(18) The teaching is that the race as a whole is slowly evolving on to the said higher Plane of Consciousness, and long ages from now will "conscious" normally on it. In the meantime, however, certain advanced souls have transcended the Human Plane, and have passed on to the higher plane, where they aid and assist the rest of the race. Moreover, to the individual whose unfoldment is rapid, from one or more of many well-known causes, there come at times "flashes of consciousness" from the higher plane aforesaid, which at least for the time being bring the individual into conscious contact with that plane. The pages of the mystic records are filled with statements of experiences of this kind. In certain forms of poetic fervor, religious exaltation, and mystic experience, these flashes come and are then recorded by the individual experiencing them—the record, however, usually being given in the terms of the philosophy, religion, or general belief of the person experiencing the contact or "illumination," the person not fully realizing from just what source the flash of Truth has come.

(36) The highest occult teachings, as well as the highest speculations of science, inform us that there is always a movement in. circles around some given point, and the movement of the said point, or centre of motion, around some other centre, and so on, and on, to infinity." The same writer continues: "All events tend to move in cyclic trend—in constant circular movement of continuous recurrence. The experience of man, aided by the reports of history, bears out this statement. The student of human history is struck by the continuous cyclic trend manifested throughout the ages of history. The student of philosophy is attracted by the same evidence in. his own field. And so it is with every field of human thought—the cyclic trend is noticeable everywhere. Races and nations rise, flourish, decline, and fall; only to be succeeded by others travelling over the same lines. 'Westward the star of Empire takes its flight '—the centre of political power is constantly changing. The civilizations of Lemuria, Atlantis, Egypt, Chaldea, Rome and Greece arose and passed away. Our own civilization is but travelling over the same general lines. All forms of political government, monarchic, autocratic, democratic, in all their variations, were known in the past as in the present. The same law is observable in the history of philosophical thought. Philosophical theories popular in Greece over two thousand years ago fell into disrepute, but are now again forcing their way to the front. The scientific theories of Causation, Continuity, Determinism, and Evolution were popular in Ancient Greece over two thousand years ago. And they were likewise popular in Ancient Egypt and India centuries before that time. Fashions in literature, dress, and manner constantly recur—travelling 'round and 'round their little circles. Laugh as we may at the absurdity of fashion in dress, nevertheless it is proceeding according to Cyclic Law. Religious ideas are as old as the world—pantheism, polytheism, monotheism, and atheism—all have played their parts of fashion in religious thought, over and over again, and will play them again. The present-day revival of interest in the occult teachings arise from the operations of the same law. And the life of individuals manifest the same trend and tendency. A little thought will convince you that the majority of people travel in circles throughout their entire life. The same old thing, over and over again, recurring at intervals of greater or lesser duration, according to the nature and character of the person. Many people are like the squirrel who travels all day on his whirling wheel—always going but getting nowhere, ever ending just where he began." The thoughtful student, considering what has just been called to his attention, will naturally ask us how it is, if this be so, that there is any real progress at all. If, says he, there is nothing but a continuous running around in circles—a constant travelling around without getting anywhere—how is it that there is evident a real progress, a real evolution, a real advancement in the scale of life and being? The answer is simple: given a circular movement around a given point, axis, or centre of attraction, and further given an advancing movement of that centre, point, or axis, it follows that the first circular movement will also be a spiral movement. If the Central Point is advanced, then the circular movement is converted into a spiral movement—and while there persists a "going 'round and 'round" as before, each "going 'round" process travels on a little higher plane, or a more advanced position. And this is just what exists in the Cosmos—a Cosmic Spiral Process, onward and upward, in advancing and rising circles.

(18) On the Astral Plane there are countless subplanes, and divisions thereof, all of which are more or less independent of each other. The distinctions between the planes are altogether the result of differences on the rate of vibrations, and do not represent distances in space. Each sub-plane or division thereof is inhabited by souls exactly fitted to dwell upon it, by reason of their respective degree of spiritual enfoldment. The great law of attraction operates in producing this result, and each soul "feels perfectly at home" on the plane in which it finds itself. The law works with unerring accuracy, and makes no mistakes.

(2) ... For in any one science the reduction of the total of knowledge into its separate propositions does not shatter its unity, chipping it into unrelated fragments; in each distinct item is talent the entire body of the science, an integral thing in its highest Principle and its last detail: and similarly a man must so discipline himself that the first Principles of his Being are also his completions, are totals, that all be pointed towards the loftiest phase of the Nature: when a man has become this unity in the best, he is in that other realm; for it is by this highest within himself, made his own, that he holds to the Supreme.

At no point did the All-Soul come into Being: it never arrived, for it never knew place; what happens is that body, neighbouring with it, participates in it: hence Plato does not place Soul in body but body in Soul. The others, the secondary Souls, have a point of departure- they come from the All-Soul- and they have a Place into which to descend and in which to change to and fro, a place, therefore, from which to ascend: but this All-Soul is for ever Above, resting in that Being in which it holds its existence as Soul and followed, as next, by the Universe or, at least, by all beneath the sun.

The partial Soul is illuminated by moving towards the Soul above it; for on that path it meets Authentic Existence. Movement towards the lower is towards non-Being: and this is the step it takes when it is set on self; for by willing towards itself it produces its lower, an image of itself- a non-Being- and so is wandering, as it were, into the void, stripping itself of its own determined form. And this image, this undetermined thing, is blank darkness, for it is utterly without reason, untouched by the Intellectual-Principle, far removed from Authentic Being.

As long as it remains at the mid-stage it is in its own peculiar region; but when, by a sort of inferior orientation, it looks downward, it shapes that lower image and flings itself joyfully thither.

(20) The characteristic feature of the Plane of Consciousness of the Demi-Gods is that of Oneness with Universal Life—the consciousness of the Life of All-Manifestation. Varying in many degrees and forms, of course, this is the characteristic feature of all experiences of this great plane of conscious activity. On this plane, the individual feels in close touch with all the rest of Creation—a united part of (not apart from) the ALL. The experience of even a slight momentary contact with this plane of being constitutes the common "mystic experience," of which sages, seers, poets, and illumined souls of all ages have sung, and regarding which they have tried to inform us in words inadequate to the task. The study of these mystic reports throw much light on the subject, and is well worth the time and attention of all true students of the Rosicrucian teaching. But the student must always remember that these experiences are not the end of all thought on the subject, nor the final word of Truth. As valuable as is this part of the teaching, it must never be mistaken for the highest peak of the Mountain of Truth.

(1) In the Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians, we find the following Sixth Aphorism: The Sixth Aphorism VI. As Life is the Essence of Spirit, so is Consciousness the Essence of Life. Spirit is One, yet it manifests in many forms of Life. Life is One, yet it manifests in many forms of Consciousness. While the forms of manifested Consciousness are innumerable, yet the wise know Consciousness to manifest on Seven Planes: and these Planes of Consciousness are known to the wise as (1) The Plane of the Elements; (2) The Plane of the Minerals; (3) The Plane of the Plants; (4) The Plane of the Animals; (5) The Plane of the Human; (6) The Plane of the Demi-Gods; (7) The Plane of the Gods .

(3) The planets of this chain of worlds are not identical in composition and nature with the earth; on the contrary there is a wide difference between the several planets in this respect. The earth is not the highest in development in this chain, but on the contrary is far down on the scale, although there are others still lower. The progress of the souls around this chain of worlds, however, is not merely like a circle in which the soul travels from the lowest to the highest, but is rather according to the plan of the spiral, in which the journey always returns to the starting point, but on a higher plane of activity.

(38) According to the secret doctrine, man, through the gradual refinement of his vehicles and the ever-increasing sensitiveness resulting from that refinement, is gradually overcoming the limitations of matter and is disentangling himself from his mortal coil. When humanity has completed its physical evolution, the empty shell of materiality left behind will be used by other life waves as steppingstones to their own liberation. The trend of man's evolutionary growth is ever toward his own essential Selfhood. At the point of deepest materialism, therefore, man is at the greatest distance from Himself. According to the Mystery teachings, not all the spiritual nature of man incarnates in matter. The spirit of man is diagrammatically shown as an equilateral triangle with one point downward. This lower point, which is one-third of the spiritual nature but in comparison to the dignity of the other two is much less than a third, descends into the illusion of material existence for a brief space of time. That which never clothes itself in the sheath of matter is the Hermetic Anthropos--the Overman-- analogous to the Cyclops or guardian dæmon of the Greeks, the angel of Jakob Böhme, and the Oversoul of Emerson, "that Unity, that Oversoul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other."

(26) In concluding our consideration of this high plane, let us glance at the following words from the pen of Sir Oliver Lodge, the great English scientist, who has given the world startling corroboration of some important ancient truths known to the occultists and esoteric teachers; he says: "Let us imagine, then, as a working hypothesis, that our subliminal self—the other and greater part of us—is in touch with another order of existence, and that it is occasionally able to communicate, or somehow, perhaps unconsciously, transmit to the fragment in the body something of the information accessible to it. We should then be like icebergs floating in an ocean, with only a fraction exposed to the sun and air and observation; the rest, by far the greater bulk, eleven-twelfths—submerged in a connecting medium, submerged and occasionally in subliminal or sub-aqueous contact with others, while still the peaks, the visible bergs, are far separate. Such an iceberg, glorying in its crisp solidity and sparkling pinnacles, might resent attention paid to its submerged subliminal supporting region, or to the saline liquid out of which it arose, and to which in due course it will some day return. 'We feel that we are greater than we know.' Or, reversing the metaphor, we might liken our present state to that of the hulls of ships submerged in a dim ocean among strange beasts, propelled in a blind manner through space; proud, perhaps, of accumulating many barnacles of decoration: only recognizing our destination by bumping against the dock wall; and with no cognizance of the deck, and the cabins, and spars, and sails, no thought of the sextant and the compass and the captain, no perception of the lookout on the mast, of the distant horizon, no vision of objects far ahead, dangers to be avoided, destinations to be reached, other ships to be spoken with by means other than by bodily contact—a region of sunshine and cloud, of space, of perception, and of intelligence, utterly inaccessible to those parts below the water line." VII. The Soul of the Gods It must be apparent to every careful student that it is practically impossible to speak in ordinary terms of the expression and manifestation of the Self which is known to the Rosicrucians as "The Soul of the Gods." It is sufficient for the purpose to merely indicate its existence as a phase of the Ego—existing in a latent state in most individuals, but affording occasional flashes of its presence to a few, and destined to become the normal plane of conscious functioning to the whole race in the course of spiritual evolution. Moreover, on certain planes of life and being, even today, there exist beings to whom this phase of consciousness is habitual and normal, even as is the plane of human consciousness normal and habitual to the majority of our race today.

(15) The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend first to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes at once the medium by which as they reach out more and more towards magnitude they proceed to bodies progressively more earthy. Some even plunge from heaven to the very lowest of corporeal forms; others pass, stage by stage, too feeble to lift towards the higher the burden they carry, weighed downwards by their heaviness and forgetfulness.

As for the differences among them, these are due to variation in the bodies entered, or to the accidents of life, or to upbringing, or to inherent peculiarities of temperament, or to all these influences together, or to specific combinations of them.

Then again some have fallen unreservedly into the power of the destiny ruling here: some yielding betimes are betimes too their own: there are those who, while they accept what must be borne, have the strength of self-mastery in all that is left to their own act; they have given themselves to another dispensation: they live by the code of the aggregate of beings, the code which is woven out of the Reason-Principles and all the other causes ruling in the kosmos, out of soul-movements and out of laws springing in the Supreme; a code, therefore, consonant with those higher existences, founded upon them, linking their sequents back to them, keeping unshakeably true all that is capable of holding itself set towards the divine nature, and leading round by all appropriate means whatsoever is less natively apt.

In fine all diversity of condition in the lower spheres is determined by the descendent beings themselves.

(21) To those who have experienced the flashes of Illumination, or the glimpse of the Fire of Cosmic Consciousness—both of which classes of phenomena belong to the Plane of the Consciousness of the Demi-Gods—there has come a realization of the actual Oneness of Life in the Universe, and an actual awareness that the Universe is animated by One Life which is diffused among and permeates every portion of its extent and manifestation. To such has come an assurance that there is nothing "dead" in the Universe—that every part and portion, individual and collective, is instinct. with Life. Not only this, but for at least the time of the experience there has come a sense of absolute certainty that the individual is in touch with this One Life, and is an actual centre of activity within its presence.

(47) In this ascending scale of animal life the student will perceive countless varieties and species, subspecies and variations among species. And in each there will be perceived some slight difference in the degree and quality of the intelligence manifested by the creature. Even among the individuals of the same species there is found a great variation in such manifestations. But throughout it all, there is perceived to be a certain general plane of consciousness which may be called "The Animal Plane" as distinguished from "The Mineral Plane" on the one hand, and "The Human Plane" on the other hand.

(25) "These experiences, when they have come to one, have left him in a new state of mind, and he has never been the same man afterward. Although the keenness of the recollection has worn off, there remains a certain memory which long afterward proves a source of comfort and strength to him, especially when he feels faint of faith and is shaken like a reed by the winds of conflicting opinions and speculations. The memory of such an experience is a source of renewed strength—a haven of refuge to which the weary soul flies for shelter from the outside world which understands it not. From the writings of the ancient philosophers of all races, from the songs of the great poets of all peoples, from the preachings of the prophets of all religions and times we can gather traces of this illumination which has come to them—this unfoldment of spiritual consciousness. One tells the story in one way, the other in other terms, but all tell practically the same essential story. All who have recognized this illumination, even in a faint degree, recognize the like experience in the tale, song, or preaching of another, though centuries may roll between them. It is the song of the Soul, which when once heard is never forgotten. Though it be sounded by the crude instruments of the semi-barbarous races, or the finished instruments of the talented musician of today, its strains are plainly recognized. From Old Egypt comes the song—from India of all ages—from Ancient Greece and Rome—from the early Christian saint—from the Quaker Friend—from the Catholic monasteries —from the Mohammedan Mosque—from the Chinese Philosopher—from the legends of the American Indian hero-prophet—it is always the same strain, and it is swelling louder and louder, as many more are taking it up and adding their voices or the sounds of their instruments to the grand chorus." The student must remember that in the experiences noted above, the individual simply has flashes, or period of dawning consciousness on this Sixth Plane of Consciousness, and is not to be regarded as having entered fully and completely into its manifestations, much less as having evolved into a state in which he functions normally and habitually on this high plane. There are beings—once men—who have evolved into the higher state in which they function normally and habitually on this plane of conscious being; but these individuals are no more than mere men, and have earned the right to be called "Demi-Gods." But, even as they once were men, so all men become as they now are by the unfoldment of this higher region of Self. These flashes of consciousness from this high plane are prophetic signs and messages indicating the awakening of the higher faculties, and giving assurance of further growth and unfoldment.