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- 1. The Primordial Seven, the first seven Breaths of the Dragon of Wisdom, produce in their turn from their holy circumgyrating Breaths the Fiery Whirlwind (a).
(a) This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all the Stanzas to explain. Its language is comprehensible only to him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern allegory and its purposely obscure phraseology. The question will surely be asked, “ Do the Occultists believe in all these ‘ Builders,’ ‘ Lipika,’ and ‘ Sons of Light ’ as Entities, or are they merely imageries ? ” To this the answer is given as plainly : “ After due allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we must admit the existence of these Entities, if we would not reject the existence of spiritual humanity within physical mankind. For the hosts of these Sons of Light and ‘ Mind-born Sons ’ of the first manifested Ray of the Unknown All, are the very root of spiritual man.” Unless we want to believe the unphilosophical dogma of a specially created soul for every human birth — a fresh supply of these pouring in daily, since “ Adam ” — we have to admit the occult teachings. This will be explained in its place. Let us see, now, what may be the occult meaning of this Stanza.
The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious god, — aye, even the highest — the Spiritual primeval Intelligences must pass through the human stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, since the middle point of the Fourth Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed. Each Entity must have won for itself the right of becoming divine, through self-experience. Hegel, the great German thinker, must have known or sensed intuitionally this truth when saying, as he did, that the Unconscious evolved the Universe only “ in the hope of attaining clear self-consciousness,” of becoming, in other words, man ; for this is also the secret meaning of the usual Purânic phrase about
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Brahmâ being constantly “ moved by the desire to create.” This explains also the hidden Kabalistic meaning of the saying : “ The Breath becomes a stone ; the stone, a plant ; the plant, an animal ; the animal, a man ; the man, a spirit ; and the spirit, a god.” The Mind-born Sons, the Rishis, the Builders, etc., were all men — of whatever forms and shapes — in other worlds and the preceding Manvantaras.
This subject, being so very mystical, is therefore the most difficult to explain in all its details and bearings ; since the whole mystery of evolutionary creation is contained in it. A sentence or two in it vividly recalls to mind similar ones in the Kabala and the phraseology of the King Psalmist (civ.), as both, when speaking of God, show him making the wind his messenger and his “ ministers a flaming fire.” But in the Esoteric doctrine it is used figuratively. The “ fiery Wind ” is the incandescent Cosmic dust which only follows magnetically, as the iron filings follow the magnet, the directing thought of the “ Creative Forces.” Yet, this cosmic dust is something more ; for every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It is an atom and an angel.
In this connection it should be noted that one of the luminaries of the modern Evolutionist School, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of “ natural selection ” as the sole factor in the development of physical man, practically concedes the whole point here discussed. He holds that the evolution of man was directed and furthered by superior Intelligences, whose agency is a necessary factor in the scheme of Nature. But once the operation of these Intelligences is admitted in one place, it is only a logical deduction to extend it still further. No hard and fast line can be drawn.