Eternity is the Past, the Present, and the Future, united in the Divine Mind; whereas that which encompasses these is the Divine Form. To be comprehensible to finite mind, Eternity and its Container manifest as innumerable spheres moving around other spheres, themselves in motion throughout the deeps of space. For every being in ascending scale, this symbol holds until he enters Eternity there to unite with the all-inclusive One.

Because a revolving sphere, this Earth is a manifestation of time to its dwellers, and because Time, moving in its orbit, carries with it the succession of events, their re-incarnation so to speak, the human root races and sub-races - progressing through their cycles and minor cycles of timed events, - are, at the beginning of these periods, impelled to move over the Earth in great migrations which began with the polar races, and continued throughout Lemurian, Atlantean, and historic times, and still continue, as witness the influx of world peoples to that amalgamation which in America, will result in a new sub-race.

To primitive man the earth was flat; the all-important center around which swung the diminutive sun and moon, and the insignificant stars; heavenly lamps all of them, and lighted only for his convenience in day or night. In Atlantean times the Secret Science taught the world's rotundity, and its minor place in the universal scheme; but this knowledge was for the few, since the spherical earth, and its axial and orbital revolutions, were clews to certain cyclic operations of karmic Law.

Through major and minor karmic cycles, all worlds and creatures approach Eternity, the Divine Vision. Enlarged cycles of sight will be successive until, at the last unveiling of minds and eyes, the far off in time and space becomes the Eternal Now, and the Ever Present.

In both the individual and collective building of the temple of Divine Truth, Karma urges to perfect work, since it reveals to man's spiritual understanding that what is builded for Time and Eternity must in every detail be flawless. The lower nature deems Karma a hard taskmaster, but the nobler part of man at times sees Karma as Divine Truth and Compassion; so the dictum of the higher nature rules in a way which the lower never realizes; therefore unconsciously this lower pays its debt to the Law as we shall see.

Retiring from objective life, man the builder reaches higher and higher levels of discrimination in respect to Truth until, at the turning point of his subjective arc, a ray of light from the universal Atma informs his individual seventh principle; whereat he sees time as a spiral in which he must travel toward perfection. Then, though actuated by only a fraction of the Divine Thoroughness, he gladly descends to meet the requirements of karmic Law. Soon a workman on the physical plane, he will tear down and rebuild wherever necessary. In the successive clothings incident to rebirth, the lower nature, because taking to itself a new body and an unremembering brain, may rebel at Karma's decree; still the momentum established at the turning of man's cycle, must be maintained till time and place and condition have new inception at the beginning of the next cycle.

Within the objective arc of every human life exist innumerable karmic time cycles which lift one into joy, or plunge him into sorrow, but, in the direst descent, there is no compulsion for the higher nature because - as in the greater cycle - at the turning point of this small dark one the Divine Adjudicator of karmic Law informs the spiritual will of man which at once fulfills its office. Thereupon the lower principles, unconscious that they are willed so to do, proceed to self-punishment.

The succession of births into the physical world, a succession uninterrupted for ages, may be likened to a mighty river ever flowing because of its innumerable tributaries. From the lake of Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico the Mississippi sweeps over a flat surface, but, for thirteen hundred miles in direct line from the river's source to its mouth, the curve of the globe is the arc of a circle, complete were the river's course uninterrupted.

In respect to time, the human race moves in a great spiral of which the historic ages are an arc, though seemingly no curve is there. The planetary rounds - caused by the sun's revolution in its vast orbit - and that simultaneous great circling of time which really causes the world-pilgrimages of the root races, have their individual correspondent in the circling of man the unit through his time orbit.

Evidently time is relative, and is determined according to the needs of mankind, whether evolving as root races, sub-races, or individuals. The determiner of time is the atmic principle of man, and the Atma of the globe by him inhabited. From the viewpoint of these Atmas, time is only opportunity perhaps profited by, but almost never wholly so; therefore must man be born again into time until every opportunity has been made the most of.

At the close of Earth's seventh round, a separation of its principles occurs: then the higher, to a great extent purified, but not wholly so, retire to their place as a transparent, luminous and secret planet, while the old body of Earth swims in space a planet in pralaya like the Moon above us. After ages of involution comparable to that of the human soul in Devachan, the secret planet reaches the limit where its atmic principle, enlightened by the Solar Atma, beholds Time as a spiral. Therefore the planet gravitates downward to unite with its old body, and, for the world, time and opportunity begin anew; not on the former level however, because the lowest arc of the karmic time spiral will indicate the place attained in this our present manvantara.

Although Earth's annual revolution is explained by Material Science, and to the satisfaction of its votaries, Occult Science, that seeker for hidden causes, finds that, at the turning of the orbit on December 22nd, the earth's Atma receives an impulse from the Atma of the Sun then in Capricornus.

In passing let it be said that, as regent of the Zodiac, the Sun determines and maintains for every planet the time orbit necessary to its peculiar development. Losing its planetary time orbit, the dead moon received from the astral personal will principle of the earth an imposed time orbit; one not without purpose, but that is another matter. In respect to axial revolution, the earth is impelled and maintained by forces somewhat analogous to those causing orbital motion. The inner impulses affecting the earth are slight indeed, but sufficient for the minute time cycles indicated by axial revolution.

As before said, our earth is time to its dwellers; hence its yearly and daily turnings have fostered in mankind the illusion of past, present, and future. This illusion is far preferable to that of the mindless polar first race who, in the light of the never sinking polar sun, lived in one dimensional time, the present.

Year by year the earth arrives at those higher and higher positions in the great time spiral which usher in the sub-races, and the root races of a planetary round. This fact wonderfully strengthens the hope in the human breast which makes to-morrow better than to-day, and the years to come brighter than those behind. Therefore, ignoring whatever of glamor legend has cast over the long ago, we picture the golden age of the race in the world's large and brilliant future.

Viewed from differing angles the Atma of the sun is Time, Karma, Truth, Spiritual Will, and also Christos, in short the Manifested Word, to the worlds in his keeping. In a secondary way the earth's Atma is all these to its dwellers, and, in an individual way, the corresponding Atma of man is therefore ruler and finally perfector of his being. In every instance Atma is the Auric Egg of Akasha enveloping and permeating the lower principles.

M.