The first year · Lesson 4
The Ladder of Planes
How THE ALL is in everything, and the book’s map of the planes of being
Welcome back. Today’s saying is “While All is in THE ALL, it is equally true that THE ALL is in ALL.” It asks you to hold two ideas at once: you live inside the great Mind, and that Mind lives inside you. This is our longest reading, about forty pages. Take it in two sittings if you like. There is no hurry.
The reading
- Chapter VII: "The All" in All The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, pp. 95–110 · about 2,607 words, 13 min
- Chapter VIII: The Planes of Correspondence The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, pp. 113–135 · about 3,744 words, 19 min
About 32 minutes in all. Each link opens the book at the first paragraph.
Before you read
- This is the longest lesson of the year, so be kind to yourself. Chapter VII is one sitting and Chapter VIII is another. Stopping in between is a good plan, not a failure.
- Chapter VII asks big questions. How is THE ALL inside its world? How does a world begin and end? Why make one at all? Read it slowly. The authors admit they can’t answer the last one.
- Chapter VIII is a map. It has lists inside lists: three great planes, seven smaller planes in each, and seven more inside those. You don’t need to learn them by heart. Look for the order, from low to high.
- Watch for the pictures the authors use, from famous novels to everyday things. They make the hard ideas easier, and the quiz asks about them.
In a nutshell
Chapter VII: "The All" in All
Earlier chapters said the whole universe is held in the Mind of THE ALL. This chapter adds the other half: THE ALL is also in every part of the universe. The authors explain this with writers and artists, who live a little inside everything they imagine. Then they tell how a universe is made. First THE ALL pours out its energy. The vibrations get lower and lower until they become solid matter. The book calls this going down “Involution.” Then the swing turns and everything starts to climb back up. This is “Evolution.” Life appears and splits into countless single souls, which rise higher and higher. At the very end, THE ALL draws everything back into itself. The book says no soul is wiped out. Each one grows without limit and joins its Creator. Last, the authors ask why THE ALL makes universes at all. They turn down the usual answers one by one. In the end they say the question has no answer we can know.
Chapter VIII: The Planes of Correspondence
This chapter goes back to the second principle, Correspondence. It says the same laws work on every level of being. First the authors ask what a “plane” is. Their answer is that it is not a place. It is a step on a scale of vibration, which they call a “Fourth Dimension.” The faster the vibration, the higher the plane. Then they draw the map. The universe has three great planes, and they shade into one another. Each one splits into seven minor planes, and each of those into seven sub-planes. The book stresses that these lines are only drawn to help us study. Near the end comes a warning. Power on the higher planes can be used for good or evil, and those who misuse it fall a long way. The chapter closes by saying all seven principles work on every plane.
- The Great Physical Plane
- Matter and energy. Its seven minor planes go up from three kinds of matter, through the ether, to three kinds of energy.
- The Great Mental Plane
- Living minds. Its seven minor planes are mineral, plant, animal and human minds, with three planes of unseen “elementals” in between.
- The Great Spiritual Plane
- Beings far above us: Masters and Adepts, then angels, then beings the book calls “gods.” It says even they are mortal and live in the Mind of THE ALL.
Highlights
While All is in THE ALL, it is equally true that THE ALL is in ALL.
The saying the whole chapter explains. The book says it is the old root of the phrase “All in All,” which people use about God.
This is what spiritual development means—the recognition, realization, and manifestation of the Spirit within us.
The authors ask you to remember this one, and say it holds “the Truth of True Religion.” Notice that it is about finding something already inside you.
All are on the Path, whose end is THE ALL. All progress is a Returning Home.
The book’s hopeful picture of the universe. Everything, from a stone to an angel, is on its way back to where it came from.
THE ALL ACTS BECAUSE IT ACTS.
The authors’ last word on why THE ALL creates. It is a way of saying the question has no reason behind it that we can find.
The higher the degree of rate of vibration, the higher the plane, and the higher the manifestation of Life occupying that plane.
This is how the book ties the planes to vibration. You will see the idea worked out in full in Chapter IX.
Words to know
- Immanent
- Living or staying within. The book says THE ALL is immanent in its universe. (The 1908 printing spells it “Imminent” once.)
- Paradox
- Two statements that seem to fight each other but can both be true, seen from different sides.
- Involution
- In the book, the first half of creation, when THE ALL’s energy slows down into matter.
- Evolution
- In the book, the second half, when everything climbs back up from matter toward spirit.
- Aeon
- A huge stretch of time. The book says each one holds millions of years.
- Fourth Dimension
- In the book, the scale of vibration that sets the planes. The phrase was popular in 1908 and meant many things to many writers.
- Ether
- A thin, invisible substance that scientists of the 1800s thought filled all space and carried light. Later science dropped the idea.
- Elementals
- Unseen beings that occult writers placed between the kingdoms of nature. The book puts them on three planes.
The real story
Our notes, not the book's.
Where does all this talk of “planes” come from? Chapter VIII itself says the word was “very freely used” in recent occult books. Much of that came from the Theosophical Society, which Helena Blavatsky and others founded in New York in 1875. Theosophists taught that the world is built in layers, each finer than the one below. They gave the layers names such as the physical, the astral and the mental plane. C. W. Leadbeater’s The Astral Plane (1895), which is on this site, says the astral plane alone has seven subdivisions. The Kybalion borrows this love of sevens but draws its own map. It has three great planes, each split into sevens, and it ranks them by vibration. It also borrows the Theosophical idea that people today are the fifth “race.” So this map is not an ancient Hermetic teaching, as the book suggests. It is mostly the work of writers in the decades before 1908, built on a much older idea of a ladder from matter up to spirit. Still, it is worth the read. Few books show so clearly how people around 1900 pictured the unseen world, and you will meet the same ladder again on this shelf.
Quiz
Answer from the notes or the reading, in any order; you can change an answer at any time. Each answer says why, with a link to the page.