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A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga812
much resemble. We have spoken of this resemblance, in the previous lessons
of this series. And, so we shall begin at the point where “living forms” began.
Speaking now of our own planet, the Earth, we find matter emerging
from the molten state in which it manifested for ages. Gradually cooling and
stratifying, the Earth contained none of those forms that we call living forms.
The temperature of the Earth in that period is estimated at about 15,000
times hotter than boiling water, which would, of course, render impossible
the existence of any of the present known forms of life. But the Yogi
Teachings inform us that even in the molten mass there were elementary
forms that were to become the ancestral forms of the later living forms.
These elementary forms were composed of a vaporous, peculiar form of
matter, of minute size,—little more than the atoms, in fact, and yet, just a
little more advanced. From these elementary forms, there gradually evolved,
as the Earth cooled and solidified, other forms, and so on until at last the first
“living form” manifested.
As the globe cooled at the poles, there was gradually created a tropical
climate, in which the temperature was sufficiently cool to support certain
rudimentary forms of life. In the rocks in the far northern latitudes, there are
found abundant traces of fossils, which goes to prove the correctness of the
Yogi Teachings of the origin of life at the north pole, from which the living
forms gradually spread south toward the equator, as the Earth’s surface
cooled.
The elementary evolving life forms were of a very simple structure, and
were but a degree above the crystals. They were composed of identically the
same substance as the crystals, the only difference being that they displayed
a greater degree of mind. For that matter, even the highest physical form
known to us today is composed of simple chemical materials. And these
chemical materials are obtained, either directly or indirectly, from the air,
water, or earth. The principal materials composing the physical bodies of
plants, animals, and man, are oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, with a still
smaller proportion of sulphur and phosphorus, and traces of a few other