THE RIDDLE OF LIFE/PART 2
CHAPTER
II
THE
SOLAR SYSTEM
A
SOLAR system is a group of worlds circling round a central sun, from which they
draw light, life and energy. On this all theosophists and non-theosophists are
agreed. But the theosophist sees much more than this in a solar system. It is
to him a vast field of evolution, presided over by a divine LORD, who has
created its matter out of the ether of space, permeating this matter with His
Life, organising it into His Body, and from His Heart, the Sun, pouring out the
energy which circulates through the system as its life-blood—life-blood which
returns to the heart when its nutrient properties are exhausted, to be
recharged and sent forth again on its life-sustaining work. Hence a solar
system is, to the theosophist, not merely a splendid mechanism of physical
matter, but the expression of a life, and the nursery of lives derived
therefrom, instinct in every part with latent or active intelligence, desire
and activity. It exists for the sake of the self, in order that the germs of
divinity, the embryonic Selves emanated from the supreme Self, may unfold into
the likeness of the parent-God, whose nature they share, being truly 'partakers
of the divine Nature'. Its globes are 'man-bearing', and not men alone but also
sub-human beings, are its inhabitants. In worlds subtler than the physical
dwell beings more highly evolved than men, as also beings less evolved; beings
clothed in bodies of matter finer than the physical, and therefore invisible to
physical eyes, but none the less active and intelligent; beings among whose
hosts myriads of men are found, men who have, for the time, discarded their
fleshly raiment, but who, none the less, are thinking, loving, active men. And
even during life on our physical earth, encased in the garment of the flesh,
men are in touch with these other worlds and other-world beings, and may be in
conscious relation with them, as the founders, prophets, mystics and seers of
ail the faiths have witnessed.
The
divine LORD manifests Himself in His system in three Aspects, or 'Persons', the
Creator, the Preserver, the Regenerator; these are the Holy Spirit, Son and
Father of the Christian; the Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva of the Hindu; the
Chochmah, Binah and Kether of the Hebrew Kabbalist; the Third, Second and First
Logos of the theosophist, who uses the old Greek term,'the WORD', for the
manifested God.
The
matter of the system is built up by the Third Logos, seven types of atoms being
formed by Him; aggregations composed of these yield the seven fundamental kinds
of matter found in the system, each denser than its predecessor, each kind
being correlated with a distinct stage of consciousness. We call/the matter
composed of a particular type of atom, a plane, or world, and hence recognise
seven such planes in the solar system; the two highest are the divine, or
super-spiritual planes, the planes of the Logoi, and the lower of these two is
the birthplace and habitat of the human self, the Monad, the God in man; the
two succeeding are the spiritual planes, reaching which man realises himself as
divine; the fifth, still densifying, is the intellectual plane; the sixth, the
emotional and passional, the seat of sensations and desires, is generally
called the astral plane; the seventh, the physical plane. The matter of the
spiritual planes is correlated with the spiritual stage of consciousness, and
is so subtle and so plastic that it yields to every impulse of the spirit, and
the sense of separateness is lost in that of unity. The matter of the
intellectual plane is correlated with the intellectual stage of consciousness,
with thought, cognition, and every change in thought is accompanied with a
vibration of its matter. The late W.K. Clifford seems to have recognised
mind-stuff as a constituent of the cosmos, for, as every force needed its
medium, thought, regarded as a force, needed a special kind of matter for its
working. The matter of the astral plane is correlated with the desire stage of
consciousness, every change of emotion, passion, desire and sensation being
accompanied with a vibration of its matter. The matter of the physical plane is
the coarsest or densest, and is the first to be organised for the active
expression of human consciousness.
These
seven kinds of matter, interpenetrating each other—as physical solids, liquids,
gases and ethers interpenetrate each other in the objects round us—are not all
spread evenly over the whole area occupied by a solar system, but are partly
aggregated into planets, worlds or globes; the three finest kinds of matter do
spread over the whole, and are thus common to the system, but the four denser
kinds compose and surround the globes, and the fields occupied by these are not
in mutual touch.
We
read in various scriptures of 'Seven Spirits'; Christianity and Islam have
seven Archangels; Zoroastrianism, seven Amshaspends; Hebraism has seven
Sephiroth; Theosophy calls them the seven planetary Logoi; and they are the
rulers of the planets Vulcan, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and
Neptune.
Each
of these seven planets is the turning-point in a chain of interlinked worlds,
presided over by the planetary Logos, and each chain is a separate field of
evolution from its earliest beginnings up to man. There are thus seven such
subsidiary fields of evolution In a solar system, and they are, naturally, at
different stages of progress. The chain consists of seven globes, of which
generally one is of physical and six of finer matter; in our own chain,
however, our earth has two sister globes visible to physical sight — Mars and
Mercury—and four invisible companions. The wave of evolutionary life, bearing
the evolving beings, occupies one globe at a time—with certain special
exceptions which need not be mentioned here—passing on to the next in order
when the lessons on the earlier have been learned. Thus our humanity has
travelled from globe 1, on the mental plane, to globe 2, on the astral; from
that to globe 3, Mars, and to globe 4, our Earth; it will pass on to globe 5,
Mercury, and from that to globe 6, again on the astral, and thence to globe 7,
on the mental. This completes a great evolutionary Round, as it is aptly
called.
This
huge scheme of evolution cannot be readily grasped by the ignorant, any more
than can the corresponding scheme of the astronomer, which deals only with the
physical plane. Nor is it necessary that it should be understood by those of
small intelligence, since it has no immediate bearing on life. It is
interesting only to the man who, desiring to understand, is ready to grapple
with the deeper problems of nature, and does not grudge strenuous intellectual
exertion.
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