Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00405)

Liesel:

>I was thinking about some of what we wrote yesterday. You were
>saying the life/spirit came first, and I was saying that spirit
>& matter evolved together. I got to wondering whether there
>wasn't some theosophical truth in what both of us were saying.

Depending upon which step we're at in the process, either description
could be considered right. In the unmanifest state, before we take on
our seven principles and come into existence, we are neither spirit
nor matter. This state comes first, before existence. Coming into
existence, we clothe ourselfs in spirit/matter. Along descending planes,
the balance of spirit to matter tips, where it is heavily tipped towards
the spiritual at first, and towards the material at the lowest planes.
There has to be, though, something of both on any plane in order for
there to be manifest life.

> But on my
>side of the story spirit/life & matter always exist together.
>All matter has life/consciousness, we say. In all manifestation
>there's never one without the other. And evolution, it is said,
>is not possible without the presence of both, in varying
>degrees.

My previous description attempted to talk about the appearance of a life
on a particular plane. That life acts upon the materials of the plane,
upon the living beings thereon, and acts as an organizing force. When we
embody ourselves physically, we gather together our physical skandhas, and
clothe ourselves in the smaller lives and energies that go to make up our
physical form. When we appear on the sceen, we cause a new form of
organization to appear physically, that allows for our body to play host
to its countless living cells. When we die, and depart this plane, the body
dies, and the lives that were the cells have to find existence through other
hosts.

All this ties in with the subject of chaos. When an organizing force appears,
causing order to spontaneous arise out of chaos, or causing a higher form of
order to arise, we have the embodiment of a living being. Some life has entered
into existence on our plane, and the presence of that life allows for the
order to have arisen. In fact, I'd say, the order that we find in our
universe itself is there for the very same reason: the embodiment of a Great
Being.

-- Eldon