LONGER PRESENTATION

THE ETHER ENVELOPE, SECTION TWO:
THE BASICS OF HYLOZOICS

“All things are three and three is everywhere, for as the Pythagoreans say, everything and all things are determined by the number three.”

Aristotle

“All esoteric teaching about the manifestation of life is based on the basic concept of the hylozoics.”

The esoteric master Djwhal Khul

2.1 Pythagoras’ School

Hylozoics is the esoteric world view in Western formulation. Hylozoics was formulated by Pythagoras, the great Greek mathematician and thinker. His intention with hylozoics was to lay the basis for the science of the future. How far ahead of his times he was is clear from the fact that it is only now that his system has a prospect of being generally comprehended. This is so thanks to the fact that scientific research has reached so far that it is beginning to converge with some basic hylozoic principles. Whereas science deals with physical reality only, hylozoics primarily describes the superphysical reality, for the causes of physical events are to be found in the superphysical. In the future, a direct connection between science and hylozoics will be possible.

Thus Pythagoras was thousands of years ahead of his times. This is explained by the fact that he belonged to a brotherhood the members of which had systematically developed their consciousness far beyond the limits of normal man. They roused to full activity “organs of knowledge” that still lie dormant within most of us. That gave them a sovereign knowledge of the universe and man, far beyond the possibilities of modern science, which is limited to information obtained through the physical senses and their instrumental extensions. That sovereign knowledge is called esoterics. Members of the brotherhood used to form schools of knowledge in various nations when these had reached a certain degree of civilization. At least a sizeable minority of the people should have been able to liberate their thinking from traditional erroneous views and have begun pondering, in a rational way, the meaning of life and the nature of reality.

Around 700 B.C. Pythagoras founded a school of knowledge in Sicily, which was then a Greek colony. When Pythagoras appeared, esoteric schools had existed for thousands of years. The novelty of his esoteric school was the systematic and lucid mode of presenting the knowledge of immemorial age. He understood the Greek sense of concrete knowledge, scientific method, and exactness.

This is the reason why hylozoics is the esoteric knowledge system best suited to Westerners with scientific and philosophical orientations, their love of clear facts and aversion to ambiguous symbols.

Pythagoras’ disciple Kleinias later moved the school to Athens, where it gained a tremendous influence on Greek thinking. Famous initiates include Plato and Aristotle. In connection with Alexander’s conquest of the Far East as far as India and North Africa and the spread of Greek to the world language, the school had to cover a much larger area. Both the hermetic and the gnostic schools were strongly influenced by the Pythagoreans.

For close on three millennia, hylozoics has been a living tradition, a path to knowledge of the world and of ourselves. Thousands of men and women have walked that path. Till very recently, the knowledge was kept secret to those outside the school. We live indeed in a world where everything truly valuable is threatened, of course knowledge too. Only in our times an elementary presentation of hylozoics has been allowed for publication. This was in 1950 when The Philosopher’s Stone by Henry T. Laurency was published for the first time, in Swedish. Henry T. Laurency was a Swede, who himself was an initiated Pythagorean. It is worth pointing out that it applies to all esoteric knowledge that only those who are initiated can present it correctly. What the uninitiated wrote about Pythagoras and the hylozoic lacks theoretical significance. The Philosopher’s Stone was followed in 1961 by The Knowledge of Reality by Laurency. Since 1985 these books have been available in English. They are basic for all hylozoic study today. The greater body of hylozoic knowledge is still unpublished and will remain so for a long time yet. The knowledge of otherwise unknown forces in nature and in man will continually be given only to the very few, to those who have vanquished all temptations to abuse the power which all true knowledge confers.

2.2 Hylozoics’ mental system

Hylozoics is a mental system. By this is meant a system that man can comprehend and use by his mental consciousness, his intellect and common sense. In problems belonging to the world view, emotion is no source of illumination and no sure guide. Only reason can, at best, decide whether alleged facts are true facts, judge their possibility, credibility, or probability.

But facts as such do not suffice. Single, disconnected facts confuse rather than explain. Facts must be put together into contexts and contexts be combined into still larger units: into systems. Every thinking man makes himself a system. Every new thing he learns he connects with his former learning, incorporating the new with the system he has already got and goes on building, consciously or unconsciously. All rational thinking is done in systems. And that is so because understanding always goes from universals to particulars, from a whole to details.

The hylozoic system makes it possible to unite that striving after knowledge which here in the West has during hundreds of years been divided into mutually conflicting movements: theology, philosophy, and science. Such division and conflict is always proof of ignorance. Reality is one and single. Therefore, there can be only one true knowledge of reality, only one tenable world view. Life views, on the other hand, should indeed be as numerous as thinking people, since everybody should formulate his own view of what he wants from life and what he is prepared to give in return.

The more mankind develops, the better shall we agree also on matters of life view. So it is because more and more people will see that their life view should be based on the world view, its facts about reality. In order to know how it should be you must first know something of how it actually is. Our life view is more important than our world view, since it guides us in our practical life, furnishes our conception of right (conception of right and wrong, what we vaguely term “morality”). Being the knowledge basis of our life view, the world view has its unsuspected significance. And here hylozoics will make its contribution.

The hylozoic world view describes existence as a unity with three sides or aspects: matter, consciousness, and motion. Everything is matter that has consciousness (always to some degree) and is in motion. The least, indestructible parts of matter are the monads. The meaning of life is the development of consciousness in every monad.

In every creature there is a monad that is sufficiently developed to be the central individual consciousness in that creature. The various kingdoms of nature – minerals, plants, animals, men, etc. – are different stages in the evolution of individual consciousness.

The human kingdom is not the final stage of this development, only of its organic biological part in the visible physical world. Beyond the physical world there is a great number of ever higher worlds. In these the individual’s development goes on beyond the human stage. There are more natural kingdoms above man than below him.

Everything in existence makes up a unity. There is actually no isolation, particularly not for consciousness and energy (matter in motion). All higher development presupposes that the individual, with his self-identity preserved, enters into ever larger groups where co-operation and service of life and development are the essential activity.

All this is ruled by laws. Besides the laws of nature, which concern the life of matter, there are laws of life, which concern consciousness and its development. It is man’s duty to learn about the laws of life and to apply them to the best of his ability. The laws of life most important for man and which he can apply himself are: the law of freedom, the law of unity, the law of self-realization, and the law of activation.

The law of freedom says that every man has a right to do whatever he wants to within the limits of the equal right of all.

The law of unity says that all life makes up a unity and that higher development is possible only when man overcomes his selfishness and learns co-operation and service.

The law of self-realization says that every man must develop in his own manner according to the conditions set by his individual character.

The law of self-activation says that all your development is the result of your own work, all knowledge the result of your own mental effort.

Three laws of life that rule man whether he wants it or not are: the law of development, the law of destiny, and the law of sowing and reaping.

As rational beings we have to choose between two paths, two kinds of self-realization: the will to power or the will to unity. The will to power leads to aggravated suffering for all, especially for those who have abused power. The will to unity has the effect that nobody demands more than his share and that everybody sees service of the common good as his highest task in life. That will prove to be the only traversable path to happiness and joy for everybody, the welfare of all and the illfare of none.

In the following, the fundamentals of the hylozoic world view are presented. Where it has been possible, these basic facts have been illustrated by recent scientific findings and ideas, all to make it easier for the reader to understand. Hylozoics is here to make a mental revolution. May the reader not be overwhelmed but soon find his bearings in the new (and yet so strangely familiar) ideas!

2.3 The Three Aspects of Reality

The Greek word hylozoics could be translated “spiritual materialism”. This implies that there is a spiritual reality and a material reality. No world view that excludes either aspect of reality is tenable in the long run. We are used to doctrines that make a sharp distinction between a spiritual, or higher world, and a material, or lower world. Hylozoics has another perspective, however, than exoteric philosophy, theology, or occultism.

Pythagoras abolished the imagined opposition of spirit and matter, explaining that it was the outcome of ignorance of both. He taught that everything is matter and that universal matter possesses ”spirit”, or consciousness. Thus matter and consciousness are two aspects of one and the same reality.

A third aspect of reality is motion. Everything is in motion, and everything that moves is matter.

The whole cosmos and everything in the cosmos has these three aspects. There is no matter devoid of consciousness (even though it still be potential). No consciousness can exist without a material basis. And motion manifests itself in matter as energy and in consciousness as will.

The three aspects of life are equivalent. None can be identified with or explained from any of the other two. Nor can anyone of them be explained from anything else. You cannot define them, only observe that they are self-evident. Therefore, they are absolute, and in their totality they ultimately explain everything.

Philosophical and scientific materialism has taken only the outer reality, the objective matter aspect, into account. The inner reality, however, the subjective consciousness aspect of emotions and thoughts, is as absolute and peculiar, and cannot be equated with objective phenomena such as chemical and electrical processes in nerve cells. The one-sidedness of materialism makes it untenable.

On the other hand, so-called philosophical idealism has disregarded the matter aspect and asserted that objective reality was subjective experience only. The consequence of that view is absurd: everything material is just an illusion.

In contemporary physics they say that “everything is energy”. According to hylozoics, energy is the same as matter in motion. It remains for science to discover consciousness in that dynamic matter, discover the universal existence of consciousness.

Perhaps it is clear from the above examples of one-sided views that all three aspects must be taken into account to make our world view complete so as not to mislead us.

2.4 Everything Is Alive

When hylozoics says that all matter has consciousness, this of course does not imply that consciousness manifests itself in the same way in all kinds of matter. Just as there are various material life-forms, so there are various kinds of consciousness in them. A man can think, imagine, and make plans, which animals cannot. His consciousness is much more extensive and intensive than that of higher animals, not to speak of lower ones.

Although animals cannot think as we can, yet they display intelligent behaviour. They act expediently, flexibly, show they have a will of their own, they remember, and they learn. That one-sided materialism which holds the brain or at least nervous system to be a necessary condition of consciousness must yield in the face of recent discoveries.

The e-coli bacterium, a most primitive organism, consists of one single cell. It has neither a brain, nor even a head or a heart. It has just one DNA molecule as a chromosome and a life-time of twenty minutes at the most. Still it can learn to recognize various chemical substances, remember them, and evince a purposive behaviour in swimming towards “pleasant” substances and away from “unpleasant” ones. According to biochemist Dr Koshland, who made these observations, these bacteria display individual behaviour despite identical genes and environment. They develop a personality which remains to the end of their lives.

Bacteria are organisms. It is clear all the same that the borderline between organic and inorganic matter does not set a bound for life itself. Also mineral life-forms give proof of intelligent adaptation to their environment. Therefore, they must perceive it in some manner. It is well-known, for instance, that many freshly synthesized substances must learn to crystallize. Having had the experience once, they find it much easier later. No two crystals of the same chemical composition are entirely identical but have their peculiarities and individual patterns of reaction – that is, habits. These must be due to unique experiences and memories.

Science has begun to discover the consciousness aspect of existence, hitherto much ignored. Tompkins and Bird have given many examples of “green intelligence” in their book, The Secret Life of Plants. Dr Rupert Sheldrake has gone even farther in his book, A New Science of Life. In it, he suggests that all forms of nature, organic and inorganic (so-called lifeless), are preceded by and constructed from invisible morphogenetic fields that act intelligently and in a manner aiming at wholeness. This idea is in harmony with hylozoics.

There is some sort of consciousness in everything. In fact, all forms of nature are forms of life, since there exists nothing lifeless. But how do we account for the differences in extension and intensity of consciousness? Hylozoics says that they are due to differences in the degrees of consciousness evolved in various forms of life. Alongside of chemical and biological evolution, which concerns material forms, there is also a psychological evolution, which concerns consciousness in the forms.

2.5  The Evolution of Consciousness

What does “evolution of consciousness” actually mean? The acquisition of new and more favourable inner qualities, the loss of older and less favourable ones, the winning of new abilities, faculties which increase the prospects of the individual to choose and so afford him greater freedom.

Where man in concerned, evolution implies that worse qualities are replaced by better ones in the direction of the ideal. This should imply: a deeper sympathy, a stronger empathy, a better understanding, a sharper intellect, and a firmer will. It should also lead to greater ability in more fields of action. Evolution also implies that the various conflicting elements of the personality are balanced into a greater harmony, so that the “lower self” is put under the control of the “higher self”.

We who are now human beings have our qualities and abilities thanks to having developed to this stage from total unconsciousness and impotence. Perhaps you think of the development from the prenatal stage to a mature man or woman. According to hylozoics, however, that development is only a repetition. Entirely new qualities and abilities cannot be so quickly acquired. We are human and can reach human maturity because we have been humans many times before. Reincarnation is a principle running through all life.

When we are born into a new life, we have latent human qualities acquired in thousands of previous lives. The faster we reach human maturity and the deeper that maturity is, the more lives we have lived before and the richer was their content. Memories from these former lives are not directly accessible in our waking consciousness (but how much do we remember from the earliest years of the life we are living now?). The general experience we have had in previous incarnations can quickly be roused from the slumber of latency, however, when we are faced with similar situations anew. This explains not just the different depth in the understanding of life in different people but also their innate predispositions, talents, genius. “All knowledge is but remembrance”, said Plato, who was a Pythagorean.

Differences in degree of consciousness among men thus are due to the fact that some people are older and others are younger “souls”. And if men, animals, plants, and inorganic matter are included in one great context of life, namely evolution, then the various kingdoms of nature can be explained as the chief successive stages of that evolution.

Hylozoics does that. We who are now men were able to become human for the first time – thousands of incarnations ago – because we had reached as far as was possible in the pre­ceding natural kingdom. The animal kingdom had nothing more to teach us. Correspondingly, we existed as plants during still earlier epochs, and before even those we were minerals.

The biological evolution of life-forms concerns the refinement of the material envelopes for the benefit of the indwelling life. That evolution has furnished the instruments that were necessary to the development of consciousness. Throughout the animal kingdom and up to man, we can trace the refinement of the nervous system including the brain as the essential feature of the evolution of organic matter. And yet the brain is just a tool for consciousness.

The evolution of consciousness is the meaning of life.

2.6 The Monads

A life-form is worn out, it dies and dissolves, but the consciousness that was in it passes on in a new form. How is that possible? For if consciousness always has a material basis, then that basis must be something different from and more enduring than the brain and other parts of the nervous system.

Hylozoics explains the matter thus: The individual consciousness there is in every form of life is bound up with an indestructible material nucleus, which remains also after the dissolution of the form. Pythagoras called that nucleus the monad. He said that the monad was divine in essence. By that he meant that it is possible for the monad to expand its consciousness and will so as to eventually embrace the entire cosmos.

The hylozoic term monad can be translated “self-atom”. Monads consist of matter just as everything else in the universe. But, in contrast to all other matter, they are not composed of atoms. They are indivisible primordial atoms; the very building blocks of everything in the cosmos.

We are used to regarding man as a body that (possibly) has a soul. Perhaps we understand that it really is the other way round: man is a soul that has a body; or expressed more exactly: a monad that is clothed in a physical life-form.

If by “death” we mean the definitive end of life, then there is no “death” in the entire cosmos. There is only the dissolution of temporary envelopes for the monads, their life-forms. Since life-forms are composed of cells, molecules, atoms, etc., those forms must dissolve into their component parts sooner or later. Since the monad is uncompounded, however, being just one primordial atom, it cannot dissolve. It is immortal.

Like all matter monads also have consciousness. To begin with and before monads have entered life-forms, their consciousness is only potential – not yet awakened. Life-forms are the necessary instruments which monads need in order to awaken to consciousness and subsequently to develop it more and more. When consciousness awakens and becomes active, the monad becomes a self in its life-form.

The consciousness of the monad develops consecutively in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms. The monad is in every kingdom a unitary and indestructible self. But only in the human kingdom does it become conscious of itself.

The monads are the building blocks of everything. They are the primordial atoms which physical cells, molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles ultimately consist of. Why do we say then that one monad is the inmost nucleus of every life-form? The life-forms consist of nothing but monads, do they not?
The explanation lies in the very different degree of consciousness developed in the monads. Monads that collectively build physical atoms, and thus indirectly the forms of physical matter, have an undeveloped consciousness, relatively speaking. They function as material primordial atoms only. The little consciousness they have is just sufficient to fulfil functions in the life of atoms and cells. A relatively small number out of the immense multitude of monads have reached such a degree of developed consciousness that they can each take possession of a life-form as their own and be its dominant consciousness, its self. But all monads will reach that stage eventually and become selves in minerals, plants, animals, and men.

2.7 The Unity of Everything

Nothing exists in isolation; everything influences everything else. Nay, even more: everything mirrors everything else, perceives everything else. With what degree of clarity this is done is another matter and shows the degree of consciousness developed. And “everything” is a being at some stage of development.

We are all one another in some sense. We all make up one common cosmic consciousness. Like all water-drops are united in the ocean, so the individual consciousness of all monads is united in one common consciousness. This is the cosmic total consciousness in which every monad has an unlosable share.

The most important thing to know about the nature of consciousness is its unity. There is only one consciousness in the entire cosmos. But we human beings are still too primitive to be able to perceive unity. It is only when the sense of responsibility – not just for ourselves or our family or even nation, but for all life – awakens in us that we begin to participate in the consciousness of unity. In fact, we are all – minerals, plants, animals, and human beings – included in ever greater hierarchies of life.

If consciousness undergoes an evolution, if monads form hierarchies of life from minerals to men, why should all this end with man? If the self is immortal and develops continually in new forms, then this evolution must eventually carry the self to a superhuman stage. This lies in the future for all monads who are now human. However, there must even now exist such beings as have already attained to superhuman levels of knowledge and ability. That is mere logic. They make up the continuation of the hierarchies of life beyond man.

These hierarchies of superhuman beings are, according to hylozoics, the intelligent powers that direct the entire process of evolution, that set its direction and goal. This idea is not overly fantastic; a modern scientist, biologist Rupert Sheldrake, considers it as a possible hypothesis. The following ideas expressed in his book, A New Science of Life, accord with those of hylozoics:
“If such a hierarchy of conscious selves exists, then those at higher levels might well express their creativity through those at lower levels.

“And if such a higher-level creative agency acted through human consciousness, the thoughts and actions to which it gave rise might actually be experienced as coming from an external source. This experience of inspiration is in fact well known.

“Moreover, if such ‘higher selves’ are immanent within nature, then it is conceivable that under certain conditions human beings might become directly aware that they were embraced or included within them. And in fact the experience of an inner unity with life, or the earth, or the universe, has often been described, to the extent that it is expressible.”

2.8 The Superphysical Reality

Hylozoics speaks of a reality beyond the physical, the superphysical reality. With superphysical senses (as in clairvoyance, remote viewing, etc.) one can observe superphysical forms that penetrate physical visible matter. Around living beings one observes some sort of psychic atmosphere, the so-called aura. An American physician, Dr. Shafica Karagulla, researched the aura and its medical implications. She became interested after meeting several colleagues who said they could perceive the aura as a “field of life energy” around their patients. They had learnt to use their clairvoyant faculty to make diagnoses. They said they could often “see” a disease as a defect in the vital field before it was pathologically manifest in the organism.

In her book Breakthrough to Creativity, Dr. Karagulla sums up her findings thus: Man has a vital field of physical energy which is at the edge of visibility. It expresses as a web of light extending several inches beyond the body. Moreover he has an emotional field extending to about eighteen inches beyond the body and a mental or intellectual field extending two feet or more. Commenting on her book Dr. Edward Aubert has written:
“It seems that we live in a vast ocean of interlacing energies. These energies move in and out of our individual fields in a manner analogous to the process of breathing. Each person appears to have his own method of selecting energy; some do it predominantly through intellectual stimulation, others through emotional excitation. Depression and self-centredness greatly diminish the individual’s access to the cosmic energy supply.”
This clearly indicates that also the superphysical reality has the three aspects of matter, consciousness, and motion. The aura is no effect of the organism, no radiation from it. It has an independent existence. In the projection phenomenon man finds that he is alive and conscious in his “spiritual body” (that is: his aura), when he has temporarily left his organism. The aura also has its own structure, independent of that of the organism, and disease manifests itself regularly first in the aura and later in the body.

2.9 Worlds in the Cosmos

Physical matter is visible and tangible to us. Since superphysical matter is invisible and intangible to us, some philosophers call it subjective or “spiritual” and not objective or material. This, however, just evidences their ignorance of the nature of superphysical reality. The basis of physical matter is atoms, which we cannot perceive by our senses. Only when atoms gather together in sufficient quantity and in sufficiently gross composition do they become perceptible to us as objective matter. Of course atoms are in themselves not less objective than the visible forms they make up. We must try to avoid the logical error of ascribing to matter the abortive categories of our limited understanding of it.

When Maxwell and Hertz discovered the existence of electromagnetic fields more than a hundred years ago, one consequence was that the concept of matter was extended to include also fields, till then an unimaginable concept. Fields, as science conceives of them, are still just physical. However, our increasing experience of superphysical “vital fields” will finally enable science to widen the concept of matter even more, beyond the limitation to the physical.

Hylozoics teaches the existence of many kinds of superphysical matter. These matters completely penetrate the physical, exist in the same space as the physical. Man’s aura penetrates his organism and also extends far beyond it.

The entire physical world, not only our planet but the entire solar system and the cosmic space beyond it, is filled with and penetrated by superphysical matter of various kinds. This is possible since also the most solid physical matter mostly consists of empty space between and within atoms. In this vacuum there is seemingly unlimited space for the ever finer atoms that superphysical matter is made up of.

In this manner the various kinds of superphysical matter make up different worlds in the same space as the physical world. Thus when different worlds are discussed in hylozoics, this does not refer to various planets or some such things, but to different states of matter, or dimensions, in the same space. For the sake of clarity and to distinguish the world concepts of hylozoics from other such concepts, one can speak of “atomic worlds”.

Each world has its own kind of atoms, its own kind of matter composed of atoms, its own typical kind of consciousness, its own kind of motion (energy, vibrations). The three aspects exist in all the worlds but manifest themselves in totally different ways in each world.

The atoms of the physical world are the biggest or coarsest ones. The next finer atoms are those that make up the emotional world. Finer atoms still constitute the matter of the mental world. Then there is a long continuous series of ever finer atoms.

The finest atoms are the primordial atoms, the monads.

The emotional world has its name from the fact that emotions, or feelings, are the typical consciousness of its kind of matter. The “emotional field” in the aura consists of emotional matter. Through their emotional auras all organisms (human beings, animals, and plants) are in contact with each other. “We live in a vast ocean of interlacing energies.” The individual emotional aura is a condensation of the surrounding emotional “ocean” and has a constant interchange of matter, energy, and consciousness with it. The corresponding is true of the interaction of the “intellectual field” with the mental world. The characteristic consciousness of that world consists of thoughts and ideas.

2.10 Primordial Matter

Everything’s ultimate basis is primordial matter. The primordial matter is the matter the primordial atoms consists of. It is matter of an entirely different kind than all matter existing in the cosmos. Such cosmic matter is atomic, consists of particles and void between them.

Primordial matter, however, is entirely homogenous (uniform). It is absolutely dense and, at the same time, absolutely elastic, which might seem a paradox. Primordial matter has no limit. It is true, endless space.

Primordial matter is eternal in time. It has never come into being and will never cease to exist. It is eternally the same. It never changes.

In primordial matter all those qualities exist potentially, which appear in atomic matter. Primordial matter is the basis and the material of everything that is.

Primordial matter is eternally unconscious. No consciousness can awaken in that homogenous and immutable matter. Only in monads and in the matter composed of them is the development of consciousness possible.

2.11 Dynamis

Primordial matter endures in all eternity and is, as primordial matter, immutable. Primordial matter is immensely charged with force and activity. What is unceasingly active in primordial matter is its dynamic energy, which Pythagoras called dynamis.

Like primordial matter is the stuff out of which all other matter is composed, so dynamis is the cause of all motion, change, force, energy in the entire universe. Dynamis is the primordial force. Dynamis has never come into being and will never cease to exist. Dynamis is eternal, limitless, and immutable. Dynamis is omnipotent. However, dynamis is also blind, eternally unconscious like primordial matter.

The omnipotence of dynamis appears in the fact that it creates primordial atoms, or monads. No other force in the universe can do that. At every moment, innumerable monads are in this manner created in limitless primordial space. This is done in such a manner that dynamis “digs holes” in primordial matter, makes “bubbles” in that absolutely dense substance, which is possible thanks to its elasticity. Thus monads are voids in primordial matter.

Dynamis acts in every primordial atom that it has created. If this primordial force ceased but for a fraction of a second, then the monads would dissolve and the bubbles would coalesce with homogenous primordial matter. The monad endures as an individual as long as dynamis acts in it. No external force can dissolve the monad, it truly is immortal.

2.12 The Primordial Atoms (the Monads)

Primordial matter with its dynamic energy is the cause of the monads (primordial atoms). And the monads are, in their turn, the building blocks of all other matter, composite matter. The monads are the least possible parts of matter. We might conceive of them as exceedingly small points of force.

The monads manifest the three aspects of existence. The primordial atoms, or monads, have originated from primordial matter, they contain and express omnipotent primordial force, and they have the potential of consciousness.

The monad is eternal and indestructible. All material forms dissolve. They break up into their constituent parts. The monad, however, is simple, uncompounded, and indivisible. What should it break up into?
The monad has within itself an exhaustless energy. It is the primordial force of the monad, its own force. It is eternal, dynamic (self-active), omnipotent. However, dynamis is in itself blind, has in itself no purposive or intelligent control.

In spite of being so exceedingly small, the monad nevertheless is the great potentiality. It has within itself the possibility of all qualities and faculties. Its potentiality is the basis of everything that eventually manifests itself in the cosmos.

The monad has a potentiality of everything. Thereby it also has the potentiality of conscious­ness. In the cosmos, the monad’s potential consciousness is sooner or later roused to life, is actualized. Once actual, consciousness will develop more and more. The monad eventually becomes a conscious being, an individual that feels, thinks, and acts. The monad thereby becomes a self.

Now we are ripe for the complete hylozoic definition of the monad: The monad, or primordial atom, is the least possible part of matter and the least possible firm point for an individual consciousness.

2.13 The Cosmos

As long as the monads exist free and uncompounded with each other in primordial matter, their potential consciousness cannot be actualized (be roused to life). Only when they have united with each other and so have entered ever grosser material forms can they be influenced by each other, can they be reached by countless vibrations that force them into activity, which actualizes their consciousness.

The free state of the monads in primordial matter was called “chaos” by Pythagoras. The opposite of it he called the cosmos, an ordered whole of monads. Chaos is unlimited in space and time. The cosmos has a limited extension in space and a limited duration in time. It has the form of a globe.

The cosmos comes into being, grows to reach a definite extension, exists as long as is necessary for the complete development of the consciousness of the monads making up the content of the cosmic globe. Then the cosmos is dissolved. All this is ruled by immutable laws.

There is a generic term for all these processes that make up the life-cycle of the cosmos: manifestation. Besides the building and dismantling of the cosmos, manifestation includes all greater and lesser processes within the cosmos, all formation and dissolution of matter, all transference of energy.

Most important in the process of manifestation is that consciousness, existing potentially in every monad, is roused to life (actualized), subsequently to reach ever greater clarity. When the monad finally has knowledge of all the laws in the whole cosmos, it is omniscient in cosmic respect. Then it has also learnt how to apply all the laws with perfect precision, which makes the monad cosmically omnipotent. When all monads in the cosmos have reached cosmic omniscience and omnipotence, then the cosmos has achieved its purpose and is dissolved.

In our cosmos there are monads (primordial atoms) at all stages of the development of consciousness – from dormant to cosmically omniscient and omnipotent. The highest developed monads in the cosmos form that collective being which directs the process of manifestation towards its intended final goal.

Our cosmos is already a perfect organization.

2.14 The Composition of Matter

Since the monads, or primordial atoms, are the least possible parts of matter, everything in the cosmos ultimately consists of monads – directly or indirectly. Those grosser particles which science knows and studies – what it calls atoms and subatomic particles – are built from finer ones, which in their turn are composed of finer particles still. So continues the series which ends with the primordial atoms, or monads, being the very finest atoms.

These different kinds of particles are called atomic kinds in hylozoics. The various atomic kinds form an unbroken chain from monads to physical atoms. The highest atomic kind, or number 1, is the monad. The lowest, or number 49, is the physical atom.

Atoms of a lower kind thus consist of atoms of all the higher kinds, and the higher atoms therefore penetrate all the lower atoms. A 49-atom consists of a number of 48-atoms, each 48-atom of a number of 47-atoms, etc. The atoms of kind number 1, the monads, thus penetrate all the atomic kinds 2–49 in the cosmos. The atom of kind number 49, the physical atom, is the kind of atom that is composed of most monads.

Each atomic kind is the building material for its own particular kind of matter, which is called atomic matter. We have already seen how higher atomic kinds compose and penetrate all the lower atomic kinds. Higher atomic matter thus penetrates all lower matter, and all the 49 atomic matters occupy the same space, the cosmic globe.

The 49 atomic kinds interpenetrate also in another manner. After monads (1-atoms) have combined to form 2-atoms, free monads still remain everywhere between the 2-atoms. And when 2-atoms have composed 3-atoms, free 2-atoms remain everywhere between the 3-atoms.

The same is true of the composition of all lower atomic kinds, so that, finally, when emotional atoms (48) have composed physical atoms (49), there are free 48-atoms left everywhere between the 49-atoms.

There is no void in the cosmos. Even such physical matter as to us appears entirely solid mostly consists of vacuum between sparse particles. Hylozoics teaches that the apparent void there is in lower matter is always filled up with higher matter.

In order to have some conception of higher kinds of matter, you might start from an analogy in the physical world. A piece of iron is an instance of solid physical matter. If you heat it enough, it starts to glow. The iron emits light, which is matter, albeit of another kind than that of the iron atoms: less composed, finer particles – higher particles in hylozoic parlance. Light can penetrate some solid matter, can occupy the same space as it. And yet light is physical matter.

Superphysical matter of all its various ever finer kinds has far greater powers of penetration, has even more than physical light the character of being “immaterial”, as it were. But it is matter all the same. There is nothing immaterial.

2.15 Worlds in the Cosmos

Every kind of atomic matter is its own world. We have already seen that these different atomic worlds have different kinds of matter – relatively fine or gross. Moreover, each one of them has its own kind of motion: energy, vibrations. Each kind of matter and world makes a peculiar kind of consciousness possible, a kind entirely different from all the others. Just think about the difference between physical, emotional, and mental consciousness!
All the different worlds interpenetrate. They occupy the same space, are different dimensions of this common space and have different lapse of time or duration.

The 49 atomic worlds together form a globe. This globe is our cosmos. In the physical world (49) it corresponds to our galaxy with its trillions of stars.

In infinite primordial matter there is room for an unlimited number of cosmoses. Such cosmic globes exist at all stages of manifestation. Some are being built out, have not formed their physical world yet and are thus invisible to us. Others, considerably older, have achieved their purpose and are in process of being dismantled, likewise invisible.

A cosmos such as ours makes up – from the human viewpoint – an unsurveyable totality of globes within globes: aggregates of solar systems, solar systems, planets.

2.16 Solar Systems

The 49 atomic worlds, which together make up our cosmos, have been built out according to a definite plan. They form seven series of seven worlds in each series.

The seven highest worlds in the cosmos, 1–7, make up the basis of all the lower manifestation, 8–49. The next septenary of worlds, 8–14, is like a scaled-down replica of the highest seven worlds, also with much more limited possibilities for consciousness and motion in these worlds. The third septenary, 15–21, is analogously a scaling-down, or dimensional reduction, of the worlds 8–14, and so on.

The lowest septenary of worlds thus is 43–49. It is in this matter that solar systems are built. Solar systems are globes, replicas of the cosmos immensely scaled down with everything which that implies as to reduction of the expressions of consciousness and will in this extremely composite matter.

The lowest world of the solar systems thus is world 49, the physical world. Billions (109) of solar systems have not yet reached physical materiality in their manifestation. Billions have finally dismantled their physical world. The stars of our galaxy that are visible to us are only a fraction of the total number.

Like the cosmic worlds 2–42, the lowest seven atomic worlds, 43–49, are formed in and from higher atomic worlds. World 43 is the starting point and material for the successively lower worlds “down” to world 49.

The seven solar systemic worlds have been given their own names:

43  the manifestal world

44  the submanifestal world

45  the superessential world

46  the essential world

47  the causal-mental world

48  the emotional world

49  the physical world

Otherwise, these worlds as well are most simply denoted by figures.

2.17 Molecular Matter

Within the solar systems, their atomic matter, 43–49, is composed to form molecular matter. Each atomic kind forms six successively lower molecular kinds. Thus there are 42 (7×6) molecular kinds in the solar system.

Molecular kinds are denoted by figures 2-7, atomic kinds by 1. In the solar systems there are thus 49 main kinds of matter: 7 atomic kinds and 42 molecular kinds. They are denoted as follows: 43:1-7 (manifestal matter), 44:1-7 (submanifestal matter), etc., to 49:1-7 (physical matter), inclusive.

The molecular kinds have been composed by analogy with the cosmic atomic kinds. A number of manifestal atoms (43:1) form a 43:2-molecule, a number of 43:2-molecules form a 43:3-molecule, and so forth. The lower the molecular kind within the series 43:2-7, the more 43-atoms enter into the molecule. The corresponding is true of 44:1-7; 44:7 contains the greatest number of 44-atoms.

The following definitions are the only esoterically tenable ones: Atoms are composed of monads, or primordial atoms; the lower the atomic kind, the more monads enter into the atom. Molecules are composed of atoms; the lower the molecular kind, the more atoms enter into the molecule.

The six molecular kinds 49:2-7 have been given individual names:

(49:1  atomic)

49:2  subatomic

49:3  superetheric

49:4  etheric

49:5  gaseous

49:6  liquid

49:7  solid

It is worth keeping in mind that what science calls atoms are not the true physical atoms, 49:1, but etheric molecules (“chemical atoms”), 49:4. By its present methods physical science will not be able to reach the true physical atoms.

Atomic matter and molecular matter are different in structure and function.

The 49 atomic matters exist everywhere in the cosmos, and the 48 superphysical atomic worlds thus occupy the same space as the physical world, world 49.

The 42 molecular matters exist only in the solar systems and are within them limited to the planets and the suns. Space between these globes is not void, however, but consists of atomic matter (1–49).

The sun consists of atomic and molecular matter. The planets are built up of essential (46:2-7), causal-mental (47:2-7), emotional (48:2-7), and physical (49:2-7) molecular matter.

The molecular matters within each planet form concentric spheres. The largest sphere is 46:2-7; within it follow in turn 47:2-7, 48:2-7, and 49:2-7, three successively smaller spheres, the larger encompassing all the smaller. Higher molecular matter penetrates all the lower kinds, its sphere extending beyond the spheres of the lower matters. The physical visible sphere (49:5-7), the planet visible to us, therefore is the inmost, grossest nucleus of the planet proper, which is thus considerably larger. An analogy in a smaller scale is the relation between man’s organism and his higher envelopes, which together form his aura. Every planet has its “aura”.

One function of the sun is to transform atomic matter into molecular matter. We see only its lowest physical molecular kind, the gaseous envelope (49:5).

2.18 Some Facts About the Motion Aspect

Nothing in the cosmos stands still. Everything is in motion and everything that moves is matter. To the motion aspect belong all events, all processes, all changes. Expressions of motion are also force, energy, vibrations, sound, and light (including colour).

In hylozoics, three specifically distinct causes of motion are enumerated:

dynamis

material energy

will

The dynamic energy of primordial matter, the primordial force, dynamis, is the origin of all motion and the source of all power in the cosmos. Dynamis creates and maintains the monads, gives them their proper motion and inherent force.

The action of dynamis in the monads is the cause of energetic action in all composite matter. The more composite the matter is, however, the more inhibited are the monads by the increasingly grosser particles and the weaker, therefore, is their energetic action. In the lowest world of the grossest matter, our physical world, motion comes almost to a stand-still. We say that matter has reached the solid state.

Material energy is the same as matter in motion. All higher kinds of matter (atomic kinds) are energy in relation to lower kinds. This is due to the fact that all matter is dynamic matter, and that higher matter of course has a greater dynamics, or energetic action on lower matter.

Nuclear physicists believe that they dissolve matter into immaterial energy, which hylozoicians maintain not to be the case. In fact, the particles of lower matter dissolve into the finer particles of the next higher kind of matter. The latter cannot be ascertained by physical science, slipping through, as it were, the coarse-meshed nets provided by physical instruments. Their immensely greater energetic action is measurable, however, since it affects lower matter, and hence the mistake of physical science.

Here too we can use our previous example of the red-hot iron. The energy emitted as radiation from the glowing metal is matter and no less material than the piece of iron itself. All energy is matter; the difference between the two which physical science calls matter and energy is a difference in the degree of dynamics between kinds of matter having different atomic composition and therefore different contents of motion.

Will is discussed in Chapter 2.30.

2.19 Space and Time

Space is matter. There is no void in the cosmos. What appears as vacuum between material forms of a lower kind is filled up with successively higher kinds of matter. And monads fill up the cosmic globe in all its extension.

Every kind of atomic matter makes up a world of its own and has its own kind of space. The lower kinds of space enter into all the higher kinds. Therefore, it can be said that world 49 has three dimensions, world 48 four dimensions, and world 47 five dimensions. The increasing number of dimensions of the successively higher worlds and the penetration of lower kinds of matter by all the higher kinds, is the same fact expressed in two ways. Space is matter.

Time is the same as motion, or change. To measure time is to compare various events, changes in matter, with each other. Without any change there is no time. That is why primordial matter is said to be “beyond time”.

Time has no dimension. The notion of time as a “fourth dimension” has come from the inability to separate material reality and mathematical construction. It is certainly practical to insert time as a fourth axis into a system of co-ordinates with the usual three spatial dimensions. But this does not make time a dimension in the real world. It is also possible to make two-dimensional systems where time is the second dimension. Using the same logic you could then assert that there are only two dimensions, one of space and one of time. This fact alone should suffice to expose the error in thinking. The concept of dimension belongs to space and thus to the matter aspect, cannot belong to time or the motion aspect. Any other assertion is simply irrational. The fourth dimension penetrating the physical world is the emotional world.

The same confusion of time and space is reflected in the fascinating but erroneous notions that time could “flow backwards” and that you could travel backwards and forwards in time as in some sort of landscape and intervene in past and future events. “Travels” in time are possible. Interventions in future and past events are impossible. For this is contradicted by the basic causal law of existence. The ignorance of reality is obviously so great that, lacking experience, they resort to abortive analogies which divert from reality.

Causal law means that everything that happens is the effect of composite causes. The two pairs, past and future and cause and effect, are indissolubly united. The past reaches with its altering energies into the future, so that the present is always predestined by the immediate past and the immediate future is predestined by the present moment. The freedom of conscious beings lies in being able to choose the path of one’s action in the present.

2.20 The Meaning and Goal of Life

The meaning of life is the development of consciousness in matter. Therefore, the more we learn to look on matter as the necessary basis and instrument for this development, and nothing more, the less we regard material things as values in themselves, the more correct is our view of life. Right life view must be based on the knowledge of consciousness development, its character, conditions, stages, and goal. In hylozoics we study this knowledge in its widest possible perspective, the manifestation of the cosmos.

The manifestation of the monads begins when they are introduced into the cosmos from infinite chaos. When, after (to our human minds) an incomprehensible long period, they reach the conclusion of manifestation, then the monads will have gone through four major processes of manifestation, one after another, and will have entered into an unsurveyable number of compositions of the atomic kinds 2–49.

Thanks to its participation in these energy processes and material compositions, the monad is able to develop its consciousness and thereby to realize the meaning of its individual life. Its consciousness development is divided according to the four processes of manifestation.

During the processes of involvation and evolvation after their introduction from chaos, the monads have only potential consciousness. Then they are unconscious like primordial matter.

In the subsequent process of involution, monads are further involved in such a manner that forms are made of ever lower atomic and molecular kinds from world 43 down to the lowest world, world 49. Thereby the consciousness of the monad is actualized, or awakened. Once actualized, the consciousness of the monad is at first passive, that is: active only under external influence.

The process of evolution begins in world 49. The monads now liberate themselves from lower matter by gradual stages, simultaneously gaining self-active consciousness in higher matter. In continuously renewed forms the monad passes in succession through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. After the monad has passed from the animal to the human kingdom (the fourth natural kingdom), it eventually becomes self-conscious. Through evolution in these lower four natural kingdoms, monad consciousness in the physical (49), emotional (48), and causal-mental (47) worlds is eventually activated.

The transition from the fourth to the fifth natural kingdom (the superhuman kingdom) marks the monad’s entry into the process of expansion. In this process, the monad attains ever higher kinds of self-consciousness from world 46 up and simultaneously learns to expand its self-consciousness to embrace ever more monads in a common consciousness.

This common consciousness has been described as a union of love and wisdom. Love means inseparable unity with all, without isolation, without “me” and “you”, with only “us”, true brotherhood realized. Wisdom means immensely greater insight than what is possible for the isolated consciousness in the human kingdom, since the experiences and memories of all are at the disposal of everybody who has entered the common consciousness: the planetary total consciousness.

In the higher world of the fifth kingdom, world 45, and in the divine kingdoms that follow from world 44 up, this common consciousness is gradually further expanded and more profoundly experienced. This process is the meaning of the term “expansion”.

In the highest kingdom, in worlds 1–7, the monad, with its self-identity preserved, is one with the whole cosmos. The monad has reached cosmic omniscience and omnipotence. This is its goal in manifestation.

The cosmos has been built in order to make it possible for the monads in chaos to develop their consciousness from first potentiality, through all the intermediate stages, into cosmic omniscience and omnipotence. All processes in the cosmos serve this aim, directly or indirectly. They all enter into the great process of manifestation.

2.21 Manifestation

Manifestation must be viewed from all three aspects.

As viewed from the consciousness aspect, manifestation is the development of the monad consciousness from mere potentiality (unconsciousness) to cosmic omniscience.

As viewed from the matter aspect, manifestation is the transmutation and gradual refinement of matter, so that it is able to build more and more expedient organs for ever-developing consciousness.

As viewed from the motion aspect, manifestation is the continuous redirection of energies into increasing harmony with the great purpose and with the dynamic plan for the development of all life.

The monad works its way forward through the various stages of manifestation, from total unconsciousness to omniscience, from isolation to unity with all life, from impotence to omnipotence, from total bondage to the greatest possible freedom under those laws of life which all monads must obey.

Manifestation is a unitary process, the whole of all processes in the cosmos. All the monads in the cosmos participate in manifestation, consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily. After the monad has been introduced into the cosmos, it goes through four principal processes in its individual manifestation, until it reaches the highest cosmic king­dom. All monads go through these four processes in succession. Since there are monads simultaneously at all stages of consciousness development, these processes work side by side everywhere in the cosmos. In fact they presuppose one another.

The four processes of manifestation are:

(1)  involvation and evolvation

(2)  involution

(3)  evolution

(4)  expansion

 

2.22 Involvation and Evolvation

Involvation is the composition of monads (atomic kind 1) to form ever coarser matter: from atomic kind 2 to atomic kind 49. Evolvation is the corresponding opposite process, the dissolution of 49-atoms into 48-atoms, of 48-atoms into 47-atoms and so forth until free monads (1-atoms) are obtained. Involvation and evolvation thus condition one another.

Through involvation the 49 cosmic atomic kinds are formed. Atoms of the lowest seven atomic kinds, 43–49, are further involved to form six molecular kinds each, 42 in all, which are the building materials of the solar systems. Through evolvation matter is continuously dissolved, to be replaced by the matter newly formed through involvation. Atoms and molecules dissolve and re-form continually. And as long as the atom endures, there is an exchange of higher atomic kinds in it all the time. A 49-atom is constantly pervaded by atoms of 48 ever higher kinds.

There is also a constant current of primordial atoms, or monads, pouring “down” from the highest atomic world, world 1, through the atoms of all the worlds to the lowest world, 49, and another current going “up” through the atoms of all the worlds to the highest world, world 1, so that a continuous circulation of monads is obtained. This circulation goes on as long as the existence of the lower worlds is necessary to the manifestation of the monads. It is this circulation of monads that maintains the atoms, molecules, material aggregates in their given forms. As a result of the circulation, all atoms in all worlds and, consequently, all molecules and aggregates, radiate material energy.

Involvatory and evolvatory matter has only potential consciousness. Such matter cannot make up other forms than atoms and molecules. But those material forms are the condition of the next process in the manifestation of the monads: involution.

2.23 Involution

Involution takes place in the solar systems, in their worlds 43–49. Like any other process it should be viewed from the three aspects.

From the motion aspect: The atom of involvatory and evolvatory matter rotates round its axis with enormous rapidity. To this rotatory motion involution adds a cyclic spiral motion: the atom circles round a central focal point in cyclically recurring spirals.

From the matter aspect: This composite motion makes it possible for atoms and molecules to build coherent forms: aggregates. Thereby a whole series of life-forms can be built up and be developed further, life-forms that the monads of evolution need for their consciousness activation. Examples of such life-forms of involutionary matter are the mental and emotional envelopes of man.

From the consciousness aspect: As the monad participates in these form-building processes, its potential consciousness is actualized, brought to life. Actualized consciousness during the entire involution is only passive, that is: the monads have (faint, dream-like) consciousness in their kinds of matter only when they are activated by vibrations from without.

Involution runs through nine successive stages from world 43 to world 48, inclusive. The monads form atoms, molecules and aggregates at all these stages and in all these worlds. All these material compounds are living beings, collective beings formed of monads. Such collective involutionary beings are called elementals, and the nine stages of their conscious­ness actualization are called the nine elemental kingdoms.

The elemental kingdoms of involution have their counterparts in evolution: the natural kingdoms. The direction of involution is “down”, its goal is the physical world, world 49.

The least involved and therefore least experienced elementals belong to the first elemental kingdom in world 43; the most involved and therefore most experienced ones belong to the ninth kingdom in world 48. In order to be able to pass to a higher kingdom (in a lower world!), the elementals must have learnt everything there is for them to learn in their present kingdom.

2.24 Evolution and Expansion

During involvation and evolvation the consciousness of the monads is only potential. In involution the monad consciousness is actualized, brought to life. During the entire involution in worlds 43–48, consciousness remains only passive. This means that the life-forms of involution, elementals, are incapable of self-activity. They must be activated by vibrations from without, by beings that can produce vibrations themselves. Such beings are evolutionary monads.

Thus in evolution consciousness becomes self-active. The activation of consciousness begins in the lowest world, the physical world (49) and in its grossest molecular kind, 49:7, solid matter. Only this matter has the inertia, and its vibrations reach the coarseness necessary for the monad to begin to record the opposites of outer and inner, its material surroundings and its own consciousness. Thereby the monad is eventually able to apprehend the opposition of outer compulsion and its own inner will. The activation of consciousness means precisely the awakening of the will.

Involutionary beings are collectives of monads: atoms, molecules, and aggregates. They have a common consciousness. Examples of such elementals are the envelopes of evolutionary monads in worlds 47 and 48 and also man’s “thought-forms”, material forms that all his consciousness expressions generate in those worlds.

When the monads, on concluding their involution, pass to evolution, they can begin to act as independent beings. They now clothe themselves in envelopes of involutionary matter and activate the passive consciousness of these envelopes. The monads become selves in their envelopes. Matter forms are either involutions or evolutionary beings. They are involutionary beings of involution, until they are taken possession of active evolutionary monads.

Evolution means that the monads learn to activate ever higher kinds of consciousness in the ever higher kinds of matter of ever higher worlds. Evolution begins in the physical world (49), continues in the emotional (48) and in the causal-mental (47) worlds. In the essential (46) world, evolution is superseded by expansion.

Evolution and expansion together consist of twelve major stages. The monads cover six such stages in the solar systemic worlds 49–43 and six in the cosmic worlds 42–1. These twelve stages are called natural kingdoms. The 6th through the 12th natural kingdoms are also called divine kingdoms: the 1st through the 7th.

The six natural kingdoms within the solar system are:

(1) the mineral kingdom in worlds 49–47

(2) the vegetable kingdom

(3) the animal kingdom

(4) the human kingdom

(5) the essential kingdom in worlds 46 and 45

(6) the manifestal kingdom, or first divine kingdom in worlds 44 and 43

The six natural kingdoms beyond the solar system are:

  (7)  the second divine kingdom in worlds 42–36

  (8)  the third divine kingdom in worlds 35–29

  (9)  the fourth divine kingdom in worlds 28–22

 (10)  the fifth divine kingdom in worlds 21–15

 (11)  the sixth divine kingdom in worlds 14–8

 (12)  the seventh divine kingdom in worlds 7–1

Evolution and expansion move “upwards”, which the above tables show by enumerating the worlds from below up. In order to be able to activate a higher kind of consciousness, the monad must have activated all the lower kinds already.

In the mineral and vegetable kingdoms, the monad already has active consciousness, which shows in its power of initiative and ability of spontaneous form-building. As the monads have an incipient apprehension of the environing material world, they begin to strive for objective consciousness. They instinctively perceive it as necessary for clearer and more all-round consciousness. This striving results in the development of the organismal sense organs, which reaches its acme in the animal kingdom. Thus it is the activation of consciousness that creates the requisite forms, the organs, not the other way round as scientific physicalism assumes.

Fully developed objective consciousness, even though only of the lowest three molecular kinds of the physical world (49:5-7), lays the basis of the development of self-consciousness, the monad’s awareness of being a self, having a self-identity. This is not possible until in the human kingdom. In order to confirm this faint self-consciousness, it is necessary for the monad at lower stages of development in the human kingdom to experience its isolation from all other life, to regard itself as something separate from everything else. Once its self-consciousness is confirmed, however, this self-assertion must be overcome. Otherwise it will hinder the expansion of the individual consciousness into community with ever more monads. That expansion begins in the superhuman essential kingdom, it is true, but marked efforts are seen already at the higher stages of the human kingdom. At his entry into expansion, the individual is united – while preserving his self-identity and self-consciousness – with ever more monads in a common consciousness. Thus it is not a matter of the self being “annihilated in the universal soul”, as some would have it.

The monad in the human kingdom thus has a long journey behind it. It has developed consciousness in all lower degrees up to its present human consciousness in worlds 47–49.

The successive degrees in the awakening of consciousness form links in an unbroken chain. The higher degrees emerge from the lower ones, which were necessary for the development of the higher. Without the first passive consciousness, consciousness cannot become self-active. Without active consciousness no objective consciousness can arise. Without objective consciousness no self-consciousness. Without self-consciousness no expansion of the individual self into group-consciousness.

Let us sum up what we have learnt so far:

In the elemental kingdoms of involution the monads have passive subjective consciousness in 43–48.

In the natural kingdoms of evolution the monads have: in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms, faint active subjective consciousness in 49; in the animal kingdom, active objective consciousness in 49, active subjective consciousness in 48; in the human kingdom, active objective isolated self-consciousness in 49, active subjective isolated self-consciousness in 48 and 47; in the essential kingdom, active objective and subjective self-consciousness in 45–49 with simultaneous group-consciousness.

2.25 Subjective And Objective Consciousness

Subjective reality is consciousness. Objective reality is matter. There are no exclusively “subjective worlds” as contrasted with the objective physical world. All worlds are both objective and subjective, since they all have both aspects: matter and consciousness.

Consciousness is able to apprehend all kinds of reality: matter, consciousness, and motion.

The content of consciousness thus can be both subjective and objective. Consciousness has a subjective content when it is occupied with itself: with feelings, thoughts, memories and so on. This is called subjective consciousness. Consciousness is also able to observe matter. It does so, for instance, when using our senses we perceive what is happening in the physical.

This is called objective consciousness.

Normal man has objective consciousness of physical matter only. Objective consciousness of emotional and mental matter means that you can “see” material forms in these worlds, for example the auras surrounding living organisms. This is usually called clairvoyance. Emotional clairvoyance is far more common than mental.

Most people are not clairvoyant, however. Except for sense perceptions of the physical world, man’s consciousness is subjective only. His emotional and mental consciousness so far developed is subjective. This is the reason why most people reject the idea of superphysical (“spiritual”) worlds. The idea that feelings and thoughts are not only subjective states of consciousness but also objective things that have extension in space, force fields that have definable rates of vibrations, must seem strange to them. Not so to people with higher (super-physical) objective consciousness.

Every thought is the consciousness of a particular mental form, every feeling is carried by an emotional material form. Whether he knows it or not man fills up the mental and emotional worlds surrounding him with such mental and emotional forms. They can be observed by the clairvoyant, and their meaning can be deciphered by those who have learnt their language.

2.26 The Self And Its Envelopes

Casually examined your inner life, your consciousness, may seem unitary enough. After some self-observation, however, you see that you have consciousness on three different planes simultaneously: on the physical plane by your sense impressions and will impulses to the muscles, on the emotional plane by your desires and feelings, and on the mental plane by your thoughts and ideas. Thus it is possible to be simultaneously aware of the fact that you feel cold, are excited, and are occupied with intellectual work, for example calculation or planning a journey. Your consciousness is momentarily more concentrated on some one of the three planes. It is constantly changing levels and is unceasingly, restlessly active.

Sometimes, when your attention is not entirely caught by the physical external world, nor entirely engrossed in your inner emotional or mental world, the self becomes aware. Perhaps it then observes, like a detached onlooker, your perpetually changing consciousness of three kinds. This can be experienced through some self-observation. Feelings and thoughts appear to come and go freely according to their own laws of association, but the self can intervene and control them if it wants to. What observes and controls must be different from what is observed and controlled. The self is sense perceptions, feelings, and thoughts but is also different from, above and beyond them. It can identify with these kinds of consciousness, but it can also renounce identification consciously. The self, as such, appears to be a centre of observing self-consciousness and a centre of will.

According to the prevalent physicalist psychology, the brain produces every kind of consciousness. According to hylozoic psychology, the brain does not produce any consciousness but merely conveys the expressions of consciousness to the physical. The brain has very little consciousness in itself. The brain certainly is a condition of consciousness in the organism.

But neither body nor brain is a condition of consciousness, as projection phenomena demonstrate. To give an analogy: A radio receiver is necessary to listen to a transmission in the physical world. But the transmission – and the radio station for that matter – is not dependent on the function nor even existence of the receiver.

Only physical consciousness is produced in the physical body. Hylozoics teaches, however, that all consciousness has a material basis. Then man’s various kinds of consciousness must have another material basis than the organism. According to hylozoics, that basis is the monad (the self-atom) as well as the monad’s envelopes in the different worlds with their entirely different kinds of consciousness.

Man’s envelope in the visible physical world is the organism. He also has another, a finer envelope of (to most people) invisible physical matter, and three envelopes of superphysical matter.

Enumerating them in the order of increasing subtlety, we call man’s five envelopes:

(1) the coarse physical – the organism

(2) the subtle physical – the etheric envelope

(3) the emotional envelope

(4) the (relatively) coarse mental envelope

(5) the subtle mental, the causal envelope, the “soul”

The presence of four subtle envelopes in the organism enables man to lead his life in the physical world, at the same time having emotional and mental consciousness. Without his emotional envelope he would lack desires and feelings, and without his mental envelope he would be unable to think.

Consciousness in the causal envelope is as yet undeveloped in most people. Fully developed, the causal consciousness affords immediate correct perception of everything it is directed at in the three worlds of man, clarifying the causes and effects of things irrespectively of distances on the planet or time past. The ancients (teachers of the old esoteric schools) called this “intuition” or “beholding the ideas in the world of ideas” (the causal world).

The etheric envelope is actually the most important of the two physical bodies. It conveys various life-sustaining energies (“vital force”) to the organism. Defects in the functions of the etheric envelope act upon the organism as decreased vitality and disease. Many people can discern their own and other people’s etheric envelopes as a thin, faintly luminous film surrounding the entire body. The etheric envelope penetrates the organism. It forms, as it were, a perfect replica of it, so that every cell has its own etheric counterpart, its own etheric envelope. Actually it is the other way round: the organism is a replica of the etheric envelope, which is its basic form or “blueprint”. Therefore, the etheric is sometimes called the morphogenetic or formative envelope.

2.27 The Three Aspects of Consciousness Expressions

Reality is a unity of matter, consciousness, and motion. If we consider any one of the three life aspects in isolation, then our view will always be imperfect and misleading. Biology views evolution just as development of forms and does not heed consciousness in the forms.

Psychology studies consciousness as such but knows nothing of its material basis: man’s emotional and mental envelopes and the monad.

Everything in the cosmos has three aspects, and so have the expressions of consciousness.

The feelings we have and the thoughts we think are not mere subjective states of consciousness. Feelings and thoughts are also material forms. Finally they are also forces; they are effects of causes and, in their turn, become causes of new effects.

Two esoteric sayings of immemorial age illustrate this: “Thoughts are things” and “energy follows thought”.

There is a universal parallelism of matter, consciousness, and motion (force). Physical matter consists of the grossest atoms in the cosmos, emotional matter is made up of finer atoms, and mental matter of finer atoms still, and so on. Matter is the carrier, the medium of motion, of the vibrations that fill up the whole cosmos. The finer the atoms, the more rapid, intensive, penetrating are the vibrations conveyed by them. This parallelism between matter and motion is vitally important also for consciousness, since every content of consciousness corresponds to a particular rate of vibration in a particular kind of matter. There are physical, emotional, mental, etc., vibrations.

This is perhaps easier to understand if we first study things in the physical world. As physical matter vibrates, a wave goes out in all directions. Depending on its frequency the vibration conveys, say, the colour blue, or (at a lower frequency) the note of do. Vibrations hit the respective sense organs in man. There they produce electrical nerve-impulses corresponding to them. These are discharged in the brain, but the recording organ is the etheric brain, not the gross physical brain. The self-atom, the monad, with its vast experience of the import of perpetually changing vibrations, interprets the impression immediately and correctly.

The possibilities of differentiation appear inexhaustible. We can think of however many nuances of colour, musical notes, smells, etc. The same is true of emotional vibrations, various moods and feelings without end.

Thought form a mental elemental in mental matter, but also emits vibrations in the mental world. Being a material form the elemental can be localized, but not the vibrations, which reach all and can be apprehended by those who are tuned in to the corresponding wavelength.

A man’s feeling or thought, be it strong or faint, lasting or fleeting, heeded by himself or unnoticed, gives rise to a characteristic vibration in his emotional or mental envelope. The envelope is in direct contact with it´s own world. The vibration reaches out in all directions. It travels faster than light and is weakened only at an immense distance from its source. All emotional envelopes that are in its way are affected by it. If the vibration is sufficiently strong, if the envelope is in a receptive condition and if the self is not occupied with some particular business, then a feeling is recorded as though it were the individual’s own. This is how telepathy works, a universal phenomenon in the cosmos.

We are more telepathic than we suspect. Much of what we think are our own feelings and thoughts are suggestions from without. They are more for evil than for good: the unprovoked depression you feel in the throngs of a big city is one instance.

This shows the importance of being active, attentive in our consciousness. It is in passive states that we most easily receive bad influences from without. We human beings are still far from being able to exercise conscious telepathy, purposive transference of thoughts. We must first learn to be positive, not to burden other people with our negative emotionality, our depressive feelings.

Our five envelopes in three worlds are hit by innumerable vibrations every second. Our senses record an exceedingly tiny fraction of all kinds of vibrations in the physical world. The corresponding is true of subjective consciousness in our superphysical envelopes. Less than a millionth part of all vibrations is apprehended by us. Everything else passes us by unnoticed.

If we could apprehend and correctly interpret all vibrations that reach us over immense distances, then we would be all but omniscient.

2.28 Experience and Memory

There is no ignorance in the absolute sense of the word “ignorance”. Even in involution the monad has experiences and learns from them. This is possible since the monad has an indestructible memory. All the experiences of the monad, all vibrations that have ever hit the primordial atom, are engraved in it for ever. This memory becomes latent, it is true. We experience that every day, when practically everything we live through fades from our actual memory. In fact, however, we never forget anything. What we have experienced once, we can experience again, which happens when the monad is again affected by similar vibrations, confronted by similar impressions, put into similar situations. We know that a memory from early childhood can suddenly reappear with overwhelming clarity.

Therefore, “knowledge is remembrance” (Plato). Everything we have experienced, learnt, mastered – in this life or in a previous life – is preserved in latent state. By far the most of it we never remember anew: fragmented impressions, memory details, primitive insights which we have outgrown long ago in never-ceasing evolution. There are also very many tendencies and habits, qualities and abilities, which have been repeated and have become firmly established in the monad during countless incarnations. Man has quite a lot of such powers, functions, and qualities as were developed already in the animal kingdom: locomotion, three-dimensional vision, sexuality, aggressiveness, vanity, playfulness, etc. Specifically human characteristics are self-consciousness, language, abstract thought, imagination, idealism, among others. Such qualities and abilities as are called innate have in fact been acquired in previous lives. Then they have become latent and have been reacquired perhaps many times over. At each new occasion they are actualized more easily than before.

Man thus carries his past to a much greater extent than he may imagine. Since he goes forward in his consciousness development, this means that he latently carries a worse person than he actually is, all the primitive tendencies that he believes he has left behind long ago. It depends on himself, on his intentional control of attention and interests, whether this latency will have opportunities of resuscitation.

The power of latency and man’s inability or unwillingness to control his consciousness are part of the explanation for the problem of evil. For man is neither good nor evil in any absolute sense of the words “good” and “evil”. He is on the level he has attained and has both the good and the bad qualities of that level. Moreover, he has, in a latent state, all the ever worse qualities of ever lower levels.

Therefore, it is very important that man tries to resuscitate those positive qualities and valuable abilities which belong to his present level of understanding. This latent experience of life extends over several recent incarnations. But his actual consciousness concerns only his present incarnation. This must mean that whatever man expresses in his actual state – in knowledge, insight and understanding, qualities and abilities, versatile competence and interests – in some certain life is a mere fraction of his true, latent capacity. Therefore, the two concepts of personality and individuality are distinguished in esoterics. Individuality is the total man; personality is the tiny part that is actualized in this particular incarnation. The actual personality consists partly of former experience remembered anew (including habits, tendencies, etc.), partly the small amount of new experience that man manages to collect during his present physical life. By far the greater portion of man’s ability and understanding thus is remembrance. Only a tiny portion he acquires as entirely new in his present life.

2.29 Waking Consciousness and the Unconscious

In all natural kingdoms the monad has a waking life and an unconscious life. The waking consciousness is whatever the self apprehends in every instant. Man’s waking consciousness consists of sense perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and perceptions of the will. Attention is the centre, the focus of waking consciousness. Attention indicates the presence of the self. The waking consciousness is just an infinitesimal fraction of man’s total possible consciousness. The incomparably greater portion of what man’s physical senses and superphysical envelopes record passes the self by unnoticed. Thus it is hardly an exaggeration to call the unconscious the true man.

The unconscious is partly subconscious, partly superconscious.

The subconscious is latency. It contains everything that ever passed through the waking consciousness; everything the monad has seen, tasted, and done; all experiences it has worked up, everything ever since its consciousness was awakened, thus all experiences of the monad even long before its entry into the mineral kingdom. Each incarnation deposits, as it were, its own layer of consciousness. All this is preserved, for the subconscious forgets nothing. It is preserved as predispositions for qualities and abilities and ex­presses itself in the personality as character traits, prospects of understanding, instincts for the most varied things.

Direct understanding of something means that you have worked it up in previous lives. Whatever you have not experienced previously you can with difficulty learn to comprehend. Comprehension must work its way forward slowly, step by step. You can learn to comprehend things which you really do not understand, cannot yet understand until several incarna­tions hence. Anyone who understands and anyone who merely comprehends “do not speak the same language”. Whatever you understand you can also, as a rule, apply and realize. Not so what you only comprehend. All this has to do with different depths in the experience of life.

The superconscious is potentiality. It embraces all those higher kinds of consciousness which the monad has not yet activated in evolution.

The superconscious does not include only the normally superhuman, causal consciousness and higher, but also layers in man’s typical kinds of consciousness as yet unknown to the majority. Examples of the latter are: emotionally, the mystics’ experience of the unity of all life and the “peace which passeth all understanding”; mentally, the great thinkers’ experience of the synthesis of ideas, a preparatory stage before contacting the causal consciousness.

Waking man is in contact with his unconscious. He is constantly receiving impulses from his subconscious. They can instil feelings, moods, thoughts into him, apparently out of nothing. They can impel him to speak and act without his understanding why or even his being aware of his action. More seldom he receives inspirations from his superconscious, for example in the form of an intuition. In hylozoics, intuition means a direct correct perception of a major causal context. It is an expression of causal consciousness.

Evolution means that the monad activates ever higher kinds of consciousness. Expressed differently, the monad successively moves the boundary between its waking consciousness and superconscious. Our present waking consciousness was once our superconscious. Correspondingly, our present waking consciousness will belong to our subconscious and parts of our present superconscious will be our waking consciousness some time in the future. What we sporadically and uncontrolledly contact when we are at our best, in unforgettable moments of profound peace and unity with life, or when we summon up unsuspected powers within us and courageously attack the most difficult problems and situations, or when we reach a sudden insight and make an intellectual conquest, all this which we for lack of knowledge call “our better self” (as though we were more selves than one) will in the future be our normal, our everyday consciousness.

2.30 The Will

In Chapter 3.10 wWe mentioned that hylozoics enumerates three specifically different causes of motion: dynamis, material energy, and will. Dynamis acts directly in primordial matter and in the monads. Material energy is the indirect action of dynamis in the composite atomic kinds 2–49. This action weakens in each lower atomic kind, at each step of increasing composition of primordial atoms. This explains why motion apparently ceases in the lowest kind of matter, solid physical matter (49:7).

Thus material energy is the expression of dynamis through the matter aspect. Correspond-ingly, will is dynamis expressing itself through the consciousness aspect. Dynamis is in itself blind, lacks consciousness and can never have consciousness, for motion and consciousness eternally remain different aspects. Consciousness can develop, however, so that it eventually learns to control dynamis in matter, learns to use energies and to direct them towards a goal. This ability is called active consciousness. It lies potential in the monads and must, like all faculties, be developed. This is not done at once but only in evolution.

Involution is the actualization of monad consciousness.

Evolution is the activation of monad consciousness.

Actualization means that consciousness is awakened, roused to life; activation means that consciousness, awakening more and more, gradually learns to control energies.

There are as many kinds of will and active consciousness as there are kinds of matter. Thus there are 49 main kinds of will in the cosmos. Activation starts in evolution from below, from the lowest matter, 49:7. Man has three main kinds of will: physical will (49), emotional will (48), and mental will (47). Since emotional consciousness is the most activated at the present stage of mankind’s development, emotional will (desire) is almost always stronger than mental will (intellectual resolution), except in the few who have developed mental conscious-ness so that it dominates emotionality. But a higher kind of will is potentially always stronger than a lower kind. In the future, when mankind has activated mentality as much as it has today activated emotionality, mental will will dominate emotional will, just as today emotional will dominates physical will. And only then will man live up to his name of rational creature.

Will acts on matter directly. Man demonstrates this innumerable times every day by his physical will, whenever he moves a muscle. Emotional and mental will act on their respective kinds of matter, give rise to vibrations in the emotional and mental envelopes as well as in their surrounding material worlds. Will is still just faintly developed in most people. When finally man has completely developed emotional, mental, and causal subjective and objective consciousness, then he has also mastered the corresponding kinds of will to perfection. By the aid of his higher causal and mental will, he will then be able to control etheric physical matter and achieve the effects he desires also in visible physical matter. This is the magic of immemorial age: the power of mind over matter. Magic will remain a secret, unattainable for all but the very few who have overcome any temptation to abuse the tremendous power and who have placed all their capacity at the service of evolution for all time to come.

2.31 Passive and Active Consciousness

Consciousness can be passive or active. Passive consciousness does not imply inactivity; so far the term ”passive” is misleading. It means, however, that consciousness lacks the power of activity of its own, lacks a will of its own. Such consciousness must be activated from without. As soon as outer influence ceases, passive consciousness becomes latent (dormant). In contradistinction, active consciousness has the power of spontaneous activity, has a will of its own.

Man has both passive and active consciousness in his physical, emotional, and mental envelopes. Sense impressions are passive when attention is not present. Emotions and thoughts are passive when they just come about, as it were, without the control, will, attention of the self; when mental and emotional associations unceasingly chase each other without our conscious controlling or willing them. No consciousness “just comes about”, however. All consciousness is activated consciousness. If it is not activated from within, by the monad, then it is activated from without: from the surrounding emotional and mental worlds or through robot functions (habits), which the monad has established in its envelopes on various occasions and which subsequently act without the control of the monad.

Thus there is a great difference between “I think” and “it thinks in me”. Everybody can convince himself of that truth by some self-observation. Indeed, the envelopes of man act as robots more than 90 per cent of the time. They pick up surrounding vibrations and reproduce them reinforced, while the monad, or self, passively observes, often not even that. Less than 10 per cent of man’s consciousness is determined by himself – by the monad. The greater part is robot consciousness: physical, emotional, and mental.

Man is a monad that has gone through involution and has worked its way through the lowest three kingdoms of evolution. He has, in a latent state, the passive consciousness in 43– 48 of the entire involution. It is quite natural that this latency must characterize his life to a great extent, all the more as his active consciousness is relatively little developed. Thus when it is said that man is an evolutionary monad, this does not automatically imply that he is self-active in his consciousness all the time, only that he has the possibility. How active he will be he decides himself.

2.32 Monad and Envelope in Co-Operation

Every form of nature has life, some sort of consciousness. All life has a form, from atoms and molecules to aggregates of these. Examples of aggregates are organic life-forms in the physical world and superphysical envelopes in higher worlds. Also planets and solar systems are aggregates, living forms.

Most aggregates of the material kinds 47 and 48 belong to involution. These life-forms are called elementals and have passive consciousness. Examples are man’s envelopes of superphysical matter.

Most aggregates of physical matter, 49, belong to evolution. These life-forms, for example minerals and organisms – vegetable, animal, and human – as well as their etheric envelopes, have a faint active consciousness. This appears in their capacity of auto-formation and expedient adaptation to the surrounding world.

The elementals of involution have no possibility of self-active consciousness. When influenced from without, however, they are unfailingly activated.

Through their various kingdoms the elementals learn to pick up all the vibrations that hit them and to reproduce them reinforced. In every higher kingdom (in a lower material world!) they become ever more accomplished reproducers of vibrations, ever more perfectly docile robots.

The monads of evolution need envelopes in order to be able to activate ever higher kinds of consciousness from 49 up. Without his two physical envelopes man would lack sense perceptions, without his emotional envelope he would be without desires and feelings, and without his mental envelope he would not be able to think. The monad’s own vibrations are all too faint to be apprehended by the monad as they are. But its envelopes reproduce them many times reinforced. Envelopes therefore function like some sort of sounding-board, where the monad might be likened to the vibrating string. At the same time as the monad must have its envelopes, the monad as an evolutionary being is necessary for its envelopes, in order to activate the otherwise passive elementals. Monads and envelopes need each other equally for their consciousness development.

The monads of expansion have envelopes of evolutionary matter. This matter is self-active to a certain extent, but this self-activity is insignificant in comparison with that of the monad and wholly dominated by it.

2.33 Self-Activation as the Meaning of Life

The meaning of life is consciousness development. This is true of all monads, irrespective of their stage of manifestation, of their being monads of involution or evolution. For monads of evolution, and thus also for us human beings, development is the same as increased self activation of the consciousness we have got: physical, emotional, and mental; particularly the higher subdivisions of these kinds of consciousness. This lays the necessary basis for the self activation of ever higher kinds of consciousness: causal, essential, etc.

Whenever man is thinking thoughts that he does not want to acknowledge, whenever he is experiencing feelings that he understands to be below his true level, then the passive consciousness of his envelopes and not the monad determines the content of his consciousness. Whenever man does not keep his attention directed at some definite object – either in the inner subjective world or in the outer objective world – then the monad is inactive, the self absent. And when the self is absent, the envelopes are masters.

The envelopes are good servants but bad masters. Ninety per cent of all your suffering depends on the simple fact that you do not want to control your envelopes, and “you” means the monad. The envelopes pick up telepathically the negative emotions of the surrounding world and reinforce them. The monad can refuse to attend to them, if it wants to. The envelopes preserve countless memories of negative emotions and (often imaginary) wrongs, injuries, shame, depressions. The least association the monad makes calls those memories to life, and the monad unresistingly allows itself to be led through the same emotions again.

The only possibility of getting rid of this suffering, the only path to enduring happiness is for man to learn to control his envelope consciousnesses. That he does by being self-active in his consciousness as often and as much as he is able to. He can step up his power of choosing consciousness himself: “This I will keep, that I won’t.” Control of consciousness is possible and will finally be understood to be necessary. Man practises this by learning to be attentive, more and more attentive, and finally attentive all the time. He will keep his attention on his inner subjective world and on the outer objective world simultaneously. The higher, noble feelings, which everybody wants to possess instead of the lower, negative ones, do not appear by themselves. They must be cultivated consciously by being attended to constantly, by being inculcated in consciousness. The liberating ideas, new insights, new individual elaborations and other valuable mental consciousness must be firmly retained in consciousness in order to become living powers of our inner life. All this the self does by a conscious, deliberate act of mental and emotional will. Whatever we call this – self-activation, concentration, meditation – it is the same thing. It is also the quickest and surest path to higher consciousness.

2.34 The Unity of Consciousness

As viewed from the matter aspect, the cosmos is an immense manifoldness and unity at the same time. The monads, which ultimately make up the sole content of the cosmos, are first and foremost individuals.

Individuals are united into aggregates. Lesser aggregates enter into greater, the latter into greater still. Finally everything has been built together into a unity. This unity we call the cosmos.

As viewed from the consciousness aspect, the cosmos is always a unity. There is in the cosmos one single consciousness – the consciousness of the monads. And in this common consciousness every monad has an unlosable share as soon as the individual monad consciousness has been actualized in the process of involution.

Consciousness thus is by nature both collective and individual. Its collective nature is the primary one. Individual consciousness is secondary and has arisen from the collective one.

To give an analogy, the ocean is the primary nature of water, the water drops that are separated from it are secondary. The cosmic total consciousness is the sum total of the consciousness of all monads like the ocean is the amalgamation of all water drops. This analogy is as close we can come to grasping the nature of the consciousness of unity. In order to understand it, however, we must experience it.

Every monad has its individual consciousness. Every composite atom and molecule has moreover its common consciousness. Every aggregate, envelope, world, planet, solar system has its own total consciousness. Any composition of matter, however loose and transient, be it only of two or three atoms, has a common consciousness. Thus there are as many kinds of common consciousness as there are kinds of material aggregates. Each of these innumerable consciousness collectives also has its own memory of everything it has experienced ever since it came into being. This is a memory that is preserved for the future in each constituent atom, and it can never be lost.

In each higher world in evolution and expansion (from world 49 “up”), consciousness is ever more intensive and extensive, energies are ever more powerful and penetrating. Therefore, the monad has during its evolution and expansion an entirely new conception of reality in each higher world it reaches. The perspective is enormously widened in each higher world, and the conception there is in the lower worlds of the three aspects of reality appears hopelessly restricted as viewed from the higher worlds. It was this fact that was originally meant by the saying that reality is “illusion”, since there is no common conception of reality valid for all until in the highest cosmic world (world 1)

2.35 Collective Beings

Every world, every planet, every solar system and so forth thus has its own collective consciousness. From the material point of view, such a collective makes up a unitary being. It always is an envelope for a monad which in its expansion has a considerable lead (of at least one natural kingdom) over all the other monads, those making up the envelope. This monad dominates the envelope by its consciousness and is its “self”. The other monads in the envelope may be at widely different stages of development. Monads of involution collectively make up envelopes for monads of evolution. Monads of evolution collectively make up envelopes for monads of expansion.

An example will make this clear. All human beings together make up a collective. We are by no means the lords of creation but have a humble position in the greater schemes. Our human kingdom enters together with the lowest three kingdoms as well as a fifth and a sixth – the essential and manifestal kingdoms – into the planetary collective consciousness. Let us call this community the planetary being. In this unitary being there is a focal point of higher intelligence that directs the further evolution of the entire planetary life. It is a monad that in its consciousness development has long ago passed not only planetary (46–49) but also solar systemic (43–45) consciousness. In fact, this monad has attained the third divine kingdom (29–35). We may call this monad the “god” of our planet, if we want to. In hylozoics, the term “planetary ruler” is preferred.

The planetary ruler has a staff of assistants around him. This is the planetary government the members of which have at least 42-consciousness. Everything that happens in the solar system (43–49) thus is encompassed within their knowledge and power. The planetary government has in its turn an executive, a widely branched organization of individuals belonging to the fifth and sixth natural kingdoms. This executive is called the planetary hierarchy. Its task is to implement the general plan for the evolution of the planetary life that the planetary government has laid down. Some of the members of the planetary hierarchy have voluntarily incarnated in mankind. It is they who have founded and then led the esoteric knowledge schools.

The members of the planetary government and hierarchy do not live in their superhuman worlds only. They also live in the physical world and have individual physical envelopes – not all of them organisms like we have, however – in order to be better able to supervise evolution in the most difficult of worlds. The fact that their individual matter aspect (envelopes) is as limited in space as our organisms are does not prevent their consciousness and will aspects embracing the entire planet and – where those in the higher brackets of the organization are concerned – the entire solar system and beyond. The capacity of expansion belongs to the monad, not to its envelopes.

2.36 Man’s Path to Unity

In all the kingdoms of manifestation consciousness is a unity. This is true of involution as well as of evolution and expansion. The monads that enter into and build up an involutionary being (elemental) have a common consciousness. The elemental, the monad envelope, functions as a unity. The monads of evolution make up consciousness collectives, they too. In the three subhuman kingdoms the collective consciousness is in fact more important than the individual one. Just think about the herd instinct of animals and other countless instances of the special instincts, which are the expressions of collective consciousness in these kingdoms!

The human kingdom is the only natural kingdom where the individual apprehends himself as isolated from all other life. This isolation is necessary, however, for the human monad to develop the new kind of consciousness that characterizes the monad from the human kingdom on: self-consciousness, the awareness of being an individual self. In order for the self not to drown in the collective consciousness it must, during a limited stage, be allowed to feel separated from everything else. Its individuality and unique character, its ability to keep to its own truth, must be developed and confirmed, and the interests of the collective must for the time being stand aside.

Here we have the explanation for much of what has been called the “curse of man”.

Unable to identify himself with others in their consciousness, insensitive to the sufferings of others, man tramples on the equal right of other beings to existence and happiness. Man is often aggressive, brutal, and cruel. However, that basic law of existence, the law of balance – which when expressing itself in the consciousness aspect is called the law of reaping – sees to it that he is made to reap everything; that all suffering he has caused others is returned to him with the same effect.

Slowly, and generally on the path of suffering, man reaches the insight that the law of unity rules all existence and all life.

In the superhuman kingdoms (from world 46 on), the individuals again live in collectives with common consciousness. But this essential (46) unity and the instinctive (47–49) unity in the subhuman kingdoms are of entirely different qualities. Animals have no possibility of self- consciousness. Men have the possibility, but they seldom use it until reaching the higher stages of the human kingdom. In the essential kingdom (46, 45), however, the individual is permanently self-conscious. It is to this self-consciousness that the consciousness of unity is linked, so that the individual perceives his own individual self within the much larger collective self. He perceives his self-identity without isolation from or opposition to other individuals in the collective, being self- and group-conscious as he is. The essential individuals (46-selves) have entered into a higher consciousness, where the co-operation and happiness of all is the one important thing, where everybody’s experience is shared by all in the common work for helping all lower life up into the essential life.

2.37 The Natural Kingdoms and Activation

The monad’s acquisition of self-consciousness in the human kingdom implies a loss of the instinctive collective consciousness the monad acquired in the lower three natural kingdoms. But self-consciousness is a condition of developing the higher kind of consciousness of unity, essentiality (46). In that way, the successive natural kingdoms are definite stages in the evolution of the monad. The lower kingdoms are conditions of reaching the higher, and until the individual has learnt everything there is to learn in a lower kingdom, he cannot pass to the next higher kingdom.

The passing to a higher kingdom from a lower one is final. A human monad can never again become an animal monad, no more than an animal monad can become a vegetable monad or a vegetable monad can become a mineral monad. On the other hand, a relapse to a lower level of consciousness within the same kingdom is always possible, since qualities and abilities that have been acquired in some certain incarnation need not be actualized again (be remembered anew) in a subsequent life.

The natural kingdoms make up an unbroken chain from the lowest physical consciousness in the mineral kingdom (49:7) to consciousness in the highest cosmic kingdom (1–7). Each higher natural kingdom is the flower and perfection of the next preceding one, is its ideal, unconsciously or consciously strived for. Man will always feel imperfect in the human kingdom, for perfect man, comprehensively developed and harmonized man, is superman, the monad in the essential kingdom.

2.38 The Law of Transformation and the Law of Form

All life has a form, from atoms, molecules, monad envelopes, to planets, solar systems, aggregates of solar systems and the entire cosmos. All these forms are subject to the law of transformation. They are formed, changed, dissolved, and re-formed. This is inevitable, since in the long run no material forms tolerate the wear of the cosmic material energies that pour through them. The primordial atoms that make up these material compositions thereby have opportunities of ever new experiences in new forms. All learn from everything.

Primordial atoms (monads) are at enormously different stages in the development of their consciousness. The overwhelming majority have as yet no independent consciousness. They make up envelopes for the relatively few monads that can take possession of the envelopes, become selves in the envelopes.

The envelope monads are affected by the self’s immensely more powerful consciousness vibrations, are stimulated into greater activity and clearer consciousness. At the same time, the envelope serves the self, functions as the “organ” the self needs for its further evolution.

The monads are the sole indestructible things in the cosmos. There is no “death”, only new forms for the monad to express its consciousness through. When the form has fulfilled its temporary task for the monad’s evolution, it dissolves.

The law of form concerns the monad in the vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms. It says that the monad, upon the dissolution of its life-form (so-called death), receives a life-form similar to the previous one, and that this process is repeated until the consciousness development of the monad requires a specifically different, higher form, a more expedient possibility of having increased experience. The successively higher forms are supplied by the natural kingdoms, where each higher kingdom also implies the addition of a new kind of envelope, a possibility of a new, higher kind of consciousness. The series of ever higher (as viewed from the physical) worlds in the cosmos supplies more and more refined life-forms to the monad during its further evolution and expansion.

When the monad leaves the human fourth kingdom for the superhuman fifth kingdom, it also leaves all its human life-forms, all its five envelopes. Even the causal envelope is dissolved then. In the fifth kingdom, the monad normally has self-made envelopes, at first one of causal (47:1) and one of essential matter (46:1-7) only, later also one of superessential matter (45:4-7).

In the essential kingdom, there is for the monad no compulsion of reincarnation, of assuming life-forms in the lowest three worlds (47–49). However, these selves often incarnate in mankind, voluntarily, out of love and compassion for straying mankind, to be our guides and teachers. History has recorded just a few names of such individuals and made a distorted presentation of their work.

2.39 The Lowest Three Natural Kingdoms

The three subhuman kingdoms reach their perfection in the human, the fourth kingdom. The monads of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms activate eventually physical, emotional, and mental consciousness. This consciousness of three kinds man shares with the lower evolution. He finally activates it to human perfection: physical 49:2, emotional 48:2, mental 47:4, whereupon all lower consciousness is synthesized in or superseded by causal consciousness, 47:2,3.

So it always is in evolution: a lower kind of consciousness is necessary to activate a higher one. Once the higher consciousness is functioning, this supersedes the lower and in addition reaches much farther. Causal consciousness, for instance, contains all the essential of physical, emotional, and mental consciousness but in addition has its own considerably higher quality, greater intensity and penetration. Its perception of reality is incomparably superior to that of all lower consciousness.

The monad has gross physical consciousness (49:5-7) from the mineral kingdom on, etheric physical consciousness (49:2-4) from the vegetable kingdom on, and emotional consciousness (48) from the animal kingdom on. This also means that the monads of the various kingdoms have the corresponding material envelopes. The mineral monad has an inorganic physical envelope. The vegetable monad has besides its organism also an etheric envelope, and the animal monad has in addition an emotional envelope. These are the individual envelopes of the mineral, vegetable, and animal monads. In addition, these monads have, collectively and within their species, access to higher envelopes, which make higher consciousness than the individual one possible. Man’s unique envelope is the causal envelope (47:1-3).

Thus the number of the monad’s individual envelopes determines which natural kingdom it belongs to.

In the mineral kingdom, the chief consciousness is linked to the visible physical world (49:5-7), which the mineral monad apprehends subjectively only. The mineral monads learn to perceive differences in temperature and pressure in solid matter (49:7). In this molecular kind, vibrations are massive enough for the monad to begin to apprehend the difference between inner and outer reality, between its own consciousness and the surrounding world. This lays the basis for the activation of objective physical consciousness (49:5-7), which reaches its perfection in the animal and human kingdoms. Consciousness in the mineral kingdom gradually manifests itself as a tendency to repetition. After innumerable experiences it becomes organized habit, or nature. This can be seen in the countless unique forms of the mineral kingdom, for example snow-crystals, the perfectly symmetrical forms of which are due to individual characters already formed through memory and habit. When consciousness gradually increases, there arises a striving after adaptation.

The most important plant consciousness is the physical etheric (49:2-4) one. This implies that plants apprehend the effects of physical vitality within their own organisms. In man, this kind of physical etheric consciousness is normally below the threshold of waking consciousness. He rather perceives it as energy, physical vitality or the lack of it, due to the rhythmical flow and ebb of etheric energies. The vegetable monads strive to apprehend the first faint emotional consciousness. They gradually learn to perceive emotional vibrations from the surrounding world and to discern in them the two basic emotions: attraction, or “love”, and repulsion, or “hatred”. This means that plants apprehend whether you love them or hate them.

In the vegetable kingdom consciousness is almost wholly subjective. The perception of the physical surroundings is very defective. Only in the animal kingdom, with the development of the nervous system and sense organs of the organism, are there possibilities of extensive objective perception. Even though this concerns only the lower three molecular kinds of the physical world (49:5-7), yet it is immensely important to the further evolution, also in the human kingdom. Only with objective consciousness does the individual experience the contrast between himself and the environing world so strongly that self-consciousness can develop. Objective consciousness thus is a condition of the further evolution in the human kingdom.

The animal kingdom develops emotional consciousness into strong activity. Repulsive emotions dominate the animals and express themselves in fear and aggressiveness, occurring throughout the animal kingdom. At the end of its sojourn in the animal kingdom and in its highest species, the monad activates attractive emotionality. This manifests itself in the care that higher animals take of their offspring and in the affection that domestic animals show to man. On the highest levels of the animal kingdom, a first mental individual consciousness (47:7) is also activated, which is seen in the sagacity and incipient understanding of the highest animal species.

2.40 Group-Souls and Transmigration

The passing of the monads from the mineral to the vegetable kingdom, from the vegetable to the animal kingdom, and from the animal to the human kingdom is called transmigration. This can never go backwards. The fact that biological species degenerate does not imply that the monads in those forms would relapse in evolution, but is a phenomenon that concerns the material forms only. The monads go on in the new forms of higher species.

In order to be able to transmigrate to a higher natural kingdom, the monad must learn to receive and adapt itself to vibrations from a higher kind of matter than the monad has activated hitherto: in the mineral kingdom etheric vibrations, in the vegetable kingdom emotional, and in the animal kingdom mental vibrations. In order to pass to the superhuman fifth kingdom, man must learn to receive and adapt himself to causal as well as essential and superessential (47–45) vibrations.

To begin with, the monad is insensitive to these vibrations. Then they only serve to vitalize the envelopes. Man does not know, for instance, that expedient energies from his causal envelope vitalize all his lower envelopes and last of all his organism with its etheric envelope. Nor does he know that these energies are the source of his physical health as well as psychic well-being. Gradually he learns to perceive the consciousness content of these causal energies as powerful ideas. And when man is finally able to live with his normal waking consciousness in this kind of consciousness, then he has stepped over into the superhuman kingdom.

When minerals are absorbed by plants, the mineral monads have an opportunity to experience the process of vitalization in the etheric envelopes of the plants, bathing in etheric vibrations.

Thereby the mineral monads learn to receive and adapt themselves to etheric vibrations (49:4 at the lowest). This is a condition of passing to the vegetable kingdom. Vegetable monads develop the most rapidly when their life-forms are devoured by animals and men and the monads are thereby exposed to the strong emotional vibrations of these higher beings. The evolution of animal monads is not furthered, however, when men eat animals. For transmigration to the human kingdom does not occur in such a manner as to the vegetable and animal kingdoms but requires the monad’s own effort. And animal food counteracts the refinement of the human organism and etheric envelope, thereby obstructing the natural activation of etheric objective consciousness (49:2-4), so-called etheric vision.

In the lowest three natural kingdoms, the monads form so-called group-souls. A group-soul is a common envelope for a group of monads that are on the same level in their kingdom and belong to the same species. In between incarnations the monad is enclosed in its group-soul.

When the monad incarnates in a new organism or (in the mineral kingdom) an inorganic form, it is clothed in individual envelopes out of matter from the group-soul. At the end of the incarnation the monad is returned to the group-soul, and its individual envelopes dissolve into it. Experiences the monad has had during its incarnation correspond to consciousness in emotional and mental molecules that the monad has incorporated with its envelopes. When these envelopes dissolve into the group-soul, the latter is enriched with the new molecules, and the individual experiences benefit all the monads of the group. Also during incarnation the monads are in magnetic contact with their group-souls and share in its accumulated experience. This is the hylozoic explanation of special instincts, an otherwise inexplicable phenomenon.

There are three kinds of group-souls or common envelopes: mineral, vegetable, and animal group-souls. In the mineral kingdom, etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes are shared in the group and only the gross physical forms are individual. In the vegetable kingdom emotional and mental envelopes are shared. In the animal kingdom group-souls are made up only of mental envelopes. Thus the animal has three individual envelopes: the organism, and the etheric and emotional envelopes.

The higher an animal species stands in evolution, the fewer individuals go to form the group-souls of the species.

The method of group-souls facilitates monad evolution enormously in these lower natural kingdoms where matter is the most inert and thus consciousness activation the most difficult. Without the common activation by the group-soul the monad would be exclusively thrown upon its own individual effort for its evolution. This would be all too small at these early stages of self-activation, and evolution in these kingdoms would take an unreasonably long time.

The transmigration of monads from the mineral to the vegetable kingdom and from the vegetable to the animal kingdom takes place imperceptibly and automatically.

Their transmigration from the animal to the human kingdom is quite another matter. It is called causalization and implies that the till then animal monad receives a causal envelope (47:1-3), an individual envelope. This causal envelope encloses the now human monad, is its truly human envelope, and can never incarnate into an animal organism. Causalization requires the most intense effort possible for an animal, the highest emotional and mental capacity possible in the animal kingdom. Therefore, only the furthest developed individuals of the highest species are able to causalize: monkeys, elephants, dogs, horses, and cats. These five species also go to form group-souls of very few individuals.

2.41 The Human Kingdom

The human kingdom is the fourth natural kingdom. In the evolution of the monads it is that major phase which extends from the highest possible animal faculty to the highest human capacity – or the lowest superhuman ability, if we thus prefer to express the matter.

Where consciousness is concerned there is no sharp dividing line between animal and man.

For newly causalized man is often less intelligent than the highest individuals of the animal kingdom, finds it more difficult than they to orient himself in existence. This is so since when causalizing man lost the common consciousness made possible by the group-soul. What definitely separates man from the animals is instead the causal envelope, the monad’s one immortal envelope (“soul”) throughout all its incarnations in the human kingdom.

Thus whatever stage man is at in his evolution, whatever sex, whatever race, nation, or religion he belongs to, he has an “immortal soul”. This implies that every man has as great a right as everyone else to life, freedom, and personal integrity, a right to be looked upon and treated by everybody as a brother.

The equal right of all human beings does not mean equality, however, in the sense that all are found on the same level of development. There is as great a difference in consciousness between a newly causalized man and a man in process of passing to the fifth kingdom as between the lowest and highest species of the animal kingdom. The human kingdom extends over a very wide range of various kinds of lower and higher emotional and mental consciousness. During its evolution as a man in tens of thousands of incarnations, the monad has opportunities of the most variegated experiences, getting to know his fellow men from all sides, being and acting in situations of all sorts, taking part in and being the victim of all kinds of infamy, and so forth.

The monad’s path through the human kingdom consists of a long series of ever higher levels. The number of the levels is 777, a symbolic as well as a real number. The 777 levels are grouped into five main stages according to the kinds of consciousness that are chiefly activated at the respective stages in turn:

Stage	Number of levels	Typical consciousness
Barbarism	400	lower emotional
Civilization	200	lower emotional-mental
Culture	100	higher emotional
Humanity	70	higher mental
Ideality	7	causal

Man uses a number of incarnations for each level. The number depends on how long a time it takes for him to learn what the level in question is meant to teach him. On the lowest levels everything human remains to be learnt. The experiences that are had and the qualities that are developed there are such as the ruling ignorance of life calls “bad”. But the esoteric knowledge of life sees deeper, knows that all such experiences are necessary, since they entail necessary lessons. These lessons would not otherwise have been learnt. They were the only possible ones on that level, and thanks to them man could evolve to the next higher level.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is that our moral judgements of each other have no justification, since they are based on hatred and ignorance. We human beings are neither good nor bad in any absolute sense. We are on a certain level, have the good as well as bad qualities belonging to the level but lack as yet the ever better qualities of the ever higher levels. According to the law of good, man follows the highest good he truly sees and understands, not by outer compulsion and duty but because it is a need and a joy for him to be able to do so. What individuals at lower stages consider to be right and good appears to those at higher stages as poor ideals, even wrong and evil aims. But so it must be if there are lower and higher and if unceasing development to higher levels is a fact.

The evolutionary tempo in the human kingdom is different at different stages. The tempo is very slow at the lowest two stages, where people do not spontaneously want to develop their higher potentials, than at the higher stages, where the understanding that the meaning of life is consciousness development grows ever stronger. At the stage of barbarism each level requires as a rule a hundred incarnations or more. The tempo accelerates in the further evolution, so that the entire stage of ideality can be covered in seven incarnations: one per level. There are great differences in tempo between individuals; those who instinctively adapt themselves to the laws of the freedom, unity, and development of all life learn faster and make quicker progress, while those who want to assert themselves at the cost of other life delay their evolution unlimitedly.

The evolution of man is ruled by seven basic laws of life. These are the laws of all men’s freedom, unity, development, self-realization, common destiny and reaping relations, and self-activation. The sooner man tries to understand and apply these laws of life, the better he does both as an individual and in relation to others. In the esoteric sense, culture equals life in harmony with the laws of life, applied unconsciously or consciously. In order to be able to understand the laws of life you must first have been applying them. It is only at the cultural stage (the higher emotional stage) that the need, the longing for such a life arises in man. At the humanist stage (the higher mental stage), emotional longing for such a life is supported by mental understanding of its conditions, a balanced knowledge of the nature, modes of expressions, and purposes of the laws of life. At the idealist (causal) stage realization is the most effective; then man has acquired knowledge and ability enough to remake himself into the human ideal. Still about 85 per cent of mankind are found at the stages of barbarism and civilization, where egoism and the physical and lower emotional interests are the stronger motives and the interest in the laws of life and the activation of consciousness is weak or non existent.

2.42 The Knowledge of the Stages of Development

The knowledge of man’s stages of development is one of the most important parts of hylozoics, since it affords perspectives on who we are and where we are going. The entire view on man and man’s ways in science, theology, philosophy, psychology, educational and social theory, and politics will remain distorted until they have accepted the basic truths of reincarnation, the evolution of consciousness, the different stages of evolution, and the laws of life.

In our times it passes as a truism that all men are equal. The original meaning of this idea was only that all should be equal before the law and nobody should have rights without the corresponding duties, that is: privileges on account of birth, wealth, religion, nation, race, sex, etc. These demands of equality are also supported by the laws of life. They are still far from satisfied, and we should all do our best to have them satisfied. What does not belong in the original idea, however, but is a distortion of it, is the notion that all men are born with largely the same qualifications and that man is shaped chiefly by his childhood environment. The result of such an error has been that they strive to equalize the natural differences there are between individuals. This is clearly seen in the modern school system. Our present educators have no idea of the immense differences there are also between young people of the same age.

It is true that man in each incarnation repeats, in broad outline, his previous development in the human kingdom from the stage of barbarism. This means that a man who in a former life reached the humanist stage will perhaps re-attain it at thirty-five years after covering the stages of barbarism and civilization in childhood and the cultural stage in youth and as a young adult. It stands to reason that this re-acquisition of his latency would be quicker and less painful with understanding parents and teachers.

Thus it will be a task for the educators of the future to discern in an age group of children, all wrestling with the problems of the stages of barbarism and civilization, which children latently are at the cultural stage, perhaps even at the humanist and causal stages, and give them different education according to their different needs and prospects of understanding.

The politicians of the future, having solid knowledge of the reality of the developmental stages, will make laws for the purpose of furthering everybody’s consciousness on his level. It is true that inequality will increase as a result of this, though not by providing less scope for anyone but by providing more scope than hitherto for quite a number of young people. All will benefit from this, since “the many will be the wiser tomorrow, the wiser the few are today”, those few who have always been the leaders, teachers, and examples to the many.

The knowledge of man’s stages of development explains much that will otherwise remain psychological riddles. Why are people so different, so unequal in the breadth and depth of their understanding, have such different skills in action and realization? Why are some pronounced egoists while others dedicate their lives to the service of something that is greater than themselves? The answer lies quite naturally in differences of age in the human kingdom, different stages of development.

It must be unequivocally declared that stages of development do not equal stages of educa-tion. There are plenty of examples of uneducated people on higher levels who have con-siderably greater understanding of life and common sense than educated people on lower levels. The corresponding is true of the economic classes of the community: there are individuals at higher as well as lower stages in all classes and social groups. In order to understand the reality of the stages of development we must get rid of superficial physical criteria, learn to consider the inner man. It might be said that the stage of development by and large appears in the individual’s view of right and wrong, his sense of responsibility for everything that happens, and his capacity for unselfish action.

When the knowledge of the stages of development has become more common, it will help man to evolve more rapidly, since he will then see that every stage has its relative value and its inevitable limitation. It is a matter of always striving on, not getting stuck on the level you have reached and considering it to be final. The emotional stage can be covered much faster when you understand that feeling is not everything, that the mystic or saint is no infallible authority in matters of knowledge just because he is emotionally so ennobled, “so wonderful”. Thereupon, at the mental stage, man can break himself of the habit of relying on his superior intellect to understand and judge everything without sufficient facts. For then he will learn that there is an even higher intellect, causal consciousness, with a capacity for direct knowledge that the mental intellect does not have.

One value of hylozoics appears in the fact that it demonstrates the relativity and limitation of all stages but also – within these limits – their priceless values. The physicalist says that man is an animal. The mystic says that man is god. The hylozoician rejects both assertions as false, points instead to an ancient knowledge of man as a being under evolution with the animal in latency (since he has once been an animal) and the god in potency (since he will be a god). The mystic as well as the yoga philosopher makes the blunder of confusing the actual and the potential.

Hänvisningar:

Lars Adelskogh, The Explanation, Section Two, www.hylozoik.se

Lars Adelskogh, Förklaringen, Del Två www.hylozoik.se

Lars Adelskogh, Eterhöljet, Del Två www.hylozoik.se