Therefore it becomes evident, why that which is pertinently called in Esoteric Buddhism “wave of evolution,” and “mineral, vegetable, animal and man-impulse,” stops at the door of our Globe, at its Fourth Cycle or Round. It is at this point that the Cosmic Monad (Buddhi) will be wedded to, and become the vehicle of, the Âtmic Ray; i.e., Buddhi will awaken to an apperception of it (Âtman), and thus enter on the first step of a new septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead it eventually to the tenth, counting from the lowest upwards, of the Sephirothal Tree, the Crown.
Everything in the Universe follows analogy. “As above, so below”; Man is the microcosm of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual plane, repeats itself on the cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction; corresponding to the highest must be the lowest; the material to the spiritual. Thus, corresponding to the Sephirothal Crown, or Upper Triad, there are the three elemental kingdoms, which precede the mineral,[291] and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in the cosmic differentiation to the Worlds of Form and Matter, from the Super-Spiritual to the Archetypal.
Now what is a Monad? And what relation does it bear to an Atom? The following reply is based upon the explanations given in answer to these questions in the above-cited article, “The Mineral Monad,” written by the author. To the second question it is answered:
None whatever to the atom or molecule as at present existing in the scientific conception. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organisms, once classed among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable, and classed among algæ; nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics. Physically or constitutionally the Mineral Monad differs, of course, from the Human Monad, which is not physical, nor can its constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements.[292]
In short, as the Spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose Rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the “Individual Monads” of men, so the Mineral Monad—being at the opposite curve of the circle—is also One, and from it proceed the [pg 201] countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as individualized.
Otherwise how could one account for, and explain mathematically, the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The Monad is the combination of the last two principles in man, the sixth and the seventh, and, properly speaking, the term “Human Monad” applies only to the Dual Soul (Âtmâ-Buddhi), not to its highest spiritual vivifying principle, Âtmâ, alone. But since the Spiritual Soul, if divorced from the latter (Âtmâ), could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called.... Now the Monadic, or rather Cosmic, Essence, if such a term be permitted, in the mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles, from the lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity, trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a “Mineral Monad,” the more correct phraseology in Physical Science, which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it “the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called ‘the Mineral Kingdom’.”The atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined after æons to blossom into a man. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy, which itself has not yet become individualized; a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The Ocean of Matter does not divide into its potential and constituent drops, until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists, while accepting this thought for convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the concrete from the abstract, by terms of which the “Mineral, Vegetable, Animal Monad,” etc., are examples. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The “Monadic Essence” begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. As the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the Spiritual Essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad—not the atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence.[293]
Leibnitz conceived of the Monads as elementary and indestructible units, endowed with the power of giving and receiving with respect to other units, and thus of determining all spiritual and physical phenomena. It is he who invented the term apperception, which together with nerve- (not perception, but rather) sensation, expresses the [pg 202] state of the Monadic consciousness through all the kingdoms up to Man.
Thus it may be wrong, on strictly metaphysical lines, to call Âtmâ-Buddhi a Monad, since in the materialistic view it is dual and therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit, and vice versâ; and since the Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable apart from each other; so in the case of Âtmâ-Buddhi. The latter being the vehicle of the former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Âtmâ, as Adam-Kadmon, the Kabalistic Logos, does to Ain Suph, or Mûlaprakriti to Parabrahman.
And now a few words more on the Moon.
What, it may be asked, are the “Lunar Monads,” just spoken of? The description of the seven Classes of Pitris will come later, but now some general explanations may be given. It must be plain to everyone that they are Monads, who, having ended their Life-Cycle on the Lunar Chain, which is inferior to the Terrestrial Chain, have incarnated on the latter. But there are some further details which may be added, though they border too closely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the mystery is divulged only to Adepts, but it may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then that there are seven Earths, so there are seven Moons, the last alone being visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Mâyâ, a reflection, just as man's body is. “The real Sun and the real Moon are as invisible as the real man,” says an Occult maxim.