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Nº. L
CONCERNING THE ONE LIFE:
BEING A RECAPITULATION (1)
(1)
THE spirit absorbed in man or in the planet does
not exhaust Deity.
Nor does the soul evolved upward
through matter exhaust substance.
There remain, then, ever in the
fourth dimension – the principium – above the manifest, unmanifest God and soul.
The perfection of man and of the
planet is attained when the soul of the one and of the other is throughout
illuminate by spirit.
But spirit is never the same thing as
soul. It is always celestial energy, and soul is always substance.
That which creates is Spirit (God).
The immanent consciousnesses
(spirits) of all the cells of a man’s entity, cause by their polarisation a
central unity of consciousness, which is more than the sum total of all their
consciousnesses, because it is on a higher round or plane.
For in spiritual science everything
depends upon levels; and the man’s evolution works round spirally, as does the
planetary evolution.
In this relation consider the worlds
of form and formless worlds of Hindû theosophy.
Similarly the soul of the planet is
more than the associated essences of the souls upon it: because this soul also
is on a higher plane than they.
Similarly, too, the consciousness of
the solar system is more than that of the associated world-consciousnesses.
And the consciousness of the manifest
universe is greater than that of its corporate systems.
But that of the
unmanifest
is higher and greater still: as, except in substance, God the Father is greater
than God the Son.
The elemental kingdoms represent
spirit on its downward path into matter.
There are three of these before the
mineral is reached.
These are the formless worlds before
the worlds of form.
They are in the planet, and also in
man.
All the planets inhabited by manifest
forms are themselves manifest.
After the form-worlds come other formless worlds, caused by the upward arc of
ascending spirit: but these also are in the planet.
They are also in the man: and are the
states of pure thought.
The thinker, therefore, who is son of
Hermes, is as far beyond the medium who is controlled and who is not
self-conscious, as the formless worlds of the ascending arc are beyond the
formless worlds of the elemental, or descending, arc.
In the planet and in the man they
only seem contiguous because each round is spiral.
But each round takes the One Life
higher in the spiral.
Neither the planet-soul nor the
man-soul goes over exactly the same ground again.
But perverse and disobedient will may
reverse the direction of the spiral.
Individuals in whom
the will so acts are finally abandoned by the planet to the outer sphere.
The One Life is the point of
consciousness.
The will is the impulse which moves
it.
In the celestial the One Life is the
Elohim; and the will is the Father.
The One Life is manifest by
effulgence (the Son).
So, then, the will begets in
substance the effulgence, which is the manifestation of the One Life.
In man and the planet the effulgence
is dim and diffuse until it moves into the soul. Then only Christ is born.
The One Life is invisible until
Christ manifests it.
Christ in man has for counterpart
Adonai in the heavens.
So, then, the One Life is in the
Father-Mother latently, until manifest by the Son (effulgence).
And the procession of the Holy Spirit
is from the Father-Mother through the Son.
Herein is the difference reconciled
between the Greek and
The point of consciousness shineth more and more unto the perfect day of brightness
(“Nativity of Christ” within man).
The object of creation is the
production of “Ancients.” (1)
They are the first-fruits of the
souls of the planets; or First Resurrection.” (First in
dignity, not in time.)
They are not themselves creators; but
are regenerators of that which is created;
Being vehicles for
the Holy Spirit, who is the regenerator, through Christ.
Because will can create only when it
is in the abstract; the derived does not create.
The Father-Mother creates through
Adonai by means of the Holy Spirit.
The will of the perfect man renovates
through the effulgence of his One Life.
His Karma is poured out over the
world to save mankind.
He is the Saviour through his
precious life.
There are twenty-four Ancients,
because there are twelve Avatârs of the Lord, and
every one is dual.
Will, when it is derived through
existence, begets Karma.
God has no Karma. God does not ex-ist: God IS.
Karma is the channel of initiation.
God is not initiated.
The perfect man saves himself and
saves others by his righteousness.
The two terms of existence are
creation and redemption.
The first is God’s work; the second
is the work of Christ, – God in man.
The reason why the Ancient cannot
create is because he is not infinite.
He is immortal, not eternal; he is
derived, not self-subsistent.
His is the point of grace, not the
point of projection.
The thrones of the Ancients are round
about the Throne of God and below it.
The lower self is the cause of the
difference between man and nature.
This lower self is the unreal self,
the magnetic states.
These magnetic states are the
serpent, in whose folds all nature is involved (to man).
It is the serpent that tempts Eve,
the soul.
How does this magnetic self arise?
It is a reflect,
the pole of which is antithetic to the pole of the true self.
The perfect balance is to be in the
centre or equator, between the two.
Nature has no lower self;
consequently she is not self-conscious (does not know that she is “naked”).
The centre of the true self is in
eternity; the poles are in time.
The soul’s proper seat is in the
centre, – eternity.
When she is there, the man is in
eternal life.
This centre is the tree of life.
The tree of the knowledge of good and
evil is the condition of the cognisance of the two poles.
Eating the fruit of this tree is the
act by which the soul beholds these two poles.
While she remained in her first state
she was as nature is, seeing only one pole, the good, and not knowing herself.
There are two modes of God, – the
manifest and the unmanifest.
God manifest rises gradually through
nature to meet God unmanifest.
Every level in nature rises out of
itself to merge in every other level.
When the mind-plane is reached, God
emerges thence as the soul, and looks upon himself.
That into which the soul looks back
is the past of her journey, – time and nature.
That into which she looks forward is
God, – spirit and eternity.
The point she has reached is eternal
life, – the tree in the midst of paradise.
The false self is the mirage in time.
As the planes evolved, their laws
were the laws of God.
But backwards they are the laws of
the Devil.
“A prayer said backwards is an
evocation of the Evil One.”
The God manifest is the true self.
The God unmanifest
is the Divine overshadowing, the true spouse of the
soul.
To know one’s self is no sin.
God planted the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil.
The sin is in the retrogression
towards the astral.
It is the giving of the apple to
Adam.
Adam is commanded; Adam is rebuked.
From the moment of the fall, a new
projection takes place, similar to that of God’s first projection into time.
The wheel turns again, and all is
done over again in the microcosm.
For the retrogression towards the
intellectual (Adam) is a displacement of the centre.
It is a
transference of the tree of life from the place of Eve (the soul) to the
place of Adam.
The centre can be nowhere save in the meeting place of the two lines which intersect at
right angles the two triangles of the “Seal of Solomon.”
There can be but one point of centre, therefore the two trees represent two lines crossed.
When the One Life has reached the
seventh kingdom, then is the Sabbath.
That is the point of return from
Nature – God in Action – to God in God – Rest.
Seven for the
outgoing, seven for the incoming. (1)
Thought in nature is the law of God.
Thought in man is the law of God;
because man is the offspring of nature, and there is but one law.
All the planes in nature express this
thought in unison.
Law in one plane does not conflict
with law in another plane. Therefore God is invariable in nature.
But in man there appears to be
conflict of two diverse wills. How is this, and whence comes the will which
conflicts with the law of God in man?
Man like the world, is constituted of
many planes.
Each plane has its consciousness, and
the medium of one plane is more responsive and powerful in expressing the will
of God than that of another plane.
The same is true of nature’s plane.
It is a question of subtlety and rarefaction of media.
The cause of evolution is the
constant convergence of radii.
That is, – the consciousness of the
mineral plane has a tendency to express itself in a higher plane, i.e.
as vegetable consciousness; and the vegetable as animal; and the animal as
human; and the human as divine.
But when the human is reached, the
whole process begins over again, in petto.
And in man unregenerate, the tendency
is not from behind forwards, in upward order, but in downwards, or retrogressive
series.
For in man all the planes are
consubstantiate, and all their modes of law obtain. Some media are
weaker or denser than others, and these are the lowermost and outermost, –
“touching negation.”
As the earth in its
whirling, or individuation, throws off its Karma, so it is with man.
It is through Karma that initiation
occurs.
Karma is two-faced, good and evil.
But only the good face reflects on us the divine light.
Diana is the moon; so also is Hecate.
The “moon” is good or evil, according
to the condition of the postulant.
Footnotes
(125:1) Written at home, the first five
sections on December 9, 1883, and the rest on January 21, 1884, and regarded by
the writer as an exercise or meditation, based on previous illuminations, rather
than as a fresh illumination. It is unfinished. E.M. Referred to in Life
of Anna Kingsford, vol. ii, p. 33.
(127:1) A.V., “Elders,” Apoc. iv.
(129:1) The
difference between this reckoning and that in “The Great Work,” Part II, No. III, v. 60, 61, is only apparent, the
point which the two series have in common being here reckoned twice over, making
the total in both cases thirteen. E.M.
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