P. Sinnett, one of H.
P. Blavatsky's early helpers, the "law of ethical causation," an
inadequate and misleading term, because first, karma is more
than ethical, it is both spiritual and material and all between. It
has its application on the spiritual, mental, psychical,
and
physical planes. To call it the "law of cause and effect" is much
better, because more general, but even this does not describe it
adequately at all. The very essence of the meaning of this doctrine
is that when anything acts in any state of imbodied
consciousness, it sets up an immediate chain of causation, acting
on every plane to which that chain of causation reaches, to which
the force extends.

Human karma is born within man himself. We are its creators

and generators, and also do we suffer from it or are clarified
through it by our own previous actions. But what is this habit in
itself, das Ding an sich, as Kant would have said, this inveterate,
primordial habit of nature, which makes it react to an arousing
cause? That is a question which we shall, at some future time,
have to go into more fully than we can do it this evening, but we
may say this much: that it is the will of the spiritual beings who
have preceded us in bygone kalpas or great manvantaras, and who
now stand as gods, and whose will and thought direct and protect
the mechanism and the type and quality of the universe in which we
live. These great beings were once men in some former great
manvantara. It is our destiny ultimately to become like unto
them, and to be of their number, if we run the race of kalpic
evolution successfully.

Man, as H. P. Blavatsky has set it forth, weaves around himself

from birth to death a web of action and of thought — each one of
them producing results, some immediately, some later. Each act is
a seed. And that seed inevitably, by the doctrine of swabhava, will
produce the results which belong to it, and none other.
Swabhava, as we remember, is the doctrine of the essential
characteristic of anything, that which makes it what it is, and not
something else: that which makes the lily a lily, and not a rose or
a violet; that which makes one being a horse, and another a fly,
and another a blade of grass, and so on — its essential nature.

In our study of hierarchies in former meetings, we noticed that

each hierarchy proceeded from its own seed, its own seed-logos
or the highest part of it, its crown or pinnacle; and that
everything rolled down from it, rolled out from the seed into
being. So the human body grows from a microscopic seed, as it
were, into the man we know, partaking of the nature around it,
because it is a composite being. All composite things are
temporary and transitory. If they were not composite, they could
not manifest in any manner whatever. It is the composites, the
compound nature of them, which enables them to learn and to
mingle with and to be one in the manifested sense with all the
manifested universe around us.

We mentioned in former studies the wonderful doctrine of the

ancient Stoics of Greece and Rome, called the krasis di' holou, the
"mingling through everything," the "intermingling of all"; when
this doctrine was applied to the gods, the ancient Stoics called it
theocrasy — not theocracy, which means something else entirely.
Theocrasy means the "intermingling of the gods," even as human
thoughts mingle on earth.

Now the self remains eternally itself on its own plane, but in
manifestation it intermingles, if we may use that term, with the
spheres of matter by raying itself, as does the sun; by
communicating itself as the divine ray. It shoots down into the
spiritual world, and thence into the intellectual world, and thence
into the psychic world, and thence into the astral world, and
thence into the physical. It creates at each one of these stages, at
each plane of the hierarchy, a vehicle, a sheath, a clothing, a
garment, and these, just expressed by various names, on the
higher plane are called souls, and on the lower plane, bodies, and it
is the destiny of these souls — garments or vehicles or sheaths of
the spirit — ultimately to be raised upwards to divinity.

There is an immense difference between purely unconscious

spirit-life, and fully self-developed, self-conscious spirituality. The
monad starts out on its cyclic journey as an unself-conscious god-
spark, and ends it as a self-conscious god, but it does this through
assimilation of manifested life and by carrying up with itself the
various souls which it has created in its cyclic pilgrimage, in them
developing its inner essence and through them understanding
and coming into relation with other monads and other soul-
selves. It is the raising of the soul (or rather the souls) through the
self, to divinity, that constitutes the process of evolution, the
unfolding of the potentialities and capacities of the divine seed.

We may now ask: What is the difference between the self and the
ego The individual self, we know, is a spiritual or rather monadic
"atom." It is that which in all things says "I am," and hence is pure
consciousness, direct consciousness, not reflected consciousness.
The ego is that which says "I am I" — indirect or reflected
consciousness, consciousness reflected back upon itself, as it
were, recognizing its own mayavi existence as a "separate" entity.
See how marvelous these teachings are, for if we understand this
doctrine aright, it means spiritual salvation for us; and if we
understand it wrongly, it means our going downwards! For
instance, intensity of egoism is the understanding of it wrongly;
and, paradox of paradoxes, impersonality is the understanding of
it rightly. As Jesus said in the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark,
and Luke, voicing one of the teachings of the ancient wisdom: "He
who saves his life shall lose
it, but he who gives up his life for my
sake, shall find it."
Here we have the real meaning imbodied in a "dark saying" of a
matter that we studied somewhat at our last meeting: the
doctrine of the loss of the soul. There, in words ascribed to Jesus
and thrice repeated, we have the inner meaning of this mystery:
the because, the why, and the how of it.

We return to the strange doctrine mentioned before, strange to

Western ears, strange to Western thought. You will remember
that H. P. Blavatsky frequently describes the processes of
evolution and of development as the starting out of the spiritual
essence down the shadowy arc into matter, and its growing more
and more dense, compact, and heavy the deeper it goes into the
ocean of the material world, until it passes a certain point — the
turning point of the forces which arising in itself urge it forward
in that maha-manvantara; and that then it begins to rise again
along the upward cycle, the luminous arc, back towards the
divinity from which it emanated as a ray or rays. This monadic
essence, this monadic stream, passing into evolution is, like an
army or host, composed of a quasi-infinitude of individual
monads. We may call them spiritual atoms, unself-conscious god-
sparks. They gather to themselves as they descend into matter —
which is eternally there from the infinitude of
evolving beings in
all stages of development which had preceded them — or, rather,
they derive reflected or indirect consciousness (self-
consciousness) from that contact and intermingling. They begin to
have more than the mere feeling or rather simple cognition of "I
am," or pure consciousness; they begin to feel themselves self-
consciously at one with all that is. The unself-conscious god-spark
is beginning self-consciously to recognize its own essential and
inherent divinity. It is developing self-consciousness, and this self-
consciousness is what we call the ego, the recognition that "I am
I," a part or ray of the All recognizing that wondrous truth.
Now consider the hierarchy of the human being growing from the
self as its seed — ten stages: three on the arupa or immaterial
plane, and seven (or perhaps better, six) on the plane of matter or
manifestation. On each one of these seven planes (or six planes),
the self or Paramatman develops a sheath or garment, the upper
ones spun of spirit, or light if you will; and the lower ones spun of
shadow or matter; and each such sheath or garment is a soul; and
between the self and a soul — any soul — is the ego. First in order
is the self, the divine entity or thing, or monad, behind all; and
growing from within it, like a sun developing from within its own
essence, along the karmic lines or paths of the memories or
"results" or "fruits" brought over from the preceding great
manvantara, thus developing strictly according to the skandhas
in its own nature, is the ego, contacting and intermingling with
matter and the other hosts of intelligences of this
maha-
manvantara. The ego throws out from itself — as the seed will
throw out its green blade, developing into the tree with its
branches and its twigs and its numberless leaves — it throws out
from itself its garment or sheath or vehicle spun of light or spun
of shadow, according to the plane or point upon which it is; and
this ethereal or spiritual or astral garment of the ego is the soul —
that is, any soul.

There are many souls in man. There are likewise many egos in
man; but back of them all, both egos and souls, is the deathless
flame, the self. Remember that the ancient Egyptians also taught
of the various souls of man, of the manifold selves of man, of the
several egos of man. We have not spoken often as yet of the
ancient Egyptian teachings, because they are exceedingly difficult
on account of being inwrapped in complicate symbol and
allegory; they are the most hid, perhaps, the most enshrouded
with tropes and figures of speech of any ancient system. But the
old truths are there; they are the same age-old teachings.
Now evolution is the unfolding, the developing, the bringing out
from the divine seed within of all its latent capacities, its
swabhava in short; its individual characteristics or the essence of
its being. The whole effort of evolution, however, is not merely to
bring out that which is within each individual seed, but also that
each individual monad, and each ego, and each soul, shall gather
up from the matter in which it works other less progressed
entities which become parts of itself, and shall carry them along
with it on the arc of the evolutionary journey upwards.

Each one of us is therefore a potential Christ, a potential Christos,

because while we are, each one of us, a Christos within,
intrinsically, each one of us is, or should be, a "savior" of his
fellow men likewise, and of all the lower beings under him, under
his guidance and sway. If a man or woman ill-treats or treats
nobly the atoms of his or her body, he or she is held responsible
at the hands of karma, so to say, before the divine tribunal of his
own self; yea, to the very last farthing he shall be held to a strict
accounting. Look at the dignity with which this noble teaching
endows and crowns our human species! What a sublime meaning
do the doctrines of our Teachers have in this light! Man is
responsible; because when he has achieved self-consciousness
even in minor degree he becomes a creator thereby, and becomes
therefore responsible to a coordinate extent. He becomes a
collaborator and co-worker with the gods whom he is destined to
join as one of themselves.

If the life-stream, if the stream of monads, if any individual

monad has passed the lowest point of its manvantaric cycles
safely, has safely swung past the path leading downward at the
midpoint of the fourth round, and successfully starts out on the
upward way, along the luminous arc, it is safe to a certain extent,
but not yet wholly so, because that same test comes again at the
midpoint in each round. But the midpoint of the fourth round is
the most critical. We all know what a round is, and the seven
through which we must pass before we complete our
evolutionary pilgrimage on this planet. But if the monadic spark
passes safely through each of the three rounds to come, then in
the last round, on the last or seventh globe, in the last race of that
globe, he shall blossom out as a dhyan-chohan, a "lord of
meditation" — already almost a god. And those of us who shall
have made the race successfully shall, after the long nirvana that
awaits us after the seven rounds are completed, which
nirvana is
a period of unspeakable bliss corresponding to the devachan
between two earth lives — those of us, I say, who shall have
become these lords of meditation, shall become the forerunners,
the makers, the developers, the gods of the future planet which
shall be the child of this, as this globe, Terra, was the child of our
mother, the moon; and so on forever, but always advancing
higher and higher up the rungs of the wondrous ladder of cosmic
life.

This is the strange and wonderful doctrine, strange and

wonderful to Western ears. Endless are the ramifications of
thought which spring from it. Think of the destiny before us! Yes,
and it is also wise to look at the other side. Let us turn our faces
from the morning sunlight occasionally, and look in the other
direction. Remember that we have innate and ineluctable moral
responsibilities where ethical problems are involved. We have, to
a certain extent, knowledge; hence power, hence responsibility.
Behind us, trailing upwards, are infinitudes of beings who are
less than we. Each one of them is on the same path whereon we
have trodden ourselves; each one of them having to go over that
same path, stained with the blood from our own feet. And shall
they fail for lack of our help? They shall have to pass the danger
point, even as we have done; because the teaching is that at the
middle point of every evolution there is a downward path,
leading into spheres of being grosser and more material than
ours.

When our planet first started, or rather first was started, on its
course of emanational evolution, the propelling agents in that
were the dhyan-chohans from the lunar chain, i.e., those who had
run the evolutionary race successfully there; and behind them,
trailing after them we came, seven classes of us, the most evolved,
the less, the less, the less, the less, the animals, the vegetables, and
the minerals.

Our time is drawing to a close this evening, but there is one point
which it seems incumbent upon us to touch upon at least slightly.
When Leibniz spoke of the inherent urge in every monad
propelling it into manifestation, he spoke from the ancient books,
from the Pythagorean and the Neoplatonic teachings, of which he
was a student, and he meant what we do when we speak of the
swabhava, the essential nature of a thing. There is, however, one
point of his teaching to which we must allude, where he says in
substance that our world is the best possible world in the
universe. Those of you who are acquainted with the great French
philosopher, Voltaire, may remember his book, Candide, or
"Optimism," in which Voltaire evidently is tilting at the optimistic
theories of Leibniz, and in which two of his characters are the
inveterately irrational optimist, Dr. Pangloss, and the young man,
Candide, Dr. Pangloss's pupil, a young philosopher, a thorough-
going selfish optimist, who accepted all the
rebuffs of life with
great indifference and calmness, and with a smile at human
misery. And Voltaire has a passage commenting upon these two
characters (Candide, ch. vi), where he says, with all that pungent,
aphoristic point which is so great an ornament of the French
genius, Si c'est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc
les autres — "If this is the best of all possible worlds, how about
the others?" A very comprehensive remark indeed, and a very
true one. It is not the best possible of all worlds. Far from it. It
were indeed a weary and hopeless outlook for our human kind, if
it were! Yet the great German philosopher was right in this sense,
that it is the best possible world which the world's karma has
enabled it to be or to produce; and if it is not better, we ourselves
are largely responsible for it.

We see in this amusing reference to the theories of Leibniz and

Voltaire the true meaning of the word optimism. Our own
majestic philosophy gives us a far wider vision, a more
penetrating insight into things, a profounder understanding of
the so-called riddle of life. Everything is relative, one of the
greatest teachings of the esoteric philosophy. There are no
absolutes (in the usual European sense of that word) anywhere.
Everything is relative, because everything is interlinked and
intermingles with every other thing. If there were an absolute, in
the European sense, there could be nothing but the barren silence
and immutability of complete and utter perfection, which is
impossible, for there would be in such case, there could be, no
growth, no future growth, no past development, spiritually,
mentally, or in any other wise.

We now close. At our next meeting we shall take up the study of

the so-called hells and heavens, for this branch of our
investigation is a very necessary part of the psychological side of
our study which we began at our last meeting. We say this
evening only this, that all the doctrines and dogmas and teachings
and tenets of the great world religions are based fundamentally
upon some more or less obscure truth, usually very much
obscured by ignorance or fanaticism, or by both. And, in
conclusion, let us note well that there are no hells, and there are
no heavens, as these are commonly supposed to be, but spheres of
life and experience corresponding to each class of the myriad
degrees of entities in being. As Jesus is said to have stated in the
Christian Gospels: "In my Father's house are many mansions."
There are in the endless kosmos innumerable appropriate places
of retributive bliss or retributive woe for all grades of souls, and
in these karmically appropriate spheres, the countless hosts
of
evolving entities of all classes find their properly and exactly
adjusted places.

Chapter 14
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Fourteen
Heavens and Hells: Teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy and of
the Exoteric Religions.

The devachan ["heaven"] merges from its highest into its

lowest degree — by insensible gradations; while from the
last step of devachan [downwards], the Ego will often find
itself in Avitcha's ["hell's"] faintest state, which, towards the
end of the "spiritual selection" of events may become a
bona fide "Avitcha." — The Mahatma Letters, p. 188

From Kama Loka then . . . the newly translated "Souls" go

all (but the shells) according to their attractions, either to
Devachan or Avitchi. — Ibid., p. 199

Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels, . . . — Sir

Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia, bk. 8

WE OPEN our studies this evening by reading from The Secret

Doctrine, volume II, page 273, the following:

For the evolution of Spirit into matter could never have

been achieved; nor would it have received its first impulse,
had not the bright spirits sacrificed their own respective
super-ethereal essences to animate the man of clay, by
endowing each of his inner principles with a portion, or
rather, a reflection of that essence. The Dhyanis of the
Seven Heavens (the seven planes of Being) are the
NOUMENOI of the actual and the future Elements, just as
the Angels of the Seven Powers of nature — the grosser
effects of which are perceived by us in what Science is
pleased to call the "modes of motion" — the imponderable
forces and what not — are the still higher noumenoi of still
 higher Hierarchies.

This is an exceedingly interesting paragraph. It contains, in small

compass, the entire outline of the studies that we have been
pursuing for some weeks past.

In taking up this evening the study of the so-called heavens and

hells, it may be well first of all to repeat that there are no heavens
and there are no hells, as these are outlined in the exoteric
religions. Those conceptions are based, however, upon teachings
which actually came from the Mystery-doctrines and they contain
in themselves the outline of a truth, indeed, of a great truth, when
properly understood. But while we do not accept the Christian
heaven and the Christian hell, nor the Mohammedan heavens nor
the Mohammedan hells, nor the literal exoteric teachings
concerning them as found among the Buddhists and the ancient
Greeks and the Romans, nevertheless there actually are in nature
certain spheres of being in which those portions of man's
constitution which survive the death of the physical body find
appropriate dwelling places; they are, in fact, retributive realms
or spheres of being, to which are magnetically attracted those
parts of his constitution which in him are of
similar or identical
quality.

Jesus, in the Gospel "according to John," 14th chapter, the second

verse, says the following: "In my Father's house are many
mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare
a place for you." He said this in the long final address which he
gave to his disciples before his arrest and appearance before the
authorities, according to the Christian legends.

There is no great religion of the ancient time which does not

teach in more or less clear and definite form the existence of
certain forces of reward or of retribution, acting after man's
death in appropriate spheres in which the so-called soul of man
meets with retribution or, as some say, "punishment" or "reward"
after physical death. Those spheres in which the soul shall receive
appropriate retributive purgation or punishment are called hells
in the English tongue; and those in which the soul shall receive
appropriate retributive repose and reward are commonly called
heavens; and because these words are familiar to Europeans, and
represent with fair accuracy the general idea of postmortem
retribution prevalent in all great religions, it may be best for us to
use them. But we must positively clear out of our minds, wash our
minds clean of, all ideas that have been put into them by the
miseducation of the dogmatic theologies, if we are to gain a
correct idea of what the esoteric
philosophy teaches on these
lines.

We must remember that we are studying the occultism of the

archaic ages. Now this word occultism meant originally only the
science of things hid; even in the Middle Ages of Europe, those
philosophers who were the forerunners of the modern scientists,
those who then studied physical nature, called their science
occultism, and their studies occult, meaning the things that were
"hid," or not known to the common run of mankind. Such a
medieval philosopher was Albertus Magnus, a German; and so
also was Roger Bacon, an Englishman; both of the thirteenth
century of the Christian era.

Therefore, occultism as we use the term, and as it should be used,

means the study of the hid things of being, the science of life or
universal nature. In one sense this word can be used to mean the
study of unusual "phenomena," which meaning it usually has
today among people who do not think, or who will not think, of
the vastly larger field of causes which occultism, properly
speaking, investigates. Doubtless mere phenomena have their
place in study, but they are on the frontier, as it were, on the
outskirts — and they are the superficialities — of occultism. In
studying true occultism we must penetrate deep into the causal
mysteries of being; and, in very truth, we have been doing this in
these studies: step by step have we been going deeper into the
realm of causes.

Now in order fully to comprehend the destiny of the soul,

postmortem, and before its next rebirth in a physical body on this
plane, it is incumbent upon us first to say that there is a vast field
of teachings with regard to death upon which we do not feel at
present privileged to roam. The reason for our necessary
reticence and silence is this, that the teachings with regard to the
deeper mysteries of death give keys to mysteries of still greater
magnitude and scope, and in ancient days were communicated
only to a chosen few, at any time. Any one of you who chooses to
look into the religious mystical literatures of the world can prove
this fact for himself.

In former studies we have traced the peregrination of the monad

from the state of latency into manifestation, as viewed from below.
Now the monad is a spiritual "atom," so to say; let us call it this
evening a spiritual radical (radicle), using this word radical in
precisely the double sense in which H. P. Blavatsky used it when
she spoke of comets as "those long-haired sidereal radicals" —
with a touch of real humor in one sense, but also hinting, by the
use of the word, at a great truth of the esoteric philosophy with
regard to comets in calling them radicals. You know what radical
originally meant. It meant a (little) "root," from the Latin radix,
hence its application to a comet as the root or the germ of a future
world. So, also, a monad is a radical, a radical in both the senses
in which she used the word: an "aggressive" (in the sense of self-
acting, self-developing) entity, and also a
root, a germ of a future
god.

Now this radical, in order to attain self-consciousness, and

conscious self-consciousness, must pass down the arc of shadows
until it reaches the turning point of the great cycle in that
manvantara, and as an integral part of and belonging to the
hierarchy evolving in that manvantara. By that time, if its karma
is so, it has reached conscious self-consciousness, and is
manifesting on our plane as a man. Thereupon it starts upwards
along the luminous arc or the arc of ascension, and if it is
successful in its cyclic pilgrimage, it finally blossoms forth into a
god. We must remember this general outline if we wish to
understand clearly what we mean by heavens and hells.

The whole aim of evolution, the entire destiny of the spiritual

radical, is the elevating of the consciously personal into the
consciously impersonal — so important a thought that we are
obliged to say that it lies as the very first conception and as the
root of the whole esoteric philosophy. A self-conscious god can be
such only because it has a vehicle of self to work through; and this
is what the spiritual radical lacks when it starts out on its cyclic
pilgrimage. Manhood must be raised to godhood.

We may begin to see here the meaning of what H. P. Blavatsky

spoke of as the loss of the soul. At every step downward, as its
self-consciousness is slowly and gradually evolved in any
manvantara, the monad fabricates into itself, or secretes from
itself, and excretes from itself, vehicles proper for its cognizing
the forces and matter on the various planes through which it
passes, and in which it manifests. Those on the higher planes are
egos, and each ego secretes its own appropriate vehicle called a
soul. Consequently, there is an ego and a soul for each step
downward: a dual vehicle for manifesting the monadic essence
on every plane. Through the whole, as a golden cord, runs the
self, the innermost consciousness, the spiritual "I am." The ego-
soul gives to the monad the consciousness "I am I." The self,
however, is the same in all of us. "I am I" is the quality only of the
ego. Therefore the important thing is to "save" the ego. The higher
egos are saved
because of previous salvation gained in former
manvantaras. But the lower egos and their souls are built up out
of the matter and consciousness of this manvantara, and they
must be "saved." The state of human consciousness in which we
— mankind — now live in this epoch and in this manvantara is
called in the individual the human soul, the human ego; and this
human soul and this human ego must be "saved," because our
self-consciousness is centered therein. We use the word saved,
because none better occurs to us; at least the word is familiar.
This saving means that the ego-soul must be rescued from the
magnetic attraction of matter.

But what happens if its education is incomplete when at the

bottom of the arc, before beginning the ascent along the luminous
arc, it becomes unable to run the race and fails? Suppose that the
pull of matter is too strong and that its attraction is downward.
Slowly, in that case, the links with the higher self are broken, the
golden chain is ruptured, and the whole effort of the monad in
that manvantara is lost. The entity cycling downward is what is
called a lost soul.

Now a lost soul has naught to do with the heavens and the hells.
The state of nirvana, again, has nothing to do with the heavens
and the hells. The heavens and the hells concern only the truly
human entity: that is, the human ego and the human soul; only
this grade of consciousness, for to it belong those consciousnesses
which can partake of the conception of, and can experience,
felicity or misery. Nirvana is beyond felicity; it is, of course,
beyond misery. Its opposite pole is nirvana-avichi, which is the
utter contrast of nirvana; it is the lowest point, the nether pole of
conscious being.

When the body breaks up at physical death the astral elements

remain in the "shadow-world" with the same conscious center, as
in life, clinging within them, still vitalizing them; and certain
processes there go on, but there is no need for us to take time this
evening in discussing what kama-loka is or devachan is,
particularly. When the "second death," after that of the physical
body, takes place — and there are many deaths, that is to say,
many changes of the vehicles of the ego — when the second death
takes place, what becomes of the human center, the truly human
entity? We have been told that the higher part of it withdraws
into itself all that aspires towards it, and takes that "all" with it
into the devachan; and that the atman, with the buddhi, and with
the higher part of the manas — which is the so-called human soul,
or the mind — becomes thereupon the spiritual monad of man.
Strictly speaking, this is the divine monad within its
vehicle —
atman and buddhi — combined with the human ego in its higher
manasic element; but they are joined into one after death, and
are hence spoken of as the spiritual monad.

The human monad "goes" to devachan. Devachan is a Tibetan

word and may be translated as "god-land," "god-country, "god-
region." There are many degrees in devachan: the highest, the
intermediate, and the lowest. What becomes of the entity, on the
other hand, the lower human soul, that is so befouled with earth-
thought and the lower instincts that it cannot rise? There may be
enough in it of the spirit-nature to hold it together as an entity
and enable it to become a reincarnating entity, but it is foul, it is
heavy; its tendency is consequently downwards. Can it therefore
rise into a heavenly felicity? Can it go even into the lower realms
of devachan and there enjoy its modicum of the beatitude, bliss,
of everything that is noble and beautiful? No. There is an
appropriate sphere, a sphere appropriate for every degree of
development of the ego-soul, and it gravitates to that sphere and
remains there until it is thoroughly purged, until the sin has been
washed out, so to
say.

These are the so-called hells, beneath even the lowest parts of
devachan; and the arupa heavens are the highest parts of the
devachan. Nirvana is a very different thing from the heavens.
Nirvana is a state of utter bliss and complete, untrammeled
consciousness, a state of absorption in pure being, and is the
wondrous destiny of those who have reached superhuman
knowledge and purity and spiritual illumination. It really is
personal absorption into or identification with the self — the
highest SELF. It is also the state of the monadic entities in the
period that intervenes between minor manvantaras or rounds of
a planetary chain; and more fully so between each seven-round
period or Day of Brahma and the succeeding Day or new kalpa of
a planetary chain. At these last times, starting forth from the
seventh sphere in the seventh round, the monadic entities have
passed far beyond even the highest state of devachan. Too pure
and too far advanced even for such a condition as the devachanic
felicity, they go to their appropriate sphere and condition, which
latter is the nirvana following the end of the seventh round.

Now what do the ancients say in their exoteric religions about

these so-called heavens and hells? Every such ancient religion
taught that the so-called heavens are divided into steps or grades
of ascending bliss and purity; and the so-called hells into steps or
grades of increasing purgation or suffering. The esoteric doctrine,
or occultism, teaches that the one is not a punishment; nor is the
other, strictly speaking, a reward. The teaching is, simply, that
each entity after physical death is drawn to the appropriate
sphere to which the karmic destiny of the entity magnetically
attracts it. As a man works, as a man sows, in his life, that and
that only shall he reap after death. Good seed produces good fruit;
bad seed, tares — and perhaps even nothing of value or of
spiritual use follows a negative and colorless life. There is no
"law" of karma; we repeat, there is no "law" of karma. There are
no "laws" of nature; we repeat, there are no "laws" of nature.
What is a natural "law"? Is a natural "law" a god? Is it a being? Is
it an entity? Is it a force? Is it an energy? If so, what god produces
it? The word law, however, is convenient enough provided we
understand what we mean by it. Perhaps no better word, in our
day, could be found for ordinary usage in writing popularly or in
conversation. But do not let us make the mistake of taking
abstractions for realities.

In this study of the marvelous doctrines of occultism we shall

never move a step forward towards a proper understanding of
nature, if we do make this mistake. We must wash our minds
clean of Occidental scientific and theological miseducation. The
so-called laws of nature and the law of karma are simply the
various workings of consciousnesses in nature: truly and actually,
they are habits, habits of beings. We replace the abstractions of
Occidental science and theology with the action and the
ineluctable results thereof of consciousnesses and wills in the
spheres of being of the hierarchies of life. We are simply abusing
our intelligence, stultifying our intellects, when we go around and
around the vicious circles of materialistic theory and think we
have satisfied our inquiring minds by replacing the work of
endless hosts of beings in and of nature with an abstraction called
law or laws. Think of it! Do we realize that not one single great
thinker of the ancients, until the Christian era, ever
talked about
laws of nature, as if these laws were living beings, as if these
abstractions were actual entities which did things? Did the laws
of navigation ever navigate a ship? Does the law of gravity pull
the planets together? Does it unite or pull the atoms together?
Nonsense. This word law is simply an abstraction, an expression
for the action of entities in nature. The ancients put realities, living
beings, in the place of laws which, as we use the term, are only
abstractions; they did not cheat themselves so easily with words.
They called them gods. Very good; call them, then, gods. They
called them spiritual entities. Very good, then; call them so. Call
them dhyanis, or by any other name you please. But pin your
faith, direct your intellects, to actual, living beings, to realities, not
to nothingnesses, not to abstractions, which have no reality
except as modes of speech.

Let us take for example the ancient Brahmanical teachings. There

we find many divisions of heavens and hells; but the common one
is the division into seven lower spheres or lokas, or hells, or
infernal halls, and the seven superior lokas, which we may call
heavens. The Buddhist teaching usually gives the number as 21
hells, for which the common word is narakas; and the Buddhists
also used the word lokas for the higher spheres; but note well that
in all ancient systems, these higher and lower spheres or grades
were in ascending and descending steps. There was the highest,
and all the others which followed, decreasing in felicity and
purity by degrees, each one growing more material and less
happy with each step downward, until they passed insensibly into
the higher hells, and here again still further increasing in
materiality downward until the end of the hierarchy of these
stages was reached.

Among the very lowest of these hells the Buddhists placed avichi.
This is a Sanskrit word, and its general meaning is "waveless,"
having no waves or movement, suggesting the stagnation of life
and being in immobility; it also means "without happiness," or
"without repose"; and below that another hierarchy begins, a new
world. What endless realms for speculation open to us here!

We can here but sketch — our remaining time this evening is so

short — an outline of the doctrines concerning the heavens and
the hells. In beginning with a general outline, we are pursuing the
general plan of our studies here. First, we try to give the general
sketch, the general view, later filling in the necessary details as
we pursue our subject, although frequently alluding to another
teaching connected with it, purposely doing so; and in this way
we are following the ancient system or method of teaching these
different subjects. In our modern Occidental institutions of
learning, it is customary, perhaps a rigorous requirement, that
the lecturer shall pursue to the end all details of a subject
embarked upon: opening one line of investigation and not
deviating from it until everything in theory and practice, or
supposed to be there, is known, or thought to be known; and
when that one line of study is fully exhausted, and when the
intellect is completely crystallized in that form, and
weary, then
opening a new line of investigation. This method is positively
contrary to nature. Neither child nor adult learns life's lessons in
such artificial fashion. The ancients knew better the psychology
of teaching and learning. They built up, first, the general view,
such as has a man on a mountaintop with the general
topographical view before his vision, whence he constructs a
topographical survey which he retains in his mind; and when he
goes down into the valley, he is enabled easily to fill in all
necessary details. This is nature's method, if we may so speak of
it; and it is what is called the Platonic method: first the general,
then the particular. In logic, this is called the deductive system, as
opposed to the Aristotelian or inductive method, on which
modern Western teaching is based.

Now the Egyptians, as we know from their papyri, taught the

existence of many spheres after death, the many planes of felicity
and beatitude and the many planes of suffering or purgation,
spheres which the defunct entity had to pass through before it
reached one or the other of the goals of postmortem life: heaven
or hell. The teachers of ancient times had a way, an allegorical
way, of expressing the course of life after death, and in this
manner kept the intuition alive and active without touching upon
forbidden matters, secrets or mysteries of the sanctuaries. Let us
take in this connection, as illustration, the teaching of the
Mithraic religion, which came very close at one time to ousting
completely the Christian doctrine. The Mithraists taught the
existence of seven (and nine) heavens, each one preceded and
followed by another one, inferior or superior, respectively; and
each one was to be attained by a "ladder," which was only a
graphic, a neat, way of speaking. Of course they meant
only that
the ladder was a representation of the steps, grades, or degrees,
which the soul had to climb in order to attain the goal; and the
ladder was likewise a figure of the degrees of the hierarchy — the
steps, the planes, the spheres, of which it is composed. They had
also their seven degrees of initiation, based upon the rising scale
existent in nature; and two other degrees which were held as too
sacred to speak of openly; and this makes nine degrees in all.

How about the ancient Scandinavians? Take the case of their

Niflheim, a word meaning "cloudy (or misty) dwelling place,"
"home," or "mansion." This nebulous region was the ninth, the
lowest, in their system, and itself was composed of nine minor
worlds or spheres. Very careful indeed were the writers of the
Eddas in the way they taught; but they give us enough to show us
the same identical teachings as found elsewhere over the world. I
am speaking here more particularly of the Prose Edda, which is
more open in its esoteric allusions than is the Poetic Edda, the
Edda of verse. Now the Prose Edda tells us that on one side, the
northern, of the cosmic space, were cold and gloom, and it gives
to this sphere the name Nifl, "nebulous region," which is a
generalizing of the meaning of the name. Nifl had nine divisions
or degrees, but more particularly Nifl was the name of the lowest
of the nine; still, the Edda gave that name to the entire series of
nine spheres on the north. A middle region was the Ginnungagap,
an Old Norse word which can be translated perhaps as "yawning
abyss," or abyss (or gap) of abysses; this was the middle or
intermediate sphere. And then came Muspellheim to the south, a
place of fire and flame and warmth, not necessarily anything like
the Christian hell, for, as a matter of fact, it was nearer like a
heaven than a hell; elemental or divine beings lived there, a
natural thought to the cold-enduring Scandinavians. Their hell
was cold, and the hells of Southrons were hot — these words
being merely appropriate ways of expressing things to be easily
apprehended by the people.

What did the early Christians or the medieval Christians believe

as regards heaven and hell? Let us choose the descriptions of
Dante, the great Italian poet, for instance, for he echoes the
ancient pagan teaching remarkably in some ways; always in a
distorted manner, it is true, but you can see the ancient truth
under all that he wrote. How significant it is that he made Vergil,
the great Latin poet, his conductor through his Infernos, or Hells,
and through his Purgatory; but in due deference to his Christian
teachers and the Christian age in which he lived, when he came to
the Heavens, which he describes, he has a Christian guide, his
Beatrice, and of course he had to follow his Christian doctrines.
Dante divides his Hells into nine circles. He divides his Purgatory
into seven circles, preceded by the Ante-purgatory, and followed
by the Terrestrial Paradise, which make again nine. In each of
these Hells, and in each of these divisions of Purgatory — places
of purification — he shows the
lowest as the most terrible; the
second above it is not quite so fearful, and the third less so than
the second; and so on up through the eighteen circles or degrees
of Hells and Purgatory to the topmost one of the Purgatory, which
is scarcely, if at all, unpleasant. Finally, Dante divides his Heavens
into nine, and these are topped by the Empyrean, the dwelling
place of God and his Angels! Thus, there are nine Hells; seven
divisions of Purgatory, with the Ante-purgatory and the
Terrestrial Paradise — again nine; nine Heavens; the Empyrean:
9+9+9+1=28, divisions of nonphysical life, each one appropriated
to punish certain vices or reward certain virtues after death. A
curiously faithful, curiously distorted, and often grotesque,
parody of the archaic doctrine.

Chapter 15
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Fifteen
The Evolution of the "Absolute." Generalized Plan of Evolution on
All Planes. Seven Keys to Wisdom and Future Initiations.

Containing all things in the one summit of his own

hyparxis, he himself subsists wholly beyond. — Proclus,
The Theology of Plato, p. 212

You will not understand it, as when understanding some

particular thing. — Damascius (Cory, Ancient Fragments, p.
281)

Things divine are not attainable by mortals who

understand body,

But only as many as are lightly armed arrive at the summit.

— Proclus, Commentary on the "Cratylus" of Plato

IN OPENING our study this evening we read first from The Secret
Doctrine, volume I, page 570, the first paragraph:

While the Christian is taught that the human soul is a

breath of God — being created by him for sempiternal
existence, i.e., having a beginning, but no end (and
therefore never to be called eternal) — the Occult teaching
says, "Nothing is created, but is only transformed. Nothing
can manifest itself in this universe — from a globe down to
a vague, rapid thought — that was not in the universe
already; everything on the subjective plane is an eternal is;
as everything on the objective plane is an ever becoming —
because transitory."

You will remember that at our last meeting we were obliged to

confine ourselves to a short review of the subject of the heavens
and hells as doctrinally held by various exoteric religions; and in
considering several theological or philosophical or mythological
teachings about them, we had reached the viewpoint of the
medieval Christian theology, as represented in the Divina
Commedia of the great Italian poet, Dante; and we found in that
really noble poem once again, as we found in the other systems
that we have mentioned, the wonderful number nine as the root-
number of division.

We also touched briefly upon the ancient Scandinavian beliefs in

regard to this subject as found in the Younger or Prose Edda, and
merely vaguely alluded to the teachings therein contained. We
also spoke of the beliefs of the Greek and Latin Stoics; and we
might also have pointed out that in an important so-called
Hermetic work, supposed to have had its origin in Egypt, but
which has been greatly altered by later Christian hands — the
work I refer to being called The Divine Poemandres — there are
seven spheres or stages of being spoken of, as also vague allusions
to an eighth, while a ninth is merely hinted at also.

Now turning to ancient Greece again, we find that the great poet
Homer, in the eighth book of the Iliad, makes his Zeus speak, in
addressing the gods and goddesses, of the Golden Chain. Zeus tells
the other divinities in very masterful language of his supreme
power, and that if they all, the gods and goddesses of high
Olympus, were to drag downward at one end of that Chain, and
he were to hold the other, he Zeus himself, alone, could drag it
upwards with all the gods and goddesses, all the seas and the
earths, and hang that Golden Chain, with them all at the nether
end, to one of the pinnacles of heaven. What is the meaning of
this curious tale? The following:

This Golden Chain represents the concatenation of the living

hierarchies which we have studied before — the Golden Chain of
all being, inward and outward. In the same address to the
assembly of the divinities of Olympus, Zeus speaks as follows:
"Any one of you who despises my words and will, I shall cast
down into gloomy Tartarus . . . which is as far below Hades as
Earth is below Olympus." This shows us somewhat of Homer's
representation of the framework of kosmos, which was
somewhat as follows: Earth, or rather the universe, was
represented as a sphere; Olympus was placed at the upper or
northern side or pole; what was called Earth was the next part
below; below Earth was Hades; and at the nether pole from
Olympus was placed Tartarus. Homer, through his Zeus, tells us
that as far below Olympus as Earth is, so far below Hades is
Tartarus.

The Greek poet Hesiod, in his Theogony, beginning with verse 721,
also tells us that if a brazen anvil were allowed to fall from
Olympus to Earth it would take nine days to fall, and would reach
the Earth on the tenth; and if that same brazen anvil, in
continuing its course, were to fall from Earth to Tartarus, it would
again take nine days to fall, and would reach Tartarus on the
tenth. So the Latin poet Vergil (Aeneid, 6, 577-9) has the same
general idea.

We see therefore in Greek and Latin mystical thought the same

principle of hierarchies and scales of nines and tens that we have
met with before. The theory calls for a continuous succession of
planes or spheres of being, ranging from higher to lower;
repeated uninterruptedly throughout the range of any general
hierarchical system of worlds. For instance, beginning at
Tartarus, there follows a new subhierarchy, a new sphere, a new
egg, of being; just as the Olympus of any one such system is the
nether pole of a still higher hierarchy than itself. And so on
throughout the universe.
Now this "nine days' falling" of Hesiod's "brazen anvil," and any
other similar figure, is simply the well-known mythologic way of
speaking, rendering in an easily understood form for the general
public, with their sleeping minds, the esoteric doctrines, the
doctrines of occultism, that is to say, the facts of inner being, as
those are found in all the mystical teachings of all the ancient
nations.

This subject of the hells and heavens rests upon several

fundamental esoteric factors which we have been studying
continuously since these meetings were inaugurated last January.
As said at our last meeting, there are in very truth no hells and no
heavens, in the ordinary Christian sense at all. But there are
spheres of retribution, spheres of probation, which are particular
spheres of being; and some of these hells, as described for
instance in the Brahmanical and in the Buddhist religions, are
actually spheres of near-pleasure, rather agreeable than
otherwise; they are described as really very pleasant and
interesting places! But they are still lower than the heavens, so
called.

We might consider the description of some of the so-called

heavens, on the other hand, as not so exceedingly pleasant; the
idea being that just as are the conditions among men on earth, so
it is among appropriate spheres of retribution or probation or
purgatorial cleansing: when the compass of man's life on earth
has been brought to its end, everything then moves according to
strict analogy and according to strict gravitational attraction.
Nothing can go to any sphere or go into any state for which it is
unfit. Everything finds its exactly appropriate and similar goal, or
home, or sphere.

These heavens and hells are states, of course; so is earth life a

state. But if a thing is a state, it is also the state of a thing; and if it
is a thing, it must have place, or position, or locality. That is
obvious. So, therefore, while these heavens and hells are states,
they are likewise localities, places. The ancient wisdom speaks of
them in general by the Sanskrit word meaning "the three worlds"
— tri-bhuvana, i.e., three briefly generalized abodes or mansions
or dwelling places; as Jesus says in the Christian scriptures: "In
my Father's house are many mansions." They are states of mind
for the entities who dwell therein, and it is through these states of
mind that the purgatorial cleansing of the soul-nature is
accomplished.

Why does a man go to hell? Because he wants to go to hell. Why

does a man go to heaven? Because he desires to go to heaven. A
man goes wherever he wills to go. If during his life he has lived an
evil existence, it is because the impulses and attractions of his
being were such; and can such a soul, inwrapped with earthly
attractions, ascend into spiritual spheres? Can the operations of
spiritual beings, of the so-called higher laws of nature, attract a
man whose soul is absorbed in heavenly aspirations into one of
the lower and pain-racked spheres of purgation? Never. Think of
the meaning involved in this thought. We must therefore take
warning therefrom, and live in accordance therewith. Let us
hearken to these doctrines, sublime in their grandeur. Every
word of them is pregnant with profound meanings.

Let us go a little farther. You may remember that some months

ago we pointed out that in the ancient wisdom, in the ancient
occultism, there was a teaching which actually had originated a
modern scientific doctrine, born nevertheless in a distorted form
of materialism, regarding the operations of nature, the so-called
conservation of energy, which is one of the great pillars of
modern materialistic science; and also its twin dogma, the so-
called correlation of forces. Those two scientific doctrines were
born of the supposition that there is nothing in existence but
inert, lifeless, soulless matter, impelled by strange and unknown
and perhaps undiscoverable impulses, which were called forces,
springing forth in some unknown and perhaps undiscoverable
way. Science is changing its viewpoints in many directions, it is
quite true, but yet some materialistic ideas still remain. Now, in
our time, everything is supposed to be fundamentally force;
matter itself is supposed to be force. The ideas, as you readily
see,
still are the same; the words alone are changing. It is, however, a
step ahead, but we should not let ourselves be carried away by
mere words, providing the thought behind the words is the same
and as fully materialistic as ever.

But there are signs that other changes also are rapidly taking
place in scientific realms. Within three weeks [1924], the present
speaker read the report of an address by an eminent English
physicist, an honor and credit to his country, intuitional in some
ways, who tells us what the latest discoveries are demonstrating
to the scientists of the time. What is this new light? Just what we
pointed out some months ago as a fundamental teaching of the
ancient occultism, that force is simply matter in an ethereal state;
or, to put it in another and a truer way, matter is simply
crystallized force, so to say, force and matter being in essence
one. This scientist further tells us that modern thinkers are now
beginning to believe that matter is not eternal. Of course, we also
believe that, provided that by "matter" we mean merely physical
matter, the basic maya — or illusion — of physical being. But if
we mean by "matter" the substratum, the essential
substance of
being, we differ instantly, for indeed that is eternal. IT is
Mulaprakriti, root-substance, the garment of Parabrahman.

Again, what do we mean when we speak of Parabrahman and

Mulaprakriti, essential consciousness and essential nature — or
essential substance or "matter"? We mean this: that
Parabrahman-Mulaprakriti can be for any human intellect
merely the absolute state of the hierarchy, the highest portion, its
flower, its principle, its root, its seed — that from which the rest
evolves, or goes out and becomes the manifested universe we live
in and know and are a part of. As Paul says in the Christian
Gospels, "In him [that is, in It — the Greek allows this translation]
we live and move and have our being," i.e., we are It, in the sense
of being essentially a part of the flower of our hierarchy, the
highest to us, for It is the root of consciousness of and in our
kosmical universe or universal kosmos, which latter is all that is
comprehended within the zone of the Milky Way, that is, the
universal kosmos that we know of. The summit of it is this root
from which all these numberless inferior worlds or universes
inside it have come forth, have evolved forth; its children the
solar systems, the suns, the stars, the planets — all the living
beings, all the atoms, all the worlds or universes, in short, the
kosmos — all come forth from It. It is the summit, the flower, the
acme, as also the seed; it is the absolute Paramatman, supreme
self.

What do we mean by the word Absolute? Do we mean God — if

you like that word, if you really wish to call it God? But do you
know anything about God? Don't we see that the instant in which
we stultify our intellects, cripple our intuition, limit the soaring of
our interior faculties by speaking of bounds, whether inferred in
thought or word, then we reach ends and halt? Remember always
in this connection, that beyond and beyond and beyond the
kosmical universe, beyond our ken, beyond our imagination,
there is always endless life, endless being, for there is no end
anywhere; and this thought is what was meant in the ancient
occultism when its teachers spoke of that "circle whose
circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere," the
"boundless," the "without bounds." This word Absolute, misused
as it is in modern philosophy and even among our own selves, is
the exact translation of the Sanskrit mukti, or moksha, which I
will allude to in a
moment. Absolute is the modern English form
of the past participle passive of the Latin word absolvere,
meaning "to loosen," "to set free," "to release," and hence
"perfected." Not utter, limitless perfection like the immortal gods
in some religions were supposed to have, which is always
impossible. But the relative perfection, the summit, the acme, the
flower, the root, the seed, of any hierarchy; and particularly for
us of that hierarchy which is for us the highest — our kosmical
universe.

Now the Sanskrit words mukti or moksha: the former comes from
the Sanskrit root much, meaning "to release," "to set free," as said;
moksha from the Sanskrit moksh, with an almost identical
meaning, and probably a desiderative of the same root much. The
meaning is that when a spirit, a monad, or a spiritual radical, has
so grown in manifestation that it has first become a man, and is
set free interiorly, inwardly, and from a man has become a
planetary spirit or dhyan-chohan or lord of meditation, and has
gone still higher to become interiorly a brahman, and from a
brahman the Parabrahman for its hierarchy, then it is absolutely
perfected, free, released: perfected for that great period of time
which to us seems almost an eternity, so long is it, virtually
incomputable by the human intellect. This is the Absolute: limited
in comparison with things still more immense, still more sublime;
but, so far as we can think of it,
"released" or "freed" from the
chains or bonds of material existence.

When the great period of the universal kosmic pralaya occurs,

and the universe is indrawn (following the Oriental metaphor)
into the bosom of Parabrahman, what then happens? The
spiritual entities then enter into their paranirvana, which means
exactly for them what is meant for us when we speak of the death
of the human being. They are drawn by their spiritual
gravitational attractions into still higher hierarchies of being, into
still higher spiritual realms, therein still higher rising and
growing and learning and living; while the lower elements of the
kosmos, the body of the universe (even as does our physical body
when the change called death comes — death, the twin sister of
life), follow their own particular gravitational attractions: the
physical body to dust; the vital breath to the vital breath of the
kosmos; dust to dust, breath to breath. So with the other kosmic
principles, as with man's principles at his decease: the kama of
our nature to the universal reservoir of the kamic
organism; our
manas into its dhyan-chohanic rest; our monads into their own
higher life. Then when the clock of eternity points once again for
the kosmos to the hour of "coming forth into light" — which is
"death" for the spiritual being, as death for us is life for the inner
man — when the manvantara of material life comes around again
(the period of spiritual death for the kosmos is the material life of
manifestation), then in the distant abysms of space and time the
kosmic life-centers are aroused into activity once more: first the
stage of the nebular fiery cloud; then the whirling nebula; then
the spiral nebula; then the ringed nebula; then the sun and the
planets, and finally the human and other beings that grow on the
last; each one of these planets having its seven rounds to fulfill in
the forthcoming planetary periods, time after time, during
endless life. Endless hope and experience lie in this marvelous
scheme, but always at every step on the
path there is a dividing of
the ways for those entities which have attained moral
responsibility, an up and a down, for the "moment of choice" is
really continuous.

At the present period we have lived somewhat more than half of

the maha-manvantaric cycle; we are, for the maha-manvantara of
our kosmical solar system, at the point where matter has already
reached its ultimate degree of development in our hierarchy. We
have lived, according to the ancient numerical teaching, 155
trillion, 520 odd billion solar years. One half of our maha-
manvantara is gone; and there still remain nearly 155 trillion, 520
billion solar years. More accurately, we have slowly passed the
actual lowest point of the great universal kosmical cycle. That
lowest point, where matter reached its greatest degree of physical
manifestation for us, for our great wave of life, was when the
moon had reached the middle point of its fourth round, which
was ages and aeons before it became our physical satellite. The
ancient teachings are that as the great Parabrahman of our
hierarchical system has 100 divine Years of life to live, each Year
having 360 Days, and each Year being divided into 12
Months,
and as 50 divine Years have passed, therefore on this planet
Terra, on this earth, we have attained to or reached the first
divine Day of the first divine Month of the ascending cycle of the
second period of 50 divine Years. We have, then, come down the
cycles for the last 155 trillion, 520 odd billion years, cycling down,
in and through our hierarchy, to the lowest point of it on the
moon; and have, since that point was reached ages agone, slowly
and painfully begun our climb upwards again towards the
Ineffable, the summit of our hierarchical system, our "Absolute."
Please remember very carefully that we use this word Absolute
only in the sense and meaning hereinbefore explained.

How did the Absolute become the Absolute? By chance? There is

no chance. There is nothing but endless life and endless
consciousness and endless duration, working according to the
principles and elements of inherent nature, which is called
swabhava in our Sanskrit works. The root-meaning of this word
swabhava is "self-generation, self-becoming." We generate
ourselves throughout all times: give ourselves our own bodies;
climb our own ladders, step by step; seek our own hells and find
our own heavens. And, the whole purpose, the whole effort, of
universal evolution, according to the teaching of this ancient
wisdom, is this: raising personality into individuality, substance
into divinity, matter into spirit, grossness into purity.

Whence then came the Absolute, the supreme self or spirit, or

Paramatman, of which we are sparks? By growth from within
outwards; and from without inwards. It was once, in incalculable
aeons gone by, a man. Think of the sublimity involved in this
teaching; consider the almost endless aeons of the past; and that
what in its far, faraway origin was a spark of divinity, a spark of
another and former Absolute, is now our "God," our Paramatman,
our supreme self, of which we are verily the children, and in
which we move and live and have our being. What is the main
lesson that we may draw from this? What was the psychological
mystery hinted at by us in our last meeting? It is this, and we
touch but lightly upon it: our human souls are gods in embryo;
our human souls were formerly animal souls; our present animal
souls will in a future manvantara become human souls. Our
human souls in a future manvantara will become monads. Man, if
he make the manvantaric race successfully, is destined to be the
composite logos of a forthcoming hierarchy; as he now in fact is,
in the inferior hierarchy of himself, the logos of the quasi-
infinitude of less beings composing his personal nature. Reflect
long over this mystery, wonderful, sublime!

Are these teachings not thought-compelling? No wonder they

have been held secret and sacred in the ancient wisdom. Why?
For many reasons. First, because they could not be understood
without the necessary spiritual and intellectual training; and yet
it is remarkable, it is truly astonishing, how often and how, in so
many ways, we see allusions to them in the ancient exoteric
teachings of the various religions. Remember that "exoteric," in
the ancient religions, does not mean "false." The word merely
means those teachings for which the key has not been openly
given.

I have noticed and read in some of the translations from the

Welsh made for us by our Welsh scholar, Professor Kenneth
Morris, teachings that I believe to be taken from the ancient
Welsh books, which have caused me to gasp in amazement, that
these teachings of the ancient wisdom, so sacred and occult,
should have been so boldly put forth by the ancient bards in open
language. But I looked again, and I saw how a Master-hand had
worked, disguising and hiding while openly teaching. The
arrangement, the very beauty, of the imagery used, misled the too
inquiring and the too clever mind. But for him who has the key, it
is easy to follow. Likewise have I found the same method not only
in the wonderful Celtic teachings, but also in the teachings of
ancient Egypt, and of other countries.

At a former meeting I touched, perhaps, too slightly upon the

much vexed question, as some people call it, of good and evil.
That is a subject which properly comes at the close of the studies
concerning purgatory, hells and heavens. Christian thinkers have
found it impossible to solve this problem satisfactorily to any
thinking and reflective mind. But though it is to them and others
a much vexed question, to a student of the ancient wisdom it is
really very simple. How can a Christian who believes that his God,
that his Creator of all that is, One who therefore must be likewise
the creator of evil — how can he reconcile this necessary
conclusion with his other teachings concerning his Deity, for
instance that God is all good, and from Him proceeds necessarily
therefore nothing but good? Is evil then the work of the Devil?
What child would not then ask, whence then the Devil and the
evil proceeding from him? From God? But is God not all good?
Hence the inevitable deduction that
God is either not all-good or
not all-powerful. Evil would not be, could not be, by their theory,
unless a fruit of God's wisdom, because if the case were
otherwise, it would exist without the divine permission, i.e.,
contrary to God's will, which ex hypothesi is impossible, since God
is all-powerful. The logical difficulty under their theory is
complete and unanswerable by it.

What, then, really is the origin of what is called good and evil?
Good and evil arise out of the conflicting action of the
multimyriad wills in manifestation. Good is relative; there is no
absolute good. Evil is relative; there is no absolute evil. If good
were absolute, its opposite, its shadow, or nether pole, evil, must
also be absolute. Both, however, are relative things. They offset
and balance in nature the one the other, like all other pairs of
opposites, such as heat and cold, high and low, day and night,
north and south, etc. They arise, as just said, out of the conflict of
wills, conscious and unconscious. All the innumerable,
multitudinous beings in manifestation are, each one of them,
more or less "selfish," more or less seeking its own, hungering and
thirsting for sensation of various kinds. Even spiritual evil exists;
and there are high agents of "spiritual wickedness," of which the
Christian Apostle Paul has spoken, forming the
opposite agencies
to the high agents of good. The agents of spiritual wickedness are
called by us the Brothers of the Shadow, and the others are called
by us the Brothers of the Light. The Brothers of the Shadow work
in and with matter, for material and selfish purposes. The
Brothers of the Light work in and with nature for spirit, for
impersonal purposes. They contrast one with another.

These two bodies represent two fundamental paths in nature, the

one the right-hand path, the other the left, and are so called in the
ancient occultism. The Sanskrit name for one, the left-hand path,
is pratyeka-yana. Yana means "Path" or "road," and also "vehicle";
and we can translate pratyeka in this connection by the
paraphrase "every one for himself." H. P. Blavatsky, as you will
well remember, has spoken of the Pratyeka Buddhas, high and in
one sense holy beings indeed, but craving spiritual wisdom,
spiritual enlightenment, for themselves alone, selfishly, in
indifference to the sorrow and pain of the world, yet so pure
withal that they are actually buddhas of a kind. The other body
follow the path which in Sanskrit is called amrita-yana, the
"immortal vehicle" or "path of immortality."

The one, the former, is the path of the personality; the other, the
latter, is the path of the individuality. The one is the path of
matter; the other is the path of spirit; the one leads downward,
the other path loses itself in the ineffable glories of conscious
immortality in "eternity."

Now these are the two bodies of entities representing the two
sides of nature, and the conflicts or oppositions of these two sides
of nature, together with the battles of will with will, of the hosts of
beings in manifested existence, produce the so-called evil in the
world, arising out of the selfish activities of the inferior or less
developed or evolved entities. Selfishness, therefore, is the root of
all evil. The old teaching is true, and that is all there is to it. On the
highest planes of being, there is neither good nor evil; there is
neither life in our sense, nor death; there is neither beginning nor
end of personal action of any kind. But there is what is called in
the wonderful ancient Brahmanical teachings, sat, chit, ananda;
sat meaning "pure being"; chit, "Pure thought"; ananda, "bliss";
and this is the state of what one may call the Absolute.

In closing our study this evening, let us remember that the kosmic
work of the monad, the spiritual radical, is so important that we
refer to it again here. It itself can evolve only by raising inferior
souls and psychological vehicles into self-conscious entities, which
thus in turn themselves become monads. THIS IS THE
GENERALIZED AND ENTIRE PLAN OF EVOLUTION ON ALL
PLANES. This is our great work. This is our high destiny. Our
supreme self, our Paramatman, our supreme monad, our highest
self, the summit of our hierarchy, is doing that work consciously;
we as self-conscious humans are doing it in our smaller way; and
this is the whole plan of manifested being, the generalized outline
of kosmic evolution, as said just now. No man can live unto
himself alone; no man can rise to spirit alone. It is of the very
essence of nature that he must, willy-nilly, carry with him, up or
down, innumerable other entities and inferior selves, along the
upward or the downward path.

A few words more on a very important subject. The ancient

wisdom tells us that there are seven doctrinal keys to wisdom and
future initiations. During our study of those seven keys we have
briefly alluded to five. What are they? These seven keys we may
call sapta-ratnani, the "seven jewels" or "gems," or "treasures,"
and they are as follows. First, that operation of nature — using
nature in the sense of the absolute, total aggregation of all that is,
inside and outside, backwards and forwards, up and down, right
and left, everything, everywhere — which in man manifests as
reimbodiment, or reincarnation, can be briefly expressed as the
change of his vehicle or body when his inner state or condition
changes; for by the operations of nature he is finally called to
gravitate towards, or must go to, another state or condition and
place. This is called death, but it is another form of life. There is
the first key. Apply it to our teachings
in its many and various
reaches.

The second key is the doctrine of action and reaction, called

karma. These first two keys we have but briefly touched upon in
these preparatory studies. In future studies we shall find it
necessary to go into them more in detail.

The third key is the doctrine of interpenetrating beings or

existences, otherwise called the doctrine of hierarchies, which are
also inseparable and universally interpenetrating planes or
spheres. Everything exists in everything else. There are, in strict
truth, no absolute divisions anywhere, neither high nor low,
neither within nor without, neither right nor wrong, nor up nor
down. Fundamentally, there is naught but an eternal Is and an
eternal Now. As the ancient Stoics said so finely, "Everything
interpenetrates everything else." The very atmosphere we
breathe, for instance, is vibrant and living with the multitudinous
lives; the monadic essences or lives are in the air we breathe, in
our bones, in our blood, in our flesh, in everything. Think of it,
then; let your thought go free, release yourself inwardly. Let your
imagination carry you into the wonders that these keys open up
to our minds. Conscientious study of the ancient wisdom and a
pure and unselfish life will be your
unfailing guides.

The fourth key is the doctrine of swabhava, the doctrine of the

essential characteristic of any entity, of any spiritual radical; the
doctrine also of self-generation or self-becoming in manifestation,
thus affirming one's responsibility in and for oneself. This is the
most abstruse, the most mystic, of the four keys, hitherto
mentioned, for actually it is the key to the other three keys.

The fifth is the key to self-conscious being and existence, a subject

to which we have alluded this evening and also in our last study;
for the entire aim, method, and operation of universal being is
the raising of the inferior to the superior; and this great work
cannot ever be achieved by following the "path for oneself," the
pratyeka-yana, but by following the amrita-yana, the "immortal
vehicle," or the path of self-consciousness in immortality. Make
your thought free, I repeat; let it go out released!

As regards the other two keys, I ought to say, perhaps, that they
belong to high degrees of initiation. I know but very little of the
seventh; my studies have taught me very little about it, so closely
is it hid. I know this, however, that understanding and use of this
seventh key can be reached by very few men on this earth. As
regards the sixth key, we are taught that it can be reached by
great effort in the higher degrees of initiation.

This evening closes the last of our preparatory studies. We shall

go to higher themes in the future.

Chapter 16
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Sixteen
Atma-Vidya: How the One Becomes the Many. "Lost Souls" and
"Soulless Beings." Man, a Composite Being: No Abiding Principle
in Man.

Thus, therefore, the doctrine of the Egyptians concerning

principles, proceeding from on high as far as to the last of
things, begins from one principle, and descends to a
multitude which is governed by this one; and every where
an indefinite nature is under the dominion of a certain
definite measure, and of the supreme unical cause of all
things. — Iamblichus, On The Mysteries, section 8, 3
(Thomas Taylor, trans.)

But at the close of the minor cycle, after the completion of

all the seven Rounds, there awaits us no other mercy but
the cup of good deeds, of merit, outweighing that of evil
deeds and demerit in the scales of Retributive Justice. Bad,
irretrievably bad must be that Ego that yields no mite from
its fifth Principle, and has to be annihilated, to disappear in
the Eighth Sphere. A mite, as I say, collected from the
Personal Ego suffices to save him from the dreary Fate. Not
so after the completion of the great cycle: either a long
Nirvana of Bliss (unconscious though it be in the, and
according to, your crude conceptions); after which — life as
a Dhyan Chohan for a whole Manvantara, or else "Avitchi
Nirvana" and a Manvantara of misery and Horror as a —-
— you must not hear the word nor I — pronounce or write
it. But "those" have nought to do with the mortals who pass
through the
seven spheres. The collective Karma of a future
Planetary is as lovely as the collective Karma of a —-— is
terrible. Enough. I have said too much already. — The
 Mahatma Letters, p. 171

WE OPEN our studies, taking them up tonight at the point where

we left them last summer, by reading extracts from The Secret
Doctrine, volume I, pages 206-8:

There are four grades of initiation mentioned in exoteric

works, . . . Three further higher grades have to be
conquered by the Arhan who would reach the apex of the
ladder of Arhatship. . . . The Arhats of the "fire-mist" of the
7th rung are but one remove from the Root-Base of their
Hierarchy — the highest on Earth, and our Terrestrial
chain. This "Root-Base" has a name which can only be
translated by several compound words into English — "the
ever-living-human-Banyan." This "Wondrous Being"
descended from a "high region," they say, in the early part
of the Third Age, before the separation of the sexes of the
Third Race.

. . . It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a

wondrous Being, called the "Initiator," and after him a
group of semi-divine and semi-human beings. "Set apart" in
Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in
whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, . . .
to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth
and during the present cycle. These "Sons of Will and Yoga"
born, so to speak, in an immaculate way, remained, it is
explained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind.

The "BEING" just referred to, which has to remain

nameless, is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all
the great historically known Sages and Hierophants . . .
have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious
(to the profane — the ever invisible) yet ever-present
Personage about whom legends are rife in the East,
 especially among the Occultists and the students of the
Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever
the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over
the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as
said, the "Nameless One" who has so many names, and yet
whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is
the "Initiator," called the "GREAT SACRIFICE." For, sitting at
the threshold of LIGHT, he looks into it from within the
circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will be quit
his post till the last day of this life-cycle. Why does the
solitary
Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why does
he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which he
drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does
not know — aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its heaven?
Because the lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back
to their home are never sure to the last moment of not
losing their way in this limitless desert of illusion and
matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show the
way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a
voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has
succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and
illusion. Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for the
sake of mankind, though but a few Elect may profit by the
GREAT SACRIFICE.

We have here read one of the most sublime passages in this

wonderful book; and it is hoped to comment upon and illustrate,
if possible, the matters spoken of in what we have just read. We
cannot do this altogether directly; the subject is too profound and
no sufficient preparatory study has been made; but we can do so
indirectly to some extent. It is necessary to do so to some degree
because this sublime subject is the seventh of the seven jewels
(counting upwards). You will remember that these seven jewels
or gems or treasures were given as follows: the first or lowest is
rebirth, or rather reimbodiment, better still, perhaps,
regeneration. In Sanskrit it is called punarjanman, and in Greek
palingenesis, both words representing practically the same
thought: the first element in each word meaning "again" or
"anew," and the second element in each meaning "generation" or
"birth," "coming into being."

The second jewel, counting upwards, is the doctrine or fact in

nature called karma, the doctrine of results. The third jewel is the
doctrine of hierarchies, of which the Sanskrit term is lokas. The
fourth is the doctrine of swabhava, which we have studied
somewhat in former meetings, this Sanskrit word having two
general philosophical meanings: first, self-begetting, self-
generation, self-becoming, the general idea being that there is no
merely mechanical or soulless activity of nature in bringing us
into being for we brought ourselves forth, in and through and by
nature, of which we are a part of the conscious forces, and are
our own children. The second meaning is that each and every
entity that exists is the result of what he actually is in his own
higher nature; he brings forth that which he is in himself
interiorly, nothing else. A particular race, for instance, remains
and is that race as long as the particular race-swabhava remains
in the racial seed and
manifests thus, and so forth. Likewise is the
case the same with a man, a tree, a star, a god — whatnot!

The fifth jewel, counting still upwards, is the doctrine of

evolution, which we have already very briefly studied in the
theosophical sense. This esoteric teaching is not the doctrine of
transformism, which is, properly speaking, the correct name for
the materialistic doctrine of Darwin and of the Frenchman
Lamarck from whom, doubtless, he drew the idea. Rather it is the
theosophical idea of unfolding, or unwrapping, a doctrine — with
its corollary, involution — that is expressed by two Sanskrit
words, these being first, pravritti, meaning the "unfolding forth"
of the spirit-entity into matter, or of matter-lives into spirit-
entities, as the case may be; and second, nivritti, meaning the
"infolding" of spirit-entities into matter, or of matter-lives into
spirit-entities, as the case may be.

The sixth and the seventh treasures, or jewels, were touched

upon very slightly at one of our recent meetings. We venture now
to add a few more ideas to what was said before. The sixth jewel
is the doctrine expressed here also by two compound words of
contrasted sense: first amrita-yana, a Sanskrit word meaning
"immortality-vehicle," "carriage or bearer, or rather path, of
immortality," and referring to the individual man; and the other
word is pratyeka-yana, a Sanskrit word meaning (in paraphrase)
the "path of each one for himself." It is impossible to translate this
latter compound word into English by a single word. Both the
idea and the vocable do not exist in English. It may perhaps be
approached by the theosophic idea latent in the word personality;
and the mysterious relation of individuality to personality is
included in these two compound catchwords or technical terms;
and therefrom hangs an entire doctrine or department of thought
of
the wonderful philosophy of occultism, the esoteric doctrine.
With it — as also with the seventh jewel — are connected closely
the doctrines of the ancient wisdom relating to the monads of the
various classes: whence they came, how they came, yes, and why
they came.

We are touching upon all these profound subjects very lightly at

present, because they will all recur again and again in future
studies, and will in due course be more fully illustrated and
explained more clearly.

Now, the last or the seventh jewel, counting upwards, is called

atma-vidya, literally meaning the "knowledge of the self"; this
compound is only a catchword as are the others, but it imbodies
and hides a doctrine which is truly sublime. You will remember
that the present speaker, in connection with this seventh jewel,
stated that he knew little or almost nothing of it. This phrase was
badly chosen, and perhaps produced a misleading impression. It
is well understood that any earnest and devoted student of the
Esoteric School can understand at least appropriate parts of this
mysterious doctrine — something at least — the degree of his
apprehension thereof depending upon his inner state of
enlightenment, his fidelity to the Teachers, his loyalty to the
principles of the School, and his ability in understanding and
penetrating somewhat into the depth of its teachings.

But while this is the case with the students, each one according to
his capacity, others higher than we are can understand more of it;
naturally, the Teachers understand more of it than we do.
Probably, however, there are not ten men today on earth who can
understand this doctrine in its fullness. It is a wonder-teaching
that even the Masters have probably not solved utterly. The
Masters of the Masters know more of it than the latter do, i.e., the
Chohans, as they are called — chohan, a Tibetan word meaning
"lord," used in the sense of preceptor, or teacher. But the main
and essential meaning of this wondrous doctrine, running all
through it, is this, which is its keynote: HOW THE ONE BECOMES
THE MANY; and this is the most difficult problem that the human
spirit has ever attempted to solve.

Take as an analogy, for instance, the monad. To speak of the

monad as "descending" into matter is to speak wrongly, though
constantly this phrase is used, because it is a convenient method
of expression; and if this fact is understood, it is probably
permissible as a phrase. But actually, when we come to study the
facts, very soon we see and we know that the monad does not
"descend" into matter. Similarly, the One, though it is appropriate
and convenient to speak of it as "becoming the many," never
becomes many, remains eternally itself, the summit of the
hierarchy, its root-base, which is this Wondrous Being, the
supreme Initiator, on whatever plane it may be placed. Yet the
many flow forth from It; and It is their supreme self, their
Paramatman.

This, then, is the general theme of our discourse this evening; but
because we have no time now to make a complete resume of our
studies during the course of last spring and winter, this evening
we shall go over very shortly a few doctrines which were touched
upon in former studies, for the sake of brushing up our
recollection of them. The first one that we turn back to, then, is
the doctrine of swabhava, as contrasted in meaning with the
ideas involved in the kin-expression, swabhavat. This difference
in meaning, which is very great, is not generally understood, and
the two words often have been sadly confused by students. They
are very different in meaning, though both come from the same
Sanskrit root bhu: swabhava; swabhavat. (Let me tell you here
that the Sanskrit sound represented in English as a is pronounced
like the u in but or tub; but when the a is written as a or a, it is
pronounced ah, as in father.)

As just said, these two words are both nouns derived from the
same Sanskrit word bhu, meaning "to become" — not "to be" in
the passive sense so much, but "to become," to "grow into"
something. The quasi-pronominal prefix swa means "self"; hence
the noun means "self-becoming," "self-generation," "self-growing"
into something. Yet the essential or fundamental or integral self,
as said before, does not do so. Like the monads, like the One, the
self fundamental sends down a ray from itself, as the sun sends a
ray from itself into the darkness of matter; and it is this spiritual
ray which "descends" into matter, self-generating or self-becoming
a self-conscious entity in its turn — the solar light, the sun itself,
remaining ever in its own integrity or ens, never descending,
never commingling integrally as an entity with the multitudinous
hosts of
matter-lives, its own children.

Now swabhavat is called by H. P. Blavatsky, Father-Mother. It is a

state or condition of kosmic consciousness-substance, where
spirit and matter, which you know are fundamentally one, no
longer are dual as in manifestation, but one: that which is neither
manifested matter, nor manifested spirit, alone, but both are the
primeval unity; spiritual akasa; where matter merges into spirit,
and both now being really one, are called Father-Mother, the
spiritualization, so to say, of spirit-substance. See how we have to
hunt for adequately expressive words in our wretchedly
imperfect European languages! The Sanskrit word expresses the
idea, if you understand it, instantly.

These two nouns, then, as you see, are from the same root, and
the two words are closely connected in origin, but they are not
the same in meaning at all. Swabhava is the self-generation of
anything, of any entity, of any monad. Swabhavat is the Father-
Mother, the kalpic akasic spirit-substance, never descending from
its own state or condition, or from its own plane, but the quasi-
infinite reservoir of being, of consciousness, of light, of life, and
the source of what science, in our day, so ridiculously calls the
"forces" of nature universal.

These deeply mystical and very profound themes we shall have to

go into more fully in the future; but for the present it will suffice
to remember that swabhavat is kosmical spirit-substance, the
reservoir of being and of beings. The Northern Buddhists call it
swabhavat, more mystically adi-buddhi — "primeval buddhi"; the
Brahmanical scriptures call it akasa; and the Hebrew Old
Testament refers to it as the kosmic "waters."

Now the next subject which needed a little illustration was the
very solemn question of "lost souls," as contrasted with "soulless
beings." It may be well to say that these three or four subjects are
briefly again touched upon this evening because it has come to
attention that these matters have been mistaken by some of our
hearers. There is an immense difference between "lost souls" and
"soulless beings." A lost soul is one in whom the "golden thread"
uniting the lower thinking entity with its higher self is completely
ruptured, broken off from its higher essence or root, its true self.
The case here is hopeless, virtually; there can be no more union
for that lower self which, at the moment of final rupture,
commences sinking immediately into the Eighth Sphere, the so-
called Planet of Death. A soulless being, a soulless man, is one in
whom the thread has been worn, so to speak, very thin; or,
rather, where the spiritual and impersonal aspirations in
this life
and in other lives have been so few, the attempts to unite with the
higher part of the self have been so weak, that slowly the spiritual
ray has been withdrawing itself from the lower part; but it is not
yet ruptured completely. It still remains; and even one single holy
and impersonal aspiration may cause reunion. It is not a lost soul;
but so far as the human entity is practically concerned, it is
properly called a soulless being, for the entity lives almost wholly
in his lower principles. Soulless beings furnish those cases which
are popularly spoken of as "men and women without conscience."
They seem to have no moral sense, although their mental and
psychical faculties may still be strong and keen.

These are the worst cases of soulless human beings. Other cases
are those of men and women who merely do not seem to care for
anything that is good and beautiful and true, noble and high and
lofty; their desires are of the earth, earthly; their passions are
strong and their intuitions are weak. These cases are very
common indeed; so much so that H. P. Blavatsky says in her Isis
Unveiled that we "shoulder soulless men" every day of our lives.
Look into the faces of the men and the women whom you see on
the streets. Go to town; go anywhere; the situation actually is a
terrible one. There is a full possibility that a weak-souled human
being, perhaps beginning merely in giving way to the lusts of the
will, and to the passions of the mind, and to the instincts of the
lower nature, may, little by little, but inevitably and surely, starve
out, or wear away by attrition, all the attachments of the higher
ray which bind it into the lower nature, and which, if they were
fully strong
and active, would make the man (or woman) a
walking god among us; verily, a god in the flesh. Instead of this, in
the worst cases of the soulless being, you would have before you
little more than a human shell (alive, but spiritually almost dead)
in the man or the woman, as the case may be. A soulless being
was once an insouled man or woman who, before the former
state, had the same chance successfully to run the race that we all
have. This is indeed a solemn verity, and one which H. P.
Blavatsky has told us should be taught and reiterated in our
teaching, because it is truly helpful as a warning. Not one of us is
absolutely safe at this midway stage of our evolutionary journey;
for not one of us knows what he is capable of, either for good or
ill.

There is the truth; and it is no trifling matter. Is there any reason

for wonder that all our teachers have told us repeatedly that
every teaching that is given in the School is founded upon what
men commonly call ethical principles of conduct, and must be
studied in that light? It is the only thing that, put into sincere
practice, will save us surely; for these principles come first and in
the middle and at the end of our studies.

In future studies we shall have to trace to the end the destiny of

these two classes of beings; but it may be well to say a few words
now of the fate of the lost soul. There are two general classes of
these: the lower, but not the worse; and the higher, the worse. In
order to make the meaning of this very difficult subject more
clear, I shall have to go into a new but collateral thought, which is
the key: man is a composite being. On this fact of human nature
reposes a most wonderful truth which is at the foundation of the
marvelous psychological doctrines of the Lord Gautama Buddha.
It is as follows: there is no abiding principle whatsoever in "man."
Fix this like steel into the core of your minds. It will save you
from myriad dangers if rightly understood. "Man" is not his
higher nature; "man" is that which is called the "human nature."
Do you realize how greatly men and women live in what the
Hebrews call the nephesh, i.e., live in their astral souls?
To a
certain extent such unison with our lower principles is necessary;
but to follow the beautiful old simile of the ancient philosophers,
the astral soul should be our vehicle, our bearer; so to say, it
should be made a horse to carry us on our journey; or, to change
the figure, a chariot in which we should ride; a horse which we
must drive. We, the inner self, should govern and drive our astral
steed, but should never allow it to control us.

In order to make this more clear, examine following diagram:

You will notice that man's seven principles and elements are
divided into three separate parts: a lowest triad, purely mortal
and perishable; an intermediate duad, psychical, composite, and
mostly mortal, kama-manas, the "man" proper, or "human
nature"; and a higher duad, atma-buddhi, immortal,
imperishable, the monad. At the death of the human being, this
higher duad carries away with it all the spiritual essence, the
aroma, of the lower or intermediate duad; and then the higher
duad is the higher self, the reincarnating individuality, or egoic
monad. Man's ordinary consciousness in life at this stage of
evolution is almost wholly in the lower or intermediate duad;
when he raises his consciousness to become one with the higher
duad, he becomes a Mahatma, a Master.

Now this lower part of the nature is composite. There is nothing

permanent per se in it whatever; as an entity, nothing abides. It is
ordinary man as he is today, and in him there is no abiding self-
principle whatsoever. If you fasten your thoughts and your
affections to the things of the lower nature, you will de facto, of
necessity, follow it, and become it, as outlined and shown in and
by the doctrine of swabhava. As a man thinks, so is he! The
Hebrew words in this old saying, which is taken from Proverbs,
chapter 23, verse 7, are Englished: "As he thinketh in his heart
(nephesh), so is he," but the Hebrew word nephesh used here
really means "As he thinks in his lower nature, that he is
(becomes)." A Sanskrit commentator, Yaska (Nirukta, 10, 17), in his
gloss on a certain Vedic text, has the following remark, exactly to
the point on the same subject: Yad yad rupam kamayate devata,
tat tad devata bhavati
— "Whatever body (or form, or shape) a
divine being (divinity) longs for (wants, desires, i.e., gives himself
up to), that very thing the divine being becomes." Here is the
secret of the whole thing. We are what we make ourselves, our
own children. Nothing but that. And, if our thoughts are upwards,
we come finally into the companionship of the divinities; and,
before reaching them, come into the companionship of the holy
Teachers, because we make ourselves such, we become like them;
and they, in turn, answer the call.

But if, on the contrary, our thoughts are running downwards, and
we wear away the silver thread or the golden thread which binds
us to our higher nature, we then naturally gravitate or go
downwards: down, down, down, until at last the final rupture of
the golden chain or thread comes, and the soul becomes a lost
soul, a lost astral soul; and its destiny is as follows. There are two
classes of this kind of soul, as remarked before. The first class is
the lower but not the worse; it consists of those human beings on
this planet (or on any other planet which possesses a humanity
similar to ours) who, through native weaknesses of soul and from
lack of spiritual attraction upwards, go to pieces after a certain
interval of time, long or short as the case may be: the lower part of
the nature, being composite and impermanent and nonenduring,
following natural laws finally simply breaks up and vanishes
much as the human body dies and decays. That is the end of it; it
is finally annihilated.

The monad of such a soul, meanwhile, there being nothing, no

aroma of aspiration or yearning upwards, to take away from that
life or from those lives — because, mind you, it is perfectly true
that lost souls as well as soul-beings can reincarnate; they can
indeed; there are children born lost souls; as a fact it is very rare,
perhaps, but the fact can and does take place — the monad, I say,
of such a lost soul, in due course of time "reincarnates" again; and
the lost soul episode is like a blank page in its "book of lives."

The second class, and the worse by far, are those in which the
soul is vitally strong. They are those who are spiritually evil,
paradoxical as it may sound; those which the Christian teachers
have spoken of in the New Testament as beings of spiritual
wickedness and iniquity. One may wonder how it can come to
pass that a being which has ruptured the golden thread can still
have spiritual qualities or parts. That is one of the dark and
solemn mysteries which we may have to go into in more detail
later. We have no time this evening to do so, beyond pointing out
that the explanation lies in an understanding of esoteric
psychology, and of the nature of high astral matter. But let me
point out this: if a soul can receive an impress, can receive an
impulse, and it most certainly does, that impress or impulse will
carry it on until its initial strength is exhausted, until the impulse
no longer exists, until the impulse has worked itself out. Through
many, many, lives of spiritual evildoing, these
beings who have
eventuated as lost souls have built up through the intensity of
their will a bank account, so to speak, of certain forces of nature,
impulses of evil, of pure matter, running hot and strong. And
when I say hot I do not mean in the ordinary emotional sense, as
when one speaks of the "heat of passion." All such passion is dead.
Nay, but running hot like the fires of hell: revenge, hatred, and
antagonism to anything that is highly good or nobly beautiful,
and all such things. These impulses here exist, and they have a
spiritual source, for they are degraded spiritual energies, spirit
fallen and crystallized into matter, so to speak. Very difficult to
explain, indeed, is this abstruse subject; but this is the gist of it.
Lastly, I might add that these beings can (and do), under certain
conditions, go far lower: they enter the lower path, and go still
farther down; and if the evil be strong enough in certain rare
cases, their terrible destiny is what the Teachers have
called an
avichi-nirvana (avichi being a generalized term for what is
popularly called hell), aeons of unspeakable misery, self-imposed,
until final dissolution ensues — and nature knows them no more.

Of course you remember that we have studied the subject of hells

and heavens, but as yet we have had no time to go into this
matter at length. Avichi is a generalized term for places of evil
realizations (but not of punishment in the Christian sense), where
the will for evil, and the unsatisfied evil longings for pure
selfishness, find their chance for expansion — and final
extinction of the entity itself. Avichi has many degrees, or grades.
Nature has all things in her; if she has heavens where good men
and true men find rest and peace and bliss, so has she other
spheres and states, where go or gravitate those who must find an
outlet for the evil passions burning within. They, at the end of
their avichi-nirvana, go to pieces and are ground over and over,
and vanish away finally like a shadow before the sunlight in the
air — ground over in nature's laboratory.

Now you remember it was pointed out in other studies that in our
esoteric teachings there are no "laws" of nature, and this for two
reasons: first, because there is no such thing as "nature." Nature is
not an entity; it is an abstraction. Nature is not a goddess or a god;
it is not a being or a planet; it is not a sphere or a universe. Nature
is the abstract aggregate, so to speak, the immense aggregate, of
all beings and things, interblending and acting and interacting
upon each other: spiritual, intermediate, and lower; and their
interblending and interconnection produce what we call nature.
The beings here referred to, of course, are of all grades, from the
most material, the most degraded, up to the highest, of any
hierarchy. And the second reason is that these aggregated beings
that we call very conveniently by the term of nature are not
"ruled" by "law." Who or what makes any laws that nature shall
or must follow or does follow? No one, neither devil nor
god. But
the query may and ought to arise: does not nature follow certain
courses, and when the circumstances and conditions are
identical, are not those courses always the same, which are what
we call laws? Of course, yes; nobody denies a fact. We deny the
explanation. Explanations are important. If a man comes to you
and says something to you and you find that he is merely talking,
giving you words when you want the bread of life, are you going
to take what he says for truth? Are you going to take the words
only, and be satisfied with husks? Or are you going to think, and
say: "My dear sir, I have looked into what you tell me; what you
say is merely words; nobody denies the facts that are, but I want
an explanation of those words and of those facts. I want
something that will feed my soul." Do you get any food for your
soul when you hear mere talk about mechanical,
incomprehensible laws of nature? Do you realize that no great
thinker in antiquity at any time ever used such empty
language as
laws of nature with the concomitant ideas — or lack of ideas?
Never. The expression containing the notion "laws of nature" is a
modern product derived from two sources: first from the
Christian religion; and second from modern scientific
materialism. Men, during all the ages, have been fully aware that
nature pursued certain very regular courses, modernly called
laws, and always followed the same courses; but our forebears
had other and wiser explanations of these regular courses in
natural phenomena, for they knew more of the inner mysteries of
being, because they had true religion behind and within
themselves; they had a universal philosophy; and last but not
least they had what were called initiates who personally could go
behind and into nature, enter into her and know her at first hand.

Now what causes nature to act as she does? The modern scientist
will tell you that he means by the laws of nature those sequences
of events which always happen in the same way when the
circumstances and conditions are the same; the regular order of
phenomena and forces. The Christian theologian tells you what
he means by the laws of nature probably somewhat as follows:
"Well, brother, it is probably the Will of God Almighty who, it is
true, has not vouchsafed to us a full explanation of these difficult
problems; but it is fundamentally the Divine Will which has once
and for all time created the machine of nature and has set it to
running." About two or five or six hundred years ago these
gentlemen had another explanation, somewhat different from the
above, because modern science had not yet begun to be
aggressively vocal with views or a view of its own; and this other
theological explanation was that it was God Almighty Himself
who personally and actively guided and ordered these things
which
nature produces. "He sent his rain upon the just and the
unjust; He caused the sun to shine, and the rain to fall," and much
more to the same tune. But then came along certain skeptical
thinkers and they said, "Ha, ha, God the Creator! Then He created
diseases; He creates the evils in men's hearts. It must be so, not
otherwise, because He created man and all things else and, being
all-wise, He must have known what He was doing. Therefore, why
punish a man for doing what he cannot avoid doing, because God
created man and his mind and his heart and his will?"

So the theologians' later idea, apparently, was that God

manufactured the world with His own Almighty Hand, and set it
to spinning, and set the various elements thereof each to running
in its own way, and let it go forth with a primal impress of the
Divine Intelligence upon it.

I think that I am quoting correctly the early modern theological

idea.

Now the initiates, knowing nature's arcana, had words fitted to

express exactly what they desired to say; words which are
impressive and which are not mere abstractions, although when
convenient they too used abstractions; they used such words as
principles and elements of nature. It is quite true that such words
are catchwords, technical words; but they knew precisely what
they meant by them. They also spoke mystically and theologically
of the "gods." It is one of the most lamentable things for scholars
today, that owing to the deliberate and willful suppression by the
Christian Church of so many of the truths of antiquity, the
average scholar or student has no more idea of what the ancients
meant by the gods and their actions than he has of what is taking
place at this moment on the star Sirius. Yet, when understood and
properly explained, polytheism is seen to be a wonderful and a
sublime teaching. It does not mean, for instance, that each god is
as great and as single as, or
omnipotent and omniscient like, the
Christian theological notion of their God. Not at all. The gods, i.e.,
spiritual entities, are the higher inhabitants of nature. They are
an intrinsic part of nature itself, for they are its informing
principles; they are as much subject to the wills of still higher
beings — call these wills the laws of higher beings, if you will —
as we are, and as are the animals below us. We are gods to the
beings composing our bodies. The atoms in our body are, in their
way, conscious, and we are like gods to them. And what they
might call the laws of nature are what we think and what we will.
Nature is conscious from beginning to end, in varying degrees;
although in reality there is no beginning and no end, which are
vain dreams.

Furthermore, nature has two aspects, a positive aspect and a

negative aspect. Please understand that I am using the word
nature, with the meaning pointed out before, because the
ordinary expression is convenient, the term is understood. If a
speaker has to spend some three minutes or more in order to
explain each time anew an already explained use of a word, he
will never arrive at the end of what he wishes to say; so, once
having made an explanation of what we mean by nature and
laws, we may use these or other common words because they are
convenient. H. P. Blavatsky also constantly speaks of the laws of
nature, and the fundamental law of karma; so again does
Katherine Tingley constantly speak of the higher law. Who has
not heard highly educated people say that the sun "rises in the
east"? Of course they and we know that the sun does not rise in
the east. Men very frequently find it useful and convenient to use
ordinary language in order intelligently to voice a thought. But
this does not
mean that they should be held to rigid literal
account for what every sane man should know perfectly well is
merely a convenient mode of expression.

The so-called laws of nature, therefore, are the action and

interaction and interplay of consciousnesses and wills — in the
kosmos — not so much considered as personalized
consciousnesses and wills, but by us those words are used more
as abstractions, meaning the combined and aggregate action-
results of all consciousnesses and wills in the kosmos. Yet
actually, when traced to causes, to their sources, these laws are
the consciousnesses and wills in action of the multimyriad hosts
of beings that compose and are "nature" itself, working through,
in, and by, "matter," their vehicles — abstractly called nature.
Nature has these two poles or sides: the positive pole or side and
the negative pole or side. Examine yourself closely, and you will
find that even your mind is dual, like everything else, for it
mirrors nature. It has its passive side, its unconscious reflexes,
just as the body has, just as nature has. It
has also its positive or
active side. There is a great difference between the conscious will
and the unconscious will. Take the body as an instance of what I
am trying to say; e.g., the beating of the heart, the automatic
winking of the eyes, the processes of digestion. These are
unconsciously performed acts, under the control of unconscious
or semiconscious elemental entities; when normally functioning,
man's will has nothing self-consciously to do with them. They
represent the passive side of his will as expressed through those
elemental minds. But he also has an active or positive side in
which he wills and thinks, and acts accordingly, and for these
latter things he is held responsible, he incurs karmic
responsibility.

So is it exactly the same in nature, as is illustrated by this example

of the passive and active wills in man's own mind and body. The
laws of physical nature are the action-results of the passive side
of the beings and consciousnesses who and which compose what
is called nature; and the higher those beings are, the less is their
active or positive side manifest on the lower planes.

Work therefore with nature, and not against her; violate none of
her laws, if you desire health and happiness. Remember what H.
P. Blavatsky says in The Voice of the Silence — let us paraphrase it:
work with nature and follow her; become one with her, and she
will make obeisance unto you as an active, self-conscious co-
worker — a master. Happiness can be found only in obedience to
this fundamental truth of inseparable unity. There is no
happiness in unbrotherhood, in acting solely for yourself, in
trying to impose your personal will on others. It is by giving that
life is found in all its beauty, by giving the self to the All. There is
no happiness like it; there is no way for inner development to
come so quickly and so surely and so safely to the student as that
which lies in giving up the personal self to nobly impersonal
aims. It is the way to peace and power.

Let us occupy the few more minutes of time that we have in

referring to an interesting phenomenon of nature that took place
during this last summer. I refer to the near approach of the planet
Mars to Earth; and I speak of this with intent, because it is going
to illustrate a point in the substance of our theme.

You will doubtless have heard how our scientists have concluded
— they say that their theory is true, but it is absolutely false
according to theosophy — that the planet Mars is older than the
Earth; and the sole reason for their saying this is because when
they examine what they can see of the surface of Mars through
their telescopes, they see no sign, certain and convincing to all, of
even vegetable life. Apparently, they see no particular organic
activity of any kind on that ruddy sphere; and they at once jump
to the conclusion that Mars is dead, in a state something like that
of the moon, and that therefore it is very much older than our
planet Earth. In the first place, to the student of the ancient
wisdom, the "age" of a planet may be of two kinds. Does it mean
older in spiritual experience — because, remember, a planet is an
"animal" in the Greco-Latin sense, and "animal" means "living
being," for it is a hierarchy of lives
— or does it merely mean that
the physical sphere is older than ours?

Now the teaching of the ancient wisdom is that Mars is younger

than the Earth. Its body, its physical sphere, is younger; but, at the
present time, it is in a state of "obscuration." It is what we may
call asleep; it is more than merely asleep, actually, for the vastly
larger part of its hosts of lives, of its living entities, have left it in
order to go to higher spheres or globes of the Martian planetary
chain. But this again does not mean — one has to be very careful
in the use of expressions in our studies — that there is no life on
Mars. When our own physical body is asleep, does it mean that it
is in decay, that it is dead? Are there no vital processes going on
in the sleeping human body? Of course there are, many:
recuperation, reinforcing of the bonds of the inner nature; not of
the inner nature itself, but there is the strengthening of the bonds
connecting the vital astral entity with it.

There are — and this will illustrate another point — on the planet
Mars in its present state of obscuration certain beings left there
by the receding life-wave of Mars when that planet went into
obscuration; and these beings are called in the Sanskrit language
sishtas, meaning "remainders" or "remains," i.e., those whose
duty it is to keep the seeds of life on that planet until the incoming
flow of the returning life-wave in the new manvantara to come
shall find these bodies ready for them and in all ways
appropriate. Now these sishtas are of seven kinds: three
elemental; the mineral; the "plant"; the "beast"-type there, which
represented the human on Mars; and one other. There are certain
ones of these sishtas which are not at all of the lower types; they
must have been higher than the average of its humanity when that
planet went into obscuration, in order to provide for the more
evolved humanity coming down on its
succeeding round fit and
appropriate vehicles for the new life cycle, or manvantara, there.
Generally, then, the sishtas are those superior classes — each of
its own kind and kingdom — left behind on a planet when it goes
into obscuration, in order to serve as the seeds of life for the
inflow of the next incoming life-wave when the dawn of the new
manvantara takes place on that planet.

Venus, on the contrary, is now actively engaged in its last round.

The planet Mercury, on the other hand, is just beginning its last
round. Both these planets are far older than the Earth. Mars is
younger — I am not here talking of the spiritual age; I am talking
only of the age of the physical body, the sphere. You will find it
generally the law (and I am using this term law, remember,
because it is convenient), you will find it, generally speaking, a
physical fact of nature in our solar system that the farther a
sphere (or planet) is from the sun, the physically younger it is.
Mars, as a matter of fact, has ended its third round. We of the
Earth are in our fourth; Venus is in its seventh and last; and
Mercury is just beginning its seventh.

I have brought up this matter, because there are some who have
misunderstood H. P. Blavatsky's teaching in The Secret Doctrine
regarding the six companion-globes of the planetary earth-chain,
saying that we came to Earth from the planet Mars which is thus
made one of the globes of the planetary earth-chain; that we are
now on Earth; and that we shall in the future (next) manvantara
go to Mercury, which is also made one of the planetary earth-
chain.

This is utterly wrong. As we have just said, Mercury is in its

seventh round; we are in our fourth, and our next round will be
our fifth. It is true that Mars has ended its third round; but while
the planets farther from the sun generally are the younger,
physically, than those nearer it, this does not mean that they are
necessarily the younger spiritually. For instance, you may take the
planet Saturn. The planet Saturn, spiritually, is farther advanced
than is the planet Mars, or than is our planet Terra.

If you take up a book of astronomy and compare the varying

density of the planets as there given in the tables, you will have a
rough-and-ready, and very generally accurate, rule by which to
go in order to find out which of the physical planets are physically
older than others. But then this does not refer to spiritual age or
evolution; and this fact shows the complexity that confronts the
student in his study of these doctrines, which really are very
simple, but seem complex to us because our minds are matter-
minds and not spirit-minds. It is difficult to think about such
things with the minds we have, because they are matter-built.
They go to pieces at our death; and these subjects are based on
spiritual facts. Hence the confusion under which Mr. Sinnett and
others who followed his lead have labored — even to the extent of
denying their own teachers!

The planet Saturn is surrounded with belts and — I am in very

deep water here and I wish to speak slowly so as not to give a
mistaken impression — the planet Saturn is the last, counting
outwards from the sun, of the seven sacred planets of the
ancients. As regards our solar system, Uranus and Neptune,
certainly not the latter, really do not belong to it. Actually,
physically, they do, because they are under that system's
influence, somewhat like visitors entertained in a home; but they
do not belong to or form a part of the septenary of the seven
sacred planets of antiquity of which you all doubtless have read.
Those seven sacred planets provisionally may be named as
follows: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. I
say provisionally, because there is much more behind this matter
of the seven sacred planets than appears openly. For instance, the
sun and the moon are reckoned in the above list as two
substitutes for the two real planets; and Mars — to
a certain
extent — is in the same category. We can say no more of this here.

Shall we say that the sun and moon represent two other planets?
Let us take provisionally the list as usually given, including the
sun and the moon: each one of these seven globes is a body like
our own earth in that each is a septenary chain, sevenfold in
composition — six other superior globes of finer matter above the
physical sphere or globe, just as we humans have our six
principles above this bearer or carrier miscalled a principle,
which we call our body. This does not apply in toto to the moon,
because the moon is dead; yet even the moon has its six
companion-globes. The mysteries concerning the moon, I may
remark in passing, are more than interesting, and we shall
sometime go into them as far as we can properly do so; but
excepting the moons, all the other globes and planets of the solar
system have, each one, six companion-globes of finer matter, all
fully alive, unless in obscuration; and in the planetary life these
form a peculiar analogy with man's seven principles, for if
we
could see our own principles, could see what the plan of each
principle is, we should find that it is an actual rupa or form. Yet
let me here enter a caveat: the six companion-globes of any
planet or other sidereal body are not, really, the six principles of
such a body, for each one of these seven globes forming part of a
chain has its own individual seven principles and elements. So each
planet or sidereal body has its six companion-globes, forming
together a planetary chain, and only those globes which are on the
same kosmic plane of nature or being are physically visible to
each other. For instance, we can see only the fourth (planetary)
plane globes of each of the other planetary or sidereal chains,
because we are on the fourth planetary plane, as they are. If we
were on the kosmic plane above us, we should see two Jupiters,
two Saturns, and so forth.

The sun also is septenary, as said just now. A wonderful teaching

lies here in that connection. The moon, dead as it is, has also six
companion-globes; and when we leave this earth in obscuration
at the close of this earth-round, and go to the globe above this, we
shall see then the two lunar bodies belonging to that plane, and
also two suns.

We now close our evening's study, and express the hope that at
the next meeting we shall have more opportunity and a clearer
field to go at some length into the truly sublime subject which H.
P. Blavatsky has set down for us in The Secret Doctrine in the
extracts first read this evening.

Chapter 17
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Seventeen
The Silent Watcher.

For countless generations hath the adept builded a fane of

imperishable rocks, a giant's Tower of INFINITE THOUGHT,
wherein the Titan dwelt, and will yet, if need be, dwell
alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to
invite the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help
in his turn enlighten superstitious man. And we will go on
in that periodical work of ours; we will not allow ourselves
to be baffled in our philanthropic attempts until that day
when the foundations of a new continent of thought are so
firmly built that no amount of opposition and ignorant
malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow will be found
to prevail.

But until that day of final triumph someone has to be

sacrificed — though we accept but voluntary victims. The
ungrateful task did lay her [H.P.B.] low and desolate in the
ruins of misery, misapprehension, and isolation: but she
will have her reward in the hereafter for we never were
ungrateful. As regards the Adept — not one of my kind,
good friend, but far higher — you might have closed your
book with those lines of Tennyson's "Wakeful Dreamer" —
you knew him not —

"How could ye know him? Ye were yet within / The

narrower circle: he had wellnigh reached / The last, which
with a region of white flame, / Pure without heat, into a
larger air / Upburning, and an ether of black blue, /
Investeth and ingirds all other lives. . . ." — The Mahatma
Letters, p. 51
WE OPEN our study by reading a part of the passages of The
Secret Doctrine that were read at our last meeting, that is to say,
from volume I, pages 207 and 208:

The Arhats of the "fire-mist" of the 7th rung are but one
remove from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy — the
highest on Earth, and our Terrestrial chain. This "Root-
Base" has a name which can only be translated by several
compound words into English — "the ever-living-human-
Banyan." This "Wondrous Being" descended from a "high
region," they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before
the separation of the sexes of the Third Race.

And then we read the last paragraph on page 208:

It is under the direct, silent guidance of this MAHA —

(great) — GURU that all the other less divine Teachers and
instructors of mankind became, from the first awakening
of human consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It is
through these "Sons of God" that infant humanity got its
first notions of all the arts and sciences, as well as of
spiritual knowledge; and it is they who have laid the first
foundation-stone of those ancient civilizations that puzzle
so sorely our modern generation of students and scholars.

As we noted at our last meeting, we are approaching a part of our

studies where, to use the words of the old thinkers, we feel almost
that we should remove our footgear, because we stand on holy
ground. These sublime passages contain, in fact, the outline of the
meaning of the seventh of the seven jewels or treasures of
wisdom, which has the technical name of atma-vidya. This phrase
literally signifies "self-knowledge."

Now this Sanskrit word atman is exceedingly difficult to translate,

but the English word "self" seems to come nearest to an adequate
rendering of it. Atma-vidya means much more than ordinarily we
might understand by the words "knowledge of the self"; yet, were
we to know the self in its fullness, we should know all knowledge
that it is possible for man to know. Hence, that technical name is
given to it as descriptive of the entire branch of the esoteric
philosophy which this seventh jewel contains. As it is, we can
know only parts of this branch of the esoteric philosophy. We are
told that it is hinted in the ancient writings, particularly in the
Sanskrit, that even the most spiritual beings on earth in this our
age know not fully all that is contained in this treasure. There are
possibly not a dozen thinking beings on earth today, who of
course would comprise the very highest and holiest men that the
earth has brought forth up to the present period of evolution,
who can in
any sense fully understand it. But we can have and
understand appropriate parts of this sublime wisdom-mystery;
and it is these that we are going to attempt to elucidate to the best
of our capacity this evening.

We stated at our last meeting that this seventh treasure or jewel

can be considered as a study of the problem of how the One
becomes the many; but it was also said that, as a matter of fact,
the One essentially never becomes the many. One might as well
say that the sun which gives us our light comes down to earth in
order to do it; but it does not. It sends out its rays, emanations
from itself, which illuminate, vitalize, and quicken our world of
matter; and similar is the case with the One.

Further, what do we mean by the One? Obviously, we do not

mean the personal God of any exoteric theology. No matter how
great, how vast in compass spiritually, we may consider this One
to be, it is still a unity, a being, and therefore it is finite. Therefore,
in order to elucidate our problem, we turn to another one of these
seven treasures, and we find an illustration of this particular
branch of our problem in the lokas — a technical word for
hierarchies, as is also brahmanda, or "egg of Brahma" — of which
the One is the root-base if we consider it as the origin of all the
beings and things in that hierarchy; or the flower or summit or
acme if we consider it as the aim and end of our evolution. This,
therefore, is the One. But there are other Ones, Ones
innumerable, in the kosmical universe; some higher than our
highest, or lower than our lowest degree.

You doubtless remember that in studying the doctrine of

hierarchies we showed that these hierarchies are endless in
number. They themselves, each one of them, can be considered as
a unit; and there are many above us and many below us:
innumerable ones above us and innumerable ones below us;
innumerable ones within and innumerable ones without our
kosmical hierarchy. They are endless in number in all directions.
From this One of our hierarchy, however, and we mean in this
instance the universal kosmos or the kosmical universe, comes all
our life, all our being, all that we are without and within. It is the
source and origin of everything that we can be and know,
working in and upon that background of the Boundless which
comprises the limitless aggregate of all other hierarchies
whatsoever.

The most extended, the vastest, and the most immense hierarchy
of our unfettered imagination is but as a mote of dust, as a single
atom, in comparison with the Boundless. The Boundless cannot
ever or in any sense be considered as one, as a mere unity. One
implies the finite, the beginning of computation or enumeration;
and we must think of the Boundless as a zero, signifying endless
and limitless infinitude, with no qualifications whatsoever that
belong to all that is manifested or limited; and, on the other side
of the illustration, signifying the all-encompassing, endless,
boundless Fullness of the All. This is Space, which is either the
unlimited Fullness of the All, or the unlimited Emptiness of the
All, according as we view it. The latter view is the profoundly
spiritual sunyata of the Buddhist philosopher.

Let us turn for a moment to another kindred subject. Have we

ever considered and pondered over the meaning of the word
immutable when people use it as sometimes happens when
speaking of such subjects as Space, the Boundless, etc.? Has it ever
occurred to us to try to realize that if the Boundless were
immutable even for the minutest fraction of a second, the entire
fabric of universal kosmical being would vanish away in the
twinkling of an eye, like a shadow on a wall! All that we can know
or mentally figurate of so limitlessly vast a subject as the
Boundless, is such thoughts as we vaguely express in words or
phrases like "boundless life," which is motion: endless and
beginningless activity. Immutability is a phantom of the
imagination, a mere reflection in our minds of finite pause. There
is ceaseless motion, ceaseless and endless and beginningless life
in the horizonless fields of the Boundless.

But when we consider the One, the summit, or the root-base of

our own hierarchy — or of any other hierarchy — we can by
spiritual intuitions grasp the truth concerning it; but if we go
beyond that hierarchy, going up step by step from lower to higher
spheres, we shall always, we must always, reach a point where
our understanding and imagination fall powerless before the
immensity of the (to us) nonunderstandable, because we can in
nowise encompass or comprehend it; only can we see that in It
and from It is the infinite life, which in its ceaseless unending
motion is immutably the same always. Only in this paradoxical
sense is the word immutable permissible. So much, then, for the
Boundless. But as regards the One, it is analogically immutable
only for its own period of activity as source of a hierarchy, and only
for those below it; and hence you will find our books occasionally
speaking of the "immutable law," that
which for the "seven
eternities" during which our period of manifestation endures
"varies not, and knows no shadow of turning." And why? Because
that highest summit, that One, is the supreme Silent Watcher, the
supreme Life-giver, the great supreme Sacrifice, to use H. P.
Blavatsky's terms, of our own great kosmic hierarchy, which is
the highest that our imagination can attain to. But do not confuse
this supreme Silent Watcher with the Silent Watcher of the less
hierarchy of the Teachers.

When our hierarchy goes into pralaya — which means the release
of its entirety of lives and life for higher and spiritual things of
greater value and of nobler compass than those we now have or
can even conceive of — when that happens, I say, it is but as the
passing, as it were, of a cloud hitherto over the "face of the
Boundless," and hosts of other universes are then coming equally
into manifested life as ours will then be passing out of it for its
pralayic rest. Try and form some simple concept of the meaning
of endless and beginningless eternity and of the Boundless, and
drop it there: unceasing life, endless activity, never-ending life
and consciousness in unceasing motion everywhere. It is only
"parts" — which, as compared with the totality which is the
Boundless, are as nothing — only such parts, so to say, this, that,
or another part which, in its maya of manifested life and
unmanifested repose, alternately is active or passive, which
passes away and
then returns again. The wise ancients never
bothered their heads much about any foolish attempt to fathom
the Boundless or the limitless Eternal. They recognized the reality
of being, and let it go at that, knowing well that an ever-growing
knowledge of the universal life was and is all that human
intelligence could ever attain to by an ever-expanding
consciousness.

This alternate appearing and disappearing of worlds or

hierarchies is the teaching imbodied in the first of the seven
jewels or treasures of wisdom. As the human spirit sends down its
ray and reincarnates by means of that ray into a human being of
astral matter and of mind-matter and of flesh, so similarly, when
the time comes for a hierarchy to reimbody itself, to undertake its
task anew of palingenesis or repeated self-generation, the same
relative course is run. Never let us forget the ancient axiom of the
esoteric wisdom which the Hermetists so beautifully expressed:
As above, so below. What happens in heaven is mirrored on earth,
mutatis mutandis. Man's palingenesis, as a microcosm, is but a
faithful copy of the palingenesis of worlds, of his own kosmic
hierarchy as the macrocosm.

Let us now turn to our main theme for tonight. As the summit of
our hierarchy is One, the root of our ens, in which we move and
live and have our being, as the Christian Apostle Paul puts it; so
similarly in the spiritual-psychological hierarchy there is a One in
whom we are all rooted, in whom psychologically and mystically
and religiously, yea and aspirationally, we live. This One is the
Great Initiator, the Great Sacrifice, the Wondrous Being referred
to by H. P. Blavatsky; the supreme Head of the hierarchy of the
Teachers. From it originally come our noblest impulses through
our own higher selves; from it come the life and aspiration we
feel, stirring oft in our minds and hearts; from it, through our
higher natures, come the urge to betterment, the sense of loyalty
and troth, all the things which make life holy and bright and high
and well worth living.

It was during the third race of humanity of this fourth round on

this globe, when the incarnate ray in each of the units of the then
mankind had evolved forth its vehicle (by generating from within
itself this vehicle, fit for the expression of itself, of the divine spirit
within); and then that vehicle, or soul, was become self-conscious.
Then, as time passed, there came a period when an interpreter, a
guide, a teacher, of the race of mankind was needed, because the
race was rapidly sinking with every subcycle of the Great Age
more totally into matter and consequent illusion and spiritual
defilement, for such is produced by the evolving of matter. The
dhyan-chohans, the lords of meditation, who were men from a
former great period of activity of our planet Terra, beings from a
former manvantara, were then leaving or withdrawing from this
earth. They had already done their cyclical work, done all they
could, in informing, inspiring, and illuminating the then
mankind; but they now
needed successors more like the sinking
men of the period. By reason of a mystery which we cannot
elucidate here, the noblest representatives of the then humanity
became the direct and willing vehicles of self-conscious rays from
these dhyan-chohans, lords of meditation. It was not exactly what
is called in Brahmanism an avatara — a "descent" which means
the overshadowing incarnation of a portion of a high spirit in a
high human being; but it was the actual indwelling (fully
conscious on both sides, and relatively complete) of a portion of
the essence of a dhyan-chohan in a fully conscious, willing, and
utterly self-sacrificing, man of high degree. Now, please mark
well: the highest one of these incarnations, the noblest man-fruit
of human evolution produced up to that time, became the head of
this spiritual-psychological hierarchy literally, and in very truth, in
his case, was a man infilled with a dhyan-chohan: what might
actually
be called an incarnate god. This was — and still is — the
Silent Watcher, the Initiator, the Wondrous Being, the Great
Sacrifice — "sacrifice" for a reason which I explain elsewhere.

Pause a moment. Let us think away for a moment from the thread
of our theme. Let us consider the immense hope, the profound
intellectual splendor, and the spiritual beauty which we find in
these teachings. They are well worth thinking over, indeed! If
anything, theosophy, the esoteric wisdom, is a vast doctrine of
hope, not of mere optimism as the word is ordinarily understood,
but a doctrine of vitalizing hope and interior illumination. There,
in these wonder-teachings, is the path along which we may
ascend. More particularly, it depends on ourselves whether our
ascent along the stairway of that ray which is living and working
in each one of us is achieved or not; and — pray listen carefully —
whether or not we ascend by our being consciously linked
through that Being with the Highest. That Being, that Wondrous
Being, does not "come down" and "descend" into us, because for it
this would be pollution of a sort not to be tolerated; yet we are
linked with it by
and through the ray within us. As the sun sends
forth innumerable rays, yet remains ever the sun, so through this
Being pours, as the root-base of our spiritual-psychological
hierarchy, a ray which is instinct and alive in every normal child
that comes into the world.

Now it depends upon us whether we follow along that ray

upwards or, as pointed out at our last meeting, abandon our
divine birthright, and follow the lure of chaos and the Pit —
respond to the exhalations from "hell." There are people, perhaps,
who may not have understood the meaning of the word
annihilation as we use it. Let us understand that annihilation,
strictly speaking, exemplifies what Katherine Tingley calls the
"infinite mercy of the higher law." There is no such nightmare as
"eternal suffering." Those human beings who have forfeited their
divine birthright go to pieces; they lose their personal entity; but
when that has happened, there remains but an empty psychic
shell. When we lay our body down at death and it goes to pieces
and its atoms are returned to the earth which gave it birth, is
there anything very dreadful in that? Take the same rule and
apply it to the case of the lost souls, of which we were speaking at
a former meeting.

If anyone desires to get a masterly outline of this subject, let him

turn to The Key to Theosophy, pages 92-3 and 113-14, and he will
there find what H. P. Blavatsky tells her readers of annihilation,
and more particularly in connection with the Buddhist teaching
as taught by the Lord Gautama the Buddha. Why I say the "Lord"
Buddha will be explained in a moment.

This Wondrous Being is the Chief, the Master-Initiate, the Head

and Leader of the spiritual-psychological hierarchy of which the
Masters form a part. He is the "ever-living-human-Banyan" Tree
from which they hang as leaves and fruits, spiritually speaking.
So also do we, spiritually speaking. On every globe, on every man-
bearing planet of every sun in the infinitudes of space, we are
taught that, as far as great spiritual seers know, the same thing
exists there. There is over each one a Master-Teacher, and in each
case he merits the term which H. P. Blavatsky gives him, taking it
from her own Teachers, of the "GREAT SACRIFICE." Why is he so
called? Because, from boundless compassion for those lower in
the scale of evolution than he is, he has renounced all hope and
opportunity in this manvantara of himself going higher, out of
this sorrow-laden world, and remains behind among us as our
great Inspirer and Teacher. He himself can learn nothing more of
this hierarchy, for all knowledge
pertaining to it or possible in it
is his already. He has sacrificed himself for all below him.

There are some people who talk of sacrifice of that sort as if it

were something gruesome or evil! Why, is there anything more
sublimely beautiful than the giving of self in noble service to
others — to all Is there anything which actually can lead man
higher? Is there anything which opens the heart more? Is there
anything which opens more the doors of inspiration? And, on the
other hand, is there anything which more quickly closes these
doors, or more fully belittles man, which more quickly shrivels
the self, than does its opposite: personality, selfishness, egoism?
Ay, there is a joy, an unspeakable joy, in self-sacrifice of this high
kind. The Wondrous Being is technically called the Great Sacrifice
because, having reached the pinnacle of evolution in this our
hierarchy, he can learn nothing more in or from that hierarchy.
He has deliberately renounced further progress for himself in our
manvantara, and this truly is the greatest of sacrifices; and he has
renounced it in order to live
for those less beings who are weary,
and who stumble on the upward way; following the dictates
inherent in that noble cry: "How can I live in heaven when one
single being on earth must suffer?" We are reminded of the old
story of the Scotsman who, when told by his Dominie that his dog
could not go to heaven with him, answered instantly: "Oh,
Dominie, if my dog cannot go to heaven with me, then shall I stay
here on earth with my faithful dog; for he never would abandon
me!" That is a touch of the same spirit of devotion.

In the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, we find a closely

similar tale of one of the great heroes of that work who, having
met with severe trials of many kinds on his way to swarga or
heaven, successfully passed them all; but when he finally reached
the confines of heaven he was met by the devas, who told him:
"Brother, your faithful dog enters not here." And he said: "Oh,
then shall I go back with my dog, my faithful companion who
loved me and who has followed me everywhere. Shall I abandon
him and leave him outside?" And the devas, according to the
beautiful legend, then opened wide the gates of heaven, and the
heavenly choristers began to sing a paean of welcome and praise
to the faithful hero-heart, who would have renounced his own
unspeakable bliss for the sake of a loving and faithful creature
less evolved than he.

This is the spirit of renunciation of self for others, as exemplified

in legend and story. Is there anything more beautiful than it?

Now let us go a step farther. Let us leave our theme for a few
moments and take up again a matter which we feel was not fully
understood, perhaps, due to our insufficient exposition of it at our
last meeting. We spoke then of there being two classes of lost
souls. That is quite correct. But we must also point out that there
are likewise two subdivisions in the second of these two classes,
and these two subdivisions of the second class are those who fully
merit the old Christian term "workers of spiritual iniquity." The
first subdivision comprises those who are commonly called
conscious sorcerers; and the second comprises the same type of
beings but includes those who have reached such a point of inner
power, yea, of evil spiritual strength, that they are able even to
defeat nature's call to dissolution for the entire term of the
manvantara. They merit truly the old mystic saying, "workers of
spiritual evil."

In order to make this difficult subject somewhat clearer, consult

and reflect over the subjoined diagram, which gives a brief
outline of the various consciousnesses in a hierarchy:

The entire system hangs like a chain from the primeval seed, the
root-base of the hierarchy.

The first subdivision comprises those who are annihilated when

this globe goes into its obscuration. But to the second subdivision
belong they who are almost human incarnations of what the
Tibetans called the lhamayin; or sometimes they may even be
overshadowed by the mamo-chohans which preside at the
pralayas. These last, however, are not exactly "devils" or evil
entities, but rather beings whose destiny it is for the time in view
to carry on the work of destruction, of desolation. As regards the
higher spiritual sorcerers and workers of evil, the second
subdivision, their final destiny is truly terrible, for there awaits
them at the close of the manvantara the avichi-nirvana, the
absolute contrast and nether pole of the nirvana of spirit; and
then a manvantara of unparalleled misery. They are the polar
opposites of the dhyan-chohans. Final and utter annihilation is
their end. Nature is bipolar; and as is the action, so is the reaction.

Now annihilation, as it is used in the esoteric philosophy, does not

mean what people commonly imagine it to be. It means the
breaking up, the dissolution, of a personal entity, but never of the
immortal individuality, which is impossible. We speak, and speak
correctly, of the dissolution or the annihilation of an army, or of
the annihilation of a flock of sheep. When the separate entities
are gone, killed, or whatever it may be, the flock of sheep is no
more, the flock is dissolved. It is annihilated as a flock, as an
entity. And similarly, annihilation in its psychological sense does
not mean that it is the immortal spirit which is annihilated. That
idea is perfectly ludicrous. An immortal spirit cannot be
annihilated. Its residence, its dwelling place, is infinite space; and
its time is eternity. But as our body dissolves, is annihilated as a
body, is resolved and dissolved into its component elements, so
with the lost soul which is at first a mere psychic shell, when the
impulses
which came to it in the time when it was linked with an
incarnate spirit have spent their force; then its term comes, it is
dissolved, it is annihilated, it ceases, it passes out of being. There
is nothing left of it, for like a dead physical body it is resolved into
its component elements. But in the first stages it becomes
spiritually dead, though mentally alive. It is a psychic corpse,
from which the immortal element has fled. That is what a lost
soul is.

Students of the esoteric philosophy know what happens to the

kama-rupa of a man after the death of the physical body. It is
finally dissolved, or annihilated. It is in nature's course that it
must be so. I tell you that when we spoke at our last meeting of
the ancient wisdom-teachings of the Lord Buddha, to the effect
that there is "no abiding principle in man" — using the words of
Rhys Davids, the eminent Welsh scholar, who is a bright literary
honor to his country despite the mistakes that he makes in
misunderstanding much of the inner sense of the Buddhist
teaching — we mean simply this: that the only abiding thing in
man's nature is from and in his higher self, his higher nature. His
body; his vital force; his astral double, the linga-sarira; the kamic
principle; the manas; all these pass away at death. Nothing of an
abiding principle in the combination of these five; yet while these
five component parts of man's psychology hang together in
physical life, they form
the "man." Is there any one of you so
egoistic as to think that this poor being of clay now speaking
before you is the immortal spirit? Or the life which informs it? Or
this poor mind of matter, which I am using as an instrument
wherewith to speak to you? No!

The thought just expressed is commonly supposed — and rightly

supposed — to be a Buddhist teaching; it is also the teaching of
the ancient wisdom; it was likewise the teaching of the Stoics, and
also of Plato. Why, it is likewise the teaching of the scriptures of
Judaism and of Christianity. You doubt it? Turn to the Book of
Ecclesiastes, one of the so-called sacred canonical works of the
latter two religions. We have made our own translation of the
following passages, for we trust not the translation of the
theological scribes. They are too harsh on the one hand, and
insufficiently clear on the other. We find, then, in Ecclesiastes,
chapter 3, verses 18-21, the following — and please remember
that this book is supposed to have been written by the so-called
"wisest man in the world," Solomon. Whatever we may think of
that notion, those who accept this book believe it. It is old-
fashioned and popular theology.

Said I in my heart, concerning the nature of the sons of

man (Adam) (it is) that the Elohim may form them, and to
show that they are beasts, they themselves. For the destiny
of the sons of man (Adam) and the destiny of the beast is
one destiny to them: as dies the one, so dies the other; and
the thinking faculty [the Hebrew word is ruahh, very
extraordinary indeed!] is one for all; and the superiority of
man over the beast is nothing, because all are illusion. All
go to one place. All are from the dust, and all return to the
dust.

But now listen to the following, showing that the writer of this,
although he certainly was not that mythical figure Solomon, was
nevertheless a man who knew. Listen!

Who knows the thinking faculty of the sons of man which,

herself, ascends above; and the thinking faculty of the
beast which, herself, descends under the earth?

There we have the age-old teaching regarding psychology, and

when properly understood, it will easily be seen that every word
of it is true. And when the key-wisdom behind this brief
exposition is understood, it will be seen to be unutterably
beautiful. What vain illusions did those misguided men of the
early sects of Christendom foist upon the early western European
world; what irreligious folly, to teach that the physical body of
man is such a permanent and necessary thing that it will be
resurrected and, if the life of the indwelling soul was good, shall
sit with multitudes on the "right hand of God Almighty." What
unbelievably crass materialism! More spiritual harm was done to
the European races by teachings such as this than anything,
perhaps, that history records. Like many other teachings of early
Christianity, this one was a horribly mistaken and distorted tenet
of the ancient wisdom concerning the regeneration of the
personality into an immortal individuality — one of the
ancient
Mystery-doctrines which we explain briefly elsewhere. On the
other hand, it is necessary to teach a man of his dual nature; to
teach him that he is in his higher nature really an essential spirit,
verily, an incarnate god, and that he can become consciously that
god in the flesh if he will. And teach him that if he chooses to
follow the beast-nature he becomes as a beast, for the inner self
tolerates not this latter course. The silver thread (which is golden
above) is in that case broken; and instead of the man we have the
man-beast, for from the man-beast the soul departs, nature's
merciful liberation of the self-conscious indwelling individuality.

There is no "endless torture" or punishment anywhere.

Now my time for this evening is drawing to a close. I have not

said one-tenth part concerning this subject of the seventh
treasure in its connection with the Wondrous Being; yet I wish to
add a few more words tonight before ending. First, as to my
reason for using the term the "Lord Buddha." This Wondrous
Being overshadowed about twenty-five hundred years ago a pure
and noble-minded youth born in the north of India. The vehicle,
this youth, was in all ways receptive, and the wisdom-teaching
coming from him was given to the world. This chosen vehicle was
called Siddhartha as his personal name; his clan name was
Gautama; and he was later given the title Sakyamuni — meaning
the Sakya-sage; he was also later called the Buddha. This word
buddha is a title meaning the "awakened," just as the word
christos or christ means the "anointed." The Wondrous Being
overshadowed, and partly entered into, this young man who had
come strictly in accordance
with the law of cycles, at the cyclically
appointed time in the world's course; for an Awakened One, a full
Christ, that is to say, a Buddha, was cyclically destined to come at
that time. He was in the line of the successively-coming Buddhas,
and he was the noblest, he was the highest, of the mystic
hierarchy of his period, as also he was then the nearest to this
Wondrous Initiator, of any of our race. We know that the
Teachers themselves speak of the Lord Buddha as their Teacher.
That young man, we are taught, came directly from the Lodge: not
his body, but the holy entity infilling it. He was one of their
greater ones. Concerning all these profound and wonderful
doctrines there is vastly more that simply cannot be uttered here,
for obvious reasons; there is an entire department of the esoteric
philosophy involved which treats of some of the most carefully
guarded secrets of nature and being. We merely, then, hint, and
pass on.

H. P. Blavatsky herself, you may remember, took pansil, a Pali

word meaning the "five qualities or vows" (in Sanskrit, Pancha-
sila), and thereby became a formal Buddhist. Why? Because, as
the messenger from the Lodge, she knew perfectly well that back
of the outward teachings, behind the exoteric doctrines of
Gautama Buddha, there is the inner truth, there is the esoteric
Buddhism, as well as the esoteric Budhism: the former word
spelled with two ds, meaning the teachings of Gautama the
Buddha; and the other word spelled with one d, and meaning
"wisdom." And they are truly one when Buddhism is properly
explained and understood. She knew exactly what she was about.
Look, for instance, at the way in which she writes of the Buddha.

But, while all the above is strict and accurate truth, I must enter
here another caveat. Are we Buddhists? No. Not more so than we
are Christians, except perhaps in this sense, that the religious
philosophy of the Buddha-Sakyamuni is incomparably nearer to
the ancient wisdom, the esoteric philosophy. Its main fault today
is that its later teachers carried its doctrines too far along merely
formal or exoteric lines; and yet with all that, and to this day, it
remains the purest and holiest of the exoteric religions on earth,
and its teachings even exoterically are true. They need but the
esoteric key in interpretation of them. As a matter of fact, the
same may be said of all the great ancient world-religions.
Christianity, Brahmanism, and others, all have the same esoteric
wisdom behind the outward veil of the exoteric formal faith.

You will remember that H. P. Blavatsky says somewhere that of

the two branches of Buddhism, i.e., the Southern and the
Northern, the Southern still retains the teachings of the "Buddha's
brain," the "eye doctrine," that is to say his outer philosophy for
the general world; and that the Northern still retains his "heart
doctrine."

Now understand those two expressions. They are Buddhist terms:

eye doctrine and heart doctrine are real Buddhist terms. They are
also esoteric wisdom terms. The eye doctrine is that which is
seen; it may be false and it may be true; but in the technical sense
it is a true exotericism lacking only the key. The eye doctrine is
sometimes called the doctrine of forms and ceremonies, that is,
the formal outward presentation. Whereas the heart doctrine is
that which is hid, but which is the inner life, the heart-blood, of
the religion. As the eye is seen and also sees, so, conversely, the
heart is unseen, but is the life-giver, and applied to religion the
expression means the doctrine of the inner heart of the teaching.
As a secondary thought, it also gives the idea that it contains the
nobler part of human conduct, what people call kindliness,
humanity, compassion, pity.

Chapter 18
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Eighteen
The Spiritual-Psychological Hierarchy of Adepts. The Wondrous
Being, the Buddhas, Nirmanakayas, Dhyan-Chohans.

Then the Blessed One spake, and said:

'Know, Vasettha, that (from time to time) a Tathagata is

born into the world, a fully Enlightened One, blessed and
worthy, abounding in wisdom and goodness, happy, with
knowledge of the world, unsurpassed as a guide to erring
mortals, a teacher of gods and men, a Blessed Buddha. He,
by himself, thoroughly understands, and sees, as it were,
face to face this universe — the world below with all its
spirits, and the worlds above, of Mara and of Brahma —
and all creatures, Samanas and Brahmans, gods and men,
and he then makes his knowledge known to others. The
truth doth he proclaim both in its letter and in its spirit,
lovely in its origin, lovely in its progress, lovely in its
consummation: the higher life doth he make known, in all
its purity and in all its perfectness.' — Tevijja Sutta, pp. 186-
7 (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi)

OUR STUDY this evening begins with reading once more a part of
the matter from the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, which
was read at our last meeting, namely, on page 207:

The Arhats of the "fire-mist" of the 7th rung are but one
remove from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy — the
highest on Earth, and our Terrestrial chain. This "Root-
Base" has a name which can only be translated by several
compound words into English — "the ever-living-human-
Banyan." This "Wondrous Being" descended from a "high
region," they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before
 the separation of the sexes of the Third Race.

This evening we are going to make a step forward, in some

respects, far and away beyond any distance that we have traveled
on a similar occasion. Our preceding two studies have been for
the purpose, mainly, of illustrating some of the preliminary ideas
connected with this wonderful doctrine of the Wondrous Being.

First, then, let us note that the key word of this teaching is the
word banyan. Doubtless you all know what a banyan tree is, a
well-known tree in India, and called the Ficus bengalensis, the
"Bengal Fig," because it is a relative of the fig tree. It grows
rapidly, and soon attains to very respectable dimensions. From its
branches there hang down tendrils which, when they reach the
soil, strike into the ground and become roots there. And the
tendril which grew down and rooted itself in the ground becomes
another tree trunk, in its turn sending forth branches, these
branches anew sending forth other tendrils, becoming in their
turn new roots, which again become new trunks, sending forth
other branches, developing in their turn new tendrils, and so on.
It is a wonderful figure of speech to have been chosen for this
subject.

Now this Wondrous Being is a spiritual banyan. To say that it is

our higher self would be using a misleading phrase; it would be
doing violence to the facts. Notwithstanding this, however, in one
sense it is our higher self, our Paramatman. From it we spiritually
spring; and when, in the course of the cycles, the life-wave shall
have run its rounds on this planetary chain, into the hierarchical
banyan again we shall be withdrawn. It is in very truth, so far as
this planet is concerned, and so far as its thinking entities more
particularly are concerned, our Father in Heaven. The Wondrous
Being referred to here must not be confused with its lower copy,
the supreme Initiator, the Great Sacrifice, the Head of the
spiritual-psychological hierarchy of Adepts, the more immediate
subject of our present study.

You will remember that in our former studies we pointed out that
the course of the evolution of man, more particularly of his
psychological nature, was a copy in miniature of the development
not merely of worlds of the macrocosmic scale, but also of various
high spiritual beings who form the directing intelligences of the
kosmos, and of their vehicles in the universe. First, when the time
comes for manifestation, for the sending forth of a life-wave, it
begins, rounds out, and then completes its evolutionary course on
the first "plane" of its downward and forward journey. Then,
passing from that plane, to use the ordinary term, and going to a
lower one, it leaves on the plane or sphere to and into which it
had first penetrated, vehicles of various sorts, remaining more or
less active, though the main vigor of the life-wave has passed on.
And so through and in all of the seven planes or spheres of
manifestation — first in the spiritual world; then in the psychical;
then in the astral;
and lastly in the physical; thus reaching the
limit which the active impulse or force of the evolutionary wave
attains in that particular manvantara, which is what we call
absolute matter for that particular life-wave: four planes from its
beginning, counting downwards. Three more planes upwards
round out the manvantaric cycle.

Remember here that our teaching allows of no such things as

"absolutes" in the ordinary sense, for actually all absolutes are
relative. The absolute self, our Father in Heaven, is but the
Absolute of our hierarchy, its crown, its summit, its glory; or,
considering it as the beginning of manifested beings, the root or
the seed thereof. And, as all nature works in bipolar phases,
"absolute matter," therefore, is the ultimate depth to which a
spiritual impulse can reach in that particular manvantaric cycle.
Below it are other complete hierarchies; while above our
hierarchical (not individual) Father in Heaven is the lowest plane
of another but superior hierarchy, one of innumerable multitudes
of hierarchies, which in their aggregate comprise the universal
kosmos.

In our last study we spoke of the care that we should have when
we speak of the One; the reason is that there are infinite
multitudes of such Ones, a necessary implication of what we have
said this evening and elsewhere.

Now, as the monad descends into matter, or rather as its ray —

one of other innumerable rays proceeding from it — is propelled
into matter, it secretes from itself and then excretes on each one
of the seven planes through which it passes its various vehicles,
all overshadowed by the self, the same self in you and in me, in
plants and in animals, in fact in all that is and belongs to that
hierarchy. It is the one self, the supreme self or Paramatman of
the hierarchy. It illumines and follows each individual monad
and all the latter's hosts of rays. Each such monad is a spiritual
seed from the previous manvantara, which manifests as a monad
in this manvantara; and this monad through its rays throws out
from itself by secretion and then excretion all its vehicles; and
these vehicles are, first, the spiritual ego, the reflection or copy in
miniature of the monad itself, but individualized through the
manvantaric evolution, bearing or carrying as a vehicle the
monadic ray. The latter
cannot directly contact the lower planes,
because it is the monadic essence itself, the latter a still higher ray
of the infinite Boundless composed of infinite multiplicity in
unity.

The next vehicle is the spiritual soul, the bearer of the spiritual
ego. On its own higher plane, this vehicle is, as it were, a sheaf or
pillar of light. Similarly with the various egos and their related
vehicle-souls on the inferior planes, all growing constantly more
dense, as the planes of matter, into which the monadic ray
penetrates, gradually thicken downwards and become more
dense until the final "soul." The final soul is the physical body, the
general vehicle or bearer or carrier of them all. Soul, as the term
is here used, is seen to be a general expression for any bearer or
carrier of an egoic center, or ego.

When we call this hierarchical Wondrous Being our highest self,

we mean that it is the primeval or originating seed from which
we grow and develop into composite entities, the immortal divine
part of our nature and being. We can consider it, in one aspect, as
a sheaf of divine light separating into innumerable individuals or
entities (monads and monadic rays) in a manvantara; and when
the pralaya comes, again withdrawing and drawn back into itself,
enriched and ennobled, however, through its countless hosts of
manifested monads and monadic rays, with the individualizing
experience that these latter have gained, because, though at first
unself-conscious god-sparks, they are now self-conscious
divinities. The innumerably various individual consciousnesses
increase in power and glory and self-cognition by means of the
life and lives through which it (and they) have passed. Hence the
wonder-teaching flowing forth from this.

Listen carefully: last spring we pointed out that the one end and
aim of all manvantaric evolution is the raising of the mortal into
immortality; and we mentioned as an illustration of the idea the
beautiful Invocation of Katherine Tingley, "that from the
corruptible I may become incorruptible; that from darkness I
may go forth in light." That, indeed, is the aim and end of kosmic
evolution. Have we reached as yet such a state, you and I? We
have not; and our immortality as men is nonexistent or rather
conditional, and will so be until we have "raised the corruptible
into incorruptibility."
In order to make things more clear, please note the following: no
student of these studies should feel discouraged at what may
seem to him to be the confusion caused by using such words as
spiritual, divine, Wondrous Being, the One, hierarchy, and many
more, in various places which seem different from other places or
conditions. The fact is that such usage is really unavoidable. No
European language has evolved terms or expressions suitable to
these majestic and often (to us) complex doctrines; and hence a
speaker is obliged to do the best he can in this respect. But please
mark this well: there need be no confusion whatsoever, and in
time there will be none, if the student or reader will constantly
bear in mind the following facts. The entire framework of
kosmos, or nature, is builded throughout in scalar fashion, and on
correspondences and repetitives, so that, actually, the same
descriptive words are properly applied to any theme of a
repetitive character, for the reason that there are no absolutes
anywhere, and everything is strictly relative to everything else.
The only differences are those of evolutionary development, and
the relative and varying greater or less degree in which spirit or
matter is evolved or manifesting. The divine of one hierarchy is
actually grossest matter to another far superior hierarchy; but
within one and the other the repetitive rules apply very strictly,
because kosmos or nature follows one general course and one law,
and has one general and throughout-repeated course of action,
which applies as strictly and fully to a kosmos as to the less
kosmos, the atom.

Hence, the Wondrous Being of our own planetary spiritual-

psychological hierarchy of Adepts, etc., is a correspondence in
small of the kosmical One of the universal kosmical hierarchy of
the solar system, etc.

Bearing this rule ever in mind, confusion will gradually fade

away into dazzling light of illumination. It is well worth trying!
Some perhaps may think it a remarkable thing that in our last
two studies we contrasted the case of the lost soul with the case of
the children of this Wondrous Being — the buddhas. Naturally
the former are the other or nether pole of the buddhas, as these
lost souls are, like the buddhas, cases of extreme rarity of
occurrence. In our present state of evolution, in which these lost
souls occur, equally rare is the other occurrence: the raising of
the mortal into immortality, of the corruptible into
incorruptibility.

Let us go into this a little farther. What is it that is "lost"? It is the

soul. Now what is soul? As I have explained before, by our use it
is a vehicle on the higher planes manifesting as a sheaf or pillar
of light; and on the lower planes, depending upon the spirituality
of the plane, or its materiality, a more or less physically corporeal
body. These souls in all cases are living, more (or less) conscious,
sentient entities; living beings, composite: each one of them
composed of innumerable multitudes of less (inferior) entities, as
our body itself is composed of quasi-infinite numbers of atomic
cosmoi, tiny cosmoses, minute universes.

Now such a soul becomes lost, annihilated truly, when it has lost
its touch or rather union with that which gives it immortality —
or the promise of it. For, if and when the impulse, all impulses or
aspirations, towards the indwelling divinity, towards its closer
union therewith, have faded out or ceased completely, then there
is nothing left in it to hold it together, for it is wholly a
compounded thing, as said before, and it then disintegrates, falls
to pieces, as the physical body will disintegrate in the fire or in
the earth. What then happens to the immortal monad which had
informed it? Its career in that vehicle is violently checked. The
course of nature, of destiny, in that particular instance, has been
violated and interrupted. Yet all the previous spiritual gleanings
from the former lives of that monad in other former vehicles still
remain; and, after a certain period, the monad shoots forth
another ray, another ego, although the page of the lost soul
remains blank, so
to say — it is, as it were, nonexistent,
completely wiped out. Immortality has no record of it. It is truly a
terrible thing, not only spiritually, but for the higher soul, the
spiritual ego, itself (see diagram).

On the contrary, on the other side, when once in many, many

generations the flower of spirituality blooms full in a soul, and
mortality is raised into immortality, we have the opposite case: a
Master is born, consciously immortal, linked for ever with his
higher individual self. As the one case is one pole, so is the other
case the other pole of nature's course.

But when the former soul is lost, there is then for it no more pain,
no more sorrow; it is wiped out, and vanishes, even as a shadow
which passes along a wall and is gone.
Now listen: modern science tells us in its hypotheses built upon
its recent discoveries, that every physical atom is composed, first,
of a central nucleus which is called a proton; and, second, that
around it go circling, cycling, revolving — precisely as the planets
and many comets in the solar system do around the sun — other
corpuscular bodies called electrons. We will use these facts as
illustrative of our theme because the conception is so closely
similar in outline to that of the ancient wisdom. The next idea to
grasp is that mere bulk, mere magnitude, is no proof or criterion
of greatness, either in spiritual grandeur or in physical power.
The fact is that every atom in the manifested universe is a bearer
and a carrier of lives. Our bodies are actually composed and
builded up of innumerable hosts of such atoms, every one a
miniature cosmos or solar system, every one of them carrying its
hosts of astral-psychic and even spiritual infinitesimals. Over all,
through all,
permeating all, controlling all, giving connected and
inhering life to all, are the predominant life, power, and
characteristic of our own personality, of our own personal ego as
man; the Paramatman, the spiritual self, the Father in Heaven, of
these infinitesimal beings. We are not necessarily greater in
essence than any one unit of these innumerable hosts of
infinitesimals which live, and move, and have their being, in one
or another or another or another atom of our body. There may be
entities among them very much farther advanced than we are,
paradoxical as the statement may sound; and therefore I repeat:
"Break the molds of your minds; let in the light!" Because a thing
may be strange to the mind and because it may sound new, is it
therefore necessarily untrue? How dare you or I or anyone say:
"This or that is the only truth, the only thing that can be"? What is
the criterion of truth here? What, indeed, is truth, as judged by
such standards?

Let us go a step farther. Take our body or, for instance, its organs
— the heart, the liver, the brain, and others, each one receiving
from the predominant personal ego of the man certain particular
rays of force, and each one a kosmical universe or a universal
kosmos for the hosts of atomic infinitesimals composing it — in
this connection, I say, has it ever struck you, has it ever occurred
to you, that our solar system is such an atomic infinitesimal as
compared with the universal kosmos; formed of its proton the
sun, and of its electrons the planets, each planet bearing its hosts
of lives, and forming a part of the vehicle or body, if you will, of
some immense titanic entity utterly beyond our sphere of
comprehension? "God"? But why God? What assurance have we
that such a titanic entity is better than you or I, as God is
supposed to be? Mere magnitude or bulk, mere material
magnitude, is absolutely no criterion of anything. Our picture
may or it may not be true. But the point
to get here is this, that as
our body is held together by the forces driving through it, and
coming from us, secreted and excreted by you and by me; so does
the One of the universal kosmos — or of any hierarchy inferior to
it — send forth and control the many. Thus, then, the universal
kosmical Wondrous Being is our highest self; which in no way
whatever contradicts or interferes with the other fact, that each
one of us has his own monadic higher self, a spark thereof, destined
in its turn to become in future manvantaras the highest self of a
kosmos. Profound, sublime thought! And the Wondrous Being of
inferior scope and splendor, who is the root-base of our own
planetary spiritual-psychological hierarchy of Adepts, a miniature
as it were of the kosmical, is the one spoken of in the passage
from The Secret Doctrine which forms our present theme.

Now, the hierarchical Wondrous Being has been deliberately

spoken of in our last two studies, and also in this our present
study, as an entity because, generalizing the conception, it is an
entity. But there are three forms in which, or planes upon which,
this entity manifests; and for the sake of perspicuity and
convenience, just here, we are going to use the Buddhist
phraseology, the phraseology of Buddhism and Tibet, as
expressed in the Sanskrit language. The highest aspect, or the
highest subentity of the Wondrous Being is called adi-buddha, adi
meaning "primeval" (or the highest). This adi-buddha is in the
dharmakaya state: a Sanskrit compound of two words meaning
the "continuance-body," sometimes translated equally well — or
ill — the "body of the law," both very inadequate expressions, for
the difficulty in translating these extremely mystical terms is very
great. A mere correct dictionary translation misses the
esoteric
meaning entirely; and just there is where Occidental scholars
make such ludicrous errors at times. The first word comes from
the root dhri, meaning "to support," "to sustain," "to carry," "to
bear," hence "to continue"; also human laws are the agencies
supposed to carry, support, sustain, civilization; the second
element, kaya, means "body"; the noun thus formed may be
rendered the "body of the law," but this phrase does not give the
idea at all. It is that spiritual body or state of a high spiritual being
in which the sense of soulship and egoity has vanished into a
universal (hierarchical) sense, and remains only in the seed, i.e.,
latent — if even so much. It is pure consciousness, pure bliss, pure
intelligence, freed from all personalizing thought.

The second aspect or subentity is called the dhyani-buddha,

"contemplation-buddha," a great descent from the former, so far
as mere impersonal spirituality goes. This is carried by the
sambhoga-kaya, two Sanskrit words meaning "enjoyment-body,"
or rather "participation-body," because the buddha in the
sambhoga-kaya state still participates in, still retains, its
consciousness as an individual, its egoship and its soul, though it
is still too far above material or personal concerns to care about
or to meddle with them; and therefore it would be powerless here
on our material earth. As H. P. Blavatsky once said, a god from the
spheres celestial, living solely in its own nature, and without a
material body to manifest in material spheres, would be utterly
powerless there.

The third, and lowest, yet in one sense the highest aspect or
subentity (highest on account of the immense, willing, self-
sacrifice involved in its incarnation in human flesh) is the
manusha-buddha, meaning "human buddha," because born in a
human body for compassionate work among men. The manusha-
buddha at will or need lives and works in the nirmanakaya,
"form-body," about which a very wonderful doctrine exists, to be
explained later.

The dhyani-buddhas are one of the ten classes of beings which

came to our globe from the preceding planetary manvantara. We
will recite them, as follows: three elemental kingdoms, the lowest;
the mineral kingdom; the plant kingdom; the beast kingdom. I
pause a moment in order to make a remark. Please do not say
"animal" in this connection. We must have precision here. Animal
means any being which has an anima, or "vital soul." Man is an
animal in that sense, but he is not a beast, His vital-astral-physical
body is a beast, and he works in and with a human soul through a
vital or beast soul, enlightened by a spiritual soul. We hope to
have time later to illustrate this point more fully this evening.

Then another kingdom after the beast kingdom: the manusha-

kingdom or human kingdom. So far, then, we have three
elemental kingdoms, 3; then the mineral, 4; plant, 5; beast, 6;
human, 7. Then begin the dhyan-chohans of three classes. Man in
his higher nature is an embryo dhyan-chohan, an embryo lord of
meditation. It is his destiny, if he run the race successfully, to
blossom forth at the end of the seventh round as a lord of
meditation; if you like, as a spiritual planetary, or a planetary
spirit, when this planetary manvantaric kalpa is ended, this Day
of Brahma, which is the seven rounds in seven stages each. But
there are three classes of dhyan-chohans, as said; these three
classes in their turn are each divided into seven, as you know.
Now of these three the lowest class being divided into seven, of
these seven the fourth is that dhyan-chohan who is our "God in
Heaven," for this fourth round. Its spiritual primary is the adi-
buddha of the fourth round. It itself
is a dhyani-buddha.

Let us try to make this clearer. On each planet or globe of the

seven globes forming the planetary chain, as the life-wave
touches it in a round — and similarly through all the seven
rounds — there is evolved, or rather appears, a buddha, it might
be better to say a maha-buddha: one at the commencement of a
globe's awakening to life again, and another maha-buddha when
the life-wave leaves the planet after completing its round there.
Likewise, for each race during such a globe-round there appears
another buddha who, so to say, is a ray from the maha-buddha of
the planet, and is called the race-buddha; and he in his turn, at
the middle of the race, or when the central point of the race is
nearing, overshadows a chosen human vessel of purity and
nobility, or spiritual grandeur, this last becoming the buddha
preparing the spiritual way for the great race-buddha of the
succeeding root-race, who appears shortly before the close of the
preceding root-race. Such a one (as this last) was the Lord
Sakyamuni, Gautama Buddha, who is now living on earth, as the
Teachers tell us, a nirmanakaya. A nirmanakaya is the lowest of
the three mystical vehicles, as we explained a little while ago. It
exists in seven degrees or kinds, the lowest being the case where
the entity, the spiritual entity, retains all his human principles
except the physical body — all. He is a man in every respect,
except for the physical body, which he has discarded.

Now all these buddhas — and we have no time this evening to

illustrate the wonderful mysteries connected with this doctrine —
all these buddhas of a round derive from the dhyani-buddha of
that round. They form part of the spiritual-psychological
hierarchy of that round. It is this dhyani-buddha of our fourth
round, our Father in Heaven, who is the Wondrous Being, the
Great Initiator, the Sacrifice, spoken of before. The name and
titles are sometimes likewise applied to that spiritual entity, the
race-buddha, who comes shortly before or at the beginning of a
root-race; and who at certain epochs during the course of that
race chooses a fit human vehicle, usually one of the Great Lodge,
overshadows this chosen vessel or incarnates in it, as the case
may be — depending upon the materiality of the race and round
and many other factors — and so overshadowed, the chosen
vessel becomes the manusha or human buddha. Strictly speaking,
the race-buddha himself is a manusha
or human buddha also. As
remarked before, probably none of these titles or names are hard
and fast as limited to one sole entity; they are often applied,
mutatis mutandis, to more than one sole entity or class. This is
extremely suggestive.

It is in this manner that this subject of the Wondrous Being,

which seems so intricate, but which is actually so simple, is
explained. It seems intricate on account of its subtility, but it is
very simple indeed. It is our brain-minds of matter which prevent
us from seeing it easily and clearly. The ray running through all
our individual being, from which we draw our spiritual life and
spiritual sustenance, comes direct to us from this hierarchical
Wondrous Being in whom we all are rooted. He to us,
psychologically and spiritually, holds exactly the same place that
the human ego, the man-ego, holds to the innumerable multitudes
of elemental entities which compose his body — atomic
infinitesimals, before referred to, are not meant here.

But listen: the analogy is correct also in this respect, that if we

made it universal, kosmic, we would say that that inexpressible
One — which is the Utmost of the Utmost, and the Inmost of the
Inmost, of our kosmical universe, comprising the greatest
boundaries of the Milky Way — corresponds to all within the
Milky Way as our human ego corresponds to the infinitesimal
atomic universes which compose its own physical body. The
symbology is there; the correspondence is there; and it is by the
correspondence that we are striving to explain somewhat of the
mystery, how the One becomes the many; not because the One
"descends into matter" or becomes "many" materially and
literally. Not at all. But in the same way that the sun is an
immense and exhaustless reservoir of vital, psychic, and spiritual
rays, sending them out through billions of years, exhaustlessly; in
the same way this hierarchical Wondrous Being of kosmic
magnitude, through its inferior but high
Wondrous Beings of
various degrees, enlightens us and uplifts us and inspires us, and
leads us onward and upward towards immortality, for aye doing
its best, through its own spiritual ray within us, to illumine and
lighten our material corruptibility, in order to make it
incorruptible; that from personality we may enter individuality;
"that from darkness, we may go forth in light!" And the time will
come when we shall do this work and become incorruptible
consciously, working with nature and becoming one with her; for,
just as this Wondrous Being is the foundation-force back of and
behind all that we call nature, so that same Wondrous Being in
far-gone former manvantaras was then a man, even as you and I
now are. Such we shall also become, if we run the cosmic race
successfully. Wonderful, inspiring thought!

Now I wish to read a citation from Katherine Tingley, taken from

one of her recent lectures, because it is so appropriate to our
present studies on this point, that if we come here with pure
hearts and a sincere motive, learning from each other in the spirit
of true comradeship and brotherly love, we shall all get
something high and fine, something to urge us upward and
onward. It will be a holy thing, a benediction. Listen:

A man gets what he works for, and if he does not work for
it, he does not get it. But when one wants truth so much
that he is actually hungry for it, he gets it. It is the wine of
life, so to speak, the revelation of the book of life. No
language can describe it.

Those who desire the truth, those who have the courage to
enter the new life, those who have the desire to be reborn
in a sense, must throw overboard everything that has held
them down in their limitations, in their doubts, in their
fears, their dislikes, and their passions. Man is a majestic
being if he knows his own spiritual nature, and works
assiduously to become that which he was intended to be.

We are cutting brief our lecture tonight; it is already very long;

we have still more to say, and our time for closing is drawing
near.

Another thought that must be hinted at tonight is that H. P.

Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine is both an exoteric and an esoteric
book. It contains doctrines which were esoteric before this book
was printed. Now they are "exoteric." But if anyone thinks — I
never did, thank the immortal gods — that he knows The Secret
Doctrine by reading it once or even a dozen times, or a score of
times, he mistakes greatly the situation. It must be read not only
between the lines, but within the words. I have found the value of
the following rule: never take a single statement in it and allow
your mind to mold itself around it, never let a single idea
crystallize; break the molds, let in the light. It is an excellent rule.
As soon as a man says: "I have the truth," look out for him, for he
is probably blind. The molds of his mind are crystallized, and he
cannot see the light.

These things, these thoughts that we study, are serious, there is no

playing with them; it means going up or going down; and we have
the choice of paths daily, momently, instantly. I do not mean this
as a preachment. I speak from my heart, for I have found the
truth of what I say, and its great value.

Now to illustrate by a diagram this question of souls and egos

alluded to this evening (see diagram):

Please note here what is intended to be an egg-shaped design. It is

not a graphic representation, that is, a picture; it is a paradigm. A
paradigm is a graphic symbol, but not a picture of a thing.

Let the three parallel lines drawn above the egg represent, if you
will, the arupa world, the formless world; and the seven planes
comprised within the egg, the rupa world, seven being the
number of the principles always in manifestation, held in union
as an individual by the higher triad, the arupa triad, its root
above.

The three higher of the seven within the egg are also called arupa,
formless, but only relatively so. Please remember one of the first
lessons of the esoteric wisdom: there are no absolutes. We speak
indeed of absolutes, but only as relative absolutes. The popular,
ordinary sense of this word as "limitless or endless completions" is
utterly inadmissible, for there are no absolutes of that kind, for
every thing is relative in quality and space and time to some thing
else, and it must be so unless we cast logic and common sense to
the winds.

Just think of it: if any thing were absolute in the old popular
sense, it would be everything, and there could be nothing but that
in manifestation, hence no change for betterment, no progress, no
evolution. Relativity — which means universally occurring
relationships in space and time — is the very heart of the
conception of the kosmos as an aggregate of evolving entities, the
offspring of infinite motion, infinite life, infinite progress always.

To continue our discussion of the paradigm: through this egg-

shaped paradigm falls the ray from the arupa world, represented
by the vertical line signifying the self universally manifesting in
every atom it touches in this kosmos — and it permeates them all
— as the self individual, the self egoic, the human self, the astral
self, etc. These three highest divisions, the arupa triad, collectively
are likewise called the Paramatman, the supreme self, the summit
or flower of the hierarchy, the root-base or source of that self.

Please always keep in mind that there is another hierarchy above

our highest division, this division beginning with the lowest, the
"absolute matter," of that higher hierarchy. Everything is relative.
Absolute matter even of our own hierarchy would be intangible,
invisible, to us. Why? Because our present physical senses do not
belong to its plane, and therefore have not been trained by
evolution to take cognizance of it; our senses, eyesight, smelling,
tasting, hearing, touching, can cognize only those things, and all
those things, which they have been built to cognize through
experience in and through ourselves. We have not descended in
this manvantara into the absolute matter of any other hierarchy
than our own; we have gone down only as far as the stages of this
hierarchy would let us go. I do not here mean our kosmical
hierarchy. Rather, I mean our planetary hierarchy. Do not be
absolute in the application of terminology, for the reasons
already set forth. We must, when
we hear a "hierarchy" spoken
of, immediately question which one. When we hear the "self"
spoken of, we must immediately question which one. When we
hear the "soul" spoken of, let us immediately ask ourselves which
soul. This is a safe rule and guide to follow in interpretation of
any and all passages.
Now, as just said, these three highest planes represented by the
three horizontal lines paradigmatically represent the
Paramatman or supreme self of the hierarchy, in the archetypal
world. If you please, let this topmost circle inside the egg
represent the monadic envelope or the divine soul, which is
called, from another standpoint, the atman or divine ego. The
circle on the horizontal plane below the monadic envelope let us
call the spiritual soul or the individual monad. The self
corresponding to it is the jivatman. Next comes the third circle in
this egg, and corresponding to it is the higher human soul,
composed of the lower buddhi and the higher manas; and the self
corresponding to it is the bhutatman, meaning the "self of that
which has been," or the reincarnating ego. The fourth is the lower
human soul or man, manas and kama; and the self corresponding
to it is pranatman, or personal ego. The next circle, still lower —
growing progressively darker like all the others,
which I have
attempted to illustrate by increasing the shading — is the beast
soul, kama-prana. And the self corresponding to it may be simply
called the beast ego. Finally, the lowest "soul" of all is the physical
body. Remember that the word soul, in our ancient wisdom,
means vehicle; and, of course, this lowest vehicle, the physical
body, also comprehends the prana, and the linga-sarira or model-
body which is its background and seed and root. These three are
inseparable.

Please notice in this diagram the role played by the self,

represented roughly by the line dropped from the highest and
running through and permeating all the planes below its
archetypal origin. I wish to call to your attention the fact that not
merely Plato, but the entire Greek school of mystic philosophies,
spoke of the self as immanent in kosmos, and as a sacrifice, which
Christian mystics call sometimes the "Christ crucified in matter";
and, if we care to make the application to the exoteric Christian
religion of the doctrine of the Wondrous Being which we have
been studying, we shall discover that the whole Christian mythos
or story was actually drawn from it, the entire thing, and
distortedly called the "incarnation of the Logos." In old Greek
philosophy, the word logos was used in many ways, which the
Christians sadly misunderstood. The dhyan-chohan, of which we
have spoken this evening, is our spiritual logos, the planetary
logos, so far as this fourth
round is concerned. The spiritual entity
behind the sun is the solar logos of our solar system. Small or
great as every solar system may be, each has its own logos, the
source or fountainhead of almost innumerable logoi of less
degree in that system. Every man has his own spiritual logos;
every atom has its own logos; every atom has its own
Paramatman and Mulaprakriti, for every entity everywhere has
its own highest. These things and the words which express them
are relative. Bulk and magnitude have nothing whatsoever to do
with it; it is quality, spiritual quality, which is the true criterion.
This is a great and useful thing to remember. I have found
inestimable help in that one rule.

We have only a few minutes more of time this evening. I have

been asked briefly to speak of another matter, and that is in
connection with the recurring cycles of the year, and especially as
regards the New Year. H. P. Blavatsky somewhere, I think it was
in an old issue of her magazine Lucifer at the beginning of the
year of 1890, says, among other things in a very interesting
article, that theosophists and esotericists particularly should hold
the 4th day of January as the beginning of the new year. Now that
is an extremely interesting statement; and in general connection
with it, I wish to call your attention to one very important fact,
which is that the esoteric wisdom is based entirely on nature and
her fundamental operations. Nature, as we understand that word,
does not mean only the physical, visible universe. That is merely
the shell or body of nature the real. Nature, with us, means the
entire aggregate of everything that is, inwards and outwards, of all
planes in all spheres
throughout the Boundless.

The significance of this in the present connection is that the

esoteric method of reckoning time is a natural method, based
wholly on recondite operations of nature. It is not an artificial
method. You will find that none of the real anniversaries is based
on man-made ideas or on chance, such as the artificial scheme
used by the French during the French Revolution; or dating from
the founding of a city, like Rome; or from the death of some great
man, like Jesus. Such methods, as a matter of fact, are unknown
in the esoteric chronology, though parallels do exist, but these are
based on natural cycles. The ancient wisdom bases all its
chronological reckonings upon the kosmic clock which nature
gives us, and which is majestic, infallible, and a perfect
timekeeper. That clock is the heavenly vault; and the sun, the
moon, the seven planets (as the ancients reckoned them), and the
stars, are the "hands" marking time cycles. The year mostly used
in reckoning time by the ancients is what astronomers
call the
tropical year, so called from the change of the seasons. Winter,
spring, summer, autumn; winter, spring, summer, autumn;
recurring regularly; and recurring regularly because based on the
movement of the earth around the sun, like a hand on the dial of
the kosmical clock. The so-called anomalistic year and the
sidereal year were both known to ancient astronomy, but were
not used except for purely astronomical (not astrological)
calculations, or only rarely for astrological reckoning.

Mark the difference between astrology and astronomy.

Astronomy is the science of the movements, and the relations to
each other, of the stars and planets. That is all. It simply tells us
what they are made of, where they move, and when they move,
and how long it takes them to move along certain orbits or paths,
and is purely exoteric. But astrology, mind you, means the
"science of the stars" (while astronomy proudly calls itself the "law
of the stars"), just as geology means the "science of the earth."
Ancient astrology — not the pasteboard-science which passes
under that name today, but the ancient spiritual-astral astrology,
a true and profound wisdom about the evolution of divinity into
and through matter, and about the human soul and the human
spirit — taught the science of the relations of the parts of kosmic
nature among themselves, and more particularly as that science
applied to man
and his destiny as timed by the celestial orbs.
From that great and noble science sprang up, as said, an exoteric
pseudoscience, derived from the Mediterranean and Asian
practice, eventuating in the modern schemes of so-called
astrology — a poor, degraded, and worn-out remnant of ancient
wisdom.

All nations had ways of reckoning the year and fixing the
beginning of the year. Not all nations put the opening of the year
at the same date; some nations reckoned from the winter solstice,
that is when the sun has attained its southernmost point, before
beginning its slow course northwards again. I am speaking as an
inhabitant of the northern hemisphere. Of course, in South
America and in other lands below the equator, the conditions are
reversed. But now we are speaking of the northern hemisphere.
Other nations reckoned the beginning of the year at the summer
solstice, about June 21st or 22nd; while the winter solstice takes
place on or about December 21st. Other nations again reckoned
the opening of the year at the spring equinox, March 21st or 22nd.
Other nations began the reckoning of the year at the autumnal
equinox, six months later, on September 22nd or 23rd. The Jews,
for instance, had two years: a civil year, beginning in September
at the autumnal equinox, and a religious year, beginning
with the
spring equinox. The ancient Germanic nations of northern
Europe before the time of Caesar began the year at the winter
solstice on December 21st; the ancient Greeks began their year at
different times of the annual cycle, but most often, probably, in
the autumn; and the ancient Romans began it in the spring. The
ancient Egyptians began it in the summer; and the ancient
Persians, and the Syrians, and other nations, had each its own
period for opening the year.

The Mediterranean civilizations were already on the downward

path for many centuries before what in Europe is popularly
called the year l AD. They were slowly losing a great deal of the
ancient wisdom, and an understanding of its great secrets, and it
was shown not merely in the manner in which the Eleusinian
Mysteries were modified and changed, but also in the constant
shifting and remodeling of their calendars, and in their methods
of computing time, of calculating chronological periods, the
beginnings and ends of various cycles, etc. The Romans were
particularly blameworthy in this regard. They were perhaps
worse in that respect than any other nation known to us. If some
dictator or political chieftain wished to have a few days more of
power, or to prevent or to postpone an election, he would begin to
meddle with the calendar, a course of conduct carried on with the
connivance or through the ignorance or negligence of the
pontiffs. And so finally it came about that on account of the
disorder of the
calendar at the time of Julius Caesar — to be exact
in the year 46-47 BC — the calends of January, that is the first day
of January, fell on the day of the season which now corresponds
to the 13th of October; and if the confusion had continued
indefinitely, the first of January would in due course have taken
place in all the months of the year, wandering through them, and
finally completing its course around the year somewhere in
March, having completed the cycle. It should be added that the
old standard Roman year was lunar, consisting of about 354 days.
Julius Caesar deserves credit for having stopped this confusion by
his reformation of the Roman calendar. I do not mean to say that
Caesar did it all himself. He did not; for though he was a clever
man and an amateur astronomer, yet he had the services of an
Egyptian — or Alexandrian Greek — astronomer, a man of great
ability, called Sosigenes. In the year 47 BC, when the first day of
January fell on what would now be the 13th of October — just
exactly as if our own first of January this year had occurred two
or three months before in the late autumn, on the season-day
properly belonging to the 13th of October — these two eminent
gentlemen, or perhaps three, if we include M. Flavius, put their
heads together and shuffled the calendar into conformity with the
seasons again. Caesar was Pontifex Maximus at that time, and it
was his duty to take charge of or oversee the correct computing of
chronological periods, etc. This he did, inserting two extra months
(one to have 33
days and the second 34 days) between November
and December of that year, 47, and adding an intercalary period
or "month" of 23 days to the preceding February, making an
addition of 90 days to that year in order to harmonize the
calendar with the seasons. That year, then, was 445 days long;
and because it was such a long year, and ordinary people were so
puzzled as to the way in which business, etc., was going to be
done, it was called the Year of Confusion, but Macrobius neatly
calls it the "last year of confusion"! Then Caesar fixed the new
calendar to have a mean year of 365 days, with a leap year each
fourth year of 366 days; an arrangement that has lasted to our
own time in the West, but slightly modified. This arrangement of
the calendar, of course, abolished the old Roman lunar year. But,
if he had only begun the year as he should have done, according
to the ancient reckonings, the old reckoning of the ancient
wisdom, at the beginning of one of the four
seasons of the year
and when the moon was new — at the winter solstice, or, if you
please, at the spring equinox, or the autumnal, or the summer
solstice — if he had taken the old beginning of the year of his own
people, the Romans, as it had been before in the early days, that is
to say, on December 21st or 22nd at the winter solstice, or at the
spring equinox in March, of Numa, everything would have been
"all right."

But now mark what happened. He had Sosigenes whispering in

his ear, and Sosigenes knew more than Caesar, but he forgot one
little thing. He said — this is an imaginary conversation, but
something like it, I think, must have taken place — "Brother
Caesar, Imperator! According to the old way, the way of our noble
ancestors, the year ought to begin not merely at the winter
solstice but also at new moon. Now the new moon this year does
not fall on the day when the winter solstice takes place, but it falls
seven days later, for the solstice this year falls on December 24th."
"That is right," said Caesar. "We will begin the year seven days
later than the solstice. We will call that day the calends of
January" — or, as we should say, the first of January. Caesar made
December to have 30 days; later changed to 31 days. And that is
how our habit of putting the beginning of the year on the first of
January instead of on the day of the solstice, December 21, arose.
Had Caesar (he had it in his power to do so as Pontifex Maximus)
proclaimed in his edict that the calendar as reformed by him
would commence running on the first occasion when the winter
solstice and a new moon coincided; or at one of the other three
beginnings of a season which coincided with a new moon, it
would have been exactly right, according to the ancient wisdom;
because, mark you, all these ancient methods of chronological
reckoning were not based merely on the fact of somebody
founding a city, or on the fact of somebody happening to die on a
certain day, but on coordinated astronomical and terrestrial
events. The ancient methods were based on the time dial of the
kosmos. Caesar should have waited till a new moon coincided
with one of the two solstices, or with one of the two equinoxes,
beginning the new year at the moment the moon was new on that
night. Evidently, Caesar felt that he could not wait; or, perhaps,
did not desire to wait; or did not know.

Now, then, as time went on and Christianity in later years came

into vogue, people naturally kept the beginning of the year as on
January first, the month-day established in the Julian calendar.
But finally the Christians began to think that they ought to have
their own day for beginning the new year in a religious sense,
connected with the supposed birth of Jesus; and so, early in the
history of Christianity, eastern Christians took the 12th day after
December 25, the 6th of January, in celebration of the mystical
epiphany and birth (and baptism) of Jesus. It was, in a religious
sense, the beginning of their year. The English call this festival
Twelfth Day, as being the twelfth day after December 25th. What
a curiously confused mess of ancient ideas and new dogmas! His
"birth day" was later transferred to December 25.

Why was the 6th of January chosen, instead of the 4th? For this
reason. The winter solstice, when Caesar and Sosigenes made
their corrections of the calendar, was made to fall on the 24th of
December. The next new moon fell, then, on the first of January,
which was why Caesar said the new year was to begin on that
day, the calends of January. Then, many years later, 14 days after
the day which the Christians thought was the solstice in their
time, December 23-24 (December then having 31 days and not 30
days, as arranged by Caesar), was the sixth of January, which the
Christians called the Epiphany, copying an ancient pagan word
and idea. Epiphany is a Christian word which originally belonged
to the Mysteries of the old pagan Greek religion and to the ancient
wisdom; it means "appearance" of a god, and was adopted by and
adapted to the Christos-mythos.
Let us return to H. P. Blavatsky and her article in Lucifer. We see
that calendars can be changed; that calendars can be made by
men; that the Roman calendar was also changed and was made
by men; and that the Julian calendar, with modifications, has
come down to us, and is the one used in Europe and America
today. It is no proper calendar for esotericists to use in order to
compute the esoteric cycles or the beginning of the true esoteric
year.

Why did H. P. Blavatsky choose the 4th of January of the current

calendar for the beginning of the esoteric year? The true esoteric
year should begin on the 14th day after the winter solstice,
provided that the winter solstice coincide with a new moon. The
14th day thereafter, would, of course, be a full-moon day. The day
of the winter solstice could be used as a beginning of the civil
year, if so desired; and the 14th day thereafter as the beginning of
the esoteric year. Caesar, had he wished or, rather, had he known
more, could have so arranged his calendar to fit, either for the
new moon at a winter solstice or a summer one, or at one of the
equinoxes. But H. P. Blavatsky chose January 4, because it was the
14th day after the winter solstice — not because it was the 4th, or
any other month-day.

Now January 4th is 14 days after the winter solstice on December

21st, and when coinciding with a full moon it is an astrological
date. It is not a man-made date. It does not depend upon a man-
made calendar. It falls fourteen days after the festival of the true
winter solstice; and when the winter solstice also coincides with a
new moon, a secret cycle opens. Put the winter solstice where it
belongs, and ten days will bring you to the first of January by our
present calendar. Notice the number ten. H. P. Blavatsky also says
in her article that the celebration of the new year by esotericists
should be in connection with the Budha-wisdom, a word coming
from the same root from which Buddha, the Lord Gautama's title,
was taken, the root meaning "to awaken." Now, again, what is
Budha, from the same root? Budha is the Sanskrit name for the
planet Mercury, which the Greeks called Hermes, and the Latins
Mercurius, and which we, adopting the Latin name, call Mercury.
Hermes has
always been the particular overseer of mystics in
many, perhaps all, nations. In ancient Greece, he was given the
titles of psychagog and psychopomp, meaning "conductor of souls"
to the nether world, likewise the Mysteries. No matter what form
the interpretation of the ancient wisdom may have taken in
ancient times, one invariably finds the planet Hermes, or
Mercury, associated closely with the teachings of the Mysteries
dealing with the afterworld. In India, Hermes was named Budha,
as just said; and he was called the son of Soma, or the Moon.

For instance, in Homer's Odyssey, you read how Hermes led the
souls of the dead suitors, "gibbering like bats," to the "meads of
asphodel" (book 24). This allusion to the work of Hermes the
psychopomp, the "helper," is a "mystery" which was taken
directly from the Eleusinian Mysteries or, perhaps, from still
earlier Mysteries.

Mark then, that our new year should begin 14 days after the
winter solstice, provided that day is a Mercury-day. Now how are
we going to know whether it is a Mercury-day or not? There is the
rub. Have you any idea how the days of the week came to be
named in the order that they now have, and have had for ages, in
many parts of the world widely separated from each other? Why
one day is called Sun's day, and another Moon's day, and another
Tuesday — Tiw's (Mars's) day? Do you know the old Anglo-Saxon
names for these, by the way? Wodnesdaeg, Wednesday, for
Mercury-day; and Frigedaeg, Friday, or Venus-day; Thunresdaeg,
Thursday, or Jupiter-day; Saeternesdaeg, Saturday for Saturn's
day, and so forth. The system was as follows: the first hour of a
day beginning when the central point of the sun is on the eastern
horizon of that day, according to the ancient system, was said to
be under the direct rule of one of the seven sacred planets. Now if
the planet Mercury, for instance, was the one in
control of that
first hour, the whole day which followed that first hour was
called Mercury-day. Every succeeding hour of that same day was
said to be under the control of one or the other of the seven
planets, following each other in a certain order, as follows:
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon — the Sun and
the Moon, however, being substitutes for two secret planets. The
day has 24 hours: beginning with Mercury, for instance, and
counting the seven planets in the order just given through all the
24 hours, would bring in the 25th hour, which is the first hour of
the next day, with Jupiter in control, and that day would then be
Thursday; and so on throughout till we come to Mercury again —
one week of seven days. You can easily prove this for yourself. As
regards the real esoteric Budha-day, or Wednesday, or Mercury-
day, I say here only this: if the winter solstice is coincident with a
new moon, plus something else, that day is a real astrological
Budha-day; and, of course, 14 days later, or two weeks, is likewise
a Budha-day, but at full moon. Verb. sap.!

Now let us go another step farther. The 4th of January, 1890, fell
on a Saturday, although H. P. Blavatsky in that article had been
speaking of Hermes. But that was merely because she of necessity
used the week-names and month-days of the current calendar,
spoiled and ungeared as it is. So it is perfectly obvious that the
year she is alluding to was the esoteric astrological year, and not
the popular one of the current calendar. This manner, above
given, of computing cycles of time, following the hour of the
kosmical clock, is the one that was always followed in the ancient
wisdom. They rejected any other way, because it is the method or
the way in which nature herself works in the rounds, in the races,
in the kalpas, etc.
Chapter 19
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Nineteen
The Seven Jewels and the Seven Stages of Initiation.

These Portals lead the aspirant across the waters on "to the
other shore."

Each Portal hath a golden key that openeth its gate; and
these keys are: —

1. DANA, the key of charity and love immortal.

2. SHILA, the key of Harmony in word and act, the key that
counterbalances the cause and the effect, and leaves no
further room for Karmic action.

3. KSHANTI, patience sweet, that nought can ruffle.

4. VIRAG, indifference to pleasure and to pain, illusion

conquered, truth alone perceived.

5. VIRYA, the dauntless energy that fights its way to the

supernal TRUTH, out of the mire of lies terrestrial.

6. DHYANA, whose golden gate once opened leads the

Narjol [Naljor] toward the realm of Sat eternal and its
ceaseless contemplation.

7. PRAJNA, the key to which makes of a man a god, creating

him a Bodhisattva, son of the Dhyanis.

Such to the Portals are the golden keys. — H. P. Blavatsky,

The Voice of the Silence, pp. 47-8

THE MAIN text that we shall have to consider this evening is that
on page 207 of volume I of The Secret Doctrine, which has already
been read twice, the part dealing with the "ever-living-human-
Banyan." As our studies will also include a paragraph on page 424
of the same volume, this latter I shall read. It opens section xii,
"The Theogony of the Creative Gods":

To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every

ancient cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative
analysis, of all the great religions of antiquity; as it is only
by this method that the root idea will be made plain. Exact
science — could the latter soar so high, while tracing the
operations of nature to their ultimate and original sources
— would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. The original,
transcendental and philosophical conception was one. But
as systems began to reflect with every age more and more
the idiosyncrasies of nations; and as the latter, after
separating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving along
its own national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually
became veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy. While
in some countries the FORCES, or rather the intelligent
Powers of nature, received divine honours they were
hardly entitled to, in others — as now in Europe and the
civilized lands — the very thought of any such Force
being
endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is
proclaimed unscientific.

Now then, first, has it ever occurred to us to consider, to ask, why

the doctrines which we have been studying for the past months
have always been held so secret? There are three general reasons
for this, two rather, the third being a corollary of the second. The
first is that these teachings have from time immemorial been
considered the noble reward, the sublime reward, for those who
give themselves heart and soul and irretrievably to the Teachers
and to the terrestrial-celestial body that they represent. That is
the less reason for the silence. The greater is the following, that
these doctrines from their very nature being so abstruse, so subtil
that our poor minds of matter find difficulty in comprehending
them, would almost of necessity be misunderstood without a
preliminary training and education. It requires literally years of
study and training to bring the mind into such a state that it can
receive these glorious teachings, these sublime doctrines that we
have been studying, with some modicum
at least of intelligent
comprehension. If they were given out to the world
indiscriminately, what would be the consequence? Intuitive but
otherwise untrained minds would worship the Teachers, Masters,
as gods; or the stupid heads in the multitudes would persecute
them and try to do them to death as "devils," were they to appear
publicly and openly live among men. And a third party of the
public, the skeptics, would deride, would mock, not only the
Teachers themselves but their holy message.

These rules of secrecy are based on natural law, and on a keen

understanding of the workings of the human mind. These
doctrines were formulated in the dawn of time by giant intellects,
and by godlike minds. He indeed must be blind and perverse of
will who can look upon them after study and close examination
as speculations or as mere theorizings. What a compliment was
paid to H. P. Blavatsky by those who in their blind ignorance said
that she had invented them! Think of what that means, what a
wonderful woman, according to them, she must have been! And
obviously, the truth is the direct contrary. Did she ever claim that
they were originated and formulated by her? No; from the
beginning she said: "I am but a voice speaking for Those who sent
me."

These reservations of secrecy, caution, and prudence, are not the

singular and otherwise unknown rule of the trans-Himalayan
school to which we belong. They were the invariable rule of all
the great Mystery Schools of past times. Even in the latest of the
exoteric faiths, in the Christian religion, you find the same thing,
and conceived in words, by the way, which are as unkind as it is
possible to put them in — almost cruel in the haughty reserve that
they signify. Yet they are not so when properly understood. I refer
to certain warnings uttered by the mythical Jesus in the Sermon
on the Mount; and remember, that Sermon is prefaced by the
words of explanation that he went up onto a hill in order to
escape from the crowds thronging and pressing him, when he
then called his disciples and delivered unto them the so-called
Sermon on the Mount, evidently a Mystery-teaching. More of this
hid meaning we shall point out this evening. But here are the
words:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye
your pearls before the swine, lest haply they trample them
under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;

knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that
asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him
that knocketh it shall be opened. — Matthew, 7:6-8

It is extremely doubtful if the real Jesus, the center around whom

were collected the legends of the Mystery-figure Jesus, ever used
language of that kind; but it represents the spirit of esotericism
and is a true echo of the esoteric methods of the Near East,
leaving the framework of the words aside. It shows the immense
prudence and caution that always surrounded the giving out of
any part of the ancient Mystery-teachings. From immemorial
time was it always so.

And, another thing. The penalty for betrayal of the Mysteries, in

later times, was death. Never in any circumstances has the power
or the force of the Lodge, has the hand of a Teacher, been raised
in violence or in hatred against a betrayer, against the unfaithful,
no matter how grave the crime might have been. Their
punishment was in this: they were left strictly to themselves; and
the inner penalty was the withdrawal of the Deathless Watcher,
the higher self within, which had been consciously and
successfully invoked upon entrance into the Mysteries, and in the
higher degrees of initiation had been faced, literally face to face.
The early and automatic penalty was inner death by the soul-loss.
The betrayer lost his soul. Let me tell you further, in passing, that
practically all the civil institutions of ancient times, punishments
among others, were based upon what took place in the Mystery
Schools. Such, for instance, was the crucifixion of the Romans,
taken direct
from one of the ceremonies of initiation, the "mystic
death"; taken from it, stolen from it, and made an instrument of
legal murder by the State in later, degenerate times. Another
instance, also taken from the ceremony of the mystic death was
the "cup," in India the Soma draft. In Greece we find Socrates
punished by drinking from the cup of hemlock; and we are
reminded of Jesus, praying that the "cup" might pass from him.
Numerous other very different instances could be cited.

Similarly in Egypt and in other countries, when the periods of

spiritual barrenness, of which Plato tells us, had succeeded the
periods of spiritual fertility; when those periods came upon the
world the State then undertook to punish in its own name the
betrayal of the Mysteries, which by those times had become
merely a State institution and nothing much else, merely a part of
the religious establishment. Two or three instances have come
down to us so far as Athens in Greece alone is concerned. One
was Socrates, 5th-4th century BC, who unwittingly betrayed some
of the secrets of the Mysteries; and despite his innocence of
conscious wrongdoing, they unwillingly killed that great man.
Another was the philosopher-poet Diagoras, 5th century BC, who
was accused of impiety, of so-called atheism, and who fled from
Athens. A third was the dramatist-poet Aeschylus, 5th century BC,
who had to flee to Italy in order to escape death. He was accused
on the same grounds, of what was called profanation or impiety.

Another instance which we might mention, of a quite different

type, is that of the wearing of a crown or a diadem by civil rulers,
formally enacted in the coronation of a king — a ceremony
adopted from the Mysteries. Some of the earliest crowns which
they wore had outstanding spikes, reminding one of the crown of
thorns of Jesus; or it may have been in the form of the Greek
diadem, representing, in Greece, the crown of the central and
west and northwest parts of Europe. As just hinted, this also was a
symbol of one of the ceremonies of one of the stages of initiations,
a ceremony signifying what occurred when the one undergoing
trial was in a state of samadhi, as the Hindus say, and his head
was surrounded with a glory or aura radiating from the brain like
the spikes of the early crown, in which state, also, a nimbus or
aura surrounded the body as well as the head, but far less
strongly.

Now we embark more particularly upon our main theme. It will

be recalled that we have been studying from the time these
meetings were inaugurated about a year ago the so-called seven
treasures or jewels, and we are now studying certain aspects of
the seventh or highest, more especially in its relation to the
Wondrous Being, called the Great Initiator, the Lonely Watcher,
the Silent Witness, and by other such names. And we called
attention last week to certain of the analogies which our own
human life bore to the kosmic Wondrous Being — for instance,
particularly the analogy of the infinitesimals, the lives
infinitesimal, living in and upon the kosmoi or universes
comprised in our own physical body, the atomic infinitesimals,
and how our personal self was the supreme self of that host of
those almost innumerable atoms; that it was the self which held
that infinitesimally immense kosmos together, and permeated all
in it, and reached through all in it, like a mystic fire. And we also
pointed out
how, nevertheless, each one of those atoms, being a
universe in itself, had its own entire hierarchy, its own series of
ten degrees or stages, counting from its own supreme, its own
Parabrahman and Mulaprakriti, down to its own "absolute
matter."

Similarly, our own universal kosmos can be considered as an

imbodied soul or rather self, made up of almost innumerable
kosmic atoms or solar and planetary bodies, living with
numberless companions on the face of the Boundless. We began
to have some intelligent comprehension from this study of the
self, how, in a sense, the One might become the many, yet
remaining forever the One, merely calling it the One because it is
the summit or SELF of that most great hierarchy which our
imaginations can attain to. But beyond its boundaries there are
innumerable other such Ones, and beyond all such Ones, there
are innumerable hosts of infinitely greater Ones; and so ad
infinitum! The best way by which to represent the Boundless, in
which they all move and live and have their being, is by the age-
old symbol of the zero — limitless boundlessness.

That symbol is remarkable also in another respect, that it so

clearly and beautifully exemplifies the teaching of the Void, the
Emptiness, called in Buddhism sunyata, meaning the "empty," the
"void." It is really extraordinary how our Western scholars will
misunderstand and therefore misrepresent these things. They are
such literalists that they will take a word and drive that word to
literal death. They take the form of the thought, the body, and see
little or nothing of the soul behind it. They seem to have no
realization of the mystic meaning behind this wondrous thought,
the Void, the Emptiness.

Do you remember that in a former study we spoke of a medieval

mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux in France, who said that the state a
student of mysticism should aspire to was that of emptying
himself, utterly casting out everything that was personal or
limiting, everything that was bound and finite? Such a state of
mind lets the free winds of infinity blow through one, as it were!

Let us pause a moment over this. The Void is a symbol of the

Boundless; hence, it is everything because it is no thing. "No-
thing," if you like. Not "nothing" in the Christian theological sense,
but no thing, no manifestation. It is not a consciousness, because
it is all consciousness, which is unconsciousness in every personal
and limited sense; consciousness is a human term. Yet it is not
unconsciousness, because it is all unconsciousness of any
personal or limited sense, and unconsciousness is a human term.
It is both the limited and the illimitable time, and eternity;
everything and therefore no thing. Call it by anything and you
limit it. It is that which IS and WAS and in the utter eternity ever
shall BE. And because it is nothing finite, because it is not a thing,
because it is not one, or two, or three, but beyond all numeration;
because it is beyond all human thought and similitude and
comparison and expression, it is called that which
the human
mind reaches when it opens to its utmost for an abstraction, the
Void, which is likewise utter Fullness.

Our study this evening calls to us to move forward. Each one of

our studies lately has been dealing with very difficult subjects;
and each one, if properly understood, means a great stride
forward for us along the esoteric path. Tonight, let us be more
particular in our remarks.

These seven treasures, then, represent in doctrinal form the

seven stages of initiation. We are told that there are ten stages or
degrees of initiation, which means that there are three more than
the above named seven of these treasures. But we need not
consider these three others. They are utterly beyond our capacity.
They belong, we are told, to beings who have advanced so far
beyond us that they can no longer truly be called human entities,
although they do belong to our planetary chain by reason of past
evolutionary karma.

Each stage or degree of initiation after the third of the seven, we

are taught, is marked by something more than teaching. The first
three initiations, or stages or degrees in initiation, are composed
of teachings. With the fourth degree, there begins another
method. What is this method?

It is one of the fundamental teachings of occultism that nothing

can be truly known which is not experienced, lived through. As a
matter of fact, we all know this, as it is common experience. One
of the so-called laws of our being, one of the fundamental
conditions of our human nature is this, that thoroughly to know a
thing, thoroughly to enter into it, thoroughly to understand it, you
must be it, you must become it. You cannot tread the Path until
you become and are that Path. Thus, therefore, the different
stages or degrees of initiation are really a kind of forcing-process
for certain chosen spirits, certain chosen souls, who have proved
themselves worthy: a "forcing" or developing-process enabling
them through actual experience, individual experience, to pass
through and realize the hid secrets of being which the slow
processes of evolutionary development would have brought to
them as the ages rolled by. It is, in fact, a quickening or
awakening of the
man to inner knowledge and power. These
different stages or degrees of initiation are marked by
preparatory purifications, first. Then came the "death," a mystic
death. The body and lower principles, so to say, are paralyzed,
and the soul is temporarily freed. And, to a certain extent, the
freed inner man is guided and directed and helped by the
initiators while it passes into other spheres and to other planes
and learns the nature of these by becoming them, which is the
only way by which knowledge thereof roots itself into the soul,
into the ego: by becoming the thing.

The initiant is one undergoing initiation — and remember that

initiation means "beginning"; an initiant is a "beginner," while a
person initiated, an initiate, is one who has begun an
undertaking. Please also note that adept means one who is
"skilled"; hence, even in our ordinary life, a chemist, a physician,
a theologian, a mechanic, an engineer, a teacher of languages, an
astronomer, are all "adepts," persons who are skilled, each in his
own profession. Those two words have, generally speaking, the
same meaning also in the Esoteric School: an Adept is one who is
skilled in the esoteric wisdom, in the teachings of life; and an
initiant is one who is beginning to learn them. To say that you
and I are beginners, i.e., initiants, is merely stating the obvious
truth. It is likewise a convenient word, for it tells you nothing
definite as to degree or stage; it is a generalization. Hence one
could properly ask: "beginning where and what?" I may be at
the
bottom rung of the ladder of initiation, and you may be at the top;
yet each one of us is beginning, for progress is endless.

Let us then closely examine all these or any other similar

statements, for our own sakes. We are taught strictly to examine,
strictly to search into, everything that is told us; to awaken
ourselves to the realization of things, to live the life, to be it, to
become it; for such is the old teaching of uncounted ages gone by.

Now the passage from The Secret Doctrine to which we have

alluded this evening and which forms our main theme at present,
in which H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the "ever-living-human-
Banyan," refers also to the arhats (a Sanskrit word meaning
"worthies") who belong to the seventh rung of the spiritual-
psychological hierarchy, being only one remove from the root-
base of their hierarchy, which is the Wondrous Being of our
present study, therefore on the eighth plane of the ten composing
that hierarchy. There is a still greater and more Wondrous Being
on the ninth plane; the highest of all, the summit of all, is on the
tenth.

Let us make a step still farther forward. We are taught that at the
fifth initiation, part of the wonderful experience that the initiant
of that degree must go through is that, after due and sufficient
preparation and purification of the lower self and of the soul
within, the one under trial in the mystic path meets his higher
self, his own inner god, face to face for "a passing moment." Woe
unto him if there be anything in him which cannot support the
trial! The warnings given to us in this respect are solemn indeed.
The Deathless Watcher knows all, and accepts no excuses. Those
who fail have indeed another chance in another life, or in other
lives; but no base metal either now or then can be accepted in this
dread test. The inner nature must be pure gold tried in the fire,
nothing counterfeit, nothing that is weak and will break or fail
when the test comes upon it. You must then be fully ready to take
your place in the Guardian Wall; no weakling can stand there.

We are further told that in the sixth degree, instead of one's own
higher self, the initiant meets another One, a matter which we
will tonight pass over in silence. And in the seventh degree, the
same proceeding takes place as part of the mystic death, and the
aspirant — can we say "meets face to face"? no, he becomes for a
passing moment the Wondrous Watcher himself; and either
returns among men as a ------, or vanishes and is seen no more. In
the former case, he knows, because he has become!

We have spoken tonight of the Christian mythos. We deliberately

have chosen this term, for truly it is a mythos. The entire story of
Jesus as it is given in the so-called Gospels is a Mystery-story. No
such man or being as the Jesus of the Gospels ever lived.
Remember what a mythos is. It is a tale or allegory imbodying
some secret truth. In this case, it is the story of the Mysteries
partly told in symbol and allegory, partly told with some degree
of later ignorant embroidery; but, as a whole, representing
almost, as it were picturing, what took place in the Mysteries of
Asia Minor. The manner and style of narrative, in all such cases,
depended upon the national custom of celebrating them, and on
the cast of mind of the peoples among whom such or another
scheme or system of initiation prevailed. But the Jesus of the
Gospels is a Mystery-figure only: a composite figure based on
mystical teaching. Undoubtedly there did exist a young Syrian
initiate of that time, around whom were grouped these various
tales and stories taken more or less bodily from the Mystery
Schools of Asia Minor and especially of Alexandria; because
Alexandrian mysticism is the main origin of theological
Christianity, for in that city it had its rise theologically. This
Syrian initiate, probably a young Jewish rabbi, was possibly
actually called Yeshua, Iesous in Greek, Jesus in Latin. The
Hebrew word yeshua` itself means "savior," and the later
Christians of course seized upon this name — or later conferred it
upon their supposed founder — and wove a mystical tale about
his name, thus symbolizing his mission on earth as a "savior." We
all know the Christian tale. But from the very beginning of it as
the Gospels give it: from the story of the Magi following the star,
to the mystical death by crucifixion, and the rising again on the
third day from the tomb, it is nothing but a copy, more or less
denatured and faded and poorly woven together, of great actual
Mysteries, the
Mysteries of some of the ceremonies of initiation,
of which the earliest Christians certainly had some knowledge
(see Origen and Clement of Alexandria, for instance). But the
story in its various imperfections shows clearly that it is only a
feebly constructed allegory, or mythos, of actual initiatory
occurrences.

Apollonius of Tyana, the Greek, was probably as noble a

character as was the Syrian Yeshua, or Jesus. Jesus is merely the
Roman form of the name. We read of the marvels of Apollonius of
Tyana, of his works and life, in the mystic "Life" written by
Philostratus. But Apollonius is a historical character, and Jesus is
not. The story of Apollonius is an interesting one. We read of his
"vanishing away" before Domitian, when he was on trial before
that eccentric and severe monarch; and much more. Why was it
that Jesus was said to have been "crucified"? But he was not
actually crucified. It is a Mystery-story, as I have said; and not
necessarily a Jewish Mystery-story, nor a Greek Mystery-story.
Each nation had its own Mysteries, greatly resembling one
another, but varying in detail; but in all, there was always the
"mystical death"; there was always the "descent into hades" or
"hell"; there was always the "resurrection," the
rising, usually
after "three days"; and the "glorification" at the end of the trial.

Very many of the things that occurred in the Mysteries were

taken over into civil functions of the State, and they thus formed
the types of many institutions in civil life in ancient times. The
king and his ministers or servants, as officers or functionaries of
the State, were taken over from the ancient Mysteries, as copies of
the teacher and his disciples or officials. This is one reason (of two
reasons) why the ancients wrote of their divine dynasties of
primeval times; and on this also was originally founded the idea
of the "divine right of kings" — in later ages so greatly
misunderstood and abused. Why, the very calendars of the
ancient nations were based upon the same thing: they were
derived, taken over, from the Mysteries. Originally, they were
based on actual astrological truths, real knowledge of time
periods; and later were misunderstood and misapplied.
For instance, have you realized that the Christian
commemorative holy days of Good Friday, and Easter three days
later, are practically the same thing as the winter solstice of
December 21-22, and Christmas, December 25, three days later?
Both are based on the same original idea of the mystic death, and
the birth or resurrection three days later of the "unconquered
Sun," exemplified in the "death" and "resurrection" of the
successful neophyte in the Mysteries three days later! Why was it,
I ask you, that the Christians adopted both the ancient pagan
festival of the winter solstice, and the ancient pagan resurrection-
mythos, and made an Easter out of the latter — one being the
alleged anniversary of their Jesus' birth (Christmas), and the latter
the anniversary of his "resurrection"? Because they wanted very
much to connect and bind together their newfangled religion
with the personality of the great Jewish prophet or initiate later
called Jesus;
and, at the same time, to connect him with the
archaic Mystery-teachings of the School of Wisdom. Now, as the
Jewish or rather Syrian festival took place in the month of the
spring equinox, or rather on the day of the full moon following the
spring equinox, they copied the ancient Mysteries again here, as
follows: they, as it were, severed the symbol into two parts, and
called one Christmas, commemorating the birth of the physical
body of their supposed Jesus; and the other part they called
resurrection, or Easter, commemorating the "birth" of the
transcending Christos. It was a curious tour de force, as the
French say, a curious feat of "mystical gymnastics," as Katherine
Tingley so neatly puts it. But, and please mark this, these two
dates were actually in very truth closely connected in the ancient
Mysteries, and very much in the line the Christians followed!

Now, if you take the mystic calendar that guardedly we spoke of

last week, it is remarkable how it fits in with the Mystery-
teachings connected with this Wondrous Being, the Great
Initiator. As to the article in Lucifer (January 1890) referred to, in
which H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the date which the esotericists
should call the New Year, i.e., January 4th — does anyone really
think that she meant that January 4th per se has any especially
magical or mystical properties or influences? No; she did not. Our
calendar-day for January 4th is a date of a purely mechanical
calendar, with nothing mystical or hid in it at all. If we were to
fall into a period of universal ignorance such as the
Mediterranean nations fell into after Christianity became
powerful, we should forget even how to take care of our merely
mechanical calendar, and find ourselves unable to make it
conform to the changing seasons. We should then be in the same
troubled case as the European peoples were in, in the sixteenth
century, when Pope Gregory XIII had certain contemporary
mathematicians reform the old Julian calendar because of the
disorder it had fallen into through the pure ignorance of
Gregory's predecessors. They did not know how to intercalate the
necessary days at the proper time, and in February 1582, when
the Julian calendar was reformed by Papal Bull or Edict, they
were eleven to twelve days behind the true year. Similar was the
case when Julius Caesar reformed the calendar in the year 47 BC,
only much worse, for owing to political machinations, doubtless,
of the different Pontifices Maximi, the calendar of the Romans, as
I remarked last week, had fallen so far behind the natural year of
the seasons that the calendar January the first fell on what was
really October 13th, according to nature; and the calendar winter
solstice, December 21st or 22nd, fell on October 3rd, or
thereabouts; and if Caesar had not corrected the growing
disorder and confusion, the constant loss of the days through
wrong or omitted
intercalations would have let the calendar year
fall continually backwards all through the natural year, perhaps.
So you see that when speaking of H. P. Blavatsky and the
astrological calendar, most certainly we do not mean merely the
mechanical calendar of common use; nor did H. P. Blavatsky
mean it. But she meant a date depending upon real astrological
facts.

Remember that astronomy is merely the mechanical aspect of

true, ancient astrology and, for that reason, astronomy deals only
with the positions, movements, and physical conceptions of
planetary and solar and stellar bodies. It is in real fact merely one
branch of the ancient astrology, a sublime science of the celestial
bodies, and we do not mean what modern writers miscall
astrology — a paper-science at best. We have spoken sufficiently
strongly against such a misconception at other meetings.

Now our real year, our mystic year, is quite a different one from
the civil or ordinary chronological year. The civil chronological
year could begin on the true date of the winter solstice, that is to
say, on the day and moment when the sun is farthest south, and
just as it begins its journey northwards again. That is one of the
natural periods of time and season division; and it is also an
astrological time period, if we wish to form a time cycle, but with
one important change. Now what would be that astrological
cycle? We could start our civil year at the winter solstice when the
moon is new. But fourteen days after the true solstice or on what is
now January 4th, according to our present calendar, the moon is
full; and that day opens under the control of the planet Mercury
or Hermes, the particular leader, guide, and director, of
initiations and the Teachers. This is the case, mark well, when
that planet is in inferior conjunction at sunrise; or more
particularly when Sun,
Mercury, Earth, and Moon are all in
syzygy — all along a straight line — Mercury being between Sun
and Earth, and the Moon full. The planet Mercury then controls
the first hour of the 14th day after the winter solstice; but that
solstice must concur with the new moon, and Mercury on that
14th day afterwards must be in inferior conjunction at sunrise.
The 14th day (January 4th) is then a true "Wednesday" or
Mercury-day. Thus opens the cycle. How long that cycle lasts, I
have not had opportunity to investigate. Our astronomers here
can work it out. But thus we should have two years: one for what
we may call the civil year (fundamentally an astrological year) for
the purposes of civil chronology, by which ordinary time would
be reckoned; and the Budhic-cycle year. The civil year would then
begin with the day of the winter solstice, let us say December 21-
22, in the night between December 21st and 22nd. The next day
therefore would be the first day of the first month of the
new civil
year; but our mystic year, our Budhic year, would begin fourteen
days after that at full moon, on a true Wednesday or Budha-day.

We turn now to another matter, which is of real importance. I

refer to the diagram which was discussed somewhat at our last
meeting, and which we then had no time to explain in detail.

This paradigm, this symbol, can refer either to man, or mutatis

mutandis to the universe of any full hierarchy, it matters not
which hierarchy. Note then, first, that we have at the top of the
diagram the archetypal world, which is the root or seed, if we
look upon it as the origin or commencement of things, as the
locus of the initiation of kosmic evolution and progress; or which
is the flower, the end, the consummation of things, if we look
upon it as the full-blown flower of the kosmic evolutionary cycle.
It may be divided into three planes, so to say, forming the highest
triad or divine triad; the second of these planes is called the
Paramatman or supreme self. The first plane represents the
Parabrahman, with its field of Mulaprakriti; this highest triad, as
represented, applies to any hierarchy — this hierarchy, that
hierarchy, any hierarchy, as this paradigm is representative of all.
The Paramatman likewise represents the First or Unmanifested
Logos. The third plane, or lowest of
the triad, represents the Third
or Manifested Logos, or Brahma-Purusha-Prakriti. Then,
following the diagram downwards, we reach the seven principles
and elements in manifestation, formed of the three quasi-arupa
or formless planes, and of the four rupa planes, or planes of form.
The egg-shaped envelope of the hierarchy is divided into these
seven planes, if you please, and six centers of consciousness with
their inseparable six vehicles or "souls." The vertical line running
up and down through the egg represents the indwelling self: that
self which in you and me and in all is One; that which in all of us
says "I am." It does not differ in you or in me, for it is One, the
universal self of the hierarchy. But what is it in you and me or in
anyone which says "I am I, not you" — that which is self-
consciousness? That is the ego, the "I," but not the self, for the self
is beyond and outside of all such limitation of consciousness. It
recognizes no distinction between Thee and Me.

You remember the beautiful Sufi legend, how the Soul, wandering
in search of truth, came finally to the House of God and knocked
at the portal. Then in answer to the knock, thunder reverberated
through the spaces of Heaven, and God called out: "Who art
thou?" And the Soul replied: "I." And God answered: "I know not
I." Then the Soul wandered again for many ages in tribulation
and sorrow, and finally it came anew, and once more knocked at
the portal of the House of God. And the voice of God called out
and said: "Who art thou?" And the Soul replied: "Thou." And the
voice of God then answered and said: "Enter into thine own, for
we are One." No distinction there between I and Thou — a
beautiful legend imbodying one of the profoundest concepts of
the ancient wisdom.

Further, we have attempted to represent paradigmatically the

decreasing consciousness, understanding, power, potency, force,
expansion, comprehension, by the six circles gradually
decreasing in size downwards, along the central line representing
the self. It is impossible to represent adequately on a flat surface a
purely metaphysical subject; but our wish in so doing is to show
that the higher the circle or sphere is, the more spiritual the
sphere or center is; the larger and the more comprehending it is
in both quality and potency, not necessarily in magnitude.
Further, we have attempted to show the increasing materiality in
these centers or spheres as they go farther downwards, by thicker
and thicker shading of these centers in the diagram. The highest
center is the divine soul or monadic envelope. It is the first or
highest vehicle of the atman; and as an egoic center it is the
divine ego. The next one downwards is the spiritual soul or the
individual monad. This, and the one above it, combined,
are the
inner Christ; and corresponding to the spiritual soul or individual
monad is the jivatman or spiritual ego. It is that portion of our
spiritual economy which is deathless as an individualized ego;
deathless until the end of the maha-manvantara of the solar
system. When the solar pralaya arrives in the grand fullness of
time, there comes a moment, a final instant which is the utter
completion or consummation of all things in that system; and in
the twinkling of an eye, literally, and instantly, all the planets and
the sun itself are "blown out," as it were. The last one of all
manifested beings has at that instant gone to higher planes; and
there being nothing whatsoever left to hold physical matter
together anywhere within the solar system, that system
immediately falls to pieces and vanishes away (as I have said
before) like an instantaneous shadow passing over a wall.

The second center is comprised of buddhi, both the fruit and the
seed of manas. This is the center or seed or root or base of the
reincarnating ego. Then below it comes in our diagram the higher
human soul, composed of the lower buddhi and the higher
manas, with the self permeating it, as said above. Corresponding
to it as egoic center is the bhutatman, explained at our last
meeting, otherwise the human ego. Next comes the human soul or
man: this is formed of manas, kama, prana, and the egoic center
corresponding to it is the pranatman, or the personal ego, which
is mortal.

There is no abiding principle from and including this,

downwards; no abiding principle in "man" whatsoever. The next
below is the beast soul, or the vital-astral soul, the kama-prana; its
quasi-egoic center being the beast ego, if you like: that elementary
principle of egoship in the beast which holds it together during its
existence. Our teachings do give to every animate thing a soul;
not a human soul or a divine soul or a spiritual soul, but a soul
corresponding to its type. What it is, what its type is, comes from
its soul; hence we properly may speak of the different beasts as
having, one or the other, a duck soul, an ostrich soul, a bull or a
cow soul, a chicken soul, or a nightingale soul, and so on. The
lower entities, considered as a kingdom, are differentiated into
these different families of animate beings by the different souls
within each; and of course behind the soul from which it springs,
there are in each individual entity all the other
principles that
likewise inform man. But all the higher principles are latent in the
beast. That is why man belongs to another — the human
kingdom, for there is in him the buddhi principle more or less
active. Manas springs forth from the buddhi as the fruit from the
flower; but manas itself is mortal, goes to pieces at death. All of it
that lives after death is only what is spiritual in it, and that can be
squeezed out of it, so to say. H.P.B. calls it the aroma of the manas,
much as the chemist takes from the rose the attar or essence of
roses.

The last is the physical "soul" or body: the sthula-sarira, the gross
body, prana, and the linga-sarira.

We have spoken before of the lost soul as being at one pole, and
of the Master at the other pole, of consciousness. It is between the
higher human soul and the human soul (or man proper) that lies
the psychological frontier over which one must pass forwards or
upwards, backwards or downwards; into regeneration or
degeneration. If you go upwards and continue to go upwards or
rather inwards — please remember that we are obliged to use
human language in all such descriptions; we actually do not go up
in space; it is quality that we are speaking of, the refining of the
quality of the human ego, the penetrating, the breaking into, as it
were, of the final sheaths of our inner being that makes the
distinction — if we continue to go upwards or inwards, we attain
finally to Masterhood. But, contrariwise, if we go downwards, if
our egoic soul-quality wholly deteriorates, then at last we lose the
ego-center, the soul-center which, divorced from its upper life-
thread, is dissipated and, as
said, is at last annihilated. There is
the case of a lost soul at one pole of consciousness, and of the
Master at the other pole. When mortality becomes immortality,
when the corruptible becomes the incorruptible, then do we
attain to full and complete conscious Masterhood — a lord of life.

As said before, when the conscious center which we now are is

given over to full attraction or gravitation towards matter, the
momentum increases with time and use and, through attrition as
it were, that part of us where our egoic consciousness then
resides, called soul, is worn away and finally vanishes. It is wiped
out, annihilated; nothing is left of it. It sinks into the Eighth
Sphere, the Planet of Death, where it meets finally its fearful fate.
As to the monadic (the spiritual) essence of our being, it then has
to evolve a new conscious center or egoic vehicle for future
reincarnations. That is where the seriousness of this thing comes
in. It has to develop or evolve the new soul-center, the new egoic
center, in order to take up again the link in the series of lives; and
it may be that in certain circumstances ages upon ages may pass
before the newly evolved vehicle of monadic consciousness is
able to make up the lost time and opportunities. In the
meanwhile, the racial life-wave has swept far
along the pathway
of destiny; leaving the "failures" far in the rear.

Chapter 20
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Twenty
The Higher Aspect of Human Psychology. Initiation and the
Mysteries: Avataras, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas. Their Relation to
Globes, Rounds, and Races.

Truly, "for the salvation of the good and the destruction of

wickedness," the personalities known as Gautama,
Sankara, Jesus and a few others were born each in his age,
as declared — "I am born in every Yuga" — and they were
all born through the same Power.

There is a great mystery in such incarnations and they are

outside and beyond the cycle of general re-births. Rebirths
may be divided into three classes: the divine incarnations
called Avataras; those of Adepts who give up Nirvana for
the sake of helping on humanity — the Nirmanakayas; and
the natural succession of rebirths for all — the common
law. The Avatara is an appearance, one which may be
termed a special illusion within the natural illusion that
reigns on the planes under the sway of that power, Maya;
the Adept is re-born consciously, at his will and pleasure;*
the units of the common herd unconsciously follow the
great law of dual evolution.

What is an Avatara? for the term before being used ought

to be well understood. It is a descent of the manifested
Deity — whether under the specific name of Shiva, Vishnu,
or Adi-Buddha — into an illusive form of individuality, an
appearance which to men on this illusive plane is objective,
but it is not so in sober fact. That illusive form having
neither past nor future, because it had neither previous
incarnation nor will have subsequent rebirths, has naught
 to do with Karma, which has therefore no hold on it.

___________

*A genuine initiated Adept will retain his Adeptship,

though there may be for our world of illusion numberless
incarnations of him. The propelling power that lies at the
root of a series of such incarnations is not Karma, as
ordinarily understood, but a still more inscrutable power.
During the period of his lives the Adept does not lose his
Adeptship, though he cannot rise in it to a higher degree.

— H. P. Blavatsky, "The Doctrine of Avataras." "S.D. III," p.

364

PLUNGING directly into our subject this evening, it will be

remembered that we have been studying the nature of the
Wondrous Being of whom H. P. Blavatsky writes in the first
volume of The Secret Doctrine; and that the key words by which
we may gain some appreciation of the way this Wondrous Being
works in humanity, and more particularly in the psychological
hierarchy, through the cycles of the Mysteries and of initiation —
these key words were the "human Banyan."

Also we read on page 424 of the same volume, under section the
12th, "The Theogony of the Creative Gods," H. P. Blavatsky's words
concerning the hierarchy of forces, where she points out how
these forces were originally understood in their proper sense as
intelligences and consciousnesses working in nature; but that
each nation, as the cycles of time passed by, understood these
forces and intelligences in the same way indeed, but gave to them
different names, and developed a philosophical understanding of
the machinery, so to say, of the kosmos in slightly differing
manners or forms, and that these different philosophical forms
were the various schools of the Mysteries; for instance, in
Samothrace and Eleusis in Greece, and similar schools in other
countries.

Now up to the present time we have been talking in more or less

generalizing terms regarding this Wondrous Being; but tonight
we are going to try to particularize, asking ourselves definitely
who and what this Wondrous Being is.

To do that, we are undertaking an extremely difficult task, on

account of the subtil nature of the subjects which in their entirety
expose the truth about this Wondrous Being. We cannot
understand who and what this Wondrous Being is without
understanding something of the initiations of the Mystery
Schools; and to understand those we must understand something
of the higher aspect of human psychology; and again, to
understand that, we must understand the other doctrines which
we have been studying, such as that of hierarchies, and the
doctrine of swabhava, and so forth.

Please understand that these seven jewels, these seven treasuries

of wisdom, comprehend in small compass all possible human
knowledge during this kalpa; that is to say, the key teachings
which form those seven treasuries. They comprise everything
that man has known, that humanity now knows, and that
humanity can know, in this kalpa. They are, really, a short
synopsis in the form of philosophical principles — these seven
jewels — of all possible human knowledge; and it depends upon
each one of us how much of that knowledge we can understand.

You probably also have noticed that not one of these jewels can
be fully understood if considered alone. They complement each
other and explain each other. Every one of them is explained by
the other six; each one of them explains the other six and
complements them. Please do not imagine for a moment that they
are separate and distinct compartments of knowledge in the
materialistic sense. There is but one knowledge, one truth, as
there is but one life, and one ultimate being; but these various
jewels, these seven jewels, are different facets, so to say, of that
truth, different pillars, to change the figure, in the temple of
divine wisdom.

It will be remembered that at our last study we spoke of two main

reasons why the Teachers have kept these and other doctrines so
secret, and why the penalties for betrayal of this knowledge were
so great. First, because these teachings that we have been
studying, and many others, derivatives from them, are the
sublime reward of those who have proved themselves worthy of
them and of going farther in behind the veil of life. But the
greater reason is that they could not be understood by the
untrained mind even were they told; they simply could not be
understood. Great minds would understand more than would
little minds, of course; but on account of the imperfect spiritual
development of men's minds so far in this fourth round, men
simply cannot understand them without at least some training,
and the result of unlawful exposure of them would be
degradation of the teachings which originally were given to men
by the gods in the early ages of the human race.

This statement is no vain remark. These teachings have been

betrayed in some degree at different times, and they have always
resulted in what we call black magic, the natural result of a
misunderstanding and of a misapplication of them and of the
principles of truth which are in them. Even today we find men
and women, although they know nothing whatever of these
secret doctrines, going up and down the land, charging for their
teachings on what they call spiritual realities, and professing to
know everything in heaven and on earth. Note well that no true
spiritual teacher ever charges money, or any other fee, for
spiritual truths.
We all know what H. P. Blavatsky said about such action. "I would
liefer starve in the gutter than take a penny for teaching spiritual
truths." That is the test by which one may know, one of the tests at
least, the true teacher from the false. That is one way in which a
teaching may be degraded. Our Teachers have no desire to have
these glorious doctrines misunderstood and degraded and,
perhaps, human souls in relatively large numbers misled and
their feet set upon the path which leads downward.

Now in Greece — we will take this case first as an example —

there were two bodies of the Mysteries, the Less and the Greater.
The Less, in Attica, were celebrated in the springtime; and the
Greater were celebrated at about the period of the autumnal
equinox, in September, at Eleusis. The Less consisted, first, of
purifications of the soul and mind outwards and inwards, mostly
inwards, for that is the real purification; and, second, of
dramatizations of that which was to take place in actuality later
in the Greater Mysteries. They represented in dramatic, pictorial
form that which the Greater Mysteries were to bring to the
candidates.

The Mysteries of Samothrace, also a Greek institution, and like

those of Attica a State institution in the later days, were probably
the oldest in Greece. But these two schools of the Mysteries, while
teaching the same fundamental verities and the same ultimate
truths, did not teach the same things. For instance, the Mysteries
of Samothrace were what we today would rather call scientific.
They dealt with the nature and operations of the Kabeiroi, who
belonged to the class of spiritual entities called "builders," the
lower septenary; whereas at Eleusis — and this name Eleusis
means the "Advent" or the "Coming," and the Eleusinia "things
that are to come" — at Eleusis the more theological and mystical
doctrines were taught, more particularly that which will happen
to man after death. Hence the name of the place, Eleusis, where
they were celebrated, and the name of the Mysteries themselves,
the Eleusinia, i.e., the things which shall be
or shall come.

Each country had its own mystical jargon or dialect or manner of

speaking of and in the various Mysteries; and with regard to the
Mysteries in Greece and in Syria and in Palestine, these jargons or
technical words nearly resembled each other. For instance, in
Syria, outsiders were called swine and dogs; betrayers were
called wolves. Those of you who remember your New Testament
will probably remember the instances in which swine and dogs
and, I think, also wolves are spoken of. Foxes was a term for those
who tried to enter the Mysteries unlawfully. All these terms are
taken from the attributes of certain animals, which man in
unlawful action copied: the fox on account of its cunning; the
wolf on account of its bold cruelty and lack of conscience — that
is the reputation it has, at least; swine and dogs on account of the
reputation that these beasts have always had in the Orient.

But while these terms were a part of the jargon of the Mysteries
of those countries in those days, as was pointed out at our last
meeting, it is not the language used in our School. I do not believe,
as said, that Jesus ever called those who were not initiates in the
Mysteries of his time "swine and dogs." If he did this, the
presumption becomes a certainty that he did not belong to our
School; but as he did so belong, we must conclude that such
language came from his disciples living probably in Alexandria,
where the Gospels were almost certainly composed and written
in the form in which we now have them.

Next — and now we turn to the direct subject of our study, to our
main theme, our main thought. Open wide your hearts; cast out
for a short time from your minds all thoughts which are personal
and unworthy of the atmosphere into which we are now entering.
At our last study we took four technical words in order to explain
somewhat by them our present great subject, talking around it
rather than talking of it, four words used in the trans-Himalayan
Buddhism because, first, they are the words which H. P. Blavatsky
used; secondly, because they are the words which are in the
esoteric books of the East belonging to our School. Three of these
are, adi-buddha, the "primal wisdom," or Logos, as a Greek would
say; then the dhyani-buddha, the "buddha of meditation or
contemplation," of which buddhas there are seven; then the
manushya, the "human buddha." But these three are all
connected: the adi-buddha as the Logos, the dhyani-buddha as the
causal
buddha, the manushya-buddha as the agent on our plane
of the celestial hierarchy. These buddhas belong to the celestial
hierarchy as contrasted with the kosmic hierarchy or builders.
The fourth word is bodhisattva.

At former meetings we have spoken of the planetary spirits, using

this term in a general sense as equivalent to dhyani-chohans or
lords of meditation. Now this evening we go a step farther. The
planetaries are the builders of the astral-material world, and they
draw their plan, and they draw their higher life, and they draw
their wisdom (outside of that which they themselves have won)
from the celestial hierarchy, the upper septenary; and this
celestial hierarchy originates in adi-buddha, primordial buddha,
or the Logos.

Now for each round of our septenary planetary cycle (that is of

this kalpa, or Day of Brahma comprising all the seven rounds)
there is a presiding dhyani-buddha, a buddha of contemplation, a
causal buddha; and all the events of all the seven globes of our
planetary chain are under the overseeing or supervision of the
particular dhyani-chohan of that round. Our present round, being
the fourth, is under the supervision of the dhyani-buddha
belonging to the fourth degree of the celestial hierarchy. For each
globe of the planetary chain there is what the Buddhists call a
bodhisattva, a Sanskrit word meaning "he whose essence is
wisdom."

This bodhisattva is a mind-born son, so to say, of the dhyani-

buddha of that round. There is a dhyani-bodhisattva for this
globe, and also one for each one of the three globes which
precede this globe on the downward arc, and likewise a
bodhisattva for each of the three globes which follow this globe
on the upward arc — one bodhisattva for each. This dhyani-
bodhisattva is the spiritual head of the spiritual-psychological
hierarchy of each globe. Take our globe, for instance. Our dhyani-
bodhisattva is the Wondrous Being, the Great Initiator, the Silent
Watcher of our globe; in one sense an emanation from the
dhyani-buddha overseeing all the round, but not merely an
exudation or prolongation, if you will, of the dhyani-buddha.
Each bodhisattva is an entity in himself. He is as a ray of that
dhyani-buddha.

Next, during evolution on our earth (and on the other six globes
correspondentially) the life-wave runs through seven stages
called root-races. Each one of these root-races is ushered in by a
manushya-buddha, a human buddha, who is the "son" of the
globe-bodhisattva in the same way as the globe-bodhisattva is a
"son" of the dhyani-buddha of the round. Each one of these seven
root-races is furthermore divided at its middle point, so to speak.
When half of its cycle is run, then the racial cataclysm ensues, for
that is the way in which nature operates; and preceding that
cataclysm there is another human buddha, or manushya-buddha,
of less degree.

Is this Wondrous Being a man? He is. Is he more than a man? He

is. Is he a septenary entity? He is. How is the influence of this
Wondrous Being communicated to his agents, the human
buddhas and the human bodhisattvas?

Let us study for a moment an allied subject, a psychological one,

before we go farther. We cannot understand what comes to our
theme farther on until we have at least sketched out this
psychological subject. Man, as you know, is sevenfold. Man may
be divided in a triform way: a spiritual man, an intermediate or
highly ethereal man, and an astral-physical man. In other words
and in "psychological" terms: (1) divine man, (2) spiritual man, (3)
personal man. Now, then, what is an avatara? An avatara, as
commonly supposed, is the descent of a god into a human form.
That idea is exoteric. It is not false, but simply put in that way and
with nothing more added in explanation it is very misleading.

You remember what Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita: "I

incarnate in period after period in order to destroy wickedness
and reestablish righteousness." Krishna there represents the
Logos, or rather, perhaps, the logoic ray; and the Logos — or its
ray or influence — on our plane would be utterly helpless,
inactive, and have no possible means of communication with us
and our sphere, because that logoic ray lacks an intermediate and
fully conscious vehicle or carrier, i.e., it lacks the intermediate or
highly ethereal mechanism, the spiritual-human in us, which in
ordinary man is but slightly active. An avatara takes place when a
direct ray from the Logos enters into, fully inspires, and
illuminates, a human being, through the intermediary of a
bodhisattva who has incarnated in that human being, thereby
supplying the fit, ready, and fully conscious intermediate vehicle
or carrier. This "human being" has no karmic ego of its own. The
egoity, the
ego, the intermediate part, the highly ethereal and
fully conscious intermediary, the spiritual-human element, is
supplied by the incarnating bodhisattva; that is to say, the highly
evolved personal principles of a buddha, otherwise a
nirmanakaya — not the highest element of that buddha, which is
in nirvana, but the spiritual-personal element of the buddha,
glorious, pure, and great, the spiritual-personal ego — enters into
the body of that utterly pure human being before or shortly after
its birth, and thus supplies the intermediate vehicle appropriate
for the incarnation of the logoic ray. That is an avatara.

For instance, a child is born. That child has an inner psycho-astral

nature of transparent purity and beauty and it attracts
magnetically, if you like, but spiritually, actually, a ray from the
Logos. Its own higher self is fully active, of course, and the logoic
ray — which is ITSELF — manifests in it. Furthermore, a
bodhisattva, under the conditions which prevail when an avatara
is required on earth, enters that body also, thus supplying the
egoic element. So, then, we have this marvelous thing: a pure
human body with its prana and astral model-body, but with no
true karmic ego incarnating, a bodhisattva supplying that egoic
element of still greater purity than possible to ordinary men, and
evolved to the degree required for the incarnation of the logoic or
atmic ray, that logoic ray and the higher self of the born child
really being one. But this mystery in life is a very exceptional
circumstance.

Let us turn to another facet of the same psychological subject.

Take the case of the Lord Buddha. Please notice that we here
speak of the Lord Buddha, although we speak of the great man as
Siddhartha, his personal name, and of the sage Gautama, or
Gautama-Sakyamuni. Gautama was his family name; Sakya, his
clan name; Sakyamuni, the Sakya sage, was the title given to him
in later life and after. When Sakyamuni entered nirvana during
life, he is then exoterically said to have "died" at the age of eighty
years; but our teachings show him actually to have lived to one
hundred years before he gave up his physical body and remained
on earth as a nirmanakaya. We all know what a nirmanakaya is;
it is a complete man minus the physical body only. But is that all
there is of this wondrous mystery? It is not. The higher portions
of the Buddha were in nirvana; yet the spiritual-personal ego
remained on earth, active, an active entity, a force for spiritual
good as a nirmanakaya, overshadowed by the
nirvanic element,
and this nirmanakaya was, please note carefully, a human
bodhisattva. It is the teaching that this bodhisattva, the egoic
element of the Buddha Gautama, as was the case with previous
buddhas, was a spiritual-human ray from the globe dhyani-
bodhisattva.

You perceive the difficulty, the extreme difficulty, in making

these subtil and highly spiritual subjects clear to minds untrained
in our metaphysic. Actually they require years of deep thought.
Let us look at it from another aspect again. Who was Jesus? What
was Jesus? Who was Apollonius of Tyana? What was he? The
teaching is that both were incarnations of a nirmanakaya, and
both had the same mysterious connection with the bodhisattva of
the Buddha Gautama. Apollonius was not an avatara, though
Jesus was. There are close psychological similarities between
these two wonder-cases of history; but they are not identically the
same mystery. I merely note here in passing that mystically a
buddha stands higher than an avatara, for reasons which will be
explained in due course of our study.

Let us go a step farther. You all have read of the incarnations of

the buddhas in Tibet. We are now speaking in exoteric language,
such as you will read in Sven Hedin or various others of the
European explorers. Some of them have seen these so-called
incarnations of the Buddha. Please understand once for all that
our School is not Lamaism; our School is representative of the
archaic, esoteric, wisdom of the world, although it is true on the
other hand that the esoteric side of Tibetan Lamaism, properly
understood, is the nearest doctrinal approach to the doctrines, in
large degree, of our School. With all the faults that the Tibetans
may have, with all the various drawbacks that we Westerners
may consider them as having in one way or another, nevertheless
the esoteric teaching in Tibet is nearer to that of our School than
any other.

But how did this very curious and interesting doctrine of the
continued reincarnations of the Buddha in the Tibetan Tashi-
Lama and the Dalai-Lama, and in various others of the Buddhist
hierarchy in various monasteries in Tibet, originate? It originated
in the mother-doctrine that we are now studying. You will
remember that H. P. Blavatsky speaks in the passage in The Secret
Doctrine that we are now studying of an event that happened
before the separation of the sexes in the third root-race, when a
certain "spiritual being" incarnated in men; and she says that this
was not a race but, after this Wondrous Being, became a
succession of great spiritual entities. It is actually the passing on
of the inner self, the ego if you like, the ethereal man, of that
original Wondrous Being that came to humankind from superior
spheres in order to enlighten and to save mankind, beginning
with the third root-race — passing on down through the ages
thereafter in vehicles of
human flesh and mentality even to our
present time. You will remember how she speaks of this
Wondrous Being as a man, and yet not a man, one concerning
whom legends are rife in the Orient. In all ages there have been
mysterious allusions to the Master-Initiate, to the Great One, to
the Head of all Teachers, to the Silent Watcher, to the Great
Initiator, and so forth and so forth. Tibetan Lamaism drew this
teaching of the continued reincarnations of the Buddha from that
fact. This is an interesting question, and perhaps some day we
shall investigate it more fully; but we cannot touch upon Tibetan
Lamaism at greater length this evening.

It is necessary, however, to understand that the difference

between the transmission of an egoic element as in the buddhaic
line in Tibet, and those exceptional incarnations called the
avataras, is in one sense great; and in another sense they are very
much alike. They are very much alike in this, that in both cases
the upadhi (or vehicle) chosen for the manifestation of the
superior entity is a human being. Also in both cases the psycho-
ethereal upadhi is a bodhisattva; that is to say, in the case of an
avatara, the bodhisattva is the glorified personal man of a
buddha, of a manushya-buddha; the lamaic succession is also
bodhisattvic, but of inferior intensity, so to say — a bodhisattvic
influence rather than a full incarnation of a bodhisattva, as in the
case of an avatara.

The doctrines that students of Buddhism set forth in the books

which they publish on Buddhism, in the West, are of course those
that they derive from the Buddhist books themselves, usually
with very inadequate understanding of the subtil points of that
most spiritual of all religions; and unquestionably these scholars
strive to understand and truthfully and honestly to set forth that
which they believe to be the real meaning of Buddhist teachings.
But it is an amazing thing that they do not succeed better; and the
reason is that they come to their study with materialistic Western
minds, materialistic Western preconceptions and prejudices.
They come to their study in an attitude of mind which they
themselves do not recognize as existing, and hence talk sagely —
when they fail to grasp meanings — of the "superstitious
extravagances of Oriental imagery," etc., etc. Now how is it
possible to understand the real nature or the real essence of
anything if you begin your study with the
prepossessing idea that
you know better and more than did the persons who wrote the
things which you are studying? Such egoism destroys sympathy
and obscures true vision; and if your study be of religious
subjects, inevitably you will look upon all statements made or
doctrines formulated as "monkish vagaries." But, as was pointed
out in other studies, there is no exoteric doctrine belonging to the
great ancient world religions which is intrinsically false. The fact
is that the exoteric teaching is the truth, but it needs a key in
order to explain it; and without the key it actually can be, and
usually is, misunderstood and misinterpreted, and degraded in a
manner very similar to that of which we spoke upon opening our
study this evening.

Let us now turn to another subject connected with this, collateral,

and showing another facet of the jewel. They tell us that the
human buddha, the manushya-buddha Gautama-Sakyamuni, was
born 643 years before the first year of the accepted beginning of
the Christian era. Our doctrine tells us further that a human
racial buddha comes at the beginning of, and a minor one
preceding the middle point of, a root-race. I call your attention to
the fact that we are now approaching the middle point of our fifth
root-race. We are in the fourth subrace of that fifth root-race, not
in the fifth subrace thereof. Please get this point clear in your
minds. It will be between sixteen thousand and twenty thousand
years yet before the racial cataclysm will ensue which will cut our
fifth root-race in two, exactly as happened to the fourth-race
Atlanteans and to the third-race Lemurians who preceded them;
and as it will happen to the two root-races which will follow ours,
the sixth and seventh.

Now the reason why some students have supposed that racially
we are now in the fifth subrace is on account of a
misinterpretation, very pardonable, it is true, because we all
know that the subject of cycles and numbers is always closely
veiled. This misinterpretation or misconception appears to have
arisen from what H. P. Blavatsky writes in volume II of The Secret
Doctrine on pages 435 and 445; and I desire to call your attention
to the fact that one of the commonest "blinds" that a teacher is
obligated to make when writing of esoteric matters in a public
work is using the same word in varying senses. There is an esoteric
obligation to do so when it is necessary, in order to tell the truth
for those who can and who may read, and yet to hide it from the
"dogs" and "swine" and "foxes," if you will forgive my use here of
the New Testament or Syrian jargon. I call your attention in the
above connection to The Secret Doctrine,
volume I, page xliii: ". . .
each Round being composed of the Yugas [Ages] of the seven
periods [root-races] of Humanity; four of which are now passed
in our life cycle, the middle point of the 5th being nearly
reached." I call your attention also to page 610 of this same
volume where H. P. Blavatsky says: "But as we are in the mid-
point of our sub-race of the Fifth Root Race — the acme of
materiality in each — therefore the animal propensities, though
more refined," etc. The "acme of materiality in each" means only
one thing — the middle point of the fourth of any cyclical series: for
instance, the fourth primary subrace; the fourth subrace of the
fourth primary subrace of the fifth root-race, and so forth.

Suppose that for convenience' sake we divide the races in the

following way: root-race really meaning the first or root- or
originating primary subrace, but commonly applied to all the
seven successive primary subraces of a root-race and all the
many other smaller subraces included in those seven. The first
root-race then is the first primary subrace, of which primary
subraces there are seven in the great racial cycle; then the
secondary subrace, seven of them in each primary subrace; then
seven family races in each secondary subrace; then seven
national races in each family race. We need go no farther. A few
steps more in the series and you will come to the unit-entity, or
individual man. But please also examine page 147 and page 710 of
volume II, for they will well repay your close study of them.

In another part of The Secret Doctrine you will remember that H.

P. Blavatsky, in speaking of the precessional cycle of 25,920 years,
here giving the ancient figures, calls it the cycle of a family race,
that is to say, the race including seven national races. The
European race is a family race; and hence when she speaks of the
lifetime of this family race she says it has about 16,000 more
years to run. So you see that from our ordinary human viewpoint
we are not yet very near the great racial cataclysm; but from the
standpoint of the cycles of the age of a root-race so short a period
as 16,000 years is like saying tomorrow, or even the next hour. A
short period of 16,000 or 20,000 years is insignificant in duration
in the drama of the soul.

And H. P. Blavatsky somewhere — I think it was in her magazine

Lucifer in 1887 or 1888 — alludes very graphically to the
earthquakes then reported in the newspapers as occurring, and
she calls them the forerunners of that which is going to happen to
us as a race. But is America the home to be of the 6th subrace?
Yes. Which subrace? Subrace is vague enough! Is it to be a sixth
family race? But if America is then to be in about 16,000 years, or
the latter part of a precessional cycle of 25,920 years from now,
the home of the sixth family race, H. P. Blavatsky goes on
immediately, in a masterly way, just as any initiate would, to lead
the mind on, and she says that America is also to be the seed-land,
the nursery, of the sixth root-race, a statement also true, but
including a vast period of years between the two points! When
that latter far-distant day dawns America will then no longer be.
Much of the land of the Americas
that is now above the waters
will then be under them, and new land, now forming the sea
bottom, will have arisen above its surface. For all we know, North
and South America may be more widely united. New land will
rise out of the present Pacific, thus raising the old Lemurian beds
again, to be joined to us here on our western coasts.

So when we read of subraces let us beware, let us be careful, lest

the molds of our minds, misleading us, lead us astray after mere
words which are blinds. Break the molds of your minds at all
costs! Free your minds, keep them plastic! Refuse to take as the
sole truth any isolated statement whatsoever, wherever you may
find it. Take it, but not alone; contrast it, compare it, study it, and
analyze it if you want the truth. Especially is this necessary when
it is a question of cycles, and of the words dealing with cycles.
Watch carefully when you see the word subrace, watch carefully
when you read of the Buddha. Which buddha? Or of the
bodhisattva — which one?

So we postpone for a later and more extended study the subjects

which we have attempted this evening to outline. Much more
should and will be said about this Wondrous Being. But, in
closing, do not misconstrue my words about this Wondrous
Being. Remember the series: first, the Logos, the adi-buddha; then
the seven dhyanis, each one of the seven inspiring and overseeing
one of the seven rounds, who is the causal buddha, the sun, if you
like, emanating out innumerable inferior beings. Then the
dhyani-bodhisattvas, for each globe of the planetary chain, seven
of them; and seven manushya-buddhas, one such for each one of
the seven root-races on each globe during each round. There are
probably almost numberless cases where a bodhisattva, a
buddhic ray, as the cycles of time pass, reaches out from the
Lodge of the Masters, where the Great Initiator, the Highest One,
is, the Man-Emanation of the Wondrous Being, and inspires and
instills the ancient wisdom into the soul of some great and pure
human being, such
as was Jesus of Nazareth, and Apollonius of
Tyana, and many, many others whose names are not familiar to
us Westerners.

And in the initiations there are three things that take place. They
are directly connected with the subject of the Wondrous Being
and the bodhisattvas. Remember that initiation is the quickening
or enlivening of the soul of one who is prepared. It is a
quickening process of evolution, for producing a more rapid
evolving of the inner man, which otherwise an ordinary man
would achieve only after many ages. In these initiations, and in
the fifth, to particularize, there occurs what is called the
theophany. The Christians use that word and also epiphany,
which is a minor form of the same thing, and they say it should be
celebrated on the 4th-6th of January, the matter having direct
relation with the calendar of the solar year of which we spoke in
our last study. Theophany originally meant the "appearance of a
god." It actually is the following mystery: in the fifth initiation, the
human being under trial, the chela under trial, meets his own god-
self face to
face, and for a longer or shorter time becomes one with
it. He then knows truth. You will remember that the only way of
really understanding a thing is to become that thing. And that is
the real meaning of what takes place in the true, real initiations,
and the epiphany is a minor manifestation of the theophany. It is a
Greek word meaning "shining upon," or illuminating; whereas
theophany means the "shining forth visibly of a god" — the man's
own inner higher self.

If the theophany is more or less complete upon the ending of the

initiation or the trial, the chela then has theopneusty, meaning
"divine inspiration." He is consciously united with his inner god,
his higher self. Literally, the inner god of the candidate breathes
down into him, for a longer or shorter time, depending upon his
advancement, the wisdom and the knowledge of all the universe,
so to say, in degree greater or less, depending upon the
candidate's advancement and receptivity.

The highest of all the ancient initiation achievements in Greece

was called the theopathy, meaning "suffering a god" — not a god
who suffers, but one who suffers the conscious entrance into him
of a god. This is not, of course, an avatara, which is something else
entirely, as we have shown above; but it means that at initiation
and for a less or greater time afterwards, according to the
spiritual power and receptivity of the initiate, he becomes,
through that holy presence in him, a walking, living god, his own
inner self. Finally, in some rare cases the theophany, the
theopneusty, and the theopathy last as long as does the life on
earth of the initiate.

Chapter 21
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter 21
Initiations and the Ancient Mysteries. Root-Races and Their
Subdivisions. Globe Rounds. Planetary Rounds. Solar Kalpas: How
Calculated. Racial Cataclysms.

"As to the Philosophy, by whose assistance the Mysteries

were developed (and which, we may say, they were
designed to teach), it is coeval with the Universe itself; and,
however its continuity may be broken by opposing
systems, it will make its appearance at different periods of
time, as long as the sun himself shall continue to illuminate
the world. It has, indeed, and may hereafter be violently
assailed by delusive opinions; but the opposition will be
just as imbecile as that of the waves of the sea against a
temple built on a rock, which majestically pours them
back, broken and vanquished, foaming to the main.
However it may be involved in oblivion in barbarous and
derided in impious ages, it will again flourish — through all
the infinite revolutions of time." — Thomas Taylor,
Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries

Hence in the Smaragdine Tablet, disfigured by Christian

hands: —

"The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior

with the Superior; to effect that one truly wonderful Work"
— which is MAN. For the secret work of Chiram, or King
Hiram in the Kabala, "one in Essence, but three in Aspect,"
is the Universal Agent or Lapis Philosophorum. The
culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect Man, at
one end of the line; the union of the three elements is the
Occult Solvent in the "Soul of the World," the Cosmic Soul
 or Astral Light, at the other; . . . — The Secret Doctrine, II,
113

The intention of all mystic ceremonies is to conjoin us with

the world of the Gods. — Sallust

The design of the Mysteries is to lead us back to the

perfection from which, as a Principle, we first made our
descent. — Plato

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God [their
own inner god]. — Jesus

I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now

mine eye seeth thee. — Job

THIS evening we are going to speak of another matter collateral

with our main theme yet very important; and at our next meeting
we shall endeavor to take up the scattered threads which we have
unloosened, both in generalization and in particular, and gather
them together and weave them into a consistent whole, making as
nearly as possible a clearer picture for our brain-minds of what
we can understand at present of the seventh treasury of wisdom.
Also, if we have time this evening, we shall endeavor very briefly
to treat of a matter left incomplete at our last meeting, that is to
say, the question of the seven root-races of mankind through
which the human wave of life passes during the present fourth
round on our globe.

We open our study in reading from volume I of The Secret

Doctrine, page 424, the extract which we have read before:

To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every

ancient cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative
analysis, of all the great religions of antiquity; as it is only
by this method that the root idea will be made plain. Exact
 science — could the latter soar so high, while tracing the
operations of nature to their ultimate and original sources
— would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. The original,
transcendental and philosophical conception was one. But
as systems began to reflect with every age more and more
the idiosyncrasies of nations; and as the latter, after
separating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving along
its own national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually
became veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy. While
in some countries the FORCES, or rather the intelligent
Powers of nature, received divine honours they were
hardly entitled to, in others — as now in Europe and the
civilized lands — the very thought of any such Force
being
endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is
proclaimed unscientific.

Note the calm but trenchant irony in this extract. I merely call
attention to it before passing on. Now this extract, though dealing
with the various aspects which the ancient religions took as the
ages passed, leading to their differentiations into the so-called
great religions of the world, nevertheless fits in very well by
analogy and by comparison with the subject which we are going
to treat in particular, although briefly, this evening, that is to say,
the question of initiations and the ancient Mysteries, and also a
much misunderstood fact in nature closely connected with the
ancient Mysteries, which was evolved into a doctrine by the
ancients and called by them the "succession of teachers" —
guruparampara in Sanskrit, and distortedly and faintly reflected
in the Apostolic Succession in the Christian scheme.

The Christian Church very early took over that doctrine of the
succession of teachers, with much other theological timber, from
the old religions of the countries bordering the Mediterranean
Sea; and the doctrine which it took over became for that Church
the so-called Apostolic Succession of the Church of Rome, the
popes succeeding one another and claiming to be the successors
of the fisherman-apostle of Galilee, Simon Peter. We do not care
to go into this aspect of the matter for it is useless for our present
purpose, and no benefit can be gained by it; but wherever we
look and whatever line of human social or religious activity we
may choose to take for our study, we shall always find that there
is a passing on of authority or a passing on of teachings, or of
both. The various heads of even our political bodies succeed one
another, and usually carry on a political tradition. Big businesses
succeed one another, and usually pass on, from man to man, a
tradition of commercial policy and expansion, and
so forth. It is
simply an exemplification in ordinary practical life of a rule of
nature; that is to say, that man, being a mortal being, having to
die, but being an entity of thought and of heart, does not want to
see that which he feels to be good, or which he believes to be
good, lost; and so he transfers either authority or teaching, or
both, to another whom he considers fit and capable to carry on
his teaching or authority, or both.

It is in the religious field of human activity that this system is

most marked, and where the feeling is the strongest. A succession
of "prophets" succeeding each other in the ancient Mysteries, a
succession of hierophants succeeding each other therein, is a fact
well known to us, even ordinary knowledge such as you may find
in an encyclopedia or in school books.

In Greece, for instance, in taking the Eleusinian Mysteries as an

example, we know that the hierophants were drawn from one
family, the Eumolpidae, living in Athens, and the torchbearers
were drawn from another family, the Lycomidae, living in
Athens; and we have reason to believe that the Mysteries of
Samothrace, the seat of an older rite, and which were, like the
Mysteries of Eleusis, a State function, were also conducted in the
same manner by the passing on of the tradition held sacred and
incommunicable to outsiders; and the bond of union between the
initiates of these so-called Mysteries was considered indissoluble,
impossible of dissolution, for death merely strengthened the tie.

Now outside of the fact that men like to pass on what they think
and believe to be good, whence arose throughout the various
countries of the world of which we have some knowledge the
remarkable mystic similarities we know of, whence came to them
all the closely similar knowledge and authority which were
passed on from one head to another? It must have come from
somewhere. Men no longer believe in the empty philosophico-
scientific theory or fallacy of fifty years ago, to the effect that, for
instance, six men, living in six different isles, will inevitably and
infallibly tread six more or less identical paths of mental and
physical thought and ceremony. It was once a scientific heresy to
doubt that theory. It was called a fact, though there were no facts
to prove it; it was a theory merely, having no other foundation
than imagination overworked in order to find an explanation of
similarities and identities such as the above.

Let us say here that we look with respect and reverence upon the
discoveries of the many great and noble-minded men who have
given us brighter views into the shell of nature, the outward
physical shell, and whose lives often are models of self-sacrifice;
but while we recognize that every new light shed into our minds,
showing us new views into the heart of nature, is good for us,
nevertheless we draw a sharp line of distinction between science,
the noble knowledge of classified truth, and the theories of
scientists. We accept a theory if it is good, but only as a theory;
and it must be corroborated by nature herself before we will
accept it as a fact, as a part of science per se.

So, then, we receive the following bit of knowledge from our

Teachers that this particular doctrine, which in the Church of
Rome is called the Apostolic Succession, and in the ancient
Mysteries was called the Passing of the Word, the Passing of the
Knowledge, the Passing of the Authority, or by some similar
expression, originated in our Order, but obviously not in our
lifetime. We are merely a generation, one of many, carrying on
the tradition of the knowledge which originated in the final ages
of that vanished continent Lemuria and was more particularly
developed in Atlantis, where were first established the ancient
Mysteries.

As in the highest of the Lodges, we are taught, the truth is passed

from the great Master-Initiator to his successor to the truth and
the authority, so in the inferior Lodges, the same system is
followed; and we in our work merely carry on the same tradition.
It is saddening to see how learned ignoramuses with high-
sounding names, or possibly with an alphabetical string of
academic titles after their names, sometimes talk about the
Mysteries of which they can really know nothing outside of the
scattered data found imbodied in old literature. They are mere
bookmen, readers, and not understanders. It is also truly pathetic
to hear some folk talk about the non-necessity of having a leader,
because they believe that one man is as good as another, and that
no man can be very much better than another, and to see their
opinion that all this talk about spiritual, inner light and
illumination passed on from initiate to initiate is just
thingumbobbery!

Are they wise? But ask them for proof of their theory, and they
can give you none. No proof whatsoever; it is pure speculation.
On the contrary, we may point out to them even such facts as we
know, or the things of which history has left certain records in
her annals, where invariably you will find the same old tradition
coming down the ages of the passing down of the knowledge and
of the authority and of the doctrine.

Now when we speak of Mysteries and initiations we use those

words in a sense which to us is sacred, and with no wish or
desire, far less with any attempt, to create a false and
mischievous atmosphere of emotionalism. We speak of facts. You
know that every member of the School is more or less a scientist,
i.e., a "knower" and researcher. We are taught to use our brains
and our minds and our wills first of all for self-conquest, and then
to analyze properly ourself and the world we live in. Have we not
been told again and again that we must consult our consciences
before we accept anything? In order to do that, we have to think;
we also know that even if in doing so we should, through our own
blindness or incapacity, reject a truth offered to us, we shall
nevertheless have done aright, because we have been faithful to
ourselves and to our consciences, and that the karma of that
rejection will be merely temporary, because the inner man
understands, and the truth in time will dawn in
faithful hearts.

We are taught that the Mysteries — we take those of Greece for an

example — were divided into two parts. Let us particularize and
take those of Eleusis: you will remember that Eleusis as a word
means "advent," "the coming," that which is coming, the promise.
As the Mysteries of Samothrace were rather what we would call
scientific, dealing more with the operations of nature, and the
origin of those operations and the method of controlling them,
and teaching what they led to — in other words, what we would
today call science; so the teachings at Eleusis were rather those
religious and philosophic doctrines of esotericism giving to men
what the great Roman orator, Cicero, called a brighter view of life
and a livelier hope as regards death, because they taught of the
things which are to be, more particularly the so-called, and
thoughtlessly so-called, "dark mysteries of death." These Eleusinia
were divided into two parts, as said above, the Less Mysteries and
the Greater Mysteries. The Less Mysteries were celebrated in the
early springtime, more or less about the time of the Anthesteria,
the Flower Festival, and the celebrations took place at a small
town called Agrae. Those Mysteries were mainly dramatic in
form, with this one object in view: to prepare him or her who was
initiated into these Less Mysteries better to understand, more
quickly to apprehend, and more easily to seize with the mind,
that which he was to go through in the Greater Mysteries of
Eleusis, providing that in the interim and during the time of trial
he proved himself true and fit and clean.

Even in the days when early Christianity had superseded the

degenerate and corrupt religions of the Mediterranean countries,
even then, fallen as the Eleusinia were from their former high
state, yet they were considered so highly that initiations still took
place in them. They were actually finally stopped on the initiative
of the pagans themselves, the school closed by an order of the
Christian Emperor Justinian in Constantinople, but closed on the
petition of the better of the so-called pagans themselves. The truth
is that the Mysteries were not overcome by Christianity, but fell
because of intrinsic degeneracy. Can we imagine what those men
must have felt in the day when they saw that which was dearer to
them than life closed and ended by their own will, invaded and
degraded by degenerate rites and beliefs and, doubtless, also by
the Christian fanatics?

Now the dramatizations in the Less Mysteries were not what we

would call plays exactly; they were plays in one sense because
they were dramas. But they were enacted in the form of
spectacles in which the would-be disciple, the initiant or the one
to be initiated, had to take the main part himself or herself. Let us
give a concrete example, which at least will be interesting and
perhaps illuminating, remembering that there were various kinds
of styles of initiations and of Mysteries existing in the different
countries, although fundamentally they were all one and still
today are one in the great secret sodalities; but in each country
the initiations and Mysteries took on different aspects, as it were,
as for instance in Hindustan as compared with Greece. The
initiator and the neophyte might use a different language, and
wear different clothing, etc., and perhaps go through a different
rite, and so on and so on. But fundamentally the idea was the
same the world over. It must be remembered that the
Smaller
Mysteries were preparations for the Greater. In the former, the
candidate was taught, and enacted as a drama what he would
have to experience psychically and spiritually in the Greater
Initiations.

One of these rites was the drama, or the trial rather, that the
neophyte would have to pass through in actuality later, in the
Greater Initiation, and it was the meeting with his inner self, his
own inner self, not in the vague and abstract way in which we
today speak of a man as having "found his true self"; but in the
Less Initiation the neophyte was actually put through training
and purification in order to fit him to undergo the real test, in
which he met his own inner self face to face, as another
individual apparently, at first, but at a still higher initiation to be
blended with that other self, his own self, his higher self.

This rite is one of the Smaller Mysteries, those of purification and

training, and was enacted at the town of Agrae, not far from
Athens, where the Less Mysteries were held, and it was enacted
dramatically. The neophyte was then and there taught to
anticipate and understand what was coming to him if he was
successful later in the Greater Rite. He was frankly and openly
told at the last what he was there to meet if he desired to go to the
end of the path. And similarly with the other stages or degrees of
initiation.
Now it is not certainly known how many degrees or secret stages
there were of the Eleusinia, but we know that there were several;
and we know that to the very end, before they were finally closed
on account of their degeneration, they were so carefully guarded,
so faithfully kept hid, that to this day scholars are mentally
running around in bewilderment, in an endeavor to find out what
really was taught in the Eleusinia, in these Mysteries which
aroused the admiration of the greatest men of antiquity. In those
of Samothrace likewise the circumstances of secrecy and degree
were very similar.

Take Egypt: the pyramids, we are taught, were simply — the

Great Pyramid especially — majestic initiation-temples. There too
the Mysteries and the initiations were most sacredly guarded and
kept secret. They were kept only for those who had proved
themselves worthy, not by talk but by act, and who had been tried
and tested in many different ways. And why? Because it was a
dangerous matter for unprepared minds. Our Teachers tell us
plainly that there were three results of an initiation: one success;
another failure, which often meant death; and the third (a partial
failure) often meant madness. But success meant glory
unspeakable. Why was it that madness and death sometimes
ensued? Through any outward punishment? No. The results were
wholly from within the candidates themselves. They were plainly
told, these neophytes: "Come with a clean heart, and glory
unspeakable and knowledge of the gods shall be yours; but come
with a perverse and wicked heart, with your mind untrained and
with
your will unset, and you will never be able to face that
which you will have to meet in the other world." Because that is
what the Greater Mysteries were, a passing behind the veil of this
physical shell. No wonder that the training was severe, arduous!
Those ancient men had high hearts in their bodies and wise old
minds.
Now those Mysteries are not dead today. We are taught distinctly
that the same ancient truths, the same entrance into glory, the
same beautiful realization of the highest hopes that man bears in
the secret recesses of his heart, the same surpassing knowledge of
life and being: all can be had by him who wills and who dares and
who knows how to keep silent. That is what the Masters have
taught us. They also have taught us another great truth, that it is
not a sine qua non for success to have a mighty brain-mind, for
they have told us plainly that even some of their own Brothers,
some of the Masters themselves, are such by virtue of their
spiritual grandeur, and not by virtue of any brain-mind eminence
alone nor of any particular mental power; and further that such
of the Masters, spiritual sons of glory, may stand high even
among themselves. We are further taught that this brain-mind of
ours is very often a hindrance to us; it is indeed a most useful
servant if we keep
it a servant, but it is a master which will
inevitably put our feet upon the left-hand path unless illumined
and guided by the spiritual nature, because all its thoughts are
thoughts of self, and all its thinking is for gratification of its own
desires; its horizons are limited, and its outlook is short; its self-
born inspirations are few and far between; and it is mortal and
dies with the body. It depends upon ourselves to which side of
our nature, the higher or the lower, we shall, as William Quan
Judge used to say, nail our faith, pin it there and keep it there.

The other matter mentioned at the beginning of our study this

evening is that of the races through which mankind, as a life-
wave, passes in its journey from the beginning of evolution on
this globe to its end. You will remember that there are seven such
root-races which form the evolutionary cycle, in this fourth
round, which is what we call one globe-round; and we are at the
present time, as said before, in the fourth subrace of our present
fifth root-race. There is confusion about these races in the minds
of some students, because H. P. Blavatsky, as was pointed out at
our last meeting, was under the necessity when she wrote of
keeping quiet, or rather hid, certain teachings which she was not
then empowered publicly to give out. Had there been the proper
appeal from her students, perhaps she would have done so then.
At any rate, we shall give a short outline in an attempt to
illustrate this rather difficult subject.

Let each line of the following diagram represent a root-race.

There are seven lines (or root-races), and you will notice that the
junction-line, beginning one root-race out of the preceding root-
race, is at the middle point of the former, that is, at the fourth
subrace of the preceding or mother-race. It is so in all the lines (or
root-races). Now we are at present in the fifth root-race, two races
short of the completion of our globe-cycle or globe-round, and our
present fifth root-race is almost at the point, the middle of our
fifth root-race, where the sixth root-race to come will branch off.
Each root-race, each of the seven, is divided in our teachings into
seven minor races as follows. Notice the recurrence of the
number seven:
[*Another name may be suggested which is better for this and the
following terms.]

We say 72 years, because the average man, barring accidents and

malignant diseases which may carry him off before his time,
usually lives about 72 years. Some human beings live much
longer, of course. If we took count of all human deaths — of the
babies who die in such numbers in infancy, and of all who die in
shipwreck, and of all the men killed in wars, and of all the
murders and of all the diseases, and of the train and automobile
wrecks, and of all such accidents — probably the average length
of human life today would not be more than 15 or 20 years; but
those cases, after all, are exceptional. Man lives today, on a
natural average, about 72 years, barring all accidents, etc., as
above suggested.

The following is an interesting calculation, offered only as a

suggestive thing. Suppose that you desire to calculate the length
of time of a root-race, and please understand that what we are
saying now is only a rough approximation. Take then 72 years,
the famous three score years and ten in the Bible — a mystery-
figure, a round number for 72 — and multiply it by seven: we get
one tribal generation; multiply it by seven again, we get one tribal
race; multiply that by seven and we get one national race, and
your figure will come to about 25,920 years, the length of the
precessional cycle; multiply that by seven again, and you get one
family race; multiply that again by seven and you get a secondary
subrace; and multiply that by seven once more and you get a
figure which is really the entire time period of a root-race. This
calculation is very rough numerically, and is so intended to be;
but it is suggestive.

You see we do not count the root-race as one of the seven here,
but make it the all-inclusive one, and why? Because if we did so
count it, we should be counting the primary subrace twice. A root-
race really ought to mean the race which originates a thing, or is
its "root." It is therefore, strictly speaking, from the first primary
subrace that all the others of the series grow, exactly as the root
of a tree sends up its trunk, and the trunk its branches, the
branches their smaller branchlets, the smaller branchlets still
smaller branchings, they the twigs, which bear the leaves.
Therefore, according to the above series, it is the primary subrace
which really is the root-race.

Now there are seven (please mark again, seven) root-races in one
globe-round, that is to say, a planetary round as it passes through
our globe. Seven globe-rounds equal one planetary round; seven
planetary rounds equal one kalpa or manvantara or Day of
Brahma, and seven kalpas plus seven planetary pralayas (or
seven periods of planetary rest) equal one solar kalpa.

• 7 Root-Races = 1 Globe-Round
• 7 Globe-Rounds = 1 Planetary Round
• 7 Planetary Rounds = 1 Kalpa = 4,320,000 of our years (plus
several more ciphers)
• 7 Kalpas + 7 Planetary Pralayas = 1 Solar Kalpa

These figures are given because they are fundamental. They are
accurate as far as they go. We shall have to deal with them in
future studies.

Please note in conclusion that the drawing on page 294,

illustrating the birth of root-races from each other at the middle
point of each, equally well can represent a primary subrace or a
secondary subrace, or a national race, or a tribal race, etc., and
the reason is obvious, because there are no perfectly unique and
singular things in nature anywhere. Nature does nothing but
repeat itself, and the man who said that nature never repeats
itself uttered a titanic fallacy. Nature does nothing but repeat
itself. Did you ever see a thing perfectly unique — utterly
different in all respects from everything else? On the contrary,
you see everything everywhere repeating itself: the seasons year
in and year out; day and night year in and year out; the planets
circling around the sun continually; their satellites circling
around their primaries in more or less the same way; and so
forth. There is constant repetition everywhere. A tree in putting
forth its foliage, puts forth its own leaves; it does not
put forth
something unique and unheard of — pumpkin pies or chairs or
temples or houses; it puts forth that which belongs to it, as all
trees do.

Cycles can be found in every branch of life; for instance, children

are born on the average at the end of ten lunar months or nine
solar months. A child can live and be perfectly healthy and
successful, if born at seven months after conception, but it is
often a child of great sensitiveness, high-strung, of nervous
temperament, and it needs the most anxious and loving care,
because it has to finish its growth in the cold outside, and nature
takes two other months to do it normally.

Now, as said before, we shall endeavor at our next study to link

together the various threads of thought which we have gathered
up and weave them into a whole so consistent, so coherent, that
even our brain-minds can grasp at least some notion of the
sublime theme that we have been studying within the last few
weeks.
Chapter 22
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Twenty-Two
The Hierarchy of Compassion. The Incarnation of the
Manasaputras.

Know that the stream of superhuman knowledge and the

Deva-Wisdom thou hast won, must, from thyself, the
channel of Alaya, be poured forth into another bed.

Know, O Narjol [Naljor], thou of the Secret Path, its pure

fresh waters must be used to sweeter make the Ocean's
bitter waves — that mighty sea of sorrow formed of the
tears of men.

Now bend thy head and listen well, O Bodhisattva —

Compassion speaks and saith: "Can there be bliss when all
that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the
whole world cry?" — The Voice of the Silence, pp. 67, 71

IN OPENING our study this evening let us read from The Secret
Doctrine, volume II, pages 281-2:

As the "coats of skin" of men thickened, and they fell more

and more into physical sin, the intercourse between
physical and ethereal divine man was stopped. The veil of
matter between the two planes became too dense for even
the inner man to penetrate. The mysteries of Heaven and
Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their celestial teachers
in the days of their purity, became a great focus of light, the
rays from which became necessarily weakened as they
were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial, because too
material soil. With the masses they degenerated into
Sorcery, taking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of
idolatry full of superstitions, and man-, or hero-worship.
 Alone a handful of primitive men — in whom the spark of
divine Wisdom burnt bright, and only strengthened in its
intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age in
those who turned it to bad purposes — remained the elect
custodians of the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the
divine
Teachers. There were those among them, who
remained in their Kumaric condition from the beginning;
and tradition whispers, what the secret teachings affirm,
namely, that these Elect were the germ of a Hierarchy
which never died since that period: —

"The inner man of the first * * * only changes his body from
time to time; he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor
Nirvana, spurning Devachan and remaining constantly on
Earth for the salvation of mankind. . . ." "Out of the seven
virgin-men (Kumara) four sacrificed themselves for the sins
of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain
till the end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they
are ever present. When people say of one of them, "He is
dead"; behold, he is alive and under another form. These are
the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the Seed of undying
knowledge. . ."

. . . Higher than the "Four" is only ONE on Earth as in

Heavens — that still more mysterious and solitary Being
described in Book I.

— the Wondrous Being of whom we have spoken before.

Plunging then directly into our study, let us first ask ourselves
one question. Whither are we as a race, as men, as thinking
entities, traveling, in what direction? The ancient wisdom tells us
that we are traveling inwards, not up, not down, not to right or to
left, not forward or backward, but inwards, leaving the realms of
matter, taking them with us in fact by spiritualizing the inferior
coatings: traveling inwards on that path which began with our
descent (if you like the term) into matter, into manifestation, and
henceforward raising matter towards spirit, its real source or
root, following the path which we ourselves inwardly are, and
marching inwards, ever more inwardly, until at the
consummation of all things we shall attain a goal, an end, even
more supernal than that which we left in commencing our
peregrination downwards into experience.

The next thought that occurs is: Are our higher natures separate
from ourselves, paradoxical as it may sound? Are they ourselves?
What are they? We all know, as students, the teachings
concerning the seven principles of man; but when we stop to ask
ourselves what are these seven principles really — do they form a
unity, or is each one of them an entity in itself? — then we enter
upon very difficult subjects indeed. Let us say first that the four
lower principles are borrowed or rather, perhaps, evolved out of
ourselves in combination with elements drawn from the common
storehouse of nature, as man takes into his body for his nutrition
his food formed of atoms, yet each one of those atoms in itself is
the vehicle of a monad, manifesting in that sphere or plane of life.
But our three higher principles are each one a separate entity but
conjoined into an inseparable unity during the manvantaric
cycle. And we see the reason why this is so in studying the
seventh of the seven
treasuries of wisdom, which seventh is the
supreme key of all the other six.

We begin to form some conception of what lies before us in this

study: how unity becomes multiplicity and how multiplicity
resolves itself back into unity. Note first the difference between
one, unity, and union. Union is an assemblage of things straitly
united together; unity is an assemblage of things but with a
common head or source, the summit of a hierarchy, for instance;
whereas one is a monad, an individual, and therefore indivisible.
Now we are a union in our four lower principles; we are a unity in
our three higher principles, our upper triad; and we are one in
the three highest, the highest triad, so called for easy
comprehension.

The three principles forming the upper triad exist each on its own
plane, and we feel their influence, because we are in spiritual
rapport with them. Nevertheless each one exists on its own plane
in consciousness and power. We know of each only what we have
so far evolved; all we know, for instance, of the third principle
(counting from the top), the manas, is what we have so far
assimilated of it in this fourth round. It will not be fully developed
until the end of the next round. What we call our manas is a
generalizing term for the reincarnating ego — I am now speaking
of the higher manas.

Turning a moment to a collateral subject, we must realize that all

our consciousness, i.e., the consciousness of the ordinary man,
pertains to this our present plane, but that there are innumerable
other planes of the kosmos surrounding us, interpenetrating us,
and of these other planes each has its own entities, its own beings,
thinking and unthinking, as our plane has, each class appropriate
to its own sphere or plane, and that our very earth
interpenetrates them as they interpenetrate us, and that the
reason we do not see their habitations and them, and their
dwellings, and the lower creatures living there, is because our
senses are not yet fitted to cognize them, have not been evolved
or trained to know them or see them, for our physical senses have
but a very limited perception of things. But there indeed they are.
Some of these planes belong to our own hierarchy, and some do
not. Those which do not, belong to other hierarchies each having
its own series of planes or worlds. As in a chord of music
each
note may be distinctly heard, each being separate from the other,
but together they form a chord, a musical harmony, so it is with
these planes. It is, if you like, all a matter of differing vibrations,
this word being used here in its scientific sense. If the vibrations
are such that our senses can cognize them, we see them then, or
hear them, or touch them, or taste them, or smell them, as sense
perceptions; and if our senses are incognizant of them, we know
nothing of them. Yet they are there!

Similarly with our three higher principles, the upper triad. The
ego exists with its own consciousness, and its own forces, and its
own dwelling which is a "soul," and we feel its effects, we feel its
flux, which to us is an influx; and similarly with the buddhic
principle, and with the atmic ray. We say that the atman is
universal, and so it is; but it belongs (so far as we are concerned in
our present stage in evolution) to the fourth kosmic plane, though
it is our seventh principle.

What I am trying to say is that the destiny of man is to raise his

focus of consciousness from the lower to the higher; and with
each step that he makes upwards, or more properly inwards, he
finds a new world, with its own inhabitants, as said above, with its
own conditions and "laws," with the "habitations" of its
inhabitants. And following the ancient axiom of the Hermetists,
"As above, so below," we can see the perfect truth, the perfect
fidelity to fact, in stating that these various planes or rather
worlds — some of which are immensely higher than ours, some
only a little higher, some immensely lower than ours, some only a
little lower — that each one of these planes or worlds, I repeat,
has its own life and thinking beings, its own trees, and its own
stones, and its own storms, and its own fire, its own inhabitants,
and its own animals, and all the rest of the manifold and various
things and entities, similar to but not identical with the beings
we
see around us on our plane. Think of the vastness of the spaces of
consciousness and being which this thought brings home to us,
the illimitability of life, its utter and perfect endlessness,
promising endless evolution before us, as there have been endless
experiences and evolution behind us! The reflection is an
ennobling one.

Now the summit of every hierarchy, as so often said, is one: and

may be considered as one in three or three in one, a philosophical
conception of the ancients whence the Christians got their dogma
of the Trinity. This is the uppermost triad. Next comes a unity of
what we call our upper triad, three separate principles per se, yet
bound together in a compact unity in the seventh or highest
principle, the atman, which is the self, the "universal selfhood,"
not our ego, but that feeling or consciousness of selfhood which is
the same in you and in me and in every human being, and even
in all the inferior beings of the hierarchy, yea, even in those of the
beast kingdom under us, and dimly perceptible even in the plant
world, and which is latent even in the minerals. This is the pure
cognition, the abstract idea of self. It differs not at all throughout
the hierarchy, except in degree of self-recognition. When you say
self, you mean the same thing that I do; but when you
say myself, I
am I and not another, that is the consciousness of your ego, and it
is not the same as when I say I am I. When this ego is raised from
the lower planes to the higher, it comes naturally in touch with
higher things. From the inferior consciousness we become by
evolution conscious of ourself as a man, or self-conscious; and
from the man we become a Buddha or a Christ, reaching full
expanded self-consciousness. And there are thereafter other
planes still higher than this, of which we now say no more.
Finally, the four lowest principles form a union, nonpermanent,
transitory, and dissoluble at death.

Remember that these planes or worlds extend as such in both

directions, inwards and outwards — one reaching ever into
greater superiority to us, from our standpoint; and the other
direction going downwards or, as it is sometimes expressed, along
the path of the left hand.

Now let us read another extract, as our next subject, from The
Secret Doctrine, volume I, page 572:

Esoterically the teaching differs: The divine, purely Adi-

Buddhic monad manifests as the universal Buddhi (the
Maha-buddhi or Mahat in Hindu philosophies) the spiritual,
omniscient and omnipotent root of divine intelligence, the
highest anima mundi or the Logos. This descends "like a
flame spreading from the eternal Fire, immoveable,
without increase or decrease, ever the same to the end" of
the cycle of existence, and becomes universal life on the
Mundane Plane. From this Plane of conscious Life shoot
out, like seven fiery tongues, the Sons of Light (the logoi of
Life); then the Dhyani-Buddhas of contemplation: the
concrete forms of their formless Fathers — the Seven Sons
of Light, still themselves, to whom may be applied the
Brahmanical mystic phrase: "Thou art 'THAT' — Brahm." It
is from these Dhyani-Buddhas that emanate their chhayas
(Shadows) the Bodhisattvas of the celestial realms,
the
prototypes of the super-terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and of the
terrestrial Buddhas, and finally of men. The "Seven Sons of
Light" are also called "Stars."

Sublime beyond ordinary human comprehension are the truths

of life and the mysteries of being! We are taught that there exists
a Hierarchy of Compassion, which H. P. Blavatsky sometimes
called the Hierarchy of Mercy or of Pity. This is the light-side of
nature as contrasted with its matter-side or shadow-side, its night-
side. It is from this Hierarchy of Compassion that came those
semidivine entities about the middle period of the third root-race
of this round, and incarnated in the semiconscious, quasi-
senseless men of that period, those advanced entities otherwise
known as the solar Lhas, as the Tibetans call them, the solar
spirits, who were the men of a former kalpa who during the third
root-race thus sacrificed themselves in order to give us
intellectual light; incarnating in those senseless psychophysical
shells in order to awaken into a divine flame of egoity and self-
consciousness the sleeping egos which we then were. They are
ourselves because belonging to the same spirit-ray that we do; yet
we, more strictly speaking, were those half-unconscious, half-
awakened egos whom they touched with the divine fire of their
own being. This our "awakening" was called by H. P. Blavatsky
the incarnation of the manasaputras, or "sons of mind" or light.
Had that incarnation not taken place, we indeed should have
continued our evolution by merely "natural" causes, but it would
have been slow almost beyond comprehension, almost
interminable; but that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense
pity, their immense love, though, indeed, acting under karmic
impulse, awakened the divine fire in our own selves, gave us light
and comprehension and understanding. So from that time we
ourselves became the "Sons of the Gods"; the faculty of self-
consciousness in us was awakened, our eyes were opened,
responsibility became ours, and our feet were set then definitely
upon the path, that inner path, quiet, leading inwards back to our
spiritual home.

In speaking of initiations at our last meeting, you remember it

was pointed out that initiation is in fact a quickening process, but
it is also something else; it is a copy, an endeavor to copy, what
was done by the incarnation of those lords of understanding, sons
of light. It is an attempt to stimulate, to awaken into activity, the
inner spiritual self, to enliven us more quickly, to enable us to see
and understand, saving those who successfully pass through the
tests aeons and aeons of suffering and strife and, noblest of all,
enabling those whose minds have become enlightened,
themselves to do the same for their brothers who are less
progressed than they.

Why is it that from the very beginning all the Teachers who have
appeared among men continually teach us the duty as well as the
need of self-control, and of pity and of compassion and of
spiritual understanding? Why? Because these things verily are
the keys, these are the open sesames, these are the things which
unlock the portals, not merely to let in the light, but when the
light is seen, to give it again to others, for who is the man who
would not follow it?

Let us write down the following names, cited in the above extract
from The Secret Doctrine, and reduce them to hierarchical form so
that they will more easily remain in the memory;

1. Adi-buddhi.
2. The second is maha-buddhi, which is in fact mahat. It is
likewise the First Logos, adopting the Greek method of
nomenclature.
3. The third is universal light which is also life, also called in
the Sanskrit, divine matter, divine nature, daiviprakriti; the
Second Logos.
4. The sons of light, called the logoi of life, the Third Logos.
5. The dhyani-buddhas, the buddhas of contemplation or
meditation.
6. The celestial bodhisattvas, a Sanskrit word meaning "he
whose nature is essentially celestial wisdom or bodhi."
7. The superterrestrial or superhuman bodhisattvas.
8. The manushya-buddhas, or the human buddhas.
9. Men.

This is the Hierarchy of Compassion, emanating or evolving from

the supernal regions, and they are the flowers of the evolutionary
course; and these regions themselves form the first (or the tenth)
or the root, if you like, of the Hierarchy of Compassion, counting
upwards or downwards.

Now the essential aim of this hierarchy, the whole purpose and
strife, if you like the word, of evolution, is to raise the corruptible
into incorruptibility, to raise imperfection to perfection, to raise
the mortal so that it shall put on immortality or, in other words,
to raise the personal man to be the individual man, to make of the
human a divine being. The average man has of course not yet
reached that sublime stage, and hence, as was pointed out before,
there is no abiding principle whatsoever in personal man,
because he is composed only of the five lower principles; and
when we say personal man we mean the man of this period, of
this epoch, the evolving entity of the present time, the person. But
overshadowing this person, incarnating in this person (if we can
use the term incarnating) there is the divine flame, there is the
divine seed, there is the constant impulse from the god within,
telling us always "Come up higher, come to me; be the path and
walk it; I am the
way, the truth, and the life" — in the heart of each
one of us. It is there; and as soon as the personal man consciously
allies himself with this divine spark, he becomes thereby
impersonal and immortal in his inner consciousness and
therefore incorruptible, at least until the end of this maha-kalpa;
and then his sublime destiny is to enter into that ineffable
nirvana where he will remain in indescribable bliss and
universal understanding until the next kalpa begins, whence be
starts out anew but on a far more elevated plane. He starts out as
a leader of that new humanity. He then finds it his turn to become
one of that band or company or body of sons of mind or light,
himself in his turn to endow with self-consciousness and future
spiritual immortality the semiconscious beings of that cycle to
come.
Bodhisattva: this is a keyword. You will remember it was pointed
out at a former study that the dhyani-buddhas, who are fifth in
the enumeration of this Hierarchy of Compassion, these lords of
contemplation, are seven in number, and each one of them has
governance or rather has the overseeing of one of our rounds.
(Remember that there are seven rounds in a kalpa.) He is its head,
the constant stimulator behind that force in nature which we feel
always within us. That "force" is the divine urge, as philosophers
might call it. It is not, however, yet truly divine; because noble,
great, as these spiritual beings truly are, they have not yet
reached the summit of their own hierarchy; but their great work
is what we may call the divine urge, the push, behind the
evolutionary process. Further, each of these dhyani-buddhas in
himself is a hierarchy, just as we pointed out that every atom is a
hierarchy, every man is a hierarchy and, indeed, every entity is a
hierarchy of greater or of inferior
degree, because everything
that is composite is necessarily divisible into degrees of spiritual
and intellectual excellence.

How else could the evolving beings learn? If man existed in

nothing but the pristine purity of his divine essence, what would
there be for him to learn, how could he learn? Each one of these
dhyanis has, or gives birth to, so to say, or emanates or evolves
from himself, seven "sons," called celestial bodhisattvas, and each
celestial bodhisattva has charge of one of the globes of our
planetary chain, so that not only each planetary round, but each
globe also has its spiritual head. It is a hierarchy in that sense
again, as well.

Furthermore, let us take our earth, the fourth globe, as a further

example. The celestial bodhisattva of our globe in his turn gives
birth to seven superhuman bodhisattvas, and these superhuman
bodhisattvas or superterrestrial bodhisattvas have, each one,
charge of one race of the seven root-races in each round and give
birth by a wonderful process, which we shall shortly describe, to
seven human buddhas — each one, each superhuman
bodhisattva, to a race-buddha. A bodhisattva, as explained
exoterically, means one who in another incarnation or in a few
more incarnations will become a buddha. That is true, but it is an
exoteric teaching, that is to say, it is incomplete, and therefore
misleading. A bodhisattva from the standpoint of our occult
teachings, our esoteric teachings, is more than that. When a man,
a human being, has reached the point where his ego becomes
conscious, fully so, of its inner divinity, becomes clothed with the
buddhic ray; where, so to say, the personal man has put on the
garments of inner immortality in actuality, on this earth, here
and now, that man is a bodhisattva. His higher principles have
nearly reached nirvana. When they do so finally, such a man is a
buddha, a human buddha, a manushya-buddha. Obviously, if
such a bodhisattva were to reincarnate, in the next incarnation or
in a very few future incarnations thereafter, he would be a
manushya-buddha. A buddha, in the esoteric teaching, is one
whose higher principles can learn nothing more; they have
reached nirvana and remain there; but the spiritually awakened
personal man, the bodhisattva, the person made semidivine, to
use popular language, instead of choosing his reward in the
nirvana of a less degree, remains on earth out of pity and
compassion for inferior beings, and becomes what is called a
nirmanakaya. A nirmanakaya is a bodhisattva, a personal man
made semidivine. He clothes himself in a nirmanakayic vesture.
The nirmanakaya, you will remember, is one who is a complete,
thinking, spiritual entity, minus
the physical body only.

Let us take an example of how this works. Remember, please,

apropos of our subject, that we are studying the nature of the
Wondrous Being only incidentally at present, as being an
illustration truly sublime of the seventh treasury of wisdom, the
atma-vidya, the knowledge of self. Now let us take our
illustration. Some time after Gautama Buddha died, there was
born in the south of India a man who made a great mark in the
Indian world thereafter. His name was Sankaracharya. Acharya is
a Sanskrit word meaning "teacher" or "master"; and the name of
the man himself was Sankara; the two words joined together
make Sankaracharya, "Sankara the teacher," as the Hindu
Vedantists of the Adwaita or nondualistic school put it. Now here
again is a very interesting thing, briefly alluded to before.
Sankaracharya was an avatara, which means an incarnation of a
"god," and yet he stood less high than the Buddha (Gautama) who
had preceded him, although the latter was a man.
How shall we
explain that wonder? Easily. The Buddha Gautama became a
buddha through his own efforts, throughout innumerable ages;
whereas Sankaracharya was in one mystical sense what may
truly be called an illusion from the standpoint of esoteric
manhood. Sankara was a man, there was a physical body, there
was the great spiritual essence within; but there had been no
previous Sankaracharya. Sankaracharya per se, spiritually, was a
divine ray. The atman and the buddhi, born in the body of this
Brahmana, were there, also the kama, the prana, the astral
model-body, and the physical body — but no illuminated personal
ego; and in order that that avatara at that time in history might
do its work, the bodhisattva of the Buddha entered into that body
and gave it light, provided the illuminating ego, thus repeating
the aeon-old mystery of self-sacrifice, taking on the "sins" (or
karmic heritage from parents) such as they may have been, if
any, of that body, thus
giving the chance for that divine ray, that
avatara, to work in the world: providing the vehicle through
which the divine ray might manifest to and in the world of man.

That is the secret of an avatara; but not every bodhisattva is

necessarily the vehicle of an avatara, for the avataras come at
particular and specified periods. Buddhas also come at particular
and specified periods, but leave behind them a bodhisattva, their
ego, their illuminated thinking part, the nirmanakaya, devoted to
the work of saving the race, for of such is the conscious part of
the Hierarchy of Compassion on our globe.

This was one of the ancient Mystery-teachings in the old Mystery

Schools.

But that is not all there is to this true and wondrous mystery. This
same bodhisattva, we are taught, also provided some centuries
later the conscious vehicle, the egoic power, in the person called
Jesus, in Palestine. These are subjects, however, which we cannot
go into more deeply tonight. They are only an illustration how
this Hierarchy of Compassion works on earth in its sublime
overseeing and protective work of and for the human race.

We turn now to some questions which have been handed in, five
of them in number which, before we close this evening, we shall
read and do our best to answer. I mention this now before
continuing our subject, because the very theme upon which we
have touched in connection with the Buddha Gautama and Jesus
is mentioned in these questions, questions which all of us
probably have asked ourselves, and have hunted for answers to
them.

We have now gained some idea of what we mean by self-

knowledge, of our unity with all, of how our individuality was
born, as it were, of heaven and of earth: the inner divine ray and
the lower personal man, the latter raised upwards until he
becomes one with that divine ray, thus becoming a fit and
purified vehicle for it. We have also seen that the study of the
Wondrous Being is a most sublime illustration of the exalted
spiritual state to which we should attain, and shall attain, run we
successfully the race.
Now let us go a little farther in our thought in connection with
this Wondrous Being. We have seen that he or it is both — as H. P.
Blavatsky said, using popular language — of heaven and of earth.
His roots are the dhyani-buddha of this round, and the ray
reaches him as a man through the celestial bodhisattva emanated
by the dhyani-buddha, and also through the superterrestrial or
superhuman bodhisattva in ultimate charge of our root-race. The
Wondrous Being is here considered in his (or its) racial aspect.
Note well, however, that there is also a Wondrous Being for our
globe; also one for the entire planetary chain, etc.

There is a tradition, and our Teachers tell us that it is a tradition

founded on truth, that even unto this day there exists in Central
Asia a certain mystical and mysterious land, or district if you like.
It is called Sambhala. This is a word known in Sanskrit literature,
but because the sayings and legends regarding it are connected
with what our self-sufficient European Sanskritists and
Orientalists call "pagan superstition" and the "love of the
Orientals for imagery," and so forth, our European scholars say
that it is a myth. Blind men! It is an actual district on earth, in a
certain part of Tibetan territory, and has been for ages the subject
of much mystical speculation, and remains so to this day. It is the
"home" of our exalted Teachers. It is likewise the "home" of the
Wondrous Being considered as man, or in his racial aspect. This
Wondrous Being incarnates himself from age to age at will and at
pleasure, but never leaves the duty he has taken upon
himself,
nor will he ever drop it until his work is done. He is the spiritual
bond and link of the various bodhisattvas and buddhas of the
Hierarchy of Compassion with superior worlds and with us and
the lower beings of our round. This land of Sambhala is described
as a place of great beauty, surrounded by a high range of
mountains. It is said that no human eye will ever see it unless
permitted to see it. It is said that to this land of Sambhala go those
who are "called" there, sometimes to return and sometimes to
remain; and that there, supreme over all the Masters, reigns the
human aspect of this Wondrous Being, the Great Initiator, the
Great Sacrifice.

These are the teachings; and it is further said that from this land,
spiritually, continually, and also in actual physical shape at
cyclical critical periods, go forth Masters into the world. Can any
thoughtful and spiritual mind read H. P. Blavatsky's story and
history, what she says and what she did, without reading between
the lines and behind the words? Have we ever taken it into our
hearts how much it meant for her, and to her, when she spoke of
her "going home"? Have we ever considered what might have
been incarnate in that woman-body? The saviors take up bodies,
sometimes, in this manner, as they please from age to age, and
sex itself matters little, though usually man-bodies are selected.
Such physical body-instruments as are most appropriate for the
work to be accomplished are the ones chosen.

We are further told that these four kumaras of whom we have

read this evening — "higher than the 'Four' is only ONE" — are
spiritually and originally the four celestial bodhisattvas of the
four globes of our round, and by correspondence of the four
completed root-races of our earth, higher than whom there is
none on earth except this ONE. Let us take these wonderful
teachings into our hearts and make them a part of us! There is
infinite beauty in them, hope unspeakable; there is spiritual life,
there is intellectual health.

What is the matter with men's minds? Does not every one of us
know that the average human being won't take truth when he
sees it, unless it accord with his preconceptions? And why is this?
Because his mind is so full of and so confused with his own brain-
mind ideas, with his own opinions, which he thinks are so much
superior to anything that comes to him from any other source,
especially if from an impersonal source. We are all in the same
mental condition; we are all cursed with these molds of mind
which blind us. Every one of us, in different degrees, doubtless,
some less than others; but we are all cursed with it by our own
will, and all we need to do is to exercise our will and break these
molds of mind, in order to let in the light, and the spiritual life,
and the understanding, yea, and holy compassion. What keeps all
these out of our minds and hearts as an active force except these
molds of mind? "Give up your life if ye would find it."

Sometimes men may accuse you and say that you are atheists
because you do not believe in a personal God. Let me read just
here what a great Greek thinker said on that subject when he was
accused of "atheism." And let me say, before reading: atheist
meant among the Greeks one who did not accept the gods of the
multitude, the mythologic gods of the State. It was no such term of
opprobrium and hatred as it has become under the Christian
theological dispensation. It meant rather, "You are a radical!" —
not much if anything more. But the Christians have turned that
perfectly legitimate word — which meant one who accepted not
the gods of the State — into an expression of hatred, signifying
moral degradation. Remember that the Christians themselves
were called atheists by the pagans, simply because they did not
accept the mythologic gods of the State; and the Christians, when
they became powerful, retaliated in kind, and called the pagans
atheists, because they
refused to accept the Jewish-Christian God,
Jehovah.

But what said Epicurus, called by later ages than his own an
atheist, and a sensationalist, and possibly by every other evil-
sounding epithet which men in hatred can heap upon one whom
they dislike? "The gods are, yet they are not what the multitude
imagine them to be. The man who denies the existence of the
gods worshiped by the multitude is neither an infidel nor an
atheist; but he who thinks the gods are what the multitude hold,
is an atheist and impious."

Now our time for this evening is drawing to a close. We take up

the questions above spoken of. These questions may have
occurred, doubtless have occurred, to each one of us; and perhaps
we have searched for answers. I will give them as if they had
been asked from the floor here:

I understood you to say in the Thursday meeting, one week

ago, that Jesus and Apollonius were nirmanakayas. In Isis
Unveiled, volume II, page 159, H. P. B. says that while Jesus
and others were united to their spirits permanently,
Apollonius and others of his class were so united only at
intervals. I should think a nirmanakaya would be
permanently united to his spirit, when working on this
earth.

This question has been largely answered by what we have

already explained to be the meaning of a bodhisattva. A
nirmanakaya is a state assumed by or entered into by a
bodhisattva. When that state is ended the nirmanakaya ends.
Kaya means "body," "vehicle." Therefore, Sankaracharya, Krishna,
Lao-tse, Jesus, were avataras in differing degrees. There was a
divine ray which came at the cyclic time of each such incarnation,
and the connecting link, the flame of mind, was provided in each
such case by a member of the Hierarchy of Compassion. But these
avataras were not all equally great. Apollonius, while not an
avatara, was a nirmanakaya — a bodhisattva. As said before, the
bodhisattva stands actually, in the Hierarchy of Compassion,
higher than an avatara, in the same way as a man who has gained
divinity through his own efforts, and remains behind in the world
of men out of compassion for it, and in order to help it spiritually,
really stands higher than the
devas or gods in their crystallized
cold purity.

Jesus, and others such as Krishna and Lao-tse, were united to

their spirits permanently. Obviously this means not the physical
bodies of those great men, but that the particular atma-buddhic
ray which was called on earth Jesus, or Krishna, or Lao-tse,
informed men who naturally were always united to their spirits,
though each manifested through a bodhisattva-nirmanakaya.
They could be nothing else. They could not be an avatara through
a being inferior to a bodhisattva. Apollonius and the Bodhisattva
Gautama and others of his noble type, were not permanently
allied to their spirits, or rather were not merely, solely, atma-
buddhic rays, because they were men made perfect through
experience: personal men become semidivine, and actually, as
said, such a being stands far higher than a spiritual ray or monad
per se, because such as the bodhisattvas are the fine flowers of
evolution.

Next question:

At one Thursday evening meeting, it was declared that the

words of the Sermon on the Mount were not the words of
Jesus, but gatherings of ancient wisdom compiled by some
later writer. I don't understand just how in Katherine
Tingley's addresses, etc., this Sermon and Jesus are always
placed together as one being the author of the other. I got
the impression at this meeting that Jesus was merely an
Initiate Jew, but not nearly of such grand stature as to
command the adoration of all Christians. However,
perhaps I did not hear correctly.

Our question is here framed in a most careful manner. In the first

place, then, it is not to be said, and it was not said, that the
Sermon on the Mount was not the logia or "words" of Jesus. What
was said, inadequately doubtless on account of the shortness of
time, was that the Sermon on the Mount, as we now have it in the
New Testament, was in all probability composed in much the
same manner as the four canonical Gospels were composed.
Doubtless it is based on the logia and sayings of the Master, Jesus.
Unquestionably a man, Jesus, lived. Unquestionably he had a
school. Unquestionably he had his disciples. Unquestionably he
taught them and his sayings were treasured by his disciples; but,
as time went on, much was forgotten, and they were revised and
edited, and we now have them in the form in which they appear
in the New Testament. This was rendered easy enough by the fact
that a good deal in those writings was on matters of more or less
common philosophical, or even
esoteric, knowledge, more or less
current in the thought of the day, and it required but little skill to
weave together these ideas into a more or less logical whole. The
very fact that the well-known contradictions and incongruities in
the four Gospels, when compared, prove various redactions by
different writers shows that they were compiled from differing
bases of theory. For the theosophist, certain expressions used
therein show him that the esotericism of Syria played a large part
in their compilation, as was natural enough. Jesus taught
universal truths; his half-instructed followers misunderstood
much. Those expressions and terms were used in the Mystery
Schools of the eastern Mediterranean world of that period, but do
not belong to our School; and as Jesus certainly belonged to our
School, the presumption is, as said, that his sayings had been
"touched up" and with extraneous matter formed into the four
Gospels. Somebody or rather somebodies doubtless thought the
scattered sayings of
the Teacher could be improved upon — made
"more clear and easy."

Such seems to be the fate of nearly all great teachings. There is

absolutely no preventive of it except the faithful hearts of men
and women who stand to the death for the pure teachings of the
one who gave them light and an awakened inner life. Let us never
forget it!

Our questioner was correct in the impression he received that

Jesus was stated to be an Initiate Syrian — a Jew if you like. We
speak now of Jesus the man; but I do not think that we ever said
that he should command, in any circumstances, the "adoration" of
the Christians or of anybody else, because such worship is a thing
precisely forbidden to all followers of the truth — impersonal and
ineffable. That idea is a misunderstanding of our meaning by the
questioner.

Here is another question:

Another perplexing thing to me is the many different ways

in which the 7, 9, and 10 principles of man and the
universe are enumerated. In Instructions Nos. I and II by H.
P. Blavatsky, it is said that atman is not really a principle of
man at all, but that the auric envelope makes up the
seventh. Yet in our esoteric meetings, atman is often
spoken of as belonging to man. The esoteric and exoteric
enumeration of these principles differs, and often manas is
called but one principle, then again divided into two and
the lower manas joined with the kama principle, etc.

These well-taken points, of course, are something that each one

must solve for himself, by studying the literature which we
already have, so ably written by our older students. Of necessity
the seven principles are subject to different methods of
enumeration, because each method of enumeration or
presentation in diagrammatic or paradigmatic form merely
shows another vista of the truth, shows another facet or way of
looking at the one jewel. So a man, if he were in India, who
desired to study that wonderful monument of beauty, the Taj
Mahal, would not merely look at it from the front and then go
away, but would go inside and study it in detail; and go to the
back of it, and to the right and to the left, thus seeing all sides of it,
meanwhile gathering all information possible from authorities. In
much the same way the seven principles, or the ten, are subject to
different methods of presentation. As a matter of fact, atman is
put as the seventh principle, because it is the permanent root of
our being;
but if we knew the kama principle were that root, then
it should be called the seventh, or rather the first or highest, as
being the root of our being; or the manas, under similar
conditions, should be called the seventh. The atman is put as the
first or highest because the seven principles of man are
considered in a generalizing way, and the atman or self being the
root or the highest element of being is considered as one of the
seven principles, though in reality it is a universal principle.

Our fourth question shows how deeply our questioner has

thought:

The doctrine of cycles, and the exact number of years the

human race will take in one manvantara or a Day and
Night of Brahma to reach the 7th race and 7th round, taken
in conjunction with the doctrine of free will, always
somewhat puzzles me. Why does not man's free will and
failures continually keep upsetting the exact number of
years it takes him to reach to certain future rounds and
races? In Theosophy: The Path of the Mystic, Katherine
Tingley says that humanity has passed the worst point, the
crucial point, in its evolution, and that no powers in
heaven and hell can stay its progress, but yet she keeps on
talking to humanity as if it were on the brink of
destruction.

In the first place, in the large sweep of things, taking the seven
rounds as a kalpa or as a whole, and even more strongly so as
regards the solar kalpa, that is, the cycle of the solar system, the
exact number of years of even a human's many incarnations is
definite and set, in much the same way as the number of turns (or
days and nights) which our globe, the earth, makes in one year, or
one revolution around the sun. In other words, the number of
days is set and determined in a year, or the number of days in a
lunar cycle or month. But while that is so in the general sweep of
things, the doctrine of free will which man has is a very real
truth, and man's failures or successes do work to retard or to
hasten the number of a human being's incarnations, for instance
— which briefly covers the question our questioner has asked.

The total number is set; but just as the bodies of the solar system,
the planets, as is known to astronomers, sometimes due to their
perturbations are occasionally a little behind or a little ahead in
time, nevertheless in the long run they "arrive on time," as if they
were endowed with consciousness, and had to arrive at the goal
at the time when the hour is set therefor. So man's free will can
alter the course or time periods of his incarnations, but not their
number. In any round, in any root-race, he can change them in
that respect, but he will have to pay for it by karmic retribution,
for a reaction sets in; and there will be an adverse current
running the other way. Shall we say, finally, that man has no free
will because he is bound to a globe which he cannot voluntarily
leave? Of course not, although he is, nolens volens, carried around
the sun by our globe's annual course. There is much more that
might be said to clarify this point, but it is too strictly esoteric to
speak
of here.

As regards Katherine Tingley's words, permit me to point out that

our questioner has quoted her exactly, as far as the sense goes. It
is a fact that we have passed the worst point, the crucial point, in
our evolution. It was the middle of the fourth race of this fourth
round. Things could not have been worse from the spiritual
viewpoint in our entire manvantara. It was the midmost or
lowest point of several cycles. We, as a racial body, passed
through it successfully, but many, many entities fell and took the
downward path. "But yet she keeps on talking to humanity as if
we were on the brink of destruction" — do not you know that
even in this fifth root-race we have not yet reached the middle
point of the fourth primary subrace thereof — its middle and
therefore dangerous point? And that the great racial catastrophe
due for our fifth root-race has therefore not yet come upon us? As
H. P. Blavatsky pointed out in 1887 or 1888, the great tidal waves
and earthquakes occurring in the
last few thousand years seem to
be premonitions of what a few more thousands of years will
bring upon us with augmented force.

The last question is:

The names given to the Absolute in its different

manifestations are confusing to me (or perhaps just hard to
remember). In Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms man's higher
self is called Iswara, in the Bhagavad-Gita, Purusha; again
it is often called atman. In Chapter viii of the Bhagavad-
Gita the names adhyatman, adhibhuta, adhidaivata,
adhiyajna, brahman, and so forth, are all used with very
subtle differences of meanings.

They are; but the meanings are also explained in the first part of
Bhagavad-Gita, chapter 8. We may here point out that even as in
the arrangements of the seven principles in the various books,
these names are attempts to show other or different views of the
one thing.

In conclusion, we will translate these five Sanskrit names:

adhyatman means the "original atman or self," equivalent to
Paramatman, or supreme atman, the highest of the hierarchy.
Adhibhuta means that supreme thing, or the higher egoic
principle or "original element," in us coming over from other
manvantaras; it is, so to say, the incarnating essence of the
element. Adhidaivata means "more divine," the highest part of all
from the serial standpoint, the hierarchical standpoint,
considering various stages. Adhiyajna means the greater, the
"superior sacrifice."

Krishna in the high spiritual sense was the greater sacrifice, the
primal sacrifice, the first initiator on the part of the Hierarchy of
Compassion, a sacrifice through pure love and compassion, than
which, in men, there is nothing more sublime, because it makes
us as one of the gods. Brahman, the last word, is, as we all know, a
Sanskrit word of which the essential root means "expansion"; it is
that part of the celestial economy which first initiates
manifestation, the expansion of the One into the many.

Chapter 23
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Twenty-Three
The Sun and the Planets. Their Role in the Evolutionary Drama.

The most mystic of discourses inform us, that the

wholeness of him (the sun) is in the supermundane orders:
for there a solar world and a total light subsist, as the
oracles of the Chaldaeans affirm. . . .

Unwearied nature rules over the worlds and works,

That heaven drawing downward might run an eternal

course,

And that the other periods of the sun, moon, seasons, night,
and day, might be accomplished. — Proclus, Commentary
on the "Timaeus" of Plato (Cory, Ancient Fragments, pp. 274-
5)

THE SECRET DOCTRINE, volume I, pages 279 and 280:

Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a

remote future, we hope to have proven so far the following
facts:

(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the

Hindu sense of the word nastika, or the rejection of idols,
including every anthropomorphic god. In this sense every
Occultist is a Nastika.

(2) It admits a Logos or a collective "Creator" of the

Universe; a Demi-urgos — in the sense implied when one
speaks of an "Architect" as the "Creator" of an edifice,
whereas that Architect has never touched one stone of it,
but, while furnishing the plan, left all the manual labor to
the masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the
Ideation of the Universe, and the constructive labour was
left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that
Demiurgos is no personal deity, — i.e., an imperfect extra-
cosmic- god, — but only the aggregate of the Dhyan-
Chohans and the other forces.

As to the latter —

(3) They are dual in their character; being composed of (a)

the irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (b) the
intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness which directs and
guides that energy, and which is the Dhyan-Chohanic
thought reflecting the Ideation of the Universal mind. This
results in a perpetual series of physical manifestations and
moral effects on Earth, during manvantaric periods, the
whole being subservient to Karma. As that process is not
always perfect; and since, however many proofs it may
exhibit of a guiding intelligence behind the veil, it still
shows gaps and flaws, and even results very often in
evident failures — therefore, neither the collective Host
(Demiurgos), nor any of the working powers individually,
are proper subjects for divine honours or worship. All are
entitled to the grateful reverence of Humanity, however,
and man ought to be ever striving to help the divine
evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the
best of his ability a
co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever
unknowable and incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless
Cause of all causes, should have its shrine and altar on the
holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart — invisible,
intangible, unmentioned, save through "the still small
voice" of our spiritual consciousness. Those who worship
before it, ought to do so in the silence and the sanctified
solitude of their Souls; making their spirit the sole
mediator between them and the Universal Spirit, their good
 actions the only priests, and their sinful intentions the only
visible and objective sacrificial victims to the Presence.

We proceed to gather up this evening more of the scattered

threads left over from our former studies. First, let us look a little
more closely into what is meant by a bodhisattva. It will be
remembered that a bodhisattva was spoken of as the personal
man relatively perfected; the case where the personal entity had
become an impersonal entity, where mortality had put upon itself
the vesture of immortality; in other words, a case where the
personal man has become an Awakened One or a Buddha short of
Buddhahood complete by only one stage; or, to use the Christian
(early Christian-Greek) mystical expression, a Christ on earth.

Now a bodhisattva, being such, practically means what we might

call the higher manas, the higher self (not the highest self, but the
higher self) fully developed and in the full radiance of the dual
monad atma-buddhi, and thus forms a fit vehicle, a fit medium,
between the divine and the lower selves of man; and thus
provides an appropriate channel of communication in cases
where an avatara is due for manifestation on earth. There could
be no such thing as an avatara among men were it not for this
medium supplying the necessary psychospiritual link. Pure spirit,
in endeavoring to act upon earth, can have neither effect upon,
nor chance of communication with, men, because it is the actual
divine essence, so to say, of the kosmos and needs the two
spiritual qualities or vehicles buddhi and manas-taijasa in order
so to manifest, and the bodhisattva, in supplying the spiritual
egoic quality, the intermediate quality, furnishes that necessary
medium or vehicle. The bodhisattva, furthermore, who, instead of
pursuing its own natural karmic higher course in the nirvanic
state, chooses by virtue of the compassion inherent in itself to
remain on earth, as a helper of mankind, in that case becomes a
nirmanakaya, a fully conscious thinking entity upon this our
human plane, minus only the physical body. It is stated in the
esoteric philosophy that Gautama the Buddha made that sublime
choice, and furnished the intermediate principle for the Hindu
avatara, Sankaracharya, of whom we spoke at our last meeting.
There is a tradition and a record among us likewise that the same
bodhisattva furnished the intermediate principle of the avataric
manifestation called Jesus, as also in two other cases which we
here leave unnamed, the reason being that each race and each
subrace, as well as every smaller racial cycle of importance, as we
know, is under the particular guidance of a buddha, or of minor
incarnations or overshadowings by him.

Gautama the Buddha was himself an avatara plus, i.e., in a larger

sense; that is to say, instead of furnishing an intermediate vehicle
from himself, in a minor cycle, he was that intermediate vehicle
himself in his psychospiritual totality, inspired by his own divine
nature, and with his own physical body as the "temple" thereof,
differing in that respect from an avatara per se, in which the
intermediate vehicle is furnished by the bodhisattva-
nirmanakaya of the buddha under whose governance, or rather
overseeing, the particular race in which the avatara appears runs
its course as a minor cycle of the greater racial cycle of that
buddha himself. An avatara, therefore, requires the bodhisattva
of the racial buddha as a vehicle in order to manifest upon earth
at the time he is due to appear. A buddha does not, because,
although an avatara in the sense of being under the direct and
fully actual illumination of his own divine self (which is a
superterrestrial bodhisattva, studied at our
last meeting), he has
karma behind him. It is the direct and actual reincarnation of a
divine man, which an avatara is not. An avatara is, in a sense, an
illusion or maya, because the intermediate or egoic quality — the
offspring metaphysically of karma — is lacking there and has to
be furnished by the bodhisattva-quality or vehicle.
An avatara, formally only, stands higher than a bodhisattva, but it
is a higher stage merely of form of and in a hierarchy, and not
from the evolutionary viewpoint. A buddha becomes such by self-
directed evolution, the great truth that Katherine Tingley so often
tells us of. An avatara comes by karmic racial necessity at certain
epochs in the world's history; a buddha does so likewise, but also
by personal choice out of an immense compassion for his inferior
fellow beings still involved in the toils of material existence.
There is the difference, and a very important one it is to
remember for our future studies.

We might say in passing that at about our present period, what is

called a Messianic cycle is ending and, naturally, a new one is
opening — a Messianic cycle running 2,160 years, in definite,
exact figures. These cycles succeed one another continuously. So
if we choose to count backwards, we can say, if we like, that the
European Messianic cycle which is ending, or out of which we are
emerging, is that inaugurated for Europe by Jesus, the Avatara.
Interesting thoughts come up in this connection which we may
safely leave for consideration at another time.

So much for those threads.

Please remember that evolution comprises two lines of action, as

it were, two forces running collaterally, that is to say, the spirit or
the developed side of existence on the one hand, and that of the
undeveloped side on the other hand: otherwise, darkness and
light, or the selfish and the compassionate, which, you will
remember, is a subject that we alluded to somewhat in studying
the fifth of the seven treasuries of wisdom of the Hierarchy of
Compassion which is the unselfish or immortal side of existence.

Now the action and interaction of these two lines of energy

supply the motive forces behind evolution, behind progress; and
the course which evolution takes really arises in, springs out
from, and is inaugurated by, the impulses at the opening of the
manvantaric cycle given to the dark or matter-side of existence by
the dhyani-chohans, I mean by the higher parts or entities of this
Hierarchy of Compassion. It is the keynotes furnished by them,
the primal and original impulses depending of course upon
destiny (or karma) which give the originating plan and the
driving power behind everything that happens in that
manvantara throughout its cycle of evolution until its close; and
while free will exists in man as soon as he has learned to obey the
spiritual statutes of self-consciousness, this free will itself, being a
divine energy and in a sense springing itself from the general
dhyan-chohanic impulse, can in no circumstances militate
against, be contrary to, or adversely affect, the
general
evolutionary current which bears the manifold hosts of entities in
manifestation always towards the ultimate goal, signalized by H.
P. Blavatsky in the ancient saying, "The Day Be With Us" — the
end of a manvantara or the opening of pralaya.

Thus, then, these two lines of energy are eternally coactive —

using the word eternally in the sense of lasting throughout the
solar kalpa — on one side, the "dark," undeveloped forces of
matter; and, on the other side, the Hierarchy of Compassion with
its innumerable units urging the hosts of evolving beings forward
in one direction, the whole effort of the Hierarchy of Compassion
being to raise other less developed beings or units from the
matter-side up into the "light-side." The entities of the Hierarchy
of Compassion in past manvantaras were themselves thus so
raised by other Hierarchies of Compassion, now by this time far,
far ahead of us in evolution; and it is our sublime destiny in the
future kalpa ourselves so to guide the entities behind us now, a
process called the "Passing on of the Light," as the Greek and
Latin poets put it.

Furthermore, as briefly alluded to at our last study, please

remember that the ancient initiations, and the Mystery Schools in
which those initiations took place, were established solely for the
purpose of "forcing" or quickening the evolution of fit and proper
candidates. They were established from the same motives of
compassion that presided over the acts of the great actors of the
primal drama, the opening acts of our manvantara. They copied,
as it were in miniature, what took place in those primordial
times, and what took place in actual life in the Hierarchy of
Compassion on our earth, or that section, rather, of the Hierarchy
of Compassion which we call the Great White Lodge.

Let us turn a moment to another collateral and very important

matter upon which we have touched but lightly, because the
questions involved are so profound that it was impossible in
treating of one subject adequately to make the meaning clear
without temporarily dropping our main theme. But it is likewise
necessary not to go too far ahead and leave these loose threads
behind; we must gather them in also and weave them into the
fabric, into the picture, which we are endeavoring to make.

We refer more particularly to the role which the sun and the
planets of our solar system play in the evolutionary drama. There
are great mysteries connected with this, and we are told very
plainly that not merely the ultimate word but even specifying
explanations in no circumstances are given out except to those
who have pledged themselves irretrievably and irrevocably to the
Lodge. And even then they are given out only with "mouth to ear,"
and "at low breath"; and, furthermore, only to those, says H. P.
Blavatsky, who have passed successfully their fourth initiation,
which consists very largely in the personal and individual
experiencing of the teachings given in the three preceding stages —
three stages of preliminary teaching and training, leading to
actual personal experience thereof in the fourth initiation, in
which, we are told, the candidate must leave the body of flesh,
yea, even the brain-mind, behind, and become that of which he
was
taught, because only by being can he know. Nevertheless a
great deal has been openly said that is, to the student, very
illuminating as regards these subjects.

First, at various times we have spoken of the sun, of our solar orb,
as the central locus of our solar system. So it is, not merely
physically but also in other ways. The sun, paradoxically but
truly, supplies most of our material, vital powers; and it is
interesting to note that the nearer the planets are to the sun, as a
general rule, the more dense they are. Mark well that Mercury,
the planet of budha or of wisdom, the particular guardian and
initiator in the Mysteries, is the nearest to the sun (but one) of our
seven planets, i.e., the seven Mystery-planets. Note the words "but
one." You will remember that the ancients spoke of seven
Mystery-planets: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars — I give them in the old
order — Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. This matter we shall
develop somewhat in diagrammatic form later this evening if we
have the time.

The intra-Mercurial planet, as it is called, according to our

teaching became practically invisible to the physical eye during
the third root-race, after the fall of man into physical generation.
On March 26, 1859, a body was seen crossing the solar disk,
making what astronomers call a transit. That body has not been
seen again; but there are other reasons which have induced some
astronomers to believe that there actually is an intra-Mercurial
planet (although they cannot find it again despite the search for
it), such as the perturbations of Mercury. An attempt at
explanation of these perturbations has been recently made, based
on the relativity doctrines of Einstein, and that explanation is
now in fashion. Nevertheless, our Teachers say that there is an
intra-Mercurial planet; we may call it Vulcan, as the astronomers
so called it.
Even if Vulcan became invisible during the third root-race, it
could yet become visible in transit, that is, in crossing the sun's
disk, as this body was actually in 1859 seen to do, because
although invisible to our unaided sight, yet through the lens of a
telescope when turned upon the unsurpassed illumination of the
sun's disk, its body could probably be seen against the great
brilliance of the solar orb. The immensely great illumination
provided by the sun would readily throw into shadow, or make
appear as a shadow, any body of less brilliance, or any body
normally too ethereal to be seen otherwise.

The seventh planet, our teaching is, is a planet which under

proper conditions is sometimes seen apparently near the moon. It
is said that it has a retrograde motion, and that it is slowly dying.
It has reached the end of its cycle. I think it erroneous to say that
the moon "hides" it. That may be a good way, perhaps, of
expressing a certain appearance, but I think it is a misleading
one. Let us keep the facts just as they were given us, that it is
sometimes "seen apparently near the moon," that it has a
retrograde motion, and that it is slowly dying.

Vulcan is in one mystic sense the highest of the seven sacred

planets; perhaps not the least dense, but in one sense the highest
psychologically; and we have reason to believe that the other
planet sometimes seen apparently near the moon is perhaps the
lowest of the seven sacred planets. This does not mean that our
teaching limits the number of the planets of the solar system to
seven. On the contrary, we are taught that there are many more
planets in the solar system than are known to astronomers, some
perfectly invisible, because they are on planes both higher and
lower than our plane. There are planets in our system higher
than ours, higher than any planet visible to us; there are also
planets in our system much lower than ours, much lower than
any planet visible to us.

These seven especial planets were called sacred for a reason most
difficult openly to explain; but we may say this, that the seven
planets which we on earth (please note the qualification) call
sacred, are those planets (and the earth is not one of them) which
are the upadhis — a Sanskrit word meaning "bearers" or
"carriers" — (to us) of the seven solar forces. They are all "higher"
in that sense, or from that point of view, than is the earth; and
they are all intimately connected with this earth, and provide this
earth, not with its principles, but with spiritual and intellectual
and psychical and astral and vital powers, so to say. These seven
sacred planets, moreover, are our "makers," and oversee our
destiny.

This is a bit of the genuine ancient astrology. It is not merely to

the physical body of the seven planets that we allude; doubtless
each physical planet or rather globe has its own astronomical
forces, such as gravitation and magnetism, and so forth; but we
are here speaking of the inner or occult action of them. Each of
the globes of our planetary chain, moreover, each of the seven
globes thereof, is under the particular watchfulness or care of one
of these seven Mystery-planets. Furthermore, each round is under
the particular overseeing of one of these seven sacred planets.
Furthermore, each race on any one of the globes is under the
particular care and overseeing of one of these seven sacred
planets. For these reasons, as well as for others still more
important and intimate on account of their strait connection with
our planetary chain, were they called the seven sacred planets.

The sun and moon are not two of the seven, although for
purposes of esoteric astrology they were substituted for the real
two, because one is apparently near the moon, and one is so near
the sun. Yet, for all that, the sun and moon are both closely in
interaction respectively with those two.

With regard to the sun: What is the sun? Is the sun a physical
body only? It is not. It is not really a physical body, for it is not
gas, it is not gaseous. It is not solid, nor is it liquid or gaseous. The
sun is a reflection. What do we mean when we say a reflection?
We do not mean the word in the full, complete, and exclusive
sense in which it is commonly employed, as when we speak of the
reflection of an image in a mirror. We mean it in this sense, that
the true sun is a body — strange as it may seem to our present-
day scientists — of energy or force. Modern science is beginning
to understand now that force and matter are fundamentally one
thing. Some years ago everything in the scientific imagination
was matter. Now everything has become force to it. Marvelous,
that these scientific gentlemen do not see how easily they change
the bases of their thought, and how dogmatic they so often are as
regards each new series of bases that they assume! But there
the
fact is. Science today tells us that matter is simply force, which is
true. But it is matter all the same. There is no need of running to
one extreme in trying to pull ourselves out of another. No need of
incurring the perils of Scylla in trying to evade those of
Charybdis. Matter exists, it is; it is the upadhi or carrier of force,
and force is also the intrinsic life of matter. Nevertheless matter
exists; it is a maya, an illusion indeed, but it exists. Maya does not
mean illusion in the exclusive and full sense of nonentity. Not at
all. Maya actually implies that something exists to produce it, but
that the seer of it does not know what the reality is behind; in
other words, our senses do not tell us the truth about the thing
behind the manifestation. That is what maya means, not that the
thing itself is nonentity. That view is an absurdity.

If you examine photographs of sunspots, if you look at the sun

through a good telescope and center your gaze upon a sunspot
when it is near a limb of the sun, near an edge, you will see that
as the spot crosses the solar disk, it seems to be black. Now why
does it appear black? We know that it is not black in color. Our
scientists have proved that fact, but the visible disk of the sun is
so intensely brilliant that the less brilliance of the part within the
spot, though very brilliant itself, seems dark to our eyes.

Suppose that we were to say that the sun we see is simply like the
glow around some electrical machines, merely a "reflection" of
the electrical current, as it were, a mayavi manifestation on our
plane of a force so immense that we can form no proper
conception of it. Suppose that we were to think of the sun as
occupying no space (or dimension) at all, and that what we see,
that immense apparent body of light, were like an electrical
spark, apparently a body, apparently occupying space. Suppose
that we go a step further and say that the visible sun which we
see is matter in its sixth state of ethereality, and that what is
behind that tremendously brilliant veil or reflection is an atom, so
to say, an infinitesimal part of matter-substance, matter in its
seventh state. It is easy to follow this thought. The sun is a mass of
force; as even the medieval philosophers might have said:
"Brother, when a man tells you that he has seen the sun, laugh at
him. He has not. The sun is invisible. The
true sun, the origin and
center of these high forces, is on higher planes, and we merely see
on the sixth subplane of our kosmic plane this intense brilliance
covering so vast a space as the apparent sun does."

Furthermore, while the sun gives us our light on earth, it

probably does not furnish us with 30 percent of the heat that we
have, and then not by direct physical radiation, but in somewhat
the same way in which the electric current furnishes us with
heat, or in a similar way — in the same way would be, perhaps,
too strong a manner of putting the fact. Forces emanate from the
solar heart or center and reach the meteoric veils encircling the
earth, and arouse electromagnetic currents, producing thus a part
of the meteorological phenomena which we experience in storms
and fair weather and rain and snow and ice. The earth itself
produces probably 70 percent or more of the heat which we
know; and such things as storms are caused mostly by
electromagnetic action and reaction, if I may use that expression,
between the innate prana, or vital forces of the earth, and the
meteoric continent which surrounds our globe like a veil. For we
are encircled during our manvantara, and every other planet of
the solar system is similarly encircled during its manvantara,
with a thick veil of meteoric dust, most of it very fine, some of it
of more or less large bodies.

Take Venus, for instance, or Mercury. They are surrounded each

one with its own veil of meteoric or kosmic dust: each one veils
her face, or his face. This meteoric veil acts in one sense as does a
cushion, thus forming a protection to its planet. We do not see for
that reason the real face of the planet. But Mars has no such veil.
Why? Because the vital essence of that planetary chain has left
Mars' physical globe for its other globes.

We shall have to reserve until next week the diagram which was
to have been shown to you this evening, at which point of study
we have now arrived. Let us briefly point out that the diagram in
question is taken from the mystical Syrian thought in vogue
before the Christian era, and represents the exoteric astrological
ideas that the Syrians then had of the relationship of the planes of
being, and necessarily therefore of the planets and the mystical
positions occupied by each of them in the evolutionary drama.
They put it this wise. First and highest was the Milky Way, which
to them was the utmost limit of this hierarchy or universe. Then
came the Nebulae and Comets, which were represented in the
spiritual hierarchy by the Seraphim. The third grade still lower
were the Fixed Stars, and they were represented by the
Cherubim. Then taking a leap over the immensities of the space of
our universe, these old thinkers of Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and
doubtless Persia, and of course Phoenicia, and all the
other
countries of Asia Minor, began the inferior series with the planets
of our solar system. First, Saturn, the seat of the Thrones; then
Jupiter, the seat of the Dominations; then Mars, the seat of the
Virtues; then the Sun, the seat of the Powers; then Venus, the seat
of the Principalities; then Mercury, of the Archangels; then the
Moon, of the Angels; then our Earth. They also enumerated five
elements — an enumeration which is exoteric, but it is the same
as the esoteric as far as it goes. Our Earth, as well as
interplanetary space, comprises these five elements, and when
we say our Earth we mean not merely our physical planetary
body of this element upon which we move, but the entire sphere
comprehended between the Moon and the Earth. These five
elements were named Ether, Fire, Air, Water, gross matter or
Earth. Outside of this hierarchy or universe or kosmos they
placed the Celestial Waters, even as the first chapter of the
Hebrew book of Genesis speaks of the "spirit of the Elohim
moving over the waters." "Celestial Waters" was a name
frequently given by the ancients to what the Greeks called Chaos,
undeveloped matter or, as we today would say, spacial deeps.

Our time of study this evening is drawing to a close. Let us,

however, point out the interesting fact that this same series of the
planets shows us clearly that the ancients must have understood
perfectly well the mechanism of the framework of the visible
solar system, and that, if their thought was geocentric, making the
earth the center of the kosmos, it was a natural thought; and that
as man is instinctively anthropocentric, he cannot naturally think
from another standpoint. So, naturally, the ancient astrologers
and astronomers, with their feet on earth, calculated from the
earth, and saw from the earth, and placed man, looking up
towards the spheres of the solar system, on earth as the center of
observation even as we do today, not meaning at all that they
knew nothing of the heliocentric system, which we know they did
know.

What can this mean? This cannot mean anything but one thing,
and that is, that these planets were so placed on account of and
because of the relative time occupied by each in making the
circuit of its orbit, to wit: Saturn, about thirty years; Jupiter, the
next "lowest," practically twelve; Mars, the next lowest,
practically two; the Sun (or the Mystery-planet, the Sun supplying
its place), one year; Venus, the next one, seven months; Mercury,
three months; the Moon, one month. We would like to point out
also that the days of our own common week are based upon this
series, and then we shall close for this evening.

Why, in putting the planets in the order Saturn, Jupiter, Mars,

Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, did they not make their week of
seven days follow that order? Because, dividing the day and night
into 24 hours, each day, beginning at sunrise, opens with its first
hour under the governance of some particular planet. If you
calculate through the 24 hours, beginning with Saturn (there
being seven sacred planets), during the 24 hours they go into 24
three times, with three over. Three times seven is 21 hours, with
three over: 22, 23, 24, the 25th hour being the first hour of the
next day. Three times seven running through the 24 hours, we
find that if the first hour began with Saturn as presiding planet,
the 8th hour would also be under Saturn, the 15th would be
under Saturn, the 22nd would be under Saturn, the 23rd then
would be under Jupiter, the 24th under Mars, and the 25th hour,
the first of the next day, would be Sun or Sunday. By taking this
list and counting each fourth, beginning with the one
just ended,
as the first (or adding three more to the hour just ended), gives
you the days of the week. Thus: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun,
SUNDAY; Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, MONDAY; Moon, Saturn,
Jupiter, Mars, TUESDAY (Mars' day); Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury,
WEDNESDAY, being the Anglo-Saxon Woden, corresponding to
the Latin and Greek terms; Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter,
THURSDAY (Thor's day); Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, FRIDAY;
Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, SATURDAY, again beginning the
second or following week.

So the order and names of the days of our week are ultimately
based upon a very interesting and occult reason — ancient
astrology explained and given to the world only in the Mysteries
as we know them. The order and names of the days of the week
were the same in India and in Northern Europe, and in some
parts of Asia, a matter which has never yet been satisfactorily
explained by our calendarists and astronomers. The reason is
found in the fundamentally identical astrological system common
to the entire ancient world.

Chapter 24
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

PART TWO

Chapter Twenty-Four
The Ten Stages of Being according to the Syrian System. Esoteric
Method of Teaching: Paradoxes, Intuition.

Their writings also [i.e., of the Pythagoreans], and all the

books which they published, most of which have been
preserved even to our time [i.e., to the time of Iamblichus],
were not composed by them in a popular and vulgar
diction, and in a manner usual with all other writers, so as
to be immediately understood, but in such a way as not to
be easily apprehended by those that read them. For they
adopted that taciturnity which was instituted by
Pythagoras as a law, in concealing after an arcane mode,
divine mysteries from the uninitiated, and obscuring their
writings and conferences with each other. — Iamblichus,
Life of Pythagoras, p. 56

Philosophy, according to his [Plato's] acceptation, being not

merely a set of doctrines but the perfecting of the whole
spiritual life; . . . — Eduard Zeller, Plato and the Older
Academy, p. 160

It moves. It moves not.

It is far, and It is near.

It is within all this,

And It is outside of all this. — Isa-Upanishad, 5 (Hume,

trans.)

LET US OPEN our study this evening by reading from The Secret
Doctrine, volume I, pages 435-6, as follows:
 Mor Isaac . . . shows the ancient Syrians defining their
world of the "Rulers" and "active gods" in the same way as
the Chaldeans. The lowest world was the SUBLUNARY —
our own — watched by the "Angels" of the first or lower
order; the one that came next in rank, was Mercury, ruled
by the "ARCHANGELS"; then came Venus, whose gods were
the PRINCIPALITIES; the fourth was that of the SUN, the
domain and region of the highest and mightiest gods of our
system, the solar gods of all nations; the fifth was Mars,
ruled by the "VIRTUES"; the sixth — that of Bel or Jupiter —
was governed by the DOMINIONS; the seventh — the world
of Saturn — by the THRONES. These are the worlds of
form. Above come the four higher ones, making seven
again, since the three highest are "unmentionable and
unpronounceable." The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is
the domain of the Cherubs; the ninth, belonging to the
walking and numberless stars on account of their distance,
has the seraphs; as to the tenth — Kircher, quoting Mor
Isaac, says that it is composed "of invisible stars that could
be taken, they said, for clouds — so massed are they in the
zone that we call Via Straminis, the Milky Way;". . . That
which comes after and beyond the tenth world (our
Quaternary, or the Arupa world), the Syrians could not tell.
"All they knew was that it is there that begins the vast and
incomprehensible ocean of the infinite, the abode of the
true divinity without boundary or end."

Champollion shows the same belief among the Egyptians.

The main thought this evening that seems to call first for further
illustration is the subject of the bipolar nature of being, that is to
say, that there are two interacting energy-substance lines in the
kosmos, which together comprise the totality of all evolutionary
processes: first, the lower, the kosmokratores, or world builders;
and second, the higher, the intelligences impelling the former into
action and overseeing their evolutionary ways. The second class
is of course the higher, and comprises what we, following H. P.
Blavatsky, have called the Hierarchy of Compassion.

Now these two lines of action, or classes, may also be called (a)
the left-hand or matter-side, and (b) the right-hand or spirit-side,
i.e., (a) the builders, the kosmokratores, who are in fact (in one
sense) the lower principles of (b) the dhyani-buddhas, who are
the right-hand, or spirit-side, of being, which latter are of the
inner kosmos, as the kosmokratores or builders, also called
planetary spirits or dhyani-chohans of a lower grade, are of the
outer or material kosmos, that is, as said above, the left-hand side,
the matter-side, the night-side, the dark side.

From the interaction of these two quasi-opposing forces (or

elements) in nature come into self-consciousness the
innumerable monads of inner and outer space, because this
night-side or matter-side is made up of the lower principles of the
light-side, as it were; and these lower principles are composite,
formed of simply innumerable numbers of monads in almost
infinitely varying degrees of development. The higher monads
form the vehicles of the dhyani-buddhas, the Hierarchy of
Compassion; but there are monads, hosts of them, of intermediate
and lower degrees, and of still lower and of the lowest degree;
and the lowest form the material world, which we see around us.
As said above, from the interaction of the indwelling force and of
the vehicle in which it works or, in other words, from the
informing spiritual powers impelling and urging these monads in
various states of evolution towards further progress, spring the
various degrees of consciousnesses in nature. We are some of
these monads, both our
higher egos and our personal egos. We
ourselves are monads in the particular state of evolution in which
we find ourselves; and we are on our way to becoming conscious
co-workers with nature or, in other words, slowly evolving out (or
into) the dhyani-chohans or lords of contemplation, the
manasaputras, of future manvantaras. We were, in former
kalpas, or manvantaras, monads in a still lower state of evolution
than that in which we are now, forming then the vehicles of those
who are still ahead of us, and who now still work through us,
through our higher and our personal egos, and who thus inspire
us to progress upwards, and who are, in fact, our inner gods: our
very selves, yet different!

The work of evolution is, in fact, the raising of the personal into
the impersonal; the raising of the mortal to put on the garments
of immortality; the raising of the beast to become a man; the
raising of a man to become a god; and the raising of a god to
become still more largely divine. When we say "raising a beast to
become a man," we do not, however, thereby mean the scientific
hypothesis miscalled evolution and properly called transformism.
The theosophic doctrine of evolution is immensely greater,
infinitely (if we can use that expression) more profound, than
those scientific theories. A beast never becomes a self-conscious,
thinking man according to the scientific merely mechanical
doctrine of materialistic transformism, any more so than a pile of
mortar and bricks self-develops into a mansion, or a rough block
of marble into a noble statue. It is the inner monad, the
indwelling fire, which continually urges or brings forth into
action the latent lives and forces in the atoms. Each
atom in itself
is a sleeping soul, and this, awakened, is what evolves or
develops, not the merely physical body. Remember the threefold
category that H. P. Blavatsky gives us: gods, first; monads, second;
atoms, third — gods, the divine or highest triad; monads, the
upper triad of the septenary; and the atoms, the lower quaternary
of the septenary. Each one of those atoms, which are simply
incalculably great in numbers, forming the lower quaternary, as
already said, is a sleeping god, an embryo god rather. Its inner
nature must be brought out, and that bringing out is evolution,
the bringing out of inner capacities, each atom-entity making, as
it does so, its own vehicles. This is the doctrine of self-directed
evolution, following the urge, the primordial impress, of the
dhyani-chohans. All this has been set forth by us before.

In past studies we have spoken of the initiations (and of the

doctrine of evolution taught anciently therein) as being a forcing-
school. This word forcing is ambiguous. The word is subject to
misinterpretation. Let us then put in its place the word
quickening, or awakening, the word quickening meaning "life" in
contrast with what is inert or dead; therefore, it is the quickening,
the enlivening, the bringing out of that which is within. This idea
is the key thought of the theosophical doctrine of evolution.

A beast no more develops mechanically into a man than do pieces

of ivory, and cupfuls of polish, and pieces of wood and rolls of
wire, naturally fall together and take proper form and
"transform" themselves into a piano. Impossible! What makes a
piano is the architect of it, the man, the thinker; so evolution is
the working upon and in matter of the spiritual entity which
takes and forms and urges onwards the material vehicles in
which it is.

When we speak of the incarnation of the manasaputras, the

thinking entities, the sons of mind, it is of course understood that
they are parts of, or entities from, the Hierarchy of Compassion,
from the light-side of nature; and while evolution, the natural
evolving (with the primordial spiritual or dhyani-chohanic
impress behind it) of nature into higher beings, would take place
and actually takes place continuously, that process would be
almost interminable in length of time were it not for the higher
beings who give us of their light and their life, and thereby much
more quickly lead us on. That is what is meant by the
manasaputras' "descent into incarnation." They are our higher
natures and, paradoxical as it is, are more largely evolved beings
than we are; they were the spiritual entities who quickened our
personal egos, which were thus evolved into self-consciousness,
relatively small though that yet be. One, and yet many! As you can
light an infinite number of candles from one
lighted candle, so
can you, from a spark of consciousness, quicken and enliven
innumerable other consciousnesses lying, so to speak, in sleep, or
latent, in the atoms.

This brings us directly to another matter. We all possibly have

heard of "contradictions" in The Secret Doctrine, or in our esoteric
teachings. There are no contradictions there; there are apparent
contradictions, if you like, but an apparent contradiction is really
the figure of speech called a paradox. It is the famous old way of
the ancient schools of occultism, to teach by paradoxes or by
parables, as Jesus is said to have done. There is manifest a
profound knowledge of human psychology in basing teachings on
this principle. The aim is deliberately to arouse the mind, to
astonish, to make the hearer think for himself. You cannot teach a
child to eat or to walk by walking for it or by feeding yourself for
it. It must learn to feed itself. It must itself learn to walk.

Similarly, students, neophytes, must learn to think for themselves,

to stand upon their own feet. It is, I repeat, a very profound
knowledge of psychology, of human thinking, which made the
ancient Teachers, and makes the Masters of wisdom today, follow
the same old principles, a method which we have followed since
these studies were begun. You will have noticed that in no case
has any subject been at first openly and fully stated or followed to
its ultimate: first, because it is impossible; second, because it was
obviously necessary to say certain things first, trying to arouse
attention, trying to arouse honest objections — not merely
criticisms — but honest objections in your own mind which you
yourselves must solve; and then later other aspects of the subject
were brought out and other sides of the teachings were given.
Some of you know this fact, of course; but I am speaking more
particularly of our younger and newer members. This method is a
system of teaching
diametrically opposite to that pursued in the
Western world since the downfall of the Mediterranean
civilizations. The popular method today is that of the pure brain-
mind, of that mind which is mortal and goes to pieces with the
death of the body. Its forte is the mere memorizing of times,
places, names, dates, etc., in short, everything that can be
memorized from books or daily occurrences, and stuffed into the
brain; and this mind dies. That is one reason why we do not
remember our past incarnations, because our minds were puny
and dealt with little and evanescent things. But the memory of
our past incarnations nevertheless inheres and remains in our
higher natures, for this nature deals only with principles and
generals; and someday, when we shall have passed out of and
beyond our planet, we shall remember those past lives, unless
indeed they be those cases of incarnations of a lost soul, in which
cases there remain only blank pages, as it were, in the spiritual
volume of life.

Let us illustrate some of these so-called contradictions by a few

examples: the moon is older than the sun; the sun is older than the
moon. No contradiction is here, but there is a paradox, Again, the
sun is older than any of its planets; the planets are older than their
sun. No contradiction again, but a paradox. Let us explain these
paradoxes at once. Tracing the evolution of the solar system
according to the esoteric philosophy, we point out first that the
Milky Way is the storehouse of celestial bodies to be; as it were,
the nursery from which seeds of future suns go forth to begin
their manvantaric courses. When the time comes for such an
event to happen, a comet, in its primordial ethereal robes, starts
forth to enter upon its peregrinations, and after circling around
and passing through what is to us illimitable space for long aeons
of time, it, driven or drawn by karma, or under the guidance of
karma, if you will, reaches that particular region in space which
was actually the spot or region occupied by itself in a former
imbodiment as a sun, and it settles there, and awakens and
enlivens and quickens the solar dust around it (for space is full of
it), and we then have a nebula. Further, it also gathers around
itself larger ethereal remnants of its former self when it was a
sun; and these then accrete to themselves other particles
wandering in space, as we can say, and in due course these other
bodies, with their accretions, become the planets of the new solar
system.

What is a planet? What its origin? A sun runs through its kalpic
course, its manvantaric period, which is a solar manvantara; and
when its time comes to go into pralaya, into its rest, its internal
force is weakened and — it dies. This is not an event of a day, but
an event requiring much time; and what was its lowest principle
(corresponding to our physical body) disintegrates into literally
innumerable particles. Call them atoms, if you like. Remember,
please, that the sun is neither solid — nor will it be then, when it
dies — nor is it liquid, nor is it gaseous. After its death, it dissolves
into innumerable atoms or particles, and these particles begin
their long peregrinations through the fields of space, wandering
in the immense solitudes for long, long aeons, until that
indwelling entity of the former sun, which has its own inspiring
inner presence, comes again under the form of a comet and
reawakens what is now the solar dust of its former vehicle-self in
the space
where it formerly was — that dust being the remnants
of its own former body. And these particles of the sun that was,
are attracted to it again and form its suite of planets. Thus, in a
sense, the planets of a sun are its "moons."

So, you see, as an entity, the sun is older than any one of its
planetary system, remnants of its former body; but the planets
are older than the sun that now is, because they actually are
particles of the former sun that was of this plane. Where is the
contradiction? A paradox, truly, which we had to solve; for the
solving quickens our intuition, and that is one of the main aims
and purposes of this system of teaching, the quickening of the
intuition. Our brain-mind is a most admirable servant when
under direction, but it should never be our master. It is not even a
good servant; it has no self-respect. It has no discrimination,
judgment, intuition, or understanding.

And similar to the above is the paradox concerning the moon.

Perhaps at some future study we may have time to explain it. Also
similar is the case of the planetoids, or the so-called asteroids, of
which there are so many between the planets Jupiter and Mars.
They are remnants of a former solar manvantara.

Further, all the planets not in obscuration or sleeping (as Mars is)
are surrounded with thick and often greatly condensed clouds of
the kosmic dust which they have accreted unto themselves; it
actually is the former solar dust of now disintegrated moons and
planets. For over our own heads and over and around every one
of the nonsleeping planets of our solar system, there is a
continent, literally a continent, of this kosmic dust, so thick is that
solar dust and so numerous are the bodies or particles of various
sizes which compose it. It acts as a veil protecting us from the
terrific energy of the sun, acting not merely as a veil of protection
against his rays alone, but also against other accidents that might
happen to us were there no such protecting veil surrounding our
globe in thick folds.
Mars has at present none or very little of such a protecting veil,
simply because its life-energies have gone to another globe of the
Martian planetary system — the Martian planetary chain — and
the attractive magnetic force which holds together such a veil
therefore is largely absent. But Venus and Mercury, for instance,
have, as we have, such a protecting veil, although much thinner
in Mercury's case than in that of Venus, because Mercury is just
emerging from obscuration, and it is what the astronomers see
when they look at those planets through their telescopes, when
they see the "clouds," and note that they cannot see the face of the
planet itself. They really see the veil. We are not conscious of the
veil protecting us. Somewhat like a man in a room with one of
those white net curtains over his window — he can see outwards,
and discern what passes in the street beyond; but the man in the
street cannot easily see him.

As a final example this evening of the use of the paradox in our

study, I take the following. At a former study we said that nature
never repeats herself. We repeat it this evening: nature never
repeats herself. In a later study we stated that nature does
nothing but repeat herself. We repeat it this evening: nature does
nothing but repeat herself. Contradiction? No. Paradox? Yes. Let
us see if we can make this apparent contradiction a little clearer.
What are cycles? Repetitions. What are hierarchies? Repetitions.
What are the main repetitions of a general type? Principles,
forces, planets, suns, orbs, atoms, monads, gods — all are
manifold repetitions of primal spiritual impresses. Nature works
in no other way than by repeating herself — repetitions on
inferior planes of primordial principles or root-types.

Now, what mean we in saying that nature never repeats herself?

Let us here use our common sense. We are not here to amuse
each other with folly. Nature likewise never repeats herself,
because you will never find two principles identical, no two
cycles are identical, no two men are identical, no two monads, no
two suns, no two planets, no two souls, no two egos are identical.
Our paradox then is solved by remembering that nature's method
is unity in endless diversity.

We return now to our main theme. The Syrians had the following
method or system of describing the stages of being which we
represent in the accompanying diagram: (1) the Milky Way, or the
first principle; (2) Nebulae and Comets, or Seraphim, sphere two,
counting downwards; (3) the Fixed Stars, or Cherubim. These
three were the Formless World. Then the planets: (4) Saturn,
Thrones; (5) Jupiter, Dominations; (6) Mars, Virtues; (7) Sun,
Powers; (8) Venus, Principalities; (9) Mercury, Archangels; (10)
Moon, Angels. These eight, including Earth, Men, were the World
of Form.

Then we will draw, if you please, a circle which will represent a

sphere, and let it be our Earth; and we will divide this Earth into
five zones, the topmost one being that of ether; the one
underneath it being fire; the one underneath that being air; the
one underneath that being water; and the lowest one being earth.

Please understand also that the Syrians conceived of this world-

system as a sphere, as a kosmos; hence, our design must have a
circle surrounding it — a conventional figure, it is true, and not
implying any particular limitations, but signifying the bounding
circle of that particular kosmos or hierarchy. The Syrians further
said that outside of this hierarchy, of this kosmos, there were the
Celestial Waters, meaning thereby what the Greeks called Chaos,
or kosmic matter undeveloped for us, the waters of space, in
other words. As regards this metaphor, Celestial Waters, you will
remember what the Hebrew Bible also says about the "spirit of
the Elohim" or gods moving on the face of the "waters."

The three highest planes are what we call arupa, or formless; and
the other seven (or eight) planes are rupa, or formed. They taught
that in the beginning of things, i.e., when kosmic evolution began,
the primordial essence evolved forth the most subtil and the most
spiritual element, and this naturally was the highest, the Milky
Way, where all things begin in this system; and that the next step
in evolution downwards was the comets and the nebulae; and
then the "1,122 fixed stars"; and then the various solar systems —
our own solar system, as an example, bringing us thus to the first
of the seven planetary regions. Any other solar system would
have answered, but ours naturally was chosen, being ours. Each
of these steps downwards represents the stage that the evolving
wave of life had to pass through before it finally culminated in
material existence as on our earth, for instance; finally passing
through the last seven stages, the surrounding planes of the globe.
First of these last
seven was what we may call the Nameless
Element; then the superether; then the ether; and then the fire;
and then the air; and then the water; and then the earth — these
elements not being the material things familiar to us, but the
spirits of the elements, the primordial matter of which our
elements are merely the material representation.

You will notice that the Christian Apostle, Paul, speaks of several
of these powers or elements pertaining or belonging to the
various planets as above described in the Syrian system, such as
the Dominions, and the Virtues, the Thrones, the Principalities,
the Archangels, and the Angels. You will also remember that in a
former study we pointed out that really all Christian mysticism
was founded by Dionysius, the so-called Areopagite, who also
used these same names; so that in addition to the thoughts which
Christianity drew from Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism, it
also drew from (through Paul himself who was a Syrian) these
ancient Mystery-teachings as exoterically expressed in the
hierarchy as shown in the diagram. But behind this outward
expression there was the same exposition, there was the same
esoteric system and truth, that we have been studying for some
months past.

Chapter 25
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Twenty-Five
The Mysteries of Septenary Nature. Correspondences: Globes,
Elements, Human Principles. The Seven Sacred Planets of the
Ancients. Racial Time Periods and Catastrophes.

But upon this one of those more antient priests [of Egypt]
exclaimed, O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children,
nor is there any such thing as an aged Grecian among you!
But Solon, when he heard this — What (says he) is the
motive of your exclamation? To whom the priest: —
Because all your souls are juvenile; neither containing any
antient opinion derived from remote tradition, nor any
discipline hoary from its existence in former periods of
time. But the reason of this is the multitude and variety of
destructions of the human race, which formerly have been,
and again will be: the greatest of these indeed arising from
fire and water; but the lesser from ten thousand other
contingencies. . . . But whatever has been transacted either
by us, or by you, or in any other place, beautiful or great,
or containing any thing uncommon of which we have
heard the report, every thing of this kind is to be found
described in our temples, and preserved to the present day.
— Plato,
Timaeus, pp. 466-7 (Thomas Taylor, trans.)

LET US OPEN our study this evening by reading from the first
volume of The Secret Doctrine, pages 611-12, section 15, entitled
"Gods, Monads, and Atoms":

The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the

mysteries of Nature are to be found only in Eastern
esoteric sciences. So vast and so profound are these that
hardly a few, a very few of the highest Initiates — those
 whose very existence is known but to a small number of
Adepts — are capable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it
is all there, and one by one facts and processes in Nature's
workshops are permitted to find their way into the exact
Sciences, while mysterious help is given to rare individuals
in unravelling its arcana. It is at the close of great Cycles, in
connection with racial development, that such events
generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of
5,000 years of the present Aryan Kaliyuga; and between
this time and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the
Veil of Nature, and materialistic science will receive a
death-blow. . . .

. . . From the very beginning of AEons — in time and space

in our Round and Globe — the Mysteries of Nature (at any
rate, those which it is lawful for our races to know) were
recorded by the pupils of those same now invisible
"heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols. The
keys thereto passed from one generation of "wise men" to
the other.

At our last meeting we discussed a diagram showing the Syrian

views, from an exoteric standpoint, of the external and internal
structure of the kosmos; and some of you, who perhaps observed
carefully, will have noticed that this diagrammatic hierarchy
seemed to be represented as all on one plane. Now that is true, in
a certain sense; but there is much in connection with that fact
that we could not then and now cannot speak of, for the simple
reason that we have not as yet laid the foundations for properly
understanding it. Let it then suffice this evening to say that, as a
matter of real fact, the hierarchies interact and intermingle —
cross each other in all directions, as it were.

As remarked in a former study, the direction of our evolution is

"outwards" at first, and "inwards" secondly. On descending the
shadowy arc or the arc of matter in the beginning of the
manvantara of this our planetary chain, the direction which we
followed, as members of our planetary life-wave, was from
within outwards, i.e., from inner planes, from inner worlds,
constantly proceeding "downwards" — that is, into ever-
increasing materiality; and when we reached the middle of the
fourth round on this our globe, which is the central or turning
point of the manvantara of this planetary chain, the impulse
slackened and finally reached its close in what we call the fourth
root-race, the Atlantean race. Thereafter the reverse process
began its action, and progress, advancement, development,
retraced its steps, as it were, in a spiral, the direction
thenceforward being from without inwards, or an ascent in ever-
increasing spirituality. This process of a primal descent into
materiality, followed by a reascent into spirituality, is the course
followed not merely in the construction, development, and
consummation of the destiny of a planetary chain, and of all
planetary chains, but also is the course followed in the larger
cycles of evolution, such as the solar kalpas, for instance, which
comprise, each one, seven of the planetary manvantaras. Seven
planetary manvantaras make one solar kalpa; in other words,
seven Days of Brahma or seven planetary cycles, each cycle
consisting of seven rounds, form one solar kalpa (or manvantara).

In order to assist our minds in understanding our study this

evening, in order to help us in conceiving the idea, let us draw
seven circles representing seven globes: three on the downward
cycle or shadowy arc, one at the bottom or turning point, and
three on the ascending or luminous arc or cycle. We may number
with the letters of the alphabet.
Now these circles represent, if you will, the globes of the
planetary chain, and the evolution of the life-wave beginning on
globe A and running there through its appointed cycles,
completing them, and then entering B; after completing its course
on B, then entering C; and then, on ending its course for the
round on C, entering D, where we are now, and also in the fourth
round. We are thus halfway around the course for our round, the
fourth, and somewhat more, because we are the fifth root-race of
our globe D, on which seven root-races must run their course.

Each of these globes, furthermore is builded out of, and has its
correspondence with, what the ancients called the elements, that
is to say, the bases of the seven principles of nature. They are
furthermore called "rudiments," not in the sense of something
incomplete, but in the original sense of root-things, originants.
The Sanskrit word for the principles is tattwa, meaning "a
reality," not the uttermost reality, the Absolute of any hierarchy,
but its root-differentiations in manifestation; and the word for the
elements is bhuta, each element springing from its predecessor or
superior and giving life and birth to another, its inferior. The
ancients always reckoned four elements, and sometimes five; our
School reckons seven in all. The usual enumeration of the
ancients is as follows: aether, fire, air, water and, lastly, earth.
The last two principles to be enumerated, and the last two
elements, the bases of the former two, have been given no names
exoterically,
because they are not yet known by our present
senses. Human consciousness does not yet recognize them, but
they are recognized, taught of, and named, in the esoteric
philosophy nevertheless; and they are called, for the second,
anupapadaka-tattwa, a Sanskrit word very difficult to explain in
English. The general meaning is that it does not proceed from
anything else, i.e., "parentless." It proceeds from itself. Finally, the
first of all the seven, the uppermost on the descending arc of
nature, is called adi-tattwa or "original tattwa," for the principle;
and adi-bhuta for the corresponding element, because it belongs
to the same plane of being of the kosmos as the principle adi-
tattwa, but in a somewhat lower degree, being the base or vehicle
of the former, the principle.

These elements, of course, are not the familiar things which we

know under these names — fire, water, air, or earth — but these
familiar things are their correspondences on our earth, in a
mystic sense. Now, although the seven globes of the planetary
chain are not the seven elements respectively, each to each, yet
each globe is builded up out of them all and, furthermore, one of
the seven elements predominates in each one of the globes
respectively. All this will be elucidated in our future studies,
when we come to study the lokas and talas. For instance, on globe
A: the fire-quality would not be our material earth-fire; it would
there be the spirit of fire, so to say, the root of fire, because in the
esoteric philosophy "fire" is not merely the result of combustion,
according to modern scientific ideas, but is an actual element, a
rudiment, a base. And similarly with air, proceeding from fire,
born from fire; and similarly with the element water, proceeding
from
air, born from it; and again earth born from water, i.e., the
element water.

It is likewise the old Stoic doctrine, that the elements give birth
one to another. Manifestation begins on the spiritual plane, and
as the life impulses reach forth into grosser forms, into matter (to
use the popular expression), the succeeding elements (bases,
rudiments) are born, each one from the preceding one, and from
all preceding ones. For instance, earth is born not merely from the
element water, but likewise from fire, and air. Furthermore, the
seven rounds of a planetary chain, the seven globes of a planetary
chain, and the seven root-races of any globe thereof, has each its
predominating correspondence with one of these seven elements.
Please understand that we mean not at all the familiar things we
know on our earth by those names, but the bases, the originants,
the "spirits" of them: the causes, the tattwas, the real things which
produce what we see here on our earth.

Furthermore, the seven sacred planets are, each one of them, a

manifestation, an incorporealization, of the powers of one of the
seven solar logoi, or spiritual forces of our solar kosmos, of which
force-elements we may see a faint manifestation or, if you will, an
adumbration, in the seven colors of the solar spectrum. We
reserve further clearer explanation of this for future studies.

Please note also that our own human seven principles correspond
each one, respectively and relatively, with one of these elements.
The seven principles and elements of man are a duplication in
him of the seven principles and elements of the kosmos. The
seven elements, or bases, or rudiments, are the seven vehicles of
the seven principles of the kosmos. These elements are at the
same time substance and energy or force, because energy and
substance fundamentally are the same thing. Matter and force are
fundamentally the same thing. It is, as it were, the upper and the
lower side, the inward and outward, the impulse and its results or
fruits.

And furthermore, with regard to the seven sacred planets

mentioned above: when the esoteric science of the ancients spoke
of seven sacred planets, certain ones especially were designated
because, as a matter of fact, each of the planets known to us is
itself connected with seven other planets which are to it its seven
sacred planets. Our earth is not one of the seven sacred planets of
the ancients. Those seven sacred planets were Saturn; Jupiter;
Venus; Mercury; the planet very near to the sun, at present
invisible but suspected, and called by some modern astronomers
Vulcan; a sixth which we merely mention, at present; and a
seventh sometimes seen near the moon — by those who "have
eyes to see"!

It will be recollected that it was remarked at a former study that

the Vulcan-planet was first discovered, or supposed to be
discovered, on March 26th, 1859, when it was seen in transit
across the solar disk, and astronomers since then have searched
for it and have not been able to find it. The teaching with
reference to that planet, the highest (in one sense) of our seven
sacred planets, is this, that it became invisible to our physical
senses at about the middle point of the third root-race; but as we
have now reached again, on the upward arc, the plane
corresponding to the degree of plane-development of the third
root-race, in a relatively short cyclic period it should begin again
to show itself; but even today, while it might be generally
invisible on account of what we may call its ethereality, if
searched for by telescope it might nevertheless be seen, under
favorable conditions, crossing the solar disk. And why? Because
the truly indescribable brilliance of the sun throws anything that
appears
before it into visibility, so to speak, as a darker body, and
it could thus be seen as such a shadowy body crossing the solar
disk. At least that is one reason, probably, why astronomers have
searched for this planet and have — or have not yet — found it.

With regard to the seventh mentioned above, which is the

"lowest" of our seven sacred planets, the one esoterically spoken
of as near the moon, that planet is in its last or seventh round,
and is therefore dying. The probability is that it also, to our
present physical senses, is more or less ethereal, and therefore
practically invisible, except under certain very favorable
conditions. Before our planet shall have reached its last or
seventh round, our moon will have disintegrated into stellar dust,
but by that time this secret or Mystery-planet near the moon and
now dying will be dead, and will be to us as a moon; not a true
moon in the sense of our lunar mother, but rather a satellite. It
will appear to us as a moon; and, indeed, will be a "moon,"
because it will be a dead body.

There is a great deal that simply cannot be said — at least not yet
— about these seven sacred or Mystery-planets. But we have
pointed out before that the seven principal dhyani-chohans, or
lords of meditation, are very intimately connected, each to each,
respectively, with the seven Mystery-planets or sacred planets,
that is, the seven which are the sacred planets for the earth. There
are many other planets in our solar system, but only seven of that
number are our seven sacred planets.

Each other planet, Jupiter, let us say for instance, has its own
seven sacred planets, and all belonging to our solar system, but
not all of them would necessarily be our seven sacred planets. Yet
each one, by the interconnection or intermingling of the elements
of kosmic construction, each one of them, I say, is a solar locus.

Here again is something that we must touch upon before we pass

on farther.

Man is higher than the globe be lives on. Man is higher than the
sun. You and I sitting here, occupy a status spiritually higher than
the sun, although it is the spiritual and vital locus of the solar
system. The sun we see is not the true sun. The sun we see is
merely the focus of the titanic forces playing on the other side,
through it. And man is higher than it, and yet comes from it, from
the inner side of it, so to say. Further, as pointed out in another
study, do not be carried away by scientific theories, for science is
absolutely no criterion of spiritual knowledge, which is, as yet, far
beyond its scope or reach. Our physical bodies, i.e., the body of
each one of us, is a kosmos, even, relatively speaking, a universal
kosmos. Modern science is beginning to suspect this truth, and
the scientists now speak of the atom, formed of its electrons and
protons, as composing a miniature solar system. There is no
particle of substance or matter which is free from life, barren of
intelligent life and
lives; and there are beings in and on the
electrons of the atoms of our body which are higher than the
personal self of us is. A sublime thought to think about! We have,
indeed, higher responsibilities inherent in us than we dream of.
Our body, in very truth, is a temple of life.

I have received a letter from a friend which is well worth reading

at this point. I cite a portion of it with an included quotation
concerning the planet Vulcan:

"Seeliger has conclusively shown that there is enough of

the cosmic dust which forms the Zodiacal Light to account
for all the discrepancies in the movements of Mercury,"
and so make a Vulcan unnecessary.

This was written about twelve years ago, and was

supposed to settle the whole difficulty of Mercury's 42
seconds per century change in perihelion position.
Note first: the perturbations in the movements of Mercury were
first explained by an unknown planet called Vulcan. Well, Vulcan
could not be found again, so the theorists said that it must be
cosmic dust which produces these perturbations. Second theory: I
quote again from the letter:

Then comes friend Einstein and starts explaining it in an

entirely different way, and "cosmic dust" in its turn is
scientifically made away with. Then comes Professor Poor
of Columbia University and shows that Einstein's theory
about Mercury upsets the positions of the other planets
more than it helps Mercury — so there you are!

I admire their wonderful ingenuity in making theories for

the marvels they have discovered under the limited
conditions at their disposal, but we certainly must keep an
open mind on the things which are subject to such various
interpretations.

Very well put. It covers the ground very neatly.

We are nearing the conclusion of our study for this evening, but
meanwhile there is a matter which requires some treatment
before we close, and that is with regard to the root-races of any
globe of our planetary chain. Take the races, for instance, of our
own globe D of our planetary chain, globe D being the lowest in
the chain, as you know. Now these root-races occupy vastly more
time in their evolution than is commonly supposed. Time runs
into millions of years for any and for each root-race. It is
supposed by some who have not read H. P. Blavatsky's Secret
Doctrine with attention that our root-race, the fifth, is only about
one million years old now. That idea is not true, and H. P.
Blavatsky says nothing of the sort. In volume II, page 435, she says
that our fifth root-race is about one million years old, as a race sui
generis and quite free from its parent-stem. How many more
million years did it require to reach even that point, born as a
root-race at about the
central point of the mother-race? It
required millions of years for our race to reach the central point
of its career, where we are now. Our great racial catastrophe,
which will come upon us as their own came in due time upon all
other former root-races, and as such a catastrophe will come
upon the two races which are to succeed our fifth race, i.e., the
sixth and seventh root-races, has not yet reached us, but it is
coming.

Another thing: while each root-race is destroyed alternately by

fire and by water, let us not forget that the other elements
likewise are at work at the same time; but it is fire and water
more particularly which affect and cause the displacements of
continents or rather their submergence, and the emergence or
rising of the new lands. There is an interesting point of our
doctrines in this connection, and I now briefly allude to it.

The teaching is that the first, the third, the fifth, and the seventh
root-races are what may be called aqueous; and the second, the
fourth, and the sixth — those with even numbers — are what we
may call the terreous races. In other words, those with uneven
numbers, 1, 3, 5, and 7, flourish on our globe at times when the
oceans cover more of its surface than does the land; and the
conditions are reversed in the second, fourth, and sixth root-
races, when there is more land than water on the globe's surface.
Fire destroyed the first race, as it destroyed the third race also;
water destroyed the second and also the fourth race; and fire will
destroy the fifth, water the sixth, and fire again the seventh. Now,
geologically speaking, it is this alternation in extent of land or
water which brings about this cyclical condition.

Let us try to make this matter a little more clear. The third race
perished by fire, which means the action of subterrene
earthquakes and of volcanoes' principally, followed by
submergence. Now the third race was an aqueous race, that is to
say, there was then more water on the face of the earth than land.
So today, in our fifth race, at about the middle period of our race's
life cycle, there is one-third as much land as water on the surface
of the globe, i.e., three times as much water as land. When our
root-race shall be drawing towards its end, the coming
catastrophe will be shown by immense systemic and minor
seismic and volcanic disturbances, announcing the submergence
of our continental system and the emergence of new lands for the
following sixth root-race, the working of fire. When the Atlantean
system fell, when the Atlantean continental system had its
catastrophe which slowly overwhelmed it with flood, it was water
which caused it. There was then more land than water; nature
sought a
readjustment, a better balance, and that great system
perished by floods. The water came and submerged the land, of
course also accompanied by earthquakes and the action of
volcanoes. We must not imagine that when a root-race perishes
through fire or water as the chief causative agent, that there is
then no aqueous or terrene-fire disturbance. On the contrary, fire
and water work together, but the one or the other then
predominates. The fourth, the Atlantean, was a terreous period,
and nature followed her usual course in cases of disturbed
equilibrium — "and the waters came and overwhelmed the land."
Whence the "waters came" is a most fascinating subject for study,
but we have no time to go into it tonight. Ours is an aqueous
period; and in due course the waters will slowly tend to
disappear, giving place to new lands in the future, the dwelling
places to be of the next, the sixth root-race.

Katherine Tingley: I would like to ask Professor de Purucker if he

will make an explanation — which I think would be satisfactory
to you, and which he could do much better than I — and show
what will be the state of civilization, of humanity, at the ending of
these different races, when the end comes? How will evolution be
marked? Will not those people who will seem to be the "victims"
of the terrible catastrophe which comes at the end of every race
have the knowledge of the secrets of death, and look upon rebirth
as a glorious release?

G. de Purucker: I think certainly so. The end of every race brings

with it a perfection of what that race was striving to accomplish.
And I dare say that if we could look back and know what took
place when the continent of Atlantis sank, we should realize that
even those comparatively few, who by death left the physical
body during that catastrophe, had the realization that what they
had to undergo was no more and no less than merely one form of
death inevitable to all men sooner or later. They knew better than
we do now, although far more sunken in matter, that life is
eternal, for, actually, there is nothing but life everywhere! And
their physicians could have told them, and did tell them, for they
knew, that every disease of our bodies comes about from an
excess of life, particularly what we may call the malignant or
wasting diseases. In these cases it is life running riot in the body,
and that is what causes death. They knew it better than we.

Furthermore, no one should think that in these racial

catastrophes everyone is swept away in a moment in a fearful
confusion and chaos, and that there is no hope, and that
everything is but wild despair. Not at all. These catastrophes come
on slowly. The continents sink through the ages. Man migrates
and leaves the sinking lands behind, and moves to higher and
better ones, new ones, fresh ones, where new races are born out
of what we justly may call the death of the old.

Nothing, I suppose, that I might mention, could equal the horror

of the catastrophe of Lisbon years ago, when tens of thousands of
people perished in an earthquake; or the fearful catastrophe at
Messina, in Sicily, only a few years ago; and other earthquakes
and tidal waves which you all may remember. We are in our own
great cyclical catastrophe now, though it is but beginning. How
much worse is the agony of heart, let us say, of one who is at the
bedside of one whom he loves! Ah, there you have anguish! But
sudden catastrophes, when they do occur, occur mostly on a
relatively small scale. When the races near their ends, the
continents sink slowly. There are much worse things than merely
losing the physical body, for those whose destiny it is to be in a
racial catastrophe. They will know the beautiful secrets of death.
At the end of our race we shall know it far better than the
Atlanteans did. But not one so perishes individually, unless it is
his personal karma. How about the tens of thousands who
perish
yearly in steamer, train, automobile, mine and various other
accidents? Pray reflect.

Chapter 26
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Microcosm, a Mirror of the Macrocosm. Elements,

Principles, Manifestations of the One Life. Relativity: a
Fundamental Conception of the Ancient Wisdom.

"Man," says Van Helmont, "is the mirror of the universe,

and his triple nature stands in relationship to all things."—
H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, I, 213

. . . there is but one element . . . This element then is the —

to speak metaphysically — one sub-stratum or permanent
cause of all manifestations in the phenomenal universe.
The ancients speak of the five cognizable elements of ether,
air, water, fire, earth, and of the one incognizable element
(to the uninitiates) the 6th principle of the universe — call
it Purush Sakti, while to speak of the seventh outside the
sanctuary was punishable with death. But these five are
but the differentiated aspects of the one. As man is a seven-
fold being so is the universe — the septenary microcosm
being to the septenary macrocosm but as the drop of
rainwater is to the cloud from whence it dropped and
whither in the course of time it will return. In that one are
embraced or included so many tendencies for the
evolution of air, water, fire, etc. (from the purely abstract
down to their concrete condition) and when those latter
are called elements it is to indicate their productive
potentialities for numberless form changes or evolution of
being. — The Mahatma Letters, pp. 90-1

LET US OPEN our study this evening by reading from The Secret
Doctrine, volume I, section 16, pages 638-9:
 In ancient symbolism it was always the SUN (though the
Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was meant), that was
supposed to send forth the chief Saviours and Avatars.
Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the
Avatars, and so many other incarnations of the highest
SEVEN. The closer the approach to one's Prototype, "in
Heaven," the better for the mortal whose personality was
chosen, by his own personal deity (the seventh principle),
as its terrestrial abode. For, with every effort of will toward
purification and unity with that "Self-god," one of the lower
rays breaks and the spiritual entity of man is drawn higher
and ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first, until,
from ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the one and
highest beam of the Parent-SUN.

That is a superb passage. It contains in embryo the substance of

our studies for some weeks past. It will be remembered that we
have spoken of the Hierarchy of Compassion, the spiritual
hierarchy from which we draw our inner life, spiritual and
mental, and whose supreme chief is that Wondrous Being who, in
his spiritual capacity, is the dhyani-buddha of this fourth round.
His human representative is the chief of what we call the Great
White Lodge, he to whom the Masters look up for quickening and
enlightenment, he who lights their fires as they light and quicken
ours.

How is this quickening and lighting done? How was it that the
manasaputras worked, in their incarnations in the hitherto
senseless humanity, to raise man — if we can give to the
humanity of that time that name — from spiritually and mentally
senseless beings to self-conscious humanhood?

Listen: every one of the seven principles of man, as also every one
of the seven elements (corresponding in the kosmos to the seven
principles in man), is itself a mirror of the universe, that is, it
contains in itself everything that the boundless All contains.
Everything is in the microcosm that exists in the macrocosm; the
one, the less, mirrors the other, the greater. In other words, each
of the elements, each of the principles, each of the rudiments to
blossom forth later into divinity, is itself a septenary or sevenfold
entity, existing on its own septenary plane, which to it is as
palpably certain, real, and substantial as this our physical plane is
to us as seen through our physical eyes and heard through our
physical ears, or sensed by the media of the other senses, two
more of which, by the way, are still to be developed.

Now each one being a septenary, each one of these principles or

elements is a copy in miniature, if we may use that word, of the
Whole. For instance, the principle of manas is septenary. It has its
own atman, its buddhi, and its manas — the manas-manas, which
is its own particular essence or swabhava; next, its kama or
desire principle; then its vital essence; then its garment, its linga-
sarira, or model-body, so to say, that which gives it its own
particular shape and conformation according to the qualities of
that plane; and finally its sthula-sarira, or lowest portion or
vehicle or carrier or bearer.

These manasaputras or sons of mind, children of mahat, are said

to have quickened and enlightened the manas-manas of the
manas-septenary, because they themselves are typically manasic
in their essential characteristic or swabhava. Their own
vibrations, so to say, could cause that essence of manas in
ourselves to vibrate in sympathy, much as the sounding of a
musical note will cause sympathetic response in something like it,
a similar note in other things.

Who are these manasaputras? They are ourselves in a sense, but

we are rather and more particularly those who were quickened
and enlivened. They are a mystery; they are at once our higher
selves — not our highest selves, but our higher selves — and yet
different. We have shown in past studies that from the One spring
all the manifold differentiations of a kosmic (or any other)
hierarchy, and that there is a perfect kinship or unity of being
throughout. These sublime thoughts can be very clearly
understood if we awaken in ourselves that portion of our nature
to which they are native and familiar. We can do it, and it
depends upon us to do it. Why is it that the Masters choose, from
time to time, a certain one or certain ones, and take him or them
to themselves? Because they see in those so selected the inner
Master already quickened, enlivened, at least to some extent.
Would they take a beast? No. Why not? Because the beast is not
quickened. Would they take an ordinary man? No. Why?
Because
the man is not quickened, he is not awakened, he is not yet
conscious in himself of the inner essential Buddha, the Awakened
One. There is no question of arbitrary choice about this fact. It is a
selection and an election of the fit and proper ones; it is therefore
just, it is therefore right.

Let us pursue this thought a little more. Let us take nature and
consider her elements. Now this word element is from the Latin
and it means one of the rudiments of things, the word "rudiment"
in its original sense. The Sankhya especially, one of the six
accepted schools of philosophy of India, and also even the
Vedanta — perhaps the noblest of those schools — both speak of
the six original "producers" or elements of nature as prakritis, the
six prakritis derived from the primal Prakriti, or root-Prakriti, the
first and highest. The Sankhya also speaks of them, and so do
many students of the Vedanta, as the six tattwas or real elements.
Now what is the difference between the six elements or prakritis,
and the six tattwas? The prakriti is the vehicular or bearer- or
carrier-side, so to say, the substantial side, and the tattwa is the
analogic or force-side. And these two fundamentally are one,
because, please remember, matter and force, spirit and
substance, are
both fundamentally one. Matter can be called
crystallized spirit. We have to hunt for words in any attempt to
describe these things; hence this is an inadequate expression, but
it perhaps conveys the meaning. Parabrahman and Mulaprakriti
— "beyond-Brahman" and "root-nature" — of the Vedanta and the
Sankhya, represent the same thought, and these two
fundamentally are one. Root-nature is the veil, as it were, of the
primordial energy, the primordial consciousness; and these
prakritis in the Sankhya, these six or seven prakritis, stand for the
six or seven elements of nature, corresponding to our human
seven or six principles. And these are born, or issue rather, one
from the other. That prakriti which is the higher plane is the
parent of the prakriti which is the lower plane. First, the
primordial one gives birth to the second: atman, let us say, gives
birth to buddhi. And atman and buddhi combined give birth to
manas, issuing from the two former, and
containing the qualities
of the preceding two as well as its own. And atman, buddhi,
manas then give birth to kama, the fourth in order; and so on
down to the seventh or lowest.

Similarly globe A, the first on the descending arc, gives birth to

globe B, and globe B gives birth to globe C; but it does so with the
swabhavic tattwa of globe A also working in it. And globe C gives
birth to globe D, our earth, but with the tattwas or intrinsic
individualities or swabhavas of A and B in it also. Globe D thus
has the tattwas of globes A, B, and C inherent in it in addition to
its own individual characteristic or swabhava.

When the evolutionary impulse has reached its limit in any one
manvantara — and the limits vary in every manvantara, because
there is no absolute point or position in space, or any one
particular plane where every evolutionary manvantaric impulse
in the Boundless must stop, for so many monads, so many
hierarchies have so many respective evolutionary impulses and
their respective ends — that is, when that outrushing impulse
that comes from above, carrying these prakritis and principles
down into greater manifestation of matter, has reached the limit
possible for that particular manvantara, it then turns, as it were,
around the goal and begins the reascent.

We in our planetary chain have passed that goal or turning point

of the rounds. Furthermore, in each of the races on any globe of
the chain; in each of the globes during any round; and for each of
the rounds passing through all the seven globes; there is a
midpoint in its respective evolutionary course, and that midpoint
is its respective goal or turning point, where the respective cycle
begins a reascent. Hence, there will then be a sudden rising of the
evolving monads or entities; and, correspondentially, senses
hitherto latent and undeveloped will be developed, and the
principles in nature which we now do not cognize will then be
cognized and known. Ether, for instance, of which we have a
mere presentiment today at the middle point of our fifth race in
the fourth round, recognized even by science, will during the fifth
round become an actuality in what will then be the atmosphere,
as palpable and plain to the senses as air is today to us.

So, then, when speaking of the elements or the prakritis, we do

not mean that the earth and water and air and fire spoken of by
the ancients as elements, are the real elemental prakritis of
nature. That is absurd. The ancients used those words
symbolically. These four (or five things, including ether) are
merely manifestations — four of them so far developed — of four
or five out of the seven subprakritis or subprinciples belonging to
the lowest prakritic element as manifest at this stage on our
fourth globe, corresponding to the seventh or lowest kosmic
plane or prakriti.
As each principle is itself a subseptenary and mirrors the
Boundless, so does each element mirror all the other elements;
and from each element can be drawn the life and nature and
characteristic, in minor degree, of course, of all the other six. The
above-named qualities of the matter of the seventh or lowest
prakriti of our globe, that is to say, solidity, fluidity, air (there
seems to be no corresponding adjective in English for air, or for
the following one, fire), are merely the correspondences of the
similar subprakritis of the four kosmic elements or prakritis in
which our planetary chain exists now. Ether as an element will
come next; and in the sixth round will be developed the sixth
element; and during the seventh round will be developed the
seventh. None of the ancient philosophers of the Mediterranean
countries, when speaking of earth, water, air, fire, ether, nor the
Hindus, when speaking, for instance, of akasa or of adi-tattwa,
meant the material things which we can
sense, such as earth and
water. They meant the root-elements of nature, of which these
four or five things that we sense are, as it were, presentments or
symbols.

The Greeks called the elements stoicheia, a plural diminutive of

the word stoichos meaning a "series," in other words, a hierarchy.
The singular stoicheion would be an entity of a hierarchy, a part
of it, one of the composite parts of the hierarchy, although
modern scholars can trace no ostensible reason for giving this
name to what they recognize as being the ancient conception of
the elements of nature. But our philosophy shows why, and
explains that the stoicheia are the seven prakritis of the kosmos.
Each of the globes of our planetary chain is an imbodiment of all
these elements or seven prakritis, but in the manner outlined
above, of each element containing in parvo all the others. Our
earth, for instance, is an imbodiment or representation of the
lowest prakriti, but there is water and there is air and there is
fire, and we know that there is ether in development. We know
four and recognize five, an exemplification of what has just been
said. Nevertheless, the seven globes of our planetary chain are
not the respective correspondences of the seven kosmic elements.
This would be a false analogy.

Each one of the grades of initiation, of which we have spoken

before, corresponds to one of these seven kosmic elements; and
the trials through which the initiant or candidate must pass, in
order to prove his capacity, are regulated and governed by the
nature of each one respectively of the seven prakritis. There are,
as a matter of fact, ten grades or degrees of initiation and ten
kosmic prakritis — seven in manifestation, and three root-
prakritis or the highest; but the uppermost three are so far
beyond our utmost capacity of understanding now that we can do
no more than mention the fact. Always ten: three arupa or
formless (to us, please understand) and seven in manifestation;
and of these seven the upper triad is, relatively speaking, also
arupa.

Let us here point out something very important — that is, that all
the teaching of the ancient wisdom is given from our plane, so
that when we say arupa or "formless," it does not mean that in
themselves, an sich, per se, these higher planes or entities are
formless, which would be absurd. But to us they are formless,
exactly as ether is formless, because it is not yet (for us)
developed. We have as yet but a mere presentiment of it in this
fourth round, and only because we are in the fifth root-race,
corresponding in element to that fifth element, ether. And as a
corollary to that, and it is an important deduction, as regards the
beings inhabiting each element, each principle, of the universal
kosmos: their habitations, their countries, all that therein exists,
to them are as real and palpable as are palpable and material
things on our plane to us. Force, to us, is substance in motion. Do
you realize that our most dense and rigid matter is force to beings
in the
hierarchy below us? Do we realize that what we call the
density and the rigidity of matter are merely such to our senses,
and that this very density and this rigidity show and prove that
our dense and rigid matter is but a balancing of opposing forces?
Why, many modern scientists today, making a right-about-face
from what was utter truth to science some fifty years ago, now
say that there is no such thing as matter per se, that there is
nothing but force. Matter is therefore to it a maya, an illusion, and
so it is. But so is force a maya, because it is merely matter to
something higher than it. All things are relative, a statement
which is one of the fundamental conceptions of the ancient
wisdom.

So when we speak of these various prakritis and principles, let us

recognize first that these elements, these tattwas or principles,
from whatever viewpoint we may look at them, are all
manifestations of the one universal life, which is likewise
universal substance in its lower aspect. Spirit and substance,
force and matter are fundamentally one, two sides to the same
thing.

This, that is so important, we fain would dwell upon much longer

and give illustrations of its application to our studies. Let us make
a final application tonight. What is the difference between a
Master, and me and you? The former has his higher principles
awakened and lives in them. And we do not. From the scientific
standpoint, that is all there is to it; from the philosophic
standpoint, we may say that a Master has become as far as he can
be, more at one with the universal life; and from the religious
standpoint or the spiritual standpoint, we may say that a Master
has developed an individual consciousness, or recognition, of his
oneness with the Boundless. This is the very foundation of the
ethics without which there is nothing worthy of the ancient
wisdom. No man can misconduct himself without injecting
inharmony, disharmony, into the human hierarchy of which he is
a part, and for this he shall pay to the uttermost farthing. But this
is no vengeance, no punishment, by nature,
which merely
readjusts the disturbed equilibrium or disharmony. It arose out of
the exercise of free will. And the Masters have learned to govern
their wills and to cooperate with nature as a whole; thence they
grow in strength of soul, and live in unity with the divine. That is
the difference between them and us: they live at one with the
spiritual summit of our hierarchy. We can do the same. It is
simply a matter of opening our inner eyes, of cleansing our souls,
of clearing out from our brains the trash which we eat mentally,
the husks which the "swine feed upon," and letting in the pure,
clear life, the "wine of life."

It is only the molds of mind that impede us, nothing but the molds
of mind; and when we say the molds of mind we do not exactly
mean the molds of submental matter in which the mind works.
That is, I think, a wrong way to put it. We mean the crystallization
of the mind itself, when mental force becomes mental matter.
Therefore break these molds; no one can do it for you but
yourself. The molds of man's mind are his greatest enemy, his
worst foe, his strongest opponent, because these molds are living
substance. Your mind is matter, but it is living matter; and every
thought you think clings to the mind and inheres in it, and
becomes what the ancient wisdom calls an elemental, and it will
finally turn and torture you unless you break your mental molds.
What man would do otherwise, when there are freedom and light
and wisdom and peace and glory and knowledge unspeakable for
the having, for the taking, providing that we do indeed take the
kingdom of heaven by violence!

Chapter 27
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Two Fundamental Kosmical Hierarchies: Matter and Spirit-
Consciousness. Chaos-Theos-Kosmos: Gods-Monads-Atoms.

There are, assuredly, two forms of Brahma: the formed and

the formless. Now, that which is the formed is unreal; that
which is the formless is real, is Brahma, is light.

That light is the same as the sun [the spiritual sun, not our
visible sun which is only a reflection, a veil, a form].

Verily, that came to have Om as its soul (atman). He divided

himself (atmanam) threefold. Om is three prosodial units
(a+u+m). By means of these "the whole world is woven,
warp and woof, across Him." — Maitri-Upanishad, 6, 3
(Hume, trans.)

An exuberance of power is always present with the highest

causes, and at the same time that this power transcends all
things, it is equally present with all with unimpeded
energy. Hence, conformably to this, the first illuminate the
last of things, and immaterial are present with material
natures immaterially. Nor should it be considered by any
one as wonderful, if we say that there is a certain pure and
divine matter. For matter being generated by the father
and demiurgus of wholes, receives a perfection adapted to
itself, in order to its becoming the receptacle of the Gods. At
the same time nothing prevents more excellent beings
from being able to impart their light to subordinate
natures. Neither, therefore, is matter separated from the
participation of better causes; so that such matter as is
perfect, pure, and boniform, is not unadapted to the
reception of the Gods. For, since it is requisite that
 terrestrial natures should by no means be destitute of
divine communion, the earth also receives a
certain divine
portion from it, sufficient for the participation of the Gods.
— Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, pp. 265-6 (Thomas Taylor,
trans.)

IT IS NEARLY fifty years since H. P. Blavatsky brought theosophy

to us — nearly half a century has passed, and those of us who
have had the opportunity of studying it during that period, or at
least during part of it, realize the great changes that have taken
place in the thought of the world, changes such that we can only
ascribe them to the spiritual impulses given to the world by H. P.
Blavatsky, and those behind her.

At the close of our study this evening we shall point to a number

of facts, showing how this great theosophist, penetrating the
secrets of the ancient wisdom, foreshadowed, prophesied, if you
like, some of the greatest of the scientific discoveries, so called,
that have been made during these last fifty years.

These are real revolutions in thought, and it is only just that we

should place the merit where the merit is due, for there is no
other cause of such revolutions — which are not merely still
taking place, but which have hardly yet reached their maximum
— than the work done by H. P. Blavatsky, and the spiritual
impulse which she brought into the world at that time.

We open our study this evening by reading once again the latter
part of what we read at our last study from The Secret Doctrine,
volume I, pages 638-9, as follows:

The closer the approach to one's Prototype, "in Heaven,"

the better for the mortal whose personality was chosen, by
his own personal deity (the seventh principle), as its
terrestrial abode. For, with every effort of will toward
 purification and unity with that "Self-god," one of the lower
rays breaks and the spiritual entity of man is drawn higher
and ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first, until,
from ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the one and
highest beam of the Parent-SUN.

Two fundamental lines of thought, we trust, have been brought

out in our studies with at least sufficient clearness for present
purposes. Those lines are respectively the exposition of the night-
side, the matter-side, the vehicular side, of nature; and secondly,
of the light-side, the spiritual side, the divine side, of nature, the
latter also being in our system called the Hierarchy of
Compassion. The former hierarchy which pervades and really is
the space, the matter-space, or the space-matter, in which the
second hierarchy works, is composed of the hierarchy of the
builders, the masons of the world, the kosmokratores or world
makers of mystic Greek philosophy. They are the inferior
hierarchy spiritually, but have relative dominion over their
subhierarchies from their beginning down to their lowest plane,
which forms the mere elemental or nature forces on the lowest
plane of their kosmic hierarchy. Such words as elemental or
lowest are mere adjectives describing
psychological mysteries. As
hinted, the seven grades of them run up to the lowest of the
Hierarchy of Compassion, forming the divine side. There is no
break between them; actually, they interblend and interpenetrate
each other. As the spirit works in the soul of man, and the soul of
man works in his lower vehicle, so does the Hierarchy of
Compassion work in and through the hierarchy of the builders.

This thought is so important for the understanding of the ancient

wisdom that we call attention to it again and again, because it
provides the philosophical and scientific framework, the
structural carpentry, not merely of the universe, but of man's
own consciousness, and is the groundwork against which we
must place the picture of what takes place in the processes of
kosmic evolution and in that of man, as outlined in the ancient
initiations and Mystery Schools.

It was said at a former meeting that man is spiritually higher than

the sun. So he is; but it was not said which man — purposely not
said . The sun is the vital locus of his system, and so terrific are
the forces of that same inwardly divine entity, even on our plane,
that were one of us, a man, to approach within the range of those
forces he would be simply annihilated, not merely broken up and
dispersed as the physical body is at death, but reduced to nothing,
wiped out. Why? Because the first five (counting upwards), i.e.,
the five lower principles of his psychological economy, would be
dissipated into their component atoms, each to each on its own
plane, and drawn, sucked, into the stellar body, and only his
higher part, the divine part, the spiritual part, belonging to the
Hierarchy of Compassion, the Christ part, the Buddha part, would
remain intact. Why? Because the latter part itself is of the same
substance as the hid sun, of which our physical sun is merely the
reflection or
the manifestation on this plane of the divine being
behind it. Consequently, when we said that man is greater than
the sun, we meant that his progress along the path of evolution
has proceeded farther than that entity (considered as a reflection)
which is the sun. He undoubtedly is farther along the path of
evolution than is his solar locus — a paradox, indeed, but true! It
was the entry into the senseless "shadows" of his being, i.e., the
four lowest of his seven principles, by the manas principle,
inferior to the two highest, during the middle of the third root-
race in this fourth round, that made of him the being that he now
is, self-conscious; and thereby he became literally an incarnation
of the divine.

It now remains with him to bring into activity those inner forces,
his higher principles, which form his inner spiritual nature, and
which are not indeed inert, but only sleeping, as it were. We
speak of the higher principles as "sleeping" in a man, a form of
speech which is perhaps correct as a manner of expression, but
really it is the lower ones which are asleep spiritually and need
awakening. The very root budh, from which we have buddhi, and
buddha, and budha with one d, means "to awaken," hence
derivatively "to enlighten." Our higher principles are actual
entities living on their own planes, individual beings, fully
conscious and thinking entities. Fix that thought firmly in your
minds, if you please. Our higher parts are not inchoate,
uncoordinated, undeveloped, sleeping things. They are a unity of
entities, a spiritual kosmos in miniature.

The great awakening of the lower elements in third-race man that

was accomplished by the incarnation of these manasaputras was
repeated, partly dramatically and partly actually, in the ancient
Mysteries and in the initiations, which were thus a copying of
what still takes place in nature, and took place in nature
preeminently during the third root-race. And by those initiations
the attempt was still further to stimulate, still more to awaken,
still more greatly to enliven and bring forth that inner and higher
nature of man. That great purpose formed the core, the heart, and
the meaning, of the ancient initiations.

Yet, please mark, initiation and Mystery do not mean the same
thing exactly. Though very closely similar in purpose and running
on parallel lines, of the two, initiation meant teaching, awakening,
opening the mind; the Mysteries were the dramatized forms of
what took place in the higher degrees. There were three
dramatizations, training and educating the neophyte for what he
must be, and go through, in the four higher degrees. He was
directed and helped in those higher degrees as far as was made
permissible by his karma; but the very heart and essence of the
trial was a test, and he had to face it alone, and himself to prove
his spirit-power, to prove the soul-nature of him. If he came
through the first trial triumphant, he was granted the privilege,
and he had the inner strength, to undertake the higher degrees.
There could, under such conditions, be no full protection, no
mollycoddling. Just the contrary of that took place. His teacher
watched over his
senseless body while his inner nature was out
exploring the realms of space, yea, entering into the sun, entering
into the planets, and into the moon, and into other things and
beings, becoming, losing his self and becoming, that which he had
to face and conquer, or fail. Glorious were the privileges of
victory; and at the end, at the seventh trial, if and when the final
triumph came, he rose a glorified Buddha, a glorified Christ, truly
a master of men. Then he knew, because he had been. This was no
mere sensual experience, sensual in the sense of being an
experience of the senses — hearing, seeing, touching, feeling,
smelling, tasting — but it was being the things and beings of
which he had been taught, i.e., complete knowledge of life in this
hierarchy.

Such was the meaning of the higher initiation, of those higher

degrees which went beyond the scope and meaning of the
Mysteries, which latter were the dramatizations of the processes
of kosmical life, the preparation for whatever it was that the
candidate had to face in the four higher initiatory degrees.

In order to make the matter more clear, let us write down a

symbolic outline of the two lines of growth or development of the
two fundamental kosmical hierarchies.

On the left or matter-side:

CHAOS
THEOS
KOSMOS
On the right or divine side, the light-side:

GODS
MONADS
ATOMS

corresponding each to each; and psychologically, so far as man is

concerned, (1) the divine; (2) the spiritual or human; and (3)
kosmic-astral.

Chaos is a Greek word, and is usually thought to mean a sort of

helter-skelter treasury of original principles and seeds of beings.
Well, so it verily is, in one profound sense; only it is most
decidedly and emphatically not helter-skelter. It is the kosmic
storehouse of all the latent or resting seeds of beings and things
from former manvantaras. Of course it is this, simply because it
contains everything. It means space, not the highest space, not the
Parabrahman-Mulaprakriti, the Boundless — not that; but the
space of any particular hierarchy descending into manifestation,
i.e., what space for it is at that particular period of its beginning of
development. Remember the principle of relativity. There are no
utter absolutes anywhere and never have been and never will be.
The directive principles in Chaos are the Gods of the
corresponding column.

Theos is a Greek word meaning "god." Corresponding to it are the

Monads.

Kosmos is a Greek word meaning "arrangement." Kosmos was

also used for a woman's paraphernalia, decoration, and all that
kind of thing: cosmetics and robes and jewelry. It meant that
which was arranged and kept along the lines and rules of
harmony — the arrangement of the universe; and corresponding
to it in the other column are the Atoms. Note the three
correspondences: Chaos, Gods or divine beings, the kosmic
architects; then Theos, for the builders, the kosmokratores,
corresponding to the Monads, the spirit-beings; then Kosmos, the
universe, arranged as we see it; and the Atoms, or vital-astral
seeds, on the divine side.

We do not speak here of chemical atoms, please understand.

These belong to the Kosmos. As used in this outline, Gods,
Monads, and Atoms, we mean (1) the divine; (2) the spiritual-
human; and (3) those ultimate particles of substance which
inflame, which inspire, which vitalize, the material kosmos. Each
to each: the Gods work in the Chaos; the Monads work in and
through the Theos, the theoi, the builders; and the Atoms, as the
semiconscious, ultimate entities of matter, work through the
Kosmos or the manifested universe, as prepared according to
what is popularly called natural law, i.e., the essential and
inherent operations of nature, deriving from the Gods and
Monads.

Such an atom, according to these parallel columns (which are H.

P. Blavatsky's, of course), signifies the ultimate particle of matter,
which ultimate particle is matter's seventh principle, its highest
principle; and for that reason the sun is called an atom, because it
is the seventh or highest degree of matter or prakriti on this
plane. Prakriti means nature or the developing power, that which
has brought forth manifestation. There are seven kosmical
prakritis, and we are in the first or lowest; the seventh as you
count downwards, the first if you count upwards. Each of these
again has seven subplanes. The sun as an entity is the highest
entity of the kosmical system, the solar system. But what we see is
merely its vehicle, its seventh or lowest or material element or
principle, counting downwards. The so-called solar flames are not
flames. The sun is not burning; it is not in combustion; it is not
hot; what we see is the aura of the Sun, the sixth subelement or
subprinciple of the first or
lowest prakriti. That aura therefore is
the sun's material buddhic aura, and looked at from the scientific
standpoint it is a globe of kosmic forces. Please remember, as so
often said before, that force and matter fundamentally are the
same; they are simply different degrees of manifestation of spirit-
substance. Matter is crystallized force; or, if you like, though it is
not so good a method of describing it, spirit or force or energy is
etherealized matter. Much better is it to put it the other way.

Matter on our plane is crystallized light. Light is substance-energy

or energy-substance, either will do. Call it force. And light, this
force, again is the matter of something still higher than it, the
prakriti above it.

Now our time has nearly expired, and we wish to call attention to
what was spoken of at the beginning of our study this evening,
certain very important and fundamental principles of thought
which the scientists call discoveries of our era made by them (or
at least in the making by them), but which were anticipated in
time by members of this School from the study of theosophical
doctrines. Please understand that we look upon science, ordered
and coordinated knowledge, as the greatest friend and ally we
have. But when it comes to the theories or speculations or dogmas
of scientific men, we accept them or reject them exactly in
proportion as we think that they contain or do not contain truth
— not my truth or your truth, but as they contain (or do not
contain) those fundamental principles which, by their coherency
and consistency and appeal to the best in us, announce
themselves as facts of being.

Theosophy, indeed, has changed the world's thought. Practice

without theory is emptiness of mind; theory without practice is
folly. A man who has a beautiful theory, and does no act to carry
it into operation or fact, is a drone, for he was not born to be a
sloth; but on the contrary, a man who has no theory, whose ideas
are not coordinated and directed by principles, is a madman, and
acts like a fool. The noblest thing that we can do is so to change
the thought of the world that men will realize their oneness with
the inner beings on the various planes of life universal, and
govern themselves accordingly, not merely in the legislatures, but
in their teachings and in their personal conduct of life, and in
their care for their brothers, and in their sense of loyalty and
fidelity to their teachers, those whom they know and believe to
have that truth.

We have drawn up a list of a few such anticipations, and

doubtless any one of you could have extended the list to thrice or
four times its length. Here they are:

1. That simple materialism, comprising fortuity, chance, and dead

matter, producing life and consciousness, as an explanation of life
and being, is unscientific, unphilosophical, and impossible,
because contrary to nature and reason; therefore absurd.

2. That other planets are inhabited by intelligent beings, or are

not so, as the case may be; and that this is denied not from
knowledge, but from ignorance only, of such planets; the only
planet that we do know, our earth, bearing intelligent beings. The
denial therefore is irrational, purely speculative and theoretical,
and based solely on supposedly true facts concerning
atmosphere, cold or heat, etc., as these are known on our planet
only.

3. The unreal nature of the physical universe, or sphere, i.e., that

all we see and know with sensational perceptions is its purely
phenomenal appearances.

4. That force is etherealized matter; or, preferably, that matter is

equilibrated or crystallized forces.

(These last two have now been fully admitted by exoteric

scientists.)

5. That electricity and magnetism are particular, i.e., corpuscular:

formed of particles or corpuscles, and therefore matter. They are
the phenomenal effects of noumenal causes — matter or rather
matters.

6. That the so-called modes of motion, when H. P. Blavatsky first

brought her message to the world, i.e., forces, of whilom
scientists, as a definition of forces, is a childish effort to explain
forces by ticketing them in a new manner which explains nothing
at all, all forces being simply moving matters.

7. That all matter is radiant, i.e., radioactive, that is, it radiates;

some forms or states of matter more than others. Compare the
work and discoveries of Becquerel, Rontgen, the Curies,
Rutherford, and Soddy, etc., and the work on similar lines of great
thinkers in other countries.

8. That light is corpuscular, because a matter, or substance; that

is, light is a material radiance, in fact.

9. That transmutation of matters, hence of metals, is a fact in

nature, occurring hourly, momently, instantly, and continuously
through time.

10. That the atom is a divisible body — i.e., the chemical or

physical atom; it is, so to say, merely a smaller molecule.

(Numbers 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 have all been admitted by science, or

practically admitted; in some cases in full, in other cases verging
on full admission.)

11. That the physical atom is a tiny solar system, each member of
such a system being in its own turn compounded of physical
infinitesimals, or of subatoms, or of infra-atoms.
12. That the nebular hypothesis as commonly accepted was
incomplete, insufficient, as a workable hypothesis, although
containing certain elements of natural, that is, of occult, truth.

13. That the sun is neither burning, nor even hot, though it is
glowing in one sense, superficially, i.e., on its "surface"; nor does it
recuperate its heat and other forces, as alleged, by shrinkage of
volume; nor does radium account for its expenditure of energy, is
practically admitted.

14. That storms — rain, hail, snow, wind — and droughts, likewise
most of the earth's heat, are not caused by or derived from solar
energy, but result from electromagnetic interplay of forces
between the earth's mass and the meteoric mass, or "veil," above
our atmosphere; such phenomena or effects being accompanied,
partly causally, partly effectually, by periodic expansion or
dilatation of the atmospheric body and by periodic contraction
thereof; and that the glacial periods, so called, are largely due to
the same causes.

(A few months ago, let me interpolate, some eminent scientists in

the northern part of California were investigating the upper
regions of the atmosphere, and to a certain extent they have come
to this conclusion, at least in part and in degree.)

15. That Darwinism and Haeckelism are inadequate to explain

and account for the mass of biological phenomena; and neither
Darwin's natural selection nor Spencer's survival of the fittest, is
other than a minor or secondary operation of nature; that
transformism as taught by the modern speculative scientist is not
evolution — which is what the ancient wisdom does teach — and
is both uncertain as a theory because purely speculative, and
unscientific because as a theory it is based on data too few;
therefore it is incomplete and insufficient.
(We all know what remarkable changes have taken place in the
theories of the transformists even since H. P. Blavatsky died.)

16. And lastly, that all things and operations in the kosmos are
relative, not absolute, in nature, there being no absolutes except
in the sense of relativity of relationships; our teachings thus
anticipating the fundamental concept of Dr. Albert Einstein on this
point.

At our next meeting, we shall take up the study of the atom.

Chapter 28
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Adventure of an Atom. Laya-Centers: Sun, Comets, and
Planets; Soul and Monad. The Keynote of Occultism.

The Occult Science is not one, in which secrets can be

communicated of a sudden, by a written or even verbal
communication. If so, all the "Brothers" should have to do,
would be to publish a Hand-book of the art which might be
taught in schools as grammar is. It is the common mistake
of people that we willingly wrap ourselves and our powers
in mystery — that we wish to keep our knowledge to
ourselves, and of our own will refuse — "wantonly and
deliberately" to communicate it. The truth is that till the
neophyte attains to the condition necessary for that degree
of Illumination to which, and for which, he is entitled and
fitted, most if not all of the Secrets are incommunicable. The
receptivity must be equal to the desire to instruct. The
illumination must come from within. Till then no hocus
pocus of incantations, or mummery of appliances, no
metaphysical lectures or discussions, no self-imposed
penance can give it. All
these are but means to an end, and
all we can do is to direct the use of such means as have
been empirically found by the experience of ages to
conduce to the required object. And this was and has been
no secret for thousands of years. — The Mahatma Letters,
pp. 282-3

LET US OPEN our study this evening by reading an extract from

volume I of The Secret Doctrine, page 567:

As to the "elemental atoms," so called, the Occultists refer

to them by that name with a meaning analogous to that
 which is given by the Hindu to Brahma when he calls him
ANU, the "Atom." Every elemental atom, in search of which
more than one Chemist has followed the path indicated by
the Alchemists, is, in their firm belief (when not
knowledge), a SOUL; not necessarily a disembodied soul,
but a jiva, as the Hindus call it, a centre of POTENTIAL
VITALITY, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of
compound Souls — an intelligent active EXISTENCE, from
the highest to the lowest order, a form composed of more
or less differentiations.

Majestic, sublime, are the thoughts involved in the study which

we begin this evening. It ought to be said, perhaps, by way of
preface, that the frequent interruptions of our meetings
necessitated by circumstances have prevented us before from
entering upon this new departure in our studies; and we shall
not, except by inference, embark upon our present line of thought
more fully than we shall do this evening until our studies can be
continued more definitely. And why? Because from immemorial
time our School has set apart a certain portion of the year, at
certain specified times, of never less than three months, in which
the studies were pursued daily for hours at a time, with intervals
of rest; and these were called periods of initiation. The reason for
this method was that frequent interruptions, the inroad or ingress
into the thought of daily occupations, so distracted the mind, so
tore it away from the higher nature, that it could not successfully
meet and understand the things which it was then
supposed to
undertake and to try to comprehend.

But doing the best we can, we shall begin this evening, very
shortly, to undertake a study of the atom, and of what H. P.
Blavatsky calls its adventures, by referring to collateral and
almost identical subjects: the laya-centers, the sun and planets
and comets, and the soul and the monad by contrast with the
above.

As we read in The Secret Doctrine, an atom is a soul. A soul is an

entity which is evolved by experiences; it is not a spirit, it is a
vehicle of the spirit. It manifests in matter through and by being a
substantial portion of the lower essence of the spirit. Touching
another plane below it, or it may be above it, the point of union
allowing ingress and egress to the consciousness is a laya-center.
A laya-center is, therefore, a center in "homogeneous" substance.
It will be remembered that in a former study we derived this
word laya from the Sanskrit word li, meaning "to dissolve." The
word pralaya comes from the same root: laya is the noun-form
from the root li, with a prepositional prefix pra, meaning
"towards," "forwards," hence "continuous." In other words,
pralaya means "continuous dissolution." A laya-center is that part
of an entity, of an atom which, being
relatively homogeneous
substance, matter "dissolved" into homogeneity, allows ingress
and egress for passing consciousness and consciousnesses.

Let us take the laya-center as manifested in the sun. The sun at its
core is a laya-center. Each planet likewise has at its central point,
and is in its central point, a laya-center; each comet is in building
around a laya-center, its heart or core. Dimensions or positions in
space have nothing to do with it, because a laya-center is not of a
physical and material nature. It is the disappearing-point for all
things below it, and the entering-point for all things above it, for
any one particular entity, be it an atom, a sun, a planet, a human
being.

The sun, as we see it, is a reflection, as we have often before said.

Suppose that we call it a veil, which is perhaps a better word,
though reflection is just as good, because it actually is a reflection
— the sun we see, that is. What do we see when we look at the
sun? We see a titanic splendor. That is a reflection. The sun itself,
its core, could be held in the palm of your hand, and I mean the
part of the sun which is behind that splendorous reflection. That
part which could be held in the palm of your hand is itself of the
seventh or highest stage of the lowest prakriti-stage, a particle of
matter-substance of the lowest cosmic grade, the prakriti. The
splendor that we see is the aura of that laya-center, its aura or
emanations, and these emanations are forces. The sun is a body
of unimaginable forces springing from, pouring down through,
this laya-center from the true sun which is behind the outer veil.
And the golden disk that we see is but the auric manifestation to
our
physical eyes on this plane of the true sun, pouring through
the sun at the center of the visible orb.

So it is in a human being. There is a center in his nature through

which pour the forces from above, and through which he himself
ascends higher; and that center is the laya-center of his inner
nature.

In speaking of the monad, we must not confuse it with the laya-

center. A laya-center is the channel, the point, the disappearing-
point, the neutral center, in matter or substance, through which
consciousness passes — and the center of that consciousness is
the monad. For the present moment we need not pause to
consider on what plane the monad is acting; on any plane on
which it may be acting when it passes from one plane of
consciousness to another it does so through a laya-center. It will
be remembered that in our last study or two we pointed out the
parallelisms running in nature, such as matter and spirit-
consciousness. Please remember that these words are used
generalizingly, not defining any particular matter or any
particular spirit, but only to show the mass of kosmic substance
acted upon by the great forces above it, which are the beings of
life, the hierarchies of universal nature; and in this kosmic body,
in this kosmic substance, there are innumerable laya-centers,
because they are
really the "critical points," the translation-stages,
by which as individuals we gain access to our higher self, and by
which the divine and spiritual forces entering into us from above
pass.

The sun is the vital focus of its system, outside of other activities
far greater still, but the physical sun is that something which we
can see with our physical eyes; and further it is a thing of matter,
although it is in the sixth degree of our stage of prakriti, counting
upwards, the buddhic stage of the lowest prakriti. But the true
sun, the spiritual sun, is that divine being behind the sun, an
entity, a god. The physical sun is its body or garment, just as in
ourselves our higher nature is a god, a divine spark, and that
divine spark is a monad. The soul in contradistinction with the
monad is its vehicle for manifestation on any one plane. It really
means vehicle. The spirit manifests in seven vehicles, and each
one of these vehicles is a soul; and that particular point through
which the divine influence passes into the soul is the laya-center,
and it is, so to say, the heart of the soul, or rather the summit
thereof — homogeneous soul-substance, if you like.

It is very necessary to have these preliminary conceptions clear

and definitely outlined in our minds. The mysteries behind these
words are sublime, unimaginably beautiful; but we cannot
understand them properly without knowing the words, and the
implications of thought involved in them when we use them.

All the sectarian departures from the great foundation-religions

of antiquity have grown out of the lack of following that one rule.
Understand your terms and use them rightly. Disputes have
arisen about the meaning of terms, due perhaps to the fact that in
the origin of any particular religion those terms were not defined
in such clever and appropriate manner that later dogmatists
could not fasten upon them in order to misuse them.
It is actually a most difficult problem. We are always between
"the devil and the deep sea." On the one hand, we have the people
who will insist upon literalisms, such as "Pythagoras, the Master,
said so." A beautiful sense of loyalty to the teacher in some cases,
perhaps; but see how it can be misused by the would-be
dogmatists, who insist on taking the letter and losing the spirit!
And, on the other hand, there are those who think that the letter
has no importance, which is likewise wrong; this class think that
they have the spirit and they try to force the letter to conform to
their conceptions of what the Master or Masters taught,
Pythagoras or any other.

So it is necessary that we have these and other similar words

clearly outlined in our minds. When we undertake the study of
the atom we embark upon new and vast fields of consciousness,
and pass in our minds over to other planes; and our only
salvation is, as H. P. Blavatsky has told us, to cling like grim death
to the fundamental principles of her teachings which are the
Masters' teachings. We cannot so cling unless we know exactly to
what we should cling. If we were to say that an atom is a god, we
would say wrongly. If we were to say that the atom contains a
god, we should speak only partly rightly. If we were to say that
the atom manifests a god, we approach a step nearer to the truth.

Now comes another thought. What do we mean by atom Do we

mean a kosmical atom, an astral atom, a psychical atom, a
buddhic atom, an atmic atom? Our studies of theosophy show us
that all these atoms are variously "souls," existent on divers
planes, in various degrees of consciousness; and we realize then
that the atom in its essence, in its inmost of its inmost, is a monad,
a divine spark, a being from former manvantaras, which monad
has learned its lessons so fully that it needs to learn nothing more
in this manvantara. But it is trailed by a train of skandhas,
resident in the life-atoms, and which are karmic impressions.
These life-atoms are inferior beings, trailing after it, making up its
bodies, so to say, as certain elements make up our bodies, beings
for which it is responsible because it affected them in former
kalpas, former manvantaras, former life cycles: responsible for
them because it has soiled them in some instances, and in other
instances it has cleansed them
from the soil.

What are these inferior things that follow in the track of a

Monad? They are parts of its being, thoughts of its thought,
children of its soul, offspring of its heart. Sublime thought, in
which we have the secret of manifestation in the universe, and
also the secret of the Hierarchy of Compassion; the secret why
one half of nature is what we call matter, crystallized and so-
called inert; and why the other half of nature is will and
consciousness, intelligence and love, understanding and life. And
these two opposites work eternally together during the
manvantaras. At every moment in space and time, units of this
train of inferior things themselves reach comprehension and
understanding, and pass through their particular laya-center into
spheres above — themselves having meanwhile developed or
evolved other inferior beings trailing after them.

The processes of kosmic life and evolution are outlined in what

has just been said. So that when we use H. P. Blavatsky's
expression and speak of the "adventures of an atom," we obtain
some glimpse of the study now before us. Do you realize that in
the studies which we have followed as faithfully as we have been
able to do so, there has been laid down the outline, at least the
skeleton-framework, of a system of philosophy entire and
complete, so majestic in its reaches, so wide in its subject, having
such grandeur in its possibilities, such profundity in its inmost
nature, that nothing like it is known in the exoteric literature of
the world today? Even the magnificent systems of exoteric
philosophy of the Orient and the best efforts of European
philosophy — which, by the way, are mostly mere verbiage —
cannot compare with it. Their light is as a mere rushlight before
the blaze of the noonday sun, when we compare them with the
esoteric system.

And why is this so? Because we have outlined the teachings of the
gods, the teachings formerly taught in the ancient Mystery
Schools. Nor have they been more than hinted at. We have not
said the one-thousandth part of what remains to be said.

Seven are the keys which open wide the portals of the ancient
wisdom. These seven keys we have touched but lightly, of
necessity lightly, in our allusions to the seven treasuries of
wisdom. In one or another of these seven treasuries, or in one or
another of these seven jewels, lies every department of human
thought, every thought that human mind can give birth to. These
seven treasuries were given and explained to the ancient races by
members of the Hierarchy of Compassion, and by their pupils,
and they have been passed down to us. But remember that these
seven treasuries, as we have already said very plainly, under the
names they go by are mere key words, catchwords, reminding-
terms.

These sublime ideas make a man feel at home in any part of the
universe. This is the very keynote of occultism, the being one with
the universal life, at home everywhere. Occultism is the
exposition of the essence of life, of the essence of being, and of the
essence of living. Let us never confuse it with the so-called occult
arts, arts which are strictly forbidden to us as students of this
School. The Brothers of the Shadow lead on their helpless victims
with the occult arts, enticing them thereby, and their end is
nonentity. But the Masters have told us plainly: first learn
discipline, first learn the Law. Then the powers which you may
crave, you will crave only as spiritual powers, and only to give
yourself and them to others. On the path, the so-called occult arts
drop away even from the imagination, because their deluding
enticements and their allurements are clearly seen. I do not
imagine for a moment that any one of us here needs to be
reminded of this.

Katherine Tingley has been insistent upon the necessity of first

learning the Law — and the learning of the Law means the
development of the spiritual nature; and it is the royal road, the
royal union. Having it, you have everything in the universe;
boundless knowledge, for instance, and the powers
commensurate with it then will come naturally. But any attempt
to cultivate them prematurely, any mere longing for them, will
pull you down as surely as the sun will rise over the eastern
horizon tomorrow morning, because it is the personal coloring of
the mind, it is the personal wish, it is desire and appetite for
power and novelty that want these things. The divine-human
entity, the buddha, the member of the Hierarchy of Compassion
by divine right, knows these things and wants them not, for he
has passed far beyond them. The constant urge with him is to go
above matter, to cleanse the heart from soil, to cast off the
garments of the mortal man and to put on the robes of
immortality which, in fact,
inwardly are yours already, awaiting
simply for each individual to recognize them, and to become, as
the ancient Egyptian expressed it, a "Son of the Sun," a holy
initiate.

Chapter 29
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Twenty-Nine
Space: the Boundless All. Infilled with Interlocking,
Interpenetrating Universes. One Action, One Hierarchical
Intelligence, One Course of Operation throughout Nature: One
Organism, One Universal Life.

Either an ordered universe, or else a welter of confusion.

Assuredly then a world-order. Or think you that order
subsisting within yourself is compatible with disorder in
the All? And that too when all things, however distributed
and diffused, are affected sympathetically. — Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus to Himself, 4, 27 (Rendall, trans.)

Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having

one substance and one soul; and observe how all things
have reference to one perception, the perception of this
one living being; and how all things act with one
movement; and how all things are the co-operating causes
of all things which exist; observe too the continuous
spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web. —
Ibid., 4, 40 (Long, trans.)

IN CONTINUING our study this evening, let me once more

introduce our subject by calling attention to the fact that the
teachings of occultism are based on a foundation of ethics and
morals; and, as has so often been said, there is the distinction
which marks the division line, as it were, between the hierarchies
on the one side, the ascending or luminous arc, and those
hierarchies on the other side, the shadowy arc, or those beings
and intelligences which are descending into matter for the
experience needed in order to enable them to take their march on
the upward rise.
Ethics is not a subject which is disputable, as between men; only
the forms of ethics are; but the fundamental principles of right as
contrasted with wrong, of duty as contrasted with selfishness, of
the joy of renunciation and self-abnegation as contrasted with the
shriveling influence of the opposite theories of being — and there
are many in the world — in these lies the distinction between the
sons of light and the children of the shadow.

It will be remembered that our subject in closing our last study

was the teachings imbodied in the word atom. Mark first, please,
that this does not mean the atom of science. The atom of science
is a more or less clear conception of fundamental material
particles which has arisen in the minds of scientists in an attempt
to explain the phenomena of physical nature as those phenomena
have been studied during the last hundred years or so; and the
scientific doctrines concerning the atom are based, furthermore,
largely on misunderstood teachings of certain Greek
philosophers.

But if we understand the atom as the doctrine concerning it is

imbodied in the teachings of the ancient wisdom, we shall find
that it is an intelligence and a living being of its kind. Let us then
open our studies this evening by reading from The Secret
Doctrine, volume I, pages 107 and 106; from page 107 first:

. . . every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self-

consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a
Universe in itself, and for itself. It is an atom and an angel.

Not a Christian angel; not a being with wings, etc., but a spiritual
intelligence. Then from page 106:

The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine,

fully conscious god, — aye, even the highest — the Spiritual
primeval INTELLIGENCES must pass through the human
 stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely
to our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit
any world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached the
appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we
have now, since the middle point of the Fourth Root Race
of the Fourth Round was passed. Each Entity must have
won for itself the right of becoming divine, through self-
experience.

These words "self-experience" comprise the thought which

Katherine Tingley so frequently emphasizes in her instructions to
us — self-directed evolution, a doctrine imbodying the necessity of
using our spiritual will and our spiritual intelligence for noble
and altruistic and impersonal aims. Let us say here again that for
man there is always a choice of paths: the right-hand, the
luminous arc, upward and upward forever; and the left-hand, the
shadowy arc, leading down into those spheres concerning which
we have knowledge, of course, and of which we have already
several times spoken.

Further, be it noted that this term or word atom is really a

catchword. We say atom, but we actually mean a multitude of
thoughts connected with cosmogony and evolution. For instance,
gods, monads, souls, atoms, are words jointly and separately
involved in profound doctrines explaining cosmogonical and
evolutionary processes. And connected therewith very closely is
what is called in occultism the laya-center, to which we have
briefly alluded in former studies. In part three of this first volume
of The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky, in section 15, devotes one
of the most beautiful parts of her great work to developing the
doctrines comprised in what she called "Gods, Monads, and
Atoms."

Please understand first, that in these studies, questions of

spirituality, ethics, religion, are deeply involved. They go to the
very foundation of our being. They are not mere questions of
brain-mind disputation, or mere mental exercises in clever
speaking. These teachings lead directly to the setting of our feet
on the path of the luminous arc; and we who have had the benefit
already of these teachings should have some realization, at least,
that if there is one primal aim and object towards which we look,
it is to become more fully, more heartfeltly, one with that glorious
army of which the Masters are the outer vanguard, as it were.

Now what do we mean by space? People generally think of space

as a "receptacle of things" — a definition which we reject. They
talk about infinite space, and yet at the same time call space a
receptacle, a container — a curious commentary upon the loose
thinking of our age. Obviously if it is a receptacle it is a finite
thing; and besides that, the conception entirely misses the heart-
meaning of the word space. Understand what we mean by space,
and we have a key by which to open much of the nobler teachings
hid deeply in the elementary studies. Space, as understood in true
occultism, means that all that is, is a fullness, perfect and
continuous absolutely, endless and beginningless; not a mere
receptacle, not a mere container, nothing finite, but the boundless
All. Further, space is; it is not merely on or in one plane, but on
and in seven planes, the seven kosmic planes of our universe,
besides penetrating inwards infinitely, endlessly, and
also
outwardly endlessly. It is the infinite pleroma of the Greeks, the
Greek word pleroma meaning "fullness."

Obviously, everything that is, is a part of space. Space not being a

mere container, an abstraction of the mind, or a mere receptacle,
shows why H. P. Blavatsky in her teachings speaks of the only
"God" we recognize as That — using the word of the old Vedas —
i.e., space, the boundless All. This All obviously contains all things,
everything that is, as shown before in our study of that wonderful
doctrine of hierarchies, which is the third of the seven jewels or
treasuries of wisdom. Space is infilled with an infinite multitude
of self-contained universes, interlocking and interpenetrating
each other. These universes, again, are themselves infilled with
endlessly multitudinous beings of all and various kinds, the high
and the low, the inner and the outer. We cannot say the highest
and the lowest, because that form of expression would imply
limits or bounds, frontiers, and space is limitless. Only within the
confines or boundaries of any one universe or
hierarchy may we
use the superlative form of these adjectives, and say the highest
or the lowest.

Take any one universe or hierarchy as an instance of the general

rule. Any universe is infilled with beings finding their origin and
taking their rise in the summit, the acme, the seed in another
sense, which is, so to say, the god of that hierarchy; and this god,
at the beginning of any period of manifestation, this spiritual,
elementary being, casts off from itself, or throws forth from itself,
evolves from itself, brings out from itself, a multitudinous series
of hierarchies consisting of less or inferior beings, beings less in
spirituality and dignity than itself. They are, as it were, the
thoughts that the god or kosmic primal thinker thinks. Take the
instance of a thinking human being as an analogy. He thinks
thoughts. Each thought has its own life, each thought has its own
essence, each has its own course to run. Each thought is based on
a particular vibration, as it were, using words common to our
understanding today. Each has its own particular swabhava or
intrinsic essential nature, which is
its individuality.

So this summit of the hierarchy "thinks thoughts." Now I do not

mean to say that this summit is a human being or a god-being,
which thinks thoughts as we do. The figure here used is an
analogy only. As a man thinks thoughts, and thus fills his
atmosphere around him with these living beings, these winged
messengers called thoughts, so the primordial elementary being,
the summit, the seed, the first to issue forth from the bosom of the
infinite Mother, casts forth from itself these parts of itself, these
monadic aggregations, these kosmic "thoughts."

And what are these first emanations? They are what the ancient
wisdom called the gods. And these gods in their turn send forth
from themselves other multitudinous series of beings less than
they — less in dignity, less in grandeur, less in understanding.
And these secondary emanations or evolutions are the monads.
And these monads, as they pursue their way down the shadowy
arc, in the beginning of a manvantara, in their turn cast forth
from themselves, in identically the same way and on the same
line of action, other entities less than they, forming still more
outward hierarchies, more material intelligences; and these
tertiary emanations are the souls. And the souls, as they pursue
their way down, exactly as their higher progenitors did, cast forth
from themselves, think forth from themselves, send forth from
themselves, evolve forth from themselves, beings still less in
wisdom and spirituality and dignity and power than they. And
these are the atoms —
but not the physical atom. Let us cast that
idea out of our minds instantly. The atoms of physical science are
really molecular aggregations of atomic elements only, existing
on the borderland of the astral plane.

The time will come when we shall set forth more clearly than we
have time to do tonight, the relation of the atom to the
phenomenal physical world. What we need to do this evening in
the introductory study now in hand, is to show one action, one
hierarchical intelligence, one course of operation, throughout
nature. Please remember that these operations of nature are what
the scientists and Christian theologians, in their ignorance, call
the laws of nature. Now there are no laws of nature, as we have
set forth and explained before. There are no mechanically acting
laws, so called, because there are no lawgivers: consequently
there are no such natural laws. But there are operations of nature,
and these operations of nature are what our thinkers see, and
from lack of understanding the ancient wisdom, and perhaps
from lack of properly descriptive words, they follow the analogy
of human operations and say the "laws of nature."

But they are the spiritually automatic operations of beings in that

vast aggregate of entities and intelligences, which is called the
universe, which is but one of infinite multitudes of others in
space. All that is, is one vast organism. There is no void and no
emptiness anywhere — all is infilled and is one boundless
fullness. If we can fix that thought in our minds, and think of
ourselves as linked in a chain of beings, an endless chain — what
Homer called the Golden Chain — we shall realize the force, the
philosophical profundity, and the deep meaning of what our
teachings set forth when they speak of universal brotherhood, the
fundamental unity of all that is. Every one of us has in himself the
potentiality of becoming a god, and of advancing from godhood
still higher into what are now to us inexpressible spheres of
divinity. But it depends upon ourselves. At each instant the choice
lies before us: the path to the "right hand," and the path to the
"left hand,"
adopting the old Buddhist nomenclature.

These two arcs, the shadowy arc or the arc of matter, and the
luminous arc or the arc of light, or of spirit, exemplify in those
two phrases the duality of nature in manifestation; and the beings
on the luminous arc are what our Teachers call the dhyani-
buddhas, the buddhas of contemplation, those who once in long
past kalpas were men as we are now, human beings. The other
arc contains the hierarchies which are descending into matter in
order to learn the lessons that we of this kalpa have learned in
the past; as the dhyani-buddhas, the sons of light, did, long, long
aeons agone, but who now are the summit of the buddhic
hierarchy of which we form a part, if our hearts are sincere and
our souls are strong.

The beauty and the splendor of these teachings fill the soul with
awe. It needs but the proper comprehension of them, so firmly to
fix the mind and the soul to the eternal truth that nothing will
ever shake them in future. Ay, if we can but see, there lies
unfolded the great mystery of evolution. Those who have
advanced along the path have left their records behind them, and
there they stand, those glorious entities, armies of them: the
lowest are those just beyond us, the chelas, and then higher still
are the masters, and the masters of the masters; and then the
chohans; and the maha-chohans; and then the dhyani-chohans;
and then the dhyani-buddhas; and thus endlessly, on and up, for
infinity is limitless and endless. And this process of hierarchical
development has been going on from eternity in the past, and will
continue into eternity in the future.

The reason why men find it difficult to accept this sublime

teaching is the fact that their minds are so full of other thoughts
that it is difficult for them to drive in and find place for and fix in
their memory these sublime truths. Men will not willingly give up
their prejudices; they break not willingly their mind-molds. How
many of us come to a meeting like this with minds made up on
what we "know to be the truth," because, forsooth, we have so
read it somewhere, and our minds are crystallized in that setting.
I know how difficult it is for each one of us to keep the mind
always free and plastic, always ready to accept the truth, no
matter what our own prejudices, religious, philosophic, or
scientific, may be. The critic is not the wise man. The critic
unconsciously to himself sees his own littleness; the wise man,
the man who knows, will say rather, "I will think, I will examine
this that the teacher has given me. This is an opportunity; I will
not reject it because it seems
difficult for me to believe, or
because I have read that H. P. Blavatsky in such a passage said so
and so." Pray do not take any one passage of H. P. Blavatsky's or
Katherine Tingley's or William Q. Judge's, and build an iron wall
of prejudice about it, because you think you have understood it.
Keep the mind fluid and open and plastic; hold fast to that which
your soul, your conscience, tells you is good; and, if necessary,
wait! Thebes was not builded in a day.

Before concluding, there is a question which must have arisen in

every thoughtful theosophical mind, and it has been thusly
phrased by a student:

If every one is under the guidance of the dhyani-chohans,

how does it happen that, as H. P. Blavatsky says in The
Secret Doctrine, volume I, page 412, end of the second
paragraph, "cruelty, blunders, and but too-evident
injustice" are to be found in nature? And she then quotes
the saying that nature is a "comely mother but stone cold."

The principles upon which this thoughtful question has been

based are very simple indeed. In the first place, the dhyani-
chohans do not "guide nature"; not any more than man's inner
dhyani-chohan guides the circulation of his blood, or the
processes of his own digestion. Those things belong to the lower
spheres of nature. There is a dhyani-chohan at the head of every
department of nature; but direct interference, the old theological
idea of an Almighty God interfering with the mess he has himself
created, is not accepted in our teachings. The dhyani-chohans do
not "guide" the material processes of nature. They are the summit
of the hierarchy and form the "laws" according to which nature
works; but every entity, every monad, every atom, every soul, has
the power of free will and choice, in more or less limited degree,
depending upon its intelligence, and must exercise it or go down.
And there is the key, the answer to the question. Man does not
control by his
thought the beating of his heart or the processes of
his digestion, or the time it takes him to grow from babyhood to
youth, from youth to manhood, and from manhood to sink into
decrepitude. Those things are ruled by what are properly called
the nature-forces; and the laws upon which the nature-forces
work are those superior operations which represent the
automatic spiritual activities of the dhyani-chohans; but to say
that they guide nature is untrue; the idea is a relic of the old
theological Christian dogmas which remains in our minds; and
we must wash our intellects clean of such thoughts if we wish to
understand the heart, the essence, of the ancient teachings, which
show one organism, one universal life, in diversified action
everywhere. And in this one organism, in this one beating heart,
in this one universal life, there are these multitudinous and
countless and endless and infinite series of intelligences, each
working out its own destiny from inward impulses, controlled by
various higher
entities in which they move, and live, and have
their being.

Chapter 30
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty
The Interrelation of Gods, Monads, Atoms — a Key to the Doctrine
of Evolution. Successive Emanations: Sheaths. Higher Beings
Emanating and Clothing Themselves in Hosts of Lower Beings.
Morality Based on the Structure of the Universe.

But the other medium, which is suspended from the Gods,

though it is far inferior to them, is that of daemons, which
is not of a primarily operative nature, but is subservient to,
and follows the beneficent will of the Gods. It likewise
unfolds into energy the invisible good of the Gods, being
itself assimilated to it, and gives completion to its
fabrications conformably to it. For it renders that which is
ineffable in the good of the Gods effable, illuminates that
which is formless in forms, and produces into visible
reasons (or productive forms) that which in divine good is
above all reason. Receiving also a connascent participation
of things beautiful, it imparts and transfers it, in unenvying
abundance, to the genera posterior to itself. These middle
genera, therefore, give completion to the common bond of
the Gods and souls, and cause the connexion of them to be
indissoluble. They also bind together the one continuity of
things from on high as far as to the end; make the
communion of wholes to
be inseparable; cause all things to
have the best, and a commensurate mixture; in a certain
respect, equally transmit the progression from more
excellent to inferior natures, and the elevation from things
posterior to such as are prior; insert in more imperfect
beings order and measures of the communication which
descends from more excellent natures, and of that by
which it is received; and make all things to be familiar and
 coadapted to all, supernally receiving the causes of all
these from the Gods. —Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, pp.
32-3

TO "KEEP ALIVE in man his spiritual intuitions," describes very

well the work of the Theosophical Society in the world. But
beyond that fine thought we must go if we are to understand and
fully to put the teachings, which have been given us in trust, into
our lives, and thereby to develop the moral, the ethical, sense
which these teachings are first and foremost meant to develop
and to make living in us, if we are to carry out the purpose and
aim set before us.

Mere disquisitions on philosophic, religious, and scientific

subjects impart nothing of permanent worth, are fruitless, bear
no fruit, unless the spirit of the Lodge is behind them; and that
Lodge-spirit cannot exist without the spiritual intuitions which
exist in the core, in the central part, of every human being. You
will notice that the entire tendency of our studies has been to
develop the higher nature of us. These teachings of the esoteric
philosophy have stood and will stand the test of time and of the
human heart. Here is a fact, surely, for which we may give
heartfelt thanks.

This evening we are approaching the end of the elementary

studies which we have been briefly considering for the last two or
three years; and soon it will be our duty to take up more concrete
aspects of the ancient wisdom, or wisdom-religion; and, in fact,
we have already approached these more detailed doctrines in our
present subject — gods, monads, souls, atoms, and bodies. The
necessity for a clear understanding of those former studies, which
to some may appear somewhat abstract, is this: their reach into
the realms of human thought as represented by religion,
philosophy, and science, is immense; they form, as it were, the
foundation stones upon which the ancient wisdom rests.

It will be remembered at our last study in The Secret Doctrine,

volume I, page 107, we read the following: "every atom in the
Universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is,
like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It is
an atom and an angel" — that is, a spiritual being. We are going to
speak more plainly on this present subject than we have ever
spoken before, and the reason for it is that the proper
understanding of the doctrine of evolution — of development and
growth — rests upon a correct vision of the real meaning and
interrelation of these three: gods, monads, and atoms.

First, it will be remembered that in speaking of space, we rejected

the idea that space was merely a container. Now this is not a mere
abstraction of thought; it is an absolutely important thing to
understand that all being is one immense organism, through
which beats one universal heart, so to say. You see there
immediately the basis of morals; there is no absolute emptiness,
no absolute vacuum, anywhere; all beings are closely related and
interchained in the strongest bonds of union: spiritual, divine,
intellectual, mental, astral, physical. Nothing can exist without all
other things; for the kosmos, deprived of a single atom, would
crumble into impalpable dust. No metaphor this; it is an actuality.

Now a monad is often spoken of as descending into matter. This is

a fashion of speaking, a method of speech. The monad itself does
not "descend," no more than does a god drive our streetcars or
blacken our boots. How, then, does the monadic influence extend
itself throughout the different planes of nature, so that in
ordinary parlance it is in fact correct to speak of the mineral
monad, of the animal monad, of the astral monad, of the human
monad, of the spiritual monad, of the divine monad? In the
following way: but first — as an interpolation — concerning the
monad, let me read something that H. P. Blavatsky says (The
Secret Doctrine, II, 185-6):

The terms "mineral," "vegetable" and "animal" monad are

meant to create a superficial distinction: there is no such
thing as a Monad (jiva) other than divine, and
consequently having been, or having to become, human.
And the latter term has to remain meaningless unless the
difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out of
the shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within the
plane of primeval differentiation. It is divine in its higher
and human in its lower condition — the adjectives "higher"
and "lower" being used for lack of better words — and a
monad it remains at all times, save in the Nirvanic state,
under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms.

There you have the matter unequivocally stated.

It was pointed out at our last meeting that when the thrill of life
in the boundless All first occurs in cyclical duration, the
primordial beings issue forth as what are called the gods, and that
these gods, as the ages passed, during the progressive
manvantaric periods, sent forth from themselves, or cast forth
from themselves, or cast out from themselves, or gave birth to,
less beings — less meaning inferior, of less divinity, or less
sublimity, less grandeur — and these beings are the monads. In
exactly the same way the monads sent forth from themselves (or
gave birth from themselves to) the souls; and, please understand,
just as the monad was in the god, so was the soul in the monad.
These entities remained latent in the monads as karmic fruitage
from the previous maha-manvantara. Just as the life remains in
the seed when cast forth from the plant, and sends forth its green
blade in the springtime; so, when the manvantaric thrill passes
over these spaces, after the long pralayic rest,
the gods send forth
the monads, and the monads send forth the souls, and the souls
send forth the atoms. And the atoms similarly send forth from
themselves our vehicles, our bearers, our bodies.

Let us see if we can illustrate this by a diagram. Let us take an

immense circle to represent the boundless All, which of course is
merely a representation for space; then place a point in its center.
This point represents the first germ of the kosmic life. This point
also has its meaning in the sense of a kosmic seed. Now it is not
one point only in the kosmos that springs into activity, but
innumerable such points, such seeds. The number is limitless,
practically; and each one of such points represents an
individuality from the previous maha-manvantara. But these
points as represented in the diagram are symbols; and the one
stands diagrammatically for all. If you please, this point in the
quasi-infinitude of a hierarchy, of a universe, is the beginning of
that hierarchy, and it represents the god of that hierarchy. This
god itself is a synthetic aggregation of multitudinous other gods,
as man's body is an aggregation, a synthesis, of multitudinous less
or inferior lives.

Now this god clothes itself in its emanations, in its pranic aura, if
you like; it sends forth from itself pranic or vital effluvia, and
thus it clothes itself in garments, in sheaths of vitality, flowing
forth from itself, and these sheaths or garments are its "clothing."
Any such god naturally casts its own individuality into its sheath,
into its clothing: seven degrees or states of it; its individuality is
its swabhava, an important idea to which we have drawn your
attention and on which we have laid emphasis. The swabhava of
an entity is its individuality, the characteristic of it, the
essentiality of what it is, as contrasted with some other swabhava.
In ordinary language we may call it individuality. That which
makes a rose bring forth always a rose, and not a lily; that which
makes a man bring forth always a man and not some other sort of
entity; that which makes a god a god and not a monad is its
swabhava. This is a Sanskrit compound meaning self-generation,
self-pouring out,
the pouring out of that which is within and,
therefore, derivatively, its individual and own characteristic.
Please remember in this connection that always more within,
infinitely, boundlessly, more within, are the vast states of
consciousness living on the equally vast fields of the spaces of
space; the possibilities to be evolved in a man's evolution, and the
eternities through which he has passed, and the lives which he
has lived through in the past, are endless.

But passing on. This god sends forth its sheaths, and these sheaths
consist of less (or inferior) beings. If the god is a primordial entity
let us call these latter primal. As man clothes himself in physical
flesh, so the god clothes itself in a garment or body, and this
garment or body is composed, if you like, of atoms divine. Now
these divine atoms are the monads. Compared with the god they
are the mere clothing of it, just as the synthesis, the aggregation,
of physical lives which compose a man's body and which form his
physical "coat of skin" or clothing are, as it were, the physical
monads or the atoms of the man himself. Similarly, let us, then,
advance a point farther. The germ, the seed, the point above
mentioned, let us now call a monad — one of the almost infinite
number of monads in each god, forming the clothing of each god,
the sheaths, the garments of light, that in which a god lives, which
it has sent forth from itself, its outpouring of individual life.

Similarly acts the monad as did its father-god; and its sheath and
its clothing are the souls, as yet latent, most of them, but some
forming the more active part in which it manifests at any one
particular time. The same course of action occurs with the soul.
The soul clothes itself in atoms, the emanations from itself and
the outpouring of its own vitality, its own prana. And then the
atoms pour forth from themselves the effluvium of physical-astral
life, and these vital effluvia form the physical body of man, his
astral body and his physical body.

So you see just what H. P. Blavatsky means by saying that an atom

is an "atom and an angel" or a soul. Through all these hosts of
beings streams the flow of the self, entering into every one,
forming in fact the very root of its being, not however the
personalized entity or the ego, but the impersonal self, that which
is the same in you and in me; the same in the inhabitants of
distant stellar spaces, as it is in us: the one self, limitless,
boundless, the ideation of selfhood. Remember that the ego is the
sense of "I am I," not "you"; and here immediately the conception
of personality enters in. But it is in raising the personality into
impersonality, the ego into divinity, the corruptible into the
incorruptible, that consists the whole effort and purpose and aim
of the divine part of evolution; and that divine part, that
particular activity, is that of the higher range of the luminous arc,
of the buddhic hierarchy, of which the summit is the dhyani-
buddhas, the buddhas
of contemplation; and the material on
which they work is these other monads, souls, atoms, which form
the matter-side of nature, called the shadowy arc.

You will remember that all these things have been alluded to by
us before; but tonight remember this one important point, that
the monad does not "descend into matter." It casts forth from
itself its life, as the sun pours forth its vitality in rays; and its life
manifests first as a monadic entity of inferior grade, as a soul; and
the soul in its turn pours forth its vitality, manifesting in almost
innumerable atoms. The monad itself is but one of innumerable
others, emanated, cast forth, breathed forth, if you like to use an
Oriental metaphor, from Brahma, the god, the summit of our
hierarchy.

As said, these garments or sheaths of light are those monadic

entities which must, during the course of evolutionary progress,
become denser, darker, thickened, with the passage of time, until
the ultimate result is the last energy, the last expenditure of the
divine or monadic force as manifested in the physical body.
When equilibrium between matter and spirit is finally reached,
when the lowest point in that kalpa, i.e., in that Day of Brahma, in
that period of seven rounds, has been reached, then step in upon
the scene the manasaputras, the sons of mind, entities from the
buddhic hierarchy, from the luminous arc of evolving nature,
those who had been men before in former kalpas, and who have
watched over us, under the guidance of the Silent Watcher, their
supreme Head, ever since our present kalpa or manvantara
began, aeons ago.

The monad, in one sense, may be called the active god of the
hierarchy; or, in man's especial case, man's divine ego, sheathed
in its garments of light composed of inferior monadic entities
called souls; and the soul may be called an inferior monad, part of
the sheaths or the garments of the monad proper. These
respective garments are cast forth, somewhat as the tree puts
forth its leaves, its branches, its stems, its fruits. Similarly the
atoms are born from the pranic or vital essence of the souls, and
they form our bodies. So we see that every man, in his inmost
essence — that is, inmost for the hierarchy to which he belongs —
is a divine being, a god; and his spiritual nature is the monad; and
his soul-nature is the ego, that particular entity hovering between
the pit and the sun, which must be raised from personality into
impersonality, because in the soul resides that particular part of
the psychological processes of intellection which makes a man
self-conscious, a
self-conscious being, capable of the ideation of
individualized being.

What wonderful thoughts are these! How they do uplift the soul!
Man feels his native divinity, his interior spiritual strength; he
feels the power of divinity within his own heart, the power for
goodness and truth. And how small, how insignificant, how
unworthy, seem those things that lie apart from the path of duty,
of right!

How many have been hungry for truth, and have searched for it,
and yet have found only the husks of a pseudo-esotericism? But
they also should have it. Human beings, they have a right to it; but
they are not going to get it unless they "work for it," for such is the
archaic law. These teachings have formed the reward, the reward
of those who have been faithful.

There is one subject which for certain reasons must now be

touched upon briefly. It is a subject which has been deliberately
avoided by me hitherto for obvious reasons; I refer to the matter
of sex. At our present stage of study, it is necessary then to point
out that man at a certain former period of his evolution was
without sex, was sexless, and also that in the next coming root-
race, the sixth root-race, he will be without sex as we now
understand it. Sex is but a passing phase in evolutionary
development, and has no more value in one sense, to man, than
an evil dream has to a man under certain conditions. Nature has
followed that line, as it were, under protest, through the evildoing
involved in our past karma, as the only way by which souls can
find incarnation at present; but as the race grows in spiritual
strength and in spiritual knowledge, and looks with closer self-
analysis into its own inner being, children will come into the
world without fathers; and from being at first an unheard of
phenomenon, and presumably to be called a portent or a prodigy
when it first appears, this procedure of generation will become
the natural course of things in the sixth root-race. Our present
sexually separated men and women, the present method of
generation of human beings, of animals, and of some plants, will,
in those far distant times of the future, be no more.

In conclusion: you have heard of the ancient Mysteries, and of the

doctrine of the "virginal birth." Beginning with the fourth degree
or stage of initiation, the future was outlined in the ancient
Mysteries to the candidate both by teaching and more especially
by causing the candidate himself to pass through what was to
come to pass in the future ages of racial development; that is to
say, the initiant had to go through, to live through, what the race
was to live through for the next two root-races. Previous to the
fourth degree, he was taught what the race had already been
through, with allusions to the future. When we read, therefore, of
the "virgin birth" of Christ, for instance, it is true that this has its
religious explanation, its philosophical explanation, its mystical
explanation, etc.; but it has also its physiological explanation. You
will remember what H. P. Blavatsky says about the seven keys
which belong to and open each one of these
inmost sevenfold
mysteries, of which two were held as particularly secret: the
physiological, and the spiritual. The physiological key to this
aspect of the Mystery-teaching was, as said, that the initiant had
to symbolize in his person and had to pass through or live through
what was coming; and he was therefore said, in view of the future
racial action along the lines of generation, to have been "born
from a virgin."

It is a comforting thing, especially in the present stage of the

world when humanity is doing its best to throw off the shackles of
Atlantean and Lemurian sin (if we may use this word), i.e., to
throw off the horrible karma which holds the world in its evil
grip, to know the causes which brought it to be. This gives us
knowledge and power to stem this stream of human sin and
misery. And, finally, those who will not accept the truth and work
with the Law, certainly, as Jesus might have said, will not "sit at
my table with me when I partake of the wine of the spirit in the
House of my Father." "Those who have ears to hear and to
understand, let them hear" — and be wise!

Chapter 31
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-One
The Building of the Kosmos. The Same Fundamental Law
throughout Life and Being: an Endless Ladder of Progress.
Analogical Processes of Kosmical and Psychological Development.
The River of Life.

And by the circulations of the soul being merged in a

profound river and impetuously borne along, we must
understand by the river, not the human body alone, but the
whole of generation (with which we are externally
surrounded) through its swift and unstable flowing. For
thus, says Proclus, Plato in the Republic calls the whole of
generated nature the river of Lethe, which contains both
Lethe and the meadow of Ate, according to Empedocles;
the devouring jaws of matter and the light-hating world, as
it is called by the gods; and the winding rivers under which
many are drawn down, as the oracles assert. But by the
circulations of the soul the cogitative and opiniative
powers are signified; the former of which, through the
soul's conjunction with the body, is impeded in its energies,
and the latter is Titanically torn in pieces under the
irrational life. — Thomas Taylor, "Introduction to the
Timaeus"

In consequence of a reasoning process, therefore, he found

that among the things naturally visible, there was nothing
the whole of which if void of intelligence could ever
become more beautiful than the whole of that which is
endued with intellect: and at the same time he discovered,
that it was impossible for intellect to accede to any being,
without the intervention of soul. Hence, as the result of this
reasoning, placing intellect in soul and soul in body, he
 fabricated the universe; that thus it might be a work
naturally the most beautiful and the best. In this manner,
therefore, according to an assimilative reason, it is
necessary to call the world [or universe] an animal, endued
with intellect, and generated through the providence of
divinity. — Plato, Timaeus (Thomas Taylor, trans.)

IN EXPLANATION of what was said in the final part of our

meeting last week: the idea of bringing in the subject, which was
then so lightly touched upon, was to connect it with the general
scheme of evolutionary development that we shall later have to
study more fully, and to show that throughout the entire universe
of beings there runs one general plan.

You all know, of course, that there are seven races all told on this
planet, in this round on globe D, and that each of these races has
its own continent, follows its own course of evolution, has bodies
— that is, the individual units of the race have bodies —
coordinated to and in harmony with the physical surroundings in
which they live. But as regards the question of the division of the
human racial stream, that is, the later third root-race, into the
sexual humanity which has evolved into the men and women of
today, the point to be emphasized at present is that what we call
sex is but a passing phase in racial evolution and, strictly
speaking, is not normal to mankind on globe D of our planetary
chain. This method of procreation actually was copied from the
beasts, which "separated" before "man." Please understand this
clearly: sex is a transitory phase in racial evolution, and has no
more importance than that; and further, as we are now evolving
on the ascending
arc, as we have already passed in fact beyond
the first steps of the luminous arc, of the arc of ascent, we shall
find as the ages pass that our present physiological status as men
and women is to be outgrown. As a matter of fact, the Atlantean
and Atlanto-Lemurian karma has weighed so heavily upon us, the
fifth race, that we are actually belated, and have not at the
present date, the middle point of the fifth race, reached that stage
as regards the evolving of the physical body which otherwise we
should have reached.

As it stands, however, the teaching tells us that at the end of our

own fifth race, men and women will be disappearing as opposite
sexes; and that by the middle of the sixth root-race (the race to
come) men and women as separate sexes shall be no longer. The
race will consist of beings who are physiologically neither men
nor women; and, as hinted just now, the first examples of
parthenogenetic reproduction are already due, and would have
shown themselves already, were it not for our being belated by
the heavy weight of our Atlantean karma, which we have been
carrying, or rather working off.

About the middle of the sixth race humanity — then no longer

"men" and "women," but humanity — will procreate their kind, if
we can here properly use this word, at any rate will evolve or
give birth to their own genus, by a process similar to that which
took place in the early third race, a process called in the esoteric
wisdom "creating sons by passive yoga"; that is to say, by
meditation and by unconscious will, at first, later to be succeeded
by conscious will in the seventh or following root-race. The
humans of that period (the sixth root-race) will produce children
by meditation and by will; during the seventh root-race, the last
to come on this globe, during this fourth round — a race which to
us now would seem glorious — the humans of that race will
produce their kind in the same general manner, but by
consciously exercised will and meditation, yet still more
impersonally and still more ethereally than the sixth
race will do.
The sixth will do so, much as the flowers grow from the plants,
almost unconsciously as it were, hence by "passive yoga"; not so
much unconsciously from the mental standpoint but
physiologically almost unconscious of any "procreative" act, or of
any creative act. The seventh will "create" their offspring with
conscious and fully active imagination, a force called kriyasakti in
Sanskrit. The difficulty is in finding words to explain something
which to us of the fifth root-race is nonexistent, almost, and hence
speculative or unreal.

The main point then, here, is to realize that this present

physiological state of sex is a passing racial evolutionary phase;
and that every abuse, every misuse, no matter of what kind or
what the world may think about it, is a reaction contrary to the
evolutionary law, to use the popular phraseology; and that while
it is true that the present method is the one which nature has
evolved at the present time, as said before it is not really the
method which primordial humanity might have followed. Even
the Hebrew Bible alludes to this matter in a passage which you all
may recall. We of the fifth race now are on the ascending arc, and
we should at least attempt to lead the race towards a nobler life
as pioneers of nature's forthcoming stages.

Our main theme tonight is the building of the kosmos, the

building of worlds, and the building of man. Throughout the vast
extent of manifested being, there prevail fundamental operations
of nature, which men today call the laws of nature because they
do not understand their origin. Men personify nature, which is a
mere generalizing term; and they use the word law — which is
merely a word adapted from human action — in order to give a
name to those fundamental movements of being. But there are
operations of nature, and these fundamental operations of nature
are actually the life-currents in the spiritual essence governing
our hierarchy, as the life-currents in man are they which govern
the atoms, astral and physical, which compose his body.

Remember that space is not a vacuum, space is not a mere

container; if so, there would have to be a container of that
container, and so ad infinitum. But space is the infinite fullness of
everything; it is the boundless All, without beginning and without
end; it is one vast organism; it is a unity; everything is interlocked
and interchained with everything else, and through all there runs
the one universal life; there is the beating of the one universal
heart. This thought is so important for a proper understanding of
our philosophy that its repetition surely will be forgiven. There
are no vacuum-separations, there is no absolute division
anywhere. There is no real vacuum; everything is full, everything
is full with and of beings; and these beings with which the
boundless All is filled are space itself. Therefore, when we speak
of space, we mean not merely the vast, boundless extension of
any one plane, but more particularly the invisible spheres, the
planes
within, ascending, as it were, going inwards, and inwards,
and inwards forever; and outwards likewise.

The next thought is that through the action and interaction of the
gods, monads, souls, and atoms, we conceive a world as springing
forth in the beginning of its manvantara, from and through the
invisible deeps of space, and extending itself, as it were, casting
itself, projecting itself, forward, in its descent down the shadowy
arc of matter-manifestation. And how? Not by a something or a
somebody which existed before itself was there, but by making
itself its own world, evolving out its own kosmos, which thus
becomes its garment or body.

The gods — and please do not think of human forms when we

speak of the gods; we mean the arupa, the formless, entities,
beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences,
pure spirits, formless as we conceive form — through that
impersonal (and may we say inevitable?) energy, at any rate, by
reason of the karmic impulses behind them, project from
themselves less bodies, inferior bodies, which are the monads;
and the monads do precisely likewise and project the souls; and
the souls do precisely likewise and project the atoms. Each
springs from each. Through all, furthermore, there runs the
boundless self, the boundless soul of the upper realms; but each
one of these atoms, each one of these souls, each one of these
monads, each one of these gods, is its own hierarchy, the supreme
part, the head, the seed, from which its own following hierarchy
springs. Wheels within wheels, lives within lives, consciousnesses
within consciousnesses, beings within beings — a vast and
endless congeries of interlocked and interrelated and interliving
things. Pray get this thought! It is the very foundation of the
ancient wisdom. All questions of theology that have so
embarrassed and perplexed the minds of men are solved just by
these few simple principles of the ancient wisdom-religion. Think
upon them for yourselves, and make your own deductions
therefrom.

Now let us briefly follow the evolutionary course of one

hierarchy, one solar system. The same law, if you like the word,
the same fundamental operation of nature, runs through all that
which we find done in the case of a solar system, and is also that
which takes place in the case of a universe, is that which takes
place in the case of a sun, of a planet, and of the beings which
overrun that planet. Suppose then that we figurate a god, a divine
seven-principled being, starting into activity after its pralayic
sleep, bringing with it the karmic seeds, the impulses from the
previous maha-manvantara, every one of those seeds having its
karmic swabhava, its karmic characteristic or essential nature;
and starting into immediate activity when the life-wave first
arouses the sleeping spheres all comprised within the one
immense entity which we have agreed to call a god. We do not
exactly mean what the Hindus call a deva, which is something
else, but a god. But not God, not the Christian
God. We mean a
god, one of the supreme intelligences, each one of which is the
head of a hierarchy, the hierarchies themselves being numberless
and "filling space," being, in fact, space itself.

We simply must keep several ideas in our heads at once in

essaying an exposition of these intricate subjects. There is one of
the secrets of understanding the ancient wisdom: to retain in the
mind more than one conception at the same time; it is our
safeguard against mental biases, and it is easy. Let me illustrate: a
man is driving an automobile; he may be at the same time
watching the road, watching for other automobiles, while in the
back of his mind there may be forming some plan of work; and he
may also be talking to a friend. Let us keep these various
thoughts, all that has been spoken of so far this evening, in our
mind, as we consider this present matter.

Now this god is seven-principled, as said, and each principle has

its own work to do in the building of its kosmos; each one acts
according to karmic impulses originating in the previous
manvantara particularly, and in all previous manvantaras in
general; and each one of these gods moves into manifestation
according to the lines traced out for it by its own past
consciousness and actions in former epochs of manvantaric
activity. Therefore when these seeds of beings start into active
existence, the innumerable monads or divine souls — divine
seeds which form the clothing of each one of these seven
principles — when all these principles spring into activity each
undertakes its own particular work, a division of labor, as it were,
in the divine realms. First, the highest sends forth from itself a
host of less beings, inferior beings; and they find their habitat,
their habitation and their realm of activity, in the plane next
"below," which is that of its second principle. That second
principle then begins its own especial activity and does likewise;
and thus two of the seven principles and realms of being are now
working; and so on down the scale until we reach the lowest, the
prithivi-tattwa, of the divine series or scale.

When the astronomer looks into the ethery spaces and sees those
starry clouds, those nebulous masses, in some cases — though not
in all, for these nebulae are not all the same — in those which are
destined for the beginning of worlds, he sees there what has so
far taken place in material manifestation of a hierarchy through
the activity of the subseven degrees of the lowest or seventh
principle of a divine entity or god informing an otherwise
invisible life-center, informed by that god's vital essence, which is
the fundamental life of that hierarchy, the fundamental impulse,
or what men call the fundamental law, the fundamental
operation of its nature, the fundamental characteristic, the
swabhava. In such manner, then, the vital essence creates its own
dwelling — a sun, a planet, which cycles down, as it were, into
visible evolution. But mark: each head of a hierarchy retains its
own place, powers, and nature; but its offspring thicken or
condense, its offspring thus forming its
garments on the several
planes of being. Each of these garments is a host of living beings,
atoms, souls — the name matters little provided we understand
the thought. We must use analogies derived from our human
vocabulary, because we have as yet evolved no words which can
adequately explain these spiritual things; therefore remember
that by the law of analogy such words are applicable, mutatis
mutandis, as the Latin phrase goes, "making the necessary
allowances for circumstances," to various spheres of being.

When this thickening and grossening of the fabric — which takes

place from each entity shooting forth from itself, emanating from
itself, other less entities, less here meaning inferior — reaches its
lowest degree, then we have a sun and planets. Let us take our
planet as an instance. When such a planet has reached its lowest
point of evolution driven by the karmic impulse inhering in it,
which is at the middle point of its fourth round (which we on our
planet have passed), then begins the reaction, the reversal of the
kosmic operation, and the life-currents begin to withdraw
inwards, thenceforth following the luminous arc "upwards": not
leaving its garments behind altogether, but as they were sent
forth, so are they now withdrawn inwards. This, then, is an
outline of the process of the evolution of spirit, and the involution
of matter; just as the processes of projection or casting forth were
the involution of spirit and the evolution of matter
on the
downward or shadowy arc. Thus is the kosmos built.

Now another thought. Each one of these gods, each one of these
monads, each one of these souls, each one of these atoms, is an
exhaustless reservoir of consciousness, of force, and of matter.
Let us take the atmic (or seventh or highest) of the god whom we
have chosen as example. Such atmic plane or sphere is a laya-
center. A laya-center is a nirvanic center, that part, or place, or
condition rather, or state of being, where homogeneity of
substance is, where heterogeneity has ceased, or has not yet
begun. When such laya-center begins its activity towards
evolution, it casts forth from itself ceaselessly, hosts and
multitudes of these inferior beings; but its own inner strength is
in nowise diminished.

It is, as said, an exhaustless reservoir, a creative center; precisely

as the sun — one of the finest analogies that we have — casts
forth from itself ceaselessly, during a manvantara, practically
illimitable hosts of solar rays, yes, and also of beings. Each one of
these beings has its future cyclic course to run; and from being
originally an unconscious god-spark, it has to develop into a self-
conscious god, and do the same kosmic work that its own great
progenitor did or is doing.

We ourselves, when we were not men as yet, unevolved rays

only, belonged to the lower realms of spiritual being, then
pursued our evolutionary course up to self-conscious manhood;
and we who are now humans are destined on the future planet
which shall follow this our present globe — the offspring of the
earth — to attain a development greater than manhood here; and
those inferior lives which are now trailing after us on the
evolutionary journey, the beasts, the plants, and the minerals,
will have then their turn to pass through the human stage. Life
and being form an endless chain, an endless ladder of progress;
yet when manhood has been attained comes moral responsibility:
at any moment there lies the path before us — the path to the
right, up the luminous arc; or the path to the left, downwards
along the arc of shadows.

Our time this evening is drawing to a close, but it is necessary for

us to call attention to the following diagram:

Here we have six columns representing analogical cases of

cosmical and psychological development. First, we have what we
may call the Esoteric Line: to the left of that we have placed the
numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, representing the full hierarchy
of ten stages or degrees. The next column gives the Brahmanic
Tattwas. Tattwa is a Sanskrit word, which may be translated as
"element," meaning the substantial "reality" back of the
phenomenal appearance, upon which the seed-consciousness
works; the garment or bearer of the inworking consciousness.
Then come in the next column the Elements, as commonly
understood everywhere in ancient times. Then comes the Mystic
Greek system, as found mostly in the Neoplatonic and
Neopythagorean philosophies. And lastly comes the division of
the beings composing the evolving life-wave, or river of life, into
two generic (general) forms, Dhyani-Chohans, and Pitris.

1. In the Esoteric Line we have first swabhavat, a Sanskrit word

meaning, as you know, the "self-evolving," the "self-developing,"
even translated sometimes as the "self-existent." Corresponding to
this is the adi-tattwa in the next column. Adi is a Sanskrit word
meaning "original," "primordial." Corresponding to this among
the elements is the One. We have no word for this element. The
ancients referred to it in various ways. We will simply call it the
One, as it is the seed from which the others spring in descent, that
is to say, in thickening and grossening during the evolutionary
course. The Mystic Greek has the First Logos to correspond.

2. The planes below are next given, reading from left to right. Adi-
buddhi, "original or primordial buddhi"; and when the thought is
somewhat changed, and a slightly different hierarchy is to be
followed, it is called adi-buddha, individualizing the hierarchy in
tracing the development of the Hierarchy of Compassion, though
when we speak of adi-buddhi, we refer rather to the action of the
principles than to the entities embodying those principles.
Corresponding to it in the Tattwas is anupapadaka-tattwa,
another Sanskrit word meaning "Parentless," that which does not
follow an individualized progenitor, therefore parentless, not that
it has no source or origin, but that it itself is the primal seed of
individuality, which in this particular hierarchy first springs into
manifestation in it. The case is like the entrance of the manas into
man, thereby giving him self-consciousness and individuality,
which he does not get from his parents. Among the Elements
we
may call it spirit. The Mystic Greek has it as the Second Logos.

3. The third plane below is the gods, corresponding of course to

the manasaputras in man, the sons of mind. Its tattwa is akasa-
tattwa, the word akasa meaning "brilliant," "shining," "luminous."
Let me point out here parenthetically that, strictly speaking,
swabhavat is the proper correspondence of akasa; but the way in
which this diagram is arranged is an attempt to show
corresponding intelligences and activities in the several
individual hierarchies here set forth; and therefore akasa-tattwa
corresponds in it to the gods in the Esoteric Line. Among the
Elements it is aether, but not the ether of science. The ether of
science is merely one of its lower principles. The Mystic Greek has
likewise the gods, otherwise composing the Third Logos. In
Brahmanic philosophy this plane is called mahat, a word which
means "great." Mahat is a technical term in the Brahmanic
system, and is the Father-Mother of manas; it is the "mother" of
the
manasaputras or sons of mind, if you like, or that element
from which they spring, that element which they breathe and of
which they are the children.

4. The monads, corresponding to taijasa-tattwa, meaning "the

shining," "the brilliant," "the fiery," "the sparkling." Among the
Elements it is fire. The Mystic Greek has the daimones
corresponding to it, beings whom the Christians have turned into
demons or devils. It simply means spiritual beings of a certain
class; but this thought is too intricate to go into at any length this
evening. I may merely point out that the daimones belong to the
hierarchy of consciousness, as shown in the diagram, and not to
the hierarchy of the shadowy arc. Socrates, as you know,
frequently alluded to his daimonion, meaning his "guardian
angel." As he said: "My daemon told me never what to do, but
always what to refrain from doing." It is, as it were, the
"conscience" of later thought.

Now these four classes are grouped under the general heading of
the Dhyani-chohans, the chohans of meditation, the lords of
meditation. The following three classes belong to the Pitris —
beings of lower degree, whom you will remember as mentioned
in The Secret Doctrine and there called "Fathers," because they are
more particularly the actual progenitors of our lower principles;
whereas the dhyani-chohans are actually in one most important
sense our own selves. We were born from them; we were the
monads, we were the atoms, the souls, projected, sent forth,
emanated, by the dhyanis, as pointed out before.

5. Now the fifth degree downward comprises in this particular

diagram what are called souls in the Esoteric Line. In the
Brahmanic Tattwas we see vayu-tattwa. Vayu means "airy,"
"aerial." In the Elements, air; in the Mystic Greek, the heroes.
These are the highest class of the Pitris.

6. The sixth are the atoms. Please remember, as said before, that
atom as here used does not mean the atom of science, but what
we may call the astral monad, of which the atoms of the physical
world are the emanations, the projections. The atoms, the astral
atoms, clothe themselves in the physical world, which is their
garment-offspring. The Brahmanic Tattwa is apas-tattwa; the
Elements show here water; and the Mystic Greek, men.

7. The seventh is the bodies, vehicles merely, corresponding to

prithivi-tattwa. Prithivi is a Sanskrit word meaning "extension,"
i.e., wide, spacious. It is common to speak of prakriti as "matter,"
but really prithivi is the word better corresponding to what we
call matter. Prakriti is rather "nature" and the living garment of
spirit. The Element is earth; and the Mystic Greek in this
hierarchy of entities shows the beasts.
These last three classes are the Pitris; and below these seven
comes the Elemental World, in three planes. One of these
elemental planes or worlds we may mention in passing, as it is
the "interior realm" which has its locus or habitation at the center
of any globe.

Now the evolution of mankind depends upon and follows that of

the respective elements in each instance — that is to say, that the
human life-wave evolves in each of the seven elements one after
the other, from the highest downwards to the last; and then on
the turn of the grand cycle, ascending through them all to the
highest again. Each globe of the seven of the planetary chain,
each of the seven root-races on every globe, partakes of the
nature and qualities of the kosmic element it happens to be
evolving in and through, whether it be what is technically called
earth, or water, or air, or fire, or aether, or spirit, or the Nameless
One. Man's seven principles likewise correspond to and are
derived from the seven kosmic elements, each to each. And mere
bulk of body, or size, has nothing to do with the nature of man
and his powers, with the building of man, or his destiny.

For instance, the first and second root-races were gigantic beings
as far as mere size was concerned, but they were otherwise mere
shells, mere phantom creatures, so to say, the offspring of the
pitris alone, as yet not filled with the divine fires of self-
consciousness and intellect. They were ethereal on what was then
an ethereal earth, our present gross planet Terra. They had no
physiological organs, properly speaking, and their shapes were
different from ours, although the general human skeletal
framework as we now know it was within them, evolved from the
previous round on this earth.

In races the fifth and the sixth still to come, humanity will evolve
bodies corresponding to the surroundings they will then be in;
and, in very truth, those surroundings themselves will be
developed or made by the humanity evolving therein, actually
evolving their own surroundings, which will be their own
emanations. We may conceive of them, if you like, as very small
beings, lilliputian in size, perhaps, but nevertheless of gigantic
intellects, and of immense spiritual powers. If we will only once
realize, as even our scientists are beginning to do, the almost
limitless forces locked up in an atom — a thing so small that it as
yet is merely a figment of the scientific imagination, which no one
has ever seen, or knows anything about except certain deductions
which have been more or less gradually made by studying the
workings of the atoms through the physical phenomena of beings
— we can realize that if even physical matter contains forces or
powers as great as even one atom has, what may
not man be or
become, upon evolving that which is within himself, evolving the
unspeakable grandeur of his inner nature, as he is going to do —
at least those who will pass the "critical periods." We may
understand, I repeat, that mere size of body does not mean
possession of power or of knowledge, or of intelligence or of
compassion. As a matter of fact, it is perhaps rather the contrary:
mere volume or rather mass weighing the inner spirit rather
heavily down.

And it is quite permissible to conceive of gods so small that an

atom, one of our physical atoms, would be a cosmical universe to
it. And to use the old Brahmanic terms, there sits at the heart of
Being a god, thinking divine thoughts, and ruling its universe.

So when we speak of men at the end of the fifth race in future

ages as evolving physical vehicles out from themselves, which
nevertheless will preserve the same general skeleton outline as at
present; when we say that their shape will be neither that of man
nor of woman, we simply mean that man himself, through
suffering and experience, and through the evolving of that which
is lying latent within him, and even now ready to appear, will
bring forth into exteriorization from within himself his own
inner nature: a sexless being. From that time forwards, men and
women will be no more, replaced by far nobler humans.

You will remember that at our last meeting it was said that the
time had even now come when children might be produced
without fathers; but the race is belated in its evolutionary course,
and probably ages will yet pass before this parthenogenetic
process begins. Yet even this process is merely the first step to a
still more different process to come later, but it will take place
before this our fifth root-race ends; it will come to pass partly
because men and women are growing more alike, instead of more
unlike. As long as marriage lasts, however, it ought to be a union
of mutual respect and kindness, in which each helps the other to
grow morally and intellectually.

At the end of this fifth root-race, man and woman as sexes will
have nearly passed away; and in the sixth race, naturally, at
certain specified times, without passion, by meditation and by
passive will and thought, humans will evolve forth their
offspring, much in the "unconscious" way (though the term
unconscious is incorrect) that the flowers bring forth their
blooms; and in the seventh race of this round on this planet the
humans of that splendid time will bring forth from within
themselves glorious creations of the active will and of the
imagination, their "children"; and there will then be a race of
Adepts, of incarnate devas upon earth. This will be in the seventh
race on this planet during this present fourth round. It is only
because we have sunken morally and are belated that the
phenomenon of virginal birth has not yet appeared on earth as a
physical fact; though, as pointed out at our last meeting, it has
been "prophesied" in religious mysteries, and the
initiation
ceremonies contained one where the initiant, after certain
conditions had been complied with, was said to be "born of a
virgin," thus anticipating, or rather forecasting, what was to come
to the entire race in the future; this being, as said before, a
reward for noble service rendered in behalf of mankind. Here is a
wondrous truth, concealed and kept hid for fear of the
profanation which would be sure to follow if these divine
mysteries, if these divine teachings, fell into unworthy hands
directed by scheming brains!

Chapter 32
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-Two
Out of the Invisible into the Visible. From the Visible into the
Invisible. The Magnum Opus.

5. This (universe) existed in the shape of Darkness,

unperceived, destitute of distinctive marks, unattainable
by reasoning, unknowable, wholly immersed, as it were, in
deep sleep.

6. Then the divine Self-existent (Svayambhu, himself)

indiscernible, (but) making (all) this, the great elements
and the rest, discernible, appeared with irresistible
(creative) power, dispelling the darkness.

...

19. But from minute body (-framing) particles of these

seven very powerful Purushas springs this (world), the
perishable from the imperishable.

20. Among them each succeeding (element) acquires the

quality of the preceding one, and whatever place (in the
sequence) each of them occupies, even so many qualities it
is declared to possess.

21. But in the beginning he assigned their several names,

actions, and conditions to all (created beings), even
according to the words of the Veda.

22. He, the Lord, also created the class of the gods, who are
endowed with life, and whose nature is action; and the
subtile class of the Sadhyas, and the eternal sacrifice.

...
 51. When he whose power is incomprehensible, had thus
produced the universe and me, he disappeared in himself,
repeatedly suppressing one period by means of the other.

52. When that divine one wakes, then this world stirs;
when he slumbers tranquilly, then the universe sinks to
sleep.

53. But when he reposes in calm sleep, the corporeal beings

whose nature is action, desist from their actions and mind
becomes inert.

54. When they are absorbed all at once in that great soul,
then he who is the soul of all beings sweetly slumbers, free
from all care and occupation.

...

57. Thus he, the imperishable one, by (alternately) waking

and slumbering, incessantly revivifies and destroys this
whole movable and immovable (creation).— The Laws of
Manu (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv)

A FAR-SEEING hope and a bright peace abide in the hearts of all

faithful students; in those at least who have learned to perceive
that behind the mask of visible things there is a splendor of life
and consciousness which is theirs for the taking; and also that it
depends upon themselves entirely to what extent they may
advance along the pathway which ascends ever upwards and
onwards along the luminous arc, upon which we, as a race, have
been and are now marching ever since the middle part of the
fourth root-race.

The Mystery Schools of antiquity made the one great aim and
object of their studies and initiatory ceremonies the bringing
forth into actuality in each candidate or initiant of his immortal
nature, of that part of him which belongs to, or rather is the
offspring of, the inner monad; that which in fact makes him a
conscious part of the buddhic hierarchy, of the Hierarchy of
Compassion. It is the union of the personal man with these higher
principles of his own nature that produces the living Christ, or the
fully Awakened One called the Buddha. It was the object of
initiation, as said, not merely to make man conscious of this
higher life within him, of these splendors within, but also to
enable him to become ready and fit to teach others of that life
which he himself felt within himself. That was the main object
and aim of all the Mystery Schools the world over, however much
they may have differed in forms and in the words in which they
clothed their thoughts. It was, in other words, to make each
initiant or candidate a living follower and example of the Silent
Watcher.

Now there are many Silent Watchers, as has been pointed out.
The Silent Watcher, in fact, is the hierarch or supreme
hierarchical Head of any one particular hierarchy of the
numberless hierarchies in the kosmos; the one spoken so
inspiringly of by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine is the chief
of the dhyani-buddhas governing this fourth round on this planet.

It would seem a curious thing to refer to in this connection; and

yet it seems a necessary thing to do, to speak of the different
vagaries of thought, quasi-philosophic, quasi-scientific, quasi-
religious, which are being spread abroad in the world today.

Many are the teachings of theosophy, which are now so familiar

and beautiful, which in the beginning were not easily received by
many in the world because they were strange and conflicted with
the prejudices — religious, scientific, and other — that men had at
the time.

How many people objected to the teaching of reincarnation when

it was first promulgated! What did someone once say to the
present speaker: "I do not want to be reborn a cab horse; I do not
want to be reborn a flea; I am a man!" Obviously, there was here
no objection to the doctrine of reincarnation which teaches no
such metempsychosis as that; the objection was to his own
prejudices, and he did not know it.

Similar is the case with some of the doctrines which will have to
be developed and unfolded in our studies here. I will not say that
among ourselves these teachings will meet with
misunderstanding; but among others they may meet with
objectors; the root-thoughts or bases of them may be
misunderstood at first, and the objectors may not wait for time
and reflection to confer an understanding of them. Meanwhile, let
us remember that the utmost vigorous exercise of the intuitional
and of the intellectual powers of each student is absolutely
necessary, and is actually demanded. We take nothing on blind
faith; but while that is the fact, on the other hand there likewise
remains for us the duty to cultivate the spiritual and meditative
faculty within our being, the immortal part of our natures.

Let us now take up the study which we temporarily closed at our

last meeting — gods, monads, and atoms, as regards their
respective work in the building of a world, in the building of a
cosmos, and in the building of man. We refer not only to his body
of flesh, but this noble doctrine includes also the why and the
how, yea, and the when of his descent through spiritual spheres
into incarnation and his existences in those spheres. Let us read
first from The Secret Doctrine, volume II, page 267:

The doctrine teaches that the only difference between

animate and inanimate objects on earth, between an
animal and a human frame, is that in some the various
"fires" are latent, and in others they are active. The vital
 fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of them.
But no animal has the three higher principles awakened in
him; they are simply potential, latent, and thus non-
existing. And so would the animal frames of men be to this
day, had they been left as they came out from the bodies of
their Progenitors, whose shadows they were, to grow,
unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in
matter.

Out of the invisible into the visible, from the deeps of inmost
space, when the time comes, the life-wave sends forth its flowings
into the exterior and into the outer spheres, making for itself as it
advances, creating for itself, through the beings which represent
that wave, its own garments, which kosmically are its planes, its
worlds. These several stages of evolution or progression, as
before said, are (1) the gods, whose garments are (2) the monads,
whose garments are (3) the souls, whose garments are (4) the
atoms, whose garments are (5) bodies. Refer the order to worlds,
and the doctrine is true. Refer the order to man, and the doctrine
is true. Refer the order to the elemental, mineral, vegetable, beast,
and human kingdoms of this earth, and the doctrine is again
analogically true. Stage by stage, degree by degree, as the living
wave advances, it projects from itself at each stage, it casts forth
from itself at each stage, innumerable entities inferior to itself,
which form its vehicles, which
we may also call its garments, its
bodies, or its planes and its worlds. Each god of the great host, for
instance, from within itself produces multitudes of monads; each
monad produces from within itself multitudes of souls; each soul
produces from within itself multitudes of atoms; and these clothe
themselves in vehicles of matter, or bodies, and all run through
their long evolutionary course. Then, when the lowest point of the
great round of life has been reached, the upward cycle begins:
there is a reentering of the vital forces, a gathering up, a
gathering withinwards, of the hosts of beings; the visible passes
back by degrees into the invisible, plus the growth and
experiences gained during the journey by each individual entity.
Each one has advanced one plane upwards in its evolution; each
one has gone so many milestones farther along the path; and,
finally, the life-wave enters the divinity from which it went forth,
but nobler, higher, in every respect. It began its long evolutionary
course
after its equally long pralayic sleep, obeying the karmic
impulses awakening it to a new life period; and now having
completed it, it is once more ready to issue forth again to form a
new manvantara, and in order to do this, once again develops
from within itself new planes, new elements, new principles, new
hosts of beings as it did before, but now nobler, ever new ones
going forth, growing ever higher and higher in grandeur and
power. Such is a general outline of the evolutionary course.

You know the old saying: "As it is above, so it is below." That

saying is found in an ancient writing said to have been engraved
on an emerald table; according to the legend, it was called the
"Emerald Table of Hermes," and is undoubtedly based on one of
the ancient Hermetic teachings. I will quote the first few lines of
it:

True, without error, certain most true; that which is above

is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that
which is above, for performing the marvels of the Kosmos.
As all things are from the [Primordial] One, by the
mediation of One [the Logos — that is to say, the host of
Dhyan-chohans], so all things arose out of this One Thing
by evolving . . .

And that "One Thing" is the summit of any hierarchy, the divinity
already spoken of in giving the general outline of the
evolutionary procession.
Turning to the Zoroastrian faith, we find the following verses in
an ancient work (which modern scholars, for reasons best known
to themselves, try to bring down to late times, but which
unquestionably contains very archaic thought) called The Desatir,
in the chapter called "The Book of Shet the Prophet Zirtusht,"
Zirtusht being one of the forms of the name which in English is
called Zoroaster, following the Greco-Latin form:

29. Know, O My Friend! that the essence of the Self-existent

is one, and without limits or conditions.

30. Being is like light; and light becometh visible. [Mark

that!]

35. Whatsoever is on earth is the reflection and the shadow

of something that is in the [spiritual] World-Sphere.

36. While that resplendent something remaineth in its

native condition, it is well also with its shadow.

37. When that resplendent thing removeth away from its

shadow, life removeth to a distance.

38. Again, that light [that resplendent thing] is the shadow

of something still more resplendent than itself [note the
hierarchical teaching here];

39. And so on up to Me, who am the Light of Lights [the

hierarchical head].

It probably has occurred to every thoughtful mind that if man has

within himself a quasi-divine monad, and seated within that
divine monad a divinity, a god, it is strange that our
consciousness of this unity with the divine through this monadic
link is not stronger in us than it is today. The Christians speak of
their guardian angel, and so do the Mohammedans; and other
peoples, such as the Greeks, spoke as did Socrates of the daimon,
the guardian self; but why is it that our conscience is not stronger
and more vocal than it is? Why is it that we have to work and
struggle inwardly to get this interior illumination consciously,
which, even according to the Christian teachings, must be "taken
by violence"? Is the reason not here? Man is composite; he is a
complex, a compound being, and lives on different planes, and
these planes are the seven elements of nature; and the seven
elements of nature are its seven principles, and the seven
principles of man can otherwise be called man's seven
elements.

The monad lives in its own world, in its own logoic activity, with
its quasi- or semi-divine powers in full action, far more self-
conscious on its own plane than you are or I am on this our plane
of consciousness. And similarly with the god within us, seated
within the monad.

But further, you will remember that in discussing the teaching

referring to the Silent Watcher, we pointed out that it was based
on the fact of the many and the One — how man and the universe
are both, respectively, many and one, many in the lower nature,
and one in the higher. Now, then, please note carefully the
following: our consciousness is no higher than it is because we
are (each of us) a person; and it is the raising of this person, of
this personal self, of this personal soul, into the impersonality and
individuality of the monad, that is the great work, the magnum
opus, of life. Here is the answer in brief to the question
propounded above. The purpose of all initiatory ceremonies — to
put the answer in another form, the aim of all initiatory teachings
of the ancient Mystery Schools — was the evocation of the higher
self, of this inner being; and it is possible to do it. A strong and
indomitable will is the first requisite. Purity of life is the second,
mental purity above everything else. And absolute loyalty and
devotion to the teachings of the esoteric wisdom and to the
teacher, is the third; and these three principles of life and conduct
are true raja-yoga; and this "kingly union" is the union with the
god within, our divine self. When this union takes place, then you
have what the Greeks called in their ancient Mysteries,
theopneusty, the breathing into the personal of the impersonal
essence.

Yet preceding this stage or degree of initiation, the second or

intermediate, there came the first of these initiations, the actual
and real meeting face to face with the god within, your own
higher ego-self; and this degree was called theophany, a Greek
compound word meaning the "appearance of a god" — i.e., of that
god which is within you, your own inner self. Further, when the
two preceding unions were achieved, when the high degrees of
theopneusty and theophany had been won, there came a third
and last stage, which the Greeks called theopathy, a Greek
compound word meaning "suffering a god," "enduring a god" — a
meaning later to be more fully explained. Such an initiate became
even in life an evolved Christos, or as the Buddhists call it, an
Awakened One, a Buddha, the awakening to the living buddhic
entity within the man, the last stage of human knowledge
possible on this earth on this round, the fourth. Very few indeed
are they
who attain to this supreme stage of incarnate wisdom!
Such a one was the Lord Buddha, Gautama Sakyamuni, Prince of
Kapilavastu. He it is, we are told, who today as a nirmanakaya
forms the summit (or Silent Watcher) of the hierarchy of sages
forming the Great Brotherhood, living among them invisible to
those of lower degree and visible to those of higher degree; in
what the Buddhists of the north call the sacred land of Sambhala,
that mysterious locality which is placed north of the Himalayas,
and not so far from what is called the desert of Gobi or Shamo.
And that wondrous thing, that wondrous entity, that wondrous
being, which was in H. P. Blavatsky and worked through her,
came from Sambhala — came from this hierarchy. I do not here
refer merely to the woman, to the physical body; no, nor even to
the personality born in Russia; but to that wonderful thing who
incarnated in that body, and who left part of "herself" behind
there and who went forth into the world crippled psychically,
obeying in this respect an archaic law, which was the cause of so
much misunderstanding about her. This entity did its work in the
world at the proper cyclic time for its appearance among men:
the opening of a new Messianic cycle.

You know the warning about "false Christs" which is given in the
Christian Gospels: in Matthew, chapter 24, verses 23, 24, and 25,
and in Mark, chapter 13, verses 21, 22, and 23. They are
practically the same in sense and words, and they evidently are
both — Mark and Matthew — taken from a former, earlier,
Christian Gospel, possibly the so-called Gospel "according to the
Hebrews," of which scholars know, but which they have never yet
found. At any rate, the writer of the above warning spoke truly
when, using the alleged words of Jesus, he said in substance:
"Many shall come after me, teaching false Christs, who will try to
lead you astray, saying 'Lo, here he is!' and 'Lo, there he is!'
Believe it not." These words are not necessarily of solely Christian
application: it is the warning against imposture contained in
them that we quote. They could apply equally well to Jews,
Hindus, Buddhists, ancient Americans, Scandinavians, to any
people living anywhere in the
world, for the warning could apply
to all. Why? Because there are in fact cyclic crises or periods
when real "saviors" of men do appear, as also "false prophets"
and "false Christs." They come always whenever the time is ripe.
After every period of 2,160 years, the length of the Messianic
cycle, there comes a recrudescence of spiritual faith into the
world at times of material growth and spiritual decadence; in
those times that Plato calls the barren periods, a Messenger
"comes" from Sambhala, and gives his doctrine to men and
establishes it, and then passes. And instantly copyists, or perhaps
false disciples, those who perhaps are seeking prominence for
themselves, or who are deceived, or who perhaps are even misled
by their own prejudices, by the weaknesses of their own human
minds — let us put it in the most charitable way possible — begin
making sects, begin preaching "false Christs," begin to make an
appeal to the wonder-loving appetite
of the people. And a new
sect is born, and either dies out or lives on for a time, and the
world is priest-ridden and man-hierarchy ridden for another
series of centuries, until by his own spiritual vigor and his mental
strength man frees himself again; and after turbulence and
achings of the heart there comes a new real light, a new real
Christos, a new light from the Hierarchy of Compassion. It is the
working of the same old appeal to men's spiritual inner fires, by
the spiritual dhyanis who incarnated primarily in the third root-
race on this planet in this round as the manasaputras, and who
thereby saved us from aeons of animality and unspeakable
degradation, and untold ages of lightless wandering.

There is the situation. We must follow either the "right hand" or

the "left," as the ancient Buddhists said. "Keeping the link
unbroken" means following the right-hand path. Each one of us as
individuals has the choice. None other can choose for us. All the
teacher can do is to appeal and to teach. Each one of us has his
conscience, which he must follow, and with which no
interference is ever tolerated. But mark you, be sure that the path
you choose is the path of conscience and wisdom. Be sure you are
not led along the left-hand path by wiles and guile of many kinds.

These are old and trite sayings, but they have always a proper
application. Their truth is not lessened by the fact that we are all
familiar with them.

At our next meeting we shall have to undertake more definitely

the study of how the life-wave passes into imbodiments, making
its own vehicles by projection from itself — by bringing forth
from within its own focus of vitality — innumerable inferior
entities, giving them forth as man gives forth his thoughts; and
then in future studies show how the life-wave passes down the
shadowy arc into ever grosser manifestation, until the critical
period is reached, when the ascending cycle of the luminous arc
begins. We shall have to refer more fully to the old Greek and
Roman philosophic school, the Stoic, and show how true were
their teachings regarding the evolution of the elements, these
elements following each other down into manifestation, each
giving form to each. For in this teaching we may find a proper
understanding of how the kosmos is built, and how man is
constructed, and the why and the how of his evolution, and why
he is here on earth now and not elsewhere, either
farther along
the path or not so far.

All these are matters which are directly connected with the
scientific researches of our own day, for modern scientific
discovery is making great strides forward, and will sooner or
later need guidance, or it too will take the left-hand path. H. P.
Blavatsky has told us plainly that it is through the Theosophical
Movement that will come the light which is to enlighten the world
and guide the footsteps of man on the path along the luminous
arc; and it is our duty to aid in this noble work with all our
strength. And if we do not understand our own philosophy
properly and rightly, so that we can meet others and talk with
them convincingly, we are failing in our duty. But those of us who
have an indomitable will and who have awakened the inner
Christos within, even to such a small extent that we can see even
something of that wonderful light within which gives us far-
seeing hope and abiding peace; those of us who have felt it even
in slight degree, will realize that in it and nowhere else on this
earth,
nor in any other sphere, visible or invisible, lies the path,
the ancient path, the small, old path of which the Upanishads
speak, that leads to the heart of the universe.

Chapter 33
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-Three
The Life-wave and the Seven Elements. The Esoteric Philosophy as
Taught by the Stoics.

If, out of the material portion of the ether, by virtue of the

inherent restlessness of its particles, the forms of worlds
and their species of plants and animals can be evolved,
why, out of the spiritual part of the ether, should not
successive races of beings, from the state of monad to that
of man, be developed; each lower form unfolding a higher
one until the work of evolution is completed on our earth,
in the production of immortal man? — H. P. Blavatsky, Isis
Unveiled, I, 340

The most positive of materialistic philosophers agree that

all that exists was evolved from ether; hence, air, water,
earth, and fire, the four primordial elements must also
proceed from ether and chaos the first Duad; all the
imponderables, whether now known or unknown, proceed
from the same source. Now, if there is a spiritual essence in
matter, and that essence forces it to shape itself into
millions of individual forms, why is it illogical to assert that
each of these spiritual kingdoms in nature is peopled with
beings evolved out of its own material? Chemistry teaches
us that in man's body there are air, water, earth, and heat,
or fire — air is present in its components; water in the
secretions; earth in the inorganic constituents; and fire in
the animal heat. The Kabalist knows by experience that an
elemental spirit contains only one, and that each one of the
four kingdoms has its own peculiar elemental spirits; man
being higher than they, the
law of evolution finds its
illustration in the combination or all four in him. — Ibid., I,
 343

FOR THOUSANDS of years there has been no such attempt as

there is at present, on the part of the Masters, our Elder Brothers,
to bring forth to the attention of mankind the doctrines which we
have been studying at these meetings for the past few years, as
any student of antiquity may assure himself. The reason is that at
about the time of the discovery of America there came the end of
one of the racial cycles, and the inauguration of another, which
has culminated at the present time in the various spiritual,
psychical, and physical disturbances both of man and of the
earth, such as we have been experiencing in the last ten or twelve
years.

You remember what Cicero the Roman orator, tells us of those

who never had had the immense advantages conferred by
initiation. He tells us, in the metaphorical language of his day,
that those who were initiated lived and died with a brighter hope
and a deeper knowledge of man and things; and that those who
did not have the supreme advantages of the secret teachings of
the ancient wisdom given through initiation, lived, more
particularly after death, in what he described as the shades and
mud and degradation and sorrow and filth — words which well
merit our attention, because Cicero, like most men of his time,
had indeed passed through the Eleusinian rites, a fact which we
know because he himself so tells us.

Now the main subject which we have to study more fully this
evening is the procedure followed by nature in the building of
worlds and of the kosmos and of man; and directly connected
with this our subject are the different views of the gods, the
monads, the souls, the atoms, and the bodies, which we have been
studying this winter.

You remember that the ancient Greeks and Romans had a school
which they called the Stoic, from the Stoa Poikile or Painted
Porch, in Athens, where the Stoic teachers taught. This school was
founded by Zeno of Citium, in the island of Cyprus, at about the
end of the fourth century before our present era; and it formed at
about the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire the religious
science or scientific religion of the most advanced thinkers of that
era. There is no question that Zeno had been initiated, probably
in the Samothracian as well as in the Eleusinian Mysteries;
because we know that the doctrines that he taught are not only
practically identical as far as they go — please note the
qualification — with our own, but there are allusions and hints
here and there scattered throughout these teachings which show
us very plainly that these doctrines of Stoicism did not originate
with him, according to the views of the modern scholars, but
must have taken their origin in a far
past, in an antiquity
originating far beyond anything of which history has preserved
annals.

Among the doctrines of Stoicism was that of the genesis or birth

of the elements of the kosmos. Five were spoken of, and two more
were vaguely hinted at. The five were aether, beginning with the
highest; then what was called fire; then air; then water; and then
earth. Now these kosmical elements are not the familiar things
which we know by those names, for they were taken merely to
symbolize, through certain appropriate qualities which they
possess, the actual elements of kosmical being.

These elements of nature, which the Brahmanical philosophy

called the tattwas, may likewise be called the principles of
kosmos, precisely as man's seven principles may be called the
elements of his being. We can say the elements of kosmos, or the
principles of kosmos, and it means for present purposes the same
thing; and we may say the elements of man or the principles of
man, and it means for present purposes precisely the same thing.
Seven different qualities or states or conditions of prakriti or
nature — call it also substance or matter for the present, if you
like. The present is not an appropriate time to go into a too
detailed distinction of the difference — which does exist —
between matter and prakriti. At any rate, the elements are seven
different states or conditions or qualities of prakriti, the
manifested side of kosmical being.

These seven elements or principles — five, as openly taught —

according to the Stoic philosophy were derived one from the
other, in order as follows: first, the Nameless One; second, its
progeny or offspring or child, which is the second element lower
in the scale; the third was aether, the progeny or offspring of the
second, combining in itself, at the same time, the qualities or
powers of the second, its parent, and of the first, its grandparent,
so to say. Then came fire, containing in itself the elements of the
three preceding, and also its own particular swabhava or
essential characteristic. You will remember what swabhava
means: the particularity, the essential nature, the real
characteristic, of a thing, which makes it different from some
other thing. The swabhava of a rose makes the rose plant bring
forth a rose always, and not a lily or a violet; and the swabhava of
a man brings forth as offspring a man always and not a
gooseberry or an acorn. This is swabhava, or self-nature. Call
it
the essential individuality, if you like; it is the special or germinal
individuality.

Then from fire, as a parent, sprang air. We are using these

familiar terms, with a warning, as said before, that they do not
really mean the familiar material things which we know by those
names. However, this element called air contains in itself the
qualities of its own nature, likewise those of fire, its parent, and
of aether, its grandparent, and the qualities of the second and the
first elements as well. Then comes water, containing in itself its
own qualities and also the qualities of the five which precede it.
Finally comes the seventh or last, gross matter, or concreted
substance, containing in itself the qualities of all the six which
precede it; each element giving birth to each following one as the
life-wave ran its course down the shadowy arc of manifestation,
or the building of the framework of the kosmos.

Thus, said the Stoics, is the kosmos built — enunciating an exactly

similar doctrine to our own, indeed, identical, as so far outlined.
Simply change the names: use gods, monads, souls, atoms, bodies,
or bearers, and add life force, and the kosmical self as the first,
and our seven kosmical principles are there. Then, said the Stoics
(expressing here their doctrine in our own terms), when the
impulse of the evolutionary life-wave had reached its ultimate
cycle of descent, i.e., had reached its lowest point on the fourth
round, then began the period of ascent; and water drew into
itself, as the life-wave advanced upward, earth, and mingled it
with itself; and air, following in turn, drew within itself the water
containing the earth, and mingled it with itself. Then fire drew
into itself the air containing the two lower elements in itself; and
the aether then in its turn drew into itself the fire, with its
elemental containments; and the second element, counting
downwards, drew into itself the
aether; and finally the first, or
Nameless One, then drew into itself the second, containing the
elemental qualities of all the others: and then, using the Stoic
language, the "tension" of the divine Essence was restored to its
own quality and kind, as far as that Essence had emanated a life-
wave of innumerable living particles or monads, and there was
repose and bliss and utter peace and ineffable rest until the cyclic
time came for the next evolutionary outpouring of the
innumerable lives.

This is, as seen, a doctrine precisely similar to our own, as shown

in the teaching setting forth the evolution of lives during the
rounds of a planetary chain. Descending along the shadowy arc
into manifestation through matter, the life-wave advances
downwards until it reaches its lowest cyclical point, then rises
along the luminous arc until all is withdrawn again into the
Essence which sent it forth, or rather from which it went forth;
individual experience gained, many stages in evolution passed
through, by every unit or monad of the life-wave which had come
down into matter for the purpose of gaining soul-experience
there, and incidentally giving to the circumambient matter itself
an upward impulse. For matter is nothing but crystallized spirit;
or, if you like, spirit is etherealized matter; though the former
statement is the better way by far in which to express the fact.

All this of course happens in what is called space. Space is not a

mere container or receptacle of things, as our modern
dictionaries define it, for in that case it would be a thing finite in
itself; and, as said before, in such case we should have to find or
conceive of a container to contain the container, and so ad
infinitum. But space is the endless and beginningless pleroma,
"Fullness," as the Greek philosophers said: the boundless All, the
field of action of the universal life, the endless and beginningless
Fullness. Space is the vast, truly incalculable, aggregation of the
innumerable hierarchies forming manifested being. We live and
move and have our being in space, as the beings, living in and
upon the atoms which compose our bodies, live in our bodies,
which to them are practically endless space, the illimitable
pleroma.

Break the molds of your minds; allow your thought to lead you
into the vast expanse of the universal consciousness which these
sublime ideas must open to you. Imagine, if you will, that life is
endless; that throughout all runs the beating of the universal
heart; and, furthermore, that there is nothing great, nothing
small, except by comparison, except relatively so. We bring
forward again here the thought which we have often before
expressed, an axiom which is one of the fundamental truths of
the esoteric wisdom, the ancient wisdom of the olden times, and
this fundamental truth or principle is that of relativity.
Everything is relative; there are no absolutes anywhere, except
relatively so; there are no jumping-off places; there are no
ultimates; there are no bounds beyond which the evolving spirit
may not go. Everything is related to everything else. How can a
thinking man talk of infinites, and at the same time speak of
absolutes? Why, the very word absolute, as pointed out in a
former study, means
what the Hindu word mukta means,
"released," "free." Absolute means released, unchained, unbound
— freedom.

You remember that when Paul, the apostle of the Christians,

during one of his missionary journeys, spoke to the men of
Athens from Mars' Hill, i.e., from the Areopagus, he used words
which are unquestionably, I think, the finest in the Christian New
Testament, for they are purely pagan philosophy. In addressing
the men of Athens, he told them that when he disembarked, on
coming up to Athens he found an altar dedicated "to the
Unknown God" — agnosto theo. Now he must have disembarked
at the old port, of Phalerum, the port of Athens which was used
before (and after) the building of the Piraeus. We know also, from
the Greek historian and traveler, Pausanias, in chapter 1, book 1,
of his work, that there were altars in that port dedicated to the
"Unknown Gods." This word, translated into English as
"unknown" (agnostos), means in Greek not so much "unknown"
as "unknowable" — unknown in the sense of unknowable;
unknown because it
was unknowable.

Now Paul, in speaking to the Athenians in his sermon to them,

used the following words, as given in the Christian writing, Acts,
chapter 17, verse 28: "For in him we live, and move, and have our
being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also
his offspring." I may point out in passing that the Greek of this
passage allows us to translate the Greek word auto just as well "it"
as "him": "For in It we move, and live, and have our being." The
Christians of modern days, having in mind their personal, active,
monotheistic deity, in translating this passage naturally took the
word as of the masculine gender; but the neuter gender is
grammatically correct also and philosophically better by far.

Ay, Paul, the "Christian" — shall we so call him? at any rate he

was an initiate — Paul, the "wise masterbuilder," as he calls
himself, thus hinting at his esoteric affiliations, not only tells us
that in It we live and move and have our being, but makes
reference constantly to matters of initiation. The many mystical
allusions to various matters which occur throughout the writings
ascribed to him, show very plainly how far the Christianity of
today has wandered from its first founders.

These poets of whom Paul here speaks are unquestionably the

two famous Stoic philosophers, Aratus (a countryman of Paul,
both he and Aratus being probably natives of Tarsus in Cilicia)
and Cleanthes of the Troad, who wrote, by the way, one of the
finest examples of Greek religious poems extant, greatly admired
even by Christian writers because they believe they see in it what
they would probably call a nascent monotheism, in the Christian
sense. But it was simply a hymn of reverence to the Stoic divine
Essence, the hierarch of the grand hierarchy of our universe, its
supreme head, which in the poem Cleanthes called Zeus. Please
always remember that though Zeus may be called the supreme
hierarch of a universe, or kosmos, or hierarchy, he is but the head
of one of innumerable other similar hierarchies, hierarchies of
the vast aggregate, endless and beginningless, which compose
manifested being.
In him — in it — we live, and move, and have our being. And this
it is what we very rightly call space, which is the vast, endless and
beginningless congeries of living beings. There is no vacuum, no
vacuity, no emptiness, no "nothing," anywhere. Everything is full,
not merely of life, but of living and conscious things, and of beings
of infinitely varying degrees of consciousness, such as you and I
are, for example. Think of it! Open your minds, and let the
thoughts which this divine idea gives to you stream in. Let them
find a habitation in your souls! They bring endless comfort and
peace, and lead to further illumination.

Verily, such is space, sevenfold space, more particularly the vast

spaces of space inwards, inwards, inwards, endlessly.

In opening our more particular study for this evening, let us read
from The Secret Doctrine, volume II, page 492, the second
paragraph:

The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that

Mankind, collectively and individually, is, with all
manifested nature, the vehicle (a) of the breath of One
Universal Principle, in its primal differentiation; and (b) of
the countless "breaths" proceeding from that One BREATH
in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature
with its many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the
planes that are ever increasing in materiality. The primary
Breath informs the higher Hierarchies; the secondary —
the lower, on the constantly descending planes.

A wonderful passage! Note particularly the reference to the

"many mankinds," concerning which matter we shall speak at
greater length in a future study.

During our last study we traced very briefly the evolution from a
god (one of infinite multitudes of divinities or gods), of other
multitudes of inferior beings; of monads springing from that god
and forming its luminous garment, its vehicle, its carrier, its
bearer, its body. Each one of those innumerable multitudes of
monads, in its turn, sends forth from itself, projects from itself,
other innumerable multitudes of souls, which form its garment,
its bearer, its carrier, its vehicle, its body. Again, every one of
such souls in its turn sends forth from itself other innumerable
multitudes of atoms, pranic-astral entities — not the physical
atom of science, please — and these atoms form the garment, the
carrier, the vehicle, the bearer, the body of such a soul.

Each one of these atoms, in its turn, concretes around itself,

gathers to itself, the life-atoms waiting over for it from previous
cycles of activity, which are the skandhas belonging to that plane
of manifestation, and thus forms its physical vehicle in which all
the other principles (mostly latent) reside.

Now this vast collection of entities — gods, monads, souls, atoms

— passed down through the kosmical elements which we have
described, using the Stoic formulae rather than the Brahmanic
which are not so well known to European readers, but which
equally well could have been used; and as these courses of life, as
this life-wave, travels downwards into matter, through each
element, through each one of the seven elements, it gives birth to
one class of these entities which we have been describing. The
god lives on the plane of the Nameless One; the monads live on
the plane of the second element, likewise unnamed in the
literature of the ancients; the souls live on the plane of aether,
akasa; and the atoms live on the plane of air, the fourth plane, the
pranic-astral world.

Thus, the elements of the Stoics, seven in number, but only five
openly named, form the principles of nature; and the life-wave in
passing through these elements builds its appropriate habitations
in each one of them. At certain appropriate planes, these
habitations take the form of globes, and these globes are the
seven forming our planetary chain; they are globes built of these
innumerable, multitudinous hosts of atoms, of souls, of monads;
some "awakened," some partly "awake," some still sleeping in the
lower spheres.

Then when the hosts of beings composing the life-wave — the life-
wave being composed of the entities derived from a former but
now dead planet, in our case the moon — find that the time has
arrived for them to enter upon their own particular evolutionary
course, they cycle downwards along the planetary chain that has
been prepared for them by the three hosts of elementary beings,
of the three primordial elementary worlds, the forerunners of the
life-wave yet integral parts of it. Remember, a hierarchy consists
of ten degrees or states; three, as the Pythagoreans would have
said, remaining in the silence and darkness — to us — of divinity,
and seven entering into manifestation. This life-wave passes
seven times in all around the seven spheres of our planetary
chain, at first cycling down the shadowy arc through all the seven
elements of the kosmos, gathering experience in each one of
them; each particular entity of the life-wave, no matter what its
grade or kind, spiritual,
psychic, astral, mental, divine, in it,
advancing, advancing, advancing downwards, advancing until at
the bottom of the arc, when the middle of the fourth round is
attained, they feel the end of the downward impulse. Then begins
the upward impulse. According to the Stoic doctrine, everything
passes by degrees back towards the divine, through the elements
again, the lower being withdrawn into the higher, until at last the
great cyclic round is finished, and the cycling beings reenter
divinity, man being in the front ranks. As so often said before,
"man" begins his evolutionary journey an unself-conscious god-
spark, and ends it as a self-conscious god.
And when we say "man" of the later stages of that journey, we
mean the thinking entity. The personal, by that time, will have
become the impersonal; the mortal will have been raised into
immortality. These two ideas comprise two of the most sublime
teachings of the ancient wisdom. The main thing to realize at the
present time is that space is a vast, beginningless and endless
Fullness; it is the boundless All; and, further, that it is composed
of the numberless hierarchies, which actually are space itself, the
spaces of space; and, still further, that these hierarchies in their
turn are composed of incalculable numbers of evolving beings in
all the seven stages of development; and that each such being has
its own grand cycle to perform: first down the shadowy arc and
then, when the end of that particular evolutionary wave or
course has been reached, the reascent along the luminous arc
upwards, towards the source from which it originally came. Then,
finally, the long pralayic
sleep. At its end comes the kosmic
reawakening, obeying the karmic impulses from the preceding
manvantara and manvantaras, the opening of a new evolutionary
course through the spheres of life, but on higher and far sublimer
levels than before.

Chapter 34
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-Four
The Spaces of Space. The Secret Doctrine, a Unifier: Universal
Keys. Doctrines of the Void and of the Fullness Contrasted.

Mme. Blavatsky, speaking on this subject in her Secret

Doctrine, quotes from the old Book of Dzyan thus:

"An army of the Sons of Light stands at each angle, the

Lipika in the middle wheel."

The four angles are the four quarters, and the "middle
wheel" is the center of space; and that center is
everywhere, because as space is illimitable, the center of it
must be wherever the cognizing consciousness is. And the
same author, using the Disciple's Catechism, writes:

"What is it that ever is? Space, the Anupadaka. What is it

that ever was? The germ in the Root. What is it that is ever
coming and going? The great Breath. Then there are three
eternals? No, the three are one. That which ever is is one;
that which ever was is one; that which is ever being and
becoming is also one; and this is space."

In this parentless and eternal space is the wheel in the

center where the Lipika are, of whom I cannot speak; at the
four angles are the Dhyan Chohans, and doing their will
among men on this earth are the Adepts — the Mahatmas.
The harmony of the spheres is the voice of the Law, and
that voice is obeyed alike by the Dhyan Chohan and the
Mahatma — on their part with willingness, because they
are the law; on the part of men and creatures because they
are bound by the adamantine chains of the law which they
do not understand. — W. Q. Judge, Echoes from the Orient,
 p. 15

Thou hast to study the voidness of the seeming full, the

fulness of the seeming void. — The Voice of the Silence, pp.
55-6

IN OPENING our study tonight, let us again read the passage on

page 492 of the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, read at our
last meeting:

The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that

Mankind, collectively and individually, is, with all
manifested nature, the vehicle (a) of the breath of One
Universal Principle, in its primal differentiation; and (b) of
the countless "breaths" proceeding from that One BREATH
in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature
with its many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the
planes that are ever increasing in materiality. The primary
Breath informs the higher Hierarchies; the secondary —
the lower, on the constantly descending planes.

We have here in brief compass not only the outline of the

hierarchical teaching, but also of the entire building of the
kosmos which, repeated in the small, means likewise the building
of the microcosm or man.

You will remember that at our last meeting we discussed, more or

less briefly on account of the shortness of the time, the question
of the nature of space, and what space was, and what space was
not. We endeavored to point out that space, in the ordinary
conception of things, means a receptacle or a container; in other
words, it usually means place. Space is used almost synonymously
with place; but this is not the use which is authorized or taught in
the esoteric teachings, wherein it is shown that space is the
illimitable series of hierarchies, which do not merely fill, but
which are the boundless All, beginningless and endless; and that
space, as the old Greeks put it, was an endless Fullness, endless
and beginningless, and they called it the pleroma, or the Fullness;
one universal life, one heart, so to say, pulsating or beating
throughout.

We also spoke of — and please mark this carefully — the spaces

of space, the inwards of space, the inward parts, bearing to space
the same relation that man's own inner principles bear to his
outer vehicle.

Now then, tonight we are going to execute an apparently

complete right-about-face; after thus having pointed out in
former studies what space was considered to be in certain
branches of the ancient wisdom, as among the Stoics, and among
the Brahmans, and in other schools of thought alluded to merely,
we shall now take up very briefly likewise the manner in which
space is looked upon more particularly by our Esoteric School,
and especially by the holders of the esoteric doctrines of Gautama
the Buddha.

We are now going to say, and prove, that the secret doctrine of
the ages is above everything else a unifier; that we are learning,
we are beginning to understand, a series of doctrines which give
us the keys to the great religions of the past ages; and that these
keys are universal in their proper application, each depending
solely upon the inner capacities of the individual as to how much
he may gain by turning a key once around, or twice, or three
times, mayhap even seven times.

There is a doctrine of the Northern Buddhism — and we choose it

in order to illustrate the esoteric teachings regarding space —
called the doctrine of the Void, the doctrine of the Empty, likewise
found in other schools in past times, such as were illustrated by
the Greek Atomists, Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus, and by
the great Roman poet Lucretius; and even spoken of by some of
the Stoical philosophers, who otherwise taught the doctrine of the
Fullness. We have an illustration here that may be a lesson to us,
as will appear later on this evening, that things which may seem
to be or form a contradiction in The Secret Doctrine, or elsewhere
in our teachings, are not really contradictions, though they may
be paradoxes. A paradox, please understand, is a statement which
appears to be or contain a contradiction, but which actually is not
one.

The word used in the Buddhist Sanskrit writings to describe this

Emptiness is sunyata. sunya means "empty" or "void." The ta is
the same grammatical suffix in Sanskrit as tas is in the Latin,
unites, trinitas, vacuitas, and is found in English as the ty in
eternity, or unity, or vacuity, and so forth: therefore sunyata is to
be translated "vacuity."

These Buddhist philosophers teach that the only reality, the only
fundamental thing, so to say, of being, is the illimitable Void.
From it in the beginning, or in time, springs forth a kosmos, or
spring forth the universes; and to it they return when their cycle
of manifestation is ended. This doctrine of the Void is of a far
more spiritual nature than the doctrine of the Fullness. It is much
more difficult to understand than the latter, because our
European minds are not trained to the thinking required easily to
understand thoughts such as these. We can much more easily,
much more quickly, comprehend and understand the Fullness of
things, than we can the thought that out from the illimitable and
perfect Void spring into life all the infinite manifestations of
kosmic being; and that back into the Void they sink again when
their life cycle is run. In other words, our minds find it easier to
understand the mystical and the religious rather than the truly
philosophic and the truly scientific. Yet this
doctrine of the Void
was taught by the grandest intellect, the most titanic spiritual
power, known to mankind in the annals of recorded and
unrecorded history; I mean by him whom we call the Lord
Buddha, Gautama Sakyamuni.

This does not mean that we are Buddhists, as has been pointed
out in former studies; but the doctrines which the Buddha taught
are also ours, when we apply to them the key which we have. You
will remember that two kinds of doctrine were taught by the
Buddha, i.e., the doctrine of the eye, very faithfully preserved by
the Southern school of Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and so forth; and
what is called the doctrine of the heart, that is, the hid doctrine,
the Mystery-doctrine; respectively so called because the eye can
see outward or visible things; but the heart is not seen, and in it,
according to the old thought, flow the fountains of life. This
doctrine of the heart is the esoteric wisdom, the unseen part of
the teaching, its core or heart, that which is not given out to all.

Practically all the religions and philosophies of the Occident, even

in Greek and Roman times, have preferred to demonstrate their
tenets on the background, or on the foundation, of the doctrine of
the Fullness; i.e., that the universe is infinitely full, and that this
fullness is composed of infinite multitudes of beings. Now that
doctrine is true — we repeat it emphatically; but likewise is truer
still the doctrine of the Void. No contradiction exists here, as will
be shown.

What do we mean when we speak of the Void, then? The doctrine

of the Void means, or rather can be illustrated by, two things.
When we look into what people popularly call the infinitudes of
space, what do we see? We see what to us is emptiness. But this
so-called ether (these ethery spaces), even according to the
theories recently taught by our modern scientists, is more rigid
than steel, denser than our densest matter; and the hard and
dense material stuff that we know on this earth, the hard rocks,
the harder metals, etc., are like floating foam, foamy bubbles,
holes, as it were, floating in and on the infinite vast expanses of
the kosmic Void.

The other way by which to approach our subject is the following:

What is that which is not matter? Spirit. Can you put spirit into a
container? Can it be encompassed or measured? No. Why not?
Because it cannot be contained, in our sense of the word. It, to us,
is emptiness, void. It is that which infills the vast ethery spaces,
and it is merely the feebleness of our senses and the weakness of
our understanding causing us to live in the external, which make
us foolishly to believe that this which we see is the real, and that
the so-called ethery spaces are unreal or empty in the popular
sense.

The Void, then, is the higher planes of the boundless All; that
which to us is void, and which therefore was so expressed by the
ancient philosophers — teaching as they did the usual sort of
men, they used simple language so that men could more easily
understand, just exactly as in the case of the much misunderstood
geocentric system so much mocked at by our wise modern
natural philosophers. And yet, is it not true that every point in
space is its center? Why, the idea is a common thought among
thinking men. Even the rather orthodox French philosopher
Pascal, copying an ancient Greek figure of expression, says that
space or infinity is that which has its center everywhere, and its
circumference nowhere.

Naturally, then, the ancients looked upon our earth as the center
of space, and so would the inhabitants of Venus, or of Mars, or of
Jupiter, or of the Moon, or of the Sun, or of any other body or
point in space. They spoke and taught anthropocentrically, as
pointed out in one of our earlier studies, i.e., from the human
standpoint of comprehension.
And likewise — and this is a passing thought — when our own
ancient esoteric philosophers spoke of the planets, spoke of
Venus, or of Mars, for instance, as a "constellation," they knew
perfectly well what they were saying, and they did not speak in
ignorance. Why did they speak of a planet as a constellation,
which in ordinary astronomical terminology or parlance means a
collection or a gathering of stars? Because every one of the visible
planets we see is but one of seven, six of them invisible to our
physical eyes, the seven forming a planetary chain. And,
furthermore, these planetary chains are composed of seven
distinct and separate globular bodies, forming, to the eye of the
seer, a true constellation; and furthermore still, each one of these
seven globes has fourteen different lokas (or rather seven lokas
and seven talas) or "worlds" attached to it, making thus, counting
all the seven globes, 49 worlds or planes or lokas and 49 talas. As
hinted at in our former
two or three studies, where we spoke of
the life-wave coming down and passing through the seven
elements of nature, we implied that the life-wave formed and
built in each one of the seven elements its appropriate habitat or
habitation. Each one of these seven globes or spheres is built for
the development of one of the seven principles of man; and each
one of these seven globes has its own seven subprinciples or
subelements to boot; precisely as the interior nature of man has
built corresponding upadhis or vehicles as his own seven
subprinciples in each one of his seven greater principles,
therefore 49; and as each principle is bipolar, there are 49 X 2 =
98 conditions or states all told. Each principle of kosmos or of
man must have its chance for manifestation in its own "home" or
element, in its own vibratory surroundings, in its own particular
magnetic sphere; and a proper understanding of all this can be
obtained in no other way than by following the hierarchical
evolutionary course of
the great titanic intellects and spirits
which govern our kosmos.
The doctrine of the Void, then, is actually identic with the
doctrine of the Fullness. There is a distinction, however, and this
distinction is, as pointed out, that the doctrine of the Void is the
more spiritual of the two, and treats of the upper or superior
nature of the kosmos, of the inwards and the yet more inwards
and of the still more inwards, infinitely, of the spaces of space;
whereas the doctrine of the Fullness treats of the kosmoi, the
kosmoses, as they are in manifestation. But the same thought,
precisely the same idea, lies back of both doctrines.

This opens the avenue for a further brief explanation of what was
pointed out in our last study or two. Some perhaps may have
thought that there was a radical difference between the principles
of man and the elements of man, or the principles of space and the
elements of space. The difference is not radical; it does not go to
the root of the case. But there is a distinction. Fundamentally the
elements and the principles are one. As explained before, force
and matter are essentially one. Spirit and substance are
essentially one. Spirit may be called etherealized matter, or
matter crystallized spirit, but the latter is the better form of
expression. It is permissible to make a distinction between a force
and its material vehicle, its material self, so to say.

The seven great elements of the kosmos are the vehicles of the
seven great forces of the kosmos, and those seven great forces are
the principles of the kosmos; hence, the seven great elements in
which they work are the vehicles of the kosmic principles. The
principles are the energy-consciousness side, and the elements
are the matter-prakriti side of being. There is the sole distinction.
But, as said, there is no radical difference between them. It is
rather a distinction of states or conditions. A force, however
spiritual it may be, is matter to a still higher force. Matter
concreted, as we may think it to be, is force to a matter inferior to
it. The explanation of the paradox lies in pointing out the
relationship of the planes of being each to each, as these work, or
are worked upon, in the great kosmic Void-Fullness.

We would like to point out further that in speaking of principles

and elements as is here done — the seven principles and elements
of man may be instanced — the teaching as above given is
accurate in every particular. The point to remember is that these
so-called seven principles of man or of the kosmos, considered as
descriptive words, are generalizing terms. You could not, for
instance, separate man into seven naturally distinct pieces and
lock each piece into a separate receptacle. And why? Because
these seven principles are to be thought of much as if we were to
speak of consciousness and force and matter and energy and
element, etc. They are generalizing terms. They are the
consciousness-substance, the matter-force, of the boundless All in
which man moves, and lives, and has his being. Great intellects of
the past have analyzed this matter-force or spirit-substance and
have shown that it consists in manifestation of seven
apparently
discrete, seven separate, parts, which yet essentially are one — the
One Life, universal and boundless. They are, first, the self; then
the vehicle of the self, the vehicle or fountain of pure impersonal
individuality. Then, third, the capacity for personal or limited
thought, egoity; then the principle of "hate and love" or
"attraction and repulsion" in the kosmos or in man, called kama.
Then, fifth, the vitality or life principle, derived directly from the
first; and then, sixth and seventh, the astral and physical bodies,
vehicles.

Now you see that these are general principles of being. But when
we undertake to analyze man more particularly, for purposes of
accurate esoteric study, we shall find, when we come to that part
of our investigations, that we shall have to be far more particular
in the terms we use if we are to get a proper understanding of
what man is, how he is built, his relationship to other beings in
the kosmos, why he evolves as he does, and his final destiny. The
greatest questions of the spirit-side of nature, the greatest
questions of psychology, the great problem of psychophysical
evolution, are bound up in just this thought that we have here
enunciated.

Our time is so short at any one of our meetings that we can do

little more in that time than briefly hint at certain things, taking
them up at later meetings for further consideration. But mark
you, it is better so. Such was always the method of the ancient
schools. Never did they teach according to our modern boasted
system of turning and twisting and hammering at a subject until
the life went out of it, and the brains of their pupils wearied and
became set in mental molds. This brain-mind method has no
element of inspiration in it whatsoever. That method cripples the
thinking entity. On the contrary, the ancient teaching was by
proper suggestion, making the disciple to do his thinking for
himself, on a hint or at an allusion, making his mind to catch the
holy fires of inspiration, so that he should lighten up his own
inner temple with the thoughts that his own divine monad
infused or inspired into him. Parables, hints, suggestions, were
the teacher's method; and then always, at a later date, catching
up
the thought again, opening the door a little wider, raising the veil
of Isis a trifle more, rendering help in this manner.

Thus, then, we have seen that the elements and the principles are
essentially one, dual only in manifestation. We have seen that the
principles of nature and of man are the energy-consciousness
side of nature and of man; and that the elements in the kosmos or
in man are the matter-prakriti side of nature and of man. But
remember always that force and matter, spirit and substance,
consciousness and its vehicle or upadhi, are essentially one. As
said before, a force or a spiritual energy is concreted matter to
another one diviner than it; and the concreted matter of our
plane is a whirling cyclone of force to the matter inferior to it. A
fact, this, which our scientists are beginning to realize, as shown
in their teaching of the whirling electrons, tiny bodies, whirling in
the molecular aggregate called the physical atom — a miniature
solar system, they say. A true thought that, and inspired.

Remember that sunyata, called the doctrine of the Void, refers to

the spiritual side of being, and that the doctrine of the pleroma,
the doctrine of the Fullness, refers to the matter-prakriti side of
being, the side of manifestation, which passes away when the
great manvantara is finished.

But remember also, as said several times already this evening,

that when we speak of substance or of spirit, of force or of matter,
of purusha or of prakriti — to use the Brahmanical Sankhya
terms — it is only by way of voicing the things which we have
learned through our various inner faculties and outer senses
about the kosmos, and that fundamentally these respective pairs
are one. Spirit and substance or matter are one, and both will
sink back again into the vast illimitable Void of the unbounded
divinity when the time of universal pralaya comes. Remember
the ancient mystic saying that the disciple should learn to know
the meaning of the statement: the fullness of the seeming void,
and the voidness of the seeming full.

Now this "seeming full" of matter is truly sunya, emptiness,

mostly holes, so to say. Sunya is the ancient Brahmanical doctrine
of maya, a doctrine of the Vedanta, called the "end of the Veda,"
because it is claimed to be the perfection or end of the teaching
concerning the esoteric side of the Vedic poems. Maya means
"illusion." Not that the manifested kosmos does not exist; it does
exist, or it could not be or provide an illusion. The illusion
consists in not properly understanding it. If matter or substance
(or nature, prakriti) did not exist, you might as well say that spirit
does not exist, because they are fundamentally one. The truth is
that matter is not the substantial, infinite element, the essence of
reality, which our Western minds — untaught and undisciplined
in these ideas — think it is, merely because it seems solid to us
and therefore "real." It is illusion because it is deceptive; and
actually, as the Buddhists
taught, thereby teaching the same
thought as the Brahmanical Adwaita-Vedanta, sunyata is the
doctrine of emptiness, of the elemental vacuity of the manifested
universe, and hence is the doctrine of maya, illusion: illusory
because unreal.

Even the modern natural philosophers, the physicists, the

chemists, now are beginning to understand that this so-called
apparent universe is mostly vacuity. They have never yet been
able to find out what matter really is; it is a figment of the
scientific imagination, as commonly explained, and all they know
about it is simply what their own intuitions and scientific
deductions have told them: that back of the seeming, back of the
appearances, there is something concerning which they say —
"We are learning more about it. What it really is, we do not
know!"

As a final thought tonight, let me point out that although we have

been speaking during recent meetings of the gods, monads, souls,
atoms, bodies, which still form our present subject of study, we
have not yet finished it by any means; we have barely entered
upon it. Using the term gods, we use a term which is familiar. It is
a good term, a truthful term; there is no reason to reject it; but yet
it is not the term used in our esoteric system. Our esoteric Tibetan
teachings use for it the expression dhyani-buddhas, and the lower
side of the god-plane where they belong is occupied by the
dhyani-chohans. Dhyani, a Sanskrit word adopted into the
Tibetan terminology, means "meditation" or "contemplation";
therefore the former expression means "buddhas of meditation"
or of contemplation; and the latter means "lords of
contemplation" or of meditation. The latter term, however, is not
infrequently used to include both classes. In the Mystic Greek
system, these
gods, these dhyani-buddhas, were called logoi,
logoses. The word logos is a Greek vocable meaning "word." It
also has a derivative meaning given as "reason." Why? Because
the Greek philosophers saw that when a man thinks and desires
to express his thought, to convey the thought to another, he must
use words. The word is the carrier of the thought over to another
mind: and from this simple illustration the word logos, meaning
"word," was adopted into the philosophic language and into the
religious language (and later into Christianity), to mean that
power or energy or entity which carries the divine thought over
to lower planes — carried over from the plane above or behind it,
from the intellect or mind behind it, from the consciousness
behind it, to lower planes. In our case, the monads occupy this
second or lower plane.

In conclusion, I desire to translate from the original Greek the

first five verses of the Christian Gospel ascribed to the disciple
whom Jesus is said to have especially loved, John, called John the
Divine, divine meaning here theologian. He was thus called
theologian, we must suppose, because he was the only one of the
four writers of the four accepted Gospels who wrote anything
resembling in style or in matter the fine, lofty, theological
teachings belonging to the Neoplatonic or Neopythagorean school
— an unintended compliment to the latter. These quasi-pagan
teachings are found in the first part only of the Gospel according
to John. They are as follows — and I would that I had time more
fully to explain them than the necessarily brief commentary on
them that I can make this evening:

1. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was

 towards god, and the logos was god.

2. This [the logos] was in the beginning towards god.

I am making my own translation; the so-called Authorized

Version is a literary farce, translated to suit the monotheistic
prejudices of the Christian exegetes; and the Revised Version is no
better.]

3. All things were generated through it, . . .

The Greek word egeneto, here translated "generated," could

likewise be translated "came into being." The English word
generated itself comes from the same Aryan root. I read again:

3. All things were generated through it, and without it not a

single thing was generated [came into being].

4. That which was generated in it was life, and the life was
the light of men.

5. And the light shines in the shadow, and the shadow took
it not up.

Don't you see our teachings alluded to there; the very words used
in the ancient doctrine, ay, even from the Book of Dzyan, the
"spirit and its wing," the "wing and its shadow"? Shadow is an
ancient Mystery-term meaning "vehicle" or "body" as was pointed
out in a recent study, in a quotation read from a chapter of The
Desatir called "The Book of Shet, the Prophet Zirtusht," or
Zoroaster. There the word shadow was used in exactly the same
sense.

Note the thought here: in the beginning of our manifested

universe existed the logos, being the first entity or thing brought
into manifestation in the beginning; and this logos was towards
god. The Greek word here translated "towards" is pros, meaning
motion towards a thing. Of course, the logos sprang from the
spirit divine, god, but the attempt here in this Gospel is to
emphasize the thought that its natural aspirations were towards
its parent-fountain. A great secret of occultism lies in this thought.
"As a man thinketh, so is he," says in substance a Hebrew writing,
Proverbs, thereby uttering a profound truth. Man follows
infallibly the bent of his nature, his desire. He is magnetically
drawn towards that which his heart longs for, and that which he
wants he gets; if he wants heaven he will get it; and if he wants
hell, he will be magnetically drawn to spheres infernal. This, in
brief expression, is an outline of the whole mystery of
so-called
karmic fruits, of heaven and of hell — and much more which we
must here leave unsaid.

"And the logos was towards god" — aspiring towards its own
divine source; and this god was swabhavat, Father-Mother; not
swabhava, which is an entirely different thing. As pointed out
before, swabhavat is what certain Asiatic and other schools call
Father-Mother, the great Vacuity, sunya, the great Emptiness,
akasa in Hindu writings, which is the great Void to us, but the
great Fullness in another sense. What we call the great Fullness is
the manifested universe flowing forth in wondrous procession
from the Void, or swabhavat, or Father-Mother, or mahasunya, or
akasa, various names for the same thing.

Verse 2. "This was in the beginning towards god." So anxious was

the writer of this Gospel to point out that the logos originated in
the beginning, and that the aspiration of the logos was towards its
parent-source, that he must needs repeat it once again.

Verse 3. "All things were generated through it," that is, came into
being through it. This shows that it is the demiurgus or world
fashioner which was in the writer's mind, and this logos is on the
third lower plane only of manifestation, on the third kosmic
plane; as we say, the third logos from above, which is the
manifest logos or the world maker, the world artificer. The writer
continues: "And without it not a single thing was generated." So
anxious, so desirous, was he to show that there was no creating of
souls or worlds or anything else by an extra-kosmic god, that he
has to point out again here that it was the logos, the kosmic word,
carrying its force down from its parent, that from itself generated
things, cast them forth, projected them, evolved them, exactly as
we have been pointing out in our recent meetings as being the
course or method of manifestation. And these things were the
monads, the atoms, the souls, and all the rest.

The writer continues, changing the thought-type somewhat, for

fear that it will be thought that this generation of the beings on so
high a plane is the mere matter and gross physical things which
we see around us: "That which was generated in it [in the logos]
was life" — not stones, trees, stars, planets, etc., men, and other
things, but life. And the life — mark this — "was the light of men,"
the spiritual light illuminating mankind; in other words, man's
higher nature, or verily our own inner logos, our own "inner
god," our own inner Christos.

And this logos, the third or manifest logos, is but the vehicle of a
logos still higher than itself. During the processes of generating or
bringing forth all these things which are less than itself, every
single step brings forth light, for light is one of the first
manifestations of the creative activity — remember, creation in
its original sense means formation. This light of the third kosmic
plane is daiviprakriti. We borrow the word from the Vedanta of
Hindustan; it means "shining or divine prakriti," of which akasa
or swabhavat is the "crown." Swabhavat or akasa is the first
manifest kosmic element or manifestation of prakriti, or essential
nature itself. Remember that there are seven natures, one within
the other; seven elements; seven kosmic forces. "And the life was
the light of mankind" — our own higher nature.

And the last verse: "And the light shines in the shadow" — which,
as regards man, is its vehicles or our higher minds. "And the
shadow took it not up," i.e., primordial man had as yet evolved no
vehicle or mind fit to "take it up" or in.

This thought here enables the writer of this Gnostic Gospel —

Gnostic at least in the first part thereof — to introduce his
sectarian teachings: "There was a man who was sent from God,
whose name was John," to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
human logos, the savior of mankind. He, Jesus Christ, was this
light, who "became flesh" (!) and came into the world as the "light
of men." Tragic! A beautiful teaching of the ancient Mystery-
religion from the beginning of time is here taken and adapted,
and applied — as pointed out in a previous study — to a mere
Mystery-figure, a mere type-figure of the ancient Mysteries. Not
that Jesus did not ever live; a man, a Hebrew rabbi if you like,
called Jesus, did live; but the Christos of whom the Christian
Gospels write is a type-figure of the Mysteries, but much and
sadly distorted.

Chapter 35
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-Five
Occultism and the Mystery Schools. Seven Degrees of Initiation:
Man Becomes a God. Seven Kosmic Planes: Our Planetary Chain of
Seven Globes on the Four Lower Planes — the Passage of the Life-
wave therethrough.

The world — meaning that of individual existences — is

full of those latent meanings and deep purposes which
underlie all the phenomena of the Universe, and Occult
Sciences — i.e., reason elevated to supersensuous Wisdom
— can alone furnish the key wherewith to unlock them to
the intellect. Believe me, there comes a moment in the life
of an adept, when the hardships he has passed through are
a thousandfold rewarded. In order to acquire further
knowledge, he has no more to go through a minute and
slow process of investigation and comparison of various
objects, but is accorded an instantaneous, implicit insight
into every first truth. Having passed that stage of
philosophy which maintains that all fundamental truths
have sprung from a blind impulse — . . . ; the adept sees
and feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental
truths — the Universal Spiritual Essence of Nature, SHIVA
the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Regenerator. — The
Mahatma
Letters, p. 241

I say again then. It is he alone who has the love of

humanity at heart, who is capable of grasping thoroughly
the idea of a regenerating practical Brotherhood who is
entitled to the possession of our secrets. He alone, such a
man — will never misuse his powers, as there will be no
fear that he should turn them to selfish ends. A man who
places not the good of mankind above his own good is not
 worthy of becoming our chela — he is not worthy of
becoming higher in knowledge than his neighbor. — Ibid.,
p. 252

There is but one general law of life, but innumerable laws

qualify and determine the myriads of forms perceived and
of sounds heard. — Ibid., p. 255

THE SEARCH for truth is the noblest aim that man can pursue.
The original principles of being were uncovered ages upon ages
agone, and were coordinated into a complete and marvelous
system. Upon that wonderful system as a basis, the teachers of
ancient times laid the foundations of the superstructures of the
various philosophic and religious systems which have come down
to us in the world's literatures as now extant. These systems
contain in greater or less degree fundamental truths of being, the
study of which in our own time is called occultism — the science
of the kosmos and of man as a part thereof; telling us of the
origin, the nature, and the destiny of the universe and of man, a
part thereof. The Mystery Schools of antiquity formed the inner
focus of the ancient thought, and the doctrines there studied were
called the heart doctrine, because they represented the doctrines
that were hid; and the various philosophies that they expounded
in public were called the eye doctrine, because they
were the
doctrines in exoteric phrasing of the things that were seen and
not the things that were hid. The heart doctrine comprised the
solutions of the enigmas of being, and these solutions were put
forth in exoteric form under the guise of allegory and in
mythological treatment, and formed the eye doctrine, or the
exoteric religions or philosophies.

But all these ancient philosophies were founded on wonderful

and sublime truths, compared with which the philosophies of
modern Europe are mere verbiage, little more than fine words.
The doctrines comprised in occultism treat, as said, of the real
nature, origin, and destiny of the kosmos and man. These Mystery
Schools taught causal things, and their effects in life; they taught
of the most intimate and profound relations of the elementary
beings, whatever their degree in the kosmos, to each other. They
taught man that the way to a complete understanding of the
mysteries of being was by searching within; that no man could
understand a truth properly which merely entered his ears,
without having developed in himself also first the capacity, the
inner faculty, of comprehension; and it was the development of
this inner faculty of comprehension or understanding that was
the main aim of the schools of initiation.

The whole effort, then, of these initiating schools was to make

man know himself. Why? Because the inmost essence of man is
rooted in the inmost essences of the universe, and by following
the small, age-old path, as the Upanishads said, which lies within
man himself, and to which Jesus alluded when he said, "I am the
way, the truth, and the life" — by following that small, old path
inwards, man could climb step by step inwards or "upwards,"
inwards and inwards forever, constantly expanding into greater
fields of consciousness. And this evolving of the inner man is
achieved through the evocation of the spiritual powers latent in
man's higher nature. It is, in fact, the uniting man's soul to his
divine monad, his inner god.

As pointed out in former studies, three were the states, after the
fourth degree of initiation, which the initiant or candidate must
win: first came the theophanic mystery, which is the appearance
at the solemn moment of initiation of man's own inner god to
himself; and this holy presence was called by the Greeks
theophany, "the appearance of a god," i.e., man's own higher self
to himself. And while in the average candidate this sublime
moment of intellectual ecstasis and high vision lasted but a short
time, with further spiritual progress of the candidate the
theophanic communion became more enduring and lasting, until
finally, ultimately, man knew himself, not merely as the offspring
spiritually of his own inner god, but as that inner god itself, in his
essential being.

That was the first step, the first realization. The second came in
what the Greeks called theopneusty, which is a Greek compound
word meaning "the inbreathing of a god," and in which man not
merely was conscious by inner senses, and outer senses even, of
his inner divinity, but he felt the inspiration flowing through his
intellectual and spiritual veins, as it were — felt the inbreathing
from his own inner god and became, thus, inspired, the very
word inspiration meaning "inbreathing." With the passing of time
and the greater purification of the soul-vehicle, which is man
himself, this inbreathing or inspiration became permanent.

Finally, there came at the seventh initiation the most sublime

mystery of all, called theopathy by the Greeks, meaning "the
suffering a god" — a technical term; that is to say, not that the god
suffered, but that the initiant, the candidate, suffered himself to
become, abandoned himself fully to be, a truly selfless channel of
communication of his own inner god, his own higher self; he
became lost as it were in the greater self of his own higher self.
This personal self became absorbed, transmuted, and its lower
characteristics vanished away like a cloud before the sun; and
with the passing of time and the greater cleansing of the vehicle,
the soul, the personal man, became blended utterly with his own
inner god. And that was theopathy.

Now the various degrees of initiation in the ancient Mystery

Schools comprised, first, three degrees, which were those of
teaching. With the fourth began the personal experience; that is
to say, the teaching was continued, but in addition to that the
initiant, the candidate, was made to be, to become, that which
before he was taught of, told about; because the only way utterly
to know a thing, the only way utterly to understand a thing, is to
become it.

There is vastly more in this thought than appears on the surface,

and more than we have time this evening to enter into. But let it
remain in your minds. And the teaching was continued with
every step higher, up to the seventh, ay, even up to the tenth
degree. We stop at the seventh, because the three highest degrees
are far beyond our comprehension, and pertain only, we are told,
to the highest of the Masters.

Teaching continued even up to the seventh initiation,

coordinately with the self-experiencing, the self-becoming; and in
this way man not merely knew, but felt himself, realized that he
was, one with the kosmos, not merely its offspring and child in a
detached manner, but verily, in every sense of the word, it itself.
Then came the realization of that kosmic self, the atman, that
which is the same in you and me, in every dweller on this globe,
and in every dweller in every one of the planetary or stellar
bodies in space; the feeling, the sense, the knowledge, "I am." That
which separates us is the feeling of "I am I," and "you are you";
and this is the action of the ego, egoism.

Yet, mystery of mysteries, know this: it is only through the

passing across of egoity into universality that man becomes a god.
If there were not the egoic principle enlarged and purified to
contain it and to understand it, there could be no such thing as
the Hierarchy of Compassion, there could be no such thing as the
luminous arc. It remains with each one of us so to live the life, so
to purify his inner sheaths of being, so to transmute his soul-
essence, that they may become fit channels of communication
between his own inner god and himself. When man has
accomplished that, he becomes omniscient for our kosmic
hierarchy; omniscient, for all knowledge of it and in it is his. And
why? Because his essence of consciousness, the egoic essence, has
become united through his own inner god with the universal
plane, the atmic plane; and knowledge and wisdom then stream
through him as the sun-rays stream through the atmosphere.

We have read from The Secret Doctrine at three or four former

meetings a paragraph which we shall repeat tonight, in volume II,
on page 492, as follows:

The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that

Mankind, collectively and individually, is, with all
manifested nature, the vehicle (a) of the breath of One
Universal Principle, in its primal differentiation; and (b) of
the countless "breaths" proceeding from that One BREATH
in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature
with its many mankinds [please note that] proceeds
downwards toward the planes that are ever increasing in
materiality. The primary Breath informs the higher
Hierarchies; the secondary — the lower, on the constantly
descending planes.

We have there, comprised in brief compass as said before, the

entire outline of the study which we have been pursuing this
winter; and at a later moment this evening, or perhaps at our
next meeting, we shall go into this question of the various
mankinds spoken of. There is involved in this a great and
wondrous mystery. Let me merely say at the present moment that
the humanity of which we form a part on earth today, that is to
say, the particular life-wave which we call mankind or humanity
or human beings, is not the sole and only life-stream of intelligent
egos traversing the various rounds of evolution on our planetary
chain. There are six others, all evolving contemporaneously with
us, some ahead of us, and some behind us; and they are evolving
in the various lokas or talas which we shall try further to
elucidate this evening. A most difficult subject this, but one which
we shall do our best to explain, because it is absolutely necessary,
even in small degree, in order properly to understand the
fundamental questions of the evolution of the evolving ego.
Evolution is a subject which is interesting the world very much at
the present time, and which our scientists limit, of course, merely
to the physical world, more especially as concerns man and the
beasts, which are two stirpes (to use the Latin word) only of the
vastly numerous families of evolving beings, some ahead of us
and some behind.

Now you will remember that at our last two or three meetings we
spoke of the principles and elements of the kosmos. The elements
form thereof the vehicular, or bearer, or carrier side; and the
principles form the energy-consciousness side; and we shall this
evening limit our study (with mere allusions to human elements
and principles) to the kosmic planes, because our present
endeavor is to get a clear picture, as clear as possible at the
present time, of what we mean when we speak of kosmic planes,
of the seven globes of the planetary chain, and of the rounds.

It is most interesting to note that these subjects, which so many

people have misunderstood to be merely interesting questions for
intellectual entertainment, are intimately involved with the
moral, and with the spiritual, nature of man; and no man can
have a proper comprehension of ethics and morals without
understanding his proper place in the universe: his origin, his
nature, and his destiny. What morals need in Occidental thought
is a foundation based on science and philosophy. Morals are not
something which is up in the air; they are not something which
man must merely live by — they are that, indeed, but they are
much more. The moral sense springs from man's spiritual
consciousness, and no man — and we lay it down positively —
can really understand a theosophical doctrine from the
intellectual standpoint only and without having the spiritual light
upon it. And that light, that spiritual light, manifests in man's
intellectual realm of thought as his instinctive moral sense, that
which the great German philosopher Kant spoke of as the one
thing which held him firmly to the belief that our universe was
something more than mere force and matter.

Remember first, that, as pointed out in the Upanishads and in the

several wonderful Brahmanical philosophies, in ancient Greek
thought, in Christianity, and preeminently in our own teachings
— throughout the world, in fact, in the various ancient
philosophies and religions — when we speak of divine things we
must understand that we also are a part thereof, and that even the
physical world itself, the material world itself, is but the garment
of the divine; imperfect, because it is builded by imperfect
because evolving hierarchies, by imperfect entities, of which we
also are examples. Remember what Goethe says, in his Faust:

Thus, at the roaring loom of Time I ply, / And weave for

God the garment thou see'st Him by.

And as Paul, the Christian, said, "In It we live and move and have
our being."

Search into yourselves. The teachings given out in these studies

are the keys. Prove them; examine the literatures of the world;
search all things; and, as Paul said (speaking as an initiate), retain
that which is good, retain that which you know to be true.

Seven, then, are the elements of kosmos; seven, then, are its
principles, working through those seven elements. From the
consciousness-side they are consciousness on the one hand,
vehicle on the other. From the substantial side they are force on
the one hand, and matter on the other. Let us illustrate this first
of all by seven horizontal, parallel lines, to represent the elements
and principles of kosmos.

Please remember that this figure is a diagram. The elements, the

principles, of the kosmos are not really one above another, like a
series of steps, or like the rungs of a ladder. This figure is a
diagram only, that is, it is a symbol. The elements of the kosmos,
the principles of the kosmos, the spheres of the kosmos, are
within each other, the most spiritual being the inmost. But this
being impossible in representation on a plane surface, we have to
figurate the idea schematically, diagrammatically,
paradigmatically. Therefore this figure merely shows first, that
there are seven planes in kosmos. Let us next represent the
evolving and originating life forces, the gods and the intelligences
of the three higher planes, by a triangle, using the old Platonic
and Pythagorean symbol — a beautiful symbol — because it
shows and suggests the originating point, the kosmic point, the
seed, from which all divine things spring; and which shows the
apex of the triangle also vanishing,
as it were, through the highest
plane, through a laya-center, a neutral center, a nirvana of all
things less or lower than it, vanishing more inward into
something higher. Exactly as a seed, an acorn, for instance, will
bring forth an oak, in its turn shedding its harvest of acorns, so
the kosmic seed sends forth from itself these hosts of hierarchies
of beings, themselves producing other lower hosts on the
downward scale. Let us then represent this process by a triangle.

The four lower planes of the figure, which are the four lower
kosmic planes, represent all the states that man can reach to in
his present period of development. Our own atmic essence
springs forth from the fourth kosmic plane, counting downwards.
Further, let us next represent our planetary chain in the following
manner, that is to say, by inscribing circles, seven of them, on
these planes, two on each plane, with the exception of the lowest
plane where we inscribe only one circle, representing our own
globe Terra. Then, we number these circles respectively,
beginning with the left and going downwards, A, B, C, D; and then
going upwards, E, F, and G. Please note that there are two circles
or globes on each plane, with the exception of globe D, our own.
These seven "planes" are really the seven kosmic elements
respectively.

It is extremely tempting to suppose, or to think, that each one of

these seven globes has a respective habitat or locus or place on or
in each one of the kosmic elements, but it is not so. That idea is
what we call a false analogy, a tempting suggestion leading the
mind astray.

Now, then, when we speak of the seven elements of the kosmos,

we mean by elements exactly what the ancients meant, which
they described by verbal symbols. They spoke of four usually,
occasionally of five, and they were the same all over the world —
earth, water, air, fire; sometimes a fifth, aether, was mentioned;
but these were certainly not the material earth, water, air, or fire
that we know. These things of earth were chosen because they
symbolized, by reason of certain attributes inherent in them, the
four planes or rather elements of nature on which the seven
globes of our planetary chain live and move and have their being.
We can say that earth represented kosmic matter, concreted
substance, the lowest element of all; and that water represented
Chaos in the ancient sense — as the Hebrew Bible puts it, the
"waters" of space over which brooded the Elohim, the gods,
mistranslated "God." And we can say that air is spirit. The very
word
spiritus in Latin means "breath," "wind," "air." And fire is
the symbol of divine light, the first emanation of the kosmic
Logos, which we call, adopting the Sanskrit-Buddhist term,
daiviprakriti, "divine nature," "divine light," light being one of the
first emanations in the beginning of the evolutionary
processional period.

Therefore, when we speak of elements, we mean rather what the

average European mind understands by "spheres of action,"
worlds: the world of kosmic matter, the world of Chaos, the
spheres of spirit, and the world of the divine light or daiviprakriti.

The logoic world, which is to us the quasi-divine, the fourth

kosmic plane, counting downwards, comprising the planetary
globes A and G, let us then call the archetypal world, and we so
write it in our diagram. The world beneath, comprising globes B
and F, we will call the intellectual or creative world. The world
below that, comprising globes C and E, we will call, if you please,
the astral or formative world. And the lowest element or world of
all, on which our sole globe is, our planet Terra, let us call the
physical world.

You will here recognize at once what we have stated before in

connection with the doctrines of the Qabbalah — the four worlds
that it teaches of. Those of you who have studied the Qabbalah
may remember that its world of emanations or archetypal world
is called atsiloth; then comes the second, the world called beriah,
or creative following downwards; and then the third world, called
the world of formation, yetsirah; and finally the fourth or
material world, which the Qabbalists called the world of shells,
qelippoth, our world, because it is that of the most concreted
matter, the shell holding all the others; like the shell of an egg, or
the rind of a fruit, and so on, and also meaning something else in
connection with kama-loka, but we are not treating of that part of
the subject tonight and merely mention it in passing. These
worlds are, of course, our four kosmic elements.

Furthermore, please remember the next important thought. Each

one of these seven kosmic elements, counting from the beginning,
i.e., counting downwards, comprises in itself all the others which
preceded it, of which it is an emanation. For instance, the first,
the highest, emanates the second, below it, in which it reflects
itself, to boot; yet this second nevertheless has its own swabhava,
its own essential nature or peculiar characteristic, but it also is
the carrier or vehicle of the one above it, as just said. Next, these
two emanate and reflect themselves into the third, which yet has
its own essential nature, but nevertheless is the carrier or bearer
of those above it; and similarly with the fourth or lowest world or
element.

Every atom, even of the physical world, has everything in it of the

boundless kosmos, latent or developed, as the case may be. Note
the optimistic trend of thought in this.

Now, then, these four lower kosmic elements or planes comprise

all of us, that is to say, all of us that we have so far developed. The
summit of the archetypal or fourth kosmic plane is the element
where the laya-center of our atman is — our universal kosmic
self. Through it stream the divine forces from above, which
originate or rather are our seven principles, our seven elements
of being, manifesting in the four lower kosmic elements which
likewise form the seven ranges of prakriti or nature as we
cognize them. You will remember that every kosmic element in
itself is subdivided into seven subelements, i.e., seven degrees of
prakriti. So far as we are concerned, the seven subdegrees of
prakriti or nature on each one of these four lower kosmic planes
comprise the only degrees of prakriti of which we can at the
present time have cognizance, because we have not yet evolved
the faculties within us necessary to cognize the higher ones.

As a concluding thought tonight, you will remember from reading

the teachings that H. P. Blavatsky gave us in her wonder work The
Secret Doctrine, that the life-wave pursues an evolutionary course
through these seven globes, passing from globe A, after finishing
its evolutionary cycle on it, to globe B, finishing its cycle on B and
passing to globe C, finishing its cycle on it and then passing on to
globe D, and so around the chain, making what we call one round.

But we must be cautious in these matters and avoid leaping to

conclusions. The above does not mean that only when everything
is finished or perfected on globe A, we then jump to globe B. Not
at all. Seven sublife-waves evolve on globe A. When the lowest (or
the mineral) on globe A — remember that though it is a spiritual
planet, yet the "mineral" of that spiritual planet is as dense and as
gross to its inhabitants as our minerals are to us — has finished
its development for that one round, it feels the impact or impulse
of the incoming vegetable kingdom, and its surplus of life
overflows into globe B; and when the beast kingdom in its turn
impacts upon the vegetable, and when this latter has run its
sevenfold course, the vegetable then in its turn overflows into
globe B downwards, and the mineral in B passes on to globe C;
and when the human world impulses into globe A, then the beast
world begins to come down into globe B, the vegetable to pass
into C, the mineral into
D, and so on. This is the process during
the first round; but beginning with the second round the process
changes somewhat its order. But we reserve this for future
studies.

There is an overflow of the surplus life forces, as it were, from

every kingdom into the next globe; and this complicated process
is followed (but changed, beginning with round 2) throughout all
the rounds, throughout all the seven globes. When globe G, or the
seventh, is reached, there ensues for the life-wave a nirvana,
answering to the devachan or heaven period between two human
incarnations on earth; and also between any two globes there is a
smaller time of rest for the evolving life-wave.

This process alone is enough to set the minds of many people in

bewilderment. It seems so complicated; in reality it is very simple.
It needs only a little honest thought to understand it — half as
much thought as most people give to the material things of life:
what shall I eat, what shall I put on, what theater shall I go to,
how shall I make money, and so forth.

We have spoken of lokas and talas. We shall touch upon that

matter more fully at our next meeting. But remember this fact:
each one of these globes is divided into fourteen different
"worlds." I do not mean globes; I mean conditions or states of
matter. For instance, water may be ice or steam, and yet may be
water. Suppose that you had to explain to a man who had never
seen ice, had seen merely water, what ice is; and after trying to do
so he said: "The man raves; he is trying to tell me that water, the
most fluid of things, under certain conditions may become cold
stone."

Secondly, when we say worlds (we have to use words in order to

give some idea of the meaning) we do not mean globes. A globe is
globe A, or B, or C, or D, or E, or F, or G; but each one of these
globes comprises or has seven lokas, or "places," or worlds, or
conditions, or states, or kinds, of matter — subworlds, if you like;
and also seven talas, making fourteen altogether. Please
remember also that these fourteen (or these twice seven) worlds
are not above each other like the steps in a stair. They are within
each other, one more inward than another, not exactly like the
skins of an onion, but each inner one is finer, more spiritual,
more ethereal, than its next outer; and the most ethereal, the
most spiritual of all, is the inmost.

Now these seven lokas on each globe are the fields of action of the
ascending subwaves in the racial cycles; likewise, the various
kinds of bodies, ethereal or physical or spiritual, or whatever else,
that the race uses as it passes along the evolutionary cycles,
correspond in texture and senses with the various lokas passed
through, and the loka which the evolving entity senses is that
particular loka or world correspondent to its bodies. And the talas
are the same thing on the downward subwaves of the racial
cycles. The lokas and talas are always working together, two by
two, one of each, because matter is bipolar in manifestation on
the globes; of the two (one loka and one tala), one is spiritually
positive, attracting one way, and the other is spiritually negative,
attracting the other way.

And, lastly, we point out that we are at the present time in one of
these lokas and in one of these talas, and that there are six other
humanities or life-waves evolving similarly to our own course:
intelligent, thinking beings on our planet — I do not necessarily
say on our globe D — evolving through these lokas and talas. How
this thought stirs the imagination! If this process of evolution did
not so take place, we say in conclusion, there could be no
completely logical and satisfactory explanation of the
phenomenon that the early writers upon theosophical subjects
called "fifth rounders" and "sixth rounders."

Chapter 36
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-Six
Interpenetrating Spheres of Being. Lokas and Talas: Bipolar
Kosmical Principles and Elements. The "Heresy of Separateness"

All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is
holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any
other thing. For things have been co-ordinated, and they
combine to form the same universe (order). For there is
one universe made up of all things, and one god who
pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, (one)
common reason in all intelligent animals, and one truth; if
indeed there is also one perfection for all animals which
are of the same stock and participate in the same reason. —
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 9 (George Long, trans.)

Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by

subtle threads of magnetic sympathy, and, there is a
mutual correlation even between a star and a man; . . . —
The Mahatma Letters, p. 267

If through the Hall of Wisdom, thou would'st reach the Vale

of Bliss, Disciple, close fast thy senses against the great dire
heresy of separateness that weans thee from the rest. —
The Voice of the Silence, pp. 8-9

IN THE JEWISH Talmud there is a quaint old story, full of the

profound wisdom of the ancient teachers, about four candidates
for wisdom. It tells how they entered into the Garden of Delights,
a name which the Jews used, especially the Qabbalists, to
designate the realm of occultism, of the occult sciences; and the
names of these four candidates for wisdom were as follows: Ben
Asai, Ben Zoma, Ahher, and Rabbi Aqiba. As the story goes, "Ben
Asai looked — and lost his sight; Ben Zoma looked — and lost his
reason. Ahher went into the Garden of Delights and committed
depredations therein; but Rabbi Aqiba entered in peace and left
in peace. And the Holy One, whose servants we are — blessed be
his name — said: 'This old man is worthy of serving us with
glory.'"

Here are the four general types of students of the ancient wisdom.
Ben Asai, who lost his sight, was one who was attracted by the
doctrines and teachings and, like another case mentioned in the
Greek legends, looked upon the face of naked truth and was
"blinded." He became, that is, a worse exotericist than he was
before. He was unprepared, unready. He had forced his way into
the place where he did not belong. And he incurred one of the
penalties awaiting those who enter into the holy places with an
unpure heart and an unprepared mind.

And Ben Zoma looked and lost his reason; he was one whose
nature was so essentially selfish that he looked only for that
which he himself might gain therefrom. And his nature being
unsteady, weak, self-centered and selfish, he lost his "reason,"
that is to say, he became the slave instead of the master. You
know the old medieval saying that the magician who evokes the
so-called "spirits of the vasty deep," and is not in complete control
of them, is made away with by them, which is a saying teaching
the same doctrine that we teach of the utter necessity of spiritual
preparation, moral preparedness. "For the pure in heart see God,"
and have naught to fear, which is the Christian method of
expressing the same idea.

Ahher, who made depredations in the Garden, was one who had
will power and daring, but likewise was he one who considered
self first of all, and he misused the sacred sciences for self-
advancement and personal gain, for position, and all the rest of it.
He is the type of the black magician, as it is called. Such a one
destroys himself by entering into a place for which he is not fitted,
that is, Ahher who made "depredations"; and so likewise did Ben
Zoma.

But Rabbi Aqiba, who entered in peace, and went out in peace,
was the type of the man inwardly fully prepared and ready,
whose nature was so purified by discipline, by self-discipline, so
purified by self-forgetfulness and a recognition of the beauties of
self-abnegation in the true sense, that through him could stream
the rays coming from the divine heart of Being, from the spiritual
sun.

Now, what does this allegory teach us? This parable shows us
first, that in order to be faithful disciples, and, second, in order to
gain that which we are supposed to gain, the first lesson for us is
discipline, self-discipline, ethics. We continually recur in our
studies to this point, because it is of the first importance. Every
man thinks he is ethical and moral. Is he? Ask yourself what you
or I would do under real temptation. The French have a rather
cynical saying that "every man has his price." Is it true? If it is,
then neither you nor I, not one of us, is fit to sit here this evening.
Only when we have passed beyond the point where anything on
earth can move us or sway our will, or buy us, then only are we
fit to enter into the Garden of Delights, like the old man Rabbi
Aqiba, who entered in peace and left in peace — a Master.

We open our study tonight by referring once more to the extract

from the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, page 492, which
we have read at several meetings, because around it circles the
theme of our present study. Please note every word.

The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that

Mankind, collectively and individually, is, with all
manifested nature, the vehicle (a) of the breath of One
Universal Principle, in its primal differentiation; and (b) of
 the countless "breaths" proceeding from that One BREATH
in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature
with its many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the
planes that are ever increasing in materiality. The primary
Breath informs the higher Hierarchies; the secondary —
the lower, on the constantly descending planes.

We are going tonight to make a great step forward, to make a

leap, as it were, over many things that might have been
considered, such as the enormously important problems of death,
and of the left-hand path, to mention two subjects only. But we
are going to do our best (although we have not laid the
foundation fully for it yet) to point out what the ancient wisdom
meant when it spoke of spheres of being. The common term for
such a sphere is "plane," which has its value, because we are
accustomed to it; and yet we must remember that this word plane
is a loose word, because it may mean almost anything as vulgarly
used, and it does not carry the fundamental thought that these
inner worlds are actually fields of action, spheres of being, actual
entitative worlds, in fact.

You will remember that at our last study we drew seven parallel
lines, diagrammatical, illustrating the seven kosmic elements, in
which work the seven kosmic forces or principles — the energy-
consciousness side of being. Please note this evening carefully
that these elements, the kosmical elements, are worlds. Call them
planes if you like, but really they are worlds. I do not mean
globes, necessarily, that is, solid spherical bodies. They are
around and in globes, yet they are truly worlds, spheres of action,
spheres of consciousness; and each one of these kosmical
elements, in addition to being a world, is infilled with its own
"humanities," countless, numberless, innumerable, beyond all
human computation. The human stirps, the human lineage, race,
class, is but one among many of them.
The ancient wisdom tells us that there are seven main classes of
such humanities or stirpes on every planetary chain, and that on
this earth, globe D of our chain, man stands at the head of the
classes below him. These classes are recognized in ordinary
parlance, in the parlance of our science, as kingdoms: the human
kingdom (which is confused wrongly with the beast kingdom)
first; the beast kingdom second; the vegetable kingdom third; the
mineral kingdom fourth; and below that the three kingdoms of
the elementals — call these last nature spirits, or substirpes or
sublineages, subraces, sublife-waves of being. And you will have
noticed at our last meeting that in the diagram we figured a
triangle, representing the three higher or arupa or formless
worlds which thus, with the seven below, make the ten of a
complete hierarchy.

Now these kosmical elements or worlds or spheres are divided

more particularly into lokas — a Sanskrit word meaning "places"
in the sense of worlds — and into talas. And these are as given
below, using the names found in the Brahmanical literature of
Hindustan, names which we have adopted for convenience
because they are in that literature and are more or less known;
but this does not necessarily mean that we accept all the ideas
connected therewith in the Brahmanical works. We use these
names because they show that there are actually seven worlds or
lokas, and seven inferior worlds or talas, which we shall begin to
define and briefly to describe this evening.

Note that these seven kosmical principles and elements are in fact
these fourteen lokas, or rather lokas and talas, seven of each. Let
us first enumerate them, name them in order:

Satya-loka —— 1 — Atala

Tapar-loka -— 2 — Vital
 Janar-loka —— 3 — Sutala

Mahar-loka — 4 — Rasatala

Swar-loka —— 5 — Talatala

Bhuvar-loka - 6 — Mahatala

Bhur-loka —— 7 — Patala

First the lokas. Beginning with the highest, that is, the inmost, we
find satya-loka, a word meaning "reality-world"; tapar-loka, the
next, is a Sanskrit compound word meaning "devotion-world" in
the sense of "meditation," "contemplation," "introspection"; next,
janar-loka from the Sanskrit root meaning "birth"; mahar-loka
meaning "great"; swar-loka meaning "heaven"; bhuvar-loka, an
ancient word coming from the Sanskrit root bhu, meaning "to
grow" or "develop"; and lastly bhur-loka, the lowest. The
corresponding talas are, counting downwards from the higher to
the more material, atala, vitala, sutala, rasatala, talatala,
mahatala, patala.

Now the first thought which we must concentrate our attention

upon is this, that these lokas and talas are not one above the other
like the rungs of a ladder; they interpenetrate, they interblend;
they do not merely commingle, but interblend. A man's thought,
for instance, is not necessarily perfectly divine or perfectly evil. It
is composite, blended, of both qualities, but not merely mixed.
There is nothing so mechanical as that about this fact. We are
studying ethereal and spiritual matters. These lokas and talas
blend together. For instance, electricity, whether we call it matter
or force, is bipolar. There is a positive pole and a negative pole.
We may call a loka one of the poles and its corresponding tala the
other, for these correspond to each other in twos, a loka and a
tala, each to each. Satya-loka to atala, tapar-loka to vitala, and so
on down the scale, until we come to the lowest, bhur-loka and
patala.

It is commonly said in the Brahmanical literature that the lokas

are the "heavens" and the talas are the "hells." Now that is one
way of expressing a profound truth, but we must beware of these
words heavens and hells on account of wrong European religious
ideas, associated ideas. The actual, esoteric meaning is that the
lokas are the luminous arc, or rather that procession of nature
and of beings in which spirit or the luminous arc predominates.
And the talas are the arc of shadows, the shadowy arc, or rather
that procession of nature and of beings in which matter
predominates. Each one of the lokas works with its corresponding
one of the talas. Here is a root-thought. You cannot separate them.

Each of the seven kosmical elements corresponds, each to each,

with the lokas and, each to each, with the talas. In other words,
the seven lokas and the seven talas work correspondentially on
each one of the kosmical elements or worlds. Furthermore, each
one of the seven globes of our planetary chain has its own seven
lokas and seven talas by "reflection." You know the old esoteric
principle lying at the basis of all our thought, expressed in the so-
called Hermetic axiom, "As above, so below; as below, so above."
The meaning is that our universe, and every part of it, is not an
anarchical universe. Everything is inchained with everything
else, and the higher is reflected or rather reflects itself in the
lower, the lower being actually the expression of the higher; or, as
expressed in our former three or four meetings, the lower worlds
are the garments (or expressions, or reflections) of the higher.
Nothing is separate from anything else. You know the greatest
heresy in Buddhism (and
this is likewise our own teaching) is the
so-called separateness, the idea or belief that anything is or can
be considered apart from the whole. That is also what the
Christians meant when they spoke of the "crime against the Holy
Ghost." The few early Christians who were initiated considered
this crime as the most heinous of iniquities, and they were right.

Now then, having gone thus far, we may see that these talas or
inferior worlds are, each to each, each in each, actually the
kosmical elements. Is this thought clear? Next, the forces working
through these talas or worlds, through these fields of action —
forces material, ethereal, psychical, spiritual, divine, and so on —
are the principles of the kosmos, the consciousnesses which infill
space and are, in fact, space itself; and these latter are the lokas.

We have pointed out that these elements may be considered

serially somewhat after the fashion of the skins of an onion. This
is a far better illustration, as being more suggestive, than the
"Plane"-system, although this system was used too in ancient
times; and we also pointed out that these skins of the earth, these
skins of the kosmos, grow more ethereal, grow more spiritual, as
they proceed inwards. But we do not mean — please mark this
very carefully — that these more spiritual or inner worlds or
spheres are smaller, i.e., inferior in volume to the outermost rind.
Size has nothing whatsoever to do with ethereal or spiritual
bearings. Mere bulk or volume has nothing whatsoever to do with
consciousness. How then can we reconcile these two apparently
contradictory statements, this paradox: that the more you
approach the material center of a thing, the denser it is; the more
you approach the spiritual center of a thing the diviner it is? You
know that the old Greek philosophers,
the Atomistic Philosophers
so called, such as Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, etc., followed
by the great Roman poet, Lucretius, said for instance in their
Atomistic theories that heaven was composed of the finer, the
more subtil atoms, and that the earth and the planetary and
stellar bodies were composed of those which were coarser and
heavier and therefore fell together, meaning that they were more
strongly attracted together. That is true enough, for it is a
statement made from the tala-side, that is to say, the matter-side.
But now listen.

We have often spoken of a laya-center, a laya-center being the

seventh or highest degree of matter (or the first degree of spirit),
the vanishing-point of matter into higher realms, the nirvana of
matter, the nirvana of any entity of which it is the heart, the
center. Our laya-center as human beings is our atman, our
universal self. Each globe is likewise an atom or a monad, or a
god, according to the plane or world which we consider it as
being in. Now this laya-center is at the center or heart of our
being; it is, in fact, that core of our being, and from it radiate, as
the rays from the sun radiate outwards, these forces, these
elements, these skins of being; these forces and elements or skins
growing grosser, in one sense, as they proceed farther from the
center. But the more ethereal the original plane is, or the original
world or sphere is, or the original field of action is, the more
spiritual the originating center is, and the wider is its outflow of
radiation. You catch that thought? The
spiritual entity
continuously flowing through the laya-center has rays which
reach far beyond the more material coatings, and which in the
lowest, radiate scarcely more than beyond its own circumscribed
limits. To change somewhat the illustration, the spiritual, inner
realms of man or of globe are the various "planes" or degrees, or
spheres, of the auric egg — one of the most sacred of our
teachings, and the one concerning which the least has been said.

Let us illustrate this again by an exoteric statement with regard to

the three lowest of the lokas respectively, bhur-loka, bhuvar-loka,
and swar-loka. Bhur-loka is said to be, in the exoteric,
Brahmanical books, our earth. Its field of influence reaches little
farther than the atmosphere. Bhuvar-loka, they say, has rays (or
an atmosphere) which reach to the sun, although actually it is the
world or loka next within the earth — not another physical world
within the physical earth, skin-of-onion fashion, but an ethereal
world within the physical earth. And swar-loka is a world still
more ethereal or spiritual, within bhuvar-loka, that has rays (or
an atmosphere) which reach even to Dhruva, or the polar star.
This may illustrate the point.

And mark you, as a natural fact deduced from this, we could have
no connection with beings outside ourselves, or beyond
ourselves, or with other planets, or our sun or others, unless there
were these atmospheric bearers or carriers, these auric rays,
these atmospheres by which we come into touch with other
beings and globes and worlds — both on our plane and on other
planes. Is that clear? A magnet has its magnetism or magnetic
atmosphere reaching beyond itself, which will illustrate the point.
It has its limits of reach, of course; and in the same sense all these
lokas and talas have their atmospheres. The inner ones have the
atmospheres which reach farther than the outer lokas and talas;
and so progressively more so as we go inwards.

Now patala, the lowest of the talas, is also said to be our earth.
That statement also is correct from the point of view of the
kosmical planes. Note also that these lokas and these talas are the
bipolar elements of nature, the bipolar worlds of being, the
ascending and the descending: the involving or the talas, and the
evolving or the lokas. By the action of the talas being dominant
over the action of the lokas, we "descend," to use the popular
phrase, along the shadowy arc, into manifestation at the
beginning of a manvantara, and having reached our earth, which
is the turning point, we then ascend along the luminous arc, the
lokas then becoming the dominant, and the talas the recessive, to
use modern biological phraseology.

Satya-loka could not exist without atala as its vehicle or nether

pole. Tapar-loka could not exist without vitala as its nether pole;
and so forth down the scale. This is one of the most difficult of
things to explain in European words; and yet really it is one of the
simplest of conceptions. We must cleanse our minds first of
mechanical suggestions. We must understand that we are here
dealing with spiritual and psychological and ethereal matters and
things. There could be no luminous arc without the lokas, and no
shadowy arc without the talas, as bases respectively — and when
we say luminous or shadowy arc we do not mean an actual arc,
for it is a figure of speech. We mean those worlds and those
processes and those processions of beings in nature by which, or
in which, or through which we descend into manifestation or, on
the other hand, by which we rise and grow into spiritual
greatness.

Such are the two arcs respectively. Virtue, purity, kindness,

compassion, pity, mercy, etc. — all these things are signs that the
entity possessing them is evolving the spirit within, and is rising,
ascending, along the luminous arc. And where we see selfishness
and impurity and unkindliness and cruelty and deception,
hypocrisy, etc., they are the signs that the entity possessing them
is under the influence or dominance of the descending or
shadowy arc, the talas. Nevertheless, from the very beginning and
in either direction, the lokas and talas are interblended and work
together, for they are spirit and matter.

These two, lokas and talas, therefore work each within the other.
For instance, our earth, our planet Terra, our globe, on and in
which we live, has its own particular seven lokas and seven talas.
As seen from the kosmical viewpoint, the physical loka and tala to
our present physical eyes are bhur-loka and patala, or our earth.
It is patala if we look at it from the material standpoint; and it is
bhur-loka if we look at it from the energy-consciousness side,
from the nobler or better side, towards the rising side. Remember
always that lokas and talas work and exist invariably two by two
— by twos, one of each, and on every plane.
In addition to the seven kosmical principles being respectively
these lokas, as said before, and the kosmical elements the seven
talas, all fourteen, seven of each, are reflected in each one of the
seven globes of our chain. "As above, so below; as below, so
above." The little is as the great; the microcosm is but a
representation or copy in small of the macrocosm.

Suppose that we were to ask ourselves with regard to these lokas

and talas: Where do we stand in the scale? Where are we in loka
and tala? We are in the fourth globe of our chain, as we know. Let
us then take the fourth loka and the fourth tala, i.e., mahar-loka
corresponding in scale with rasatala. But, again, we are in the
fourth round of our planetary chain. Therefore we have this
bipolar principle emphasized by the fourth round quality, i.e.,
mahar-loka and rasatala again. We are, furthermore, in the fifth
root-race of the fourth globe on the fourth round. Therefore our
root-race, though evolving on that fourth globe and in that fourth
round, is represented by the fifth of each column: swar-loka and
talatala. "Wheels within wheels," as Ezekiel, the Hebrew prophet,
nobly said.

Furthermore, where are we as regards the kosmic elements? We

have stated this a few moments ago. H. P. Blavatsky, in her
diagram of these in The Secret Doctrine, which we reproduced at
our last meeting, shows that our globe Terra stands in the lowest
of the kosmic elements, the seventh counting downwards.
Therefore the kosmical element in which we and this globe are, is
bhur-loka and patala, kosmically speaking.

It is these actions and interactions, these interblendings of lokas

and talas, of these various elements and forces and principles,
which render any exposition of them so complicated. However, it
makes knowledge of them precious, for knowledge of these things
is not cried from the housetops, but, as said before, is given as the
reward of merit to those found worthy and well qualified.

Let us approach these questions from another standpoint. Where

are we on the kosmical worlds or planes? We are told that
Brahma lives one hundred of his years. Brahma, remember, is a
Sanskrit word standing for the spiritual energy-consciousness
side of our solar universe, i.e., our solar system, and the Egg of
Brahma is that solar system. We are further told that his life is
half ended, fifty of his years are gone — a figure which we
express in fifteen figures of our years, i.e., 155 trillions, 520
billions (155,520,000,000,000) of years have passed away since our
solar system, with its sun, first began its manvantaric course.
There remain, therefore, fifty more such years to pass before the
system sinks into rest, or pralaya. As only half of the evolutionary
journey is accomplished, we are, therefore, at the bottom of the
kosmic cycle, i.e., on the lowest plane, as the diagram above
mentioned shows.

And where are we on this planet? We are on the lowest plane

here also, because being in the fourth round, we have run our
course only by half. The lowest kosmical plane, as said above, is
bhur-loka and patala. As a matter of fact, however, as said at
another study, we have advanced a little on the ascending arc,
because our planetary chain is the child of the lunar chain, and
the lunar chain was on the exact lowest degree.

Now these thoughts are laid before you tonight as suggestive

propositions for further consideration. Understand first that the
universe, according to the ancient system, is divided into seven
grades or degrees of being, which are worlds, lokas and talas, that
is, these worlds are polarized into lokas and talas, two by two
throughout. Our earth shows them as bipolar, because it is the
only planet on this plane, in this kosmic element, or world, in this
particular degree or sphere. It is the turning point of our
planetary chain where matter-spirit equilibrates, rendering it
bipolar. Next, that each one of the seven globes of our chain has
its own seven lokas and seven talas. As said before, they are
popularly called heavens and hells. Not that they are heavens and
hells in the European sense of the word, but they represent the
two sides of being, the duality of manifestation, the higher and
the lower natures, if you like, as well of the planet as of the
human being.

Let us go a little farther. In the seven lokas and seven talas of our
world, working together as they do, two by two, one of each, one
loka and one tala: in each of these there are innumerable hosts of
beings. In the higher ones of the lokas and talas are thinking and
conscious entities, as our own human stirps (that is, race, lineage,
life-wave) is. These lokas and talas interpenetrate each other. As
H. P. Blavatsky says in a very noble passage in The Secret
Doctrine, they have each one their own "geographical" spheres;
the respective inhabitants of the different lokas and talas live in
their own world, pursue their own vocations, work out their own
karmic destiny, even as we do in our world. It is but human
egoism that claims so foolishly that ours is the only race of
intelligent beings in the boundless kosmos, and which goes so far
as even to deny intelligence and consciousness to beings even on
other physical planets. It is a position which is intolerable to the
mind of really
thinking men, because it is based on nothing but
ignorance and folly. Nothing can be said for the claim
whatsoever; and everything — logic, intellect, analogy, comparing
thought, intuition — all speak loudly to the contrary, and
proclaim that there is not an atom of the infinite realms of space
which is not fully infilled with its own appropriate and proper
lines or races of beings.

I beg you to bear these lokas and talas in mind. Please think of
them always by twos, one of each, one loka and one tala, its
correspondence in the scale, ever working together, as
inseparable as positive and negative are, as inseparable as good
and evil are, as inseparable as spirit and matter. They represent
and in fact are the two sides of being, not necessarily the body-
side and the spirit-side, but the two contrasting forces, the two
contrasted sides of nature, the night-side and the light-side, the
shadowy side and the bright side.

The three diagrams to which I now call attention are of three very
ancient symbols coming to us from old Atlantean times, and full
of suggestive meaning along the lines of our study tonight. Let us
take first this one: a circle divided by the twice curved line. Rising
out of the circumference and reentering into the circumference,
the line proceeds around, forming a figure, of which one side is
shaded and the other is left blank. This is a favorite Buddhist
symbol. It is found all over the Orient, but particularly in
Buddhist countries, and furnishes one of the favorite motifs of
Buddhist art. All Buddhist art is religious art, of course. Will you
please note here that in taking one side, the shaded side, we find
the line leaving the circumference at the top, curving around,
then recurving itself, and then at the bottom reentering the
circumference. And where it reenters the circumference we find
the side left blank or void, moving forth in the opposite direction,
forming part of the circumference of
the circle, ascending until it
reaches the summit, and then joining the other line which first
went down from that point in the twice curved line to rejoin the
point after forming the other side of the circumference. These
represent the lokas and talas, or the involution of spirit and the
evolution of matter; and, again, the rising one the evolution of
spirit, and the involution of matter, joined and inseparable,
forming one figure; the circle also suggesting the boundless All;
and the shadowy side suggesting the talas, the dark side or the
matter-side, and the side left void suggesting the spirit-side, the
great illimitable Void of the boundless All, of the boundless Self.

I think that this design, this symbol, is one of the most beautiful,
one of the most suggestive, that I have ever known. The more you
study it the more it suggests thought. It shows, as said before, our
lokas and our talas inseparable and interworking. It shows the
descent of spirit, so to say, and the ascent of matter, coordinately
and contemporaneously; and it shows the evolution of spirit, and
the involution of matter back again into spirit, from which it
came and which it fundamentally is.

Let us turn next to another old symbol. It is the swastika, another

favorite Buddhist symbol and otherwise found all over the Orient,
and even all over the world. It first suggests motion, evolution;
the broken arms bent at right angles suggest life, movement, and
forward progress, and many other things.

Next, note the cross figure. We have here — and now we come to
the symbol-meaning of the cross upon which we must lightly
touch tonight — first the vertical line, so called the spirit, and
then the horizontal line, the matter which it enters and traverses.
The two work together. Take away either arm, or either part of
the two lines which make the swastika, and you no longer have a
swastika. This also suggests, though less violently, if I may use the
expression, the lokas and talas inseparably joined.

And the third of our symbols is what is known to scholars today

as the Egyptian tau or ansated or handled cross, also a very old
symbol dating from Atlantean times, and found on the backs of
some of the statues on Easter Island.

Note the circle at the top of the cross, and the vertical line
descending from it, symbolic of the descent of the spirit into
matter — the horizontal line — from the sphere of the divine. Its
meaning is similar to that of the swastika. The latter, however,
emphasizes the movements and circulations of consciousnesses
in space, or evolution; while the ansated cross represents a higher
plane — the primordial movements and states of kosmic being.

These symbols are really very beautiful. There is no need to sully

our thought by adverting to questions of phallic meaning into
which they have been degraded. They can bear that
interpretation, because you can degrade anything. All life is one,
and one general design runs through all. But we shall not speak of
this. The main thing we wish to point out now is that in these age-
old symbols and particularly in this bipolar, bi-vital, loka-tala
Buddhistic figure, the first we discussed, we find the suggested
outline, the symbolic or paradigmatic form, of the entire doctrine
of the higher and lower spheres of being, kosmical or human, i.e.,
of the lokas and talas.
There is one more thing to bring to your attention, if you please,
and that is to point out at least by suggestion, the perfect
coherence of all the limbs of life. How can one otherwise express
it, the perfect unity of the mechanism of being? The circulations
of the kosmos are carried on not in haphazard form, but from
sphere to sphere, from world to world, from plane to plane, by
and through consciousnesses, whether they be gods, monads,
souls, or atoms, working in the various elements; and more
particularly in our solar system this is done through the sun and
planets, especially by and through the respective inner
atmospheres of their lokas and talas.

In occultism there are seven sacred planets. We recognize many

more in our solar system than seven, many more than our
scientists do, but only seven planets are held sacred. And why?
We can at least say this much, that these seven planets are sacred
for us, inhabitants of this globe, because they are the transmitters
to us from the sun of the seven primal forces of the kosmos. Our
seven principles and our seven elements spring originally from
this-sevenfold life-flow.

Let us put this matter in another light. On this plane, our physical
globe, Terra, is alone, but on the three other planes of being, the
globes of our planetary chain, two by two, are not the seven
principles of our earth. That would be a false analogy, false
analogical reasoning. We must be careful not to be led astray by
such false analogies. The seven principles of our globe are the
seven lokas and seven talas belonging especially to earth; and the
seven principles of each one of the other six globes of our
planetary chain are the respective lokas and talas belonging to
each one of them. Now these two other globes on each plane of
the three planes above ours, making thus the other six globes of
our planetary chain, receive their respective life force, receive
their respective inflow of intellectual and spiritual energies and
beings, from the respective lokas and talas of the sun. There are
seven suns, but only one sun on this plane, as our globe is but one
on this plane, the lowest of the seven
kosmical planes.

Chapter 37
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Framework of the Kosmos. Lokas and Talas: Principles and
Elements, Worlds — Not States Merely. Space the Ultimate Reality.

Maitreya: The sphere of the whole earth has been

described to me, by you, excellent Brahman; and I am now
desirous to hear an account of the other spheres (above the
world), — the Bhuvar-loka and the rest, — and the
situation and the dimensions of the celestial luminaries. —
Vishnu Purana, 2, 7 (Wilson, trans.)

She said: "That, O Yajnavalkya, which is above the sky, that

which is beneath the earth, that which is between these
two, sky and earth, that which people call the past and the
present and the future — across what is that woven, warp
and woof?"

He said: "That, O Gargi, which is above the sky, that which

is beneath the earth, that which is between these two, sky
and earth, that which people call the past and the present
and the future — across space alone is that woven, warp
and woof."

"Across what then, pray, is space woven, warp and woof?"

He said: "That, O Gargi, Brahmans call the Imperishable. . . .

"It consumes nothing soever.

No one soever consumes it....

"Verily, O Gargi, that Imperishable is the unseen Seer, the

unheard Hearer, the unthought Thinker, the ununderstood
Understander. Other than It there is naught that sees.
Other than It there is naught that hears. Other than It there
 is naught that thinks. Other than It there is naught that
understands. Across this Imperishable, O Gargi, is space
woven, warp and woof [It is SPACE Itself]." — Brihad-
Aranyaka Upanishad, 3, 8, 6-8, 11 (Hume, trans.)

IF BROTHERHOOD is the "lost chord," ethically speaking, in

Occidental thought, may we not say that the loss of the idea that
the universe we sense or know of is but the rind of things is the
cause of the spiritual and intellectual feebleness of that same
Occidental thought? We have lost, as Occidentals, perhaps the
noblest concept of all the ancient world, the concept which,
however, still exists over the larger part of the globe today, and
that concept, or knowledge to many, is the fact that the outside
world, which our physical senses tell us of, is but the shell of
things, of reality and that the greater part is within, behind the
veil of physical existence. Think what that means. We see but the
rind, the husk, the shell, the skin of things; but all the great
moving forces are from within, all the great circulations of the
kosmos are behind the outward seeming, and this verity was the
core of the religious and philosophic conceptions of the ancient
world, and to a large extent forms even
today in the Orient and
among the so-called savage peoples — degenerated heirs of a
greater wisdom of past time — the philosophic and religious
thought which leads them to live and to die in calm peace and
hope. And in larger spheres of our thinking we must realize that
if we are to understand the great problems of life, the great
problems of the various departments of human thought —
religion, philosophy, and science — we must go behind this
outward veil, we must penetrate more deeply into the heart of
things.

The thought is sublime because it contains the fundamentals of

the true exposition of life, and because it is a veritable key to the
understanding of the ideas which motivated the civilizations of
past ages; and our civilization will never reach that which it
should be, and indeed which it is destined to be, until this old-
world thought is brought back into the consciousness of men.
Then indeed it will guide their conduct because it will give a
rational explanation of the problems of being; and men and
women will live aright, because they will then understand that
what human intellect calls justice, that is to say, order, rules the
entire universe.

We read again from The Secret Doctrine, from volume II, page
492, the same extract that we have read at our previous studies,
four or five of them, because it still forms the main theme of what
we are here considering and trying to understand:

The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that

Mankind, collectively and individually, is, with all
manifested nature, the vehicle (a) of the breath of One
Universal Principle, in its primal differentiation; and (b) of
the countless "breaths" proceeding from that One BREATH
in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature
with its many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the
planes that are ever increasing in materiality. The primary
Breath informs the higher Hierarchies; the secondary —
the lower, on the constantly descending planes.

We continue our study this evening of the framework of the

kosmos; and this framework itself is constructed in the manner
pointed out in our last study, i.e., by the lokas and talas. And
great, unquestionably, was the patience of all here at our last
meeting, who listened to our study, to our thought, and realized
the immense complexity of a first presentation of these things —
who doubtless saw that we were following as closely as possible
the methods of study used in the ancient Mystery Schools; and
one of these methods was never at the first approach of a new
subject, openly and fully, to voice the teaching concerning it, but
to begin it first by hint and also by talking around it, about it,
never at it or of it. There were several reasons for this, founded
on a profound knowledge of human psychology. The whole effort
is to enable the hearer or reader to break his own molds of mind;
nothing perhaps, knowing human nature as we do, so
antagonizes the human mind or renders it more combative than
to throw an idea at it, so to say. But let the hearer or reader first
feel that he is taken into the thought by indirection, and by an
appeal to his own inner spirit — for, indeed, he wants to break his
molds of mind himself in the first instance, and to understand of
his own initiative; and he is right. Our first duty is to open the
way to the hearer to think for himself.

This evening, however, having followed the above method at our

last meeting, we are going to approach the matter directly, and
clear up the apparent confusion.

One of the other methods which we have followed — and you

have doubtless noticed it — is the use of the figure of speech
called the paradox, for precisely the same reasons outlined above.
We must, above all things, prevent the crystallization of the
mentality around one thought; and experience has shown that
the best way to do this is first to talk around and about a thing;
then to present one aspect, and then, if possible, a contrasting
aspect, the antithesis or polar opposite of the former aspect; and
very soon the mind which undergoes this process, realizes it and
says to itself: "I am not going to allow my mind to crystallize
about this thought alone; something more is coming, another
view. I will await, before judging." This process tends, above
everything else, to prevent dogmatism, whether in religion, or
philosophy, or science. And mark you, it is the exact opposite of
the methods of instruction so dear to the Occidental heart, which
likewise is fascinated by the entifying
of abstractions. This
entification of abstracts, as you know, is the leaning or the
attempt mentally to think of abstractions as real entities. It is the
exact opposite of the method followed in all ancient civilizations,
and even in the Orient today, in dealing with profound
psychological or spiritual matters. Their wise old teachers showed
them that the entification of abstractions distracts the mind and
leads it away from the primal truths of being, for the mind feels
temporarily satisfied with phantasms instead of realities, and
precious time is lost; while the mind itself is lost in mazes of
unrealities. This is another example of the profound knowledge of
human psychology that the ancient teachers had.

Even in the Christian scheme of thought, we find Paul following

the same line of real entitative instruction by parable and trope,
in the old manner, in his Letters, in his Epistles, to the various so-
called churches. If the Christian exegetes, the theologians, were
students of the ancient wisdom, they would know at least enough
not to take the words of Paul literally, because Paul was an
initiate, as is shown very clearly by his own writings — not
necessarily a high initiate, because this word initiate merely
means one who has "entered into" a system, and who therefore
has some knowledge, has received one aspect at least, has passed
through one rite or more of the ancient wisdom.

You know that Paul in his second Epistle to the Corinthians,

chapter 12, verses 2, 3, 4, writes as follows: "I know a man in
Christ" — note the wording, he does not say "I know a friend of
Christ," but "I know a man in Christ" — "fourteen years agone
(whether in body I know not, whether out of body I know not,
God knoweth). Such a one being caught up to the third heaven.
And I know such a man (whether in body, whether out of body I
know not, God knoweth), that he was caught up into the Paradise,
and heard things not to be divulged, which are not lawful for a
man to utter."
Now we have made our own translation of these lines from the
Greek original, and while there is no need to repeat the Greek
words, I wish to point out that the very words that Paul uses here,
"heard things not to be divulged," etc., etc., are the sacramental
words, so to speak, the sacred words, used in the mystic
ceremonials of the ancient teachings. Further, this shows very
clearly that this man was Paul himself, otherwise he would have
known nothing of it.

Thirdly, when he shows that this man, he himself, was "caught up

to the third heaven," I must point out that if our theologians knew
something of the language of the Mysteries, they would at least
understand that this expression "third heaven" is an old form or
symbol of speech of the initiations.

Remember, we have spoken at other ones of our studies of the

fact that beginning with the fourth degree of initiation, in the
ancient times, the candidate was made to be or to become — for
the time being — that which he had heretofore been taught of; he
was made to go into the different lokas and talas and temporarily
be the things there in order to know them. One of the methods of
describing this fact was speaking of being in or of the first
heaven, the second heaven, the third heaven, the fourth, and so
on. It was another way of saying, by Paul, "In my third initiation I
heard things not to be divulged, which it is not lawful for a man
to utter."

Now an example of this entification of abstractions, this giving to

phantasmal notions both substance and form, is shown clearly in
the scientific and philosophic writings of our European thinkers,
when they use the word space in the sense of a mere concept.
Space to them is an abstraction; to us, the ultimate being, reality,
all-life. Just think what that means. Space, ex hypothesi, is
boundless, is what we call infinite; and yet they write of it and
talk of it and speak of it as a mere container, a finite thing, and
speak of the "dimensions of space." Space, as boundless-all-life,
can have no dimensions. You cannot bound or mete or measure
the infinite. What they mean is the dimensions of matter,
mensuration. They predicate a conceptual abstraction, then
proceed to endow it with finite attributes — entifying it, as said
above; for to them, space is a mere mental representation.

Some of our Occidental thinkers are even speaking of the "fourth

dimension of space," implying that there are others beyond, a
fifth, a sixth perhaps. Now we do not admit this idea. Space can
have no dimensions. Matter can have three dimensions only,
because, as you will readily see, when you express the metes and
bounds of manifested substance by length, and breadth, and
depth, you have covered the entire field that it presents. But what
is it in these minds which induces them to hunt and search for
what they so inaccurately call the dimensions of space? It is the
intuition, the recognition, of worlds within the outer rind or shell,
spoken of before. There is no such thing in nature as "Flatland" or
a two-dimensional world, or a one-dimensional world, because
each world comprises all "dimensions."

Consider what we mean when we speak of the principles and

elements of the kosmos, as pointed out in our last study. The
elements are worlds, and the principles are the spiritual forces,
entities, spiritual intelligences at the root of them, which work
through those worlds or elements. And what do we mean by
world? We mean exactly what the English usage of the word
"world" is. We go out upon our housetops, or into the roads, or
into a field, and see what we call the universe around us, the
stars, and the sun, and again the beings on earth; and all this is a
world. No, it is not a globe. A globe is merely one of the entities or
bodies in a world. So, at our last meeting, when we said that these
lokas and talas are not globes but worlds, we meant just that. We
may perhaps call them spheres, if you like, but not by using the
word "sphere," please, in the physical, geometrical sense. We use
it rather in a more abstract sense, as when we speak of the sphere
of one's activity, the musical
sphere or the musical world, the
intellectual or material spheres or worlds. But the word "world"
for our present purposes, in order to describe these lokas and
talas, is far better. Etymologically it would never do, because this
Anglo-Saxon word was originally weorold, meaning "man-age,"
i.e., meaning the age of a man, definitely, in those times, taken as
of one hundred years and commonly spoken of in literary usage
as an age. It is interesting that this word "world" closely
corresponds with the meaning, with the two meanings rather, of
the Greek word aion, or aeon, which originally meant with the
Greek Gnostics both an epoch of time, a period of time, and a
spiritual being or world.

Now these lokas and talas, if we refer them to the kosmos, are
respectively the principles and elements of the kosmos. The lokas
are the principles, and the talas are the elements. Loka means
"world." The principles, however, are as much worlds as the
elements are. The principles of the kosmos are higher kosmic
worlds as the elements are lower kosmic worlds. Pause a
moment, and see how simple this conception really is. We see the
physical world around us, the physical universe. We are taught in
our sacred science (in occultism, that is) that the world has seven
so-called planes. As remarked before, this word "plane" is an
unfortunate term in some ways, because people associate it with
its geometrical meaning of a flat surface. It is a loose term, but it
is familiar and therefore it is convenient. The elements, the talas,
are worlds; so are the lokas; they represent together, in other
words, what is popularly called the seven principles of the
kosmos. The seven principles of
the kosmos correspond in their
element-side to the talas; and the seven principles, per se, of the
kosmos, that is to say, the spiritual side, correspond to the seven
lokas.

The difficulty for us arises, perhaps, because we have been so

accustomed to speak of the seven principles of man and,
Occidentals as we are, we think of them only as abstractions;
accustomed to our habit of entifying abstractions, we do not
conceive of them as real, essential things, so that perhaps in our
minds we have reduced these principles of man almost to mere
words. But, as pointed out in a former study, man has seven
principles and also seven elements or vehicles in which those
principles work, each principle in its appropriate vehicle, each
principle in its corresponding element. Yet we should consider
the kosmos in precisely the same manner, because man is but a
reflection of the kosmos, he is the microcosm of the macrocosm —
"As above, so below; as below, so above."

So then, knowing that our universe has seven planes, that is,
seven elements from one viewpoint, and seven principles or the
energy-consciousness side from another viewpoint, we may now
definitely say that the element-side, the vehicle-side, the matter-
side, the dark side, is the tala-side. The seven talas are the seven
elements or matter-worlds of kosmos; and the seven lokas —
which are worlds also — are the seven principles of the kosmos.

Now if we were able to ascend into any one of the higher

elements and principles of the kosmos, we should find our
present world reduplicated — with modifications, naturally; but
each one of these elements and principles is a kosmic world, a
tala or a loka respectively.

One of the most interesting symbols in use by men of the ancient

world, by which they described these inseparable lokas and talas,
was what is called in Hindustan Vishnu's Sign, and which for
some unknown reason among European mystics is called
Solomon's Seal. This symbol is one of the most widespread,
familiar, and favorite symbols of the Asiatic-European world.

We have here two interlaced triangles, one pointing upwards and

one pointing downwards, inseparably united in order to form this
symbol. Separate them, and this symbol no longer exists. The
triangle with its point upwards represents the lokas, and the one
with its point downwards, the talas. This is likewise a symbol of
human and kosmic evolution, of the duality in nature, and of the
interplay of the spiritual and material forces in life. If we were to
put a point in the center of these interlaced triangles, we should
immediately transfer its symbolic meaning to incipient kosmic
evolution, it then becoming somewhat like the figure of the circle
with the central point. Also, in human matters, it would then be
the symbol of what we call a Master. Sometimes, in the last sense,
it is written in more simple shape, as three dots in triangular
form. Sometimes again the three dots have a fourth in the center,
which is but an abbreviated form of this same figure; but in this
case the triangle always points
upwards, for it shows that the
aspiration of the man symbolized is upwards, signifying the
ascent through the lokas.

This brings us to our next point, and that is that while it is true
that these lokas and talas are "states" in a general sense, it is only
so in the sense in which heavens and hells may be so considered.
They are states, of course, but they are also localities, because any
entity in or possessing a state must be somewhere. Devachan and
nirvana are not localities, they are states, states of the beings in
those respective spiritual conditions. Devachan is the
intermediate state; nirvana is the superspiritual state; and avichi,
popularly called the lowest of the hells, is the nether pole of the
spiritual condition. These three are states of beings having habitat
in the lokas or talas, i.e., in the worlds of the kosmic egg. And
secondly, while the heavens and hells are considered as states, we
must remember that hell or heaven is not a condition which
exists per se, as does a world. Each is the state of some thing or
some entity which is in that state, and which, therefore, being an
entity, must have position or place and, according to the
invariable rules which govern the kosmos, such states must be
likewise correspondential to similar surroundings — in other
words, a being in heaven or hell is in a corresponding loka or tala.

So then, before closing tonight, we hope that we have made one

thing perfectly clear, that is, to put it briefly, that these lokas and
talas are respectively the principles and elements of the kosmos,
and also of every globe in that kosmos, each one of which
possesses seven lokas and seven talas. These lokas and talas are
inseparable, and each one corresponds to a similar one of the
other line. That is clear, is it not? The two highest together, the
two lowest together, and the intermediate in the same way. Please
remember the main thought, that these lokas and talas are
worlds. They are not mere states only, which means nothing. An
entity possesses or is in a state, but a state does not exist per se or
"by itself." That idea arises out of the fondness of our minds for
entifying abstractions. A state is an abstraction. It must be held or
possessed or developed by some entity in order to be anything.

And finally, please remember this, that each one of these lokas
and each one of these talas produces the following lower one of
the scale from itself, as pointed out before when we studied
briefly the elements. The highest of either line projects or sends
forth the next lower. It, in addition to its own particular
characteristic or swabhava, contains also within itself the nature
of the one above it, its parent, and also sends forth the one lower
than it, the third in the line downwards. And so on down the
scale. So that each one of the principles or elements is likewise
sevenfold, containing in itself the subelements of that or those of
which it is the reflection from above.

Chapter 38
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-Eight
Degeneration and Closing of the Schools of the Mysteries.
Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic Systems: Main Sources of
Christian Theology. Esoteric and Exoteric Teachings: Symbolism.

There never was, nor can there be more than one universal
religion; for there can be but one truth concerning God.
Like an immense chain whose upper end, the alpha,
remains invisibly emanating from a Deity — in statu
abscondito with every primitive theology — it encircles our
globe in every direction; it leaves not even the darkest
corner unvisited, before the other end, the omega, turns
back on its way to be again received where it first
emanated. On this divine chain was strung the exoteric
symbology of every people. Their variety of form is
powerless to affect their substance, and under their diverse
ideal types of the universe of matter, symbolizing its
vivifying principles, the uncorrupted immaterial image of
the spirit of being guiding them is the same. . . .

Thus is it that all the religious monuments of old, in

whatever land or under whatever climate, are the
expression of the same identical thoughts, the key to which
is in the esoteric doctrine. — Isis Unveiled, I, 560-61

The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-
up and dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian period is
simply an offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-
castes themselves, born of Pagan parents. — Ibid., II, 334

But to assert that Christianity communicated to man moral

truths previously unknown, argues, on the part of the
assertor, either gross ignorance or else wilful fraud. — H. T.
 Buckle, History of Civilization in England, I, 129

PROBABLY there are few things that human beings are so

irritable about as the various issues involved in questioning an
accepted religion. Outside of the fact that everyone knows that
religious wars have always been the bloodiest and bitterest in
history, even in ordinary life, if a man's religious beliefs, or even
his vague religious views, are touched upon adversely, there is
aroused in him a feeling of antagonism. In well-bred men and
women this antagonism does not go far, because they are willing
to concede to another a view different from their own; but, sadly
enough, it would seem that there is very little good breeding in
matters of religious feeling. No man likes to feel that his religion
is subject to derision or mockery, because of course to him his
religion is the "true religion." It has always been so among the
adherents of any religion. It is only the wiser ones who are
willing to see a view which a fellow man sees, and to consider
that view honestly, desirous of arriving at some
knowledge of
what the critic or the speaker himself believes, or sees.

Especially is this so in all the various branches of Occidental

religious thought, derived, as we know, from Christianity and
Judaism. The old religions, the religions of the ancient world, had
their popular mythologies which the people believed in; and
some of these old religions are still extant today in the Orient and
elsewhere. But even among those who were not initiated into the
Mysteries, which gave men a wider vision of truth and a deeper
knowledge of human nature, even among those who had nothing
to live by except the various mythologies, and who today have
nothing to live by except the various mythologies, in all these
religions, excepting the Christian, there is a feeling among their
adherents that the other man may know something of value too. I
have often wondered how much in the Theosophical Movement
this spirit of Christian and quasi-Jewish antagonism against
another man's belief actually exists among ourselves.

This spirit of religious bigotry, of course, has resulted, as we all

know, in the various religious persecutions, in the various
torturings — physical or other — and inquisitorial actions of the
bigots in temporary power. You find nothing like that in any of
the ancient religions of the globe, neither in present nor in past
times. Why should it have been and even yet be in the religion of
the Occident? As said before, it must certainly lie in the fact that
the adherents thereof have lost the key to the inner knowledge of
their own religious beliefs; and this dates very far back. We find
Gregory Nazianzen, canonized as one of the saints of the
Christian Church, writing to Jerome, another saint of the Church,
his friend and confidant, about the way doctrines should be
taught, and this is what he says:

Nothing imposes better on people than verbiage, for the

less they understand the more they admire. Our Fathers
and teachers often have taught, not what they thought, but
that which necessity and circumstance obliged them to say.

If we compare this with the spirit which motivated the great

religions of past times, we realize that among the initiates of the
latter the very expression of a thought which they felt contrary to
truth was uttered to the prejudice of a man's own soul; that living
as "whited sepulchres," to use the Christian symbol, i.e., living as
hypocrites, living a living lie, was considered the one thing that
most effectively shriveled the soul of a man, that ate out the core
of his being, and rendered him utterly unfit, not merely for an
appreciation of the deeper mysteries which lie within nature and
within man himself, but likewise utterly unfit to undergo the least
of the tests preceding the actual trials of the initiation
ceremonies.

Even at the time when the Christian religion is supposed first to

have begun its career, although the Mysteries, the initiation
systems, had greatly degenerated, they still retained more or less
of the ancient spiritual fire and of the ancient truths. So that a
Roman emperor, Nero, master of the Western world, was told to
his face that he was unfit to pass through the rites at Eleusis, and
he dared not go there for that purpose. And Nero was by no
means as bad a man as his Christian critics have tried to make
him out to have been. We have no wish to whitewash a black
character, but he was by no means, and we repeat it, as black in
his life or in the things he did, as some men who pass muster as
near-canonized saints in the hagiological lists of Christendom.

For one thousand years, beginning from the time of Pythagoras

and ending about the time of Justinian, the night of an incoming
dark cycle was beginning to settle upon the world; and this period
is cut in twain at just about the time when the birth of Jesus is
supposed to have occurred. Pythagoras lived in the sixth century
before the reputed beginning of our era, i.e., the present era that
is accepted by Occidental peoples; and Justinian lived in the sixth
century after the beginning of that era; and it was in his age, and
by his order, that the last of the Mystery Schools was closed at
Athens, and seven men fled at peril of their lives to Khosru the
Great, King of Persia, and lived there in peace and dignity and
honor at his court until, due to the whirl of the wheel of
circumstance, Khosru, victor in his war against Justinian, as one
condition of the peace which Justinian purchased with money,
laid it down that these seven philosophers were to be allowed to
return to their own country in peace and to
live in peace, and to
die in peace; and so it was.

Compare that noble spirit with the spirit manifest on the other
side, and you have a slight vision of the inspiration which dwelt
in what was called the ancient initiatory life, and of the spirit
which has hovered over the Western world ever since that year
one of our era, so named, the Christian era.

This does not mean that the slightest aspersion is hereby cast
upon the character of the so-called Jesus. Not one word would a
true theosophist ever say against the character of that great and
noble man, or against the teachings supposed to emanate from
him personally. But it is probable that the theosophic effort which
Jesus attempted to initiate did not endure for fifty years after his
death. Almost immediately after his passing, his disciples, all half-
instructed, and in some cases almost illiterate, men — when I say
"half-instructed" I mean having very little knowledge of the
teachings which their great Master attempted to give them —
foisted upon the world of their time the forms and beliefs of early
Christianity; and had there been nothing but these, that religious
system had not lived another fifty years. But what happened?
During the oncoming of the dark cycle after Jesus (which began as
before said about the time of Pythagoras), the last few rays from
the setting sun of
the ancient light shone feebly in the minds of
certain of these Christian Fathers, Clement of Alexandria for one,
and Origen of Alexandria for another, and in one or two more
like these, who had been initiated at least in the lowest of some of
the then degenerate pagan Mysteries; and these men entered into
the Christian Church and introduced some poor modicum of that
light, some poor rays of it, as it were, which they still cherished;
and these rays they derived mainly from the Neopythagorean and
the Neoplatonic systems.

People speak of Christianity as if it were wholly derived from

Judaism. Very little of it is. It is, in its theology, almost wholly
derived from misunderstood Greek thought, mainly, as said, from
the Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic systems; and this is obvious
to anyone who reads the writings of those who are called the
great doctors of Christian theology, such as Dionysius, the so-
called Areopagite, whose system is, in essentials, entirely taken
from the Neoplatonic philosophy. Mainly derived from him,
again, are the present standard theological works of the Church of
Rome: I mean the works of Thomas Aquinas. These are today the
standard by which the theology of Rome is directed and settled
when disputed points are to be adjudicated. And yet, while this is
so, and while much of that which was taken over by the early
Christian Fathers still remains as factors and words in the
Christian theology, it has utterly forgotten the spirit of these early
pagan thoughts; and that religion today stands reduced to
a
system of forms and ceremonies, mostly.

Now this is the situation that we are facing in the Occident, and
above everything else it is our duty to bring back the old spiritual
life, the old spiritual fire, the holy fire of the ancient days, to our
fellow men: not to make the world pagan again — if we can use
that term pagan in the sense of reintroducing the old Greek or
Roman mythology, not at all; nor to make it Buddhist in the sense
of introducing the present Buddhist religion; nor Brahmanical;
nor Zoroastrian; because all these in their turn are more or less
degenerate — but to bring back the essence of true religion, the
living truths, which all the great Masters of the world from
immemorial time have taught.

The Christians say that the blood of the saints, the blood of the
martyrs, is the "seed of the Church." Let us so live that our lives
shall be the seed of the great church or fellowship of the future.
Ethics lie at the root of it all; ethics, in the heart and mind of man,
are the spiritual light shining through his intellect. They are a
guide, a light unto our feet when honestly practiced, unfailing,
giving infinite peace to the human heart. When we say ethics and
morals we do not mean merely conventional systems of right
conduct, though those may be good also. We mean the cultivation
of the understanding, of the instinct living in the soul of man, of
his intuitional perception, that right is right and wrong is wrong,
outside of any conventional systems whatsoever, and that if a
man errs, he works, not only to his own undoing, but to the
undoing of others with whom he is inseparably linked.

We have been studying at our last few meetings the theme of

Gods, Monads, and Atoms, and we have seen that these are
related to and causative of the evolution of the kosmos by their
interworking in the lokas and talas — and we have seen that
these lokas and talas comprise the structure, the framework, the
carpentry, of the universe; that they infill space, and in fact are
space itself. There is not, in the absolute sense, a void point
anywhere. All being is infilled with swarming multitudes of
entities in the various and manifold degrees of development in
which they find themselves. But all follow certain general rules of
order, certain fundamental operations of the kosmos, which are
called in popular parlance, natural laws. We have seen that the
energy-consciousness side is the side of the principles; and that
the matter-prakriti side, or the element-side, is the side of the
talas, as the former — the principles — are of the lokas. And yet
these are inseparable,
these lokas and talas, each involved with
each, the two highest together and the two lowest together, and
those between in similar manner, two by two, as inseparable as
the two poles of a magnet (you cannot have a magnet with only
one pole); as inseparable also as good and evil, as are light and
darkness. In fact, these lokas and talas are an expression
kosmically of what we call the system of opposites, of contraries,
which is another way of expressing duality in nature. They are
interlinked from the uppermost or highest down to the lowest;
and it is by passing through these principles and elements,
through these lokas and talas, that the life-waves, the streams of
beings, undergo their evolution, acquire their experience. There
are no separations or voids between the hosts of the various
hierarchies in the kosmos, which is another way of expressing the
same thing. They blend into each other, let us say, if you like; at
least as a first suggestion for understanding. They blend together
by and through
their atmospheres, the outermost atmosphere of
one interpenetrating and interblending more particularly with
the outermost atmosphere of its superior or of its inferior loka or
tala, as the case may be; and the thought here is of "atmospheres"
or auras within each other, inwardly, not mere mechanical
junctions of atmospheres on any one plane.

These innumerable hosts, these swarming multitudes of beings,

which infill space and are space itself, work downwards along the
arc of the shadows in their so-called descent into matter; and
then, when they have reached the bottom of the grand cycle in
any manvantara, they turn because, having reached the lowest
point possible as regards that hierarchy, they cannot go farther
down in it. This is a question which we must go into more fully in
the future. Please accept it for the moment as a proposition. Thus,
having reached that bottom point, that utmost point of
materiality, for that particular cycle of evolution of matter and
involution of spirit, they turn and begin the homeward course,
"ascending" through the lokas and talas as they "came down"
through them, and this ascent is the involution of matter and the
evolution of spirit or, to put it in other words, matter resolves
itself again into the spirit which it fundamentally is.

There is no difference in occultism between force and matter,

except in degree of materiality or grossness; there is no difference
of kind at all. There is no difference between spirit and substance,
except in degree, no difference in kind at all. Both are
fundamentally one; and both, when the long ages of the
manvantaric cycle shall have ended, shall sink back again into the
infinite womb of the great Void, the maha-sunyata, that is to say,
back into the illimitable kosmos of the spiritual realms, which is
"void" to our lower natures, but actually an ineffable pleroma or
Fullness to the divine eye within us.

It is through the working and interaction respectively of the gods

and the monads and the souls and the atoms that the various
globes of our planetary chain, and of any other planetary chain,
and the various lokas and talas pertaining thereto, come into
being. These latter are the vehicles of the former: their garments
of light, if you like, on the higher planes, and their bodies so
called on the lower planes. They are projected, out-thrown, cast
forth, emanated, from these gods, monads, souls, and atoms.
Please remember that when we say atom we do not mean the
chemical atom of modern scientific thought. That atom is, as said
before, rather an aggregate of atomic elements. We mean by the
term a vital-astral entity. At the heart of it is its monad. At the
heart of that monad is its god, and that god is but a ray of the
supreme summit of the hierarchy to which it belongs.

Now, any such hierarchy is but one of an endless multitude of

others similar to it; yea, there are others so much greater than it,
be it as great as your imagination can make it, that it itself seems
by comparison but as a grain of sand on the shores of an infinite
sea. It is so, even in the outer spaces of astronomy which the
instruments of the astronomers can, or at least attempt to,
penetrate. There are kosmoi, kosmoses, so much greater than our
own universal kosmos (which comprises everything within the
zone of the Milky Way) beyond our universe, that our entire
universal kosmos could be placed in one of them and lost; and, on
the other hand, there is an actual universe at the core of every
one of the tiniest atoms of our physical makeup, an actual
universe infilled with its own hierarchies, infilled with its own
endless hosts of beings.

Remember, please, that bulk, volume, size, have nothing

whatsoever to do with consciousness, or with force. And greater
than that thought is this: that the worlds we see, the universe we
see, are but the rind, the shell, the husk of the greater part which
lies within. We see these things around us; they are repeated by
reflection from what is within: "As above, so below; as below, so
above."

We were speaking of initiations and Mysteries a few moments

agone, and perhaps some may have wondered: Are there no
records left of these? There are many; but, alas, people do not
know how to find them. The ordinary scholar takes such
statements as he finds them in his books as simply examples,
samples, rather, of what he calls the "unexampled superstition of
past ages." He knows everything! Our little mental world of 100 or
150 or 200 years is the summum bonum, the ne plus ultra, to such
minds; everything that preceded that short period was ignorance
and superstition; but there are some men and women who have
intellects greater than those, intuitions livelier than those, and
they have felt and seen at least somewhat of the truth in reading
these records of bygone times.

I have personally seen statements in such old records which are

amazingly bold and open. For instance, I make mention of things
found in articles or poems written by Professor Kenneth Morris,
in these cases taken from some of the old Welsh writings, and I
have marveled that such things were left open, simply marveled
at it; but when you read a little more you find that the allusion is
so masterly interwoven with cognate subjects, true but having no
direct bearing upon that blazing star of light that springs forth to
the eye here and there, that these other cognate subjects actually
hide the esoteric star of light, and our modern reader simply
reads in such case as he would a fine modern poem, and he sees
nothing more.

I will take another instance. Professor Osvald Siren, in a very

interesting lecture he gave on Chinese Buddhist art a few days
ago, twice or thrice, perhaps, mentioned two things which are
extremely interesting, and they were placed in direct conjunction.
You remember he told us in his description of the various
postures of these statues of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, that
the bodhisattvas wore what he called "crowns"; and he called
attention to the headgear, as represented in these statues of the
buddhas, and he called it the ushnisha. This is a Sanskrit word,
and it comes from the Sanskrit root ush, which means "to be
warm," "to be hot," "to be flaming," or "fiery." Ushnisha is also
used in the sense of "turban," because this particular headgear
somewhat resembles a turban. It is of spiral conical form,
somewhat like the spiral shell of some snails.

One of the most interesting and instructive aspects of ancient

thought — and it should be of our studies likewise — is that of
symbology. It has been very truly said that once an esoteric
thought has been vocally expressed or printed, it is exoteric. Of
course that is true. That is a fact. But let us not lose sight of
another fact, that while a thing, an esoteric truth, may be
proclaimed from the housetops, unless it is understood it still
remains esoteric, although in form, formally, it is exoteric.

I think it was Aristotle who first used these words "esoteric" and
"exoteric," meaning that which is inward, and that which is
outward and formal. Of course, that distinction is a true one; yet
if you examine the literatures, the symbology of the ancient
literatures, philosophies, and sciences, with the understanding
given to us by the esoteric teachings, you will find that while the
symbolism is exoteric because it has been published, it still
remains esoteric because it is unexplained, its meaning is still hid.

Now will you please recall to your minds that two years ago, I
think it was, we spoke of the fact that practically the entire life of
the ancient world in all its branches, religious, scientific,
philosophic, social, political, whatnot, was ultimately based on
knowledge derived from the Mysteries. This fact is so true and
goes so far in reach that, for an example, even the dread
crucifixion-punishment of the Persians, Carthaginians, and
Romans, a punishment to which only criminals or foreigners
were ever subjected, in early times, as a form, arose in the
initiatory ceremonies.

To return more directly to the subject of the "crown" and the

ushnisha on the buddhas' heads: the crown, you will remember,
was the symbolic sign of one who had passed a certain degree in
initiation. He who was "crowned" was an initiate of a certain
grade; and this was expressed by saying that he wore a crown.
This wearing of crowns has passed into our own European life.
The monarchs are crowned, and at their coronations they
ignorantly repeat a very, very ancient ceremony, meaning then a
great deal, meaning now nothing. And the wearing or use of
crowns, at least as a decoration on rings or letter paper, is still
retained by European nobility in the form of coronets. Originally
it meant that the one so entitled to use the one or the other of
these various crowns had passed a certain grade of initiation, and
in some cases a high initiation too, if you please. The bodhisattvas
were those who were crowned with the buddhic fire, which was
symbolized by the wearing of a diadem
or a crown, or something
similar. The crown, actually, if you examine its earliest forms in
iconography, you will see evidently originated in two ideas, one
of which was the sun, used as a symbol, with its spreading rays —
so much so that some of the late studies or artworks of the very
last age of the ancient times, that of the Romans, show one or
more of the emperors, for instance, with a halo or a nimbus at the
back of his head from which spikes spread out, making a crown
or representing the solar rays. The solar rite, if you like to call it
that, was thus symbolized; and the halo or nimbus back of the
heads of the buddha statues, a fact-symbol copied by the
Christians likewise, originated from a fact well known to the
ancients, and even spoken of in the exoteric literature as it has
come down to us. This fact — and this is the second idea or truth
mentioned — is that a saint, as the Christians would say, a holy
man, as we may say, i.e., one who is in the state of deep samadhi,
has
his head surrounded with these auric streams, these rays
from the vital inner fire, which form a glory around his head, and
sometimes even around the entire body. They stream upwards
from the back of the head, often symbolically represented in the
buddha-iconography as one single, lambent flame soaring
upwards from and over the top of the skull. In this case you may
perhaps find that the ushnisha is missing, its place being taken by
this flame issuing from the top of the head, a symbolic
representation of the fire of the spirit and of the aroused and
active buddhic faculty in which the man is at the time.

You see how beautiful these thoughts are, how much there is
merely in studying the outward symbology of these old beliefs.
How often have I heard this very ushnisha mocked at by
Occidentals, derided with more or less gentle sarcasm. Such
mockery comes from a lack of understanding. It pays — even to
put it on the personal, selfish plane — it pays to understand and
study symbology! There is one more explanation of the ushnisha,
the most secret of all, which we mention but pass over at present.
It refers to the popular belief that the ushnisha is an excrescence
or protuberance of the skull itself.

Now, there are a few more things which we ought to inaugurate

tonight as a prelude and introduction to the beginning of our
study when we next meet. Let me first read from The Secret
Doctrine, volume I, page 569, the following extract:
 . . . the ancient Initiates, who were followed more or less
closely by all profane antiquity, meant by the term "atom,"
a Soul, a Genius or Angel, the first-born of the ever-
concealed CAUSE of all causes; and in this sense their
teachings become comprehensible. They claimed, as do
their successors, the existence of Gods and Genii, angels or
"demons," not outside, or independent of, the Universal
Plenum, but within it. Only this Plenum, during the life-
cycles, is infinite.

We have soon to close our study this evening, but let us again
point out that in our use of the term atom, as H. P. Blavatsky
always used it, we employ it as, and give it the same general
meaning that, the ancient Greek philosophers did from whom we
derive the word. If you remember, it means "that which cannot
be divided"; so, then, it was the ultimate particle of substance;
and this indivisible atom did not at all mean the atom in our
modern, scientific, chemical sense. It meant rather what we
called the monad, which was the name given to the spiritual One
by Pythagoras, and meant exactly the same thing that atom
originally did, the word used by the old Greek Atomists, such as
Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, and Lucretius of Italy, and by
such as they, albeit the Atomistic sense was more materialistic
than ours. Furthermore, this word atom is used by us in a general
sense, frequently. We have spoken of the sun as an atom, and we
have spoken of the earth as an atom, and we have
called attention
to the fact that the ancient Hindus in their writings called Brahma
(the third hypostasis, so to say, of the divine Brahman) the kosmic
atom. The idea is that this kosmic atom is "Brahma's Egg," from
which the universe shall spring into manifested being, as from
the egg the chick comes forth, in its turn to lay another egg. Each
of these kosmic eggs or universes gives birth, after its rest period
has ended, to its own offspring, each of the former derived in
similar manner from its own former manvantaric egg.

And a common doctrine among the ancients all over the world, in
Hindustan or in Greece or Rome, wherever it may have been,
was, as so beautifully expressed in a poem by Cleanthes, the Stoic:
"Zeus is all that is. Whate'er you see or know or sense or feel is
Zeus. Zeus is all within and all without." Therefore not an atom
but is Zeus, as also every potentiality of the infinite kosmos, as of
all kosmoi; for every universe or kosmos is but one of the vast
and incomputable swarms of living entities which fill the spaces
of endless and beginningless SPACE.

Chapter 39
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Thirty-Nine
Theosophy and Occultism. Occultism: the Quintessence of Truth,
Reality; a Complete Whole. Occultism and Moral Responsibility.
Our Solar System: a Kosmic Atom, Egg of Brahma.

It is easy to become a Theosophist. Any person of average

intellectual capacities, and a leaning toward the meta-
physical; of pure, unselfish life, who finds more joy in
helping his neighbour than in receiving help himself; one
who is ever ready to sacrifice his own pleasures for the
sake of other people; and who loves Truth, Goodness and
Wisdom for their own sake, not for the benefit they may
confer — is a Theosophist.

But it is quite another matter to put oneself upon the path

which leads to the knowledge of what is good to do, as to
the right discrimination of good from evil; a path which
also leads a man to that power through which he can do
the good he desires, often without even apparently lifting a
finger. — H. P. Blavatsky, "Practical Occultism," Lucifer, II,
150

Occultism is not the acquirement of powers, whether

psychic or intellectual, though both are its servants.
Neither is Occultism the pursuit of happiness, as men
understand the word; for the first step is sacrifice, the
second, renunciation. — Lucifer, I, 7

Our philosophy of life is one grand whole, every part

necessary and fitting into every other part. Every one of its
doctrines can and must be carried to its ultimate
conclusion. Its ethical application must proceed similarly.
If it conflict with old opinions those must be cast off. It can
 never conflict with true morality. . . . The spirit of
Theosophy must be sought for; a sincere application of its
principles to life and act should be made. Thus mechanical
Theosophy, which inevitably leads — as in many cases it
already has — to a negation of brotherhood, will be
impossible, and instead there will be a living, actual
Theosophy. — William Q. Judge, The Path, X, 235

. . . Tcharaka, a Hindu physician, who is said to have lived

5,000 years B.C., in his treatise on the origin of things, . . .
thus beautifully expresses himself: "Our Earth is, like all
the luminous bodies that surround us, one of the atoms of
the immense Whole of which we show a slight conception
by terming it — the Infinite." — Isis Unveiled, I, 560

OCCULTISM, as the Masters and H. P. Blavatsky have told us, is

that sublime wisdom delivered to the early races of mankind by
exalted beings from other lokas; and while in our modern times
to this wisdom has been given the name of occultism, that is the
science of things which are secret or hid, and while that name has
its correspondence in other languages, as in the Sanskrit gupta-
vidya, in the form in which it has been presented to the public in
our age, it is called theosophy. One may ask oneself: Is there any
intrinsic difference between occultism and theosophy? I think we
may say very fairly and justly that there is not, that
fundamentally the two are one, two names for one thing. But H. P.
Blavatsky very wisely made a distinction, superficial if you like,
but convenient, between occultism and theosophy, and this
distinction was thought of in connection with the three kinds of
members of the Theosophical Movement: first, the members of
the Theosophical Society who are
neither theosophists nor
occultists necessarily, but who are those who so greatly admire
our broad and universal platform, who are so much in sympathy
with the ideals which theosophy sets forth, that they have thrown
in their lot with us, and work with us. The second class comprises
those who are more than mere members of the Theosophical
Society; they are those who study the particular and certain
doctrines which in our time have been called theosophical, and
which represent the eye doctrine, as Gautama the Buddha called
it; in other words, the publication for the public weal of certain
chosen and specified doctrines of occultism, fit for public
dissemination in our age. Lastly, those who have given
themselves in a larger, in a deeper, and in a more heartful degree
than the other two classes have done, to that sublime wisdom
which has come down to us from immemorial time as the
revelation, if we may use that word, of the truths of the kosmos,
and of course of man as a part thereof.

This, then, is the distinction, such as it is, between theosophy and

occultism. The theosophical doctrines are more generally for the
public, yet they are chosen from the doctrines of occultism; they
are the doctrines which are most fit for public dissemination in
our age, as already said.

Now the unfortunate part of this matter is the following:

everything that is of human nature, or which springs from the
heart or brain of mankind, is de facto subject to imitation or even
to degeneration; and consequently this name occultism, a truly
noble name in its real meaning, is often greatly, even vilely,
misused and misunderstood; it is bandied about in the
newspapers, and passes from mouth to mouth as signifying little
more than the so-called psychistic or wonderment-doctrines on
which the public feeds so avidly. That use is a degradation of the
original sense. All things which really satisfy the heart and mind
of man must be of necessity true in degree, otherwise they could
not so satisfy; but, as we all know, men's minds and hearts
sometimes feed on mere husks, as it is expressed in the Christian
New Testament — feed on husks which the swine eat. You know
what the symbolic expression swine means. We have spoken of it
before, so we need not now allude to it again. But the point which
I
wish to impress upon our minds in this connection is, that
occultism is the exposition of the very essence, the quintessence,
of truth, of reality. It cannot be studied by the higher mind alone,
nor can it be studied alone by those other faculties in man which
he classes under the generic heading of "feelings." But it must be
studied as a complete whole, and it answers fully to all demands
of man's entire spiritual and psychological composition, and is
therefore entirely and utterly satisfactory. It provides man not
merely with a basis for the noblest system of ethics the world
knows, but describes to him what those ethics are, and on what
they are founded, and what the due and perfect practice of them
will lead to. And that leading, we are told, is along that old, small
path, of which the Upanishads speak — for those who follow it
finally come into direct connection and into confabulation with
the all-wise and calm-eyed gods, for that path leads us directly to
the heart of the universe
— the "heart" in the mystical and
esoteric sense: into those places, into those spiritual,
superspiritual, and divine, regions where is the core of the being
of each one of us.

The various great religions of the present and of the past times
have sprung forth from the doctrines of occultism; each one of
such religions in its germinal stage, in its beginning, was the
spiritual offspring of some great and noble man, one of the
Masters, indeed, who taught publicly during the particular period
when he appeared among men openly for the salvation of his
fellows, giving forth anew, once again, the age-old truths or,
perchance, but a newer version of the ancient light to them,
elucidating the great problems concerning the kosmos and man,
which to those who have not received such light, so harass the
human heart and, it may be, the human intellect, with an urgency
demanding solution. Such a movement was started in our time by
our great-souled Brother, H. P. Blavatsky. It depends upon us
almost wholly at the present time, and will in the future so
depend very largely, whether that effort is to fail as all religions
in the past, save one, have failed, more or less; or whether it is to
go forward successfully, doing the work it was intended to do,
planting the seeds of right thinking and right action, of human
brotherhood, and of universal kindliness, in the hearts of all who
follow it; or whether, following the left-hand path, the path of
matter, it is to go down and possibly become even an instrument
of the Brothers of the Shadows.

Our Teachers have told us plainly that the study of occultism

involves a great moral responsibility: that it places such a
responsibility upon the shoulders of him or of her who studies it,
because it awakens the inner man; it awakens his hid powers.
And, furthermore, precisely proportionate to a man's earnestness
is its study productive of good or, it may be, of the reverse.
OCCULTISM CANNOT BE TRIFLED WITH. It deals with direct and
original things, if you understand these terms, not with reflected
truths. Hence, unless a man's heart be absolutely pure — I mean
by that, clean of all personal selfishness — he never is safe. There
can be no trifling with it. It calls out of a man all he is inwardly,
and brooks no halfway loyalty.

The two paths lie always at our feet; at every step they diverge,
one to the right and one to the left; and one single act may induce
a habit, which will make a character, in time, by repetition; and
that character is you or I, for it is the exercise of knowledge (or
half-knowledge) and will.

It is for these reasons that time and again we refer to the

necessity of understanding clearly what we mean by morals, and
that there is the utmost need for their practice by each one of us,
by you and by me, every moment of our lives. Such practice does
not mean merely the hypocritical assent of the mentality, with a
mental reservation that "finally I shall do as I please." That field of
mental reservations is precisely where the Brothers of the
Shadows make their conquests of the hearts of men, on just such
lines as those. I tell you, with all solemnity, that the warning
should be, must be, heeded.

Now, let us open our study tonight by reminding ourselves of the

fact that the lokas and the talas of which we have spoken at our
several last meetings, as concerns the earth, are its seven
principles and its seven elements respectively — and as concerns
the kosmos precisely the same may be said; furthermore, that the
seven kosmical lokas and seven kosmical talas comprise the
entirety, the totality, of all that is in our solar system, which is the
kosmic atom. In other words, they comprise the totality of the Egg
of Brahma. You know the meaning of that fine old Brahmanical
symbol, the egg, a symbol which is found likewise in other
religions, such as the Orphic system in Greece, and the Egyptian
system; and we know from the representations we have of the
earth-mounds, that anciently it was equally well recognized in
North America.

When we speak of the kosmic atom — when we speak of the Egg

of Brahma, which is another way of saying the same thing —
when we speak of it as being the solar system, please know that
we do not mean the planets together, or the sun alone, or the sun
and planets together, which last form merely the outward rind or
shell, as it were (or, if we may use a physiological term, the nerve
centers, the ganglia, of the physiological operations), of this Egg of
Brahma. When we speak of the kosmic atom, and inferentially of
the atom of matter as we know it on this earth, we mean the vital-
astral entity behind it, that particular entity considered as a unity,
which gives it its life, its swabhava, that is, its particular or
individual characteristic, that which differentiates it from other
similar kosmic eggs or kosmic atoms. We may also speak of our
earth as Brahma's Egg, but this is by analogy; the real Egg of
Brahma is the solar system.

We have said before that the lokas and talas are the seven
principles and the seven elements of our globe, our globe Terra;
but there are other seven lokas and other seven talas which are
respectively the seven principles and the seven elements of each
one of the other six globes of our planetary chain, seven of each,
to each. One may ask oneself, if one has not studied occultism,
why there should be so much of the sevening process in our
studies; why our doctrines should continually run in sevenfold
aggregates. The answer of occultism is, because nature has so
builded her structures. Outside of such obvious things as the
seven principal colors of the light spectrum and the seven rays of
the sun (which is almost the same thing), and the seven notes of
the diatonic scale in music, and the fact known to students of
physiology that many diseases run in cycles of seven days or
multiples thereof — leaving these things aside, we find in
studying the ancient literatures as showing
forth the religions,
philosophies, and sciences of the past times, that while they all
state the fact under different forms undoubtedly, they all agree
more or less unanimously in ascribing to the structural
framework of the universe and of man the same system of seven
component parts.

This question of numeration is one which we have laid no

foundation for at present, and therefore we postpone it for longer
consideration to a future time. Suffice it then for the present to
accept it as a proposition for study. You yourselves can prove
what has been said. The literatures of the world lie open before
you. Read them and study them, and you will be convinced as all
other sincere students have been convinced who have done it.
Study therefore the evidences and prove the facts.

Now the gods, monads, and atoms work through the kosmic egg
inwards and outwards, that is, they work through the lokas and
talas. As H. P. Blavatsky says in the first volume of The Secret
Doctrine, on page 619:

"God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit,

Mind, and Body (Atma, Manas, and Sthula Sarira) in man."
In their septenary aggregation they are the "Heavenly
Man" (see Kabala for the latter term); thus, terrestrial man
is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. . . . "The
Monads (Jivas) are the Souls of the Atoms, both are the
fabric in which the Chohans (Dhyanis, gods) clothe
themselves when a form is needed."

They so clothe themselves, in order, as pointed out in our former

studies of the gods, monads, souls, and atoms, to evolve forth the
universe; as the Upanishad puts it, as a spider spins a web. That is
a beautiful symbol. From out of themselves, from their own
substance, they weave the geometrical pattern of the kosmos and
therein work.

The study of the structure or framework of our kosmic atom is a

vast, profound, and intricate subject, and before we can properly
do it justice, it would seem better first to undertake at least a
cursory examination — for at this point we have now arrived in
our studies — of the building of our own globe, as a part of the
planetary chain in which it is one of the seven links. Indeed, let us
go a little farther than that, and study the working of the life-
waves of and in our planetary chain. Our planetary chain, as said
before, may itself be considered the Egg of Brahma, the kosmic
egg, the fruit of its parent, i.e., the planetary chain of the
preceding manvantara; and it itself is to be the parent of its own
future offspring, the planetary chain to come when we in our
own chain shall have run our cyclical evolutionary course and
sunk into our long and well-earned pralaya, or rest — in other
words, after we have rejoined those superspiritual spheres from
within which we came in the
very beginning of things — to
remain there in peace and in bliss ineffable, until the seeds latent
in us, the fruitage of our present and future acts and thoughts,
shall spring into activity in due time. For all things move in
regular courses and according to order, which shall bring us
down, in far-distant aeons into the fabrication of the planetary
chain to be.

Chapter 40
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty
Definitions of Deity: Atheism; Pantheism. Is There a Supreme
Personal God? Kosmic Architects and Builders. Really to Know,
One Must Become.

"Thus there is but one Absolute Upadhi (basis) in the

spiritual sense, from, on, and in which, are built for
Manvantaric purposes the countless basic centres on which
proceed the Universal, cyclic, and individual Evolutions
during the active period."

"The informing Intelligences, which animate these various

centres of Being, are referred to indiscriminately by men
beyond the Great Range as the Manus, the Rishis, the Pitris,
the Prajapati, and so on; and as Dhyani Buddhas, the
Chohans, Melhas (fire-gods), Bodhisattvas, and others, on
this side. The truly ignorant call them gods; the learned
profane, the one God; and the wise, the Initiates, honour in
them only the Manvantaric manifestations of THAT which
neither our Creators (the Dhyan Chohans) nor their
creatures can ever discuss or know anything about. The
ABSOLUTE is not to be defined, and no mortal or immortal
has ever seen or comprehended it during the periods of
Existence. The mutable cannot know the Immutable, nor can
that which lives perceive Absolute Life."

"Therefore, man cannot know higher beings than his own

"progenitors." "Nor shall he worship them," but he ought to
learn how he came into the world. . . .

There is frequent confusion in the attributes and

genealogies of the gods in their theogonies, as given to the
world by the half-initiated writers, Brahmanical and
 Biblical, the Alpha and the Omega of the records of that
symbolical science. Yet there could be no such confusion
made by the earliest nations, the descendants and pupils of
the divine instructors: for both the attributes and the
genealogies were inseparably linked with cosmogonical
symbols, the "gods" being the life and animating "soul-
principle" of the various regions of the Universe. Nowhere
and by no people was speculation allowed to range beyond
those manifested gods. The boundless and infinite UNITY
remained with every nation a virgin forbidden soil,
untrodden by man's thought, untouched by fruitless
speculation. The only reference made to it was the brief
conception of its diastolic and systolic property, of its
periodical expansion or dilatation, and contraction. In the
Universe with all its
incalculable myriads of systems and
worlds disappearing and reappearing in eternity, the
anthropomorphised powers, or gods, their Souls, had to
disappear from view with their bodies: — "The breath
returning to the eternal bosom which exhales and inhales
them," says our Catechism. . . . In every Cosmogony, behind
and higher than the creative deity, there is a superior deity,
a planner, an Architect, of whom the Creator is but the
executive agent. And still higher, over and around, within
and without, there is the UNKNOWABLE and the unknown,
the Source and Cause of all these Emanations. . . . — The
Secret Doctrine, II, 34, 42-3

WE APPROACH this evening one aspect of occultism which has

always been held as very sacred and very carefully guarded, and
that is the study of other worlds than ours, not as those worlds
have been set forth in the exoteric religions, but in accordance
with the secret wisdom which has been handed down to us from
immemorial time. We mean the teaching concerning the superior
globes of our own planetary chain; and on a misunderstanding of
the doctrines concerning the teaching regarding the planetary
chain have been based the exoteric views of the heavens and the
hells of the various exoteric faiths.

One might ask oneself what the proper answer is to give to those
who might ask any one of us: "Is a theosophist an atheist? Does he
believe in God? If not, why not?" Now these questions are directly
connected with the proper understanding of the doctrines about
the planetary chain. Let us then first devote a few moments to
answering these questions for ourselves. Are we atheists? How
can we answer that question before we know what we mean by
the term? If we take a modern dictionary, for instance the Century
Dictionary, and look up the definition of the term "atheism," we
find three general ones. The first is: "The doctrine that there is no
God." And then follows a quotation from Sir J. R. Seeley, from his
book, Natural Religion, page 26: "Atheism is a disbelief in the
existence of God — that is, disbelief in any regularity in the
universe to which man must conform himself under penalties."
Notice the peculiar limitation of thought
involved in this. If there
is no regularity in the universe, therefore there is no personal
supreme God, and therefore if you don't believe in such a God, the
universe is irregular and anarchical, and you are an atheist!

The second definition is as follows: "The denial of theism, that is,

of the doctrine that the great first cause is a supreme intelligent,
righteous person." The third definition is "godlessness," with the
implied meaning that if you don't accept the God of the one who
gives the definition, you are an atheist, and you live a "godless,"
that is, an evil life. Such, then, are the definitions given in a
standard work.

Now any tyro-student of history knows that this question or idea

of belief in a god or in no god has varied, or rather has received
different treatment in different ages. You will remember
doubtless that when the Christian religion first began to run a
more or less successful course in Greece and in the Roman
Empire, educated Greeks and Romans called the new Christian
sect an atheistic sect. They were called "atheists," atheoi, merely
meaning one, or rather those, who did not accept the established
gods of the State, that is, the gods of the State religion; and the
term bore with it no particular or necessary implication of
evildoing whatsoever. It was very much as if a European or
American were to say today: Such and such a man is a
freethinker, or a Confucianist, or a Buddhist, or a scientist, etc.

When the Christians grew more powerful and had in later ages
the upper hand of the so-called pagans, they in their turn
retaliated by calling the pagans atheists, because the latter did not
accept the Jewish-Greek, newfangled Christian God. In other
words, the term actually means: "If you accept my God you are
not an atheist; and if you do not accept my God you are an
atheist."

That is just about what atheism has always meant, if we consult

the pages of history. But if we think of atheism as containing in
itself a necessary implication of evildoing, we lower ourselves to
the mental viewpoint of certain very narrow-minded Christians
to whom all who do not accept their particular variety of religion,
their particular understanding or misunderstanding of Deity, are
atheists. We are reminded of course of that Scottish lady of the
legend, of whom we have all heard, who with her husband
composed a kirk; she and her Jamie alone composed the kirk. But
she was "nae sae certain aboot Jamie." Therefore she alone
composed the kirk, and her husband Jamie, poor man, came very
near to being (in her eyes) an atheist.

Now that is the spirit that has governed Christian thought

practically ever since the death of its founder. So, therefore, when
we ask if a man is an atheist, we must be careful first to ascertain
what we mean by the term. I have been called an atheist because
I do not accept the old orthodox definition of the personal
Christian God. I reject the term, if it mean living an immoral life. I
reject it with all the indignation of which I am sensible, if the
word be so used, for it is an imputation which is grossly unjust.
And doubtless any one of you feels exactly as I do. Was it not the
author of The Plough and the Cross, a very clever Irish writer,
who said somewhere that our "forefathers were afraid of ghosts;
but we are afraid of names," i.e., of labels and tickets?

Notice the second definition given above, that a man is an atheist

if he does not believe in the existence of a supreme, personal, first
cause, who is an "intelligent, righteous person." I reject such a
deity; therefore, according to the dictionary, I am an atheist. But if
anyone were to ask me, Are you an atheist? I would say no. And if
he were to say, Why? I would say, because to me the boundless
All is totally instinct with consciousness and life, an infinitely
immense and swarming multitude, endless and beginningless, of
beings who form not merely the heart of the pulsating life of all
that is, but provide the very consciousnesses which govern and
control the innumerable universes of and in the boundless All.

If you turn even to the canonical scripture of the Christian

religion and ask what Paul meant when he spoke of Deity, we find
there, from him, two definitions worthy of the initiant that the
man was, when he said, first: "In It we live, and move, and have
our being." This is pure pantheism — not as misunderstood in the
grotesque sense which the Christians have misgiven to it, i.e., that
every stock and every stone is God, thus showing their profound
ignorance of the high and noble philosophical meaning behind
the term pantheism; but in the sense that all is life, and that it is
impossible to conceive of, nay, even to touch the smallest point of
space or being, which lacks that limitless life. For back of A lies B,
which is still greater than A; back of B lies C, still greater than B;
back of C lies D, yet more grandiose; and so on infinitely, with
never an end. What blasphemous ideas have come down through
the ages regarding this question of Deity! Here in our Occidental
Christianism we
have a God, a bundle of contradictions, a
misunderstood rendering of Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic,
and of some Judaic, thoughts, the curious and contradictory
compound called the Christian Deity — I mean the theological
definition thereof.

Then another saying of Paul from his Epistle to the Romans, in

chapter 11, verse 36: "For out of It, and through It, and back to It
are all things." Pantheism this, pure and simple, even as we
understand it.

Or, if we turn to the English rendering of John's Gospel, chapter 4,

verse 24, we find an affirmation of the opposite thought, which
particular translation sprang from the orthodox rendering of the
text by the later Christians, where this Greek verse is
mistranslated as saying "God is a Spirit." The Greek original could
equally well and even better be translated: "God is Spirit." So be it.
They may worship "a spirit" if they like, a spirit who is a
"righteous person"; but those whose hearts have expanded under
the beneficent influence of the wisdom-religion, and whose minds
have opened to somewhat of the understanding which every
faithful student of that wisdom should possess, can only reject
such a definition of the Deity that he cannot accept, with the
indignation which the definition deserves.

No theosophist, H. P. Blavatsky has somewhere said, has ever

denied Deity, i.e., limitless life in the boundless All; but this Deity
is nothing like, nor in any sense can it be compared with, a finite
creator, which such a "person" is supposed to be, however
"supreme" and however "righteous" and however great that
supposed "person" or that "spirit" may be imagined to be.

Now, if someone were to ask you, Is there a supreme personal

God ruling the planetary chain and is it your God? the answer is
no. There is a host, a multitude, a hierarchy, of intelligent and of
thinking and of highly spiritualized beings, from which the
planetary chain sprang forth, but it is not our god, nor do we
worship any such. Those beings are our progenitors, our elder
brothers in a very exalted sense, for they were men in former
manvantaras long since past; but our "god," never, not even when
considered as a unity and called the Logos. Our "deity," if it is
anything, is that indescribable, boundless life, in its highest
aspects, back of everything, forming a background of all
manifested being on whatever plane, and in which all is, and
from which all is, and to which all is; indescribable, unthinkable,
and therefore ineffable.

You remember that when Gautama the Buddha was asked, What
is God? and Is there God? that greatest and noblest of Masters was
silent. And when asked a second and a third time, What is God?
he again was silent. Three times was he asked the question, and
three times he preserved his silence.

In our recent studies we have attempted to show that the entire

system of beings, the structure or framework of the universe on
the background of the Boundless, sprang forth from the action
and the intermingling of the gods, the monads, the souls, and the
atoms; and that these produced the various planetary chains of
our solar system, that is to say, of the kosmic atom or, as the
Brahmanical thinkers named it, the Egg of Brahma. From these
gods, monads, souls, and atoms, the manifested being of the solar
system came forth.

Let us then turn next to our own planetary chain. You will
remember that it is stated to be composed of seven globes, of
which our present earth is the fourth and on the lowest plane of
the seven; and that this planetary chain is working in four of the
planes or worlds of the solar system, in the four lowest worlds
thereof, as a matter of fact, our earth occupying the lowest
element or world of the seven which compose the solar system.
These seven elements are otherwise the kosmical lokas and talas,
or kosmical worlds, principles, and elements working together.
They are the worlds within the outer seeming, more ethereal than
our world, of which ours is a copy, not necessarily a copy in every
detail, but a copy on general lines, even as the physical body of
man is a copy on general lines of the soul of him; and as his soul
is a copy on general lines of the spirit of him; and as the spirit of
him is a copy on general lines of his divine root, a god-being or
godhead from which he sprang.

You will also remember that there are two general lines or
hierarchies of spiritual beings who brought forth our kosmos, of
which our planetary chain is one part; and these two are
respectively the architects and the builders. The architects form
the higher or more spiritual side, and actually form the line of the
luminous arc; and the builders or constructors form, on the other
hand, the shadowy arc.

In the Buddhist system of Tibet, the general name of dhyani-

chohans, or lords of meditation, is given to both these lines of
beings; but more particularly the architects are called the dhyani-
buddhas, the buddhas of contemplation. The Greeks called the
world builders, the masons of the world, by the general term of
kosmokratores, a compound Greek word meaning "world
builders." They are those who receive the creative or constructive
impress from the beings of the luminous arc, or the dhyani-
buddhas, and carry it out.
In each of these two lines there are seven grades or rather classes:
there are seven classes of the dhyani-buddhas, and seven classes
of the dhyani-chohans; and so far as our own planetary chain is
concerned, these seven classes are reflected, repeated, therein.

Furthermore, each one of the seven globes composing our

planetary chain is under the particular oversight (I think it would
be wrong to use the word direction or guidance, but rather the
over-seeing), under the particular over-seeing or care — care is
perhaps the best word to describe this extremely metaphysical
concept — under the care of one class of these dhyani-buddhas
and one class of the builders. That is to say, globe A, for instance,
the first, on the descending arc of our planetary chain, is under
the care or watchful inspiration or oversight, of one class of these
seven of both lines. Globe B is under the care of the second class
of each line. Globe C under the same care or inspiration of the
third class of each; and our own globe D or fourth has likewise its
own dhyani-buddhas and builders of the fourth class; and the
three globes of the ascending arc, similarly.

Do not confuse these two lines, because the distinction is very

important if we are to obtain any adequate understanding at all
of this branch of the ancient wisdom. The architects then, of the
luminous arc, provide the model, lay down the plans. They are
the architects, the overseers, and their work is carried out by
these inferior grades or classes of spiritual beings called the
builders.

Now with regard to this very question of God, considered briefly

above, you will remember that the Gnostics, during the time of
the beginning of the Christian era, claimed, and we claim with
them, that the Christian God, Jehovah, whom the Christians call
the Creator, could not for that very reason be a very high god. The
very attributes and functions of creation or formation that were
given to him show, said these Gnostics, that he was but an
inferior deity, a builder, receiving his "orders," so to say, from the
divine architects and supernal planners and thinkers of the
kosmos, he himself thus being but a builder. As they so well put it,
the manifold imperfections and incompletenesses so plainly
apparent even to us humans, in the kosmical system, proclaim
that it could not be the work of an all-perfect and kosmically
omnipotent Deity; from utter perfection could spring forth only a
perfect and complete work. The early Christians were unable to
understand the deep philosophy behind this
unanswerable
axiom, and waxed very wroth and indignant indeed against what
they called the "blasphemous opinions" of those Gnostics. In
common with all thoughtful minds, you will see the deep
philosophical and religious implications that lie behind this
argument or axiom, but upon them we cannot longer pause at
this time. Remember this, though, that in all the ancient faiths you
will find two general classes of spiritual beings at work in the
kosmos, and they are always divided, as we have already said this
evening, into the thinkers or planners or architects, the inspirers;
and into the builders. There is, finally, vastly more in this thought
than we have time to go into tonight.

Now the Silent Watcher of whom we have spoken at other

meetings is the highest of the dhyani-chohans of our globe; but
there is likewise a Silent Watcher for each of the other six globes,
and for the planetary chain as a whole. There is likewise a Silent
Watcher for the entire kosmical — for the entire solar — system.
So when we say Silent Watcher, without further defining, it is like
saying spiritual being or hierarchical head. It is a generic term. As
remarked at those former meetings, one such Silent Watcher is on
our earth today, the supreme head of the Hierarchy of
Compassion, the highest link with the spiritual beings of the
hierarchy higher than ours upward along the luminous arc. He is,
so to say, our supreme Master, our supreme Chief.

You have all studied, of course, in the doctrine concerning our

own planetary chain, what are commonly called the seven
rounds, meaning that the life cycle or life-wave begins its
evolutionary course on globe A, the first of the globes, then,
completing its cycles there, runs down to globe B, and then to
globe C, and then to globe D, our earth; and then to globe E, on the
ascending arc, then to globe F, and then to globe G. This is one
planetary round. Then ensues a planetary nirvana, until the
second round begins in the same way, but in a more "advanced"
degree of evolution than was the first round. Please note that one
such round is a planetary round. A globe-round is one of the
passages, one of the seven passages, of that life-wave during its
planetary round, on any one and therefore on and through each
of the globes: when the life-wave has passed through globe D, for
instance, and ends its cycles on globe D, that is the globe-round of
globe D for that particular
planetary round; and so with all the
globes respectively. There are seven globe-rounds therefore (one
globe-round for each of the seven globes) in each planetary
round. Furthermore, when seven planetary rounds have been
accomplished, which is as much as saying 49 globe-rounds (or
globe-manvantaras), then ensues a still higher nirvana than that
between globes G and A after each planetary round, which is
called a pralaya of that planetary chain, which pralaya lasts until
the cycle again returns for the new planetary chain to form,
containing the same series of living beings as on the preceding
chain and which are now destined to enter upon that new
planetary chain, but on a higher series of planes than in the
preceding one.

Next, when seven such planetary chains with their various kalpas
or manvantaras have passed away, this sevenfold grand cycle is
one solar manvantara, and then the entire solar system sinks into
the solar or kosmic pralaya. Our own sun is then extinguished,
suddenly, like a flash of light, or like a shadow passing over a
wall. After just a "flickering," finally the light goes out, and the
great mass of entities passes into spiritual realms far higher than
any of those attained during the highest point of attainment in the
period while the solar manvantara lasted, because they are then
entering upon their solar nirvana.

Let us draw again the same diagram that we copied from H. P.

Blavatsky at a former meeting, from page 200 of volume I of The
Secret Doctrine. The seven parallel lines represent, if you please,
the seven planes or worlds of the solar system. Above or on the
lowest line of these seven let us place a circle to represent globe
D, our earth. On the next plane above we also place two more
circles to represent the two globes immediately above our own,
called respectively C on the left and E on the right. On the plane
above that we place two more globes, and call these respectively
B on the left and F on the right. And on the plane above that, the
fourth kosmic plane counting upwards, we draw two more circles
to represent the two highest globes of our chain, respectively A on
the left and G on the right.

Please remember that these kosmic "planes" are merely so called

for purposes of convenience. They are actually the seven
kosmical lokas and talas of the kosmic system, that is to say, of the
solar system. But each one of these is a true world; they are
worlds as truly as our own is, which we perceive when we look
up and see the stars above us, and look to the earth and see the
earth beneath our feet, the trees growing therefrom, the human
and other animate beings walking with us, etc. Each one of these
kosmic "planes" is a world, but each is again subdivided into
septenary divisions, into seven divisions, all of them together
making 49 subdivisions of the seven main divisions (or worlds) of
the solar system.

Let us illustrate this by another diagram. We draw again seven

parallel lines. And let these represent, if you please, the lowest
solar world, or plane, of the seven, the lowest kosmic world, our
world, the world we are in now. It, like all the others, is
septempartite or divided into seven parts or divisions,
representing matter or spirit from the grossest to the highest
degree of each in our world, from the ethereal (highest) to the
most material (lowest); and on one of these planes our globe
Terra is at present.

Now what is the manner in which the life-wave in any round

works? For the moment, if you will, we shall omit considering the
previous three globes, A, B, and C, on the descending turn, and
consider only our own globe D, or earth. These seven lines in the
diagram are intended to represent respectively the seven grades
or materializations of matter in the lowest of the seven kosmic
planes, growing more material from the top downwards. Now
then, our globe D in round the first is in the highest or topmost of
these seven subplanes of our own lower kosmic plane, and our
own kosmic plane, please remember, is the lowest of the seven of
all the kosmic planes. It is the seventh and lowest. The life-wave
during round 1 passes through our earth, after evolving it forth, a
process which we are to study in detail later; it is a process of
evolutionary development which occupies many millions of
years; and after finishing its globe-round 1, leaves our globe D
and passes to the next higher globe E. All right.
As this life-wave is
descending into matter for the first three rounds, our globe
during round first will be on the highest subplane of the lowest
kosmic plane or world. The second or next round will find our
globe materialized and on subplane the second, counting
downwards; in round the third, still more materialized and on the
third subplane downwards; in round 4, that is, where we are
now, our globe has reached its grossest state of matter; the
downward cycling ceases, and the ascent begins.

What about subplanes 5, 6, and 7? Those planes are related to the

destiny of beings who have followed the left-hand path, and who
ultimately reach the utmost point of physical materialization in
subplane the seventh, or the grossest possible in our solar system,
and the last.
We see, thus, that the life-wave in making its first round, round 1,
as is illustrated in Diagram 1, passes through (on its descending
arc through the lowest four kosmic worlds or planes) the highest
subplane or subworld of each one of these lowest four kosmic
worlds, forming in each such kosmic world, a globe, one of the
then-in-the-making seven globes of the chain. Is this clear? In
round 1 the life-wave forms globe A on subplane the highest of
the fourth kosmic world or plane. See the diagram. In round 1 the
life-wave forms globe B on subplane the highest of the fifth
kosmic world or plane. In round 1 the life-wave forms globe C on
subplane the highest of the sixth kosmic world or plane; and so
with the lowest globe D, our earth; and on the ascending scale
likewise we see globes E, F, and G, similarly formed, each on the
highest subplane of the respective kosmic worlds or planes.
Round 2 begins (after the long, long planetary nirvana) on globe A
on the second subplane of the fourth
kosmic world or plane; then
the life-wave passes to globe B on the second subplane of the fifth
kosmic world or plane; then to globe C on the second subplane of
the sixth kosmic world or plane; then to globe D (our earth) on
the second subplane of the seventh or lowest kosmic world or
plane. Similarly, during this second planetary round, the life-
wave passes to all the globes on all the second subplanes of the
ascending arc. Each such passage of the life-wave in and through
each globe of the seven globes forms a globe-round, as said above.

So with round 3, and again with round 4, where we are now on

globe D, on the fourth subplane of the seventh or lowest kosmic
plane or world; that is to say, that the life-wave during each
planetary round passes through the seven globes of the chain,
and from kosmic plane to kosmic plane, but during each one
round passes through only one subplane of each kosmic world or
plane. The result of this being that during the seven rounds, it
passes through 49 subplanes, and the beings composing the life-
wave thereby have the chance of working out the destiny for
which they came into active manifestation and evolution; for the
whole purpose of the evolutionary processes of the kosmos is for
the gaining of self-consciousness through individualizing
experiences — i.e., experiences which individualize (evolve, bring
out) the monads. And in order to attain that end, each monad
must not merely undergo and mentally experience the various
phases and natures of the universal life, but be them. As
pointed
out before in our studies, the initiations of old times, the real
initiations, the initiations which brought to man's consciousness
the knowledge of the spiritual truths of being, were based on this
fact: that no man could really know anything merely by being
taught about it, but he must be it, he must become it. In the old
Mystery Schools, the system of teaching only during the first three
initiations was changed into both teaching and personal
experience beginning with the fourth initiation, these personal
experiences growing grander and greater with each higher step
that the candidate or initiant took; until finally, if he was
successful in all the seven degrees, he attained the divine status
from which he started forth in the beginning of the kosmic or
solar manvantara, plus divine self-consciousness, self-awakening,
and became thereby a Buddha, an Awakened One; or a Christos,
to adopt the old Greek Mystery-term.

During our next few studies we shall continue to investigate the

subject of the planetary chain.

Chapter 41
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty-One
The Doctrine of the Spheres. The Universal Solar System and our
Solar System. The Seven Sacred Planets: Why "Sacred"?

But Time was generated together with the universe, that

being produced together they might together be dissolved,
if any dissolution should ever happen to these. And time
was generated according to the exemplar of an eternal
nature, that this world might be the most similar possible
to such a nature. For its exemplar is permanent being,
through the whole of eternity; but the universe alone was
generated, is, and will be, through the whole of time. After
this manner, therefore, and from such a cogitation of
divinity about the generation of time, that he might give
birth to its flowing subsistence, he generated the sun and
moon, and the five other stars, which are denominated
planets, for the purpose of distinguishing and guarding the
numbers of time. But the divinity, as soon as he had
produced the bodies of these stars, placed them, being
seven in number, in the seven circulations formed by the
revolution of the nature distinguished by difference. . . . But
with
respect to the other stars, if any one should think
proper to investigate their circulations, and through what
causes they are established, the labour would be greater
than that of the discourse itself, for the sake of which they
were introduced. — Plato, Timaeus, pp. 467-8 (Thomas
Taylor, trans.)

The lower world is subject to the sway of the upper world.

In the beginning of its revolution the sovereignty over this

lower world is committed to one of the slow-moving stars.
Which governeth it alone for the space of a thousand years;

And for other thousands of years each of the heavy-moving

stars, and swift-moving stars becometh its partner, each for
one thousand years.

Last of all the moon becometh its associate.

After that, the first associate will get the sovereignty.

The second king goeth through the same round as the first
king; and the others are in like manner his associates.

Last of all the first king is for a thousand years the partner
of the second king.

Then the period of the reign of the second king is also past.

And understand that the same is the course as to all the

others.

When the Moon hath been king, and all have been
associates along with it, and its reign too is over, one Grand
Period is accomplished.

After which the Sovereignty again returneth to the first

king, and in this way there is an eternal succession.

And in the beginning of the Grand Period, a new order of

things commenceth in the lower world.

And, not indeed the very forms, and knowledge, and events
of the Grand Period that hath elapsed, but others precisely
similar to them will again be produced.

And every Grand Period that cometh resembleth from

beginning to end the Grand Period that is past. — The
Desatir, "The Book of the Prophet, the Great Abad," vv. 102-
16 (Mulla Firuz Bin Kaus, trans.)
VAST ARE the reaches of both the space and the time, and
profound are the mysteries likewise, connected with and
involved in the subjects with which our present cycle of study is
opened; for these subjects deal in general with what we may call
collectively the doctrine of the spheres: that is to say, that
particular and fundamental branch of the archaic philosophy and
religion of the ancient wisdom which was most especially
developed in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean or
Inland Sea — a favored study there, even as in the Farther Orient,
among the archaic sages of Hindustan, the doctrines regarding
the workings of the various monadic states of consciousness were
more largely developed and prized.

In our last study we sketched, though briefly, the outline of the

theosophical doctrine dealing with the planetary chain of our
earth. Now this subject of planetary chains is a special case, as
mathematicians would say, of the general doctrine of the spheres;
this subject has always been one of the most carefully guarded,
considered as one of the most sacred and occult, because it leads
us, in its ultimate reaches, directly to the heart of being. In order
to reach that heart of being we have to pass through many secret
chambers of Mother Nature, chambers which have been held
secret from immemorial time, and the arcana of which have been
guarded as one of the most sacred possessions of the Guardians of
mankind.

You will remember that our studies were originally opened by

taking into consideration the general outline of cosmogony and
theogony as found in the archaic cosmology and theology of the
ancient wisdom. This was sketched in all its general aspects, as an
outline only, details being left for filling in at future dates. We
passed in review — only in sketch, please bear in mind — how
worlds are born, how, like children, they spring from the womb
of nature; how, from a germ, they grow into youth, reach
maturity, then decline, and finally decay, followed by ultimate
death, again to resurrect in cyclic rebirth from that same womb
of Mother Nature.

It was shown also that these doctrines of the ancient wisdom,

mystic, marvelous, wonderful, leave no query unanswered, leave
nothing to be built upon mere faith — blind faith that is; but that
each theorem of its philosophy must be, and is, proved, as the
study of it progresses. Remember what proof is. Proof consists in
bringing conviction to the mind; conviction of its reality, based
upon evidence, is the proof of a fact or theorem. Remember that
the various circumstantial things which we may bring in
production of proof are merely the evidential part, the evidences
of reality.

Then, as we passed in review, in outline only, these general

theorems, we finally arrived at the doctrine concerning the
planetary chains, which, as said, is a special case of the general
theorem of the wonderful doctrine of the spheres. Henceforth our
studies go more into detail. We have sought to conduct our
studies together so that the written report of these may help those
who are seeking deeper knowledge of the ancient Mysteries and
of the ancient wisdom than they can get from the books of the
world. One of the reasons for this is that some students have
accepted certain statements of Mr. Sinnett on this very question
of the planetary chain, to the effect that two of the physical
planets of our solar system, Mars and Mercury, were two of the
members of our earth's planetary chain, although H. P. Blavatsky
in this very volume of The Secret Doctrine published several years
before her death declared positively that this notion is wrong; for
indeed, it is not true.

As our studies proceed, you will see for yourselves that it cannot
be true. Let me ask parenthetically: Who was the originator of
this idea? You will remember that the earliest teachings were
given to two Englishmen in India, Mr. A. O. Hume and Mr. A. P.
Sinnett, through H. P. Blavatsky, through Damodar (who later
went to Tibet to join the Teachers), and through one or two
others. The philosophical, religious, and scientific teachings that
Mr. Sinnett received in answer to queries sent by him to the
Masters through H. P. Blavatsky and Damodar were later
incorporated by him in two of his works, The Occult World and
Esoteric Buddhism, as he called them. Both were good books for
their time, as far as they went, but criticized also by H. P.
Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine for their materialistic bias of
presentation, and for their overemphasis on certain aspects of the
teachings to the neglect of the higher, the more spiritual, the more
intellectual, portions, in the attempt by
Mr. Sinnett to "reconcile"
the teachings of the ancient wisdom with what he obviously
thought was the last word of human knowledge, the scientific
theories and fads of his day. Those scientific theories and
teachings are already out of date now, lost to mind and mostly
forgotten. Science has "moved"; but the teachings of the ancient
wisdom have remained!

We open our study this evening, after these preliminary

observations, by reading from The Secret Doctrine, volume II, first
on page 699, "On Chains of Planets and their Plurality":

Did the Ancients know of worlds besides their own? What

are the data of the Occultists in affirming that every globe
is a septenary chain of worlds — of which only one
member is visible — and that these are, were, or will be,
"man-bearing," just as every visible star or planet is? What
do they mean by "a moral and physical influence" of the
sidereal worlds on our globes?
 Such are the questions often put to us, and they have to be
considered from every aspect. To the first of the two
queries the answer is: — We believe it because the first law
in nature is uniformity in diversity, and the second —
analogy. "As above, so below."

And then on page 703:

When, therefore, we find in the Bibles of Humanity "other

worlds" spoken of, we may safely conclude that they not
only refer to other states of our planetary chain and Earth,
but also to other inhabited globes — stars and planets;
withal, that the latter were never speculated upon. The
whole of antiquity believed in the Universality of life.

In entering upon the present phase of our study, we are obliged to

go into detail. But this entering upon a more detailed study is
attended naturally with increased difficulties, not only because of
the many subjects that we are more or less perforce obliged to
meet in following the main theme of our discourse, but also from
the fact that not one iota of teaching can be omitted at any one
point; it must at least be alluded to if the teaching is to remain
complete and whole and not a divided thing. Hence we shall go
slowly. It were indeed easy to hurry over this subject, easy to get a
general outline, but in such case we could go but little farther
than the surface meaning in The Secret Doctrine; and our
instructions are: simplify by illustration, supporting it by
confirmation and proof.

Hence, let us first consider what we mean by the doctrine of the

spheres, one of the most archaic of the ancient Mysteries. We
mean four things, speaking generally. These four are as follows:
first, the universal solar system. We mean by this our sun and all
the planetary bodies in the solar system, visible or invisible, seen
or unseen, known or unknown, owning the sun as their primary.
Modern science today recognizes seven, eight, or perhaps nine
planets, and a host of planetoids, and no more, as belonging to the
solar system. Modern astronomy knows nothing of the great body
of the universal solar system except its physical shell, the outer
physical clothing of it, the seven, eight, or nine planets which we
can see with the physical eye in the heavens, and which are
counted as follows: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune. But the ancient wisdom, the esoteric teaching,
tells us that there are actually scores of planets in this universal
solar system of ours, and that these
scores, excepting those
counted by astronomy, are all invisible to us, to our eyes of
fourth-plane matter — or seventh-plane matter, according to the
way by which we may count.

Neptune is not a member of our universal solar system, according

to the ancient wisdom. We will deal with this matter later. Next,
Uranus is not a member of our solar system, but is a member of
the universal solar system. We shall fully explain what we mean
by our solar system. Can you blame Mr. Sinnett for not
understanding, and therefore thinking that he knew more than
the Master did and than H. P. Blavatsky did, and that the archaic
teachings contained contradictions, when the man could not get it
through his head that the same words may be used with different
meanings; and that one of the favorite, sanctified, methods of
concealing truth from those not qualified to get it is to say two,
three, four, five, six, seven different things with the same words?

First, then, we have the universal solar system, comprising the

septenary sun and all the planets of the solar system, visible or
invisible, and on seven planes. Then, we have our solar system,
which is the second of these four aspects of the doctrine of the
spheres, and is the group usually called the seven sacred planets
of the ancients, as these seven are related to our planetary chain.
The third is something to which we shall merely allude as
occasion arises, and not go much farther. It is alluded to by H. P.
Blavatsky in the first volume (pp. 163-4) of The Secret Doctrine in
her answer to part of Mr. Sinnett's misunderstanding regarding
the earth's planetary chain. You will remember where she speaks
of the relation of Mars and Mercury and the four secret planets to
our earth; and she explains that they all bear a relation thereto
which no initiate will speak of, much less explain. The fourth
aspect is our earth's planetary chain per se.

Now Mr. Sinnett asked his question of the Teacher as follows:

"What other planets of those known to ordinary science, besides
Mercury, belong to our system of worlds?" Please mark those four
last words. And he continues: "Are the more spiritual planets —
(A, B and Y, Z) — visible bodies in the sky or are all those known
to astronomy of the more material sort?" And the answer came as
follows: "Mars and four other planets of which astronomy knows
yet nothing. Neither A, B, nor Y, Z, are known; nor can they be
seen through physical means however perfected." And yet despite
that, Mr. Sinnett taught and claimed for years that two of our
visible planets, Mars and Mercury, form part of our earth's
septenary planetary chain.

You will remember how H. P. Blavatsky alludes to Mr. Sinnett's

misunderstanding of the Master's teaching in The Secret Doctrine,
volume I, especially on pages 162-8 inclusive. Anyone in reading
these pages, unless he has a stultified mind or is entirely ignorant
of occult doctrines, must instantly sense that she is hinting at
more than one thing. Read those pages and ponder them well. At
our next meeting we are going into this matter more deeply.

Now then, for a brief review, first, of our universal solar system:
we mean by that expression all bodies and every body belonging
to the sun, and revolving around it. The sun is their primary; they
circle around the sun as satellites or planets, visible or invisible;
that is, the expression universal solar system means not only the
mere shell of nature — composed of the seven, eight, or nine
planets, that the eye sees — but also the great inner core of the
solar system, its seven planes of being. There are actually scores of
planets in our universal solar system, of which we see only seven
physical ones, on the same plane as the earth; and if we count our
globe as one, there are eight. Neptune, however, as already said,
does not belong to it; Uranus does not belong to our system of
worlds (or our solar system), but it does belong to the universal
solar system, because it is a true planet intimately connected with
our sun as regards its origin
and destiny.

In order to make this point more clear, let me illustrate what

Neptune is by a very fortunate illustration which we can draw
from modern science. You know that chemical physics, or
physical chemistry, teaches that the atom is composed of a central
nucleus, which has been called the proton, answering in the atom
to what our sun is in the universal solar system; and that around
this central nucleus, revolving with vertiginous rapidity, are
other bodies which they call electrons. The chemists theorize —
and occultism says that this theory is true, you can find the proof
of it in The Secret Doctrine — to the effect that if one of these
atomic planets or electrons is torn out from that atom, the atom
itself is altered or changed; not alone does the electric charge of
the atom vary, but the atom itself is de facto altered; and also if,
so to say, the atom is electron-hungry, if an electron should pass
near — I am using very simple language in order to convey the
idea — should
pass near that atomic solar system, it may be
captured, in which case the atomic electric hunger is satisfied,
while the atomic valency is altered.

Neptune, although a "planet" in the sense that it does revolve

around the sun, is not a true member of our solar system in any
sense. It is a "capture," and its capture changed in one sense the
entire nature of our universal solar system; and it will remain
captured until the karmic time shall come for it to leave us. It is
captured exactly as some of the planets have captured "moons."
Why is it, we may ask, in passing, that Venus and Mercury have
no moons; and that Mars is said to have two, and Saturn nine, and
Jupiter nine, whereas we know by our teaching that each planet
can have but one true moon, the others being mere captures,
satellites? Now, suppose we were to say that in the past aeons of
time, a comet, nearing the planetary stage, passed sufficiently
close to the gravitational attraction of our universal solar system
on its own plane of being to be captured, and that due to the
interplay of various forces it settled into an orbit around our sun;
and that long
aeons later our astronomers discovered it and
named it Neptune. Please consider that as a theory. We will leave
it, if you will, for the time, and call it a theory.

We have said that Uranus is not a member of our solar system.

We repeat the statement. It is a member, however, of our
universal solar system.

You see how it was that Mr. Sinnett, through lack of esoteric
training, through lack of knowledge of the ancient wisdom,
through being absolutely psychologized with the splendid
achievements in purely physical discovery of the marvelous
scientific advance of his day — the "last word of knowledge," it
actually was proclaimed in the scientific periodicals of that day —
preferred the scientific theories and fads of the period to the
tenets of the ancient wisdom, those tenets which have been
proved by generation after generation of titanic intellects, of men,
great seers, who had for immemorial ages tested nature, sending
their souls into the very womb of matter, into all its seven planes
or spheres, and finding out the truth, the reality, of things.

Now, please note: Mr. Sinnett's question referred to "our system

of worlds." Do you not see how vague that question was? At least
four different aspects of the doctrine of the spheres could be
meant by those words. The Teachers had been urging Messrs.
Sinnett and Hume to adopt a definite English terminology and
nomenclature which, indeed, Mr. Sinnett did adopt, to a certain
extent. We owe many of our common terms and expressions to
him, and we are duly grateful to him for the good work that he
did in this respect; but many of these terms are too vague. For
instance, the term "root-race" is a most unfortunate one. At a later
date we shall have to show how unfortunate it is. We propose to
adopt the Master's own term "stock-race," using the word "stock"
in the sense of body or trunk. We owe to Mr. Sinnett also the
expression "round," meaning the passage of the life-wave from
globe A, the first of our earth's chain, to globe G, or the
seventh at
the end; and many more of the words, phrases, and much of the
technical vocabulary which is commonly employed by us today
are due to Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume.

The question about "our system of worlds" asked by Mr. Sinnett

provided a perfect opening for the Master to tell him the truth in
wholly general terms, and yet to hide from him that which he
should not know. Had Mr. Sinnett been definite enough in his
question — indeed, to put it in another way, had he been wise
enough to ask a perfectly definite question — it would have been
much more difficult and embarrassing to the Teacher, in view of
necessary secrecy, to give a definite answer. In such case, Mr.
Sinnett would have got a definite answer; or he would have been
told that his question was one that should not be answered, as
indeed happened in several cases. But what was the actual
answer that he got? We have read it, and it contains several
points of teaching under and in the words. All these four aspects
of the general doctrine of the spheres, which we have been
alluding to, are contained in the Master's answer in the form of
hint and allusion, with especial reference to the
most esoteric.
"Our system of worlds" was taken at its face value, just as the
vague and indefinite question — from the viewpoint of occultism
— ought to have been taken. The archaic law is that only those
who knock at the door in the right manner can enter therein. All
depends upon which door you knock at; and this is an old rule,
ancient, ancient, ancient, running back into immemorial time, to
the very days of the later Atlanteans when the Mysteries were
first established in order to segregate the nobler portion of the
Atlantean folk from those who were degenerating and rushing to
their doom.

So, then, please understand perfectly clearly that our universal

solar system of worlds means our sun and all the planetary
bodies whatsoever in the solar system, of whatever degree or
kind, on whatever plane, inner or outer, and in whatever orbits
they may be revolving around their primary, the sun. Remember
likewise in this connection that our solar system is septenary, that
it is composed of seven planes, or worlds, and hence that there
are seven suns in it, of which we see but one sun, the lowest in
degree.

We might as well say here and now, because it is a part of our

study, that the inhabitants of the three globes preceding ours and
those of the three globes following ours, in our earth's planetary
chain, in each case, see two suns. An illustration of this we have
fortunately in modern astronomy, in what are called the star-
doubles. There are many kinds of doubles. I do not mean mere
optical doubles, but true solar pairs or couples, which is a fact of
being closely connected with the very interesting and also
mysterious doctrine of obscurations, into which we shall have to
go in pursuing this our present study of the earth's planetary
chain. But these stellar couples or doubles show that those suns,
which are seen as doubles, form a septenary system which, like
our own sun, have a lower single sun, or lower fourth-plane sun,
just as our own physical sun is. You see here how one key to the
ancient wisdom will open the door to nature's secret chambers.
Never forget the old Hermetic axiom: analogy is
nature's
fundamental law, "As above, so below."

Next: the seven sacred planets of the ancients — which ones are
they? They are as follows. I am not naming them in their proper
esoteric order; I am naming them in the old exoteric Greek way:
Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Note, first, that
our Earth is not one of these seven sacred or secret planets.
Second, that the Moon (the first one in order of enumeration,
preceding Mercury) and the Sun, are considered here in exoteric
enumeration as planets. Actually, however, they stand for two
secret planets which are invisible to us: the Sun for an intra-
Mercurial planet which we will, if you like, for purposes of
convenience, call Vulcan, a planet visible to the men of the third
root-race — or stock-race — in this round, but which now has
disappeared from our vision. It will reappear, however, as our
own race progresses to higher levels of perception. The Moon,
again, as said, stands for another secret planet which is now
dying, having nearly reached the end of its
septenary life cycle.
Before the Earth has reached its seventh round, our Moon will
have disintegrated into atomic stellar dust; and this present secret
planet, being a dying planet, this Mystery-planet for which the
Moon is the exoteric substitute, will then be the satellite of the
Earth in place of the Moon that was and now is; but that planet-
satellite will not be a true moon, but a mere satellite. Please note
the difference. For instance, the planet Mars has two satellites,
Phobos and Deimos. Phobos is not a moon; but Deimos is a true
moon, but not of Mars. Phobos is a capture, as we may say, by
Mars.

This subject of the seven sacred planets of the ancients is

intimately bound up with the doctrine of our own earth's
planetary chain, the latter a specific instance of the general
doctrine of the spheres; and we shall have to go into this subject
as a formal study. But let us point out, before closing tonight, that
the sun and moon, as forming two of those seven secret planets in
the exoteric enumeration, are substitutes for two secret and
invisible planets, briefly spoken of already. Furthermore, with
regard to Mars, there is a mystery — i.e., esoteric, secret —
connected with this matter which we have not time to go into
tonight, but in it lies the reason why H. P. Blavatsky, in alluding to
these seven secret planets on a certain page of The Secret Doctrine
speaks only of four — Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus — and
hints at three more which she does not mention there as
belonging to the group of the seven sacred planets of the ancients.

Note also that every one of the seven globes of our earth's
planetary chain is under the guidance, and is actually formed by,
one of the seven sacred planets which, for this reason, with other
reasons, was called sacred. So, again, each root-race — or stock-
race — of every one of the seven globes during each globe-round
is under the protection and guidance of one of the seven sacred
planets. But the main reason for calling them sacred is this: as our
universal solar system is composed of seven planes of being, in
other words, is composed of seven worlds, seven planes, seven
spheres of life and activity — not globes but spheres in the larger
sense, as when a man says spheres of activity — we search for an
answer to the question, Why is it so? Here is the answer, and it
shows why these planets are called sacred. These seven planets
are the houses, each one to each one, of the seven logoi of our
solar system, thus forming a minor group at the head of which is
one of the
seven primordial logoi of the universal solar system.
When our universal solar system came out of latency as a nebula,
later it became a comet, still later separating into sun and planets,
each one pursuing its own particular life-path; the separation of
the nebular inner life into seven cosmic forces for future life
activities was done by the seven primordial logoi.

Put it in this way: the chief Logos of the universal solar system is
sevenfold, septenary, i.e., the solar Logos — Brahma, as the
Hindus would put it — is septenary. Then, each of these seven
minor logoi, again subdividing into seven forces or powers, form
sevenfold groups or minor solar systems, and our solar system is
one of such groups: seven minor logoi, each one, each to each, is
the rector, the guide, of one of the seven sacred planets; if you
like, its informing soul. But, mark this: this former subdivision
composes the life forces of our solar system. Hence our solar
system forms a group within the universal solar system. We have
explained what we mean before. In other words, then, there are
forty-nine of these minor logoi in our universal solar system; but
our sacred seven which with our earth's planetary chain compose
our solar system, belong to our solar Logos. In still other words,
put it in this way: as the sun has its spectrum of
seven rays, so
each one of these rays again is subdivided into seven minor rays.
Please consider that as an illustration. Our planetary chain, you
will remember, which will be the subject of our next study,
consists of seven globes, collectively the developed sevenfold
entity of a former sevenfold chain in another life cycle or
manvantara, which chain is now dead, but functioning now as
our moon-chain. And remember that when we say our moon in
this particular case we mean the sevenfold moon, the entire
definite septenary entity. Our present moon, as a matter of fact, is
not the physical moon that was, which has disappeared, but is its
kama-rupa, its vampirizing shell, purely and truly in more than
one sense vampirizing. It is a phantom of the moon that was, its
true shell. Our earth, which grew from it, draws still from it the
life-atoms which the karmic destiny of our earth obliges it to
gather into itself, for its weal or for its woe, as the case may be.

Chapter 42
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty-Two
The Doctrine of the Spheres in its Four Aspects. The Seven Sacred
Planets and Their Rectors: Their Relation to our Earth-Chain. The
Circulations of the Kosmos: Outer Rounds and Inner Rounds;
Sishtas. One Universal Basic Law: As Above, So Below. The Eye
and the Heart Doctrines.

The most celebrated of the Babylonians, together with

Ostanes and Zoroaster, very properly call the starry
spheres herds; whether because these alone among
corporeal magnitudes, are perfectly carried about a centre,
or in conformity to the oracles, because they are
considered by them as in a certain respect the bonds and
collectors of physical reasons, which they likewise call in
their sacred discourses herds [agelas], and by the insertion
of a gamma [angelous], angels. Wherefore the stars which
preside over each of these herds are considered demons
similar to the angels, and are called archangels: and they
are seven in number. — Anon., Theologumensis
Arithmeticis (Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 276)

The "Doctrine of the Eye" is for the crowd, the "Doctrine of

the Heart," for the elect. The first repeat in pride: "Behold, I
know," the last, they who in humbleness have garnered,
low confess, "thus have I heard." . . .

The Dharma of the "Eye" is the embodiment of the external,

and the nonexisting.

The Dharma of the "Heart" is the embodiment of Bodhi, the

Permanent and Everlasting. — The Voice of the Silence, pp.
27, 29
THE TRADITIONS of mankind tell us, and the records of the
ancient wisdom corroborate the traditions, that the doctrines
which we have been studying for the last four years or so have
come down to us unimpaired and in their pristine purity, in the
charge of great minds, great men, great souls. These traditions as
the ages passed, dating from the midpoint of the fourth stock-race
or the Atlantean, took various forms as they were given out more
or less fully at different times; took forms, we say, in the various
great world religions; and it is at the back of, behind, under the
surface of, these great world religions that we find many, if not
all, of the doctrines of the ancient wisdom. We should not include
in these religions thus spoken of, the various smaller religions or
quasi-religious cults, however large their extent among mankind
may have been, because these smaller religions were often the
offspring of men who imperfectly understood the ancient
wisdom, and who, in some cases, were actually
unfaithful to their
own teachers. And therein we may find one of the dominating
reasons why these archaic teachings have always been held as
sacred and secret; because, as was told to Mr. Sinnett and Mr.
Hume, the Masters had and have no wish to foist another mere
exoteric religion on a world already priest-ridden and creed-
burdened.

A source which is polluted at its fountainhead can hardly give

forth the pure springs which heal. The best antidote for folly is
wisdom; for ignorance, real knowledge; for false and therefore
wholly unauthorized theosophy, the archaic teachings of the
wisdom-religion.

We take up again tonight the study which was begun at our

meeting last week; and the main theme then was what was called
the doctrine of the spheres, of which the doctrine of our planetary
chain, the planetary chain of our solar system, is a particular
case. Let us pass in brief review, at the same time perhaps slightly
bettering, the explanation that was then made. The doctrine of
the spheres comprises the entirety of the teachings dealing with
the origin, the life, and the destiny of the spheres or planets, and
of the sun, belonging to and composing our universal solar
system. By "universal" solar system we mean all the bodies
whatsoever, known and unknown, visible and invisible, that
revolve around the sun, which is their primary. There are many
such planets, scores of them, most of them invisible to our eyes of
flesh.

The second aspect of the doctrine of the spheres is the subsidiary

doctrine of the planetary chains. Each one of these planets is a
sevenfold body, comprising in a unity seven globes; and one of
the seven is visible to our eyes in the cases of the seven or eight or
nine planets known to astronomy, because our eyes have been
trained through evolution on this planet to see them, for these
few cases belong to our own "plane." When we shall be on the
globes of our chain to which we shall pass when leaving this
earth, our senses will then be trained by nature, by evolution, to
cognize, to sense and to see — to know, in other words, other
celestial bodies, other planets of our universal solar system.
Similarly was it the case with the globes which we left in
descending the planetary chain. Each planetary chain, therefore,
has seven globes, according to the teachings, existing on four
planes: two globes on each one of the three higher planes, and of
these seven globes only one is on the lowest
plane; our earth is on
this lowest or fourth plane of our chain. This doctrine of the
planetary chain is our main theme of study at present.

The third aspect of the doctrine of the spheres is what has been
called the seven sacred planets of the ancients — likewise a
teaching comprising a sevenfold mystery. These planets are
respectively Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun (which is a substitute for
enumerative reasons for an intra-Mercurial planet), Venus,
Mercury, and our Moon which is also a substitute for a planet
near our Earth, and which is now dying. These seven sacred
planets of the ancients were called sacred for the reasons set
forth in our last study. They are the houses of the seven forces of
one of the seven chief rays of the solar Logos: this one chief ray
being our particular logos. This doctrine is really very simple, but
because it is a case of seven involved in seven, it sounds very
complicated; actually it is not. There are seven main or chief rays
or forces which make and which inform the sun; and these seven
forces are the seven solar logoi. Each one of these seven main
logoi is subdivided in its turn into seven;
and these seven
subdivisions of one chief ray or logos form the rectors, the genii,
the archangels if you will, of which the seven sacred planets are
the houses.

Each one of these seven sacred planets was intimately concerned

in building one of the globes of our planetary chain. Each one of
the stock-races or root-races on any one of our seven globes
during the passage through it of the evolving life-wave, is likewise
under the direct governance and control of one of these seven
sacred planets; and when we say "planet," please note carefully
that we do not mean the mere physical body of it, the planet
which we see; that is but the house of the sevenfold dhyan-
chohan, the rector, the genius, that particular solar force which
has builded and which uses that planet as its house — its "nerve
center," so to say.

The fourth aspect of the universal solar system deals with the
group which is so sacred that, as H. P. Blavatsky says on pages
163-4 of volume I of The Secret Doctrine: "As to Mars, Mercury,
and 'the four other planets,' they bear a relation to Earth of which
no master or high Occultist will ever speak [in public, we should
add], much less explain the nature."
This doctrine of the spheres is full of wonder. We have merely
sketched an outline of it; and closely connected with it is a twin
doctrine, even more sacred and more mysterious, which we may
call the doctrine of the circulations of the kosmos, of which the
circulations of the forces of the universal solar system are a
special case. Note here in passing, that the workings of karma and
the reincarnation of the human soul on earth are special cases,
again, of these two doctrines: the doctrine of the circulations
which make the actions of karma to be; and the doctrine of man's
successive reimbodiment in houses of flesh, as the doctrine of the
spheres shows the building of other globes in houses of physical
form, fit for the evolving souls, and providing bodies for them
corresponding to each one of those globes. This doctrine of the
circulations of the kosmos is one which we approach with a great
deal of caution. We should remember that whatever may be said
on that subject here at present does not
by any means include all
that could be said about this recondite subject; no, not one-tenth.
This doctrine of the circulations of the kosmos, or of the
circulations of the life forces in the universal solar system, among
many other things, deals with the passage of the life-wave from
globe to globe on our planetary chain; explains to us and
elucidates how this is done; while the doctrine of the spheres sets
forth to what globes these circulations go, into which globes these
circulations enter, and in what states those globes are left when
their respective life cycles are completed. This applies also, of
course, to us here on earth, and to the life-atoms on our globe
here; and, for instance, tells us of such men as we shall be on the
next globe following this our earth and such as we were on the
globe preceding this earth. And so, on all the globes of our chain
the life-wave functions similarly; that is to say, these circulations
are related to each globe and to all.

Next, with regard to these planetary rectors or genii or dhyan-

chohans — each subsidiary solar logos of the seven minor logoi of
one chief Logos forming the presiding genius of each globe —
they actually are the builders of our planetary chain, plus the
indwelling life or swabhava belonging to our own planetary
chain. The human seed is sown, for example; it grows, becomes
an embryo, finally is born, grows into a man. There is the
indwelling life, the character, the inward urge, the forward push,
the development of the inner faculties; but this is done in a world
of surrounding forces which affect it profoundly by action and
reaction, or karma. So with the globes; so with our planetary
chain as a whole.

Let us also remark in passing that these seven sacred planets are
profoundly instrumental in building our planetary chain; but the
earth also itself is one of another group or series of seven planets,
which build or cooperate in building the planetary chain of
certain other ones of our planets — so closely interrelated and
interlocked are the functionings of the life forces and life-waves
in our solar kosmos, our universal solar system.

Now briefly passing in review questions which we shall study in

detail later, please bear in mind that the life-wave in any
planetary chain — we will take our own as an instance of the rule
— passes once from the first globe to the seventh, through all the
seven globes; and when it has thus passed once through the seven
globes of the chain it completes what we call one chain-round,
round being a word which Mr. Sinnett coined for this purpose,
and which we still use. Seven such chain-rounds complete a life
cycle of our planetary chain. Then what happens?

We now approach another mystery. There are outer rounds and

inner rounds. The inner round comprises the passages of the life-
wave in any one planetary chain from globe A to globe G (or Z)
once around, and this takes place seven times in a planetary
manvantara. The outer round — please listen carefully —
comprises the passage of the entirety of a planetary chain's life-
wave, by the working of the doctrine of the circulations of the
solar system, from one of these sacred planets to another, and this
for seven times.

Reverting for a moment again to a round in a planetary chain: on

our globe, the indwelling egoic force in any one man, or in any
one life-entity, evolves for itself bodies correspondential to its
surroundings — bodies outer, bodies inner. The higher ones of
these inner bodies we may call monadic eggs; and when the life-
wave leaves any one such globe of the seven of that planetary
chain in order to pass to the next globe, the vehicles
correspondential and belonging to that particular globe, its own
evolutions thereon, remain behind as the sishtas, a Sanskrit word
meaning "remainders," in order to serve as the first vehicles or
bodies for the monads when the same life-wave returns on the
succeeding cycle, and after aeons upon aeons of time the monads
of the returning life-wave find these "sleeping spheres" or
dormant "life-atoms" or vehicles waiting for them. These sleeping
spheres or dormant life-atoms are correspondential, each one
and all of them, to the
particular globe of the planetary chain
which had evolved them. Thus the sishtas are the already evolved
or individualized vehicles or "life-atoms" fit to receive the
returning monadic host.

Let us now illustrate this doctrine of our planetary chain by

drawing seven circles, each circle to be one of the manifested
globes of our planetary chain.
The life-wave enters globe A, runs through its life cycle there, and
then passes on to globe B. Finishing its cycle on globe B, it passes
on to globe C; and then to globe D, the lowest of the seven. In our
own chain, globe D is our earth. We draw straight lines under the
three higher pairs, and one straight line under globe D. These
lines represent the four lowest planes or worlds of our solar
system, our universal solar system. There are yet three higher
planes or worlds, making seven in all; and beyond these higher
three planes, there are still three more, thus making the perfect
number ten. Of these last three and highest planes or worlds, we
shall say nothing more here.
But now let us draw on the three higher planes of the seven, five
more circles representing globes as follows: two globes on the
lowest plane of these three highest, two more globes on the plane
above that; and one globe on the seventh plane from the bottom,
thus forming the acme or summit. We then shall have twelve
globes in our planetary chain: seven manifest, and five hid; and
this is the system of construction (of the solar logoic force) which
we are going to study — each one of these twelve globes, by the
way, corresponding in the ancient wisdom to one of the twelve
signs of the zodiac. You see, then, that there are seven globes in
manifestation; one visible to us, the lowest and the fourth; six
higher in abscondito or hid; and finally five globes on the three
higher planes of the seven planes, forming therefore seven plus
five, or twelve globes in all. This is just a sketch, at the present
time, merely outlining the teachings.

The question naturally arises: What is it that circles from globe to

globe of a planetary chain in the inner rounds, and passes from
one to the other and each in turn of the seven sacred planets in
the outer rounds? We have said that each globe of a chain, when
the life-wave leaves it, retains its hosts of monadic eggs as the
sishtas. We used the word "monadic" there in a general sense;
that is to say, it applies in all cases to that particular part of the
entire human spiritual-psychological-physical economy which
corresponds to that particular globe — which belongs to it, in
short, and which is left behind much as a traveler leaves behind a
house or clothing fit for certain climates and weathers when he
goes elsewhere; because he is coming back to that his quondam
home. But what is it, what is that final ultimate, that monad, that
higher monad, which provides and really is the undying seed
from which all these others spring forth? That is what H. P.
Blavatsky called the spiritual
self, the divine soul; the immortal
seed, the Father-Mother, the source, the fountainhead — give it
any name you like — of the oviform body, the auric egg, which in
its essence, not in its shape, contains the divine-spiritual
individuality of man or of any other life-entity. That is deathless,
birthless; it lasts throughout the entire solar manvantara, and
goes into the supreme paranirvana only when the universal solar
system in the due course of its cyclic evolution passes finally into
pralaya or latency.

Just think a moment, what does all this mean? This means that on
any one particular globe — let us take ours, our globe earth, as an
illustration, and us men as the examples for the illustration — we
evolve here partly from within without by our own inner
swabhavic urge, and partly from without inwards by the reaction
of nature around us, certain personalities and certain characters
and certain vehicles exactly correspondential to the globe on
which we then are. Those characters and personalities and
vehicles are utterly unfit for another globe, utterly unfit for
another plane. They could no more pass to another plane or live
on another globe than, let us say, a rose could live at the bottom
of the ocean. They do not belong there; they belong on this earth;
they belong in the material and psychological atmospheres of this
earth; they belong in and to that particular world of circulation of
forces which make this earth and which actually are this earth.
We do not find roses growing
at the North Pole, or glaciers at sea
level in the tropics. Everything in nature is fit for and has its own
place.

Similarly, on every one of the other globes of our chain, there are
bodies or vehicles, etc., evolved, inner bodies and outer bodies,
correspondential in each case to those globes, belonging there,
which we have made when there, and which we left behind when
we left those globes. Similarly, as there is but one fundamental
rule, one basic law, to use the popular word, throughout all the
kosmos, when man reincarnates he comes back with the same
spiritual individuality, indeed, he comes back with the same
higher human individuality. But he evolves for himself each time,
and on each globe — because the race is different, the karma is
different, the circumstances are different, since succeeding
evolution has evolved both him and the surrounding globe still
more — he evolves personalities, vehicles, etc., out of himself
anew from the seeds which at each preceding death had passed
into latency in the character, and thus passes into and informs
anew the globe monadic eggs of various sorts formerly
left
behind on the different globes when the life-wave left them to
pass onwards.

Those of you who are Oriental classical scholars will readily see
how what has been said, little as it is thus far, throws a light
which is really dazzling upon the teachings of the greater ones of
the ancient religions, such as those of Egypt, and of Greece;
preeminently so as regards the doctrines of Brahmanism and
Buddhism in India and the Farther Orient. No wonder is it that
theosophy has been called the unifying philosophy of the world. It
shows the why and the how of all these great ancient religions. It
tells us what they were and what they meant.

Now, then, one may ask oneself — and this is a slight digression
but apparently necessary — why is there so much talk of seven:
seven here and seven there and seven everywhere? Do we live in
an anarchical universe, a helter-skelter universe, one without
order or well-defined shape? Or do we live in a universe every
atom of which is in the grip of forces controlled by forces still
higher and more recondite and powerful? Obviously the latter.
And these higher forces are in the grip and control of still higher
ones. This simply means that there is one consistent life-wave
running throughout all being; and being one coherent and
consistent will, having one basic direction, it must act on all
planes of the universe more or less in the same way. Hence you see
the need, the necessity, the value, to us, yea and the beauty, of the
ancient teachings, proclaiming the fundamental operation of
nature, commonly called the law of analogy, expressed by the
Hermetic axiom,
"As above, so below; as below, so above."

The primal kosmic Logos, let us say, has one direction in which its
will pours forth in floods of light and life. Those floods pass
through their various cycles and formations in descending into
matter, and re-arising again towards their source. By doing so
they but follow — and cannot do otherwise — the powerful
impulses springing from the central heart, that one will. We are
tempted to use the words purpose, or design, were it not that
these words are so misused in the Christian theological schemes,
that it would almost give to listeners an idea of a kosmic personal
God, and that blasphemy we do not recognize. Just here is where
enter the operations of karma. Karma is not a law made by
something or somebody. It is the inherent nature or quality of
kosmic being to react against action upon it. It is the doctrine of
consequences. Kosmically speaking, it has its flow of action or
force in a certain direction, which is the will, the life-flow, of the
kosmic Logos, and this life-flow of the
Logos, as said before,
springing from one heart, the central heart of our solar system,
and thus forming the constitution or fundamental operation of
universal nature, everything in that nature obeys its direction;
and hence we have the doctrine regarding the seven, because it is
but the photographing, so to say, on our minds of the facts of the
kosmos, the solar Logos being divided into ten parts, of which
seven are manifest, and three occult or hid. Everything which
owes its life to the Logos, which is part of the Logos, which is
subject to the sweep of its energy, and to its "law," is therefore by
primal necessity likewise built on a sevenfold plan.

So we can now, with these words of introduction, pass on to

consider the first aspect of the doctrine of the spheres, called our
earth's planetary chain. This, as illustrated in diagram 2, is
composed of seven globes in manifestation, and five hid: the two
highest of the lower seven forming the models for the five and
last below. The two next globes are grosser and more material;
the two following are of still grosser and more material
constituency; the series of planes ending with our earth, which is
the copy here below of the superspiritual globe forming the last
or twelfth — or first — in our entire planetary chain.

Those of you who know your classics will remember how Plato
speaks of the fact that the Deity geometrizes according to a
twelvefold plan. Why has the zodiac twelve houses or signs? Why
were there twelve great gods — seven manifested and five occult
— in all the great world religions of ancient times? In these
ancient religions, the forms of expression and the words differed,
but the heart doctrine was there and the same in them all; not the
doctrine of the eye, i.e., the outward things which were seen, the
ceremonial ritual and worship which varied, often greatly, the
ones from the others. That was the exoteric part — not "false," but
unexplained; but the doctrine of the heart, to use our ancient
language, our ancient phraseology, meaning the doctrine of that
which is hid and not seen, and which is the higher expression of
truth, is hid, not visible to the physical eye. Therefore the
outpourings from man's nobler nature, from his higher soul,
spiritual, beautiful,
holy, yea and divine, were called collectively
the doctrine of the heart also.

Now we said at our last meeting that Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume
and later others had misunderstood and misinterpreted the
Masters' teachings with regard to the globes which compose our
own planetary chain; and we referred then to the first volume of
The Secret Doctrine, and H. P. Blavatsky's kindly but nevertheless
mercifully caustic criticisms of Mr. Sinnett's idea that his merely
scientifically trained mind knew the secrets of nature really
better than his Teacher did, or than did H. P. Blavatsky, his second
teacher; and on pages 163-4 of this volume, you will find what she
says on the matter. In the first place, she says that in answer to
Mr. Sinnett's query the Teacher gave a reply which was more or
less vague. This was because the question was very vague. Mr.
Sinnett never seemed to realize that he was asking questions, in
certain cases, which simply could not be answered by anyone
pledged to secrecy. What then was to be done? The Teacher had
offered himself to teach. The time had come to
teach the world
somewhat of the ancient wisdom; a few seeds were to be sown in
the world's thought-life. Yet the answer had to be given in a vague
way. Had Mr. Sinnett questioned with perfect definiteness, on
definite subjects of which he himself had a definite knowledge, he
would doubtless have received a definite answer, or would have
been told that his question could not be answered for the reasons
already set forth. This refusal to answer, indeed, happened
several times. His question in this connection was, as read at our
last meeting: "What other planets of those known to ordinary
science, besides Mercury, belong to our system of worlds?" We
have seen that in occultism "our system of worlds" can refer to at
least four different things: our universal solar system; our
planetary chain; our group of seven sacred planets; and this
mystery-group — Earth, Mercury, Mars, and four other secret
planets.

Well, the answer came back generalized: "Mars and four other
planets of which astronomy knows yet nothing," referring most
particularly to the mystery-group. And why? Because Mr. Sinnett
had just previously been questioning his informant on a certain
aspect of the teachings which could not be fully explained
without giving out the doctrine concerning this mystery-group.
That is all there was to that. And H. P. Blavatsky says here: "As to
Mars, Mercury, and 'the four other planets,' they bear a relation
to Earth of which no master or high Occultist will ever speak,
much less explain the nature."

Obviously, this sentence does not refer to our planetary chain,

because H. P. Blavatsky had already said that Mars and Mercury
do not belong to it. Evidently, she is referring to some other
group. She also wrote as follows: "For the reply was: 'Mars, etc. [as
a matter of fact the Teacher's answer did not contain the word
etc.], and four other planets of which astronomy knows nothing."
The Teacher's answer contained the word yet, "yet nothing."
"Neither A, B, nor Y, Z, are known; nor can they be seen through
physical means however perfected."

Then H. P. Blavatsky continues: "This is plain: (a) Astronomy as

yet knows nothing in reality of the planets, neither the ancient
ones, nor those discovered in modern times." Obviously, she is
merely speaking of visible planets; for modern astronomy did not
then admit the existence of other planets on other planes of the
solar system, and does not admit them today. "(b) No companion
planets from A to Z, i.e., no upper globes of any chain in the Solar
System, can be seen." Disproving again what Mr. Sinnett thought.
But also mark you this: the Teacher in his answer to Mr. Sinnett
did not say "companion planets from A to Z," as H. P. Blavatsky
here writes. He said "Neither A, B, nor Y, Z," specifying four
planets, two in the beginning, and two at the end of the mystery-
group. You see, then, that there is much behind all this, much that
does not appear on the surface. H. P. Blavatsky in her turn was
faced with precisely the same situation as the
Master was. She
could not tell the whole truth, because pledged to secrecy; yet she
had to give some answer; and she did what Teachers from
immemorial time have done in similar cases. They gave an
answer, which was perfectly true, as far as they could go, but they
deliberately, in view of the interlocking of the nature of the
kosmos and also therefore of our teachings, allowed a hint of
something else to come in at the same time, which served a
double purpose: for it was a "blind," and yet was absolutely
responsive and truthful, as far as it went.

Then on page 167 (The Secret Doctrine, volume I) H. P. Blavatsky

quotes from the Teacher's words again: "'Let us imagine THAT
OUR EARTH IS ONE OF A GROUP OF SEVEN PLANETS OR MAN-
BEARING WORLDS. . . .'" Then in parenthesis, and this parenthesis
is H. P. Blavatsky's: "(The SEVEN planets are the sacred planets of
antiquity, and are all septenary.)." Here still another, a third,
aspect of the doctrine of the spheres is alluded to. This is a perfect
illustration of how such a situation has to be faced.

As still another example of the policy of secrecy we mention, in

another place in The Secret Doctrine you will find H. P. Blavatsky's
statement that our Earth does not belong to the seven sacred
planets of the ancients, and here she says that it does, and the two
statements are apparently contradictory. It is a paradox, but it is
not contradictory. And fortunately this paradox is easy of
explanation. The seven sacred planets of the ancients, as planets
of the solar system, are those mentioned in the beginning of our
study tonight, i.e., Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun (a substitute), Venus,
Mercury, and Moon as a substitute. Our Earth is not included, as
you see. But as we also pointed out tonight, each one of the globes
of our planetary chain is the child of, in a sense built by,
controlled by, and guided by one of these seven sacred planets,
that is to say, by the respective genius or rector of each of the
seven sacred planets. Hence, the seven globes of our planetary
chain were likewise
frequently called the seven sacred planets by
the ancients, because those seven globes were builded by their
cooperative instrumentality, and are under their guidance. The
globes were builded by the seven sacred planets, plus, as before
remarked, the action of the indwelling swabhavic life of our own
planetary chain.
Our time is drawing very near to an end for this evening, but we
wish to call attention to two facts only before closing. First, the
seven globes of our planetary chain are not the seven principles
of the earth. The analogy is good and very striking; yet these
seven globes of our planetary chain are, each one, a distinct and
separate entity; each one of the seven, our earth included, has its
own seven principles. Yet the other six globes of our chain are not
the other six principles of our earth. The idea is grotesque. It is as
much as to say that seven men, seven chelas of the Masters, a
group of seven chelas, are the seven principles each of each. Not
at all. The seven globes form a single group, but each one is a
separate entity and has its own seven principles.

The second thing is this, that these so-called planes, these seven
planes, should really and truly be called worlds. It is very difficult
to find a proper word to describe this fact. These planes, or rather
worlds, collectively are the lokas and talas: seven lokas and seven
talas, corresponding one to the other, each to each.

This bipolarity of loka and tala, repeated seven times on seven

decreasing degrees of materiality counting upwards, or
increasing degrees of materiality counting downwards, are the
seven planes or rather worlds of the solar system
macrocosmically; the seven planes or worlds of our planetary
chain are the lokas and talas microcosmically. These lokas and
talas, then, are worlds. Look at the world around us: the stars
above us, the earth beneath our feet, the winds blowing — in
short, all the world we see and feel and know. It is one of the
lokas and one of the talas conjointly. And these lokas and talas
correspond one to the other, each to each, exactly as in the case of
the bipolarity of magnetism or of electricity on our plane.
Fundamentally they are one, but they manifest in bipolar
character. That particular force or vital current whose tendency
is downwards, forms that aspect of the union which is called the
tala of any world. And the other, whose aspect is upwards or,
technically speaking,
north, forms the loka.

At our next study we shall begin a rather detailed investigation of

our planetary chain, having now covered the various outlying
fields of that which it was necessary briefly to survey before we
could adequately understand the teachings regarding the earth's
planetary chain.

Chapter 43
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty-Three
Analogy: the Life of Man and the Life of a Planetary Chain.
Occultism and Ethics: Live the Life If Thou Wouldst Know the
Doctrine."

Analogy is thus the surest guide to the comprehension of

the Occult teachings. . . .

Everything in the Universe follows analogy. "As above, so

below"; Man is the microcosm of the Universe. That which
takes place on the spiritual plane repeats itself on the
Cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction;
corresponding to the highest must be the lowest; the
material to the spiritual. — The Secret Doctrine, I, 173, 177

As you may infer by analogy every globe before it reaches

its adult period, has to pass through a formation period —
also septenary. Law in Nature is uniform and the
conception, formation, birth, progress and development of
the child differs from those of the globe only in magnitude.
The globe has two periods of teething and of capillature —
its first rocks which it also sheds to make room for new —
and its ferns and mosses before it gets forest. As the atoms
in the body change [every] seven years so does the globe
renew its strata every seven cycles. . . .

. . . The correspondence between a mother-globe and her

child-man may be thus worked out. Both have their seven
principles. In the Globe, the elementals (of which there are
in all seven species) form (a) a gross body, (b) her fluidic
double (linga sariram), (c) her life principle (jiva); (d) her
fourth principle kama rupa is formed by her creative
impulse working from centre to circumference; (e) her fifth
 principle (animal soul or Manas, physical intelligence) is
embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal kingdoms;
(f) her sixth principle (or spiritual soul, Buddhi) is man (g)
and her seventh principle (atma) is in a film of
spiritualized akasa that surrounds her. — The Mahatma
Letters, pp. 93, 94

Those alone, whom we call adepts, who know how to direct

their mental vision and to transfer their consciousness —
physical and psychic both — to other planes of being, are
able to speak with authority on such subjects. And they tell
us plainly: —

"Lead the life necessary for the acquisition of such

knowledge and powers, and Wisdom will come to you
naturally. Whenever you are able to attune your
consciousness to any of the seven chords of 'Universal
Consciousness,' those chords that run along the sounding-
board of Kosmos, vibrating from one Eternity to another;
when you have studied thoroughly 'the music of the Spheres,'
then only will you become quite free to share your
knowledge with those with whom it is safe to do so. . . . " —
The Secret Doctrine, I, 166-7

THESE teachings may seem recondite when first heard, and so

indeed they are. But, like all our theosophical teachings, there is
one aspect of them which is very simple and contains the
principal idea of each thought, i.e., of each doctrine; and it is, in
each and every case, this main or principal idea which we
illustrate, it remaining for yourselves to fill in the details, and to
prove by your own studies the theorems advanced.

But may it not be a good thing to point out that one of the noblest
results of these studies is the effect it has on the moral nature of
man, of the student? You may tell a man to "be good because it is
good to be good," as remarked once before; and this statement is
perfectly correct and probably no one will object to it, yet it will
not go very deep into the hearer's consciousness and mind. But if
you tell a man that he is, in essence, an incarnate god, an
incarnate divinity in his essence, and that he has come down into
these spheres of matter for purposes of universal work, and that
he is failing in his duty, he is failing in his relationship to his own
higher self, if that duty be not accomplished, then you put a
thought into that man's mind which allows him to think, and
makes him think, and gives him a basis for morals, a religious
and philosophical basis, which if he has any good in him at all, he
himself will follow up to the end.

It is absurd to think that any one of our theosophical doctrines

can be divorced from its ethical aspect. They cannot be separated
so; and this, perhaps, is the distinction most easily understood
between the archaic teachings and those of the various so-called
cults or cultuses or quasi-religions which spring up like
mushrooms from age to age and from time to time, and have a
longer or shorter life, depending on circumstances, causing
meanwhile more or less deplorable spiritual injury to the
unfortunate people who hear of them and follow them in
confidence and misplaced trust.

So far as this question of ethics as connected with our teachings is

concerned, pray remember that you cannot understand them
adequately unless you "live the life" that they inculcate. Our
Teachers have told us so, plainly: "Live the life as it ought to be
lived, and knowledge will come to you naturally." There is only
one truth in nature, and understanding of it comes naturally to
him or her who "obeys the law." Real knowledge brings modesty
and compassion and magnanimity and courage in its train, and
all the fine, old, noble virtues; and those virtues are the insignia
which mark the real disciple — not foolish claims which, in direct
proportion as the claims are false, are the more foolishly
pretentious. The greater the claims, the less truth is there behind
them.

With regard to these doctrines being so difficult: they are very

difficult, not merely in their elucidation, which we are
attempting, but also because they are so intimately interwoven
together. Yet this very fact contains the clue, the Ariadne's thread,
leading to their solution. The very fact that, just as the forces and
principles and planes of nature are so interlocked and are so
intimately bound together that if you really know one you know
more or less of all, just so is it with these doctrines. If you really
know one with some fair degree of complete knowledge — some
fair degree, I say — you have a more or less perfect key that will
fit the locks of all.

Indeed, analogy is the fundamental law or, if you like, the

fundamental operation, of our processes of thinking, derived
from nature because we are the children of nature; for just as the
highest is reflected in the lowest, so is the working of the human
mind. If you follow the workings of nature as taught in occultism,
you will find that the lowest is but the exemplification or copy of
what is above.

These teachings, which we have been studying together here, you

will yourselves find in the pages of The Secret Doctrine. Search,
and you will find them. Yet it may take you years to find them.
But that is no real reason for discouragement. Why, in the old
times, in India for example, the pupil had to pass ten or twelve
years in the study of the sacred Sanskrit language alone before he
was even allowed to read the scriptures written in that noble
tongue; twelve more years were then passed in study of the
scriptures before he was allowed even to speak of, or to give an
opinion upon them. Twenty-four years of daily study, from eight
to twelve hours a day, so sacred were these ancient teachings
then held to be! No one may expect or need think that he or she
can have any comprehension of our teachings without some
honest effort on his or her own part, to study them, to understand
them and, above everything else, to think about them, to reflect
on them. That is the greatest help of all, to
reflect, to ponder them
in the mind, to brood over them.

Now, at our last study we passed in brief general review the

doctrines concerning the birth, building, growth, maturity,
decline, and final death, of our planetary chain. This short
general review was made in order that the many and various
statements made in The Secret Doctrine, here and there, and
dealing with all these four aspects of the general doctrine of the
spheres, should be separated in our minds. No one can give out
any such recondite doctrine in its fullness, in easy language.
These doctrines closely interlock; and the more esoteric part is
always deliberately hid under the same words which set forth the
exoteric presentation. The former must be picked out and
studied; the intuition must be developed; the intellect polished;
and, above everything else, the spiritual nature must be appealed
to and aspired to. This process of study is not so difficult as it
sounds, for these higher faculties are innate in us. The spiritual
nature is the real man. The constant appeals to us
by our
Teachers to look inwards and to look upwards are not
meaningless; they have a most profound practical value for the
serious student.

We open, then, our study tonight by reading from the first volume
of The Secret Doctrine as follows, on pages 158-9:

Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical Universe

is septenary. Hence every sidereal body, every planet,
whether visible or invisible, is credited with six companion
 globes. . . . The evolution of life proceeds on these seven
globes or bodies from the 1st to the 7th in Seven ROUNDS
or Seven Cycles.

That is, the life-wave circles around the seven globes in seven
different courses, each course from globe one to globe the last
being called a round. But let us not confuse a general or chain-
round from globe A to globe G or the last, with a globe-round,
which merely means the passing through or traversing of any one
of these seven globes by the life-waves. This latter is a globe-
round. Furthermore, these rounds, circling, revolving, from globe
A to globe G, in any one planetary chain — ours for instance — is
called an inner round. The outer rounds, as pointed out at our last
meeting, refer to the seven sacred planets; and these outer rounds
we shall not touch upon except very incidentally. But it ought to
be pointed out that these seven sacred planets actually build and
govern and oversee, each to each, all the seven globes of our
earth's chain. What are the correspondences here? Let us point
them out. We draw a diagram of the twelve globes of our earth's
planetary chain once
more:
Beginning with the seven globes on our manifested planetary
chain, below the line which we have drawn in order to separate
them from the five which are hid, we will call the first globe A,
the next globe B, the next C, the next D, which is our earth. The
one above us on the ascending arc is E, the next one above it is F,
and the last one of the seven we shall mark as G. There are,
furthermore, as shown in this diagram, five hid globes on the
three higher planes of the solar kosmos, the universal solar
system, which globes we merely mention in passing.

Now the sacred planet which builds and forms globe A, subject of
course to the swabhava of globe A — that is to say, its own
indwelling genius or will or spirit, its own individuality, just as a
growing child is shaped more or less by its environment, but
nevertheless has its own growing individuality and personality —
the sacred planet, I say, that builds globe A is the Sun, or rather
that planet for which the Sun is an enumerative substitute, and
which we will call Vulcan. The sacred planet which builds the
second globe, B, is Jupiter. The sacred planet which builds globe C,
the one preceding ours on the downward arc, and from which we
came during this round before we entered the earth-globe, is
Venus. The sacred planet building our own Earth is Saturn. The
one building globe E, to which we shall go when we leave globe D,
our Earth, is Mercury. The one building globe F is Mars; and the
one building globe G, or the last, is the Moon, or rather the planet
for which the Moon is an exoteric
enumerative substitute.

Note well, however, that in all cases we mean the spiritual genius
or rector (not the physical planet) which is the builder, the
former, the overseer, of any respective globe of our earth's chain.

Please understand, then, that these genii or rectors, these sacred

planets actually are the kosmokratores of our planetary chain,
the world builders, plus the swabhavic impulses emanating from
the planetary chain itself: as, for instance, a child is born on
earth; it has its own indwelling vitality, its own personality, its
own individuality, its own inner push and urge to life and
experience; but it is born into an environment, into conditions,
which mold it in a very large degree, and which similarly in large
degree direct the way and manner in which its body and higher
principles are builded and work and function.

We merely allude here once more to what was said, I think at our
last meeting, that when the last of the seven rounds of our earth's
planetary chain is fully completed, the life-waves pass on to one
of the outer rounds. Now you know that the moon which we see
in our evening skies is but the relic, the kama-rupa, of a former
planet which lived and completed its life cycle before our earth
existed, and which was as full of life and the hosts of lives as our
earth is now. It also ran the course of its seven rounds, along
seven lunar globes, and when its septenary life cycle was
completed, when its seventh round was completed, what then
happened? Each globe, as the life-wave left it after completing the
last globe-round of the seventh chain-round, passed into
invisibility after it had cast forth its energies, a large part of its
life-atoms, into a laya-center in space.

Let us take these seven globes, as shown in the diagram, which

represent the chain of our earth, and imagine them, if you please,
to be the seven globes of our moon during its last round, we mean
the seventh or last moon-round. When the globe-round on A is
completed, or rather nearly completed, the ten classes of life-
entities prepare to leave it. The class which is most advanced
projects its energy into space, into another point of the solar
system, into what is called a laya-center, which is a Sanskrit word
meaning a homogeneous center, a center of homogeneous
substance, on a spiritual plane of course, using the word
"spiritual" in a general sense. And this process goes on, for all the
ten classes of that globe A, each one of these ten families or stocks
leaving the globe one by one, until, when the time has come for
the last animalcule of the last stock to leave the globe, that globe
then suddenly disappears — and is in abscondito, invisible. And
why? The reason is this: all
matter, as our scientists today are
beginning to realize, is but another form of kosmic force, for force
and matter are one. All matter is built up of atoms; these atoms in
turn are built up of electrons and protons; and these in their turn
are but tiny substantial entities, built up of energic matter or force
— force and matter being fundamentally one, as spirit and
substance are fundamentally one.

Hence, when the life-atoms, when the life, so to say, leaves the
globe, it vanishes, because those life-atoms are its ultimate
particles. The globe is not annihilated, but it passes into the state
which is called in abscondito, or invisibility. This is perhaps the
most difficult point of all others in our study to explain, because
there is nothing known to us at present on earth that we can
point to as being analogous to it. At any rate, such is the fact; and,
as I have tried to point out, when the life leaves an atom, its sub-
atoms, so to speak, are not annihilated, but, as it were, they
separate and they become invisible, and the portions of the
undeveloped substance which remain behind pass into latency,
into dormancy, much like ice crystals hanging in space; pass into
latency as tiny globules of force-matter, and remain in that state
until the attraction to activity later comes — which is another
subject that we shall have to go into some day — to join the new
earth-globe A, the life-atom returning, after aeons of wandering
transmigration, to its own life-source.

Similarly with globe B of the moon-chain, the same process takes

place, and it vanishes. And so with all the seven globes. How is it
then, it may be asked, if globe D of the moon-chain vanished, that
we see our present moon? We have before pointed out that our
moon is a phantom, a kama-rupa, of the moon's globe D that was,
but we of earth happen to be on the plane of what was the astral
to the Lunarians. We have gone up a step, and we see with our
physical eyes what would have been invisible to us when we lived
on the moon. As a man when departing this life leaves his kama-
rupa in the astral realms behind him, the shade, as the ancients
put it, his spook, until it disintegrates — if haply that be the man's
fortunate destiny — so does it happen with the globes; because
these globes are living things. Can life come from anything but
life? Clear your minds of the idea that there is any dead matter.
Wipe out all that old scientific trash of fifty or one hundred years
ago. There is nothing in
it. Already it is ancient and forgotten. The
scientists now have new theories. Fifty years ago there was
nothing but matter. The forces were only "modes of motion."
Forces per se did not exist; nor did anybody know how such
"modes of motion" arose out of dead matter. Now, however, they
are beginning to tell us that there is no matter, that there is
nothing but force; and that what we call the modes of matter are
merely quanta of force or energy, certain forms or functions of
what these very metaphysical scientists call energy or force or
whatnot.

Thus, these various globes of the moon-chain cast their life-

substance each into a laya-center; these seven laya-centers
forming as it were the planes of rest of these "sleeping spheres."
There is more behind this which we cannot now go into; but it
would be dishonest to pass over this point without calling to your
attention one fact, that the higher nature of a globe, as of a man
its child, is deathless, and tastes never of death — during the solar
manvantara, at least — sleeps not during these intermediate
times of planetary rest, but is in nirvana, for some period of time,
at least. Please mark those words.

After long aeons of time, these sleeping spheres reawaken for

another period of manifestation, in principle exactly as a man
returns to earth incarnation. The thrill of active or to-be-
manifested life now runs through these seven laya-centers, and
they begin to differentiate. Do you know that the secrets
regarding death and human incarnation are bound up in this
subject of the planetary spheres, the planetary chain, and also in
that marvelous, wonderful doctrine of the circulations of the
kosmos?

What do the Christians mean — we make a slight digression

which seems necessary and interesting as well — when they
speak of the resurrection of the bodies of the dead? A ludicrous
doctrine this, if taken at its face value as taught by the old-style
theology. Much well-merited criticism by independent thinkers
has been directed against this Christian dogma — well-merited
criticism, we said; but nevertheless in its pagan origin it was one
of the old Mystery-teachings. Here is a part, at least, of the secret
of it. The life-atoms which form a man's body, which form a
man's astral body, which form a man's psychic nature, which
form a man's mental and spiritual nature, are his offspring, the
off-throwings of the man in life who now physically is what we
call "dead." They are far more "bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh," incomparably more so, than is the son of his parents,
because they are himself, his own dissipated life-atoms, and they
will return to
him as inevitably and as infallibly as the strokes of
karma for good or ill fall upon a man who has originated them,
who has acted upon nature, which automatically reacts,
rebounds, against the action. These life-atoms come back to him
in the succeeding life, when the attraction pulls them, when the
gravitational pull comes from the entity descending again
through the various planes of substance into reincarnation. Each
plane that he passes through after death in going out, in going up,
is again traversed in coming down into reincarnation; and these
life-atoms flow to him by gravitational attraction, by magnetic
pull, and form anew his various vehicles on the various planes of
his being. They are the life-atoms whose "faces he once dirtied,"
perhaps, and which he now again must wash; or, again, those
which he had helped on their upward way. Because, verily, these
life-atoms are themselves germ-souls in their essence, even as we
men in our higher natures are children of the Highest — of
the
Logos, whose very essence is in us, is we ourselves! These life-
atoms also, even as we ourselves, are building for an immortal
destiny; and this is a really fine illustration of the interlocking of
the hosts of lives of universal being.

Think of the mystery, of the wonder, behind this beautiful fact. In

that way, also, are the worlds builded. This, then, is the secret
meaning of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body,
an old Mystery-teaching ignorantly adopted — not the old body
which Mr. Brown or Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith had, for that is gone
forever; but the life-atoms which builded that former body, and
actually were it, collect anew to form the new body of the
reincarnating man. As they were his before, so now they come
back and build him a body more or less closely like to the one he
had left at death in the former life. Can you escape the action of
the law? Think of the moral viewpoints that this action of karma
brings to our eyes. Think of the responsibility, moral and physical
and mental and spiritual, that is ours. We suffer from our own
acts, and we have joy from our own acts; and these little beings,
these embryonic souls, these life-atoms, build the bodies of the
vehicles which once again we
live in. Man, each one of us, in
future aeons of time, after ages upon ages in the future, is
destined to be a Logos; and the beings then in his care and charge,
his own life-atoms then more or less "grown-up," will be the
archangels, the angels, the prajapatis, the manus, the human
souls, and all the various smaller entities, less entities such as we
now know of beneath us. The Logos that is now our own Highest,
our own "Father in Heaven," was, aeons upon aeons upon aeons
agone, a man also, of whom our present hosts of beings were then
the life-atoms, marching upwards and onwards. Can you imagine
and see, now, why these doctrines have always been kept so
secret and sacred? Suppose that they were subject to
misunderstanding, and misrepresented in cheap advertisement,
dropped in the mire, "cast before the swine," as the Syrian
Teacher said!

But there is danger in all this. There is always a danger in saying

more than should be said about these esoteric and holy doctrines.
We have not said more than should be said; we are merely
elucidating and explaining what has been said by hint and
allusion in The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky. In future years
we may go deeper into these things; but surely enough has been
said tonight to show the analogy between and the much that
might be said about the life of man and that of a planetary chain.

Chapter 44
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty-Four
Principles of Thought and Study: Can Occultism Be Taught?
Ancient Astrology a True Science. Our Earth-Chain of Globes, the
Seven Sacred Planets, and the Twelve Zodiacal Signs. Life-Atoms:
the Building Blocks of the Universe.

Astrology is a science as infallible as astronomy itself, with

the condition, however, that its interpreters must be
equally infallible; and it is this condition, sine qua non, so
very difficult of realization, that has always proved a
stumbling-block to both. Astrology is to exact astronomy
what psychology is to exact physiology. In astrology and
psychology one has to step beyond the visible world of
matter, and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit. —
Isis Unveiled, I, 259

The signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning. From
one point of view they represent the different stages of
evolution up to the time the present material universe with
the five elements came into phenomenal existence. As the
author of Isis Unveiled has stated in the second volume of
her admirable work, "the key should be turned seven
times" to understand the whole philosophy underlying
these signs. — T. Subba Row, "The Twelve Signs of the
Zodiac"

IT IS AN EGREGIOUS folly to suppose that occultism can be taught

in lessons as one would teach a language or a science, and the
question arises: How, then, since these meetings are for the
purpose of studying together some of the noble doctrines of
occultism, how is it that they might seem to be taught in that
manner, by lessons in courses? The difference is this: while
occultism cannot be taught as one would teach a language,
nevertheless, obviously and of necessity, there must be some
means and method by which the great sages of olden days
communicated from time to time appropriate parts of the esoteric
knowledge to the world; and this is done by teaching and
elucidating certain doctrinal principles thereof, these principles
actually being some of the basic facts of the kosmos. You cannot
teach occultism as you would teach a language, for the reason
that the facts of being of the kosmos, of inner and of outer nature,
are so interlocked that unless one had a thousand tongues,
speaking a thousand
idioms at the same time, and the hearers
were capable of appreciating these thousand idioms at the same
instant, one could not convey the ideas, the thoughts,
simultaneously into the minds of the hearers. This may illustrate,
if poorly, why you cannot teach occultism as you can teach a
language, or a mere physical science, or some other ordinary
system of exoteric study, such as our universities do teach; for
these latter studies or sciences or arts are very simple, dealing
with one main line of thought alone.

But the great sages of ancient times laid down certain principles
of thought and of study which, they tell us, are, or rather
represent, the fundamental operations and characteristic natures
of the universe. And not one of those mighty minds ever
attempted, because it is de facto impossible, to teach of these
operations and natures as one would teach a language or a mere
physical science; but by hint, by allusion, by an appeal to the
intuition and the innate knowledge of his hearers, and by proper
physical illustration, such a teacher leads them on, step by step,
until finally the man or the woman sees as in a flash the meaning
conveyed as a key, and grasps and applies that key, with greater
or less success, depending on the hearer's own spiritual insight. In
that way, therefore, are the doctrines of occultism communicated
in the first four stages of initiation.

You may take, for instance, the teaching regarding the beginnings
of kosmic evolution. We realize from this study that there are
seven different principles of and in which the kosmos is builded;
which work, each one of the seven, on its own plane — or rather
in its own world; and to attempt to describe at the same instant of
time the simultaneous operations of these seven principle-
elements is physically impossible. But a hint is given, an allusion
is made to some one or more facts of universal nature; and the
mind of the hearer is opened by an intuitional thought which is
aroused in himself by the communication. No child is taught to
walk merely by seeing its parents walk, but by itself learning to
put leg before leg; and its first feeble and vacillating steps, in
time, grow into the assured and confident stride of the man.

So it is with these doctrines. Little by little, step by step, our

teachers lead us on to understand, so that we in our turn become
teachers to and of ourselves, and are enabled boldly and
successfully to apply as keys the doctrines that we have heard to
larger doors of learning and knowledge, leading into still more
secret chambers of our great Mother Nature. And these chambers
are full of wonders and mysteries, mystic and marvelous beyond
all comparison with things upon earth. I am thinking, as I speak,
of one of the real meanings of that wonderful inscription which
Plutarch tells us of in his treatise on Osiris and Isis, chapter 9 —
Plutarch of Chaeronea, the genial writer, the inimitable
biographer, the great-hearted man, initiate, quondam priest of
Delphi, of the famous oracle there. One of his most mystic
writings it is, and one of the most difficult to understand, so
carefully does he veil his real meaning. He says that this
inscription, presumably engraved over the portico of the
great
Temple of Neith, at Sais in the delta of Egypt, ran as follows:
 Isis am I, I am all that was, that is, and that shall be,

and no one of mortals has ever lifted my veil.

And Proclus, the Neoplatonic philosopher, in the course of his

commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, remarks incidentally as
follows with regard to this inscription, that its ending was:

and the fruit that I brought forth became the Sun.

Neith is the mystic or occult side of Isis; Isis represented the open
side, the obvious or plain side, of the hid goddess Neith. This veil
was the universal nature around us, hiding the mysteries and
operations of the great kosmic life. And to this day, no one of
mortals, however great, has ever succeeded in raising that veil
utterly. But little by little as the aeons of time flow by, our greatest
seers, the Masters, and the Masters of the Masters, who also in
their spheres of thought and action advance even as we advance,
check and prove and try the knowledge communicated by the
gods our ancestors to the early races of mankind; prove the truths
of being again, modify them in form for presentation to a later
age; and in that sense send forth anew to the world, from time to
time, some and more of the doctrines of reality. Their work is a
very difficult one. There is nothing that men resent so much,
nothing that so greatly arouses their ire and their hatred, as to
have their cherished beliefs disturbed.
Consider how all the world
teachers have been received, in whatever age. Look at the great-
hearted Socrates who, though not initiated, betrayed parts of the
Mysteries to the public ear, from his own intuitional insight — a
serious crime in those days. Look at the legends concerning Jesus,
legends only, nevertheless representing certain mystic truths;
look at Pythagoras; look at every one of those great souls who
have attempted to enlighten mankind throughout the different
ages: every one of them was persecuted and misunderstood,
though every one of them was giving his lifework, his very soul,
in order to help his fellows; every one of them was hated; and, in
later ages, every one of them, though more or less understood or
misunderstood and wronged, was almost — and in one or two
cases quite — deified! So has it been today, in our own age.

We enter upon our study tonight by reading again the same

extract from volume I of The Secret Doctrine that we read at our
meeting last week, from pages 158-9:

Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical Universe

is septenary. Hence every sidereal body, every planet,
whether visible or invisible, is credited with six companion
globes. . . . The evolution of life proceeds on these seven
globes or bodies from the 1st to the 7th in Seven ROUNDS
or Seven Cycles.

You will remember that we passed briefly in review the four

aspects of the wonderful doctrine of the spheres; and we merely
approached another doctrine still more wonderful, the doctrine
of the circulations of the kosmos; and we closed our study for that
evening at the point where we saw that each globe of the lunar
chain of the sevenfold moon that was — each one of those globes
— had perfected its respective series of ten stocks or families and
had projected them into a laya-center, one for each globe, in
order that these respective ten families or stocks might have their
long pralayic rest; and then that when, after the course of cyclic
aeons, the thrill of waking life returned again to these sleeping
hosts, differentiation set in in these laya-centers as the life-waves
advanced downwards towards them through the various planes
of superior matter, quickening and enlivening each plane, one
after the other, as the life-waves went lower and lower down.
Remember that "lower" here
does not refer to movement in space
alone, but much more to quality; the life-waves were descending
into grosser and still grosser planes of matter.
The first of the sleeping hosts that felt the inflow of the life forces
as these reached it, coming from the higher spheres, was that
aggregate which was to form globe A of the earth-chain.

Here, if you will, are twelve globes, representing the planetary

chain of our earth or, inferentially, the planetary chain of any one
of the scores of planetary chains in our universal solar system.
The uppermost five, as shown in the diagram, we shall say very
little of. They are superspiritual worlds. The lower seven are the
worlds in manifestation, and it is these lower seven that form the
main subject of H. P. Blavatsky's outline of the planetary chains as
given by her in The Secret Doctrine; and it is to these seven that
we shall restrict very largely our remarks.

These globes of the earth-chain are not yet, as at this point of our
study, in existence; but that particular series of ten stocks or
families which hitherto has been sleeping — a sleeping sphere
coming over from the moon that was, globe A of the moon that
was — when it feels the thrill of incoming life, begins to develop
into globe A of the earth-chain. This incoming life on each
sleeping but now reawaking globe, in the course of the latter's
progress to full formation, passes down from the spiritual of its
plane to the material of its plane, through seven stages or steps or
spaces of evolutionary development. As does globe A of the earth-
chain, so do globes B, C, D, E, F, and G; and each in turn, but by a
peculiar procedure which we are now going to study.

Now of these ten families, we shall go not much farther with

regard to the three highest than a mere allusion to them, and
restrict our remarks to the seven manifest stocks or families
which form the volumes of the life-waves circling around the
seven globes in what are called the chain-rounds. As we saw at
our last study, a chain-round is the passage of the seven life-waves
through the seven globes, once, from globe A to globe G; and a
globe-round is the passage of these seven life-waves through any
one globe — the traversing of any one globe by those seven life-
waves — during the course of their chain-round. These rounds
are the inner rounds. As regards the outer rounds, we shall make
but little more than an allusion to them at present, and for a very
obvious reason. If for some of us, for we are all in the same state
in this respect, it is difficult enough to understand even the inner
rounds — the passages of the life-waves around the seven
globes
of our own earth-chain — it would be impracticable, unwise
really, at the present time, to overload our minds with the
teachings regarding the outer rounds, which we stated as being
the passages of the life-waves from, through, and into, in other
larger rounds, the seven sacred planets of the ancients.

Before continuing, I would like to make a little digression in order

to avoid a later possible misunderstanding. You know that there
is a great deal written and taught in the world about astrology,
and various so-called astrological teachers print pamphlets and
books, and will cast and read your horoscope as best they can.
Occasionally, by a lucky hit, a happy guess, guided more or less by
the fragments of ancient knowledge that have come down to us in
the books of the ancient peoples, they may tell you something that
is true, but how often with the best of goodwill do they mistake.
The astrology of the ancients was indeed a great and noble
science. Modern astrology is but the tattered and rejected outer
coating of real ancient astrology, for that truly sublime science
was the doctrine of the origin, of the nature and of the being, and
of the destiny, of the solar bodies, of the planetary bodies, and of
the beings who dwell on them. This wonderful science was
founded on two doctrines mainly, i.e.,
those two which we have
been studying together for the last two or three evenings: the
doctrine of the spheres, and the doctrine of the circulations of the
kosmos, the latter being microcosmically the doctrine of the
circulations of the universal solar system. And the so-called
astrology that has come down to us and is with us today, is but a
series of sadly incomplete and mutilated fragments of teachings
misunderstood by the later Greeks and Romans themselves.
Please understand this clearly, because there actually is a vast
and noble science which was in the ancient times called
astrology, a term which means the "science of the celestial
bodies." So great and so noble was it that it was held strictly as a
Mystery-teaching. It was always against the law of the Mysteries
to tell to the outward world any of these Mystery-teachings — any
such divulging of the secret doctrines being held to be a grave
crime and, in the later times, was even punished by the State with
death.

The ancient nations themselves, the later Greeks and Romans, for
instance, forbade the public practice and teaching of astrology,
from reasons of sound public policy, because they knew that it
could not be taught or practiced honestly in public as a means of
private gain. They even went so far in the Roman Empire as to
forbid its practice under penalty of banishment or death. Time
and again, the Mediterranean nations issued the most drastic
laws against it, and against what the Romans commonly called
the "Chaldaeans" or "astrologers," because of the much mischief
which arose from it. The misleading and unsettling of the minds
of the ignorant and thoughtless aroused the legislatures of those
times, and they took legislative action in an attempt to curb the
growing evil. Nevertheless real astrology is a very profound truth,
for there actually is a bond of closest union, a strict and perfect
correspondence among all the parts of being: all the parts of
being forming the one vast
organism through which circulates
and flows one universal life. This life follows certain channels,
and collects in certain centers, and these channels and centers are
infilled with spiritual and intellectual energies, and with what we
would call today electric and magnetic forces; they function more
particularly in the centers, certain solar systemic ganglions,
which we call the planets, and herein lies the secret of the
circulations which we have been speaking of, the secret of the
gravitational pull which draws the life-atoms of the kosmos here
and not there, or vice versa. These life-atoms we must briefly
speak of before we close tonight, if our time permits.
We shall now point out a few correspondences between the
twelve globes of our planetary chain and the planets, and also
between these and those and the twelve constellations of the
zodiac. There is a strict and close correspondence between each
of the seven sacred planets and one of the globes of our earth-
chain, respectively; and between each one of the globes and one
of the constellations of the zodiac — one of the houses of the
circle of life, as the Greeks called it. But while it is true that the
seven sacred planets of the ancients, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the
Sun (as a substitute for a secret planet), Venus, Mercury, and the
Moon (as a substitute for another secret planet), do actually build
and oversee our planetary chain as a whole, i.e., one of the sacred
planets respectively to one of the globes — the one predominating
power over each globe coming from its especial sacred planet —
nevertheless, the influences of the other six of the seven sacred
planets are at work therein
also. Likewise, while each one of
these twelve globes of the planetary chain is under the particular
oversight, or overseeing, of one of the constellations of the zodiac,
that is to say, of the predominating genius or rector of that
constellation of the zodiac, nevertheless each one of the other
eleven constellations is also at work in each of the twelve globes
of the chain. There can be no separation of forces, for everything
works together in nature towards a common end — which is one
of the noblest proofs we have of universal brotherhood.

Let us begin with globe A of the manifest seven. Globe A is under

the oversight of the Sun (as a substitute), and its zodiacal house is
Leo. Globe B under Jupiter, zodiacal house Sagittarius. Globe C,
Venus, zodiacal house Libra. Globe D, our Earth, Saturn, zodiacal
house Capricorn. Globe E, Mercury, zodiacal house Virgo. Globe F,
Mars, zodiacal house Scorpio. Globe G, Moon (as a substitute for a
secret planet), zodiacal house Cancer.

Now going to the five superarchetypal globes, let us take the one
at the top, the first (or last) of which, by the way, our poor,
material earth is the copy in matter: planet Saturn, zodiacal house
Aquarius. Please note that this is the constellation called the
Waterman. Continuing to the left, the globe below: the planet is
Venus, zodiacal house Taurus. The one below that on the
descending arc is under Jupiter, the zodiacal house is Pisces.
Crossing along and taking the globe on the same plane as the last
mentioned, but on the ascending arc, the planet is Mars, and the
zodiacal house is Aries. The one above it and next to the last (or
first), the planet is Mercury, and the zodiacal house is Gemini.

If it were possible to do so in the short time we have, we could go

into wonderlands of study in following out the various relations
of the globes of our chain and of the planets and of the houses of
the zodiac, and concerning the beings dwelling on these globes
and planets, and concerning the circulations of the life-waves. Let
me recall to your mind, before leaving this small detail of our
study, a statement made by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine,
where she says that "if we could only follow the adventures of an
atom" — I am quoting in substance — "no romance that has ever
been written or imagined, could equal this theme for mystic
wonder, and for the profundity of its appeal to the spiritual
nature of our soul."

We are now going to pass, if you please, to a much later stage in

planetary evolution, possibly returning later to the point where
we are now. We have now arrived at the point where we must
find out how globe A of the earth-chain, in the first round, is
builded. These ten families — three of them we will leave without
further mention at present — or rather these seven manifest
families or stocks of the inflowing life-waves, these seven life-
waves, are the seven which left the corresponding globe A of the
moon at its death, and were its ten or seven principles. They are
now reentering into manifestation after their long pralayic rest,
clothing themselves with sheaths, or veils, of supersensuous
matter as they descend through the three superarchetypal
spheres above the manifest four kosmic planes, on the downward
arc, until aeons upon aeons later when they have reached this
plane — the fourth kosmic plane counting downwards, of the
seven kosmic planes, on which fourth
plane of the kosmos the
forthcoming globe A of an earth planetary chain is to be — they
are ready to begin its formation. And how do they proceed? First
come the three kingdoms of the elemental world. The first
kingdom builds, running the gamut of its seven degrees or stages,
and when its work is finished, it goes into obscuration; seven
minor steps of building does it build, seven degrees of work has it
to do, before its surplus of life can pass to a lower plane on the
downward arc, and begin to construct and build the foundation
of the succeeding globe B to come.

When its seven stages of work are finished, the second elemental
world then steps in instantly, and follows the same course of
seven stages. When its seven are finished, it also passes in its turn
its surplus of life onwards, down to the foundation prepared for it
by the first elemental (or preceding) kingdom, to globe B below.
Then follows on globe A the third elemental kingdom. Then, when
these three are thus finished, there begins to work on globe A the
mineral kingdom, that is to say, the mineral world corresponding
to globe A; and when its sevenfold work is finished on the basis
provided by the three elemental kingdoms, there follows the
sevenfold life-wave of the vegetable kingdom; and it runs through
its seven cycles or stock-races. And when its course is finished, its
surplus life follows the stream of the already descended entities
into the plane below, into globe B, into the work prepared for it
by its predecessors.

Then comes the animal kingdom into globe A. Remember, I am

speaking of the first round only, so far. When the first round is
finished, and the second round begins after the interglobal
nirvana between globe G and globe A, the method of procedure is
changed. We are now discussing the first round only. When the
animal kingdom has run through its seven stock-races (or root-
races) on globe A, then comes the seventh and last stock-family or
kingdom, or the human, on globe A of our chain.

Now to go back a little. Take the first elemental kingdom on globe

A. It is finishing its seventh root-race, its seventh stock-race, its
seventh cycle, its seventh ring as Mr. Sinnett called it; and when it
has finished this, its life-wave then passes on completely to globe
B, where its six preceding stock-races had already gone when
they had finished their respective cycles. And what is left behind?
Do all the hosts of lives of that first elemental kingdom go there?
Do they all pass down to globe B? Please note this detail, for it is
very, very important for our future studies. They do not; that first
elemental kingdom leaves behind it on globe A the sishtas — a
Sanskrit word meaning "remainders." This word itself contains a
whole doctrine of wonder; and just here is illustrated one of our
difficulties in lecturing. Every step that we make forwards opens
to view a new avenue, opens a new door, till we are fairly
bewildered with the wonder of it all; and we must hold by sheer
force of will to our main theme of thought lest we be drawn off
into other paths. And this is one of the ways by which the
Teachers are enabled to disguise the teachings and hide them
from those not entitled to them, as remarked before. They cannot
tell all, not even of a single doctrine, for the reason that it simply
wouldn't be understood. They tell us as much as they may and
can, and give hints and allusions to something else; and this
method very conveniently thus acts as a "blind." Hence,
sometimes people say, "Why, this doctrine is contradictory!" It is
not. Paradoxical, yes; contradictory, no.

Now what are the sishtas of the first elemental kingdom or world
that remain on globe A after that life-wave has passed on to form
the foundation of globe B? And what are the sishtas of the second
elemental world when its life-wave has passed down to globe B
and its sishtas remain behind on globe A; and similarly with the
third elemental world, and all the other four kingdoms? We will
describe what it is by an illustration drawn from our own present
mineral kingdom on this earth. The minerals we now have on our
earth, today, are the mineral kingdom of our globe D in
obscuration here, that is to say, they are the remainders or the
sishtas of our mineral kingdom which has passed on forwards to
the globes on the upward arc, preparing those globes for our
future coming, when we come in our turn on leaving this globe D
or earth. Not that they alone work for us, for we work for them
too; each kingdom works for each other kingdom, and all work
for all. But the real bulk or volume of the mineral kingdom has
gone on; and it has left its sishtas behind on this globe earth, its
"sleeping spheres," its "sleeping atoms." And so when all the
kingdoms of globe A have passed on, each one leaves behind its
sishtas, its remainders, its lives representing the very highest
point of evolution arrived at by that kingdom in that round,
sleeping: sleeping life-atoms, dormant, relatively motionless. Not
without life, however; for everything is alive; there is no dead
matter anywhere. Is a man dead who is asleep? No; but sleeping,
dormant, resting. These sishtas of all the seven kingdoms thus
await the incoming of the life-waves on the next round, and then
they reawaken to a new cycle of activity.

You know doubtless a beautiful old fairy story, given to us from

the French, who got it from the Persians, and the Persians
received it from the Hindus; I think that the English version is
called "Prince Charming," or "The Sleeping Beauty." The French
title of it is La Belle au Bois Dormant, "The Beauty in the Sleeping
— Enchanted — Wood." Remember the beautiful old tale: the
wondrous castle, the enchanted wood, in both of which
everything and all is sleeping; even the princess, the castle's
chatelaine, is sleeping, waiting, enwrapped in dreamless sleep;
and by and by comes along Prince Charming, who sees this
enchanted wood and he enters into it. He is a knight-errant, out to
achieve deeds of noble doing. He enters this enchanted castle and
he sees the Sleeping Beauty, and he bends down and he kisses her
forehead; and instantly everything awakens, everything is
restored to consciousness, and is set in motion and movement.
Thus, verily, is it with the
incoming of the life-waves. When the
incoming life-waves strike or rather reenter into the dormant life-
atoms, they awaken; things are restored to individual activity.
Thus, each one of these seven sphere-globes of our chain, when it
is in what we call obscuration, is a sleeping sphere, a dormant
sphere — full of general life, indeed, as is a sleeping man, but
individualized activity is dormant.

Let me say in passing, lest there be a future misunderstanding,

that not one of the globes, when in obscuration, remains dormant
for the full period of a chain-round. That is to say, when its seven
stocks or families have left globe A and passed on forwards to the
succeeding globes, globe A does not remain dormant throughout
the complete duration of the remaining six-sevenths of the
manvantara of that round until, after the interplanetary nirvana,
the life-waves reenter it again. But when a certain period of time
has passed, it reawakens and receives another succeeding life-
wave. Difficult indeed it is to understand the interworking even
of the inner rounds, to say nothing of the outer rounds. And these
different life-waves are the seven life-waves passing around the
chain, not all together, and not all during the period of one globe-
round; but some of these life-waves precede others, because they
are more evolved, and run the race more quickly. Hence it is that
we have among us what H. P. Blavatsky
and the Masters call fifth
rounders and even, very, very rarely, sixth rounders. There again
is another one of the many subjects which we must refer for
study to future meetings.

So, then, each one of these seven kingdoms, during a globe-round,

after the expiration of its seven root-races or stock-races, passes
its surplus of life to the globe next following in order around the
chain, and itself — its remainders — goes into dormancy or
obscuration with the globe that it leaves as a life-wave.

We leave our study tonight at this point to be taken up again at

our next meeting. But I would like to add a few general words
about the life-atoms before closing. What do we mean when we
speak of life-atoms? We do not mean that they are only and
merely the atoms of prana, for those are only one small part of
the vast hosts of the life-atoms. The life-atoms in general mean
the atoms of life, of the universal life forming our planetary
chain. Hence, the expression "life-atoms" is a short and
convenient way of saying the building blocks of the universe, the
bricks, so to say, of the vital kosmos. So many men on earth, so
many gods in heaven. So many monads in heaven, so many life-
atoms on earth, or elsewhere. So many atoms on earth, so many
equivalent god-sparks in heaven. Gods, monads, atoms — you
remember the chapter that H. P. Blavatsky has so prefaced in The
Secret Doctrine, thus showing the three general
classes or degrees
of manifested life: the highest, the inner god; the monad, its
vehicle, which is man in his essence; and third, himself as a
composite being formed of the life-atoms which he himself has
brought forth. The life-atoms, then, are the vital building bricks of
the kosmos. We mean also in one sense that they are the life-
atoms of the globe. The globe, all globes, are the life-atoms of a
still larger body. Again, there are life-atoms, if you please, on the
physical plane; life-atoms on the astral plane; life-atoms on the
mental plane; life-atoms on the spiritual plane; life-atoms on
every plane or rather world; and, as far as we know, so on
forever. Furthermore, each one of these life-atoms, no matter on
what plane it may be, is an embryo-soul, growing, evolving, with
a sublime destiny before it. Even we are the life-atoms of our own
solar Logos, its offspring or children verily, the children of our
Highest, of it, the Logos. And in aeons to come, if we run the race
successfully
as men, and then as dhyan-chohans, we, each one of
us, in the infinitudes of matter-space, shall be a Logos; and the
life-atoms which now compose our bodies and our vehicles, inner
and outer, and which are our offspring, our children, shall be in
those distant aeons the dhyan-chohans, the archangels, and the
angels, and the prajapatis, and the manus, and the human beings;
and all the hosts of the evolving lives now below us and behind us
in the grand evolutionary drama of being, shall in their turn also
have advanced correspondingly far along the paths of destiny.

Before we close this evening we have been asked to answer the

questions: "What proof can you bring to the average man or
woman of the truth of these sublime teachings?" "What are the
foundations of the teachings of the esoteric philosophy?" The
answer to the first question is this: we can bring proof,
cumulative proof, and you will remember what we have pointed
out before as being proof. Proof is the bringing of conviction to
the mind, and this conviction is brought by a preponderance of
evidence. And if asked the further question, "On what foundation
do you bring that proof?" we say, on two foundations, mutually
supporting. First, on the innate faculties in the human soul which
tell a man that such or another thing is true; he then is satisfied
spiritually, intellectually, emotionally. To him it is proved. That is
one proof. The other one is perhaps not so strong per se, but to
the average man it is perhaps stronger. We can show that the
greatest minds of all
ages have believed as we believe. They did
not use the same words or technical phrases perhaps, did not
teach the doctrines in the same form perhaps, but the heart of it
all nonetheless was there, the real thing was there, the core of it.
You will find all this in the world's literatures; and the only
difficulty that it seems to me could be encountered — and I
merely make this remark out of prudence — is this: that only too
often the ancient literatures are not understood, even by those
who translate them and read them. Perhaps to the average
inquirer the most convincing evidence is that the finest minds of
all times have believed in the theosophical doctrines; and it is to
these great intellects that we refer, as to an ultimate court of
appeal, much as human beings usually refer disputed questions
for solution to the noblest minds that they have among
themselves, feeling sure that the questions will be solved in the
best way in which good and able men can solve them. I repeat,
that we
bring proof. But, of course, the inquirer, if honest, must
do his own thinking; that we cannot do for him.

The foundations of the esoteric teachings, for the average person

rest on exactly the same basis of demonstration that the former
question does. If you find that back of the teachings which have
come down to us from immemorial times, there are certain facts,
certain doctrines, which are the same all over the world, and in
all ages, which were not outwardly, not openly expressed, but
were kept hid, it is logically necessary to assume that they were
looked upon as esoteric, otherwise why hide them? These being
the same in substance everywhere, we ask the reason, Why are
they the same? The natural — and correct — inference is that
they were drawn from the same common source which, now an
inference, grows into full conviction as we study them. Really,
their best proof is in themselves!

Chapter 45
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty-Five
Physiology, Psychology, and Pneumatology of the Universe. Ten
and Twelve Planes of the Universal Solar System: Intermediate
Critical Planes. All Manifested Being a Graded Continuum of
Interrelated, Interlocked Hierarchies: Each with its Own
Beginning and End. Sishtas and the Surplus of Life.

"The Sun is the heart of the Solar World (System) and its
brain is hidden behind the (visible) Sun. From thence,
sensation is radiated into every nerve-centre of the great
body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery
and vein. . . . The planets are its limbs and pulses.
(Commentary.) . . .

Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid

throughout our system, of which the Sun is the heart — the
same as the circulation of the blood in the human body —
during the manvantaric solar period, or life; the Sun
contracting as rhythmically at every return of it, as the
human heart does. Only, instead of performing the round
in a second or so, it takes the solar blood ten of its years,
and a whole year to pass through its auricles and ventricles
before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great
veins and arteries of the system.

. . . The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as

man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral
does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes every
twenty-four hours. . . .

. . . Space is the real world, while our world is an artificial

one. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude: in its
bottomless depths as on its illusive surface; a surface
 studded with countless phenomenal Universes, systems
and mirage-like worlds. Nevertheless, to the Eastern
Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at the bottom, in the
real world, which is a Unity of Forces, there is "a
connection of all matter in the plenum," as Leibnitz would
say. This is symbolized in the Pythagorean Triangle. — The
Secret Doctrine, I, 541, 615

Intelligences are without beginning.

The Sphere hath an active Soul.

The heavens have neither rent nor seam. — The Desatir,

"The Book of Shet Sasan the First," vv. 16, 17, 20 (Mulla
Firuz Bin Kaus, trans.)

The heavy-moving stars are many, and each has an

Intelligence, a Soul and a Body.

And in like manner every distinct division of the heavens

and planets, hath its Intelligences and Souls. — Ibid., "The
Book of the Prophet, the Great Abad," vv. 23, 24

THE PHYSIOLOGY of the universe which we have been studying

during the last few meetings should be understood in its relation
to the psychology of the universe; and, at the same time, we
should remember that beyond the psychological aspect of the
kosmic life there is the pneumatology of the universe; these
giving rise in their respective fields to the three essential vehicles
through and in which, from which, and back to which, the
universal life plays and flows and is — the three thus being the
fountainheads of and therefore corresponding in man to his three
general divisions of body, soul, and spirit. The physiology of the
universe comprises the totality of all the imbodied or envehicled
entities thereof; the psychology of the universe comprises the
various hierarchies of spiritual beings which work in those hosts
of bodies; and the pneumatology of the universe comprises all
those divine beings standing behind, ruling and inspiring, the
intermediate classes. Now the doctrines with regard to this
third
and last division are extremely difficult, as we all know, and
hitherto we have had occasion merely to allude to them. Our
studies, so far, have comprised only an attempt to understand
something of the psychology and of the physiology of the spaces
of kosmos.

Now one — and perhaps one of the greatest — of the functions or

operations of universal nature is that which is expressed by our
word evolution; and we use it in strictly the etymological sense,
meaning the unfolding or the unrolling, or the rolling outwards, of
what is, or has been, impacted in the original seed or root. We do
not use the word evolution as that word is misused in modern
biological science. In fact, biologists do not teach evolution; they
teach what the French very correctly call transformisme; and the
difference between the two senses is immense. As, at a later date,
we shall go into this study more in detail [lectures given in 1927-9
and later issued as Man in Evolution], we desire at present to call
attention to this great difference of meaning merely in order to
avoid a misunderstanding, that in using the words evolution or
development as these are used in occultism, we use them in the
sense used by modern biologists. Not at
all. We employ the word
evolution strictly in the etymological sense — the unfolding, the
unrolling, the outgoing, of the forces lying latent, from its past
karma, in the seed of the being or entity, whatever it may be,
which enters upon a cycle of active existence.

This great principle was well illustrated in the case of kosmic

evolution by what the ancient Stoics taught with regard to the
evolving or development or evolution, the rolling out, of the four
(or five) elements of the ancients, as those elements were
understood in their day. They taught, as we pointed out at a
former study, that the fifth element, the fifth essence or
quintessence, called aether — which is our akasa — held in its
bosom before their manifestation or evolving the seeds of the
lower four; and that when the time came for these four to evolve,
when the Deity, when Zeus, wished to send forth the worlds again
into manifestation after a period of repose, the first that appeared
was the element fire, rolling out from aether (or akasa), evolving,
unwrapping itself, from it. Not fire as we understand it, but, as it
were, the seed of fire, the spirit of fire, that primary and
elemental kosmic force of which fire on our plane, this low plane,
is a feeble manifestation. Then, when fire
had run through its
course of cyclic evolution, in the same way that it had proceeded
forth from the bosom of aether or akasa, so did air from fire,
unrolling itself from the bosom of fire which had contained in
itself this element air; containing not merely its own swabhava, or
characteristic or quality of fieriness, as we say in Oriental
thought, but containing in itself also the characteristic of its own
parent aether, akasa. Then, next in sequence, from air rolled
forth, was unwrapped, sprang forth in development, the element
water. Not our water, which is absurd, but that which we might
call the seed of water, the spirit of water, that which water or
liquidity represents on our plane; and it held in its bosom
somewhat of the quality or characteristic of air, its parent; and of
fire, its grandparent; and also of aether or akasa. It contained also
the forces, the potencies, and the powers, of these its
predecessors, but feebler naturally in water than in their own
respective
realms; the qualities and potencies of each preceding
one growing feebler as the evolution proceeds farther on, i.e.,
more largely into "matter." Then from water, from its bosom,
evolved or rolled forth the seed of the element earth. When the
turn of the cycle set in, when the evolution of these elements,
when the building of globes and so forth, had come to an end, and
Zeus wished to recall them all back to his bosom, then the reverse
procedure began, and water took unto itself again its child, the
element earth. Earth began to liquesce and to pass back into the
element water. Then in its turn, in its due period, the element
water began to aerify its particles and to pass into, or was
gathered again into, the bosom of its parent, the element air. Then
air in its turn began to ignify its nature and to pass into the bosom
of its parent fire. Then, finally, fire aetherialized its nature and
passed back into the bosom of the fifth essence or aether, its
parent; and the cycle of kosmic evolution
was ended for another
period of repose.

Now we carry these five elements farther on at least to seven in

number. But there is the principle of development inherent in the
kosmos which we illustrate by using the word evolution as above
outlined: the outgoing of the breath, the breathing forth, of
Brahma, as the archaic Indian thinkers said. The work done, then
ensued the inbreathing, the ingathering, the involution, of
Brahma. Precisely the same illustration that we have just given
from the Stoic philosophy you will find in the ancient Hindu
literature, in the Upanishads, and more particularly in the
Puranas.

Just so, after the same manner, with due changes made for
circumstances and entities, are the globes of our planetary chain
evolved. Globe A runs through its life cycle, and then evolves
globe B, which in turn runs its life cycle, and then evolves globe C,
which runs through its life cycle and evolves globe D, or our globe
earth. Globe D runs through its life cycle and evolves globe E; and
then are evolved globe F and then globe G, the last of the
manifested seven, in the same manner. These globe-evolutions
are the subject which we are now studying.

The questions that have been asked have been exceedingly

helpful to the present speaker. They have shown him, for
instance, that not enough has been said about the planes of
kosmos and the principles of kosmos, and about the various ways
and forces by which these twelve globes of our planetary chain
are interrelated. Let us then illustrate these in the following
diagram:

Here we have the seven kosmic planes represented by straight

lines, and above them is shown a triangle, which will represent, if
you please, the pneumatological or divine or superspiritual three
planes about which it is needless now to speak, because even if
anything were said about them it is very doubtful that it would be
of assistance to us at the present time. The teachings with regard
to them are too abstract. Below the triangle follow the three
higher planes of the kosmic manifest seven, containing the five
hid globes of our planetary chain; then below these follow the
four lower planes of the kosmic manifest seven of the kosmos,
containing our manifested seven globes, or what H. P. Blavatsky
in The Secret Doctrine usually called the planetary chain of the
earth. We have numbered them as in former studies, A, B, C, D, E,
F, and G. In addition, each one of these seven kosmic manifest
planes or worlds is itself a septenary, i.e., divided into seven
subplanes or worlds. This fact will come
in as a very important
subject in our later studies.

You will notice that these twelve globes are on seven planes. You
will next notice that in the diagram only seven manifest kosmic
planes, and a triangle representing three divine planes, are given,
which make ten. Now why do we not here show twelve kosmic
planes or worlds? We have drawn the diagram in this way in
order to call attention, by an apparent lack of something, to a fact
which we wish to emphasize. You may remember the Latin poet,
Martianus Capella, speaking of the sun, "whose sacred head is
encircled with twice six rays." Now these twice six rays encircling
the head of the solar god represent the twice six powers or the
twice six globes in the spiritual sun. Our visible physical sun is
but the body of the sun. There are seven manifest suns; actually
there are ten and two polar "links." We see but one sun, the
lowest; that sun, as a matter of fact, nonetheless being on our
highest physical plane; but, as the storyteller says, "that is again
another
story"!

These twelve forces of the sun represent and are the twelve forces
of the Logos, who is the manifest solar god; and, naturally, being
twelve forces they must have their own homes to live in, their
own spheres of appropriate action. They must have the
appropriate matters or substances in which to work. As a matter
of fact, they are themselves their own homes! They build their own
houses with a part of themselves, even as a snail builds its own
shell, remaining notwithstanding apart; in it, controlling it, each
one to each, but yet not of it, as the spirit and the soul of a man
remain apart from his body, in it yet above it, and in a true sense
not of it.
These twelve forces represent and are, therefore, the twelve
planes of the universal solar system; yet there are but ten planes
in a hierarchy. What about the extra two, the eleventh and the
twelfth? Now here is the solution of the riddle. All manifested
being is a continuum. This means that universal being extends
itself infinitely in all directions, most especially we say inwards
and outwards, without break of continuity, yet graded into
innumerable parts or steps or planes or worlds; and this
continuum is, so to say, broken up into hierarchies manifesting in
seven, ten, or twelve divisions or parts. The lowest seven parts
are the manifest portion of any hierarchy, that portion which is
builded below a certain plane of materiality, and these seven are
the rupa worlds or worlds of form; and of these seven, as a matter
of fact, the three higher are relatively arupa or "formless" — to us,
to our cognition, please understand. The truly arupa or
so-called
"formless" or divine worlds are the three highest above these
manifest seven, thus making the ten worlds or planes or degrees.

Any hierarchy has of course its beginning and its end, its zenith
and its nadir, its acme and its ground, its highest and its lowest,
the first and the tenth counting downwards. But what is it that
connects this first and this tenth with the other hierarchies, with
the rest of the continuum? What is a hierarchy? It is an
individualized entity. This entity is composed, in its turn, of hosts
and multitudes of smaller or inferior entities, as man's body is an
entity, and yet is composed of hosts of cells; and these cells again
are entities, and in their turn are composed of molecules and of
atoms; and the atoms in their turn are composite things; and yet
they all live together, and function together, every one of them
common to a hierarchy, within other hierarchies, and all
interrelated and interlocking. But each one of these hierarchies
nevertheless has its own acme or summit and its nether pole, its
head and its foot, its beginning and its end.
That which connects a hierarchy, let us say at the acme or the
beginning, with the rest of the continuum, is an intermediate or
"critical" plane partaking of the nature both of the hierarchy
beneath and of the hierarchy above it in the continuum, of which,
of course, it is a part. With its foot, again, it is connected on an
extra or twelfth plane, another intermediate or "critical" plane,
with the highest plane of the hierarchy which is beneath it or
follows it. Thus, then, we have a hierarchy consisting of ten,
always ten, degrees or stages or planes or forces: seven manifest,
and three hid or occult, or mystic — it matters not what word you
use here; and these ten principles or planes, forming a hierarchy,
are connected with the superior worlds and connected with the
inferior worlds by two extra or intermediate planes, one below
and one above, each to each.

Let us now take up our main study from the point where we left it
last week. A very interesting question was asked last week, as to
whether our planetary chain formed the seven principles of the
earth. And the answer was: "They do not, because each one of the
seven globes is itself a distinct and separate planet and is itself a
septenary." But the planetary chain forms a hierarchy of globes.
Please remember that hierarchy does not mean any one
particular thing. It means any possible collection of entities to the
number of ten, which form a unity. You will recall how much
emphasis we laid in a former study upon the differences between
a one, a monad, a unity, and a union. It was stressed in
anticipation of questions on studies like our present subject. If we
have not these elementary ideas clear in our minds, there is
bound to be confusion. A union is a more or less fast or loose
aggregate or assemblage of diverse entities. A
unity, as we shall
use it, is a union in which the bonds are so tight that it functions
not as an assemblage, but as a single being, as an individual. A
hierarchy is a unity. A monad is the root of a hierarchy, a pure
and permanent individual, like the characteristic life-center in a
seed from which a tree springs. The tree functions as a unity, but
if you take its individual leaves and branches, and roots, and
consider it as a mere assemblage, it is only a union. Considered as
an entity, as a hierarchy of less lives, smaller lives, it is a unity;
and the spiritual center or seed from which it springs, its
indwelling characteristic swabhava, its peculiar life-seed, is the
monad. And the one is that ultimate, purest, simplest, form of
kosmic being which we call divine, and of which the old
theologians sang: In which there is no shadow of turning, there is
no manifestation or differences. It is pure being, as contrasted
with
differentiated substance. It is the one, in which are no
opposites or no contrasts; pure being, pure bliss, pure
consciousness — what the Upanishads call sat-chit-ananda;
beness-consciousness-bliss.

Now, then, the planetary chain being a unity or a hierarchy,

functions as a single entity, and is a single entity; it is coadunated,
because it is a unity; it is formed into one thing. Why? Because it
is endowed with a soul and a spirit flowing forth from its
generating monad. In other words, its consciousness is monadic.

Let us read from The Secret Doctrine, volume I, page 166, an

extract as follows:

Hence it only stands to reason that the globes which

overshadow our Earth must be on different and superior
planes. In short, as Globes, they are in CO-ADUNITION but
not IN CONSUBSTANTIALITY WITH OUR EARTH and thus
pertain to quite another state of consciousness.

Coadunition, or rather coadunation, the forming into a unity,

does not mean that the entity so unated is a single (noncomposite)
being in the ordinary popular sense; otherwise its component
parts would not be conjoined in a unation. It means that the
coadunated entity is a unity or a hierarchy in the same way that
man's body is a unity and a hierarchy, if we consider that body as
the vehicle through which works the indwelling monadic soul of
the man, governing and controlling the hosts of smaller lives of
which the body is made.

Now we take up the method or process by which our manifest

seven globes of the planetary chain are evolved or "born," let us
say. When the thrill of the incoming life-waves — consisting of
ten classes, after their long pralayic rest, coming over from the
moon-globe A that was and now is not — inaugurates the new
earth-manvantara, those life-waves begin to differentiate on the
plane of the globe A of the earth planetary chain to be, and to
gather into themselves magnetically or gravitationally the hosts
of life-atoms belonging to that plane and which are hanging in
space, and which have been transmigrating during the long
pralayic rest of the higher principles — transmigrating into other
beings on that particular plane and out of them. And here is the
real meaning of the ancient doctrine of transmigration: the life-
atoms which a man throws off during life, and which his body at
any moment consists of during his life, and which are left behind
him after his death, and while he
himself is resting in devachan,
transmigrate according to their respective natures; pass into and
inform the beasts, and the vegetable world, and the mineral, and
the elemental — the three elemental worlds or kingdoms; and
similarly those of his intermediate principles. But when that man
returns to incarnation, passing through the various planes
downward into physical incarnation, he makes for himself, at
first, garments of light formed of his former life-atoms belonging
to the higher planes, that is, he gathers into himself again the
same life-atoms that he shed and cast off when he passed through
those respective planes on his way "upwards"; and so, on each
plane on his way downwards into incarnation. Similarly, when he
reaches this earth, he gathers the life-atoms of this plane into
himself again, not merely by the magnetic pull unconsciously to
himself active during his antenatal life, but even more so after his
birth. And so do these planets, the various globes of the various
planetary chains. The life-waves gather again to themselves, for
each globe in turn, as they pass down and through the four lower
planes of the kosmos, the life-atoms that belonged respectively to
the former moon-globes on the four lower planes, which life-
atoms help to build the new "physical" globes or bodies of the
new planetary chain to be, which the incoming life-waves or the
seven principles of each of the globes of the moon that was, form
and shape, and in which they are now to work in the new
manvantara.

What does each one of these globes of our planetary chain, or any
other chain, consist of? It consists of these life-atoms, plus the
indwelling vital forces, the life-waves; and together they actually
construct the globe, and are that globe. Man likewise builds his
own body from within. There are secrets even in nutrition that
our scientists have not yet solved. Man builds his own body out of
himself, as often said before. He first secretes, and then excretes
his various vehicles on the different planes of his being. He
excretes his own body and bodies or vehicles from the secretions
that come from within himself. And the globes of our chain are
built in precisely the same way.

We have passed briefly under consideration, in other studies, the

three elemental kingdoms as regards their work in forming globe
A of our chain. Let us now return to that. The elemental kingdom
no. 1 has finished its work, let us say, on what is now the first
foundation of globe A. That globe, therefore, has begun to take
form. It is one-seventh (or one-tenth) formed, formed to the
extent of the range of the first elemental kingdom. That first
elemental kingdom has now passed through its seven periods of
work, of evolution, and then goes into obscuration — one of Mr.
Sinnett's words. A far better word would have been dormancy or
sleep, because this word obscuration actually rather obscures the
sense. A man is not obscured when he sleeps. The body may be so,
in a sense; but it is better actually to state in more appropriate
words just what the real condition is. It is that of sleep, or latency
— of dormancy, rather.

But what happens now? Instantly that elemental kingdom no. 1

goes into dormancy, elemental kingdom no. 2 begins its work on
the foundation just laid for it by elemental kingdom no. 1.
Meanwhile, the surplus of life of elemental kingdom no. 1 passes
on to globe B, and lays there the first foundation of globe B as it
did for globe A. Now what do we mean by the "surplus of life,"
and what, furthermore, is it that is left behind as the sishta or
remainder, of the elemental kingdom no. 1 now dormant on globe
A? (Nevertheless, the active life of the life-waves, a part of it,
passes on and forms the beginning of globe B.) What is the
surplus of life, then? Surplus of life, as here used, is that to which
we alluded a few moments ago, when we spoke of the unfolding
or unrolling of the elements which, before manifestation, are
involved in each other. This surplus of life contained or involved
in the elemental kingdom no. 1, on globe A, is the 42 principles of
all the
other six globes of the manifest seven, as regards the first
elemental kingdom, enwrapped, enfolded, involved and dormant
therein, so to say, and not yet ready to manifest, because of not
being appropriate and fit for globe A, and therefore spoken of as
sleeping, resting in the bosom of elemental kingdom no. 1, but
more truthfully overshadowing it and infilling it with life, with the
42 "fires." As this surplus of life is unfolded, or evolved, sleeping
spheres, sleeping forces or potencies — which are really the
overshadowing 42 fires — pass down to the plane below as
surplus of life, the passing "down" being due to the gravitational
attraction or pull of the lower plane, as felt by their inferior
swabhava or inherent characteristic. Hence, as soon as they touch
their own realms, so to say, the sleeping fires of the life-waves
belonging by nature to those realms begin to awaken, the life-
waves appropriate and belonging to that
plane begin to work, and
the elemental kingdom no. 1 on globe B begins its life cycle.

Let us go back to globe A. When the elemental kingdom no. 2 has

finished its work on globe A, i.e., when it has run through its
seven stock-races on globe A, then elemental kingdom no. 3 steps
in as did no. 2, after no. 1. Immediately thereupon the
gravitational pull on no. 2, after that elemental kingdom no. 2 on
globe A has gone into dormancy, draws that surplus of life in
elemental kingdom no. 2 down to globe B, where immediately no.
2 on globe B begins to awaken and to work, and to gather in the
life-atoms belonging to it on that plane. Thus, on globe A we have
elemental kingdoms 1 and 2 in dormancy, and no. 3 working out
its life cycle on globe A. Elemental kingdom no. 1, when it has
finished its sevenfold course of work on globe B, passes similarly
on to globe C and begins to form it; while no. 2 coincidently is
entering on its work on globe B; and no. 3 is on globe A, as said.

Thus, then, at the present stage we have elemental kingdom no. 1

beginning its work on globe C; elemental kingdom no. 1 in
obscuration on globe B, where no. 2 is active; elemental kingdoms
nos. 1 and 2 asleep, and elemental kingdom no. 3 active on globe
A. After its — no. 3's — life cycle is completed on globe A, then
comes the fourth or mineral kingdom on globe A, and there does
precisely as did its predecessors, elemental kingdoms nos. 1, 2,
and 3, i.e., it runs through its sevenfold stock-race or course on
globe A. And instantly that this is finished, the mineral kingdom
enters into dormancy or sleep or obscuration on globe A, and the
vegetable kingdom begins to appear there. Meanwhile, when that
happens, the mineral kingdom passes down to globe B, following
the same rule or operation or function of nature as did the
preceding kingdoms or life-waves. As the vegetable kingdom
appears on globe A, elemental kingdom no. 3 passes on to globe C.
No. 2 passes on to globe D, our earth;
and no. 1 then passes on to
globe E. Then, on globe A, appears the animal kingdom; and when
it has run through its sevenfold course it passes down to globe B,
and coincidently each of the five preceding kingdoms or life-
waves makes a step forward to the next globe. Then, finally,
comes the 7th, the human kingdom, on globe A. So that when the
human on globe A appears, the first elemental kingdom is
beginning its work on globe G — the last of the manifest seven.
Thus, step by step, one kingdom or life-wave following the other
in turn, the seven life-waves pass from globe A to globe G through
all the intermediate globes; but when the 7th or human kingdom
reaches globe G, the other kingdoms are also respectively
completing their evolution there; the reason being the law of
retardation operating to slow up the progress of the inferior
kingdoms on the upward arc, because these inferior kingdoms
ascend through the globes on the upward arc with more difficulty
than the higher and more evolved
kingdoms. The drag of matter
holds them back.

This is the first chain-round. From the second chain-round on, the
process is different, and we shall have to study that difference in
detail next week, perhaps, or at a later meeting. Meanwhile,
please get this clear. The march of the life-waves through the
spheres represents one detail of the circulations of the kosmos —
the passing of the life-entities from sphere to sphere.
Furthermore, we have been speaking mostly of globe A; and
therefore when we say mineral and vegetable and animal and
human, we do not mean those things as we know them on earth
today, on this globe D in this fourth round, in their already more
or less evolved condition now. We are speaking of the first round
of and through the first planet, or globe A; and those kingdoms as
they then were would be to our present perceptions, even at their
fullest development on globe A during the first round, the mere
filmy and invisible and wholly imperfect presentments of what
they are to be in the future
— i.e., they would seem to us to be
spiritual entities. And yet to their own globe, and to themselves,
even in that first round and on that first globe A, they were as
physical as our globe is now to us, and we are to each other.

At our last meeting, you will remember that we discussed the

question: What is the basis of proof upon which our esoteric
teachings rest? Whence came they, and how old are they? Let us
take the first part of this question: "What is the basis of proof?"
The answer to that is simple. The basis of proof is the operations
and functions of universal nature, as we have repeatedly said. By
nature we mean not physical nature alone, but all that is, inner
and outer, higher and lower — everything; for that is truth, that
is, the reality of being. Now that is the basis. How do we gain an
understanding and a knowledge of these things and facts of
universal nature? So far as the understanding is concerned, the
argument in proof is presented on the same grounds on which
any fact or truth of nature is presented and by an appeal to
intelligence and common sense.

"Science" in our days is a word to swear by. Call a thing scientific

and people will swallow it without much pretense of close
analysis. It does not matter much to the average man whether the
scientific allegation be true or not per se. He rarely examines it. It
may be a "scientific fact" today; and then tomorrow it is replaced
by some other "scientific fact." No men in the world, I venture to
say, have more real reverence for true science, i.e., for classified
and coordinated knowledge, than have ourselves; but for the
theories and hypotheses of scientific researchers we have no
more respect than those hypotheses are intrinsically worth. The
day when science begins to dogmatize through its
representatives, it becomes nothing more than a peculiar kind of
church. I know of nothing that kills dogmatism more quickly and
easily and naturally than these studies in our ancient wisdom; for
the simple reason that no sooner do we understand one thing,
and think that we
have seized a final truth, than we learn from
the expansion of our faculties and our knowledge, the very
wholesome lesson that it is but a baby's introduction to a truth
still more sublime. We learn that lesson very, very quickly; and if
we have any tendency to dogmatize or to worship mental idols of
any kind, that tendency is quickly killed in us by further study.

Here is our point: ask any scientist for proof of one of the
established theorems of his science; let us put it even more
forcibly, for proof of one of the more recondite facts of nature,
and he will probably say to you: "When you come to me, after
having pursued an adequate course of study, and your mind has
been disciplined to understand what you are asking about, then I
may be able better to aid you, for then you will be able to
understand what I shall have to say." And the man would be
absolutely right in giving such an answer, which is exactly in
substance what our Teachers tell us. That answer comprises the
basis of the argument in proof. When the questioner or aspirant
is willing to discipline himself and to study, not merely to read,
but to give adequate thought and study to the subject — mental
study and mental and moral discipline, including physical care
for the body, and above all else showing deep spiritual aspiration
— when he has thus truly disciplined himself,
because "discipline
precedes the Mysteries"; when his nature is thus opened up and
trained, all exactly in principle as the scientist tells the inquirer to
do, then he shall know, for, as the Masters tell us: "Live the life,
and ye shall know the doctrine, because knowledge will come to
you naturally." And this living the life, let us say in passing,
means not merely one thing, it does not mean merely morality of
sex alone, however important that truly is; it means, if anything,
far more than that. It means the full training of the interior man
to be true, right, clean, aspiring; in other words, the good old-
fashioned word righteousness, acting rightly because you are
thinking rightly; because such training opens wide the doors
within to the light. The man — and woman, too, of course — who
has envy or jealousy or hatred or selfish ambition corroding his
soul, or who nourishes revenge in his heart, or any other and all
others of these denizens of the inner
infernal regions, these
hellions of the inner man, is utterly unfit to understand the
doctrine; and for a very simple reason. His intellect is befuddled
and beclouded. His psychic nature is thickened and rendered
gross. His inner nature is cut off from its spiritual sun and its
inspiration; and his very brain-mind becomes opaque to the
millions of rays of the higher nature.

Now these are old reflections; we all know them; we have read
them time and time again. But let us take home into our hearts
this illustration: just as the scientist tells his inquirer, When you
have studied and are prepared, then come to me, and we will
begin investigation, for then you will be able to understand; so do
our Teachers tell us. When you are disciplined and are ready,
when you are prepared and trained, then come to us and we will
investigate nature's secrets, and you will then have firsthand
proof; because you yourself, your inner nature, will not merely
have been so quickened that knowledge will come to you
naturally and intuitionally, and you will know, but your soul, or
rather spirit-soul, through the methods of training of the ancient
wisdom, and of the ancient schools, will be sent into the very
heart of being, of universal nature, and you will discover
firsthand knowledge for yourself — a knowledge that will endure
unchanged for aye!
This answer simply imbodies facts that we all know. Our
teachings are based on, or rather are the codified expression, the
formulated expression of, the fundamental operations or functions
of nature, of universal nature. The argument in proof, or the
demonstration, takes exactly the same form, and rests upon
exactly the same grounds, as does the argument or proof of a fact
in natural physical science. Fulfill the conditions, and you will
have the knowledge, says the one; and so says the other.

Now as regards the whence. These teachings came to the first

conscious human race on our globe in this round from semidivine
beings who brought them over from a previous manvantara; and
these semidivine beings were once men, as we now are. These
beings or revealers are what we shall in our turn be when the
sevenfold manvantara of our planetary chain shall have ended its
course; and we shall then become the teachers and instructors on
the future planetary chain, the child and offspring of this chain,
of those vast hosts of less progressed entities who are now trailing
along behind us on this chain.

This form of instruction was first communicated to the original

thinking human race by direct passing; and then, as time went on,
and the races of men sank more deeply into matter, there were
established leaders of the people, priest-kings of the so-called
divine dynasties, a fact which was the original source of what has
now become a mere legend, the so-called divine right of kings,
which was then an actual fact. There were then true priest-kings,
leaders of men; spiritual souls, in other words, consciously
working among men. Then, still later, when the races sank still
more deeply into matter, these priest-kings, great and noble
beings, geniuses of the first water, spiritual luminaries in every
sense, were replaced by the priest-colleges, depositories of the
primeval revelation; and then the Mysteries were inaugurated, to
which chosen ones were taken from the masses of the people for
initiation and for spiritual and intellectual training, in an era still
more engrossed in matter.

This last happened at about the middle period of the fourth root-
race, the race which preceded ours; and this system of the
Mysteries has descended even to our own day.

But there is still one fact most difficult to explain, but which must
be gone into at least shortly in order to complete our survey; and
that is, that from the very beginning of our round on this earth,
from the very beginning of the first race, a race of empty and
mentally senseless "shells" — in the sense that the beasts are
"shells," not being enlightened by the inner intellectual light, the
inner rays, the manasaputras — from the very beginning of
human race-life on this earth in this round certain entities, of far
higher grade than man will be even aeons upon aeons hence, had
come to earth and had watched over and guided the evolution of
the first and second and early third races. During the third stock-
race they created, by the power of will and yoga, by kriyasakti, a
mystic body of high adepts and seers, a body which is the most
secret and hid; and this body has functioned and worked even
down to our own times, and it is what we today call the Lodge of
the
Masters, its representative among men on earth today. Those
beings "created" by will and yoga, by kriyasakti, were they who
carried on the mystic knowledge, the wisdom of the gods, from
age to age during the aeons that dropped, one after the other, into
the background of the past, passing that knowledge on to their
successors in turn, until it at present has reached our own day.

Let us leave this, and take up the third point of query. How old is
the esoteric wisdom? We have already answered that question in
the foregoing observations; but we might add this, that its age is
incomputable per se — it is, rather, ageless. Can you tell me,
please, how old are the functions and operations of universal
nature? Tell me that, and then I will tell you how old the ancient
wisdom is! It is ageless. This wisdom of universal nature, the
reality of being, is the same to an inhabitant of a planet circling
around Sirius or any other great or small star, as it is to us. It is
that wisdom which is in our day truly called theosophy, god-
wisdom, the wisdom of the gods — that which they themselves
study, we may say.

There was another question which came in a letter, and it alludes

to what is an apparent misunderstanding with regard to the
planet Mars. This questioner seems to have misunderstood, or at
least to be disturbed by, the fact that the planet Mars was
reckoned as one of the planets overseeing one of the globes on the
ascending chain of our system; in other words, the sixth globe of
the manifest seven of our chain, and also as overseeing one of the
globes of the hid five; and she asks: "Why is this, if Mars
represents the principle of desire or kama?" Let us point out first
that we are not alluding to the physical planet Mars. We are
alluding to the hierarchy Mars, when we speak of it as being the
overseer or controller of two of our twelve globes.

Furthermore, as representing the principle of kama or desire,

please bear in mind that Mars is also a septenary; that it has its
own seven, ten, or twelve globes, and that these globes are divine,
and spiritual, and psychic, and one of them physical, as is our
globe earth. Desire is dual. There is a divine desire as well as an
evil desire. What is aspiration, for instance? Obviously, the globes
correspond in the Martian chain to those which it affects in our
chain, and it exercises on the globes of those two planes a
corresponding influence, a noble one.

Whence comes that impulse in a man's nature which makes him

eagerly desire to do good? Yes, remember the old Greek
cosmogonic mythos, that the first divinity to stir in the bosom of
Chaos, was Eros, divine desire. Everything has its opposite, desire
included.

And this questioner further asks about Mars, Mercury, and the
"four other planets," quoting H. P. Blavatsky that they "bear a
relation to Earth, of which no master or high Occultist will ever
speak, much less explain the nature." But I might say this,
perhaps, that this special septenary represents a particular group
whose function is to act in building another planetary chain.

There is another question that has been asked on the subject of

man's entire inner constitution: whether this is also twelvefold, as
is the complete constitution of the planetary chain. We have said
that man has seven manifest principles, which make of him a
complete man. He also has three higher principles which, when
they become manifest in him, make of him a divine being, a
dhyan-chohan. In addition to all these, he has two more "links." I
have avoided speaking of them as "principles," in order to avoid
creating confusion. But he has two more links — one in his higher
nature, and one beneath him — along one or the other of which it
is his destiny to travel. Now you may call these two extra links
principles if you like. I do not think that they should be so called
because man is a self-conscious hierarchy. His entire nature is a
denary, or composed of ten fundamental principles; and really
this higher link is the root by which he is rooted into divinity. It is
so high
above him, that to say that it is one of man's principles
sounds to me like a desecration of thought, or a blasphemy.

On the other hand, in the nadir of his being, beneath him, he has
the other link, or the twelfth, if you like, counting downwards.
This other link, this other body or field of matter or force, or both,
or force-matter or energy-substance, along which it may be his
awful destiny to travel, is his link with absolute matter, and is the
opposite of his divine root.
The further question comes up: Can you call these two links
principles or not? I can only say that if you call them principles,
then man's twelve principles correspond in a general way each to
each to the twelve globes of our chain. But otherwise we may say
this, that the first (or the last) of these twelve globes symbolizes
man's link with the divine; and our earth-globe, the lowest in the
diagram on page 574, which is the copy in gross matter of the
highest globe, is his link going downwards into absolute matter.

You remember what H. P. Blavatsky says in one of her beautiful

works, The Voice of the Silence, where she speaks of the "men of
Myalba." Now, Myalba is our earth, and it is also called a hell. It is
so considered in the esoteric wisdom; and we have pointed out
before and now once more say in concluding this answer, that of
these hells some are described as being quite pleasant and
agreeable to the beings who inhabit them; but to the beings who
live on the superior globes above them they would be awful. The
description of a globe as a hell must be properly understood, in
order to get the meaning of this truly profound fact. "Hell" means
the limitations and sorrows inevitable to spiritual entities passing
through a globe of gross matter, such as our earth-globe is.

Chapter 46
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty-Six
The Chela Life. Seven and Ten Life-waves: The Course of the
Monads around the Seven Globes; Laws of Acceleration on the
Downward and of Retardation on the Upward Arc. Fifth and Sixth
Rounders. The Sacred Word.

There are many sorts of chelas. There are lay chelas and
probationary ones; accepted chelas and those who are
trying to fit themselves to be even lay chelas. Any person
can constitute himself a lay chela, feeling sure that he may
never in this life consciously hear from his guide. Then as
to probationary chelas, there is an invariable rule that they
go upon seven years' trial. These "trials" do not refer to
fixed and stated tests, but to all the events of life and the
bearing of the probationer in them. There is no place to
which applicants can be referred where their request could
be made, because these matters do not relate to places and
to officials: this is an affair of the inner nature. We become
chelas; we obtain that position in reality because our inner
nature is to that extent opened that it can and will take
knowledge: we receive the guerdon at the hands of the
Law. — W. Q. Judge, Letters That Have Helped Me, pp. 54-5

"Verily! it is this noble eightfold path; that is to say: right

views; right aspirations; right speech; right conduct; right
livelihood; right effort; right mindfulness; and right
contemplation.

"This, O Bhikkhus, is that middle path, avoiding these two

extremes, discovered by the Tathagata — that path which
opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to
peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlightenment,
 to Nirvana!" — Dhamma-Chakka-Ppavattana-Sutta (Max
Muller, trans.), (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi, 147-8)

Seek this wisdom by doing service, by strong search, by

questions, and by humility; the wise who see the truth will
communicate it unto thee, and knowing which thou shalt
never again fall into error, . . . — Bhagavad-Gita, ch. 4 (W.
Q. Judge Recension)

Let loyalty and truth be paramount with you. — Confucius

Be what you love. Strive after what you find beautiful and
high, and let the rest go. Harmony, sacrifice, devotion: take
these for keynotes; express them everywhere and in the
highest possible way. — W. Q. Judge

THERE IS something very beautiful and encouraging in the

thought that the doctrines which we study have been studied with
the same devotion in other ages, not only by learners such as we
are, but by the greatest minds of all times; and, furthermore, that
these being the doctrines of nature, of Mother Nature, they are
essentially the same in all parts of the boundless spaces of the
kosmos, so that kindred thinkers on the planets of other solar
systems study the same essential thoughts that we do. As the
mind of man grows in its comprehension of these wonderful
doctrines, as his mind expands and his soul grows greater under
the inspiriting rays of his inner spiritual sun, he comes to realize
that the more he learns, the more does he know that there are
endless knowledges ahead to learn; until, finally, the student
reaches the point where his whole soul is infilled with a
reverence and a love and a devotion for truth and his teachers
that know no limits; and truly, that realization is the mainspring
and
the inspiration of what we call the chela life.

I have been hoping, before the present cycle of our studies is

concluded, to touch upon this question of the inner life of the
student, the chela life, because I know nothing that is more
beautiful, nothing that is so encouraging, and at the same time
nothing that calls for larger exercise of the truly spiritual will and
of the higher understanding than do the requirements of soul
needed in order to follow that chela life; because that life calls out
everything that a man has in him, or a woman has in her —
everything. You may remember that H. P. Blavatsky somewhere,
in fact in several places, speaks of the chela life as being very,
very beautiful, and at other times as being a "terrible" thing. And
so it is, and for one simple reason which we shall mention, and
then we shall turn to our evening's study.

The reason is this: beautiful we know it is. But why should it be

"terrible"? Because no sooner does the student set his feet finally
and firmly on that still small path, which we are told leads to the
very heart of the universe, than everything that is in his karma
and that would find expression through many future lives
perhaps, comes down upon him all at the same time, more or less;
and, as H. P. Blavatsky says, to succeed requires an inflexible will
of iron and an undivided concentration of all his faculties upon
the great work. He must face, and conquer, in one short lifetime
perhaps, the karmic fruitages of bygone mistakes and failures
falling upon his devoted soul; all at once, like horrible ghosts of
the past. You can imagine what that means! He must face them,
and conquer. Such is the working of nature and the karmic law;
and all aspirants must go through the trial. Our Teachers as well
as all others have had to face karmic circumstances, and conquer
them; and these
things have been a puzzle to the ignorant outside
world, which inevitably has most unjustly blamed the aspirant. In
H. P. Blavatsky's life, to take an instance, there are passages
which, as anyone who knows of and who can understand them
aright will realize, redound infinitely to her credit; but the
ignorant and biased and cruel world does not see the originating
karmic cause of past lives in those passages, and blames her as
having originated them in this life as "weaknesses" in its blind
view, because it does not know of what these greater souls have
to face when their devoted feet are following the path to glory
and success — "working out old karma," as the saying is.

I think that this is a very valuable truth which we should

carefully reflect over; and to me it has always been a very
practical and morally useful one, because it brings charity for
others into our hearts, a greater kindliness, and a greater
realization of the nobility, of the self-sacrifice, of those who tread
this path — not for themselves but for us, a path which yet is pure
joy; it is absolutely so; but, on the other hand, until the final
victories have been won, and they must be won, it is often strewn
with pitfalls and surrounded with circumstances which cause the
treader of that path to be grossly and cruelly misjudged by the
world, which sees but understands not.

We have been studying during the last few evenings the doctrine
of the planetary chains, and we have arrived at the point where
we are enabled to see how the various planets of our chain, as
illustrating all the planetary chains, came into being as the off-
throwings of the life-waves coming down from the rest to which
they had gone when leaving the preceding planetary chain at its
pralaya, or death.

Now what do we mean when we speak of life-waves, the seven —

or the ten? We mean the collective hosts of the monads; and in
order to have a short and easy definition, which perhaps will best
recall to our minds what a monad is, let us call it, if you please, a
spiritual ego. It is, in fact, a consciousness-center, being in the
spiritual realms of the universal life what the life-atoms are in the
lower planes of form. Now these monads and life-atoms
collectively are the seven (or ten) life-waves — these monads with
the life-atoms in and through which they work; these life-atoms
having remained — when the former planetary chain went into
pralaya — in space as kosmic dust on the physical plane, and as
corresponding life-atoms or life-specks of differentiated matter
on the intermediate planes above the physical.

Out of the working of the monads as they come down into matter
— or rather through and by the monadic rays permeating the
lower planes of matter — are the globes builded: partly out of the
substance of the monads themselves, thrown out from
themselves; and partly from the ingathering of the life-atoms
magnetically attracted to the incoming monadic life-waves, for
these are the same life-atoms that formed the various vehicles of
those identical monads in the preceding planetary chain, and
therefore are now attracted to them again. These life-atoms had
remained behind, when that former chain died, on each of the
various planes: the physical, the astral, the psychic, the
intellectual, the quasi-spiritual, the spiritual, and the divine; for
all these planes or worlds have their various life-atoms (or
building bricks) through and in which these spiritual egos or
monads work.

We have already explained the building of the globe A, the first

on the downward arc of our own planetary chain. Let us briefly
recapitulate. The seven (or ten) hosts of monads, or the seven life-
waves, consist of monads in seven degrees of advancement for
each host, or in ten degrees, if we count ten. Let us say seven for
purposes of easy illustration. Therefore, these seven main hosts
with their seven subdivisions each, comprise the 49 "fires," or the
49 sublife-waves, which work and function through the globes of
the planetary chain during the rounds after they have builded
those globes. These seven main groups or hosts or hierarchies
pertained each one to a respective one of the seven manifest
globes of the planetary chain that was — of the moon in our case;
and they build each one the respective new globe of the planetary
chain that is or that will be — of the earth in our case. Yet all
enter into the work of building each globe, for instance, globe A;
and when globe A is
builded, they all enter into the work of
building globe B; and likewise so with globes C and D and E and F
and G, which are all of the manifest seven.

In doing this work of building, first enter into the arena of

activity, as said before, the three kingdoms of the elementals, one
kingdom of which may perhaps be called a spiritual kingdom. The
second kingdom of the elementals we may perhaps call a quasi-
spiritual or akasic kingdom; and the third elemental kingdom is
much more material, immediately preceding the mineral which is
the fourth kingdom. The other life-waves or the hosts or
hierarchies, outside of these four, are those of the vegetable, the
beast or so-called animal, and the human; and then finally above
these seven are three other kingdoms, thus forming ten; and
these three highest are the kingdoms of the dhyan-chohans, the
completed or fully evolved entities from the preceding lunar
manvantara. About them there is a most fascinating detailed
study, which we cannot go into tonight. It has reference to the
reason why these particular dhyan-chohans failed to attain full
dhyan-chohanship during the lunar manvantara, and therefore
were obliged
to take a hand in the building of the succeeding
planetary chain, that of our earth, in which they actually
function, however, as the inspiring spirits, the inspiring gods, so
to say.

Now then: first enters elemental kingdom no. 1, and forms the
basis or lays the foundation of globe A. When it has run through
its sevenfold cycle, when its seventh subcycle begins, its first
subclass is attracted to the plane below in order to form the
foundation of globe B as it had done that of globe A. But it is the
surplus of life which so descends. The actual elemental kingdom
no. 1 belonging to globe A remains behind on globe A and goes
into dormancy there; whereas the surplus of life which elemental
kingdom no. 1 had in its bosom (latent as it were in globe A) is
projected out or attracted to that spot of kosmos which is to
develop into globe B, because the monads of this surplus of life
belonged to globe B of the lunar chain, as the monads on globe A
did to globe A of the lunar chain. Then follows on globe A,
elemental kingdom no. 2; followed in turn by all the other
kingdoms. As each new kingdom enters globe A, a step forward is
taken by all the preceding kingdoms, each to its succeeding
globe.

After elemental kingdom no. 2 ends its course, then on globe A

follows elemental kingdom no. 3; and when its seventh
subkingdom is running its course, its first subkingdom is
projected to globe B, which also attracts the same. Meanwhile, the
first subkingdom on globe B of no. 2 moves to globe C; and
elemental kingdom no. 1 passes to globe D; and so it is that these
kingdoms follow each other, step by step, globe after globe, up to
globe G.

Then on globe A comes the mineral kingdom, or what may be

called the mineral kingdom on such a spiritual globe as is globe A.
We probably could not conceive of its condition on globe A, first
round, in our present condition of existence here on globe D,
fourth round, although we — our monads — passed through that
condition on globe A. We ourselves as monads took a part in that
building of the mineral on globe A, first round.

Each one of the kingdoms on the several globes below globe A,

when the mineral kingdom enters globe A, now each in its turn
moves a step forward to the next globe. Then appears the
vegetable kingdom on globe A, and then the animal, and then the
human. As each following one appears, each of the preceding
kingdoms, each on its globe, moves one step forward to its next
globe; so that it works out that when the first subkingdom of
elemental kingdom no. 1 reaches the last manifest globe, or globe
G, the first subkingdom of the human (or what is the "human" for
globe A) reaches globe A and runs its course there. Then follow on
globe A the three highest kingdoms, the dhyan-chohanic, but in a
very peculiar way; and it would overload our minds, I think, at
the present time, to go into the details of that study now. Let us
get the main principles of the course of the monads around the
seven globes clear first.

When these seven kingdoms — from elemental no. 1 to the

human — have finished their evolution on globe A during this
first round, globe A goes into what Mr. Sinnett called obscuration,
that is, into dormancy; it goes to sleep. Everything on it is now
dormant, is sleeping, awaiting the incoming of the life-waves
when round no. 2 begins. Please remember that we are now
studying round no. 1 only. Beginning with round no. 2, the
process followed by the life-waves through the seven globes
changes. Again when the life-waves have run their full sevenfold
course, or their seven stock-races or root-races on globe B, then it
in its turn goes into dormancy or obscuration, which is not
pralaya, please. Technically not. It may be possible to call the state
of dormancy by the name of pralaya in a general sense; but
pralaya really means disintegration and disappearance, like that
of death. But obscuration is sleep; it is, really, dormancy. And so is
it with each one of these seven globes, one
after the other. When
the final or rather the last representatives of the last stock-race,
i.e., of the last life-wave, leave it, each one in turn then goes to
sleep or into dormancy.

But there is an interesting fact, due to what the Masters have

called the law of acceleration operating on the downward arc,
and the law of retardation operative on the upward arc. It so
happens that the most evolved kingdoms, such as the human and
the beast and the vegetable, pass through their various cycles
more quickly than do the younger kingdoms or hosts of these
seven life-waves or hierarchies, such as the mineral and the three
elemental kingdoms. These latter are younger, and have not been
over the ground before; whereas the more evolved kingdoms
have to go over what is, in a certain sense, a more familiar path —
unfamiliar only in this respect, that they are now running the
round in a new planetary chain, on and in and through a new
plane or world of the universal kosmos.

Remember that there are seven planes of kosmos, ten really; but
we are now keeping our study limited to the seven manifest
planes. With each new planetary chain, a new subdivision of one
of those seven worlds or planes is entered upon, for this purpose:
to gain experience in every world or plane that the universal
solar system offers the evolving entities of the life-waves. So that
when seven full chain-manvantaras have been run through — in
other words, when seven planetary chains have been lived
through — one complete plane of the kosmos has been traversed
or experienced by the life-waves, and there then ensues what is
called a solar pralaya. This is another deep subject which we
reserve for future study.

Now, then, all the entities in our first round on our present
planetary chain have reached globe G, the last of the manifest
seven; the smaller and inferior and less evolved entities having
had more trouble and difficulty in making the route, in running
the round, on account of having had less experience in former
great cycles. But as these less kingdoms, inferior kingdoms, come
down the arc of descent, being more matter-full than the more
evolved, i.e., the older and therefore more spiritualized, they run
faster than do these latter; and this is the acceleration of the
speed of development of the lower kingdoms on the downward
arc. Conversely, on the upward arc, from our globe D or the earth,
the rate of development is reversed; the higher kingdoms run
faster, while there is for those lower kingdoms a law of
retardation: acceleration for the higher kingdoms, such as the
human, but a slowing down or retardation for the lower
kingdoms.

Here is the reason why the process of evolution works out as I

have tried to explain it: when all these seven hierarchies do
finally reach globe G during this first round, they reach it all
together, that is to say, they gather on that last globe G all
together, globe G being the last globe of the manifest seven; and
here they all finish the first round simultaneously before the
interplanetary nirvana begins.

After this long interplanetary nirvana, when it is ended, then

opens round 2 on globe A, and round 2 is the exemplar, or sets the
example, of the evolutionary process for all the succeeding five
rounds, seven rounds in all; and while, indeed, the same general
procedure or plan of evolving on each globe, and from globe to
globe, that was followed in the first round still holds, there is this
immense difference: that all the "houses," the "tenements," used
by the evolving entities in the second round were builded during
the first round for them. They are ready and awaiting the
incoming monads, as the sishtas, the remainders, of the first
round. So that the entities, the host of monads, when they return
to globe A and the other globes of the chain for the second round,
have but to step into and thus awaken these sleeping bodies or
houses, each host passing into its own class, instead of having to
build anew and go through the lowest houses or bodies up to the
highest, as was the case
in the first round; for each kingdom now
enters into its own appropriate bodies evolved during the first
round and now waiting for the incoming monads. And so it is on
each of the seven globes of the planetary chain. When round 3
begins, an identical procedure is followed; and likewise for all
succeeding rounds.

Another immense difference, already alluded to, is this — that

beginning with the second round, all the lines of evolution or
activity now having been laid, and nothing having to be instituted
de novo, from the ground up, as it were, the progress of the life-
waves or hierarchies is relatively faster for those which are the
most evolved: having this effect, that some smaller hosts of
monads, and individuals too, outrun the others, run through their
evolutionary course much more rapidly, and thus outdistance or
precede the general body of the seven evolving hierarchies, so
that, for instance, when they leave our own globe D, they pass on
ahead of, or before, the bulk of the advancing army, to globe E,
and then to globe F, and finally to G the last, and then have their
interplanetary nirvana ahead of their more slowly evolving
brothers; and return to globe A as advanced rounders. In our
case, the case just cited, they would be fifth rounders, since our
present round is the fourth. This is
why we have fifth rounders
now among us, although we as a human host are in our fourth
round. As regards the sixth rounders — those whose spirituality
is so high, and whose innate capacity acquired through long
aeons of experience is so great that they outrun even the fifth
rounders — they are very, very few in number. Our Teachers tell
us that Gautama the Lord Buddha is the only fully developed sixth
rounder in recorded history who has succeeded in attaining this
exalted state, and he only — the noblest initiate in recorded
history — he only succeeded by virtue of a mystery — a
profoundly esoteric process.

.......

There remain a few scattered thoughts for us to take up before we

leave our study tonight. First: the seven so-called sacred planets
are not all necessarily higher in degree or stage of evolution than
is our earth-chain, although they do indeed actually build our
earth-chain by their supervision and guiding influence as
architects, and by and through the forces which they lend to the
evolving hierarchies or life-waves belonging to our chain. Some
of them, of our seven sacred planets, are actually lower than the
earth is, spiritually. Others are higher. Others again are higher in
degree but less evolved in time than we are; that is to say, they
are spiritually higher, yet they are younger in years. As, for
instance, a son is younger in years than is his father, but it is quite
possible that the growing boy is, spiritually speaking, his father's
superior; not necessarily so, but it could be so and often is.
Gautama the Buddha is an example in point. He vastly outranked
not merely his own family, but all
human beings since his time,
and also for ages preceding his time.

.....

As has been said, the second round opened the new process of
evolution for the remainder of the manvantara of our planetary
chain; and at our next meeting we shall deal briefly with this; and
then we shall turn to our own globe D and its evolutionary
history; because it seems better to follow the lines of study laid
down by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine; and, after having
pointed out the general evolution of the planetary chain, to come
to our own globe and specialize on it. Its history holds all that we
can possibly manage to study and understand for months to
come; and this study will, of course, involve the study of the seven
great stock-races or root-races of our globe during this present
fourth round.

.....

I have before me three questions. The first is as follows:

 What is the true esoteric explanation of the physiological
and psychic effect or influence exerted by the vibratory
movement set in motion by the sounding of the Word,
upon the cerebral or nervous centers of the human body,
and is there any special, definite musical note which ought
to be sustained throughout the sounding?

This question we are not enabled to answer in full for two

reasons: first, interesting as it is, it does not bear upon the subject
of our present study; and the second reason is, that a full answer
to this very interesting question would involve a virtually
complete outline of practical theurgy, and that, of course, is
impossible here and now. But we might say this: the main thing is
not so much what musical note is sounded, as what is behind the
sounding. If the sounding is to be merely a humming, or making a
musical noise, or a vocal exercise, you might as well be still; but if
there is behind the sounding the aspiration of the heart, and the
uplifting of the mind, and the throwing of the will as a
consciously exerted energy to everything that is spiritually noble,
it matters very little, so far as we are concerned, on what note the
voice is sounded. It is what is aroused by will and meditation in
the inner man, or what the inner man is enabled to give out, that
counts for good; but this does not
mean that the proper sounding
of this mystic word cannot be done so as to produce the most
wonderful effects. It certainly can.

The next question is:

Is not our number 10 made of 6 and 4 instead of 7 and 3?

The upper and lower globes are connecting or transition
globes, as I understand. We have often been told that this
earth is the real hell, so to speak, which is now more
comprehensible. Some beings, I understand, may have to
travel lower, which would mean backward, and this must
 be connected with the mystery of the moon, it would seem.
I should also imagine that the lower globe at least, must
have been formed or evolved or compounded differently
from the others.

The answer to the last part of this question is, no. It has not been
evolved differently. As regards "the upper and lower globes being
connecting or transition globes," I presume the person who sent
this question in meant the uppermost and lowest; in other words,
no. 1 and our earth. They are so. The rest of the question has
already been answered. The evolving entities are ever traveling,
either lower or higher; and this is very truly connected in one
direction very straitly with the "mystery of the moon"; but this is
a subject which, for us at least, is and must remain absolutely
tabu for the present.

I will in a few moments draw a diagram which will illustrate the

question of the 6 and 4, or 7 and 3. Meanwhile, we will go on to
the next question.

The moon must also have had twelve globes?

It did.

Are possibly our present globes the ones which held this
position for the moon?

They are, yes, in a sense; not the actual present globes of our
chain, but their "privations," as Aristotle would have said. That is
to say, those spiritual-astral remnants or types or images which
the lunar globes became when they went into pralaya, do
reappear again when the new planetary chain comes into being,
and around them are formed, as around a model, the 12 globes of
the earth-chain. The answer, then, is both yes and no; the 12
globes of the moon that were, come out of "privation" as types or
models for the 12 globes of the new chain to be — the earth-chain.
 And those now above us the ones we shall next use,
climbing as does the nautilus, who "left the past year's
dwelling for the new"?

I do not fully, perhaps, understand this part of the question;

because, obviously, we shall use next all the globes on the
ascending arc, and of course we shall climb. Unless, indeed, the
questioner means, perhaps, three of the five hid globes, the three
on the ascending arc; in which case the answer is the same, yes.

Now with regard to the 6 and 4, or 7 and 3. I might point out that
it is quite possible theoretically to divide these ten principles of
man or nature in various ways. I have never heard, however, of a
division into 6 and 4. I do not see why it could not be so divided;
but I have never heard of such a division; and, to follow the old
saying, "We have not so received it, and we cannot so impart it" —
in substance, an old Buddhist saying. But the division into 7 and 3
is a natural division. There is a sharp separation between the
divine worlds and the worlds of manifestation, and this division
into 7 and 3 shows it. But the best two divisions that I have ever
heard of or seen of the 7 and 10 principles are this and one other,
as seen in this first diagram. Here we have an upper triangle (this
diagram is a symbol, please understand, a symbolic diagram), a
triangle with its "horn" pointing upwards; then an intermediate
square below it; and then a triangle with its horn pointing
downwards. These three figures show the ten innate or natural
principles of man: the divine triad; the intermediate quaternary,
showing the personal or individual entity as a composite and
complete "man"; and the lower triangle with its horn, if you like,
pointing downwards.

Now this is a very general diagram, but it does show how the ten
element-principles function: the divine, the purely material, and
the intermediate quaternary. But for practical purposes, I think
the best way is to divide the ten principles of man as shown by
diagram 2. First, of course, is the upper or divine triangle, a figure
which goes without saying. Then we divide the intermediate
quaternary into two duads. Please remember that this composite
drawing is a symbolic diagram used merely for purposes of
illustration. Here, then, we have, as before, the divine triad above;
then the duad of the monad, so to say, atma-buddhi. Then the
second or personal or astral duad, which is manas and kama.
Then below is the inverted triangle representative of the mere
vehicle, the body — that is to say, the sthula-sarira and the linga-
sarira and the pranas. The value of this division is, that if you
study it, it will most admirably illustrate what happens to a man
post mortem, or after death. This
intermediate quaternary can be
divided, as said, into these two duads, which separate naturally
after death. They can be separated even in life, without a man's
killing himself. When a man dies, the lower triangle disperses,
simply goes to pieces. The psychological struggle after death,
when the "second death" ensues, takes place between this lower
duad, kama and manas, or kama-manas, and the monad, atma-
buddhi; and if the upper duad, atma-buddhi, succeeds in taking
out from this lower duad all that is of good in it, then the
reincarnating ego has its stock of experience increased, and its
incarnation has not then been a failure.

The lower duad likewise is mortal, and finally goes to pieces; but
the monad, the upper duad, is at last indrawn into the divine
triangle, into the three highest of the ten principles of man, and
there it passes its postmortem experience, whether it be
devachan for the ego of ordinary men or nirvana for the initiates.

Chapter 47
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty-Seven
Teacher and Pupil. Requisites of Chelaship.

"1. To the earnest Disciple his Teacher takes the place of

Father and Mother. For, whereas they give him his body
and its faculties, its life and casual form, the Teacher shows
him how to develop the inner faculties to the acquisition of
the Eternal Wisdom.

"2. To the Disciple each Fellow-Disciple becomes a Brother

and Sister, a portion of himself, for his interests and
aspirations are theirs, his welfare interwoven with theirs,
his progress helped or hindered by their intelligence,
morality, and behavior through the intimacy brought
about by their co-discipleship." — From the Book of
Discipline in the Schools of Dzyan, quoted by H. P.
Blavatsky

The WISE ONES tarry not in pleasure-grounds of senses.

The WISE ONES heed not the sweet-tongued voices of

illusion.

Seek for him who is to give thee birth, in the Hall of

Wisdom, the Hall which lies beyond, wherein all shadows
are unknown, and where the light of truth shines with
unfading glory.

That which is uncreate abides in thee, Disciple, as it abides

in that Hall. If thou would'st reach it and blend the two,
thou must divest thyself of thy dark garments of illusion. . .
.

Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou hast become
 that Path itself. . . .

"UPADHYAYA, the choice is made, I thirst for Wisdom. . . .

Thy servant here is ready for thy guidance."

'Tis well, Sravaka. Prepare thyself, for thou wilt have to

travel on alone. The Teacher can but point the way. The
Path is one for all, the means to reach the goal must vary
with the Pilgrims. — The Voice of the Silence, pp. 7, 12, 45

WE ARE GOING to interrupt the regular course of our studies

tonight in order to take up a subject which undoubtedly is very
dear to the hearts of all of us, and upon which we have touched
more or less briefly at different times: that is to say, the subject of
the relationship between teacher and pupil, between what the old
Hindus called the guru and the chela. We are going to treat it
from our standpoint, of course; not as that relationship has been
all too often misunderstood in different countries and at different
times in those periods which Plato called periods of spiritual
barrenness. Our age is one of such periods or, perhaps better, is
just emerging from one; and you all remember, doubtless, how in
one of the most beautiful of the ancient Hindu writings, the
Bhagavad-Gita, the Logos Krishna states that at such periods he
incarnates anew in order to save and establish the just and to
overthrow the unjust and the wicked — for the reestablishment
of righteousness on earth.

This relationship is an extremely sacred one, because it is a tie

which binds closely heart to heart, mind to mind; and, according
to the beautiful teachings of the ancient wisdom, the preceptor,
the teacher, the guru, the master — call him or her by what name
you will — acts as the midwife, bringing to birth, helping to bring
into the active life of the disciple, the hid part of the disciple, the
soul of the man. You remember that Socrates always refused to
hear himself called a teacher in the ordinary sense. But he said: "I
am a midwife to young men, because I bring their souls to birth. I
help the inner being, the inner man, to express himself." And this
is exactly the spiritual relation that the teacher holds to the
disciples, to the pupils, to the chelas, the learners, the hearers —
call them by what name you will.

The idea is, again, that the latent spiritual potencies in the mind
and heart of the learner shall receive such assistance as the
teacher can give, but it does not mean that the teacher shall do all
the work that the disciple himself or herself must do. No child can
be taught to walk merely by seeing its parents walk; and no
parent can eat for its child, or drink for its child, or learn for its
child. The child must do these things itself. You may remember
that H. P. Blavatsky frequently points out that, according to the
old teachings, the relationship of teacher and disciple is infinitely
more sacred even than that of parent and child; because, while
the parents give the body to the incoming soul, the teacher brings
forth that soul itself and teaches it to see, and teaches it to know,
and teaches it to become what it is in its inmost being — a divine
thing.

Now we pointed out at our last meeting that the so-called chela
life, or chela path, was a beautiful one, full of joy to its very end;
however, as a warning, lest such an idea be taken in a light or
frivolous manner, in a manner not sufficiently deeply
understood, we endeavored also to point out that it called forth
and needed everything noble and high in the learner or disciple
himself or herself; for the powers or faculties of the higher self
must be brought into activity in order to attain and to hold those
summits of intellectual and spiritual grandeur where the Masters
themselves live. For that, Masterhood, is the end of discipleship;
not, however, that this ideal should be set before us merely as an
end to attain to as something of benefit for one's own self,
because that very thought is a selfish one and therefore a
stumbling on the path. It is for the individual's benefit, of course;
yet the true idea is that everything and every faculty that is in the
man or the woman, in the soul of either,
shall be brought out in
the service of all humanity; for this is the royal road, the great
royal thoroughfare of self-conquest. It actually is far easier to
follow than is the path of self, the road of shadows. And, as we
have often said before, the path of light, of self-conquest and
growth, leads to the very heart of being, to the very heart of the
universe; because, as the inner faculties develop, as they grow
and expand under the inspiriting rays of the inner spiritual sun,
they receive and comprehend new knowledges, take wider and
vaster insights into the secret chambers of Mother Nature. Each
new insight, each intuition of great things, in its turn opens, as it
were, new doors into chambers still more vast. The mind
undertakes first to understand; and, finally, knows through
immediate perception the realities of the universe, and this is
Masterhood; and beyond those great Teachers, beyond the
Masters themselves, are still greater ones who follow a path still
more sublime!

But every footstep along that path is a footstep — now please

listen carefully and do not judge before you hear the end — is a
footstep of self-sacrifice, sacrifice joyfully made of the lower self's
egoisms; the noblest, the most joyful, the most beautiful thing in
the world, because it is the giving up at each such step of the
shackles of the lower or inferior self with its multitudinous
limitations, in order to pass into a greater light. Cooperation with
others in the great work in that noble sense — and we mean by
the use of that word no modern political shibboleth whatsoever
— the mental and spiritual cooperation not merely between
teacher and disciple, but between the disciples themselves and all
the hosts of the spiritual beings of the universe, can come only
when the lower selfish self is utterly forgotten; and it comes in
exact proportion as this inferior self, our personal ego, is so
forgotten, and the higher self takes over the reins of our destiny.

What is our greatest limitation? What is it that prevents us from

seeing not merely truth itself, but also into futurity and into the
past? What prevents us from knowing the secrets of being? It is
the veils enshrouding the personal self, the concentration of our
thoughts and ideas around the individual, around the personal,
egoic center. We clasp these veils to our breast and thereby
weave around us a web of maya or illusion, because we wish for
personal benefits, and will them, and want them, for the lower
selfish self.

The real process of growth is the exact reverse of this. It is the

casting down of these idols of the personality, the throwing away
of these inner veils, so that the light may come in, that light and
that peace, which latter, in the beautiful words of the Christian
ritual, passeth all understanding of men.

What are some of the requisites of chelaship? First, perhaps,

devotion, devotion to an ideal. Have first the ideal, then be
devoted to it, follow it always. It will require your will fully in
exercise, the spiritual will. Coincidently, perhaps, comes duty. Ask
any man or woman who sincerely has tried to follow this path,
whether duty be such an easy thing, and he will tell you truly that
there is nothing like the right performance of duty, which brings
into the soul such indescribable peace and rest. Think of what it
means to have nothing behind you to undo, no mistakes of the
personality which have to be remedied, rectified! And this can be
done, and easily done. It can be accomplished by following that
still old path, as the Upanishads put it, which leads into the haven
of eternal joy, eternal peace, and to that enwrapping
consciousness of universal presences and processes which to the
nobler side of the intellect is supreme bliss.
Coincidently again with these two is the noble virtue of loyalty.
Can any man succeed in anything unless he be true? Fancy a man
undertaking a noble work and being told to trust neither himself
nor his fellows! How is it possible to succeed with one's own
nature running in diverse directions, his very heartstrings pulled
here and there, hither and yon, by the conflict of selfish desires
and by the petty egoisms of his personality? It cannot be done.

These principles of chelaship rest on no vague or uncertain

foundation, but on the vast experiences of the human race, which
any man or woman can prove by looking within, looking into
those founts of spiritual life, crystal clear and pellucid as the
water of the mountain tarn; where he may see, as in the beautiful
old mythos of Narcissus, his own reflection, the reflection of his
own divine self. That can never be done when and as long as the
mind is covered with the dust of its enshrouding veils. It is the
dust of selfish actions, the cravings of these petty egoisms, the
disturbed and untranquil surface of the mind blown upon by the
windy gusts of passion, which unfit it utterly to reflect the higher
self — the companion of stars. That which reflects the stars, itself
must be in a sense starlike; and only that which is starlike in the
soul can understand the lessons of the stars.

So far, then, as regards the teaching. But how about the teacher?
What man would go upon a ship captained by another man in
whom he had no confidence at all? What man would step into an
automobile driven by another man whom he knew to be
drunken? A trite simile, but a very true one, and directly
applicable to the case in point. Where, then, shall we find these
teachers, those in whom we can place such trust? We can, indeed,
learn something from the books, the great scriptures of the old-
time religions, written by great initiates. We can learn much even
from their surface meanings; but there is a key which unlocks
still deeper meanings in those scriptures, and that key can be
imparted alone by one who knows, a teacher.

Now where shall we find such a teacher? A momentous question,

one, probably, that is asked, would be asked, rather, by anyone
who might hear us speaking as we do. The insignia majestatis, the
"signs of spiritual majesty," cannot be mistaken. Have them in
your own heart, and you will know them when you see them. And
you can have them in your own heart; and how? Simply follow
the noble old rules of conduct. Live as ye should, and ye shall
know the truth, because ye shall see it; and, as our Teachers add,
it will come to you naturally; and you will know the teacher when
you see him or her, and you will also know better than to judge a
teacher by superficial appearances, by the words of the day, the
day's mere exercises and duties; having that light in your own
heart, at least in some degree, you will perceive the kindred rays
in the heart of the teacher, and know him.

Therein lies the meaning of the beautiful saying, ascribed to

Jesus: "I am the way, the truth, and the life," and it is truly so,
because no disciple, no man (or woman) desirous of leading a
better and a nobler life, can put his foot on that path until he
himself becomes it, at least in some degree.

You know that in olden times there were seven (and ten) degrees
of initiation. Let us speak only of the seven. Of these seven
degrees, three consisted of teachings alone, which formed the
preparation, the discipline, mental and spiritual and psychic and
physical; what the Greeks called the katharsis or "cleansing"; and
when the disciple was considered sufficiently cleansed, purified,
disciplined, quiet mentally, tranquil spiritually, then he was taken
into the fourth degree. And this fourth degree likewise consisted
partly of teachings, but also, as we have pointed out before, in
part of direct personal introduction, by the old mystical
processes, into the processes of the universe, by which truth was
gained by firsthand personal experience. In other words, to speak
in plain terms, his spirit-soul, his individual consciousness, was
assisted to pass into other planes and realms of being, and to
know and to understand by the process of becoming them.
Because a man, a mind, an
understanding, can grasp and see and
thereby know only those things which it itself is.

Think over those words, they are full of meaning and truth. You
can understand nothing that is not in you, nothing. No man, for
instance, who is deprived of the mathematical faculty can
understand even the mere elements of mathematics. Having this
mathematical faculty within himself he understands something of
the meaning of the rules of mathematics. No man can understand
what right action is, what devotion and duty and loyalty are,
unless he has at least something in his own soul of devotion and
duty and loyalty; and the more he knows of these beautiful
qualities the more he loves them, the more he wishes to follow
them; and in following them, following them always farther on,
he loves them the more and the more. These truths living in you
lead you finally to a complete understanding of the hearts of your
fellow men; giving you an ability to read their characters, an
ability to understand the woes and troubles that they carry; and
the power as well as the ability, and the desire as well as the
power
and the ability, to replace those sorrows and egoisms in
the hearts of men with joy and peace and love and goodwill.

That is the noble work that is before us; and that is the work of
the Masters themselves. You may remember that when Mr.
Sinnett was in correspondence, through H. P. Blavatsky and two
or three more of the chelas, with the Masters, he was told plainly
that the last truths, even of the limited sphere of esoteric
knowledge that it was permissible to give to him, could not be
imparted to him because, as he himself confesses, he had no right
comprehension of the meaning of universal brotherhood, and no
love for that noble truth. Apparently, his utmost understanding of
that sublime truth was a form of sentimental unity, or merely a
political cooperation. He had, apparently, no sense of the
meaning inherent in the words, the spiritual brotherhood of all
beings and, particularly, of the fact that all human beings are
linked together, not merely by the bonds of emotional thought or
feeling, but by the very fabric of the universe itself, all men, as
well as all beings, springing forth from the inner and
spiritual sun
of the universe, as its hosts of rays. We all come from one source,
that spiritual sun, and are all builded of the same life-atoms on all
the various planes. It is this interior unity of being and of
consciousness, as well as the exterior union of us all, which
enables us to grasp intellectually and spiritually the mysteries of
the universe; because not merely ourselves and our own fellow
human beings, but also all other things that are, are children of
the same parent, great Mother Nature, in all her seven and ten
planes or worlds of being.

After the fourth degree, there followed the fifth and the sixth and
the seventh initiations, each in turn, and these consisted of
teachings also; but more and more, as the disciple progressed,
were there developed in him the faculties — and he was helped in
this development more and more largely as he advanced farther
— there were developed in him the faculties, still farther and
more deeply to penetrate beyond the veils of maya or illusion;
until, having passed the seventh or last initiation of all of the
"manifest" initiations, if we may call them that, he became one of
those truly called supermen whom we call the Mahatmas, great
soul-spirits, whose very nature is magnanimity — used here in the
old Latin sense of "great souledness" — the word meaning exactly
what mahatmaship does in the Sanskrit.

Loyalty to the teacher, devotion to the teacher, the complete

fulfilling of all duties to the teacher, is the other side of this
subject. Devotion, duty, and loyalty to truth and its behests, on the
one side, unfailing, unchanging, never varying; and the same
virtues living in our souls towards the teacher whom we have
chosen, is the other side, because that teacher has given us inner
light, yea, more, has given us inner life, inner life in a very real
and practical sense, and not merely in a mystical one; because, by
the processes of the ancient schools, such a teacher is enabled to
carry the disciple, if uninterrupted in his studies, even over the
gulf of what men call physical death; is enabled so to awaken the
dormant powers of the spirit-soul in him that they function as it
were automatically. The giver of inner light and the giver of inner
life: such is the teacher. How rarely is this recognized or even
known in the Occident today. This explains in part why the
egoistic and so-called
individualistic Occidental, self-satisfied in
his blind folly, hurls against the devotion of teacher and pupil of
the ancient Eastern schools, the devotion of the disciples to their
teacher and of the latter to them, such unkindly and insulting
epithets, calling such devotion mental servitude, calling it mental
subservience, speaking of it in terms of mockery, proving, as said
before, that the critic understands it not, because that noble
virtue is not in his own soul in the sense we mean. How great and
far-reaching is his spiritual loss!

There is something so beautiful in devotion and loyalty and duty,

faithfully carried out, that all nations of men, in all times and in
all countries, have placed those three qualities of the soul in the
very forefront of manly and womanly virtues. I venture to say
that if we follow these three noble virtues faithfully, undismayed
by the many mistakes that we may make, and our courage never
dampened by the falls that we may have, but always rising again
to the battle — I venture to say that as time goes on, easier and
easier, smoother and smoother, will become for us the path of
wisdom and peace, and ever more joyful.
Fidelity is comprised in these things. Semper fidelis, runs the
beautiful Latin motto, "always faithful"! What loveliness of
thought there is in this! What man or woman can fail to despise
the weakness in the weakling, the unfaithfulness in the unfaithful
one! Indeed, such moral obliquity is a human characteristic; even
the beasts have it not. Show me an unfaithful beast. It is only in us
men that this petty vileness has its existence. And what can we
learn from this little fact? Simply this, that we have, in addition to
the innate love of the beast for its master, the divine gift of self-
conscious intellection, which in too many of us is weakly allowed
to remain uncultivated and undeveloped, so that we have but two
or three feeble glimmerings or rays from the spiritual sun, so to
say. And these two or three or more feeble glimmerings are just
enough to put "sin," to use the old word, into our hearts. They are
just enough to make us see and realize our
self-importance, but
not enough to make us see the truth and our inherent spiritual
brotherhood; and here is where the human being fails and falls —
the so-called "secret of Satan."

What, then, is the remedy? More light. What is the remedy for
folly? Wisdom. What is the remedy for ignorance? More
knowledge. With more light, with the flooding of the inner nature
by the rays of the spiritual sun within, these feeble glimmerings
and rays grow and expand, until finally the whole inner nature is
deluged with this wonderful inner light that the mystics of all
ages have talked of; and then unfaithfulness becomes impossible,
utterly impossible. No man will sit down, childlike, and spend his
time casting up sums in simple addition — two and two make
four. He has passed that childish stage. He goes to higher things;
and he looks upon the unfaithfulnesses and the failings of his less
developed brothers with compassion, not with condemnation of
the weakling himself. These weaklings are precisely like little
children with their small sums in arithmetic. They are precisely
like mentally undeveloped people. They have only a few poor
glimmerings or rays in them of that glorious luminary
within.

Now there is the actual psychologic fact. It is not a figure of

speech or metaphor. That is what the criminal is in his inner
nature: I mean the really criminal man or woman who chooses
evildoing from love of it. That is what the poorly developed man
has in him: just these poor feeble glimmerings of the inner sun,
which are all that reach his undeveloped mind; just enough to
make him see something, and to recognize, as he thinks, his own
self-importance. But when the greater light, when the flooding,
the deluging, of the inner nature with the larger illumination
comes, then we see that all there is of us, in the sense of this petty
self, is but a reflection of something nobler; and all our natures,
our entire natures, are opened, when that realization comes, to
an alliance with this inner and higher and nobler self, the
spiritual sun of our inner being.

Chapter 48
Table of Contents
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy — G. de Purucker

Chapter Forty-Eight
The Heart of the Universe. The Way to Peace, Bliss,
Understanding, Is Within. The Great Quest — Know Thyself — the
Whole Secret of Initiation. Our Responsibility: Ethical Values and
the Laws of the Universe; Harmony.

Behold the truth before you: a clean life, an open mind, a

pure heart, an eager intellect, an unveiled spiritual
perception, a brotherliness for one's co-disciple, a
readiness to give and receive advice and instruction, a
loyal sense of duty to the Teacher, a willing obedience to
the behests of TRUTH, once we have placed our confidence
in, and believe that Teacher to be in possession of it; a
courageous endurance of personal injustice, a brave
declaration of principles, a valiant defence of those who
are unjustly attacked, and a constant eye to the ideal of
human progression and perfection which the secret
science (Gupta Vidya) depicts — these are the golden stairs
up the steps of which the learner may climb to the Temple
of Divine Wisdom. — From the Book of Discipline in the
Schools of Dzyan, quoted by H. P. Blavatsky

The ancient narrow path that stretches far away

Has been touched by me, has been found by me.

By it the wise, the knowers of Brahma, go up

Hence to the heavenly world, released. — Brihad-Aranyaka

Upanishad, 4, 4, 8 (Hume, trans.)

The way to final freedom is within thy Self.

That way begins and ends outside of Self. — The Voice of

 the Silence, p. 39

The great secret is sympathy for the souls of men, the will
to press forward to that which is true. — Katherine Tingley

THIS evening's call for a resumption of our esoteric studies was in

one sense unexpected; and instead of following the thread of our
discourses where they were left off, I am going to ask you to
come, all of us together in thought and in spirit, into an
atmosphere of magical beauty, into an atmosphere where the
roots of our being live, and whence is drawn the sustenance, both
spiritual and intellectual, from which the intermediate nature of
man, and also man as he appears in the everyday affairs of life,
finds its nourishment, its guidance, and its direction, and all the
finer things which make man man.

In this spiritual and intellectual atmosphere, I refer first to some

elementary propositions of the ancient wisdom, the first of which
is that all men in their inmost spiritual essence are not merely in
kinship, but in an utter and inseparable union. This does not
mean that the hosts of monads who are the spiritual portions of
men, one monad to one man, are but one monad; but, as you all
must know, it means that the monads themselves also have a
spiritual side, and that that spiritual side or nature of each one
has its roots, finds its ultimate fountain of being, in the
transcendent divine in which we live and move and have our
being.

Therefore through each monad, if we so will it, run the streams of

intellectual omniscience, which streams are transmitted to us
even through the beclouding veils of the intermediate nature; for
we derive both that spiritual life and that intellectual omniscience
— in other words, bliss and pure consciousness and pure
understanding — from the divine which is at the heart or core of
every man and of every woman; yes, and also at the heart and the
core of the beings beneath us, though they as yet have not
evolved the sensitive vehicle which can translate those sublime
and supernal mysteries into comprehensible thought-form
through their lack of the necessary organ of thought, which in
them has not yet expressed itself as a self-conscious faculty.

The human beings above us, I mean those who are the chelas of
the Teachers, and the Teachers themselves, and the Teachers of
the Teachers, are each one respectively a stage nearer than the
preceding class to that divine, a degree or a step higher in the
buddhic hierarchy, in the Hierarchy of Compassion.

Let us recollect that we are the outmost rank or ring of that

buddhic Hierarchy of Compassion, and it depends upon each one
of us, not only upon the life that we live, but upon the ideas that
we hold inshrined in our minds and in our hearts, to how great a
degree we may become faithful transmitters and manifesters of
the divine streams from that supernal source. When we can
transmit these in their native crystalline purity, when our minds
become transmitters so limpid and clear, so high in their
aspirations and so unadulterate in their natures that we can
consciously receive and pass on these life-giving streams, the
streams of understanding from the fountain of the universal life,
then indeed we are saviors of men, saviors of our fellows; and
this is the goal to which the Teachers call us.

For after all, is not this aim the one which the Teachers have told
us is the lifework of themselves, and should be the lifework of us
at the present time? It is. In some countries they speak of a Christ;
in other countries they speak of a Buddha; elsewhere they speak
of one who has found the Way, the Path, who has found Tao. And
in each case the reference is to one who has so completely
subordinated his individuality to the universe that he thereby
becomes the faithful transmitter of the spiritual life.
All these various names and titles mean the same thing. What is
this meaning? It is that the mind and the heart, the understanding
and the consciousness, and therefore the example and the life,
are all at one, all in unity working along the same pathway
leading to the sublime goal at which we have hinted; and this life
so led brings not only to the heart of each one of us a peace and a
joy which pass all ordinary human understanding, but it likewise
enables us to give that peace and that joy to others.

It is through and by the lessons that we learn in our daily life that
come to us the opportunities of setting our feet upon this
pathway. As all of us know, the noblest aim that we can have is to
fit ourselves for this lifework. Now, how is it done? Is it by looking
for mere mysteries and for weird tests and expected trials? What
kind of a test or trial should such be, at a time when one is
wrought up to a pitch of exaltation and high expectation so that in
a certain sense he is temporarily abnormal and therefore has a
transitory but nevertheless an abnormal strength to meet such
tests or trials. Such would hardly be tests or trials at all and hence
would be of very little profit and very little worth. The testing
comes in the affairs of life that concern us daily, in the duties
which we perform faithfully or perhaps unfaithfully, in never
leaving our task for personal or selfish purposes; for here we are
tested in every part of our being, and at every moment, and in the
most unexpected and most
unforeseen places, and at the most
unexpected and most unforeseen times.

Our rejoicing passeth all ordinary comprehension when one,

through long and faithful service and unswerving devotion which
leads to inner development, which takes him far along the path,
follows that still small path which leadeth to the heart of the
universe; for we feel that what he then has attained we also may
attain and should attain and must ultimately attain if we do as he
did; it is a matter for joy to all when this happens.
I have just spoken of the pathway which leadeth to the heart of
the universe. Now what is that heart? Is it "God"? What god can
we conceive of which is not, after all, the noblest figuration of our
own imagination? Such a god after all would be but a name, a
breath, and nothing more, for it is a conception originating in our
own minds. We do not mean by the phrase, "the heart of the
universe," some divine being who after all is but an aggregate, a
collection, a synthesized unity of the various individuals of the
hierarchy of which it is the controlling head. We do not mean
this, for what sense would it have since these hierarchical heads
are more numerous than the sands on the shores of an infinite
ocean, for they are infinite in number; and how should any one
such be the heart of the universe? Nay, that is not our meaning.
We mean by the heart of the universe that consciousness, that
light, that understanding, that nature whose essence is bliss,
which is the life of the universe
— not a personal life but an
impersonal life, from and through which the universe draws the
forces which infill it, which forces are the gods, the spiritual
beings, the playing of whose vitality we sense even through the
shell of the physical world, and therefrom take the term so
familiar to us, the forces working in matter.

This consciousness, this light, this understanding, this nature

whose essence is bliss, are collectively what we mean by the heart
of the universe, a heart which is nowhere in particular, because
everywhere; called the "heart" only because it is the secret center
in each one of us, the core of our being, and which is not only the
source but also the passageway, or the canal, or the channel,
through which those supernal forces of the divine do pass into us;
and, reduced to the last analysis, we are they and they are we,
because the recondite and secret fountains of our being are all
these things.
You know the teaching of the old Eastern philosophy, the Vedanta
of Hindustan, which in this respect is likewise the teaching of
Northern Buddhism, and is also ours, to this effect: the universe is
one vast organism, an organism which is composite of organisms
still smaller, still more minute, not located in any particular place
but spread throughout the spaces, indefinitely in all directions,
and likewise inwardly and outwardly, in the inner worlds as well
as in the outer worlds. And these are full of these still smaller, still
more minute organisms, which in their aggregate form the vast
organism of the cosmos.

I fancy that after all it is only a figure of speech to speak of the

universe as one vast organism, for the reason that any organism,
in strict logic, must be a limited entity, and the thought that we
are endeavoring to express is dealing with That which is limitless
in all senses. Hence the expression "vast organism " is a
metaphor, a trope, a manner of speech in order to express an idea
almost too subtil and high to put in ordinary language.

This vast organism of the cosmos then is an organism only by

philosophic license, so to say. It is an organism in the sense in
which the human race is an organism, formed, as the latter is, of
individuals, composite of men, men who are minuter organisms
of the corporate body we call humanity, of men whose bodies in
their turn are composite of entities still more minute; and these
entities still more minute are again composed of entities still
smaller than they, and so forth indefinitely.

Let our minds pass in thought in the reverse direction towards

macrocosmic spheres, and there also do we find the same law of
unity in diversity, prevailing everywhere. We may reach in our
imagination an ultimate point and say, this is the universe; but by
a still stronger effort and looking beyond that point not only do
we sense other universes still more remote, but our instinct, our
intuition, alike tell us that through these more distant aggregates,
as through our own universe, play the same deific forces that we
know, the same divine energies, the same driving urge to
progress, the same call to come up higher, having the same forces
playing through them, their brother-universes or sister-universes,
if you will. And there are indefinite numbers of such,
incomputable hosts of them, hosts visible and invisible, hosts
without and within. So that all that we can mean when using the
phrase, "the universe is one vast organism" is to carry our
thought ever onwards and to realize that it is
boundless space,
without limitations, without frontiers, without ending places.

Remember, furthermore, that any such organism exists only in

periods of its own manvantara; for manvantara is a word which
we may by analogy employ for both the great and the small.
There may be a manvantara of a universe as well as a
manvantara of an aggregate of universes; nor does any such
universe, nor does any such aggregate of universes, necessarily
have its period of manvantara or its period of pralaya
contemporaneously with all other aggregate bodies.

Let us be cautious about this. When we speak of "universal

manvantara" we mean the manvantara of our own cosmic
aggregate; but another universe may be in pralaya while we are
in manvantara; many other universes may be in pralaya, or in
manvantara, while we may be conversely in manvantara or
pralaya.

Let us be watchful over our thoughts, keeping close guard over

our minds, for in this manner we shall never allow our minds to
crystallize into a mere succession of phrases and thus make of the
thought a dogma. We learn much by thus watching ourselves and
by thus studying ourselves, and by reaching ever inwards into
our own spiritual natures, guided by the teaching which the
Masters have given to us; and the essence, or, so to say, the
keynote of all these teachings is that the way to light and to life
and to peace and to bliss and to understanding is within
ourselves; and we obtain these wonderful things by reaching or
striving ever farther inwards, inwards, inwards, endlessly. For
the farther we reach into ourselves, so to say, the farther we
follow that pathway leading inwards, the more we become
conscious of still greater things, still wider visions, and the
pathway thus followed becomes space itself.

Is this pathway a different path from that which leadeth

outwards, outwards, outwards, still farther outwards to spaces
and cosmoi which we can intuitively sense as existing beyond the
boundaries of our own universe? No, it is the same path, exactly
the same path; it is only our mind of matter, in which we of
necessity must work in this our present period of evolution, that
conceives of the mysteries of consciousness as occupying space,
or as following lines of directional expansion. All these things
exist in our consciousness, not along any material directions; it is
consciousness which understandeth, and consciousness is neither
forwards nor backwards, nor to the right nor to the left, nor up
nor down, but is. It is all things at all times, and because it is
everywhere, it is nowhere in particular.

Where then abides this consciousness which is in each one of us?

It is within, it is found by reaching inwards; it is the great
searching, the great quest; it is the seeking the light; it is likewise
the finding it; it is seeking the life; it is the finding of it. This
consciousness should be sought for by turning inwards therefore;
yet when we say that the path is inwards, it is, after all, but a
figure of speech; it is a manner of verbal expression, in order to
convey an idea, and we must not let our minds crystallize around
a mere figure of speech.
Do you remember when we spoke at a former meeting here on
the nature of the ancient initiations, we then called attention to
the very profound truth that there could be no initiations unless
there were the awakened consciousness in the postulant or
neophyte? What is initiation? The word itself really means a
beginning, the first steps of a beginner, and there are many
beginnings. There is the beginning for the man of the world; there
is the beginning for the true chela; there is the beginning for the
Mahatma; there is the beginning for his Teacher, and so on
indefinitely. It is the opening of the course for development of a
beginner, and he who guides his first steps will do so with much
the same care and attention that a mother uses in guiding and
watching the first steps of her little one.

It is an old Oriental saying, and a very beautiful one, too, that the
initiator is both father and mother to his disciple, and more even
than this: because whereas the father and the mother give the life
of the physical body, and that body itself for the purpose of the
incoming soul, and also give the love and the care and the
attention necessary to save the child from dangers and perils in
our physical world, the initiator in very truth gives you your soul,
because he awakens it for you, acquaints you with yourself, opens
the portals of your understanding, leads you forth to inspect and
understand the universe surrounding us and the mysteries which
it comprises. In brief, the teacher, the initiator, leads you inwards
so that you may know yourself — in other words, as just hinted,
watches over and attends to the growth and development of your
expanding consciousness.

Gnothi seauton, said the Greeks: "Know thyself," an injunction

carved over the temple of Apollo at Delphi; this mandate
comprises in two words the whole secret of initiation and of the
initiations, because it comprises the path which the expanding
consciousness follows in its growth: know thyself.
Thyself — what is it? It is consciousness; it is also the heart of the
universe. Thyself, that self which is the same in thee and in me, in
you and in all others, which is not different in any one of us, as
compared with any other one of us. It is the ultimate self, the
spiritual oversoul; and therefore it is the one self, the heart of the
universe. It is the consciousness in you which says simply "I am,"
and that same consciousness is in me and in all others: in the
Teacher, in the chelas of the Teachers, in the Teachers of the
Teachers, in the Silent Watcher of our supernal sphere — that
overself is the same in all entities comprised in any hierarchy.

But while that overself is the same in you, and in me, and in all
that is, not different anywhere from what it is anywhere else; yet
this does not comprise all there is of us psychologically speaking.
There is something else within us, not different from the oversoul
but a ray of that oversoul, so to say, and this something else in
each one of us is the individual ego: that part in each of us which
says not merely "I am," but "I am I," and not you. Think over this
psychological mystery as it is to those who are not well
acquainted with the ancient wisdom; for truly one of the most
wonderful mysteries of the ancient wisdom, of esotericism, lies in
a correct understanding of this psychological mystery.

In order to make my meaning more clear, please remember that

while it is a perfectly true statement that the inner nature of man
is the seed of his individual consciousness, that consciousness is
but a reflection, so to say, of the universal consciousness which
abides in all other entities whatsoever and wheresoever they may
be. It is quite true that we reach into this universal consciousness
and partake of its universality by following the path leading
inwards; but this is not a procedure of the consciousness; and the
mind should not be allowed to crystallize around any idea of
mere directional expansion.
A man, by considering the starry orbs which he sees over his
head at night, may as easily follow the path inwards as another
man may by sitting in a corner with his attention concentrated on
his navel or the tip of his nose, in the manner of some exoteric
yogis, so called. The truth is that it is an arousing of the
consciousness to self-understanding, and to developing it towards
the universal.

Therefore, once you begin that undertaking, and once you begin
to follow that path, you will find that mere directional expansions
are but words. The consciousness itself will give you the meaning
of these things, and such meaning is always away from the
directional limitations or particularities of the material world. It
is a growth of consciousness actually, rather than a following of
any path so called in any particular direction. As a man's
consciousness expands he realizes that it is growing; but he will
probably smile if he hears one, whose consciousness has not
expanded equivalently, talking of any particular direction in
space as being that which the pathway towards the light follows.

This relative I, this ego-self, this individual I in each one of us, is

not the heart of the universe; but it is rooted in the heart of the
universe, therefore rooted in the universal life, in the universal
consciousness, for it is a ray of it. It is that part of us which, by the
magic of evolution, by the wondrous magic which the gods work
in their deific energies, forming and framing the cosmos as a
wonderful web of being — it is that part of us, I say, which grows
from unself-consciousness to self-understanding, to self-
consciousness.

In the vast womb of eternities past it began its career as an

unself-conscious god-spark; and its destiny is to flower out in due
course as a self-conscious god, becoming so through the
unwrapping or unfolding or evolving of the potentialities which
are latent or inherent in its very nature as a spark of the universe.
This is spiritual evolution, and can be considered as a building up
of a god from the forces and faculties and powers inherent in its
own self, the pouring forth of the latent or sleeping energies
which intrinsically belong to it; yes, a self-conscious god, as it will
finally become, infilled with and by the heart of the universe,
which is the universal self. It is the building up of a god through
and by means of the ego-self, its periodic mirror or reflection.

As Katherine Tingley expresses it in her most beautiful

invocation:

O my Divinity! thou dost blend with the earth and fashion

for thyself temples of mighty power.

O my Divinity! thou livest in the heart-life of all things, and

dost radiate a golden light that shineth forever and doth
illumine even the darkest corners of the earth.

O my Divinity! blend thou with me that from the

corruptible I may become Incorruptible; that from
imperfection I may become Perfection; that from darkness
I may go forth in Light.

The universal self is the heart of the universe, for these two
phrases are but two manners of expressing the same thing; it is
the source of our being; it is also the goal whither we are all
marching, we and the hierarchies above us as well as the
hierarchies and the entities which compose them inferior to us.
All come from the same ineffable source, the heart of Being, the
universal self, pass at one period of their evolutionary journey
through the stage of humanity, gaining thereby self-consciousness
or the ego-self, the "I am I," and they find it, as they advance along
this evolutionary path, expanding gradually into universal
consciousness — an expansion which never has an end, because
the universal consciousness is endless, limitless, boundless.

Yea, in very truth, it is all a most wondrous mystery, using the

word "mystery" here in its Greek sense of something secret and
wonderful. We leave our deific source as unself-conscious god-
sparks, and our destiny is to become self-conscious gods,
thereafter taking a direct part in the vast cosmic labor.

But is this the limit which we reach, thereafter to go no farther

ahead? Do we then reach the frontiers of consciousness-space,
thereafter finding or discovering nothing still grander or greater
to know or to be? No indeed, the truth is the exact reverse of this.
The consciousness expands gradually, and the more it expands
the more it learns, and that expanding is timeless, outside of time
and space. It expands forever.

We have spoken of the hierarchies above us, that is to say, of the

hosts of hierarchies who have passed through the human stage
and who are marching along their own respective evolutionary
pathways towards still greater destinies; but let us not forget that
beneath us there are other hosts of hierarchies composed of lives
innumerable, uncounted hosts of them, trailing after us,
consciously or unconsciously looking up to us as we look up to
those who have preceded us, even as we have trailed after, in
former manvantaras, those who are now ahead of us, whom we
look up to as gods or spiritual beings or, to use the term adopted
from Buddhism, dhyan-chohans.

Of the hosts of these small and inferior entities who are trailing
after us, one portion of them is comprised in the multitude of
minute, even infinitesimal, lives which compose our bodies: that
is to say, the physical body, the astral body, the mental body, the
intellectual body, and the spiritual body, which aggregate hosts
composing these respective bodies, being of different grades or in
different stages in evolution, and each such host furthermore
interlocking with each other and with all others, and with
different hierarchies of the world around us — all the hierarchies
composing these various bodies of man's septenary constitution
together form the composite unity through which man's inmost
self works, because in them, in another sense than that used by
Paul of the Christians, we live and move and have our inferior
being.

What is this inmost self? I have already said what it is this

evening, and on many another occasion here. It is that part of us
by which we conjoin with the heart of the universe — in very
truth, it is the heart of the universe, limited only by the
individualized expression of our spiritual nature; and this
spiritual nature itself is the source of our ego.

Let us try briefly once more to sketch the construction or rather,

perhaps, constitution of our inner nature, and I select us men as
examples because we have developed up to the point where self-
consciousness is beginning to manifest itself, and thereby we may
illustrate more clearly and more easily how evolution proceeds.

First, then, is the universal self, the heart of being, which is the
same in all of us. This universal self pours out its energies
through the highest in man's constitution, which in each one of us
is the monad, our inner spiritual god. The monad working
through the various spheres builds up man's intermediate nature,
which is the ego-self; and this ego-self, as its consciousness
expands away from personality and limitations towards
universality, spontaneously enters upon greater and ever greater
spheres of life and activity, until this ego becomes in its turn a
fully self-conscious expression of its inspiriting monad, which is
but another way of saying that it rebecomes that monad itself,
plus the experiences that the ego has acquired from absorbing the
aroma of the various lives which it has had.
When the ego has thus rebecome monadic, in other words has
become a monad itself — its own inspiriting monad meanwhile
having itself advanced to spheres of life and activity still more
sublime than it formerly had — the ego-monad then assumes a
cosmic nature, and in its turn evolves an intermediate self or
intermediate selves, which works or which work through our
lower natures, helping thereby the lives beneath us and in us, in
whom we live and move and have our inferior being, as I have
already said. It is through these inferior lives composing our
intermediate or lower natures that the ego-self finds its fields of
self-expression; and when it finally becomes an egoic monad, it
becomes to the hosts of lives on these intermediate and lower
spheres their divine oversoul, the hierarch of their hierarchy.

Thus then, as a parting thought, let us realize the responsibility —

spiritual, mental, psychical, emotional, astral, and physical —
which is ours. And when I say "ours," I mean ours as self-
conscious beings, egos. We are responsible for what these
intermediate and lower lives undergo to a very large extent; we
realize that as we impress them, so will they self-express
themselves, until they have attained self-consciousness in their
turn; we realize that we give them the initial impetus towards
evolutionary unfolding, and that as we set their faces, so to say, so
will they travel the path.

We realize, finally, that ethical values are in human life, and in

the connections that I have just hinted at, what the laws of the
universe are in the cosmos. Both signify harmony; both signify
consistency in action; both signify an identic source; and both
point to the fact that both we and they, these lower entities, are
treading the path which they who have gone before us have
trodden. This treading of the path is a growth of consciousness, it
is an expansion of the conscious understanding; and hence it is
that these entities ahead of us are where they are, because,
having trodden that path, they have come to know.

The Buddhists have a most beautiful expression to illustrate this

fact of the common nature of those who have gone before
ourselves, and those who are coming after us. They speak of a
Buddha as one who is a Tathagata, a Sanskrit expression
compounded of two words meaning either "thus come" or "thus
gone," for the Sanskrit is susceptible of either translation; but the
meaning is identical, signifying one who has followed the inward
way, the inner pathway, the still small path coming down, so to
say, from the universal self, passing through the human
constitution onward until it disappears again in the heart of being
from which we came.

All of you are that pathway. I mean that each one of you men and
women is for yourself that pathway; there is no other for any one
of you, because it is yourself traveling along the path of
understanding consciousness, and reaching ultimately its
evolutionary goal, when you become a god.

THE END
Table of Contents