Using the cosmic amphitheater as the scenario, I wish to portray some recollections in these pages…
Long before the emergence from Chaos of this lunar chain about which so many distinguished theosophist writers have spoken, there was a universe of which only traces now remain among the innermost files of Nature…
That which I will relate below, with the aim of clarifying the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, occurred in one of those worlds…
In accordance with cosmic decisions, seven human races very similar to those of our world, evolved and devolved on that planet.
By the time of its Fifth Root Race, which highly resembled our own, the abominable civilization of Kali Yuga or the Iron Age, such as we have at this moment here on Earth, was in existence.
At that time, I was merely a poor intellectual animal condemned to the sorrow of living. I had gone from bad to worse, incessantly reincorporating in male or female organisms in accordance with the debit and credit of Karma…
In plain language, I confess that my Natural Mother worked in vain creating bodies; I always destroyed them with my vices and passions.
Like an unbearable curse, each one of my existences was repeated within the spiral, in lower and lower curves… It was obvious that I had launched myself on the downward path of devolution.
I wallowed like a pig in the wretched mire of all my vices and was not remotely interested in spiritual matters…
Without question I had turned into an irredeemable cynic: it became clear that any kind of punishment, no matter how grave, was in fact condemned to failure…
It is said that Buddha’s necklace has one hundred and eight beads, and this indicates to us the number of lives which are assigned to every soul…
I must emphasize by saying that the last of those 108 existences was for me something definitive… it was then that I entered devolution in the submerged mineral kingdom.
The last of those personalities was of the female sex and it is clear that after wallowing in the bed of Procrustes, it served me the passport to hell…
In the bowels of that mineral world, I blasphemed, I cursed, I offended, I insulted, I fornicated shockingly, and I degenerated more and more without any sign of repentance…
I felt as if I were falling into the remotest distant past; the human form disgusted me; I preferred to assume the form of beasts in those abysses, later appearing as a plant, a shadow that slid here and there; finally, I felt I was fossilizing…
To turn into stone! What horror!… Yet, as I was in such a state of degeneration, it was of no importance to me…
To see the leper in the city of the living dead with fingers, ears, noses, arms, and legs falling off is certainly not pleasant; still nothing moved me…
I fornicated unceasingly in the bed of Procrustes with whatever larva came near, and I felt myself extinguishing like a taper, a wax candle…
Life in the mineral entrails of such a planet obviously was excessively monotonous; that is why, since I wanted to kill long and tedious amounts of time, I wallowed like a pig in filth.
I became frightfully debilitated, falling into pieces and dying painfully; I disintegrated with hideous slowness…
I no longer had strength to think. It was better this way. At last came the “Second Death” about which Saint John spoke in the Apocalypse; I exhaled my last breath and then…
The Essence was freed; I saw myself transformed into a lovely child. Certain Devas, after examining me thoroughly, allowed me to enter through atomic doors which led to a return journey to the surface of the planet into the sunlight.
Evidently the ego had died, the me, myself, the “I.” My freed soul now assumed the beautiful shape of a tender infant… What happiness, my God! How great is the mercy of God!…
Essence liberated from the ego is completely innocent and pure. The ego is that which is changed into cosmic dust within the bowels of this world…
How long did I live in the infernal worlds? I do not know, possibly eight to ten thousand years…
Now devoid of ego and back on the evolutionary path, I entered the world of gnomes or pygmies, beings who work with the clay of the earth, innocent elementals of the mineral kingdom…
Later I entered the paradises of the elementals in the plant kingdom; I reincorporated constantly as plants, trees, and flowers; How happy I felt in the temples of Eden receiving the teaching at the feet of the Devas…!
Happiness in the paradise of the Jinns is inconceivable to human reasoning.
Every family in those Edens has its temples and instructors. One is filled with ecstasy upon entering the sanctuary of the orange groves or the chapel of the elemental family of mint, the church of the eucalyptus…
In dealing with the evolutionary process we must put forth the following statement: Natura non facit saltus (Nature does not take leaps). It is therefore evident that the more advanced states of the plant kingdom allowed me passage to the animal state.
I began to reembody in very simple organisms and after having taken millions of bodies, I ended up returning in more and more complex organisms…
As an outstanding note in these paragraphs, I must assert that still I have very interesting memories of one of those many existences by the banks of a beautiful river of cheerful waters which rushed ever so musically over its bed of age old rocks…
I was at that time a humble creature, a very particular specimen of the Batrachian genus. I moved about in the thicket, hopping here, there and everywhere.
Clearly, I had full consciousness of myself; I knew that formerly I had belonged to the perilous kingdom of intellectual animals… My best friends were the elementals of those plants which had their roots in the banks of the river. I talked with them in the universal language…
I dwelt delightfully in the shadow, far away from rational humanoids. When I had presentiment of any immediate danger, I found refuge in the crystalline waters…
I continued to return many times in various organisms before I had the pleasure of reembodying as a specimen of a certain class of very intelligent amphibians which gladly emerged from the stormy waters of the sea to greet the sun’s rays on the sandy beach…
When the terrible Parca (death) came, sovereign before whom all mortals tremble with fear, I bid my last farewell to the three inferior kingdoms and returned to a humanoid organism; thus, I painfully recaptured the rational animal state which I previously lost…
In this, my new state of a tri-brained or tri-centered biped state, I remembered and I evoked unusual abysmal incidents. I did not have the slightest desire to go back to the buried world. I longed to wisely make the most of my new cycle of one hundred and eight lives which were now assigned me for the realization of my Innermost Self.
Past experience had left painful scars in the depth of my soul, and I was in no way willing to repeat the devolving processes of the internal world.
I knew well that the Wheel of Samsara turns incessantly in an evolving and devolving way and that Essences, after passing through the intellectual animal kingdom, descend millions of times to the horrifying precipice to eliminate the subjective elements of perception. However, by no means did I long for more abysmal suffering, and that is why I was very willing to make the best of my new cycle of rational existences.
By this time, the civilization of the aforementioned planet had reached its peak; the inhabitants of that world had ships, spaceships, gigantic ultra modern cities, powerful industries and commerce, all kinds of universities, etc.; unfortunately, there was no coordination whatsoever with the concerns of the spirit.
In one of my new humanoid existences, with a restless consciousness, as though sensing a strange terror, I resolved to inquire into, to investigate, to seek the secret path…
A wise old proverb says, “When the disciple is ready, the Master appears.”
The Guru, the Guide, appeared, to take me out of the darkness into the light; he taught me the mysteries of life and death; he showed me the path of the razor’s edge.
Thus the mystery of the golden blossom came about; I understood my own situation in depth. I knew that I was only a poor homunculus, yearning to become a true Man, and it is obvious that I achieved this in that great cosmic day, that sidereal day before yesterday, long before the Mahamanvantara of Padma or Golden Lotus.
Unfortunately, in those long distant times when I had scarcely started my esoteric studies at the feet of the Master, I did not enjoy any fortune whatsoever; my family, inhabitants of that world, lived in poverty; a sister who looked after the house earned wretched pennies in a street market selling fruit and vegetables; I used to accompany her…
On one occasion, I was locked up in a horrendous prison for no reason…
I spent a long time behind the cruel bars of that jail. However, and this is curious, no one accused me. There was no crime to pursue. It was treated as a very special case and to make matters worse, my name did not even appear on the list of prisoners. Obviously, there was a certain kind of secret persecution against the Initiates, so I came to understand.
I lay in wait patiently, in anticipation of any opportunity, for some chance moment to escape…
A number of times I tried in vain to escape, but finally one day, for no particular reason, the guards forgot that a door had been left open; unquestionably I could not miss this opportunity that I had so longed for. In a matter of seconds I was out of that prison making detours in a market square with the intention of throwing off track some of the police who had managed to see me and were following. I succeeded in my attempt and left that city for good.
I shall conclude the present chapter by saying that only by working in the fiery forge of Vulcan did I then manage to become a real Man.
Samael Aún Weor
