THE RESTORED NEW TESTAMENT By JAMES MORGAN PRYSE In one volume, 819 large pages; with many artistic illustrations No other translation of the New Testament approaches this version in beauty and sublimity. It brings out vividly secret meanings in the text not perceived or even suspected by other translators. A work of striking originality, as fearless and sincere as it is wholesome and beautiful. Breaking away from the old traditions and conventional methods of New Testament translation, interpretation and criticism, it opens up an entirely new field, which to many readers will seem like a new world. Jesus appears, not as a "man of sorrows" and a sacrificial victim, but as the grandly heroic type of a candidate who wins his way into the Greater Mysteries, becoming a full initiate and thereby achieving conscious immortality. Students of esotericism will find it AN INVALUABLE TEXT-BOOK the only one, in fact, that deals with the New Testament as a whole and explains its allegorical teachings: in this lucid and systematic interpretation a fund of information is furnished, much of which is drawn from sources not accessible to most students. Everything that is true and beautiful in the New Testament is here presented with an added poetic charm and with a wealth of esoteric interpretation. T HE story of the fall of the Maya civilization of Yucatan, told by Augustus Le Plongeon, M. D., who learned of it by his explorations and discoveries in that land, and from his deciphering of the hieroglyphics on the temples, monuments, excavations, and from a study of the remnants of that ancient race. Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayas and Quiches 11,500 years ago. Their relation to the Sacred Mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Chaldea and India. Free Masonry in times anterior to the Temple of Solomon. Illustrated. By AUGUSTUS LE PLONGEON; Cloth. $2.50. The Theosophical Pub. Co. of N.Y. 25 West 45th Street, New York An A Fascinating Reincarnation Story The Theosophical Pub. Co. of N. Y. 25 West 45th St., New York, N. Y. VOL. 25 I' F WHAT is true of luck ghosts were taken as absolute and could be taken without background and surroundings, a false notion would be held of man and his relations. Then it would appear as if people can bring themselves under the protection of some power, and thereby stand outside and secure against the law and order in our world. Discern therefore the universe, its plan, its factors, its object, and its law, to recognize the true setting of luck. The Universe Divided as Nature and as Mind. The plan is concerned with the development of matter, so that it shall become conscious in ever higher degrees. In the manifested universe everything visible and invisible may be roughly classified as of two factors. One of these is nature, the other mind; however, consciousness, itself unchangeable, is present through everything. Nature includes all in the four worlds on the involutionary side. Therefore it comprises all that came into existence from the beginning of manifestations in the four worlds, from spirit on the in volutionary side down to the grossest matter. Breath, life, form, and physical matter, in everyone of their phases, are included in nature and nature predominates in desire. Mind includes mind and thought. Mind reaches down into the physical, and is that along which nature rises, from its physical state to that of the perfected mind. Nature is matter, as well as mind is matter. The difference between these states of matter lies in the degrees in which matter is conscious. Nature is not conscious as mind, but is conscious only of the state in which it is, as breath, life, form, physical matter, and desire. Mind is, however, matter which is conscious as mind, conscious of itself and of other things in its state, and which can be conscious of states below and states above itself. Nature is unevolved matter; mind is consciously evolving matter. Matter, as here used, includes spirit, spirit being the beginning or finest state of matter, and matter the end or grossest state of spirit. Instead of the accurate terms, spirit-matter and matter-spirit, the term matter is in use. The use is, however, conversational. Hence, the term, if that be not remembered, is apt to mislead. This matter, visible and invisible, is made up of ultimate units. Each unit is always spirit-matter, and none can be broken up or destroyed. It can be changed. The only change such a unit can undergo is that it is successively conscious in different states. As long as it is not conscious of anything except of its function, it is matter, spiritmatter, as distinguished from mind. Matter, then, to use the term colloquially, exists in four worlds, and in many states in each of these. The states differ in the degree in which these units are conscious. The four worlds of spirit-matter are, to give them names —and one name will do as well as some other as long as the essence of that is understood which the name stands forthe breath world, the life world, the form world, the sex world. Other names, and these have been used in these articles on ghosts, are the sphere of the fire, the sphere of air, the sphere of water and the sphere of earth. (See The Word, Vol. 20, p. 259.) In these worlds or spheres and on the various planes of each of them exist the two factors, spirit-matter or nature, and mind. The spirit-matter manifests as the four occult elements and the elemental beings in them. The mind is active as mind and thought. These two are intelligent. In this sense the manifested universe, consciousness being present throughout all, consists of nature and mind. Nature involves, and mind contacts it at all stages in its involution, meets it in the physical world more intimately, and raises it with itself by its own evolution through thought. So spirit-matter, which is nature, involves from the spiritual to the physical, sinking and condensing through four worlds. In the lowest, our physical world, it is met by mind, which thenceforth raises it from stage to stage in the physical world and so on through the psychic world, the mental world and the spiritual world of knowledge, these three names standing here for the aspects on the evolutionary line of the form world, the life world and the breath world. The stages of evolution correspond to stages of involution. That gives seven great stages in the four worlds. The planes are the breath-mind plane in the sphere of the fire, the life-thought plane in the sphere of air, the formdesire plane-a part of which is the astral-psychic plane in the sphere of water, and the physical plane in the sphere of earth. On those planes are the stages of involution and evolution, matter being of the same degree or kind on each plane, but differing in the degree to which matter is conscious. This is the plan upon which the two factors work. Purpose of Involution and Evolution. The purpose of involution and evolution is, in so far as human beings are concerned, to give the minds an opportunity of coming into contact with physical matter and thereby refining the matter that it becomes conscious in ever higher degrees, and at the same time to give the minds an opportunity to gain knowledge of all things by this refining which brings them into contact with all things, through the physical bodies they inhabit. By aiding nature they benefit themselves. This outline, omitting many phases, is merely like a cross section of evolution at the human stage. In the body of man, therefore, all nature is represented and focused. Into this wonderful body reach and are condensed parts of the four worlds. Nature is there represented as breath, life, form, and the physical body. Desire is there, too, but it is different, being more directly connected with the mind. Desire is not mind, except in a peculiar way. Desire is the lowest, darkest, grossest, the unrefined, ungoverned, unlawful part of the mind, and so has not the traits which are generally associated with mind. Therefore it was said that the two factors are nature and mind, which is represented only as mind and in thought. Mind, however, in its highest sense is knowledge; in its lowest, desire. In the middle state, which is a blend of desire and mind, it is thought. In the human body is nature and is mind. Nature is there as a being composite. Mind is there and also as a being. The nature man or sense man is the personality (see The Word, Vol. 5, pp. 193-204, 257-261, 321-332); the mind man is called the individuality (see The Word, Vol. 2, pp. 193-199). Into the personality are drawn the four occult elements. What is in man a sense is in nature an element (see The Word, Vol. 5, p. 194; Vol. 20, p. 326). The organs and different systems in the physical body, excepting the central nervous system, all belong to nature and to the makeup of the sense man. The evolution and refining is accomplished as to the sense man, by re-embodiment of the matter which is the organs and the senses; as to the mind man, by his reincarnations into these elements fashioned into ever new forms, for him and his work. The plan has this purpose at the human stage. The law and the only law which controls these two processes of re-embodiment and reincarnation is the law of karma. Nature ghosts are the means used to prepare the |