distinction lies between the immovable or eternal immutable ALL, and the movable Speech or Logos, i. e., the periodical and the manifested. It can relate to the Universal, and to the individual mind, to Mahat, or to the Higher Manas, or even to the lower, the Kama Manas or Brain-Mind. Because that which is desire, instinctive impulse in the lower, becomes thought in the Higher. The former finds expression in acts, the latter in words. Esoterically, thought is more responsible and punishable than act. But exoterically it is the reverse. Therefore, in ordinary human law, an assault is more severely punished than the thought or intention, i. e., the threat, whereas Karmically it is the contrary.

Q. "God geometrizes," says Plato, but seeing that there is no personal God, how is it that the process of formation is by Dots, Lines, Triangles, Cubes, Circles, and finally Spheres? And how when the sphere leaves the static state, does the inherent force of Breath set it whirling?

A. The term "God"-unless referring to the Unknown Deity or Absoluteness, which can hardly be supposed acting in any wayhas always meant in ancient philosophies the collectivity of the working and intelligent Forces in nature. The word "Forest" is singular, yet it is the term to express the idea of thousands or even millions of trees of different kinds. Materialists have the option of saying "Nature", or still better-"Law geometrizes" if they so prefer. But in the days of Plato, the average reader would hardly have understood the metaphysical distinction and real meaning. The truth, however, of Nature ever "geometrizing" is easily ascertained. Here is an instance: Heat is the modification of the motions or particles of matter. Now, it is a physical and mechanical law that particles or bodies in motion on themselves, assume a spheroidal form-this, from a globular planet down to a drop of rain. Observe the snowflakes, which along with crystals exhibit to you all the geometrical forms existing in nature. As soon as motion ceases, the spheroidal shape alters; or, as Tyndall tells us, it becomes a flat drop, then the drop forms an equilateral triangle, a hexagon and so on. In observing the breaking up of ice-particles in a large mass, through which he passed heat rays, he observed that the first shape the particles assumed, was triangular or pyramidal, then cubical and finally hexagonal, &c. Thus, even modern physical science, corroborates Plato and justifies his proposition.

Q. When Tyndall took a large block of ice and threw a powerful ray upon it and thence on to a screen, there were to be seen the forms of ferns and plants in it. What is the reason of this?

A. This question ought really to be addressed first to Professor Tyndall, who would give a scientific explanation of it-and perhaps he has already done so. But Occultism would explain it by saying either that the ray helped to show the astral shapes which were preparing to form future ferns and plants, or that the ice had preserved the reflection of actual ferns and plants that had been re

flected in it. Ice is a great magician, whose occult properties are as little known as those of Ether. It is occultly connected with the astral light, and may under certain conditions, reflect certain images from the invisible astral region, just as light and a sensitised plate may be made to reflect stars that cannot be perceived even by the telescope. This is well known to learned Yogis who dwell on the eternal ice of Bodrinath and the Himalayas. At any rate, ice has certainly the property of retaining images of things impressed on its surface under certain conditions of light, images which it preserves invisibly until it is melted. Fine steel has the same property, though it is of a less occult nature. Were you to observe the ice from the surface, these forms would not be seen. But once that in decomposing the ice with heat you deal with the forces and the things that were impressed on it, then you find that it throws off these images and the forms appear. It is but one link leading to another link. All this is not modern sicence of course, yet it is fact and truth.

Q. Do numbers and geometrical figures represent to human consciousness the laws of action in the Divine Mind?

A. They do, most assuredly. There is no chance evolution or formation, nor is any so-called abnormal appearance or cosmic phenomenon due to haphazard circumstances.

Sloka (5). "DARKNESS," THE BOUNDLESS OR THE NO-NUMBER,
ADI-NIDANA SVABHAVAT: THE O (for x, unknown quantity).
I. THE ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, for He is One.

II. THE VOICE OF THE WORD, SVABHAVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR
HE IS ONE AND NINE.

III. THE "FORMLESS SQUARE" (Arupa).

AND THESE ENCLOSED WITHIN THE O (Boundless Circle), are the Sacred Four, AND THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA (subjective, formless) UNIVERSE; THEN COME THE "SONS", THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER (Bhâskara).

Q. The "One Rejected" is the sun of our system. Astronomically is there any explanation of Mârttanda's rejection?

A. The sun is older than any of its planets-though younger than the moon. Its "rejection" means that when bodies or planets began to form, helped by its rays, magnetic radiance or heat, and especially by its magnetic attraction, it had to be stopped, otherwise it would have swallowed all the younger bodies like as Saturn is fabled to have treated his progeny. This does not mean that all the planets are thrown out from the sun, as modern Science teaches, but simply that under the Rays of the sun they acquire their growth. Aditi is the ever-equilibrizing mother-nature on the purely spiritual and subjective plane. She is the Sakti, the female power or potency of the fecundating spirit; and it is for her to regulate the behaviour of the sons born in her bosom. The Vedic allegory is very suggest

Q. Were all the planets in our solar system first comets and then suns?

A. They were not suns in our, or their present solar systems, but comets in space. All began life as wanderers over the face of the infinite Kosmos. They detached themselves from the common storehouse of already prepared material, the Milky Way (which is nothing more or less than the quite developed world-stuff, all the rest in space being the crude material, as yet invisible to us); then, starting on their long journey they first settled in life where conditions were prepared for them by Fohat, and gradually became suns. Then each sun, when its Pralaya arrived, was resolved into millions and millions of fragments. Each of these fragments moved to and fro in space collecting fresh materials, as it rolled on, like an avalanche, until it came to a stop through the laws of attraction and repulsion, and became a planet in our own, as in other systems, beyond our telescopes. The sun's fragments will become just such planets after the Solar pralaya. It was a comet once upon a time, in the beginning of Brahma's Age. Then it came to its present position, whence it will burst asunder, and its atoms will be whirled into space for æons, and æons like all other comets and meteors, until each, guided by Karma, is caught in the vortex of the two forces, and fixed in some higher and better system.

Thus the Sun will live in his children as a portion of the parents lives in their offspring. When that day comes, the semblance or reflection of the Sun which we see, will first fall off like a veil from the face of the true Sun. No mortal will see it, for no mortal eye could bear its radiance. Were this veil once removed for even a second, all the planets of its system would be instantaneously reduced to ashes, as the sixty thousand of King Sagara's Sons were destroyed by a glance of Kapila's eye.

Sloka (6). THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE (Word, Voice and Spirit). THE REJECTED SUN IS ONE, THE "SONS-SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS.

Q. What is the relation of the Lipika, the "Second Seven" to the "Primordial Seven" and to the first "Sacred Four"?

A. If you believe that any, save the highest Initiates, can explain this to your satisfaction, then you are greatly mistaken. The relation can be better understood, or rather, shown to be above all understanding, by first studying the Gnostic systems of the early centuries of Christianity, from that of Simon Magus down to the highest and noblest of them, the so-called PISTIS-SOPHIA. All these systems are derived from the East. That which we call the "Primordial Seven" and the "Second Seven" are called by Simon Magus the Eons, the primeval, the second and the third series of Syzygies. They are the graduated emanations, ever descending lower and lower into matter, from that primordial principle which he calls Fire, and we, Svâbhâvat. Behind that Fire, the manifested but

silent Deity, stands with him as it does with us, that "which is, was, and ever will be". Let us compare his system with ours.

In a passage quoted from his works by the author of Philosophumena, we read:-"From this permanent Stability and Immortality of this first manifested principle 'Fire' (the third Logos) which immutability does not preclude activity, as the second from it is endowed with intelligence and reason (Mahat), it (the Fire) passed from the potentiality of action to action itself. From this series of evolutions were formed six beings, or the emanation from the infinite potency; they were formed in Syzygies, i. e., they radiated out of the flame two by two, one being active, the other the passive principle". These Simon named Nous and Epinoia, or Spirit and Thought, Phône and Onoma, Voice and Name, and Logismos and Euthumêsis, Reasoning and Reflection. And again:-"In each of these six primitive Beings the Infinite Potency was in its totality; but it was there in potentiality and not in act. It had to be established therein through an image (that of the paradigm), in order that it should appear in all its essence, virtue, grandeur and effects; for only then could it become like unto the Parent Potency infinite and eternal. If, on the contrary, it was not conformed by or through the Image, that Potentiality could never become Potency or pass into action, but was lost for lack of use, as it happens to a man who having an aptitude for grammar or geometry does not exercise it; it gets lost for him just as if he never had it" (Philosophumena, p. 250).

He shows that whether these Eons belong to the superior, middle or lower world, they are all one, except in material density, which determines their outward manifestations and the result produced, not their real essence which is one, or their mutual relations which, as he says, are established from eternity by immutable laws.

Now the first, the second, third or primordial seven or Lipika, are all one. When they emanate from one plane to another, it is a repetition of "as above, so below". They are all differentiated in matter or density, not in qualities; the same qualities descend on to the last plane, our own, where man is endowed with the same potentiality, if he but knew how to develop it, as the highest DhyanChohans.

In the hierarchies of Eons, Simon gives three pairs of two each, the seventh being the fourth which descends from one plane to another.

The Lipika proceed from Mahat and are called in the Kabala the four Recording Angels; in India, the four Maharajahs, those who record every thought and deed of man; they are called by St. John in the Revelation, the Book of Life. They are directly connected with Karma and what the Christians call the Day of Judgment, in the East it was called the Day after Mahamanvantara, or the "Day-Be-With-Us". Then everything becomes one, all individualities are merged into one, yet each knowing itself, a mysterious

teaching indeed. But then, that which to us now is non-consciousness or the unconscious, will then be absolute consciousness.

Q. What relation have the Lipika to Mahat?

A. They are a division, four taken from one of the Septenates that emanates from Mahat. Mahat corresponds with the Fire of Simon Magus, the secret and the manifested Divine Ideation, made to witness to itself in this objective Universe through the intelligent forms we see around us, in what is called creation. Like all other emanations, they are "Wheels within Wheels". The Lipika are on the plane corresponding to the highest plane of our chain of globes.

sense.

Q. What is the difference between Spirit, Voice and Word? A. The same as between Atma, Buddhi and Manas, in one Spirit emanates from the unknown Darkness, the mystery into which none of us can penetrate. That Spirit-call it the "Spirit of God" or Primordial Substance-mirrors itself in the Waters of Space-or the still undifferentiated matter of the future Universeand produces thereby the first flutter of differentiation in the homogeneity of primordial matter. This is the Voice, pioneer of the "Word" or the first manifestation; and from that Voice emanates the Word or Logos, that is to say, the definite and objective expression of that which has hitherto remained in the depths of the Concealed Thought. That which mirrors itself in Space is the Third Logos. We may express this Trinity also by the terms Colour, Sound, and Numbers.

THE INNER AWAKENING

N its true sense the religious impulse is the longing of the heart for communion with the incommunicable, for sight and hearing of the invisible and soundless. It is the source of all human despairs, thus, of all the agonies of those who suffer the thirst of unquenchable love robbed of its object.

Religious faith has its origin in the same longing of the heart for reunion with what has been known and loved and lost to mortal ken and view. The void is known and the soul, in the anachronism of absence, hungers fiercely to span the abyss of ignorance with some form and bridge of hope to the knowledge that must be because it ought to be if love is not to be a liar and a cheat.

Thus we have nature's terrible paradox that out of death and loss is bred the hope of immortality and enduring possession of what we cherish. Thus indeed, as a great Master has said, the longing of no human heart is to be despised.

Men die, but love remains, ever making the mystic leap from one passing generation to another. The fuel perishes to its ash,