மறுபிறவி, 7 ஜென்ம தொடர்...8 (Rebirth)

THE LIFE-STREAMS

WE have now completed the first portion of our study, on the field of evolution, having outlined the planes and places in which the evolution of life takes place. We may perhaps liken this to a description of the buildings of a university, with its colleges, lecture-halls and class-rooms. Our next step will be to study the streams of life which pour into the vast and complex structure of our solar system, just as streams or ”batches” of students pour into a university, passing through various courses of study, eventually obtaining their degrees, and passing out into the world, there to fulfil such functions as their tastes and qualifications permit. Instead of a university, however, it would be more appropriate to use the illustration of a vast educational establishment, comprising every degree of education, from the nurseries and kindergarten of infants, to the most advanced honours course of a university.

We shall commence with the larger units, the vast streams or waves of life, and trace them through the various kingdoms of nature, subdividing as they go, until eventually we reach the races and sub-races of humanity, and individual men in those races, who climb steadily through the higher levels of the human kingdom until they pass into the superhuman levels of attainment.

In modern Theosophical literature the term ”life-waves” has been employed in three distinct senses:

First. To represent the three great Outpourings(as they are more usually and perhaps more appropriately called) of Divine Life, from the three Persons of the Trinity, by means of which the solar system came into existence, and by which it is nourished and sustained.

Second. To describe the successive impulsions, or streams of life, of which the Second Outpouring is formed. It is these with which we are dealing in this chapter, and which we shall usually denote, for the sake of clarity, as streams of life, or lifestreams.

Third. To signify the transference of life from one planet of a chain to another planet, in the course of the various ”rounds.” This we shall deal with in detail at a later stage of our study, when it will be seen that this kind of life-wave differs considerably from what we have called a life-stream.

Confining ourselves to our human line of evolution - ignoring for the moment the deva line of evolution, and other lines which may exist, but of which we know as yet little or nothing - we note that there are seven main kingdoms of life evolving side by side through our earth Scheme. Whether the same method is followed in the other nine Schemes or not, we do not at present know for certain, though there appear to be indications that this is probably substantially the case.

The seven kingdoms are:

The First Elemental Kingdom.
The Second Elemental Kingdom.
The Third Elemental Kingdom.
The Mineral Kingdom.
The Vegetable Kingdom.
The Animal Kingdom.
The Human Kingdom.

All seven of these kingdoms are manifestations or expressions of the same life, the one life of the Logos, manifesting in that Second great Outpouring, which comes from the Second Aspect of the Trinity, after the primitive matter has been prepared for its reception by the action of the First Outpouring, which comes from the Third Aspect of the Trinity. (For fuller explanation of the Three Outpourings, and their work, vide The Causal Body, pp. 13, 14, 70).

The Second Outpouring comes forth in a series of successive waves, following one another like waves of the sea. It is the history of the progress of these waves of life - which we have decided to call Life-streams - that will be traced in this and subsequent chapters. The first three of the seven kingdoms are on the downward arc of evolution, i.e., the life in them is plunging deeper and deeper into matter. The First Elemental Kingdom, in fact, does not descend below the higher mental plane; the Second Elemental Kingdom does not descend below the lower mental plane; and the Third Elemental Kingdom comes down only as far as the astral plane.

The Mineral Kingdom represents the turning point, where the life reaches the lowest point of its descent into matter, and commences to ascend again through the planes. This phenomenon of descent into materiality and re-ascent into spirituality is one which constantly recurs in many ways, and will be dealt with more fully later on.

The Vegetable, Animal and Human Kingdoms are definitely occupied in rising steadily through the planes.

We may therefore arrange the kingdoms thus:

The Second Outpouring (from the Second Logos) consists, as said above, of streams of life; in our line of evolution there are seven of these streams, composed of the seven kingdoms enumerated, and these are poured into the first chain of our Scheme.

The general plan is that each stream shall animate a kingdom for a whole chain-period, passing on into the next higher kingdom in the next chain, i.e., it takes a whole chain-period for any given kingdom to evolve to such a point that it becomes fit to pass into the kingdom succeeding it in the scale of progress.

That, as said, is the general principle: but there is an important modification with which we shall deal presently. It is omitted now, with so much else, in order to avoid introducing complications at too early a stage of our study.

From this it will be seen that, as the First Elemental Kingdom passes on into the Second Elemental Kingdom, there would be a gap caused in the position vacated by the kingdom which had passed on. This gap is filled by an entirely fresh life-stream, which pours forth from the Logos, and thus makes a new First Elemental Kingdom.

As this must take place in each of the seven chains, we perceive that there are altogether thirteen life-streams in our Scheme. These consist of the seven streams-one for each kingdom - which entered the first chain, and six entirely new streams, one of which entered each of the succeeding six chains, in order to provide, as explained, a new First Elemental Kingdom.

The progress of the kingdoms through the seven chains of our Scheme is illustrated in Diagram XIV.

The student is asked kindly to note the system adopted to indicate the various kingdoms, as it is one which will be followed in a number of subsequent diagrams. The First Elemental Kingdom is shown by one vertical line; the Second Elemental Kingdom by two vertical lines; the Third Elemental Kingdom by one inclined line; the Mineral by crossed vertical and horizontal lines; the Vegetable by inclined lines making a V . the Animal by an A; the Human by an H. It will be noticed that these indications have some relationship to the markings adopted for the matter of the planes, which makes them easier to remember.

The student will notice also that throughout the diagrams, whilst globes and rounds are indicated by circles, kingdoms of life and groups of entities are indicated by squares or rectangles.

From Diagram XIV it will be seen that the life which is now being expressed in our present humanity came up through the Animal Kingdom in the third (Moon) chain, through the Vegetable Kingdom in the second chain, and through the Mineral Kingdom in the first chain. Now, as each kingdom must pass through all the kingdoms that precede it, it is clear that the life-stream, out of which our present humanity has emerged, must have passed through the three Elemental Kingdoms in some previous chains, in some previous Scheme.

A similar consideration of course applies to all but the lowest life-stream which entered our first chain, i.e., they must have passed through previous chains in some previous Scheme. Of such previous chains and Schemes we have no direct knowledge as yet, though we can clearly deduce the fact that they must have existed.

Diagram XV is an attempt to illustrate the progress of the life-streams through successive Schemes.

The meaning of the seven radiating lines in Diagrams XIV and XV, at the head of the Human Kingdom, is that human entities pass out of the Human Kingdom into the superhuman, along one of seven possible paths of future progress. The full explanation of this we must once more postpone till a little later.

If we look at Diagram XIV we perceive that the only life stream which runs through the whole seven kingdoms in our Scheme of seven chains is that which entered the first chain as the First Elemental Kingdom (No. 7 in the Diagram). Climbing steadily, one kingdom in each chain, this life-stream eventually reaches the Human Kingdom, and passes out of it, in the seventh and last chain of our Scheme.

The other six kingdoms of the first chain, as already said, must have commenced their evolution in earlier chains, whilst the six life-streams which emerge from the Logos and enter the six chains after the first will have to continue and complete their evolution in chains subsequent to the seventh and last chain of our Scheme.

These considerations impress upon us the fact that, whilst our Scheme of Evolution is a complete and more or less self contained field of evolution, having a definite beginning and a definite ending, yet it forms one in a larger series of successive Schemes. From this we may deduce that even the solar system as a whole follows the general principle which we find operating elsewhere in so many other directions, and is but one incarnation in some gigantic series. Anything in the nature of ultimate finality seems therefore-as we might have expected-to be utterly beyond the furthest horizon to which we can stretch our imaginations.

We have seen that the life-streams evolve through the various chains, passing through the whole of the seven globes in each round. Now it is very difficult for us to grasp with our physical consciousness what can be the condition of the life of the lower kingdoms on the higher planes; the idea of the evolution of a mineral, for example, on the mental plane, suggests nothing readily comprehensible to the ordinary mind. It would correspond to our thought of a mineral. Yet we should not assume that such a thought-form as we could make of a mineral would be its only representation on that level. The thought-form which exists there is that of the Manu, moulded by a power altogether beyond comparison with that of our mentality.

It may also help us to an understanding if we recollect that every mineral has its astral and mental counterparts, and it must be on these higher correspondences of the minerals that are produced certain effects which constitute their evolution.

Further, the special types of matter which form the counterparts are also on their respective planes manifestations of the mineral monad, and we may suppose that through such manifestations that monad is evolving during its existence on these loftier levels.

The essential fact to bear in mind seems to be that the whole process is the bringing down of the mind-energies flowing from the Logos - from His cosmic mental plane to that prakritic mental which is our mental plane. It is His idea of a mineral, materialised as far down as our thought of the etheric body of a mineral.

The Group-Soul also must always contain within itself latent possibilities connected with the higher planes through which it has descended; and it may be that in those stages of evolution these potentialities are being developed by some method quite outside those with which we are familiar.

Without the unfolding of psychic faculties we cannot expect to understand in detail the hidden growth in these exalted spheres of finer matter; the important point is that we should realise that the life-streams are evolving in some way during the periods spent on all the globes, useful progress being made in every part of the chain.

It has already been mentioned that, besides the line of evolution which we are pursuing, there are also other lines which may be considered as running parallel with our own. For the divine life is pressing upwards through several streams, of which ours is but one, and numerically by no means the most important. We should bear in mind that physical humanity occupies only a small part of the surface of the earth, whilst entities at a corresponding level on other lines of evolution not only crowd the earth far more thickly than man, but at the same time populate the enormous plains of the sea and the fields of the air.

The table of the evolution of life, appended here, shows the streams as flowing side by side as far as the mineral kingdom, but as soon as the upward arc is begun, they diverge. The streams re-unite at the Solar Spirits level. The table must not be considered as in any way exhaustive, as there are no doubt other lines which have not yet been observed, and there are also certainly all kinds of variations and possibilities of crossing at different levels from one line to another. The table is designed merely to give a broad outline of the scheme.