The Universal World-View of the Masters

by Dr George Arnsby Jones, Litt.D., Ph.D.

Most of the great social religions attempt to present a world-view – or theology – of the liberating force, which is God, and to relate this force to the entire spiritual and physical universe. The term theology presupposes both a synthesis or philosophy of religion and a critical study of religious teachings. Ideally, such a theology should set forth a broad statement concerning the nature of God and His attributes and His relations with mankind. The theologies of the major world faiths contain several doctrines which are common to them all, but each one of these faiths also has garnered accretions of dogma and doctrinal arguments and speculations over the course of thousands of years. The theology, or universal world-view, thus set forth here will be derived from the pure teachings of the Mystic Adepts Themselves rather than from professional theologians and metaphysical scholars. At the core of the Mystic Adepts’ world-view is the Supreme Being, Whom – the mystics insist – cannot be named; thus, He is often ‘known’ by the term Anami Purush – Nameless Spirit or Nameless One. This exalted, Supernal Being dwells on a plane that is so spiritual that its nature is completely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. But there are many dominions and realms below this Supreme Dominion of the Highest Being. These dominions, Mansions in the Father’s House, can be conveniently divided into the four Grand Divisions of the cosmic scheme of creation. The Mystic Adepts set forth these divisions in the following way:

1. The purely Spiritual Region.
2. The spirituo-material region.
3. The materio-spiritual region.
4. The material region.

The Highest Division, the purely Spiritual Region, is termed Sat Loka in Hinduism, Such Khand in Sikhism, and Muqam-i-Haq in the teachings of Islamic sages. It is the highest and truly Spiritual Realm, entirely devoid of physical, mental and spiritualised matter. In the terminology of the Mystic Adepts it is

unchanging and eternal; all joy and all bliss; all wisdom and all Love; the Abode of God. Here, in ineffable wonder, dwell the perfected Spiritual Beings and the Supreme Saints of all time.

The Lord of the lowest plane of this wondrous region is known in oriental terminology as Sat Purush, the True Being. The esoteric scriptures of the East state that this Being radiates a Light which is the equivalent of billions of suns, although this is still a poor description of Him, for He is beyond the capacity of human language or intellect to describe. Sat Purush directs and controls the creation and the dissolution of the entire cosmic universe, but His own region is immune from any such change. This True Being derives His power from Anami Purush, the Nameless One.

The second division is termed Brahmand – the Egg of Brahm – in the oriental teachings. It is so called because of its apparently elliptical shape. It embraces within its totality both the materio-spiritual and the physical regions, but it is far more immense than the combination of both of these. In fact, the three lower divisions of the cosmic creation can be conceived of as a totality, with the summit of this region as Brahmand, the spirituo-material region itself, and the middle section as And, the oriental term for the materio-spiritual region, and the lowest section as Pind, the oriental term for the lowest material region – the physical universe.

The inhabitants of Brahmand, the spirituo-material region, are unutterably happy, but they are not immortal as are the beings in the Highest Region of Sach Khand. However, they live in an infinitely vaster time-scale than do the beings in the lower two divisions. Brahmand is subject to dissolution at the end of each major cosmic life-cycle. Brahmand is the region of Brahm and Par Brahm, who are also known as Kal and Maha-Kal in the oriental terminology. Brahm is the being who is entrusted with the direction of the material creation and is an assistant to Par Brahm. He is the ruling deity of the three lower divisions: Brahmand, And and Pind. Par Brahm resides in the upper and more spiritual section of Brahmand, and Brahm himself resides in the lower, more material region. In this lower section of Brahmand, mental matter is supreme, for it is the plane of mind; mind itself being composed of a subtlised form of matter with a certain admixture of spirit. Trikuti, the oriental term for the lower section of Brahmand, is therefore the region of Universal Mind, which many meta-physicians and theologians erroneously conceive of as ‘God.’

And, the third and materio-spiritual region, is the nearest Grand Division to that of the physical universe. The central power-source of And is known in oriental terminology as Sahasra Kanwal – the Lotus of a Thousand Petals –, and it is from this power-source that the physical universe derives its motor energies. The time-scale in And is shorter than that in Brahmand, but it is still much longer than that in Pind, the physical universe. The region of And, up to and including Trikuti, goes into dissolution at the end of a lesser cosmic life-cycle, which lasts for many millions of years. The ‘heavens’ of the world religions are located in And and in the lowest realms of Brahmand. The Heaven of Christianity, the Paradise of Islam, and the Swargas of Hinduism are all located here. These ‘heavens’ are very beautiful, but they themselves are all subject to eventual dissolution.

Pind, the fourth and lowest division of creation, comprises the entirety of our physical universe: all the planets, suns, stars, solar systems, galaxies and cosmic schemes known and unknown to modern astronomy. Matter in our physical universe is in its most coarse, most dense form, with a very limited admixture of spirit substance, just enough to vivify matter and maintain life. The physical structure of our universe is the lowest projection of a cosmic idea channelled through the medium of Universal Mind. At some primordial point in what we call space-time the first downward waves of energy from Brahmand and And differentiated that primal matter – known in some esoteric literature as ‘fire-mist’ – into the first worlds of physical creation. That mass of fire-mist which was to become our Earth was once floating near to the great sphere of its sun. Its mass of primal atoms were multiplying at a tremendous rate, and the formation of that planet upon which we now dwell was in progress. This creative process was speeded up, through aeons of time, by the reproductive principles immanent in the primal life-forces emanating from And and Brahmand. Waves of cosmic force were descending the spiral of creation, and the planet earth evolved upon one of the wave-lengths of the Being who controls all the orders of manifestation within all life-forms.

This downward-flowing cosmic force, which impels living souls into lower creation, is the negative pole of the same audible Life-Stream which – in its upward-surging, positive manifestation – can liberate souls from bondage to mind and matter. This negative aspect of the primal Spiritual Force was necessary to the purpose of universal creation; through its pulsating flow that primordial fire-mist, eventually to become our home, increased its density and gravitated towards the sun. The sun’s magnetic power moulded the fire-mist into a flat, disc-like condition, and this sun-earth relationship continued through further epochs of time. Then the sun gradually impregnated the primal atoms of the fire-mist with the transmutative atomic potentialities of the minerals and gases, which now constitute our present planet and its surrounding atmosphere. The fire-mist now rapidly increased its density and began to experience the attractive force within its own nucleus. This inner vibratory activity caused the spheroidal shape of the earth and it began to whirl away into space away from the sun. It became a self-motivating system, thus preventing its continuing movement away from the sun, and it began to form its present functional relationship with the sun and with the other planets which comprise this solar system. The negative pole of the cosmic creative force keeps the earth in its present elliptical relationship with the sun. Thus the creation of this tiny speck of dust in the vastness of Pind – the primal home of mankind. The Mystic Adepts teach that this planet is a vast complex of living souls. There are degrees of soul-consciousness functioning through all grades of matter: through neutron, proton, electron, atom, molecule, cell, colloid, and onward and upward on the ascending scale of life until man himself is reached. How long has man been on this earth? And how much longer will he elect to stay?

Man is still chained to the lower three divisions of mind and matter by the negative pole of the cosmic Life-Stream. Gross matter is cosmic energy at its lowest vibrationary level, and subtle energy is matter at its highest point in the spiral of creation. Matter and energy are in constant interaction in the three divisions – Brahmand, And and Pind – and this state of affairs has gone on for countless aeons; there is no escape from the continual cycle of ascending and descending these lower levels of creation until the human being has merged his consciousness fully with the upward-surging, Spiritual Current that leads to man’s True Home, the Abode of Bliss. It has been said by some metaphysicians that matter can be ‘liberated’ by speeding up its vibrations, so that it is transformed into energy. Likewise, say these wise ones, man can transform himself into higher ‘energy.’ There is a half-truth here, for the ‘energy’ spoken of is still that of the materio-spiritual or – at its best – the spirituo-material world. Matter is real – despite the negations on this subject so beloved of certain religious schools of thought – but with all its reality, matter is still impermanent and ever-changing because of the continuing forces of the evolutionary process. And the same truth applies to the subtlised forms of matter in the second and third divisions of creation. Therefore, what is known as the ‘illusory nature of our external world’ can be seen as the impermanence of creation in all three lower divisions of the cosmic universe.

Man had to have this planetary home in order to evolve to a state of self-consciousness and self-realisation. He was given an intelligent planet on which to achieve his goal. When the earth took its present orbit in the solar system it was in a super-heated condition. This concentrated heat caused a release of energy from the radiant sphere, and this energy produced a cloud-mass which completely surrounded the earth. This cloud-mass, consisting of several gases which have been created by the cooling process of the planet, eventually became transformed into the present atmosphere. Through the intelligence immanent in all creation, this early cloud-mass served as a protection for the evolving earth-sphere from the powerful cosmic radiations of the highly condensed stars. The present atmosphere surrounding the earth, with its highly advanced degree of innate intelligence, now filters out these outer cosmic radiations in a far more efficient manner than did the primordial cloud-mass. The solar sphere then focused its beneficial sunlight through the cloud-mass, and thus enabled the infant-earth to attain the stage where it could produce organic forms.

Through the cooling process it had undergone, the earth reached that temperature whereby primordial species of vegetation could come into being. These early forms of vegetation and crude mosses and peat possessed rudimentary morphic delineation. The early animal forms were also cumbersome and grotesque. The morphic principle inherent in the downward-flowing creative forces gradually evolved finer structural developments in mineral, vegetable and animal forms. And soon the planetary stage was set for the eventual type of physical organism which would house the highest ensouled entity – man. And man himself has now moved through many epochs of human history, experiencing so many things in the outer world that he forgets that he was an outgoing spark of the Divine Flame before he became an ensouled body. It is time for him to remember that the summum bonum of all his earthly existence is that point where he is ready to return to the True Home as a fully conscious and liberated soul.