Theosophical University Press Online Edition
The Practical Value of Philosophical Thinking
Time-Period in the Kama-Loka
Formation of the Kama-Rupa
The Sevenfold Kama-Rupic Moon
Not all Planets Have Kama-Rupas
Some Problems of the Devachan
Shortening the Devachan
Worship of the Inner Divinity
The Lamaic Succession in Tibet
No Remission of Sins
Hierarchies Within Hierarchies
Is it advantageous or practical for men today to put their minds on thoughts of abstract beauty such as are taught in technical Theosophy? Do we gain anything from studying about grand figures of history such as the Buddha, or, let us say, what is known in Theosophy as The Silent Watcher?
In the name of holy Truth, what can be more practical in human life than inducing men to think, than giving them thoughts and ideals of beauty, of law and order, and in instilling into the hypercritical and irreverent mind so common today ideals of human grandeur and sublimity, as examples for all men to follow? The value of it all lies in the fact that in so doing we are awakening the souls and hearts of men, replacing aridity of thought and barrenness of ideas and ideals with mental seeds and suggestions which, in their flower, ennoble human life and inspire courage and hope to face life's manifold problems. This is just what the teaching of Theosophy does: it makes men more truly men: it gives to them inspiration, even to do the daily task, inspiration to face the so-called problems of life with a vision into the future, thus enabling men to surmount these problems grandly. It teaches men nobly to live and nobly to die.
Is there anything 'practical' about this? The man who has been a mere money-grubber all his life, and who, when he dies, dies with an empty soul, leaving behind him all that he has gained in life -- for this 'all' is merely material things -- is one who has left no permanent record of himself in the sphere in which he moved; certainly no record proving that he has influenced his fellow-men for better; and I would indeed love to ask whether such a man is one who truly can be called a 'practical' man? In my judgment he is far otherwise. He may have been a hard worker: he may have sacrificed comfort and peace and human happiness to increase his material possessions; but it seems to me that in all the qualities that make a man truly a man, he has accomplished really nothing at all, and dies a human failure. I think such a man is a most impractical man, for he has abandoned everything that is really worth while in life, and has exchanged it all for what the Bible of the Jews and the Christians calls a 'mess of pottage.' He cannot take his money, his land, his stocks and bonds, nor his material possessions in any form with him; he leaves them all behind, to be squandered usually by those into whose hands they come.
Now this does not in anywise mean that I think that a man should not do his duty in life along these so-called 'practical' lines. Quite the contrary. A man should do his duty in the sphere of life in which he finds himself, and should do it in as upright and human, as well as humane, a way as it is possible for him to do. My point is that a concentration of all his energies, intellectual, psychic, and physical, in merely so-called 'practical' works, starves the soul within him. The vast ranges of his inner consciousness have never had a chance to have their play in action in his life. Therefore I call him a failure.
Contrariwise, the man who "lays up for himself," as the Christian New Testament has it, "treasures in heaven," which means within the realm and sphere of his own inner being: who has inbuilt into his soul the treasury of mighty and grand thoughts, thoughts of sublimity and universal benevolence which not only sway his own life and make it grand, but sway the lives of those who touch his sphere and who thereby are affected by his example -- such a man, I say, is no failure; and I look upon him as having lived a most practical life in the proper sense of the word, because he has made his life affect others powerfully, even in the material sphere, for good. He has been an example, an ideal, for others to look up to and to follow -- to copy in short; and this is because he has lived his life roundly: every part or function of his complex constitution has been brought into play, into activity. His life thus has been lived universally so to speak; and he has not confined, cabined, restricted, his whole existence into the small corner or small field of merely one phase of human intercourse. During his life he has grown on all the planes of his being, because he has been a lover of, a student of, and therefore follower of, ideals and ideas. Indeed, it is ideas that move and that rule the world; it is not at all the mere hunt for material possessions. Who are the men who have made and unmade civilizations? They are the thinkers! These are the men also who affect other men, and Theosophy above everything else teaches a man to think as well as to be more by giving play to the various capacities for action which lie latent in the constitution of all men.
Now, coming to still more recondite thoughts: the training in subtilty in thinking, the training in thinking impersonal thoughts so that one's own inner cogitations become ever more impersonal in character; and the constant seeking to elevate one's feelings and emotions to ever higher planes, are spiritual exercises of the first importance; and this, among other very practical results, is what the study of our Theosophical teachings does for us. Teachings concerning the Rounds and Races, and the relation of the different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to each other -- taking these two instances merely as examples -- impractical as they may sound to the ordinary man who can see no farther in his life than the tip of his nose, not only take us out of the ordinary humdrum, commonplace affairs of human life and refresh our souls with courage founded upon hope, but also awaken within us a perennial spiritual fount from which flow inspiration and intuition.
What would be the difference in the Period of time to be spent in the kama-loka state between a strong young man who had died of pneumonia; a physically wasted young man who had died of tuberculosis; and an average old man?
While in the case of the strong young man dying, his physical desires would probably still be strong, on the other hand it might be argued that if it were his karmic destiny to die then, that would be the "natural" end of his life.
The question runs to the point of ascertaining the periods of time spent in the kama-lokic state by different individuals who on earth were strong, or physically wasted by disease, or one passing out averagely old. The answer is simple: every human being whatsoever after death remains in the kama-loka precisely as long as the as yet unexpended store of vitality needs for its exhaustion -- the vitality here of course being what one might call ordinary astral-physical-vital energy.
Let me try to illustrate: let a man's store or stock of vitality or vital energy at birth be called X, for every human being is born with a certain vital power, precisely in the same way as an ordinary physical machine constructed to do a work will last for as long or as short a time as it has been built to endure, a strong machine obviously lasting longer than a delicate machine subjected to the same usage. Thus, then, the vital store of energy at birth we will call X. When the man dies, he will have expended of this vital store an amount which we can call, if you please, Y. Now, the difference between X and Y, let us say is Z, which means the balance or unexpended portion of his vital energy. Thus, X minus Y equals Z. Thus, Z is the unexpended vital energy which has to be exhausted in the kama-loka.
Now, old people usually have expended most of their vitality, and practically wholly so when they die of sheer old age, so that in their cases the Y is usually nearly as large as the X, or quite as large; and in these cases the kama-lokic residence, if they are average men and not desperately wicked, is very short -- perhaps a mere unconscious passing through the kama-loka. A strong young man or woman who dies from an accident, or some quick or sudden disease, like pneumonia, let us say, has not yet expended much of his vital energy or X, so that in these cases the Y factor is small; and hence when we come to the same equation as before, X minus Y equals Z, we see that the Z factor is fairly large, so that in these cases there is a good deal of unexpended energy which has to be exhausted in the kama-loka, or in the Astral Light, or World, before the Devachan can begin.
On the other hand, take the cases of men and women who perhaps in early manhood or womanhood, or even in youth, have been long afflicted with some wasting disease which utterly exhausts them, and carries them away prematurely. In these cases the Y factor becomes large; and when we make our equation, X minus Y equals Z, we see that the Z or remaining balance is relatively small, and perhaps is almost nil, so that then we can write our equation, X equals Y, or X minus Y equals zero.
Hence we see that all cases whatsoever depend upon the amount of vitality or vital energy expended or used up while the human being is alive on earth; if this expenditure has been great, then Z becomes very small, perhaps zero; if this energy or Y is very small, then the unexpended energy or Z remains large, perhaps nearly equalling X, as in the case of still-born infants, or infants dying young. Consequently, except by stating some such general rule with regard to the original store of vital energy with which a human being is born, one cannot answer the question otherwise than by saying that in all cases whatsoever it depends on the individual.
Furthermore, we must remember that appearances are often deceptive so that an apparently hale and hearty young person may actually be expending his original store of vitality at a great rate, without realizing it, so that as the years pass, becoming weaker and weaker in this store, he becomes more and more subject to attack by disease, etc., and perhaps the disease may take him or her even in youth or early middle age. The above is what is meant by our Theosophical writers when they speak of "what would be the natural life on earth," if the man had not died prematurely for one reason or another, as in the case of accidents or suicides or disease, etc. Karman in all cases brings about death, just as it brings about birth, and just as it brings about the kama-lokic period.
As regards consciousness in the kama-loka, this is not imbodied in the question, but perhaps the questioner has it in mind; and if so, there is unnecessary confusion, and I have written about this matter and explained it in many places. Consciousness in the kama-loka depends upon the materiality or the material tendencies of the man or woman while living on earth. If the material tendencies were strong while alive in the body, and if the death occur before the vitality has been exhausted, as above described, there is a certain vague and fleeting consciousness in the kama-loka. If the man or woman was very spiritual while on earth, then after death from whatever cause, accident or what-not, or wasting disease, the consciousness in the kama-loka is extremely faint, scarcely that of a vague dream, and perhaps there may be no consciousness whatsoever, for the more spiritual a being is while alive on earth, the less is the tendency to awaken to the dreamy kama-lokic existence.
Please explain what Mr. Judge means by the statement in the OCEAN p. 47 orig. ed., that the astral body, (i.e. linga-sarira) coalesces with the Kama-principle of the departed entity, and that it is this astral body which gives the kama its rupa, so to speak, and forms the kama-rupa? How is this statement to be understood in the light of the other statement in various places, but notably by you on page 97 of your OCCULT GLOSSARY, that the linga-sarira fades out pari passu with the physical corps?
Here I believe there is a confusion in the questioner's mind. Mr. Judge on the page of his Ocean of Theosophy referred to, is using the term "astral body" in a rather loose way, and quite in the fashion or style of these earlier days, when a great deal of effort was made to explain our technical Sanskrit words, and when the simplest possible manner of speech was always sought for. But it is clear, I believe, that what Mr. Judge means by the phrase "astral body" is the linga-sarira, although of course "astral body" could refer to any number of permanent or -- temporary vehicles which the ego could use in the astral realms, such as the mayavi-rupa for instance, formed of the higher astral substance and therefore in a certain sense an "astral body," which can be made visible on the physical plane by the adept.
Now I have often stated, following strictly in the line of H. P. B., that the linga-sarira disintegrates pari passu and almost molecule for molecule with the disintegration of the physical body or sthula-sarira; and this statement is a fact. But the kama-rupa is formed of astral substance emanating mainly from the auric egg of the individual, originally during its life-time on earth and when freed from the physical corpse forming the kama-rupa after death; and as a large part of the lower or grosser portions of the kama-rupa is formed of astral life-atoms drawn from the decaying or decayed linga-sarira, we thus see that Mr. Judge is quite correct in stating in the general and rather vague way he does, that the dead man's "astral body" and the principle of passion and desire "leave the physical in company and coalesce." Of course it is so -- but very soon the kama-rupa frees itself from the linga-sarira with it, because these life-atoms are still strongly attracted to the desire principle in the kama-rupa.
Mr. Judge's words are strictly correct and accurate. It is, however, inaccurate to say that it is the "astral body which gives the kama its rupa, and thus forms the kama-rupa." It is the unexpended vital energy of the man which, attracting astral atoms and life-atoms from the decaying linga-sarira and elsewhere, form a shape or rupa around the center of desire, and thus make the kama-rupa as it appears as a shape after death. When the ego finally casts off the kama-rupa at the time of the Second Death, then the kama-rupa becomes just an empty shell -- as much so as the linga-sarira and the sthula-sarira were at death and very shortly after death of the man on this plane.
To recapitulate: (a) The linga-sarira fades out pari passu with the physical corpse; (b) certain atoms or life-atoms are attracted from the linga-sarira by the desire-principle in addition to other astral atoms drawn from the astral light, and thus coalescing produce the shape or rupa of the kama-rupa; (c) at the Second Death, when the ego begins to enter the devachanic state, the kama-rupa is cast off and thereafter in the case of normal human individuals begins to disintegrate, to go to pieces, molecule for molecule and atom by atom, just as the physical corpse does when buried, or as the linga-sarira does. (d) Of course there are the instances of sorcerers, dugpas, whose gross passions and material desires keep them in the Astral Light and lead them to an immediate or a very quick reimbodiment in a physical body; and other sporadic cases like infants dying young, congenital idiots, and a few more.
The moon, which is a kama-rupa, has seven globes. Hence it is a sevenfold entity. Reasoning analogically, is the kama-rupa of a man a sevenfold entity?
Yes, the kama-rupa of a man is sevenfold; so also is every principle, cosmic, or human. The moon-chain as a whole is a kama-rupic entity, and every globe of the moon-chain is a kama-rupic entity. In other words each moon -- each globe of the earth-chain having its corresponding moon of the moon-chain -- each moon is a kama-rupa to its corresponding earth-chain globe. The seven kama-rupic globes of the moon-chain are on the four Cosmic Planes on which our earth-chain is. These planes are named by H. P. B. in The Secret Doctrine, (I, 200) counting from the highest of the four to the lowest, as: (1) Archetypal, (2) Intellectual, (3) Astral formative, (4) Physical material. The reason why we see the kama-rupa of Globe D of the moon-chain is that our Globe D of our earth-chain is on a sub-plane higher than Globe D of the moon-chain, and similarly all the globes of the earth-chain are each one on a sub-plane of their respective Cosmic Planes higher than the corresponding globes of the moon-chain. Each one of the principles, as said, whether of a man or a globe, is sevenfold.
Do all the planets have kama-rupas or Dwellers of the Threshold during their earlier Rounds?
No. Some planets have kama-rupic Dwellers just like some men; but these in actual fact are not very numerous.
I think I recall reading in THE MAHATMA LETTERS that K. H. speaks somewhere of the periodic devachan that the adept can enter into, even during imbodied existence.
Yes, but that is not the case of the high adepts, but of the high chelas who have not fully passed beyond the need of the devachan. Now there is an occult law well known to the adept, by which a man can shorten his devachan, by taking certain resting-periods, devachanic resting-periods if you wish, in a single imbodiment, set aside a certain number of weeks or months or even years in any one imbodiment for the purpose of going into a temporary but intensive devachan then and there.
That may be a very good way to do for a high chela. For instance, if he is given a work to do, he does his work it may be for several years, and he needs his devachanic rest before he will be called upon again. He profits by that time, let us say by going into the devachan more or less so, right then and there, and rests himself for a while. Then when he comes out of it, he is in the same body, and strong and inwardly recuperated and ready to go on again. But that of course is the case of chelas or adepts who still need the rest, or some devachanic rest.
This matter of the devachan is a very peculiar thing. I have met people, men and women, going about their ordinary vocations, who were actually living in a devachanic state. They were dreaming, they were lackadaisical. Perhaps you have all heard of that kind of folk, people who do not seem to care. They just go about in a sort of half-asleep state. They are not really living. They are still in the devachan to a certain extent. They want to lie abed so long, so to speak, like children do sometimes. They have hardly come out of the devachanic state. They have come out of it enough to take a body, but their minds are still partly in the devachanic dream.
And I have met Theosophists too, whom I deeply revere, who have left the devachan to come into our Work before their devachan was really ended. They are like people who have waked from sleep before the body has had enough of it to rest it. They are high-strung, nervous, active, quick, that kind of people. These are two extremes which one meets in human life: those who are still in the devachan more or less, although still imbodied -- I do not mean completely in the devachan, but in a devachanic dreamy state and hence not fully at work, or awake to life's calls; and those who have not been in the devachan long enough; and I will say that some of this last class comprise a few of our very best workers, and they are having a hard time of it, because they have to fight an inner psychological state of inner weariness which is almost impossible to describe unless you have been through it. They are usually not strong in body, highstrung, nervous individuals, but they are doing a grand work. They have given up a portion of their rest, semi-consciously as it were, in order quickly to take their part again in humanity's destiny.
Would it be possible for any of us to shorten our devachanic period?
Quite possible, if you have the will to do so. Any human being who is willing to renounce his rest, the utter peace and calm which is the thing most longed for by the tired human soul, and who trains himself to this renunciation, can shorten his devachan automatically. But it is only high chelas who can actually do without the devachan, because they have risen above the plane where the human ego requires and longs for rest.
In the far distant future, not only will all human egos on earth have passed beyond the need of the devachan after death, but they will have passed beyond the need for the present type of sleep for the body. What are now our gross physical bodies, in those days will have become practically bodies of condensed light, wonderful bodies, radiant, luminous. They won't need rest as our gross physical bodies now do.
But I would advise any devoted student to think carefully before trying to shorten the devachanic rest, because you may bring upon yourself complicate and possibly disastrous karmic consequences. It is something like a man who, because he has some very important work to do in view, deliberately goes without his sleep, or cuts it short, night after night after night. He can do it, but he can ruin his health that way too; and so in the end he really doesn't get what he is after.
The best way is to think to yourself: I hope that my devachan will be only so long as absolutely needed for rest. I hope it won't be like sleeping in bed longer than one has to, merely because one likes to sleep and rest in bed. That attitude of mind is quite right and safe.
What is the idea behind the portrayal in Egyptian hieroglyphs of the King worshiping or adoring himself?
We have here no self-adoration, as our Occidental Egyptologists wrongly state -- no adoration of a person, no kingly individual worshiping himself as the figure-head of a civilized community. That would be tawdry, paltry. But we have the case of a man who looked upon himself as representing the divinity within him and as the vicegerent of his inner god on earth, and thereby clothed with spiritual dignity and power, with heavy responsibility in his hands -- the guide and shepherd of his people.
The adoration and worship was paid symbolically to that divinity, as it were, like a species of prayer: "Not my will" -- that of this feeble man, the King of Egypt -- "be done, but thy will be done" -- your Father in Heaven. "Make me a full vessel of thy kingly majesty and power, that I in turn may do my duty to my people, my sheep, my brothers, my children." This at least was the original idea, however much it later may have degenerated. It was a right royal and kingly thing, sublime in its priest-hood -- the king-priest, the priest-king, as they existed in the far-distant ages of the past before Atlantis fell.
For during the Third Root-Race when self-consciousness came to men, they worshiped each one his own individual divinity, worshiped it as a bright and starry god to which he aspired: my Self, my god in heaven, my link with the Infinite; just as Jesus the Christ did in reference to his "Father in Heaven." And as time passed and the realization, the keen realization, of man's oneness with the god within vanished, fell, disappeared, men began to worship themselves in the lower sense, the selfish self instead of the divine Self, even worshiped images of the human body which they put in their temples. Not that they abandoned the old worship, they degraded it, turning the temple of the divine into places where hellions found their home. The same thought must have been in the mind of the writer of the Christian New Testament where he represents the Avatara as going into the temple and cleaning out the money-changers and the gatherers of taxes.
Let me tell you that every Initiate, every Adept, knows his "Father in Heaven," recognises him and calls him "Father-Sun," or "Father-Flame," or "Father-Fire," or "Father-Star," and looks upon himself, the man himself, not only as an efflux flowing from this inner divinity, but as its child, its representative here on earth, laboring to imbody the mandates and the dictates of the god within. And the ancient Initiates -- and the Kings of Egypt in the days of Egypt's glory were all such, were all Sons of the Sun -- knew it even in those already degenerate days.
When I speak from a public platform and see my audience sitting before me and realize that behind those faces of flesh and those brightly shining eyes there are living gods, I put myself in that frame of mind and address myself -- or try to -- to that within them which I know will understand with a word. Oh! if we could only realize, we men and women, the living reality of the god within each one of us, each one with his own "Father-Flame," "Father-Fire," "Father-Sun," "Father-Star"! This is the Silent Watcher of each of us. When a man addresses it or aspires to it, he addresses, or aspires to, his own Silent Watcher -- that bright and luminous divinity living with patience infinite through the entire solar manvantara, waiting, waiting, waiting, refusing to go on, waiting each one for his child -- me, you: the Christ and the Christ-Child: Adi-Buddha, Manushya-Buddha; primeval, primordial wisdom, love, compassion -- the human representation thereof, the human Buddha.
That is the real meaning of the Egyptian King worshiping himself; and of course degeneration of such things could only take place when a man had fallen from his pristine estate of understanding, in which pristine state intuition was not beclouded by reason because reason had not yet grown up to be pure intellect. It will in time, but it has not yet so grown. Any one of you who has once felt the touch of the god within never is the same again. Never can you be the same again. Your life is changed; and you can have this awakening at any moment, any moment that you will take it.
Is there any truth to the current idea that the Tashi Lama in Tibet is always a reincarnation of the Buddha? Is this a real succession, or is it merely a tradition without meaning?
The Succession of the Tibetan Lamaic hierarchy since the time of Tsong-kha-pa in the Fourteenth Century is a real one and takes place through different individual men. We must remember that the principle regarding this matter is comprised in that deeper Buddhism which really is Esoteric Buddhism -- let our Western scholars say what they like.
Neither the Tashi Lama nor the Dalai Lama is a reincarnation or reimbodiment of the Bodhisattva Sakyamuni; but the Succession beginning with Tsong-kha-pa is a transmission of a 'Ray' in each individual case of the line of Tashi Lamas derivative from the spiritual Maha-Guru whom H. P. B. calls the Silent Watcher of this Globe.
There is an important distinction to be drawn between successive reincarnations of Gautama and the successive imbodiments of rays from an identic source in the Hierarchy of Compassion which I have just called the Maha-Guru. It is just here that all Theosophists as well as all esotericists stumble and wander from the facts.
It is indeed a transmission in serial line of a ray from the 'Buddha'; but the 'Buddha' in this case is not the Bodhisattva Gautama, even though he attained Buddhahood, which is a state, but the Dhyani-Buddha of whom the Bodhisattva Gautama himself was an incarnated ray and the noblest and most complete and the fullest since the beginning of our Fifth Root-Race. This is why the Exalted One, Gautama, later attained Buddhahood.
Even the Tibetans of nearly all classes, with the possible exception of the Tashi and Dalai Lamas themselves, look upon this transmission in Succession or serial line through repetitive imbodiments of the 'Buddha' as being repeated incarnations of Gautama the Buddha in the two Head Lamas of the Tibetan Hierarchy. But this is erroneous; and it is just the point where the stumbling hereinbefore referred to occurs.
The higher members of the Tibetan Hierarchy, including the Khutuktus, and, I sincerely believe, the Tashi Lama himself and in all probability the Dalai Lama, are as perfectly acquainted with the esoteric facts in this case as H. P. B. was; and they know perfectly well that these reincarnations of 'Living Buddhas,' as Westerners call them, are not, as said above, repetitive reimbodiments of Sakyamuni, but repeated reimbodiments of identic rays or of an identic ray inspiriting and enlightening one Tashi Lama after the other; and a similar ray in repeated imbodiments inspirits and enlightens one Dalai Lama after the other. This has been the case since Tsong-kha-pa's time. It has been so up to the present and there seems no reasonable doubt that the Succession, as above described, will continue unless and until human vehicles are found which are too imperfect to continue this esoteric line of Succession.
If people only understood the true meaning of the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism regarding the Dhyani-Buddhas and their human representatives on earth, then they would have the key to this continuous mystery of the Succession of living Buddhic rays in the higher members of the Tibetan Hierarchy; and it is just this that H. P. B. spoke of when she wrote as openly as she dared then to do.
To put the matter in other words which will be consistent with facts and accordant with common-sense: Every Tashi Lama from Tsong-kha-pa's time to the present has been the reimbodiment of an identic Buddhic ray, emanated from the Dhyani-Buddha of this Globe, in other words, the mysterious Individual or Personage, whom Esoteric Tradition states as living in Sambhala, concerning which mysterious land every Tibetan, high or low, has heard somewhat; yet these different Tashi Lamas have been men, seven-principled men, and therefore all have been distinct individuals, each different from his Predecessor and from his Successor, yet each has been the vehicle or channel of transmission of an identic Buddha-Force, which I have hereinbefore called the Ray from the Maha-Guru.
We have then the Succession of an identic spiritual Buddha-Individuality through a long serial line since Tsong-kha-pa's time of different men who thus become recognised for what they are and who are appointed or raised to the position of Successors in the Hierarchy of the Tashi Lamas.
While this wondrous fact continues in Tibet even to this day, in former ages an identic Succession of true Teachers existed in other parts of the world and has formed the basis for the mysterious stories commonly current in the ancient literatures of Hierarchies of Initiates continued through the ages because of being linked with the Master-Adept whom H. P. B. in Isis Unveiled and elsewhere at times refers to as 'Maha' or 'Maha-Guru.'
What is the meaning of the following quotation from ST. JOHN, xx 23?
Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
These words are an ecclesiastical addition to the original theme of the gospel, made by heaven knows whom and heaven knows when. They have no actual meaning whatever, but simply satisfy the priesthood that they have special God-given powers, and are therefore obviously inserted or originally written by someone with that point of view. In their open construction they are utterly against the doctrine of Karman -- that a man is responsible for his own good deeds and misdeeds. Sins cannot be remitted by either God, demon, or human. It is like saying that a man's character can be remitted. If you did so you would annihilate the man.
If they have any moral value at all, it is simply the injunction to forgive injury against one, and not to make them worse and carry them on by hatred and revenge.
We should understand that a great many things in the Christian gospels are not holy truth, or the laws of Nature, but the Christian gospels were written by no great initiates, and even after the first writers finished their work, interpolations occurred later on which are now recognised as such even by Christian scholars. Therefore, one will find many things in the Christian gospels that do not need even pausing over, because they are often half-meaningless interpolations, even sometimes put in the manuscripts by fanatics who happened to have the upper hand: but there is a substratum of actual truth in all the gospels.
Not only has every individual his own Inner God, but these Inner Gods collectively form the body corporate through which a superior divinity works. The superior divinity again in its turn is but one of a still more sublime army or host collected together under a godhead still more sublime; and so on ad infinitum. Is this a correct conception?
Every individual entity is an expression of a Divine Monad, which is but another phrase for 'an Inner God.' Every Monad in its heart of hearts is an individualized divinity; therefore every human being, as well as every other entity, however high or low, is an expression of a Divine Seed which is an Inner God.
This vast cosmic aggregate of Inner Gods or Divine Monads forms the body corporate of a hierarchy, the hierarchy of the Cosmos; and for this hierarchy there is the supreme Hierarch in which all these hosts of Inner Gods are included, much as the body contains all the life-atoms which compose itself. Such hierarchies being infinite in number in Boundless Space, there are, therefore, logically, an infinite number of cosmic hierarchies.
A further deduction from these premisses is, therefore, that not only is every being, such as a human being, an expression of an individualized divinity called his or its 'Inner God,' but all these 'Inner Gods' are under the sway of, and living in and forming part of, some superior divinity, which in its turn is but a divinity forming a part of a superior host collectively aggregated within the life-sphere of some divinity still more sublime; and so on ad infinitum. So that at every step we may use the language of Paul of the Christians in saving that "In It, we live, and move and have our being."