onsideration of Cosmic
Evolution at a point in which matter has reached the limit of its
lowest vibrations, manifesting in the grossest possible form of matter.
These students may point to the fact that Science begins its
consideration of evolution with the _nebulae_, or faint cloudlike,
vaporous matter, from which the planets were formed. But there is only
an apparent contradiction here. The _nebulae_ were part of the Process
of Involution, and Science is right when it holds that the gross forms
were produced from the finer. But the process of change from finer to
grosser was _Involution_, not Evolution. Do you see the difference?
Evolution begins at the point when the stage of Unfoldment commenced.
When the gross forms begin to yield to the new upward urge, and unfold
into finer forms--then begins Evolution.

We shall pass over the period of Evolution in which Matter was evolving
into finer and still finer forms, until at last it reached a degree of
vibration capable of supporting that which we call "life." Of course
there is "life" in all matter--even in the atom, as we have shown in
previous lessons. But when we speak of "life," as we now do, we mean
what are generally called "living forms." The Yogi Teachings inform us
that the lowest forms of what we call "life" were evolved from forms of
high crystal life, which indeed they very much resemble. We have spoken
of this resemblance, in the previous lessons of this series. And, so we
shall begin at the point where "living forms" began.

Speaking now of our own planet, the Earth, we find matter emerging from
the molten state in which it manifested for ages. Gradually cooling and
stratifying, the Earth contained none of those forms that we call
living forms. The temperature of the Earth in that period is estimated
at about 15,000 times hotter than boiling water, which would, of
course, render impossible the existence of any of the present known
forms of life. But the Yogi Teachings inform us that even in the molten
mass there were elementary forms that were to become the ancestral
forms of the later living forms. These elementary forms were composed
of a vaporous, peculiar form of matter, of minute size,--little more
than the atoms, in fact, and yet, just a little more advanced. From
these elementary forms, there gradually evolved, as the Earth cooled
and solidified, other forms, and so on until at last the first "living
form" manifested.

As the globe cooled at the