The ancient doctrine of the constant, eternal change of every atom from state to state, is founded upon, or rather grows out of, another which postulates that the is no such thing as dead matter.
At every conceivable point in the universe there are lives; nowhere can be found a spot that is dead; and each life is forever hastened onward to a higher evolution.
To admit this, we must of course grant that matter is never perceived by the eye or through any instrument. It is but the phenomena of matter that we recognize through the senses, and hence, say the sages, the thing denominated ("matter") by us is an illusion. Even the protoplasm of the schools is not the original matter; it is simply another of the phenomena.
The first original matter is called by Paracelsus and others primordial matter, the nearest approach to which in the Eastern school is found in the Sanskrit word mulaprakriti. This is the root of matter, invisible, not to be weighed, or measured, or tested with any instrument of human invention. And yet it is the only real matter underlying all phenomena to which we erroneously give its name. But it is not dead, but full of the lives first referred to.
Now, bearing this in mind, we consider the vast solar system, yet vast only when not compared with the still greater aggregation of stars and planets around it. The great sidereal year covered by the sun in going through the twelve signs of the zodiac includes over 25,000 mortal years of 365 days each. While this immense circuit is being traversed, the sun drags the whole solar system with him around his own tremendous orbit, and we may imagine-for there are no observations on this point-that, while 25,000 years of travel around the zodiac have been passing, the solar system as a whole has advanced along the sun's own orbit only a little distance. But after millions of years shall have been consumed in these progresses, the sun must bring his train of planets to stellar space where they have never been before; here other conditions and combinations of matter may very well obtain-conditions and states of which our scientists have never heard, of which there has never been recorded one single phenomenon; and the difference between planetary conditions then and now will be so great that no resemblance shall be observed.
This is a branch of cyclic law with which the Eastern Sages are perfectly familiar. They have inquired into it, recorded their observations, and preserved them. Having watched the uncountable lives during cycles upon cycles past, and seen the behavior under different conditions in other stellar spaces long ago left behind, they have some basis to draw conclusions as to what will be the state of things in the ages to come.
This brings us to an interesting theory offered by Theosophy respecting life itself as exhibited by man, his death and sleep. It relates also to what is generally called "fatigue."
The most usual explanation for the phenomena of sleep is that the body becomes tired and more or less depleted of its vitality then seeks repose. This, says Theosophy, is just the opposite of truth, for, instead of suffering a loss of vitality, the body, at the conclusion of the day, has more life in it than when it was wakened. During the waking state the life-waves rush into the body with greater intensity every hour, and, we being unable to resist them any longer than the period usually observed, they overpower us and we fall asleep. While sleeping, the life waves adjust themselves to the molecules of the body; and when equilibrium is complete we again wake to continue the contest with life.
If this periodical adjustment did not occur, the life current would destroy us. Any derangement of the body that tends to inhibit this adjustment is the cause of sleeplessness and perhaps death. Finally, death of the body is due to the inequality of the contest with the life force; it at last overcomes us, and we are compelled to sink into the grave. Disease, the common property of the human race, only reduces the power of the body to adjust and resist. Children, (say the Adepts) sleep more than adults and need earlier repose, because the bodily machine, being young and tender, is easily overcome by life and made to sleep.
Adepts relate not only to the birth and death of planets in this solar system, but also to the evolution and development of man, through the various kingdoms of nature, until he reaches the most perfect condition which can be imagined. The evolution of the human being includes not only the genesis of his mortal frame, but, as well, the history of the inner man, whom they are accustomed to calling the real one.
This, then, brings us to a very interesting claim put forward for the Wisdom religion, that it pretends to throw light not only upon man's emotions and mental faculties, but also upon his pre-natal and post-mortem states, both of which are of the highest interest and importance. Such questions as, "Where have I come from?" and "What shall be my condition after death?" trouble and confuse the minds of all men, cultured and ignorant.
Priests and thinkers have, from time to time, formulated theories, more or less absurd, as to those pre-natal and post-mortem states, while Science today laughs in derision at the idea of making any inquire into the matter whatever.
Theologians have offered explanations, all of which relate only to what they suppose will happen to us after death, leaving entirely out of view and wholly un-answered the natural question,
"What were we before we were born here?" And, taking them on their own ground, they are in the most illogical position, because, having once postulated immortality for the soul-the real man-they cannot deny immortality in either direction. If man is immortal, the immortality could never have had a beginning, or else it would have an end. Hence their only escape from the dilemma is to declare that each soul is a special creation. But this doctrine of a special creation for each soul born upon earth, is not dwelt upon or expounded by the priests, inasmuch as it is deemed better to keep it discretely in the background.
The Wisdom Religion, on the other hand, remains logical from beginning to end. It declares that man is a spiritual being, and allows no break in the chain of anything once declared immortal. The Ego of each man is immortal; "always was existent, always will be, and never can be non-existent"; appearing now and again, and reappearing, clothed in bodies on each occasion different, it only appears to be mortal; it always remains the substratum and support for the personality acting upon the stage of life. And in those appearances as mortal, the questions mooted above-as to the pre-natal and post-mortem states-are of vital interest, because mans knowledge or ignorance concerning them alters man's thought and action while an actor on the stage, and it is necessary for him to know in order that he may so live as to aid in the grand upward sweep of the evolutionary wave.
Now the Adepts have for ages pursued scientific experimentation and investigation upon those lines. Seers themselves of the highest order, they have recorded not only with their own actual experiences beyond the veil of matter, on both sides, but have collected, compared, analyzed and preserved the records of experiences of the same sort by hundreds of thousands of lesser seers, their own disciples; and the process has been going on from time immemorial.
Let science laugh as it may, the Adepts are true scientists, for they take into account every factor in the question, whereas Science is limited by brain-power, by circumstance, by imperfection of instrumentation, and by a total inability to perceive anything deeper than the mere phenomena presented by matter. The records of the visions and experiences of the greater and lesser seers, through the ages, are extant today.
Of their mass, nothing has been accepted except that which has been checked and verified by millions of independent observations; and therefore the Adepts stand in the position of those who possess actual experiential knowledge of what precedes the birth of the ego in human form, and what succeeds when the "mortal coil" is cast away.
This recording of experiences still goes on; for the infinity of the changes of Nature in its evolution permits no stoppage, no "last word" no final declaration. As the earth sweeps around the sun. it not only passes through new places in orbit, but, dragged as it is by the sun through its greater orbit, involving millions of millions of years, it must in that larger circle enter upon new fields in space and unprecedented conditions. Hence the Adepts go further yet, and state that as the phenomena presented by matter today are different from those presented a million years ago, so matter will a million years from now show different phenomena still.
Indeed, if we could translate our sight to that time, far back in the past of our globe, we could see conditions and phenomena of the material world so different from those now surrounding us that it would be almost impossible to believe we had never been in such a state as that prevailing. And the changes toward the conditions that will prevail at a point equally remote in advance of us, in time, and which will be not less than those that have occurred, are in progress now. Nothing in the material world endures absolutely unchanged in itself or its conditions even for the smallest conceivable portion of time. All that is, is forever in process of becoming something else. This is not mere transcendentalism, but is an old established doctrine called, in the East "the doctrine of the constant, eternal change of atoms from one state into another."
