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Preface
5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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ARCHETYPAL MAN
This
important symbol, the signification of which is a key to the
knowledge of the soul's evolution to perfection, represents humanity
perfected potentially on the higher planes in a past cycle of
involution, and now subsisting as the directive efficient cause of
imperfect actual humanity evolving on the lower planes in the
present cycle. When the evolution is complete, the potential is actualised, and the souls are perfected.
"The Spiritual Man is both the import and the highest degree of
creation, for which reason he was formed on the sixth day. As soon
as the Man was created, everything was complete, including the Upper
and Lower Worlds, for everything is comprised in the Man. He unites
in Himself all the forms." - Zohar, III. 48A.
"Now the heavenly Man, as being born in the image of God, has no
participation in any corruptible or earth-like essence." - PHILO,
Works, Yonge, Vol. IV. p. 60.
"The first world, or the Archetypal Man in whose image everything is
formed, is occupied by no one else." - C. D. GINSBURG, The Kabbalah,
p. 111.
The soul carries her knowledge with her to the earth, so that
everything which she learns here below she knew already, before she
entered into this world (Zohar, III. 61, в). - Ibid., p. 116.
We have referred to the ancient Asiatic idea, that above the earth,
in the heavens, existed a true and perfect ideation of everything
created in the universe, visible or invisible. That this perfect
ideal, true, and real, paradigm, was in opposition to, yet in
harmony with, its imperfect shadow, the changeable, by man
considered real,-universe; but the really untrue and unreal. . . .
The Qabbalah holds fully to this idea. It also claims that the first
account of the Creation in Genesis, referred exclusively to this
ideal world and to an Ideal Man. In this first account there is not
any Garden of Eden, nor any Eve, and the Ideal Man is created as an
Androgene, but in the similitude of Elohim." - MYER, Qabbalah, pp.
121-2.
The process of involution of all qualities and forms into matter,
eventuates in the creation of the Archetypal Man, the perfect
prototype and source of all the souls of humanity, when the One
becomes the many in the new cycle of evolution.
"These (Naassenes) honour Logos of all universals Man, and Son of
Man. This Man is male-female, and is called by them Adamas." -
HIPPOLYTUS, Philosophumena, Intro.
“Particular souls, by reason of what they have in common, can only
be understood as derived from a General Soul which is their cause,
but is not identical with all or any of them, . . . containing as
identical with its own nature the eternal ideas of all the forms,
general and particular, that become explicit in the things of time
and space" (Plotinus). - T. WHITTAKER, Neo-Platonists, p. 55.
“All things are from eternity in God, not indeed in gross material
form, but as the work of art exists in the master. When God regarded
himself, he saw the eternal images of all things prefigured in
himself, not, however, in multiplicity, but as one image. Eckhart
follows Thomas in proclaiming the doctrine that there exists an
eternal world of ideas. Distinct from this is the world of
creatures. - UEBERWEG, Hist. of Philos., Vol. I. p. 475.
“These Ideas (i.e. the eternal archetypes of things), which are the
first causes of individual existences, are contained in the Divine
Wisdom or the divine Word, the only-begotten Son of the Father.
Under the influence of the Holy Ghost (or the fostering divine love)
they unfold their effects, which are the created objects, or the
external world." (J. Scotus Erigena.) - Ibid., Vol. I. p. 362.
Speaking about the Son of God, Ruysbrock said-'I believe that the
Son is the Image of the Father, that in the Son have dwelt from all
eternity, foreknown and contemplated by the Father, the prototypes
of all mankind. We existed in the Son before we were born. He is the
creative ground of all creatures -the eternal cause and principle of
their life. The highest essence of our being rests therefore in
God,-exists in his Image in the Son.'" - VAUGHAN, Hours, etc., Vol.
I. p. 326.
"The Celestial Man is the seventh day'; all combat then ceaseth and
it is sanctified. Every regenerate person is a 'sabbath,' when he
becometh celestial; because he is a likeness of the Lord." -
SWEDENBORG, Arc. Cel. to Genesis. ii. 2.
The Higher Self descends matter during six stages of Involution (six
days). The seventh stage is the completed Archetypal Man in whom
activity ceases for a time and he is said to die. Every soul is
destined to become perfect on the higher planes and be made the
image of the Divine Archetype.
“It is taught (in the Upanishads) that the âtman created the
universe and then entered into it as soul. Here for the first time
we meet with the word jîva átman, which later denotes the individual
soul' as contrasted with the supreme. But no such contrast yet
exists here. It is the âtman himself who alone exists and creates
the universe, who as jiva átman enters into the universe that he has
created. Neither from the point of view of pure idealism, nor in its
empirical varieties of pantheism and cosmogonism, does any
opposition exist between the supreme and individual souls. The
contrast between them is first seen at the moment in which the âtman
who creates the universe and then enters into his creation becomes a
duality, the parts of which are set over against one another. We
have described this further accommodation to the empirical
consciousness as Theism, since here the original unity of the âtman
is divided into God and the Soul." - DEUSSEN, Phil. of Upanishads,
p. 258.
From the Absolute (Father) proceeds the manifest God (Son), the
Higher Self (Christ) who descends as Spirit into Matter, imparting
by the process of involution all qualities and forms of growth which
are subsequently to be evolved in nature. The Higher Self is the
Agent of the Supreme, He is all and in all, and operates in
countless ways in the Divine scheme. At a certain stage in the
involutionary cycle the Self starts forth to become the Archetypal
Man by being born on the mental plane in order to commence his
evolution in the aspiring mind. As the germ-soul in the
causal-sheath, he begins to evolve as the ideal life of the Soul.
This spiritual evolution (or potential involution), then, having
proceeded upward when evolution is begun, is capable of being
reflected downwards to the lower planes. The Self makes, as it were,
a trial trip, and thereby becomes organized as the Archetypal Man.
The greater Self undergoes beforehand on the higher planes the ideal
life experiences of the lesser Self which transpire subsequently. In
human evolution these primal experiences of the Self are distorted
beyond recognition, owing to the fact that they do not appear on the
lower planes in a sequential or coherent form.
"The image and likeness of God. . . more probably points to the
Divine pattern and archetype after which man's intelligent nature
was fashioned; reason, understanding, imagination, volition, etc.,
being attributes of God; and man alone of the animals of the earth
being possessed of a spiritual nature which resembled God's nature.
Man in short was a spirit, created to reflect God's righteousness
and truth and love, and capable of holding direct communion with
Him." - STANLEY LEATHES, Smith's Dict. of Bible, art. Adam, p. 44.
“In reference to the world, Christ is the Agent in creation; through
Him are all things' (1 Cor. viii. 6), and we through Him. He
pre-existed in the form of God' (PHIL. ii. 6) from the beginning. He
is the first-born of all creation; in Him and through Him and unto
Him are all things. He is before all things, and in Him all things
hold together' (COL. i. 15, 16). All things are to be summed up in
Him (EPH. i. 10). 'He is all and in all' (COL. iii. 11). His reign
is co-extensive with the world's history. 'He must reign till He
hath put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall
be abolished is death.' Only when all things have been subjected
unto Him, shall the Son also Himself be subjected to Him that did
subject all things unto Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. xv.
24-28). - W. R. INGE, Paddock Lectures, p. 40.
"Christ is the ideal, representative man, the archetype of the race,
as Adam is the concrete, imperfect copy of the archetype. In
Christ,' the pure archetype is imparted to man. As Christ is the
image of the invisible God, So we are 'transformed into the same
image from glory to glory.' By the resurrection the earthly flesh
was over-come, and the spirit of the heavenly man was set free as
the animating principle of a new humanity. This is the meaning of
the new creation.'" - W. R. INGE, Constructive Quarterly, June,
1913.
"Underlying this ceaseless flux is something abiding, archetypal,
spiritual, -something by which these ever-floating atoms are for the
time compelled to take upon themselves the bodily form in which they
are manifested to the senses,-something which holds the same
relation to the ordinary body as that which is held by the Platonic
Idea to the Platonic Eidolon, or by the body celestial to the body
terrestrial. Without such something the ordinary body is simply
nothing. Ordinary body, in short, must hold its very existence in
fee from Spirit, and there is no escape from this conclusion.
Moreover, the traces of archetypal unity which are everywhere
perceptible in the organic world may be looked upon as supplying
evidence to the same effect; for may not these show that the bodies
of different living creatures are not things apart, as they would
seem to be at first sight, but parts of a connected whole which has
its real foundation in the unity of the Divine Being?" - C. B.
RADCLIFFE, Man Trans-corporeal. Cont. Review, Dec., 1874, p. 128.
"Unless God had been first we-our whole human race in general and
each of us in particular-never would have been at all. We are what
we are because He is what He is. Everything which we do God has
first made it possible for us to do. Every act of ours, as soon as
it is done, is grasped into a great world of activity which comes
from Him; and there the influence and effect of our action is
determined. Everything that we know, is true already before our
knowledge of it. Our knowing it is only the opening of our
intelligence to receive what is and always has been a part of His
being, who is the universal Truth. Every deed or temper or life is
good or bad as it is in harmony or out of harmony with Him." -
PHILLIPS BROOKS, Light of the World, p. 40.
"Christ is that perfect Humanity within us, from which we have been
momentarily estranged by selfishness and the want of self-sacrifice,
but which is ever at hand to weld us again into Itself and restore
us to God. For Christ is not a man but MAN.'" - J. G. ADDERLEY,
Symbolism of the Mass.
"It is impossible to think of God except as the infinite and perfect
of ourselves. If it was a human conception, then it was a true human
conception or intuition, of God, of ourselves, and of our relation
to God, that in the beginning laid the foundation of religion in the
fact that we are created or constituted in the image of God; and
that the beginning and principle of all spiritual instinct and
impulse is the natural movement and effort of the spirit in us, to
fulfil itself in that image, to realise itself as Son of God, to
become perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect." - W. P. Du Bose,
Constructive Quarterly, March 1913, p. 11.
“Man may change, but thou art God, and Thy nature is perfection.'
When God begins the nobler creation in any heart, it cannot be that
anything short of the full completion and entire working out of His
purpose and His plan, shall be the goal and end of His activity. If
a Spirit, all-powerful and infinite, is working in me, never can its
work be finished until its work is perfected." - A. MACLAREN,
Sermons, Series, p. 49.
“For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which
is Jesus Christ." - 1 COR. iii. 11.
"Christ recognised Himself as the Man to whom all the past history
of the race had tended, the Man from whom all the future history of
the race was to flow. He declared Himself not only to be a Man, but
the archetypal Man."-STOP- FORD A. BROOKE, Serm., The Baptism of
Christ.
"We are justified in holding that, whatever else He may be, God is
essentially man, that is, He is the fount of humanity. There must be
one side, so to speak, of the infinitely complex being of God in
which humanity is eternally contained, and which finds expression in
the finite universe. Humanity is not a vague term. We ought not to
interpret it in terms of the primeval savage, or even of average
human nature to-day, but in terms of what we have come to feel is
its highest expression, and that is Jesus. If we think, therefore,
of the archetypal eternal Divine Man, the source and sustenance of
the universe, and yet transcending the universe, we cannot do better
than think of Him in terms of Jesus; Jesus is the fullest expression
of that eternal Divine Man on the field of human history." - R. J.
CAMPBELL, The New Theology, p. 89.
"Aristotle's dictum in the Politics, that the nature of a thing is
that which it has become when its process of development is
completed.' That is the other side of the Platonic doctrine of
ideas, that behind and antecedent to things as we see them are the
ideas of them which are perfect and eternal. Every man carries in
him the plan of a Perfect which his own nature at once suggests and
craves after." - J. BRIERLEY, The Eternal Religion, p. 227.
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