Of all the perennially inspiring facts in life
which Theosophy reveals, none is so overwhelming as the fact that Matter, Life and
Consciousness are three aspects of one indivisible Unity. It is impossible to conceive of
any matter which is not living, nor of any life
which has not consciousness. And when a
man realizes that all forms of consciousness,
from that of an electron to that of a Dhyan
Chohan, are embodiments of the one Logos;
that, "cabined, cribbed, and confined"
though He be there, yet He is within the electron; then he begins to live in a universe of
perpetual light, and to him nature at work in
realms visible and invisible is one blaze of glory
of the Ineffable. To know this, even merely
intellectually, is to gain a new insight into
everything in heaven and earth. But to feel
it, to live it, is to discover an exhilaration and
an enthusiasm of which he had not thought
himself capable.
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It was shown, in the chapter on "The Evolution of the Matter and Force", that the
Consciousness of the Logos pervades all the
processes in the building of the chemical elements. The same is true when we watch all
the processes which we consider characteristic
of life, as distinct from those of matter. At
each stage of life, from the lowest to the highest,
from a bacterium to an archangel, He works,
with His agents as His helpers, with His plan
before Him. Nothing comes to birth by
chance; nothing dies by chance; life and death
are the warp and woof of His loom. Each
organism contains — when the seed, when the
tree, in life, as too, in death — one chapter of
the Divine Wisdom for him who will study its.
processes.
What are the principles which guide the evolution of life? There are many, and one of
them is that life grows in response to a stimulus
from without. Stimuli from the world without are needed so as to rouse the slumbering
life, whether of mineral, plant, animal or man.
Heat, strain, pressure and other external impacts, which impinge on the slumbering life
in a mineral, awaken that mineral to its higher
possibilities of organization. The fiery glow
of a nebula has no meaning to us men, and we
...
Perhaps the most vital principle to grasp is
that, as life evolves, more and more consciousness is released. A successful evolutionary
form means one through which the consciousness locked up within the life can manifest
more fully. Simply to live means little for the
life; but, while living, to think, to feel, to
intuit, to aspire, however vaguely, however
feebly, is what all nature is striving for. There
is not an electron that is not vaguely aspiring
to be a fuller representative of the Divine Force
of which it is a channel; each plant and each
animal, from the dim recesses of its thought
and feeling, is dumbly hoping and trying to be
a larger mirror of the Divine Life which it contains. Life is ever striving to be more and
more self-conscious, and, above all, to be conscious of the Great Plan, and of its own joyous
participation in that Plan.
These principles of the evolving life are seen
in operation in that struggle for existence which
characterizes the evolution of our vegetable and
animal forms. Seen through the cold passionless eyes of a scientific materialism, nature is
"red in tooth and claw with ravin"; what else
...
This is exactly what happens. Myriads of
Builders, great and small, are ever at work,
building cells, guiding organs to form, moulding and coloring the flowers, selecting from
the Mendelian "genes" those which are most
suited to bring about the particular form, the
model of which is placed before them by the
Deva in charge. Nature is truly a factory, but
so vast and stupendous that the imagination
of man can but stand dazed at the sight of her
many creations.
1Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reveries, Chapter, "The Origin of
Species".
1 In the literal sense of the word. i.e" "entering into flesh", into physical life for the
first time. Compare in the Christian Gospel: Et Verbum caro factum est — "And the Word was made flesh."
