The Theosophical Society,
The Evolution of Life
From
A Textbook of Theosophy
By
C
All
the impulses of life which I have described as building the interpenetrating
worlds came forth from the Third Aspect of the Deity.
Hence in the Christian
scheme that Aspect is called “the Giver of Life”, the
Spirit who brooded over
the face of the waters of space. In theosophical
literature these impulses are
usually taken as a whole, and called the first
outpouring.
When
the worlds had been prepared to this extent, and most of the chemical
elements already existed, the second outpouring of
life took place, and this
came from the Second Aspect of the Deity. It brought
with it the power of
combination. In all the worlds it found existing
what may be thought of as
elements corresponding to those worlds. It
proceeded to combine those elements into organisms which it then ensouled, and in this way it built up the seven kingdoms of nature. Theosophy
recognizes seven kingdoms, because it regards man as separate from the animal
kingdom, and it takes into account several stages of evolution which are unseen
by the physical eye, and gives to them the mediaeval name of “elemental
kingdoms”.
The
divine Life pours itself into matter from above, and its whole course may be
thought of in two stages the gradual assumption
of grosser and grosser matter, and then the gradual casting off again of the
vehicles which have been assumed.
The
earliest level upon which its vehicles can be scientifically observed is the
mental – the fifth counting from the finer to the grosser, the first on which
there are separated globes. In practical study it is found convenient to divide
this mental world into two parts, which we call the higher and lower according
to the degree of density of their matter. The higher consists of the three
finer subdivisions of mental matter; the lower part of the other four.
When
the outpouring reaches the higher mental world it draws together the
ethereal elements there, combines them into what
at the level correspond to
substances, and of these substances builds forms
which it inhabits. We call this
the first elemental kingdom.
After
a long period of evolution, through different forms at that level, the wave of
life, which is all the time pressing steadily downwards, learns to identify itself
so fully with those forms that, instead of occupying them and withdrawing from
them periodically, it is able to hold them permanently and make them part of
itself, so that now from that level it can proceed to the temporary occupation
of forms at a still lower level. When it reaches this stage we call it the
second elemental kingdom, the ensouling life of which
resides upon the higher mental levels, while the vehicles through which it
manifests are on the lower.
After
another vast period of similar length, it is found that the downward
pressure has caused this (Page 30 ) process to
repeat itself; once more the life
has identified itself with its forms, and has taken
up its residence upon the lower mental levels, so that it is capable of ensouling bodies in the astral world. At this stage we call
it the third elemental kingdom.
We
speak of all these forms as finer or grosser relatively to one another, but
all of them are almost infinitely finer than any
with which we are acquainted in
the physical world. Each of these three is a
kingdom of nature, as varied in the
manifestations of its different forms
of life as in the animal or vegetable
kingdom which we know. After a long period spent
in ensouling the forms of the
third of these elemental kingdoms it identifies
itself with them in turn, and so
is able to ensoul the etheric part of the mineral kingdom, and becomes the life
which vivifies that – for there is a life in the
mineral kingdom just as much as
in the vegetable or the animal, although it is in
conditions where it cannot
manifest so freely. In the course of the mineral
evolution the downward pressure
causes it to identify itself in the same way with the etheric matter of the physical world, and from that to ensoul the denser matter of such minerals as are
perceptible to our senses.
In
the mineral kingdom we include not only what are usually called minerals, but
also liquids, gases and many etheric
substances the existence of which is
unknown to western science. All the matter of
which we know anything is living
matter, and the life which it contains is always
evolving. When it has reached
the central point of the mineral stage the downward
(Page 31) pressure ceases,
and is replaced by an upward tendency; the outbreathing has ceased and the
indrawing has begun.
When
mineral evolution is completed, the life has withdrawn itself again into
the astral world, but bearing with it all the
results obtained through its
experiences in the physical. At this stage it ensouls vegetable forms, and
begins to show itself much more clearly as what we
commonly call life – plant
life of all kinds; and at a yet later stage of its
development it leaves the vegetable kingdom and ensouls
the animal kingdom. The attainment of this level is the sign that it has
withdrawn itself still further, and is now working from the lower mental world.
In order to work in physical matter from that mental world it must operate
through the intervening astral matter; and that astral matter is now no longer
part of the garment of the group soul as a whole, but is the individual astral
body of the animal concerned, as will be later explained.
In
each of these kingdoms it not only passes a period of time which is to our
ideas almost incredibly long, but it also goes
through a definite course of
evolution, beginning from the lower manifestations
of that kingdom and ending
with the highest. In the vegetable kingdom, for
example, the life-force might
commence its career by occupying grasses or
mosses and end it by ensouling
magnificent forest trees. In the animal kingdom it
might commence with the
mosquitoes or with animalculae,
and might end with the finest specimens of the
mammals.
The
whole process is one of steady evolution from lower forms to higher, from
the simpler to the more complex. But what is
evolving is not primarily the form,
but the life within it. The forms also evolve and
grow better as time passes;
but this is in order that they may be appropriate
vehicles for more and more
advanced waves of life. When the life has reached
the highest level possible in
the animal kingdom, it may then pass on into the
human kingdom, under conditions which will presently be explained.
The
outpouring leaves one kingdom and passes to another, so that if we had to
deal with only one wave of this outpouring we could
have in existence only one
kingdom at a time. But the Deity sends out a
constant succession of these waves, so that at any given time we find a number
of them simultaneously in operation.
We
ourselves represent one such wave; but we find evolving alongside us another wave
which ensouls the animal kingdom – a wave which came
out from the Deity one stage later than we did. We find also the vegetable
kingdom, which represents a third wave, and the mineral kingdom, which
represents a fourth; and occultists know the existence all round us of three
elemental kingdoms, which represent the fifth, sixth and seventh waves. All
these, however, are successive ripples of the same great outpouring from the
Second Aspect of the Deity.
We
have here, then, a scheme of evolution in which the divine Life involves
itself more and more deeply in matter, in order that
through that matter it may
receive vibrations which could not otherwise
affect it impacts from without, which by degrees arouse within it rates of
undulation corresponding to their own, so that it learns to respond to them.
Later on it learns of itself to generate these rates of undulation, and so
becomes a being possessed of spiritual powers.
We
may presume that when this outpouring of life originally came forth from the
Deity,
at some level altogether beyond our power of cognition, it may perhaps
have been homogeneous; but when it first comes
within practical cognizance, when it is itself in the intuitional world, but is
ensouling bodies made of the
matter of the higher mental world, it is already not
one huge world-soul, but
many souls. Let us suppose a homogeneous outpouring,
which may be considered as one vast soul at one end of the scale; at the other,
when humanity is reached, we find that one vast soul broken up into millions of
the comparatively little souls of individual men. At any stage between these
two extremes we find an intermediate condition, the immense world-soul already
subdivided, but not to the utmost limit of possible subdivision.
Each
man is a soul, but not each animal or each plant. Man, as a soul, can
manifest through only one body at a time in the
physical world, whereas one
animal soul manifests simultaneously through a number
of animal bodies, one
plant-soul through, a number of separate plants. A
lion, for example, is not a
permanently separate entity in the same way as a man
is. When the man dies –
that is, when he as a soul lays aside his physical
body – he remains himself
exactly as he was before, an entity separate
from (Page 34) all other entities.
When
the lion dies, that which has been the separate soul of him is poured back
into the mass from which it came – a mass which is
at the same time providing
the souls for many other lions. To such a mass we
give the name of “group-soul”.
To
such a group-soul is attached a considerable number of lion bodies – let us
say a hundred. Each of those bodies while it lives
has its hundredth part of the
group-soul attached to it, and for the time being
this is apparently quite
separate, so that the lion is as much an
individual during his physical life as
the man; but he is not a permanent individual. When
he dies the soul of him
flows back into the group-soul to which it belongs,
and that identical soul-lion
cannot be separated from the group.
A
useful analogy may help comprehension. Imagine the group-soul to be
represented by the water in a bucket, and the
hundred lion bodies by a hundred
tumblers. As each tumbler is dipped into the
bucket it takes out from it a
tumblerful of water (the separate
soul). That water for the time being takes the
shape of the vehicle which it fills, and is
temporarily separate from the water
which remains in the bucket, and from the water in
the other tumblers.
Now
put into each of the hundred tumblers some kind of coloring matter or some kind
of flavoring. That will represent the qualities developed by its
experiences in the separate soul of the lion during
its lifetime. Pour back the
water from the tumbler into the bucket; that
represents the death of the lion.
The
coloring matter or the flavoring will be distributed (Page 35) through the
whole of the water in the bucket, but will be a much
fainter coloring, a much
less pronounced flavor when thus distributed than it
was when confined in one
tumbler. The qualities developed by the experience
of one lion attached to that
group-soul are therefore shared by the entire
group-soul but in a much lower
degree.
We
may take out another tumblerful of water from that
bucket, but we can never
again get exactly the same tumblerful
after it has once been mingled with the
rest. Every tumblerful
taken from that bucket in the future will contain some
traces of the coloring or flavoring put into each
tumbler whose contents have
been returned to the bucket. Just so the qualities
developed by the experience
of a single lion will become the common property
of all lions who are in the
future to be born from that group-soul, though in a
lesser degree than that in
which they existed in the individual lion who
developed them.
That
is the explanation of inherited instincts; that is why the duckling which
has been hatched by a hen takes to the water
instantly without needing to be
shown, how to swim; why the chicken just out of its
shell will cower at the
shadow of a hawk; why a bird which has been
artificially hatched, and has never
seen a nest, nevertheless knows how to make one, and
makes it according to the
traditions of its kind.
Lower
down the scale of animal life enormous numbers of bodies are attached to a single
group-soul – countless millions, for example, in the case of some of the smaller
insects; but as we rise in the animal kingdom (Page 36) the number of
bodies attached to a single group-soul becomes smaller
and smaller, and
therefore the differences between individuals
become greater.
Thus
the group-souls, gradually break up. Returning to the
symbol of the bucket, as tumbler after tumbler of water is withdrawn from it,
tinted with some sort of coloring matter and returned to it, the whole
bucketful of water gradually
becomes richer in color. Suppose that by
imperceptible degrees a kind of
vertical film forms itself across the center of
the bucket, and gradually solidifies itself into a division, so that we have
now a right half and a left half to the bucket, and each tumblerful
of water which is taken out is returned always to the same half from which it
came.
Then
presently a difference will be set up, and the liquid in one half of the
bucket will no longer be the same as that in the
other. We have then practically
two buckets, and when this stage is reached in a
group-soul it splits into two,
as a cell separates by fission. In this way, as
the experience grows ever
richer, the group-souls grow smaller but more
numerous, until at the highest
point we arrive at man with his single individual
soul, which no longer returns
into a group but remains always separate.
One
of the life-waves is vivifying the whole of a kingdom; but not every
group-soul in that life-wave will pass through the
whole of that kingdom from
the bottom to the top. If in the vegetable kingdom
a certain group-soul has
ensouled forest trees, when it
passes on into the animal kingdom it will omit
all (Page 37) the lower stages – that is, it will
never inhabit insects or reptiles, but will begin at once at the level of the
lower mammals. The insects and reptiles will be vivified by group-souls which
have for some reason left the vegetable kingdom at a much lower level than the
forest tree. In the same way the group-soul which has reached the highest
levels of the animal kingdom, will not individualize into primitive savages but
into men of somewhat higher type, the primitive savage being recruited from
group-souls which have left the animal
kingdom at a lower level.
Group-souls
at any level or at all levels arrange themselves into seven great
types, according to the Minister of the Deity through
whom their life has
poured forth. These types are clearly distinguishable
in all the kingdoms, and
the successive forms taken by any one of them form
a connected series, so that
animals, vegetables, minerals and the varieties
of the elemental creatures may
all be arranged into seven groups, and the life
coming along one of those lines
will not diverge into any of the others.
No
detailed list has yet been made of the animals, plants or minerals from this
point of view; but it is certain that the life which
is found ensouling a
mineral of a particular type will never vivify a
mineral of any other type than
its own, though within that type it may vary. When
it passes on to the vegetable
and animal kingdoms it will inhabit vegetables and
animals of that type and of
no other, and when it eventually reaches humanity
it will individualize into men
of that type and of no other.
The
method of individualization is the raising of the soul of a particular
animal to a level so much higher than that attained by
its group-soul that it
can no longer return to the latter. This cannot be
done with any animal, but
only with those whose brain is developed to a
certain level, and the method
usually adopted to acquire such mental
development is to bring the animal into
close contact with man. Individualization, therefore,
is possible only for
domestic animals, and only for certain kinds even
of those. At the head of each
of the seven types stands one kind of domestic
animal – the dog for one, the cat
for another, the elephant for a third, the monkey
for a fourth, and so on. The
wild animals can all be arranged on seven lines
leading up to the domestic
animals; for example, the fox and the wolf are
obviously on the same line with
the dog, while the lion, the tiger and the leopard
equally obviously lead up to
the domestic cat; so that the group-soul animating
a hundred lions mentioned
some time ago might at a later stage of its
evolution have divided into, let us
say, five group-souls each animating twenty cats.
The
life-wave spends a long period of time in each kingdom; we are now only a
little past the middle of such an aeon,
and consequently the conditions are not
favourable for the achievement of
that individualization which normally comes
only at the end of a period. Rare instances of such
attainment may occasionally
be observed on the part of some animal much in
advance of the average. Close
association with man is necessary to produce this
result. The animal if (Page
39)
kindly treated develops devoted affection for his
human friend, and also
unfolds his intellectual powers in trying to
understand that friend and to
anticipate his wishes. In addition to this, the
emotions and the thoughts of man
act constantly upon those of the animal, and tend
to raise him to a higher level
both emotionally and intellectually. Under favourable circumstances this
development may proceed so far as to raise the
animal altogether out of touch
with the group to which he belongs, so that his
fragment of a group-soul becomes capable of responding to the outpouring which
comes from the First Aspect of the Deity.
For
this final outpouring is not like the others, a mighty outrush
affecting
thousands or millions simultaneously; it comes to
each one individually as that
one is ready to receive it. This outpouring has
already descended as far as the
intuitional world; but it comes no farther than that
until this upward leap is
made by the soul of the animal from below; but when
that happens this Third
Outpouring
leaps down to meet it, and in the higher mental world is formed an
ego, a permanent individuality – permanent, that
is, until, far later in his
evolution, the man transcends it and reaches back
to the divine unity from which
he came. To make this ego, the fragment of the
group-soul (which has hitherto
played the part always of ensouling
force) becomes in its turn a vehicle, and is
itself ensouled by that
divine Spark which has fallen into it from on high. That
Spark
may be said to have been hovering in the monadic world over the group-soul through
the whole of its previous evolution, unable to effect
a junction with it until its corresponding fragment in the group-soul had developed
sufficiently to permit it. It is this breaking away from the rest of the
group-soul and developing a separate ego which marks the distinction between the
highest animal and the lowest man.
The Theosophical Society,