Figaniere V. - Esoteric Studies

Visconde de Figaniere

Esoteric Studies

I.

Rise of the Lower Kingdoms

The attainment to the human state of what is below it can only refer essentially to the soul of things, the Fourth principle; whence it follows that the lower element of the human quaternary, the astral soul, was actual, in bygone cycles, as the highest principle of animal life, and—in times still more remote—of the two inferior kingdoms. The medium of advance is type or Form. Progress implies that the vehicle is a new form in respect of any given class of monadic essence. Therefore progress of the Monad concurs with retrogression of Form, otherwise, with decrease of the vis formativa; this must ultimately lead to the materialisation of astral substance, Form being thereinafter reduced to a potential state. It is thus I understand the Law of Retardation.

As man never can be, so he never has been, manifested in a shape belonging to the animal kingdom in esse; i. e., he never formed part of that kingdom. Derived, only derived, from the most finished class of the latter, a new human form must always have been the new type of the cycle. The human shape in one ring, as I imagine, becomes cast-off clothes in the next; it is then appropriated by the highest order in the servant-kingdom below. We are now in the 25th Earth-ring of the Manwantara. May not man’s type of the 24th Ring have been that of the Simiadæ in its variety? Might not the Monkey-kingdom of Ramayana fame rest on some far-off tradition relating to a period when that was the common lot or rather aspect, of man? Is Swift’s fiction so preposterous—provided we withdraw the human figure from its network? Who knows what shape veiled the Ego in remote rings? Man may have been a quadruped of some kind before he became a biped, and a crawling entity before that—and yet withal such would be the Ego-kingdom, the seventh; never less. The progress or advance of Form is in the latter.

The store-house of potential forms, from Ring to Ring, is of course the elemental-prototypes. Just as man, as I suppose, gives up his form to entities beneath him, when he develops a more perfected one; so likewise do the higher animals make over theirs to entities of a lower level; the lowest of these, to the highest order of plants, and the latter to the mineral powers—but with an ever-decreasing momentum. This is only a logical way of expressing the idea. The process, applicable only to the astral period of the ring, is in reality a process of elimination. The prototypes whose physical outcome may have been admired by the higher orders of existence in the preceding ring, are now gradually eliminated through the inferior planes of astral existence, all such being ultimately (not in the same ring of course) involved in, and extinguished by, the Mineral-kingdom (physical)? as will be suggested hereinafter. The retrogression of form, it is needless to observe, is in no way substantial; it constitutes the gradual ebbing of the vis formativa (3rd prin.) and a comparative increase of cohesive energy (1st prin.) by a variable withdrawal of the life-principle (2nd) from the former in behalf of the latter—hence consolidation of substance or the growth of “matter.”

Leaving this part of the topic for a moment, let us see how it fares with the Monad (4th prin.).

The “seed” left with the seven Rishis, Manus, or otherwise Dhyan Chohanic adepts, at the end of the Round, and also of every Ring is as I take it the “Fire (i. e., Astral Light) of which there are seven “great descents during the Manwantara, each producing seven secondary descents through the rings, and each of the latter as many sub-descents corresponding to the races. Discarding minutiæ, I shall divide the “Fire” into four parts, symbolised by a (animal souls, i. e., of the higher orders), b (animal monadic essence, i. e., of the inferior orders), c (vegetable monadic essence), d (mineral and inanimate monadic essence). These “remains” of the ex-Ring which “descends” at the expiration of a minor obscuration, manifest themselves by the aforementioned seven sub-descents. In each of these, as in Noah’s ark, every order is fully represented (a, b, c, & d); but not one is like another, till finally the seventh sub-descent gives forth the last astral contribution. But before all this begins, the “Nature Spirits” must be woke up; for, although we know not what they do, they surely have some very important share in the proceedings. We need take no further notice than of one sub-descent, and follow it in its course. When, by virtue of the first Life-impulse, the respective Elemental-kingdoms have revived, the first sub-descent commences, d heading the way as it were, (c, b, a, being, each in its turn, an exponent of “Fire”). The third tanmatra’s supremacy is the immediate cause of descent. By alternations of supremacy among the tanmatras (the 5th being the rising power, the 1st the descending one, the others expressing intermediate values), there will be cycles describing both arcs, oftentimes and in different degrees, in which, as far as the 4th tanmatra is concerned, a and d concur with the extremes of rise and fall, b and c intermediately; until, under the sway of the 2nd tanmatra, d carries its charge over the boundary so to say of the second kingdom (aroused by the respective impulse), in which an analogous succession of cycles takes place, and so on through the third kingdom. As a, b, c and d all correspond to the fourth tanmatra, every turn of fortune which overtakes the monadic procession, represents some change in the equivalents of that tanmatra owing to the permutation which is constantly going on among the five combined subtle elements, whereby those equivalents are at one time equal to a, at another to b etc. The result is an increasing involution of the monadic essence or fire-principle—the soul of things.

The vital “impulses” would seem to be nothing else but differentiations of the astral element made up of the five tanmatras, the impulse being tantamount to a certain fundamental change in their combinations. According to my conception the critical change (for change in itself is perpetual) answers to the moment when the base, which characterizes any given group of combinations, is altered. Now, as regards the planetary chain, the base of the primordial element must be the fourth tanmatra; hence it follows that the first life impulse is coincident with the passage of the basal power from the fourth to the third tanmatra. The subjoined table shows the sequence:

Descending arc.
First	impulse	...	base,	3rd	tanmatra
Second	”	...	”	2nd	”
Third	”	...	”	1st	”
Ascending arc.
Fourth	impulse	...	”	2nd	”
Fifth	”	...	”	3rd	”
Sixth	”	...	”	4th	”
Seventh	”	...	”	5th	”

Needless to add that every change of base intimates a new modality of life-potency with regard to type, the vehicle (1st tan.) and the Monad.

Now, taking this in conjunction with what preceded, it will at once be seen that the manifestation of d coincides with the fourth impulse; and that d, being the Monad, the “impulse,” here represents vital force expressing itself as form in its first mode, i. e., the mineral prototype (force is one, its modalities many), and that the rise of the Monad, as well as of form and life, must commence from this plane, embracing numerous inner falls and ascents. Therefore, the manifestation of c coincides with the fifth impulse, and that of b with the sixth. Nor is there any difficulty in conceiving that the monadic essence is (as I have seen stated, I forget where) identical in successive rounds; except, as I imagine, d, in its entirety, takes more than one round to reappear; nay part of it will require more than one Manwantara. As a is only a development of b, its manifestation belongs to one of the higher cycles of the same (sixth) impulse. The seventh is beyond our present purpose, as pertaining to the human kingdom and connected with the union of the ethereal and material factors. But the diagram herewith will convey a general idea of the scheme.

Now (going back to the period prior to the “descent”), if a and b represent the soul-essence of the animal kingdom gradually freed by death during the former round or ring; and c corresponds to the astral residue of the vegetable kingdom, from whence proceeds d? From the earth itself by periodical disintegrations of its surface during the ascending arc. As I understand it, part of essence d goes no further than a certain depth below the surface, while another part does. The latter, starting from its own level of the fourth cosmic plane, proceeds through the under world (astral field of prototypes) thence, as it were, on to the planet, dives into it, works its way down (cataclysms, etc.), remains buried in its bowels, probably for rounds upon rounds, then gradually rises after æons of incarceration as the rocks and metals of some round or other, and closes the tremendous circle of its migrations at the dissolution of those substances, by a return to the astral plane. The migratory circle of the other part of d is considerably lessened, and those of c, b and a are comparatively brief, as their heaviest point is never beyond the earth’s surface. The return to the astral plane must ever be on some lower level than the starting-point, the monad combining some mode of the third principle.

The mineral Monad (taking a general view) thus immures itself at one time by virtue of the Law of Retardation, and at another regains its freedom by the Law of Dissolution (of matter), the former means materialisation, the latter elimination of type and liberation of the monad, which, of course, is never complete, as it depends on a vehicle (a mode of the form-principle) to escape dissolution.

Form begins with the universal, in its astral stage; forms utilized, which have done their work, higher up, are absorbed by the mineral in its physical stage, and finally annihilated by the same, after a subsequent stage (ethereal). The mineral (physical) far from being the initial kingdom from which sprout the others, as materialists will have it, is the annihilator, or rather concealer, of form, and, in the older sense, the Hades of Life. There is constant play between the principles composing the earth, a translation of force from one mode to another.

During the Manwantara, the direction, logically speaking, is from the centre toward the surface: the second, or life principle, withdraws (in a degree) from the cohesive mode, to energize the formal mode. At the approach of obscuration or Pralaya, translation is reversed. When obscuration is at its highest all the planet’s energies are concentrated as simple cohesion. This is occultation of vitality. As vital force recedes from the surface, matter there disintegrates: all mineral and metallic types manifested during the Ring are after a period of “ethereal” manifestation, their ultimate degree of perfection (6th and 7th Race-cycles)—at last dissolved and the Monad set free.

If, as appears to be the lesson, our planet is mostly made up of a solid nucleus, covered by a plastic layer the latter underlying the outer crust; then, it might be conjectured, that this surface crust is partly annihilated at every ring, and the whole of it by the end of the round, leaving nothing but the bare nucleus, from which, when revived, at the next round, a part of the new crust is upheaved, or otherwise produced therefrom, the equivalent of which is returned to the nucleus from the astral plane. The other part of the crust would be the result of sedimentary formations during the period. The nucleus recuperates its vitality by virtue of the evolution of water, which being under the auspices of the second punchikrita (with the intervention of the second kingdom) would probably coincide with the era of transition from the astral to the physical period. The process of absorption of mineral prototypes (alluded to above) would synchronize with a subsequent sub-era referable to the third kingdom’s intervention. Such of these prototypes, or rather the substance containing their power, as might be taken into the nucleus, would only reappear in some far-distant round, of a future Manwantara, as the case might be, for there is a scale in everything. The new crust of every round (though differently made up, from above and from below) would represent seven orders of types, one order to be exhibited in each ring. The underworld provides the earth, which now absorbs now yields up; but its digestion is of prodigious length. From its soul comes its body, life and form.

Thus things proceed so long as mater fœcunda, sleeping now and then to awaken with restored youth, waxes strong and flourishes without the cycles of her existence; but when the baneful curve of one of these coincides with that of the great Solar cycle, the waning period sets in; food and restoration come in slower and slower, whilst old age begins to tell apace. The decisive moment is when she receives the last morsel from her feeder reluctantly tendered. Then, after her last delivery, follows the grand climacteric. Reduced in time to a formless crumbling mass, she assumes her freedom and wanders through space whilst the last sparks of vitality are dying out.

Long before this crisis (the end of the worlds, or solar Pralaya) the lower kingdoms have all “risen” or “passed through Man” who, as such, of course no longer exists. For, while a was continually, from round to round, developing into the lowest power of the human soul; b had been ascending to a, c to b, and d to c. So that in due course the Monad, in all its grades, had achieved the ne plus ultra of its possibilities, i. e., returned to the plane of its genesis, having been regularly cast off by the human soul in Kama Loka, where, after its Pisacha phase, it dissolved in the currents of its own element. Thus if form is eliminated by the mineral, the lower Monad is eliminated by man—the two poles of physical existence. It will be said, and rightly so, that all the monadic essence could not be manifested in man pending the solar Manwantara. The reply is that there must always be “remains” whatsoever cycle be contemplated; it is a necessity of relative infinitude, and of progress in time.

What about the air and water planes at dissolution? I did not follow up this off-shoot of the subject, as entailing too lengthy a digression; but I may here epitomize my inferences. The sixth and seventh Races mark the physico-ethereal period of evolution (man being then, according to present notions, super-terrestrial), and correspond with the two physico-astral races of the downward arc. Of the three planes (terrestrial, liquid and atmospheric), the first has been noticed, viz., the gradually decomposing earth-crust manifests the two new sets of mineral and metallic types, the substrata or footing of “superterrestrial” man, but developing with never ceasing attenuation the most beautiful outlines, panoramas, etc.; for that kingdom has regained its plasmatic power. The water-plane, as it dissolves (which does not mean “evaporation,” but molecular resolution, a change of nature—water and air have their, no less than earth its, fathomless “depth in” a drop or atom)—yields the new flora (embracing two stages) of those races; and the atmospheric plane, the new fauna, under corresponding circumstances; for, part of c went to, or was reserved for, the water-plane, at its descent; and part of b, for the air plane.

The correlation between the second kingdom, vegetable-prototypes, and water-plane; and that of the first kingdom with animal-prototypes and the air-plane, before the evolution of sex, will explain the basis on which the hypothesis rests. With physico-ethereal man there must be involution of sex. As physico-astral man depended on entities of the sub-human class (evolved from animal prototypes) for rebirth, so will physico-ethereal man find among the graceful, shapely orders issuing from the air-plane, one or more which will be developed for his successive embodiments when procreated forms are given up—a process which will only include all mankind very gradually. The Adamic and post-Adamic races were giants; their ethereal counterparts may possibly be Lilliputians—beauteous, luminous, diaphanous—but will assuredly be giants in mind.

Visconde de Figaniere,

F. T. S.

Footnotes

---