Theosophy
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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 cannotmanifest 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 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.
______________________
The All Wales
Guide to
Getting Started in Theosophy
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Reincarnation
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From A Textbook
of Theosophy By C W Leadbeater
How We Remember our Past Lives
Life after Death & Reincarnation
The
Slaughter of the
a
great demand by the public for lectures on Reincarnation
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 Outline of Theosophy
Charles Webster Leadbeater
Theosophy - What it is How is it Known?
The Method of Observation General Principles
Advantage Gained from this
Knowledge
The Deity The Divine Scheme The Constitution of Man
The True Man Reincarnation The Wider Outlook
Death Man’s Past and Future Cause and Effect
Quotes
from the Writings of
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky
The Secret Doctrine , Volume 2, Page 100
It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts
that the two opposites — Spirit and Matter — can be cemented together on
Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find
themselves wedded in Eternity.
The Secret Doctrine , Volume 2, Page 108
It is the motive, and the motive alone, which makes any
exercise of power become black, malignant, or white, beneficent Magic. It is
impossible to employ spiritual forces if there is the slightest tinge of
selfishness remaining in the operator .... The powers and forces of animal
nature can equally be used by the selfish and revengeful, as by the unselfish
and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of spirit lend themselves only to
the perfectly pure in heart — and this is Divine Magic.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 36
The Secret Doctrine , Volume 3, Page 14
Even ignorance is better than
Head-learning with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide it.
The Voice of the Silence, Page 43
Annotation - The Path, May, 1888
The Secret Doctrine , Proem [Volume 1], Page 35
Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 210
The Secret Doctrine , Volume 1, Page 134
incarnation of
his God; and when the sense of personal responsibility will be so
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 2, Page 374
It is the
motive, and the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power become
The Secret Doctrine , Volume 2, Page 498
Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 36
From strength to
strength, from the beauty and perfection of one plane to the
greater beauty
and perfection of another, with accessions of new glory, of fresh
knowledge and
power in each cycle, such is the destiny of every Ego, which thus
becomes its own
saviour in each world and incarnation.
The Key to
Theosophy, Page 105
The Secret Doctrine , Volume 1, Page 69
The mind
receives indelible impressions even from chance acquaintance or persons
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 311
The Key to Theosophy, Page 228
A Student of
Katherine Tingley
Katherine
Tingley (1847 -1929)Was the founder & President
of the Point
Loma Theosophical Society 1896 -1929
She and her
students produced a series of informative
Theosophical works in the early years of the 20th century
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man?
Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation
Karma The Seven in Man and Nature
The Occult World
By
Alfred Percy Sinnett
The Occult World is an treatise on the
Occult and Occult Phenomena, presented
in
readable style, by an early giant of
the Theosophical Movement.
Preface to the American Edition Introduction
Occultism and its Adepts The Theosophical Society
First Occult Experiences Teachings of Occult Philosophy
Later Occult Phenomena Appendix
Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
Devachan
Cycles
Arguments Supporting Reincarnation
Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
Psychic Laws, Forces, and Phenomena
Psychic Phenomena and Spiritualism
Karma Fundamental Principles Laws: Natural and Man-Made The Law of Laws
The Eternal Now
Succession
Causation The Laws of Nature A Lesson of The Law
Karma Does Not Crush Apply This Law
Man in The Three Worlds Understand The Truth
Man and His Surroundings The Three Fates
The Pair of Triplets Thought, The Builder
Practical Meditation Will and Desire
The Mastery of Desire Two Other Points
The Third Thread Perfect Justice
Our Environment
Our Kith and Kin Our Nation
The Light for a Good Man Knowledge of Law The Opposing Schools
The More Modern View Self-Examination Out of the Past
Old Friendships
We Grow By Giving Collective Karma Family Karma
National Karma
India’s Karma
National Disasters
Try these if you are looking for a
local Theosophy Group or Centre
UK Listing of Theosophical Groups
Please tell us about your UK Theosophy Group
Worldwide Directory of Theosophical Links
General pages
about Wales, Welsh History
and The History
of Theosophy in Wales
Wales is a
Principality within the United Kingdom
and has an
eastern border with England. The land
area is just
over 8,000 square miles. Snowdon in
North Wales is
the highest mountain at 3,650 feet.
The coastline is
almost 750 miles long. The population
of Wales as at the 2001 census is 2,946,200.
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