The Ancient Wisdom
by
Annie Besant
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar
1911
PREFACE
This book is intended to place in the hands of the general
reader an epitome of theosophical teachings, sufficiently plain to serve the
elementary student, and sufficiently full to lay a sound foundation for further
knowledge. It is hoped that it may serve as an introduction to the profounder
works of H.P.Blavatsky, and be a convenient steppingstone to their study.
Those who have learned a little of the Ancient Wisdom know
the illumination, the peace, the joy, the strength, its lessons have brought
into their lives. That this book may win some to con its teachings,and to prove
for themselves their value, is the prayer with which it is sent forth into the
world.
Annie Besant,
August 1897
(NOTE-
At the beginning of the original print, there is introduction explaining the underlying
unity of
all religions. Many readers might find it difficult to understand terms in
various religions. So this section is given at the end in case anybody wants to
read. So we start here with first chapter The Physical Plane )
CHAPTER I
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.
(Page 41)
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
(Page 42) 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 (Page 43)
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 Ātmā ; those of the fourth plane as Ātmā enveloped
in Buddhi-matter ; those of the third plane as Ātmā enveloped in Buddhi and
Manas-matter ; those of the second plane as Ātmā enveloped in Buddhi-Manas- and
Kāma-matter ; those of the lowest as Ātmā enveloped in Buddhi-Manas-Kāma and
Sthűla-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.
(Page 44) 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
(Page 45) 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,
(Page 46) 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, (Page 47) 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, ( Page 48) 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 (Page 49)
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 (Page 50)
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 Prāna, and it becomes the life-breath of every creature. Prāna 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
(Page 51)
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.
(Page 52) 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
(Page 53)
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 (Page 54) 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 (Page 55) 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, (Page 56)
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.
CHAPTER -2-
THE ASTRAL PLANE
(Page 57)
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 (Page 58) 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,
(Page 59) 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 (Page 60)
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
(Page 61) 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,
(Page 62) 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
(Page 63) 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
(Page 64) 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 (Page 65) 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
(Page 66) 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 (Page 67) 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 (Page
68)
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.
(Page 69)
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, (Kâmarűpa is the technical name for the astral body, from
Kâma, desire, and rűpa, form) or astral bodies, of animals are found, as has
just been stated, to lead (Page 70)
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,
(Page 71) 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
(Page 72) 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, (Page 73)
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 (Page 74) 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
(Page 75) 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. (Page 76)
(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
(Page 77) 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 (Page
78) 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,
(Page 79) 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.
(Page 80) 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 (Page 81) 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 (Page 82)
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. (Page 83)
CHAPTER
III
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 (Page 84) 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.(Page
85) 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 (Page
86)
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
(Page 87)
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 (Page 88)
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
(Page 89) 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 (Page
90) 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 (Page 91) 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
(Page 92)
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.
(Page 93) 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,
(Page 94) 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
(Page 95) 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 (Page 96) 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 (Page 97)
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
(Page 98) 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
(Page 99) 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 (Page 100) 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
(Page 101)
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 (Page 102) 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 (Page 103) 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.
(Page 104) 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 (Page
105) 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 (Page 106)
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. (Page 107)
CHAPTER IV
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
(Page 108)
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 (Page 109)
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
(Page 110)
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. (Arűpa, without form: rűpa, form. Rűpa 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
(Page 111) 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 (Page 112) 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; (Page 113) 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 (Page 114)
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 Arűpa and Rűpa 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, (Page 115) 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 Rűpa, 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,
(Page 116)
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
(Page 117) 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 (Page 118)
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,
(Page 119) 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, (Page 120) 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 (Page 121)
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
(Page 122) 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.
a) 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 (Page 123)
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, (Page 124)
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.
(b) 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 (Page 125) 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
(Page 126) 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 (Page 127) 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 –
( c ) 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. (Page 128)
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 (Page 129) 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 Augśides 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
(Page 130)
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 (Page 131) 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 (Page 132) 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.
(Page 133) 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.
(Page 134)
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;
(Page 135) 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
(Page 136)
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.
(Page 137)
CHAPTER V
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
(Page 138) 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 (Page 139)
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 Arűpa and Rűpa Devachan – existing
on the arűpa and rűpa 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 (Page 140)
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.
(Page 141)
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
(Page 142)
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
(Page 143) 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 (Page 144) 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,
(Page 145) 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
(Page 146)
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
(Page 147) 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.
(Page 148)
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,
Page 83) 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 (Page 149) 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, (Page 150)
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. (Page 151)
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 (Page 152)
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 (Page 153) 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, (Page 154)
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,
(Page 155) 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 (Page 156) 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,
(Page 157) 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 (Page 158)
“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
(Page 159)
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
(Page 160)
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
(Page 161)
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
(Page 162) 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.
(Page 163)
CHAPTER VI
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
( Page 164) 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 Triműrti being the concrete manifestation of these) –the three
LOGOI severally showing these forth with all the (Page
165) 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
(Page 166) 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
(Page 167) 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
(Page 168)
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 (Page 169) 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 (Page 170)
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
(Page 171) 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, (Page 172)
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
(Page 173)
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 (Page 174) 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 (Page
175) 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
(Page 176) 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. Sthūla Sharira is the Sanskrit name for the dense body.)
Putting together the two ways of looking at the same
thing, we may construct a table:
(Page 177)
PRINCIPLES |
|
LIFE |
FORMS |
Atmâ.
|
Spirit |
Atmâ |
|
Buddhi |
Spiritual Soul |
|
Bliss-Body |
Higher Manas |
Human Soul |
|
Causal Body |
Lower Manas |
|
Mental Body |
Those of our readers who are more familiar with the
Vedântin classification may find the following two tables of the form-side
useful: |
Buddhic body |
Ânandamayakosha |
Causal body |
Vignyânamayakosha |
Mental body |
Manomayakosha |
Astral body |
Physical body |
Etheric |
Prânamayakosha |
Dense |
Annamaykosha |
PRINCIPLES |
FORMS |
|
|
Kâma . Animal Soul |
Astral Body |
Linga Sharira * |
Etheric Double |
Sthűla Sharira |
Dense Body |
|
|
* Linga Sharira was the name originally given to the
etheric body, and must not be confused with the Linga Sharîra of Hindu
philosophy. Sthűla 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 (Page 178)
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.
(Page 179)
CHAPTER VII
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 : -
(Page 180)
“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).” (Page 181)
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
(Page 182) 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 (Page 183)
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
(Page 184) 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.)
(Page 185)
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. (Page 186)
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.
(Page 187)
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 (Page
188)
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, (Page 189)
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 (Page
190) 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,
(Page 191) 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. (Page 192)
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 (Page 193)
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 (Page 194)
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
(Page 195) 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 (Page 196) 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
(Page 197) 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; (Page 198)
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, (Page 199) 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
(Page 200)
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 (Page 201) 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 (Page 202) 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 (Page 203)
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 (Page 204) 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.(Page
205)
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 Kārmic 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 (Page 206) 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
(Page 207) 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.
CHAPTER
VIII
REINCARNATION CONTINUED
(Page
208) 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 (Page 209)
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 (Page 210)
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 (Page 211) 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 (Page 212)
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 (Page 213) 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, (Page
214) 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 (Page 215)
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 (Page 216) 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 (Page
217) 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 (Page 218) 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 (Page 219) 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
(Page
220) 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 (Page
221) 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 (Page 222) 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 (Page 223)
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
(Page
224) 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. (Page
225)
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. (Page
226) 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
(Page 227) 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 (Page 228) 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
(Page
229) 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
(Page 230) 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 (Page 231)
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 (Page
232) 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
(Page
233) 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, (Page 234) 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
(Page 235) 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, Page 64]
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 (Page
236) 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,
Page 67] ” 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 (Page
237) 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
(Page
238) 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 (Page
239) are rarer than in the East, because in the West the first words
of such a child would be met with disbelief, and he would quickly lose faith
in his own memories. In the East, where belief in reincarnation is almost universal,
the child’s remembrances are listened to, and where the opportunity serves they
have been verified.
There
is another important point with respect to memory that will repay consideration.
The memory of past events remains, as we have seen, with the Thinker
only, but the results of those events embodied in faculties are at
the service of the lower man. If the whole of these past events were thrown
down into the physical brain, a vast mass of experiences in no classified order,
without arrangement, the man could not be guided by the out come of the past,
nor utilise it for present help. Compelled to make a choice between two lines
of action, he would have to pick, out of the un-arranged facts from his past,
events similar in character, trace out their results, and after long and weary
study arrive at some conclusion – a conclusion very likely to be vitiated by
the overlooking of some important factor, and reached long after the need for
decision had passed.
All
the events, trivial and important, of some hundreds of lives would form a rather
unwieldy and chaotic mass for reference in an emergency that demanded a swift
action. The far more effective plan of Nature leaves to the Thinker the memory
of the events, provides a long period of excarnate existence for the mental
body, during which all events are tabulated and compared and their results
are classified; then these results are embodied as faculties, and these faculties
form the next mental body of the Thinker.
In
this way, the enlarged and improved faculties are available for immediate use,
and, the faculties of the past being in them, a decision can be come to, in
accordance with those results and without any delay. The clear quick insight
and prompt judgment are nothing else than the outcome of past experiences, moulded
into an effective form for use; they are surely more useful instruments than
would be a mass of unassimilated experiences, out of which the relevant ones
would have to be selected and compared, and from which inferences would have
to be drawn, on each separate occasion on which a choice arises.
From
all these lines of thought, however, the mind turns back to rest on the fundamental
necessity for reincarnation if life is to be made intelligible, and if injustice
and cruelty are not to mock the helplessness of man. With reincarnation man
is a dignified, immortal being, evolving towards a divinely glorious end; without
it, he is a tossing straw on the stream of chance circumstances , irresponsible
for his character, for his actions, for his destiny.
With
it, he may look forward with fearless hope, however low in the scale of evolution
he may be today, for he is on the ladder to divinity, and the climbing to its
summit is only a question of time; without it, he has no reasonable ground of
assurance as to progress in the future, nor indeed any reasonable ground
(Page 241) of assurance in a future at all. Why should a creature
without a past look forward to a future?He
may be a mere bubble on the ocean of time. Flung into the world from non-entity,
with qualities of good or evil, attached to him without reason or desert, why
should he strive to make the best of them? Will not his future, if he have one,
be as isolated, as uncaused, as unrelated as his present? In dropping reincarnation
from its beliefs, the modern world has deprived God of His justice and has bereft
man of his security; he may be “lucky” or “unlucky” but the strength and dignity
conferred by reliance on a changeless law are rent away from him, and he is
left tossing helplessly on an un-navigable ocean of life.
(Page
242)
KARMA
Having
traced the evolution of the soul by the way of reincarnation, we are now in
a position to study the great law of causation under which rebirths are carried
on, the law which is named Karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word, literally meaning
“action”; as all actions are effects flowing from preceding causes, and as each
effect becomes a cause of future effects, this idea of cause and effect is an
essential part of the idea of action, and the word action, or karma, is therefore
used for causation, or for the unbroken linked series of causes and effects
that make up all human activity.
Hence
the phrase is sometimes used of an event, “This is my karma,” i.e., “This event
is the effect of a cause set going by me in the past.” No one life is isolated!
It is the child of all the lives before it, the parent of all the lives that
follow it, in the total aggregate of the lives that make up the continuing existence
of the individual.
There
is no such thing as ”chance” or as “accident”; every event is linked to a preceding
cause, to a following effect; all thoughts, deeds, circumstances are causally
related to the past and will causally influence the future; as our ignorance
(Page 243) shrouds from our vision alike the past and the future,
events often appear to us to come suddenly from the void, to be “accidental,”
but this appearance is illusory and is due entirely to our lack of knowledge.
Just as the
savage, ignorant of the laws of the physical universe, regards physical events
as uncaused, and the results of unknown physical laws as “miracles”; so do many,
ignorant of moral and mental laws, regard moral and mental events as uncaused,
and the results of unknown moral and mental laws as good and bad “luck.”
When
at first this idea of inviolable, immutable law is a realm hitherto vaguely
ascribed to chance dawns upon the mind, it is apt to result in a sense of helplessness,
almost of moral and mental paralysis. Man seems to be held in the grip of an
iron destiny, and the resigned “kismet” of the Moslem appears to be the only
philosophical utterance. Just so might the savage feel when the idea of physical
law first dawns on his startled intelligence, and he learns that every movement
of his body, every movement in external nature, is carried on under immutable
laws.
Gradually
he learns that natural laws only lay down conditions under which all workings
must be carried on, but do not prescribe the workings; so that man remains
ever free at the centre, while limited in his external activities by the conditions
of the plane on which those activities are carried on. He learns further that
while the conditions master him, constantly frustrating his strenuous efforts,
so long as he is ignorant of them, or, knowing them, (Page
244) fights against them, he masters them and they become his servants
and helpers when he understands them, knows their directions, and calculates
their forces.
In
truth science is possible only on the physical plane because its laws are
inviolable, immutable. Were there no such things as natural laws, there could
be no sciences. An investigator makes a number of experiments, and from the
results of these he learns how Nature works; knowing this, he can calculate
how to bring about a certain desired result, and if he fail in achieving that
result he knows that he has omitted some necessary condition – either his knowledge
is imperfect, or he has made a miscalculation. He
reviews his knowledge, revises his methods, recasts his calculations, with a
serene and complete certainty that if he ask his question rightly Nature will
answer him with unvarying precision. Hydrogen and oxygen will not give him water
today and prussic acid tomorrow; fire will not burn him today and freeze him
tomorrow. If water be a fluid today and a solid tomorrow, it is because the
conditions surrounding it have been altered, and the reinstatement of the original
conditions will bring about the original result.
Every
new piece of information about the laws of Nature is not a fresh restriction
but a fresh power, for all these energies of Nature become forces which he
can use in proportion as he understands them. Hence the saying that “knowledge
is power,” for exactly in proportion to his knowledge
(Page 245) can he utilise these forces; by selecting those with which
he will work, by balancing one against another, by neutralising opposing energies
that would interfere with his object, he can calculate beforehand the result,
and bring about what he predetermines.
Understanding
and manipulating causes, he can predict effects, and thus the very rigidity
of nature which seemed at first to paralyse human action can be used to produce
and infinite variety of results. Perfect rigidity in each separate force makes
possible perfect flexibility in their combinations. For the forces being of
every kind, moving in every direction, and each being calculable, a selection
can be made and the selected forces so combined as to yield any desired result.
The
object to be gained being determined, it can be infallibly obtained by a careful
balancing of forces in the combination put together as a cause. But, be it remembered,
knowledge is requisite thus to guide events, to bring about desired results.
The ignorant man stumbles helplessly along, striking himself against the immutable
laws and seeing his efforts fail, while the man of knowledge walks steadily
forward, foreseeing, causing, preventing, adjusting, and bringing about that
at which he aims, not because he is lucky but because he understands. The one
is the toy, the slave of Nature, whirled along by her forces: the other is her
master, using her energies to carry him onwards in the direction chosen by his
will.
That
which is true of the physical realm of law is (Page
246) true of the moral and mental worlds, equally realms of law.
Here also the ignorant is a slave, the sage is a monarch; here also the inviolability,
the immutability, that were regarded as paralysing, are found to be the necessary
conditions of sure progress and of clear-sighted direction of the future. Man
can become the master of his destiny only because that destiny lies in a realm
of law, where knowledge can build up the science of the soul and place in the
hands of man the power of controlling his future – of choosing alike his future
character and his future circumstances.The
knowledge of karma that threatened to paralyse, becomes an inspiring, a supporting,
an uplifting force.
Karma is then, the law of causation, the law of cause and effect. It was put
pointedly by the Christian Initiate, S. Paul : “Be not deceived, God is not
mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”(Galatians,
vi, 7). Man is continually sending out forces on all the planes on which
he functions; these forces – themselves in quantity and quality the effects
of his past activities – are causes which he sets going in each world he inhabits;
they bring about certain definite effects both on himself and on others, and
as these causes radiate forth from himself as centre over the whole field of
his activity, he is responsible for the results they bring about.
As
a magnet has its “magnetic field,” an area within which all its forces play,
larger or smaller according to its strength, so has every man a field of influence
(Page 247) within which play the
forces he emits, and these forces work in curves that return to their forth-sender,
that re-enter the centre whence they emerged.
As the subject is a very complicated one, we will sub-divide it, and then study
the subdivisions one by one.
Three
classes of energies are sent forth by man in his ordinary life, belonging respectively
to the three worlds that he inhabits; mental energies on the mental plane, giving
rise to the causes we call thoughts; desire energies on the astral plane, giving
rise to those we call desires; physical energies aroused by these, and working
on the physical plane, giving rise to the causes we call action. We
have to study each of these in its workings, and to understand the class of
effects to which each gives rise, if we wish to trace intelligently the part
that each plays in the perplexed and complicated combinations we set up, called
in their totality “our Karma.” When a man, advancing more swiftly than his
fellows, gains the ability to function on higher planes, he then becomes the
centre of higher forces, but for the present we may leave these out of account
and confine ourselves to ordinary humanity, treading the cycle of reincarnation
in the three worlds.
In
studying these three classes of energies we shall have to distinguish between
their effect on the man who generates them and their effect on others who come
within the field of his influence; for a lack (Page
248) of understanding on this point often leaves the student in a
slough of hopeless bewilderment.
Then we must remember that every force works on its own plane and reacts on
the planes below it in proportion to its intensity, the plane on which it is
generated gives it its special characteristics, and in its reaction on lower
planes it sets up vibrations in their finer or coarser materials according to
its own original nature.The
motive which generates the activity determines the plane to which the force
belongs.
Next it will be necessary to distinguish between ripe karma, ready to show itself
as inevitable events in the present life; the karma of character, showing itself
in tendencies that are the outcome of accumulated experiences, and that are
capable of being modified in the present life by the same power (the Ego) that
created them in the past; the karma that is now making, and will give rise to
future events and future character. ( These divisions are familiar to the student
as Prārabdha (commenced, to be worked out in the life); Sanchita (accumulated),
a part of which is seen in the tendencies, Kriyamāna, (in course of making).
Further,
we have to realise that while a man makes his own individual karma he also connects
himself thereby with others, thus becoming a member of various groups – family,
national, racial – and as a member he shares in the collective karma of each
of these groups.
It
will be seen that the study of karma is one (Page
249) of much complexity; however, by grasping the main principles
of its working as set out above, a coherent idea of its general bearing may
be obtained without much difficulty, and its details can be studied at leisure
as opportunity offers. Above all, let it never be forgotten, whether details
are understood or not, that each man makes his own karma, creating alike his
own capacities and his own limitations; and that working at any time with these
self-created capacities, and within these self-created limitations, he is still
himself, the living soul, and can strengthen or weaken his capacities, enlarge
or contract his limitations.
The
chains that bind him are of his own forging, and he can file them away or rivet
them more strongly; the house he lives in is of his own building, and he can
improve it, let it deteriorate, or rebuild it, as he will. We are ever working
in plastic clay and can shape it to our fancy, but the clay hardens and becomes
as iron, retaining the shape we gave it. A proverb from the Hitopadesha
runs, as translated by Sir Edwin Arnold:
“Look!
The clay dries into iron, but the potter moulds the clay;
Destiny today
is the master – Man was master yesterday. “
Thus
we are all masters of our tomorrows, however much we are hampered today by the
results of our yesterdays.
Let
us now take in order the divisions already set out under which karma may be
studied.
Three
classes of causes, with their effects on their (Page
250) creator and on those he influences.The
first of these classes is composed of our thoughts. Thought is the most potent
factor in the creation of human karma, for in thought the energies of the SELF
are working in mental matter, the matter which, in its finer kinds, forms the
individual vehicle, and even in its coarser kinds responds swiftly to every
vibration of self-consciousness. The vibrations which we call thought, the immediate
activity of the Thinker, give rise to forms of mind-stuff, or mental images,
which shape and mould his mental body, as we have already seen; every thought
modifies this mental body, and the mental faculties in each successive life
are made by the thinkings of the previous lives.
A
man can have no thought-power, no mental ability, that he has not himself created
by patiently repeated thinkings; on the other hand, no mental image that he
has thus created is lost, but remains as material for faculty, and the aggregate
of any group of mental images is built into a faculty which grows stronger with
every additional thinking, or creation of a mental image, of the same kind.
Knowing
this law, the man can gradually make for himself the mental character he desires
to possess and he can do it as definitely and as certainly as a bricklayer can
build a wall. Death does not stop his work, but by setting him free from the
encumbrance of the body facilitates the process of working up his mental images
into the definite organ we call a faculty, and he brings this back with him
to his next birth on the physical plane, part of the brain
(Page
251) of the new body being moulded so as to serve as the organ of
this faculty, in a way to be explained presently.
All
these faculties together form the mental body for his opening life on earth,
and his brain and nervous system are shaped to give his mental body expression
on the physical plane. Thus the mental images created in one life appear as
mental characteristics and tendencies in another, and for this reason it is
written in one of the Upanishads: “Man is a creature of reflection: that
which he reflects on in this life he becomes the same hereafter.” (Chhāndogyopanishad
IV, xiv,1). Such
is the law, and it places the building of our mental character entirely in our
own hands; if we build well, ours the advantage and the credit; if we build
badly, ours the loss and blame. Mental character, then, is a case of individual
karma in its action on the individual who generates it.
This
same man that we are considering, however, affects other by his thoughts. For
these mental images that form his own mental body set up vibrations, thus reproducing
themselves in secondary forms. These generally, being mingled with desire, take
up some astral matter, and I have therefore elsewhere (see Karma, page
25 - Theosophical Manual No. IV) called these secondary thought-forms – astro-mental
images. Such forms leave their creator and lead a quasi-independent life – still
keeping up a magnetic tie with their progenitor.
They
come into contact with and affect others, in this way setting up karmic links
between these (Page 252) others
and himself; thus they largely influence his future environment. In such fashion
are made the ties which draw people together for good or evil in later lives;
which surround us with relatives, friends, and enemies; which bring across our
path helpers and hinderers, people who benefit and who injure us, people who
love us without our winning in this life, and who hate us though in this life
we have done nothing to deserve their hatred. Studying the results, we grasp
a great principle – that while our thoughts produce our mental and moral character
in their action on ourselves, they help to determine our human associates in
the future by their effects on others.
The
second great class of energies is composed of our desires – our out-goings after
objects that attract us in the external world: as a mental element always enters
into these in man, we may extend the term “mental images “ to include them,
although they express themselves chiefly in astral matter. These in their action
on their progenitor mould and form his body of desire, or astral body, shape
his fate when he passes into Kāmaloka after death, and determine the nature
of his astral body in his next rebirth.
When
the desires are bestial, drunken, cruel, unclean, they are the fruitful causes
of congenital diseases, of weak and diseased brains, giving rise to epilepsy,
catalepsy, and nervous diseases of all kinds, of physical malformations and
deformities, and, in extreme cases, of monstrosities. Bestial appetites of an
abnormal kind or intensity may set up (Page
253) links in the astral world which for a time chain the Egos, clothed
in astral bodies shaped by these appetites, to the astral bodies of animals
to which these appetites properly belong, thus delaying their reincarnation;
where this fate is escaped, the bestially shaped astral body will sometimes
impress its characteristics on the forming physical body of the babe during
ante natal life, and produce the semi-human horrors that are occasionally born.
Desires
– because they are outgoing energies that attach themselves to objects – always
attract the man towards an environment in which they may be gratified. Desires
for earthly things, linking the soul to the outer world, draw him towards the
place where the objects of desire are most readily obtainable, and therefore
it is said that a man is born according to his desires. ( See Brihadāranyakopanishad,IV,iv,
5,7,and context). They are one of the causes that determine the place of rebirth.
The
astro-mental images caused by desires affect others as do those generated by
thoughts. They, therefore, also link us with other souls, and often by the
strongest ties of love and hatred, for at the present stage of human evolution
an ordinary man’s desires are generally stronger and more sustained than his
thoughts. They thus play a great part in determining his human surroundings
in future lives, and may bring into those lives persons and influences of whose
connection with himself he is totally unconscious.
Suppose
a man by sending out a thought of bitter hatred and revenge has helped to form
in (Page 254) another the impulse
which results in a murder; the creator of that thought is linked by his karma
to the committer of the crime, although they have never met on the physical
plane, and the wrong he has done to him, by helping to impel him to a crime
, will come back as an injury in the infliction of which the whilhom criminal
will play his part. Many a “bolt from the blue” that is felt is utterly undeserved
is the effect of such a cause, and the soul thereby learns and registers a lesson
while the lower consciousness is writhing under a sense of injustice.
Nothing
can strike a man that he has not deserved, but his absence of memory does not
cause a failure in the working of the law. We thus learn that our desires in
their action on ourselves produce our desire-nature, and through it largely
affect our physical bodies in our next birth; that they play a great part in
determining the place of rebirth; and by their effect on others they help to
draw around us our human associates in future lives.
The
third great class of energies, appearing on the physical plane as actions, generate
much karma by their effects on others, but only slightly affect directly the
Inner Man. They are effects of his past thinkings and desires, and the karma
they represent is for the most part exhausted in their happening. Indirectly
they affect him in proportion as he is moved by them to fresh thoughts and desires
or emotions, but the generating force lies in these and not in the actions themselves.
Again,
if actions are often repeated, they set up a habit of the body
(Page
255) which acts as a limitation to the expression of the Ego in the
outer world; this, however, perishes with the body, thus limiting the karma
of the action to a single life so far as its effect on the soul is concerned.
But it far otherwise when we come to study the effects of actions on others,
the happiness or unhappiness caused by these, and the influence exercised by
these as examples.They
link us to others by this influence and are thus a third factor in determining
our future human associates, while they are the chief factor in determining
what may be called our non-human environment. Broadly speaking, the favourable
or unfavourable nature of the physical surroundings into which we are born depends
on the effect of our previous actions in spreading happiness or unhappiness
among other people. The physical results on others of actions on the physical
plane work out karmically in repaying to the actor good or bad surroundings
in a future life.
If
he has made people physically happy, by sacrificing wealth or time or trouble,
this action karmically brings him favourable physical circumstances conducive
to physical happiness. If he has caused people wide-spread physical misery,
he will reap karmically from his action wretched physical circumstances conducive
to physical suffering. And this is so, whatever may have been his motive in
either case – a fact which leads us to consider the law that :
Every force works on its own plane. If a man sows happiness for others on the
physical plane, (Page 256) he will
reap conditions favourable to happiness for himself on that plane, and his motive
in sowing it does not affect the result . A man might sow wheat with the object
of speculating with it to ruin his neighbour, but his bad motive would not make
the wheat grains grow up as dandelions. Motive is a mental or astral force,
according as it arises from will or desire, and it reacts on moral and mental
character or on the desire-nature severally.
The
causing of physical happiness by an action is a physical force and works on
the physical plane. “By his actions” man affects his neighbours on the physical
plane; he spreads happiness around him or he causes distress, increasing or
diminishing the sum of human welfare. This increase or diminution of happiness
may be due to very different motives – good, bad, or mixed. A man may do an
act that gives widespread enjoyment from sheer benevolence, from a longing to
give happiness to his fellow creatures.
Let
us say that from such a motive he presents a park to a town for the free use
of its inhabitants; another may do a similar act from mere ostentation, from
desire to attract attention from those who can bestow social honours (say, he
might give it as purchase-money for a title); a third may give a park from mixed
motives, partly unselfish, partly selfish. The motives will severally affect
these three men’s characters in their future incarnations, for improvement,
for degradation, for small results.
But
the effect of the action is causing happiness to large numbers of people does
not depend on the motive of the giver; (Page
257) the people enjoy the park equally, no matter what may have prompted
its gift, and this enjoyment, due to the action of the giver, establishes for
him a karmic claim on Nature, a debt due to him that will be scrupulously paid.
He will receive a physically comfortable or luxurious environment, as he has
given widespread physical enjoyment, and his sacrifice of physical wealth will
bring him his due reward, the karmic fruit of his action.
This
is his right. But the use he makes of his position, the happiness he derives
from his wealth and his surroundings, will depend chiefly on his character,
and here again the just reward accrues to him, each seed bearing its appropriate
harvest. (see Karma, Pages 50 to 51) Truly, the ways of Karma are equal.
It does not withhold from the bad man the result which justly follows from an
action which spreads happiness, and it also deals out to him the deteriorated
character earned by his bad motive, so that in the midst of wealth he will remain
discontented and unhappy.
Nor
can the good man escape physical suffering if he cause physical misery by mistaken
actions done from good motive; the misery he caused will bring him misery in
his physical surroundings, but his good motive, improving his character, will
give him a source of perennial happiness within himself, and he will be patient
and contented amid his troubles. Many a puzzle maybe answered by applying these
principles to the facts we see around us.
These
respective effects of motive and of the (Page
258) results (or fruits) of actions are due to the fact that each
force has the characteristics of the plane on which it was generated, and the
higher the plane the more potent and the more persistent the force. Hence motive
is far more important than action, and a mistaken action done with a good motive
is productive of more good to the doer than a well-chosen action done with
a bad motive. The
motive, reacting on the character, gives rise to a long series of effects, for
the future actions guided by that character will all be influenced by its improvement
or its deterioration ‘ whereas the action, bringing on its doer physical happiness
or unhappiness, according to its results on others, has in it no generating
force, but is exhausted in its results.
If
bewildered as to the path of right action by a conflict of apparent duties,
the knower of karma diligently tries to choose the best path, using his reason
and judgment to the utmost; he is scrupulously careful about his motive, eliminating
selfish considerations and purifying his heart; then he acts fearlessly, and
if his action turn out to be a blunder he willingly accepts the suffering which
results from his mistake as a lesson which will be useful in the future. Meanwhile,
his high motive has ennobled his character for all time to come.
This
general principle that the force belongs to the plane on which it is generated
is one of far-reaching import. If it (Page
260) be liberated with the motive of gaining physical objects, it
works on the physical plane and attaches the actor to that plane. If it aim
at devachanic objects, it works on the devachanic plane and attaches the actor
thereto. If it have no motive save the divine service, it is set free on the
spiritual plane, and therefore cannot attach the individual, since the individual
is asking for nothing.
The
Three Kinds of Karma
Ripe
Karma is that which is ready for reaping and which is therefore inevitable.
Out of all the karma of the past there is a certain amount which can be exhausted
within the limits of a single life; there are some kinds of karma that are so
incongruous that they could not be worked out in a single physical body, but
would require very different types of body for their expression; there are liabilities
contracted towards other souls, and all these souls will not be in incarnation
at the same time; there is karma that must be worked out in some particular
nation or particular social position, while the same man has other karma that
needs an entirely different environment.
Part
only, therefore, of his total karma can be worked out in a given life, and this
part is selected by the Great Lords of Karma – of whom something will presently
be said – and the soul is guided to incarnate in a family, a nation, a place,
a body, suitable for the exhaustion of that aggregate of causes which can be
worked out together. This aggregate of causes fixes the length of that particular
life; gives to the body its characteristics, its powers, and its limitations;
brings into contact with the man the souls incarnated within that life-period
to whom he has contracted (Page 260)
obligations, surrounding him with relatives, friends, and enemies; marks
out the social conditions into which he is born, with their accompanying advantages
and disadvantages; selects the mental energies he can show forth by moulding
the organisation of the brain and nervous system with which he has to work;
puts together the causes that result in troubles and joys in his outer career
and that can be brought into a single life.
All
this is the “ripe karma,” and this can be sketched out in a horoscope cast by
a competent astrologer. In all this the man has no power of choice; all is fixed
by the choices he has made in the past, and he must discharge to the uttermost
farthing the liabilities he has contracted.
The
physical, astral and mental bodies which the soul takes on for a new life-period
are, as we have seen, the direct result of his past, and they form a most important
part of this ripe karma. They limit the soul on every side, and his past rises
up in judgment against him, marking out the limitations which he has made for
himself. Cheerfully to accept these, and diligently to work at their improvement,
is the part of the wise man, for he cannot escape from them.
There
is another kind of ripe karma that is of very serious importance – that of inevitable
actions. Every action is the final expression of a series of thoughts; to borrow
an illustration from chemistry, we obtain a saturated solution of thought by
adding thought after thought of the same kind, until another thought – or even
an impulse, a vibration, from (Page 261)
without – will produce the solidification of the whole; the action which expresses
the thoughts. If
we persistently reiterate thoughts of the same kind, say of revenge, we at last
reach the point of saturation, and any impulse will solidify these into action
and a crime results. Or we may have persistently reiterated thoughts of help
to another to the point of saturation, and when the stimulus of opportunity
touches us they crystallise out as an act of heroism.
A
man may bring over with him some ripe karma of this kind, and the first vibration
that touches such a mass of thoughts ready to solidify into action will hurry
him without his renewed volition, unconsciously, into the commission of the
act. He cannot stop to think; he is in the condition in which the first vibration
of the mind causes action; poised on the very point of balancing, the slightest
impulse sends him over. Under
these circumstances a man will marvel at his own commission of some crime, or
at his own performance of some sublime act of self-devotion. He says: “ I did
it without thinking,” unknowing that he had thought so often that he had made
that action inevitable. When a man has willed to do an act many times, he at
last fixes his will irrevocably, and it is only a question of opportunity when
he will act.
So
long he can think, his freedom of choice remains, for he can set the new though
against the old and gradually wear it out by the reiteration of opposing thoughts;
but when the next thrill of the soul in response to a stimulus means action,
the power of choice is exhausted. (Page 262)
Herein lies the solution of the old problem of necessity and free will; man
by the exercise of free will gradually creates necessities for himself, and
between the two extremes lie all the combinations of free will and necessity
which make the struggles within ourselves of which we are conscious.
We
are continually making habits by the repetitions of purposive actions guided
by the will; then the habit becomes a limitation, and we perform the action
automatically. Perhaps we are then driven to the conclusion that the habit is
a bad one, and we begin laboriously to unmake it by thoughts of the opposite
kind, and, after many an inevitable lapse into it, the new thought-current turns
the stream, and we regain our full freedom, often again gradually to make another
fetter.
So
old thought-forms persist and limit our thinking capacity, showing as individual
and as national prejudices. The majority do not know that they are thus limited,
and go on serenely in their chains, ignorant of their bondage; those who learn
the truth about their own nature become free. The constitution of our brain
and nervous system is one of the most marked necessities in life; these we have
made inevitable by our past thinkings, and they now limit us and we often chafe
against them. They can be improved slowly and gradually; the limits can be expanded,
but they cannot be suddenly transcended.
Another
form of this ripe karma is where some past evil-thinking has made a crust of
evil habits around a man which imprisons him and makes an
(Page
263) evil life; the actions are the inevitable outcome of his past,
as just explained, and they have been held over, even through several lives,
in consequence of those lives not offering opportunities for their manifestation.
Meanwhile the soul has been growing and has been developing noble qualities.
In one life
this crust of past evil is thrown out by opportunity, and because of this the
soul cannot show his later development; like a chicken ready to be hatched,
he is hidden within the imprisoning shell, and only the shell is visible to
the external eye. After a time that karma is exhausted, and some apparently
fortuitous event – a word from a great Teacher, a book, a lecture – breaks the
shell and the souls comes forth free.
These
are the rare, sudden, but permanent “conversions,” the “miracles of divine grace,”
of which we hear; all perfectly intelligible to the knower of karma, and felling
within the realm of the law. The accumulated karma that shows itself as character
is, unlike the ripe, always subject to modifications. It may be said to consist
of tendencies, strong or weak, according to the thought-force that has gone
to their making, and these can be further strengthened or weakened by fresh
streams of thought-force sent to work with or against them.
If
we find in ourselves tendencies of which we disapprove, we can set ourselves
to work to eliminate them; often we fail to withstand temptation, overborne
by the strong out-rushing stream of desire, but the longer we can hold out against
it, even though (Page 264) we fail
in the end, the nearer are we to overcoming it. Every such failure is a step
towards success, for the resistance wears away part of the energy, and there
is less of it available for the future. The karma which is in the course of
making has been already studied.
Collective
Karma
When
a group of people is considered karmically, the play of karmic forces upon each
member of the group introduces a new factor into the karma of the individual.
We know that when a number of forces play on a point, the motion of the point
is not in the direction of any one of these forces, but in the direction which
is the result of their combination. So the karma of a group is the resultant
of the interacting forces of the individuals composing it, and all the individuals
are carried along in the direction of that resultant.
An
Ego is drawn by his individual karma into a family, having set up in previous
lives ties which closely connect him with some of the other Egos composing it;
the family has inherited property from a grandfather who is wealthy; an heir
turns up, descended from the grandfather’s elder brother, who had been supposed
to have died childless, and the wealth passes to him and leaves the father of
the family heavily indebted; it is quite possible that our Ego had had no connection
in the past with this heir, to whom in past lives the father had contracted
some obligation which has resulted in this catastrophe, and yet he is threatened
with suffering by his action, being involved with family karma.
If,
in his own individual past, there was a wrong-doing which can be exhausted by
suffering caused by the family karma, he is left involved in it; if not, he
is by some “unforeseen circumstances” lifted out of it, perchance by some benevolent
stranger who feels an impulse to adopt and educate him, the stranger being one
who in the past was his debtor.
Yet
more clearly does this come out, in the working of such things as railway accidents,
shipwrecks, floods, cyclones, etc. A train is wrecked, the catastrophe being
immediately due to the action of the drivers, the guards, the railway directors,
the makers or employees of that line, who thinking themselves wronged, send
clustering thoughts of discontent and anger against it as a whole. Those who
have in their accumulated karma – but not necessarily in their ripe karma –
the debt of a life suddenly cut short, may be allowed to drift into this accident
and pay their debt; another, intending to go by the train, but with no such
debt in his past, is “providentially” saved by being late for it.
Collective
karma may throw a man into the troubles consequent on his nation going to war,
and here again he may discharge his debts of his past not necessarily within
the ripe karma of his then life. In no case can a man suffer that which he has
not deserved, but, if an unforeseen opportunity should arise to discharge a
past obligation, it is well to pay it and be rid of it for evermore.
The
“Lords of Karma” are the great spiritual (Page
266) Intelligences who keep the karmic Records and adjust the complicated
workings of karmic law. They are described by H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine
as the Lipika, the Recorders of Karma, and the Mahārājas (The Mahādevas,
or Chaturdevas of the Hindus) – and Their hosts, who are “the agents of Karma
upon earth.” The Lipika are They who know the karmic record of every man, and
who with omniscient wisdom select and combine portions of that record to form
the plan of a single life; They give the “idea” of the physical body which is
to be the garment of the reincarnating soul, expressing his capacities and his
limitations; this is taken by the Mahārājas and worked into a detailed
model, which is committed to one of Their inferior agents to be copied; this
copy is the etheric double , the matrix of the dense body, the materials for
these being drawn from the mother and subject to physical heredity.
The
race, the country, the parents, are chosen for their capacity to provide suitable
materials for the physical body of the incoming Ego, and suitable surroundings
for his early life. The physical heredity of the family affords certain types
and has evolved certain peculiarities of material combinations; hereditary diseases,
hereditary finenesses of nervous organisation, imply definite combinations of
physical matter, capable of transmission.
An
Ego who has evolved peculiarities in his mental and astral bodies, needing special
physical peculiarities for their expression, is guided to parents whose
(Page
267) physical heredity enables them to meet these requirements.
Thus an Ego with high artistic faculties devoted to music would be guided to
take his physical body in a musical family, in which the materials supplied
for building the etheric double and the dense body would have been made ready
to adapt themselves to his needs, and the hereditary type of nervous system
would furnish the delicate apparatus necessary for the expression of his faculties.
An
Ego of very evil type would be guided to a coarse and vicious family, whose
bodies were built of the coarsest combinations, such as would make a body able
to respond to the impulses from his mental and astral bodies. An Ego who had
allowed his astral body and lower mind to lead him into excesses, and had yielded
to drunkenness, for instance, would be led to incarnate in a family whose nervous
systems were weakened by excess, and would be born from drunken parents, who
would supply diseased materials for his physical envelope. The guidance of
the Lords of Karma thus adjust means to ends, and insures the doing of justice;
the Ego brings with him his karmic possessions of faculties and desires, and
he receives a physical body suited to be their vehicle.
As
the soul must return to earth until he has discharged all his liabilities, thus
exhausting all his individual karma, and as in each life thoughts and desires
generate fresh karma, the question may arise in the mind : “How can this constantly
renewing bond be put an end to ? How can the soul attain his
(Page
268) liberation?” Thus we come to the “ending of karma,” and have
to investigate how this may be.
The
binding element in karma is the first thing to be clearly grasped. The outward
going energy of the soul attaches itself to some object, and the soul is drawn
back by this tie to the place where that attachment may be realised by union
with the object of desire, so long as the soul attaches himself to any object,
he must be drawn to the place where that object can be enjoyed. Good karma binds
the soul as much as does bad, for any desire, whether for objects here or in
Devachan, must draw the soul to the place of gratification.
Action
is prompted by desire, an act is done not for the sake of doing the act, but
for the sake of obtaining by the act something that is desired, of acquiring
its results, or, as it is technically called, of enjoying its fruit. Men work,
not because they want to dig, or build, or weave, but because they want the
fruits of digging, building, and weaving, in the shape of money or of goods.
A barrister pleads, not because he wants to set forth the dry details of a case,
but because he wants wealth and fame, and rank.Men
around us are labouring for something, and the spur to their activity lies in
the fruit it brings them and not in the labour. Desire for the fruit of action
moves them to activity, and enjoyment of that fruit rewards their exertions.
Desire is, then , the binding element in karma, and when the soul no longer
desires any object in earth or in heaven, his tie to the wheel of reincarnation
(Page 269) that turns in the three
worlds is broken. Action itself has no power to hold the soul, for with the
completion of the action it slips into the past. But the ever-renewed desire
for fruit constantly spurs the soul into fresh activities, and thus new chains
are continually being forged.
Nor
should we feel any regret when we see men constantly driven to action by the
whip of desire, for desire overcomes sloth, laziness, inertia – (the student
will remember that these show the dominance of the tāmasic guna, and while
it is dominant men do not emerge from the lowest of the three stages of their
evolution) – and prompts men to the activity that yields them experience. Note
the savage, idly dozing on the grass; he is moved to activity by hunger, the
desire for food,, and is driven to exert patience, skill, and endurance to gratify
his desire. Thus
he develops mental qualities, but when his hunger is satisfied he sinks again
into a dozing animal. How entirely have mental qualities been evolved by the
promptings of desire, and how useful have proved desires for fame, for posthumous
renown. Until man is approaching divinity he needs the urgings of desires, and
the desires simply grow purer and less selfish as he climbs upwards. But none
the less desires bind him to rebirth, and if he would be free he must destroy
them.
When
a man begins to long for liberation, he is taught to practise “renunciation
of the fruits of action”; that is, he gradually eradicates in himself the wish
to possess any object; he at first voluntarily and (Page
270) deliberately denies himself the object, and thus habituates
himself to do contentedly without it; after a time he no longer misses it, and
he finds the desire for it is disappearing from his mind. At this stage he is
very careful not to neglect any work which is duty because he has become indifferent
to the results it brings to him, and he trains himself in discharging every
duty with earnest attention, while remaining entirely indifferent to the fruits
it brings forth.When
he attains perfection in this, and neither desires nor dislikes any object,
he ceases to generate karma; ceasing to ask anything from the earth or from
Devachan, he is not drawn to either; he wants nothing that either can give him,
and all links between himself and them are broken off. This is the ceasing of
individual karma, so far as the generation of new karma is concerned.
But the soul has to get rid of old chains as well as to cease from the forging
of new, and these old chains must be either allowed to wear out gradually or
must be broken deliberately. For this breaking, knowledge is necessary, a knowledge
which can look back into the past, and see the causes there set going, causes
which are working out their effects in the present.
Let
us suppose that a person, thus looking backward over his past lives, sees certain
causes which will bring about an event which is still in the future; let us
suppose further that these causes are thoughts of hatred for an injury inflicted
on himself, and that they will cause suffering a year hence
(Page
271) to the wrong-doer; such a person can introduce a new cause to
intermingle with the causes working from the past, and he may counteract them
with strong thoughts of love and goodwill that will exhaust them, and will thus
prevent their bringing about the otherwise inevitable event, which would, in
its turn, have generated new karmic trouble. Thus he may neutralise forces coming
out of the past by sending against them forces equal and opposite, and may in
this way “burn up his karma by knowledge.” In similar fashion he may bring to
an end karma generated in his present life that would normally work out in future
lives.
Again,
he may be hampered by liabilities contracted to other souls in the past, wrongs
he has done to them, duties he owes them. By the use of his knowledge he can
find those souls, whether in this world or in either of the other two, and seek
opportunities of serving them. There may a soul incarnated during his own life-period
to whom he owes some karmic debt; he may seek out that soul and pay his debt,
thus setting himself free from a tie which, left to the course of events, would
have necessitated his own reincarnation, or would have hampered him in a future
life. Strange and puzzling lines of action adopted by occultists have sometimes
this explanation – the man of knowledge enters into close relations with some
person who is considered by the ignorant bystanders and critics to be quite
outside the companionships that are fitting for him; but that occultist is quietly
working out a karmic (Page 272)
obligation which would otherwise hamper and retard his progress.
Those
who do not possess knowledge enough to review their past lives may yet exhaust
many causes that they have set going in the present life; they can carefully
go over all that they can remember, and note where they have wronged any or
where any has wronged them, exhausting the first cases by pouring out thoughts
of love and service, and performing acts of service to the injured person, where
possible on the physical plane also; and in the second cases sending forth thoughts
of pardon and good will. Thus they diminish their karmic liabilities and bring
near the day of liberation.
Unconsciously,
pious people who obey the precept of all great Teachers of religion to return
good for evil are exhausting karma generated in the present that would otherwise
work out in the future. No one can weave with them a bond of hatred if they
refuse to contribute any stands of hatred to the weaving, and persistently neutralise
every force of hatred with one of love. Let a soul radiate in every direction
love and compassion, and thoughts of hatred can find nothing to which they can
attach themselves.
“The
Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me.” All great Teachers knew
the law and based on it Their precepts, and those who through reverence and
devotion to Them obey Their directions profit under the law, although they know
nothing of the details of its working. An ignorant man who carries out faithfully
the instructions given him by (Page 273)
a scientist can obtain results by his working with the laws of Nature, despite
his ignorance of them, and the same principle holds good in worlds beyond the
physical. Many who have not time to study, and perforce accept on the authority
of experts rules which guide their daily conduct in life, may thus unconsciously
be discharging their karmic liabilities.
In
countries where reincarnation and karma are taken for granted by every peasant
and labourer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of inevitable troubles
that conduces much to the calm and contentment of ordinary life. A man overwhelmed
by misfortunes rails neither against God nor against his neighbours, but regards
his troubles as the results of his own past mistakes and ill-doings.
He
accepts them resignedly and makes the best of them, and thus escapes much of
the worry and anxiety with which those who know not the law aggravate troubles
already sufficiently heavy. He realises that his future lives depend on his
own exertions, and that the law which brings him pain will bring him just joy
as inevitably if he sows the seed of good. Hence a certain patience and a philosophic
view of life, tending directly to social stability and to general contentment.
The
poor and ignorant do not study profound and detailed metaphysics, but they grasp
thoroughly these simple principles – that every man is reborn on earth time
after time, and that each successive life is moulded by those that precede it.
To them rebirth is as sure (Page 274)
and as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun; it is part of the course
of nature, against which it is idle to repine or to rebel.
When
Theosophy has restored these ancient truths to their rightful place in western
thought, they will gradually work their way among all classes of society in
Christendom, spreading understanding of the nature of life and acceptance of
the result of the past. Then too will vanish the restless discontent which arises
chiefly from the impatient and hopeless feeling that life is unintelligible,
unjust, and unmanageable, and it will be replaced by the quiet strength and
patience which come from an illumined intellect and a knowledge of the law,
and which characterise the reasoned and balanced activity of those who feel
that they are building for eternity.(Page
275)
CHAPTER
X
THE LAW OF SACRIFICE
The
study of the Law of Sacrifice follows naturally on the study of the Law of Karma,
and the understanding of the former, it was once remarked by a Master, is as
necessary for the world as the understanding of the latter. By an act of Self-sacrifice
the LOGOS became manifest for the emanation of the universe, by sacrifice the
universe is maintained, and by sacrifice man reaches perfection. (The Hindu
will remember the opening words of the Brihadāranyakopanishad,
that the dawn is in sacrifice; the Zoroastrian will recall how Ahura Mazda came
forth from an act of sacrifice; the Christian will think of the Lamb – the symbol
of the LOGOS – slain from the foundation of the world.) Hence every religion
that springs from Ancient Wisdom has sacrifice as a central teaching, and some
of the profoundest truths of occultism are rooted in the law of sacrifice.
An
attempt to grasp, however feebly, the nature of the sacrifice of the LOGOS may
prevent us from falling into the very general mistake that sacrifice is an essentially
painful thing; whereas the very essence of sacrifice is a voluntary and glad
pouring forth of life that others may share in it; and pain
(Page
276) only arises when there is discord in the nature of the sacrificer,
between the higher whose joy is in giving and the lower whose satisfaction lies
in grasping and holding.It
is that discord alone that introduces the element of pain, and in the supreme
Perfection, in the LOGOS, no discord could arise; the One is the perfect chord
of Being, of infinite melodious concords, all tuned to a single note, in which
Life and Wisdom and Bliss are blended into one keynote of Existence.
The
sacrifice of the LOGOS lay in His voluntarily circumscribing His infinite life
in order that He might manifest. Symbolically, in the infinite ocean of light,
with centre everywhere and with circumference nowhere, there arises a full-orbed
sphere of living light, a LOGOS, and the surface of that sphere is His will
to limit Himself that He may become manifest, His veil ( This is the Self-limiting
power of the LOGOS, His Māyā, the limiting principle by which all
forms are brought forth. His Life appears as “Spirit,” His Māyā as
“Matter,” and these are never disjoined during manifestation.)in which He incloses
Himself that within it a universe may take form.
That
for which the sacrifice is made is not yet in existence; its future being lies
in the “thought” of the LOGOS alone; to him it owes its conception and will
own its manifold life. Diversity could not arise in the “partless Brahman” save
for this voluntary sacrifice of Deity taking on Himself form in order to emanate
myriad forms, each dowered with a spark of His life and therefore with the power
evolving into His image. (Page 277)
“The primal sacrifice that causes the birth of beings is named action (karma),”
it is said (Bhagavad Gîtâ, viii,3.), and this coming forth into activity
from the bliss of perfect repose of self-existence has ever been recognised
as the sacrifice of the LOGOS.
That
sacrifice continues throughout the term of the universe, for the life of the
LOGOS is the sole support of every separated “ life “ and He limits His life
in each of the myriad forms to which He gives birth, bearing all the restraints
and limitations implied in each form. From any one of these He could burst
forth at any moment, the infinite Lord, filling the universe with His glory;
but only by sublime patience and slow and gradual expansion can each form be
led upward until it becomes a self-dependent centre of boundless power like
Himself.
Therefore
does He cabin Himself in forms, and bear all imperfection till perfection is
attained, and His creature is like unto Himself and one with Him, but with its
own thread of memory. Thus this pouring out of His life into forms is part of
the original sacrifice, and has in it the bliss of the eternal Father sending
forth His offspring as separated lives, that each may evolve an identity that
shall never perish, and yield its own note blended with all others to swell
the eternal song of bliss, intelligence and life.
This
marks the essential nature of sacrifice. Whatever other elements may become
mixed with the central idea; it is the voluntary pouring out of life that others
may partake of it, to bring others into life and to (Page
278) sustain them in it till they become self-dependent, and this
is but one expression of divine joy. There is always joy in the exercise of
activity which is the expression of the power of the actor; the bird takes joy
in the outpouring of song, and quivers with the mere rapture of singing; the
painter rejoices in the creation of his genius, in the putting into form of
his idea; the essential activity of the divine life must lie in giving, for
there is nothing higher than itself from which it can receive; if it is to be
active at all – and manifested life is active motion – it must pour
itself out.
Hence
the sign of the spirit is giving, for spirit is the active divine life in every
form.
But
the essential activity of matter, on the other hand, lies in receiving; by receiving
life-impulses it is organised into forms; by receiving them these are maintained;
on their withdrawal they fall to pieces. All its activity is of this nature
of receiving, and only by receiving can it endure as a form. Therefore it is
always grasping, clinging, seeking to hold for its own; the persistence of the
form depends on its grasping and retentive power, and it will therefore seek
to draw into itself all it can, and will grudge every fraction with which it
parts. Its joy will be in seizing and holding; to it giving is like courting
death.
It
is very easy from this standpoint, to see how the notion arose that sacrifice
was suffering. While the divine life found its delight in exercising its activity
of giving, and even when embodied in form cared not if the form perished by
the giving, (Page 279) knowing
it to be only its passing expression and the means of its separated growth;
the form which felt its life-forces pouring away from it cried out in anguish,
and sought to exercise its activity in holding, thus resisting the outward flow.
The sacrifice diminished the life-energies the form claimed as its own; or even
entirely drained them away, leaving the form to perish.
In
the lower world of form this was the only aspect of sacrifice cognisable, and
the form found itself driven to slaughter, and cried out in fear and agony.
What wonder that men, blinded by form, identified sacrifice with the agonising
form instead of with the free life that gave itself, crying gladly :”Lo! I come
to do thy will, O God; I am content to do it.” What wonder that men – conscious
of a higher and a lower nature, and oft identifying their self-consciousness
more with the lower than with the higher – felt the struggle of the lower nature,
the form, as their own struggles, and felt that they were accepting
suffering in resignation to a higher will, and regarded sacrifice as that devout
and resigned acceptance of pain.
Not
until man identifies himself with the life instead of with the form can the
element of pain in sacrifice be gotten rid of. In a perfectly harmonised entity,
pain cannot be, for the form is then the perfect vehicle of the life, receiving
or surrendering with ready accord. With the ceasing of struggle comes the ceasing
of pain. For suffering arises from jar, from friction, from antagonistic movements,
and where the whole nature works in perfect harmony (Page
280) the conditions that give rise to suffering are not present.
The
law of sacrifice being thus the law of life - evolution in the universe, we
find every step in the ladder is accomplished by sacrifice – the life pouring
itself out to take birth in a higher form, while the form that contained it
perishes. Those who look only at the perishing forms see Nature as a vast charnel
house; while those who see the deathless soul escaping to take new and higher
form hear ever the joyous song of birth from the upward springing life.
The
Monad in the mineral kingdom evolves by the breaking up of its forms for the
production and support of plants. Minerals are disintegrated that plant-forms
may be built out of their materials; the plant draws from the soil its nutritive
constituents, breaks them up, and incorporates them into its own substance.
The mineral forms perish that the plant forms may grow, and this law of sacrifice
stamped on the mineral kingdom is the law of evolution of life and form. The
life passes onward and the Monad evolves to produce the vegetable kingdom, the
perishing of the lower form being the condition for the appearing and the support
of the higher.
The
story is repeated in the vegetable kingdom, for its forms in turn are sacrificed
in order that animal forms may be produced and may grow; on every side grasses,
grains, trees perish for the sustenance of animal bodies; their tissues are
disintegrated that the materials comprising them may be assimilated by
(Page
281) the animal and build up its body. Again the law of sacrifice
is stamped on the world, this time on the vegetable kingdom; its life evolves
while its forms perish; the Monad evolves to produce the animal kingdom, and
the vegetable is offered up that the animal forms may be brought forth and maintained.
So
far the idea of pain has scarcely connected itself with that of sacrifice, for,
as we have seen in the course of our studies, the astral bodies of plants are
not sufficiently organised to give rise to any acute sensations either of pleasure
or of pain. But as we consider the law of sacrifice in its working in the animal
kingdom, we cannot avoid the recognition of the pain there involved in the breaking
up of forms. It is true that the amount of pain caused by the preying of one
animal upon another in “the state of nature “ is comparatively trivial in each
case, but still some pain occurs.
It
is also true that man, in the part he has played in helping to evolve animals,
has much aggravated the amount of pain, and has strengthened instead of diminishing
the predatory instincts of carnivorous animals; still, he did not implant those
instincts, though he took advantage of them for his own purposes, and innumerable
varieties of animals, with the evolution of which man has had directly nothing
to do, prey upon each other, the forms being sacrificed to the support of other
forms, as in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms.
The
struggle for existence went on long before man appeared on the scene, and accelerated
the evolution alike of life and of forms, while the pains
(Page
282) accompanying the destruction of forms began the long task of
impressing on the evolving Monad the transitory nature of all forms, and the
difference between the forms that perished and the life that persisted .
The
lower nature of man was evolved under the same law of sacrifice as ruled in
the lower kingdoms. But the outpouring of divine Life which gave the human Monad
came a change in the way in which the law of sacrifice worked as the law of
life. In man was to be developed the will, the self-moving, self-initiated
energy, and the compulsion which forced the lower kingdoms along the path of
evolution could not therefore be employed in his case, without paralysing the
growth of this new and essential power.
No
mineral, no plant, no animal was asked to accept the law of sacrifice as a voluntarily
chosen law of life. It was imposed upon them from without, and it forced their
growth by a necessity from which they could not escape. Man was to have the
freedom of choice necessary for the growth of a discriminative and self-conscious
intelligence, and the question arose : “How can this creature be left free to
choose, and yet learn to choose to follow the law of sacrifice, while yet he
is a sensitive organism, shrinking from pain, and pain is inevitable in the
breaking up of sentient forms?”
Doubtless
eons of experience, studied by a creature becoming ever more intelligent, might
have finally led man to discover that the law of sacrifice is the fundamental
law of life; but in this, as in so much else, he was not left to his own unassisted
efforts. (Page 283) Divine Teachers
were there at the side of man in his infancy, and they authoritatively proclaimed
the law of sacrifice, and incorporated it in a most elementary form in the religions
by which They trained the dawning intelligence of man.
It
would have been useless to have suddenly demanded from these child-souls that
they should surrender without return what seemed to them to be the most desirable
objects, the objects on the possession of which their life in form depended.
They must be led along a path which would lead gradually to the heights of voluntary
self-sacrifice. To this end they were first taught that they were not isolated
units, but were parts of a larger whole, and that their lives were linked to
other lives both above and below them.
Their
physical lives were supported by lower lives, by the earth; by plants, they
consumed these, and in thus doing they contracted a debt which they were bound
to pay, Living on the sacrificed lives of others, they must sacrifice in turn
something which should support other lives, they must nourish even as they were
nourished, taking the fruits produced by the activity of the astral entities
that guide physical Nature, they must recruit the expended forces by suitable
offerings.
Hence
have arisen all the sacrifices to these forces – as science calls them – to
these intelligences guiding physical order, as religions have always taught.
As fire quickly disintegrated the dense physical, it quickly restored the etheric
particles of the burnt offerings to the ethers; thus the astral particles were
easily (Page 284) set free to be
assimilated by the astral entities concerned with the fertility of the earth
and the growth of plants. Thus the wheel of production was kept turning, and
man learned that he was constantly incurring debts to Nature which he must as
constantly discharge.
Thus
the sense of obligation was implanted and nurtured in his mind, and the duty
that he owed to the whole, to the nourishing mother Nature, became impressed
on his thought. It is true that this sense of obligation was closely connected
with the idea that its discharge was necessary for his own welfare, and that
the wish to continue to prosper moved him to the payment of his debt. He was
but a child-soul, learning his first lessons, and this lesson of the interdependence
of lives, of the life of each depending on the sacrifice of others, was of vital
importance to his growth. Not
yet could he feel the divine joy of giving; the reluctance of the form to surrender
aught that nourished it had first to be overcome, and sacrifice became identified
with this surrender of something valued, a surrender made from a sense of obligation
and the desire to continue prosperous.
The
next lesson removed the reward of sacrifice to a region beyond the physical
world. First, by a sacrifice of material goods, material welfare was to be secured.
Then the sacrifice of material goods was to bring enjoyment in heaven, on the
other side of death. The reward of the sacrificer was of a higher kind, and
he learned that the relatively permanent might be secured by the sacrifice of
the (Page 285) relatively transient
– a lesson that was important as leading to discriminative knowledge.The
clinging of the form to physical objects was exchanged for a clinging to heavenly
joys. In all exoteric religions we find this educative process resorted to by
the Wise Ones – too wise to expect child-souls the virtue of unrewarded heroism,
and content, with a sublime patience, to coax their wayward charges slowly along
a pathway that was a thorny and a stony one to the lower nature.
Gradually
men were induced to subjugate the body, to overcome its sloth by the regular
daily performance of religious rites, often burdensome in their nature, and
to regulate its activities by directing them into useful channels; they were
trained to conquer the form and to hold it in subjection to the life, and to
accustom the body to yield itself to works of goodness and charity in obedience
to the demands of the mind, even while that mind was chiefly stimulated by a
desire to enjoy reward in heaven.
We
can see among the Hindus, the Persians, the Chinese, how men were taught to
recognise their manifold obligations; to make the body yield dutiful sacrifice
of obedience and reverence to ancestors, to parents, to elders; to bestow charity
with courtesy; and to show kindness to all. Slowly men were helped to evolve
both heroism and self-sacrifice to a high degree, as witness the martyrs who
joyfully flung their bodies to torture and death rather than deny their faith
or be false to their creed. They looked indeed for a “crown of glory” in heaven
as a recompense for the (Page 286)
sacrifice of the physical form, but it was much to have overcome the clinging
to the physical form, and to have made the invisible world so real that it outweighed
the visible.
The
next step was achieved when the sense of duty was definitely established; when
the sacrifice of the lower to the higher was seen to be “right,” apart from
all question of a reward to be received in another world; when the obligation
owed by the part to the whole was recognised, and the yielding of service by
the form that existed by the service of others was felt to be justly due without
any claim to wages being established thereby.
Then
man began to perceive the law of sacrifice as the law of life, and voluntarily
to associate himself with it; and he began to learn to disjoin himself in idea
from the form he dwelt in and to identify himself with the evolving life. This
gradually led him to feel a certain indifference to all the activities of form,
save as they consisted in “duties that ought to be done,” and to regard all
of them as mere channels for the life-activities that were due to the world,
and not as activities performed by him with any desire for their results. Thus
he reached the point already noted, when karma attracting him to the three worlds
ceased to be generated, and he turned the wheel of existence because it ought
to be turned, and not because its revolution brought any desirable object to
himself.
The
full recognition of the law of sacrifice, however, lifts man beyond the mental
plane – (Page 287) whereon duty
is recognised as duty, as “what ought to be done because it is owed” – to that
higher plane of Buddhi where all selves are felt as one, and where all activities
are poured out for the use of all, and not for the gain of a separated self.
Only on that plane is the law of sacrifice felt as a joyful privilege, instead
of only recognised intellectually as true and just.
On
the buddhic plane man clearly sees that life is one, that it streams out perpetually
as the free outpouring of the love of the LOGOS, that life holding itself separate
is a poor and a mean thing at best, and an ungrateful one to boot. There the
whole heart rushes upwards to the LOGOS in one strong surge of love and worship,
and gives itself in joyfullest self-surrender to be a channel of His life and
love to the world. To
be a carrier of His light, a messenger of His compassion, a worker in His realm
– that appears as the only life worth living; to hasten evolution, to serve
the Good Law, to lift part of the heavy burden of the world – that seems to
be the very gladness of the Lord Himself.
From this plane only can a man act as one of the Saviours of the world, because
on it he is one with the selves of all. Identified with humanity where it is
one, his strength, his love, his life can flow downwards into any or into every
separated self.
He
has become a spiritual force, and the available spiritual energy of the world-system
is increased by pouring into it of his life. The forces he used to expend on
the physical , astral, and mental planes, seeking things for his separated self,
are now all gathered (Page 288) up
in one act of sacrifice, and, transmuted thereby into spiritual energy, they
pour down upon the world as spiritual life.
This
transmutation is wrought by the motive which determines the plane on which
the energy is set free.
If a man’s motive be the gain of physical objects, the energy liberated works
only on the physical plane; if he desire astral objects, he liberates energy
on the astral plane; if he seek mental joys, his energy functions on the mental
plane; but if he sacrifice himself to be a channel of the LOGOS, he liberates
energy on the spiritual plane, and it works everywhere with the potency and
keenness of a spiritual force. For such a man, action and inaction are the same;
for he does everything while doing nothing, he does nothing while doing everything.
For
him, high and low, great and small are the same; he fills any place that needs
filling, and the LOGOS is alike in every place and in every action. He can flow
into any form, he can work along any line, he knows not any longer choice or
difference; his life by sacrifice has been made one with the life of the LOGOS
– he sees God in everything and everything in God. How then can place or form
make to him any difference? He no longer identifies himself with form, but is
self-conscious Life. “Having nothing, he possesseth all things “ asking for
nothing, everything flows into him. His life is bliss, for he is one with his
Lord, who is Beatitude; and, using form for service without attachment to it,
“he has put and end to pain.”
Those
who grasp something of the wonderful (Page
289) possibilities which open out before us as we voluntarily associate
ourselves with the law of sacrifice will wish to begin that voluntary association
long ere they can rise to the heights just dimly sketched. Like other deep spiritual
truths, it is eminently practical in its application to daily life, and none
who feel its beauty need to hesitate to begin to work with it. When a man resolves
to begin the practice of sacrifice, he will train himself to open every day
with an act of sacrifice, the offering of himself, ere the day’s work begins,
to Him to whom he gives his life; his first waking thought will be this dedication
of all his power to his Lord.
Then
each thought, each word, each action in daily life will be done as a sacrifice
– not for its fruit, not even as duty, but as the way in which, at the moment,
his Lord can be served. All that comes will be accepted as the expression of
His will; joys, troubles, anxieties, successes, failures, all to him are welcome
as marking out his path of service; he will take each happily as it comes and
offer it as a sacrifice; he will loose each happily as it goes, since its going
shows that his Lord has no longer need for it.
Any
powers he has he gladly uses for service; when they fail him, he takes their
failure with happy equanimity; since they are no longer available he cannot
give them. Even suffering that springs from past causes not yet exhausted can
be changed into a voluntary sacrifice by welcoming it; taking possession of
it by willing it, a man may offer it as a gift, changing it by this motive into
a spiritual force. Every human life (Page
290) offers countless opportunities for this practice of the law
of sacrifice, and every human life becomes a power as these opportunities are
seized and utilised.
Without
any expansion of his waking consciousness, a man may thus become a worker on
the spiritual planes, liberating energy there which pours down into the lower
worlds. His self-surrender here in the lower consciousness, imprisoned as it
is in the body, calls out responsive thrills of life from the buddhic aspect
of the Monad which is his true Self, and hastens the time when that Monad shall
become the spiritual Ego, self-moved and ruling all his vehicles, using each
of them at will as needed for the work that is to be done.
In
no way can progress be made so rapidly, and the manifestation of all the powers
latent in the Monad be brought about so quickly, as by the understanding and
the practice of the law of sacrifice. Therefore it was called by a Master, “The
Law of evolution for man.” It has indeed profounder and more mystic aspects
than any touched on here, but these will unveil themselves without words to
the patient and loving heart whose life is all a sacrificial offering. There
are things that are heard only in the stillness; there are teachings that can
be uttered only by “The Voice of the Silence.” Among these are the deeper truths
rooted in the law of sacrifice. (Page 291)
CHAPTER
XI
MAN’S ASCENT
So
stupendous is the ascent up which some men have climbed, and some are climbing,
that when we scan it by an effort of the imagination we are apt to recoil, wearied
in thought by the mere idea of that long journey. From the embryonic soul of
the lowest savage to the liberated and triumphant perfected spiritual soul of
the divine man – it seems scarcely credible that the one can contain in it all
that is expressed in the other, and that the difference is but a difference
in evolution, that one is only at the beginning and the other at the end of
man’s ascent.
Below
the one stretch the long ranks of the sub-human – the animals, vegetables, minerals,
elemental essences; above the other stretch the infinite gradations of the
superhuman – the Chohans, Manus, Buddhas, Builders, Lipikas; who may name or
number the hosts of the mighty Ones? Looked at thus, as a stage in a yet vaster
life, the many steps within the human kingdom shrink into a narrower compass,
and man’s ascent is seen as comprising but one grade in evolution in the linked
lives that stretch from the elemental essence onwards to the manifested God.
We
have traced man’s ascent from the appearance (Page
292) of the embryonic soul to the state of the spiritually advanced,
through the stages of evolving consciousness from the life of sensation to the
life of thought. We have seen him retread the cycle of birth and death in the
three worlds, each world yielding him its harvest and offering him opportunities
for progress. We are now in a position to follow him into the final stages of
his human evolution, stages that lie in the future for the vast bulk of our
humanity, but that have already been trodden by its eldest children, and that
re being trodden by a slender number of men and women in our own day.
These
stages have been classified under two headings – the first are spoken of as
constituting “the probationary Path,” while the later ones are included in “the
Path proper” or “ the Path of discipleship.” We will take them in their natural
order.
As a man’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature develops, he becomes more
and more conscious of the purpose of human life, and more and more eager to
accomplish that purpose in his own person. Repeated
longings for earthly joys, followed by full possession and by subsequent weariness,
have gradually taught him the transient and unsatisfactory nature of earth’s
best gifts; so often has he striven for, gained, employed, been satiated, and
finally nauseated, that he turns away discontented from all that earth can offer.
“What doth it profit?” sighs the wearied soul: “All is vanity and vexation.
Hundreds, yea, thousands of times have I possessed, and finally have found disappointment
even in possession.” (Page 293)
“These
joys are illusions, as bubbles on a stream, fairy-coloured, rainbow-hued, but
bursting at a touch. I am athirst for realities; I have had enough of shadows;
I pant for the eternal and the true, for freedom from the limitations that hem
me in, that keep me prisoner amid these changing shows.”
This
first cry of the soul for liberation is the result of the realisation that,
were this earth all that poets have dreamed it, were every evil swept away,
every sorrow put an end to , every joy intensified, every beauty enhanced, were
everything raised to its point of perfection, he would still be aweary of it,
would turn from it void of desire. It has become to him a prison, and, let it
be decorated as it may, he pants for the free and limitless air beyond its inclosing
walls.
Nor
is heaven more attractive to him than earth; of that too he is aweary; its joys
have lost their attractiveness, even its intellectual and emotional delights
no longer satisfy. They also “come and go, impermanent” like the contacts of
the senses; they are limited, transient, unsatisfying. He is tired of the changing;
from very weariness he cries out for liberty.
Sometimes
this realisation of the worthlessness of earth and heaven is at first but a
flash in consciousness, and the external worlds reassert their empire and the
glamour of their illusive joys again laps the soul into content. Some lives
even may pass, full of noble work and unselfish achievement, of pure thoughts
and lofty deeds, ere this realisation of the emptiness of all that is phenomenal
becomes the (Page 294) permanent
attitude of the soul.
But
sooner or later the soul once and for ever breaks with earth and heaven as incompetent
to satisfy his needs, and this definite turning away from the transitory, this
definite will to reach the eternal, is the gateway to the probationary Path.
The soul steps off the highway of evolution to breast the steeper climb up the
mountain side, resolute to escape from the bondage of earthly and heavenly lives,
and to reach the freedom of the upper air.
The
work which has to be accomplished by the man who enters on the probationary
Path is entirely mental and moral; he has to bring himself up to the point at
which he will fit to “meet his Master face to face” : but he very words “his
Master” need explanation. There are certain great Beings belonging to our race
who have completed Their human evolution, and to whom allusion has already been
made as constituting a Brotherhood, and as guiding and forwarding the development
of the race.
These
Great Ones, the Masters, voluntarily incarnate in human bodies on order to form
the connecting link between human and superhuman beings, and They permit those
who fulfil certain conditions to become Their disciples, with the object of
hastening their evolution and thus qualifying themselves to enter the great
Brotherhood, and to assist in its glorious and beneficent work for man.
The
Masters ever watch the race, and mark any who by the practice of virtue, by
unselfish labour for human good, by intellectual effort turned to the
(Page
295) service of man, by sincere devotion, piety, and purity, draw
ahead of the mass of their fellows, and render themselves capable of receiving
spiritual assistance beyond that shed down on mankind as a whole. If an individual
is to receive special help he must show special receptivity.
For
the Masters are the distributors of the spiritual energies that help on human
evolution, and the use of these for the swifter growth of a single soul is
only permitted when that soul shows a capacity for rapid progress and can thus
be quickly fitted to become a helper of the race, returning to it the aid that
had been afforded to himself. When a man, by his own efforts, utilising to the
full all the general help coming to him through religion and philosophy, has
struggled onwards to the front of the advancing human wave and when he shows
a loving, selfless, helpful nature, then he becomes a special object of attention
to the watchful Guardians of the race, and opportunities are put in his way
to test his strength and call forth his intuition.In
proportion as he successfully uses these, he is yet further helped, and glimpses
are afforded to him of the true life, until the unsatisfactory and unreal nature
of mundane existence presses more and more on the soul, with the result already
mentioned – the weariness which makes him long for freedom and brings him to
the gateway of the probationary Path.
His
entrance on his Path places him in the position of a disciple or chelâ,
on probation, and some one Master takes him under His care, recognising
(Page
296) him as a man who has stepped out of the highway of evolution,
and seeks the Teacher who shall guide his steps along the steep and narrow path
which leads to liberation.
That
Teacher is awaiting him at the very entrance of the Path, and even though the
neophyte knows not his Teacher, his Teacher knows him, sees his efforts, directs
his steps, leads him into the conditions that best subserve his progress, watching
over him with the tender solicitude of a mother, and with the wisdom born of
perfect insight. The road may seem lonely and dark, and the young disciple may
fancy himself deserted, but a “friend who sticketh closer than a brother” is
ever at hand, and the help withheld from the senses is given to the soul.
There
are four definite “qualifications” that the probationary chelâā must
set himself to acquire, that are by the wisdom of the great Brotherhood laid
down as the conditions of full discipleship. They are not asked for in perfection,
but they must be striven for and partially possessed ere Initiation is permitted.The
first of these is the discrimination between the real and the unreal which has
been already dawning on the mind of the pupil, and which drew him to the Path
on which he is now entered; the distinctions grows clear and sharply defined
in his mind, and gradually frees him to a great extent from the fetters which
bind him, for the second qualification, indifference to external things, comes
naturally in the wake of discrimination, from the clear perception of their
worthlessness. (Page 297)
He
learns that the weariness which took all the savour out of life was due to the
disappointments constantly arising from his search for satisfaction in the unreal,
when only the real can content the soul; that all forms are unreal and without
stability, changing ever under the impulses of life, and that nothing is real
but the one Life that we seek for and love unconsciously under its many veils.
This discrimination is much stimulated by the rapidly changing circumstances
into which a disciple is generally thrown, with the view of pressing on him
strongly the instability of all external things.
The
lives of a disciple are generally lives of storm and stress, in order that the
qualities which are normally evolved in a long succession of lives in the three
worlds may in him be forced into swift growth and quickly brought to perfection.
As he alternates rapidly from joy to sorrow, from peace to storm, from rest
to toil, he learns to see in the changes the unreal forms, and to feel through
all a steady unchanging life. He grows indifferent to the presence or the absence
or the absence of things that thus come and go, and more and more he fixes his
gaze on the changeless reality that is ever present.
While he is thus gaining in insight and stability he works also at the development
of the third qualification – the six mental attributes that are demanded from
him ere he may enter on the Path itself. He need not possess them all perfectly,
but he must have them all partially present at least ere he will be permitted
to pass onward.
First
he must (Page 298) gain control
over his thoughts, the progeny of the restless, unruly mind, hard to curb as
the wind. (Bhagavad Gitâ, vi. 34). Steady, daily practice in
meditation, in concentration, had begun to reduce this mental rebel to order
ere he entered on the probationary Path, and the disciple now works with concentrated
energy to complete the task, knowing that the great increase in thought power
that will accompany his rapid growth will prove a danger both to others and
to himself unless the developing force be thoroughly under his control.
Better
give a child dynamite as a plaything, than place the creative powers of thought
in the hands of the selfish and ambitious. Secondly, the young chela must add
outward self-control to inner, and must rule his speech and his actions as rigidly
as he rules his thoughts. As the mind obeys the soul, so must the lower nature
obey the mind. The usefulness of the disciple in the outer world depends as
much on the pure and noble example set by his visible life, as his usefulness
in the inner world depends on the steadiness and strength of his thoughts. Often
is a good work marred by carelessness in this lower part of human activity,
and the aspirant is bidden strive towards an ideal perfect in every part, in
order that he may not later, when treading the Path, stumble in his own walk
and cause the enemy to blaspheme.
As already said, perfection in anything is not demanded at this stage, but the
wise pupil strives towards perfection, knowing that at his best he is
(Page
299) still far away from his ideal.
Thirdly,
the candidate for full discipleship seeks to build into himself the sublime
and far-reaching virtue of tolerance – the quiet acceptance of each man, each
form of existence, as it is, without demand that it should be something other
shaped more to his own liking. Beginning to realise that the one Life takes
on countless limitations, each right in its own place and times, he accepts
each limited expression of that Life without wishing to transform it into something
else; he learns to revere the wisdom which planned this world and which guides
it, and to view with wide-eyed serenity the imperfect parts as they slowly work
out their partial lives.
The
drunkard, learning his alphabet of the suffering caused by the dominance of
the lower nature, is doing as usefully in his own stage as is the saint in his,
completing his last lesson in earth’s school, and no more can justly be demanded
from either than he is able to perform. One is in the kindergarten stage, learning
by object-lessons, while the other is graduating, ready to leave his university;
both are right for their age and their place, and should be helped and sympathised
with in their place.
This
is one of the lessons of what is known in occultism as “tolerance.” Fourthly
must be developed endurance, the endurance that cheerfully bears all and resents
nothing, going straight onwards unswervingly to the goal. Nothing can come to
him but by the Law, and he knows the Law is good. He understands that the rocky
pathway that leads up the mountain-side straight to the summit
(Page
300) cannot be as easy to his feet as the well-beaten winding highway.
He
realises that he is paying in a few short lives all the karmic obligations accumulated
during his past, and that the payments must be correspondingly heavy. The very
struggle into which he is plunged develop in him the fifth attribute, faith
– faith in his Master and in himself, a serene strong confidence that is unshakeable. He learns to
trust in the wisdom, the love, the power of his Master, and he is beginning
to realise – not only to say he believes in – the Divinity within his own heart,
able to subdue all things to Himself. The last mental requisite, balance, equilibrium,
grows up to some extent without conscious effort during the striving after the
preceding five.
The
very setting of the will to tread the Path is a sign that the higher nature
is opening out, and that the external world is definitely relegated to a lower
place. The continuous efforts to lead the life of discipleship disentangle the
soul from any remaining ties that may knit it to the world of sense, for the
withdrawal of the soul’s attention from lower objects gradually exhausts the
attractive power of those objects. They “turn away from an abstemious dweller
in the body,” ( Bhagavad Gitâ, ii, 59.) and soon lose all power to disturb
this balance. Thus
he learns to move amid them undisturbed, neither seeking nor rejecting any.
He also learns to balance amid mental troubles of every kind, amid alternations
of mental joy and mental pain, this balance being further taught by
(Page
301) the swift changes already spoken of through which his life
is guided by the ever-watchful care of his Master.
These
six mental attributes being in some measure attained, the probationary chelâā
needs further but the fourth qualification, the deep intense longing for liberation,
that yearning of the soul towards union with deity that is the promise of its
own fulfillment. This adds the last touch to his readiness to enter into full
discipleship, for, once that longing has definitely asserted itself, it can
never again be eradicated, and the soul that has felt it can never again quench
his thirst at earthly fountains; their waters will ever taste flat and vapid
when he sips them, so that he will turn away with ever-deepening longing for
the true water of life.
At
this stage he is “the man ready for Initiation,” ready to definitely “enter
the stream” that cuts him off forever from the interests of earthly life save
as he can serve his Master in them and help forward the evolution of the race.
Henceforth his life is not to be the life of separateness; it is to be offered
up on the altar of humanity, a glad sacrifice of all he is, to be used for the
common good.
The
student will be glad to have the technical names of these stages in Sanskrit
and Pâli, so that he may be able to follow them out in more advanced
books: |
SANSKRIT
(used by Hindus) |
PALI
(used by Buddhists) |
1 |
VIVEKA |
|
discrimination
between the real and the unreal |
1 |
MANODVÂRAVAJJANA |
the
opening of the doors of the mind; a conviction of the impermanence of the
earthly |
2 |
VAIRÂGYA |
|
indifference
to the unreal, the transitory |
2 |
PARIKAMMA |
preparation
for action; indifference to the fruits of action |
3 |
SHATSAMPATTI |
SHAMA |
control
of thought |
3 |
UPACHÂRO |
attention
or conduct; divided under the same headings as in the Hindu |
DAMA |
control
of conduct |
UPARATI |
tolerance |
TITIKSHA |
endurance |
SHRADDHA |
faith |
SANADDGBA |
balance |
4 |
MUMUKSHA |
|
desire for liberation |
4 |
ANULOMA |
direct
order or succession, its attainment following on the other three. |
The
man is then the ADHIKARI |
The
man is then the GATRABHU |
During
the years spent in evolving the four qualifications, the probationary chelâā
will have been advancing in many other respects. He will have been receiving
from his Master much teaching, teaching usually imparted during the deep sleep
of the body; the soul, clad in the well-organised astral body, will
(Page
302) have become used to it as a vehicle of consciousness, and will
have been drawn to his Master – to receive instruction and spiritual illumination.
He
will further have been trained in meditation, and this effective practice outside
the physical body will have quickened and brought into active exercise many
of the higher powers; during such meditation he will have reached higher regions
of being, learning more of the life of the mental plane. He will have been taught
to use his increasing powers in human service, and during many of the hours
of sleep for the body he will have been working diligently on the astral plane,
aiding the souls that have passed on to it by death, comforting the victims
of accidents, teaching any less instructed than himself, and in countless ways
helping those who needed it, thus in (Page
303) humble fashion aiding the beneficent work of the Masters, and
being associated with Their sublime Brotherhood as a co-labourer in a however
modest and lowly degree.
Either
on the probationary Path or later, the chelâā is offered the privilege
of performing one of those acts of renunciation which mark the swifter ascent
of man. He is allowed “to renounce Devachan,” that is, to resign the glorious
life in the heavenly places that awaits him on his liberation from the physical
world, the life which in his case would mostly be spent in the middle arūpa
world in the company of the Masters, and in all the sublime joys of the purest
wisdom and love. If he renounce this fruit of his noble and devoted life, the
spiritual forces that would have been expended in his Devachan are set free
for the general service of the world, and he himself remains in the astral region
to await a speedy rebirth upon earth.
His
Master in this case selects and presides over his reincarnation, guiding him
to take birth amid conditions conducive to his usefulness in the world, suitable
for his further progress and for the work required at his hands. He has reached
the stage at which every individual interest is subordinated to the divine work,
and in which his will is fixed to serve in whatever way may be required of him.
He therefore, gladly surrenders himself into the hands he trusts, accepting
willingly and joyfully the place in the world in which he can best render service,
and perform his share of the glorious work (Page
304) of aiding the evolution of humanity.
Blessed
is the family into which a child is born tenanted by such a soul, a soul that
brings with him the benediction of the Master and is ever watched and guided,
every possible assistance being given him to bring his lower vehicles quickly
under control. Occasionally, but rarely a chelâ may reincarnate in a body
that has passed through infancy and extreme youth as the tabernacle of a less
progressed Ego; when an Ego comes to the earth for a very brief life-period,
say for some fifteen or twenty years, he will be leaving his body at the time
of dawning manhood, when it has passed through the time of early training and
is rapidly becoming an effective vehicle for the soul.
If
such a body be a very good one, and some chelâ be awaiting a suitable
reincarnation, it will often be watched during its tenancy by the Ego for whom
it was originally built, with the view of utilising it when he has done with
it; when the life-period of that Ego is completed, and he passes out of the
body into Kāmaloka on his way to Devachan, his cast-off body will be taken
possession of by the waiting chelâ, a new tenant will enter the deserted
house, and the apparently dead body will revive. Such cases are unusual, but
are not unknown to occultists, and some references to them may be found in occult
books.
Whether
the incarnation be normal or abnormal, the progress of the soul, of the chelâ
himself, continues, and the period already spoken of is reached when he is “ready
for Initiation”; through that (Page 305)
gateway of Initiation he enters, as a definitely accepted chelâ, on the
Path. This Path consists of four distinct stages, and the entrance into each
is guarded by an Initiation. Each Initiation is accompanied by an expansion
of consciousness which gives what is called “the key to knowledge” belonging
to the stage to which it admits, and this key of knowledge is also a key of
power, for truly is knowledge power in all the realms of Nature.
When
the chelâ has entered the Path he becomes what has been called “the houseless
man,” (The Hindus call this stage that of Parivrajaka, the wanderer; the Buddhist
calls it that of Srotāpatti, he who has reached the stream. The chelâ
is thus designated after his first Initiation and before his second.) for he
longer looks on earth s this home – he has no abiding-place here, to him all
places are welcome wherein he can serve his Master.
While
he is on this stage of the Path there are three hindrances to progress, technically
called “fetters,” which he has to get rid of, and now – as he is rapidly to
perfect himself – it is demanded from him that he shall entirely eradicate faults
of character, and perform completely the tasks belonging to his condition. The
three fetters that he must loose from his limbs ere he can pass the second Initiation
are: the illusion of the personal self, doubt, and superstition. The personal
self must be felt in consciousness as an illusion, and must lose forever its
power to impose itself on the soul as a reality.
He
must feel himself one with all, all must live and breathe in him and he in all.
(Page 306) Doubt must be destroyed,
but by knowledge, not by crushing out; he must know reincarnation and karma
and the existence of the Masters as facts; not accepting them as intellectually
necessary, but knowing them as facts in Nature that he has himself verified,
so that no doubt on these heads can ever again rise in his mind.
Superstition
is escaped as the man rises into a knowledge of realities, and of the proper
place of rites and ceremonies in the company of Nature; he learns to use every
means and to be bound by none. When the chelâ has cast off these fetters
– sometimes the task occupies several lives, sometimes it is achieved in part
of a single life – he finds the second Initiation open to him, with its new
“key of knowledge” and its widened horizon. The chelâ now sees before
him a swiftly shortening span of compulsory life on earth, for when he has reached
this stage he must pass through his third and fourth Initiations in his present
life or in the next. (The chelâ on the second stage of the path is for
the Hindu the Kutichaka, the man who builds a hut; he has reached a place of
peace. For the Buddhist he is the Sakridāgāmin, the man who receives
birth but once more.)
In
this stage he has to bring into full working order the inner faculties, those
belonging to the subtle bodies, for he needs them for his service in the higher
realms of being. If he has developed them previously, this stage may be a very
brief one, but he may pass through the gateway of death once more ere he is
ready to receive his third Initiation, (Page
307) to become “the Swan,” the individual who soars into the empyrean,
that wondrous Bird of Life whereof so many legends are related. ( The Hindu
calls him the Paramahamsa, beyond the “ I “; the Buddhist names him the Arhat,
the worthy.)
On
this third stage of the Path the chelâ casts off the fourth and fifth
fetters, those of desire and aversion; he sees the One self in all, and the
outer veil can no longer blind him, whether it be fair or foul. He looks on
all with an equal eye; that fair bud of tolerance that he cherished on the probationary
Path now flowers out into an all-embracing love that wraps everything within
its tender embrace. He is “the friend of every creature,” the “lover of all
that lives” in a world where all things live.
As
a living embodiment of divine love, he passes swiftly onwards to the fourth
Initiation, that admits him to the last stage of the Path, where he is “beyond
the Individual,” the worthy , the venerable. ( The Hamsa, he who realises “I
am THAT,” in the Hindu terms; the Anāgāmin, the man who receives birth
no more, in the Buddhist.)Here he remains at his will, casting off the last
fine fetters that still bind him with threads however fragile, and keep him
back from liberation. He throws off all clinging to life in form, and then all
longing for formless life; these are the chains and he must be chainless; he
may move through the three worlds, but not a shred of theirs must have power
to hold him; the splendours of the “formless world” must charm him no more than
the concrete glories of the worlds of form.(Page
308)
Then
– mightiest of all achievements – he casts off the last fetter of separateness,
the “I “ever making faculty –(Ahamkāra, generally given as Māna, pride,
since pride is the subtlest manifestation on the “I” as distinct from others.)
– which realises itself as apart from others, for he dwells on the plane of
unity in his waking consciousness, on the buddhic plane where the Self of all
is known and realised as one. This faculty was born with the soul, is the essence
of individuality, and it persists till all that is valuable in it is worked
into the Monad, and it can be dropped on the threshold of liberation, leaving
its priceless result to the Monad, that sense of individual identity which is
so pure and fine that it does not mar the consciousness of oneness.
Easily
then drops away anything that could respond to ruffling contacts, and the chelâ
stands robed in that glorious vesture of unchanging peace that naught can mar.
And the casting away of that same “I-making” faculty has cleared away from the
spiritual vision the last clouds that could dim its piercing insight, and in
the realisation of unity, ignorance – (Avidyā, the first illusion and the
last, that which makes the separated worlds – the first of the Nidānas
– and that which drops off when liberation is attained.) – the limitation that
gives birth to all separateness – falls away, and the man is perfect, is free.
Then
has come the ending of the Path, and the ending of the Path is the threshold
to Nirvāna. Into that marvellous state of consciousness the
(Page
309) chelâ has been wont to pass out of the body while he has
been traversing the final stage of the Path; now, when he crosses the threshold,
the nirvānic consciousness becomes his normal consciousness, for Nirvāna
is the home of the liberated Self. (The Jivanmukta, the liberated life, of the
Hindu; the Asekha, he who has no more to learn, of the Buddhist.) He
has completed man’s ascent, he touches the limit of humanity; above him there
stretch hosts of mighty Beings, but they are superhuman; the crucifixion in
flesh is over, the hour of liberation has struck, and the triumphant “It is
finished!” rings from the conqueror’s lips. See! – he has crossed the threshold,
he has vanished into the light nirvānic, another son of earth has conquered
death.
What
mysteries are veiled by that light supernal we know not; dimly we feel that
the Supreme Self is found, that lover and Beloved are one. The long search is
over, the thirst of the heart is quenched forever, he has entered into the joy
of his Lord.
But
has earth lost her child, is humanity bereft of her triumphant son? Nay! He
has come forth from the bosom of the light, and He standeth again on the threshold
of Nirvāna, Himself seeming the very embodiment of that light, glorious
beyond all telling, a manifested Son of God. But now His face is turned to earth,
His eyes beam with divinest compassion on the wandering sons of men, His brethren
after the flesh; He cannot leave them comfortless, scattered as sheep without
a shepherd. Clothed in the majesty of a mighty renunciation, glorious with the
(Page 310) strength of perfect
wisdom and “power of an endless life,” He returns to earth to bless and guide
humanity, Master of Wisdom, kingly Teacher, divine Man.
Returning
thus to earth, the Master devotes Himself to the service of humanity with mightier
forces at His command than He wielded while He trod the Path of discipleship;
He has dedicated Himself to the helping of man, and He bends all the sublime
powers that He holds to the quickening of the evolution of the world. He pays
to those who are approaching the Path the debt He contracted in the days of
His own chelāship, guiding, helping, teaching them as He was guided, helped,
and taught before.
Such
are the stages of man’s ascent, from the lowest savagery to the divine manhood.
To such goal is humanity climbing, to such glory shall the race attain.
(Page
311)
CHAPTER
XII
BUILDING A COSMOS
It
is not possible, at our present stage of evolution, to do more than roughly
indicate a few points in the vast outline of the kosmic scheme in which our
globe plays a part. By “ a kosmos “ is here meant a system which seems, from
out standpoint, to be complete in itself, arising from a single LOGOS, and sustained
by His Life. Such a system is our solar system, and the physical sun may be
considered to be the lowest manifestation of the LOGOS when acting as the centre
of His kosmos; every form is indeed one of His concrete manifestations, but
the sun is His lowest manifestation as the life-giving, invigorating, all-pervading,
all controlling, regulative, coordinating, central power.
Says
an occult commentary :
“Sūrya (the sun), in its visible reflection, exhibits the first or lowest
state of the seventh, the highest state of the Universal PRESENCE, the pure
of the pure, the first manifested Breath of the ever unmanifested SAT (Be-ness).
All the central physical or objective Suns are in their substance the lowest
state of the first Principle of the BREATH, (Secret Doctrine; I, 330, Adyar
Ed.),
are in short, the lowest state of the “Physical Body” of the LOGOS.”
All
physical forces and energies are but transmutations of the life poured forth
by the sun, the Lord ( Page312)
and Giver of life to his system. Hence in many ancient religions the sun stood
as the symbol of the Supreme God – the symbol, in truth, the least liable to
misconstruction by the ignorant. Mr. Sinnett well says :
“The
solar system is indeed an area of Nature including more than any but the very
highest beings whom our humanity is capable of developing are in position
to investigate. Theoretically we may feel sure – as we look up into the heavens
at night – that the whole solar system itself is but a drop in the ocean of
the kosmos, but that drop is in its turn an ocean from the point of view of
the consciousness of such half-developed beings within it as ourselves, and
we can only hope at present to acquire vague and shadowy conceptions of its
origin and constitution. Shadowy,
however, though these may be, they enable us to assign the subordinate planetary
series, in which our own evolution is carried on, to its proper place in the
system of which it is a part, or at all events to get a broad idea of the
relative magnitude of the whole system, of our planetary chain, of the world
in which we are at present functioning, and of the respective periods of evolution
in which as human beings we are interested. “
For
in truth we cannot grasp our own position intellectually without some idea –
however vague it may be – of our relation to the whole; and while some student
are content to work within their own sphere of duty and to leave the wider reaches
of life until they are called to function in them, others feel the need of a
far-reaching scheme in which they have their place, and take an intellectual
delight in soaring upwards to obtain a bird’s-eye view of the whole field of
evolution. This
need has been (Page 313) recognised
and met by the spiritual Guardians of humanity in the magnificent delineation
of the kosmos from the standpoint of the occultist traced by their pupil and
messenger, H.P.Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine, a work that will
become ever more and more enlightening as students of the Ancient Wisdom themselves
explore and master the lower levels of our evolving world.
The
appearance of the LOGOS, we are told, is the herald of the birth-hour of our
kosmos.
“When He is manifest, all is manifested after Him; by His manifestation this
All becomes manifest.” (Mundakopanishad, II, ii, 10).
With Himself He brings the fruits of a past kosmos – the mighty spiritual Intelligences
who are to be His co-workers and agents in the universe now to be built. Highest
of these are “the Seven,” often Themselves spoken of as Logoi, since each in
His place is the centre of a distinct department in the kosmos, as the LOGOS
is the centre of the whole. The
commentary before quoted says:
The
seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, Self-born from the inherent
power in the matrix of Mother-substance …The energy from which they sprang
into conscious existence in every Sun is what some people call Vishnu, which
is the Breath of the Absoluteness. We call it the one manifested Life – itself
a reflection of the Absolute. (Secret Doctrine, I , 331, Adyar ed.)
This
“one manifested Life” is the LOGOS, the manifested God.
(Page
314) From this primary division our kosmos takes its sevenfold character,
and all subsequent divisions in their descending order reproduce this seven-keyed
scale. Under each of the seven secondary Logoi come the descending hierarchies
of Intelligences that form the governing body of His kingdom .
Among
These we hear of the Lipika, who are the Recorders of the karma of that kingdom
and of all entities therein; of the Mahārājas or Devarājas, who
superintend the working out of karmic law; and of the vast hosts of the Builders,
who shape and fashion all forms after the Ideas that dwell in the treasure-house
of the LOGOS, in the Universal Mind, and that pass from Him to the Seven, each
of whom plans out His own realm under that supreme direction and all-inspiring
life, giving to it, at the same time, His own individual colouring. H. P. Blavatsky
calls these Seven Realms that make up the solar systems the seven Laya centres;
she says :
The
seven Laya centres are the seven Zero points, using the term Zero in the same
sense that chemists do, to indicate a point at which, in Esotericism, the
scale of reckoning of differentiation begins. From the Centres – beyond which
Esoteric philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of
the “Seven Sons” of Life and Light, the seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all
other philosophies – begins the differentiation of the elements which enter
into the constitution of our Solar System.(Secret Doctrine, I , 195, Adyar
Ed.)
This
realm is a planetary evolution of a stupendous character, the field in which
are lived out the stages of life of which a physical planet, such as Venus,
is but a transcient embodiment. We may speak of the Evolver and Ruler of this
realm as a planetary (Page 315) Logos,
so as to avoid confusion. He draws from the matter of the solar system, outpoured
from the central LOGOS Himself, the crude materials He requires, and elaborates
them by His own life-energies, each planetary Logos thus specialising the matter
of His realm from a common stock. (See in chapter I, on “The Physical Plane”
the statement on the evolution of matter.)
The
atomic state in each of the seven planes of His kingdom being identical with
the matter of a sub-plane of the whole solar system, continuity is thus established
throughout the whole. As H. P. Blavatsky remarks, atoms change “their combining
equivalents on every planet,” the atoms themselves being identical, but their
combinations differing. She goes on : -
“Not
alone the elements of our planet, but even those of all its sisters in the
solar system, differ as widely from each other in their combinations, as from
the cosmic elements beyond our solar limits…Each atom has seven planes of
being, or existence, we are taught. ( Secret Doctrine, Volume1, pages 166
and174, of the 1893 edition or Volume 1, 199, page 205, of the Adyar edition.)
The sub-planes, as we have been calling them, of each great plane. On the
three lower planes of His evolving realm the planetary Logos establishes seven
globes or worlds, which for convenience’ sake, following the received nomenclature,
we will call globes A,B,C,D,E,F,G.
These
are the Seven small wheels revolving, one giving birth to the other spoken of
in Stanza vi, of the Book of Dzyan: He builds
them in the likeness of the older wheels, placing them on the imperishable centres.
(Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, page 64, of the 1893 edition or Volume 1, page 249,
of the Adyar edition.) (Page 316)
Imperishable,
since each wheel not only gives birth to its successor, but is also itself reincarnated
at the same centre, as we shall see.
These globes may be figured as disposed in three pairs on the arc of an ellipse,
with the middle globe at the mid-most and lowest point; for the most part globes
A and G – the first and seventh – are on the Arūpa levels of the mental
plane; globes B and F – the second and sixth – are on the rûpa levels;
globes C and E – the third and fifth – are on the astral plane; globe D – the
fourth – is on the physical plane. These globes are spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky
as “graduated on the four lower planes of the world of formation,”( Secret Doctrine,
Volume 1, page 221, of the1893 edition or Volume 1, page 249, of the Adyar edition-
the note is important, that the archetypal world is not the world as it existed
in the mind of the planetary Logos, but the first model which was made.) i.e.,
the physical and astral planes, and the two subdivisions of the mental (rûpa
and arûpa). They may be figured : - as
(Page
317) This
is the typical arrangement, but it is modified at certain stages of evolution.
These seven globes form a planetary ring or chain, and – if for a moment we
regard the planetary chain as a whole, as, so to say, an entity, a
planetary life or individual – that chain passes through the seven globes as
a whole form its planetary body, and this planetary body disintegrates and is
reformed seven times during the planetary life. The planetary chain has seven
incarnations, and the results obtained in one are handed on to the next.
Every such chain of worlds is the progeny and creation of another lower
and dead chain – its reincarnation, so to say. (Secret Doctrine, Volume
1, page 176, of the 1893 Edition or Volume 1, page 207, of the Adyar
Edition.)
These
seven incarnations (technically called “manvantaras”) make up “the planetary
evolution,” the realm of the planetary Logos. As there are seven planetary Logoi,
it will be seen that seven of these planetary evolutions, each distinct from
the others, make up the solar system. (Mr. Sinnett calls these “seven schemes
of evolution”). In
an occult commentary this coming forth of the seven Logoi from the one, and
of the seven successive chains of seven globes each, is described:
From
one light seven lights; from each of the seven, seven times seven. ( Secret
Doctrine, Volume1, page 147, of the 1893 Edition or Volume 1, page
180, of the Adyar edition.)
Taking
up the incarnations of the chain, the (Page
318) manvantaras, we learn that these also are sub-divisible into
seven stages; a wave of life from the planetary Logos is sent round the chain,
and seven of these great life-waves, each one technically spoken of as “a round,”
complete a single manvantara. Each globe has thus seven periods of activity
during a manvantara, each in turn becoming the field of the evolving life.
Looking
at a single globe we find that during the period of its activity seven root-races
of a humanity evolve on it, together with six other non-human kingdoms interdependent
on each other. As these seven kingdoms contain forms at all stages of evolution,
as all have higher reaches stretching before them, the evolving forms of one
globe pass to another to carry on their growth when the period of activity of
the former globe comes to an end, and go on - from globe to globe to the end
of that round; they further pursue their course round after round to the close
of the seven rounds or manvantara after manvantara till the end of reincarnations
of their planetary chain is reached, when the results of that planetary evolution
are gathered up by the planetary Logos. Needless to say that scarcely anything
of this evolution is known to us; only the salient points in the stupendous
whole have been indicated by the Teachers.
Even
when we come to the planetary evolution in which our own world is a stage, we
know nothing of the processes through which its seven globes
(Page
319) evolved during its first two manvantaras; and of its third
manvantara we only know that the globe which is now our moon was globe D of
that planetary chain. This fact, however, may help us to realise more clearly
what is meant by these successive reincarnations of a planetary chain. The seven
globes which formed the lunar chain passed in due course through their sevenfold
evolution; seven times the life-wave, the Breath of the planetary Logos, swept
round the chain, quickening in turn each globe into life.
It
is as though that Logos in guiding His kingdom turned His attention first to
globe A, and thereon brought into successive existence the innumerable forms
that in their totality make up a world; when evolution had been carried to a
certain point, He turned His attention to globe B, and globe A slowly sank into
a peaceful sleep. Thus the life wave was carried from globe to globe, until
one round of the circle was completed by globe G finishing its evolution; then
there succeeded a period of rest, (technically called a pralaya), during which
the external evolutionary activity ceased.
At
the close of this period, external evolution recommenced, starting on its second
round and beginning as before on globe A. The process is repeated six times,
but when the seventh, the last round, is reached, there is a change. Globe A,
having accomplished its seventh life-period, gradually disintegrates, and the
imperishable laya centre state supervenes; from that, at the dawn of the succeeding
manvantara a new globe A (Page 320)
is evolved – like a new body – in which the “principles” of the preceding planet
A take up their abode. This phrase is only intended to convey the idea of a
relation between globe A of the first manvantara and globe A of the second,
the nature of that connection remains hidden.
Of
the connection between globe D of the lunar manvantara – our moon – and globe
D of the terrene manvantara – our earth – we know little more, and Mr. Sinnett
has given a convenient summary of the slender knowledge we possess in The
system to which we belong. He says:-
The
new earth nebula was developed round a centre bearing pretty much the same
relation to the dying planet that the centres of the earth and moon bear
to one another at present. But in the nebulous condition this aggregation
of matter occupied an enormously greater volume than the solid matter of the
earth now occupies.
It
stretched out in all directions so as to include the old planet in its fiery
embrace. The temperature of the new nebula appears to be considerable higher
than any temperatures we are acquainted with, and by this means the old planet
was superficially heated afresh in such a manner that all atmosphere, water,
and volatilisable matter upon it was brought into the gaseous condition and
so became amenable to the new centre of attraction set up at the centre of
the new nebula.
In
this way the air and seas of the old planet were drawn over into the constitution
of the new one, and thus it is that the moon in its present state is an arid,
glaring mass, dry and cloudless, no longer habitable, and no longer required
for the habitation of any physical beings. When the present manvantara is
nearly over, during the seventh round, its disintegration will be completed
and the matter which it still holds together will resolve into meteoric dust.(Op
.cit., Page 19)
In
the third volume of The Secret Doctrine, in
which are printed some of the oral teachings given by H.P.Blavatsky to her more
advanced pupils, it is stated:
At
the beginning of the evolution of our globe, the moon was much nearer to the
earth, and larger than it is now. It has retreated from us, and shrunk much
in size.(The moon gave all her principles to the earth.) A new moon will
appear during the seventh round, and our moon will finally disintegrate and
disappear. (Op. Cit. III, 562, 1893 Ed.)
Evolution
during the lunar manvantara produced seven classes of beings, technically called
Fathers, or Pitris, since it was they who generated the beings of the terrene
manvantara. These are the Lunar Pitris of the Secret Doctrine. More
developed than these were two other classes – variously called Solar Pitris,
Men, Lower Dhyānis – too far advanced to enter on the terrene evolution
in its early stages, but requiring the aid of later physical conditions for
their future growth.
The
higher of these two classes consisted of individualised animal-like beings,
creatures with embryonic souls, i.e., they had developed the causal
body; the second were approaching its formation. Lunar Pitris, the first class,
were at the beginning of that approach showing mentality, while the second and
third had only developed the kāmic principle.
These
seven classes of Lunar Pitris were the product the lunar chain handed on for
further development to the terrene, the fourth reincarnation of the planetary
chain. (Page 321) As Monads – with
the mental principle present in the first, the kāmic principle developed
in the second and third classes, this germinal in the fourth, only approaching
the germ stage in the still less developed fifth, and imperceptible in the sixth
and seventh – these entities entered the earth-chain, to ensoul the elemental
essence and the forms shaped by the Builders. ( H.P.Blavatsky, in the Secret
Doctrine, does not include those whom Mr. Sinnett calls first – and second-class
Pitris in the “monads from the lunar chain” : she takes them apart as “men,”
as “Dhyān Chohans.” Compare Volume 1, pages 197, 207 and 211 of the 1893
edition; Volume 1, pages 227, 236 and 239 of the Adyar edition)
The
nomenclature adopted by me is that of the Secret Doctrine. In the valuable
paper by Mrs. Sinnett and Mr. Scott-Elliot on the Lunar Pitris, H.P.B.’s
“Lower Dhyanis,” that incarnate in the third and fourth rounds, are taken as
the first and second classes of Lunar Pitris; their third class is therefore
H.P.B.’s first class, their fourth class her second and so on. There is no difference
in the statement of facts, only in nomenclature, but this difference of nomenclature
may mislead the student if it be not explained. As I am using H.P.B’s nomenclature,
my fellow-students of the London Lodge and readers of their “Transaction” will
need to remember that my first is their third, and so on sequentially.
The
“Builders” is a name including innumerable Intelligences, hierarchies of beings
of graduated consciousness and power, who on each plane carry out the actual
building of forms. The higher (Page 323) direct
and control, while the lower fashion the materials after the models provided.
And now appears the use of the successive globes of the planetary chain.
Globe
A is the archetypal world, on which are built the models of the forms that are
to be elaborated during the round; from the mind of the planetary Logos the
highest Builders take the archetypal Ideas, and guide the Builders on the arūpa
levels as they fashion the archetypal forms for the round.
On
globe B these forms are reproduced in varied shapes in mental matter by a lower
rank of Builders, and are evolved slowly along different lines, until they are
ready to receive an infiltration of denser matter; then the Builders in astral
matter take up the task, and on globe C fashion astral forms, with details more
worked out; when the forms have been evolved as far as the astral conditions
permit, the Builders of globe D take up the task of form-shaping on the physical
plane, and the lowest kinds of matter are thus fashioned into appropriate types,
and the forms reach their densest and most complete condition.
From
this middle point onwards the nature of the evolution some what changes; hitherto
the greatest attention had been directed to the building of the form; on the
ascending arc the chief attention is directed to using the form as a vehicle
of the evolving life and on the second half of the evolution on globe D, and
on globes E and F the consciousness expresses itself first on the physical and
then on the astral and lower mental planes through the equivalents of the forms
elaborated on the descending arc.(Page 324)
On
the descending arc the monad impresses itself as best it may on the
evolving forms, and these impressions, and so on; on the ascending arc the Monad
expresses itself through the forms as their inner ruler. On globe
G the perfection of the round is reached, the Monad inhabiting and using as
its vehicles the archetypal forms of globe A.
During
all these stages the Lunar Pitris have acted as the souls of the forms, brooding
over them, later inhabiting them. It is on the first-class Pitris that the heaviest
burden of the work falls during the first three rounds. The second and third-class
Pitris flow into the forms worked up by the first; the first prepare these
forms by ensouling them for a time and then pass on, leaving them for the tenancy
of the second and third classes. By the end of the first round the archetypal
forms of the mineral would have been brought down, to be elaborated through
the succeeding rounds, till they reach their densest state in the middle of
the fourth round. “Fire” is the “element” of this first round.
In
the second round the first-class Pitris continue their human evolution, only
touching the lower stages as the human foetus still touches them today, while
the second-class, at the close of the round, have reached the incipient human
stage. The great work of the round is bringing down the archetypal forms of
vegetable life, which will reach their perfection in the fifth round. “Air”
is the second round “element”. (Page 325)
In
the third round the first-class Pitris becomes definitely human in form; though
the body is jelly-like and gigantic, it is yet, on globe D, compact enough to
begin to stand upright; he is ape-like and is covered with hairy bristles. The
third-class Pitris reach the incipient human stage. Second class solar Pitris
make their first appearance on globe D in this round, and take the lead in human
evolution. The archetypal forms of animals are brought down to be elaborated
into perfection by the end of the sixth round, and “water” is the characteristic
“element.”
The
fourth round, the middle one of the seven that make up the terrene manvantara,
is distinguished by bringing to globe A the archetypal forms of humanity, this
round being as distinctively human as its predecessors were respectively animal,
vegetable, and mineral. Not ill the seventh round will these forms be fully
realised by humanity, but the possibilities of the human form are manifested
in the archetypes in the fourth. "Earth” is the “element” of this round,
the densest, the most material. The first-class solar Pitris may be said to
hover round globe D more or less in this round during its early stages of activity,
but they do not definitely incarnate until after the third great out-pouring
of life from the planetary Logos in the middle of the third race, and then only
slowly, the number increasing as the race progresses, and multitudes incarnating
in the early fourth race.
The
evolution of humanity on our earth, globe D, offers in a strongly marked form
the continual sevenfold diversity already often alluded to. Seven races of men
had already shown themselves in the third round, and in the fourth these fundamental
divisions became very clear on globe C, where seven races, each with sub-races
evolved. On globe D humanity begins with a First Race – usually called a Root
Race – at seven different points, “seven of them, each on his lot.” (Book
of Dzyan (Stanzas of Dzyan, 3: 13). – Secret Doctrine, Volume
2, page 18, of the 1893, edition– Volume 3, page 29, of the Adyar edition.)
These
seven types side by side, not successive – make up the first root-race, and
each again has its own seven sub-races. From the first root-race – jelly-like
amorphous creatures – evolves the second root-race with forms of more definite
consistency, and from it the third, ape-like creatures that become clumsy gigantic
men. In the middle of the evolution of this third root-race, called the Lemurian,
there come to earth – from another planetary chain, that of Venus, much farther
advanced in its evolution – members of its highly evolved humanity, glorious
Beings, often spoken of as Sons of Fire, from Their radiant appearance, a lofty
order among the Sons of Mind. (Manasaputra. This vast hierarchy of self-conscious
intelligences embraces many orders.)
They
take up Their abode on earth, as the Divine Teachers of the young humanity,
some of them acting as channels for the third outpouring and projecting into
animal man the spark of monadic life which forms the causal body. Thus the first,
second, and third classes of Lunar Pitris become individualised – the vast
(Page
327) bulk of humanity. The two classes of solar Pitris, already individualised
– the first ere leaving the lunar chain and the second later – form two low
orders of the Sons of Mind; the second incarnate in the third race at its middle
point, and the first come in later, for the most part in the fourth race, the
Atlantean.
The
fifth, or Aryan race, now leading human evolution, was evolved from the fifth
sub-race of the Atlantean, the most promising families being in Central Asia,
and the new race-type evolved, under the direct superintendence of a Great Being,
technically called a Manu. Emerging from Central Asia the first sub-race settled
in India, south of the Himalāyas, and in their four orders of teachers,
warriors, merchants, and workmen, ( Brāhmanas, Kshattriyas, Vaishyas and
Shudras ) became the dominant race in the vast Indian peninsula, conquering
the fourth-race and third-race nations who then inhabited it.
At
the end of the seventh race of the seventh round, i.e., at the close
of our terrene manvantara, our chain will hand on to its successor the fruits
of its life; these fruits will be the perfected divine men, Buddhas, Manus,
Chohans, Masters, ready to take up work of guiding evolution under the direction
of the planetary Logos, with hosts of less evolved entities of every grade of
consciousness, who still need physical experience for the perfecting of their
divine possibilities.
The
fifth, sixth, and seventh (Page 328)
manvantaras of our chain are still in the womb of the future after this fourth
one has closed, and then the planetary Logos will gather up into Himself all
the fruits of evolution, and with his children enter on a period of rest and
bliss. Of that high state we cannot speak; how at this stage of our evolution
could we dream of its unimaginable glory; only we dimly know that our glad spirits
shall “enter into the joy of the Lord,” and, resting in Him, shall see stretching
before them boundless ranges of sublime life and love, heights and depths of
power and joy, limitless as the One Existence, inexhaustable as the One that
Is.
PEACE TO ALL BEINGS
(NOTE-
At the beginning of the original print, there is introduction explaining the underlying
unity of
all religions. Many readers might find it difficult to understand terms in
various religions. So this section is given below in case anybody wants to
read. )
INTRODUCTION
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 Vidyā,
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
(Page 2) 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. (Page 3) 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
great spiritual 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,
(Page 4) 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
(Page 5) 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:
1) One eternal, infinite, incognisable real Existence.
2) From THAT the manifested God, unfolding from unity to duality to trinity.
3) From the manifested Trinity many spiritual Intelligences, guiding cosmic
order.
4) 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.
5) His evolution by repeated incarnations, into which he is drawn by desire,
and from which he is set free by knowledge and sacrifice, becoming divine in
potency as he had ever been divine in latency.
China which is now a fossilised civilisation, was peopled in old days by the
Turanians, the fourth subdivision of the great Fourth Race, the race which
inhabited the lost continent of Atlantis, and spread its
(Page 6) offshoots over the
world. The Mongolians, the last subdivision of that same race, later reinforced
its population, so that in China we have traditions from ancient days, preceding
the settlement of the Fifth, or Āryan race in India. In the Ching Chang
Ching, or
Classic of Purity, we have a fragment of an ancient scripture of singular
beauty, breathing out the spirit of restfulness and peace so characteristic of
the “original teaching.” Mr. Legge says in the introductory note to his
translation [
The Sacred Books of the East] that the treatise –
“Is attributed to Ko Yüan (or Hsüan), a Tāoist 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 Tāo, 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,” (Page 7)
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 China when the Turanians separated
off from the Toltecs. The idea is strengthened by the contents of the brief
treatise, which deals with Tāo – literally “the Way’ – the name by which the One
Reality is indicated in the ancient Turanian and Mongolian religion. We
read:
“The Great Tāo has no bodily form, but It produced and nourishes heaven and
earth. The Great Tāo has no passions, but It causes the sun and the moon to
revolve as they do. The Great Tāo 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 Tāo (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 Tāo Te Ching the teaching as to the Unmanifested and the
Manifested comes out very plainly.
“The Tāo that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tāo.(Page
8) 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 Tāo. 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 Tāo 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).” (Page 9)
“Breath of Space” would be a happier translation. Since all is produced from It,
It exists in all :
“All pervading is the Great Tāo. 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 Tāo:
“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, Tāoism, 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
(Page 10) 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 Tāo (i, 5).”
The supplied words “inspiration of” rather cloud than elucidate the meaning, for
entering into the Tāo is congruous with the whole idea and with other
Scriptures.
On putting away of desire is laid much stress in Tāoism ; a commentator on the
Classic of Purity remarks that understanding the Tāo 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 Tāo 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)
(Page 11)
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 Āryan Race, we have the same teachings embodied in the
oldest and greatest Āryan religion – the Brāhmanical. The eternal
Existence is proclaimed in the Chhāndogyopanishad 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 : (Page 12)
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
(Shvetāshvataropanishad, 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
(Page 13) know Him by the heart and by the mind,
dwelling in the heart, become immortal (Ibid., iv, 18-20).
That man in his inner Self is one with the Self of the universe – “I am That” –
is an idea that so thoroughly pervades all Hindu thought that man is often
referred to as the “divine town of Brahman,” [ Mundakopanishad
] the “town of nine gates,” [
Shvetâshvataropanishad, iii,14. ] God dwelling in
the cavity of the heart.[
Ibid., Ii]
“In one manner is to be seen (the Being) which cannot be proved, which is
eternal, without spot, higher than the ether, unborn, the great eternal
Soul…This great unborn Soul is the same which abides as the intelligent
(soul) in all living creatures, the same which abides as ether in the heart
; [
The “ether in the heart” is a mystical phrase used to indicate the One, who
is said to dwell therein.] - in him it sleeps; it is
the Subduer of all, the Ruler of all, the sovereign Lord of all ; it does
not become greater by good works nor less by evil work. It is the Ruler of
all, the sovereign Lord of all beings, the Preserver of all beings, the
Bridge, the Upholder of the worlds, so that they fall not to ruin (
Brihadāranyakopanishad, 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 Brahmā or again as Vishnu sleeping
under the waters, the Lotus springing from Him, and in the Lotus Brahmā. Man is
likewise threefold, and in the Mândűkyopanishad the self is described as
conditioned by the physical body, the subtle body, and the mental body, and then
rising out of all into (Page 14)
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
Brihadāranyakopanishad.
“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.
( Shvetāsh, 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,
(Page 15) the Boundless Light ;
the Second, Avalokiteshvara, or Padmapāni (Chenresi) ; the Third,
Manjusri – “the representative of creative wisdom, corresponding to Brahmâ.” (
Eitel’s Sanskrit Chinese Dictionary, sub voce. ) Chinese Buddhism
apparently does not contain the idea of a primordial Existence, beyond the
LOGOS, but Nepalese Buddhism postulates Âdi-Buddha, from Whom Amitâbha arises.
Padmapâni is said by Eitel to be the representative of compassionate Providence
and to correspond partly with Shiva, but as the aspect of the Buddhist Trinity
that sends forth incarnations He appears rather to represent the same idea as
Vishnu, to whom He is allied by bearing the Lotus (fire and water, or Spirit and
Matter as the primary constituents of the universe).
Reincarnation and Karma are so much the fundamentals of Buddhism that it is
hardly worth while to insist on them save to note the way of liberation,
and to remark that as the Lord Buddha was a Hindu preaching to Hindus,
Brâhmanical doctrines are taken for granted constantly in His teaching, as
matters of course. He was a purifier and a reformer, not an iconoclast, and
struck at the accretions due to ignorance, not at fundamental truths belonging
to the Ancient Wisdom.
“Those beings who walk in the way of the law that has been well taught,
reach the other shore of the great sea of birth and death, that is difficult
to cross.” (Udānavarga, 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
(Page 16) 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 Nirvāna)….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 Brāhmana (Ibid., xxxiii, 68).”
And a Brâhmana is a man “having his last body,” (Udânavarga, xxxiii, 41)
and is defined as one.
“Who, knowing his former abodes (existences) perceives heaven and
hell, the Muni, who has found the way to put an end to birth”. (ibid.,
xxxiii,55).
In the exoteric Hebrew Scriptures, the idea of a Trinity does not come out
strongly, though duality is apparent, and the God spoken of is obviously the
LOGOS, not the One Unmanifest :
“I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness;
I make peace and create evil ; I am the Lord that doeth all these things.” (Is.,
xlvii, 7)
Philo, however, has the doctrine of the LOGOS very clearly, and it is found in
the Fourth Gospel :
“In the beginning was the Word [Logos] and the Word was with God and the
Word was God….All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything
made that was made. (St. John i, 1, 3).
In the Kabalah the doctrine of the One, the Three, the Seven, and then the many,
is plainly taught : (Page 17)
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 :
(Page 18)
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 Egypt, we find there from hoariest antiquity its famous
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 (Page 19) 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 Aűharmazd:
(Page 20)
Supreme in omniscience and goodness, and unrivalled in splendor : the region
of light is the place of Aűharmazd (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 – Aűharmazd 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.
(Page 21) 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).(Page
22)
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, Vohűman –
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 Parsīs. 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.(Page
23)
Travelling westward to Greece, we meet with the Orphic system, described with
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, page 93).
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. (Page 24)
The man was also regarded as having three vehicles, the physical and
subtle bodies and the luciform body or augoeides, that :
Is the “causal body,” or karmic vesture of the soul, in which its destiny,
or rather all the seeds of past causation are stored. This is the
“thread-soul,” as it is sometimes called, the “body” that passes over from
one incarnation to another (ibid., p. 284).
As to
reincarnation:
Together with all the adherents of the Mysteries in every land the Orphics
believed in reincarnation (ibid., p. 292).
To this Mr. Mead brings abundant testimony, and he shows that it was taught by
Plato, Empedocles, Pythagoras, and others. Only by virtue could men escape from
the life-wheel.
Taylor in his notes to the Select Works of Plotinus, quotes from
Damascius as to the teachings of Plato on the One beyond the One, the Unmanifest
Existence :
Perhaps indeed, Plato leads us ineffably through the one as a
medium to the ineffable beyond the one which is now the subject of
discussion ; and this by an ablation of the one in the same manner
as he leads to the one by an ablation of other things…That which is
beyond the one is to be honoured in the most perfect silence…The
one indeed wills to be by itself, but with no other ; but the unknown
beyond the one is perfectly ineffable, which we acknowledge we
neither know, nor are ignorant of, but which has about itself
super-ignorance. Hence by proximity to this the one itself is
darkened ; for being near to the immense principle, if it be lawful so to
speak, it remains as it were in the adytum of the truly mystic silence…The
first is above the one
and all things, being more simple than either of these
(pp.341-343).(Page 25)
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 Sāmkhya 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 (άρχή) 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 Sānkhya, viz.,
the Prakŗti from which the whole material side of the universe evolved.
And his famous saying πάντα ́ρεî (panta rhei)
(Page 26) 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 India and learned his philosophy there, as
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
(Page 27) those expressions
denote relations of the Intelligence to the Light, which indeed in the
beginning was free from these connections, but later on encloses the
Intelligence and mediates its connection with matter. It follows from this
that the Buddhist view ascribes to the highest Intelligence the power to
produce light from itself, and that in this respect also there is an
agreement between Buddhism and Gnosticism.
Garbe here points out that, as regards the features alluded to, the agreement
between Gnosticism and Sânkhya is very much closer than that with Buddhism ; for
while these views as to the relations between Light and Spirit pertain to the
later phases of Buddhism, and are not at all fundamental to, or characteristic
of it as such, the Sânkhya teaches clearly and precisely that Spirit is
Light. Later still the influence of the Sânkhya thought is very plainly
evident in the Neo-Platonic writers ; while the doctrine of the LOGOS or Word,
though not of Sânkhyan origin, shows even in its details that it has been
derived from India, where the conception of Vāch, 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.
(Page 28) 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 “temple of God,” [ I Cor.,iii,16]
the “temple of 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, - (Page 29)
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 Tāo Teh Ching of the types of scholars :
Scholars of the highest class when they hear about the Tāo, 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 (Page 30)
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 (Page 31)
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 (Page 32)
(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 (Page 33)
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 Greece, and we know that Pythagoras gained some of his learning in
India, while Plato studied, and was initiated in the schools of Egypt. More
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. Grćcor.
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
(Page 34) (μαθήσιος και΄
προνι΄ας ποτιδέεται) – (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 (Ślian, 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 Bavičre, 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 Greece presents us were
formed in the 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
(Page 35) 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 (Page 36)
is the Father of the Gods. (Note on Intellectual Prudence, pp.
325-332).
By various practices the disciples were taught to escape from the body, and to
rise into higher regions. As grass is drawn from a sheath, the inner man was to
draw himself from his bodily casing (
Kathopanishad, vi,17). The “body of light” or “radiant body” of the
Hindus is the “luciform body” of the Neo-Plationists, and in this man rises to
find the Self :
Not grasped by the eye, nor by speech, nor by the others senses (lit.,
Gods), nor by austerity, nor by religious rites ; by serene wisdom, by
the pure essence only, doth one see the partless One in meditation. This
subtle Self is to be known by the mind in which the fivefold life is
sleeping. The mind of all creatures is instinct with [these] lives ; in
this, purified, manifests the Self ( Mundakopanishad, III, ii, 8,9).
Then alone can man enter the region where separation is not, where “the spheres
have ceased.” In G.R.S.Mead’s Introduction to Taylor’s Plotinus,
he quotes from Plotinus a description of a sphere which is evidently the Turîya
of the Hindus :
They likewise see all things, not those with which generation, but those
with which essence is present. And they perceive themselves in others. For
all things there, are diaphanous; and nothing is dark and resisting, but
everything is apparent to every one internally and throughout. For light
everywhere meets with light ; since everything contains all things in itself
and again see all things in another. So that all things are everywhere and
all is all. Each thing likewise is everything. And the splendor there is
infinite. For everything there is great, since even that which is small is
great. (Page 37) 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, (Page
38) 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 (Page 39)
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.
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