STARTS
HERE
A FREE INTRO TO THEOSOPHY
The Seven
Principles Of Man
By
Annie Besant
Published in
1909
Inquirers attracted to Theosophy by its central doctrine of the
brotherhood of man, and by the hopes which it holds out of wider knowledge and
of spiritual growth, are apt to be repelled when they make their first attempt
to come into closer acquaintance with it, by the to them strange and puzzling
names which flow glibly from the lips of Theosophists in conference assembled.
They hear a tangle of Âtma-Buddhi, Kâma-Manas, Triad, Devachan, and what
not, and feel at once that for them Theosophy is far too abstruse a study. Yet
they might have become very good Theosophists, had not their initial enthusiasm
been
quenched with the douche of Sanskrit terms. In the present manual the
smoking flax shall be more tenderly treated, and but few Sanskrit names shall
be flung in the face of the enquirer.
As a matter of fact, the use of these terms has become general among
Theosophists because the English language has no equivalents for them, and a
long and clumsy sentence has to be used in their stead if the idea is to be
conveyed at all. The initial trouble of learning the names has been preferred
to
the continued trouble of using roundabout descriptive phrases –
"Kâma," for instance, being shorter and more precise than "the
passional and emotional part of our nature."
Man according to the Theosophical teaching is a sevenfold being, or, in
the usual phrase, has a septenary constitution. Putting it in another way,
man’s nature has seven aspects, may be studied from seven different points of
view, is composed of seven principles. The clearest and best way of all in
which to think of man is to regard him as one, the Spirit or True Self ; this
belongs to the highest region of the universe, and is universal, the same for
all ; it is a ray of God, a spark from the divine fire. This is to become an
individual, reflecting the divine perfection, a son that grows into the
likeness of his father.
For this purpose the Spirit, or true Self, is clothed in garment after
garment, each garment belonging to a definite region of the universe, and
enabling the Self to come into contact with that region, gain knowledge of it,
and work in it. It thus gains experience, and all its latent potentialities are
gradually drawn out into active powers.
These garments, or sheaths, are distinguishable from each other both
theoretically and practically.
If a man be looked at clairvoyantly each is distinguishable by the eye,
and they are separable each from each either during physical life or at death,
according to the nature of any particular sheath. Whatever words may be used,
the fact
remains the same – that he is essentially sevenfold, an evolving being,
part of whose nature has already been manifested, part remaining latent at
present, so far as the vast majority of humankind is concerned. Man’s
consciousness is able to function through as many of these aspects as have been
already evolved in him into activity.
This evolution, during the present cycle of human development, takes
place on five out of seven planes of nature. The two higher planes – the sixth
and seventh – will not be reached, save in the most exceptional cases, by men
of this humanity in the present cycle, and they may therefore be left out of
sight for our present purpose.
As, however, some confusion has arisen as to the seven planes through
differences of nomenclature, two diagrams are given at the end of this treatise
showing the seven planes as they exist in our division of the universe,
in correspondence with the vaster planes of the universe as a whole, and also
the subdivision of the five into seven, as they are represented in some of our
literature.
A "plane" is merely a condition, a stage, a state ; so that we
might describe man as fitted by his nature, when that nature is fully
developed, to exist
consciously in seven different conditions, or seven different stages, in
seven different states ; or technically, on seven different planes of being.
To take an easily verified illustration: a man may be conscious on the
physical plane, that is, in his physical body, feeling hunger and thirst, and
pain of a blow or cut. But let the man be a soldier in the heat of battle, and
his consciousness will be centred in his passions and emotions, and he may
suffer a
wound without knowing it, his consciousness being away from the physical
plane and acting on the plane of passions and emotions: when the excitement is
over, consciousness will pass back to the physical, and he will
"feel" the pain of his
wound.
Let the man be a philosopher, and as he ponders over some knotty problem
he will lose all consciousness of bodily wants, of emotions, of love and hatred
; his consciousness will have passed to the plane of intellect, he will be
"abstracted," i.e.., drawn away from considerations pertaining to his
bodily life, and fixed on the plane of thought.
Thus may a man live on these several planes, in these several
conditions, one part or another of his nature being thrown into activity at any
given time ; and an understanding of what man is, of his nature, his powers,
his possibilities, will be reached more easily and assimilated more usefully if
he is studied along these clearly defined lines, that if he be left without
analysis, a mere confused bundle of qualities and states.
It has also been found convenient, having regard to man’s mortal and
immortal life, to put these seven principles into two groups – one containing
the three higher principles and therefore called the Triad, the other
containing the four lower, and therefore called the Quaternary. The Triad is
the deathless part of man’s nature, the "spirit" and soul of
Christian terminology ; the Quaternary is
the mortal part, the "body", of Christianity.
This division into body, soul and spirit is used by
This looseness is fatal to any clear view of the constitution of man,
and the Theosophist may well appeal to the Christian philosopher as against the
causal Christian non-thinker if it be urged that he is making distinctions
difficult to be grasped. No philosophy worthy of the name can be stated even in
the most elementary fashion without making some demand on the intelligence and
the
attention of the would be learner, and carefulness in the use of terms
is a condition of all knowledge.
The dense physical body of man is called the first of his seven
principles, as it is certainly the most obvious. Built of material molecules,
in the generally accepted sense of the term –with its five organs of sensation -
the five senses -its organs of locomotion, its brain and nervous system, its
apparatus for carrying on the various functions necessary for its continued
existence, there
is little to be said about this physical body in so slight a sketch as
this of the constitution of man.
Western science is almost ready to accept the Theosophical view that the
human organism consists of innumerable "lives," which build up the
cells.
H P Blavatsky says on this: "Science has never yet
gone so far as to assert with the Occult doctrine that our bodies, as well as
those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of
such beings [bacteria, etc.]: which, with the exception of the larger species,
no microscope can detect ….
The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be
identical, chemical science may well say that there is no difference between
the matter
which composes the ox and that which forms the man. But the Occult
doctrine is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the
same, but the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the
bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and
of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle – whether you call
it organic or
inorganic – is a life.
Every atom and molecule in the universe is both life-giving and
death-giving to such forms (Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 281, new edition). The
microbes thus "build up the material body and its cells," under the
constructive energy of vitality – a phrase that will be explained when we come
to deal with "life," as the Third Principle, and with these microbes
as part of it. When the "life" is no longer supplied the microbes
"are left to run riot as destructive agents," and they break up and
disintegrate the cells which they built, and so the body goes to pieces.
The purely physical consciousness is the consciousness of the cells and
the molecules. The selective action of the cells, taking from the blood what
they need, rejecting what they do not need, is an instance of this self
consciousness. The process goes on without the help of our consciousness or
volition. Again that which is called by physiologists unconscious memory
is the memory of the physical consciousness, unconscious to us indeed, until we
have learned to transfer our brain consciousness there.
What we feel is not what the cells feel. The pain of a wound is felt by
the brain-consciousness, acting, as before said, on the physical plane ; but
the
consciousness of the molecule, as of the aggregation of molecules we
call cells, leads it to hurry to the repair of the damaged tissues – actions of
which the brain is unconscious – and its memory makes it repeat the same act
again and again, even when it has become unnecessary.
Hence cicatrices on wounds, scars, callosities, etc. The student may
find many details on this subject in physiological treatises. The death of the
dense
physical body occurs when the withdrawal of the controlling life-energy
leaves the microbes to go their own way, and the many lives, no longer
co-ordinated, separate from each other and scatter the particles of the cells
of "the man of dust," and what we call decay sets in.
The body becomes a whirlpool of unrestrained, unregulated lives, and its
form, which resulted from their correlation, is destroyed by their exuberant
individual energy. Death is but an aspect of life, and the destruction of one
material form is but a prelude to building up of another.
PRINCIPLE II. THE ETHERIC DOUBLE
The Linga Sharira , the astral body, the ethereal body, the fluidic
body, the double, the wraith, the doppelganger, the astral man – such are a few
of the many names which have been given to the second principle in man’s
constitution.
The best name is the Etheric Double, because this term designates the
second principle only, suggesting its constitution and appearance: whereas the
other names have been used somewhat generally to describe bodies formed of some
more
subtle matter than that which affects our physical senses, without
regard to the question whether other principles were or were not involved in
their
construction. I shall therefore use this name throughout.
The etheric double is formed of matter rarer or more subtle than that
which is perceptible to our five senses, but still matter belonging to the
physical plane, to which its functioning is confined.
It is the state of physical matter which is just beyond our "solid
, liquid and gas," which form the dense portions of the physical plane.
This etheric double is the exact double or counterpart of the dense
physical body to which it belongs, and is separable from it, although unable to
go very far away therefrom.
In normal healthy human beings the separation is a matter of difficulty,
but in persons known as physical or materialising mediums, the ethereal double
slips out without any great effort. When separated from the dense body it is
visible to the clairvoyant as an exact replica thereof, united
to it by a slender thread.
So close is the physical union between the two that an injury inflicted
on the etheric double appears as a lesion on the dense body, a fact known under
the
name of repercussion. A. d’Assier, in his well known work – translated
by Colonel Olcott, the President-Founder of the Theosophical Society, under the
title of Posthumous Humanity – gives a number of cases (see p. 51-57) in which
this repercussion took place.
Separation of the etheric double from the dense body is generally
accompanied by a considerable decrease in vitality in the latter, the double
becoming more vitalised as the energy in the dense body diminishes. Colonel
Olcott says;
" When the double is projected by a trained expert, even the body
seems torpid, and the mind in a ‘brown study’ or dazed state ; the eyes are
lifeless in expression, the heart and lung actions feeble, and often the
temperature much lowered. It is very dangerous to make any sudden noise or burst
into the room, under such circumstances ; for the double, being by
instantaneous reaction drawn
back into the body, the heart convulsively contracts, and death may even
be caused."
In the case of Emilie Sagée, the girl was noticed to look pale and exhausted
when the double was visible:
"the more distinct the double and more material in appearance,, the
really material person was effectively wearied, suffering and languid ; when on
the contrary, the appearance of the
double weakened, the patient was seen to recover strength."
This phenomenon is perfectly intelligible to the Theosophical student,
who knows that the etheric double is the vehicle of the life-principle, or
vitality, in the physical body, and that its partial withdrawal must therefore diminish
the
energy, with which this principle plays on the denser molecules.
Clairvoyants, such as the Seeress of Prevorst, state that they can see
the ethereal arm or leg attached to a body from which the dense limb has been
amputated, and D’Assier remarks on this:- "whilst
I was absorbed in physiological studies, I was often arrested by a
singular fact. It sometimes happens that a person who has lost an arm or leg
experiences certain sensations at the extremities of the fingers and toes.
Physiologists explain this anomaly by postulating in the patient an inversion
of sensitiveness or of recollection, which makes him locate in the hand or the
foot the sensation with which the nerve of the stump is alone affected …I
confess that these explanations seemed
to me laboured and have never satisfied me.
When I studied the problem of the duplication of man, the question of
amputations recurred to my mind, and I asked myself if it was not more simple
and logical to attribute the anomaly of which I
have spoken to the doubling of the human body, which by its fluid nature
can escape amputation".
The etheric double plays a great part in spiritualistic phenomena. Here
again the clairvoyant can help us. A clairvoyant can see the etheric double
oozing out of the left side of the medium, and it is this which often appears
as the
"materialised spirit," easily moulded into various shapes by
the thought-currents of the sitters, and gaining strength and vitality as the
medium
sinks into a deep trance.
The Countess Wachtmeister, who is clairvoyant, says she has seen the
same "spirit" recognised as that of a near relative or friend by
different sitters, each of whom saw it according to his expectations, while to
her own eyes it was the mere double of the medium.
So again, H P Blavatsky told me that when she was at the Eddy
homestead, watching the remarkable series of phenomena there produced, she
deliberately moulded the "spirit" that appeared into the likenesses
of persons known to herself and to no one else present, and the other sitters
saw the types which she produced by her own willpower, moulding the plastic
matter of the medium’s
double.
Many of the movements of objects that occur at such séances, and at
other times, without visible contact, are due to the action of the etheric
double, and the student can learn how to produce such phenomena at will. They
are trivial enough: the mere putting out of the etheric hand is no more
important than the putting out of the dense counterpart, and neither more or
less miraculous.
Some persons produce such phenomena unconsciously, mere aimless
overturnings of
objects, making of noises, and so on: they have no control over their
etheric double, and it just blunders about in their near neighbourhood, like a
baby trying to walk.
For the etheric double, like the dense body, has only a diffused
consciousness belonging to its parts, and has no mentality. Nor does it readily
serve as a
medium of mentality, when disjoined from the dense counterpart.
This leads to and interesting point. The centres of sensation are
located in the fourth principle, which may be said to form a bridge between the
physical organs and the mental perceptions ; impressions from the physical
universe impinge on the material molecules of the dense physical body, setting
in vibration the constituent cells of the organs of sensations, or our
"senses".
These vibrations, in their turn, set in motion the finer material
molecules of the etheric double, in the corresponding sense organs of its finer
matter.
From these vibrations pass to the astral body, or fourth principle,
presently to be considered, wherein are the corresponding centres of sensation.
From these vibrations are again propagated into the yet rarer matter of
the lower mental plane, whence they are reflected back until, reaching the
material molecules of the cerebral hemispheres, they become our "brain
consciousness."
This correlated and unconscious succession is necessary for the normal
action of consciousness as we know it.
In sleep and in trance, natural or induced, the first two and the last
stages are generally omitted, and the impressions start from and return to the
astral
plane, and thus make no trace on the brain memory ; but the natural or
trained psychic, the clairvoyant who does not need trance for the exercise of
his powers, is able to transfer his consciousness from the physical to the
astral
plane without losing grip thereof, and can impress the brain-memory with
knowledge gained on the astral plane, so retaining it for use.
Death means for the etheric double just what it means for the dense
physical body, the breaking up of its constituent parts, the dissipation of its
molecules. The vehicle of the vitality that animates the bodily organism
as a whole, it oozes forth from the body when the death hour comes, and is seen
by
the clairvoyant as a violet light, or violet form, hovering over the
dying person, still attached to the physical body by the slender thread before
spoken
of. When the thread snaps, the last breath has quivered outwards, and
the bystanders whisper "He is dead."
The etheric double, being of physical matter, remains in the
neighbourhood of the corpse, and is the "wraith," or
"apparition," or "phantom," sometimes seen at the moment of
death and afterwards by persons near the place where the death has occurred.
It disintegrates slowly pari passu with its dense counterpart, and its
remnants are seen by sensitives in cemeteries and churchyards as violet lights
hovering over graves.
Here is one of the reasons which render cremation preferable to burial
as a mode of disposing of the physical enveloped of man ; the fire dissipates
in a few hours the molecules which would otherwise be set free only in the slow
course of gradual putrefaction, and thus quickly restores to their own plane
the dense and etheric materials, ready for use once more in the building up of
new forms.
PRINCIPLE III. PRÂNA, THE LIFE
All universes, all worlds, all men, all brutes, all vegetables, all
minerals, all molecules and atoms, all that is, are plunged in a great ocean of
life, life eternal, life infinite, life incapable of increase or diminution.
The universe is only life in manifestation, life made objective, life
differentiated.
Now each organism, whether minute as a molecule or vast as a universe,
may be thought of as appropriating to itself somewhat of life, of embodying, in
itself as its own life some of this universal life.
Figure a living sponge, stretching itself out in the water which bathes
it, envelops it, permeates it ; there is water, still the ocean, circulating in
every passage, filling every pore ; but we may think of the ocean
outside the sponge, or of part of the ocean, appropriated by the sponge,
distinguishing them in thought if we want to make statements about each
severally.
So each organism is a sponge bathed in the ocean of life universal, and
containing within itself some of that ocean as its own breath of life.
In Theosophy we distinguish this appropriated life under the name Prâna,
breath, and call it the third principle in man’s constitution. To speak quite
accurately, the "breath of life" – that which the Hebrews
termed Nephesh, or the breath of life breathed into the nostrils of Adam – is
not Prâna only, but Prâna and the fourth principle conjoined. It is these two
together that make the "vital spark" (Secret Doctrine, vol. i., p.
262), and that are the "breath of life in man, as in beast or insect, or
physical, material life"
It is "the breath of animal life in man – the breath of life
instinctual in the animal". But just now we are concerned with Prâna only,
with vitality as the animating principle in all animal and human bodies. Of
this life the etheric double is the vehicle, acting, so to say, as means of
communication, as bridge, between Prâna and the dense body.
Prâna is explained in the Secret Doctrine as having for its lowest
subdivision the microbes of science ; these are the "invisible lives"
that build up the
physical cells (se ante, p. 8,9) ; these are the "countless myriads
of lives" that build the "tabernacle of clay," the physical
bodies (Secret Doctrine vol. I, p. 245). "Science, dimly perceiving the
truth, may find bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in
them only, occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases are attributed.
Occultism – which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in
a mineral or human body, in air, fire, or water – affirms that our whole body
is
built of such lives; the smallest bacterium under the microscope being
to them a comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria.
The"fiery lives" are the controllers and directors of these microbes,
these invisible lives, and "indirectly" build, i.e.., build by
controlling and directing the microbes, the immediate builders, supplying the
latter with what is necessary, acting as the life of these lives; the
"fiery lives" the synthesis, the essence, of Prâna, are the
"vital constructive energy" that enables the microbes to build the
physical cells.
One of the archaic commentaries sums up the matter in stately and
luminous phrases: "The worlds, the profane, are built up of the known
elements. To the conception of an Arhat, these elements are themselves
collectively a divine life
; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the numberless and
countless crores – ( a crore is ten millions) – of lives.
Fire alone is ONE, on the plane of the One Reality ; on that of
manifested, hence illusive, being, its particles are fiery lives which live and
have their
being at the expense of every other life that they consume. Therefore
they are named the Devourers….Every visible thing in this universe was built by
such lives, from conscious and divine primordial man, down to the unconscious
agents
that construct matter…..From the One Life, formless and uncreate,
proceeds the universe of lives (Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 269).
As in the universe, so in man, and all these countless lives, all this
constructive vitality, all this is summed up by the Theosophist as Prâna .
PRINCIPLE IV. THE DESIRE BODY
In building up our man we have now reached the principle sometimes
described as the animal soul, in Theosophical parlance Kâma Rûpa, or the
desire-body. It belongs to in constitution, and functions on, the second or
astral plane. It
includes the whole body of appetites, passions, emotions, and desires
which come under the head of instincts, sensations, feelings and emotions, in
our Western psychological classification, and are dealt with as a subdivision
of mind.
In Western psychology mind is divided – by the modern school – into
three main groups, feelings, will, intellect. Feelings are again divided into
sensations and emotions , and these are divided and subdivided under numerous
heads. Kâma,
or desire, includes the whole group of "feelings," and might
be described as our passional and emotional nature.
All animal needs, such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, come under it;
all passions, such as love (in its lower sense), hatred, envy, jealousy. It is
the
desire for sentient experience, for experience of material joys –
"the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life".
This principle is the most material in our nature, it is the one that
binds us fast to earthly life. "It is not molecularly constituted matter,
least of all
the human body, Sthula Sharira, that is the grossest of all our
‘principles’ but verily the middle principle, the real animal centre ; whereas
our body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which
the beast in us acts all its life" ( Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 280-81).
United to the lower part of Manas, the mind, as Kâma-Manas, it becomes
the normal human brain-intelligence, and that aspect of it will be dealt with
presently. Considered by itself, it remains the brute in us, the
"ape and tiger" of Tennyson, the force which most avails to keep us
bound to earth and to stifle in us all higher longings by the illusions of
sense.
Kâma joined to Prâna is, as we have seen, the "breath of
life," the vital sentient principle spread over every particle of the
body. It is, therefore, the
seat of sensation, that which enables the organs of sensation to
function. We have already noted that the physical organs of sense, the bodily
instruments
that come into immediate contact with the external world, are related to
the organs of sensation in the etheric double.
But these organs would be incapable of functioning did not Prâna make
them vibrant with activity, and their vibrations would remain vibrations only,
motion on the material plane of the physical body, did not Kâma, the principle
of sensation translate the vibration into feeling. Feeling indeed, is
consciousness on the kâmic plane, and when a man is under the domination of a
sensation or a
passion, the Theosophist speaks of him as on the kâmic plane, meaning
thereby that his consciousness is functioning on that plane.
For instance, a tree may reflect rays of light, that is ethereal
vibrations, and these vibrations striking on the outer eye will set up
vibrations in the
physical nerve-cells ; these will be propagated as vibrations to the
physical and on to the astral centres, but there is no sight of the tree until
the seat of the sensation is reached, and Kâma enables us to perceive.
Matter of the astral plane – including that called elemental essence –
is the material of which the desire-body is composed, and it is the peculiar
properties of this matter which enable it to serve as the sheath in which the
Self can gain experience of sensation. (The constitution of the elemental
essence would lead us too far from an elementary treatise).
The desire – body, or astral body, as it is often called, has the form
of a mere cloudy mass during the earlier stages of evolution, and is incapable
of serving as an independent vehicle of consciousness.
During deep sleep it escapes from the physical body, but remains near
it, and the mind within it is almost as much asleep as the body. It is,
however, liable to be affected by forces of the astral plane akin to its own
constitution, and gives rise to dreams of a sensuous kind.
In a man of average intellectual development the desire-body has become
more highly organised, and when separated from the physical body is seen to
resemble it is outline and features ; even then, however, it is not conscious
of its surroundings on the astral plane, but encloses the mind as a shell,
within which the mind may actively function, while not yet able to use it as an
independent vehicle of consciousness.
Only in the highly evolved man does the desire-body become thoroughly
organised and vitalised, as much the vehicle of consciousness on the astral
plane as the physical body is on the physical plane.
After death, the higher part of man dwells for awhile in the
desire-body, the length of its stay depending on the comparative grossness or
delicacy of its constituents. When the man escapes from it, it persists for a
time as a "shell" and when the departed entity is of a low type, and
during earth life infused such mentality as it possessed into the passional
nature, some of this remains
entangled with the shell.
It then possesses consciousness of a very low order, has brute cunning,
is without conscience – an altogether objectionable entity, often spoken of as
a
"spook." It strays about, attracted to all places in which
animal desires are encouraged and satisfied, and is drawn into the currents of
those whose animal passions are strong and unbridled.
Mediums of low type inevitably attract these eminently undesirable
visitors, whose fading vitality is reinforced in their séance rooms, who catch
astral reflections, and play the part of "disembodied spirits" of a
low order. Nor is
this all; if at such a séance there be present some man or woman of
correspondingly low development, the spook will be attracted to that person,
and may attach itself to him or to her, and thus may be set up currents between
the
desire-body of the living person and the dying desire-body of the dead
person, generating results of the most deplorable kind.
The longer or shorter persistence of the desire-body as a shell or a
spook depends on the greater or less development of the animal and passional
nature in the dying personality. If during earth-life the animal nature was
indulged and allowed to run riot, if the intellectual and spiritual parts of
man were neglected or stifled, then, as the life-currents were set strongly in
the direction of passion, the desire-body will persist for a long period after
the
body of the person is dead.
Or again, if earth-life has been suddenly cut short by accident or by
suicide, the link between Kâma and Prâna will not be easily broken, and the
desire-body will be strongly vivified. If, on the other hand, desire has been
conquered and
bridled during earth-life, if it has been purified and trained into
subservience to man’s higher nature, then there is but little to energise the
desire-body and it will quickly disintegrate and dissolve away.
There remains one other fate, terrible in its possibilities, which may
befall the fourth principle, but it cannot be clearly understood until the
fifth
principle has been dealt with.
THE QUATERNARY, OR FOUR LOWER PRINCIPLES
The etheric double is here named the Linga Sharira, a name now discarded
in consequence of the confusion caused by employing a well-known term in Hindu
Philosophy in an entirely new sense.
Before her departure H.P.B. urged her pupils to reform the terminology,
which had been too carelessly put together, and we are trying to carry out her
wish.]
We have thus studied man, as to his lower nature, and have reached the
point in his path of evolution to which he is accompanied by the brute. The
quaternary, regarded alone, ere it is affected by contact with the mind, is
merely a lower animal ; it awaits the coming of the mind to make it man.
Theosophy teaches that through past ages man was thus slowly built up,
stage by stage, principle by principle, until he stood as a quaternary, brooded
over but not in contact with the Spirit, waiting for that mind which could
alone enable him to progress farther, and to come into conscious union with the
Spirit, so fulfilling the very object of his being.
This æonian evolution, in its slow progression, is hurried through in
the personal evolution of each human being, each principle which was in the
course of ages successively evolved in man on earth, appearing as part of the
constitution of each man at the point of evolution reached at any given time,
the remaining principles being latent, awaiting their gradual manifestation.
The evolution of the quaternary until it reached the point at which
further progress was impossible without mind, is told in eloquent sentences in
the
archaic stanzas on which the Secret Doctrine of H P Blavatsky is based (breath is, theSpirit, for which
the human tabernacle is to be built ; the gross body is the dense physical body
; the spirit of life is Prâna ; the mirror of its body is the etheric double ;
the vehicle of desires is Kâma): -
" The Breath needed a form ; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed
a gross body ; the Earth moulded it ; The Breath needed the Spirit of Life ;
the Solar Lhas breathed into it its form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its
Body; ‘We gave it
our own,’ said the Dhyânis. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires ; ‘It
has it,’ said the Drainer of Waters. But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the
Universe; ‘We cannot give that, ‘said the fathers, ‘I never had it, ‘
said the Spirit of the Earth. ‘The form would be consumed were I to give it
mine,’ said the Great Fire ….Man remained an empty senseless Bhûta"
(phantom).
And so is the personal man without mind. The quaternary alone is not
man, the Thinker, and it is as Thinker that man is really man. Yet at this
point let the student pause, and reflect over the human constitution, so far as
he has gone.
For this quaternary is the mortal part of man, and is distinguished by
Theosophy as the personality. It needs to be very clearly and definitely
realised, if the constitution of man is to be understood, and if the student is
to read more advanced treatises with intelligence.
True, to make the personality human it has yet to come under the rays of
mind, and to be illuminated by it as the world by the rays of the sun. But even
without these rays it is a clearly defined entity, with its dense body,
its etheric double, its life, and its desire body or animal soul. It has
passions,
but no reason ; it has emotions, but no intellect ; it has desires, but
no rationalised will ; it awaits the coming of its monarch, the mind, the touch
which shall transform it into man.
PRINCIPLE V. MANAS, THE THINKER, OR MIND
We have reached the most complicated part of our study, and some thought
and attention are necessary from the reader to gain even an elementary idea of
the relation held by the fifth principle to the other principles in man.
The word Manas comes from the Sanskrit word – man, the root of the verb
to think ; it is the Thinker in us, spoken of vaguely in the West as mind. I
will ask the reader to regard Manas as Thinker rather than as mind, because the
word Thinker suggests some one who thinks, i.e., an individual, an entity.
And this is exactly the Theosophical idea of Manas, for Manas is the
immortal individual, the real " I ," that clothes itself over and
over again in transient personalities, and itself endures for ever.
It is described in the Voice of the Silence in the exhortation addressed
to the candidate for initiation: "Have perseverance as one who doth for
evermore endure. Thy shadows [personalities] live and vanish ; that which in
thee shall live for ever, that which in thee knows, for it is knowledge, is not
of fleeting life; it is the man that was, that is, and will be, for whom the
hour shall never strike".
H P Blavatsky has described it very clearly in
The Key to Theosophy: "Try to imagine a ‘Spirit,’ a
celestial being, whether we call it by one name or another, divine in its
essential nature, yet not pure enough to be one with the ALL, and having, in
order to achieve this, to so purify its nature as finally to gain that goal.
It can do so only be passing individually and personally, i.e., spiritually
and physically, through every experience and feeling that exists in the
manifold or differentiated universe. It has, therefore, after having gained
such experience
in the lower kingdoms, and having ascended higher and still higher with
every rung on the ladder of being, to pass through every experience on the
human planes.
In its very essence it is Thought, and is, therefore, called in its
plurality Manasaputra, ‘the Sons of (universal) Mind.’ This individualised
‘Thought’ is
what we
Theosophists call the real human Ego, the thinking entity imprisoned in a case
of flesh and bones. This is surely a spiritual entity, not matter (that is, not
matter as we know it, on the plane of the objective universe) – and such
entities are the incarnating Egos that inform the bundle of animal matter
called mankind, and whose names are Manasa or minds" (The Key to Theosophy
, p. 183-184). This idea may be rendered yet clearer perhaps by a
hurried glance cast backward over man’s evolution in the past. When the
quaternary had been slowly built up, it was a fair house without a tenant, and
stood empty awaiting the coming of the one who was to dwell therein.
The name Mânasaputra (the sons of mind) covers many grades of
intelligence, ranging from the mighty "Sons of the Flame" whose human
evolution lies far behind them, down to those entities who gained
individualisation in the cycle
preceding our own, and were ready to incarnate on this earth in order to
accomplish their human stage of evolution.
Some superhuman intelligences incarnated as guides and teachers of our
infant humanity, and became founders and divine rulers of the ancient
civilisations.
Large numbers of the entities spoken of above, who had already evolved
some mental faculties, took up their abode in the human quaternary, in the
mindless men. These are the reincarnating Mânasaputra, who became the tenants
of the
human frames as then evolved on earth, and these same Mânasaputra,
reincarnating age after age, are the Reincarnating Egos, the Manas in us, the
persistent individual, the fifth principle in man.
The remainder of mankind through successive ages received from the
loftier Mânasaputra their first spark of mind, a ray which stimulated into
growth the germ of mind latent within them, the human soul thus having its
birth in time there. It is these differences of age, as we may call them, in
the beginning of the individual life, of the specialisation of the eternal Divine
Spirit into a
human soul, which explain the enormous differences in mental capacity
found in
our present humanity.
The multiplicity of names given to this fifth principle has probably
tended to increase the confusion surrounding it in the minds of many who are
beginning to study Theosophy.
Mânasaputra is what we call the historical name, the name that suggests
the entrance into humanity of a class of already individualised souls at a
certain point of evolution ; Manas is the ordinary name, descriptive of the
intellectual nature of the principle ; the Individual or the " I ,"
or Ego, recalls the fact that this principle is permanent, does not die, is the
individualising principle, separating itself in thought from all that is not
itself, the Subject in Western terminology as opposed to the Object ; the
Higher Ego puts it into
contrast with the Personal Ego, of which something is to be presently
said .
The Reincarnating Ego lays stress on the fact that it is the principle
that reincarnates continually, and so unites in its own experience all the
lives
passed through on earth. There are various other names, but they will
not be met with in elementary treatises.
The above are those most often encountered, and there is no real
difficulty about them, but when they are used interchangeably, without
explanation, the unhappy student is apt to tear his hair in anguish, wondering
how many principles he has got hold of, and what relation they bear to each
other.
We must now consider Manas during a single incarnation, which will serve
as the type of all, and we will start when the Ego has been drawn – by causes
set a-going in previous earth-lives – the family in which is to be born the
human being who is to serve as its next tabernacle. (I do not deal here with
reincarnation, since that great and most essential doctrine of Theosophy must
be
expounded separately).
The Thinker, then, awaits the building of the "house of life"
which he is to occupy ; and now arises a difficulty ; himself a spiritual
entity living on the mental or third plane upwards, a plane far higher than
that of the universe, he cannot influence the molecules of gross matter of
which his dwelling is built by the direct play upon them of his own most subtle
particles.
So, he projects part of his own substance, which clothes itself with
astral matter, and then with the help of etheric matter permeates the whole
nervous
system of the yet unborn child, to form, as the physical apparatus matures,
the thinking principle in man. This projection from Manas, spoken of as its
reflection, its shadow, its ray, and by many another descriptive and
allegorical name, is the lower Manas, in contradistinction to the higher Manas
– Manas, during every period of incarnation, being dual.
On this, H P Blavatsky says: "Once imprisoned, or incarnate,
their (the Manas) essence becomes dual; that is to say the rays of the eternal
divine Mind,
considered as individual entities, assume a twofold attribute which is
(a) their essential, inherent, characteristic, heaven-aspiring mind
(higher Manas), and
(b) the human
quality of thinking, or animal cogitation, rationalised owing to the superiority
of the human brain, the Kâma-tending or lower Manas" (The Key to Theosophy, p. 184).
We must now turn our attention to this lower Manas alone, and see the
part which it plays in the human constitution.
It is engulfed in the quaternary, and we may regard it as clasping Kâma
with one hand, while with the other it retains its hold on its father, the
higher Manas.
Whether it will be dragged down by Kâma altogether and be torn away from
the triad to which by its nature it belongs, or whether it will triumphantly
carry back to its source the purified experiences of its earth-life – that is
the life-problem set and solved in each successive incarnation.
During earth-life, Kâma and the lower Manas are joined together, and are
often spoken of conveniently as Kâma-Manas. Kâma supplies, as we have seen, the
animal and passional elements ; the lower Manas rationalises these, and adds
the
intellectual faculties ; and so we have the brain-mind, the
brain-intelligence, i.e.., Kâma-Manas functioning in the brain and nervous
system, using the physical apparatus as its organ on the material plane.
In man these two principles are interwoven during life, and rarely act
separately, but the student must realise that "Kâma-Manas " is not a
new principle, but the interweaving of the fourth with the lower part of the
fifth.
As with a flame we may light a wick, and the colour of the flame of the
burning wick will depend on the nature of the wick and of the liquid in which
it is
soaked, so in each human being the flame of Manas set alight the brain
and Kâmic wick, and the colour of the light from that wick will depend on the
Kâmic nature and the development of the brain-apparatus. If the Kâmic nature be
strong and undisciplined it will soil the pure manasic
light, lending it a lurid tinge and fouling it with noisome smoke. If
the brain-apparatus be imperfect or undeveloped, it will dull the light and
prevent it from shining forth to the outer world.
As was clearly stated by H P Blavatsky in her article on "Genius" ;
"What we call ‘the manifestations of genius’ in a person are only the more
or less successful efforts of that Ego to assert itself on the outward plane of
its objective form – the man of clay – in the matter-of-fact daily life of the
latter.
The Egos of a Newton, an Æschylus, or a Shakespeare are of the same
essence and
substance as the Egos of a yokel, an ignoramus, a fool, or even an idiot
; and the self-assertion of their informing genii depends on the physiological
and material construction of the physical man.
No Ego differs from another Ego in its primordial or original essence
and nature. That which makes one mortal a great man and of another a vulgar
silly person is, as said, the quality and make-up of the physical shell or
casing, and the adequacy or inadequacy of brain and body to transmit and give
expression to the light of the real inner man ; and this aptness or inaptness
is, in its turn, the
result of Karma.
Or, to use another simile, physical man is the musical instrument, and
the Ego the performing artist. The potentiality of perfect melody of sound is
in the former – the instrument – and no skill of the latter can awaken a
faultless harmony out of a broken or badly made instrument.
This harmony depends on the fidelity of transmission, by word and act,
to the objective plane, of the unspoken divine thought in the very depths of
man’s subjective or inner nature.
Physical man may – to follow our simile – be a
priceless Stradivarius, or a cheap and cracked fiddle, or again a
mediocrity between the two, in the hands of the Paganini who ensouls him"
(Lucifer November, 1889, p.228).
Bearing in mind these limitations and idiosyncrasies ([Limitations and
idiosyncrasies due to the action of the Ego in previous earth-lives, be it
remembered ] imposed on the manifestations of the thinking principle by the
organ through which it has to function, we shall have little difficulty in
following the workings of the lower Manas in man ; mental ability,
intellectual strength, acuteness, subtlety – all these are its manifestations ;
these may reach as far as what is often called genius, what H P Blavatsky speaks of as "artificial genius, the
outcome of culture and of purely intellectual
acuteness." Its nature is often demonstrated by the presence of
Kâmic elements in it, of passion, vanity and arrogance.
The higher Manas can but rarely manifest itself at the present stage of
human evolution. Occasionally a flash from those loftier regions lightens the
twilight in which we dwell, and such flashes alone are what the Theosophist
calls true genius ; "Behold in every manifestation of genius, when
combined with virtue, the undeniable presence of the celestial exile, the
divine Ego whose jailer thou
art, O man of matter."
For theosophy teaches "that the presence in man of various creative
powers" – called genius in their collectivity – is due to no blind chance,
to no innate
qualities through hereditary tendencies – though that which is known as
atavism may often intensify these faculties – but to an accumulation of
individual antecedent experiences of the Ego in its preceding life and lives.
For, omniscient in its essence and nature, it still requires experience,
through
its personalities, of the things of earth, earthly on the objective
plane, in order to apply the fruition of that abstract experience to them. And,
adds our
philosophy, the cultivation of certain aptitudes through out a long
series of past incarnations must finally culminate, in some one life, in a
blooming forth as genius, in one or another direction" – ( Lucifer
November, 1889, p. 229-30).
For the manifestation of true genius, purity of life is an essential
condition. Kâma-Manas is the personal self of man ; we have already seen that
the quaternary, as a whole, is the personality, "the shadow," and the
lower Manas gives the individualising touch that makes the personality
recognise itself as " I ". It becomes intellectual, it recognises
itself as separate from all other
selves ; deluded by the separateness it feels, it does not realise a
unity beyond all that it is able to sense.
And the lower Manas, attracted by the vividness of the material-life
impressions, swayed by the rush of the Kâmic emotions, passions and desires,
attracted to all material things blinded and deafened by the storm
voices among which it is plunged – the lower Manas is apt to forget the pure
and serene glory of its birthplace, and to throw itself into the turbulence
which gives rapture
in lieu of peace.
And, be it remembered, it is this very lower Manas that yields the last
touch of delight to the senses and to the animal nature ; for what is passion
that can neither anticipate nor remember, where is ecstasy without the subtle
force of imagination, the delicate colours of fancy and of dream?
But there may be chains yet more strong and constraining, binding the
lower Manas fast to the earth. They are forged of ambition, of desire for fame,
be it for that of the statesman’s power, or of supreme intellectual
achievement. So long as any work is wrought for sake of love, or praise, or
even recognition that the work is "mine" and not another’s ; so long
as in the heart’s remotest
chambers one subtlest yearning remains to be recognised as separate from
all ; so long, however grand the ambition, however far reaching the charity,
however lofty the achievement, Manas is tainted with Kâma, and is not pure as
its source.
MANAS IN ACTIVITY
We have already seen that the fifth principle is dual in its aspect
during each period of earth-life, and that the lower Manas united to Kâma,
spoken of conveniently as Kâma-Manas, functions in the brain and nervous system
of man. We need to carry our investigation a little further in order to
distinguish clearly between the activity of the higher and of the lower Manas,
so that the working
in the mind of man may become less obscure to us that it is at present
to many.
Now the cells of the brain and nervous system (like all other cells) are
composed of minute particles of matter, called molecules (literally, little
heaps). These molecules do not touch each other, but are held grouped together
by that manifestation of the Eternal Life which we call attraction. Not being
in
contact with each other they are able to vibrate to and fro if set in
motion, and, as a matter of fact, they are in a state of continual vibration.
H P Blavatsky points out (Lucifer, October, 1890, p.
92-93) that molecular motion is the lowest and most material form of the One
Eternal Life. Itself
motion as the "Great Breath," and the source of all motion on
every plane of the universe. In the Sanskrit, the roots of the terms for
spirit, breath, being and motion are essentially the same, the Râma Prâsad says
that "all these roots have
for their origin the sound produced by the breath of animals" –the
sound of expiration and inspiration.
Now, the lower mind, or Kâma-Manas, acts on the molecules of the nervous
cells by motion, and set them vibrating, so starting mind-consciousness on the
physical plane. Manas itself could not affect these molecules ; but its ray,
the lower Manas, having clothed itself in astral matter and united itself to
the kâmic elements, is able to set the physical molecules in motion, and so
give rise to "brain consciousness," including the brain memory and
all other functions of the human mind, as we know it in its ordinary activity.
These manifestations, "like all other phenomena on the material
plane.. must be related in their final analysis to the world of
vibration," says H P Blavatsky.
But, she goes on to point out , "in their origin they belong to a
different and higher world of harmony." Their origin is in the manasic
essence, in the ray ; but on the material plane, acting on the molecules of the
brain, they are translated into vibrations.
This action of the Kâma-Manas is spoken of by Theosophists as psychic.
All mental and passional activities are due to this psychic energy, and its
manifestations are necessarily conditioned by the physical apparatus
through which it acts. We have already seen this broadly stated ( ante, p.
29-30), and the rationale of the statement will now be apparent.
If the molecular constitution of the brain be fine, and if the working
of the specifically kâmic organs (liver, spleen, etc.) be healthy and pure – so
as not
to injure the molecular constitution of the nerves which put them into
communication with the brain – then the psychic breath, as it sweeps through
the
instrument, awakens in this true Æolian harp harmonious and exquisite
melodies ; whereas if the molecular constitution be gross or poor, if it be
disordered by the emanations of alcohol, if the blood be poisoned by gross
living or sexual
excesses, the strings of the Æolian harp become too loose or too tense,
clogged with dirt or frayed with harsh usage, and when the psychic breath
passes over them they remain dumb or give out harsh discordant notes, not
because the breath is absent, but because the strings are in evil case.
It will now, I think, be clearly understood that what we call mind, or
intellect, is in
H P Blavatsky’s words, "a pale and too often distorted
reflection" of Manas itself, or our fifth principle ; Kâma-Manas is
"the rational, but earthly or physical intellect of man, incased in, and
bound by, matter, therefore subject to the influence of the latter" ; it
is the "lower self, or that which manifesting through our organic system,
acting on this plane of illusion, imagines itself the Ego sum, and thus falls
into what Buddhist philosophy brands as the ‘heresy of separateness.’ It is the
human personality, from which proceeds "the psychic, i.e., ‘terrestrial
wisdom’ at best, as it is
influenced by all the chaotic stimuli of the human or rather animal
passions of the living body" (Lucifer, October, 1890, p.179).
A clear understanding of the fact that Kâma-Manas belongs to the human
personality, that it functions in and through the physical brain, that it acts
on the molecules of the brain, setting them into vibration, will very much facilitate
the comprehension by the student of the doctrine of reincarnation.
That great subject will be dealt with in another volume of this series,
and I do not propose to dwell upon it here, more than to remind the student to
take careful note of the fact that the lower Manas is a ray from the immortal
Thinker, illuminating a personality, and that all the functions which are
brought into activity in the brain-consciousness are functions
correlated to the particular brain, to the particular personality, in which
they occur.
The brain-molecules that are set vibrating are material organs in the
man of flesh ; they did not exist as brain molecules before his conception, nor
do they persist as brain molecules after his disintegration. Their functional
activity
is limited by the limits of his personal life, the life of the body, the
life of the transient personality.
Now the faulty of which we speak as memory on the physical plane depends
on the response of these very brain-molecules to the impulse of the lower
Manas, and there is no link between the brains of successive personalities
except through the higher Manas, that sends out its ray to inform and enlighten
them successively.
It follows, then, inevitably, that unless the consciousness of man can
rise from the physical and Kâma-manasic planes to the plane of the higher
Manas, no memory of one personality can reach over to another. The memory of
the personality belongs to the transitory part of man’s complex nature, and
those only can recover the memory of their past lives who can raise their
consciousness to the plane of the immortal Thinker, and can, so to speak,
travel in consciousness up and down the ray which is the bridge between the
personal man that perishes and
the immortal man that endures.
If, while we are cased in the human flesh, we can raise our
consciousness along the ray that connects our lower with our true Self, and so
reach the higher Manas, we find there stored in the memory of that eternal Ego
the whole of our past lives on earth, and we can bring back those records to
our brain-memory by way of that same ray, through which we can climb upwards to
our "Father."
But this is an achievement that belongs to a late stage of human
evolution, and until this is reached the successive personalities informed by
the manasic rays are separated from each other, and no memory bridges over the
gulf between. The
fact is obvious enough to any one who thinks the matter out, but as the
difference between the personality and the immortal individuality is somewhat
unfamiliar in the West, it may be well to remove a possible stumbling-block
from
the student’s path.
Now the lower Manas may do one of three things ; It may rise towards its
source, and by unremitting and strenuous efforts become one with its
"Father in heaven," or the higher Manas – Manas uncontaminated with
earthly elements, unsoiled and pure. Or it may partially aspire and partially
tend downwards, as indeed is mostly the case with the average man. Or saddest
fate of all, it may become so clogged with the kâmic elements as to become one
with them, and be finally
wrenched away from its parent and perish.
Before considering these three fates, there are a few more words to be
said touching the activity of the lower Manas. As the lower Manas frees itself
from Kâma, it becomes the sovereign of the lower
part of man, and manifests more and more of its true and essential
nature. In Kâma is desire, moved by bodily needs, and Will, which is the
outgoing energy of the Self in Manas, is often led captive by the turbulent
physical impulses. But
the lower Manas, "whenever it disconnects itself, for the time
being, from Kâma, becomes the guide of the highest mental faculties, and is the
organ of the free will in physical man" (Lucifer, October 1890, page 94).
But the condition of this freedom is that Kâma shall be subdued, shall
lie prostrate beneath the feet of the conqueror ; if the maiden Will is to be
set free, the manasic St. George must slay the kâmic dragon that holds her
captive ; for while Kâma is unconquered, Desire will be master of the Will.
Again, as the lower Manas frees itself from Kâma, it becomes more and
more capable of transmitting to the human personality with which it is
connected the impulses that reach it from its source. It is then, as we have
seen, that genius flashes forth, the light from the higher Ego streaming
through the lower Manas to the brain, and manifesting itself to the world. So
also, as H P Blavatsky points out, such action may raise a man
above the normal level of human power.
"The higher Ego," she says, "cannot act directly on the
body, as its consciousness belongs to quite another plane and planes of ideation
; the lower
self does ; and its action and behaviour depend on its freewill and
choice as to whether it will gravitate more towards its parent (‘the Father in
heaven’) or the ‘animal’ which it informs, the man of flesh. The higher Ego, as
part of the essence of the Universal Mind, is unconditionally omniscient on its
own plane, and only potentially so in our terrestrial sphere, as it has to act
solely through its alter ego the personal self.
Now …the former is the vehicle of all knowledge of the past, the present
and the future, and …it is from this fountain head that its ‘double’ catches
occasional glimpses of that which is beyond the senses of man, and transmits
them to certain brain-cells (unknown to science in their functions), thus
making of man a seer, a soothsayer and a prophet" (Lucifer, November,
1890, p. 179).
This is the real seership, and on it a few words must be said presently.
It is, naturally, extremely rare, and precious as it is rare. A "faint and
distorted reflection" of it is found in what is called mediumship, and of
this H P Blavatsky says: "Now what is a medium? The term
medium, when not applied to things and objects, is supposed to be a person
through whom the action of another person or being is either manifested or
transmitted.
Spiritualists believing in communications with disembodied spirits, and
that these can manifest through, or impress sensitives to transmit messages
from them, regard mediumship as a blessing and a great privilege. We
Theosophists, on the other hand, who do not believe in the ‘communion of
spirits’, as Spiritualists do, regard the gift as one of the most dangerous of
abnormal nervous diseases.
A medium is simply one in whose personal Ego, or terrestrial mind, the
percentage of the astral light so preponderates as to impregnate with it his
whole physical constitution. Every organ and cell thereby is attuned, so
to speak, and subject to an enormous and abnormal tension" (Lucifer,
November 1890, page 183).
To return to the three fates spoken of above, any one of which may
befall the lower Manas. It may rise towards its source and become one with the
Father in heaven. This triumph can only be gained by many successive
incarnations, all consciously directed towards this end. As life succeeds life,
the physical frame becomes more and more delicately attuned to vibrations
responsive to the manasic
impulses, so that gradually the manasic ray needs less and less of the
coarser astral matter as its vehicle.
"It is part of the mission of the manasic ray to get gradually rid
of the blind deceptive element which, though it makes of it an actual spiritual
entity on
this plane, still brings it into so close contact with matter as to
entirely becloud its divine nature and stultify its intuitions" (Lucifer,
November, 1890,
p. 182).
Life after life it rids itself of this "blind deceptive
element," until at least, master of Kâma, and with body responsive to
mind, the ray becomes one
with its radiant source, the lower nature is wholly attuned to the
higher, and the Adept stands forth complete, the "Father and the
Son," having become one on all planes, as they have been always "one
in heaven."
For him the wheel of incarnation is over, the cycle of necessity is
trodden. Henceforth he can incarnate at will, to do any special service to
mankind; or he can dwell in the planes round the earth without the physical
body, helping in
the further evolution of the globe and of the race.
It may partially aspire and partially tend downwards.
This is the normal experience of the average man. All life is a
battlefield, and the battle rages in the lower manasic region, where Manas
wrestles with Kâma for empire over man. Anon aspiration conquers, the chains of
sense are broken, and the lower Manas, with the radiance of its birthplace on
it, soars upwards on strong wings, spurning the soil of earth.
But alas! too soon the pinions tire, they flag, they flutter, they cease
to beat the air ; and downwards falls the royal bird whose true realm is that
of the
higher air, and he flutters heavily to the bog of earth once more, and
Kâma chains him down.
When the period of incarnation is over, and the gateway of death closes
the road of earthly life, what becomes of the lower Manas in the case we are
considering?
Soon after the death of the physical body, Kâma-Manas is set free, and
dwells for a while on the astral plane clothed with a body of astral matter.
From this all of the manasic ray that is pure and unsoiled gradually
disentangles itself, and, after a lengthy period spent on the lower levels of Devachan, it returns
to its source, carrying with it such of its life-experiences as are of a nature
fit
for assimilation with the Higher Ego.
Manas thus again becomes one during the latter part of the period which
intervenes between two incarnations. The manasic Ego, brooded over by
Âtma-Buddhi – the two highest principles in the human constitution, not
yet considered by us – passes into the devachanic state of consciousness,
resting from the weariness of the life-struggle through which it has passed.
The experiences of the earth-life just closed are carried into the
manasic consciousness by the lower ray withdrawn into its source. They make the
devachanic state a continuation of earth-life, shorn of its sorrows, a
completion of the wishes and desires of earth-life, so far as those were pure
and noble.
The poetic phrase that "the mind creates its own heaven" is
truer than many may have imagined, for everywhere man is what he thinks, and in
the devachanic state the mind is unfettered by the gross physical matter
through which it works on
the objective plane.
The devachanic period is the time
for the assimilation of life experiences, the regaining of equilibrium, ere a new
journey is commenced. It is the day that succeeds the night of earth-life, the
alternative of the objective manifestation. Periodicity is here, as everywhere
else in nature, ebb and flow, throb and rest, the rhythm of the Universal Life.
This devachanic state of consciousness lasts for a period of varying
length, proportioned to the stage reached in evolution, the Devachan of the
average man being said to extend over some fifteen-hundred years.
Meanwhile, that portion of the impure garment of the lower Manas which
remains entangled with Kâma gives to the desire-body a somewhat confused
consciousness, a broken memory of the events of the life just closed.
If the emotions and passions were strong and the manasic element weak
during the period of
incarnation, the desire-body will be strongly energised, and will
persist in its activity for a considerable length of time after the death of
the physical body.
It will also show a considerable amount of consciousness, as much of the
manasic ray will have been overpowered by the vigorous kâmic elements, and will
have remained entangled in them. If, on the other hand, the earth-life just
closed was characterised my mentality and purity rather than by passion, the
desire-body, being but poorly energised, will be a pale simulacrum of the
person to whom it belonged, and will fade away, disintegrate and perish before
any long period has elapsed.
The "spook" already mentioned (ante, p. 20-21) will now be
understood. It may show very considerable intelligence, if the manasic element
be still largely present, and this will be the case with the desire-body of
persons of strong animal nature and forcible though coarse intellect.
For intelligence working in a very powerful kâmic personality will be
exceedingly strong and energetic, though not subtle or delicate, and the spook
of such a person, still further vitalised by the magnetic currents of persons
yet living in the body, may show much intellectual ability of a low type.
But such a spook is conscienceless, devoid of good impulses, tending
towards disintegration, and communications with it can work for evil only,
whether we regard them as prolonging its vitality by the currents which it
sucks up from the bodies and kâmic elements of the living, or as exhausting the
vitality of these living persons and polluting them with astral connections of
an altogether
undesirable kind.
Nor should it be forgotten that, without attending séance-rooms at all,
living persons may come into objectionable contact with these kâmic spooks. As
already mentioned, they are attracted to places in which the animal part of man
is chiefly catered for ; drinking houses, gambling saloons, brothels – all
these places are full of the vilest magnetism, are very whirlpools of magnetic
currents of the foulest type.
These attract the spooks magnetically, and they drift to such psychic
maëlstroms of all that is earthly and sensual. Vivified by currents so
congenial to their own, the desire-bodies become more active and potent;
impregnated with the
emanations of passions and desires which they can no longer physically
satisfy, their magnetic current reinforce the similar currents in the live
persons,
action and reaction continually going on, and the animal natures of the
living become more potent and less controlled by the will as they are played on
by these forces of the kâmic world.
Kâma-loka (from loka, a place, and so the place for Kâma) is a name
often used to designate that plane of the astral world to which these spooks
belong, and from this ray forth magnetic currents of poisonous character, as
from a pest-house float out germs of disease which may take root and grow in
the congenial soil of some poorly vitalised physical body.
It is very possible that many will say, on reading these statements,
that Theosophy is a revival of mediaeval superstitions and will lead to
imaginary
terrors. Theosophy explains mediaeval superstitions, and shows the
natural facts on which they were founded and from which they drew their
vitality.
If there are planes in nature other than the physical, no amount of
reasoning will get rid of them and belief in their existence will constantly
reappear ; but knowledge will give them their intelligible place in the
universal order, and will prevent superstition by an accurate understanding of
their nature, and of the laws under which they function.
And let it be remembered that persons whose consciousness is normally on
the physical plane can protect themselves from undesirable influences by
keeping their minds clean and their wills strong.
We protect ourselves best against disease by maintaining our bodies in
vigorous health ; we cannot guard ourselves against invisible germs, but we can
prevent our bodies from becoming suitable
soil for the growth and development of the germs.
Nor need we deliberately throw ourselves in the way infection. So also
as regards these malign germs from the astral plane. We can prevent the
formation of Kâma- manasic soil in which they can germinate and develop, and we
need not go into evil places, nor deliberately encourage receptivity and
mediumistic tendencies.
A strong active will and a pure heart are our best protection. There
remains the third possibility for Kâma-Manas, to which we must now turn our
attention, the fate spoken of earlier as "terrible in its consequences,
which may befall the kâmic principle." It may break away from its source
made one with Kâma instead of with the higher Manas.
This is fortunately, a rare event, as rare at one pole of human life as
the complete re-union with the
higher Manas is rare at the other. But still the possibility remains and
must be stated.
The personality may be so strongly controlled by Kâma that, in the
struggle between the kâmic and manasic elements, the victory may remain wholly
with the former. The lower Manas may become so enslaved that its essence may be
frayed and thinner and thinner by the constant rub and strain, until at last
persistent yielding to the promptings of desire bears its inevitable fruit, and
the slender link which unites the higher to the lower Manas, the "silver
thread that binds it to the Master," snaps in two. Then, during
earth-life, the lower quaternary is wrenched away from the Triad to
which it was linked, and the higher nature is
severed wholly from the lower. The human being is rent in twain, the
brute has broken itself free, and it goes forth unbridled, carrying with it the
reflections of that manasic light which should have been its guide through the
desert of life.
A more dangerous brute it is than its fellows of the unevolved animal
world, just because of these fragments in it of the higher mentality of man.
Such a being, human in form but brute in nature, human in appearance but without
human truth, or love or justice – such a one may now and then be met with in
the haunts of men, putrescent while still living, a thing to shudder at with
deepest, if hopeless compassion. What is its fate after the funeral knell has
tolled?
Ultimately, there is the perishing of the personality that has thus
broken away from the principles that can alone give it immortality. But a
period of
persistence lies before it. The desire-body of such a one is an entity
of terrible potency, and it has this unique peculiarity, that it is able under
certain rare circumstances to reincarnate in the world of men.
It is not a mere "spook" on the way to disintegration; it has
retained, entangled in its coils , too much of the manasic element to permit of
such
natural dissipation in space. It is sufficiently an independent entity,
lurid instead of radiant, with manasic flame rendered foul instead of
purifying, as to be able to take to itself a garment of flesh once more and
dwell as man with men.
Such a man – if the word may indeed be applied to the mere human shell
with brute interior – passes through a period of earth-life the natural foe of
all
who are still normal in their humanity. With no instincts save those of
the animal, driven only by passion, never even by emotion, with a cunning that
no brute can rival, a deliberate wickedness that plans evil in fashion unknown
to the mere frankly natural impulses of the animal world, the reincarnated
entity touches ideal vileness.
Such soil the page of human history has; the monsters of iniquity that
startle us now and again into a wondering cry, "Is this a human
being?" Sinking lower with each successive incarnation, the evil force
gradually wears itself out, and such a personality perishes separated from the
source of life.
It finally disintegrates, to be worked up into other forms of living
things, but as a separate existence, it is lost. It is a bead broken off the
thread of life,
and the immortal Ego that incarnated in that personality has lost the
experience of that incarnation, has reaped no harvest from that life-sowing.
Its ray has brought nothing back, its lifework for that birth has been a total
and complete failure, whereof nothing remains to weave into the fabric of its
own eternal Self.
SUBTLE FORMS OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH PRINCIPLE
The student will already have fully realised that "an astral
body" is a loose term that may cover a variety of different forms. It may
be well at this stage to sum up the subtle types sometimes inaccurately called
the astral that belong to the fourth and fifth principles.
During life a true astral body may be projected – formed, as its name
implies, of astral matter – but, unlike the etheric double, dowered with
intelligence, and able to travel to a considerable distance from the physical
body to which it
belongs. This is the desire-body, and it is, as we have seen, a vehicle
of consciousness. It is projected by mediums and sensitives
unconsciously, and by trained students consciously.
It can travel with the speed of thought to a distant place, can there
gather impressions from surrounding objects, can bring back those impressions
to the physical body. In the case of a medium it can convey them to others by
means of
the physical body still entranced, but as a rule when the sensitive
comes out of trance, the brain does not retain the impressions thus made upon
it, and no trace is left in the memory of the experiences thus acquired.
Sometimes, but this is rare, the desire-body is able sufficiently to
affect the brain by the vibrations it set up, to leave a lasting impression
thereon, and
then the sensitive is able to recall the knowledge acquired during
trance. The student learns to impress on his brain the knowledge gained in the
desire-body, his will being active while that of the medium is passive.
This desire-body is the agent unconsciously used by clairvoyants when
their vision is not merely the seeing in the astral light. This astral form
does then really travel to distant places, and may appear there to persons who
are sensitive or who chance for the time to be in an abnormal nervous
condition.
Sometimes it appears to them – when very faintly informed by
consciousness – as a vaguely outlined form, not noticing its surroundings. Such
a body has appeared near the time of death at places distant from the dying
person, to those who
were closely united to the dying by ties of the blood, of affection, or
of hatred. More highly energised, it will show intelligence and emotion, as in
some
cases on record, in which dying mothers have visited their children
residing at a distance, and have spoken in their last moments of what they had
seen and done.
The desire-body is also set free in many cases of disease – as is the
etheric double – as well as in sleep and in trance. Inactivity of the physical
body is a condition of such astral voyagings. The desire-body seems also
occasionally to appear in séance-rooms, giving rise to some of the more intellectual
phenomena that takes place.
It must not be confounded with the "spook" already
sufficiently familiar to the reader, the latter being always the kâmic or
Kâma-Manasic remains of some dead person, whereas the body we are now dealing
with is the projection of an astral
double from a living person.
A higher form of subtle body, belonging to Manas, is that known as the
Mâyâvi Rûpa, or "body of illusion." The Mâyâvi Rûpa is a subtle body
formed by the consciously directed will of the Adept or disciple; it may, or
may not, resemble
the physical body, the form given to it being suitable to the purpose
for which it is projected.
In this body the full consciousness dwells, for it is merely the mental
body rearranged. The Adept or disciple can thus travel at will, without the
burden of the physical body, in the full exercise of every faculty, in perfect
self-consciousness. He makes the Mâyâvi Rûpa visible of invisible at will – on
the physical plane – and the phrase often used by chelâs and others as
to seeing an Adept "in his astral," means that he was visited by them
in his Mâyâvi Rûpa.
If he so chose, he can make it, indistinguishable from a physical body,
warm and firm to the touch as well as visible, able to carry on a conversation,
at all points like a physical human being. But the power thus to form the true
Mâyâvi Rûpa is confined to Adepts and chelâs; it cannot be done by the
untrained student, however psychic he may naturally be, for it is a manasic and
not a psychic creation, and it is only under the instruction of his Guru that
the chelâ learns to form and use the "body of illusion."
THE HIGHER MANAS
The immortal Thinker itself, as will by this time have become clear to
the reader, can manifest itself but little on the physical plane at the present
stage of human evolution. Yet we are able to catch some glimpses of the
powers resident in it, the more as in the lower Manas we find those powers
"cribbed, cabined and confined" indeed, but yet existing.
Thus we have seen that the lower Manas "is the organ of the
freewill in physical man." Freewill resides in Manas itself, in Manas the
representative of Mahat, the Universal Mind. From Manas comes the
feeling of liberty, the knowledge that we can rule ourselves – really the
knowledge that the higher nature in us can
rule the lower, let that lower nature rebel and struggle as it may.
Once let our consciousness identify itself with Manas instead of with
Kâma, and the lower nature becomes the animal we bestride, it is no longer the
"I." All its plungings, its struggles, its fights for mastery, are
then outside us, not within us, and we rein it in and hold it as we rein in a
plunging steed and subdue it to our will.
On this question of freewill I venture to quote from an article of my
own that appeared in the Path – "Unconditioned will, alone can be
absolutely free: the unconditioned and the absolute are one: all that is
conditioned must, by virtue of that conditioning, be relative and therefore
partially bound. As that will evolves the universe, it becomes conditioned by
the laws of its own manifestation.
The manasic entities are differentiations of that will, each conditioned
by the nature of its manifesting potency, but, while conditioned without, it is
free within its own sphere of activity, so being the image in its own world of
the
universal will in the universe. Now as this will, acting on each
successive plane, crystalises itself more and more densely as matter, the
manifestation is conditioned by the material in which it works, while,
relatively to the material, it is itself free.
So at each stage the inner freedom appears in consciousness, while yet
investigation shows that, that freedom works within the limits of the plane of
manifestation on which it is acting, free to work upon the lower, yet
hindered as to manifestation by the unresponsiveness of the lower to its
impulse.
Thus the higher Manas, in whom reside free will, so far as the lower
quaternary is concerned – being the offspring of Mahat, the third Logos, the
Word, i.e., the Will in manifestation – is limited in its manifestation in our
lower nature by the sluggishness of the response of the personality to its
impulses.
In the lower Manas itself – as immersed in that personality - resides
the will with which we are familiar, swayed by passions, by appetites, by
desires, by impressions coming from without, yet able to assert itself among
them all, by virtue of its essential nature, one with that higher Ego of which
it is the ray.
It is free, as regards all below it, able to act on Kâma and on the
physical body, however much its full expression may be thwarted and hindered by
the crudeness of the material in which it is working. Were the will the mere
outcome of the physical body, of the desires and passions, whence could arise
the sense of the " I " that can judge, can desire, can overcome?
It acts from a higher plane, is royal as touching the lower whenever it
claims the royalty of birthright, and the very struggle of its self-assertion
is the
best testimony to the fact that in its nature it is free. And so,
passing to lower planes, we find in each grade this freedom of the higher as
ruling the
lower, yet, on the plane of the lower, hindered in manifestation.
Reversing the process and starting from the lower, the same truth
becomes manifest. Let a man’s limbs be loaded with fetters, and crude material
iron will prevent the manifestation of the muscular and nervous force with
which they are instinct: none the less is that force present, though hindered
for the moment in its activity. Its strength may be shown in its very efforts
to break the chains
that bind it: there is no power in the iron to prevent the free giving
out of the muscular energy, though the phenomena of motion may be hindered.
But while this energy cannot be ruled by the physical nature below, its
expenditure is determined by the kâmic principle ; passions and desires can set
it going, can direct and control it. The muscular and nervous energy cannot
rule
the passions and desires, they are free as regards it, it is determined
by their interposition.
Yet again Kâma may be ruled, controlled, determined by the will ; as
touching the manasic principle it is bound, not free, and hence the sense of
freedom in choosing which desire shall be gratified, which act performed. As
the lower
Manas rules Kâma, the lower quaternary takes its rightful position of
subserviency to the higher triad, and is determined by a will it recognises as
above itself, and, as it regards itself, a will that is free.
Here in many a mind will spring the question, ‘And what of the will of
the higher Manas ; is that in turn determined by what is above it, while it is
free
to all below? But we have reached a point where the intellect fails us,
and where language may not easily utter that which the Spirit senses in those
higher realms.
Dimly only can we feel that there , as everywhere else, "the truest
freedom must be in harmony with law, and that voluntary acceptance of the
function of acting as channel of the Universal Will must unite into one perfect
liberty and perfect obedience."
This is truly an obscure and difficult problem, but the student will
find much light fall on it by following the lines of thought thus traced.
Another power resident in the higher Manas and manifested on the lower
planes by those in whom the higher Manas is consciously master, is that of
creation of forms by the will. The Secret Doctrine says:
"Kriyashakti". The mysterious power
of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal
results by its own inherent energy. The ancient held that any idea will
manifest itself externally if one’s attention is deeply concentrated upon it.
Similarly and intense volition will be followed by the desired
results" (vol. I, p. 312). Here is the secret of true "magic,"
and as the subject is an important one, and as Western science is beginning to
touch its fringe, a separate section is devoted to its consideration farther
on, in order not to break the connected outline here given on principles.
Again we have learned from H P Blavatsky that Manas, or the higher Ego, as "part
of the essence of the Universal Mind, is unconditionally omniscient on its own
plane," when it has fully developed self-consciousness by its evolutionary
experiences, and "is the vehicle of all knowledge of the past and
present, and the future."
When this immortal entity is able through its ray, the lower Manas, to
impress the brain of a man, that man is one who manifests abnormal qualities,
is a genius or seer. The conditions of seership are thus laid down: -
"The former [the visions of the true seer] can be obtained by one
of two means:
(a) on the condition of paralysing at will the memory and the
instinctual independent action of all the material organs and even cells in the
body of flesh, an act which, when once the light of the higher Ego has consumed
and subjected for ever the passional nature of the personal lower Ego, is easy,
but requires an adept;
(b) of being a reincarnation of one who, in a previous birth, had
attained through extreme purity of life and efforts in the right direction
almost to a Yogi-state of holiness and saintship.
There is also a third possibility of reaching in mystic visions the
plane of the higher Manas ; but it is only occasional, and does not depend on
the will of the seer, but on the extreme weakness and exhaustion of the
material body through
illness and suffering. The Seeress of Prevorst was an instance of the
latter case ; and Jacob Boehme of our second category" (Lucifer, November,
1890, p. 183).
The reader will now be in a position to grasp the difference between the
workings of the higher Ego and of its ray. Genius, which sees instead of
arguing, is of the higher Ego; true intuition is one of its faculties.
Reason, the weighing and balancing quality which arranges the facts gathered by
observation, balances them one against the other, argues from them,
draws conclusions from them – this is the exercise of the lower Manas through
the
brain apparatus; its instrument is ratiocination; by induction it
ascends from the known to the unknown, building up a hypothesis; by deduction
it descends again to the known, verifying its hypothesis by fresh experiment.
Intuition, as we see by its derivation, is simply insight – a process as
direct and swift as bodily vision. It is the exercise of the eyes of the
intelligence, the unerring recognition of a truth presented on the mental
plane. It sees with
certainty, its vision is unclouded, its report unfaltering. No proof can
add to the certitude of its recognition, for it is beyond and above the reason.
Often our instincts, blinded and confused by passions and desires, are
miscalled intuitions, and a mere kâmic impulse is accepted as the sublime voice
of the higher Manas. Careful and prolonged self-training is necessary, ere the
voice can be recognised with certainty, but of one thing we may feel very sure:
so long as we are in the vortex of the personality, so long as the storms of
desires and appetites howl around us, so long as the waves of emotion toss us
to and fro, so long the voice of the higher Manas cannot reach our ears.
Not in the fire or the whirlwind, not in the thunderclap of the storm,
comes the mandate of the higher Ego: only when there has fallen the stillness
of a silence that can be felt, only when the very air is motionless and the
calm is profound, only when the man wraps his face in a mantle which closes his
ears even to the silence that is of earth, then only sounds the voice that is
stiller than the silence, the voice of his true Self.
On this H P Blavatsky has written in Isis Unveiled: "Allied
to the physical half of man’s nature is reason, which enables him to maintain
his supremacy over the lower animals, and to subjugate nature to his uses.
Allied to his spiritual
part is his conscience, which will serve as his unerring guide through
the besetment of the senses; for conscience is that instantaneous perception
between right and wrong which can only be exercised by the spirit, which, being
a portion of the divine wisdom and purity, is absolutely pure and wise.
Its promptings are independent of reason, and it can only manifest
itself clearly when unhampered by the baser attractions of our dual nature.
Reason
being a faculty of our physical brain, one which is justly defined as
that of deducing inferences from premises, and being wholly dependent on the
evidence of other senses, cannot be a quality pertaining directly to our divine
spirit.
The latter knows – hence all reasoning, which implies discussion and
argument, would be useless. So an entity which, if it must be considered as a
direct emanation from the eternal Spirit of wisdom, has to be vied as possessed
of the
same attributes as the essence of the whole of which it is part.
Therefore it is with a certain degree of logic that the ancient
Theurgists maintained that the rational part of a man’s soul (spirit) never
entered wholly into the man’s body, but only overshadowed him more or less
through the irrational or astral soul, which serves as an intermediary agent,
or a medium between spirit and body.
The man who has conquered matter sufficiently to receive the direct
light from his shining Augoeides, feels truth intuitionally; he could not err
in his
judgement, notwithstanding all the sophisms suggested by cold reason,
for he is illuminated. Hence prophesy, vaticination, and the so-called divine
inspiration, are simply the effects of this illumination from above by our own
immortal
spirit" (Volume I, page 305-306).
This Augoeides, according to the belief of the Neo-Platonists, as
according to the Theosophical teachings, "sheds more or less its radiance
on the inner man, the astral soul" (Volume, page 315) i.e.., in the now
accepted terminology, on
the Kâma-Manasic personality or lower Ego.
(In reading Isis Unveiled, the student has to bear in mind the fact that
when the book was written, the terminology was by no means even as fixed as it
is now ; in Isis Unveiled is the first modern attempt to translate into Western
language the complicated Eastern ideas, and further experience has shown that
many of the terms used to cover two or three conceptions may with advantage be
restricted to one and thus rendered precise. Thus the "astral soul"
must be understood in the sense given above.)
Only as this lower Ego becomes pure from all breath of passion, as the
lower Manas frees itself from Kâma, can the "shining one" impress it
; H P Blavatsky tells how initiates meet this higher Ego
face to face. Having spoken of the trinity in man, Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, she goes
on: "It is when this trinity, in anticipation of the final triumphant
reunion beyond the gates of corporeal death, became for a few seconds a unity,
that the candidate is allowed, at the moment of the initiation, to behold his
future self.
Thus we read in the Persian Desatir of the ‘resplendent one’ ; in the
Greek philosopher-initiates of the Augoeides – the self-shining ‘blessed vision
resident in the pure light’ ; in Porphyry, that Plotinus was united to his
‘god’ six times during his lifetime, and so on" (Isis Unveiled, Volume II,
pages 114-115).
This trinity made into unity, again, is the "Christ" of all
mystics. When in the final initiation, the candidate has been outstretched on
the floor or altar stone and has thus typified the crucifixion of the flesh, or
lower nature, and when from this "death" he has "risen
again" as the triumphant conqueror over sin and death, he then, in the supreme
moment, sees before him the glorious presence and becomes "one with
Christ," is himself the Christ.
Thenceforth he may live in the body, but it has become his obedient
instrument ; he is united with his true Self, Manas made one with Âtma-Buddhi,
and through the personality which he inhabits he wields his full powers as an
immortal spiritual intelligence. While he was still struggling in the toils of
the lower nature, Christ, the spiritual Ego, was daily crucified in him ; but
in the full Adept Christ has arisen triumphant, lord of himself and of nature.
The long pilgrimage of Manas is over, the cycle of necessity is trodden,
the wheel of rebirth cease to turn, the Son of man has been made perfect by
suffering.
So long as this point has not been reached, "the Christ" is
the object of aspiration. The ray is ever struggling to return to its source,
the lower Manas
ever aspiring to re-become one with the higher. While this duality
persists the continual yearning towards reunion felt by the noblest and purest
natures is one of the most salient facts of the inner life, and it is this
which clothes itself as prayer, as inspiration, as "seeking after
God," as the longing for union with the divine.
"My soul is athirst for God, for the living God," cries the
eager Christian, and to tell him that this intense longing is a fancy and is
futile to make him turn aside from you as one who cannot understand, but whose
insensibility does not alter the fact. The Occultist recognises in this cry the
inextinguishable
impulse upwards of the lower Self to the higher from which it is
separated, but the attraction of which it vividly feels.
Whether the person pray to the Buddha, to Vishnu, to Christ, to the
Virgin, to the Father, it matters not at all ; these are questions of mere
dialect, not of essential fact. In all the Manas united to Âtma-Buddhi is the
real object , veiled under what name the changing time or race may give ; at
once the ideal humanity and the "personal God," the "God
Man" found in all religions, "God incarnate," the "Word
made flesh," "the Christ who must be born in " each, with whom
the believer must be made one.
And this leads us on to the last planes with which we are concerned, the
planes of Spirit, using that much abused word merely as the opposite pole to
matter ; here only very general ideas can be grasped by us, but it is necessary
none the less to try to grasp these ideas if we are to complete, however poorly
our conception of man.
PRINCIPLES VI & VII - ÂTMA – BUDDHI, THE SPIRIT
As the completion of the thought of the last section, we will look at
Âtma-Buddhi first in its connection with Manas, and will then proceed to a
somewhat more general view of it as the "Monad." The clearest and
best description of the human trinity, Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, will be found in the
Key to
Theosophy, in which H.P.Blavatsky gives the following definitions:-
THE HIGHER SELF is Atma, the inseparable ray of the Universal and ONE
SELF. It is the God above, more than within us. Happy the man who succeeds in saturating
his inner Ego with it
THE SPIRITUAL divine EGO is the spiritual soul, or Buddhi, in close
union with Manas, the mind-principle, without which it is no EGO at all, but
only the Atmic Vehicle.
THE INNER or HIGHER EGO is Manas, the fifth principle, so called,
independently of Buddhi. The mind-principle is only the Spiritual Ego when
merged into one with Buddhi... It is the permanent individuality or the
reincarnating Ego. (Page
175-176 Âtmâ must then be regarded as the most abstract part of man’s
nature, the "breath" which needs a body for its manifestation. It is
the one reality, that which manifests on all planes, the essence of which all
our principles are but aspects.
The one Eternal Existence, wherefrom are all things, which embodies one
of its aspects in the universe, that which we speak of as the One Life – this
Eternal Existence rays forth as Âtmâ, the very Self alike of the universe and
of man ; their innermost core, their very heart, that in which all things
inhere.
In itself incapable of direct manifestation on lower planes, yet That
without which no lower planes could come into existence, It clothes itself in
Buddhi, as Its vehicle, or medium of further manifestation. "Buddhi is the
faculty of
cognising, the channel through which divine knowledge reaches the Ego,
the discernment of good and evil, also divine conscience, and the spiritual
Soul, which is the vehicle of Âtmâ"( Secret Doctrine, Volume I, p. 2).
It is often spoken of as the principle of spiritual discernment. But
Âtma-Buddhi, a universal principle, needs individualising ere experience can be
gathered and self-consciousness attained. So the mind-principle is united to
Âtma-Buddhi, and the human trinity is complete. Manas becomes the spiritual Ego
only when merged in Buddhi ; Buddhi becomes the spiritual Ego only when united
to Manas; in the union of the two lies the evolution of the Spirit,
self-conscious on all planes.
Hence Manas strives upward to Âtma-Buddhi, as the lower Manas strives
upward to the higher, and hence, in relation to the higher Manas, Âtma-Buddhi,
or Âtma, is often spoken of as "the Father in Heaven," as the higher
Manas is itself thus
described in relation to the lower. (See ante page 40)
The lower Manas gathers experience to carry it back to its source ; the
higher Manas accumulates the store throughout the cycle of reincarnation;
Buddhi becomes assimilated with the higher Manas; and these, permeated with the
Âtmic
light, one with that True Self, the trinity becomes a unity, the Spirit
is self-conscious on all planes, and the object of the manifested universe is
attained.
But no words of mine can avail to explain or to describe that which is
beyond explanation and beyond description. Words can but blunder along on such
a theme, dwarfing and distorting it. Only by long and patient meditation can
the student
hope vaguely to sense something greater than himself, yet something
which stirs at the innermost core of his being.
As to the steady gaze directed at the pale evening sky, there appears
after while, faintly and far away, the soft glimmer of a star, so to the
patient gaze of the inner vision there may come the tender beam of the
spiritual star, if but as a mere suggestion of a far off world.
Only to a patient and persevering purity will that light arise, and
blessed beyond all earthly blessedness is he who sees but the palest shimmer of
that transcendent radiance.
With such ideas as to "Spirit," the horror with which
Theosophists shrink from ascribing the trivial phenomena of the séance-room to
"spirits" will be readily understood. Playing on musical boxes,
talking through trumpets, tapping people
on the head, carrying accordions round the room – these things may be
all very well for astrals, spooks and elementals, but who can assign them to
"spirits" who has any conception of Spirit worthy of the name?
Such vulgarisation and degradation of the most sublime conceptions as
yet evolved by man are surely subjects for the keenest regret, and it may well
be hoped that ere long these phenomena will be put in their true place, as
evidence that the materialistic views of the universe are inadequate, instead
of being exalted to a place they cannot fill as proofs of Spirit.
No physical, no intellectual phenomena are proofs of the existence of
Spirit. Only to the spirit can Spirit be demonstrated. You cannot prove a
proposition in Euclid to a dog ; you cannot prove Âtma-Buddhi to Kâma and the
lower Manas. As
we climb, our view will widen, and when we stand on the summit of the
Holy Mount the planes of Spirit shall lie before our opened vision.
THE MONAD IN EVOLUTION
Perhaps a slightly more definite conception of Âtma-Buddhi may be
obtained by the student, if he considers its work in evolution as the Monad.
Now Âtma-Buddhi is identical with the universal Oversoul, "itself an
aspect of the Unknown
Root," the One Existence. When manifestation begins the Monad is
"thrown downwards into matter," to propel forwards and force
evolution (see Secret Doctrine, vol. II,p.115); it is the mainspring, so to
speak, of all evolution, the impelling force at the root of all things.
All the principles we have been studying are mere "variously
differentiated aspects" of Âtma, the One Reality manifesting in our
universe; it is in every atom, "the root of every atom individually and of
every form collectively," and all the principles are fundamentally Âtma on
different planes.
The stages of its evolution are very clearly laid down in Five years of
Theosophy, page 273 et seq. There we are shown how it passes through the stages
termed elemental, "nascent centres of forces," and reaches the
mineral stage; from this it passes up through vegetable, animal, to man, vivifying
every form.
As we are taught in the Secret Doctrine: "The well known
Kabbalistic aphorism runs:
"A stone becomes a plant; the plant a beast; the beast, a man; the
man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god."
The ‘spark’ animates all the kingdoms in turn before it enters into and
informs divine man, between whom and his predecessor, animal man, there is all
the difference in the world….The Monad…is first of all, shot down by the law of
evolution into the lowest form of matter – the mineral.
After a sevenfold gyration incased in the stone, or that which will
become mineral and stone in the Fourth Round, it creeps out of it, say as a
lichen.
Passing thence, through all the forms of vegetable matter, into what is
termed animal matter, it has now reached the point in which it has become the
germ, so to speak, of the animal, that will become the physical man" (Vol.
I, pages 266-267).
It is the Monad, Âtma-Buddhi, that thus vivifies every part and kingdom
of nature, making all instinct with life and consciousness, one throbbing
whole.
"Occultism does not accept anything inorganic in the Kosmos. The
expression employed by science, ‘ inorganic substance,’ means simply that the
latent life, slumbering in the molecules of so-called ‘inert matter,’ is
incognisable.
All is life and every atom of even mineral dust is a life, though beyond
our comprehension and perception, because it is outside the range of the laws
known to those who reject Occultism "(Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, pages
268-69). And again: "Everything in the universe, throughout all its
kingdoms, is conscious, i.e.., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and
on its own plane of perception.
We men must remember that simply because we do not perceive any signs of
consciousness which we can recognise, say in stones, we have no right to say
that no consciousness exists there. There is no such thing as either
‘dead’ or ‘blind’ matter, as there is no ‘blind’ or ‘unconscious’ law"
(page 295).
How many of the great poets, with the sublime intuition of genius, have
sensed this great truth! To them all nature pulses with life; they see life and
love every where, in suns and planets as in the grains of dust, in rustling
leaves and opening blossoms, in dancing gnats and gliding snakes.
Each form manifests as much of the One Life as it is capable of
expressing, and what is man that he should despise the more limited
manifestations, when he compares himself as a life-expression, not with the
forms below him, but with the possibilities of expression that soar above him
in infinite heights of being, which he can estimate still less than the stone
can estimate him?
The student will readily see that we must regard this force at the
centre of evolution as essentially one. There is but one Âtma-Buddhi in our
universe, the universal Soul, everywhere present, immanent in all, the One
Supreme Energy
whereof all varying energies or forces are only differing forms.
As the sunbeam is light or heat or electricity according to its
conditioning environment, so is Âtma all-energy, differentiating on different
planes. "As an abstraction, we will call it the One Life; as an objective
and evident reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which
begins at the upper rung with the one unknowable causality, and ends as
Omnipresent Mind and Life
immanent in every atom of matter" (Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page
163).
Its evolutionary course is very plainly outlined in a quotation given in
the Secret Doctrine, and as students are very often puzzled over this unity of
the Monad, I subjoin the statement. The subject is difficult, but it could not,
I think, be more clearly put than it is in these sentences:-
"Now the monadic or cosmic essence (if such a term be permitted) in
the mineral, vegetable, and animal, though the same throughout the series of
cycles from the lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the
scale of progression.
It would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate entity
trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after
incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being; in short,
that the Monad
of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an atom of hornblende.
Instead of saying a ‘Mineral Monad,’ the more correct phraseology in
physical science, which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to
call it ‘the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the mineral
kingdom.’ The
atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a
particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined after æons to
blossom as a man. But it is a concrete manifestation of the universal energy
which itself has not yet become individualised ; a sequential manifestation of
the one universal Monas.
The ocean of matter does not divide into its potential and constituent
drops until the sweep of the life impulse reaches the stage of man birth. The
tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is gradual, and in the
higher animals
comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to
the whole Kosmos in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists, while accepting
this thought for convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the
evolution of the concrete from the abstract by terms of which the ‘mineral,
vegetable, animal, Monad,’ etc., are examples. The term merely means that the
tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its
circuit.
The ‘Monadic Essence’ begins imperfectly to differentiate towards
individual consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. As the Monads are
un-compounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual
essence which vivifies
them in their degrees of differentiation, which properly constitutes the
Monad – not the atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance
through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence"
(vol. I, p. 201).
The student who reads and weighs this passage will, at the cost of a
little present trouble, save himself from much confusion in days to come. Let
him first realise clearly that the Monad – "the spiritual essence" to
which alone in strict accuracy the term Monad should be applied – is one all
the universe over, that Âtma-Buddhi is not his, nor mine, nor the property of
anybody in particular, but the spiritual essence energising in all.
So is electricity one all the world over ; though it may be active in
his machine or in mine, neither he nor I can call it distinctly our
electricity. But
– and here arise confusion – when Âtma-Buddhi energises in man, in whom
Manas is active as an individualising force, it is often spoken of as though
the "atomic aggregation" were a separate Monad, and then we have
"Monads," as in the above passage.
This loose way of using the word will not lead to error if the student
will remember that the individualising process is not on the spiritual plane,
but Âtma-Buddhi as seen through Manas seems to share in the individuality of
the
latter. So if you hold pieces of variously coloured glass in your hand
you may see through them a red sun, a blue sun, a yellow sun, and so on. None
the less there is only the one sun shining down upon you, altered by the media
through which you look at it.
So we often meet the phrase "human Monads" ; it should be
"the Monad manifesting in the human kingdom"; but this somewhat
pedantic accuracy would be likely only to puzzle a large number of people, and
the looser popular phrase will not
mislead when the principle of the unity on the spiritual plane is
grasped, any more than we mislead by speaking of the rising of the sun.
"The Spiritual Monad is one, universal, boundless, and impartite,
whose rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the ‘ individual
Monads’ of men" (Secret Doctrine, Vol. I ,p. 200).
Very beautifully and poetically is this unity in diversity put in one of
the Occult Catechisms in which the Guru questions the Chela:- "Lift thy
head, O Lanoo; dost thou see one or countless lights above thee, burning in the
dark midnight sky?" "I sense one Flame, O Gurudeva ; I see countless
undetached sparks burning in it."
"Thou sayest well. And now look around and into thyself. That light
which burns inside thee, dost thou feel it different in any wise from the light
that shines in thy brother-men?"
"It is in no way different, though the prisoner is held in bondage
by Karma, and though its outer garments delude the ignorant into saying, ‘thy
soul’ and ‘my soul’" (Secret Doctrine, vol., I, p.145).
There ought not to be any serious difficulty now in grasping the stages
of human evolution; the Monad, which has been working its way as we have seen,
reaches the point at which the human form can be built up on earth ; an etheric
body and
its physical counterpart are then developed, Prâna specialised from the
great ocean of life, and Kâma evolved, all these principles, the lower
quaternary,
being brooded over by the Monad, energised by it, impelled by it, forced
onward by it towards continually increasing perfection of form and capacity for
manifesting the higher energies in Nature.
This was animal, or physical man, evolved through two and a half Races.
But the Monad and the lower quaternary could not come into sufficiently close
relation with each other ; a link was yet wanting. "The Double Dragon [the
Monad] has no hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no
tree or branch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there
is no agent of transmission, and the form knows it not" – (Secret
Doctrine, vol. II, p. 60).
Then, at the middle point just reached, in the middle, that is, of the
Third race, the lower Mânasaputra stepped in to inhabit the dwellings thus
prepared for them, and to form the bridge between animal man and the Spirit,
between the
evolved quaternary and the brooding Âtma-Buddhi, to begin the long cycle
of reincarnation which is to issue in the perfect man.
The "monadic inflow," or the evolution of the Monad, from the
animal into the human kingdom, continued through the Third Race on to the
middle of the Fourth, the human population thus continually receiving fresh
recruits, the birth of
souls thus continuing through the second half of the Third race and the
first half of the Fourth.
After this, the "central turning point" of the cycle of
evolution, "no more Monads can enter the human kingdom. The door is closed
for this cycle" (Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 205). Since then
reincarnation has been the method of evolution, this individual reincarnation
of the immortal
Thinker in conjunction with Âtma-Buddhi replacing the collective
indwelling of Âtma-Buddhi in lower forms of matter.
According to Theosophical teachings, humanity has now reached the Fifth
Race, and we are in the fifth sub-race thereof, mankind on this globe in the
present stage having before it the completion of the Fifth race, and the rise,
maturity and decay of the Sixth and Seventh Races.
But during all the ages necessary for this evolution, there is no
increase in the total number of reincarnating Egos ; only a small proportion of
these are reincarnated at any special time on the globe, so that the population
may ebb and flow within very wide limits, and it will have been noticed that
there is a rush of birth after a local depopulation has been caused by
exceptional
mortality.
There is room and to spare for all such fluctuations, having in view the
difference between the total number of reincarnating Egos and the number
actually incarnated at a given period.
LINES OF PROOF FOR AN UNTRAINED ENQUIRER
It is natural and right that any thoughtful person brought face to face
with assertions such as those put forth in the preceding pages, should demand
what proof is forthcoming to substantiate the propositions laid down. A
reasonable person will not demand full and complete proof available to all
comers, without study and without painstaking.
He will admit that the advanced theories of a science cannot be
demonstrated to one ignorant of its first principles, and he will be prepared
to find that very much will have been alleged which can only be proved to those
who have made some
progress in their study. An essay on the higher mathematics, on the
correlation of forces, on the atomic theory, on the molecular constitution of
chemical compounds, would contain many statements the proofs of which would
only be
available for those who had devoted time and thought to the study of the
elements of the science concerned.
And so an unprejudiced person, confronted with the Theosophical view of
the constitution of man, would readily admit that he could not expect complete
demonstration until he had mastered the elements of the Theosophical science.
None the less are there general proofs available in every science which
suffice to justify its existence and to encourage study of its more recondite
truths; and in Theosophy it is possible to indicate lines of proof which can be
followed by the untrained enquirer, and which justify him in devoting time and
pains to a study which gives promise of a wider and deeper knowledge of himself
and of external nature than is otherwise attainable.
It is well to say at the outset that there is no proof available to the
average enquirer of the existence of the three higher planes of which we have
spoken.
The realms of Spirit, and of the higher mind are closed to all save
those who have evolved the faculties necessary for their investigation.
Those who have evolved these faculties need no proof of the existence of
those realms; to those who have not, no proof of their existence can be given.
That there is something above the astral and the lower levels of the mental
plane may indeed be proved by the flashes of genius, the lofty intuitions, that
from time to time lighten the darkness of our lower world.
But what that something is, only those can say whose inner eyes have
been opened, who see where the race as a whole is still blind. But the lower
planes are susceptible to proof, and fresh proofs are accumulating day be day.
The Masters of Wisdom are using the investigators and thinkers of the Western
world to make "discoveries" which tend to substantiate the outposts
of the Theosophical position, and the lines which they are following are
exactly those which are needed for the finding of natural laws which will
justify the
assertions of Theosophists with regard to the elementary
"powers" and "phenomena" to which such exaggerated
importance has been given.
If it is found that we have undeniable facts which establish the
existence of planes other than the physical on which consciousness can work ;
which establish the existence of senses and powers of perception other than
those with which we
are familiar in daily life ; which establish the existence of powers of
communication between intelligences without the use of mechanical apparatus,
surely, under these circumstances, the Theosophist may claim that he has made
out a prima facie case for further investigation of his doctrines.
Let us then, confine ourselves to the lower planes of which we have
spoken in the preceding pages, and the four lower principles in man which are
correlated with these planes. Of these four, we may dismiss one, that of Prâna,
as none will challenge the fact of the existence of the energy we call
"life" ; the need of isolating it for purposes of study may be
challenged, and in very truth the plane of Prâna, or the principle of Prâna,
runs through all other planes, all other principles, interpenetrating all and
binding all in one.
There remain for our study the physical plane, the astral plane, the
lower levels of the manasic plane. Can we substitute these by proofs which will
be
accepted by those who are not yet Theosophists? I think we can.
First, as regards the physical plane. We need here to notice how the
senses of man are correlated with the physical universe outside him, and how
his knowledge of that universe is bounded by the power of his organs of sense
to vibrate in
response to vibrations set up outside him. He can hear when the air is
thrown into vibrations into which the drum of his ear can also be thrown; if
the vibration be so slow that the drum cannot vibrate in answer, the person
does not hear any sound.
If the vibration be so rapid that the drum cannot vibrate in answer, the
person does not hear any sound. So true is this, that the limit of hearing in
different persons varies with this power of vibration of the drums of their
respective
ears ; one person is plunged in silence, while another is deafened by
the keen shrilling that is throwing into tumult the air around both.
The same principle holds good for sight ; we see so long as the light
waves are of a length to which our organs of sight can respond ; below and
beyond this length we are in darkness, let the ether vibrate as it may. The ant
can see where we are blind, because its eye can receive and respond to etheric
vibrations more rapid than we can sense.
All this suggests to any thoughtful person the idea that if our senses
could be evolved to more responsiveness, new avenues of knowledge would be
opened up even on the physical plane ; this realised, it is not difficult to go
a step farther,
and to conceive that keener and subtler senses might exist which would
open up, as it were, a new universe on a plane other than the physical.
Now this conception is true, and with the evolution of the astral senses
the astral plane unfolds itself, and may be studied as really, as
scientifically, as
the physical universe can be. These astral senses exist in all men, but
are latent in most, and generally need to be artificially forced, if they are
to be used in the present stage of evolution. In a few persons they are
normally present and become active without any artificial impulse.
In very many persons they can be artificially awakened and developed.
The condition, in all cases, of the activity of the astral senses is the
passivity of the physical, and the more complete passivity on the physical
plane the greater the possibility of activity on the astral.
It is noteworthy that Western psychologists have found it necessary to
investigate what is termed the "dream consciousness," in order to
understand the
workings of consciousness as a whole. It is impossible to ignore the strange
phenomena which characterise the workings of consciousness when it is removed
from the limitations of the physical plane, and some of the most able and
advanced of our psychologists do not think these workings to be in any way
unworthy of the most careful and scientific investigation.
All such workings are, in Theosophical language, on the astral plane,
and the student who seeks for proof there is an astral plane may here find
enough and to spare. He will speedily discover that the laws under which
consciousness works on the physical plane have no existence on the astral.
E.g., the laws of space and time, which are here the very conditions of
thought, do not exist forconsciousness when its activity is transferred to the
astral world.
Mozart hears a whole symphony as a single impression, "as in a fine
and strong dream" (Philosophy of Mysticism, Du Prel, vol. I, p. 106), but
has to work it out in successive details when he brings it back with him to the
physical plane.
The dream of the moment contains a mass of events that would take years
to pass in succession in our world of space and time. The drowning man sees his
life history in a few seconds. But it is needless to multiply instances.
The astral plane may be reached in sleep or in trance, natural or
induced, i.e.., in any case in which the body is reduced to a condition of
lethargy. It is in trance that it can best be studied, and here our enquirer
will soon find proof that consciousness can work apart from the physical
organism, unfettered by the laws that bind it while it works on the physical
plane.
Clairvoyance and clairaudience are among the most interesting of the
phenomena that here lie for investigation. It is not necessary here to give a
large number of cases of clairvoyance, for I am supposing that the enquirer
intends to study
for himself. But I may mention the case of Jane Rider, observed by Dr.
Belden, her medical attendant, a girl who could read and write with her eyes
carefully covered with wads of cotton wool, coming down from to the middle of
the cheek
(Isis Revelata, vol. I, p. 37).
Of a clairvoyant observed by Schelling who announced the death of a
relative at a distance of 150 leagues, and stated that the letter containing
the news of the death was on its way (ibid., vol. II,p, 89-92); of Madame
Lagrandré, who diagnosed the internal state of her mother, giving a description
that was proved to be correct by the post-mortem examination (Somnolism and
Psychism, Dr. Haddock,p. 54-56); of Emma, Dr. Haddock’s somnambule, who
constantly diagnosed
diseases for him (ibid., chap. vii.).
Speaking generally, the clairvoyant can see and describe events which
are taking place at a distance, or under circumstances that render physical
sight impossible. How is this done? The facts are beyond dispute. They require
explanation. We say that consciousness can work through senses other than the
physical, senses unfettered by the limitations of space which exist for our
bodily senses, and cannot by them be transcended.
Those who deny the possibility of such working on what we call the
astral plane should at least endeavour to present a hypothesis more reasonable
than ours.
Facts are stubborn things, and we have here a mass of facts proving the
existence of conscious activity on a superphysical plane, of sight without
eyes, hearing without ears, obtaining knowledge without physical apparatus. In
default
of any other explanation, the Theosophical hypothesis holds the field.
There is another class of facts: that of etheric and astral appearances,
whether of living or dead persons, wraiths, apparitions, doubles, ghosts, etc.,
etc. Of course the omniscient person of the end of the nineteenth century will
sniff with lofty disdain at the mention of such silly superstitions. But sniffs
do not abolish facts, and it is a question of evidence.
The weight of evidence is enormously on the side of such appearances,
and in all ages of the world human testimony has borne witness to their
reality. The enquirer whose demand for proof I have in view may well set to
work to gather first hand evidence on this head. Of course if he is afraid of
being laughed at he had better leave the matter alone, but if he is robust
enough to face the ridicule of the superior person he will be amazed at the
evidence which he will collect from persons who have themselves come into
contact with astral forms.
"Illusions! hallucinations! " the superior person will say.
But calling names settles nothing. Illusions to which the vast majority of the
human race bears
witness are at least worthy of study, if human testimony is to be taken
as of any worth. There must be something which gives rise to this unanimity of
testimony in all ages of the world, testimony which is found today among
civilised people, amid railways and electric lights, as well as among barbarous
races.
The testimony of millions of Spiritualists to the reality of etheric and
astral forms cannot be left out of consideration. When all cases of fraud and
imposture are discounted there remain phenomena that cannot be dismissed as
fraudulent, and that can be examined by any persons who care to give time and
trouble to the investigation.
There is no necessity to employ a professional medium ; a few friends
well know to each other, can carry on their search together; and it is not too
much to say that any half-dozen persons, with a little patience and
perseverance, may convince themselves of the existence of forces and of
intelligences other than those of the physical plane.
There is danger in this research to any emotional, nervous, and easily
influenced natures, and it is well not to carry the investigations too far, for
the reasons given on the previous pages. But there is no readier way of
breaking down the unbelief in the existence of anything outside the physical
plane than trying a few experiments, and it is worth while to run some risk in
order to effect this breaking down.
These are but hints as to lines that the enquirer may follow, so as to
convince himself that there is a state of consciousness such as we label
"astral." When he has collected evidence enough to make such a state
probable to him, it will be time for him to be put in the way of serious study.
For real investigation of the astral plane, the student must develop in
himself the necessary senses, and to make his knowledge available while he is
in the body, he must learn to transfer his consciousness to the astral plane
without losing grip of the physical organism, so that he may impress on the
physical brain the knowledge acquired during his astral voyagings.
But for this he will need to be not a mere enquirer but a student, and
he will require the aid and guidance of a teacher. As to finding that teacher,
"when the pupil is ready the teacher is always there." Further proofs
of the existence of the astral plane are, at the present time, most easily
found in the study of mesmeric and hypnotic phenomena. And here, ere passing to
these, I am bound to
put in a word of warning.
The use of mesmerism and hypnotism is surrounded by danger. The
publicity which
attends on all scientific discoveries in the West has scattered
broadcast knowledge which places within the reach of the criminally disposed
powers of the
most terrible character, which may be used for the most damnable
purposes.
No good man or woman will use these powers, if he finds that he
possesses them, save when he utilises them purely for human service, without
personal end in view, and when he is very sure that he is not by their means
usurping control over the will and the actions of another human being.
Unhappily the use of these forces is as open to the bad as to the good, and
they may be, and are being, used to most nefarious ends.
In view of these new dangers menacing individuals and society, each will
do well to strengthen the habits of self-control and of concentration of
thought and will, so as to encourage the positive mental attitude as opposed to
the negative, and thus to oppose a sustained resistance to all influences
coming from without.
Our loose habits of thought, our lack of distinct and conscious purpose,
lay us open to the attacks of the evil-minded hypnotiser, and that this is a
real, not a fancied, danger has been already proved by cases that have brought
the victims within grasp of the criminal law. It may be hoped that ere long
such hypnotic malpractices may be brought within the criminal code.
While thus in the attitude of caution and of self-defence, we may yet
wisely study the experiments made public to the world, in our search for
preliminary proofs of the existence of the astral plane. For here Western
science is on the
very verge of discovering some of those "powers" of which
Theosophists have said so much, and we have the right to use in justification
of our teachings all the facts with which that science may supply us.
Now, one of the most important classes of these facts is that of
thoughts rendered visible as forms. A hypnotised person, after being awakened
from trance and being apparently in normal possession of his senses, can be
made to see any form conceived by the hypnotiser. No word need be spoken, no
touch given ; it suffices that the hypnotiser should clearly image to himself
some idea, and that idea becomes a visible and tangible object to the person
under his control.
This experiment may be tried in various ways ; while the patient is in
trance, "suggestion" may be used; that is, the operator may tell him
that a bird is on his knee, and on awaking from the trance he will see the bird
and will stroke it (Etudes Cliniques sur la Grand Hystérie, Richet, p. 645); or
that he has a lampshade between his hands, and on awaking he will press his
hands against it,
feeling resistance in the empty air (Animal Magnetism, translated from.
Binet and Féré,p. 213).
Scores of these experiments may be read in Richet or in Binet and Féré.
Similar results may be effected without "suggestion," by pure
concentration of the thought; I have seen a patient thus made to remove a ring
from a person’s
finger, without word spoken or touch passing between hypnotiser and
hypnotised.
The literature of mesmerism and hypnotism in English, French, and German
is now very extensive, and it is open to every one. There may be sought the
evidence of this creation of forms by thought and will, forms which, on the
astral plane,
are real and objective. Mesmerism and hypnotism set the intelligence
free on this plane, and it works thereon without the hindrance normally imposed
by the physical apparatus ; it can see and hear on that plane, and sees
thoughts as things.
Here, again, for real study, it is necessary to learn how thus to
transfer the consciousness while retaining hold of the physical organism ; but
for
preliminary inquiry it suffices to study others whose consciousness is
artificially liberated without their own volition. This reality of thought
images on a superphysical plane is a fact of the very highest
importance, especially in its bearing on reincarnation; but it is enough here
to point to it as one of the facts which go to show the prima facie probability
of the existence of such a plane.
Another class of facts deserving study is that which includes the
phenomena of thought-transference, and here we reach the lower levels of the
mental, or
manasic, plane. The Transactions of the Psychical Research Society
contain a large number of interesting experiments on this subject, and the
possibility of the transference of thought from brain to brain without the use
of words, or of
any means of ordinary physical communication, is on the verge of general
acceptance.
And two persons, gifted with patience, may convince themselves of this
possibility, if they care to devote to the effort sufficient time and
perseverance. Let them agree to give, say, ten minutes daily to their
experiment, and fixing on the time, let each shut himself up alone, secure from
interruption of any kind. Let one be the thought projector, the other the
thought-receiver, and it is safer to alternate these positions, in order to
avoid risk of one becoming permanently abnormally passive.
Let the thought projector concentrate himself on a definite thought and
the will to impress it on his friend ; no other idea than the one must enter
his mind ; his thought must be concentrated on the one thing,
"one–pointed" in the graphic language of Patanjali. The thought
receiver, on the other hand, must render his mind a blank, and must merely note
the thoughts that drift into it. These he
should put down as they appear, his only care being to remain passive,
to reject nothing, to encourage nothing.
The thought-projector, on his side, should keep a record of the ideas he
tries to send, and at the end of six months the two records should be compared.
Unless the persons are abnormally deficient in thought and will, some power of
communication will by that time have been established between them: and if they
are at all psychic they will probably also have developed the power of see in
each other in the astral light.
It may be objected that such an experiment would be wearisome and
monotonous. Granted. All first hand investigations into natural laws and forces
are wearisome and monotonous. That is why nearly every one prefers second-hand
to
firsthand knowledge ; the "sublime patience of the
investigator" is one of the rarest gifts. Darwin would perform an
apparently trivial experiment hundreds of times to substantiate one small fact
.
The supersensuous domains certainly do not need for their conquest less
patience and less effort than the sensuous. Impatience never yet accomplished
anything in the questioning of nature, and the would-be student must, at the
very outset,
show the tireless perseverance which can perish but cannot relinquish
its hold.
Finally, let me advise the inquirer to keep his eyes open for new
discoveries, especially in the sciences of electricity, physics, and chemistry.
Let him read Professor Lodge’s address to the British Association at Cardiff in
the autumn of 1891 and Professor Crookes’ address to the Society of Electrical
Engineers in London the following November.
He will there find pregnant hints of the lines along which Western
science is preparing to advance, and he will perchance begin to feel that there
may be something in H.P.Blavatsky’s statement that the Masters of Wisdom are
preparing to give proofs that will substantiate the Secret Doctrine.
The Seven Planes and the principles functioning thereon
7 x
6 x
5 Atma. Spirit Spiritual
4 Buddhi. Spiritual Soul
3 Manas. Human Soul. Mental
2 Kâma. Astral or Desire-Body Astral
1 Prâna. Etheric Double. Dense Physical Body Physical
Another Division according to the Principles
7 Atma Spiritual
6 Buddhi
5 Higher Manas Mental
Principles closely interwoven during earth life.
Sometimes called high Psychic Plane
4 Lower Manas
3 Kâma Astral
2 Prâna. Etheric Double Physical
1 Dense Physical Body
Another Division also according the Principles
7 Atmâ Spiritual
6 Buddhi
5 Manas Mental
4 Kâma Astral
3 Prâna Physical
2 Etheric Double
1 Dense Physical Body
These two latter divisions are matters of convenience in classification.
The first diagram gives the planes themselves as they exist in nature.
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Concerns are
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The Spiritual
Retreat, Tekels Park in Camberley,
Surrey, England
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Tekels Park is a
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Classic
Introductory Theosophy Text
A Text Book of
Theosophy By C W Leadbeater
What Theosophy Is
From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death
Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life
The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
Preface to the American Edition Introduction
Occultism and its Adepts The Theosophical Society
First Occult Experiences Teachings of Occult Philosophy
Later Occult Phenomena Appendix
Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
Devachan
Cycles
Arguments Supporting Reincarnation
Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
Psychic Laws, Forces, and Phenomena
Psychic Phenomena and Spiritualism
Karma Fundamental Principles Laws: Natural and Man-Made The Law of Laws
The Eternal Now
Succession
Causation The Laws of Nature A Lesson of The Law
Karma Does Not Crush Apply This Law
Man in The Three Worlds Understand The Truth
Man and His Surroundings The Three Fates
The Pair of Triplets Thought, The Builder
Practical Meditation Will and Desire
The Mastery of Desire Two Other Points
The Third Thread Perfect Justice
Our Environment
Our Kith and Kin Our Nation
The Light for a Good Man Knowledge of Law The Opposing Schools
The More Modern View Self-Examination Out of the Past
Old Friendships
We Grow By Giving Collective Karma Family Karma
National Karma
India’s Karma
National Disasters
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