Created Beings

Until the birth of time, the created universe was made in the likeness of the original. But since all animals were not yet created, it was still Unlike.

What remained, the Creator then proceeded to fashion after the nature of the pattern. The mind perceives the idea of an animal a certain nature and number. And so He thought that this created animal should have a like nature and number.

The four of such are:

1. The stars
2. The race of birds of the air
3. The water species
4. The land creatures.

Of the heavenly and divine, He:

• created the greater part out of fire [radiant layer], that they might be the brightest of all things and fairest to behold
• fashioned them after the likeness of the universe in the shape of a circle
• made them follow the intelligent motion of the supreme, distributing them over the whole circumference of heaven, which was to be a true cosmos or glorious world spangled with them all over.

He gave to each of them two movements:

1. A movement on the same spot after the same manner, whereby they ever continue to think consistently the same thoughts about the same things

2. A forward movement in which they are controlled by the revolution of the Same and the like; but by the other 5 motions they were unaffected, in order that each of them might attain the highest perfection.

This is why the fixed stars were created, to be divine and eternal animals, ever-abiding and revolving after the same manner and on the same spot.

The other stars which reverse their motion and are subject to deviations of this kind, were created in the manner already described.

The earth clinging (or ‘circling’) around the pole which is extended through the universe, he framed to be the guardian and artificer of night and day, first and eldest of gods that are in the interior of heaven.

It would be useless to tell:

• all their shapes circling as in dance
• all their juxtapositions
• all the return of them in their revolutions on themselves
• all their approximations
• which of these deities in their conjunctions meet
• which of them are in opposition
• in what order they get behind and before one another.
• when they will be eclipsed and send terrors of the future to those who cannot calculate their movements

Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven. From these sprang Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all that generation. From Cronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Here, and all those who are said to be their brethren, and others who were the children of these.

When all of them had come into being, the Creator told them:

Dharma

Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains of the elements, and mingled them in much the same manner;

They were diluted to the second and third degree, not pure as before.

He divided this whole mixture into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star. Having there placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to which their first birth would be one and the same for all. No one should suffer a disadvantage at His hands.

They were to be sown in the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious of animals.

Human nature was of 2 kinds:

1. The superior race would hereafter be called man.

Now, when they should be implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing some part of their bodily substance, then:

• it would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions;
• They must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them;

if they conquered these they would live righteously. if they were conquered by them, unrighteously.

He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining this,

2. Man would would pass into a woman.

If, as a woman, he did not desist from evil, then he would continually be changed into some brute resembling the evil nature which he had acquired. He would not cease from his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of the Same and the Like within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made up of fire [radiant] and air [spatial] and water [radioactivity] and earth [matter], and returned to the male form.

Having given all these laws to his creatures, that he might be guiltless of future evil in any of them, the creator sowed some of them in the earth, and some in the moon, and some in the other instruments of time.

When he had sown them he committed to the younger gods the fashioning of their mortal bodies. He desired them to furnish what was still lacking to the human soul.

Having made all the suitable additions, to rule over them, and to pilot the mortal animal in the best and wisest manner which they could, and avert from him all but self-inflicted evils.

When the Creator had made all these ordinances, He remained in his own accustomed nature. His children heard and were obedient to their father’s word, and receiving from him the immortal principle of a mortal creature, in imitation of their own creator they borrowed portions of fire, and earth, and water, and air from the world, which were hereafter to be restored.

These they took and welded them together, not with the indissoluble chains by which they were themselves bound, but with little pegs too small to be visible, making up out of all the four elements each separate body, and fastening the courses of the immortal soul in a body which was in a state of perpetual influx and efflux.

The Sensations

These courses were detained as in a vast river.

They neither overcame nor were overcome. But they were hurrying and hurried to and fro, so that the whole animal was moved and progressed, irregularly and irrationally in any way and in all the 6 directions of motion. It wandered backwards and forwards, and right and left, and up and down, and in all the six directions.

For great as was the advancing and retiring flood which provided nourishment, the affections produced by external contact caused still greater tumult—when the body of any one met and came into collision with some external fire, or with the solid earth or the gliding waters, or was caught in the tempest borne on the air, and the motions produced by any of these impulses were carried through the body to the soul.

All such motions have consequently received the general name of ‘sensations,’ which they still retain. These led to a very great and mighty movement.

It united with the ever-flowing stream in stirring up and violently shaking the courses of the soul. They completely stopped the revolution of the same by their opposing current, and hindered it from predominating and advancing.

They so disturbed the nature of the Other or Diverse

These can only be undone by Him who united them:

• the 3 double intervals (i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8)
• the 3 triple intervals (i.e. between 1, 3, 9, 27), together with the mean terms and connecting links which are expressed by the ratios of 3:2, and 4:3, and of 9:8

These were twisted by the sensations in all ways. The circles were broken and disordered in every way so that when they moved they:

• tumbled to pieces
• moved irrationally
• moved in a reverse direction at one time
• moved then again obliquely and then upside down

This is similar to a person who is upside-down and has his head on the ground and his feet up in the air. A spectator will fancy that the right of either is his left, and the left right.

If, when powerfully experiencing these and similar effects, the revolutions of

When such a soul comes in contact with some external thing, either of the Same or of the Other, they speak of the Same or of the Other to be very opposite of the truth.

They become false and foolish. There is no course or revolution in them which has a guiding or directing power.

If again any sensations enter in violently from without and drag after them the whole vessel of the soul, then the courses of the soul, though they seem to conquer, are really conquered.