THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

LIFE ATOMS

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What then is meant by the life-atoms, and their going through endless transmigrations.

The invisible atoms of the mummy would mean the imperceptibly decaying atoms of the physical body, and the life-atoms of the Jiva would be quite distinct from the atoms of the mummy. Do your words import that both the invisible atoms of the physical body as well as the atoms of the Jiva after going through various life-forms return again to re-form the physical body, and the Jiva of the entity that has reached the end of its Devachanic state and is ready to be reincarnated again?

[C.W.V, p109]

Without any doubt Jiva or Prana is quite distinct from the atoms it animates. The latter belong to the lowest or grossest state of matter – the objectively conditioned; the former – to its highest state: that state which the uninitiated, ignorant of its nature, would call the ‘objectively finite,’ but which, to avoid any future misunderstanding, we may, perhaps, be permitted to call the Subjectively Eternal, though at the same time, and in one sense the subsistent existence – however paradoxical and unscientific the term may appear.* Life, the occultist says, is the eternal uncreated energy, and it alone represents in the infinite universe, that which the physicists have agreed to name, the principle, or the law of continuity, though they apply it only to the endless development of the conditioned.

* Though there is a distinct term for it in the language of the adepts, how can one translate it into a European language? What name can be given to that which is objective yet immaterial in its finite manifestations, subjective yet substantive (though not in our sense of substance) in its eternal existence? Having explained it the best we can, we leave the task of finding a more appropriate term for it to our learned English occultists.

[C.W.V, p111]

And, to our correspondent’s further query, “do the atoms of these (the 4th and the 5th) also re-form after going through various transmigrations to constitute over again the 4th and the lower 5th of the next incarnation” – we answer – “they do.” The reason why we have tried to explain the doctrine of the “life atoms” at such length, is precisely in connection with this last question, and with the object of throwing out one more valuable hint. We do not feel at liberty at present, however, to give any further details.

[C.W.V, p117]

Life is ever present in the atom or matter, whether organic or inorganic conditioned or unconditioned – a difference that the occultists do not accept . . . . When life-energy is active in the atom, that atom is organic; when dormant or latent, then the atom is inorganic . . . .

[C.W.IX, p74]

Every atom has contained within it its own life, or force, and the various atoms which make up the physical frame always carry with them their own life wherever they travel. The human or animal life-principle, however, which vitalizes the whole being, appears to be a progressed, differentiated, and individualized energy of motion, which seems to travel from organism to organism at each successive death. Is it really, as quoted above, “subtle supersensuous matter,” which is something distinct from the atoms that form the physical body?

If so, it becomes a sort of a monad, and would be something akin to the higher human soul which transmigrates from body to body.

[C.W.IX, p77]

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