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GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS - III

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__The Scintillas are the "Souls," and these Souls appear in the three-fold form of Monads (units), atoms and gods - according to our teaching. "Every atom becomes a visible complex unit (a molecule), and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man." (Esoteric Catechism) Again, "God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body (Atma, Manas and Sthula Sarira) in man." In their septenary aggregation they are the "Heavenly Man" (see Kabala for the latter term); thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. . . . . "The Monads (Jivas) are the Souls of the Atoms, both are the fabric in which the Chohans (Dhyanis, gods) cloth themselves when a form is needed." (Esoteric Catechism)
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__This relates to Cosmic and sub-planetary Monads, not to the Super-Cosmic Monas (the Pythagorean Monad) as called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The Monads of the present dissertation are treated from the standpoint of their individuality, as atomic Souls, before these atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For this descent into concrete matter marks the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but with their life and behaviour in Space, on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional chemist and physicist cannot reach them - unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly clairvoyant faculties.

__It is well known that Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined monadic evolution incorrectly, which is not to be wondered at, since he was not an INITIATE, nor even a Mystic, only a very intuitional philosopher. Yet no psycho-physicist ever came nearer than he has to the esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution - viewed from its several standpoints - i.e., as the universal and the individualized Monad; and the chief aspects of the Evolving Energy, after differentiation - the purely Spiritual, the Intellectual, the Psychic and the Physical - may be thus formulated as an invariable law; a descent of Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from the depths of materiality towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete form and substance up to the LAYA state, or what Science calls "the zero-point," and beyond.
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* Such recent works as the Qabbalah of Mr. Isaac Myer and of Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, fully justify our attitude towards the Jehovistic Deity. It is not the transcendental, philosophical, and highly metaphysical abstraction of the original Kabalistic thought - Ain-Soph-Shekinah-Adam-Kadmon, and all that follows - that we oppose, but the crystallization of all these into the highly unphilosophical, repulsive, and anthropomorphic Jehovah, the androgynous and finite deity for which eternity, omnipotence, and omniscience are claimed. We do not war against the IDEAL REALITY, but the hideous theological Shadow.
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__These states - once the spirit of Esoteric philosophy is grasped - become absolutely necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations. Physical Science having now ascertained, through its department of Chemistry, the invariable law of this evolution of atoms - from their "protylean" state down to that of a physical and then a chemical particle (or molecule) - cannot well reject the same as a general law. And once it is forced by its enemies - Metaphysics and Psychology ? - out of its alleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it more difficult than it now appears to refuse room in the Spaces of SPACE to Planetary Spirits (gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or Ghosts, and others. Already Figuier and Paul D'Assier, two Positivists and Materialists, have succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still greater Scientists will follow in that "intellectual FALL." They will be driven out of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of simple common sense.
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__Here is an example: Prof. W. Crookes' latest discovery of what he has named protyle. In the "Notes on the Bhagavat Gita" by one of the best metaphysicians and Vedantic scholars in India, ? the lecturer, referring cautiously to "things occult" in that great Indian esoteric work, makes a remark as suggestive as it is strictly correct. ". . . Into the details of the evolution of the solar system itself," he says, "it is not necessary for me to enter. You may gather some idea as to the way in which the various elements start into existence from these THREE principles into which MULAPRAKRITI is differentiated (the Pythagorean triangle), by examining the lecture delivered by Professor Crookes a short time ago upon the so-called elements of modern chemistry. This lecture will give you some idea of the way in which these Elements spring from Vishwanara, ? the most objective of these three principles, which seems to stand in the place of the protyle mentioned in that lecture. Except in a few particulars, this lecture seems to give the outlines of the theory of physical evolution on the plane of Vishwanara, and is, so far as I know, the nearest approach made by modern investigators TO THE REAL OCCULT THEORY on the subject."
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? Let not the word "psychology" cause the reader to carry his thought by an association of ideas to modern "Psychologists," so-called, whose idealism is another name for uncompromising materialism, and whose pretended Monism is no better than a mask to conceal the void of final annihilation - even of consciousness. Here Spiritual psychology is meant.
? T. Subba Row, see Theosophist for Feb., 1887.
? "Vishwanara is not merely the manifested objective world, but the one physical basis (the horizontal line of the triangle) from which the whole objective world starts into existence." And this is the Cosmic Duad, the androgynous Substance. Beyond only, is the true Protyle.
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__These words will be re-echoed and approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much from the lectures by Prof. Crookes has already been quoted in ?XII. of these Addenda. Since then, there has been another lecture delivered, as remarkable as the first one, on the "Genesis of the Elements," ? and also a third one. Here we have almost a corroboration of the teachings of Esoteric philosophy concerning the mode of primeval evolution. It is, indeed, as near an approach, made by a great scholar and specialist in chemistry, ** to the Secret Doctrine, as could be made apart from the application of the monads and atoms to the dogmas of pure transcendental metaphysics, and their connection and correlation with "Gods and intelligent Conscious Monads." But Chemistry is now on its ascending plane, thanks to one of its highest European representatives. It is impossible for it to go back to that day when materialism regarded its sub-elements as absolutely simple and homogeneous bodies, which it had raised, in its blindness, to the rank of elements. The mask has been snatched off by too clever a hand for there to be any fear of a new disguise. And after years of pseudology, of bastard molecules parading under the name of elements, behind and beyond which there could be nought but void, a great professor of chemistry asks once more: "What are these elements, whence do they come, what is their signification? . . . . These elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before us mocking - mystifying, and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities." (Gen. of Elem., p. 1.)"
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? By W. Crookes, F.R.S., V.P.C.S., delivered at the Royal Institution, London, on Friday, February 18th, 1887.
** How true it is will be fully demonstrated only on that day when his discovery of radiant matter will have resulted in a further elucidation with regard to the true source of light, and revolutionized all the present speculations. Further familiarity with the northern streamers of the aurora borealis may help the recognition of this truth.
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__Those who are heirs to primeval revelations have taught these "possibilities" in every century, but have never found a fair hearing. The truths inspired to Kepler, Leibnitz, Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ever alloyed with their own speculations in one or another predetermined direction - hence distorted. But now one of the great truths has dawned upon an eminent professor of modern exact science, and he fearlessly proclaims as a fundamental axiom that Science has not made itself acquainted, so far, with real simple elements. For Prof. Crookes tells his audience:

__"If I venture to say that our commonly received elements are NOT simple and primordial, that they have not arisen by chance or have not been created in a desultory and mechanical manner, but have been evolved from simpler matters - or perhaps, indeed, from one sole kind of matter - I do but give formal utterance to an idea which has been, so to speak, for some time 'in the air' of science. Chemists, physicists, philosophers of the highest merit, declare explicitly their belief that the seventy (or thereabouts) elements of our text-books are not the pillars of Hercules which we must never hope to pass." . . . "Philosophers in the present as in the past - men who certainly have not worked in the laboratory - have reached the same view from another side." Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer records his conviction that 'the chemical atoms are produced from the true or physical atoms by processes of evolution under conditions which chemistry has not yet been able to produce.' . . . "And the poet has forestalled the philosopher. Milton (Paradise Lost, Book V.) makes the Archangel Raphael say to Adam, instinct with the evolutionary idea, that the Almighty had created

. . . 'One first matter, all
Indued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance.' "

__Nevertheless, the idea would have remained crystallized "in the air of Science," and never have descended into the thick atmosphere of materialism and profane mortals for years to come, perhaps, had not Professor Crookes bravely and fearlessly reduced it to its simple elements, and thus publicly forced it on Scientific notice. "An idea," says Plutarch, "is a being incorporeal, which has no subsistence by itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of the manifestation." (De Placit. Philos.) The revolution produced in old chemistry by Avogadro was the first page in the Volume of New Chemistry. Mr. Crookes has now turned the second page, and is boldly pointing to what may be the last. For once protyle accepted and recognized - as invisible Ether was, both being logical and scientific necessities - Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it will reappear in its reincarnation as New Alchemy, or METACHEMISTRY. The discoverer of radiant matter will have vindicated in time the Archaic Aryan works on Occultism and even the Vedas and Puranas. For what are the manifested "Mother," the "Father-Son-Husband" (Aditi and Daksha, a form of Brahma, as Creators) and the "Son," - the three "First-born" - but simply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial manifestation is called nitrogen. Even the exoteric descriptions of the "First Born" triad give all the characteristics of these three gases. Priestley, the "discoverer" of Oxygen, or that which was known in the highest antiquity!

__Yet all the ancient, medieval, and modern poets and philosophers have been anticipated even in the exoteric Hindu books. Descartes' plenum of matter differentiated into particles; Leibnitz's Ethereal Fluid and Kant's "primitive fluid" dissolved into its elements; Kepler's Solar Vortex and Systemic Vortices; in short, from the Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the universal mind - through Anaxagoras, down to Galileo, Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and after them to the latest speculations by European mystics - all this is found in the Hindu hymns and Mantras to the "Gods, Monads, and Atoms," in their fulness, for they are inseparable. In esoteric teachings, the most transcendental conceptions of the universe and its mysteries, as the most (seemingly) materialistic speculations are found reconciled, because those sciences embrace the whole scope of evolution from Spirit to matter. As declared by an American Theosophist, "The Monads (of Leibnitz) may from one point of view be called force, from another matter. To occult Science, force and matter are only two sides of the same SUBSTANCE." (Path, No. 10, p. 297.)

__Let the reader remember these "Monads" of Leibnitz, every one of which is a living mirror of the universe, every monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and definition with certain Sanskrit stanzas (Slokas) translated by Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of the Divine Mind, . . . "Hidden in a veil of thick darkness, formed mirrors of the atoms of the world, and cast reflection from its own face on every atom. . . . ."