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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1 [[Vol. 1, Page]] 566 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. [[This page continued from previous section ]] XI. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS. FROM THE STAND-POINT OF SCIENCE AND THAT OF OCCULTISM. W HEN the Occultist speaks of "Elements," and of human Beings who lived during those geological ages, the duration of which it is found as impossible to determine, according to the opinion of one of the best [[Vol. 1, Page]] 567 METAPHYSICAL CHEMISTRY. English geologists*, as the nature of matter, it is because he knows what he is talking about. When he says "Man" and Elements, he neither means "man" in his present physiological and anthropological form, nor the elemental atoms, those hypothetical conceptions, the entitative abstractions of matter in its highly attenuated state, as existing at present in scientific minds; nor, again, the compound Elements of antiquity. In Occultism the word Element means "rudiment" in every case. When we say "Elementary Man," we mean either the proemial, incipient sketch of man, in its unfinished and undeveloped condition, hence in that form which now lies latent in physical man during his life-time, and takes shape only occasionally and under certain conditions; or that form which for a time survives the material body, and which is better known as an "Elementary."** With regard to "Element," when the term is used metaphysically, it means, in distinction to the mortal, the incipient divine man; and, in its physical usage, inchoate matter in its first undifferentiated condition, or in the laya state, which is the eternal and the normal condition of substance, differentiating only periodically, and is during that differentiation in an abnormal state -- in other words, a transitory illusion of the senses. As to the "elemental atoms," so called, the Occultists refer to them by that name with a meaning analogous to that which is given by the Hindu to Brahma when he calls him A NU, the "Atom." Every elemental atom , in search of which more than one Chemist has followed the path indicated by the Alchemists, is, in their firm belief (when not knowledge ), a SOUL; not necessarily a disembodied soul, but a jiva , as the Hindus call it, a centre of POTENTIAL VITALITY, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of compound Souls -- an intelligent active EXISTENCE, from the highest to the lowest order, a form composed of more or less differentiations. It requires a metaphysician -- and an Eastern metaphysician -- to understand our meaning. All those atom-Souls are differentiations from the ONE, and in the same relation to it as the divine Soul -- the Buddhi -- to its informing and inseparable Spirit, or Atman. Modern physics, while borrowing from the ancients their atomic theory, forgot one point, the most important of the doctrine; hence they got only the husks and will never be able to get at the kernel. They left behind, in the adoption of physical atoms, the suggestive fact that [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * In answer to a friend, that eminent geologist writes: . . . ."I can only say, in reply to your letter, that it is at present, and perhaps always will be, IMPOSSIBLE to reduce, even approximately, geological time into years, or even into millenniums." (Signed William Pengelly, F.R.S.) ** Plato speaking of the irrational, turbulent Elements "composed of fire, air, water, and earth," means Elementary Daemons. (See Timaeus. ) [[Vol. 1, Page]] 568 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. from Anaxagoras down to Epicurus, the Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all those Philosophers believed more or less in ANIMATED atoms, not in invisible specks of so-called "brute" matter. Rotatory motion was generated in their views, by larger (read, more divine and pure) atoms forcing downwards other atoms; the lighter ones being thrust simultaneously upward. The esoteric meaning of this is the ever cyclic curve downward and upward of differentiated elements through intercyclic phases of existence, until each reaches again its starting point or birthplace. The idea was metaphysical as well as physical; the hidden interpretation embracing "gods" or souls, in the shape of atoms, as the causes of all the effects produced on Earth by the secretions from the divine bodies.* No ancient philosopher, not even the Jewish Kabalists, ever dissociated Spirit from matter or vice versa. Everything originated in the ONE, and, proceeding from the one, must finally return to the One. "Light becomes heat, and consolidates into fiery particles; which, from being ignited, become cold, hard particles, round and smooth. And this is called Soul , imprisoned in its robe of matter;"** Atoms and Souls having been synonymous in the language of the Initiates. The "whirling Souls," Gilgoolem , a doctrine in which so many learned Jews have believed ( See Mackenzie ' s Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia ), had no other meaning esoterically. The learned Jewish Initiates never meant by the "Promised land" Palestine alone, but the same Nirvana as the learned Buddhist and Brahmin do -- the bosom of the E TERNAL O NE, symbolized by that of Abraham, and by Palestine as its substitute on Earth.*** The passage of the S OUL- A TOM "through the Seven Planetary Chambers" had the same metaphysical and also physical meaning. It had the latter when it was said to dissolve into Ether ( See Isis Unveiled , Vol. I., p. 297.) Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and materialist, knew and believed so much in the ancient Wisdom, that he taught that the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Plato uses the words " secretions " of turbulent Elements (Timaeus). ** Valentinus' Esoteric Treatise on the Doctrine of Gilgul . *** Surely no educated Jew ever believed the literal sense of this allegory -- namely, that "the bodies of Jews deposited in foreign lands contain within them a principle of Soul which cannot rest, until by a process called the "whirling of the Soul" the immortal particle reaches once more the sacred Soil of the "Promised land." The meaning is evident to an occultist. The process was supposed to be accomplished by a kind of metempsychosis, the psychic spark being conveyed through bird, beast, fish, and the most minute insect. ( See Royal Masonic Cyclo. Mackenzie. ) The Allegory relates to the atoms of the body , which have each to pass through every form before all reach the final state, which is the first starting point of the departure of every atom -- its primitive laya State. But the primitive meaning of Gilgoolem , or "Revolution of Souls," was the idea of the re-incarnating Souls or Egos.