The Path of Initiation

FIVE

EVOLUTION AND INITIATION IN NATURE

We can begin this chapter by quite safely reiterating that the actual process of evolution through the various kingdoms of Nature (whether visible or invisible), as shown in fig. 5.1, is quite distinctively different from that suggested by modern neo-Darwinists. It is of an underlying spiritual nature and is thus psychologically causal, whereas that of the Darwinists is purely related to the world of objective influences and effects. In order to understand how this could be so, however, we have to refer, once again, to our hermeneutic system of states of being and consciousness, remembering that this is not static but rather interconnected with the law of cycles. Following this, we shall more readily understand the associated logic as we consider the relationship (in terms of consciousness) between the Macrocosm and the microcosm.

It will be remembered that the basis of the doctrine of cycles is that, within the overall framework of Universal Consciousness, ideas—as expressions of different aspects of that Consciousness—are in a constant process of interactivity. All such ideas are entities, to be found appearing macro-cosmically and microcosmically within the kosmic consciousness of Space as hierarchies of celestial Oversouls and lesser soul beings, only some having objective body forms. Transference of vital consciousness and functional instinct between these various soul organisms then takes place through the agency of what esoteric and occult philosophy would regard as mobile sub-hierarchies of spirits. One might suggest therefore that the whole process of what we call evolution—as with the ancient science of alchemy—lies in relation to this same constant process of transfer and assimilation of such groups of spirits from and to larger Group Oversouls.

8. PLANETARY SOUL	-	8TH KINGDOM (DHYANI BUDDHAS/INTERPLANETARY SPIRITS)

7. DIVINE SOUL	-	7TH KINGDOM IN NATURE (PLANETARY BUDDHAS)

6. SEMI-DIVINE SOUL	-	6TH KINGDOM IN NATURE (PLANETARY CHOHANS)

5. SPIRITUAL SOUL	-	5TH KINGDOM IN NATURE (ADEPTS/MASTERS)

4. CAUSAL SOUL	-	4TH OBJECTIVE KINGDOM IN NATURE (HUMANS)

3. TERRESTRIAL SOUL	-	3RD OBJECTIVE KINGDOM IN NATURE (ANIMALS)

2. CELL	-	2ND OBJECTIVE KINGDOM IN NATURE (PLANTS)

1. ATOM	-	1ST OBJECTIVE KINGDOM IN NATURE (MINERALS)

Fig. 5.1. Progressively individualizing hierarchies of souls

It will undoubtedly strike some readers as bizarre that we are here discussing the issue of interplanetary consciousness when our own human consciousness is so much more limited. However, this does not take into consideration the fact that the full extent of our own subliminal consciousness has not yet been apprehended by us even though its higher reaches are said to be fundamentally celestial in origin and nature. Our own spiritual nature may be limited to function within the higher aspects of our own planetary consciousness but our divine nature is said to extend far beyond that.

All very well you might say, but how can we consider such things in practical terms? Well, one way might be to begin developing an astrological interest along even general lines. The initial approach to a greater field of existence and knowledge involves simple interest in it and its purely objective workings. That then, in due course, leads to much more defined knowledge and inner understanding. Consequently, because (esoteric) astrology leads us necessarily back toward our own celestial point of origin (as spirits), it is important for us to grasp at least a few associated points, which I shall now try to explain.

The most important feature of this doctrine, as far as evolution is concerned, is that of the interaction of greater and lesser cycles of consciousness (see again fig. 2.7) whether of a planetary or an interplanetary nature. Within these, the various phenomenal forms of self-expression to which they give rise only appear in the first half of each cycle, where they are unfolded by a process of involutionary emanation from the soul or Oversoul. That is to say, lesser cycles owe their very existence to being emanations of greater soul cycles. It follows that the interaction of a greater and a lesser cycle results in a dynamic revitalization of the latter, enabling its continued existence. The lesser cycle or subcycle then progresses until picked up by another greater cycle, which has a slightly or considerably different effect upon it.

THE DOCTRINE OF PLANETARY ROUNDS, CHAINS, AND GLOBES

As already suggested, the whole process of universally developing intelligence—what we otherwise call evolution—is taking place within the field of consciousness of hugely more advanced hierarchies of beings, commonly known to esotericists by the Greek name logoi. Thus our solar system in its entirety is merely the objective expression of the consciousness of a Solar Logos, who is itself one of seven such Logoi in the body of a far more evolved and exalted kosmic Logos. Hence, within our solar system we find a sequence of lesser kosmic consciousness expressing itself through the various planetary schemes with which we are familiar via astronomy or astrology.

Rather inevitably, this whole subject becomes increasingly complex the further one goes into it. However, the intention here is to keep things as simple and straightforward as reasonably possible. Rather more comprehensive detail is provided, for those interested, at the back of the book in appendix A. With that in perspective, let us just focus on the idea of consciousness always as a field of being of greater or lesser degree and mind itself as a psycho-spiritual fluid medium capable of being transferred between such fields—such as those of the various planetary schemes within the solar system.

The fact that the order of planetary globes comprising a “chain” of being and consciousness in each such scheme expresses an actual sequence of development is itself important. The general evolutionary sequence is itself triple in nature, comprising involution, evolution, and devolution. As we saw in the previous chapter, “involution” consists of the reexpression in form of the subjective achievement of the preceding cycle. “Evolution” then comprises the expansion of consciousness achieved because of the limitation induced by that form. Finally, “devolution” comprises the liberation from the repetitive lesser cycle into a yet greater cycle of being and consciousness.

This principle is the same whether considered in relation to the microcosm or the Macrocosm, the latter being associated with our solar system as a whole and the yet greater celestial system of which it forms a part. In our solar system, this triple progression involves ten planetary schemes as shown in fig. 5.2.*12

Our Earth scheme, the fourth in the series of the first seven sequential planetary schemes, expresses a critical point of balance and change as between the involutionary and evolutionary functions within the nature of the physical consciousness of our Solar Logos. Correspondingly, the seventh scheme (that of Jupiter) represents a point (and a state) of balance between the evolutionary and devolutionary cycles.

THE VARYING QUALITY OF MATTER

Within the overall scheme, every physically objective planet also represents a similarly critical sequence of triple development within its own nature. Hence one might suggest that the terrestrial crust and atmosphere of the physical planets Venus and Mars, for example, which are respectively involutionary and evolutionary within the overall consciousness of the Logos, are quite different from each other and from those of Earth in metaphysically qualitative terms, even if not in visually objective terms. That is because the mineral kingdom not only evolves but also has a slightly different purpose in each separate world scheme.

Fig. 5.2. Involution–evolution–devolution in our solar scheme

This is something our modern science cannot yet understand. That is because it is fundamentally quantitative in its analytical approach. It has not even begun to consider the possibility of qualitatively different atoms or the nature of soul being, even if it is beginning to acknowledge the qualitative difference between cellular organisms, the next higher range of entities above atoms in our world scheme.

When we consider the actual states of which each planet is composed, we accordingly find a subtle difference between them (which our modern scientific technology is also as yet incapable of registering). Thus, by virtue of every state and substate being respectively sevenfold in nature (as we saw in chapter 1), we can suggest that the gaseous, liquid, and solid matter of our Earth is—at the seventh and lowest level—the most densely organized in this solar system (apart from that of our Moon). That of Venus and Mars, however, is less so, although the arrangements and characteristics are necessarily rather different because of their differing involutionary/evolutionary functions and stages of development.

Although Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine and Bailey’s A Treatise on Cosmic Fire both go into rather greater detail on this issue, I will not do so here because, in dealing with more important general evolutionary principles, such details might only cause confusion. What I will add, however, is a suggestion that the matter of each visible planetary globe within our solar system comprises more or less of each of the seven subplanes of the seventh and lowest kosmic plane, in due correspondence. Quite apart from this, each and every planetary scheme has sevenfold companion globe-states on each of the kosmic, astral, lower mental, and higher mental planes of being and consciousness.1 As we shall see later on, the importance of this lies in relation to the further evolution of those high initiates who pass on to greater states of being.

Each group of globe-states is known theosophically (and in esoteric Buddhism) as a planetary chain (see again appendix A), in each of which a complete spiral sequence of involutionary/evolutionary progression is known esoterically as a round.2 The reason for mentioning all this inevitable complexity is that it helps us at least to be aware of how, why, and where Universal Consciousness is “joined up” in practical terms. Hence we can begin to understand why evolution is in fact a fundamentally spiritual process in which transmissions and transitions of consciousness always take place following the same general principles, even though between states involving widely different types of form and function.

THE IMPACT OF THE GREATER CYCLES ON HUMANITY

Those same transitions necessarily work according to cycles taking place within the Universal Mind, each such cycle involving an expressive, logically sequential emanation of kosmic memory and Divine Purpose. Each such emanation is progressively involutionary, evolutionary, and devolutionary, as already suggested. Consequently, greater Intelligences (or rather, their auric influences) periodically pass through lesser states of being, while lesser intelligences evolve sufficiently to transcend their own fields of limitation and thus move into greater states of being. They can thus progressively access the much more highly developed knowledge associated with those same states.

The various cycles themselves derive from the relative (because constantly changing) geometric relationships of planets and solar systems in space. Hence it is that the ancient wisdom tradition conceives of the influences of greater Intelligences (“gods,” relatively speaking) periodically affecting our Earth. Hence also the suggestion of divinely evolved (hence “perfected”) members of our own Earth humanity systematically passing on to other planetary and solar schemes, in due cycle, in order to helpfully influence the evolutionary progress in them according to yet Higher Purpose.

As mentioned earlier, the overall zodiacal cycle of 25,920 years has to be seen predominantly in the context of the giant carrier wave of kosmic consciousness that gives rise to it and then picks it up again, much later. This kosmic consciousness is that of unimaginably evolved Intelligences whose own functions progress in sequence through greater celestial systems of which our solar system forms only a small part. In fig. 2.7, we can see that the giant wave passes through the zodiacal framework during the latter or evolutionary part of the Age of Pisces, thereby giving our planetary consciousness a huge evolutionary jolt. At the end of the Age of Pisces it continues upward into a prolonged period of what appears to be subjectivity, only to reappear in active, involutionary mode at the beginning of the subsequent Age of Pisces, some 26,000 years later. This brings into form (very temporarily on our planet) literal “gods,” walking among the humankind of the time.

The cycle of precession has to be seen as parallel to the orbital cycle of our Earth around the Sun, although on a hugely greater scale. Thus, there are celestial equinoxes and celestial solstices. So by virtue of precession involving a seemingly regressive cycle (although this is itself based on an illusion), the 12,960-year period between its two celestial solstices (from Virgo-Leo to Pisces-Aquarius) is predominantly involutionary. In other words, it is concerned with unfoldment in form of the range of planetary consciousnesses evolved in the last Great Year cycle. During the latter half of the Great Year (i.e., from Pisces-Aquarius back to Virgo-Leo) the overall process is evolutionary. That is to say, there is a progressive dying out on Earth of many of the subsidiary species and types of body forms generated in the involutionary cycle, leaving evolutionary development potential to those left. Only those forms and organisms remain that are definitely concerned with and able to provide the vehicles for development of a new consciousness within each kingdom of Nature. This is the basis of the much-misunderstood “Day of Judgment” concept found in the Christian Bible and a few other religious works.

THE CYCLIC RETURN OF THE “GODS”

Turning back to fig. 2.7, those “gods” within the greatest wave who are not of such a developed nature that they can follow that wave to its natural epicycle would “drop out” of it at a certain point; in continuing their own lesser cycle, they rejoin the lesser, zodiacal cycle on our planet at the beginning of the Age of Virgo, at its cusp with the end of the Age of Leo. They would thereby give rise to the appearance of a secondary race of “gods,” or demigods, whose (again temporary) involvement in our planetary consciousness heralds the upturn of the 25,920-year cycle. These beings would remain in subtle objectivity within our planetary aura throughout the Age of Virgo and then depart, en route to their own rejoining of the greater kosmic Life Wave. We see then that one hierarchy of gods has a cycle of reappearance on our Earth of around 26,000 years, while another has a cycle of only about 13,000 years.

Bearing in mind that the ending of the last Ice Age occurred some 12,500 years ago, according to geologists and paleontologists, we can therefore see the logic of the idea that certain of “the gods” are about to return to Earth. When we talk about their returning to Earth, however, it does not immediately infer that they will take physically objective incarnation. For many of them, the extent of their power, as pure spirits, is such that to do so would be impossible. They can return to the outer Oversoul of the planet, however, and from there exert their influences mainly through the deva hierarchy and the Spiritual Hierarchy of Adepts who thus act in the same way that an electrical transformer would. In other words, the higher devas and the Adepts “step down” the vast power of these great Intelligences so that their various involutionary and evolutionary influences can be safely absorbed and passed on. We are told, however, that it now becomes possible for carefully prepared and dedicated groups of more evolved human beings “on the Path” also to act in this same way, at least to a minor extent.3 We shall touch on this too in greater detail, in a later chapter when we consider the issues of the human kingdom as a whole taking initiation and of a major change of orientation in the overall governance of our planet.

It is otherwise important to remember that these various gods (whether greater or lesser) are not concerned with the process of involution–evolution merely in relation to humankind. Their appearances present all our various kingdoms of Nature with definite points of crisis and opportunity in which old and new energies and forces are united. They bring with them other hierarchies of being and consciousness from the celestial regions through which they have passed and they eventually take with them those units of consciousness that, for one reason or another, no longer fit within our own planetary scheme of development. For example, at least some of those ex-human demigods (called “heroes” in the ancient Greek tradition) whose presence is needed in other solar or planetary schemes to aid in their particular evolutions, are removed because of their very success in this one. In this way the whole Macro-kosmos permanently re-seeds and re-harvests itself, in due cycle. But nothing happens except in due cycle—and thus strictly according to Universal Law.

THE FIELD OF PLATONIC DUALITY

Having already mentioned the intermediate states of consciousness through which the life of each kingdom must pass, before it attains to union with the next higher kingdom, let us next take a look at these states to see if we can draw any conclusions from their analysis. First of all, let us recognize that the sevenfold sequence that is described covers only the four lower states or substates within a soul/Oversoul octave. This is the field Plato refers to as the manifestly Different—that which is ever-changing. Therefore, the three higher substates comprise what Plato calls the Same, those qualitatively different archetypal progressions of the Oversoul/soul nature. So, in the lower cycle, the indwelling life of the kingdom of Nature in question passes through a myriad of different compound forms, involving experience of a wide range of constantly fluctuating energies and forces. As a result of these experiences, the indwelling life develops the power of feeling, or external sensitivity.

In the higher cycle, there is but one triple archetype of form, constituted of a homogeneous light substance, derived from an emanating center of particular quality and power. These three substates must thus be seen as three functional aspects of but one (monadic) archetype comprising the Will-to-be, the Will-to-know, and the Will-to-generate/adapt. Beyond them lies the eighth substate, the eleventh in the overall sequence of progression. This is that of the soul/Oversoul itself. Beyond this lies an emanation from a yet greater kingdom of (kosmic) Nature, an antahkarana or bridge of consciousness along and up which it has to climb before it can reach its own emanating source.

THE RECURRENCE OF THE SENSORY FACULTIES

This type of analysis is, for most students, rather complex and it would probably be wiser to look at the issue from the viewpoint of effects in the various kingdoms on the various planes. However, before we do so, let us first consider the corresponding way in which the five senses appear and reappear within the fields of human and superhuman consciousness, in apparently different forms. These recur, as shown in the table below, within the five lower states of operative consciousness of the solar system (the first two states being wholly subjective).4 The essence of what is being shown here is the progressive range of faculty to be found within each given state, which the aspiring human intelligence can access and take advantage of subject to the necessary effort. That same effort involves sentient perception of the associated vibratory quality followed by disciplined usage in practice. Through this combination the individual gradually develops these as readily recoverable faculties within his own nature.

Plane	Sensory Function	Quality
7. ADIC	The Will-to-be
6. AKASIC	The Will-to-know
5. ATMIC	5. All knowledge
	4. Perfection
	3. Realization
	2. Active service
	1. Beatitude
4. BUDDHIC	5. Spiritual idealism
	4. [Spiritual] Intuition
	3. Spiritual vision
	2. Healing
	1. Comprehension
3. MENTAL	7. Spiritual telepathy	Formless
	6. Response to group vibration	Formless
	5. Spiritual discernment	Formless
	4. Mental discrimination	Formless
	3. Higher clairvoyance	Possessing forms
	2. Planetary psychometry	Possessing forms
	1. Higher clairaudience	Possessing forms
2. ASTRAL	5. Emotional idealism
	4. Imagination
	3. Lower clairvoyance
	2. Psychometry
	1. Lower clairaudience
1. PHYSICAL	5. Smell	3rd etheric state (pranic vitality)
	4. Taste	4th etheric state (astral light)
	3. Sight	Gaseous/atmospheric matter
	2. Touch (feeling)	Liquid matter
	1. Hearing	Dense matter

THE USE AND DEVELOPMENT OF FACULTY

The sensory faculties mentioned above are, of course, described purely from the human viewpoint and we shall look at them slightly more closely later in the chapter. The lesser kingdoms too, however, share in these faculties to some evolutionary extent, in terms of response to stimulus. For example, the mineral kingdom has the crude capacity to respond (chemically) to sound, touch, sight, and taste. However, smell is not so generally developed. The plant kingdom has extended its faculty of responsive awareness into the astral state. It has consequently developed not only all of the physical senses to a greater extent than the mineral but also possesses capacity for self-generated change through now having a degree of lower clairaudience (response to sound frequencies), psychometry (external sensory faculty), and even embryonic lower clairvoyance (response to solar and lunar light). The animal goes even further through possession of all of these to a greater extent, plus some rudimentary degree of astral imagination (desire for possession), together with emotional idealism (devotional response) in the higher species. These suggestions are open to our own perceptual experience.

It is perhaps worth mentioning in passing that what we generally refer to as intuition is actually not that at all. True intuition is of a higher spiritual nature, involving a faculty with which even an initiated Master is only just coming to grips. What we lesser mortals experience is in fact a form of telepathic contact within one or another of the mental, astral, or physical states. In the few true cases of non-Adept consciousness picking up real spiritual contact, with its associated intuitive insights, it is as a result of the individual unconsciously using the energies of one or another of the three highest mental subplanes. These involve the faculty of what we call the Spiritual Ego, which is itself, in fact, the lowest emanation of the Monad as it impinges upon the outermost limits of the buddhic (kosmic etheric double) state. Thus it is that spiritual telepathy of the highest mental substate is not only the functional essence of the mental state itself, it is also the vibratory projection of the spiritual (buddhic) state—hence its esoteric association with occult sound.

THE ILLUSION OF FORM

The next thing to be taken into consideration is that interaction between solar energy and planetary substance is of critical importance in the production of mass forms. However, direct solar energy alone cannot begin to generate productive forms. To reiterate an earlier suggestion: it is the interaction with less powerful reflected solar energy (via the Moon) that actually draws forth by sympathetic magnetic resonance the apparently dormant spark of plant life, thereby giving rise to the manifest evolutionary process. As also mentioned earlier, reflection in a mirror produces a virtual image while, as recognized by science, a hologram (which is also virtual) is generated by the out-of-phase interaction (at a specific point in space) of two laser projections emitted from the same source. Consequently, therefore, the multitude of objective forms generated here on Earth by interactive solar and lunar energy have to be considered as mere holograms. Hence the ancient and hitherto puzzling idea that the manifest world is only a sensory illusion.

The whole process is perhaps more easily understood by reference again to fig. 2.1. This shows the sphere of kosmic physical existence (the Oversoul) from within which the deva Monad projects its influence centripetally inward, in response to pressure from logoic Intelligence. This is met by a corresponding, but dual outgoing (centrifugal), influence from the center, which we otherwise recognize as the yin-yang duality that gives rise to magnetic polarity. At the points where the two then meet, we find a coordination of the incoming and outgoing forces. Within the field of our planetary Oversoul, as already mentioned, this meeting place becomes the Earth’s crust on which all objective forms thus find themselves generated. Here the evolutionary process commences, beginning logically with the mineral kingdom, the most objective of the involutionary elemental states. Having said as much, the point must be made that “Nature, the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve intelligence unaided—she can only create [relatively] senseless forms.”5 That is to say, only by the intervention and emanation of a higher Intelligence into it can any kingdom of Nature (including the human) make evolutionary progress beyond a certain point. This we shall see, in later chapters, becomes of critical importance in understanding the nature and function of the Self-evolved human (Manushi) Buddha.

EVOLUTIONARY “MISSING LINKS”

As we have already otherwise seen, every soul state (although interrelated) is qualitatively different from all others. That distinction is manifest by virtue of the fact that the soul state consciousness generates a definite field of force, which is essentially electromagnetic in nature (but not in the limited sense applied by modern science). That is to say, it is vibrationally both attractive and repellent, depending on the psychic nature of whatever it comes into contact with. To that which it is complementary, it is attracted. However, there are definite “spaces” (synapses) between the forms generated by consciousness. Across these, curiously enough, evolutionary “ladders” or “bridges” must be built, thereby negating the possibility of any other intermediate forms. Nature firmly shuts the door on its own past creations, so we are told, and it is always so, without exception. What we imagine to be missing links never involve intermediate forms in the sense of a forward progression. However, as mentioned earlier, there are intermediate links of a regressive nature. The reason for this involves a law of retardation in Nature that, as Blavatsky describes,6 ensures a hiatus when any new species comes into existence. This applies to humanity as well as all the other kingdoms of Nature.

Let us take as our example of the way in which the underlying scheme works, the idea of the so-called missing link—that as yet indefinable stage or sequence that links quite different main species. This is something that Darwin himself avoided by concentrating his attention on objective functional changes in mere subspecies. As we shall see, the process works through the incarnating intelligence passing out of the purely objective phase of its experience into a purely subjective phase of which modern science is as yet completely unaware but which has to do with “germinal” existence in a nonphysical state.

Let us suggest first of all that there is no such thing as a “quantum evolutionary leap,” as some scientists believe. When we consider this graphically, we see that the cycle of unfoldment of the various species within a kingdom of Nature reaches a natural climax in respect to potentially objective forms. For example, in fig. 5.3 (the mineral to plant evolutionary sequence) we see that the most highly evolved stage reached by the mineral kingdom involves the organic soils. That is because these provide the medium in which the next higher kingdom of Nature can objectively manifest.

Fig. 5.3. The mineral to plant evolutionary sequence

From here, however, there is no immediate transition of the indwelling life into the plant kingdom consciousness, but only into its forms. Instead, we see the mineral life and its subjective consciousness extending further into two progressive states of subjectivity before becoming ready for the next stage of its own spiritually involutionary unfoldment, through merging with a yet higher involutionary influence. We then find that the last stage of objective mineral development (the organic soils) becomes the natural medium or vehicle for the first stage of evolutionary development of the plant.

Correspondingly (see fig. 5.4) we find the same principle in the progression between the animal and human kingdoms. The mammal is the most evolved of the objective animal types; yet the animal life must extend several further developmental stages into subjectivity before it attains to the first and most primeval stage of proto-human unfoldment. But before it does so, it becomes the receptor of a higher type of life with which it must unite before being able to progress further. Yet even when this combined existence reaches the tenth stage and there forcibly unites with such a higher Intelligence, it does not begin to look “human” by modern standards of comparison. However, the most important consideration here is that the inter-kingdom evolutionary transition takes place always within the subjective side of Nature.

NOTES:

The graphic depicts (in general terms) the involutionary and also evolutionary Life Wave passing through the feld of consciousness of the Animal kingdom, thereby giving rise to the different main species. Sub-waves feeding off the main wave then give rise to all the associated sub-species.

The mammalian type is, however the highest animal type possible. So, when the main evolutionary wave reaches this point, it can no longer produce better physical forms. Instead, it moves into its purely spiritual, transitional mode in order to attain to a primordial form of consciousness associated with the next highest kingdom in Nature - the human.

In order to do this, it has to merge with a yet higher involutionary wave, the combination of the two then generating the sequentially involutionary progression of human consciousness, described in terms of 'Root Races'. It is then the lowest of these involutionary human types that take on those mamalian physical forms that we are familiar with today.

Fig. 5.4. The animal to human evolutionary sequence

But then, what about the differentiation between the subkingdoms, such as the insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals? Do the same principles apply? The short answer to this is no; the reason for that lies in the fact that these are expressions of the different subfunctions found within the kingdom as a whole. They therefore appear together out of one subjective archetype, as a series of objective prototypes. It is then the latter that adapt and, in so doing, degenerate through multiplication. This, of course, is completely back-to-front as far as Darwinism is concerned. For Darwinists, multiplication is itself a sign of forward evolutionary development through adaptation. But then modern science as yet fails to take into its considerations the doctrine of cycles, which, to some extent, we touched on earlier in this chapter.

EVOLUTION IN THE LOWEST KINGDOMS OF NATURE

If the devas/angels are only concerned with fostering the status quo and thus with promoting the same unchanging cycles of activity, how is it that evolution as such can take place within the mineral and plant kingdoms? One answer is that it is because of direct human involvement or interference. Humanity uses the products of the mineral kingdom (often blending them) for all sorts of tools and crafted artifacts. The daemonic mineral life is thereby subjected to rapid and enforced change of a type that it would not and could not generate of its own through mere vulcanism and metamorphic or sedimentary activity.

In a curious way, even human warfare follows suit. While certain elements of the mineral kingdom have developed radioactivity “organically” in small degree, humankind has accelerated this. The atomic and hydrogen bombs, despite causing immense and unfortunate destruction, have given rise to the ability by the mineral kingdom to generate mass nuclear energy and power. Although this has in turn given rise to a type of radiation that is immensely destructive to the currently existing plant, animal, and human forms found on our planet, that is because these existing forms are themselves in the process of becoming obsolescent and must, in due time, give rise to new ones, of similar shape, perhaps, but also of entirely different quality and potency. One should otherwise bear in mind that our computer age is based upon different usages of the mineral kingdom to generate “artificial intelligence.” The fact of particular parts of the mineral kingdom being forced into such high-grade experience itself involves an evolutionary crisis of incredible magnitude.

Humans—being essentially self-centered creatures—would be unlikely to consider the mineral kingdom from such a viewpoint. But from the bigger perspective of planetary management, it is of vital importance. The various forms of the plant kingdom have been made use of by both animals and humans for food and shelter, while humans have also used wood for furniture, tools, and even ornately carved artifacts such as statues to adorn their homes and sacred places. The indwelling life of the plant kingdom necessarily reacts to such treatment in a variety of ways, some of them involving a merely blind cycle of repetitive experience but others involving direct sensory experience through human contact.

It is the memory of human contact—faint though it may be—that will be passed down in the daemonic consciousness of the mineral and plant kingdoms, thereby leaving a germinal impression of their greater potential, even though this memory may not fully reexpress itself for millions or even billions of years to come. In the same way, we may suggest that in past eons, ancient humanity experienced the consciousness of what we would now think of as “gods” who have themselves passed through the human cycle untold ages ago. Hence it is that the human, relatively speaking, is a “god” as far as the lesser kingdoms of Nature are concerned. The magnetic influences generated by the lower human chakras affect each in due turn. As the ancient wisdom tradition puts it, the universe is a gigantic process of ever-becoming. With that in mind, let us now take a closer look at the lives and derivation of forms in each of the objective kingdoms of Nature, as follows.

1. The Mineral Kingdom
It is commonly known, by tradition, that the Nature spirit denizens of the mineral and plant kingdoms are otherwise known to the Western world as “gnomes” plus “brownies” on the one hand and “elves” plus “fairies” on the other (see fig. 3.5 in chapter 3). As Geoffrey Hodson, the twentieth century clairvoyant researcher of the deva world, tells us, both these groups have two distinct forms of self-presentation: a spheroidal astral body, which is their permanent “vehicle” (conforming with the terrestrial soul principle) and a temporarily materialized etheric body form by which humans more usually recognize them.7 Within both groups there appear to be numerous subtypes, comprising those with increasingly vaguer objective appearances—having a far less definable consciousness plus closer association with the underground world—and those with more coherent body forms and facial expressions. There are all sorts of other interesting human parallels, which the interested reader will discover by studying Geoffrey Hodson’s works more closely.

Within the former group, in correspondence with the duality of matter and spirit, the gnomes appear to be concerned with the denser aspects of the mineral kingdom, while the brownies tend to function much closer to the Earth’s surface. Hence we have the following suggested parallels, which correlate with Hodson’s own view of the three fundamental processes in Nature: absorption, assimilation, and discharge.8 They are given here in order of ascending evolutionary nature and development.

3. Human spirit—brownies dealing with mineral soils and radioactivity

2. Human spiritual soul—gnomes and brownies dealing with the extension and perfection of crystalline forms

1. Human personality—gnomes dealing with purely accumulative and metamorphic activity in relation to development of mineral compounds

Just as the human personality is triple, and primarily concerned with integration, so the gnomes dealing with metamorphic activity would perhaps be concerned with the three types of volcanic activity that give rise to the production of those involutionary compounds known to us as igneous rock, lava, and poisonous gases. These three amorphously molecular substates comprise all those atoms in the mineral kingdom that display the ability to select and thus discriminate intelligently under the law of attraction and repulsion.9

However, following on from these there should be seven evolutionary and devolutionary gnome and brownie types in all, paralleling in a very obscure way the seven human subtypes: (1) of the Earth, earthy; (2) the devotionally driven; (3) the mentally/organizationally driven; (4) the artistic; (5) the idealistic; (6) the philanthropic/altruistic; (7) the philosophical. We might then suggest that each of these seven groups are themselves hierarchically “overshadowed” by seven groups of devas who are in turn overshadowed by three archangelic groups.

2. The Plant Kingdom
When we come to the Nature spirits of the plant kingdom, we find similar parallels, because the organizational side of Nature always follows the same essential blueprint. Thus the three overall groups could perhaps be classified as:

3. Those concerned with photosynthesis plus smell and radiation

2. Those concerned with the phenomenal cycle of flowering and fruiting

1. Those living entirely within the plant forms and generating them out of their own etheric essences (derived from the astral light)

The seven subgroups of Nature spirits (comprising what we have come to know as the elves and fairies, the Nature spirits of the trees being otherwise known as “dryads”) can perhaps be classified very roughly along the following lines of their various productions.

Once again, we might suggest that there are seven groups of devas concerned with watching over these and that there are three groups of archangels overshadowing them. As regards the atoms of the plant kingdom, they not only have the capacity to discriminate intelligently under the law of attraction and repulsion, as in the mineral kingdom, but they also have an embryonic sensory or feeling capacity.

3. The Nature Spirits of the Animal Kingdom
When we come to consider the process of evolution in the animal kingdom, other issues have to be taken into consideration, which are not applicable to the mineral and plant kingdoms. For here, humanity is not instrumental in changing the forms (although this does happen through specialist breeding); it is the direct experience of mingling human and (daemonic) animal consciousness that generates a very real crisis in the latter. In addition, this is the first kingdom on the evolutionary cycle where the daemonic Nature spirit becomes so fully involved in the form created throughout its life cycle that the form itself becomes a recognizably living entity. Following the same principles, the animal kingdom can be (esoterically) considered, in the following seven involutionary and evolutionary groups:

Again following the same principles, these seven subgroups might be considered as overshadowed and guided by seven groups of angels/devas, while the later are themselves controlled and guided by three groups of planetary archangels. The atoms of the animal kingdom, like those of the mineral and plant kingdoms, discriminate intelligently under the law of attraction and repulsion, as well as having a materially increased sensory faculty. However, the animal also possesses instinct (partly functioning through the solar plexus chakra), which involves an embryonic mentality. This might be described as “the habitual reaction of some type of consciousness to a given set of circumstances, or of environment.”10 Thus it is that the animal possesses an embryonic faculty of anticipation but, because lacking any real range and coherence of mental faculty, it lacks the conscious capacity to preadjust to circumstances. It thus also lacks the capacity to learn consciously from experience.

Notwithstanding this, the animal group soul learns and telepathically transmits its increased knowledge to other groups through sympathetic vibration. It is this (sometimes even transoceanic faculty) that many biologists have already noted as taking place within an immediate time scale that makes physical contact impossible as an associated reason. The modern biologist Rupert Sheldrake has noted this in his published research work, as have other scientists too.

It is in the present worldwide ecological movement that humanity in the mass has begun to realize just how necessary is the balance in Nature. Interestingly also, it is the way in which our present humanity’s science is experimenting with the involutionary groups of the animal kingdom, for the purpose of treating its own animal type of body, that is to some considerable extent affecting the consciousness of the animal kingdom as a whole through sympathetic association. The usage of animals for experimental science is all right up to a point, as also their training for particular purposes. However, when it takes on a purely destructive or aggressively harmful nature, either objectively or subjectively, it has gone too far and will automatically result (through the law of cause and effect) in retribution as sympathetically detrimental effects within the human kingdom.

We might otherwise pause here for a moment to consider the domesticated animals, plus those animals that various ecologically motivated groups of humans now work closely with in order to help maintain the continuing existence of their species. The training and use of animals to work with humans probably started in late Atlantean times after the “door was closed” to any further evolutionary transition of entities from the animal into the human kingdom. Although many today tend to think of such domestication purely in terms of satisfying our own physical and emotional needs, we need to consider the fact that we are also preparing the animals, well in advance, for their own next evolutionary progression. That will take place, so we are told, in the next major cycle of our planetary scheme, by which time the majority of present humankind will have reached Adeptship. Therefore, how we treat the animals that come into our care over the next tens of thousands of years will have its own karmic outcome in our own eventual ability, in due course, to help them achieve the self-conscious faculty of the human being with which we are ourselves so familiar.

HUMAN EVOLUTION

The various anthropologically distinct human types are rarely taken into consideration these days because of a misplaced sense that “discrimination is a bad thing.” From the viewpoint of helping all human development, this is in fact very silly because it willfully fails to take into account quite natural evolutionary differences. There appear to be ten stages in the evolutionary development of human types, so we are told,11 which can be classified as follows:

The (rare) “throw-backs” to the quasi-animal state; the lowest forms of human development whose objectivity of intelligence is almost nonexistent
The (also quite rare) types who have no natural skills and are completely incapable of response to even emotional training or culture generally
Those types who are emotionally and psychically alive and are beginning to integrate; in these “child souls” the desire nature is rampant and they are concerned purely with personal satisfaction
Those many types who retain the Atlantean nature; they are primarily emotional and show little sustained response to mental training
Those who, although still largely astral in their nature, are capable of being mentally trained and thereby showing that they can think of their own accord when the need arises
Those who can think of their own accord and are thus to be found forming the cultural mainstream of their age; they are classified as “the world’s aspirants” who are beginning to develop the ideal of service in their consciousness
Those who have begun to develop the sensitive mystic consciousness, but who are as yet incapable of maintaining a sustained connection between it and the mind
Those who have achieved some degree of connection and are thus able to function, to some extent, as practical mystics and occultists
Those who have developed a very real sense of contact with their Higher Self and who are fully conscious of their various vehicles as such
The Self-conscious Adept

It is only when we come to the human kingdom that we find positive response to mental faculties per se and thus the self-conscious capacity to use what we call creative imagination. In fact, it might seem strange to suggest that humans possess faculties of higher clairaudience, planetary psychometry, and higher clairvoyance, although (objective) mental discrimination is more certainly recognized. However, these are generally used in an unconscious manner, while the human intelligence is perhaps more aware of having to apply conscious effort in the use of the five senses on both the astral and physical planes. The average human being is completely unaware of what is meant by (i.e., how to apply) astral clairaudience and psychometry, although the concept of clairvoyance is now commonly acknowledged. Yet, as just suggested, all three of these are commonly used all the time—unconsciously—by the individual. For example, it is impossible to use pictorial imagination (which is largely astral, not mental in nature) without the simultaneous use of astral clairvoyance and astral psychometry to produce a coherent sense of imagery. As is commonly recognized, any faculty develops or evolves through persistent practice; these faculties—although undoubtedly less common—respond in exactly the same way, preceded by the use of imagination. That is why all such faculties are self-generated.

For the vast majority of educated people these faculties might actually appear as mental constructs. Yet their use in conjunction with personal desire and self-centeredness renders them largely if not entirely astral in nature. The capacity to use these faculties consciously at the mental level are really only to be found where trained esthetics are practiced, often (curiously enough) in the field of business, because of the need for intelligently reliable application. That is why business creativity (when properly applied) has a huge potential for developing otherwise latent spiritual faculty. When business is somewhat relieved of its entirely profit-motivated orientation and returned to generating a vocational sense in the individual, this will undoubtedly start to appear. It is perhaps worth mentioning at this very point the perhaps rather unexpected but nevertheless entirely logical attitude of the Spiritual Hierarchy of our planet to the world of business, as follows:

The development of the so-called irreligious man into a sound and creative businessman, with all the necessary perception and equipment for success, is as much a spiritual unfoldment . . . as the taking of an initiation by a disciple in an Ashram. . . . It will [one day] be realized that all activity which drives the human being forward towards some form of development . . . is essentially spiritual in nature.12

THE HIGHEST HUMAN FACULTIES

We turn next to the three higher faculties found in the field of mental consciousness: spiritual discernment, response to group vibration, and spiritual telepathy. It will be noted first of all that these, as a triad, are separated from the four lower mental faculties. The reason for that is twofold. First, the terrestrial soul nature reaches its optimum potential with the integration of an individualized personality, involving fourth mental substate matter. Second, the higher three substates relate to the field of group activities, involving altruism, and not to personal concerns at all. In practical terms, as we saw in an earlier chapter, these three are in fact more closely related to the next higher plane (of Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul nature) than to the lesser world of purely personal evolutionary development.

This buddhic state is otherwise (most importantly) known to esotericists as the kosmic etheric double of the Logos, as we have repeatedly mentioned throughout the earlier chapters of this book—for good reason. The field of Buddhi is itself a plane of hallowed light substance (hence of spiritual illumination) concerned with the objective expression of archetypal forms in response to what one could only call Divine Purpose. That purpose is thus expressed in ever-constant wholes (hence with groups and general influences) rather than in forever-changing elemental compounds like the human, animal, plant, and mineral body forms.

That is not to say there is no further evolutionary progress in these higher fields. However, the progress is of a purely subjective nature, resulting in increased potency and qualitative extent of influence, which are instantly recognizable as relative radiance and magnetic potency by others functioning at the same level. In relation to those of an advanced spiritual nature, their capacity to “tone down” their magnetic potency while in physical incarnation would, however, make them almost unrecognizable as such by virtually all others operating merely at the physical, astral, and lower mental levels.

THE LOWEST SPIRITUAL FACULTIES

Let us finally consider the nature of the sensory faculties as they function within the nature of the human Causal Soul itself, remembering that the semi-spiritual nature is itself still only in the process of individualization with the vast majority of human beings. That is to say, the “divine spark” that is the real Intelligence in a human being does not as yet possess the capacity for fully individualized Self-consciousness at the spiritual level (that of the buddhic state). It thus perforce only shares passively in the common life of this state as it trickles down into the mental state and thus influences the human consciousness. The lowest of the buddhic faculties is itself related to subjective (i.e., spiritual) sound and hearing, giving rise to what we know as comprehension. It is this, consequently, that incorporates the human faculty of objective understanding. It is also that which correspondingly and vibrationally gives rise (as a trinity of expression) to the three highest mental faculties involving the generation of mental archetypes and the Egoic sense of what we call “Self.”

Comprehension is again that which gives rise to the next higher buddhic faculty of healing. However, this is not healing in the ordinary sense with which we are perhaps more familiar, involving for example the “laying on of hands” or “magnetic passes.” It is the higher equivalent to touch/feeling on the physical plane, this by virtue of the substance of the kosmic etheric double acting as a sort of dimensionless limb. Thus the capacity for true spiritual feeling (functioning on and from that level and not from the self-induced wishful thinking of the would-be healer) involves a quasi-maternal enfoldment, the magnetic potency of which automatically gives of itself by a sort of natural “overflow.” That in turn thereby (very logically) produces healing/regeneration at the lower levels of being through sympathetic correspondence.

The third buddhic faculty of spiritual vision involves true Self-consciousness within the Spiritual Soul nature. It is not clairvoyance per se, for clairvoyance merely involves the capacity to see mental or astral forms (one’s own, or those of others) while still functioning in the physical body. Spiritual vision involves a fully conscious registration and identification of spiritual forms of light when fully absorbed into that state. Thus the advanced mystic may indeed experience a temporary spiritual vision through an ascetic self-abnegation that momentarily causes that total absorption, but cannot retain it. However, the true Master Adept in the field of occult science—because of a permanently ascetic lifestyle (in psychological terms)—can achieve and retain it at will.

The fourth buddhic faculty—that of the true intuition, as we mentioned earlier in this chapter—is parallel to that of taste at the physical level. However, we might also suggest that spiritual intuition is the higher equivalent of instinct. In fact, there is no conflict between these two because psychic “taste” and instinct are, in a sense, one and the same. Both carry and convey the implicit idea of a discriminating faculty of immediate insight, which generates automatic response. Hence we can see how intuition builds on the faculties of astral imagination and mental discrimination. Having said as much, however, this is a far more advanced faculty.

The fifth and final buddhic faculty is that of spiritual idealism. However, this is a long way from the quality of personal (hence astral) idealism with which we human beings are most familiar. Spiritual idealism appears to involve a direct registration of archetypal perfection and association with it. Its parallel association with the physical sense of smell may puzzle some but when the olfactory registration of beauty is taken into account, as that which fills one with the perfected essence of the flower, it perhaps makes more sense. Whereas taste without an accompanying sense of smell, or bouquet, provides us with a bland registration of mere opposites or extremes—like hot and cold, or dry and wet—smell on its own has the capacity to engender in us a sense of the sublime and of total fulfillment. It is all-encompassing.

Interestingly enough, it is only in the nose that stem cells are to be found; apparently, they do not exist anywhere else in the body. These curiously potent cells have a capacity, now registered by science, to stimulate regrowth of any other cells, however seriously damaged, even though the “why” and “how” are as yet nowhere near understood. The fact that breathing through the nose is of far greater regenerative health value than breathing through the mouth may well be allied to this same issue. In esoteric philosophy, the scientific study of sympathetic association is of huge importance and here we appear to have an example as to why that should perhaps be so.

THE ATMIC STATE

We come finally to the spiritual faculties of the fifth solar plane. However, because these are the expression of the spiritual will—with which human beings in general are totally unfamiliar—there is perhaps very little that can be said about them.

We are told that absorption into the spiritual will (and thus the Purpose of the Logos) ultimately brings nirvanic bliss by virtue of the attainment of all (archetypal) perfection and thus full release from all further need for reincarnation. However, even this appears to have a degree of conditionality about it. In terms of the spiritual evolutionary Path, the attainment of self-consciousness in the fifth solar state (the atmic state, using Sanskrit terminology) is that of the Master who has achieved the fifth degree of initiation, whereas the Adept of the fourth degree has only achieved a corresponding capacity for self-conscious function within the fourth solar state, that of Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul which, as we pointed out earlier, is also the state of the kosmic etheric double. It is therefore interesting to read what is said about these two achievements in The Voice of the Silence, Blavatsky’s poetic gem of esoteric Buddhist philosophy.

Of the pathway leading to the fourth initiation—described as being entered by the gate of viraga (defined as “indifference to pleasure and to pain, illusion conquered, truth alone perceived”)—The Voice warns the individual, now that the third degree of purely human self-mastery is achieved, to prepare for the temptations “which do ensnare the inner man.” Here:

[T]he lightest breeze of passion or desire will stir the steady light upon the pure white walls of soul. The smallest wave of longing for Maya’s gifts illusive personal desires and fulfillments . . . a thought as fleeting as a lightning flash will make thee thy prizes forfeit—the prizes thou hast [already] won.13

Of the pathway leading onward to the fifth initiation, The Voice then continues:

Thou hast now crossed the moat that circles round the gate of human passions. Thou hast now conquered Mara and his furious host. Thou hast removed pollution from thine heart and bled it from impure desire. But, O thou glorious combatant, thy task is not yet done. Build high, Lanoo, the wall that shall hedge in the Holy Isle, the dam that will protect thy mind from pride and satisfaction at thoughts of the great feat achieved. . . . Ere thou canst settle in Dhyana-marga and call it thine, the Soul has to become as the ripe mango fruit: as soft and sweet as its bright golden pulp for others’ woes, as hard as that fruit’s stone for thine own throes and sorrows. . . . When thou has reached that state, the portals that thou hast to conquer on the Path fling open wide their gates to let thee pass, and Nature’s strongest mights possess no power to stay thy course.14

Even now, however, the Master Soul has yet much further to travel on the upward path. But this and the process of how the individual attains mastery in the first place, through human experience, will be dealt with at greater length in a later chapter. However, before we move on in greater detail to the issue of the sequentially progressive initiations of individual humankind, we shall in the next two chapters take a historic look backward over the last few thousand years to consider some of the evolutionary changes in psychological and spiritual attitudes that have taken place in human culture generally. By so doing—in relation to the hitherto unsuspected, supporting influences from the guardians of our planetary life—we may perhaps begin to see that orthodox history actually tells us very little about the underlying realities of our human cultures and civilizations.

CONCLUSION TO CHAPTERS ONE TO FIVE

By way of concluding the first part of this book, let us try to summarize the most important points in the first five chapters, as these will themselves become central to our considerations in the latter parts of the book.

In chapter 1 we started with the principle of all existence being the expression of a Universal Consciousness, which is itself beyond all conceptualization and cannot therefore be properly equated with a “God” as some religions suggest. Within this Universal Consciousness we saw that all creatures and all forms—whether visible to humans or not—are mere participants through the use of an innately percipient intelligence common to all. We also saw that consciousness manifests itself by way of that limitation, which we define as the multiple soul principle, thereby resulting in the omniverse being qualitatively and concentrically based. That consequently gives rise to what within the field of planetary existence we call the objective world state, the psychic world state, the spiritual world state, and the semi-divine and divine world states, followed by the solar or extraplanetary state of existence associated with true kosmic consciousness. We further learned that the Mind principle is itself the projection of the soul entity and that it should not be confused with Intelligence, which itself constitutes the true nature of the “divine spark” in both the human and evolving Nature generally.

In chapter 2 we considered the nature of consciousness in more specifically human terms and what is involved in the evolutionary progression leading from elemental existence through the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms to eventually human self-consciousness. We learned how the human being, as the microcosm of the Macrocosm, derives both the lower sense of self and the higher sense of Self from his or her soul nature and how this gives rise to an eventual perception of the nature of the spiritual Path and how it must be followed.

In chapter 3 we took a look at the subtle world populated by the deva, nature spirit, and elemental kingdoms of Nature, taking particular note of their hierarchical structure, their functions, and their interactive dynamics. We also saw that the deva, as the exponent of logoic memory, thereby possesses no sense of choice, whereas Man, as the expression of logoic imagination, does possess it. The two groups—human and deva—are thus the necessarily complementary aspects of consciousness in the logoic Macrocosm. This chapter spent some time considering the interaction between deva-kind and humankind at various levels of existence, ranging from the lowest elemental state to the divine state, thereby showing how that complementary nature actually works.

In chapter 4, we considered the rationale behind the universal law of cause and effect (karma) and how humans generate karma through ignorantly obstructing the work of the devas and nature spirits. We also saw how karma underlies the whole nature of the reincarnatory process, not only in connection with human beings, but also in relation to the greater kosmic process involving planetary lives and whole kingdoms or subkingdoms of Nature. This otherwise touched on the nature of good and evil, plus the foundational criteria by which hierarchies of superior evolved Intelligence decide on the necessity for introduction or removal of groups of lives into or from the manifest state in order to fulfill Divine Purpose.

In chapter 5 we considered the actual process of causal evolution in greater Nature as seen through the eyes of the esotericist, as opposed to the materialistic view of orthodox science, which focuses on deducing paradigms from purely objective—hence transitory—effects. From this we were able to suggest that the sequential process of subjective development, which we call “initiation,” is actually not specific to humans alone, but rather involves the underlying, or spiritual, evolutionary process active throughout all Nature. We saw that this is necessarily founded on the interactive law of cycles, affecting different kingdoms of Nature in different ways. We also took a more detailed look in this chapter at the functions of the various higher and lower substates of consciousness employed by humans in their evolutionary progress of developing both psychological and spiritual faculty, usually without being at all aware of their true nature.

These various issues and principles, as discussed in chapters 1 to 5, thus provide us with a coordinated foundation and sense of structure for our further considerations in parts 2 and 3 of this book in particular. In part 2 we shall take a look at how human history and its mystical-cum-religious cultures have worked out in accordance with underlying cycles and their associated impulses through the adaptive agency and influence of the Spiritual Hierarchy of Adepts. In part 3 we shall then take a much more detailed look at the actual initiatory process involving humankind, including consideration of the important underlying rationale of progressive spiritual development and its own psychological criteria.