We finally come to the 4th and last of the problems that collectively feed into the first problem we discussed three presentations ago. So a quick recap; what are the major problems that traditional esoterics encounter when trying to describe what the “self” is? The first and major problem is the denial of the centrality of matter in any equation when talking about the self. The second problem is how you account for the continuity of consciousness. What is that consciousness linked to? If your envelopes of the 1st triad disintegrate at the end of each incarnation, what happens to the self? You have to link that consciousness to something that itself survives. In Hylozoics we see no problem with this because we acknowledge the centrality of the monad in all universal structures and posit that this unit of matter is insoluble and immortal. Link consciousness to that unit of being and all your problems disappear. When you accept that memory is indestructible and it is linked to matter as part of the Holy Trinity, then you get an explanation for the term “God immanent” and “God transcendent”. The latter is a fully conscious monad active on the 1st Plane of matter and the former is any other self-conscious monad contained within an envelope of less evolved matter. This concept takes care of our third problem. So we come to the 4th and the last problem that needs to be explained in order to understand the genesis of the cosmos and the formation of the self.
If we accept that there is only matter that comprises various atomic kinds, how did we get here? Theology solves the problem conveniently by handing it all over to an omnipotent and eternal god. Hylozoics cannot untie this knot that simply, since it does not admit the existence of other gods than such monads that have reached the various cosmic divine kingdoms. This particularly applies to the seventh and highest divine kingdom, planes 1 to 7. The monad reaches this kingdom after having passed all the preceding, lower stages in the process of manifestation, including involution, evolution, and expansion. Our cosmos has existed for so long that some monads have already managed to achieve this and in so doing have made the cosmos a perfect organisation. But that does not explain how it all began, at the genesis of our cosmos, before it was even a twinkle in the eye of the Absolute. Were all those monads then as unconscious as the ones created in primordial matter right now? How could an accumulation of primordial atoms ever form those composite atomic kinds and the forms that are required for the evolution of consciousness? It would be exceedingly difficult to solve this problem if there was only one cosmos. There are countless cosmic globes, however, and there have always been. If you accept this premise, it puts paid to the notion that there is only one “High” god, to rule them all, so to speak. Thus these cosmoses exist simultaneously and everywhere in the Metaverse; this term applies to the Ante-Verse, plus all the universes. There are cosmic globes at all the stages of manifestation from the recently formed to the fully constructed and those in the process of being dismantled. The monads that have reached the highest (seventh) divine kingdom of their cosmos, make up collectives that perform the function of supreme guardians of the law, supervisors of evolution, and shapers of matter, where that globe is concerned. Accordingly, as younger monads reach up to the highest kingdom (1–7), the older ones are set free for other tasks. The latter can, if they so desire, leave their cosmos in a collective formation in order to build a new cosmos somewhere in primordial matter with its infinite store of unconscious primordial atoms. In so doing, they afford countless monads the experience of life. They received this gift of life themselves from other cosmos builders once in an immensely distant past, and now they are carrying the baton. And so it goes on without beginning and without end. The cosmos builders thus do not create the monads – this supreme omnipotence is reserved for eternally unconscious, “blind” dynamis – but they make them enter into a cosmos and compose them to form the 48 lower atomic kinds. Thanks to the cosmos builders, the cosmos receives from the very beginning the highest degree of finality possible with its primordial atoms, still however, only potentially conscious.
It is worth reflecting on “blind” dynamis that creates monads. We use the term Ante-Verse to describe this concept. You can not locate this concept in space and time, as it exists external to both. The primordial atoms found in “Chaos” as the Greeks deemed this place to be, are not created but have always existed. You can not be an immortal monad if you were first created. Wherever that monad came from is deemed in the Kabala to have “limitless potential”. What exits from this limitless potential is then bound within the limitations of a thought bubble created by one fully conscious monad, which we designate as the Absolute.
We started this series of presentations by singling out one particular esoteric writer, Alice Bailey and saying that the way she presented the concept of the “self” to her students was unsatisfactory. We know that she was just a dictation machine for the Master DK, but even a machine has its limitations and if the software running that machine does not have the lines of code to fully execute the “programme”, you are going to end up with an incomplete message being conveyed to Humanity. So let us now look at the messages that were given and compare and contrast them to the concepts expounded by Hylozoics, as revealed to us by Laurency, and in our case, translated into English by Lars Adelskogh.
The “Three Aspects of Man” according to Bailey were:
- Spirit, Life, Energy
- Soul, the mediator or the middle principle
- The Body, the phenomenal appearance.
Another way to represent this would be to say:
- The Monad, or pure spirit, is known as the Father in heaven.
- The Ego, the Higher Self or the individuality.
- The personality, or lower self, Humanity on the physical plane
Each of these three aspects is called a “fire” in the work “Cosmic Fire” by Bailey. As each aspect is threefold, you end up with nine aspects. Now, as card-carrying Hylozoicians, you may recognise a pattern here and say these three “aspects” of Man are called the three triads of Humanity in Hylozoics:
- Third triad (43:4, 44:1 and 45:1).
- Second triad (45:4, 46 and 47:1)
- First triad (47:4, 48 and 49:1)
The numbering in the Hylozoic system starts, from the physical world up, since activation proceeds from below by the monad during its evolution.
In the book Cosmic Fire, there are numerous references to “fire by friction”, “solar fire” and “electric fire”. In Hylozoics, by comparison:
Fire by friction equates to the energies of the 1st triad;
Solar fire equates to the energies of the 2nd triad, and
Electric fire equates to the energies of the 3rd triad.
Cosmic Fire also uses other terms for the three triads. “Fire of matter “is the energies of the 1st triad, “fire of mind” refers to the energies of the whole of the second triad, although it usually is referring to causal energies (47:1-3), and the “electric fire of spirit” is the energies of the 3rd triad.
In her book “White Magic”, Bailey uses the term “spiritual energy”, which for us is 3rd triad energy, “sentient energy” (consciousness), which is 2nd triad energy and “pranic energy”, which equates to 1st triad energy. The way Bailey phrased this would imply that pranic energy is the most important of these energies and therefore the etheric envelope is the most important of the envelopes of incarnation from an energetic point of view.
The point being made here is that what Bailey calls “man’s three aspects” are the three triads, three material units, not just consciousness and energy units. Each one of them consists of two atoms and one molecule, a fact that is not generally known to esoteric students. In the theosophical terminology, which Bailey largely adopted without revision, this fact was obscured by using the term “triad” only for the second triad, whereas the first triad was called the quaternary or the “personality”, and the third triad “the One” or the “Monad”. The last term as you well know, gives me palpitations. Monad, meaning “unity” in Greek, was the term used by Pythagoras for the primordial atom, the self, and must not be used for any composite atom of a lower kind, least of all for anything that is not a unity but a compound of three. There is no disputing the fact that the word “monad” is an original Pythagorean term. Therefore it should be used in the original Pythagorean sense or not at all; end of rant.
Nowhere in the vast Bailey literature is there any unambiguous explanation of the fact that the evolution of Humanity within the solar system is affected by three atomic triads. There are allusions and hints but that is all. I am making a point of elucidating the similarity of these concepts, as expounded by Bailey and Hylozoics because I know many of you have been steeped in the knowledge contained in the “Blue Books”. In answering the question “What is the self” we need to look at the similarities and differences between these two schools of thought and hopefully learn many new things along the way.
See you at the next presentation.