When certain teachers of the Ancient Wisdom gave to the outer world the esoteric classification and scale of the human and the planetary principles, they gave their order and importance as obtaining at this stage of the universal scheme of development; an order and importance beginning with Atma, and ending with the basic physical.

From these teachings, then much veiled, it was inferred that ultimately the six lower principles would be drawn into the primal Atma; the result being infinite variety in Unity. This inference overlooked or ignored the fact that infinite variety demands degrees of density below the inconceivably tenuous Atma.

H. P. B. more than once denied the fixed superiority of any principle over another, and her contention was logical since no final and true Unity can consist of unequals. Somehow the naturally lowest must develop qualities lifting it to the level of worth occupied by the highest. That the Kosmic scheme renders this possible, it now behooves us to make plain.

The number 10, representing our planetary series, is the true Kosmic number, the one concealed in the zodiacal 12, and in every twelve-fold scheme of evolution. For its infinite variety in Unity, the perfected universal scheme demands ten degrees of density from Atma down to a certain division of the physical, for which reason among others, 10 is the perfect number. To bring about this Unity, it is given to every solar system to perfect some one of the ten principles, or, more precisely, some fraction thereof. Solar systems exist in each of which the basic principle is far more ethereal than our planetary Manas; and in the consummation of those systems all below Manas will be residuum. These systems, together with the host of those somewhat lower - all of course unknown to ordinary vision - occupy the interstellar spaces, and with their vast circumferences narrow the gulf separating star from star.

The opposite of these ethereal systems exists in physical systems like that over which our sun presides; systems almost the lowest in the universal scheme.

In an earlier volume of this series it was intimated, as a blind, that the evolution proper to our solar system is that of the personal will principle; nevertheless our arrangement of the solar Hierarchies made the violet basic, whereas the orange physical four were placed above Atma. This arrangement was a clue to the truth whose unveiling was at that time deemed unwise, since it would reveal prematurely certain matters touching the Avatar.

Let it now be said that, in the real order of principles and Hierarchies for any solar system, the dominant Hierarchy - the one representing the principle differentiating that system from another - is given first prominence. Inasmuch as our solar system is to develop the principle which in the exoteric order lies below the violet, we have emphasized the importance of the orange Hierarchies by placing them above that of Atma.

Since the secret of the orange principle and the orange Hierarchies is now divulged, let it be said that Personal Will is developing as the dominant principle in a solar system only a few links above our own in the mighty chain of suns whose lower end, just below us, terminates in a system that emphasizes the physical more than does our evolution.

Even in that lowest link of the chain of systems, a certain physical residuum will remain to be refined if possible in greater systems yet unborn.

During physical life, we often tread under foot a residuum destined to remain as such to the close of the Kosmic Maha Manvantara. Since in the Kosmic scale this world is near the limit of the assimilable physical, we can understand that limit; whereas beings at the upper end can understand the fact of a spiritual limit transcending the highest division of our solar Atma.

In the sublime ascent to the Kosmic Logos, and even in the solar system whose evolution is based as we have said upon the Astral, death, because always largely a matter of the physical, is probably unknown despite the fact that that Astral is normally far denser than any Astral known to our system of planets. In any event, death, as experienced on this planet, is unknown in solar systems only a little higher in the series.

No wonder that death and passing weigh heavily upon the human heart doomed to bear a burden unfelt within the charmed circles of countless suns at first thought more favored than that under which man was born a thing seemingly of perishable flesh doomed to dissolution in its every part. No wonder he clings to physical life as a surety worth more than every theory of what the future holds in store.

To offset this dull view of human destiny, how often has backward and drooping faith been refreshed by the dews of heavenly intuition! How often have seers of the high and pure vision pic tured for us the wide millennial earth of harmless living and deathless life, no figment of heated imagination, but sober fact believable in the light of such knowledge of physical being as in this open cycle we are permitted to impart!

Inasmuch as the physical holds within certain of its seven divisions the positive principle of our solar system, and of this world chain in particular, man must be drawn from posthumous life into re-birth to prepare both himself and the physical earth for the future just mentioned. To remain in the subjective arc of his cycle longer than to assimilate the experience of the objective arc, means time lost, and position delayed in the progressing race, and sub-race.

In successive life cycles, all earnest souls will shorten their subjective arcs until the minimum necessary to recuperation is reached. On the other hand, a master in his six-fold vesture will for a long period remain on the astral plane, provided he there can the better labor for the world's welfare. But even he must clothe himself in the basic physical at the beginning of those astronomical cycles which most favor his progress toward acquisition of that body of which the great Master of physical life furnished the pattern.

H. P. B.