Welcome back to the Continuing Adventures of the Monad. In the last presentation, we started to look at the origins of Hylozoics and what it was trying to bring to the world. Two key points were described. The first was the Trinity of forces that go to make up all reality in our Universe. That trinity is Matter, Motion and Consciousness. The second point that was made is that Hylozoics is specially designed to appeal to the Western, mentally focused, mind. This type of thinking had not existed until the onset of the Greek civilisation and Pythagoras was the father of this new way of perceiving the world. A World View that was used in concepts presented in Material Spiritualism, which is another way of saying Hylozoics.
When the first three grades of Hylozoics were presented to the world, through the works of Laurency, terminologies were used that overlapped but did not fully equate to descriptions given by other systems of thought, such as Theosophy. It is useful for any student of esoterics to be aware of how these terminologies equate to one another.
Indian sacred literature uses two terms that a student will often be presented with. The first is Buddhi. I have spoken before about how any term, related to the Buddha, can not apply to any plane or world within the Solar System. Buddha took the (i8) and left the Solar System. Nevertheless, the term Buddhi is used and this equates to Plane-46, the Unity Plane in the Hylozoic classifications. The second term is Nirvana. This refers to Plane-45, the Lower Spiritual World. Another example is the Theosophist’s use of the term ‘Intuition’, to refer to Plane-46 and ‘Spirit’ to refer to Plane-45. Just to remind you, when I use the term Plane, I am in fact referring to a World. This is a specific envelope of our Planetary Logos. Laurency re-designates Plane-46 to the Essential Plane and Plane-45 to the Super-Essential plane. Laurency considers it meaningless, when the Adyar Theosophists speak of the Spiritual World (45), the Divine World (43) or the ‘World of Intuition’ (47:1-3 & 46). Personally, I can see what the Theosophists are getting at, but I can also see where Laurency is coming from. Why is a world divine, surely they all are? We, however, do need handles to navigate our way through ideas and concepts. As a student of esoterics, you just need to be aware of such distinctions in the use of terminology and not get confused by them.
H.P. Blavatsky in the ‘Secret Doctrine’ and Alice Bailey in ‘Cosmic Fire’, used the term ‘Cosmic Physical’ to refer to atomic worlds 43-49. This is, effectively, referring to the Solar System. Laurency, in his inimitable way, considers the use of the term ‘Cosmic Physical’ to be ‘deplorable’, as he considers it to be disorientating. I, personally, think that the term ‘Cosmic Physical’ is perfectly functional, as it relates our solar system to the six higher Cosmic Kingdoms. However, Laurency would prefer to just use the term ‘cosmic’ to refer to everything outside the Solar System. The Solar System differs from the cosmic world because it contains molecular, as well as atomic matter. Another interesting example is Master D.K.’s use of the term ‘monad’ to refer to the Third triad. He, himself, however, goes on to explain the use of this word as meaningless. This is where the student comes to realise that as information has been revealed to us through the offices of the Hierarchy, certain information was withheld, only to be revealed at a later date. Maybe this has something to do with our receptivity to those ideas. Laurency postulates that D.K. may have used a simplified explanation of the term ‘monad’ because he did not want to then have to explain the concept of the Primordial Atom. This does not mean he skirted the issue altogether. He did describe the primordial atom as a ‘tiny point of consciousness, eternally present’. You and I know what he was getting at. Why? Because we understand the concepts that Hylozoics is putting forward.
This raises the question, what is the purpose of the Hylozoic system? Hylozoics was presented to Humanity to give us a comprehensive answer to the questions of the meaning and the goal of existence. Laurency considers Hylozoics to be the only system that gives a rational explanation to the Meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything. It gives a basic World View but not a Life View, which contains facts of reality that are fundamental to the correct conception of our reality and is necessary for an understanding of life. This, as mentioned earlier, is the only reality system ever publicised. Other occult systems present a Life View, which is subjective and focuses on the consciousness aspect, ignoring the matter aspect. Laurency makes a bold claim that Hylozoics will never be dogmatised or superseded by a better system in the future. It is the only correct and therefore the only tenable system. Remember, we are dealing with reality as it appears on the 1st and not the 2nd Triad. Laurency has a serious bone to pick with philosophers in general and states that Hylozoics puts a definite end to philosophical fictionalisation, with its endless mania for speculation. How you perceive this statement is clearly dependent on if you are a mentalist or an emotionalist. You know where I stand on this matter. Think of Hylozoics as a tenable common foundation to religion, philosophy and science. It is an elementary textbook. The seeker has to convince themselves of the correctness of Hylozoics, by examining whether it gives reasonable answers to questions that would otherwise be inexplicable.
It would not be correct to say that Hylozoics is about the knowledge of the Hierarchy. We have to be clear in our minds that the 5th and 6th Kingdoms of Nature, found on the 2nd and 3rd Triads, have a very different perception of the three aspects of reality; Matter, Motion and Consciousness, which are presented in Hylozoics. Hylozoics is a mental system of facts that are supplied to us by the Hierarchy. Humanity is mainly focused in its emotional body but what mental capacity it has, is still focused on the slow, step-by-step methodology of ‘Inference’ thinking. Bladon designates this type of thinking as ‘Associated’ thinking. Collectively, we still have to progress towards Perspective or Conceptual thinking.
What are the limitations of Hylozoics? The first limitation is that it is a mental system. This means it is using our mental and not our causal envelope to process information. Our mental envelope exists on the 1st Triad. In our waking state, we are aware of three dimensions. We know that there are many more dimensions in our Cosmos than that. It is self-evident that Hylozoics can therefore not be a firm system for all time and on all Planes of Matter. What Hylozoics does, is that it affords us a framework that does not contain anything that conflicts with reality. However, it is not a reality for the Causal Self, which operates in 5-dimensions. For something to be a reality, it must be experienced and Hylozoics is a system, not something that can be experienced. Only a Causal Self can experience ‘reality’ on the 1st Triad, as life alone is reality. A mental system is a theory, not life. This raises a very interesting fact about causal consciousness. It does not rely on concepts. It relies on Intuition. What does that exactly mean? When you are able to experience reality on subplanes 47:1 to 47:3, the Causal Planes, the Consciousness, Motion and Matter aspects become a living reality. Our mental system is a substitute for life, as life cannot be bound by concepts. At present, we have working hypotheses and these can never replace direct experience.
So, what are you trying to do as an esoterician? You are striving towards causal consciousness. This means you are trying to ditch the highest mental consciousness, which is Systematic or Universal thought and proceed without them. To do this, you have to abandon your mental conceptions of reality and try to identify with causal, intuitional, consciousness. You have to be aware that what Hylozoics is helping you understand is just a theory, which will be abandoned in due course. When do we abandon it? When we can experience reality, both in the present and in the past. Enter the ‘Zen’ phrase, ‘Eternal Now’!
We have furthered our understanding of what Hylozoics is all about. We can continue our discussion in the next presentation.