In most esoteric thought, the involutionary process whereby spirit manifests in the world of form has been one of successive degrees, the earliest forms associated with earth-life being far less dense or concrete than we experience today. The theosophist C.W. Leadbeater describes it this way:
The forms built in the first round were very different from any of which we know anything now. Properly speaking, those which were made on our physical earth can scarcely be called forms at all, for they were constructed of etheric matter only, and resembled vague, drifting and almost shapeless clouds. In the second round they were definitely physical, but still shapeless and light enough to float about in currents of wind.68
The Cayce story falls in with these ideas, placing most of the fantastical, mythic-sounding lore concerning Atlantis at a non-physical stage of involution, when our bodies and even our personalities did not have the fixed, human form that we see today. At this level, we had a much more immediate interaction with the laws of the universe, creating form with thought, for example, and transporting objects through the air. It was at this time, prior to the deeper stages of involution, that the spiritual knowledge still with us was put into forms that could be passed along. Subsequently, direct access to that knowledge was lost because involution was a process of “continual hardening” that resulted in less and less ability to remember our source (i.e., a loss of consciousness).69 Thus we find reference to an esoteric tradition that over the ages has passed along knowledge forgotten by most. It complicates our story beyond what is strictly necessary here to go into detail concerning the claim that there were those souls who did not lose themselves in involution and were the preservers of spiritual knowledge in the non-material planes. Some of these eventually lost their consciousness in earthly life and some remained at levels beyond the three dimensions to serve as helpers and teachers.
The Beginnings of Human History
For the souls who had first left the orderly progression of involution-evolution by doing “that which was commanded not to be done,” a fresh beginning was made possible in an opportunity to join the physical evolution already underway on earth. This was the start of the Adamic races. According to Cayce, the evolutionary refinements that gave rise to humanity as we know it today took place in response to the need that arose when souls lost their way in the involutionary process:
(Q) Was it originally intended that souls remain out of earthly forms, and were the races originated as a necessity resulting from error?
(A) The earth and its manifestations were only the expression of God and not necessarily as a place of tenancy for the souls of men, until man was created—to meet the needs of existing conditions.70
Those “existing conditions” were that spirit entities had become entranced by their own creations on the thought plane and entrapped by the lures of raw physicality in the earth. Independent of this glitch, however, evolution was already taking place here as the natural expression of Creative Force progressively awakening in a material world. Reading 900-340 describes that natural pattern of evolution as “…the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, each developing towards its own source…” yet all being part of a unified purpose of becoming one with Creative Energy or God. This is yet another articulation of the developmental pattern we looked at in the last chapter. Continuing with this same excerpt, we see the co-creative role that was given to us in this natural progression. Each of these kingdoms of the earth was to have its day, “…yet man given that to be lord over all, and the ONLY survivor of that creation” The human body was developed as a means by which entrapped souls could regain their sovereignty and take their place in the evolutionary advance.
According to Cayce the elements of the body were “…of the earth-earthy. For, it was made from that which was already a part of God's evolution. Thus the physical body is oft subject to those things and influences, those related things…”71 In Chapter 10, when we consider both the blessings and the complications presented by our biology, this will take on special significance. For now, let us just note that this idea meshes with what evolutionary biologists tell us about the evolutionary past that saddles us with propensities which are often challenging.
According to the Cayce source, the evolution of an early hominid into a fit dwelling place for souls resulted in the advent of the human race in five places simultaneously. The yellow race appeared on that part of the globe that is now the Gobi desert, the white race in the area now known as the Caucasus Mountains, the red race on the now-lost Atlantean continent (but with remnants of that race surviving in North America), the brown race in the Andes, and the black race in the African plains.72 This is especially interesting in the light of an observation made by Teilhard de Chardin:
Man came silently into the world. As a matter of fact he trod so softly that, when we first catch sight of him as revealed by those indestructible stone instruments, we find him sprawling all over the old world from the Cape of Good Hope to Peking…. Thus in the eyes of science, which at long range can only see things in bulk, the “first man” is, and can only be, a crowd, and his infancy is made up of thousands and thousands of years.73
Teilhard de Chardin further corroborates the idea that the human form is especially suited to expansion in consciousness when he points out how a better brain was a requirement for greater consciousness, but that to get to that better brain, it was important for the creature to be able to stand on two feet, thus freeing the hands to do things that the jaw would have done for a creature on all fours. Why was that important? Because the resultant loosening of the jaw muscles allowed the cranium to grow beyond what it could have done when it was wrapped tight by the tighter jaw muscles! He also points out that the use of hands resulted in the eyes coming closer together on a smaller face to converge on what the hands were doing—this was a precursor to reflection. Truly, we can exclaim with the Psalmist that we are wonderfully made!74 As the Cayce source put it, this time it was God's projection rather than our own that put us here in the earth.75
Now that we are here in the human condition, the path outlined in the Cayce story once again converges with that described in modern evolutionary thought. Evolution in the flesh, as one reading puts it, involves passing through the various experiences of being in the earth, from primitive man seeking the attributes of fleshly experience, to consciousness of the higher laws. Then when we apply those laws we evolve spiritually “…until man becomes in the spiritual sense the one-ness with the Creator's forces…This we find then is evolution…”76 How do we accomplish this? The same reading goes on to say that it is by acquiring understanding of both spiritual law and physical law—both characterized as God's laws—and applying them here in earthly life. “Then truly is it given, ‘The righteous shall inherit the earth.’” Missteps aside, from the time we entered the earth plane in the human bodies suited to our developmental needs, we were given the opportunity to reclaim our evolutionary calling as co-creators: “…The soul of each individual is a portion then of the Whole, with the birthright of Creative Forces to become a co-creator with the Father, a co-laborer with Him…”77
To summarize, then, the main points thus far in this chapter: The growth of consciousness over the course of evolution on this planet is an evolution of the manifest aspect of the Absolute rather than an evolution of the Absolute in its non-dual totality. Within the manifest aspect of the Absolute, there is a deep history