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A Treatise on White Magic - Rule Twelve - The Prisoners of the Planet
The "prisoners of the planet" fall into two categories: 1. Those lives which act under the influence of a conscious purpose, and who "limit the life that is in them" for a time. They consciously take form, knowing the end from the beginning. These Beings in their turn fall into three main groups. [531] The Being Who is the life of our planet, the One in Whom we live and move and have our being. This being, or sum total of organized lives is sometimes called the planetary Logos, sometimes the Ancient of Days, sometimes God, and sometimes the One Life. Those lives who constitute the Principle of Limitation in a kingdom of nature. The Life that is, for instance, expressing itself through the medium of the animal kingdom is a self-conscious intelligent entity, working in full awareness of intent and objective, and limiting his sphere of activity in order to provide due opportunity and expression for the myriad lives that find their life and being and sustenance in him. See you how the law of sacrifice runs throughout creation. The sons of mind, human souls, solar Angels, the divine sons of God who in full self-consciousness work out certain well seen ends through the medium of the human family. 2. Those lives who are limited in form because they are not self-conscious but are unconscious constituent parts of a greater form. They have not yet evolved to the point where they are self-conscious entities. It might be said that this second category includes all existences, but the line of demarcation between self-produced limitation and unrealized form-taking lies entirely in the realm of consciousness. Some lives are prisoners and know it. Others are prisoners and know it not. The clue to suffering lies right here in the realm of mind. Pain and agony, rebellion and the conscious urge towards betterment and the changing of conditions are only found where what we call individuality is present, where the "I" complex is controlling, and where a self-conscious entity is functioning. There is of course [532] the equivalent to pain in kingdoms below the human, but it enters into another differentiation. It is not self-related. Subhuman forms of life suffer and undergo discomfort and are subject to the throes of death but they lack memory and prevision, and possess not that mental apprehension which will enable them to relate past and present and anticipate the future. They are exempt from the agony of foreboding. Their entire reaction to what are called evil conditions is so different to that of humanity that it is difficult for us to grasp it. The Old Commentary describes these two groups in the following terms: "The Sons of God, who know and see and hear (and knowing, know they know) suffer the pain of conscious limitation. Deep in the inmost depths of conscious being, their lost estate of liberty eats like a canker. Pain, sickness, poverty and loss are seen as such, and from them every son of God revolts. He knows that in himself, as once he was before he entered prisoner into form, he knew not pain. Sickness and death, corruption and disease, they touched him not. The riches of the universe were his, and naught he knew of loss." "The lives that enter into form along, with lives self-conscious, the deva lives which build the forms indwelt by all the Sons of God, they know not pain or loss or poverty. The form decays, the other forms retire, and that which is required to nourish and keep strong the outer, lacks. But lacking also will and planned intent, they feel no aggravation and know no clear revolt."
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