Theos-Talk Archives (November 2001 Message tt00589)

>From THE SECRET DOCTRINE by H.P. Blavatsky

Vol. 1, Page 179
Now what is a "Monad?" And what relation does it bear to an Atom? The
following reply is based upon the explanations given in answer to
these questions in the above-cited article: "The Mineral Monad,"
written by the author. 

"None whatever," is answered to the second question, "to the atom or
molecule as existing in the scientific conception at present. It can
neither be compared with the microscopic organism, once classed among
polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable, and classed
among Algae; nor is it quite the Monas of the Peripatetics. Physically
or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course, from the
human monad, which is neither physical nor can its constitution be
rendered by chemical symbols and elements." In short, as the spiritual
Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose rays,
nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the "Individual
Monads" of men, 
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Vol. 1, Page 178 
so the Mineral Monad -- being at the opposite point of the circle --
is also One -- and from it proceed the countless physical atoms, which
Science is beginning to regard as individualized. 

Otherwise how could one account for and explain mathematically the
evolutionary and spiral progress of the Four Kingdoms? The "Monad" is
the combination of the last two "principles" in man, the 6th and the
7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad" applies only to
the dual soul (Atma-Buddhi), not to its highest spiritual vivifying
Principle, Atma, alone. But since the Spiritual Soul, if divorced from
the latter (Atma) could have no existence, no being, it has thus been
called . . . . Now the Monadic, or rather Cosmic, Essence (if such a
term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and animal, though the
same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to
the Deva Kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be
very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity trailing its
slow way in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms, and after an
incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being;
in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an
atom of horneblende. Instead of saying a "Mineral Monad," the more
correct phraseology in physical Science, which differentiates every
atom, would of course have been to call it "the Monad manifesting in
that form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom." The atom, as
represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle
of something, animated by a psychic something, destined after aeons to
blossom as a man. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal
Energy which itself has not yet become individualized; a sequential
manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean (of matter) does
not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of
the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The
tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is gradual, and in
the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied
the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the pantheistic sense; and the
Occultists, while accepting this thought for convenience sake,
distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the concrete
from the abstract by terms of which the "Mineral, Vegetable, Animal,
(etc.), Monad" are examples. The term merely means that the tidal wave
of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The
"Monadic 
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Vol. 1, Page 179 
Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual
consciousness in the Vegetable Kingdom. As the Monads are uncompounded
things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence
which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation, which
properly constitutes the Monad -- not the atomic aggregation, which is
only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and
the higher degrees of intelligence. 

Leibnitz conceived of the Monads as elementary and indestructible
units endowed with the power of giving and receiving with respect to
other units, and thus of determining all spiritual and physical
phenomena. It is he who invented the term apperception, which together
with nerve- (not perception, but rather) -- sensation, expresses the
state of the Monadic consciousness through all the Kingdoms up to
Man. 

Thus it may be wrong on strictly metaphysical lines to call
Atma-Buddhi a MONAD, since in the materialistic view it is dual and
therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit, and vice versa; and since
the Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable apart from
each other; so in the case of Atma-Buddhi. The latter being the
vehicle of the former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Atma, as
Adam-Kadmon, the Kabalistic Logos, does to En-Soph, or Mulaprakriti to
Parabrahm.