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Preface
5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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INVOLUTION
These processes of life are the descent of
Spirit into Matter and the ascent of Spirit therefrom. The first is
the Divine Sacrifice, or the limitation of Spirit in forms; and the
second is the Resurrection from the Dead, or the liberation of
Spirit from captivity in matter.
"There is a raying out of all orders of existence, an external
emanation from the Ineffable One. There is again a returning
impulse, drawing all upwards and inwards towards the centre from
whence all came (Plotinus to Flaccus). - VAUGHAN'S Hours, etc., p.
83.
The "raying out is the involution into matter of all qualities and
potencies, and the " drawing inwards" is the evolution of the same.
"Twofold is the truth I shall speak; for at one time there grew to
be One alone out of many, and at another time, however, it separated
so that there were many out of the One. Twofold is the coming into
being, twofold the passing away of perishable things; for the latter
(i.e. passing away) the combining of all things both begets and
destroys, and the former (i.e. coming into being), which was
nurtured again out of parts that were being separated, is itself
scattered." - Empedocles, FAIRBANKS, 60.
A twofold truth is to be found in the World-process :-First, there
is Involution, and then second, there is Evolution. For at one time,
in one cycle, the many potencies have gone to compose the One Monad
(the Archetypal Man); and subsequently at another time, in the
following cycle, the One Monad by means of evolution, proceeds to
actualize and differentiate, so that the many monads and potencies
are brought forth from the One. Manifestation involves duality; also
the ceasing from manifestation. For the latter, -the indrawing
(passing away),— both begets ideals enabling the Self to
subsequently manifest, and also destroys the illusions of the lower
mind while the former,-the out- pouring (coming into being),-the
issuing forth from the Womb of Pain, in the separation of Spirit and
Matter, -is also ultimately suspended as illusion vanishes.
In the San-khya philosophy, "There cannot be the production of
something out of nothing; that which is not, cannot be developed
into that which is. production of what does not already exist
(potentially) is impossible; because there must of necessity be a
material out of which a product is developed; and because everything
cannot occur everywhere at all times; and because anything possible
must be produced from something competent to produce it. In the San-khya,
therefore, we have a synthetical system propounded, starting from an
original primordial 'eternally existing essence called Prakriti (a
word meaning 'that which evolves or produces everything else')." -
MON. WILLIAMS, Indian Wisdom, pp. 89, 90.
Prakriti at its origin is said to be identical with 66 Brahman the
Supreme," and that its first production is Buddhi, followed by
Ahankara and Manas or self-consciousness and mind. From the Absolute
everything proceeds, but the process of manifestation is by
involution of Spirit and evolution of the same, so that the Divine
nature may be expressed.
“Matter in itself, as Anaxagoras represents it in the primitive
state, before Spirit had begun to work upon it, can only be a
chaotic, motionless mass; for all motion and separation must come
from Spirit. But matter must nevertheless contain all the
constituents of derived things as such; for Spirit creates nothing
new: it only divides what actually exists. Conversely, Spirit is
necessary, because matter, as such, is unordered and unmoved, and
the activity of matter is restricted to, the separation of
substances, because they are already supposed to contain within
themselves all their determinate qualities." - E. ZELLER, Hist. of
Greek Phil., Vol. II. p. 383.
"It is because of this union (with Phanes) that Zeus is said to
swallow' Phanes. For the creative Deity and architect of the
sensible world must first imbibe the ideal and eternal types of
things before he can fashion them forth into sensible shape. Thus
Proclus (Tim. iv. 267) Orphous called: God the Manifestator (Phanes)
as manifesting the noëtic monads, and stored within him the types of
all living creatures." - G. R. S. MEAD, Orphous, p. 204.
The Second Logos (Phanes) is said to be contained by the First Logos
(Zeus) in order that he (the Second, or Higher Self) should be
replete with the prototypes of all things that are to be involved in
matter, so that they may be fashioned forth afterwards by the
process of evolution. It is from the mental plane that the
intelligible type-forms of growth proceed.
“The single sense-and-thought of Cosmos is to make all things, and
make them back into itself again, as Organ of the Will of God, so
organised that it, receiving all the seeds into itself from God, and
keeping them within itself, may make all manifest, and [then]
dissolving them, make them all new again; and thus like a Good
Gardener of Life, things that have been dissolved, it taketh to
itself, and giveth them renewal once again (Corpus Hermeticum, IX).”
- G. R. S. MEAD, T. G. Hermes, Vol. II. p. 133.
The Divine purpose in manifestation is to involve all things in
matter, that they may return again by evolution after having
accomplished the end for which they existed, namely, the growth and
exaltation of the myriad souls of humanity.
“You will all admit, I hope, without difficulty that what is evolved
in nature must first have been involved. When people speak of the
theory of evolution as being enough to account for all the order,
beauty, life, form, and intelligence in creation, without the
necessity of postulating any personal or super-personal Creator
behind it, they are simply begging the whole question. Evolution
accounts for nothing. It only tells us how certain things have come
to be what they are, but it does not tell us why. How could the
evolutionary process result in the production of a Shake-speare or
Gladstone if the qualities which appeared in these two great men
were not already latent in the whole vast scheme of things? . . .
There would have been no Gladstone if the Gladstone soul, or
potency, had not been wrapped up somewhere in the cosmos from the
beginning of time." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm., The Source of Good.
"He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set
eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work
that God hath done from the beginning even to the end." - ECCLES.
iii. 11.
The first sentence refers to the period and process of involution
when the archetypal world on the buddhic plane is made perfect and
"very good." Then also is set potentially in the causal-body (heart)
the means of immortality,-the Truth, Love, and Wisdom of the
Spirit,-yet, these being latent, the lower mind (man) is left in
ignorance of the Divine scheme, and is unable to find out the work
that God hath done in the universe and the soul, from the beginning
even to the end of the cycle of existence.
"He hath made every thing beautiful in its time.' The nearest
approach I can make myself to an explanation of what beauty is, and
even that is no explanation, but only an index finger pointing
towards it, is to say that it is the witness in the soul of that
which is as opposed to that which seems-the real of which this world
is but the shadow; it is a glimpse, an intimation of the supernal,
the state of being in which there is no lack, no discord, strife, or
wrong, and where nothing is wanting to the ideal perfection,
whatever it may be." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm., The Elusive
Revelation.
“All perfection increases towards the interiors, and decreases
towards the exteriors; since interior things are nearer the Divine,
and in themselves purer; but exterior things are more remote from
the Divine, and in themselves grosser." - SWEDENBORG, Heaven and
Hell, p. 23.
"The individual, or any grouping of individuals, depends for its
meaning, its power to change and to grow, for the direction of its
development, its fullness and sufficiency, upon a Life larger than
its own. This larger Life works within the unit, as well as upon it
from its environment. The part played by this inherent, larger Life
which has purposes beyond the unit while working within it, is
coming to be more and more allowed for by biological science. The
tide of thought among biologists is flowing away from a strictly
mechanical theory of evolution, and making for a psychic conception
of the driving-force in evolution. A living thing cannot be
explained by an analysis of its elementary substances. It is coming
more and more to be felt that a directive Life has been at work in
Nature, and that that Life, which was so much larger than any one of
its manifestations, was the sufficiency of that manifestation. The
individual thing was nothing of itself, but it was what it was by
virtue of the action of the Whole through it and upon it. We may
indeed say that all beings everywhere are local centres of the great
Universal Spirit that pervades the universe, and that when the
beings are human then they do become conscious co-operating units."
- T. RHONDDA WILLIAMS, Serm., Divine Sufficiency.
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