In the chapter "The Physical Body" page 121 of "Arcane Science," it was explained that man's physical body is a temple of many rooms in each of which are countless little workmen, transient atomic lives under one master workman; while over all is one supreme architect the "Hiram " of that body. Also it was said that every organ and part is built up and maintained by these transient lives; whereas the master workmen and the architect are permanent through all life cycles; their period of activity in each physical life of the individual being commensurate with the life term of his physical body. Moreover it was said that the operation of the foundation atoms in man is clue to the activity of the foundation atoms in worlds, and in all lesser organisms.

Let us begin the exposition of our subject by examining into conditions proper to one of the lowest rungs of the evolutionary ladder; in other words, into conditions proper to the insect family. There the group-soul is the source and center of life for its myriad output. This group-soul has in charge the fertilized eggs, whether in the body of the mother, or whether expelled to develop elsewhere. Not being a physical substance, the group-soul is in the fourth spacial dimension; hence, however widely separated, its progeny are never outside its care. Far below the level of self-consciousness, the units of the lower orders of life are at death blotted out, and the infinitesimal experience of each is added to the collective experience of the group-soul which thus progresses towards self-consciousness.

That the units of even the lowest orders conform physically to a model, is due primarily to the image in the mind of the group-soul. This archetypal model in its little way corresponds with the archetypal model of creation existing in the Divine Mind. In the "Heart of Things," and in the chapter "Images," was explained the office of images in the reproduction of the human creature whose foundation atoms reproduce the composite image resulting from the effect of both the paternal and the maternal image on the model furnished by the reincarnating entity.

Since in the lower species the unit is blotted out by death, such permanent physical atoms as alone insure the rebirth of individualized physical life, cannot there exist. However, because the short life and the vast progeny of the lower species oblige the atoms proper to each class to toil unremittingly, it results that they are able to follow the group-soul model, and also to meet the requirements of the idealizing group-soul in its efforts to lift its output in the evolutionary scale.

Originally the group-soul of the lowest order of life on this planet was vast and nebulous, but eventually internal differences brought about its division. This, repeated many times during the geological ages, has in certain instances greatly narrowed the output of each evolving group-soul, and brought about the differentiation of species. In the first round of our Earth's first and lowest manvantara, that which would become physical man was but a unit proper to a group-soul whose output numbered many thousands, and possibly millions, of lives each blotted out by death.

When, in the Earth's present or fourth manvantara, and in the first round thereof, the luna pitris descended to occupy the physical bodies of our humanity, original conditions were far higher than in the first world period; in fact an individualized physical body belonged to every unit of the race. Then it was that the foundation physical atoms in man began their office as such, thus insuring his rebirth as an individual being, despite the fact of what we misname death.

Domestication of the higher animals has brought about for some the final division of the animal group-soul, and so insured their individual rebirth through the foundation physical atoms henceforth associated with each. To the domestic animals this is a compensation offsetting the cruelty suffered from man their natural protector.

When our shaping solar system turned on its axis, a vast and nebulous bulk, the seven-fold mass was but one primitive group-soul. As sponsors for all life beneath their exalted rank, the Solar Hierarchies first separated the Sun, and it became an individual existence whose permanent foundation atoms, those proper to the several planes, were established in the solar centers and sub-centers. From the residue was next built the original four planets which, because afterward dividing, became increased to ten. Thus did the original group-soul become eleven whose foundation atoms insured reincarnation to each after its eons of pralaya.

In passing let it be said that the many divisions whereby each fragment of the group-soul proper to any of Nature's orders becomes a personal possession, originates in what are to become the foundation atoms of the individual being. The division of the primal human, whereby the entity became male and female, was an event allegorized in the story of Eve created from Adam's rib. In this instance two dominant atoms, in fact two architects, had been evolved. Division of the group-soul of any species always results from a corresponding event. A colony of bees well illustrates the operation of the group-soul. The hive is the progeny of the queen, the center of life until a new queen is developed. Then comes division that two group centers may fulfill their office.

The invisible astral planet holds in its enveloping sheath the foundation atoms of the physical Moon. These atoms are vehicles of the skandas, the karmic seeds which, in eons to come, will germinate moon-ward, drawing with them the violet planet. Then the cold shell of the Moon, not dead but in pralaya, is to be vitalized into a new birth. Fulfilling their office, the Solar Hierarchies will then sow the seeds of a new evolution higher than that of the last moon manvantara.

Considering next the possibility of our globe as the purified abode of a purified race of beings, we will touch briefly upon the means to that prophesied outcome which, with Isaiah, was the holy mountain of the Lord, while with John it was the new Jerusalem that would certainly supplant the old, thus making this footstool the abode of deathlessness and peace. Nor was this outcome unknown to the formulators of the Ancient Wisdom. In their cosmogony it had definite place, not as a miracle to be, but as the work of methodical law; in fact it would result from a separative process analogous to those everywhere discoverable in the prodigious descent from suns to things.

Purification of the foundation atoms proper to the Earth's physical, astral, kamic, and kama-manasic principles, has not kept pace with the slow purification of the corresponding atoms in man which, even from this planet's beginning, were on a far higher level. Therefore the looked for Millennium is not, as the ignorant suppose, to be an early and direct act of God, but rather is it a far-off bringing about through an orderly evolutionary process.

For the physical foundation atoms of this globe, always on the plane of the orange, even as are those of man and the higher animals, that purification means their separation from the lower and fluctuating physical atoms. Then will the more evolved orange atoms gather around the permanent ones located at the seven or, precisely, at the fortynine centers, and at many more minor centers of what is to become the new Earth; in fact that earth withdrawn from its gross material shell, even as the violet planet withdrew from the Moon shell.

The more evolved orange atoms then will have acquired a degree of stability far exceeding that of the ordinary physical atoms as now existing. Still these orange atoms must fall far short of permanency. As for the foundation atoms, since they are to carry the karmic seeds of another planetary birth, their term of separation from the earth-shell will, after the lapse of ages, come to an end.

Because the foundation orange atoms in man, and even the secondary orange, ever have been and ever shall be far more evolved than the corresponding globe atoms, we prophesy of him that in that millennial season his immortality and freedom from rebirth shall be assured.

H. P. B.