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.
[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/
