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Preface
5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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ATALANTA, THE FAIR MAID
A symbol of the love of beauty, harmony and
perfection set before the lower nature.
"She required every suitor who wanted to win her to contend with her
first in the foot-race. She conquered many suitors, but was at
length overcome by Milanion with the assistance of Aphrodite. The
goddess had given him three golden apples, and during the race he
dropped them one after the other beauty charmed Atalanta so much,
that she could not abstain from gathering them, and Milanion thus
gained the goal before her."-Smith's Class. Dict.
The love of beauty and perfection, being at first unattached to the
lower nature, requires, in order to be utilised, that means should
be found to enlist it. Mental imagination (Milanion) having received
from the astral love development (Aphrodite) love of form, sound and
colour (the apples), is able to attract and draw down the higher
love of beauty to itself. And thus an aspect of buddhic emotion
becomes united with mind and originates the æsthetic feelings in
sculpture, music and painting.
Evolution is an unfolding of qualities which are latent, and this
unfolding is in response to stimuli from without. Esthetic feeling (Atalanta),
being of the higher planes, is too subtle to respond to ordinary
mental processes. But when imagination (Milanion) is touched with
love of form, sound and colour, this mental faculty arouses æsthetic
feeling which, from being at first potential and inactive in the
soul, is now made manifest.
"Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the
evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the
world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition
that this is beautiful and that is ugly." - T. H. HUXLEY, Evolution
and Ethics, p. 80.
“Beauty, Goodness, Splendour, Love, all those words of glamour which
exhilarate the soul, are but the man-made names of aspects or
qualities picked out by human intuition as characteristic of this
intense and eternal Life in which is the life of men." - E.
UNDERHILL, Mysticism, p. 35.
"All things that are, are the shadow and image of heavenly things.
The highest lesson they can teach is, to remind us of and to
symbolise for us the uncreated and everlasting Wisdom and Love and
Beauty which lie beneath them, and ripple up through them." - A.
MACLAREN, Sermons, 1st Series, p. 16.
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