Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Seven Principles Of Man
By A Besant
The Monad
In explanation of our composite nature with its seven principles must include a brief outline of what theosophy tells us about evolution. Evolution, as taught by the wisdom-religion, means an unwrapping, a rolling out; in other words, it is the growth into manifestation or activity of qualities which are latent and invisible in the inner nature of any being. The qualities of a living seed when first dropped into the soil are invisible and latent. But when the time and the conditions are ripe for growth these latent qualities begin to develop, to unwrap or roll out into visibility. An acorn, for example produces first a tiny shoot and then at last the magnificent and sturdy oak.
All organisms, that is, all living beings — plants, animals, men — grow from seeds. In the case of humans and most animals these seeds are so minute as to be invisible to any eye but that of the microscope. And yet one of these infinitesimal vital cells may grow into a six-foot man with all his complex faculties, or into the enormous elephant with its highly specialized organs.
What is it that causes this truly magical growth of an invisible seed into a wondrous individual, such as a great musician or inventor? Why is it that the law of development from within outwards, from invisibility into visibility, is at the root of evolution? It is because at the heart of every seed there is a living spirit-soul, atma-buddhi. This spirit-soul is a spark of the universal life-spirit. It is the urge to self-expression of this invisible spirit-soul at the core of every organism which causes it to expand, to unfold its own powers through the outward development of faculty and function. Of course it is fed and helped forwards by the stimulation of its environment. But unless there were this living spiritual urge present at its core, the seed would not expand and fructify. A dead seed will not grow, no matter how favorable its environment.
Again, modern science in its theories of evolution has confined its studies to the visible side of nature — the physical; although there are scientists whose researches are bringing them to a more comprehensive view. Not only the bodies, however, but the minds and souls of creatures, are subject to evolution. For if evolution is a law of nature then nothing can be excluded from the action of that law. In every particle of matter there is imprisoned a spark of the universal, indestructible LIFE. This spark is named in theosophy the monad, a word which means a "unit," an "individual." This monad is a point, a center of complete, individualized, indestructible consciousness, originating, as said, in the central universal life. Such a monad lives at the core of every organism, from an atom to a star.
But these monads are in vastly differing degrees of evolution. The monad at the heart of, say, an atom in the mineral kingdom is much less evolved or unfolded than one which has reached, on its upward evolutionary journey of self-unfoldment, the vegetable or the animal kingdom. The monad at the core of a human being is immeasurably more advanced than either. The reason is that, during the ages of its progressive self-development through the stages of matter in all the lower kingdoms, it has now reached the point where it has so highly evolved its own latent intellectual and spiritual powers that it can at last manifest as a human being. The difference between this process, which is a spiritual one, and some of the erroneous ideas of Darwinian evolution is fully explained in Man in Evolution by G. de Purucker.
There is a monad at the core of every physical atom. The physical atom is the outmost body or vehicle through which the monad works and expresses itself. When it ensouls a chemical atom, the monad is starting near the bottom of the evolutionary ladder. And slowly through countless ages that monad passes from kingdom to kingdom of nature, advancing ever upward.
We can understand something of this process if we remember how a plant grows. Back of every plant is what may be called a plant-monad, in other words a spiritual monad passing through the vegetable phase of its evolutionary journey. A seed is dropped in the soil and immediately that conditions are right, the sleeping or latent energy locked within it begins the process of building up from the soil a plant-vehicle for itself. Similarly does the monad make for itself higher and higher vehicles as it passes upwards through the elemental, mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms — someday to blossom forth in the vesture of humanhood.
The reader will now begin to see that it is these monads whose activities not only produce, but are the very stuff of evolution. The monadic hosts, high, intermediate, and low in their scale of development, ensoul and build all manifestations of life visible and invisible to us — spiritual, intellectual, psychic, and physical. And they do this because of the spiritual urge at the heart of each monad, this urge being generated in its origin in the central universal fount of life.
It is these monads, with their inner life of urges, activities, and slowly unfolding characteristics, which make up the invisible parts of nature — that invisible world of inconceivably greater scope and range than our visible. Here in these inner realms work the vast hosts of invisible monads which are thus the cause of visible evolution.
Before passing on to consider ourselves as seven-principled beings, we shall answer a question that may have arisen in the mind of the student. He may ask: What is the purpose of all this monadic evolution from kingdom to kingdom and from range to range or plane to plane of evolving being? This purpose can be stated as follows: Each great solar period of evolution is called in theosophy a manvantara. In this solar period or manvantara the monad starts out at the very beginning as an unself-conscious god-spark. And the object of its passage through all the forms of life in that particular solar manvantara is that it may emerge from them as a fully self-conscious god. When the end of that solar period comes, a monad which has successfully completed its evolution will have first-hand knowledge of — will in fact have been — all the life-forms in that manvantara. It will have absorbed to itself at last the power self-consciously to understand and assimilate and use all those experiences. So it becomes a selfconscious god, a master of wisdom and life in that manvantara which it has just rounded out. In a later solar manvantara, the monad will go on to experience still higher levels of evolution and knowledge.
The monad at the center of each one of us is far on its way to becoming such a self-conscious god. And this of course means that you and I, who are in reality our own monads if we could only realize it, are destined to emerge at the close of this solar manvantara through which we are now passing as fully-fledged, all-understanding gods.
One of the most beautiful aspects of this teaching is that in thus mounting the evolutionary ladder of being we awaken and stimulate the evolutionary potencies of all the atoms and creatures which we contact on all the planes of experience. It is a law of the universe — in other words it is in the very nature of things — that we cannot ourselves rise without lifting everything else to some degree. The ethical implications in responsibility and karmic consequences are easily apparent. But let us now go back to our subject of the seven human principles.
