Then, again, another great perplexity was created in the minds of students by the incomplete exposition of the doctrine of the evolution of the Monads. To be fully realized, both this process and that of the birth of the Globes must be examined far more from their metaphysical aspect, than from what one might call a statistical standpoint, involving figures and numbers which are rarely permitted to be widely used. Unfortunately, there are few who are inclined to handle these doctrines only metaphysically. Even the best of the Western writers upon our doctrine declares in his work, when speaking of the evolution of the Monads, that “on pure metaphysics of that sort we are not now engaged.”(281) And in such case, as the Teacher remarks in a letter to him: “_Why this preaching of our doctrines, all this uphill work and swimming __‘__in adversum flumen__’__? Why should the West ... learn ... from the East ... that which can never meet the requirements of the special tastes of the æsthetics?_” And he draws his correspondent’s attention “_to the formidable difficulties encountered by us [the Adepts] in every attempt we make to explain our metaphysics to the Western mind._”
And well he may; for _outside_ of metaphysics, no Occult philosophy, no Esotericism is possible. It is like trying to explain the aspirations and affections, love and hatred, the most private and sacred workings in the soul and mind of a living man, by an anatomical description of the thorax and brain of his dead body.
Let us now examine two tenets mentioned above, but hardly alluded to in _Esoteric Buddhism_, and supplement them as far as lies in our power.
Additional Facts And Explanations Concerning The Globes And The Monads.
Two statements made in the above work must be noticed and the author’s opinions quoted. The first is as follows:
The spiritual Monads ... do not fully complete their mineral existence on Globe A, then complete it on Globe B, and so on. They pass several times round the whole circle as minerals, and then again several times round as vegetables, and several times as animals. We purposely refrain for the present from going into figures, etc., etc.(282)
That was a wise course to adopt in view of the great secrecy maintained with regard to figures and numbers. This reticence is now partially relinquished; but it would perhaps have been better had the real numbers concerning Rounds and evolutional gyrations been either entirely divulged at the time, or entirely withheld. Mr. Sinnett understood this difficulty well when saying: