I may answer you, what I said to G. Th. Fechner one day, when he wanted to know the Hindu view on what he had written — "You are right;...'every diamond, every crystal, every plant and star has its own individual soul, besides man and animal...' and, 'there is a hierarchy of souls from the lowest forms of matter up to the World Soul,' but you are mistaken when adding to the above the assurance that 'the spirits of the departed hold direct psychic communication with Souls that are still connected with a human body' — for, they do not." The relative position of the inhabited worlds in our Solar System would alone preclude such a possibility. For I trust you have given up the queer idea — a natural result of early Xtian training — that there can possibly be human intelligences inhabiting purely spiritual regions? You will then as readily understand the fallacy of the christians — who would burn immaterial souls in a material physical hell — as the mistake of the more educated spiritualists, who lullaby themselves with the thought that any other but the denizens of the two worlds immediately interlinked with our own can possibly communicate with them. However etherial and purified of gross matter they may be, the pure Spirits are still subject to the physical and universal laws of matter. They cannot even if they would span the abyss that separates their worlds from ours. They can be visited in Spirit, their Spirit cannot descend and reach us. They attract, they cannot be attracted, their Spiritual polarity being an insuperable difficulty in the way. (By-the-bye you must not trust Isis literally. The book is but a tentative effort to divert the attention of the Spiritualists from their preconceptions to the true state of things. The author was made to hint and point out in the true direction, to say what things are not, not what they are. Proof reader helping, a few real mistakes have crept in as on page 1, chapter 1, volume 1, where divine Essence is made emanating from Adam instead of the reverse.)
Once fairly started upon that subject, I will endeavour to explain to you still clearer where lies the impossibility. You will thus be answered in regard to both Planetary Spirits and séance room "Spirits."
The cycle of intelligent existences commences at the highest worlds or planets — the term "highest" meaning here the most spiritually perfect. Evolving from cosmic matter — which is akasa, the primeval not the secondary plastic medium, or Ether of Science instinctively suspected, unproven as the rest — man first evolutes from this matter in its most sublimated state, appearing at the threshold of Eternity as a perfectly Etherial — not Spiritual Entity, say — a Planetary Spirit. He is but one remove from the universal and Spiritual World Essence — the Anima Mundi of the Greeks, or that which humanity in its spiritual decadence has degraded into a mythical personal God. Hence, at that stage, the Spirit-man is at best an active Power, an immutable, therefore an unthinking Principle (the term "immutable" being again used here but to denote that state for the time being, the immutability applying here but to the inner principle which will vanish and disappear as soon as the spark of the material in him will start on its cyclic work of Evolution and transformation). In his subsequent descent, and in proportion to the increase of matter he will assert more and more his activity. Now, the congeries of the star-worlds (including our own planet) inhabited by intelligent beings may be likened to an orb or rather an epicycloid formed of rings like a chain — worlds inter-linked together, the totality representing an imaginary endless ring, or circle. The progress of man throughout the whole — from its starting to its closing points meeting on the highest point of its circumference — is what we call the Maha Yug or Great Cycle, the Kuklos, whose head is lost in a crown of absolute Spirit, and its lowest point of circumference in absolute matter — to viz. the point of cessation of action of the active principle. If using a more familiar term we call the Great Cycle the Macrokosm and its component parts or the inter-linked star worlds Microkosms, the occultists' meaning in representing each of the latter as perfect copies of the former will become evident. The Great is the Prototype of the smaller cycles: and as such, each star world has in its turn its own cycle of Evolution which starts with a purer and ends with a grosser or more material nature. As they descend, each world presents itself naturally more and more shadowy, becoming at the "antipodes" absolute matter. Propelled by the irresistible cyclic impulse the Planetary Spirit has to descend before he can reascend. On his way he has to pass through the whole ladder of Evolution, missing no rung, to halt at every star world as he would at a station; and, besides the unavoidable cycle of that particular and every respective star world, to perform in it his own "life-cycle" too, viz.: returning and reincarnating as many times as he fails to complete his round of life in it, as he dies on it before reaching the age of reason, as correctly stated in Isis. Thus far Mrs. Kingsford's idea that the human Ego is being reincarnated in several successive human bodies is the true one. As to its being reborn in animal forms after human incarnation it is the result of her loose way of expressing things and ideas. Another WOMAN — all over again. Why, she confounds "Soul and Spirit," refuses to discriminate between the animal and the spiritual Egos, the Jiv-atma (or Linga-Sharir) and the Kama-Rupa (or Atma-Rupa), two as different things as body and mind, and — mind and thought are! That is what happens. After circling, so to say, along the arc of the cycle, circling along and within it (the daily and yearly rotation of the Earth is as good an illustration as any) when the Spirit-man reaches our planet, which is one of the lowest, having lost at every station some of the etherial and acquired an increase of material nature, both spirit and matter have become pretty much equilibrized in him. But then, he has the Earth's cycle to perform; and, as in the process of involution and evolution downward, matter is ever striving to stifle spirit, when arrived at the lowest point of his pilgrimage, the once pure Planetary Spirit will be found dwindled to what Science agrees to call a primitive or Primordial man — amidst a nature as primordial, speaking geologically, for physical nature keeps pace with the physiological as well as the spiritual man, in her cyclic career. At that point the great Law begins its work of selection. Matter found entirely divorced from spirit is thrown over into the still lower worlds — into the sixth "GATI" or "way of rebirth" of the vegetable and mineral worlds, and of the primitive animal forms. From thence, matter ground over in the workshop of nature proceeds soulless back to its Mother Fount; while the Egos purified of their dross are enabled to resume their progress once more onward. It is here, then, that the laggard Egos perish by the millions. It is the solemn moment of the "survival of the fittest," the annihilation of those unfit. It is but matter (or material man) which is compelled by its own weight to descend to the very bottom of the "circle of necessity" to there assume animal form; as to the winner of that race throughout the worlds — the Spiritual Ego, he will ascend from star to star, from one world to another, circling onward to rebecome the once pure planetary Spirit, then higher still, to finally reach its first starting point, and from thence — to merge into MYSTERY. No adept has ever penetrated beyond the veil of primitive Kosmic matter. The highest, the most perfect vision is limited to the universe of Form and Matter.