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.