The Golden Star

VISION 11

The Dwellers in the Celestial Spheres

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“Although these Lords are so high in the Celestial Hierarchies, even they are Illusion, and therefore have no more permanence than Man. Nevertheless, all things are relatively real, for the cognizer is also a reflection, and the things cognized are therefore as real to him as he is to himself. On whatever plane our consciousness may be acting, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. But nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute existence, which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. But as we rise in the scale of development we perceive that in the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and that the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached ‘actuality’; but only when we shall have reached Absolute Consciousness and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Illusion. Unchanged, the One Lord dwells in the profoundest depths of time, and during the intensest activities of the great Cycles. Beyond Him is Divine Spirit, round whose Concealed Pavilion is the Darkness of eternal Illusion.

“The first seven Dhyân Chohans are those Entities who are born of the Mind of the Logos; they are the Pure Flames, or the Intellectual Breaths; those Angels who are said to have made themselves independent by passing from the passive and quiescent into the active state of Self-Consciousness. Some of them incarnated as men, others have made men the vehicles of their Reflections. One of those great Lords has said: ‘I am the same to all Beings; those who worship me are in me, and I in them.’ For this reason the Egyptian Candidate for Initiation always personified the God of the Temple he belonged to—each Temple having a special God, the equivalent of one of the Dhyân Chohans—just as the High Priest of that Temple always personified that God, and as the Pope personates Peter, and even Jesus Christ, upon entering the inner Sanctuary.

“The necessity for all these Hosts of Creators will be apprehended perhaps when it is understood that the One Lord of All is Infinite and Unconditioned. This One Lord, State of Consciousness, or Principle—call it what you will—cannot create, for It can have no direct relation to the finite and conditioned.

“If all the wonders we behold in Nature, from the great Suns and Planets to the tender blade of grass or a speck of dust, had been created by the Absolute Perfection and were the direct work of even the First Energy that proceeded from It, then all these things would have been perfect, eternal and unconditioned like their Author. The many imperfect works found in Nature testify that they are the products of finite and conditioned Beings, no matter how high they rank amongst the Dhyân Chohans, Gods, or Archangels. These imperfect works are the unfinished creations and the products of evolution, under the guidance of the finite Lords.

“The First-Born Logos is not an Emanation but an Energy inherent and coeternal with the One Deity. It is an Energy or Condition which proceeds through itself, not being due to the active or conscious will of the one that produces it. The Zohar speaks of emanations, but reserves the word for the seven Sephiroth emanated from the first three, the triad of Kether, Chokmah, and Binah. As for these three, it explains the difference by calling them im-manations, or something inherent to and coeval with the subject postulated, or, in other words, ‘Energies.’ These ‘Auxiliaries,’ the Auphanim, the half-human Prajâpatis, the Angels, the Architects under the leadership of the ‘Angel of the Great Council,’ with the rest of the Kosmos-Builders, explain the imperfection of the Universe. This imperfection is one of the arguments of the Secret Science in favour of the existence and activity of these Powers. Philo was very near the truth when he ascribed the origin of evil to the admixture of inferior potencies in the arrangement of matter—and even in the formation of Man—a task entrusted to the Divine Logos.

“Thus it is not the One and Unconditioned Lord, nor even Its reflection that creates, but the ‘Seven Gods’ and their Hosts, who fashion the Universe out of the Eternal Matter, vivified into objective life by the reflection into it of the One Reality, the One Life.

“In the ancient teachings it is said that: ‘Descending on his region first as Lord of Glory, the Flame, having called into conscious being the highest of the Emanations of that special Region (like our own Kosmos, for instance), ascends from it again to Its Primeval Seat, whence It watches over and guides its countless beams, or Monads. It chooses as Its Avatâras only those who had the seven virtues in them in their previous incarnation. As for the rest, It overshadows each with one of Its countless beams. Yet even the beam is a part of the Lord of Lords.’

“Therefore, in the Egyptian Teachings, as in those of all others, Faiths founded on Philosophy, man was not merely a union of mind and body, but he became a trinity when Soul was added to it, the divine spiritual principle, which carries with it Wisdom and Understanding, with which the Mind eventually links up. They knew that Man was a septenary creation, consisting of:

• Kha—body.
• Khaba—astral body or shadow.
• Ba—Higher Mind.
• Akh—terrestrial intelligence (or lower mind).
• Sah—or mummy, whose functions commenced after the death of the body (actually, the Sah was the life-giving spark, but count mummy and life-giving spark as two separate principles); and
• Osiris—the highest, uncreated spirit, or Soul.

“Each of these principles has its own ray or rays which are in direct communion with the Monads in the higher realms, each according to its nature.

“Once man has entirely merged his Self in the Universal Self he becomes a Dhyâni, and is identified with Supreme Intelligence, and thus he becomes a Dweller in the Celestial Spheres. ‘They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that World . . . neither marry . . . neither can they die any more,’ as Jesus told the Sadducees.

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