Embryo In general, the vitalized germ of an organism in its earlier stages, and sometimes applied to it until it leaves the egg or womb covering. The fertilization of the germ-cell in plant or animal is an everyday working of the universal law by which spirit incubates matter for the purpose of differentiating on the objective planes, in order to manifest the subjective monadic life. Thus the reincarnating ego, in beginning to make a new body for itself, with the division of the fertilized microscopic egg cell, is analogous to the world-germ awakening in a laya-center to begin another galactic, solar, or planetary existence. "This desire for a sentient life shows itself in everything, from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into objective existence" (SD 1:44).
In the unfolding marvel of the embryonic germ-cell, both in the human and subhuman kingdoms, each kind manifests its own essential selfhood or svabhava, and its own degree of evolution. In the unfolding growth of the human embryo it rapidly epitomizes the aeon-long history of the imbodiments of the race, as it also repeats its individual course through all the forms of matter -- a process often referred to as recapitulation. It goes back to past manvantaras of manifestation in mineral form, for "the cell-germinating substance (the cytoblastema) and the mother-lye from which crystals originate, are one and the same essence, save in differentiation for purposes" (SD 2:256n).
to be continue "Embryo2 "
Recapitulation Known as the biogenic law. In embryology, the supposed process in which any embryo reproduces many of the progressive type-forms of the organisms that precede it in the line of development. The points of similarity between the series of forms that prevail from the simplest types of life to those of higher animals, and the resemblances in embryonic development of different organisms, are interpreted as evidence of a common descent. This implies that the imbodying entity -- man, for instance -- is the product of a progressive series of forms. Theosophy, however, shows the original unit of every manifested being to be an unself-conscious spark of divine life which becomes involved progressively in all grades and forms of matter during uncounted periods of time and varied rounds of experience. Thus the common descent and the evolutionary urge are fundamentally spiritual in origin.
The human embryo, in rapidly epitomizing its individual and racial history, sketches strange conditions which were normal in the early root-races. Its brain, in the second month, forms more than twenty percent of the body, as compared with about two percent in the adult body; the early embryonic and adult heart have similar relative proportions.
to be continue "Recapitulation2 "