Section XIV. Gods, Monads and Atoms.

Some years ago we remarked that:

We now say it does more. It not only reconciles the various and apparently conflicting systems, but it checks the discoveries of modern exact Science, showing some of them to be necessarily correct, since they are found corroborated in the Ancient Records. All this will, no doubt, be regarded as terribly impertinent and disrespectful, a veritable crime of lèse-science; nevertheless, it is a fact.

Science is, undeniably, ultra-materialistic in our days; but it finds, in one sense, its justification. Nature behaving ever esoterically in actu, and being, as the Kabalists say, in abscondito, can only be judged by the profane through her appearance, and that appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane. On the other hand, the Naturalists refuse to blend Physics with Metaphysics, the Body with its informing Soul and Spirit. They prefer to ignore the latter. This is a matter of choice with some, while the minority very sensibly strive to enlarge the domain of Physical Science by trespassing on the forbidden grounds of Metaphysics, so distasteful to some Materialists. These Scientists are wise in their generation. For all their wonderful discoveries will go for nothing, and remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of Matter and strain their eyes to see beyond. Now that they have studied Nature in the length, breadth, and thickness of her physical frame, it is time to remove the skeleton to the second [pg 670] plane, and search within the unknown depths for the living and real entity, for its sub-stance—the noumenon of evanescent Matter.

It is only by acting along such lines that some truths, now called “exploded superstitions,” will be discovered to be facts, and the relics of ancient knowledge and wisdom.

One of such “degrading” beliefs—degrading in the opinion of the all-denying Sceptic—is found in the idea that Kosmos, besides its objective planetary inhabitants, its humanities in other inhabited worlds, is full of invisible, intelligent Existences. The so-called Arch-Angels, Angels and Spirits, of the West, copies of their prototypes, the Dhyân Chohans, the Devas and Pitris, of the East, are not real Beings, but fictions. On this point materialistic Science is inexorable. To support its position, it upsets its own axiomatic law of uniformity and of continuity in the laws of Nature, and all the logical sequence of analogies in the evolution of Being. The masses of the profane are asked, and are made to believe that the accumulated testimony of History—which shows even the “Atheists” of old, such men as Epicurus and Democritus, as believers in Gods—is false; and that Philosophers like Socrates and Plato, asserting such existences, were mistaken enthusiasts and fools. If we hold our opinions merely on historical grounds, on the authority of legions of the most eminent Sages, Neo-Platonists, and Mystics in all ages, from Pythagoras down to the eminent Scientists and Professors of the present century, who, if they reject “Gods,” believe in “Spirits,” are we to consider such authorities to be as weak-minded and foolish as any Roman Catholic peasant, who believes in and prays to his once human Saint, or the Archangel St. Michael? But is there no difference between the belief of the peasant and that of the Western heirs of the Rosicrucians and Alchemists of the Middle Ages? Is it the Van Helmonts, the Khunraths, the Paracelsuses and Agrippas, from Roger Bacon down to St. Germain, who were all blind enthusiasts, hysteriacs or cheats, or is it the handful of modern Sceptics—the “leaders of thought”—who are struck with the cecity of negation? The latter is the case, we opine. It would indeed be a miracle, quite an abnormal fact in the realm of probabilities and logic, were that handful of negators to be the sole custodians of truth, while the million-strong hosts of believers in Gods, Angels, and Spirits—in Europe and America alone—namely, Greek and Latin Christians, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., should be no better than deluded fanatics and hallucinated mediums, and [pg 671] often no higher than the victims of deceivers and impostors! However varying in their external presentations and dogmas, beliefs in the Hosts of invisible Intelligences of various grades have all the same foundation. Truth and error are mixed in all. The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries of Nature are to be found only in Eastern Esoteric Science. So vast and so profound are these that scarcely even a few, a very few of the highest Initiates—those whose very existence is known but to a small number of Adepts—are capable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there, and one by one facts and processes in Nature's workshops are permitted to find their way into exact Science, while mysterious help is given to rare individuals in unravelling its arcana. It is at the close of great Cycles, in connection with racial development, that such events generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of 5,000 years of the present Âryan Kali Yuga; and between this time and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the Veil of Nature, and materialistic Science will receive a death-blow.

Without throwing any discredit upon time-honoured beliefs, in any direction, we are forced to draw a marked line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and knowledge due to the independent researches of long generations of Adepts; between, in short, faith and Philosophy. There have been, in all ages, undeniably learned and good men who, having been reared in sectarian beliefs, died in their crystallized convictions. For Protestants, the garden of Eden is the primeval point of departure in the drama of Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on the summit of Calvary is the prelude to the hoped-for Millennium. For Roman Catholics, Satan is at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and Antichrist at its apex. For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within the narrow frames of their respective theologies: one self-created personal God, and an empyrean ringing with the Hallelujas of created Angels; the rest, false Gods, Satan and fiends.

Theo-Philosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of æons—in time and space in our Round and Globe—the mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which it is lawful for our Races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those same, now invisible, “Heavenly Men,” in geometrical figures and symbols. The keys thereto passed from one generation of “Wise Men” to another. Some of the symbols thus passed from the East to the West, brought from the Orient by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous [pg 672] “Triangle.” The latter figure, along with the square and circle, are more eloquent and scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed “Geneses.” The ten Points inscribed within that “Pythagorean Triangle” are worth all the theogonies and angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For he who interprets these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden)—on their very face, and in the order given—will find in them the uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to Terrestrial Man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were evolved the Kosmos, our Earth, and the primordial Elements by which the latter was generated. Begotten in the invisible “Depths,” and in the Womb of the same “Mother” as its fellow-globes—he who masters the mysteries of our own Earth will have mastered those of all others.

Whatever ignorance, pride or fanaticism may suggest to the contrary, Esoteric Cosmology can be shown to be inseparably connected with both Philosophy and Modern Science. The Gods and Monads of the Ancients—from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz—and the Atoms of the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the theories of the old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the human frame, which begins with body and ends with Spirit. In the Occult Sciences they can be studied separately, but they can never be mastered unless they are viewed in their mutual correlations during their life-cycle, and as a Universal Unity during Pralayas.

La Pluche shows sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical capacities, when declaring his personal views on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. He says:

Philosophy, however, could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal, and absolute Deity, if it had had no Mathematical Point within the Circle upon which to base its speculations. It is only the manifested Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in the infinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that makes a reconciliation [pg 673] between Philosophy and Theology possible—on condition that the latter should abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because Christian theology has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical figures, that it has evolved its self-created human and personal God, the monstrous Head whence flow in two streams the dogmas of Salvation and Damnation. This is so true, that even those clergymen who are Masons, and who would be Philosophers, have, in their arbitrary interpretations, fathered upon the Ancient Sages the queer idea that:

A curious explanation this, more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean.

Nor did the “Hierogram within a Circle, or equilateral Triangle,” ever mean “the exemplification of the unity of the divine Essence”; for this was exemplified by the plane of the boundless Circle. What it really meant was the triune coëqual Nature of the first differentiated Substance, or the con-substantiality of the (manifested) Spirit, Matter and the Universe—their “Son”—which proceeds from the Point, the real, Esoteric Logos, or Pythagorean Monad. For the Greek Monas signifies “Unity” in its primary sense. Those unable to seize the difference between the Monad—the Universal Unit—and the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the ever-hidden and the revealed Logos, or the Word, ought never to meddle with Philosophy, let alone with the Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to remind the educated reader of Kant's Thesis to demonstrate his second Antinomy.1053 Those who have read and understood it will see clearly the line we draw between the absolutely ideal Universe and the invisible though manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads are not the Elements of extension itself, but only those of the invisible Reality which is the basis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither Esoteric Philosophy, nor Kant, to say nothing of Leibnitz, would ever admit that extension can be composed of simple or unextended parts. But theologian-philosophers will not grasp this. The Circle and the Point—the latter retiring into and merging with the former, after having emanated the first three Points and connected them with lines, thus forming the first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the Manifested World—have [pg 674] ever been an insuperable obstacle to theological flights into dogmatic empyreans. On the authority of this Archaic Symbol, a male, personal God, the Creator and Father of all, becomes a third-rate emanation, the Sephira standing fourth in descent, and on the left hand of Ain Suph, in the Kabalistic Tree of Life. Hence, the Monad is degraded into a Vehicle—a “Throne”!

The Monad—the emanation and reflection only of the Point, or Logos, in the phenomenal World—becomes, as the apex of the manifested equilateral Triangle, the “Father.” The left side or line is the Duad, the “Mother,” regarded as the evil, counteracting principle;1054 the right side represents the “Son,” “his Mother's Husband” in every Cosmogony, as being one with the apex; the base line is the universal plane of productive Nature, unifying on the phenomenal plane Father-Mother-Son, as these were unified in the apex, in the supersensuous World.1055 By mystic transmutation they became the Quaternary—the Triangle became the Tetraktys.

This transcendental application of geometry to cosmic and divine theogony—the Alpha and the Omega of mystical conception—was dwarfed after Pythagoras by Aristotle. By omitting the Point and the Circle, and taking no account of the apex, he reduced the metaphysical value of the idea, and thus limited the doctrine of magnitude to a simple Triad—the line, the surface, and the body. His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, have interpreted these three geometrical figures as Space, Force, and Matter—“the potencies of an interacting Unity.” Materialistic Science, perceiving but the base line of the manifested Triangle—the plane of Matter—translates it practically as (Father)-Matter, (Mother)-Matter, and (Son)-Matter, and theoretically as Matter, Force, and Correlation.

But to the average Physicist, as remarked by a Kabalist:

Symbols represent abstractions, and on these

The Physicist who regards Space merely as a representation of our mind, or extension unrelated to things in it, which Locke defined as capable of neither resistance nor motion; the paradoxical Materialist, who would have a void there, where he can see no Matter, would reject with the utmost contempt the proposition that Space is

Such is, nevertheless, the Kabalistic teaching, and it is that of Archaic Philosophy. Space is the real World, while our world is an artificial one. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude: in its bottomless depths as on its illusive surface; a surface studded with countless phenomenal Universes, Systems and mirage-like Worlds. Nevertheless, to the Eastern Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at bottom, in the real World, which is a Unity of Forces, there is “a connection of all Matter in the Plenum,” as Leibnitz would say. This is symbolized in the Pythagorean Triangle.

It consists of Ten Points inscribed pyramid-like (from one to four) within its three sides, and it symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean Decad. The upper single point is a Monad, and represents a Unit-Point, which is the Unity whence all proceeds. All is of the same essence with it. While the ten points within the equilateral Triangle represent the phenomenal world, the three sides enclosing the pyramid of points are the barriers of noumenal Matter, or Substance, that separate it from the world of Thought.

It is argued that “the human mind cannot conceive an indivisible unit short of the annihilation of the idea with its subject.” This is an error, as the Pythagoreans have proved, and a number of Seers before them, although there is a special training needed for the conception, and although the profane mind can hardly grasp it. But there are such things as “Meta-mathematics” and “Meta-geometry.” Even Mathematics pure and simple proceed from the universal to the particular, from the mathematical indivisible point to solid figures. The teaching originated in India, and was taught in Europe by Pythagoras, who, throwing a veil over the Circle and the Point—which no living man can define except as incomprehensible abstractions—laid the origin of the differentiated cosmic Matter in the base of the Triangle. Thus the latter became the earliest of geometrical figures. The author of New Aspects of Life, dealing with the Kabalistic Mysteries, objects to the objectivization, so to speak, of the Pythagorean conception and the use of the equilateral triangle, and calls it a “misnomer.” His argument that a solid equilateral body—

—demonstrates on the contrary the grandeur of the conception in all its Esoteric application to the idea of the pregenesis, and the genesis of Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal Triangle, depicted by mathematical, imaginary lines,

But in such case most of the scientific hypotheses are no better than “phantoms of the mind”; they are unverifiable, except on inference, and have been adopted merely to answer scientific necessities. Furthermore, the ideal Triangle—“as the abstract idea of a triangular body, and, therefore, as the type of an abstract idea”—accomplished and carried out to perfection the double symbolism intended. As an emblem applicable to the objective idea, the simple triangle became a solid. When repeated in stone, facing the four cardinal points, it [pg 677] assumed the shape of the Pyramid—the symbol of the phenomenal merging into the noumenal Universe of thought, at the apex of the four triangles; and, as an “imaginary figure constructed of three mathematical lines,” it symbolized the subjective spheres—these lines “enclosing a mathematical space—which is equal to nothing enclosing nothing.” And this because, to the senses and the untrained consciousness of the Profane and the Scientist, everything beyond the line of differentiated Matter—i.e., outside of, and beyond the realm of even the most Spiritual Substance—has to remain for ever equal to nothing. It is the Ain Suph—the No Thing.

Yet these “phantoms of the mind” are in truth no greater abstractions than the abstract ideas in general as to evolution and physical development—e.g., Gravity, Matter, Force, etc.—on which the exact Sciences are based. Our most eminent Chemists and Physicists are earnestly pursuing the not hopeless attempt of finally tracing to its hiding-place the Protyle, or the basic line of the Pythagorean Triangle. The latter is, as we have said, the grandest conception imaginable, for it symbolizes both the ideal and the visible universes.1062 For if

this is true only of the realm of exact Science in a world as deceptive as it is illusive. In the realm of Esoteric Science the Unit divided ad infinitum, instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division the planes of the only eternal Reality. The eye of the Seer can follow it and behold it in all its pregenetic glory. This same idea of the reality of the subjective, and the unreality of the objective Universe, is found at the bottom of the Pythagorean and Platonic Teachings—limited to the Elect alone; for Porphyry, speaking of the Monad and the Duad, says that the former only was considered substantial and real, “that most simple Being, the cause of all unity and the measure of all things.”

But the Duad, although the origin of Evil, or Matter—hence unreal in Philosophy—is still Substance during Manvantara, and is often called the Third Monad, in Occultism, and the connecting line as between two Points, or Numbers, which proceeded from That, “which [pg 678] was before all Numbers,” as expressed by Rabbi Barahiel. And from this Duad proceeded all the Scintillas of the three Upper and the four Lower Worlds or Planes—which are in constant interaction and correspondence. This is a teaching which the Kabalah has in common with Eastern Occultism. For in the Occult Philosophy there is the “One Cause” and the “Primal Cause,” the latter thus becoming, paradoxically, the Second, as is clearly expressed by the author of the Qabbalah, from the Philosophical Writings of Ibn Gabirol, who says:

Thus he shows the early Hebrews, as the later Arabians, following in the steps of the Oriental Philosophy, such as the Chaldean, Persian, Hindû, etc. Their Primal Cause was designated at first,

and, let us add, of the eternal IS, or the I AM. Moreover, in the Kabalah the name YHVH (or Jehovah) expresses a He and a She, male and female, two in one, or Chokmah and Binah, and his, or rather their Shekinah or synthesizing Spirit (or Grace), which again makes of the Duad a Triad. This is demonstrated in the Jewish Liturgy for Pentecost, and the prayer:

And so it is considered in the exoteric Purânas, for Shekinah is no more than Shakti—the female double of any God—in such case. And so it was with the early Christians, whose Holy Spirit was feminine, as Sophia was with the Gnostics. But in the transcendental Chaldean Kabalah, or Book of Numbers, Shekinah is sexless, and the purest abstraction, a state, like Nirvâna, neither subject nor object, nor anything except an absolute Presence.

Thus it is only in the anthropomorphized systems—such as the Kabalah has now for the most part become—that Shekinah-Shakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras, the two straight lines which can form no geometrical figure and are the symbol [pg 679] of Matter. Out of this Duad, when united in the basic line of the Triangle on the lower plane (the upper Triangle of the Sephirothal Tree), emerge the Elohim, or Deity in Cosmic Nature, with the true Kabalists the lowest designation, translated in the Bible “God.”1067 Out of these (the Elohim) issue the Scintillas.

The Scintillas are the “Souls,” and these Souls appear in the three-fold form of Monads (Units), Atoms and Gods—according to our Teaching. As says the Esoteric Catechism:

Every Atom becomes a visible complex unit [a molecule], and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man.

Again:

God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body [Âtmâ, Manas, and Sthûla Sharîra] in man.

In their septenary aggregation they are the “Heavenly Man,” in the Kabalistic sense; thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. Once again:

The Monads [Jîvas] are the Souls of the Atoms; both are the fabric in which the Chohans [Dhyânîs, Gods] clothe themselves when a form is needed.

This relates to cosmic and sub-planetary Monads, not to the super-cosmic Monads, the Pythagorean Monad, as it is called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The Monads of the present dissertation are treated, from the standpoint of their individuality, as Atomic Souls, before these Atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For this descent into concrete Matter marks the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but with their life and behaviour in Space, [pg 680] on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional Chemist and Physicist cannot reach them—unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly clairvoyant faculties.

It is well known that Leibnitz came very near the truth several times, but he defined Monadic Evolution incorrectly, a thing not to be wondered at, since he was not an Initiate, nor even a Mystic, but only a very intuitional Philosopher. Yet no Psycho-physicist ever came nearer than has he to the Esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution—viewed from its several standpoints, i.e., as the Universal and the Individualized Monad, and the chief aspects of the Evolving Energy after differentiation, the purely Spiritual, the Intellectual, the Psychic and the Physical—may be thus formulated as an invariable law: a descent of Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a reäscent from the depths of materiality towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete form and substance up to the Laya-state, or what Science calls the “zero-point,” and beyond.

These states—once the spirit of Esoteric Philosophy is grasped—become absolutely necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations. Physical Science having now ascertained, through its department of Chemistry, the invariable law of this evolution of Atoms—from their “protylean” state down to that of a physical and then a chemical particle, or molecule—cannot well reject these states as a general law. And once it is forced by its enemies—Metaphysics and Psychology1068—out of its alleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it more difficult than it now appears to refuse room in the Spaces of Space to Planetary Spirits (Gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or Ghosts, and others. Already Figuier and Paul D'Assier, two Positivists and Materialists, have succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still greater Scientists will follow in that intellectual “Fall.” They will be driven out of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of simple common sense.

We may take as an example, Mr. W. Crookes' latest discovery of what he has named Protyle. In the Notes on the Bhagavad Gîtâ, by one of the best metaphysicians and Vedântic scholars in India, the lecturer, referring cautiously to “things Occult” in that great Indian Esoteric work, makes a remark as suggestive as it is strictly correct. He says: