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Preface
5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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EVOLUTION AND INVOLUTION
Evolution is the gradual emerging into objective
activity of qualities and faculties which have been previously
involved to perfection in the matter of the lower planes.
"If the Monad begins its cycle of incarnations through the three
objective kingdoms on the descending curved line, it has necessarily
to enter on the re-ascending curved line of the Sphere as a man
also. On the descending arc it is the spiritual which gradually
transforms into the material. On the middle line of the base, Spirit
and Matter arc equilibrised in Man. On the ascending arc, Spirit is
slowly reasserting itself at the expense of the physical, or Matter,
so that, at the close of the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round, the
Monad will find itself as free from Matter and all its qualities as
it was in the beginning: having gained in addition the experience
and wisdom, the fruitage of all its personal lives, without their
evil and temptations. This order of evolution is found in the first
and second chapters of Genesis, if one reads it in its true esoteric
sense; for Chapter i. contains the history of the first Three
Rounds, as well as that of the first Three Races of the Fourth
(Round), up to the moment when Man is called to conscious life by
the Elohim of Wisdom." - H. P. BLAVATSKY, Secret Doctrine, Vol. II.
p. 190.
“When the soul is fully involved, "Spirit and Matter are
equilibrized” in the Archetypal Man, the Adam (Kadmon) of Genesis i.,
or the Christ who descended into the lower parts of the earth," and
of whose "body and members the human race now consists.
“I say that Christ is the last Word of Evolution just because it was
the first, if it had not been the Alpha it could not be the Omega.
It is the unveiling of Reality, the Reality that changeth not, the
Reality without a second, without rival or superior." - R. J.
CAMPBELL, Serm., The Source of Good.
"The putting forth of finite beings from the Deity was called by
Scotus (Erigena) the process of unfolding, and in addition to this,
he taught the doctrine of the return of all things unto God, or
their deification." - UEBERWEG, Hist. of Philos., Vol. I. p. 359.
"Rightly interpreted, religion is life. For all human life, on this
side of death and on the other, is the resurrection of Christ and
his ascension to the Father. Whatever this world may have been like
at its birth, it was the in-folding of the life of God in
preparation for a vast spiritual unfolding which is now going on and
in which we individually and collectively are taking part. That
infolding was, as it were, the laying of a divine body in the tomb
of matter, the sacrifice, of a divine life to death; we are now
watching and co-operating in the issuing forth and rising up of that
divine life, 'the Christ that is to be.' We are individually members
of the body of this Christ and of one another; to see it is to find
life, to miss it is to abide in death. Christ rises in every man who
has caught this vision and given himself to it.' - R. J. CAMPBELL,
Serm., The Resurrection Life.
“You cannot have evolution without something to evolve; evolution
does not create anything, it only reveals it. What we are to-day,
therefore, is the partial unfolding of some immeasurably greater
Fact than can probably ever be fully expressed under material
conditions.” - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm., The Persistence of Jesus.
'The doctrine of creation by development or evolution is a true
doctrine, and is in no way inconsistent with the idea of divine
operation; but the development is not of the original substance.
Being infinite and eternal, that is perfect always. Development is
the manifestation of the qualities of that substance in the
individual. Development is intelligible only by the recognition of
the inherent consciousness of the substance of existence. Of the
qualities of that substance as manifested in the individual, Form is
the expression. And it is because development is directed by
conscious, experienced, and continually experiencing intelligence,
which is ever seeking to eliminate the rudimentary and imperfect,
that progression occurs in respect of Form. The highest product,
man, is the result of the Spirit working intelligently within. But
man attains his highest, and becomes perfect, only through his own
voluntary co-operation with the Spirit. There is no mode of Matter
in which the potentiality of personality, and therein of man, does
not subsist. For every molecule is a mode of the universal
consciousness. Without consciousness is no being. For consciousness
is being. - KINGSFORD AND MAITLAND, The Perfect Way, pp. 18, 19.
“Evolution itself cannot even be conceived of except in connection
with some unitary Being, immanent in the evolutionary process, which
reveals its own Nature by the nature of the Idea, which, in fact, is
progressively set into reality by the process. Without help from the
tenet of evolution, the doctrine of God as perfect Ethical Spirit
cannot be vindicated against the charges offered by the prevalence
of evil; and the most precious dogmas of Christianity concerning the
Divine work of redemption, the growth of the Divine Kingdom by
revelation and inspiration, and the final triumph of that Kingdom as
the realised Ideal of an all-inclusive good, cannot even be stated
in intelligible terms. Thus the beliefs, hopes, and practical
motives of a religion that is compatible with the advance of
race-culture require the unquestioning acceptance of the truth, that
wherever the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself,' there it is
always, 'first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in
the ear.'" - G. T. LADD, Phil. of Religion, Vol. II. pp. 303-4.
“"The Divine Self is the sum-total of the finite selves which
compose the race, and which are ever on the way to becoming more and
more truly personal."—Ibid., p. 309.
"Evolution is the growing towards God individuated of that which
went forth from God un-individuated. It is the gradual taking on of
Godhead by means of the passage through matter : a returning to God
full, concrete and concentred, of that which went forth from God
empty, discrete, and scattered. . . . For is not evolution the
passage through matter of Spirit; is not Faith the clinging of
matter to Spirit; is not Love the transfusion of matter by Spirit ?"
- E. C. U., A Message to Earth, p. 8.
Evolution being found in so many different sciences, the likelihood
is that it is a universal principle. And there is no presumption
whatever against this Law and many others being excluded from the
domain of the spiritual life." - H. DRUMMOND, Natural Law, etc., p.
37.
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