The Writings of Annie Besant
The Ancient Wisdom
by
First published 1897
THE UNITY
UNDERLYING ALL RELIGIONS
Right thought is
necessary to right conduct, right understanding to right living, and the Divine
Wisdom – whether called by its ancient Sanskrit name of Brahma Vidya, or its
modern Greek name of Theosophia, Theosophy – comes to the
world as at once an adequate philosophy and an all-embracing religion and
ethic.
It was once said of the
Christian Scriptures by a devotee that they contained shallows in which a child
could wade and depths in which a giant must swim. A similar statement might be
made of Theosophy,
for some of its teachings are so simple and so practical that any person of
average intelligence can understand
and follow them, while others are so lofty, so profound, that
the ablest strains his intellect to contain them and sinks exhausted in the
effort.
In the present volume an
attempt will be made to place Theosophy
before the reader simply and clearly, in a way which shall convey its general
principles and truths as forming a coherent conception of the universe, and
shall give such
detail as is necessary for the understanding of their relations to
each other.
An elementary textbook
cannot pretend to give the fullness of knowledge that may be obtained from
abstruser works, but it should leave the student with clear fundamental ideas
on his subject, with much indeed to add by future study but
with little to unlearn. Into the outline given by such a book
the student should be able to paint the details of further research.
It is admitted on all
hands that a survey of the great religions of the world shows that they hold in
common many religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas. But while the fact is
universally granted, the explanation of the fact is a matter of dispute.
Some allege that
religions have grown up on the soil of human ignorance tilled by the
imagination, and have been gradually elaborated from crude forms of animism and
fetishism; their likenesses are referred to universal natural phenomena
imperfectly observed and fancifully explained, solar and star worship being the
universal key for one school, phallic worship the equally universal key for
another ; fear, desire, ignorance, and wonder led the savage to personify the
powers of nature, and priests played upon his terrors and his hopes, his misty
fancies, and his bewildered questionings ; myths became scriptures and symbols
facts, and their basis was universal the likeness of the
products was inevitable.
Thus speak the doctors
of"Comparative Mythology," and plain people are silenced but not
convinced under the rain of proofs ; they cannot deny
the likenesses, but they dimly feel: Are all man’s dearest hopes and lofty
imaginings nothing more than the outcome of savage fancies and of groping
ignorance? Have the great leaders of the race, the martyrs and heroes of
humanity, lived, wrought, suffered and died deluded, for the mere
personifications of astronomical facts and for the draped obscenities of barbarians?
The second explanation
of the common property in the religions of the world asserts the existence of
an original teaching in the custody of a Brotherhood of greatspiritual
Teachers, who – Themselves the outcome of past cycles of evolution – acted as
the instructors and guides of the child-humanity of our
planet, imparting to its races and nations in turn the fundamental
truths of religion in the form most adapted to the idiosyncrasies of the
recipients.
According to this view,
the Founders of the great religions are members of the one Brotherhood, and
were aided in Their mission by many other members, lower in degree than
Themselves, Initiates and disciples of various grades, eminent in spiritual
insight, in philosophical knowledge, or in purity of ethical wisdom.
These guided the infant
nations, gave them their polity, enacted their laws, ruled them as kings,
taught them as philosophers, guided them as priests ; all the nations of antiquity
looked back to such mighty men, demigods, and heroes, and they left their
traces in literature, in architecture, in legislation.
That such men lived it
seems difficult to deny in the face of universal tradition, of still existing
Scriptures, and of prehistoric remains for the most part now in ruins, to say
nothing of other testimony which the ignorant would reject.
The sacred books of the
East are the best evidence for the greatness of their authors, for who in later
days or in modern times can even approach the spiritual sublimity of their
religious thought, the intellectual splendour of their philosophy, the breadth
and purity of their ethic? And when we find that
these books contain teachings about God, man, and the universe
identical in substance under much variety of outer appearance, it does not seem
unreasonable to refer to them to a central primary body of doctrine. To that
body we give the name Divine Wisdom, in its Greek form: THEOSOPHY.
As the origin and basis
of all religions, it cannot be the antagonist of any: it is indeed their
purifier, revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that has
become mischievous in its external presentation by the
perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstition ; but it
recognises and defends itself in each, and seeks in each to unveil its hidden
wisdom. No man in becoming a Theosophist need cease to be a Christian, a
Buddhist, a Hindu ; he will but
acquire a deeper insight into his own faith, a firmer hold on its
spiritual truths, a broader understanding of its sacred teachings. As Theosophy of old gave
birth to religions, so in modern times does it justify and defend them. It is
the rock whence all of them were hewn, the hole of the pit whence all were dug.
It justifies at the bar of intellectual criticism the deepest longings and
emotions of the human heart: it verifies our hopes for man ; it
gives us back ennobled our faith in God.
The truth of this
statement becomes more and more apparent as we study the various
world-Scriptures, and but a few selections from the wealth of material
available will be sufficient to establish the fact, and to guide the student in
his search for further verification. The main spiritual verities of religion
may
be summarised thus:
One eternal, infinite,
incognisable real Existence.
From THAT the manifested
God, unfolding from unity to duality to trinity.
From the manifested
Trinity many spiritual Intelligences, guiding cosmic
order.
Man a reflection of the
manifested God and therefore a trinity fundamentally, his inner and real Self
being eternal, one with the Self of the universe.
His evolution by
repeated incarnations, into which he is drawn by desire, and from which he is
set free by knowledge and sacrifice, becoming divine in potency as he had ever
been divine in latency.
China which is now a
fossilised civilisation, was peopled in old days by the Turanians, the fourth
subdivision of the great Fourth Race, the race which inhabited the lost
continent of Atlantis, and spread its offshoots over the world. The Mongolians,
the last subdivision of that same race, later reinforced its population, so
that in China we have traditions from ancient days, preceding the settlement of
the Fifth, or Aryan race in India. In the Ching Chang Ching, or Classic of
Purity, we have a fragment of an ancient scripture of singular
beauty, breathing out the spirit of restfulness and peace so characteristic
of the "original teaching." Mr. Legge says in the introductory note
to his translation [ The Sacred Books of the East]
that the treatise –
"Is attributed to Ko Yüan (or Hsüan), a Taoist of the Wü dynasty (A.D.
222-227), who is fabled to have attained to the state of an Immortal, and is
generally so denominated. He is represented as a worker of miracles
; as addicted to
intemperance, and very eccentric in his ways. When shipwrecked on one
occasion, he emerged from beneath the water with his clothes unwet, and walked
freely on the surface. Finally he ascended to the sky in bright day. All these
accounts may safely be put down as the figments of later time."
Such stories are
repeatedly told of Initiates of various degrees, and are by no means
necessarily "figments," but we are more interested in Ko Yüan’s own account of the book.
"When I obtained
the true Tao, I recited this Ching [book] ten thousand times. It is what the
Spirits of heaven practise and had not been communicated to scholars of this
lower world. I got if from the Divine Ruler of the
the Royal-mother of the West.
Now the "Divine
Ruler of the
deals with Tao – literally "the Way’ – the name by which the
One Reality is indicated in the ancient Turanian and Mongolian religion. We
read: "The Great Tao has no bodily form, but It produced and nourishes
heaven and earth. The Great Tao has no passions, but It causes the sun and the
moon to revolve as they do. The Great Tao has no name, but It effects the
growth and
maintenance of all
things. (i,1)
This is the manifested
God as unity, but duality supervenes:
Now the Tao (shows
itself in two forms), the Pure and the Turbid, and has (two conditions of)
Motion and Rest, Heaven is pure and earth is turbid ; heaven moves and the
earth is at rest . The masculine is pure and the feminine is turbid ; the
masculine moves and the feminine is still. The radical (Purity) descended, and
the (turbid) issue flowed abroad, and thus all things were
produced (I, 2).
This passage is
particularly interesting from the allusion to the active and receptive sides of
Nature, the distinction between Spirit, the generator, and Matter, the
nourisher, so familiar in later writings. In the Tao Te Ching the teaching as
to the Unmanifested and the Manifested comes out very plainly.
"The Tao that can
be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named
is not the enduring and unchanging name. Having no name, it is the Originator
of heaven and earth, having a name, it is the Mother of all things…Under these
two aspects it is really the same ; but as development takes place it receives
the different names. Together we call them the Mystery (i, 1,2,4). "
Students of the Kabalah will be reminded of one of the Divine Names, "the
Concealed Mystery." Again:
"There was
something undefined and complete, coming into existence before heaven and
earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone and undergoing no change,
reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted). It may be regarded
as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the
designation of the Tao.
Making an effort to give it a name, I call it the Great. Great, it passes on (
in constant flow). Passing on, it becomes remote. Having become remote, it
returns (xxv, 1-3). "
Very interesting it is
to see here the idea of the forthgoing and the returning of the One Life, so
familiar to us in the Hindu Literature. Familiar seems the verse: "All
things under heaven sprang from It as existent (and named) ; that existence
sprang from It as
non-existent (and not named) (xl,2)".
That a Universe might
become, the Unmanifest must give forth the One from whom duality and trinity
proceed:
"The Tao produced
One ; One produced Two ; Two produced Three ; Three produced all things. All
things leave behind them the Obscurity (out of which they have come), and go forward
to embrace the Brightness (into which they have emerged), while they are
harmonised by the Breath of vacancy (xlii, 1)."
"Breath of
Space" would be a happier translation. Since all is produced from It, It
exists in all:
"All pervading is
the Great Tao. It may be found on the left hand and on the right …It clothes
all things as with a garment, and makes no assumption of being their lord ; -
It may be named in the smallest things. All things return (to their root and
disappear), and do not know that it is It which presides over
their doing so – It may
be named in the greatest things (xxxiv, 1, 2 )." Chwang-ze (fourth century
BC) in his presentation of the ancient teachings, refers to the spiritual
Intelligences coming from the Tao:
"It has Its root
and ground (of existence) in Itself. Before there were heaven and earth, from
of old, there It was securely existing. From It came the mysterious existence
of spirits, from It the mysterious existence of God (Bk. vi, Pt. I, Sec. vi,
7)."
A number of the names of
these Intelligences follow, but such beings are so well known to play a great
part in the Chinese religion that we need not multiply quotations about them.
Man is regarded as a
trinity, Taoism, says Mr. Legge, recognising in him the spirit, the mind, and
the body. This division comes out clearly in the /Classic of Purity, in the
teaching that man must get rid of desire to reach union with
the One:
Now the spirit of man
loves purity, but his mind disturbs it. The mind of man loves stillness, but
his desires draw it away. If he could always send his desires away, his mind of
itself would be still. Let his mind be made clean, and his spirit of itself
becomes pure ….The reason why men are not able to attain to
this is because their
minds have not been cleansed, and their desires have not been sent away. If one
is able to send the desires away, when he then looks at his mind it is no
longer his: when he looks out at his body it is no longer his ; and when he
looks farther off at external things, they are things which he has
nothing to do with ..(i,
3, 4).
Then, after giving the
stages of indrawing to "the condition of perfect stillness," it is
asked:
"In that condition
of rest independently of place, how can any desire arise? And when no desire
any longer arises there is the true stillness and rest. That true (stillness)
becomes (a) constant quality, and responds to external things (without error) ;
yea, that true and constant quality holds possession of the
nature. In such constant
response and constant stillness there is constant purity and rest. He who has
this absolute purity enters gradually into the (inspiration of the ) True Tao
(i, 5)."
The supplied words
"inspiration of" rather cloud than elucidate the meaning, for
entering into the Tao is congruous with the whole idea and with other
Scriptures.
On putting away of
desire is laid much stress in Taoism ; a commentator on the Classic of Purity
remarks that understanding the Tao depends on absolute purity, and
The acquiring the Absolute
Purity depends entirely on the putting away of Desire, which is the urgent
practical lesson of the Treatise. The Tao Teh Ching says:
Always without desire we
must be found,
If its deep mystery we
would sound;
But if desire always
within us be,
Its outer fringe is all
that we shall see.( i, 3)
Reincarnation does not
seem to be so distinctly taught as might have been expected, although passages
are found which imply that the main idea was taken for granted and that the
entity was considered as ranging through animal as well as human births. Thus
we have from Chwang-ze the quaint and wise story of a
dying man, to whom his
friend said:
"Great indeed is
the Creator! What will He now make you to become? Where will He take you to?
Will he make you the liver of a rat or the arm of an insect? Szelai replied,
"Wherever a parent tells a son to go, east, west, south or north, he
simply follows the command …Here now is a great founder, casting his metal. If
the metal were to leap up (in the pot) and say, ‘I must be made into a (sword
like the ) Moysh,’ the great founder would be sure to regard it as uncanny. So
again, when a form is being fashioned in the mould of the womb, if it were to
say, ‘I must become a man, I must become a man,’ the Creator would be sure to
regard it as uncanny. When we once understand that heaven and earth are a great
melting pot and the Creator a great founder, where can we to go to that shall
not be right for us? We are born as from a quiet sleep and we die to a calm
awaking" (Bk. vi, Pt. I, Sec. vi).
Turning to the Fifth,
the Aryan Race, we have the same teachings embodied in the oldest and greatest
Aryan religion – the Brahmanical. The eternal Existence is proclaimed in the
Chhandogyopanishad as "One only, without a second," and it is
written:
It willed, I shall
multiply for the sake of the universe (vi, ii, 1, 3).
The Supreme Logos,
Brahman, is threefold – Being, Consciousness, Bliss, and it is said:
From This arise life,
mind and all the senses, ether, air, fire , water, earth the support of all (
Mundakopanishad, ii,3).
No grander descriptions
of Deity can be found anywhere than in the Hindu Scriptures, but they are
becoming so familiar that brief quotation will suffice. Let the following serve
as specimens of their wealth of gems:
"Manifest, near,
moving in the secret place, the great abode, herein rests all that moves,
breathes, and shuts the eyes. Know That as to be worshipped, being and
non-being, the best, beyond the knowledge of all creatures. Luminous, subtler than
the subtle, in which the worlds and their denizens are infixed.
That, this imperishable
Brahman ; That, also life and voice and mind…In the golden highest sheath is
spotless, partless Brahman ; That the pure Light of lights, known by the
knowers of the Self…That deathless Brahman is before, Brahman behind, Brahman
to the right and to the left, below, above, pervading ;
this Brahman truly is
the all. This is the best ( Mundakopanishad , II,ii, 1,2,9,11).
Beyond the universe,
Brahman, the supreme, the great, hidden in all beings according to their
bodies, the one Breath of the whole universe, the Lord, whom knowing (men)
become immortal. I know that mighty Spirit, the shining sun beyond darkness… I
know Him the unfading, the ancient, the Soul of all, omnipresent by His nature,
whom the Brahman-knowers call unborn, whom they call eternal
(Shvetashvataropanishad, iii. 7,8,21).
When there is no
darkness, no day nor night, no being nor non-being (there is) Shiva even alone
; That the indestructible, That is to be worshipped by Savriti, from That came
forth the ancient wisdom. Not above nor below, nor in the midst, can He be
comprehended. Nor is there any similitude for Him whose name is infinite glory.
Not with the sight is established His form, none may by the eye behold Him ;
they who know Him by the heart and by the mind, dwelling in the heart, become
immortal (Ibid., iv, 18-20).
That man in his inner
Self is one with the Self of the universe – "I am That" – is an idea
that so thoroughly pervades all Hindu thought that man is often referred to as
the "divine town of Brahman," [ Mundakopanishad ] the "town of
nine gates," [ Shvetâshvataropanishad, iii,14. ] God dwelling in the
cavity of
the heart.[ Ibid., Ii]
"In one manner is
to be seen (the Being) which cannot be proved, which is eternal, without spot,
higher than the ether, unborn, the great eternal Soul…This great unborn Soul is
the same which abides as the intelligent (soul) in all living creatures, the
same which abides as ether in the heart ; [ The "ether in the heart"
is a mystical phrase used to indicate the One, who is said
to dwell therein.] - in
him it sleeps; it is the Subduer of all, the Ruler of all, the sovereign Lord
of all ; it does not become greater by good works nor less by evil work. It is
the Ruler of all, the sovereign Lord of all beings, the Preserver of all
beings, the Bridge, the Upholder of the worlds, so that they fall not to ruin (
Brihadaranyakopanishad, IV, iv, 20,22, Trs. Dr. E. Röer.)
When God is regarded as
the evolver of the universe, the threefold character comes out very clearly as
Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma or again as Vishnu sleeping under the waters, the
Lotus springing from Him, and in the Lotus Brahma. Man is likewise threefold,
and in the Mândûkyopanishad the self is described as conditioned by the
physical body, the subtle body, and the mental body, and then rising out of all
into the One "without duality." From the Trimurti (Trinity) come many
Gods, connected with the administration of the universe, as to whom it is said
in the Brihadaranyakopanishad.
"Adore Him, ye
Gods, after whom the year by rolling days is completed, the Light of lights, as
the Immortal Life (IV, iv, 16)."
It is hardly necessary
to mention the presence in Brâhmanism of the teaching of reincarnation, since
its whole philosophy of life turns on this pilgrimage of the Soul through many
births and deaths, and not a book could be taken up in which this truth is not
taken for granted. By desires man is bound to this wheel
of change, and therefore
by knowledge, devotion, and the destruction of desires, man must set himself
free. When the Soul knows God it is liberated. ( Shvetash, I, 8.) The intellect
purified by knowledge beholds Him. ( Mund., III, I,8 .) Knowledge joined to
devotion finds the abode of Brahman. ( Mund., III, ii,4).
Whoever knows Brahman,
becomes Brahman. ( Mund., III, ii,9 ) When desires cease the mortal becomes
immortal and obtains Brahman. ( Kathop., vi, 14). Buddhism, as it exists in its
northern form, is quite at one with the most ancient faiths, but in the
southern form it seems to have let slip the idea of the Logoic Trinity as of
the One Existence from which They came forth. The LOGOS in His triple
manifestation is: the First LOGOS, Amitâbha, the Boundless Light ; the Second,
Avalokiteshvara, or Padmapani (Chenresi) ; the Third, Manjusri – "the
representative of creative wisdom, corresponding to Brahmâ." ( Eitel’s
Sanskrit Chinese Dictionary, sub voce. ) Chinese Buddhism apparently does not
contain the idea of a primordial Existence, beyond the LOGOS, but Nepalese
Buddhism postulates Âdi-Buddha, from Whom Amitâbha arises. Padmapâni is said by
Eitel to be the representative of compassionate Providence and to correspond
partly with Shiva, but as the aspect of the Buddhist Trinity that sends forth
incarnations He appears rather to represent the same idea as Vishnu, to whom He
is allied by bearing the Lotus (fire and water, or Spirit and Matter as the
primary constituents of the universe).
Reincarnation and Karma
are so much the fundamentals of Buddhism that it is hardly worth while to
insist on them save to note the way of liberation, and to remark that as the
Lord Buddha was a Hindu preaching to Hindus, Brâhmanical
doctrines are taken for
granted constantly in His teaching, as matters of course. He was a purifier and
a reformer, not an iconoclast, and struck at the accretions due to ignorance,
not at fundamental truths belonging to the Ancient Wisdom.
"Those beings who
walk in the way of the law that has been well taught, reach the other shore of
the great sea of birth and death, that is difficult to cross."
(Udanavarga, xxix. 37).
Desire binds man, and
must be gotten rid of:
"It is hard for one
who is held by the fetters of desire to free himself of them, says the Blessed
One. The steadfast, who care not for the happiness of desires, cast them off
and do soon depart (to Nirvana)….Mankind
has no lasting desires: they are impermanent in them who experience them ; free
yourselves then from what cannot last, and abide not in the sojourn of death (
Ibid., Ii, 6, 8).
He who has destroyed
desires for (worldly )goods, sinfulness, the bonds of the eye of the flesh, who
has torn up desire by the very root, he, I declare, is a Brahmana (Ibid.,
xxxiii, 68)."
And a Brâhmana is a man
"having his last body," (Udânavarga, xxxiii, 41) and is defined as
one.
"Who, knowing his
former abodes (existences) perceives heaven and hell, the Muni, who has found
the way to put an end to birth". (ibid., xxxiii,55). In the exoteric
Hebrew Scriptures, the idea of a Trinity does not come out strongly, though
duality is apparent, and the God spoken of is obviously the LOGOS, not the One
Unmanifest: "I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and
create darkness; I make peace and create evil ; I am the Lord that doeth all
these things." (Is., xlvii, 7) Philo, however, has the doctrine of the
LOGOS very clearly, and it is found in the Fourth Gospel:
"In the beginning
was the Word [Logos] and the Word was with God and the Word was God….All things
were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. (St.
John i, 1, 3).
In the Kabalah the
doctrine of the One, the Three, the Seven, and then the many, is plainly
taught:
The Ancient of the
Ancients, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, yet also has not any form. It
has a form through which the universe is maintained. It also has not any form,
as It cannot be comprehended. When It first took this form [Kether, the Crown,
the First Logos] It permitted to proceed from It nine brilliant Lights [Wisdom
and the Voice, forming with Kether the Triad, and then the seven lower
Sephiroth] …It is the Ancient of the Ancients, the Mystery of the Mysteries,
the Unknown of the Unknown.
It has a form which
appertains to It, since It appears (through it) to us, as the Ancient Man above
all as the Ancient of the Ancients, and as that which there is the Most Unknown
among the Unknown. But under that form by which It makes Itself known, It
however still remains the Unknown (Issac Myer’s Qabbalah, from the Zohar, pp.
274-275).
Myer points out that the
"form" is "not ‘the Ancient of the Ancients,’ who is the Ain
Soph. Again:
"Three Lights are
in the Holy Upper which Unite as One ; and they are the basis of the Thorah,
and this opens the door to all….Come, see! the mystery of the word. These are
three degrees and each exists by itself, and yet all are One and are knotted in
One, nor are they separated one from another….Three come out from One, One
exists in Three, it is the force between Two, Two nourishes One. One nourishes
many sides, thus All is One. (ibid., 373, 375,376).
Needless to say that the
Hebrews held the doctrine of many Gods – "Who is like unto Thee, O Lord,
among the Gods?" –and of multitudes of subordinate ministrants, the
"Sons of God," the "Angels of the Lord," the "Ten
Angelic Hosts."(Exodus, xv,ii.)
Of the commencement of
the universe the Zohar teaches:
In the beginning was the
Will of the King, prior to any existence which came into being through
emanation from this Will. It sketched and engraved the forms of all things that
were to be manifested from concealment into view, in the supreme and dazzling
light of the Quadrant [the Sacred Tetractys] (Myer’s
Quabbalah, pp. 194-95).
Nothing can exist in
which the Deity is not immanent, and with regard to Reincarnation it is taught
that the Soul is present in the divine Idea ere coming to earth ; if the Soul
remained quite pure during its trial it escaped rebirth, but this seems to have
been only a theoretical possibility, and it is said:
All souls are subject to
revolution (metempsychosis, a’leen o’gilgoolah), but men do not know the ways
of the Holy One: blessed be It! they are ignorant of the way they have been
judged in all time, and before they came into this world and when they have
quitted it (ibid., p. 198).
Traces of this belief
occur both in the Hebrew and Christian exoteric
Scriptures, as in the
belief that Elijah would return, and later that he had
returned in John the
Baptist.
Turning to glance at
The Gods bow before Thy
Majesty by exalting the Souls of That which produceth them….and say to Thee:
Peace to all emanations from the unconscious father of the conscious Fathers of
the Gods…..Thou Producer of beings, we adore the Souls which emanate from Thee.
Thou begettest us, O Thou Unknown, and we greet Thee in worshipping each
God-Soul which descendeth from Thee and liveth in us (quoted in Secret Doctrine
iii, 485, 1893 ed.; v, 463, Adyar Ed.).
The "conscious
Fathers of the Gods" are the LOGOI, the "unconscious Father" is
the One Existence, unconscious not as being less but as being infinitely more
than what we call consciousness, a limited thing.
In the fragments of the
Book of the Dead we can study the conceptions of the reincarnating of the human
Soul, of its pilgrimage towards and its ultimate union with the LOGOS. The
famous papyrus of "the scribe Ani, triumphant in peace," is full of
touches that remind the reader of the Scriptures of other
faiths ; his journey
through the underworld, his expectation of re-entering his body (the form taken
by reincarnation among the Egyptians), his identification with the LOGOS:
Saith Osiris Ani: I am
the great One, son of the great One ; I am Fire, the son of Fire …I have knit
together my bones, I have made myself whole and sound ; I have become young
once more ; I am Osiris the Lord of eternity (xliii, 1, 4 ).
In Pierret’s recension
of The Book of the Dead we find the striking passage:
I am the being of
mysterious names who prepares for himself dwellings for millions of years (p.
22). Heart, that comest to me from my mother, my heart necessary to my
existence on earth …Heart, that comest to me from my mother, heart that is
necessary for me for my transformation (pp. 113-114).
In Zoroastrianism we
find the conception of the One Existence, imaged as Boundless Space, whence
arises the LOGOS, the creator Aûharmazd: Supreme in omniscience and goodness,
and unrivalled in splendor: the region of light is the place of Aûharmazd (The
Bundahis, Sacred Books of the East, v, 3,
4; v, 2).
To him in the Yasna, the
chief liturgy of the Zarathustrians, homage is first paid:
I announce and I (will)
complete (my Yasna [worship] to Ahura Mazda, the creator, the radiant and
glorious, the greatest and the best, the most beautiful (?) (to our
conceptions), the most firm, the wisest, and the one of all whose body is most
perfect, who attains his ends the most infallibly, because of His
righteous order, to Him
who disposes our minds aright, who sends His joy-creating grace afar ; who made
us and has fashioned us, and who has nourished and protected us, who is the
most bounteous Spirit (Sacred Books of the East, xxxi, pp. 195,196).
The worshipper then pays
homage to the Ameshaspends and other Gods, but the supreme manifested God, the
LOGOS, is not here presented as triune. As with the Hebrews, there was a
tendency in the exoteric faith to lose sight of this
fundamental truth.
Fortunately we can trace the primitive teaching, though it disappeared in later
times from the popular belief. Dr. Haug, in his Essays on the Parsis
(translated by Dr. West and forming vol. v of Trubner’s Oriental Series) states
that Ahuramazda – Aûharmazd or Hârmazd – is the Supreme Being, and that from
him were produced – Two primeval causes, which, though different were united
and produced the world of material things as well as that of the spirit (p.
303).
These were called twins
and are everywhere present, in Ahuramazda as well as in man. One produces
reality, the other non-reality, and it is these who in later Zoroastrianism
became the opposing Spirits of good and evil. In the earlier teachings they
evidently formed the Second Logos, duality being his
characteristic mark.
The "good" and
"bad" are merely Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, the
fundamental "twins" of the Universe, the Two from the One.
Criticising the later idea, Dr. Haug says:
Such is the original
Zoroastrian notion of the two creative Spirits, who form only two parts of the
Divine being. But in the course of time this doctrine of the great founder was
changed and corrupted, in consequence of misunderstandings and false
interpretations. Spentômainyush [ the "good spirit"] was taken as a
name of Ahuramazda Himself, and then of course Angrômainyush [ the "evil
spirit"] by becoming entirely separated from Ahuramazda ; was regarded as
the constant adversary of Ahuramazda: thus the Dualism of God and Devil arose
(p. 205).
Dr. Haug’s view seems to
be supported by the Gâtha Ahunavaiti, given with other Gâthas by "the
archangels" to Zoroaster or Zarathustra:
In the beginning there
was a pair of twins, two spirits, each of a peculiar activity ; these are the
good and the base …And these two spirits united created the first (the material
things) ; one the reality, the other the non-reality …And to succor this life
(to increase it) Armaiti came with wealth, the good and
true mind ; she, the everlasting
one, created the material world….All perfect things are garnered up in the
splendid residence of the Good Mind, the Wise and the Righteous, who are known
as the best beings (Yas., xxx, 3,4,7,10; Dr. Haug’s translation, pp.149-151).
Here the three LOGOI are
seen, Ahuramazda the first, the supreme Life ; in and from him the
"twins," the Second LOGOS ; then Armaiti the Mind, the Creator of the
Universe, the Third LOGOS. ( Armaiti was a first Wisdom and the Goddess of
Wisdom, Later as the creator, She became identified with the earth, and was
worshipped as the Goddess of Earth). Later Mithra appears, and in the exoteric
faith clouds the primitive truth to some extent ; of him it is said:
Whom Ahura Mazda has
established to maintain and look over all this moving world ; who, never
sleeping, wakefully guards the creation of Mazda (Mihir Yast, xxvii, 103:
Sacred Books of the East, xviii).
He was a subordinate
God, the Light of Heaven, as Varuna was the Heaven itself, one of the great
ruling Intelligences. The highest of these ruling Intelligences were the six
Ameshaspends, headed by the Good Thought of Ahuramazda, Vohûman – Who have
charge of the whole material creation (Sacred Books of the East,v. p. 10 note).
Reincarnation does not
seem to be taught in the books which, so far, have been translated, and the
belief is not current among modern Parsis. But we do find the idea of the
Spirit in man as a spark that is to become a flame and to be reunited to the
Supreme Fire, and this must imply a development for which
rebirth is a necessity.
Nor will Zoroastrianism ever be understood until we recover the Chaldean
Oracles and allied writings, for there is its real root.
Travelling westward to
According to the
theology of Orpheus, all things originate from an immense principle, to which
through the imbecility and poverty of human conception we give a name, though
it is perfectly ineffable, and in the reverential language of the Egyptians in
a thrice unknown darkness in contemplation of which all knowledge is refunded
into ignorance (Thomas Taylor, quoted in Orpheus, ). From this the
"Primordial Triad," Universal Good, Universal Soul, Universal Mind,
again the Logoic Trinity. Of this Mr. Mead writes:
The first Triad, which
is manifestable to intellect, is but a reflection of, or substitute for the
Unmanifestable, and its hypostases are:
(a) the Good, which is
super-essential;
(b) Soul (the World
Soul), which is a self-motive essence;
(c) Intellect (or the
Mind), which is an impartible, immovable essence
(ibid., p. 94).
After this, a series of
ever-descending Triads, showing the characteristics of the first in diminishing
splendor until man is reached, who – Has in him potentially the sum and
substance of the universe…"The race of men and gods is one (Pindar, who
was a Pythagorean, quoted by Clemens, Strom., v.709)…Thus man was called the
microcosm or little world, to distinguish him
from the universe or
great world (ibid., p. 271).
He has the Nous, or real
mind, the Logos or rational part, the Alogos or irrational part, the two latter
again forming a Triad, and thus presenting the more elaborate septenary
division. The man was also regarded as having three vehicles, the physical and
subtle bodies and the luciform body or augoeides, that:
Is the "causal
body," or karmic vesture of the soul, in which its destiny, or rather all
the seeds of past causation are stored. This is the "thread-soul," as
it is sometimes called, the "body" that passes over from one
incarnation to another (ibid., p. 284).
As to reincarnation:
Together with all the
adherents of the Mysteries in every land the Orphics believed in reincarnation
(ibid., p. 292).
To this Mr. Mead brings
abundant testimony, and he shows that it was taught by Plato, Empedocles,
Pythagoras, and others. Only by virtue could men escape from the life-wheel.
Taylor in his notes to
the Select Works of Plotinus, quotes from Damascius as to the teachings of
Plato on the One beyond the One, the Unmanifest Existence:
Perhaps indeed, Plato
leads us ineffably through the one as a medium to the ineffable beyond the one
which is now the subject of discussion ; and this by an ablation of the one in
the same manner as he leads to the one by an ablation of other things…That
which is beyond the one is to be honoured in the most perfect silence…The one
indeed wills to be by itself, but with no other ; but the unknown beyond the
one is perfectly ineffable, which we acknowledge we neither know, nor are
ignorant of, but which has about itself super-ignorance.
Hence by proximity to
this the one itself is darkened ; for being near to the immense principle, if
it be lawful so to speak, it remains as it were in the adytum of the truly
mystic silence…The first is above the one and all things, being more
simple than either of
these (pp.341-343).
The Pythagorean,
Platonic, and Neo-Platonic schools have so many points of contact with Hindu
and Buddhist thought that their issue from the one fountain is obvious. R.
Garbe, in his work, Die Samkhya Philosophie (iii,pp.85-105) presents many of
these points, and his statement may be summarised as follows:
The most striking is the
resemblance – or more correctly the identity – of the doctrine of the One and
Only in the Upanishads and the Eleatic school. Xenophanes’ teaching of the
unity of God and the Kosmos and of the changelessness of the One, and even more
that of Parmenides, who held that reality is ascribable only to the One unborn,
indestructible and omnipresent, while all that is manifold and subject to
change is but an appearance, and
further that Being and
Thinking are the same – these doctrines are completely identical with the
essential contents of the Upanishads and of the Vedântic philosophy which
springs from them. But even earlier still the view of Thales, that all that
exists has sprung from Water, is curiously like the VaidiK
doctrine that the
Universe arose from the waters. Later on Anaximander assumed as the basis
(????) of all things an eternal, infinite, and indefinite Substance, from which
all definite substances proceed and into which they return – an assumption
identical with that which lies at the root of the Sankhya, viz., the Prakrti
from which the whole material side of the universe evolved.
And his famous saying
p??ta ´?eî (panta rhei) expresses the characteristic view of the Sânkhya that
all things are ever changing under the ceaseless activity of the three gunas.
Empedocles again taught theories of transmigration and
evolution practically
the same as those of the Sânkhyas, while his theory that nothing can come into
being which does not already exist is even more closely identical with a
characteristically Sânkhyan doctrine.
Both Anaxagoras and
Democritus also present several points of close agreement, especially the
latter’s view as to the nature and position of the Gods, and the same applies,
notably in some curious matters of detail, to Epicurus. But it is, however, in
the teachings of Pythagoras that we find the closest and most
frequent identities of teachings and argumentation, explained as due
to Pythagoras himself having visited
into relation with matter, in which the Light can be lessened
and at last quite obscured, in which case the Intelligence falls finally into
complete unconsciousness.
Of the highest
Intelligence it is maintained that it is neither Light nor Not-Light, neither
Darkness nor Not-Darkness, since all those expressions denote relations of the
Intelligence to the Light, which indeed in the beginning was free from these
connections, but later on encloses the Intelligence and mediates its connection
with matter. It follows from this that the Buddhist view ascribes to the
highest Intelligence the power to produce light from itself, and that in this
respect also there is an agreement between Buddhism and Gnosticism. Garbe here
points out that, as regards the features alluded to, the agreement between
Gnosticism and Sânkhya is very much closer than that with Buddhism ; for while
these views as to the relations between Light and Spirit pertain to the later
phases of Buddhism, and are not at all fundamental to, or characteristic of it
as such, the Sânkhya teaches clearly and precisely that Spirit is Light.
Later still the influence
of the Sânkhya thought is very plainly evident in the Neo-Platonic writers ;
while the doctrine of the LOGOS or Word, though not of Sânkhyan origin, shows
even in its details that it has been derived from India, where the conception
of Vach, the Divine Word, plays so prominent a part in the Brâhmanical system.
Coming to the Christian
religion, contemporaneous with the Gnostic and Neo-Platonic systems, we shall
find no difficulty in tracing most of the same fundamental teachings with which
we have now become so familiar. The threefold LOGOS appears as the Trinity ;
the First LOGOS, the fount of all life being the Father ; the dual-natured
Second LOGOS the Son, God-man ; the Third, the creative Mind, the Holy Ghost,
whose brooding over the waters of chaos brought forth the worlds. Then comes
"the seven Spirits of God" [Rev. iv. 5.] and the hosts archangels and
angels. Of the One Existence from which all comes and into which all returns,
but little is hinted, the Nature that by searching cannot be found out ; but
the great doctors of the Church Catholic always posit the unfathomable Deity,
incomprehensible, infinite, and therefore necessarily but
One and partless.
Man is made in the
"image of God," [Gen. I, 26-27] and is consequently triple in his nature
– Spirit and Soul and body, [1-Thess. V, 23] he is a "habitation of
God," [Eph. Ii, 22] the "
asked as to Elijah coming before the Messiah, He answered that
"Elias is come already and they knew him not." [ Matt. xvii, 12 ].So
again we find the disciples taking reincarnation for granted in asking whether
blindness from birth was a punishment for a man’s sin and Jesus in answer not
rejecting the possibility of ante-natal sin, but only excluding it as causing
the blindness in
the special instance.
[John, ix, 1-13 ] The remarkable phrase applied to "him that overcometh"
in Rev. iii, 12, - that he shall be "a pillar in the temple of my God, and
he shall go no more out", has been taken as signifying escape from
rebirth. From the writings of some of the Christian Fathers a good case may be
made our for a current
belief in reincarnation ; some argue that only the pre-existence of the Soul is
taught, but this view does not seem to me supported by the evidence.
The unity of moral
teaching is not less striking, than the unity of the conceptions of the
universe and of the experiences of those who rose out of the prison of the body
into the freedom of the higher spheres. It is clear that this body of primeval
teaching was in the hands of definite custodians, who had schools in which they
taught, disciples who studied their doctrines. The identity of these schools
and of their discipline stands out plainly when we
study the moral
teaching, the demands made on the pupils, and the mental and spiritual states
to which they were raised. A caustic division is made in the Tao Teh Ching of
the types of scholars:
Scholars of the highest
class when they hear about the Tao, earnestly carry it into practice. Scholars
of the middle class, when they have hears about it, seem now to keep it and now
to lose it. Scholars of the lowest class, when they have heard about it, laugh
greatly at it (Sacred Books of the East, xxxix, op. Cit.,
xli, 1).
In the same book we
read:
The sage puts his own
person last, and yet it is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as
if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved. It is not because
he has no personal and private ends that therefore such ends are realised?
(vii,2) – He is free from self-display, and therefore he
shines; from
self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished ; from self-boasting, and
therefore his merit is acknowledged, from self-complacency, and therefore he
acquires superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving that
therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him (xxii, 2). There is no
guilt greater than to sanction ambition ; no calamity greater
than to be discontented
with one’s lot ; no fault greater than the wish to be getting (xlvi,2).
To those who are good
(to me) I am good ; and to those who are not good (to me) I am also good ; and
thus all get to be good. To those who are sincere (with me) I am sincere; and
to those who are not sincere (with me) I am also sincere ; and thus (all) get
to be sincere (xlix, 1).
He who has in himself
abundantly the attributes (of the Tâo ) is like an infant. Poisonous insects
will not sting him ; fierce beasts will not seize him ; birds of prey will not
strike him – ( lv, 1), I have three precious things which I prize and hold
fast.
The first is gentleness
; the second is economy ; the third is shrinking from taking precedence of
others …Gentleness is sure to be victorious, even in battle, and firmly to
maintain its ground. Heaven will save its possessor, by his (very) gentleness
protecting him (lxvii,2,4).
Among the Hindus there
were selected scholars deemed worthy of special instruction to whom the Guru
imparted the secret teachings, while the general rules of right living may be
gathered from Manu’s Ordinances, the Upanishads, the Mahâbhârata and many other
treatises:
Let him say what is true,
let him say what is pleasing, let him utter no disagreeable truth, and let him
utter no agreeable falsehood ; that is the eternal law (Manu, iv, 138). Giving
no pain to any creature, let him slowly accumulate spiritual merit (iv, 238).
For that twice-born man, by whom not the smallest danger even is caused to
created beings, there will be no danger from any (quarter) after he is freed
from his body (vi, 40). Let him patiently bear hard words, let him not insult
anybody, and let him not become anybody’s enemy for the sake of this
(perishable) body. Against an angry man let him not in
return show anger, let
him bless when he is cursed (vi, 47-48).
Freed from passion, fear
and anger, thinking on Me, taking refuge in Me, purified in the fire of Wisdom,
many have entered My Being (Bhagavad Gitâ , iv, 10). Supreme joy is for the
Yogi whose Manas is peaceful, whose passion-nature is calmed, who is sinless
and of the nature of Brahman (iv, 27). He who beareth no ill-will to any being,
friendly and compassionate, without attachment and egoism, balanced in pleasure
and pain, and forgiving, ever content, harmonious, with the self controlled,
resolute, with Manas and Buddhi dedicated to Me – he, My devotee, is dear to Me
(xii,13,14)
If we turn to the
Buddha, we find Him with His Arhats, to whom His secret teachings were given ;
while published we have:
The wise man through
earnestness, virtue, and purity makes himself an island which no flood can
submerge (Udânavarga, iv, 5 ). The wise man in this world holds fast to faith
and wisdom, these are his greatest treasures ; he cast aside all other riches,
(x 9). He who bears ill-will to those who bear ill-will can
never become pure ; but
he who feels no ill-will pacifies those who hate ; as hatred brings misery to mankind,
the sage knows no hatred (xiii, 12). Overcome anger by not being angered ;
overcome evil by good ; overcome avarice by liberality ; overcome falsehoods by
truth (xx,18).
The Zoroastrian is
taught to praise Ahuramazda, and then:
What is fairest, what is
pure, what immortal, what brilliant, all that is good. The good spirit we
honor, the good kingdom we honor, and the good law, and the good wisdom (Yasna,
xxxvii). May there come to this dwelling contentment, blessing, guilelessness,
and wisdom of the pure (Yasna, lix). Purity is the best good. Happiness,
happiness is to him ; namely, to the best pure in purity (Ashem-vohu). All good
thoughts, words, and works are done with knowledge.
All evil thoughts,
words, and works are not done with knowledge (Mispa Kumata). ( Selected from
the Avesta in Ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian Morals, by Dhunjibhoy Jamsetji
Medhora).
The Hebrew had his
"schools of the prophets" and his Kabbalah, and in the exoteric books
we find the accepted moral teachings:
Who shall ascend into
the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean
hands and a pure heart ; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, not sworn
deceitfully (Ps. xxiv,3,4). What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah,vi,8). The lip of
truth shall be established for ever ; but a lying tongue is but for a moment
(Prov. xii, 19). Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of
wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and
that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that
thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy home? when thou seest the naked
that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? (Isa.
lviii,6,7).
The Christian teacher
had His secret instructions for His disciples, (Matt. xiii, 10-17) – and He
bade them:
Give not that which is
holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine (Matt. vii, 6).
For public teaching we
may refer to the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and to such doctrines
as:
I say unto you, love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you….Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. v, 44-48). He
that findeth his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake
shall find it (x,39). Whoever shall humble himself as this
little child, the same
is greatest in the kingdom of heaven (xviii, 4). The fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance ; against such there is no law (Gal., v, 22-23). Let us love one
another ; for love is of God ; and everyone that loveth is born of God and
knoweth God ( I John iv, 7 ).
The school of the
Pythagoras and those of the Neo-Platonists kept up the tradition for
the Pythagorean had pledged disciples as well as an outer
discipline, the inner circle passing through three degrees during five years of
probation. (For details see G.R.S. Mead’s Orpheus, p. 263 et. Seq.). The outer
discipline he describes as follows:
We must first give
ourselves up entirely to God. When a man prays he should never ask for any
particular benefit, fully convinced that that will be given which is right and
proper, and according to the wisdom of God and not the subject of our own
selfish desires (Diod. Sic. ix, 41). By virtue alone does man
arrive at blessedness,
and this is the exclusive privilege of a rational being (Hippodamus, De
Felicitate, ii, Orelli, Opusc. Græcor. Sent. et Moral., Ii, 284). In himself,
of his own nature, man is neither good nor happy, but he may become so by the
teaching of the true doctrine (µa??s??? ?a?? p?????a?
p?t?d?eta?) – (Hippo,
ibid.).
The most sacred duty is
filial piety. "God showers his blessings on him who honors and reveres the
author of his days," says Pampelus (De Parentibus, Orelli, op. Cit., ii,
345). Ingratitude towards one’s parents is the blackest of all crimes, writes
Perictione ( ibid.,p. 350), who is supposed to have been the
mother of Plato. The
cleanliness and delicacy of all Pythagorean writings were remarkable (Œlian,
Hist. Var., xiv,19). In all that concerns chastity and marriage their principles
are of the utmost purity. Everywhere the great teacher recommends chastity and
temperance ; but at the same time he directs that the married should first
become parents before living a life of absolute celibacy, in order that
children might be born under favourable conditions for continuing the holy life
and succession of the Sacred Science (Iamblichus, Vit. Pythag., and Hierocl.,
ap. Stob. Serm. xlv, 14). This is exceedingly interesting, for it is precisely
the same regulation that is laid down in the Mânava Dharma Shâstra, the great
Indian Code. …Adultery was most sternly condemned (Iamb., ibid.).
Moreover, the most
gentle treatment of the wife by the husband was enjoined, for had he not taken
her as his companion "before the Gods"? (See Lascaulx. Zur Geschichte
der Ehe bei den Griechen, in the Mém. De l’Acad. De Bavière, vii, 107,sq.).
Marriage was not an
animal union, but a spiritual tie. Therefore, in her turn, the wife should love
her husband even more than herself, and in all things be devoted and obedient.
It is further interesting to remark that the finest characters among women with
which ancient
The authors of antiquity
are agreed that this discipline had succeeded in producing the highest examples
not only of the purest chastity and sentiment, but also a simplicity of
manners, a delicacy, and a taste for serious pursuits which was unparalleled.
This is admitted even by Christian writers (See Justin,
xx, 4)…Among the members
of the school the idea of justice directed all their acts, while they observed
the strictest tolerance and compassion in their mutual relationships. For
justice is the principle of all virtue, as Polus, (ap. Stob., Serm., viii, ed.
Schow, p. 232) teaches ; "’tis justice which maintains peace and balance
in the soul ; she is the mother of good order in all communities,
makes concord between
husband and wife, love between master and servant.’
The word of a
Pythagorean: was also his bond. And finally a man should live so as to be ever
ready for death ( Hippolytus, Philos., vi). (ibid., p. 263-267).
The treatment of the
virtues in the Neo-Platonic schools is interesting, and the distinction is
clearly made between morality and spiritual development, or as Plotinus put it,
"The endeavour is not to be without sin, but to be of God." (Select
Works of Plotinus, trans. Thomas Taylor, ed., 1895, p. 11).The lowest
stage was becoming
without sin by acquiring the "political virtues" which made a man
perfect in conduct (the physical and ethical being below these), the reason
controlling and adorning the irrational nature. Above these were the cathartic,
pertaining to reason
alone, and which liberated the Soul from the bonds of generation ; the
theoretic , lifting the Soul into touch with natures superior to itself;and the
paradigmatic, giving it a knowledge of true being:
Hence he who energises
according to the practical virtues is a worthy man; but he who energises
according to the cathartic virtues is a demoniacal man, or is also a good
demon. (A good spiritual intelligence, as the daimon of Socrates).
He who energises
according to the intellectual virtues alone is a God. But he who energises
according to the paradigmatic virtues is the Father of the Gods. (Note on
Intellectual Prudence, pp. 325-332).
By various practices the
disciples were taught to escape from the body, and to rise into higher regions.
As grass is drawn from a sheath, the inner man was to draw himself from his bodily
casing ( Kathopanishad, vi,17). The "body of light" or "radiant
body" of the Hindus is the "luciform body" of the
Neo-Plationists, and in this man rises to find the Self:
Not grasped by the eye,
nor by speech, nor by the others senses (lit., Gods), nor by austerity, nor by
religious rites ; by serene wisdom, by the pure essence
only, doth one see the
partless One in meditation. This subtle Self is to be
known by the mind in
which the fivefold life is sleeping. The mind of all
creatures is instinct
with [these] lives ; in this, purified, manifests the Self
( Mundakopanishad, III,
ii, 8,9).
Then alone can man enter
the region where separation is not, where "the spheres
have ceased." In
G.R.S.Mead’s Introduction to Taylor’s Plotinus, he quotes from Plotinus a
description of a sphere which is evidently the Turîya of the Hindus: They
likewise see all things, not those with which generation, but those with which
essence is present. And they perceive themselves in others. For all things
there, are diaphanous; and nothing is dark and resisting, but everything is
apparent to every one
internally and throughout. For light everywhere meets with
light ; since everything
contains all things in itself and again see all things in another. So that all
things are everywhere and all is all. Each thing likewise is everything. And
the splendor there is infinite. For everything there is great, since even that
which is small is great. The sun too which is there is all the stars; and again
each star is the sun and all the stars. In each however, a different property
predominates, but at the same time all things are visible in each. Motion
likewise there is pure; for the motion is not confounded by a mover different
from it (p. lxxiii).
A description which is a
failure, because the region is one above describing by
mortal language, but a
description that could only have been written by one
whose eyes had been
opened.
A whole volume might
easily be filled with the similarities between the
religions of the world, but
the above imperfect statement must suffice as a
preface to the study of Theosophy, to that which
is a fresh and fuller
presentment to the world
of the ancient truths on which it has ever been fed.
all these similarities
point to a single source, and that is the Brotherhood of
the White Lodge, the
Hierarchy of Adepts who watch over and guide the evolution of humanity, and who
have preserved these truths unimpaired ; from time to time, as necessity arose,
reasserting them in the ears of men. From other worlds, from earlier
humanities, They came to help our globe, evolved by a process comparable to
that now going on with ourselves, and that will be more intelligible when we
have completed our present study than it may now appear ; and They have
afforded this help, reinforced by the flower of our own humanity, from the
earliest times
until today.
Still They teach eager
pupils, showing the path and guiding the disciple’s steps
; still They may be reached
by all who seek Them, bearing in their hands the
sacrificial fuel of
love, of devotion, of unselfish longing to know in order to
serve ; still They carry
out the ancient discipline, still unveil the ancient
Mysteries. The two pillars
of Their Lodge gateway are Love and Wisdom, and
through its straight
portal can only pass those from whose shoulders has fallen
the burden of desire and
selfishness.
A heavy task lies before
us, and beginning on the physical plane we shall climb
slowly upwards, but a
bird’s eye view of the great sweep of evolution and of its
purpose may help us, ere
we begin our detailed study in the world that
surrounds us. A LOGOS,
ere a system has begun to be, has in His mind the whole, existing as idea – all
forces, all forms, all that in due process shall emerge into objective life. He
draws the circle of manifestation within which He wills to
energise, and
circumscribes Himself to be the life of His universe. As we watch
we see strata appearing
of successive densities, till seven vast regions are
apparent, and in these
centres of energy appear whirlpools of matter that
separate from each
other, until when the processes of separation and of
condensation are over –
so far as we are here concerned – we see a central sun,
the physical symbol of
the LOGOS, and seven planetary chains, each chain
consisting of seven
globes.
Narrowing down our view
to the chain of which our globe is one, we see
life-waves sweep round
i, forming the kingdoms of nature, the three elemental,
the mineral, vegetable,
animal, human. Narrowing down our view still further to
our own globe and its
surroundings, we watch human evolution, and see man
developing
self-consciousness by a series of many life-periods ; then centering
on a single man we trace
his growth and see that each life-period has a
threefold division that
each is linked to all life-periods behind it reaping their results, and to all
life-periods before it sowing their harvests, by a law that cannot be broken ;
that thus man may climb upwards with each life-period
adding to his
experience, each life-period lifting him higher in purity, in devotion, in
intellect, in power of usefulness, until at last he stands where They stand who
are now the Teachers, fit, to pay to his younger brothers the debt he owes to
Them.
THE
PHYSICAL PLANE
We have just seen that
the source from which a universe proceeds is a manifested Divine Being, to whom
in the modern form of the Ancient Wisdom the name LOGOS, or Word has been
given. The name is drawn from Greek Philosophy, but perfectly expresses the
ancient idea, the Word which emerges from the Silence, the Voice, the Sound, by
which the worlds come into being.
We must now trace the evolution
of spirit-matter, in order that we may understand something of the nature of
the materials with which we have to deal on the physical plane, or physical
world. For it is in the potentialities wrapped up, involved, in the
spirit-matter of the physical world that lies the possibility of evolution. The
whole process is an unfolding, self-moved from within and aided by intelligent
beings without,
who can retard or
quicken evolution, but cannot transcend the capacities inherent in the
materials. Some idea of these earliest stages of the world’s
"becoming" is therefore necessary, although any attempt to go into
minute details would carry us far beyond the limits of such an elementary
treatise as the present. A very cursory sketch must suffice.
Coming forth from the
depths of the One Existence, from the ONE beyond all
thought and all speech,
a LOGOS, by imposing on Himself a limit, circumscribing voluntarily the range
of His own Being, becomes the manifested God, and tracing the limiting sphere
of His activity thus outlines the area of His universe.
Within that sphere the
universe is born, is evolved, and dies ; it lives, it
moves, it has its being
in Him ; its matter is His emanation ; its forces and
energies are currents of
His Life ; He is immanent in every atom, all-pervading,
all-sustaining,
all-evolving ; He is its source and its end, its cause and its
object, its centre and
circumference ; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it breathes in Him
as its encircling space ; He is in everything and everything in Him. Thus have
the sages of the Ancient Wisdom taught us of the beginning of the manifested
worlds.
From the same source we
learn of the Self-unfolding of the LOGOS into a
threefold form ; the
First LOGOS, the Root of all being ; from Him the Second,
manifesting the two
aspects of Life and Form, the primal duality, making the two
poles of nature between
which the web of the universe is to be woven –
Life-Form,
Spirit-Matter, Positive-Negative, Active-Receptive, Father-Mother of
the worlds. Then the
Third LOGOS, the Universal Mind, that in which all
archetypically exists,
the source of beings, the fount of fashioning energies,
the treasure house in
which are stored up all the archetypal forms which are to
be brought forth and elaborated
in lower kinds of matter during the evolution of
the universe. These are
the fruits of past universes, brought over as seeds for
the present.
The phenomenal spirit
and matter of any universe are finite in their extent and
transitory in their
duration, but the roots of spirit and matter are eternal.
The root of matter
(Mulâprakriti ) has been said by a profound writer to be
visible to the LOGOS as
a veil thrown over the One existence, the supreme
Brahman (Parabrahman)
–to use the ancient name.
It is this
"veil" which the LOGOS assumes for the purpose of manifestation,
using it for the
self-imposed limit which makes activity possible. From this He
elaborates the matter of
His universe, being Himself its informing, guiding, and
controlling life. (
Hence He is called "The Lord of Mâyâ" in some Eastern
Scriptures, Mâyâ, or
illusion, being the principle of form; form is regarded as
illusory, from its
transitory nature and perpetual transformations, the life
which expresses itself
under the veil of form being the reality).
Of what occurs on the
two higher planes of the universe, the seventh and sixth,
we can form but the
haziest conception. The energy of the LOGOS as whirling
motion of inconceivable
rapidity "digs holes in space" in this root matter, and
this vortex of life
encased in a film of the root of matter is the primary atom;
these and their
aggregations, spread throughout the universe, form all the
subdivisions of
spirit-matter of the highest or seventh plane. The sixth plane
is formed by some of the
countless myriads of these primary atoms, setting up a
vortex in the coarsest
aggregations of their own plane, and this primary atom
en-walled with spiral
strands of the coarsest combinations of the seventh plane
becomes the finest unit
of spirit-matter, or atom of the sixth plane. These
sixth plane atoms and
their endless combinations form the subdivisions of the
spirit-matter of the
sixth plane.
The sixth-plane-atom, in
its turn, sets up a vortex in the coarsest aggregations
of its own plane, and,
with these coarsest aggregations as a limiting wall, becomes the finest unit of
spirit-matter, or atom, of the fifth plane. Again, these fifth-plane atoms, and
their combinations form the subdivisions of the spirit-matter of the fifth
plane. The process is repeated to form successively
the spirit-matter of the
fourth, the third, the second, and the first planes.
These are the seven
great regions of the universe, so far as their material constituents are
concerned. A clearer idea of them will be gained by analogy when we come to
master the modifications of the spirit-matter of our own physical world.
(The student may find
the conception clearer if he thinks of the fifth plane atoms as Atma ; those of
the fourth plane as Atma enveloped in Buddhi-matter ; those of the third plane
as Atma enveloped in Buddhi and Manas-matter ; those of the second plane as
Atma enveloped in Buddhi-Manas- and Kama-matter ; those of the lowest as Atma
enveloped in Buddhi-Manas-Kama and Sthûla-matter. Only the outermost is active
in each, but the inner are there, though latent, ready to come into activity on
the upward arc of evolution).
The world
"spirit-matter" is used designedly. At implies the fact that there is
no such thing as "dead" matter ; all matter is living, the tiniest
particles are lives. Science speaks truly in affirming: "No force without
matter, no matter without force." They are wedded together in an
indissoluble marriage throughout the ages of the life of a universe, and none
can wrench them apart. Matter is form, and there is no form which does not
express a life ; spirit is life, and there is no life that is not limited by
form. Even the LOGOS, the Supreme Lord, has during manifestation the universe
as His form, and so down to the atom.
This involution of the
life of the LOGOS as the ensouling force in every
particle, and its
successive enwrapping in the spirit-matter of every plane, so
that the materials of
each plane have within them in a hidden, or latent
condition, all the form
and force possibilities of all the planes above them as
well as those of their
own – these two facts make evolution certain and give to
the very lowest particle
the hidden potentialities which will render it fit – as
they become active powers
– to enter into the forms of the highest beings. In
fact, evolution may be
summed up in a phrase: it is latent potentialities
becoming active powers.
The second great wave of
evolution, the evolution of form, and the third great
wave, the evolution of
self-consciousness, will be dealt with later on. These
three currents of
evolution are distinguishable on our earth in connection with
humanity ; the making of
the materials, the building of the house, and the
growing of the tenant of
the house, or, as said above, the evolution of
spirit-matter, the
evolution of form, the evolution of self-consciousness.If the
reader can grasp and
retain this idea, he will find a helpful clue to guide him
through the labyrinth of
facts.
We can now turn to the detailed
examination of the physical plane, that on which
our world exists and to
which our bodies belong.
Examining the materials
belonging to this plane, we are struck by their immense
variety, the innumerable
differences of constitution in the objects around us,
minerals, vegetables,
animals, all differing in their constituents: matter hard
and soft, transparent
and opaque, brittle and ductile, bitter and sweet,
pleasant and nauseous,
coloured and colourless. Out of this confusion three
subdivisions of matter
emerge as a fundamental classification: matter is solid,
liquid, gaseous. Further
examination shows that these solids, liquids and gases
are made up by
combinations of much simpler bodies, called by chemists
"elements,"
and that these elements may exist in a solid, liquid, or gaseous
condition without
changing their respective natures.
Thus the chemical
element oxygen is a constituent of wood, and in combination
with other elements
forms the solid wood fibres ; it exists in the sap with
another element,
yielding a liquid combination as water ; and it exists also in
it by itself as gas.
Under these three conditions it is oxygen. Further , pure
oxygen can be reduced
from a gas to a liquid, and from a liquid to a solid,
remaining pure oxygen
all the time, and so with other elements. We thus obtain
as three subdivisions,
or conditions of matter on the physical plane, solid,
liquid, gas. Searching
further, we find a fourth condition, ether, and a minute
search reveals that this
ether exists in four conditions as well defined as
those of solid, liquid
and gas ; to take oxygen again as an example: as it may
be reduced from the
gaseous condition to the liquid and the solid, so it may be
raised from the gaseous
through four etheric stages the last of which consists
of the ultimate physical
atom, the disintegration of the atom taking matter out
of the physical plane
altogether, and into the next plane above.
In the annexed plate
three gases are shown in the gaseous and four etheric
states ; it will be
observed that the structure of the ultimate physical atom is
the same for all, and
that the variety of the "elements" is due to the variety
of ways in which these
ultimate physical atoms combine. Thus the seventh
subdivision of physical
spirit-matter is composed of homogeneous atoms ; the
sixth is composed of
fairly simple heterogeneous combinations of these, each
combination behaving as
a unit ; the fifth is composed of more complex
combinations, and the fourth
of still more complex ones, but in all cases these
combinations act as
units .
The third subdivision
consists of yet more complicated combinations, regarded by the chemist as
gaseous atoms or "elements," and on this subdivision many of the
combinations have received special names, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, chlorine,
etc., and each newly discovered combination now receives its name ; the second
subdivision consists of combinations in the liquid condition, whether regarded
as elements such as bromine, or as combinations such as water or alcohol ; the
first subdivision is composed of all solids, again whether regarded as
elements, such as iodine, gold, lead, etc., or as compounds, such as wood,
stone, chalk, and so on.
The physical plane may
serve the student as a model from which by analogy he may gain an idea of the
subdivisions of spirit-matter of other planes. When a
Theosophist speaks of a
plane, he means a region throughout which spirit-matter
exists, all whose
combinations are derived from a particular set of atoms; these
atoms, in turn, are
units possessing similar organisations, whose life is the
life of the LOGOS veiled
in fewer or more coverings according to the plane, and
whose form consists of
the solid, or lowest subdivision of matter, of the plane
immediately above. A
plane is thus a division in nature, as well as a
metaphysical idea.
Thus far we have been
studying the results in our own physical world of the
evolution of
spirit-matter in our division of the first or lowest plane of our
system. For countless
ages the fashioning of materials has been going on, the
current of the evolution
of spirit-matter, and in the materials of our globe we
see the outcome at the
present time. But when we begin to study the inhabitants
of the physical plane,
we come to the evolution of form, ( ) the building of
organisms out of these
materials.
When the evolution of
materials had reached a sufficiently advanced state, the
second great life-wave
from the LOGOS gave the impulse to the evolution of form, and He became the
organising force (As Âtmâ-Buddhi, indivisible in action, and therefore spoken
of as the Monad. All forms have Âtmâ-Buddhi as controlling life.) - of His
Universe, countless hosts of entities, entitled Builders -- ( Some are lofty
spiritual Intelligences, but the name covers even the building Nature-spirits
The subject is dealt with in Chapter XII ) - taking part in the building up of
forms out of combinations of spirit-matter. The life of the LOGOS abiding in
each form is its central, controlling, and directing energy.
This building of forms
on the higher planes cannot here be conveniently studied in detail; it may
suffice to say that all forms exist as Ideas in the mind of the LOGOS, and that
in this second life-wave these were thrown outwards as models to guide the
Builders. On the third and second planes the early spirit-matter combinations
are designed to give it facility in assuming shapes
organised to act as
units, and gradually to increase its stability when shaped into an organism.
This process went on
upon the third and second planes, in what are termed the three elemental
kingdoms, the combinations of matter formed therein being called generally
"elemental essence," and this essence being moulded into forms by aggregations,
the forms enduring for a time and then disintegrating. The outpoured life, or
Monad, evolved through these kingdoms and reached in due course the physical
plane, where it began to draw together the ethers and hold them in filmy
shapes, in which life-currents played and into which the denser materials were
built, forming the first minerals. In these are beautifully shown – as may be
seen by reference to any book on crystallurgy – the numerical and geometrical
lines on which forms are constructed, and from them may be gathered plentiful
evidence that life is working in all minerals, although much "cribbed,
cabined, and confined." The fatigue to which metals are subject is another
sign that they are living things, but it is here enough to say that the occult
doctrine so regards them, knowing the already-mentioned processes by which life
has been involved in them.
Great stability of form
having been gained in many of the minerals, the evolving Monad elaborated greater
plasticity of form in the vegetable kingdom, combining this with stability of
organisation. These characteristics found a yet more balanced expression in the
animal world, and reached their culmination of
equilibrium in man,
whose physical body is made up of constituents of most unstable equilibrium,
thus giving great adaptability, and yet which is held together by a combining
central force which resists general disintegration even
under the most varied
conditions.
Man’s physical body has
two main divisions: the dense body, made of constituents from the three lower
levels of the physical plane, solids, liquids, and gases: and the etheric
double, violet-gray or blue-gray in colour, interpenetrating the dense body and
composed of materials drawn from the four higher levels.
The general function of
the physical body is to receive contacts from the physical world, and send the
report of them inwards, to serve as materials from which the conscious entity
inhabiting the body is to elaborate knowledge. Its etheric portion has also the
duty of acting as a medium through which the life-currents poured out from the
sun can be adapted to the uses of the denser particles.
The sun is the great
reservoir of the electrical, magnetic, and vital forces for
our system, and it pours
out abundantly these streams of life-giving energy.
They are taken in by the
etheric doubles of all minerals, vegetables, animals,
and men, and are by them
transmuted into the various life-energies needed by
each entity. ( When thus
appropriated the life is called Prana, and it becomes
the life-breath of every
creature. Prana is but a name for the universal life
while it is taken in by
an entity and is supporting its separated life.)
The etheric doubles draw
in, specialise, and distribute them over their physical
counterparts. It has
been observed that in vigorous health much more of the
life-energies are
transmuted than the physical body requires for its own
support, and that the
surplus is rayed out and is taken up and utilised by the
weaker. What is
technically called the health aura is the part of the etheric
double that extends a
few inches from the whole surface of the body and shows
radiating lines, like
the radii of a sphere, going outwards in all directions.
These lines droop when
vitality is diminished below the point of health, and
resume their radiating
character with renewed vigour. It is this vital energy,
specialised by the
etheric double, which is poured out by the mesmeriser for the
restoration of the weak
and for the cure of disease, although he often mingles
with it currents of a
more rarefied kind. Hence the depletion of vital energy
shown by the exhaustion
of the mesmeriser who prolongs his work to excess.
Man’s body is fine or coarse
in its texture according to the materials drawn
from the physical plane
for its composition. Each subdivision of matter yields
finer or coarser
materials ; compare the bodies of a butcher and of a refined
student ; both have
solids in them, but solids of such different qualities.
Further , we know that a
coarse body can be refined, a refined body coarsened.
The body is constantly
changing ; each particle is a life, and the lives come
and go. They are drawn
to a body consonant with themselves, they are repelled
from one discordant with
themselves. All things live in rhythmical vibrations,
all seek the harmonious
and are repelled by dissonance.
A pure body repels
coarse particles because they vibrate at rates discordant
with its own ; a coarse
body attracts them because their vibrations accord with
its own. Hence if the
body changes its rates of vibration, it gradually drives
out of it the
constituents that cannot fall into the new rhythm, and fills up
their places by drawing
in from external nature fresh constituents that are
harmonious. Nature
provides materials vibrating in all possible ways, and each
body exercises its own
selective action.
In the earlier building
of human bodies this selective action was due to the
Monad of form, but now
that man is a self-conscious entity he presides over his
own building. By his
thoughts he strikes the keynote of his music, and sets up
the rhythms that are the
most powerful factors in the continual changes in his
physical and other
bodies. As his knowledge increases he learns how to build up
his physical body with
pure food, and so facilitates the tuning of it. He learns
to live by the axiom of
purification: "Pure food, pure mind, and constant memory of God." As
the highest creature living on the physical plane, he is the
vice-regent of the LOGOS
thereon, responsible, so far as his powers extend, for
its order, peace, and
good government ; and this duty he cannot discharge
without these three
requisites.
The physical body, thus composed
of elements drawn from all the subdivisions of the physical plane, is fitted to
receive and to answer impression from it of
every kind. Its first
contacts will be of the simplest and crudest sorts, and as
the life within it
thrills out in answer to the stimulus from without, throwing
its molecules into
responsive vibrations, there is developed all over the body
the sense of touch, the
recognition of something coming into contact with it. As
specialised sense-organs
are developed to receive special kinds of vibrations,
the value of the body
increases as a future vehicle for a conscious entity on
the physical plane. The
more impressions it can answer to, the more useful does
it become ; for only
those to which it can answer can reach the consciousness.
Even now there are
myriads of vibrations pulsing around us in physical nature
from the knowledge of
which we are shut out because of the inability of our
physical vehicle to
receive and vibrate in accord with them. Unimagined
beauties, exquisite
sounds, delicate subtleties, touch the walls of our prison
house and pass on
unheeded. Not yet is developed the perfect body that shall
thrill to every pulse in
nature as the aeolian harp to the zephyr.
The vibrations that the
body is able to receive, it transmits to physical
centres, belonging to
its highly complicated nervous system. The etheric
vibrations which
accompany all the vibrations of the denser physical
constituents are
similarly received by the etheric double, and transmuted to its
corresponding centres.
Most of the vibrations in the dense matter are changed
into chemical heat, and
other forms of physical energy; the etheric give rise to
magnetic and electric
action, and also pass on the vibrations to the astral
body, whence, as we
shall see later, they reach the mind.
Thus information about
the external world reaches the conscious entity enthroned in the body, the Lord
of the body, as he is sometimes called. As the channels of information develop
and are exercised, the conscious entity grows by the materials supplied to his
thought by them, but so little is man yet developed that even the etheric
double is not yet sufficiently harmonised to regularly convey to the man
impressions received by it independently of its denser comrade, or to impress
them on his brain. Occasionally it succeeds in doing so, and then we have the
lowest form of clairvoyance, the seeing of the etheric doubles of physical
objects, and of things that have etheric bodies as their lowest vesture.
Man dwells, as we shall
see, in various vehicles, physical, astral, and mental
and it is important to
know and remember that as we are evolving upwards, the
lowest of the vehicles,
the dense physical, is that which consciousness first
controls and rationalises.
The physical brain is the instrument of consciousness
in waking life on the
physical plane, and consciousness works in it – in the
undeveloped man – more
effectively than in any other vehicle. Its potentialities
are less than those of
the subtler vehicles, but its actualities are greater,
and the man knows
himself as " I " in the physical body ere he finds himself
elsewhere. Even if he be
more highly developed than the average man, he can only show as much of himself
down here as the physical organism permits, for
consciousness can
manifest on the physical plane only so much as the physical
vehicle can carry.
The dense and etheric
bodies are not normally separated during earth life; they
normally function
together, as the lower and higher strings of a single instrument when a chord
is struck, but they also carry on separate though coordinated activities. Under
conditions of weak health or nervous excitement
the etheric double may
in great part be abnormally extruded from its dense counterpart ; the latter
then becomes very dully conscious , or entranced, according to the less or
greater amount of the etheric matter extruded.
Anesthetics drive out
the greater part of the etheric double, so that
consciousness cannot
affect or be affected by the dense body, its bridge of
communication being
broken. In the abnormally organised person called
mediums, dislocation of
the etheric and dense bodies easily occurs, and the etheric double, when
extruded, largely supplies the physical basis for "materialisations."
In sleep, when the
consciousness leaves the physical vehicle which it uses
during waking life, the
dense and etheric bodies remain together, but in the
physical dream life they
function to some extent independently. Impressions
experienced during
waking life are reproduced by the automatic action of the
body, and both the
physical and etheric brains are filled with disjointed
fragmentary pictures,
the vibrations as it were, jostling each other, and
causing the most
grotesque combinations. Vibrations from outside also affect
both, and combinations
often set up during waking life are easily called into
activity by currents
from the astral world of like nature with themselves. The
purity or impurity of waking
thoughts will largely govern the pictures arising
in dreams, whether
spontaneously set up or induced from without.
At what is called death,
the etheric double is drawn away from its dense
counterpart by the
escaping consciousness ; the magnetic tie existing between
them during life earth
life is snapped asunder, and for some hours the
consciousness remains
enveloped in this etheric garb. In this it sometimes
appears to those with
whom it is closely bound up, as a cloudy figure, very
dully conscious and
speechless – the wraith. It may also be seen, after the
conscious entity has
deserted it, floating over the grave where its dense
counterpart is buried,
slowly disintegrating as time goes on.
When the time comes for
rebirth, the etheric double is built in advance of the
dense body, the latter
exactly following it in its ante-natal development. These
bodies may be said to
trace the limitations within which the conscious entity
will have to live and
work during his life, a subject that will be more fully
explained in Chapter IX
on Karma.
THE ASTRAL
PLANE
The astral plane is the
region of the universe next to the physical, if the word
"next" may be
permitted in such a connection. Life there is more active than on
the physical plane, and
form is more plastic. The spirit-matter of that plane is
more highly vitalised
and finer than any grade of spirit-matter in the physical
world. For , as we have
seen, the ultimate physical atom, the constituent of the
rarest physical ether,
has for its sphere-wall innumerable aggregations of the
coarsest astral matter.
The word "next" is, however, inappropriate, as
suggesting the idea that
the planes of the universe are arranged as concentric
circles, one ending
where the next begins. Rather they are concentric
interpenetrating
spheres, not separated from each other by distance but by
difference of
constitution. As air permeates water, as ether permeates the
densest solid, so does
astral matter permeate all physical. The astral world is
above us, below us, on
every side of us, through us; we live and move in it, but
it is intangible,
invisible, inaudible, imperceptible, because the prison of the
physical body shuts us
away from it, the physical particles being too gross to
be set in vibration by
astral matter.
In this chapter we shall
study the plane in its general aspects, leaving on one
side for separate
consideration those special conditions of life on the astral
plane surrounding the
human entities who are passing through it on their way
from earth to heaven. (
Devachan, the happy or bright state, is the Theosophical
name for heaven.
Kâmaloka, the place of desire, is the name given to the
conditions of
intermediate life on the astral plane).
The spirit-matter of the
astral plane exists in seven subdivisions, as we have
seen in the
spirit-matter of the physical. There, as here, there are numberless
combinations, forming
the astral solids, liquids, gases, and ethers. But most
material forms there
have a brightness, a translucency, as compared to forms
here, which have caused
the epithet astral, or starry, to be applied to them –
an epithet which is, on
the whole, misleading, but is too firmly established by
use to be changed. As
there are no specific names for the subdivisions of astral
spirit-matter, we may
use the terrestrial designations. The main idea to be
grasped is that astral
objects are combinations of astral matter, as physical
objects are combinations
of physical matter, and that the astral world scenery
much resembles that of
earth in consequence of its being largely made up of the
astral duplicates of
physical objects.
One peculiarity,
however, arrests and confuses the untrained observer; partly
because of the translucency
of astral objects, and partly because of the nature
of astral vision –
consciousness being less hampered by the finer astral matter
than when encased in the
terrestrial – everything is transparent, its back is
visible as its front,
its inside as its outside. Some experience is needed,
therefore, ere objects
are correctly seen, and a person who has developed astral
vision, but has not yet
had much experience in its use, is apt to receive the
most topsy-turvy
impressions and to fall into the most astounding blunders.
Another striking and at
first bewildering characteristic of the astral world is
the swiftness with which
forms – especially when unconnected with any
terrestrial matrix –
change their outlines.
An astral entity will
change his whole appearance with the most startling
rapidity, for astral
matter takes the form under every impulse of thought, the
life swiftly remoulding
the form to give itself new expression. As the great
life-wave of the
evolution of form passed downwards through the astral plane,
and constituted on that
plane the third elemental kingdom, the Monad drew round itself combinations of
astral matter, giving to these combinations – entitled
elemental essence – a
peculiar vitality and the characteristic of responding to,
and instantly taking
shape under, the impulse of thought vibrations.
This elemental essence
exists in hundreds of varieties on every subdivision of
the astral plane, as
though the air became visible here – as indeed it may seen
in quivering waves under
great heat – and were in constant undulatory motion
with changing colours
like mother-of-pearl.
This vast atmosphere of
elemental essence is ever answering to vibrations caused by thoughts, feelings,
and desires, and is thrown into commotion by a rush of any of these like
bubbles in boiling water. ( C.W. Leadbeater, Astral Plane, p. 52). The duration
of the form depends on the strength of the impulse to which it owes its birth ;
the clearness of its outline depends on the precision of the thinking, and the
colour depends on the quality – intellectual, devotional, passional – of the
thought.
The vague loose thoughts
which are so largely produced by undeveloped minds gather round themselves
loose clouds of elemental essence when they arrive in the astral world, and
drift about, attracted hither and thither to other clouds of similar nature,
clinging round the astral bodies of persons whose magnetism attracts them –
either good or evil – and after a while disintegrating, to again form a part of
the general atmosphere of elemental essence. While they maintain a separate
existence they are living entities, with bodies ofelemental essence and
thoughts as the ensouling lives, and they are then called artificial
elementals, or thought-forms.
Clear, precise thoughts
have each their own definite shapes, with sharp clean outlines, and show an
endless variety of designs. They are shaped by vibrations set up by thought,
just as on the physical plane we find figures which are shaped by vibrations
set up by sound. "Voice-figures" offer a very fair analogy for
"thought-figures," for nature, with all her infinite variety, is very
conservative of principles, and reproduces the same methods of working on plane
after plane in her realms.
These clearly defined artificial
elementals have a longer and much more active
life than their cloudy
brethren, exercising a far stronger influence on the astral bodies (and through
them on the minds) of those to whom they are attracted.
They set up in them
vibrations similar to their own, and thus thoughts spread from mind to mind
without terrestrial expression. More than this: they can be directed by the
thinker towards any person he desires to reach, their potency depending on the
strength of his will and the intensity of his mental power.
Among average people the
artificial elementals created by feeling or desire are
more vigorous and more
definite than those created by thought. Thus an outburst of anger will cause a
very definitely outlined and powerful flash of red, and sustained anger will
make a dangerous elemental, red in colour, and pointed, barbed, or otherwise
qualified to injure. Love, according to its quality, will set up forms more or
less beautiful in colour and design, all shades of crimson to the most exquisite
and soft hues of rose, like the palest blushes of sunset or the dawn, clouds of
tenderly strong protective shapes. Many a Mother’s loving prayers go to hover
round her son as angel-forms, turning aside from him evil influences that
perchance his own thoughts are attracting.
It is characteristic of
these artificial elementals, when they are directed by the will towards any
particular person, that they are animated by the one impulse of carrying out
the will of their creator. A protective elemental will hover round its object,
seeking any opportunity of warding off evil or attracting good – not
consciously, but by a blind impulse, as finding there the
line of least
resistance.
So, also, an elemental
ensouled by a malignant thought will hover round its victim seeking opportunity
to injure. But neither the one nor the other can make any impression unless
there be in the astral body of the object something skin to themselves,
something that can answer accordingly to their vibrations, and
thus enable them to
attach themselves. If there be nothing in him of matter cognate to their own,
then by a law of their nature they rebound from him along the path they pursued
in going to him – the magnetic trace they have left – and rush to their creator
with a force proportionate to that of their projection.
Thus a thought of deadly
hatred, failing to strike the object at which it was darted, has been known to
slay its sender, while good thoughts sent to the unworthy return as blessings
to him that poured them forth.
A very slight
understanding of the astral world will thus act as a most powerful stimulus to
right thinking, and will render heavy the sense of responsibility in regard to
the thoughts and feelings, and desires that we let loose into this astral
realm. Ravening beasts of prey, rending and devouring, are too many of
the thoughts with which
men people the astral plane. But they err from ignorance, they know not what
they do. One of the objects of theosophical teaching, partly lifting up the
veil of the unseen world, is to give men a sounder basis for conduct, a more
rational appreciation of the causes of which the effects only are seen in the
terrestrial world.
A few of its doctrines
are more important in their ethical bearing than this of the creation and
direction of thought-forms, or artificial elementals, for through it man learns
that his mind does not concern himself alone, that his thoughts do not affect
himself alone, but that he is ever sending out angels and
devils into the world of
men, for whose creation he is responsible, and for whose influences he is held
accountable. Let men, then, know the law, and guide their thoughts thereby.
If, instead of taking
artificial elementals separately, we take them in the mass, it is easy to
realise the tremendous effect they have in producing national and race
feelings, and thus in biasing and prejudicing the mind. We all grow up
surrounded by an atmosphere crowded with elementals embodying certain ideas ;
national prejudices, national ways of looking at all questions, national types
of feelings and thoughts, all these play on us from our birth, aye, and before.
We see everything through this atmosphere, every thought is more or less
refracted by it, and our own astral bodies are vibrating in accord with it.
Hence the same idea will
look quite different to the Hindu, an Englishman, a Spaniard, and a Russian ;
some conceptions easy to the one will be almost impossible to the other,
customs instinctively attractive to the one are instinctively odious to the
other. We are all dominated by our national atmosphere, i.e., by that portion
of the astral world immediately surrounding us.
The thoughts of others,
cast much in the same mould, play upon us and call out from us synchronous
vibrations ; they intensify the points in which we accord with our surroundings
and flatten away the differences, and this ceaseless action upon us through the
astral body impresses on us the national half-mark
and traces channels for
mental energies into which they readily flow. Sleeping and waking , these
currents play upon us, and our very unconsciousness of their action makes it
the more effective. As most people are receptive rather than initiative in
their nature, they act almost as automatic reproducers of the
thoughts which reach
them, and thus the national atmosphere is continually intensified.
When a person is
beginning to be sensitive to astral influences, he will occasionally find
himself suddenly overpowered or assailed by a quite inexplicable and seemingly
irrational dread, which swoops upon him with even paralysing force. Fight
against it as he may, he yet feels it, and perhaps resents it. Probably there
are few who have not experienced this fear to some
extent, the uneasy dread
of an invisible something, the feeling of a presence, of "not being
alone." This arises partly from a certain hostility which animates the
natural elemental world against the human, on account of the various
destructive agencies devised by mankind on the physical plane and reacting on
the astral, but is also largely due to the presence of so many artificial
elementals of an unfriendly kind, bred by human minds.
Thoughts of hatred,
jealousy, revenge, bitterness, suspicion, discontent, go out
by millions crowding the
astral plane with artificial elementals whose whole
life is made of these
feelings. How much also is there of vague distrust and
suspicion poured out by
the ignorant against all whose ways and appearance are
alien and unfamiliar.
The blind distrust of all foreigners, the surly contempt,
extending in many
districts even towards inhabitants of another country – these
things also contribute
evil influences to the astral world. There being so much
of these things among
us, we create a blindly hostile army on the astral plane,
and this is answered in
our own astral bodies by a feeling of dread, set up by
the antagonistic
vibrations that are sensed, but not understood.
Outside the class of
artificial elementals, the astral world is thickly populated, even excluding,
as we do for the present, all the human entities who have lost their physical
bodies by death. There are great hosts of natural elementals, or
nature-spirits, divided into five main classes –the elementals of the ether,
the fire, the air, the water, and the earth ; the last four groups have been
termed, in mediaeval occultism, the Salamanders, Sylphs, Undines, and Gnomes
(needless to say there are two other classes, completing the seven, not
concerning us here, as they are still unmanifested).
These are the true
elementals, or creatures of the elements, earth, water, air,
fire and ether, and they
are severally concerned in the carrying on of the
activities connected
with their own element ; they are the channels through
which work the divine
energies in these several fields, the living expressions
of the law in each. At
the head of each division is a great Being, the captain
of the mighty host,
(Called a Deva, or God, by the Hindus. The student may like
to have the Sanskrit
names of the five Gods of the manifested elements ; Indra,
lord of the Akâsha, or
ether of space ; Agni, lord of fire ; Pavana, lord of
air, Varuna, lord of
water ; Kshiti, lord of the earth). the directing and
guiding intelligence of
the whole department of nature which is administered and
energised by the class
of elementals under his control.
Thus Agni the fire-God,
is a great spiritual entity concerned with the manifestation of fire on all
planes of the universe, and carries on his administration through the host of the
fire-elementals. By understanding the nature of these, or knowing the methods
of their control, the so-called miracles of magical feats are worked, which
from time to time are recorded in the public
press, whether they are
avowedly the results of magical arts, or are done by the aid of
"spirits" – as in the case of the late Mr. Home, who could
unconcernedly pick a red-hot coal out of a blazing fire with his fingers and
hold it in his hand unhurt. Levitation (the suspension of a heavy body in the
air without visible support) and walking on the water have been done by the aid
respectively of the elementals of the air and the water, although another
method is more often employed.
As the elements enter
into the human body, one or another predominating according to the nature of
the person, each human being has relations with these elementals, the most
friendly to him being those whose element is preponderant in him. The effects
of this fact are often noted, and are popularly ascribed to "luck". A
person has " a lucky hand" in making plants grow, in lighting fires,
in finding underground water, etc. Nature is ever jostling us with her occult
forces, but we are slow to take her hints. Tradition sometimes hides a truth in
a proverb or a fable, but we have grown beyond all such
"superstitions."
We find also on the
astral plane, nature-spirits – less accurately termed elementals – who are
concerned with the building of forms in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and
human kingdoms. There are nature-spirits who build up minerals, who guide the
vital energies in plants, and who molecule by molecule
form the bodies of the
animal kingdom ; they are concerned with the making of the astral bodies of
minerals, plants, and animals, as well as with that of the physical.
These are the fairies
and elves of legends, the "little people" who play so large a part in
the folk lore of every nation, the charming irresponsible children of nature,
whom science had coldly relegated to the nursery, but who will be replaced in
their own grade of natural order by the wiser scientists of a later day. Only
poets and occultists believe in them just now, poets by the
intuition of their
genius, occultists by the vision of their trained inner senses. The multitude
laugh at both, most of all at the occultists ; but it matter not – wisdom shall
be justified of her children.
The play of the
life-currents in the etheric doubles of the forms in the mineral, vegetable,
and animal kingdoms, awoke out of latency the astral matter involved in the structure
of their atomic and molecular constituents. It began to thrill in a very
limited way in the minerals, and the Monad of form, exercising his organising
power, drew in materials from the astral world, and
these were built by the
nature-spirits into a loosely constituted mass, the mineral astral body.
In the vegetable world
the astral bodies are a little more organised, and their special characteristic
of "feeling" begins to appear. Dull and diffused sensations of
well-being and discomfort are observable in most plants as the results of the
increasing activity of the astral body. They dimly enjoy the air,
the rain, and the
sunshine, and gropingly seek them, while they shrink from noxious conditions.
Some seek the light and some seek the darkness ; they answer to stimuli, and
adapt themselves to external conditions, some showing plainly a sense of touch.
In the animal kingdom the astral body is more developed, reaching in the higher
members of that kingdom a sufficiently definite
organisation to cohere
for some time after the death of the physical body, and to lead an independent
existence on the astral plane.
The nature-spirits
concerned with the building of the animal and human astral bodies have been
given the special name of desire-elementals, (Kâmadevas, they are called
"desire-gods") because they are strongly animated by desires of all
kinds, and constantly build themselves into the astral bodies of animals and
men.
They also use the
varieties of elemental essence similar to that of which their own bodies are
composed to construct the astral bodies of animals, those bodies thus
acquiring, as interwoven parts, the centres of sensation and of the various
passional activities. These centres are stimulated into functioning by impulses
received by the dense physical organs, and transmitted by the etheric physical
organs to the astral body.
Not until the astral
centre is reached does the animal feel pleasure or pain. A stone may be struck,
but it will feel no pain ; it has dense and etheric physical molecules, but its
astral body is unorganised ; the animal feels pain from a blow because he
possesses the astral centres of sensation, and the desire-elementals have woven
into him their own nature.
As a new consideration
enters into the work of these elementals with the human astral body, we will
finish our survey of the inhabitants of the astral plane ere studying this more
complicated astral form.
The desire-bodies,
(Kâmarûpa is the technical name for the astral body, from Kâma, desire, and
rûpa, form) or astral bodies, of animals are found, as has just been stated, to
lead an independent though fleeting existence on the astral plane after death
has destroyed their physical counterparts. In "civilised"
countries these animal
astral bodies add much to the general feeling of hostility which was spoken of
above, for the organised butchery of animals in slaughterhouses and by sport
sends millions of these annually into the astral world, full of horror, terror,
and shrinking from men.
The comparatively few
creatures that are allowed to die in peace and quietness are lost in the vast
hordes of the murdered, and from the currents set up by these there rain down
influences from the astral world on the human and animal races which drive them
yet further apart and engender "instinctive" distrust and fear on the
one side and lust of inflicting cruelty on the other.
These feelings have been
much intensified of late years by the coldly devised methods of the scientific
torture called vivisection, the unmentionable barbarities of which have
introduced new horrors into the astral world by their reaction on the culprits,
(See Chapter III, on "Kâmaloka .") as well as having
increased the gulf
between man and his "poor relations".
Apart from what we may
call the normal population of the astral world, there are passing travellers in
it, led there by their work, whom we cannot leave entirely without mention.
Some of these come from our own terrestrial world, while others are visitors
from loftier regions.
Of the former, many are
Initiates of various grades, some belonging to the Great White Lodge – the
Himâlayan or Tibetan Brotherhood, as it is often called (It is to some members
of this Lodge that the Theosophical Society owes its inception) – while others
are members of different occult lodges throughout the world, ranging from white
through shades of grey to black. ( Occultists who are unselfish and wholly
devoted to the carrying out of the Divine Will, or who are aiming to attain
these virtues, are called "white". Those who are selfish and are
working against the Divine purpose in the universe are called
"black."
Expanding selflessness,
love and devotion are the marks of the one class: contracting selfishness,
hatred, and harsh arrogance are the sign of the other.
Between these are the
classes whose motives are mixed, and who have not yet realised that they must
evolve towards the One Self or towards separated selves ; these I have called
grey. Their members gradually drift into, or deliberately join, one of the two
great groups with clearly marked aims).
All these are men living
in physical bodies, who have learned to leave the physical encasement at will,
and to function in full consciousness in the astral body. They are of all
grades of knowledge and virtue, beneficent and maleficent, strong and weak,
gentle and ferocieous. There are also many younger aspirants, still
uninitiated, who are learning to use the astral vehicle, and who are employed
in works of benevolence or malevolence according to the path they are seeking
to tread.
After these, we have
psychics of varying degrees of development, some fairly alert, others dreamy
and confused, wandering about while their physical bodies are asleep or
entranced. Unconscious of their external surroundings, wrapped in their own
thoughts, drawn as it were within their astral shell, are millions of
drifting astral bodies
inhabited by conscious entities, whose physical frames are sunk in sleep.
As we shall see
presently, the consciousness in its astral vehicle escapes when the body sinks
into sleep, and passes on to the astral plane ; but it is not conscious of its
surroundings until the astral body is sufficiently developed to function
independently of the physical.
Occasionally is seen on
this plane a disciple (A Chelâ, the accepted pupil of an
Adept), who has passed
through death and is awaiting an almost immediate
reincarnation under the
direction of his Master. He is, of course, in the
enjoyment of full
consciousness, and is working like other disciples who have
merely slipped off their
bodies in sleep. A certain stage (See chapter XI, on
"Man’s
Ascent") – a disciple is allowed to reincarnate very quickly after death,
and under these
circumstances he has to await on the astral plane a suitable
opportunity for rebirth.
Passing through the
astral plane also are the human beings who are on their way
to reincarnation ; they
will again be mentioned later on (See chapter VII, on
"Reincarnation".)
and they concern themselves in no way with the general life of
the astral world. The
desire-elementals, however, who have affinity with them
from their past
passional and sensational activities, gather round them,
assisting in the
building of the new astral body for the coming earth-life.
We must now turn to the
consideration of the human astral body during the period of existence in this
world, and study its nature and constitution as well as its relations with the
astral realm. We will take the astral body of
(a) an undeveloped man,
(b) an average man, and
(c) a spiritually
developed man.
(a) An undeveloped man’s
astral body is a cloudy, loosely organised, vaguely
outlined mass of astral
spirit-matter, containing materials – both astral matter
and elemental essence –
drawn from all the subdivisions of the astral plane, but
with a predominance of
substances from the lower, so that it is dense and coarse in texture, fit to
respond to all the stimuli connected with the passions and appetites. The
colours caused by the rates of vibration are dull, muddy, and
dusky – brown, dull
reds, dirty greens, are predominant hues. There is no play
of light or quickly
changing flashing of colours through this astral body, but
the various passions
show themselves as heavy surges, or, when violent, as
flashes ; thus sexual
passion will send a wave of muddy crimson, rage a flash of
lurid red.
The astral body is
larger than the physical, extending round it in all directions ten to twelve
inches in such a case as we are considering. The centres of the organs of sense
are definitely marked, and are active when worked on from without ; but in
quiescence the life-streams are sluggish, and the astral body, stimulated
neither from the physical nor mental worlds, is drowsy and indifferent. ( the
student will recognise here the predominance of the tâmasic guna, the quality
of darkness or inertness in nature.)
It is a constant
characteristic of the undeveloped state that activity is
prompted from without
rather from the inner consciousness . A stone to be moved must be pushed ; a
plant moves under the attractions of light and moisture ; an animal becomes
active when stirred by hunger: a poorly developed man needs to be prompted in
similar ways. Not till the mind is partly grown does it begin to initiate
action. The centres of higher activities, ( The seven Chakras, or wheels, so
named from the whirling appearance they present, like wheels of
living fire when in
activity.) related to the independent functioning of the
astral senses, are
scarcely visible. A man at this stage requires for his
evolution violent
sensations of every kind, to arouse the nature and stimulate
it into activity. Heavy
blows from the outer world, both of pleasure and pain,
are wanted to awaken and
spur to action.
The more numerous and
violent the sensations, the more he can be made to feel,
the better for his
growth. At this stage quality matters little, quantity and
vigour are the main
requisites. The beginnings of this man’s morality will be in
his passions ; a slight
impulse of unselfishness in his relations to wife and
child or friend, will be
the first step upwards, by causing vibrations in the
finer matter of his
astral body and attracting into it more elemental essence of
an appropriate kind. The
astral body is constantly changing its materials under
this play of the
passions, appetites, desires, and emotions.
All good ones strengthen
the finer parts of the body, shake out some of the
coarser constituents, draw
into it the subtler materials, and attract round it
elementals of a
beneficent kind who aid in the renovating process. All evil ones
have diametrically
opposite effects, strengthening the coarser, expelling the
finer, drawing in more
of the former, and attracting elementals who help in the
deteriorating process.
The man’s moral and
intellectual powers are so embryonic in the case we are
considering that most of
the building and changing of his astral body may be
said to be done for him
rather than by him. It depends more on his external
circumstances than on
his own will, for, as just said, it is characteristic of a
low stage of development
that a man is moved from without and through the body much more than from
within and by the mind. It is a sign of considerable advance when a man begins
to be moved by the will, by his own energy, self-determined, instead of being
moved by desire, i.e., by a response to an external attraction or repulsion.
In sleep the astral
body, enveloping the consciousness, slips out of the
physical vehicle,
leaving the dense and etheric bodies to slumber. At this
stage, however, the
consciousness is not awake in the astral body, lacking the
strong contacts that
spur it while in the physical frame, and the only things
that affect the astral
body may be elementals of the coarser kinds, that may set
up therein vibrations
which are reflected to the etheric and dense brains, and
induce dreams of animal
pleasures. The astral body floats just over the
physical, held by its
strong attraction, and cannot go far away from it.
(b) In the average moral
and intellectual man the astral body shows an immense
advance on that just
described. It is larger in size, its materials are more balanced in quality,
the presence of the rarer kinds giving a certain luminous quality to the whole,
while the expression of the higher emotions sends playing through it beautiful
ripples of colour. Its outline is clear and definite, instead of vague and
shifting, as in the former case, and it assumes the likeness of its owner. It
is obviously becoming a vehicle for the inner man, with good definite
organisation and stability, a body fit and ready to function, and able to
maintain itself, apart from the physical. While retaining great plasticity, it yet
has a normal form, to which it continuously recurs when any pressure is removed
that may have caused it to change its outline.
Its activity is
constant, and hence it is in perpetual vibration, showing endless varieties of
changing hues ; also the "wheels" are clearly visible though not yet
functioning ( Here the student will note the predominance of the râjasic guna,
the quality of activity in nature.) It responds quickly to all the contacts
coming to it through the physical body, and is stirred by the influences rained
on it from the conscious entity within, memory and imagination stimulating it
to action, and causing it to become the prompter of the body to activity
instead of only being moved by it.
Its purification
proceeds along the same lines as in the former case – the expulsion of lower
constituents by setting up vibrations antagonistic to them and the drawing in
of finer materials in their place. But now the increased moral intellectual
development of the man puts the building almost entirely under his own control,
for he is no longer driven here and there by stimuli from external nature, but
reasons, judges, and resists or yields as he thinks well.
By the exercise of
well-directed thought he can rapidly affect the astral body, and hence its
improvement can proceed apace. Nor is it necessary that he should understand
the modus operandi in order to bring about the effect, any more than that a man
should understand the laws of light in order to see.
In sleep, this
well-developed astral body slips, as usual, from its physical encasement, but
is by no means held captive by it, as in the former case. It roams about in the
astral world, drifted hither and thither by the astral currents, while the
consciousness within it, not yet able to direct its movements, is awake,
engaged in the enjoyment of its own mental images and mental activities, and
able also to receive impressions through its astral covering, and to change
them into mental pictures. In this way a man may gain knowledge when out of the
body, and may subsequently impress it on the brain as a vivid dream or vision,
or without this link of memory it may filter through into the
brain-consciousness.
(c) The astral body of a
spiritually developed man is composed of the finest particles of each
subdivision of astral matter, the higher kinds largely predominating in amount.
It is therefore a beautiful object in luminosity and colour, hues not known on
earth showing themselves under the impulses thrown
into it by the purified
mind. The wheels of fire are now seen to deserve their names, and their
whirling motion denotes the activity of the higher senses. Such a body is, in
the full sense of the words, a vehicle of consciousness, for in the course of
evolution it has been vivified in every organ and brought under
the complete control of
its owner.
When in it he leaves the
physical body there is no break in consciousness ; he merely shakes off his
heavier vesture, and finds himself unencumbered by its weight. He can move
anywhere within the astral sphere with immense rapidity, and is no longer bound
by the narrow terrestrial conditions. His body answers to his will, reflects
and obeys his thought. His opportunities for serving humanity are thus
enormously increased, and his powers are directed by his virtue and his
beneficence. The absence of gross particles in his astral body renders it
incapable of responding to the promptings of lower objects of desire, and they
turn away from him as beyond their attraction. The whole body vibrates only in
answer to the higher emotions, his love has grown into devotion, his energy is
curbed by patience.
Gentle, calm, serene,
full of power, but with no trace of restlessness, such a man "all the
Siddhis stand ready to serve." (Here the sâttvic guna, the quality of
bliss and purity in nature, is predominant. Siddhis are superphysical powers.)
The astral body forms
the bridge over the gulf which separates consciousness from the physical brain.
Impacts received by the sense organs and transmitted, as we have seen, to the
dense and etheric centres, pass thence to the corresponding astral centres ;
here they are worked on by the elemental essence and are transmuted into
feelings , and are then presented to the inner man as objects of consciousness,
the astral vibrations awakening corresponding vibrations in the materials of
the mental body. (See chapter IV, on "The Mental Plane.")
By these successive
gradations in fineness of spirit-matter the heavy impacts of terrestrial
objects can be transmitted to the conscious entity ; and, in turn, the
vibrations set up by his thoughts can pass along the same bridge to the
physical brain and there induce physical vibrations corresponding to the
mental.
This is the regular
normal way in which consciousness receives impressions from without, and in
turn sends impressions outwards. By this constant passage of vibrations to and
fro the astral body is chiefly developed ; the current plays
upon it from within and
from without, it evolves its organisation, and subserves its general growth.
By this it becomes
larger, finer in texture, more definitely outlined, and more organised
interiorly. Trained thus to respond to consciousness, it gradually becomes fit
to function as its separate vehicle, and to transmit to it clearly the
vibrations received directly from the astral world. Most readers will have had
some little experience of impressions coming into consciousness from without,
that do not arise from any physical impact, and that are very quickly verified
by some external occurrence.
These are frequently
impressions that reach the astral body directly, and are transmitted by it to
the consciousness, and such impressions are often of the nature of previsions
which very quickly prove themselves to be true. When the man is far progressed,
though the stage varies much according to other circumstances, links are set up
between the physical and the astral, the astral and mental, so that
consciousness works unbrokenly from one state to the other, memory having in it
none of the lapses which in the ordinary man interpose a period of
unconsciousness in passing from one plane to another. The man can then also
freely exercise the astral senses while the consciousness is working in the
physical body, so that these enlarged avenues of knowledge become an appanage
of his waking consciousness. Objects which were before matters of faith becomes
matters of knowledge, and he can personally verify the accuracy of much of the
Theosophical teaching as to the lower regions of the invisible world.
When man is analysed
into "principles," i.e., into modes of manifesting life, his four
lower principles, termed the "lower Quaternary," are said to function
on the astral and physical planes. The fourth principle is Kâma, desire, and it
is the life manifesting in the astral body and conditioned by it ; it is
characterised by the attribute of feeling, whether in the rudimentary form of
sensation, or in the complex form of emotion, or in any of the grades that lie
between. This is summed up as desire, that which is attracted or repelled by
objects, according as they give pleasure or pain to the personal self.
The third principle is
Prâna, the life specialised for the support of the physical organism. The
second principle is the etheric double, and the first is the dense body. These
three function on the physical plane. In H.P.Blavatsky’s later classifications
she removed both Prâna and the dense physical body from
the rank of principles,
Prâna as being universal life, and the dense physical
body as being the mere
counterpart of the etheric, and made of constantly
changing materials built
into the etheric matrix. Taking this view, we have the
grand philosophic
conception of the One Life, the One Self, manifesting as man,
and presenting varying
and transitory differences according to the conditions
imposed on it by the
bodies which it vivifies; itself remaining the same in the
centre, but showing
different aspects when looked at from outside, according to
the kinds of matter in
one body or another.
In the physical body it
is Prâna, energising, controlling, co-ordinating. In the
astral body it is Kâma,
feeling, enjoying, suffering. We shall find it in yet
other aspects, as we
pass to higher planes, but the fundamental idea is the same
throughout, and it is
another of those root-ideas of Theosophy,
which firmly grasped, serve as guiding clues in this most tangled world.
KÂMALOKA
KÂMALOKA, literally the
place or habitat of desire, is, as has already been intimated, a part of the
astral plane, not divided from it as a distinct locality, but separated off by
the conditions of consciousness of the entities belonging to it. (The Hindus
call this state Pretaloka, the habitat of Pretas. A Preta is a human being who
has lost his physical body, but is still encumbered
with the vesture of his
animal nature. He cannot carry this on with him, and until it is disintegrated
he is kept imprisoned by it.)
These are human beings
who have lost their physical bodies by the stroke of death, and have to undergo
certain purifying changes before they can pass on to the happy and peaceful
life which belongs to the man proper, to the human soul.
(The soul is the human
intellect, the link between the Divine Spirit in man and his lower personality.
It is the Ego, the individual, the " I ", which develops by
evolution. In Theosophical parlance, it is Manas, the Thinker. The mind is
the energy of this,
working within the limitations of the physical brain, or the astral and mental
bodies).
This region represents
and includes the conditions described as existing in the various hells,
purgatories, and intermediate states, one or other of which is alleged by all
the great religions to be the temporary dwelling-place of man after he leaves
the body and before he reaches "heaven." It does not include any
place of eternal
torture, the endless hell still believed in by some narrow religionists being
only a nightmare dream of ignorance, hate and fear. But it does include
conditions of suffering, temporary and purificatory in their nature, the
working out of causes set going in his earth-life by the man who experiences
them. These are as natural and inevitable as any effects caused in this world
by wrongdoing, for we live in a world of law and every seed must grow up after
its own kind. Death makes no sort of difference in a man’s moral and mental
nature, and the change of state caused by passing from one world to another
takes away his physical body, but leaves the man as he was.
The Kâmalokic condition
is found on each subdivision of the astral plane, so that we may speak of it as
having seven regions, calling them the first, second, third, up to the seventh,
beginning from the lowest and counting upwards. (Often these regions are
reckoned the other way, taking the first as the highest and the seventh as the
lowest. It does not matter from which end we count ; and I am reckoning upwards
to keep them in accord with the planes and principles.).
We have already seen
that materials from each subdivision of the astral plane
enter into the
composition of the astral body, and it is a peculiar rearrangement of these
materials, to be explained in a moment, which separates the people dwelling in
one region from those dwelling in another, although those in the same region
are able to intercommunicate. The regions, being each a subdivision of the
astral plane, differ in density, and the density of the external form of the
Kâmalokic entity determines the region to which he is limited ; these
differences of matter are the barriers that prevent passage from one region to
another ; the people dwelling in one can no more come into touch with people
dwelling in another than a deep-sea fish can hold a conversation with an eagle
– the medium necessary to the life of the one would be destructive to the life
of the other.
When the physical body
is struck down by death, the etheric body, carrying Prâna with it and
accompanied by the remaining principles – that is, the whole man, except the
dense body – withdraws from the "tabernacle of flesh," as the outer
body is appropriately called. All the outgoing life-energies draw themselves
inwards, and are
"gathered up by Prâna," their departure being manifested by the
dullness that creeps
over the physical organs of the senses.
They are there,
uninjured, physically complete, ready to act as they have always
been ; but the
"inner Ruler," is going, he who through them saw, heard, felt,
smelt, tasted, and by
themselves they are mere aggregations of matter, living
indeed but without power
of perceptive action. Slowly the lord of the body draws himself away, enwrapped
in the violet-grey etheric body, and absorbed in the contemplation of the
panorama of his past life, which in the death hour rolls
before him, complete in
every detail.
In that life-picture are
all the events of his life, small and great ; he sees
his ambitions with their
success or frustration, his efforts, his triumphs, his
failures, his loves, his
hatreds ; the predominant tendency of the whole comes
clearly out, the ruling
thought of the life asserts itself, and stamps itself
deeply into the soul,
marking the region in which the chief part of his
post-mortem existence
will be spent.
Solemn the moment when
the man stands face to face with his life, and from the
lips of his past hears
the presage of his future. For a brief space he sees himself as he is,
recognises the purpose of life, knows that the Law is strong and just and good.
Then the magnetic tie breaks between the dense and etheric bodies, the comrades
of a lifetime are disjoined, and – save in exceptional cases – the man sinks
into peaceful unconsciousness.
Quietness and devotion
should mark the conduct of all who are gathered round a dying body, in order
that a solemn silence may leave uninterrupted this review of the past by the
departing man. Clamorous weeping, loud lamentations, can but jar and disturb
the concentrated attention of the soul, and to break with the
grief of a personal loss into the stillness which aids and
soothes him, is at once selfish and impertinent. Religion has wisely commanded
prayers for the dying, for these preserve calm and stimulate unselfish
aspirations directed to his helping, and these, like all loving thoughts,
protect and shield.
Some hours after death –
generally not more than thirty-six, it is said – the man draws himself out of
the etheric body, leaving it in turn as a senseless corpse, and the latter,
remaining near its dense counterpart, shares its fate.
If the dense body be
buried, the etheric double floats over the grave, slowly disintegrating, and
the unpleasant feelings many experience in a churchyard are largely due to the
presence of these decaying etheric corpses. If the body is burned, the etheric
double breaks up quickly, having lost its nidus, its physical centre of
attraction, and this is one among many reasons why cremation is preferable to
burial, as a way of disposing of corpses.
The withdrawal of the
man from the etheric double is accompanied by the withdrawal from it of Prâna,
which thereupon returns to the great reservoir of life universal, while the
man, ready now to pass into Kâmaloka, undergoes a
rearrangement of his astral body, fitting it for submission to the
purificatory changes which are necessary for the freeing of the man himself.
(These changes result in the formation of what is called by Hindus the Yâtanâ,
or the suffering body, or in the case of very wicked men, in whose astral
bodies there is a
preponderance of the
coarser matter, the Dhruvam, or strong body).
During earth life the
various kinds of astral matter intermingle in the formation of the body, as do
the solids, liquids, gases, and ethers in the physical. The change in the arrangement
of the astral body after death consists in the separation of these materials,
according to their respective densities, into a series of concentric shells –
the finest within, the densest without –
each shell being made of the materials drawn from one
subdivision only of the astral plane. The astral body thus becomes a set of
seven superimposed layers, or a seven-shelled encasement of astral matter, in
which the man may not inaptly
be said to be
imprisoned, as only the breaking of these can set him free. Now will be seen
the immense importance of the purification of the astral body during
earth-life; the man is retained in each subdivision of Kâmaloka so long as the
shell of matter pertaining to that subdivision is not sufficiently
disintegrated to allow
of his escape into the next.
Moreover, the extent to
which his consciousness has worked in each kind of matter determines whether he
will be awake and conscious in any given region, or will pass though it in
unconsciousness, "wrapped" in rosy dreams," and merely detained
during the time necessary for the process of mechanical disintegration.
A spiritually advanced
man, who has so purified his astral body that its constituents are drawn only
from the finest grade of each division of astral matter, merely passes through
Kâmaloka without delay, the astral body disintegrating with extreme swiftness,
and he goes on to whatever may be his bourne, according to the point he has
reached in evolution. A less developed man, but one whose life has been pure
and temperate and who has sat loosely on the things of the earth, will wing a
less rapid flight through Kâmaloka, but will dream peacefully, unconscious of
his surroundings, as his mental body
disentangles itself from the astral shells, one after the other, to
awaken only when he reaches the heavenly places.
Others, less developed
still, will awaken after passing out of the lower regions, becoming conscious
in the division which is connected with the active working of the consciousness
during the earth-life, for this will be aroused on receiving familiar impacts,
although these be received now directly through the
astral body, without the
help of the physical. Those who have lived in the animal passions will awake in
their appropriate region, each man literally going "to his own
place."
The case of men struck
suddenly out of physical life by accident, suicide, murder, or sudden death in
any form, differs from those of persons who pass away by failure of the
life-energies through disease or old age. If they are pure and spiritually
minded they are specially guarded, and sleep out happily the term of their
natural life. But in other cases they remain conscious – often entangled in the
final scene of earth-life for a time, and unaware that they have lost the physical
body – held in whatever region they are related to by the outermost layer of
the astral body: their normal Kâmalokic life does not begin until the natural
web of earth-life is out-spun, and they are vividly conscious of both
their astral and
physical surroundings.
One man who had
committed an assassination and had been executed for his crime was said, by one
of H.P.Blavatsky’s Teachers, to be living through the scenes of the murder and
the subsequent events over and over again in Kâmaloka, ever repeating his
diabolical act and going through the terrors of his arrest and execution.
A suicide will repeat
automatically the feelings of despair and fear which preceded his self-murder,
and go through the act and the death-struggle time after time with ghastly
persistence. A woman who perished in the flames in a wild condition of terror
and with frantic efforts to escape, created such a whirls of passions that,
five days afterwards, she was still struggling
desperately, fancying
herself still in the fire and wildly repulsing all efforts to soothe her: while
another woman who, with her baby on her breast, went down beneath the whirl of
waters in a raging storm, with her heart calm and full of love, slept
peacefully on the other side of death, dreaming of husband and
children in happy
lifelike visions.
In more ordinary cases,
death by accident is still a disadvantage, brought on a person by some serious
fault, (Not necessarily a fault committed in the present life. The law of cause
and effect will be explained in Chapter IX, "Karma"), for the
possession of full consciousness in the lower Kâmalokic regions, which are
closely related to the earth,
is attended by many inconveniences and perils. The man is full of all the plans
and interests that made up his life, and is conscious of the presence of people
and things connected with them.
He is almost
irresistibly impelled by his longings to try and influence the affairs to which
his passions and feelings still cling, and is bound to the earth while he has
lost all his accustomed organs of activity ; his only hope of peace lies in
resolutely turning away from earth and fixing his mind on higher
things, but comparatively few are strong enough to make this
effort, even with the help always offered them by workers on the astral plane,
whose sphere of duty lies in helping and guiding those who have left his world.
(These workers are disciples of some of the great Teachers who guide and help
humanity, and
they are employed in this special duty of succouring souls in
need of such assistance.)
Too often such sufferers
impatient in their helpless inactivity, seek the assistance of sensitives, with
whom they can communicate and so mix themselves up once more in terrestrial
affairs ; they sometimes seek even to obsess convenient mediums and thus to
utilise the bodies of others for their own
purposes, so incurring
many responsibilities in the future. Not without occult reason have English
churchmen been taught to pray: "From battle, murder, and from sudden
death, Good Lord, deliver us."
We may now consider the
divisions of Kâmaloka one by one, and so gain some idea of the conditions which
the man has made for himself in the intermediate state by the desires which he
has cultivated during physical life ; it being kept in mind that the amount of
vitality in any given "shell" – and therefore his
imprisonment in that shell – depends on the amount of energy thrown
during earth-life into the kind of matter of which that shell consists.
If the lowest passions
have been active, the coarsest matter will be strongly vitalised and its amount
will also be relatively large. This principle rules through all Kâmalokic
regions, so that a man during earth-life can judge very fairly as to the future
for himself that he is preparing immediately on the other side of death.
The first or lowest,
division is the one that contains the conditions described in so many Hindu and
Buddhist Scriptures under the name of "hells" of various kinds. It
must be understood that a man, in passing into one of these states, is
not getting rid of the
passions and vile desires that have led him thither ; these remain, as part of
his character, lying latent in the mind in a germinal state, to be thrown
outwards again to form his passional nature when he is returning to birth in
the physical world. (See chapter VII, on "Reincarnation").
His presence in the
lowest region of Kâmaloka is due to the existence in his kâmic body of matter
belonging to that region, and he is held prisoner there until the greater part
of that matter has dropped away, until the shell composed of it is sufficiently
disintegrated to allow the man to come into contact with
the region next above.
The atmosphere of this
place is gloomy, heavy, dreary, depressing to an inconceivable extent. It seems
to reek with all the influences most inimical to good, as in truth it does,
being caused by the persons whose evil passions have led them to this dreary
place. All the desires and feelings at which we shudder,
find here the materials for their expression ; it is, in fact,
the lowest slum, with all the horrors veiled from physical sight parading their
naked hideousness. Its repulsiveness is much increased by the fact that in the
astral world character expresses itself in form, and the man who is full of
evil passions looks the whole of them ; bestial
appetites shape the astral body into
bestial forms, and repulsively human animal shapes are the
appropriate clothing of brutalised human souls.
No man can be a
hypocrite in the astral world, and cloak foul thoughts with a veil of virtuous seeming ; whatever a man is that he appears to be in outward
form and semblance, radiant in beauty if his mind be noble, repulsive in hideousness
if his nature be foul. It will readily be understood, then, how such
Teachers as the Buddha –
to whose unerring vision all worlds lay open – should describe what was seen in
these hells in vivid language of terrible imagery, that seems incredible to
modern readers only because people forget that, once escaped from the heavy and
unplastic matter of the physical world, all souls
appear in their proper likenesses and look just what they are.
Even in this world a
degraded and besotted ruffian moulds his face into most repellent aspect ; what
then can be expected when the plastic astral matter takes shape with every
impulse of his criminal desires, but that such a man should wear a
horrifying form, taking
on changing elements of hideousness?
For it must be
remembered that the population – if that word may be allowed – of this lowest
region consists of the very scum of humanity, murderers, ruffians, violent
criminals of all types, drunkards, profligates, the vilest of mankind.
None is here, with
consciousness awake to its surroundings, save those guilty of brutal crimes, or
of deliberate persistent cruelty, or possessed by some vile appetite. The only
persons who may be of a better general type, and yet for a while be held here,
are suicides, men who have sought by self-murder to escape
from the earthly penalties of crimes they had committed, and who
have but worsened their position by the exchange. Not all suicides, be it
understood , for self-murder is committed from many motives, but only such as
are led up to by crime and are then committed in order to avoid the
consequences.
Save for the gloomy
surroundings and the loathsomeness of a man’s associates, every man here is the
immediate creator of his own miseries. Unchanged, except for the loss of the
bodily veil, men here show out their passions in all their native hideousness,
their naked brutality ; full of fierce unsatiated appetites,
seething with revenge,
hatred, longings after physical indulgences which the loss of physical organs
incapacitates them for enjoying, they roam, raging and ravening, through this
gloomy region, crowding round all foul resorts on earth,
round brothels and gin-palaces, stimulating their occupants to
deeds of shame and violence, seeking opportunities to obsess them, and so to
drive them into worse excesses.
The sickening atmosphere
felt round such places comes largely from these earthbound astral entities,
reeking with foul passions and unclean desires. Mediums – unless of very pure
and noble character – are special objects of attack, and too often the weaker
ones, weakened still further by the passive
yielding of their bodies for the temporary habitation of other
excarnate souls are obsessed by these creatures, and are driven into
intemperance or madness.
Executed murderers,
furious with terror and passionate revengeful hatred, acting over again, as we
have said, their crime and recreating mentally its terrible results, surround
themselves with an atmosphere of savage thought-forms, and, attracted to any
one harbouring revengeful and violent designs, they egg him on into the actual
commission of the deed over which he broods.
Sometimes a man may be
seen constantly followed by his murdered victim, never able to escape from his
haunting presence, which hunts him with a dull persistency , try he ever so
eagerly to escape. The murdered person, unless himself of a very base type, is
wrapped in unconsciousness, and this very unconsciousness seems to add a new
horror to its mechanical pursuit.
Here also is the hell of
the vivisector, for cruelty draws into the astral body the coarsest materials
and the most repulsive combinations of the astral matter, and he lives amid the
crowding forms of his mutilated victims – moaning,
quivering, howling (they
are vivified, not by the animal souls but by elemental life) pulsing with
hatred to the tormentor – rehearsing his worst experiments with automatic
regularity, conscious of all the horror, and yet imperiously impelled to the
self-torment by the habit set up during earth-life.
It is well once again,
to remember, ere quitting this dreary region, that we have no arbitrary
punishments inflicted from outside, but only the inevitable working out of the
causes set going by each person. During physical life they yielded to the
vilest impulses and drew into, built into, their astral bodies
the materials which alone could vibrate in answer to those
impulses ; this self-built body becomes the prison house of the soul, and must
fall into ruins ere the soul can escape from it.
As inevitably as a
drunkard must live in his repulsive soddened physical body here, so must he
live in his equally repulsive astral body there. The
harvest sown is reaped after its kind. Such is the law in all the worlds, and
it may not be escaped. Nor indeed is the astral body there more revolting and
horrible than it was when the man was living upon earth and made the atmosphere
around him fetid with his astral emanations. But people on earth do not
generally recognise its ugliness, being astrally
blind.
Further, we may cheer
ourselves in contemplating these unhappy brothers of ours by remembering that
their sufferings are but temporary, and are giving a much-needed lesson in the
life of the soul. By the tremendous pressure of nature’s disregarded laws they
are learning the existence of those laws, and the misery that accrues from
ignoring them in life and conduct. The lesson they
would not learn during earth-life, whirled away on the torrent of
lusts and desires, is pressed on them here, and will be pressed on them in
their succeeding lives, until the evils are eradicated and the man has risen into
a better life. Nature’s lessons are sharp, but in the long run they are
merciful, for they lead to the evolution of the soul and guide it to the
winning of its
immortality.
Let us pass to a more
cheerful region. The second division of the astral world may be said to be the
astral double of the physical, for the astral bodies of all things and of many
people are largely composed of the matter belonging to this division of the
astral plane, and it is therefore more closely in touch with the physical world
than any other part of the astral. The great majority of
people make some stay
here, and a very large proportion of these are consciously awake in it. These
latter are folk whose interests were bound up in the trivial and petty objects
of life, who set their hearts on trifles, as well as those who allowed their
lower natures to rule them, and who died with the appetites still active and
desirous of physical enjoyment.
Having largely sent
their life outwards in these directions, thus building their astral bodies
largely of the materials that responded very readily to material impacts, they
are held by these bodies in the neighbourhood of their physical attractions.
They are mostly dissatisfied, uneasy, restless, with more or less
suffering according to the vigour of the wishes they cannot gratify ;
some even undergo positive pain from this cause, and are long delayed ere these
earthly longings are exhausted.
Many unnecessarily
lengthen their stay by seeking to communicate with the earth, in whose
interests they are entangled, by means of mediums, who allow them to use their
physical bodies for this purpose, thus supplying the loss of their own. From
them comes most of the mere twaddle with which every one is familiar who has
had experience of public spiritualistic séances, the gossip and trite morality
of the petty lodging-house and small shop – feminine, for the most
part. As these earth
bound souls are generally of small intelligence, their communications are of no
more interest- (to those already convinced of the existence of the soul after
death) –than was their conversation when they were in the body, and – just as
on earth – they are positive in proportion to their
ignorance, representing the whole astral world as identical with
their own very limited area. There as here: They think the rustic cackle of
their burgh The murmur of the world.
It is from this region
that people who have died with some anxiety on their minds will sometimes seek
to communicate with their friends in order to arrange the earthly matter that
troubles them ; if they cannot succeed in showing themselves, or in impressing
their wishes by a dream on some friend, they will
often cause much annoyance by knockings and other noises directly
intended to draw attention or caused unconsciously by their restless efforts.
It is a charity in such
cases for some competent person to communicate with the distressed entity and
learn his wishes, as he may thus be freed from the anxiety which prevents him
from passing onwards. Souls, while in this region, may also
very easily have their attention drawn to the earth, even
although they would not spontaneously have turned back to it, and this
disservice is too often done to them by the passionate grief and craving for
their beloved presence by friends left behind on earth.
The thought-forms set up
by these longings throng round them, and oftentimes arouse them if they are
peacefully sleeping, or violently draw their thoughts to earth if they are
already conscious. It is especially in the former case that this unwitting
selfishness on the part of friends on earth does mischief to
their dear ones that
they would themselves be the first to regret ; and it may that the knowledge of
the unnecessary suffering thus caused to those who have passed through death
may, with some, strengthen the binding force of the religious precepts which
enjoin submission to the divine law and the checking of
excessive and rebellious
grief.
The third and fourth
regions of the Kâmalokic world differ but little from the second, and might
also be described as etherialised copies of it, the fourth being more refined
than the third, but the general characteristics of the three subdivisions being
very similar. Souls of somewhat more progressed types are
found there, and
although they are held there by the encasement built by the activity of their
earthly interests, their attention is for the most part directed onwards rather
than backwards, and, if they are not forcibly recalled to the concerns of
earth-life, they will pass on without very much delay.
Still, they are
susceptible to earthly stimuli, and the weakening interest in terrestrial
affairs may be reawakened by cries from below. Large numbers of educated and
thoughtful people, who were chiefly occupied with worldly affairs during their
physical lives, are conscious in these regions, and may be induced
to communicate through mediums, and, more rarely, seek such
communication themselves. Their statements are naturally of a higher type than
those spoken of as coming from the second division, but are not marked by any
characteristics
that render them more valuable than similar statements made by
persons still in the body. Spiritual illumination does not come from Kâmaloka.
The fifth subdivision of
Kâmaloka offers many new characteristics. It presents a distinctly luminous and
radiant appearance, eminently attractive to those accustomed only to the dull
hues of the earth, and justifying the epithet astral, starry, given to the
whole plane. Here are situated all the materialised
heavens which play so
large a part in popular religions all the world over.
The happy hunting grounds
of the Red Indian, the
their places here. Men
and women who clung desperately to every "letter that killeth" have
here the literal satisfaction of their cravings, unconsciously creating in
astral matter by their powers of imagination, fed on the mere husks of the
world’s Scriptures, the cloud-built palaces whereof they dreamed.
The crudest religious
beliefs find here their temporary cloud-land realisation, and literalists of
every faith, who were filled with selfish longings for their own salvation in
the most materialistic of heavens, here find an appropriate, and to them
enjoyable, home, surrounded by the very conditions in which they believed. The
religious and philanthropic busybodies, who cared more to carry out their own
fads and impose their own ways on their neighbours than to work unselfishly for
the increase of human virtue and happiness, are here much to the
fore, carrying on reformatories, refuges, schools, to their own
great satisfaction, and much delighted are they still to push an astral finger
into an earthly pie with the help of a subservient medium whom they patronise
with lofty condescension.
They build astral
churches and schools and houses, reproducing the materialistic heavens they coveted ; and though to keener vision their erections are imperfect,
even pathetically grotesque, they find them all-sufficing. People of the same
religions flock together and co-operate with each other in various ways, so
that communities are formed, differing as widely from each other as do similar
communities on earth.
When they are attracted
to the earth they seek, for the most part, people of their own faith and
country, chiefly by natural affinity, doubtless, but also because barriers of
language still exist in Kâmaloka ; as may be noticed occasionally
in messages received in spiritualistic circles. Souls from this region often
take the most vivid interest in attempts to establish communication
between this and the next world, and the "spirit guides"
of average mediums come, for the most part, from this and from the region next
above. They are generally aware that there are many possibilities of higher
life before them, and that they will, sooner or later, pass away into worlds
whence communication
with this earth will not
be possible.
The sixth Kâmalokic region
resembles the fifth, but is far more refined, and is largely inhabited by souls
of a more advanced type, wearing out the astral vesture in which much of their
mental energies had worked while they were in the physical body. Their delay is
here due to the large part played by selfishness in their artistic and
intellectual life, and to the prostitution of their talents to the
gratification of the desire-nature in a refined and delicate way.
Their surroundings are
the best that are found in Kâmaloka, as their creative thoughts fashion the
luminous materials of their temporary home into fair landscapes and rippling
oceans, snow-clad mountains and fertile plains, scenes that are of fairy-like
beauty compared with even the most exquisite that earth
can show. Religionists
also are found here, of a slightly more progressed kind than those in the
division immediately below, and with more definite views of their own
limitations. They look forward more clearly to passing out of their present
sphere, and reaching a higher state.
The seventh, the
highest, subdivision of Kâmaloka, is occupied almost entirely by intellectual
men and women who were either pronouncedly materialistic while on earth, or who
are so wedded to the ways in which knowledge is gained by the lower mind in the
physical body that they continue its pursuit in the old ways,
though with enlarged
faculties. One recalls Charles Lamb’s dislike of the idea that in heaven
knowledge would have to be gained "by some awkward process of
intuition" instead of through his beloved books. Many a student lives for
long
years, sometimes for centuries – according to H.P.Blavatsky –
literally in the astral library, conning eagerly all books that deal with his
favourite subject, and perfectly contented with his lot.
Men who have been keenly
set on some line of intellectual investigation, and have thrown off the
physical body, with their thirst for knowledge unslaked, pursue their object
still with unwearied persistence, fettered by their clinging to the physical
modes of study. Often such men are still sceptical as to the
higher possibilities that lie before them, and shrink from the
prospect of what is practically a second death – the sinking into
unconsciousness ere the soul is born into the higher life of heaven.
Politicians, statesmen, men of science, dwell for a while in this region,
slowly disentangling themselves from the
astral body, still held to the lower life by their keen and vivid
interest in the movements in which they have played so large a part, and in the
effort to work out astrally some of the schemes from which Death snatched them
ere yet they had reached fruition.
To all, however, sooner
or later – save to that small minority who during earth-life never felt one
touch of unselfish love, of intellectual aspiration, of recognition of
something or some one higher than themselves – there comes a time when the
bonds of the astral body are finally shaken off, while the soul sinks into
brief unconsciousness of its surroundings, like the unconsciousness that
follows the dropping off of the physical body, to be awakened by a sense of
bliss, intense, immense, fathomless, undreamed of, the bliss of the heaven-world,
of the world to which by its own nature it belongs.
Low and vile may have
been many of its passions, trivial and sordid many of its longings, but it had
gleams of a higher nature, broken lights now and then from a purer region, and
these must ripen as seeds to the time of their harvest, and however poor and
few must yield their fair return. The man passes on to reap
this harvest, and to eat
and assimilate its fruit. (See Chapter V, on Devachan).
The astral corpse, as it
is sometimes called, or the "shell" of the departed entity, consists
of the fragments of the seven concentric shells before described, held together
by the remaining magnetism of the soul. Each shell in turn has disintegrated,
until the point is reached when mere scattered fragments of it remain ; these
cling by magnetic attraction to the remaining shells, and
when one after another
has been reduced to this condition, until the seventh or innermost is reached
and itself disintegrates, the man himself escapes, leaving behind him these
remains.
The shell drifts about
vaguely in the kâmalokic world, automatically and feebly repeating its
accustomed vibrations, and as the remaining magnetism gradually disperses, it
falls into a more and more decayed condition, and finally disintegrates
completely, restoring its materials to the general mass of astral
matter, exactly as does
the physical body to the physical world.
This shell drifts
wherever the astral currents may carry it, and may be vitalised, if not too far
gone, by the magnetism of embodied souls on earth, and so restored to some
amount of activity. It will suck up magnetism as a sponge sucks up water, and
will then take on an illusory appearance of vitality, repeating more vigorously
and vibration to which it was accustomed ; these are often set up by the
stimulus of thoughts common to the departed soul and friends and relations on
earth, and such a vitalised shell may play quite respectably the part of a
communicating intelligence; it is however, distinguishable – apart from the use
of astral vision – by its automatic repetitions of familiar thoughts, and by
the total absence of all originality and of any traces of knowledge not
possessed during physical life.
Just as souls may be delayed
in their progress by foolish and inconsiderate friends, so may they be aided in
it by wise and well-directed efforts. Hence all religions, which retain any
traces of the occult wisdom of their Founders, enjoin the use of "prayers
for the dead." These prayers with their accompanying
ceremonies are more or
less useful according to the knowledge, the love, and the willpower by which
they were ensouled.
They rest on that
universal truth of vibration by which the universe is built, modified, and
maintained. Vibrations are set up by the uttered sounds, arranging astral
matter into definite forms, ensouled by the thought enshrined in the words.
These are directed towards the Kâmalokic entity, and, striking against
the astral body, hasten
its disintegration. With the decay of occult knowledge these ceremonies have
become less and less potent, until their usefulness has almost reached a
vanishing point.
Nevertheless they are
still sometimes performed by a man of knowledge, and then exert their rightful
influence. Moreover, every one can help his beloved departed by sending to them
thoughts of love and peace and longing for their swift progress through the
Kâmalokic world and their liberation from astral
fetters. No one should
leave his "dead" to go on a lonely way, unattended by loving hosts of
these guardian angel thought-forms, helping them forward with joy.
THE MENTAL
PLANE
The mental plane, as its
name implies, is that which belongs to consciousness working as thought ; not
of the mind as it works through the brain, but as it works in its own world,
unencumbered with physical spirit-matter. This world is
the world of the real
man. The word "man" comes from the Sanskrit root "man" and
this is the root of the Sanskrit verb "to think," so that man means
thinker; he is named by his most characteristic attribute, intelligence.
In English the word
"mind" has to stand for the intellectual consciousness itself, and
also for the effects produced on the physical brain by the vibration of that
consciousness ; but we have now to conceive of the intellectual consciousness
as an entity, an individual – a being, the vibrations of whose life are
thoughts, thoughts which are images, not words.
This individual is
Manas, or the Thinker ; (Derived from Manas is the technical name, the mânasic
plane. Englished as "mental." We might call it the plane of the mind
proper, to distinguish its activities from those of the mind working in the
flesh.) –he is the Self, clothed in the matter, and working within the
conditions, of the higher subdivisions of the mental plane. He reveals his
presence on the physical
plane by the vibrations he sets up in the brain and nervous system ; these
respond to the thrills of his life by sympathetic vibrations, but in consequence
of the coarseness of their material they can reproduce only a small section of
his vibrations and even that very imperfectly.
Just as science asserts
the existence of a vast series of etheric vibrations, of which the eye can only
see a small fragment, the solar light spectrum, because it can vibrate only
within certain limits, so can the physical thought-apparatus, the brain and
nervous system, think only a small fragment of the vast series of mental
vibrations set up by the Thinker in his own world.
The most receptive
brains respond up to the point of what we call the great intellectual power ;
the exceptionally receptive brains respond up to the point of what we call
genius ; the exceptionally unreceptive brains respond only up to the point we
call idiocy ; but every one sends beating against his brain
millions of
thought-waves to which it cannot respond, owing to the density of its
materials, and just in proportion to its sensitiveness are the so-called mental
powers of each. But before studying the Thinker, it will be well to consider
his world, the mental plane itself.
The mental plane is that
which is next to the astral, and is separated from it only by differences of
materials, just as the astral is separated from the physical. In fact, we may
repeat what was said as to the astral and the physical with regard to the
mental and the astral. Life on the mental plane is more
active than on the
astral, and form is more plastic. The spirit-matter of that plane is more
highly vitalised and finer than any grade of matter in the astral world. The
ultimate atom of astral matter has innumerable aggregations of the coarsest
mental matter for its encircling sphere-world, so that the disintegration of
the astral atom yields a mass of mental matter of the coarsest
kinds. Under these
circumstances it will be understood that the play of the life-forces on this
plane will be enormously increased in activity, there being so much less mass
to be moved by them.
The matter is in
constant ceaseless motion, taking form under every thrill of
life, and adapting
itself without hesitation to every changing motion.
"Mind-stuff,"
as it has been called, makes astral spirit-matter seem clumsy,
heavy, and lustreless,
although compared with the physical spirit-matter it is
so fairy-light and
luminous. But the law of analogy holds good, and gives us a
clue to guide us through
this super astral region, the region that is our
birthplace and our home,
although, imprisoned in a foreign land, we know it not,
and gaze at descriptions
of it with the eyes of aliens.
Once again here, as on
the two lower planes, the subdivisions of the
spirit-matter of the
plane are seven in number. Once again, these varieties
enter into countless
combinations, of every variety of complexity, yielding the
solids, liquids, gases,
and ethers of the mental plane. The word "solid" seems
indeed absurd, when
speaking of even the most substantial forms of mind-stuff ;
yet as they are dense in
comparison with other kinds of mental materials, and as
we have no descriptive
words save such as are based on physical conditions, we must even use it for
lack of a better.
Enough if we understand
that this plane follows the general law and order of
Nature, which is, for
our globe, the septenary basis, and that the seven
subdivisions of matter
are of lessening densities, relatively to each other, as
the physical solids,
liquids, gases, and ethers ; the seventh, or highest,
subdivision being
composed exclusively of the mental atoms.
These subdivisions are
grouped under two headings, to which the somewhat
inefficient and
unintelligible epithets "formless" and "form" have been
assigned. (Arûpa,
without form: rûpa, form. Rûpa is form, shape, body. ) The
lower four – the first,
second, third, and fourth subdivisions – are grouped
together as "with
form" ; the higher three – the fifth, sixth and seventh
subdivisions – are
grouped as "formless." The grouping is necessary, for the
distinction is a real
one, although one difficult to describe, and the regions
are related in
consciousness to the divisions in the mind itself – as will appear more plainly
a little farther on.
The distinction may
perhaps be best expressed by saying that in the lower four subdivisions the
vibrations of consciousness give rise to forms, to images or pictures, and
every thought appears as a living shape ; whereas in the higher three,
consciousness, though still, of course, setting up vibrations, seems rather to
send them out as a mighty stream of living energy, which does not body itself
into distinct images while it remains in this higher region, but which steps up
a variety of forms all linked by some common condition when it rushes into the
lower worlds.
The nearest analogy that
I can find for the conception I am trying to express is
that of abstract and
concrete thoughts ; an abstract idea of a triangle has no
form, but connotes any
plane figure contained within three right lines, the
angles of which make two
right angles ; such an idea, with conditions but
without shape, thrown
into the lower world, may give birth to a vast variety of
figures, right-angled,
isosceles, scalene, of any colour and size, but all
filling the conditions –
concrete triangles each one with a definite shape of
its own. The
impossibility of giving in words a lucid exposition of the
difference in the action
of consciousness in the two regions is due to the fact
that words are the
symbols of images and belong to the workings of the lower
mind in the brain, and
are based wholly upon those workings ; while the
"formless"
region belongs to the Pure reason, which never works within the
narrow limits of
language.
The mental plane is that
which reflects the Universal Mind in Nature, the plane
which in our little
system corresponds with that of the Great Mind in the
Kosmos. (Mahat, the
Third LOGOS, or Divine Creative Intelligence, the Brahmâ of the Hindus, the
Mandjusri of the Northern Buddhists, the Holy Spirit of the
Christians.) In its higher
regions exist all the archetypal ideas which are now
in course of concrete
evolution, and in its lower the working out of these into
successive forms, to be
duly reproduced in the astral and physical worlds.
Its materials are
capable of combining under the impulse of thought vibrations,
and can give rise to any
combination which thought can construct ; as iron can
be made into a spade for
digging or into a sword for slaying, so can mind-stuff
be shaped into
thought-forms that help or injure ; the vibrating life of the
Thinker shapes the
materials around him, and according to his volitions so is
his work. In that region
thought and action, will and deed, are one and the same
thing – spirit-matter
here becomes the obedient servant of the life, adapting
itself to every creative
motion.
These vibrations, which
shape the matter of the plane into thought-forms, give
rise also from their
swiftness and subtlety to the most exquisite and constantly
changing colours, waves
of varying shades like the rainbow hues of
mother-of-pearl,
etherialised and brightened to an indescribable extent,
sweeping over and
through every form, so that each presents a harmony of
rippling, living,
luminous, delicate colours, including many not ever known to
earth.
Words can give no idea
of the exquisite beauty and radiance shown in
combinations of this
subtle matter, instinct with life and motion. Every seer
who has witnessed it,
Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, speaks in rapturous terms of
its glorious beauty, and
ever confesses his utter inability to describe it;
words seem but to
coarsen and deprave it, however deftly woven in its praise.
Thought-forms naturally
play a large part among the living creatures that
function on the mental
plane. They resemble those with which we are already
familiar in the astral
world, save that they are far more radiant and more
brilliantly coloured,
are stronger, more lasting, and more fully vitalised. As
the higher intellectual
qualities become more clearly marked, these forms show
very sharply defined
outlines, and there is a tendency to a singular perfection
of geometrical figures
accompanied by an equally singular purity of luminous
colour. But, needless to
say at the present stage of humanity, there is a vast
preponderance of cloudy
and irregularly shaped thoughts, the production of the
ill-trained minds of the
majority.
Rarely beautiful
artistic thoughts are also here encountered, and it is little
wonder that painters who
have caught, in dreamy vision, some glimpse of their
ideal, often fret
against their incapacity to reproduce its glowing beauty in
earth’s dull pigments.
These thought-forms are built out of the elemental
essence of the plane,
the vibrations of the thought throwing the elemental
essence into a corresponding
shape, and this shape having the thought as its
informing life. Thus
again we have "artificial elementals" created in a way
identical with that by
which they come into being in the astral regions. All
that is said in Chapter
II of their generation and of their importance may be
repeated of those of the
mental plane, with here the additional responsibility
on their creators of the
greater force and permanence belonging to those of this
higher world.
The elemental essence of
the mental plane is formed by the Monad in the stage of its descent immediately
preceding its entrance into the astral world, and it
constitutes the second
elemental kingdom, existing on the four lower
subdivisions of the
mental plane. The three higher subdivisions, the "formless,"
are occupied by the
first elemental kingdom, the elemental essence there being
thrown by thought into
brilliant coruscations, coloured streams, and flashes of
living fire, instead of
into definite shapes, taking as it were its first
lessons in combined
action, but not yet assuming definite limitations of forms.
On the mental plane, in
both its great divisions, exist numberless
Intelligences, whose
lowest bodies are formed of the luminous matter and elemental essence of that
plane – Shining ones who guide the processes of natural order, overlooking the
hosts of lower entities before spoken of, and yielding submission in their
several hierarchies to their great overlords of the seven Elements. (These are
the Arûpa and Rûpa Devas of the Hindus and the Buddhists, the "Lords of
the heavenly and the earthly" of the Zoroastrians, the
Archangels and Angels of
the Christians and Mahomedans).
They are, as may readily
be imagined, beings of vast knowledge, of great power,
and most splendid in
appearance, radiant, flashing creatures, myriad-hued, like
rainbows of changing
supernal colours, of stateliest mien, calm energy
incarnate, embodiments
of resistless strength. The description of the great
Christian Seer leaps to
mind, when he wrote of a mighty angel: "A rainbow was
upon his head, and his
face was imperial as it were the sun, and his feet as
pillars of fire.(
Revelation, x, 1). "As the sound of many waters" are their
voices, as echoes from
the music of the spheres. They guide natural order, and
rule the vast companies
of the elementals of the astral world, so that their
cohorts carry on
ceaselessly the processes of nature with undeviating regularity
and accuracy.
On the lower mental
plane are seen many Chelâs at work in their mental bodies,
(Usually called Mâyâvi
Rûpa, or illusory body, when arranged for independent
functioning in the
mental world.) --- freed for a time from their physical
vestures. When the body
is wrapped in deep sleep the true man, the Thinker, may escape from it, and
work untrammelled by its weight in these higher regions.
From here he can aid and
comfort his fellowmen by acting directly on their
minds, suggesting
helpful thoughts, putting before them noble ideas, more
effectively and speedily
than he can do when encased in the body. He can see
their needs more clearly
and therefore can supply them more perfectly, and it is
his highest privilege
and joy thus to minister to his struggling brothers, without their knowledge of
his service or any ideas of theirs as to the strong arm that lifts their
burden, or the soft voice that whispers solace in their pain.
Unseen, unrecognised, he
works, serving his enemies as gladly and as freely as
his friends, dispensing
to individuals the stream of beneficent forces that are
poured down from the
great Helpers in higher spheres. Here also are sometimes
seen the glorious
figures of the Masters, though for the most part They reside
on the highest level of
the "formless" division of the mental plane ; and other
Great Ones may also
sometimes come hither on some mission of compassion
requiring such lower
manifestation.
Communication between
intelligences functioning consciously on this plane,
whether human or
non-human, whether in or out of the body, is practically
instantaneous, for it is
with:the "speed of thought." Barriers of space have
here no power to divide,
and any soul can come into touch with any one by merely directing his attention
to him.
Not only is
communication thus swift, but it is also complete, if the souls are
at about the same stage
of evolution ; no words fetter and obstruct the
communion, but the whole
thought flashes from the one to the other, or, perhaps
more exactly, each sees
the thought as conceived by the other. The real barriers
between souls are the
differences of evolution ; the less evolved can know only
as much of the more
highly evolved as his is able to respond to ; the limitation
can obviously be felt
only by the higher one, as the lesser has all that he can
contain.
The more evolved a soul,
the more does he know of all around him, the nearer
does he approach to
realities ; but the mental plane has also its veils of
illusion, it must be
remembered, though they be far fewer and thinner than those
of the astral and the
physical worlds. Each soul has its own mental atmosphere,
and, as all impressions
must come through this atmosphere, they are all
distorted and coloured.
The clearer and purer, the atmosphere, and the less it
is coloured by the personality,
the fewer are the illusions that can befall it.
The three highest
subdivisions of the mental plane are the habitat of the
Thinker himself, and he
dwells on one or other of these, according to the stage
of his evolution. The
vast majority live on the lowest level, in various stages
of evolution ; a
comparatively few of the highly intellectual dwell on the
second level, the
Thinker ascending thither – to use a phrase more suitable to
the physical than to the
mental plane – when the subtler matter of that region
preponderates in him,
and thus necessitates the change ; there is of course, no
"ascending,"
no change of place, but he receives the vibrations of that subtler
matter, being able to
respond to them, and he himself is able to send out forces
that throw its rare
particles into vibration.
The student should
familiarise himself with the fact that rising in the scale of
evolution does not move
him from place to place, but renders him more and more able to receive
impressions. Every sphere is around us, the astral, the mental, the buddhic,
the nirvânic, and worlds higher yet, the life of the supreme God ; we need not
stir to find them, for they are here; but our dull unreceptivity
shuts them out more
effectively than millions of miles of mere space.
We are conscious only of
that which affects us, which stirs us to responsive
vibration, and as we
become more and more receptive, as we draw into ourself
finer and finer matter,
we come into contact with subtler and subtler worlds.
Hence, rising from one
level to another means that we are weaving our vestures
of finer materials and
can receive through them the contacts of finer worlds ;
and it means further
that in the Self within these vestures diviner powers are
waking from latency into
activity, and are sending out their subtler thrills of
life.
At the stage now reached
by the Thinker, he is fully conscious of his
surroundings and is in
possession of the memory of his past. He knows the bodies he is wearing,
through which he is contacting the lower planes, and he is able to influence
and guide them to a great extent. He sees the difficulties, the
obstacles, they are
approaching – the results of past careless living – and he
sets himself to pour
into them energies by which they may be better equipped for their task.
His direction is
sometimes felt in the lower consciousness as an imperiously
compelling force that
will have its way, and that impels to a course of action
for which all the
reasons may not be clear to the dimmer vision caused by the
mental and astral
garments. Men who have done great deeds have occasionally left on record their
consciousness of an inner and compelling power, which seemed to leave them no
choice save to do as they had done. They were then acting as the real man ; the
Thinkers, that are the inner men, were doing the work consciously through the
bodies that then were fulfilling their proper functions as vehicles of the
individual. To these higher powers all will come as evolution proceeds.
On the third level of
the upper region of the mental plane dwell the Egos of the
Masters, and of the
Initiates who are Their Chelâs, the Thinkers having here a
preponderance of the
matter of this region in their bodies. From this world of
subtlest mental forces
the Masters carry on Their beneficent work for humanity,
raining down noble
ideals, inspiring thoughts, devotional aspirations, streams
of spiritual and
intellectual help for men.
Every force there
generated, rays out in myriad directions, and the noblest,
purest souls catch most
readily these helpful influences. A discovery flashes
into the mind of the
patient searcher into Nature’s secrets ; a new melody
entrances the ear of the
great musician ; the answer to a long studied problem
illumines the intellect
of a lofty philosopher ; a new energy of hope and love
suffuses the heart of an
unwearied philanthropist. Yet men think that they are
left uncared for,
although the very phrases they use ; "the thought occurred to
me; the idea came to me;
the discovery flashed on me " unconsciously testify to
the truth known to their
inner selves though the outer eyes be blind.
Let us now turn to the
study of the Thinker and his vestures as they are found
in men on earth. The
body of the consciousness, conditioning it in the four
lower subdivisions of
the mental plane – the mental body, as we term it – is
formed of combinations
of the matter of these subdivisions. The Thinker, the
individual, Human Soul –
formed in the way described in the latter part of this
chapter – when he is
coming into incarnation, first radiates forth some of his
energy in vibrations
that attract round him, and clothe him in, matter drawn
from the four lower
subdivisions of his own plane.
According to the nature
of the vibrations are the kinds of matter they attract ;
the finer kinds answer
the swifter vibrations and take form under their impulse
; the coarser kinds
similarly answer the slower ones ; just as a wire will
sympathetically sound
out a note – i.e., a given number of vibrations – coming
from a wire similar in
weight and tension to itself, but will remain dumb amid a
chorus of notes from
wires dissimilar to itself in these respects, so do the
different kinds of matter
assort themselves in answer to different kinds of
vibrations. Exactly
according to the vibrations sent out by the Thinker will be
the nature of the mental
body that he thus draws around him, and this mental
body is what is called
the lower mind, the lower Manas, because it is the
Thinker clothed in the
matter of the lower subdivisions of the mental plane and
conditioned by it in his
further working.
None of his energies
which are too subtle to move this matter, too swift for its
response, can express
themselves through it ; he is therefore limited by it,
conditioned by it,
restricted by it in his expression of himself. It is the first of his
prison-houses during his incarnate life, and while his energies are acting
within it he is largely shut off from his own higher world, for his attention
is with the outgoing energies and his life is thrown with them into the mental
body, often spoken as a vesture, or sheath, or vehicle – any expression will
serve which connotes the idea that the Thinker is not the mental body, but
formed it and uses it in order to express as much of himself as he can in the
lower mental region.
It must not be forgotten
that his energies, still pulsing outwards, draw round
him also the coarser
matter of the astral plane as his astral body ; and during
his incarnate life the
energies that express themselves through the lower kinds
of mental matter are so
readily changed by it into the slower vibrations that
are responded to by
astral matter that the two bodies are continually vibrating
together, and become
very closely interwoven ; the coarser the kinds of matter
built into the mental
body, the more intimate becomes this union, so that the
two bodies are sometimes
classed together and even taken as one.( Thus the
Theosophist will speak
of Kâma Manas, meaning the mind as working in and with the desire nature,
affecting and affected by the animal nature. The Vedântin
classes the two
together, and speaks of the Self as working in the
Manomayakosha, the
sheath composed of the lower mind, emotions, and passions.
The European
psychologist makes "feelings" one section of his tripartite
division of
"mind", and includes under feelings both emotions and sensations.)
When we come to study
Reincarnation we shall find this fact assuming vital
importance.
According to the stage
of evolution reached by the man will be the type of
mental body he forms on
his way to become again incarnate, and we may study, as we did with the astral
body, the respective mental bodies of three types of men
a) an undeveloped man
b) an average man
c) a spiritually
advanced man.
In the undeveloped man
the mental body is but little perceptible, a small
amount of unorganised
mental matter, chiefly from the lowest subdivisions of
the plane, being all
that represents it. This is played on almost entirely
from the lower bodies,
being set vibrating feebly by the astral storms raised
by the contacts with
material objects through the sense organs. Except when
stimulated by these
astral vibrations it remains almost quiescent, and even
under their impulses its
responses are sluggish. No definite activity is
generated from within,
these blows from the outer world being necessary to
arouse any distinct
response.
The more violent the
blows, the better for the progress of the man, for each
responsive vibration
aids in the embryonic development of the mental body.
Riotous pleasure, anger,
rage, pain, terror, all these passions, causing whirlwinds in the astral body,
awaken faint vibrations in the mental, and gradually these vibrations, stirring
into commencing activity the mental consciousness, cause it to add something of
its own to the impressions made on it from without.
We have seen that the
mental body is so closely mingled with the astral that
they act as a single
body, but the dawning mental faculties add to the astral
passions a certain
strength and quality not apparent in them when they work as
purely animal qualities.
The impressions made on the mental body are more
permanent than those
made on the astral, and they are consciously reproduced
by it. Here memory and
the organ of imagination begin, and the latter
gradually moulds itself,
the images from the outer world working on the matter
of the mental body and
forming its materials into their own likeness.
These images, born of
the contacts of the senses, draw round themselves the
coarsest mental matter;
the dawning powers of consciousness reproduce these
images, and thus
accumulate a store of pictures that begin to stimulate action
initiated from within,
from the wish to experience again through the outer
organs the vibrations
that were found pleasant, and to avoid those productive
of pain.
The mental body then
begins to stimulate the astral, and to arouse in it the
desires that, in the
animal, slumber until awakened by a physical stimulus ;
hence we see in the
undeveloped man a persistent pursuit of sense-gratification never found in the
lower animals, a lust, a cruelty, a calculation, to which they are strangers.
The dawning powers of the mind, yoked to the service of the senses, make of man
a far more dangerous and savage brute than any animal, and the stronger and
more subtle forces inherent in the mental-spiritual matter lend to the
passion-nature an energy and a keenness that we do not find in the animal
world.
But these very excesses
lead to their own correction by the sufferings which
they cause, and these
resultant experiences play upon the consciousness and
set up new images on
which the imagination works. These stimulate the
consciousness to resist
many of the vibrations that reach it by way of the
astral body from the
external world, and to exercise its volition in holding
the passions back
instead of giving them free rein.
Such resistant vibrations
are set up in, and attract towards, the mental body,
finer combinations of
mind-stuff and tend also to expel from it the coarser
combinations that
vibrate responsively to the passional notes set up in the
astral body ; by this
struggle between the vibrations set up by passion-images
and the vibrations set
up by the imaginative reproduction of past experiences,
the mental body grows,
begins to develop a definite organisation, and to
exercise more and more
initiative as regards external activities.
While the earth life is
spent gathering experiences, the intermediate life is spent assimilating them,
as we shall see in detail in the following chapter, so that in each return to
earth the Thinker has an increased stock of faculties to take shape as his
mental body. Thus the undeveloped man, whose mind is the slave of his passions,
grows into the average man, whose mind is a battleground in which passions and
mental powers wage war with varying success, about balanced in their forces,
but who is gradually gaining the mastery over his lower nature.
In the average man, the
mental body is much increased in size, shows a certain
amount of organisation,
and contains a fair proportion of matter drawn from
the second, third, and
fourth subdivisions of the mental plane. The general law which regulates all
the building up and modifying of the mental body may here be fitly studied,
though it is the same principle already seen working in the lower realms of the
astral and physical worlds.
Exercise increases,
disuse atrophies and finally destroys. Every vibration set up in the mental
body causes changes in its constituents, throwing out of it, in the part
affected, the matter that cannot vibrate sympathetically, and replacing it by
suitable materials drawn from the practically illimitable store around. The
more a series of vibrations is repeated, the more does the part affected by
them increase in development ; hence, it may be noted in passing, the injury
done to the mental body by over-specialisation of mental energies.
Such mistaken direction
of these powers causes a lopsided development of the
mental body ; it becomes
proportionately over developed in the region in which
these forces are
continually playing and proportionately undeveloped in other
parts, perhaps equally
important. A harmonious and proportionate all-round
development is the
object to be sought, and for this we need a calm self-analysis and a definite
direction of means to ends. A knowledge of this law, further explains certain
familiar experiences, and affords a sure hope of progress. When a new study is
commenced, or a change in favour of high morality is initiated, the early
stages are found to be fraught with difficulties ; sometimes the effort is even
abandoned because the obstacles in the way of its success appear to be
insurmountable.
At the beginning of any
new mental undertaking, the whole automatism of the
mental body opposes it ;
the materials habituated to vibrate in a particular
way, cannot accommodate
themselves to the new impulses, and the early stage
consists chiefly of
sending out thrills of force which are frustrated, so far
as setting up vibrations
in the mental body are concerned, but which are the
necessary preliminary to
any such sympathetic vibrations, as they shake out of
the body the old
refractory materials and draw into it the sympathetic kinds.
During this process, the
man is not conscious of any progress; he is conscious
only of the frustration
of his efforts and of the dull resistance he encounters. Presently, if he
persists, as the newly attracted materials begin to function, he succeeds
better in his attempts, and at last, when all the old materials are expelled
and the new are working, he finds himself succeeding without an effort, and his
object is accomplished.
The critical time is
during the first stage ; but if he trust in the law, as sure in its working as
every other law in Nature, and persistently repeat his efforts, he must succeed
; and a knowledge of this fact may cheer him when otherwise he would be sinking
in despair. In this way, then, the average man may work on, finding with joy
that as he steadily resists the promptings of the lower nature he is conscious
they are losing their power over him, for he is expelling from his mental body
all the materials that are capable of being thrown into sympathetic vibrations.
Thus the mental body gradually comes to be composed of the finer constituents
of the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane, until it has become radiant
and exquisitely beautiful form which is the mental body of the –
Spiritually developed
man. From this body all the coarser combinations have
been eliminated, so that
the objects of the senses no longer find in it, or in
the astral body
connected with it, materials that respond sympathetically to
their vibrations. It
contains only the finer combinations belonging to each of
the four subdivisions of
the lower mental world, and of these again the
materials of the third
and fourth sub-planes very much predominate in its
composition over the
materials of the second and first, making it responsive
to all the higher
workings of the intellect, to the delicate contacts of the
higher arts, to all the
pure thrills of loftier emotions.
Such a body enables the
Thinker who is clothed in it to express himself much
more fully in the lower
mental region and in the astral and physical worlds ;
its materials are
capable of a far wider range of responsive vibrations, and
the impulses from a
loftier realm mould it into nobler and subtler organisation.
Such a body is rapidly
becoming ready to reproduce every impulse from the Thinker which is capable of
expression on the lower subdivisions of the mental plane ; it is growing into a
perfect instrument for activities in this lower mental world.
A clear understanding of
the nature of the mental body would much modify
modern education, and
would make it far more serviceable to the Thinker than
it is at present. The
general characteristics of this body depend on the past
lives of the Thinker on
earth, as will be thoroughly understood when we have
studied Reincarnation
and Karma. The body is constituted on the mental plane,
and its materials depend
on the qualities that the Thinker has garnered within
himself as the results
of his past experiences.
All that education can
do is to provide such external stimuli as shall arouse and encourage the growth
of the useful faculties he already possesses, and stunt and help in the
eradication of those that are undesirable. The drawing out of these inborn
faculties, and not the cramming of the mind with facts, is the object of true
education.
Nor need memory be
cultivated as a separate faculty, for memory depends on attention – that is on
the steady concentration of the mind on the subject studied – and on the
natural affinity between the subject and the mind. If the subject be liked –
that is, if the mind has a capacity for it – memory will not fail, provided due
attention be paid. Therefore education should cultivate the habit of steady
concentration, of sustained attention, and should be directed according to the
inborn faculties of the pupil.
Let us now pass into the
"formless" divisions of the mental plane, the region
which is man’s true home
during the cycle of his reincarnations, into which he
is born, a baby soul, an
infant Ego, an embryonic individuality, when he begins his purely human
evolution.( See Chapters VII and VIII, on "Reincarnation").
The outline of this Ego,
the Thinker, is oval in shape, and hence H.P. Blavatsky speaks of this body of
Manas which endures throughout all his incarnations as the Auric Egg. Formed of
the matter of the three highest subdivisions of the mental plane, it is
exquisitely fine, a film of rarest subtlety, even at its first inception ; and,
as it develops, it becomes a radiant object of supernal glory and beauty, the
shining One, as it has been aptly named. ( This is the Augœides of the
Neo-Platonists, the "spiritual body" of St. Paul).
What is this Thinker? He
is the divine Self, as already said, limited, or
individualised, by this
subtle body drawn from the materials of the "formless"
region of the mental
plane. (The Self, working in the Vignyânamayakosha, the
sheath of discriminative
knowledge, according to the Vedântic classification).
This matter – drawn
around a ray of the Self, a living beam of the one Light
and Life of the universe
– shuts off this ray from its Source, so far as the
external world is
concerned, encloses it within a filmy shell of itself, and so makes it "an
individual." The life is the Life of the LOGOS, but all the powers of that
Life are lying latent, concealed ; everything is there potentially, germinally,
as the tree is hidden within the tiny germ in the seed.
This seed is dropped
into the soil of human life that its latent forces may be
quickened into activity
by the sun of joy and the rain of tears, and he fed by
the juices of the
life-soil that we call experience, until the germ grows into a mighty tree, the
image of its generating Sire. Human evolution is the evolution of the Thinker;
he takes on bodies on the lower mental and astral, and the physical planes,
wears then through earthly, astral, lower mental life, dropping them successively
at the regular stages of this life-cycle as he passes from world to world, but
ever storing up within himself the fruits he has gathered by their use on each
plane.
At first, as little
conscious as a baby’s earthly body, he almost slept through life after life,
till the experiences playing on him from without awakened some of his latent
forces into activity; but gradually he assumed more and more part in the
direction of his life, until, with manhood reached, he took his life into his
own hands, and an ever-increasing control over his future destiny.
The growth of the
permanent body which, with the divine consciousness, forms the Thinker is
extremely slow. Its technical name is the causal body, because he
gathers up within it the
results of all experiences, and these act as causes,
moulding future lives.
It is the only permanent one among the bodies during
incarnation, the mental,
the astral, and physical bodies being reconstituted for
each fresh life ; as
each perishes in turn, it hands on its harvest to the one
above it, and thus all
the harvests are finally stored in the permanent body ;
when the Thinker returns
to incarnation he sends out his energies, constituted
of these harvests, on each
successive plane, and thus draws round him a anew
body after body suitable
to his past.
The growth of the causal
body itself, as said, is very slow, for it can vibrate
only in answer to
impulses that can be expressed in the very subtle matter of
which it is composed,
thus weaving them into the texture of its being. Hence the
passions, which play so
large a part in the early stages of human evolution,
cannot directly affect
its growth. The Thinker can work into himself only the
experiences that can be
reproduced in the vibrations of the causal body, and
these must belong to the
mental region, and be highly intellectual or loftily
moral in their character
; other wise its subtle matter can give no sympathetic
vibration in answer.
A very little reflection
will convince any one how little material, suitable for
the growth of this lofty
body, he affords by his daily life ; hence the slowness
of evolution, the little
progress made. The Thinker should have more of himself
to put out in each successive
life, and, when this is the case, evolution goes
swiftly forward.
Persistence in evil courses reacts in a kind of indirect way on
the causal body, and
does more harm than the mere retardation of growth ; it
seems after a long time
to cause a certain incapacity to respond to the
vibrations set up by the
opposite good, and thus to delay growth for a
considerable period
after the evil has been renounced.
Directly to injure the
causal body, evil of a highly intellectual and refined
kind is necessary, the
"spiritual evil" mentioned in the various Scriptures of
the world. This is
fortunately rare, rare as spiritual good, and found only
among the highly
progressed, whether they be following the Right-hand or the
Left-hand Path. (The Right-hand
Path is that which leads to divine manhood, to
Adeptship used in the
service of the worlds. The Left-hand Path is that which
also leads to Adeptship,
but to Adeptship that is used to frustrate the progress
of evolution and is
turned to selfish individual ends. They are sometimes called
the White and Black
Paths respectively.)
The habitat of the
Thinker, of the Eternal Man, is on the fifth subplane, the
lowest level of the
"formless" region of the mental plane. The great masses of
mankind are here, scarce
yet awake, still in the infancy of their life. The
Thinker develops
consciousness slowly, as his energies, playing on the lower
planes, there gather
experience, which is indrawn with these energies as they
return to him
treasure-laden with the harvest of life. This eternal Man, the
individualised Self, is
the actor in every body that he wears ; it is his
presence that gives the
feeling of " I " alike to body and mind, the " I " being
that which is
self-conscious and which, by illusion, identifies itself with that
vehicle in which it is
most actively energising.
To the man of the senses
the " I " is the physical body and the desire nature ;
he draws from these his
enjoyment, and he thinks of these as himself, for his
life is in them. To the
scholar the " I " is the mind, for in its exercise lies
his joy and therein his
life is concentrated. Few can rise to the abstract
heights of spiritual
philosophy, and feel this Eternal Man as " I ", with memory
ranging back over past
lives and hopes ranging forward over future births.
The physiologists tell
us that if we cut the finger we do not really feel the
pain there where the
blood is flowing, but that pain is felt in the brain, and
is by imagination thrown
outwards to the place of the injury ; the feeling of
pain in the finger is,
they say an illusion ; it is put by imagination at the
point of contact with
the object causing the injury ; so also will a man feel
pain in an amputated
limb, or rather in the space the limb used to occupy.
Similarly does the one
" I ", the Inner Man, feel suffering and joy in the
sheaths which enwrap
him, at the points of contact with the external world, and
feels the sheath to be
himself, knowing not that this feeling is an illusion,
and that he is the sole
actor and experiencer in each sheath.
Let us now consider, in
this light, the relations between the higher and lower
mind and their action on
the brain. The mind, Manas, the Thinker, is one, and is
the Self in the causal
body; it is the source of innumerable energies, of
vibrations of
innumerable kinds. These it sends out, raying outwards from
itself. The subtlest and
finest of these are expressed in the matter of the
causal body, which alone
is fine enough to respond to them ; they form what we
call the Pure Reason,
whose thoughts are abstract, whose method of gaining
knowledge is intuition ;
its very "nature is knowledge," and it recognises truth
at sight as congruous
with itself.
Less subtle vibrations
pass outwards, attracting the matter of the lower mental
region, and these are
the Lower Manas, or lower mind – the coarser energies of
the higher expressed in
denser matter ; these we call the intellect, comprising
reason, judgement,
imagination, comparison, and the other mental faculties ; its
thoughts are concrete,
and its method is logic ; it argues, it reasons, it
infers. These
vibrations, acting through astral matter on the etheric brain, and
by that on the dense
physical brain, set up vibrations therein, which are the
heavy and slow
reproductions of themselves – heavy and slow, because the
energies lose much of
their swiftness in moving the heavier matter.
This feebleness of
response when a vibration is initiated in a rare medium and
then passes into a dense
one is familiar to every student of physics. Strike a
bell in air and it
sounds clearly ; strike it in hydrogen, and let the hydrogen
vibrations have to set
up the atmospheric waves, and how faint the result.
Equally feeble are the
workings of the brain in response to the swift and subtle
impacts of the mind ;
yet that is all that the vast majority know as their
"consciousness."
The immense importance
of the mental workings of this "consciousness" is due to the fact
that it is the only medium whereby the Thinker can gather the harvest
of experience by which
he grows. While it is dominated by the passions it runs
riot, and he is left
unnourished and therefore unable to develop ; while it is
occupied wholly in
mental activities concerned with the outer world, it can
arouse only his lower
energies; only as he is able to impress on it the true object of its life, does
it commence to fulfil its most valuable functions of gathering what will arouse
and nourish his higher energies.
As the Thinker develops
he becomes more and more conscious of his own inherent powers, and also of the
workings of his energies on the lower planes, of the bodies which those
energies have drawn around him. He at last begins to try to influence them,
using his memory of the past to guide his will, and these
impressions we call
"conscience" when they deal with morals and "flashes of
intuition " when
they enlighten the intellect.
When these impressions
are continuous enough to be normal, we speak of their
aggregate as
"genius." The higher evolution of the Thinker is marked by his
increasing control over
his lower vehicles, by their increasing susceptibility
to his influence, and
their increasing contributions to growth. Those who would
deliberately aid in this
evolution may do so by a careful training of the lower
mind and of the moral
character, by steady and well directed effort.
The habit of quiet,
sustained, and sequential thought, directed to non-worldly
subjects, of meditation,
of study, develops the mind-body and renders it a
better instrument ; the
effort to cultivate abstract thinking is also useful, as
this raises the lower
mind towards the higher, and draws into it the subtlest
materials of the lower
mental plane.
In these and cognate
ways all may actively co-operate in their own higher
evolution, each step
forward making the succeeding steps more rapid. No effort,
not even the smallest,
is lost, but is followed by its full effect, and every
contribution gathered
and handed inwards is stored in the treasure-house of the
causal body for future
use. Thus evolution, however slow and halting, is yet
ever onwards, and the
divine Life, ever unfolding in every soul, slowly subdues
all things to itself.
The word Devachan is the
theosophical name for heaven, and, literally translated, means the shining
land, or the Land of the Gods. ( Devasthan, the place of the Gods, is the
Sanskrit equivalent. It is the Svarga of the Hindus ; the Sukhâvati of the
Buddhists ; the Heaven of the Zoroastrians and Christians,
and of the less
materialised among the Mohammedans). It is a specially guarded part of the mental
plane, whence all sorrow and all evil are excluded by the action of the great
spiritual Intelligences who superintend human evolution ; and it is inhabited
by human beings who have cast off their physical and astral bodies, and who
pass into it when their stay in Kâmaloka is completed.
The devachanic
life consists of two stages, of which the first is passed in the four lower
subdivisions of the mental plane, in which the Thinker still wears the mental
body and is conditioned by it, being employed in assimilating the materials
gathered by it during the earth-life from which he has just emerged.
The second stage is
spent in the "formless world," the Thinker escaping from the mental
body, and living in his own
unencumbered life in the
full measure of the self-consciousness and knowledge to which he has attained.
The total length of time
spent in Devachan
depends upon the amount of material for the Devachanic
life which the soul has brought with it from its life on earth. The harvest of
the fruit for consumption and assimilation in Devachan consists of all
the pure thoughts and emotions generated during earth-life, all
the intellectual and
moral efforts and aspirations, all the memories of useful work and plans for
human service – everything which is capable of being worked into mental and
moral faculty, thus assisting in the evolution of the soul.
Not one is lost, however
feeble, however fleeting ; but selfish animal passions cannot enter, there
being no material in which they can be expressed. Nor does all the evil in the
past life, though it may largely preponderate over the good, prevent the full
reaping of whatever scant harvest of good there may have been ; the scantiness
of the harvest may render the devachanic life very
brief, but the most depraved, if he has had any faint longings after the right,
any stirrings of tenderness, must have a period of devachanic life in which
the seed of good may put forth its tender shoots, in which the spark of good
may be gently fanned into a tiny flame.
In the past, when men
lived with their hearts largely fixed on heaven and directed their lives with a
view to enjoying its bliss, the period spent in Devachan was very long,
lasting sometimes for many thousands of years ; at the present time, men’s
minds being so much more centred on earth, and so few of their thoughts
comparatively being directed towards the higher life, their devachanic periods are
correspondingly shortened.
Similarly, the time
spent in the higher and lower regions of the mental plane ( Called technically
the Arûpa and Rûpa Devachan
– existing on the arûpa and rûpa levels of the mental plane ) respectively is
proportionate to the amount of thought generated severally in the mental and
causal bodies ; All the thoughts belonging to the personal self, to the life
just closed – with all its ambitions, interests, loves, hopes, and fears – all
these have their fruition in the Devachan where forms are
found ; while those belonging to the higher mind, to the regions of abstract,
impersonal thinking, have to be worked out in the "formless" devachanic region. The
majority of people only just enter that lofty region to pass swiftly out again ; some spend there a large portion of their devachanic existence ; a
few spend there almost the whole.
Ere entering into any
details let us try to grasp some of the leading ideas which govern the devachanic life, for it is
so different from physical life that any description of it is apt to mislead by
its very strangeness. People realise so little of their mental life, even as
led in the body, that when they are presented with a picture of mental life out
of the body they lose all sense of reality, and feel as though they had passed
into a world of dream.
The first thing to grasp
is that mental life is far more intense, vivid, and nearer to reality than the
life of the senses. Everything we see and touch and hear and taste and handle
down here is two removes farther from the reality than everything we contact in
Devachan. We do not even
see things as they are, but the things that we see down here have two more
veils of illusion enveloping them. Our sense of reality here is an entire
delusion ; we know nothing of things, of people, as they are ; all that we know
of them are the impressions they make on our senses, and the conclusions, often
erroneous, which our reason deduces from the aggregate of these impressions. Get
and put side by side the ideas of a man held by his father, his closest friend,
the girl who adores him, his rival in business, his deadliest enemy, and a
casual acquaintance, and see how incongruous the pictures.
Each can only give the
impressions made on his own mind, and how far are they from the reality of what
the man is, seen by the eyes that pierces all veils and behold the whole man.
We know of each of our friends the impressions they make on us, and these are
strictly limited by our capacity to receive ; a child may
have as his father a
great statesman of lofty purpose and imperial aims, but that guide of nation’s
destinies is to him only his merriest play fellow, his most enticing
storyteller.
We live in the midst of
illusions, but we have the feeling of reality, and this yields us content. In Devachan we shall also be
surrounded by illusions – though, as said, two removes nearer to reality – and
there also we shall have a similar feeling of reality which will yield us
content.
The illusions of earth,
though lessened, are not escaped from in the lower heavens, though contact is
more real and more immediate. For it must never be forgotten that these heavens
are part of a great evolutionary scheme, and, until man has found the real
Self, his own unreality makes him subject to illusions.
One thing however, which
produces the feeling of reality in earth-life and of unreality when we study Devachan, is that we look
at earth-life from within, under the full sway of its illusions, while we
contemplate Devachan
from outside, free for the time from its veil of Mâyâ.
In Devachan the process is
reversed, and its inhabitants feel their own life to be the real one and look
on the earth-life as full of the most patent illusions and misconceptions. On
the whole, they are nearer to the truth than the physical critics of their
heaven-world.
Next, the Thinker –
being clad only in the mental body and being in the
untrammelled exercise of
its powers – manifests the creative nature of these
powers in a way and to
an extent that down here we can hardly realise. On earth
a painter, a sculptor, a
musician, dreams, dreams of exquisite beauty, creating
their visions by the
powers of the mind ; but when they seek to embody them in
the coarse materials of
earth they fall far short of the mental creation. The
marble is too resistant
for perfect form, the pigments to muddy for perfect
colour.
In heaven, all they
think, is at once reproduced in form, for the rare and
subtle matter of the
heaven-world is mind stuff, the medium in which the mind
normally works when free
from passion, and it takes shape with every mental
impulse. Each man,
therefore, in a very real sense, makes his own heaven, and
the beauty of his
surroundings is definitely increased, according to the wealth
and energy of his mind.
As the soul develops his powers, his heaven grows more and more subtle and
exquisite; all the limitations in heaven are self-created,
and heaven expands and
deepens with the expansion and deepening of the soul.
While the soul is weak
and selfish, narrow and ill-developed, his heaven shares
these pettinesses; but
it is always the best that is in the soul, however poor
that best may be. As the
man evolves, his devachanic lives become fuller,
richer, more and more
real, and advanced souls come into ever closer and closer
contact with each other,
enjoying wider and deeper intercourse.
A life on earth, thin,
feeble, vapid, and narrow, mentally and morally, produces
a comparatively thin, feeble, vapid and narrow life in Devachan, where only the
mental and the moral
survive. We cannot have more than we are, and our harvest
is according to our
sowing. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked ; for whatsoever a man soweth,
that,"- and neither more nor less, - "shall he also reap." Our
indolence and greediness would fain reap where we have not sown, but in this
universe of law, the Good Law, mercifully just, brings to each the exact wages
of his work.
The mental impressions,
or mental pictures, we make of our friends will dominate us in Devachan. Round each soul
throng those he loved in life, and every image of the loved ones that live in
the heart becomes a living companion of the soul in heaven. And they are
unchanged. They will be to us there as they were here, and no otherwise. The
outer semblance of our friend as it affected our senses, we form out of mind-stuff
in Devachan by the
creative powers of the mind; what was here a mental picture is there – as in
truth it was here, although we knew it not – an objective shape in living
mind-stuff, abiding in our own mental atmosphere ;
only what is dull and dreamy here is forcibly living and vivid
there.
And with regard to the
true communion, that of the soul with soul? That is
closer, nearer, dearer
than anything we know here, for, as we have seen, there
is no barrier on the
mental plane between soul and soul; exactly in proportion
to the reality of the
soul-life in us is the reality of soul-communion there ;
the mental image of our
friend is our own creation ; his form is as we knew and
loved it ; and his soul
breathes through that form to ours just to the extent
that his soul and ours
can throb in sympathetic vibration.
But we can have no touch
with those we knew on earth if the ties were only of
the physical or astral
body, or if they and we were discordant in the inner life
; therefore
into our Devachan
no enemy can enter, for sympathetic accord of
minds and hearts can
alone draw men together there. Separateness of heart and
mind means separation in
the heavenly life, for all that is lower than the heart
and mind can find no
means of expression there. With those who are far beyond us in evolution we
come into contact just as far as we can respond to them ; great ranges of their
being will stretch beyond our ken, but all that we can touch is ours. Further,
these greater ones can and do aid us in the heavenly life, under
conditions we shall
study presently, helping us to grow towards them, and thus
be able to receive more
and more. There is then no separation by space or time,
but there is separation
by absence of sympathy, by lack of accord between hearts and minds.
In heaven we are with
all whom we love and with all whom we admire, and we
commune with them to the
limit of our capacity, or, if we are more advanced, of
theirs. We meet them in
the forms we loved on earth, with perfect memory of our
earthly relationships,
for heaven is the flowering of all earth’s buds, and the
marred and feeble loves
of earth expand into beauty and power there. The
communion being direct,
no misunderstandings of words or thoughts can arise ;
each sees the thought
his friend creates, or as much of it as he can respond to.
Devachan, the
heaven-world, is a world of bliss, of joy unspeakable. But it is
much more than this,
much more than a rest for the weary. In Devachan all that
was valuable in the
mental and moral experiences of the Thinker during the life
just ended is worked
out, meditated over, and is gradually transmuted into
definite mental and
moral faculty, into powers which he will take with him to
his next rebirth. He
does not work into the mental body the actual memory of the past, for the
mental body will, in due course, disintegrate ; the memory of the past abides
only in the Thinker himself, who has lived through it and who endures. But
these facts of past experiences are worked into mental capacity, so that if a
man has studied a subject deeply the effects of that study will be the creation
of a special faculty to acquire and master that subject when it is first
presented to him in another incarnation.
He will be born with a
special aptitude for that line of study, and will pick it
up with great facility.
Everything thought upon earth is thus utilised in
Devachan ; every
aspiration is worked up into power ; all frustrated
efforts
become faculties and
abilities ; struggles and defeats reappear as materials to
be wrought into
instruments of victory ; sorrows and errors shine luminous as
precious metals to be
worked up into wise and well-directed volitions.
Schemes of beneficence, for
which power and skill to accomplish were lacking in the past, are in Devachan worked out in
thought, acted out, as it were, stage by stage, and the necessary power and
skill are developed as faculties of the mind to be put into use in a future
life on earth, when the clever and earnest
student shall be reborn
as a genius, when the devotee shall be reborn as a
saint. Life then, in Devachan, is no mere
dream, no lotus-land of purposeless
idling ; it is the land
in which the mind and heart develop, unhindered by gross
matter and by the
trivial cares, where weapons are forged for earth’s fierce
battlefields, and where
the progress of the future is secured.
When the Thinker has
consumed in the mental body all the fruits belonging to it
of his earthly life, he
shakes it off and dwells unencumbered in his own place.
All the mental faculties
which express themselves on the lower levels are drawn
within the causal body –
with the germs of the passional life that were drawn
into the mental body
when it left the astral shell to disintegrate in Kâmaloka –
and these become latent
for a time, lying within the causal body, forces which
remain concealed for
lack of material in which to manifest. (The thoughtful
student may here find a
fruitful suggestion on the problem of continuing
consciousness after the
cycle of the universe is trodden. Let him place Îshvara
in the place of the
Thinker, and let the faculties that are the fruits of a life
represent the human
lives that are the fruits of a Universe. He may then catch
some glimpse of what is
necessary for consciousness, during the interval between universes).
The mental body, the
last of the temporary vestures of the true man,
disintegrates, and its
materials return to the general matter of the mental
plane, whence they were
drawn when the Thinker last descended into incarnation.
Thus the causal body
alone remains, the receptacle and treasure-house of all
that has been
assimilated from the life that is over. The Thinker has finished a
round of his long
pilgrimage and dwells for a while in his own native land.
His condition as to
consciousness depends entirely on the point he has reached
in evolution. In his
early stages of life he will merely sleep, wrapped in
unconsciousness, when he
has lost his vehicles on the lower planes. His life
will pulse gently within
him, assimilating any little results from his closed
earth-existence that may
be capable of entering into his substance ; but he will
have no consciousness of
his surroundings. But as he develops, this period of
his life becomes more
and more important, and occupies a greater proportion of
his devachanic
existence.
He becomes
self-conscious, and thereby conscious of his surroundings – of the
not-self – and his
memory spreads before him the panorama of his life,
stretching backwards
into the ages of the past. He sees the causes that worked
out their effects in the
last of his life-experiences, and studies the causes he
has set going in this
latest incarnation. He assimilates and works into the
texture of the causal
body all that was noblest and loftiest in the closed
chapter of his life, and
by his inner activity he develops and co-ordinates the
materials in his causal
body. He comes into direct contact with great souls,
whether in or out of the
body at the time, enjoys communion with them, learns
from their riper wisdom
and longer experience.
Each succeeding devachanic life is richer
and deeper ; with his expanding
capacity to receive,
knowledge flows into him in fuller tides ; more and more he
learns to understand the
workings of the law, the conditions of evolutionary
progress, and thus
returns to earth-life each time with greater knowledge, more
effective power, his
vision of the goal of life becoming ever clearer and the
way to it more plain
before his feet.
To every Thinker,
however unprogressed, there comes a moment of clear vision
when the time arrives
for his return to the life of the lower worlds. For a
moment he sees his past
and the causes working from it into the future, and the
general map of his next
incarnation is also unrolled before him. Then the clouds
of lower matter surge
round him and obscure his vision, and the cycle of another
incarnation begins with the
awakening of the powers of the lower mind, and their
drawing round him, by
their vibrations, materials from the lower mental plane to
form the new mental body
for the opening chapter of his life-history. This part
of our subject, however,
belongs in its detail to the chapters on reincarnation.
We left the soul asleep,
(See Chapter III., On Kâmaloka, ) having shaken off the
last remains of his astral body, ready to pass out of Kâmaloka
into Devachan,
out of purgatory into
heaven. The sleeper awakens to a sense of joy unspeakable, of bliss
immeasurable, of peace that passeth understanding.
Softest melodies are
breathing round him, tenderest hues greet his opening eyes, the very air seems
music and colour, the whole being is suffused with light and harmony.
Then through the golden
haze dawn sweetly the faces loved on earth, etherialised
into the beauty which
expresses their noblest, loveliest emotions, unmarred by
the troubles and the passions
of the lower worlds. Who may tell the bliss of
that awakening, the
glory of that first dawning of the heaven-world?
We will now study the
conditions in detail of the seven subdivisions of
Devachan, remembering that
in the four lower we are in the world of form, and a
world, moreover, in
which every thought presents itself at once as a form. This
world of form belongs to
the personality, and every soul is therefore surrounded
by as much of his past
life as has entered into his mind and can be expressed in
pure mind-stuff.
The first, or lowest,
region is the heaven of the least progressed souls, whose
highest emotion on earth
was a narrow, sincere, and sometimes selfish love for
family and friends. Or
it may be that they felt some loving admiration for some
one they met on earth
who was purer and better than themselves, or felt some
wish to lead a higher
life, or some passing aspiration towards mental and moral
expansion.
There is not much
material here out of which faculty can be moulded, and their
life is but very
slightly progressive ; their family affections will be
nourished and a little
widened, and they will be reborn after a while with a
somewhat improved
emotional nature, with more tendency to recognise and respond to a higher
ideal. Meanwhile they are enjoying all the happiness they can
receive; their cup is
but a small one, but it is filled to the brim with bliss,
and they enjoy all that
they are able to conceive of heaven. Its purity, its
harmony, play on their
undeveloped faculties and woo them to awaken into
activity, and the inner
stirrings begin which must precede any manifested
budding.
The next division of devachanic
life comprises men and women of every religious faith whose hearts during their
earthly lives had turned with loving devotion to God, under any name, under any
form. The form may have been narrow, but the heart rose up in aspiration, and
here finds the object of its loving worship.
The concept of the
Divine which was formed by their mind when on earth here
meets them in the radiant glory of devachanic matter, fairer,
diviner, than
their wildest dreams.
The Divine One limits
Himself to meet the intellectual limits of His worshipper,
and in whatever form the
worshipper has loved and worshipped Him, in that form He reveals Himself to his
longing eyes, and pours out on him the sweetness of His answering love. The
souls are steeped in religious ecstasy, worshipping the One under the forms
their piety sought on earth, losing themselves in the
raptures of devotion, in
communion with the Object they adore. No one finds
himself a stranger in
the heavenly places, the Divine veiling Himself in the
familiar form. Such
souls grow in purity and in devotion under the sun of this
communion, and return to
earth with these qualities much intensified. Nor is all
their devachanic
life spent in this devotional ecstasy, for they have full
opportunities of
maturing every other quality they may possess of heart and
mind.
Passing onwards to the third
region, we come to those noble and earnest beings
who were devoted
servants of humanity while on earth, and largely poured out
their love to God in the
form of works for man. They are reaping the reward of
their good deeds by developing
larger powers of usefulness and increased wisdom in their direction. Plans of
wider beneficence unroll themselves before the mind of the philanthropist, and
like an architect, he designs the future edifice
which he will build in a
coming life on earth ; he matures the schemes which he
will then work out into
actions, and like a creative God plans his universe of
benevolence, which shall
be manifested in gross matter when the time is ripe.
These souls will appear
as the great philanthropists of yet unborn centuries,
who will incarnate on
earth with innate dower of unselfish love and of power to
achieve.
Most varied in
character, perhaps, of all the heavens is the fourth, for here
the powers of the most
advanced souls find their exercise, so far as they can be
expressed in the world
of form. Here the kings of art and of literature are
found, exercising all
their powers of form, of colour, of harmony, and building
greater faculties with
which to be reborn when they return to earth. Noblest
music, ravishing beyond
description, peals forth from the mightiest monarchs of
harmony that the earth
has known, as Beethoven, no longer deaf, pours out his
imperial soul in strains
of unexampled beauty, making even the heaven world more melodious as he draws
down harmonies from higher spheres, and sends them thrilling through the
heavenly places. Here also we find the masters of painting and of sculpture,
learning new hues of colour, new curves of undreamed beauty.
And here also are others
who failed, though greatly aspiring, and who are here
transmuting longings
into powers, and dreams into faculties, that shall be
theirs in another life.
Searchers into Nature are here, and they are learning
her hidden secrets ;
before their eyes are unrolling systems of worlds with all
their hidden mechanism,
woven series of workings of unimaginable delicacy and
complexity ; they shall
return to earth as great "discoverers," with unerring
intuitions of the
mysterious ways of Nature.
In this heaven also are
found students of the deeper knowledge, the eager,
reverent pupils who
sought the Teachers of the race, who longed to find a
Teacher, and patiently
worked at all that had been given out by some one of the
great spiritual Masters who
have taught humanity. Here their longings find their
fruition, and Those they
sought, apparently in vain, are now their instructors ;
the eager souls drink in
the heavenly wisdom, and swift their growth and
progress as they sit at
their Master’s feet. As teachers and as light-bringers
shall they be born again
on earth, born with the birthmark of the teacher’s high
office upon them.
Many a student on earth,
all unknowing of these subtler workings, is preparing
himself a place in this
fourth heaven, as he bends with a real devotion over the
pages of some teacher of
genius, over the teachings of some advanced soul. He is forming a link between
himself and the teacher he loves and reverences, and in
the heaven-world that
soul-tie will assert itself, and draw together into communion the souls it
links. As the sun pours down its rays into many rooms,
and each room has all it
can contain of the solar beams, so in the heaven-world
do these great souls
shine into hundreds of mental images of themselves created
by their pupils, fill
them with life, with their own essence, so that each
student has his master
to teach him and yet shuts out none other from his aid.
Thus, for periods long
in proportion to the materials gathered for consumption
upon earth, dwell men in
these heaven-worlds of form, where all good that the
last personal life had
garnered finds its full fruition, its full working out
into minutest detail.
Then as we have seen, when everything is exhausted, when
the last drop has been
drained from the cup of joy, the last crumb eaten of the
heavenly feast, all that
has been worked up into faculty, that is of permanent
value, is drawn within
the causal body, and the Thinker shakes off him and the
then disintegrating body
through which he has found expression on the lower
levels of the devachanic
world. Rid of this mental body, he is in his own world, to work up whatever of
his harvest can find material suitable for it in that high realm.
A vast number of souls
touch the lowest level of the formless world as it were but for a moment,
taking brief refuge there, since all lower vehicles have fallen away. But so
embryonic are they that they have as yet no active powers that there can
function independently, and they become unconscious as the mental body slips
away into disintegration. Then, for a moment, they are aroused to
consciousness, and a flash of memory illumines their past and they see its
pregnant causes ; and a flash of foreknowledge illumines their future, and they
see such effects as will work out in the coming life. This is all that very
many are as yet able to experience of the formless world. For, here again, as
ever, the harvest is according to the sowing, and how should they who have
sowed nothing for that lofty region expect to reap any harvest therein?
But many souls have
during their earth-life, by deep thinking and noble living, sown much seed, the
harvest of which belongs to this fifth devachanic region, the lowest of the
three heavens of the formless world. Great is now their reward for having so
risen above the bondage of the flesh and of passion, and they begin to
experience the real life of man, the lofty existence of the soul
itself, unfettered by
vestures belonging to the lower worlds. They learn truths by direct vision, and
see the fundamental causes of which all concrete objects are the results; they
study the underlying unities, whose presence is marked in the lower worlds by
the variety of irrelevant details.
Thus they gain a deep
knowledge of law, and learn to recognise its changeless workings below results
apparently the most incongruous, thus building into the body that endures firm
unshakable convictions, that will reveal themselves in earth-life as deep
intuitive certainties of the soul, above and beyond all reasoning. Here also
the man studies his own past, and carefully disentangles the causes he has set
going ; he marks their interaction, the resultants accruing from them, and sees
something of their working out in the lives yet in the future.
In the sixth heaven are
more advanced souls, who during earth-life had felt but little attraction for
its passing shows, and who had devoted all their energies to the higher
intellectual and moral life. For them there is no veil upon the past, their
memory is perfect and unbroken, and they plan the infusion into
their next life of
energies that will neutralise many of the forces that are working for
hindrance, and strengthen many of those that are working for good.
This clear memory
enables them to form definite and strong determinations as to actions which are
to be done and actions which are to be avoided, and these volitions they will
be able to impress on their lower vehicles in their next birth, making certain
classes of evils impossible, contrary to what is felt to
be the deepest nature,
and certain kinds of good inevitable, the irresistible demands of a voice that
will not be denied.
These souls are born
into the world with high and noble qualities which render a base life
impossible, and stamp the babe from its cradle as one of the pioneers of
humanity. The man who has attained to this sixth heaven sees unrolled before
him the vast treasures of the Divine Mind in creative activity and can study
the archetypes of all forms that are being gradually evolved in the lower
worlds.
There he may bathe
himself in the fathomless ocean of the Divine Wisdom, and unravel the problems
connected with the working out of those archetypes, the partial good that seems
as evil to the limited vision of men encased in flesh.
In this wider outlook,
phenomena assume their due relative proportions, and he sees the justification
of the divine ways, no longer to him "past finding out" so far as
they are concerned with the evolution of the lower worlds.
The questions over which
on earth he pondered, and whose answers ever eluded his eager intellect, are
here solved by an insight that pierces through phenomenal veils and sees the
connecting links which make the chain complete. Here also the
soul is in the immediate
presence of, and in full communion with, the greater souls that have evolved in
our humanity, and, escaped from the bonds which make "the past" of
earth, he enjoys "the ever-present" of an endless and unbroken life.
Those we speak of here
as "the mighty dead" are there the glorious living, and the soul
enjoys the high rapture of their presence, and grows more like them as their
strong harmony attunes his vibrant nature to their key.
Yet higher, lovelier,
gleams the seventh heaven, where Masters and Initiates have their intellectual
home. No soul can dwell there ere yet is has passed while on earth through the
narrow gateway of Initiation, the strait gate that "leadeth unto
life" unending. ( See Chapter XI, on "Man’s Ascent." The
Initiate
has stepped out of the
ordinary line of evolution, and is treading a shorter and steeper road to human
perfection).
That world is the source
of the strongest intellectual and moral impulses that flow down to earth ;
thence are poured forth the invigorating streams of the loftiest energy. The
intellectual life of the world has there its root; thence genius receives its
purest inspirations. To the souls that dwell there it matters little whether,
at the time, they be or be not connected with the lower
vehicles ; they ever
enjoy their lofty self-consciousness and their communion with those around them
; whether, when "embodied" they suffuse their lower vehicles with as
much of this consciousness as they can contain is a matter for their own choice
– they can give or withhold as they will.
And more and more their
volitions are guided by the will of the Great Ones, whose will is one with the
will of the LOGOS, the will which seeks ever the good of the worlds. For here
are being eliminated the last vestiges of separateness – ( Ahamkâra, the "
I " making principle, necessary in order that self consciousness may be
evolved, but transcended when its work is over) – in all who have not yet
reached final emancipation – all, that is, who are not yet Masters – and, as
these perish, the will becomes more and more harmonised with the will that
guides the worlds.
Such is an outline of
the "seven heavens" into one or other of which men pass in due time
after the "change that men call death." For death is only a change
that gives the soul a partial liberation, releasing him from the heaviest of
his chains. It is but a birth into a wider life, a return after a brief exile
on earth to the soul’s true home, a passing from a prison into the freedom of
the upper air. Death is the greatest of earth’s illusions ; there is no death,
but only changes in life’s conditions. Life is
continuous, unbroken,
unbreakable ; "unborn, eternal, constant," it perishes not with the
perishing of the bodies
that clothe it. We might
as well think that the sky is falling when a pot is broken, as imagine that the
soul perishes when the body falls to pieces. ( A simile used in the Bhagavad
Purâna).
The physical, astral and
mental planes are "the three worlds" though which lies the pilgrimage
of the soul, again and again repeated. In these three worlds revolves the wheel
of human life, and souls are bound to that wheel throughout their evolution,
and are carried by it to each of these worlds in turn. We are
now in a position to
trace a complete life-period of the soul, the aggregate of these periods making
up its life, and we can also distinguish clearly the difference between
personality and individuality.
A soul when its stay in
the formless world of Devachan
is over, begins a new life-period by putting forth the
energies which function in the form-world of the mental plane, these energies
being the resultant of the preceding life-periods. These passing outwards,
gather round themselves, from the matter of the four lower mental levels, such
materials as are suitable for their
expression, and thus the
new mental body for the coming birth is formed. The vibration of these mental
energies arouses the energies which belong to the desire-nature, and these
begin to vibrate ; as they awake and throb, they attract to themselves suitable
materials for their expression from the matter of
the astral world, and
these form the new astral body for the approaching incarnation.
Thus the Thinker becomes
clothed with his mental and astral vestures, exactly expressing the faculties
evolved during the past stage of his life. He is drawn, by forces which will be
explained later, (See Chapter VII , on "Reincarnation") to the family
which is to provide him with a suitable physical encasement, and
becomes connected with
this encasement through his astral body.
During prenatal life the
mental body becomes involved with the lower vehicles, and this connection
becomes closer and closer through the early years of childhood, until at the
seventh year they are as completely in touch with the Thinker himself as the
stage of evolution permits. He then begins to slightly control his vehicles, if
sufficiently advanced, and what we call conscience is
his monitory voice. In
any case, he gathers experience through these vehicles, and during the
continuance of earth-life, stores the gathered experience in its own proper
vehicle, in the body connected with the plane to which the experience belongs.
When the earth-life is
over the physical body drops away, and with it his power of contacting the
physical world, and his energies are therefore confined to the astral and
mental planes. In due course, the astral body decays, and the outgoings of his
life are confined to the mental plane, the astral faculties
being gathered up and
laid by within himself as latent energies.
Once again, in due
course, its assimilative work completed, the mental body disintegrates, its
energies in turn becoming latent in the Thinker, and he withdraws his life
entirely into the formless devachanic world, his own native habitat. Thence, all experiences of
his life period in the three worlds being
transmuted into
faculties and powers for future use, are contained within himself, he anew
commences his pilgrimage and treads the cycle of another life-period with
increased power and knowledge.
The personality consists
of the transitory vehicles through which the Thinker energises in the physical,
astral, and lower mental worlds, and of all the activities connected with
these. These are bound together by the links of memory caused by impressions
made on the three lower bodies ; and, by the self-identification of the Thinker
with his three vehicles, the personal " I " is set up. In the lower
stages of evolution this " I " is in the physical and
passional vehicles, in
which the greatest activity is shown, later it is in the mental vehicle, which
then assumes predominance.
The personality with its
transient feeling, desires, passions, thus forms a quasi-independent entity,
though drawing all its energies from the Thinker it enwraps, and as its
qualifications, belonging to the lower worlds, are often in direct antagonism
to the permanent interests of the "Dweller in the body,"
conflict is set up in
which victory inclines sometimes to the temporary pleasure, sometimes to the
permanent gain. The life of the personality begins when the Thinker forms his
new mental body, and it endures until that mental body disintegrates at the
close of its life in the form-world of Devachan.
The individuality
consists of the Thinker himself, the immortal tree that puts out all these
personalities as leaves, to last through the spring, summer and autumn of human
life. All that the leaves take in and assimilate enriches the sap that courses
through their veins, and in the autumn this is withdrawn into the parent trunk,
and the dry leaf falls and perishes. The Thinker alone lives
forever ; he is the man
for whom "the hour never strikes," the eternal youth who as the
Bhagavad Gitâ has it, puts on and casts off bodies as a man puts on new
garments and throws off the old.
Each personality is a
new part for the immortal Actor, and he treads the stage of life over and over
again, only in the life-drama each character he assumes is the child of the preceding
ones and the father of those to come, so that the life-drama is a continuous
history, the history of the Actor who plays the
successive parts.
To the three worlds that
we have studied is confined the life of the Thinker, while he is treading the
earlier stages of human evolution. A time will come in the evolution of
humanity when its feet will enter loftier realms, and reincarnation will be of
the past. But while the wheel of rebirth and death is turning, a man is bound
thereon by desires that pertain to the three worlds, his
life is led in these
three regions.
To the realms that lie
beyond we now may turn, albeit but little can be said of them that can be
either useful or intelligible. Such little as may be said, however, is
necessary for the outlining of the Ancient Wisdom.
THE BUDDHIC AND NIRVÂNIC PLANES
We have seen that man is
an intelligent self-conscious entity, the Thinker, clad in bodies belonging to
the lower mental, astral and physical planes ; we have now to study the Spirit
which is his innermost Self, the source whence he proceeds.
This Divine spirit, a
ray from the LOGOS, partaking of His own essential Being, has the triple nature
of the LOGOS Himself, and the evolution of man as man consists in the gradual
manifestation of these three aspects, their development from latency into
activity, man thus repeating in miniature the evolution of the universe.
Hence he is spoken of as
the microcosm, the universe being the macrocosm; he is called the mirror of the
universe, the image, or reflection, of God ; ( "Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness." – Gen. I, 26. ) – and hence also the ancient
axiom, "As above, so below." It is this in-folded deity that is the
guarantee of man’s final
triumph ; this is the hidden motive power that makes evolution at once possible
and inevitable, the upward-lifting force that slowly overcomes every obstacle
and every difficulty. It was this Presence that Matthew Arnold dimly ( ) sensed
when he wrote of the "Power, not ourselves, that makes for
righteousness," but he erred in thinking "not ourselves," for it
is the very innermost Self of all – truly not our separated selves, but our Self.
(Âtma, the reflection of Paramâtmâ.)
This Self is the One,
and hence is spoken of as the Monad – ( It is called the Monad, whether it be
the Monad of spirit-matter, Âtma ; or the Monad of form or the human Monad,
Âtma-Buddhi-Manas. In each it is a unit and acts as a unit,
whether the unit be
one-faced, two-faced, or three-faced) – and we shall need to remember that this
Monad is the outbreathed life of the LOGOS, containing within itself
germinally, or in a state of latency, all the divine powers and attributes.
These powers are brought
into manifestation by the impacts arising from contact with the objects of the
universe into which the Monad is thrown ; the friction caused by these gives
rise to responsive thrills from the life subjected to
their stimuli, and one
by one the energies of the life pass from latency into
activity. The human
Monad – as it is called for the sake of distinction – shows
as we have already said,
the three aspects of Deity, being the perfect image of
God, and in the human
cycle these three aspects are developed one after the
other.
These aspects are the
three great attributes of the Divine Life as manifested in
the universe, existence,
bliss, and intelligence – ( Satchitânanda is often used
in the Hindu Scriptures as
the abstract name of Brahman, the Trimûrti being the
concrete manifestation
of these) –the three LOGOI severally showing these forth
with all the perfection
possible within the limits of manifestation.
In man, these aspects
are developed in the reversed order – intelligence, bliss,
existence –
"existence" implying the manifestation of the divine powers. In the
evolution of man that we
have so far studied we have been watching the
development of the third
aspect of the hidden deity – the development of
consciousness as
intelligence. Manas, the Thinker, the human Soul, is the image
of the Universal Mind,
of the Third LOGOS, and all his long pilgrimage on the
three lower planes is
devoted to the evolution of this third aspect, the
intellectual side of the
divine nature in man.
While this is
proceeding, we may consider the other divine energies as rather
brooding over the man,
the hidden source of his life, than as actively
developing their forces
within him. They play within themselves, unmanifest.
Still, the preparation
of these forces for manifestation is slowly proceeding;
they are being roused
from that unmanifested life that we speak of as latency by
the ever-increasing
energy of the vibrations of the intelligence, and the
bliss-aspect begins to
send outwards its first vibrations – faint pulsings of
its manifested life
thrill forth.
This bliss-aspect is
named in theosophical terminology Buddhi, a name derived
from the Sanskrit word
for wisdom, and it belongs to the fourth, or buddhic
plane of our universe,
the plane, in which there is still duality, but were
there is no separation.
Words fail me to convey the idea, for words belong to
the lower planes where
duality and separation are ever connected, yet some
approach to the idea may
be gained.
It is a state in which
each is himself, with a clearness and vivid intensity
which cannot be
approached on lower planes, and yet in which each feels himself to include all
others, to be one with them, inseparate and inseparable. (The reader should
refer back to the Introduction, p. 36, and reread the description given by
Plotinus of this state, commencing: "They likewise see all things."
And he should note the phrases, "Each likewise is everything," and
"In each, however a different quality predominates.)
Its nearest analogy on
earth is the condition between two persons who are united
by a pure, intense love,
which makes them feel as one person, causing them to
think, feel, act, live
as one, recognising no barrier, no difference, no mine
and thine, no
separation. (It is for this reason that the bliss of divine love
has in many Scriptures
been imaged by the profound love of husband and wife, as in the Bhagavad Purâna
of the Hindus, the Song of Solomon of the Hebrews and Christians. This is also
the love of the Sufi mystics, and indeed of all
mystics.)
It is a faint echo from
this plane which makes men seek happiness by union
between themselves and
the object of their desire, no matter what that object
may be. Perfect
isolation is perfect misery ; to be stripped naked of
everything, to be
hanging in the void of space, in utter solitude, nothing
anywhere save the lone
individual, shut out from all, shut into the separated
self – imagination can
conceive no horror more intense. The antithesis to this
is union, and perfect
union is perfect bliss.
As this bliss-aspect of
the Self begins to send outwards its vibrations, these
vibrations, as on the
planes below, draw round themselves the matter of the
plane on which they are
functioning, and thus is formed gradually the buddhic
body, or bliss-body, as
it is appropriately termed. (Ânandamayakosha, or
bliss-sheath, of the
Vedântins. It is also the body of the sun, the solar body,
of which a little is
said in the Upanishads and elsewhere.)
The only way in which
the man can contribute to the building of this glorious
form is by cultivating
pure, unselfish, all-embracing, beneficent love, love
"that seeketh not
its own" – that is, love that is neither partial, nor seeks
any return for its
outflowing. This spontaneous outpouring of love is the most
marked of the divine
attributes, the love that gives everything, that asks
nothing. Pure love
brought the universe into being, pure love maintains it, pure
love draws it upwards
towards perfection, towards bliss.
And wherever man pours
out love on all who need it, making no difference,
seeking no return, from
pure spontaneous joy in the outpouring, there that man
is developing the
bliss-aspect of the Deity within him, and is preparing that
body of beauty and joy
ineffable into which the Thinker will rise, casting away
the limits of
separateness, to find himself, and yet one with all that lives.
This "the house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens," whereof wrote St.
Paul, the great
Christian Initiate ; and he raised charity, pure love, above all
other virtues, because
by that alone can man on earth contribute to that
glorious dwelling. For a
similar reason is separateness called "the great
heresy" by the
Buddhist, and "union" is the goal of the Hindu ; liberation is
the escape from the
limitations that keep us apart, and selfishness is the
root-evil, the
destruction whereof is the destruction of all pain.
The fifth plane, the
Nirvânic, is the plane of the highest human aspect of the
God within us, and this
aspect is named by theosophists Âtmâ, or the Self. It is
the plane of pure
existence, of divine powers in their fullest manifestation in
our fivefold universe –
what lies beyond on the sixth and seventh planes is
hidden in the
unimaginable light of God.
This âtmic, or nirvânic,
consciousness, the consciousness belonging to life on
the fifth plane, is the
consciousness attained by those lofty Ones, the first
fruits of humanity, who
have already completed the cycle of human evolution, and who are called
Masters. (Known as Mahâtmâs, great Spirits, and Jivanmuktas, liberated souls,
who remain connected with physical bodies for the helping of humanity. Many
other great Beings also live on the nirvânic plane.)
They have solved in
Themselves the problem of uniting the essence of individuality with
non-separateness, and live, immortal Intelligences, perfect in wisdom, in
bliss, in power.
When the human Monad
comes forth from the LOGOS, it is as though from the
luminous ocean of Âtmâ a
tiny thread of light was separated off from the rest by
a film of buddhic
matter, and from this hung a spark which becomes enclosed in
an egg-like casing of
matter belonging to the formless levels of the mental
plane.
"The spark hangs
from the flame by the finest thread of Fohat." ( Book of Dzyan, Stanza
vii, 5, ; Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 66, 1893 ed. ; p. 98 Adyar Edition)
As evolution proceeds,
this luminous egg grows larger and more opalescent, and
the tiny thread becomes
a wider and wider channel through which more and more of the âtmic life pours
down. Finally, they merge – the third with the second, and the twain with the
first, as flame merges with flame and no separation can be seen.
The evolution of the
fourth and fifth planes belongs to a future period of our
race, but those who
choose the harder path of swifter progress may tread it even
now, as will be
explained later. (see Chapter XI, on "Man’s Ascent.") On that
path the bliss body is
quickly evolved, and a man begins to enjoy the
consciousness of that
loftier region, and knows the bliss which comes from the
absence of separative
barriers, the wisdom which flows in when the limits of the
intellect are
transcended. Then is the wheel escaped from which binds the soul
in the lower worlds, and
then is the first foretaste of the liberty which is
found perfected on the
nirvânic plane.
The nirvânic
consciousness is the antithesis of annihilation; it is existence
raised to a vividness
and intensity inconceivable to those who know only the
life of the senses and
the mind. As the farthing rush-light to the splendour of
the sun at noon, so is
the nirvânic to the earth-bound consciousness, and to
regard it as an
annihilation because the limits of the earthly consciousness
have vanished, is as
though a man, knowing only the rush-light, should say that
light could not exist without
a wick immersed in tallow. That Nirvâna is, has
been born witness to in
the past in the Scriptures of the world by Those who
enjoy it and live its
glorious life, and is still borne witness to by others of
our race who have
climbed that lofty ladder of perfected humanity, and who
remain in touch with
earth that the feet of our ascending race may mount its
rungs unfalteringly.
In Nirvâna dwell the
mighty Beings who accomplished Their own human evolution in past universes, and
who came forth with the LOGOS when He manifested Himself to bring this universe
into existence. They are His ministers in the administration of the worlds, the
perfect agents of His will. The Lords of all the hierarchies of the Gods and
lower ministrants that we have seen working on the lower planes have here Their
abiding-place, for Nirvâna is the heart of the universe, whence all its
life-currents proceed. Hence the Great Breath comes forth, the life of all, and
thither it is indrawn when the universe has reached its term. There is the
Beatific Vision for which mystics long, there the unveiled Glory, the Supreme
Goal.
The Brotherhood of
Humanity – nay, the Brotherhood of all things – has its sure
foundation on the
spiritual planes, the âtmic and buddhic, for here alone is
unity, and here alone
perfect sympathy is found. The intellect is the separative
principle in man, that
marks off the " I " from the " not I ," that is conscious
of itself, and sees all
else as outside itself and alien. It is the combative,
struggling,
self-assertive principle, and from the plane of the intellect
downwards the world
presents a scene of conflict, bitter in proportion as the
intellect mingles in it.
Even the passion-nature is only spontaneously combative
when it is stirred by
the feeling of desire and finds anything standing between
itself and the object of
its desires; it becomes more and more aggressive as the
mind inspires its
activity, for then it seeks to provide for the gratification
of future desires, and
tries to appropriate more and more from the stores of
Nature.
But the intellect is
spontaneously combative, its very nature being to assert
itself as different from
others, and here we find the root of separateness, the
ever-springing source of
divisions among men.
But unity is at once
felt when the buddhic plane is reached, as though we
stepped from a separate
ray, diverging from all other rays, into the sun itself,
from which radiate all
the rays alike.
A being standing in the
sun, suffused with its light, and pouring it forth,
would feel no difference
between ray and ray, but would pour forth along one as
readily and easily as
along another. And so with the man who has once
consciously attained the
buddhic plane ; he feels the brotherhood that others
speak of as an ideal,
and pours himself out into any one who wants assistance,
giving mental, moral,
astral, physical help exactly as it is needed.
He sees all beings as
himself, and feels that all he has is theirs as much as
his; nay, in many cases,
as more theirs than his, because their need is greater,
their strength being
less. So do the elder brothers in a family bear the family
burdens, and shield the
little ones from suffering and privation ; to the spirit
of brotherhood weakness
is a claim for help and loving protection, not an
opportunity for
oppression.
Because They had reached
this level and mounted even higher, the great Founders of religions have ever
been marked by Their overwelling compassion and tenderness, ministering to the
physical as well as to the inner wants of men, to every man according to his
need. The consciousness of this inner unity, the
recognition of the One
Self dwelling equally in all, is the one sure foundation
of Brotherhood ; all
else save this is frangible.
This recognition,
moreover, is accompanied by the knowledge that the stage in
evolution reached by
different human and non-human beings depends chiefly on
what we may call their
age. Some began their journey in time very much later
than others, and, though
the powers in each be the same, some have unfolded far more of those powers
than others, simply because they have had a longer time for the process than
their younger brethren. As well blame and despise the seed because it is not
yet a flower, the bud because it is not yet the fruit, the
babe because it is not
yet the man, and blame and despise the germinal and baby
souls around us because
they have not yet developed to the stage we ourselves
occupy. We do not blame
ourselves because we are not yet as Gods ; in time we shall stand where our
elder Brothers are standing.
Why should we blame the
still younger souls who are not yet as we? The very word brotherhood connotes
identity of blood and inequality of development ; and it therefore represents exactly
the link between all creatures in the universe –
identity of the
essential life, and difference in the stages reached in the
manifestation of that
life.
We are one in our
origin, one in the method of our evolution, one in our goal,
and the differences of
age and stature but give opportunity for the growth of
the tenderest and
closest ties. All that a man would do for his brother of the
flesh, dearer to him
than himself, is the measure of what he owes to each who
shares with him the one
Life. Men are shut out from their brothers’ hearts by
differences of race, of
class, of country ; the man who is wise by love rises
above all these petty
differences, and sees all drawing their life from the one
source, all as part of
his family.
The recognition of this
Brotherhood intellectually, and the endeavour to live it
practically, are so
stimulative of the higher nature of man, that it was made
the one obligatory
object of the Theosophical Society, the single "article of
belief" that all
who would enter its fellowship must accept. To live it, even to
a small extent, cleanses
the heart and purifies the vision ; to live it
perfectly would be to
eradicate all stain of separateness, and to let the pure
shining of the Self
irradiate us, as a light through flawless glass.
Never let it be
forgotten that this Brotherhood is, whether men ignore it or
deny it. Man’s ignorance
does not change the laws of nature, nor vary by one
hair’s breadth her
changeless, irresistible march. Her laws crush those who
oppose them, and break
into pieces everything which is not in harmony with them.
Therefore can no nation
endure that outrages Brotherhood, no civilisation can
last that is built on
its antithesis. We have not to make brotherhood ; it
exists. We have to
attune our lives into harmony with it, if we desire that we
and our works shall not
perish.
It may seem strange to
some that the buddhic plane – a thing to them misty and
unreal – should thus
influence all planes below it, and that its forces should
ever break into pieces
all that cannot harmonise itself with them in the lower
worlds. Yet so it is,
for this universe is an expression of spiritual forces,
and they are the
guiding, moulding energies pervading all things, and slowly,
surely, subduing all
things to themselves.
Hence this Brotherhood,
which is a spiritual unity, is a far more real thing
than any outward
organisation ; it is a life and not a form, "wisely and sweetly
ordering all
things." It may take innumerable forms, suitable to the times, but
the life is one ; happy
they who see its presence, and make themselves the
channels of its living
force.
The student has now
before him the constituents of the human constitution, and
the regions to which
these constituents respectively belong; so a brief summary
should enable him to
have a clear idea of this complicated whole.
The human Monad is
Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, or, as sometimes translated, the Spirit, the Spiritual Soul,
and Soul, of man. The fact that these three are but aspects of the Self makes
possible man’s immortal existence, and though these three aspects are
manifested separately and successively, their substantial unity
renders it possible for
the Soul to merge itself in the spiritual Soul, giving
to the latter the
precious essence of individuality, and for this individualised
Spiritual Soul to merge
itself in the Spirit, colouring it – if the phrase may
be permitted with the
hues due to individuality, while leaving uninjured its
essential unity with all
other rays of the LOGOS and with the LOGOS Himself.
These three form the
seventh, sixth and fifth principles of man, and the
materials which limit
and encase them, i.e., which make their manifestation and
activity possible, are
drawn respectively from the fifth (nirvânic), the fourth
(buddhic), and the third
(mental), planes of our universe. The fifth principle
further takes to itself
a lower body on the mental plane, in order to come into
contact with the phenomenal
worlds, and thus intertwines itself with the fourth
principle, the
desire-nature, or Kâma, belonging to the second or astral plane.
Descending to the first,
the physical plane, we have the third, second and first
principles – the
specialised life, or Prâna ; the etheric double, its vehicle ;
the dense body, which
contacts the coarser materials of the physical world. We
have already seen that
sometimes Prâna is not regarded as a "principle," and
then the interwoven
desire and mental bodies take rank together as Kâma Manas ; the pure intellect
is called the Higher Manas, and the mind apart from desire
Lower Manas.
The most convenient
conception of man is perhaps that which most closely
represents the facts as
to the one permanent life and the various forms in which
it works and which
condition its energies, causing the variety in manifestation.
Then we see the Self as
the one Life, the source of all energies, and the forms
as the buddhic, causal,
mental, astral, and physical (etheric and dense) bodies.
( Linga Sharira was the
name originally given to the etheric body, and must not
be confused with the
Linga Sharira of Hindu philosophy. Sthula Sharira is the
Sanskrit name for the
dense body.)
It will be seen that the
difference is merely a question of names, and that the
sixth, fifth, fourth,
and third "principles" are merely Âtmâ working in the
Buddhic, causal, mental
and astral bodies, while the second and first
"principles "
are the two lowest bodies themselves. This sudden change in the
method of naming is apt
to cause confusion in the mind of the student, and as
H.P. Blavatsky, our
revered teacher, expressed much dissatisfaction with the
then current
nomenclature as confused and misleading, and desired others and
myself to try and
improve it, the above names, as descriptive, simple, and
representing the facts,
are here adopted.
The various subtle
bodies of man that we have now studied form in their
aggregate what is
usually called the "aura" of the human being. This aura has
the appearance of an
egg-shaped luminous cloud, in the midst of which is the
dense physical body, and
from its appearance it has often been spoken of as
though it were nothing
more than such a cloud. What is usually called the aura
is merely such parts of
the subtle bodies as extend beyond the periphery of the
dense physical body ;
each body is complete in itself, and interpenetrates those
that are coarser than
itself ; it is larger or smaller according to its development, and all that
part of it that overlaps the surface of the dense body is termed the aura. The
aura is thus composed of the overlapping portions of the etheric double, the
desire body, the mental body, the causal body, and in rare cases the buddhic body,
illuminated by the Âtmic radiance.
It is sometimes dull,
coarse and dingy ; sometimes magnificently radiant in
size, light, and colour
; it depends entirely on the stage of evolution reached
by the man, on the
development of his different bodies, on the moral and mental
character he has
evolved. All his varying passions, desires, and thoughts are
herein written in form,
in colour, in light, so that "he that runs may read " if
he has eyes for such
script. Character is stamped thereon as well as fleeting
changes, and no
deception is there possible as in the mask we call the physical
body. The increase in
size and beauty of the aura is the unmistakable mark of
the man’s progress, and
tells of the growth and purification of the Thinker and
his vehicles.
REINCARNATION
We are now in a position
to study one of the pivotal doctrines of the Ancient
Wisdom, the doctrine of
reincarnation. Our view of it will be clearer and more
in congruity with
natural order, if we look at it as universal in principle, and
then consider the
special case of the reincarnation of the human soul.
In studying it, this
special case is generally wrenched from its place in natural order, and is
considered as a dislocated fragment, greatly to its detriment. For all
evolution consists of an evolving life, passing from form to form as it
evolves, and storing up in itself the experiences gained through the forms ;
the reincarnation of the human soul is not the introduction of a new principle
into evolution, but the adaptation of the universal principle to meet the
conditions rendered necessary by the individualisation of the continuously
evolving life.
Mr. Lafcadio Hearn (
"Mr. Hearn has lost his way in expressing – but not, I
think, in his inner view
– in part of his exposition of the Buddhist statement
of this doctrine, and
his use of the word "Ego" will mislead the reader of his
very interesting chapter
on this subject, if the distinction between real and
illusory ego is not
readily kept in mind.") has put this point well in
considering the bearing
of the idea of the pre-existence on the scientific
thought of the West. He
says: -
"With the
acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, old forms of thought crumbled ; new
ideas everywhere arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas ; and we now have
the spectacle of a general intellectual movement in directions strangely
parallel with Oriental philosophy. The unprecedented rapidity and multiformity
of scientific progress during the last fifty years could not have failed to
provoke an equally unprecedented intellectual quickening among the
non-scientific. "
"That the highest
and most complex organisms have been developed from the lowest and simplest ;
that a single physical basis of life is the substance of the
whole living world ;
that no line of separation can be drawn between the animal
and vegetable ; that the
difference between life and non-life is only a
difference of degree,
not of kind ; that matter is not less incomprehensible
than mind, while both
are but varying manifestations of one and the same unknown reality – these have
already become the commonplaces of the new philosophy."
"After the first
recognition even by theology of physical evolution, it was easy
to predict that the
recognition of psychical evolution could not be indefinitely
delayed ; for the
barrier erected by old dogma to keep men from looking backward had been broken
down. And today for the student of scientific psychology the idea of
pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact, proving
the Buddhist explanation of the universal mystery quite as plausible as any
other."
"None but very
hasty thinkers,’ wrote the late Professor Huxley, ‘will reject it
on the ground of
inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that
of transmigration has
its roots in the world of reality ; and it may claim such
support as the great
argument from analogy is capable of supplying." (Evolution
and Ethics, p. 61, ed.
1894 – Kokoro, Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life,
by Lafcadio Hearn, pp.
237-39 london, 1896)."
Let us consider the
Monad of form, Âtma-Buddhi. In this Monad, the outbreathed life of the LOGOS,
lie hidden all the divine powers, but, as we have seen, they are latent, not manifest
and functioning. They are to be gradually aroused by external impacts, it being
of the very nature of life to vibrate in answer to vibrations that play upon
it.
As all possibilities of
vibrations exist in the Monad, any vibration touching it
will arouse its
corresponding vibratory powers, and in this way one force after
another will pass from
the latent to the active state. (From the static to the
kinetic condition, the
physicist would say.) Herein lies the secret of evolution
; the environment acts
on the form of the living creature – and all things, be
it remembered, live –
and this action, transmitted through the enveloping form
to the life, the Monad,
within it, arouses responsive vibrations which thrill
outwards from the Monad
through the form, throwing its particles, in turn, into
vibrations, and
rearranging them into a shape corresponding, or adapted, to the
initial impact.
This is the action and
reaction between the environment and the organism, which
have been recognised by
all biologists, and which are considered by some as
giving a sufficient
mechanical explanation of evolution. Their patient and
careful observation of
these actions and reactions yields, however, no
explanation why the
organism should thus react to stimuli, and the Ancient
Wisdom is needed to
unveil the secret of evolution, by pointing to the Self in
the heart of all forms,
the hidden mainspring of all the movements of nature.
Having grasped this
fundamental idea of a life containing the possibility of
responding to every
vibration that can reach it from the external universe, the
actual response being
gradually drawn forth by the play upon it of external
forces, the next
fundamental idea to be grasped is that of the continuity of
life and forms.
Forms transmit their
peculiarities to other forms that proceed from them, these
other forms being part
of their own substance, separated off to lead an
independent existence.
By fission, by budding, by extrusion of germs, by
development of the offspring
within the maternal womb, a physical continuity is
preserved, every new
form being derived from a preceding form and reproducing its characteristics. (
The student might wisely familiarise himself with the researches of Weissman on
the continuity of germ-plasm.)
Science groups these
facts under the name of the law of heredity, and its
observations on the
transmission of form are worthy of attention, and are
illuminative of the
workings of Nature in the phenomenal world. But it must be
remembered that it
applies only to the building of the physical body, into which
enter the materials
provided by the parents.
Her more hidden
workings, those workings of life without which form could not
be, have received no
attention, not being susceptible of physical observation,
and this gap can only be
filled by the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, given by
Those who of old used
superphysical powers of observation, and verifiable
gradually by every pupil
who studies patiently in Their schools.
There is continuity of
life as well as continuity of form, and it is the continuing life – with ever
more and more of its latent energies rendered active by the stimuli received
through successive forms – which resumes into itself the
experiences obtained by
its incasings in form ; for when the form perishes, the
life has the record of
those experiences in the increased energies aroused by
them, and is ready to
pour itself into the new forms derived from the old,
carrying with it this
accumulated store.
While it was in the
previous form, it played through it, adapting it to express
each newly awakened
energy; the form hands on these adaptations, inwrought into its substance, to
the separated part of itself that we speak of as its
offspring, which, beings
of its substance, must needs have the peculiarities of
that substance; the life
pours itself into that offspring with all its awakened
powers, and moulds it
yet further ; and so on and on.
Modern science is
proving more and more clearly that heredity plays an
ever-decreasing part in
the evolution of the higher creatures, that mental and
moral qualities are not
transmitted from parents to offspring, and that the
higher qualities the
more patent is this fact ‘ the child of the genius is
oft-times a dolt;
commonplace parents give birth to a genius.
A continuing substratum
there must be, in which mental and moral qualities
inhere, in order that
they may increase, else would Nature, in this most
important department of
her work, show erratic uncaused production instead of
orderly continuity. On
this science is dumb, but the Ancient Wisdom teaches that this continuing
substratum is the Monad, which is the receptacle of all results, the storehouse
in which all experiences are garnered as increasingly active powers.
These two principles
firmly grasped – of the Monad with potentialities becoming
powers, and of the
continuity of the life form – we can proceed to the
continuity of life and
form – we can proceed to study their working out in
detail, and we shall
find that they solve many of the perplexing problems of
modern science, as well
as the yet more heart-searching problems confronted by
the philanthropist and
the sage.
Let us start by
considering the monad as it is first subjected to the impacts
from the formless levels
of the mental plane, the very beginning of the evolution of form. Its first
faint responsive thrillings draw round it some of the matter of that plane, and
we have the gradual evolution of the first elemental kingdom, already
mentioned. (See chapter IV, on "The Mental Plane").
The great fundamental
types of the Monad are seven in number, sometimes imaged as like the seven
colours of the solar spectrum, derived from the three primary. ("As above,
so below." We instinctively remember the three LOGOI and the seven
primeval Sons of the Fire ; in Christian Symbolism, the Trinity and the
"Seven Spirits that are before the throne" ; or in Zoroastrian,
Ahuramazda and the seven Ameshaspentas.)
Each of these types has
its own colouring of characteristics, and this colouring
persists throughout the
aeonian cycle of its evolution, affecting all the series
of living things that
are animated by it. Now begins the process of subdivision
in each of these types,
that will be carried on, subdividing and ever
subdividing, until the
individual is reached.
The currents set up by
the commencing outward-going energies of the Monad – to follow one line of
evolution will suffice ; the other six are like unto it in
principle – have but
brief form-life, yet whatever experience can be gained
through them is
represented by an increasedly responsive life in the Monad who
is their source and
cause ; as this responsive life consists of vibrations that
are often incongruous with
each other, a tendency towards separation is set up
within the Monad, the
harmoniously vibrating forces grouping themselves together for, as it were,
concerted action, until various sub-Monads, if the epithet may for a moment be
allowed, are formed, alike in their main characteristics, but differing in
details, like shades of the same colour.
These become, by impacts
from the lower levels of the mental plane, the Monads of the second elemental
kingdom, belonging to the form region of that plane, and the process continues,
the Monad ever adding to its power to respond, each Monad being the inspiring
life of countless forms, through which it receives vibrations, and, as the
forms disintegrate, constantly vivifying new forms ; the process of subdivision
also continues from the cause already described.
Each Monad thus
continually incarnates itself in forms, and garners within
itself as awakened
powers all the results obtained through the forms it
animates. We may well
regard these Monads as the souls of groups of forms; and as evolution proceeds,
these forms show more and more attributes, the attributes being the powers of
the monadic group-soul manifested through the forms in which it is incarnated.
The innumerable
sub-Monads of this second elemental kingdom presently reach a stage of
evolution at which they begin to respond to the vibrations of astral
matter, and they begin
to act on the astral plane, becoming the Monads of the
third elemental kingdom,
and repeating in this grosser world all the processes
already accomplished on
the mental plane.
They become more and
more numerous as monadic group-souls, showing more and more diversity in
detail, the number of forms animated by each becoming less as the specialised
characteristics become more and more marked.
Meanwhile, it may be
said in passing, the ever-flowing stream of life from the LOGOS supplies new
Monads of form on the higher levels, so that the evolution proceeds
continuously, and as the more-evolved Monads incarnate in the lower worlds
their place is taken by the newly emerged Monads in the higher.
By this ever-repeated
process of the reincarnation of the Monads, or Monadic
group-soul, in the
astral world, their evolution proceeds, until they are ready
to respond to the
impacts upon them from physical matter. When we remember that the ultimate
atoms of each plane have their sphere-walls composed of the
coarsest matter of the
plane immediately above it, it is easy to see how the
Monads become responsive
to impacts from one plane after another.
When, in the first
elemental kingdom, the Monad had become accustomed to thrill responsively to
the impacts of matter of that plane, it would soon begin to
answer to vibrations
received through the coarsest forms of that matter from the
matter of the plane next
below. So, in its coatings of matter that were the
forms composed of the
coarsest materials of the material plane, it would become susceptible to
vibrations of astral atomic matter ; and, when incarnated in forms of the
coarsest astral matter, it would similarly become responsive to
atomic physical ether,
the sphere-walls of which are constituted of the grossest
astral materials.
Thus the Monad may be
regarded as reaching the physical plane ; and there it
begins, or, more
accurately, all these monadic group-souls begin, to incarnate
themselves in filmy
physical forms, the etheric doubles of the future dense
minerals of the physical
world. Into these filmy forms the nature-spirits build
the denser physical
materials, and thus minerals of all kinds are formed, the
most rigid vehicles in
which the evolving life in-closes itself, and through
which the least of its
powers can express themselves. Each monadic group-soul
has its own mineral
expressions, the mineral forms in which it is incarnated,
and the specialisation
has now reached a high degree. These Monadic group-souls are sometimes called
in their totality the mineral Monad or the Monad
incarnating in the
mineral kingdom.
From this time forward
the awakened energies of the Monad play a less passive
part in evolution. They
begin to seek expression actively to some extent when
once aroused into
functioning, and to exercise a distinctly moulding influence
over the forms in which
they are imprisoned. As they become too active for their
mineral embodiment, the
beginnings of the more plastic forms of the vegetable
kingdom manifest
themselves, the nature-spirits aiding this evolution throughout
the physical kingdoms.
In the mineral kingdom there had already been shown a
tendency towards the
definite organisation of form, the laying down of certain
lines ( The axes of
growth which determine form. They appear definitely in
crystals ) along which
the growth proceeded. This tendency governs henceforth
all the building of
forms, and is the cause of the exquisite symmetry of natural
objects, with which
every observer is familiar.
The monadic group-souls
in the vegetable kingdom undergo division and
subdivision with
increasing rapidity, in consequence of the still greater
variety of impacts to
which they are subjected, the evolution of families,
genera, and species
being due to this invisible subdivision.
When any genus, with its
generic monadic group-soul, is subjected to very
varying conditions,
i.e., when the forms connected with it receive very
different impacts, a
fresh tendency to subdivide is set up in the Monad, and
various species are
evolved, each having its own specific group-soul.
When Nature is left to
her own working the process is slow, although the
nature-spirits do much
towards the differentiation of species ; but when man has
been evolved, and when
he begins his artificial systems of cultivation,
encouraging the play of
one set of forces, warding off another, then this
differentiation can be
brought about with considerable rapidity, and specific
differences are readily
evolved. So long as actual division has not taken place
in the monadic
group-soul, the subjection of the forms to similar influences may
again eradicate the
separative tendency, but when that division is completed the
new species are
definitely and firmly established , and are ready to send out
offshoots of their own.
In some of the
longer-lived members of the vegetable kingdom the element of
personality begins to
manifest itself, the stability of the organism rendering
possible this
foreshadowing of individuality. With a tree, living for scores of
years, the recurrence of
similar conditions causing similar impacts, the seasons
ever returning year
after year, the consecutive motions caused by them, the
rising of the sap, the
putting forth of leaves, the touches of the wind, of the
sunbeams, of the rain –
all these outer influences with their rhythmical
progression – set up
responsive thrillings in the monadic group-soul, and, as
the sequence impresses
itself by continual repetition, the recurrence of one
leads to the dim
expectation of its oft-repeated successor. Nature evolves no
quality suddenly, and
these are the first faint adumbrations of what will later
be memory and
anticipation.
In the vegetable kingdom
also appear the foreshadowings of sensation, evolving
in its higher members to
what the Western psychologist would term "massive"
sensations of pleasure
and discomfort. (The "massive" sensation is one that
pervades the organism
and is not felt especially in any one part more than in
others. It is the
antithesis of the "acute.") It must be remembered that the
Monad has drawn round
itself materials of the planes through which it has
descended, and hence is
able to contact impacts, from those planes, the
strongest and those most
nearly allied to the grossest forms of matter being the
first to make themselves
felt.
Sunshine and the chill
of its absence at last impress themselves on the monadic
consciousness ; and its
astral coating, thrown into faint vibrations, gives rise
to the slight massive
kind of sensation spoken of. Rain and drought affecting
the mechanical constitution
of the form, and its power to convey vibrations to
the ensouling Monad –
are another of the "pairs of opposites," the play of which
arouses the recognition
of difference, which is the root alike of all sensation,
and later of all
thought. Thus by their repeated plant-reincarnations the monadic group-souls in
the vegetable kingdom evolve, until those that ensoul the highest members of
the kingdom are ready for the next step.
This step carries them
into the animal kingdom, and here they slowly evolve in
their physical and
astral vehicles a very distinct personality. The animal,
being free to move
about, subjects itself to a greater variety of conditions
than can be experienced
by the plant, rooted to a single spot, and this variety,
as ever, promotes
differentiation.
The monadic group-soul,
however, which animates a number of wild animals of the same species or
subspecies, while it receives a great variety of impacts, since
they are for the most
part repeated continually and are shared by all the
members of the group,
differentiates but slowly.
These impacts aid in the
development of the physical and astral bodies, and through them the monadic
group-soul gathers much experience. When the form of a member of the group perishes,
the experience gathered through that form is accumulated in the monadic
group-soul, and may be said to colour it ; the slightly
increased life of the monadic group-soul, poured into all the forms which
compose its group, shares among all the experiences of the perished form, and
in this way continually repeated experiences, stored up in the monadic group-soul,
appear as instincts, "accumulated hereditary experiences" in the new forms.
Countless birds having
fallen a prey to hawks, chicks just out of the egg will cower at the approach
of one of the hereditary enemies, for the life that is incarnated in them knows
the danger, and the innate instinct is the expression of its knowledge. In this
way are formed the wonderful instincts that guard animals from innumerable
habitual perils, while a new danger finds them
unprepared and only
bewilders them.
As animals come under
the influence of man, the monadic group-souls evolves with greatly increased
rapidity, and, from causes similar to those which affect plants under
domestication, subdivision of the incarnating life is more readily brought
about. Personality evolves and becomes more and more strongly marked ; in the
earlier stages it may almost be said to be compound – a whole flock of wild
creatures will act as though moved by a single personality, so completely are
the forms dominated by the common soul, it, in turn, being affected by the
impulse from the external world.
Domesticated animals of
the higher types, the elephants, the horse, the cat, the dog, show a more
individualised personality – two dogs, for instance, may act very differently
under the impact of the same circumstances. The monadic group-soul incarnates
in a decreasing number of forms as it gradually approaches the point at which
complete individualisation will be reached. The desire-body, or Kâmic vehicle,
becomes considerably developed, and persists for some time after the death of
the physical body, leading an independent existence in Kâmaloka. At last the
decreasing number of forms animated by a monadic group-soul comes down to
unity, and it animates a succession of single forms – a condition differing
from human reincarnation only by the absence of Manas, with its causal and
mental bodies.
The mental matter brought
down by the monadic group-souls begins to be susceptible to impacts from the
mental plane, and the animal is then ready to receive the third great
outpouring of the life of the LOGOS – the tabernacle is ready for the reception
of the human Monad.
The human Monad is, as
we have seen, triple in its nature, its three aspects being denominated,
respectively, the Spirit, the spiritual Soul, and the human Soul,
Âtma-Buddhi-Manas. Doubtless, in the course of eons of evolution, the upwardly
evolving Monad of form might have unfolded Manas by progressive growth, but
both in the human race in the past, and in the animals of the present, such has
not been the course of Nature.
When the house was ready
the tenant was sent down ; from the higher planes of being the âtmic life
descended, veiling itself in Buddhi, as a golden thread ; and its third aspect,
Manas, showing itself in the higher levels of the formless world of the mental
plane, germinal Manas within the form was fructified, and the embryonic causal
body was formed by the union. This is the individualisation of the spirit, the
incasing of it in form, and this spirit incased in the causal body is the soul,
the individual, the real man. This is his birth hour; for though his essence be
eternal, unborn and undying, his birth in time as an individual is definite.
Further, this outpoured
life reaches the evolving forms not directly, but by intermediaries. The human
race having attained the point of receptivity, certain great Ones, called Sons
of Mind – (Manasaputra is the technical name, being merely the Sanskrit for
Sons of Mind.) – cast into men the monadic spark of
Âtma-Buddhi-Manas,
needed for the formation of the embryonic soul.
And some of these great
Ones actually incarnated in human forms, in order to become the guides and
teachers of infant humanity. These Sons of Mind had completed Their own intellectual evolution in other worlds, and came
to this
younger world, our earth, for the purpose of thus aiding in the
evolution of the human race. They are in truth, the spiritual fathers of the
bulk of our humanity. Other intelligences of much lower grade, men who had
evolved in preceding cycles in another world, incarnated among the descendants
of the race
that received its infant
souls in the way just described. As this race evolved, the human tabernacles
improved, and myriads of souls that were awaiting the opportunity of
incarnation, that they might continue their evolution, took birth among its
children.
These partially evolved
souls are also spoken of in the ancient records as Sons of Mind, for they were
possessed of mind, although comparatively it was but little developed –
childish souls we may call them, in distinguishment from the
embryonic souls of the bulk of humanity, and the mature souls of the
great Teachers.
These child-souls, by
reason of their more evolved intelligence, formed the leading types of the
ancient world, the classes higher in mentality, and therefore in the power of
acquiring knowledge, that dominated the masses of less developed men in
antiquity.
And thus arose, in our
world, the enormous differences in mental and moral capacity which separate the
most highly evolved
from the least evolved races, and which, even within the limits
of single race, separate the lofty philosophic thinker from the well-nigh
animal type of the most depraved of his own nation. These differences are but
differences of the stage of evolution, of the age of the soul, and they have
been found to exist throughout the whole of history of humanity on this globe.
Go back as far as we
may in historic records,
and we may find lofty intelligence and debased ignorance side by side, and the
occult records, carrying us backwards, tell a similar story of the early
millennia of humanity.
Nor should this distress
us, as though some had been unduly favoured and others unduly burdened for the
struggle of life. The loftiest soul had its childhood and its infancy, albeit
in previous worlds, where other souls were as high above it as others are below
it now ; the lowest soul shall climb to where our highest are standing, and
souls yet unborn shall occupy its present place in evolution.
Things seem unjust
because we wrench our world out of its place in evolution, and set it apart in
isolation, with no forerunners and no successors. It is our ignorance that sees
the injustice ; the ways of Nature are equal, and she
brings to all her children infancy, childhood, and manhood. Nor hers the fault
if our
folly demands that all souls shall occupy the same stage of
evolution at the same time, and cries "Unjust!" if the demand be not
fulfilled.
We shall best understand
the evolution of the soul, if we take it up at the point where we left it, when
animal-man was ready to receive, and did receive, the embryonic soul. To avoid
a possible misapprehension, it may be well to say that there were not
henceforth two Monads in man – the one that had built the
human tabernacle, and the one that descended into that
tabernacle, and whose lowest aspect was the human soul.
To borrow a simile again
from H. P. Blavatsky, as two rays of the sun may pass through a hole in a
shutter, and mingling together form but one ray though they had been twain, so
is it with these rays from the Supreme Sun, the divine Lord
of our universe. The
second ray, as it entered into the human tabernacle, blended with the first,
merely adding to it fresh energy and brilliance, and the human Monad, as a unit,
began its mighty task of unfolding the higher powers in man of that divine Life
whence it came.
The embryonic soul, the
Thinker, had at the beginning for its embryonic mental body the mind-stuff
envelope that the Monad of form had brought with it, but had not yet organised
into any possibility of functioning. It was the mere germ of a mental body,
attached to a mere germ of a causal body, and for many a life the
strong desire-nature had its will with the soul, whirling it along
the road of its own passions and appetites, and dashing up against it all the
furious waves of its own uncontrolled animality.
Repulsive as this early
life of the soul may at first seem to some when looked at from the higher stage
that we have now attained, it was a necessary one for the germination of the
seeds of mind. Recognition of difference, the perception that one thing is
different from another, is a preliminary essential to thinking
at all. And, in order to
awaken this perception in the as yet unthinking soul, strong and violent
contrasts had to strike upon it, so as to force differences upon it – blow
after blow of riotous pleasure, blow after blow of crushing pain.
The external world
hammered on the soul through the desire nature, till perceptions began to be
slowly made, and, after countless repetitions, to be registered. The little
gains made in each life were stored up by the Thinker, as we have already seen,
and thus slow progress was made.
Slow progress, indeed, for
scarcely anything was thought, and hence scarcely anything was done in the way
of organising the mental body. Not until many perceptions had been registered
in it as mental images was there any material on which mental action, initiated
from within, could be based ; this would begin
when two or more of
these mental images were drawn together, and some inference, however
elementary, was made from them. That inference was the beginning of reasoning,
the germ of all the systems of logic which the intellect of man has since
evolved or assimilated. These inferences would at first all be made in the
service of the desire-nature, for the increasing of pleasure, the lessening of
pain ; but each one would increase the activity of the mental body, and would stimulate
it into more ready functioning.
It will readily be seen
that at this period of his infancy man had no knowledge of good or of evil;
right and wrong for him had no existence. The right is that which is in
accordance with the divine will, which helps forward the progress of the soul,
which tends to the strengthening of the higher nature of man and to the
training and subjugation of the lower, the wrong is that which retards
evolution, which retains
the soul in the lower stages after he has learned the lessons they have to
teach, which tends to the mastery of the lower nature over the higher, and
assimilates man to the brute he should be outgrowing instead of to the God he
should be evolving.
Ere man could know what
was right, he had to learn the existence of the law, and this he could only
learn by following all that attracted him in the outer world, by grasping every
desirable object, and then by learning from experience, sweet
or bitter, whether his
delight was in harmony or in conflict with the law. Let us take an obvious
example, the taking of pleasant food, and see how infant man might learn
therefrom the presence of a natural law. At the first taking, his hunger was
appeased, his taste was gratified, and only pleasure resulted from the
experience, for his action was in harmony with law. On another occasion, desiring
to increase pleasure, he ate overmuch and suffered in consequence, for he
transgressed against the law. A confusing experience to the
dawning intelligence, how the pleasurable became painful by excess.
Over and over again he
would be led by desire into excess, and each time he would experience the
painful consequences, until at last he learned moderation, i.e., he learned to conform
his bodily acts in this respect to physical law; for he found that there were
conditions which affected him and which he could not control, and that only by
observing them could physical happiness be insured.
Similar experiences
flowed in upon him through all the bodily organs, with undeviating regularity ;
his outrushing desires brought him pleasure or pain just as they worked with
the laws of Nature or against them, and, as experience increased, it began to
guide his steps, to influence his choice, It was not as though he had to begin
his experience anew with every life, for on each new
birth he brought with
him mental faculties a little increased, and
ever-accumulating store.
I have said that the
growth in these early days was very slow, for there was but the dawning of
mental action, and when the man left his physical body at death he passed most
of his time in Kâmaloka, sleeping through a brief devachanic period of
unconscious assimilation of any minute mental experience not yet sufficiently
developed for the active heavenly life that lay before him after many days.
Still, the enduring
causal body was there, to be the receptacle of his qualities, and to carry them
on for further development into his next life on earth. The part played by the
monadic group-soul in the earlier stages of evolution is played in man by the
causal body, and it is this continuing entity who, in all cases, makes
evolution possible. Without him, the accumulation of mental and moral
experiences, shown as faculties, would be as impossible as
would be the
accumulation of physical experiences, shown as racial and family
characteristics without the continuity of physical plasm.
Souls without a past
behind them, springing suddenly into existence, out of nothing, with marked
mental and moral peculiarities, are a conception as monstrous as would be the
corresponding conception of babies suddenly appearing from nowhere, unrelated
to anybody, but showing marked racial and family types.
Neither man nor his
physical vehicle is uncaused, or caused by the direct power of the LOGOS ;
here, as in so many other cases, the invisible things are clearly seen by their
analogy with the visible, the visible being, in very truth, nothing more than
the images, the reflections, of things unseen.
Without a continuity in
the physical plasm, there would be no means for the evolution of physical
peculiarities ; without the continuity of the intelligence, there would be no
means for the evolution of mental and moral qualities. In both cases, without
continuity, evolution would be stopped at its first stage, and the world would
be a chaos of infinite and isolated beginnings instead of a cosmos continually
becoming.
We must not omit to
notice that in these early days much variety is caused in
the type and in the
nature of individual progress by the environment which
surrounds the
individual. Ultimately all the souls have to develop all their
powers, but the order in
which these powers are developed depends on the
circumstances amid which
the soul is placed. Climate, the fertility or sterility
of nature, the life of
the mountain or of the plain, of the inland forest or the
ocean shore – these
things and countless others will call into activity one set
or another of the
awakening mental energies.
A life of extreme
hardship, of ceaseless struggle with nature, will develop very
different powers from
those evolved amid the luxuriant plenty of a tropical
island ; both sets of
powers are needed, for the soul is to conquer every region
of nature, but striking
differences may thus be evolved even in souls of the
same age, and one may
appear to be more advanced than the other, according as the observer estimates
most highly the more "practical" or the more
"contemplative"
powers of the soul, the active outward-going energies, or the
quiet inward-turned
musing faculties. The perfected soul possesses all, but the
soul in the making must
develop them successively, and thus arises another cause of the immense variety
found among human beings.
For again, it must be
remembered that human evolution is individual. In a group
informed by a single
monadic group-soul the same instincts will be found in all,
for the receptacle of
the experiences is that monadic group-soul, and it pours
its life into all forms
dependent upon it.
But each man has his own
physical vehicle and one only at a time, and the
receptacle of all
experiences is the causal body, which pours its life into its
one physical vehicle,
and can affect no other physical vehicle, being connected
with none other. Hence
we find differences separating individual men greater,
than the ever separated,
closely allied animals, and hence also the evolution of
qualities cannot be
studied in men in the mass, but only in the continuing
individual. The lack of
power to make such a study leaves science unable to
explain why some men
tower above their fellows, intellectual and moral giants,
unable to trace the intellectual
evolution of a Shankarâchârya or a Pythagoras,
the moral evolution of a
Buddha or of a Christ.
Let us now consider the
factors in reincarnation, as a clear understanding of
these is necessary for
the explanation of some of the difficulties – such as the
alleged loss of memory –
which are felt by those unfamiliar with the idea. We
have seen that man,
during his passage through physical death, Kâmaloka and
Devachan, loses one after
the other, his various bodies, the physical, the
astral, and the mental.
These are all disintegrated, and their particles remix
with the materials of
their several planes. The connection of the man with the
physical vehicle is
entirely broken off and done with ; but the astral and
mental bodies hand on to
the man himself, to the Thinker, the germs of the
faculties and qualities
resulting from the activities of the earth-life, and
these are stored within
the causal body, the seeds of his next astral and mental
bodies.
At this stage, then,
only the man himself is left, the labourer who has brought
his harvest home, and
has lived upon it till it is all worked up into himself.
The dawn of a new life
begins, and he must go forth again to his labour until
the even.
The new life begins by
the vivifying of the mental germs, and they draw upon the
materials of the lower
mental levels, till a mental body has grown up from them
that represents exactly
the mental stage of the man, expressing all his mental
faculties as organs ;
the experiences of the past do not exist as mental images
in this new body; as
mental images they perished when the old mind-body
perished, and only their
essence, their effects on faculty, remain ; they were
the food of the mind,
the materials which it wove into powers, and in the new
body they reappear as
powers, they determine its materials, and they form its
organs. When the man,
the Thinker, has thus clothed himself with a new body for his coming life on
the lower mental levels, he proceeds, by vivifying the astral
germs, to provide
himself with an astral body for his life on the astral plane.
This, again, exactly
represents his desire-nature, faithfully reproducing the
qualities he evolved in
the past, as the seed reproduces its parent tree. Thus
the man stands, fully
equipped for his next incarnation, the only memory of
these events of his past
being in the causal body, in his own enduring form, the
one body that passes on
from life to life.
Meanwhile, action
external to himself is being taken to provide him with a
physical body suitable
for the expression of his qualities. In past lives he has
made ties with,
contracted liabilities towards, other human beings, and some of
these will partly determine
his place of birth and his family. – ( This and the
following causes
determining the outward circumstances of the new life will be
fully explained in
Chapter IX, on "Karma".) He has been a source of happiness or of
unhappiness to others ; this is a factor in determining the conditions of his
coming life. His
desire-nature is well disciplined, or unregulated and riotous ;
this will be taken into
account in the physical heredity of the new body. He has
cultivated certain
mental powers, such as the artistic ; this must be considered, as here again
physical heredity is an important factor where delicacy of nervous organisation
and tactile sensibility are required.
And so on, in endless
variety. The man may, certainly will, have in him many
incongruous
characteristics, so that only some can find expression in any one
body that could be
provided, and a group of his powers suitable for simultaneous expression must
be selected. All this is done by certain mighty spiritual Intelligences,(
Spoken of by H.P.Blavatsky in the Secret Doctrine. They are the Lipika, the
Keepers of the kârmic records, and the Mahârâjas, who direct the practical
working out of the decrees of the Lipika.) - often spoken of as the
Lords of Karma, because
it is their function to superintend the working out of
causes continually set
going by thoughts, desires, and actions. They hold the
threads of destiny which
each man has woven, and guide the reincarnating man to the environment
determined by his past, unconsciously self-chosen through his past life.
The race, the nation,
the family, being thus determined, what may be called the
mould of the physical
body – suitable for the expression of the man’s qualities,
and for the working out of
the causes he has set going – is given by these great
Ones, and the new
etheric double, a copy of this, is built within the mother’s
womb by the agency of an
elemental, the thought of the Karmic Lords being its
motive power.
The dense body is built
into the etheric double molecule by molecule, following
it exactly, and here
physical heredity has full sway in the materials provided.
Further, the thoughts
and passions of surrounding people, especially of the
continually present
father and mother, influence the building elemental in its
work, the individuals
with whom the incarnating man had formed ties in the past
thus affecting the
physical conditions growing up for his new life on earth.
At a very early stage
the new astral body comes into connection with the new
etheric double, and
exercises considerable influence over its formation, and
through it the mental
body works upon the nervous organisation, preparing it to
become a suitable
instrument for its own expression in the future. This influence commenced in
ante natal life – so that when a child is born its brain-formation reveals the
extent and balance of its mental and moral qualities – is continued after
birth, and this building of brain and nerves, and their correlation to the
astral and mental bodies, go on till the seventh year of childhood, at which
age the connection between the man and his physical vehicle is complete, and he
may be said to work through it henceforth more than upon it.
Up to this age, the
consciousness of the Thinker is more upon the astral plane than upon the
physical, and this is often evidenced by the play of psychic faculties in young
children. They see invisible comrades and fairy landscapes, hear voices
inaudible to their elders, catch charming and delicate fancies from
the astral world. These
phenomena generally vanish as the Thinker begins to work effectively through
the physical vehicle, and the dreamy child becomes the commonplace boy or girl,
oftentimes much to the relief of the bewildered parents, ignorant of the cause
of their child’s "queerness."
Most children have at
least a touch of this "queerness," but they quickly learn to hide
away their fancies and visions from their unsympathetic elders, fearful of
blame for "telling stories," or of what the child dreads far more –
ridicule.
If parents could see
their children’s brains, vibrating under an inextricable mingling of physical
and astral impacts, which the children themselves are quite incapable of
separating, and receiving sometimes a thrill – so plastic are they – even from
the higher regions, giving a vision of ethereal beauty, of heroic
achievement, they would
be more patient with, more responsive to, the confused prattlings of the little
ones, trying to translate into the difficult medium of unaccustomed words the
elusive touches of which they are conscious, and which they try to catch and
retain. Reincarnation, believed in and understood, would relieve child life of
its most pathetic aspect, the unaided struggle of the soul to gain control over
its new vehicles, and to connect itself fully with its densest body without
losing power to impress the rarer ones in a way that would enable them to
convey to the denser their own more subtle vibrations.
The ascending stages of
consciousness through which the Thinker passes as he reincarnates during his
long cycle of lives in the three lower worlds are clearly marked out, and the
obvious necessity for many lives, in which to experience them, if he is to
evolve at all, may carry to the more thoughtful
minds the clearest
conviction of the truth of reincarnation.
The first of the stages
is that in which all the experiences are sensational, the only contribution
made by the mind consisting of the recognition that contact with some object is
followed by a sensation of pleasure, while contact with others is followed by a
sensation of pain. These objects form mental pictures, and the pictures soon
begin to act as a stimulus to seek the objects
associated with pleasure,
when those objects are not present, the germs of memory and of mental
initiative thus making their appearance. This first rough division of the
external world is followed by the more complex idea of the bearing of quantity
on pleasure and pain, already referred to.
At this stage of
evolution, memory is very short lived, or, in other words, mental images are
very transitory. The idea of forecasting the future from the past, even to the
most rudimentary extent, has not dawned on the infant Thinker,
and his actions are
guided from outside, by the impacts that reach him from the external world, or
at furthest by the promptings of his appetites and passions, craving
gratification. He will throw away anything for an immediate satisfaction,
however necessary the thing may be for his future well being; the need of the
moment overpowers every other consideration. Of human souls in thisembryonic
condition, numerous examples can be found in books of travel, and the necessity
for many lives will be impressed on the mind of any one who studies the mental
condition of the least evolved savages, and compares it with the mental
condition of even average humanity among ourselves.
Needless to say that the
moral capacity is no more evolved than the mental; the
idea of good and evil
has not yet been conceived. Not is it possible to convey
to the quite undeveloped
mind even elementary notion of either good or bad. Good and pleasant are to it
interchangeable terms, as in the well-known case of the Australian savage mentioned
by Charles Darwin. Pressed by hunger, the man
speared the nearest
living creature that could serve as food, and this happened
to be his wife; a
European remonstrated with him on the wickedness of his deed,
but failed to make any
impression; for from the reproach that to eat his wife
was very, very bad he
only deduced the inference that the stranger thought she
had proved nasty of
indigestible, and he put him right by smiling peacefully as
he patted himself after
his meal, and declaring in a satisfied way, "She is very
good."
Measure in thought the
moral distance between that man and St. Francis of
Assisi, and it will be
seen that there must either be evolution of souls as
there is evolution of
bodies, or else in the realm of the soul there must be
constant miracle,
dislocated creations.
There are two paths
along either of which man may gradually emerge from this
embryonic mental
condition. He may be directly ruled and controlled by men far
more evolved than
himself, or he may be left slowly to grow unaided. The latter
case would imply the
passage of uncounted millennia, for, without example and
without discipline, left
to the changing impacts of external objects, and to
friction with other men
as undeveloped as himself, the inner energies could be
but very slowly aroused.
As a matter of fact, man
has evolved by the road of direct precept and example
and of enforced
discipline. We have already seen that when the bulk of the
average humanity received
the spark which brought the Thinker into being, there
were some of the greater
Sons if Mind who incarnated as Teachers, and that there was also a long
succession of lesser Sons of Mind, at various stages of
evolution, who came into
incarnation as the crest-wave of the advancing tide of
humanity.
These ruled the less
evolved, under the beneficent sway of the great Teachers, and the compelled
obedience to elementary rules of right living – very elementary at first, in
truth – much hastened the development of mental and moral faculties in the
embryonic souls. Apart from all other records the gigantic remains of
civilizations that have long since disappeared – evidencing great engineering
skill, and intellectual conceptions far beyond anything possible by the mass of
the then infant humanity – suffice to prove that there were present on earth
men with minds that were capable of greatly planning and greatly executing.
Let us continue the
early stage of the evolution of consciousness. Sensation was wholly lord of the
mind, and the earliest mental efforts were stimulated by desire. This led the
man, slowly and clumsily, to forecast, to plan. He began to recognise a
definite association of certain mental images, and, when one
appeared, to expect the
appearance of the other that had invariably followed in its wake. He began to
draw inferences, and even to initiate action on the faith of these inferences –
a great advance. And he began also to hesitate now and
again to follow the
vehement promptings of desire, when he found, over and over again, that the
gratification demanded was associated in his mind with the subsequent happening
of suffering.
This action was much
quickened by the pressure upon him of verbally expressed laws; he was forbidden
to seize certain gratifications, and was told that suffering would follow
disobedience. When he had seized the delight-giving
object and found the
suffering follow upon pleasure, the fulfilled declaration made a far stronger
impression on his mind than would have been made by the unexpected – and
therefore to him fortuitous – happening of the same thing un foretold. Thus
conflict continually arose between memory and desire, and the
mind grew more active by
the conflict, and was stirred into livelier functioning. The conflict, in fact,
marked the transition to the second great stage.
Here began to show
itself the germ of will. Desire and will guide a man’s actions, and will has
even been defined as the desire which emerges triumphant from the contest of
desires. But this is a crude and superficial view, explaining nothing. Desire
is the outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined in its direction by the
attraction of external objects. Will is the outgoing energy
of the Thinker,
determined in its direction by the conclusions drawn by the reason, from past
experiences, or by the direct intuition of the Thinker himself. Otherwise put:
desire is guided from without – will from within. At the beginning of man’s
evolution, desire has complete sovereignty, and hurries him
hither and thither; in
the middle of his evolution, desire and will are in continual conflict, and
victory lies sometimes with the one, sometimes with the other; at the end of
his evolution desire has died, and will rules with unopposed, unchallenged sway.
Until the Thinker, is
sufficiently developed to see directly, will is guided by him through the
reason; and as the reason can draw its conclusions only from its stock of
mental images – its experiences – and that stock is limited, the will constantly
commands mistaken actions. The suffering which flows from these mistaken
actions increases the stock of mental images, and thus gives the reason an
increased store from which to draw its conclusions. Thus progress is made and
wisdom is born.
Desire often mixes
itself up with will, so that what appears to be determined from within is
really largely prompted by the cravings of the lower nature for objects which
afford it gratification. Instead of an open conflict between the
two, the lower subtly
insinuates itself into the current of the higher and turns its course aside.
Defeated in the open field, the desire of the personality thus conspire against
their conqueror, and often win by guile what they failed to win by force.
During the whole of this second great stage, in which the faculties of
the lower mind are in
full course of evolution, conflict is the normal condition, conflict between
the rule of sensations and the rule of reason.
The problem to be solved
in humanity is the putting an end to conflict while preserving the freedom of
the will; to determine the will inevitably to the best, while yet leaving that
best as a matter of choice. The best is to be chosen, but by a self-initiated
volition, that shall come with all the certainty of a foreordained necessity.
The certainty of a compelling law is to be obtained
from countless wills,
each one left free to determine its own course.
The solution of that
problem is simple when it is known, though the contradiction looks
irreconcilable when first presented. Let man be left free to choose his own
actions, but let every action bring about an inevitable result; let him run
loose amid all objects of desire and seize whatever he will, but let him have
all the results of his
choice, be they delightful or grievous. Presently he will freely reject the
objects whose possession ultimately causes him pain; he will no longer desire
them when he has experienced to the full that their possession ends in sorrow.
Let him struggle to hold
the pleasure and avoid the pain, he will none the less be ground between the
stones of law, and the lesson will be repeated any number of times found
necessary; reincarnation offers us many lives as are needed by the most
sluggish learner. Slowly desire for an object that brings suffering in its
train will die, and when the thing offers itself in all its attractive glamour
it will be rejected, not by compulsion but by free choice.
It is no longer
desirable, it has lost its power. Thus with thing after thing; choice more and
more runs in harmony with law. "There are many roads of error; the road of
truth is one"; when all the paths of error have been trodden, when all
have been found to end in suffering, the choice to walk in the way of truth is
unswerving, because based on knowledge. The lower kingdoms work harmoniously,
compelled by law; man’s kingdom is a chaos of conflicting wills, fighting
against, rebelling against law; presently there evolves from it a nobler unity,
a harmonious choice of voluntary obedience, an obedience that, being voluntary,
based on knowledge and on memory of the results of disobedience, is stable and
can be drawn aside by no temptation. Ignorant, inexperienced, man would always
have been in danger of falling; as a God, knowing good and evil by experience,
his choice of the good is raised forever beyond possibility of change.
Will in the domain of
morality is generally entitled conscience, and it is subject to the same
difficulties in this domain as in its other activities. So long as actions are
in question which have been done over and over again, of which the consequences
are familiar either to the reason or to the Thinker himself, the conscience
speaks quickly and firmly. But when unfamiliar problems arise as to the working
out of which experience is silent, conscience cannot speak with certainty; it
has but a hesitating answer from the reason, which can draw only a doubtful
inference, and the Thinker cannot speak if his experience does not include the
circumstances that have now arisen.
Hence conscience often
decides wrongly; that is, the will, failing clear direction from either the
reason or the intuition, guides action amiss. Nor can we leave out of
consideration the influences which play upon the mind from without, from the
thought-forms of others, of friends, of the family, of the community, of the
nation. (Chapter 11, "The Astral Plane.") These all surround and
penetrate the mind with their own atmosphere, distorting the appearance of
everything, and throwing all things our of proportion. Thus influenced, the
reason often does not even judge calmly from its own experience, but draws
false conclusions as it studies its materials through a distorting medium.
The evolution of moral
faculties is very largely stimulated by the affections, animal and selfish as
these are during the infancy of the Thinker. The laws of morality are laid down
by the enlightened reason, discerning the laws by which Nature moves, and
bringing human conduct into consonance with the Divine Will.
But the impulse to obey
these laws, when no outer force compels, has its roots in love, in that hidden
divinity in man which seeks to pour itself out to give itself to others.
Morality begins in the infant Thinker when he is first moved by love to wife,
to child, to friend, to do some action that serves the loved one without any
thought of gain to himself thereby. It is the first conquest over the lower
nature, the complete subjugation of which is the achievement of moral
perfection.
Hence the importance of
never killing out or striving to weaken, the affection, as is done in many of
the lower kinds of occultism. However impure and gross the affections may be,
they offer possibilities of moral evolution from which the cold-hearted and
self-isolated have shut themselves out. It is an easier task to
purify than to create
love, and this is why "the sinners" have been said by great Teachers
to be nearer to the kingdom of heaven than the Pharisees and Scribes.
The third great stage of
consciousness sees the development of the higher intellectual powers; the mind
no longer dwells entirely on mental images obtained from sensations, no longer
reasons on purely concrete objects, nor is concerned with the attributes which
differentiate one from another. The Thinker having learned clearly to
discriminate between objects by dwelling upon their unlikenesses, now begins to
group them together by some attribute which appears in a number of objects
otherwise dissimilar and makes a link between them.
He draws out, abstracts,
his common attribute, and sets all objects that posses it, apart from the rest
which are without it; and in this way he evolves the power of recognising
identity amid diversity, a step toward the much later recognition of the One
underlying the man, he thus classifies all that is around
him, developing the
synthetic faculty, and learning to construct as well as analyse. Presently he
takes another step, and conceives of the common property as an idea, apart from
all the objects in which it appears, and thus constructs a higher kind of
mental image of a concrete object – the image of an idea that has no phenomenal
existence in the worlds of form, but which exists on the higher levels of the
mental plane, and affords material on which the Thinker himself can work.
The lower mind reaches
the abstract idea by reason, and in thus doing accomplishes its loftiest
flight, touching the threshold of the formless world, and dimly seeing that
which lies beyond. The Thinker sees these ideas, and lives among them
habitually, and when the power of abstract reasoning is developed and exercised
the Thinker is becoming effective in his own world, and is beginning his life
of active functioning in his own sphere.
Such men care little for
the life of the senses, care little for external observation, or for mental
application to images of external objects; their powers are indrawn, and no
longer rush outwards in the search for satisfaction.
They dwell calmly within
themselves, engrossed with the problems of philosophy, with the deepest aspects
of life and thought, seeking to understand causes rather than troubling
themselves with effects, and approaching nearer and nearer to the recognition
of the One that underlies all the diversities of external Nature.
In the fourth stage of consciousness
that One is seen, and with the transcending the barrier set up by the intellect
the consciousness spreads out to embrace the world, seeing all things in itself
and as parts of itself, and seeing itself as a ray of the LOGOS, and therefore
as one with Him. Where is then the Thinker?
He has become
Consciousness, and, while the spiritual Soul can at will use any of his lower
vehicles, he is no longer limited to their use, nor needs them for this full
and conscious life. Then is compulsory reincarnation over and the man has
destroyed death; he has verily achieved immortality. Then has he become "a
pillar in the
To complete this part of
our study, we need to understand the successive quickenings of the vehicles of
consciousness, the bringing them one by one into activity as the harmonious
instruments of the human Soul.
We have seen that from
the very beginning of his separate life the Thinker has possessed coatings of
mental, astral, etheric, and dense physical matter. These form the media by
which his life vibrates outwards, the bridge of consciousness, as we may call
it, along which all impulses from the Thinker may reach the dense
physical body, all
impacts from the outer world may reach him.
But this general use of
the successive bodies as parts of a connected whole is a very different thing
from the quickening of each in turn to serve as a distinct vehicle of
consciousness, independently of those below it, and it is this quickening of
the vehicles that we have now to consider. The lowest vehicle, the
dense physical body, is
the first one to be brought into harmonious working order; the brain and the
nervous system have to be elaborated and to be rendered delicately responsive
to every thrill which is within their gamut of vibratory power. In the early
stages, while the physical dense body is composed of the grosser kinds of
matter, this gamut is extremely limited, and the physical organ of the mind can
respond only to the slowest vibrations sent down.
It answers far more
promptly, as is natural, to the impacts from the external world caused by
objects similar in materials to itself. Its quickening as a vehicle of
consciousness consists in its being made responsive to the vibrations that are
initiated from within, and the rapidity of this quickening depends on the
co-operation of the lower nature with the higher, its loyal subordination of
itself in the service of its inner ruler.
When after many, many
life-periods, it dawns upon the lower nature that it exists for the sake of the
soul, that all its value depends on the help it can bring to the soul, that it
can win immortality only by merging itself in the soul, then its evolution
proceeds in giant strides. Before this, the evolution has been unconscious; at
first, the gratification of the lower nature was the object of life, and, while
this was a necessary preliminary for calling out the energies of the Thinker,
it did nothing directly to render the body a vehicle of consciousness; the
direct working upon it begins when the life of the man establishes its centre
in the mental body, and when thought commences to dominate sensation.
The exercise of the
mental powers works on the brain and the nervous system, and the coarser
materials are gradually expelled to make room for the finer, which can vibrate
in unison with the thought-vibrations sent to them. The brain becomes finer in
constitution, and increases by ever more complicated
convolutions the amount
of surface available for the coating of nervous matter adapted to respond to
thought-vibrations. The nervous system becomes more delicately balanced, more
sensitive, more alive to every thrill of mental activity. And when the
recognition of its function as an instrument of the Soul,
spoken of above, has
come, then active co-operation in performing this function sets in. The
personality begins deliberately to discipline itself, and to set the permanent
interests of the immortal individual above its own transient gratifications.
It yields up the time
that might be spent in the pursuit of lower pleasures to the evolution of
mental powers; day by day time is set apart for serious study; the brain is
gladly surrendered to receive impacts from within instead of from without, is
trained to answer to consecutive thinking, and is taught to refrain
from throwing up its own
useless disjointed images, made by past impressions.
It is taught to remain
at rest when it is not wanted by its master; to answer, not to initiate
vibrations. (One of the signs that it is being accomplished is the cessation of
the confused jumble of fragmentary images which are set up during sleep by the
independent activity of the physical brain. When the brain is
coming under control
this kind of dream is very seldom experienced.)
Further, some discretion
and discrimination will be used as to the food-stuffs which supply physical
materials to the brain. The use of the coarser kinds will be discontinued, such
as animal flesh and blood and alcohol, and pure food will build up a pure body.
Gradually the lower vibrations will find no materials
capable of responding to
them, and the physical body thus becomes more and more entirely a vehicle of
consciousness, delicately responsive to all the thrills of thought and keenly
sensitive to the vibrations sent outwards by the Thinker.
The etheric double so
closely follows the constitution of the dense body that it is not necessary to
study separately its purification and quickening; it does not normally serve as
a separate vehicle of consciousness, but works synchronously with its dense
partner, and when separated from it either by accident or by death, it responds
very feebly to the vibrations initiated from
within. It function in
truth is not to serve as a vehicle of mental-consciousness, but as a vehicle of
Prâna, of specialised life-force, and its dislocation from the denser particles
to which it conveys the life-currents is therefore disturbing and mischievous.
The astral body is the
second vehicle of consciousness to be vivified, and we have already seen the
changes through which it passes as it becomes organised for the work. (see
Chapter II, "The Astral Plane".). When it is thoroughly organised,
the consciousness which has hitherto worked within it, imprisoned by it, when
in sleep it has left the physical body and is drifting about in the astral
world, begins not only to receive the impressions through it of astral objects
that form the so-called dream-consciousness, but also to perceive astral
objects by its senses – that is, begins to relate the impressions received to
the objects which give
rise to those impressions.
These perceptions are at
first confused, just as are the perceptions at first made by the mind through a
new physical baby-body, and they have to be corrected by experience in the one
case as in the other. The Thinker has gradually to discover the new powers
which he can use through this subtler vehicle, and by which he can control the
astral elements and defend himself against astral dangers. He is not left alone
to face this new world unaided, but is taught and helped and – until he can
guard himself – protected by those who are more experienced than himself in the
ways of the astral world. Gradually the new
vehicle of consciousness
comes completely under his control, and life on the astral plane is as natural
and as familiar as life on the physical.
The third vehicle of
consciousness, the mental body, is rarely, if ever, vivified for independent
action without the direct instruction of a teacher, and its functioning belongs
to the life of the disciple at the present stage of human evolution. (See
Chapter XI, "Man’s Ascent"). As we have already seen, it is
rearranged for separate functioning (See Chapter IV, "The Mental Plane"),
on the mental plane, and here again experience and training are needed ere it
comes fully under its owner’s control. A fact – common to all these three
vehicles of consciousness, but more apt to mislead perhaps in the subtler than
in the denser, because it is generally forgotten in their case, while it is so
obvious that it is remembered in the denser – is that they are subject to
evolution, and that with their higher evolution their powers to receive and to
respond to vibrations increase.
How many more shades of
a colour are seen by a trained eye than by an untrained. How many overtones are
heard by a trained ear, where the untrained hears only the single fundamental
note. As the physical senses grow more keen the world becomes fuller and
fuller, and where the peasant is conscious only his furrow and his plough, the
cultured mind is conscious of hedgerow flower and quivering aspen, of rapturous
melody down-dropping from the skylark and the whirring of tiny wings through
the adjoining wood, of the scudding of rabbits under the curled fronds of the
bracken, and the squirrels playing with each other through the branches of the
beeches, of all the gracious movements of wild things, of all the fragrant
odours of filed and woodland, of all the changing glories of the cloud-flecked
sky, and of all the chasing lights and shadows on the hills. Both the peasant
and the cultured have eyes, both have brains, but of what differing powers of
observation, of what differing powers to receive impressions.
Thus also in other
worlds. As the as the astral and mental bodies begin to function as separate
vehicles of consciousness, they are in, as it were, the peasant stage of
receptivity, and only fragments of the astral and mental worlds, with their
strange and elusive phenomena, make their way into consciousness; but they
evolve rapidly, embracing more and more, and conveying to consciousness a more
and more accurate reflection of its environment. Here, as everywhere else, we
have to remember that our knowledge is not the limit of Nature’s powers, and
that in the astral and mental worlds, as in the physical, we are still
children, picking up a few shells cast up by the waves, while the treasures hid
in the ocean are still unexplored.
The quickening of the
causal body as a vehicle of consciousness follows in due course the quickening
of the mental body, and opens up to a man a yet more marvelous state of
consciousness, stretching backwards into an illimitable past, onwards into the
reaches of the future. Then the Thinker not only possesses the
memory of his own past
and can trace his growth through the long succession of his incarnate and
excarnate lives, but he can also roam at will through the storied past of the
earth, and learn the weighty lessons of world-experience, studying the hidden
laws that guide evolution and the deep secrets of life hidden in the bosom of
Nature.
In that lofty vehicle of
consciousness he can each the veiled Isis, and lift a corner of her
down-dropped veil; for there he can face her eyes without being blinded by her
lightening glances, and he can see in the radiance that flows from her the
causes of the world’s sorrow and its ending, with heart pitiful and
compassionate, but no
longer wrung with helpless pain. Strength and calm and wisdom come to those who
are using the causal body as a vehicle of consciousness, and who behold with
opened eyes the glory of the Good law.
When the buddhic body is
quickened as a vehicle of consciousness the man enters into the bliss of
non-separateness, and knows in full and vivid realisation his unity with all
that is.
As the predominant
element of consciousness in the causal body is knowledge, and ultimately
wisdom, so the predominant element of consciousness in the buddhic body is
bliss and love.
The serenity of wisdom
chiefly marks the one, while the tenderest compassion streams forth
inexhaustibly from the other; when to these is added the godlike and unruffled
strength that marks the functioning of Âtma, then humanity is crowned with
divinity, and the God-man is manifest in all the plenitude of his power, of his
wisdom, of his love.
The handing down to the
lower vehicles of such part of the consciousness belonging to the higher as
they are able to receive does not immediately follow on the successive
quickening of the vehicles. In this matter individuals differ very widely,
according to their circumstances and their work, for this quickening of the
vehicles above the physical rarely occurs till probationary
discipleship is reached,
( See Chapter XI, "Man’s Ascent"), and then the duties to be
discharged depend on the needs of the time.
The disciple, and even
the aspirant for discipleship, is taught to hold all his powers entirely for
the service of the world, and the sharing of the lower consciousness in the knowledge
of the higher is for the most part determined by the needs of the work in which
the disciple is engaged. It is necessary that the disciple should have the full
use of his vehicles of consciousness on the higher
planes, as much of his
work can be accomplished only in them; but the conveying of knowledge of that
work to the physical vehicle, which is in no way concerned in it, is a matter
of no importance and the conveyance or non-conveyance is generally determined
by the effect that the one course or the other would have on the efficiency of
his work on the physical plane.
The strain on the
physical body when the higher consciousness compels it to vibrate responsively
is very great, at the present stage of evolution, and unless the external circumstances
are very favourable this strain is apt to cause nervous disturbance,
hyper-sensitiveness with its attendant evils.
Hence most of those who
are in full possession of the quickened higher vehicles of consciousness, and
whose most important work is done out of the body, remain apart from the busy
haunts of men, if they desire to throw down into the physical consciousness the
knowledge they use on the higher planes, thus
preserving the sensitive
physical vehicle from the rough usage and clamour of ordinary life.
The main preparation to
be made for receiving in the physical vehicle the vibrations of the higher
consciousness are: its purification from grosser materials by pure food and
pure life; the entire subjugation of the passions, and the cultivation of an
even, balanced temper and mind, unaffected by the
turmoil and vicissitudes
of external life ; the habit of quiet meditation on lofty topics, turning the
mind away from the objects of the senses, and from the mental images arising
from them, and fixing it on higher things ; the cessation of hurry, especially
of that restless, excitable hurry of the mind, which keeps the brain
continually at work and flying from one subject to another ; the genuine love
for the things of the higher world, that makes them more attractive than the
objects of the lower, so that the mind rests contentedly in their companionship
as in that of a well-loved friend.
In fact, the
preparations are much the same as those necessary for the conscious separation
of "soul" from "body" and those were elsewhere stated by me
as follows:
The student –
"Must begin by
practising extreme temperance in all things, cultivating an equable and serene
state of mind, his life must be clean and his thoughts pure, his body held in
strict subjection to the soul, and his mind trained to occupy itself with noble
and lofty themes; he must habitually practise compassion,
sympathy, helpfulness to
others, with indifference to troubles and pleasures affecting himself, and he
must cultivate courage, steadfastness, and devotion.
In fact, he must live
the religion and ethics that other people for the most part only talk. Having
by persevering practice learned to control his mind to some extent so that he
is able to keep it fixed on one line of thought for some little time, he must
begin its more rigid training, by a daily practice of concentration on some
difficult or abstract subject, or on some lofty object of
devotion; this
concentration means the firm fixing of the mind on one single point, without
wandering, and without yielding to any distraction caused by external objects,
by the activity of the senses, or by that of the mind itself.
It must be braced up to
an unswerving steadiness and fixity, until gradually it will learn so to
withdraw its attention form the outer world and from the body that the senses
will remain quiet and still, while the mind is intensely alive with all its
energies drawn inwards to be launched at a single point of thought, the highest
to which it can attain.
When it is able to hold
itself thus with comparative ease it is ready for a further step, and by a
strong but calm effort of the will it can throw itself beyond the highest
thought it can reach while working in the physical brain, and in the effort
will rise and unite itself with the higher consciousness and find
itself free of the body.
When this is done there is no sense of sleep or dream nor any loss of
consciousness; the man finds himself outside his body, but as though he merely
slipped off a weighty encumbrance, nor as though he had lost any part of
himself; he is not really "disembodied", but had risen out of the
gross body ‘in a body of
light’ which obeys his slightest thought and serves as a beautiful and perfect
instrument for carrying out his will. In this he is free of the subtle worlds,
but will need to train his faculties long and carefully for reliable work under
the new conditions.
"Freedom from the
body may be obtained in other ways; by the rapt intensity of devotion or by
special methods that may be imparted by a great teacher to his disciple.
Whatever the way, the
end is the same – the setting free of the soul in full consciousness, able to
examine its new surroundings in regions beyond the treading of the flesh of the
man of flesh. At will it can return to the body and re-enter it, and under
these circumstances it can impress on the brain-mind, and
thus retain while in the
body, the memory of the experiences it has undergone." [ Conditions of
life after death" Nineteenth Century of Nov. 1896 ]
Those who have grasped
the main ideas sketched in the foregoing pages will feel that these ideas are
in themselves the strongest proof that reincarnation is a fact in nature. It is
necessary in order that the vast evolution implied in the phrase, " the
evolution of the soul," may be accomplished. The only alternative –
putting aside for the moment the materialistic idea that the soul is only the
aggregate of the vibrations of a particular kind of physical matter – is that
each soul is a new creation, made when a babe is born, and stamped with
virtuous or with vicious tendencies, endowed with ability or with stupidity, by
the arbitrary whim of the creative power.
As the Muhammadan would
say, his fate is hung round his neck at birth, for a man’s fate depends on his
character and his surroundings, and a newly created soul flung into the world
must be doomed to happiness or misery according to the
circumstances environing
him and the character stamped upon him.
Predestination in its
most offensive form is the alternative of reincarnation. Instead of looking on
men as slowly evolving, so that the brutal savage of today will in time evolve
the noblest qualities of saint and hero, and thus, seeing in the world a wisely
planned and wisely directed process of growth, we shall be
obliged to see in it a
chaos of most unjustly treated sentient beings, awarded happiness or misery,
knowledge or ignorance, virtue or vice, wealth or poverty, genius or idiocy, by
an arbitrary external will, unguided by either justice or
mercy – a veritable
pandemonium, irrational and unmeaning.
And this chaos is
supposed to be the higher part of the cosmos, in the lower regions of which are
manifested all the orderly and beautiful workings of a law that ever evolves higher
and more complex form from the lower and the simpler, that obviously
"makes for righteousness," for harmony and for beauty.
If it be admitted that
the soul of the savage is destined to live and evolve, and that he is not
doomed for eternity to his present infant state, but that his evolution will
take place after death and in other worlds, then the principle of
soul-evolution is conceded, and the question of the place of evolution alone
remains. Were all souls on earth at the same stage of evolution, much might be
said for the contention
that further worlds are needed for the evolution of souls beyond the infant
stage.
But we have around us
souls that are far advanced, and that were born with noble mental and moral
qualities. But parity of reasoning, we must suppose them to have been evolved
in other worlds ere their one birth in this, and we cannot but wonder why an
earth that offers varied conditions, fit for little-developed and
also for advanced souls,
should be paid only one flying visit by souls at every stage of development,
all the rest of their evolution being carried on in worlds similar to this,
equally able to afford all the conditions needed to evolve the souls of
different stages of evolution, as we find them to be when they are born here.
The Ancient Wisdom
teaches, indeed, that the soul progresses through many worlds, but it also
teaches that he is born in each of these worlds over and over again, until he
has completed the evolution possible in that world. The worlds themselves, according
to its teaching, form an evolutionary chain, and
each plays its own part
as a field for certain stages of evolution.
Our own world offers a
field suitable for the evolution of the mineral, vegetable, animal and human
kingdoms, and therefore collective or individual reincarnation goes on upon it
in all these kingdoms. Truly, further evolution lies before us in other worlds,
but in the divine order they are not open to us until we have
learned and mastered the
lessons of our own world has to teach.
There are many lines of
thought that lead us to the same goal of reincarnation, as we study the world
around us. The immense differences that separate man from man have already been
noticed as implying an evolutionary past behind each soul; and attention has
been drawn to these differentiating the individual
reincarnation of men –
all of whom belong to a single species – from the reincarnation of monadic
group-souls in the lower kingdoms.
The comparatively small differences
that separate the physical bodies of men, all being externally recognisable as
men, should be contrasted with the immense differences that separate the lowest
savage and the noblest human type in mental and moral
capacities. Savages are
often splendid in physical development and with large cranial contents, but how
different their minds from that of a philosopher or saint!
If high mental and moral
qualities are regarded as the accumulated results of civilised living, then we
are confronted with the fact that the ablest men of the present are over-topped
by the intellectual giants of the past, and that none of our own day reaches
the moral altitude of some historical saints.
Further, we have to
consider that genius has neither parent nor child; that it
appears suddenly and not
as the apex of a gradually improving family, and is itself generally sterile,
or, if a child be born to it, it is a child of the body, not of the mind.
Still more
significantly, a musical genius is for the most part born in a musical family,
because that form of genius needs for its manifestation a nervous organisation
of a peculiar kind, and nervous organisation falls under the law of heredity.
But how often in such a family its object seems over when it has provided a
body for a genius, and it then flickers out and vanishes in a few generations
into the obscurity of average humanity. Where are the descendants of Bach, of
Beethoven, of Mozart, of Mendelssohn, equal to their sires? Truly genius does
not descend from father to son, like the family types of the Stuart and the
Bourbon.
On what ground, save
that or reincarnation, can the "infant prodigy" be accounted for?
Take as an instance the case of the child who became Dr.Young, the discoverer
of the undulatory theory of light, a man whose greatness is scarcely yet
sufficiently widely recognised. As a child of two he could read "with
considerable fluency", and before he was four he had read through the
Bible twice; at seven he began arithmetic, and mastered Walkingham’s Tutor’s
Assistant before he had reached the middle of it under his tutor, and a few
years later we find him mastering, while at school, Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
mathematics,
book-keeping, French, Italian, turning and telescope-making and delighting in
Oriental literature.
At fourteen he was to be
placed under private tuition with a boy a year and a half younger, but, the
tutor first engaged failing to arrive, Young taught the other boy. (Life of Dr.
Thomas Young, by G. Peacock, D.D.). Sir William Rowan Hamilton showed power
even more precocious. He began to learn Hebrew when he was barely three, and
"at the age of seven he was pronounced by one of the Fellows of Trinity
College, Dublin, to have shown a greater knowledge of the language than many
candidates for a fellowship. At the age of thirteen he had acquired
considerable knowledge of at least thirteen languages.
Among these, besides the
classical and the modern European languages, were
included Persian,
Arabic, Sanskrit, Hindustani, and even Malay….. He wrote, at
the age of fourteen, a
complimentary letter to the Persian Ambassador, who
happened to visit
Dublin; and the latter said that he had not thought there was
a man in Britain who
could have written such a document in the Persian language.
A relative of his says:
"I remember him a little boy of six, when he would
answer a difficult
mathematical question, and run off gaily to his little cart.
At twelve he engaged
Colburn, the American ‘calculating boy,’ who was then being exhibited as a curiosity
in Dublin, and he had not always the worst of the
encounter." When he
was eighteen, Dr. Brinkley (Royal Astronomer of Ireland)
said of him in 1823:
"This young man, I do not say will be, but is, the first
mathematician of his
age." "At college his career was perhaps unexampled.
Among a number of
competitors of more than ordinary merit, he was first in every subject, and at
every examination. (North British Review, September 1866).
Let the thoughtful student
compare these boys with a semi-idiot, or even with an
average lad, note how,
starting with these advantages, they become leaders of
thought, and then ask
himself whether such souls have no past behind them.
Family likenesses are
generally explained as being due to the "law of heredity,"
but differences in
mental and in moral character are continually found within a
family circle, and these
are left unexplained. Reincarnation explains the
likenesses by the fact
that a soul in taking birth is directed to a family which
provides by its physical
heredity a body suitable to express his characteristics; and it explains the
unlikenesses by attaching the mental and moral character to the individual
himself, while showing that ties set up in the past have led him to take birth
in connection with some other individual of that family. (See Chapter IX, on
"Karma").
A "matter of
significance in connection with twins is that during infancy they
will often be
indistinguishable from each other, even to the keen eye of the
mother and of nurse;
whereas, later in life, when Manas has been working on his
physical encasement, he
will have so modified it that the physical likeness
lessens and the
differences of character stamp themselves on the mobile
features." [
Reincarnation by Annie Besant, ] Physical likeness with mental and
moral unlikeness seems
to imply the meeting of two different lines of causation.
The striking
dissimilarity found to exist between people of about equal
intellectual power in
assimilating particular kinds of knowledge is another
"pointer" to
reincarnation. A truth is recognised at once by one, while the
other fails to grasp it
even after long and careful observation. Yet the very
opposite may be the case
when another truth is presented to them, and it may be
seen by the second and
missed by the first. "Two students are attracted to
Theosophy and begin to
study it, at a year’s end one is familiar with its main conceptions and can
apply them, while the other is struggling in a maze. To the one each principle
seemed familiar on presentation ; to the other new, unintelligible, strange.
The believer in
reincarnation understands that the teaching is old to the one, and new to the
other; one learns quickly because he remembers, he is but recovering past
knowledge; the other learns slowly because his experience has not included
these truths of nature, and he is acquiring them toil fully for the
first time.[
Reincarnation by annie Besant, ] " So also ordinary intuition is
"merely recognition of a fact familiar in a past life, though met with for
the first time in the present," another sign of the road along which the
individual has traveled in the past.
The main difficulty with
many people in the reception of the doctrine of reincarnation is their own
absence of memory of their past. Yet they are every day familiar with the fact
that they have forgotten very much even of their lives in their present bodies,
and that the early years of childhood are blurred and those of infancy a blank.
They must also know that events of the past which have entirely slipped out of
their normal consciousness are yet hidden away in dark caves of memory and ban
be brought out again vividly in some forms of disease or under the influence of
mesmerism.
A dying man has been
known to speak a language heard only in infancy, and unknown to him during a
long life; in delirium, events long forgotten have presented themselves vividly
to the consciousness. Nothing is really forgotten; but much is hidden out of
sight of the limited vision of our waking consciousness, the most limited form
of our consciousness, although the only
consciousness recognised
by the vast majority. Just as memory of some of the present life is in-drawn
beyond the reach of this waking consciousness, and makes itself known again
only when the brain is hypersensitive and thus able to respond to vibrations
that usually beat against it unheeded, so is the memory of
the past lives stored up
our of reach of the physical consciousness. It is all with the Thinker, who
alone persists from life to life; he has the whole book of memory within his
reach, for he is the only " I " that has passed through all the experiences
recorded therein.
Moreover, he can impress
his own memories of the past on his physical vehicle, as soon as it has been
sufficiently purified to answer his swift and subtle vibrations, and then the
man of flesh can share his knowledge of the storied past. The difficulty of
memory does not lie in forgetfulness, for the lower vehicle, the physical body,
has never passed through the previous lives of its
owner; it lies in the
absorption of the present body in its present environment, in its coarse
unresponsiveness to the delicate thrills in which alone the soul can speak.
Those who would remember the past must not have their interests centred in the
present, and they must purify and refine the body till it is able to receive
impressions from the subtler spheres.
Memory of their own past
lives, however, is possessed by a considerable number of people who have
achieved the necessary sensitiveness of the physical organism, and to these of
course, reincarnation is no longer a theory, but has become a matter of personal
knowledge. They have learned how much richer life
becomes when memories of
past lives pout into it, when the friends of this brief day are found to be the
friends of the long-ago, and old remembrances strengthen the ties of the
fleeting present. Life gains security and dignity when it is seen with a long
vista behind it, and when the loves of old reappear in the
loves of today. Death
fades into its proper place as a mere incident in life, a change from one scene
to another, like a journey that separates bodies but cannot sunder friend from
friend. The links of the present are found to be part of a golden chain that
stretches backwards, and the future can be faced with a glad security in the
thought that these links will endure through days to come, and form part of
that unbroken chain.
Now and then we find
children who have brought over a memory of their immediate past, for the most
part when they have died in childhood and are reborn almost immediately. In the
West such cases are rarer than in the East, because in the West the first words
of such a child would be met with disbelief, and he would quickly lose faith in
his own memories. In the East, where belief in reincarnation is almost
universal, the child’s remembrances are listened to, and where the opportunity
serves they have been verified.
There is another
important point with respect to memory that will repay consideration. The
memory of past events remains, as we have seen, with the Thinker only, but the
results of those events embodied in faculties are at the service of the lower
man.
If the whole of these
past events were thrown down into the physical brain, a vast mass of
experiences in no classified order,
without arrangement, the
man could not be guided by the out come of the past, nor utilise it for present
help. Compelled to make a choice between two lines of action, he would have to
pick, out of the un-arranged facts from his past, events similar in character,
trace out their results, and after long and weary
study arrive at some conclusion
– a conclusion very likely to be vitiated by the overlooking of some important
factor, and reached long after the need for decision had passed.
All the events, trivial
and important, of some hundreds of lives would form a
rather unwieldy and chaotic
mass for reference in an emergency that demanded a
swift action. The far
more effective plan of Nature leaves to the Thinker the
memory of the events,
provides a long period of excarnate existence for the
mental body, during
which all events are tabulated and compared and their
results are classified;
then these results are embodied as faculties, and these
faculties form the next
mental body of the Thinker.
In this way, the
enlarged and improved faculties are available for immediate
use, and, the faculties
of the past being in them, a decision can be come to, in
accordance with those
results and without any delay. The clear quick insight and
prompt judgment are
nothing else than the outcome of past experiences, moulded into an effective
form for use; they are surely more useful instruments than would be a mass of
unassimilated experiences, out of which the relevant ones would have to be
selected and compared, and from which inferences would have to be drawn, on
each separate occasion on which a choice arises.
From all these lines of
thought, however, the mind turns back to rest on the
fundamental necessity
for reincarnation if life is to be made intelligible, and
if injustice and cruelty
are not to mock the helplessness of man. With
reincarnation man is a
dignified, immortal being, evolving towards a divinely
glorious end; without
it, he is a tossing straw on the stream of chance
circumstances ,
irresponsible for his character, for his actions, for his
destiny.
With it, he may look
forward with fearless hope, however low in the scale of
evolution he may be
today, for he is on the ladder to divinity, and the climbing
to its summit is only a
question of time; without it, he has no reasonable
ground of assurance as
to progress in the future, nor indeed any reasonable
ground of assurance in a
future at all. Why should a creature without a past
look forward to a
future?He may be a mere bubble on the ocean of time. Flung
into the world from
non-entity, with qualities of good or evil, attached to him
without reason or
desert, why should he strive to make the best of them? Will
not his future, if he
have one, be as isolated, as uncaused, as unrelated as his
present? In dropping
reincarnation from its beliefs, the modern world has
deprived God of His
justice and has bereft man of his security; he may be
"lucky" or
"unlucky" but the strength and dignity conferred by reliance on a
changeless law are rent
away from him, and he is left tossing helplessly on an
un-navigable ocean of
life.
KARMA
Having traced the
evolution of the soul by the way of reincarnation, we are now
in a position to study
the great law of causation under which rebirths are
carried on, the law
which is named Karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word, literally
meaning
"action"; as all actions are effects flowing from preceding causes,
and
as each effect becomes a
cause of future effects, this idea of cause and effect
is an essential part of
the idea of action, and the word action, or karma, is
therefore used for
causation, or for the unbroken linked series of causes and
effects that make up all
human activity.
Hence the phrase is
sometimes used of an event, "This is my karma," i.e., "This
event is the effect of a
cause set going by me in the past." No one life is
isolated! It is the
child of all the lives before it, the parent of all the
lives that follow it, in
the total aggregate of the lives that make up the
continuing existence of
the individual.
There is no such thing
as "chance" or as "accident"; every event is linked to a
preceding cause, to a
following effect; all thoughts, deeds, circumstances are
causally related to the
past and will causally influence the future; as our
ignorance shrouds from
our vision alike the past and the future, events often
appear to us to come
suddenly from the void, to be "accidental," but this
appearance is illusory
and is due entirely to our lack of knowledge. Just as the
savage, ignorant of the
laws of the physical universe, regards physical events
as uncaused, and the
results of unknown physical laws as "miracles"; so do many, ignorant
of moral and mental laws, regard moral and mental events as uncaused, and the
results of unknown moral and mental laws as good and bad "luck."
When at first this idea
of inviolable, immutable law is a realm hitherto vaguely
ascribed to chance dawns
upon the mind, it is apt to result in a sense of
helplessness, almost of
moral and mental paralysis. Man seems to be held in the
grip of an iron destiny,
and the resigned "kismet" of the Moslem appears to be
the only philosophical
utterance. Just so might the savage feel when the idea of
physical law first dawns
on his startled intelligence, and he learns that every
movement of his body, every
movement in external nature, is carried on under
immutable laws.
Gradually he learns that
natural laws only lay down conditions under which all
workings must be carried
on, but do not prescribe the workings; so that man
remains ever free at the
centre, while limited in his external activities by the
conditions of the plane
on which those activities are carried on. He learns
further that while the
conditions master him, constantly frustrating his
strenuous efforts, so
long as he is ignorant of them, or, knowing them, fights
against them, he masters
them and they become his servants and helpers when he understands them, knows
their directions, and calculates their forces.
In truth science is
possible only on the physical plane because its laws are
inviolable, immutable.
Were there no such things as natural laws, there could be
no sciences. An
investigator makes a number of experiments, and from the results of these he
learns how Nature works; knowing this, he can calculate how to bring about a
certain desired result, and if he fail in achieving that result he knows that
he has omitted some necessary condition – either his knowledge is
imperfect, or he has
made a miscalculation. He reviews his knowledge, revises
his methods, recasts his
calculations, with a serene and complete certainty that
if he ask his question
rightly Nature will answer him with unvarying precision.
Hydrogen and oxygen will
not give him water today and prussic acid tomorrow;
fire will not burn him
today and freeze him tomorrow. If water be a fluid today
and a solid tomorrow, it
is because the conditions surrounding it have been
altered, and the
reinstatement of the original conditions will bring about the
original result.
Every new piece of
information about the laws of Nature is not a fresh
restriction but a fresh
power, for all these energies of Nature become forces
which he can use in
proportion as he understands them. Hence the saying that
"knowledge is
power," for exactly in proportion to his knowledge can he utilise
these forces; by
selecting those with which he will work, by balancing one
against another, by
neutralising opposing energies that would interfere with his
object, he can calculate
beforehand the result, and bring about what he
predetermines.
Understanding and
manipulating causes, he can predict effects, and thus the very
rigidity of nature which
seemed at first to paralyse human action can be used to
produce and infinite
variety of results. Perfect rigidity in each separate force
makes possible perfect
flexibility in their combinations. For the forces being
of every kind, moving in
every direction, and each being calculable, a selection
can be made and the
selected forces so combined as to yield any desired result.
The object to be gained
being determined, it can be infallibly obtained by a
careful balancing of
forces in the combination put together as a cause. But, be
it remembered, knowledge
is requisite thus to guide events, to bring about
desired results. The
ignorant man stumbles helplessly along, striking himself
against the immutable
laws and seeing his efforts fail, while the man of
knowledge walks steadily
forward, foreseeing, causing, preventing, adjusting,
and bringing about that
at which he aims, not because he is lucky but because he
understands. The one is
the toy, the slave of Nature, whirled along by her
forces: the other is her
master, using her energies to carry him onwards in the
direction chosen by his
will.
That which is true of
the physical realm of law is true of the moral and mental
worlds, equally realms
of law. Here also the ignorant is a slave, the sage is a
monarch; here also the
inviolability, the immutability, that were regarded as
paralysing, are found to
be the necessary conditions of sure progress and of
clear-sighted direction
of the future. Man can become the master of his destiny
only because that
destiny lies in a realm of law, where knowledge can build up
the science of the soul
and place in the hands of man the power of controlling
his future – of choosing
alike his future character and his future
circumstances.The
knowledge of karma that threatened to paralyse, becomes an
inspiring, a supporting,
an uplifting force.
Karma is then, the law of
causation, the law of cause and effect. It was put
pointedly by the
Christian Initiate, S. Paul: "Be not deceived, God is not
mocked: for whatsoever a
man soweth that shall he also reap."(Galatians, vi, 7).
Man is continually
sending out forces on all the planes on which he functions;
these forces –
themselves in quantity and quality the effects of his past
activities – are causes
which he sets going in each world he inhabits; they
bring about certain
definite effects both on himself and on others, and as these
causes radiate forth
from himself as centre over the whole field of his
activity, he is
responsible for the results they bring about.
As a magnet has its
"magnetic field," an area within which all its forces play,
larger or smaller according
to its strength, so has every man a field of
influence within which
play the forces he emits, and these forces work in curves
that return to their
forth-sender, that re-enter the centre whence they emerged.
As the subject is a very
complicated one, we will sub-divide it, and then study
the subdivisions one by
one.
Three classes of
energies are sent forth by man in his ordinary life, belonging respectively to
the three worlds that he inhabits; mental energies on the mental plane, giving
rise to the causes we call thoughts; desire energies on the astral plane,
giving rise to those we call desires; physical energies aroused by these, and
working on the physical plane, giving rise to the causes we call action.
We have to study each of
these in its workings, and to understand the class of effects to which each
gives rise, if we wish to trace intelligently the part that each plays in the
perplexed and complicated combinations we set up, called in their totality
"our Karma." When a man, advancing more swiftly than his
fellows, gains the
ability to function on higher planes, he then becomes the centre of higher
forces, but for the present we may leave these out of account and confine
ourselves to ordinary humanity, treading the cycle of reincarnation in the
three worlds.
In studying these three
classes of energies we shall have to distinguish between their effect on the
man who generates them and their effect on others who come within the field of
his influence; for a lack of understanding on this point often leaves the
student in a slough of hopeless bewilderment.
Then we must remember
that every force works on its own plane and reacts on the planes below it in
proportion to its intensity, the plane on which it is generated gives it its
special characteristics, and in its reaction on lower planes it sets up
vibrations in their finer or coarser materials according to
its own original
nature.The motive which generates the activity determines the plane to which
the force belongs.
Next it will be necessary
to distinguish between ripe karma, ready to show itself as inevitable events in
the present life; the karma of character, showing itself in tendencies that are
the outcome of accumulated experiences, and that are capable of being modified
in the present life by the same power (the Ego)
that created them in the
past; the karma that is now making, and will give rise to future events and
future character. ( These divisions are familiar to the student as Prarabdha
(commenced, to be worked out in the life); Sanchita (accumulated), a part of
which is seen in the tendencies, Kriyamana, (in course of making).
Further, we have to
realise that while a man makes his own individual karma he also connects
himself thereby with others, thus becoming a member of various groups – family,
national, racial – and as a member he shares in the collective karma of each of
these groups.
It will be seen that the
study of karma is one of much complexity; however, by grasping the main
principles of its working as set out above, a coherent idea of its general
bearing may be obtained without much difficulty, and its details can be studied
at leisure as opportunity offers. Above all, let it never be forgotten, whether
details are understood or not, that each man makes his own karma, creating
alike his own capacities and his own limitations; and that working at any time
with these self-created capacities, and within these self-created limitations,
he is still himself, the living soul, and can strengthen or weaken his capacities,
enlarge or contract his limitations.
The chains that bind him
are of his own forging, and he can file them away or rivet them more strongly;
the house he lives in is of his own building, and he can improve it, let it
deteriorate, or rebuild it, as he will. We are ever working in plastic clay and
can shape it to our fancy, but the clay hardens and becomes as iron, retaining
the shape we gave it. A proverb from the Hitopadesha
runs, as translated by
Sir Edwin Arnold:
"Look! The clay
dries into iron, but the potter moulds the clay;
Destiny today is the
master – Man was master yesterday. "
Thus we are all masters
of our tomorrows, however much we are hampered today by the results of our
yesterdays.
Let us now take in order
the divisions already set out under which karma may be studied.
Three classes of causes,
with their effects on their creator and on those he influences.The first of
these classes is composed of our thoughts. Thought is the most potent factor in
the creation of human karma, for in thought the energies of the SELF are
working in mental matter, the matter which, in its finer kinds, forms the
individual vehicle, and even in its coarser kinds
responds swiftly to
every vibration of self-consciousness. The vibrations which we call thought,
the immediate activity of the Thinker, give rise to forms of mind-stuff, or
mental images, which shape and mould his mental body, as we have already seen;
every thought modifies this mental body, and the mental faculties in each
successive life are made by the thinkings of the previous lives.
A man can have no
thought-power, no mental ability, that he has not himself created by patiently
repeated thinkings; on the other hand, no mental image that he has thus created
is lost, but remains as material for faculty, and the aggregate of any group of
mental images is built into a faculty which grows stronger with every
additional thinking, or creation of a mental image, of the same kind.
Knowing this law, the
man can gradually make for himself the mental character he desires to possess
and he can do it as definitely and as certainly as a bricklayer can build a
wall. Death does not stop his work, but by setting him free from the
encumbrance of the body facilitates the process of working up his mental images
into the definite organ we call a faculty, and he brings this back with him to
his next birth on the physical plane, part of the brain of the new body being
moulded so as to serve as the organ of this faculty, in a way to be explained
presently.
All these faculties
together form the mental body for his opening life on earth, and his brain and
nervous system are shaped to give his mental body expression on the physical
plane. Thus the mental images created in one life appear as mental
characteristics and tendencies in another, and for this reason it is written in
one of the Upanishads: "Man is a creature of reflection: that which he
reflects on in this life he becomes the same hereafter."
(Chhandogyopanishad IV, xiv,1). Such is the law, and it places the building of
our mental character entirely in our own hands; if we build well, ours the
advantage and the credit; if we build badly, ours the loss and blame. Mental
character, then, is a case of individual karma in its action on the individual
who generates it.
This same man that we
are considering, however, affects other by his thoughts. For these mental
images that form his own mental body set up vibrations, thus reproducing
themselves in secondary forms. These generally, being mingled with
desire, take up some
astral matter, and I have therefore elsewhere (see Karma, - Theosophical Manual
No. IV) called these secondary thought-forms – astro-mental images. Such forms
leave their creator and lead a quasi-independent life – still keeping up a
magnetic tie with their progenitor.
They come into contact
with and affect others, in this way setting up karmic links between these
others and himself; thus they largely influence his future environment. In such
fashion are made the ties which draw people together for good or evil in later
lives; which surround us with relatives, friends, and
enemies; which bring
across our path helpers and hinderers, people who benefit and who injure us,
people who love us without our winning in this life, and who hate us though in
this life we have done nothing to deserve their hatred.
Studying the results, we
grasp a great principle – that while our thoughts produce our mental and moral
character in their action on ourselves, they help to determine our human
associates in the future by their effects on others.
The second great class
of energies is composed of our desires – our out-goings after objects that
attract us in the external world: as a mental element always enters into these
in man, we may extend the term "mental images " to include them,
although they express themselves chiefly in astral matter. These in their
action on their
progenitor mould and form his body of desire, or astral body, shape his fate
when he passes into Kamaloka after death, and determine the nature of his
astral body in his next rebirth.
When the desires are
bestial, drunken, cruel, unclean, they are the fruitful causes of congenital
diseases, of weak and diseased brains, giving rise to epilepsy, catalepsy, and
nervous diseases of all kinds, of physical malformations and deformities, and,
in extreme cases, of monstrosities. Bestial appetites of an abnormal kind or
intensity may set up links in the astral world which for a time chain the Egos,
clothed in astral bodies shaped by these appetites, to the astral bodies of
animals to which these appetites properly belong, thus delaying their
reincarnation; where this fate is escaped, the bestially shaped astral body
will sometimes impress its characteristics on the forming physical body of the
babe during ante natal life, and produce the semi-human horrors that are
occasionally born.
Desires – because they
are outgoing energies that attach themselves to objects – always attract the
man towards an environment in which they may be gratified. Desires for earthly
things, linking the soul to the outer world, draw him
towards the place where
the objects of desire are most readily obtainable, and therefore it is said
that a man is born according to his desires. ( See
Brihadaranyakopanishad,IV,iv, 5,7,and context). They are one of the causes that
determine the place of rebirth.
The astro-mental images
caused by desires affect others as do those generated by thoughts. They,
therefore, also link us with other souls, and often by the strongest ties of
love and hatred, for at the present stage of human evolution an ordinary man’s
desires are generally stronger and more sustained than his
thoughts. They thus play
a great part in determining his human surroundings in future lives, and may
bring into those lives persons and influences of whose connection with himself
he is totally unconscious.
Suppose a man by sending
out a thought of bitter hatred and revenge has helped to form in another the
impulse which results in a murder; the creator of that thought is linked by his
karma to the committer of the crime, although they have never met on the
physical plane, and the wrong he has done to him, by helping to impel him to a
crime , will come back as an injury in the infliction of which the whilhom
criminal will play his part. Many a "bolt from the blue" that is felt
is utterly undeserved is the effect of such a cause, and the soul thereby
learns and registers a lesson while the lower consciousness is writhing under a
sense of injustice.
Nothing can strike a man
that he has not deserved, but his absence of memory does not cause a failure in
the working of the law. We thus learn that our desires in their action on
ourselves produce our desire-nature, and through it largely affect our physical
bodies in our next birth; that they play a great
part in determining the
place of rebirth; and by their effect on others they help to draw around us our
human associates in future lives.
The third great class of energies, appearing on the physical plane as actions,
generate much karma by their effects on others, but only slightly affect
directly the Inner
the most part exhausted in their happening. Indirectly they
affect him in proportion as he is moved by them to fresh thoughts and desires
or emotions, but the generating force lies in these and not
in the actions
themselves.
Again, if actions are
often repeated, they set up a habit of the body which acts as a limitation to
the expression of the Ego in the outer world; this, however, perishes with the
body, thus limiting the karma of the action to a single life so far as its
effect on the soul is concerned. But it far otherwise when we come
to study the effects of
actions on others, the happiness or unhappiness caused by these, and the
influence exercised by these as examples.They link us to others by this
influence and are thus a third factor in determining our future human
associates, while they are the chief factor in determining what may be
called our non-human
environment. Broadly speaking, the favourable or unfavourable nature of the
physical surroundings into which we are born depends on the effect of our previous
actions in spreading happiness or unhappiness among other people. The physical
results on others of actions on the physical plane work out karmically in
repaying to the actor good or bad surroundings in a future life.
If he has made people
physically happy, by sacrificing wealth or time or trouble, this action
karmically brings him favourable physical circumstances conducive to physical
happiness. If he has caused people wide-spread physical misery, he will reap
karmically from his action wretched physical circumstances
conducive to physical
suffering. And this is so, whatever may have been his motive in either case – a
fact which leads us to consider the law that:
Every force works on its
own plane. If a man sows happiness for others on the physical plane, he will
reap conditions favourable to happiness for himself on that plane, and his
motive in sowing it does not affect the result . A man might sow wheat with the
object of speculating with it to ruin his neighbour, but his
bad motive would not
make the wheat grains grow up as dandelions. Motive is a mental or astral
force, according as it arises from will or desire, and it reacts on moral and
mental character or on the desire-nature severally.
The causing of physical
happiness by an action is a physical force and works on the physical plane.
"By his actions" man affects his neighbours on the physical plane; he
spreads happiness around him or he causes distress, increasing or
diminishing the sum of
human welfare. This increase or diminution of happiness may be due to very
different motives – good, bad, or mixed. A man may do an act that gives
widespread enjoyment from sheer benevolence, from a longing to give happiness
to his fellow creatures.
Let us say that from
such a motive he presents a park to a town for the free use of its inhabitants;
another may do a similar act from mere ostentation, from desire to attract
attention from those who can bestow social honours (say, he might give it as
purchase-money for a title); a third may give a park from mixed
motives, partly
unselfish, partly selfish. The motives will severally affect these three men’s
characters in their future incarnations, for improvement, for degradation, for
small results.
But the effect of the
action is causing happiness to large numbers of people does not depend on the
motive of the giver; the people enjoy the park equally, no matter what may have
prompted its gift, and this enjoyment, due to the action of the giver,
establishes for him a karmic claim on Nature, a debt due to him that will be
scrupulously paid. He will receive a physically comfortable or luxurious
environment, as he has given widespread physical enjoyment, and his sacrifice
of physical wealth will bring him his due reward, the karmic fruit of
his action.
This is his right. But
the use he makes of his position, the happiness he derives from his wealth and
his surroundings, will depend chiefly on his character, and here again the just
reward accrues to him, each seed bearing its
appropriate harvest.
Truly, the ways of Karma are equal. It does not withhold
from the bad man the
result which justly follows from an action which spreads
happiness, and it also
deals out to him the deteriorated character earned by his
bad motive, so that in
the midst of wealth he will remain discontented and
unhappy.
Nor can the good man
escape physical suffering if he cause physical misery by
mistaken actions done
from good motive; the misery he caused will bring him
misery in his physical
surroundings, but his good motive, improving his
character, will give him
a source of perennial happiness within himself, and he
will be patient and
contented amid his troubles. Many a puzzle maybe answered by applying these
principles to the facts we see around us.
These respective effects
of motive and of the results (or fruits) of actions are
due to the fact that
each force has the characteristics of the plane on which it
was generated, and the
higher the plane the more potent and the more persistent
the force. Hence motive
is far more important than action, and a mistaken action
done with a good motive
is productive of more good to the doer than a
well-chosen action done
with a bad motive. The motive, reacting on the
character, gives rise to
a long series of effects, for the future actions guided
by that character will
all be influenced by its improvement or its deterioration
‘ whereas the action,
bringing on its doer physical happiness or unhappiness,
according to its results
on others, has in it no generating force, but is
exhausted in its
results.
If bewildered as to the
path of right action by a conflict of apparent duties,
the knower of karma
diligently tries to choose the best path, using his reason
and judgment to the
utmost; he is scrupulously careful about his motive,
eliminating selfish
considerations and purifying his heart; then he acts
fearlessly, and if his
action turn out to be a blunder he willingly accepts the
suffering which results
from his mistake as a lesson which will be useful in the
future. Meanwhile, his
high motive has ennobled his character for all time to
come.
This general principle
that the force belongs to the plane on which it is
generated is one of
far-reaching import. If it be liberated with the motive of
gaining physical
objects, it works on the physical plane and attaches the actor
to that plane. If it aim at devachanic
objects, it works on the devachanic
plane
and attaches the actor
thereto. If it have no motive save the divine service, it
is set free on the
spiritual plane, and therefore cannot attach the individual,
since the individual is
asking for nothing.
The Three
Kinds of Karma
Ripe Karma is that which
is ready for reaping and which is therefore inevitable. Out of all the karma of
the past there is a certain amount which can be exhausted within the limits of
a single life; there are some kinds of karma that are so incongruous that they
could not be worked out in a single physical body, but would require very
different types of body for their expression; there are liabilities contracted
towards other souls, and all these souls will not be in incarnation at the same
time; there is karma that must be worked out in some particular nation or
particular social position, while the same man has other karma that needs an
entirely different environment.
Part only, therefore, of
his total karma can be worked out in a given life, and this part is selected by
the Great Lords of Karma – of whom something will presently be said – and the
soul is guided to incarnate in a family, a nation, a place, a body, suitable
for the exhaustion of that aggregate of causes which can
be worked out together.
This aggregate of causes fixes the length of that particular life; gives to the
body its characteristics, its powers, and its limitations; brings into contact
with the man the souls incarnated within that life-period to whom he has
contracted obligations, surrounding him with relatives, friends, and enemies;
marks out the social conditions into which he
is born, with their
accompanying advantages and disadvantages; selects the mental energies he can
show forth by moulding the organisation of the brain and nervous system with
which he has to work; puts together the causes that result in troubles and joys
in his outer career and that can be brought into a single life.
All this is the
"ripe karma," and this can be sketched out in a horoscope cast by a
competent astrologer. In all this the man has no power of choice; all is fixed
by the choices he has made in the past, and he must discharge to the uttermost
farthing the liabilities he has contracted.
The physical, astral and
mental bodies which the soul takes on for a new life-period are, as we have
seen, the direct result of his past, and they form a most important part of
this ripe karma. They limit the soul on every side, and his past rises up in
judgment against him, marking out the limitations which he
has made for himself.
Cheerfully to accept these, and diligently to work at their improvement, is the
part of the wise man, for he cannot escape from them.
There is another kind of
ripe karma that is of very serious importance – that of inevitable actions.
Every action is the final expression of a series of thoughts; to borrow an
illustration from chemistry, we obtain a saturated solution of thought by
adding thought after thought of the same kind, until another thought – or even
an impulse, a vibration, from without – will produce
the solidification of
the whole; the action which expresses the thoughts. If we persistently
reiterate thoughts of the same kind, say of revenge, we at last reach the point
of saturation, and any impulse will solidify these into action and a crime
results. Or we may have persistently reiterated thoughts of help to another to
the point of saturation, and when the stimulus of opportunity touches us they
crystallise out as an act of heroism.
A man may bring over
with him some ripe karma of this kind, and the first vibration that touches
such a mass of thoughts ready to solidify into action will hurry him without
his renewed volition, unconsciously, into the commission of the act. He cannot
stop to think; he is in the condition in which the first
vibration of the mind causes action; poised on the very point of
balancing, the slightest impulse sends him over. Under these circumstances a
man will marvel at his own commission of some crime, or at his own performance
of some sublime act of self-devotion. He says: " I did it without
thinking," unknowing that he had thought so often that he had made that action
inevitable. When a man has willed to do an act many times, he at last fixes his
will irrevocably, and it is only a question of opportunity when he will act.
So long he can think,
his freedom of choice remains, for he can set the new though against the old
and gradually wear it out by the reiteration of opposing thoughts; but when the
next thrill of the soul in response to a stimulus means action, the power of
choice is exhausted.
Herein lies the solution
of the old problem of necessity and free will; man by the exercise of free will
gradually creates necessities for himself, and between the two extremes lie all
the combinations of free will and necessity which make the struggles within
ourselves of which we are conscious.
We are continually
making habits by the repetitions of purposive actions guided by the will; then
the habit becomes a limitation, and we perform the action automatically.
Perhaps we are then driven to the conclusion that the habit is a bad one, and
we begin laboriously to unmake it by thoughts of the opposite kind, and, after
many an inevitable lapse into it, the new thought-current turns the stream, and
we regain our full freedom, often again gradually to make another fetter.
So old thought-forms
persist and limit our thinking capacity, showing as individual and as national
prejudices. The majority do not know that they are thus
limited, and go on serenely in their chains, ignorant of their bondage; those
who learn the truth about their own nature become free. The constitution
of our brain and nervous system is one of the most marked
necessities in life; these we have made inevitable by our past thinkings, and
they now limit us and we often chafe against them. They can be improved slowly
and gradually; the limits can be expanded, but they cannot be suddenly
transcended.
Another form of this
ripe karma is where some past evil-thinking has made a crust of evil habits
around a man which imprisons him and makes an evil life; the actions are the inevitable
outcome of his past, as just explained, and they have been held over, even
through several lives, in consequence of those lives
not offering
opportunities for their manifestation. Meanwhile the soul has been growing and
has been developing noble qualities.
In one life this crust
of past evil is thrown out by opportunity, and because of this the soul cannot
show his later development; like a chicken ready to be hatched, he is hidden
within the
imprisoning shell, and only the shell is visible to the external eye.
After a time that karma
is exhausted, and some apparently fortuitous event – a word from a great
Teacher, a book, a lecture – breaks the shell and the souls comes forth free.
These are the rare,
sudden, but permanent "conversions," the "miracles of divine grace,"
of which we hear; all perfectly intelligible to the knower of karma, and felling
within the realm of the law. The accumulated karma that shows itself as
character is, unlike the
ripe, always subject to modifications. It may be said to consist of tendencies,
strong or weak, according to the thought-force that has gone to their making,
and these can be further strengthened or weakened by fresh streams of
thought-force sent to work with or against them.
If we find in ourselves
tendencies of which we disapprove, we can set ourselves to work to eliminate
them; often we fail to withstand temptation, overborne by the strong
out-rushing stream of desire, but the longer we can hold out against
it, even though we fail
in the end, the nearer are we to overcoming it. Every such failure is a step
towards success, for the resistance wears away part of the energy, and there is
less of it available for the future. The karma which is in the course of making
has been already studied.
Collective
Karma
When a group of people
is considered karmically, the play of karmic forces upon each member of the
group introduces a new factor into the karma of the individual. We know that when
a number of forces play on a point, the motion of the point is not in the
direction of any one of these forces, but in the
direction which is the
result of their combination. So the karma of a group is the resultant of the
interacting forces of the individuals composing it, and all the individuals are
carried along in the direction of that resultant.
An Ego is drawn by his
individual karma into a family, having set up in previous lives ties which
closely connect him with some of the other Egos composing it; the family has
inherited property from a grandfather who is wealthy; an heir turns up,
descended from the grandfather’s elder brother, who had been supposed to have
died childless, and the wealth passes to him and leaves the father of the family
heavily indebted; it is quite possible that our Ego had had no connection in
the past with this heir, to whom in past lives the father had contracted some
obligation which has resulted in this catastrophe, and yet he is threatened
with suffering by his action, being involved with family karma.
If, in his own
individual past, there was a wrong-doing which can be exhausted by suffering
caused by the family karma, he is left involved in it; if not, he is by some
"unforeseen circumstances" lifted out of it, perchance by some benevolent
stranger who feels an impulse to adopt and educate him, the stranger being one
who in the past was his debtor.
Yet more clearly does
this come out, in the working of such things as railway accidents, shipwrecks,
floods, cyclones, etc. A train is wrecked, the catastrophe being immediately
due to the action of the drivers, the guards, the railway directors, the makers
or employees of that line, who thinking themselves
wronged, send clustering
thoughts of discontent and anger against it as a whole.
Those who have in their
accumulated karma – but not necessarily in their ripe karma – the debt of a
life suddenly cut short, may be allowed to drift into this accident and pay
their debt; another, intending to go by the train, but with no such debt in his
past, is "providentially" saved by being late for it.
Collective karma may
throw a man into the troubles consequent on his nation going to war, and here
again he may discharge his debts of his past not necessarily within the ripe
karma of his then life. In no case can a man suffer that which he has not
deserved, but, if an unforeseen opportunity should arise to discharge a past
obligation, it is well to pay it and be rid of it for evermore.
The "Lords of
Karma" are the great spiritual Intelligences who keep the karmic Records
and adjust the complicated workings of karmic law. They are described by H.P.
Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine as the Lipika, the Recorders of Karma, and the
Maharajas (The Mahadevas, or Chaturdevas of the Hindus) – and Their hosts, who
are "the agents of Karma upon earth." The Lipika are They who know
the karmic record of every man, and who with omniscient wisdom select and
combine portions of that record to form the plan of a single life; They give the
"idea" of the physical body which is to be the garment of the
reincarnating soul, expressing his capacities and his limitations; this is
taken by the Maharajas and worked into a detailed model, which is committed to
one of Their inferior agents to be copied; this copy is the etheric double ,
the matrix of the dense body, the materials for these being drawn from the
mother and subject to physical heredity.
The race, the country,
the parents, are chosen for their capacity to provide suitable materials for
the physical body of the incoming Ego, and suitable surroundings for his early
life. The physical heredity of the family affords certain types and has evolved
certain peculiarities of material combinations;
hereditary diseases, hereditary
finenesses of nervous organisation, imply definite combinations of physical
matter, capable of transmission.
An Ego
who has evolved peculiarities in his mental and astral bodies, needing special
physical peculiarities for their expression, is guided to parents whose physical
heredity enables them to meet these requirements. Thus an Ego with high
artistic faculties devoted to music would be guided to take his physical body
in a musical family, in which the materials supplied for building the etheric double
and the dense body would have been made ready to adapt themselves to his needs,
and the hereditary type of nervous system would furnish the delicate apparatus
necessary for the expression of his faculties.
An Ego of very evil type
would be guided to a coarse and vicious family, whose bodies were built of the
coarsest combinations, such as would make a body able to respond to the
impulses from his mental and astral bodies. An Ego who had allowed his astral
body and lower mind to lead him into excesses, and had yielded to drunkenness,
for instance, would be led to incarnate in a family whose nervous systems were
weakened by excess, and would be born from drunken parents, who would supply
diseased materials for his physical envelope. The guidance of the
Lords of Karma thus adjust means to ends, and insures the doing of justice; the
Ego brings with him his karmic possessions of faculties and desires, and he
receives a physical body suited to be their vehicle.
As the soul must return
to earth until he has discharged all his liabilities, thus exhausting all his
individual karma, and as in each life thoughts and desires generate fresh
karma, the question may arise in the mind: "How can this constantly
renewing bond be put an end to ? How can the soul
attain his liberation?" Thus we come to the "ending of karma,"
and have to investigate how this may be.
The binding element in
karma is the first thing to be clearly grasped. The outward going energy of the
soul attaches itself to some object, and the soul is drawn back by this tie to
the place where that attachment may be realised by union with the object of
desire, so long as the soul attaches himself to any object, he must be drawn to
the place where that object can be enjoyed. Good karma binds the soul as much
as does bad, for any desire, whether for objects here or in Devachan, must draw the
soul to the place of gratification.
Action is prompted by desire,
an act is done not for the sake of doing the act, but for the sake of obtaining
by the act something that is desired, of acquiring its results, or, as it is
technically called, of enjoying its fruit. Men work, not because they want to
dig, or build, or weave, but because they want the fruits of digging, building,
and weaving, in the shape of money or of goods. A barrister pleads, not because
he wants to set forth the dry details of a case, but because he wants wealth
and fame, and rank.Men around us are labouring for something, and the spur to
their activity lies in the fruit it brings them and not in the labour. Desire
for the fruit of action moves them to activity, and
enjoyment of that fruit
rewards their exertions.
Desire is, then , the binding element in karma, and when the soul no
longer desires any object in earth or in heaven, his tie to the wheel of
reincarnation that turns in the three worlds is broken. Action itself has no
power to hold the soul, for with the completion of the action it slips into the
past. But the
ever-renewed desire for fruit constantly spurs the soul into fresh
activities, and thus new chains are continually being forged.
Nor should we feel any
regret when we see men constantly driven to action by the whip of desire, for
desire overcomes sloth, laziness, inertia – (the student will remember that
these show the dominance of the tamasic guna, and while it is dominant men do
not emerge from the lowest of the three stages of their evolution) – and
prompts men to the activity that yields them experience.
Note
the savage, idly dozing on the grass; he is moved to activity
by hunger, the desire for food,, and is driven to exert patience, skill, and
endurance to gratify his desire. Thus he develops mental qualities, but when
his hunger is satisfied he sinks again into a dozing animal. How entirely have
mental qualities been evolved by the promptings of desire,
and how useful have proved
desires for fame, for
posthumous renown. Until man is approaching divinity he needs the urgings of
desires, and the desires simply grow purer and less selfish as he climbs
upwards. But none the less desires bind him to rebirth, and if he
would be free he must
destroy them.
When a man begins to long
for liberation, he is taught to practise "renunciation of the fruits of
action"; that is, he gradually eradicates in himself the wish to possess
any object; he at first voluntarily and deliberately denies himself the object,
and thus habituates himself to do contentedly without it; after a time he no
longer misses it, and he finds the desire for it is disappearing from his mind.
At this stage he is very careful not to neglect any work which is duty because
he has become indifferent to the results it brings to him, and he trains himself
in discharging every duty with earnest attention, while remaining entirely
indifferent to the fruits it brings forth.When he attains perfection in this,
and neither desires nor dislikes any object, he ceases to generate karma; ceasing
to ask anything from the earth or from Devachan, he is not drawn
to either; he wants nothing that either can give him, and all links between
himself and them are broken off. This is the ceasing of individual karma, so
far as the generation of new karma is concerned.
But the soul has to get
rid of old chains as well as to cease from the forging of new, and these old
chains must be either allowed to wear out gradually or must be broken
deliberately. For this breaking, knowledge is necessary, a knowledge which can
look back into the past, and see the causes there set going, causes which are
working out their effects in the present.
Let us suppose that a
person, thus looking backward over his past lives, sees certain causes which
will bring about an event which is still in the future; let us suppose further
that these causes are thoughts of hatred for an injury inflicted on himself,
and that they will cause suffering a year hence to the wrong-doer; such a
person can introduce a new cause to intermingle with the causes working from
the past, and he may counteract them with strong thoughts of love and goodwill
that will exhaust them, and will thus prevent their bringing about the
otherwise inevitable event, which would, in its turn, have generated
new karmic trouble. Thus
he may neutralise forces coming out of the past by sending against them forces
equal and opposite, and may in this way "burn up his karma by knowledge."
In similar fashion he may bring to an end karma generated in his present life
that would normally work out in future lives.
Again, he may be
hampered by liabilities contracted to other souls in the past,
wrongs he has done to
them, duties he owes them. By the use of his knowledge he can find those souls,
whether in this world or in either of the other two, and
seek opportunities of
serving them. There may a soul incarnated during his own
life-period to whom he
owes some karmic debt; he may seek out that soul and pay his debt, thus setting
himself free from a tie which, left to the course of
events, would have
necessitated his own reincarnation, or would have hampered
him in a future life.
Strange and puzzling lines of action adopted by occultists
have sometimes this
explanation – the man of knowledge enters into close
relations with some
person who is considered by the ignorant bystanders and
critics to be quite
outside the companionships that are fitting for him; but
that occultist is quietly
working out a karmic obligation which would otherwise
hamper and retard his
progress.
Those who do not possess
knowledge enough to review their past lives may yet
exhaust many causes that
they have set going in the present life; they can
carefully go over all
that they can remember, and note where they have wronged
any or where any has
wronged them, exhausting the first cases by pouring out
thoughts of love and
service, and performing acts of service to the injured
person, where possible
on the physical plane also; and in the second cases
sending forth thoughts
of pardon and good will. Thus they diminish their karmic
liabilities and bring
near the day of liberation.
Unconsciously, pious
people who obey the precept of all great Teachers of
religion to return good
for evil are exhausting karma generated in the present
that would otherwise
work out in the future. No one can weave with them a bond
of hatred if they refuse
to contribute any stands of hatred to the weaving, and
persistently neutralise
every force of hatred with one of love. Let a soul
radiate in every
direction love and compassion, and thoughts of hatred can find
nothing to which they
can attach themselves.
"The Prince of this
world cometh and hath nothing in me." All great Teachers
knew the law and based
on it Their precepts, and those who through reverence and devotion to Them obey
Their directions profit under the law, although they know nothing of the
details of its working. An ignorant man who carries out
faithfully the
instructions given him by a scientist can obtain results by his
working with the laws of
Nature, despite his ignorance of them, and the same
principle holds good in
worlds beyond the physical. Many who have not time to
study, and perforce accept
on the authority of experts rules which guide their
daily conduct in life,
may thus unconsciously be discharging their karmic
liabilities.
In countries where
reincarnation and karma are taken for granted by every
peasant and labourer,
the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of
inevitable troubles that
conduces much to the calm and contentment of ordinary
life. A man overwhelmed
by misfortunes rails neither against God nor against his
neighbours, but regards
his troubles as the results of his own past mistakes and
ill-doings.
He accepts them
resignedly and makes the best of them, and thus escapes much of the worry and
anxiety with which those who know not the law aggravate troubles already
sufficiently heavy. He realises that his future lives depend on his own
exertions, and that the law which brings him pain will bring him just joy as
inevitably if he sows
the seed of good. Hence a certain patience and a philosophic
view of life, tending directly to social stability and to general contentment.
The poor and ignorant do
not study profound and detailed metaphysics, but they grasp thoroughly these
simple principles – that every man is reborn on earth time after time, and that
each successive life is moulded by those that precede it. To them rebirth is as
sure and as inevitable as the rising and setting of
the sun; it is part of the course of nature, against which it
is idle to repine or to rebel.
When Theosophy has restored these
ancient truths to their rightful place in western thought, they will gradually
work their way among all classes of society in Christendom, spreading
understanding of the nature of life and acceptance of the result of the past.
Then too will vanish the restless discontent which arises chiefly from the
impatient and hopeless feeling that life is unintelligible, unjust, and
unmanageable, and it will be replaced by the quiet strength and patience which
come from an illumined intellect and a knowledge of the law, and which
characterise the reasoned and balanced activity of those who feel that they are
building for eternity.
THE LAW OF
SACRIFICE
The study of the Law of
Sacrifice follows naturally on the study of the Law of Karma, and the
understanding of the former, it was once remarked by a Master, is as necessary
for the world as the understanding of the latter. By an act of Self-sacrifice
the LOGOS became manifest for the emanation of the universe, by
sacrifice the universe
is maintained, and by sacrifice man reaches perfection. (The Hindu will
remember the opening words of the Brihadaranyakopanishad, that the dawn is in
sacrifice; the Zoroastrian will recall how Ahura Mazda came forth from an act
of sacrifice; the Christian will think of the Lamb – the symbol of the LOGOS –
slain from the foundation of the world.) Hence every religion that springs from
Ancient Wisdom has sacrifice as a central teaching, and some of the profoundest
truths of occultism are rooted in the law of sacrifice.
An attempt to grasp,
however feebly, the nature of the sacrifice of the LOGOS may prevent us from
falling into the very general mistake that sacrifice is an essentially painful
thing; whereas the very essence of sacrifice is a voluntary and glad pouring
forth of life that others may share in it; and pain only arises when there is
discord in the nature of the sacrificer, between the higher whose joy is in
giving and the lower whose satisfaction lies in grasping and holding.It is that
discord alone that introduces the element of pain, and in the supreme
Perfection, in the LOGOS, no discord could arise; the One is the perfect chord
of Being, of infinite melodious concords, all tuned to a single note, in which
Life and Wisdom and Bliss are blended into one keynote of Existence.
The sacrifice of the
LOGOS lay in His voluntarily
circumscribing His
infinite life in order that He might manifest. Symbolically, in the infinite
ocean of light, with centre everywhere and with circumference nowhere, there
arises a
full-orbed sphere of
living light, a LOGOS, and the surface of that sphere is His will to limit
Himself that He may become manifest, His veil ( This is the Self-limiting power
of the LOGOS, His Maya, the limiting principle by which all forms are brought
forth. His Life appears as "Spirit," His Maya as "Matter,"
and
these are never
disjoined during manifestation.)in which He incloses Himself that within it a
universe may take form.
That for which the
sacrifice is made is not yet in existence; its future being lies in the "thought"
of the LOGOS alone; to him it owes its conception and will own its manifold
life. Diversity could not arise in the "partless Brahman" save for
this voluntary sacrifice of Deity taking on Himself form in order to emanate
myriad forms, each dowered with a spark of His life and therefore with the
power evolving into His image. "The primal sacrifice that causes the birth
of beings is named action (karma)," it is said (Bhagavad Gîtâ, viii,3.),
and this coming forth into activity from the bliss of perfect repose of
self-existence has ever been recognised as the sacrifice of the LOGOS.
That sacrifice continues
throughout the term of the universe, for the life of the LOGOS is the sole
support of every separated " life " and He limits His life in each of
the myriad forms to which He gives birth, bearing all the restraints and
limitations implied in each form. From any one of these He could burst forth
at any moment, the
infinite Lord, filling the universe with His glory; but only by sublime
patience and slow and gradual expansion can each form be led upward until it
becomes a self-dependent centre of boundless power like Himself. Therefore does
He cabin Himself in forms, and bear all imperfection till
perfection is attained,
and His creature is like unto Himself and one with Him, but with its own thread
of memory.
Thus this pouring out of
His life into forms is part of the original sacrifice, and has in it the bliss
of the eternal Father sending forth His offspring as separated lives, that each
may evolve an identity that shall never perish, and yield its own note blended
with all others to swell the eternal song of bliss, intelligence and life.
This marks the essential
nature of sacrifice. Whatever other elements may become mixed with the central
idea; it is the voluntary pouring out of life that others may partake of it, to
bring others into life and to sustain them in it till they
become self-dependent,
and this is but one expression of divine joy. There is always joy in the
exercise of activity which is the expression of the power of the actor; the
bird takes joy in the outpouring of song, and quivers with the mere rapture of
singing; the painter rejoices in the creation of his genius, in
the putting into form of
his idea; the essential activity of the divine life must lie in giving, for
there is nothing higher than itself from which it can receive; if it is to be
active at all – and manifested life is active motion – it must pour itself out.
Hence the sign of the spirit is giving, for spirit is the active divine life in
every form.
But the essential
activity of matter, on the other hand, lies in receiving; by receiving
life-impulses it is organised into forms; by receiving them these are maintained;
on their withdrawal they fall to pieces. All its activity is of this nature of
receiving, and only by receiving can it endure as a form. Therefore it
is always grasping,
clinging, seeking to hold for its own; the persistence of the form depends on
its grasping and retentive power, and it will therefore seek to draw into
itself all it can, and will grudge every fraction with which it parts. Its joy
will be in seizing and holding; to it giving is like courting death.
It is very easy from this
standpoint, to see how the notion arose that sacrifice was suffering. While the
divine life found its delight in exercising its activity of giving, and even
when embodied in form cared not if the form perished by the giving, knowing it
to be only its passing expression and the means of its separated growth; the
form which felt its life-forces pouring away from it cried out in anguish, and
sought to exercise its activity in holding, thus resisting the outward flow.
The sacrifice diminished the life-energies the form claimed as its own; or even
entirely drained them away, leaving the form to perish.
In the lower world of
form this was the only aspect of sacrifice cognisable, and the form found
itself driven to slaughter, and cried out in fear and agony. What wonder that
men, blinded by form, identified sacrifice with the agonising form instead of
with the free life that gave itself, crying gladly:"Lo! I come to do
thy will, O God; I am content to do it." What wonder that
men – conscious of a higher and a lower nature, and oft identifying their
self-consciousness more with the lower than with the higher – felt the struggle
of the lower nature, the form, as their own struggles, and felt that they were
accepting suffering in
resignation to a higher will, and regarded sacrifice as that devout and
resigned acceptance of pain.
Not until man identifies
himself with the life instead of with the form can the element of pain in
sacrifice be gotten rid of. In a perfectly harmonised entity, pain cannot be,
for the form is then the perfect vehicle of the life, receiving or surrendering
with ready accord. With the ceasing of struggle comes the ceasing of pain. For
suffering arises from jar, from friction, from antagonistic movements, and where
the whole nature works in perfect harmony the conditions that give rise to
suffering are not present.
The law of sacrifice
being thus the law of life - evolution in the universe, we find every step in
the ladder is accomplished by sacrifice – the life pouring itself out to take
birth in a higher form, while the form that contained it perishes. Those who
look only at the perishing forms see Nature as a vast charnel house; while
those who see the deathless soul escaping to take new and
higher form hear ever
the joyous song of birth from the upward springing life.
The Monad in the mineral
kingdom evolves by the breaking up of its forms for the production and support
of plants. Minerals are disintegrated that plant-forms may be built out of
their materials; the plant draws from the soil its
nutritive
constituents, breaks them up, and incorporates them into its own
substance. The mineral forms perish that the plant forms may grow, and this law
of sacrifice stamped on the mineral kingdom is the law of evolution of life and
form. The life passes onward and the Monad evolves to produce the vegetable
kingdom, the perishing of the lower form being the condition for the appearing
and the support of the higher.
The story is repeated in
the vegetable kingdom, for its forms in turn are sacrificed in order that
animal forms may be produced and may grow; on every side grasses, grains, trees
perish for the sustenance of animal bodies; their tissues are disintegrated
that the materials comprising them may be assimilated by the animal and build
up its body. Again the law of sacrifice is stamped on
the world, this time on
the vegetable kingdom; its life evolves while its forms perish; the Monad
evolves to produce the animal kingdom, and the vegetable is offered up that the
animal forms may be brought forth and maintained.
So far the idea of pain
has scarcely connected itself with that of sacrifice, for, as we have seen in
the course of our studies, the astral bodies of plants are not sufficiently
organised to give rise to any acute sensations either of pleasure or of pain.
But as we consider the law of sacrifice in its working in the animal kingdom,
we cannot avoid the recognition of the pain there involved in the breaking up
of forms. It is true that the amount of pain caused by the preying of one
animal upon another in "the state of nature "
is comparatively trivial in each case, but still some pain occurs.
It is also true that
man, in the part he has played in helping to evolve animals, has much
aggravated the amount of pain, and has strengthened instead ofdiminishing the
predatory instincts of carnivorous animals; still, he did not implant those
instincts, though he took advantage of them for his own purposes,
and innumerable
varieties of animals, with the evolution of which man has had directly nothing
to do, prey upon each other, the forms being sacrificed to the support of other
forms, as in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms.
The struggle for
existence went on long before man appeared on the scene, and accelerated the
evolution alike of life and of forms, while the pains accompanying the
destruction of forms began the long task of impressing on the evolving Monad
the transitory nature of all forms, and the difference between
the forms that perished
and the life that persisted .
The lower nature of man
was evolved under the same law of sacrifice as ruled in the lower kingdoms. But
the outpouring of divine Life which gave the human Monad came a change in the
way in which the law of sacrifice worked as the law of life. In man was to be
developed the will, the self-moving, self-initiated
energy, and the compulsion which forced the lower kingdoms along
the path of evolution could not therefore be employed in his case, without
paralysing the growth of this new and essential power.
No mineral, no plant, no
animal was asked to accept the law of sacrifice as a voluntarily chosen law of
life. It was imposed upon them from without, and it forced their growth by a
necessity from which they could not escape. Man was to have the freedom of
choice necessary for the growth of a discriminative and
self-conscious intelligence, and the question arose: "How can this
creature be left free to choose, and yet learn to choose to follow the law of
sacrifice, while yet he is a sensitive organism, shrinking from pain, and pain
is inevitable in the breaking up of sentient forms?"
Doubtless eons of
experience, studied by a creature becoming ever more intelligent, might have
finally led man to discover that the law of sacrifice is the fundamental law of
life; but in this, as in so much else, he was not left to his own unassisted
efforts. Divine Teachers were there at the side of man in his infancy, and they
authoritatively proclaimed the law of sacrifice, and
incorporated it in a most elementary form in the religions by which They
trained the dawning intelligence of man.
It would have been
useless to have suddenly demanded from these child-souls that they should
surrender without return what seemed to them to be the most desirable objects,
the objects on the possession of which their life in form depended. They must
be led along a path which would lead gradually to the heights of voluntary
self-sacrifice. To this end they were first taught that
they were not isolated units, but were parts of a larger whole,
and that their lives were linked to other lives both above and below them.
Their physical lives
were supported by lower lives, by the earth; by plants, they consumed these,
and in thus doing they contracted a debt which they were bound to pay, Living
on the sacrificed lives of others, they must sacrifice in turn something which
should support other lives, they must nourish even as they
were nourished, taking the fruits produced by the activity of
the astral entities that guide physical Nature, they must recruit the expended
forces by suitable offerings.
Hence have arisen all
the sacrifices to these forces – as science calls them – to these intelligences
guiding physical order, as religions have always taught.
As fire quickly
disintegrated the dense physical, it quickly restored the etheric particles of
the burnt offerings to the ethers; thus the astral particles were easily set
free to be assimilated by the astral entities concerned with the fertility of
the earth and the growth of plants. Thus the wheel of production was kept
turning, and man learned that he was constantly incurring debts to Nature which
he must as constantly discharge.
Thus the sense of
obligation was implanted and nurtured in his mind, and the duty that he owed to
the whole, to the nourishing mother Nature, became impressed
on his thought. It is true that this sense of obligation was closely connected
with the idea that its discharge was necessary for his own
welfare, and that the wish to continue to prosper moved him to the payment of
his debt.
He was but a child-soul,
learning his first lessons, and this lesson of the interdependence of lives, of
the life of each depending on the sacrifice of others, was of vital importance
to his growth. Not yet could he feel the divine joy of giving; the reluctance
of the form to surrender aught that nourished it had first to be overcome, and
sacrifice became identified with this surrender of
something valued, a surrender made from a sense of obligation and the
desire to continue prosperous.
The next lesson removed
the reward of sacrifice to a region beyond the physical world. First, by a
sacrifice of material goods, material welfare was to be secured. Then the
sacrifice of material goods was to bring enjoyment in heaven, on the other side
of death. The reward of the sacrificer was of a higher kind,
and he learned that the relatively permanent might be secured
by the sacrifice of the relatively transient – a lesson that was important as
leading to discriminative knowledge.The clinging of the form to physical
objects was exchanged for a clinging to heavenly joys. In all exoteric
religions we find this educative process resorted to by the Wise Ones – too
wise to expect
child-souls the virtue of unrewarded heroism, and content, with a
sublime patience, to coax their wayward charges slowly along a pathway that was
a thorny and a stony one to the lower nature.
Gradually men were
induced to subjugate the body, to overcome its sloth by the regular daily
performance of religious rites, often burdensome in their nature, and to
regulate its activities by directing them into useful channels; they were trained
to conquer the form and to hold it in subjection to the life, and to
accustom the body to yield itself to works of goodness and charity
in obedience to the demands of the mind, even while that mind was chiefly
stimulated by a desire to enjoy reward in heaven.
We can see among the
Hindus, the Persians, the Chinese, how men were taught to recognise their
manifold obligations; to make the body yield dutiful sacrifice of obedience and
reverence to ancestors, to parents, to elders; to bestow charity with courtesy;
and to show kindness to all. Slowly men were helped to
evolve both heroism and self-sacrifice to a high degree, as
witness the martyrs who joyfully flung their bodies to torture and death rather
than deny their faith or be false to their creed.
They looked indeed for a
"crown of glory" in heaven as a recompense for the sacrifice of the
physical form, but it was much to have overcome the clinging to the physical
form, and to have made the invisible world so real that it outweighed the
visible.
The next step was
achieved when the sense of duty was definitely established; when the sacrifice
of the lower to the higher was seen to be "right," apart from all
question of a reward to be received in another world; when the obligation owed
by the part to the whole was recognised, and the yielding of service by the
form that existed by the service of others was felt to be justly
due without any claim to wages being established thereby.
Then man began to
perceive the law of sacrifice as the law of life, and voluntarily
to associate himself with it; and he began to learn to disjoin himself in idea
from the form he dwelt in and to identify himself with the evolving life. This
gradually led him to feel a certain indifference to all the activities of form,
save as they consisted in "duties that ought to be done," and to
regard all of them as mere channels for the life-activities that were due
to the world, and not as activities performed by him with any
desire for their results. Thus he reached the point already noted, when karma
attracting him to the three worlds ceased to be generated, and he turned the
wheel of existence because it ought to be turned, and not because its
revolution brought any
desirable object to himself.
The full recognition of
the law of sacrifice, however, lifts man beyond the mental plane – whereon duty
is recognised as duty, as "what ought to be done because it is owed"
– to that higher plane of Buddhi where all selves are felt as one, and where
all activities are poured out for the use of all, and not for the gain of a
separated self. Only on that plane is the law of sacrifice felt as
a joyful privilege,
instead of only recognised intellectually as true and just.
On the buddhic plane man
clearly sees that life is one, that it streams out perpetually as the free
outpouring of the love of the LOGOS, that life holding itself separate is a
poor and a mean thing at best, and an ungrateful one to boot. There the whole
heart rushes upwards to the LOGOS in one strong surge of love and worship, and
gives itself in joyfullest self-surrender to be a channel of His life and love
to the world. To be a carrier of His light, a messenger of
His compassion, a worker
in His realm – that appears as the only life worth living; to hasten evolution,
to serve the Good Law, to lift part of the heavy burden of the world – that
seems to be the very gladness of the Lord Himself.
From this plane only can
a man act as one of the Saviours of the world, because on it he is one with the
selves of all. Identified with humanity where it is one, his strength, his
love, his life can flow downwards into any or into every separated self.
He has become a
spiritual force, and the available spiritual energy of the world-system is
increased by pouring into it of his life. The forces he used to expend on the physical , astral, and mental planes, seeking things for his
separated self, are now all gathered up in one act of sacrifice, and,
transmuted thereby into spiritual energy, they pour down upon the world as
spiritual life.
This transmutation is
wrought by the motive which determines the plane on which the energy is set
free.
If a man’s motive be the
gain of physical objects, the energy liberated works only on the physical
plane; if he desire astral objects, he liberates energy on the astral plane; if
he seek mental joys, his energy functions on the mental plane; but if he
sacrifice himself to be a channel of the LOGOS, he liberates energy on the
spiritual plane, and it works everywhere with the potency and
keenness of a spiritual
force. For such a man, action and inaction are the same; for he does everything
while doing nothing, he does nothing while doing everything.
For him, high and low,
great and small are the same; he fills any place that needs filling, and the
LOGOS is alike in every place and in every action. He can flow into any form,
he can work along any line, he knows not any longer choice or difference; his
life by sacrifice has been made one with the life of the LOGOS – he sees God in
everything and everything in God. How then can place or form make to him any
difference? He no longer identifies himself with form, but is self-conscious
Life. "Having nothing, he possesseth all things " asking for nothing,
everything flows into him. His life is bliss, for he is one with his Lord, who
is Beatitude; and, using form for service without attachment to it,
"he has put and end
to pain."
Those who grasp
something of the wonderful possibilities which open out before us as we
voluntarily associate ourselves with the law of sacrifice will wish to begin
that voluntary association long ere they can rise to the heights just dimly
sketched. Like other deep spiritual truths, it is eminently practical in its
application to daily life, and none who feel its beauty need to hesitate to
begin to work with it.
When a man resolves to begin the practice of sacrifice, he will train himself
to open every day with an act of sacrifice, the offering of himself, ere the
day’s work begins, to Him to whom he gives his life; his first waking thought
will be this dedication of all his power to his Lord.
Then each thought, each
word, each action in daily life will be done as a sacrifice – not for its
fruit, not even as duty, but as the way in which, at the moment, his Lord can
be served. All that comes will be accepted as the expression of His will; joys,
troubles, anxieties, successes, failures, all to him are welcome as marking out
his path of service; he will take each happily as
it comes and offer it as a sacrifice; he will loose each
happily as it goes, since its going shows that his Lord has no longer need for
it.
Any powers he has he
gladly uses for service; when they fail him, he takes their failure with happy
equanimity; since they are no longer available he cannot give them. Even
suffering that springs from past causes not yet exhausted can be changed into a
voluntary sacrifice by welcoming it; taking possession of it by
willing it, a man may offer it as a gift, changing it by this
motive into a spiritual force. Every human life offers countless opportunities
for this practice of the law of sacrifice, and every human life becomes a power
as these opportunities are seized and utilised.
Without any expansion of
his waking consciousness, a man may thus become a worker on the spiritual
planes, liberating energy there which pours down into the lower worlds. His
self-surrender here in the lower consciousness, imprisoned as it is in the
body, calls out responsive thrills of life from the buddhic aspect of the Monad
which is his true Self, and hastens the time when that Monad shall become the
spiritual Ego, self-moved and ruling all his vehicles, using each of them at
will as needed for the work that is to be done.
In no way can progress
be made so rapidly, and the manifestation of all the powers latent in the Monad
be brought about so quickly, as by the understanding and the practice of the
law of sacrifice. Therefore it was called by a Master, "The Law of
evolution for man." It has indeed profounder and more mystic aspects than
any touched on here, but these will unveil themselves without words to the
patient and loving heart whose life is all a sacrificial offering. There are
things that are heard only in the stillness; there are teachings that can be
uttered only by "The Voice of the Silence." Among these are the
deeper truths rooted in the law of sacrifice.
MAN’S
ASCENT
So stupendous is the
ascent up which some men have climbed, and some are climbing, that when we scan
it by an effort of the imagination we are apt to recoil, wearied in thought by
the mere idea of that long journey. From the embryonic soul of the lowest
savage to the liberated and triumphant perfected spiritual soul of the divine
man – it seems scarcely credible that the one can
contain in it all that
is expressed in the other, and that the difference is but a difference in
evolution, that one is only at the beginning and the other at the end of man’s
ascent.
Below the one stretch
the long ranks of the sub-human – the animals, vegetables, minerals, elemental
essences; above the other stretch the infinite gradations of the superhuman – the
Chohans, Manus, Buddhas, Builders, Lipikas; who may name or number the hosts of
the mighty Ones? Looked at thus, as a stage in a yet vaster life, the many
steps within the human kingdom shrink into a narrower compass, and man’s ascent
is seen as comprising but one grade in evolution in the linked lives that
stretch from the elemental essence onwards to the manifested God.
We have traced man’s
ascent from the appearance of the embryonic soul to the state of the
spiritually advanced, through the stages of evolving consciousness from the
life of sensation to the life of thought. We have seen him retread the cycle of
birth and death in the three worlds, each world yielding him its harvest and
offering him opportunities for progress. We are now in a position to follow him
into the final stages of his human evolution, stages that lie in the future for
the vast bulk of our humanity, but that have already been trodden by its eldest
children, and that re being trodden by a slender number of men and women in our
own day.
These stages have been
classified under two headings – the first are spoken of as constituting
"the probationary Path," while the later ones are included in
"the Path proper" or " the Path of discipleship." We will
take them in their natural order.
As a man’s intellectual,
moral, and spiritual nature develops, he becomes more and more conscious of the
purpose of human life, and more and more eager to accomplish that purpose in
his own person. Repeated longings for earthly joys, followed by full possession
and by subsequent weariness, have gradually taught
him the transient and
unsatisfactory nature of earth’s best gifts; so often has he striven for,
gained, employed, been satiated, and finally nauseated, that he turns away
discontented from all that earth can offer. "What doth it profit?"
sighs the wearied soul: "All is vanity and vexation. Hundreds, yea,
thousands of
times have I possessed,
and finally have found disappointment even in possession."
"These joys are
illusions, as bubbles on a stream, fairy-coloured, rainbow-hued, but bursting
at a touch. I am athirst for realities; I have had enough of shadows; I pant
for the eternal and the true, for freedom from the limitations that hem me in,
that keep me prisoner amid these changing shows."
This first cry of the
soul for liberation is the result of the realisation that, were this earth all
that poets have dreamed it, were every evil swept away, every sorrow put an end
to , every joy intensified, every beauty enhanced, were everything raised to
its point of perfection, he would still be aweary of it, would turn from it
void of desire. It has become to him a prison, and, let it be decorated as it
may, he pants for the free and limitless air beyond its inclosing walls.
Nor is heaven more attractive
to him than earth; of that too he is aweary; its joys have lost their
attractiveness, even its intellectual and emotional delights no longer satisfy.
They also "come and go, impermanent" like the contacts of the senses;
they are limited, transient, unsatisfying. He is tired of the changing; from
very weariness he cries out for liberty.
Sometimes this
realisation of the worthlessness of earth and heaven is at first but a flash in
consciousness, and the external worlds reassert their empire and the glamour of
their illusive joys again laps the soul into content. Some lives even may pass,
full of noble work and unselfish achievement, of pure thoughts
and lofty deeds, ere
this realisation of the emptiness of all that is phenomenal becomes the
permanent attitude of the soul.
But sooner or later the
soul once and for ever breaks with earth and heaven as incompetent to satisfy
his needs, and this definite turning away from the transitory, this definite
will to reach the eternal, is the gateway to the probationary Path. The soul
steps off the highway of evolution to breast the steeper climb up the mountain
side, resolute to escape from the bondage of earthly and heavenly lives, and to
reach the freedom of the upper air.
The work which has to be
accomplished by the man who enters on the probationary Path is entirely mental
and moral; he has to bring himself up to the point at which he will fit to
"meet his Master face to face": but he very words "his
Master" need explanation. There are certain great Beings belonging to our
race who have completed Their human evolution, and to whom allusion has already
been made as constituting a Brotherhood, and as guiding and forwarding the
development of the race.
These Great Ones, the
Masters, voluntarily incarnate in human bodies on order to form the connecting
link between human and superhuman beings, and They permit those who fulfil
certain conditions to become Their disciples, with the object of hastening
their evolution and thus qualifying themselves to enter the great Brotherhood,
and to assist in its glorious and beneficent work for man.
The Masters ever watch
the race, and mark any who by the practice of virtue, by unselfish labour for
human good, by intellectual effort turned to the service of man, by sincere
devotion, piety, and purity, draw ahead of the mass of their fellows, and
render themselves capable of receiving spiritual assistance beyond that shed
down on mankind as a whole. If an individual is to receive special help he must
show special receptivity.
For the Masters are the
distributors of the spiritual energies that help on human evolution, and the
use of these for the swifter growth of a single soul is only permitted when
that soul shows a capacity for rapid progress and can thus be quickly fitted to
become a helper of the race, returning to it the aid that had been afforded to
himself. When a man, by his own efforts, utilising to the full all the general
help coming to him through religion and philosophy, has struggled onwards to
the front of the advancing human wave and when he shows a loving, selfless,
helpful nature, then he becomes a special object of attention to the watchful
Guardians of the race, and opportunities are put in his way to test his
strength and call forth his intuition.In proportion as he successfully uses
these, he is yet further helped, and glimpses are afforded to him of the true
life, until the unsatisfactory and unreal nature of mundane existence presses
more and more on the soul, with the result already mentioned – the weariness
which makes him long for freedom and brings him to the gateway of the
probationary Path.
His entrance on his Path
places him in the position of a disciple or chelâ, on probation, and some one Master
takes him under His care, recognising him as a man who has stepped out of the
highway of evolution, and seeks the Teacher who shall guide his steps along the
steep and narrow path which leads to liberation.
That Teacher is awaiting
him at the very entrance of the Path, and even though the neophyte knows not
his Teacher, his Teacher knows him, sees his efforts, directs his steps, leads
him into the conditions that best subserve his progress, watching over him with
the tender solicitude of a mother, and with the wisdom born of perfect insight.
The road may seem lonely and dark, and the young disciple may fancy himself
deserted, but a "friend who sticketh closer than a brother" is ever
at hand, and the help withheld from the senses is given to the soul.
There are four definite
"qualifications" that the probationary chelâa must set himself to
acquire, that are by the wisdom of the great Brotherhood laid down as the
conditions of full discipleship. They are not asked for in perfection, but they
must be striven for and partially possessed ere Initiation is permitted.
The first of these is
the discrimination between the real and the unreal which has been already
dawning on the mind of the pupil, and which drew him to the Path on which he is
now entered; the distinctions grows clear and sharply defined in his mind, and
gradually frees him to a great extent from the fetters which bind him, for the
second qualification, indifference to external things, comes naturally in the
wake of discrimination, from the clear perception of their worthlessness.
He learns that the
weariness which took all the savour out of life was due to the disappointments
constantly arising from his search for satisfaction in the unreal, when only
the real can content the soul; that all forms are unreal and without stability,
changing ever under the impulses of life, and that nothing is real but the one
Life that we seek for and love unconsciously under its many veils. This
discrimination is much stimulated by the rapidly changing circumstances into
which a disciple is generally thrown, with the view of pressing on him strongly
the instability of all external things.
The lives of a disciple
are generally lives of storm and stress, in order that the qualities which are
normally evolved in a long succession of lives in the three worlds may in him
be forced into swift growth and quickly brought to perfection. As he alternates
rapidly from joy to sorrow, from peace to storm, from rest to toil, he learns
to see in the changes the unreal forms, and to feel through all a steady
unchanging life. He grows indifferent to the presence or the absence or the
absence of things that thus come and go, and more and more he fixes his gaze on
the changeless reality that is ever present.
While he is thus gaining
in insight and stability he works also at the development of the third
qualification – the six mental attributes that are demanded from him ere he may
enter on the Path itself. He need not possess them all perfectly, but he must
have them all partially present at least ere he will be permitted to pass
onward.
First he must gain
control over his thoughts, the progeny of the restless, unruly mind, hard to
curb as the wind. (Bhagavad Gitâ, vi. 34). Steady, daily practice in
meditation, in concentration, had begun to reduce this mental rebel to order
ere he entered on the probationary Path, and the disciple now works with
concentrated energy to complete the task, knowing that the great increase in
thought power that will accompany his rapid growth will prove a danger both to
others and to himself unless the developing force be thoroughly under his
control.
Better give a child
dynamite as a plaything, than place the creative powers of thought in the hands
of the selfish and ambitious. Secondly, the young chela must add outward
self-control to inner, and must rule his speech and his actions as rigidly as
he rules his thoughts. As the mind obeys the soul, so must the lower nature
obey the mind. The usefulness of the disciple in the outer world depends as much
on the pure and noble example set by his visible life, as his usefulness in the
inner world depends on the steadiness and strength of his thoughts.
Often is a good work
marred by carelessness in this lower part of human activity, and the aspirant
is bidden strive towards an ideal perfect in every part, in order that he may
not later, when treading the Path, stumble in his own walk and cause the enemy
to blaspheme.
As already said,
perfection in anything is not demanded at this stage, but the wise pupil
strives towards perfection, knowing that at his best he is still far away from
his ideal.
Thirdly, the candidate
for full discipleship seeks to build into himself the sublime and far-reaching
virtue of tolerance – the quiet acceptance of each man, each form of existence,
as it is, without demand that it should be something other shaped more to his
own liking. Beginning to realise that the one Life
takes on countless
limitations, each right in its own place and times, he accepts each limited
expression of that Life without wishing to transform it into something else; he
learns to revere the wisdom which planned this world and which guides it, and
to view with wide-eyed serenity the imperfect parts as they slowly work out
their partial lives.
The drunkard, learning
his alphabet of the suffering caused by the dominance of the lower nature, is
doing as usefully in his own stage as is the saint in his, completing his last
lesson in earth’s school, and no more can justly be demanded from either than
he is able to perform. One is in the kindergarten stage, learning by
object-lessons, while the other is graduating, ready to leave his
university; both are right for their age and their place, and should
be helped and sympathised with in their place.
This is one of the
lessons of what is known in occultism as "tolerance." Fourthly must
be developed endurance, the endurance that cheerfully bears all and resents
nothing, going straight onwards unswervingly to the goal. Nothing
can come to him but by
the Law, and he knows the Law is good. He understands that the rocky pathway
that leads up the mountain-side straight to the summit cannot be as easy to his
feet as the well-beaten winding highway.
He realises that he is
paying in a few short lives all the karmic obligations accumulated during his
past, and that the payments must be correspondingly heavy. The very struggle
into which he is plunged develop in him the fifth attribute, faith – faith in
his Master and in himself, a serene strong confidence that is unshakeable. He
learns to trust in the wisdom, the love, the power of his Master, and he is
beginning to realise – not only to say he believes in – the Divinity within his
own heart, able to subdue all things to Himself. The last mental requisite,
balance, equilibrium, grows up to some extent without conscious effort during
the striving after the preceding five.
The very setting of the
will to tread the Path is a sign that the higher nature is opening out, and
that the external world is definitely relegated to a lower place. The
continuous efforts to lead the life of discipleship disentangle the soul from
any remaining ties that may knit it to the world of sense, for the
withdrawal of the soul’s attention from lower objects gradually
exhausts the attractive power of those objects. They "turn away from an
abstemious dweller in the body," ( Bhagavad Gitâ,
ii, 59.) and soon lose all power to disturb this balance. Thus he learns to
move amid them undisturbed, neither seeking nor
rejecting any. He also
learns to balance amid mental troubles of every kind, amid alternations of
mental joy and mental pain, this balance being further taught by the swift
changes already spoken of through which his life is guided by the ever-watchful
care of his Master.
These six mental
attributes being in some measure attained, the probationary chelâa needs
further but the fourth qualification, the deep intense longing for liberation,
that yearning of the soul towards union with deity that is the promise of its
own fulfillment. This adds the last touch to his readiness to
enter into full
discipleship, for, once that longing has definitely asserted itself, it can
never again be eradicated, and the soul that has felt it can never again quench
his thirst at earthly fountains; their waters will ever taste flat and vapid
when he sips them, so that he will turn away with ever-deepening longing for
the true water of life.
At this stage he is
"the man ready for Initiation," ready to definitely "enter the
stream" that cuts him off forever from the interests of earthly life save
as he can serve his Master in them and help forward the evolution of the race.
Henceforth his life is
not to be the life of separateness; it is to be offered up on the altar of
humanity, a glad sacrifice of all he is, to be used for the common good.
The student will be glad
to have the technical names of these stages in Sanskrit and Pâli, so that he
may be able to follow them out in more advanced books: SANSKRIT (used by
Hindus) PALI (used by Buddhists)
1 VIVEKA discrimination
between the real and the unreal 1 MANODVÂRAVAJJANA the opening of the doors of
the mind; a conviction of the impermanence of the earthly
2 VAIRÂGYA indifference
to the unreal, the transitory 2 PARIKAMMA preparation for action; indifference
to the fruits of action
3 SHATSAMPATTI SHAMA
control of thought 3 UPACHÂRO attention or conduct; divided under the same
headings as in the Hindu
DAMA control of conduct
UPARATI tolerance
TITIKSHA endurance
SHRADDHA faith
SANADDGBA balance
4 MUMUKSHA desire for
liberation 4 ANULOMA direct order or succession, its attainment following on
the other three.
The man is then the
ADHIKARI The man is then the GATRABHU During the years spent in evolving the
four qualifications, the probationary chelâa will have been advancing in many
other respects. He will have been receiving from his Master much teaching,
teaching usually imparted during the
deep sleep of the body;
the soul, clad in the well-organised astral body, will have become used to it
as a vehicle of consciousness, and will have been drawn to his Master – to
receive instruction and spiritual illumination.
He will further have
been trained in meditation, and this effective practice outside the physical
body will have quickened and brought into active exercise many of the higher
powers; during such meditation he will have reached higher regions of being,
learning more of the life of the mental plane. He will have
been taught to use his
increasing powers in human service, and during many of the hours of sleep for
the body he will have been working diligently on the astral plane, aiding the
souls that have passed on to it by death, comforting the victims of accidents,
teaching any less instructed than himself, and in countless ways helping those
who needed it, thus in humble fashion aiding the
beneficent work of the Masters, and being associated with Their
sublime Brotherhood as a co-labourer in a however modest and lowly degree.
Either on the
probationary Path or later, the chelâa is offered the privilege of performing
one of those acts of renunciation which mark the swifter ascent of man. He is
allowed "to renounce Devachan,"
that is, to resign the glorious life
in the heavenly places
that awaits him on his liberation from the physical world, the life which in
his case would mostly be spent in the middle arupa world in the company of the
Masters, and in all the sublime joys of the purest wisdom and love. If he renounce this fruit of his noble and devoted life, the spiritual
forces that would have been expended in his Devachan are set free for the
general service of the world, and he himself remains in the astral region to await
a speedy rebirth upon earth.
His Master in this case
selects and presides over his reincarnation, guiding him to take birth amid
conditions conducive to his usefulness in the world, suitable for his further
progress and for the work required at his hands. He has reached
the stage at which every individual interest is subordinated to
the divine work, and in which his will is fixed to serve in whatever way may be
required of him.
He therefore, gladly
surrenders himself into the hands he trusts, accepting willingly and joyfully
the place in the world in which he can best render service, and perform his
share of the glorious work of aiding the evolution of humanity.
Blessed is the family
into which a child is born tenanted by such a soul, a soul that brings with him
the benediction of the Master and is ever watched and guided, every possible
assistance being given him to bring his lower vehicles quickly under control. Occasionally,
but rarely a chelâ may reincarnate in a body that has passed through infancy
and extreme youth as the tabernacle of a less progressed Ego; when an Ego comes
to the earth for a very brief life-period, say for some fifteen or twenty
years, he will be leaving his body at the time of dawning manhood, when it has
passed through the time of early training and is rapidly becoming an effective
vehicle for the soul.
If such a body be a very
good one, and some chelâ be awaiting a suitable reincarnation, it will often be
watched during its tenancy by the Ego for whom it was originally built, with
the view of utilising it when he has done with it; when the life-period of that
Ego is completed, and he passes out of the body into Kamaloka on his way to Devachan, his cast-off
body will be taken possession of by the waiting chelâ, a new tenant will enter
the deserted house, and the apparently dead body will revive. Such cases are
unusual, but are not unknown to occultists, and some references to them may be
found in occult books.
Whether the incarnation be normal or abnormal, the progress of the soul, of the chelâ
himself, continues, and the period already spoken of is reached when he is
"ready for Initiation"; through that gateway of Initiation he enters,
as a definitely accepted chelâ, on the Path. This Path consists of four
distinct stages, and the entrance into each is guarded by an Initiation. Each
Initiation is accompanied by an expansion of consciousness which gives what is
called "the key to knowledge" belonging to the stage to which it
admits, and this key of knowledge is also a key of power, for truly is
knowledge power in all the realms
of Nature.
When the chelâ has entered
the Path he becomes what has been called "the houseless man," (The
Hindus call this stage that of Parivrajaka, the wanderer; the Buddhist calls it
that of Srotapatti, he who has reached the stream. The chelâ is thus designated
after his first Initiation and before his second.) for
he longer looks on earth s this home – he has no abiding-place
here, to him all places are welcome wherein he can serve his Master.
While he is on this
stage of the Path there are three hindrances to progress, technically called
"fetters," which he has to get rid of, and now – as he is rapidly to
perfect himself – it is demanded from him that he shall entirely eradicate
faults of character, and perform completely the tasks belonging to his condition.
The three fetters that he must loose from his limbs ere he can pass
the second Initiation are: the illusion of the personal self,
doubt, and superstition. The personal self must be felt in consciousness as an
illusion, and must lose forever its power to impose itself on the soul as a
reality.
He must feel himself one
with all, all must live and breathe in him and he in all. Doubt must be
destroyed, but by knowledge, not by crushing out; he must know reincarnation
and karma and the existence of the Masters as facts; not accepting them as
intellectually necessary, but knowing them as facts in Nature
that he has himself verified, so that no doubt on these heads
can ever again rise in his mind.
Superstition is escaped
as the man rises into a knowledge of realities, and of
the proper place of rites and ceremonies in the company of Nature; he learns to
use every means and to be bound by none. When the chelâ has cast off these fetters
– sometimes the task occupies several lives, sometimes it is achieved in part
of a single life – he finds the second Initiation open to him, with its new "key
of knowledge" and its widened horizon. The chelâ now sees before him a swiftly
shortening span of compulsory life on earth, for when he has reached this stage
he must pass through his third and fourth Initiations in his present life or in
the next. (The chelâ on the second stage of the path is for the Hindu the
Kutichaka, the man who builds a hut; he has reached a place of peace. For the
Buddhist he is the Sakridagamin, the man who receives birth but once more.)
In this stage he has to
bring into full working order the inner faculties, those belonging to the
subtle bodies, for he needs them for his service in the higher realms of being.
If he has developed them previously, this stage may be a very brief one, but he
may pass through the gateway of death once more ere he is ready to receive his
third Initiation, to become "the Swan," the individual who soars into
the empyrean, that wondrous Bird of Life whereof so many legends are related. (
The Hindu calls him the Paramahamsa, beyond the " I "; the Buddhist
names him the Arhat, the worthy.)
On this third stage of
the Path the chelâ casts off the fourth and fifth fetters, those of desire and
aversion; he sees the One self in all, and the outer veil can no longer blind
him, whether it be fair or foul. He looks on all with an equal eye; that fair
bud of tolerance that he cherished on the probationary Path now flowers out
into an all-embracing love that wraps everything within its tender embrace. He
is
"the friend of
every creature," the
"lover of all that
lives" in a world where all things live.
As a living embodiment
of divine love, he passes swiftly onwards to the fourth Initiation, that admits
him to the last stage of the Path, where he is "beyond the
Individual," the worthy , the venerable. ( The Hamsa, he who realises "I am THAT," in the
Hindu terms; the Anagamin, the man who receives birth no more, in the
Buddhist.)Here he remains at his will, casting off the last fine fetters that
still bind him with threads however fragile, and keep him back from liberation.
He throws off all clinging to life in form, and then all longing for formless
life; these are the chains and he must be chainless; he may move through the
three worlds, but not a shred of theirs must have power to hold him;
the splendours of the
"formless world" must charm him no more than the concrete glories of
the worlds of form.
Then – mightiest of all
achievements – he casts off the last fetter ofseparateness, the "I
"ever making faculty –(Ahamkara, generally given
as Mana, pride, since pride is the subtlest manifestation on the "I"
as distinct from others.) – which realises itself as apart from others, for he
dwells on the
plane of unity in his waking consciousness, on the buddhic plane
where the Self of all is known and realised as one. This faculty was born with
the soul, is the essence of individuality, and it persists till all that is
valuable in it is worked into the Monad, and it can be dropped on the threshold
of liberation, leaving its priceless result to the Monad, that sense of
individual identity
which is so pure and
fine that it does not mar the consciousness of oneness.
Easily then drops away
anything that could respond to ruffling contacts, and the chelâ stands robed in
that glorious vesture of unchanging peace that naught can mar. And the casting
away of that same "I-making" faculty has cleared away from the
spiritual vision the last clouds that could dim its piercing insight, and in the
realisation of unity, ignorance – (Avidya, the first illusion and the last, that
which makes the separated worlds – the first of the Nidanas – and that which
drops off when liberation is attained.) – the
limitation that gives birth to all separateness – falls away, and the man is
perfect, is free.
Then has come the ending
of the Path, and the ending of the Path is the threshold to Nirvana. Into that
marvellous state of consciousness the chelâ has been wont to pass out of the
body while he has been traversing the final stage of the Path; now, when he
crosses the threshold, the nirvanic consciousness becomes his normal
consciousness, for Nirvana
is the home of the liberated Self.
(The Jivanmukta, the
liberated life, of the Hindu; the Asekha, he who has no more to learn, of the
Buddhist.) He has completed man’s ascent, he touches the limit of humanity;
above him there stretch hosts of mighty Beings, but they are superhuman; the
crucifixion in flesh is over, the hour of liberation has struck,
and the triumphant
"It is finished!" rings from the conqueror’s lips. See! – he has
crossed the threshold, he has vanished into the light nirvanic, another son of
earth has conquered death.
What mysteries are
veiled by that light supernal we know not; dimly we feel that the Supreme Self
is found, that lover and Beloved are one. The long search is over, the thirst
of the heart is quenched forever, he has entered into the joy of his Lord.
But has earth lost her
child, is humanity bereft of her triumphant son? Nay! He has come forth from
the bosom of the light, and He standeth again on the threshold of Nirvana, Himself seeming
the very embodiment of that light, glorious beyond all telling, a manifested
Son of God. But now His face is turned to earth, His eyes beam with divinest
compassion on the wandering sons of men, His brethren after the flesh; He
cannot leave them comfortless, scattered as sheep without a shepherd. Clothed
in the majesty of a mighty renunciation, glorious with the strength of perfect
wisdom and "power of an endless life," He returns to earth to bless
and guide humanity, Master of Wisdom, kingly Teacher, divine
Returning thus to earth,
the Master devotes Himself to the service of humanity with mightier forces at
His command than He wielded while He trod the Path of discipleship; He has
dedicated Himself to the helping of man, and He bends all
the sublime powers that He holds to the quickening of the
evolution of the world. He pays to those who are approaching the Path the debt
He contracted in the days of His own chelaship, guiding, helping, teaching them as He was guided, helped, and taught before.
Such are the stages of
man’s ascent, from the lowest savagery to the divine manhood. To such goal is
humanity climbing, to such glory shall the race attain.
BUILDING A
COSMOS
It is not possible, at
our present stage of evolution, to do more than roughly indicate a few points
in the vast outline of the kosmic scheme in which our globe plays a part. By
" a kosmos " is here meant a system which seems, from out standpoint,
to be complete in itself, arising from a single LOGOS, and sustained by His
Life. Such a system is our solar system, and the physical sun may be considered
to be the lowest manifestation of the LOGOS when acting as the centre of His
kosmos; every form is indeed one of His concrete manifestations, but the sun is
His lowest manifestation as the life-giving, invigorating, all-pervading, all
controlling, regulative, coordinating, central power.
Says an occult
commentary:
"Surya (the sun),
in its visible reflection, exhibits the first or lowest state of the seventh,
the highest state of the Universal PRESENCE, the pure of the pure, the first
manifested Breath of the ever unmanifested SAT (Be-ness). All the central
physical or objective Suns are in their substance the lowest state of the first
Principle of the BREATH, (Secret Doctrine; I, 330, Adyar Ed.),
are in short, the lowest
state of the "Physical Body" of the LOGOS."
All physical forces and
energies are but transmutations of the life poured forth by the sun, the Lord
and Giver of life to his system. Hence in many ancient religions the sun stood
as the symbol of the Supreme God – the symbol, in truth, the least liable to
misconstruction by the ignorant. Mr. Sinnett well says:
"The solar system
is indeed an area of Nature including more than any but the very highest beings
whom our humanity is capable of developing are in position to investigate.
Theoretically we may feel sure – as we look up into the heavens at night – that
the whole solar system itself is but a drop in the ocean of the
kosmos, but that drop is in its turn an ocean from the point of
view of the consciousness of such half-developed beings within it as ourselves,
and we can only hope at present to acquire vague and shadowy conceptions of its
origin and constitution. Shadowy, however, though these may be, they enable us
to assign
the subordinate
planetary series, in which our own evolution is carried on, to its proper place
in the system of which it is a part, or at all events to get a broad idea of
the relative magnitude of the whole system, of our planetary chain, of the
world in which we are at present functioning, and of the respective periods of evolution
in which as human beings we are interested. "
For in truth we cannot
grasp our own position intellectually without some idea – however vague it may
be – of our relation to the whole; and while some student are content to work
within their own sphere of duty and to leave the wider reaches of life until
they are called to function in them, others feel the need
of a far-reaching scheme
in which they have their place, and take an intellectual delight in soaring
upwards to obtain a bird’s-eye view of the whole field of evolution. This need
has been recognised and met by the spiritual Guardians of humanity in the
magnificent delineation of the kosmos from the standpoint of the occultist
traced by their pupil and messenger, H.P.Blavatsky,
in The Secret Doctrine,
a work that will become ever more and more enlightening as students of the
Ancient Wisdom themselves explore and master the lower levels of our evolving
world.
The appearance of the
LOGOS, we are told, is the herald of the birth-hour of our kosmos.
"When He is
manifest, all is manifested after Him; by His manifestation this All becomes
manifest." (Mundakopanishad, II, ii, 10).
With Himself
He brings the fruits of a past kosmos – the mighty spiritual Intelligences who
are to be His co-workers and agents in the universe now to be built. Highest of
these are "the Seven," often Themselves
spoken of as Logoi, since each in His place is the centre of a distinct
department in the kosmos, as the LOGOS is the centre of the whole. The commentary
before quoted says:
The seven Beings in the
Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, Self-born from the inherent power in the matrix of
Mother-substance …The energy from which they sprang into conscious existence in
every Sun is what some people call Vishnu, which is the Breath of the
Absoluteness. We call it the one manifested Life – itself a reflection of the
Absolute. (Secret Doctrine, I , 331, Adyar ed.)
This "one
manifested Life" is the LOGOS, the manifested God. From this primary
division our kosmos takes its sevenfold character, and all subsequent divisions
in their descending order reproduce this seven-keyed scale. Under each of the
seven secondary Logoi come the descending hierarchies of Intelligences that
form the governing body of His kingdom .
Among These we hear of
the Lipika, who are the Recorders of the karma of that kingdom and of all
entities therein; of the Maharajas or Devarajas, who superintend the working
out of karmic law; and of the vast hosts of the Builders, who shape and fashion
all forms after the Ideas that dwell in the treasure-house of the LOGOS, in the
Universal Mind, and that pass from Him to the Seven, each of whom plans out His
own realm under that supreme direction and all-inspiring life, giving to it, at
the same time, His own individual colouring. H. P. Blavatsky calls these Seven
Realms that make up the solar systems the seven Laya centres; she says:
The seven Laya centres
are the seven Zero points, using the term Zero in the same sense that chemists
do, to indicate a point at which, in Esotericism, the scale of reckoning of
differentiation begins. From the Centres – beyond which Esoteric philosophy
allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of the
"Seven Sons"
of Life and Light, the seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all other philosophies –
begins the differentiation of the elements which enter into the constitution of
our Solar System.(Secret Doctrine, I , 195, Adyar Ed.)
This realm is a
planetary evolution of a stupendous character, the field in which are lived out the stages of life of which a physical planet,
such as Venus, is but a transcient embodiment. We may speak of the Evolver and
Ruler of this realm as a planetary Logos, so as to avoid confusion. He draws
from the
matter of the solar
system, outpoured from the central LOGOS Himself, the crude materials He
requires, and elaborates them by His own life-energies, each planetary Logos
thus specialising the matter of His realm from a common stock. (See in chapter
I, on "The Physical Plane" the statement on the evolution of matter.)
The atomic state in each
of the seven planes of His kingdom being identical with the matter of a
sub-plane of the whole solar system, continuity is thus established throughout
the whole. As H. P. Blavatsky remarks, atoms change "their combining
equivalents on every planet," the atoms themselves being
identical, but their
combinations differing. She goes on: -
"Not alone the
elements of our planet, but even those of all its sisters in the solar system,
differ as widely from each other in their combinations, as from the cosmic
elements beyond our solar limits…Each atom has seven planes of being, or
existence, we are taught. (Secret Doctrine, Volume1, pages 166 and174, of the
1893 edition or Volume 1, 199, , of the Adyar edition.)
The sub-planes, as we
have been calling them, of each great plane. On the three lower planes of His
evolving realm the planetary Logos establishes seven globes or worlds, which
for convenience’ sake, following the received nomenclature, we will call globes
A,B,C,D,E,F,G.
These are the Seven
small wheels revolving, one giving birth to the other spoken of in Stanza vi,
of the Book of Dzyan: He builds them in the likeness of the older wheels,
placing them on the imperishable centres. (Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, , of the 1893 edition or Volume 1, , of the Adyar
edition.) Imperishable, since each wheel not only gives birth to its successor,
but is
also itself reincarnated
at the same centre, as we shall see.
These globes may be
figured as disposed in three pairs on the arc of an ellipse, with the middle
globe at the mid-most and lowest point; for the most part globes A and G – the
first and seventh – are on the Arupa levels of the mental plane; globes B and F
– the second and sixth – are on the rûpa levels; globes C and E – the third and
fifth – are on the astral plane; globe D – the fourth – is on the physical
plane. These globes are spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky as "graduated on the
four lower planes of the world of formation,"( Secret
Doctrine, Volume 1, , of the1893 edition or Volume 1, , of the Adyar edition-
the note is important,
that the archetypal world is not the world as it existed in the
mind of the planetary Logos, but the first model which was made.) i.e., the
physical and astral planes, and the two
subdivisions of the mental (rûpa and arûpa). They may be figured: - as
This is the typical
arrangement, but it is modified at certain stages of evolution. These seven
globes form a planetary ring or chain, and – if for a moment we regard the
planetary chain as a whole, as, so to say, an entity, a planetary life or
individual – that chain passes through the seven globes as a whole form its
planetary body, and this planetary body disintegrates and is
reformed seven times
during the planetary life. The planetary chain has seven incarnations, and the
results obtained in one are handed on to the next.
Every such chain of
worlds is the progeny and creation of another lower and dead chain – its
reincarnation, so to say. (Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, , of the 1893 Edition or
Volume 1, , of the Adyar Edition.)
These seven incarnations
(technically called "manvantaras") make up "the planetary
evolution," the realm of the planetary Logos. As there are seven planetary
Logoi, it will be seen that seven of these planetary evolutions, each distinct
from the others, make up the solar system. (Mr. Sinnett calls these
"seven schemes of
evolution"). In an occult commentary this coming forth of the seven Logoi
from the one, and of the seven successive chains of seven globes each, is
described:
From one light seven
lights; from each of the seven, seven times seven. ( Secret
Doctrine, Volume1, , of the 1893 Edition or Volume 1, , of the Adyar edition.) Taking
up the incarnations of the chain, the manvantaras, we learn that these also are
sub-divisible into seven stages; a wave of life from the planetary
Logos is sent round the
chain, and seven of these great life-waves, each one technically spoken of as
"a round," complete a single manvantara.
Each globe has thus seven periods of activity during a manvantara, each in turn
becoming the field of the evolving life.
Looking at a single
globe we find that during the period of its activity seven root-races of a humanity evolve on it, together with six other non-human kingdoms
interdependent on each other. As these seven kingdoms contain forms at all
stages of evolution, as all have higher reaches stretching before them, the
evolving forms of one
globe pass to another to carry on their growth when the period of activity of
the former globe comes to an end, and go on - from globe to globe to the end of
that round; they further pursue their course round after round to the close of
the seven rounds or manvantara after manvantara till the
end of reincarnations of their planetary chain is reached, when
the results of that planetary evolution are gathered up by the planetary Logos.
Needless to say that scarcely anything of this evolution is known to us; only
the salient points in the stupendous whole have been indicated by the Teachers.
Even when we come to the
planetary evolution in which our own world is a stage, we know nothing of the
processes through which its seven globes evolved during its first two
manvantaras; and of its third manvantara we only know that the globe which is
now our moon was globe D of that planetary chain. This fact,
however, may help us to realise more clearly what is meant by these
successive reincarnations of a planetary chain. The seven globes which formed
the lunar chain passed in due course through their sevenfold evolution; seven
times the life-wave, the Breath of the planetary Logos, swept round the chain,
quickening in turn each globe into life.
It is as though that
Logos in guiding His kingdom turned His attention first to globe A, and thereon
brought into successive existence the innumerable forms that in their totality
make up a world; when evolution had been carried to a certain point, He turned
His attention to globe B, and globe A slowly sank into
a peaceful sleep. Thus
the life wave was carried from globe to globe, until one round of the circle
was completed by globe G finishing its evolution; then there succeeded a period
of rest, (technically called a pralaya), during which the external evolutionary
activity ceased.
At the close of this
period, external evolution recommenced, starting on its second round and
beginning as before on globe A. The process is repeated six times, but when the
seventh, the last round, is reached, there is a change.
Globe A, having
accomplished its seventh life-period, gradually disintegrates, and the
imperishable laya centre state supervenes; from that, at the dawn of the succeeding
manvantara a new globe A is evolved – like a new body – in which the
"principles" of the preceding planet A take up their abode. This
phrase is only intended to convey the idea of a relation between globe A of the
first manvantara and globe A of the second, the nature of that connection
remains hidden.
Of the connection
between globe D of the lunar manvantara – our moon – and globe D of the terrene
manvantara – our earth – we know little more, and Mr. Sinnett has given a
convenient summary of the slender knowledge we possess in The system to which
we belong. He says:-
The new earth nebula was
developed round a centre bearing pretty much the same relation to the dying
planet that the centres of the earth and moon bear to one another at present.
But in the nebulous condition this aggregation of matter
occupied an enormously
greater volume than the solid matter of the earth now
occupies.
It stretched out in all
directions so as to include the old planet in its fiery embrace. The
temperature of the new nebula appears to be considerable higher than any
temperatures we are acquainted with, and by this means the old planet was
superficially heated afresh in such a manner that all atmosphere, water, and
volatilisable matter upon it was brought into the gaseous condition and
so became amenable to the new centre of attraction set up at the centre of the
new nebula.
In this way the air and
seas of the old planet were drawn over into the constitution of the new one,
and thus it is that the moon in its present state is an arid, glaring mass, dry
and cloudless, no longer habitable, and no longer required for the habitation
of any physical beings. When the present manvantara
is nearly over, during the seventh round, its disintegration
will be completed and the matter which it still holds together will resolve
into meteoric dust.(Op .cit., )
In the third volume of
The Secret Doctrine, in which are printed some of the oral teachings given by
H.P.Blavatsky to her more advanced pupils, it is stated:
At the beginning of the
evolution of our globe, the moon was much nearer to the earth, and larger than
it is now. It has retreated from us, and shrunk much in size.(The
moon gave all her principles to the earth.) A new moon will appear during the
seventh round, and our moon will finally disintegrate and disappear. (Op. Cit. III, 562, 1893 Ed.)
Evolution during the
lunar manvantara produced seven classes of beings, technically called Fathers,
or Pitris, since it was they who generated the beings of the terrene
manvantara. These are the Lunar Pitris of the Secret Doctrine. More developed
than these were two other classes – variously called Solar Pitris, Men,
evolution in its early stages, but requiring the aid of later
physical conditions for their future growth.
The higher of these two
classes consisted of individualised animal-like beings, creatures with
embryonic souls, i.e., they had developed the causal body; the second were
approaching its formation. Lunar Pitris, the first class, were at the beginning
of that approach showing mentality, while the second and third had only
developed the kamic principle.
These seven classes of
Lunar Pitris were the product the lunar chain handed on for further development
to the terrene, the fourth reincarnation of the planetary chain. As Monads –
with the mental principle present in the first, the kamic principle developed
in the second and third classes, this germinal in the
fourth, only approaching the germ stage in the still less
developed fifth, and imperceptible in the sixth and seventh – these entities
entered the earth-chain, to ensoul the elemental essence and the forms shaped
by the Builders. ( H.P.Blavatsky, in the Secret Doctrine,
does not include those whom Mr. Sinnett
calls first – and second-class Pitris in the "monads from
the lunar chain": she takes them apart as "men," as "Dhyan
Chohans." Compare Volume 1, pages 197, 207 and 211 of the 1893 edition;
Volume 1, pages 227, 236 and 239 of the Adyar edition)
The nomenclature adopted
by me is that of the Secret Doctrine. In the valuable paper by Mrs. Sinnett and
Mr. Scott-Elliot on the Lunar Pitris, H.P.B.’s "Lower Dhyanis," that
incarnate in the third and fourth rounds, are taken as the first and second
classes of Lunar Pitris; their third class is therefore H.P.B.’s first class,
their fourth class her second and so on. There is no difference in
the statement of facts, only in nomenclature, but this
difference of nomenclature may mislead the student if it be not explained. As I
am using H.P.B’s nomenclature, my fellow-students of the
The "Builders"
is a name including innumerable Intelligences, hierarchies of beings of
graduated consciousness and power, who on each plane carry out the actual
building of forms. The higher direct and control, while the lower fashion the
materials after the models provided. And now appears the use of the successive
globes of the planetary chain.
Globe A is the
archetypal world, on which are built the models of the forms that are to be
elaborated during the round; from the mind of the planetary Logos the highest
Builders take the archetypal Ideas, and guide the Builders on the arupa
levels as they fashion
the archetypal forms for the round.
On globe B these forms
are reproduced in varied shapes in mental matter by a lower rank of Builders,
and are evolved slowly along different lines, until they are ready to receive
an infiltration of denser matter; then the Builders in astral matter take up
the task, and on globe C fashion astral forms, with
details more worked out;
when the forms have been evolved as far as the astral conditions permit, the
Builders of globe D take up the task of form-shaping on the physical plane, and
the lowest kinds of matter are thus fashioned into appropriate types, and the
forms reach their densest and most complete condition.
From this middle point
onwards the nature of the evolution some what changes; hitherto the greatest
attention had been directed to the building of the form; on the ascending arc
the chief attention is directed to using the form as a vehicle of the evolving
life and on the second half of the evolution on globe D,
and on globes E and F the consciousness expresses itself first
on the physical and then on the astral and lower mental planes through the
equivalents of the forms elaborated on the descending arc.
On the descending arc
the monad impresses itself as best it may on the evolving forms, and these
impressions, and so on; on the ascending arc the Monad expresses itself through
the forms as their inner ruler. On globe G the perfection of the round is
reached, the Monad inhabiting and using as its vehicles the archetypal forms of
globe A.
During all these stages
the Lunar Pitris have acted as the souls of the forms, brooding over them,
later inhabiting them. It is on the first-class Pitris that the heaviest burden
of the work falls during the first three rounds. The second and third-class
Pitris flow into the forms worked up by the first; the first prepare these
forms by ensouling them for a time and then pass on, leaving them for the
tenancy of the second and third classes. By the end of the first round the
archetypal forms of the mineral would have been brought down, to be elaborated
through the succeeding rounds, till they reach their densest state in the
middle of the fourth round. "Fire" is the "element" of this
first round.
In the second round the
first-class Pitris continue their human evolution, only touching the lower
stages as the human foetus still touches them today, while the second-class, at
the close of the round, have reached the incipient human stage. The great work
of the round is bringing down the archetypal forms of
vegetable life, which
will reach their perfection in the fifth round. "Air" is the second
round "element".
In the third round the
first-class Pitris becomes definitely human in form; though the body is
jelly-like and gigantic, it is yet, on globe D, compact enough to begin to
stand upright; he is ape-like and is covered with hairy bristles. The third-class
Pitris reach the incipient human stage. Second class solar Pitris make their
first appearance on globe D in this round, and take the
lead in human evolution.
The archetypal forms of animals are brought down to be elaborated into
perfection by the end of the sixth round, and "water" is the
characteristic
"element."
The fourth round, the
middle one of the seven that make up the terrene manvantara, is distinguished
by bringing to globe A the archetypal forms of humanity, this round being as distinctively
human as its predecessors were respectively animal, vegetable, and mineral. Not
ill the seventh round will these forms be fully realised by humanity, but the
possibilities of the human
form are manifested in
the archetypes in the fourth. "Earth" is the "element" of this
round, the densest, the most material. The first-class solar Pitris may be said
to hover round globe D more or less in this round during its early stages of
activity, but they do not definitely incarnate until after the third great out-pouring
of life from the planetary Logos in the middle of the third race,
and then only slowly, the number increasing as the race
progresses, and multitudes incarnating in the early fourth race.
The evolution of
humanity on our earth, globe D, offers in a strongly marked form the continual
sevenfold diversity already often alluded to. Seven races of men had already
shown themselves in the third round, and in the fourth
these
fundamental divisions
became very clear on globe C, where seven races, each with sub-races evolved.
On globe D humanity begins with a First Race – usually called a Root Race – at
seven different points, "seven of them, each on his lot." (Book of
Dzyan (Stanzas of Dzyan, 3: 13). – Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, , of the 1893,
edition– Volume 3, , of the Adyar edition.)
These seven types side
by side, not successive – make up the first root-race, and each again has its
own seven sub-races. From the first root-race – jelly-like amorphous creatures
– evolves the second root-race with forms of more definite consistency, and
from it the third, ape-like creatures that become clumsy gigantic men. In the
middle of the evolution of this third root-race,
called the Lemurian,
there come to earth – from another planetary chain, that of Venus, much farther
advanced in its evolution – members of its highly evolved humanity, glorious
Beings, often spoken of as Sons of Fire, from Their radiant
appearance, a lofty
order among the Sons of Mind. (Manasaputra. This vast hierarchy of
self-conscious intelligences embraces many orders.)
They take up Their abode
on earth, as the Divine Teachers of the young humanity, some of them acting as
channels for the third outpouring and projecting into animal man the spark of
monadic life which forms the causal body. Thus the first, second, and third
classes of Lunar Pitris become individualised – the vast bulk of humanity. The
two classes of solar Pitris, already individualised – the first ere leaving the
lunar chain and the second later – form two low orders of the Sons of Mind; the
second incarnate in the third race at its middle point, and the first come in
later, for the most part in the fourth race, the Atlantean.
The fifth,
or Aryan race, now leading human evolution, was evolved from the fifth sub-race
of the Atlantean, the most promising families being in
fourth-race and third-race
nations who then inhabited it.
At the end of the
seventh race of the seventh round, i.e., at the close of our terrene
manvantara, our chain will hand on to its successor the fruits of its life;
these fruits will be the perfected divine men, Buddhas, Manus, Chohans, Masters,
ready to take up work of guiding evolution under the direction of the planetary
Logos, with hosts of less evolved entities of every grade of
consciousness, who still need physical experience for the perfecting of
their divine possibilities.
The fifth, sixth, and
seventh manvantaras of our chain are still in the womb of the future after this
fourth one has closed, and then the planetary Logos will gather up into Himself
all the fruits of evolution, and with his children enter on a period of rest
and bliss. Of that high state we cannot speak; how at this
stage of our evolution
could we dream of its unimaginable glory; only we dimly know that our glad
spirits shall "enter into the joy of the Lord," and, resting in Him,
shall see stretching before them boundless ranges of sublime life and love,
heights and depths of power and joy, limitless as the One Existence,
inexhaustable as the One
that Is.
PEACE TO ALL BEINGS
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