Searchable Theosophical Texts
Theosophy House
The Ancient Wisdom
by
Annie Besant
(1847 - 1933)
Published in 1897
The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
Annie Besant was active in Theosophical circles and a collaborator
with
Archbishop C. W. Leadbeater.
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.
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
the settlement of the Fifth, or Aryan race in
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
Eastern Hwa
; he received it from the Divine Ruler of the Golden Gate ; he
received it from
the Royal-mother of the West.
Now the "Divine Ruler of the Golden Gate," was the title
held by the Initiate
who ruled the Toltec empire in Atlantis, and its use suggests that
the Classic
of Purity was brought thence to
Toltecs. The idea is strengthened by the contents of the brief
treatise, which
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
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
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. (
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
Trinity, Ra, Osiris-Isis as the dual Second LOGOS, and Horus. The
great hymn to
Amun-Ra will be remembered:
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
such abundant learning by G.R.S.Mead in his work Orpheus. The
Ineffable
Thrice-unknown Darkness was the name given to the One Existence.
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;
and (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.
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
tradition asserts. In later centuries we find some peculiarly
Sânkhyan and
Buddhist ideas playing a prominent part in Gnostic thought. The
following
quotation from Lassen, cited by Garbe on p. 97, shows this very
clearly:
Buddhism in general distinguishes clearly between Spirit and Light,
and does not
regard the latter as immaterial ; but a view of Light is found
among them which
is closely related to that of the Gnostics. According to this,
Light is the
manifestation of Spirit in matter ; the intelligence thus clothed
in Light comes
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
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 "
Holy Ghost," [ I Cor., vi, 19] – phrases that exactly echo the
Hindu teaching.
The doctrine of reincarnation is rather taken for granted in the
New Testament
than distinctly taught ; thus Jesus speaking of John the Baptist,
declares that
he is Elias "which was for to come." [ Matt. xi., 14]
referring to the words of
Malachi, " I will send you Elijah the prophet", [ Mal.,
Iv, 5] and again, when
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
precise information has been published of the Grecian schools than
of others ;
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
school of Pythagoras, and the same is true of the men.
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
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 of
elemental 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 Valhalla of the
Norsemen, the
houri-filled paradise of the Muslim, the golden jewelled-gated New
Jerusalem of
the Christian, the lyceum-filled heaven of the materialistic
reformer, all have
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.
DEVACHAN
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 this
embryonic 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 temple of God and shall go out no more."
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 f