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ABOUT MYSELF:

In one respect this book is the product of decades of searching without a definite goal in mind – only to learn and explore.  What I eventually found was the Alice Bailey books (about 18 altogether plus six by Alice Bailey) which held a strange fascination for me, but it was only after some years that I had the urge to write.  As I wrote the more I learned, and the more I learned the more I wrote.  It has been a learning experience.

Only after eight years of reading and study followed by about five years of writing did I finally understand what I had really been writing about.  Once I came to this realization the real objective emerged.  I then had to discard about half of what I had written, and largely rewrite the rest.  Mostly the book will reflect the Bailey presentation and terminology so as to provide an easy bridge to the Bailey references.  In some cases I retained a particular word or phrase thereby reflecting the original “color” of the writing that some might label as direct or controversial.  References will lead the reader to the original source.

As for myself, being a Control Systems Engineer by profession makes me a hybrid between a Mechanical and an Electrical Engineer.  My field is largely Instrumentation.  Starting in 1956, I worked as a test engineer in Military Research and Development.  A few years later that was called Aerospace.  Then as an Application Engineer I worked at Beckman Instruments with process type analytical instrumentation.  Finally as a Bechtel Design Engineer I worked in the engineering, construction, and operation of nuclear power plants.  The last five years before my retirement I worked in Design Engineering on the nuclear waste cleanup program at Savannah River.

With this type of background I am used to figuring out how things work, and how they work together from a systems standpoint.  My background is more broad in scope for it cuts through multiple disciplines.  So, I am by no means a specialist which probably works in my favor considering the varied nature of this work.  I tend to keep working on something until it makes sense to me.  The problem I have faced all along is that the material in this book challenges so many long accepted “scientific” beliefs.  It enters an area that science has hitherto avoided, a point that demands correction.  My pursuit of this work will probably continue to occupy me until I get ready to leave.

THE ETHERIC WORLDS:

             While our scientists have worked diligently to understand everything about our physical world, they have not been able to make much progress in understanding the etheric worlds as our only link to these worlds is through sight.  Unfortunately, only a few of us have the extraordinary gift of etheric vision.  We loosely call this gift clairvoyance.  There are different levels of that ability, but it typically opens up what are termed the 3rd and 4th ethers to vision through the physical eyes.  Still others have astral vision in which the aura is seen, and this allows views of the astral and mental bodies.

So, in addition to the matter that we know in the states we call solid, liquid, and gas, we have forms of matter beyond gasses that we term “the four ethers”.  The ethers seem to have no mass since they inter-penetrate our solid matter.  These ethers are, however,  similarly  energized like the physical matter we know with its changes of state, and the ethers in turn may be energized into various discrete levels of activity.  These levels we call “planes” or “sub-planes”.

Thus we come to have a physical plane that we know, as well as an astral plane and mental plane that our senses do not detect.  We could view these planes as successive energy levels.  These planes are also what some people think of as different “dimensions”, or in science fiction terminology, a “parallel universe”.  The real story is somewhat less exotic.

We might further note that man also has a separate body of consciousness on each of these planes, and these bodies are built of that same etheric substance.  So, it is not like we are discussing something totally alien to ourselves.  The, astral, and mental bodies that are a part of us also have their own corresponding forms throughout the planetary worlds.  So, the Earth also has an astral body as well as a mental body, if it did not we would not exist for we are all built out of the matter of our world.

Because these bodies composed of etheric matter are not perceived by most people, the tendency is to ignore their reality.  Now, consider the person that has a medical problem, and must go to the hospital to undergo an operation.  Once under anesthesia they might suddenly become conscious again, but strangely they find themselves floating in mid air up near the ceiling.  Even more disconcerting they can see their own body on the table below, and the first thought is they must have died.  No one below seems concerned, however, for the monitors are beeping normally.  In short, the person is still alive, but separated from their own physical body.

The person soon realizes that their full waking consciousness is with them, and they are now in a different form.  The question then is what should we think of this matter.  Is it not evident that there is more to us than just the physical body, and more to the point, our real consciousness does not reside in that physical form.  Ponder that!

Until our science acknowledges the existence of the etheric and undertakes active investigation of these worlds, we will remain mired in 20th century orthodoxy.  This also means no real progress in new fields such as Astrobiology or other new fields of exploration.

WHAT  IS  EVOLUTION  REALLY ?

Evolution is a much more extensive topic than what Darwinian evolutionary science acknowledges.  This is understandable because it is otherwise entirely subjective in nature.  For the most part it lies outside the normal boundaries of our senses, or for the sensitivities of the instruments we have developed.  What follows then is essentially unknowable to our human perspective at the present state of our development – unless we are told.  Evolution is actually a science of the future, it is life.

Living in the age that he did, Darwin essentially proposed an evolutionary process that proceeded through natural, observable means.  Today that model includes the concepts of genetic mutation augmented by natural selection, and all resting upon the idea of descent from a common ancestor.  While all these elements are usually accepted to be correct, the ability of this model to explain the complex processes that painstaking research over the last century has brought to light appears dim.

The processes existing in even a single cell have been researched in depth, and the case for careful planning seems rather evident.  Certainly the planning involved in building masses of cells into endocrine glands, each of which interact with other endocrine glands, and all utilizing the services of a circulatory system to communicate is a task beyond our science today – let alone leaving it all to chance happenings.

So, if we now consider that there is another whole world beyond the dense physical that we know, namely the etheric, then we have an exceedingly complex matter.  First, this will involve the coordination of multiple forms.  Further we need to contemplate that whatever shape or form we have it all stems from an underlying etheric framework.  This model then extends itself growing its “coat of skin” which is actually built inside to out with the dense physical matter that we know.  This actually represents still more complication to present  day conceptions.

One of the first principles of evolution as expressed here is that new developments are continually placed upon old foundations.  Everything in existence is in a state of increase, growing, and developing.  A second principle of the evolutionary process is that it follows a pattern based upon energy utilization and synthesis, a merging.  A third principle involves the recognition that the emergence of man establishes a fundamental pattern.

Throughout at least the last three centuries numerous books have been written on various aspects of esoteric philosophy.  The earlier ones were couched in archaic phraseology and difficult to understand.  In the last century, however, a series of books by Alice Bailey was a modern, in-depth approach to the subject of evolution.  While these books utilized modern English usage, the revelatory nature of these books caused them to be presented “cloaked” so that they require study to organize the material , and understand what is really being said.  They typically require several readings as the material brings new understanding only after an earlier reading has been assimilated.  Thus each reading becomes a new experience.

An important concept we come to realize is that humans travel the evolutionary path to a point where they no longer must reincarnate into a dense physical body, and from that point continue their existence in a body comprised of only etheric matter.  We learn that on the nearby worlds of Venus, Mercury, and Vulcan, the human populations already exist in bodies built with only etheric matter.  Such beings are invisible to the sight of most people like ourselves, and are no longer subject to the environmental effects we humans in dense physical matter are subject to.

From an evolutionary standpoint we are told that Venus is completing her final world period while Mercury is between world periods in a state of pralaya.  While at present Venus has a dense physical planetary body, at the conclusion of this world period she will become an astral planet, and the dense physical planet that we see in our night sky will become a cast off shell.  Not to worry, this will not happen for millions of years.

 THE  MAN  IN  THE  MOON

             As fascinating as are the illustrations of our Moon breaking off from the Earth as a result of an impact by some errant celestial body, it is all conjecture.  As thinking individuals we need to examine the logic of such theories, and evaluate whether or not that theory fits with what we can actually observe.

The first point to note is that all larger bodies in the solar system are essentially spherical to the eye.  They vary in size from the tiny planetoid Ceres that is almost 600 miles in diameter up to the planet Jupiter that is about 88,700 miles in diameter.  The terrestrial planets assumed this shape during their initial formation when in a molten state while the gas planets are always that shape because they are liquid.

We distinguish between planets and moons by calling those that orbit the Sun “planets”, while those that rotate around planets are called “moons”.  Exceptions to the spherical shape exist only as fragments, with the remnant shapes being very irregular.  These are typically called asteroids.

Asteroids are fragments of worlds that have gone through their evolutionary life process, and left a physical “shell” behind.  That shell either ended up circling some planet or it was allowed to collide with another cast off shell thereby leaving fragments.  The result at this point being an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that represents fragments of many planetary worlds from the past of our system.  The lives of all kingdoms that were part of those worlds are now on an astral planet that was part of the original planetary scheme.  That astral planet, together with its life forms, still orbits the sun.  The distinction should be noted that “bodies” are alive while “shells” are what we term dead.

So, to say it another way, when we humans pass through the change called death leaving behind a physical “body”, so the “body” we call a moon is simply a planetary equivalent.  The Moon we see in our sky was once a terrestrial planet like our Earth.  At some point more than 100 million years ago the Moon became a failed chain, and was subsequently brought into Earth orbit where it entered into a process of synthesis.  During synthesis the life essence of the Moon was absorbed into our world while the form nature of those various lives disappeared in that process.  Dust to dust.  From observations during our visit to the lunar surface years ago there did not seem to be any shortage of dust.

We might also note that in that process of synthesis millions of what are termed human monads came into our Earth scheme.  These monads were already individualized beings meaning that each had an individual human soul.  Individualization essentially means that that life is no longer part of the animal kingdom where the animal is governed by the herd instinct.  In this instance there is no identification of self while humans distinguish between themselves and other like beings.

While in the case above, our Earth was the recipient in that process of synthesis, this would not normally be the case since there are other planets that serve as collection worlds.  Saturn is the principal planet of synthesis in our system as might be noted from the extensive ring structure, as well as the large number of orbiting satellites.  In this role it serves as a collection point for the life essence , and as a processing station for disposal of the physical (planetary) forms.

The large number of moons presently orbiting Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune must represent what were once planetary worlds orbiting the Sun.  As such they likely represent a secondary group termed the “inner round”, a part of the early system.  Some of these moons still show signs of a remaining life process, but their status is not in doubt.  For that matter, a human body takes some period of time up to a day, to lose all life activity.

The origin of most of the material in this section is from the book Cosmic Fire by Alice Bailey.  It was published in 1925.  None of this information seems to have crept into the astronomical world, although one must work first at extracting the information and then piecing it together.

THE  MARTIAN  STORY

             Our physical world that we know will extend over a time span of perhaps 6 billion years.  During that period there will be seven consecutive periods termed “rounds”, also called world periods.  In a perfect world each of these rounds would represent a shorter time span than the previous one by a factor of phi or (0.62), thus reflecting the spiral-cyclic nature of the evolutionary process.  Further, each round is separated from the last by a period of rest.  This particular period is called an “intermediate pralaya”, and represents about 10% of the duration of a round.  This period of pralaya represents a more or less complete break in the life process.

The idea of the seas drying up is not really a strange unknown concept. The paleontological record here on Earth shows a number of periods labeled “extinctions” during which ancient marine species disappeared – only to return later.  There are also several places in the Bible where the statement is made….”I will dry up the seas”.  Sometimes the context makes sense, while in other cases it does not.

In evolutionary terms each of these world periods represents a new starting point for the life process which is why it is called a “world period”.  In this fresh start the life forms build upon what had been previously established, they repeat that earlier growth rapidly, and then move forward into new areas of development.

The subject of Martian scheme development is involved with the evolutionary development of our entire solar system, and  Mars is also one of the seven manifesting planetary schemes that are involved with that evolutionary process.  The schemes themselves are also involved in their own evolutionary development that occurs as a sort of overlapping sequence, while the system as a whole is on its own evolutionary path, a path that is hidden to us.  Interestingly, the individual planetary schemes must progress in their own evolution before the system itself can advance.  So, some planets are well ahead while others are well back in their development, all planets being at different points from an evolutionary standpoint, and from the Bailey presentation one gains much insight into the various levels of the evolutionary process as it exists.

As for Mars, from photographic images of the present surface returned by the Mars Rovers, it should be possible to see that an evolutionary process has previously existed.  During that earlier period the surface probably would have looked a bit like some Earth landscapes in our own history.  Evidence of earlier erosion by water is visible in the images, but the surface now looks like it has been in the present state of pralaya for some millions of years.  We can also see that at present all bodies of water have dried up between the world periods.  While no life is in evidence on Mars, that may change at some point before we enter our next intermediate pralaya in perhaps 20 million years.

At the present time our Earth is in the process of initial development of the 4th kingdom, the human.  This is a critical period for it is the initial stage of a crucial phase of the evolutionary process we are involved with, and this initial development will also continue for some millions of years.  Following this period another planet will commence the same process.  That planet will be Mars, for up to this point Mars has been developing only the lower kingdoms.

SOLAR  EVOLUTION

             By first modeling the evolutionary process as it relates to man we can then better understand the natural correspondence at solar levels.  The evolutionary journey of man extends over a period of millions of years, and is expressed through three stages that involve his three bodies of consciousness.  These three stages are seen in the life process over three consecutive root-races.  First as Lemurian man he labored for millions of years in perfecting his physical body.  Then as Atlantean man he labored for more millions of years perfecting his astral body.  Now as Aryan man he is in the process of perfecting his mental body, but over a still lesser period of time.

We are told that there are three successive solar systems that represent the lives of one solar Logos.  These three systems are expressed through the lives of three types of stars.  In the first system the Red Dwarfs constitute almost 90% of all stars in the universe.  In the second system are stars belonging to the Main Sequence, like our own Sun.  In the final system the few Blue Giants comprise about 1% of the universe.  So, based upon what we can actually observe, each succeeding life appearance of the solar Logos is roughly one-tenth the duration of the previous system., and interestingly the population of that type of star averages one-tenth that of the previous system.

THE  FIRST  SYSTEM will be a small, low energy type of star as exemplified by a Red Dwarf.  The solar mass will be in a range from about 0.1 to 0.5.  This will be a very long lived star.  When this type of star has exhausted its supply of Hydrogen fuel it will become a burned out shell.

THE  SECOND  SYSTEM will be one belonging to the Main Sequence.  In this case the solar mass will vary from about 0.5 to 5.0.  The life path of this system leads through the stage termed a Red Giant, and ultimately this star ends its life as a White Dwarf.

THE  THIRD  SYSTEM will be a Blue Giant having a solar mass from about 5.0 to over 100.  The end of this system will come with a shattering explosion, a super nova.  The remaining remnant will be a Neutron Star.  The evolutionary process for a star or solar system is complete at this point.

This is not the end of the solar evolutionary process, however.  Following the path of development beyond our solar system we have the Seven Solar Systems.  Where there are seven (manifesting) planetary schemes in our solar system, so this greater system now has seven star systems as a correspondence.  Again, the seven star systems are not the sum total of what is involved, just as there are more than seven planets in our solar system.

We are told that our Sun as well as the nearby Sirius star system are important members of this greater system.  Looking at some of the nearby reaches of space we could list other stars likely to be members of this system.   These other nearby candidates include Alpha and Beta Centauri.  Both of these star systems are actually binaries, and at a distance of 4.3  Light Years , are actually quite close to our system in astronomical terms.  Still other candidates include Procyon in the constellation of Canis Minor, Tau Ceti in the constellation Cetus, and Epsilon Eridani.  These latter three are 10 to 12 light years away.  The last two are also Main Sequence type stars like our own Sun that could host civilizations like our own. The first three would have civilizations that are evolved beyond our comprehension.

The motion of this entire group is just like a larger solar system, and is built just like our system with our Sun at the center.  While our system has a central physical Sun this larger system will have an equivalent central body that is in etheric matter.  All the star systems orbit this central body just like planets while this system as a whole will have its own trajectory through the heavens.

Note:   It should be realized that the present tendency of many in the astronomical community is to lump all stars into the Main Sequence, this in spite of the radical differences between the types, and the fact that we can clearly define these three types from a physical standpoint.  As a matter of fact if we go back at least 25 years we would find that these three types of stars were the conventional wisdom.  We might also note that in looking at these three distinct phases of one immense evolutionary process, we could view this like our own human development that passes over a single lifetime in steps from infant to adolescent to adult.