Author: C W Leadbeater
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 126
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788170594529
Description
Man is a curiously complex being, and his evolution, past, present and future is a study of perennial interest for all who can see and understand. Through what toilsome eternities of gradual development he has come to be what he is, to what round in the long ladder of his progress he has now attained, what possibilities of further progress the veil of the future conceals from us, these are questions to which few can be indifferent – questions which have been occurring all through the ages to everyone who has thought at all.
In the Western world, the answers given have been many and various. There has been much dogmatic assertion, based on differing interpretations of alleged revelation; there have been many ingenious speculations, the fruit in some cases of close metaphysical reasoning. But dogmatism meets us with a story which is on the face of it manifestly impossible, while speculation moves chiefly along entirely materialistic lines, and endeavors to arrive at a satisfactory result by ignoring half of the phenomena for which we have to account. Neither dogmatism nor speculation approaches the problem from a practical point of view, as a matter, which can be studied and investigated like any other science.
Theosophy comes forward with a theory based upon entirely different foundations. While in no way depreciating the knowledge to be gained either by study of the ancient scriptures or by philosophical reasoning, it nevertheless regards the constitution and the evolution of man as matters, not of speculation, but of simple investigation. When so examined, they prove to be parts of a magnificent scheme, coherent and readily comprehensible – a scheme which, while it agrees with and explains much of the old religious teaching, is yet in no way dependent on it, since it can be verified at every step by the use of the inner faculties which, though as yet latent in the majority of mankind, have already been brought into working order by a number among our students.
Contents
1. How these Things are Known
2. The Planes of Nature
3. Clairvoyant Sight
4. Man’s Vehicles
5. The Trinity
6. The Earlier Outpourings
7. The Animal Group-Soul
8. The Upward Curve
9. Human Consciousness
10. The Third Outpouring
11. How Man Evolves
12. What His Bodies Show Us
13. Colors and Their Meaning
14. The Counterpart
15. Early Stages of Man’s Development
16. The Ordinary Person
17. Sudden Emotions
18. More Permanent Conditions
19. The Developed Man
20. The Health-Aura
21. The Causal Body of the Adept
Appendix