Edited (2009) by Sandra Tabatha Cicero
The whole system of
the spiritual philosophy of the Rosicrucian Fraternity revolves, so to speak,
around the doctrine of the Virgin Spirits or Monads; we shall endeavor to make
this doctrine comparable with that held by a few of the recognized philosophers
of the academic world.
"Call, it by what name you will, it is a voice that speaks
where there is none to speak—it is a messenger that comes, a messenger without
form or substance; or it is the flower of the soul that has opened. It cannot
be described by a metaphor. But it can be felt after, looked for, and desired,
even amid the raging of the storm." (Light on the Path—M. C.)[1]
“Have perseverance as one who doth for evermore endure. The
shadows live and vanish; that which in thee knows, for it is knowledge,
is not of fleeting life, it is Man that was, that is, and will be, for whom the
hour shall never strike.” (Voice of the Silence—Blavatsky)[2]
The Monad, is the name given by Leibnitz,[3] to simple unextended
substance, (R.C. Cosmic Root Substance)
that is, substance which has the power of action; active force is the essence
of substance; the monads being simply substances are therefore the only real
substances and that material things are phenomenal, but phenomena having their
good and proper foundation and connected with each other—this is the conception
of Leibnitz. The monads of Leibnitz are quantitatively differentiated by their
ideas. Every Soul is a Monad; plants and minerals, are, as it were, sleeping
monads with unconscious ideas. In plants these ideas are formative vital
forces, in animals they take the form of sensation and memory; in human souls
they disclose themselves in the acquisition of self consciousness, reason; in a
word they approach though they do not attain to the clearness of the adequate
ideas possessed by God.
Mertz,[4]
in his very thoughtful synopsis of the speculations of Leibnitz, states in regard
to the monadic conception: "As a cone stands on its point or a perpendicular
straight line cuts a horizontal plane only in one depth, so the essences of
things really have only a punctual existence in this physical world of space,
but have an infinite depth of inner life in the metaphysical world of
thought." This is good occultism, for this is the spirit, the very root of
occult doctrine and thought; "Spirit-Matter" and
"Matter-Spirit" extend infinitely in depth and like the "essence-of-things"
of Leibnitz, our essence of things real is at the seventh depth; while the
unreal and gross matter of our Science and the external world is at the lowest
end of our perceptive senses. It is interesting to note that were Leibnitz' and
Spinoza's systems reconciled, the essence and spirit of esoteric philosophy
would be made to appear. Leibnitz made of the two substances of Descartes two attributes
of one Universal Unity, in which he saw God. Spinoza recognized but one
Universal indivisible substance and Absolute All, like Parabrahmam, the Absolute. Leibnitz, on the contrary, perceived the
existence of a plurality of substances. There was but ONE for Spinoza; for
Leibnitz an infinitude of Beings, from and in the ONE. Hence, though both admitted
but one real Entity, while Spinoza made it impersonal and indivisible, Leibnitz
divided his personal Deity into a number of divine and semi-divine Beings. Now,
if these two teachings were blended together and each corrected by the
other—and, foremost of all, the One Reality weeded of its personality—there
would remain a sum total—a true spirit of esoteric philosophy in them; the
impersonal attributeless, Divine Essence, which is NO "Being" but the
root and cause of all being.
Draw a deep mental line between that
ever-incognizable-essence, and the invisible yet comprehensible Presence, (Prima Materia), the Kabalistic Shekinah,
in one aspect, from beyond and through which vibrates the Sound of the Verbum
and from which evolve the numberless hierarchies of intelligent Egos, of
conscious and of semi-conscious perceptive and apperceptive Beings, whose
essence is spiritual Force, whose substance is the Elements and whose bodies
are the atoms —and our esoteric doctrine is there. That which was to Leibnitz
the primordial and ultimate element in every body and object was thus not the
material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more or less extended, as were those
of Epicurus and Gassendi,[5] but as Mertz has shown,
immaterial and metaphysical atoms, mathematical points; or real souls, for in
the words of this great philosopher Leibnitz, "that which exists outside
of us in an absolute manner, are souls whose essence is Force.”
It will be apparent
then, that to Leibnitz, atoms and elements are centers of force, or rather
"spiritual beings whose very nature is to act" for the elementary
particles are not acting mechanically but from an internal principle. The
monads are incorporeal spiritual units and differ from atoms in some
particulars which are very important. Atoms are not distinguished from each
other; they are qualitatively alike, but one monad differs from every other
monad qualitatively, and every one is a peculiar world to itself. Not so with
atoms, they are absolutely alike quantitatively and qualitatively and possess
no individuality of their own. But the monads of Leibnitz closely resemble the
elementals of mystical philosophy—these monads are presentative Beings. Every
monad reflects every other, and it is a living mirror of the Universe within its
own sphere, for upon it depends the power possessed by these monads, and upon
this depends the work they can do for us; in mirroring the world, the monads
are not mere passive reflective agents, but are spontaneously active; they
produce the images spontaneously as does the soul in a dream.
But unfortunately it
is at this point that Leibnitz' philosophy breaks down. No provision is made,
nor any distinction established, between the "elemental" monad and
that of a high planetary Spirit, or a creative Hierarch, or even the human
monads or virgin spirit. He even goes so far as to sometimes doubt whether
"God has ever made anything but Monads or substances without extension."
But what does Occultism say to this. It states that what is called collectively,
"Monads," by Leibnitz, roughly viewed, and leaving every subdivision
out of calculation for the present, may be separated into three distinct
groups, which, counted from the highest and most spiritual planes, are firstly
"gods," or conscious spiritual Egos, the Intelligent Architects, who
work after the plan in the Divine Mind. Then come the elementals, or Monads,
who form collectively and unconsciously the grand Universal Mirrors of
everything connected with their respective realms. Lastly the atoms of
material molecules,which are informed
in their turn by their apperceptive monads, just as every cell in the human
body is so informed. There are shoals of such informed atoms, which, in their
turn, inform the molecules; an infinitude of monads, or elementals proper,
and countless spiritual forces—Monadless, for they are pure incorporealities,
except under certain laws when they assume a form—(not necessarily human).
With Spinoza[6] neither intellect nor will
pertains to the nature of God, in the usual sense in which these human
qualities are attributed to the Deity, but rather the will of God is the sum of
all causes and all laws, and the intellect of God is the sum of all mind. Or,
as conceived by Santayana, the immaculate materialist, "The mind of God
is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused
consciousness that animates the world." Life or mind is one phase or
aspect of everything that we know, as material extension or body is another;
these are two aspects through which we perceive the operation of substance, or
God; in this sense, —God, the universal process and external reality behind
the flux of things, may be said to have both a mind and body. Neither mind nor
matter is God; but the mental processes and the molecular processes which
constitute the double history- the word, these, and their causes and their Laws
are God. All things in however diverse degree are animated.
"Mind,"
says Spinoza, in opposition to Malebranche, "is not matter, neither is
matter mental, neither are mind and matter wholly independent and unrelated;
neither is the molecular process the cause of mind, nor is it the effect of
thought, the two processes are dependent and parallel. There is but one
process, seen now internally as thought, and now externally as motion. The decision
of the mind and the desire and determination of the body are all one and the
same thing." And all the world is double in this way, wherever there is an
external material process, it is but one side or aspect of the real process, which
a fuller view would show to include as well an internal process, correlative
in however different a degree, with the mental process which we see within
ourselves. The inward and mental process corresponds at each stage with the external
and material process. Thinking substances and extended substances are one and
the same thing, comprehended now through this and now that attribute.
Spinoza said,
"Our mind insofar as it understands, is an eternal mode of thinking,
which is determined by another mode of thinking and this one again by another
and so on to infinity, so that they all constitute at the same time the eternal
and infinite intellect of God." In this pantheistic merging of the
individual with the All, the Orient speaks again; we hear the echo of Omar, the
tent- maker, who "never called the ONE two" and of the old Hindu poem
"Know in thyself and all oneself, the same soul; banish the dream that
sunders part from whole;" or of the cry of the Vedantin ecstatic
"Brahman is true, the world is false, the soul is Brahman—and is nothing
else." "Sometimes" said Thoreau, "as I drift idly, I cease
to live and begin to be."
Hume[7] thought he had shown that
there was no soul, and no science; that our minds are but ideas in procession
and association, and that our certainties but probabilities in perpetual danger
of violation. These false conclusions are the result of false premises; he
assures that all knowledge comes from separate and distinct sensations ;
naturally these cannot give us necessity, or invariable sequences of which we
may be forever certain; and naturally we must not expect to see our souls,
even with the eyes of the internal sense. Let us grant that absolute knowledge
comes from sensation, from an independent external world which owes us no
promise of behavior. But what if we have knowledge that is independent of
sense-experience, knowledge whose truth is certain to us even before
experience, á priori. Then absolute
truth and absolute science would become possible, would it not? Let us then
call to our aid the philosopher Kant, who says in the Critique of Pure Reason: "Experience is by no means the only
field to which our understanding can be confined. Experience tells us what is,
but not that it must be necessarily what it is and not otherwise. It therefore
can never give us any really general truths; and our reason, which is
particularly anxious for that class of knowledge is aroused by it rather than
satisfied. General truths, which at the same time bear the character of an inward
necessity, must be independent of experience, clear and certain in themselves."
That is to say, they must be true no matter what our latest experience may be;
true before experience and true á
posteriori. "How far we can advance independently of all experience,
in á priori knowledge, is shown by
the brilliant example of mathematics." For mathematical knowledge is
necessary and certain; we cannot conceive of future experience violating it, as
we cannot for the life of us conceive that two by two will ever make anything
else than four. Such truths are true before experience; they do not depend on
experience, past, present or future. Therefore they are absolute and necessary
truths; it is inconceivable that they should ever become untrue. But whence do
we get this character of absoluteness and necessity. Not from Experience; for
experience gives us nothing but separate sensations and events, which may alter
their sequence in the future. These truths derive their necessary character
from the inherent structure of our minds, from the natural and inevitable
manner in which our minds must operate. For the mind of man is not passive wax,
upon which experience and sensation write their absolute and yet whimsical
will, nor is it a mere abstract name for the series or group of mental states;
it is an active organ, so to speak, which moulds and coordinates sensations
into ideas; an organ which transforms the chaotic multiplicity of experience
into the ordered unity of thought.
Now, just what is
meant by sensations and perceptions, and how does the mind change the former
into the latter? By itself a sensation is merely the awareness of a stimulus,
we have a taste on the tongue, an odor in the nostrils, a sound in the ears, a
temperature on the skin, a flash of light on the retina, a pressure on the
fingers; it is the crude, raw be- ginning of experience; it is what the infant
has in the early days of its groping mental life; it is not yet knowledge.
But, let these various sensations group themselves about an object in space and
time—say, an apple; let the odor in the nostrils and the taste on the tongue,
the light on the retina, and the shape revealing pressure on the fingers and
the hand, unite and group themselves about this "something;" and
there is now a consciousness not so much of a stimulus as of a specific
object, there is perception. Sensation has passed into knowledge. But was this
passage, this grouping automatic? Did the sensations of themselves
spontaneously and naturally fall into a cluster and an order, and so become
perceptions. Our modern so-called psychologists, echo with Locke and
Hume—"Yes." "Not at all"—states the esoteric philosophy.
For these various sensations come to us through the varied channels of senses, through
a thousand different nerves that pass from skin and eye and ear and tongue into
the brain. What a medley of messengers they must be, as they crowd into the
chambers of the mind, calling for attention. And left to themselves they remain
a rabble, a chaotic "manifold" pitifully impotent, waiting to be
ordered into meaning and purpose and power. As readily might the message brought
to a general from a thousand sections of the battle line weave themselves
unaided into comprehension and command. No; there is a lawgiver for this mob;
a directing and coordinating power that does not merely receive, but takes
these atoms of sensation and moulds them into sense; it is the real man, the
Theosophical Manas, the Rosicrucian Human Spirit, the inner spiritual Ego in
action.
Again, reverting to the subject of life and reincarnation, although
we cannot prove it, in the ordinary concept of the word, we feel intuitively
that we are deathless. We perceive that life is not one of those dreams so
beloved by the people in which every villain is punished and every act of
virtue meets with its reward; we learn anew the gentleness of the dove, and
that any thief can triumph if he steals enough. If mere worldly utility and
expediency were the justification of virtue and morality, it would not be wise
to be too good, and yet, knowing all this, having it flung into our faces with
brutal repetition, we still feel the command to righteousness, we know that we
ought to do the inexpedient good. How could this sense of right survive if it
were not that in our hearts we feel that this life is only a part of life, this
earthly dream only an embryonic prelude to a new birth, a new awakening; if we
did not vaguely know that in that latter existence the balance will be redressed
and not one cup of water given generously but shall be returned a hundred fold.
All nature is built on a plan of ebb and flow. As day succeeds
day, with intervening nights, so season succeeds season, and the trees die and
bloom again. The tides ebb and flow; the moon waxes and wanes. There is not a
corner of the earth into which we may not look and find these successive
alternations. The life of man, as imagined by conventional belief, exhibits a
glaring contrast with all its surroundings and stands out as the monumental
instance of fatuity and incapacity on the part of the caricature of a Deity who
is supposed irreverently to have designed it. No truly scientific brain would
look at a single earth life and not pronounce with certainty that it is but a
fragment of a whole; so unmistakably are the missing parts forthshadowed in the
part that is seen.
Finally and by the same token there IS a Deity. If the sense of
Duty involves and justifies belief in rewards to come, the postulate of
immortality must lead to the supposition of the existence of a cause adequate
to the effect; (Kant) ; in other words to postulate the existence of Deity. Our
reason leaves us free to believe that behind the thing-in-itself there is a
just Law; our moral sense commands us to believe it. Rousseaur[8] was right—above the logic
of the head is the feeling in the heart. Pascal[9] was right—the heart has
reason of its own, which the head can never, never understand.
As to the denial of
atheists that there is such a being as God, we answer that atheism is refutable
on the very face of it. For atheism may be termed materialism in its naked and
not in its transcendental sense. If then, as they say, Man—the highest form of
matter is unable to create or annihilate his component parts, how is it likely
that any lower form of matter should have this marvelous power. Materialism in
its transcendental sense states that under this phenomenal matter, there is a
more subtle state, which is real; matter in its zero state; but then this may
be imagined to be Universal Existence, without beginning and without ending,
and it is really then a sublime Pantheism, for it declares that all matter is
but the external manifestation, an illusion, if you please, of the Reality,
that underlies ALL.
For as Tyndal[10] states, "When I attempt
to give the power which I see manifested in the Universe, an objective form,
personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulations.
I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun "He" regarding it ; I
dare not call it a Mind; I refuse to call it even a Cause. Its mystery overshadows
me, but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames which my neighbors try
to make it fit, simply distort and desecrate it."
Even the
materialistic Haeckel,[11] in his History of Creation,[12] makes the statement:
"The low dualistic conception of God corresponds with a low animal stage
of development of the human organism. The more development of mind the present
day is capable of; and is justified in conceiving that infinitely nobler and
sublimer idea of God which alone is compatible with the monistic conception of
the Universe, and which recognizes God's spirit and power in all phenomena and
without exception. This monistic idea of God, which belongs to the future has
already been expressed by Giordano Bruno in the following words: `A spirit
exists in all things, and no body is so small but contains a part of the Divine
Substance within itself, by which it is animated.' It is of this noble idea of
God that Goethe says, 'Certainly there does not exist a more beautiful worship
of God than that which needs no image, but which arises in our heart from
converse with nature.' By it we arrive at the Sublime idea of the UNITY OF GOD
AND NATURE."
We must therefore negate all attempts to anthropomorphise this
Incomprehensible Reality, which in Fichte's time, drew the ire of this Great Philosopher
in the following words: "You attribute personality and consciousness to
God, but what do you call personality and consciousness ? That, no doubt which
you have found in yourselves, becomes cognizant of you in yourselves and is
distinguished by that name. But if you will give only the slightest attention
to the nature of your conception, you will see that you do not and cannot conceive
of this without limitation and finality. By attributing that predicate to this
Being, you in consequence make it a finite one, a creature like unto yourselves;
you have not, as was your wish, conceived God, but merely the multiplied
representative of yourselves. Even consciousness, personality, and even substance,
attributed to Deity, carry with them the idea of necessary limitations and are
as attributes of relative and limited beings; to affirm this of God is to bring
him down to the rank of relative and limited beings."
But, we might add,
in spite of the foregoing, it is better for us to maintain a somewhat neutral
position, for some definitions contain nothing but conceptions of our minds,
which may conceive many things that have no existence in fact and are extremely
prolific in multiplying conceptions of things once formed, and it is sometimes
impossible to infer from the conception one has of God, that God exists at all.
The proof of the existence of Deity must spring from a loftier source than the
mind, from the Deific font in man, the source of his higher inspirations; from
the Spiritual Monad, which being God itself, can alone prove that the existence
of Deity is a surety.
[3] Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: a German
philosopher and mathematician whose
theory of monads stand as his best known contribution to esoteric thought. http://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-met/
[4] John Theodore Merz (without the “t”): an
industrial chemist and philosopher who sought to bridge the gap between science
and the arts. http://infomotions.com/etexts/archive/ia311537.us.archive.org/1/items/leibnizm00merzuoft/leibnizm00merzuoft_djvu.htm
[5] Pierre Gassendi: French priest,
mathematician, and astronomer. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gassendi/
[6] Baruch
Spinoza: Dutch rationalist philosopher and religious thinker, and foremost
proponent of pantheism. http://www.iep.utm.edu/spinoza/
[7] Scottish
empiricist philosopher David Hume is a key figure in western philosophy. Empiricists
maintain that all knowledge arises from experience. http://www.iep.utm.edu/humelife/
[8] Jean Jacques Rousseau: an important 18th-
century writer, thinker, and composer whose works influenced the romantic
movement. http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/
[9] French
mathematician and religious philosopher Blaise
Pascal, laid the foundations for the theory of probability. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal/
[10] John
Tyndall: British physicist who studied the behavior of light beams passing
through various substances. http://www.answers.com/topic/john-tyndall
[11] Ernst
Haeckel: German biologist, physician, artist, and philosopher. http://www.slate.com/id/2124625/
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