Knowledge of Life Two
2. THE HYLOZOIC WORLD VIEW
2. THE HYLOZOIC WORLD VIEW
1What is the most typical of our times is the general anguish before life, no matter how well many people (especially “critics”) try to mask it. World views and life views are bursting like soap-bubbles and people feel they are wandering on a bottomless quagmire. Neither are they helped by their subconscious which through all their incarnations has assimilated untenable illusion and fiction systems. Even “initiates” who have not had any opportunity to remember anew their esoteric knowledge feel insecure and disoriented. Reflecting man needs a world view as a firm foundation to stand on. Those who have never been initiated or just in lower degrees are in most cases content with a life view.
2Mankind needs an ideology to satisfy the needs of emotional as well as mental consciousness, to afford us a world view (with a knowledge of reality) and a life view (with a knowledge of the laws of life). Only such an ideology can liberate us from the idiologies, illusions, and fictions, delusions and superstitions of the ruling life ignorance, and can liberate emotion from hatred (fear, contempt, etc.).
3The hylozoic system has proved its logical cogency to those who are independent of ingrained views, are able to grasp the system with its simple rational explanations, and take the pains to apply it as an explanatory instrument. The old saying, that it is impossible to prove esoterics correct, is false. The incompleteness of the old systems justified such a saying, but ever since the hylozoic system was presented it has been possible to prove esoterics correct.
4Esoterics is the knowledge possessed by the fifth natural kingdom. The geniuses of the fourth kingdom and all the authorities of its religion, philosophy, and science are unable, without a thorough examination, to judge the value of esoterics as a working hypothesis. That it is justified to regard esoterics as a working hypothesis cannot be denied by anyone who has thoroughly examined its content of reality. To realize that reality cannot be otherwise constituted, however, is possible for you only if you were once initiated into a hylozoic knowledge order and so have this particular knowledge latently. Exoterists can ascertain that the system makes up an uncontradictory, logical whole, that facts ascertained always can be put into their correct contexts, that the system explains more than any other system and does so in an incomparably superior manner. They will never be able to deny that the esoteric knowledge is beyond all comparison the supreme working hypothesis, because is explains thousands of otherwise incomprehensible and inexplicable phenomena in a rational and incontrovertible manner. And this is the fact that demonstrates its accordance with reality. All other hypotheses will sooner or later prove their untenability.
5The idea of a fifth kingdom in nature is exceedingly close to human thought, so close that it is amazing it has not been presented a long time ago. Such a possibility has been counteracted by theological fictionalism, the absence of a number of reality concepts (development, higher kinds of consciousness, etc.). Darwinism supplied the idea of further “ennoblement” of the human type in connection with an equally unrealistic brainwave of formation of geniuses in the manner of Nietzsche’s caricature of the superman idea.
6Only those can claim to be esotericians who have mastered Pythagorean hylozoics and so are able to explain thousands of otherwise eternally insoluble problems in a simple, uncontradictory and the most general way; who realize that hylozoics is absolutely superior to all other attempts to explain superphysical reality; who never need to ask “who said that?” but are able to decide for themselves whether alleged facts are also true facts and are able to put them into their correct contexts. Those who invoke authorities, those who are just able to parrot others, show that they are no true esotericians. The explanatory resources of hylozoics are fundamental and evident to any mind free from confusion and dogmatism, to common sense, that anyone who has mastered hylozoics cannot help being convinced that this is the one true explanation, that such is the makeup of reality. It is impossible to imagine anything more rational. No “scholarship” is required to comprehend the system, just common sense and logical thinking. It is matchless in its grand simplicity.
7A basic guideline can be laid down for seekers: the simpler an explanation, the more correct is it, the closer to the correct view of reality. The more complicated, difficult to comprehend, the less probable is it. That is a truth which mathematicians in particular should easily realize. It has a universal application. Truth is the simplest thing of all, but also the most difficult to find. The basic truths are absolutely impossible to discover without explanation given from higher kingdoms. When the explanation has been given, then it is absolutely self-evident. Of course these “keys” are given only to “initiates”.
8The hylozoic mental system is intended to provide the unshakable basis for the philosophy and science of the future. Up to now there has been no such basis. The intention was to present the esoteric knowledge in such a form that the intelligentsia, philosophers and scientists included, still all too dependent on the mode of presentation used, would be forced to realize that esoterics is something which the learned must sooner or later examine. The time for supercilious rejection is over.
9The esoteric mental systems of the future will contain incomparably more esoteric facts than hylozoics does at present. However, the Pythagorean reality system will remain the basic system. We should be grateful to Pythagoras for this simple system with its teaching of the three aspects of reality, of the series of ever higher material worlds, of the monads and their consciousness development through ever higher natural kingdoms, of the gradual development of monad consciousness through the acquisition of consciousness in a long series of ever higher kinds of matter, with cosmic omniscience as the final goal.
10Pythagorean hylozoics is the only world view that has explained the trinity of existence, the three basic and inseparable aspects of life, the necessary condition of life in all connections.
11The three basic aspects of reality – matter, motion, and consciousness – are the conditions of manifestation. They are the necessary conditions of space, time, and law.
12Matter is the condition of space, motion is the condition of time, and that law is the condition of any process of nature was known even to the most ancient Greek philosophers, which fact is clear from the distinction they made between mechanical and final (purposive) causes of events.
13The following can be said to sum up the hylozoic mental system accounted for in the earlier published works of the present author.
14This world view is at the bottom of the life view, which in its turn is the basis of the conception of right.
15The world view includes first of all the various domains of scientific research (astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, biology) and the technological applicatory disciplines, thus the study of the matter and motion aspects of existence.
16The life view includes what concerns the consciousness aspect and man as a social being: conception of right, state, society, etc.
17A life view not based on the hylozoic world view is built on sand.
18Generally speaking, extravert individuals who have the odd departments (1,3,5,7) in their envelopes (particularly the causal and triad envelopes) take an especial interest in problems of world view whereas introvert individuals having even departments (2,4,6) try to solve the problems of life view.
1The denotations used are consistently mathematical.
2Any nomenclature which names unknown worlds, matters, energies, consciousnesses, etc., by terms that are incomprehensible, more or less abortive, not to say misleading or idiotized because abused by ignorance, is meaningless and almost always brings about confusion of ideas.
3The mathematical nomenclature makes it possible to have an exact idea of the kind of world, etc., intended, the degree attained by the individual in cosmic evolution.
4It is quite sufficient if it is clarified once and for all that every world, etc., is in all respects totally different from all the others in the series, that each higher world entails an incomprehensible intensification of the capacity for consciousness and the effect of energy.
5It is an incontestable fact that the mathematical nomenclature is superior in exactness. Another advantage is that a more general use of this nomenclature would make it more difficult for charlatans to impose on people with obscure hints and vague formulations.
6The term “world 43” gives more information than does the “manifestal world”, for it defines at least the relative position of that world in the series of 49 worlds. It has the additional advantage of being international.
7Although everything seemingly merges, yet mathematical divisions are at the bottom: the number three being the fundamental, moreover the number seven for the matter aspect, the number nine for the consciousness aspect (the three triads), and the number twelve for the motion aspect (the twelve zodiacal energies).
1The doctrine of trinity, or trinitism, is the teaching of Pythagorean hylozoics on the three aspects of existence. It is indispensable to a correct understanding of reality.
2Existence is a trinity, having three equivalent aspects of reality:
the matter aspect
the motion aspect (energy aspect)
the consciousness aspect
3They are indissolubly and inseparably united without any confusion or conversion.
4None of these three aspects can exist without the other two, and so it is in all worlds in the whole cosmos.
5There is one single matter (primordial matter), one single consciousness (the cosmic total consciousness), one single source of energy (dynamis). Dynamis, the primordial atom, the collective consciousness are the three basic factors of life.
6Pythagoras called this one correct conception of reality hylozoics (“spiritual materialism”), thereby clarifying that “spirit” is the indestructible consciousness of the atoms.
7The three absolutes ascertainable by everybody are the three aspects of reality: matter, consciousness, and motion, which everybody can immediately ascertain but which the philosophers, due to the fictions of previous thinkers, have not been able to discover. The term, the “motion aspect”, appears probably too naive to the learned. But it is important that the three absolutes of existence can be immediately ascertained. The concepts of force, energy, will, etc., are auxiliary concepts that can be explained away by the modern sophists (conceptual analysts).
8The origin of motion is the dynamic energy of primordial matter (which Pythagoras called dynamis), the first cause of the perpetuum mobile of the universe.
9Energy is matter in motion. Higher kinds of matter are energy in relation to lower kinds. Matter dissolves, not into energy, but into higher matter.
10Along with the knowledge of the three inseparable aspects of reality there follows also an understanding of such expressions as “everything is matter”, “everything is consciousness”, “everything is energy”. The import of such sayings is also that “everything is”.
1The potentiality of primordial matter is actualized in the primordial atoms. The potential qualities of matter appear in manifestational matter (the cosmic atoms, the solar systemic molecules and molecular aggregates). The qualities appear in the material relations in motion. It is motion that effects everything and makes life and expressions of life possible. The consciousness aspect enables us to acquire knowledge of the material relations and material reactions in motion, of the method of acquiring omnipotence (dynamis) and thereby of controlling motion. The collective consciousness (planetary and cosmic) affords us a knowledge of what every individual in his individual character has been able to discover in the three aspects of reality.
2To the self in worlds 47–49 “everything” is matter, to the self in worlds 45–47 “everything” is consciousness, to the self in worlds 43–45 “everything” is energy. This abuse of the word “everything” appears incurable. One aspect is never everything. To call it “everything” because it is the aspect that dominates everything is evidence of pedagogic helplessness. Without matter there is neither consciousness nor energy. The matter aspect is the objective ground and cause of everything. The whole cosmos is composed of atoms. These are the first fundamental facts.
3The Westerner starts from the matter aspect and the Indian from the consciousness aspect. What the former calls atoms the latter calls devas. Atoms, molecules belonging to involutionary matter (secondary matter) have passive consciousness that can be activated from without. This gives the Indian incomparably better understanding of a great number of phenomena, which the physicalist with his “dead” matter can never explain and of course, in his conceited self-blindness, denies. He does not even suspect how ridiculous he is in the eyes of those who have studied the consciousness aspect. The physicalist is an able technician with all his inventions. But the “occultist” is aware of more worlds of greater importance.
4The first Shankara (shortly after Buddha) tried to draw the attention of the yoga philosophers away from the matter aspect and direct it exclusively to the consciousness aspect. This had the effect that the second Shankara eliminated the matter aspect, as though it did not even exist. And so a new kind of misconception ensued: the one saying that matter is an “illusion”. It is the task of hylozoics to eliminate this superstition. Hylozoics will definitively establish the fact that reality has three aspects.
5When once the basis has been laid for the understanding of the three fundamental aspects of reality, there is of course nothing to prevent that, considering consciousness development, the consciousness aspect is made the dominant aspect, or that the will aspect, being the factor that realizes, is put into the foreground. The matter aspect is then the self-evident basis of both consciousness and energy, and it is not necessary to consider it any more. Attention can again be wholly directed to the consciousness and motion aspects. The reason for this, which only esotericians can fully understand, is the fundamental significance of the effect of attention. If matter is attended to, its significance is strengthened. Not matter but consciousness and energy in matter are important. The more exclusively these two aspects are considered, the more important they become in the life of man, the easier will it be to solve the problems of consciousness and energy. The researcher learns that he often has eliminate unessentials in order to concentrate on essentials.
6However, as long as subjectivist ideas remain in occidental or oriental philosophical speculation, it is necessary to start from the matter aspect of existence as a prerequisite of objective conception of material reality. Otherwise there is a risk that you relapse into the old misconception as it appears in the “idealism” of philosophic epistemology and Indian illusion philosophy (advaita).
7The natural sciences necessarily start from the matter aspect, since that aspect is the object of research. Psychologists explore the consciousness aspect. But if they do not know that the various kinds of consciousness (sense perceptions, emotions, thoughts) correspond to different kinds of matter, they have no prospects of reaching the correct conclusions.
1Hylozoics clarifies that there are three inseparable aspects of reality, and this brings about rethinking: All matter has energy and consciousness. All energy implies matter and consciousness. All consciousness is at the same time energy and matter. If, when studying one aspect, you neglect the two others, the result will be distorted.
2Every kind of consciousness expression (active consciousness) is at the same time an energy expression, resulting in a material form. That was the reason why in old esoterics all evolutionary kingdoms (from the mineral kingdom) were called “creative hierarchies”. Other sayings were: “Energy follows thought” and “thoughts are things”.
3Just as “thoughts are things”, material phenomena, so also the spoken “word” has form, energy, and consciousness. You should not demand that the learned comprehend this.
4To those who have never learnt to think hylozoically it seems strange that all idiologies, all systems of thought, etc., are material things. An idea in the world of ideas is a material thought-form charged with energy. The plans that are worked out by the planetary hierarchy are also material forms, not only subjective products of consciousness. The three aspects of reality can never be separated, never exist separately. This makes you understand how far from reality all the subjectivist speculations of philosophy are. The same is true of yoga philosophy and, especially, the absolute subjectivism of advaita, which deals with nothing but consciousness, denying the existence of matter.
1It is fundamentally important to see that the three aspects of reality are totally different in all the worlds, even though certain analogies can be ascertained on account of the common, absolute origin. Once you have seen this you need not construct new terms for the corresponding realities in the various worlds. It is sufficient to say, for example, consciousness in world 46 or will in world 45, or matter in world 43, and we will know as much or as little as if we had learnt a multitude of different designations. It will rather be clearer thanks to the exact mathematical nomenclature.
2When acquiring consciousness in a higher world, the individual has to start all over again, as it were, learning to view existence, reality, and life as things totally different from what he had formerly been able to perceive of being. The matter aspect decreases in importance by each higher world, until, in world 46, it appears to be just the basis and vehicle of consciousness. Also the consciousness aspect, becoming ever more dominant by each higher world, appears to lose more and more of its sovereignty. This happens after world 44, when consciousness experiences the significance of dynamis, which turns omniscience into omnipotence.
3All the three aspects of reality manifest so totally differently in the different atomic worlds, that it is impossible for those in lower worlds to judge the pertaining phenomena in higher worlds. Not just spontaneous experiences are necessary for this but also thorough methodical and systematical study in each particular world. It is even necessary to follow different paths of development to acquire special abilities. Thus the evolution going through the human kingdom provided a special sense for the consciousness aspect, and that going through the deva kingdoms, a special sense for the matter aspect. This is hinted at by the fact that in the old esoteric teaching, the atoms also in the lowest natural kingdoms were called devas.
4It should be pointed out that the three aspects of reality within the solar system (43–49) have been explored just in their seven lowest manifestations and that 42 remain. The motion aspect, called the “will”, the art of using dynamis, seems to be the most difficult to explore. According to the planetary hierarchy, “will” is the same as energy expenditure in accordance with law. Will implies knowledge (understanding), ability to live in unity and to realize.
1The three aspects are to be found everywhere and in all connections, being factors that must always be taken into account. They exist in all worlds and are different in all worlds. They must not be confused with the three triads. It is true, however, that in the first triad the monad acquires a basic understanding of the matter aspect; in the second triad, of the consciousness aspect; in the third triad, of the motion aspect.
2With each higher atomic world the density of primordial atoms decreases, so that first the consciousness aspect and then the motion aspect can assert themselves.
3The matter aspect dominates in solar systems of the first degree, in the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49), in the lowest or first triad.
4The motion aspect dominates in solar systems of the third degree, in atomic worlds 43–45, in the third triad.
5In solar systems such as ours (of the second degree), the consciousness aspect is especially cultivated. The monad in the second triad has actually reached as far as is the purpose of our solar system in consciousness development. Those who reach farther than that are exceptional. How exceptions are possible has not been explained to us. And fantasts should see to it that they do not construct new fictions, an activity that always has consequences.
6Those philosophers in the West and the East who start from the consciousness aspect (the “subjectivists”) have taken a standpoint that can be defended in the fifth but not in the fourth natural kingdom. That is also why all their philosophy is in the air, since it does not have the necessary logical basis.
7It is obvious that the correct explanation of their error is that they have misunderstood instructions that were originally intended for initiates. It is also true that men are in too great a hurry to become supermen. They should sober down and be a bit more patient, and try to gain common sense.
8Teaching in the planetary hierarchy starts from the consciousness aspect, but that is quite another matter. This concerns those who in the four lower natural kingdoms have become familiar with the matter aspect and then, as causal selves, have been in the position to explore the matter aspect. They may subsequently disregard the matter aspect and direct their attention exclusively to the consciousness aspect, the very aspect they should primarily explore.
9To those who strive to become 44-selves and thereby enter into the sixth natural kingdom, the study of the motion aspect (cosmic, systemic, and planetary energies) is of course the most essential. They have a very thorough knowledge of the matter and consciousness aspects within the solar system and are able to handle the energies in accordance with the Law.
1The monads are the only indestructible things in the universe. All material compositions undergo constant change. They are formed, change, dissolve, and are formed anew. This is due to the fact that no material forms can in the long run stand the wear caused by the material energies originating from the highest cosmic world. Everything is reborn, in which process all monads in all kingdoms receive the forms of life corresponding to the levels of developments they have reached. It is impossible to return from a higher to a lower kingdom.
2All primordial atoms have potential, actualized, or activated consciousness and thereby are co-partners of cosmic total consciousness, which in respect of manifestation is the “absolute”. This fact clarifies the basis of the two symbols: god immanent and god transcendent. All lower matter contains all the higher kinds and thus atoms from the divine worlds. The monads (primordial atoms) are the divine in existence. Every monad is a potential cosmic omnipotent and omniscient being, a being which in the process of manifestation will actually reach the highest divine kingdom and thus realize its divinity itself, since this is its destination being a potential godhead.
3Even involvation into matter implies a potential limitation for the monad, whose potentiality is universal consciousness. This limitation becomes ever more conscious the higher natural kingdom (beyond the fourth) the monad succeeds in reaching, precisely because it knows its potential godhead.
4The meaning of existence is to rouse the potential consciousness of the monads and thereafter to enable them to acquire omniscience in ever higher worlds until they reach the final goal: the cosmic omniscience and omnipotence of all. This they do by gaining their own experience and working it up, thus by their own work. How this is done in countless cosmoses and innumerable solar systems we do not know. Presumably, it can be done in countless ways. Every cosmos can thus be said to be a new experiment. We must be content if we comprehend the procedure on our planet, a unique thing in the solar system and in the greater globe of seven solar systems. Nowhere else as on Terra has suffering reached such an intensity. Anyone who has experienced suffering efficiently enough will probably do everything he can to abolish it. Not just physicians and psychologists are needed for this. It is also required to have a knowledge of the meaning of life and the nature and development of consciousness. Without that knowledge all attempts amount to nothing but erring and groping at random. World history, if it were what it should be, would give us sufficient information about that.
5The individual (the self, monad, primordial atom) acquires envelope upon envelope in ever higher worlds. It is his task in the course of development to acquire first subjective, much later objective consciousness in these envelopes. He never comes to know himself, only his envelopes, be they called triads, or soul, spirit, etc. The self is the central self-consciousness, a primordial atom of which he will never have any conception. This self-consciousness just is there as an individual self-identity. Everything else is something external to the self, even if the individual takes his envelopes for his self. It is these selves, these primordial atoms that together make up the cosmic total consciousness. It is this unlosable share in the cosmos that makes the individual a potential “god”. He is in essence divine. That he does not think so himself is due to the fact that he knows that he is on his way to ever higher worlds, ever higher kingdoms.
6The monad, or primordial atom, remains inaccessible until it manifests itself as the ultimate self in the highest cosmic kingdom. This is the ultimate goal, however, and until this is achieved any one of the atoms entering into the atomic chain 2–43 will be the expression of the self. Only in the highest cosmic world will the self be able to identify itself as a primordial atom, a monad. The self thus always is any one of the many more or less temporary envelopes of the self. In the three lowest natural kingdoms, the lowest triad with the monad enclosed within it is the mineral, vegetable or animal soul. In the human kingdom, the “I”, self, or soul is at first the monad in the first (or lowest) triad in the triad envelope, then the monad in the inmost centre of the causal envelope, subsequently the monad in the second triad in the essential envelope. In the fifth natural kingdom, the “I”, or self, or spirit is the monad in the second triad. In the sixth natural kingdom, the “I”, or self, or spirit is the monad in the third triad. Thereupon the monad ascends through its atomic chain 2–43, and when reaching the highest atomic world (1) it liberates itself from involvation into matter, being now a free primordial atom.
7You should make these facts clear to yourself once and for all, so that you will not be confused every now and then by all the terms you find in esoteric or occult literature or in the Upanishads. You should, therefore, keep in mind that whenever there is talk about the soul or self or spirit or god, etc., this always refers to various developmental stages of the monad and that the “self” referred to is the monad consciousness which is in any one of the 49 atomic worlds and is on its way to the highest atomic world, which embraces everything in the cosmos.
8This fact – that the self is a primordial atom, a monad – was never mentioned in esoteric literature. The spirit, soul, personality – all these things are just envelopes for the self-atom (monad), which remained a never-mentioned, unknown quantity, and so this entity always appeared to be a “mystical” and unsatisfactory item to the philosophers who must always have full clarity about the basic facts of existence. It is only in the works of Laurency that this basic fact is presented.
9It was Pythagoras who saw that this intellectual demand is justified and so gave us the solution of the “ultimate mystery”. It is thus to Pythagoras that we owe this supreme insight, a mystery that was revealed only in our times, probably in order to put an end to all the twaddle of ignorance with its subsequent confusion of ideas.
10In all esoteric teaching there was an all-pervading principle that the highest reality was never to be mentioned but remained the great mystery. Another principle was that since the self-atom (monad) cannot be identified until in the highest cosmic kingdom, when liberated from involvation into matter, it was considered meaningless even to mention it. Besides, there must be something that is protected from the idiotization by human conceit and arrogance. That tendency stops at nothing, even if you tell it that even “nirvana”, the superessential world (45) is beyond any possible human understanding. Man must go on fantasizing and idiotizing until he has learnt to respect the “inscrutable”, a respect that is necessary to the acquisition of discipleship.
11The monad, the self-atom is “a point of light eternally present”, observable even in the first triad in the mineral kingdom. When it has left the third triad and in its 43-atom has liberated itself from involvation into systemic molecular matter (43–49), it appears to a 44-self, who is able to observe it, “to shine like a sun”.
1All matter in the entire cosmos is composed of primordial atoms, called by Pythagoras monads: the least possible parts of primordial matter and the least possible firm points for individual consciousness. There cannot be more primordial atoms in the cosmos than those that have been pumped into it from the primordial manifestation (chaos). However incalculably great the number is, it is not “infinite”.
2The cosmos consists of 49 interpenetrating atomic worlds of different degrees of density. They fill up our cosmic globe – one of innumerable globes in primordial matter – and occupy the same (physical) “space” in the globe. From this it follows that all cosmic worlds exist in the physical world. It is just a question of different degrees in the densification of primordial atoms.
3The cosmic globe gradually expands by being supplied with primordial atoms from the inexhaustible store of primordial matter (the chaos of the Greeks), until the cosmos is filled up with primordial atoms in various compositions. The worlds are built out from “above” by being supplied with primordial atoms. The next higher world supplies the material for the next lower one. Each next lower atomic kind contains all the higher kinds and contains ever more primordial atoms. The limit has been reached with the 49 different atomic kinds forming 49 different atomic worlds, the higher penetrating all the lower in 49 dimensions altogether. The lowest atomic kind (49) contains 48 ever higher atomic kinds.
4Primordial matter is spaceless. The innumerable cosmoses arise in truly endless primordial matter. Space exists only in connection with the cosmos, which is filled up with primordial atoms. The cosmic globe is like a “bubble” in primordial matter.
5The cosmos of the esoterician corresponds to what astronomers call a galactic system, which includes all observable stars. Stars of other cosmoses or galactic systems remain invisible.
6The matter aspect is a condition of any spatial perception in the cosmos. Spatial perception is moreover determined by the dimensions. There are 49 different kinds (lower and higher kinds) of atomic worlds. Each lower world has a dimension less than the next higher world. Dimension means kind of space (line and area are not included). The highest world (1) has 49 dimensions, the lowest world (49) only one dimension.
7Cosmoses are not of the same size. Many of them are at the stage of being built out or at the stage of being dismantled. A fully built-out cosmos has a size limited to the possibility of primordial atomic consciousness to perceive 49 dimensions; to such a consciousness the cosmos is a single point, being equal to the monad as a point in primordial matter.
8Space and form are the modes in which matter exists. Even the atom is space as well as form.
9All the worlds have a spherical form and all the higher worlds penetrate all the lower worlds, so that an individual having 49-dimensional spatial perception perceives all the 49 dimensions even in the physical world. It is in a sense right to say that the cosmos is a physical globe containing all the other 48 atomic worlds, all of them penetrating the physical world.
10Everyone of the 49 different atomic worlds is totally different from the other ones, even though there is a certain all-pervading analogy on account of the basic factors necessary to them all. All the worlds are different from each other as for dimension (“space”), duration (“time”), material composition (atomic kinds, etc.), motion (energy), consciousness, and (as consequences of all this) their laws of nature and laws of life.
11The 49 atomic worlds are divided into seven series of seven worlds each, the six lower series making up six different evolving divine kingdoms striving towards the seventh.
12The following esoteric facts may clarify how utterly impossible it is for a man to fully understand even the things that are seemingly among the most explored.
13In the emotional world, emotional matter, there are atoms of the atomic kinds 6, 13, 20, 27, 34 and 41; and they all evince affinities, analogies, correspondences with systemic 48-atoms and planetary 48:2-7-molecules.
14The manner in which sense perceives the reality of its own world is universally valid and inescapable, the one logically correct perception. It changes with each world. Reality is such as sense perceives it. It is meaningless to ask how reality really is. That is what philosophers have always done, and any other answer than “reality is precisely such as it is in each particular world” is not merely illogical but also leads thought astray. The cosmos quite simply consists of a series of worlds, or realities, each one of which is different from all the others. Since there are 49 ever higher atomic worlds, there are in all 49 ever higher kinds of subjective and objective atomic consciousness, 49 radically different kinds of perception of reality, every one of which possesses the same justified reality for the monads having the corresponding kind of consciousness. When the monad consciousness in its envelope is able to identify itself with the consciousness of the material world of this envelope, then the individual has reached the “absolute” of that world.
15The cosmos is composed of primordial atoms which are so densely packed that there is actually no true vacuum. This density is the condition of the very possibility of cosmic existence in primordial matter with its tremendous pressure. That is the material side of the cosmos. It is of course meaningless to speak of “space” in this connection, since the concept of space can be grasped only as a collective concept of all spatial relations in all worlds.
16If in this connection we consider the cosmic total consciousness, which is made up of the consciousness aspect of all primordial atoms, then we have an idea of the cosmic total being in which every primordial atom has an unlosable share and which enables the primordial atoms to develop their consciousness into omniscience of the entire cosmos, and their power into omnipotence in the cosmos.
17If we extend this view we can look upon all the 49 atomic worlds as 49 different kinds of collective consciousness and each material world as a collective of consciousness unitary in itself. The meaning of life is that the individual himself gradually acquires consciousness in ever higher worlds starting from the lowest (the physical) world. This is the hylozoic way of looking upon reality, that sovereign view of reality which kills all the imaginative speculations of philosophic ignorance.
18They read that higher worlds (matters) penetrate lower ones. But how many think that thought to its end, meaning that everything in the physical world, in the human organism, is penetrated by emotional, mental, causal, essential matter, apart from the fact that physical atoms contain all the other kinds of cosmic atoms? Our organism is pervaded by the vibrations of these worlds. Matter is at the same time consciousness and energy. We are penetrated not just by matters. We also live in these worlds of consciousness, worlds of energy. There are in every human being (dormant) organs for the perception of those consciousnesses, for the assimilation of those energies. Being ignorant of those realities, being blinded by their erudition, their great learning about what other ignorants, generation for generation, have taken over – divers fancied facts and articles of faith – they refuse even to examine the reality content of the knowledge given to us by “our brethren in the superhuman realm”.
19The entire cosmos is a living consciousness in which everyone has a share in the form of individual consciousness and to the extent that we ourselves acquire the possibility to apprehend it. The cosmos is “organized” matter, consciousness, energy, according to eternal laws which also are laws of our existence. We live in the lowest of all the worlds and take it to be all that exists. And what have we done with it? Can it be anything else than chaos when most of what we think, feel, say, and do is out of tune with the harmony of life and its laws. “We have dissolved the harmonious connection between our lives and the higher laws of our existence with the result that we are going against the great current of the divine order of things.” And so our lives look like they do, being filled with fears, disappointments, sufferings. The basic fault with our existence is that we are interested just in the matter aspect instead of the consciousness aspect of existence. When consciousness development becomes our true task of life, then the problems of life will be solved by themselves.
1The six natural kingdoms belonging to the solar system are:
the mineral kingdom
the vegetable kingdom
the animal kingdom
the human kingdom
the essential kingdom (the fifth natural kingdom)
the first or lowest divine kingdom (the sixth natural kingdom)
2The perfected first self (the monad centred in the mental molecule of the first triad) is sovereign in the worlds of man (47–49) in respect of consciousness and energy; the second self rules sovereign in worlds 45–49; and the third self, in the solar system (43–49).
3All the atomic worlds in the cosmos occupy the same “space”, so that the physical cosmos also contains all the other atomic worlds. Moreover it should be noted that to 45-selves there are practically no molecular worlds but just atomic worlds. The lowest four natural kingdoms, though not higher kingdoms, live in molecular worlds. Of course there are molecular kinds also in worlds 43–45, but they are not perceived as different regions but as various modifications of the atomic kinds.
4No molecular kinds within the worlds of man (the physical, emotional, and mental worlds each present a number of different regions, and it should be noted that higher regions penetrate lower ones) should be conceived as inaccessible to man, but as present in the physical world. Thus the tendency to imagine the superphysical as being out of reach of physical beings is misleading. Everything surrounds us human beings.
5When the individual has acquired full objective consciousness in his emotional envelope, he is in that envelope able to visit the moon when it is in perigee and its emotional world touches upon that of the earth. Visits to other globes of the earth’s planetary chain are possible only for essential selves, since the seven globes are contained in the common essential world. All the planets in the solar system can be visited by superessential selves, since superessential consciousness is common to all the planets.
6It is quite another matter that organic beings can be transported between planets, if the beings are enclosed in special protective shelters that contain the conditions of existence necessary for the life of the organism. The physical atomic world, supporting everything physical, is common to the entire cosmos.
7According to science, the sun emits two kinds of energy: light and heat. According to esoterics, it emits 42 different kinds of energy.
8Esoterically, matter and light are synonymous concepts, motion and sound as well. Only causal selves, however, are able to realize this fact. To them, even minerals are full of light. The primordial atom (the monad) is a sun. Perhaps you understand the gnostic saying: “In that light we shall see the light.” There is no darkness to beings in higher worlds. And all nature is a symphony to them.
1“Inspiration” concerning things that are beyond the sphere of one’s own “expert knowledge” is always a risky matter. Latent knowledge, affording immediate certainty, is awakened to remembrance only through renewed study in a new incarnation. With this reservation the following description, which seems to be correctly perceived, is presented.
2The 42 kinds of molecular matter within the solar system undergo four different processes of total involvation and evolvation and thus four different stages of development as primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary matter.
3In primary matter, monads acquire rotary motion. Their potential consciousness has not yet been actualized. Rotary motion makes the formation of aggregates (molecules, etc.) possible. Before this stage, monads function as circulatory matter from the highest to the lowest and from the lowest to the highest atomic kind in a continuous cycle.
4In secondary matter, the monad acquires, in addition to rotary motion, cyclic spiral motion. In that material process consciousness awakens into passive consciousness and acquires the possibility of perfect robotism (reactivity to even the faintest external vibrations). There is no possibility of individual activity (“manifestation of the will”).
5Tertiary matter affords the solar system its constancy, like a spinal cord, a skeleton, the stability needed for the final evolution of quaternary matter through ever higher natural kingdoms, the capacity for forming permanent envelopes (triads, connective lines, etc.) The permanent consciousness of this matter makes the various kinds of envelope memories possible.
6Quaternary matter consists of monads involved into triads that afford to the monads the possibility of being conscious in three different worlds (in the first triad, in the physical, emotional, and mental worlds), enable the monad to have a synthetic consciousness as a prerequisite of intuition and further consciousness expansion.
1Every solar system is a unique experiment. That collective being (group of monads), which in the cosmos forms a solar system of the first degree, has attained the third divine kingdom (29–35) and has had the opportunity of studying a great number of solar system of different kinds. The experience collected from these numerous experiments are of course utilized at the new attempt.
2Each solar system undergoes three total remouldings before that mass of monads (primordial atoms) of primary matter, which made up the content of the system of first degree, has acquired solar systemic consciousness.
3In all systems of all degrees there exist monads that have in other solar systems reached a certain development, though not the requisite level when the system was dissolved, and therefore have been transferred to other systems at a suitable stage of development. Generally, such monads have attained a higher level than have the monads in the corresponding natural kingdoms, and so the former constitute the elite of their various kingdoms.
4The esoteric literature gives accounts of various modes of evolution. These descriptions may confuse the uninitiated but are of great interest to experts on esoterics.
5During immense periods of time, monads have at different times been introduced from primordial manifestation into a cosmos under construction. Those later introduced have not managed to undergo the manifestational processes which the earlier ones have passed through. Even this fact suffices to explain why monads are at different stages of development, a fact that is obvious in all solar systems and in all natural kingdoms from the lowest to the highest one. Thus there are monads on innumerable levels of development from the mineral kingdom to the highest divine kingdom. (The esoterician can, therefore, only regret the erroneous dogma of democracy, saying that all are equal. We are all brothers, but that is quite another matter. When mankind has reached the stage of culture and the hatred of envy rules no more, it will also be realized that those on higher levels in all kingdoms must assist those on lower levels, which is a corollary of the law of unity, a law of life.
6Our solar system must be a relatively late phenomenon in the cosmos, since our cosmos is not only fully built out but also a perfect organization with all the cosmic worlds full of individuals on all levels of development. Innumerable solar systems must come after ours, a fact that is obvious from the enormous quantity of monads involved into the physical atoms, to say nothing of physical molecules. It is calculated that those who have reached so far down into involution will manage to conclude their development before the cosmos is dissolved. The remaining ones will be transferred to new cosmoses in the making in order to make up the vanguard of the new cosmic organization.
7Our solar system is a system of the “second degree”. In systems of the first degree, consciousness development does not reach farther than the perfection of the first self in the first triad. Such a solar system of the first degree may be called the particular system of the matter aspect. Systems of the second degree are particular systems of the consciousness aspect. And systems of the third degree are particular systems of the motion aspect.
8In systems of the first degree, there are many monads that for some reasons (we have never been informed as to what they are, and an esoterician never speculates) have acquired the repulsive basic tendency, a defiant attitude to the surrounding world, which makes it all but impossible to acquire the qualities of attraction (striving after unity with everything, which is a condition of the frictionless process of evolution). They not just counteract their own development but are also hindrances to other monads, those of the attractive basic tendency. It became necessary to gather these to a planet of their own when the solar system was formed. And our planet is an experiment in a large scale with these lovable beings. That is also the reason why we too have been endowed with organisms; in these the better to have the gruesome experiences that apparently are necessary to teach the monads to apply the laws of life purposefully, the law of unity in particular. In their total life ignorance they accuse life of the hell they have made themselves, a matter of course with these self-glorious, all-knowing creatures.
1
Worlds Natural kingdoms Triads 43 manifestal first divine kingdom or third triad 44 submanifestal sixth natural kingdom 45 superessential essential kingdom or second triad 46 essential fifth natural kingdom 47 causal-mental four first triad 48 emotional lowest 49 physical natural kingdoms
2The highest world of the solar system is 43. After it come the cosmic worlds (42–1).
3The worlds of man are 47–49.
4Each one of the atomic kinds 43–49 provides the building material for six ever more composed, ever coarser molecular kinds (states of aggregation).
5These 42 molecular kinds make up the solar system proper. The molecular kinds within each atomic world have been given analogous names and mathematical notations:
(1 atomic)
2 subatomic
3 superetheric
4 etheric
5 gaseous
6 liquid
7 solid
6The figures of the molecular kinds are put after those of the atomic kind. Thus the physical gaseous molecular kind is written 49:5.
7Atomic worlds 43–45 are common to all the planets in the solar systemic globe. The worlds of the planetary globes are formed from atomic kinds 46–49.
8The planetary molecular kinds, being grouped concentrically, have different radii from the centre of the planet. The higher molecular kinds penetrate all the lower ones.
1The three lowest atomic worlds (47–49) are divided into five molecular worlds. In each such world man has, when incarnated, an envelope of the corresponding kinds of matter. The table below summarizes some facts about the worlds of man.
2
Worlds Molecular kinds Consciousness areas Envelopes of the monad Lowest triad 47 causal 1 atomic causal intuition causal envelope “ 2 subatomic “ “ “ “ “ 3 superetheric “ “ “ “ 47 mental 4 etheric system thinking mental envelope 47:4 “ 5 gaseous perspective thinking “ “ “ 6 liquid principle thinking “ “ 47 “ 7 solid inference thinking “ “ 48 emotional 1 atomic attractive feelings emotional envelope 48:1 “ 2 subatomic “ “ “ “ “ 3 superetheric “ “ “ “ 48 “ 4 etheric repulsive feelings “ “ “ 5 gaseous “ “ “ “ “ 6 liquid “ “ “ “ 48 “ 7 solid “ “ “ “ 49 physical etheric 1 atomic physical etheric envelope 49:1 “ “ 2 subatomic “ “ “ “ 3 superetheric “ “ 49 “ “ 4 etheric nuclear science “ “ “visible world” 5 gaseous scientific research areas organism “ “ 6 liquid “ “ “ 49 “ “ 7 solid “ “ “
3The consciousness of the normal individual (the majority) does not reach beyond:
49:5-7 physical objective consciousness
48:4-7 emotional consciousness
47:6,7 mental consciousness
The worlds of man:
47:1-3 the causal world
47:4-7 the mental world
48:1-7 the emotional world
49:1-4 the etheric world
49:5-7 the “visible world”
48:1-3 the higher emotional
48:4-7 the lower emotional
“clairvoyance”: objective consciousness within 48:4-7
1The whole cosmos makes up one gigantic process of manifestation in which the monads are found at various stages of either involution (down to physical matter) or evolution (in the different natural kingdoms).
2The many processes constantly going on in the cosmos can be divided into the following main processes:
the process of involvation
the process of involution
the process of evolution
the process of expansion
3A more detailed account of these processes has been given in first two works by Laurency. Mention is made of them in this work in order to make readers not familiar with esoterics pay attention to the pertaining basic realities.
4Involvation is the name of that process in which primordial atoms are composed to form ever coarser (ever more compounded) kinds of matter (atomic kinds and molecular kinds). The more composed matter is, the more involved are the primordial atoms.
5Evolvation means the dissolution of more composed matter into less composed matter.
6Sometimes the terms “involution” and “evolution” are used to denote incarnation: the individual is invested with ever coarser material envelopes, which later dissolve.
7Involution is a secondary process of involvation in which the potential consciousness of the primordial atoms (monads) is awakened into passive consciousness.
8Evolution is the process in which the monads’ passive consciousness is activated into selfinitiated consciousness activity.
9The process of expansion implies a constant expansion of the monad individual consciousness, its acquisition of ever increasing participation of the cosmic total consciousness.
10The processes of evolution and expansion imply with each higher atomic world a further enormous expansion of the capacity for consciousness as well as a corresponding increase of the dynamic primordial power.
11The intensity of both consciousness and energy is most different at different stages of development of the same kind of molecules and atoms. This is true not only within the same kingdom. There is a marked difference in intensity of mental atoms belonging to a 46-self and a
45-self, etc., the whole path up. There is seemingly no limit, since the cosmic atoms entering into the mental atom have quite another capacity when used by a cosmic self, this being the case when such a self (as an avatar) has invested himself with an envelope of mental matter.
12You should be able to distinguish between involutionary and evolutionary beings. Involutionary beings are elementals, products of the consciousness expressions of evolutionary beings. All consciousness expressions bring about the formation of elementals in the involutionary matter of the different worlds (involutionary matter having its own passive consciousness that is activated by the consciousness expression that formed it). They dissolve when the energy that formed them has ceased working.
1The monad, or primordial atom, or self has issued from the highest world and will some time reattain it after its long journey through the cosmos. Originally being a monad with potential consciousness, it has through the processes of manifestation developed into a self with cosmic omniscience and omnipotence.
2The cosmos has been formed in order to provide the monads in primordial manifestation (chaos) with the opportunity of acquiring consciousness, omniscience, and omnipotence. When the monad, through the great cosmic process of manifestation with involvation, involution, evolution, and expansion, has returned to the highest cosmic world from which it has issued, has been liberated from its involvation into matter and as a free primordial atom finds that it is the ultimate self it has always been, dynamis can act in it with its total power. The monad, that cosmic sun, is then able to shape a universe. Eternal cosmoses are continually shaped by individuals (collective beings) who have become cosmic “all-selves”.
3Solar systems are the last links in the formation of the cosmos. They are necessary to awaken the objective consciousness of the monads, teach them to distinguish the opposition of inner and outer, consciousness and matter. It is in the three lowest physical molecular kinds (49:5-7), actually in the very lowest kind (49:7), that the opposition becomes fully clear. Without this opposition it is impossible for the individual to acquire self-consciousness, “I-consciousness”, self-identity, being necessary to active consciousness, self-determination, lawfulness; necessary to consciousness development, to self-acquired experience and knowledge of reality. This matter is so directly self-evident that one is astonished at the fact that this realization has not long ago invalidated philosophical subjectivism, the origin of that fantasy of life ignorance called philosophy. One more instance of the truth that the most self-evident, most directly given, can never be found by mankind but must be indicated to it.
1Few facts are yet to hand concerning the involution of the monads (primordial atoms). The same can be said of all other problems. Actually, we have been given only as much as is necessary to have a vision of existence. That is indeed all man (the first self) is able to grasp. And the planetary hierarchy considers with perfect justice that there is too much foolish speculation already about the facts we have received. We have what we need to live our lives in the right way. When understanding increases, then the knowledge we need in addition increases too.
2As you know the 49 atomic worlds in the cosmos are divided into seven different cosmic kingdoms (1–7; 8–14, 22–28, 29–35; 36–42; 43–49). They have also been given designations by analogy with the seven atomic worlds of the solar system, thus the cosmic physical (43–49); cosmic emotional (36–42); cosmic mental (29–35); cosmic essential (22–28); etc. This analogy is no accident but designates certain affinities between the worlds and atomic kinds indicated.
3And now comes the question as to the many different processes of involution the results of which we can ascertain in the kinds of matter of the solar system. Physical matter (49) is made up of matter that has undergone specific processes in the cosmic physical (the solar system); emotional matter (48), in the cosmic emotional (36–42); mental matter (47), in the cosmic mental (29–35); etc. These analogies of the matter aspect are also valid for the consciousness aspect. They are valid to such a great extent that individuals in the second cosmic kingdom (36–42) cannot fully utilize or “understand” all the possibilities of mental matter (47:1-7) that can be utilized in the cosmic mental kingdom.
4To begin with, the cosmos is insignificant in extent, but it grows incessantly through the introduction of monads from the primordial manifestation in primordial matter. This introduction is not continuous but is done serially in stages according as the monads (primordial atoms) introduced have been compounded to make up material worlds more and more filled with atoms.
5We can calculate with 49 series of cosmic introduction analogous to the composition into the 49 cosmic atomic worlds. Involution as well as evolution is done in stages according as the atoms have acquired the requisite qualities. In this we can see the differences in involutionary as well as evolutionary respect, the whole series of natural kingdoms and stages of development within the different natural kingdoms.
6The “stages of development” attained are by and large determined by the differences in age between the monads in all the involutionary and evolutionary kingdoms, the moment of their introduction into the cosmos, the time of their transition from a higher to a lower involutionary kingdom, the time of their transition from a lower to a higher evolutionary kingdom.
7Also evolution in the human kingdom is done in stages through a serial transition of the monads from the animal to the human kingdom. The difference in age between human monads can amount to seven eons. Thus there are age classes. To what extent these classes incarnate in the various existing castes or social classes is another matter.
8In a rationally organized state, where it is possible to assess everybody by the understanding of life he has acquired (no sentimentality, that perversion of life) and help him to his right position in the social fabric, the stage of development will determine to which caste the individual will belong. Such ideal states, however, will not be brought about until the planetary hierarchy has been called back and leads the way. Humans cannot do so, which is a fact that should soon enough be a general realization after a twelve thousand year fiasco.
9A basic axiom in esoterics is that all evolution is the outcome of the action of higher material energies upon lower matters. The “direction” comes “from above”, not “from below”. The new qualities in plants and animals suddenly appearing are impulses from that natural kingdom which supervises biological evolution.
10The corresponding is true of consciousness development. Generally, all events, all processes of nature, are effects of energies from higher worlds, higher kingdoms. This idea, irremediably idiotized in Christianity due to a barbarous idea of god, divine arbitrariness instead of accordance with law, has existed in mankind for millions of years and was during the last twelve thousand years available only to the elite in esoteric knowledge orders because of mankind’s abuse of the knowledge. The result of this abuse was that mankind has been forced to suffer under such barbarous conditions in “historical times”. Bad reaping from bad sowing.
11The corresponding is also true of the origin of the knowledge. It comes from the higher mental world, the causal world.
12And finally the same principle applies for the energies that enable humans to reach the fifth natural kingdom.
13Thus the talk about “power from on high” (that originally esoteric idea) was justified, if only they had understood what was meant by it and had not explained this fact in such an utterly primitive manner as they did in Christianity, that theology which even a hundred years ago should have been buried in the deepest cellar-archives.
14In KR 1.27 it is shown that atoms from the highest world pour through all the lower atomic kinds, and that this “cosmic motion” is necessary to the existence of the lower worlds. Not only primary involutionary matter is affected in this manner, however. Also secondary matter, with actualized consciousness, is correspondingly affected. And this is the kind of cosmic energy that constitutes the driving force of both involution and evolution. All life develops and the consciousness of all monads is constantly activated until all finally must reach their goal. Then it is up to the individual to decide the tempo of his development. If he assimilates these energies purposefully and lawfully, then he can accelerate his development in an enormously increased tempo. If he uses these energies for egoistic purposes, however, which often is the case with the monads of repulsive basic tendency, they can instead counteract evolution and delay it to an extent not suspected also for those who otherwise could have kept up with the normal jog-trot of evolution. Examples from esoteric history are the catastrophes which overwhelmed Lemuria and Atlantis and which mankind has suffered under ever since and not least in our times.
1Everything in the cosmos is subject to the law of change. Everything develops. Matter itself, the atomic and molecular kinds, undergoes constant change. Evolution takes place in a series of three solar systems.
2In a solar system of the first kind, development reaches the point where matter in the three lowest worlds (47–49) is “automatized”. To give an instance from organic life, this automatization makes seed-forming possible, in such a manner that the seed from the very beginning contains in potential state everything that will later develop from it.
3“Out of the egg comes a hen, out of the hen comes an egg. Was the first hen a hen or was it an egg?” The answer to that question is that this entire procedure is the result of a process of transformation which has gone on for billions of years before egg as well and hen could have their final forms. Automatization is also apparent in the so-called self-healing processes of nature.
4Nothing can remain without change. In the whole of nature, from molecules, minerals to forms of nature of all kinds, there can be no real standstill, even though no researcher’s eye is able to observe the change.
5The same is true of the consciousness aspect. The capacity for consciousness increases continually, in the course of millions of years, intensively as well as extensively in all forms of nature. Human consciousness has undergone an unbroken expansion. The same is true of individuals in higher kingdoms. So for instance present-day 45-selves have a knowledge and understanding that are incomparably much greater than those of their predecessors of just one million years ago, which fact is due to their experience of all the other consciousness expansion.
6Not all monads in the cosmos are able to reach “perfection” (omniscience and omnipotence of the highest cosmic world) before the cosmos is dismantled. The “imperfect” monads are transferred to cosmoses in the making to continue their interrupted evolution. This is true of all monads belonging to primary matter (the last ones introduced) as well as some percentages of secondary and tertiary matter. Quaternary matter should succeed, however.
7There are constant transfers of such monads (primordial atoms) as have not “managed to become perfect” in the various processes of manifestation. The “imperfect” ones are transferred to other planets, other solar systems, other cosmoses in the making at lower stages of development in order to continue their consciousness development until the final goal is reached.
1Not many data on the life-time of a solar system, of a planet; the duration of geological processes, of biological evolution; or the life-time of the human races, etc., have been allowed for exoteric publication. The major periods of manifestation evidently are to be assigned to the material composition of a solar system, the forming of planets, the processes of involvation and involution, the activation of consciousness in the three lowest natural kingdoms. The nearer we approach phenomena that can be studied in our history, the less data are available. The knowledge of the cycles that concern mankind cannot be publicized lest too much could be precalculated by those whose life-task it is to counteract all development. We must be content with the astronomical computations that are possible in the matter of zodiacal epochs, etc., and the data of esoteric astrology about which departmental energies are active in the worlds of man during a certain epoch.
2A statement by Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine has caused some confusion of ideas. She mentions that we are in the world-period called in Sanskrit Kali Yuga (the iron age), totalling 432000 years, and that the year 1898 would signal that 5000 years had elapsed since the beginning of this age. There is no mention whether this yuga concerns the solar system or the planet or mankind or some certain root-race. The field was left open to guess-work and for all manner of prophets who had not learnt more than that they believed in their brainwaves or ingenious calculations.
3Wherever human ignorance and lack of true perception gain hold, wherever individuals overrate their own judgement, there words will lose their proper meaning and the knowledge will be replaced by the superstitious beliefs of public opinion. Such was the fate of all knowledge also in India. Originally, “manvantara” meant an exactly stated time-period. Nowadays, however, it means an unspecified period of time. The same fate has befallen the term “yuga”. You must be very well versed in the mysteries to grasp what these words mean. Add to this the fact that Indians, like mystics, abhor exact data as they limit the scope for fantasy.
4However, it appears that not even the calculations made for solar systems apply for all solar systems but just present a statistical average. There are three kinds of solar systems. The duration of processes vary even in systems of the same kind.
5Each cosmos is a new experiment in developmental respect, and there is reason to suppose that the life-time of not only solar systems but also of a cosmos can vary quite considerably depending on the duration of the requisite processes. Different (exoteric) figures of the age of our solar system are extant, and it is of course futile to speculate. As for our planetary chain, we are in the fourth eon (of seven allotted) of 4320 million years, of which about 2000 million years have been used. The life on our planet in this fourth round is calculated at 600 million years, of which 320 million years have elapsed.
6It also appears that the “original schedule” does not indicate the true stage of development where mankind is concerned. Fresh, unforeseen factors, new kinds of cosmic energies, for instance, have accelerated development for the planetary hierarchy and thereby also for those aspirants to discipleship who are approaching the fifth natural kingdom. On account of the enormous differences in development between those who are still at the lower emotional stage and those who have reached the stage of humanity, and since the incarnations humanists make among the masses at lower stages do not afford them the experiences to which they are entitled, humanists have been offered an additional opportunity: the prospect of a more rapid development, if they so wish, by becoming disciples of the planetary hierarchy and so receiving special training. If they pass the tests they have prospects of reaching their goal – the causal stage – incomparably more rapidly than otherwise.
1The process of evolution, commencing in the lowest kingdom of nature, the mineral kingdom, is the last process in a long series which the monads pass through before they have gained active consciousness and so possess the conditions of acquiring by themselves ever higher kinds of consciousness in ever higher kinds of matter.
2Evolutionary monads in the solar systems are always enclosed in triads which are always enclosed in several material envelopes.
3During its consciousness development as a human, the monad-self has five different envelopes; as a second self, seven; and as a third self, nine different envelopes. In the cosmos, the monad acquires 42 different envelopes belonging to the different cosmic worlds. The monad views the envelope in which it is at the time “centred” as its true self. In the highest cosmic world, the monad liberates itself from any envelope and experiences itself as the ultimate self it has always been.
4The confusion of the monad with its envelopes has given rise to a multitude of misconceptions and obscurities. The monad is the very centre of self-consciousness, always inaccessible a material, objective reality until it has reached the highest cosmic world.
5The man who is without the knowledge of reality thinks in the physical world that he is his organism; later in the emotional world, that he is his emotional envelope; and in the mental world, his mental envelope. He identifies himself with his envelope consciousnesses, being quite unaware of the fact that the self (monad) is a primordial atom and uses its envelopes in order to acquire consciousness in them, have the necessary experiences in these worlds, experiences that are worked up into knowledge of reality and life, experiences that are turned into abilities and qualities. We are reborn until we have learnt to use our envelopes purposefully. When we have become sovereign in them, learnt what we must learn in the human kingdom, then we can pass to the next higher kingdom.
6As long as the individual identifies himself with his envelopes of incarnation, he is dependent on their states, the content of their consciousness, he is dependent on the pertaining vibrations for his “sense of well-being”. However, the more clearly he realizes that he is not his envelopes, the easier will it be for him to control them, to free himself from this dependence.
7The whole process of evolution up to the highest cosmic world is an analogous process of continuous identification with, and liberation from, envelopes and envelope consciousnesses of ever higher kinds. All through the process the individual seeks in vain for “his true self”, and it slips constantly away, since the self is a primordial atom and the self will not find itself until in the highest cosmic world it has liberated itself from involvation into matter and finally is its ultimate self as a free primordial atom. Everything with which the self has identified itself has always been envelopes, since in the proper sense there cannot be anything else than primordial atoms, involved into matter, existing on some one of the countless developmental levels from the lowest to the highest. We all enter into envelopes for individuals in higher kingdoms in an unbroken series, and we go on doing it until we have liberated ourselves from this involvation.
8So simple is the description of the process, that process which ignorance has made utterly incomprehensible with all its profundities and unintelligible symbols.
9The individual finds a practical use of this realization if he often repeats to himself, “I am not my envelopes”, until he has liberated himself from his dependence on them in all situations of life. That motto should be the most helpful one, the sum total of all wisdom.
1The physical envelopes (the organism and etheric envelope) are directly affected by energies from the causal envelope.
2The emotional and mental envelopes are affected from the triad envelope. These two facts have a psychological significance.
3The causal envelope is man’s one permanent envelope always enclosing the monad (individual, self). It is the causal envelope that incarnates, encloses, and penetrates all the lower envelopes. The causal envelope was acquired by the monad at its transition from the animal to the human kingdom. This envelope cannot incarnate in an animal body. When man is able to acquire an envelope of essential matter (world 46), he passes to the fifth natural kingdom.
4After the individual has passed to the fifth natural kingdom and wants to work in the lowest worlds (47–49) without incarnating, he only needs the causal and physical etheric envelopes for this purpose. The emotional and mental envelopes are of course necessary connecting links but are completely automatized and empty of all consciousness content, and so they are regarded as “non-existent”. The pertaining kinds of consciousness are unable to explore reality, cannot even provide a correct perception of reality but just confuse and disorientate in reality. We understand why ancient esoteric symbolism used that term, “illusion”, in reference to emotionality and mentality.
5It is the emotional and mental consciousness that philosophers and prophets of culture busy themselves with and from which also the elite have such difficulty in liberating themselves. THE
1Consciousness is by nature both individual in the monads (primordial atoms) and collective (in the compositions of matter). The worlds of matter are at the same time worlds of consciousness, and all the cosmic worlds make up a common cosmic total consciousness in which thus every monad (primordial atom) has an unlosable share. It can therefore be said that the entire cosmos in respect of consciousness makes up a living whole (god immanent).
2Consciousness is one and single: the cosmic total consciousness, the common consciousness of all primordial atoms. This is the basis of all the innumerable kinds of common consciousness, the innumerable kinds of ever larger common consciousness. In the absolute sense, however, the axiom is valid for the consciousness of the primordial atom, and its absolute validity is realized only by the primordial atom when it has liberated itself from all involvation into matter.
3No consciousness can separate itself from the common consciousness otherwise than apparently (in the three lowest atomic worlds 47–49). It is the monad’s share in the cosmic total consciousness that enables the monad to have individual consciousness. Once the monad has acquired individual consciousness, it cannot in the higher worlds of higher kingdoms lose its selfidentity.
4After the individual has acquired the consciousness of unity (46), an acquisition of higher consciousness means a simultaneous entry into a greater group, an expanded consciousness vertically as well as horizontally, in height as well as in breadth. As the higher includes the lower, the depth also increases and widens. Thus its goes on until all has been embraced when individual consciousness has reached the consciousness of the highest world which includes the entire cosmos.
1Within the solar system, all primordial atoms that have entered into material compositions have had their potential consciousness actualized. When the potential consciousness of the monads has been roused into passive consciousness, they have opportunities in ever higher natural kingdoms to activate their consciousness and thereby to acquire self-consciousness in ever higher matters and material worlds, until they have acquired self-consciousness in and of the whole cosmos.
2In order to activate their consciousness and thereby to acquire self-consciousness, the individuals (monads) must be involved down into solid physical matter because it is only in the solid physical matter (49:7) of the mineral kingdom that the solely subjective consciousness of atomic matter can begin to acquire objective consciousness, learn to distinguish between inner and outer, self and not-self, consciousness and matter, subjective and objective, which leads to the realization that the individual is something separate from everything else. Also, it is only in the lowest dimensional world that the atomic consciousness can acquire the beginnings of space and time perception. This process of objectivization continues through the vegetable and animal kingdoms until it finally, in the human kingdom, leads to individual self-consciousness.
3In the human kingdom, the individuals acquire a power of reflection of their own, selfreliance, and self-determination. It is in order that he develop his individuality, which he cannot lose in higher worlds, that the individual lives isolated from other individuals in his causal envelope (the only envelope in the cosmos without a consciousness of community). In the next higher kingdom (the fifth, the essential kingdom), the individual acquires an ever greater conscious share in the consciousness of community and a self-acquired knowledge of everything in the worlds of man (47–49).
4It is in the physical world that the human individual can acquire knowledge, qualities and abilities, not in the emotional and mental worlds. In those two worlds, man does not succeed even in objective natural research, since matter is instantaneously reshaped by any consciousness expression. Such research requires causal consciousness, which can refrain from such influence.
5The consciousness capacity is dependent on the quality of the envelopes. It is the duty of the self to see to it that this quality equals the potentiality of the different atomic kinds to express the three aspects. The limit of any atomic kind is also a limit to knowledge and power. If the individual wants to expand his consciousness beyond it, he must acquire consciousness in the next higher world.
6Each higher molecular kind means an increase of consciousness intensively as well as extensively. With each higher atomic kind the capacity for consciousness increases in an unbroken series in which the products are squared (thus 2 x 2 = 4, 4 x 4 = 16, 16 x 16 = 256, etc.).
1The expression the “meaning of life” can be understood in several senses.
2In the widest sense, the meaning of life is consciousness development all the way to omniscience and omnipotence.
3This is a fact which we have received from the planetary hierarchy and which all new ideologies must start from. We must keep using the term idiology (from idios = one’s own) until we are able to base world views and life views on a true knowledge of reality and life. An ideology we shall have only when, as causal selves, we have entered into the world of Platonic ideas.
4For the first self, the meaning of life is its final union with the second self.
5As destiny, the meaning of life is the nature of the path the self is wandering, the self’s relationships to his clan, the self’s methods of self-realization.
6For the personality (the incarnation), the meaning of life is, in developmental respect, experiences for the increase of insight and understanding; in respect of reaping, redress of mistakes made against all life, accomplishment of a life-task imposed by others or by oneself.
7Most of the reaping is redress of “balance upset” and is a result of bad sowing. The deepest sense contained in this are the necessary experiences which the basic tendency of individual character forces upon the individual in order to enable him to realize himself.
1All events, everything that has ever existed and taken place in all the worlds, everything belonging to the three aspects, is preserved in the collective memories of the different worlds. It is not lost even when the worlds, planets, solar systems are dissolved, as it is reflected in the active collective consciousness of still higher atomic worlds. That was the meaning of the gnostic saying: “there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed”.
2The individual’s past is preserved in the planetary memory as well as in his causal envelope and his triad’s subconscious. For the individual, his past is most easily accessible in the causal envelope after he has become a causal self. The fact that some people are able before that to remember past incarnations is due to a direct contact with the triad physical atom.
1The causal envelope isolates the individual from other individuals. As long as the causal envelope is his “highest envelope”, the individual is a lone individual. He remains so until the monad has centred itself in the second triad mental atom when he himself activated his causal envelope. Then he has entered into the kingdom of the second selves and has an incipient essential consciousness. He has united with his collective being.
2A collective being is a consciousness being. The individual’s share in this collective consciousness extends (as always in all kinds of aggregates) as far as his own consciousness activity.
3Collective beings are in some measure “isolated” beings having their own consciousness. But this isolation is self-chosen. Nothing prevents an essential self from making contact with other collective beings. In so doing, however, he temporarily steps out of his own collective consciousness and leaves this outside. He leaves the “aggregate” he belongs to. The reason for this is the differences in vibration. Every collective being has its own rate of vibration with specific functions which must not be “disturbed” by “irrelevant” vibrations.
4An essential being, who has activated all of his essential consciousness (46:1-7), can enter into contact with all essential and lower beings in the seven-globe to which he belongs. He can, whenever he wishes, become “one” with any one of these beings and “understand” all lower beings, better than they understand themselves. He can, if the “need” arises, follow this lower being’s entire course of development ever since the mineral stage. He does not do so out of curiosity, however. According to the law of freedom, which grants all beings the right to “private life”, he must not search for anything which is not necessary for direct aid. And subsequently he must forget everything he has seen. He has learnt how to efface from consciousness everything that must be forgotten. It is quite another matter that it remains ineffaceable in the causal memory of the globe.
5This global causal memory exists in that utmost film of mental atoms which surrounds our globe (74). It is a causal being in its own right, belonging to quite another evolution than the human one. This memory is accessible to everybody who has acquired objective causal consciousness of the highest kind (47:1). And that is never possessed by anybody less than a second self.
6Sharing consciousness entails responsibility. You are always responsible for what you know. You are always responsible for others if you share their consciousness. And nobody can free himself from this responsibility. For nobody escapes any kind of responsibility. And what you fear you must get to know until you cannot fear it anymore. However, the fact of responsibility is a thing to be observed lest you idly and unnecessarily assume responsibility. You have a sufficient burden in the various kinds of responsibility which destiny imposes on you and which you impose on yourself out of ignorance through your relations in life.
1The human stage is the only developmental stage where the individual is an isolated individual. At all other stages, lower as well as higher, the individual belongs to a collective, shares a collective consciousness. That is why this phase of development is the hardest of them all.
2There are as many principal kinds of collective beings as there are natural kingdoms. The subdivisions within the natural kingdoms are innumerable, especially in higher kingdoms. It is obvious that a knowledge of these is almost wholly lacking. Mere enumerations without data on their tasks and functions are meaningless. Useless knowledge only provides material for misleading imaginative speculation.
3Collective beings consist of individual beings, and individual beings are included in collective beings. Therefore, it is of some importance to realize, especially concerning a higher being, that there is always a collective being involved. Those who calculate with the possibility of corrupting a higher being (used as they are to the possibility of corrupting everybody else, always in some respect) perhaps see the foolishness of it if they are informed that the individual is always at the same time a collective, which is law. Then they perhaps see that the notion of influencing (more correctly: changing) collective beings is a grotesque superstition.
4Higher beings “help” when the Law permits that help be given and only if the one needing help has acquired a right to help. There is only one way of “influencing” them: to serve evolution, unity, beings in need of and dependent on our very help.
5There are collective beings without number. But the number of individuals they contain can vary enormously depending on the “need”.
6The highest collective being in our solar system, as for that part of its activity which concerns its own development, is busy acquiring objective consciousness within atomic kinds 29–31. It is expected that it will have accomplished this task at the close of the next eon and will thereby leave the solar system to enter into a larger globe.
7Jeshu (that was the true name of so-called Jesus) had essential consciousness and became a perfect second self (45-self) in a later incarnation, which approximately coincided with the beginning of the present era.
8That collective being, whose task it is to supervise human evolution, has no easy job. At the present stage of development most people counteract evolution through their egoism and their hatred, through idiotizing fictions of all sorts. Add to this the enormous resistance on the part of those individuals who have resolved to try to stop evolution by all means, the “brothers of the shadows”, the real rulers of the physical and emotional worlds.
9The collective being that supervises human evolution must not be confused with the collective beings that represent the laws of destiny and reaping.
10Ignorance, being without limit, attributes to divers yogis, being active in various places, qualities, abilities and realizations that can be possessed only by collective beings.
11As soon as the knowledge about collective beings is more general, benevolent imagination will tell everything whatever about them and their doings. Therefore, it must be very emphatically said that such talk remains unreliable imaginings. Those who spread such things about these beings and pretend to know anything about them, reveal irremediably their lack of judgement and knowledge. The only ones who know anything about them are those superessential and still higher selves who are members of these collectives. And they are silent.
1From the vibrational point of view, everything consists of vibrations. These can be divided into continuous and cyclic ones. Continuous vibrations are the result of the dynamic action of blind will. Cyclic vibrations are the result of the action of will through active consciousness, which can have a cosmic, systemic, etc., origin. All vibrations are necessary to the genesis, continuance, development and dissolution of life.
2The cosmic vibrations are necessary to the cosmos and to everything in the cosmos. They penetrate everything in the cosmos. They affect both similarly and dissimilarly; similar things similarly, and dissimilar things dissimilarly. This is true of every atom and composition of atoms. They have a unifying or a dissolving, a strengthening or a weakening effect; a harmonious effect on everything in harmony with them, a disharmonious effect on everything else. They act (and this is essential knowledge) in accordance with the immutable fundamental laws of nature.
3The collective beings who are responsible for a solar system, a 49-globe, a seven-globe, a globe, a world, etc., can be thought of as specialized and cooperating scientists, of a format inconceivable to us, of course. The foremost of these calculate the cycles for “everything”, the effects of “everything”, and supervise that “everything” is arranged according to these “regulations” within the particular domain of everyone.
4There are cycles for everything, for every atom and composition of atoms, for globes of all kinds.
5A solar system is brought into being through the cooperation of numerous individuals from three cosmic kingdoms: the third (worlds 22–28), the second (29–35), and the first (36–42) kingdom. These beings (who of course have common consciousness) cooperate in order that this system with all its processes of manifestation realize its stipulated purpose: all the primordial atoms (monads) introduced into the solar system shall be able to develop their consciousness into omniscience and omnipotence in the seven lowest atomic worlds (43–49).
6Human beings develop requisite qualities and abilities by purposefully solving their problems in their five worlds, and the corresponding is true of those cosmic beings. Also the individuals in the three highest cosmic kingdoms (1–7, 8–14; 15–21) have their problems to solve (and they are said to be the most difficult of all, according to the rule: the higher the world, the more obvious, the more difficult the problems). That is all we know about them. Since the planetary hierarchy is not in a position to comment on these problems, only humans, in the inconceivable wisdom of their self-glory, are capable of solving such problems: “According to my unassailable opinion...” (What did a 45-self say? “They have no sense of proportion. They have no sense of humour.”) May it be allowed a poor creature to say that humour is the ability to see one’s own ridiculousness. That is why humans do not understand what is meant by humour.
7Those individuals who have reached the three highest cosmic kingdoms or divine kingdoms (1–21) are the ones directly responsible for the continuance of the cosmic globe, for the supplying of the energies that make the various processes of manifestation in lower kingdoms possible, for the composition and differentiation of primordial manifestation into the septenary division of worlds, the basis of the departmental division. The lower cosmic organization, however, the formation of the solar systems and the implementation of the processes of manifestation in lower worlds, is a task for individuals in the worlds 22–42. The lowest divine kingdom (43–49) and the hierarchies of the planets supervise the processes within the worlds of the solar system.
8God immanent is the cosmic total consciousness. God transcendent is the activation of consciousness emanating from the highest divinity (who shaped the cosmos) and continuing in ever lower worlds, the consciousness activation that makes all worlds “living beings”, collective beings, unitary consciousnesses that are taken over by individuals who, through self-acquired selfconsciousness in world after world, are able to enter into those collective consciousnesses.
9One can also try to clarify the matter saying that “god immanent” is the part of cosmic total consciousness of which the individual has acquired self-consciousness; and “god transcendent”, the part which still remains to be “conquered”.
1The human individual is member of some collective being in the making. How far this collective being has developed depends on the developmental stages of the constituent individuals.
2Into this collective being can enter a multitude of clans, generally composed of those who have causalized together, being members of a certain animal species, for instance.
3The “god” of the individual is for the first self his second self; for the second self, his third self etc. Only at the stage of ideality, when the tendency to unity has so developed that unity has become the one essential thing, the individual is capable of seeing this higher unity in his collectivity, which then is his “god”. Then he can begin assimilating the experiences of knowledge and life there are in his collectivity.
4Religion, etc., fosters superstitious belief in an external power as a support and help. This robs the individual of self-reliance and self-determination, qualities that must be developed. Selfreliance should not be cultivated until the individual has reached the stage of culture, since the result easily degenerates into self-sufficiency. Self-determination belongs at the stage of humanity. Before that, attempts at cultivating it bring about an injudicious belief in all manner of fictions as well as the conceit of ignorance.
5It stands to reason that those who have reached the causal stage and have been able to come into contact with higher beings are absolutely devoted and faithful to these. This does not entail any dependence, however. Higher beings are no wet-nurses, no servants, no insurance agents, no probation officers appointed to put everything aright, “assist in any need”, which is bad reaping out of bad sowing.
6For those at lower stages of development, having a characteristic tendency to division, higher beings are rather high-risk realities. They wish nobody any harm. That is why they keep aloof from men. They are not to blame if their vibrations could prove fatal to humans who unwarrantedly intrude on them. The spiteful feelings and thoughts, which men unconsciously emit to everybody, reach them too. Such vibrations are thrown back with the reinforcement corresponding to the force-field contacted. Such expressions of hatred (irreverence, contempt, ridicule, scorn, etc., in infinitum) become a fatal sowing for those presumptuous idiots who believe they have a “right” to all their expressions of the tendency to division.
7You would be very wise not to “push your way forward” to higher beings. For the immature the result is, in the best case, just negative, no result at all. But most of them have managed to strengthen their egoism, self-deception, and self-blindness before they feel disappointed, abandoned (and other such idiotic accusations).
8This is what Krishnamurti has warned for in our times. He saw the sorrowful consequences of a new form of superstition resulting from misunderstanding of personal relations, in this case between members of a certain clan. Those lacking in understanding failed to see that the clan in question had quite a special future task and also had reached the stage of ideality.
9It is as unsavoury to hear the Christian sentimental drivel about “Jesus”, familiarity with god and his intentions and other such stupidity of ignorance, as to hear the theosophical chatter about the masters as their errand-boys.
1The individual at the stages of barbarism, civilization and culture is an emotional self; at the stage of humanity, a mental self; at the stage of ideality, a causal self; and at the stage of unity, an essential self.
2Those who are at the stage of culture want to anticipate evolution and have prospects of doing so if they are not content to follow along in the slow jog-trot on the primrose path. There are several prerequisites of this. One is that the individual has acquired a certain percentage of the essential qualities. Another is that the individual must systematically and methodically work upon the ennoblement of this envelopes of incarnation. Yet another is that individual, with one-pointed purposity, seeks for opportunities to serve evolution, mankind, and life. Under these preconditions the individual is given, albeit unconsciously, help from the hierarchy to be able to perform his self-assumed, superhuman task of developing, in the course of some twenty incarnations, the qualities and abilities that otherwise would demand thousands of incarnations. Without help this would be impossible.
3Matter, vibrations, and consciousness are “the same thing”. Molecular kinds and vibrational kinds indicate the consciousness levels in the different envelopes. Systematic development requires a constant contact with the superconscious, and this is possible only when the third mental molecular kind (47:3) is active.
4The expression “contact with the superconscious” has several meanings: contact with the vibrations in the higher molecular kinds of the envelopes of incarnation, or with the causal consciousness, or with the individual’s second triad collective which is part of the planetary hierarchy.
5The help given to the individual is a direct effect of his own efforts. It appears in a constant supply of “light and power” and in confirmations of consciousness levels attained, the so-called planetary initiations. These initiations should of course not be confused with the initiation into some esoteric knowledge order. The first planetary initiation is taken at the stage of culture; the second, at the stage of humanity; the third, at the stage of ideality; the fourth, at the stage of unity. Having taken the third initiation the individual is a causal self; the fourth initiation, an essential self; the fifth, a superessential self on the verge of the lowest divine kingdom.
6Having entered the essential world the individual thus is an essential self and a member of the lowest collective being of the planetary hierarchy, a being with a common collective consciousness. Keeping his individual consciousness and individual character, the individual knows that he is a greater self with all the other individual selves. All opposition has ceased as everybody perceives his unity with everything. Every atom is a joint owner of the cosmos and contributes to the cosmos as much as it has acquired consciousness. All lower worlds are embraced and penetrated by the essential world. Everything is contained in unity. There can be no loneliness. (And no human being can suggest any improvement in any respect as to the management of higher worlds. The sufferings of mankind are bad reaping from bad sowing in thousands of incarnations. And we are all jointly responsible, for we have all taken part in the violation of all laws of life in all respects. We may take comfort in the truth that suffering ceases when the sowing has been reaped.)
7The essential life is unity and wisdom. The emotional saint lacks the knowledge of reality, even if he deceives himself that he has gained “cosmic consciousness”. It is not sufficient to have a knowledge of the physical and emotional worlds, and that is the reason why the so-called love (eros, caritas) of emotional attraction is often unreasonable and unwise. Only when the individual has acquired the mental, causal, and essential knowledge, can he purposefully apply unity (agape).
8It is an esoteric commonplace to say that “everything makes up a unity”. “It sounds nice”, they say. But they do not reflect what this and similar ideas and facts mean. One must feed people with the simplest conclusions, and one is constantly faced with the comment, “nobody has said that before”. Such people have no prospects whatever of applying the knowledge rationally and so they do not need it either.
9“Everything makes up a unity.” That means that it is not a matter of individual “salvation” but collective “salvation”. And those who do not realize this and work with this goal before their eyes have no chance of “salvation”. We shall be saved when our collective (mankind) will be saved. Those who reach up into the fifth natural kingdom (beside their work for the collective) are the ones who have acquired greater qualifications than others to work for the collective. Those who shape the cosmos in order that all in the cosmos shall reach the highest kingdom, how could they take an interest in the success of a few individuals? That would imply a failure. Try to use your power of reflection and stop imagining and busying yourselves with unessentials. Those who want something to feed their emotionality with, who think the Law is hard, who want to be saved in their own ways, those can safely do without esoterics. It is nothing for them for the next one thousand incarnations. Life is in no hurry. And those who rather want to feel important than to serve evolution may waste a few thousand incarnations if they think that is nice. There is a limit, however, the eons. Those who do not get ready (to reach a higher kingdom) within the cosmic epochs stipulated for evolution will have to content themselves with continuing on another planet and in company with those who have recently passed from the animal to the human kingdom by acquiring causal envelopes. There they will make up the elite and get even more opportunities of feeling important.
1The saying about the unity of all life is no empty talk. Mankind makes up a collective among countless others. Those who want to “be saved” should discover the collective and work for the salvation of the collective. Those who forget their own salvation for that of others demonstrate that they have the qualifications for working for evolution and acquire the right to opportunities for this. That is the simple secret of discipleship and entry into a higher kingdom.
2The future task of the fourth natural kingdom (when mankind will have acquired the esoteric knowledge of reality and life as well as objective consciousness in their causal envelopes) will be to function, in relation to the three lowest natural kingdoms, as the fifth natural kingdom functions in relation to the fourth: to assist at the consciousness development of these monads, above all to counteract the repulsivity of their instinct of life. Being a “planetary hierarchy” for the monads in the three lowest natural kingdoms, mankind will help the mineral monads to transmigrate to the vegetable kingdom; the vegetable monads, to the animal kingdom; and the animal monads to causalize to the human kingdom. Thereby mankind will be able to achieve its proper mission: to serve evolution.
1The motion aspect is the most important in respect of life, for it is the condition of all processes of nature or of manifestation. Without it, there would be no life, no change, no development.
2The motion aspect has provided the basis of our auxiliary concepts “time, energy, and law”. (The Law = causality = the constant relations there are in motion. Time = the way of measuring motion.)
3The origin and cause of motion is the dynamic energy of primordial matter (called by Pythagoras dynamis), being the source of all the different kinds of energies in the cosmos.
4The importance of the motion aspect increases enormously with each higher atomic world. Even in world 44, “everything” appears to be energy, consciousness just the directing agent, matter the carrier of consciousness and, as for the rest, the material to be formed according to the laws ruling in each world.
5The motion aspect is thus the power aspect. The power is the outcome of the ever wider knowledge in ever higher worlds and, above all, of the ability to apply the Law (the sum total of all the laws of matter, consciousness, and motion in each world).
6All energies, of whatever kind, consist either of atoms or of molecules. Dynamis cannot act through anything but these as its material. “Ideas”, too, are atoms or molecules having their energy from dynamis, which is the primordial force in everything. And everything is an expression of the trinity of existence.
7Still (in 1963, when this is written) the so-called atomic researchers have not realized that energy is matter, a higher kind of matter, that a higher kind of matter act as energy on a lower kind of matter.
8In the absolute sense, energy is the dynamic energy of primordial matter (dynamis). There is no other kind of “pure energy”. And that kind acts only in and through matter. Energy free from matter does not exist. The ideas that “matter dissolves into energy” or that “energy is condensed into matter” are utterly wrong.
9Man lives in a world of various kinds of energies, partly dynamic, positive energies; partly receptive, negative energies; partly magnetic, attractive forces. The process of development implies that constructive relations are established between negative and positive energies, and that magnetic forces are produced from these relations (energy = energies of the second triad, force = energies of the first triad). The development of consciousness is also a creative process. Man handles energies and must learn to use them constructively.
10What the planetary hierarchy calls “will” is dynamized matter impregnated with atoms of higher atomic kinds and the pertaining kinds of consciousness.
11What men call “will” is actually purposive decision, an individual’s attempt to dynamize emotional or mental matter with his own thought-form of the illusory or fictitious kind.
1Space and time have different meanings for the esoterician, meanings that they cannot have for exoterists.
2The cosmos is a globe in primordial matter. In the concept of globe is also the concept of space.
3Space is globe, is dimension, and, quite particularly, also consciousness, since space is filled up with different kinds of matter with actualized consciousness, thus is filled up with primordial atoms. There is no “empty space” on account of the enormous pressure brought to bear by primordial matter. The cosmos is like a bubble in primordial matter, like a balloon blown up through the supply of primordial atoms, to use abortive analogies.
4Space arises through matter. Physical space is obtained through physical matter. The different atomic worlds have different space (dimension) and time (duration). Therefore, if you use the expression “space and time”, you should indicate which world you have in mind. Generally, “beyond space and time” actually means “beyond physical space and physical time”. At any event the expression is improper, since “beyond space and time” refers to spaceless and timeless primordial matter outside the cosmos. An acute critic said that also “space without limit” was “space”. He did not understand that a concept can be given its definition through negation of a known concept.
5People have been used to thinking of higher worlds as being beyond, above the physical world. But all the 49 atomic worlds are contained in the physical world and there are none “above” or “beyond”, Only the molecular worlds within the solar systems have different radii.
6Time can be called process of manifestation: the motion aspect in the consciousness and matter aspects.
7Time is absolute in the same sense as the present is absolute. Time is objective as a measurer of a process. Time is subjective when there is no possibility of measuring.
8For the esoterician, time is never a continuous existence but is composed of time-cycles, periods of manifestation of various kinds (which “determine” time).
9Time is determined by the processes of manifestation (including the movements of the stars), processes going on in all the 49 atomic worlds. As long as these processes go on, also the cosmos exists and thus time and space as well. We are quite unable to measure the flight of time in the emotional and mental worlds. That does not mean, however, that there is no time in these worlds for those who are able to follow the processes of manifestation (all changes). For man, there is space and time only in the physical world, since only in this world is he able to ascertain the pertaining phenomena.
10Space in a way contracts by each higher dimension, and the concept of distance is reduced as well. To those in the highest cosmic world, the cosmos is a reality present here and now and eternally. To a 43-self, it is the same in respect of the solar system. His concepts of time are enormous, the solar systemic cycles. To the causal self, there is no distance in planetary respect in the three lowest atomic worlds. Man in the physical world is dependent on the three dimensions of physical space and the time concept of day and night.
11The processes of manifestation prove the existence of time, for a process must go on in time, in a succession of events. Time is thus objectively real and can be measured when the process can be studied. It is quite another matter that the perception of time is subjective when the succession of consciousness expressions cannot be recorded.
12The possibility of foreseeing the future, about which there has been so much unreliable speculation, is due partly to the ability of ascertaining past causes of present events, partly to the plans for evolution that are drawn up in the planetary hierarchy and planetary government. These plans indicate what kinds of energies, what new factors will cooperate with those of previously given causes.
1With each new dimension “everything is made new”. The mere fact that the intellect with its acquired three-dimensional perception of space believes itself able to judge phenomena in the emotional world is sufficient proof of how incurably naive is all speculation, how unsuspecting it is of its own inability.
2To the self that has acquired objective consciousness, the ability to study the matter aspect of existence and thus the dimensions, the cosmos appears to contract with each higher dimension until it appears, to the highest self as a free monad, to be compressed into one single point, the point of the primordial atom. The fact that this seems absurd to human consciousness just demonstrates the immense limitation of our reason.
1Objectively, man’s perception of time is determined by his ability to ascertain the rotation of the earth and its revolution around the sun. This enables us to divide time into days and nights, hours, minutes and seconds, weeks, months, and years. Subjectively, our perception of time is determined by our experiences of the happening we witness, the succession of events.
2To the esoterician who strives after continuity of consciousness not just through 24 hours but also through his incarnations, the perception of time is a continuous series of events in which he participates himself as an observer and agent. Therein lies also the control of consciousness.
3The many symbolic expressions used by the planetary hierarchy include “without time” and the “eternal present” (past, present, and future in one concept of time). The intended meaning is that they in their worlds do not need any chronology or calendar but live in the present, in an “inclusive be-ness”. In their life, there is neither day nor night, no seasons, ages, incarnations, etc., nothing of which in the worlds of man is of such great importance. They do not, for instance, reckon with the number of incarnations for their disciples but look upon incarnations as making up a continuous whole (levels and stages attained). “The life of man” is to them the whole series of incarnations in the human kingdom, like days in a long life of about 500 years.
4There are esotericians who are so enamoured with the term “illusion” that they hold both space and time to be illusions. We poor human beings should keep to human concepts and experiences. The best proof that time exists is that things do not happen simultaneously but in succession. This is precisely what is meant by time.
5The yoga advaitee’s notion that time is a fiction actually implies a denial of the existence of the three aspects of reality .
6Time is a phenomenon which, according to the planetary hierarchy, cannot be understood even by second selves, only by such third selves as have incipient cosmic consciousness (42). Cosmically, time is an eternal now. The concepts “past, present, and future” have no meaning to a superessential self (45). The concepts “beginning and end” belong to the motion aspect (the processes of manifestation). Concepts of time change with each world. Second selves calculate time in interstellar zodiacal epochs, the active and passive periods of solar systems, planets, and departments. To third selves there are only two concepts of space: solar systemic space and cosmic space. The expression “space and time”, used by the planetary hierarchy in its relations with disciples, refers to the space and time concepts of the “physical world”. In the emotional and mental worlds, it is not possible to calculate time, and so the improper expression “there is no time” has been universally accepted in reference to those worlds.
7As seen from the highest cosmic world, innumerable cosmoses arise, develop, and are dismantled as a steady stream. The same is true of solar systems. The eons (4320 million years) we calculate with are like seconds in eternity. Actually, “eternity” is an improper term, since it lacks a concept of time, is timelessness, “beyond space and time”.
8According to information given by the planetary hierarchy, the life-time of a solar system, as expressed in terrestrial years, amounts to a fifteen-digit number. This is mentioned in order to liberate mankind from the fictitious numbers (constantly changed) which science now and then believes itself able to ascertain.
1The relation of higher kinds of consciousness to lower kinds of matter is one of the most important esoteric problems. In any case it is a problem that is quite beyond human comprehension, a fact that probably only esotericians realize. The expression “spirit and matter” has, as usual, several meanings, which generally speaking cannot be elucidated, since they presuppose a knowledge that only evolution “reveals” eventually. The Pythagorean monad was a mystery until Demokritos presented his atomic theory. The “least conceivable part of a substance” was the first primitive definition (conceivability was not very great at the time). Esoterics gives an account of 49 kinds of atoms more and more composed of primordial atoms. (An atom is the material unit making up the original material for a particular composition to form a new kind of matter of another dimension.) The theosophists confused the monad with the third triad. Also D.K. (being reduced to using the existing terminology) consistently used the word “monad” to denote the third triad, although he greatly deplored it.
2The old occult definition of the relation between spirit and matter, that spirit is the highest kind of matter and matter the lowest kind of spirit, was in ancient times the simplest explanation. Occultists did not, at the time, know anything about the fact that the different degrees of density of the atomic worlds are due to the different degrees of primordial atomic density or of the fact that reality has three aspects. Understanding these facts you also understand the fact that all the lower atomic kinds contain ever more primordial atoms and consequently become ever more “material”, that the capacity of the consciousness aspect and of the energy aspect increases enormously with each higher world, so that the atomic kinds thereby become ever more “spiritual”. The term “spirit” has a multiple meaning but is used esoterically to denote atomic consciousness as well as the highest synthesis of consciousness, energy, and lawfulness.
3Another esoteric saying is that the meaning of evolution is “the union of spirit and matter”. This means that man in the physical world has gained an understanding of higher kingdoms and thus also of the highest being in the planet (a 43-self) as well as the very striving to reach the same kingdom some time in the future.
4Yet another esoteric view appears in the conception of the seven lowest atomic worlds as being folded together so that world 43 is united with world 49; world 44, with world 48; world 45, with world 47 and world 46 comes on top. Then certain relations between the worlds are obtained and world 46 stands out as particularly important. The nature of these relations has as yet not been elucidated. It is easier to understand that the world of unity (world 46) is regarded as the world of “salvation”.
5It is in the solid matter of the physical world (49:7) that the four lowest natural kingdoms live their lives, have their experiences, acquire their qualities and abilities. Physical life is necessary to the discovery of matter, objectivity, and self-identity. When self-consciousness has been roused to life, however, the law of self-realization begins to function, and continues to do so until the individual has realized his unity with all, with the all. That was the meaning of the symbolic expression: “Thou art that.” Consciousness is one single cosmic consciousness. When the individual has acquired this total consciousness, he has reached his final goal. “Matter” has become “spirit”. Spirit and matter are one. Having realized this you understand how abortive man’s life is if he lives his physical life as if it were the only kind of life and the meaning of life; as if there were no consciousness development.
The above text constitutes the essay The Hylozoic World View by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life Two by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.