_The Worlds, to the profane, are built up of the known Elements. To the conception of an Arhat, these Elements are themselves, collectively, a Divine Life; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the numberless and countless crores of Lives. Fire alone is_ ONE, _on the plane of the One Reality: on that of manifested, hence illusive, Being, its particles are fiery Lives which live and have their being at the expense of every other Life that they consume. Therefore they are named the_ “DEVOURERS.” ... _Every visible thing in this Universe was built by such_ LIVES, _from conscious and divine primordial man down to the unconscious agents that construct matter.... From the_ ONE LIFE, _formless and uncreate, proceeds the Universe of Lives. First was manifested from the Deep [Chaos] cold luminous Fire [gaseous light?], which formed the Curds in Space [irresolvable nebulæ, perhaps?] ... These fought, and a great heat was developed by the encountering and collision, which produced rotation. Then came the first manifested_ MATERIAL _Fire, the hot Flames, the Wanderers in Heaven [Comets]. Heat generates moist vapour; that forms solid water [?]; then dry mist, then liquid mist, watery, that puts out the luminous brightness of the Pilgrims [Comets?], and forms solid watery Wheels_ [MATTER _Globes]. Bhümi [the Earth] appears with six sisters. These produce by their continuous motion the inferior fire, heat, and an aqueous mist, which yields the third World‐Element_—WATER; _and from the breath of all [atmospheric]_ AIR _is born. These four are the four Lives of the first four Periods [Rounds] of Manvantara. The three last will follow_.
The Commentary first speaks of the “numberless and countless crores of Lives.” Is Pasteur, then, unconsciously taking the first step toward Occult Science, in declaring that, if he dared express his ideas fully upon this subject, he would say, that the organic cells are endowed with a vital potency that does not cease its activity with the cessation of a current of oxygen towards them, and does not, on that account, break off its relations with life itself, which is supported by the influence of that gas? “I would add,” continues Pasteur, “that the evolution of the germ is accomplished by means of complicated phenomena, among which we must class processes of fermentation”; and life, according to Claude Bernard and Pasteur, is nothing else than a process of fermentation. That there exist in Nature Beings, or Lives, that can live and thrive without air, even on our Globe, has been demonstrated by the same Scientists. Pasteur found that many of the lower lives, such as vibriones, and other microbes and bacteria, could exist without air, which, on the contrary, killed them. They derived the oxygen necessary for their multiplication from the various substances that surrounded them. He calls them _ærobes_, living on the tissues of our matter, when the latter has ceased to form a part of an integral and living whole (then called very unscientifically by Science “dead matter”), and _anærobes_. The one kind binds oxygen, and contributes greatly to the destruction of animal life and vegetable tissues, furnishing to the atmosphere materials which enter, later on, into the constitution of other organisms; the other finally destroys, or rather annihilates, the so‐called organic substance; ultimate decay being impossible without their participation. Certain germ‐cells, such as those of yeast, develop and multiply in air, but when deprived of it, they will adapt themselves to life without air and become ferments, absorbing oxygen from substances coming in contact with them, and thereby ruining the latter. The cells in fruit, when lacking free oxygen, act as ferments and stimulate fermentation. “Therefore the vegetable cell, in this case, manifests its life as an anærobic being. Why, then, should an organic cell form, in this case, an exception?” asks Professor Bogolubof. Pasteur shows that in the substance of our tissues and organs, the cell, not finding sufficient oxygen for itself, stimulates fermentation in the same way as the fruit‐cell, and Claude Bernard thought that Pasteur’s idea of the formation of ferments found its application and corroboration in the fact that urea increases in the blood during strangulation. LIFE therefore is everywhere in the Universe, and, Occultism teaches us, it is also in the atom.