Universal or Kosmic Mind (Atman) is eternal, perpetual motion. It needs no physico-chemical, or mechanical brain as an organ of transmission. Yet, physical science sees in motion simply a blind, unreasoning force or law; Occult Science, tracing motion to its origin, identifies it with the Universal Deity, and calls this eternal ceaseless motion or the “Great Breath.”
The concepts of the West are the allegories of the East, and the truths of the Elect. Behind the veil of terrestrial phenomena, the Occultist sees in the Elemental Forces of Nature secondary Causes which are, in themselves, the effects of primary Causes produced and guided unerringly by Divine Intelligences. The idea of anything in Nature being inorganic or dead is materially fallacious, and is utterly rejected by Esoteric Philosophy. When matter appears inert, it is the most active. A stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration which is so rapid that, to the physical eye, the stone seems devoid of motion. Substance is the pre-cosmic substratum of matter, undifferentiated yet interrelated with Ideation, supersensuous but atomic, informed by the Divine Breath of its form. Substance does not mean matter in metaphysics. It is boundless Æther, formless and supernal, the ultimate essence of matter in Space and noumenon of evanescent matter on Earth. Ether is physical and infernal. Kosmos is Eternal Noetic Motion Unmanifested, the Great Breath of One Element. Father-Æther is the source and cause of All Cosmic Forces, which are differentiated aspects of Cosmic Substance, generated by substantial yet super-sensuous Powers. Our Cosmos is ruled by Creative and Intelligent Occult Forces: they are emanations of conscious living entities, acting behind the veil of matter. The forces we know of are but the phenomenal manifestations of realities we know nothing about, but which were known by the ancients. The truths of today are the falsehoods of yesterday. Conceit and prejudice strangle every truth. As only truth can dispel error, Truth should be the sole aim of Science and Justice. It is true that pure Force is nothing in the world of physics; but it is the All in the domain of metaphysics. Inertia is the Greatest of Occult Forces. A flying cannon ball moves only from its own inherent Force of Inertia. Eternal Vibration is the spiritual term for Motion Unmanifested, unconscious, innate, noumenal. It is the “Great Breath” of the One Eternal Element. Vortical Motion is the material term for Motion Manifested, conscious, external, phenomenal. Whatever may be the future name given to the Force of Inertia by scientists, to maintain that that Force does not reside in the atoms but only in the “space between them,” is not true. To the mind of an Occultist it is like saying that water does not reside in the drops of which the ocean is composed, but only in the space between those drops. The Atom belongs wholly to the domain of metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction and has nought to do with physics, strictly speaking, as it can never be brought to the test of retort or balance. Avogadro’s law holds the same place in chemistry as the law of gravitation does in astronomy. Occultists see in gravity only Sympathy and Antipathy, or Attraction and Repulsion, caused by physical polarity on our terrestrial plane, and by spiritual causes beyond our illusive earth. Matter, to the Occultist and to those men of Science who care too much for truth and too little for their vanity to dogmatise, is that totality of existences in the Kosmos, which falls within any of the planes of possible perception. If Scientists could fathom the ultimate nature of these Forces, they would have first to admit their substantial nature, however supersensuous. Science merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory projections from the region that Occultism has long since penetrated. Light and heat, sound and cohesion, are the ghosts or shadows of matter in motion. However, there is no fundamental difference between light and heat, each is merely a metamorphosis of the other. Heat is light in complete repose. Light is heat in rapid motion. When light is combined with a body, it becomes heat; but when thrown off from that body, heat reverts to light. Occult Science may err in particulars but it can never become guilty of a mistake in questions of Universal Laws, simply because Divine Science was born on higher planes, and was brought on Earth by Beings who were far wiser than man will ever be. Occult Science may be less well-informed as to the behaviour of compound elements in various cases of physical correlations: still, it is immeasurably higher in its knowledge of the ultimate occult states of matter, and of the true nature of matter, than all the Academies of Science of our day may possess. Occult Science does not regard either electricity, or any of the forces supposedly generated by it, as matter in any of the states known to physical Science. None of these “forces,” so-called, are either solids, gases, or fluids. An Occultist would even object to electricity being called a fluid, as it is an effect and not the cause. But its noumenon, he would say, is a conscious cause. The force, which materialism considers as the cause of the diversity that surrounds us, is in sober reality only an effect, i.e., a result of that diversity. In other words, the cause of any force is not matter, but motion itself. And thus the great dogma, “no force without matter and no matter without force,” is dethroned and loses the solemn significance with which materialism has tried to invest it. If nature abhors vacuum, what is atom? To admit the divisibility of the atom, amounts to an admission of an infinite divisibility of substance, which is equivalent to reducing substance to nothingness. If the Universe is composed of atoms, then those atoms must be elastic. Absolutely non-elastic atoms could never exhibit a single one of those numerous phenomena that are attributed to their correlations. Without any elasticity the atoms could not manifest their energy, and the substance of the materialists would remain weeded of every force. Materialism is now enmeshed in a fatal circle of its own making. If the blind inertia of physical Science is replaced by the Intelligent Active Powers behind the veil of illusive matter, motion and inertia become subservient to those Powers. Acceptance of the infinite divisibility of the atom opens limitless horizons to Substance, informed by the Divine Breath of its Soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still undreamt of even by the most spiritually disposed chemists and physicists. But alas, the insanities of materialism and pessimism are incurable. The most Science can do is to assume the attitude of agnosticism. But to do this, requires a boundless love of truth and the surrender of the prestige of infallibility, which the men of Science have acquired among the flippant masses. Dualistic and anthropomorphic may be the philosophy of Vishisht Advaita, when compared with the non-duality of Advaita, it is yet supremely higher in logic and philosophy than the cosmogenesis exalted by Christianity and Science, its great opponents.
Kosmos is Abstract and Formless, because Homogeneous and Impartite, vehicle of all Universes to be. Cosmos is Receptive Nature or concrete World of Forms seemingly fragmented, “no better than an aberration of the ever-deceiving physical senses.” Kosmos is Boundless, because Omnipresent and Changeless. Cosmos is Finite, Impermanent, Self-modifying World. Kosmos is directed and controlled by the “Army” of Divine Sentient Beings. Cosmos is built and ruled by Sidereal Planetary Spirits and Deities. Kosmos is Eternal (Spiritual) Egg and Womb or Matri-Padma, Mother Lotus, of all Worlds to be. Cosmos is the Periodical (Mundane) Egg of our World fructified, yet immaculate, when a ray from the First Logos flashes from the latent Germ in the Heart of the Eternal. Kosmos is ever-concealed, unknown and unknowable noumena. Cosmos is perceptions and visible phenomena after a “Night of Brahma.” Kosmos is the “Father” Concealed and Unmanifested, the “Unknown God” of the Athenians. Cosmos is Plato’s Second God, giving birth to a “Son” or Universe.
Fohat, the Light of Logos, shapes the atoms from crude material, which is as yet invisible to us. Since sound and rhythm are closely related to the Four Elements of the Ancients, the potency of the spoken word awakens their corresponding powers with good or bad results. As the differentiation of the Divine Monas precedes the evolution of the Dhyani-Chohans of the Third Hierarchy of Being in the primary creation, before those Devas can occupy their first ethereal form, so animal creation has to precede the evolution of man on earth. Then the Great Breath vibrates and differentiates the primordial, first manifested Atom. How could you make yourself understood by those semi-intelligent Forces, whose means of communication with us are not through spoken words but through sounds and colours in correlated vibrations between the two? By employing sound, light and colours, which are understood by these grades of intelligence. Light and heat are ghosts of matter in motion. Natural-born magicians are those whose inner selves are connected, by reason of their direct descent, with that group of Dhyani-Chohans who are “the first-born of Ether.” No substance possesses any inherent gustatory or olfactory property. Taste and odour are mere sensations caused by vibrations — hence illusionary perceptions. We taste and smell in our dreams and visions. Akasha is primordial substance, the vehicle of Divine Thought. Knowledge of Akasha and other mysteries can alone lead to knowledge of the Forces of Nature. Could air exist if there were no etheric medium in Space to buoy up its molecules? The waves and undulations of Science are all produced by atoms propelling their molecules into activity from within. Atoms fill the immensity of Space and, by their continuous vibration, are Eternal Motion (Atman), cyclic and spiral, which keeps the wheels of Life rolling.
The arguments against Theosophy are like a verdant moss, which displays a velvety carpet of green, without roots, and with a deep bog below. Abuse, pure and simple, is the only weapon of partisans. When a man has lived in crime, his astral cadaver which holds him prisoner, seeks again the objects of his passions and desires to resume its earthly life. It torments the dreams of young girls, bathes in the vapour of spilt blood, and wallows about the places where the pleasures of his life flitted by. The term elementary applies not only to one principle or constituent part, i.e., an elementary primary substance, but also embodies the idea which we express by the term elemental — that which pertains to the four elements of the material world. Elementaries are earth-bound incarnated thoughts of evil men who have passed away. In the grain of sand, as in each atom of the human body, spirit is latent, not active. Yet, the atom is vitalized and energized by spirit, without being endowed with distinct consciousness. Spirit and matter co-existent, inseparable, interdependent, and convertible to each other. But European tongues are too materialistic to make room for such metaphysical ideas. A copious vocabulary, indeed, that has but one term for God and for alcohol! In Sanskrit, for instance, there are twenty words or more to render one idea in its various shades of meaning. Christendom, with its boasted civilization, has outgrown the fetishism of the Fijians. The anthropomorphic ideas of Spiritualists concerning spirit are a direct consequence of the anthropomorphic conceptions of Christians as to their Deity. Spirit is abstract light, uncreated, latent in every atom, in whose profound and sacred repose all motion must cease for ever. Spirit is a ray, a fraction of the Whole; and the Whole being Omniscient and Infinite, its fraction must partake, in degree, of the same abstract attributes. The critics of Theosophy refuse to comprehend the philosophical doctrine that every atom is imbued with Divine Light. It is only when this atom, magnetically drawn to its fellow atoms, that is transformed at last, after endless cycles of evolution, into Man — the crown of intellectual and physical evolution on earth.
Gravity is an obsolete law in starry heaven. Among the materialists, gravity is the king of the all-potent imponderables. But among the students of the Sacred Science, gravity in one of the attributes of differentiation manifested as the law of attraction and repulsion between various states of matter. Newton did not use the word “attraction” with regard to the mutual action of bodies in a physical sense; to him, attractions were impulses; he believed that there is some subtle spirit, by the force and action of which all movements of matter are determined. For Pythagoras, Forces were Spiritual Entities (Gods independent of planets and matter, as we see and know them on Earth), who are the Rulers of the Sidereal Heaven. Light, heat, electricity, etc., are Affections, not properties or qualities of matter. Matter is the prerequisite and vehicle for the manifestation of Intelligent Forces on this plane. Newton had derived his knowledge of Gravitation and its laws from Jacob Böhme, with whom Gravitation or Attraction is the first property of Nature. Newton, whose profound mind had fathomed the spiritual thought of the great Seer in its mystic rendering, owes his great discovery to Böhme, the nursling of the genii who watched over and guided him. The voidness of the seeming full is the fullness of the seeming void. It was from Newton’s theory of a universal void that dates the immense scorn now shown by the moderns for ancient physics. Though the old sages had always maintained that “nature abhorred vacuum,” the mathematicians of the new world had discovered the antiquated “fallacy” and exposed it. More recently, modern Science vindicated, however ungracefully, archaic knowledge having, moreover, to also vindicate Newton’s character and powers of observation at this late hour. And now Father Æther is welcomed once more with open arms and wedded to gravitation. “Look back before moving forward” must become the motto of exact Science, in finding herself itself inexact every leap-year. Rough and up-hill is the path of Science; her days are full of vanity and vexation of Spirit. The metaphysical tenets of Kepler are purely occult. He was not the first to discover the theory of Attraction and Repulsion in Kosmos, for it was known from the days of Empedocles, the two opposite forces being called by him Hate and Love, or Repulsion and Attraction. Kepler also gave a pretty fair description of Cosmic Magnetism. Why should he be denounced then as most unscientific, for offering just the same solution as Newton did — only showing himself more sincere, more consistent, and even more logical? Where is the difference between Newton’s “all-powerful Being” and Kepler’s Rectores, his Sidereal and Cosmic Forces, or Angels?
Part 1. The Voice of the Will is the Atomic Point, the Logos of the Silent All, a veil concealing Itself from the perception of lower minds. Part 2. The mediumistic state of passivity is dangerous, for passivity paralyzes the connection between man’s lower and higher principles. Part 3. Life is identical with Will, and Will is a property of the Kabbalistic Astral Light. Part 4. There is no special organ of will, any more than there is a physical basis for the activities of self-consciousness. Part 5. Insights to the laws governing compulsion and obsession. Part 6. The Yogi performs his wonders by exercising his Will-Power and Thought. Part 7. Free will is a nameless Intelligent Force, guiding and shaping the imprisoned intelligence and force inherent in every atom of matter. Part 8. Hypnotism is the new scientific name for the old “superstition” variously called fascination and enchantment. Part 9. Will is the offspring of the Divine, Desire, the motive power of animal life.
Why do celestial orbits perpetually shift their position and form? Speculations galore, enough for every taste and brain power, on the origin of rotation, and of the seven planes and comets. Science lies on a Procrustean bed of its own making. Count de Maistre and William Herschel cut the Gordian knot by saying that the planets rotate because they are made to rotate, for a will is needed to impart a circular motion, and another will to restrain the former under the perturbing influence of the Sun. The planetary orbits are far from immutable; on the contrary, they are subject to a perpetual mutation in their position and form. As orbits are alternately widening and narrowing, their great axis lengthens and diminishes, or oscillates at the same time from right to left around the Sun, raising and lowering itself periodically while pivoting around itself with a kind of tremor. Gravity is an obsolete law in starry heaven and mother earth. A comet whose tail defies the law of gravity right in the Sun’s face can hardly be credited with obeying that law. Science is like Cæsar’s wife, she must not be suspected, but she can be respectfully criticised, nevertheless. It is hardly surprising that many learned astronomers favour the Kabbalah and ancient systems to the modern dreary and contradictory expositions of the Universe. Spirit is the first differentiation of eternal Beness or That. It is the Causeless Cause of Cosmos, manifesting through a plurality of Creative and Intelligent, yet contrary, Forces — centripetal and centrifugal — possessing inherent powers of their own. Intra-Cosmic Forces are not suppositions and abstractions, they are acting realities whose attributes can be determined by direct observation and induction. Deity is Life and Law, and vice versa. Deity is a Soul in an orbicular Fire (Democritus). That Fire is the Sun, which is the image of divine Intelligence (Iamblichus), and an immortal Living Being (Plato), whose visible parts are its organs.
The Christian Fathers applied the sacred name Daimonia of the Greeks (the divine Egos of man) to their “devils,” a fiction of diseased brains, and thus dishonoured the anthropomorphized symbols of wise antiquity, and made them all loathsome in the sight of the ignorant and the unlearned. Daimonium was ascribed by the ancients to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise, but the term was often synonymous with gods or angels. The Indian Daimonia and Deities are thirty-three millions. The two most important Elemental classes, as well as the least understood by the Orientalists, are the Devas (Shinning Ones) and the Pitris (Ancestors). Deva Yonis such as gnomes, sylphs, fairies, djinns, etc., belong to the three lower kingdoms of elementals and pertain to the Mysteries on account of their dangerous nature. The Pitris or Lunar Ancestors are not the forefathers of the present living men but those of the first human race. Pitris are Devas, Lunar and Solar. It is the Lunar Pitris who gave images of their astral body (chhayas) as models of the first race in the Fourth Round, while the Solar Pitris informed and endowed man with intellect — a Great Sacrifice! The Pitris have naught to do with juggling, tricks, and other phenomena, nor are the “spirits of the departed” concerned in them. There are three main classes of Elementaries: (1) of the spiritually dead; (2) of the spiritually poor but materially rich; and (3) of those whose bodies perished by violence. The ancients taught that while man is a septenary trinity of body, astral spirit, and immortal soul, the animal has only five instead of seven principles in him. Apes have as much intelligence as some men. Why, then, should these men who are no way superior to the apes, have Immortal Spirits and the apes none? One may search for months and never find the demarcation in the “Comte de Gabalis” between the spirits of the séance-rooms and the Sylphs and Undines of the French satire. Theosophists believe in spirits no less than Spiritualists do, but as dissimilar in their variety as are the feathered tribes in the air. Countless generations of buffoons, appointed to amuse Majesties and Highnesses, had the inestimable privilege of speaking truth at the Courts, yet those truths have always been laughed at. A strict rule, common to both Right and Left Paths, is the renunciation of carnal commerce with male or female Elementals. Certain mediums boast of Spirit husbands and wives. Consultation and deliberation with “spirits” spells the end of wisdom. The truthfulness of Spiritualists is always tempered by enthusiasm. The only character of Truth, is its capability of enduring the test of universal experience, and coming unchanged out of every possible form of fair discussion. Spiritualism is a philosophy of yesterday. But the philosophy of the East comes to us from an immense antiquity. Theosophists share only the product of corroborated experience, hoary with age; Spiritualists hold to their own views, that are based on their unflinching enthusiasm and emotionalism. Holy spirits will not visit promiscuous séance rooms, nor will they intermarry with living men and women. Monotheism, proclaiming in one place God, whom “no man shall see and live,” shows him at the same time so petty a god as to concern himself with the breeches of his chosen people. Polytheism is based upon a fact of nature. Spirits mistaken for gods, have been seen in every age by men — hence the universal belief in many and various gods, who are the personified powers of nature. Man is made up of a spiritual and of a fleshly body; Angels are pure spirits but are created and finite in all respects, whereas God is infinite and uncreated. Therefore the masses are well justified in believing in a plurality of gods. While Pagans are sincere in calling their religion Polytheism, the Churches put a mask on theirs by claiming for it the title of a monotheistic Church. Christian angel-worship is plainly idolatrous. The Devas are the embodied powers of states of matter. Every Deva has a direct connection with its bodily fabric, in invisible atoms and visible molecules, and also physical and chemical particles. Although gods are superior to man in some respects, it must not be concluded that the latent potencies of the human spirit are inferior to those of the Devas. Their angelic faculties are more expanded than those of ordinary men; but with the ultimate effect of prescribing a limit to their expansion, to which the human spirit is not subjected. There are high Devas and lower ones, higher Elementals and those far below man and even animals. But all these have been or will be men, and the former will again be reborn on higher planets and in future manvantaras. Dugpas are the “Brothers of Shadow,” possessed by earth-bound Elementaries. A highly developed Intellectual Soul (manas) is quite compatible with the absence of Spiritual Soul (Buddhi). The Sorcerer, who always performs his rites on the day of the new moon, when the benign influence of the Pitris is at its lowest ebb, crystallizes some of the satanic energy of his predecessors in evil; while the Brahman pursues a corresponding benevolent course with the energy bequeathed him by his Pitris. The only difference between the spirits of other Societies and ours lies in their names, and in dogmatic assertions with regard to their natures. In those whom the Spiritualists call the “Spirits of the Dead,” and in whom the Roman Church sees the Devils of the Host of Satan, we see neither. We call them, Dhyani-Chohans, Devas, Pitris, Elementals — imperfect at times, but never wholly imperfect. With a 36-page extended conversation about Elementals and Elementaries with a Student of Occultism.
Fohat (Cosmic Electricity), by infusing energy into primordial matter, electrifies into life and scatters into atoms. It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter. Occultism asserts that Electricity is Matter, not mere motion. Force, or Energy, may be better names for it. Electricity is “immaterial” only in the sense that its molecules are not subject to perception and experiment; yet, Occultism says it is atomic, therefore material. Fohat is connected with Vishnu, from the root vish, “to pervade,” therefore, he is called the Pervader and the Manufacture because he shapes the atoms from crude material. From the first awakening of Kosmos to a new Day of Brahmā or Motion, which even during the periods of Rest (Night) pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom, assuming an ever-growing tendency to circular movement. The gyratory movement of atoms and spheres exists from eternity. The Elementary Germs with which Fohat fills the Universe from the “Heaven of Mind,” are the atoms of Science and the monads of Leibniz. A perpetual exchange of atoms is taking place in Space, thus changing their combining equivalents on every planet. Atoms enter into new forms of existence, undreamt of, and incognisable to, physical Science. The essence of cometary matter, for instance, is totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are familiar with. Enshrined in its pristine state within the bosom of the Eternal Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to incessant differentiation. If we follow the atoms and molecules of the lower plane in their transformation upwards, these will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of our faculties. As the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose rays form what we, in our ignorance, call the “Individual Monads” of men, so the Mineral Monad — being at the opposite point of the circle — is also One, and from it proceed the countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as individualized. Instead of saying a Mineral Monad, the more correct phraseology in physical science which differentiates every atom would have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom. The atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined after aions to blossom as a man. It is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has not yet become individualized, i.e., a sequential manifestation of the One Universal Monad. As the monads are uncompounded things, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad — not the atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of Intelligence. Every form on earth and in Space strives towards self-formation following the model placed for it in the “Heavenly Man.” The atom’s evolution and involution, its external and internal growth and development, have all one and the same object — Man or Humanity at large. Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle, whether organic or inorganic, is a life. Each atom may reach, by “self-induced and self-devised efforts,” that plane where it re-becomes the One Unconditioned All. Starting upon the long journey immaculate; descending more and more into sinful matter, and having connected himself with every atom in manifested space — the Pilgrim, having struggled through and suffered in every form of life and being, is only at the bottom of the valley of matter, and half through his cycle, when he has identified himself with Humanity at large. This, he has made in his own image. Myths are now proved to be fables, just in proportion as we misunderstand them; truths, in proportion as they were once understood. The Ether of Science, the Ilus of Berosus, the Protyle of Sir William Crookes, are one the same, primordial matter out of which the “Builders,” following the plan traced out for them in the Divine Thought, fashion the systems in Cosmos. Such grand metaphysical concepts can no longer be brushed aside as myths. Materialism and the malignancy of Scepticism are two evils that must remain in the world as long as man has not quitted his present gross form to don the one he had during the first and second Root-Races of this Round. The atom of the chemist, the atom of the physicist, that of the mathematician, and that of the metaphysician, have absolutely nothing in common but the name! Each lower mind constructs an atom to suit his own fancy, in order to explain some special phenomenon with which he is particularly concerned. The primordial Atom belongs wholly to the domain of metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction and has nought to do with physics, strictly speaking, as it can never be brought to the test of retort or balance. The whole Universe focuses on a single metaphysical point. Atoms, Ether, and the Evolution itself of modern Science are based on the conceptions of archaic nations. “Conceptions” for the profane, under the shape of allegories; plain truths taught during the Initiations of the Elect. Force is not in the Atom: it is in the space which separates atoms from each other. Matter exists in two conditions, latent or undifferentiated, and patent or differentiated. Atomic, however, is a substance not subject to the qualities of matter, from which it is quite different. The Matter of the Esoteric Doctrine is eternal because it is Unevolved Cause. Eternal Matter becomes atomic only periodically. In the language of the Initiates, Atoms are Souls and Intelligences. The atom imagined by modern Science, now called “energy,” is inseparable from Spirit. Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical atoms are simply organic units in profound lethargy. Their coma comes to an end when their inertia becomes activity. Replace the chemical terms molecule, atom, particle, etc., by the words Hosts, Monads, Devas, etc., and one might think the genesis of gods, the primeval evolution of manvantaric Intelligent Forces, was being described. Were Leibniz’ and Spinoza’s systems to be reconciled, the essence of Esoteric Philosophy would be made to appear. From the shock of the two, as opposed to the Cartesian system, emerge the Truths of the Archaic Doctrine and the Spirit which is at the heart of the Occult Doctrine and Thought. Though both admitted but one real Entity, while Spinoza made it impersonal and indivisible, Leibniz divided his personal Deity into a number of divine and semi-divine Beings. Spinoza was a subjective, Leibniz an objective Pantheist, yet both were great philosophers in their intuitive perceptions. To the follower of the true Eastern Archaic Wisdom, to him who worships in spirit nought outside the Absolute Unity, that ever-pulsating great Heart that beats throughout, as in every atom of nature, each such atom contains the germ from which he may raise the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits will give life eternal and not physical life alone. Spirit is abstract light, uncreated, latent in every atom, in whose profound and sacred repose all motion must cease for ever. Latent Electricity becomes patent under certain conditions. The “elementary atoms” are compound bodies that contain primordial globules, the gross encasement of the still finer atom-spark — the spark of Life and source of Electricity — which is matter, still. When the Life-energy is active in the atom, that atom is organic; when dormant or latent, “inorganic.” The distinction between the two states is arbitrary and spurious. Life is as much present in the inorganic as in the organic matter. Matter, in atomizing, differentiates. Restore the differentiated matter to the status quo ante, and there is no difficulty in seeing how it can pass through the interstices of dense substance in its differentiated state, as we easily conceive of the travel of electricity and other forces through their conductors. There are no “blind” forces in nature. Every atom in the universe is permeated with Universal Intelligence, from the latent spark in the mineral up to the quasi-divine light in man’s brain. Matter and force are ever allied. Matter without force, and force without matter, are inconceivable. Every atom is endowed with consciousness, yet the potential of man’s ability to control the cells and atoms of his body, have not been honoured with the imprimatur of the popes of modern science. Every atom is a little universe of its own. Every cell and organ in the human body has a brain and memory of its own, and thus also, experience and discriminative powers. Physical Science calls “atoms” that which the Occultists regard as particles or molecules. The real atoms are the inner principles and the intelligent, spiritual guides of the cells, and the particles they inform. Atom is not the smallest constituent unit of matter, not even a mathematical point. It is an immutable Entity, a reality within an appearance — the molecule being in Occult Philosophy but a figment of maya-illusion. It may be described as a compact or crystallized point of Divine Energy and Ideation. The Hermetic Divine Fire is the fons et origo of life, that Uncreated Spirit which starts from, and is immediately reabsorbed into primordial matter. It is the ultimate essence of every atom whether pertaining to animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic substance. Before that Spirit is immersed into matter, it is self-existent and independent of matter. The real Atom does not exist on the material plane, it is beyond space and time. Atom, in its eternal state, is invisible even to the eye of an Archangel. Brahmā is called Atom, because we have to imagine it as a mathematical point which, however, can be extended to Absoluteness. He who would be an occultist must not separate either himself or anything else from the rest of creation or non-creation. For, the moment he distinguishes himself from even a vessel of dishonour, he will not be able to join himself to any vessel of honour. He must think of himself as an infinitesimal something, not even as an individual atom, but as a part of the world-atoms as a whole — or become an illusion, a nobody, and vanish like a breath leaving no trace behind.
