This is the third chapter of the
series of articles titled “Studies in Isis
Unveiled” published by Theosophy
journal.
The cosmic travel of the
soul
The accompanying article is made up
of textual extracts from Isis Unveiled, topically and sequentially arranged.
The page references from which the statements are taken, are given at the
conclusion of the article. — Editors
Esoteric philosophers held that
everything in nature is but a materialization of spirit. The Eternal First
Cause is latent spirit and matter from the beginning. While conceding the idea
of such a God to be an unthinkable abstraction to human reason, they claimed
that the unerring human instinct grasped it as a reminiscence of something
concrete to it though intangible to our physical senses. With the first idea,
which emanated from the hitherto-inactive Deity, the first motion was
communicated to the whole universe, and the electric thrill was instantaneously
felt throughout the boundless space. Spirit begat force, and force matter; and
thus the latent deity manifested itself as a creative energy.
When; at what point of the eternity;
or how? The question must always remain unanswered; for human reason is unable
to grasp the great mystery. But, though spirit-matter was from all eternity, it
was in a latent state; the evolution of our visible universe must have had a
beginning. This mystery of first creation, which was ever the despair of
science, is unfathomable, unless we accept the doctrine of the Hermetists.
Though matter is co-eternal with spirit, that matter is certainly not our
visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme sublimation. Pure
spirit is but one remove higher. Unless we allow man to have been evolved out
of this primordial spirit-matter, how can we ever come to any reasonable
hypothesis as to the genesis of animate beings?
The esoteric doctrine, then,
teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism, and even the persecuted Kabala, that the
one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and
harmonious successions is either passive or active. Upon inaugurating an active
period, an expansion of this Divine essence, from within outwardly,
occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible
universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus
progressively set in motion. In like manner when the passive condition is
resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place, and the previous work
of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe becomes
disintegrated, its material dispersed; and "darkness" solitary and
alone, broods once more over the face of the "deep." To use a
metaphor which will convey the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the
"unknown essence" produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to
disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present
universe is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning, and will have
no end.
The successive existence of an
incalculable number of worlds before the subsequent evolution of our own, was
believed in and taught by all the ancient peoples. The Hindu doctrines teach of
two Pralayas or dissolutions; the one universal, the Maha-Pralaya, the other
partial, or the minor Pralaya. This does not relate to the universal
dissolution which occurs at the end of every "Day of Brahma," but to
the geological cataclysms at the end of every minor cycle of our globe. A
partial cataclysm occurs at the close of every "age" of the world,
which does not destroy the latter, but only changes its general appearance. New
races of men and animals and a new flora evolve from the dissolution of the precedent
one.
As well as man, and every other
living thing upon it, our planet has had its spiritual and physical evolution.
From an impalpable ideal thought under the creative Will of Him of whom
we know nothing, and but dimly conceive in imagination, this globe became
fluidic and semi-spiritual, then condensed itself more and more, until
its physical development. Our physical planet is but the hand-maiden, or rather
the maid-of-all-work, of the spirit, its master. The allegorical curse under
which it labors, is that it only procreates, it does not create. And
this curse will last until the minutest particle of matter on earth shall have
outlived its days, until every grain of dust has, by gradual transformation
through evolution, become a constituent part of a "living soul," and,
until the latter shall reascend the cyclic arc, and finally stand – its own
Redeeming Spirit – at the foot of the upper step of the spiritual worlds, as at
the first hour of its emanation. Beyond that lies the great "Deep" –
A MYSTERY. The ancients were philosophers, consistent in all things. Hence they
taught that each of these departed worlds, having performed its physical
evolution, and reached – through birth, growth, maturity, old age, and death –
the end of its cycle, had returned to its primitive subjective form of a spiritual
earth. Thereafter it had to serve through all eternity as the dwelling of those
who had lived on it as men, and even animals, but were now spirits.
Eternity is pointed off into grand
cycles, in each of which twelve transformations of our world occur, following
its partial destruction by fire and water, alternately. Of these twelve
transformations*, the earth after each of the first six is grosser, and
everything on it – man included – more material, than after the preceding one:
while after each of the remaining six, the contrary is true, both man and earth
growing more and more refined and spiritual with each terrestrial change.
(* These
"transformations" refer to the greater and lesser Zodiacal cycles
which mark the numerous geological changes on the septenary globes during the
immeasurably long course of evolution, and must also include such changes as
occur in the passage of life from an old planet to a new one as in the case of
the moon and our earth. Editors)
When the apex of the cycle is
reached, a gradual dissolution takes place, and every living and objective form
is destroyed. But when that point is reached, humanity has become fitted to
live subjectively as well as objectively. And not humanity alone, but also animals,
plants, and every atom. After a time of rest, say the Buddhists, when a new
world becomes self-formed, the astral souls of animals and of all beings,
except such as have reached the highest Nirvana, will return on earth again to
end their cycles of transformations, and become men in their turn. If there is
a developed immortal spirit in man, it must be in everything else, at least in
a latent or germinal state, and it can only be a question of time for each of
these germs to become fully developed. Logic shows us that as all matter had a
common origin, it must have attributes in common, and as the vital and divine
spark is in man's material body, so it must lurk in every subordinate species.
The Hermetists held every particle of matter contains within itself a spark of
the divine essence – or light, spirit – which, through its tendency to
free itself from its entanglement and return to the central source, produced
motion in the particles, and from motion forms were born. As by gradual
progression from the star-cloudlet to the development of the physical body of
man, the rule holds good, so from the universal ether to the incarnate human
spirit they traced one uninterrupted series of entities. These evolutions were
from the world of spirit into the world of gross matter; and through that back
again to the source of all things. The "descent of species" was to
them a descent from the spirit, primal source of all, to the "degradation
of matter."
The pre-existence and god-like
powers of the human spirit were believed in by most all the sages of ancient
days. The slow development from pre-existing forms was a doctrine with the
later Rosicrucians. The Platonic philosophy was one of order, system, and
proportion; it embraced the evolution of worlds and of species, the correlation
and conservation of energy, the transmutation of material form, the
indestructibility of matter and of spirit. The Pythagorean Monad, which
lives "in solitude and darkness," may remain on this earth forever
invisible, impalpable, and undemonstrated by experimental science. Still, the
whole universe will be gravitating around it, as it did from the
"beginning of time," and with every second, man and atom approach
nearer to that solemn moment in the eternity, when the Invisible Presence will
become clear to their spiritual sight. When every particle of matter, even the
most sublimated, has been cast off from the last shape that forms the ultimate
link of that chain of double evolution, which, throughout millions of ages and
successive transformations, has pushed the entity onward; and when it shall
find itself reclothed in that primordial essence, identical with that of its
Creator, then this once impalpable organic atom will have run its race, and the
sons of God will once more "shout for joy" at the return of the
pilgrim.
The doctrine of the immortality of
the soul dates from the time when the soul was an objective being, hence
when it could hardly be denied by itself; when humanity was a spiritual
race and death existed not. Toward the decline of the cycle of life the
ethereal man-spirit then fell into the sweet slumber of temporary
unconsciousness in one sphere, only to find himself awakening in the still
brighter light of a higher one. But while the spiritual man is ever striving to
ascend higher and higher toward its source of being, passing through the cycles
and spheres of individual life, physical man had to descend with the great
cycle of universal creation until it found itself clothed with the terrestrial
garments. Thenceforth the soul was too deeply buried under physical clothing to
reassert its existence, except in the cases of those more spiritual natures,
which, with every cycle, became more rare. And yet none of the pre-historical
nations ever thought of denying either the existence or the immortality of the
inner man, the real "self." Only, we must bear in mind the teachings
of the old philosophies: the spirit alone is immortal – the soul, per se, is
neither eternal nor divine. When linked too closely with the physical brain of
its terrestrial casket, it gradually becomes a finite mind, a simple
animal and sentient life-principle. The cycle is moving down, and as it
descends, the physical and bestial nature of man develops more and more at the
expense of the Spiritual Self.
Man before being encased in matter had
no use for limbs, but was a pure spiritual entity. Hence if the Deity, and his
universe, and the stellar bodies are to be conceived as spheroidal, this shape
would be archetypal man's. As his enveloping shell grew heavier, there came the
necessity for limbs, and the limbs sprouted. If we fancy a man with arms and
legs naturally extended at the same angle, by backing him against the circle
that symbolizes his prior shape as a spirit, we would have the very figure
described by Plato – the X cross within the circle. The grand cycle includes the
progress of mankind from its germ in the primordial man of spiritual form to
the deepest depth of degradation he can reach – each successive step in the
descent being accompanied by a greater strength and grossness of the physical
form than its precursor. But while the grand cycle, or age, is running its
course, seven minor cycles are passed, each marking the evolution of a new race
out of the preceding one, on a new world. And each of these races, or grand
types of humanity, breaks up into subdivisions of families, and they again into
nations and tribes.
The "coats of skin,"
mentioned in the third chapter of Genesis as given to Adam and Eve, are
explained by certain ancient philosophers to mean the fleshy bodies with which,
in the progress of the cycles, the progenitors of the race became clothed. They
maintained that the god-like physical form became grosser and grosser, until
the bottom of what may be termed the last spiritual cycle was reached, and
mankind entered upon the ascending arc of the first human cycle. Then began an
uninterrupted series of cycles or yugas; the precise number of years of which each of them consisted
remaining an inviolable mystery within the precincts of the sanctuaries and
disclosed only to the initiates. As soon as humanity entered upon a new one,
the stone age, with which the preceding cycle had closed, began to gradually
merge into the following and next higher age. With each successive age, or
epoch, men grew more refined, until the acme of perfection possible in that particular
cycle had been reached. Then the receding wave of time carried back with it the
vestiges of human, social, and intellectual progress. Cycle succeeded cycle, by
imperceptible transitions; highly-civilized flourishing nations waxed in power,
attained the climax of development, waned, and became extinct; and mankind,
when the end of the lower cyclic arc was reached, was replunged into barbarism
as at the start. Kingdoms have crumbled and nation succeeded nation from the
beginning until our day, the races alternately mounting to the highest and
descending to the lowest points of development. These cycles, according
to the Chaldean philosophy, do not embrace all mankind at one and the same
time. Draper observes that there is no reason to suppose that any one cycle
applied to the whole human race. On the contrary, while man in one portion of
the planet was in a condition of retrogression, in another he might be
progressing in enlightenment and civilization. Whether or not the men of
science are willing to concede the correctness of the Hermetic theory of the
physical evolution of man from higher and more spiritual natures, they
themselves show us how the race has progressed from the lowest observed point
to its present development. And, as all nature seems to be made up of
analogies, is it unreasonable to affirm that the same progressive development
of individual forms has prevailed among the inhabitants of the unseen
universe? While they made no attempt to calculate the duration of the
"grand cycle," the Hermetic philosophers yet maintained that,
according to the cyclic law, the living human race must inevitably and
collectively return one day to that point of departure, where man was first
clothed with "coats of skin;" or, to express it more clearly, the human
race must, in accordance with the law of evolution, be finally physically spiritualized.
We must go deep indeed into the abstruse metaphysics of Oriental mysticism
before we can realize fully the infinitude of the subjects that were embraced
at one sweep of the majestic thought of its exponents.
Modern science insists upon the
doctrine of evolution; so do human reason and the "secret doctrine,"
and the idea is corroborated by ancient legends and myths, and even by the
Bible itself when it is read between the lines. We see a flower slowly
developing from a bud, and the bud from its seed. But whence the latter, with
all its predetermined programme of physical transformation, and its invisible,
therefore spiritual forces which gradually develop its form, color, and
odor?
The word evolution speaks for
itself. The germ of the present human race must have pre-existed in the parent
of this race. Physical man, as a product of evolution, may be left in the hands
of the man of exact science. None but he can throw light upon the physical
origin of the race. But we must positively deny the materialist the same
privilege as to the question of man's psychical and spiritual evolution, for he
and his highest faculties cannot be proved on any conclusive evidence to
be "as much products of evolution as the humblest plant or the lowest
worm." If those who believe in the evolution of spirit as firmly as
the materialists believe in that of matter are charged with teaching
"unverifiable hypotheses," how readily can they retort upon their
accusers by saying that, by their own confession, their physical
evolution is still "an unverified, if not actually an unverifiable
hypothesis." The former have at least the inferential proof of legendary
myth, the vast antiquity of which is admitted by both philologists and archæologists;
while their antagonists have nothing of a similar nature. For a belief to have
become universal, it must have been founded on an immense accumulation of
facts, tending to strengthen it, from one generation to another. The universe
is the combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single
spirit – a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason. In the Mysteries were
symbolized the pre-existent condition of the spirit and soul, and the lapse of
the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that life, the
purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine bliss, or re-union with
spirit. The sacred numbers of the universe in their esoteric combination solve
the great problem and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of the
emanations. The lower orders before they develop into the higher ones must
emanate from the higher spiritual ones, and when arrived at the turning point,
be re-absorbed again into the infinite. The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is
the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the one evolving the many and
pervading the many. This is the ancient doctrine of emanation in few words.
Even the apostle Paul accepted it as true. "Out of him and through him and
in him all things are." This is purely Hindu and Brahmanical. The present
earth-life is a fall and a punishment. The soul dwells in "the grave which
we call the body," and in its incorporate state, and previous to
the discipline of education, the noetic or spiritual element is
"asleep." Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Is not this
the idea of Maya, or the illusion of the senses in physical life, which
is so marked a feature of Buddhistical philosophy?
Basing all his doctrines on the
presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught that the nous, spirit, or
rational soul of man, possessed a kindred nature, or even homogeneous, with the
Divinity, and was capable of beholding the eternal realities. The basis of this
assimilation is always asserted to be the pre-existence of the spirit or nous.
The greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era mirrored faithfully in
his works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of
years before himself, and its metaphysical expression. Thus is warranted the
inference that to Plato and the ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same
wisdom. So surviving the shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine and
eternal?
What was a demonstration and a
success in the eyes of Plato and his disciples is now considered the overflow
of a spurious philosophy and a failure. The scientific methods are reversed.
The testimony of the men of old, who were nearer to truth, for they were nearer
to the spirit of nature – the only aspect under which the Deity will allow
itself to be viewed and understood – and their demonstrations, are rejected.
The whole of the present work is a protest against such a loose way of judging
the ancients. To be thoroughly competent to criticize their ideas, and assure
one's self whether their ideas were distinct and "appropriate to the
facts," one must have sifted these ideas to the very bottom. It is idle to
repeat that which we have frequently said, and that which every scholar ought
to know; namely, that the quintessence of their knowledge was in the hands of
the priests, who never wrote them, and in those of the initiates who, like
Plato, did not dare write them. In no country were the true esoteric
doctrines trusted to writing. Therefore, those few speculations on the
material and spiritual universes which they did put in writing, could not
enable posterity to judge them rightly, even had not the early Christian
Vandals, the later crusaders, and the fanatics of the middle ages destroyed
three parts of that which remained of the Alexandrian library and its later
schools. Who, then, of those who turn away from the "secret doctrine"
as being "unphilosophical" and, therefore, unworthy of a scientific
thought, has a right to say that he studied the ancients; that he is aware of
all they knew, and knowing far more, knows also that they knew little, if
anything?
This "secret doctrine"
contains the alpha and omega of universal science; therein lies the corner and the
key-stone of all the ancient and modern knowledge; and alone in this
"unphilosophical" doctrine remains buried the obsolute in the
philosophy of the dark problems of life and death.
Thus it is that all the religious
monuments of old, in whatever land or under whatever climate, are the
expression of the same identical thoughts, the key to which is in the esoteric
doctrine. It would be vain, without studying the latter, to seek to unriddle
the mysteries enshrouded for centuries in the temples and ruins of Egypt and
Assyria, or those of Central America, British Columbia, and the Nagkon-Wat of
Cambodia. If each of these was built by a different nation; and neither nation
had had intercourse with the others for ages, it is also certain that all were
planned and built under the direct supervision of the priests. And the clergy
of every nation, although practicing rites and ceremonies which may have
differed externally, had evidently been initiated into the same traditional
mysteries which were taught all over the world. As cycle succeeded cycle, and
one nation after another came upon the world's stage to play its brief part in
the majestic drama of human life, each new people evolved from ancestral
traditions its own religion, giving it a local color, and stamping it with its
individual characteristics. While each of these religions had its
distinguishing traits, by which, were there no other archaic vestiges, the
physical and psychological status of its creators could be estimated, all
preserved a common likeness to one prototype. This parent cult was none other
than the primitive "wisdom-religion." We can assert, with entire
plausibility, that there is not one of all these sects – Kabalism, Judaism, and
our present Christianity included – but sprung from the two main branches of
that one mother-trunk, the once universal religion, which antedated the Vedic
ages – we speak of that prehistoric Buddhism which merged later into
Brahmanism.
Many and various are the
nationalities to which belong the disciples of that mysterious school, and many
the side-shoots of that one primitive stock. The secrecy preserved by these
sub-lodges, as well as by the one great and supreme lodge, has ever been
proportionate to the activity of religious persecutions; and now, in the face of
the growing materialism, their very existence is becoming a mystery. But it
must not be inferred, on that account, that such a mysterious brotherhood is
but a fiction, not even a name, though it remains unknown to this day.
Whether its affiliates are called by an Egyptian, Hindu, or Persian name, it
matters not.
Most assuredly, no one could expect
to find, in a work open to the public, the final mysteries of that which was
preserved for countless ages as the grandest secret of the sanctuary. But,
without divulging the key to the profane, or being taxed with undue
indiscretion, we may be allowed to lift a corner of the veil which shrouds the
majestic doctrines of old. The key must be turned seven times before the
whole system is divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby
allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the
whole!
(Note: The volume and page
references to Isis Unveiled, from which the foregoing chapter is compiled, are,
in the order of the excerpts, as follows: I, 428; I, 429; II, 264-5; II, 424;
II, 420; II, 455-6; I, 330; I, 433; I, 258; I, 285; I, 251; I, 257; I, 238; I,
212-13; II, 362; II, 366; II, 469; II, 263; I, 293-4; I, 6; I, 294; I, 295; I,
296; I, 297; I, 152; I, 153; I, 155; I, 612; I, xvi; I, xiv; I, 7; I, xvi; I,
xiii; I, xi; I, 424; I, 510; I, 271 fn.; I, 511; I, 561; II, 216; II, 123; II,
307; II, 460; II, 461.)
(Theosophy,
Los Angeles, June 1917, p.355-363)
