The Knowledge of Reality by Henry T. Laurency
1. THE PROBLEMS OF REALITY, PART ONE
1. THE PROBLEMS OF REALITY, PART ONE
1An eminent modern scientist answered the question whether mankind has as yet succeeded in exploring one per cent of reality: “No, not even one ten thousandth of one per cent”.
2That is, not even one millionth! One certainly has respect for such a scientist. Nobody makes a greater impression than he who realizes man’s immense ignorance about life. For it is obvious to anyone who has assimilated what theology, philosophy, and science have to tell us about reality that the conclusions drawn are mere hypotheses (a euphemism for guesswork and supposition!). Or, as Professor Whittaker has put it: “We know that there is something we call matter, but not what it is; we know that it moves, but not why it does so, and that is the sum of all our knowledge.” That is true. Science cannot answer the questions of What? and Why?, which already Newton realized. To rid themselves of the evidence of this too embarrassing ignorance, modern philosophers try to discard all reality concepts, calling just them fictions!
3There are plenty of authorities in theology, philosophy, and science, who will pass judgements on everything and make dogmatic assertions about matters which they have not even examined. They know a priori that “this” cannot be true, because it conflicts with what they read in their paper pope or “conflicts with the laws of nature”; as if their paper pope had solved the problem of existence for them, amounted to a world-view that explains reality and solves the basic problems of knowledge! As if science could decide what “conflicts with the laws of nature” and what does not, when it has not explored even one per cent of them!
4It is important that we should not restrict ourselves to what has been investigated, that we should not reject any one idea just because to us it seems alien, improbable, or unprofitable. It is important to investigate any new possibility of knowledge. We know too little to be able to afford to neglect the least chance of expanding our knowledge. Most new ideas at first sight appear improbable to most people. Those who consider themselves able to judge accept only what fits in with their own thought system. But they ought to realize that if that system is so correct, they should be all but omniscient.
5The scientists seem ever oblivious to the fact that their hypotheses and theories are just temporary. They flatter themselves that they are free from dogmatism, that their thinking is free and straight. But the history of science has always borne witness to the opposite. It still is all too frequently seen that scientific authorities reject what is seemingly improbable, strange, and unknown (as every revolutionary idea has been) without examining it. The scientists call what they cannot explain delusion, the religious call it god.
6There is something seemingly incorrigibly, ineradicably idiotic in this: in refusing to examine.
7The true seeker, who has recognized mankind’s total disorientation and intellectual helplessness as to the problems of existence, examines everything, not caring whether the ruling authorities have dismissed it categorically or parroting public opinion ridicules and disdains, as it does everything that it does not know or cannot comprehend.
8To try to explain to the uninitiated something of which they are totally unaware, would seem a hopeless task, especially when it is something that to them appears strange, improbable, and unreal.
9Mankind has for so long been fed with so many religious, philosophic, scientific, and, in the last decades, also occult attempts to explain existence that most people refuse to study the true knowledge when it is offered. They are content to explore only the world that is visible to them. General doubt whether there is any other reality is gaining ground more and more.
10But suppose there is a knowledge of existence that to the learned will seem the height of madness. Suppose Kant, the philosopher, was mistaken in claiming that we shall never come to know anything about the inner reality of nature. Suppose the Indian rishis, the Egyptian hierophants, the gnostic theurgists, the original, true Rosicrucians were not such mystagogues, charlatans, and deceivers as the learned have tried to make them.
11Characteristic of the learned world today is its contempt for everything we have inherited from our fathers, as if all mankind’s experiences hitherto were nonsensical and useless in life.
12Scientific research has come far within its own limited domains, but only the elite among the scientists are beginning to realize how little mankind knows about the whole.
13What do the paleontologists know about the antiquity of man? Do they know that there have been fully developed men on our planet for 21 million years?
14What do the geologists know about the two hemispherical continents, Lemuria and Atlantis, now lying on the bottom of the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean; and what do the antiquarians know about their civilizations?
15What do the archaeologists know about cultures nearer to us in time than those mentioned: the Indian culture of some 50.000 years ago, the Egyptian of 40.000 years ago, the Peruvian of 15.000 years ago, or even that of ancient Greece of 12.000 years ago?
16What do the learned know about the different secret knowledge orders that have existed in many countries? What do they know about the order instituted by Vyasa in India some 45.000 years ago, or that by Hermes Trismegistos in Egypt some 40.000 years ago, the one by the first Zoroaster in Persia about 30.000 years ago, or that by Pythagoras just about 2700 years ago?
17What do the learned know about existence, about the structure of the universe, about other kinds of matter and other worlds than the physical, about the fact of a fifth kingdom in nature?
18What do these immensely learned know even about the individual’s life that continues after he has left his worn-out organism?
19What they may perhaps have picked up of the pertaining knowledge is so distorted that it must be regarded as little more than gross superstition.
20To the Western attitude, the idea that knowledge must be kept secret is almost revolting, in any case repulsive, and it prompts the assumption that one is dealing with the “intellectual quackery of charlatans”.
21The Indians, on the other hand, simply accept secrecy as a necessity. Several thousand years of experience have taught them that one must not “cast pearls”, and they do not.
22And this for the simple reasons that exact comprehension calls for considerable qualifications, and that all knowledge which confers power is abused by those in a position to use power for their own good.
23There are many kinds of yogis in India. The highest kind is unknown except to special initiates. The yogis of whom Westerners hear are mostly members of the Ramakrishna Mission. They teach the philosophy of Sankhya and Vedanta as expounded by Ramakrishna. The highest yogis are initiates who pass on their knowledge only to a few select disciples under the strictest vows of secrecy. They regard all Westerners as barbarians and consider it a profanation of their knowledge to reveal anything of it to those ignorant, incurably skeptical, scornfully and arrogantly superior, curious people, who abuse the knowledge the moment they think they have understood it and who, moreover, place all their knowledge at the service of barbarism and at the disposal of bandits.
24The Indian’s attitude to life is the exact opposite of the Westerner’s. Whereas to the Westerner the physical world is the only one that exists, to the Indian the superphysical reality is the essential one. It is the higher material worlds that constitute the material basis of physical matter and the causes of the processes of nature exist in those higher worlds.
25The real yogi, who has succeeded in his experiments, has developed organs which in others are as yet undeveloped, being intended to be organized and vitalized in some future epoch, organs which make it possible to explore higher molecular kinds, a whole series of ever higher stages of aggregation far beyond the possibilities of nuclear physics to ascertain.
26Of these rudiments Westerners have no conception and their mighty authorities dismiss with derision and contempt the mere idea that such things could be possible. They have, to be sure, the wonderful ability to judge things of which they know nothing.
27The Indian explanation of reality is itself superior to that of the West. It is a doctrine of development, of the pre-existence of the soul, of rebirth, and of karma, that is, the law of sowing and reaping. It asserts that there are other worlds than the physical and undertakes to prove this to serious and honest inquirers who are prepared to undergo its methods of developing the rudiments of higher kinds of objective consciousness existing in man. It thereby refutes the agnostic’s and the skeptic’s denial of superphysical knowledge, of existence being ruled laws, of development, etc., thereby clearing the way for esoterics.
28How, then, could Westerners have any knowledge of superphysical worlds when they do not have the ability to ascertain their existence? They ascertain facts in physical matter by applying physical sense (objective physical consciousness). In order to ascertain facts in higher worlds a corresponding kind of sense is necessary, and it is that which has been given the unfortunate name of clairvoyance.
29Scientists cannot be blamed for lacking emotional or mental sense. But one is justified in demanding that they should not categorically deny the existence of things concerning which they have no logical right to express opinions.
30Philosophy does not teach man to think in accordance with reality. It does teach, however, that man only makes mistakes when trying to think without the necessary facts. The philosophers have not yet grasped this. Besides, they have failed to solve the most evident of all the problems of knowledge.
31The judgement of Western psychology is preferably left to the understanding reader of all the following.
32Those who are satisfied with their thought systems (not least the skeptics) may very well have them. We are all to re-learn in lives to come. But there is a category of inquirers who instinctively realize that there must be something different, something more, that things cannot be just as the learned say they are. It is these seekers that the esoterician wishes to reach, not in order to persuade them, but to ask them to examine the matter logically. If it is false, then it must be possible to refute it logically. But it is not refuted by the ordinary rant of those who have never examined the matter.
33At mankind’s present stage of development, the esoteric knowledge cannot be more than a working hypothesis where most people are concerned. But the further mankind develops, the more obvious its incomparable superiority will become.
34System is thought’s way of orienting itself. Facts are largely useless until reason can fit them into their correct contexts (historical, logical, psychological, or causal ones). All rational thinking is based on principles and systems. Every thinking man has made his own system, whether he knows it or not. Systems afford a correct apprehension of ground and consequence of thinking, as well as of cause and effect of objective realities. The quality of the system shows the individual’s level of development, his ability of judgement, and his knowledge of facts. Most people’s systems are the belief systems of emotional thinking which no facts can upset. Thereby the individual has reached his point of maturity, the limit of his receptivity, being captive in the prison of his own thoughts.
35Ignorance about existence is so great that the dogmatic systems of theology, the speculative systems of philosophy, and the primitive hypothesis systems of science have all been accepted as satisfactory explanations.
36The inquirers into truth examine the original facts or basic hypotheses of the existing systems, to what extent any system does not contradict itself, its consequences, and its ability to explain rationally.
37Many people find esoterics self-evident the moment they first come into contact with it. This is because knowledge, as Platon maintained, is remembrance anew. Everything which we are able immediately to grasp, comprehend, understand, we have assimilated in previous incarnations. Also qualities and abilities once acquired remain latently, until they are given opportunities to develop in some new incarnation. Understanding of the old remains as well as the turn for skills. One of many examples of this is the genius, an otherwise incomprehensible phenomenon.
38The esoterician presents his system to those who have remained seekers, not being satisfied with the ruling systems. He quietly awaits the day when science will have ascertained so many formerly esoteric facts that it will no longer be possible for it to refuse to accept esoterics as the only really tenable working hypothesis.
39One inestimable value, among others, of the esoteric knowledge is that it frees from the superstitions and spurious knowledge of ignorance, from illusions and fictions (conceptions without correspondences in reality). Another is that it entails a complete revaluation of all the values of life as a necessary consequence of knowing the meaning and goal of life.
1If man is not to be like a reed in the wind, like a ship on the boundless sea, or feel as though he were walking on a bottomless quagmire, he will need at the emotional stage something firm for his feeling, and at the mental stage something firm for his thinking. Up to now, this “something” has not been in accordance with reality.
2As mankind cannot unaided acquire knowledge of existence, of its meaning and goal, or knowledge of cosmic reality and life, it has always had this knowledge given to it – by whom will be shown later.
3This has entailed definite risks. The knowledge that gives power, the knowledge of laws and forces of nature and how to make use of them, has always been abused for selfish ends. And those who have not been able to comprehend the knowledge of reality have always distorted it into superstition and false doctrines.
4Along with knowledge goes responsibility for the right use of knowledge. Abuse of knowledge leads to the loss of knowledge and where whole nations are concerned, to their annihilation.
5On two occasions whole continents have had to be submerged into the depths of the sea: Lemuria and Atlantis.
6After those two failures it was decided that the knowledge should be imparted in secret schools of knowledge only, and only to those who had reached such a stage of development that they could understand correctly and not misinterpret what they were taught, but apply it correctly in the service of life. They were taught to think correctly. For the last 45.000 years esoteric knowledge orders have been instituted among nations that have reached a sufficiently high level. Since knowledge is remembrance anew, those who have never been initiated cannot see the correctness of esoterics.
7The knowledge orders comprised several degrees. Those in the lowest degree were given carefully elaborated symbols which could be interpreted in a new way in each higher degree, so that only those who reached the highest degree were fully able to understand the whole of it. The procedure involved difficulties in that those who did not reach the highest degree sometimes made their own faulty thought systems.
8For those not admitted to these orders, religions were instituted corresponding to different nations’ ability to understand and their need of norms of purposeful activity.
9The rapid rise in general enlightenment and the advances of science made other measures necessary. Ever since the 18th century the conflict between “belief and knowledge” (between which those are unable to distinguish who believe they know, comprehend, understand), has grown more and more accentuated. (All are believers who lack the exact knowledge of reality, also those who say they do not believe in anything.) This conflict began with the anti-religious, anti-metaphysical philosophy of enlightenment and grew throughout the 19th century with the progress of scientific research. Laplace with his Systeme du monde, Lamarck, Darwin, Spencer, and Haeckel with the theory of evolution. Lange his History of Materialism, and others, convinced natural scientists that “they did not need the hypothesis of a spiritual world”. Their attacks on the old life-views led to a growing uncivilizing disorientation, so that people finally “felt increasingly uncertain about right and wrong. They are even uncertain whether right and wrong is anything but old superstition.” There is a danger that mankind in its madness will exterminate itself.
10It became necessary to take steps to counter this frenzy, and it was decided to allow the safe part of the esoteric knowledge, which mankind now has the ability to comprehend, if not to understand its significance, to be made exoteric. Mankind thus had the possibility of forming a rational conception of reality and life, as well as of the meaning and goal of existence.
11Belief was not permitted in the esoteric orders. In these, the question was always that of comprehending and understanding, not believing. In the lowest degree they were taught to distinguish between belief and assumption. Belief is absolute, unreasonable emotional conviction, unamenable to correction or reason. Everybody has his petty beliefs about almost any absurdity, and this is because man is unable to truly know anything but definitively established facts in the visible world. In contrast, assumption is preliminary, valid only until one has come to know, is amenable to rational arguments, and desires correction. Authorities there may well be in all domains of life, but their assumptions do not amount to any final instance for common sense, which, however different for each of us, is still the highest sense and that which everybody ought to strive to develop. It is the individual’s synthetic instinct of life acquired through his incarnations.
12During the last two thousand years there has been an unremitting conflict between different idiologies, a conflict between theology and philosophy, theology and science, philosophy and science.
13In the history of European philosophy it is chiefly the conflict between theology and philosophy that is apparent. In this conflict, theology has almost always had the support of those in political power. Philosophy has had to fight its way step by step, with unspeakable toil and millions of martyrs, to achieve freedom of thought and expression, tolerance and humanity. These gains are instead threatened by the Marxist idiology, which forbids the individual to think in any other way than what those in power decree. This is the new tyranny of thought. That mental development is hampered by this new kind of idiotization even the simplest intellect should be able to see.
14The conflict between theology and science began with Galilei and is still going on.
15The conflict between philosophy and science has been called off, at least for the time being, now that the philosophers finally have become either agnostics who deny the possibility of ascertaining superphysical facts, or antimetaphysicians who deny the existence of superphysical reality.
16Throughout the history of philosophy, which actually begins with the sophists, we can trace the attempts of human reason to solve the problems of existence on its own without esoteric knowledge, with access to physical sense only.
17That this was bound to fail will become manifest in what follows. But it is only now that people in general are beginning to see that it is impossible. Science lacks the organs of apprehension necessary to this, and the scientist refuses to concern himself with things that cannot be investigated by the instruments of natural research. Logically, this is perfectly defensible.
18It should be pointed out that the Indian yoga philosophy is not consistent with the facts of esoteric knowledge, but is based on misinterpretations of some of these. Rebirth has been turned into a meaningless metempsychosis, so that it is considered possible for men to be reborn as animals, whereas reversion to an inferior natural kingdom is in fact precluded. Evolution through the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms is considered to end with men’s entrance into and extinction in nirvana, whereas nirvana is not really the end but the beginning. The Indian interpretation of manas, buddhi, nirvana, atma, karma, is misleading, as is also the absolute subjectivism of Advaita, which makes knowledge of the matter and motion aspects of existence impossible.
1When people get hold of a new word, sooner or later it loses its original significance. People always believe they know which concept the word belongs to. It can be predicted that the term “esoteric” as an ingredient of the vocabulary of the masses will be synonymous with practically anything.
2Regrettably, there is also a risk of esoterics falling into disrepute because of the growing popularity of quasi-occultism. More and more writers of the incompetent sort, with an eye to the main chance, have hastened to produce all sorts of balderdash, for there is a rapid sale for this as for all other cheap literature. Their sense of reality being ruined by all fictionalism, people prefer fiction to reality.
3There are also clairvoyants a la Swedenborg who will tell what they have seen in the “inner world”. They ought to consider the esoteric axiom that “no self-tutored seer ever saw correctly”, since though the next world may be seemingly like ours, it is actually totally unlike. Unless one has esoteric knowledge of the pertaining matters, one will misinterpret practically everything.
4There are five proofs, for those who need them, of the correctness of hylozoics (its agreement with reality), each one of them by itself wholly sufficient, being of matchless logical tenability. These five are:
- the logical proof,
- the proof by explanation,
- the proof by prediction,
- the proof by clairvoyance,
- the experimental proof.
5The logical proof consists in showing that hylozoics constitutes a non-contradictory and irrefutable thought system and, as such, cannot be constructed by the human intellect nor without knowledge of reality. It can never come in conflict with facts definitively ascertained by science. All new facts will find their place in it. The more research advances, the more obvious will it be that hylozoics is the only tenable working hypothesis. At mankind’s present stage of development it cannot be anything else for most people.
6The proof by explanation: Hylozoics provides the simplest, most unitary, most general, noncontradictory and irrefutable explanation of thousands of facts otherwise completely inexplicable.
7The proof by prediction: Already a number of verifiable predictions (sufficient in number to fill a volume) of discoveries, inventions, and happenings, in themselves unpredictable by man, have been made.
8The proof by clairvoyance: As also Indian raja yogis maintain, anyone who is willing to undergo the requisite training can develop abilities, now dormant in man, which will one day be powers possessed by everybody, that is, the possibility of acquiring objective consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds, or states of aggregation, at present invisible.
9The experimental proof (magic): This proof consists in knowing the pertaining laws of nature and the method of their application and in using physical etheric material energies to bring about changes also in dense physical matter. Magic, however, has been prohibited for a number of reasons. Its use would put a weapon in the hands of mankind’s potential bandits and tempt them into all sorts of crime. Scientists have dubbed the magicians frauds and called all such phenomena impossible, since they “conflict with the laws of nature”. The magicians have been martyrs in other ways too. Those hungry for sensations demand more and more of them. Those in need of help besiege their victims with their pleas. The curious want all their problems solved for them.
1The following is a popular expose, in modern dress and for the first time, of the essentials of the Pythagorean secret doctrine. Pythagoras called the world-view hylozoics (spiritual materialism). All matter has spirit or consciousness. All worlds are spiritual worlds, lower and higher ones.
2The Problems of Reality affords only the most fundamental facts needed in order to understand the meaning and goal of life. Thousands of facts already published are necessarily set aside in order not to burden the presentation. A more detailed account is given in The Philosopher’s Stone by Laurency.
3As regards the theory of knowledge, everything is above all what it appears to be: physical material reality, but beside that always something totally different and immensely more.
4Existence is a trinity of three equivalent aspects: matter, motion, and consciousness. None of these three can exist without the other two. All matter is in motion and has consciousness.
5Matter is composed of primordial atoms, which Pythagoras called monads, the smallest possible parts of primordial matter and the smallest firm points for individual consciousness.
6The original cause of motion is the dynamic energy of primordial matter.
7To begin with, consciousness in the primordial atoms is potential (unconscious), is gradually awakened in the process of manifestation, becoming actualized passive consciousness, and subsequently becomes increasingly more active in ever higher worlds of ever higher natural kingdoms.
8Pythagoras realized that the Greeks had the prerequisites for comprehending objective reality, for scientific method, and for systematic thinking. Cultivating the consciousness aspect, as the Orientals do, before the foundation for understanding material reality has been laid, results in subjectivism and in a life of unbridled imagination. It is to Pythagoras we owe most of our fundamental reality concepts, which today’s conceptual analysts are so busy trying to discard, thereby making conception of reality definitely impossible. Pythagoras, with his doctrine of monads, and Demokritos, with his exoteric atomic theory, can be considered the first two scientists in the Western sense of the word. They realized that the matter aspect is the necessary basis of a scientific approach. Without this basis there will be no accuracy in exploring the nature of things and their relationships. There are no controllable limits to individual consciousness, but it has a tendency to drown in the ocean of consciousness.
9The following will outline further the three aspects of reality, the consciousness development in the different natural kingdoms, and the great Law (the sum total of all the laws of nature and life). Knowledge of the aspects of life is a necessary condition of understanding the evolution of the natural kingdoms.
1Primordial matter, the chaos of the Greeks, is at the same time limitless space.
2In this unmanifested primordial matter, “beyond space and time”, there is an unlimited number of cosmoses at all the different stages of being built out or dismantled.
1A cosmos is a globe in primordial matter. Its original dimensions are small, but, being supplied with primordial atoms from the inexhaustible store of primordial matter, it grows incessantly until it has reached the requisite size. It is thus matter that is space.
2A fully built-out cosmos, such as ours, consists of a continuous series of material worlds of different degrees of density, the higher penetrating all the lower. The highest world thus penetrates everything in the cosmos.
3The worlds are built out from the highest world, each higher world supplying material for the next lower world which is formed in and out of the higher ones.
4There are seven series of seven cosmic material worlds, making 49 in all (1–7, 8–14, 15–21, 22–28, 29–35, 36–42, 43–49), in accordance with the constant division into seven departments. These atomic worlds occupy the same space in the cosmos. All the higher worlds embrace and penetrate the lower worlds.
5There is a very simple explanation for the numbers three and seven which so-called experts brush aside with the usual ridicule. Three is because of the three aspects (trinity!!) of existence and seven because that is the greatest number of different ways in which three can be combined in succession. Also the sneer at “Pythagorean numerology” will be a thing of the past when people come to know more.
6The numeration of the worlds is from the highest world down, showing that they are formed from the highest world down. It is thus easy to see how many higher worlds remain to be attained whichever lower world the individual happens to be in.
7All the 49 worlds differ from each other as to dimension, duration, material composition, motion, and consciousness; due to differences in density of primordial atoms.
8The seven lowest cosmic worlds (43–49) contain billions of solar systems. The lowest world (49) is the physical world.
9Our cosmos is a perfect organization.
1The cosmos consists of primordial atoms (called monads by Pythagoras) which are composed to make 49 kinds of atoms, each in succession coarser than the previous ones, in seven continuous series of seven atomic kinds in each. These atomic kinds make up the 49 cosmic atomic worlds.
2Each lower atomic kind is formed out of the next higher one (2 out of 1, 3 out of 2, 4 out of 3, etc.). The lowest atomic kind (49) thus contains all the 48 higher kinds. When an atomic kind is dissolved, the next higher kind is obtained; out of the physical atom are obtained 49 atoms of atomic kind 48.
3All matter (atomic kinds, molecular kinds, aggregates, worlds, etc.) is formed and dissolved. Only primordial atoms are eternal and indestructible. The process of composition to make lower kinds of matter is called involvation and the corresponding process of dissolution, evolvation. The lower the kind of matter, the more involved are the primordial atoms.
4Atomic matter is by nature dynamic.
1Space, not being space in the absolute sense of the word, is limitless primordial matter.
2In the cosmic sense, space is always a globe. The cosmos is a globe. The solar systems are globes. The planets are globes. The worlds in the planets are globes. The cosmic atomic worlds occupy the same “space” as the physical world, exist everywhere in the cosmic globe. The planetary molecular worlds have different radii starting from the centre of the planet. The higher worlds penetrate the lower ones. “Higher” and “lower” are not to be taken in their spatial sense when referring to atomic worlds; when referring to molecular worlds “outer” and “inner” are more exact.
3The globular form of the molecular worlds is due to the fact that the different kinds of matter group themselves according to their densities concentrically round an original centre of force.
4Each atomic kind has its own dimension. Thus there are 49 dimensions in the cosmos. In the cosmic sense, dimension means kind of space. Physical matter has one dimension (line and area are not counted), the highest kind of matter has forty-nine. With the 49th dimension, the cosmos becomes a point to primordial atomic consciousness.
5Time simply means continuation, continued existence. Time is various ways of measuring motion, various kinds of processes of manifestation. Physical time is determined by the rotation of the earth and its revolution round the sun.
1The globes of the solar systems are replicas of the cosmos in dimensions scaled down enormously with all the limitations that implies, not least in respect of consciousness.
2Millions of solar systems have not yet reached the physical gaseous molecular stage. Millions of others again are in “pralaya” with suns dissolved, pending a new “day of Brahma” when new suns are to be kindled. The suns are transformers that convert atomic matter into molecular matter. What we see is just an external physical gaseous envelope.
3The solar systems have seven worlds composed of the seven lowest atomic matters (43–49). The highest world of the solar systems is formed from the 43rd atomic kind; their lowest world (the physical), from the 49th. These seven worlds have been given different names in the different knowledge orders. Most of those names are old and, due to the misuse by ignorance, diffuse, ambiguous, meaningless, and thus unserviceable. It is high time we adopted an internationally agreed-upon nomenclature and then the mathematical one is of course the only expedient and the most exact one. It will be consistently applied in this book. In order to make comparison easier for those interested, however, the Sanskrit terms used in India and those used by Henry T. Laurency in The Philosophers’ Stone will be given.
4The seven systemic worlds are called in Sanskrit:
43 satya 43 adi, or mahaparanirvana 44 tapas 44 anupadaka, or paranirvana 45 jana 45 nirvana, or atma 46 mahar prajapatya 46 buddhi 47 mahendra 47 manas 48 antariksha 48 kama 49 bhu 49 sthula
5In Laurency they had the following Western designations:
43 the manifestal world
44 the submanifestal world
45 the superessential world
46 the essential world
47 the causal-mental world
48 the emotional world
49 the physical world
1Molecules are composed of atoms. The lower the molecular kind, the more atoms enter into the molecule.
2Atoms are composed of primordial atoms. The lower the atomic kind, the more primordial atoms enter into the atom.
3These definitions are the only ones esoterically tenable.
4The matter of the solar systems is called molecular matter to distinguish it from atomic matter, which is cosmic. Within the solar systems the seven lowest atomic kinds are transformed into molecular kinds.
5Each atomic kind supplies material for six successively more composite molecular kinds, each lower being formed from the next higher. The seven atomic kinds thus make 42 molecular kinds and it is these that make up the solar system. The 49 atomic kinds exist in all the worlds, occupy the same space.
6The six molecular kinds within each systemic world have been given analogous names and mathematical designations:
(1 atomic)
2 subatomic
3 superetheric
4 etheric
5 gaseous
6 liquid
7 solid
7The figure of each molecular kind is put after that designating the atomic kind. Thus the physical gaseous molecular kind is written 49:5.
8The chemical so-called atom of science is a physical etheric molecule (49:4). This molecular kind, like all other molecular kinds, contains 49 different layers of matter. To reach the real physical atom (49:1), nuclear physicists have to work their way through 147 layers of matter, each in succession higher than the other. No physical science will achieve that.
9It should be mentioned in this connection that the “elements” of the ancients (at which chemists laugh), namely, earth, water, air, fire, and quinta essentia, were their terms of the five lowest molecular kinds, or states of aggregation.
1The three higher worlds of the solar system (43–45) are common to all who in the solar system have acquired objective consciousness in the respective kinds of matter. These are individuals who have left the human or fourth natural kingdom and passed to higher kingdoms.
2The four lower systemic worlds (46–49) are also called planetary worlds. Now we are approaching the worlds of man which man has to learn to comprehend if he is not to remain ignorant of his own existence, quite apart from existence in general. If he knows nothing about his worlds, he remains the helpless victim of all the idiologies, illusions, and fictions of ignorance in the domains of religion, philosophy, and science. Without this knowledge he is unable to think in accordance with reality.
3To facilitate the consciousness development of the monads in these lower worlds, the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49) have been divided into five separate molecular worlds. World 47 is divided into the higher (or causal, 47:2,3) and the lower (47:4-7) mental world. World 49 is divided into the physical etheric world (49:2-4) and the world visible to man (49:5-7) with its three states of aggregation (solid, liquid, and gaseous).
4The consciousness development in the four lower natural kingdoms goes on in these five molecular worlds.
5The visible world (49:5-7) can be called the special world of minerals, the physical etheric world (49:2-4) that of plants, the emotional world (48) that of animals, and the mental world (47:4-7) the special world of man as regards consciousness. The higher mental world, or the causal world (47:1-3), the Platonic world of ideas, is man’s goal in the human kingdom. Some divide the mental world into three: the causal (47:1-3), the higher mental (47:4,5), and the lower mental world (47:6,7). This will be discussed further in the chapter about the consciousness aspect.
1The monads are the sole content of the cosmos. The monad is the smallest possible part of primordial matter and the smallest possible firm point for individual consciousness. If at all one should try to imagine a monad, one would perhaps come closest picturing it as a point of force.
2All forms of matter existing in the cosmos consist of monads at different stages of development. All these compositions of monads are being formed, changed, dissolved, and reformed in innumerable variations, but the monads’ matter aspect remains eternally the same.
1The consciousness development of the monads goes on in and through their envelopes. It is by acquiring consciousness in its envelopes and in the ever higher molecular kinds of these that the monad attains ever higher natural kingdoms.
2All forms of nature are envelopes. In every atom, molecule, organism, world, planet, solar system, etc., there is one monad at a higher stage of development than are the other monads in that form of nature. All forms other than organisms are aggregate envelopes, molecules of the kinds of matter of the respective worlds held together electromagnetically.
3In our solar system there are organisms on our planet only. On the other planets also the lowest envelope (49:5-7) is an aggregate envelope.
1Man, incarnated in the physical world, has five envelopes:
an organism in the visible world (49:5-7) an envelope of physical etheric matter (49:2-4) an envelope of emotional matter (48:2-7) an envelope of mental matter (47:4-7) an envelope of causal matter (47:1-3)
2The four lower of these are renewed at each new incarnation and are dissolved in their order at the end of incarnation. The causal envelope is man’s one permanent envelope. It was acquired when the monad passed from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom. This causal envelope is the “true” man and incarnates together with the human monad which it always encloses.
3The figures in brackets indicate the molecular kinds existing in the different envelopes, the higher envelopes embracing and penetrating all the lower ones.
4The four aggregate envelopes are oval in shape and extend between 30 and 45 cm beyond the organism, making the so-called aura. Approximately 99 per cent of the matter of these envelopes is attracted to the organism, so that the aggregate envelopes form complete replicas of the organism.
5Each of these envelopes has its special purpose. Without a physical etheric envelope the individual would lack sense perceptions, without an emotional envelope the individual would lack feelings, and without a mental envelope the individual would lack the ability to think. It is the presence of these envelopes in the human organism that enables the various pertaining organs to fulfil their tasks as long as they can function. It should be emphasized here that every cell of the organism, every molecule in the cell, contains physical atoms which themselves contain all the 48 higher atomic kinds.
6All higher envelopes, like the organism, have their special organs (made of atoms), which are the seats of the different kinds of functions of consciousness and of motion. These atomic organs in the etheric, emotional, mental, and causal envelopes are in contact with each other.
7Since man tends always to identify his self (his monad, ultimate self) with that envelope in which he happens for the time to be, he regards himself in the physical world as being a physical self, in the emotional world as an emotional self, in the mental world as a mental self, and in the causal world as a causal self – not seeing that he is a monad, an ultimate self.
8It is inevitable at the stage of ignorance that subjectively, when emotionally active, he regards his feelings as his being, or, as intellectual man, regards his thoughts as his true being. He always thinks he is that which he identifies himself with at the time.
9The self knows only what it has itself experienced, worked up, and realized, what exists in its envelopes, what it has been able to learn in its worlds.
1The monad consciousness can be potential, actualized, passive, activated, self-active, latent, subjective, objective.
2The monad’s potential consciousness is awakened to life (is actualized) in the cosmos. Once actualized, consciousness is at first passive, then becomes activated in the process of evolution, until it becomes increasingly more active in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, becoming selfactive in the human kingdom and thereby acquiring consciousness of itself as its own self.
3By “monad” is meant the individual as a primordial atom and by “self” the individual’s consciousness aspect.
4The term “self” also applies to those envelopes in which the monad has acquired selfconsciousness, with which the self identifies itself, at the time regarding them as its true self. The self is the centre of all self-perceptions. Attention indicates the presence of the self.
1One must distinguish between self-consciousness (individual consciousness, self consciousness in the envelopes), collective consciousness, and ultimate self-consciousness. (Technically, cosmic, systemic, and planetary consciousness can be distinguished.)
2Since the ultimate components of the universe are primordial atoms, the cosmic total consciousness is an amalgamation of the consciousness of all primordial atoms, just as the ocean is the union of all drops of water (the closest analogy possible).
3The most important insight is that all consciousness is at the same time collective consciousness. This is so because there is no personal isolation, although only those who have acquired essential consciousness (46) can live in the collective consciousness.
4There are innumerable kinds of collective consciousness: atomic, molecular, aggregate, world, planetary, systemic, and after these, different kinds of cosmic consciousness. The higher the kingdom attained by the monad, the more is embraced by the collective consciousness in which the self, with its self-consciousness preserved, experiences other selves as its own larger self.
5Or, to put it differently, all consciousness in the whole cosmos constitutes a common, inevitable, indivisible unity in which every individual has a smaller or greater part, depending on the level of development he has attained.
6As a higher kind of matter penetrates lower kinds, so a higher kind of consciousness apprehends lower consciousness. On the other hand, a lower kind cannot apprehend higher kinds, which always appear non-existent.
7The capacity of consciousness increases with each higher atomic kind in a progressive series the products in which are squared (thus 2 x 2 = 4, 4 x 4 = 16, 16 x 16 = 256, 256 x 256, etc.).
8When the monad has attained the highest divine kingdom and has thereby acquired full cosmic collective consciousness, it no longer needs envelopes in which to develop consciousness. Then, for the first time, it will know itself to be that ultimate self which it has always been. Until then it has identified itself with one or other of its envelopes. It is thus not to be wondered at that the ignorant search in vain for their selves and many of them, indeed, deny that there is such a thing.
9All forms in the whole cosmos, also those in the highest divine kingdoms, are only envelopes for primordial atoms – the selves. The forms which we call “soul”, “spirit”, “god”, etc. are the envelopes which the self uses at its different stages of development.
10The different kinds of consciousness also include subjective and objective consciousness, self-consciousness in the individual’s different envelopes, super-and sub-consciousness, the memory, and the individual’s experiences of the manifestations of the will.
1Consciousness is subjective. Sense perceptions, feelings, and thoughts are subjective. Everything consciousness apprehends outside itself is material and thus objective.
2Sense is objective consciousness, the apprehension by consciousness of objective material reality in all worlds. Objective consciousness is (subjective) apprehension of a material object. One is to distinguish between physical, emotional, mental, causal, etc. sense.
3Reason is the faculty of imagination, abstraction, conception, reflection, deduction, judgement, etc. Reason is the instrument for working up the content of sense. Reason can subjectively perceive vibrations (“hunch”, etc.) long before sense can refer them to material reality. But it is not until sense has begun to function that you can speak of knowledge.
4At mankind’s present stage of development, most people in their organisms can be objectively conscious only in the three lowest states of aggregation (49:5-7). Objective consciousness of material forms in higher molecular kinds has been given that vague term, “clairvoyance”.
5Everything that is subjective has its objective correspondence. Every feeling corresponds to the consciousness in an emotional molecule, every thought to a mental molecule, every intuition to a causal molecule, etc. The kind of matter indicates the kind of consciousness.
1Physical consciousness is the lowest kind of consciousness, just as physical matter is the lowest kind of matter and physical energy is the lowest kind of force.
2There are six main kinds of physical consciousness (physical atomic consciousness excluded) corresponding to subjective and objective experiences in the six physical molecular kinds.
3The corresponding is true of all higher worlds.
4Man’s physical consciousness is partly the organism’s different kinds of sense perceptions, partly to most people only subjective apprehension by the etheric envelope of the vibrations in the three higher physical molecular kinds (49:2-4).
1Man’s emotional consciousness is his monad’s consciousness in his emotional envelope.
2At mankind’s present stage of development, most people’s emotional consciousness during physical incarnation is limited to mere subjective experiences of the vibrations in the emotional envelope.
3By nature emotional consciousness is exclusively desire, or what the individual at the emotional stage perceives as dynamic will. At the stage of barbarism, before the individual’s consciousness in his mental envelope has been activated, desire manifests as more or less uncontrolled impulses. When the mental envelope, influenced by the vibrations of the emotional envelope, is attracted to and woven together with the emotional envelope, mental consciousness is awakened to life, and desire and thought merge. If desire then preponderates, there ensues feeling, which is desire coloured with thought. If thought preponderates, imagination ensues, which is thought coloured with desire.
4Man’s emotional life is mainly the life of emotional illusions. He is the victim of desire’s wishful thinking, of the illusions of emotional thinking. The individual is completely free of the illusions only after he has acquired causal consciousness.
5The vibrations of the three lower emotional molecular kinds (48:5-7) are largely repulsive, the three higher, attractive. Noble feelings are expressions of attraction.
1Man’s mental-causal consciousness is his monad’s self-acquired ability of consciousness, partly in his mental envelope (47:4-7), partly in his causal envelope (47:1-3).
2There are four kinds of consciousness of the mental envelope, corresponding to the ability to apprehend the vibrations in the four lower mental molecular kinds (47:4-7).
3The majority of mankind have developed (activated) only the lowest kind (47:7): discursive deductive thinking from ground to consequence.
4The second kind from below (47:6), philosophic and scientific principle thinking, is still the highest kind of thinking for all except the very rare elite.
5The third kind from below (47:5), elite thinking, is – in contrast to principle thinking which mostly absolutifies – partly consistent relativizing and percentualizing thinking, partly perspective thinking and system thinking.
6The highest kind of consciousness in the mental envelope (47:4) is still inaccessible to mankind. Its manifestations consist in – among other things – concretization of causal ideas involving simultaneous thinking by systems instead of concepts.
7The content even of elite thinking is for the most part made up of fictions (conceptions without real correspondences), due to lack of facts about existence. It is only the facts of esoterics that make it possible to think in accordance with reality.
8Causal consciousness (47:1-3) is possible only for those who have developed so far ahead of the rest of mankind that they can purposefully prepare for their transition to the next higher kingdom. They have acquired the ability to associate with everybody in the causal world, the meeting-place for the individuals belonging to the fourth as well as the fifth natural kingdom.
9Causal consciousness is subjectively intuition, the experiencing of causal ideas, and makes it possible to study objectively the physical, emotional, and mental worlds, and makes omniscience in these worlds possible.
10To causal consciousness there is, in planetary respect (the worlds of man: 47–49), neither distance nor past time. The causal self is able to study all its previous lives as a man, is able independently and quickly to acquire the facts necessary to comprehend all realities in the worlds of man, achieving more in one hour (in 47:1) than the most efficient mental thinker could manage in one hundred years. Fictions are precluded.
1The following survey of the different kinds of consciousness within the solar system will perhaps make it easier to understand the fact that ever higher kinds of matter, material envelopes, material worlds, correspond to ever higher kinds of consciousness.
49 physical (including etheric) consciousness
48 emotional consciousness
47 mental-causal consciousness
46 essential consciousness
45 superessential consciousness
44 submanifestal consciousness
43 manifestal consciousness
2It should be evident from the terms used for the ever higher kinds of consciousness that all but the three lowest (47–49) are incomprehensible to mankind at its present stage of development.
3The term “self” applied to an individual indicates the highest world in which he has acquired full subjective and objective self-consciousness and ability of activity; for example, that self which has acquired causal consciousness is called a causal self, having acquired essential consciousness a 45-self, a submanifestal self a 44-self, a manifestal self a 43-self.
4In international usage, the term “self” might for greater convenience be replaced with “monad”, thus 43-monad, 44-monad, 45-monad, etc.
1Man’s consciousness is divided into waking consciousness, subconsciousness, and superconsciousness.
2In his organism man’s waking consciousness consists of sense perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and expressions of the will.
3The monad’s subconsciousness contains, in their latent state, all the monad’s perceptions and worked-up experiences ever since the monad’s consciousness was awakened to life. Each incarnation deposits, as it were, its own layer of consciousness. All this is preserved as rudiments of qualities and abilities, usually manifesting as possibility of understanding. For these rudiments to be actualized it is necessary that they be developed in each new incarnation, a process that is nevertheless increasingly easier.
4To the superconsciousness belong all not yet self-activated domains of consciousness in the molecular kinds of the individual’s different envelopes. Development consists in self-activating consciousness and thereby acquiring self-consciousness in these molecular kinds.
5Man is constantly receiving impulses from his subconsciousness, less frequently inspirations through his superconsciousness.
6Waking consciousness is thus a tiny fraction of the monad’s possibility of consciousness.
7All the individual’s envelopes are being penetrated every second by innumerable vibrations from without (the emotional envelope by feelings from the environment, the mental envelope by global mental vibrations). Very, very few of these are apprehended by waking consciousness.
1Each envelope of the individual has its consciousness, its memory: the subconscious collective consciousness of its different molecules. These memories dissolve with the envelopes. The permanent envelope in the human kingdom, the causal, retains the memory of everything it has experienced since its formation.
2Remembrance anew is the ability to resuscitate the vibrations received or emitted by the envelopes.
3Expressions of consciousness activate the matter of the envelopes. Constant vibrations (habits, tendencies, etc.) retain “permanent atoms” (Sanskrit: skandhas). On the dissolution of the envelopes they enter into the causal envelope and accompany it at reincarnation, constituting the latent fund of experiences (predispositions, talents, etc.).
4The primordial atom’s memory is indestructible though latent. In order to remember anew it is necessary to renew the contact with previously experienced reality. Causal selves and higher selves are able to do this in the planetary and cosmic globe memories.
1To the motion aspect belong all occurrences, all processes of nature and life, all changes. Everything is in motion and everything that moves is matter.
2Motion has of old been given manifold terms: force, energy, activity, vibration, etc. As motion should also be considered: sound, light, and colour.
3In hylozoics three main causes of motion are distinguished, each one specifically different: dynamis, material energy, will.
1The original cause of motion, the source of all power, the one primordial force, the universe’s total energy, is the dynamic energy of primordial matter, which Pythagoras called dynamis. It is eternally active, inexhaustible, unconscious, absolute omnipotence.
2Dynamis acts in every primordial atom, and only in the primordial atoms, which penetrate all matter.
3Dynamis is the fundamental cause of the perpetuum mobile of the universe.
1In the scientific sense of the word, energy is matter in motion. All higher kinds of matter (atomic kinds, molecular kinds) are energy in relation to all lower kinds.
2Matter does not dissolve into energy, but into higher matter.
3When matter ceases to move, its quality of being energy ceases.
4All forces of nature are matter. There are more than 2400 different kinds of forces of nature within the solar system. Every molecular kind contains 49 different layers of matter, which can all act as energy.
1The cosmic motion (in the 49 atomic kinds) is the result of a constant current of primordial atoms (primary matter) flowing down from the highest atomic world through the atoms of all the worlds unto the lowest world, then returning to the highest world to begin their circulation anew, and this continuing as long as the existence of the lower worlds is necessary. There are two kinds of atoms: negative and positive. In the negative (receptive) atoms, material energy flows from a higher atomic kind to a lower; in the positive (propulsive) atoms, from a lower to a higher. This current is the force that maintains the atoms, molecules, material aggregates in their given forms. As a result, all atoms in all worlds, and consequently all molecules and aggregates, radiate material energy, in doing which the aggregate always in some respect communicates something of its individual character. Thus every aggregate emits specialized energy.
2Vibrations are the result of higher kinds of matter penetrating lower kinds. This fact has given rise to the idea that everything consists of vibrations.
1The will is dynamis acting through active consciousness. Active consciousness is thus the ability of consciousness to let dynamis act through it. The “will” is energy’s individualized mode of acting through consciousness, in doing which the essential things for ever higher worlds are the consciousness content’s accordance with law, accordance with plan, purposefulness, onepointedness of purpose.
2The esoteric axiom, “energy follows thought”, indicates that the expressions of active consciousness induce matter to act as energy.
3Magic is knowledge of the method of using mental material energy to influence physical etheric material energies to bring about changes in the visible molecular kinds. That method will remain esoteric, since mankind is too hopelessly ignorant and too egoistic to be entrusted with this terrible power. Inasmuch as all power is abused (at the best only on account of ignorance) mankind must be content to be ignorant of all forces of nature other than those it has succeeded in discovering by itself. That knowledge is entrusted only to those who cannot possibly abuse power.
4Consciousness activation in the three lowest natural kingdoms is an unconscious and automatic process which gradually becomes a conscious one in the human kingdom. In higher kingdoms it is the result of self-initiated consciousness activity.
5Man’s will is at the emotional stage desire, at the mental stage the rational motive. The original philosophic definition of will was the relation of consciousness to a purpose.
1By analogy with the aspects of matter and consciousness, there are also seven kinds of motion, thus:
49 physical energies
48 emotional energies
47 mental-causal energies
46 essential energies
45 superessential energies
44 submanifestal energies
43 manifestal energies
2As one desires, the word “energy” can be replaced with “will”. The different kinds of will are acquired simultaneously with full subjective and objective self-consciousness in the respective worlds, or with the self’s ability to centre itself in the pertaining envelopes.
3The energies that become manifest are the effects of the next higher molecular kinds upon the next lower ones in each world. The atomic energies act from world to world through the atomic kinds.
1The meaning of existence (a problem unsolvable to theologians, philosophers, and scientists) is the consciousness development of the primordial atoms, to awaken to consciousness primordial atoms which are unconscious in primordial matter, and thereupon to teach them in ever higher kingdoms to acquire consciousness of, understanding of life in all its relationships.
2The goal of existence is the omniscience and omnipotence of all in the whole cosmos.
3The process implies development: in respect of knowledge from ignorance to omniscience, in respect of will from impotence to omnipotence, in respect of freedom from bondage to that power which the application of the laws afford, in respect of life from isolation to unity with all life.
4The self develops in and through envelopes, from the lowest physical etheric envelope to the highest cosmic world. It constantly acquires new envelopes in one world after another. Step by step it acquires self-consciousness in the ever higher molecular kinds of its envelope by learning to activate the consciousness in these. By this it finally becomes the master of its envelope. Until then it is disoriented in the consciousness chaos of this envelope, and it is the victim of vibrations from without.
5The ancient terms – which ignorance always misinterpreted – “soul”, “spirit”, “god”, etc., referred to the self’s envelopes in higher worlds. By “soul” they meant man’s permanent causal envelope (47-envelope), by “spirit” his future 45-envelope, by “god” the 43-envelope.
6Atomic consciousness is world consciousness. The individual as a joint owner of a consciousness collective is like a cell in an organism. The organism is an envelope of an individual in a higher kingdom. When in the collective consciousness of his world the individual has so developed that he can take over this material world as an envelope of his own, then he will be a “god” of this world.
7Atomic consciousness, world consciousness, omniscience (in that world) does not mean that the individual knows everything about everything that is or happens. But it is possible for him to find out more or less quickly everything he wishes to know, independently of space and past time in a given world, to ascertain all relations in the three aspects (matter, motion, and consciousness) of that world.
1All material forms (atoms, molecules, aggregates, worlds, planets, solar systems, aggregates of solar systems, etc.) are subject to the law of transformation. They are being formed, changed, dissolved, and re-formed. This is inevitable, since in the long run no material forms tolerate the wear of the cosmic material energies.
2The primordial atoms that form all these compositions of matter thereby have opportunities to have ever new experiences in new forms. All learn from everything.
3When their form is renewed, all organisms (plants, animals, men) get a form of life similar to the previous form, until their consciousness development requires a specifically different, higher form, a more purposeful possibility to acquire increased experience.
4Man is reborn as a man (never as an animal), until he has learned everything he can learn in the human kingdom, and has acquired all the qualities and abilities necessary to enable him to continue his consciousness expansion in the fifth natural kingdom. Rebirth explains both the seeming injustices of life (since in new lives the individual has to reap what he has sown in previous lives) and the innate, latent understanding and the once self-acquired abilities existing as predispositions. It does more than that. It refutes 99 per cent of everything that mankind has accepted as truth.
1The consciousness development of the monads goes on in a series of ever higher natural kingdoms: six within the solar system and six in the cosmic worlds. The six kingdoms belonging to the solar system are:
the mineral kingdom 49:7 – 49:5 the vegetable kingdom 49:7 – 48:7 the animal kingdom 49:7 – 47:7 the human kingdom 49:7 – 47:4 the essential kingdom 49:7 – 45:4 the manifestal kingdom, first or lowest divine kingdom 49:7 – 43
2The monad consciousness is activated in envelopes. It learns to apprehend the vibrations in their ever higher molecular kinds, acquires in these the possible experience and knowledge of the matter and motion aspects as well as the ability to use the insight gained. As a rule the monad spends seven aeons in each of the four lowest natural kingdoms.
3It follows from what has been said that each kind of matter has its own kind of consciousness and its own kind of energy, that every form of nature is a living being with a collective consciousness and is an envelope for a monad in a higher kingdom than the other monads in that envelope.
1The transition of the monads from the mineral to the vegetable kingdom and thence to the animal and human kingdoms is called transmigration. It cannot work backwards. Reversion from a higher natural kingdom to a lower one is absolutely precluded. The “degeneration” of organisms – besides, of all other matter – does not affect the evolution of the monads, but is the process of dissolution of composed matter, as also is “radio-activity”. Metallurgists experience a phenomenon they call the “fatiguing” of metals.
2In the mineral kingdom, the monad consciousness begins to be activated. In the lowest physical molecular kind (49:7), the monads learn to distinguish differences in temperature and pressure. In this kingdom, the vibrations become violent enough for a first apprehension of inner and outer. And thus begins that process of objectivization of consciousness which reaches its perfection in the animal kingdom. The monads eventually learn to apprehend external realities. Immensely slowly through the three lowest kingdoms, the monads come to see themselves as something separate from everything else. For us, who find the contrast between consciousness and the material external world self-evident, it is, of course, hard to grasp what incredible toil this process has cost. What the philosophers are trying to do is to deprive mankind of the result of this process of objectivization.
3The contrasting process continues in the human kingdom, but now as a contrast between the self-conscious self and the external world (including other selves). This process is necessary for the individual to acquire self-reliance and self-determination, without which qualities he can never acquire the power of freedom. There is always the risk, however, that self-assertion, and thus isolation, will become absolute. This can lead to the severance of the tie that unites him with existence. It is by becoming an ever larger self with all the other selves that the individual acquires cosmic omniscience. The individual has to learn to overcome the self-assertion at the expense of other life and to realize the necessity of serving life. Then he will also find that therein lies the only way to happiness, joy, and bliss.
4In order to pass from a lower to a higher natural kingdom, the monad has to learn to receive and adapt itself to the vibrations from ever higher molecular kinds. At first these vibrations fulfil the necessary functions of vitalization in the monads’ envelopes.
5Consciousness in the mineral kingdom is gradually manifested as a tendency to repetition, after innumerable experiences becoming organized habit, or nature. Increase of consciousness results in instinctive striving to adaptation.
6As mineral monads are absorbed by plants and experience the process of vitalization in these, mineral consciousness learns to receive and adapt itself to etheric vibrations (gradually to ever higher from 49:7:7 to 49:4:1), a condition of entering into the vegetable kingdom. In this kingdom the monad acquires the ability to distinguish between attractive and repulsive vibrations, thereby having achieved contact with the emotional world (48:7). Vegetable monads develop most quickly when plants are consumed by animals and men, and the vegetable monads thereby are subjected to the strong vibrations in the emotional envelopes of animals and men. By learning to perceive these vibrations they become able gradually to attain higher levels in their kingdom. In the lower kingdoms transmigration occurs almost imperceptibly. In between incarnations animal monads are enclosed in a common envelope of mental matter. The higher up the scale of evolution an animal is, the fewer are the monads that go to its group. Thus several quadrillions of flies go to form one group-soul, millions of rats one, hundreds of thousands of sparrows one, thousands of wolves one, hundreds of sheep one. Only the monkey, elephant, dog, horse, and cat, which belong to groupsouls of very few monads, are able to causalize. When a higher animal devours a lower animal, the lower animal’s monad becomes part of the higher animal’s group-soul. This is not the case, however, when men eat animals. Man’s causal envelope is not a group-soul; besides, transmigration to higher kingdoms is not affected in this way, but is the result of the individual’s own consciousness activity. Animal monads thus do not pass through the human organism, but return to their own group-soul. Instead, evolution is counteracted, since the fact is that animal meat coarsens the human organism, the task of which is to strive towards “etherization”.
7When natural research eventually learns about facts pertaining to these matters, it will discover the causes and effects of consciousness activation. This applies especially to those scientists who have innate etheric objective consciousness, a thing met more and more frequently.
8The levels of development within each kingdom appear most markedly in the animal kingdom with its many classes from the lowest to the highest animal species. Classes are the natural order of things in all kingdoms. The classes of nature indicate different classes of age due to the different times of the transmigration of the monads.
9As each higher kingdom is attained (and also each higher level within the same kingdom), the monad’s ability to be influenced by more and more comprehensive series of vibrations of ever higher molecular kinds increases. There are 49 such series within each molecular kind.
10When the monad has been able for a long time to be affected by mental vibrations (47:7) and has thus attained the highest animal species, it becomes possible for it to transmigrate to the human kingdom.
1By acquiring a causal envelope the monad transmigrates from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom. To term this process “causalization” is preferable to “individualization”, since the monad is an individual in all kingdoms.
2The causal envelope is the permanent envelope of the human monad until it essentializes and passes to the fifth natural kingdom. It is this envelope which incarnates and thereby involves into four lower envelopes which are soon to be dissolved.
3At mankind’s present stage of development, man activates consciousness mainly in his emotional and mental envelopes.
4The consciousness development in the human kingdom can be divided into five principal stages comprising a total of 777 levels of development. The table below shows which molecular consciousnesses are thereby activated.
5molecular kinds
stage of emotional mental barbarism 48:5-7 47:7 civilization 48:4-7 47:6,7 culture 48:3-7 47:6,7 humanity 48:2-7 47:4-7 ideality 48:2-7 47:2-7
The Philosophers’ Stone by Laurency gives a more detailed account of the different developmental stages.
7The number of individuals counted among our planet’s mankind, causalized here or transferred hither, amounts to some 60 thousand million. They are in the physical, emotional, mental, and causal worlds of our planet, most of them asleep in their causal envelopes – since they have no possibility of causal consciousness – pending a new incarnation.
8The transmigration of these monads from the animal to the human kingdom occurred in five different epochs, the last one some 18 million years ago, the individual of the four earlier epochs being transferred later from another planet. The causal envelopes of men are thus of widely different ages, which fact explains the different developmental stages. Those who have reached the highest stage have some 150.000 incarnations behind them, those at the lowest some 30.000. In this connection one ought to consider the fact that the capacity of consciousness is doubled with each higher molecular kind, so that the numbers of incarnations are not themselves to be compared.
9The Western declaration that “god created all men equal” thus is as great an error as the fiction of the Indian philosophers that “all are gods”. God cannot create a single monad, only give the monads the opportunity of being introduced into cosmic manifestation. Certainly, some time all monads will attain the highest divine stage, but before that they will have to be involved down to the physical world, and after that to mount the seemingly endless graduation of developmental levels from the mineral kingdom to the highest divine kingdom.
10It should be obvious from the above that men’s moral judgements of each other are the criticisms of ignorance and the unjustified verdicts of hatred. Men are neither good nor evil. They are on a certain level of development and know no better. To this must be added the effects of the law of destiny and the law of reaping. To understand this it is also important to know that during times of upheaval, the clans at the highest stages do not incarnate to any great extent. Of those incarnated at present, more than 85 per cent are at the two lowest stages. Most of the remaining 15 per cent are of the unobtrusive, quiet kind of people. Unless they have been given special tasks, they incarnate chiefly in those countries where they have the best prospects of finding others on the same level. Those at the stage of humanity who have not had the opportunity to study esoterics feel themselves outsiders, not understanding why, and put the blame for this upon themselves. This is, regrettable, the rule. They have been initiated once and thereafter have remained seekers after the “lost word of the master” (esoterics). They have the knowledge as an instinct, not knowing its cause, and thus they are uncertain.
11In the physical world man is an organism with an etheric envelope. He has two kinds of physical consciousness. The sense perceptions of the organism allow him to apprehend objectively the material forms in the three lowest molecular kinds. The vibrations in the molecular kinds of the etheric envelope are still apprehended only subjectively by most people. Visible realities are the only ones man knows of and they are for him the only real ones. He takes his feelings and thoughts to be just subjective apprehensions, being quite unaware of the fact that when he experiences feelings it is his attention (the monad) moving to his emotional envelope, and when he is thinking it is the monad moving to his mental envelope. He does not know that he is a monad in a causal envelope.
12The individual at the stage of barbarism as a physical self only, without emotional and mental consciousness worth mentioning, belongs to the very lowest levels of the stage of barbarism. Immediately after causalization he is little more than an animal, often not even that intelligent. His life in the emotional world between incarnations is of a very short duration. He soon relapses into dreamless sleep in his causal envelope, being incapable of employing the consciousness of his mental envelope. On the higher levels of the stage of barbarism, his mental consciousness is activated to the extent that he is able to draw simple conclusions.
13As an emotional self (at the stages of civilization and culture), the individual is in his thought and action determined by emotional motives. The emotional stage is the most difficult stage of development. Man must by himself acquire consciousness in all six molecular kinds of his emotional envelope and in the two lowest of his mental envelope. To the emotional stage belongs almost everything that man today regards as civilization and culture.
14The emotional stage is divided into the two stages of civilization and culture, each of which presents a great number of levels.
15The emotional consciousness of the civilizational individual seldom extends beyond the lower three or four molecular kinds, his mental consciousness seldom beyond the lowest two. With this modest intellectual capacity he intellectualizes his desires into such emotions as normally exist in the lower regions of the emotional world. Generally, they are of the repulsive kind.
16It is at the cultural stage that the three higher molecular kinds of the emotional envelope are activated. The pertaining vibrations in the emotional world are mainly attractive. Having once attained these regions, the individual can gradually free himself from the tendency, since long acquired, to a repulsive attitude to the surrounding world and to himself. His feelings become more and more ennobled with each higher level and supersede his previous receptivity to the countless expressions of hatred of the repulsive vibrations. For everything that is not love is hatred.
17On the highest cultural levels, the individual becomes a mystic. In the domains of emotional consciousness that he has now reached, he no longer has any use for his intellectuality as acquired up to now. Frequently in states of ecstasy he experiences the unity of life past all understanding. His imagination, which develops powerfully, makes him lose himself in seeming infinitude. His emotional development is terminated and crowned by an incarnation as a saint. In subsequent incarnations he strives to become a mental self.
18The mental stage is divided into the stages of humanity and ideality (or the causal stage). The humanist activates consciousness in the four lower mental molecular kinds, the idealist in all six. The humanist is a mental self, the idealist a causal self.
19The most distinguishing trait of the humanist is his striving after common sense, a prerequisite for acquiring causal intuition. He can no longer, like the mystic, lose himself in the ineffable, but demands above all clarity in everything and facts for everything. His firm determination to comprehend reality and life despite everything compels him always to seek further. The ever longer periods spent in the mental world between incarnations, during which time he can work up his ideas undisturbed, re-act upon this endeavour of his. He becomes more and more receptive to the inspirations of his elder brothers in the fifth natural kingdom. When he has come to the Sokratean realization that man cannot know anything worth knowing, he is ready to receive the esoteric knowledge.
20In the old days, he would then have been chosen to be initiated into some secret knowledge order. Nowadays he is given the knowledge in a mental system of the fundamental facts of existence which his reason compels him to accept as the only tenable working hypothesis. Using the knowledge gained, it is possible for him to activate ever higher kinds of consciousness, until, one day, the world of intuition opens up before him and he becomes able to ascertain facts about reality and life by himself, as well as to study his previous incarnations as a man.
21Then he also sees how hopeless it is for man with his insufficient means to acquire this knowledge, how almost impossible it is for most people even to grasp it. Starting from their own petty belief system or thought system, they imagine themselves able to judge everything by this. He sees that man’s life of consciousness, apart from ascertaining facts in the visible world, consists of emotional illusions and mental fictions. He sees, too, how futile it is to do what Platon did, to hint at the existence of a world of ideals. Now he knows that it exists.
22As a causal self he acquires knowledge of the laws of life and the ability to make rational use of this knowledge with one-pointed purpose. He sees that the mistakes of ignorance as to these laws are no crimes against the deity, that all the good and evil that man meets with are his own work.
23He enters into communication with those in higher kingdoms and receives from them the further facts he needs but cannot ascertain for himself. He gradually acquires the twelve essential qualities which make it possible for him to pass to the fifth natural kingdom. These are enumerated in the esoteric account of the twelve labours of Herakles (Hercules), which have been totally distorted in the exoteric legend.
24Man’s five envelopes all have their own consciousnesses and their own tendencies. Those of the organism are inherited from one’s parents. The qualities and abilities, etc. that the self acquires in its emotional and mental envelopes have their correspondences in a cluster of atoms (Sanskrit: skandhas), are preserved by the causal envelope, and used at reincarnation. It is the task of the self to learn to master its envelopes, so that they submit to its will. This is no easy task, since the tendencies of the envelopes are the results of habits from thousands of incarnations. At mankind’s present stage of development, the emotional controls the physical. Man still has to learn to control the emotional by the mental. And more than good resolutions is needed to do that. It can take many lives once one has seen the need for it.
25When the individual leaves his worn-out organism with its etheric envelope, he goes on living in his emotional envelope and, when this is dissolved, in his mental envelope, and when this too is dissolved, he waits, asleep in his causal envelope, to be reborn into the physical world, which is incomparably the most important, since it is in this world that all human qualities must be acquired, and it is only in this world that he has the possibility of freeing himself from emotional illusions and mental fictions. Life between incarnations is a period of rest in which man does not learn anything new. The quicker the self can free itself from its incarnation envelopes, the quicker it develops.
26At the same time as the etheric envelope frees itself from the organism in the so-called process of death, the emotional envelope frees itself from the etheric envelope which remains near the organism and dissolves along with it.
27Man’s life in the emotional world can prove completely different for different individuals, depending on their developmental level.
28Like the physical world, the emotional world has six successively higher regions. Most people are nowadays objectively conscious from the beginning in the three regions that correspond to the three lower regions of the physical world. (Mental consciousness, however, remains subjective.) Objects in those regions are material counterparts of the material forms of the physical world, which fact often causes the newcomer to think that he still lives in the physical world. During this first period, the individual can also associate with his friends in the physical world when they are asleep. Without esoteric knowledge he believes, like everybody else, that the highest region in this new world of his is “heaven and his final destination in eternity”.
29The emotional envelope dissolves gradually: first its lowest molecular kind, then the lowest but one, etc. When the three lowest have dissolved it is not possible for the individual to contact the visible physical world. There are those who already in the process of physical death are able to free themselves from the three lower molecular kinds of their emotional envelope.
30In the three higher regions of the emotional world, the existing material forms are imaginative creations made by the individuals in those regions. For emotional matter forms itself in accordance with the slightest hint from consciousness, the ignorant neither understanding the cause nor being able to grasp how it happened. The individual seldom learns anything really new while in the emotional world, and in the mental world never.
31The life of the emotional envelope can vary as greatly as that of the organism.
32Upon the dissolution of the emotional envelope, the individual in his mental envelope leads a life of thought that is absolutely subjective, not suspecting the impossibility of apprehending objective reality in this world. But apprehension of reality, bliss, and perfection, omniscience and omnipotence are absolute. All his fantasies become absolute realities to him. Everything he wishes is instantly there and all his friends, all the “great ones” of mankind, are with him, all equally perfect.
33The independent life of the mental envelope can vary from a minute or so (in the case of the barbarian) to thousands of years. It all depends on how many ideas the individual has collected during physical life and how vital they are. Platon is said to have material to work up for ten thousand years.
34Upon the dissolution of the mental envelope, the individual in his causal envelope sinks into dreamless sleep that will last until the time comes for rebirth and an embryo has been formed for him in a physical maternal body. He awakens with a desire for a new life and forms instinctively, by means of his causal envelope, new mental and emotional envelopes, these being the necessary communication links. It will be the task of the growing child to use its latent qualities to develop the ability of consciousness in them.
35There can be no conscious causal life unless the intuition of the causal ideas has been acquired in physical existence. (It is, besides, in the physical that everything must be acquired.) The monad’s continuity of consciousness, made possible through the memory in its incarnation envelopes now dissolved, has been lost. The causal envelope, however, retains the memory of all the human incarnations and of the experiences had, of insight and understanding gained, of qualities and abilities acquired. Everything is there as rudiments in new incarnations. How much, or rather, how little of it all will be actualized anew, depends on the individual’s new opportunities of remembering anew and developing his latent qualities.
1Only those individuals who have attained the highest cosmic world have absolute (one hundred per cent) knowledge of the whole cosmos and of the three aspects (matter, motion, and consciousness).
2Just as men must get knowledge of higher worlds from individuals in the fifth natural kingdom, so the latter in their turn must get knowledge of still higher worlds and of existence in its entirety from individuals in the sixth natural kingdom, etc. throughout the series of ever higher kingdoms. But all get only the knowledge necessary for them to understand reality and to develop further, which they cannot acquire by themselves. All individuals in higher kingdoms are researchers in their own worlds and have to acquire their own knowledge of everything in these and learn to apply without friction the knowledge of those laws of nature and of life which are constant in their worlds.
3By essentializing the causal self acquires an envelope of essential matter and, in so doing, passes from the fourth to the fifth natural kingdom.
4The fifth natural kingdom consists partly of 46-selves (essential selves) with envelopes and consciousness in the planetary essential world, partly of 45-selves with envelopes and consciousness in the systemic superessential world.
5The consciousness of the essential envelope is that of unity. The individual knows that he is his own self having a self-identity that will never be lost, but also a larger self together with all the monads in the five natural kingdoms and, when he so desires, he experiences others’ consciousness as his own. “The drop-consciousness has become one with the oceanconsciousness.” “The union with god” is the self’s acquisition of the consciousness of unity.
6In the atoms of all the lower worlds (47–49) there are essential atoms having passive consciousness, which can be activated by vibrations from without (god immanent). It is only at the higher emotional stage that the individual is sufficiently developed to be able to perceive these vibrations some time at all.
7In the secret knowledge order of the gnosticians, the 46-consciousness was called the “son”, or “Christos”, and the 43-consciousness the “father”, or the “great carpenter”.
8The 46-self is omniscient in worlds 46–49. Omniscience does not mean that the individual knows everything about everything, but that he is able, when need be, quickly to find out anything he wants to know in his worlds, independently of space and past time.
9Only essential consciousness can become conscious in the physical, emotional, and mental atoms. Before it is acquired, subatomic molecular consciousness is the highest kind of consciousness in the different worlds. After it has acquired these kinds of atomic consciousness, the monad can identify itself with the total consciousness of these worlds and their unadulterated memories of past time.
10As an essential self, the individual has to acquire by himself through his own research complete knowledge of everything of importance in the worlds of man (47–49).
11Essential monads form a collective being of their own having a common total consciousness.
12The essential self does not need to incarnate further, since he has no more to learn in the kingdom of man. He often does incarnate, however, in order by all means and by personal contact to help those preparing for their entrance into this higher kingdom. All the thanks he may reckon on is to be misunderstood, abused, and persecuted, especially by those who, with their habitually conceited overestimation of themselves, consider themselves ready, but fail in the tests which they unwittingly undergo.
13When mankind has come to see its almost total ignorance of life and its inability to solve the problems and to guide development, even 45-selves and still higher avatars will be prepared to incarnate, provided their help is called for by an appreciable percentage of mankind. To do so before that would be a meaningless sacrifice.
14The essential self’s task as regards himself is not only to re-learn in all respects, but also gradually to acquire consciousness in the six molecular kinds of its envelope, in this replacing the lower with the higher, until the envelope consists exclusively of essential atomic matter. When this has been achieved, the individual begins a corresponding process of activation and consciousness in the 45-world in order to become a 45-self.
15The superessential selves are constantly experiencing anew that lower worlds’ light is higher worlds’ darkness, not only literally, but also symbolically. As regards consciousness, a 45-self is to a man as a man is to a plant.
16In some esoteric books, essentiality is called “love and wisdom”, and superessentiality “will”. Such terms are misleading, to say the least of it. The inability to find new terms is remarkable considering that the least technical novelty can have one of its own.
17To use the word “love” of essentiality and at the same time to say that man does not know what love is, affords no clarity. But the confusion of ideas is so much greater, so that people at once are ready to aver that man is incapable of love. Human love is attraction (physical, emotional, and mental). Regrettably, it can turn into repulsion if it is not genuine. For essential consciousness there is neither attraction nor repulsion, only inseparable unity with all, will to unity.
18The term “will” as applied to superessentiality is equally hopeless. At the most, it can have its old philosophic meaning: will is the relation of consciousness to a purpose. But that is, to be sure, meagre information.
19A suitable term for
46-consciousness: world consciousness
45-consciousness: planetary consciousness
44-consciousness: interplanetary consciousness
43-consciousness: solar systemic consciousness
20The essential self knows that the Law is inflexible and inevitably just, that life is divine, and that all monads are indestructible. It knows that life is happiness and that suffering exists only in the three lower molecular kinds of the physical and emotional worlds (49:5-7; 48:5-7), and then only as bad reaping after bad sowing.
1The lowest divine kingdom is made up of those individuals who have acquired envelopes and consciousness in the two highest systemic worlds (43 and 44). They have at their disposal the two highest collective consciousnesses of the solar system. They are omniscient in the solar system, independent of space in that globe and its past time. One realizes that they have complete mastery of the aspects of matter and motion and of the Law within worlds 43–49.
1All we know about these six successively higher divine kingdoms in the 42 higher atomic worlds is that they exist, that they constitute a perfect cosmic organization working with unfailing precision in accordance with all existence’s laws of nature and laws of life.
2In the cosmos, the individual does not acquire any envelopes of his own. He succeeds to some higher function and, finally, to the highest in his world with its collective consciousness, and identifies himself with this world as his own envelope.
3The individuals of the second divine kingdom aspire towards omniscience in worlds 36–42 (only now “cosmic consciousness”), those of the third divine kingdom towards omniscience in worlds 29–35, etc.
4Those who have attained the highest world have freed themselves from all involvation into matter and as free monads (primordial atoms) have come to know themselves as the ultimate selves they have always been. Their auras are like cosmic giant suns and they radiate energy like the fountainhead of all power.
5They can, if they so wish, withdraw with a collective from out of their cosmos and begin building a new cosmos in the endless chaos of primordial matter.
1The individuals of the fifth and sixth natural kingdoms constitute the hierarchy of our planet, which has acquired atomic consciousness in the planetary worlds 46 and 45 as well as 44 and 43.
2The hierarchy is divided into seven departments, each of which works with its specialized energy that functions in accordance with the systemic law of periodicity.
3The hierarchy supervises evolution in the lower kingdoms, taking an especial interest in those at the stage of humanity who with one-pointed purpose seek to acquire the twelve essential qualities in order the better to serve life. In so doing they qualify for the fifth kingdom.
1Into the planetary government can enter individuals who have attained the second divine kingdom. The head of the planetary government belongs to the third kingdom.
2Like all governments in still higher kingdoms, the planetary government is divided into three main departments dealing with the three fundamental functions concerning the aspects of matter, motion, and consciousness. They have the ultimate responsibility that all the pertaining processes of nature work with unfailing precision. They see to it that all receive what they need for their consciousness development and that implacable justice is done to all in accordance with the law of sowing and reaping.
3In their contacts with men, the gods assume human ideal shapes, permanent envelopes of physical atomic matter, also to anchor their physical consciousness, envelopes which can easily be made visible to all.
1To enter into the solar systemic government it is necessary to have attained the third divine kingdom. It supervises, of course, everything in the solar system, receives directions from higher governments and gives directions to the planetary governments.
2It also transmits knowledge received concerning the cosmos and the Law to the extent that this is necessary to the fulfilment of the functions.
3The law of self-realization is valid in all kingdoms and all individuals have to explore their worlds by their respective means, and learn to apply the knowledge and insight gained.
1The Law is the sum total of all the laws of nature and of life: the constant relations of matter, motion, and consciousness – expressive of the nature of primordial matter and of omnipotent, inexhaustible, eternally dynamic primordial force, acting in its blind way in the imperturbable and inevitable constant relations of nature and life.
2Of this Law, science has not yet explored more than an infinitesimal fraction.
3There are laws in everything and everything is expressive of law. The gods themselves are subject to the Law. Omnipotence is possible only through absolutely faultless application of the laws in their entirety.
4In primordial matter (the chaos of the ancients) there are no laws manifest. They only appear in connection with the composition of the atoms in the cosmos.
5The further the limits of subjective and objective consciousness are extended, the more laws are discovered. Only the monads of the highest divine kingdom have knowledge of all the laws of the universe and are able to apply them correctly with unfailing precision.
6Laws of nature concern matter and motion; laws of life concern the consciousness aspect.
7The laws of life most important to mankind are the laws of freedom, unity, development, self (self-realization), destiny, reaping, and activation.
8The law of freedom says that every monad is its own freedom and its own law, that freedom is gained by law, that freedom is the right to individual character and activity within the limits of the equal right of all. (Curiosity as to the consciousness life of others is a serious mistake.)
9The law of unity says that all monads make up a unity and that every monad for superindividual consciousness expansion must realize its unity with all life.
10The law of development says that all monads develop their consciousness, that there are forces acting in different ways towards the final goal of life.
11The law of self says that every monad must itself acquire all the qualities and abilities requisite for omniscience and omnipotence, from the human kingdom onwards: understanding of laws and the responsibility following upon this.
12The law of destiny indicates what forces influence the individual in consideration of necessary experiences.
13The law of reaping says that all the good and evil we have initiated in thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds are returned to us with the same effect. Every consciousness expression has an effect in manifold ways and entails good or bad sowing which will ripen and be reaped some time.
14The law of activation says that individual development is possible only through self-initiated consciousness activity.
15A more detailed account of the laws of life is given in The Philosophers’ Stone by Laurency. Those most important for the individual are: the laws of freedom, unity, self, and activation – especially the first two.
16The laws of life make possible the greatest possible freedom and unerring justice for all. Freedom, or power, is the individual’s divine, inalienable right. It is acquired through knowledge of the Law and through unfailing application of the laws. Freedom (power) and law are the conditions of each other. Development implies purposefully applied activity in accordance with the Law. Otherwise the cosmos would degenerate into chaos.
17In monads of repulsive basic tendency, development can take the wrong course, this becoming manifest already in parasitism of plant life and in predacity of animal (and human) life. Unconscious and, to a still higher degree, conscious encroachment upon the monad’s eternally inalienable, inviolable divine freedom, limited by the equal right of all life, results in the struggle for existence and the cruelty of life.
18Life is joy, happiness, bliss in the mental and all higher worlds. Suffering is found only in the three lower regions of the physical and emotional worlds.
19Evil is all mistakes as to the Law, especially the repulsive tendency (hatred) in all its innumerable forms.
20All good and evil that befalls the individual is his own work, the result of his own application of his limited conception of right and wrong. All reap what they have sown in previous lives and often in the same life. Nothing can happen to the individual which he has not deserved by defying the Law.
21“Human dual nature” appears in the conflict between man’s “higher and lower self”, between the inevitable causal ideals of causal consciousness, which ideals the individual will be able to realize sooner or later, and “imperfect personality” in the incarnation envelopes (the qualities that the monad has acquired at the lower stages). It is part of the complete experience of life that the self will eventually have had every bad quality and reaped the consequences.
22Man learns, though incredibly slowly, from his own experiences and by reaping what he has sown. Man goes on incarnating until he has learnt all he is to learn and reaped unto the last grain what he has sown. The higher the stage of development a being has attained, the greater the effect of its mistakes as to the Law, and the greater the effect of the wrong done to it. Injustice in any respect whatsoever is absolutely precluded, and the talk about it is a manner of speech of the ignorant and envious.
23Ignorance, lawlessness, sovereign arbitrariness go together. According as man attains ever higher levels, he sees the necessity and purposefulness of law, tries to gain knowledge of laws of nature and of life, and also strives to acquire the ability of rationally applying what he knows. When he can do this, man is not only learned but also wise.
24Ignorance thinks that it can be lawless, refuse to gain knowledge of laws of nature and laws of life and apply them correctly. Nature’s law of cause and effect, life’s law of sowing and reaping, gradually teaches the ignorant and the most defiant to life, by means of innumerable painful experiences, what is rational and necessary. The ignorant must be taught the inevitability of law, and the unwilling not to encroach on the equal right of all.
25All moralists (“Pharisees” of the Gospels) infringe the laws of freedom and unity by their constant violations of the individual’s personal inviolability (their slanderousness, domineering attitudes, intrusion into the sanctity of privacy). The individual has life’s divine right to be what he is, with all his failings, faults, and vices; to think, to feel, to say, and to do what he sees fit, as long as he does not thereby infringe the equal right of others to that same inviolable freedom.
26At mankind’s present stage of development, understanding of the individual’s right to absolute integrity is lacking. How others lead their lives is not our concern, and all judgements are great mistakes. At least the so-called esotericians should understand this, but it will apparently be some time before they have learnt not to meddle in other people’s business. It is part of the ability to be silent.
27Human legal and social systems will continually be changed, until the ultimate legal system agrees with the laws of life, the development and goal of life.
1Hylozoics, the mental knowledge system elaborated by 46-self Pythagoras, is the only esoteric system to give an account of the trinity of existence and thus of the planetary hierarchy’s basic view of existence. It is to Pythagoras that we owe the reality concepts that provide the necessary foundation for scientific approach. It was, indeed, his intention to make spiritual materialism the unshakable foundation of the science of the future.
2Of the three aspects of existence, the matter aspect is the only one to make scientific exactness possible. Neither the consciousness aspect nor the motion aspect provides equally logical explanatory grounds. The best proof of this is the yoga philosophy and the old and modern “occult” systems.
3Most systems of “superphysics” launched in our times are best suited to emotionalists who do not need, do not even want, clarity, since clarity hinders the unhampered expansion of emotional imagination into infinitude, which is what the mystic needs.
4It is obvious that the intelligentsia having a philosophic and scientific training will not waste time and effort on such vague systems, especially when esoterics has been declared by all religious, philosophic, and scientific authorities to be the spiritual mishmash of mystagogues, which people have long since known all the same.
5Those who have assimilated the contents of The Problems of Reality will have no difficulty in discovering the mental shortcomings of the older systems. Those untrained in esoterics, however, should defer making such comparisons until they have thoroughly mastered hylozoics, as otherwise confusion of concepts may easily ensue. It was in order to avoid such confusion that, in the old days, no one was allowed to belong to more than one knowledge order.
6Chapters 1.4 - 1.41 constitute the hylozoician’s “shorter catechism”.
1The emotional task of religion has been that of freeing man from fear and anxiety, of giving him faith in life and in the power of good; and of mysticism in all religions that of granting enduring bliss and “the peace that passeth all understanding”.
2The task of science is to explore physical, but not superphysical reality. Without the facts of esoterics, mankind will remain ignorant of 46 of the 49 cosmic worlds, science will be able to explore only world 49.
3Philosophy, esoterics, and anthroposophy have been occupied with the problems of existence. The great difference between philosophers and esotericians is that the philosophers have generally been subjectivists relying on the correctness of their own speculations, while the esotericians have been objectivists who have constructed their systems on facts.
4In this respect the anthroposophist Steiner was an esoterician. The difference between Steiner and the esotericians is that the esotericians accepted superhuman facts from the planetary hierarchy only, whereas Steiner believed that he could himself ascertain even such facts, which is patently absurd. Nor are they to be found in the “akashic records”.
5The objection to the theosophists is that they have lacked the requisite philosophic and scientific training and that their expositions of esoterics have often been unintelligent and, in any case, inadequate, and for this reason have seemed “quasi”. Nor have the theosophists explained the essential and principal differences between the yoga philosophy and esoterics. It is not correct to say, as Blavatsky did, that all superphysical knowledge has come from “India”. It has come from the planetary hierarchy, and its esoteric knowledge orders have existed among all nations that have attained a sufficiently high level to be able to inquire intelligently into the meaning and goal of life.
6The esoterician has once and for all left the world of illusions and fictions, which mankind prefers living in, to enter into the world of reality.
The above text constitutes the essay The Problems of Reality, Part One by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book The Knowledge of Reality by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1979 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.