STANZA VI.

1. By the power of the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge (a), Kwan-Yin, the “Triple” of Kwan-Shai-Yin, residing in KwanYin-Tien (b), Fohat, the breath of their progeny, the Son of the Sons, having called forth from the lower abyss (chaos) the illusive form of Sien-Tchan (our Universe) and the seven elements :

(a.) The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge is called “ the triple ” of Kwan-Shai-Yin because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the “ Mother, the Wife and the Daughter ” of the Logos, just as in the later theological translations she became “ the Father, Son and (the female) Holy Ghost ”the Sakti or Energy the Essence of the three. Thus in the Esotericism of the Vedantins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Eswara, the Logos, is at one and the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos or Verbum of Parabrahmam ; while in that of the trans-Himalayan teachings it is in the hierarchy of allegorical and metaphysical theogony“ the Mother ” or abstract, ideal matter, Mulaprakriti, the Root of Nature ; from the metaphysical standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Bhûta, manifested in the Logos, Avalokitêshwâra ;and from the purely occult and Cosmical, Fohat, the “ Son of the Son,” the androgynous energy resulting from this “ Light of the Logos,” and which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity which is Life.

(b) Kwan-Yin-Tien means the “ melodious heaven of Sound,” the abode of Kwan-Yin, or the “ Divine Voice ” literally. This “ Voice ” is a synonym of the Verbum or the Word  : “ Speech,” as the expression of thought. Thus may be traced the connection with, and even the origin of the Hebrew Bath-Kol, the “ daughter of the Divine Voice,” or Verbum, or the male and female Logos, the “ Heavenly Man ” or Adam Kadmon, who is at the same time Sephira. The latter was surely anticipated by the Hindu Vâch, the goddess of Speech, or of the Word. For Vâch—the daughter and the female portion, as is stated, of Brahmâ, one “ generated by the gods ” is, in company with Kwan-Yin, with Isis (also the daughter, wife and sister of Osiris) and other goddesses, the female Logos, so to speak, the goddess of the active forces in Nature, the Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech.

If Kwan-Yin is the “ melodious Voice,” so is Vâch ;  “ the melodious cow who milked forth sustenance and water ” (the female principle)“ who yields us nourishment and sustenance,” as Mother-Nature. She is associated in the work of creation with the Prajâpati. She is male and female ad libitum, as Eve is with Adam. And she is a form of Aditi the principle higher than Ether in Akâsa, the synthesis of all the forces in Nature ;  thus Vâch and Kwan-Yin are both the magic potency of Occult sound in Nature and Ether which “ Voice ” calls forth Sien-Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out of Chaos and the Seven Elements. Thus in Manu Brahmâ (the Logos also) is shown dividing his body into two parts, male and female, and creating in the latter, who is Vâch, Viraj, who is himself, or Brahmâ again it is in this way a learned Vedantin Occultist speaks of that “ goddess,” explaining the reason why Eswara (or Brahmâ) is called Verbum or Logos ;  why in fact it is called Sabda Brahmam  :

“ The explanation I am going to give you will appear thoroughly mystical ; but if mystical, it has a tremendous significance when properly understood. Our old writers said that Vâch is of four kinds (see Rig Veda and the Upanishads). Vaikhari-Vâch is what we utter. Every kind of Vaikhari-Vâch exists in its Madhyama, further in its Pasyanti, and ultimately in its Para form.

The reason why this Pranava is called Vâch is this, that the four principles of the great Kosmos correspond to these four forms of Vâch. Now the whole manifested solar System exists in its Sukshma form in the light or energy of the Logos, because its energy is caught up and transferred to Cosmic matter. The whole Kosmos in its objective form is Vaikhari-Vâch, the light of the Logos is the Madhyama form, and the Logos itself the Pasyanti form, and Parabrahm the Para form or aspect of that Vâch. It is by the light of this explanation that we must try to understand certain statements made by various philosophers to the effect that the manifested Kosmos is the Verbum manifested as Kosmos ” (see Lecture on the Bhagavadgita, referred to above).

2. The Swift and the Radiant One produces the seven Layu (a)  centres, against which none will prevail to the great day “ Be with us ”and seats the universe on these eternal foundations, surrounding Sien-Tchan with the Elementary Germs (b).

(a.) The seven Layu centres are the seven Zero points, using the term Zero in the same sense that Chemists do, to indicate a point at which, in Esotericism, the scale of reckoning of differentiation begins. From the Centres—beyond which Esoteric philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of the “ Seven Sons ” of Life and Light, the Seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all other philosophers—begins the differentiation of the elements which enter into the constitution of our Solar System. It has often been asked what was the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and functions, as he seems to exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the popular religions. The answer has just been given in the comment on Stanza V. As well said in the Bhagavadgita Lectures, “ The whole Kosmos must necessarily exist in the One Source of energy from which this light (Fohat) emanates.”

Whether we count the principles in Kosmos and man as seven or only as four, the forces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven ; and it is stated by the same authority that “ Pragna, or the capacity of perception, exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter ” (Personal and impersonal God). For, “ just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the Solar System exists in seven different conditions ” (ibid). So does Fohat. He is One and Seven, and on the Cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and is the “ spirit ” of Electricity, which is the Life of the Universe.

As an abstraction, we call it the One Life ; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable Causality, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while science speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point to intelligent Law and sentient Life, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal god at all, but the emanation of those other Powers behind him whom the Christians call the “ Messengers ” of their God (who is in reality only the Elohim, or rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we, the “ Messenger of the primordial Sons of Life and Light.”

(b.) The “ Elementary Germs ” with which he fills Sien-Tchan (the “ Universe ”) from Tien-Sin (the “ Heaven of Mind,” literally, or that which is absolute) are the Atoms of Science and the Monads of Leibnitz.

3. Of the seven (elements) first one manifested, six concealed ; two manifested five concealed ; three manifested four concealed ; four produced three hidden ; four and one tsan (  fraction) revealed—two and one half concealed ; six to be manifested one laid aside (a). lastly, seven small wheels revolving ; one giving birth to the other (b).

(a.) Although these Stanzas refer to the whole Universe after a Mahapralaya (universal destruction), yet this sentence, as any student of Occultism may see, refers also by analogy to the evolution and final formation of the primitive (though compound) Seven Elements on our Earth. Of these, four elements are now fully manifested, while the fifth—Ether—is only partially so, as we are hardly in the second half of the Fourth Round, and consequently the fifth Element will manifest fully only in the Fifth Round. The Worlds, including our own, were of course, as germs, primarily evolved from the one Element in its second stage (  “ Father-Mother,” the differentiated World’s Soul, not what is termed the “ Over-Soul ” by Emerson), whether we call it, with modern Science, Cosmic dust and Fire Mist, or with Occultism—Akâsa, Jivâtma, divine Astral Light, or the “ Soul of the World.”

But this first stage of Evolution was in due course of time followed by the next. No world, as no heavenly body, could be constructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been sufficiently differentiated already from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya. The latter term is a synonym of Nirvana. It is, in fact, the Nirvanic dissociation of all substances, merged after a life-cycle into the latency of their primary conditions. It is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the matter that was, the realm of negativeness—wherein lie latent during their period of rest the active Forces of the Universe. Now, speaking of Elements, it is made the standing reproach of the Ancients, that they “ supposed their Elements simple and undecomposable.”

Once more this is an unwarrantable statement ;    as, at any rate, their initiated philosophers can hardly come under such an imputation, since it is they who have invented allegories and religious myths from the beginning. Had they been ignorant of the Heterogeneity of their Elements they would have had no personifications of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Æther ; their Cosmic gods and goddesses would never have been blessed with such posterity, with so many sons and daughters, elements born from and within each respective Element.

Alchemy and occult phenomena would have been a delusion and a snare, even in theory, had the Ancients been ignorant of the potentialities and correlative functions and attributes of every element that enters into the composition of Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire—the latter a terra incognita to this day to modern Science, which is obliged to call it Motion, evolution of light and heat, state of ignition,—defining it by its outward aspects in short, and remaining ignorant of its nature. But that which modern Science seems to fail to perceive is that, differentiated as may have been those simple chemical atoms—which archaic philosophy called “ the creators of their respective Parents,” fathers, brothers, husbands of their mothers, and those mothers the daughters of their own sons, like Aditi and Daksha, for example—differentiated as these elements were in the beginning, still, they were not the compound bodies known to science, as they are now.

Neither Water, Air, Earth (synonym for solids generally) existed in their present form, representing the three states of matter alone recognised by Science ; for all these are the productions already recombined by the atmospheres of globes completely formed even to fire  so that in the first periods of the earth’s formation they were something quite sui generis. Now that the conditions and laws ruling our solar system are fully developed ; and that the atmosphere of our earth, as of every other globe, has become, so to say, a crucible of its own, Occult Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange taking place in space of molecules, or of atoms rather, correlating, and thus changing their combining equivalents on every planet.

Some men of Science, and those among the greatest physicists and chemists, begin to suspect this fact, which has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope only shows the probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and sidereal substance ; it is unable to go any farther, or to show whether atoms gravitate towards one another in the same way and under the same conditions as they are supposed to do on our planet, physically and chemically. The scale of temperature, from the highest degree to the lowest that can be conceived of, may be imagined to be one and the same in and for the whole Universe ; nevertheless, its properties, other than those of dissociation and re-association, differ on every planet ; and thus atoms enter into new forms of existence, undreamt of, and incognizable to, physical Science.

As already expressed in “ Five Years of Theosophy,” the essence of Cometary matter, for instance, “ is totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are acquainted ” (p. 242). And even that matter, during rapid passage through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain change in its nature. Thus not alone the elements of our planets, but even those of all its sisters in the Solar System, differ as widely from each other in their combinations, as from the Cosmic elements beyond our Solar limits.

Therefore, they cannot be taken as a standard for comparison with the same in other worlds. Enshrined in their virgin, pristine state within the bosom of the Eternal Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to incessant differentiation. “ The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing.” And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her Protean products, which, carried on by the wave of the efflux, are scattered by Fohat, and driven toward and beyond this or another planetary atmosphere.

Once caught by the latter, the atom is lost ; its pristine purity is gone for ever, unless Fate dissociates it by leading it to “ a current of efflux ” (an occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the ordinary term implies)  ; when it may be carried once more to the borderland where it had perished, and taking its flight, not into Space above but into Space within, it will be brought under a state of differential equilibrium and happily re-absorbed. Were a truly learned Occultist-alchemist to write the “ Life and Adventures of an Atom ” he would secure thereby the eternal scorn of the modern chemist, perchance also his subsequent gratitude.

However it may be, “The Breath of the Father-Mother issues cold and radiant and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once more, and be purified in the eternal bosom of inner Space,” says the Commentary. Man absorbs cold pure air on the mountain-top, and throws it out impure, hot and transformed. Thus—the higher atmosphere being the mouth, and the lower one the lungs of every globe—the man of our planet breathes only the refuse of “ Mother ; ” therefore, “ he is doomed to die on it.”

(b) The process referred to as “ the small wheels giving birth, one to the other,” takes place in the sixth region from above, and on the plane of the most material world of all in the manifested Kosmos—our terrestrial plane. These “ Seven Wheels ” are our planetary chain (see Commentary Nos. 5 and 6). By “ Wheels ” the various spheres and centres of forces are generally meant ; but in this case they refer to our septenary ring.

4. He builds them in the likeness of older Wheels (worlds), placing them on the imperishable centres (a). How does Fohat build them  ? He collects the fiery dust. He makes balls of fire, runs through them and round them, infusing life thereinto ;   then sets them into motion, some one, some the other way. They are cold—he makes them hot. They are dry—he makes them moist. They shine—he fans and cools them (b). Thus acts Fohat from one Twilight to the other during Seven Eternities.

(a) The Worlds are built “ in the likeness of older Wheels ”—i.e., those that existed in preceding Manvantaras and went into Pralaya, because the Law for the birth, growth, and decay of everything in Kosmos, from the Sun to the glow-worm in the grass, is One. It is an everlasting work of perfection with every new appearance, but the Substance-Matter and Forces are all one and the same. But this Law acts on every planet through minor and varying laws. The “ imperishable Laya Centres ” have a great importance, and their meaning must be fully understood if we would have a clear conception of the Archaic Cosmogony, whose theories have now passed into Occultism. At present, one thing may be stated. The worlds are built neither upon, nor over, nor in the Laya centres, the zero-point being a condition, not any mathematical point.

(b) Bear in mind that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is said, metaphorically, to have sprung like Rudra from Brahmâ “ from the brain of the Father and the bosom of the Mother,” and then to have metamorphosed himself into a male and a female, i.e., polarity, into positive and negative electricity. He has seven sons who are his brothers ; and Fohat is forced to be born time after time whenever any two of his son-brothers indulge in too close contact— whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he binds together and unites those of unlike nature and separates those of similar temperaments. This, of course, relates, as any one can see, to electricity generated by friction and to the law involving attraction between two objects of unlike, and repulsion between those of like polarity. The Seven “ Sons-brothers,” however, represent and personify the seven forms of Cosmic magnetism called in practical Occultism the “ Seven Radicals,” whose co-operative and active progeny are, among other energies, Electricity, Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc.

Occult Science defines all these as Super-sensuous effects in their hidden behaviour, and as objective phenomena in the world of senses ; the former requiring abnormal faculties to perceive them—the latter, our ordinary physical senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more supersensuous spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to, real and conscious causes. To attempt a description of such entities would be worse than useless. The reader must bear in mind that, according to our teaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a great Illusion, the nearer a body is to the Unknown Substance, the more it approaches reality, as being removed the farther from this world of Maya.

Therefore, though the molecular constitution of their bodies is not deducible from their manifestations on this plane of consciousness, they nevertheless (from the standpoint of the adept Occultist) possess a distinctive objective if not material structure, in the relatively noumenal—as opposed to the phenomenal—Universe. Men of science may term them Force or Forces generated by matter, or “ modes of its motion,” if they will ; Occultism sees in the effects “ Elemental ” (forces), and, in the direct causes producing them, intelligent Divine Workmen. The intimate connection of those Elementals (guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers)—their correlation we might call it—with the elements of pure Matter, results in our terrestrial phenomena, such as light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of course we shall never agree with the American Substantialists who call every Force and Energy—whether Light, Heat, Electricity or Cohesion—an “ Entity ; ” for this would be equivalent to calling the noise produced by the rolling of the wheels of a vehicle an Entity—thus confusing and identifying that “ noise ” with the driver outside, and the guiding Master Intelligence within the vehicle. But we certainly give that name to the “ drivers ” and to these guiding Intelligences—the ruling Dhyan Chohans, as shown.

The “ Elementals,” the Nature-Forces, are the acting, though invisible, or rather imperceptible, secondary Causes and in themselves the effects of primary Causes behind the Veil of all terrestrial phenomena. Electricity, light, heat, etc., have been aptly termed the “ Ghost or Shadow of Matter in Motion,” i.e., supersensuous states of matter whose effects only we are able to cognize. To expand, then, the simile given above. The sensation of light is like the sound of the rolling wheels—a purely phenomenal effect, having no existence outside the observer ; the proximate exciting cause of the sensation is comparable to the driver—a supersensuous state of matter in motion, a Nature-Force or Elemental. But, behind even this, stand—just as the owner of the carriage directs the driver from within—the higher and noumenal causes, the Intelligences from whose essence radiate these States of “ Mother,” generating the countless milliards of Elementals or psychic Nature-Spirits, just as every drop of water generates its physical infinitesimal Infusoria. (See “ Gods, Monads, and Atoms,” in Part III.) It is Fohat who guides the transfer of the principles from one planet to the other, from one star to another—child-star.

When a planet dies, its informing principles are transferred to a laya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in it, which is thus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new sidereal body. (Vide infra, “ A Few Theosophical Misconceptions, etc.”) It is most remarkable that, while honestly confessing their entire ignorance of the true Nature of even terrestrial matter—primordial substance being regarded more as a dream than as a sober reality—the physicists should set themselves up as judges, nevertheless, of that matter, and claim to know what it is able and is not able to do, in various combinations. Scientists know it (matter) hardly skin-deep, and yet they will dogmatise. It is “ a mode of motion ” and nothing else. But the force that is inherent in a living person’s breath, when blowing a speck of dust from the table, is also, and undeniably, “ a mode of motion ” ;   and it is as undeniably not a quality of the matter, or the particles of that speck, and it emanates from the living and thinking Entity that breathed, whether the impulse originated consciously or unconsciously. Indeed, to endow matter—something of which nothing is known so far—with an inherent quality called Force, of the nature of which still less is known, is to create a far more serious difficulty than that which lies in the acceptation of the intervention of our “ Nature-Spirits ” in every natural phenomenon.

The Occultists, who do not say—if they would express themselves correctly—that matter, but only the substance or essence of matter, is indestructible and eternal, (i.e., the Root of all, Mulaprakriti)  : assert that all the so-called Forces of Nature, Electricity, Magnetism, Light, Heat, etc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material particles, are in esse, i.e., in their ultimate constitution, the differentiated aspects of that Universal Motion which is discussed and explained in the first pages of this volume (See Proem). When Fohat is said to produce “ Seven Laya Centres,” it means that for formative or creative purposes, the Great Law (Theists may call it God) stops, or rather modifies its perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the area of the manifested Universe.

“ The great Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya to cause them to circumgyrate during Manvantara ” (Occult Catechism). We have said that Laya is what Science may call the Zero-point or line ; the realm of absolute negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, the noumenon of the Seventh State of that which we ignorantly call and recognise as “ Force ” ; or again the Noumenon of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance which is itself an unreachable and unknowable object to finite perception ; the root and basis of all states of objectivity and subjectivity too ; the neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre.

It may serve to elucidate the meaning if we attempt to imagine a neutral centre—the dream of those who would discover perpetual motion. A “ neutral centre ” is, in one aspect, the limiting point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of matter as already formed ; each of these corresponding to an appropriate set of perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between these two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place  ; and if we follow the atoms and molecules of (say) the lower in their transformation upwards, these will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we are using on the lower plane. In fact, to us the matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our perception into nothing—or rather it passes on to the higher plane, and the state of matter corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess special and not readily discoverable properties.

Such “ Seven Neutral Centres,” then, are produced by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it— “ Fair foundations (are) laid whereon to build.” quickens matter into activity and evolution. The Primordial Atom (anu) cannot be multiplied either in its pregenetic state, or its primogeneity ; therefore it is called “ sum total,” figuratively, of course, as that “ sum total ” is boundless. (See Addendum to this Book.)

That which is the abyss of nothingness to the physicist, who knows only the world of visible causes and effects, is the boundless Space of the Divine Plenum to the Occultist. Among many other objections to the doctrine of an endless evolution and re-involution (or re-absorption) of the Kosmos, a process which, according to the Brahminical and Esoteric Doctrine, is without a beginning or an end, the Occultist is told that it cannot be, since “ by all the admissions of modern scientific philosophy it is a necessity of Nature to run down.” If the tendency of Nature “ to run down ” is to be considered so forcible an objection to Occult Cosmogony, “How,” we may ask, “ do your Positivists and Free-thinkers and Scientists account for the phalanx around us of active stellar systems  ? ”

They had eternity to “ run down ” in ; why, then, is not the Kosmos a huge inert mass  ? Even the moon is only hypothetically believed to be a dead planet, “ run down,” and astronomy does not seem to be acquainted with many such dead planets. The query is unanswerable. But apart from this it must be noted that the idea of the amount of “ transformable energy ” in our little system coming to an end is based purely on the fallacious conception of a “ white-hot, incandescent Sun ” perpetually radiating away his heat without compensation into Space.

To this we reply that nature runs down and disappears from the objective plane, only to reemerge after a time of rest out of the subjective and to reascend once more. Our Kosmos and Nature will run down only to reappear on a more perfect plane after every Pralaya. The matter of the Eastern philosophers is not the “ matter ” and Nature of the Western metaphysicians. For what is Matter  ? And above all, what is our scientific philosophy but that which was so justly and so politely defined by Kant as “ the Science of the limits to our Knowledge ?”

Where have the many attempts made by Science to bind, to connect, and define all the phenomena of organic life by mere physical and chemical manifestations, brought it to  ? To speculation generally—mere soap-bubbles, that burst one after the other before the men of Science were permitted to discover real facts. All this would have been avoided, and the progress of knowledge would have proceeded with gigantic strides, had only Science and its philosophy abstained from accepting hypotheses on the mere one-sided Knowledge of their Matter.

If no physical intellect is capable of counting the grains of sand covering a few miles of sea-shore ; or to fathom the ultimate nature and essence of those grains, palpable and visible on the palm of the naturalist, how can any materialist limit the laws changing the conditions and being of the atoms in primordial chaos, or know anything certain about the capabilities and potency of their atoms and molecules before and after their formation into worlds  ? These changeless and eternal molecules  —far thicker in space than the grains on the ocean shore— may differ in their constitution along the line of their planes of existence, as the soul-substance differs from its vehicle, the body.

Each atom has seven planes of being or existence, we are taught  ; and each plane is governed by its specific laws of evolution and absorption. Ignorant of any, even approximate, chronological data from which to start in attempting to decide the age of our planet or the origin of the solar system, astronomers, geologists, and physicists are drifting with each new hypothesis farther and farther away from the shores of fact into the fathomless depths of speculative ontology.

The Law of Analogy in the plan of structure between the trans-Solar systems and the intra-Solar planets, does not necessarily bear upon the finite conditions to which every visible body is subject, in this our plane of being. In Occult Science this law is the first and most important key to Cosmic physics ; but it has to be studied in its minutest details and, “ to be turned seven times,” before one comes to understand it. Occult philosophy is the only science that can teach it. How, then, can anyone hang the truth or the untruth of the Occultist’s proposition that “ the Kosmos is eternal in its unconditioned collectivity, and finite but in its conditioned manifestations ” on this one-sided physical enunciation that “ it is a necessity of Nature to run down  ? ” With these verses—the 4th Sloka of Stanza VI.—ends that portion of the Stanzas which relates to the Universal Cosmogony after the last Mahapralaya or Universal destruction, which, when it comes, sweeps out of Space every differentiated thing, Gods as atoms, like so many dry leaves.

From this verse onwards, the Stanzas are concerned only with our Solar System in general, with the planetary chains therein, inferentially, and with the history of our globe (the 4th and its chain) especially. All the Stanzas and verses which follow in this Book I. refer only to the evolution of, and on, our Earth. With regard to the latter, a strange tenet—strange from the modern scientific standpoint only, of course—is held, which ought to be made known. But before entirely new and rather startling theories are presented to the reader, they must be prefaced by a few words of explanation.

This is absolutely necessary, as these theories clash not only with modern science, but contradict, on certain points, earlier statements made by other Theosophists, who claim to base their explanations and renderings of these teachings on the same authority as we do.

This may give rise to the idea that there is a decided contradiction between the expounders of the same doctrine ; whereas the difference, in reality, arises from the incompleteness of the information given to earlier writers, who thus drew some erroneous conclusions and indulged in premature speculations, in their endeavour to present a complete system to the public. Thus the reader, who is already a student of Theosophy, must not be surprised to find in these pages the rectification of certain statements made in various Theosophical works, and also the explanation of certain points which have remained obscure, because they were necessarily left incomplete.

Many are the questions upon which even the author of “ Esoteric Buddhism ” (the best and most accurate of all such works) has not touched. On the other hand, even he has introduced several mistaken notions which must now be presented in their true mystic light, as far as the present writer is capable of doing so. Let us then make a short break between the Slokas just explained and those which follow, for the Cosmic periods which separate them are of immense duration. This will afford us ample time to take a bird’s-eye view of some points pertaining to the Secret Doctrine, which have been presented to the public under a more or less uncertain and sometimes mistaken light.

A FEW EARLY THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING PLANETS, ROUNDS, AND MAN

Among the eleven Stanzas omitted there is one which gives a full description of the formation of the planetary chains one after another, after the first Cosmic and Atomic differentiation had commenced in the primitive Acosmism. It is idle to speak of “ laws arising when Deity prepares to create ” for (a) laws or rather Law is eternal and uncreated ; and (b) that Deity is Law, and vice versâ. Moreover, the one eternal Law unfolds everything in the (to be) manifested Nature on a sevenfold principle ; among the rest, the countless circular chains of worlds, composed of seven globes, graduated on the four lower planes of the world of formation (the three others belonging to the Archetypal Universe). Out of these seven only one, the lowest and the most material of those globes, is within our plane or means of perception, the six others lying outside of it and being therefore invisible to the terrestrial eye. Every such chain of worlds is the progeny and creation of another, lower, and dead chain—its reincarnation, so to say.

To make it clearer  : we are told of the planets—of which seven only were held as sacred, as being ruled by the highest regents or gods, and not at all because the ancients knew nothing of the others that each of these, whether known or unknown, is a septenary, as is the chain to which the Earth belongs (see “ Esoteric Buddhism ”). For instance, all such planets as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., etc., or our Earth, are as visible to us as our globe, probably, is to the inhabitants of the other planets, if any, because they are all on the same plane ; while the superior fellow-globes of these planets are on other planes quite outside that of our terrestrial senses. As their relative position is given further on, and also in the diagram appended to the Comments on Verse 7 of Stanza VI., a few words of explanation is all that is needed at present.

These invisible companions correspond curiously to that which we call “ the principles in Man.” The seven are on three material planes and one spiritual plane, answering to the three Upadhis (material bases) and one spiritual vehicle (Vahan) of our seven principles in the human division. If, for the sake of a clearer mental conception, we imagine the human principles to be arranged as in the following scheme, we shall obtain the annexed diagram of correspondences  :

As we are proceeding here from Universals to Particulars, instead of using the inductive or Aristotelean method, the numbers are reversed. Spirit is enumerated the first instead of seventh, as is usually done, but, in truth, ought not to be done. Or as usually named after the manner of Esoteric Buddhism and others  : 1, Atma ; 2, Buddhi (or Spiritual Soul) ; 3, Manas (Human Soul) ; 4, Kama Rupa (Vehicle of Desires and Passions) ;   5, Linga Sarira ; 6, Prana ; 7, Sthula Sarira.

The dark horizontal lines of the lower planes are the Upadhis in one case, and the planes in the case of the planetary chain. Of course, as regards the human principles, the diagram does not place them quite in order, yet it shows the correspondence and analogy to which attention is now drawn. As the reader will see, it is a case of descent into matter, the adjustment—in both the mystic and the physical senses—of the two, and their interblending for the great coming “ struggle of life ” that awaits both the entities. “ Entity ” may be thought a strange term to use in the case of a globe  ; but the ancient philosophers, who saw in the earth a huge “ animal,” were wiser in their generation than our modern geologists are in theirs ;   and Pliny, who called the Earth our kind nurse and mother, the only element which is not inimical to man, spoke more truly than Watts, who fancied that he saw in her the footstool of God.

For Earth is only the footstool of man in his ascension to higher regions  ; the vestibule “ to glorious mansions, Through which a moving crowd for ever press.” But this only shows how admirably the occult philosophy fits everything in Nature, and how much more logical are its tenets than the lifeless hypothetical speculations of physical science. Having learned thus much, the mystic will be better prepared to understand the occult teaching, though every formal student of modern science may, and probably will, regard it as preposterous nonsense. The student of occultism, however, holds that the theory at present under discussion is far more philosophical and probable than any other. It is more logical, at any rate, than the theory recently advanced which made of the moon the projection of a portion of our Earth extruded when the latter was but a globe in fusion, a molten plastic mass.

It is said that the planetary chains having their “ Days ” and their “ Nights ”—i.e., periods of activity or life, and of inertia or death—and behave in heaven as do men on Earth  : they generate their likes, get old, and become personally extinct, their spiritual principles only living in their progeny as a survival of themselves. Without attempting the very difficult task of giving out the whole process in all its cosmic details, enough may be said to give an approximate idea of it. When a planetary chain is in its last Round, its Globe 1 or A, before finally dying out, sends all its energy and “ principles ” into a neutral centre of latent force, a “ laya centre,” and thereby informs a new nucleus of undifferentiated substance or matter, i.e., calls it into activity or gives it life. Suppose such a process to have taken place in the lunar “ planetary ” chain ; suppose again, for argument’s sake (though Mr. Darwin’s theory quoted below has lately been upset, even if the fact has not yet been ascertained by mathematical calculation) that the moon is far older than the Earth.

Imagine the six fellow-globes of the moon—æons before the first globe of our seven was evolved—just in the same position in relation to each other as the fellow-globes of our chain occupy in regard to our Earth now. (See in “ Esoteric Buddhism,” “ The Constitution of Man,” and the “ Planetary Chain.”) And now it will be easy to imagine further Globe A of the lunar chain informing Globe A of the terrestrial chain, and—dying ; Globe B of the former sending after that its energy into Globe B of the new chain ; then Globe C of the lunar, creating its progeny sphere C of the terrene chain ; then the Moon (our Satellite) pouring forth into the lowest globe of our planetary ring—Globe D, our Earth—all its life, energy and powers ;   and, having transferred them to a new centre becoming virtually a dead planet, in which rotation has almost ceased since the birth of our globe.

The Moon is now the cold residual quantity, the shadow dragged after the new body, into which her living powers and “ principles ” are transfused. She now is doomed for long ages to be ever pursuing the Earth, to be attracted by and to attract her progeny. Constantly vampirised by her child, she revenges herself on it by soaking it through and through with the nefarious, invisible, and poisoned influence which emanates from the occult side of her nature.

For she is a dead, yet a living body. The particles of her decaying corpse are full of active and destructive life, although the body which they had formed is soulless and lifeless. Therefore its emanations are at the same time beneficent and maleficent—this circumstance finding its parallel on earth in the fact that the grass and plants are nowhere more juicy and thriving than on the graves ; while at the same time it is the graveyard or corpseemanations, which kill. And like all ghouls or vampires, the moon is the friend of the sorcerers and the foe of the unwary.

From the archaic æons and the later times of the witches of Thessaly, down to some of the present tantrikas of Bengal, her nature and properties were known to every Occultist, but have remained a closed book for physicists. Such is the moon from the astronomical, geological, and physical standpoints. As to her metaphysical and psychic nature it must remain an occult secret in this work, as it was in the volume on “ Esoteric Buddhism,” notwithstanding the rather sanguine statement made therein on p. 113 (5th edition) that “ there is not much mystery left now in the riddle of the eighth sphere.” These are topics, indeed, “ on which the adepts are very reserved in their communications to uninitiated pupils,” and since they have, moreover, never sanctioned or permitted any published speculations upon them, the less said the better.

Yet without treading upon the forbidden ground of the “ eighth sphere,” it may be useful to state some additional facts with regard to ex-monads of the lunar chain—the “ lunar ancestors ”—as they play a leading part in the coming Anthropogenesis. This brings us directly to the septenary constitution of man ;   and as some discussion has arisen of late about the best classification to be adopted for the division of the microcosmic entity, two systems are now appended with a view to facilitate comparison. The subjoined short article is from the pen of Mr. T. Subba Row, a learned Vedantin scholar. He prefers the Brahmanical division of the Raja Yoga, and from a metaphysical point of view he is quite right.

But, as it is a question of simple choice and expediency, we hold in this work to the “ time-honoured ” classification of the trans-Himalayan “ Arhat Esoteric School.” The following table and its explanatory text are reprinted from the “ Theosophist ” of Madras, and they are also contained in “ Five Years of Theosophy  ”:

SEPTENARY DIVISION IN DIFFERENT INDIAN SYSTEMS

“ We give below in a tabular form the classifications adopted by the Buddhist and Vedantic teachers of the principles of man  :

From the foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the Buddhist classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedantic division, as it is merely the vehicle of Prana. It will also be seen that the Fourth principle is included in the third Kosa (Sheath), as the same principle is but the vehicle of will-power, which is but an energy of the mind. It must also be noticed that the Vignanamaya Kosa is considered to be distinct from the Manomaya Kosa, as a division is made after death between the lower part of the mind, as it were, which has a closer affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth ;   and its higher part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact, the basis for the higher spiritual individuality of man. We may also here point out to our readers that the classification mentioned in the last column is, for all practical purposes, connected with Raja Yoga, the best and simplest.

Though there are seven principles in man, there are but three distinct Upadhis (bases), in each of which his Atma may work independently of the rest. These three Upadhis can be separated by an Adept without killing himself. He cannot separate the seven principles from each other without destroying his constitution.” The student will now be better prepared to see that between the three Upadhis of the Raja Yoga and its Atma, and our three Upadhis, Atma, and the additional three divisions, there is in reality but very little difference.

Moreover, as every adept in cis-Himalayan or transHimalayan India, of the Patanjali, the Aryasanga or the Mahayana schools, has to become a Raja Yogi, he must, therefore, accept the Taraka Raja classification in principle and theory whatever classification he resorts to for practical and occult purposes. Thus, it matters very little whether one speaks of the three Upadhis with their three aspects and Atma, the eternal and immortal synthesis, or calls them the “ seven principles.”

For the benefit of those who may not have read, or, if they have, may not have clearly understood, in Theosophical writings, the doctrine of the septenary chains of worlds in the Solar Kosmos, the teaching is briefly thus  :

1. 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. (See Diagram No. 3, after verse 6 of this commentary.) The evolution of life proceeds on these seven globes or bodies from the 1st to the 7th in Seven Rounds or Seven Cycles.

2. These globes are formed by a process which the Occultists call the “ rebirth of planetary chains (or rings).” When the seventh and last Round of one of such rings has been entered upon, the highest or first globe “ A,” followed by all the others down to the last, instead of entering upon a certain time of rest—or “ obscuration,” as in their previous Rounds—begins to die out. The “ planetary ” dissolution (  pralaya) is at hand, and its hour has struck ;   each globe has to transfer its life and energy to another planet. (See diagram No. 2 infra, “ The Moon and the Earth.”)

3. Our Earth, as the visible representative of its invisible superior fellow globes, its “ lords ” or “ principles ” (see diagram No. 1), has to live, as have the others, through seven Rounds. During the first three, it forms and consolidates ; during the fourth it settles and hardens ; during the last three it gradually returns to its first ethereal form  : it is spiritualised, so to say.

4. Its Humanity develops fully only in the Fourth—our present Round. Up to this fourth Life-Cycle, it is referred to as “ humanity ” only for lack of a more appropriate term. Like the grub which becomes chrysalis and butterfly, Man, or rather that which becomes man, passes through all the forms and kingdoms during the first Round and through all the human shapes during the two following Rounds. Arrived on our Earth at the commencement of the Fourth in the present series of lifecycles and races, man is the first form that appears thereon, being preceded only by the mineral and vegetable kingdoms—even the latter having to develop and continue its further evolution through man.

This will be explained in Book II. During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like the globe on which it lives, will be ever tending to reassume its primeval form, that of a Dhyan Chohanic Host. Man tends to become a God and then—   God, like every other atom in the Universe. “ Beginning so early as with the 2nd round, Evolution proceeds already on quite a different plan. It is only during the 1st round that (heavenly) man becomes a human being on globe A (rebecomes) a mineral, a plant, an animal, on globe B and C, etc. The process changes entirely from the second round ; but you have learned prudence . . . and I advise you to say nothing before the time for saying it has come  . . .” (Extract from the Teacher’s letters on various topics.)

5. Every life-cycle on Globe D (our Earth) is composed of seven root-races. They commence with the Ethereal and end with the spiritual on the double line of physical and moral evolution—from the beginning of the terrestrial round to its close. (One is a “ planetary round ” from Globe A to Globe G, the seventh ; the other, the “ globe round,” or the terrestrial  ). This is very well described in “ Esoteric Buddhism ” and needs no further elucidation for the time being. 6. The first root-race, i.e., the first “ men ” on earth (irrespective of form) were the progeny of the “ celestial men,” called rightly in Indian philosophy the “ Lunar Ancestors ” or the Pitris, of which there are seven classes or Hierarchies. As all this will be sufficiently explained in the following sections and in Book II., no more need be said of it here.

But the two works already mentioned, both of which treat of subjects from the occult doctrine, need particular notice. “ Esoteric Buddhism ” is too well known in Theosophical circles, and even to the outside world, for it to be necessary to enter at length upon its merits here. It is an excellent book, and has done still more excellent work. But this does not alter the fact that it contains some mistaken notions, and that it has led many Theosophists and lay-readers to form an erroneous conception of the Secret Eastern Doctrines.

Moreover it seems, perhaps, a little too materialistic. “ Man,” which came later, was an attempt to present the archaic doctrine from a more ideal standpoint, to translate some visions in and from the Astral Light, to render some teachings partly gathered from a Master’s thoughts, but unfortunately misunderstood. This work also speaks of the evolution of the early Races of men on Earth, and contains some excellent pages of a philosophical character. But so far it is only an interesting little mystical romance. It has failed in its mission, because the conditions required for a correct translation of these visions were not present. Hence the reader must not wonder if our Volumes contradict these earlier descriptions in several particulars.

Esoteric “ Cosmogony ” in general, and the evolution of the human Monad especially, differ so essentially in these two books and in other Theosophical works written independently by beginners, that it becomes impossible to proceed with the present work without special mention of these two earlier volumes, for both have a number of admirers— “ Esoteric Buddhism ” especially. The time has arrived for the explanation of some matters in this direction. Mistakes have now to be checked by the original teachings and corrected. If one of the said works has too pronounced a bias toward materialistic science, the other is decidedly too idealistic, and is, at times, fantastic. From the doctrine—rather incomprehensible to western minds— which deals with the periodical “ obscurations ” and successive “ Rounds ” of the Globes along their circular chains, were born the first perplexities and misconceptions. One of such has reference to the “ Fifth-” and even “ Sixth-Rounders.”

Those who knew that a Round was preceded and followed by a long Pralaya, a pause of rest which created an impassable gulf between two Rounds until the time came for a renewed cycle of life, could not understand the “ fallacy ” of talking about “ fifth and sixth Rounders ” in our Fourth Round. Gautama Buddha, it was held, was a Sixth-Rounder, Plato and some other great philosophers and minds, “ Fifth-Rounders.” How could it be  ? One Master taught and affirmed that there were such “ Fifth-Rounders ” even now on Earth ;   and though understood to say that mankind was yet “ in the Fourth Round,” in another place he seemed to say that we were in the Fifth.

To this an “ apocalyptic answer ” was returned by another Teacher  :“ A few drops of rain do not make a Monsoon, though they presage it.” . . . “ No, we are not in the Fifth Round, but Fifth Round men have been coming in for the last few thousand years.” This was worse than the riddle of the Sphinx. ! Students of Occultism subjected their brains to the wildest work of speculation. For a considerable time they tried to outvie Œdipus and reconcile the two statements. And as the Masters kept as silent as the stony Sphinx herself, they were accused of inconsistency, “ contradiction,” and “ discrepancies.”

But they were simply allowing the speculations to go on, in order to teach a lesson which the Western mind sorely needs. In their conceit and arrogance, as in their habit of materializing every metaphysical conception and term without allowing any margin for Eastern metaphor and allegory, the Orientalists have made a jumble of the Hindu exoteric philosophy, and the Theosophists were now doing the same with regard to esoteric teachings. To this day it is evident that the latter have utterly failed to understand the meaning of the term “ Fifth and Sixth Rounders.” But it is simply this  : every “ Round ” brings about a new development and even an entire change in the mental, psychic, spiritual and physical constitution of man, all these principles evoluting on an ever ascending scale.

Thence it follows that those persons who, like Confucius and Plato, belonged psychically, mentally and spiritually to the higher planes of evolution, were in our Fourth Round as the average man will be in the Fifth Round, whose mankind is destined to find itself, on this scale of Evolution, immensely higher than is our present humanity. Similarly Gautama Buddha— Wisdom incarnate—was still higher and greater than all the men we have mentioned, who are called Fifth Rounders, while Buddha and Sankaracharya are termed Sixth Rounders, allegorically.

Thence again the concealed wisdom of the remark, pronounced at the time “ evasive ”—that “ a few drops of rain do not make the Monsoon, though they presage it.” And now the truth of the remark made in “ Esoteric Buddhism ” by its author will be fully apparent  :— “ It is impossible, when the complicated facts of an entirely unfamiliar science are being presented to untrained minds for the first time, to put them forward with all their appropriate qualifications and abnormal developments.

We must be content to take the broad rules first and deal with the exceptions afterwards, and especially is this the case with study, in connection with which the traditional methods of teaching, generally followed, aim at impressing every fresh idea on the memory by provoking the perplexity it at last relieves.” As the author of the remark was himself, as he says, “ an untrained mind ” in Occultism, his own inferences, and his better knowledge of modern astronomical speculations than of archaic doctrines led him quite naturally, and as unconsciously to himself, to commit a few mistakes of detail rather than of any “ broad rule.” One such will now be noticed.

It is a trifling one, still it is calculated to lead many a beginner into erroneous conceptions. But as the mistaken notions of the earlier editions were corrected in the annotations of the fifth edition, so the sixth may be revised and perfected.

There were several reasons for such mistakes.

(1) They were due to the necessity under which the teachers laboured of giving what were considered as “ evasive answers ” : the questions being too persistently pressed to be left unnoticed, while, on the other hand, they could only be partially answered.

(2) This position notwithstanding, the confession that “ half a loaf is better than no bread ” was but too often misunderstood and hardly appreciated as it ought to have been. As a result thereof gratuitous speculations were sometimes indulged in by the European lay-chelas. Among such were (a) the “ Mystery of the Eighth Sphere ” in its relation to the Moon ; and (b) the erroneous statement that two of the superior Globes of the terrestrial chain were two of our well-known planets  : “ besides the Earth . . . there are only two other worlds of our chain which are visible. . . . Mars and Mercury. . . .” (Esoteric Buddhism ; p. 136.)

This was a great mistake. But the blame for it is to be attached as much to the vagueness and incompleteness of the Master’s answer as to the question of the learner itself, which was equally vague and indefinite. It was asked  : “ What planets, of those known to ordinary science, besides Mercury, belong to our system of worlds  ? ” Now if by “ System of Worlds ” our terrestrial chain or “ string ” was intended in the mind of the querist, instead of the “ Solar System of Worlds,” as it should have been, then of course the answer was likely to be misunderstood. For the reply was  : “ Mars, etc., and four other planets of which astronomy knows nothing. Neither A, B, nor YZ are known nor can they be seen through physical means however perfected.”

This is plain : (a) Astronomy as yet knows nothing in reality of the planets, neither the ancient ones, nor those discovered in modern times. (b) No companion planets from A to Z, i.e., no upper globes of any chain in the Solar System, can be seen. 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.

Let it now be distinctly stated, then, that the theory broached is impossible, with or without the additional evidence furnished by modern Astronomy. Physical Science can supply corroborative, though still very uncertain, evidence, but only as regards heavenly bodies on the same plane of materiality as our objective Universe. Mars and Mercury, Venus and Jupiter, like every hitherto discovered planet (or those still to be discovered), are all, per se, the representatives on our plane of such chains.

As distinctly stated in one of the numerous letters of Mr. Sinnett’s “ Teacher,” “ there are other and innumerable Manvantaric chains of globes which bear intelligent Beings both in and outside our solar system.” But neither Mars nor Mercury belong to our chain. They are, along with the other planets, septenary Units in the great host of “ chains ” of our system, and all are as visible as their upper globes are invisible. If it is still argued that certain expressions in the Teacher’s letters were liable to mislead, the answer comes  : Amen ; so it was. The author of “ Esoteric Buddhism ” understood it well when he wrote that such are “ the traditional modes of teaching by provoking the perplexity ” they do, or do not relieve as the case may be.

At all events, if it is urged that this might have been explained earlier, and the true nature of the planets given out as they now are, the answer comes that  : “ it was not found expedient to do so at the time, as it would have opened the way to a series of additional questions which could never be answered on account of their esoteric nature, and thus would only become embarrassing.” It had been declared from the first and has been repeatedly asserted since that (1st) no Theosophist, not even as an accepted chela—let alone lay students—could expect to have the secret teachings explained to him thoroughly and completely, before he had irretrievably pledged himself to the Brotherhood and passed through at least one initiation, because no figures and numbers could be given to the public, for figures and numbers are the key to the esoteric system.

(2.) That what was revealed was merely the esoteric lining of that which is contained in almost all the exoteric Scriptures of the world-religions— pre-eminently in the Brahmânas, and the Upanishads of the Vedas and even in the Purânas. It was a small portion of what is divulged far more fully now in the present volumes ; and even this is very incomplete and fragmentary. When the present work was commenced, the writer, feeling sure that the speculation about Mars and Mercury was a mistake, applied to the Teachers by letter for explanation and an authoritative version. Both came in due time, and verbatim extracts from these are now given. “

It is quite correct that Mars is in a state of obscuration at present, and Mercury just beginning to get out of it. You might add that Venus is in her last Round. If neither Mercury nor Venus have satellites, it is because of the reasons . . . (vide footnote supra, where those reasons are given), and also because Mars has two satellites to which he has no right.

Phöbos, the supposed inner satellite, is no satellite at all. As remarked long ago by Laplace and now by Faye (see comptes rendus, Tome XC., p. 569), Phöbos keeps a too short periodic time, and therefore there ‘  must exist some defect in the mother idea of the theory ’ as Faye justly observes.

Again, both (Mars and Mercury) are septenary chains, as independent of the Earth’s sidereal lords and superiors as you are independent of the ‘  principles ’ of Daumling (Tom Thumb)—which were perhaps his six brothers, with or without night-caps.‘  Gratification of curiosity is the end of knowledge for some men,’ was said by Bacon, who was as right in postulating this truism, as those who were familiar with it before him were right in hedging off WISDOM from Knowledge, and tracing limits to that which is to be given out at one time.

Remember :  ‘  knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men, Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. . . .’ You can never impress it too profoundly on the minds o   f those to whom you impart some of the esoteric teachings. ” Again, here are more extracts from another letter written by the same authority. This time it is in answer to some objections laid before the Teachers. They are based upon extremely scientific, and as futile, reasonings about the advisability of trying to reconcile the Esoteric theories with the speculations of Modern Science, and were written by a young Theosophist as a warning against the “ Secret Doctrine ” and in reference to the same subject. He had declared that if there were such companion Earths “ they must be only a wee bit less material than our globe.” How then was it that they could not be seen  ?

The answer was  : “ Were psychic and spiritual teachings more fully understood, it would become next to impossible to even imagine such an incongruity. Unless less trouble is taken to reconcile the irreconcileable—that is to say, the metaphysical and spiritual sciences with physical or natural philosophy, ‘  natural ’ being a synonym to them (men of science ) of that matter which falls under the perception of their corporeal senses—no progress can be really achieved. Our Globe, as taught from the first, is at the bottom of the arc of descent, where the matter of our perceptions exhibits itself in its grossest form.

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. Our planet (like all those we see) is adapted to the peculiar state of its human stock, that state which enables us to see with our naked eye the sidereal bodies which are co-essential with our terrene plane and substance, just as their respective inhabitants, the Jovians, Martians and others can perceive our little world  : because our planes of consciousness, differing as they do in degree but being the same in kind, are on the same layer of differentiated matter.

What I wrote was ‘  The minor Pralaya concerns only our little strings of globes.’ (  We called chains ‘  Strings ’ in those days of lip-confusion. )‘  To such a string our Earth belongs.’ This ought to have shown plainly that the other planets were also ‘  strings ’ or CHAINS.

If he (meaning the objector ) would perceive even the dim silhouette of one of such ‘ planets ’ on the higher planes, he has to first throw off even the thin clouds of the astral matter that stands between him and the next plane.” It becomes patent why we could not perceive, even with the help of the best earthly telescopes, that which is outside our world of matter. 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 your 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. Meanwhile, be prudent.

Do not give out the great Truths that are the inheritance of the future Races, to our present generation. Do not attempt to unveil the secret of being and non-being to those unable to see the hidden meaning of Apollo’s heptachord—the lyre of the radiant god, in each of the seven strings of which dwelleth the Spirit, Soul and Astral body of the Kosmos, whose shell only has now fallen into the hands of Modern Science. . . . . . Be prudent, we say, prudent and wise, and above all take care what those who learn from you believe in ; lest by deceiving themselves they deceive others . . . . for such is the fate of every truth with which men are, as yet, unfamiliar. . . . .

Let rather the planetary chains and other super- and sub-cosmic mysteries remain a dreamland for those who can neither see, nor yet believe that others can. . . .” It is to be regretted that few of us have followed the wise advice ; and that many a priceless pearl, many a jewel of wisdom, has been cast to an enemy unable to understand its value and who has turned round and rent us. “ ‘  Let us imagine,’ wrote the same Master to his two ‘  lay chelas,’ as he called the author of ‘  Esoteric Buddhism’ and another gentleman, his costudent for some time—‘  let us imagine that our earth is one of a group of seven planets or man-bearing worlds. . . . . . (The seven planets are the sacred planets of antiquity, and are all septenary.)

Now the life-impulse reaches A, or rather that which is destined to become A, and which so far is but cosmic dust (a “ laya centre ”) . . etc.’ ” In these early letters, in which the terms had to be invented and words coined, the “ Rings ” very often became “ Rounds,” and the “ Rounds ” life-cycles, and vice versâ. To a correspondent who called a “ Round ” a “ World-Ring,” the Teacher wrote  : “ I believe this will lead to a further confusion. A Round we are agreed to call the passage of a monad from Globe A to Globe G or Z. . . The ‘  World-Ring  ’ is correct. . . Advise Mr. . . . strongly, to agree upon a nomenclature before going any further. . .”

Notwithstanding this agreement, many mistakes, owing to this confusion, crept into the earliest teachings. The Races even were occasionally mixed up with the “ Rounds ” and “ Rings,” and led to similar mistakes in “ Man.” From the first the Master had written :— “ Not being permitted to give you the whole truth, or divulge the number of isolated fractions . . . I am unable to satisfy you.” This in answer to the questions, “ If we are right, then the total existence prior to the man-period is 637,” etc., etc. To all the queries relating to figures, the reply was, “ Try to solve the problem of 777 incarnations. . . .

Though I am obliged to withhold information . . . yet if you should work out the problem by yourself, it will be my duty to tell you so.” But they never were so worked out, and the results were—neverceasing perplexity and mistakes. Even the teaching about the Septenary constitution of the sidereal bodies and of the macrocosm—from which the septenary division of the microcosm, or Man—has until now been among the most esoteric. In olden times it used to be divulged only at the Initiation and along with the most sacred figures of the cycles.

Now, as stated in one of the Theosophical journals,* the revelation of the whole system of Cosmogony had not been contemplated, nor even thought for one moment possible, at a time when a few bits of information were sparingly given out in answer to letters written by the author of “ Esoteric Buddhism,” in which he put forward a multiplicity of questions. Among these were questions on such problems as no MASTER, however high and independent he might be, would have the right to answer, thus divulging to the world the most time-honoured and archaic of the mysteries of the ancient college-temples. Hence only a few of the doctrines were revealed in their broad outlines, while details were constantly withheld, and all the efforts made to elicit more information about them were systematically eluded from the beginning.

This is perfectly natural. Of the four Vidyas— out of the seven branches of Knowledge mentioned in the Purânas— namely, “ Yajna-Vidya ” (the performance of religious rites in order to produce certain results) ; “ Maha-Vidya,” the great (Magic) knowledge, now degenerated into Tantrika worship ; “ Guhya-Vidya,” the science of Mantras and their true rhythm or chanting, of mystical incantations, etc.—it is only the last one, “ Atma-Vidya,” or the true Spiritual and Divine wisdom, which can throw absolute and final light upon the teachings of the three first named. Without the help of Atma-Vidya, the other three remain no better than surface sciences, geometrical magnitudes having length and breadth, but no thickness.

They are like the soul, limbs, and mind of a sleeping man  : capable of mechanical motions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep-walking, of producing visible effects, but stimulated by instinctual not intellectual causes, least of all by fully conscious spiritual impulses. A good deal can be given out and explained from the three first-named sciences. But unless the key to their teachings is furnished by Atma-Vidya, they will remain for ever like the fragments of a mangled text-book, like the adumbrations of great truths, dimly perceived by the most spiritual, but distorted out of all proportion by those who would nail every shadow to the wall.

Then, again, another great perplexity was created in the minds of students by the incomplete exposition of the doctrine of the evolution of the Monads. To be fully realised, both this process and that of the birth of the Globes must be examined far more from their metaphysical aspect than from what one might call a statistical standpoint, involving figures and numbers which are rarely permitted to be broadly used. Unfortunately, there are few who are inclined to handle these doctrines only metaphysically.

Even the best of the Western writers upon our doctrine declares in his work that “ on pure metaphysics of that sort we are not now engaged,” when speaking of the evolution of the Monads (“ Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 46). And in such case, as the Teacher remarks in a letter to him, “ Why this preaching of our doctrines, all this uphill work and swimming in adversum flumen  ? Why should the West . . . learn . . . from the East . . . that which can never meet the requirements of the special tastes of the æsthetics  ? ”

And he draws his correspondent’s attention “ to the formidable difficulties encountered by us (the Adepts) in every attempt we make to explain our metaphysics to the Western mind.” And well he may ;   for outside of metaphysics no occult philosophy, no esotericism is possible. It is like trying to explain the aspirations and affections, the love and hatred, the most private and sacred workings in the soul and mind of the living man, by an anatomical description of the chest and brain of his dead body. Let us now examine two tenets mentioned above and hardly alluded to in “ Esoteric Buddhism,” and supplement them as far as lies in our power.

ADDITIONAL FACTS AND EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND THE MONADS

Two statements made in “Esoteric Buddhism  ” must be noticed and the author’s opinions quoted. On p. 47 (fifth edition) it is said  :— “ . . . the spiritual monads . . . do not fully complete their mineral existence on Globe A, then complete it on Globe B, and so on. They pass several times round the whole circle as minerals, and then again several times round as vegetables, and several times as animals. We purposely refrain for the present from going into figures,  ” etc., etc. This was a wise course to adopt in view of the great secrecy maintained with regard to figures and numbers.

This reticence is now partially relinquished  ; but it would perhaps have been better had the real numbers concerning Rounds and evolutional gyrations been either entirely divulged at the time, or as entirely withheld. Mr. Sinnett understood this difficulty well when saying (p. 140) that  : “ For reasons which are not easy for the outsider to divine, the possessors of occult knowledge are especially reluctant to give out facts relating to Cosmogony, though it is hard for the uninitiated to understand why they should be withheld.” That there were such reasons is evident.

Nevertheless, it is to this reticence that most of the confused ideas of some Eastern as well as Western pupils are due. The difficulties in the way of the acceptance of the two particular tenets under consideration seemed great, just because of the absence of any data to go upon. But there it was. For the figures belonging to the Occult calculations cannot be given— as the Masters have many times declared—outside the circle of pledged chelas, and not even these can break the rules. To make things plainer, without touching upon the mathematical aspects of the doctrine, the teaching given may be expanded and some obscure points solved.

As the evolution of the Globes and that of the Monads are so closely interblended, we will make of the two teachings one. In reference to the Monads, the reader is asked to bear in mind that Eastern philosophy rejects the Western theological dogma of a newly-created soul for every baby born, as being as unphilosophical as it is impossible in the economy of Nature.

There must be a limited number of Monads evolving and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation of many successive personalities, in every new Manvantara. This is absolutely necessary in view of the doctrines of Rebirth, Karma, and the gradual return of the human Monad to its source—absolute Deity. Thus, although the hosts of more or less progressed Monads are almost incalculable, they are still finite, as is everything in this Universe of differentiation and finiteness. As shown in the double diagram of the human “ principles ” and the ascending Globes of the world-chains, there is an eternal concatenation of causes and effects, and a perfect analogy which runs through, and links together, all the lines of evolution.

One begets the other—globes as personalities. But, let us begin at the beginning. The general outline of the process by which the successive planetary chains are formed has just been given. To prevent future misconceptions, some further details may be offered which will also throw light on the history of humanity on our own chain, the progeny of that of the Moon. In the diagrams on p. 172, Fig. 1 represents the “ lunar-chain ” of seven planets at the outset of its seventh or last Round ; while Fig. 2 represents the “ earth-chain ” which will be, but is not yet in existence.

The seven Globes of each chain are distinguished in their cyclic order by the letters A to G, the Globes of the Earth-chain being further marked by a cross— + —the symbol of the Earth. Now, it must be remembered that the Monads cycling round any septenary chain are divided into seven classes or hierarchies according to their respective stages of evolution, consciousness, and merit. Let us follow, then, the order of their appearance on planet A, in the first Round. The time-spaces between the appearances of these hierarchies on any one Globe are so adjusted that when Class 7, the last, appears on Globe A, Class 1, the first, has just passed on to Globe B, and so on, step by step, all round the chain.

Again, in the Seventh Round on the Lunar chain, when Class 7, the last, quits Globe A, that Globe, instead of falling asleep, as it had done in previous Rounds, begins to die (to go into its planetary pralaya) ; and in dying it transfers successively, as just said, its “ principles,” or life-elements and energy, etc., one after the other to a new “ layacentre,” which commences the formation of Globe A of the Earth Chain. A similar process takes place for each of the Globes of the “ lunar chain ” one after the other, each forming a fresh Globe of the “ earth-chain.” Our Moon was the fourth Globe of the series, and was on the same plane of perception as our Earth.

But Globe A of the lunar chain is not fully “ dead ” till the first Monads of the first class have passed from Globe G or Z, the last of the “ lunar chain,” into the Nirvana which awaits them between the two chains ; and similarly for all the other Globes as stated, each giving birth to the corresponding globe of the “ earth-chain.”

Further, when Globe A of the new chain is ready, the first class or Hierarchy of Monads from the Lunar chain incarnate upon it in the lowest kingdom, and so on successively. The result of this is, that it is only the first class of Monads which attains the human state of development during the first Round, since the second class, on each planet, arriving later, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach the incipient human stage only in the Second Round, and so on up to the middle of the Fourth Round. But at this point—and on this Fourth Round in which the human stage will be fully developed—the “ Door ” into the human kingdom closes ; and henceforward the number of “ human ” Monads, i.e., Monads in the human stage of development, is complete.

For the Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point will, owing to the evolution of humanity itself, find themselves so far behind that they will reach the human stage only at the close of the seventh and last Round. They will, therefore, not be men on this chain, but will form the humanity of a future Manvantara and be rewarded by becoming “ Men ” on a higher chain altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this there is but one solitary exception, for very good reasons, of which we shall speak farther on. But this accounts for the difference in the races.

It thus becomes apparent how perfect is the analogy between the processes of Nature in the Kosmos and in the individual man. The latter lives through his life-cycle, and dies. His “ higher principles,” corresponding in the development of a planetary chain to the cycling Monads, pass into Devachan, which corresponds to the “ Nirvana ” and states of rest intervening between two chains. The Man’s lower “ principles ” are disintegrated in time and are used by Nature again for the formation of new human principles, and the same process takes place in the disintegration and formation of Worlds. Analogy is thus the surest guide to the comprehension of the Occult teachings.

This is one of the “  seven mysteries of the Moon,” and it is now revealed. The seven “ mysteries ” are called by the Japanese Yamaboosis, the mystics of the Lao-Tze sect and the ascetic monks of Kioto, the Dzenodoo—the “ seven jewels.” Only the Japanese and the Chinese Buddhist ascetics and Initiates are, if possible, even more reticent in giving out their “ Knowledge ” than are the Hindus. But the reader must not be allowed to lose sight of the Monads, and must be enlightened as to their nature, as far as permitted, without trespassing upon the highest mysteries, of which the writer does not in any way pretend to know the last or final word.

The Monadic Host may be roughly divided into three great classes :

1. The most developed Monads (the Lunar Gods or “ Spirits,” called, in India, the Pitris), whose function it is to pass in the first Round through the whole triple cycle of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms in their most ethereal, filmy, and rudimentary forms, in order to clothe themselves in, and assimilate, the nature of the newly formed chain. They are those who first reach the human form (if there can be any form in the realm of the almost subjective) on Globe A in the first Round. It is they, therefore, who lead and represent the human element during the second and third Rounds, and finally evolve their shadows at the beginning of the Fourth Round for the second class, or those who come behind them.

2. Those Monads that are the first to reach the human stage during the three and a half Rounds, and to become men.

3. The laggards ; the Monads which are retarded, and which will not reach, by reason of Karmic impediments, the human stage at all during this cycle or Round, save one exception which will be spoken of elsewhere as already promised. Now the evolution of the external form or body round the astral is produced by the terrestrial forces, just as in the case of the lower kingdoms ; but the evolution of the internal or real man is purely spiritual. It is now no more a passage of the impersonal Monad through many and various forms of matter—endowed at best with instinct and consciousness on quite a different plane—as in the case of external evolution, but a journey of the “ pilgrim-soul ” through various states of not only matter but Self-consciousness and self-perception, or of perception from apperception. (See “ Gods, Monads and Atoms.”)

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. To return to “ Esoteric Buddhism.” It is there stated with regard to the enormous period intervening between the mineral epoch on Globe A, and the man-epoch, that  : “

The full development of the mineral epoch on Globe A, prepares the way for the vegetable development, and, as soon as this begins, the mineral life-impulse overflows into Globe B. Then, when the vegetable development on Globe A is complete and the animal development begins, the vegetable lifeimpulse overflows to Globe B, and the mineral impulse passes on to Globe C. Then finally comes the human life-impulse on Globe A.” (Page 49.) And so it goes on for three Rounds, when it slackens, and finally stops at the threshold of our Globe, at the Fourth Round ; because the human period (of the true physical men to be), the seventh, is now reached.

This is evident, for as said, “ . . . there are processes of evolution which precede the mineral kingdom, and thus a wave of evolution, indeed several waves of evolution, precede the mineral wave in its progress round the spheres ” (ibid). And now we have to quote from another article, “ The Mineral Monad ” in “ Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 273 et seq. “ There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or nascent centres of forces—from the first stage of differentiation of (from) Mulaprakriti (or rather Pradhâna, primordial homogeneous matter) to its third degree—i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception ; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man ; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning point in the degrees of the “ Monadic Essence,” considered as an evoluting energy.

Three stages (sub-physical) on the elemental side ; the mineral kingdom ; three stages on the objective physical side—these are the (first or preliminary) seven links of the evolutionary chain.” “ Preliminary ” because they are preparatory, and though belonging in fact to the natural, they yet would be more correctly described as sub-natural evolution. This process makes a halt in its stages at the Third, at the threshold of the Fourth stage, when it becomes, on the plane of the natural evolution, the first really manward stage, thus forming with the three elemental kingdoms, the ten, the Sephirothal number. It is at this point that begins : “ A descent of spirit into matter equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution ; a re-ascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organism—up to Nirvana, the vanishing point of differentiated matter.” (“ Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 276.)

Therefore it becomes evident why that which is pertinently called in Esoteric Buddhism “ Wave of Evolution,” and mineral-, vegetable-, animal- and man-“ impulse,” stops at the door of our Globe, at its Fourth cycle or Round. It is at this point that the Cosmic Monad (Buddhi) will be wedded to and become the vehicle of the Atmic Ray, i.e., it (Buddhi) will awaken to an apperception of it (Atman) ; and thus enter on the first step of a new septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead it eventually to the tenth (counting from the lowest upwards) of the Sephirothal tree, the Crown.

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. Thus, corresponding to the Sephirothal Crown (or upper triad) there are the three elemental Kingdoms, which precede the Mineral (see diagram on p. 277 in Five Years of Theosophy), and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in the Cosmic differentiation to the worlds of Form and Matter from the Super-Spiritual to the Archetypal. Now what is a “ Monad ? ” And what relation does it bear to an Atom ?

The following reply is based upon the explanations given in answer to these questions in the above-cited article : “ The Mineral Monad,” written by the author. “ None whatever,” is answered to the second question, “ to the atom or molecule as existing in the scientific conception at present. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism, once classed among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable, and classed among Algæ ; nor is it quite the Monas of the Peripatetics.

Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course, from the human monad, which is neither physical nor can its constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements.” In short, as the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the “ Individual Monads ” of men, so the Mineral Monad—being at the opposite point of the circle—is also One—and from it proceed the countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as individualized. Otherwise how could one account for and explain mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the Four Kingdoms ? The “ Monad ” is the combination of the last two “ principles ” in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term “ human monad ” applies only to the dual soul (Atma-Buddhi), not to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle, Atma, alone. But since the Spiritual Soul, if divorced from the latter (Atma) could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called.

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.”

The atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined after æons to blossom as a man. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has not yet become individualized ; a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean (of matter) does not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point.

The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the pantheistic sense ; and the Occultists, while accepting this thought for convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the concrete from the abstract by terms of which the “ Mineral, Vegetable, Animal, (etc.), Monad ” are examples. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The “ Monadic Essence ” begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual consciousness in the Vegetable 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. Leibnitz conceived of the Monads as elementary and indestructible units endowed with the power of giving and receiving with respect to other units, and thus of determining all spiritual and physical phenomena. It is he who invented the term apperception, which together with nerve- (not perception, but rather)—sensation, expresses the state of the Monadic consciousness through all the Kingdoms up to Man.

Thus it may be wrong on strictly metaphysical lines to call AtmaBuddhi a monad, since in the materialistic view it is dual and therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit, and vice versâ ; and since the Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable apart from each other ; so in the case of Atma-Buddhi. The latter being the vehicle of the former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Atma, as AdamKadmon, the Kabalistic Logos, does to En-Soph, or Mulaprakriti to Parabrahm. A few words more of the Moon. What, it may be asked, are the “ Lunar Monads,” just spoken of ?

The description of the seven classes of Pitris will come later, but now some general explanations may be given. It must be plain to everyone that they are Monads, who, having ended their life-cycle on the lunar chain, which is inferior to the terrestrial chain, have incarnated on this one. But there are some further details which may be added, though they border too closely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the mystery is divulged only to the adepts, but it may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then that there are 7 Earths, so there are 7 Moons, the last one alone being visible ; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Maya, a reflection, just as man’s body is. “ The real Sun and the real Moon are as invisible as the real man,” says an occult maxim. And it may be remarked en passant that those ancients were not so foolish after all who first started the idea of “ the seven moons.”

For though this conception is now taken solely as an astronomical measure of time, in a very materialised form, yet underlying the husk there can still be recognised the traces of a profoundly philosophical idea. In reality the Moon is only the satellite of the Earth in one respect, viz., that physically the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every other respect it is the Earth which is the satellite of the Moon, and not vice versâ. Startling as the statement may seem it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease which coincide with the lunar phases ; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in the phenomena of human gestation and conception.

The importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers of psychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the Earth’s action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist that this fact alone is sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth’s satellite on other planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a mother, who walks round and round her child’s cradle keeping watch over the infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent upon it ; though in one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more fully developed than the child she watches.

It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as well in the formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The “ Lunar Monads ” or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself. They are the “ Monads ” who enter on the cycle of evolution on Globe A, and who, passing round the chain of planets, evolve the human form as has just been shown. At the beginning of the human stage of the Fourth Round on this Globe, they “ ooze out ” their astral doubles from the “ ape-like ” forms which they had evolved in Round III.

And it is this subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds physical man. These “ Monads ” or “ divine sparks ” are thus the “ Lunar ” ancestors, the Pitris themselves. For these “ Lunar Spirits ” have to become “ Men ” in order that their “ Monads ” may reach a higher plane of activity and self-consciousness, i.e., the plane of the Manasa-Putras, those who endow the “ senseless ” shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with “ mind ” in the latter part of the Third Root-Race. In the same way the “ Monads ” or Egos of the men of the seventh Round of our Earth, after our own Globes A, B, C, D, et seq., parting with their life-energy, will have informed and thereby called to life other laya-centres destined to live and act on a still higher plane of being—in the same way will the Terrene “ Ancestors ” create those who will become their superiors. It now becomes plain that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme, for the formation of the three periodical Upadhis ; or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point.

These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the physical evolutions. These three are the finite aspects or the reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion of atma, the seventh, the one reality.

1. The Monadic is, as the name implies, concerned with the growth and development into still higher phases of activity of the Monad in conjunction with :

2. The Intellectual, represented by the Manasa-Dhyanis (the Solar Devas, or the Agnishwatta Pitris) the “givers of intelligence and consciousness ” to man and :

3. The Physical, represented by the Chhayas of the lunar Pitris, round which Nature has concreted the present physical body. This body serves as the vehicle for the “ growth ” (to use a misleading word) and the transformations through Manas and—owing to the accumulation of experiences—of the finite into the infinite, of the transient into the Eternal and Absolute. Each of these three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of the highest Dhyanis or “ Logoi.”

Each is represented in the constitution of man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm ; and it is the union of these three streams in him which makes him the complex being he now is. “ Nature,” the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve intelligence unaided—she can only create “ senseless forms,” as will be seen in our “ Anthropogenesis.” The “ Lunar Monads ” cannot progress, for they have not yet had sufficient touch with the forms created by “ Nature ” to allow of their accumulating experiences through its means. It is the Manasa-Dhyanis who fill up the gap, and they represent the evolutionary power of Intelligence and Mind, the link between “ Spirit ” and “ Matter ” in this Round.

Also it must be borne in mind that the Monads which enter upon the evolutionary cycle upon Globe A, in the first Round, are in very different stages of development. Hence the matter becomes somewhat complicated. . . . Let us recapitulate. The most developed Monads (the lunar) reach the human germ-stage in the first Round ; become terrestrial, though very ethereal human beings towards the end of the Third Round, remaining on it (the globe) through the “ obscuration ” period as the seed for future mankind in the Fourth Round, and thus become the pioneers of Humanity at the beginning of this, the Fourth Round. Others reach the Human stage only during later Rounds, i.e., in the second, third, or first half of the Fourth Round.

And finally the most retarded of all, i.e., those still occupying animal forms after the middle turning-point of the Fourth Round—will not become men at all during this Manwantara. They will reach to the verge of humanity only at the close of the seventh Round to be, in their turn, ushered into a new chain after pralaya—by older pioneers, the progenitors of humanity, or the Seed-Humanity (Sishta   ), viz., the men who will be at the head of all at the end of these Rounds.

The student hardly needs any further explanation on the part played by the fourth Globe and the fourth Round in the scheme of evolution. From the preceding diagrams, which are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to Rounds, Globes or Races, it will be seen that the fourth member of a series occupies a unique position. Unlike the others, the Fourth has no “ sister ” Globe on the same plane as itself, and it thus forms the fulcrum of the “ balance ” represented by the whole chain. It is the sphere of final evolutionary adjustments, the world of Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the balance is struck which determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder of its incarnations in the cycle.

And therefore it is, that, after this central turning-point has been passed in the Great Cycle,—i.e., after the middle point of the Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globe—no more Monads can enter the human kingdom. The door is closed for this Cycle and the balance struck. For were it otherwise—had there been a new soul created for each of the countless milliards of human beings that have passed away, and had there been no reincarnation—it would become difficult indeed to provide room for the disembodied “ Spirits ; ” nor could the origin and cause of suffering ever be accounted for.

It is the ignorance of the occult tenets and the enforcement of false conceptions under the guise of religious education, which have created materialism and atheism as a protest against the asserted divine order of things. The only exceptions to the rule just stated are the “ dumb races,” whose Monads are already within the human stage, in virtue of the fact that these “ animals ” are later than, and even half descended from man, their last descendants being the anthropoid and other apes. These “ human presentments ” are in truth only the distorted copies of the early humanity. But this will receive full attention in the next Book.

As the Commentary, broadly rendered, says :

1. “ Every form on earth, and every speck (atom) in Space strives in its efforts towards self-formation to follow the model placed for it in the ‘ heavenly man.’ . . . Its (  the atom’s  ) involution and evolution, its external and internal growth and development, have all one and the same object—man ; man, as the highest physical and ultimate form on this earth ; the monad, in its absolute totality and awakened condition—as the culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth.”

2. “ The Dhyanis (Pitris) are those who have evolved their bhuta (doubles   ) from themselves, which rupa (form) has become the vehicle of monads (seventh and sixth principles   ) that had completed their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas (   Rounds  ). Then, they (  the astral doubles  ) became the men of the first Human Race of the Round. But they were not complete, and were senseless.” This will be explained in the Books that follow. Meanwhile man— or rather his Monad—has existed on the earth from the very beginning of this Round. But, up to our own Fifth Race, the external shapes which covered those divine astral doubles changed and consolidated with every sub-race ; the form and physical structure of the fauna changing at the same time, as they had to be adapted to the everchanging conditions of life on this globe during the geological periods of its formative cycle. And thus shall they go on changing with every Root Race and every chief sub-race down to the last one of the Seventh in this Round.

3. “ The inner, now concealed, man, was then (in the beginnings   ) the external man. The progeny of the Dhyanis (Pitris   ), he was ‘ the son like unto his father.’ Like the lotus, whose external shape assumes gradually the form of the model within itself, so did the form of man in the beginning evolve from within without. After the cycle in which man began to procreate his species after the fashion of the present animal kingdom, it became the reverse.

The human fœtus follows now in its transformations all the forms that the physical frame of man had assumed throughout the three Kalpas (  Rounds   ) during the tentative efforts at plastic formation around the monad by senseless, because imperfect, matter, in her blind wanderings. In the present age, the physical embryo is a plant, a reptile, an animal, before it finally becomes man, evolving within himself his own ethereal counterpart, in his turn. In the beginning it was that counterpart (astral man  ) which, being senseless, got entangled in the meshes of matter.”

But this “ man ” belongs to the fourth Round. As shown, the monad had passed through, journeyed and been imprisoned in, every transitional form throughout every kingdom of nature during the three preceding Rounds. But the monad which becomes human is not the Man. In this Round—with the exception of the highest mammals after man, the anthropoids destined to die out in this our race, when their monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of the Sixth and the Seventh Races, and then into lowest human forms in the fifth Round—no units of either of the kingdoms are animated any longer by monads destined to become human in their next stage, but only by the lower Elementals of their respective realms.

The last human Monad incarnated before the beginning of the 5th Root-Race. The cycle of metempsychosis for the human monad is closed, for we are in the Fourth Round and the Fifth Root-Race. The reader will have to bear in mind—at any rate one who has made himself acquainted with “ Esoteric Buddhism ”—that the Stanzas which follow in this Book and Book II. speak of the evolution in our Fourth Round only. The latter is the cycle of the turning-point, after which, matter, having reached its lowest depths, begins to strive onward and to get spiritualized with every new Race and with every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not to see contradiction where there is none, as in “ Esoteric Buddhism ” Rounds are spoken of in general, while here only the Fourth, or our present Round, is meant. Then it was the work of formation ; now it is that of reformation and evolutionary perfection.

Finally, to close this chapter anent various, but unavoidable misconceptions, we must refer to a statement in “ Esoteric Buddhism ” which has produced a very fatal impression upon the minds of many Theosophists. One unfortunate sentence from the work just referred to is constantly brought forward to prove the materialism of the doctrine. On p. 48, 5th Edition, the Author, referring to the progress of organisms on the Globes, says that “ the mineral kingdom will no more develop the vegetable . . . than the Earth was able to develop man from the ape, till it received an impulse.”

Whether this sentence renders literally the thought of the author, or is simply (as we believe it is) a lapsus calami, may remain an open question. It is really with surprise that we have ascertained the fact that “ Esoteric Buddhism ” was so little understood by some Theosophists, as to have led them into the belief that it thoroughly supported Darwinian evolution, and especially the theory of the descent of man from a pithecoid ancestor. As one member writes : “ I suppose you realise that three-fourths of Theosophists and even outsiders imagine that, as far as the evolution of man is concerned, Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one another.”

Nothing of the kind was ever realised, nor is there any great warrant for it, so far as we know, in “ Esoteric Buddhism.” It has been repeatedly stated that evolution as taught by Manu and Kapila was the groundwork of the modern teachings, but neither Occultism nor Theosophy has ever supported the wild theories of the present Darwinists—least of all the descent of man from an ape.

Of this, more hereafter. But one has only to turn to p. 47 of “ Esoteric Buddhism,” 5th edition, to find there the statement that “ Man belongs to a kingdom distinctly separate from that of the animals.” With such a plain and unequivocal statement before him, it is very strange that any careful student should have been so misled unless he is prepared to charge the author with a gross contradiction.

Every Round repeats on a higher scale the evolutionary work of the preceding Round. With the exception of some higher anthropoids, as just mentioned, the Monadic inflow, or inner evolution, is at an end till the next Manvantara. It can never be too often repeated, that the full-blown human Monads have to be first disposed of, before the new crop of candidates appears on this Globe at the beginning of the next cycle. Thus there is a lull ; and this is why, during the Fourth Round, man appears on Earth earlier than any animal creation, as will be described. But it is still urged that the author of “ Esoteric Buddhism ” has “ preached Darwinism ” all along.

Certain passages would undoubtedly seem to lend countenance to this inference. Besides which the Occultists themselves are ready to concede partial correctness to the Darwinian hypothesis, in later details, bye-laws of Evolution, and after the midway point of the Fourth Race. Of that which has taken place, physical science can really know nothing, for such matters lie entirely outside of its sphere of investigation.

But what the Occultists have never admitted, nor will they ever admit, is that man was an ape in this or in any other Round ; or that he ever could be one, however much he may have been “ ape-like.” This is vouched for by the very authority from whom the author of “ Esoteric Buddhism ” got his information. Thus to those who confront the Occultists with these lines from the above-named volume : “ It is enough to show that we may as reasonably—and that we must, if we would talk about these matters at all— conceive a life-impulse giving birth to mineral form, as of the same sort of impulse concerned to raise a race of apes into a race of rudimentary men.”

To those who bring this passage forward as showing “ decided Darwinism,” the Occultists answer by pointing to the explanation of the Master (Mr. Sinnett’s “ teacher ”) which would contradict these lines, were they written in the spirit attributed to them. A copy of this letter was sent to the writer, together with others, two years ago (1886), with additional marginal remarks, to quote from, in the “ Secret Doctrine.” It begins by considering the difficulty experienced by the Western student, in reconciling some facts, previously given, with the evolution of man from the animal, i.e., from the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the doctrine of analogy and correspondences.

Then it touches upon the mystery of the Devas, and even Gods, having to pass through states which it was agreed to refer to as “ Inmetallization, Inherbation, Inzoonization and finally Incarnation,” and explains this by hinting at the necessity of failures even in the ethereal races of Dhyan Chohans. Concerning this it says : “ Still, as these ‘ failures ’ are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms. . . . .”

After which only a hint is given about the mystery contained in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and explained in Book II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution, “ they will have to drink it to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the Elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop little by little the full type of humanity.”

These Dhyan Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as do the lower Pitris ; nor do they incarnate in man until the Third Root Race. Thus, as the teaching stands : “ Man in the First Round and First Race on Globe D, our Earth, was an ethereal being (a Lunar Dhyani, as man), non-intelligent but super-spiritual ; and correspondingly, on the law of analogy, in the First Race of the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races and sub-races . . . he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly ethereal. . . .

He is sexless, and, like the animal and vegetable he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser surroundings. “ II. Round. He (Man   ) is still gigantic and ethereal but growing firmer and more condensed in body, a more physical man. Yet still less intelligent than spiritual (1), for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than is the physical frame . . . “ III. Round. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of a giant-ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual.

For, on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality (  2  ). In the last half of the Third Round his gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more rational being, though still more an ape than a Deva. . . . (All this is almost exactly repeated in the third Root-Race of the Fourth Round.) “ IV. Round. Intellect has an enormous development in this Round. The (hitherto  ) dumb races acquire our (present   ) human speech on this globe, on which, from the Fourth Race, language is perfected and knowledge increases.

At this half-way point of the Fourth Round (as of the Fourth Root, or Atlantean, race   ) humanity passes the axial point of the minor Manvantara cycle . . . . the world teeming with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease . . . .” This is from the authentic letter ; what follows are the later remarks and additional explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes. (1.) “ . . .

The original letter contained general teaching—a ‘ bird’s-eye view ’—and particularized nothing. . . . To speak of ‘ physical man ’ while limiting the statement to the early Rounds would be drifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous ‘  coats of skin.’ . . . The first ‘ Nature,’ the first ‘ body,’ the first ‘ mind ’ on the first plane of perception, on the first Globe in the first Round, is what was meant. For Karma and evolution have— ‘ . . . centred in our make such strange extremes  ! From different Natures* marvellously mixed . . .’ (2.) “ Restore : he has now reached the point (   by analogy, and as the Third Root Race in the Fourth Round   ) where his (  “ the angel ”-man’s) primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent human mentality, and you have the true version on your thumb-nail. . . .”

These are the words of the Teacher—text, words and sentences in brackets, and explanatory footnotes. It stands to reason that there must be an enormous difference in such terms as “ objectivity ” and “ subjectivity,” “ materiality ” and “ spirituality,” when the same terms are applied to different planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its relative sense. And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left to his own speculations, an author, however eager to learn, yet quite inexperienced in these abstruse teachings, has fallen into an error. Neither was the difference between the “ Rounds ” and the “ Races ” sufficiently defined in the letters received, nor was there anything of the kind required before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the difference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master’s (188-), “ the teachings were imparted under protest. . . .

They were, so to say, smuggled goods . . . and when I remained face to face with only one correspondent, the other, Mr. ————–, had so far tossed all the cards into confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon law.” Theosophists, “ whom it may concern,” will understand what is meant. The outcome of all this is that nothing had ever been said in the “ letters ” to warrant the assurance that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any Adept believed in, the preposterous modern theory of the descent of man from a common ancestor with the ape—an anthropoid of the actual animal kind, unless metaphorically. To this day the world is more full of “ ape-like men ” than the woods are of “ men-like apes.”

The ape is sacred in India because its origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick veil of allegory. Hanuman is the son of Pavana (Vayu, “ the god of the wind ”) by Anjana, a monster called Kesarî, though his genealogy varies. The reader who bears this in mind will find in Book II. passim, the whole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The “ Men ” of the Third Race (who separated) were “ Gods ” by their spirituality and purity, though senseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men.

These “ Men ” of the Third Race—the ancestors of the Atlanteans— were just such ape-like, intellectually senseless giants as were those beings, who, during the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was these third Race “ men ” who, through promiscuous connection with animal species lower than themselves, created that missing link which became ages later (in the tertiary period only) the remote ancestor of the real ape as we find it now in the pithecoid family.

Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach the evolution of “ man ” from the “ ape.” Nor does the author of “ Esoteric Buddhism ” assert it anywhere in his work in so many words  ; but, owing to his inclination towards modern science, he uses language which might perhaps justify such an inference.

The man who preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean race, however much he may have looked physically like a “ gigantic ape ”—“ the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man ”—was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The “ Lemuro-Atlantean ” was a highly civilized race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization of the day : at any rate, the Lemuro-Atlantean of the closing Third Race was so. And now we may return to the Stanzas.

5. At the fourth (Round, or revolution of life and being around “ the seven smaller wheels ”) (a), the sons are told to create their images. One third refuses. Two (thirds   ) obey. The full meaning of this sloka can be fully comprehended only after reading the detailed additional explanations in the “ Anthropogenesis ” and its commentaries, in Book II. Between this Sloka and the last, Sloka 4 in this same Stanza, extend long ages ; and there now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another æon. The drama enacted on our planet is at the beginning of its fourth act, but for a clearer comprehension of the whole play the reader will have to turn back before he can proceed onward.

For this verse belongs to the general Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Book II. will give a detailed account of the “ Creation ” or rather the formation, of the first human beings, followed by the second humanity, and then by the third ; or, as they are called, “ the first, second, and the third Root-Races.” As the solid Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its protoplasmic phantom, so did man.

(a) That which is meant by the qualification the “ Fourth ” is explained as the “ fourth Round ” only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can equally mean fourth “ Eternity ” as “ Fourth Round,” or even the fourth (our) Globe. For, as will repeatedly be shown, it is the fourth Sphere on the fourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that we are in the Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium between Spirit and Matter had to take place.

Says the Commentary explaining the verse :— “ The holy youths (the gods) refused to multiply and create species after their likeness, after their kind. They are not fit forms (rupas) for us. They have to grow. They refuse to enter the chhayas (shadows or images) of their inferiors. Thus had selfish feeling prevailed from the beginning, even among the gods, and they fell under the eye of the Karmic Lipikas.” They had to suffer for it in later births. How the punishment reached the gods will be seen in the second volume.

6. The curse is pronounced (a) : they will be born in the fourth (Race), suffer and cause suffering (b). This is the first war (c).

(a) It is a universal tradition that, before the physiological “ Fall,” propagation of one’s kind, whether human or animal, took place through the will of the Creators, or of their progeny. It was the Fall of Spirit into generation, not the Fall of mortal man. It has already been stated that, to become a Self-Conscious Spirit, the latter must pass through every cycle of being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man.

Spirit per se is an unconscious negative abstraction. Its purity is inherent, not acquired by merit ; hence, as already shown, to become the highest Dhyan Chohan it is necessary for each Ego to attain to full self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious Being, which is synthesized for us in Man. The Jewish Kabalists arguing that no Spirit could belong to the divine hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit) was united to Nephesh (living Soul), only repeat the Eastern Esoteric teaching. “ A Dhyani has to be an Atma-Buddhi ;   once the Buddhi-Manas breaks loose from its immortal Atma of which it (Buddhi) is the vehicle, Atman passes into non-being, which is absolute Being.” This means that the purely Nirvanic state is a passage of Spirit back to the ideal abstraction of Be-ness which has no relation to the plane on which our Universe is accomplishing its cycle.

(b) “ The curse is pronounced ” does not mean, in this instance, that any personal Being, god, or superior Spirit, pronounced it, but simply that the cause which could but create bad results had been generated, and that the effects of a Karmic cause could lead the “ Beings ” that counteracted the laws of Nature, and thus impeded her legitimate progress, only to bad incarnations, hence to suffering.

(c) “ There were many wars ” refers to several struggles of adjustment, spiritual, cosmical, and astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the evolution of man as he is now. Powers—pure Essences—“ that were told to create ” is a sentence that relates to a mystery explained, as already said, elsewhere. It is not only one of the most hidden secrets of Nature—that of generation, over whose solution the Embryologists have vainly put their heads together—but likewise a divine function that involves that other religious, or rather dogmatic, mystery, the “ Fall ” of the Angels, as it is called. Satan and his rebellious host would thus prove, when the meaning of the allegory is explained, to have refused to create physical man, only to become the direct Saviours and the Creators of “ divine Man.” The symbolical teaching is more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, as will be seen later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind, functioning medium, impelled and guided by fathomless Law, the “ rebellious ” Angel claimed and enforced his right of independent judgment and will, his right of free-agency and responsibility, since man and angel are alike under Karmic Law. “

And there was war in Heaven. . . . Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon ; and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not ;   neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And the Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” The Kabalistic version of the same story is given in the Codex Nazareus, the scripture of the Nazarenes, the real mystic Christians of John the Baptist and the Initiates of Christos. Bahak-Zivo, the “ Father of the Genii,” is ordered to construct creatures (to create). But, as he is “ ignorant of Orcus,” he fails to do so, and calls in Fetahil, a still purer spirit, to his aid, who fails still worse.

This is a repetition of the failure of the “ Fathers,” the lords of light who fail one after the other. (Book II, Sloka 17.) We will now quote from our earlier Volumes : “ Then steps on the stage of creation the spirit † (of the Earth so-called, or the Soul, Psyche, which St. James calls ‘ devilish ’) the lower portion the Anima Mundi or Astral Light. (See the close of this Sloka). With the Nazarenes and the Gnostics this Spirit was feminine. Thus the spirit of the Earth perceiving that for Fetahil, the newest man (the latest), the splendour was ‘ changed,’ and that for splendour existed ‘ decrease and damage,’ she awakes Karabtanos,† ‘ who was frantic and without sense and judgment,’ and says to him :— ‘ Arise, see, the splendour (light) of the newest man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce or create men), the decrease of this splendour is visible. Rise up, come with thy mother (the Spiritus) and free thee from limits by which thou art held, and those more ample than the whole world.’ After which follows the union of the frantic and blind matter, guided by the insinuations of the spirit (not the Divine breath but the Astral spirit, which by its double essence is already tainted with matter) ; and the offer of the mother being accepted, the Spiritus conceives “ Seven Figures,” and the seven stellars (planets) which represent also the seven capital sins, the progeny of an astral soul separated from its divine source (spirit) and matter, the blind demon of concupiscence.

Seeing this, Fetahil extends his hand towards the abyss of matter, and says : ‘ Let the Earth exist, just as the abode of the powers has existed.’ Dipping his hand in the chaos, which he condenses, he creates our planet.‡ ” “ Then the Codex proceeds to tell how Bahak-Zivo was separated from the Spiritus, and the Genii or angels from the rebels.§ Then Mano  || (the greatest), who dwells with the greatest ferho, call KebarZivo (known also by the name of Nebat-Iavar bar Iufin Ifafin), Helm and Vine of the food of life,¶ he being the third life, and commiserating the rebellious and foolish Genii, on account of the magnitude of their ambition, says : ‘ Lord of the Genii** (Æons), see what the Genii, the rebellious angels do, and about what they are consulting.* They say, ‘ Let us call for the world, and let us call the ‘ powers ’ into existence,” The Genii are the Principes, the “ Sons of Light,” but thou art the “ Messenger of Life.”

And in order to counteract the influence of the seven “ badly disposed ” principles, the progeny of Spiritus, cabar-zio, the mighty Lord of Splendor, produces seven other lives (the cardinal virtues) who shine in their own form and light “ from on high ” and thus re-establish the balance between good and evil, light and darkness. Here one finds a repetition of the early allegorical, dual systems, as the Zoroastrian, and detects a germ of the dogmatic and dualistic religions of the future, a germ which has grown into such a luxuriant tree in ecclesiastical Christianity. It is already the outline of the two “ Supremes ”—God and Satan. But in the Stanzas no such idea exists. Most of the Western Christian Kabalists—pre-eminently Eliphas Lévi—in their desire to reconcile the Occult Sciences with Church dogmas, did their best to make of the “ Astral Light ” only and preeminently the Pleroma of early Church Fathers, the abode of the Hosts of the Fallen Angels, of the “ Archons ” and “ Powers.” But the Astral Light, while only the lower aspect of the Absolute, is yet dual. It is the Anima Mundi, and ought never to be viewed otherwise, except for Kabalistic purposes.

The difference which exists between its “ light ” and its “ Living Fire ” ought to be ever present in the mind of the Seer and the “ Psychic.” The higher aspect, without which only creatures of matter from that Astral Light can be produced, is this Living Fire, and it is the Seventh Principle. It is said in “ Isis Unveiled,” in a complete description of it :— “ The Astral Light or Anima Mundi is dual and bisexual. The (ideal) male part of it is purely divine and spiritual, it is the Wisdom, it is Spirit or Purusha ; while the female portion (the Spiritus of the Nazarenes) is tainted, in one sense, with matter, is indeed matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the life-principle of every living creature, and furnishes the astral soul, the fluidic perisprit, to men, animals, fowls of the air, and everything living. Animals have only the latent germ of the highest immortal soul in them.

This latter will develop only after a series of countless evolutions ; the doctrine of which evolution is contained in the Kabalistic axiom : ‘ A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man  ; a man, a spirit  ; and the spirit, a god.’ ” (Vol. I., p. 301, note.) The seven principles of the Eastern Initiates had not been explained when “ Isis ” was written, but only the three Kabalistic Faces of the semi-exoteric Kabala.* But these contain the description of the mystic natures of the first group of Dhyan Chohans in the regimen ignis, the region and “ rule (or government) of fire,” which group is divided into three classes, synthesized by the first, which makes four or the “ Tetraktis.” (See Comments on Stanza VII. Book I.) If one studies the Comments attentively he will find the same progression in the angelic natures, viz., from the passive down to the active, the last of these Beings being as near to the Ahamkara element (the region or plane wherein Egoship or the feeling of I-am-ness is beginning to be defined) as the first ones are near to the undifferentiated essence. The former are Arupa, incorporeal ; the latter, Rupa, corporeal. In Volume II. of Isis (p. 183 et seq.) the philosophical systems of the Gnostics and the primitive Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, are fully considered. They show the views held in those days—outside the circle of Mosaic Jews—about Jehovah. He was identified by all the Gnostics with the evil, rather than with the good principle. For them, he was Ilda-Baoth, “ the son of Darkness,” whose mother, Sophia Achamoth, was the daughter of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom (the female Holy Ghost of the early Christians)—Akâsa ; while Sophia Achamoth personified the lower Astral Light or Ether. Ilda-Baoth, ‡ or Jehovah, is simply one of the Elohim, the seven creative Spirits, and one of the lower Sephiroth. He produces from himself seven other Gods, “ Stellar Spirits ” (or the lunar ancestors), for they are all the same.

They are all in his own image (the “ Spirits of the Face ”), and the reflections one of the other, and have become darker and more material as they successively receded from their originator. They also inhabit seven regions disposed like a ladder, as its rungs slope up and down the scale of spirit and matter.‡ With Pagans and Christians, with Hindus and Chaldeans, with the Greek as with the Roman Catholics—with a slight variation of the texts in their interpretations—they all were the Genii of the seven planets, as of the seven planetary spheres of our septenary chain, of which Earth is the lowest. (See Isis, Vol. II. p. 186.) This connects the “ Stellar ” and “ Lunar ” Spirits with the higher planetary Angels and the Saptarishis (the seven Rishis of the Stars) of the Hindus—as subordinate Angels (Messengers) to these “ Rishis,” the emanations, on the descending scale, of the former. Such, in the opinion of the philosophical Gnostics, were the God and the Archangels now worshipped by the Christians ! The “ Fallen Angels ” and the legend of the “ War in Heaven ” is thus purely pagan in its origin and comes from India viâ Persia and Chaldea. The only reference to it in the Christian canon is found in Revelations xii., as quoted a few pages back. Thus “ Satan,” once he ceases to be viewed in the superstitious, dogmatic, unphilosophical spirit of the Churches, grows into the grandiose image of one who made of terrestrial a divine man ; who gave him, throughout the long cycle of Mahâ-kalpa the law of the Spirit of Life, and made him free from the Sin of Ignorance, hence of death. (See the Section On Satan in Part II. Vol. II.)

6. The older wheels rotated downward and upward (a). . . . The Mother’s spawn filled the whole (Kosmos).* There were battles fought between the Creators and the Destroyers, and battles fought for Space ;   the seed appearing and reappearing continuously (b).  

(a) Here, having finished for the time being with our side-issues— which, however they may break the flow of the narrative, are necessary for the elucidation of the whole scheme—the reader must return once more to Cosmogony. The phrase “ Older wheels ” refers to the worlds or Globes of our chain as they were during the “ previous Rounds.” The present Stanza, when explained esoterically, is found embodied entirely in the Kabalistic works. Therein will be found the very history of the evolution of those countless Globes which evolve after a periodical Pralaya, rebuilt from old material into new forms. The previous Globes disintegrate and reappear transformed and perfected for a new phase of life. In the Kabala, worlds are compared to sparks which fly from under the hammer of the great Architect—law, the law which rules all the smaller Creators. The following comparative diagram shows the identity between the two systems, the Kabalistic and the Eastern. The three upper are the three higher planes of consciousness, revealed and explained in both schools only to the Initiates, the lower ones represent the four lower planes—the lowest being our plane, or the visible Universe. These seven planes correspond to the seven states of consciousness in man. It remains with him to attune the three higher states in himself to the three higher planes in Kosmos. But before he can attempt to attune, he must awaken the three “ seats ” to life and activity. And how many are capable of bringing themselves to even a superficial comprehension of Atma-Vidya (Spirit-Knowledge), or what is called by the Sufis, Rohanee ! In Section the VIIth of this Book, in Sub-section 3, the reader will find a still clearer explanation of the above in the Commentary upon Saptaparna—the man-plant. See also the Section of that name in Part II. differentiation.* In theogony, every Seed is an ethereal organism, from which evolves later on a celestial being, a God.

In the “ beginning,” that which is called in mystic phraseology “ Cosmic Desire ” evolves into absolute Light. Now light without any shadow would be absolute light—in other words, absolute darkness—as physical science seeks to prove. That shadow appears under the form of primordial matter, allegorized—if one likes—in the shape of the Spirit of Creative Fire or Heat. If, rejecting the poetical form and allegory, science chooses to see in this the primordial Fire-Mist, it is welcome to do so. Whether one way or the other, whether Fohat or the famous force of Science, nameless, and as difficult of definition as our Fohat himself, that Something “ caused the Universe to move with circular motion,” as Plato has it ; or, as the Occult teaching expresses it : “ The Central Sun causes Fohat to collect primordial dust in the form of balls, to impel them to move in converging lines and finally to approach each other and aggregate.” (Book of Dzyan) . . . . .

“ Being scattered in Space, without order or system, the world-germs come into frequent collision until their final aggregation, after which they become wanderers (Comets). Then the battles and struggles begin. The older (bodies) attract the younger, while others repel them. Many perish, devoured by their stronger companions. Those that escape become worlds.”

We have been assured that there exist several modern works of speculative fancy upon such struggles for life in sidereal heaven, especially in the German language. We rejoice to hear it, for ours is an Occult teaching lost in the darkness of archaic ages. We have treated of it fully in “ Isis Unveiled,” and the idea of Darwinian-like evolution, of struggle for life and supremacy, and of the “ survival of the fittest ” among the Hosts above as the Hosts below, runs throughout both the volumes of our earlier work, written in 1876 (See Index in “ Isis Unveiled ” at the words “ Evolution ”—“ Darwin ”—“ Kapila ”— “ Battle of Life,” etc. etc.)

But the idea was not ours, it is that of antiquity. Even the Purânic writers have ingeniously interwoven allegory with Cosmic facts and human events. Any symbologist may discern the astrocosmical allusion even though he be unable to grasp the whole meaning. The great “ Wars in Heaven,” in the Purânas ; the wars of the Titans, in Hesiod and other classical writers ; the “ struggles,” also in the Egyptian legend between Osiris and Typhon, and even those in the Scandinavian legends, all refer to the same subject. Northern Mythology refers to it as the battle of the Flames, the sons of Muspel who fought on the field of Wigred.

All these relate to Heaven and Earth, and have a double and often even a triple meaning, and esoteric application to things above as to things below. They relate severally to astronomical, theogonical and human struggles ; to the adjustment of orbs, and the supremacy among nations and tribes. The “ Struggle for Existence ” and the “ Survival of the Fittest ” reigned supreme from the moment that Kosmos manifested into being, and could hardly escape the observant eye of the ancient Sages. Hence the incessant fights of Indra, the god of the Firmament, with the Asuras—degraded from high gods into Cosmic demons ; and with Vritri or Ah-hi ;   the battles fought between stars and constellations, between Moon and planets—later on incarnated as kings and mortals.

Hence also the War in Heaven of Michael and his Host against the Dragon (Jupiter and Lucifer-Venus), when a third of the stars of the rebellious host was hurled down into Space, and “ its place was found no more in Heaven.” As said long ago—“ This is the basic and fundamental stone of the secret cycles. It shows that the Brahmins and Tanäim, speculated on the creation and development of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both anticipating him and his school in the natural selection of species, the survival of the fittest, and transformation. There were old worlds that perished conquered by the new,” etc., etc. (“ Isis Unveiled,” Vol. II., p. 260.) The assertion that all the worlds (Stars, planets, etc.)—as soon as a nucleus of primordial substance in the laya (undifferentiated) state is informed by the freed principles, of a just deceased sidereal body— become first comets, and then Suns to cool down to inhabitable worlds, is a teaching as old as the Rishis.

Thus the Secret Books distinctly teach, as we see, an astronomy that would not be rejected even by modern speculation could the latter thoroughly understand its teachings. For, archaic astronomy, and the ancient, physical and mathematical sciences, expressed views identical with those of modern science, and many of far more momentous import. A “ struggle for life ” as a “ survival of the fittest ” in the worlds above, as on our planet here below, are distinctly taught. This teaching, however, although it would not be “ entirely rejected ” by Science, is sure to be repudiated as an integral whole. For it avers that there are only seven Self-born primordial “ gods ” emanated from the trinitarian one. In other words, it means that all the worlds or sidereal bodies (always on strict analogy) are formed one from the other, after the primordial manifestation at the beginning of the “ Great Age ” is accomplished.

The birth of the celestial bodies in Space is compared to a crowd or multitude of “ pilgrims ” at the festival of the “ Fires.” Seven ascetics appear on the threshold of the temple with seven lighted sticks of incense. At the light of these the first row of pilgrims light their incense sticks. After which every ascetic begins whirling his stick around his head in space, and furnishes the rest with fire. Thus with the heavenly bodies. A laya-centre is lighted and awakened into life by the fires of another “ pilgrim,” after which the new “ centre ” rushes into space and becomes a comet. It is only after losing its velocity, and hence its fiery tail, that the “ Fiery Dragon ” settles down into quiet and steady life as a regular respectable citizen of the sidereal family.

Therefore it is said :— Born in the unfathomable depths of Space, out of the homogeneous Element called the World-Soul, every nucleus of Cosmic matter, suddenly launched into being, begins life under the most hostile circumstances. Through a series of countless ages, it has to conquer for itself a place in the infinitudes. It circles round and round between denser and already fixed bodies, moving by jerks, and pulling towards some given point or centre that attracts it, trying to avoid, like a ship drawn into a channel dotted with reefs and sunken rocks, other bodies that draw and repel it in turn ; many perish, their mass disintegrating through stronger masses, and, when born within a system, chiefly within the insatiable stomachs of various Suns. (See Comm. to Stanza IV).

Those which move slower and are propelled into an elliptic course are doomed to annihilation sooner or later. Others moving in parabolic curves generally escape destruction, owing to their velocity. Some very critical readers will perhaps imagine that this teaching, as to the cometary stage passed through by all heavenly bodies, is in contradiction with the statements just made as to the moon being the mother of the earth. They will perhaps fancy that intuition is needed to harmonize the two. But no intuition is in truth required. What does Science know of Comets, their genesis, growth, and ultimate behaviour ? Nothing—absolutely nothing !

And what is there so impossible that a laya centre—a lump of cosmic protoplasm, homogeneous and latent, when suddenly animated or fired up—should rush from its bed in Space and whirl throughout the abysmal depths in order to strengthen its homogeneous organism by an accumulation and addition of differentiated elements ? And why should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become an inhabited globe ! “ The abodes of Fohat are many,” it is said.

“ He places his four fiery (electro-positive) Sons in the “ Four circles ” ; these Circles are the Equator, the Ecliptic, and the two parallels of declination, or the tropics—to preside over the climates of which are placed the Four mystical Entities. Then again : “ Other seven (sons) are commissioned to preside over the seven hot, and seven cold lokas (the hells of the orthodox Brahmins) at the two ends of the Egg of Matter (our Earth and its poles). The seven lokas are also called the “ Rings,” elsewhere, and the “ Circles.”

The ancients made the polar circles seven instead of two, as Europeans do ; for Mount Meru, which is the North Pole, is said to have seven gold and seven silver steps leading to it. The strange statement made in one of the Stanzas : “ The Songs of Fohat and his Sons were radiant as the noon-tide Sun and the Moon combined ; ” and that the four Sons on the middle four-fold Circle “ saw their father’s songs and heard his Solar-selenic radiance  ; ” is explained in the Commentary in these words : “ The agitation of the Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends (North and South Poles) of the Earth which resulted in a multicoloured radiance at night, have in them several of the properties of Akâsa (Ether) colour and sound as well.”

“ Sound is the characteristic of Akâsa (Ether) : it generates air, the property of which is Touch ; which (by friction) becomes productive of Colour and Light.” (Vishnu Purâna.)

Perhaps the above will be regarded as archaic nonsense, but it will be better comprehended, if the reader remembers the Aurora Borealis and Australis, both of which take place at the very centres of terrestrial electric and magnetic forces. The two poles are said to be the store-houses, the receptacles and liberators, at the same time, of Cosmic and terrestrial Vitality (Electricity) ; from the surplus of which the Earth, had it not been for these two natural “ safety-valves,” would have been rent to pieces long ago.

At the same time it is now a theory that has lately become an axiom, that the phenomenon of polar lights is accompanied by, and productive of, strong sounds, like whistling, hissing, and cracking. (But see Professor Trumholdt’s works on the Aurora Borealis, and his correspondence regarding this moot question.)

7. Make thy calculations, O Lanoo, if thou wouldst learn the correct age of thy small wheel (chain). Its fourth spoke is our mother (Earth) (a). Reach the fourth “ fruit ” of the fourth path of knowledge that leads to Nirvana, and thou shalt comprehend, for thou shalt see (b). (a) The “ small wheel ” is our chain of spheres, and the fourth spoke is our Earth, the fourth in the chain. It is one of those on which the “ hot (positive) breath of the Sun ” has a direct effect.

To calculate its age, however, as the pupil is asked to do in the Stanza, is rather difficult, since we are not given the figures of the Great Kalpa, and are not allowed to publish those of our small Yugas, except as to the approximate duration of these. “

The older wheels rotated for one Eternity and one half of an Eternity,” it says. We know that by “ Eternity ” the seventh part of 311,040,000,000,000 years, or an age of Brahmâ is meant. But what of that ? We also know that, to begin with, if we take for our basis the above figures, we have first of all to eliminate from the 100 years of Brahmâ (or 311,040,000,000,000 years) two years taken up by the Sandhyas (twilights), which leaves 98, as we have to bring it to the mystical combination 14×7. But we have no knowledge at what time precisely the evolution and formation of our little earth began. Therefore it is impossible to calculate its age, unless the time of its birth is given—which the teachers refuse to do, so far.

At the close of this Book and in Book II., however, some chronological hints will be given. We must remember, moreover, that the law of Analogy holds good for the worlds, as it does for man ; and that as “ The one (Deity) becomes Two (Deva or Angel) and Two becomes Three (or man),” etc., etc., so we are taught that the Curds (world-stuff) become wanderers, (Comets), these become stars, and the stars (the centres of vortices) our sun and planets—to put it briefly.

(b) There are four grades of initiation mentioned in exoteric works, which are known respectively in Sanskrit as “ Sçrôtâpanna,” “ Sagardagan,” “ Anagamin,” and “ Arhan ”—the four paths to Nirvana, in this, our fourth Round, bearing the same appellations. The Arhan, though he can see the Past, the Present, and the Future, is not yet the highest Initiate ; for the Adept himself, the initiated candidate, becomes chela (pupil) to a higher Initiate. Three further higher grades have to be conquered by the Arhan who would reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. There are those who have reached it even in this fifth race of ours, but the faculties necessary for the attainment of these higher grades will be fully developed in the average ascetic only at the end of this Root-Race, and in the Sixth and Seventh.

Thus there will always be Initiates and the Profane till the end of this minor Manvantara, the present life-cycle. 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-livinghuman-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 Third Race is sometimes called collectively “ the Sons of Passive Yoga,” i.e., it was produced unconsciously by the second Race, which, as it was intellectually inactive, is supposed to have been constantly plunged in a kind of blank or abstract contemplation, as required by the conditions of the Yoga state.

In the first or earlier portion of the existence of this third race, while it was yet in its state of purity, the “ Sons of Wisdom,” who, as will be seen, incarnated in this Third Race, produced by Kriyasakti a progeny called the “ Sons of Ad ” or “ of the Fire-Mist,” the “ Sons of Will and Yoga,” etc. They were a conscious production, as a portion of the race was already animated with the divine spark of spiritual, superior intelligence. 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, “ Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras ”—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, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., 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 he 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 EarthLife. 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.

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.

Although these matters were barely hinted at in “ Isis Unveiled,” it will be well to remind the reader of what was said in Vol. I., pp. 587 to 593, concerning a certain Sacred Island in Central Asia, and to refer him for further details to the chapter in Book II. on “ The Sons of God and the Sacred Island.” A few more explanations, however, though thrown out in a fragmentary form, may help the student to obtain a glimpse into the present mystery. To state at least one detail concerning these mysterious “ Sons of God ” in plain words. It is from them, these Brahmaputras, that the high Dwijas, the initiated Brahmins of old justly claimed descent, while the modern Brahmin would have the lowest castes believe literally that they issued direct from the mouth of Brahmâ.

This is the esoteric teaching, which adds moreover that, although these descendants (spiritually of course) from the “ sons of Will and Yoga,” became in time divided into opposite sexes, as their “ Kriyasakti ” progenitors did themselves, later on ; yet even their degenerate descendants have down to the present day retained a veneration and respect for the creative function, and still regard it in the light of a religious ceremony, whereas the more civilized nations consider it as a mere animal function. Compare the western views and practice in these matters with the Institutions of Manu in regard to the laws of Grihasta and married life. The true Brahmin is thus indeed “ he whose seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the moon-plant (Soma),” and who is a “ Trisuparna,” for he has understood the secret of the Vedas.

And, to this day, such Brahmins know that, during its early beginnings, psychic and physical intellect being dormant and consciousness still undeveloped, the spiritual conceptions of that race were quite unconnected with its physical surroundings. That divine man dwelt in his animal—though externally human—form ; and, if there was instinct in him, no self-consciousness came to enlighten the darkness of the latent fifth principle. When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused into him the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to life and activity was a sense of solidarity, of one-ness with his spiritual creators. As the child’s first feeling is for its mother and nurse, so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in primitive man were for those whose element he felt within himself, and who yet were outside, and independent of him.

Devotion arose out of that feeling, and became the first and foremost motor in his nature ; for it is the only one which is natural in our heart, which is innate in us, and which we find alike in human babe and the young of the animal. This feeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in primitive man is beautifully, and one may say intuitionally, described by Carlyle. “ The great antique heart,” he exclaims, “ how like a child’s in its simplicity, like a man’s in its earnest solemnity and depth ! heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth ; making all the earth a mystic temple to him, the earth’s business all a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight ; angels yet hover, doing God’s messages among men  . . . . .   Wonder, miracle, encompass the man ; he lives in an element of miracle.

A great law of duty, high as these two infinitudes (heaven and hell), dwarfing all else, annihilating all else—it was a reality, and it is one : the garment only of it is dead ; the essence of it lives through all times and all eternity ! ” It lives undeniably, and has settled in all its ineradicable strength and power in the Asiatic Aryan heart from the Third Race direct through its first “ mind-born ” sons,—the fruits of Kriyasakti. As time rolled on the holy caste of Initiates produced but rarely, and from age to age, such perfect creatures : beings apart, inwardly, though the same as those who produced them, outwardly.

While in the infancy of the third primitive race : “  A creature of a more exalted kind Was wanting yet, and therefore was designed ; Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast For empire formed and fit to rule the rest. ” It was called into being, a ready and perfect vehicle for the incarnating denizens of higher spheres, who took forthwith their abodes in these forms born of Spiritual will and the natural divine power in man. It was a child of pure Spirit, mentally unalloyed with any tincture of earthly element. Its physical frame alone was of time and of life, as it drew its intelligence direct from above. It was the living tree of divine wisdom ; and may therefore be likened to the Mundane Tree of the Norse Legend, which cannot wither and die until the last battle of life shall be fought, while its roots are gnawed all the time by the dragon Nidhogg  ; for even so, the first and holy Son of Kriyasakti had his body gnawed by the tooth of time, but the roots of his inner being remained for ever undecaying and strong, because they grew and expanded in heaven not on earth. He was the first of the First, and he was the seed of all the others.

There were other “ Sons of Kriyasakti ” produced by a second Spiritual effort, but the first one has remained to this day the Seed of divine Knowledge, the One and the Supreme among the terrestrial “ Sons of Wisdom.” Of this subject we can say no more, except to add that in every age—aye, even in our own—there have been great intellects who have understood the problem correctly. How comes our physical body to the state of perfection it is found in now ? Through millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, or from, animals, as taught by materialism. For, as Carlyle says : “ The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself ‘ I,’—what words have we for such things ? it is a breath of Heaven, the highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for the unnamed ?

” The breath of heaven, or rather the breath of life, called in the Bible Nephesh, is in every animal, in every animate speck as in every mineral atom. But none of these has, like man, the consciousness of the nature of that highest Being,* as none has that divine harmony in its form which man possesses. It is, as Novalis said, and no one since has said it better, as repeated by Carlyle :— “ There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form . . . . We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body ! ” “ This sounds like a mere flourish of rhetoric,” adds Carlyle, “ but it is not so. If well meditated it will turn out to be a scientific fact ; the expression . . . of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles,—the great inscrutable Mystery.”