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.
PRINCIPLE I. THE DENSE PHYSICAL BODY
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
Rűpa, 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 ćonian 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
Bhűta" (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 Ćschylus, 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 Ćolian 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 Ćolian 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 Rűpa, or "body of illusion." The Mâyâvi Rűpa
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 Rűpa 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 Rűpa.
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 Rűpa 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 ćons 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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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
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