CHAPTER XVI
GOD'S PLAN, WHICH IS EVOLUTION
There is a saying attributed to Plato which is
full of significance: it is, "God geometrizes".
In that saying we have the proclamation of the
Divine Wisdom that there exists a God of the
universe, and that all nature is a creation by
Him after a Plan. Modern science, with her
doctrine of evolution, acknowledges a "design
in Nature", but that design is to most scientists,
merely the result of the mechanical interplay ot
natural forces, and it in no way warrants the
belief in a Creator. It is only a scientist here
and there who is ready to acknowledge that the
structure of the universe reveals the mind of a
"pure mathematician", the Great Architect
of the Universe.
The Ancient Wisdom proclaims with no hesitating voice that every part of nature's design
reflects the plan of a Divine Mind. This
"God's plan, which is Evolution" is not
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mechanical; what seems a "fortuitous concourse of atoms" is the resultant diagonal of
the energies of the Logos, and their quantity
and direction as they operate are determined
by Him at each moment of time.
It is difficult for the modern mind to imagine
our Solar System as a living organism. Yet
that is what it is. The sphere in space, whose
center is the Sun and whose radius is the distance from the center to the trans-Plutonian
planet "X" 1, is the physical body of the
Logos, and His mind directs all the activities
within that vast sphere. The magnitude of
that Mind baffles human imagination; only a
few glimpses here and there of Its wonders can
we gain as we study creation. Looking at that
Mind with the heart, It appears as infinite
Love; observing It with the developed artistic
imagination, It is infinite Beauty.
When the mind looks at Its activities in
visible nature, there is revealed a fascinating
geometrical design. Why "God geometrizes" we may not know till our little minds
can directly contact His great Mind; we can
but look with our eyes and ponder on what
they report, and what they report is order,
rhythm and beauty.
1
See Fig. 3.
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All matter is electricity, though no one yet
knows what is electricity, nor what is magnetism, the force induced
by electricity. Unknown as these two forces are in their true
nature, we yet know that, as one of them,
magnetism, operates, geometrical design at
once appears. When needles are pierced upright in corks,
each needle made into a magnet
with a north and south pole, and when the
corks are allowed freely to float in water, and
when over the floating needles there is held a
powerful electro-magnet, the result is shown in
Fig. 122.
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When only one needle floats, it
comes directly under the magnet; on the introduction of a second cork, the two corks range
themselves side by side; three form a triangle;...
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four a square; five a pentagon; six a pentagon
with a needle at its center. The experiment
has been carried to 52 needles; with 51, the
circles are of 6, 11, 14 and 19, with one needle
in the middle. With 52 needles, the circles
are the same, but instead of one needle, two
form the nucleus round which the circles are
grouped. Why do the magnets arrange themselves in these geometrical designs? Because
so to act is "God's plan" for magnetism.
For, everything has work to do, mapped out
for it in that Plan. Even at this very beginning
of physical forces, "number" and geometry
come into play. It was this that Pythagoras
taught when he said that the universe is constructed
according to "number". Everywhere we look, a geometrical design appears.
And as rhythm in structure and movement
means music, the universe makes music as it
works at its tasks. The electrons make waves
as they rush through the ether; but their notes
are scarcely within the audibility of the average
clairaudient ear. But the note which the
Earth makes as it circles the Sun, pushing its
way through the rether, and the harmonies of
that note, can be heard1. Each visible and
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1 I can testify to the existence of some of these notes by continuous
personal experience night and day. — C.J.
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invisible planet has its note, and the "music
of the spheres" is not a fantasy, but a most
sober verity.
Let us look for a moment now at the ultimate
physical atom (Fig. 123).
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It is aliving heart,
pulsating with energy; with its three thicker
whorls and the seven thinner, it is also a transformer; each whorl is made up of seven orders
of spirillae. Spirals and spirillae are its basis or
structure; the atom is fashioned to do a work.
“In the three whorls flow currents of different
electricities, the seven vibrate in response to etheric-waves of all kinds — to sound, light, heat, etc; they ...
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show the seven colors of the spectrum; give out the
seven sounds of the natural scale; respond in a variety
of ways to physical vibration — flashing, sirtging, pulsing
bodies, they move incessantly, inconceivably beautiful
and brilliant.
“The atom has — as observed so far — three proper
motions, i.e., motions of its own, independent of any
imposed on it from outside. It turns incessantly upon
its own axis, spinning like a top; it describes a small
circle with its axis, as though the axis of the spinning
top moved in a small circle; it has a regular pulsation, a
contraction and expansion, like the pulsation of the
heart. When a force is brought to bear upon it, it
dances up and down, flings itself wildly from side to
side, performs the most astonishing and rapid gyrations,
but the three fundamental motions incessantly persist.
If it be made to vibrate, as a whole, at the rate which
gives anyone of the seven colors, the whorl belonging
to that color glows out brilliantly.”1
Why has the atom this peculiar shape, and
these many motions and functions? Because
that is "God's plan" for the atom. Out of its
tiny life the Logos expects a cooperation, and
age by age the atom is being trained by His
agents to perform that duty. And when men
are willing to do their duty to the full, then the
atom and mankind will join in a common work
with a forcefulness not now possible.
Order, rhythm and beauty are more evident
to our minds when we look at the shapes of
the chemical elements2. The five "Platonic
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1
Occult Chemistry, by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater
2 See Chapter X, "The Evolution of Matter and Force"
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Solids" (Fig. 124) give the axes of structure
for all the elements. Verily God geometrizes,
as He builds the bricks of matter out of which
the solar system is to be made.
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Why is Calcium a tetrahedron and Phosphorus a cube?
Because it is God's plan. For each element
has its part in the Great Plan; each gives to
the universe its own revelation of the nature of
the Logos. Each is a mirror of the inexhaustible fullness
of the Divine Life; each is a channel, both to bring down to earth the energies
of that Life, as also to conduct upwards and
inwards to It the response which nature gives.
When we come to the molecular world, who
that has looked at minerals has not noted how
crystals carry out geometrical design to perfection? The precision of their angles is often
more perfect than can be achieved by the most
accurate of man-made measuring tools. After
building angular solids, exquisite for symmetry
and beauty, the mineral life next fashions out of
them solids with curves; one can but perennially marvel at the ingenuity of the mineral, as
it arranges tiny crystals of quartz and other
minerals to make spirals (Fig. 125).
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The life
activities of the mineral kingdom are a glorification of the Divine Mind which thinks in
"numbers", and ever shapes the combinations
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of the elements into forms of order, rhythm
and beauty. Each mineral carries out God's
plan for it, and the crystal world is a
mirror of those geometrical laws of the Divine
Mind which the artist senses and the mathematician deduces.
As the life of the Logos expresses itself in
more pliant forms of matter, the rhythm and
the music become ever more complex with each
higher stage. Each plant is built rhythmically,
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the place of leaf on twig, and branch on stem,
being fixed by laws of geometry and design.
When we look at the flowers, then each flower,
built as it is according to "number", is as a
chord in a great musical octave. Consider the
arrangement of sepals and petals, of stamens
and ovaries, in any flower, and the geometry of
the mineral life reappears in new variations
and combinations at the next stage as the vegetable group-soul; surely God geometrizes as
He builds the four types of Fig. 126, the Loosestrifes, Gourds, Borageworts and Geraniums.
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And when we come to the life of the animal
kingdom, how exquisite is God's geometry in
the shell of the Nautilus pompilius (Fig. 127), and
in that of Solarium (Fig. 128).
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Beauty is there
clear to our gaze; but what of the laws of
mathematics in their curves, and of mechanics
in the moulding of their chambers? In the
Nautilus, Surely a Grand Geometrician is visibly
at work, and His Mind is full of rhythm and
melody.
In all the myriads of creatures of the animal
kingdom, God geometrizes as in the plant and
the mineral. But His geometry is less evident,
though the movement of every muscle illusltrates laws of rhythmic motion, and a higher
beauty exists in the animal than in plant or
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mineral. Grace of line and limb and movement, with a complexity of rhythm difficult
to analyze, characterizes all the forms of
the animal world. In each animal God
geometrizes, and teaches its duty in His
plan.
So "God's plan, which" is Evolution", is
worked out in each order of creation, from the
atom to the animal. And when the animal life
individualizes to become the habitation of a
Monad, a Son of God gone forth to realize his
Divinity, then the whole life of man, did he but
know how to live it, can become one harmony
of thought and feeling and action, bodying
forth, in worlds visible and invisible, form after
form of beauty. Every atom and cell in his
vehicles then spring forth to give their love of
order, rhythm and beauty, to make his life as a
melody in the eternal symphony of the Logos.
For, we make music wherever we go, with all
our bodies — physical, astral, mental and causal; either
we amplify the great chords sounded by the Logos, and weave out of them new
melodies of our own, or we mar the music of
nature, and introduce discords which reverberate and cause confusion in the melodies
which others, more noble than we, are trying
to weave.
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God's plan for men is to unfold their latent
Divinity. For that, the Logos sends us forth
from Himself to live our separate lives, each
bound on a wheel of birth and death and birth
again; and each life is as a day in the School
of Eternal Life. There, we learn, taught by
His Messengers, what are the lessons necessary.
for us in order to pass from a lower class to a
higher (Fig. 129).
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God's plan for the savage is selfishness, with
an ever-insistent "I want it", in order to
strengthen the center of his individuality. But
after many lives as the savage, God's plan for
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him changes, and "We", not "I", becomes
slowly the lesson which he must learn; he must
now cooperate with the Logos by sharing,
not by asking for himself alone. "Let us share
it" becomes his creed as the citizen of a community. Comes next the later stage, when he
must be spiritual, having as the keynote of his
life a desire to share the burdens of others.
"I will help you" is the way that God's plan
speaks to the heart of the man rising to spirituality.
God's plan for the Disciple is that he shall
live in the name of his Master, becoming day
by day a nobler warden and a saintlier almoner
of the blessings which his Master creates for the
world. At the last stage of all, that of the
Master of the Wisdom, God's plan is fully
achieved, and the soul lives in an indescribable
unity of man and God. "I seek not mine own
will, but the will of the Father," is then the
motive of every action. As he alone can know,
and none below the level of his achievement;
he realizes what the Sages meant when they
said, "I am the Self", and what Christ meant
when He proclaimed, "I and my Father are
one ".
And this wonder, which is each moment's experience for the Master of the Wisdom, is God's
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plan for all men, the savage and the civilized, the
spiritual and the Disciple. And He will fulfil
it in His own good time, winning the cooperation of all, of the sinner as of the saint. For
that purpose alone has He sacrificed Himself
to fashion a universe for our habitation and
growth. Where He works, no failure is possible, and to join Him in His
work is to feel deathlessness and mastery.
God's plan is not, as it sometimes seems to
our eyes, a round of weariness and pain, an
implacable Fate which wrings out of man many
griefs for each joy which he creates for himself.
To the babe who tries to walk, there is stress of
limb and anxiety of mind as he makes his first
steps; but, if a mother's joyous face and laughing eyes are before him to encourage him, the
effort of body is little, compared to the final
bliss in her loving arms. So is it with all life.
If, from one angle, evolution seems an unending stress, from another it is an exhilarating
play. It is the great Game which the Logos
plays with us, and the laws of Righteousness are the rules of the game.
The joyousness which is the undercurrent of
nature's processes must be sensed by each for
himself, out of his own experiences. It may
take many a life before he can say, in spite of
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all that he has suffered, that Love is the fulfilling bf the Law;
but his evolution is incomplete till he knows for himself that the heart of
things is indeed Love and Joy, and that all the
tragedy of evolution is only a passing phase.
One of the mystery teachings of the past is
that the universe is at play while it is at work.
Hinduism teaches that all manifestation is the
"dance of Shiva", and the same doctrine was
taught in the Eleusinian Mysteries. One of the
experiences of the initiated in those Mysteries
was to feel what was in the "sacred basket";
these were the "playthings" of Dionysus, the
Divine Child. Tradition reports that they
were the dice, the spinning-top, the ball, and
the mirror. What they were in reality, tie
have in Fig. 130.
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The "dice" were the five
Platonic Solids, which give the axes for the
growth of the chemical elements and crystals;
the "top" was a model of the ultimate physical
atom; the "ball" was a model of the Earth,
and the "mirror" was the symbol of the seven
planes on which are reflected what the Logos
fashions on high. These were the "play-things" of the Logos as the Divine Child and
the initiates at Eleusis were taught to sense
beneath the processes of nature a deep under-current of joy.
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All the principles of Theosophy, which this
work has so far tried to explain, are summed up
in our next figure, Fig. 131.
PRINCIPLES IN EVOLUTION
1. The Divine Consciousness veils Itself as Life and Matter.
2. Form dies to release Life. Life returns in better organized Form.
3. Geometrical Building in all forms, visible and invisible.
4. All building after the Archetypal Pattern on high.
5. Man strengthens his center through
Selfishness; he radiates out from his
center through Self-Sacrifice.
6. The Divine Life exists in all things —
mineral, plant, animal, man, angel — not
as less or as more, but as Perfect
Divinity.
FIG. 131
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The first and the last maxims give the clue
to what is happening around us, that all is consciousness, the Divine Consciousness itself, and
none less; and that, wherever the Divine:
Manifestation reveals itself there is neither
"less" nor "more". Where He is, there He
is in His Perfection.
We have so far considered God's plan largely
from the standpoint of man, as the individual
and as the unit, and only here and there gained
a glimpse of the Plan in its larger aspect.
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There remains only to attempt to see the Plan
as a whole. Could we but step outside the
limits of the planes of our globe, then should
we see the work of the Logos for the Solar
System as a whole.
Those who are able to see that work in its
entirety say that the appearance of the Solar
System from high planGs is that of a wonderful
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cosmic Flower of many petals and colors, with
a great golden pistil which is the Sun, as the
heart of the Flower (see frontispiece, Fig. 132.1)
Each of the seven Planetary Logoi permeates
the whole system with His influences, but the
matter especially affected by one type of those
influences forms a great ellipsoid in space, the
major focus of which is the Sun, and the minor
focus the planet of the Planetary Logos. These
ellipsoids of influence are changing in their relation to each other, and those changes are
partly indicated by the changing positions of
the physical planets. So the Solar System, as
the Logos and His seven great Assistants who
work with Him, appears as a great Flower of
many petals, with a great, glowing, golden
heart at its center.2
Whoso can attain to this vision of the work
of the Logos can never have a shadow of doubt
as to His Love and Might and Beauty. Each
vision of the Truth, through religion or philosophy, through ,science or art, or through
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1 It is impossible to do more than barely suggest this vision in a
diagram. The planets cannot be placed to a true scale in the small
diagram. The colors adopted are not the ancient traditional
colors of the Seven Planetary Logoi, but simply the seven colors
of the solar spectrum taken in order. The colors used in Ancient
Chaldea are described in Man: Whence, How and Whither, by Annie
Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, Chap. XIII.
2 See
The Inner Life, by C. W. Leadbeater, Vol. I, under "Symbology"
[starting with the sentence, "Another symbol is that of the lotus,...], for a fuller description.
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philanthropy and service, leads the soul one
step nearer to the goal, which is, to live and
move and have his being, in full consciousness,
and with exceeding joy, in the Logos of our
Solar System.
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