From the Cognitive Revolution (c.70,000 BCE), when Homo-Sapiens evolved imagination, to modern times, art in its endless visual forms has given clues to how humans record, behave and perceive the meaning of their lives. This meaning was mostly depicted figuratively until the development of visual abstraction. Much of early non-figurative art was inspired telepathically by perfected beings of great power who channelled spiritual teachings through selected human artists. The phenomena depicted in this work could not be portrayed in a “realist” or figurative mode because much phenomena is non-objective, of a spiritual nature, and not fully understood.

In spiritualism, ectoplasm is said to be formed by physical mediums while in a trance state. This material is excreted as a gauze-like substance from orifices on the medium’s body. Perfected beings, spirits or angels, are said to drape this substance over a nonphysical object, thus enabling these spirits to interact in the physical and perceivable universe. Some accounts claim that ectoplasm begins clear and almost invisible, but darkens and becomes visible, as the psychic energy becomes stronger. According to some mediums, ectoplasm cannot occur in light conditions as the ectoplasmic substance would disintegrate. Digital ectoplasm, which can be observed in higher levels of light, often requires the digital sensor of a camera to act as a medium. Digital ectoplasm discerned through telepathic photography can, under the right circumstances, be observed near the base, or trunk, of various plants in what initially appears as dew but lies in the plant’s cells just beneath the outer membrane and the membrane-bounded organelles and nucleus. Much of plant ectoplasm channels messages having to do with photosynthesis and environmental issues, although nature’s perfected beings will also use plants to transmit what is sometimes referred to as ancient wisdom.Much of this communication occurs during the plant’s cellular mitosis as an occult nursery rhyme. For the images in this study, begonia plants provided much (but not all) of a digital seance, while the camera sensor functioned as a “Ouija board” through a form of clairvoyance, or clairpixelation. The camera’s sensor was able to pick up a jewel like digital ectoplasm which was later enhanced using photographic manipulation on a computer.

No purely divine being can have an independent conscious existence before the spark which issued from the pure essence of the Absolute has passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world and acquired individuality, first by natural impulse and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts, and thus ascend through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest mind, from mineral and plant, up to the realms of the holiest archangel. When the mind becomes irradiated by enlightenment, then the human mental faculty, the intellect, becomes suffused and filled with spiritual discrimination and vision and is illuminated by the radiance of divinity. Therefore, the radiant mind is human reason lit by the light of revelation of the divine, plus human intellect and self-consciousness.

Phenomena are the impermanent, ever-changing outward appearances of things, as opposed to permanent enduring realities. Phenomena are objects of perception as opposed to objects of cognition as that which is perceived by the senses, contrasted with that which is conceived by the mind. The word correlates with both meanings of noumena. Under the first meaning it may be said that everything is phenomenal except reality; but the word may also be used relatively. Under the second meaning, phenomena is a word stressing the mechanical aspect of things, as contrasted with the unseen intelligences behind such things, such as the forces of science and the intelligent noumena of which they are the manifestations.

Induction is the process of reasoning from the parts to the whole, from the particular to the general, or from the individual to the universal; contrasted with deduction, which reasons from the whole to the parts, from the general to the particular, from the universal to the individual. Science endeavors to establish general laws by reasoning from particular observations. But it is necessary to assume that what is true in an individual case will be true in the general case of which it is only an instance. Hypotheses are necessarily and naturally regarded as provisional, subject to modification in the light of subsequent, more extended observations of nature. This method endeavors to come to an understanding of nature by a continued process of trial and error, the formulation of its laws becoming ever wider. But an essential part of this method itself is deductive, since it reasons back from the provisional hypotheses to new facts which support the refutation of them. Induction and deduction are interdependent functions of the ratiocinative mind. The data of scientific induction are sensory percepts and no amount of such data will enable ascertaining the truth about the causal worlds which underlie phenomena.

A monad is an elementary particle and one of the ultimate elements of the universe which serves as a substantial form of being but lacking a clear perception of other monads. Each monad is a center of force which is eternal and indestructible, reflecting the universe as an established harmony. A monad is a unit of consciousness as defined by Pythagoras to indicate unity. Additionally, the monad is a spark which radiates in an infinite number of rays from a primeval uncreated ray.

Number lies at the root of the manifested universe. Numbers and harmonious proportions guide the first differentiations of homogeneous substance into heterogeneous elements; and number and numbers set limits to the formative hand of nature. Reasoning minds lend a spurious reality to abstractions in which genuine realities appear in the guise of such abstraction. Number is such an apparent abstraction, known only by its effects in a world which seems real, and which regards number as an attribute. Yet nothing is more fundamental than number. Balzac noted that number is an entity, a divinity, the creative Logos itself is called the Number, meaning number one, arising out of no-number or the zero. Esoteric systems set great store by numbers — some systems more so than others — because, thoroughly mystical, numbers play a prominent part in every cosmogony. For the Pythagoreans number was a creative, emanational formative power, and the Sepher Yetsirah (Numbers of Creation) gives the whole process of evolution in numbers, and elsewhere the I Ching speaks of celestial numbers.

The sacredness of numbers begins with the great first — the one, and ends with the nought or zero — the boundless circle representing the universe. All the intervening figures, however multiplied relating to facts in nature. They are a key to the ancient views on cosmogony, including humanity and beings, and the evolution of the races, spiritually as well as physically. The circle, zero, or nought is the symbol of the all, equivalent to non-being, in contradistinction to the number one. Number one is equivalent to the cosmic monad, the odd. Odd numbers are considered to be perfect or celestial and the even numbers imperfect, manifested, or terrestrial. The cosmic one, the first, alone was cosmic unity and therefore good and harmonious, because no disharmony can to be found in the unitary one alone. One is the universal abstraction, entirely by itself and independent of every other power whether noumenal or phenomenal. The cosmic one is intimately intertwined with the universal zero, the latter being equivalent to the universal all.

The Pythagorean concept of the monad is a process of manifestation in which the monad was the first phenomenon to come into existence. This phenomenon produced the dyad as a duality which begat numeric integers and numerous abstract entities. From these numbers came points, from points came lines, from lines came two-dimensional entities, then three-dimensional entities, bodies, and eventually culminating in the four elements of the physical world: earth, water, fire and air.

In the Hi-ts’ze, the appendices to the I Ching, the universe is described as a living organism called T’ai-ch’i (the supreme being, or most ultimate). The processes of birth and rebirth, or the production of life, are due to the manifestations of tao by means of the yang and yin. To yang belong the numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9; to yin belong the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. There are then five celestial and five terrestrial numbers. These rows of five operate upon each other, and each number has another with which it corresponds. The sum of these numbers is twenty-five. It is in accordance with these factors that the processes of the universe are effected. The text of the original treatise is from a system of eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams, composed of whole and broken lines. Altering the positions of the whole and broken lines form the changes in the diagrams. This work has been assigned to Fu-Hsi  during the thirtieth century BCE. The first extant commentary on the work is assigned to Ching Wen, founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 BCE.

The tendency of evolution on an upward arc is towards unity; on a downward arc, towards diversity; and both tendencies are active in the human being. Unity may be viewed as simple or as all-inclusive as when it appears as the goal of both analysis and synthesis. Cosmic unity implies wholeness, homogeneity, uniformity, indivisibility and individuality. Its expression is cosmic space but can be applied to any individual monadic unit. Unity, in contrast with duality or multiplicity, is relative, such as a whole in relation to its parts, or the hyparxis of a hierarchy. Hyparxis refers to a realm outside of time and space. This is not a realm that is easily accessible, but something that is encountered on the path of transformation. A hyparxis is the reconciling impulse in the triad of time (past, present and future ) and later as the reconciling or at least ‘connecting’ element between fact and value, existence and essence, etc. Unity during manvantaric cosmic differentiation does not lose its origin in the vast diversities of differentiation, for the unity remains original and expresses itself at the same time as the emanated hierarchies which flow forth from it, later in time to return into it again.

There is no supreme god in the Tao system of philosophy, no demiurge or maker of the cosmos and the yearly renovation of nature is due to the spontaneity of tao. As explained in the I Ching, tao brings about the revolving mutations of the yin and yang in which there is a system of mutations of nature — the most ultimate which produced the two regulating powers of yin and yang which produce the four shapes of the seasons. Tao is the ultimate reality in which all attributes are united, it is heavy as a stone but light as a feather. It is the unity underlying plurality. Whatever is done without it fails; whatever is done by means of it, succeeds. It has neither root nor stalk, leaf nor flower. Yet upon it depends the generation and the growth of the cosmos of ten thousand things, each after its kind. Svabhavat is an equivalent, also the deep akashic abysses of the highest reaches of the cosmic anima mundi, manifesting periodically.

The process of passing from the simple to the complex is known as differentiation. Philosophically, differentiation is from homogeneity to heterogeneity and from unity to multiplicity. This does not imply that unity is less than multiplicity or diminished by it, for unity contains all that comes from it. Differentiation is much the same as manifestation in which the process of evolution on the downward arc is one of continuous differentiations, while the inverse process takes place on the upward arc. A duad represents the beginning of differentiation or departure from cosmic simplicity and wholeness. Differentiation begins after zero, from which the number one is the first differentiation. Spirit is the first differentiation from space, and primordial matter is the first differentiation from spirit. Differentiation also implies specialization of function, as is seen in biology in connection with the evolution of the cell.

A monad is a spiritual life-atom, a living being, evolving on its own plane. A life-atom is the vehicle of the monad which enlightens it, and in turn enlightens a physical atom. The ultimates of nature are atoms on the material side and monads on the energetic side. Monads are indivisible, atoms are divisible and the splitting of the atom has caused evolution to speed up, thus creating both future shock and information overload. Monads are indivisible particles containing in themselves the potentialities of all possible future development as being self-moved, self-driven spiritually indivisible entities, and the ultimates of being and self-consciousness. Monads exist in the vast expanses of the spatial deeps in which space is an infinite host of monads filled.

Pantheism is the doctrine that the root-essence of the universe is divinity, that divinity pervades throughout and is the substratum, the inmost, of all beings and things — every atom, sun, universe,  and human. Pantheism excludes the idea that deity is separate from the universe; and while monotheism and polytheism are regarded as being exclusive of each other, recognizes both as complementary albeit partial statements of truth. In pantheism everything that is, is a manifestation of an all-permeant, divine essence. Pantheism conceives the basis of evolution, by which an inner divinity, the monadic essence, or the hosts of monads progressively evolve from lower to higher manifestation, because the same ultimate essence is the very heart of each.

Life-atoms belong to all planes, functioning within each of the principles of which the human composition is built.  Thus there are divine life-atoms, spiritual life-atoms, intellectual, psychic, vital, astral, and physical life-atoms. During a lifetime those which are intimately connected with an individual are in a state of constant flux and reflux, entering and leaving in unceasing rhythms the body of their owner or host. But after death, the dominant controlling factor having departed, each group of life-atoms proceeds to peregrinate throughout their respective natural habitats. Thus when the physical body dies, the life-atoms of the body go into the soil, into plants, or into the bodies of beasts or humans— through food or by osmosis, or in breathing creatures through the air that are drawn to bodies by magnetic sympathy. This transmigration of the life-atoms is the origin of the theories of the transmigration of the human soul into beasts after death. The life-atoms belonging to the astral plane are also liberated at death and follow along the same lines as the physical life-atoms as they find their way into and out of other astral vehicles with which they are in magnetic sympathy. In this way they help form the astral vehicles of individuals of the three lower kingdoms as well as of the animal and human kingdoms.

The success of magnetic healing arises from the fact that human or animal magnetism is a fluid, and hence an emanation flowing from the healer to the sufferer. All human beings have this magnetic fluid, but some natural-born healers have the instinctive power of projecting or emitting their own magnetism, which flows from different parts of the body, but especially from the tips of the fingers, the eyes, or the hands. Magnetism is a manifestation of the universal cosmic electromagnetism, life-energy, or fohat. Magnetism, which is the alter-ego of electricity, is that aspect or functioning of cosmic electromagnetism causing attraction and repulsion, and distinguished by bipolarity. All electromagnetism arises from akasha, and the bipolarity of magnetism and electricity is simply the fundamental bipolarity in cosmic structure inherent in the akasha of the cosmic womb in which worlds are born. Magnetism is an emanation from the beings or entities which produce it from their own inner vital power. It flows forth from them as an aura, usually unconsciously. Thus magnetism has an auric efflux or fluidity which finds its foundation in the vitality or pranic sources of the beings or things from which it flows. Those who are especially endowed with the faculty of arousing it in themselves and projecting it can use it for either corrective, or for evil and destructive, purposes.

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. As such, there are  “lunar monads” known as pitris who are the ancestors of humanity. They entered the cycle of evolution as the astral doubles of early humanity.

There are also both angelic and human monads. The former is but an essence. There are countless animal and human monads but only one monad manifests in the mineral kingdom. Within the higher animals the monad increases continually awakening sensations.

The reincarnating ego is used to signify a monadic unity. This reincarnating ego is the combined spiritual, intellectual, and psychological fruit gathered in the monad at the end of each individual life of an embodied entity. Atmamatra is a primordial spiritual particle, monad, or elementary portion of material which is the spiritual atom as opposed to the elementary elements of the self.

Egos are indirect or reflected consciousnesses, seeing themselves as apart from other egos, each having its own individualized characteristics. But the self is the purest and strongest intuition of being, as a universal principle, and as the summit of the hierarchy called humanity. It is pure consciousness, the essential principle which gives to every person knowledge of selfhood. As it has no egoic consciousness, it seems to be unconsciousness. To become self-conscious, a vehicle is needed, so that the self may see itself reflected as in a mirror. In humans what is called the personal self is a compound, in which the true selfhood ray shines dimly through many screens. This causes various mental states to be regarded as pertaining to our individuality, though they are actually influences which flow into and out of the mind, and to which we attribute a false sense of ownership, as when we say, “I am happy,” instead of “I am experiencing happiness.” Liberation frees us from these false selves as we abandon the heresy of separateness, and see the true self within us as being identical with that self in all beings.

Certain human beings, because of a common monadic origin in an identical spiritual source, are of the same spiritual family, and in consequence have bonds among themselves of intensive sympathy, and sympathetic intellectual understanding and processes of mentation. These feelings cause them to feel more at-one with each other than with human beings similarly united but not derivative from the same spiritual ray. Yet all these different spiritual rays converge or coalesce on a loftier plane into another cosmic entity still more sublime than the former ones. This is but one of many others which on a divine plane still loftier than the last, find their common point of origin in a cosmic individuality still grander.

Humanity is only partially self-conscious, because they can contemplate only part of their being; that in them which is now the contemplator may become part of what is contemplated. As the subject, the knower, shifts upwards and inwards as more and more of the vestures pass into the category of objects or what is known. The unknown manifests the universe in order to attain full self-consciousness, and in humans, the microcosm, an unself-conscious spark of divinity passes through stages of evolution and experience in order to achieve relatively full self-consciousness. The potentiality of self-consciousness, however, is in every atom. In order to become self-conscious, spirit must pass through every cycle of cosmic being, until every ego has attained full self-consciousness as a human being or equivalent entity. Early humanity was not self-conscious. It was the intellectual fires which gave the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness. While individualism is a necessary stage in evolution, human evolution is on the road towards realization of the unity of all selves. Hence selfishness is the greatest obstacle in spiritual development. It is not its grosser manifestations that are most harmful, but the subtler forms in which it may wear the mask of virtue. It is overcome by aspiration towards the source of our being, by recognizing the barrenness and futility of self-seeking and its destructive results, and by the cultivation of a primal instinct of altruism which is at the heart of every being. Selfhood in its sense of concentration on the lower self and its interests is widespread today. It is a paradox that in selflessness is found the noblest and highest emanation of self-expression of the spiritual self in humanity. We strive to wean our lower self from attachments to objects of personal desire and to achieve a feeling which pertains to a divine essence. Without altruism, no society, whether of animals or humans, could hold together. Instead of regarding self as a difficult goal, we can regard it as an original “home” from which we have wandered.

Spirit differs radically from matter.  A finite spirit is independent of its body, and as such, the physical universe is unhampered by spiritual law. The universe, though essentially a unity, appears as a plurality of monads, manifesting under the dual — yet essentially illusory — aspects of formless, or abstract, spirit and matter. There is therefore no essential difference between spirit and matter, these being but mutually contrasted aspects of one underlying and all-pervading abstract substance. The three hypostases of objectivization are privation, form, and matter. Privation does not signify emptiness or nothingness, for the term means that which precedes form and is actively manifested as the root cause and source of the latter. Because it is formless it is called privation as having no form thus implying limitation or constriction. Form also is equivalent to vehicle, body or embodiment. Because an absolutely formless thing would have no qualities by which it could be distinguished from any other entity, the word is interpreted as without body or form. Hence it implies that entities in the formless spheres exist as ideas, which will become embodied in various lower planes in another era during an immensely long cosmic existence. Cosmic pralaya is not such for formless entities, as only monadic forms are dissolved. The monad does not descend into the planes of matter, but shoots forth from itself a multitude of rays. Each ray forms the essential nature of the complex evolving being to which it pertains, and hence the monad is the primal or ultimate source of all that being’s life and characteristic attributes, the immortal part of the being, whether that being be human, animal, vegetable, mineral, or whatever. The rays from a person’s individual monad which form the complex essential nature of being, are the sources of the different centers in the human constitution. These sources persist throughout all the evolutionary transformations in the life cycle and gather the life-atoms at each new incarnation of the reincarnating ego.

The dissolution and manifestation of nature is called the elemental pralaya because the universe then returns to its original elements. In one sense, it is partial because the dissolution reaches as far as the elements and there stops. The inner portions or constitution of the universe remain in status quo, which does not signify that they are inactive — any more so than the reincarnating ego is inactive when the lower quaternary of the human constitution undergoes its prakritika pralaya or death. A prakrita pralaya occurs,at the end of an age when the cosmos goes into pralaya. At that time everything that exists is resolved into the primal elements only to be reissued or emanated anew at the end of the long pralaya. Prakritika pralaya may apply to a globe when it refers to the cosmic pralaya, the resolving of the prakritis of nature goes beyond the cosmic elements and are then resolved into the One. During a pralaya, matter crumbles or vanishes away into something else that interpenetrates it. Pralaya is the state of latency or rest between two manvantaras of great life cycles. During pralaya, everything disappears from the phenomenal universe and is transferred into a noumenal essence which periodically throughout eternity gives birth to all the phenomena of nature. Pralaya is dissolution of the visible into the invisible, the heterogeneous into the homogeneous as the objective universe returns its primal and eternally productive cause, to reappear at the following cosmic dawn. Pralaya is like a state of nonbeing for all existences on the lower material planes. A pralaya is not the same as an obscuration, because an obscuration is the passage of a life-wave from a globe or equivalent celestial body to a globe on another plane. During such an obscuration the globe abandoned by the life-wave remains in status quo — in a refrigerated condition, so to speak — awaiting the influx of the succeeding life-wave.

Because the mineral kingdom is limited to a single monad humanity developed chrysopoeia, or the transmutation of “base metals” (e.g., lead) into “noble metals” (particularly gold), as well as the creation of an elixir of immortality,  the creation of panaceas able to cure any disease, and the development of an alkahest, a universal solvent. However,  a potential problem involving alkahest is that, if it dissolves everything, then it cannot be placed into a container because it would dissolve the container. The alkahest from a metaphysical, psychological, and mystical aspect is the higher self which, by its intrinsic energies, working upon matter or the base “metals” produces in time the pure gold of the mind. Alchemists considered gold as a masculine deposit of the emanative fire of the sun. While divine alchemy seeks to purify the gold of human nature, physical alchemy seeks gold by transmutation from baser metals. In contrast, brass is mentioned as signifying the baser elements of passional matter; and silver is the watery or feminine principle of the moon. The “Golden Rule” is the law of humanity’s higher nature, which is love and harmony, as contrasted with the law of a lower nature, which makes for personal separateness and sets individuals at variance with their neighbor. Its realization in thought and conduct is an indispensable requisite to attainment on the path of wisdom and liberation.

In cosmic evolution, no sooner does duality in evolutionary manifestation supervene, than matter, of necessity, appears as the other pole or alter ego of spirit, from the dual nature of manifestation itself. It is only by the interaction of polar forces that evolution can proceed, a process everywhere, mystically or theologically, typified by various conflicts. The same duality is present in human nature in which the adversary is the lower quaternary manifesting through the terrestrial nature, which first dominates, and then eventually is dominated by, the upper triad or spirit.

The hierarchical system on which nature is constructed of one life, one intelligence, and hence one plan ruling throughout all the hierarchical branches, and yet every hierarchical branch containing in its essence all free action within the confines of its field, demonstrates that there is no reconciliation between the free will of individuals in any part of nature and common life, vitality, or the intelligence which permeates the Absolute. This difficulty arises in exoteric spiritual systems which envision a will in humanity wrongly supposed to be different from the spiritual laws founded in the cosmic intelligence. A person uses their free will as much in refraining as in acting. Another difficulty lies in the misuse of the adjective “free,” which is understood to mean a will free from cosmic unity, and all too often running more or less wild and contrary to cosmic structure. Reluctance by humans to acknowledge the mandates of cosmic law induces the varieties of evil, disharmony, and even disease with which human life is all too often cursed. The way to freedom, peace, wisdom, and love is by subordinating the individual human will to harmony with the spiritual.

The antahkarana is an intermediary between something that is low to something that is high. Every messenger of truth and light is an antahkarana between the divine and humanity.  Every great initiate is an antahkarana between humanity and the spiritual essence of their own inner purity. Earth was pounded by meteorites, mostly made of metal, during the first half-billion years of its existence. Meteorite collisions also melted the earth’s crust, leading to geothermal activity and the more complex compounds used in metabolism. Just as a lump of coal goes through numerous initiations to become a diamond, so likewise must humanity evolve to become an antahkarana.  

Initiation is a process by which beings develop the power and knowledge to work for the cosmos through spiritual expansion toward higher levels of consciousness. Just as minerals evolved into precious metals, spiritually enlightened beings were in past incarnations ordinary humans, but have undergone a series of spiritual transformations. These initiatory transformations are forms of spiritual alchemy which create avatars as true embodiments of spiritual perfection, driven by noble goals.

Phenomena such as earthquakes are generally the end-products of a chain of causation operating not only on the physical plane but also on other cosmic planes. A study of the geology of the earth’s crust as regards the lie of the rocks, the position of faults, the presence of volcanic activities, etc., may indicate the places most likely to be affected. However, the relation between earthquakes and the positions of the heavenly bodies is a result of events on the mental plane of the earth. The more subtle forms of force-matter or astral light form the links between the physical earth and the mental state of the living beings upon it, and rapid and more or less violent physical cataclysms may be regarded as the final effects of a sudden release of tension in those higher realms. Unusual psychic conditions perceptible to animals and occasionally to humans precede earthquakes many hours before a shock, and long before the seismographs show even the smallest tremor.

Many ancient peoples knew how to avail themselves of the magical virtues of precious stones. The sapphire was especially valued because it enshrines some of the influences of Venus as transmitted through the higher aspect of the Moon, and so is able to induce equanimity and banish evil thoughts. The sapphire will open barred doors and dwellings for the spirit of humanity as it produces more peace than any other gem, but those who would wear it must lead a pure and holy life.

The Greeks worshiped stones. The Ophites and Siderites had serpent stones and star stones. There is  the Lia Fail or speaking stone of Westminster and Pliny’s stones which ran away when a hand approached them. Likewise, there is the vast subject of talismans and of gemstones with potent properties. A stone is an organism enshrining a divine spark or monad. The difference between the stone and the human is that what is expressed in humans is latent in the stone. Why were the hierophants of genuine magic or occult science able to evoke from a stone its latent potencies? The skill of the magician knows what can be done by placing stones in a particular grouping, perhaps with certain ceremonies, etc. Why do particular stones, like particular plants, animals, or humans, possess particular virtues? Physical matter is a concretion of universal light or radiation, but it needs the eye of a seer to perceive what starry virtue lies sleeping in a gem or other talisman.

Light, as a form of radiation, is an efflux or substance which can be traced back to a source or focus which gave it birth and from and through which it therefore pours as an extension of vitality. Light, and most other forms of radiation, partake of both an undulatory and corpuscular character, for in one sense it is both, and in another sense it is neither, for its undulations or discrete particles are merely the methods by which it subjects itself to human examination. In itself it is both force and substance, and as everything in the universe is in an unceasing state of vibration or constant movement, even a discrete particle — because of their vibrational activities — is as readily conceivable as undulatory in its character as corpuscular. The important thing about light is not so much its modes of motion or manifestation, but the fact that it is the vital efflux or substance flowing forth from a living being, whether microcosmic or macrocosmic. The same observations, mutatis mutandis, may be said of other forms of radiation — electricity, magnetism (electricity’s alter-ego), heat, and even, on far higher planes, thought and consciousness.

The planets are individual manifestations of conscious intelligences, their distances from the sun being generally in rhythmical progression and their motions directed by mind and volition. The universe is the product of cosmic mind or intelligence, whose activities manifest on the material plane as the laws of nature. The universe and all in it, proceeding from cosmic consciousness, is imbued throughout with the qualities and attributes of its divine originators — energizing and guiding all just as the ancient teaching of analogy is the master key to understanding universal nature. Monads may be looked upon as the seeds of cosmic life, life-centers or energy points, and naught in the universe is the product of chance, but is the offspring of mind. Thus the solar system itself sprang from such a cosmic seed or monad, and the same holds true for the planets, nebulae, comets, and all other individually enduring cosmic bodies. Comets are coordinated with earlier and later stages of nebular evolution, playing an activating part in the formation of individual celestial bodies. The planets did not emerge from the sun, but the sun is their “co-uterine sibling” with the same nebular origin. The sun is the great distributor of light and other radiations, including vital energy, throughout the solar system, and is itself a member of a hierarchy of solar beings. The sacred planets are: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn — the Sun and Moon being substitutes for esoteric and invisible planets. The complete number of the planets of a solar system is twelve, which is the number of globes composing a planetary chain. These twelve sacred planets are closely linked with the twelve houses of the zodiac. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are said not to belong to the solar system (nor are they included among the twelve sacred planets), but are members of the larger universal solar system.

The extraterrestrial minerals which had formed the geological substance of earth in conjunction with hydrothermally heated water also created organisms. Additionally these minerals evolved into diamonds and other precious stones including gold. The diamond is a symbol of the imperishable attributes of the cosmic quinta essentia — the fifth essence of medieval mystics. It is the highest element in ancient and medieval philosophy that permeates all nature and is the substance composing the celestial bodies. Quinta essentia is the essence of substance in its purest and most concentrated form, being too spiritual to manifest in material realms directly but sending into the world of manifestation its diamond heart.

The ’ophanim signifies the turning or revolving of celestial bodies, especially the planets, with a focus on the indwelling angelic hosts which give the celestial bodies their respective individualities, characteristic, energies, substances, and which produce and control their various cyclical movements in both space and time. The ’ophanim is one of the ten classes of the angelic hosts comprising the planetary realm, as opposed to the lower elemental realm.

When an avatar appears or whenever an effort is made to aid humanity along spiritual lines, the powers of darkness automatically react along their own lines. This corresponding tendency to evil is the fundamental significance of doom.

Fetahil is a creative power mandated to form humanity, but failed to do so because of its extreme purity. Thus other and lower powers — Iukabar Zivo — completed the work. In the structure of the universe, all creative powers of too high a rank are unable, because of spiritual  righteousness and lofty status, to form the lower planes until the intermediate ranges, in the gradually descending ladder of life, have been evolved or emanated into manifestation.

The simplest chemical compounds through random physical processes eventually produced simple organic entities. These natural, material entities produced, by accretion of environmental experience, ever more complex and evolved structures forming a continuum of physical evolution, until consciousness resulted. Because all evolution lies latent within the essence of each entity, humanity has evolved most recently from the anthropoids. By contrast, the most spiritual, highly evolved entities, working with the least evolved kingdoms at the opening of planetary manifestation, gradually built up the inner and outer vehicles necessary for the expression of innate consciousness within those kingdoms of nature. The lower kingdoms found manifestation through the more evolved, so that the human kingdom became the origin of all the kingdoms below it. As such, the lower kingdoms of nature came to birth through the proto-human stock of earlier evolutionary periods.

An avatar is that which passes down a celestial energy or an individualized complex of celestial energies to become a celestial being in order to overshadow and illuminate a human being. These divine rays come down at the cyclic time of each of the evolved human’s various incarnations. These avataric descents do not pertain solely to a race or solar system, because nature repeats itself by analogy, and the same line of enlarging understanding of evolutionary development takes place in all spheres mutatis mutandis.

Cosmic fohat is a bipolar vital electricity. As the bridge between spirit and matter, fohat is the collection of intelligent forces through which cosmic ideation impresses itself upon substance, thus forming the various worlds of manifestation. In the manifested universe, it is that electric vital power which unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first impulse which becomes in time law. Fohat becomes the propelling force or the active power which causes the One to become Two and Three . . . then fohat is transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms and makes them aggregate and combine. Fohat is ever-present and active from the primordial beginnings of a manvantara to its last end, nor does it then actually pass out of existence, but becomes quiescent or latent, sleeping or dormant during the succeeding cosmic pralaya. Fohatic magnetism is the spiritual magnetism or electricity maintained individually in each entity, from subatomic to galactic. The twelve signs of the zodiac each has its own fohatic magnetism which together form the characteristic quality of the galaxy. These twelve magnetisms, which are actually six bipolar magnetisms, are also responsible for the precession of the equinoxes.

Nitya pralaya is the constant destruction of all that is. It represents continuous dissolution, taking place without cessation in everything from a sun or planet to the atom. It is continuous change, which can take place only by the destruction of the preceding condition or state, a state in which the indwelling entity remains, while its various principles and vehicles undergo incessant change. Nitya thus has no absolute reference to time period, but is the unceasing, continuous changes or modifications of living things or beings, to growth and decay, life and death, as exemplified by the continuous change of the cells of our bodies. It is the opposite of nitya sarga which is the endless productive or generative activity of the universe manifesting as a continuous creation or productive activity, which proceeds from within outwards as the emanative force of the cosmic hierarchy or cosmic monad.

The conservation of energy is a theory that the total energy of any material system is a quantity which cannot be increased or decreased by any action among the parts, and that when energy seems to disappear it is merely transformed into an equivalent quantity of another mode of energy. The theory is an affirmation that something cannot be created out of nothing or resolved into nothing because there is a constant flow of force into any such physical or material system from sources exterior to a “closed material system.”  Such forces are not exterior but closed material systems of phenomena on the physical plane of inner and powerful perceptions which produce physical systems as an appearance — real enough for the entities within it while it lasts, but vanishing once the inner, controlling forces are withdrawn. When this system vanishes, the atoms simply disappear because the cohering energies which make them are withdrawn. This irreconcilability between atoms and perceptual vibrations is discerned when light is the effect produced in matter by light itself, which is one of the modes or effects of cosmic vital electricity — of fohat acting on the terrestrial planes. Thus, the forces of science become mere abstractions.

Physical bodies are three-dimensional and anything with fewer or more dimensions is not a physical body. In mathematics we may assume as many or few so-called dimensions as we like, as independent variables, and use this formulation in the interpretation of phenomena. Thus we can represent motion or position in time by a vector or a line, and devise a special interpretation of physical phenomena, which we may call a space-time continuum. If we imagine the existence of one, two, or four-dimensional physical bodies it is easy to calculate how many sides and edges, such a transcendental body would have, supposing it could exist. But such calculations are purely algebraic. Such speculations have been used to explain phenomena such as spiritualism and UFOs. However, this dimensional calculus is only useful for the interpretation of nonphysical ideas such as the phenomena of thought or emotion — where physical concepts have been abstracted from the mind.

Modern spiritualism is an unconscious blundering into necromancy. If the astral remains of the dead are really called up, then the normal processes of their dissolution are interfered with. If they appear, but are not called up, then they have been impersonated by still more harmful and dangerous denizens of the lower astral light.

Like light, consciousness can manifest only by means of a vehicle, and it can have various degrees of manifestation according to the planes of perception. Every manifested entity is conscious to some degree, and is an expression of divine consciousness or spirit. Enlightenment is said to be a latent spiritual consciousness which becomes manifest intellectually as mind, so far as the human constitution goes. Human consciousness is closely linked to the senses and the term consciousness is often used as alternative to spirit as the purest form of cosmic force or cosmic force-substance. There are states or degrees of consciousness, according to the level on which the conscious essence is manifested. Therefore, it is possible to call one state unconscious by contrast with another, as when we compare waking consciousness with the consciousness of sleep or trance.

Modern discussions of chrysopoeia, or alchemy, are generally split into an examination of its exoteric practical applications and its esoteric spiritual aspects although both applications are complementary. The athanor is the self-feeding furnace of the alchemists, and also a transmitting agent formed of astral substance or fluid. Electricity is the upper rung of existence, and astral fluid, the athanor of the alchemists, is its lowest.

The ability to walk unharmed across a bed of live coals, or to handle fire and heated objects with impunity is well known to many ordinary fakirs, sorcerers, and adepts. Likewise, some mediums are rendered invulnerable to fire as a cause produced consciously and at will. All these cases result from a compression of the astral fluid already existing about a person which forms an elastic shell, impenetrable by any physical object. This invisible shell of compressed astral fluid also accounts for instances where a person cannot be shot. In these cases the bullets appear just beyond the muzzle of the weapon, quiver in the air, and fall to the ground, as if meeting an impenetrable barrier.

The cintamani is a magical jewel, which manifests whatever one wishes. It is the philosopher’s stone serving as an alchemical vehicle that turns the human body into immortal gold. Other properties include the ability to transmute base metals into gold or silver, and the ability to heal all forms of illness and prolong the life of any person who consumes a small part of this jewel. Further attributes of this vehicle include the transmutation of common crystals into precious stones and diamonds.

A philosopher’s stone can be created by an alchemical method known as the Magnum Opus. This stone produces the process used to transmute a lesser substance into a higher form; usually lead into gold.

Atonement is reconciliation of that which is lower, with that which is higher. In its best sense atonement means the becoming at one between the human ego and its spiritual counterpart, where the life or vitality of the lower personal being is offered up as a sacrifice, willing and utterly joyful, to the higher self. All forces of nature originally spring from a common source, a cosmic spiritual unit, which is the heart of nature itself. Hence it is no more possible to divorce attraction from its alter ego repulsion than it would be to have a stick which has only one end. This reconciliation applies directly to forces of gravitation, which is a bipolarity similar to electricity being recognized as both a positive attraction and negative repulsion. Just as human beings, because of the bipolarity in their vital auras feel attracted to, repelled by, or both from other human beings, producing the strong sympathies and antipathies which are so well known, so likewise does gravity operate. Celestial bodies are not only strongly or weakly attracted to each other, but are likewise strongly or weakly repelled by each other although their spiritual counterparts are frequently reconciled harmoniously.

Attraction, and hence gravitation, is a manifestation of cosmic desire, which draws together separate things into unities. Gravitation, like all the other phenomena of nature, is attributed to living beings with the vital electricity or vital magnetism emanating from these beings. This electricity or magnetism is one of the phenomena of life and of cosmic intelligence. In the lower magnitudes it is found in and among the molecules, atoms, and electronic particles where the same observations apply. Cohesion among the infinitesimals is the microcosmic working of the same fundamental quality that manifest itself in macrocosmic phenomena, such as gravitation.When the great period of the universal cosmic pralaya occurs, and the universe is indrawn, the spiritual entities then enter into their paranirvana, which means exactly what is meant by the death of a human being. They are drawn by their spiritual gravitational attractions into still higher hierarchies of being, into still higher spiritual realms, rising and growing and learning. While the lower elements of the cosmos, the body of the universe follow their own particular gravitational attractions as the physical body turns to dust. When the clock of eternity points once again to the hour for the cosmos to ‘come forth into light,’ then in the distant abysms of space and time the cosmic life-centers are aroused into activity once more.

The cosmic “divine” is both transcendent and immanent, allowing manifestation to break into innumerable rays which produce various deific powers in inner and outer nature. Each of these inherent divinities, however, emanate from an all-encompassing and forever unmanifested origin. Various universes spring from this rootless root at periodic intervals called manvantaras, and then resolve back into the pre–manvantaric condition or pralaya, only to issue forth again when the pralaya of whatever magnitude has run its course. Therefore, at one and the same time divinity is transcendent and immanent, eternal and unmanifest, while its rays or cosmic sparks of whatever magnitude are periodic and manifested. Hence from each manifested cosmic hierarch proceed the multiple rays, to which in various theogonies are given names and attributes of superior deities. The demiurge is a deity in its creative aspect, not a personal deity, but an abstract term denoting a host of creative powers. The chief divinities are the cosmic elements originating in and from a primordial element.Out of cosmic ideation springs the activity of universal mind — the collective aggregate of all individualized consciousnesses everywhere. The appearance and disappearance of worlds is a continuous process in an endless chain of interlocking cosmic hierarchies. As one of these hierarchies comes into existence it is like an exhalation of divine breath, and each such exhalation is a thought of cosmic ideation which becomes a world. This breath is cosmic ideation entering into a manvantara and is the root of all individual consciousness everywhere. Just as pre-cosmic ideation is regarded as the root of consciousness, so pre-cosmic substance is the spiritual substratum of matter. Manvantara is produced by means of the interlocking and interacting motion of cosmic ideation with primordial cosmic substance. Further, fohat is the intelligent energy behind this interlocking activity, which during manvantara joins the two together.

Cosmic consciousness grouped under thought, will, understanding, and feeling, are collectively expressed as universal mind. During deep sleep, the human mind is in abeyance on the physical plane. Consciousness is not affecting the physical brain as in waking hours. Similarly in the cosmos at the manvantaric dawn, universal mind “was not” because there was, as yet, no vehicle for its expression through the cosmic hierarchies. Universal mind remained during pralaya in a state of intense spiritual-intellectual activity, as the permanent root of subsequent cosmic mental action arising during manvantara. Universal mind has various applications, because nature is built on analogical structure and function, and hence what applies to the great likewise applies to the small. Thus universal mind is applicable either to a solar system, a galactic system, or a system comprising a number of galaxies, etc.  As such, it stands for the higher ranges of the astral light as the storehouse of ideas impressed upon it by the creative spiritual forces, and the transmitter of them to the world of material and physical objectivity. In this view it would be the source of the intermediate human principles.Cosmic ideation and cosmic substance are one in their primordial character, yet as the reawakening of the universal mind into manvantara needs the appropriate cosmic fields of action, cosmic substance may be said to be the manvantaric vehicle of cosmic ideation. Conversely, during cosmic pralaya, all the varied differentiations of cosmic substance are resolved back or indrawn once again into cosmic unity, a subjective condition, and hence during the cosmic pralaya cosmic ideation can no longer be called active, but passive.

During a manvantara the one uniform and non-compounded spirit becomes differentiated into the incomprehensibly vast varieties of manifested nature; whereas during pralaya differentiation vanishes and returns into the non-compounded homogeneity of the cosmic spirit.

Esotericism is often viewed as a perennially hidden, inner tradition. A second perspective sees esotericism as a category that encompasses movements which embrace an “enchanted” world-view in the face of increasing disenchantment. A third view regards esotericism as a category encompassing all of Western culture’s “rejected knowledge” that is accepted neither by the scientific establishment nor by orthodox religious authorities.

Apocrypha is applied to writings regarded as esoteric, for private instruction, and of profounder import than exoteric writings; but the rise of bogus esoteric schools has slowly brought the word into contempt and clothed it with its later meaning of spurious or doubtful.

The term philosophia perennis, has been used since the Renaissance and of which scholasticism made much use. The term signifies the totality of primordial and universal truths and therefore the metaphysical axioms whose formulation does not belong to any particular system.

Although the idea that varying viewpoints could be categorized together under the rubric of “esotericism” developed in the late eighteenth century, esoteric currents were largely ignored as a subject of academic enquiry. In Europe during the eighteenth century, amid the Age of Enlightenment, these esoteric traditions came to be regularly categorized under the labels of “superstition,” “magic,” and “the occult.”

Aporrheta refers to secret or mystical instructions delivered to a candidate for initiation in the Mysteries. These Mysteries are facts of rigidly esoteric character learned by adepts through initiation which are improper to divulge to the uninitiated — hence spoken of as forbidden. Arrhetos is whatever is considered too holy, too sacred, or improper in every aspect to divulge to the public whether in speech or writing.

The kabiri are four lower classes of spiritual entities otherwise known as pitris, kumaras, and agnishvattas — all children of the cosmos who are held in the highest veneration by those who are initiated into the Mysteries.

Panpsychists maintain that consciousness emerges from the combination of billions of subatomic consciousnesses, just as the brain emerges from the organization of billions of subatomic particles. But how do these tiny consciousnesses combine?

In working upon the physical body, prana automatically uses the linga-sarira (model-body) as its vehicle of expression during earth-life. Prana may be said to be the psychoelectric veil or field manifesting in the individual as vitality. The life-atoms of prana fly instantly back, at the moment of physical dissolution, to the natural pranic reservoirs of the planet. The atoms impregnated with the life-principle are partially transmitted to progeny by heredity, and partially are drawn once more together and become the animating principle of a new body in every new incarnation. The term jiva is sometimes used similarly to prana, however prana means outbreathing and jiva means life per se. There is a universal or cosmic jiva or life principle, just as there are innumerable hosts of individualized jivas, which are the atoms of the former similar to drops in the ocean of cosmic life. These individualized jivas are relatively eternal, and correspond to the term monad whereas prana is applied to the life-fluid or jivaic aura when manifesting in the human constitution. The three forms of pranayama include puraka (inhaling), kumbhaka (retaining), and rechaka (exhaling). Pranayama is a very different thing from the advice given by doctors to breathe deeply, and to fill the lungs with fresh air. Pranayama should never be practiced by anyone unless under the guidance of initiated gurus who teach it only in rare cases to certain pupils for karmic purposes.

In the astral-vital organisms of living beings the breath is called prana. This is not limited to the respiratory functions, but includes what physiologists might call nerve currents operating in all parts of the body, of which the pulmonary diastole and systole is only a particular manifestation. The ceaseless alternate outflowing and inflowing of cosmic life or hierarchies is called the Great Breath from its analogy to physiological breathing, which implies incessant alternating motion, expansion and contraction, of life, air, wind, or spirit. The human monad reincarnates into a center of consciousness known as the jiva. The jiva becomes prana when a child is born and begins to breathe. Like a sponge immersed in water, the interior of the sponge is similar to the prana, while the water outside the sponge is the jiva.

The astral body, model-body, or linga-sarira is connected with the physical body by an extensible cord of astral-vital substance, which allows the astral to separate locally from the physical for a certain distance, as happens in sleep and trance, without severing the actual connection. When the cord is severed, however, physical death ensues. This cord is both magnetic and of odic force.

Everything on earth is the shadow or reflection of its prototype in superior inner spheres. Matter is the shadow of spirit, the human linga-sarira (model-body) is called the shadow-body, and similarly the astral light is called the shadow of cosmic substance, both representing the nether pole of their respective higher counterparts.  A shadow is what enables manifestation itself by giving to light objective reality — it is the necessary corollary which completes light or goodness — their creator on earth. Every divinity has its accompanying dark aspect of shadow, frequently called its veil, sheath, of vehicle.

The law of cycles arises out of the ever-unceasing alternations of the Great Breath of spirit in the universe. Abstract absolute motion, as the worlds evolve, assumes an ever-growing tendency to circular movement. Hence arise the wheels and globes of cosmic evolution and the rounds of the evolutionary life-waves. Motion is repetitive, ever returning to similar, but not identical, points. The geometrical symbol is the helix, which combines the cyclic with the progressive motion; if the axis of the helix is itself a circle, a vortex results, thus creating wheels within wheels as the process advances to further degrees of complexity. The ancients divided time into endless cycles with all periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration.

Matter is alive, conscious in some degree, and vibrationally responsive to the laws of nature, and the same general principles apply also to diseases in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. The vital currents of human electricity connect the conscious person with their body by the living wires of nerves. The rhythmic motion or natural harmony vibrating in each cell and organ at its own rate, is responsive to the universal vibration or Great Breath which in other modes of motion manifests as heat, light, sound, density, etc. But beyond the electrical and vibrational states of the body, and above the mental influence, is the essential self, the source of all harmony or rhythmic procedures keyed to this harmony and striving to raise the lower nature to act in unison with its finer and greater powers.

There is no non-living matter, for even rocks are concreted living monads, which because of their temporarily passing through a state of concretion do not manifest the innate powers and functions of vitality which they do on inner and invisible planes. The only distinction between what is popularly called living and non-living matter is the differences in organic development on the physical plane. Everything is always alive — in organized beings of flesh, in the vegetation, and in the rocks. Magnetism and electricity, forms of radiation, are manifestations of cosmic vitality and atoms and their component particles, being themselves electrical in essence, are life particles. In a long forgotten epoch of past history, spontaneous generation was on earth the most common way by which life broke through into the physical plane from the inner invisible worlds. Spontaneous generation has changed its methods now, almost escaping detection, in the genesis of terrestrial life. Every point in space, every particle of material substance, is a living being or life-atom. Such a life-atom finding itself in proper physical surroundings on a physical plane, and  impelled by its own karmic urge, will begin to express itself on this plane and gather nourishment to itself, first by osmosis from the surrounding ether or air, and finally from the environing matter of the place where it is. What takes place in the history of the life-germ on earth today, as in the growth of the human seed into the embryo and thereafter into the human child, is but a more complicated picture of what spontaneous generation was in the early history of the earth, when almost any point of physical matter was quivering with life and desired to self-express itself through evolutionary unfolding as a living being. Every star is the embodiment of a conscious living being, pursuing its own pathways of destiny, and intimately bound together not only with its own planetary family but with all the other stars and planets in the galaxy to which it belongs.

The one eternal element is abstract space, coexistent with endless duration, primordial substance, and unending motion as the breath of one element. Perpetual motion is ever-becoming, ever-present, and ever-existing. Thus perpetual motion is an irresolvable first principle, and from it proceed relatively perpetual motions, such as the motions of the celestial orbs. All motion is in one sense perpetual. When motion is stopped by concussion, heat is generated; and thus the motion continues, so that it could be assumed that the same amount of motion will affect the same amount of matter for ever. The physical universe is conceived as matter and motion, being the productions of originating substance and hence, illusory in their appearances and phenomena, both in essence are indestructible, uncreated, and eternal. More so is the ultra-physical, when considered as noumena apart from manifested physical productions. The equation of energies of perpetual motion can always be made to balance outside factors, such as the earth’s rotation. If thought and volition are regarded as forms of energy, the scope of the problem is greatly enlarged because perpetual motion is possible but not in the way in which it is interpreted.The music of the spheres is an extremely archaic philosophy which states that the world was called forth out of chaos by sound or harmony, and that the universe is constructed on harmonic proportions. The intervals between planets correspond to musical sounds, so perfectly consonant, that they produce the sweetest melody, which is inaudible to humans, by reason of the greatness of the sound, which our ears are incapable of receiving. Every monad or life-atom, is in constant motion, and as it moves emits a sound, its own keynote, and this sound is in musical harmony with nature’s all-inclusive harmonic symphonies. Furthermore, every particle of matter, every physical atom, in its incessant movements produces a sound which is a song, so that if we had the power of spiritual hearing (genuine clairaudience), we would be able to hear this unimaginably grand symphony of sounds. In such a state we would hear the grass growing and the opening of a flower would itself be a marvelous natural orchestral performance.

Force is an effect produced on matter, including the unknown cause of that effect. It is a definite measurable quantity, usable in calculating the quantitative relation between phenomena. But force remains a mystery. If it is an inherent property of matter, then matter becomes a self-moving entity, a divine thing in its essence, but if it acts on matter from outside, then where does it inhere? Is it an independent existence? The forces of science are effects produced on the physical plane by elementals or nature forces, which are themselves secondary causes and the effects of primary causes, ultimately of divine origin, which exist behind the veil of terrestrial phenomena. Eternal motion gives rise to the dual manifestation of force and matter, twin aspects of the same substance. In the universe force may be generalized as a unity, just as substance or consciousness may — but just as there are consciousnesses and substances, so likewise cosmic force is essentially intelligent, and therefore essentially belonging to nature’s divinities. These divinities exist on different planes of the invisible worlds of the universe in hierarchical structures or degrees. Therefore the inner and invisible conscious and self-conscious forces, which are really divinities of many kinds, which by their interconnections and interwoven activities, produce the differentiated and marvelously varied manifested world in which we live.

Consciousness and thought are manifestations of motion in the guise of active intelligence. The beginning of differentiation is spoken of as the beginning of change. Life manifests as motion, and as it passes from plane to plane produces what is called birth and death. Absolute motion and what humans call absolute rest — really but another form of incessant motion — converge into one. The tendency of cosmic motion is a spiral and in kinematics, simple harmonic motion generates ellipses, of which the straight line and the circle are limiting cases.

Standards of measurement successfully adopted for phenomena within terrestrial limits have proven inadequate for the definition of phenomena outside those limits. Both theory and experimentation show that these standards are largely conceptual and must be changed to suit new conditions. To introduce a volitional principle into nature is to assume that the volitional principle is absent elsewhere — an assumption purely speculative. The universe is not divided into a mechanical section and a volitional section, separated by a hypothetical boundary that varies according to investigation. A mechanical interpretation is adopted for practical purposes on the physical plane, which enables results that do not bring the validity of its assumptions into question. Science finds that one form of motion is consequent upon another, but it knows nothing about the cause of motion. Words like force and mass are merely convenient abstractions. Likewise, there is no reason for introducing a psychological element into nature at one point rather than at another, for such disjunct compartments do not exist in nature. Indeterminacy, as used by science, is the opposite of determinism and both imply attitudes of mind rather than actualities in nature.

When the instinct of the animal body, the mental reasoning faculties, and the reembodying ego’s intuition are functioning together, the person is keyed to health, sanity, and wisdom. Otherwise, the real inner conflict manifests in some form of disorder. In humans, the organic vital fluid of the reembodying ego is the cohering factor for the entire constitution, dominating over all minor vital expressions of the life-atoms. The intense and ceaseless activity of these life-atoms builds and composes the body, and as age comes on, and the physical vehicle naturally and normally weakens, the uninterrupted activity of the vital power becomes too strong to be held in check by the gripping influence of the vital-electrical field. Thus the atomic forces, continuing unabated within the body structure, slowly weaken the structure and destroy it, until death occurs.

Apart from regular medical practice, widespread forms of drugless healing are employed today. Forms of faith or magnetic healing depend on the ability of the ‘healer’ to convey life-forces to the diseased person. If the practitioner succeeds in conveying the vitality of pranic fluids from their own healthy body to another person, that healthy life-force expels inharmonious vibrations in the affliction and restores health. Such cures can be permanent, although usually they are temporary, lasting from a few days to a few years. However, the magnetic healer’s emanation may induce germs or mental bias, thus complicating any cure. Moreover, the subtle infection on karma affects both healer and patient in the outcome. Even evil persons can displace a disease and, by driving it back onto some inner level of the sufferer’s constitution, create a seeming cure.

Medicine was originally a divine science, providing for the well-being of the spiritual, mental, psychic, astral, and physical human. Archaic medicine included a profound knowledge of astrology, of alchemy, of occult physiology, of the finer forces vibrating as sound, color, form, thought, and feeling, and whatever related humans to their universe of natural law and order. This was the basis of the natural “magic” which tradition has linked with the medical art. This knowledge was dual in its power to work for life or death, for good or evil ends. Its full comprehension required not only a trained intellect, but the intuitive understanding of a pure spiritual nature. What writings are available today are of little practical value without the lost key. Interpretation of legendary and classical beliefs and customs, and of archaeological findings, overlooks what is known of ancient medical practice which is largely exoteric yet symbolic of a deeper teaching than we possess. However, in making a pure, serene, uplifting atmosphere around the sick person, invokes the influences of wholeness within and without their body. By putting the inner person in tune with their body, disordered nature-forces manifesting as disease would tend to flow freely into the currents of health.

However illness is displaced, it cannot be denied out of existence, and sooner or later it will reappear in a more unnatural and probably more dangerous form because of the suppression of its endeavor to exhaust itself in physical expression. Physical disease, originating as karma in this or a former life, becomes visible while working its way out of the system for good. It is positively pernicious for a healer to act upon the will, conscience, or moral integrity of a sick person by hypnotizing their mind, will, or conscience into believing that sickness does not exist, or that it is fate from past actions. Any such control of another’s conscious life is a form of hypnotism, and falls under what is called black magic. On the other hand, a healer is morally obligated to help the sick in the right ways of treating the body, mind, and soul involving the arousing of the patient’s inner powers of spiritual, moral, and intellectual resistance against weaknesses in themselves. In mesmerism the emanation from a pure-minded operator arouses the disordered forces of the diseased body to vibrate harmoniously. Thus the sufferer makes themselves healthy. The best of all healing is where the sufferer is brought into a state of self-confidence through a higher kind of resignation which brings peace and inner quiet and works in harmony with the body’s natural resources of health.

Nemesis has been called the retributive aspect of karma as the automatic reestablishing of equilibrium brought about by the action of the human being. Human free will grows greater as it becomes the free will of the universe of which humanity is an integral and inseparable part. Thus, it is humans who create causes, and karma which adjusts the effects.

Jiva is the universal principle of a life force and is contained in all the particles of material existence. The actions of these principles begin in the extreme subtleties of a universal “mind” and end with the grossest condescension of human frailty as the weakness of human perception. This frailty within human perception tends to view both jiva and prana as synonyms. Fortunately this subtle misperception is corrected on the higher planes. Perception alone is not a sufficient means to know objects and principles behind observed reality in which certain existent phenomena are not perceived but are derived. Bhrantidarsana describes the illusions arising out of the egotistical, imperfect human mind in its attempts to understand reality. However this imperfectly evolved human mind is extremely apt to mistake illusions for verities, presentiments for realities, and appearances for the fundamental substratum of being. Any partially developed intellect or understanding can de facto have only an illusory conception of the manifestations of true reality.

The correction of misperception between the jiva and prana is corrected by an understanding of angelic atomicity. Prana is similar to a “vitality bubble” composed of atoms which are charged with prana of different colors. Each color has a specific atomic structure and is maintained by a specific angel. Angels are members of numerous hierarchies of celestial powers, from the formative hosts that emanates from the formative heavens down to the presiding spirit of an atom. Angels serve as intermediaries or envoys between the divine and the human, or terrestrial, realms. An angelus rector is a ruling angel who causes a planet to pursue its course around the sun. The Asdts are fiery spiritual beings or self-conscious spirits of cosmic character, emanating from the heavens.

The fall refers to the descent of enlightened beings whose mission was to enlighten nascent humanity, and the lower kingdoms of nature. Additionally, the fall refers to the descent of human beings into matter, when they became clothed in skin, and began to reproduce by sexual generation. Both of these events in the cycle of evolution have been perverted by ecclesiastical error into calamities. The War in Heaven was the natural opposition of lower nature to the progress of unfolding beings essential to evolution. The fall of mankind includes the natural human evolutionary passage into physical corporeality, and also the misuse of human intelligence; but does not refer to the natural use of procreative functions or to innate sinfulness. Those cosmic entities of various classes who in the course of their evolution descended into matter in order to form and inform the lower worlds rebelled in a purely mystical sense against spirit or heaven, asserting individual free will and divine love. Their act is one of compassion and self-sacrifice, and they are eventually saved, while they carry the cycle of evolution along the ascending arc. Theology, and John Milton, have misinterpreted this into the legend of the fallen angles, whose rebellion is a crime, who are the eternal enemies of mankind, and who are in consequence doomed to final destruction.

The lower mind or psycho-nervous effluvia of the brain acts through the nervous ganglia in the kamic, or desire, centers, such as the liver, stomach, and spleen, though the central ganglia of this nervous system are situated in the base of the skull. The brain, and with it the heart, are the organs of spiritual and intellectual powers far higher than those represented by mere human personality working through the brain-mind. Hence the higher forms of thought and superconsciousness correlate with the cerebral and cardiac centers. However, it is only in rare moments that the brain tissues are suffused with the glory emanating directly from a higher nature to work through the pineal and pituitary glands in the skull and through the secret center in the heart.

The optic thalami are the two great posterior ganglia at the base of the brain, forming part of the wall of the third ventricle. They are the bed from which optic fibers arise, as well as a special center for the correlation and transmission of sensory, motor, and ideational impressions which, consciously and subconsciously, interact between the body and the brain. The thalami are a central station for the reception, condensation, and transmission of all the intercommunicating lines between consciousness and the external world. Embryology shows the optic thalami playing an early and leading part in connection with the pineal gland, then at the apex of the developing head in antiquity when the pineal gland functioned as the only eye of vision. At that stage of evolution, the human was as unselfconscious in personality and as gelatinous in physical structure as the embryo now is at its first stages. The embryo repeats the gradual growth and dominating position of the cerebral hemispheres which, in the history of the early root-races, gave play to intellectual faculties at the expense of spiritual vision. Then the pineal “eye,” no longer active, retired to the hollow of the brain where the optic thalami developed the current two eyes of physical vision. The original eye has since then continued to function — although unrecognized by the vast majority of people — as the organ of intuitive discernment.

Turiya is the highest of all the states into which consciousness may be cast. It is a practical annihilation of the ordinary human consciousness as it unites with the overshadowing higher mind and becomes at one with the monadic essence. Turiya is a state of consciousness of the deepest abstraction from things of the material world — that state which seems to be a complete trance, physically speaking. The higher consciousness of the human being, often unconscious of the brain-mind consciousness, enters into turiya and brings about a condition of perfectly dreamless sleep. However, it is a state of the highest or most exalted spiritual and intellectual activity, of spiritual ecstasy — or highest samadhi.

The pineal gland is a rounded, oblong body, about one-third of an inch long, of a deep reddish color, connected with the posterior part of the third ventricle, and intimately related to the optic thalami which are the organs of reception and condensation of the most sensitive and sensorial incitations from the periphery of the body. This organ is in central relation to the coordinating organs of all the senses and sensations, and to the thinking brain which perfects and coordinates ideas. Modern morphologists have shown it to be the homologue of the “third eye.” It is  the seat of the highest consciousness in humanity — the omniscient spiritual and all-embracing mind. Actually the third eye withdrew, pari passu, into the central cavity of the developing brain. There it has remained as a symbol of that past spiritual vision which humans will regain as they progress consciously along the upward arc of the evolutionary cycle. Descartes reasoned that the seat of the soul was the pineal gland which, he said, though it was tied to the brain, was yet capable of being put into a kind of swinging motion by “animal spirits” that cross the cavities of the skull. He was right about the organ’s response in oscillations or what the ancients called animal spirits which are otherwise expressed as the circulating currents of the nerve-aura. When the focused power of the active pituitary is directed to higher psychic levels, its influence, through radiated wave-energy, reaches the pineal gland which responds with spiritual clairvoyance. If, however, the increased activity is upon the lower astral levels, the effects are distorted and misleading. When the pituitary is connected with the optic and nerve centers, its enlargement becomes uncontrolled, giving rise to strange hallucinations, hearing, etc. No one organ of a human being can function alone from coordinated activity with the other parts of the human constitution. Thus while the pituitary body can stimulate increased activity in the pineal gland, the pineal gland in its turn can act strongly upon the pituitary body and, as the latter is awakened and begins to vibrate, the physical brain becomes influenced by the spiritual and higher intellectual inspirations from the pineal.A photon is a particle of light. After a journey of billions of miles hurtling through space, a photon may collide with an electron in a leaf on earth giving the electron a huge energy boost. When this occurs, the electron starts to bounce around, a little like a pinball. It makes its way through a tiny part of the leaf’s cell, and passes on its extra energy to a molecule that can act as an energy currency to fuel the plant, thus creating a hybrid extraterrestrial plant on earth.

The fertilization of the germ-cell in plant or animal is the spiritual incubating of matter for differentiating the objective planes, in order to manifest a subjective monadic life. The reincarnating ego, to make a new body of the fertilized microscopic egg cell, is analogous to the world-germ awakening to begin another galactic, solar, or planetary existence. This desire for sentience shows itself in everything reflected in objective existence. In the embryonic germ-cell, both human and subhuman kingdoms manifests essential selfhood, or svabhava, and their own degree of evolution.

Bacteria are a host of visible and invisible agents which carry out many processes of evolutionary life and death. They are links in the karmic chain which  return results of whatever was an antecedent cause. Thus bacteria of a disease will produce injurious toxins only when the karmic conditions within the individual provide a suitable culture-medium for them. The selective functions of these creative and destructive microorganisms are directed by an invisible hierarchy of intelligences which guide the nature forces both physically and metaphysically as merited. The whole process is as natural as the analogous way in which trillions of body cells react to the stimulation or depression of harmonious or discordant states of mind and emotions. Both cells and bacteria are living entities, sentient but not intelligent in the human sense. To regard bacteria as the primal cause of a disease is mistaking the phenomena for the noumena which is working out karmic effects.

The essential principle in reproduction is that an individual separates a portion of itself, which then evolves independently into a similar individual. This may occur by fission, as in the amoeba and other unicellular forms. Or by budding, as in the sea anemone and many plants or by the throwing off of spores, as occurs in mosses and fungi. By the production of an egg, hatched within or without the body. The egg may contain the positive and negative reproductive elements, and be self-fertilizing, or it may contain only the negative element and so require fertilizing. The positive element may be contributed by the same individual as supplies the negative element  thus incurring hermaphroditism. Or the positive and negative elements may be in different individuals, and present the usual mode of reproduction. The human body has at one time or another passed through all these states and is destined to transcend the present mode, which is but a passing phase in evolutionary history.

Chaitanya is the invisible essence of human intelligence, the cosmic root of monadic individuality, and the cosmic intelligence-force or essential consciousness behind and within individuality. All individual egos in the universe are rooted in cosmic chaitanya as their universal source, and become individualized in the material realms by means of the karanopadhi, or the thoughts through which spiritual monadic entities work and manifest themselves. The karana-sarira, or the karanopadhi or causal body, is the vehicular instrumental body-form produced by the working of what is perhaps the most mysterious principle or element, mystically speaking, in the constitution not only of humanity, but of the universe — the very mysterious spiritual bijas. These are the seeds of kama-manas (desire) left in the fabric of the reincarnating entity, which act as the karana, or instrumental cause, of such entity’s reincarnations on earth. As such chaos is “chaotic” only in the sense that its constituents are unformed and unorganized while resting in a storehouse of all the latent seeds from former manvantaras.

Associated with each human being is an angel who has accompanied that same individual being through successive incarnations, eventually leading to a destiny of opportunities to compensate for the misperceptions and imbalance of previous incarnations. Similarly, the angel evolves through the deeds of the incarnating individual. Archangels are contemplative celestial beings which reside in several hierarchies. These realms are sometimes referred to as the celestial lights in which the agents of karmic laws reside. Flagae denotes an order of spiritual beings which correspond to guardian angels, called  the higher pitris in whom constitutional principles of nature are actively manifest. An archangel is associated with large cohesive groups of humanity such as a city or country, as well as smaller groups such as a congregation of family. Obviously the archangel of a family is of a lesser rank than the archangel of a city.

A planetary spirit presides over the highest hierarchies of archangels. These beings have all passed through a stage of evolution corresponding to the humanity of earth only on other worlds, in long past cycles. Earth is far too young to have produced high planetary spirits.

Besides being our terrestrial globe, earth is a comprehensive symbol of the material or vehicular side of manifestation as well as one of the elements. It is primordial undifferentiated matter which produces the manifested worlds of entities. Connected with these entities are the numerous allusions to earth as the nether pole of substantiation, often synonymous with the nether regions. As the lowest of the several elements, earth denotes physicalization, in which physical matter is a combination of all four elements with the earth-element predominating. The pure element, however, is not physical in its characteristic property, or tattva, but is, in connection with the human organs, the non-physical tattva of the senses. Earth is characterized by square or cubical forms and by fixity although the name earth is usually applied to the grossest globe, which alone is in a more direct rapport with our physical senses. The earth actually is an animate being, as are all the celestial globes and the nature spirits pertaining to it were said by medieval European mystics to be primarily the gnomes.

The gates of hell are various places on the surface of the planet that have acquired a legendary reputation for being entrances to the underworld. Often they are found in regions of unusual geological activity, particularly volcanic areas, or sometimes at lakes, caves or mountains. The gates of hell create a nature deficit thus causing an alienation from nature. This alienation exhibits a diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses in humanity.

Worlds are evolved from the state of latency or pralaya into which they passed at the close of the preceding manvantara, and both primordial matter and primordial spirit come from the same source and are resolved again into it. The process is one of evolution or progressive manifestation on various planes of objectivity and potentialities latent in the spiritual germ. Worlds must be understood, not with regard to standards of size, but as including a universe of stars on the one hand and an atomic speck on the other. The births and rebirths of worlds are not the haphazard productions of an eternal consciousness, but are the offspring or productions of consciousness-life-substance periodically manifesting its inherent life and powers by the appearances of different world systems — be these galaxies, solar systems, individual suns, or planetary bodies or in the infinitesimal realms of atoms and their component electronic monads. The entire process of the appearances and disappearances of world systems is dependent on karmic causality manifesting on all planes with characteristics and actions of consciousness and consciousnesses.

Audlang is one of several heavens in which three gradually ascending planets are contained. Audlang is one of the planes of substances different from our matter, of which these unseen planets or globes are built. The meaning of firmament is the vault of heaven or sky. It is often identified with air, called the breath of the supporters of the heavenly dome. It also relates to the supporters, pillars, or cosmocratores in many ancient cosmogonies, which are said to uphold or support the world. “Waters” have the mystical significance of ethers, and hence the division between the waters above and the waters below does not refer to the common fluid. In the same sense firmament signifies one aspect of the dividing line between one hierarchical division and another, in which divisions or firmaments mutually support and complement each other, and thus build up the web or fabric of the cosmic structure.

Hierarchies, or the interpenetrating of beings, is the structure and operation of the universe. This applies not only to the entities comprising a universe but to all its planes and spheres as well as the entities interlocking in an endless series, one group linking to its superior or inferior in an evolutionary grade, in turn being the link to the ascending or descending group. Thus everything exists in and because of everything else. The essential nature or hyparxis of the hierarchy flows forth from the hierarch, and is delegated in proportionate lower degrees to inferior members of the hierarchy, so that all is organically connected. The hierarchical system is inherent in the cosmic germ from which the manifested universe springs and thus pervades the manifested universe throughout all its parts from the highest to the lowest. The hierarchy of spiritual beings extending from the highest solar or galactic monad, to the least element forming its vehicles or being is built of divinities, who serve as a living channel for the spiritual currents coming to our system from the heart of the solar divinity, and who themselves shed glory and light and peace upon that pathway from the compassionate depths of their own being.

The cosmos as a whole is a living organism, subdivided into almost innumerable subordinate series of hierarchical units with an assemblage of beings of many kinds, each of which is a compound unit. In order that the elements composing each such unit are linked together, the celestial bodies, visible or invisible, form a unity with companion globes on invisible planes. These globes are said to be in co-adnation but not in consubstantiality, which means that, despite being of different grades of materiality, they form a catenary unit of orbits. Although consisting of several globes, the only ones visible to the human eye on earth are those which are on the same plane of materiality. The visible globes belong  to the manifested worlds and the others to the unmanifested. 

The genesis of worlds, cosmogenesis, as distinguished from anthropogensis, the origin of humans, occurs at the commencement of a manvantara. It constitutes the basis of the subject-side of manifested being, and is the source of all manifestations of individual consciousness. Mulaprakriti, or primordial cosmic substance, is the foundation of the object-side of all objective evolution and cosmogenesis. Mulaprakriti is not restricted to earth, but includes innumerable globes — nor is it confined to those worlds which happen to be visible, but includes worlds on all the various planes of manifested substance. It does not mean that the worlds were created ex nihilo by divine fiat, nor that they were merely the productions from dead, unconscious, albeit eternal and uncreated matter. Cosmogenesis is not a process which has occurred only once, but a process which is repeated indefinitely during manvantaras and after great pralayas.

There existed three Eves in Eden: the archetypal Eve, the feminine aspect of the divine androgyne; the Eve of the early third root-race, after the separation of the sexes but before the awakening of mind; and Eve the mother of Abel and Cain. The first Eve was no woman but, like the first Adam, the spiritual feminine aspect of an archetypal spiritual host; the second was no woman but womankind; while the third was woman and mother as is now known. They correspond to the three Adams: the first, the spiritual albeit masculine type of the archetypal host; the second, the mindless first human race; and the third the race whose eyes are opened. Between the Eve of Genesis and the Eve of the early third root-race passed long ages, involving millions of years during which the archetypal preparation of the globe for human habitation was followed by distinct root-races and three Edens, with millions of years between these later developments. Adam and Eve, once mind appeared in them, enter the path of self-directed evolution, a reference to the second and third Eves mentioned above.

There are entities which express themselves through a race or nation, somewhat as the mind expresses itself through a collection of living units which compose a person’s organism. However, the units of the human body do not engender a unitary entity but, drawn together by similar karma and by the magnetism of a human embodiment, form the vehicle for the expression of an entity of a higher order. The individuals of a race or nation, though drawn by similarity of karma and character into the same race or nation, do not constitute a vehicle for the manifestation of any entity of a higher order. Such a national or racial aggregation of individuals of like karma and character create an atmosphere or manifestation which exists in the ideation of the planetary spirit, both as an embodied idea and as an abstract spiritual entity.

Karma is the causes and consequences of action which produces change.  A primary postulate of every philosophy, karma is unceasingly active throughout nature and is rooted in harmony with operations existing from eternity in the very nature of things. It is action and adjuster which preserves equilibrium by compensating all actions, excessive or defective. Hence it is called the law of retribution, implying neither reward nor punishment, based on nature’s own harmonious equilibrium. Laws and operations are the innumerable hierarchies of beings in all-various grades which not only condition nature, but are in fact universal nature itself. By our actions we act upon other people and ultimately react upon ourselves. These beings, then, are agents of karma. The effect of karma on human beings is the natural reaction from their actions, which may be described as only half-actions, for they are not completed until the reaction has ensued. Since the consequences of acts do not necessarily ensue immediately, it follows that at any stage of our embodied careers we may experience the results of actions performed a long time in the past.

Astrology associates the archangels with the planets: Raphael with the Sun, Gabriel with the Moon, Michael with Mercury, Aniel (Anael) with Venus, Samael with Mars, Zadkiel (Sachiel) with Jupiter, and Kafziel (Cassiel) with Saturn. However, on occasion the planets of Michael and Raphael are reversed. 

These seven leading archangels take turns guiding the evolution of humanity by leading particular civilizations to prominence. The rank of these archangels is determined by their associated seven pranas.

These seven pranas, with seven classifications of human cognizance, emanate from seven rays of the sun. These rays are named Sushumna (which controls will and courage), Harikesa (which enables wisdom and love), Visvakarman (which upholds truth), Visvatriarchas (which creates beauty), Sannaddha (which provides knowledge), Sarvavasu (which grants loving service), and Swaraj (which maintains ordered activity).

These rays are a concentrated stream of spiritual energy emanating, ultimately, from the divine Absolute. Each ray is the embodiment/expression of one of the great divine qualities, such as divine will, divine wisdom, divine love, etc. Lower wisdom is like the limbs of a sleeping human. It is capable of mechanical motions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep-walking, of producing visible effects, but stimulated by instinctual not intellectual causes, least of all by fully conscious spiritual impulses.

The existence of vast stores of latent energy in atoms, considering everything as a question of physical dynamics, infers that an equivalent quantity of physical energy must have been expended in creating the atom. Energy or life is a fundamental attribute and function of the universe which radiate outwards from within and when expended on the astral plane is far more productive of results than the same amount expended on the physical plane. Forces are active monadic essences, which may be considered to be a living, intelligent, self-conscious phenomena that when actively used, its power to do work or to produce effects is energy.

From darkness comes light, from light comes color. Light is in the physical world and is resolvable into a spectrum or band of colors, defined as a quality of visual perception depending on the wavelength of light. We could see no color at all unless we perceived color in our mind from the first, and thus recognized the color because of its identity with what is within us. The physical stimuli of color merely evokes what is already in our mind. Colors and sounds have great potency in practical magic, as cosmic powers can be 

evoked by an understanding use of proper colors and sounds. The colors correspond with the notes of the musical octave, the planets, and the primary elements. It is the universal mind viewed from a visual aspect as manifested light. Cosmic forces are interchangeable, their incomprehensible aggregate being cosmic life. Therefore, any form of this cosmic life has not only its particular keynote of sound, but likewise its particular keynote of color, etc. Color is a surface property of an object, but there is no way to tell a blind person what that sensory experience is, because it’s a purely visual experience. The blind learn about red in the way others learn about quarks, or concepts like justice or virtue — through use in verbal contexts.

Seven colors are associated with the seven leading archangels to include blue, violet, yellow, green, magenta, orange and red. When these colors, or vitalities, are absorbed into the body, they decompose in the spleen and produce rays of enlightenment in the colors of white, yellow, red, green and blue.

These enlightened rays of color flow through the body, clarifying spiritual misconceptions, and circulate through the body’s chakras or psychic glands. Additionally they give energy to all the various organs. These are known as the five pranas. The tertiary ray colors serve as the Ida (lunar) and Pingala (solar) paths which run alongside the central Sushumna subhuman nadi (channel) of the body. These five pranas include pitah (yellow) which maintains the heart beat and breathing as it enters through the breath and is sent to all the cells of the circulatory system; apana (red) removes waste products through the body via the lungs and excretory systems; adana (blue) maintains sound production of the vocal apparatus while speaking, singing, laughing, crying, etc; samana (green) controls the metabolic processes of digestion of food to cell metabolism by regulating the heat processes of the body; and vyana (white) regulates the expansion and contraction of the cardio-vascular system and muscles.

Chakras are connected with the pranic circulations and ganglia of the auric egg, and function in the physical body through the intermediary of the linga-sarira, or astral model-body. They are located in different parts of the physical frame, reaching from the top of the skull to the region about the pubis. The human body, as a microcosm, contains every power, attribute, or energy in the solar system.  The forces that originally emanate from the sun, and pass in and through the various planets, are transmitted to us in the physical body. Thus each one of these solar forces has its corresponding focus or organ in the human body, and these are the chakras. Amrita is the mystical soma juice, which enables spiritual nature to overcome and govern the lower elements of the human condition. Amrita is the liquid of supernal and spiritual wisdom as a means for rising above all unawakened temperaments and become at one with the cosmic life-intelligence-substance.

Bees have a portion of the divine mind from which ethereal particles permeate the whole earth so that all beings draw from it the streams of life. The spiritual or monadic consciousness manifests itself in innumerable ways as nectar or amrita, and this same consciousness is consumed by humanity. The lunar body or psychic nature is born as the “bee” of the human attains the will and the urge to enter into the solar life of the spirit. Mythical zoology points directly to an inner and mystical significance in which “bee” is used not in the sense of the insect, but for a certain class of elementals whose flying around and through the earth is governed directly by lunar influences. When these bees sprinkle their nectar, gathered in paradise, they set beings free from birth, aging, disease, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. What is this nectar?  It is mindfulness occupied with the body. As an elixir it is the soma of immortality.

The elements of the present atmosphere are compounded from simpler elements which existed on earth at earlier stages of its evolution, and which exist now on some other planets. The atmosphere of the earth has become not only a chemical, but an alchemical crucible, in which there is a perpetual exchange taking place in atoms which correlate and thus change combined equivalents on every planet. Neither sun nor stars have terrestrial elements, except in the sun’s outer illumination, for it is only in its outer realms that the integration of atomic substances become sufficiently physical to permit the appearance of terrestrial elements. There is a spiritual “laboratory” on the far outskirts of the atmosphere, and when atoms and molecules cross this, they change and differentiate from their primordial nature.

It is a matter of choice whether to regard light as primordial and deduce other phenomena from it, or to consider luminosity as a result of the vibration of molecules — since light is both. Light is the first of all manifested things, and is the very essence of matter, not as a decoration of it. Nor is light necessarily associated with heat, as even the humble glow worm attests. Self-luminosity, with or without heat, is a characteristic of everything that is, although this self-luminosity is by no means always visible to the human physical senses. Every entity anywhere, great or small, as well as every aggregate of atoms, is continuously and uninterruptedly self-luminous, continually emanating an unceasing stream of radiation because of the energies ever active within itself. This radiation is of several different kinds, of which ordinary or physical light is but one manifestation. Everything is radiant — not only luminous, but self-luminous, generating radiation of many kinds from within itself. It is the imperfect ability of our vision to see these many forms of radiation that causes us to be unconscious of them. Our eyes have been evolved to sense only one small gamut in the great scale of radiation of the universe surrounding us. Visible light is a short scale of radiation, but matter itself in all its forms is concreted radiation or crystallized light.Evolution is an ancient and cardinal tenet of archaic wisdom formerly called emanation. In humankind, three distinct lines of evolution take place and converge: the spiritual, the mental or manasic, and the astral-vital-physical. The manasic factor is derived from the perfected humanity of a previous manvantara, whose entrance into the human stock of the third root-race brought about the union of heavenly and terrestrial entities to create a completely self-conscious being who mirrors every plane in nature. Just as below human beings there are less evolved kingdoms, so above are beings in whom fuller self-consciousness has been achieved and more of divine potentialities realized. All evolution beneath humankind tends towards humanhood as its objective; but humanity itself has ever greater heights to attain in the future.

Evolution presupposes two main factors: the entity which is evolving, and the form which is evolved. These two are related as spirit to matter, as the monad to its organism. Every one of the countless beings which constitute the universe is essentially a spark of the universal divine fire, life, or spirit; and at any time is at one stage or another of a continuous career of unfolding growth. This unfolding or bringing into manifestation of the inherent already inwardly existing characteristics of a being is therefore growth from within development. The process is universal, since the universe consists of living beings, all of which are growing because they are unfolding. Every spark creates for itself a succession of forms by which it expresses more or less of its inherent qualities. The physical vehicles are merely the physical end-products before these physical embodiments are engendered. There are other embodiments made of subtler grades of matter or consciousness-substance on intermediate planes, and astral stuff created on the lower plane close to the physical realm. Environment modifies growth, but without the urge of the indwelling monad, there could be no action upon environment, nor any reaction by environment.

Retardation means that certain individuals or groups are from time to time retarded in their forward development because of evolution. The stage before them is already occupied by a superior group of evolving entities, which exercises upon the inferior group an influence retarding the full expression of the evolving faculties of the individuals of the lower group. This can be illustrated by the evolution of the kingdoms of nature. Animals are subject to a very definite law of retardation, because their immediate and future field of evolution is occupied by the evolving human kingdom. However, it is equally true that the human kingdom exercises upon the beast kingdom beneath it a stimulating and elevating power. If one kingdom has not reached a certain evolutionary standing on the ladder of life, it will have to wait in a more or less inactive or dormant evolutionary condition until room is made for its further progress by the kingdom preceding it. The animals, and all other kingdoms, are undergoing retardation at the present time because they have not yet evolved human qualities and powers. When the way is finally opened for them to progress forwards, and if they are ready to do so, there is an immediate acceleration, so that their progress from the beginning of such acceleration is quick. Such individuals develop rapidly when their time comes because the law of acceleration is the opposite of the law of retardation.

Evolution is not a process of accretion from without. Such accretion could not produce an organism unless the full plan of that organism existed already in latent ideation. Nor is evolution in the vegetable and animal kingdoms a process of mere transformation by which one physical organism changes into another. The changes take place because of the unfolding growth of the indwelling entity. This indwelling entity builds for itself new forms suitable to its own changed or unfolded states. The plan of evolution and orders of beings on earth may be represented by a tree, whose main trunk is the human stem, from which the various animal types have issued like branches, each of them entering upon a special unfolding development and differentiation of its own. The same observation applies to the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, although their root-types issued from the human stem long before the animal types appeared on earth.

Fundamental matter is the root of prakrit referred to as mulaprakriti or root nature and is used interchangeably with pradhana as the essence of matter. Mulaprakriti is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the objective planes of nature. Ethereality is a state of matter more refined and less dense than familiar physical matter. The differences between the higher divisions of matter is analogous to the subdivisions of physical matter — solid, liquid, gas, and fiery. Thus the characteristic of the solid is fixity of form, restriction of movement; that of liquid, mobility; of gas, expansibility; while the fiery element is exempt from gravitation. The major divisions of matter must be graded on a somewhat analogous scale. There is a clear distinction between akasha, astral light, and ether. Akasha in its higher portions is pure spirit; the astral light is the highest division of the physical cosmic plane and may even be called the most subtle part of the terrestrial atmosphere; whereas ether is a material agent interpenetrating molecular matter, and is therefore even more gross than is the astral light. In one sense these three are the highest, the very low, and the lowest parts of spirit or akasha itself.

There are no permanent bodies because everything is in a state of flux and interchange. The physical universe is an ocean of life, partly embodied and partly non-corporeal. Such terms as matter, energy, wave, and particle are descriptive of various manifestations of this living ocean. The chemical elements are centers or vortices in such an ocean, continually giving and receiving emanations from each other. All forms of physical matter emit radiation and radioactive phenomena. These emanations are partly actinic rays and partly emitted particles. Their disintegration results in a continual emission of both these forms, accompanied by an elevation of the temperature of the radioactive body, a loss of its own mass, and the formation of temporary unstable elements of lower atomic weight, until an end-product of the emanations is reached. During the descending arc of cosmic evolution, the process of concretion is predominant, and during the ascending arc the process of disintegration or etherealization is predominant. Calculations as to the age of the solid crust of the earth, based on disintegration rates indicates that the rate of radioactive disintegration has been on the increase in comparatively recent times, and will continue at a growing rate into the geologic future.

Though the cosmic planes are different from one another, they are not separated by gaps, just as the spectral colors are distinct and characteristic yet merge imperceptibly into each other. Nor can it be supposed that at all stages of evolution the scheme of planes was the same as now. There was a physico-astral stage of humanity and of other beings which now no longer exists on earth, in much the same way as we find the fossils of types intermediate between existing types but now extinct. No hard and fast enumeration can be made as to the number of planes in the cosmos. The number assigned depends on the particular purpose for which the definition is made.

To euhemerize is to interpret myths as having once being historical events. The term is sometimes used as an equivalent to anthropomorphism. A great deal of archaic mythology, however, is a half-forgotten and often distorted racial tradition or memory of events in the lives of once semi-divine humans, who actually were in most cases the initiates of the later third and early fourth root-races.

A conjunction of two heavenly bodies occurs when, as seen from the earth, they are in the same ecliptic longitude, according to astrology, or in the same right ascension, according to astronomy. More than two bodies appearing in exact conjunction is an exceedingly rare occurrence. The planets and the sun and moon are usually considered, but the fixed stars may be included. Such conjunctions have always been held in astrology to indicate, prefigure, or cause important events and changes, and to mark the changes of cycles. The conjunctions of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars together are specially mentioned. The conjunctions of the sun and moon are related to human and animal physiological conception. Also, the fact that the planetary orbits have nodes and apsides with their own periods of revolution allows for the calculation of longer periods.

Aura-soma is a method of chromotherapy and a divination system based on color. It shares similarities with other forms of divination such as tarot, the I Ching and the Kabbalah.The central idea of Aura-soma is that color is a unifying universal language which relates to all theologies and schools of psychology. It is part of the underlying order of the universe with each color relating to a different aspect of life.

Red is the color associated with the Muladhara or first chakra located at the base of the spine. The first chakra affects the legs and feet and influences walking, the anus, and elimination. Positive qualities associated with this red earth element are steadfastness, courage, loyalty, and perseverance. Negative qualities of excess red energy may create humans who are stubborn and bigoted.

Orange is the color of the Svadhisthana second chakra located in the pelvis area. Being a color derived from red and yellow, orange represents kind-heartedness in an individual. Orange symbolizes the rising sun, and makes humans alert and cheerful. Astonishing results are ascribed to the use of the color orange to treat mental illness. A person with an excess of orange may express confusion, tiredness, and pessimism.

Yellow is the color of the Manipura third chakra located in the solar plexus. Yellow is applied to combat glandular diseases and diseases of the lymphatic system, and to strengthen the nervous system. Yellow is said to have effects that greatly assist metabolism and glandular activity. A person with an excess of this color could express lack of concentration, malice, and deviousness.

Green is the color of the Anahata fourth chakra located in the heart region. The color green is located in the middle of the color spectrum and has a harmonizing effect. Green is the color of possession and of the will to possess. Green is also the color of concentration. Green is a positive influence in the treatments of cysts, eye diseases and diabetes, promoting the relaxation of the body’s organs and stimulating detoxification of the body.  A person with an excess of green could experience lethargy, lack of motivation, insecurity, and jealousy. Pink is a secondary color that can also be associated with the heart chakra.

Blue is the color of the Vishuddha fifth chakra located in the throat. Blue is the color of peace and infinity and can be applied for relieving headaches and migraines, the pains of stomach, muscle cramps, and even liver disorders. As a general rule, the color blue is said to have a very positive effect on all kinds of pain conditions. An excess of this color in a person could bring about doubt, distrust, apathy, and melancholia.

Indigo is the color of the sixth Ajna chakra located in lower part of the forehead. Indigo is believed to be a cooling color that develops psychic perception and intuition. It is applied for eye, ear, nose, and mental problems. It is also used to treat addiction. This chakra is referred to as the third eye. The third eye is a mystical and invisible eye which provides perception beyond ordinary sight. The third eye is the gate that leads to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness.

The linga-sarira is the astral model around which the physical body is built, and from which the physical body develops as growth proceeds. The astral realms are not one single plane, but a series of planes growing gradually more ethereal as they approach the inner spheres of nature’s structure. The linga-sarira is formed before the body is formed, and serves as a pattern around which the physical body is molded into maturity. It is as mortal as is the physical body, and disappears with the physical body, dissolving atom by atom with the physical corpse. The linga-sarira has great tensile strength. It changes continuously during a lifetime, although these changes never depart from a human pattern. It is composed of electromagnetic matter, which is more refined than the matter of the physical body. The world was composed of such matter in past ages before it became the physical sphere it now is. After a long period of descent into matter, astral form oozed forth from itself into a coat of skin, corresponding to the Garden of Eden as the present physical flesh-form of humanity appeared.

The astral body sustains a døppelganger or fluidic form known as the linga sharira or lha Body. This is the subtle shadow of the physical body which can be difficult to see with the naked eye. This etheric body is composed of four ethers and is called the “vital body” since ether is the way of ingress for vital forces from the sun and the fields of nature which promote assimilation, growth, and propagation. Additionally, there is a type of spiritual sight, that humanity will eventually develop, called etheric vision. The sthula sarira or the gross body is the physical body that eats, breathes and moves. The lha body is very important to physical health and gives nourishment and energy to the physical body. Its shape is exactly like that of the physical body, causing it to appear as a double body. After death, the consciousness leaves the physical body but continues its journey as the lha Body. The lha Body stays on the physical plane, maintaining its prior shape until the physical body is fully decayed.

The physical body, usually considered as the lowest substance-principle of the human constitution is the result of the harmonious co-working on the physical plane of forces and faculties streaming through their astral vehicle or linga-sarira, the pattern or model of the physical body. The sthula-sarira is the concreted effluvium or dregs of the linga-sarira. Hence, the sthula-sarira is the vehicle or carrier on the physical plane of all the other human principles. The physical body is built up of cosmic elements from all parts of the universe. The millions of tiny lives that make up our bodies are much more enduring than is the body itself as a unit. These little lives are constantly undergoing birth and rebirth and constantly changing or evolving. Thus the human body also changes as the years pass by. The physical body is the outermost, and therefore the feeblest, expression of all the wondrous qualities and forces working in humans. The human body was once a globe of light, and will again become ethereal and radiant as humanity, in its evolutionary development, rises upwards along the ascending arc. As the inner human unfolds, so bodies on all planes of human constitution become more refined, ethereal, and perfect in their coordinated activities. Humans really are complete without the sthula-sarira because even the physical body is the expression of humanity’s constitution on the physical plane. The human constitution can be a complete human entity even when the physical body is discarded, but the sthula-sarira is needed for evolution and active work on this sub-plane of the solar cosmos.

Panchikarana is how matter came into existence, originating from the primordial five elements of earth, air, fire, water and ether. In addition to the solids, liquids, and gases which compose the chemical regions of the physical world, there is a finer grade of matter called ether that permeates the atomic structure of the earth and its atmosphere. It is disposed in four grades of density and is considered to be a kind of physical matter. Suksma sarira or the subtle body is the body of the mind and the vital energies, which keep the physical body alive. The subtle body is composed of the five subtle elements before they have undergone panchikarana. 

The issuing of streams of light and life from a sun is an act of emanation —the unfolding of what is latent in a germ is an act of evolution — but equally so an emanation, for all the attributes of the developing germ flow forth from the inherent life which is unfolding itself. Emanation is the process by which hosts of individual monads issue from their original parent-source and evolve for subsequent unfolding from each monad, and of what is latent in it. Emanation is the manifestation of worlds and living beings from a unitary divine source so that it is opposed both to the doctrine of special creation and to the materialistic scientific theory of evolution.

The barhishads are those who attend to or who are engrossed in material or pragmatical concerns and who developed a human astral-physical form. These lunar ancestors evolved from astral bodies or shadows, thus forming the first astral-physical races of humanity. They created the semblance of humanity out of their own divine essence to become the first race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. They could not give to humanity that sacred spark which expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they did not have it to give.

Ursa Major is the vital support or carrier not only of destiny but of the heavens. The saptarshayahs are seven rishis or sages, who preside over this constellation and maintain the universe in karmic supervision. These rishis are individuals who were formerly embodied on the earth but through successive incarnations gained mastery over the limitations of the material realm and thus were able to transform their residual karma and their physicality.

Bhrigu is one of the most celebrated of the rishis and is regarded as one of the seven progenitors of humanity and sentient beings. The Bhargavas are descendants of Bhrigu and are aerial deities connected with fire. They are responsible for enclosing fire in wood and giving it to humanity and also placing fire in the navel or center of the world.

Humanity is the summit of the animal kingdom, however, there are vast spheres of cosmic inner space and inner consciousness inhabited by numerous hierarchies of all-various evolving, intelligent, and semi-intelligent beings. The more highly each kingdom is specialized along its peculiar lines, the more sharply is it differentiated from the other kingdoms. Such distinction tends to disappear and merge into a continuity when the entities in the different kingdoms are in an elementary or germinal stage. Humanity is more sharply distinguished from the lower kingdoms than they are from each other. To these are added three kingdoms below the mineral domain called elemental kingdoms.

Soma is a sacred juice which gives mystic visions and trance-revelations. The Soma plant is the asclepias acida, which yields a juice from which the mystic beverage, the Soma drink, is made. The descendants of the Rishis knew all its powers. But the real property of the true Soma was to make a new person of the initiate, after they are reborn, namely once that they begin to live in their astral body. The partakers of Soma find themselves both linked to the external body, and yet away from it in their spiritual form. The latter, freed from the former, soars in the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually ‘as one of the gods,’ and yet preserving in their physical brain the memory of what they see and learn. Plainly speaking, Soma is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Those who drink it reach the place of splendor (Heaven). Soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. Hence the somapas are those people who, having become infilled with the essence of their inner spirit, were mystically spoken of as having drunk of the soma juice and thus being under the ecstasy of intellectual illumination. Whether the mystical drink was an actual drink, or merely a spiritual one, cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. If this drink, however relatively innocent in a single instance, were to be constantly repeated, it would develop into a drug habit. In later Atlantean times the drugging of initiates was common, and the results always disastrous, this being one of the sorceries for which the Atlanteans in history have remained infamous. Due to the heavy Atlantean karma still weighing on us, many nations as late as historic times employed more or less harmless potations to bring about a temporary dulling or stupefying of the brain and nervous system. However, if not moderated such potations can cause quite reckless behavior.

Nabhastala is the under side or bottom of clouds, the regions of the atmosphere where clouds are, and hence the term is often used for ether or the entire atmosphere of the earth, higher and lower. Fire is the active, energetic, vitalizing, quickening principle on all planes. It is often paired with water as spirit and form; contrasted with earth, as celestial and terrestrial; air is spoken of as its vehicle, as is also ether, because the root of cosmic ether is the celestial fire. The order of the elements varies, from different points of view and on different planes of manifestation. From primordial chaos came forth a fire that was cold, formless, and luminous — essential consciousness-substance. The first hot fires and flames issued at a later stage of manifestation. Concealed within the sun is the triple formless invisible fire, which precedes the septenary manifested fire of cosmos. Fire, whether heavenly or terrestrial, is the most perfect and pure reflection of the one universal flame. It is life and death, creator of the origin and end of every material thing as a divine consciousness-substance. From one flame all lamps can be kindled because fire imparts infinitely without loss. Like most other things, fire has its nether pole and hence its infernal aspect, but the fires of hell are purificatory. Fire was the great agent of purification in medieval alchemy, for it removes the dross from the gold. The same is true on the moral plane, for spiritual aspiration calls down an inner fire that purifies the gold from the dross in the aspirant’s heart.

Manas generally indicates the thinking faculty. Thinking is closely associated with volitions, because mental activity is one of the ways that volitions manifest themselves. Thinking done by manas is more closely linked to volition than to the discursive processes associated with apperception. Manas is the mental activity which follows from volitions, whether immediately, or separated by time and caused by the activation of a latent tendency. This is the cosmic mind of the reincarnating ego.

The seraphim are the fiery serpents of heaven in the hierarchy of emanations proceeding from the cosmic monad. The seraphim precede the cherubim in emanational order, because in the hierarchical scheme the seraphim stand for the creative fires, the spiritual archetypes, whereas the cherubim are the builders of forms and hence are of the form class. Thus the seraphim belong to the formless class which works through and in the cherubim or form class. The seraphim, whose color is the spiritual red of fire, precedes both in time and in hierarchical dignity the cherubim whose color is blue — the idea being that before manifestation of both mind and form can occur in the cosmic monad, there must be the awakening of divine desire, signified as a fiery spiritual red.

Heaven and hell denote states of consciousness experienced in daily life on earth. A rough division of cosmic spheres makes heaven the highest, hell the lowest, with the earth beneath heaven, and the underworld beneath it. The crystalline spheres of medieval astronomy are called heavens surrounding the earth concentrically. Far from being adjudicated by a deity to happiness or torment, after death a person goes to that region to which they are attracted by the affinities which they have set up during their life. The existence of almost endless and widely varying spheres or regions, all inhabited by peregrinating entities, exist as regions in which the higher can be dubbed the heavens and the lowest the hells, and the intermediate can be called the regions of experiences and purgation. All spheres possessing sufficient materialized substance to be called embodied spheres are hells by contrast with the ethereal and spiritual globes of the heavens. Therefore, the lower globes of a planetary chain may be called hells, and the higher globes of the chain, by contrast, heavens. All evolving entities go to both the heavens and the hells in accordance with their evolutionary necessities, and for the purpose of purgation through the suffering of material experience.

Flame is a portion of fire, in which fire is a more abstract term, and flame a more concrete and particular term.  The intellectual and guiding cosmic spirits, as well as the astrally and physically creative builders, are spoken of as being a hierarchy of flames. The lords of the flame are intelligent architects cosmically, being the givers of mind to humanity they are alluded to as those whose fire is too pure for the production of physical mortal humanity. Flame is also a projection of fire, as when a flame of the divine fire descends into matter, or flames of fire descend upon or encircle the head of an initiate. Flamma is an alchemical or hermetic term used to denote one of the four elements, corresponding to the alchemical sulphur and spirit.

The lipikae are the scribes of the dhyani, enlightened and contemplative, realms. As recorders or annalists they inscribe invisible (to humanity) tablets of astral light. These tablets maintain the unseen gallery of eternity connected with karma and laws of retribution. Eternity is the abstract sum total of endlessly cyclical time periods meaning a cosmic mahakalpa as a manifestation period or 311,040,000,000,000 human years. Originally eternity signified time divided into endless cycles stretching from the indefinite past through the present into the indefinite future, comprised within encompassing boundless duration.

The lipikae inscriptions are a faithful record of every act and thought of all beings that ever were, or ever will be, in the phenomenal universe. Because the lipikae are connected to destiny in which the future is connected to the past and is ever alive in the present, they are also associated with the science of Astrology.The karma which brings to a person conditions which are not chosen or wished for in the present life, is yet consistent with free will because it is the result of all previous actions, now expressed in results. These reactions of causes which were set in motion in this or in former lives, being the result which was inherent in previous choices, is a self-imposed destiny, but it is not fatalism, because there is now freedom to decide again how to meet the results of what previously had  been chosen. Karma is mathematically exact, both physically and metaphysically, but it is so constantly involved with new elements of choice and of proportion that its effects of necessity are measured. A gati is the path or sphere of existence entered upon by entities impelled by past karma. If a person lives a noble and upright life, their gati will be a sphere in the higher aspects. If a person deliberately lives an evil, degenerate existence, their next sphere of existence will be a rebirth in some degenerate sphere of activity. Similarly with the divinities and all other entities find themselves in succeeding spheres of life and action strictly according to karma. For karma is universal, and what one makes oneself to be, that they shall become.

There are many types of karma, such as human, racial, national, family, individual, etc. A chain of causation, stretched out in time, will be intersected by any given present moment so that in speaking of a person,  both past and future, they are their own karma. However, since the whole universe are linked together, it follows that the karma of all beings is linked and, in a profound sense, identical. Karma in its moral aspect is cosmic justice. Karma is action or activity of any kind — spiritual, intellectual, psychological, astral, or physical. Human beings, living in the human planes, produce karma corresponding to their environment. But individualized and active beings in other spheres, produce karma corresponding with their own state.The regents of the cosmos, acting as karmic agents of past destiny, are the establishers of fate or destiny for a world or universe when beginning its manvantaric evolution. These regents establish in the noumenal worlds the roots, and in the phenomenal worlds the fruits, of the essential laws of being. Fatalism is the belief that human beings have no free will. However, though perhaps we cannot maintain our own personal will against the laws of the universe except in very moderate degrees, we have considerable latitude to make experiments and learn from our mistakes. Fatum means the laws of nature or the will of the three fates, the Moirai. It also means our lot, appointed by the destiny born of our own past thoughts, feelings, and acts. Fate is very closely associated with karma.

The earth is visited periodically and at long intervals by comparatively sudden changes, varying in geographic importance from a continental to local catastrophes. The whole period of a cataclysm includes a gradual beginning, a progressive intensification, a culmination, and a gradual diminution. Local transformations are often sudden, sharp, or violent, whereas those embracing a wide geographical field are usually much slower or of longer period, frequently seeming to be nothing more than the merely secular changes which human experience recognizes as customary. Cataclysms are due to the influence of the sun, moon, planets, and ultimately also to the constellations. As all physical phenomena are manifestations of what originally occurs in the realms of mind and consciousness, the movements of the earth’s crust reflect the movements in the minds of the beings inhabiting it, for all nature is an organism and all things are ineluctably knitted together by cosmic forces. There is a purpose in every important work of nature, whose actions are all cyclic and periodical. The forthcoming cataclysms at the end of the fifth root-race are stated to be especially marked by the element fire.

“Correspondences” refer to the idea that there are both real and symbolic communications existing between all things within the universe. Examples include the esoteric concept of the macrocosm and microcosm, often presented as the dictum of  “as above, so below,” as well as the astrological idea that the actions of the planets have a direct corresponding influence on the behavior of human beings.

On our earth there is a hierarchy of light. Working in this sphere there are lofty intelligences having their respective places in hierarchical degrees. These masters are living forces in the spiritual life of the world and awakened minds and intuitive hearts sense their presence. The head of the terrestrial spiritual-psychological hierarchy is a mystagogue sometimes called the Silent Watcher, who acts as a channel for all the spiritual forces flowing to and from the earth, and who is connected inwardly with all the beings on earth.

Cosmocratores are the planetary regents who fabricate the solar system and are hierarchically superior to those who fabricate the material earth. They are composed of three principal groups, similar to the groups of lipikas. The first group rebuilds worlds after pralaya, the second builds a planetary chain, and the third are the progenitors of humanity. Following their ideation of the cosmos, they fashion systems out of ether and primordial materials such as protyle, etc. The cosmocratores, as the masons of the world, work in the vehicular or material side of nature and receive the instructions for their work from the hierarchy that works on the spirit side, the divine architects.

Teachers are of various grades, belonging to different degrees of different benevolent hierarchies. At the top are those who serve as inspirers and light-bringers to the races of humanity. Below the highest come lesser teachers, pertaining to the lesser cycles of time. The mythology of ancient peoples contains reference to divine instructors of various ranks. The term teachers is applied especially to masters of wisdom, from whom comes the light that guides and aids, but does not govern or control, working through many channels to keep alive humanity’s spiritual intuitions. These masters of wisdom send into the world messengers who have earned the right to work for humankind, including the sublime duty of teaching. On the other hand, false teachers have always abounded in the world, and the pupil needs to discriminate between the false and the true. A true teacher is recognizable by the universality of  their teachings, which are not circumscribed by sectarian, national, credal, party, or other limitations. The true teacher never constrains the will of the pupil nor exacts unconditional acceptance of any doctrines, but points the way in answer to the pupil’s call, seeking to evoke and stimulate the pupil’s own spiritual and intellectual strength and inner vision. Teachers succeed one another and pass on teachings from age to age as in the succession of the guruparampara chain.

Guruparampara refers to a long pedagogic chain, or lineage, of influence extending from the highest spiritual guide down through vast numbers of spiritual chiefs, ending at last in the mere teachers of our youth. There are two kinds of guruparampara: those who rise one above the other in spiritual dignity and in progressively greater esoteric degree, and those who succeed each other in time and in one line in the outer world. Both kinds maintain the same series, manifesting in two slightly different manners as a process of the hierarchical structure of nature itself, although neither pupil nor final guide may be aware that this is the case.

Arambha is the beginning formation of the universe out of pre-existing material. The universe proceeds forth as a ‘new’ production of cosmic intelligence or ‘points’ of individuality called monads. Such a new universe is recognized as the karmic resultant of a preceding universe, the former ‘self’ of the present. The nidanas are the chain of causal concatenation, the twelve causes of existence or manifestation which developed each one by itself, usually in serial and periodic order and strictly in accordance with stored-up karmic seeds of various kinds. The atomic core of selfhood veils itself in the various sheaths of consciousness, which are the seeds or the very being of the nidanas referred back to the self as their originators.

The first cause is a demiurgic root-impulse unfolding a universe. Individualized activity must be finite, however immense, but not infinite or eternal. If the universe is a chain of causation in which each link is the effect of a precedent cause, then if there is no first cause there is no effects and the principle of causality disappears altogether. Infinity has no first cause but is the all-fecund womb of literally infinite numbers of productive demiurgic first causes. We can therefore recognize the necessary limits of human conceptual power, and only postulate a causeless cause.

Every thought leaves a seed in the mind of the thinker, no matter how fugitive the thought was. The sum of such small seeds make up a larger seed for thought, and thus constitute a human’s general character. Thoughts are highly important because humanity is made of thought and built of thought; as we think, so we act and will act, and as we act and think so will we suffer or rejoice, and the whole world with us.

Pralaya refers to a period when the universe dissolves into a state of non-existence. This occurs when the three qualities of matter are in perfect balance. These qualities are referred to as the three gunas which are sattva (purity as per equilibrium), rajas (passion as per activity) and tamas (ignorance as per inertia). Nirguna signifies without qualifying attributes and as a noun signifies a fault or that which is devoid of good qualities. Pre-cosmic substance is the substratum of matter in various grades of differentiation. This substance is often referred to as “darkness” or “chaos.” Pre-cosmic root-substance (mulaprakriti) is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the objective planes of nature. Just as pre-cosmic ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-cosmic substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its differentiation. Substance is not matter, but is the noumenon, or cause, of matter. Pradhana is the root of matter from which the cosmos is created. In pradhana the three gunas are in a state of equilibrium. Each of these three gunas is present in every particle of creation but the variations in their activity manifest as the variety of creation.

Sattva is the quality of truth, goodness, reality, and purity. The three gunas or qualities run all through fabric of nature like threads inextricably mingled. Each of these three qualities participate in the nature of the other two, yet each one possesses its (svabhava) intrinsic characteristic. Not one of these three can be considered apart from the other two. The three are fundamentally three operations of the human consciousness, and essentially are that consciousness itself. As the human being is the microcosm of the macrocosm, the same gunas can be discovered in the cosmos.

The three qualities (gunas) have both a good and an imperfect or evil side, and each possesses in itself the other two qualities. For instance, there is sattva-sattva, rajas-sattva, tamas-sattva, etc. Thus in the different hierarchies in the cosmos, the beings composing these hierarchies may be classified not only under one of the three gunas, as essentially manifesting that characteristic, but likewise during their evolution they pass through the phases of the other two qualities, although under the dominance of the main quality from which they as individuals derive. The three qualities are born from nature and bind the imperishable self to manifested life. Of these the sattva quality by reason of its characteristics entwines the mind to rebirth through its attachment to wisdom and knowledge; rajas produces aspiration as well as propensity and thirst, and imprisons the ego through the consequences produced from such action; tamas has its good side but likewise is the deluder of all creatures, and imprisons the ego in a body by characteristics such as indifference, idleness, and sleep. The fruit of righteous acts is called pure and holy and appertains to sattva; from rajas is gathered fruit both good and that which produces pain or sorrow; and tamas produces steadfastness and immovability in a good cause, as well as in a bad sense being the cause of senselessness, ignorance, and indifference. Those in whom the sattva quality is established are said to be mounted on high; those who are full of rajas remain in the middle sphere, the human world; while those who are overcome by the evil aspect or quality of tamas sink below. Thus each of the three qualities has its positive and negative side, and the initiate or adept seeks to make all three qualities manifest in their life in their highest aspects.

Svabhava can bring forth only that which itself is, as its essential characteristic and its own inner nature. Svabhava may be called the essential individuality of any monad, expressing its own characteristics, qualities, and type, by its self-urged evolution. Consequently, each individual svabhava brings forth and expresses its own particular vehicles as its various svarupas, signifying characteristic bodies or images or forms. The essential self sends a ray from itself into manifestation, and the vehicles formed by this ray express its unique individual essence and path of evolutionary growth and experience. Every entity, in all ranges of being, reflects its own essential individuality which is stamped on its innermost essence. Having attained a certain stage of evolution or development (or quality, characteristic, or individuality) in a preceding era, when the next period of evolution came, these entities could produce nothing but themselves, or their own inner natures, as seeds do. A seed can produce nothing but what it itself is, what is in it — and this is the heart and essence of the doctrine of svabhava. Svabhavat is the underlying cosmic substance, the divine source, the self-existent and, to undeveloped minds, the great vacuity — having its own svabhava. Svabhavat is really the plastic essence of matter, both manifest and unmanifest. The svabhavika philosophers teach the becoming or unfolding of the self by inner impulse or evolution of the inherent seeds of individuality lying latent in every monad or jiva.

The human sense organs, each of which has a physical means of expression and of reception, are referred to as the eyes, nose, ear, tongue, body (for the sense of touch), and brain (the organ of mind). The physical organs of sense themselves are vehicles of the living impulses of sense acting from their seats within the astral constitution, or shadayatana, commonly described as the organs of sensation through which consciousness passes. The organ of spiritual vision in the human body is the third eye. Like the other senses it has its spiritual origin which expresses itself through its several forms, corresponding to different planes. Some of the Atlantean magicians and initiates had this inner sight, which was even in their material race highly developed, so that their vision could pass any distance and penetrate opaque bodies. In the order of evolution of the physical senses and their organs, sight comes third, and was evolved as a physical sense in a preceding root-race. The third eye was once external and an organ of physical vision, but retreated inwards when it was replaced by the two eyes as existing at present. The third eye has now become the pineal gland.

If we ordinarily call silence the absence of sound, it is also possible to call sound the absence of silence. Humans must learn the fullness of the seeming void, the voidness of the seeming full — and, applying this, name silence as a mighty positive power, not a mere emptiness. Silence is that in which sound becomes manifest. It is the container of sound, the privation of sound in the rest of the senses, both external and internal. To some humans, silence may seem an unutterable horror, but it must be faced to obtain the sublimities beyond. Silence to our ears is, on higher planes a silence to our soul, but may in either instance be a celestial harmony which our grosser nature cannot absorb.  Gnosis rests upon a square whose corners are silence, depth, divine mind, and truth. There was a time when there was neither silence nor sound, for these constitute a duality, and before this all was a cosmic oneness.

Learned pundits and philologists deny that sound has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines. But the mysterious connection between sound and light is one of the most profound secrets. It is more important to understand that everything great or small, high or low, has its own keynote of sound, its mathematical number, so to speak. Hence every atom has its own particular characteristic sound or note and it is possible to control such an atom, or any other entity, provided one knows the characteristic sound which mathematically represents such an entity. The secret of all mantras, from the standpoint of practical magic, is not so much the words themselves or the letters they hold, although these letters have a certain meaning, but rather the finding of the keynote and chanting it. Rhythm, in this sense, is the very essence of harmonic affinity.

The first root-race was devoid of mind on our plane. The second had a sound language of vowels, and its speech was largely onomatopoetic in character. The third root race developed a speech which was little better than animal sounds, but towards its end these now fully developed human beings had monosyllabic speech, after the awakening of their minds. Before that there was communication by thought-transference. After monosyllabic speech, came the agglutinative, spoken by some Atlantean races, and then the inflectional language of the fifth root-race, represented by Sanskrit and its derivatives, and the later closely related languages such as Greek and Latin. The great number and variety of today’s languages are evidence of the great antiquity of the human race and its extensive division and subdivision. The elaborateness of languages spoken by so-called primitive peoples, especially the frequently highly complicated and extensive vocabulary, for which their modern representatives have but little use, shows that they are remnants of once highly civilized peoples. The priests of Atlantis addressed their gods in the mystical sound-language of those gods known as vach.

Each of the five elements is said to have its guna or peculiar quality, as well as a corresponding organ of sense in the human being. Thus ether has sound for its guna and the ear for its organ; air has tangibility for its guna and the skin for its organ; fire or light has sight for its guna and the eye for its organ; water has taste for its guna and the tongue for its organ; the earth has smell for its guna and the nose for its organ. There are actually seven gunas in nature, but only five have yet been evolved in any degree, and two remain still to appear both as qualities and as sense organs in the distant future.

It was only during the third root-race that hearing became manifest as a distinctly individualized physical sense apparatus. Vibrations of material particles in and outside of the body aroused the sense of hearing as a physical manifestation.Though the alternation of manvantara and pralaya conjoined are the Great Breath, the alternating motion of this prana does not cease even during the long pralayic ages. Breath is often used in the same sense as ray, wind, spirit, or pneuma, to denote an active emanation which is at once active and passive, positive and negative, donative and receptive, and is the principle of polarity later in cosmic evolution. An instance is when the divine breath incubates the waters of space, and worlds are produced. There may also be right-hand and left-hand breaths, or breaths (winds) from the four, six, or eight directions, each having its own specific quality and functions.

Pralaya is part of a cyclic model of endless wheels within wheels of various duration marking the beginning (manvantara) or end (pralaya) of either a cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical event. These may be realized as nights and days and are heavily influenced by the planetary time cycles of astrology and the zodiac. However, many planets in our solar system have no globes on the human plane of perception.

Many of the properties attributed to atoms could be represented as vortices in a frictionless, incompressible fluid. Analysis of the atom has failed to resolve it into anything more than electric particles whose properties are functions of their motions called vibrations. Fohat traces spiral lines and forms wheels or centers of force around which primordial cosmic matter expands and contracts and passes through stages of consolidation ending in globes, and later through stages of etherealization. Vortical motion is a universal law seen in the stellar universe and in the electronic constitution of the physical atom, giving a fuller meaning to the word cycle. Wheel, cycle, globes, and revolutions all pertain to the same fundamental conception of whirling, revolving, or the gyrating motion of beings and substances. No motion can take place except in matter, space, and time, where the revolutions of entities include the time periods or cyclic returns of beings and events throughout duration. Wherever there is a whirling or turning, whether of matter or of an event in time, it is because it is a being or thing which is active in reproducing itself in cyclic events. A cycle of time entails a moving entity producing the cycle, albeit the moving entity may not be visible and indeed may be incomprehensible. Motion, the divine breath, becomes a cosmic whirlwind and sets in motion the particles in space, bringing about their coagulation and concretion, and later their dissipation and dispersion.

A nebula is the first stage of manifestation of a planet or star. Dark nebulae are masses of unknown substance sufficient to obscure the light of the stars behind them. These are composed of primordial or dormant matter, or matter at times in a state of atomic dissociation. The kinetic activities of world-building in them have not yet begun, whereas the light nebulae represent the processes of building. A true or irresolvable nebula is said to be gaseous rather than a cluster of stars. Irresolvable nebulae are cosmic matter which has reached a plane of condensation where it is ready for building into worlds by the action of intelligent fohatic energy. The sun started as a very diffused, tenuous gas or nebula, extending much farther than its present volume. The combined influence of gravitation and of contraction by cooling resulted in the separation of parts of the mass into rings, and these rings afterwards coalesced into planets. The galaxy itself is alive — an animate organism — and every solar system comprised in it is likewise alive and therefore an organism. The term alive comprises mind or intelligence and spirit. Thus not only is the sun alive, but every one of the planets (excepting the moons) is an individual living entity, of which only the grossest or physical globe is apparent to our vision and therefore, is a composite unit, formed of component individuals. The solar system was originally formed from a vast nebula consolidating into a physical world from inner worlds — astral matter becoming physical matter —  guided by innate mind in which the various motions within the solar system arise from the innate vitality within it.

The stars of the entire galaxy are all intimately connected together, spiritually, intellectually, psychically, vitally, and physically, which means a connection extending back to a unity of origin in a past so greatly remote that its period can be reckoned only in astronomical figures. In an exactly similar way all the planets of our solar system, especially the so-called sacred planets of the ancients, are connected in origin in a distant past. They are connected to the hierarchies of intelligent beings of various classes which enter into creative action when the central sun emits creative light preceding the later periods of manvantaric activity. Those classes of  cosmic architects open the manvantaric drama by entering upon their respective functions, and once the lines of structure are laid, the lower classes— high though they may be in spirituality and intellectuality — begin their work as builders, which is ceaseless until the manvantaric end.

Planets are the outer shell of living beings and have evolved from cosmic seeds, passing through various stages including that of comets. They are inhabited by denizens adapted to their conditions. Each planet of the solar system is in its own particular stage of planetary evolution, one planet being in one round of its own evolutionary course, another in a different round of its evolutionary development; and the substances or matter composing them are in different states of materiality, ethereality, or spirituality. The planetary movements are regulated by mathematical law originally impressed not only in the structure of the solar system, but in the characteristic nature of each individual planet in the system, and mark cycles of time, great and small. They shed influence on the earth and its inhabitants both as time indicators and by their quality as living beings. Each celestial body is the vehicle of what is in essence a divine entity and are undergoing courses of evolutionary unfolding in time periods so vast that mathematics cannot compass them. Every cosmic body is a composite entity of inner and invisible energies and substances, and of an outer and visible physical body. These elements are the principles of every self-contained entity or individual life-center. Every entity in the universe is an inseparable part of its universe, therefore whatever the whole contains, is found in miniature in every part.

The bhadra-kalpa is the present age, said to last 236 million years during which 1,000 fully enlightened beings or sages will appear. The bhaumika pralaya is a terrestrial or planetary dissolution or manifestation. The bhaumika pralaya occurs when a planet has to transfer its life and energy to a new laya-center of another globe where it begins the bhaumika manvantara, the great life cycle of a new globe which is the re-embodiment of the inner constitution or life essence of the former planet which is now dead and decaying. Our earth, or any similar celestial body on this cosmic plane, is looked upon as an entity which is becoming, growing, evolving, and is therefore a living being. Frequently the earth is called prithivi, because it is a manifestation of the guarding and guiding planetary spirit of the solar system.

“Invisible” planets exist within a space which is neither a limitless void nor a conditioned fullness, but both—being insubstantial and on the plane of absolute abstraction. As such, horoscopy must consider time as finite while duration is endless. Time is a point within a circle of duration which has neither limit nor boundaries, nor any name or attribute. Space is not mere emptiness or a mere container, but a vast and incomprehensibly immense plenum, pleroma, or fullness, divided into various departments, planes, spheres, and worlds.

A circle is a mystic unity symbolized by the inclusive number one, the single amalgamated source from which proceed creative rays and manifestations of the mind.  A point at the center of a circle is the cosmic germ of generation out of which all later phenomena emanate or flow, and hence is the first manifestation. The circle may be conceived as either one unbroken line, having no parts, or as an infinitude of points — in which zero and infinity are extremes which meet, and where spirit and matter are not yet separated — thus it is spirit-substance.

A singular point is made by the intersection of two lines at the apex of a cone where a decreasing magnitude reaches zero. This becomes the node of a vibration, as when something passes from one state to another. Such conjecture suggests that the centers of the nebulae are of the nature of ‘singular points,’ at which matter is poured into the universe from some other, and entirely extraneous, spatial dimension, so that they appear as points at which matter is being continually created. This suggests that matter can be created, and resorts to a fourth-dimensional theory to explain its mysterious appearance. However, physical matter is formed or deposited from ultra-physical matter, as energy-substance passing from one plane to another, so there is no need to resort to a fourth-dimensional theory.

The ever-unknown frontierless womb of boundless space is conventionally represented by the circular zero. All the sections of a sphere are circles in which its surface is an infinite plane having neither boundaries nor parts and therefore measurable perhaps solely by the rules of geometry. A balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces produces the sphere, as in a soap bubble. Its center and its surface represent opposite poles, between which radiate expansive and contractive energies. The earth is virtually a sphere. The heavens, the limits of our vision, form the surface of an ideal sphere, whose center is everywhere, and whose periphery is nowhere. The path of a point which moves round an axis while continually approaching it or receding from it, the spiral, also often used for a helix, is generated by compounding a circular motion with one in a straight line. The spiral form is an apt illustration of the course of evolution, which brings motion round towards the same point, yet without repetition. The figures 8 and ∞, denoting the ogdoad and infinity, stand for spiral cyclic motion. The course of fohat in space is spiral, and spirit descends into matter in spiral courses. The complicated spirals of cosmic evolution bring the motion back to the point from which it started at the birth of a great cosmic age.

The physical plane of objectivity is referred to as the three-dimensional world, because space is considered a system of points with three rectilinear coordinates necessary to determine the position of a point. When one of these three dimensions becomes zero, the volume of the body also becomes zero, and it vanishes from the physical planes. Time may be considered a dimension, because it is a quality or mode of measuring space from event to event, so that by such mensuration the mind can picture not only the continuous present, but likewise the past and future. Any entity possessing three dimensions could not exist or be, unless the time element entered into the equation. Unless a being or thing exists in time it obviously cannot exist at all, and thus time can be called a dimension of space. As long as matter or physical space exists, there will be a physical space with three dimensions and no more, yet to which can be added the fourth dimension called time. Likewise, consciousness, which is an attribute of abstract space like time is, is yet another dimension. The terms dimensions and dimensional arise merely because they apply to the three standard manners of measuring physical objects, and likewise to the time element or points of duration, but when applied to the higher modes or qualities of a cosmic continuum, these words can be used only by distorting the idea of mensuration they involve. Time is only an illusion produced by our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration. It does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced. A spiral line represents time returning upon itself in cycles, and yet transcending itself at each cyclic sweep. Divided or phenomenal time is often conceived as an offspring of space, the latter considered as a container of manifestation.

Every celestial body is under the directing influence of a hierarchy of beings, spiritual, quasi-spiritual, and astral, the higher of which may be called celestial spirits. These planetary spirits have evolved through past cosmic cycles of evolution from a state equivalent to the human although the general hierarchy pertaining to each planet is closely linked with the destinies of the present life-waves of that planet. Evolution starts from a primal point and is fulfilled in the pleroma or manifested sum total of a manifested universe, with special emphasis on the inner and invisible ranges and planes. Therefore, it is the cosmic abode of invisible divinities in all their many ranges and ranks, together with the planes, worlds, and spheres composing the fullness. Such an entirety is the whole elaborately divided and subdivided into planes and hierarchies of emanations, being geometrically symbolized by squares, circles, points, etc. A point is regarded as having no parts or magnitude, but is postulated for the purpose of defining position, for it cannot in itself have position unless space has been previously assumed. An abstract point cannot have location or relation to anything as it is devoid of attributes, unless we consider unity as an attribute. It is equivalent to the whole universe. The mystical significance of a point describes an emanative center, a spot where energies from one plane enter another plane, a symbol of unity and homogeneity, representing the phase before polarity has set in. When a point appears in a circle it is the first differentiation in the periodical manifestations of an ever-eternal nature.

The skandhas are various attributes forming the compound constitution of the human being. They are the manifested qualities and attributes forming the human being on all six planes of being, beneath the spiritual monad, making up the totality of the subjective and objective person. They have to do with everything that is finite in the human being, and are therefore inapplicable to the relatively eternal and absolute. Every vibration of whatever kind, mental, emotional, or physical, that an individual has undergone or made, is derivative of and from one of the skandhas composing the individual’s constitution. Skandhas are the elements of limited existence. The five skandhas of every human being are: form as the material attributes; sensations or perceptions; consciousness and abstract ideas; action as tendencies both physical and mental; and knowledge as mental and moral predispositions. The human skandhas are the causal activities which by action and interaction attract the reincarnating ego back to earth-life. The exoteric skandhas have to do with the objective human, while the esoteric with the inner and subjective human. At death the seeds of causes sown which have not yet been realized remain latent in our inner principles as “psychological impulse-seeds” awaiting expression in future lives. The skandhas unite at birth and constitute the personality. After the death of the body the skandhas are separated and so remain until the reincarnating ego on its downward path into physical incarnation gathers them together again around itself, and reforms the human constitution as a unit. The skandhas are awakened into life one after another — first the highest ones, next the intermediate ones, and last the inferior ones. The skandhas are closely connected with the astral light, which also is the medium or register of impressions.

Subjective and objective are interdependent, having meaning only in relation to each other. Subjective applies to whatever is referred to the thinking subject, the ego, while objective is whatever belongs to the object of thought, the non-ego. Subjective and objective express a relation between the act of perception and the object perceived. The two words correspond to mind and matter, but parts of mind itself may become objects of some higher perceptive subject. Subject and object are contrasted on every plane, and this contrast represents the experience of the perceiving ego. But the peak of omniscience, or knowledge of things in themselves, is not reached until the duality or contrast of subject and object vanishes into unity. The word subjective is often used to mean unreal, in contrast with the physical world which is regarded as real — despite the fact that the physical world is perhaps of all things the most unreal of entities subject to knowledge. Thus an apparition may at times be described as being purely subjective, meaning that in such cases instead of being an actual external object it is a mental image considered objectively by the mind itself.

In cosmology a horizontal diameter in a circle symbolizes the first manifestation which gives birth to the universe. It also represents the hermaphroditic third root-race of humanity. The diameter, when found isolated in a circle represents female nature as the first world, self-generated and self-impregnated by the universally diffused spirit of life — referring to the primitive root-races also. An empty circle represents a boundless unmanifested point within the first differentiation of potential space within abstract space. While the horizontal diameter represents the third stage of manifestation, the divine mother or nature, a cross within the circle is the manifested world in which the vertical diameter is male, and alone in the circle represents humanity after the separation of the sexes.

When a manvantara begins there is a wisdom energy which radiates a pre-cosmic substance which acts as a demiurge, but not yet an architect. This radiation is a divine thought that impregnates matter to create perception in sentient beings. As such it functions as a manvantaric dawn.

The alpha and omega is the originator of a cosmic manvantara, and all the hierarchies of spiritually inferior beings flowing forth from this manvantara undertake the work of building, preserving, and finally destroying the solar system when the manvantaric term is ended. Then the alpha or outflowing energy recombines with the omega or inflowing energy, re-coalescing into their original oneness.

Svabhavat is the essence that fills the universe and is the root of all things. It is the abstraction known as mulaprakriti or cosmogenesis. Like the akashic or etheric realms, svabhavat remains in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it while progressing from an inactive state into one of intense activity. It differentiates these states, and begins its work through that differentiation. After a certain existence it passes away into prayala.

Rudras are highly intellectual and spiritual entities, having through previous evolutionary periods attained self-consciousness by individually passing through the equivalent of the human kingdom. The rudras represent the aggregate of entities in the primary formation of worlds, as well as the intellectually informing principles of humanity. They are said to be at war with the shadowy entities and powers of the lower spheres, and hence are sometimes spoken of as the destroyers of outward forms. They are also one of the classes of the “fallen” or intellectually incarnating deities, the progenitors of the true intellectual-spiritual self in humans. The rudras are even referred to as the ten vital breaths or pranas because the ten vital breaths are the ten varieties of intellectual energies flowing from them, and which on the intellectual plane may be spoken of as the mental pranas.

Sishtas are those superior classes of each kingdom left behind on a globe during its obscuration, serving as seeds of life for the returning life-wave in the next planetary manifestation. They are the most highly evolved monads of each of the forerunners who, because of the innate urge and karmic power behind them, have preceded in their development the great bulk of their life-wave. In the human life-wave, the sishtas will be the most evolved humans, the great sages, those who have outrun the evolutionary development of the human life-wave considered as a whole. They are called remainders merely because they remain behind on a globe in order to provide the seeds for inaugurating their own life-wave’s evolutionary progress, when that life-wave once again reaches the globe on which the sishtas remain. While the sishtas are dormant, sleeping, or resting, they are not inactive or in a dream-world. They are relatively dormant merely because the life-wave has passed them by. Yet they still carry on all the functions, processes, and duties required of the most advanced egos of that life-wave until the life-wave returns to the globe on which these sishtas are awaiting it. The sishtas are the mind of any life-wave — and hence the respective mind for each life-wave.

Diti is cosmically what may be called the first sheath or integument of aditi which is generalized space. Thus, diti becomes the more or less divine spatial extent of a cosmic unit, such as a universe, solar system, etc., although the significance of diti points directly to lofty spirit. Diti is the principle of the metaphysical nature of akasha. Diti represents, at one and the same time, the divine mind of the ascetic, and the divine aspirations of mystic humanity toward deliverance from the webs of illusion, to final bliss.

The terms space, extension, and spatial extension convey notions essential to our mental processes, and we cannot even think of a point without having first imagined an extended space for it to be located. When abstract space is spoken of as a boundless extension, the latter word must be understood as the addition of this, that, or some other cosmic plane. Therefore, on each such plane resembling a spatial adjunct we recognize a physical space, great or small. However, extension is not abstract space itself, for all extensions of whatever character, and on whatever plane, are contained in abstract space. If we speak of abstract space as a boundless extension, we must enlarge the word extension to include the inner and the outer, the high and the low, and all that is visible or invisible, past, present, and future.

The issuing of streams of light and life from a sun is an act of emanation, while  the unfolding of what is latent in a germ is an act of evolution — but equally so an emanation, for all the attributes of the developing germ flow forth from the inherent life which is unfolding itself. Emanation is the process by which hosts of individual monads issue from their original parent-source and evolve for the subsequent unfolding, from each monad, of what is latent in it. Emanation is the manifestation of worlds and living beings from a unitary divine source in which it is opposed both to the doctrine of special creation and to the materialistic scientific theory of evolution.

Although often used interchangeably with being which refers to abstract continuity in spirit, existence means a manifestation of an entity in the phenomenal worlds. Therefore being is the noumenon and existence is the phenomenon. Hence the causes of existence (nidanas), or of all existences can be dissolved. The Absolute, a cosmic hierarch, is absolute existence as non-existence. Non-existence is described as absolute being, and consciousness. The distinction between being and existence, is the former is the noumenal One, and the latter the phenomenal manifold through which the One is known.

Fohat is cosmic vitality manifesting in one of its forms as fire or as electricity and magnetism in manifold appearances as an offspring of cosmic space or cosmic waters. These waters are not liquid but ether — the fiery waters of space. Fohat is a vital electrical power that transpires to create and unify all cosmic energies. It is a living force created by will which acts on the cosmic, terrestrial and human planes as they exercise their influences both respectively and collectively on the unseen planes of affinity and sympathy. Fohat is the inseparable absolute monad uniting humanity with nature through an attraction of atoms. Akarsha is attraction, contrasted with prishu or presha which is repulsion. As an electrical fluid, fohat is present in the construction and formation of a plan in the mind of nature. This plan is sometimes called the Divine Thought of cosmic and human ideation in which “word made flesh” is manifested. On the earthly plane fohat is felt as the magnetism of desire. On the cosmic plane fohat is the constructive power that carries out the formation of all  phenomena.

The laws of nature are the action and interaction of the combined consciousnesses and wills which pervade the cosmos. The will pours forth in floods of light and life which follow the pathways of universal circulation from the central heart of the solar system. They descend, plane by plane and cycle by cycle, into the depths of matter, from which they arise again towards their primal source. In this progressive descent and ascent, will is made to manifest in each state of consciousness which it enters. There is, therefore, the one fundamental cosmic will-ideation, breaking into innumerable streams of willing entities during periods of manifestation, and operating in every round of the endless ladder of life. Universal thought and will come into manifestation through the collective hosts of spiritual beings who are the vehicles through which the unmanifested appears. They are intelligent forces that act according to laws imposed upon them by still higher powers. The natural law which preserves the balanced motion of planetary rotation explains how there is a will needed to impart a circular motion and another will to restrain it. In the composite human being — the microcosm — there are the divine, spiritual, intellectual, emotional, animal, astral, and even physical wills. As will operates through human nature, the individual consciously and unconsciously gives it a right or wrong direction, according to the use of free will in choosing a course of conduct. The brain and body show the different actions of the conscious, positive, volitional will and of the negative, automatic, vegetative will. The latter energizes the mysteries of organic functions carried on by various conscious or semiconscious elemental entities who act instinctively under the intelligent, harmonious laws of nature for the body’s welfare.

Fohat is the mysterious link between mind and matter serving as the animating electrical charge of atoms, bringing them to life. Just as subject and object can be synthesized into a unit, fohat synthesizes spirit and matter to create a subjective spirit and objective matter. This process creates a plan for a new universe. Each manvantara is headed by a different incarnate Manu whose cosmic ideation arises as a type of wisdom of the Absolute from the pre-cosmic ideation occurring at the beginning of a manvantara. This cosmic ideation gives rise to fohat. Absolute wisdom mirrors itself in its ideation by a transcendental process, superior to and incomprehensible by human consciousness which results in the cosmic energy of fohat. Fohat is the dynamic energy of cosmic ideation which exist as Divine Thought to become the substance of “the laws of nature.” As such, fohat is the bridge of ideation created by the architects of the visible universe. Fohat, as the unity of mind and matter, is the divine androgyne representing the active male potency of the female reproductive Shakti in nature. As the primordial light in the universe of manifestation, fohat is the ever-present electrical energy and ceaseless destructive and formative power of daiviprakriti, the fons et origo of all phenomena, the divine mother of evolution.

Fohat guides the ether (akasha) toward activity which differentiate into a marvelous complexity and diversity thus creating the various natures of phenomena. At first these natures are inert substances but evolve into increasingly abstract planes of perception. Ananga means without limbs or parts and is a graphic and suggestive title of all spiritual potencies, qualities, or attributes. It is also a name for akasha, the sky or cosmic ether, and for manas (mind). Archaeus is one phase of fohat manifesting as energy on lower planes of the universe. It is a combination of intelligent energy and original substance working as mind and vehicle.

Shakti is universal energy, the feminine aspect of fohat and one of the forces of nature. It is energy that proceeds through itself, not being due to the active or conscious will of the one that produces it. Viewed as a consort of  deities, this energy or active power is represented as feminine influences. Cosmically the shaktis originate in the summit of the astral light or akasa, which is the womb of the cosmic shaktis, but also their playground. In humans, shakti is the mind in its higher aspect, and the activities of the various pranas in the human constitution in its lower aspect. There is no essential distinction between any divinity and its consort. Furthermore, all the shaktis are either conscious entities in nature, or vital effluxes or emanations, cosmic fluids, with which nature is infused throughout. The kundalini is likewise born in the mind in humanity, but descending through the human constitution has its pranic or psychovital physical representations in the various chakras or vital centers of the human frame. Thus the kundalini is an example of shakti or of its fluidic effluxes in the lower portions of the human constitution. Cosmic operations or cosmic justice are often viewed as terrible in their operation. Hence shakti is often represented in iconography as surrounded with a necklace of skulls or similar emblems which pragmatic culture misinterprets as horrible and revolting.

Chit represents the intelligence side of nature, and its opposite, achit, is its vehicle, the substantial or material side of nature. Chidachit refers to that which is neither the one nor the other, but the link or intermediate division between the mental form and the manifested form of phenomena equivalent to fohat.

Somewhere between time and eternity lies a dimension called hyparxis. Hyparxis is an ‘ableness-to-be.’ It does not indicate a change in time, or a manifestation of eternity. Instead it refers to transformations in ‘inner time.’ Hyparxis combines what is actual with what is potential, thus creating a ‘present moment’ based on the internalized experience of external temporal events, past, present, or future. Thus, the new age refers to no age at all, but instead describes an elemental quality of being. The word utopia signifies ‘no place.’ It is neither here nor there, of this world or transcendental to it. Its existence as a non-existence can be seen as a singularity, but within this ‘no place’ exists an infinity of space. Thus an invisible space between worlds is created as a medium between the real and the ideal environments. The aspiration for a space within a pre-existing place distinguish the utopian impulses from the transcendental impulses, whereas transcendentalism seeks escape from the “real” world in exchange for an ideal one, utopia instead seeks a deeper connection with this world in the form of its inner potential as a comprehension of the real.

Noumenon and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses. Noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values, as distinct from a thing knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes. Human understanding makes sense of and thus intuits phenomena that appear to the mind. A crucial difference between the noumenon and the thing-in-itself is that to call something a noumenon is to claim a kind of knowledge, whereas the thing-in-itself is unknowable.

The pranic life-atoms of the human body make an electrical field which permeates the astral-vital-physical constitution,  and puts us in contact with the natural flow of ethereal currents of electric and magnetic forces. These forces emanate from great cosmic entities which are the intelligent agencies for the karmic action of the laws of nature. They function in the noumenal realm of causes which appear on earth as phenomena of all kinds to oversee the destiny of both humanity and the planet. They act impersonally in harmony with the combined effects of ethereal and terrestrial conditions. The sun, moon, planets, earth, and human brain are all magnets in contact with a common network of consciousness. The atoms, fluids, and gases have stepped down, plane after plane, bringing us the karmic influences of the hierarchies which compose the solar organism. They are the tangible carriers of the cosmic electrical fire of divine, spiritual, mental, psychic, astral, and material forces which fill the universe. The same impersonal agents of the karmic law, under the influences of far higher spiritual agents, are equally active and helpful during human cycles of ethical and spiritual aspiration and progress.

Bath Qol is the voice of primordial light signifying the wisdom that was received vocally. This wisdom is the daughter of a cosmic all-wisdom referred to as prajna. The arani represents the father and mother elements in nature, the creative, generative energy producing offspring from a receiver. While the mother/father metaphor is visualized physiologically, it may be interpreted as the creative power of the human mind to a celestial spark. Aupapadukas are those who are self-born by reason of their own intrinsic energy, without parents or predecessors from which existence or activities are derived, as is the usual case in linear descent. There are aupapaduka divinities of the solar system as well as organic entities, because the core of any such entity is aupapaduka incarnating out of inherent energy and not as the offspring of a predecessor.

Samskara refers to any compound form in the universe whether a tree, a cloud, a human being, or a molecule. Everything that is physical and visible in the phenomenal world are conditioned things. Every action by an individual leaves a samskara in the deeper structure of the person’s mind. These impressions then await volitional fruition in that individual’s future.

Samjna is perceiving the qualities of an object. Its function is to create a condition for perceiving again “this is the same,” or recognizing what has been previously perceived. Samjna becomes manifest as the interpreting of the object by the features that have been apprehended. Humans can make sense of phenomena in various ways, but in doing so can never know the “things-in-themselves” as the actual objects and dynamics of the natural world in their noumenal and transcendent dimension.

As the symbol of generation, birth, and rebirth, the egg is the most familiar form of that in which is deposited and developed the germ of every living being, used not only on account of the mystery of apparent self-generation, but from its spheroidal shape, the sphere and circle both being symbols of encompassing space. The female emanator is first a germ, a drop of heavenly dew, a pearl, and then an egg which gives birth to the four elements along with akasha. Giving a fellow disciple an egg in the old Mystery schools suggested the rebirth of nature when initiation ceremonies prevailed at the spring equinox, thereby expressing the hope that they might be reborn. The egg was the symbol of life in immortality and eternity, and also the glyph of the generative matrix. The third root-race, produced their offspring from eggs which was a method which still exist today among animals. This race and its method of reproduction was the logical outcome of the so-called “sweat-born” of the later second and earliest third root-races.

The progressive series of methods by which human life has reproduced its kind on earth is closely related to the unfolding of composite human nature, and is also a part of evolutionary history. The re-embodying ego manifested its composite nature in the degree corresponding to the various gradations of matter in and through which it slowly descended, plane after plane, to its present state. This series of former kinds of embodiments, and of the progressive modes of reproduction are found repeated in the development of the human embryo, in the persistence of vestigial organs in adults, and in reproductive methods which still prevail in the lower kingdoms of plant and animal life. In the lowest forms of life, a homogeneous speck of protoplasm divides into two. Next, in a nucleated cell, the cell nucleus splits into two sub-nuclei which develop within the cell wall, or burst through to multiply outside into independent entities. This fission is a copy of the reproductive method of the first root-race. The next type of cell division is budding, where a portion of the parent swells out at the surface, finally to separate and to grow into a full-sized individual, as in many vegetables, the sea anemone, etc. This repeats the way in which the primeval human race merged out of its first reproductive method. At the next step, the parent organism throws off a single cell which develops into a multicellular organism like the parent, as in bacteria and mosses. The formation of these spores is followed by a type of intermediate hermaphroditism with the bisexual organs inhering in the same individual, as in plants. These “buds” grew more numerous and became human spores or seeds as a type of “vital sweat.”  Many of these buds at certain seasons when the parent entity had become mature, would leave it, as  the spores or seeds of plants today. These seeds were taken care of by nature and developed in their environment. At present, the occasional cases of multiple human births hint at this long-past condition in procreation. The present method of procreation, like all the preceding ones, is a passing phase of human re-embodiment and will in time become human evolutionary history as other methods will have taken its place.

Organisms reproduce in various ways: fission, gemmation, parthenogenesis, hermaphroditic reproduction, and sexual reproduction. In the course of evolution, organisms pass from one method to another. The passage from the hermaphroditic method to one in which the sexes are separate took place first in the animal kingdom, and shortly afterwards in the human kingdom. The process of separation did not occur suddenly, but slowly. This is often called the fall, and is so in one sense was a descent from spirit toward matter, and served as an initiation of various beasts. In reality, it was simply a following of the natural course of an unfolding progress in evolution. The separation is symbolized by a circle with a vertical diameter. The hermaphroditic state is repeated in the developing embryo where the organs of both sexes arise from the same germinal layer of cells, and differentiation does not occur until the middle period of fetal life. Today, the orderly unfolding of embryonic cells into a human form is in keeping with the embodying ego’s karma, and is therefore directed by creative spiritual entities and forces. Before humans could become male and female physically, their prototype had to arrange a form on the sexual plane astrally. That is to say, atoms and the organic forces, descended into the plane of differentiation to carry out a balance as male and female in its present stage of materiality. After the separation, the third eye began to disappear, and death as we now understand it was not known until then. Thus the primeval polarity of all things differentiated on the material plane — including sexual humanity — was of immaculate origin and purpose.

The otherwise unaccountable sterility which ethnologists note among certain so-called primitive peoples is a physiological prevision by which karmic law hastens the closing scenes for the remnants of a racial cycle. A process of decimation is taking place all over the planet among races whose ‘time is up’ — among these stocks are the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. The study of this sterility throws a strong light upon the origin of the anthropoids. This dates back to hybrids resulting form the union of certain imperfectly evolved groups of Atlanteans with females of a semi-human, if not quite animal race, itself the progeny of the mindless Lemurians. This took place at the period of the greatest materialization of physical humanity, when the unnatural union was fertile because the mammalian types were not remote enough from their root-type — the primeval astral human — to develop a necessary barrier. Since then, nature has changed, and the general rule for the crime of human bestiality is a resulting sterility.

The originating causes of sex are not rooted in the higher principles or elements of the human composite constitution. It is the effect of former thought-deposits, of emotional and mental tendencies and biases given way to in preceding lives on earth. The predominating cause of a given sex in incarnation is the strong attraction to the opposite sex during the preceding lives on earth. This attraction, arising out of thought and emotional energy, feminizes the life-atoms, or masculinizes them, as the individual case may be, and the natural consequence is incarnation in a body of the sex to which attraction leads. Thus a reincarnating ego may have several incarnations in bodies of one sex, and then incarnate in bodies of the opposite sex for a number of times in succeeding incarnations. How many times, therefore, a reincarnating ego may embody in a male or a female body is not subject to any arbitrary rule but depends solely upon the karmic impulses in the treasury of psychomental experiences. Though the distinction of sex is biologically regarded as a profound and nearly universal attribute, it is an evolutionary condition or cycle of the reincarnating ego’s development in its present stage of materiality. Therefore, it is a transitory event in its bipolar earthly experience. As sex has been nature’s plan for humanity for some eighteen million years, it will continue to be the natural plan for some ages to come. Some ages hence, sex differentiation will give way to the activities of impersonal, spiritual and creative energies.

The seasons are in part due to the inclination of the earth’s axis. If there were no inclination — if the ecliptic coincided with the equator, and the earth’s axis with the poles of the equator — there would be no seasons. In ancient times there were no changes of season, but an eternal spring which lasted as long as the lack of polar inclination endured. During this time earth’s axis was without inclination, remaining at right angles with the plane of the ecliptic. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter corresponded with other quaternaries, such as the four points of the compass and the four elements and also represent a cycle of changes from birth to dissolution and rebirth. The earth’s axis undergoes a secular movement of inclination with interims of pauses and smaller changes, or what may be called librations. This secular movement is on the whole continuous, so that in course of long ages the axis of the earth becomes inverted, and the poles are reversed but, continuing their movement, they finally return to the position of right angularity with the plane of the ecliptic. Enormous changes take place during this cycle, not only as regards seasons, but likewise as regards geological and marine convulsions and cataclysms — evidences of which are apparent not only in the geological record, but in many botanical and zoological migrations. Hence, what was at one time land becomes sea, and vice versa.

The semi-fluid granular substance found in all forms of organic life, protoplasm is the primal type of physical matter which appears as either homogeneous, amorphous, or gelatinous substance, with the potential of differentiating into every known form and function. The biological basis of manifesting life on the physical plane is semi-astral matter operating at the level where two realms, the lower astral and the ethereal-physical, merge into each other. As a physicalization of vital astral substance, protoplasm links the tangible world of forms to the invisible world of living forces and the root-types in evolution.  Astral matter, it must be noted, is a state of matter, having, like gross matter, its own rudimentary, primordial, or undifferentiated ‘protyle.’ There are several protyles in nature corresponding to the various planes of matter, each having its own undifferentiated condition which would be the undifferentiated basis of physical matter, and therefore quasi-astral. This ethereal gradation of substances allows a medium for the transmission of living impulses of intelligences which are the direct cause of every protoplasmic seed differentiating and evolving, each after its own kind. In the lower kingdoms where all forms of plant and animal life begin in this substance, their essential nature and instincts operate under the influence of a hierarchy of cosmic entities which represent the laws of nature. In addition to this creative supervision, humanity’s own spiritual essence is allied with these karmic agents in working out human embodiments. The fertilized germ-cell of the human embryo is a microscopic copy of the protoplasmic second human root-race which was a conglomerate of highly ethereal astral cells filled with the astral essence of protoplasmic fluids. Early humans propagated themselves by fission, as do individual cells and unicellular organisms today. This procedure is an early evolutionary stage in the process of the bringing forth the underlying true human structural framework as we now know it.

The golden egg or womb is a matrix of imperishable substance. It is the luminous ‘fire mist’ or ethereal stuff from which the universe was formed. The mystery of apparent self-generation and evolution through its own creative power repeating in miniature the process of cosmic evolution in the egg, developed due to heat and moisture under the efflux of an unseen creative spirit as a reflection of the heavenly matrix, the female space or primeval chaos, in which the male spirit fecundates the germ of the visible universe. The spiritual seeds of all classes of beings and things exist in primordial cosmic chaos, and each seed is like all others, and therefore like the species which gave rise to them through emanational evolution. These seeds, particles, monads, or spiritual atoms were called homoiomere.

The human race from the beginning passed through different modes of reproduction which depended upon the physiological characteristics of the various phases through which humanity progressed from ethereal through astral into physical types. At first humanity was sexless and then, through various phases of seeding, budding, and egg-bearing, became androgynous. The higher ethereal intellectuals of this race could not physically incarnate even in the bodies of the early egg-born but were mortal in lower mental or personal aspects where there was as yet no personal ego to survive. Although the inner monadic fires existed in these beings, there was no proper vehicle into which to pour their flames. As time passed human progeny appeared with one or the other sex predominating, and finally during the later third root-race appeared as distinct males and females.

Each phenomenon has a physical plane which includes its atmosphere, its astral plane, and its mental plane, all interpenetrating one another, and 

therefore occupying the same position in space, but all quite apart from and not communicating with the corresponding planes of any other phenomenon.

Skandhas are the five bodily and mental factors which result in the rise of craving and clinging. They constitute and explain a person’s personality. These five factors are form, sensations received from form, perceptions, mental activity or formations, and consciousness. These cravings range from the highest down to and including those cravings of the astral-vital-physical vehicle.

There is a faculty of the human mind, which is superior to all which is born or begotten. Through it humans are enabled to attain union with superior intelligences, to be transported beyond the scenes of this world, and to partake of the higher life and peculiar powers of the heavens. Intuition may be described as spiritual wisdom, gathered into the storehouse of the spirit through experiences in past lives. Higher intuition is a filling of the functional human mind with a ray from the divinity within, furnishing the mind with illumination, perfect wisdom and, in its most developed form, virtual omniscience for the solar system.

The adibhuta is the underlying spiritual substratum of material objects and the first element that contains all elements. The  adhibhuta is the original and primordial element in nature and is the uncreated cause of all worlds and the nameless seed from which they emanate. This primordial element is found in mulaprakriti, the fundamental root-substance which underlies all manifestation. While all things spring from an original unity, the term element is employed relatively to many things which are themselves compound. The chemical elements, for example, may spring from a more elementary protyle, and this again from the akasha, the common spiritual-ethereal parent of the physical substratum. Thus, what is homogeneous in relation to that which comes from it, may be heterogeneous in relation to that from which it comes.

The anupadakas are considered parentless, because they radiate directly from that which is neither father nor mother and remain unmanifested. Space is not only a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction, but also the container of a number of unperceived dimensions constituted by different kinds of phenomena. All phenomena have place within the cosmic space, which is a temporal manifestation of an eternal pre-cosmic absolute abstract space.

Interplanetary ether (akasha) extends through the whole of space to the farthest visible star, although our physical eyes may not perceive that star. This is because ether is composed of physical and ultimate atoms in their normal and uncompressed condition. But all the lower and more complex forms of ether exist only in connection with the various heavenly bodies, aggregated round them as atmosphere, though extending considerably further from their surface.

Our atmosphere teems with invisible lives, of which germs are merely the physically embodied or integrated samples, minute and very weak in power. Our atmosphere contains likewise hosts of invisible beings of tremendous energy. The early races of humanity did not require an atmosphere as we now know it. There are organisms on earth at present which do not need oxygen for their vital activities, and there are beings at every stage of time and on every planet which are adapted to the external conditions which surround them. Both the atmosphere and the solid earth are interpenetrated by other spatial realms, invisible and intangible to us, but as objective to their own denizens as our world is to us.

Creation pertains to those primordial beginnings of manifested life which precede the operations of nature when it has entered into its established habits due to past karma. Such actions are the karmic results of preceding causes. Ancient cosmogonies begin with the secondary creation in cosmic things. In the beginning of the primary creation the world, and on a smaller scale the earth, was in the possession of three elemental kingdoms, and its three elements were fire, air, and water. These brought about the evolution of worlds from primordial atoms and from the pre-primordial atom. In the subsequent portions of primordial creation came the manifestation of the various hierarchies called angelic. In the primary cosmogonical creation, universal cognition developed as divine thought which became the vast range of hierarchical minds which constructed, inhabited, developed, and even emanated the manifested worlds. Primeval humanity issued as astral shadows from the highly ethereal frames of their cosmic progenitors. They were human in form only, because for ages they were “mindless” — having huge ethereal and uncompacted bodies and a spiritual-intellectual spark within —as there was as yet no active link, no active middle principle.

In cosmogenesis, the germ is the first well-developed localized cosmic entity, luminous and semi-astral, that is to be a future world. Hence the germ is the developed result of the first cosmic impulse of a primeval intelligent and formative principle working downwards into manifestation. This stage in the evolution of a cosmic entity is called  the womb, for out of the germ, as from a womb, springs or evolves the entity later to appear. This is the bond which connects entity with non-entity as a nursery of human, conscious, and spiritual beings. The germ becomes the spiritual potency in the physical cell that guides the development of the embryo, and is the cause of the hereditary transmission of faculties and all the inherent qualities in humanity. Every germ-cell, human or other, is the physical expression of inner, ethereal, and psycho-magnetic activities, and is a compact bundle of inner forces and substances ranging from the divine through intermediate degrees down to the astral and the physical realms. Each germ-cell is the projection into the physical plane of an inner, psycho-ethereal radiation, a point originating in the inner worlds and contacting physical matter by psychomagnetic affinity, and thus arousing a proper particle or molecular aggregate of living physical substance into becoming a reproductive cell. Passive germ plasm is immortal in that it is identical to its earliest ancestor.

Astral archons are celestial beings who transfer their mystic fluids or essences into their “shadows” or vehicles, thus enabling them to manifest on the various planes of the universe. These beings are concerned with a kind of hypostatic action or a transference of consciousness, vitality, and force from higher to lower planes through various vehicles or sheaths in which descending rays fall on the different planes of the universe that they traverse.

The universe is a living organism, composed of an infinite number of minor organisms of various degrees of expression in both spirit and matter. These groups of minor organisms, or worlds, are separated from each other in consciousness, not in space, by planes. All the beings of any one plane have senses relating to that plane and are therefore usually unconscious of other planes. The suns and planets of any one plane interpenetrate the physical sphere, and permeate it, so that beings actually pass through the worlds of the entities dwelling in realms invisible to us. These invisible realms are made of matter just as is our physical world, but it is less substantial  and more ethereal than ours. We do not cognize them with our physical senses because of the dissimilar vibration of the different planes. While these higher planes are the fountainhead of all the energies and matter of the physical world, to an entity inhabiting these inner and invisible worlds, these are as substantial and real to that entity as our physical world is to us. Just as we know in our physical world various grades or conditions of energy and matter, from the grossest to the most ethereal, so do the inhabitants of these other worlds know and cognize their own grossest and also most ethereal substances and energies.

‘Asiyyah is the lowest of the four worlds or spheres which are emanated during a period of world manifestation. This fourth world contains the physical matter of the planets including the earth, which is subject to birth, change, dissolution, and rebirth of its matter-forms. In the ‘asiyyatic world all the potencies and functions of the preceding or superior worlds are operative but are greatly diminished or weakened as being the farthest tip or extremity of the descent of manifestation.

Akasha is the mysterious fluid termed ‘the all-pervading ether.’ It enters into all the magical operations of nature, and produces mesmeric, magnetic, and spiritual phenomena. Akasha is an eternal divine consciousness which cannot differentiate, have qualities, or act because action belongs to that which is reflected or mirrored from it. Both electricity and magnetism are considered the vital fluids or effluxes of living beings, which flow forth from them and, blending, produce the myriad forms of electric and magnetic phenomenal activity common everywhere. These phenomena can be traced to their source in cosmic akasha.

The changes occurring in the earth’s magnetism are due to akashic magnetism incessantly generating electric currents which tend to restore disturbed equilibrium. Hence all magnetic or electrical activity on earth is produced by astral magnetism and electricity, incessantly generating electric and magnetic currents which reproduce themselves in the physical sphere.

The lokas and talas represent planes of consciousness on this earth, through some of which all humanity must pass. Everyone passes through the lower lokas, but not necessarily through the corresponding talas. The lokas refer to spheres corresponding to the planes of nature, while the talas can refer to nether-worlds or hells. Each of these planes of consciousness has a spiritual or consciousness aspect (loka) and a substantive material aspect (tala), like two sides of a coin. The lokas may also be considered as the “principle” side of a plane, while the talas are the element side. The ativahikas are a class of beings inhabiting the lower lokas who help a disembodied monad or jiva in its transit from its dead body to paramapadha, or the highest bliss.

Chiliocosm is a world made up of a thousand regions. Out of the many regions only three are named: kama-loka (desire realm), rupa-loka (form realm), and arupa-loka (formless realm). The universe is filled with chiliocosms, each one corresponding to a hierarchy with its own integral system of worlds, regions, or divisions, each division again being subdivided to form the vast complexity of universal nature around us. Each such hierarchy consists of divine, spiritual, intellectual, astral, or astral-physical divisions running from the highest down to the lowest, and the three lowest of each such chiliocosm likewise bear the names kama-loka (or kama-dhatu), rupa-loka (or rupa-dhatu), and arupa-loka (or arupa-dhatu), these three commonly spoken of as the trailokya,  applying to whatever universe, hierarchy, or chiliocosm they may be in or belong. In the trailokya, the lowest or kama-dhatu is lowest region of desire; the second or rupa-dhatu are worlds of form of such ethereal and subtle character that they may be defined as regions of a purely intellectual or mental character; whereas the highest or arupa-dhatu comprises regions of so purely spiritual — not merely ethereal — character that words cannot give an idea of their character.

Good and evil are attributes of relativity in nature as cognized by the minds of percipient beings. Neither good nor evil per se exist independently in nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the cosmos, in the necessity of contraries or contrasts, and with respect to humanity, in their human nature of ignorance and passions. Manifested qualities are in pairs of opposites, so that contrast subsists not merely within the pair itself but also between the pair considered as a whole and the One which is superior to it. Since throughout nature such pairs of opposites are reconciled by a synthesizing unity, it follows that the words good and evil are used in a relative sense, and convey the notion of incompleteness as contrasted with an intuitively conceived perfection. We cannot suppose that things can be good or evil in themselves, except relatively, or even in their relations to other things.

The general term nature is used to denote a kind of secondary divinity, while the progress of science has analyzed this into various laws and forces, which paradoxically perform some of the same functions as the deities of polytheism. Less sophisticated intellects have never ceased to believe in a whole range of cosmic hierarchies, running from divinity down to the so-called nature spirits, and traditional peoples have always looked upon these as powers which are often dreaded and must be propitiated. As soon as we depart from the simple primeval idea of a universe filled with intelligent beings — and indeed formed of these beings themselves — of numerous hierarchies, grades, and kinds, we arrive in a maze of abstractions and contradictions. The ancient pantheons are in reality allegories or personifications of the hosts and hierarchies of cosmic powers, divine, intermediate, and terrestrial, in uninterrupted serial sequences. Where an ignorant devotee might address prayers to some of these personifications, the enlightened being would seek to evoke a human power within themselves,  corresponding with the cosmic power, of which humanity is a direct reflection.

White magic, or theurgy, is knowledge used for beneficent purposes. Black magic, or goetia, is knowledge used for evil purposes. Natural magic is the knowledge and employment of the natural powers, forces, and substances of nature — what is called science. If the knowledge gained through the study of natural science is distorted in its use to selfish or ignoble ends, it becomes de facto black magic.

Evocation involves the calling forth of simulacra of the departed by magical processes, or the calling forth of nature spirits of various classes by will. The spiritual aspects of human beings cannot, however, be called forth, except in rare instances immediately after death, which means black magic. These disembodied spirits do not actually come, but cause their simulacrum to be formed, or send a messenger. The attempt to evoke the departed is an interference with the courses of nature and is detrimental to the welfare of departing egos. It is more common to evoke spooks from the kama-loka, or denizens of the lower astral light. Appearances thus created are often of a composite nature, to which the medium and sitters, whether knowingly or not, contribute to actual materialization. Such practices come under the general heading of necromancy.

Bhuta are entities that have lived and passed on, specifically spooks, ghosts, simulacra, the reliquiae of the dead and the astral dregs and remnants of human beings. The bhutas are the ‘shades’ of the ancients, the ghostly phantoms of the astral world, or astral copies of the humanity that were. The bhutas are magnetically attracted to physical localities similar to the remnants of impulses still inhering in them. As such, the bhuta of a drunkard will be attracted to barrooms. Bhuta-vijnana is the knowledge of demonology and the art of exorcising demonic possession. It was one of the branches of ancient medicine. Bhuta also refers to astral rejects of the animal kingdom.

The age-old belief in ghosts is consistent with the breaking up of composite human nature into its component parts at death. The astral body, when freed from its familiar physical duplicate, is still magnetically attached to the body, it is sometimes seen haunting a new grave for a short time. Soon the atoms of this shadowy form begin to dissipate. But the more ethereal and enduring astral atoms cohere in the desire-form body of the deceased person’s lower mental, emotional, and psychic nature. These so-called spooks are the umbrae or larvae of the dead —the human reliquiae as eidola or the astral “images” of the dead. These shells or reliquiae are usually invisible but are sometimes seen by clairvoyants. The more coherent ones are the shells of gross or wicked people and are influences of sensual or evil tendencies which instinctively haunt the atmosphere of persons and places whose characters or conditions are congenial to them and therefore magnetically attract them. Even well-meaning sensitives and persons of mediumistic or psychic type, being relatively aware of the astral plane, are susceptible, at times, to some of these strangely perverse and obsessing influences. Ghouls are the astral or astral-physical entities haunting cemeteries or burial grounds, with an eye upon the danger to humans or animals who come into contact with them. 

Bhutas are the rudimentary substances or vehicular elements of the objective or substantial side of the principles of nature and therefore inseparable from them. These cosmic elements are not the familiar things which are known under these names, for the familiar physical substances were taken as symbols, through certain appropriate qualities which they possess, of the actual elements of cosmic being. These familiar physical substances of earth, water, air, and fire are the correspondences on earth, in a mystic sense, of true cosmic elements.

The phenomena of table-rapping is supposed to be either due to tricks or some kind of unconscious muscular action on the part of the sitters at a seance, or by spirits of the departed. But there are a variety of degrees between physical mechanism and self-conscious volition, just as there are multitudes of living beings in widely differing states of materiality filling the gap between physical organisms and the spirit world. Astral light is filled with an enormous variety of beings, mostly of a low type, not using physical bodies, not human in their nature, but having a sort of consciousness of their own. The conditions provided by the vitality of the medium and sitters may stimulate, and to a certain extent direct, these beings and thus at times cause them to become active in the production of psychic phenomena. The human organism in all its ranges is composed of a vast number of elements, physical, astral, etc., which in normal life are held together in a unit and in subordination to the general life of the person. Some of these elements may become temporarily extruded, especially in mediums or those who have cultivated mediumship. Thus a phenomena may be caused innocently by the seance sitters themselves — or by astral or spiritual phenomenon produced in a table when the sitters at a seance hold their hands over or on it.

Astral remains of the deceased tend to haunt the places where they dwelt in life, and in certain conditions may bring about a connection between the lower astral plane and the physical so that visible images are seen, voices or footsteps heard, and objects moved. In some cases the astral image or reliquiae may persist for centuries, making what is called a ghost or astral corpse. When bones have been found under a house the haunting has ceased after they were ceremonially interred. Sometimes there is an evident desire on the part a revenant to communicate information of some sort, such as a hidden document or buried treasure. This is not because the spirit is desiring to communicate such information, but because it had the desire during life to guard the treasure and conceal it and reveal it to some future individual.

There is a sharp distinction between the demons of a more ethereal type, truly spiritual beings, and the lower earth-haunting demons who are distinctly denizens of the lower astral and physical realms. As with so many cosmic powers and their symbols, these beings have been relegated to the position of evil powers hostile to mankind, to be fled from instead of revered. The whole idea of the adversary or devil is enshrined in the word daemones. But fallen angels, represented as rebel spirits, were merely performing their natural duty in evolution by forming the lower worlds. As personification of evil, the word can only be truthfully applied to those beings that humanity itself, by evil thoughts and passions, has generated to hover in the lowest strata of the astral light or haunt the kama-loka. “Demon” is applicable in general to all formative power, from the highest to the lowest and denotes the formative manifestation in and on the lower planes of prakriti. All the manifested universe is the material inversion or reflection of a divine essence and its emanations which, in their aggregate, compose the spiritual background and causal forces of the universe.

The six ayatanas are the five senses plus mind, regarded as the inner seats of the lower consciousness which function through the ordinary five sense organs plus the mind organ, the brain. They compose the chain of causation or lower causes of existence. There are multiple planes of nature, such as physical, astral, mental, etc. They belong to distinct layers of existence which may not interact unless interconnected by intermediate matter or processes. The atmic body radiates from a central point that is unified with the one-life that envelopes the earth, acting through all living creatures on all levels of existence. Atmic consciousness is undifferentiated awareness as identification, not with individuality, not with groups of beings, but with all pervading life itself. If there is a strong sense of individuality, then it is not a pure atmic state but a reflection of it in the mental or astral levels.

Each plane has its corresponding state of consciousness which denotes the range or extent of that state of consciousness, or of the perceptive power of a particular set of senses, or the action of a particular force, or the state of matter corresponding to any of these. There are both macrocosmic and microcosmic planes. Each of the planes in the macrocosm has its subplanes. The lowest macrocosmic plane is called the prakritic plane, which in turn has its sub-planes. The sub-planes of the prakritic level corresponds to states of human consciousness. Thus human consciousness essentially belongs to the lowest of the cosmic planes. Each of these planes have their sub-planes that correspond with the most ethereal on top and the grossest at the bottom. Thus their order from top to bottom is atomic, sub-atomic, super-etheric, etheric, gaseous, liquid, and solid. The physical plane is therefore divided into the dense physical (consisting of the solid, liquid and gaseous) and the etheric (consisting of the four higher sub-planes).

Daiviprakriti is elemental matter in its first and second stages of evolution from above. The filmy ethereal wisps of light seen in a midnight sky is a physical manifestation of daiviprakriti, because when these manifestations are not actually resolvable nebulae, they are systems of worlds, in the making. Fohat is the energizing power working in and upon manifested daiviprakriti, or primordial substance, as the cosmic intelligence, or cosmic monad. Daiviprakriti and its differentiated energy called fohat, are the guiding and controlling principles, not only in the cosmos, but in all the subordinate elements and beings filling the cosmos. The sun is daiviprakriti working as itself, and also in its manifestation called fohat, although the daiviprakriti and the fohatic aspects are the all-permeant intelligence of a solar divinity. This original, primordial prima materia, is the divine and rational emanation of the universal Mind which— as the daiviprakriti or divine light — formed the nuclei of all the ‘self-moving’ orbs in cosmos. It is the informing, ever-present moving-power and life-principle, the vital raison d’être of all the suns, moons, planets, and even the earth.

Atoms move by instinct, similar to that which the animal guides its life. In human beings are the divine instincts of love, forgiveness, and pity. Instinct lurks in the unconscious nerve-center and manifests in the nervous system as a reflex action. Instinct may be considered as the automatic or quasi-intelligent functioning of rays flowing forth from the cosmic mind — these rays pass through divine intelligences, then through the spiritual intelligences, then through the hosts of beings of less degree, and finally reach animate and inanimate entities. Instinct is thus the functioning throughout nature as the action of cosmic mind. Instinct merges into intelligence, then into self-conscious intelligence, and finally into spiritual intelligence. Instinct may be automatic, but it must have something’s or some one’s intelligence to guide it.

Solid states correspond to the physical planes, the liquid state to the astral or psychic plane, air to mind, and fire to spirit. Each plane is associated with a specific tree. The seeds from which these trees grew suggests a central point within a circle, a chakra as mulaprakriti representing a solar centrality around which our earthly system rotates. As such, the tree of life is rooted in divine “ground” and spreads through the shelves of space, bearing living worlds upon its branches. The term anupadaka, “parentless,” or without progenitors, is a mystical designation corresponding to enlightened beings. Those merged with the Absolute can have no parents since they are self-existent, and one with the universal spirit (svayambhu), the highest aspect of svabhavat. The hierarchy of the anupadaka is great, its apex being the universal spirit-quintessence. Every human is an anupadaka in a latent state. When speaking of the universe in its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was fashioned by its architects, the universe was anupadaka.

Idolatry is the attaching of undue importance to the form rather than to the spirit, and often becomes degraded into worshiping the images made in our imagination and embodied in work of the hands. Imagination is a creative power which, used in conjunction with will, calls forth not only creative forces, but likewise their productions. Thus it can be used for spiritualization and for the materialization of images conceived in the mind to bring about the results desired, whether good or evil. Imagination may become our master, chaining us to illusions we have created. When, however, we can direct this power and resist its suggestions of fancy, it becomes a powerful instrument in shaping our lives and destiny.

Rupa means ‘form.’ While it is used to express matter or material phenomena it is also used to describe subtle and spiritual realities such as svarupa which defines the form of the self or true nature. Modern science states that the self is closely associated with the limbic system, or the paleomammalian cortex structure of the brain. Phren similarly was an ancient Greek word for the location of thought or contemplation located in the torso as opposed to the head.

Through dhyana (contemplation), a hierarchy of contemplative beings is evoked and humans enter a state of higher consciousness in which the ajna chakra is stimulated and restores the “fallen angels” of the mind to their elevated and pure status. Samadhi is a non-dualistic state of consciousness in which the experiencing subject becomes one with the experienced object. During samadhi the mind becomes very still as it merges with the object of attention, and is thus able to observe and gain insight into the changing flow of experience.

There are millions of devas enumerated in exoteric and esoteric sacred or recondite scriptures. Deva is a very general term for various classes of celestial beings. There are classes of ethereal or spiritual beings that are behind humanity in their evolution, unself-conscious sparks who have yet to go through the human stage to more fully bring forth the glory within them. Then there are the celestial beings who have passed through the human stage and are evolutionally higher than humans. And beings higher than these, who have developed the most divine parts of their constitution. Considered as inhabitants of the planes above humanity, devas are a generalized term for those evolving life-waves or hierarchies of sentient beings evolving on the superior globes of the cosmos.

Samadhi implies the complete abstraction of the percipient consciousness from all worldly, or exterior, or even mental concerns or attributes. Samadhi is the final stage of genuine yoga, and can be attained at any time by the initiate without conscious recourse to the other phases or practices of yoga enumerated in other inferior practices which are often misleading, and in some cases distinctly injurious. Enlightenment is a particular state of samadhi, during which the subject reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge. Samadhi is the highest state on earth that can be reached while in the human body. Samadhindriya is the root and organ of ecstatic meditation which sends out shoots and blossoms from the practitioner often in the form of light rays.

When evolution starts on the downward arc, spiritual essences appear as a vast host of individual monads or spiritually conscious atoms which, because of their lack of the self-conscious human condition, are often perceived as unself-conscious sparks — although this does not mean that they lack self-consciousness on their own plane, for these monads never leave their own planes. To speak of a monad incarnating means that a ray projected from the monad “descends” from its plane to inflame the nascent power in lower beings. These sparks, being the spiritual monads of living entities, gradually emanate from themselves the successive vestures through which they manifest. This process takes place serially on the downward arc, with the eventual result that, at the end of the ascending arc, the unself-conscious sparks become a self-conscious humanity.

The higher planes of the cosmos are termed arupa planes, formless worlds, where form as humans perceive it ceases to exist on an objective level. The  lower cosmic planes are called rupa-lokas or manifested planes. Formless radiation exists as separate harmonious rays on the plane of the subjective universe. These rays unite together as an infinitude of monads, each the mirror of its own universe and thus individualized as an independent mind, omniscient and universal. By the process of magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar atoms. Arupa-devas are formless celestial beings who were once human but who have graduated out of the human stage into formless beings. Beneath humans are classes who will be human in the future, such as elementals having a more or less human form, and beasts of a less advanced formless class which can be called animal elementals. There are celestial beings also referred to as devas who are neither ex-humans, asuras, nor beasts, but may be considered as celestial spirit-elementals.

Supreme beings must be propitiated through secondary powers, both beneficent and malevolent, by means of intermediaries — priests or shamans. Shamanism is one of the oldest religions in the world. It is spirit-worship, though the spirits have lost their objective form, and exchanged physicality for a spiritual nature. In its present shape, shamanism is an offshoot of primitive theurgy, and a practical blending of the visible with the invisible world. Its followers have neither altars nor idols, and their rites, which they are bound to perform at least once a year, usually on the shortest day of winter, cannot take place before any stranger to their faith. Whenever they assemble to worship, it is always in an open space, or a high hill, or in the hidden depths of a forest — similar to the old Druidic rites. Like shamans, siddhas are the spirits (or consciousness) of great sages from spheres on a higher plane than our own, who voluntarily incarnate in mortal bodies in order to help the human race in its upward progress. Hence their innate knowledge, wisdom and powers. In this sense, the siddha appellation may be applied to the highest class of incarnated human protoplasts who bring the higher mind to nascent humanity. As the siddhas are highly evolved sages or saints who have become semi-divine and virtually a class of deity, they are endowed with occult yogic powers known as siddhis. There are two classes of siddhis: those pertaining to the lower psychic and mental energies, and those pertaining to intellectual, spiritual, and divine powers — both are possessed by the spiritual initiate. These siddhis should never be used for purposes of self, but always for the benefit of humanity and all creatures.

The function of divinities is the watching over of all hierarchies below them, some being guardians of the human host, others guarding and protecting the less evolved kingdoms. The higher hierarchical ranges of divinities in our universe are entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that they belong to the orders of purely divine spirits. These beings belong to two general divisions, the formless and the form divinities. Those having forms should not be imagined as necessarily having human forms but do have highly ethereal forms, some perhaps resembling the present human shape and others of quite different construction. But the formless divinities are beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, purely spiritual, formless as we conceive form. They represent the guiding intelligences present within all invisible secrets, as well as the astral and physical manifestations of nature. With the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans began to worship themselves, perceiving what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings. Thus the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol and nature worship became relatively universal.

An avaivartika is a non-revolving, non-transmigrating, reembodying entity who has advanced so far on the evolutionary path that they are no longer enslaved by, or enchained in, the whirling waves of samsara. Avaivartyas are those who will never return having passed beyond a certain grade of evolution, freeing them from the need of returning to embodiments in lower spheres.

The word samsara is commonly rendered as the wandering of the human monad under karmic impulsions through enormously varying successions of states, and in different spheres or worlds of the manifested as well as unmanifested universe. It is the processes of metempsychosis and transmigration with particular application to human monads and the doctrine of reincarnation. Samsara is the passage through the three worlds of the physical, astral, and mental planes and embraces the entire wanderings of the monadic centers of beings. Samskara is intimately connected with causative action and its consequences, i.e., with karma.  It is the creative mind weaving together new ideas and notions in action which develops the propensities and impulses to consequent reactions or effects.  As a metaphysical term Samskara is defined as illusion, as notion, or as a species of discrimination.  It has the essential significance as the causative impulses which impel action on the plane of illusion.

Transmigration means the passing of an entity from one embodiment to another, without regard to the status of the entity or the form of the embodiments. Actually the word refers to the transmigration of life-atoms, especially those of the human vehicles after dissolution. According to their affinities and degree of development, these life-atoms which have composed the lower human principles transmigrate to other physical psychomental bodies, there to pursue their own further evolution, unhindered by their former body. Eventually, when the proper cyclic time arrives, they are all again attracted back to the reincarnating human entity to which they formerly belonged. Transmigration of the life-atoms is very important to the unity of all life, the interaction of all nature, and the working of karma.

So far as the present terrestrial period is concerned, the mammalian fauna alone are to be regarded as traceable to prototypes shed by humanity. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., are the results of astral fossil forms stored up in the auric envelope of the earth and projected into physical objectivity subsequent to the deposition of the first rocks. The divine arupa (the formless universe of thought) reflects itself in chayaloka (the shadowy world of primal form, or the intellect) which is the first realm of the anupadaka. There are five enlightened beings who exist on this plane as primeval monads from the world of incorporeal being, the arupa world, where their intelligences have neither explicit shape nor name except in esoteric philosophy. This is because they radiate directly from that which is neither father nor mother but which is incomprehensibly obscured. The concept of  veiled intelligences refers neither to self nor sentient being, nor soul, nor personality, but is instead the true “self” of nirvana. However,  it is erroneous to subsume nirvana under the rubric of anatta (non-self). Nirvana  is attained by total non-attachment, thus applying non-self to everything and permitting pure consciousness to settle in its own flawless nature.

Mind is a name given to the sum of the states of consciousness grouped under thought, will, and feeling. During deep sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane, and memory is in abeyance because the organ, through which the ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, has temporarily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or vehicle. During sleep mind is consciousness in action, the phenomenon corresponding to a noumenon which, in the absence of vehicles for its expression, can only be described as mind in latency, with a possibility of mental action.

Somnambulism, or sleepwalking is a condition in which a person moves about as if entranced, like a human automaton. Though unconscious, they may read, write, compose music or poetry, execute skilled movements, tread dangerous heights safely, etc. They may not only carry out the various activities of the waking state, but may perform both physical and mental feats which they are normally incapable. Later, they may return to bed, still asleep, and upon awakening retain no memory of this strange experience. The puzzle of this psychophysiological state is the ability of the different selves of composite human nature to function consciously upon several planes of their own being. For instance, the ordinary somnambulist may be conscious in their own astral body which is reflexly stimulating the instinctual cerebellum which presides over bodily movements and functions. Such a case is analogous to the unusual performances of an entranced medium. As in common dreams, so in sleep walking where one part of the brain, say the cerebrum, may be asleep, while the cerebellum may be awake and active. In rare cases, however, the somnambulist may so far transcend their usual character that they are functioning above the astral level of their nature.

Nirvana is not annihilation, per se, but a state in which fundamental consciousness is uninterrupted from eternity to eternity, although undergoing continual change. But such change is not a difference of essence, but a continuously enlarging and ever greater unfolding of the essence. However limitless from a human standpoint, nirvana has a limit in eternity. Once nirvana is reached, the same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. When a spiritual entity breaks loose from every particle of matter, substance, or form, to become a spiritual breath, only then does it enter upon the eternal and unchangeable nirvana which lasts an eternity.  Then that breath, existing in spirit, is nothing because it is, as a form, a semblance, a shape, completely annihilated and has become thusness itself. However, when the physical, psychic, and spiritual vehicles are reduced, it is not annihilation any more than a person in dreamless sleep is annihilated while the higher self is in its original state of absolute consciousness.

Humanity evolved out of a primordial spirit-matter, and represents a regular progressive scale of principles from meta-spirit down to the grossest matter. Every atom and speck of matter, not of substance only, is imperishable in its essence, but not in its consciousness. Immortality is an unbroken spiritual consciousness, whereas personal consciousness cannot last longer than the personality itself. Asava signifies attachments rising in the mind from the impact of outside influences which intoxicate the mind and prevent it being held to higher principles. The four asavas include sensuality, hunger for excitement, dreamy speculation, and nescience.

Nominalists hold that nothing exists but individuals, and that universals are mere names invented to express the qualities of particular things. Thus the 

term “human” is a mere abstract idea, a figment of the mind, devised to express certain qualities which we have abstracted from our experience of human individuals, but having no existence except as a name. The Realists, on the contrary, maintained that universals alone have substantive reality, and that they exist independently of, and prior to, the individuals, which are derivative from them or expressive of them. Between these doctrines are those of the Conceptualists who hold that universals, while they exist only in the mind, yet correspond to real similarities in things, which previous to creation existed in the Absolute mind. These notions are illustrated by the question as to the meaning of such words as motion, force, heat, or light. Are the things studied by under those names generalizing terms, existing only in the mind and posterior to the objects which manifest them? Or are they realities in themselves, prior to the objects, and of which the objects are manifestations? All natural phenomena arise in and are therefore derivative from and emanations from causal and originating cosmic intelligences, which perdure in essence throughout eternity, but express themselves by means of phenomena or effects at various times. Thus the phenomena which human intelligence cognizes are transitory but yet are real in their essence, because that essence lies in the perduring intelligence or intelligences from which they flow.

Annihilation requires an exegesis. The positive state is essential being, but no manifestation as such. When the spirit enters nirvana, it loses objective existence, but retains subjective being. The spirit is not an individual property of humanity, but is a divine essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible and indivisible, as that which does not exist and yet is, as is said of nirvana. The difference between animals and humanity is the former maintain principles leading to nirvana potentially, the latter actually. This has resulted in the human form body, or nirmanakaya. The spirit never descends hypostatically into a living human, but only showers its radiance on the inner psychic compounds of the astral principles of humanity. The human and its spirit have to conquer their immortality by ascending towards the unity with which they will be finally linked and into which they are finally absorbed. This is nirvana.

Dharmakaya is the spiritual body or state of a high spiritual being in which the restricted sense of ego has vanished into a universal and hierarchical sense, and remains only in the seed, latent and assuming pure consciousness, pure bliss, pure intelligence and freed from all personalizing though. The dharmakaya vesture is the threshold of nirvana or the nirvanic state referred to as “nirvana without remains.” Having reached that state the enlightened being remains entirely outside of every earthly condition and will return no more until the commencement of a new manvantara. Free from returning births, the dharmakaya state becomes parasamadhi, where no progress is possible — at least as long as an entity remains in it. Such entities may be said to be crystallized in purity and homogeneity.

Psychic powers pertain to the intermediate, psychomental part of human nature, while spiritual powers pertain to the higher part. Spiritual powers cannot be used for selfish and personal ends because their svabhava is universality and impersonality, attributes which link humanity with the surrounding universe. They emanate from the spiritual monad. Such powers cannot be evoked by personal ambition or any form of acquisitiveness, because they do not rise above the intermediate or psychic nature and make no appeal to the spirit above. In fact, spiritual powers are the fruit of renunciation, replacing the personal with the universal, the resigning of the limited for the virtually limitless, the giving up of the small for the great. Spiritual powers consist in a clear intuition of the truth, leading to right conduct, and an ability to help and teach others. An all penetrating vision must be included among spiritual powers. Likewise the siddhis and shaktis given in various enumerations comprise powers that are spiritual — the ones of permanent value are all spiritual. Since psychic powers are in themselves intermediaries, as veils of what is within and behind them, they should become adjuncts to spiritual powers.

The vajra mystically refers to indestructibility and to the wondrous reflective powers of the diamond. One who possesses the vajra reflects the suffering, joys, and sorrows — and beauties — of the world, but can never be injured by them. It has been said that the heart of the perfect person is a mirror — it reflects all things, but holds nothing for itself alone. Thus also is the heart of one wielding the vajra. It is the magic scepter of adepts, the symbol of the possessions of siddhis (superhuman powers), wielded during mystical ceremonies by initiated theurgists. It is also the symbol of power over evil spirits or elementals. Vajra expresses the indestructibility and spiritually adamantine quality of the unknown, without beginning or end — unknown to the average worldly person, but recognized by full initiates as the source of divine inspiration and intuitions.

One who reaches nirvana understands essences exactly as they are, because the consciousness has become co-extensive and co-vibrational with the cosmic monad. Such a person is free from the trammels of all the worlds of illusion which they have thus far passed through. Nirvana is the vanishing point of differentiated matter. The purely nirvanic state is an assimilation with a passage of spirit back to the ideal abstraction of be-ness which has no modifying relation with the manifested planes on which our universe exists during this manvantara. Nirvana is a state rather than a locality, forming a continuum of consciousness within the super spiritual. There are nirvanas of different degrees including one so high that it blends insensibly with the condition of the cosmic hierarch of our universe. The lower degrees of nirvana, however, are attained at intervals by highly spiritual and very mystically inclined people, who have had intensive spiritual training.

The noetic part of the human constitution is independent of the sensual and emotional influences from the psychic nature, and by centering consciousness in this noetic part of our being, we are at all times and in all places able fully to control, master, and therefore direct, the vigorous and erratic movements of the psychic nature. The noetic mind, because it is of a spiritual character, has no direct action on the physical brain or nervous system, but acts through the psychic part of the mind only through the finer elements of the cerebral and nervous texture. The psychic part of our mind is intimately blended with the physical organism, and the interaction between the two seems to conclude that we move in a vicious circle under the sway of forces difficult to control when we center our consciousness in the psychic part of our constitution.

The sensory act of looking is different from perception and cognition. Perception and knowledge arise from the seeking and actions of the mind. The mind has qualities, but is different from its qualities. For example, desire is one of many qualities of mind but mind need not always have desire, and in the state of moksha, or liberation, mind is without desire. Desire, aversion, effort, happiness, suffering and cognition are simply the linga (mark or sign) of the mind. Anumana is an inference, conclusion, or deduction from given premises. It is the one of the of the three pramanas or modes of cognition by which perception or knowledge is sought.

Pure ideas are the domain of the mind in which the perceivable universe exists to enlighten the mind. However, while the mind may be pure, it may be deceived by complexities of perception or its intellect in which avidya (ignorance) regards the transient as eternal, the impure as pure, the pain-giving as joy-giving, etc. Moksha is liberation from rebirth or samsara. This liberation can be attained while one is on earth (jivanmukti), or eschatologically (videhamukti). It is the isolation of purusha from prakṛti, and subsequent liberation from rebirth. It is the direct intuition of the real-existence, intelligence and bliss and is devoid of birth, destruction, recognition, and experience. For this reason it is called knowledge or ritambhara prajna associated with the seed syllable dhih.

What is known as modern science investigates the phenomena of physical nature and by inferential reasoning formulates general laws therefrom. Its method is called inductive and its data are so-called facts — i.e. sensory observations — whereas deductive philosophy starts from axioms. Yet science, in order to reason from the accumulation of data, must necessarily use both induction and deduction. The unity of human knowledge may be divided into religion, philosophy, and science. Science and philosophy, as presently understood, have the quality of being speculative, as opposed to religion, which is supposed to be founded on faith and moral sentiments. The present distinction between science and philosophy lies largely in their respective fields of speculation. Modern science has limited its field of study to the laws of physical nature in which the illusive and entirely phenomenal nature of matter and energy, formerly assumed to be eternal and indestructible, is realized as the chain of physical causation beyond physical limits. As such,  the physical world consists of phenomena occurring as an ultraphysical substance. In the sciences dealing with biology, evolution, and anthropology, legitimate inference from facts has been interfered with by preconceived ideas. Science suffers from not postulating an astral or formative world behind the physical. This astral world is in itself but one stage in a rising scale of invisible worlds. To ascertain the facts upon which to build a true inductive system, science must admit the means of direct perception other than those afforded by the physical senses.

Motion is a fundamental principle in universal nature, coeval with boundless space, ceasing not even during pralaya. Motion is known through its manifestations, the most fundamental of which is vibration. The essential characteristic of vibration is periodicity or cyclic motion. It appears in the alternation of manvantara and pralaya in the cosmic Great Breath and in the most rapid oscillations of minutest particles. The relative periodicity of various vibrations is found to constitute a mathematical scale, according to which phenomena may be classified. The principle of vibration involves mysteries relating to the tremendous potency of sound, some of which are familiar to physicists. Sound is a universal principle which manifests itself physically as vibrations in the mass and particles of bodies. However, they are only one of the productions of causal sound. We might as well define fear as a trembling of the body, as we know that trembling is an effect produced by the emotion. The same applies to heat, light, and others of the list of physical forces which manifest themselves in vibrations. Vibration is the consequence of inner hidden causal agencies. The vibrations ensuing from such inner movements express themselves through bodies or veils and are always in accordance with the causal rhythms and mathematics involving such quantities as rate, intensity, and quality. There are vibrations of as many kinds as there are different causal agents. Thus there are vibrations as effects on the gross physical plane while other vibrations manifest themselves on the astral, emotional, and psychological or lower mental planes. There are also vibrations of higher type which originate in the intellectual and spiritual monads of the human constitution. As an expression of energy, all vibration is force and energy itself, and hence capable of arousing energies or forces of exactly of the same quality or rate of intensity in other realms which they affect. There is always the originating or causal agent for any specific vibration — thus the thinker produces mental vibrational activity which is called thinking or thoughts, or emotion or feeling.Matter may be called a universal, and material bodies may be called particulars — or life may be a universal, and living beings particulars. The universal is defined as that which is left when all particulars or differences have ceased to be. If the particulars are realities, then the universals become abstract ideas and humanity would be merely an indefinite number of beings. But if the universal is real, then humans are each a manifestation on respective lower planes of being. Again, if living beings are real, then life becomes an abstraction. But if life is a real entity in itself, then living beings are its particular manifestations. The philosophy which starts with universals and proceeds to particulars is called deductive. Inductive philosophy proceeds from particulars to universals. Space, motion, duration, intelligence, etc., are abstract realities which are regarded as universals, whereas from the opposite viewpoint they appear as only abstractions from experience. The deductive method has its uses in applied science, yet it tacitly assumes certain universals and reasons them back from particulars.

Stoicism is most familiar as a great ethical system whose aim was to make wisdom practical. It recognized a supreme and all-harmonious divinity of hierarchical character and various subordinate deities, and the unity of humanity with nature and of nature with this divinity. This divinity, however, was not personal deity, but a cosmic spiritual origin, recognized as but one of innumerable others in the boundless fields of illimitable space. Stoicism recognized in humans the existence of wisdom and will, whereby they transcend the distractions of lower forces and realize the ideal of harmony with nature and resulting equanimity.This great system is worthy of being enumerated among the outpourings of primordial wisdom and may be said to have been the religion of the ancient world. Paganism reached one of its great heights of ethical idealism under the Stoics, and it has reverberated in wave after wave through succeeding ages down to the transcendentalism and “new age religions” of our times.

Ritambhara prajna means the faculty of the mind which gives rise to knowing. But this knowing is of a special kind. It is intuitive. Ritambhara Prajna is intuitive knowledge. The word ritambhara can be split into two parts: ‘ritam and ‘bhara’ meaning “full of truth.” The inner dynamic working of the deep consciousness (chitta) is altogether different from the dynamics of the rational mind. The ritambhara prajna is the ‘void’ or ‘shunyata.’ It is not nothingness as the word shunya would have us believe. Shunya is used in Sanskrit to signify zero. But its true sense is infinity which encompasses everything and which confers a different dimension on time and space. Ritambhara prajna is knowledge, not as ‘comprehension’ but as the principle of knowing. It is energy in the irreducible, virgin form, which gets transformed into the phenomenal universe. As such it knows its own power and function. The universal mind has no boundaries of time past, time present and time future. Everything coexists. Intuition as ritambhara prajna is the ability to transcend the confinement of the physical mind and make a direct contact with the principle of mind which is omnipresent. Humanity performs all its cognitive, analytical and synthesizing activities of knowledge at the rational level. This conditioning is so deep that the faculty of intuition inside our consciousness has been forgotten. A deeper faculty of knowing and understanding gives a direct access to the infinite consciousness which is universal. This is matter in its most subtle ethereal form.

Mind is an imperceptible substance that is the substrate of human consciousness, manifesting itself with or without qualities such as desires, feelings, perception, knowledge, understanding, errors, insights, sufferings, bliss, and others. Personal recollections and memories of the form “I did this so many years ago” mistakenly presume that there is a mind as “self” that is substantial, continuing, unchanged, and existent.

Time and space are an indivisible reality, but humanity prefers to divide them to comprehend past, present, future, relative place of other substances and beings, direction and the mental coordinates of the universe. However, this indivisible reality is eternal, independent and spiritual and cannot be reduced or inferred from non-physical or physical, dravya, ideation. Time is an illusion produced by successive states of consciousness traveling through eternal duration. It does not exist where no consciousness exists. The present is only a mathematical line which divides part of eternal duration called the future, from that part called the past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing remains without change — or the same — for the billionth part of a second. The sensation of the actuality of the division of ‘time’ known as the present, comes from the blurring of that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things which pass from the region of ideals called the future, to the region of memories that are referred to as the past.

Philosophical systems based on consciousness, as contrasted with systems based on materialism, affirm that the universe is an embodiment of mind or the aggregated hierarchies of minds proceeding from a unitary divine root or universal hierarch. Reality is essentially divine and spiritual where the psychic is noumenal to the physical, which is its phenomenon. Idealism identifies reality with inner conscious experience, and asserts that only the mental life is truly knowable. Subjective idealism denies the existence of objective reality altogether, except perhaps as illusory. Objective idealism recognizes the existence of objective worlds while regarding the ideal world as the primary production in which the external world has a relative and temporary reality. This view is a strictly logical one, for if we annihilate the object, we must thereby annihilate the subject also. These two terms have no meaning except relative to each other. Any theory of knowledge must have a knower and thing known in which the latter is objective to the former. Absolute idealism logically is as unthinkable as absolute materialism.A familiar form of materialism is what has been called the atomo-mechanical theory, which derives all phenomena from the movements of material atoms in space. Matter is thus a percept derived from the interaction of the physical senses with the physical plane of nature. Matter is one of the twin aspects of universal life, coeternal with spirit and spirit’s veil or vehicle, and hence is present on every plane of manifestation, from the highest to the lowest. Materialism stands for an attitude of mind which exalts the senses, together with appropriate intellectualism, into a summum bonum to devise a philosophy that will justify such an attitude. This kind of materialism places illusory power in the hands of humans, while depriving the real power of penetrating discrimination, and the ability, while under this illusion, to use the powers of nature right. In attempting to conceive of matter the mind must be relieved of familiar notions of physically extended space, of resistance, mass, bulk, and other properties peculiar to the physical plane of consciousness, but which transfer to notions of other kinds of matter. Inertness, and immobility are attributes of the physical plane, rather than of matter itself. Yet the word matter has come to be significant of grossness, animalism, and materialism, although it is but the shadow or veil of cosmic spirit,  a spirit manifesting under the multifarious forms of the planes of the universe.

The attempt to represent phenomena as a chain of cause and effect must lead to a point where the cause can no longer be traced — not in which causes vanish, but in which there is an imperfection of the observation and of the instruments used, so that the chain of causation continues until, because of incapacity, it is unable to predict the behavior of even a particle. Subsequent investigation may enable a further understanding of causation, but the process cannot go on indefinitely without going beyond the physical plane.

Maya means that our minds are blinded and perverted by preconceptions and imperfections, and thus do not interpret the world as it is. Maya, or illusion, is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon the power of cognition. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. Existence belonging to every plane is a shadow cast on a reflective screen. But all things appear real for the cognizer who is also a reflection. We cannot cognize existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into the field of consciousness. In whatever plane consciousness may be acting, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for that time, our only realities. By reacting against the consciousness of a perceiving being, the perceiver is cast into the bonds of illusions, out of which the deluded being has to strive in order to be free from the surrounding maya.

The systematic investigation and instruction of facts and theories regarded as important in the study of truth and philosophy, in common usage denotes the mental and moral sciences being nearly equivalent to metaphysics, and includes a number of divisions. A triad of philosophy, religion, and science has merged into a unity, although science was at one time called natural philosophy, so that the chief distinction was between faith and reason.

Philosophy is primarily monistic if it postulates a unity of origin in which all existing entities return to a source that is distinct from them. This monism attributes oneness or singleness to a concept e.g. existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished. For example, neoplatonism maintains that  everything is derived from the One. In this view only one thing is ontologically basic or prior to everything else. Existence monism posits that there exists only a single thing, the universe, which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things. Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance although many things may be made up of this stuff such as matter or mind. There is one mind that connects and exists in all living beings, regardless of their shapes or forms, and there is no distinction, no superior, no inferior, no separate devotee soul mind, no separate god mind. This oneness unifies all beings as divinity in every being, and all existence is a single divine reality not different from the infinite.

All things are relative to each other. Nothing in the universe, whether physical, astral, mental, or spiritual, is specified to the human mind except by its relations to other things. All objects are manifestations of a universal principle in which there are no absolutes. Immortality does not refer to a particular state of existence, yet the various elements of nature have varying degrees of immortality. Each element has its own cycle of existence, longer or shorter, however for purposes of reasoning or calculation it is necessary to assume certain things as constant. Good and bad are regarded as relative terms  but that does not mean good and bad differ from each other solely in being relative to each other, but that what is good from one point of view may be bad from another. As such, there is no difference between the devotional and speculative functions of the mind, and science and philosophy do not conflict with the innate sense of rectitude. Ethics are not based on expediency, a social compact, or a special revelation, but are inherent in the laws of the universe. Ethics means a self-sacrificing devotion to truth, a resolve to live in harmony with all other lives, and a sacrificing of the personal self to the greater self.

Human beings, in a state of unawareness of the universal mind, see their “I-ness” as different from the mind in others, then act out of impulse, fears, cravings, malice, division, confusion, anxiety, passions, and a mistaken sense of distinctiveness. Mind is distinct from the ever-evolving individual personality characterized with ahamkara (ego, non-spiritual psychological I-ness Me-ness), habits, prejudices, desires, impulses, delusions, fads, behaviors, pleasures, sufferings and fears. Human personality and ahamkara shift, evolve or change with time and place. But mind is the unchanging, eternal, innermost radiant absolute that is unaffected by personality, unaffected by the ego of oneself, and unaffected by the ego of others. The mind transcends individually, to realize its own true nature, its universal inner essence which is divine and pure. The divine mind, as the one fire, after it has entered the world, though one, takes different forms according to whatever it burns. Likewise so does the internal mind of all living beings, though one, takes a form according to whatever it enters yet remaining outside all forms.

In distinguishing between individuality and personality, individuality is essential self-consciousness, the recognition as “I am I,” whereas personality is states “I am Ms. Smith.” In other words, individuality is the recognition of oneself as a distinct non-partite ego, and personality is the identifying of oneself with a particular aggregate of qualities, the latter serving as vehicle for individuality. Being composite, at the death of the physical body the personal ego disintegrates, and at the next embodiment a new personality is brought together by the reincarnating ego, although this new personality is but a reconstruction of the old personality with only such changes that have been brought about by karma over time.

The astral body is a subtle body intermediate between the universal mind and the mental body, composed of a subtle material. It is related to an astral plane, which consists of the planetary heavens of astrology. Pleroma is the spirit-world, the archetypal ideal existing in the invisible heavens in contrast to the imperfect phenomenal manifestations of that ideal in the universe. The astral plane is the world of the celestial spheres or orbits, crossed by the mind in the astral body on the way to being born and after death, and is generally believed to be populated by angels, spirits or other etherial beings. The astral body is equivalent to the linga-sarira, the ethereal model-body, usually invisible but upon which the physical body (sthula-sarira) is modeled. There are three ethereal forms or bodies which might properly be called astral bodies. These include the mayavi-rupa known as the illusory form-body of thought and substance projected by high initiates; the linga-sarira or the pattern-body upon which is based the human constitution; and the kama-rupa or the phantom or spook body which is seen occasionally in the vicinity of graves or which occasionally materializes at seances.

The astral plane consists of the celestial spheres, and is held to be an astrological phenomenon. The whole of the astral portion of our earth and of the physical planets, together with the purely astral planets of our system, make up collectively the astral body of the universal mind. Yet, because there are assorted types of astral matter psychic changes occur periodically within the universal mind. The astral vehicle is the immortal vehicle of the universal mind as well as the spiritual (pneuma) vehicle, aligned with the vital breath, which is considered mortal. The afterlife involves a journey through the planetary spheres and then eventual reincarnation. As a result sentient beings are composed of mortal body, immortal reason and an intermediate spirit.

Karana-sarira or causal body is the principle or causal element which brings about not only the reembodiment of an entity, but also its evolution during a manvantara through an endless series of reembodiments. It is the reproducing agent, principle, or instrument in the constitution of a being which brings about the repetitive reembodiments that such a being is impelled, and in one sense compelled, by karma to undergo. Such a reembodiment can be of two types — higher and lower. If the causal instrument is on a high plane, all ingathered seeds of being will reproduce themselves in future existences as the higher parts of an individual. If the main causal instrument or principle is of a lower type, and reproduces existences for the reincarnating entity in lower vehicles, then it is the desire mind or lower mind which is the karana-sarira. Thus there are in the composite human constitution at least two such karanic or causal elements, one of a higher and one of a lower character. Various monads, by their reproductive action, are the causal principles or instruments of the various and unending series of reembodiments that any entity during the cosmic manvantara is undergoing. It is, therefore, these various monads in their outer or vehicular aspect which are the karana-sarira.

The eternal motion which brings everything into objective existence will cause the death of the same entity on the previous subjective plane of life. Then, when the lifetime of the current manifestation ends, the reverse of this rhythmic motion causes the death of the entity from its objective existence, back to be reborn into its subjective life. This law applies universally to solar systems, planets, human beings, atoms, etc. The reincarnating ego is born and dies on each of the successive planes of existence through which it descends from spiritual realms to be reborn again on the material plane. The same rhythmic motion is reversed in death with the same repeated births and deaths ascending on the journey to its spiritual home. Death occurs not from a lack of life, but because the ceaseless motion of vitality is wearing out the body. The senility of old age means that elements are drifting in reverse towards the other side of the veil. With the last heartbeat, the dying person is aware of the passing life as the field of experience which is harvested in the inner world in which they will later be born. The atoms of the body, freed from outer spiritual cohering force, separate actively, each to find its appropriate field of action in nature’s various kingdoms. There is a close connection between death, sleep, and initiation, with sleep being an incomplete death and initiation being a conscious experience of the after-life.

With the discovery of electromagnetism and the nervous system, there came a new interest in the spirit world which included the stars, animal magnetism and magnetic fluids. Certain of earth’s herbs were found to have excellent astral and magnetic powers. The efficacy of various herbs correspond closely with planetary illumination. Astral light is the medium of all light, energy and movement. It maintains a  luminiferous ether necessary for animal and plant magnetism and plays an especially important role in the photosynthesis and the electromagnetism of the plant world. The alchemical action of astral light and its intimate connection with the physical sphere explains epidemics, whether physical or psychological. Because it transmits thoughts and emotions, its connection with karma is evident. The astral light is the source of the physical world, just as akasha is the source of the astral light. Because there is this constant interchange of starry fluids emanating from different celestial bodies, the astral light has become the dregs of akasha, and is virtually the same as the ether of science.

Death as a necessity becomes a recurrent process, precisely like birth or rebirth, in which some group of lower sheaths enclosing the individual in embodiment dissolve. Viewing the question from the consciousness aspect, death means the exchange of one mode of consciousness for others. We are neither mortal or immortal, since we contain various elements of both. The essence of individuality is unconditionally immortal but its sheaths or bodies are mortal in various and relative degrees. Humanity is changing from instant to instant — learning, growing, expanding, evolving — so that at no two consecutive seconds of time or of experience is it the same. Therefore it is not immortal. Immortality means enduring continually as you are. If you evolve you change, and therefore you cannot be immortal in the part which evolves, because you are growing into something greater. In this sense, portions of an entity may endure for long periods of time, and thus be called immortal, but they are not immortal in the sense of continuing to exist unchanged or in a state identical to what they are now.

It is customary to regard the later Atlanteans as a race of sorcerers because there were millions in Atlantis who earnestly essayed to preserve the wisdom of their semi-spiritual forebears. There were wonderful civilizations during the millions of years of Atlantean development surpassing in materialism anything that is known today. The Atlantis continent was gradually sinking while the new America was forming. When the climax of the geologic changes in the earth’s surface arrived, a catastrophe occurred during which the greater part of Atlantis and its population, largely sorcerers, perished beneath the sea; yet many islands survived, some of them of large extent, such as Ruta and Daitya. But the wiser and more holy inhabitants of the civilization had left Atlantis before this, migrating to the high tablelands of Asia and created the kingdom of Shambhala.

Shambhala is a mystical and unknown locality, as well as an actual land or district and the seat of the greatest of spiritual adepts, sages and seers, on the earth today. It may tentatively be located in a little known and remote district of  high of central Asia, more particularly in what is now called Tibet. A multitude of airplanes fly over the place without seeing it, for its frontiers are very carefully hidden and protected against invasion by China and other countries and will continue to be so until the karmic destiny of the present root-race brings about a change of location, which then in its turn will be as carefully guarded as now.

Angelic beings reside either in the atmospheres of the planets of the solar system (planetary angels) or inside the Sun (solar angels). These angels help to guide the operation of the processes of nature such as evolution and the growth of plants. The appearance of earthly angels is like a colored flame about the size of a human being. Other planetary systems and stars have their own angels. Anunnaki is a hierarchy of lower angels of earth or the underworld, star gods who have sunk below the horizon and become judges of the dead. Below the anunnaki are several classes of genii — sadu, vadukku, ekimu, gallu — some of which are good, some evil. The anunnaki are terrestrial elementals and the children and followers of Anu the divine personification of the sky. Angels frequently can be observed when the third eye of the human ajna chakra is activated. Some angels originally incarnated as human beings. All beings, including angels, possess etheric bodies but not necessarily physical bodies. Such bodies are composed of etheric matter but also constitute a layer of the “human atmosphere.”

Shadow signifies matter, for spirit is considered to be pure energy, and matter, although essentially crystallized spirit, may be looked upon as the shadow or vehicular world in which the energy, spirit, or pure light works. Matter is but a generalizing term for an increasing ethereality ranging from the grossest tangible substance, or absolute matter, up to the most ethereal or spiritualized substance, referred to as the path of shadows.

Manifestation begins on the spiritual plane and as the life impulses reach forth into grosser material realm the succeeding rudimentary elements are born, each one from the preceding one, and from all preceding ones. For instance, earth is born not merely from the element water, but likewise from fire, and air. Humanity’s nature is tripartite and is composed of the physical (planetary), emotional (astral) and mental (spiritual) bodies and in each person one of these three bodies ultimately achieves dominance. One can create a subtle body, and hence achieve post-mortem immortality, through spiritual or yogic exercises. The mind (as separate from the physical brain) is not something with which one is born, but something that one has to develop through practice.

A man or woman having a “familiar spirit” means a sorcerer or necromancer. Such a person is a medium who is more or less under the control of an elemental spirit, by whom he or she may be entranced and is to be distinguished sharply from an adept or genuine theurgist, who is in self-conscious control of their own higher faculties through initiation and long preparation. A goety is one who uses incantations by song or speech to hold others under the spell of sound, chants, or incantations. Bewitching, exercising a charm or spell over another person or an animal, consciously or unconsciously, either for good or ill, is termed a “fascination.”  True fascination is never used by any of the right-hand path, for such activity is invariably arousing the innate spiritual, intellectual, and psychic powers inherent in others, without training the individual to take command of these powers. Fascination is exercised by snakes on birds, and by the human eye on beasts. It is used as an evil power by sorcerers, and is exercised more or less consciously by ordinary people upon each other. It is even taught today as an art for swaying the minds of customers, or more obviously by advertisements offering to confer occult powers for a fee.

The occult power of receiving from various articles impressions as to their owners or to events connected with them, psychometry is the seeing or reading with an inner sight incidents that have taken place in the neighborhood of these physical articles. Psychometry has been applied to such objects as fossils, fragments of ancient ruins, and old manuscripts, and the psychometers have been able by touching these articles, putting them to their forehead, etc., to describe ancient civilizations and bygone, forgotten, or unknown pages in human or world history. Such phenomena show that material objects retain the impressions of events with which they have been associated, and exert an influence even upon people who do not have psychometric power. This throws light on the subject of talismans, amulets, relics, etc. Astral light is nature’s storehouse of images of events, and contact with an object puts the psychometer in rapport with the impressions concerned. The psychometer brings their inner self in contact with the “essence” of the object. But as such phenomena involve the properties of planes other than the physical, any attempt to explain them in terms of the physical plane must necessarily be restricted. The physical plane limits both the powers of nature and human faculties, but the psychometer rises to a plane where some of these barriers are removed thus allowing unity and intercommunication throughout all the environment.

Some spirit mediums instinctively possess the power of precipitation, but use it without knowing its causes and rationale, and hence without conscious control. A mental image is a reality, and in materializing it the operator copies natural processes, since everything in the physical world is a materialization of something in the inner worlds working through the astral world into the physical. Precipitation uses psychic or psychophysiological faculties which have to be acquired by training.  These powers exist because of training in previous lives. Were the adept to employ precipitation for conveying intelligence to others, the precipitation would be achieved by the adept gathering astral and ethereal substance from the surrounding atmosphere and condensing it onto the paper, often in a handwriting similar to that of the sender — usually someone who is recently deceased.

The term occult defines anything which is undisclosed, concealed, or not easily perceived. Early theologians spoke of “the occult judgment of God,” while “occult philosopher” was a designation for the pre-Renaissance scientist who sought the unseen causes regulating nature’s phenomena. In astronomy, the term is still used when one stellar body “occults” another by passing in front of it, temporarily hiding it from view. As the study of things which are hidden and secret, occultism is viewed as secret in one age but may readily be in a succeeding age more or less commonly known and open to public investigation. Many things in medieval Europe were distinctly secret and therefore occult, but are today the field of scientific investigation. Occultism then has simply shifted its field of investigation and study to matters still more secret, still more recondite, still more deeply hidden in fields of nature which are now scarcely suspected. Occultism is founded on the principle that divinity is concealed — transcendent yet immanent — within every living being. As a spiritual discipline occultism is the renunciation of selfishness which leads to wisdom, to the right discrimination between good and evil, and the practice of altruism or dharma.

Reality, like truth and unity, cannot be an object of knowledge except by intuition, which then functions on its own plane. Any mental faculty beneath intuition is itself relatively unreal, and its findings or deductions partake of the nature of their source in which such deductions are understandable only by reference to their opposites. It is precisely this existence in the nature of opposites which brings about the various illusions under which human understanding necessarily labors. Words such as reality, truth, and good are understood in reference to their opposites, and the opposite of reality is appearance or illusion. There is but one fundamental or all-pervading reality, by contrast with which all else is illusion or appearance. Reality, when implying various conceptions, is a relative term, in that one thing is real by comparison with another thing which is relatively unreal. A dream seems real until we awake, and then our waking mind seems real. Yet this also will seem unreal when we awaken to a still higher consciousness.

The etheric body inhabits an etheric plane which corresponds to four higher sub-planes of the physical plane. The physical plane (a hyperplane), maintains the lower states of solid, liquid, and gaseous matter. However, the etheric reality and the etheric body are more closely related to prana, the vital, life-sustaining force of living beings, present in all natural processes within the universe. Even so, prana is part of the worldly, physical realm, sustaining the bodies and the minds of sentient beings. Animus is very close to the notion of mentality whereas anima is equivalent to prana. Because of its equivalence to prana, it exists on several planes, from the spiritual to the mental to the physical. Consequently there is an anima for every class of celestial being as it is not limited only to sentient entities having bodies of material substance.

The inherent capacity of choice, divine in its origin, which every being in the cosmos exercises in some degree as, consciously or unconsciously, it evolves forth its essential self. Every thing and being has its own essential characteristic and, the universal urge towards self-expression and self-consciousness, of necessity has its relative share of inherent free will with which to work out its destiny. Since evolution is the unfolding of inner capacities and attributes, it cannot be produced, however stimulated, by something outside of itself. Divine will is the force behind evolution on all planes of manifestation throughout the cosmos. Hence, each entity, as a unit of the divine All, has its portion of free choice and power to bring forth what is within itself. Free will is manifesting in vegetative or automatic action in the whirling electrons of the atom. It includes characteristic actions of matter, such as cohesion, polarity, and electricity in the varied growths of vegetation, in the range of animal activities, in the evolving human being, and in perfected humans.

There are three principal centers of the human body: the heart as the center of spiritual consciousness; the head as the center of mental consciousness; and the navel as the center of emotional consciousness. The heart is the organ through which the higher ego acts, seeking to impress the lower self which works through the brain. In this sense the heart is the most important part of the body, and when developed leads to spiritual mastery. The heart corresponds to prana. Cosmically, the sun is the heart of the solar system as it sends forth and receives circulations on many planes which sustain the solar system.

The sun is the store-house of vital force, which is the noumenon of electricity and it is from its mysterious depths, that issue those life currents which move through space and through the organs of every living thing on earth. Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the sun is the heart — the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body. These streams of solar living fire are stepped down into vital electricity on earth, and also in the psychic and astral-physical currents of lunar life which influence generation and all terrestrial growth.

Blood is actively protean in representing the streams of higher vitality manifesting in body, and spirit. Thus, its pranic oxygen is the agent of the solar fire while its white and red corpuscles represent the psychic life-force and the red kamic energies, all acting together in their material forms. They correspond to the lunar builders of the ethereal forms of early root-races which needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, and no food. These spherical ameboid cells have a primordial, changeable and auto-generative type of propagation. Their relation to the formation of the red cells typifies that of the early astral forms which gradually became physical and evolved into the red-blooded, mind-endowed beings of the later races.

Sunspots, which appear dark only because of the intense brilliancy of their surroundings, appear in the photosphere. The bright areas seen around them are called faculae. The photosphere as well as the reverse layer and the chromosphere are three different forms of aura with which the sun clothes itself. This aura is the solar prana or vitality which becomes visible to the human eye on account of the octave of radiation which it emits. If our eyes were not evolved to sense the particular radiation which we call light, we would not see the sun, although we would sense it and realize its presence. Likewise, every being alive, emits its own characteristic aura which, had we the eyes to see it, we would discern as a coruscating, scintillating light around the entity. Thus the human being emanates or radiates a vital aura, which is to humanity exactly what the solar aura is to the sun.

An electro-spiritual force, Kundalini is a creative power which, when aroused into action, can as easily kill as it can create. In its higher aspect Kundalini is a power or force following winding or circular pathways carrying or conveying thought and force originating in the higher mind. Abstractly, in the case of humanity, it is one of the fundamental energies or qualities of the pranas. Unskilled or unwise attempts to interfere with its normal working in the human body may readily result in insanity or a malignant or enfeebling disease. The vital body is the tetra-dimensional part of the physical body and is the foundation of organic life.  During certain spiritual yogic practices, the Kundalini at the base of the spine rises in the vital body allowing the yogin or yogini to separate two superior ethers from other ether in order for them to serve as a vehicle to travel out of the physical body. These two ethers are closely related to the Ida (right hemisphere) and Pingala (left hemisphere) yogic channels. The etheric reality or life principle is quite distinct from the physical material reality, being intermediate between the physical world and the astral world. The etheric body can be characterized as the life force also present in the plant kingdom. It maintains the physical body’s form until death. At that time, it separates from the physical body as the physical body reverts to natural disintegration. Clairvoyants see this etheric body as a “peach-blossom color.” Kundalini like the Ouroboros, the ancient symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail, represents the infinite cycle of nature’s endless creation and destruction, life and death. Plato, in his work Timaeus, described the Ouroboros as the first living thing created in the universe which became the earth itself.

Apana is a down-breath and one of the vital airs, life-currents, or pranas which vitalize, build, and sustain the human or animal body. It is the prana which ejects from the system material which it no longer requires, such as wastes, etc. It is opposite in function to the upward-tending breath, udana.

The theory that the phenomenon of organic life cannot be explained by the properties of physical matter alone, and that consequently they must be due to some nonphysical vital principle is known as vitalism. Attempts to define such a principle have been vague. If it is spirit, then what can spirit be, apart from matter, or how can it act on matter? Perhaps it is another kind of matter — an ether, fluid, etc. If the physical universe is composed of inert particles, what can explain their activity? It is necessary to postulate an immaterial force, which in its origin is immaterial but in its manifestations substantial or material. The words force and energy are used to denote effects occurring in matter. Are these effects without causes? The matter and force of materialistic science are highly metaphysical abstractions. No such thing as an inert material particle exists or can exist, for all such inert matter is but life or force in one of its multiform phases of quiescence or equilibrium. Nor can there exist an absolutely immaterial force, without relation of function or action in the material worlds. The term matter has been applied to the static aspect of life, and the term force to the dynamic aspect. No distinction valid for this purpose can be drawn between organic and inorganic beings. If there is need of a vital principle for animals and plants, working upon yet other than essential stuff or substance, there is equal need in the case of minerals, but there is no need to postulate such divorce between force and matter in either case. The jiva or prana are not an immaterial spirits different from matter acting on a lifeless body. They have substantiality, consisting of streams of living beings, life-atoms which act on something other than itself called the body, but which actually composes the body. Any minute analysis of physical matter has not succeeded in finding anything more rudimentary than a living, moving, light, and electricity — in short, an ocean of jiva.

The anima mundi is the world-soul, the divine-spiritual-astral-physical source of emanations and creative principle of all being. In its highest and intermediate portions, it corresponds to akasha. It is the essence of sentience, consciousness and differentiation, moral and physical. In its highest aspect it is nirvana, in its lowest aspect it is the astral light. Astral light is the cosmic plane above the physical plane, which is to the physical earth and the other bodies of the solar system what the linga-sarira is to the human physical body. The astral light is the carrier of life-forces — jiva cosmically, and prana individually — and the storehouse of cosmic energies on their way to or from physical manifestation. It preserves an indelible record of all events on the astral and physical planes because there is a continual interaction between the two planes. No natural phenomenon, whether mental, psychic, or physical, can exist without it.

The anima mundi is of an igneous nature in the world of form but becomes ether and spiritual in its higher planes. Every human mind was born by detaching itself from the anima mundi which is a radiation of the Absolute. The various life-atoms in the lower spheres are identical with the lower portions of the anima mundi which is the life-consciousness of the universe from the divine to the physical. The anima supra mundi is the intelligent life of the anima mundi or cosmically intelligent akasha.

Three principles of the human body include the sthulopadhi, or the physical body in the waking conscious state, the sukshmopadhi, the same body in svapna or the dreaming state, and the karanopadhi or “causal body,” which passes from one incarnation to another. Avesa is the occupancy of a human body by an adept during the presence of a divine influence on earth by taking possession of, or temporary embodiment in, an outside entity or power, whether divine or evil. It is a form of possession.

The physical plane of matter is one of the many planes in universal nature which is coordinated with our physical senses. The physical plane of consciousness is therefore the plane on which our consciousness functions when we are using those senses. It is characterized by the familiar qualities which science studies under the name of ‘properties of matter.’ In order to understand biological evolution, it is necessary to admit the existence of the next plane above the physical — the astral plane. The passage of the astral prototypes of organisms from the astral plane to the physical is called physicalization. Differentiation on the physical plane is caused by the psychological and astral life-agents acting in the protyle or subatomic particles of the physical plane. Temporary and abnormal physicalization takes place in a spiritualistic materialization. The continuous interchange of the physical materials of the earth provides for human nutrition, endurance, and renewal. The similarity of material, chemical and otherwise, in the earth and in humanity has prevailed from the time when the presentments of early root-races appeared on the globe. The progressive refinement of matter reflects humanity’s mental and spiritual evolution and will continue until, in the far distant future, the human encasement will be transparent and luminous — an ethereal body of actually condensed light. The inert physical body is built, cell for cell, upon the invisible substance of the astral model-body or linga-sarira. The latter contains the real organs of the senses and sensations, and transmits the mental, emotional, and instinctual impulses to which the physical body reacts. The lower mind acts upon the physical organs and their cells, but only the higher mind can influence the atoms in these cells, and arouse the brain to a mental conception of spiritual ideas. The universe, being a living organism, functions consciously and has its analogy in the physiological operation of the human body. Hence, scientists who tamper with the natural arrangements of chromosomes or artificially combine different embryonic elements, instead of solving the problem of life, are only dealing with the manifestation of the creative powers of ideation.

Aside from ether there is a vital energy known as the odic force which permeates all plants, animals, and humans on earth. The odic force is visible in total darkness as colored auras surrounding living things, crystals, and magnets, but viewing it requires hours first spent in total darkness, and only very sensitive people have the ability to see it. An aura is a subtle invisible essence or fluid emanating from and surrounding beings, which are classed as animate and inanimate. To the eyes of clairvoyants the human aura appears as a halo of light, variously colored according to the momentary psychic and mental condition of the individual. Since everything in the universe is a center of living energies of one kind or another, they must be surrounded by a field of force, representing radiation into the surrounding space and upon all objects within their sphere of influence. The aura is a psycho-mental effluvium, and is a direct manifestation of the akasha surrounding every individual and regarded as an essential part of an individual. Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target, such as an aura, purportedly using extrasensory perception or “sensing” with the mind.

The odic force is closely related to the five layers or “sheaths” know as koshas. The koshas cover the mind like layers of an onion. Because causality proceeds downwards, each of the layers has its own characteristics and can have its own expression of disease which requires individual healing. Each bodily aura has its own complement of chakras related to characteristics in the  sheath layers which assist in the healing process.

Annamaya kosha is the sheath of the physical self which is nourished by food. Through this layer humanity identify themselves with a mass of skin, flesh, fat, bones, and filth. Pranamaya kosha is composed of prana, the force that vitalizes and holds together the body and the mind. It pervades the whole organism and its physical manifestation is the breath. It is a modification of vayu or air and enters into and comes out of the body. As long as this vital principle exists in the organisms, life continues. Manomaya kosha is composed of manas or mind. The mind (along with the sensory organs) constitute the manomaya kosha and approximates personhood. It is the cause of diversity, of “I” and “mine.” Vijnanmaya kosha is composed of vijnana, or intellect and the five sense organs. It is the sheath composed of more intellection and is associated with perception. With its mental modifications and the organs of knowledge, it forms the cause of humanity’s transmigration. Anandamaya kosha is composed of ananda, or bliss. It is  the sheath of the causal body during deep sleep while in the dreaming and wakeful states, but has only a partial manifestation. The blissful anandamaya kosha is a reflection of truth and beauty. The Annamayakosha, the coarsest sheath, is based in the earth element, while the very subtlest sheath, Anandamaya, is based in the quanta/etheric elements.

The universe is built of hosts of evolving entities existing in all various grades of evolutionary unfoldment. All are passing through a continual series of changes with the shedding of sheath after sheath of their essential consciousness. These entities continuously modify the vehicles through which they express themselves on various cosmic planes. Evolution is the changing characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes that are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Atavism is the reappearance of characteristics of a remote ancestor in its descendant as a reversion to type or delayed heredity. Atavism is the activities of life or the life-atoms collectively.  It builds new forms and copies family resemblances of every future being. Atavism is the germ-plasm, or aggregate of life-atoms which are transmitted unchanged through generations in which the atom is the vehicle of a jiva or monad endowed with memory.

If a number of animals of one species are exposed to an unduly cold climate, many will die, while the survivors will become hardier. These hardier ones are said to transmit their hardiness to their posterity, whereby the species becomes modified to that extent. A continual succession of such small changes, provoked by changes of environment, eventually produces the differences distinguishing one species from another where the higher animal types have in the course of time been derived from the lower. But what brings about the combination of genes that results in the building of the ladder of life from the lowest to the highest manifestations of consciousness? Natura naturans may be viewed as the continuously striving, ever-changing nature, yearning towards higher things, which brings about an uninterrupted movement towards betterment. This is caused by the inner spiritual urge of beings to express throughout time an ever fuller manifestations of latent power and faculty in which inner and invisible worlds are the noumenal causes of the exterior or physical world.

Heredity is the attraction of reembodying monads to the respective families with which they have affinities of various kinds and the reembodying egos carrying such individual characteristics or attributes which perpetuate them in the family life-stream. The cause of heredity is a class of angelic beings who lie concealed in the germ that will fall into generation. That germ will become a spiritual potency in the physical cell that guides the development of the embryo, and which is the cause of the hereditary transmission of faculties and inherent qualities in humanity. That a child transmits many features from the parents cannot be denied, but it is of no greater significance than the fact that children also derive features from a variety of other sources which contribute materials and subordinate agents by which the karma of the individual is fulfilled. That karma is the innate character of the individual, as embodied in the various spiritual, psychological, or astral vehicles which contribute to the composite human being. Heredity, the transmission of characteristics from parents to children, is not merely a physiological or biological mechanism acting automatically or fortuitously, but is brought about because of the attraction to certain families, or certain parents, of reembodying egos possessing in a greater degree the same characteristics which the parents themselves have.

Gemmation is a form of asexual reproduction in which a new individual is developed from a protuberance on the body of the parent with the new individual either remaining attached, as in polyzoa and most corals, or separating as in the method of reproduction followed by the humans of the second root-race. At that time bodies were more ethereal and also differed in certain reproductive processes from what takes place in humans today. Besides a survival of analogous methods of reproduction in some of the present lower forms of life, there are also similar instances in the power which some creatures have of reproducing lost limbs, and in the power of cicatrization of wounds in the higher mammals.

The points of similarity between the series of forms that prevail from the simplest types of life to those of higher animals, and the resemblances in embryonic development of different organisms, are interpreted as evidence of a common descent. This implies that the embodying entity is the product of a progressive series of forms. However, the original unit of every manifested being is an unself-conscious spark of divine life which becomes involved in all grades and forms of matter during uncounted periods of time and varied rounds of experience. The human embryo, in rapidly epitomizing its individual history, maintains strange conditions which were normal in the early root-races. Its brain, in the second month, forms more than twenty percent of the body, as compared with about two percent in the adult body. The early embryonic and adult heart have similar relative proportions. This dominance of brain and heart, the external prominence of the pineal gland, the organ of spiritual sight, etc., all point to type-forms suitable for the spiritual and intellectual unself-conscious egos manifesting in the early human career. Today the reincarnating ego, with its vast ages of experience in matter, is an organizer which summarizes its past, in overseeing the building of its body according to karmic specifications. Primeval humanity, though ethereal, was potentially human, and had retained from previous life cycles the form-pattern and seed-types of all the lower evolutionary grades. Hence came all the subhuman creatures that developed and became specialized in their evolutionary turn.

Evolution does not end with humanity. Earth’s biosphere evolved before humans existed. One-cell organisms developed into metazoans, and some of the members of this classification later developed complex nervous systems with the capability to acquire intelligence. When humanity evolved, a noosphere, the sphere of human thought and the cognitive layer of existence, was created. As evolution continued, the noosphere gained coherence through a process of ‘planetization.’

Our thoughts are mental manifestations of ideas, primarily a prototype existing in the cosmic mind and manifested in forms by the action of cosmic energy, working in matter. Therefore ideas must be regarded as innate. However, ideas are the fundamental roots of manifested things, as viewed under the aspect of consciousness rather than under that of matter. Hence the faculty of ideation, considered cosmically, is created in what lies latent in the ideation of humanity as a whole. This is quite different from the faculty of making mental images of sensory experiences called phantasmata which is a degree of the process called astral ideation.

A chaya is the astral image or body of a person. The chayas are the astral body-projections of early spiritual beings or pitris who played an important part in the evolutionary development of humankind. In the first root-race, the pure, celestial and great pitris of various classes were commissioned to evolve their images (chaya), and make them into physical humans. Following this inauguration, the pitris informed and endowed early humanity with divine intelligence and the comprehension of the mysteries of creation. This first human race were astral chayas who are said to have oozed out of the pitris.

Cells contain a semi-transparent substance occurring in all vegetable and animal matter, which is the basis of organic life and have the name protoplasm. The cell is a collective entity containing subordinate symbiotic entities. Its structure is divided into two major parts: the central nucleus which contains the genetic material, and the surrounding cytoplasm. Human cells sprang originally from an inner human entity, functioning as the lower mind of the Absolute. The earliest human root-races were astral protoplasts that reproduced by division as cells do today. The late second and early third root-races reproduced by throwing off germ cells which then grew into a new entity. Because each cell is an individual being or organism with its own inherent characteristics and possibilities, some of these vital cells thrown off by early humans were used by entities that evolved into the higher mammals. When any one of the cells forming part of early human bodies freed itself from the psychical and the physical control that then existed, it was enabled to follow, and instinctively did follow, the path of self-expression.

Today psychical and physical dominance of the human incarnated entity over their body is so strong that their cells have largely lost their power of individual self-expression through the biological subjugation by the overlordship of the human entity. Had human cells not been so dominated they would, by the amputation of a limb for instance, immediately begin to proliferate along their own tendency-line, to build up bodies of their own kind, each one following out that particular line of life force, or progressive development, which each cell would contain in its dominant cellular structure, thus establishing a new ancestral or genealogical tree.

The noosphere requires that evolution is creative and cannot necessarily manifest by natural selection but is “emergent” in increasing complexity to include the evolution of mind. The tendency of specialized animal or plant species to revert to their primitive racial type conflicts with the idea that changes result from the gradual accretion of small differentiations. Heredity is not a string of beads, connected one to the other without any thread running through the whole. Each bead springs from the connecting vital thread or line, so that the characteristics of all ancestors are transmitted in latency, ready to appear at any time, should circumstances favor such a manifestation.

During the ‘planetization’ process spiritual energy becomes more concentrated and available as a critical element in humanity’s evolution. This energy is a quantitative property which must be transferred to an object in order to effect the object. The quantity that can be converted in form is not created nor destroyed but spirals toward a final point of divine unification as the apex of thought/consciousness. The evolution of humanity has consisted in the gradual incarnation of a spiritual being into a material body. Humanity has disembarked from a spiritual world into a world of matter. As such, the evolution of the plant and animal kingdoms did not precede, but rather accompanied the process of human incarnation. Each human being has the task to find a balance between the opposing influences of spirit and matter and each is helped in this task by the mediation of an entity which stands between and harmonizes the two extremes.

The human spirit has emanated the desire body to be transmuted into the emotional spirit. The life spirit has emanated the vital body to be transmuted into the intellectual spirit. The divine spirit has emanated the dense body to be transmuted into the pneuma of transcendent consciousness. As such, the etheric body is the vehicle of prana. The astral body (the linga sharira) is the vehicle of desires and emotions. The mental body (mayavi-rupa) is the vehicle of the concrete or lower mind. The causal body is the vehicle of the abstract or higher mind. Each body has its own aura and set of chakras, and corresponds to a particular plane of existence which merges after death entirely into the causal body.

The linga sharira is the invisible double bioplasmic body and serves as a model or matrix of the physical body, which conforms to the shape, appearance and condition of this double. The linga sharira can be separated or projected a limited distance from the physical body. When separated from the physical body it can be wounded by sharp objects. When it returns to the physical frame, the wound will be reflected in the physical counterpart, a phenomenon called “repercussion.” The sutratma is a life-giving linkage from the higher self down to the physical body. It connects the physical body to the etheric or astral body and finally to the mental body as the inseparable ray between the universe and the self. Both the astral and etheric bodies are aspects of the linga sarira. The sutratma not only serves as a link between the two bodies, but it also limits the astral body from wandering great distances. If the astral body moves farther away from the physical body to a distance of 164 feet the sutratma pulls the astral form back into the physical body.

The mental body is the intermediate between the emotional and the astral bodies in terms of the layers in the human energy field or aura. The mental body is considered an aura that includes thought forms. The human being is of a composite nature, and its aura will be composite, including astral-vital, psychomental, and spiritual emanations. Any of these may be perceptible according to the plane on which the perceiver is able to function. But the aura, even though not commonly visible to most humans, is nevertheless perceptible by the effects which it produces upon those subtle senses which all beings possess.  Humans are affected by auras, both consciously and unconsciously, and thus auras form the influence which people exercise on each other. Animals are in some ways far more sensitive to auras than are humans.

The auric egg is the source of the human aura, taking its name from its shape. It ranges from the divine to the astral-physical, and is the seat of all the monadic, spiritual, intellectual, mental, passional, and vital energies and faculties. In its essence it is eternal and endures throughout all time. Every being or thing throughout the universe, and indeed the universe itself, has, or rather is, its own auric egg. Its primal substance is akasha and appears to be ovoid or egg-shaped in outline, more or less dense, extremely brilliant with a central portion surrounded by an enormously active interworking cloud of pranic currents.

Anda is the world egg containing the seeds of what later in cosmic time will develop essential life powers, whether as a planetary chain, solar system, galaxy, or cluster of galaxies. Bija is a seed or life-germ, whether of animals or plants, of the original and causal source of the urge for life to express itself. Shakti anda is the first step of creation and is also called pure creation because at this level its divine nature is not obscured, as it manifests a state of diversity in unity.

The karana sarira, or the causal body, is the seed of the subtle body and the gross body. It is nirvikalpa rupa, or undifferentiated form, which originates with avidya, ignorance or nescience of the real identity of the mind, and gives rise to the notion of jiva, an entity imbued with a life force. The causal body has an infinite ignorance that is indescribable and characterized by emptiness and darkness. The karana sarira is constantly in search for the “I am,” because it has nothing to hold on to anymore. This causal body is the most complex of the three bodies because it contains the impressions of former experience, which results from past karma. Because human beings are composed of three sariras or ‘bodies’ emanating from ignorance, they are often equated with the five koshas (sheaths), which cover the mind. The fourth body is turiya or pure consciousness. Turiya is the background that underlies and transcends the three common states of consciousness which are waking consciousness, dreaming, and dreamless sleep also known as the three bodies.

To a large extent dreams are a reflex of our sensory impressions and of our thoughts during the waking state. The principles concerned in these dream cases is kama, desire and the lower aspect of the mind, which act and react with the various nerve centers and the organs at the base of the brain. But if the word dream is to be distinguished from dreamless sleep on the one hand and waking consciousness on the other, it must include a far higher kind of dream which is the experiences of the higher aspect of mind. These experiences, so different from those of the waking state, cannot be transmitted to the mind except symbolically or in distorted form. Astral light also plays an enormous part in most dreams. We may witness scenes which cannot have formed in our waking experience. With prophetic dreams our vision, untrammeled by physical senses, perceives in the astral light an image of what will later happen on the physical plane thus causing a recollection of what has been seen into the waking state.

The lowest principle of cosmic jiva is diffused through all nature and, among its activities on all the cosmic planes, produces all living beings and entities — humanity, beast, plant, mineral, and the kingdoms of the elemental world. On cosmic planes of consciousness, the corresponding aspects of jiva are the vehicles of cosmic thought or ideation which manifest consciously in entities as the laws of nature. Likewise, in the human being, the psychoelectric field of life-currents, vital fluids, or pranas provides the avenues for transmitting thought, feeling, emotion, and instincts. Cosmically, life is one of the spiritual-substantial aspects guided by cosmic intelligence. This cosmic vital fluid or principle, called fohat, is the universal source of both energy and matter and the carrier of consciousness. There are many grades or conditions of life, just as there are many orders of living beings who are its aggregate expressions. Thus there is the relatively animate and inanimate, as when comparing a mineral with a plant or a corpse with a living body. But the mineral has life of its own kind, and what has left the corpse is one kind of life, but the life in the physical atoms remains.

Sleep is a small death, and death may be called a larger sleep. In both, the ego, liberated successively from various bonds, travels inwards and upwards through different grades of consciousness and reaches the experiences proper to those planes. Sleep is also used figuratively, in contrast with waking, to denote a state of non-manifestation, when there is no contrast between subject and object where sleeping on one plane may coincide with waking on another. In sleep the ego becomes unconscious on the physical plane in its brain — except in the cases of dreaming. The connection between the mind and the bodily senses is quiescent and there is no direct self-conscious cognition of physical objects and events. In short, the ego is functioning on a different plane of consciousness. Distinct states of consciousness into which the human egoic self can enter, are the manifestations during embodiment of what takes place on a more profound and radical scale at death.

The reason we cannot remain continuously in the waking state, but must seek another aspect of consciousness during sleep, is that our senses are all dual, and act according to the plane of consciousness on which the thinking entity energizes. Physical sleep affords the greatest facility for  action on the various planes. Sleep is a necessity, in order that the senses may recuperate and obtain a new lease of life. Sleep is a sign that waking life has become too strong for the physical organism, and that the force of the life current must be broken by changing the waking for the sleeping state. In describing the aura of a person just refreshed by sleep, and that of another just before going to sleep, the former will be seen bathed in rhythmical vibrations of life currents — golden, blue, and rosy which are the electrical waves of life. The latter is in a mist of intense golden-orange hue, composed of atoms whirling with an almost spasmodic rapidity, showing that the person begins to be too strongly saturated with life or the life essence is too strong for the physical organs, and must seek relief in the shadowy side of the dream element, or physical sleep, as one of the states of consciousness. Human beings, animals, and plants die not because of a lack of life, but because their vehicles become finally worn out, precisely because the life-currents within have become too strong, and the building power of the vehicles are less able to repair the damages of the life-force. Paradoxically, it is the life-force which itself brings about both sleep and death.

A hallucination is a state produced by either physiological disorders, by mediumship, or by intoxication. But the cause that produces hallucinatory visions is deeper than physiology. Such visions, especially when produced through mediumship, are preceded by a relaxation of the nervous system, generating an abnormal magnetic condition which attracts the sufferer to waves of astral light. It is the latter that furnishes the various hallucinations. These, however, are not always empty and unreal dreams. No one can see that which does not exist or which is not impressed in or on the astral waves. A seer may perceive objects and scenes (whether past, present, or future) which have no relation to the seer themselves, while also perceiving several things disconnected with each other at the same time, thus producing grotesque and absurd combinations. Both drunkard and seer, medium and adept, see their respective visions in the astral light. But while the drunkard, the lunatic, the untrained medium, or one suffering from brain-injury, see because they cannot help it, and evoke the jumbled visions unconsciously to themselves, the adept and the trained seer have the choice and control of such visions. They know where to fix their gaze, how to steady the scenes they want to observe, and how to see beyond the upper outer layers of the astral light.

Human mediumship is either a voluntary or involuntary subjection to the lower planes of astral substances which, while more ethereal than ordinary matter, are frequently more gross, more powerful, and usually more malefic. Entrance into these astral realms produces a species of astral intoxication. In untrained mediumship the atoms and molecules of the astrally controlled body, which the alien astral entity uses to mold into a form and to move with its own desire-impulses, retain an astral psychomagnetic imprint. Such mediumship therefore becomes irresponsible as a source of genuine knowledge and prevision, and less capable as a guardian of truth.

Hysteria is a protean disorder regarded as a functional neurosis with abnormal sensations, emotions, or paroxysms. Hysteria manifests itself chiefly by emotional instability and by the ease with which it is influenced in impulsiveness, a remarkable egotism, and a desire to talk and to simulate. There is a constant capricious change of mood and activity with psychic faculties at times displayed in clairvoyance, hallucinations, cataleptic and somnambulistic states, etc., showing an active functioning in the astral body for various periods of which only a vague or no remembrance is retained. Hysteria is an obsessing astral entity, not always wholly human, but playing upon the human mind in unnatural and useless ways. The patient’s unconscious will include various past lives in which developed neurotic tendencies now karmically attracting harmful psychic influences. Among the various types and grades of astral entities are those dominated and enslaved by special forms of desire such as an intense love of attention and egotism.

Ecstasy, astonishment, trance, rapture, or visions are a transference of consciousness from the physical plane to another inner and superior plane, accompanied by awareness and memory of the experience as either an astral-psychic experience or a psycho-spiritual one. The former is delusive and fraught with harm, while the latter is a state of illumination resulting from the true asceticism of a spiritual disciple, and in its highest form is the same as the ultimate meditation stage of the yogi.

The antaratman is the inner self or primeval heart of an individual. The goal of the yogi is ultimate union with the antaratman. Antaryoga is a state of deep thought or abstraction signifying a high stage of inner spiritual and intellectual recollection in which all the superior part of a person’s constitution is gathered together and focused into a single point of consciousness. It is involved in the attaining of the higher states of consciousness such as turiya-samadhi.

The svabhava of a sun brings forth its svarupa, a sun-body. The svabhava of a human being brings forth a characteristic svarupa, a human body, and so forth.  Therefore, any jiva or monad of necessity embodies itself in vehicles or sheaths flowing forth from its own essence or vitality. Such a sheath, vehicle, or body is the svarupa of the indwelling svabhava, the character or individuality of the jiva or monad. The svarupa, as intrinsic nature, of fire is both heat and light. However, when it expresses through water (when water is heated), only the heat principle is expressed (water does not glow, but becomes hot). However when it expresses through an iron ball (when an iron ball is heated), both heat and light principles are expressed and the iron ball both glows and is hot.

Unity and duality, with their development as plurality in manifestation, subsist throughout the universe. Every duality is comprised in a unity existing on a higher plane of being than its dual manifestation in which such duality reproduces itself in the webwork of pluralities composing the manifested universe. Thus, light and dark are the dual manifestations of that which is called light and darkness. Spirit and matter are the dual manifestations of the one life. But the most fundamental duality is the alternation between manvantara and pralaya, which are aspects of an ever-productive ineffable source. Monistic and dualistic philosophies appear to accentuate each its own side, but in reality each view more or less implies the other.

As the unmanifested One becomes the duad, duality pervades the cosmos, often represented as male and female, or as active and passive, spirit and matter, mind and body, positive and negative, etc. These expressions are preferred because of their lack of personal attributes. A synonym for the female principle is root-matter or mulaprakriti. The male and female principles are not entities in themselves but aspects of a unity; and since every element is compound, the words male and female as applied to any element, signify only a temporary predominance of the one or the other quality. Again, the distinction is not one of fundamental nature but of relationship, so that what is female in relation to one thing may be male in relation to another.

The seed of a plant is a globule of physical matter, but the actual seed is ultra-physical. All seeds are vital life-forces working in and through physical germs, and hence these true seeds are ethereal organisms, structures composed of a higher order of matter. Thus there is a succession of vital seeds pertaining to one individual entity, each such seed being the ultimate unit of that organism on a particular plane. There is the physical seed of a plant, containing the astral seed — a unit on its own plane — containing a still subtler seed belonging to a higher plane, and so forth. Ultimately a seed is a life-atom, in itself the expression on a particular plane of a monad which is a thought in divine ideation.

Bhutasarga is elemental creation and cosmically is the first differentiation of universal indiscrete substance, or primordial akasha. It is the first stage of the pre-cosmic elements in which the seeds or germs (bhutas) reappear, sometimes as ghosts, anew from the preceding cosmic manvantara. Bhutavat refers to those seeds of cosmic being which, through evolutionary unfolding in previous manvantaras, remain as crystallized seeds to blossom forth in the unfolding new universe at the opening of the succeeding manvantara. At this time, the world is described as being composed of four spheres (anda) which, like eggs, contain a series of phenomenal elements (tattva).

The ’olam hab-beri’ah is the second world or sphere of creation of the four worlds (’olamim) which are emanated during the period of world manifestation. It is considered to contain pure or spiritual forms and original ideas from which creation commences. This sphere is a continuation of the emanation of the first ’olam. The substance of the beri’atic world is of a highly ethereal or quasi-spiritual type. From this world emanates the third world, ’olam hay-yetsirah. Adinidanasvabhavat is the basic material from which the manifested physical world is built. Adishakti is a primeval power and the divine force or energy emanation of the feminine aspect or veil of any spiritually formative potency and is the truly supreme spirit without form. The divine power, shakti,  gradually descends from ananda shakti (bliss) to iccha shakti (the power of will), jnana shakti (the power of knowledge) and kriya shakti (the power of action), at the same time manifesting the basis for creation. At the creation stage there is no actual division or limitation because this anda contains shakti tattva, thereby including  all the pure tattvas. Tattvas are elements or principles of reality and are the basic concepts to understanding the nature of the Absolute and the universe.

The sphere of maya causes the divine nature and purity that exists in the shakti anda to be forgotten. The divine creation becomes covered with five defects that make the infinite, eternal, perfect in itself, all knowing and all powerful nature, as manifested in the shakti anda appear limited. The five defects are seen as cloaks blocking the mind from recognizing the Absolute. Maya hides the divine nature of the Absolute and creates a sense of separateness. The five cloaks (kanchukas) are  the cloak of time, the cloak of limited knowledge, the cloak of desire, the cloak of causality, and the cloak of being limited. The prakriti anda describes the world as it is perceived from the common human level of consciousness. It contains the shakti of the individual intellect, the ego, the sensory mind, the five sense organs, the five organs of action, the five subtle essences (smell, taste, form, touch, and sound) and the last four physical elements (water, fire, air, and ether).

The universe is sound (shabda) which brings forth existence. Creation consists of vibrations at various frequencies and amplitudes giving rise to the phenomena of the world. The anahata-shabda is the resonating circle of sound produced without material substance. It is a mystical bell-like sound at times heard by the dying which lessens in intensity until the moment of death. It is also heard by yogis or contemplatives at certain stages of meditation. The anahata-shabda is a reflection of the inherent sound-characteristic of akasha.

Sound is more than a name describing an attribute — it is an actual efflux or production of the universal working of akashic fluid. It is an entity and a real force in nature, and the said phenomena of auditory sensations. Like the terms light, heat, air — all of which are entities — sound will have different levels of meaning according to the particular manifestation or plane concerned. The akashic fluid, whose characteristic production is sound, occupies the apex of a triangle, combining both the active and passive potencies of creative energy. Sound is therefore a tremendous creative power as it has called worlds into being out of chaos, in every cosmogony. This power descends to humanity, through their divine ancestry, as well as from the higher parts of their constitution, and the power of sound is known to adepts and used by them, being called mantrika-shakti. Everywhere the power of mantras and incantations has been recognized. Orators use mantras — they call them slogans — with instinctive knowledge of their efficacy, and set afloat phrases that stir the public mind and strongly influence events. Sound is a property of akasha, the primary of ether, sometimes called space. The ether of space has the vibratory soundboard of nature in all its differentiations. Sound is directed in its operations by fohat. The power of sound is connected with both rhythmic and sympathetic vibration. A powerful voice, sounding the right tone, may shatter a wineglass. The imagination may suggest dangerous applications of this principle.

Usually the universe as perceived by humanity’s physical senses. It is disputed whether space exists apart from objects or is a property of objects, and also whether it is objective or subjective. Such difficulties arise from our attempt to abstract an extension from the reality of which it is an aspect, just as we attempt to abstract matter and energy. The physical basis of the universe appears under three aspects, and the attempt to conceive each of the three as separate existences and to construct the universe out of them is to court contradiction and to proceed in an inverse order. Is space the ultimate residue left after we have removed everything conceivable? In that case how can we define it in terms of anything which is supposed to be derived from it? We must either leave it undefined, as a primary postulate, or else define it in terms of something which lies beyond the physical plane altogether. The idea of whether dimensions belong to space or to material objects arises from a false separation between these two, so that we speak of objects being in space, just as we speak of life as being in matter. We think of space as an absence of matter, as we think of darkness as an absence of light, and silence as absence of sound; and having thus created vacuums humans proceed to fill them. It would be nearer the truth to say that light is the absence of darkness, sound the absence of silence, and matter a form of the presence of space. Those things which appear most real are derived from those which seem most unreal, because they are not immediately physically perceivable. Space is living, incomprehensibly conscious, and hence a divinity. It is the only real world, while our manifested world born from and in it is an illusory one. The fundamental hypostases are all derivative from ever-enduring, frontierless space, which no mind can either exclude nor conceive. In this concept is combined abstract space, motion, and duration called the spawn of the Great Mother.

A mantra is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit which have psychological and spiritual powers based on codified esoteric traditions. These powers induce an altered state of consciousness which may have a syntactic structure arranged in spiritual and vibrational patterns. Ajapa is the form of mantra called hamsa, consisting of a series of inhalations and exhalations.

Om is a syllable of invocation, considered very holy. It is placed at the beginning of scriptures considered to be of unusual sanctity. Prolonging the uttering of this word, both of the O and the M, with the mouth closed, echoes and arouses vibration in the skull, and affects the different nervous centers of the body for great good. The virtue or spiritual and magical properties attributed to this word, however, arise out of the purity and devotion of the one uttering it.

Pranava is the droning or humming sound, during the proper pronunciation of the syllable “om.” In one sense pranava represents the macrocosm and in another sense the microcosm. The fact that this term is given to the mystical sacred syllable, and that it signifies a droning or humming sound, suggests that originally the word was uttered aloud, although in secret whenever possible. In Vedic Sanskrit, the anusvara (after-sound or subordinate sound) was an allophonic nasal sound depicted as a diacritic dot used to mark the specific type of nasal sound and used in a number of Indic scripts. Hence, om is transliterated with a dot below the m (ṃ).

The prithivi anda is the terminal point of creation, or solid matter. There is only one tattva in this sphere, the prithivi tattva. This tattva has a special statute because it contains in essence all the other tattvas and is the home of Kundalini Shakti. Tattvas (thusness, or an aspect of reality) explain the structure and origin of the universe. They are usually divided into three groups: shuddha (pure tattvas); shuddhashuddha (pure-impure tattvas); and ashuddha (impure tattvas). The pure tattvas describe internal aspects of the Absolute; the pure-impure tattvas describe the mind and its limitations; while the impure tattvas include the universe and living beings that assist the existence of mind.

With awareness of mind, sentient beings can make a shift in which they become aware no longer of their mind, but they become aware of their awareness itself. At this moment a sentient being experiences awareness as a felt sense or sense of being as awareness. This becoming aware of awareness is entering into a transitional awareness. The being shifts from the being aware of mind to becoming aware of awareness itself. The energy of awareness also begins to manifest and the vitality and aliveness of this existential awareness field is experienced as shakti. This existential experience of duality within non-duality and non-duality within duality is the experience of self-liberation that brings forth foundational change.

The first root-race were spiritual and ethereal, yet possessing latent but not active intelligence, and therefore having no speech. Their habitat was near the region of the North Pole, where they first appeared in distinct but overlapping localities. Their method of reproduction was by melting into their progeny. Later the race reproduced itself by fission. There was no death to individuals, because the individuals became their own descendants, as exemplified in certain elementary forms of life today. This race inhabited the planet when there was more water than land on the earth, yet the earth’s destruction was by fire.

The second root race was astral, though somewhat more concretely physical and material. Their bodies were unlike what is now regarded as human, bearing vaguely the human outline of a gelatinous, jellylike nature, as yet without bones, organs, hair, or true skin. Reproduction was by budding, although later these buds became numerous and the process became modified to the casting off of spores or seeds, or to the exuding of drops of sweat. These beings were mindless and unmoral, innocent, guided unconsciously by their spiritual instincts, nevertheless largely under the sway of lower rather than spiritual impulses with no working bridge of mentality between spirit and matter.

The date of the beginning of the third root-race is set at some twenty-three million years ago and eighteen million years ago is the date of the awakening of mind and the separation of the sexes. The latter date is collated, according to the geology of the later Triassic and earlier Jurassic periods. Their geographical area was the enormous continent known as Lemuria and outlying islands with the water-area predominating over the land-area. Its eventual destruction came about through fire. The filamentous and boneless structure of the semi-astral human bodies of the second root-race now thickened and condensed, separating itself upon skeletal form into nervous, muscular, and other physiological systems, combined with the appearance of definite organs. With the hardening and specialization of the body, the production of the reproductive cells became localized in special organs and the mode of generation became oviparous. Later these human eggs were no longer extruded as is the case with fowls today, but shrank in size and were developed and fertilized within the body — first in a virginal manner, and then before true sex appeared there ensued a fairly long period of androgynous reproduction in which androgynous humans occasionally gave birth to individuals in whom one or the other sex predominated. Time passed with a recession of androgyny, and finally with the appearance of true sex as it is understood today. This process extended over millions of years.

The satyrs of tradition represent an extinct race of quasi-animal humans. The third root-race united themselves with animal beings, thus producing creatures with which the late Lemurians and early Atlanteans mated.  This unnatural union produced the anthropoids although the first miscegenation was between races to which the names human and animal did not imply so marked a distinction as they do now, and the union was fertile and not so unnatural and infertile as it would be today. The satyrs had bristly hair, snub noses, pointed ears, incipient horns, and a tail. Later they acquired goat’s horns and hoofs. They loved the music of pipes, dance, song, and wine and, like nature spirits of western Europe, they were elfish and given to pranks. The tradition of satyrs and other beings of this kind, though extinct as a physical race, persist in astral form.

During the fourth root-race humanity reached its greatest phases of materiality.  The fourth root-race was roughly contemporaneous with is called Tertiary times and came to an end in what was then known as the middle Miocene period. Its total duration was millions of years. Often spoken of as the Atlantean, the fourth root-race would be gigantic today, which is one source of the universal tradition as to giants on the earth in far antiquity. After the fourth root-race had reached its zenith, certain unevolved tribes committed miscegenation with the most evolved of the then-existing simians. There was an enmity lasting for ages between the benevolent and the selfish populations of the fourth root-race, which continued with the adepts of the nascent fifth root-race. The karma of Atlantean black magic still blights our own fifth root-race, for the people of today were embodied as the more compact humans of Atlantean times.  The fifth root-race actually comprises the many and extremely varied human stocks which exist on earth today, simply because they all live in the time period of the fifth root-race.

When the time arrives, the future sixth root-race will be predominant on earth. At that time new lands will have appeared, and many of the present lands will be submerged. The surface of the globe will be entirely changed, and there will be more land than water. Spirituality will be on the ascendancy and materiality decreasing. The characteristics of sex will gradually disappear, and humanity will slowly once again become androgynous. Toward the close of the sixth root humanity will begin to manifest the first appearances of reproduction by kriyashakti (propagation by means of will and imagination). Toward the close of the sixth root-race, humanity will be showing a steadily increasing tendency to evolve out of flesh and into more etheric vehicles. The sixth root-race will be comparable with our own fifth root race but far more advanced, spiritually, intellectually, psychically, and even physically, and the attainment by humanity to adeptship or white magic will be notably more easy than is the case at present. With the advent of each root-race a new cosmic element comes into manifestation, and a new physical sense apparatus appears. As a result, humanity in the sixth root-race will develop a sixth sense.

During the final seventh root-race there is a return to conditions of purity which prevailed at the beginning of the earth’s human evolution. But this return does not mean going backward, but rather an emanative evolutionary unfolding to the point where cyclic motion brings all things to the original plane, but on a higher division. The great adepts and initiates will once more produce mind-born progeny immaculately as the invisible North Polar continent will once more become visible. When seven planetary root races have been accomplished, there ensues a still higher nirvana.  This higher nirvana is coincident with what is called a pralaya of that planet, which lasts until a new planet forms, containing the same hosts of living beings as on the preceding one.

The androgyne or hermaphrodite is a dual principle containing both the active and passive powers of nature, as spirit-matter. Bipolarity is the contrast and interaction between the energetic and formative sides of nature which is universally prevalent. This duality is perhaps more accurately described as positive and negative, or by spirit and matter, or again by consciousness and vehicle. The early root races established their final form in commemoration of the separation of androgynous humanity, their forbearers, into males and females. Whatever sacred meaning may have entered into this primary memorial of the ethereal forms and forces of androgynous humanity becoming separate, physicalized, warm-blooded bodies, has been forgotten and misunderstood in the exoteric rites which have come down to us. The hermaphrodite in modern humanity is sometimes the source of virgin births in which the hermaphrodite inseminates and fertilizes itself. This rare occurrence will depend on the hermaphrodite having a complete set of both reproductive organs. Additionally, these beings are capable of producing sesquizygotic, monozygotic and dizygotic twinning. The hermaphrodite embodies nature’s universal polarity on its lower planes, which is an emanation from the non-dual or non-bipolar mental and spiritual realms. In an abstract sense, this is a personification of the universal polarity in nature on its lower planes, wherein the so-called masculine and feminine principles are the opposing but coordinating agencies, often called positive and negative, in their creative and generative aspects. Thus through emanational cosmic evolution the One breaks through its Two aspects of the cosmically androgyne and phenomenal finite manifested universe. The asexual procreative methods of the early root-races evolved to hermaphroditic status in the early and middle third root-race. The present conditions of sex will pass away after ages of experience as man and woman bring forth the innate masculine and feminine aspects of the human ego. The human race in the course of millions of years will become dual-sexed and finally sexless.

Poles are antithetical in quality and yet interdependent, each presupposes the other, as without the other neither can exist. Similar poles repel, dissimilar attract. As long as they are apart, there is force but when they coalesce, they neutralize each other and the force becomes latent. The most fundamental polarity is that of spirit and matter, which may also be called positive and negative, active and passive, etc. This is repeated endlessly on every plane and subplane. When the One becomes Two, it becomes polar — when the Two re-becomes the One, it ceases to be polar. The expansive and contractive forces (in themselves constituting a polarity) are seen everywhere in evolution and involution. In magnetism, electricity, and chemistry there exist familiar instances of polarity, in which the above general laws are illustrated. In the germinal cell, the One becomes the Two by the extrusion of the polar bodies. Benjamin Franklin coined the terms positive and negative to describe the attributes of electricity. Such usage is misleading, for in both magnetism and electricity — as examples of fields of nature where polarity is native and studied — the negative can be as “positive” in its action as the so-called positive itself, and that action and reaction in these fields are equal and equivalent. A thing may be positive on one plane and negative on another plane or in another direction, or again positive at one moment and negative at the next moment. Polarity is sometimes defined by the terms male and female but, while using these terns symbolically, we must refrain from qualifying them by ideas drawn from merely physiological sex. But in nature the masculine is no stronger or weaker than the feminine as they are coequal, reciprocal, interacting, always conjoined during manifestation, and paradoxically during manifestation continuously separate, but always in action and reaction, the one equalling the other.

Ardhanarisvara was the first cosmic androgyne. Cosmic entities are not sexual or sexed in the human sense, for sex as known in the human and animal kingdoms is a transitory phase of evolution. The application of terms such as androgyne, masculine, or feminine to cosmic entities has reference to states of cosmic forces or energy and substance which may be polarized or unpolarized. Certain energies and substances in the animal kingdom, and to a degree in the vegetable kingdom, are divided into opposites which bring about sex conditions. When the forces are partially polarized, an androgynous or hermaphroditic condition results.

Enochian is an occult language of the Enochian angels used in their ceremonial magic for the evocation and commanding of various spirits. These evocations have grimoiric similarities to the apocryphal Book of Enoch, whose author was the great grandfather of Noah. The Book of Enoch warrants special attention for the unique material it holds, such as the origins of supernatural demons and giants or why some angels fell from heaven. The origin of evil was caused by the fallen angels, who came on the earth to unite with human women. These fallen angels are considered ultimately responsible for the spread of evil and impurity on the planet. The first section of the Book of Enoch depicts the interaction of the fallen angels with humanity in which one of their leaders, Shemyazaz, compels the other fallen angels to take human wives to “beget us children.” The human women, because of Shemyazaz commandment “became pregnant, and they bore great giants…Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood.”

Senzar is the name given to the ancient mystery-language unknown to modern philologists, that was known to all initiates of the inhabited and civilized world. It is the secret sacerdotal language or mystery-speech of the adepts of the chief esoteric schools and is still used and studied to this day in the secret communities of the Eastern adepts, and called by them Zend-zar or Deva-Bashya. In this language, besides its common use as a universal means of intercommunication, were written the secret history of the archaic continents and races, as well as prophecies of the future. It was taken down as the secret sacerdotal tongue from the words of the divine beings, who dictated it to the hierophants of central Asia. There was a time when this language was known to initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of Atlantis who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages who learnt it from earlier root races. Besides an alphabet of its own, it may be rendered in several modes of writing in cypher characters, which are more in the nature of ideographs than of syllables.

As a mystical figure, the Sphinx is one of the emblems made when the human race fell into materialism, and sacred knowledge had to be withdrawn to avoid profanation. The Sphinx preserves a mystery without revealing it to those not qualified to know. This mystery, among other things, is connected with the evolution of the human race from the spiritual and, at a far later date, from the androgynous race. Sphinxes are found in Egypt, Assyria, and Greece, usually man-lions, with female human heads, with or without wings. When sacred symbols were anthropomorphized, the Sphinx leapt into the sea to preserve her secret wisdom.A grimoire is a textbook of magic, typically including instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms and divination, and how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, deities and demons. Entities such as angels, spirits, deities and demons result from states of mind in which the mind itself is a grimoire. The evocation of these mental “spirits” reside in a state of human contemplation sometimes referred to as dhyana. The fallen angels of the mind can created blockages within the human chakra system and require talismans or amulets to heal that system. Amulets may include such small objects as a dzi stone or crystal, or a large talisman like a yantra or mandala, or those created through meditation practices like the circular enso.

Divination is the utilization of inner faculties, whether by natural or induced clairvoyance, or by employing the agencies which regulate events, apparently casual, such as the fall of the cards, the marks in sand, the drawing of lots, and other seership formats related to the subject of omens. The universal correspondences in nature and the interrelation of all things, imply that the most casual and trivial events have a connection with other events, so that the one can be interpreted by means of the other, provided only that the diviner knows the rules and has the insight and skill. Thus, in cartomancy, one deals the cards with a mind concentrated on the knowledge desired, and their fall is determined by unseen and little understood influences. It is evident, however, that the condition and capacities of the diviner play an essential part in the success of the operation, because a large portion of humanity is neither wise enough nor well-balanced enough to meddle with such methods in which there is a tendency for gratification of personal desires and curiosity.

As in augury and divination, the laws of correspondences and of the interrelation of all parts of the cosmos imply that it is possible to interpret the invisible and forecast the future by observing visible signs. The right interpretation of omens demands knowledge and skill, and affords a fertile field for self-deception and quackery. There was in ancient times a fairly exact and accurate science of divination based on omens. Since the cosmos is an organism, an organic whole in which every part is interconnected with every other part, the smallest atom can affect a star as well as can a star affect the smallest atom. If one were wise enough to interpret such interconnections, it would be a fairly simple matter to understand the invisible from the appearances of the visible, and likewise to foretell the future. Oomancy is the ancient art of divination by eggs in which the diviner was able, by inspecting the contents of the egg, to perceive whatever the bird born from it would have seen, had it ever been born. Divination is a logical deduction from universal correspondences and interrelation and interpenetration of all parts of the universe. Divining is therefore only a question of knowledge and skill. The germ of the future lies concealed in the present, making prediction possible by one whose faculties have been awakened.

Premonition, a prophetic feeling that some calamity is about to happen, differs from prevision in that it is a feeling rather than a picture. An event on the physical plane may not be perceptible to our physical senses, yet our more subtle inner senses are aware. Some people and many animals may have a presentiment of an earthquake, through sensitiveness to certain astral and physical conditions which precede the actual earth-shock. A case of, say, avoiding a doomed train brings up the general question of prediction and the problem of time. In these cases the inner sense may perceive an event before it has happened on the physical plane, and such cases should not be lightly dismissed as imaginary or mere coincidences. Prevision is foresight, seeing an event with the inner eye before or at the time of its occurrence. As the inner eye is independent of the time sequence on which physical eyes and minds act, it is aware of things which to our physical perceptions belong to the future. Hence, if a contact is established between consciousness and the inner sense, we may obtain a picture of events which have not yet come into the present. Events on the physical plane are the effects of causes which are preparing on invisible planes. Thus to the spiritual eye — the awakened eye — all events past, present, or future, appear as an eternal Now,  casting a shadow from the waves of illusion to the consciousness which gives the power of prevision, premonition, and foresight, etc.

The unfolding growth of the human embryo epitomizes the aeon-long history of the embodiments of the race, repeating its individual course through all the forms of matter — a process often referred to as recapitulation. It goes back to past manvantaras from which crystals originated but with a differentiation of purposes. Behind all the orderly unfolding of embryonic cells is the subconscious directing influence of the monadic ego born from and bathing in cosmic intelligence. In human beings the reincarnating ego is a ray of a spiritual monad, whose self-consciousness and activity takes in the solar system. This monad is karmically bound to oversee the evolving career of the human ego. Its celestial parentage in the cosmic hierarchy makes humans literally children of the sun, harmoniously worked out by the reproductive material of a single cell. This intelligent influence acts upon the embryo through the directive power of  an astral fluid which work through, and in conjunction with, the vital capacities and potentialities of the cell.

Crystals are structures in which a pattern of atoms or molecules repeats in space. Crystals’ repeating patterns can also exist through time. These “time crystals” are a new kind of matter, one that can never reach equilibrium. Normal three-dimensional crystals have a repeating pattern in space, but remain unchanged as time passes. Time crystals repeat themselves in time as well, leading the crystal to change from moment to moment. To remove physical or spiritual blockage from one or more chakras a hierophant places crystals on different parts of a disciple’s body, often corresponding to specific chakras. Crystals may be placed around the body to construct an energy grid, which surrounds the body with healing energy. In certain cases crystals are used in specialized initiations, which certain individuals undergo in order to transcend their human condition and evoke and become protégés of divine beings or even their equals. The initiation process is often likened to a simultaneous death and rebirth, because it is an ending of existence on one level and an ascension to an existence on the next higher realm.

The points of light from distant stars which we view in the sky are separated from each other not only by spatial distances but also by distances in time, owing to the time taken by light to travel. Space-time is a mathematical conception, useful in certain measurements demanded by modern science, but not answering anything which can form a clear mental image. It is difficult to picture a line drawn from the American President in Washington to Cicero in the Roman Forum. We can view the universe under the form of a spatial extension and an independent time, or we can view it under the form of a dimensional continuum, wherein a coordinate representing position in time takes its place along with others representing position in space. Our ordinary threefold spatial extension is a concept of our physical experience, so that there is no reason why we cannot conceive of another order if we find it suits our purposes better. Nothing in the definition of geometrical space excludes the possibility of other spatial constructions, coexistent with our space and blended with it and with each other.

The formation of crystals shows the working of intelligent life forces in the mineral world. The shapes of crystals show, in their harmony and proportion, the mathematical and geometrical principles permeant throughout the universe. A solution of salt, when evaporated, first crystallizes in triangular shapes and ultimately builds up cubes, both of which are figures of fundamental importance as alchemical symbols of the element of earth. Every granule of salt has a particular form in which it crystallizes. Snow crystals show the hexagonal patterns which display the septenate — a center from which six radii proceed. The cube is derived from a square in the same way the square is derived from the line. A cube opened out gives a cross of six squares, four in the vertical line and three in the horizontal, one square being common to both, which is an emblem of a human with their spiritual and material nature meeting at the intersection. Clairvoyant sensitives can see light emanating from crystals, and luminous phenomena are often seen at the formation or disruption of crystals indicating that the process of crystallization is a step in the evolution of the minerals to the next higher kingdom.

Stages of evolutionary development in cosmic manifestation are symbolized by the geometrical forms of a point, line, plane, and solid, which correspond to a unit or monad, duad, triad, and quaternary. Lines are rays proceeding from a center, and represent cosmic forces on the lower planes, the forces familiar in physics. These are dual or bipolar. In geometric symbols, lines may be combined, as in the cross, where common agreement makes the vertical line masculine, the horizontal feminine; or in triangles, where the side lines and the base line each have its particular meaning. A line drawn in physical space may be regarded as a symbol for a real line, but to comprehend what the latter is, we must abstract the idea from all notions of physical space.

Egos are indirect or reflected consciousnesses, seeing themselves as apart from other egos, each having its own individualized characteristics. But the self is the purest and strongest intuition of being, as a universal principle, and as the summit of the hierarchy called humanity. It is pure consciousness, the essential principle which gives to every person knowledge of selfhood. The self has no egoic consciousness, and seems to be unconsciousness. To become self-conscious, a vehicle is needed, so that the self may see itself reflected as in a mirror. In humans what is called the personal self is a compound, in which the true selfhood ray shines dimly through many screens. This causes various mental states to be regarded as pertaining to our individuality, though they are actually influences which flow into and out of the mind, and to which we attribute a false sense of ownership, as when we say, “I am happy,” instead of “I am experiencing happiness.” Liberation frees us from these false selves as we abandon the heresy of separateness, and see the true self within us as being identical with that self in all beings.

The physical senses appeared in evolution in the order of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell. These senses were not developed out of nothing but are expressions on the physical plane of previous latent, inner causal functions residing in the structure of the inner person. The physiological senses are specializations of a general perceptiveness which has different modifications in different animal species where the organs are different, especially in the insects. Sensitives and clairvoyants may be able to receive visual, auditory, or other impressions without the use of the physical organs, where the usual functions of a sense organ may be transferred to another part of the body. In the first human protoplasts, the senses were non-functional although latent. As evolution unfolded, the functions and organs followed suit, and appeared in the evolving physical vehicle.

True meditative concentration actually applies more to the heart than to the mind, and is not a forcible mental practice but a general, although very positive and impersonal, attitude towards life. It means the centering of our wishes, thoughts, and acts on the ideal of self-identification with the spiritual and universal. The hindrances to concentration which are to be removed are those arising from anger, lust, vanity, fear, sloth, etc. Such obstacles are removed by lifting the mind above them or by deliberately ignoring them, since directly fighting with them serves to concentrate the mind on them, thus defeating the aim. Thus the blending of the personal self with the impersonal self is achieved by an orderly process of self-directed evolution as an identification of oneself with the individual’s innate divinity and thereby cultivating the spirit of impersonal love and the light of wisdom which it evokes.

The kamaloka is a semi-material plane where the astral forms of disembodied “personalities” called kamarupa remain. Eventually these forms fade out from this plane by the complete exhaustion of the effects of the mental impulses that created these eidolons of human and animal passions and desires. The kamaloka is often referred to as the land of silent shadows. Kamaloka is an astral locality, the limbus of scholastic theology, but a locality only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area nor boundary, but exists within subjective space which is beyond humanity’s sensuous perceptions. It is in the kamaloka that the astral eidolons, the larvae of all the beings that have lived, animals included, await their second death. These are the entities formed after death which then become the source of the new astral forms of the next incarnation.

The human personality is constantly changing, even during a single life, and even more greatly through rebirth. The higher states of individualized consciousnesses, though they may endure for periods so vast as to seem to be everlasting, must disappear for a time. At the time of the next incarnation the ego and its astral form are karmically propelled towards the family or woman to which it will be born. This new astral form is composed partly of pure etheric essence and partly of the terrestrial elements of the punishable sins and misdeeds of the last personality. The fetus will be modeled after this new astral form with physical characteristics of the ancestral adivamsa. The adivamsa was the first primeval race, the original family.

Certain humans were historically only partially conscious. These beings miscegenated with the then existing simians or monkeys, which were themselves the offspring of a similar miscegenation among earlier root-races. These anthropoids descended partly from a human stem, but were not forms ascending towards humanity in the sense of Darwinism. This descent resulted in the structural and functional differences and resemblances between anthropoids and humans. 

Since the fourth root-race, no monads from the animal kingdom could enter the human kingdom. From that time the earth started on an ascending arc of evolution. However, the monads embodied in the anthropoids were able to enter the lowest and least evolved branches of the human kingdom during later root races. The descending arc represented an involution of spirit and a concurrent evolution of matter resulting in a progressive materialization of spirit and a continuous concretion of the texture of matter. The ascending arc represents an evolution of spirit and involution of matter, resulting in a progressive dematerialization which increasingly manifests the qualities of spirit. As such, spirit and matter are fundamentally one essence at different stages of development. The monads, now in anthropoid bodies, will disappear from incarnation during the present root-race to enter their paranirvana, remaining as astral monads until the next evolutionary round. A few anthropoids, having attained the most advanced degree of evolution in the anthropoid stock, will reach quasi-human status, although still in anthropoid bodies, before the present root-race has reached its end. Many of these anthropoids will probably have died out before the present root-race is ended or by the beginning of the next root-race — a period of several million years from now.

Augoeides is the “luminous body” which refers to the planets and the heavens.  Augoeides never descends hypostatically into the living being, but sheds its three-fold radiance on the inner person located in the astral mind. Augoeides denotes the radiant spiritual human ego. During a high degree of initiation the initiate comes face to face with this radiant presence, seen as  luminosity streaming from the divine ego at the heart of the monad. When the Augoeides touches with its rays the inferior monads in the human constitution and awakens them to activity, these become the various lower egos or manifested progeny of the divine ego. The forces of light are responsible for elements or objects such as fire, air, rain and trees. These higher forces also control much more intricate tasks governing the functioning of the cosmos and the evolution of creation. The dichotomies of light and darkness are metaphors for spiritual concepts. Both light and darkness are symbolically the contradictory forces that motivate each individual in which such a dichotomy is a spiritual concept rather than a genealogical category or species of being. The powers of light and powers of darkness, although distinct and opposite in operation, are in essence consubstantial, their distinction being a matter not of essence but of orientation, revolution or transformation in which both powers seek knowledge, for different purposes.

Light is not self-existent, but is the primordially spiritual effect of something grander and more radical beyond it. This unknown divine substratum, the original super spiritual intelligence-substance of the universe, is called either darkness or absolute light. Thus absolute light and absolute darkness are the same in which manifested light sprang from unmanifested light or darkness. Light, voidness, and darkness are a triad, with voidness and darkness being  the father-mother and light, their progeny. Darkness preceded light in cosmogony in which the emanation of light from darkness is the first step in cosmic manifestation where darkness broods over the face of the deep (the void). Light thus is the original substance or spiritual matter while  darkness is the pure spirit. Light and darkness on manifested planes constitute a duality, correlative and interdependent in which neither is conceivable without the other. However, what is darkness to our physical senses may be light to our inner senses.

A vacuum, or emptiness, is the spiritual condition of a cosmic hierarchy before it emanates its streams of manifestation as boundless space. The first entities are atoms and a vacuum, which are equivalent to the manifest and the unmanifest, latent and patent. The atoms are spiritual indivisibles, not the atoms of science but monads, and likewise the vacuum of voidness, sunyata or the arupa (formless) spheres. The atomo-mechanical theory of physics starts with atoms and a vacuum and then tries to fill the vacuum. In doing so, the notion of emptiness becomes confused with spatial extension, giving rise to the idea of an extended and measurable void. The word is used to signify the absence of something, as the absence of physical matter. But another form of matter is still present which transmits light as well as other forms of radiation. This is the cosmic void — which is a pleroma or utter fullness. 

A perispirit is the subtle body that is used to connect with the perceptions created by the brain. It is enveloped in a substance which appears as mere vapor, but seems very gross though it is sufficiently vaporous to allow a spirit to float in the atmosphere, and to transport itself through space. The perispirit plays a key role in the phenomenon of mediumship, which actually involves the interaction of the perispirit of the medium and that of a disembodied spirit. When invited to our plane of existence by a medium, spirits who inhabit worlds of a higher degree than ours are obliged to clothe themselves with a garment composed of perispirit. The most elevated spirits, when they come to visit us, assume a terrestrial perispirit, which they retain during their stay among humanity. It is through the perispirit that disincarnate spirits can move objects. Thus, the perispirit is responsible for poltergeist manifestations. Extrasensory perception is reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term denotes psychic abilities such as intuition, telepathy, psychometry, clairaudience, and clairvoyance, and their trans-temporal operation as precognition or retro-cognition. Higher consciousness is the consciousness of a transcendental reality. It is the part of the human mind that is capable of transcending animal instincts and perceive the world from a location outside the physical body including the subtle body or perispirit.

Telepathy is the transference of thought or feeling from mind to mind independent of ordinary modes of communication. This very interesting phenomenon may be noted as not only existing between human beings, and humans and animals, but likewise between animals and insects — the last being one of the commonest phenomena of natural history — and in the plant kingdom. People have always known that they talk to each other through the air, or through air vibrations which strike the ear and are conveyed to the brain. The notion of transference from one mind to another across a distance is a physical conception. We live in a common mental atmosphere, taking in and giving out thoughts and feelings, which must often pass from mind to mind, though we may not be aware of the fact. Having separate minds does not mean that these minds are closed systems, and not mutually penetrable. A thought entertained by one person may pass inwardly through planes of consciousness until it reaches a point where minds are no longer separate, and from whence it may travel outwardly to the brain of another person. It may even be that what is required is not an explanation of thought transference as an explanation of why thoughts are so seldom transferred — why human minds are so separate. The explanation is the concentration of consciousness upon affairs immediately concerning the subject which covers the individual in a mental shell of interests, around which rush the influences emanating from the thinker. Universality of empathy therefore is the key to successful telepathic communication.