Having this conception of what is to be, They may be said to have foreknowledge of it; but it is similar to the foreknowledge of the architect of the structure he proposes to erect. This ideal plan, first clothed with the divine Substance-Aspect of the Absolute, stands as the eternal prototype of that which is to be, throughout its entire cycle. It is past, present, and future combined in an eternal Now. As it clothes and materializes itself by descending to successively lower and more material states, we name the slow process, the successive stages of this unfolding, Time, and imagine that it marks real divisions of eternity. Could we approach nearer to the heart of Being this phantasmagoria of fleeting illusion would cease, and the time-harassed soul pass into eternal peace.

At each successive stage of this unfolding in time of the Divine Ideation, the entities, overtaken by the last pralaya, awaken from their long repose. They have no conception of the unthinkable periods which have passed them by, because they have not passed them by - time has not existed for them. Like the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, their awakening finds them with no knowledge of any interval. The monad ensouled in the mineral atoms again reclothes itself as this form of matter appears and the various Hierarchies, Cosmocratores, and Builders resume their labors. The great workshop of nature, so long stilled, is again filled with its countless entities, each performing its proper office; making what progress it may, until the striking of another pra- laya calls to another season of subjective being and rest. There are thus myriads of "Gods," or Creative Forces, or entities, in nature.

These different Orders of Creators or Builders must be accepted, if evolution is to be intelligently comprehended. It is as though the great Prism to which we have likened matter were capable of being acted upon by eternal Force or Motion until it gradually became more and more transparent and permitted higher and higher rates of vibrations of consciousness to pass through it. Thus, at the stage of "dead" matter the prism is so dense as only to permit the red rays, or vibrations, so to speak, to pass.

Keeping to our simile, in these red rays there can only find expression that form of consciousness which is so different from the human that we call its matter "dead." Yet the impulse received at the manvantaric or creative dawn will not permit matter to rest in this or any other condition. So, very gradually, and requiring ages of geologic time, "dead" matter is lifted or forced up, until, like a mountain top at sunrise, it catches here and there the streams of the next color, or the orange vibrations; and, a higher consciousness being now permitted to obtain a foothold, the vegetable kingdom appears. Becoming, under the constant impact of the eternal motion, still more translucent, it transmits now the yellow rays, and animal consciousness makes its appearance upon the earth. Becoming still more refined, green rays are transmitted, and human consciousness is enabled to find a fitting vehicle and man appears upon the scene. And when matter has evolved to that state in which the remaining colors of the spectrum are permitted to pass, and a corresponding consciousness to function, who can even imagine its glorious potentialities!