To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

14 / TO LIGHT A THOUSAND LAMPS
which build up the brilliant bodies we see. Moreover, every
sparkling sun which begems the skies was at one time a man,
or a being equivalent to a human, possessing in some degree
self-consciousness, intellectual power, conscience and spiritual
vision, as well as a body. And the planets and the myriads
of entities on the planets encircling any such cosmic god,
any such star or sun, are now the same entities who in far
bygone cosmic manvantaras [cycles of manifestation] were
the life-atoms of that entity.
— Fountain-Source of Occultism, p. 112
There is thus an intimate and strongly forged relationship
on all levels between galaxies and humans: if, according
to astrophysics, the chemical atoms of our physical constitution
are formed in the interior of stars, would not the lifeatoms
of our mind and spirit be kin to those of the gods
who use stars for bodies? Out of the darkness of chaos and
the void, the firmament of stars, sun, moon, and planets
came forth — and man too, his body formed of the dust of
stars, his spirit born of divinities who gave him life. To
what else did the Qabbālāh refer when it depicted those
who came after the divine dynasties as ‘‘shooting down like
falling stars’’ to enshrine themselves ‘‘in the shadows’’ and
inaugurate our present earth and its humanities.*
When the universe came into being, the human kingdom
was only one of several families of monads (Gk monas,
one, single), individual atoms of light or sparks of divinity,
who entered realms of matter for a grand purpose. We
endure throughout the manvantara or world cycle — not
our bodies, not our minds, but in the monadic core of our
*Cf. The Secret Doctrine 2:487.