Theos-Talk Archives (November 1999 Message tt00009)

Nov 6th 1999

In the last 2 weeks questions evoked a need for a simple
statement on the meaning of KARMA and REINCARNATION.  Further
questions seems to show that there might be a need for a general
statement about Cycles of Evolution.

Accordingly the following is offered for consideration:

Cycles and the Cyclees  --  The Drama of Evolution

		 In 2 parts )


	Part 1 ===

Cycles and Cyclees -- The Drama of Evolution


Many wish to know of the beginning of our Earth, and many myths
legends recount the stories gathered around that event, but are
difficult to decipher.  Or Science speculates on this event,
seeking to define a time period for it, and seeking to define
from geological and ancient evidence what the steps must have
been between "then" and "now."

Scientific perplexities would soon vanish if it were generally
understood that our Earth and solar system is the rebirth and the
reformation of the solar system and Earth that lived before it.
This ancient system had its birth, growth, maturity, old age, and
death -- or cycle of rest -- only to be born again (and all the
sentient entities upon it) into our "present."   WE may surmise
that back of the "old" system and Earth were a series of still
more ancient globes, planets and Suns, until the mind reels in
trying to define an almost infinite regression in time that
approaches bare duration.  For an example the recent Hubble
telescope in space has shown us that there are in the space that
it can sense, enormous time and space dimensions.

Yet we may surmise also, that animating all these various orbs
and Suns and galaxies there is one power, One Life--invisible,
never-changing--the Cause of all changes in intelligence and in
form.

Life does not grow--it is the principle of growing.  Beings grow
and change and become more perfect in intelligence and form.  We
can watch this in ourselves.

Another perplexity might vanish if we could think of beings as
something more than what they appear as forms.  As an example,
when we sleep and dream, we are a perceptive unit and do not have
a form;  that is, our Consciousness is not in the same kind of
body we use when we are awake.  We continue to exist and
experience and eventually awake.  So too, we can conceive of a
whole Universe that at some time goes to sleep, and the beings in
it do not cease to be, but only sleep until that Universe, solar
system or planet reawakens.

The chronicles of ancient China show that the earliest
philosophers theorized that the Universe was filled with germs.
Can we not think of ourselves as being a "germ" of Life ?  In the
vast time and space chasm between periods of "manifestation" can
we not think of ourselves as "seeds" of dormant life, which given
the right circumstances begin to live again?  But we ought also
to consider that the vast totality of all those living "germs" is
the ONE LIFE.  It bides its time to wake, to move, to create
again the right environment, so that all those living beings may
start to breathe again and it releases from sleep the countless
atoms, the many kinds and levels of sentient beings and their
forms.

Ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato and Pythagoras, used a
word monas -- It means One, the Unity.  We use the word Monad.
It is not only the outward form, but it covers the One Life that
is within.  For the Universe it is the ONE LIFE.  For us, it is
Our Life.  It is that which produces the form in which it dwells.
It is the REAL in every form, and it is invisible, though its
presence and its power can be felt.  WE can call it the Spirit of
the being, or of the human.  It is the animating Soul in all
beings, whether we call them atoms, cells, men or Suns.  Thus the
Monad is said to be deathless and eternal, just as science says
that the atom is deathless and eternal, so we might surmise that
the Monadic essence, residing in the atom is a repository for all
growth of experience.  And that leads to the increments in
learning, in Intelligence and a gradual sharpening of the power
of the Consciousness that uses any form.

We may retrospectively say that when the universe wakes up, when
the World wakes up, when we wake up, we find that all the Monads
and their forms of innumerable degrees of intelligence have
recombined into a fresh world for us to work and live in.  The
Theosophical doctrines say that every Monad is a point, a center
of force, a life, a soul, a being and a "self-moving" unit.  Not
all of it is "visible."  In fact most of it is invisible and the
form could be said to be only its manifestation, its phenomena,
on this plane of contact.

This is why not two blades of grass or two snow flakes are
exactly the same.  Each has its own "path of life" and of living.
It pursues these from its own living "center."   Philosophers
observe that this is a universal state of affairs, and they offer
a puzzle for us to think over:  "The Universe," they say, "is
that which has its Center everywhere, and its circumference
nowhere."

Life with its inherent "power to become" to act, to grow, to
move -- ever onward from the simplest forms, the simplest ideas,
to the great complex form and plans of a human form, or a World,
or a galaxy.  When the human form is made perfect, then the
Spiritual being that is the Thinker, the Observer, the "Witness
on the Scene" may come to live in and animate it.  From that
point on human evolution is self-guided.  Its changes are
expressions of Self-knowledge.

If we now picture to ourselves the great Ocean of Life (which is
also Wisdom) we will find that each of its countless drops is a
Monad.  Each Monad has the same potential as the Ocean. It is
like the lest component of a Hologram, it reflects all the rest
of the Monads as well as the Whole.

Continuing our analogy we see in all oceans that there are strong
currents moving relentlessly on the surface as well as deep
under.  And there are also places where there is an eddy, or a
resting space with extremely slow movement, as in the Sargasso
Sea.  We might compare the mineral kingdom to such a resting
place, where the monadic essence there moves very slowly.
Globing together those "mineral monads" could be said to have not
awakened yet to a knowledge of the Ocean, or to their own
independence.  Yet, without that level of monads, that "kingdom
of the minerals" as it is called, gives us all as a basis, no
other kingdom could be.  And, the impulse to grow and to move is
even there to be seen and felt (what is the formation of crystals
indicative of?).  As rocks and mountains wear away, the monadic
essence trapped therein is released to the vegetable kingdom to
use.  Lichen grows out of rocks, more complex vegetable shapes
develop as the monadic essence works its marvels in this new kind
of freedom where response to the contrasts we call heat and cold,
moist and dry are to be found.

Up and on the life-essence moves from plants to animal forms,
where still grater freedom of experience is to be had -- the
development of instinct, or response to situation.  All these
forms follow the outlines of patterns established in the far
distant past, perhaps of earlier universes.  Finally from the
form of the animals, the monadic essence is ready to move into a
human form.  No matter where we may travel in our world, there is
only one form that is human.

Coming to the form that human Intelligence can use, the monadic
essence separates into individual drops.  In the human form we
may see that it is built on its own astral pattern.  It employs
the mineral life-essence and all the experience gained as a
mineral.  Similarly,  for the life essence and experience that is
derived from its voyage through the vegetable and the animal
forms.  Now walking on two feet, the human form is of another
pattern from the animals.  But even so, the form is not the REAL
MAN.

We each know that because we are not our bodies, but, we dwell in
and we use the body as we choose.  The human form is special.
Every atom strives to reach to, and participate in being, a part
of the human form, which from the lower (material) level of
evolution is the goal of those life-atoms.  It is the best that
they can do.

And here, with the special form, evolution would stop, if to
build a perfect physical, visible form were the only goal of that
evolutionary process.  Through the progression in the mineral
kingdom, there was the "breath of life" (prana) and the
"pattern-principle" (astral body).  In the vegetable kingdom
sentience to conditions awoke, besides these two.  And each plant
begins to manifest its beginning individualism, each growing in
its own way.  In the animal body comes a greater freedom and more
special modes of intelligence.  And those are sharpened by the
need to secure food, and to protect and shelter the young.
Cooperation and degrees of both selfishness and unselfishness are
fond to develop there.  The animal principle of instinct is named
kama.

In the human body we find all these are gathered together.  With
a better brain, the kama in man becomes a kind of reason.  But in
infant humanity this is not yet responsibility.  The human form
at that early sage was still a four-fold one.  To these, to
complete the human,  another faculty, another "principle" is
needed.  This wen installed will make of the four-fold man as
Seven-principled being.  It is important to realize that the REAL
MAN did not derive from the evolution of the lower kingdoms.  The
REAL MAN is a "god."  And to become in truth a "God upon Earth,"
he has to first learn here to live and act as a god-like being
would, and as a "god" would live in the company of other "gods."


==========================




Dallas
dalval@nwc.net 


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