Theos-Talk Archives (December 1993 Message tl00114)

One difficult subject to discuss regards objective existence apart from
our physical world as we know it. Apart from physical existence in
bodies of flesh and bone here on Globe D, what exists and what is real?

We learn of spheres of causes and spheres of effects. We know of the
globes of our planetary chain, each pair on a different plane. We
know that there are bigger scales of being that our existence as a
person living on some globe, there are scales of being that embrace the
entire solar system, and others yet bigger. Where and how and what are
we in these places and at these scales of being?

A lot of teachings come into play as we try to explore the topic. We
need to be aware of the planes or spaces of consciousness. The ten
principles of man are involved. Also the Monads, Egos, and Souls are
an important consideration.

First, let's look at who and what we are, and the scale of being at
which we exist. Let's consider our current place in the scheme of
things, before broadening our view to embrace other and bigger worlds.

We are Human Monads, or rather, we are Monads whose evolution to this
point, whose self-unfolding has progressed to the point where its
self-conscious ray, its Ego, has progressed to the Human Kingdom. We
have passed through all the previous kingdoms, through the three
Elemental, the Mineral, Plant, and Animal Kingdoms. And we will in
the future move on through the three Dhyani-Chohanic Kingdoms.

We are at the scale of being where we exist as members of these various
kingdoms of nature, as we find them here on the earth, or on its
sister globes. We are particularly the Human Egos, the growing,
evolving, self-consciousness spark of divinity whom have the potential
to--but not the absolute guarantee of--rising one day into perfection
and immortality. That is, one day, we may be reabsorbed into our Monad
and achieve relative perfection.

First, we should review what we mean by *scale of being*, and how this
relates to the subsequent Teachings that we consider. We are talking
about an aspect of the Heavenly Man, of the macrocosm/microcosm duality,
of the concept of organized structure and the informing life that
brings it together. We are dealing with how a particular being, in
coming into existence, creates a whole world for lesser beings to
exist in, and becomes in a way their god.

Looking at ourselves, when we are born, we take on physical bodies,
and clothe ourselves in substances of which all the principles
consist, from Atman through the Sthula Sharira. These substances have
a life of their own, and form not only our own forms, but also that of
a almost-numberless host of life atoms. Those life atoms exist in us,
as their world or universe. Our existence, to them, might seem like
a manvanatra of sorts.

The same holds true of us in the previous kingdoms, from the Elemental
through Animal, and in future kingdoms, the Dhyani-Chohanic, as well.
We find ourselves born as a being in a particular kingdom, clothe
ourselves in our seven principles, patterned after the nature of the
kingdom in which we exist, and ourselves become the host for a whole
world of littler beings.

As members of one of the ten kingdoms of nature, here on a planetary
chain, we exist in a particular scale of being. As we progress, we
move to higher and higher kingdoms, and eventually reach completion.
Then we start over again, with another sweep of evolution throught
the kingdoms again. Our evolution is never complete. We periodically
reach out and strive for further self-consciousness through the
descend into matter. And this is cyclic, through a series of stages or
kingdoms, and not a simple linear progress, not a progression of
higher plane after higher plane without end, through kingdoms 1000,
1001, and later 100,000, 100,001, and so on. The progression is
cyclic, with each cycle expanding a bit to embrace more, but everything
repeats itself.

In this progression, we are not talking about *shifting scales*. We
are not one day a member of a kingdom, and the next day a planetary
chain! When we move on to higher worlds, it is in terms of content,
of capacity of conscciousness, of planes of existence, and is not a
matter of scale.

Now that is not to say that at different levels of development, we
don't embrace more and more of what is. That would not be true. We
do include more of life with each step forward. As a Higher Human
Monad, the scope or extent of our consciousness takes in the entire
chain. In the Spiritual Monad, we take in the entire solar system.
And the Divine Monad embraces even more.

This increasing scope of consciousness, though, does not change our
scale. When we, as Monads, take in the entire globe chain, we have not
become globe chains. We still are beings in a kingdom in it, and not
a chain ourselves. Our scope widens to embrace more, as we progress,
but our scale of being has not changed.

There are two parts to the scale of being. One regards what we take in
and embrace as beings in this world, in this planetary chain and solar
system. This has to do with the ability of the Monad to function, to
express itself, to take in and participate in what is going on. There
are different names for our essential nature, as we progress in this
manner, and take in more and more of what life offers us, as we move
forward in this school of life.

The most commonly used terms for beings at the different levels are
Gods, Monads, and Atoms, sometimes expanded to include more, like
Gods, Monads, Egos, Souls, Atoms, and Bodies, for instance. Take the
simpler three-fold breakdown. The Atoms are beings that are the most
limited in scope, and are concerned most particularly with formulating
the substances and elements of the world. The Monads are beings that
are broader in reach, and are concerned with fashioning the substances
of the world, of functioning in the role of builders. And the Gods are
beings that have the boradest reach, and concern themselves with
the architecture of the world, with fashioning the natures of the
builders and the patterns of life.

When we consider this breakdown, we have various classes of beings,
within the same scale of being, each class directing and overshadowing
the ones below it. This illustrates the concept of hierarchy, with
a descent and deligation of authority and influence from the topmost to
the lower levels. It is how the beings of our world are organized and
participate in life together.

The other aspect to scales of being concerns the idea of the Heavenly
Man. We have a great being, unknowable directly, knowable only by
analogy to us, whose birth and existence provides the informing life
that creates and holds together our world or universe. This being is
no more concerned with any of us individually than we would be with
a particular red blood cell in one of our fingertips!

The Heavenly Man is in another world, in a sense, in an entirely
different, though interdependent, aspect of existence. His world is
not different from ours in the sense of being on a higher or lower
plane, nor in terms of spiritual evolution, but only in terms of scale
of being. We never enter his scale, nor do we enter a lower scale of
being. There is one particular scale that is ours, and will always be
ours.

There's a good mathematical analogy to this in a fractal. Consider a
fractal line. It has infinite detail, infinite variability, infinite
length. At any scale of magnification, we see the same pattern
repeated in mineature, the microcosm in the macrocosm. At a particular
scale of magnification, we see the universal pattern appearing a
number of times. Taking one occurrence of that pattern, we can
magnify it another scale, and find the same pattern happening again,
a number of times. We can do this indefinitely.

With our analogy to the fractal line, we could say that the whole
nature of the line itself is growing, evolving, changing, but we
don't see one copy of the pattern, at a certain scale, suddenly grow
in size and enter the next scale. We see overall changes, but not a
shifting of scales within this fractal, and it gives us a way to
think about the scales of being in nature.

Following this tought, we may one day find ourselves to be whole
worlds, where our embodiment is as planetary chains, but by the time
that this has happened, everything, everywhere, as grown and changed
as well, so that everything is bigger and we really haven't changed
scales after all.

Coming back to our discussion, then, we are at a particular scale of
being that puts us in the kingdoms of nature, and due to our stage of
evolution, we find ourselves to be Human Monads. This determines where
we can, and where we cannot exist, and places certain constraints or
limits on us.

Beings at our scale could be Elementals, Minerals, Plants, Animals,
Humans, and Dhyani-Chohans. Our evolutionary progression takes us from
one kingdom to the next. In addition to the kingdom that we are in,
there's the level of participation in life, the position in the
hierarchy, the class of being that we are. This determines if we are
an object, a builder, or an architect. These classes represent
three parallel streams of evolution.

As a human, we could be either a builder or an architect, depending
upon our relation to our inner nature and to the spiritual. If we
bring ourselves to be closely allied with the spiritual, and to
participate in the work of the Hierarchy of Compassion, then we are
drawn into the work of the architects and will join their ranks. If
we are solely concentrated in our personal lives, and look no higher,
then we continue in the role of a builder.

Continuing our human evolution according to its normal course,
growing and evolving according to the flow of life, according to the
lessons that our human lifewave presents us over the ages, we continue
as builders and one day may join the ranks of the Dhyani Chohans, still
as builders or Monads.

Should we rise about that, should we feel a higher calling and undertake
the path of hastened evolution in order to be of service to humanity,
then we are entering on a path that will make us architects and one
day join the ranks of the Gods. We will become Gods rather than Monads.
Our destiny, then, would be to join the ranks of the Dhyani Buddhas,
a more sublime reward and more challenging activity, that just becoming
a Monad in the Dhyani-Chohanic Kingdom.

In our world, the scope of our activities is determined by the stream
of evolution that we are in, that of the builders, and as Monads we
find our range of activities limited to a single globe of our
planetary chain. At a much-higher level, as a God, our conscious field
of activity spans the solar system, as we function in and through our
Spiritual Monads.

Whatever the globe, world, or universe that defines our scope of
activity, we find ourselves taking on embodiment therein, and clothe
ourselves in the substances of that place. Our skandhas are drawn from
it, and come together to make up our natures. As Globe D personalities,
we draw upon the nature of this globe to build our seven principles.
As Planetaries, we draw upon the nature of our entire chain to build
a different type of seven principles. And as yet greater beings, we
may one day draw upon the nature of our entire solar system to build
up a still grander set of principles.

Now when we talk about drawing together the materials that will compose
our principles, we are not literally saying that the principles are
merely substances. We are saying, rather, that we take on certain
types of consciousness, and because of it also populate our natures
with lessor beings of the same type of consciousness. Like when we
take on Manas, we take on that nature of awareness, and not something
material, and populate it with thoughts, with thoughtforms that are
beings in their own right.

This coming into existence, thought, this taking on of the various
aspects of consciousness as we manifest ourselves--it is due to there
being a globe, a world, a universe wherein we can exist. There must be
a world with other beings for us to be able to exist. It must already
be there. For we are not separate individuals, in the final analysis,
we exist because of our relationships with everything else, and our
nature is composed of the sum of our interconnections with others, of
our karmic web, of our ties and bonds with other beings in a particular
world. We could not exist if we were the only being in a world. It
would not be possible.

Now we can also take and consider the reverse of this. When we move
away from existence in a world, when we let go, for the moment, of the
ties that bind us to others, we do not exist as individuals, but we
*still can exist* in and unto ourselves. This is the experience of
being out of manifestation, yet manifesting, which is what we approach
as we disengage ourselves from the world, and move farther and farther
from where it is, in the astral light or akasha, and approach the
point where it no longer affects who and what we may be.

In such a state, we are karmaless, we are not in interaction with
others, there is no cause-and-effect relationships in action, because,
for the moment, all ties to others have been dropped. We are also
amorphous, without any sense of permanent, fixed self, since the sense
of self is derived by *relationship*, which we are for the moment
withdrawn from.

We could experience this state, where it possible to paralyze the
personality, and we experience it in the after-death states as we
drop our seven Globe D principles, before moving on to Globe E.
The state has little, if any, self-consciousness, and we naturally
seek to avoid it, seeking rather to have embodied existences so that
we can acquire self-consciousness, which is the greatest of Treasures.

As we continue to explore this subject, we may find that the more that
we seek to find answers, the more questions that we open up, and the
greater the number of things to consider and contemplate. Such is the
case with a study of the Esoteric Philosophy. The further we go, the
more we realize that we don't know, and the more pieces we find to the
puzzle. But even so, the part of the puzzle that we've solved continues
to grow with each passing day, and we find a quite beautiful picture
emerging!

                          Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com)