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A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga862
for a time, and each dew-drop was then to acquire certain outside material
in solution. In that case, each dew-drop when it again returned to the body
of water, would carry with it its foreign material, which would become the
property of the whole. And subsequently formed dew-drops would carry
in their substance a particle of the foreign matter brought back home by the
previous generation of dewdrops, and would thus be a little different from
their predecessors. And this process, continuing for many generations of
dew-drops, would ultimately cause the greatest changes in the composition
of the successive generations.
This, in short, is the story of the change and improving forms of life.
From the atoms into the elements; from the lower elements into those
forming protoplasm; from the protoplasm to the lower forms of animal life;
from these lower forms on to higher forms—this is the story. But it is all a
counterpart of the dew-drop and the body of water, until the human soul is
evolved.
The plants and the lower forms of animal life are not permanent individual
souls, but each family is a group-soul corresponding to the body of water
from which the dew-drop arose. From these family group-souls gradually
break off minor groups, representing species, and so on into sub-species.
At last when the forms reach the plane of man, the group-soul breaks itself
up into permanent individual souls, and true Metempsychosis begins. That is,
each individual human soul becomes a permanent individual entity, destined
to evolve and perfect itself along the lines of spiritual evolution.
And from this point begins our story of Spiritual Evolution.
The story of Man, the Individual, begins amidst humble surroundings.
Primitive man, but little above the level of the lower animals in point of
intelligence, has nevertheless that distinguishing mark of Individuality—
“Self-Consciousness,” which is the demarkation between Beast and Man.
And even the lowest of the lowest races had at least a “trace” of this Self-
Consciousness, which made of them individuals, and caused the fragment
of the race-soul to separate itself from the general principle animating