The Unfolding of
Consciousness
One of those pregnant and significant ideas which
Theosophy scatters so lavishly around is thisÄthat the same
scale is repeated over and over again, the same succession
of events in larger or smaller cycles. If you understand one
cycle, you understand the whole. The same laws by which a
solar system is builded go to the building up of the system
of man. The laws by which the Self unfolds his powers in the
universe, from the fire-mist up to the LOGOS, are the same
laws of consciousness which repeat themselves in the
universe of man. If you understand them in the one, you can
equally understand them in the other. Grasp them in the
small, and the large is revealed to you. Grasp them in the
large, and the small becomes intelligible to you.
The great unfolding from the stone to the God goes on
through millions of years, through aeons of time. But the
long unfolding that takes place in the universe, takes place
in a shorter time-cycle within the limit of humanity, and
this in a cycle so brief that it seems as nothing beside the
longer one. Within a still briefer cycle a similar unfolding
takes place in the individualÄ rapidly, swiftly, with all
the force of its past behind it. These forces that manifest
and unveil themselves in evolution are cumulative in their
power. Embodied in the stone, in the mineral world, they
grow and put out a little more of strength, and in the
mineral world accomplish their unfolding. Then they become
too strong for the mineral, and press on into the vegetable
world. There they unfold more and more of their divinity,
until they become too mighty for the vegetable, and become
animal.
Expanding within and gaining experiences from the animal,
they again overflow the limits of the animal, and appear as
the human. In the human being they still grow and accumulate
with ever-increasing force, and exert greater pressure
against the barrier; and then out of the human, they press
into the super-human. This last process of evolution is
called "Yoga."
Coming to the individual, the man of our own globe has
behind him his long evolution in other chains than oursÄthis
same evolution through mineral to vegetable, through
vegetable to animal, through animal to man, and then from
our last dwelling-place in the lunar orb on to this terrene
globe that we call the earth. Our evolution here has all the
force of the last evolution in it, and hence, when we come
to this shortest cycle of evolution which is called Yoga,
the man has behind him the whole of the forces accumulated
in his human evolution, and it is the accumulation of these
forces which enables him to make the passage so rapidly. We
must connect our Yoga with the evolution of consciousness
everywhere, else we shall not understand it at all; for the
laws of evolution of consciousness in a universe are exactly
the same as the laws of Yoga, and the principles whereby
consciousness unfolds itself in the great evolution of
humanity are the same principles that we take in Yoga and
deliberately apply to the more rapid unfolding of our own
consciousness. So that Yoga, when it is definitely begun, is
not a new thing, as some people imagine.
The whole evolution is one in its essence. The succession
is the same, the sequences identical. Whether you are
thinking of the unfolding of consciousness in the universe,
or in the human race, or in the individual, you can study
the laws of the whole, and in Yoga you learn to apply those
same laws to your own consciousness rationally and
definitely. All the laws are one, however different in their
stage of manifestation. If you look at Yoga in this light,
then this Yoga, which seemed so alien and so far off, will
begin to wear a familiar face, and come to you in a garb not
wholly strange. As you study the unfolding of consciousness,
and the corresponding evolution of form, it will not seem so
strange that from man you should pass on to superman,
transcending the barrier of humanity, and finding yourself
in the region where divinity becomes more manifest.
If you look at Yoga in this light, then this Yoga, which
seemed so alien and so far off, will begin to wear a
familiar face, and come to you in a garb not wholly strange.
As you study the unfolding of consciousness, and the
corresponding evolution of form, it will not seem so strange
that from man you should pass on to superman, transcending
the barrier of humanity, and finding yourself in the region
where divinity becomes more manifest. |