Gleanings of a Mystic: A Series of Essays on Practical Mysticism

by Max Heindel

During the time man-in-the-making was thus evolving, great creative Hierarchies guided his every step. Absolutely nothing was left to chance. Even the food he ate was chosen for him so that he might obtain the appropriate material wherewith to build the various vehicles of consciousness necessary to accomplish the process of soul growth. The Bible mentions the various stages, though it misplaces Nimrod, making him to symbolize the Atlantean kings who lived before the Flood.

In the Polarian Epoch pure mineral matter became a constituent part of man; thus Adam was made of earth, that is, so far as his dense body was concerned.

In the Hyperborean Epoch the vital body was added, and thus his constitution became plantlike, and Cain, the man of that time, lived on the fruits of the soil.

The Lemurian Epoch saw the evolution of a desire body, which made man like the present animals. Then milk, the product of living animals, was added to human diet. Abel was a shepherd, but it is nowhere stated that he killed an animal.

At that time mankind lived innocently and peacefully in the misty atmosphere which enveloped the earth during the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch, as described in the chapter on “Baptism.” Men were then like children under the care of a common father, until the mind was given to all in the beginning of Atlantis. Thought activity breaks down tissue which must be replaced; the lower and more material the thought, the greater the havoc and the more pressing the need for albumen wherewith to make quick repairs. Hence necessity, the mother of invention, inaugurated the loathsome practice of flesh eating, and so long as we continue to think along purely business or material lines we shall have to go on using our stomachs as receptacles for the decaying corpses of our murdered animal victims. Yet we shall see later that flesh food has enabled us to make the wonderful material progress achieved in the Western World, while the vegetarian Hindus and Chinese have remained in an almost savage state. It seems sad to contemplate that they will be forced to follow in our steps and shed the blood of our fellow creatures when we shall have outgrown the barbarous practice as we have ceased cannibalism.

The more spiritual we grow, the more our thoughts will harmonize with the rhythm of our body, and the less albumen will be needed to build tissue. Consequently, a vegetable diet will suffice our needs. Pythagoras advised abstinence from legumes to advanced scholars because they are rich in albumen and apt to revive lower appetites. Let not every student who reads this rashly conclude to eliminate legumes from his diet. Most of us are not yet ready for such extremes; we would not even advise all students to abstain entirely from meat. The change should come from within. It may be safely stated, however, that most people eat entirely too much meat for their good; but this is in a certain sense a digression, so we will revert to the further evolution of humanity in so far as it has a bearing upon the Sacrament of Communion.

In due time the dense mist which enveloped the earth cooled, condensed, and flooded the various basins. The atmosphere cleared, and concurrently with this atmospheric change a physiological adaptation in man took place. The gill clefts which had enabled him to breathe in the dense water laden air (and which are seen in the human foetus to this day) gradually atrophied, and their function was taken over by the lungs, the pure air passing to and from them through the larynx. This allowed the spirit, hitherto penned up within the veil of flesh, to express itself in word and act.

There in the middle of Atlantis the sun first shone upon man as we know him; there he was first born into the world. Until then he had been under the absolute control of great spiritual Hierarchies, mute, without voice or choice in matters pertaining to his education, as a child is now under the control of its parents.

But on the day when he finally emerged from the dense atmosphere of Atlantis; when he first beheld the mountains silhouetted in clear, sharp contours against the azure vault of heaven; when he first saw the beauties of moor and meadow, the moving creatures, birds in the air, and his fellow man; when his vision was undimmed by the partial obscuration of the mist which had previously hampered perception; above all, when he perceived HIMSELF as separate and apart from all others, there burst from his lips the glorious, triumphant cry, “I AM.”

At that point he had acquired faculties which equipped him to enter the school of experience, the phenomenal world, as a free agent to learn the lessons of life, untrammeled save by the laws of nature, which are his safeguards, and the reaction of his own previous acts, which become destiny.