Organism Dictionary

Cataclysms (from Greek kataklysmos flood)

The term originated among the Stoics, who taught that the world is visited periodically and alternately by deluge (cataclysm) and conflagration (ekpyrosis, "burning up"). This last teaching was taken over into early Christian theology in the idea that the world will perish in flame.

The meaning of cataclysm, however, now includes both deluges and volcanic action. Theosophy holds that the earth is visited periodically and at long intervals by comparatively sudden changes, varying in geographic importance from a continental to merely local catastrophes. The whole period of the cataclysm includes a gradual beginning, a progressive intensification, a culmination, and a gradual diminution. Local transformations are often sudden, sharp, or violent, whereas those embracing a wide geographical field are usually much slower or of longer period, frequently seeming to be nothing more than the merely secular changes which human experience recognizes as customary.

Cataclysms are due to the influence of the sun, moon, planets, and ultimately also to the constellations. As all physical phenomena are manifestations of what originally occurs in the realms of mind and consciousness, the movements of the earth's crust reflect the movements in the minds of the beings inhabiting it, for all nature is an organism and all things are ineluctably knitted together by cosmic forces.

All the cataclysms are accompanied by both deluges and volcanism, but one or the other of these is accentuated at alternately different times. The forthcoming cataclysms at the end of the fifth root-race are stated to be especially marked by the action of the element fire. Lemuria, the third continental system, is said to have perished by subterranean convulsion, tremendous volcanic activity, and other phenomena arising in the igneous element, and the consequent breaking of the sea floor; whereas that of Atlantis, or the fourth great continental system, was mainly caused by axial disturbance, leading to subsidence of lands, tremendous consequent tidal waves, and the shifting of large portions of the oceanic system. "Therefore, it is absolutely false, . . . that all the great geological changes and terrible convulsions have been produced by ordinary and known physical forces. For these forces were but the tools and final means for the accomplishment of certain purposes, acting periodically, and apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse mixed up with, but beyond their material nature. There is a purpose in every important act of Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and periodical" (SD 1:640).

Conflagration was also used by Blavatsky to denote the destruction of the earth in pralayas, greater or less.

(See also: Cataclysms , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Germ Cell The early physical vehicle or carrier of the ' "spiritual plasm' that dominates the germinal plasm" in the development of the embryo (SD 1:219):

"every germ-cell, human or other, is the physical expression of inner, ethereal, and psycho-magnetic activities, and is a compact or bundle or sheaf of inner forces and substances ranging from the divine through intermediate degrees down to the astral and the physical, just as man, but on a much larger scale, himself is" (ET 899).

Each germ-cell is the precipitation or projection on and into the physical plane of an inner, psycho-ethereal radiation, an incarnation of a ray point originating in the inner worlds and contacting physical matter by psychomagnetic affinity, and thus arousing a proper particle or molecular aggregate of living physical substance into becoming a reproductive cell.

This ray point or tip of the imbodying ray or radiance, is not the reincarnating ego itself, but the tip of the projected ray issuing from the reimbodying ego. When this ego -- itself a ray from the spiritual monad -- reaches its own intermediate sphere, after leaving its parent-monad, it descends no farther into matter from that plane. But its radiated influence, its psychomagnetic ray, having stronger affinities for material worlds than itself, goes deeper into matter and there awakens into activity the life-atoms in each of the various planes between that of the reimbodying ego and the grossest matter of physical earth.

When this psycho-vital-electric or -magnetic ray awakens some particular life-atom in gross physical matter on earth, that life-atom so chosen belonged to the same reimbodying ego before, and therefore responds to its own "parent." It may even be regarded as the tip of the reimbodying ray from which it is precipitated into matter, "which physical matter, as atoms, is thus attracted around this tip, building first the material imbodiment of the said life-atom and by progressive accretion finally becoming the living germ-cell" (ET 900).

This descent of the ray tip into, and selection of, suitable earth of matter, has been the basis of all the various methods of procreation. The process began in the huge avoid form of the ethereal first root-race by simple division of this human cell, as the embryo today repeats in beginning its rapid review of racial records.

"One infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of an organism, determining alone and unaided, by means of constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man (or animal) in its physical, mental, and psychic characteristics. . . . those germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long generations" (SD 1:223n).

See also HEREDITY; PROCREATION; REPRODUCTION

(See also: Germ Cell , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Gaia

Greek - Earth) The goddess of the earth. It also refers to a scientific hypothesis formulated by James Lovelock whereby all living matter on the earth is believed to be a single living organism. In such a scheme, humanity is considered the nervous system of the living earth.

(See also: Gaia , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahat (Sanskrit) [from maha great]

The great; cosmic mind or intelligence, the basis and fundamental cause of the intelligent operations in and of nature considered as an organism. Blavatsky called it the first product of pradhana, the first-born of the Logos, universal mind limited by manvantaric duration, the cosmic noumenon of matter, the one impersonal architect of the universe, the great manvantaric principle of intelligence, the Third Logos, and the divine mind in active operation.

Eternal in its essence and periodical in its manifestations, mahat combines the ideal plans and prototypes of all beings and things in the manifested objective and subjective world. In another sense it is the entire aggregate of the dhyani-chohanic host, and therefore the source of the active organic cosmic intelligence controlling and directing the operations of fohat; it is likewise the direct source of the manasaputras, a class of the dhyani-chohanic host.

In Brahmanical philosophy, mahat is the father-mother of manas. In Sankya philosophy, it corresponds to kosmic buddhi or mahabuddhi and is called the first of the seven prakritis or productive creation, the other six being ahamkara and the five tanmatras.

When a ray from mahat expresses itself as the human manas (or even as the manasic attribute of the finite gods), it then because of surrounding maya involves the quality of egoity or aham-ship. Thus it is said that the great Tree of Life has parabrahman as its seed, mahat as its trunk, and ahamkara as its spreading branches.

(See also: Mahat , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Orgalmer, Orgelmir (Swedish, Icelandic) [from or primal + galmer loud one]

In Norse mythology, the first loud sound or keynote which, like the fundamental of an overtone series, echoing through the spaces of infinitude, originates the multiplying vibrations of a cosmic organism.

The frostgiant Ymer -- utter immobility and nothingness -- becomes Orgalmer when it is slain at the beginning of a universal life cycle by the creative deities Odin, Vile, and Vi (or Ve), who then use the giant body (latent matter) to create the worlds.

Odin as Ofner (opener) is the galvanizing energy that organizes the frost giant (latent matter) into a cosmos. As Svafner (closer) Odin is paired with Bergelmir at the end of a cosmic lifetime.

(See also: Orgalmer, Orgelmir , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Suicide As an inseparable part of the universe, whether considered as an organism or as a huge animated machine, we cannot violently remove ourselves from the pattern without interfering with the harmonious working of the other parts; and just here enters the immense moral or ethical import of the evil of suicide. But even had we a right to destroy our life, it would be futile.

We may destroy the body, but we cannot destroy the mind. The suicide, after the temporary but complete unconsciousness which succeeds death, awakes in kama-loka the same person, in the same state of consciousness, minus only the physical triad (body, astral body, and gross physical vitality). His state of consciousness is one of torture, the repetition over and over of his suicidal act and the emotions that induced and accompanied it; this happens automatically because the mind, like an automaton repeats incessantly perforce the controlling or dominating impulses that governed it when the person took his physical life. And as the higher ego has its own life term, he has to remain in that condition until what would have been the natural term of life on earth is ended, body or no body.

When that period ends he passes again into unconsciousness, undergoes the second death, and all that is spiritual in him passes on to devachan, leaving the lower parts to pursue their own transmigrations. Aside from extremes of mental suffering which he would not otherwise have had to endure, the suicide is deprived of the full fruitage of bliss in devachan, for the latter is in direct ratio to the extent of earthly experiences and their spiritual quality. As he is still alive, his punishment is largely due to the very intensity of that life and to his longing to enjoy earthly contacts. If his life on earth was evil and sensual, this longing tempts them to find some living being or creature through whom he can make contacts that to him were pleasures -- to live again by proxy, as it were. Many crimes, obsessions, and manias, such as dipsomania, find their explanation here. Mediums and sensitives are open doors to such contacts; and these suicided astral beings, who are often called earth-walkers and who in many cases actually astral reliquiae, having by their own act severed their connection for the time with their highest principles -- the spiritual soul (buddhi) and inner god (atman) -- deprived thus of the urge and counsel of these highest principles, too often rush into these "open doors," and "by so doing, at the expiration of the natural term, they generally lose the monad for ever" (ML 109).

Because self-destruction, so called, is always wrong, and an unwarrantable and violent interference with the orderly processes of nature, the act is bound to bring disharmony and trouble for all concerned. But in laying down general laws we must always allow for specific instances, for there is no dogmatic hard-and-fast rule in these matters. Suicides among themselves differ enormously as between the cowardly and selfish act of an evil person, the uncontrolled act of the insane, and the utterly mistaken but perhaps even compassionate act of one who thinks that by suicide he can aid others. These extremes are simply enormous, and nature which in its actions is perfect justice, albeit automatic, watches over and protects, as far as natural laws permit, these last cases of sincere but erroneous belief or thought, born of ignorance. We dare not judge in default of full knowledge of the karmic heritage, or the deeper causes which culminated in the act.

In a world that is almost rent asunder in certain aspects, by selfishness, fear, and hatred, with a mounting suicide toll in all countries capable of statistical review, the truth about suicide and the fate of the suicide is not a subject for sentiment but for persistent reiteration.

(See also: Suicide , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

GAIA/GAEA -

1. the Greek Goddess of the Earth.

2. seeing the Earth as one giant self regulating organism of which we are a inextricable part; hypotheses that treats the planet as a living being. (James Lovelock & Lynn Margolis, 1972)

3. adj. Gaian of humanity as one body. (NAD)

4. Greek Goddess, (Earth Mother or Mother Earth). Environmental action group use this term. (TRASB)

(See also: GAIA, GAEA , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Noetic [from Greek noetikos from nous mind]

Pertaining to intelligence and spiritual reason, apart from mere mental ratiocination based upon appearances or the senses. The psychic part of our mind, the kama-manas, is intimately blended with the physical organism, and the interaction between the two seems to justify the conclusion that we move in a vicious circle under the sway of forces difficult to control when we center our consciousness in the psychic part of our constitution.

 However, by taking into account the noetic part of the human constitution, the buddhi-manas, which is independent of the sensual and emotional influences from the psychic nature, and by centering our consciousness in this noetic part of our being, we are at all times an in all places able fully to control, master, and therefore direct, the vigorous and erratic movements of the psychic nature.

The noetic mind, because it is of a spiritual character, has no direct action on the physical brain or nervous system, but acts through the psychic part of the mind, and even then only through the finer elements of the cerebral and nervous texture.

(See also: Noetic , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Epidemics (from Greek epi upon + demos the people)

The causes usually assigned to epidemic diseases are: individual susceptibility; earth conditions of heat, moisture, soil, water, hygiene, and sanitation; and mass movements of people, as in wars, pilgrimages, etc. While all these factors provide physical and psychological conditions favorable for the spread of certain epidemic diseases and emotional disorders, there remain potent invisible causes to be reckoned with.

Blavatsky discusses unusual and serious effects of certain causes which in some cases are cosmic rather than bacterial (BCW 13: 109). She explains that all such mysterious epidemics as influenza are due to an exuberance of ozone in the air, where an excess of oxygen has become ozone under the powerful stimulus of electricity.

The pranic life-atoms of the human body make an electrical field which, permeating our astral-vital-physical constitution, puts us in contact with the natural flow of ethereal currents of electric and magnetic force. These forces emanate from great cosmic entities who are the intelligent agencies for the karmic action of the so-called laws of nature. They function in the noumenal realm of causes which are due to appear on earth as phenomena of all kinds. These entities, leaving aside solar forces, are the regents of the seven sacred planets, who help to build the body and oversee the destiny of both humanity and the earth. They act automatically and impersonally in harmony with the combined causes and effects of ethereal and terrestrial conditions.

The sun, moon, planets, earth, and human brain are all magnets in contact with a common network of "live" wires of consciousness. The atoms in the solar system not only probably change their combining equivalents on every planet, but they undergo a certain change in their rapid passage through our atmosphere: concerning "the Spirit, the noumenon of that which becomes in its grossest form oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen on Earth. . . . Before these gases and fluids become what they are in our atmosphere, they are interstellar Ether; still earlier and on a deeper plane -- something else, and so on in infinitum" (SD 1:626). These fluids and gases, then, have been stepped down, plane after plane, bringing to us the karmic influences of the hierarchies of entities which compose the solar organism. They are the tangible carriers of the cosmic electrical fire of divine, spiritual, mental, psychic, astral, and material forces which infill the universe. Here, in brief, are the astrological causative influences in typical epidemics, which are variously operating in other karmic diseases and mental and emotional disorders such as popular uprisings, fanatical movements, and waves of crime and vice. Happily, the same impersonal agents of the karmic law, under the influences of far higher spiritual agents, are equally active and helpful during human cycles of ethical and spiritual aspiration and progress.

(See also: Epidemics , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

GAIAN: a term which recognizes the Earth Goddess Gaia, as a living, breathing organism. Then everything else, is PART of it, rather than APART from it.

(See also: GAIAN , Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Osteopathy - A school of healing that teaches that the body is a vital mechanical organism whose structural and functional integrity are coordinated and interdependent, the abnormality of either constituting disease. It uses manipulation, but also medicine, surgery, and other modes of treatment.

(See also: Osteopathy , Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

BINDEGEWEBSMASSAGE

This technique is based on the theory that any disruption or imbalance in any portion of the body affects the entire system, specifically the autonomic, central nervous, and hormonal systems. Any disruption in any of the body systems will affect the entire organism, both physiologically and psychologically.

Bindegewebsmassage is a specific, advanced technique intended to assist in the rehabilitation of pathologic conditions. The theory of this technique extends to the belief that certain areas on the body’s surface correlate to specific internal organs manifesting the disruptions with an increased sensitivity of certain skin areas called points. See also Connective Tissue Massage.

(See also: BINDEGEWEBSMASSAGE , Alternative Health, Massage, Bodywork, Body Mind and Soul)

Cancer, Carcinoma A malignant opithelial tumor composed of a connective tissue-stroma surrounding groups or nests of multiplying epithelial cells. In general, carcinomas have capacity for unlimited growth, for invading adjacent tissues, and for producing similar typical growths in distant tissues in the same body or, as in experimental research, by grafts which take in another animal's body. These multiplying cells, drawing freely upon the nutritive materials of the living matter, pile up an unorganized, functionless, purposeless, uncontrolled local mass of its own cells running riot at the expense of the body.

The search for causes has held as suspect everything tangible in the human body and in the human milieu. Yet it is the different degree of development of the complex inner elements and urges of conscious quality which, giving personal play to the circulating life-forces, make the modern industrialized type just what it is as a human phenomenon of interacting spirit and matter. The searching analyses have yet to stress the reaction of modern people's combined mental, emotional, and ethical consciousness and vital forces upon the highly organized matter in their own bodies.

In each person the cosmic forces of vitality and intelligence manifest, perforce, according to individual karma. These combined factors are the noumena of all structural, chemical, functional, and biological phenomena. But these universal forces, in manifesting, are stepped down through the successive laya-centers of the inner person's spiritual, mental, emotional, and psychic nature. This series of conscious conditions provides and sets the stage, and directs the personal play of the manifesting impersonal forces. Every physical change as well as pathological phenomenon is "produced by certain conditions and changes in the tissues of the body which allow and force life to act in that body; . . . all this is due to those unseen creators and destroyers that are called in such a loose and general way, microbes" (SD 1:262).

During life the entire human constitution is suffused or permeated by the organic vital fluid of the reimbodying ego, which acts as a cohering factor for all the life-atoms of all the planes of the constitution to form an organic electrical field in which these life-atoms may inhere and work both collectively and individually, under the impulses and urges originating in the substance of the reimbodying ego. At times, the intense and unceasing vital activities of the life-atoms overcome the cohering, dominating influence of the organic psychoelectrical field. This is what brings about "many if perhaps not all of the various forms of disease of a lasting character. Cases of malignant disease are due to the same general cause but on account of specific and unusual circumstances are localized in some portion of the body where the power or control of the organic vitality becomes greatly weakened" (ET 813).

Lingering diseases are often preceded by a gradual withdrawal on inner lines of the higher parts of the human constitution which, being denied timely expression here, are drawn toward their native spiritual levels of existence. Thus the waning influence of the cohering, harmonizing, and balancing spiritual life-atoms and forces leaves the uncontrolled pranic forces to be expended upon the vital-astral-physical nature which manifests along the various materialistic mental, emotional, and sensuous levels and lines of life. An overdeveloped materialism is usurping the natural place and preventing the functional play of the duly awakening higher mind and spirit -- the essentials, at this stage, alike for our civilization's present safety and for its further progress.

This dangerous collective lack of balanced evolution is repeated in the play of the life-forces upon the cells of the cancerous individual. He is karmically responsible, as a self-conscious being with free will, for staging his own play of these impelling forces. His functionless cancer cell with its one primitive activity of self-division, localized out-of-time, is a biological throwback in type to the huge ethereal ovoid cell-forms of the first root-race. These primitive cells were then the normal encasement of the nascent, unself-conscious humans-to-be whose mode of reproduction was simple division. Now the normal body cell does not go off on its own, but adds its function to the complex organism in whose development it also has acquired its minor place to work and to evolve.

Nature, working always and everywhere to evolve suitable forms for the progressive imbodiments of the manifesting one life, leaves civilized man free to do his part by spiritually balancing his own human growth. Otherwise, he becomes an unnatural unit in the universal plan which makes ethics the natural cohering, harmonizing factor in the universe itself which actually is imbodied consciousness. Highly evolved culture without spiritual leaven is only sublimated selfishness.

Long-continued selfish emotions cause a distorted and inharmonious flow of the pranic currents of the body and they cause disease according to the type of the emotions. This concerns the majority today, for few have a working philosophy of life which can take things as they come. Aside from the frankly criminal and vicious types, the inner life of the many is self-centered and disturbed by the emotional play of worry, grief, disappointment, unhappiness, or a sense of futility or frustration -- for all of whom there seems to be no way of escape. Even the exceptional cases who have no articulate troubles, and who outwardly seem free from the prevailing restlessness, suffer from a muted unrest and an inward tension, a haunting feeling of self-reproach for somehow being unworthy of themselves, while a more satisfying reality of life is waiting to be attained. Evidently, the emotional effect of all these conditions -- to which the generally uncivilized are immune as yet -- react in disorder of the psychomagneto-electric forces flowing along the highly organized network of nerves. The retarded or short-circuited forces produce disease in one or another organ according to the type of the emotions. Back of all precancerous microscopical and chemical findings of changes in the blood, or in the polarity of the cells, or what not, are causative inharmonies or wrongs of the inner life.

No age or personal condition is wholly exempt from malignancy; and the karmic causes, in child or adult, may date back to a former life. Cancer, with its ability to grow in any living tissue, has been found in nearly all animals and in many plants, showing the closely knit natural relationships between all forms of life, each kingdom acting upon and reacting from harmonies or disturbances in other kingdoms. Experimental research has taken it over to the animal world countless times. Moreover, humanity's milieu is, in a real sense, an emanation of itself, because the vital human stream of incoming and outgoing material and of life-atoms on all planes is interchanged with and used by all other things and beings. Hence, humanity's unbalanced quality stamped upon this visible and invisible substance would predispose its impress to reappear, at times, in the physical forms of nature's less conscious entities.

(See also: Cancer, Carcinoma , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Automatic Writing The practice in which a person takes pen and paper, makes his mind blank, and waits for his pen to write by some involuntary impulse. Sometimes the pen is replaced by a mechanical device such as an ouija board. The results vary from purely negative ones, through the stage of illegible scrawls, up to elaborate consecutive messages or even quotations from rare books.

The ability of different persons to succeed in this practice varies, a minority being specially apt; and the aptitude can be developed by practice. The usual spiritualistic explanation is that these writings are communications from those "on the other side." But in every case it is necessary for the automatic writer to resign the control of his own will over his physical and vital-astral body and to surrender these to the use of influences unknown to him.

From a theosophical viewpoint this is extremely hazardous, as we are protected by our physical organism and by our own will from the dangerous, often malignant influences of the lower astral light; and to strive to break down that barrier is a proceeding which can lead to a breakdown of our linkage with our higher self.

(See also: Automatic Writing , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Astral Light This is the next cosmic plane above the physical, which is to the physical globes of our earth or of the other bodies of our solar system what the linga-sarira is to the human physical body. As such, it is the carrier of life-forces -- jiva cosmically, and prana individually -- and the storehouse of cosmic energies on their way to or from physical manifestation.

It preserves an indelible record of all events on the astral and physical planes, there being continual interaction between the two planes. No natural phenomenon, whether mental, psychic, or physical, can be explained without it; without it, the physical world would crumble to impalpable dust.

The astral light is itself divided into subordinate planes; the lower regions teem with gross emanations from the earth, including psychic remnants from deceased beings, which exert a negative influence on the living, especially when intercourse with these remnants is encouraged by moral and physical weakness or by ignorant experiments.

The alchemical action of the astral light and its intimate connection with the physical sphere explains epidemics, whether physical or psychological. Because it transmits thoughts and emotions, its connection with karma is evident. The astral light is the mother of the physical world, just as akasa is the mother of the astral light.

The astral light is virtually the same as the sidereal light of Paracelsus and other medieval mystic philosophers who followed him. The reason for calling this kosmic plane astral or sidereal is that all nature being a vast and intricately interwoven organism, the stars and planets emanate into each other their respective celestial energies and substances. Thus, because there is this constant interchange of starry fluids emanating from the different celestial bodies, the term astral light has a foundation of esoteric scientific fact.

It is applied specifically to the second kosmic plane only because it is nearest to the physical and beings living on the physical plane at times become sensible of the existence of the second kosmic plane by means of flashes of starry light or sensations of luminosity. Hence the ancient initiates, knowing the source of this starry substance, properly called it the astral or sidereal light, or by some similar expression. The astral light, finally, is the very dregs of akasa, and is virtually the same as the hypothetical ether of science.

(See also: Astral Light , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

PANGENESIS

Theory that each separate cell of a whole organism reproduces itself.

(See also: PANGENESIS , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Gaia - N

A Greek name for the goddess of the earth. It also refers to a scientific hypothesis formulated by James Lovelock whereby all living matter on the earth is believed to be a single living organism. In such a scheme, humanity is considered the nervous system of the living earth.

(See also: Gaia , New Age, Body mind and Soul)

Natural Selection In Darwinian theory, an important factor in biological evolution. If, for example, a number of animals of one species are exposed to an unduly cold climate, many will die, and the survivors will be the hardier ones.

These hardier ones are said to transmit their hardiness to their posterity, whereby the species becomes modified to that extent. A continual succession of such small changes, provoked by changes of environment, was supposed to act cumulatively, thus eventually producing the differences distinguishing one species from another. From this, in combination with other kinds of selection, such as sexual selection, the higher animal types have in the course of ages been derived from the lower.

The theory is open to grave objections on several grounds. There is a complete lack of evidence of the existence of any such permanently cumulative effect; further, such variations are temporary, and procreation tends to a reversion to the standard type as soon as the environmental influence is withdrawn. Again, such a process would tend to produce the greatest diversity and divergence among the species, each variety differentiating more and more widely in its own special direction, without any tendency toward a mounting scale of perfection from ameba to man. Such natural selection in itself is but a process or a result, and cannot become operative as a cause or agent except in connection with some purposeful directive energy from within or without. When novel varieties of fruit and flowers are bred, a breeder is at work, with energy and ideas in his mind.

The Mendelian principle of heredity and the combining of the genes in the germ-cells have been found so important in determining variations that the old "natural selection of chance variations" plays a far smaller part in thought concerning evolution than formerly. But the old question still stands: what brings about the combination of genes, or other outward mechanism, that results in the building of the ladder of life from the lowest known to the highest known manifestations of consciousness?

Many modern biologists are looking upon evolution as the interaction of life and environment; but life is far more than the physicochemical properties of the genes, the supposed units of heredity. Natural selection, then, is inadequate to yield the results demanded of it; and it still remains to show how any evolution, any response or adaptation to environment, can take place without a pre-formed plan or an innate vital urge within the organism.

(See also: Natural Selection , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

I Ching (Chinese) Also Yi King. The Book of Changes; also Holy Book of Mutations, these mutations being the manifestations of tao.

The text of the original treatise is from a system of eight trigrams and 64 hexagrams, composed of whole and broken lines, thus: (illust) which, by altering the positions of the whole and broken lines form the changes in the diagrams. This has been assigned by scholars to Fu-Hsi (30th century BC). The first extant commentary on it is assigned to Ching Wen, founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 BC, and his son.

There have been many explanations offered regarding this work, called by many the Qabbalah of China: some see in it only a system of divination, a lunar calendar, phallic worship, or again the vocabulary of a tribe whose very existence had to be postulated for this purpose. Both Taoists and Confucianists regard the I Ching as the holiest of books; Confucius declared that he would like to give another 50 years of his life to its study, while the only Chinese commentator who is said to have understood it was Chu Hsi (1130-1200).

In the Hi-ts'ze (or so-called Appendices to the work) the universe is described as a living organism called T'ai-ch'i (the supreme being, or most ultimate). The processes of birth and rebirth, or the production of life, are due to the manifestations of tao by means of the yang and yin.

"To Yang belong the numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9; to Yin belong the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. There are then five celestial and five terrestrial numbers; these rows of five operate upon each other, and each number has one with which it corresponds. The sum of the celestial numbers is twenty-five. It is in accordance with these factors that the processes of the Universe are effected, and the kwei and the shen do their work" (Hi-ts'ze).

Speaking of the I Ching, Blavatsky says:

"the Stanzas given in our text . . . represent precisely the same idea. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these represent the most abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe" (SD 1:441).

(See also: I Ching , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Links to archives related to mysticism:

Oomancy, Open Channel, Open Deck, Open Matching, Ophanim, 'Ophanim, 'Ophannim, Ophidian Current, Ophiomorphos, Ophiozenes, Ophir, Ophis, Ophis-Christos, Ophites, Opposites, Optic Thalamus, 'Or, Oracle, Orai, Orcus, Ordinary Consciousness, Ordovician Period, Orffyreus, Orgalmer, Organism, Orgelmir, Orgone, Orgone Energy, Orichalcum, Oriental Zodiac, Origen, Original Sin, Orion, Orlog, Ormazd, Ormuzd, Orpheus, Orphic Mysteries, Orphica, Orphism, Ortholexia, Orthrus, osadhi-prastha, Oshadhi-prastha, Oshadi Prastha, Osho, Osiris-Isis-Horus, Osraios, Ossa, Ostara, Ostura, Otherworld, Otz-Chiim, Ouija Board, Oui-Ja Board, Oulam, Oulom, Oun-nofre, Ouo, Ouraios, Ouranos, Out of Body Experience, Out of the Body Experience, Outer Band, Outer Round, Overshadowing, Oversoul, Oviform, Oviparous Humanity, Ovoid Humanity, Ovulists, Ox, Oxygen, Oxyopia, Oz, Ozone

Here are links to all 10 527 archives related to mysticism:

Mysticism Dictionary

Mysticism Dictionary - A, Mysticism Dictionary - B, Mysticism Dictionary - C,

Mysticism Dictionary - D, Mysticism Dictionary - E , Mysticism Dictionary - F,

Mysticism Dictionary - G, Mysticism Dictionary - H, Mysticism Dictionary - I,

Mysticism Dictionary - J, Mysticism Dictionary - K, Mysticism Dictionary - L,

Mysticism Dictionary - M, Mysticism Dictionary - N, Mysticism Dictionary - O,

Mysticism Dictionary - P, Mysticism Dictionary - Q, Mysticism Dictionary - R,

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