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5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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FALL OF MAN
A symbol of the descent of the evolving soul, or
consciousness, from higher to lower planes, due to the mind and
emotions being attracted by the desires and sensations of phenomenal
existence. Through the Fall, man exchanges a blissful state of
passive receptivity for a condition of active responsibility,
becoming thereby a moral being knowing higher and lower, and
involved in a struggle between good and evil, during which the
potential qualities within him are evolved into actuality.
“Why then does the soul descend and lose knowledge of its unity with
the whole? For the choice is better to remain above. The answer is
that the error lies in self-will. The soul desires to be its own,
and so ventures forth to birth, and takes upon itself the ordering
of a body which it appropriates, or rather which appropriates it, so
far as that is possible. Thus the soul, although it does not really
belong to this body, yet energizes in relation to it, and in a
manner becomes a partial soul in separation from the whole. . . .
All,-descent and reascent alike,-have the necessity of a natural
law. The universal law under which the individual falls is not
outside but within each." - Plotinus. THOS. WHITTAKER, The
Neo-Platonists, pp. 67, 68.
The fall, or descent of the soul to the underworld, or lower nature,
is variously described in the scriptures.
From a Babylonian religious text we read :-
"The evil curse has slain that man like a lamb. His god has departed
from his body; his guardian goddess has left his side; he is covered
with sorrow and trouble as with a garment, and he is overwhelmed." -
L. W. KING, Babylonian Religion, p. 207.
The mind has become a sacrifice to Desire. The Divine nature is
unapparent to the astro-mental body. Wisdom, its guide, is obscured
in the mind, and the soul has entered into the lower life of
suffering and sorrow.
Then the god Marduk (the Higher Self) is enjoined by the Supreme to
become his Saviour :-
“Take him to the house of purification, and remove the spell from
upon him." - Ibid.
In the development of the causal-body (house) is to be found the
soul's purification, when thraldom to the desire-nature will be
removed on the attainment of perfection.
“Though a man journey from the perfect to the perfect: yet that
which is perfect still remains over and above all." - Brihad.
Upanishad, V. 1.
The account of the fall of mind (man) and emotion (woman) is given
in Genesis iii. :—
"Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which
the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God
said, Ye shall not eat of any tree in the garden ?"
Now the desire-mind (the serpent) is more insidious than any of the
simple lower desires or appetites (the beasts), and thus is able to
lead the emotion-nature astray from the higher intuitions, and to
divert the vibrations of energy downward to the plane of the
desires. And so the emotion-nature is drawn to the sense objects.
"And the woman said unto the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of
the garden we may eat: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the
midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither
shall ye touch it, lest ye die."
And the emotion-nature surmises that of the sense-pleasures the soul
may partake naturally as do animals, but of the fruit of experience,
which is the moral nature, the soul cannot partake without incurring
the death penalty, by entering upon the cycle of evolution which
necessitates the repeated births and deaths of the forms which
transitorily embody the soul.
"And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die for
God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall
be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil."
Then the desire-mind represents to the emotion-nature that death or
extinction shall not supervene for such behavior; for the Divine
nature knows that when the fruits of action are tasted, experience
shall be acquired which will be the means by which Godhood will
eventually be achieved through cleaving to the good, and shunning
evil.
"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it
was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to
make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she
gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."
And so when the emotion-nature perceives the desirability of
descending to the lower planes, and sees the beauty of the prospect,
and recognizes that this course will be the means of enabling the
soul to increase its knowledge, then attachment to the lower life is
set up, and the results are communicated to the evolving mind,
whereby the mind partakes of new experiences.
"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
naked ; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves
aprons."
And then it is, both the emotions and the mind perceive their utter
lack of "clothing” (concepts), their "nakedness” or ignorance, and
they become aware of the necessity for further evolution. And their
endeavors result in producing an external mental condition which
conceals the inward growth of the soul. (Fig-leaves so applied are
symbolic of secrecy.)
"The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by which man fell,
changed into the Tree of Life by which Satan perished; the fruit of
disobedience becoming the fruit of the Tree that is in the midst of
paradise: the garden whence the first Adam was driven forth replaced
by the garden where the second Adam arose from the dead." - J. M.
NEALE, Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. I. p. 139.
"To come to man, the microcosm, the human trinity, made in the image
of God, but fallen from its original glory; Scotus attributes that
fall to a self-willed turning away from man's proper nature and
first principle of being. In following the story in Genesis, he
gives an allegoric interpretation to its several parts; ... the Fall
is not regarded as an event in time, nor Paradise as definite
locality. The story of the for-bidden fruit is interpreted as the
leading away of the mind (= the man) by sensibility (= the woman),
so as to seek pleasure in the things of sense and not in pure
wisdom. The punishments inflicted have a hidden meaning. 'In sorrow
shalt thou bring forth children,' points to the efforts necessary
for attaining knowledge; thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he
shall rule over thee,' promises the ultimate subjugation of sense by
reason. . . . The means by which the general restitution is effected
is, of course, the Incarnation. The Logos entering into human
nature, and then returning to the Father or First Principle." -
ALICE GARDNER, John the Scot, pp. 107-9.
"The failure of one thing, through grace, brings in a better thing.
Where sin abounds, grace yet more abounds. Thus that short-sighted
wisdom which would prevent falling, would by so doing prevent all
progress to higher things; for each advancing form of life which God
takes up springs out of the failure of that which has preceded it.”
- A. JUKES, Types of Genesis, p. 107.
"Adam represents the person, Eve the soul, and the Divine Voice the
Spirit, so the serpent typifies the astral element or lower reason.
For this subtle element is the intermediary between soul and body,
the fiery serpent whose food is the 'dust,' that is, the perception
of the senses which are concerned with the things of time and matter
only."
"Coming next to the philosophical reading of our parable (the Fall),
we find that on this plane the Man is the Mind or rational
Intellect, out of which is evolved the Woman, the Affection or
Heart; that the Tree of Knowledge represents Māya or Illusion; the
Serpent, the Will of the Body; the Tree of Life, the Divine
Gnosis-or interior know. ledge; and the sin which has brought and
which brings ruin on mankind, Idolatry (which is the adoration of
the shadow instead of the substance-God)." - The Perfect Way, pp.
159, 161.
"The One, which consists of these two (Life and Substance), is
always putting forth alike the Macrocosm of the universe and the
Microcosm of the individual, and is always making man in the image
of God, and placing him in a garden of innocence and perfection, the
garden of his own unsophisticated nature. And man is always falling
away from that image and quitting that garden for the wilderness of
sin, being tempted by the serpent of sense, his own lower element.
And from this condition and its consequences he is always being
redeemed by the blood of the sacrifice always being made for him by
the Christ Jesus, who is Son at once of God and of man, and is
always being born of a pure virgin; dying, rising, and ascending
into heaven." - Ibid., p. 178.
"Before Adam sinned he went up into and remained in the illuminated
Wisdom (Eden) Above, and was not separated from the Tree of Life.
But when he acceded to the desire to know, and to descend Below,
then . . . he separated himself from the Tree of Life, and knew only
the bad, and left the good alone." - Zohar, I. 52 a and b, Brody.
"I admit that the Genesis story (of the fall) as it stands cannot
reasonably be regarded as history; it is not history, it is
something better; it is a symbolic statement of certain facts of
experience. The whole drama should be removed from the material to
the super-material world, the paradise of Eden being a figure of
man's condition immediately before his descent into matter. Our real
fall, speaking of the race as a whole, consists in having to live
under conditions wherein the struggle between good and evil is
inevitable and unescapable. I say that to have come into a world
like this at all is a fall from something higher. . . . It is true
that we came up from below, but it is also true that we first came
down from above. We are of the eternal; our true being has never had
a beginning and will never have an end. But when man as man entered
this world he had to make acquaintance with something very
different. His beginnings then were lowly enough, and as he has been
slowly fighting his way upward, back in fact to where he came from,
he has been learning tragically the difference between good and
evil." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm., The Tree of Knowledge.
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