The Consciousness of the Atom
by Alice A. Bailey
1922

The eminent esoteric author Alice Bailey, published dozens of books. This book was originally delivered as a series of weekly lectures. Bailey, even at this point in her career, shows a mature grasp of esoteric issues, and deftly brings in scientific concepts such as radioactivity and the fourth dimension. Unlike some other authors of this genre, she invokes leading-edge science when it moves the argument ahead, not to impress the reader with her erudition, or to baffle the audience with irrelevant facts. She sees the universe as alive at all scales of existence. While the comparison of an atom to a solar system no longer holds true, her vision of how consciousness evolves even in the micro-scale and macro-scale, and how that is mirrored in the tripartate human being, is a lucid explanation of an occult world-view expressed by many other thinkers.

The seven lectures presented here were delivered in New York for the purpose of presenting the testimony of science as to the relation of matter and of consciousness; to enable the hearers to observe the identical manifestation of these relations and of certain basic laws in successively higher states of being, and thus to bring to them a realization of the universality of the evolutionary process and its actuality; and to deal somewhat with the nature of the expanded states of consciousness and the enlarged life toward which all mankind is traveling. They thus were intended to serve as an introduction to the more detailed study and application of the laws of life and human enfoldment generally included in the term of "occultism."

1922. Seven Lectures: Field of Evolution, Evolution of Substance; Form or Group Evolution; Evolution of Man the Thinker; Evolution of Consciousness, Goal of Evolution.; Cosmic Evolution.