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<p class="paracenter">THE WORLD-SERPENT
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<p class="para"> The universe is often conceived as a serpent coiling round and eating 
itself, the head turning about and swallowing the tail. The image is that of a 
sphere or globe enclosing the whole existence and that of something without end 
or beginning, infinite. It also gives the idea of a perpetual lengthening out, 
that is, constant creation, but at the same time of a turn back: the unrolling 
of the universe is not in a straight line, but circular.
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<p class="para"> The universe is however a complex 
entity. It is not made of only one plane, but consists of many planes 
superimposed upon each other. Thus at the bottom as the basis is the 
physical—matter—and at the top as the acme is the most subtle, the spiritual: in 
between there are gradations whose number varies according to the mode of the 
outlook.
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<p class="para"> Reverting to the image of the 
serpent, one can say that its head represents the spirit, the supreme 
consciousness, and the tail the other end, matter or supreme unconsciousness. 
The image, furthermore, gives a graphic picture of the great truth that extremes 
meet, the head bends round and catches the tail. Psychologically this means that 
if one rises higher and higher in consciousness, starting from the body 
consciousness, traversing Life and Mind and Overmind and reaches the very 
source, the head and front of consciousness, then, curious to
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-15</p>
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<p class="para">say, one finds oneself all on a 
sudden landed in the heart of matter. In the occult language this is expressed 
by saying that the consciousness that shines on the highest peak, is imbedded 
also here below in the cavern of dead matter. If one rises sufficiently high, 
rung by rung, to the extreme end of the ladder, one comes round exactly at the 
point from where one started without having to pass through all the rungs. 
Conversely too if one probes sufficiently deep into the farthest comer of 
matter, the last limit of inconscience, one comes out into the blaze of the same 
infinity that covers above and below and around.
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<p class="para"> One can recall here the curious 
conclusion reached by some modern scientists in regard to the spherical 
character of the universe that the universe being an endless bounded plane it is 
quite likely that a particular star you see in front of you may not at all be 
situated direct against you, but that it might be sending out rays that have 
come round the whole sphere and taken you, as it were, from behind!
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-16</p>
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