Chapter 22

This ambient and all-penetrating fluid, this ray detached from the [Central or Spiritual] Sun's splendour ... fixed by the weight of the atmosphere [?!] and the power of central attraction ... the Astral Light, this electro-magnetic ether, this vital and luminous caloric, is represented on ancient monuments by the girdle of Isis, which twines round two poles ... and in ancient theogonies by the serpent devouring its own tail, emblem of prudence and of Saturn [emblem of infinity, immortality, and Cronus—Time—not the God Saturn or the planet]. It is the winged dragon of Medea, the double serpent of the caduceus, and the tempter of Genesis; but it is also the brazen snake of Moses encircling the Tau ... lastly, it is the devil of exoteric dogmatism, and is really the blind force [it is not blind, and Lévi knew it], which souls must conquer, in order to detach themselves from the chains of Earth; for if they should not, they will be absorbed by the same power which first produced them, and will return to the central and eternal fire.This great Archæus is now publicly discovered by, andfor, only one man—J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia. For others, however, itisdiscovered, yet must remain almost useless.“So far shalt thou go....”All the above is as practical as it is correct, save one error, which we have explained. Éliphas Lévi commits a great blunder in always identifying the Astral Light with what we call Âkâsha. What it really is will be expounded in Volume II.Éliphas Lévi further writes:The great Magic Agent is the fourth emanation of the life principle [we say—it is the first in the inner, and the second in the outer (our) Universe], of which the Sun is the third form ... for the day-star [the Sun] is only the reflection and material shadow of the Central Sun of truth, which illuminates the intellectual [invisible] world of Spirit, and which itself is but a gleam borrowed from the Absolute.So far he is right enough. But when the great authority of the[pg 276]Western Kabalists adds that, nevertheless,“it is not the immortal Spirit, as the Indian Hierophants have imagined”—we answer, that he slanders the said Hierophants, as they have said nothing of the kind; for even the Purânic exoteric writings flatly contradict the assertion. No Hindû has ever mistaken Prakriti—the Astral Light being only above the lowest plane of Prakriti, the Material Kosmos—for the“immortal Spirit.”Prakriti is ever called Mâyâ, Illusion, and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the Gods included, at the hour of the Pralaya. As it is shown that Âkâsha is not even the Ether, least of all then, we imagine, can it be the Astral Light. Those unable to penetrate beyond the dead letter of thePurânas, have occasionally confused Âkâsha with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the visible Sky! It is true also that those who have invariably translated the term Âkâsha by“Ether”—Wilson, for instance—finding it called“the material cause of sound”possessing, moreover, thisone single property, have ignorantly imagined it to be“material,”in the physical sense. True, again, that if the characteristics are accepted literally, then, since nothing material or physical, and therefore conditioned and temporary, can be immortal—according to metaphysics and philosophy—it would follow that Âkâsha is neither infinite nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since both the words Pradhâna, Primeval Matter, and Sound, as a property, have been misunderstood; the former term (Pradhâna) being certainly synonymous with Mûlaprakriti and Âkâsha, and the latter (Sound) with the Verbum, the Word or the Logos. This is easy to demonstrate; for it is shown in the following sentence fromVishnu Purâna.401“There was neither day nor night, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness, nor light, nor any other thing, save only One, unapprehensible by intellect, or that which is Brahman, and Pums, [Spirit] and Pradhâna [Primordial Matter].”Now, what is Pradhâna, if it is not Mûlaprakriti, the Root of All, in another aspect? For though Pradhâna is said, further on, to merge into the Deity, as everything else does, in order to leave the One absolute during the Pralaya, yet is it held as infinite and immortal. The literal translation is given as:“One Prâdhânika Brahma Spirit:Thatwas”; and the Commentator interprets the compound term as a substantive, not as a derivative word used attributively,i.e., like something“conjoined with Pradhâna.”The student has to note, moreover, that the Purânic is a dualistic system, not evolutionary, and that, in this[pg 277]respect, far more will be found, from an Esoteric standpoint, in the Sânkhya, and even in theMânava-Dharma-Shâstra, however much the latter differs from the former. Hence Pradhâna, even in thePurânas, is an aspect of Parabrahman, not an evolution, and must be the same as the Vedântic Mûlaprakriti.“Prakriti, in itsprimarystate, is Âkâsha,”says a Vedântin scholar.402It is almost abstract Nature.Âkâsha, then, is Pradhâna in another form, and as such cannot be Ether, the ever-invisible agent, courted even by Physical Science. Nor is it Astral Light. It is, as said, thenoumenonof the seven-fold differentiated Prakriti403—the ever immaculate“Mother”of thefatherless“Son,”who becomes“Father”on the lower manifested plane. For Mahat is the first product of Pradhâna, or Âkâsha; and Mahat—Universal Intelligence,“whosecharacteristic propertyis Buddhi”—is no other than the Logos, for he is called Îshvara, Brahmâ, Bhâva, etc.404He is, in short, the“Creator,”or the Divine Mind in creative operation,“the Cause of all things.”He is the“First-Born,”of whom thePurânastell us that“Earth and Mahat are the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe,”or, in our language, the negative and the positive poles of dual Nature (abstract and concrete), for thePurânaadds:In this manner—as were thesevenforms [principles] of Prakriti reckoned from Mahat to Earth—so at the (time of elemental) dissolution (pratyâhâra), these seven successively reënter into each other. The Egg of Brahmâ (Sarva-mandala) is dissolved, with its seven zones (dvîpa), seven oceans, seven regions, etc.405These are the reasons why the Occultists refuse to give the name of Astral Light to Âkâsha, or to call it Ether.“In my Father's house are many mansions,”may be contrasted with the Occult saying,“In our Mother's house are seven mansions,”or planes, the lowest of which is above and around us—the Astral Light.The Elements, whether simple or compound, could not have remained[pg 278]the same since the commencement of the evolution of our Chain. Everything in the Universe progresses steadily in the Great Cycle, while incessantly going up and down in the smaller Cycles. Nature is never stationary during Manvantara, as it is everbecoming,406not simplybeing; and mineral, vegetable, and human life are always adapting their organisms to the then reigning Elements; and thereforethoseElements were then fitted for them, as they are now for the life of present humanity. It will only be in the next, or Fifth, Round that the fifth Element, Ether—the gross body of Âkâsha, if it can be called even that—will, by becoming a familiar fact of Nature to all men, as Air is familiar to us now, cease to be, as at present, hypothetical and an“agent”for so many things. And only during that Round will those higher senses, the growth and development of which Âkâsha subserves, be susceptible of a complete expansion. As already indicated, apartialfamiliarity with the characteristic of matter—Permeability—which should be developed concurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the proper period in this Round. But with the next Element added to our resources, in the next Round, Permeability will become so manifest a characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this Round will seem to man's perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and no more.Let us now return to the Life-Cycle. Without entering at length upon the description given of the HigherLives, we must direct our attention, at present, simply to the earthly Beings and the Earth itself. The latter, we are told, is built up for theFirstRound by the“Devourers,”which disintegrate and differentiate the germs of other Lives in the Elements; pretty much, it must be supposed, as in the present stage of the world, theærobesdo, when, undermining and loosening the chemical structure in an organism, they transform animal matter, and generate substances that vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism disposes of the so-called Azoic Age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time when the Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a particle, or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in it, however latent and unconscious.Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active Life; it is drawn into the vortex ofMotion[the Alchemical Solvent of Life]; Spirit and Matter are[pg 279]the two States of theOne,which is neither Spirit nor Matter, both being the Absolute Life, latent.... Spirit is the first differentiation of [and in]Space;and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is neither Spirit nor Matter, That is IT—the CauselessCauseof Spirit and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call theOne Life,or the Intra-Cosmic Breath.407Once more we say—like must produce like. Absolute Life cannot produce an inorganic atom, whether single or complex, and there is life even in Laya, just as a man in a profound cataleptic state—to all appearance a corpse—is still a living being.When the“Devourers”—in whom the men of Science are invited to see, with some show of reason, atoms of the Fire-Mist, if they will, as the Occultist will offer no objection to this—when the“Devourers,”we say, have differentiated the“Fire Atoms,”by a peculiar process of segmentation, the latter become Life-Germs, which aggregate according to the laws of cohesion and affinity. Then the Life-Germs produce Lives of another kind, which work on the structure of our Globes.Thus, in the First Round, the Globe, having been built by the primitive Fire-Lives—i.e., formed into a sphere—had no solidity, no qualifications, save a cold brightness, no form, no colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round that it developed one Element, which, from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence, has become now, in our Round, the fire we know throughout the System. The Earth was in her first Rûpa, the essence of which is the Âkâshic Principle named ——, that which is now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral Light, which Éliphas Lévi calls the“Imagination of Nature,”probably to avoid giving it its correct name, as others do.Speaking of it, in his Preface to theHistoire de la Magie, Éliphas Lévi says:It is through this Force that all the nervous centres secretly communicate with each other; from it—that sympathy and antipathy are born; from it—that we have our dreams; and that the phenomena of second sight and extra-natural visions take place.... Astral Light [acting under the impulsion of powerful wills] ... destroys, coagulates, separates, breaks, gathers in all things.... God created it on that day when he said:“Fiat Lux!”... It is directed by the Egregores,i.e., the chiefs of the souls, who are the spirits of energy and action.408Éliphas Lévi ought to have added that the Astral Light, or Primordial Substance, if matter at all, is that which, called Light,Luxesoterically[pg 280]explained,is the body of those Spirits themselves, and their very essence. Our physical light is the manifestation on our plane, and the reflected radiance, of the Divine Light, emanating from the collective Body of those who are called the“Lights”and the“Flames.”But no other Kabalist has ever had the talent of heaping up one contradiction on the other, of making one paradox chase another in the same sentence, and in such flowing language, as Éliphas Lévi. He leads his reader through the most lovely valleys, to strand him after all on a desert and barren rock.Says the Commentary:It is through and from the radiations of the seven Bodies of the seven Orders of Dhyânis, that the seven Discrete Quantities [Elements], whose Motion and harmonious Union produce the manifested Universe of Matter, are born.TheSecondRound brings into manifestation the second Element—Air; an element, the purity of which would ensure continuous life to him who would use it. In Europe there have been two Occultists only who have discovered and even partially applied it in practice, though its composition has always been known among the highest Eastern Initiates. The ozone of the modern Chemists is poison compared with the real Universal Solvent, which could never be thought of unless it existed in Nature.From the Second Round, Earth—hitherto a fœtus in the matrix of Space—began its real existence: it had developed individual sentient Life, its second Principle. The second corresponds to the sixth [Principle]; the second is Life continuous, the other, temporary.TheThirdRound developed the third Principle—Water; while theFourthtransformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our Globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on. Bhûmi has reached her fourth Principle. To this it may be objected that the law of analogy, so much insisted upon, is broken. Not at all. Earth will reach her true ultimate form—her body shell—inversely in this to man, only toward the end of the Manvantara, after the Seventh Round. Eugenius Philalethes was right when he assured his readers,“on his word of honour,”that no one had yet seen the“Earth,”i.e., Matter in its essential form. Our Globe is, so far, in its Kâmarûpic state—the Astral Body of Desires of Ahamkâra, dark Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane.It is not molecularly constituted matter, least of all the human Body,[pg 281]Sthûla Sharîra, that is the grossest of all our“Principles,”but verily themiddlePrinciple, the real Animal Centre, whereas our Body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us acts all its life. Every intellectual Theosophist will understand my real meaning. Thus the idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless Lives, just in the same way as was the rocky crust of our Earth, has nothing repulsive in it for the true Mystic. Nor can Science oppose the Occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope will ever fail to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject the doctrine.(c) Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organisms of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, ærobes, anærobes, and what not. But Science has never yet gone so far as to assert with the Occult doctrine, that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings; which, with the exception of the larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and Physiology are the two great magicians of the future, which are destined to open the eyes of mankind to great physical truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man—is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical, Chemical Science may well say that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox, and that which forms man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimalinvisibleLives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree which shelters it from the sun. Each particle—whether you call it organic or inorganic—is aLife. Every atom and molecule in the Universe is bothlife-givinganddeath-givingto such forms, inasmuch as it builds by aggregation universes, and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the transmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes theforms, and expels the souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it is self-generating and self-destroying; it brings[pg 282]into being, and annihilates, that mystery of mysteries, theliving bodyof man, animal, or plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations. It is that mysteriousLife, represented collectively by countless myriads of Lives, that follows in its own sporadic way the hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism; that copies family resemblances, as well as those it finds impressed in the Aura of the generators of every future human being; a mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention elsewhere. For the present, one instance may be cited in illustration. Modern Science is beginning to find out that ptomaine, the alkaloid poison generated by decaying corpses and matter—a Life also, extracted with the help of volatile ether, yields a smell as strong as that of the freshest orange-blossoms; but that free from oxygen, such alkaloids yield either a most sickening, disgusting smell, or a most agreeable aroma, which recalls that of the most delicately scented flowers; and it is suspected that such blossoms owe their agreeable smell to the poisonous ptomaine. The venomous essence of certain fungi, also, is nearly identical with the venom of the cobra of India, the most deadly of serpents. The French savants Arnaud, Gautier, and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men the same venomous alkaloid as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and the trigonocephalus of Portugal. It is proven that venom of the deadliest kind, whether called ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by living men, animals and plants. Gautier also discovered an alkaloid in the fresh carcase and brains of an ox, and a venom which he calls xanthocreatinine, similar to the substance extracted from the poisonous saliva of reptiles. It is the muscular tissues, the most active organs in the animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors of venoms, which have the same importance as carbonic acid and urea in the functions of life, and are the ultimate products of inner combustion. And though it is not yet fully determined whether poisons can be generated by the animal systems of living beings, without the participation and interference of microbes, it is ascertained that the animal does produce venomous substances in its physiological or living state.Thus, having discovered the effects, Science has to find theirprimarycauses; and this it can never do without the help of the old sciences, of Alchemy, Occult Botany and Physics. We are taught that every physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena, diseases—nay,[pg 283]life itself, or rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain conditions and changes in the tissues of the body, which allow and force life to act in that body—that all this is due to those unseen“Creators”and“Destroyers,”which are called, in such a loose and general way, microbes. It might be supposed that these Fiery Lives and the microbes of Science are identical. This is not true. The Fiery Lives are the seventh and highest sub-division of the plane of matter, and correspond in the individual with the One Life of the Universe, though only on that plane of matter. The microbes of Science are the first and lowest sub-division on the second plane—that of material Prâna, or Life. The physical body of man undergoes a complete change of structure every seven years, and its destruction and preservation are due to the alternate functions of the Fiery Lives, as Destroyers and Builders. They are Builders by sacrificing themselves, in the form of vitality, to restrain the destructive influence of the microbes, and, by supplying the microbes with what is necessary, they compel them under that restraint to build up the material body and its cells. They are Destroyers also, when that restraint is removed, and the microbes, unsupplied with vital constructive energy, are left to run riot as destructive agents. Thus, during the first half of a man's life, the firstfiveperiods of seven years each, the Fiery Lives are indirectly engaged in the process of building up man's material body; Life is on the ascending scale, and the force is used in construction and increase. After this period is passed, the age of retrogression commences, and, the work of the Fiery Lives exhausting their strength, the work of destruction and decrease also commences.An analogy between cosmic events in the descent of Spirit into Matter, for the first half of a Manvantara (planetary as well as human), and its ascent, at the expense of Matter, in the second half, may here be traced. These considerations have to do solely with the plane of matter, but the restraining influence of the Fiery Lives on the lowest sub-division of the second plane, the microbes, is confirmed by the fact mentioned in the theory of Pasteur above referred to, that the cells of the organs, when they do not find sufficient oxygen for themselves, adapt themselves to that condition and formferments, which, by absorbing oxygen from substances which come in contact with them, produce their destruction. Thus the process is commenced by one cell robbing its neighbour of the source of its vitality, when the supply is insufficient; and the destruction so commenced steadily progresses.[pg 284]Such experimenters as Pasteur are the best friends and helpers of the Destroyers, and the worst enemies of the Creators—if the latter were not at the same time Destroyers also. However it may be, one thing is certain in this: the knowledge of these primary causes, and of the ultimate essence of every Element, of its Lives, their functions, properties, and conditions of change—constitutes the basis ofMagic. Paracelsus was, perhaps, the only Occultist in Europe, during the latter centuries of the Christian era, who was versed in this mystery. Had not a criminal hand put an end to his life years before the time allotted him by Nature, physiological Magic would have fewer secrets for the civilized world than it now has.(d) But what has the Moon to do in all this, we may be asked. What have“Fish, Sin and Soma [Moon],”in the apocalyptic sentence of the Stanza, to do in company with the Life-microbes? With the latter nothing, except that they avail themselves of the tabernacle of clay prepared by them; with divine perfect Man everything, since“Fish, Sin and Moon”conjointly compose the three symbols of the immortal Being.This is all that can be given. Nor does the writer pretend to know more of these strange symbols than may be inferred about them from exoteric religions—from the mystery, perhaps, which underlies the Matsya (Fish) Avatâra of Vishnu, the. Chaldean Oannes, the Man-Fish, recorded in the imperishable sign of the Zodiac, Pisces, and running throughout the twoTestamentsin the personages of Joshua“Son of Nun (the Fish)”and Jesus; from the allegorical“Sin,”or Fall of Spirit into Matter; and from the Moon—in so far as it relates to the Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris.For the present, it may be as well to remind the reader, that while the Moon-Goddesses were connected in every mythology, especially the Grecian, with child-birth, because of the influence of the Moon on women and conception, the Occult and actual connection of our satellite with fecundation is to this day unknown to Physiology, which regards every popular practice in this connection as gross superstition. As it is useless to discuss these in detail, we can only stop for the present to notice the lunar symbology casually, to show that the said superstition belongs to the most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism—the basis of Christianity. With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and the Esotericism of theBible, interpreted kabalistically, shows undeniably that the Holy of Holies in the Temple was simply[pg 285]the symbol of the womb. This is now proven beyond doubt and cavil, by thenumericalreading of theBiblein general, and ofGenesisespecially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews from the Egyptians and Indians, whose Holy of Holies is symbolized by the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid and the Yoni symbols of exoteric Hindûism. To make the matter clearer, and to show at the same time the enormous difference in the spirit of interpretation and the original meaning of the same symbols between the ancient Eastern Occultists and the Jewish Kabalists, we refer the reader to the Section on“The Holy of Holies,”in the second Volume.Phallic worship has developed only with the loss of the keys to the true meaning of the symbols. It was the last and most fatal turning from the highway of truth and divine knowledge into the side path of fiction, raised into dogma through human falsification and hierarchic ambition.6.From the First-Born,409the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow becomes more strong and radiant with every Change.410The morning sun-light has changed into noon-day glory....This sentence,“the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow [Man] becomes more strong with every Change,”is another psychological mystery, that will find its explanation in Volume II. For the present, it will suffice to say that the“Watcher”and his“Shadows”—the latter numbering as many as there are reïncarnations for the Monad—are one. The Watcher, or the Divine Prototype, is at the upper rung of the Ladder of Being; the Shadow, at the lower. Withal, the Monad of every living being, unless his moral turpitude breaks the connection, and he runs loose and astray into the“Lunar Path”—to use the Occult expression—is an individual Dhyân Chohan, distinct from others, with a kind of spiritual Individuality of its own, during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the Spirit (Âtman), is one, of course, with the One Universal Spirit (Paramâtmâ), but the Vehicle (Vâhan) it is enshrined in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of that Dhyân-Chohanic Essence; and it is in this that lies the mystery of that[pg 286]ubiquity, which was discussed a few pages back.“My Father, that is in Heaven, and I—are one,”says the Christian Scripture; and in this, at any rate, it is the faithful echo of the Esoteric tenet.7.“This is thy present Wheel”—said the Flame to the Spark.“Thou art myself, my Image and my Shadow. I have clothed myself in thee, and thou art my Vâhan,411to the Day‘Be With Us,’when thou shalt re-become myself and others, thyself and I”(a).Then the Builders, having donned their first Clothing, descend on radiant Earth, and reign over Men—who Are themselves(b).(a) The Day when the Spark will re-become the Flame, when Man will merge into his Dhyân Chohan,“myself and others, thyself and I,”as the Stanza has it, means that in Paranirvâna—when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical bodies, but even the spiritual Egos, to their original principle—the Past, Present, and even Future Humanities, like all things, will be one and the same. Everything will have reëntered the Great Breath. In other words, everything will be“merged in Brahman,”or the Divine Unity.Is this annihilation, as some think? Oratheism, as other critics—the worshippers of apersonaldeity, and believers in an unphilosophical paradise—are inclined to suppose? Neither. It is worse than useless to return to the question of implied atheism, in that which isspiritualityof a most refined character. To see in Nirvâna annihilation, amounts to saying of a man plunged in a sounddreamlesssleep—one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is then in its original state of Absolute Consciousness—that he, too, is annihilated. The latter simile answers to one side of the question only—the most material; sincereäbsorptionis by no means such a“dreamless sleep,”but, on the contrary,AbsoluteExistence, an unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a comprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic visions of the Soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine Monad. Nor is the Individuality—nor even the essence of the Personality, if any be left behind—lost, because reäbsorbed. For, however limitless[pg 287]from a human standpoint, the paranirvânic state, yet it has a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the same Monad willreëmergetherefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human mind, in its present stage of development, cannot transcend, scarcely can it reach this plane of thought. It totters here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity.(b) The“Watchers”reign over men during the whole period of Satya Yuga and the smaller subsequent Yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race; after which it is the Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes, as in the Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the priests to Solon, the incarnated Dhyânis of a lower order, up to King Menes and the human Kings of other nations. All were carefully recorded. In the views of symbologists this Mythopœic Age is of course regarded as only a fairy tale. But since traditions and even chronicles of such Dynasties ofDivineKings, of Gods reigning over men, followed by Dynasties of Heroes or Giants, exist in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to understand how all the peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast oceans and belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, as well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same“fairy tales”in the same order of events.412However, as the Secret Doctrine teacheshistory—which, although esoteric and traditional, is, none the less, more reliable than profane history—we are entitled to our beliefs as much as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the Dhyâni-Buddhas of the two higher Groups, namely, the Watchers or the Architects, furnished the many and various races with divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their Vehicles of the lower Kingdoms, and who had, therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin, the great spiritual truths of the transcendental Worlds.Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers“descend on radiant Earth and reign over men,who are themselves.”The reigning Kings had finished their cycle on Earth and other Worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future Manvantaras they will have risen to higher[pg 288]Systems than our planetary World; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the hard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their predecessors. The next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own Life-Cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a Mankind whose Monads may now be still imprisoned—semi-conscious—in the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles may be animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the vegetable world.Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Seven-fold Nature; the spiritual or divine; the psychic or semi-divine; the intellectual; the passional, the instinctual, orcognitional; the semi-corporeal; and the purely material or physical natures. All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal and centripetal, way,onein their ultimate essence,sevenin their aspects. The lowest, of course, is that depending upon and subservient to our five physical senses, which are in truthseven, as shown later, on the authority of the oldestUpanishads. Thus far, for individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless Lives, the outbreathings of the One Life; in order that, through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back again, reäscending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom, we say, may reach,through individual merits and efforts, that plane where it re-becomes the One UnconditionedAll. But between the Alpha and the Omega there is the weary“Road,”hedged in by thorns, that goes down first, then—

This great Archæus is now publicly discovered by, andfor, only one man—J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia. For others, however, itisdiscovered, yet must remain almost useless.“So far shalt thou go....”

All the above is as practical as it is correct, save one error, which we have explained. Éliphas Lévi commits a great blunder in always identifying the Astral Light with what we call Âkâsha. What it really is will be expounded in Volume II.

Éliphas Lévi further writes:

The great Magic Agent is the fourth emanation of the life principle [we say—it is the first in the inner, and the second in the outer (our) Universe], of which the Sun is the third form ... for the day-star [the Sun] is only the reflection and material shadow of the Central Sun of truth, which illuminates the intellectual [invisible] world of Spirit, and which itself is but a gleam borrowed from the Absolute.

So far he is right enough. But when the great authority of the[pg 276]Western Kabalists adds that, nevertheless,“it is not the immortal Spirit, as the Indian Hierophants have imagined”—we answer, that he slanders the said Hierophants, as they have said nothing of the kind; for even the Purânic exoteric writings flatly contradict the assertion. No Hindû has ever mistaken Prakriti—the Astral Light being only above the lowest plane of Prakriti, the Material Kosmos—for the“immortal Spirit.”Prakriti is ever called Mâyâ, Illusion, and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the Gods included, at the hour of the Pralaya. As it is shown that Âkâsha is not even the Ether, least of all then, we imagine, can it be the Astral Light. Those unable to penetrate beyond the dead letter of thePurânas, have occasionally confused Âkâsha with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the visible Sky! It is true also that those who have invariably translated the term Âkâsha by“Ether”—Wilson, for instance—finding it called“the material cause of sound”possessing, moreover, thisone single property, have ignorantly imagined it to be“material,”in the physical sense. True, again, that if the characteristics are accepted literally, then, since nothing material or physical, and therefore conditioned and temporary, can be immortal—according to metaphysics and philosophy—it would follow that Âkâsha is neither infinite nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since both the words Pradhâna, Primeval Matter, and Sound, as a property, have been misunderstood; the former term (Pradhâna) being certainly synonymous with Mûlaprakriti and Âkâsha, and the latter (Sound) with the Verbum, the Word or the Logos. This is easy to demonstrate; for it is shown in the following sentence fromVishnu Purâna.401“There was neither day nor night, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness, nor light, nor any other thing, save only One, unapprehensible by intellect, or that which is Brahman, and Pums, [Spirit] and Pradhâna [Primordial Matter].”

Now, what is Pradhâna, if it is not Mûlaprakriti, the Root of All, in another aspect? For though Pradhâna is said, further on, to merge into the Deity, as everything else does, in order to leave the One absolute during the Pralaya, yet is it held as infinite and immortal. The literal translation is given as:“One Prâdhânika Brahma Spirit:Thatwas”; and the Commentator interprets the compound term as a substantive, not as a derivative word used attributively,i.e., like something“conjoined with Pradhâna.”The student has to note, moreover, that the Purânic is a dualistic system, not evolutionary, and that, in this[pg 277]respect, far more will be found, from an Esoteric standpoint, in the Sânkhya, and even in theMânava-Dharma-Shâstra, however much the latter differs from the former. Hence Pradhâna, even in thePurânas, is an aspect of Parabrahman, not an evolution, and must be the same as the Vedântic Mûlaprakriti.“Prakriti, in itsprimarystate, is Âkâsha,”says a Vedântin scholar.402It is almost abstract Nature.

Âkâsha, then, is Pradhâna in another form, and as such cannot be Ether, the ever-invisible agent, courted even by Physical Science. Nor is it Astral Light. It is, as said, thenoumenonof the seven-fold differentiated Prakriti403—the ever immaculate“Mother”of thefatherless“Son,”who becomes“Father”on the lower manifested plane. For Mahat is the first product of Pradhâna, or Âkâsha; and Mahat—Universal Intelligence,“whosecharacteristic propertyis Buddhi”—is no other than the Logos, for he is called Îshvara, Brahmâ, Bhâva, etc.404He is, in short, the“Creator,”or the Divine Mind in creative operation,“the Cause of all things.”He is the“First-Born,”of whom thePurânastell us that“Earth and Mahat are the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe,”or, in our language, the negative and the positive poles of dual Nature (abstract and concrete), for thePurânaadds:

In this manner—as were thesevenforms [principles] of Prakriti reckoned from Mahat to Earth—so at the (time of elemental) dissolution (pratyâhâra), these seven successively reënter into each other. The Egg of Brahmâ (Sarva-mandala) is dissolved, with its seven zones (dvîpa), seven oceans, seven regions, etc.405

These are the reasons why the Occultists refuse to give the name of Astral Light to Âkâsha, or to call it Ether.“In my Father's house are many mansions,”may be contrasted with the Occult saying,“In our Mother's house are seven mansions,”or planes, the lowest of which is above and around us—the Astral Light.

The Elements, whether simple or compound, could not have remained[pg 278]the same since the commencement of the evolution of our Chain. Everything in the Universe progresses steadily in the Great Cycle, while incessantly going up and down in the smaller Cycles. Nature is never stationary during Manvantara, as it is everbecoming,406not simplybeing; and mineral, vegetable, and human life are always adapting their organisms to the then reigning Elements; and thereforethoseElements were then fitted for them, as they are now for the life of present humanity. It will only be in the next, or Fifth, Round that the fifth Element, Ether—the gross body of Âkâsha, if it can be called even that—will, by becoming a familiar fact of Nature to all men, as Air is familiar to us now, cease to be, as at present, hypothetical and an“agent”for so many things. And only during that Round will those higher senses, the growth and development of which Âkâsha subserves, be susceptible of a complete expansion. As already indicated, apartialfamiliarity with the characteristic of matter—Permeability—which should be developed concurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the proper period in this Round. But with the next Element added to our resources, in the next Round, Permeability will become so manifest a characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this Round will seem to man's perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and no more.

Let us now return to the Life-Cycle. Without entering at length upon the description given of the HigherLives, we must direct our attention, at present, simply to the earthly Beings and the Earth itself. The latter, we are told, is built up for theFirstRound by the“Devourers,”which disintegrate and differentiate the germs of other Lives in the Elements; pretty much, it must be supposed, as in the present stage of the world, theærobesdo, when, undermining and loosening the chemical structure in an organism, they transform animal matter, and generate substances that vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism disposes of the so-called Azoic Age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time when the Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a particle, or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in it, however latent and unconscious.

Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active Life; it is drawn into the vortex ofMotion[the Alchemical Solvent of Life]; Spirit and Matter are[pg 279]the two States of theOne,which is neither Spirit nor Matter, both being the Absolute Life, latent.... Spirit is the first differentiation of [and in]Space;and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is neither Spirit nor Matter, That is IT—the CauselessCauseof Spirit and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call theOne Life,or the Intra-Cosmic Breath.407

Once more we say—like must produce like. Absolute Life cannot produce an inorganic atom, whether single or complex, and there is life even in Laya, just as a man in a profound cataleptic state—to all appearance a corpse—is still a living being.

When the“Devourers”—in whom the men of Science are invited to see, with some show of reason, atoms of the Fire-Mist, if they will, as the Occultist will offer no objection to this—when the“Devourers,”we say, have differentiated the“Fire Atoms,”by a peculiar process of segmentation, the latter become Life-Germs, which aggregate according to the laws of cohesion and affinity. Then the Life-Germs produce Lives of another kind, which work on the structure of our Globes.

Thus, in the First Round, the Globe, having been built by the primitive Fire-Lives—i.e., formed into a sphere—had no solidity, no qualifications, save a cold brightness, no form, no colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round that it developed one Element, which, from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence, has become now, in our Round, the fire we know throughout the System. The Earth was in her first Rûpa, the essence of which is the Âkâshic Principle named ——, that which is now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral Light, which Éliphas Lévi calls the“Imagination of Nature,”probably to avoid giving it its correct name, as others do.

Speaking of it, in his Preface to theHistoire de la Magie, Éliphas Lévi says:

It is through this Force that all the nervous centres secretly communicate with each other; from it—that sympathy and antipathy are born; from it—that we have our dreams; and that the phenomena of second sight and extra-natural visions take place.... Astral Light [acting under the impulsion of powerful wills] ... destroys, coagulates, separates, breaks, gathers in all things.... God created it on that day when he said:“Fiat Lux!”... It is directed by the Egregores,i.e., the chiefs of the souls, who are the spirits of energy and action.408

Éliphas Lévi ought to have added that the Astral Light, or Primordial Substance, if matter at all, is that which, called Light,Luxesoterically[pg 280]explained,is the body of those Spirits themselves, and their very essence. Our physical light is the manifestation on our plane, and the reflected radiance, of the Divine Light, emanating from the collective Body of those who are called the“Lights”and the“Flames.”But no other Kabalist has ever had the talent of heaping up one contradiction on the other, of making one paradox chase another in the same sentence, and in such flowing language, as Éliphas Lévi. He leads his reader through the most lovely valleys, to strand him after all on a desert and barren rock.

Says the Commentary:

It is through and from the radiations of the seven Bodies of the seven Orders of Dhyânis, that the seven Discrete Quantities [Elements], whose Motion and harmonious Union produce the manifested Universe of Matter, are born.

TheSecondRound brings into manifestation the second Element—Air; an element, the purity of which would ensure continuous life to him who would use it. In Europe there have been two Occultists only who have discovered and even partially applied it in practice, though its composition has always been known among the highest Eastern Initiates. The ozone of the modern Chemists is poison compared with the real Universal Solvent, which could never be thought of unless it existed in Nature.

From the Second Round, Earth—hitherto a fœtus in the matrix of Space—began its real existence: it had developed individual sentient Life, its second Principle. The second corresponds to the sixth [Principle]; the second is Life continuous, the other, temporary.

TheThirdRound developed the third Principle—Water; while theFourthtransformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our Globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on. Bhûmi has reached her fourth Principle. To this it may be objected that the law of analogy, so much insisted upon, is broken. Not at all. Earth will reach her true ultimate form—her body shell—inversely in this to man, only toward the end of the Manvantara, after the Seventh Round. Eugenius Philalethes was right when he assured his readers,“on his word of honour,”that no one had yet seen the“Earth,”i.e., Matter in its essential form. Our Globe is, so far, in its Kâmarûpic state—the Astral Body of Desires of Ahamkâra, dark Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane.

It is not molecularly constituted matter, least of all the human Body,[pg 281]Sthûla Sharîra, that is the grossest of all our“Principles,”but verily themiddlePrinciple, the real Animal Centre, whereas our Body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us acts all its life. Every intellectual Theosophist will understand my real meaning. Thus the idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless Lives, just in the same way as was the rocky crust of our Earth, has nothing repulsive in it for the true Mystic. Nor can Science oppose the Occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope will ever fail to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject the doctrine.

(c) Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organisms of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, ærobes, anærobes, and what not. But Science has never yet gone so far as to assert with the Occult doctrine, that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings; which, with the exception of the larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and Physiology are the two great magicians of the future, which are destined to open the eyes of mankind to great physical truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man—is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical, Chemical Science may well say that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox, and that which forms man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimalinvisibleLives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree which shelters it from the sun. Each particle—whether you call it organic or inorganic—is aLife. Every atom and molecule in the Universe is bothlife-givinganddeath-givingto such forms, inasmuch as it builds by aggregation universes, and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the transmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes theforms, and expels the souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it is self-generating and self-destroying; it brings[pg 282]into being, and annihilates, that mystery of mysteries, theliving bodyof man, animal, or plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations. It is that mysteriousLife, represented collectively by countless myriads of Lives, that follows in its own sporadic way the hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism; that copies family resemblances, as well as those it finds impressed in the Aura of the generators of every future human being; a mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention elsewhere. For the present, one instance may be cited in illustration. Modern Science is beginning to find out that ptomaine, the alkaloid poison generated by decaying corpses and matter—a Life also, extracted with the help of volatile ether, yields a smell as strong as that of the freshest orange-blossoms; but that free from oxygen, such alkaloids yield either a most sickening, disgusting smell, or a most agreeable aroma, which recalls that of the most delicately scented flowers; and it is suspected that such blossoms owe their agreeable smell to the poisonous ptomaine. The venomous essence of certain fungi, also, is nearly identical with the venom of the cobra of India, the most deadly of serpents. The French savants Arnaud, Gautier, and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men the same venomous alkaloid as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and the trigonocephalus of Portugal. It is proven that venom of the deadliest kind, whether called ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by living men, animals and plants. Gautier also discovered an alkaloid in the fresh carcase and brains of an ox, and a venom which he calls xanthocreatinine, similar to the substance extracted from the poisonous saliva of reptiles. It is the muscular tissues, the most active organs in the animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors of venoms, which have the same importance as carbonic acid and urea in the functions of life, and are the ultimate products of inner combustion. And though it is not yet fully determined whether poisons can be generated by the animal systems of living beings, without the participation and interference of microbes, it is ascertained that the animal does produce venomous substances in its physiological or living state.

Thus, having discovered the effects, Science has to find theirprimarycauses; and this it can never do without the help of the old sciences, of Alchemy, Occult Botany and Physics. We are taught that every physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena, diseases—nay,[pg 283]life itself, or rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain conditions and changes in the tissues of the body, which allow and force life to act in that body—that all this is due to those unseen“Creators”and“Destroyers,”which are called, in such a loose and general way, microbes. It might be supposed that these Fiery Lives and the microbes of Science are identical. This is not true. The Fiery Lives are the seventh and highest sub-division of the plane of matter, and correspond in the individual with the One Life of the Universe, though only on that plane of matter. The microbes of Science are the first and lowest sub-division on the second plane—that of material Prâna, or Life. The physical body of man undergoes a complete change of structure every seven years, and its destruction and preservation are due to the alternate functions of the Fiery Lives, as Destroyers and Builders. They are Builders by sacrificing themselves, in the form of vitality, to restrain the destructive influence of the microbes, and, by supplying the microbes with what is necessary, they compel them under that restraint to build up the material body and its cells. They are Destroyers also, when that restraint is removed, and the microbes, unsupplied with vital constructive energy, are left to run riot as destructive agents. Thus, during the first half of a man's life, the firstfiveperiods of seven years each, the Fiery Lives are indirectly engaged in the process of building up man's material body; Life is on the ascending scale, and the force is used in construction and increase. After this period is passed, the age of retrogression commences, and, the work of the Fiery Lives exhausting their strength, the work of destruction and decrease also commences.

An analogy between cosmic events in the descent of Spirit into Matter, for the first half of a Manvantara (planetary as well as human), and its ascent, at the expense of Matter, in the second half, may here be traced. These considerations have to do solely with the plane of matter, but the restraining influence of the Fiery Lives on the lowest sub-division of the second plane, the microbes, is confirmed by the fact mentioned in the theory of Pasteur above referred to, that the cells of the organs, when they do not find sufficient oxygen for themselves, adapt themselves to that condition and formferments, which, by absorbing oxygen from substances which come in contact with them, produce their destruction. Thus the process is commenced by one cell robbing its neighbour of the source of its vitality, when the supply is insufficient; and the destruction so commenced steadily progresses.

Such experimenters as Pasteur are the best friends and helpers of the Destroyers, and the worst enemies of the Creators—if the latter were not at the same time Destroyers also. However it may be, one thing is certain in this: the knowledge of these primary causes, and of the ultimate essence of every Element, of its Lives, their functions, properties, and conditions of change—constitutes the basis ofMagic. Paracelsus was, perhaps, the only Occultist in Europe, during the latter centuries of the Christian era, who was versed in this mystery. Had not a criminal hand put an end to his life years before the time allotted him by Nature, physiological Magic would have fewer secrets for the civilized world than it now has.

(d) But what has the Moon to do in all this, we may be asked. What have“Fish, Sin and Soma [Moon],”in the apocalyptic sentence of the Stanza, to do in company with the Life-microbes? With the latter nothing, except that they avail themselves of the tabernacle of clay prepared by them; with divine perfect Man everything, since“Fish, Sin and Moon”conjointly compose the three symbols of the immortal Being.

This is all that can be given. Nor does the writer pretend to know more of these strange symbols than may be inferred about them from exoteric religions—from the mystery, perhaps, which underlies the Matsya (Fish) Avatâra of Vishnu, the. Chaldean Oannes, the Man-Fish, recorded in the imperishable sign of the Zodiac, Pisces, and running throughout the twoTestamentsin the personages of Joshua“Son of Nun (the Fish)”and Jesus; from the allegorical“Sin,”or Fall of Spirit into Matter; and from the Moon—in so far as it relates to the Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris.

For the present, it may be as well to remind the reader, that while the Moon-Goddesses were connected in every mythology, especially the Grecian, with child-birth, because of the influence of the Moon on women and conception, the Occult and actual connection of our satellite with fecundation is to this day unknown to Physiology, which regards every popular practice in this connection as gross superstition. As it is useless to discuss these in detail, we can only stop for the present to notice the lunar symbology casually, to show that the said superstition belongs to the most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism—the basis of Christianity. With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and the Esotericism of theBible, interpreted kabalistically, shows undeniably that the Holy of Holies in the Temple was simply[pg 285]the symbol of the womb. This is now proven beyond doubt and cavil, by thenumericalreading of theBiblein general, and ofGenesisespecially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews from the Egyptians and Indians, whose Holy of Holies is symbolized by the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid and the Yoni symbols of exoteric Hindûism. To make the matter clearer, and to show at the same time the enormous difference in the spirit of interpretation and the original meaning of the same symbols between the ancient Eastern Occultists and the Jewish Kabalists, we refer the reader to the Section on“The Holy of Holies,”in the second Volume.

Phallic worship has developed only with the loss of the keys to the true meaning of the symbols. It was the last and most fatal turning from the highway of truth and divine knowledge into the side path of fiction, raised into dogma through human falsification and hierarchic ambition.

6.From the First-Born,409the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow becomes more strong and radiant with every Change.410The morning sun-light has changed into noon-day glory....

This sentence,“the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow [Man] becomes more strong with every Change,”is another psychological mystery, that will find its explanation in Volume II. For the present, it will suffice to say that the“Watcher”and his“Shadows”—the latter numbering as many as there are reïncarnations for the Monad—are one. The Watcher, or the Divine Prototype, is at the upper rung of the Ladder of Being; the Shadow, at the lower. Withal, the Monad of every living being, unless his moral turpitude breaks the connection, and he runs loose and astray into the“Lunar Path”—to use the Occult expression—is an individual Dhyân Chohan, distinct from others, with a kind of spiritual Individuality of its own, during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the Spirit (Âtman), is one, of course, with the One Universal Spirit (Paramâtmâ), but the Vehicle (Vâhan) it is enshrined in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of that Dhyân-Chohanic Essence; and it is in this that lies the mystery of that[pg 286]ubiquity, which was discussed a few pages back.“My Father, that is in Heaven, and I—are one,”says the Christian Scripture; and in this, at any rate, it is the faithful echo of the Esoteric tenet.

7.“This is thy present Wheel”—said the Flame to the Spark.“Thou art myself, my Image and my Shadow. I have clothed myself in thee, and thou art my Vâhan,411to the Day‘Be With Us,’when thou shalt re-become myself and others, thyself and I”(a).Then the Builders, having donned their first Clothing, descend on radiant Earth, and reign over Men—who Are themselves(b).

(a) The Day when the Spark will re-become the Flame, when Man will merge into his Dhyân Chohan,“myself and others, thyself and I,”as the Stanza has it, means that in Paranirvâna—when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical bodies, but even the spiritual Egos, to their original principle—the Past, Present, and even Future Humanities, like all things, will be one and the same. Everything will have reëntered the Great Breath. In other words, everything will be“merged in Brahman,”or the Divine Unity.

Is this annihilation, as some think? Oratheism, as other critics—the worshippers of apersonaldeity, and believers in an unphilosophical paradise—are inclined to suppose? Neither. It is worse than useless to return to the question of implied atheism, in that which isspiritualityof a most refined character. To see in Nirvâna annihilation, amounts to saying of a man plunged in a sounddreamlesssleep—one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is then in its original state of Absolute Consciousness—that he, too, is annihilated. The latter simile answers to one side of the question only—the most material; sincereäbsorptionis by no means such a“dreamless sleep,”but, on the contrary,AbsoluteExistence, an unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a comprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic visions of the Soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine Monad. Nor is the Individuality—nor even the essence of the Personality, if any be left behind—lost, because reäbsorbed. For, however limitless[pg 287]from a human standpoint, the paranirvânic state, yet it has a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the same Monad willreëmergetherefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human mind, in its present stage of development, cannot transcend, scarcely can it reach this plane of thought. It totters here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity.

(b) The“Watchers”reign over men during the whole period of Satya Yuga and the smaller subsequent Yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race; after which it is the Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes, as in the Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the priests to Solon, the incarnated Dhyânis of a lower order, up to King Menes and the human Kings of other nations. All were carefully recorded. In the views of symbologists this Mythopœic Age is of course regarded as only a fairy tale. But since traditions and even chronicles of such Dynasties ofDivineKings, of Gods reigning over men, followed by Dynasties of Heroes or Giants, exist in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to understand how all the peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast oceans and belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, as well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same“fairy tales”in the same order of events.412However, as the Secret Doctrine teacheshistory—which, although esoteric and traditional, is, none the less, more reliable than profane history—we are entitled to our beliefs as much as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the Dhyâni-Buddhas of the two higher Groups, namely, the Watchers or the Architects, furnished the many and various races with divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their Vehicles of the lower Kingdoms, and who had, therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin, the great spiritual truths of the transcendental Worlds.

Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers“descend on radiant Earth and reign over men,who are themselves.”The reigning Kings had finished their cycle on Earth and other Worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future Manvantaras they will have risen to higher[pg 288]Systems than our planetary World; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the hard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their predecessors. The next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own Life-Cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a Mankind whose Monads may now be still imprisoned—semi-conscious—in the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles may be animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the vegetable world.

Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Seven-fold Nature; the spiritual or divine; the psychic or semi-divine; the intellectual; the passional, the instinctual, orcognitional; the semi-corporeal; and the purely material or physical natures. All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal and centripetal, way,onein their ultimate essence,sevenin their aspects. The lowest, of course, is that depending upon and subservient to our five physical senses, which are in truthseven, as shown later, on the authority of the oldestUpanishads. Thus far, for individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless Lives, the outbreathings of the One Life; in order that, through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back again, reäscending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom, we say, may reach,through individual merits and efforts, that plane where it re-becomes the One UnconditionedAll. But between the Alpha and the Omega there is the weary“Road,”hedged in by thorns, that goes down first, then—

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