{"collection":"wmn","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/wmn/cws/cws54.htm","path":"wmn/cws/cws54.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/wmn/cws/cws54.htm","text":"THE spirit absorbed in man or in the planet does not exhaust Deity.\nNor does the soul evolved upward through matter exhaust substance.\nThere remain, then, ever in the fourth dimension--the principium--above the manifest, unmanifest God and soul.\nThe perfection of man and of the planet is attained when the soul of the one and of the other is throughout illuminate by spirit.\nBut spirit is never the same thing as soul. It is always celestial energy, and soul is always substance.\nThat which creates is Spirit (God).\nThe immanent consciousnesses (spirits) of all the cells of a man's entity, cause by their polarisation a central unity of consciousness, which is more than the sum total of all their consciousnesses, because it is on a higher round or plane.\nFor in spiritual science everything depends upon levels; and the man's evolution works round spirally, as does the planetary evolution.\nIn this relation consider the worlds of form and formless worlds of Hind\u00fb theosophy.\nSimilarly the soul of the planet is more than the associated essences of the souls upon it: because this soul also is on a higher plane than they.\nSimilarly, too, the consciousness of the solar system is more than that of the associated world-consciousnesses.\nAnd the consciousness of the manifest universe is greater than that of its corporate systems.\nBut that of the unmanifest is higher and greater still: as, except in substance, God the Father is greater than God the Son.\nThe elemental kingdoms represent spirit on its downward path into matter.\nThere are three of these before the mineral is reached.\nThese are the formless worlds before the worlds of form.\nThey are in the planet, and also in man.\nAll the planets inhabited by manifest forms are themselves manifest.\nAfter the form-worlds come other formless worlds, caused by the upward arc of ascending spirit: but these also are in the planet.\nThey are also in the man: and are the states of pure thought.\nThe thinker, therefore, who is son of Hermes, is as far beyond the medium who is controlled and who is not self-conscious, as the formless worlds of the ascending arc are beyond the formless worlds of the elemental, or descending, arc.\nIn the planet and in the man they only seem contiguous because each round is spiral.\nBut each round takes the One Life higher in the spiral.\nNeither the planet-soul nor the man-soul goes over exactly the same ground again.\nBut perverse and disobedient will may reverse the direction of the spiral.\nIndividuals in whom the will so acts are finally abandoned by the planet to the outer sphere.\nThe One Life is the point of consciousness.\nThe will is the impulse which moves it.\nIn the celestial the One Life is the Elohim; and the will is the Father.\nThe One Life is manifest by effulgence (the Son).\nSo, then, the will begets in substance the effulgence, which is the manifestation of the One Life.\nIn man and the planet the effulgence is dim and diffuse until it moves into the soul. Then only Christ is born.\nThe One Life is invisible until Christ manifests it.\nChrist in man has for counterpart Adonai in the heavens.\nSo, then, the One Life is in the Father-Mother latently, until manifest by the Son (effulgence).\nAnd the procession of the Holy Spirit is from the Father-Mother through the Son.\nHerein is the difference reconciled between the Greek and Latin Churches.\nThe point of consciousness shineth more and more unto the perfect day of brightness (\"Nativity of Christ\" within man).\nThe object of creation is the production of \"Ancients.\" 1\nThey are the first-fruits of the souls of the planets; or First Resurrection.\" (First in dignity, not in time.)\nThey are not themselves creators; but are regenerators of that which is created;\nBeing vehicles for the Holy Spirit, who is the regenerator, through Christ.\nBecause will can create only when it is in the abstract; the derived does not create.\nThe Father-Mother creates through Adonai by means of the Holy Spirit.\nThe will of the perfect man renovates through the effulgence of his One Life.\nHis Karma is poured out over the world to save mankind.\nHe is the Saviour through his precious life.\nThere are twenty-four Ancients, because there are twelve Avat\u00e2rs of the Lord, and every one is dual.\nWill, when it is derived through existence, begets Karma.\nGod has no Karma. God does not exist: God is.\nKarma is the channel of initiation. God is not initiated.\nThe perfect man saves himself and saves others by his righteousness.\nThe two terms of existence are creation and redemption.\nThe first is God's work; the second is the work of Christ,--God in man.\nThe reason why the Ancient cannot create is because he is not infinite.\nHe is immortal, not eternal; he is derived, not self-subsistent.\nHis is the point of grace, not the point of projection.\nThe thrones of the Ancients are round about the Throne of God and below it.\nThe lower self is the cause of the difference between man and nature.\nThis lower self is the unreal self, the magnetic states.\nThese magnetic states are the serpent, in whose folds all nature is involved (to man).\nIt is the serpent that tempts Eve, the soul.\nHow does this magnetic self arise?\nIt is a reflect, the pole of which is antithetic to the pole of the true self.\nThe perfect balance is to be in the centre or equator, between the two.\nNature has no lower self; consequently she is not self-conscious (does not know that she is \"naked\").\nThe centre of the true self is in eternity; the poles are in time.\nThe soul's proper seat is in the centre,--eternity.\nWhen she is there, the man is in eternal life.\nThis centre is the tree of life.\nThe tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the condition of the cognisance of the two poles.\nEating the fruit of this tree is the act by which the soul beholds these two poles.\nWhile she remained in her first state she was as nature is, seeing only one pole, the good, and not knowing herself.\nThere are two modes of God,--the manifest and the unmanifest.\nGod manifest rises gradually through nature to meet God unmanifest.\nEvery level in nature rises out of itself to merge in every other level.\nWhen the mind-plane is reached, God emerges thence as the soul, and looks upon himself.\nThat into which the soul looks back is the past of her journey,--time and nature.\nThat into which she looks forward is God,--spirit and eternity.\nThe point she has reached is eternal life,--the tree in the midst of paradise.\nThe false self is the mirage in time.\nAs the planes evolved, their laws were the laws of God.\nBut backwards they are the laws of the Devil.\n\"A prayer said backwards is an evocation of the Evil One.\"\nThe God manifest is the true self.\nThe God unmanifest is the Divine overshadowing, the true spouse of the soul.\nTo know one's self is no sin.\nGod planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.\nThe sin is in the retrogression towards the astral.\nIt is the giving of the apple to Adam.\nAdam is commanded; Adam is rebuked.\nFrom the moment of the fall, a new projection takes place, similar to that of God's first projection into time.\nThe wheel turns again, and all is done over again in the microcosm.\nFor the retrogression towards the intellectual (Adam) is a displacement of the centre.\nIt is a transference of the tree of life from the place of Eve (the soul) to the place of Adam.\nThe centre can be nowhere save in the meeting place of the two lines which intersect at right angles the two triangles of the \"Seal of Solomon.\"\nThere can be but one point of centre, therefore the two trees represent two lines crossed.\nWhen the One Life has reached the seventh kingdom, then is the Sabbath.\nThat is the point of return from Nature--God in Action--to God in God--Rest.\nSeven for the outgoing, seven for the incoming. 1\nThought in nature is the law of God.\nThought in man is the law of God; because man is the offspring of nature, and there is but one law.\nAll the planes in nature express this thought in unison.\nLaw in one plane does not conflict with law in another plane. Therefore God is invariable in nature.\nBut in man there appears to be conflict of two diverse wills. How is this, and whence comes the will which conflicts with the law of God in man?\nMan like the world, is constituted of many planes.\nEach plane has its consciousness, and the medium of one plane is more responsive and powerful in expressing the will of God than that of another plane.\nThe same is true of nature's plane. It is a question of subtlety and rarefaction of media.\nThe cause of evolution is the constant convergence of radii.\nThat is,--the consciousness of the mineral plane has a tendency to express itself in a higher plane, i.e. as vegetable consciousness; and the vegetable as animal; and the animal as human; and the human as divine.\nBut when the human is reached, the whole process begins over again, in petto.\nAnd in man unregenerate, the tendency is not from behind forwards, in upward order, but in downwards, or retrogressive series.\nFor in man all the planes are consubstantiate, and all their modes of law obtain. Some media are weaker or denser than others, and these are the lowermost and outermost,--\" touching negation.\"\nAs the earth in its whirling, or individuation, throws off its Karma, so it is with man.\nIt is through Karma that initiation occurs.\nKarma is two-faced, good and evil. But only the good face reflects on us the divine light.\nDiana is the moon; so also is Hecate.\nThe \"moon\" is good or evil, according to the condition of the postulant.\n. . . . . . . . . .\n125:1 Written at home, the first five sections on December 9, 1883, and the rest on January 21, 1884, and regarded by the writer as an exercise or meditation, based on previous illuminations, rather than as a fresh illumination. It is unfinished. E. M.\nReferred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, vol. ii, p. 33.\n127:1 A.V., \"Elders,\" Apoc. iv.\n129:1 The difference between this reckoning and that in The Great Work, Part II, No. III, v. 60, 61, is only apparent, the point which the two series have in common being here reckoned twice over, making the total in both cases thirteen. E. M.","title":"Clothed With The Sun: Part The First: Illuminations: No. L: Concerning The One Life: Being A Recapitulation","type":"page"}