The Writings of C
The Evolution of Life
From
A Textbook of Theosophy
By
C
All the impulses of life
which I have described as building the interpenetrating worlds came forth from
the Third Aspect of the Deity. Hence in the Christian scheme that Aspect is
called “the Giver of Life”, the Spirit who brooded over the face of the waters
of space. In theosophical literature these impulses are
usually taken as a
whole, and called the first outpouring.
When the worlds had been
prepared to this extent, and most of the chemical elements already existed, the
second outpouring of life took place, and this came from the Second Aspect of
the Deity. It brought with it the power of combination. In all the worlds it
found existing what may be thought of as elements corresponding to those
worlds. It proceeded to combine those elements into organisms which it then ensouled, and in this way it built up the seven kingdoms
of nature. Theosophy recognizes seven
kingdoms, because it regards man as separate from the animal kingdom, and it
takes into account several stages of evolution which are unseen by the physical
eye, and gives to them the mediaeval name of “elemental kingdoms”.
The divine Life pours
itself into matter from above, and its whole course may be thought of in two
stages the gradual assumption of grosser and grosser matter, and then the
gradual casting off again of the vehicles which have been assumed.
The earliest level upon
which its vehicles can be scientifically observed is the mental – the fifth
counting from the finer to the grosser, the first on which there are separated
globes. In practical study it is found convenient to divide this mental world
into two parts, which we call the higher and lower according to the degree of
density of their matter. The higher consists of the three finer subdivisions of
mental matter; the lower part of the other four.
When the outpouring
reaches the higher mental world it draws together the ethereal elements there,
combines them into what at the level correspond to substances, and of these
substances builds forms which it inhabits. We call this the first elemental
kingdom.
After a long period of
evolution, through different forms at that level, the wave of life, which is
all the time pressing steadily downwards, learns to identify itself so fully
with those forms that, instead of occupying them and withdrawing from them
periodically, it is able to hold them permanently and make them part of itself,
so that now from that level it can proceed to the temporary occupation of forms
at a still lower level. When it reaches this stage we call it the second
elemental kingdom, the ensouling life of which
resides upon the higher mental levels, while the vehicles through which it
manifests are on the lower.
After another vast
period of similar length, it is found that the downward pressure has caused
this process to repeat itself; once more the life has identified itself with
its forms, and has taken up its residence upon the lower mental levels, so that
it is capable of ensouling bodies in the astral
world. At this stage we call it the third elemental kingdom.
We speak of all these
forms as finer or grosser relatively to one another, but all of them are almost
infinitely finer than any with which we are acquainted in the physical world.
Each of these three is a kingdom of nature, as varied in the manifestations of
its different forms of life as in the animal or vegetable kingdom which we
know. After a long period spent in ensouling the
forms of the third of these elemental kingdoms it identifies itself with them
in turn, and so is able to ensoul the etheric part of
the mineral kingdom, and becomes the life which vivifies that – for there is a
life in the mineral kingdom just as much as in the vegetable or the animal,
although it is in conditions where it cannot manifest so freely. In the course
of the mineral evolution the downward pressure causes it to identify itself in
the same way with the etheric matter of the physical world, and from that to ensoul the denser matter of such minerals as are
perceptible to our senses.
In the mineral kingdom
we include not only what are usually called minerals, but also liquids, gases
and many etheric substances the existence of which is unknown to western
science. All the matter of which we know anything is living matter, and the
life which it contains is always evolving. When it has reached
the central point of the mineral stage the downward pressure
ceases, and is replaced by an upward tendency; the outbreathing
has ceased and the indrawing has begun.
When mineral evolution
is completed, the life has withdrawn itself again into the astral world, but
bearing with it all the results obtained through its experiences in the
physical. At this stage it ensouls vegetable forms,
and begins to show itself much more clearly as what we commonly call life –
plant life of all kinds; and at a yet later stage of its development it leaves
the vegetable kingdom and ensouls the animal kingdom.
The attainment of this level is the sign that it has withdrawn itself still
further, and is now working from the lower mental world. In order to work in
physical matter from that mental world it must operate through the intervening
astral matter; and that astral matter is now no longer part of the garment of
the group soul as a whole, but is the individual astral body of the animal
concerned, as will be later explained.
In each of these
kingdoms it not only passes a period of time which is to our ideas almost
incredibly long, but it also goes through a definite course of evolution,
beginning from the lower manifestations of that kingdom and ending with the
highest. In the vegetable kingdom, for example, the life-force might
commence its career by occupying grasses or mosses and end it by ensouling magnificent forest trees. In the animal kingdom
it might commence with the mosquitoes or with animalculae,
and might end with the finest specimens of the mammals.
The whole process is one
of steady evolution from lower forms to higher, from the simpler to the more
complex. But what is evolving is not primarily the form, but the life within
it. The forms also evolve and grow better as time passes; but this is in order
that they may be appropriate vehicles for more and more
advanced waves of life.
When the life has reached the highest level possible in the animal kingdom, it
may then pass on into the human kingdom, under conditions which will presently
be explained.
The outpouring leaves
one kingdom and passes to another, so that if we had to deal with only one wave
of this outpouring we could have in existence only one kingdom at a time. But
the Deity sends out a constant succession of these waves, so that at any given
time we find a number of them simultaneously in operation.
We ourselves represent
one such wave; but we find evolving alongside us another wave which ensouls the animal kingdom – a wave which came out from the
Deity one stage later than we did. We find also the vegetable kingdom, which
represents a third wave, and the mineral kingdom, which represents a fourth;
and occultists know the existence all round us of three elemental kingdoms,
which represent the fifth, sixth and seventh waves. All these, however, are
successive ripples of the same great outpouring from the Second Aspect of the
Deity.
We have here, then, a
scheme of evolution in which the divine Life involves itself more and more
deeply in matter, in order that through that matter it may receive vibrations
which could not otherwise affect it impacts from without, which by degrees
arouse within it rates of undulation corresponding to their own, so that it
learns to respond to them. Later on it learns of itself to generate these rates
of undulation, and so becomes a being possessed of spiritual powers.
We may presume that when
this outpouring of life originally came forth from the Deity, at some level
altogether beyond our power of cognition, it may perhaps have been homogeneous;
but when it first comes within practical cognizance, when it is itself in the
intuitional world, but is ensouling bodies made of
the
matter of the higher mental world, it is already not one huge
world-soul, but many souls. Let us suppose a homogeneous outpouring, which may
be considered as one vast soul at one end of the scale; at the other, when
humanity is reached, we find that one vast soul broken up into millions of the
comparatively little souls of individual men. At any stage between these two
extremes we find an intermediate condition, the immense world-soul already
subdivided, but not to the utmost limit of possible subdivision.
Each man is a soul, but
not each animal or each plant. Man, as a soul, can manifest through only one
body at a time in the physical world, whereas one animal soul manifests
simultaneously through a number of animal bodies, one
plant-soul through, a
number of separate plants. A lion, for example, is not a permanently separate entity
in the same way as a man is. When the man dies – that is, when he as a soul
lays aside his physical body – he remains himself exactly as he was before, an
entity separate from all other entities.
When the lion dies, that
which has been the separate soul of him is poured back into the mass from which
it came – a mass which is at the same time providing the souls for many other
lions. To such a mass we give the name of “group-soul”.
To such a group-soul is
attached a considerable number of lion bodies – let us say a hundred. Each of
those bodies while it lives has its hundredth part of the group-soul attached
to it, and for the time being this is apparently quite separate, so that the
lion is as much an individual during his physical life as the man; but he is
not a permanent individual. When he dies the soul of him
flows back into the group-soul to which it belongs, and that
identical soul-lion cannot be separated from the group.
A useful analogy may
help comprehension. Imagine the group-soul to be represented by the water in a
bucket, and the hundred lion bodies by a hundred tumblers. As each tumbler is
dipped into the bucket it takes out from it a tumblerful
of water (the separate soul). That water for the time being takes the shape of
the vehicle which it fills, and is temporarily separate from the water which
remains in the bucket, and from the water in the other tumblers.
Now put into each of the
hundred tumblers some kind of coloring matter or some kind of flavoring. That will
represent the qualities developed by its experiences in the separate soul of
the lion during its lifetime. Pour back the water from the tumbler into the
bucket; that represents the death of the lion.
The coloring matter or
the flavoring will be distributed through the whole of the water in the bucket,
but will be a much fainter coloring, a much less pronounced flavor when thus
distributed than it was when confined in one tumbler. The qualities developed
by the experience of one lion attached to that
group-soul are therefore shared by the entire group-soul but in a much
lower degree.
We may take out another tumblerful of water from that bucket, but we can never again
get exactly the same tumblerful after it has once
been mingled with the rest. Every tumblerful taken
from that bucket in the future will contain some traces of the coloring or
flavoring put into each tumbler whose contents have
been returned to the
bucket. Just so the qualities developed by the experience of a single lion will
become the common property of all lions who are in the
future to be born from that group-soul, though in a lesser degree than that in which
they existed in the individual lion who developed them.
That is the explanation
of inherited instincts; that is why the duckling which has been hatched by a
hen takes to the water instantly without needing to be shown, how to swim; why
the chicken just out of its shell will cower at the shadow of a hawk; why a
bird which has been artificially hatched, and has never
seen a nest, nevertheless knows how to make one, and makes it
according to the traditions of its kind.
Lower down the scale of
animal life enormous numbers of bodies are attached to a single group-soul –
countless millions, for example, in the case of some of the smaller insects;
but as we rise in the animal kingdom (Page 36) the number of bodies attached to
a single group-soul becomes smaller and smaller, and
therefore the
differences between individuals become greater.
Thus the group-souls,
gradually break up. Returning to the symbol of the bucket, as tumbler after
tumbler of water is withdrawn from it, tinted with some sort of coloring matter
and returned to it, the whole bucketful of water gradually
becomes richer in color.
Suppose that by imperceptible degrees a kind of vertical film forms itself
across the center of the bucket, and gradually solidifies itself into a
division, so that we have now a right half and a left half to the bucket, and
each tumblerful of water which is taken out is
returned always to the same half from which it came.
Then presently a
difference will be set up, and the liquid in one half of the bucket will no
longer be the same as that in the other. We have then practically two buckets,
and when this stage is reached in a group-soul it splits into two, as a cell
separates by fission. In this way, as the experience grows ever richer, the
group-souls grow smaller but more numerous, until at the highest point we
arrive at man with his single individual soul, which no longer returns into a
group but remains always separate.
One of the life-waves is
vivifying the whole of a kingdom; but not every group-soul in that life-wave
will pass through the whole of that kingdom from the bottom to the top. If in
the vegetable kingdom a certain group-soul has ensouled
forest trees, when it passes on into the animal kingdom it will omit all the
lower stages – that is, it will never inhabit insects or reptiles, but will
begin at once at the level of the lower mammals. The insects and reptiles will
be vivified by group-souls which have for some reason left the vegetable
kingdom at a much lower level than the forest tree. In the same way the
group-soul which has reached the highest levels of the animal kingdom, will not
individualize into primitive savages but into men of somewhat higher type, the
primitive savage being recruited from group-souls which have left the animal kingdom
at a lower level.
Group-souls at any level
or at all levels arrange themselves into seven great types, according to the
Minister of the Deity through whom their life has poured forth. These
types are clearly distinguishable in all the kingdoms, and the successive forms
taken by any one of them form a connected series, so that
animals, vegetables, minerals and the varieties of the elemental
creatures may all be arranged into seven groups, and the life coming along one
of those lines will not diverge into any of the others.
No detailed list has yet
been made of the animals, plants or minerals from this point of view; but it is
certain that the life which is found ensouling a mineral
of a particular type will never vivify a mineral of any other type than its
own, though within that type it may vary. When it passes on to the vegetable
and animal kingdoms it will inhabit vegetables and animals of
that type and of no other, and when it eventually reaches humanity it will
individualize into men of that type and of no other.
The method of
individualization is the raising of the soul of a particular animal to a level
so much higher than that attained by its group-soul that it can no longer
return to the latter. This cannot be done with any animal, but only with those
whose brain is developed to a certain level, and the method usually adopted to
acquire such mental development is to bring the animal into
close contact with man.
Individualization, therefore, is possible only for domestic animals, and only
for certain kinds even of those. At the head of each of the seven types stands
one kind of domestic animal – the dog for one, the cat for another, the
elephant for a third, the monkey for a fourth, and so on. The
wild animals can all be
arranged on seven lines leading up to the domestic animals; for example, the
fox and the wolf are obviously on the same line with the dog, while the lion,
the tiger and the leopard equally obviously lead up to the domestic cat; so
that the group-soul animating a hundred lions mentioned
some time ago might at a later stage of its evolution have
divided into, let us say, five group-souls each animating twenty cats.
The life-wave spends a
long period of time in each kingdom; we are now only a little past the middle
of such an aeon, and consequently the conditions are
not favourable for the achievement of that
individualization which normally comes
only at the end of a
period. Rare instances of such attainment may occasionally be observed on the
part of some animal much in advance of the average. Close association with man
is necessary to produce this result. The animal if kindly treated develops
devoted affection for his human friend, and also
unfolds his intellectual powers in trying to understand that friend
and to anticipate his wishes. In addition to this, the emotions and the
thoughts of man act constantly upon those of the animal, and tend to raise him
to a higher level both emotionally and intellectually. Under favourable circumstances this development may proceed so
far as to raise the animal altogether out of touch with the group to which he
belongs, so that his fragment of a group-soul becomes capable of responding to
the outpouring which comes from the First Aspect of the Deity.
For this final
outpouring is not like the others, a mighty outrush affecting thousands or millions
simultaneously; it comes to each one individually as that one is ready to
receive it. This outpouring has already descended as far as the intuitional
world; but it comes no farther than that until this upward leap is
made by the soul of the
animal from below; but when that happens this Third Outpouring leaps down to
meet it, and in the higher mental world is formed an ego, a permanent individuality
– permanent, that is, until, far later in his evolution, the man transcends it
and reaches back to the divine unity from which
he came. To make this
ego, the fragment of the group-soul (which has hitherto played the part always
of ensouling force) becomes in its turn a vehicle,
and is itself ensouled by that divine Spark which has
fallen into it from on high. That Spark may be said to have been hovering in
the monadic world over the group-soul through the whole of its previous
evolution, unable to effect a junction with it until
its corresponding fragment in the group-soul had developed sufficiently to
permit it. It is this breaking away from the rest of the group-soul and
developing a separate ego which marks the distinction between the highest
animal and the lowest man.
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Classic Introductory Theosophy Text
A Text Book of Theosophy By C
What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
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