Synopses & Reviews
THE PLAY OF CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN THE WEB THE PLAY OF CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN THE WEB By EDWARD L. GARDNER THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE 68 GREAT RUSSELL STREET LONDON W. C. I CONTENTS PACE I INTRODUCTORY 7 II GOD AND MAN 9 III FLOW AND EBB 16 IV LlFE ANEf LdGHT 21 V INSTINCT AND INTUITION 24 VI FOCUSSING LIFE 32 VII THE HUMAN CENTRE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 37 VIII WILL AND MIND 43 IX MICROSCOPIC AND MACROSCOPIC 53 X PAST AND FUTURE Now 59 XI KARMA 80 XII GOVERNMENTS AND PEOPLES 87 REVIEW 97 The illustration on the opposite page is a perspective impression of a fragment of the Web, drawn by Mr. Ian Hammond, to whom I was indebted for the diagrams given in The Web of the Universe. The following extracts from pages 30-36 of that book are brief descriptions of the characteristics of the Web The basic pattern is a six-armed cross, infinitely repeated, and appears as a maze of exceedingly fine lines, interlaced in an infinitesimal rectangular texture, ablaze with tiny points of brilliance where the lines cross, filling, enveloping all space and serving as the foundational structure for all material. The Web is sub-stance it is not itself that which we know as material but stands under material. The Web is the necessary background ... it corresponds to the canvas of the painter, language for the poet, the orchestra for the musician, etc. The lines . . . are seemingly rigid, taut-strung, yet exqui sitely delicate and fragile. The fragility is an illusion due to the superlative sensitiveness of the glowing lines. . . . The lines are spaced regularly apart though the spacing must be far smaller than even the atomic order of measure ment. The enlarged cross in the illustration symbolises the firstre-action within the Web to the impact of a focussed point of life. THE PLAY OF CONSCIOUSNESS INTRODUCTION he Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky, was published in 1889, just fifty years ago. The work consists mostly of commentaries on an archaic manuscript, described as con taining certain glyphs and figures, and an ancient text called The Stanzas of Dzyan. Mme Blavatsky, as trans lator of the Stanzas, states that these are rendered for the first time into a European language . The Proem introducing the book concludes with the fol lowing The reader ... is once more invited to regard all that follows as a fairy tale, if he likes at best as one of the, yet unproven speculations of dreamers and, at the worst, as an additional hypothesis to the many scientific hypotheses past, present and future, some exploded, others still lingering. It is not in any sense less scientific than are many of the so-called scientific theories and it is in every case more philo sophical and probable. The archaic manuscript has indeed proved to be far more philosophical and probable than many of the religious and scientific theories widely extant in the last part of the nineteenth century. Two volumes of The Secret Doctrine entitled Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis tell the story of the creation of stellar universes with their attendant chains of planets, of the origins of life on our earth, of the beginnings of the kingdoms of nature and their develop ment, and also of the great and important contribution 7 THE PLAY OF CONSCIOUSNESS humanity has to make to the vast creative effort now in process of manifestation. The book is still much more than up-to-date, for though scientific research of the last fiftyyears has been amazingly fruitful it has by no means overtaken the survey given in The Secret Doctrine. In certain directions, particularly in the sciences of biology, physics, and astronomy, recent in vestigation has produced many corroborations of arresting significance. Reprints of the book have been periodically called for and a new, well-documented edition has recently appeared. The essays that follow owe much of their content to The Secret Doctrine, though neither authority nor responsibility, other than the writers, can be claimed for the presentation...