The Rosicrucian
Cosmo-Conception
by Max Heindel
(Part 6)
VI. The Scheme
of Evolution
The Beginning
In harmony with the Hermetic axiom "As
above, so below" and vice versa, Solar Systems are born, die and
come to birth anew in cycles of activity and rest, as does man.
There is a constant flaming out and dying down of activity in every
department of nature, corresponding to the alternations of ebb and flow, day
and night, summer and winter, life and death.
In the beginning of a Day of Manifestation it is taught that a certain
Great Being (designated in the Western World by the name of God, but by
other names in other parts of the earth) limits Himself to a certain portion of
space, in which He elects to create a Solar System for the evolution of added
self-consciousness. (See Diagram 6).
He includes in His own Being hosts of glorious Hierarchies of, to us,
immeasurable spiritual power and splendor. They are the fruitage of past
manifestations of this same Being and also other Intelligences, in descending
degrees of development down to such as have not reached a stage of
consciousness as high as our present humanity, and therefore these latter will
not be able to finish their evolution in this System. In God — this great
collective Being — there are contained lesser beings of every grade of
intelligence and stage of consciousness, from omniscience to an
unconsciousness deeper than that of the deepest trance condition.
During the period of manifestation with which we are concerned, these
various grades of beings are working to acquire more experience than they
possessed at the beginning of this period of existence. Those who, in previous
manifestations, have attained to the highest degree of development work on
those who have not yet evolved any consciousness. They induce in them a stage
of self-consciousness from which they can take up further work themselves.
Those who had started their evolution in a former Day of Manifestation, but had
not progressed far at the close, now take up their task again, just as we take
up our daily work in the morning where we left off the previous night.
All the different Beings, however, do not take up their evolution at the
early stages of a new manifestation. Some must wait until those who precede
them have made the conditions which are necessary for their further
development. There are no instantaneous processes in nature. All is an
exceedingly slow unfolding, a development which, though so exceedingly slow,
is yet absolutely certain to attain ultimate perfection. Just as there are
progressive stages in the human life — childhood, youth, manhood or
womanhood, and old age — so in the macrocosm there are different stages
corresponding to these various periods of the microcosmic life.
A child cannot take up the duties of fatherhood or motherhood. Its
undeveloped mental and physical condition render it incapable of doing such
work. The same is true of the less evolved beings in the beginning of
manifestation. They must wait until the higher evolved have made the proper
conditions for them. The lower the grade of the intelligence of the evolving
being, the more it is dependent upon outside help.
At the Beginning, then, the highest Beings — those who are the farthest
evolved — work upon those who have the greatest degree of unconsciousness.
Later, they turn them over to some of the less evolved entities, who are
then able to carry the work a little further. At last self-consciousness is
awakened. The evolving life has become Man.
From the point where the self-conscious individual Ego has come into being
he must go on and expand his consciousness without outside help. Experience
and thought are then to take the place of outside teachers and the glory,
power and splendor he may attain are limitless.
The period of time devoted to the attainment of self-consciousness and to
the building of the vehicles through which the spirit in man manifests, is
called "Involution."
The subsequent period of existence, during which the individual human
being develops self-consciousness into divine omniscience, is called
"Evolution."
The Force within the evolving being which makes evolution what it is and
not a mere unfoldment of latent germinal possibilities; which makes the
evolution of each individual differ from that of every other; which provides
the element of originality and gives scope to the creative ability which the
evolving being is to cultivate that he may become a God — that Force is
called "Genius," and as previously explained, its manifestation is
"Epigenesis."
Many of the advanced philosophies of modern times recognize involution
and evolution. Science recognizes only the latter, because it (Science)
deals only with the Form side of manifestation. Involution belongs to
the Life side; but the most advanced scientists regard Epigenesis as a
demonstrable fact. The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception combines all three as
necessary to full understanding of the past, present and future development of
the System to which we belong.
The Seven Worlds
We might use a homely instance to illustrate the building of a Cosmos.
Suppose a man wants to establish a home in which to live. He first selects a
suitable location and then proceeds to build a house, dividing it into
various rooms to serve certain purpose. He makes a kitchen, dining-room
bedrooms and bathroom, and furnishes them all to suit the special purpose
they are intended to serve.
When God desires to create, He seeks out an appropriate place in space,
which He fills with His aura, permeating every atom of the cosmic
root-substance of that particular portion of space with His Life, thus
awakening the activity latent within every inseparate atom.
This Cosmic Root-substance is an expression of the negative pole of the
Universal Spirit, while the great Creative Being we call God (of whom we, as
spirits, are part) is an expression of the positive energy of the same
Universal Absolute Spirit. From the work of one upon the other, all that we
see about us in the Physical World has resulted. The oceans, the Earth
everything we see manifesting as mineral, plant animal and human forms — all
are crystallized space, emanated from this negative Spirit-substance,
which alone existed at the dawn of Being. As surely as the hard and flinty
house of the snail is the solidified juices of its soft body, so surely all
forms are crystallizations around the negative pole of Spirit.
God draws from the Cosmic Root-substance outside His immediate sphere;
thus the substance within the nascent cosmos becomes denser than it is in
Universal space, between Solar Systems.
When God has thus prepared the material for His Habitation, He next sets it
in order. Every part of the system is pervaded by His consciousness, but a
different modification of that consciousness in each part of division. The
Cosmic Root-substance is set in varying rates of vibration and is therefore
differently constituted in its various divisions, or regions.
The above is the manner in which the Worlds come into being and are fitted
to serve different purposes in the evolutionary scheme, the same as the
various rooms in the house are fitted to serve the purpose of everyday life in
the Physical World.
We have already seen that there are seven Worlds. These Worlds have
each a different "measure" and rate of vibration. In the densest World (the
Physical) the measure of vibration, though in the case of light-waves reaching
a rate of hundreds of millions per second, is nevertheless infinitesimal when
compared to the rapidity of the vibration in the Desire World, which is next to
the Physical. To get some conception of the meaning and rapidity of vibration,
perhaps the easiest way is to watch the heat vibrations rising from a very
hot stove, or from a steam radiator near a window.
It must be borne constantly in mind that these Worlds are not separated by
space or distance, as is the earth from the other planets. They are states
of matter, of varying density and vibration, as are the solids, liquids and
gases of our Physical World. These Worlds are not instantaneously created at
the beginning of a day of Manifestation, nor do they last until the end; but
as a spider spins its web thread by thread, so god differentiates one after
another of the worlds within Himself, as the necessity arises for new
conditions in the scheme of evolution in which He is engaged. Thus have all
the seven Worlds been gradually differentiated as they are at present.
The highest Worlds are created first, and as involution is to slowly
carry the life into denser and denser matter for the building of forms, the
finer Worlds gradually condense and new Worlds are differentiated within God to
furnish the necessary links between Himself and the Worlds which have
consolidated. In due time the point of greatest density, the nadir of
materiality, is reached. From that point the life begins to ascend into
higher Worlds, as evolution proceeds. That leaves the denser Worlds
depopulated, one by one. When the purpose has been served for which a
particular World was created, God ends its existence, which has become
superfluous, by ceasing within Himself the particular activity which brought
into being and sustained that World.
The highest (finest, rarest, most ethereal) Worlds are the first created
and the last eliminated, while the three densest Worlds, in which our
present phase of evolution is carried on, are but comparatively evanescent
phenomena incident to the spirit's dip into matter.
The Seven Periods
The evolutionary scheme is carried through these five Worlds in seven
great Periods of Manifestation, during which the virgin spirit, or evolving
life, becomes first, man — then, a God.
At the beginning of Manifestation God differentiates within (not
from) Himself these virgin spirits, as sparks from a Flame, of the
same nature, capable of being fanned into Flames themselves. Evolution is
the fanning process which is to accomplish that end. In the virgin spirits are
enfolded all the possibilities of their Divine Father, including the germ of
independent Will, which makes them capable of originating new phases, not
latent in them. The latent possibilities are transformed into dynamic
powers and available faculties during evolution, while the independent Will
institutes new and original departures — or Epigenesis.
Prior to the beginning of the pilgrimage through matter the virgin
spirit is in the World of Virgin Spirits, the next to the highest of the
seven Worlds. It has Divine Consciousness, but not Self-
consciousness. That, Soul-power, and the Creative Mind, are faculties or powers
attained to by evolution.
When the virgin spirit is immersed in the World of Divine Spirit, it is
blinded and rendered utterly unconscious by that matter. It is as oblivious to
outside conditions as is man when in the deepest trance. This state of
unconsciousness prevails during the first period.
In the Second Period it rises to the dreamless sleep state; in the third
Period it reaches the dream stage, and in the middle of the Fourth Period, at
which we have now arrived, the full waking consciousness of man is attained.
This is a consciousness pertaining to only the lowest one of the seven
Worlds. During the remaining half of this Period, and the entire three
remaining Periods, man must expand his consciousness so as to include all of
the six Worlds above this Physical World.
When man passed through these Worlds in his descent his energies were
directed by higher Beings, who assisted him to turn unconscious energy
inward for the building of proper vehicles. At last, when he was far
enough advanced and equipped with the threefold body as a necessary
instrument, these higher Beings "opened his eyes" and turned his gaze
outward upon the Chemical Region of the Physical World, that his
energies might conquer it.
When he has fitted himself by his work in the Chemical Region, his next
step in progress will be toward an expansion in consciousness that will
include the Etheric Region; then the Desire World, etc., etc.
In the Rosicrucian terminology, the names of the seven Periods are as
follows:
• The Saturn Period
• The Sun Period
• The Moon Period
• The Earth Period
• The Jupiter Period
• The Venus Period
• The Vulcan Period
These periods are successive Rebirths of our Earth.
It must not be thought that the above mentioned Periods have anything to do
with the planets which move in their orbits around the Sun in company with
the earth. In fact, it cannot be too emphatically stated that there is no
connection whatever between these planets and the periods. The Periods are
simply past, present or future incarnations of our Earth, "conditions"
through which it has passed, is now passing, or will pass in the future.
The three first mentioned Periods (the Saturn, Sun and Moon Periods)
have been passed through. We are now in the fourth, or Earth Period. When
this Earth Period of our Globe has been completed, we and it shall pass in
turn through the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan conditions before the great
septenary Day of Manifestation comes to an end, when all that now is will
once more be merged in the Absolute for a period of rest and assimilation of
the fruits of our evolution, to re-emerge for further and higher development at
the dawn of another Great Day.
The three and one-half Periods already behind us have been spent in
gaining our present vehicles and consciousness. The remaining three and
one-half Periods will be devoted to perfecting these different vehicles and
expanding our consciousness into something akin to omniscience.
The journey made by the virgin spirit from unconsciousness to omniscience,
unfolding its latent possibilities into a kinetic energy, is a process of
marvelous complexity and only the roughest outline will at first be given. As
we progress in our present study, however, more details will be filled in,
until the picture is as complete as the writer is capable of making it. The
attention of the student is called to the definition of terms that are given as
new ideas are being presented. He is earnestly importuned to familiarize
himself with them, as the intention is to simplify the matter by using only one
familiar English name for the same idea throughout the work. The name will be
as descriptive as possible of the idea to be conveyed, in hopes that thereby
much of the confusion arising from a multiplex terminology may be avoided. By
paying strict attention to definition of terms, it should not be too difficult
for any person of average intelligence to acquire a knowledge of at least the
outlines of the scheme of evolution.
That such a knowledge is of the utmost importance will, we think, be
conceded by every intelligent individual. We live in this world, governed by
the laws of nature. Under these laws we must live and work, and we are
powerless to change them. If we know them and intelligently co-operate with
with them, these nature-forces become most valuable servants, e.g.,
electricity and the expansive force of steam. If, on the other hand, we do
not understand them and in our ignorance work contrary to them, they
become most dangerous enemies, capable of terrible destruction.
Therefore, the more we know of the working methods of nature, which
latter is but the visible symbol of the invisible God, the better able we
shall be to take advantage of the opportunities it offers for growth and
power; for emancipation from bondage and for elevation to mastery.
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