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Sunday, September 2, 2012

THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION, Part Two


Part Two

of

The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception

by
Max Heindel

Chapter IV

Rebirth and the Law of Consequence

Only three theories worthy of note have ever been brought forward to solve the riddle of Life and Death.

In the previous chapter we have, to some extent, explained one of these three theories—that of Rebirth, together with its companion law, the law of Consequence. It may not be out of place to compare the theory of Rebirth with the other two theories advanced, with a view to ascertaining their relative foundation in nature. To the occultist there can be no question. He does not say that he "believes" in it any more than we need to say that we "believe" as to the blooming of the rose or the flowing of the river, or the operation of any of the visible workings of the material world, which are continually going on before our eyes. We do not say of these things that we "believe;" we say that we "know," because we see them. So the occult scientist can say "I know" in regard to Rebirth, the law of Consequence and their corollaries. He sees the Ego and can trace its path after it has passed out of the dense body at death until it has reappeared on earth through a new birth. Therefore to him no "belief" is necessary. For the satisfaction of others, however, it may be well to examine these three theories of life and death in order to arrive at an intelligent conclusion.

Any great law of nature must necessarily be in harmony with all her other laws. Therefore it may be very helpful to the inquirer to examine these theories in their relation to what are admitted by all parties to be "known laws of nature," as observed in that part of our universe with which we are more familiar. To this end we will first state the three theories:
  1.  The Materialistic Theory holds that life is a journey from the womb to the tomb; that mind is the result of certain correlations of matter; than man is the highest intelligence in the Cosmos; and, that his intelligence perishes when the body disintegrates at death.
  2.  The Theory of Theology asserts that at each birth a newly-created soul enters the arena of life fresh from the hand of God, passing from an invisible state through the gate of birth into visible existence; that at the end of one short span of life in the material world it passes out through the gate of death into the invisible beyond, whence it returns no more; that its happiness or misery there is determined for all eternity by its actions during the infinitesimal period intervening between birth and death.
  3.  The Theory of Rebirth teaches that each soul is an integral part of God, enfolding all divine possibilities as the seed enfolds the plant; that by means of repeated existences in an earthly body of gradually improving quality, the latent possibilities are slowly developed into dynamic powers; that none are lost by this process, but that all mankind will ultimately attain the goal of perfection and re-union with God.
The first of these theories is monistic. It seeks to explain all facts of existence as processes within the material world. The two other theories agree in being dualistic, that is, they ascribe some of the facts and phases of existence to a super-physical, invisible state, but they differ widely on other points.

Bringing the materialistic theory into comparison with the known laws of the universe, we find that the continuity of force is as well established as the continuity of matter and both are beyond the need of elucidation. We also know that matter and force are inseparable in the Physical World. This is contrary to the materialistic theory, which holds that mind perishes at death. When nothing can be destroyed, mind must be included. Moreover we know that mind is superior to matter, for it molds the fact, so that it becomes a reflection or mirror of the mind. We have discovered that the particles of our bodies are constantly changing; that at least once in seven years there is a change in every atom of matter composing them. If the materialistic theory were true, the consciousness ought also to undergo an entire change, with no memory of that which preceded, so that at no time could man remember any event more than seven years. We know that is not the case. We remember the events of our childhood. Many of the most trivial incidents though forgotten in ordinary consciousness, have been distinctly recalled in a swift vision of the whole life by drowning persons, who have related the experience after resuscitation. Similar experiences in states of trance are also common. Materialism is unable to account for these phases of sub- and super-consciousness. It ignores them. At the present stage of scientific investigation, where leading scientists have established beyond a doubt the existence of these phenomena, the policy of ignoring them is a serious defect in a theory claiming to solve the greatest problem of life—Life itself.

We may therefore safely pass from the materialistic theory as being inadequate to solve the mystery of life and death and turn to a consideration of the next theory.

One of the greatest objections to the orthodox theological doctrine, as it is expounded, is its entire and confessed inadequacy. Of the myriads of souls which have been created and have inhabited this Globe since the beginning of existence, even if that beginning dates back no further than six thousand years, the insignificant number of only "one hundred and forty and four thousand" are to be saved! The rest are to be tortured forever and ever! The devil gets the best of it all the time. One cannot help saying with Buddha, "If God permits such misery to exist He cannot be good, and if He is powerless to prevent it, He cannot be God."

Nothing in nature is analogous to such a method of creation in order that destruction may follow. It is represented that God desires ALL should be saved and is averse to the destruction of any, having for their salvation "given His only Son," and yet this "glorious plan of salvation" fails to save!

If a trans-Atlantic liner with two thousand souls on board sent a wireless message that she was sinking just off Sandy Hook, would it be regarded as a "glorious plan of salvation" if a fast motor-boat capable of rescuing only two or three people, were sent to her aid? Certainly not! It would more likely be denounced as a "plan of destruction" if adequate means were not provided for the saving of at least the majority of those in danger.

But the theologians' plan of salvation is vastly worse than this, because two or three of two thousand is an immensely greater proportion than the orthodox theological plan of saving only 144,000 out of all the myriads of souls created. We may safely reject this theory also, as being untrue, because unreasonable. If God were all-wise He would have evolved a more efficacious plan. So He has, and the above is only the theory of the theologian. The teaching of the Bible is very different, as will appear later.

We turn now to consider the doctrine of Rebirth, which postulates a slow process of development, carried on with unwavering persistence through repeated embodiments in forms of increasing efficiency whereby all are, in time, brought to a height of spiritual splendor at present inconceivable to us. There is nothing unreasonable nor difficult to accept in such a theory. As we look about us we find everywhere in nature this striving for perfection in a slow, persistent manner. We find no sudden process of creation or destruction, such as the theologian postulates, but we do find "Evolution."
Evolution is "the history of the progression of the Spirit in Time." Everywhere, as we see about us the varied phenomena in the universe, we realize that the path of evolution is a spiral. Each loop of the spiral is a cycle. Each cycle merges into the next, as the loops of the spiral are continuous, each cycle being the improved product of those preceding it and the creator of those more developed states which succeed it.

A straight line is but the extension of a point. It occupies but one dimension in space. The theory of the materialist and that of the theologian would be analogous to this line. The materialist makes the line of life start at birth, and to be consistent, the death hour must terminate it. The theologian commences his line with the creation of the soul just previous to birth. After death the soul lives on, its fate irretrievably determined by the deeds of a few short years. There is no coming back to correct mistakes. The line runs straight on, implying a modicum of experience and no elevation for the soul after death.

Natural progression does not follow a straight line such as these two theories imply; nor even a circular path, for that would imply a never-ending round of the same experiences and the use of only two dimensions in space. All things move in progressive cycles and in order to take full advantages of all the opportunities for advancement offered by our three-dimensional universe, it is necessary that the evolving life should take the three-dimensional path—the spiral—which goes ever onward and upward.

Whether we look at the modest little plant in our garden, or go to the redwood district of California and examine one of the giant Sequoias with its thirty-foot diameter, it is always the same—every branch, twig or leaf will be found growing in either a single or a double spiral, or in opposite pairs, each balancing either, analogous to ebb and flow, day and night, life and death and other alternating activities in nature.

Examine the vaulted arch of the sky and observe the fiery nebulae or the path of the Solar-Systems—everywhere the spiral meets the eye. In the spring the Earth discards its white blanket and emerges from its period of rest its winter sleep. All activities are exerted to bring forth new life everywhere. Time passes. The corn and the grape are ripened and harvested. Again the busy summer fades into the silence and inactivity of the winter. Again the snowy coverlet enwraps the Earth. But her sleep is not forever; she will wake again to the song of the new spring, which will mark for her a little further progress along the pathway of time.

So with the Sun. He rises in the morning of each day, but each morning he is further along on his journey through the year.

Everywhere the spiral—Onward, Upward, Forever!

Is it possible that this law, so universal in all other realms, should be inoperative in the life of man? Shall the earth wake each year from its winter sleep; shall the tree and the flower live again and man die? It cannot be! The same law that wakes the life in the plant to new growth will wake the human being to new experience, to further progress toward the goal of perfection. Therefore the theory of Rebirth, which teaches repeated embodiment in gradually improving vehicles, is in perfect accord with evolution and the phenomena of nature, which the other two theories are not.

Regarding life from an ethical viewpoint, we find that the law of Rebirth coupled with the companion law of Consequence, is the only theory that will satisfy a sense of justice, in harmony with the facts of life as we see them about us.

It is not easy for the logical mind to understand how a "just and loving" God can require the same virtues from the milliards whom He has been "pleased to place in differing circumstances" according to no apparent rule nor system, but willy-nilly, according to His own capricious mood. One lives in luxury; the other on "kicks and crusts." One has a moral education and an atmosphere of high ideals; the other is placed in squalid surroundings and taught to lie and steal and that the more he does of both, the more of a success he is. It is just to require the same of both? Is it right to reward one for living a good life when he was placed in an environment that made it extremely difficult for him to go astray, or to punish the other, who was handicapped to such an extent that he never had an idea of what constitutes true morality? Surely not! Is it not more logical to think that we may have misinterpreted the Bible than to impute to God such a monstrous plan and method of procedure?

It is useless to say that we must not inquire into the mysteries of God; that they are past our finding out. The inequalities of life can be satisfactorily explained by the twin laws of Rebirth and Consequence and made to harmonize with the conception of a just and loving God, as taught by Christ Himself.
Moreover, by means of these twin laws a way to emancipation from present undesirable position or environment is shown, together with the means of attaining to any degree of development, no matter how imperfect we may be now.

What we are, what we have, all our good qualities are the result of our own actions in the past. What we lack in physical, moral, or mental excellence may yet be ours in the future.

Exactly as we cannot do otherwise than take up our lives each morning where we laid them down the preceding night, so by our work in previous lives have we made the conditions under which we now live and labor, and are at present creating the conditions of our future lives. Instead of bemoaning the lack of this or that faculty which we covet, we must set to work to acquire it.

If one child plays beautifully on a musical instrument, with hardly an effort at learning, while another, despite persistent effort, is a poor player in comparison, it merely shows that one expended the effort in a previous life and is easily regaining a former proficiency, while the efforts of the other have been started only in the present life, and in consequence we see the uphill work. But, if the latter persist, he may, even in the present life, become superior to the former unless the former constantly improves.
That we do not remember the effort made in acquiring a faculty by hard work is immaterial, it does not alter the fact that the faculty remains with us.

Genius is the hall-mark of the advanced soul, which by hard work in many previous lives has developed itself in some way beyond the normal achievements of the race. It reveals a glimpse of the degree of attainment which will be the common possession of the coming Race. It cannot be accounted for by heredity, which applies only in part to the dense body and not to qualities of the soul. If genius could be accounted for by heredity, why is there not a long line of mechanical ancestry previous to Thomas Edison, each more capable than his predecessor? Why does not genius propagate itself? Why is not Siegfried the son, greater than Richard Wagner, the father?

In cases where the expression of genius depends upon the possession of specially constructed organs, requiring ages of development, the Ego naturally is reborn in a family the Egos of which have, for generations, labored to build a similar organism. That is why twenty-nine musicians of more or less genius were born in the Bach family during a period of two hundred and fifty years. That genius is an expression of the soul and not of the body is shown by the fact that it did not gradually improve and reach efflorescence in the person of John Sebastian Bach, but that the proficiency which reached its highest expression in him towered high above ancestors and descendants alike.

The body is simply an instrument, the work it yields being dependent upon the Ego which guides it, as the quality of the melody is dependent upon the musician's skill, aided by the timbre of the instrument. A good musician cannot fully express himself on a poor instrument, and even upon the same instrument, all musicians do not and cannot play alike. Because an Ego seeks rebirth as the son of a great musician it does not necessarily follow that he must be a still greater genius, as would be the case if the physical heredity were a fact and genius were not a soul-quality.

The "Law of Attraction" accounts in quite as satisfactory a manner for the facts we ascribe to heredity. We know that people of like tastes will seek another. If we know that a friend is in a certain city, but are ignorant of his address, we will naturally be governed by the law of association in our efforts to find him. If he is a musician, he will most likely be found where musicians are wont to assemble; if he is a student inquiry will be made at public libraries, reading-rooms and book stores, or if he is a sporting man we would seek him at race tracks, pool-rooms or saloons. It is not probable that the musician or the student would frequent the latter places and it is safe to say that our search for the sporting man would not be successful if we sought him in a library or at a classical concert.
Similarly, the Ego ordinarily gravitates to the most congenial associations. It is constrained to do so by one of the twin forces of the Desire World—the force of Attraction.

The objection may be urged that there are people of entirely opposite tastes, or bitter enemies even, in the same family, and if the law of Association governed why should they be attracted thereto?
The explanation of such cases is that during the Ego's earth lives many relations have been established with various people. These relations were pleasant or otherwise, involving on one hand obligations which were not liquidated at the time; or on the other involving the infliction of an injury and a feeling of very strong hate between the injured and his enemy. The law of Consequence requires an exact adjustment of the score. Death does not "pay it all" any more than moving to another city will liquidate a monetary debt. The time comes when the two enemies will meet again. The old hate has brought them together in the same family, because it is the purpose of God that all shall love one another; therefore hate must be transformed into love and though, perchance, they may spend many lives "fighting it out," they will at some time learn the lesson and become friends and mutual benefactors instead of enemies. In such cases the Interest these people had in one another set in action the force of Attraction, and that brought them together. Had they simply been mutually Indifferent they could not have become associated.

Thus do the twin laws of Rebirth and Consequence solve, in a rational manner, all the problems incident to human life as man steadily advances toward the next stage in evolution—the Superman. The trend of humanity's progress is onward and upward forever, says this theory—not as some people think who have confounded the doctrine of Rebirth with the foolish teaching of some Indian tribes who believe that man is reborn in animals or plants. That would be retrogression. No authority for this doctrine of retrogression can be found in nature or in the sacred books of any religion. In one (and one only) of the religious writings of India is it touched upon. In the Kathopanishad (chapter. v, verse 9) it is stated that "Some men, according to their deeds, go into the womb and others into the 'sthanu.'" "Sthanu" is a Sanskrit word, which means "motionless," but it also means "a pillar," and has been interpreted to mean that some men, because of their sins, go back to the motionless plant kingdom.
Spirits incarnate only to gain experience; to conquer the world; to overcome the lower self and attain self-mastery. When we realize this we shall understand that there comes a time when there is no further need for incarnation because the lessons have all been learned. The teaching of the Kathopanishad indicates that instead of remaining tied to the wheel of birth and death, man will at some time go into the motionless state of "Nirvana."

In the Book of Revelation we find these words: "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God and he shall go no more out," referring to entire liberation from concrete existence. Nowhere is there any authority for the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. A man who has evolved so far as to have an individual, separate soul cannot turn back in his progress and enter the vehicle of animal or plant, which are under a group-spirit. The individual spirit is a higher evolution than the group-spirit and the lesser cannot obtain the greater.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his beautiful poem, "The Chambered Nautilus," has embodied this idea of constant progression in gradually improving vehicles, and final liberation. The nautilus builds its spiral shell in chambered sections, constantly leaving the smaller ones, which it has outgrown, for the one last built:
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
'Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
The necessity, previously referred to, of obtaining an organism of a specific nature, brings to mind an interesting phase of the twin laws of Rebirth and Consequence. These laws are connected with the motion of the Cosmic bodies, the Sun, the planets and the signs of the Zodiac. All move in harmony with these laws, guided in their orbits by their indwelling spiritual Intelligences—the Planetary Spirits.
On account of the precession of the equinoxes the Sun moves backward through the twelve signs of the Zodiac at the rate of approximately one degree of space in 72 years, and through each sign (30 degrees of space) in about 2,100 years, or around the whole circle in about 26,000 years.

This is due to the fact that the Earth does not spin upon a stationary axis. Its axis has a slow, swinging motion of its own (just like the wobble of a spinning top that has almost spent its force), so that it describes a circle in space and thus one star after another becomes Pole Star.

Because of this wobbling motion the Sun does not cross the equator in the same place every year, but a few hundred rods further back, hence the name, the "precession of the equinoxes," because the equinox "precedes"— comes too early.

All happenings on the Earth in connection with the other Cosmic bodies and their inhabitants are connected with this and other Cosmic movements. So are also the laws of Rebirth and Consequence.
As the Sun passes through the different signs in the course of the year, the climatic and other changes affect man and his activities in different ways. Similarly the passage of the Sun by the procession of the equinoxes, through the twelve signs of the Zodiac—which is called a World-year, brings about conditions on the Earth of a far greater variety. It is necessary to the growth of the soul that it should experience them all. In fact, as we have seen, the man himself makes these conditions while in the Heaven World between births. Therefore, every Ego is born twice during the time the Sun is passing through one sign of the Zodiac; and, as the soul itself is necessarily double-sexed, in order to obtain all experiences, it is reborn alternately in a male and a female body. This is because the experience of one sex differs widely from that of the other. At the same time, the outside conditions are not greatly altered in one thousand years and therefore permit the entity to receive experience in the same identical environment from the standpoint of both man and woman.

These are the general terms upon which the law of Rebirth operates, but as it is not a blind law, it is subject to frequent modifications, determined by the Lords of Destiny, the Recording Angels, as, for instance, in a case where an Ego needs a sensitive eye or ear and there is an opportunity for giving it the required instrument in a family with which relations have previously been established. The time for the re-embodiment of the Ego in question may lack, perhaps, two hundred years of being ripe according to the average period, but it is seen by the Lords of Destiny that unless this opportunity is embraced, the Ego will perhaps have to spend four or five hundred years in heaven in excess of the time required, before another chance will present itself. Therefore the Ego is brought to rebirth ahead of schedule time, so to speak, the deficiency of rest in the third heaven being made up at another time. So we see that, not only do the departed work on us from the Heaven World, but we also work on them, attracting or repelling them. A favorable opportunity for procuring a suitable instrument may attract an Ego to rebirth. Had no instrument been available, he would have been kept longer in heaven and the surplus time deducted from his succeeding heaven lives.

The law of Consequence also works in harmony with the stars, so that a man is born at the time when the positions of the bodies in the solar system will give the conditions necessary to his experience and advancement in the school of life. That is why Astrology is an absolutely true science, though even the best astrologer may misinterpret it, because, like all other human beings, he is fallible. The stars show accurately the time in a man's life when the debt which the Lords of Destiny have selected for payment is due, and to evade it is beyond the power of man. Yes, they show the very day, although we are not always able to read them correctly.

Perhaps the most striking instance known to the writer of this inability to escape what is written in the stars, though perfectly cognizant of it, occurred in Los Angeles, California, in 1906. Some instructions in astrology were given to Mr. L., a well-known lecturer. Mr. L.'s own horoscope was taken up, because a pupil will be more interested in that than in the nativity of a stranger. He is also enabled to check the accuracy of the interpretation of the signs which are given to him. The horoscope revealed a liability to accidents and Mr. L. was shown how accidents and other events in the past figured to the time of occurrence. In addition, he was told that another accident would befall him and that it would occur on the twenty-first of the following July, or the seventh day after, i.e., on the twenty-eighth, the latter day being regarded as the more dangerous. He was warned against conveyances of any kind and the place of the threatened injury was designated as the breast, shoulders, arms and lower part of the head. He was thoroughly convinced of the danger and promised to remain at home on that day.
The writer went north to Seattle and a few days before the critical time wrote to Mr. L. and again warned him. Mr. L. answered that he remembered the warning and would act accordingly.

The next communication in regard to the matter came from a mutual friend, who stated that on the 29th of July Mr. L. had gone to Sierra Madre on an electric car which had collided with a railroad train, Mr. L. sustaining injuries of the exact description mentioned and also having a tendon cut in the left leg.
The question was why Mr. L., having entire faith in the prediction, had disregarded the advice. The explanation came three months later, when he had recovered sufficiently to write. The letter said, "I thought the 28th was the 29th."

There is no question in the writer's mind that this was a piece of "ripe" fate, impossible to escape, which was accurately foreshown by the stars.

The stars may therefore be called the "Clock of Destiny." The twelve signs of the Zodiac correspond to the dial; the Sun and the planets to the hour hand, indicating the month of the year when the different items in the score of ripe fate allotted to each life are due to work themselves out.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized, however, that though there are some things that cannot be escaped, man has a certain scope of free will in modifying causes already set going. A poet puts it thus:
One ship sails east and another sails west
With the self-same winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sail and not the gale
Which determines the way they go.
As the winds of the sea are the ways of fate
As we voyage along through life,
'Tis the act of the soul that determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
The great point to grasp is that our present actions determine future conditions.

Orthodox religionists and even those who profess no religion at all, often bring forward as one of their strongest objections to the law of Rebirth that it is taught in India to the "ignorant heathen," who believe in it. If it is a natural law, however, there is no objection strong enough to invalidate it or make it inoperative. Before we speak of "ignorant heathen," or send missionaries to them, it might be well to examine our own knowledge a little. Educators everywhere complain of superficiality on the part of our students. Professor Wilbur L. Cross, of Yale, mentions among other startling cases of ignorance, the fact that in a class of forty students, not one could "place" Judas Iscariot!

It would seem as though the labors of missionaries could profitably be diverted from "heathen" countries and from slum work to enlighten the college-bred individuals of our own country, on the principle that "charity begins at home," and "as God will not let the ignorant heathen perish" it would seem better to leave him in ignorance where he is sure of heaven, than to enlighten him and so render his chances of going to hell legion. Surely, this is a case of "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise." We would be doing ourselves and the heathen a signal service by letting him alone and looking after the ignorant Christian nearer home.

Moreover, to call this a heathen doctrine does not disprove it. Its assumed priority in the East is not more an argument against it than the accuracy of the solution of a mathematical problem is invalidated because we do not happen to like the person who first solved it. The only question is: Is it correct? If so, it is absolutely immaterial whence the solution first came.

All other religions have been but leading up to the Christian religion. They were Race Religions and contain only in part that which Christianity has in fuller measure. The real Esoteric Christianity has not yet been taught publicly, not will it be so taught until humanity has passed the materialistic stage and becomes fitted to receive it. The laws of Rebirth and Consequence have been secretly taught all the time, but, by the direct Command of Christ Himself, as we shall see, these two laws have not been publicly taught in the Western world for the past two thousand years.

Wine as a Factor in Evolution
To understand the reason for this omission and the means employed to obscure these teachings, we must go back to the beginning of man's history and see how, for his good, he has been led by the Great Teacher of humanity.

In the teaching of occult science the stages of development on the earth are divided into periods called "Epochs." There have been four of these Epochs, which are designated as follows, respectively: The Polarian, the Hyperborean, the Lemurian, the Atlantean. The present Epoch is called the Aryan Epoch.
In the First or Polarian Epoch, what is now humanity had only a dense body, as the minerals have now, hence he was mineral-like.

In the Second or Hyperborean Epoch, a vital body was added and man-in-the-making possesses a body constituted as are those of plants. He was not a plant, but was plantlike.

In the Third or Lemurian Epoch, he obtained his desire body and became constituted like the animal—an animal-man.

In the Fourth or Atlantean Epoch, mind was unfolded and now, so far as his principles are concerned, he steps upon the stage of physical life as man.

In the present, the Fifth or Aryan Epoch, man will in some degree unfold the third or lowest aspect of his threefold spirit—the Ego.

The student is requested to strongly impress upon his mind the emphatic statement that in the process of evolution up to the time when man gained self-consciousness, absolutely nothing was left to chance.
After self-consciousness there is a certain scope for the exercise of man's own individual will to enable him to unfold his Divine spiritual powers.

The great Leaders of mankind take everything into consideration, the food of man included. This has a great deal to do with his development. "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are" is not a far-fetched idea, but a great truth in nature.

The man of the first Epoch was ethereal. That does not contradict the statement that he was mineral-like, for all gases are mineral. The Earth was still soft, not yet having solidified. In the Bible man is called Adam and it is said that he was made of earth.

Cain is described as an agriculturist. He symbolizes the man of the Second Epoch. He had a vital body like the plants which sustained him.

In the Third Epoch food was obtained from living animals to supplement the former plant food. Milk was the means used for evolving the desire body, which made the mankind of that time animal-like. This is what is meant by the Bible statement that "Abel was a shepherd." It is nowhere stated that he killed animals.

In the Fourth Epoch man had evolved beyond animals—he had Mind. Thought breaks down nerve cells: kills, destroys and causes decay. Therefore the food of the Atlantean was, by analogy, carcasses. He killed to eat and that is why the Bible states that "Nimrod was a mighty hunter." Nimrod represents the man of the Fourth Epoch.

In the meanwhile, man had descended deeper and deeper into matter. His former ethereal body formed the skeleton within and had become solid. He had also lost by degrees the spiritual perception which was possessed by him in the earlier Epochs. Thus it was designed. He is destined to get it back at a higher stage, plus the self-consciousness which he did not then possess. He had, however, during the first four Epochs, a greater knowledge of the spiritual world. He knew he did not die and that when one body wasted away it was like the drying of a leaf from the tree in the autumn—another body would grow to take its place. Therefore he had no real appreciation of the opportunities and advantages of this Earth life of concrete existence.

But it was necessary that he should become thoroughly awake to the great importance of this concrete existence, so that he might learn from it all that could be learned. So long as he felt that he was a citizen of the higher Worlds and knew for a certainty that physical life is but a small part of real existence he did not take it seriously enough. He did not apply himself to the cultivation of the opportunities for growth which are found only in the present phase of existence. He dallied his time away without developing the resources of the world, as do the people of India today, for the same reason.

The only way in which an appreciation of concrete physical existence could be aroused in man was by depriving him of the memory of his higher, spiritual existence for a few lives. Thus, during his Earth life, he came to hold no positive knowledge of any other than the one present physical life, and was in this way impelled to earnestly apply himself to living it.

There had been religions previous to Christianity which had taught Rebirth and the law of Consequence, but the time had now come when it was no longer conducive to man's advancement that he should know this doctrine, and ignorance concerning it came to be regarded as a sign of progress. This one single life was to be made paramount. Therefore we find that the Christian Religion, as publicly taught, does not embody the laws of Consequence and Rebirth. Nevertheless, as Christianity is the religion of the most advanced Race, it must be the most advanced Religion, and because of the elimination of this doctrine from its publicteachings, the conquest of the world of matter is being made by the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races, in which this phase has been carried furthest.

As some new addition to or change in the food of man has been made in every Epoch to meet its conditions and accomplish its purposes, we now find added to the food of the previous Epochs a new article—wine. It was needed on account of its benumbing effect upon the spiritual principle in man, because no religion, in and of itself, could have made man forget his nature as a spirit and have caused him to think of himself as "a worm of the dust," or made him believe that "we walk with the same force with which we think"—indeed, it was never intended that he should go so far as that.

Hitherto only water had been used as a drink and in the ceremonies of the Temple service, but after the submergence of Atlantis—a continent which once existed between Europe and America, where the Atlantic Ocean now lies—those who escaped destruction began to cultivate the vine and make wine, as we find narrated in the Bible story of Noah. Noah symbolizes the remnant of the Atlantean Epoch, which became the nucleus of the Fifth Race —therefore our progenitors.

The active principle of alcohol is a "spirit" and as the humanity of the earlier Epochs used the articles of food best suited to their vehicles, so this spirit was, in the Fifth Epoch, added to the foods previously used by evolving humanity. It acts upon the spirit of the Fifth Epoch man, temporarily paralyzing it, that it may know, esteem and conquer the physical world and value it at its proper worth. Thus man forgets, for the time being, his spiritual home, clinging to this form of existence, which he has previously despised, with all the tenacity born of a feeling that this is all there is—or at least, preferring the certainty of this world to taking chances on a heaven which, in his present muddled state, he does not understand.

Water only had been used in the Temples, but now this is altered. "Bacchus," a god of wine, appears and under his sway the most advanced nations forget that there is a higher life. None who offer tribute to thecounterfeit spirit of wine or any alcoholic liquor (the product of fermentation and decay) can ever know anything of the higher Self—the true Spirit which is the very source of life.

All this was preparatory to the coming of Christ, and it is of the highest significance that His first act was to change "water into wine." (John ii:11.)

In private He taught Rebirth to His disciples. He not only taught them in words, but He took them "into the mountain." This is a mystic term meaning a place of Initiation. In the course of Initiation they see for themselves that Rebirth is a fact, for there Elijah appeared before them, who, they are told, is also John the Baptist. Christ, in unequivocal terms, had previously told them, when speaking of John the Baptist, "this is Elijah who was for to come." He reiterates this at the transfiguration scene, saying, "Elijah has come already and they knew him not, but have done to him whatsoever they listed." And following this, it is said that "they understood He spake of John the Baptist." (Matt. xvii:12-13). On this occasion, and also at the time when Rebirth was discussed between Him and His disciples, they told Him that some thought He was Elijah and others that He was one of the prophets who had been reborn. He commanded them to "tell no man." (Matt. xvii:9; Like ix:21). This was to be, for thousands of years, an esoteric teaching, to be known only among the few pioneers who fitted themselves for the knowledge, pushing ahead to the stage of development when these truths will again be known to man.

That Christ taught Rebirth and also the law of Consequence is perhaps shows in not other place as clearly as in the case of the man who had been born blind, where His disciples asked, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John ix:2).

Had Christ not taught Rebirth and the Law of Consequence, the natural answer would have been, "Nonsense! How could a man have sinned before he was born, and have brought blindness upon himself as a result? But Christ does not answer in that way. He is not surprised at the question, nor does He treat it as being at all unusual, showing that it was quite in harmony with His teachings. He explains, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of (the) God should be made manifest in him."

The orthodox interpretation is that the man was born blind in order that Christ might have the opportunity of performing a miracle to show His power. It would have been a strange way for a God to obtain glory— capriciously condemning a man to many years of blindness and misery that He might "show off" at a future time! We would consider a man who acted in such a manner a monster of cruelty.
How much more logical to think that there may be another explanation. To impute to God conduct which, in a human being, we would denounce in the strongest terms, is surely unreasonable.

Christ differentiates between the physically blind body of the man and the God within, which is the Higher Self.

The dense body has committed no sin. The God within has done some deed which manifests in the particular affliction from which he is suffering. It is not stretching a point to call a man a God. Paul says, "know ye not that ye are Gods? and he refers to the human body as the "temple of God," the indwelling spirit.

Finally, although most people do not remember their past lives, there are some who do, and all may know if they will live the life necessary to attain the knowledge. This requires great strength of character, because such knowledge will carry with it a knowledge of impending fate that may be hanging black and sinister over one, which will manifest in dire disaster. Nature has graciously hidden the past and the future from us, that we may not be robbed of peace of mind by suffering in anticipation of the pain in store for us. As we attain greater development we shall learn to welcome all things with equanimity, seeing in all troubles the result of past evil and feeling thankful that the obligations incurred thereby are being annulled, knowing that so much less stands between us and the day of liberation from the wheel of birth and death.

When a person dies in childhood in one life, he or she not infrequently remembers that life in the next body, because children under 14 years do not journey around the entire life cycle, which necessitates the building of a complete set of new vehicles. They simply pass into the upper Regions of the Desire World and there wait for a new embodiment, which usually takes place in from one to twenty years after death. When they return to birth, they bring with them the old mind and desire body, and if we listened to the prattle of children, we should often be able to discover and reconstruct such stories as the following:

A Remarkable Story
One day in Santa Barbara, Cal., a man by the name of Roberts came to a trained clairvoyant who is also a lecturer on Theosophy and asked for help in a perplexing case. Mr. Roberts had been walking in the street the previous day when a little three-year old girl came up to him and put her arms around his knees, calling him papa. Mr. Roberts was indignant, thinking that someone was trying to father the child on him. But the mother of the child, who came up directly, was equally put out and tried to get the child away. The child, however, kept on clinging to Mr. R., insisting that he was her father. On account of circumstances to be told later Mr. R. could not put it out of his mind, and sought out the clairvoyant, who accompanied him to the house of the child's parents. Where the girl at once ran up to Mr. R. and again called him papa. The clairvoyant, whom I call X, first took the child over to the window to note whether the iris of the eye would expand and contract when he turned her to and from the light, in order to see whether another entity than the rightful owner was in possession of the child's body, for the eye is the window of the soul and no "obsessing" entity can secure control of that part. Mr. X. found however, that the child was normal and next proceeded to question the little one carefully. After patient work carried on intermittently during the afternoon, so as not to tire the child, this is the story she told:

She had lived with her papa, Mr. Roberts, and another mamma in a little house that stood all alone, where no other house could be seen; there was a little brook close to the house where some flowers grew (and here she ran out and brought in some "pussy-willows") and there was a plank across the brook which she was cautioned against crossing, for fear she might fall into the brook. One day her papa had left her mother and herself and had not returned. When their supply of food was exhausted her mamma lay down on the bed and became so still. At last she said quaintly, "then I also died, but I didn't die. I came here."

Mr. Roberts next told his story. Eighteen years before he lived in London, where his father was brewer. He fell in love with their servant girl. His father objected, so he eloped with her to Australia after they had first been married. Here he went out into the bush and cleared a little farm, where he erected a small cabin by a brook, just as described by the little girl. A daughter was born to them there, and when she was about two years old he left the house one morning and went to a clearing some distance from the house, and while there a man with a rifle came up to him, saying that he arrested him in the name of the law for a bank robbery committed on the night Mr. R. had left England. The officer had tracked him here, thinking him the criminal. Mr. R. begged to be allowed to go to his wife and child, but, thinking this a ruse to entrap him into the hands of confederates, the officer refused and drove him to the coast at the point of the gun. He was taken to England and tried and his innocence proven.

First then did the authorities take heed of his constant ravings about his wife and child, whom he knew must starve in that wild and lonely country. An expedition was sent out to the cabin, when it was found that only the skeletons of the wife and child remained. Mr. Roberts' father had died in the meantime, and though he had disinherited Mr. R. his brothers divided with him and he came to America a broken man.

He then produced photographs of himself and his wife, and at the suggestion of Mr. X. they were mixed with a number of other photographs and shown to the little girl, who unhesitatingly picked out the photographs of both her alleged parents, although the photograph shown was very different from the present appearance of Mr. Roberts.

Chapter V

The Relation of Man to God

In the preceding chapters we have been considering man in relation to three of the five Worlds which form the field of his evolution. We have partly described these Worlds and noted the different vehicles of consciousness by means of which he is correlated to them. We have studied his relation to the other three Kingdoms—mineral, plant and animal—noting the difference in vehicles, and consequent difference in consciousness, between man and each of these Kingdoms. We have followed man through one life cycle in the three Worlds and have examined the operation of the twin laws of Consequence and Rebirth in their bearing upon the evolution of man.

In order to understand further details as to the progress of man, it now becomes necessary to study his relation to the Grand Architect of the Universe—to God and to the Hierarchies of Celestial Beings which stand upon the many different rungs of the Jacob's ladder of attainment that stretches from man to God and beyond.

This is a task of the utmost difficulty, rendered still more so by the indefinite conceptions of God which exist in the minds of the majority of the readers of literature dealing with this subject. It is true that names, in and of themselves, are not important, but it matters greatly that we know what we mean by a name; otherwise misunderstanding will result, and if a common nomenclature is not agreed upon by writers and teachers, the present confusion will be worse confounded. When the name "God" is used it is always uncertain whether The Absolute, the One Existence, is meant; or The Supreme Being, Who is the Great Architect of the Universe; or God, Who is the Architect of our Solar system.

The division of the Godhead into "Father," "Son" and "Holy Ghost" is also confusing. Although the Beings designated by these names are immeasurably above man and worthy of all the reverence and worship he is capable of rendering to his highest conceptions of Divinity, yet They are different from one another in actual fact.

Diagram 6 and diagram 11 will perhaps make the subject clear. It must be kept in mind that the Worlds and Cosmic Planes are not one above another in space, but that the seven Cosmic Planes inter-penetrate each other and all the seven Worlds. They are states of spirit-matter, permeating one another, so that God and the other great Beings who are mentioned are not far away in space. They pervade every part of their own realms and realms of greater density than their own. They are all present in our world and are actually and de facto "nearer than hands and feet." It is a literal truth when we say " in Him we live and move and have our being." For none of us could exist outside these great Intelligences Who pervade and sustain our world with Their Life. It has been shown that the Etheric Region extends beyond the atmosphere of our dense Earth; that the Desire World extends out into space further than the Etheric Region; also that the World of Thought extends further into inter-planetary Space than either of the others. Of course, the Worlds of rarer substance occupy a larger space than the denser World, which has crystallized and condensed, thus occupying less space.
The same principle is operative in the Cosmic Planes. The densest of them is the seventh (counting from the top downward). It is represented in the diagram as larger than any of the others, the reason being that it is the plane with which we are most intimately concerned, and it was desired to indicate its principle subdivisions. In reality, however, it occupies less space than any of the other Cosmic Planes, although it must be borne in mind that, even with this comparatively restrictive qualification as to its extent, it is still immeasurably vast, far beyond the utmost power of the human mind to conceive, comprising within its limits millions of Solar Systems similar to our own, which are the fields for the evolution of many grades of beings of approximately our own status.

Of the six Cosmic Planes above our own we know nothing, save that we are told they are the fields of activity of great Hierarchies of Beings of indescribable splendor.

Proceeding from our Physical World to the inner and finer worlds and up through the Cosmic Planes, we find that God, the Architect of our Solar System, the Source and goal of our existence, is found in the highest division of the seventh Cosmic Plane. This is His World.

His realm includes the systems of evolution carried on in the other planets which belong to our system—Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury, and their satellites.

The great Spiritual Intelligences designated as the Planetary Spirits, which guide these evolutions, are called the "Seven Spirits before the Throne." They are His Ministers, each presiding over a certain department of the Kingdom of God—which is our solar System. The Sun is also the field of evolution of the most exalted Beings in our Cosmos. They alone can endure and advance by means of the terrific solar vibrations. The Sun is the nearest approach we have to a visible symbol of God, yet it is but a veil for That which is behind. What That is cannot be uttered publicly.

When we try to discover the origin of the Architect of our Solar System, we find that we must pass to the highest of the seven Cosmic Planes. We are then in the Realm of the Supreme Being, Who emanated from the Absolute.

The Absolute is beyond comprehension. No expression nor simile which we are capable of conceiving can possibly convey any adequate idea. Manifestation implies limitation. Therefore, we may at best characterize the Absolute as Boundless Being; as the Root of Existence.

From the Root of Existence—The Absolute—proceeds the Supreme Being, at the dawn of manifestation. This is The One.

In the first chapter of John this Great Being is called God. From this Supreme Being emanates The Word, the Creative Fiat "without whom was not anything made," and this Word is the alone-begotten Son, born of His father (the Supreme Being) before all worlds—but positively not Christ. Grand and glorious as is Christ, towering high above mere human nature, He is not this Exalted Being. Truly "the Word was made flesh," but not in the limited sense of the flesh of one body, but the flesh of all that is, in this and millions of other solar Systems.

The first Aspect of the Supreme Being may be characterized as power. From this proceeds the Second Aspect, the Word; and from both of these proceeds the Third, Aspect, motion.

From this threefold Supreme Being proceed the seven Great Logoi. They contain within Themselves all the great Hierarchies which differentiate more and more as they diffuse through the various Cosmic Planes. (See diagram 6). There are forty-nine Hierarchies on the second Cosmic Plane; on the third there are 343 Hierarchies. Each of these is capable of septenary divisions and subdivisions, so that in the lowest Cosmic Plane, where the Solar System manifest, the number of divisions and subdivisions is almost infinite.

In the Highest World of the seventh Cosmic Plane dwells the God of our Solar Systems in the Universe. These great Beings are also threefold in manifestation, like The Supreme Being. Their three aspects are Will, Wisdom and Activity.

Each of the seven Planetary Spirits which proceeds from God and has charge of the evolution of life on one of the seven planets, is also threefold and differentiates within itself Creative Hierarchies which go through a septenary evolution. The evolution carried on by one Planetary Spirit differs from the methods of development inaugurated by each of the others.

It may be further stated that, at least in the particular planetary scheme to which we belong, the entities farthest evolved in the earliest stages, who had reached a high stage of perfection in previous evolutions, assume the functions of the original Planetary Spirit and continue the evolution, the original Planetary Spirit withdrawing from active participation, but guiding its Regents.

The foregoing is the teaching relative to all the Solar Systems, but coming down to the particular System to which we belong, the following is the teaching which the sufficiently trained Seer can obtain for himself by personal investigation of the memory of nature.

Chapter VI

The Scheme of Evolution

The Beginning
In harmony with the Hermetic axiom "As above, so below" and vice versa, Solar Systems are born, die and come to birth anew in cycles of activity and rest, as does man.

There is a constant flaming out and dying down of activity in every department of nature, corresponding to the alternations of ebb and flow, day and night, summer and winter, life and death.

In the beginning of a Day of Manifestation it is taught that a certain Great Being (designated in the Western World by the name of God, but by other names in other parts of the earth) limits Himself to a certain portion of space, in which He elects to create a Solar System for the evolution of added self-consciousness. (See diagram 6).

He includes in His own Being hosts of glorious Hierarchies of, to us, immeasurable spiritual power and splendor. They are the fruitage of past manifestations of this same Being and also other Intelligences, in descending degrees of development down to such as have not reached a stage of consciousness as high as our present humanity, and therefore these latter will not be able to finish their evolution in this System. In God—this great collective Being—there are contained lesser beings of every grade of intelligence and stage of consciousness, from omniscience to an unconsciousness deeper than that of the deepest trance condition.

During the period of manifestation with which we are concerned, these various grades of beings are working to acquire more experience than they possessed at the beginning of this period of existence. Those who, in previous manifestations, have attained to the highest degree of development work on those who have not yet evolved any consciousness. They induce in them a stage of self-consciousness from which they can take up further work themselves. Those who had started their evolution in a former Day of Manifestation, but had not progressed far at the close, now take up their task again, just as we take up our daily work in the morning where we left off the previous night.

All the different Beings, however, do not take up their evolution at the early stages of a new manifestation. Some must wait until those who precede them have made the conditions which are necessary for their further development. There are no instantaneous processes in nature. All is an exceedingly slow unfolding, a development which, though so exceedingly slow, is yet absolutely certain to attain ultimate perfection. Just as there are progressive stages in the human life—childhood, youth, manhood or womanhood, and old age—so in the macrocosm there are different stages corresponding to these various periods of the microcosmic life.

A child cannot take up the duties of fatherhood or motherhood. Its undeveloped mental and physical condition render it incapable of doing such work. The same is true of the less evolved beings in the beginning of manifestation. They must wait until the higher evolved have made the proper conditions for them. The lower the grade of the intelligence of the evolving being, the more it is dependent upon outside help.

At the Beginning, then, the highest Beings—those who are the farthest evolved—work upon those who have the greatest degree of unconsciousness. Later, they turn them over to some of the less evolved entities, who are then able to carry the work a little further. At last self-consciousness is awakened. The evolving life has become Man.

From the point where the self-conscious individual Ego has come into being he must go on and expand his consciousness without outside help. Experience and thought are then to take the place of outside teachers and the glory, power and splendor he may attain are limitless.

The period of time devoted to the attainment of self-consciousness and to the building of the vehicles through which the spirit in man manifests, is called "Involution."

The subsequent period of existence, during which the individual human being develops self-consciousness into divine omniscience, is called "Evolution."

The Force within the evolving being which makes evolution what it is and not a mere unfoldment of latent germinal possibilities; which makes the evolution of each individual differ from that of every other; which provides the element of originality and gives scope to the creative ability which the evolving being is to cultivate that he may become a God—that Force is called "Genius," and as previously explained, its manifestation is "Epigenesis."

Many of the advanced philosophies of modern times recognize involution and evolution. Science recognizes only the latter, because it (Science) deals only with the Form side of manifestation. Involution belongs to the Life side; but the most advanced scientists regard Epigenesis as a demonstrable fact. The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception combines all three as necessary to full understanding of the past, present and future development of the System to which we belong.

The Seven Worlds
We might use a homely instance to illustrate the building of a Cosmos. Suppose a man wants to establish a home in which to live. He first selects a suitable location and then proceeds to build a house, dividing it into various rooms to serve certain purposes. He makes a kitchen, dining-room bedrooms and bathroom, and furnishes them all to suit the special purpose they are intended to serve.
When God desires to create, He seeks out an appropriate place in space, which He fills with His aura, permeating every atom of the cosmic root-substance of that particular portion of space with His Life, thus awakening the activity latent within every inseparate atom.

This Cosmic Root-substance is an expression of the negative pole of the Universal Spirit, while the great Creative Being we call God (of whom we, as spirits, are part) is an expression of the positive energy of the same Universal Absolute Spirit. From the work of one upon the other, all that we see about us in the Physical World has resulted. The oceans, the Earth everything we see manifesting as mineral, plant animal and human forms—all are crystallized space, emanated from this negative Spirit-substance, which alone existed at the dawn of Being. As surely as the hard and flinty house of the snail is the solidified juices of its soft body, so surely all forms are crystallizations around the negative pole of Spirit.

God draws from the Cosmic Root-substance outside His immediate sphere; thus the substance within the nascent cosmos becomes denser than it is in Universal space, between Solar Systems.

When God has thus prepared the material for His Habitation, He next sets it in order. Every part of the system is pervaded by His consciousness, but a different modification of that consciousness in each part of division. The Cosmic Root-substance is set in varying rates of vibration and is therefore differently constituted in its various divisions, or regions.

The above is the manner in which the Worlds come into being and are fitted to serve different purposes in the evolutionary scheme, the same as the various rooms in the house are fitted to serve the purpose of everyday life in the Physical World.

We have already seen that there are seven Worlds. These Worlds have each a different "measure" and rate of vibration. In the densest World (the Physical) the measure of vibration, though in the case of light-waves reaching a rate of hundreds of millions per second, is nevertheless infinitesimal when compared to the rapidity of the vibration in the Desire World, which is next to the Physical. To get some conception of the meaning and rapidity of vibration, perhaps the easiest way is to watch the heat vibrations rising from a very hot stove, or from a steam radiator near a window.

It must be borne constantly in mind that these Worlds are not separated by space or distance, as is the earth from the other planets. They are states of matter, of varying density and vibration, as are the solids, liquids and gases of our Physical World. These Worlds are not instantaneously created at the beginning of a day of Manifestation, nor do they last until the end; but as a spider spins its web thread by thread, so god differentiates one after another of the worlds within Himself, as the necessity arises for new conditions in the scheme of evolution in which He is engaged. Thus have all the seven Worlds been gradually differentiated as they are at present.

The highest Worlds are created first, and as involution is to slowly carry the life into denser and denser matter for the building of forms, the finer Worlds gradually condense and new Worlds are differentiated within God to furnish the necessary links between Himself and the Worlds which have consolidated. In due time the point of greatest density, the nadir of materiality, is reached. From that point the life begins to ascend into higher Worlds, as evolution proceeds. That leaves the denser Worlds depopulated, one by one. When the purpose has been served for which a particular World was created, God ends its existence, which has become superfluous, by ceasing within Himself the particular activity which brought into being and sustained that World.

The highest (finest, rarest, most ethereal) Worlds are the first created and the last eliminated, while the three densest Worlds, in which our present phase of evolution is carried on, are but comparatively evanescent phenomena incident to the spirit's dip into matter.

The Seven Periods
The evolutionary scheme is carried through these five Worlds in seven great Periods of Manifestation, during which the virgin spirit, or evolving life, becomes first, man—then, a God.

At the beginning of Manifestation God differentiates within (not from) Himself these virgin spirits, as sparks from a Flame, of the same nature, capable of being fanned into Flames themselves. Evolution is the fanning process which is to accomplish that end. In the virgin spirits are enfolded all the possibilities of their Divine Father, including the germ of independent Will, which makes them capable of originating new phases, not latent in them. The latent possibilities are transformed into dynamic powers and available faculties during evolution, while the independent Will institutes new and original departures—or Epigenesis.

Prior to the beginning of the pilgrimage through matter the virgin spirit is in the World of Virgin Spirits, the next to the highest of the seven Worlds. It has Divine Consciousness, but not Self- consciousness. That, Soul-power, and the Creative Mind, are faculties or powers attained to by evolution.

When the virgin spirit is immersed in the World of Divine Spirit, it is blinded and rendered utterly unconscious by that matter. It is as oblivious to outside conditions as is man when in the deepest trance. This state of unconsciousness prevails during the first period.

In the Second Period it rises to the dreamless sleep state; in the third Period it reaches the dream stage, and in the middle of the Fourth Period, at which we have now arrived, the full waking consciousness of man is attained. This is a consciousness pertaining to only the lowest one of the seven Worlds. During the remaining half of this Period, and the entire three remaining Periods, man must expand his consciousness so as to include all of the six Worlds above this Physical World.

When man passed through these Worlds in his descent his energies were directed by higher Beings, who assisted him to turn unconscious energy inward for the building of proper vehicles. At last, when he was far enough advanced and equipped with the threefold body as a necessary instrument, these higher Beings "opened his eyes" and turned his gaze outward upon the Chemical Region of the Physical World, that his energies might conquer it.

When he has fitted himself by his work in the Chemical Region, his next step in progress will be toward an expansion in consciousness that will include the Etheric Region; then the Desire World, etc., etc.

In the Rosicrucian terminology, the names of the seven Periods are as follows:
  1. The Saturn Period
  2. The Sun Period
  3. The Moon Period
  4. The Earth Period
  5. The Jupiter Period
  6. The Venus Period
  7. The Vulcan Period
These periods are successive Rebirths of our Earth.

It must not be thought that the above mentioned Periods have anything to do with the planets which move in their orbits around the sun in company with the earth. In fact, it cannot be too emphatically stated that there is no connection whatever between these planets and the periods. The Periods are simply past, present or future incarnations of our Earth, "conditions" through which it has passed, is now passing, or will pass in the future.

The three first mentioned Periods (the Saturn, Sun and Moon Periods) have been passed through. We are now in the fourth, or Earth Period. When this Earth Period of our Globe has been completed, we and it shall pass in turn through the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan conditions before the great septenary Day of Manifestation comes to an end, when all that now is will once more be merged in the Absolute for a period of rest and assimilation of the fruits of our evolution, to re-emerge for further and higher development at the dawn of another Great Day.

The three and one-half Periods already behind us have been spent in gaining our present vehicles and consciousness. The remaining three and one-half Periods will be devoted to perfecting these different vehicles and expanding our consciousness into something akin to omniscience.

The journey made by the virgin spirit from unconsciousness to omniscience, unfolding its latent possibilities into a kinetic energy, is a process of marvelous complexity and only the roughest outline will at first be given. As we progress in our present study, however, more details will be filled in, until the picture is as complete as the writer is capable of making it. The attention of the student is called to the definition of terms that are given as new ideas are being presented. He is earnestly importuned to familiarize himself with them, as the intention is to simplify the matter by using only one familiar English name for the same idea throughout the work. The name will be as descriptive as possible of the idea to be conveyed, in hopes that thereby much of the confusion arising from a multiplex terminology may be avoided. By paying strict attention to definition of terms, it should not be too difficult for any person of average intelligence to acquire a knowledge of at least the outlines of the scheme of evolution.

That such a knowledge is of the utmost importance will, we think, be conceded by every intelligent individual. We live in this world, governed by the laws of nature. Under these laws we must live and work, and we are powerless to change them. If we know them and intelligently cooperate with them, these nature-forces become most valuable servants, e.g., electricity and the expansive force of steam. If, on the other hand, we do not understand them and in our ignorance work contrary to them, they become most dangerous enemies, capable of terrible destruction.

Therefore, the more we know of the working methods of nature, which latter is but the visible symbol of the invisible God, the better able we shall be to take advantage of the opportunities it offers for growth and power; for emancipation from bondage and for elevation to mastery.

Chapter VII

The Path of Evolution

A word of warning in regard to diagrams used for purposes of illustration may not be out of place. The student should remember that anything that is reduced into another dimension can never be accurate. The picture of a house would mean little or nothing to us if we had never seen a house. In that case we would see in the picture only lines and blotches. It would convey no meaning to us. Diagrams used to illustrate super physical matters are much less true representations of the reality, for the simple reason that in the case of the picture, the three-dimensional house is only reduced to two dimensions, while in the case of diagrams of the Periods, Worlds and Globes, the realities possess from four to seven dimensions, and the diagrams of two dimensions by which it is endeavored to represent them are thus so much further removed from the possibility of correctly portraying them. We must constantly bear in mind that these Worlds inter-penetrate, that the Globes inter-penetrate, and that the way they are shown in the diagram is analogous to taking all the wheels of a watch and laying them side by side in order to show how the watch keeps time. If these diagrams are to be of any use to the student they must be spiritually conceived. Otherwise they will be confusing instead of enlightening.

Revolutions and Cosmic Nights
The Saturn Period is the first of the seven Periods, and at this early stage the virgin spirits take their first step towards the evolution of Consciousness and Form. By reference to diagram 7 it will be seen that the evolutionary impulse travels seven times around the seven Globes, A, B, C, D, E, F and G, the arrows showing the direction.
First, a part of the evolution is accomplished on Globe A, situated in the World of Divine Spirit, the rarest of the five Worlds which form our field of evolution. Then, gradually the evolving life is transferred to Globe B, which is located in the somewhat denser World of Life Spirit. Here another stage of evolution is passed through. In due time the evolving life is ready to enter the arena on Globe C, which is situated in and formed of the yet denser substance of the Region of Abstract Thought. After learning the lessons peculiar to that stage of existence, the life wave travels onward to Globe D, which is located in and formed of the substance of the Region of Concrete Thought. This is the densest degree of matter reached by the life wave during the Saturn Period.

From this point the life wave is carried upward again to Globe E, which is situated in the Region of Abstract Thought, as is Globe C, yet the conditions are not the same as on Globe C. This is the Involutionary stage, and the substance of the Worlds is getting denser all the time. The tendency in everything is to become denser and more solid as times goes on; also, as the path of evolution is a spiral, it will be clear that, though the same points are gone over, the conditions are never the same, but are on a higher and more advanced plane.

When the work on Globe E has been completed, the next step is taken on Globe F, which is situated in the World of Life Spirit, the same as Globe B; thence it mounts to Globe G. When the work there is done, the life wave has traveled once around all the seven Globes; once down and up through the four respective Worlds. This journey of the life wave is called a Revolution, and seven Revolutions make one Period. During one Period the life wave travels seven times down and up through the four Worlds.
When the life wave has traveled its full complement of seven times around the seven Globes, completing the seven Revolutions, the first Day of Creation closes and there follows a Cosmic Night of rest and assimilation, after which the Sun Period dawns.

Like the night of sleep between two days of human life and the interval of rest between two earth lives, this Cosmic Night of rest after the completion of the Saturn Period is not a time of passive repose, but a season of preparation for the activity to be unfolded in the coming Sun Period, where man-in-the-making is to take a further dip into matter. Therefore, new Globes are necessary, the positions of which in the seven Worlds are different from those occupied by the Worlds of the Saturn Period. The providing of these new Globes, and other subjective activities, occupy the evolving spirits during the interval between Periods—the Cosmic Night. The manner of procedure is as follows:

When the life wave has left Globe A in the Saturn Period for the last tine, the Globe begins to slowly disintegrate. The forces which built it are transferred from the World of Divine Spirit (where Globe A is located during the Saturn Period) to the World of Life Spirit (where Globe A is located during the Sun Period). This is shown on diagram 8.
When the life wave has left Globe B in the Saturn Period for the last time, it also commences to disintegrate, and the forces thereof, like the seed-atom of a human vehicle, are used as a nucleus for Globe B in the Sun Period, this Globe being then located in the Region of Abstract Thought.

In like manner the forces of Globe C are transferred to the Region of Concrete Thought and draw upon the substance of that Region for the material wherewith to build a new Globe C for the coming Sun Period. Globe D is similarly transmuted and placed in the Desire World. Globes E, F, and G, in order named, are analogously transferred. The result is (as reference to diagram 8 will show) that in the Sun Period all the Globes are located one step further down into denser matter that they were in the Saturn Period, so that the life wave, upon its emergence from the Cosmic Night of Rest intervening between the last activity on Globe G of the Saturn Period and the renewed activity on Globe A of the Sun Period finds a new environment, with the opportunity thus afforded for new experiences.

The life wave now circles seven times around the seven Globes during the Sun Period, traversing seven times down and up the four Worlds or Regions in which these Globes are located. It makes seven Revolutions in the Sun Period, as it did in the Saturn Period.

When the life wave leaves Globe A in the Sun Period for the last time, that Globe begins to disintegrate. Its forces are transferred to the denser Region of Abstract Thought, where they form a planet to be used during the Moon Period. In the same way, the forces of the other Globes are transferred and serve as nuclei for the Globes of the Moon Period, as shown in diagram 8, the process being exactly the same as when the Globes are removed from their locations in the Saturn Period to the positions they occupied during the Sun Period. Thus the Globes of the Moon Period are placed one step further down in matter that they were during the Sun Period, the lowest (Globe D) being situated in the Etheric Region of the Physical World.

After the interim of Cosmic Night between the Sun Period and the Moon Period, the life wave starts its course on Globe A of the latter, completing in due time its seven Revolutions, as before. Then there is another Cosmic Night, during which the Globes are again transferred one step further down, and this time the densest Globe is located in the Chemical Region of the Physical World, as reference to diagram 8 will show.

This, then, is the Earth Period and the lowest and densest Globe (Globe D) is our present Earth.
The life wave here, as usual, started on Globe A, after the Cosmic Night succeeding the Moon Period. In the present Earth Period it has circled three times around the seven globes and is now on Globe D, in its fourth Revolution.

Here on earth and in this present fourth Revolution, the greatest density of matter—the nadir of materiality—was reached a few millions years ago. The tendency henceforth will be upward into rarer substance. During the three and one-half Revolutions which remain to complete this Period, the condition of the Earth will gradually become more and more ethereal, and in the next—the Jupiter Period—Globe D will again be located in the Etheric Region, as it was in the Moon Period, the other Globes being also elevated correspondingly.

In the Venus Period they will be located in the same Worlds as were the Globes of the Sun Period. The Globes of the Vulcan Period will have the same density and be located in the same Worlds as were the Globes of the Saturn Period. This is all shown on diagram 8.

When the life wave has completed its work in the Earth Period and the Cosmic Night which follows is past, it will go through its seven Revolutions on the Globes of the Jupiter Period. Then will come the usual Cosmic Night, with its subjective activities; after which the seven Revolutions of the Venus Period; then another rest, succeeded by the last of the Periods of the present scheme of evolution—the Vulcan Period. The life wave also makes its seven Revolutions here, and at the end of the last Revolution all the Globes are dissolved and the life wave is reabsorbed by God, for a period of time equal in duration to that occupied by all the seven Periods of activity. God Himself then merges into the Absolute during the Universal Night of assimilation and preparation for another Great Day.

Other and grander evolutions will then follow, but we can deal only with the seven Periods described.

Chapter VIII

The Work of Evolution

Ariadne's Thread
Having become acquainted with the Worlds, the Globes and the Revolutions which constitute the path of evolution during the seven Periods, we are now in a position to consider the work which is done in each Period, as well as the methods employed to accomplish it.

The "Ariadne's thread" which will guide us through the maze of Globes, Worlds, Revolutions and Periods will be found when it is remembered and kept steadily in mind that the virgin spirits which constitute the evolving life wave became entirely unconscious when they commenced their evolutionary pilgrimage through the five Worlds of substance denser than the World of Virgin Spirits. The purpose of evolution is to make them fully conscious and able to master the matter of all the Worlds, therefore the conditions embodied in Globes, Worlds, Revolutions and Periods are ordered with that end in view.

During the Saturn, Sun and Moon Periods and the past half of the present Earth Period, the virgin spirits have unconsciously built their different vehicles under the direction of exalted Beings who guided their progress, and have gradually awakened until they have attained the present state of waking consciousness. This period is called "Involution".

From the present time to the end of the Vulcan Period, the virgin spirits, who are now our humanity, will perfect their vehicles and expand their consciousness in the five Worlds by their own efforts and genius. This period is called "Evolution."

The above is the key to the understanding of what follows.

A thorough comprehension of the scheme of planetary evolution which has been outlines in the preceding pages is of immense value to the student. Although some believers in the laws of Consequence and Rebirth seem to think that the possession of such knowledge is quite non-essential and of little use, it is nevertheless of very great importance to the earnest student of these two laws. It trains the mind in abstract thought and elevates it above the sordid things of concrete existence, helping the imagination to soar beyond the hampering toils of self-interest. As stated in our study of the Desire World, Interest is the mainspring to action, yet at our present stage of progress, Interest is generally aroused by selfishness. It is sometimes of a very subtle nature, but it spurs to action of various kinds.
All action inspired by Interest generates certain effects which act on us, and in consequence we are bound by action having to do with the concrete Worlds. But, if our minds are occupied with such subjects as mathematics or study of the planetary phases of evolution, we are in the Region of purely Abstract Thought, beyond the influence of Feeling, and the mind is directed upward towards the spiritual realism and liberation. When we are extracting cube root, or multiplying figures, or thinking of Periods, Revolutions, etc., we have no Feeling about it. We do not quarrel about twice two being four. If our feelings were involved we should perhaps try to make it five and quarrel with the one who, for personal reasons, said it was but three, but in mathematics Truth is most clearly apparent and Feeling is eliminated. Therefore, to the average man, desiring to live in the feelings, mathematics is dry and uninteresting. Pythagoras taught his pupils to live in the World of Eternal Spirit and he demanded that those who desired instruction from him should first study mathematics. A mind capable of understanding mathematics is above the average and is capable of rising into the World of Spirit, because it is not fettered in the World of Feeling and Desire. The more we accustom ourselves to think in terms of the Spiritual Worlds, the better we shall be able to rise above the illusions which surround us in this concrete existence, where the twin feelings, Interest and Indifference, obscure the Truth and bias us, as the reflection of the light rays through the Earth's atmosphere gives us incorrect ideas of the position of the luminary emitting them.

Therefore the student who wishes to know Truth; to enter and investigate the realms of Spirit; to free himself from the toils of the flesh, as rapidly as is consistent with safety and proper growth, is earnestly advised to study what follows as thoroughly as possible; to assimilate it and draw mental conceptions of these Worlds, Globes and Periods. If he wishes to progress in this way, the study of mathematics and of Hinton's "The Fourth Dimension" are also admirable exercises in abstract thought. This work of Hinton's (though basically incorrect, because the four-dimensional Desire World cannot be actually found by three-dimensional methods), has opened the eyes of several persons who have studied it, and made them clairvoyant. Moreover, remembering that logic is the best teacher in any world, it is certain that the individual who succeeds in entering into the superphysical World by means of such studies in abstract thought, will not become confused but will be able to give a good account of himself under all circumstances.

A stupendous scheme is here unfolded, and as more and more detail is filled in, its complexity becomes almost inconceivable. Anyone capable of comprehending it will be well rewarded for taking the utmost pains to do so. Therefore, the student should read slowly, repeat often, think deeply and much.

This book, particularly this chapter, cannot be read in a casual manner. Every sentence has weight and bearing upon what follows, and presupposes a knowledge of what precedes it. If the books is not studied thoroughly and systematically, it will grown more and more incomprehensible and confusing with every page. On the other hand, if it is studied and well thought out as the student proceeds, it will be found that each page is illuminated by the increased knowledge gained by study of what went before.
No work of this kind, dealing with the deepest phases of the Great World Mystery that the human mind, at its present stage of development, is capable of grasping, can be written in such a manner that it will be light reading. Yet the deepest phases now comprehensible to use are but the A B C of the scheme as it will be revealed to us when our minds have become capable of understanding more, in later stages of our development as Supermen.

The Saturn Period
The Globes of the Saturn Period consisted of much rarer and finer substances than our Earth, as will be evident from a study of diagram 7 and diagram 8, which the student is advised to keep close at hand for frequent reference while studying this subject. The densest Globe of that Period was located in the same portion of the World of Thought occupied by the rarest of Globes of the present Period—the Region of Concrete Thought. These Globes had no consistency such as we can sense. "Warmth" is the only word that approximates the idea of the ancient Saturn Period. It was dark; and if a person could have entered into the space it occupied, he would have seen nothing. All about him would have been darkness, but he would have felt its warmth.

To the materialist it will, of course, seem insanity to call such a condition a "Globe", and to assert that it was the field of evolution of Form and Life. Yet, when we consider the Nebular Theory, we can realize that the nebula must have been dark before it glowed with light, and that it must have been hot before it could become fiery. This heat must have been brought about by motion, and motion is life.
We may say that the virgin spirits who were to evolve consciousness and form were embedded in this Globe, or perhaps better, that the whole Globe was composed of virgin spirits, as a raspberry is made of a great number of small raspberries. They were incorporated in the Globe, as the life ensouling the mineral is in our Earth. Therefore it is said among occult scientists that in the Saturn Period man went through the mineral stage.
Outside this "warmth-Globe"—in its atmosphere, we might say—were the great creative Hierarchies, who were to help the evolving virgin spirits to develop form and consciousness. There were many Hierarchies, but for the present we shall concern ourselves with the principal ones only—those which did the most important work of the Saturn Period.

In the Rosicrucian terminology these are called "Lords of the Flame," because of the brilliant luminosity of their bodies and their great spiritual powers. They are called "Thrones" in the Bible, and worked on man of their own free will. They were so far advanced that this evolutionary manifestation could give them no new experiences, and therefore no added wisdom, and the same may be said of two still higher order of Hierarchies, to be named later. The rest of the creative Hierarchies, in order to complete their own evolutions, were compelled to work on, in and with man.

These Lords of the Flame were outside the dark Saturn Globe and their bodies emitted a strong light. They, so to say, projected their pictures upon the surface of that ancient Saturn Globe, which was so impressionable that it reflected, in a multiple or echo-like manner, everything that came in contact with it, giving back the images manifolded. (This is told in the Greek myth wherein it is said that Saturn destroyed his children.)

However, by repeated efforts during the first Revolution, the Lords of the Flame succeeded in implanting in the evolving life the germ which has developed our present dense body. This germ was somewhat developed during the remainder of the first six Revolutions, being given the capacity for developing the senses organs, particularly the ear. Therefore, the ear is the most highly developed organ we possess. It is the instrument which carries with the greatest accuracy the impressions of outside conditions to the consciousness. It is less subject to the illusions of the Physical World than the other sense organs.

The consciousness of the evolving life of that Period was like that of the mineral of today—a state of unconsciousness similar to that attained by mediums in the deepest trance—yet during the first six Revolutions, the evolving life worked on the germ of the dense body under the direction and with the help of the different creative Hierarchies. In the middle of the seventh Revolution the Lords of the Flame, Who had been inactive since They gave the germ of the dense body in the first Revolution, again become active, this time to awaken the highest spiritual principle. They aroused the initial activity of the divine spirit in man.

Thus, man owes his highest and lowest vehicles—the divine spirit and the dense body, to the evolution of the Saturn Period. These, the Lords of the Flame of their own free will helped him to manifest, not being under the slightest compulsion to do so.

The work of the various creative Hierarchies is not started on Globe A, at the commencement of a Period or a Revolution. It commences in the middle of one Revolution, growing in strength and reaching its highest efficiency in the middle of the Cosmic Night—which is between Revolutions, as well as between Periods. Then it gradually declines, as the life wave sweeps on to the middle of the next Revolution.

Thus the work of the Lords of the Flame in awakening the germinal consciousness, was most active and efficient during the rest Period between the Saturn and Sun Periods.

We reiterate that a Cosmic Night is not to be regarded as a time of inactivity. It is not inert existence, as we saw in the case of the individual passing from death to a new birth. So with the great death of all the Globes of a Period. It is a cessation of active manifestation, that a proportionately keener subjective activity may be unfolded.

Perhaps the best idea of the nature of this subjective activity may be gained by observing what happens when a ripe fruit is buried in the ground. Fermentation and decay of the flesh sets in, but out of that chaos comes the new plant, sprouting forth into the air and sunshine. So, when a Period is past, all is resolved into conglomerate chaos, apparently incapable of being reduced to order. At the proper time, however, the Globes of a new period are formed and made ready for occupancy as man-bearing Worlds. Hither the evolving life is transferred from five dark Globes which it traverses during the Cosmic Night, to commence the activities of a new creative day in an altered environment, prepared and externalized during the activities of the Cosmic Night. As the forces of fermentation in the fruit stimulate the seed and fertilize the soil in which it grows, so the Lords of the Flame stimulated the germ of divine spirit, particularly during the Cosmic Night between the Saturn and Sun Periods, continuing their activities until the middle of the first Revolution of the Sun Period.

Recapitulation
Before the activity in any Period can be started, there is a recapitulation of all that has been gone through before. Owing to the spiral path of evolution, this activity takes place each time on a higher scale that the stage in progression which it rehearses. The necessity will become apparent when the actual work in recapitulation is described.

The first Revolution of any Period is a recapitulation of the work upon the dense body in the Saturn Period, and is spoken of among Rosicrucians as the "Saturn Revolution."

The Second Period is the Sun Period, and therefore the second Revolution of any Period subsequent to the Sun Period would be the "Sun Revolution."

The third Period is the Moon Period, therefore the third Revolution of any subsequent Period will be a recapitulation of the work done in the Moon Period, and is called the "Moon Revolution."

Not until after the recapitulatory Revolutions does the proper work of a Period begin. For instance, in the present Earth Period, we have passed through three and one-half Revolutions. That means that in the first, or Saturn Revolution of the Earth Period, the work done in the Saturn Period was repeated, but on an advanced scale. In the second, or Sun Revolution, the work of the Sun Period was gone through again. In the third, or Moon Revolution, the work of the Moon Period was repeated; and it was only in the fourth—the present Revolution—that the real work of the Earth Period commenced.

In the last of the seven Periods—the Vulcan Period—only the last Revolution will be concerned with real Vulcan work. In the preceding six Revolutions the work of the preceding six Periods will have been recapitulated.

Moreover (and this will particularly help the student to remember), a Saturn Revolution in any Period has always to do with the development of some new feature of the dense body, because that was started in a first Revolution; and any seventh, or Vulcan Revolution, has for its particular work some activity in connection with the divine spirit, because that was started in a seventh Revolution. In the same way, we shall see that there is a connection between the different Revolutions and all the vehicles of man.

The Sun Period
Conditions during the Sun Period differed radically from those of the Saturn Period. Instead of the "warmth-Globes" of the latter, the Sun Period Globes were glowing light-balls, of the consistency of gas. These great gas balls contained all that had been evolved in the Saturn Period, and similarly, in the atmosphere were the creative Hierarchies.

Instead of the echo-like, reflecting quality of the Saturn Period, these Globes, to some extent, had the quality of absorbing and working over sight or sound projected against their surfaces. They, as it were, "sensed" things. The Earth does not seem to do this, and a materialist would scoff at the idea, yet the occultist knows that the Earth feels everything on and in it. This lighter Globe was much more sensitive that the Earth, because it was not limited and bound in such hard and fast conditions of materiality as is our present habitat.

The life, of course, was different, because no forms such as we know could have existed there. But life can express itself in forms of fiery gas as well as—in fact better than—in forms of hard chemical matter such as the present dense forms of mineral, plant, animal and man.

As the evolving life appeared upon Globe A in the first or Saturn Revolution of the Sun Period, it was still in charge of the Lords of the Flame who, in the middle of the last Revolution of the Saturn Period, awakened in man the germ of the divine spirit.

They had previously given the germ of the dense body and, in the first half of the Saturn Revolution of the Sun Period, were concerned with certain improvements to be made upon it.

In the Sun Period the formation of the vital body was to be commenced, with all thereby implied of capability for assimilation, growth, propagation, glands, etc.

The Lords of the Flame incorporated in the germ of the dense body only the capability of evolving sense organs. At the time now under consideration it became necessary to change the germ in such a way as to allow of interpenetration by a vital body, also capability of evolving glands and an alimentary canal. This was done by the joint action of the Lords of the Flame, who gave the original germ, and the Lords of Wisdom, who took charge of material evolution in the Sun Period.

The Lords of Wisdom, who were not so highly evolved as the Lords of the Flame, worked to complete their own evolution; therefore they received the assistance of an order of exalted Beings who, like the Lords of the Flame, acted of their own free will. In esoteric parlance they are called the Cherubim. These exalted Beings did not, however, become active in the work until it was necessary to awaken the germ of the second spiritual principle of our man-in-the-making, as the Lords of Wisdom were quite capable of doing the work connected with the vital body which was to be added to the constitution of man in the Sun Period, but not of awakening the second spiritual principle.

When the Lords of the Flame and the Lords of Wisdom had, in the Saturn Revolution of the Sun Period, conjointly reconstructed the germinal dense body, the Lords of Wisdom, in the second Revolution, started the proper work of the Sun Period, by radiating from their own bodies the germ of the vital body, making it capable of inter-penetrating the dense body and giving to the germ the capability of furthering growth and propagation and of exciting the sense centers of the dense body and causing it to move. In short, they gave, germinally, to the vital body all the faculties which it is now unfolding to become a perfect and pliable instrument for the use of the spirit.

This work occupied the second, third, fourth and fifth Revolutions of the Sun Period. In the sixth Revolution the Cherubim entered and awakened the germ of the second aspect of the threefold spirit in man—the life spirit. In the seventh and last Revolution the newly awakened germ of the life spirit was linked to the germinal divine spirit, and this was still further worked upon.

We remember that in the Saturn Period our consciousness was similar to the trace condition. By the activity of the Sun Period this was modified until it became like the consciousness of dreamless sleep.
Evolution in the Sun Period added to the constitution of the evolving embryonic man, the next highest and the next lowest of his present vehicles. As the result of the Saturn Period he possessed a germinal dense body and divine spirit. At the end of the Sun Period he possessed a germinal dense body, vital body, divine spirit and life spirit, i.e., a twofold spirit and a twofold body.

We also note that, as the first, or Saturn Revolution, of any Period is concerned with work in the dense body (because that was started in a first Revolution), so the second, or Sun Revolution, of any Period is concerned with improvements on the vital body, because it was started in a second Revolution. In like manner, the sixth Revolution of any Period is dedicated to some work on the life spirit, and any seventh Revolution is particularly concerned with matters connected with the divine spirit.

In the Saturn Period man-in-the-making went through a mineral stage of existence. That is to say, he had a dense body only in the sense as had the mineral. His consciousness was also similar to that of the present mineral.

In the same way, and for analogous reasons, it may be said that in the Sun Period man went through the plant existence. He had a dense body and a vital body, as plants have, and his consciousness, like theirs, was that of dreamless sleep. The student will fully grasp this analogy by referring to diagram 4 in the chapter on the four kingdoms, where the vehicles of consciousness possessed by mineral, plant, animal and man are schematically shown, with the particular consciousness resulting from their possession in each case.

When the Sun Period was past there came another Cosmic Night of assimilation, together with the subjective activity necessary before the opening of the Moon Period. This was equal in length to the preceding Period of objective manifestation.

The Moon Period
As the chief characteristic feature of the dark Saturn Globes was described by the term "warmth," and that of the Sun Period Globes as "light" or glowing heat, so the chief characteristic feature of the Globes of the Moon Period may be best described by the term "moisture." There was no air such as we know. In the center was the hot fiery core. Next to that, and consequent upon contact with the cold of outside space, there was dense moisture. By contact with the fiery central core the dense moisture was changed into hot steam, which rushed outward to cool, and sink again toward the center. Therefore the occult scientist calls the Globes of the Moon Period "water" and describes the atmosphere of that time as "fire-fog." That was the scene of the next forward step of the evolving life.

The Moon Period work was that of acquiring the germ of a desire body and starting the germinal activity of the third aspect of the threefold spirit in man—the human spirit—the Ego.
In the middle of the seventh Revolution of the Sun Period, the Lords of Wisdom took charge of the germinal life spirit given by the Cherubim in the sixth Revolution of the Sun Period. They did this for the purpose of linking it to the divine spirit. Their greatest activity in this work was reached in the Cosmic Night intervening between the Sun and Moon Periods. In the first dawn of the Moon Period, as the life wave started upon its new pilgrimage, the Lords of Wisdom reappeared, bearing with them the germinal vehicles of the evolving man. In the first or Saturn Revolution of the Moon Period, they co-operated with the "Lords of Individuality," who had special charge of the material evolution of the Moon Period. Together they reconstructed the germ of the dense body, brought over from the Sun Period. This germ had unfolded embryonic sense organs, digestive organs, glands, etc., and was inter-penetrated by a budding vital body which diffused a certain degree of life into the embryonic dense body. Of course, it was not solid and visible as it is now, yet in a crude sort of way it was somewhat organized and is perfectly distinguishable to the trained clairvoyant sight of the competent investigator who searches the memory of nature for scenes in that far-off past.

In the Moon Period it was necessary to reconstruct the dense body to make it capable of being inter-penetrated by a desire body, and also capable of evolving a nervous system, muscle, cartilage and a rudimentary skeleton. This reconstruction was the work of the Saturn Revolution of the Moon Period.
In the second, or Sun Revolution, the vital body was also modified to render it capable of being inter-penetrated by a desire body, also of accommodating itself to the nervous system, muscle, skeleton, etc. The Lords of Wisdom, who were the originators of the vital body, also helped the Lords of Individuality with this work.

In the third Revolution the proper Moon work commenced. The Lords of Individuality radiated from themselves the substance which they helped the unconscious, evolving man to appropriate and build into a germinal desire body. They also helped him to incorporate this germinal desire body in the compound vital body and dense body which he already possessed. This work was carried on all through the third and fourth Revolutions of the Moon Period.

As with the Lords of Wisdom, so with the Lords of Individuality; though exalted far above man, they worked on and in him to complete their own evolution. While they were capable of dealing with the lower vehicle, they were powerless in regard to the higher. They could not give the spiritual impulse necessary to the awakening of the third aspect of the threefold spirit in man. Therefore another class of Beings who were beyond the necessity of evolving in such an evolution as we are passing through—who also worked of their own free will, as did the Lords of the Flame and the Cherubim—came in during the fifth Revolution of the Moon Period, to help man. They are called "Seraphim." They awakened the germ of the third aspect of the spirit—the human spirit.

In the sixth Revolution of the Moon Period the Cherubim reappeared and co-operated with the Lords of Individuality to link the newly acquired germ of the human spirit to life spirit.

In the seventh Revolution of the Moon Period the Lords of the Flame again came to the aid of man, helping the Lords of Individuality to link the human spirit to the divine spirit. Thus the separate Ego—the threefold spirit—came into existence.

Before the beginning of the Saturn Period the virgin spirits who are now man, were in the World of Virgin Spirits, and were "All-conscious" as God in who (not from whom), they were differentiated. They were not "self"conscious however. The attainment of that faculty is partly the object of evolution which plunges the virgin spirits into a sea of matter of gradually increasing density which eventually shuts it from the All-consciousness.

Thus, in the Saturn Period the virgin spirits were immersed in the World of Divine Spirit and encased in the tiniest film of that substance which they partially penetrated by the help of the Lords of Flame.
In the Sun Period the virgin spirit was plunged into the denser World of Life Spirit and more effectively blinded to the All-consciousness by a second veil of the substance of the World of Life Spirit. Still, by the help of the Cherubim it partially penetrated this second veil also. The feeling of the Oneness of All was not lost either, for the World of Life Spirit is still a universal World common to and inter-penetrating all the planets of a Solar System.

In the Moon Period, however, the virgin spirits take a further dip into the still denser matter of the Region of Abstract Thought and here the most opaque of its veils, the human spirit, is added. Henceforth the All-consciousness of the virgin spirit is lost. It can no longer penetrate its veils, look outwards and perceive others, so it is forced to turn its consciousness inwards and there it finds its self, as the Ego, separated and apart from all others.

Thus the virgin spirit is encased in a threefold veil, and as its outermost veil, the human spirit, effectively blinds it to the oneness of Life, it becomes the Ego by entertaining the illusion of separateness contracted during involution. Evolution will gradually dissolve the illusion, bring back the All-consciousness, and Self-consciousness will have been added.

Thus we see that at the close of the Moon Period man possessed a threefold body in varying stages of development; and also the germ of the threefold spirit. He had dense, vital, and desire bodies, and divine, life and human spirit. All he lacked was the link to connect them.

It has been stated that man passed through the mineral stage in the Saturn Period; through the plant stage in the Sun Period, and his pilgrimage through the conditions of the Moon Period corresponds to the phase of animal existence, for the same reason that the two other similes are applicable—he had the dense, vital, and desire bodies, as have our present animals, and his consciousness was an internal picture-consciousness, such as the lower animals have today. This resembles the dream consciousness of man, save that it is perfectly rational, being directed by the group-spirit of the animals. The student is again referred to diagram 4 in the chapter on the four kingdoms, where this is shown.

These Moon beings were not so purely germinal as in the previous Periods. To the trained clairvoyant they appear suspended by strings in the atmosphere of the fire-fog, as the embryo hangs from the placenta by the umbilical cord. Currents (common to all of them), which provided some sort of nourishment flowed in and out from the atmosphere, through those cords. These currents were thus, to some extent, similar in their function to the blood of the present day. The name "blood" as applied to these currents, however, is used merely to suggest an analogy, because the Being of the Moon Period possessed nothing like our present red blood, which is one of the very latest acquisitions of man.
Towards the end of the Moon Period there was a division of the Globe which was the field of our and other evolutions, which, for the sake of greater simplicity, we have not heretofore mentioned, but with which we shall presently become acquainted.

Part of that great Globe was crystallized by man on account of his inability to keep the part which he inhabited in the high state of vibration maintained by the other beings there, and as this part became more inert the centrifugal force of the revolving Globe sent it spinning into space, where it began to circle around the glowing fiery central portion.

The spiritual reason for the throwing off of such crystallizations is that the highest beings on such a Globe require for their evolution the exceedingly rapid vibrations of fire. They are hampered by condensation, although such a condition is necessary to the evolution of other and less advanced beings required lower rates of vibration. Therefore, when part of any Globe has been consolidated by a group of evolving beings to the detriment of others, that part is thrown off to exactly the proper distance from the central mass, so that it circles as a satellite around its primary. The heat vibrations which strike it are of the rate and strength suitable to the peculiar needs of the beings evolving upon that satellite. Of course the law of gravitation accounts quite satisfactorily for the phenomenon from a physical viewpoint. But there is always a deeper cause, that yields a more complete explanation and which we will find if we consider the spiritual side of things. As a physical action is but the visible manifestation of the invisible thought which must precede it, so is the throwing off of a planet from a central Sun simply the visible and unavoidable effect of invisible spiritual conditions.

The smaller planet which was thrown off in the Moon Period, condensed with comparative rapidity and remained the field of our evolution until the end of that Period. It was a moon to the parent planet, circling around it as our Moon circles around the Earth, but it did not show phases as our Moon does. It revolved in such a manner that one-half was always light and the other always dark, as is the case with Venus. One of its poles was pointed directly towards the large fiery Globe, as one of the poles of Venus points directly towards the Sun.

On this satellite of the Moon Period there were currents which encircled it, as the group-spirit currents encircle the Earth. The Moon beings followed those currents instinctively from the light to the dark side of this old Moon. At certain times of the year, when they were on the light side, a sort of propagation took place. We have the atavistic residue of those moon travels for propagation in the migrations of the birds of passage which, to the present day, follow the group-spirit currents around the Earth at certain seasons of the year, for identical purposes. Even the (honey)moon trips of human beings show that man himself has not yet outgrown the migratory impulse in connection with mating.

The Moon beings at this last stage were also capable of giving utterance to sounds, or cries. These were Cosmic sounds—not expressions of individual joy or sorrow, for as yet there was no individual. The development of the individual came later—in the Earth Period.

At the end of the Moon Period once more came the interval of rest, the Cosmic Night. The divided parts were dissolved and merged in the general Chaos which preceded the reorganization of the Globe for the Earth Period.

The Lords of Wisdom had now evolved so far, that they were capable of taking charge as the highest creative Hierarchy. They were given special charge of the divine spirit in man during the Earth Period.
The Lords of Individuality were also sufficiently advanced to work upon the spirit in man and the life spirit was therefore put under their charge.

Another creative Hierarchy had special care of the three germs of the dense, vital, and desire bodies as they were evolving. They were the ones who, under the direction of the higher orders, actually did the principal work on these bodies, using the evolving life as a kind of instrument. This Hierarchy is called the "Lords of Form." They were now evolved so far that they were given charge of the third aspect of the spirit in man—the human spirit—in the coming Earth Period.

There were twelve great Creative Hierarchies active in the work of evolution at the commencement of the Saturn Period. Two of these Hierarchies did some work to help at the very beginning. No information has been given as to what they did, nor anything about them, except that they helped of their own free will, and then withdrew from limited existence into liberation.

Three more of the Creative Hierarchies followed them at the beginning of the Earth Period, the Lords of the Flame, the Cherubim and the Seraphim, leaving seven Hierarchies in active service when the Earth Period began. ( Diagram 9 will give a clear idea of the twelve Creative Hierarchies and their status).

Diagram 9 The Twelve Great Creative Hierarchies
Zodiacal SignNameStatus
1. AriesNamelessThe first and second orders are said to have passed beyond the ken of anyone on Earth. It is known that they gave some assistance at the beginning of our evolution.
2. TaurusNameless
The three following orders worked of their own free will to help man during the three periods which preceded the Earth Period. They have also passed to liberation:
3. GeminiSeraphimwho, in the Moon Period, aroused in man-in-the-making the germ of the human spirit—the Ego.
4. CancerCherubimwho, in the Sun Period, aroused the germ of the life spirit.
5. LeoLords of Flamewho, in the Saturn Period, aroused the germ of the divine spirit and gave the germ of the dense body.
The following Seven Creative Hierarchies are active in the Earth Period:
6. VirgoLords of Wisdomwho, in the Sun Period, started the vital body.
7. LibraLords of Individualitywho, in the Moon Period, started the desire body.
8. ScorpioLords of Formwho have special charge of human evolution in the Earth Period.
9. SagittariusLords of Mindthe humanity of the Saturn Period.
10. CapricornusArchangelsthe humanity of the Sun Period.
11. AquariusAngelsthe humanity of the Moon Period.
12. PiscesThe Virgin Spiritswho are the humanity of the present Earth Period.
The Lords of Mind became experts at building bodies of "mind-stuff" as we are becoming experts at building bodies of chemical matter, and for a similar reason: The Region of Concrete Thought was the densest condition of matter reached during the Saturn Period where they were human and the Chemical Region is the densest state to be contacted by our humanity.

In the Earth Period the Lords of Mind reached the Creator-stage, and radiated from themselves into our being the nucleus of material from which we are now seeking to build an organized mind. They are called "Powers of Darkness" by Paul because they came from the dark Saturn Period, and are considered evil on account of the separative tendency appertaining to the plane of Reason as contrasted with the unifying forces of the World of Life Spirit; the realm of Love. The Lords of Mind work with humanity; but not with the three lower Kingdoms.

The Archangels became experts at building a body of desire-stuff: the densest matter of the Sun Period. Therefore they are able to teach and guide such less evolved beings as man and animal how to mold and use a desire-body.

The Angels are thoroughly experienced in building a vital body for in the Moon period when they were human the ether was the densest condition of matter. On account of this ability they are properly the teachers of man, animal and plant with regard to the vital functions: propagation, nutrition, etc.

Chapter IX

Stragglers and Newcomers

In following through the preceding chapter the evolution of life, consciousness and form—the triple phase of manifestation of the virgin spirit—which is the life that gathers the form about itself and gains consciousnessthereby, we have spoken as though there were only one class; as though the virgin spirits, without exception, had made constant and uniform progress.

This was done for the sake of simplicity, because stragglers there were, as there are in any great body or company.

In school there are, every year, those who fail to reach the standard required for promotion into a higher grade. Similarly, in every Period of Evolution, there are those who fall behind because they have not attained the standard necessary to pass onward to the next higher stage.

Even so early as the Saturn Period there were some who failed to improve sufficiently to take the next forward step. At that stage the Higher Beings were working with the life, which was itself unconscious, but that unconsciousness did not prevent the retardation of some of the virgin spirits who were not so pliable, nor so readily adaptable as others.

In that one word "Adaptability," we have the great secret of advancement or retardation. All progress depends upon whether an evolving being is flexible, adaptable and pliable, so as to be able to accommodate itself to new conditions, or whether it is crystallized, set, and incapable of alteration. Adaptability is the quality which makes for progress, whether an entity is at a high or a low stage of evolution. Lack of it is the cause of the retardation of the spirit and retrogression of the Form. This applies to the past, present and future, the division of the qualified and the unqualified, thus, being made with the exact and impersonal justice of the law of Consequence. There never was, or ever shall be any arbitrary distinction made between the "sheep" and the "goats."

The hardened unresponsive condition of some of the Saturn beings prevented the awakening of the divine spirit within them, therefore they remained simply mineral, all they had gained being the germinal dense body.

Thus there were two classes, or kingdoms, in the Sun Period, i.e., the stragglers of the Saturn Period, who were still mineral, and the pioneers of the Saturn Period, who were capable of receiving the germ of a vital body and becoming plant-like.

In addition to those two kingdoms there was also a third—a new life wave, which was just commencing its activity at the beginning of the Sun Period. (That is the life wave which now ensouls our animals).

The matter into which the new life wave entered, together with the stragglers of the Saturn Period, composed the mineral kingdom of the Sun Period. There was, however, a great difference in those two sub-divisions of the second kingdom. It is possible for the stragglers to make a "spurt" and overtake the pioneers, who are now our humanity, but impossible for the new life wave of the Sun Period to do that. It will reach a stage corresponding to the human, but under very different conditions.

The division of stragglers and pioneers took place in the seventh Revolution of the Saturn Period, when the divine spirit was awakened by the Lords of the Flame. Then it was found that some of the evolving entities were in such an unresponsive, hardened condition that it was impossible to arouse them. They therefore remained without the spark of spirit upon which their progress depended and they were obliged to remain at the same level, being unable to follow the others in whom the spiritual spark was awakened. Truly, truly, all that we are or are not is the result of our own effort, or our own inaction.
These stragglers and the newly arrived life wave formed dark spots in the otherwise glowing gas sphere which was the densest Globe of the Sun Period, and our present Sunspots are an atavistic remainder of that condition.

In the sixth Revolution of the Sun Period the life spirit was awakened by the Cherubim, and again it was found that some who had safely passed the critical point in the Saturn Period, had fallen behind in the Sun Period and were unfit to have the second aspect of the spirit vivified. Thus there were another class of stragglers, who had lagged behind the crest wave of evolution.

In the seventh Revolution of the Sun Period the Lords of the Flame reappeared to awaken the divine spirit in those who failed to qualify for it at the end of the Saturn Period, but had attained to the point where they could receive the spiritual impulse in the Sun Period. The Lords of the Flame also awakened the germ of divine spirit in as many of the new life wave entities as were ready, but here also there were stragglers.

Thus at the beginning of the Moon Period there were the following classes:
  1.  The Pioneers who had successfully passed through the Saturn and the Sun Periods. They had dense and vital bodies, divine and life spirit germinally active.
  2.  The Stragglers of the Sun Period, who had dense and vital bodies, also divine spirit—all germinal.
  3.  The Stragglers of the Saturn Period, who had been promoted in the seventh Revolution of the Sun Period. They had the germ of dense body and divine spirit.
  4.  The Pioneers of the new Life Wave, who had the same vehicles as class 3, but belong to a different scheme of evolution from ours.
  5.  The Stragglers of the new Life Wave, who had only the germ for the dense body.
  6. The New Life Wave, which entered upon its evolution at the beginning of the Moon Period and is the life that ensouls our plants of the present day.
It is necessary to remember that Nature hastens slowly. She makes no sudden changes in forms. To her, time is nothing; the attainment of perfection is everything. A mineral does not change to a plant at one bound, but by gradual, almost imperceptible degrees. A plant does not become an animal in a night. It requires millions of years to bring about the change. Thus at all times there are all stages and gradations to be found in nature. The Ladder of Being stretches without break from protoplasm to God.
Therefore we have to deal, not with six different kingdoms corresponding to the above six classes which entered the arena of evolution at the beginning of the Moon Period, but with three kingdoms only—mineral, plant and animal.

The lowest class in the Moon Period composed the new life stream which there commenced its evolution. It formed the hardest mineral part, yet it must be borne in mind that it was by no means as hard as the mineral of the present time, but only about as dense as our wood.

This statement does not contradict former ones which described the Moon as watery, nor does it conflict with diagram 8, showing the densest Globe in the Moon Period as located in the Etheric Region, which is etheric. As before stated, the fact that the path of evolution is spiral prevents any condition ever being duplicated. There are similarities, but never reproductions of identical conditions. It is not always possible to describe conditions in exact terms. The best available term is used to convey an idea of the conditions existing at the time under consideration.

Class 5 in our list was nearly mineral, yet on account of having passed through and beyond the mineral condition during the Sun Period, it had some plant characteristics.

Class 4 was almost plant and did evolve to a plant before the close of the Mood Period. It was, however, more nearly allied to the mineral kingdom that the next two classes, which formed the higher kingdom. We may therefore group classes 4 and 5 together, as forming a sort of half step, a "mineral-plant" kingdom, which composed the surface of the ancient planet of the Moon Period. It was something like our present peat, which is also a state between the mineral and the plant. It was soggy and wet, consistent with the statement that the Moon Period was watery.

Thus the fourth, fifth and sixth classes composed the different gradations of the mineral kingdom in the Moon Period—the highest being nearly plant and the lowest the hardest mineral substance of that time.
Classes 2 and 3 formed the plant kingdom, though they were both really more than plants, yet were not quite animal. They grew in the mineral-plant soil; they were stationary like plants; yet they could not have grown in a purely mineral soil, as our plants do now. Good examples of what they were like may be found in our parasitic plants, which cannot grow in a purely mineral soil, but seek the food already specialized by the real plant or tree.

Class 1 was composed of the pioneers of the life wave of virgin spirits. In the Moon Period they were going through a sort of animal-like existence. Yet they were like the animals of our time only in so far as they had the same vehicles and were under the control of a group-spirit, which included the whole human family. In appearance they were very different from our present animals, as shown by the partial description given in the previous chapter. They did not touch the surface of the planet, but floated suspended by umbilical-like cords. Instead of lungs they had a gill-like apparatus through which they breathed the hot steamy "fire-fog." These features of the Moon existence are still recapitulated by the embryo during the period of gestation. At certain stages of development it has the gills. The Moon beings at that time had also the horizontal spine of the animal.

During the Moon Period several more divisions of classes occurred than in the preceding periods, because there were, of course, stragglers who failed to keep abreast of the crestwave of evolution. As a result there were, at the beginning of the Earth Period, 5 classes, some of them containing several divisions, as diagram l0 will show. These divisions occurred at the following times and for the following reasons:

In the middle of the fifth Revolution of the Moon Period, when the Seraphim bestowed the germ of the human spirit upon the pioneers who had fitted themselves to pass on, some were found wanting when weighed in the balance and therefore unfit to receive the spiritual impulse which awakened the threefold spirit.

In the sixth Revolution of the Moon Period the Cherubim reappeared and vivified the life spirit of those who had been left behind in the Sun Period but had since reached the necessary stage of development (Class 2 in our previous list), and also in those stragglers of the Sun Period who had now evolved a vital body during their plant existence in the Moon Period. (These latter were class 3 in the previous list.)
Class 4 in the previous list had been going through a low stage of plant existence; nevertheless the majority of them had evolved the vital body sufficiently to allow of the awakening of the life spirit.

Thus, the three last named all possessed the same vehicles at the beginning of the Earth Period, although only the two first named (class 3a and 3b in diagram 10) belong to our life wave, and have a chance of even yet overtaking us if they pass the critical point which will come in the next Revolution of the Earth Period. Those who cannot pass that point will be held over until some future evolution reaches a stage where they can drop in and proceed with their development in a new human period.
They will be debarred from going forward with our humanity because it will be advanced so far beyond their status that it would prove a serious clog to our progress to drag them along. They will not be destroyed, but simply held in waiting for another period of evolution.

Progression with our present wave of evolution is what is meant when "salvation" is spoken of in the Christian religion, and it is something to be earnestly sought, for though the "eternal damnation" of those who are not "saved" does not mean destruction nor endless torture, it is nevertheless a very serious matter to be held in a state of inertia for inconceivable milliards of years, before a new evolution shall have progressed to such a stage that those who fail here can have an opportunity to proceed. The spirit is not conscious of the lapse of time, but it is none the less a serious loss, and there must also be feeling of unhomelikeness when at last such spirits find themselves in a new evolution.

So far as the present humanity is concerned, that possibility is so small as to be almost negligible. It is said, however, that of the total number of virgin spirits which started evolution in the Saturn Period, only about three-fifths will pass that critical point in the next Revolution and go on to the end.

The greatest apprehension of occult scientists is materialism, which if carried too far, not only prevents progress but will destroy all the seven vehicles of the virgin spirit, leaving it naked. Such an one will then have to commence at the very beginning of the new evolution. All the work it has done since the dawn of the Saturn Period will have been utterly wasted. For this reason, the present period is to our humanity, the most critical of all. Therefore occult scientists speak of the Sixteen Races, of which the Germano-Anglo-Saxon is one, as "the sixteen possibilities for destruction." May the reader safely pass them all, for their grip is worse than the retardation in the next Revolution.

Speaking generally, class 5 in the foregoing list was given the germ of the divine spirit during the seventh Revolution, when the Lords of Flame reappeared. Therefore they were pioneers of the last life wave, entering evolution at the Moon Period. They passed their mineral existence there. The stragglers of that life wave were thus left with only the germ of a dense body.

In addition to the above, there was also a new life wave (our present mineral kingdom) entering upon its evolution at the beginning of the Earth Period.

At the end of the Moon Period these classes possessed the vehicles as they are classified in diagram 10, and started with them in the beginning of the Earth Period. During the time which has elapsed since then, the human kingdom has been evolving the link of mind, and has thereby attained full waking consciousness. The animals have obtained a desire body, the plants a vital body; the stragglers of the life wave which entered evolution in the Moon Period have escaped the hard and fast conditions of rock soils; while the life wave that entered evolution here in the Earth Period forms the hard rocks and stones.

Thus have the different classes obtained the vehicles ascribed to them in diagram 3, to which the reader is referred.

Chapter X

The Earth Period

The Globes of the Earth Period are located in the four densest states of matter—the Region of Concrete Thought, the Desire World, the Etheric, and the Chemical Regions (See Diagram 8). The densest Globe (Globe D) is our present Earth.

When we speak of "the densest Worlds" or "the densest states of matter," the term must be taken in a relative sense. Otherwise it would imply a limitation in the absolute, and that is absurd. Dense and attenuated, up and down, east and west, are applicable only relatively to our own status and position. As there are higher, finer Worlds than those touched by our life wave, so there are also denser states of matter which are the field of evolution for other classes of beings. Nor must it be thought that these denser worlds are elsewhere in space; they are interpenetrated by our worlds in a manner similar to that in which the higher Worlds interpenetrate this Earth. The fancied solidity of the Earth and the forms we see are no bar to the passage of a denser body any more than our solid dense walls bar the passage of a human being clothed in his desire body. Neither is solidity synonymous with density, as may be illustrated by aluminum, a solid which is less dense than the fluidic mercury; nevertheless the latter, in spite of its density, will evaporate or exude through many solids.

This being the fourth Period, we have at present four elements. In the Saturn Period there was but one element, Fire—i.e., there was warmth, or heat, which is incipient fire. In the second, or Sun Period, there were to elements, Fire and Air. In the third, or Moon Period, there were three elements, Water being added; and in the fourth, or Earth Period, was added the fourth element, Earth. Thus it will be seen that a new element was added for each Period.

In the Jupiter Period an element of a spiritual nature will be added, which will unite with the speech so that words will invariable carry with them understanding—not misunderstanding, as is frequently the case now. For instance, when one says "house," he may mean a cottage, while the hearer may get the idea of a tenement flat building.

To this environment of the four elements, as specified above, the different classes mentioned in diagram 10 were brought over by the Hierarchies in charge of them. We remember that in the Moon Period these classes formed three kingdoms—animal, animal-plant and plant-mineral. Here on Earth, however, the conditions are such that there can be no large half-way classes. There must be four distinctly different kingdoms. In this crystallized phase of existence the lines between them must be more sharply drawn than was the case in former Periods, where one kingdom gradually merged into the next. Therefore some of the classes mentioned in diagram 10 advanced one-half step, while others went back a half a step.

Some of the mineral-plants advanced completely into the plant kingdom and became the verdure of the fields. Others went down and became the purely mineral soil in which the plants grew. Of the plant-animals some advanced into the animal kingdom, ahead of time, and those species have yet the colorless plant-blood and some, like star-fishes, have even the five points like the petals of flowers.
All of class 2 whose desire bodies could be divided into two parts (as was the case with all of class 1) were fitted to become human vehicles and were therefore advanced into the human group.

We must carefully remember that in the above paragraphs we are dealing with Form, not with the Life which dwells in the Form. The instrument is graded to suit the life that is to dwell in it. Those of class 2, in whose vehicles the above mentioned division could be made were raised to the human kingdom, but were given the indwelling spirit at a point in time later than class 1. Hence, they are not now so far evolved as class 1, and are therefore the lower races of mankind.

Those whose desire bodies were incapable of division were put into the same division as classes 3a and 3b. They are our present anthropoids. They may yet overtake our evolution if they reach a sufficient degree of advancement before the critical point already mentioned, which will come in the middle of the fifth Revolution. If they do not overtake us by that time, they will have lost touch with our evolution.
It was said that man had built his threefold body by the help of others higher than he, but in the previous Period there was no coordinating power; the threefold spirit, the Ego, was separate and apart from its vehicles. Now the time had come to unit the spirit and the body.

Where the desire body separated, the higher part become somewhat master over the lower part and over the dense and vital bodies. It formed a sort of animal-soul with which the spirit could unite by means of the link of mind. Where there was no division of the desire body, the vehicle was given over to desires and passions without any check, and could therefore not be used as a vehicle within which the spirit could dwell. So it was put under the control of a group-spirit which ruled if from without. It became an animal body, and that kind has now degenerated into the body of the anthropoid.

Where there was a division of the desire body, the dense body gradually assumed a vertical position, thus taking the spine out of the horizontal currents of the Desire World in which the group-spirit acts upon the animal through the horizontal spine. The Ego could then enter, work in and express itself through the vertical spine and build the vertical larynx and brain for its adequate expression in the dense body. A horizontal larynx is also under the domination of the group-spirit. While it is true that some animals, as the starling, raven, parrot, etc., previously mentioned, are able, because of the possession of a vertical larynx, to utterwords, they cannot use them understandingly. The use of words to express thought is the highest human privilege and can be exercised only by a reasoning, thinking entity like man. If the student will keep this in mind, it will be easier to follow the different steps which lead up to this result.

The Saturn Revolution of the Earth Period
This is the Revolution during which, in each Period. the dense body is reconstructed. This time it was given the ability to form a brain and become a vehicle for the germ of mind which was to be added later. This addition constituted the final reconstruction of the dense body, rendering it capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency possible to such a vehicle.

Unspeakable Wisdom has been employed in its construction. It is a marvel. It can never be sufficiently impressed upon the mind of the student what immeasurable facilities for the gaining of knowledge are contained in this instrument, and what a great boon it is to man; how much he should prize it and how thankful he should be to have it.

Some examples of the perfection of construction and intelligent adaptability displayed in this instrument have previously been given, but in order to further impress this great truth upon the mind of the student, it might not be out of place to illustrate more fully this Wisdom, also the work of the Ego in the blood.

It is generally known, in a vague kind of way, that the gastric juice acts upon the food to promote assimilation; but only a very few people, outside of the medical profession, are aware that there are many different gastric juices, each appropriate to the treatment of a certain kind of food. The researches of Pavlov, however, have established the fact beyond doubt, that there is one kind of juice for the digestion of meat, another for milk, another for acid fruit, etc. That fact, by the way, is the reason why all foods do not mix well. Milk, for instance, requires a gastric juice that is widely different from almost any other kind except that required for the digestion of starchy foods, and is not readily digested with any food other than cereals. This alone would show marvelous wisdom; that the Ego working subconsciously is able to select the different juices which are appropriate to the different kinds of food taken into the stomach, making each of just the right strength and quantity to digest the food. What makes the matter still more wonderful, however, is the fact that the gastric juice is poured into the stomach in advance of the food.

We do not consciously direct the process of mixing this fluid. The great majority of people know nothing of metabolism or any other phrase of chemistry. So it is not enough to say that, as we taste what is coming, we direct the process by means of signals through the nervous system.

When this fact of the selection of juices was first proven, scientists were sorely puzzled trying to learn how the right kind of juice was selected and caused to enter the stomach before the food. They thought the signal was given along the nervous system. But it was demonstrated beyond doubt that the proper juice was poured into to the stomach even though the nervous system was blocked.

At last Starling and Bayliss, in a series of experiments of brilliant ingenuity, proved that infinitesimal parts of the food are taken up by the blood as soon as the food enters the mouth, go in advance to the digestive glands and cause a flow of the proper juice.

This again, is only the physical side of the phenomena. To understand the whole wonderful connection, we must turn to occult science. That alone explains why the signal is carried by the blood.

The blood is one of the highest expressions of the vital body. The Ego guides and controls its dense instrument by means of the blood, therefore the blood is also the means used to act on the nervous system. During some of the time that digestion is going on, it acts partially through the nervous system, but (especially at the commencement of the digestive process) it acts directly upon the stomach. When, during scientific experiments, the nerves were blocked, the direct way through the blood was still open and the Ego derived the necessary information in that way.

It will also be seen that the blood is driven to wherever the Ego unfolds the greatest activity at any time. If a situation requires sudden though and action, the blood is promptly driven to the head. If a heavy meal is to be digested the greater portion of the blood leaves the head, centering around the digestive organs. The Ego concentrates its efforts on ridding the body of the useless food. Therefore a man cannot think well after a heavy meal. He is sleepy because so much blood has left the brain that the residue is insufficient to carry on the functions necessary to full waking consciousness, besides, nearly all the vital fluid or solar energy specialized by the spleen is absorbed by the blood rushing through that organ after a meal in greater volume than between meals. Thus the rest of the system is also deprived of the vital fluid in a large measure during digestion. It is the Ego that drives the blood into the brain. Whenever the body goes to sleep, the table will invariably tip towards the feet, raising the head. During coition the blood is centered in the sex organs, etc. All these examples tend to prove that during the waking hours, the Ego works in and controls the dense body by means of the blood. The larger portion of the total amount goes to that part of the body where at any given time, the Ego unfolds any particular activity.

The reconstruction of the dense body in the Saturn Revolution of the Earth Period was for the purpose of rendering it capable of inter-penetration by the mind. It gave the first impulse to the building of the frontal part of the brain; also the incipient division in the nervous system which has since become apparent in its subdivisions—the voluntary and the sympathetic. The latter was the only one provided for in the Moon Period. The voluntary nervous system (which has transformed the dense body from a mere automaton acting under stimuli from without, to an extraordinary adaptable instrument capable of being guided and controlled by an Ego from within) was not added until the present Earth Period.
The principal art of the reconstructive work was done by the Lords of Form. They are the Creative Hierarchy which is most active in the Earth Period, as were the Lords of Flame in the Saturn Period, the Lords of Wisdom in the Sun Period, and the Lords of Individuality in the Moon Period.

The Earth Period is pre-eminently the Period of Form, for there the form or matter side of evolution reaches its greatest and most pronounced state. Here spirit is more helpless and suppressed and Form is the most dominant factor—hence the prominence of the Lords of Form.

The Sun Revolution of the Earth Period
During this Revolution the vital body was reconstructed to accommodate the germinal mind. The vital body was fashioned more in the likeness of the dense body, so that it could become fitted for use as the densest vehicle during the Jupiter Period, when the dense body will have become spiritualized.

The Angels, the humanity of the Moon Period, were aided by the Lords of Form in reconstruction. The organization of the vital body is now next in efficiency to the dense body. Some writers on this subject call the former a link, and contend that it is simply a mold of the dense body, and not a separate vehicle.

While not desiring to criticize, and admitting that this contention is justified by the fact that man, at his present stage of evolution, cannot ordinarily use the vital body as a separate vehicle—because it always remains with the dense body and to extract it in toto would cause death of the dense body—yet there was a time when it was not so firmly incorporated with the latter, as we shall presently see.

During those epochs of our Earth's history which have already been mentioned as the Lemurian and the Atlantean, man was involuntarily clairvoyant, and it was precisely this looseness of connection between the dense and the vital bodies that made him so. (The Initiators of that time helped the candidate to loosen the connection still further, as in the voluntary clairvoyant.)

Since then the vital body has become much more firmly interwoven with the dense body in the majority of people, but in all sensitives it is loose. It is that looseness which constitutes the difference between the psychic and the ordinary person who is unconscious of all but the vibrations contacted by means of the five senses. All human beings have to pass through this period of close connection of the vehicles and experience the consequent limitation of consciousness. There are, therefore, two classes of sensitives, those who have not become firmly enmeshed in matter, such as the majority of the Hindus, the Indians, etc., who possess a certain low grade of clairvoyance, or are sensitive to the sounds of nature, and those who are in the vanguard of evolution. The latter are emerging from the acme of materiality, and are again divisible into two kinds, one of which develops in a passive, weak-willed manner. By the help of others they re-awaken the solar plexus or other organs in connection with the involuntary nervous system. These are therefore involuntary clairvoyants, mediums who have no control of their faculty. They have retrograded. The other kind is made up of those who by their own wills unfold the vibratory powers of the organs now connected with the voluntary nervous system and thus become trained occultists, controlling their own bodies and exercising the clairvoyant faculty as they will to do. They are called voluntary or trained clairvoyants.

In the Jupiter Period man will function in his vital body as he now does in his dense body; and as no development in nature is sudden, the process of separating the two bodies has already commenced. The vital body will then attain a much higher degree of efficiency than the dense body of today. As it is a much more pliable vehicle, the spirit will then be able to use it in a manner impossible of realization in the case of the present dense vehicle.

The Moon Revolution of the Earth Period
Here the Moon Period was recapitulated, and much the same conditions prevailed (on an advanced scale) as obtained on Globe D of that Period. There was the same kind of fire-fog atmosphere; the same fiery core; the same division of the Globe into two parts, in order to allow the more highly evolved beings a chance to progress at the proper rate and pace, which it would be impossible for beings such as our humanity to equal.

In that Revolution the Archangels (humanity of the Sun Period) and the Lords of Form took charge of the reconstruction of the desire body, but they were not alone in that work. When the separation of the Globe into two parts occurred, there was a similar division in the desire bodies of some of the evolving beings. We have already noted that where this division took place, the form was ready to become the vehicle of an indwelling spirit, and in order to further this purpose the Lords of Mind (humanity of the Saturn Period) took possession of the higher part of the desire body and implanted in it the separate selfhood, without which the present man with all his glorious possibilities, could never have existed.

Thus in the latter part of the Moon Revolution the first germ of separate personality was implanted in the higher part of the desire body by the Lords of Mind.

The Archangels were active in the lower part of the desire body, giving it the purely animal desires. They also worked in the desire bodies where there was no division. Some of these were to become the vehicles of the animal group-spirits, which work on them from without, but do not enter wholly into the animal forms, as the individual spirit does into the human body.

The desire body was reconstructed to render it capable of being interpenetrated by the germinal mind which, during the Earth Period, will be implanted in all those desire bodies in which it was possible to make the before-mentioned division.

As has been previously explained, the desire body is an unorganized ovoid, holding the dense body as a dark spot within its center, as the white of an egg surrounds the yolk. There are a number of sense centers in the ovoid, which have appeared since the beginning of the Earth Period. In the average human being these centers appear merely as eddies in a current and are not now awake, hence his desire body is of no use to him as a separate vehicle of consciousness; but when the sense centers are awakened they look like whirling vortices.

Rest Periods Between Revolutions
Hitherto we have noted only the Cosmic Nights between Periods. We saw that there was an interval of rest and assimilation between the Saturn and the Sun Periods; another Cosmic Night between the Sun and the Moon Periods, etc. But in addition to these, there are also rests between the Revolutions.

We might liken the Periods to the different incarnations of man; the Cosmic Nights between them to the intervals between deaths and new births; and the rest between Revolutions would then be analogous to the rest of sleep between two days.

When a Cosmic Night sets in, all manifested things are resolved into a homogenous mass—the Cosmos again becomes Chaos.

This periodical return of matter to primordial substance is what makes it possible for the spirit to evolve. Were the crystallizing process of active manifestation to continue indefinitely it would offer an insurmountable barrier to the progress of Spirit. Every time matter has crystallized to such a degree that it becomes too hard for the spirit to work in, the latter withdraws to recuperate its exhausted energy, on the same principle that a power-drill which has stopped when boring in hard metals, is withdrawn to regain its momentum. It is then able to bore its way further into the metal.

Freed from the crystallizing energy of the evolving spirits, the chemical forces in matter turn Cosmos to Chaos by restoring matter to its primordial state, that a new start may be made by the regenerated virgin spirits at the dawn of a new Day of Manifestation. The experience gained in former Periods and Revolutions enables the Spirit to build up to the point last reached, with comparative celerity, also to facilitate further progress by making such alterations as its cumulative experience dictates.

Thus at the end of the Moon Revolution of the Earth Period, all the Globes and all life returned to Chaos, re-emerging therefrom at the beginning of the fourth Revolution.

The Fourth Revolution of the Earth Period
In the exceeding complexity of the scheme of evolution, there are always spirals within spirals, ad infinitum. So it will not be surprising to learn that in every Revolution the work of recapitulation and rest is applied to the different Globes. When the life wave reappeared on Globe A in this Revolution, it went though the development of the Saturn Period; then after a rest which, however did not involve the complete destruction of the Globe; but only an alteration, it appeared on Globe B, where the work of the Sun Period was recapitulated. Then after a rest, the life wave passed on to Globe C, and the work of the Moon Period was repeated. Finally, the life wave arrived on Globe D, which is our Earth, and not until then did the proper work of the Earth Period begin.

Even then, the spiral within the spiral precluded its beginning immediately on the arrival of the life wave from Globe C, for the bestowal of the germ of mind did not actually take place until the fourth Epoch, the first three Epochs being still further recapitulations of the Saturn, Sun and Moon Periods, but always on a higher scale.

Chapter XI

The Genesis and Evolution of our Solar System

Chaos
In the previous pages nothing has been said about our Solar System, and of the different planets which compose it, because it was not until the Earth Period was reached that the present differentiation was made. The Earth Period is the acme of diversification, and although we have been speaking of only one class of virgin spirits— those who, in the strictest and most limited sense, are concerned with the Earth evolution—there are in reality seven "Rays" or streams of life, all pursuing different evolutions, yet all belonging to the original class of virgin spirits to which our humanity belongs.

In the previous Periods all of these different sub-classes or Rays found a suitable environment for their evolution on the same planet. But, in the Earth Period, conditions became such that in order to provide for each class the degree of heat and the vibration necessary for its particular phase of evolution, they were segregated on different planets, at varying distances from the Sun—the central source of life. This is the raison d'etre of our System and all other Solar Systems in the Universe.

Before proceeding with the description of evolution of our humanity on the Earth after its separation from the central Sun, it is necessary for the maintenance of sequential order in the description to explain the differentiation which scattered the planets of our System in space.

Active manifestation—particularly in the Physical World—depends upon separateness; upon the limitation of life by form. But during the interim between Periods and Revolutions the marked distinction between form and life ceases. This applies not only to man and the lower kingdoms, but to the Worlds and Globes which are the basis of form for the evolving life. Only the seed-atoms and the nuclei or centers of the World-Globes remain—all else is one homogenous substance. There is but one Spirit pervading space. Life and Form, its positive and negative poles, are one.

This state of things was what Greek mythology described as "Chaos." The ancient Norsemen and the Teutonic mythology call it "Ginnungagap," which was bounded upon the northern side by the cold and foggy "Niflheim"—the land of mist and fog—and upon the south side by the fire "Muspelheim." When heat and cold entered into space which was occupied by Chaos or Ginnungagap, they caused the crystallization of the visible universe.

The Bible also gives one the idea of infinite space preceding the activity of the Spirit.

In our present materialistic period we have unfortunately lost the idea of all that lies behind that word Space. We are so accustomed to speaking of "empty" space, that we have entirely lost the grand and holy significance of the word, and are thus incapable of feeling the reverence that this idea of Space and Chaos should inspire in our breasts.

To the Rosicrucians, as to any occult school, there is no such thing as empty or void space. To them space is Spirit in its attenuated form; while matter is crystallized space or Spirit. Spirit in manifestation is dual, that which we see as Form is the negative manifestation of Spirit—crystallized and inert. The positive pole of Spirit manifests as Life, galvanizing the negative Form into action, but both Life and Form originated in Spirit, Space, Chaos!

To get an idea from everyday life which will illustrate, we may take the hatching of an egg. The egg is filled with a moderately viscous fluid. This fluid, or moisture, is subjected to heat, and out of the soft, fluidic substance comes a living chick, with hard bones and comparatively hard flesh, and with down that has a comparatively hard quill, etc.

When a living chick can come out of the inert fluid of an egg without the addition of any hardening substance from outside, is it a far-fetched idea to claim that the universe is crystallized Space or Spirit? There is no doubt that the claim will seem foolish to many; but this book is not for the purpose of convincing the world at large that these things are. It is intended to aid those who inherently feel that these things must be and to help them to see the light upon this great World-mystery, which the writer has been permitted to behold. The special object at present is to show that Spirit is active all the time—in one way during Manifestation, and in another during Chaos.

Modern science would sneer at the idea that life could exist upon a Globe which is in the process of formation. That is because science cannot dissociate Life and Form and cannot conceive of Form except as solid and tangible—cognizable by one of our five physical senses.

The occult scientist, in accordance with the above definitions of Life and Form, holds that life may exist independently of Concrete Form; may have Forms not perceptible to our present limited senses, and amenable to none of the laws which apply to this present concrete state of matter.

It is true that the Nebular Theory holds that all existence (which is to say all Form, the Worlds in Space and whatever Forms there may be upon them) has come from the fiery nebula; but it does not recognize the further fact insisted upon by occult science—that the fiery nebula is Spirit. It does not admit that the whole atmosphere around us, the space between the worlds, is Spirit and that there is a constant interchange going on all the time—Form dissolving into Space, and Space crystallizing into Form.
Chaos is not a state which has existed in the past and has now entirely disappeared. It is all around us at the present moment. Were it not that old forms—having outlived their usefulness—are constantly being resolved back into that Chaos, which is also as constantly giving birth to new forms, there could be no progress; the work of evolution would cease and stagnation would prevent the possibility of advancement.

It is axiomatic that "The oftener we die, the better we live." The Poet-Initiate, Goethe says:
Who has not this—
Ever dying and bringing to birth—
Will aye remain a sorry guest
Upon this dismal earth.
and Paul says, "I die daily."

Therefore, as students of occult science, it is necessary to realize that even during active manifestation, it is Chaos that is the basis of all progress. Our life during Chaos is based upon our life in active manifestation, and vice versa, i.e., what we are able to achieve during active manifestation, and the ability to progress at all, is the result of the existence in Chaos. The interim between Periods and Revolutions is in reality much more important to the growth of the soul that concrete existence, though the latter is the basis of the former and therefore cannot be dispensed with. The importance of the Chaotic interim lives in the fact that during that period the evolving entities of all classes are so closely united that they are really one; consequently those which are of lower development during manifestation are in closest contact with the more highly evolved, thus experiencing and benefiting by a much higher vibration that their own. This enables them to live over and assimilate their past experiences in a manner impossible when hampered by Form.

We have seen the benefit to the spirit in man from the interim between death and a new birth. There the form still exists, though much more attenuated than the dense body; but in the Cosmic Night and intervals of rest between Periods and Revolutions, when there is perfect freedom from form, the beneficial results of past experiences can be much more effectively assimilated.

We have a word which was originally coined to convey the idea of the state of things between manifestations. This word, however, has been used in a material sense to such an extent that it has lost its primal significance. That word is Gas.

It may be thought that this is a very old word, which has nearly always existed as a synonym for a state of matter lighter than liquids, but such is not the case. The word was first used in "Physica," a work which appeared in 1633, the author of it being Helmont, a Rosicrucian.

Helmont did not call himself a Rosicrucian; no true Brother does so publicly. Only the Rosicrucian knows the brother Rosicrucian. Not even the most intimate friends or relatives know of a man's connection with the order. Those only who are Initiates themselves know the writers of the past who were Rosicrucians, because ever through their works shine the unmistakable words, phrases and signs indicative of the deep meaning that remains hidden from the non-Initiate. The Rosicrucian Fellowship is composed of students of the teachings of the Order, which are now given publicly, because the world's intelligence is growing to the necessary point of comprehension. This work is one of the first few fragments of the Rosicrucian knowledge being publicly given out. All that has been printed as such, previous to the last few years, has been the work of either charlatans or traitors.

Rosicrucians such as Paracelsus, Comenius, Bacon, Helmont and others gave hints in their works and influenced others. The great controversy concerning the authorship of Shakespeare (which has to no avail blunted so many goose-quills and wasted so much good ink that might have served useful ends) would never have arisen had it been known that the similarity in Shakespeare and Bacon is due to the fact that both were influenced by the same Initiate, who also influenced Jacob Boehme and a pastor of Ingolstadt, Jacobus Baldus, who lived subsequent to the death of the Bard of Avon, and wrote Latin lyric verse. If the first poem of Jacob Baldus is read with a certain key, it will be found that by reading down and up the lines, the following sentence will appear: "Hitherto I have spoken from across the sea by means of the drama; now I will express myself in lyrics."

In his "Physica," Helmont, the Rosicrucian wrote: "Ad huc spiritum incognitum Gas voco," i.e., "This hitherto unknown Spirit I call Gas." Further on in the same work he says, "This vapor which I have called Gas is not far removed from the Chaos the ancients spoke of."

We must learn to think of Chaos as the Spirit of God, which pervades every part of infinity; it will then be seen in its true light, as the occult maxim puts it: "Chaos is the seed-ground of the Cosmos," and we shall no longer wonder how "something can come out of nothing," because Space is not synonymous with "nothing." It holds within itself the germs of all that exists during a physical manifestation, yet not quite all; for by the wedding of Chaos with Cosmos there is something new brought forth each time, which did not exist before; something that was not foreshown and latent. The name of that something is Genius—the cause of Epigenesis.

It appears in all kingdoms. It is the expression of progressive spirit in man, animal and plant. Chaos is therefore a holy name; a name that signifies the Cause of all we see in Nature and inspires a feeling of devotion in every tried, true and trained occultist. He regards the visible sense world as a revelation of the hidden potentialities of the Chaos.

The Birth of the Planets
To express himself in the dense physical world, it was necessary for man to evolve a suitable dense body. In a world like this he must have a body with limbs, organs, a muscular system by means of which to move about; also a brain to direct and co-ordinate his movements. If the conditions had been different the body would have been modified accordingly.

It is necessary for all beings, high or low in the scale of existence, to possess vehicles for expression in any particular world in which they may wish to manifest. Even the Seven Spirits before The Throne must possess these necessary vehicles, which of course are differently conditioned for each of Them. Collectively, They are God, and make up the Triune Godhead, and He manifests in a different way through each of Them.

There is no contradiction in ascribing different numbers to God. We do not sin against the "oneness" of light because we distinguish three primary colors into which it divides itself. The white light of the Sun contains the seven colors of the spectrum. The occultists sees even twelve colors, there being five between red and violet—going one way around the circle—in addition to the red, orange, yellow, green, etc., of the visible spectrum. Four of these colors are quite indescribable, but the fifth—the middle one of the five—is similar to the tint of a new blown peach blossom. It is in fact the color of the vital body. Trained clairvoyants who describe it as "bluish-gray," or "reddish-gray," etc., are trying to describe a color that has no equivalent in the physical world; and they are therefore compelled to use the nearest descriptive terms afforded by our language.

Perhaps Color will enable us to realize the oneness of God with the Seven Spirits before The Throne better than anything else. We will therefore turn to diagram 11.

We see here a white triangle looming up from a dark background. White is synthetic, containing all colors within itself, as God contains within Himself all things in the Solar System.

Within the white triangle are a blue, a red and a yellow circle. All other colors are simply combinations of these three primary colors. These circles correspond to the three aspects of God, which are without beginning, and end in God; though externalized only during active manifestation.
When these three colors are interblended, as shown in the diagram, there appear four additional colors, the three secondary colors—each due to the blending of two primary colors—and one color (indigo) which contains the entire gamut of colors, making it in all the seven colors of the spectrum. These colors represent the Seven Spirits before the Throne. The colors are different, as are also the Seven Spirits, each having a different mission in the Kingdom of God—our Solar System.

The seven planets circling around the Sun are the dense bodies of the Seven Planetary Genii. Their names are: Uranus with one satellite, Saturn with eight moons, Jupiter with four moons, Mars with two moons, the Earth and its moon, Venus and Mercury.*Astronomical discoveries since the writing of this book attribute 4 satellites to Uranus, 9 to Saturn, and 11 to Jupiter.

Bodies are always found to suit the purpose they are made to serve, hence the dense bodies of the Seven Planetary Spirits are spherical, that form being best adapted to the enormous velocity with which they travel through space. The Earth, for instance, travels about 66,000 miles per hour in its orbit.
Man's body had a different shape in the past from that of the present, and from that which it will have in the future. During involution it was approximately spherical, as it still is during ante-natal life, because the intra-uterine development is a recapitulation of past stages of evolution. At that stage the organism developed the sphere, because during involution man's energies were directed inward, upon the building of its own vehicles, as the embryo develops within the sphere of the uterus.

Man's dense and vital bodies have straightened , but his higher vehicles still retain their ovoid form. In the dense body, the coordinating and governing brain is situated at one extremity. This is the most unfavorable position for such an organ. Too long a time is required for impulses to travel from one extremity to the other—from the brain to the feet, or for impacts on the feet to reach the brain. In cases of burns, for instance, science has demonstrated that valuable time is lost, the skin being blistered before a message can be carried from the injured place to the brain and back again.

This inefficiency would be greatly lessened if the brain were in the center of the body. Sensations and the responses thereto could be more quickly received and transmitted. In the spherical planets the Planetary Spirit directs from the center the movements of its vehicle. In future man will bend over, as shown in diagram 12. He will become a sphere, directing his energies outward because a spherical form affords the greatest facility for motion in all directions, and indeed, for combination of simultaneous motions.

The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception teaches that there is a further evolution in store for planets.
When the beings upon a planet have evolved to a sufficient degree, the planet becomes a Sun—the fixed center of a Solar System. When the beings upon it have evolved to a still greater degree, and consequently it has reached its maximum brilliancy, it breaks up into Zodiac, becoming, so to speak, the womb for a new Solar System.

Thus the great hosts of Divine Beings who, until then, were confined within that Sun, gain freedom of action upon a great number of stars, whence they can affect in different ways the system which grows up within their sphere of influence. The planets, or man-bearing worlds, within the Zodiac are constantly being worked upon by these forces, but in various ways, according to the stage they have reached in evolution.

Our Sun could not become a Sun until it had sent out from itself all the beings who were not sufficiently evolved to endure the high rate of vibration and the great luminosity of the beings who were qualified for that evolution. All the beings upon the different planets would have been consumed had they remained in the Sun.

This visible Sun, however, though it is the place of evolution for Beings vastly above man, is not by many means the Father of the other planets, as material science supposes. On the contrary, it is itself an emanation from the Central Sun, which is the invisible source of all that is in our Solar System. Our visible Sun is but the mirror in which are reflected the rays of energy from the Spiritual Sun. The real Sun is as invisible as the real Man.

Uranus was the first planet to be thrown off from the nebula when its differentiation began in Chaos, at the dawn of the Earth Period. There was no light but the dim light of the Zodiac. The life that left with Uranus is of a rather backward strain and is said to evolve very, very slowly.

Saturn was next differentiated. It is the field of action for the life which is at the stage of evolution corresponding to the Saturn Period. This planet was differentiated before the ignition of the nebula and (like all nebulae when passing through their Saturn Period of evolution) was not a source of light, but a reflector.

Jupiter was differentiated shortly afterwards, when the nebula had become ignited. The heat of Jupiter is not so great as that of the Sun, Venus or Mercury, but on account of its immense bulk, it is capable of retaining its heat and thus remains a suitable field of evolution for very advanced beings. It corresponds to the stage which will be reached by the Earth itself in the Jupiter Period.

Mars is a mystery, and only a limited amount of information may be given out. We may say, however, that the life on Mars is of a very backward nature and that the so-called "canals" are not excavations in the surface of the planet. They are currents such as, during the Atlantean Epoch, spread over our planet, and the remains of which can still be observed in the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis. The shifting of the Martian "canals" noted by astronomers, is thus accounted for. If they were really canals, they could not possibly shift, but currents emanating from the Poles of Mars may do so.

The Earth, including the Moon, was next set out from the Sun, and later Venus and Mercury. These and Mars will be referred to later, in connection with the evolution of man on the earth, and need not be further considered at this time.

When a planet has Moons it indicates that there are some beings in the life wave evolving on that planet who are too backward to share in the evolution of the main life wave, and they have therefore been set out from the planet to prevent them from hindering the progress of the pioneers. Such is the case with the beings inhabiting our Moon. In the case of Jupiter it is thought probable that the inhabitants of three of its moons will eventually be able to rejoin the life on the parent planet, but it is thought that at least one of the others is an eighth sphere, like our own Moon, where retrogression and disintegration of the already acquired vehicle will result from too close adherence to material existence upon the part of the evolving beings who have brought themselves to that deplorable end.

Neptune and its satellites do not properly belong to our Solar System. The other planets—or rather their Spirits— exercise an influence over the whole of humanity, but the influence of Neptune is largely restricted to one particular class the astrologers. The writer, for instance, has several times felt its compelling influence in a marked way.

When laggards inhabiting a Moon have retrieved their position and returned to the parent planet; or, when continued retrogression has caused complete disintegration of their vehicles, the abandoned Moon also commences to dissolve. The momentum of a spiritual impulse which propelled it in a fixed orbit for eons, may endure for eons after the Moon has been vacated, and from the physical point of view it may still seem to be a satellite of the planet in encircles. As the time goes on, however, and the power of attraction exercised by the parent planet diminishes, its orbit widens, until it reaches the limit of our solar system. It is then expelled into interstellar space; dissolved in Chaos. The expulsion of these cinder-like dead worlds is analogous to the manner in which hard and foreign bodies imbedded in the human system make their way through the flesh to the skin. The Asteroids illustrate this point. They are fragments of Moons which once encircled Venus and Mercury. The beings once confined upon them are known in esotericism as "The Lords from Venus" and "The lords from Mercury;" they retrieved their lost estate in a large measure by service to our humanity, as will be later described, and are now safe on their present planet, while the Moons they inhabited have partly disintegrated, and are already far outside the earth's orbit. There are other "seeming" moons in our system, but the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception does not notice them, as they are outside the pale of evolution.

Chapter XII

Evolution on the Earth

The Polarian Epoch
While the material which now forms the Earth was yet a part of the Sun, it was, of course in a fiery condition; but as the fire does not burn spirit, our human evolution commenced at once, being confined particularly to the Polar Region of the Sun.

The highest evolved beings which were to become human were the first to appear. The substances which now form the Earth were all molten, and the atmosphere was gaseous, yet man recapitulated his mineral stage anew.

From that attenuated chemical substance of the sun man himself built his first mineral body, assisted by the Lords of Form. If this statement is objected to on the ground that man could not build unconsciously, the case of the mother can be cited in answer. Is she conscious of building the body of the babe in her womb? Yet surely no one will say that she has nothing to do with it! The only difference is that the mother builds unconsciously for the babe; and man built unconsciously for himself.

Man's first dense body did not even remotely resemble his present splendidly organized vehicle. That has been evolved only in the course of myriads of years. The first dense body was a large, baggy object with an opening at the top, from which an organ projected. This was a kind of organ of orientation and direction. In the course of time the dense body drew more closely together and condensed. If it came too close to places of greater heat than it could endure, it disintegrated. In time the organ grew sensitive to the condition that threatened destruction and the dense body automatically moved to a safer place.

This organ has now degenerated into what is called the pineal gland. Sometimes it is called "the third eye," but that is a misnomer, because it never was an eye, but rather the localized organ for the sensing of heat and cold, which faculty is now distributed over the entire dense body. During the Polarian Epoch this sense was thus localized, as the sense of sight is now in the eye, and that of hearing in the ear. The extension of the sense of feeling since that time indicates the manner in which the entire body will be improved, so that at some future time any part of it will be able to perceive all things. The senses of sight and hearing will be extended over the entire body, as the sense of feeling is now. Them man will be all eyes and ears. Specialized sense organs indicate limitation. Sense perception by the whole is comparative perfection.

At the early stage of which we are now speaking there was a kind of propagation. These immense baggy creatures divided in halves in a manner similar to the division of cells by fission, but the separated portions would not grow, each remaining only half as large as the original form.

The Hyperborean Epoch
At different points on the fiery globe there began in the course of time the formation of crust-islands in a sea of fire.

The Lords of Form appeared, with the Angels (humanity of the Moon Period), and clothed man's dense form with a vital body. Those baggy bodies then began to increase in size by drawing to themselves material from the outside, osmosis, as it were. When they propagated, it was no longer by dividing into halves, but into two un-equal parts. Both parts grew until each had attained the original size of the parent.

As the Polarian Epoch was really a recapitulation of the Saturn Period, it may be said that during that time man passed through the mineral state; he had the same vehicle—the dense body—and a consciousness similar to the trance state. For analogous reasons, the plant state was passed through in the Hyperborean Epoch, as man had a dense and a vital body and a dreamless-sleep-consciousness.
Man began his evolution on the Earth after Mars had been thrown off from the central mass, and that which is now the Earth was yet undetached from the Sun; but at the close of the Hyperborean Epoch the incrustation had progressed so far that it had become an obstacle to the progress of some of the higher evolved beings in the Sun. The fiery condition also hindered the evolution of some of the lower grades of creatures, such as man, who at that stage required a denser world for his further development.
Therefore, the part which is now the Earth was thrown off from the Sun at the end of the Hyperborean Epoch, and commenced to revolve around the parent body in a somewhat different orbit than at present. Shortly afterwards Venus and Mercury were thrown off for similar reasons.

Crystallization always commences at the pole of a planet where motion is slow. The consolidated part gradually works outwards towards the equator in obedience to the centrifugal force. If that force is stronger than the cohesive tendency the consolidated mass is thrown outwards into space.

At the time when the Earth-globe was separated from the parent-mass, it included that part which is now our Moon. On this great globe was evolving the life wave now passing through the human kingdom, also the life waves which entered evolution in the Sun, Moon, and Earth Periods, and are now evolving through the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms.

Mention has been made of the stragglers of various Periods who in later Periods were enabled to take a step upward in evolution. There were some, however, who did not take this step. They did not evolve, and were therefore left further and further behind, until they became a drag and a hindrance to the progressive ones. It became necessary to get them out of the way, that the evolution of the others might not be retarded.

In the beginning of the Lemurian Epoch, these "failures" (note that they were failures, not merely stragglers) had crystallized that part of the Earth occupied by them to such a degree that it become as a huge cinder or clinker, in the otherwise soft and fiery Earth. They were a hindrance and an obstruction, so they, with the part of the Earth they had crystallized, were thrown out into space beyond recall. That is the genesis of the Moon.

The Moon—The Eighth Sphere
The seven Globes, A to G, inclusive, are the field of Evolution. The Moon is the field of Disintegration.

If Earth had not segregated from the original Globe which is now the Sun, the rapidity of the vibrations would have disintegrated man's vehicles. He would have grown so rapidly that the growth of the mushroom would seem slow in comparison. He would have become old before he had time to pass through youth. That such is the effect of too much Sun is shown by the rapidity of growth at the tropics, where maturity and old age are reached much sooner than in the north. On the other hand had the Moon remained with the Earth, man would have crystallized into a statue. The separation of the Earth from the Sun, which now sends its rays from a far distance, enables man to live at the proper rate of vibration, to unfold slowly. The Moon-forces reach him from the exact distance necessary to enable him to build a body of the proper density. But although the latter forces are active in the building of the form, they also cause death when their continued work finally crystallizes the tissues of the body.

The Sun works in the vital body and is the force which makes for life, and wars against the death-dealing Moon force.

The Lemurian Epoch
In this Epoch appeared the Archangels (the humanity of Sun Period). and the Lords of Mind (the humanity of Saturn Period). These Hierarchies were assisted by the Lords of Form, who were given charge of the Earth Period. They helped man to build his desire body, and the Lords of Mind gave the germ of Mind to the greater part of the pioneers who formed class 1, according to the classification in diagram 10.
The Lords of Form vivified the Human spirit in as many of the stragglers of the Moon Period as had made the necessary progress in the three and one half Revolutions which had elapsed since the commencement of the Earth Period, but at that time the Lords of Mind could not give them the germ of Mind. Thus a great part of nascent humanity was left without this link between the threefold spirit and the threefold body.

The Lords of Mind took charge of the higher part of the desire body and of the germinal mind, impregnating them with the quality of separate selfhood, without which no separate, self-contained beings such as we are today would be possible.

We owe to the Lords of Mind the separate personality, with all the possibilities for experience and growth thus afforded. And this point marks the birth of the Individual.

Birth of the Individual
Diagram 1 will make clear the fact that the personality is the reflected picture of the Spirit, the mind being the mirror, or focus.

As when reflected in a pond, the images of trees appear inverted, the foliage seeming to be the deepest down in the water, so the highest aspect of the spirit (the Divine Spirit) finds its counterpart in the lowest of the three bodies (the dense body). The next highest spirit (the life spirit) is reflected in the next lowest body (the vital body). The third spirit (the human spirit) and its reflection, the third body (the desire body), appear closest of all to the reflecting mirror, which is the mind, the latter corresponding to the surface of the pond—the reflecting medium in our analogy.

The Spirit came down from the higher Worlds during involution; and by concurrent action, the Bodies were built upward in the same period. It is the meeting of these two streams in the focusing Mind that marks the point in time when the individual, the human being, the Ego, is born—when the Spirit takes possession of its vehicles.

Yet we must not suppose that this at once raised man to his present status in evolution, making him the self conscious, thinking being he is today. Before that point could be reached a long and weary road had to be traveled, for at the time we are considering, organs were in their most rudimentary stage and there was no brain that could be used as an instrument of expression. Hence the consciousness was the dimmest imaginable. In short, the man of that day was very far from being as intelligent as our present-day animals. The first step in the direction of improvement was the building of a brain to use as an instrument of mind in the Physical World. That was achieved by separating humanity into sexes.

Separation of the Sexes
Contrary to the generally accepted idea, the Ego is bisexual. Were the Ego sexless, the body would necessarily be sexless also, for the body is but the external symbol of the indwelling spirit.

The sex of the Ego does not, of course, express itself as such in the inner worlds. It manifests there as two distinct qualities—Will and Imagination. The Will is the male power and is allied to the Sun forces; Imagination is the female power and is always linked to the Moon forces. This accounts for the imaginative trend of woman and for the special power which the Moon exercises over the female organism.

When the matter of which the Earth and the Moon were afterwards formed was still a part of the Sun, the body of man-in-the-making was yet plastic, and the forces from that part which afterwards became Sun, and that part which is now Moon worked readily in all bodies, so that the man of the Hyperborean Epoch was hermaphrodite—capable of producing another being from himself without intercourse with any other.

When the Earth separated from the Sun and shortly afterwards threw off the Moon, the forces from the two luminaries did not find equal expression in all, as formerly. Some bodies become more amenable to the forces from one, and some to those from the other.

Influence of Mars
In the part of the Earth Period preceding the separation of the sexes—during the three and one-half Revolutions which intervened between the time when Mars was differentiated and the beginning of the Lemurian Epoch—Mars traveled in a different orbit from the present, and its aura (that part of its finer vehicles which extends beyond the dense planet) permeated the body of the central planet and polarized the iron with it.

As iron is essential to the production of warm, red blood, all creatures were cold-blooded, or rather, the fluid parts of the body were no warmer than the surrounding atmosphere.

When the Earth was set free from the Central Sun, that event changed the orbits of the planets and thus the influence of Mars over the iron in the Earth was minimized. The Planetary Spirit of Mars finally withdrew the remainder of that influence, and although the desire bodies of the Earth and Mars still penetrate, the dynamic power of Mars over the iron (which is a Mars metal) and iron has become available for use on our planet.

Iron is in reality the basis of separate existence. Without iron the red, heat-giving blood would be an impossibility, and the Ego could have no hold in the body. When red blood developed—in the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch—the body become upright and the time had come when the Ego could begin to dwell within the body and control it.

But to dwell within is not the end and aim of evolution. It is simply a means by which the Ego may better express itself through its instrument, that it may manifest in the Physical World. To that end the sense organs, the larynx, and above all, a brain, must be built and perfected.

During the early part of the Hyperborean Epoch, while the Earth was still united with the Sun, the solar forces supplied man with all the sustenance he needed and he unconsciously radiated the surplus for the purpose of propagation.

When the Ego entered into possession of its vehicles it became necessary to use part of this force for the building of the brain and larynx. The latter was originally a part of the creative organ. The larynx was built while the dense body was yet bent together in the bag-like shape already described, which is still the form of the human embryo. As the dense body straightened and became upright, part of the creative organ remained with the upper part of the dense body and later became the larynx.

Thus the dual creative force which had hitherto worked is only one direction, for the purpose of the creating another being, became divided. One part was directed upward to build the brain and larynx, by means of which the Ego was to become capable of thinking and communicating thoughts to other beings.
As a result of this change only one part of the force essential in the creation of another being was available to one individual, hence it became necessary for each individual to seek the co-operation of another, who possessed that part of the procreative force which the seeker lacked.

Thus did the evolving entity obtain brain consciousness of the outside world at the cost of half its creative power. Previous to that time, it used within itself both parts of that power to externalize another being. As a result of that modification, however, it has evolved the power to create and express thought. Before then, it was a creator in the physical world only; since then it has become able to create in the three worlds.

The Races and Their Leaders
Before considering in detail the evolution of the Lemurians it may be well to take a general survey of the Races and their Leaders.

Some very valuable works on Occultism, bringing before the public the teachings of the Eastern Wisdom, have nevertheless contained certain mistakes, owing to a misunderstanding of the teachings by those who were so fortunate as to receive them. All books, not written directly by the Elder Brothers, are liable to contain such errors. Considering the extreme intricacy and many complications of the subject, the wonder is not that mistakes do occur, but that they are not more frequent. Therefore the writer does not presume to criticize, recognizing that more numerous and more serious mistakes may be embodied in the present work, owing to his own misconception of the teaching. He simply sets forth in the next few paragraphs what he has received, which shows how the differing (and seemingly contradictory) teaching of two such valuable works as "The Secret Doctrine" by H. P. Blavatsky, and "Esoteric Buddhism," by A. P. Sinnett, may be reconciled.

That part of human evolution which is to be accomplished during the present sojourn of the life wave on our Earth is divisible into seven great stages or Epochs; but these cannot appropriately be called Races. Nothing to which that name could be correctly applied appears until the end of the Lemurian Epoch. From that time different Races succeed one another through the Atlantean and Aryan Epochs, and will extend slightly into the Sixth great Epoch.

The total number of Races—past, present and future—in our scheme of evolution is sixteen; one at the end of the Lemurian Epoch, seven during the Atlantean Epoch, seven more in our present Aryan Epoch and one in the beginning of the Sixth Epoch. After that time there will be nothing that can properly be called a Race.

Races did not exist in the Periods which have preceded the Earth Period and they will not exist in those Periods which follow it. It is only here, at the very nadir of material existence, that the difference is so great between man and man as to warrant the separation into Races.

The immediate Leaders of humanity (apart from the creative Hierarchies) who helped man to take the first tottering steps in Evolution, after Involution had furnished him with vehicles, were Beings much further advanced than man along the path of evolution. They came on this errand of love from the two planets which are located between the Earth and the Sun—Venus and Mercury.

The Beings who inhabit Venus and Mercury are not quite so far advanced as those whose present field of evolution is the Sun, but they are very much further advanced than our humanity. Therefore they stayed somewhat longer with the central mass than did the inhabitants of the Earth, but at a certain point their evolution demanded separate fields, so those two planets were thrown off, Venus first, and then Mercury. Each was given such proximity to the central orb as insured the rate of vibration necessary for its evolution. The inhabitants of Mercury are the furthest advanced, hence are closer to the Sun.
Some of the inhabitants of each planet were sent to the Earth to help nascent humanity and are know to occult scientist as the "Lords of Venus" and the "Lords of Mercury."

The Lords of Venus were leaders of the masses of our people. They were inferior beings of the Venus evolution, who appeared among men and were know as "messengers of the Gods." For the good of our humanity they led and guided it, step by step. There was no rebellion against their authority, because man had not yet evolved an independent will. It was to bring him to the stage where he would be able to manifest will and judgment that they guided him, until he should be able to guide himself.

It was known that these messengers communed with the Gods. They were held in deep reverence and their commands were obeyed without question.

When under the tuition of these Beings mankind had reached a certain stage of progress, the most advanced were placed under the guidance of the Lords of Mercury, who initiated them into the higher truths for the purpose of making them leaders of the people. These Initiates were then exalted to kingship and were the founders of the dynasties of Divine Rulers who were indeed kings "by the grace of God," i.e., by the grace of the Lords of Venus and Mercury, who were as Gods to infant humanity. They guided and instructed the kings for the good of the people and not for self-aggrandizement and arrogation of rights at their expense.

At that time a Ruler held a sacred trust to educate and help his people; to alleviate and promote equity and well-being. He had the light of God to give him wisdom and guide his judgment. Hence, while those kings reigned, all things prospered, and it was indeed a Golden Age. Yet, as we follow the evolution of man in detail, we shall see that the present phase or period of development, though it cannot be called a golden age in any but a material sense, is nevertheless a necessary one, in order to bring man to the point where he will be able to rule himself, for self-mastery is the end and aim of all rulership. No man can safely remain ungoverned who has not learned to govern himself, and at the present stage of development, that is the hardest task that can be given him. It is easy to command others; it is hard to force obedience from oneself.

Influence of Mercury
The purpose of the Lords of Mercury at that time, and of all Hierophants of Mysteries since then, as also of all the occult schools of our day, was and is to teach the candidate the art of Self-Mastery. In the measure that a man has mastered himself, and in that measure only, is he qualified to govern others.
Were the present rulers of the masses able to govern themselves we should again have the Millennium or Golden Age.

As the Lords of Venus worked on the masses of a long past ago, so do the Lords of Mercury now work on the Individual, fitting him for mastery over self and (incidentally only, not primarily) for mastery over others. This work on their part is but the beginning of what will be an increasing Mercurial influence during the remaining three and one-half Revolutions of the Earth Period.

During the first three and one-half Revolutions Mars held sway, polarizing the iron, preventing the formation of the red blood and keeping the Ego from immuring itself in the body until the latter had attained at the requisite degree of development.

During the last three and one half Revolutions Mercury will operate to extricate the Ego from its densest vehicle by means of Initiation.

Incidentally, it may be noted that, as Mars polarized the iron, so Mercury has polarized the metal bearing its name and the workings of that metal will show very well this tendency to take the dense body away from the spirit—to liberate the latter from the former.

That dread disease, syphilis, is an example of condition were the Ego is fettered and immured in the body to a particularly cramping extent. Sufficient mercury relieves the condition, lessens the hold of the body upon the Ego and leaves the latter to that comparative freedom within the body, an overdose of mercury causes paralysis, thus taking the dense body from the man in an improper way.

The Lords of Mercury taught man to leave and re-enter the body at will; to function in his higher vehicles independent of the dense body, so that the latter becomes a cheerful dwelling house instead of a closely-locked prison—a useful instrument instead of a clogging fetter.

Therefore occult science speaks of the Earth Period as Mars-Mercury, and so it may be said truly that we have been in Mars and are going to Mercury, as taught in one of the occult works previously mentioned. It is also true, however, that we have never inhabited the planet Mars, nor are we to leave the earth at some future time to take up our abode on the planet Mercury, as the other work mentioned states, with the intention of correcting an error in the first one.

Mercury, now being in obscuration, is exercising very little influence on us, but it is emerging from a planetary rest and as time goes on its influence will be more and more in evidence as a factor in our evolution. The coming Races will have much help from the Mercurians, and the people of still later Epochs and Revolutions will have even more.

The Lemurian Race
We are now in a position to understand the information which is to follow concerning the people who lived in the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch, whom we may call the Lemurian Race.

The atmosphere of Lemuria was still very dense—somewhat like the fire-fog of the Moon Period, but denser. The crust of the Earth was just starting to become quite hard and solid in some places, while in others it was still fiery, and between islands of crust was a sea of boiling, seething water. Volcanic outbursts and cataclysms marked this time when the nether fires fought hard against the formation of the encircling wall which was to imprison them.

Upon the harder and comparatively cool spots man lived surrounded by giant fern-forests and animals of enormous size. The forms of both man and animal were yet quite plastic. The skeleton had formed, but man himself had great power in molding the flesh of his own body and that of the animals about him.

When he was born he could hear and feel, but his perception of light came later. We have analogous cases in animals like cats and dogs, the young of which receive the sense of sight some time after birth. The Lemurian had no eyes. He had two sensitive spots which were affected by the light of the Sun as it shone dimly through the fiery atmosphere of ancient Lemuria, but is was not until nearly the close of the Atlantean Epoch that he had sight as we have it today. Up to that time the building of the eye was in progress. While the Sun was within—while the Earth formed part of the light-giving mass—man need no external illuminant; he was luminous himself. But when the dark Earth was separated from the Sun it became necessary that the light should be perceived, therefore as the light rays impinged upon man, he perceived them. Nature built the eye as a light-perceiver, in response to the demand of the already-existing function, which is invariable the case, as Professor Huxley has so ably shown. The amoeba has no stomach, yet it digests. It is all stomach. The necessity for digesting food built the stomach in the course of time, but digestion took place before the alimentary canal was formed. In an analogous manner, the perception of light called forth the eye. The light itself built the eye and maintains it. Where there is no light there can be no eye. In cases where animals have withdrawn and dwelt in caves—keeping away from the light—the eyes have degenerated and atrophied because there were no light rays to maintain them and no eyes were needed in the dark caves. The Lemurian needed eyes; he had a perception of light, and the light was commencing to build the eye in response to his demand.

His language consisted of sounds like those of Nature. The sighing of the wind in the immense forests which grew in great luxuriance in that super-tropical climate, the rippling of the brook, the howling of the tempest—for Lemuria was storm-swept—the thunder of the waterfall, the roar of the volcano—all these were to him voices of the Gods from whom he knew himself to have descended.

Of the birth of his body he knew nothing. He could not see either it or anything else, but he did perceive his fellow beings. It was, however, an inner perception, like our perception of persons and things in dreams, but with this very important difference, that his dream-perception was clear and rational.

Thus he knew nothing at all about his body, in fact he did not know he had a body any more than we know we have a stomach when that organ is in good health. We remember its existence only when our abuse of it causes us to feel pain there. Under normal conditions we are entirely unconscious of its processes. Similarly did the body of the Lemurian serve him excellently, although he was unaware of its existence. Pain was the means of making him aware of his body and of the world without.

Everything in connection with the propagation of the race and the bringing to birth was done by direction of the Angels under the leadership of Jehovah, the Regent of the Moon. The propagative function was performed as stated times of the year when the lines of force, running from planet to planet, were focused at proper angles. Thus the creative force encountered no obstruction and parturition was painless. Man was unaware of birth, because at that time he was unconscious of the physical world as he now is during sleep. It was only in the intimate contact of sex relation that the spirit became aware of the flesh and then man "knew" his wife. That is shown is such passages of the Bible as "Adam knew Eve and she bore Seth"; "Elkanah knew Hannah and she bore Samuel"; and Mary's question, "How I shall conceive, seeing I know no man?" This is also the key to the meaning of the "Tree of Knowledge," the fruit of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, so that they came to know both good and evil. Previously they had known only good, but when they began to exercise the creative function independently, they were ignorant of stellar influences, as their descendants, and Jehovah's supposed curse was not a curse at all, but a simple statement of the result which must inevitably follow use of their generative force which failed to take into consideration the effect of the stellar rays on childbirth.

Thus the ignorant use of the generative force is primarily responsible for pain, sickness and sorrow.
The Lemurian knew no death because when, in the course of long ages, his body dropped away, he entered another, quite unconscious of the change. His consciousness was not focused in the physical world, therefore the laying aside of one body and the taking of another was no more to him than a leaf or twig drying and falling away from the tree and being replaced by a new growth.

Their language was to the Lemurians something holy. It was not a dead language like ours—a mere orderly arrangements of sounds. Each sound uttered by the Lemurian had power over his fellow-beings, over the animals and even over nature around him. Therefore, under the guidance of the Lords of Venus, who were the messengers of God—the agents of the creative hierarchies— the power of speech was used with great reverence, as something most holy.

The education of the boys differed greatly from that of the girls. The Lemurian methods of education seem shocking to our more refined sensibilities. In order to spare the reader's feelings, only the least cruel of them will be touched upon. Strenuous in the extreme as they may seen, it must be remembered that the Lemurian body was not nearly so high-strung as are the human bodies of the present day; also that it was only by the very harshest measures that the exceedingly dim consciousness could be touched at all. As time went on and the consciousness became more and more awakened, such extreme measures as those used then became unnecessary and have passed away, but at that time they were indispensable to arouse the slumbering forces of the spirit to a consciousness of the outside world.
The education of the boys was designed especially to develop the quality of Will. They were made to fight one another, and these fights were extremely brutal. They were impaled upon spits, with full power to release themselves, but by exercising the will power they were to remain there in spite of the pain. They learned to make their muscles tense, and to carry immense burdens by the exercise of the Will.

The education of the girls was intended to promote the development of the imaginative facility. They also were subjected to strenuous and severe treatment. They were put out in the great forests, to let the sound of the wind in the tree tops speak to them and to listen to the furious outbursts of flood and tempest. They thus learned to have no fear of those paroxysms of nature and to perceive only the grandeur of the warring elements. The frequent volcanic outbursts were greatly valued as a means of education, being particularly conducive to the awakening of the faculty of memory.

Such educational methods would be entirely out of the question at the present day, but they did not make the Lemurian morbid, because he had no memory. No matter what painful or terrifying experience he endured, everything was forgotten as soon as past. The above mentioned strenuous experiences were for the purpose of developing memory, to imprint these violent and constantly repeated impacts from without upon the brain, because memory is necessary that the experiences of the past may be used as guides to Action.

The education of the girls developed the first germinal, flickering memory. The first idea of good and evil was formulated by them because of their experiences, which worked chiefly on the imagination. Those experiences most likely to leave a recollection were thought "Good;" those which did not produce that much desired result were considered "Evil."

Thus woman became the pioneer in culture, being the first to develop the idea of "a good life," of which she became the esteemed exponent among the ancients and in that respect she has nobly led the vanguard ever since. Of course, as all Egos incarnate alternately as male and female, there is really no pre-eminence. It is simply that those who for the time being are in a dense body of the feminine gender have a positive vital body, and are therefore more responsive to spiritual impacts than when the vital body is negative as in the male.

As we have seen, the Lemurian was a born magician. He felt himself a descendant of the Gods, a spiritual being; therefore his line of advancement was by gaining not spiritual, but material knowledge. The Temples of Initiation for the most advanced did not need to reveal to man his high origin; to educate him to perform feats of magic; to instruct him how to function in the desire world and the higher realms. Such instruction is necessary today because now the average man has no knowledge of the spiritual world, nor can he function in superphysical realism. The Lemurian, however, in his own way, did possess that knowledge and could exercise those faculties, but on the other hand, he was ignorant of the Laws of the Cosmos of facts regarding the physical world which are matters of common, everyday knowledge with us. Therefore at the School Initiation he was taught art, the laws of Nature and facts relating to the physical universe. His will was strengthened and his imagination and memory wakened so that he could correlate experiences and devise ways and means of action when his past experiences did not serve to indicate a proper course of procedure. Thus, the Temples of Initiation in the Lemurian times were High Schools for the cultivation of Will-power and Imagination, with "post-graduate courses" in Art and Science.

Yet, though the Lemurian was a born magician, he never misused his powers because he felt himself related to the Gods. Under his direction of the Messengers of the Gods, already spoken of, his forces were directed toward the molding of forms in the animal and the plant worlds. It may be hard for the materialist to understand how he could do such work if he could not see the world about him. It is true man could not "see" as we understand the term and as he now sees objects outside in space with his physical eyes. Still, as the purest of our children are clairvoyant to this day while they remain in a state of sinless innocence, the Lemurians possessed an internal perception which gave them only a dim idea of the outward shape of any object; but illuminated so much the brighter its inner nature, its soul-quality, by a spiritual apperception born of innocent purity.

Innocence, however, is not synonymous with Virtue. Innocence is the child of Ignorance and could not be maintained in a universe where the purpose of evolution is the acquisition of Wisdom. To attain that end, a knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, is essential, also choice of action.
If, having knowledge and choice, man ranges himself on the side of Good and Right he cultivates Virtue and Wisdom. If he succumbs to temptation and does wrong knowingly, he fosters vice.

God's plan is not to be brought to naught, however. Every act is a seed-ground for the Law of Consequence. We reap what we sow. The weeds of wrong action bear flowers of sorrow and suffering, and when the seeds from then have fallen into a chastened heart, when they have been watered by the tears of repentance Virtue will eventually blossom forth. What blessed assurance, that out of every evil we do, Good will eventually accrue, for in our Father's Kingdom naught but Good can endure.

Therefore, the "Fall" with its consequent pain and suffering is but a temporary state where we see through a glass darkly, but anon we shall behold again face to face the God within and without, who is ever perceived by the pure in heart.

The Fall of Man
This is kabalistically described as the experience of one pair who, of course, represent humanity. The key is given in the verse where the Messenger of the Gods says to the woman, "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children;" the clue is also found in the sentence of death which was pronounced at that same time.

It will be observed that previous to the Fall the consciousness was not focused in the physical world. Man was unconsciousness of propagation, birth and death. The Angels who have charge of and work in the vital body (the medium of propagation) regulated the propagative function and brought the sexes together at certain seasons of the year, using the solar and the lunar forces when they produced conditions most propitious for fecundation, the union being achieved unconsciously by the participants at first, but later it produced a momentary physical cognition. Then the period of gestation caused no inconvenience and parturition was painless, the parent being plunged in deep sleep. Birth and death involved no break in the conscious and were therefore non-existent to the Lemurians.

Their consciousness was directed inward. They perceived physical things in a spiritual way, as we perceive them in a dream—at which time all that we see is within ourselves.

When "their eyes opened" and their consciousness was directed outward toward the facts of the physical world, conditions were altered. Propagation was directed, not by the Angels, but by man, who was ignorant of the operation of the Sun and Moon forces. He also abused the sex-function, using it for sense-gratification, with the result that pain attended the process of child-bearing. Then his consciousness became focused in the physical world, although all things did not appear to his vision with clearly defined outlines until the latter part of the Atlantean Epoch. Still he came by degrees to know death because of the break made in his consciousness when it was shifted to the higher worlds at death and back to the physical world at rebirth.

The "opening of the eyes" was brought about in the following manner: We remember that when the sexes separated, the male became an expression for Will, which is one part of the twofold soul-force; the female expressing the other part, Imagination. If woman were not imaginative she could not build the new body in the womb and were not the spermatozoa an embodiment of the concentrated human will, it could not accomplish impregnation and so commence the germination, which results in the continued segmentation of the ovum.

These twin-forces, Will and Imagination, are both necessary to the propagation of bodies. Since the separation of the sexes, however, one of these forces remains within each individual and only the part given out is available for propagation. Hence the necessity for a one-sexed being who expresses the complementary soul-force. This was previously explained; also that the part of the soul-force not used for propagation becomes available for inner growth. So long as man sent out the full, dual sex-force for generation, he could accomplish nothing in the direction of soul-growth for himself. But since then the part not used through the sex organ has been appropriated by the indwelling spirit to build the brain and the larynx for its expression.

Thus man built on, all through the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch and the first two-thirds of the Atlantean Epoch until, by the above mentioned use of this half of his sex-force, he became a fully-conscious, thinking, reasoning, being.

In man the brain is the link between the spirit and the outside world. He can know nothing of the outside world except through the medium of the brain. The sense organs are merely carriers to the brain of impacts from without and the brain is the instrument which interprets and coordinates those impacts. The Angels belonged to a different evolution and had never been imprisoned in a dense and cumbrously slow vehicle such as ours. They had learned to obtain knowledge without a physical brain. Their lowest vehicle is the vital body. Wisdom came to them as a gift, without the necessity of laboriously thinking it out through a physical brain.

Man, however, had to "fall into generation," and work for his knowledge. The spirit, by means of one part of the sex-force directed inward, built the brain to gather knowledge from the physical world, and the same force is feeding and building the brain today. It is subverted from its proper course inasmuch as it should have gone outward for procreation, but man retains it for selfish purposes. No so the Angels. They had experienced no division of their soul-powers, therefore they could send out the dual soul-force without selfish reservation.

The force that goes outward for the purpose of creating another being is Love. The Angels sent our their whole love, without selfishness or desire and in return, Cosmic Wisdom flowed into them.
Man sends out only part of his love; the residue he selfishly keeps and uses to build his inner organs of expression, to improve himself; thus does his love become selfish and sensual. With one part of his creative soul-power he selfishly loves another being because he desires co-operation in propagation. With the other part of his creative soul-power he thinks (also for selfish reasons) because he desires knowledge.

The Angels love without desire, but man had to go through selfishness. He must desire and work for wisdom selfishly, that he may reach selflessness at a higher stage.

The Angels helped him to propagate even after the subversion of part of the soul-force. They helped him to build the physical brain, but they had no knowledge that could be transmitted by means of it, because they did not know how to use such an instrument and could not speak directly to a brain being. All they could do was to control the physical expression of the love of man and guide it through the emotions in a loving, innocent way, thus saving man the pain and trouble incident to the exercise of the sex-function without wisdom.

Had that regime lasted, man would have remained simply a God-guided automaton and would never have become a personality—an individual. That he had become so is due to a much maligned class of entities called the Lucifer Spirits.

The Lucifer Spirits
These spirits were a class of stragglers in the life wave of the Angels. In the Moon Period they worked themselves far ahead of the great mass of those who are now the most advanced of our humanity. They have not progressed as far as the Angels who were the pioneer humanity of the Moon Period, however, but they were so much in advance of our present humanity that it was impossible for them to take a dense body as we have done; yet they could not gain knowledge without the use of an inner organ, a physical brain. They were half-way between man who has a brain and the Angels who need none—in short, they were demi-gods.

They were thus in a serious situation, The only way they could find an avenue through which to express themselves and gain knowledge was to use man's physical brain, as they could make themselves understood by a physical being endowed with a brain, which the Angels could not.

As said, in the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch man did not see the physical world as we do now. To him the desire world was much more real. He had the dream-consciousness of the Moon Period—an inner picture-consciousness; he was unconscious of the world outside himself. The Lucifers had no difficultly in manifesting to his inner consciousness and calling his attention to his outward shape, which he had not theretofore perceived. They told him how he could cease being simply the servant of external powers, and could become his own master and like unto the gods, "knowing good and evil." They also made clear to him that he need have no apprehension if his body died, inasmuch as he had within himself the creative ability to form new bodies without the mediation of the Angels. All of which information was given with the one purpose of turning his consciousness outward for the acquirement of knowledge.

This the Lucifers did that they might profit by it themselves—to gain knowledge as man acquired it. They brought to him pain and suffering where there was none before; but they also brought him the inestimable blessing of emancipation from outside influence and guidance, thereby starting him on the road to the evolution of his own spiritual powers—an evolution which will eventually enable him to upbuild himself with wisdom such as that of the Angels and other Beings Who guided him before he first exercised free will.

Before man's enlightenment by the Lucifer Spirits he had not known sickness, pain nor death. All of these resulted from the unwise use of the propagative faculty and its abuse for the gratification of the senses. Animals in their wild state are exempt from sickness and pain, because their propagation is carried on under the care and direction of the wise group spirit at only those times of the year which are propitious to that process. The sex-function is designed solely for the perpetuation of the species and under no circumstances for the gratification of sexual desire.

Had man remained a God-guided automaton, he would have known no sickness, pain, no death unto this day; but he would also have lacked the brain-consciousness and independence which resulted from his enlightenment by the Lucifer Spirits, the "light-givers," who opened the eyes of his understanding and taught him to use his then dim vision to gain knowledge of the Physical World which he was destined to conquer.

From that time there have been two forces working in man. One force is that of the Angels, who build new beings in the womb by means of Love which is turned downward for procreation; they are therefore the perpetuators of the race.

The other force is that of the Lucifers, who are the instigators of all mental activity, by means of the other part of the sex-force, which is carried upward for work in the brain.

The Lucifers are also called "serpents" and are variously represented in different mythologies. More will be said about them when we come to the analysis of Genesis. For the present enough has been said to warrant us in pursuing the main line of investigation, which leads us to follow the progress of man's evolution still further, through the Atlantean and Aryan Epochs, down to the present day.

What has been said about the enlightenment of the Lemurians applies to only a minor portion of those who lived in the latter part of that Epoch, and who became the Seed for the Seven Atlantean Races. The greater part of the Lemurians were animal-like and the forms inhabited by them have degenerated into the savages and anthropoids of the present day.

The student is requested to note carefully that it was the forms which degenerated. There is a very important distinction to be kept in mind between the bodies (or forms) of a race, and the Egos (or life) which is reborn in those race-bodies.

When a race is born, the forms are ensouled by a certain group of spirits and have inherent capability of evolving to a certain stage of completion and no further. There can be no standing still in nature, therefore when the limit of attainment has been reached the bodies or forms of that race begin to degenerate, sinking lower and lower until at last the race dies out.

The reason is not far to seek. New race bodies are particularly flexible and plastic, affording great scope for the Egos who are reborn in them to improve these vehicles and progress thereby. The most advanced Egos are brought to birth in such bodies and improve them to the best of their ability. These Egos, however, are only apprentices as yet, and they cause the bodies to gradually crystallize and harden until the limit of improvement of that particular kind of body has been reached. Then forms for another new race are created, to afford the advancing Egos further scope for more extended experience and greater development. They discard the old race bodies for the new, their discarded bodies becoming the habitations for less advanced Egos who, in their turn, use them as stepping-stones on the path of progress. Thus the old race bodies are used by Egos of increasing inferiority, gradually degenerating until at last there are no Egos low enough to profit by rebirth in such bodies. The women then become sterile and the race-forms die.

We may easily trace this process by certain examples. The Teutonic-Anglo-Saxon race (particularly the American branch of it) has a softer, more flexible body and a more high-strung nervous system than any other race on earth at the present time. The Indian and Negro have much harder bodies and, because of the duller nervous system, are much less sensitive to lacerations, An Indian will continue to fight after receiving wounds the shock of which would prostrate or kill a white man, whereas the Indian will quickly recover. The Australian aborigines or Bushmen furnish an example of a race dying out on account of sterility, notwithstanding all that the British government is doing to perpetuate them.

It has been said by white men against the white race, that wherever it goes the other races dies out. The whites have been guilty of fearful oppression against those other races, having in many cases massacred multitudes of the defenseless and unsuspecting natives—as witness the conduct of the Spaniards towards the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, to specify but one of many instances. The obligations resulting from such betrayal of confidence and abuse of superior intellect will be paid—yea, the last, least iota!—by those incurring them. It is equally true, however, that even had the whites not massacred, starved, enslaved, expatriated and otherwise maltreated those older races, the latter would nevertheless have died out just as surely, though more slowly, because such is the Law of Evolution—the Order of Nature. At some future time the white race-bodies when they become inhabited by the Egos who are now embodied in red, black, yellow or brown skins, will have degenerated so far that they also will disappear, to give place to other and better vehicles.

Science speaks only of evolution. It fails to consider the lines of degeneration which are slowly but surely destroying such bodies as have crystallized beyond possibility of improvement.

The Atlantean Epoch
Volcanic cataclysms destroyed the greater part of the Lemurian continent and in its stead rose the Atlantean continent, where the Atlantic Ocean now is.

Material scientists, impelled by the story of Plato to undertake researched regarding Atlantis, have demonstrated that there is ample foundation for the story that such a continent did exist. Occult scientists know that it existed and they also know that the conditions there were such as shall now be described.

Ancient Atlantis differed from our present world in many ways, but the greatest difference was in the constitution of the atmosphere and the water of that Epoch.

From the southern part of the planet came the hot, fiery breath of the volcanoes which were still abundantly active. From the north swept down the icy blasts of the Polar region. The continent of Atlantis was the meeting place of those two currents, consequently its atmosphere was always filled with a thick and murky fog. The water was not so dense as now, but contained a greater proportion of air. Much water was also held in suspension in the heavy, foggy Atlantean atmosphere.

Through this atmosphere the Sun never clearly shone. It appeared to be surrounded by an aura of light-mist, as do street-lamps when seen through a dense fog. It was then possible to see only a few feet in any direction and the outlines of all objects not close at hand appeared dim, hazy and uncertain. Man was guided more by internal perception than by external vision.

Not only the country, but also the man of that time was very different from anything existent on earth at the present time. He had a head, but scarcely any forehead; his brain had no frontal development; the head sloped almost abruptly back from a point just above the eyes. As compared with our present humanity; he was a giant; his arms and legs were much longer, in proportion to this body, than ours. Instead of walking, he progressed by a series of flying leaps, not unlike those of the kangaroo. He had small blinking eyes and his hair was round in section. The latter peculiarity, if no other, distinguishes the descendants of the Atlantean races who remain with us at the present day. Their hair was straight, glossy, black and round in section. That of the Aryan, thought it may differ in color, is always oval in section. The ears of the Atlantean sat much further back upon the head than do those of the Aryan.

The higher vehicles of the early Atlanteans were not drawn into a concentric position in relation to the dense body, as are ours. The spirit was not quite an indwelling spirit; it was partially outside, therefore could not control its vehicles with as great facility as though it dwelt entirely inside. The head of the vital body was outside of and held a position far above the physical head. There is a point between the eyebrows and about half an inch below the surface of the skin, which has a corresponding point in the vital body. This point is not the pituitary body, which lies much deeper in the head of the dense body. It might be called "the root of the nose." When these two points in the dense and the vital bodies come into correspondence, as they do in man today, the trained clairvoyant sees then as a black spot, or rather as a vacant space, like the invisible core of a gas flame. This is the seat of the indwelling spirit in the man—the Holy of Holies in the temple of the human body, barred to all but that indwelling human Ego whose home it is. The trained clairvoyant can see with more or less distinctness, according to his capacity and training, all the different bodies which form the aura of man. This spot alone is hidden from him. This is the "Isis" whose veil none may lift. Not even the highest evolved being on earth is capable of unveiling the Ego of the humblest and least developed creature. That, and that alone upon earth, is so sacred that it is absolutely safe from intrusion.

These two points just spoken of—the one in the dense body and its counterpart in the vital body—were far apart in the men of the early Atlanteans days, as they are in the animals of our day. The head of the horse's vital body is far outside the head of its dense body. The two points are closer together in the dog than in any other animal except, perhaps, the elephant. When they come into correspondence we have an animal prodigy, able to count, spell, etc.

On account of the distance between these two points, the Atlantean's power of perception or vision was much keener in the inner Worlds than in the dense Physical World, obscured by its atmosphere of thick, heavy fog. In the fullness of time, however, the atmosphere slowly became clearer; at the same time, the point spoken of in the vital body came closer and closer to the corresponding point in the dense body.
As the two approached each other, man gradually lost touch with the inner Worlds. They became dimmer as the dense Physical World became clearer in outline. Finally, in the last third of the Atlantean Epoch, the point in the vital body was united to the corresponding point in the dense body. Not until then did man become fully awake in the dense Physical World; but at the same time that full sight and perception in the Physical World were gained, the capability of perceiving the inner Worlds were gradually lost to most of the people.

In an earlier time the Atlantean did not clearly perceive the outline of an object or a person, but he saw the soul and at once knew its attributes, whether they were beneficial to him or otherwise. He knew whether the man or animal he was regarding was kindly or inimically disposed toward him. He was accurately taught by spiritual perception how to deal with others and how to escape harm. Therefore when the Spiritual World gradually faded from his consciousness, great was his sorrow at the loss.
The Rmoahals were the first of the Atlantean Races. They had but little memory and that little was chiefly connected with sensation. They remembered colors and tomes, and thus to some extend they evolved Feeling. The Lemurian had entirely lacked Feeling, in the finer signification of the word. He had the sense of touch, could feel the physical sensations of pain, ease and comfort, but not the mental and spiritual ones of joy, sorrow, sympathy and antipathy.

With memory came to the Atlanteans the rudiments of a language. They evolved words and no longer made use of mere sounds, as did the Lemurians. The Rmoahals began to give names to things. They were yet a spiritual race and, their soul-powers being like the forces of nature, they not only named the objects around them, but in their words was power over the things they named. Like the last of the Lemurians, their Feelings as spirits inspired them, and no harm was ever done to one another. To them the language was holy, as the highest direct expression of the spirit. The power was never abused or degraded by gossip or small talk. By the use of definite language the soul in this race first became able to contact the soul of things in the outside world.

The Tlavatlis were the second Atlantean Race. Already they began to feel their worth as separate human beings. They became ambitious, they demanded that their works be remembered. Memory became a factor in the life of the community. The remembrance of the deeds done by certain ones would cause a group of people to choose as their leader one who had done great deeds. This was the germ of Royalty.

This remembrance of the meritorious deeds of great men was carried even beyond the time when such leaders died. Mankind began to honor the memory of ancestors and to worship them and others who had shown great merit. That was the beginning of a form of worship which is practiced to this day by some Asiatics.

The Toltecs were the third Atlantean Race. They carried still further the ideas of their predecessors, inaugurating Monarchy and Hereditary Succession. The Toltecs originated the custom of honoring men for the deeds done by their ancestors, but there was then a very good reason for so doing. Because of the peculiar training at that time, the father had the power to bestow his qualities upon his son in a way impossible to mankind at the present time.

The education consisted of calling up before the soul of the child pictures of the different phases of life. The consciousness of the early Atlantean was, as yet, principally an internal picture-consciousness. The power of the educator to call up these pictures before the soul of the child was the determining factor upon which depended the soul qualities that would be possessed by the grown man. The instinct and not the reason was appealed to and aroused and by this method of education the son, in the great majority of cases, readily absorbed the qualities of the father. It is thus evident that there was at that time good reason for bestowing honor upon the descendants of great men, because the son almost always inherited most of his father's good qualities. Unfortunately, that is not the case in our time, although we still follow the same practices of honoring the sons of great men; but we have no reason whatever for doing so.

Among the Toltecs, experience came to be highly valued. The man who had gained the most varied experience was the most honored and sought. Memory was in them so great and accurate that our present memory is nothing in comparison. In an emergency, a Toltec of wide practical experience would be very likely to remember similar cases in the past, and suggest what action should be taken. Thus be became a valuable adviser to the community when a situation developed which none of the members had previously encountered and they were unable to think or reason from analogy as to how to deal promptly with the emergency. When such an individual was not available, they were compelled to experiment in order to find what was best to do.

In the middle third of Atlantis we find the beginning of separate nations. Groups of people who discovered in one another similar tastes and habits would leave their old homes and found a new colony. They remembered old customs and followed them in their new homes as far as they suited, forming new ones to meet their own particular ideas and necessities.

The Leaders of mankind initiated great Kings at that time to rule the people, over whom they were given great power. The masses honored these kings with all the reverence due to those who were thus truly Kings "by the grace of God." This happy state, however, had in it the germ of disintegration, for in time the Kings become intoxicated with power. They forgot that it had been put into their hands by the grace of God, as a sacred trust; that they were made Kings for the purpose of dealing justly by and helping the people. They began to use their power corruptly, for selfish ends and personal aggrandizement instead of for the common good, arrogating themselves privileges and authorities never intended for them. Ambition and selfishness ruled then and they abused their high, divinely derived powers, for purposes of oppression and revenge. This was true, not only of the Kings, but also of the nobles and the higher classes, and when one considers the power possessed by them over their fellow beings of the less developed classes, it is easy to understand that its misuse would bring about terrible conditions.

The Original Turanians were the fourth Atlantean Race. They were especially vile in their abominable selfishness. They erected temples where the Kings were worshiped as gods, and caused the extreme oppression of the helpless lower classes. Black magic of the worst and most nauseating kind flourished and all their efforts were directed towards the gratification of vanity and external display.

The Original Semites were the fifth and most important of the seven Atlantean Races, because in them we find the first germ of the corrective quality of Thought. Therefore the Original Semitic Race become the "seed race" for the seven races of the present Aryan Epoch.

In the Polarian Epoch man acquired a dense body as an instrument of action. In the Hyperborean Epoch the vital body was added to give power of motion necessary to action. In the Lemurian Epoch the desire body furnished incentive to action.

The mind was given to man in the Atlantean Epoch to give purpose to action, but as the Ego was exceedingly weak and the desire nature strong, the nascent mind coalesced with the desire body, the faculty of Cunning resulted and was the cause of all the wickedness of the middle third of the Atlantean Epoch.

In the Aryan Epoch Thought and Reason were to be evolved by the work of the Ego in the mind to conduct Desire into channel leading to the attainment of spiritual perfection, which is the Goal of Evolution. This faculty of Thought and of forming Ideas was gained by man at the expense of loss of control over the vital forces—i.e., power over Nature.

With Thought and Mind man can at present exercise power over the chemicals and minerals only, for his mind is now in the first of mineral stage of its evolution, as was his dense body in the Saturn Period. He can exercise no power over plant or animal life. Wood and various vegetable substances, together with different parts of the animals, are used by man in his industries. These substances are all in the final analysis chemical matter ensouled by mineral life, of which the bodies in all the kingdoms are composed, as previously explained. Over all these varieties of chemical mineral combinations man at his present stage may have dominion, but until he has reached the Jupiter Period, that dominion will not be extended so that he can work with life. In that Period, however, he will have the power to work with plant life as the Angels do at present in the Earth Period.

Material scientist have labored for many years in an endeavor to "create" life, but they will not succeed until they have learned that they must approach the laboratory table with the deepest reverence, as they would draw near to the alter in a Temple—with purity of heart and with holy hands, devoid of greed and selfish ambition.

Such is the wise decision of the Elder Brothers, who guard this and all the deep secrets of Nature until man shall be fit to use them for the uplifting of the race—for the glory of God and not for personal profit or self-aggrandizement.

It was, however, this very loss of power over the vital forces which the Atlanteans suffered that made it possible for man to evolve further. After that, no matter how great his selfishness became, it could not prove absolutely destructive of himself and of Nature, as would have been the case had the growing selfishness been accompanied by the great power possessed by man in his innocent former state. Thought that works onlyin man is powerless to command Nature and can never endanger humanity, as would be possible were Nature's forces under man's control.

The Original Semites regulated their desires to some extent by the mind, and instead of mere desires, came cunning and craftiness—the means by which those people sought to attain their selfish ends. Though they were a very turbulent people, they learned to curb their passions to a great extend and accomplish their purposes by the use of cunning, as being more subtle and potent than mere brute strength. They were the first to discover that "brain" is superior to "brawn."

During the existence of this Race, the atmosphere of Atlantis commenced to clear definitely, and the previously mentioned point in the vital body came into correspondence with its companion point in the dense body. The combination of events gave man the ability to see objects clearly with sharp, well-defined contours; but it also resulted in loss of sight pertaining to the inner Worlds.

Thus we see, and it may be well to definitely state it as a law: No progress is ever made that is not gained at the cost of some previously possessed faculty, which is later regained in a higher form.
Man built the brain at the expense of the temporary loss of the power to bring forth offspring from himself alone. In order to get the instrument wherewith to guide his dense body, be became subject to all the difficulty, sorrow and pain which is involved in the co-operation necessary to the perpetuation of the race; he obtained his reasoning power at the cost of the temporary loss of his spiritual insight.
While reason benefited him in many ways, it shut from his vision the soul of things which had previously spoken to him, and the gaining of the intellect which is now man's most precious possession was at first but sadly contemplated by the Atlantean, who mourned the loss of spiritual sight and power which marked its acquisition.

The exchange of spiritual powers for physical faculties was necessary, however, in order that man might be able to function, independent of outside guidance, in the Physical World which he must conquer. In time his higher powers will be regained when, by means of his experiences in his journey through the denser Physical World, he has learned to use them properly. When he possessed them, he had no knowledge of their proper use, and they were too precious and too dangerous to be used as toys, with which to experiment.

Under the guidance of a great Entity, the Original Semitic Race was led eastward from the continent of Atlantis, over Europe, to the great waste in Central Asia which is known as the Gobi Desert. There it prepared them to be the seed of the seven Races of the Aryan Epoch, imbuing them potentially with the qualities to be evolved by their descendants.

During all the previous ages—from the commencement of the Saturn Period, through the Sun and Moon Periods, and in the three and one-half Revolutions of the Earth Period (the Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, and earlier part of the Atlantean Epochs)—man had been led and guided by higher Beings, without the slightest choice. In those days he was unable to guide himself, not yet having evolved a mind of his own; but at last the time had come when it was necessary for his further development that he should begin to guide himself. He must learn independence and assume responsibility for his own actions. Hitherto he had been compelled to obey the commands of his Ruler; now his thoughts were to be turned from the visible Leaders, the Lords from Venus, whom he worshiped as messengers from the gods—to the idea of the true God, the invisible Creator of the System. Man was to learn to worship and obey the commands of a God he could not see.

Their Leader therefore called the people together and delivered a soul-stirring oration, which might be thus expressed:
Hitherto, you have seen Those who led you, but there are Leaders of varying grades of splendor, higher than They, Whom you have not seen, Who guided your every tottering step in the evolution of consciousness.
Exalted above all these glorious Beings stands the invisible God Who has created the heaven, and the earth upon which you dwell. He has willed to give you dominion over all this land, that you may be fruitful and multiply in it.
This invisible God only must you worship, but you must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth, and not make any graven image of Him, nor use any likeness to picture Him to yourselves, because He is everywhere present, and is beyond any comparison or similitude.
If you follow His precepts, He will bless you abundantly in all good. If you stray from His ways, evil will follow. The choice is yours. You are free; but you must endure the consequences of your own actions.
The education of man proceeds by four great steps. First, he is worked upon from without unconsciously. Then he is placed under the Rulership of Divine Messengers and Kings whom he sees, and whose commands he must obey. Next he is taught to revere the commands of a God whom he does not see. Finally, he learns to rise above the commands; to become a law unto himself; and, by conquering himself of his own free will, to live in harmony with the Order of Nature, which is the Law of God.

Fourfold also are the steps by which man climbs upward to God.

First, through fear, he worships the God whom he begins to sense, sacrificing to propitiate Him, as do the fetish-worshipers.

Next, he learns to look to God as the giver of all things, and hopes to receive from Him material benefits here and now. He sacrifices through avarice, expecting that the Lord will repay a hundredfold, or to escape swift punishment by plague, war, etc.

Next, he is taught to worship God by prayer and the living of a good life; and that he must cultivate faith in a Heaven where he will be rewarded in the future; and to abstain from evil that he may escape a future punishment in Hell.

At last he comes to a point where he can do right without any thought of reward, bribe, or punishment, but simply because "it is right to do right." He loves right for its own sake and seeks to govern his conduct thereby, regardless of present benefit or injury, or of painful results at some future time.
The Original Semites had reached the second of these steps. They were taught to worship an invisible God and to expect to be rewarded by material benefits, or punished by painful afflictions.

Popular Christianity is at the third step. Esoteric Christians, and the pupils of all occult schools are trying to reach the highest step, which will be generally achieved in the Sixth Epoch, the new Galilee, when the unifying Christian religion will open the hearts of men, as their understanding is being opened now.

The Akkadians were the sixth and the Mongolians the seventh of the Atlantean Races. They evolved the faculty of thought still further, but followed lines of reasoning which deviated more and more from the main trend of the developing life. The Chinese Mongolians maintain to this day that the old ways are the best. Progress constantly requires new methods and adaptability, keeping ideas in a fluid state, therefore those races fell behind and are degenerating, with the remainder of the Atlantean Races.

As the heavy fogs of Atlantis condensed more and more, the increased quantity of water gradually inundated that continent, destroying the greater part of the population and the evidences of their civilization.

Great numbers were driven from the doomed continent by the floods, and wandered across Europe. The Mongolian races are the descendants of those Atlantean refugees. The Negroes and the savage races with curly hair, are the last remnants of the Lemurians.

The Aryan Epoch
Central Asia was the cradle of the Aryan Races, who descended from the Original Semites. Thence have the different Races gone out. It is unnecessary to describe them here, as historical researches have sufficiently revealed their main features.

In the present (the Fifth or Aryan) Epoch, man came to know the use of fire and other forces, the divine origin of which was purposely withheld from him, that he might be free to use them for higher purposes or his own development. Therefore we have in this present Epoch two classes: One looks upon this Earth and upon man as being of divine origin; the other sees all things from a purely utilitarian viewpoint.

The most advanced among humanity at the beginning of the Aryan Epoch were given the higher Initiations, that they might take the place of the messengers of God, i.e. the Lords of Venus. Such human Initiates were from this time forth the only mediators between God and man. Even they did not appear publicly nor show any signs of wonders that they were Leaders and Teachers. Man was left entirely free to seek them or not, as he desired.

At the end of our present Epoch the highest Initiate will appear publicly, when a sufficient number of ordinary humanity desire, and will voluntarily subject themselves to such a Leader. They will thus form the nucleus for the last Race, which will appear at the beginning of the Sixth Epoch. After that time races and nations will cease to exist. Humanity will form one spiritual Fellowship as before the end of the Lemurian Epoch.

The names of the Races which have spread over the Earth during the Fifth Epoch, up to the present time, are as follows:
  1.  The Aryan, which went south to India
  2. The Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean
  3. The Persian-Greco-Latin
  4. The Celtic
  5. The Teutonic-Anglo-Saxon
From the mixture of the different nations now taking place in the United States will come the "Seed" for the last Race, in the beginning of the Sixth Epoch.

Two more Races will be evolved in our present Epoch, one of them being the Slav. When, in the course of a few hundred years, the Sun, because of the precession of the equinoxes, shall have entered the sign Aquarius, the Russian people and the Slav Races in general will reach a degree of spiritual development which will advance them far beyond their present condition. Music will be the chief factor in bringing this about, for on the wings of music the soul which is attuned may fly to the very Throne of God, where the mere intellect cannot reach. Development attained in that manner, however, is not permanent, because it is one-sided, therefore not in harmony with the law of evolution, which demands that development, to be permanent, must be evenly balanced—in other words, that spirituality shall evolve through, or at least equally with, intellect. For this reason the Slavic civilization will be short-lived, but it will be great and joyful while it lasts, for it is being born of deep sorrow and untold suffering, and the law of Compensation will bring the opposite in due time.

From the Slavs will descend a people which will form the last of the seven Races of the Aryan Epoch, and from the people of the United States will descend the last of all the Races in this scheme of evolution, which will run its course in the beginning of the Sixth Epoch.

The Sixteen Paths to Destruction
The sixteen Races are called the "Sixteen paths to destruction" because there is always, in each Race, a danger that the soul may become too much attached to the Race; that it may become so enmeshed in Race characteristics it cannot rise above the Race idea, and will therefore fail to advance; that it may, so to speak, crystallize into that Race and consequently be confined to the Race bodies when they start to degenerate, as happened to the Jews.

In Periods, Revolutions, and Epochs where there are no Races, there is much more time, and the likelihood of becoming fossilized is not so great, nor so frequent. But the sixteen Races are born and die in such a relatively short time there is grave danger that the one who gets too much attached to conditions may be left behind.

Christ is the great unifying Leader of the Sixth Epoch, and He enunciated this law when He uttered those little-understood words: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

"And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me cannot be my disciple.

". . . whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."

Not that we are to leave, nor underestimate family ties, but that we are to rise above them. Father and mother are "bodies"; all relations are part of the Race—which belongs to Form. The souls must recognize that they are not Bodies, nor Races, but Egos striving for perfection. If a man forgets this, and identifies himself with his Race—clinging to it with fanatic patriotism—he is likely to become enmeshed in and sink with it when his compeers have passed to greater heights on the Path of Attainment.

Chapter XIII

Back to the Bible

In our age the missionary spirit is strong. The Western churches are sending missionaries all over the world to convert the people of every nation to a belief in their creeds; nor are they alone in their proselyting efforts. The East has commenced a strong invasion of Western fields, and many Christians who have become dissatisfied with the creeds and dogmas taught by the clergy and impelled to search for truth to satisfy the demands of the intellect for an adequate explanation of the problems of life, have familiarized themselves with, and in many cases accepted, the Eastern teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.

From an occult point of view, this missionary effort, whether from East to West or vice versa, is not desirable, because it is contrary to the trend of evolution. The great Leaders of humanity Who are in charge of our development give us every aid necessary to that end. Religion is one of these aids, and there are excellent reasons why the Bible, containing not only one, but both the Jewish and Christian religions, should have been given to the West. If we earnestly seek for light we shall see the Supreme Wisdom which has given us this double religion and how no other religion of the present day is suitable to our peculiar needs. To this end we will in this chapter touch again upon certain points previously brought out in various places and connections.

In the Polarian, Hyperborean and Lemurian Epochs the task of leading humanity was a comparatively easy one, for man was then without mind, but when that disturbing element came in during the first part of the Atlantean Epoch, he developed Cunning, which is the product of the mind unchecked by the spirit. Cunning acts as an aid to desire, regardless of whether the desire is good or bad, whether it will bring joy or sorrow.

In the middle of the Atlantean Epoch the spirit had drawn completely into its vehicles and commenced to work in the mind to produce Thought and Reason: the ability to trace a given cause to its inevitable effect, and to deduce from a given effect the cause which produced it. The faculty of Reasoning or Logic was to become more fully developed in the Aryan Epoch, and therefore the Original Semites (the fifth race of the Atlantean Epoch) were a "chosen people," to bring out that germinal faculty to such a ripeness that it would be impregnated into the very fiber of their descendants, who would thus become the New Race.

To transmute Cunning into Reason proved no easy task. The earlier changes in man's nature had been easily brought about. He could then be led without difficulty because he had no conscious desire, nor mind to guide him, but by the time of the Original Semites he had become cunning enough to resent limitations of his liberty and to circumvent repeatedly the measures taken to hold him in line. The task of guiding him was all the more difficult because it was necessary he should have some liberty of choice, that he might in time learn self-government. Therefore a law was enacted which decreed immediate rewards for obedience and instant punishment for disregard of its provisions. Thus was man taught, coaxed and coerced into reasoning in a limited manner that "the way of the transgressor is hard," and that he must "fear God," or the Leader Who guided him.

Out of all who were chosen as "seed" for the new Race, but few remained faithful. Most of them were rebellious and, so far as they were concerned, entirely frustrated the purpose of the Leader by intermarrying with the other Atlantean Races, thus bringing inferior blood into their descendants. That is what is meant in the Bible where the fact is recorded that the sons of God married the daughters of men. For that act of disobedience were they abandoned and "lost." Even the faithful died, according to the body, in the Desert of Gobi (the "Wilderness") in Central Asia, the cradle of our present Race.
They reincarnated, as their own descendants of course, and thus inherited the "Promised Land," the Earth as it is now. They are the Aryan Races, in whom Reason is being evolved to perfection.

The rebellious ones who were abandoned are the Jews, of whom the great majority are still governed more by the Atlantean faculty of Cunning than by Reason. In them the race-feeling is so strong that they distinguish only two classes of people: Jews and Gentiles. They despise the other nations and are in turn despised by them for their cunning, selfishness and avarice. It is not denied that they give to charity, but it is principally, if not exclusively, among their own people and rarely internationally, as was done in the case of the earthquake disaster in Italy, where barriers of creed, race and nationality were forgotten in the humanfeeling of sympathy.

In such cases as that and the San Francisco disaster, the inner spiritual nature of man becomes more in evidence than under any other circumstances, and the close observer may then discern the trend of evolution. The fact then becomes manifest that though in the stress of ordinary life our actions may deny it, nevertheless at heart we know and acknowledge the great truth that we are brothers and the hurt of one is really felt by all. Such incidents, therefore, point out the direction of evolution. The control of man by Reason must be succeeded by that of Love, which at present acts independent of and sometimes even contrary to the dictates of Reason. The anomaly arises from the fact that Love, at present, is rarely quite unselfish and our Reason is not always true. In the "New Galilee," the coming Sixth Epoch, Love will become unselfish and Reason will approve its dictates. Universal Brotherhood shall then be fully realized, each working for the good of all, because self-seeking will be a thing of the past.
That this much-to-be-desired end may be attained, it will be necessary to select another "chosen people" from the present stock to serve as a nucleus from which the new Race shall spring. This choosing is not to be done contrary to the will of the chosen. Each man must choose for himself; he must willingly enter the ranks.

Races are but an evanescent feature of evolution. Before the end of the Lemurian Epoch there was a "chosen people," different from the ordinary humanity of that time, who became the ancestors of the Atlantean Races. From the fifth race of those another "chosen people" was drawn, from which the Aryan Races descended, of which there have been five and will be two more. Before a new Epoch is ushered in, however, there must be "a new Heaven and a new earth"; the physical features of the Earth will be changed and its density decreased. There will be one Race at the beginning of the next Epoch, but after that every thought and feeling of Race will disappear. Humanity will again constitute one vast Fellowship, regardless of all distinctions. Races are simply steps in evolution which must be taken, otherwise there will be no progress for the spirits reborn in them. But, though necessary steps, they are also extremely dangerous ones, and are therefore the cause of grave concern to the Leaders of mankind. They call these sixteen Races "the sixteen paths to destruction," because , while in previous Epochs the changes came after such enormous intervals that it was easier to get the majority of the entities in line for promotion, it is different with the Races. They are comparatively evanescent; therefore extra care must be taken that as few of the spirits as possible become enmeshed in the fetters of Race.

This is exactly what happened to the spirits reborn in the Jewish Race-bodies. They attached themselves so firmly to the Race that they are drawn back into it in successive births. "Once a Jew, always a Jew" is their slogan. They have entirely forgotten their spiritual nature and glory in the material fact of being "Abraham's seed." Therefore they are neither "fish nor flesh." They have no part in the advancing Aryan Race and yet they are beyond those remnants of the Lemurian and Atlantean peoples which are still with us. They have become a people without a country, an anomaly among mankind.

Because of their bondage to the Race-idea, their one-time Leader was forced to abandon them, and they became "lost." That they might cease to regard themselves as separate from other peoples, other nations were stirred up against them at various times by the Leaders of humanity and they were led captive from the country where they had settled, but in vain. They stubbornly refused to amalgamate with others. Again and again they returned in a body to their arid land. Prophets of their own Race were raised up who mercilessly rebuked them and predicted dire disaster, but without avail.

As a final effort to persuade them to cast off the fetters of Race, we have the seeming anomaly that the Leader of the coming Race, the Great Teacher Christ, appeared among the Jews. This still further shows the compassion and Wisdom of the great Beings Who guide evolution. Among all the Races of the Earth, none other was "lost" in the same sense as the Jews; none other so sorely needed help. To send them a stranger, not one of their own Race, would have been manifestly useless. It was a foregone conclusion that they would have rejected him. As the great spirit known as Booker T. Washington incarnated among the Negroes, to be received by them as one of themselves, and thus enabled to enlighten them as no white man could, so the great Leaders hoped that the appearance of Christ among the Jews as one of their own might bring them to accept Him and His teachings and thus draw them out of the meshes of the Race-bodies. But sad it is to see how human prejudice can prevail. "He came unto His own and" they chose Barabbas. He did not glory in Abraham, nor any other of their ancient traditions. He spoke of "another world," of a new earth, of Love and Forgiveness, and repudiated the doctrine of "an eye for an eye." He did not call them to arms against Caesar; had He done so, they would have hailed Him as a deliverer. In that respect He was misunderstood even by His disciples, who mourned as greatly over their vanished hope of an earthly kingdom as over the Friend slain by Roman hands.

The rejection of Christ by the Jews was the supreme proof of their thralldom to Race. Thenceforth all efforts to save them as a whole by giving them special prophets and teachers, were abandoned and, as the futility of exiling them in a body had been proven, they were, as a last expedient, scattered among all the nations of the earth. Despite all, however, the extreme tenacity of this people has prevailed even to the present day, the majority being yet orthodox. In America, however, there is now a slight falling away. The younger generation is commencing to marry outside the Race. In time, an increasing number of bodies, with fewer and fewer of the Race characteristics, will thus be provided for the incarnating spirits of the Jews of the past. In this manner will they be saved in spite of themselves. They become "lost" by marrying into inferior Races; they will be saved by amalgamating with those more advanced.

As the present Aryan Races are reasoning human beings, capable of profiting by past experience, the logical means of helping them is by telling them of past stages of growth and the fate that overtook the disobedient Jews. Those rebels had a written record of how their Leaders had dealt with them. It set forth how they had been chosen and rebelled; were punished; but were yet hopeful of ultimate redemption. That record may be profitably used by us, that we may learn how not to act. It is immaterial that, in the course of ages, it has become mutilated, and that the Jews of today are still under the delusion of being a "chosen people"; the lesson that may be drawn from their experience is none the less valid. We may learn how a "chosen people" may harass their Leader, frustrate His plans, and become bound to a Race for ages. Their experience should be a warning to any future "chosen people".
This Paul points out in unmistakable terms (Heb. ii. 3-4); "For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" and Paul was speaking to Christians, for the Hebrews to whom he wrote this were converted, had accepted Christ and were people whom he expected would, in some future life, be among the new "chosen people", who would willingly follow a Leader and evolve the faculty of Love and spiritual perception, the intuition which shall succeed self-seeking and Reason.

The Christian teaching of the New Testament belongs particularly to the pioneer Races of the Western World. It is being specially implanted among the people of the United States, for as the object of the new Race of the Sixth Epoch will be the unification of all the Races, the United States is becoming the "melting pot" where all the nations of the earth are being amalgamated and from this amalgamation will the next "chosen people," the nucleus, be chiefly derived.

Those spirits, from all countries of the earth, who have striven to follow the teachings of the Christ, consciously or otherwise, will be reborn here, for the purpose of giving them conditions suitable for that development. Hence the American-born Jew is different from the Jew of other countries. The very fact that he has been reborn in the Western World shows that he is becoming emancipated from the Race spirit, and is consequently in advance of the crystallized Old World orthodox Jew, as were his parents, or they would not have conceived the idea of severing the old ties and moving to America. Therefore the American-born Jew is the pioneer who will prepare the path which his compatriots will follow later.

Thus we can see that the Bible contains the teaching peculiarly needed by the Western peoples, that they may be taught a lesson by the awful example of the Jewish Race as recorded in the Old Testament, and learn to live by the teachings of the Christ in the New, willingly offering up their bodies as a living sacrifice upon the altar of Fellowship and Love.

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