Knowledge of Life Two
6. THE MATTER ASPECT
6. THE MATTER ASPECT
1Primordial matter is true matter. It contains all the inexhaustible qualities of life, qualities that no supreme godhead in any cosmos can ever judge exhaustively, since experiences even in countless cosmoses would be insufficient. In the absolute sense, matter thus remains unexplorable. The experiences of the qualities of matter, the collective total consciousness in a solar system or a cosmos – all the experiences of all the entering monads – remain limited to all the experiences of those monads.
2In a solar system, all the experiences of all its planets are accessible to 43-selves to the extent they have themselves acquired the experiences necessary to assimilate those experiences. In all its envelopes of incarnation the monad has thousands of times learnt to apprehend the matter aspect in worlds 47–49 according to the seven departments 1–3–5–7. (Of course this is true of all three aspects.) However, the experiences of the individual monad are of course always limited but sufficient for the monad having collective consciousness to be able to grasp the common experiences.
3The monads of the deva evolution represent the matter aspect, experience matter in an exceedingly more intimate way than is possible for the human monads. Therefore, their knowledge of all material relations in all material compositions is enormously greater.
4It is part of this discussion that every monad is an individual character and consequently has the experiences that only that individual character can have, experiences that can be assimilated by the collective consciousness.
5The possibility of experiences is inexhaustible and that is why no monad can assimilate all of them. Consequently, also in the deva kingdoms all are specialists, even though the common experiences in the collective consciousness have been largely assimilated and the collaboration between all is practised to the greatest extent possible, so that one is justified in speaking about “omniscience”, being accessible to all who have a sufficiently expanded collective consciousness.
6It follows from what has been said that those in the human kingdom who do research in matter could acquire an incomparably greater insight into the nature of matter if they strived after cooperation with the devas.
7Since the experiences of all monads are utilized, also the deva specialists are interested in what discoveries chemists, physicists, physiologists, etc., have made and how man apprehends matter.
8From what has been said it should be clear that individuals in higher kingdoms by no means are specialists in all respects. But in their collective consciousness they are able to learn everything they need to know.
9What the ancients called the “soul of the world” is the sum total of the collective total consciousness of the different worlds with the experiences all the monads in the planet or the solar system have had during the course of development.
10We have received enough facts concerning the matter aspect to realize its importance as the carrier of consciousness. What we have been given to know about kinds of matter, material worlds, material envelopes, etc., affords us a sufficient understanding of the make-up of reality.
11Mankind does not need more facts about the matter aspect. The consciousness aspect is the most important one for mankind, since the meaning of life is consciousness development. It cannot be asserted that great strides forward have been made in that direction. If we adhere to the prevalent idea that material things are the most essential, we counteract the purpose of our own life. We occupy our attention with countless unnecessary things and lead lives that are bereft of meaning.
12Everything in the matter aspect has its correspondence in the consciousness aspect. The disciples of the planetary hierarchy are encouraged to disregard the matter aspect as much as possible and instead consider its consciousness aspect, live in this aspect.
13There is another weighty reason for the planetary hierarchy’s reticence with regard to the matter aspect and, in particular, the etheric world, the world next to us. It is the knowledge of etheric matter and etheric energies that makes it possible to practise what has been called “magic”, the mastery of matter in the visible world, the knowledge affording the power that people strive after to be able to rule. As if it were the meaning of life when, instead, it means the extinction of life, a fact that mankind apparently still is too primitive to see. It is a power that has always been abused hitherto to the detriment of evolution and unity.
14When mankind has understood the meaning of life and also does what it can to realize this meaning, the planetary hierarchy promises that it will give us all knowledge we need to lead a perfect physical life. We shall receive the knowledge that will put an end to slave-work for physical sustenance, liberate us from disease, etc. Mankind will have the power it desires when it has learnt to use the power rightly for the weal of all and woe of none, for evolution and unity.
1All the worlds in the whole cosmos are composed of atoms consisting of primordial atoms. Therefore, all worlds in the cosmos are material worlds. But it is only in the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49) that the matter aspect is of any importance whatsoever. It is true that in higher worlds it makes up the unlosable basis of the consciousness and motion aspects. The atoms in those worlds appear to be “points of force” rather than matter. But everything requires firm points: a firm point for individual consciousness, a firm point for energy (dynamis in primordial atoms).
2To objective consciousness in higher kingdoms matter manifests itself only as light and colour (the matter aspect) and sound (the motion aspect), not offering any resistance to consciousness whatsoever but “obeying” the lest hint from consciousness. To individuals in those kingdoms the formation and dissolution of material aggregates even in the physical world is the work of an instant. You understand why the matter aspect appears completely unessential to them. But it does not in the lest mean that matter is an “illusion” (does not exist) to them. The formation and dissolution of material aggregates presupposes a knowledge of the composition of matter, and that knowledge is no “illusion”. They also have sufficient experience of what the matter aspect means to those in lower natural kingdoms.
3To man in the physical world the matter aspect is the only aspect with which he is in direct contact and of which he has immediate understanding. The fact that this aspect is the only aspect of reality to mankind, and even to science, is for the esoterician the best demonstration of the prevalent ignorance of life. This ignorance is explicable, since the normal individual (the majority) has objective consciousness only of the three lowest physical molecular kinds and these are the only explorable ones, domains of research in chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, biology, etc. It is only during the last one hundred years that the consciousness aspect has begun to attract the attention of scientists. Like the motion aspect it was considered a “quality” of matter. It has not yet been realized that these two are two independent aspects of reality. This remains to be discovered.
1None of the three aspects of reality has been the object of so much verbiage as matter. It is not strange, since the concepts of our ordinary human experience do not suffice to comprehend it, even though there is some possibility to understand the apparent contradictions.
2Matter is in actual fact primordial matter. The latter has two contrary qualities: absolute density and absolute elasticity. In this primordial matter works an absolute force, dynamis, which “in all eternity” without cessation brings forth primordial atoms. Thus we are dealing with three absolutes, all contradicting each other.
3The primordial atom can be “likened” to a gas bubble in water, but this bubble is an absolute phenomenon that cannot be dissolved, since dynamis eternally acts in it. It is what best could be called a “point of force”. This point of force has a potential (possible) consciousness that eventually can be roused to passive, active, and self-active consciousness by being brought together with other primordial atoms and by itself acquiring ever more intensive and extensive “omniscience and omnipotence” in “countless” processes of manifestation.
4However absurd this may sound, it is the basic idea for all the atomic beings of 49 different, ever higher kinds, beings who form an unbroken chain from the lowest (physical) atom to the primordial atom. In the lowest atom exist atoms of all the higher kinds.
5The 49 interpenetrating cosmic atomic worlds have different degrees of density due to the primordial atomic density (the number of primordial atoms in the different atoms). The atom of the lowest kind has the greatest number of primordial atoms.
6Also in this respect human reason finds a seemingly absurd contradiction. The coarser the matter, the greater the primordial atomic density, the less primordial matter, since primordial atoms are seeming “voids” in primordial matter. A new paradox is obtained: the coarser the matter, the less matter. It is not strange if reason, faced with the difficulties of grasping these seeming absurdities, has declared matter to be an “illusion”.
7These fundamental facts seem contradictory to human reason, which fact demonstrates the limitation of reason in respect of conception as well as the impossibility of making the issue comprehensible with the primitive concepts of reality prevalent. The planetary hierarchy has hitherto refrained from entering on these fundamental facts, precisely because it considers them inconceivable for mankind at its present stage of development. They are far beyond human capacity to judge.
1All matter composed of primordial atoms, atoms, molecules, aggregates, worlds, planets, solar systems and cosmic worlds, are only envelopes of the monads. The monad (the individual, the self) as a material phenomenon can never be anything else than a primordial atom.
2This insight is of fundamental importance. Without this insight the individual will unfailingly fall a victim to some one of the prevalent misconceptions of what the self actually is. What all these have in common is that the monad is thought to be some highest envelope.
3In the four lowest natural kingdoms the self must conceive itself as some one of its envelopes. It identifies now with the organism, now with the emotional envelope, now with the mental envelope, now with the causal envelope. As a feeling man it identifies with emotional consciousness; as a thinking man, with mental consciousness.
4Leadbeater considered that the monad was that phenomenon which hylozoics calls the submanifestal envelope (44), a product of the third triad. Besant as well as Leadbeater had understood that the “Ego” (the causal envelope) could not be the self, since there was a still “higher self”. And then they made the submanifestal phenomenon the monad.
5Symbols that have never been rightly elucidated were the ground of this misconception and more. The symbol of the “descent of spirit into matter” and that of “elemental essence” (the acquisition of cyclic spiral motion by involutionary atoms) were misunderstood, and others as well.
6You see how impossible it is for an individual in the human kingdom to solve these problems without facts from the planetary hierarchy.
7The human monad is enclosed in a triad (envelope) in a causal envelope.
8In higher worlds the individual (the self–monad–primordial atom) does not need any envelopes of his own to work on consciousness. Thus the 44-self needs only the third triad, and the 42-self (in the cosmic kingdom of 36–42) only the 43-atom. Subsequently it suffices for the ever higher selves to use that latest atom in the atomic chain of 1–43 (in which chain the monad is involved) which it has learnt to exploit to its full capacity. As a partner in the cosmic total consciousness such as it can be apprehended in the different cosmic atomic worlds, the monad consciousness does not need envelopes of its own but identifies with the different kinds of world consciousness which it has mastered and in which it has acquired omniscience and omnipotence.
9The esoterician learns to differentiate between the self and the envelopes of the self. Those are two different realities. The envelopes are the private business of the self. It is the self that you are trying to help.
1Form is matter’s mode of existing. In the entire cosmos (manifested primordial matter) everything is form, although of widely different kinds, so that ignorance thinks it can use the term “formless”. All the 49 cosmic atomic kinds make forms of different kinds, higher and lower ones in a continuous series.
2In atoms of all the lower kinds there are atoms of all the higher kinds involved, thus in the physical atom there are atoms of all the 48 higher kinds. This makes it possible to perceive the impelling force in evolution, since even in the physical atom the consciousness of all the higher worlds exists as a latent tendency. During its entire evolution, the monad is always centred in an atom of some kind and is affected by vibrations from all those atomic kinds. The ability to assimilate those vibrations depends on the stage of development.
3In all the worlds there exists involved matter as involvatory matter only (primary matter without consciousness) and as involutionary matter and evolutionary matter.
4In the esoteric literature there is an obscurity in this respect concerning the matters of the physical world. It is said that involutionary matter, when passing from emotional matter into physical matter, also passes into evolutionary matter. However, this is true only of those monads of quaternary matter which are involved into triads and into the physical atoms of triads to begin their evolution in the mineral kingdom. All other involutionary matter (secondary and tertiary matter) continues its involution through the physical molecular kinds down into the solid state of aggregation. Thus there is elemental matter also in the physical world, and this matter has to undergo processes that in due time “ennoble” it into quaternary matter. The consciousness of this quaternary matter is what appears in vegetables, for instance, (grasses, etc.) that do not house any triads.
5Tertiary matter is made up of the triads and so-called skandhas of man, among other things. It is one of the tasks of man to transfer monads of those kinds to evolution, one of the seven parallel ways of evolution.
6Atoms and molecules are specialized within each natural kingdom so that there are mineral atoms and mineral molecules, vegetable atoms and vegetable molecules, animal atoms and animal molecules, etc. Specialization proceeds further so that there are heart atoms and heart molecules, kidney atoms and kidney molecules, etc. Matter is specialized even further so that there are individual atoms and molecules according to individual character.
7These esoteric facts can never be ascertained by mankind, and such facts we receive as free gifts from the planetary hierarchy. Then it will be the business of mankind to put these facts into their correct contexts and make use of the knowledge. It should be added that the pertaining facts are of great significance for ever better understanding of the law of sowing and reaping, in its application to the individuals in all natural kingdoms. That knowledge is necessary to the understanding of how “justice is done without fail”, mechanically and automatically.
1The physical light radiating from the gaseous envelope of the sun is nothing in intensity compared to the light issuing from the higher envelopes of the sun (emotional, mental, essential and 43–45 envelopes in constantly increasing intensity). If those energies were brought down, via the atomic kinds, into the physical world, its physical molecular kinds would instantly be dissolved into physical atomic matter.
2The different worlds of the planets exist in different layers, the higher layers outside the lower ones in concentric arrangement with the physical world as the inmost one. Outside the planets the same molecular kinds exist as in the planets. The difference is that the molecular kinds are more concentrated to the planets. The analogy is obtained if man’s aura, which contains all the kinds of molecules there are in the worlds of man, is compared to the contraction of these matters within the organism, the effect of which is that the emotional and mental envelopes have the same shape as the organism.
3In a solar system of the first degree it is the worlds of the first triad that develop into perfect automatism. A solar system of the second degree (such as our own) has as its goal the automatization of the worlds of the second triad. This also implies the possibility for the second triad to fully master worlds 46–49, which is not possible until these matters have been automatized (the pertaining 45–47-atoms even in the molecular kinds of 47–49). That is why the capacity of 45-self is required for full sovereignty. They have attained the capacity that the majority in the fourth natural kingdom acquired only before the dissolution of the solar system (pending its remoulding).
4We do not know how the galaxies (the countless cosmoses) move in primordial matter. To be visible they must at least have reached down to the physical superetheric (49:3) molecular state.
5We have been given to know that all visible stars belong to our cosmos. The natural conclusion thus would be that the galaxies are their own cosmoses, since they do not display observable stars. Even if this conclusion can be regarded as a negative one, it appears plausible.
1The lowest three atomic worlds (47–49) form those four molecular worlds (visible, etheric, emotional, and mental) which are the only existing ones to the monads in their lowest triads, the individuals of the four lowest natural kingdoms. The three highest molecular kinds of mental atomic matter, making up the causal world, the world of Platonic ideas, cannot be apprehended by consciousness in the first triad. The causal world is included among the worlds of man, since man has an envelope of causal matter. This envelope embraces the lowest triad, contacts the second triad, and is the condition of the passing of the monad from the first to the second triad. The causal world is the lowest world of the second triad and objectively accessible only to those who have acquired consciousness in this second triad.
2The term “body”, used in the occult literature, has been consistently replaced with “envelope”. The term “envelope” makes it clear that it is a matter of envelopes for the self, which is something different from its envelopes. “Body” is associated with the idea of something independent, something solid, more or less impenetrable. The aggregate envelopes consist of molecules held together by electromagnetism, molecules which if they were “exploded into atoms” would be reconstituted in an instant. The molecules are held together by means of mutual affinity and the attractive force of the vibrations of the triad units. There exists nothing impenetrable in the envelopes or to the envelopes. The individual (the self) is the monad (the primordial atom) and everything else is an envelope for the self.
3During physical incarnation, man has six envelopes: two causal, one mental, one emotional, and two physical ones.
4At incarnation the causal envelope is divided into a greater one and a lesser one. The greater one remains in the causal world. The lesser one, the triad envelope, incarnates, encloses, and penetrates all the lower envelopes.
5Of old, only five envelopes were mentioned. They started from the fact that the two causal envelopes belong to the same world (the causal world). The two physical envelopes were counted as two because of their totally disparate quality and also because the visible and “invisible” physical world was apprehended as two different worlds.
6Therefore the following six envelopes are obtained:
the causal envelope (47:1-3) the triad envelope (47:3) the mental envelope (47:4-7) the emotional envelope (48:2-7) the etheric envelope (49:2-4) the organism (49:5-7)
7The first triad in the triad chain is enclosed in the triad envelope. The second triad is attached to the causal envelope.
8All the envelopes except the organism are aggregate envelopes, atoms and six different kinds of molecules held together magnetically. The percentages of the different molecular kinds are due to the level of development attained. The higher the level, the greater percentages of higher molecular kinds. When the envelopes of man finally consist exclusively of the atomic kinds belonging to the different worlds, his evolution in the human kingdom is concluded and he passes to the next higher kingdom, the fifth natural kingdom.
9Organisms are by no means necessary to the development of consciousness in the lowest physical molecular kinds (49:5-7). On other planets also the lowest envelope is an aggregate envelope.
10When a 45-self (in his second self envelope) “physicalizes”, so that he becomes visible in the physical world, he uses the first triad the energies of which shape a replica of his “lowest material form”, a replica as similar to the original as possible and consisting of mental, emotional, and physical molecular kinds. Shaping as well as dissolution is the work of an instant. This physical body cannot be distinguished from an organism. This phenomenon shows that also the lowest envelope (49:5-7) can be an aggregate envelope.
1The acquisition of self-consciousness in higher molecular kinds is a process in the scientific sense, a process involving the matter aspect. It brings about the exchange of lower for higher molecular kinds in all the envelopes (physical, emotional, mental, causal). In this process, the vibrations in the envelopes are raised, and this implies higher kinds of consciousness. In this it is important to realize that the percentages of the different envelopes are in mutual agreement. If the percentage is too high or too low in some envelope as compared to the percentages of the other envelopes, then this fact counteracts the overall purpose.
2The composition of the emotional and mental envelopes in percentages of different molecular kinds indicates the individual’s level of development .
3These two envelopes and the department of the triad envelope depends on the individual’s interests and strivings in his last incarnation.
4The material composition of the envelopes is the individual’s own work through all his incarnations. He inherits from his parents an organism which in its quality corresponds to the one he left last time.
5When the individual observes that his envelopes “walk their own paths”, make him say and do what he does not intend, then the time is up for him to set about controlling his envelopes. This is done, as everything else, by directing attention to the pertaining problems.
6The self acquires true sovereignty in its envelopes only when activating the atomic consciousness (49:1, 48:1, 47:1) as an essential self.
1Vibrations pouring through the envelopes of man can come from without, from the causal envelope, and from the triad envelope. They vitalize the mental, emotional, and etheric envelopes.
2The physical etheric envelope is directed by energies from the causal envelope and the emotional envelope by energies from the triad envelope. These two kinds of energy are often incompatible and cause conflict. It is of great importance to “self-knowledge” to realize the truth of these facts, even if you know that the individual’s emotional energies control the organism.
3In the normal individual, the inner energies from the triad envelope are strongest in the emotional envelope and from there in the etheric envelope. Since the organism is an automaton, the life expressions of the organism equal those of the etheric envelope. The energies of the organism are those of the etheric envelope. Mankind is at the emotional stage, emotional consciousness is man’s “will”, the determining factor of his views and modes of reaction, originating from the latent qualities roused by environment, upbringing, and experience.
4Out of countless vibrations pouring through the envelopes from higher worlds and even from the physical world only an exceedingly tiny fraction can be absorbed by the centres of the envelopes and in that process become instinctively perceptible in the waking consciousness.
5All molecules in the envelopes of the individual are penetrated by cosmic matter, with the result that the envelopes radiate material energies, vibrations in all directions – mental, emotional, etheric vibrations – that affect the envelopes in the environment without the normal individual in his ignorance and inability being able to apprehend those vibrations. And since those material energies are vehicles of consciousness, they also wield influence in the unconscious.
6The atomic organs of the aggregate envelopes are called chakras. They function as centres of consciousness and motion in various parts of the envelope. They convey the vibrations from the seven different atomic and molecular kinds of their worlds.
1The departments in the envelopes indicate which kinds of energies have a determining effect on their material content and thereby on consciousness, on their modes of expression and consciously or unconsciously on the environment. It is of great importance for the individual to be informed about the departments of his different envelopes. It makes it easier for him to understand himself and to work on his own development. Those who have the prerequisites of doing so should try to learn to tell where vibrations come from. The esoterician is taught that the efficiency of his work depends to a great deal on his attention to those realities and on his expedient use of energies.
2The individual is dependent on his envelopes and on the departmental energies of those envelopes. It is his task in life to make the best possible use of those energies, use them in the best way to have experiences, to develop his own consciousness, and to serve evolution. Much-vaunted freedom seems mostly to consist in making the worst possible use of the departmental energies. The freedom of abuse is nothing to boast about.
3As a rule, the departments in the envelopes change in each new incarnation. We build ourselves the content of our envelopes by consciousness and service (activity). So doing we also determine the departments of our envelopes in future incarnations. For instance, the emotional envelope in our next incarnation will be of the sixth department if we cultivate devotion; of the second department if we cultivate admiration, affection, and sympathy.
4The envelopes allotted to man at incarnation with their departmental content (esoteric astrology will explain the connection with the horoscope vibrations) often appear unsuitable to their owner. This seems especially to be the case with those who are approaching the higher stages. One of the many factors that those ruling (not least Augoeides) have to take into consideration in this matter is the necessity for the self to learn to use even such envelopes, to learn to control then, to be able to develop in spite of their apparent or obvious unserviceability.
1The envelopes exist to enable the monad to acquire a knowledge of the worlds of the envelopes, to acquire the necessary qualities and abilities that can be acquired in those worlds. The envelopes are means, not goals. The monad willingly renounces them when they have served their purpose. The individual will receive new ones until he has learnt to use them rightly, but he is responsible for how he uses them, which appears in the fact that the new ones he receives depend on how he used the previous ones.
2The envelopes of incarnation exist to collect experiences, which subsequently are preserved in the subconsciousness of the triad and the superconsciousness of the causal envelope, inaccessible to the “primitive self”, which at the present stage of mankind’s development can be conscious only in the waking consciousness of its envelopes of incarnation. There is no injustice in the fact that the self’s bad sowing in previous incarnations cannot be ascertained in subsequent ones (since the continuity of consciousness has been lost). Because the self, as soon as it has developed sufficiently to be able to distinguish between right and wrong, always receives so much knowledge that it sees its transgressions of the law. If the self refuses to abide by the law, the self has itself to blame, which it as usual seldom does in our primitive mankind.
3The envelopes of incarnation are the self’s experimental envelopes for consciousness development. They are of course of great importance, the more so the more developed the self is. When “judgement passes over the world”, however, when the collective responsibility is exacted and envelopes are destroyed seemingly without meaning, not having served any purpose, also this is according to the Law, in this case the law of reaping. We all have without meaning destroyed so many human lives that we have thereby signed our own deathsentences for the future. In this it is to be noticed, however, that the higher an individual stands, the greater significance has whatever he does and whatever is done to him. (It would be advisable to substitute the word “significance” for “value” after the philosophers with their so-called value philosophy have managed to idiotize that concept.)
4Most people’s envelopes of incarnation can be regarded as unserviceable and largely unfit for life. This is the magnificent result of mankind’s experimenting with these ever since the knowledge of reality was lost as the planetary hierarchy realized the uselessness of trying to help an idiotized mankind. Men know nothing about their envelopes except for the organism, which is an automaton directed by energies from the higher envelopes, last the causal envelope. It is the same case as with the energies that work the course of events. They, too, come from higher worlds.
5Being ignorant of their envelopes and how they should be treated and controlled, men have during more than twelve thousand years allowed those mass-directed robots to rule them. Instead of replacing the matter of the envelopes with ever higher kinds of molecules, they have managed to increase the percentages of lower kinds more and more. Lower molecular kinds are accompanied by lower kinds of consciousness, lower kinds of energy.
6To be able to learn from life you must be able to study the law of cause and effect in history. That will tell you something about our kind of history as well.
7The self has to learn to use its envelopes with their consciousnesses in the appropriate way. Without envelopes there is no development. The self has to learn to control its envelopes and not allow them to rule the self. It is a great mistake to disdain one’s envelopes. They are necessary. We have received them as free gifts. The fact that most people abuse them and consequently have increasing difficulties with them is not the fault of the envelopes but our own fault.
1The human organism belongs to the animal kingdom. All its functions are directed from the etheric envelope, which is “physical man” proper. On other planets, there are no organisms. The “fall” consisted in the fact that men as etheric beings did not want to renounce the “experiences” offered by animal bodies but, upon causalization, incarnated in the bodies of ape-men about 50 million years ago. This is nowadays impossible. Perhaps it was the esoteric story of this event that resulted in the doctrine of metempsychosis still taught in India.
2The human organism is the definitive end-product of biological evolution. What remains is the vitalization of the organism, so that it is made unassailable by disease, can remain vital and fully functionable until euthanasy occurs at an advanced age. At the present stage of the development of mankind, only an essential self (the monad in the second triad) is perfectly unassailable by any kind of disease.
3Since all qualities and abilities must be developed by the self in the organism, the etheric envelope of the organism must convey all the energies to the organism’s nervous system, glandular system, and blood, it is important that this organism is refined to be able to receive and rightly use these energies. This does not mean a life of asceticism but an application of the esoteric knowledge concerning the functions and functionability of the envelopes.
4The organism makes it possible for man to be in contact with the three lowest molecular kinds. In a life sense, the organism is exclusively a mechanical robot that reacts to incoming energies but is incapable of self-initiated activity. It is automatically directed by the etheric envelope, which penetrates the organism and extends about five centimetres beyond it. All activity, all processes, are the effects of causes found in the etheric envelopes or higher envelopes. Medical science will not be able to realize this until it has discovered the existence of the etheric envelope and its functions. Every cell in the organism is enclosed in an envelope of etheric matter.
5The majority of diseases in the organism have their origin in the higher envelopes, which all except the causal envelope evince functional deficiencies. If the vibrations (energies) from the causal envelope could pass all the intervening envelopes without hindrance, the individual would be entirely healthy.
6The cell energies can be of very different quality. If the organism is of the kind characterizing a coarsened, brutal, animal nature, the physical effect will be of quite another kind than that issuing from a refined nature. The cell energies have a raising or lowering, a refining or a coarsening effect on the entire organism. If the cells have acquired the faculty of responding to the harmonious rhythm of the physical world, they radiate those energies which, affecting everything in the environment with their harmonious effect, create the characteristic “atmosphere” that people perceive although they cannot explain it.
7The original energies, issuing from the heart chakra of the etheric envelope, are conveyed by the blood mass, which supplies the cells with etheric energies and transmits the reradiation of the cells. The explanation of the expression, “blood is a peculiar kind of sap”, which has not been understood, is that the blood mass distributes necessary energies of life. The “blood of the organism is an energy aspect like sap in the plants”.
8The sympathetic nervous system, that stupendous perceptive apparatus, is closely connected with the emotional envelope. The contact is made via the solar plexus just as vitality via the heart. In the heart is the centre of physical existence. The cerebrospinal system works in close connection with the molecules of the mental envelope via the eyebrow chakra and the life energies with the chakra in the etheric envelope corresponding to the spleen.
9Expressed simply it can be said that “everything is a gift” from higher kingdoms. Then it depends on people what use they make of this “gift”, whether this use is in accord with the laws of nature and laws of life.
10The physical atom in the individual’s lowest triad consists of 49 emotional atoms, which in their turn consist of 49 mental atoms. The physical atom thus contains 2400 mental atoms. The more of these are vitalized, the more brain-cells can function. A constant interaction takes place between cells and atoms. All are vitalized during development in the human kingdom through tens of thousands of incarnations. The number of vitalized brain-cells determines the capacity of the brain. Like all atoms, all cells have consciousness, since they contain all kinds of atoms. Their passive consciousness can be activated through vibrations from without or by the self (the monad in the causal envelope). The perfected causal self can consciously control all cells and atoms of his envelopes. Mankind has a long way to go before this will be possible.
11There are many mistaken ideas about the material composition of the envelopes of incarnation. Just as a man can be born with a diseased organism, so he can be born with relatively “coarse” emotional and mental envelopes as well. The composition of the envelopes is determined by the skandhas accompanying them throughout the incarnations. People who have eaten coarse food (meat, fish, eggs, alcohol etc.) for generations are not aided by living on a vegetarian diet for seven years, since skandhas attract new particles from the etheric counterparts of the old diet, so that the newly-formed cells of the organism are poisoned anew. And the corresponding is true of the emotional and mental envelopes (what molecular kinds they have had). Generally, it takes a whole series of incarnations before the individual has ridded himself of all the “toxins” in his envelopes and their matters function perfectly in accord with the intentions of the energies.
1The etheric envelope is the essential physical envelope. In this envelope are found all the energy centres directing the organism. The organism is quite simply an automaton, although indispensable as such.
2The organism is directed by the energies from the etheric envelope, the emotional envelope, the mental envelope, and the causal envelope. These four different kinds of energies come either from the physical, emotional, and mental worlds through the respective envelopes or directly from the causal envelope (through the heart chakra).
3At the stage of culture the emotional lower kinds of energies are gradually replaced with the energies from higher kinds (48:1-3). At the stage of humanity, the mental energies are directed either from the self in the triad envelope or from Augoeides in the causal envelope. When finally they come from the self in the will chakra of the causal envelope, the individual is a causal self.
4Before that he must have acquired such an insight that he can decide from where the different energies come that direct the organism and such a capacity that he can replace energies coming from without with his own and in a such a manner become self-determined, which he is not until these problems have been solved. Remains the problem of superconsciousness, which he sometimes takes for his own ideas and energies but sometimes mistakes for his errors of judgement and eliminates. However, as his esoteric knowledge increases, it will be possible for him ever more frequently to make the right choice between the various alternatives.
5The etheric envelope absorbs physical energy (prana) and distributes this through the blood mass to all parts of the organism. Goethe knew this when he wrote: “Blood is a peculiar kind of sap.”
6It serves moreover as a medium of vibrations between the organism and the higher envelopes, receives and conveys the organism’s nerve perceptions, which are of an etheric nature.
7The organism is built upon a structure of etheric threads. The consciousness of the etheric envelope is a synthesis of that of the etheric molecules of the organism.
8It is the presence of the etheric envelope in the organism that makes perceptions in the organism possible. In the very etheric envelope, when liberated from the organism, there are no perceptions. And only in the matter of physical vitality or weakness is it possible for man to experience his dependence on his etheric envelope.
9It is in the etheric envelope that diseases arise. The energy of bacteria is immense, which is seen in their productivity. The etheric envelopes of bacteria reach, via man’s etheric envelope, the etheric envelopes of the organic cells. Medical science is quite ignorant of all these things.
10The etheric envelope is the most overlooked of all the envelopes because desires, feelings, and thoughts appear to be incomparably more important. It needs to be pointed out that the etheric envelope is of enormous importance for the individual in incarnation. Not only the health of the organism depends on it but also the possibility of right perception and assimilation of the energies of higher envelopes. If the etheric envelope is vitalized in an expedient manner, the individual will acquire objective consciousness of the etheric molecular kinds or states of aggregation and thereby a totally different perception of physical reality. The present one is erroneous to an incredible degree. The physical atom consists of seven spirillae of which only three are functioning. Even the vitalization of a fourth spirilla would liberate the organism from most of its diseases. With all seven activated there would be no organic illnesses. Medical science rejects homeopathic remedies, since it cannot explain their efficacy. When, some time in the future, it humiliates itself to explore the energy effect of the thousandth or millionth potency, it will make more revolutionary discoveries concerning the structure of matter than the physicists with their so-called splitting of atoms.
11The etheric envelope is the envelope of reaping in the proper sense. Its ability to assimilate the etheric vibrations pouring through the physical world – on which energies depends the individual’s possibility to use the qualities and abilities which he has acquired in the human kingdom (and which are preserved latently in the first triad) – determines the new incarnation in essential respects.
12The three channels connecting all the chakras of the etheric envelopes are called in Sanskrit Sushumna, Ida, and Pingala. The central channel, Sushumna, is the connection with the third triad; Ida, with the second triad; and Pingala, with the first triad. The two outer channels wind in a spiral fashion round the central channel, so it is erroneous to describe them as right or left channels.
13There is a full activity between the crown centre and basal centre only when a direct connection has been established between the third triad and the physical etheric envelope (the first triad physical atom). Then all the centres of the etheric envelope are vitalized. Then the intermediary envelopes are automatized and function exclusively as connecting links when the triad chain itself does not suffice to that end.
14It would perhaps be more correct to say that the intermediary envelopes are dissolved and the energies are conveyed via the triad chain, but that those envelopes are automatically formed anew as soon as they are needed for work in the lower worlds.
15Every race has its peculiar individual character that separates it from other races. This is an esoteric fact which science is in no position to ascertain and which therefore is denied by its representatives who are able to judge everything that goes beyond their possibilities. This individual character manifests itself in the etheric envelope and the connecting links between the different chakras. It should be noted here that physical matter contains all the higher kinds of matter and that the physical matter specialized for and by the race also has typical emotional-mental qualities. This makes itself felt without fail so that even second selves incarnating in some certain race are affected by this. A detailing of those characteristics would be highly unsuitable for a mankind that still is found at the stage of hatred.
16Those who begin studying esoterics should observe the risk involved in the fact that thought is not merely a subjective phenomenon but also an energy phenomenon. Thought is energy and must be given outlet. This finds expression in the etheric envelope and can re-act upon the organism. Thought is practically never purely mental but a mental-emotional energy, and emotionality is released in the navel centre of the etheric envelope. This in its turn easily brings about a relapse into atavistic tendencies involving mediumism, clairvoyance, etc. In Atlantis, mankind was emotional, mediumistic, and clairvoyant. It should nowadays strive to become mental. We should not try to resuscitate what ever we should liberate ourselves from.
17Clairvoyance is the objective consciousness of the navel centre. The esoterician understands what this means in respect of illusoriness.
18Where there is true idealism, thinking in accordance with reality, and understanding of the energies of the envelopes, when the individual is able to live in accordance with the rhythm of nature and his own envelopes, he can without risk follow an elaborated method of breathing exercises. Before he has reached that stage he is very wise in refraining from such exercises. (D.K.)
1The first self is the monad in the first triad and is what is called esoterically the personality. This is the triad in the envelopes of incarnation, for without those the triad is in a passive state (“pralaya”). It is the triad which through its three units produces the three aggregate envelopes (the mental, emotional, and physical-etheric). The discussion of the etheric envelope has confused many people. It is an independent envelope, a product of the triad physical atom. At the same time it is inseparable from the organism, belongs to it, and dissolves along with it. It is constructed by the “agencies of destiny” and is the condition of the formation of the organism, a basic framework for the organism calculated for a certain individual. These contradictions disappear as you get to know the facts. The etheric envelope of the organism and the etheric envelope of the triad are two different kinds of etheric envelope. As long as the individual is subject to the compulsion of reincarnation and the law of reaping, his etheric envelope is not formed by the triad atom. This is the case only when the individual has definitively become a second self and himself is responsible for a possible incarnation or wishes to physicalize.
2At incarnation, Augoeides sees to it that the etheric envelope formed by the triad is attached to the organism’s etheric envelope at the moment of birth. However, if on account of intervening circumstances the result of this does not come out as intended, Augoeides can refuse the attachment and the child is “still-born”. If not, the triad has thereby incarnated. In the process, the triad etheric envelope is dissolved and the triad physical atom from then on assumes the task of vitalizing the organism’s etheric envelope.
3The etheric envelope of a human being cannot be separated from the organism but can rather be regarded as a part of it. It is fully detached only at the “death” of the organism. It remains in the vicinity of the organism, however, and dissolves at the same tempo as the latter.
4This is not the case where 45-selves and higher selves are concerned, however. They form their own etheric envelopes to use them when they need to physicalize. If such an individual incarnates, his etheric envelope shapes the foetus according to the appearance of the etheric envelope. When he discarnates, he destroys the very organism himself and keeps the etheric envelope. The misconception in this respect has caused a confusion of ideas so that certain esotericians think that man’s etheric envelope has an independent existence after “death”.
5In the case of certain so-called mediums the etheric envelope, too, is so loosely united with the organism that they can lend this envelope to individuals who with its aid are able to shape an aggregate envelope of the lowest molecular kinds (49:5-7), an envelope that is visible to all. In this process the organism is in a state of cataleptic trance similar to apparent death. Those experiments are extremely risky and harmful to the medium.
6How difficult it is, in normal cases, to detach the etheric envelope from the organism is clear from the fact that all the envelopes of incarnation must contribute at the process of dying and that the emotional envelope can sever the tie (sutratma) between itself and the etheric envelope only after the etheric envelope has been detached definitively.
1The emotional envelope is the only envelope having six molecular kinds and therefore six kinds of consciousness and energy. It also is the envelope that is the most difficult to control at the present stage of mankind’s development, the seat of desire (dynamic will), feelings, and imaginings.
2With the ennoblement of the envelopes follows a continuously heightening sensitivity necessary to the increased ability to apprehend ever finer vibrations. Instead of complaining about their “sensitivity” people should complain about their inability to rationally use it and control it, complain about the lack of understanding there is in complaining about the fact that they develop.
3Still western psychology has no idea of the existence of the emotional envelope and no understanding of the basic significance of emotional consciousness in man’s physical life. Still they cannot give clear definitions of desire, will, feeling, or imagination. Esoterics maintains that emotional consciousness at the present stage of mankind’s development is man’s most important kind of consciousness. Man’s development is practically concluded in his incarnation as a saint, in which he passes the test of his emotional sovereignty, his ability to control his emotional consciousness. What remains after that (the acquisition of higher mental consciousness, 47:4,5), is almost an automatic procedure.
4The emotional envelope is the psychological experimental field of the human experience. In this envelope the self fights out its “struggle of life” and wins its victory. In this envelope the self gains an understanding of the “pairs of opposites”: is happy or unhappy, rejoices or despairs, is contented or displeased, is certain or uncertain, is confident or doubts, is courageous or fears.
5The man who has from childhood imbibed nothing but illusions and fictions in a general life sense and in all the idiologies of ruling ignorance lives in an emotional and mental chaos reinforced by the mass vibrations pouring through all the envelopes from the thought forms of the environment, his class, nation, race. Anyone who can forget himself, the consciousness content of his envelopes, which is unfit for life, hostile to life, and live for fixed goals and tasks, has solved countless problems. They are solved of themselves when man has acquired the right attitude to life. With our idiotic assumptions we muddle things up and complicate the problems for ourselves. It is a great thing to be able to “not care a hoot about how it feels”. People’s statements correspond to their levels. You must not demand anything better. What has been said here refers to our emotional envelopes, where practically all our “thinking” takes place. But then that thinking is as might be expected. At any event there is no harm in knowing it.
1In normal sleep the emotional envelope (with higher envelopes) leaves the organism and its etheric envelope. It remains in the immediate vicinity of the organism, and that self which is not objectively conscious in the emotional world is occupied with the problems that for some reason have caught its attention, or it remains in a dream state, unaware of what is happening in the emotional world. The self leaves the organism because the latter must have a badly needed rest and the energies of the etheric envelope must have the opportunity to recharge, without being disturbed, the energy supply in the etheric envelopes of the organic cells.
2It has been asserted that during sleep, the emotional envelope moves freely in the emotional world and has various experiences there. As a rule, however, it remains beside the organism, absorbed in the same meaningless emotionalism as in the waking state. Exceptionally it happens that man is “awakened” to objective consciousness in the emotional world by someone who takes the trouble to rouse the creature. Such things are, however, meaningless, since without esoteric knowledge he is in no position to understand where he is.
3The emotional envelope can leave the organism in three ways: through the solar plexus centre, the heart centre, or the crown centre. Most people use the lowest exit, the cultural people the heart centre, and the causal selves the crown centre.
1The mental envelope, the vibratory product of the triad mental molecule, consists of the four kinds of mental molecules (47:4-7) and thus has four kinds of mental consciousness and energy. The percentages of these molecular kinds change with each stage of development. At the lowest stage (the stage of barbarism), the envelope consists exclusive of 47:7, and at the highest mental stage (the stage of humanity), about 90 per cent of 47:4. It is impossible to give the exact percentages relative to the different stages, since much depends on the departments of all the envelopes (especially the causal type), the percentages of molecular kinds in the other envelopes, and the path of development the individual has walked through his incarnations. In all such matters, individual character makes itself felt, and that is why any kind of schematic judgement easily is totally abortive. No general rule must be indiscriminately applied, since everything is individual. Dogmatism is always reprehensible. Very generally it can be said that 47:7 corresponds to the faculty of inference thinking, 47:6 to principle thinking, 47:5 to perspective thinking, and 47:4 to system thinking.
2Regrettably, at the present stage of mankind’s development, a very small percentage of the mental molecules of the mental envelope is of the higher three molecular kinds (47:4-6), so that most people have but little use for their mental envelopes, which are a small source of joy to them. On the other hand, the mental envelope is of great significance as a mentalizing factor in the emotional molecular kids, for without mental consciousness there would be neither feeling nor imagination. At lower stages, where the lowest mental consciousness (47:7) and the lower kinds of emotional consciousness prevail, feelings are mostly of a repulsive nature, unless desire (original emotionality) is roused and has an attractive (magnetic) effect.
3When a higher kind of mental consciousness (47:5) is reached, also feelings of a higher kind are obtained, and imagination becomes ever mightier in creating forms.
1The triad envelope is that lesser part of the causal envelope which incarnates, enclosing the monad in the lowest triad. It embraces and penetrates all the other envelopes of incarnation, dissolves and coalesces with the greater causal envelope at the conclusion of the incarnation (the dissolution of the mental envelope), has a new material composition of molecules from the causal envelope at each incarnation, collects the mental atoms released in the lower envelopes and restores them to the causal envelope.
2Just as the other envelopes of incarnation, the triad envelope can belong to a new department in each new incarnation. In contrast, the department of the causal envelope remains constant during a long series of incarnations, until also the causal envelope has “gone into pralaya” and subsequently begins a new series in another department.
3At the stages of barbarism and civilization, the triad envelope contains (beside the monad in the lowest triad) the lowest kind of causal molecules (47:3). At the stages of culture and humanity these are little by little changed for molecules of the next higher kind, 47:2. The relative percentages of the two kinds are due to the level of development attained.
4It is true that the triad envelope is a causal envelope (of the lowest kind, 47:3), but in other respects it is only a protective envelope for the monad in the triad. The triad consciousness is the synthesis of the consciousness of the envelopes of incarnation. And it is quite impossible for the self to contact the causal consciousness before it has activated, at the stage of the mystic, emotional consciousness in 48:3, thus acquired the power of emotional attraction. So doing the self begins to acquire a balance between the physical, emotional, and mental consciousnesses so that none of them dominates. After the stage of the saint has been covered, the self at the stage of humanity is able to acquire mental sovereignty without doing harm to itself. Before then, the self would become the victim of its own egoistic recklessness.
5It is in the physical world, in the physical envelope, that the self awakens to life again after its unconsciousness in the greater causal envelope upon the conclusion of the incarnation and the dissolution of the envelopes. The self can be conscious only in the envelopes and the molecular kinds which it can activate itself. It is through self-activity that it acquires consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds and ever higher envelopes (all according to the laws of self-realization and activation).
6The triad envelope contains, in addition to the lowest triad, 47:3 molecules from the causal envelope as well as mental, emotional, and physical atoms attached to the different triad units. These atoms (Sanskrit: skandhas) carry the tendencies which the self has acquired during its previous incarnations.
7Thanks to the triad the monad is able to simultaneously conceive and even synthesize the consciousness of its physical, emotional, and mental envelopes.
8The monad in the triad can at will move to any one of the three units of the triad, according as its attention is directed to phenomena in the different envelopes. It would perhaps be more correct to say that it is not a movement in space, but the monad, from that centre in the triad which corresponds to its level of development, directs its attention in various directions by shifting its focus, just as when the eye adapts to vision at various distances.
9The fact that the monad uses the three units of the triad as its instruments for the reception of vibrations in the worlds of those units does not mean that the monad has acquired selfconsciousness in the whole of the atoms. In the emotional world, it is self-conscious and selfactive in the four lowest spirals of its emotional atom, if it has succeeded in activating the four lowest molecular kinds of emotional matter in its envelopes.
10The normal individual is subjectively conscious in the seven spirals of its physical atom and objectively conscious in the lowest three. He is subjectively conscious in the four lower spirals of his emotional atom and in the lowest spiral of his mental molecule, in exceptional cases the next lowest spiral as well. Thus he lacks objective consciousness in 49:4 and higher kinds of matter.
11At the stage of civilization, the monad is able to perceive and also to produce vibrations in all the molecular kinds of the etheric envelope (49:2-4), in the four lower ones of the emotional envelope (48:4-7), and in the two lowest molecular kinds of the mental envelope (47:6,7).
12At the stage of culture (the stage of the mystic), the monad acquires consciousness in all the six matters of the emotional envelope and at the stage of humanity, in the four matters of the mental envelope.
13At the same time, the monad has acquired consciousness in the lowest molecular kinds of its triad envelope (47:3) and is able to prepare for its transition to the mental atom of the second triad, in doing which the monad becomes a causal self, whereupon the triad envelope becomes superfluous.
14When the monad in the triad envelope has acquired full sovereignty in the mental, emotional, and etheric envelopes as well as full subjective consciousness in the causal matter of its envelope, the monad is able to take over the management of the whole causal envelope itself, and so at future incarnations no more division of that envelope will take place.
15The monad in the triad envelope always is particularly interested in the content of some one of its envelopes of incarnation, has its energies directed to the physical, emotional, or mental. There is no harm in considering where your main interest is, thus making a small contribution to your own self-knowledge.
1The causal envelope is man’s permanent envelope in the human kingdom, and it accompanies him from the time when he passed from the animal kingdom until he passes into the fifth kingdom.
2The causal envelope, which the individual acquires at his transition from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom and which precludes reincarnation in organisms belonging to the animal kingdom, consists of the three higher mental molecular kinds (47:1-3).
3The greater causal envelope in the causal world consists of mental atoms (47:1) and the two higher mental molecular kinds (47:2,3). At causalization, the content is made up of ninety-nine per cent 47:3-molecules, but these are replaced by 47:2-molecules and 47-atoms in the course of development.
4The causal envelope, which at the beginning is just a film devoid of content, is supplied with ever greater quantities of causal matter at each incarnation and in ever greater proportion at each higher level. The causal envelope of the causal self can expand to a size of several metres as measured from the centre to the periphery.
5The causal envelope contains, in addition to causal secondary involutionary matter, also tertiary such matter, the molecules of which correspond to what in the esoteric literature are called skandhas, representing qualities and abilities acquired. They belong to different departments. Part of that matter belonging to a certain department enters into the incarnating triad envelope, determining its department.
6From the causal envelope issue those impulses which keep the lower envelopes alive.
7The causal envelope has two connections with the organism, the one with the heart (Sanskrit: the sutratma), the other with the brain (the antahkarana). The heart connection keeps the organism alive. If the connection with the brain ceases, the man is mindless. Muhammad’s saying, “The soul of the fool is with Allah”, indicated an understanding of life.
1The three kinds of matter of the causal envelope (47:1-3) have their correspondences in three central chakras forming a lotus-like organ. They make up the centres connecting the first and second triads until the individual himself is able to active the connection and make is passable for the monad. The lowest chakra (47:3, with an especial consideration of the matter aspect) links the first triad mental molecule (47:4) with the second triad mental atom (47:1). The second centre (47:2, the consciousness aspect) links the emotional atom (48:1) with the essential atom (46:1). The third centre (47:1, the motion aspect) links the physical atom (49:1) with the superessential molecule (45:4). These three central chakras have been given particular, informative names: 47:3 is called the intelligence centre, 47:2 the unity centre, and 47:1 the will centre.
2The first centre, the intelligence centre, makes causal-mental consciousness possible.
3The second centre, the unity centre, when vitalized conveys essential consciousness to the emotional envelope.
4The third centre, the will centre, once vitalized brings about dominance over the first triad wholly according to the intentions of the second triad.
5These connections are necessary until the individual has established a direct connection between the first and second triads. When this has been done (at essentialization, the acquisition of a fully developed essential envelope), the causal envelope can be dissolved and the individual has these two triads at his disposal. This means that, being a 45-self, he can by himself, with the greatest ease, form and dissolve the aggregate envelopes of the first triad, including such an envelope of the lowest physical molecular kinds (49:5-7).
6The envelopes which the 45-self forms in the lowest worlds using the three units of the lowest triad of course are of quite another quality than the envelopes formed by man. They are atomic envelopes, not molecular envelopes in the ordinary sense, and their consciousness is in full agreement with that of the 45-self.
1It is in the lowest triad that the individual develops in the four lowest natural kingdoms.
2It is the causal envelope that makes the individual a human being. The individual remains within the fourth natural kingdom until the self–the monad, via the causal envelope, has established a connection between the first and second triads and has itself activated the connection (Sanskrit: the antahkarana) between the two triads and moved from the first to the second triad and, being in the latter, has formed an essential envelope.
3Thereby the causal envelope, having been his “habitation” during his sojourn in the human kingdom, is superfluous and is therefore dissolved. In connection with this the individual enters into the fifth natural kingdom.
4The transition to the fifth kingdom is made possible through the causal envelope, man’s particular envelope. It is by acquiring consciousness in this envelope that man becomes a causal self and so doing achieves an unlosable contact with the planetary hierarchy. What remains for the transition to the fifth kingdom is the acquisition of the second triad collective consciousness, the essential consciousness of community.
5Psychologically, the individual does this by ceasing to considering himself a first self and trying to live as a second self, ceasing to take an interest in the envelopes of the first self and striving to live in his causal envelope. This is what is called “forgetting oneself” (the interests of the first triad).
6In his first triad, the individual is and remains an egoist, for this is a necessary condition of acquiring many qualities that otherwise would never be acquired. Those qualities are necessary in lower kingdoms. They form obstacles to entering into unity, however, when the individual has mastered mental consciousness and has reached the pertaining insights into life and realized that the application of the law of unity is a condition of further consciousness development.
7The causal envelope is a gift, a loan. The animal monad receives it as a gift from the deva evolution and keeps it until the human monad as an essential self can construct such an envelope itself. The different natural kingdoms have to help each other in a variety of ways. All the way through it is a reciprocal give-and-take. He who will not give cannot receive either. The egoist, who wants to keep all for himself, deceives himself and hampers his own development. Of course, also giving presupposes discrimination so that it will benefit those whom you want to help, for meaningless giving can harm. Giving is an art that still only few people have learnt.
8The causal envelope can be regarded as an instrument for the self. Thanks to the 47:3 centre you can objectively study the matter aspect in the worlds of man. By means of the 47:2 centre you can experience the unity of all life. And in the 47:1 centre you receive the energy that makes realization possible, the emancipation from the dependence on the first self and thereby from everything in the worlds of man. Using that way of looking at things you will have a sober, objective view of them, a view that liberates you from that mystic imaginative expansion into infinitude cherished by ignorance. This will also counteract those depressive states that so often follow upon such an expansion. You will know, and thereby you will stand on the firm ground of reality. You will also know that it is up to you to acquire the pertaining powers.
9Man as a human being is a causal being. He incarnates from the causal world and he returns to it upon the conclusion of his incarnation. Since his consciousness development it not further advanced than that the visible physical world is the only one he is able to objectively live in, be objectively conscious of, he believes that physical life is the only life there is. During the interludes between incarnations he lives a subjective life in his emotional illusions and his mental fictions that he has acquired in the physical world. To those who have acquired objective consciousness in their causal envelopes the life of life-ignorant man is a meaningless life: being a short while in the physical world with its countless possibilities of sorrows and sufferings and after that a life of unreality in the “world of imagination”. To effect any change in this it is necessary that man develops his consciousness in subjective as well as objective respect until he acquires causal consciousness and then, and only then, is able to orient himself in reality. Before then he will be the helpless victim of his imaginings which he will take for realities apart from his toilsome, dangerous life, which he has come to learn as real enough but which he (if he is wise) does not deem worth living. However, it is only in the physical world that we are able to acquire our real reason (the causal consciousness) and that is also the meaning of life where man is concerned. He has a mission, and that is to become an independent, self-oriented self in his different worlds, and he can become such a one only as the causal being he is. Only then will he not need to incarnate any more if he does not want to.
1The causal envelope is an envelope of isolation, which makes conscious participation in collective consciousness impossible, isolates the individual from the community, from unity. All monads live in the ocean consciousness, but the human kingdom is the only kingdom in which the monads lack the possibility of consciously participating in this. This fact explains why mankind is disoriented in respect of reality and life. That is why man is “saved” only when he is able to scatter that envelope and enter into the essential envelope with its consciousness of community.
2It is in the isolation of the causal consciousness that the individual must find himself, acquire self-reliance and self-determination in order in the essential kingdom to preserve his self-identity, to trust to his own judgement, to know that he can explore reality himself, discover the laws of life and apply them right. Without those necessary qualities, self-identity would always efface its individual character, become dependent on others and thereby unfit for independent application of the Law. Men always feel isolated. But this isolation is an illusion. The individual belongs to an esoteric family and clan, although he remains unaware of these until he has acquired essential consciousness and recognizes the ones with whom he has been bound up thousands of times in various ways during his wandering through the human kingdom and with whom he will collaborate in the fifth and sixth natural kingdoms.
3Of course it is particularly difficult for the genius (as a rule also in great need of understanding) to be forced always to stand alone, often against a “whole world”. It is doubly tragic if the genius succumbs to that diabolic power which compact stupidity and malevolence apparently can wield.
1In older occult literature, the triad envelope was called the “personality” and the causal envelope, the “ego”.
2In ancient Greek esoterics the two causal envelopes were called the “twin souls”. The tales made up about them have of course been wrongly interpreted and have also had a confusing effect with deplorable consequences. There are no twin souls. The individuals in the human kingdoms can possibly be divided into esoteric clans due to the fact that they causalized together. In the tale of the twins the triad envelope was called Castor and the causal envelope, Pollux.
3The old legend of the “Dweller on the Threshold”, which Bulwer-Lytton wrongly used in his novel Zanoni, has reference to the “rainbow bridge” between the first triad mental molecule (47:4) and the second triad mental atom (47:1). Before it is constructed, the “lotus chakra” in the causal envelope serves as a connecting link. The dweller on the threshold chiefly represents the self in the first triad mental molecule (47:4), the self that in its selfglory blocks the way for itself to the higher causal envelope.
4In theosophical literature you can read about the “radiant Augoeides of the Masters” (45- selves). The esoterician learns to differentiate the causal envelope with its more or less passive consciousness, the causal self who is the self-the monad centred in the greater causal envelope, and the deva, Augoeides, who deputizes as a causal self until the human individual himself has become a causal self. The causal envelope of a 45-self is no longer Augoeides. The latter has long ago been set free for other tasks. To call the very causal envelope Augoeides results in a confusion of concepts.
5The relation between the self in the triad envelope and Augoeides in the causal envelope has even been dramatized. The individual in incarnation, the conceited ignorant fool who knows everything best, is in constant conflict with Augoeides until he has acquired causal consciousness in his triad envelope.
1Form (where matter is concerned) is matter’s mode of existence. Even the atom is a material form. There are no formless worlds. Even a material world is a form. “Formless” can only be understood in the sense that the forms existing do not correspond to human experience of form.
2Scientists assert that all heat comes from the sun. However, three fifths of physical heat are generated by physical etheric energies. Only two fifths come from the sun. It should be added that the radiation from the sun contains much more than light and heat.
3The sun, converting atomic kinds into molecular kinds, radiates all the 42 different molecular matters. It depends on the receptivity of the individuals’ envelopes to what extent they function as perceptible energies. Most people perceive them only in their organisms. It was the knowledge of this fact that was the original reason why the sun was regarded as a deity and was made the object of adoration, a method the initiates used to make the minds of men receptive, if possible, to energies of higher kinds That this resulted in superstition was due to the fact that human conceit as always believes that its most idiotic brainwaves are correct. It believes itself able to rightly conceive and rightly judge everything. Mankind should be able to learn that much from history.
1It is only through esoterics that mankind has received a knowledge of reality and life in superphysical worlds. Everything that was said before 1875 about those worlds and life in them is mere imagination. At long last we have been given to know what life after “death” looks like. Man leaves his organism with its etheric envelope and lives on in the emotional world in his emotional envelope. In that world he learns nothing new but tries as best he can to kill time until his emotional envelope dissolves and his monad consciousness moves to the mental envelope where it remains until this envelope too dissolves, the triad envelope merges into and coalesces with the greater causal envelope and he falls into dreamless sleep, which lasts until time is up for a new incarnation. Thus physical life is the only life of importance. It is in the physical world that man activates his higher kinds of consciousness, acquires a knowledge of reality and life, all the requisite qualities and abilities. Life between incarnations is a period of rest pending the dissolution of the emotional and mental envelopes and the conclusion of the incarnation.
2The emotional world is, like all other worlds, a material world with involvatory matter, involutionary matter, and also evolutionary matter (triads of evolutionary beings). Material forms in the three highest regions of that world (48:2-4) are (apart from the forms, in 48:5-7, that arise as they embrace the material forms of the physical world) products of the consciousness expressions of emotional evolutionary beings. It might be cited as an example that a certain disciple who lacked the power of visualization was given the task, in order train that faculty, of creating an enclosed garden with flowers, ponds, etc., and did this so perfectly that this garden still remains and other disciples, who have passed to the emotional world, have found a meeting-place in that creation.
3The people who are disoriented in the emotional world are not in a position to judge the pertaining phenomena. Only esotericians are able to do so. Those who are found in the emotional world are helpless victims to the illusions ruling in that world. This cannot be too strongly emphasized. Emotional consciousness and emotional clairvoyance are quite unable to come in contact with “reality”. Their life is a subjective imaginative life determined by the ideas they collected while in the physical world.
4In the emotional world man lives a life of even more intensive imagination than in the physical world, and is convinced of the correctness of all the illusions and fictions that he accepted in the physical. The communications received through mediums or clairvoyants are totally worthless in respect of reality and life and are as much figments of imagination as the speculations of theologians and philosophers. Clairvoyants of all kinds, who lead mankind astray by their “revelations”, do not realize that they are victims of this inescapable illusoriness. They believe in what they see. Only esoteric knowledge can help them. They must learn to have nothing more to do with what they see, quite simply refuse to see emotionally.
5A medium possesses the faculty of lending his organism with its etheric envelope to unknown individuals in the emotional world (an activity the planetary hierarchy definitely advises against, since the so-called controller of the medium, who is supposed to watch that no unsuitable individual – who perhaps would like to take over the organism definitively – gains entrance, as a rule lacks esoteric knowledge and therefore a fully mature judgement). The medium knows nothing of what is happening to his organism in the physical world and what is happening around him, which also must be deemed highly unsuitable.
6The planetary hierarchy does not allow its disciples to practise mediumship or to try to acquire clairvoyance. The motive for doing so is clear: the individual must himself be conscious of what is happening in or to his envelopes; the individual must not engage in things that he is unable to understand, judge, control. He is responsible also in that respect.
7There is no night either in the emotional world or in higher worlds. Emotional matter is not impenetrable to light as is solid physical matter (49:7) or compact water at great ocean depths (49:6). From the sun pour out not only physical light but all the seven kinds of light there are in the seven atomic worlds of the solar system that issue from atomic matter (43–49). Each higher kind has a higher potency. “Atomic matter is light” just as “atomic energy is sound” (the source of light and sound).
8Many readers have wondered why one does not see any stars in the emotional world. This is due to the fact that emotional matter with its “astral light” renders such a discovery impossible. What one sees is not emotional involvatory matter, but involutionary matter, and research is precluded in that matter. It is in a state of constant remoulding according to the wishful thinking of individuals, so that you understand the symbolic expression the planetary hierarchy uses for emotional matter, “mist formation”. (The symbol is understood when you know that, in the writings of the ancients, emotional matter was compared to “water” and mental consciousness, to “fire”. When fire acts upon water, vapour or “mist” is obtained.)
9Only when mankind, in a distant future, has liberated itself from dependence on emotional consciousness and thereby the constant reshaping of that matter has ceased, will it be possible to objectively study its true nature. Causal selves, liberated from dependence on emotional matter, are the first ones to be able to objectively explore the pertaining kinds of matter, its involvatory as well as involutionary matter and their material compositions.
1The mental envelope is a material form in the mental world and has consciousness corresponding to that world. Only a small portion of the vibrations it receives reaches down into the brain and the waking consciousness. What the individual can experience in that world, after he has acquired mental objective self-consciousness and learnt to see through the fictitiousness of the mental forms of ignorance, is of enormous importance. Because here in the mental world there are relatively permanent thought-forms left by disciples of the planetary hierarchy who have learnt to think in agreement with reality. These “divine forms” radiate energy influencing those who have constructed them to the effect that an interaction is obtained benefiting both parties and permanenting the idea form. Anyone who has assimilated the knowledge and learnt to think right comes in contact with these forms himself and receives inspiration from them as he meditates on the pertaining domain of ideas.
2The mental world (47:4-7) is one thing for those at the emotional stage, another thing for those at the mental stage, and quite another thing for those in ever higher kingdoms.
3Those at the emotional stage are able to pick up ideas that are far beyond their possibility of true understanding (which always requires the corresponding objective consciousness), which is a fact they cannot see.
1In the causal world, the world of Platonic ideas, exist all ideas, exists everything that mankind has thought. The causal self has access to those ideas. They present themselves whenever they are demanded. A causal self is able to quote from any work whatever without previously even knowing of the existence of that work. When a causal self is writing, all the thoughts belonging to a certain idea present themselves if they are demanded at all. He just has to choose which quotations he deems to be the most suitable. A typical example of this is Blavatsky who had never seen even one of the books from which she took her many quotations.
The above text constitutes the essay The Matter Aspect by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life Two by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 2002 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.