The Writings of Annie Besant
The Ancient Wisdom
by
First published 1897
THE UNITY
UNDERLYING ALL RELIGIONS
Right thought is
necessary to right conduct, right understanding to right living, and the Divine
Wisdom – whether called by its ancient Sanskrit name of Brahma Vidya, or its
modern Greek name of Theosophia, Theosophy – comes to the
world as at once an adequate philosophy and an all-embracing religion and
ethic.
It was once said of the
Christian Scriptures by a devotee that they contained shallows in which a child
could wade and depths in which a giant must swim. A similar statement might be
made of Theosophy,
for some of its teachings are so simple and so practical that any person of
average intelligence can understand
and follow them, while others are so lofty, so profound, that
the ablest strains his intellect to contain them and sinks exhausted in the
effort.
In the present volume an
attempt will be made to place Theosophy
before the reader simply and clearly, in a way which shall convey its general
principles and truths as forming a coherent conception of the universe, and
shall give such
detail as is necessary for the understanding of their relations to
each other.
An elementary textbook
cannot pretend to give the fullness of knowledge that may be obtained from
abstruser works, but it should leave the student with clear fundamental ideas
on his subject, with much indeed to add by future study but
with little to unlearn. Into the outline given by such a book
the student should be able to paint the details of further research.
It is admitted on all
hands that a survey of the great religions of the world shows that they hold in
common many religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas. But while the fact is
universally granted, the explanation of the fact is a matter of dispute.
Some allege that
religions have grown up on the soil of human ignorance tilled by the
imagination, and have been gradually elaborated from crude forms of animism and
fetishism; their likenesses are referred to universal natural phenomena
imperfectly observed and fancifully explained, solar and star worship being the
universal key for one school, phallic worship the equally universal key for
another ; fear, desire, ignorance, and wonder led the savage to personify the
powers of nature, and priests played upon his terrors and his hopes, his misty
fancies, and his bewildered questionings ; myths became scriptures and symbols
facts, and their basis was universal the likeness of the
products was inevitable.
Thus speak the doctors
of"Comparative Mythology," and plain people are silenced but not
convinced under the rain of proofs ; they cannot deny
the likenesses, but they dimly feel: Are all man’s dearest hopes and lofty
imaginings nothing more than the outcome of savage fancies and of groping
ignorance? Have the great leaders of the race, the martyrs and heroes of
humanity, lived, wrought, suffered and died deluded, for the mere
personifications of astronomical facts and for the draped obscenities of barbarians?
The second explanation
of the common property in the religions of the world asserts the existence of
an original teaching in the custody of a Brotherhood of greatspiritual
Teachers, who – Themselves the outcome of past cycles of evolution – acted as
the instructors and guides of the child-humanity of our
planet, imparting to its races and nations in turn the fundamental
truths of religion in the form most adapted to the idiosyncrasies of the
recipients.
According to this view,
the Founders of the great religions are members of the one Brotherhood, and
were aided in Their mission by many other members, lower in degree than
Themselves, Initiates and disciples of various grades, eminent in spiritual
insight, in philosophical knowledge, or in purity of ethical wisdom.
These guided the infant
nations, gave them their polity, enacted their laws, ruled them as kings,
taught them as philosophers, guided them as priests ; all the nations of antiquity
looked back to such mighty men, demigods, and heroes, and they left their
traces in literature, in architecture, in legislation.
That such men lived it
seems difficult to deny in the face of universal tradition, of still existing
Scriptures, and of prehistoric remains for the most part now in ruins, to say
nothing of other testimony which the ignorant would reject.
The sacred books of the
East are the best evidence for the greatness of their authors, for who in later
days or in modern times can even approach the spiritual sublimity of their
religious thought, the intellectual splendour of their philosophy, the breadth
and purity of their ethic? And when we find that
these books contain teachings about God, man, and the universe
identical in substance under much variety of outer appearance, it does not seem
unreasonable to refer to them to a central primary body of doctrine. To that
body we give the name Divine Wisdom, in its Greek form: THEOSOPHY.
As the origin and basis
of all religions, it cannot be the antagonist of any: it is indeed their
purifier, revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that has
become mischievous in its external presentation by the
perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstition ; but it
recognises and defends itself in each, and seeks in each to unveil its hidden
wisdom. No man in becoming a Theosophist need cease to be a Christian, a
Buddhist, a Hindu ; he will but
acquire a deeper insight into his own faith, a firmer hold on its
spiritual truths, a broader understanding of its sacred teachings. As Theosophy of old gave
birth to religions, so in modern times does it justify and defend them. It is
the rock whence all of them were hewn, the hole of the pit whence all were dug.
It justifies at the bar of intellectual criticism the deepest longings and
emotions of the human heart: it verifies our hopes for man ; it
gives us back ennobled our faith in God.
The truth of this
statement becomes more and more apparent as we study the various
world-Scriptures, and but a few selections from the wealth of material
available will be sufficient to establish the fact, and to guide the student in
his search for further verification. The main spiritual verities of religion
may
be summarised thus:
One eternal, infinite,
incognisable real Existence.
From THAT the manifested
God, unfolding from unity to duality to trinity.
From the manifested
Trinity many spiritual Intelligences, guiding cosmic
order.
Man a reflection of the
manifested God and therefore a trinity fundamentally, his inner and real Self
being eternal, one with the Self of the universe.
His evolution by
repeated incarnations, into which he is drawn by desire, and from which he is
set free by knowledge and sacrifice, becoming divine in potency as he had ever
been divine in latency.
China which is now a
fossilised civilisation, was peopled in old days by the Turanians, the fourth
subdivision of the great Fourth Race, the race which inhabited the lost
continent of Atlantis, and spread its offshoots over the world. The Mongolians,
the last subdivision of that same race, later reinforced its population, so
that in China we have traditions from ancient days, preceding the settlement of
the Fifth, or Aryan race in India. In the Ching Chang Ching, or Classic of
Purity, we have a fragment of an ancient scripture of singular
beauty, breathing out the spirit of restfulness and peace so characteristic
of the "original teaching." Mr. Legge says in the introductory note
to his translation [ The Sacred Books of the East]
that the treatise –
"Is attributed to Ko Yüan (or Hsüan), a Taoist of the Wü dynasty (A.D.
222-227), who is fabled to have attained to the state of an Immortal, and is
generally so denominated. He is represented as a worker of miracles
; as addicted to
intemperance, and very eccentric in his ways. When shipwrecked on one
occasion, he emerged from beneath the water with his clothes unwet, and walked
freely on the surface. Finally he ascended to the sky in bright day. All these
accounts may safely be put down as the figments of later time."
Such stories are
repeatedly told of Initiates of various degrees, and are by no means
necessarily "figments," but we are more interested in Ko Yüan’s own account of the book.
"When I obtained
the true Tao, I recited this Ching [book] ten thousand times. It is what the
Spirits of heaven practise and had not been communicated to scholars of this
lower world. I got if from the Divine Ruler of the
the Royal-mother of the West.
Now the "Divine
Ruler of the
deals with Tao – literally "the Way’ – the name by which the
One Reality is indicated in the ancient Turanian and Mongolian religion. We
read: "The Great Tao has no bodily form, but It produced and nourishes
heaven and earth. The Great Tao has no passions, but It causes the sun and the
moon to revolve as they do. The Great Tao has no name, but It effects the
growth and
maintenance of all
things. (i,1)
This is the manifested
God as unity, but duality supervenes:
Now the Tao (shows
itself in two forms), the Pure and the Turbid, and has (two conditions of)
Motion and Rest, Heaven is pure and earth is turbid ; heaven moves and the
earth is at rest . The masculine is pure and the feminine is turbid ; the
masculine moves and the feminine is still. The radical (Purity) descended, and
the (turbid) issue flowed abroad, and thus all things were
produced (I, 2).
This passage is
particularly interesting from the allusion to the active and receptive sides of
Nature, the distinction between Spirit, the generator, and Matter, the
nourisher, so familiar in later writings. In the Tao Te Ching the teaching as
to the Unmanifested and the Manifested comes out very plainly.
"The Tao that can
be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named
is not the enduring and unchanging name. Having no name, it is the Originator
of heaven and earth, having a name, it is the Mother of all things…Under these
two aspects it is really the same ; but as development takes place it receives
the different names. Together we call them the Mystery (i, 1,2,4). "
Students of the Kabalah will be reminded of one of the Divine Names, "the
Concealed Mystery." Again:
"There was
something undefined and complete, coming into existence before heaven and
earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone and undergoing no change,
reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted). It may be regarded
as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the
designation of the Tao.
Making an effort to give it a name, I call it the Great. Great, it passes on (
in constant flow). Passing on, it becomes remote. Having become remote, it
returns (xxv, 1-3). "
Very interesting it is
to see here the idea of the forthgoing and the returning of the One Life, so
familiar to us in the Hindu Literature. Familiar seems the verse: "All
things under heaven sprang from It as existent (and named) ; that existence
sprang from It as
non-existent (and not named) (xl,2)".
That a Universe might
become, the Unmanifest must give forth the One from whom duality and trinity
proceed:
"The Tao produced
One ; One produced Two ; Two produced Three ; Three produced all things. All
things leave behind them the Obscurity (out of which they have come), and go forward
to embrace the Brightness (into which they have emerged), while they are
harmonised by the Breath of vacancy (xlii, 1)."
"Breath of
Space" would be a happier translation. Since all is produced from It, It
exists in all:
"All pervading is
the Great Tao. It may be found on the left hand and on the right …It clothes
all things as with a garment, and makes no assumption of being their lord ; -
It may be named in the smallest things. All things return (to their root and
disappear), and do not know that it is It which presides over
their doing so – It may
be named in the greatest things (xxxiv, 1, 2 )." Chwang-ze (fourth century
BC) in his presentation of the ancient teachings, refers to the spiritual
Intelligences coming from the Tao:
"It has Its root
and ground (of existence) in Itself. Before there were heaven and earth, from
of old, there It was securely existing. From It came the mysterious existence
of spirits, from It the mysterious existence of God (Bk. vi, Pt. I, Sec. vi,
7)."
A number of the names of
these Intelligences follow, but such beings are so well known to play a great
part in the Chinese religion that we need not multiply quotations about them.
Man is regarded as a
trinity, Taoism, says Mr. Legge, recognising in him the spirit, the mind, and
the body. This division comes out clearly in the /Classic of Purity, in the
teaching that man must get rid of desire to reach union with
the One:
Now the spirit of man
loves purity, but his mind disturbs it. The mind of man loves stillness, but
his desires draw it away. If he could always send his desires away, his mind of
itself would be still. Let his mind be made clean, and his spirit of itself
becomes pure ….The reason why men are not able to attain to
this is because their
minds have not been cleansed, and their desires have not been sent away. If one
is able to send the desires away, when he then looks at his mind it is no
longer his: when he looks out at his body it is no longer his ; and when he
looks farther off at external things, they are things which he has
nothing to do with ..(i,
3, 4).
Then, after giving the
stages of indrawing to "the condition of perfect stillness," it is
asked:
"In that condition
of rest independently of place, how can any desire arise? And when no desire
any longer arises there is the true stillness and rest. That true (stillness)
becomes (a) constant quality, and responds to external things (without error) ;
yea, that true and constant quality holds possession of the
nature. In such constant
response and constant stillness there is constant purity and rest. He who has
this absolute purity enters gradually into the (inspiration of the ) True Tao
(i, 5)."
The supplied words
"inspiration of" rather cloud than elucidate the meaning, for
entering into the Tao is congruous with the whole idea and with other
Scriptures.
On putting away of
desire is laid much stress in Taoism ; a commentator on the Classic of Purity
remarks that understanding the Tao depends on absolute purity, and
The acquiring the Absolute
Purity depends entirely on the putting away of Desire, which is the urgent
practical lesson of the Treatise. The Tao Teh Ching says:
Always without desire we
must be found,
If its deep mystery we
would sound;
But if desire always
within us be,
Its outer fringe is all
that we shall see.( i, 3)
Reincarnation does not
seem to be so distinctly taught as might have been expected, although passages
are found which imply that the main idea was taken for granted and that the
entity was considered as ranging through animal as well as human births. Thus
we have from Chwang-ze the quaint and wise story of a
dying man, to whom his
friend said:
"Great indeed is
the Creator! What will He now make you to become? Where will He take you to?
Will he make you the liver of a rat or the arm of an insect? Szelai replied,
"Wherever a parent tells a son to go, east, west, south or north, he
simply follows the command …Here now is a great founder, casting his metal. If
the metal were to leap up (in the pot) and say, ‘I must be made into a (sword
like the ) Moysh,’ the great founder would be sure to regard it as uncanny. So
again, when a form is being fashioned in the mould of the womb, if it were to
say, ‘I must become a man, I must become a man,’ the Creator would be sure to
regard it as uncanny. When we once understand that heaven and earth are a great
melting pot and the Creator a great founder, where can we to go to that shall
not be right for us? We are born as from a quiet sleep and we die to a calm
awaking" (Bk. vi, Pt. I, Sec. vi).
Turning to the Fifth,
the Aryan Race, we have the same teachings embodied in the oldest and greatest
Aryan religion – the Brahmanical. The eternal Existence is proclaimed in the
Chhandogyopanishad as "One only, without a second," and it is
written:
It willed, I shall
multiply for the sake of the universe (vi, ii, 1, 3).
The Supreme Logos,
Brahman, is threefold – Being, Consciousness, Bliss, and it is said:
From This arise life,
mind and all the senses, ether, air, fire , water, earth the support of all (
Mundakopanishad, ii,3).
No grander descriptions
of Deity can be found anywhere than in the Hindu Scriptures, but they are
becoming so familiar that brief quotation will suffice. Let the following serve
as specimens of their wealth of gems:
"Manifest, near,
moving in the secret place, the great abode, herein rests all that moves,
breathes, and shuts the eyes. Know That as to be worshipped, being and
non-being, the best, beyond the knowledge of all creatures. Luminous, subtler than
the subtle, in which the worlds and their denizens are infixed.
That, this imperishable
Brahman ; That, also life and voice and mind…In the golden highest sheath is
spotless, partless Brahman ; That the pure Light of lights, known by the
knowers of the Self…That deathless Brahman is before, Brahman behind, Brahman
to the right and to the left, below, above, pervading ;
this Brahman truly is
the all. This is the best ( Mundakopanishad , II,ii, 1,2,9,11).
Beyond the universe,
Brahman, the supreme, the great, hidden in all beings according to their
bodies, the one Breath of the whole universe, the Lord, whom knowing (men)
become immortal. I know that mighty Spirit, the shining sun beyond darkness… I
know Him the unfading, the ancient, the Soul of all, omnipresent by His nature,
whom the Brahman-knowers call unborn, whom they call eternal
(Shvetashvataropanishad, iii. 7,8,21).
When there is no
darkness, no day nor night, no being nor non-being (there is) Shiva even alone
; That the indestructible, That is to be worshipped by Savriti, from That came
forth the ancient wisdom. Not above nor below, nor in the midst, can He be
comprehended. Nor is there any similitude for Him whose name is infinite glory.
Not with the sight is established His form, none may by the eye behold Him ;
they who know Him by the heart and by the mind, dwelling in the heart, become
immortal (Ibid., iv, 18-20).
That man in his inner
Self is one with the Self of the universe – "I am That" – is an idea
that so thoroughly pervades all Hindu thought that man is often referred to as
the "divine town of Brahman," [ Mundakopanishad ] the "town of
nine gates," [ Shvetâshvataropanishad, iii,14. ] God dwelling in the
cavity of
the heart.[ Ibid., Ii]
"In one manner is
to be seen (the Being) which cannot be proved, which is eternal, without spot,
higher than the ether, unborn, the great eternal Soul…This great unborn Soul is
the same which abides as the intelligent (soul) in all living creatures, the
same which abides as ether in the heart ; [ The "ether in the heart"
is a mystical phrase used to indicate the One, who is said
to dwell therein.] - in
him it sleeps; it is the Subduer of all, the Ruler of all, the sovereign Lord
of all ; it does not become greater by good works nor less by evil work. It is
the Ruler of all, the sovereign Lord of all beings, the Preserver of all
beings, the Bridge, the Upholder of the worlds, so that they fall not to ruin (
Brihadaranyakopanishad, IV, iv, 20,22, Trs. Dr. E. Röer.)
When God is regarded as
the evolver of the universe, the threefold character comes out very clearly as
Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma or again as Vishnu sleeping under the waters, the
Lotus springing from Him, and in the Lotus Brahma. Man is likewise threefold,
and in the Mândûkyopanishad the self is described as conditioned by the
physical body, the subtle body, and the mental body, and then rising out of all
into the One "without duality." From the Trimurti (Trinity) come many
Gods, connected with the administration of the universe, as to whom it is said
in the Brihadaranyakopanishad.
"Adore Him, ye
Gods, after whom the year by rolling days is completed, the Light of lights, as
the Immortal Life (IV, iv, 16)."
It is hardly necessary
to mention the presence in Brâhmanism of the teaching of reincarnation, since
its whole philosophy of life turns on this pilgrimage of the Soul through many
births and deaths, and not a book could be taken up in which this truth is not
taken for granted. By desires man is bound to this wheel
of change, and therefore
by knowledge, devotion, and the destruction of desires, man must set himself
free. When the Soul knows God it is liberated. ( Shvetash, I, 8.) The intellect
purified by knowledge beholds Him. ( Mund., III, I,8 .) Knowledge joined to
devotion finds the abode of Brahman. ( Mund., III, ii,4).
Whoever knows Brahman,
becomes Brahman. ( Mund., III, ii,9 ) When desires cease the mortal becomes
immortal and obtains Brahman. ( Kathop., vi, 14). Buddhism, as it exists in its
northern form, is quite at one with the most ancient faiths, but in the
southern form it seems to have let slip the idea of the Logoic Trinity as of
the One Existence from which They came forth. The LOGOS in His triple
manifestation is: the First LOGOS, Amitâbha, the Boundless Light ; the Second,
Avalokiteshvara, or Padmapani (Chenresi) ; the Third, Manjusri – "the
representative of creative wisdom, corresponding to Brahmâ." ( Eitel’s
Sanskrit Chinese Dictionary, sub voce. ) Chinese Buddhism apparently does not
contain the idea of a primordial Existence, beyond the LOGOS, but Nepalese
Buddhism postulates Âdi-Buddha, from Whom Amitâbha arises. Padmapâni is said by
Eitel to be the representative of compassionate Providence and to correspond
partly with Shiva, but as the aspect of the Buddhist Trinity that sends forth
incarnations He appears rather to represent the same idea as Vishnu, to whom He
is allied by bearing the Lotus (fire and water, or Spirit and Matter as the
primary constituents of the universe).
Reincarnation and Karma
are so much the fundamentals of Buddhism that it is hardly worth while to
insist on them save to note the way of liberation, and to remark that as the
Lord Buddha was a Hindu preaching to Hindus, Brâhmanical
doctrines are taken for
granted constantly in His teaching, as matters of course. He was a purifier and
a reformer, not an iconoclast, and struck at the accretions due to ignorance,
not at fundamental truths belonging to the Ancient Wisdom.
"Those beings who
walk in the way of the law that has been well taught, reach the other shore of
the great sea of birth and death, that is difficult to cross."
(Udanavarga, xxix. 37).
Desire binds man, and
must be gotten rid of:
"It is hard for one
who is held by the fetters of desire to free himself of them, says the Blessed
One. The steadfast, who care not for the happiness of desires, cast them off
and do soon depart (to Nirvana)….Mankind
has no lasting desires: they are impermanent in them who experience them ; free
yourselves then from what cannot last, and abide not in the sojourn of death (
Ibid., Ii, 6, 8).
He who has destroyed
desires for (worldly )goods, sinfulness, the bonds of the eye of the flesh, who
has torn up desire by the very root, he, I declare, is a Brahmana (Ibid.,
xxxiii, 68)."
And a Brâhmana is a man
"having his last body," (Udânavarga, xxxiii, 41) and is defined as
one.
"Who, knowing his
former abodes (existences) perceives heaven and hell, the Muni, who has found
the way to put an end to birth". (ibid., xxxiii,55). In the exoteric
Hebrew Scriptures, the idea of a Trinity does not come out strongly, though
duality is apparent, and the God spoken of is obviously the LOGOS, not the One
Unmanifest: "I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and
create darkness; I make peace and create evil ; I am the Lord that doeth all
these things." (Is., xlvii, 7) Philo, however, has the doctrine of the
LOGOS very clearly, and it is found in the Fourth Gospel:
"In the beginning
was the Word [Logos] and the Word was with God and the Word was God….All things
were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. (St.
John i, 1, 3).
In the Kabalah the
doctrine of the One, the Three, the Seven, and then the many, is plainly
taught:
The Ancient of the
Ancients, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, yet also has not any form. It
has a form through which the universe is maintained. It also has not any form,
as It cannot be comprehended. When It first took this form [Kether, the Crown,
the First Logos] It permitted to proceed from It nine brilliant Lights [Wisdom
and the Voice, forming with Kether the Triad, and then the seven lower
Sephiroth] …It is the Ancient of the Ancients, the Mystery of the Mysteries,
the Unknown of the Unknown.
It has a form which
appertains to It, since It appears (through it) to us, as the Ancient Man above
all as the Ancient of the Ancients, and as that which there is the Most Unknown
among the Unknown. But under that form by which It makes Itself known, It
however still remains the Unknown (Issac Myer’s Qabbalah, from the Zohar, pp.
274-275).
Myer points out that the
"form" is "not ‘the Ancient of the Ancients,’ who is the Ain
Soph. Again:
"Three Lights are
in the Holy Upper which Unite as One ; and they are the basis of the Thorah,
and this opens the door to all….Come, see! the mystery of the word. These are
three degrees and each exists by itself, and yet all are One and are knotted in
One, nor are they separated one from another….Three come out from One, One
exists in Three, it is the force between Two, Two nourishes One. One nourishes
many sides, thus All is One. (ibid., 373, 375,376).
Needless to say that the
Hebrews held the doctrine of many Gods – "Who is like unto Thee, O Lord,
among the Gods?" –and of multitudes of subordinate ministrants, the
"Sons of God," the "Angels of the Lord," the "Ten
Angelic Hosts."(Exodus, xv,ii.)
Of the commencement of
the universe the Zohar teaches:
In the beginning was the
Will of the King, prior to any existence which came into being through
emanation from this Will. It sketched and engraved the forms of all things that
were to be manifested from concealment into view, in the supreme and dazzling
light of the Quadrant [the Sacred Tetractys] (Myer’s
Quabbalah, pp. 194-95).
Nothing can exist in
which the Deity is not immanent, and with regard to Reincarnation it is taught
that the Soul is present in the divine Idea ere coming to earth ; if the Soul
remained quite pure during its trial it escaped rebirth, but this seems to have
been only a theoretical possibility, and it is said:
All souls are subject to
revolution (metempsychosis, a’leen o’gilgoolah), but men do not know the ways
of the Holy One: blessed be It! they are ignorant of the way they have been
judged in all time, and before they came into this world and when they have
quitted it (ibid., p. 198).
Traces of this belief
occur both in the Hebrew and Christian exoteric
Scriptures, as in the
belief that Elijah would return, and later that he had
returned in John the
Baptist.
Turning to glance at
The Gods bow before Thy
Majesty by exalting the Souls of That which produceth them….and say to Thee:
Peace to all emanations from the unconscious father of the conscious Fathers of
the Gods…..Thou Producer of beings, we adore the Souls which emanate from Thee.
Thou begettest us, O Thou Unknown, and we greet Thee in worshipping each
God-Soul which descendeth from Thee and liveth in us (quoted in Secret Doctrine
iii, 485, 1893 ed.; v, 463, Adyar Ed.).
The "conscious
Fathers of the Gods" are the LOGOI, the "unconscious Father" is
the One Existence, unconscious not as being less but as being infinitely more
than what we call consciousness, a limited thing.
In the fragments of the
Book of the Dead we can study the conceptions of the reincarnating of the human
Soul, of its pilgrimage towards and its ultimate union with the LOGOS. The
famous papyrus of "the scribe Ani, triumphant in peace," is full of
touches that remind the reader of the Scriptures of other
faiths ; his journey
through the underworld, his expectation of re-entering his body (the form taken
by reincarnation among the Egyptians), his identification with the LOGOS:
Saith Osiris Ani: I am
the great One, son of the great One ; I am Fire, the son of Fire …I have knit
together my bones, I have made myself whole and sound ; I have become young
once more ; I am Osiris the Lord of eternity (xliii, 1, 4 ).
In Pierret’s recension
of The Book of the Dead we find the striking passage:
I am the being of
mysterious names who prepares for himself dwellings for millions of years (p.
22). Heart, that comest to me from my mother, my heart necessary to my
existence on earth …Heart, that comest to me from my mother, heart that is
necessary for me for my transformation (pp. 113-114).
In Zoroastrianism we
find the conception of the One Existence, imaged as Boundless Space, whence
arises the LOGOS, the creator Aûharmazd: Supreme in omniscience and goodness,
and unrivalled in splendor: the region of light is the place of Aûharmazd (The
Bundahis, Sacred Books of the East, v, 3,
4; v, 2).
To him in the Yasna, the
chief liturgy of the Zarathustrians, homage is first paid:
I announce and I (will)
complete (my Yasna [worship] to Ahura Mazda, the creator, the radiant and
glorious, the greatest and the best, the most beautiful (?) (to our
conceptions), the most firm, the wisest, and the one of all whose body is most
perfect, who attains his ends the most infallibly, because of His
righteous order, to Him
who disposes our minds aright, who sends His joy-creating grace afar ; who made
us and has fashioned us, and who has nourished and protected us, who is the
most bounteous Spirit (Sacred Books of the East, xxxi, pp. 195,196).
The worshipper then pays
homage to the Ameshaspends and other Gods, but the supreme manifested God, the
LOGOS, is not here presented as triune. As with the Hebrews, there was a
tendency in the exoteric faith to lose sight of this
fundamental truth.
Fortunately we can trace the primitive teaching, though it disappeared in later
times from the popular belief. Dr. Haug, in his Essays on the Parsis
(translated by Dr. West and forming vol. v of Trubner’s Oriental Series) states
that Ahuramazda – Aûharmazd or Hârmazd – is the Supreme Being, and that from
him were produced – Two primeval causes, which, though different were united
and produced the world of material things as well as that of the spirit (p.
303).
These were called twins
and are everywhere present, in Ahuramazda as well as in man. One produces
reality, the other non-reality, and it is these who in later Zoroastrianism
became the opposing Spirits of good and evil. In the earlier teachings they
evidently formed the Second Logos, duality being his
characteristic mark.
The "good" and
"bad" are merely Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, the
fundamental "twins" of the Universe, the Two from the One.
Criticising the later idea, Dr. Haug says:
Such is the original
Zoroastrian notion of the two creative Spirits, who form only two parts of the
Divine being. But in the course of time this doctrine of the great founder was
changed and corrupted, in consequence of misunderstandings and false
interpretations. Spentômainyush [ the "good spirit"] was taken as a
name of Ahuramazda Himself, and then of course Angrômainyush [ the "evil
spirit"] by becoming entirely separated from Ahuramazda ; was regarded as
the constant adversary of Ahuramazda: thus the Dualism of God and Devil arose
(p. 205).
Dr. Haug’s view seems to
be supported by the Gâtha Ahunavaiti, given with other Gâthas by "the
archangels" to Zoroaster or Zarathustra:
In the beginning there
was a pair of twins, two spirits, each of a peculiar activity ; these are the
good and the base …And these two spirits united created the first (the material
things) ; one the reality, the other the non-reality …And to succor this life
(to increase it) Armaiti came with wealth, the good and
true mind ; she, the everlasting
one, created the material world….All perfect things are garnered up in the
splendid residence of the Good Mind, the Wise and the Righteous, who are known
as the best beings (Yas., xxx, 3,4,7,10; Dr. Haug’s translation, pp.149-151).
Here the three LOGOI are
seen, Ahuramazda the first, the supreme Life ; in and from him the
"twins," the Second LOGOS ; then Armaiti the Mind, the Creator of the
Universe, the Third LOGOS. ( Armaiti was a first Wisdom and the Goddess of
Wisdom, Later as the creator, She became identified with the earth, and was
worshipped as the Goddess of Earth). Later Mithra appears, and in the exoteric
faith clouds the primitive truth to some extent ; of him it is said:
Whom Ahura Mazda has
established to maintain and look over all this moving world ; who, never
sleeping, wakefully guards the creation of Mazda (Mihir Yast, xxvii, 103:
Sacred Books of the East, xviii).
He was a subordinate
God, the Light of Heaven, as Varuna was the Heaven itself, one of the great
ruling Intelligences. The highest of these ruling Intelligences were the six
Ameshaspends, headed by the Good Thought of Ahuramazda, Vohûman – Who have
charge of the whole material creation (Sacred Books of the East,v. p. 10 note).
Reincarnation does not
seem to be taught in the books which, so far, have been translated, and the
belief is not current among modern Parsis. But we do find the idea of the
Spirit in man as a spark that is to become a flame and to be reunited to the
Supreme Fire, and this must imply a development for which
rebirth is a necessity.
Nor will Zoroastrianism ever be understood until we recover the Chaldean
Oracles and allied writings, for there is its real root.
Travelling westward to
According to the
theology of Orpheus, all things originate from an immense principle, to which
through the imbecility and poverty of human conception we give a name, though
it is perfectly ineffable, and in the reverential language of the Egyptians in
a thrice unknown darkness in contemplation of which all knowledge is refunded
into ignorance (Thomas Taylor, quoted in Orpheus, ). From this the
"Primordial Triad," Universal Good, Universal Soul, Universal Mind,
again the Logoic Trinity. Of this Mr. Mead writes:
The first Triad, which
is manifestable to intellect, is but a reflection of, or substitute for the
Unmanifestable, and its hypostases are:
(a) the Good, which is
super-essential;
(b) Soul (the World
Soul), which is a self-motive essence;
(c) Intellect (or the
Mind), which is an impartible, immovable essence
(ibid., p. 94).
After this, a series of
ever-descending Triads, showing the characteristics of the first in diminishing
splendor until man is reached, who – Has in him potentially the sum and
substance of the universe…"The race of men and gods is one (Pindar, who
was a Pythagorean, quoted by Clemens, Strom., v.709)…Thus man was called the
microcosm or little world, to distinguish him
from the universe or
great world (ibid., p. 271).
He has the Nous, or real
mind, the Logos or rational part, the Alogos or irrational part, the two latter
again forming a Triad, and thus presenting the more elaborate septenary
division. The man was also regarded as having three vehicles, the physical and
subtle bodies and the luciform body or augoeides, that:
Is the "causal
body," or karmic vesture of the soul, in which its destiny, or rather all
the seeds of past causation are stored. This is the "thread-soul," as
it is sometimes called, the "body" that passes over from one
incarnation to another (ibid., p. 284).
As to reincarnation:
Together with all the
adherents of the Mysteries in every land the Orphics believed in reincarnation
(ibid., p. 292).
To this Mr. Mead brings
abundant testimony, and he shows that it was taught by Plato, Empedocles,
Pythagoras, and others. Only by virtue could men escape from the life-wheel.
Taylor in his notes to
the Select Works of Plotinus, quotes from Damascius as to the teachings of
Plato on the One beyond the One, the Unmanifest Existence:
Perhaps indeed, Plato
leads us ineffably through the one as a medium to the ineffable beyond the one
which is now the subject of discussion ; and this by an ablation of the one in
the same manner as he leads to the one by an ablation of other things…That
which is beyond the one is to be honoured in the most perfect silence…The one
indeed wills to be by itself, but with no other ; but the unknown beyond the
one is perfectly ineffable, which we acknowledge we neither know, nor are
ignorant of, but which has about itself super-ignorance.
Hence by proximity to
this the one itself is darkened ; for being near to the immense principle, if
it be lawful so to speak, it remains as it were in the adytum of the truly
mystic silence…The first is above the one and all things, being more
simple than either of
these (pp.341-343).
The Pythagorean,
Platonic, and Neo-Platonic schools have so many points of contact with Hindu
and Buddhist thought that their issue from the one fountain is obvious. R.
Garbe, in his work, Die Samkhya Philosophie (iii,pp.85-105) presents many of
these points, and his statement may be summarised as follows:
The most striking is the
resemblance – or more correctly the identity – of the doctrine of the One and
Only in the Upanishads and the Eleatic school. Xenophanes’ teaching of the
unity of God and the Kosmos and of the changelessness of the One, and even more
that of Parmenides, who held that reality is ascribable only to the One unborn,
indestructible and omnipresent, while all that is manifold and subject to
change is but an appearance, and
further that Being and
Thinking are the same – these doctrines are completely identical with the
essential contents of the Upanishads and of the Vedântic philosophy which
springs from them. But even earlier still the view of Thales, that all that
exists has sprung from Water, is curiously like the VaidiK
doctrine that the
Universe arose from the waters. Later on Anaximander assumed as the basis
(????) of all things an eternal, infinite, and indefinite Substance, from which
all definite substances proceed and into which they return – an assumption
identical with that which lies at the root of the Sankhya, viz., the Prakrti
from which the whole material side of the universe evolved.
And his famous saying
p??ta ´?eî (panta rhei) expresses the characteristic view of the Sânkhya that
all things are ever changing under the ceaseless activity of the three gunas.
Empedocles again taught theories of transmigration and
evolution practically
the same as those of the Sânkhyas, while his theory that nothing can come into
being which does not already exist is even more closely identical with a
characteristically Sânkhyan doctrine.
Both Anaxagoras and
Democritus also present several points of close agreement, especially the
latter’s view as to the nature and position of the Gods, and the same applies,
notably in some curious matters of detail, to Epicurus. But it is, however, in
the teachings of Pythagoras that we find the closest and most
frequent identities of teachings and argumentation, explained as due
to Pythagoras himself having visited
into relation with matter, in which the Light can be lessened
and at last quite obscured, in which case the Intelligence falls finally into
complete unconsciousness.
Of the highest
Intelligence it is maintained that it is neither Light nor Not-Light, neither
Darkness nor Not-Darkness, since all those expressions denote relations of the
Intelligence to the Light, which indeed in the beginning was free from these
connections, but later on encloses the Intelligence and mediates its connection
with matter. It follows from this that the Buddhist view ascribes to the
highest Intelligence the power to produce light from itself, and that in this
respect also there is an agreement between Buddhism and Gnosticism. Garbe here
points out that, as regards the features alluded to, the agreement between
Gnosticism and Sânkhya is very much closer than that with Buddhism ; for while
these views as to the relations between Light and Spirit pertain to the later
phases of Buddhism, and are not at all fundamental to, or characteristic of it
as such, the Sânkhya teaches clearly and precisely that Spirit is Light.
Later still the influence
of the Sânkhya thought is very plainly evident in the Neo-Platonic writers ;
while the doctrine of the LOGOS or Word, though not of Sânkhyan origin, shows
even in its details that it has been derived from India, where the conception
of Vach, the Divine Word, plays so prominent a part in the Brâhmanical system.
Coming to the Christian
religion, contemporaneous with the Gnostic and Neo-Platonic systems, we shall
find no difficulty in tracing most of the same fundamental teachings with which
we have now become so familiar. The threefold LOGOS appears as the Trinity ;
the First LOGOS, the fount of all life being the Father ; the dual-natured
Second LOGOS the Son, God-man ; the Third, the creative Mind, the Holy Ghost,
whose brooding over the waters of chaos brought forth the worlds. Then comes
"the seven Spirits of God" [Rev. iv. 5.] and the hosts archangels and
angels. Of the One Existence from which all comes and into which all returns,
but little is hinted, the Nature that by searching cannot be found out ; but
the great doctors of the Church Catholic always posit the unfathomable Deity,
incomprehensible, infinite, and therefore necessarily but
One and partless.
Man is made in the
"image of God," [Gen. I, 26-27] and is consequently triple in his nature
– Spirit and Soul and body, [1-Thess. V, 23] he is a "habitation of
God," [Eph. Ii, 22] the "
asked as to Elijah coming before the Messiah, He answered that
"Elias is come already and they knew him not." [ Matt. xvii, 12 ].So
again we find the disciples taking reincarnation for granted in asking whether
blindness from birth was a punishment for a man’s sin and Jesus in answer not
rejecting the possibility of ante-natal sin, but only excluding it as causing
the blindness in
the special instance.
[John, ix, 1-13 ] The remarkable phrase applied to "him that overcometh"
in Rev. iii, 12, - that he shall be "a pillar in the temple of my God, and
he shall go no more out", has been taken as signifying escape from
rebirth. From the writings of some of the Christian Fathers a good case may be
made our for a current
belief in reincarnation ; some argue that only the pre-existence of the Soul is
taught, but this view does not seem to me supported by the evidence.
The unity of moral
teaching is not less striking, than the unity of the conceptions of the
universe and of the experiences of those who rose out of the prison of the body
into the freedom of the higher spheres. It is clear that this body of primeval
teaching was in the hands of definite custodians, who had schools in which they
taught, disciples who studied their doctrines. The identity of these schools
and of their discipline stands out plainly when we
study the moral
teaching, the demands made on the pupils, and the mental and spiritual states
to which they were raised. A caustic division is made in the Tao Teh Ching of
the types of scholars:
Scholars of the highest
class when they hear about the Tao, earnestly carry it into practice. Scholars
of the middle class, when they have hears about it, seem now to keep it and now
to lose it. Scholars of the lowest class, when they have heard about it, laugh
greatly at it (Sacred Books of the East, xxxix, op. Cit.,
xli, 1).
In the same book we
read:
The sage puts his own
person last, and yet it is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as
if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved. It is not because
he has no personal and private ends that therefore such ends are realised?
(vii,2) – He is free from self-display, and therefore he
shines; from
self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished ; from self-boasting, and
therefore his merit is acknowledged, from self-complacency, and therefore he
acquires superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving that
therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him (xxii, 2). There is no
guilt greater than to sanction ambition ; no calamity greater
than to be discontented
with one’s lot ; no fault greater than the wish to be getting (xlvi,2).
To those who are good
(to me) I am good ; and to those who are not good (to me) I am also good ; and
thus all get to be good. To those who are sincere (with me) I am sincere; and
to those who are not sincere (with me) I am also sincere ; and thus (all) get
to be sincere (xlix, 1).
He who has in himself
abundantly the attributes (of the Tâo ) is like an infant. Poisonous insects
will not sting him ; fierce beasts will not seize him ; birds of prey will not
strike him – ( lv, 1), I have three precious things which I prize and hold
fast.
The first is gentleness
; the second is economy ; the third is shrinking from taking precedence of
others …Gentleness is sure to be victorious, even in battle, and firmly to
maintain its ground. Heaven will save its possessor, by his (very) gentleness
protecting him (lxvii,2,4).
Among the Hindus there
were selected scholars deemed worthy of special instruction to whom the Guru
imparted the secret teachings, while the general rules of right living may be
gathered from Manu’s Ordinances, the Upanishads, the Mahâbhârata and many other
treatises:
Let him say what is true,
let him say what is pleasing, let him utter no disagreeable truth, and let him
utter no agreeable falsehood ; that is the eternal law (Manu, iv, 138). Giving
no pain to any creature, let him slowly accumulate spiritual merit (iv, 238).
For that twice-born man, by whom not the smallest danger even is caused to
created beings, there will be no danger from any (quarter) after he is freed
from his body (vi, 40). Let him patiently bear hard words, let him not insult
anybody, and let him not become anybody’s enemy for the sake of this
(perishable) body. Against an angry man let him not in
return show anger, let
him bless when he is cursed (vi, 47-48).
Freed from passion, fear
and anger, thinking on Me, taking refuge in Me, purified in the fire of Wisdom,
many have entered My Being (Bhagavad Gitâ , iv, 10). Supreme joy is for the
Yogi whose Manas is peaceful, whose passion-nature is calmed, who is sinless
and of the nature of Brahman (iv, 27). He who beareth no ill-will to any being,
friendly and compassionate, without attachment and egoism, balanced in pleasure
and pain, and forgiving, ever content, harmonious, with the self controlled,
resolute, with Manas and Buddhi dedicated to Me – he, My devotee, is dear to Me
(xii,13,14)
If we turn to the
Buddha, we find Him with His Arhats, to whom His secret teachings were given ;
while published we have:
The wise man through
earnestness, virtue, and purity makes himself an island which no flood can
submerge (Udânavarga, iv, 5 ). The wise man in this world holds fast to faith
and wisdom, these are his greatest treasures ; he cast aside all other riches,
(x 9). He who bears ill-will to those who bear ill-will can
never become pure ; but
he who feels no ill-will pacifies those who hate ; as hatred brings misery to mankind,
the sage knows no hatred (xiii, 12). Overcome anger by not being angered ;
overcome evil by good ; overcome avarice by liberality ; overcome falsehoods by
truth (xx,18).
The Zoroastrian is
taught to praise Ahuramazda, and then:
What is fairest, what is
pure, what immortal, what brilliant, all that is good. The good spirit we
honor, the good kingdom we honor, and the good law, and the good wisdom (Yasna,
xxxvii). May there come to this dwelling contentment, blessing, guilelessness,
and wisdom of the pure (Yasna, lix). Purity is the best good. Happiness,
happiness is to him ; namely, to the best pure in purity (Ashem-vohu). All good
thoughts, words, and works are done with knowledge.
All evil thoughts,
words, and works are not done with knowledge (Mispa Kumata). ( Selected from
the Avesta in Ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian Morals, by Dhunjibhoy Jamsetji
Medhora).
The Hebrew had his
"schools of the prophets" and his Kabbalah, and in the exoteric books
we find the accepted moral teachings:
Who shall ascend into
the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean
hands and a pure heart ; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, not sworn
deceitfully (Ps. xxiv,3,4). What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah,vi,8). The lip of
truth shall be established for ever ; but a lying tongue is but for a moment
(Prov. xii, 19). Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of
wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and
that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that
thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy home? when thou seest the naked
that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? (Isa.
lviii,6,7).
The Christian teacher
had His secret instructions for His disciples, (Matt. xiii, 10-17) – and He
bade them:
Give not that which is
holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine (Matt. vii, 6).
For public teaching we
may refer to the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and to such doctrines
as:
I say unto you, love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you….Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. v, 44-48). He
that findeth his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake
shall find it (x,39). Whoever shall humble himself as this
little child, the same
is greatest in the kingdom of heaven (xviii, 4). The fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance ; against such there is no law (Gal., v, 22-23). Let us love one
another ; for love is of God ; and everyone that loveth is born of God and
knoweth God ( I John iv, 7 ).
The school of the
Pythagoras and those of the Neo-Platonists kept up the tradition for
the Pythagorean had pledged disciples as well as an outer
discipline, the inner circle passing through three degrees during five years of
probation. (For details see G.R.S. Mead’s Orpheus, p. 263 et. Seq.). The outer
discipline he describes as follows:
We must first give
ourselves up entirely to God. When a man prays he should never ask for any
particular benefit, fully convinced that that will be given which is right and
proper, and according to the wisdom of God and not the subject of our own
selfish desires (Diod. Sic. ix, 41). By virtue alone does man
arrive at blessedness,
and this is the exclusive privilege of a rational being (Hippodamus, De
Felicitate, ii, Orelli, Opusc. Græcor. Sent. et Moral., Ii, 284). In himself,
of his own nature, man is neither good nor happy, but he may become so by the
teaching of the true doctrine (µa??s??? ?a?? p?????a?
p?t?d?eta?) – (Hippo,
ibid.).
The most sacred duty is
filial piety. "God showers his blessings on him who honors and reveres the
author of his days," says Pampelus (De Parentibus, Orelli, op. Cit., ii,
345). Ingratitude towards one’s parents is the blackest of all crimes, writes
Perictione ( ibid.,p. 350), who is supposed to have been the
mother of Plato. The
cleanliness and delicacy of all Pythagorean writings were remarkable (Œlian,
Hist. Var., xiv,19). In all that concerns chastity and marriage their principles
are of the utmost purity. Everywhere the great teacher recommends chastity and
temperance ; but at the same time he directs that the married should first
become parents before living a life of absolute celibacy, in order that
children might be born under favourable conditions for continuing the holy life
and succession of the Sacred Science (Iamblichus, Vit. Pythag., and Hierocl.,
ap. Stob. Serm. xlv, 14). This is exceedingly interesting, for it is precisely
the same regulation that is laid down in the Mânava Dharma Shâstra, the great
Indian Code. …Adultery was most sternly condemned (Iamb., ibid.).
Moreover, the most
gentle treatment of the wife by the husband was enjoined, for had he not taken
her as his companion "before the Gods"? (See Lascaulx. Zur Geschichte
der Ehe bei den Griechen, in the Mém. De l’Acad. De Bavière, vii, 107,sq.).
Marriage was not an
animal union, but a spiritual tie. Therefore, in her turn, the wife should love
her husband even more than herself, and in all things be devoted and obedient.
It is further interesting to remark that the finest characters among women with
which ancient
The authors of antiquity
are agreed that this discipline had succeeded in producing the highest examples
not only of the purest chastity and sentiment, but also a simplicity of
manners, a delicacy, and a taste for serious pursuits which was unparalleled.
This is admitted even by Christian writers (See Justin,
xx, 4)…Among the members
of the school the idea of justice directed all their acts, while they observed
the strictest tolerance and compassion in their mutual relationships. For
justice is the principle of all virtue, as Polus, (ap. Stob., Serm., viii, ed.
Schow, p. 232) teaches ; "’tis justice which maintains peace and balance
in the soul ; she is the mother of good order in all communities,
makes concord between
husband and wife, love between master and servant.’
The word of a
Pythagorean: was also his bond. And finally a man should live so as to be ever
ready for death ( Hippolytus, Philos., vi). (ibid., p. 263-267).
The treatment of the
virtues in the Neo-Platonic schools is interesting, and the distinction is
clearly made between morality and spiritual development, or as Plotinus put it,
"The endeavour is not to be without sin, but to be of God." (Select
Works of Plotinus, trans. Thomas Taylor, ed., 1895, p. 11).The lowest
stage was becoming
without sin by acquiring the "political virtues" which made a man
perfect in conduct (the physical and ethical being below these), the reason
controlling and adorning the irrational nature. Above these were the cathartic,
pertaining to reason
alone, and which liberated the Soul from the bonds of generation ; the
theoretic , lifting the Soul into touch with natures superior to itself;and the
paradigmatic, giving it a knowledge of true being:
Hence he who energises
according to the practical virtues is a worthy man; but he who energises
according to the cathartic virtues is a demoniacal man, or is also a good
demon. (A good spiritual intelligence, as the daimon of Socrates).
He who energises
according to the intellectual virtues alone is a God. But he who energises
according to the paradigmatic virtues is the Father of the Gods. (Note on
Intellectual Prudence, pp. 325-332).
By various practices the
disciples were taught to escape from the body, and to rise into higher regions.
As grass is drawn from a sheath, the inner man was to draw himself from his bodily
casing ( Kathopanishad, vi,17). The "body of light" or "radiant
body" of the Hindus is the "luciform body" of the
Neo-Plationists, and in this man rises to find the Self:
Not grasped by the eye,
nor by speech, nor by the others senses (lit., Gods), nor by austerity, nor by
religious rites ; by serene wisdom, by the pure essence
only, doth one see the
partless One in meditation. This subtle Self is to be
known by the mind in
which the fivefold life is sleeping. The mind of all
creatures is instinct
with [these] lives ; in this, purified, manifests the Self
( Mundakopanishad, III,
ii, 8,9).
Then alone can man enter
the region where separation is not, where "the spheres
have ceased." In
G.R.S.Mead’s Introduction to Taylor’s Plotinus, he quotes from Plotinus a
description of a sphere which is evidently the Turîya of the Hindus: They
likewise see all things, not those with which generation, but those with which
essence is present. And they perceive themselves in others. For all things
there, are diaphanous; and nothing is dark and resisting, but everything is
apparent to every one
internally and throughout. For light everywhere meets with
light ; since everything
contains all things in itself and again see all things in another. So that all
things are everywhere and all is all. Each thing likewise is everything. And
the splendor there is infinite. For everything there is great, since even that
which is small is great. The sun too which is there is all the stars; and again
each star is the sun and all the stars. In each however, a different property
predominates, but at the same time all things are visible in each. Motion
likewise there is pure; for the motion is not confounded by a mover different
from it (p. lxxiii).
A description which is a
failure, because the region is one above describing by
mortal language, but a
description that could only have been written by one
whose eyes had been
opened.
A whole volume might
easily be filled with the similarities between the
religions of the world, but
the above imperfect statement must suffice as a
preface to the study of Theosophy, to that which
is a fresh and fuller
presentment to the world
of the ancient truths on which it has ever been fed.
all these similarities
point to a single source, and that is the Brotherhood of
the White Lodge, the
Hierarchy of Adepts who watch over and guide the evolution of humanity, and who
have preserved these truths unimpaired ; from time to time, as necessity arose,
reasserting them in the ears of men. From other worlds, from earlier
humanities, They came to help our globe, evolved by a process comparable to
that now going on with ourselves, and that will be more intelligible when we
have completed our present study than it may now appear ; and They have
afforded this help, reinforced by the flower of our own humanity, from the
earliest times
until today.
Still They teach eager
pupils, showing the path and guiding the disciple’s steps
; still They may be reached
by all who seek Them, bearing in their hands the
sacrificial fuel of
love, of devotion, of unselfish longing to know in order to
serve ; still They carry
out the ancient discipline, still unveil the ancient
Mysteries. The two pillars
of Their Lodge gateway are Love and Wisdom, and
through its straight
portal can only pass those from whose shoulders has fallen
the burden of desire and
selfishness.
A heavy task lies before
us, and beginning on the physical plane we shall climb
slowly upwards, but a
bird’s eye view of the great sweep of evolution and of its
purpose may help us, ere
we begin our detailed study in the world that
surrounds us. A LOGOS,
ere a system has begun to be, has in His mind the whole, existing as idea – all
forces, all forms, all that in due process shall emerge into objective life. He
draws the circle of manifestation within which He wills to
energise, and
circumscribes Himself to be the life of His universe. As we watch
we see strata appearing
of successive densities, till seven vast regions are
apparent, and in these
centres of energy appear whirlpools of matter that
separate from each
other, until when the processes of separation and of
condensation are over –
so far as we are here concerned – we see a central sun,
the physical symbol of
the LOGOS, and seven planetary chains, each chain
consisting of seven
globes.
Narrowing down our view
to the chain of which our globe is one, we see
life-waves sweep round
i, forming the kingdoms of nature, the three elemental,
the mineral, vegetable,
animal, human. Narrowing down our view still further to
our own globe and its
surroundings, we watch human evolution, and see man
developing
self-consciousness by a series of many life-periods ; then centering
on a single man we trace
his growth and see that each life-period has a
threefold division that
each is linked to all life-periods behind it reaping their results, and to all
life-periods before it sowing their harvests, by a law that cannot be broken ;
that thus man may climb upwards with each life-period
adding to his
experience, each life-period lifting him higher in purity, in devotion, in
intellect, in power of usefulness, until at last he stands where They stand who
are now the Teachers, fit, to pay to his younger brothers the debt he owes to
Them.
THE
PHYSICAL PLANE
We have just seen that
the source from which a universe proceeds is a manifested Divine Being, to whom
in the modern form of the Ancient Wisdom the name LOGOS, or Word has been
given. The name is drawn from Greek Philosophy, but perfectly expresses the
ancient idea, the Word which emerges from the Silence, the Voice, the Sound, by
which the worlds come into being.
We must now trace the evolution
of spirit-matter, in order that we may understand something of the nature of
the materials with which we have to deal on the physical plane, or physical
world. For it is in the potentialities wrapped up, involved, in the
spirit-matter of the physical world that lies the possibility of evolution. The
whole process is an unfolding, self-moved from within and aided by intelligent
beings without,
who can retard or
quicken evolution, but cannot transcend the capacities inherent in the
materials. Some idea of these earliest stages of the world’s
"becoming" is therefore necessary, although any attempt to go into
minute details would carry us far beyond the limits of such an elementary
treatise as the present. A very cursory sketch must suffice.
Coming forth from the
depths of the One Existence, from the ONE beyond all
thought and all speech,
a LOGOS, by imposing on Himself a limit, circumscribing voluntarily the range
of His own Being, becomes the manifested God, and tracing the limiting sphere
of His activity thus outlines the area of His universe.
Within that sphere the
universe is born, is evolved, and dies ; it lives, it
moves, it has its being
in Him ; its matter is His emanation ; its forces and
energies are currents of
His Life ; He is immanent in every atom, all-pervading,
all-sustaining,
all-evolving ; He is its source and its end, its cause and its
object, its centre and
circumference ; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it breathes in Him
as its encircling space ; He is in everything and everything in Him. Thus have
the sages of the Ancient Wisdom taught us of the beginning of the manifested
worlds.
From the same source we
learn of the Self-unfolding of the LOGOS into a
threefold form ; the
First LOGOS, the Root of all being ; from Him the Second,
manifesting the two
aspects of Life and Form, the primal duality, making the two
poles of nature between
which the web of the universe is to be woven –
Life-Form,
Spirit-Matter, Positive-Negative, Active-Receptive, Father-Mother of
the worlds. Then the
Third LOGOS, the Universal Mind, that in which all
archetypically exists,
the source of beings, the fount of fashioning energies,
the treasure house in
which are stored up all the archetypal forms which are to
be brought forth and elaborated
in lower kinds of matter during the evolution of
the universe. These are
the fruits of past universes, brought over as seeds for
the present.
The phenomenal spirit
and matter of any universe are finite in their extent and
transitory in their
duration, but the roots of spirit and matter are eternal.
The root of matter
(Mulâprakriti ) has been said by a profound writer to be
visible to the LOGOS as
a veil thrown over the One existence, the supreme
Brahman (Parabrahman)
–to use the ancient name.
It is this
"veil" which the LOGOS assumes for the purpose of manifestation,
using it for the
self-imposed limit which makes activity possible. From this He
elaborates the matter of
His universe, being Himself its informing, guiding, and
controlling life. (
Hence He is called "The Lord of Mâyâ" in some Eastern
Scriptures, Mâyâ, or
illusion, being the principle of form; form is regarded as
illusory, from its
transitory nature and perpetual transformations, the life
which expresses itself
under the veil of form being the reality).
Of what occurs on the
two higher planes of the universe, the seventh and sixth,
we can form but the
haziest conception. The energy of the LOGOS as whirling
motion of inconceivable
rapidity "digs holes in space" in this root matter, and
this vortex of life
encased in a film of the root of matter is the primary atom;
these and their
aggregations, spread throughout the universe, form all the
subdivisions of
spirit-matter of the highest or seventh plane. The sixth plane
is formed by some of the
countless myriads of these primary atoms, setting up a
vortex in the coarsest
aggregations of their own plane, and this primary atom
en-walled with spiral
strands of the coarsest combinations of the seventh plane
becomes the finest unit
of spirit-matter, or atom of the sixth plane. These
sixth plane atoms and
their endless combinations form the subdivisions of the
spirit-matter of the
sixth plane.
The sixth-plane-atom, in
its turn, sets up a vortex in the coarsest aggregations
of its own plane, and,
with these coarsest aggregations as a limiting wall, becomes the finest unit of
spirit-matter, or atom, of the fifth plane. Again, these fifth-plane atoms, and
their combinations form the subdivisions of the spirit-matter of the fifth
plane. The process is repeated to form successively
the spirit-matter of the
fourth, the third, the second, and the first planes.
These are the seven
great regions of the universe, so far as their material constituents are
concerned. A clearer idea of them will be gained by analogy when we come to
master the modifications of the spirit-matter of our own physical world.
(The student may find
the conception clearer if he thinks of the fifth plane atoms as Atma ; those of
the fourth plane as Atma enveloped in Buddhi-matter ; those of the third plane
as Atma enveloped in Buddhi and Manas-matter ; those of the second plane as
Atma enveloped in Buddhi-Manas- and Kama-matter ; those of the lowest as Atma
enveloped in Buddhi-Manas-Kama and Sthûla-matter. Only the outermost is active
in each, but the inner are there, though latent, ready to come into activity on
the upward arc of evolution).
The world
"spirit-matter" is used designedly. At implies the fact that there is
no such thing as "dead" matter ; all matter is living, the tiniest
particles are lives. Science speaks truly in affirming: "No force without
matter, no matter without force." They are wedded together in an
indissoluble marriage throughout the ages of the life of a universe, and none
can wrench them apart. Matter is form, and there is no form which does not
express a life ; spirit is life, and there is no life that is not limited by
form. Even the LOGOS, the Supreme Lord, has during manifestation the universe
as His form, and so down to the atom.
This involution of the
life of the LOGOS as the ensouling force in every
particle, and its
successive enwrapping in the spirit-matter of every plane, so
that the materials of
each plane have within them in a hidden, or latent
condition, all the form
and force possibilities of all the planes above them as
well as those of their
own – these two facts make evolution certain and give to
the very lowest particle
the hidden potentialities which will render it fit – as
they become active powers
– to enter into the forms of the highest beings. In
fact, evolution may be
summed up in a phrase: it is latent potentialities
becoming active powers.
The second great wave of
evolution, the evolution of form, and the third great
wave, the evolution of
self-consciousness, will be dealt with later on. These
three currents of
evolution are distinguishable on our earth in connection with
humanity ; the making of
the materials, the building of the house, and the
growing of the tenant of
the house, or, as said above, the evolution of
spirit-matter, the
evolution of form, the evolution of self-consciousness.If the
reader can grasp and
retain this idea, he will find a helpful clue to guide him
through the labyrinth of
facts.
We can now turn to the detailed
examination of the physical plane, that on which
our world exists and to
which our bodies belong.
Examining the materials
belonging to this plane, we are struck by their immense
variety, the innumerable
differences of constitution in the objects around us,
minerals, vegetables,
animals, all differing in their constituents: matter hard
and soft, transparent
and opaque, brittle and ductile, bitter and sweet,
pleasant and nauseous,
coloured and colourless. Out of this confusion three
subdivisions of matter
emerge as a fundamental classification: matter is solid,
liquid, gaseous. Further
examination shows that these solids, liquids and gases
are made up by
combinations of much simpler bodies, called by chemists
"elements,"
and that these elements may exist in a solid, liquid, or gaseous
condition without
changing their respective natures.
Thus the chemical
element oxygen is a constituent of wood, and in combination
with other elements
forms the solid wood fibres ; it exists in the sap with
another element,
yielding a liquid combination as water ; and it exists also in
it by itself as gas.
Under these three conditions it is oxygen. Further , pure
oxygen can be reduced
from a gas to a liquid, and from a liquid to a solid,
remaining pure oxygen
all the time, and so with other elements. We thus obtain
as three subdivisions,
or conditions of matter on the physical plane, solid,
liquid, gas. Searching
further, we find a fourth condition, ether, and a minute
search reveals that this
ether exists in four conditions as well defined as
those of solid, liquid
and gas ; to take oxygen again as an example: as it may
be reduced from the
gaseous condition to the liquid and the solid, so it may be
raised from the gaseous
through four etheric stages the last of which consists
of the ultimate physical
atom, the disintegration of the atom taking matter out
of the physical plane
altogether, and into the next plane above.
In the annexed plate
three gases are shown in the gaseous and four etheric
states ; it will be
observed that the structure of the ultimate physical atom is
the same for all, and
that the variety of the "elements" is due to the variety
of ways in which these
ultimate physical atoms combine. Thus the seventh
subdivision of physical
spirit-matter is composed of homogeneous atoms ; the
sixth is composed of
fairly simple heterogeneous combinations of these, each
combination behaving as
a unit ; the fifth is composed of more complex
combinations, and the fourth
of still more complex ones, but in all cases these
combinations act as
units .
The third subdivision
consists of yet more complicated combinations, regarded by the chemist as
gaseous atoms or "elements," and on this subdivision many of the
combinations have received special names, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, chlorine,
etc., and each newly discovered combination now receives its name ; the second
subdivision consists of combinations in the liquid condition, whether regarded
as elements such as bromine, or as combinations such as water or alcohol ; the
first subdivision is composed of all solids, again whether regarded as
elements, such as iodine, gold, lead, etc., or as compounds, such as wood,
stone, chalk, and so on.
The physical plane may
serve the student as a model from which by analogy he may gain an idea of the
subdivisions of spirit-matter of other planes. When a
Theosophist speaks of a
plane, he means a region throughout which spirit-matter
exists, all whose
combinations are derived from a particular set of atoms; these
atoms, in turn, are
units possessing similar organisations, whose life is the
life of the LOGOS veiled
in fewer or more coverings according to the plane, and
whose form consists of
the solid, or lowest subdivision of matter, of the plane
immediately above. A
plane is thus a division in nature, as well as a
metaphysical idea.
Thus far we have been
studying the results in our own physical world of the
evolution of
spirit-matter in our division of the first or lowest plane of our
system. For countless
ages the fashioning of materials has been going on, the
current of the evolution
of spirit-matter, and in the materials of our globe we
see the outcome at the
present time. But when we begin to study the inhabitants
of the physical plane,
we come to the evolution of form, ( ) the building of
organisms out of these
materials.
When the evolution of
materials had reached a sufficiently advanced state, the
second great life-wave
from the LOGOS gave the impulse to the evolution of form, and He became the
organising force (As Âtmâ-Buddhi, indivisible in action, and therefore spoken
of as the Monad. All forms have Âtmâ-Buddhi as controlling life.) - of His
Universe, countless hosts of entities, entitled Builders -- ( Some are lofty
spiritual Intelligences, but the name covers even the building Nature-spirits
The subject is dealt with in Chapter XII ) - taking part in the building up of
forms out of combinations of spirit-matter. The life of the LOGOS abiding in
each form is its central, controlling, and directing energy.
This building of forms
on the higher planes cannot here be conveniently studied in detail; it may
suffice to say that all forms exist as Ideas in the mind of the LOGOS, and that
in this second life-wave these were thrown outwards as models to guide the
Builders. On the third and second planes the early spirit-matter combinations
are designed to give it facility in assuming shapes
organised to act as
units, and gradually to increase its stability when shaped into an organism.
This process went on
upon the third and second planes, in what are termed the three elemental
kingdoms, the combinations of matter formed therein being called generally
"elemental essence," and this essence being moulded into forms by aggregations,
the forms enduring for a time and then disintegrating. The outpoured life, or
Monad, evolved through these kingdoms and reached in due course the physical
plane, where it began to draw together the ethers and hold them in filmy
shapes, in which life-currents played and into which the denser materials were
built, forming the first minerals. In these are beautifully shown – as may be
seen by reference to any book on crystallurgy – the numerical and geometrical
lines on which forms are constructed, and from them may be gathered plentiful
evidence that life is working in all minerals, although much "cribbed,
cabined, and confined." The fatigue to which metals are subject is another
sign that they are living things, but it is here enough to say that the occult
doctrine so regards them, knowing the already-mentioned processes by which life
has been involved in them.
Great stability of form
having been gained in many of the minerals, the evolving Monad elaborated greater
plasticity of form in the vegetable kingdom, combining this with stability of
organisation. These characteristics found a yet more balanced expression in the
animal world, and reached their culmination of
equilibrium in man,
whose physical body is made up of constituents of most unstable equilibrium,
thus giving great adaptability, and yet which is held together by a combining
central force which resists general disintegration even
under the most varied
conditions.
Man’s physical body has
two main divisions: the dense body, made of constituents from the three lower
levels of the physical plane, solids, liquids, and gases: and the etheric
double, violet-gray or blue-gray in colour, interpenetrating the dense body and
composed of materials drawn from the four higher levels.
The general function of
the physical body is to receive contacts from the physical world, and send the
report of them inwards, to serve as materials from which the conscious entity
inhabiting the body is to elaborate knowledge. Its etheric portion has also the
duty of acting as a medium through which the life-currents poured out from the
sun can be adapted to the uses of the denser particles.
The sun is the great
reservoir of the electrical, magnetic, and vital forces for
our system, and it pours
out abundantly these streams of life-giving energy.
They are taken in by the
etheric doubles of all minerals, vegetables, animals,
and men, and are by them
transmuted into the various life-energies needed by
each entity. ( When thus
appropriated the life is called Prana, and it becomes
the life-breath of every
creature. Prana is but a name for the universal life
while it is taken in by
an entity and is supporting its separated life.)
The etheric doubles draw
in, specialise, and distribute them over their physical
counterparts. It has
been observed that in vigorous health much more of the
life-energies are
transmuted than the physical body requires for its own
support, and that the
surplus is rayed out and is taken up and utilised by the
weaker. What is
technically called the health aura is the part of the etheric
double that extends a
few inches from the whole surface of the body and shows
radiating lines, like
the radii of a sphere, going outwards in all directions.
These lines droop when
vitality is diminished below the point of health, and
resume their radiating
character with renewed vigour. It is this vital energy,
specialised by the
etheric double, which is poured out by the mesmeriser for the
restoration of the weak
and for the cure of disease, although he often mingles
with it currents of a
more rarefied kind. Hence the depletion of vital energy
shown by the exhaustion
of the mesmeriser who prolongs his work to excess.
Man’s body is fine or coarse
in its texture according to the materials drawn
from the physical plane
for its composition. Each subdivision of matter yields
finer or coarser
materials ; compare the bodies of a butcher and of a refined
student ; both have
solids in them, but solids of such different qualities.
Further , we know that a
coarse body can be refined, a refined body coarsened.
The body is constantly
changing ; each particle is a life, and the lives come
and go. They are drawn
to a body consonant with themselves, they are repelled
from one discordant with
themselves. All things live in rhythmical vibrations,
all seek the harmonious
and are repelled by dissonance.
A pure body repels
coarse particles because they vibrate at rates discordant
with its own ; a coarse
body attracts them because their vibrations accord with
its own. Hence if the
body changes its rates of vibration, it gradually drives
out of it the
constituents that cannot fall into the new rhythm, and fills up
their places by drawing
in from external nature fresh constituents that are
harmonious. Nature
provides materials vibrating in all possible ways, and each
body exercises its own
selective action.
In the earlier building
of human bodies this selective action was due to the
Monad of form, but now
that man is a self-conscious entity he presides over his
own building. By his
thoughts he strikes the keynote of his music, and sets up
the rhythms that are the
most powerful factors in the continual changes in his
physical and other
bodies. As his knowledge increases he learns how to build up
his physical body with
pure food, and so facilitates the tuning of it. He learns
to live by the axiom of
purification: "Pure food, pure mind, and constant memory of God." As
the highest creature living on the physical plane, he is the
vice-regent of the LOGOS
thereon, responsible, so far as his powers extend, for
its order, peace, and
good government ; and this duty he cannot discharge
without these three
requisites.
The physical body, thus composed
of elements drawn from all the subdivisions of the physical plane, is fitted to
receive and to answer impression from it of
every kind. Its first
contacts will be of the simplest and crudest sorts, and as
the life within it
thrills out in answer to the stimulus from without, throwing
its molecules into
responsive vibrations, there is developed all over the body
the sense of touch, the
recognition of something coming into contact with it. As
specialised sense-organs
are developed to receive special kinds of vibrations,
the value of the body
increases as a future vehicle for a conscious entity on
the physical plane. The
more impressions it can answer to, the more useful does
it become ; for only
those to which it can answer can reach the consciousness.
Even now there are
myriads of vibrations pulsing around us in physical nature
from the knowledge of
which we are shut out because of the inability of our
physical vehicle to
receive and vibrate in accord with them. Unimagined
beauties, exquisite
sounds, delicate subtleties, touch the walls of our prison
house and pass on
unheeded. Not yet is developed the perfect body that shall
thrill to every pulse in
nature as the aeolian harp to the zephyr.
The vibrations that the
body is able to receive, it transmits to physical
centres, belonging to
its highly complicated nervous system. The etheric
vibrations which
accompany all the vibrations of the denser physical
constituents are
similarly received by the etheric double, and transmuted to its
corresponding centres.
Most of the vibrations in the dense matter are changed
into chemical heat, and
other forms of physical energy; the etheric give rise to
magnetic and electric
action, and also pass on the vibrations to the astral
body, whence, as we
shall see later, they reach the mind.
Thus information about
the external world reaches the conscious entity enthroned in the body, the Lord
of the body, as he is sometimes called. As the channels of information develop
and are exercised, the conscious entity grows by the materials supplied to his
thought by them, but so little is man yet developed that even the etheric
double is not yet sufficiently harmonised to regularly convey to the man
impressions received by it independently of its denser comrade, or to impress
them on his brain. Occasionally it succeeds in doing so, and then we have the
lowest form of clairvoyance, the seeing of the etheric doubles of physical
objects, and of things that have etheric bodies as their lowest vesture.
Man dwells, as we shall
see, in various vehicles, physical, astral, and mental
and it is important to
know and remember that as we are evolving upwards, the
lowest of the vehicles,
the dense physical, is that which consciousness first
controls and rationalises.
The physical brain is the instrument of consciousness
in waking life on the
physical plane, and consciousness works in it – in the
undeveloped man – more
effectively than in any other vehicle. Its potentialities
are less than those of
the subtler vehicles, but its actualities are greater,
and the man knows
himself as " I " in the physical body ere he finds himself
elsewhere. Even if he be
more highly developed than the average man, he can only show as much of himself
down here as the physical organism permits, for
consciousness can
manifest on the physical plane only so much as the physical
vehicle can carry.
The dense and etheric
bodies are not normally separated during earth life; they
normally function
together, as the lower and higher strings of a single instrument when a chord
is struck, but they also carry on separate though coordinated activities. Under
conditions of weak health or nervous excitement
the etheric double may
in great part be abnormally extruded from its dense counterpart ; the latter
then becomes very dully conscious , or entranced, according to the less or
greater amount of the etheric matter extruded.
Anesthetics drive out
the greater part of the etheric double, so that
consciousness cannot
affect or be affected by the dense body, its bridge of
communication being
broken. In the abnormally organised person called
mediums, dislocation of
the etheric and dense bodies easily occurs, and the etheric double, when
extruded, largely supplies the physical basis for "materialisations."
In sleep, when the
consciousness leaves the physical vehicle which it uses
during waking life, the
dense and etheric bodies remain together, but in the
physical dream life they
function to some extent independently. Impressions
experienced during
waking life are reproduced by the automatic action of the
body, and both the
physical and etheric brains are filled with disjointed
fragmentary pictures,
the vibrations as it were, jostling each other, and
causing the most
grotesque combinations. Vibrations from outside also affect
both, and combinations
often set up during waking life are easily called into
activity by currents
from the astral world of like nature with themselves. The
purity or impurity of waking
thoughts will largely govern the pictures arising
in dreams, whether
spontaneously set up or induced from without.
At what is called death,
the etheric double is drawn away from its dense
counterpart by the
escaping consciousness ; the magnetic tie existing between
them during life earth
life is snapped asunder, and for some hours the
consciousness remains
enveloped in this etheric garb. In this it sometimes
appears to those with
whom it is closely bound up, as a cloudy figure, very
dully conscious and
speechless – the wraith. It may also be seen, after the
conscious entity has
deserted it, floating over the grave where its dense
counterpart is buried,
slowly disintegrating as time goes on.
When the time comes for
rebirth, the etheric double is built in advance of the
dense body, the latter
exactly following it in its ante-natal development. These
bodies may be said to
trace the limitations within which the conscious entity
will have to live and
work during his life, a subject that will be more fully
explained in Chapter IX
on Karma.
THE ASTRAL
PLANE
The astral plane is the
region of the universe next to the physical, if the word
"next" may be
permitted in such a connection. Life there is more active than on
the physical plane, and
form is more plastic. The spirit-matter of that plane is
more highly vitalised
and finer than any grade of spirit-matter in the physical
world. For , as we have
seen, the ultimate physical atom, the constituent of the
rarest physical ether,
has for its sphere-wall innumerable aggregations of the
coarsest astral matter.
The word "next" is, however, inappropriate, as
suggesting the idea that
the planes of the universe are arranged as concentric
circles, one ending
where the next begins. Rather they are concentric
interpenetrating
spheres, not separated from each other by distance but by
difference of
constitution. As air permeates water, as ether permeates the
densest solid, so does
astral matter permeate all physical. The astral world is
above us, below us, on
every side of us, through us; we live and move in it, but
it is intangible,
invisible, inaudible, imperceptible, because the prison of the
physical body shuts us
away from it, the physical particles being too gross to
be set in vibration by
astral matter.
In this chapter we shall
study the plane in its general aspects, leaving on one
side for separate
consideration those special conditions of life on the astral
plane surrounding the
human entities who are passing through it on their way
from earth to heaven. (
Devachan, the happy or bright state, is the Theosophical
name for heaven.
Kâmaloka, the place of desire, is the name given to the
conditions of
intermediate life on the astral plane).
The spirit-matter of the
astral plane exists in seven subdivisions, as we have
seen in the
spirit-matter of the physical. There, as here, there are numberless
combinations, forming
the astral solids, liquids, gases, and ethers. But most
material forms there
have a brightness, a translucency, as compared to forms
here, which have caused
the epithet astral, or starry, to be applied to them –
an epithet which is, on
the whole, misleading, but is too firmly established by
use to be changed. As
there are no specific names for the subdivisions of astral
spirit-matter, we may
use the terrestrial designations. The main idea to be
grasped is that astral
objects are combinations of astral matter, as physical
objects are combinations
of physical matter, and that the astral world scenery
much resembles that of
earth in consequence of its being largely made up of the
astral duplicates of
physical objects.
One peculiarity,
however, arrests and confuses the untrained observer; partly
because of the translucency
of astral objects, and partly because of the nature
of astral vision –
consciousness being less hampered by the finer astral matter
than when encased in the
terrestrial – everything is transparent, its back is
visible as its front,
its inside as its outside. Some experience is needed,
therefore, ere objects
are correctly seen, and a person who has developed astral
vision, but has not yet
had much experience in its use, is apt to receive the
most topsy-turvy
impressions and to fall into the most astounding blunders.
Another striking and at
first bewildering characteristic of the astral world is
the swiftness with which
forms – especially when unconnected with any
terrestrial matrix –
change their outlines.
An astral entity will
change his whole appearance with the most startling
rapidity, for astral
matter takes the form under every impulse of thought, the
life swiftly remoulding
the form to give itself new expression. As the great
life-wave of the
evolution of form passed downwards through the astral plane,
and constituted on that
plane the third elemental kingdom, the Monad drew round itself combinations of
astral matter, giving to these combinations – entitled
elemental essence – a
peculiar vitality and the characteristic of responding to,
and instantly taking
shape under, the impulse of thought vibrations.
This elemental essence
exists in hundreds of varieties on every subdivision of
the astral plane, as
though the air became visible here – as indeed it may seen
in quivering waves under
great heat – and were in constant undulatory motion
with changing colours
like mother-of-pearl.
This vast atmosphere of
elemental essence is ever answering to vibrations caused by thoughts, feelings,
and desires, and is thrown into commotion by a rush of any of these like
bubbles in boiling water. ( C.W. Leadbeater, Astral Plane, p. 52). The duration
of the form depends on the strength of the impulse to which it owes its birth ;
the clearness of its outline depends on the precision of the thinking, and the
colour depends on the quality – intellectual, devotional, passional – of the
thought.
The vague loose thoughts
which are so largely produced by undeveloped minds gather round themselves
loose clouds of elemental essence when they arrive in the astral world, and
drift about, attracted hither and thither to other clouds of similar nature,
clinging round the astral bodies of persons whose magnetism attracts them –
either good or evil – and after a while disintegrating, to again form a part of
the general atmosphere of elemental essence. While they maintain a separate
existence they are living entities, with bodies ofelemental essence and
thoughts as the ensouling lives, and they are then called artificial
elementals, or thought-forms.
Clear, precise thoughts
have each their own definite shapes, with sharp clean outlines, and show an
endless variety of designs. They are shaped by vibrations set up by thought,
just as on the physical plane we find figures which are shaped by vibrations
set up by sound. "Voice-figures" offer a very fair analogy for
"thought-figures," for nature, with all her infinite variety, is very
conservative of principles, and reproduces the same methods of working on plane
after plane in her realms.
These clearly defined artificial
elementals have a longer and much more active
life than their cloudy
brethren, exercising a far stronger influence on the astral bodies (and through
them on the minds) of those to whom they are attracted.
They set up in them
vibrations similar to their own, and thus thoughts spread from mind to mind
without terrestrial expression. More than this: they can be directed by the
thinker towards any person he desires to reach, their potency depending on the
strength of his will and the intensity of his mental power.
Among average people the
artificial elementals created by feeling or desire are
more vigorous and more
definite than those created by thought. Thus an outburst of anger will cause a
very definitely outlined and powerful flash of red, and sustained anger will
make a dangerous elemental, red in colour, and pointed, barbed, or otherwise
qualified to injure. Love, according to its quality, will set up forms more or
less beautiful in colour and design, all shades of crimson to the most exquisite
and soft hues of rose, like the palest blushes of sunset or the dawn, clouds of
tenderly strong protective shapes. Many a Mother’s loving prayers go to hover
round her son as angel-forms, turning aside from him evil influences that
perchance his own thoughts are attracting.
It is characteristic of
these artificial elementals, when they are directed by the will towards any
particular person, that they are animated by the one impulse of carrying out
the will of their creator. A protective elemental will hover round its object,
seeking any opportunity of warding off evil or attracting good – not
consciously, but by a blind impulse, as finding there the
line of least
resistance.
So, also, an elemental
ensouled by a malignant thought will hover round its victim seeking opportunity
to injure. But neither the one nor the other can make any impression unless
there be in the astral body of the object something skin to themselves,
something that can answer accordingly to their vibrations, and
thus enable them to
attach themselves. If there be nothing in him of matter cognate to their own,
then by a law of their nature they rebound from him along the path they pursued
in going to him – the magnetic trace they have left – and rush to their creator
with a force proportionate to that of their projection.
Thus a thought of deadly
hatred, failing to strike the object at which it was darted, has been known to
slay its sender, while good thoughts sent to the unworthy return as blessings
to him that poured them forth.
A very slight
understanding of the astral world will thus act as a most powerful stimulus to
right thinking, and will render heavy the sense of responsibility in regard to
the thoughts and feelings, and desires that we let loose into this astral
realm. Ravening beasts of prey, rending and devouring, are too many of
the thoughts with which
men people the astral plane. But they err from ignorance, they know not what
they do. One of the objects of theosophical teaching, partly lifting up the
veil of the unseen world, is to give men a sounder basis for conduct, a more
rational appreciation of the causes of which the effects only are seen in the
terrestrial world.
A few of its doctrines
are more important in their ethical bearing than this of the creation and
direction of thought-forms, or artificial elementals, for through it man learns
that his mind does not concern himself alone, that his thoughts do not affect
himself alone, but that he is ever sending out angels and
devils into the world of
men, for whose creation he is responsible, and for whose influences he is held
accountable. Let men, then, know the law, and guide their thoughts thereby.
If, instead of taking
artificial elementals separately, we take them in the mass, it is easy to
realise the tremendous effect they have in producing national and race
feelings, and thus in biasing and prejudicing the mind. We all grow up
surrounded by an atmosphere crowded with elementals embodying certain ideas ;
national prejudices, national ways of looking at all questions, national types
of feelings and thoughts, all these play on us from our birth, aye, and before.
We see everything through this atmosphere, every thought is more or less
refracted by it, and our own astral bodies are vibrating in accord with it.
Hence the same idea will
look quite different to the Hindu, an Englishman, a Spaniard, and a Russian ;
some conceptions easy to the one will be almost impossible to the other,
customs instinctively attractive to the one are instinctively odious to the
other. We are all dominated by our national atmosphere, i.e., by that portion
of the astral world immediately surrounding us.
The thoughts of others,
cast much in the same mould, play upon us and call out from us synchronous
vibrations ; they intensify the points in which we accord with our surroundings
and flatten away the differences, and this ceaseless action upon us through the
astral body impresses on us the national half-mark
and traces channels for
mental energies into which they readily flow. Sleeping and waking , these
currents play upon us, and our very unconsciousness of their action makes it
the more effective. As most people are receptive rather than initiative in
their nature, they act almost as automatic reproducers of the
thoughts which reach
them, and thus the national atmosphere is continually intensified.
When a person is
beginning to be sensitive to astral influences, he will occasionally find
himself suddenly overpowered or assailed by a quite inexplicable and seemingly
irrational dread, which swoops upon him with even paralysing force. Fight
against it as he may, he yet feels it, and perhaps resents it. Probably there
are few who have not experienced this fear to some
extent, the uneasy dread
of an invisible something, the feeling of a presence, of "not being
alone." This arises partly from a certain hostility which animates the
natural elemental world against the human, on account of the various
destructive agencies devised by mankind on the physical plane and reacting on
the astral, but is also largely due to the presence of so many artificial
elementals of an unfriendly kind, bred by human minds.
Thoughts of hatred,
jealousy, revenge, bitterness, suspicion, discontent, go out
by millions crowding the
astral plane with artificial elementals whose whole
life is made of these
feelings. How much also is there of vague distrust and
suspicion poured out by
the ignorant against all whose ways and appearance are
alien and unfamiliar.
The blind distrust of all foreigners, the surly contempt,
extending in many
districts even towards inhabitants of another country – these
things also contribute
evil influences to the astral world. There being so much
of these things among
us, we create a blindly hostile army on the astral plane,
and this is answered in
our own astral bodies by a feeling of dread, set up by
the antagonistic
vibrations that are sensed, but not understood.
Outside the class of
artificial elementals, the astral world is thickly populated, even excluding,
as we do for the present, all the human entities who have lost their physical
bodies by death. There are great hosts of natural elementals, or
nature-spirits, divided into five main classes –the elementals of the ether,
the fire, the air, the water, and the earth ; the last four groups have been
termed, in mediaeval occultism, the Salamanders, Sylphs, Undines, and Gnomes
(needless to say there are two other classes, completing the seven, not
concerning us here, as they are still unmanifested).
These are the true
elementals, or creatures of the elements, earth, water, air,
fire and ether, and they
are severally concerned in the carrying on of the
activities connected
with their own element ; they are the channels through
which work the divine
energies in these several fields, the living expressions
of the law in each. At
the head of each division is a great Being, the captain
of the mighty host,
(Called a Deva, or God, by the Hindus. The student may like
to have the Sanskrit
names of the five Gods of the manifested elements ; Indra,
lord of the Akâsha, or
ether of space ; Agni, lord of fire ; Pavana, lord of
air, Varuna, lord of
water ; Kshiti, lord of the earth). the directing and
guiding intelligence of
the whole department of nature which is administered and
energised by the class
of elementals under his control.
Thus Agni the fire-God,
is a great spiritual entity concerned with the manifestation of fire on all
planes of the universe, and carries on his administration through the host of the
fire-elementals. By understanding the nature of these, or knowing the methods
of their control, the so-called miracles of magical feats are worked, which
from time to time are recorded in the public
press, whether they are
avowedly the results of magical arts, or are done by the aid of
"spirits" – as in the case of the late Mr. Home, who could
unconcernedly pick a red-hot coal out of a blazing fire with his fingers and
hold it in his hand unhurt. Levitation (the suspension of a heavy body in the
air without visible support) and walking on the water have been done by the aid
respectively of the elementals of the air and the water, although another
method is more often employed.
As the elements enter
into the human body, one or another predominating according to the nature of
the person, each human being has relations with these elementals, the most
friendly to him being those whose element is preponderant in him. The effects
of this fact are often noted, and are popularly ascribed to "luck". A
person has " a lucky hand" in making plants grow, in lighting fires,
in finding underground water, etc. Nature is ever jostling us with her occult
forces, but we are slow to take her hints. Tradition sometimes hides a truth in
a proverb or a fable, but we have grown beyond all such
"superstitions."
We find also on the
astral plane, nature-spirits – less accurately termed elementals – who are
concerned with the building of forms in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and
human kingdoms. There are nature-spirits who build up minerals, who guide the
vital energies in plants, and who molecule by molecule
form the bodies of the
animal kingdom ; they are concerned with the making of the astral bodies of
minerals, plants, and animals, as well as with that of the physical.
These are the fairies
and elves of legends, the "little people" who play so large a part in
the folk lore of every nation, the charming irresponsible children of nature,
whom science had coldly relegated to the nursery, but who will be replaced in
their own grade of natural order by the wiser scientists of a later day. Only
poets and occultists believe in them just now, poets by the
intuition of their
genius, occultists by the vision of their trained inner senses. The multitude
laugh at both, most of all at the occultists ; but it matter not – wisdom shall
be justified of her children.
The play of the
life-currents in the etheric doubles of the forms in the mineral, vegetable,
and animal kingdoms, awoke out of latency the astral matter involved in the structure
of their atomic and molecular constituents. It began to thrill in a very
limited way in the minerals, and the Monad of form, exercising his organising
power, drew in materials from the astral world, and
these were built by the
nature-spirits into a loosely constituted mass, the mineral astral body.
In the vegetable world
the astral bodies are a little more organised, and their special characteristic
of "feeling" begins to appear. Dull and diffused sensations of
well-being and discomfort are observable in most plants as the results of the
increasing activity of the astral body. They dimly enjoy the air,
the rain, and the
sunshine, and gropingly seek them, while they shrink from noxious conditions.
Some seek the light and some seek the darkness ; they answer to stimuli, and
adapt themselves to external conditions, some showing plainly a sense of touch.
In the animal kingdom the astral body is more developed, reaching in the higher
members of that kingdom a sufficiently definite
organisation to cohere
for some time after the death of the physical body, and to lead an independent
existence on the astral plane.
The nature-spirits
concerned with the building of the animal and human astral bodies have been
given the special name of desire-elementals, (Kâmadevas, they are called
"desire-gods") because they are strongly animated by desires of all
kinds, and constantly build themselves into the astral bodies of animals and
men.
They also use the
varieties of elemental essence similar to that of which their own bodies are
composed to construct the astral bodies of animals, those bodies thus
acquiring, as interwoven parts, the centres of sensation and of the various
passional activities. These centres are stimulated into functioning by impulses
received by the dense physical organs, and transmitted by the etheric physical
organs to the astral body.
Not until the astral
centre is reached does the animal feel pleasure or pain. A stone may be struck,
but it will feel no pain ; it has dense and etheric physical molecules, but its
astral body is unorganised ; the animal feels pain from a blow because he
possesses the astral centres of sensation, and the desire-elementals have woven
into him their own nature.
As a new consideration
enters into the work of these elementals with the human astral body, we will
finish our survey of the inhabitants of the astral plane ere studying this more
complicated astral form.
The desire-bodies,
(Kâmarûpa is the technical name for the astral body, from Kâma, desire, and
rûpa, form) or astral bodies, of animals are found, as has just been stated, to
lead an independent though fleeting existence on the astral plane after death
has destroyed their physical counterparts. In "civilised"
countries these animal
astral bodies add much to the general feeling of hostility which was spoken of
above, for the organised butchery of animals in slaughterhouses and by sport
sends millions of these annually into the astral world, full of horror, terror,
and shrinking from men.
The comparatively few
creatures that are allowed to die in peace and quietness are lost in the vast
hordes of the murdered, and from the currents set up by these there rain down
influences from the astral world on the human and animal races which drive them
yet further apart and engender "instinctive" distrust and fear on the
one side and lust of inflicting cruelty on the other.
These feelings have been
much intensified of late years by the coldly devised methods of the scientific
torture called vivisection, the unmentionable barbarities of which have
introduced new horrors into the astral world by their reaction on the culprits,
(See Chapter III, on "Kâmaloka .") as well as having
increased the gulf
between man and his "poor relations".
Apart from what we may
call the normal population of the astral world, there are passing travellers in
it, led there by their work, whom we cannot leave entirely without mention.
Some of these come from our own terrestrial world, while others are visitors
from loftier regions.
Of the former, many are
Initiates of various grades, some belonging to the Great White Lodge – the
Himâlayan or Tibetan Brotherhood, as it is often called (It is to some members
of this Lodge that the Theosophical Society owes its inception) – while others
are members of different occult lodges throughout the world, ranging from white
through shades of grey to black. ( Occultists who are unselfish and wholly
devoted to the carrying out of the Divine Will, or who are aiming to attain
these virtues, are called "white". Those who are selfish and are
working against the Divine purpose in the universe are called
"black."
Expanding selflessness,
love and devotion are the marks of the one class: contracting selfishness,
hatred, and harsh arrogance are the sign of the other.
Between these are the
classes whose motives are mixed, and who have not yet realised that they must
evolve towards the One Self or towards separated selves ; these I have called
grey. Their members gradually drift into, or deliberately join, one of the two
great groups with clearly marked aims).
All these are men living
in physical bodies, who have learned to leave the physical encasement at will,
and to function in full consciousness in the astral body. They are of all
grades of knowledge and virtue, beneficent and maleficent, strong and weak,
gentle and ferocieous. There are also many younger aspirants, still
uninitiated, who are learning to use the astral vehicle, and who are employed
in works of benevolence or malevolence according to the path they are seeking
to tread.
After these, we have
psychics of varying degrees of development, some fairly alert, others dreamy
and confused, wandering about while their physical bodies are asleep or
entranced. Unconscious of their external surroundings, wrapped in their own
thoughts, drawn as it were within their astral shell, are millions of
drifting astral bodies
inhabited by conscious entities, whose physical frames are sunk in sleep.
As we shall see
presently, the consciousness in its astral vehicle escapes when the body sinks
into sleep, and passes on to the astral plane ; but it is not conscious of its
surroundings until the astral body is sufficiently developed to function
independently of the physical.
Occasionally is seen on
this plane a disciple (A Chelâ, the accepted pupil of an
Adept), who has passed
through death and is awaiting an almost immediate
reincarnation under the
direction of his Master. He is, of course, in the
enjoyment of full
consciousness, and is working like other disciples who have
merely slipped off their
bodies in sleep. A certain stage (See chapter XI, on
"Man’s
Ascent") – a disciple is allowed to reincarnate very quickly after death,
and under these
circumstances he has to await on the astral plane a suitable
opportunity for rebirth.
Passing through the
astral plane also are the human beings who are on their way
to reincarnation ; they
will again be mentioned later on (See chapter VII, on
"Reincarnation".)
and they concern themselves in no way with the general life of
the astral world. The
desire-elementals, however, who have affinity with them
from their past
passional and sensational activities, gather round them,
assisting in the
building of the new astral body for the coming earth-life.
We must now turn to the
consideration of the human astral body during the period of existence in this
world, and study its nature and constitution as well as its relations with the
astral realm. We will take the astral body of
(a) an undeveloped man,
(b) an average man, and
(c) a spiritually
developed man.
(a) An undeveloped man’s
astral body is a cloudy, loosely organised, vaguely
outlined mass of astral
spirit-matter, containing materials – both astral matter
and elemental essence –
drawn from all the subdivisions of the astral plane, but
with a predominance of
substances from the lower, so that it is dense and coarse in texture, fit to
respond to all the stimuli connected with the passions and appetites. The
colours caused by the rates of vibration are dull, muddy, and
dusky – brown, dull
reds, dirty greens, are predominant hues. There is no play
of light or quickly
changing flashing of colours through this astral body, but
the various passions
show themselves as heavy surges, or, when violent, as
flashes ; thus sexual
passion will send a wave of muddy crimson, rage a flash of
lurid red.
The astral body is
larger than the physical, extending round it in all directions ten to twelve
inches in such a case as we are considering. The centres of the organs of sense
are definitely marked, and are active when worked on from without ; but in
quiescence the life-streams are sluggish, and the astral body, stimulated
neither from the physical nor mental worlds, is drowsy and indifferent. ( the
student will recognise here the predominance of the tâmasic guna, the quality
of darkness or inertness in nature.)
It is a constant
characteristic of the undeveloped state that activity is
prompted from without
rather from the inner consciousness . A stone to be moved must be pushed ; a
plant moves under the attractions of light and moisture ; an animal becomes
active when stirred by hunger: a poorly developed man needs to be prompted in
similar ways. Not till the mind is partly grown does it begin to initiate
action. The centres of higher activities, ( The seven Chakras, or wheels, so
named from the whirling appearance they present, like wheels of
living fire when in
activity.) related to the independent functioning of the
astral senses, are
scarcely visible. A man at this stage requires for his
evolution violent
sensations of every kind, to arouse the nature and stimulate
it into activity. Heavy
blows from the outer world, both of pleasure and pain,
are wanted to awaken and
spur to action.
The more numerous and
violent the sensations, the more he can be made to feel,
the better for his
growth. At this stage quality matters little, quantity and
vigour are the main
requisites. The beginnings of this man’s morality will be in
his passions ; a slight
impulse of unselfishness in his relations to wife and
child or friend, will be
the first step upwards, by causing vibrations in the
finer matter of his
astral body and attracting into it more elemental essence of
an appropriate kind. The
astral body is constantly changing its materials under
this play of the
passions, appetites, desires, and emotions.
All good ones strengthen
the finer parts of the body, shake out some of the
coarser constituents, draw
into it the subtler materials, and attract round it
elementals of a
beneficent kind who aid in the renovating process. All evil ones
have diametrically
opposite effects, strengthening the coarser, expelling the
finer, drawing in more
of the former, and attracting elementals who help in the
deteriorating process.
The man’s moral and
intellectual powers are so embryonic in the case we are
considering that most of
the building and changing of his astral body may be
said to be done for him
rather than by him. It depends more on his external
circumstances than on
his own will, for, as just said, it is characteristic of a
low stage of development
that a man is moved from without and through the body much more than from
within and by the mind. It is a sign of considerable advance when a man begins
to be moved by the will, by his own energy, self-determined, instead of being
moved by desire, i.e., by a response to an external attraction or repulsion.
In sleep the astral
body, enveloping the consciousness, slips out of the
physical vehicle,
leaving the dense and etheric bodies to slumber. At this
stage, however, the
consciousness is not awake in the astral body, lacking the
strong contacts that
spur it while in the physical frame, and the only things
that affect the astral
body may be elementals of the coarser kinds, that may set
up therein vibrations
which are reflected to the etheric and dense brains, and
induce dreams of animal
pleasures. The astral body floats just over the
physical, held by its
strong attraction, and cannot go far away from it.
(b) In the average moral
and intellectual man the astral body shows an immense
advance on that just
described. It is larger in size, its materials are more balanced in quality,
the presence of the rarer kinds giving a certain luminous quality to the whole,
while the expression of the higher emotions sends playing through it beautiful
ripples of colour. Its outline is clear and definite, instead of vague and
shifting, as in the former case, and it assumes the likeness of its owner. It
is obviously becoming a vehicle for the inner man, with good definite
organisation and stability, a body fit and ready to function, and able to
maintain itself, apart from the physical. While retaining great plasticity, it yet
has a normal form, to which it continuously recurs when any pressure is removed
that may have caused it to change its outline.
Its activity is
constant, and hence it is in perpetual vibration, showing endless varieties of
changing hues ; also the "wheels" are clearly visible though not yet
functioning ( Here the student will note the predominance of the râjasic guna,
the quality of activity in nature.) It responds quickly to all the contacts
coming to it through the physical body, and is stirred by the influences rained
on it from the conscious entity within, memory and imagination stimulating it
to action, and causing it to become the prompter of the body to activity
instead of only being moved by it.
Its purification
proceeds along the same lines as in the former case – the expulsion of lower
constituents by setting up vibrations antagonistic to them and the drawing in
of finer materials in their place. But now the increased moral intellectual
development of the man puts the building almost entirely under his own control,
for he is no longer driven here and there by stimuli from external nature, but
reasons, judges, and resists or yields as he thinks well.
By the exercise of
well-directed thought he can rapidly affect the astral body, and hence its
improvement can proceed apace. Nor is it necessary that he should understand
the modus operandi in order to bring about the effect, any more than that a man
should understand the laws of light in order to see.
In sleep, this
well-developed astral body slips, as usual, from its physical encasement, but
is by no means held captive by it, as in the former case. It roams about in the
astral world, drifted hither and thither by the astral currents, while the
consciousness within it, not yet able to direct its movements, is awake,
engaged in the enjoyment of its own mental images and mental activities, and
able also to receive impressions through its astral covering, and to change
them into mental pictures. In this way a man may gain knowledge when out of the
body, and may subsequently impress it on the brain as a vivid dream or vision,
or without this link of memory it may filter through into the
brain-consciousness.
(c) The astral body of a
spiritually developed man is composed of the finest particles of each
subdivision of astral matter, the higher kinds largely predominating in amount.
It is therefore a beautiful object in luminosity and colour, hues not known on
earth showing themselves under the impulses thrown
into it by the purified
mind. The wheels of fire are now seen to deserve their names, and their
whirling motion denotes the activity of the higher senses. Such a body is, in
the full sense of the words, a vehicle of consciousness, for in the course of
evolution it has been vivified in every organ and brought under
the complete control of
its owner.
When in it he leaves the
physical body there is no break in consciousness ; he merely shakes off his
heavier vesture, and finds himself unencumbered by its weight. He can move
anywhere within the astral sphere with immense rapidity, and is no longer bound
by the narrow terrestrial conditions. His body answers to his will, reflects
and obeys his thought. His opportunities for serving humanity are thus
enormously increased, and his powers are directed by his virtue and his
beneficence. The absence of gross particles in his astral body renders it
incapable of responding to the promptings of lower objects of desire, and they
turn away from him as beyond their attraction. The whole body vibrates only in
answer to the higher emotions, his love has grown into devotion, his energy is
curbed by patience.
Gentle, calm, serene,
full of power, but with no trace of restlessness, such a man "all the
Siddhis stand ready to serve." (Here the sâttvic guna, the quality of
bliss and purity in nature, is predominant. Siddhis are superphysical powers.)
The astral body forms
the bridge over the gulf which separates consciousness from the physical brain.
Impacts received by the sense organs and transmitted, as we have seen, to the
dense and etheric centres, pass thence to the corresponding astral centres ;
here they are worked on by the elemental essence and are transmuted into
feelings , and are then presented to the inner man as objects of consciousness,
the astral vibrations awakening corresponding vibrations in the materials of
the mental body. (See chapter IV, on "The Mental Plane.")
By these successive
gradations in fineness of spirit-matter the heavy impacts of terrestrial
objects can be transmitted to the conscious entity ; and, in turn, the
vibrations set up by his thoughts can pass along the same bridge to the
physical brain and there induce physical vibrations corresponding to the
mental.
This is the regular
normal way in which consciousness receives impressions from without, and in
turn sends impressions outwards. By this constant passage of vibrations to and
fro the astral body is chiefly developed ; the current plays
upon it from within and
from without, it evolves its organisation, and subserves its general growth.
By this it becomes
larger, finer in texture, more definitely outlined, and more organised
interiorly. Trained thus to respond to consciousness, it gradually becomes fit
to function as its separate vehicle, and to transmit to it clearly the
vibrations received directly from the astral world. Most readers will have had
some little experience of impressions coming into consciousness from without,
that do not arise from any physical impact, and that are very quickly verified
by some external occurrence.
These are frequently
impressions that reach the astral body directly, and are transmitted by it to
the consciousness, and such impressions are often of the nature of previsions
which very quickly prove themselves to be true. When the man is far progressed,
though the stage varies much according to other circumstances, links are set up
between the physical and the astral, the astral and mental, so that
consciousness works unbrokenly from one state to the other, memory having in it
none of the lapses which in the ordinary man interpose a period of
unconsciousness in passing from one plane to another. The man can then also
freely exercise the astral senses while the consciousness is working in the
physical body, so that these enlarged avenues of knowledge become an appanage
of his waking consciousness. Objects which were before matters of faith becomes
matters of knowledge, and he can personally verify the accuracy of much of the
Theosophical teaching as to the lower regions of the invisible world.
When man is analysed
into "principles," i.e., into modes of manifesting life, his four
lower principles, termed the "lower Quaternary," are said to function
on the astral and physical planes. The fourth principle is Kâma, desire, and it
is the life manifesting in the astral body and conditioned by it ; it is
characterised by the attribute of feeling, whether in the rudimentary form of
sensation, or in the complex form of emotion, or in any of the grades that lie
between. This is summed up as desire, that which is attracted or repelled by
objects, according as they give pleasure or pain to the personal self.
The third principle is
Prâna, the life specialised for the support of the physical organism. The
second principle is the etheric double, and the first is the dense body. These
three function on the physical plane. In H.P.Blavatsky’s later classifications
she removed both Prâna and the dense physical body from
the rank of principles,
Prâna as being universal life, and the dense physical
body as being the mere
counterpart of the etheric, and made of constantly
changing materials built
into the etheric matrix. Taking this view, we have the
grand philosophic
conception of the One Life, the One Self, manifesting as man,
and presenting varying
and transitory differences according to the conditions
imposed on it by the
bodies which it vivifies; itself remaining the same in the
centre, but showing
different aspects when looked at from outside, according to
the kinds of matter in
one body or another.
In the physical body it
is Prâna, energising, controlling, co-ordinating. In the
astral body it is Kâma,
feeling, enjoying, suffering. We shall find it in yet
other aspects, as we
pass to higher planes, but the fundamental idea is the same
throughout, and it is
another of those root-ideas of Theosophy,
which firmly grasped, serve as guiding clues in this most tangled world.
KÂMALOKA
KÂMALOKA, literally the
place or habitat of desire, is, as has already been intimated, a part of the
astral plane, not divided from it as a distinct locality, but separated off by
the conditions of consciousness of the entities belonging to it. (The Hindus
call this state Pretaloka, the habitat of Pretas. A Preta is a human being who
has lost his physical body, but is still encumbered
with the vesture of his
animal nature. He cannot carry this on with him, and until it is disintegrated
he is kept imprisoned by it.)
These are human beings
who have lost their physical bodies by the stroke of death, and have to undergo
certain purifying changes before they can pass on to the happy and peaceful
life which belongs to the man proper, to the human soul.
(The soul is the human
intellect, the link between the Divine Spirit in man and his lower personality.
It is the Ego, the individual, the " I ", which develops by
evolution. In Theosophical parlance, it is Manas, the Thinker. The mind is
the energy of this,
working within the limitations of the physical brain, or the astral and mental
bodies).
This region represents
and includes the conditions described as existing in the various hells,
purgatories, and intermediate states, one or other of which is alleged by all
the great religions to be the temporary dwelling-place of man after he leaves
the body and before he reaches "heaven." It does not include any
place of eternal
torture, the endless hell still believed in by some narrow religionists being
only a nightmare dream of ignorance, hate and fear. But it does include
conditions of suffering, temporary and purificatory in their nature, the
working out of causes set going in his earth-life by the man who experiences
them. These are as natural and inevitable as any effects caused in this world
by wrongdoing, for we live in a world of law and every seed must grow up after
its own kind. Death makes no sort of difference in a man’s moral and mental
nature, and the change of state caused by passing from one world to another
takes away his physical body, but leaves the man as he was.
The Kâmalokic condition
is found on each subdivision of the astral plane, so that we may speak of it as
having seven regions, calling them the first, second, third, up to the seventh,
beginning from the lowest and counting upwards. (Often these regions are
reckoned the other way, taking the first as the highest and the seventh as the
lowest. It does not matter from which end we count ; and I am reckoning upwards
to keep them in accord with the planes and principles.).
We have already seen
that materials from each subdivision of the astral plane
enter into the
composition of the astral body, and it is a peculiar rearrangement of these
materials, to be explained in a moment, which separates the people dwelling in
one region from those dwelling in another, although those in the same region
are able to intercommunicate. The regions, being each a subdivision of the
astral plane, differ in density, and the density of the external form of the
Kâmalokic entity determines the region to which he is limited ; these
differences of matter are the barriers that prevent passage from one region to
another ; the people dwelling in one can no more come into touch with people
dwelling in another than a deep-sea fish can hold a conversation with an eagle
– the medium necessary to the life of the one would be destructive to the life
of the other.
When the physical body
is struck down by death, the etheric body, carrying Prâna with it and
accompanied by the remaining principles – that is, the whole man, except the
dense body – withdraws from the "tabernacle of flesh," as the outer
body is appropriately called. All the outgoing life-energies draw themselves
inwards, and are
"gathered up by Prâna," their departure being manifested by the
dullness that creeps
over the physical organs of the senses.
They are there,
uninjured, physically complete, ready to act as they have always
been ; but the
"inner Ruler," is going, he who through them saw, heard, felt,
smelt, tasted, and by
themselves they are mere aggregations of matter, living
indeed but without power
of perceptive action. Slowly the lord of the body draws himself away, enwrapped
in the violet-grey etheric body, and absorbed in the contemplation of the
panorama of his past life, which in the death hour rolls
before him, complete in
every detail.
In that life-picture are
all the events of his life, small and great ; he sees
his ambitions with their
success or frustration, his efforts, his triumphs, his
failures, his loves, his
hatreds ; the predominant tendency of the whole comes
clearly out, the ruling
thought of the life asserts itself, and stamps itself
deeply into the soul,
marking the region in which the chief part of his
post-mortem existence
will be spent.
Solemn the moment when
the man stands face to face with his life, and from the
lips of his past hears
the presage of his future. For a brief space he sees himself as he is,
recognises the purpose of life, knows that the Law is strong and just and good.
Then the magnetic tie breaks between the dense and etheric bodies, the comrades
of a lifetime are disjoined, and – save in exceptional cases – the man sinks
into peaceful unconsciousness.
Quietness and devotion
should mark the conduct of all who are gathered round a dying body, in order
that a solemn silence may leave uninterrupted this review of the past by the
departing man. Clamorous weeping, loud lamentations, can but jar and disturb
the concentrated attention of the soul, and to break with the
grief of a personal loss into the stillness which aids and
soothes him, is at once selfish and impertinent. Religion has wisely commanded
prayers for the dying, for these preserve calm and stimulate unselfish
aspirations directed to his helping, and these, like all loving thoughts,
protect and shield.
Some hours after death –
generally not more than thirty-six, it is said – the man draws himself out of
the etheric body, leaving it in turn as a senseless corpse, and the latter,
remaining near its dense counterpart, shares its fate.
If the dense body be
buried, the etheric double floats over the grave, slowly disintegrating, and
the unpleasant feelings many experience in a churchyard are largely due to the
presence of these decaying etheric corpses. If the body is burned, the etheric
double breaks up quickly, having lost its nidus, its physical centre of
attraction, and this is one among many reasons why cremation is preferable to
burial, as a way of disposing of corpses.
The withdrawal of the
man from the etheric double is accompanied by the withdrawal from it of Prâna,
which thereupon returns to the great reservoir of life universal, while the
man, ready now to pass into Kâmaloka, undergoes a
rearrangement of his astral body, fitting it for submission to the
purificatory changes which are necessary for the freeing of the man himself.
(These changes result in the formation of what is called by Hindus the Yâtanâ,
or the suffering body, or in the case of very wicked men, in whose astral
bodies there is a
preponderance of the
coarser matter, the Dhruvam, or strong body).
During earth life the
various kinds of astral matter intermingle in the formation of the body, as do
the solids, liquids, gases, and ethers in the physical. The change in the arrangement
of the astral body after death consists in the separation of these materials,
according to their respective densities, into a series of concentric shells –
the finest within, the densest without –
each shell being made of the materials drawn from one
subdivision only of the astral plane. The astral body thus becomes a set of
seven superimposed layers, or a seven-shelled encasement of astral matter, in
which the man may not inaptly
be said to be
imprisoned, as only the breaking of these can set him free. Now will be seen
the immense importance of the purification of the astral body during
earth-life; the man is retained in each subdivision of Kâmaloka so long as the
shell of matter pertaining to that subdivision is not sufficiently
disintegrated to allow
of his escape into the next.
Moreover, the extent to
which his consciousness has worked in each kind of matter determines whether he
will be awake and conscious in any given region, or will pass though it in
unconsciousness, "wrapped" in rosy dreams," and merely detained
during the time necessary for the process of mechanical disintegration.
A spiritually advanced
man, who has so purified his astral body that its constituents are drawn only
from the finest grade of each division of astral matter, merely passes through
Kâmaloka without delay, the astral body disintegrating with extreme swiftness,
and he goes on to whatever may be his bourne, according to the point he has
reached in evolution. A less developed man, but one whose life has been pure
and temperate and who has sat loosely on the things of the earth, will wing a
less rapid flight through Kâmaloka, but will dream peacefully, unconscious of
his surroundings, as his mental body
disentangles itself from the astral shells, one after the other, to
awaken only when he reaches the heavenly places.
Others, less developed
still, will awaken after passing out of the lower regions, becoming conscious
in the division which is connected with the active working of the consciousness
during the earth-life, for this will be aroused on receiving familiar impacts,
although these be received now directly through the
astral body, without the
help of the physical. Those who have lived in the animal passions will awake in
their appropriate region, each man literally going "to his own
place."
The case of men struck
suddenly out of physical life by accident, suicide, murder, or sudden death in
any form, differs from those of persons who pass away by failure of the
life-energies through disease or old age. If they are pure and spiritually
minded they are specially guarded, and sleep out happily the term of their
natural life. But in other cases they remain conscious – often entangled in the
final scene of earth-life for a time, and unaware that they have lost the physical
body – held in whatever region they are related to by the outermost layer of
the astral body: their normal Kâmalokic life does not begin until the natural
web of earth-life is out-spun, and they are vividly conscious of both
their astral and
physical surroundings.
One man who had
committed an assassination and had been executed for his crime was said, by one
of H.P.Blavatsky’s Teachers, to be living through the scenes of the murder and
the subsequent events over and over again in Kâmaloka, ever repeating his
diabolical act and going through the terrors of his arrest and execution.
A suicide will repeat
automatically the feelings of despair and fear which preceded his self-murder,
and go through the act and the death-struggle time after time with ghastly
persistence. A woman who perished in the flames in a wild condition of terror
and with frantic efforts to escape, created such a whirls of passions that,
five days afterwards, she was still struggling
desperately, fancying
herself still in the fire and wildly repulsing all efforts to soothe her: while
another woman who, with her baby on her breast, went down beneath the whirl of
waters in a raging storm, with her heart calm and full of love, slept
peacefully on the other side of death, dreaming of husband and
children in happy
lifelike visions.
In more ordinary cases,
death by accident is still a disadvantage, brought on a person by some serious
fault, (Not necessarily a fault committed in the present life. The law of cause
and effect will be explained in Chapter IX, "Karma"), for the
possession of full consciousness in the lower Kâmalokic regions, which are
closely related to the earth,
is attended by many inconveniences and perils. The man is full of all the plans
and interests that made up his life, and is conscious of the presence of people
and things connected with them.
He is almost
irresistibly impelled by his longings to try and influence the affairs to which
his passions and feelings still cling, and is bound to the earth while he has
lost all his accustomed organs of activity ; his only hope of peace lies in
resolutely turning away from earth and fixing his mind on higher
things, but comparatively few are strong enough to make this
effort, even with the help always offered them by workers on the astral plane,
whose sphere of duty lies in helping and guiding those who have left his world.
(These workers are disciples of some of the great Teachers who guide and help
humanity, and
they are employed in this special duty of succouring souls in
need of such assistance.)
Too often such sufferers
impatient in their helpless inactivity, seek the assistance of sensitives, with
whom they can communicate and so mix themselves up once more in terrestrial
affairs ; they sometimes seek even to obsess convenient mediums and thus to
utilise the bodies of others for their own
purposes, so incurring
many responsibilities in the future. Not without occult reason have English
churchmen been taught to pray: "From battle, murder, and from sudden
death, Good Lord, deliver us."
We may now consider the
divisions of Kâmaloka one by one, and so gain some idea of the conditions which
the man has made for himself in the intermediate state by the desires which he
has cultivated during physical life ; it being kept in mind that the amount of
vitality in any given "shell" – and therefore his
imprisonment in that shell – depends on the amount of energy thrown
during earth-life into the kind of matter of which that shell consists.
If the lowest passions
have been active, the coarsest matter will be strongly vitalised and its amount
will also be relatively large. This principle rules through all Kâmalokic
regions, so that a man during earth-life can judge very fairly as to the future
for himself that he is preparing immediately on the other side of death.
The first or lowest,
division is the one that contains the conditions described in so many Hindu and
Buddhist Scriptures under the name of "hells" of various kinds. It
must be understood that a man, in passing into one of these states, is
not getting rid of the
passions and vile desires that have led him thither ; these remain, as part of
his character, lying latent in the mind in a germinal state, to be thrown
outwards again to form his passional nature when he is returning to birth in
the physical world. (See chapter VII, on "Reincarnation").
His presence in the
lowest region of Kâmaloka is due to the existence in his kâmic body of matter
belonging to that region, and he is held prisoner there until the greater part
of that matter has dropped away, until the shell composed of it is sufficiently
disintegrated to allow the man to come into contact with
the region next above.
The atmosphere of this
place is gloomy, heavy, dreary, depressing to an inconceivable extent. It seems
to reek with all the influences most inimical to good, as in truth it does,
being caused by the persons whose evil passions have led them to this dreary
place. All the desires and feelings at which we shudder,
find here the materials for their expression ; it is, in fact,
the lowest slum, with all the horrors veiled from physical sight parading their
naked hideousness. Its repulsiveness is much increased by the fact that in the
astral world character expresses itself in form, and the man who is full of
evil passions looks the whole of them ; bestial
appetites shape the astral body into
bestial forms, and repulsively human animal shapes are the
appropriate clothing of brutalised human souls.
No man can be a
hypocrite in the astral world, and cloak foul thoughts with a veil of virtuous seeming ; whatever a man is that he appears to be in outward
form and semblance, radiant in beauty if his mind be noble, repulsive in hideousness
if his nature be foul. It will readily be understood, then, how such
Teachers as the Buddha –
to whose unerring vision all worlds lay open – should describe what was seen in
these hells in vivid language of terrible imagery, that seems incredible to
modern readers only because people forget that, once escaped from the heavy and
unplastic matter of the physical world, all souls
appear in their proper likenesses and look just what they are.
Even in this world a
degraded and besotted ruffian moulds his face into most repellent aspect ; what
then can be expected when the plastic astral matter takes shape with every
impulse of his criminal desires, but that such a man should wear a
horrifying form, taking
on changing elements of hideousness?
For it must be
remembered that the population – if that word may be allowed – of this lowest
region consists of the very scum of humanity, murderers, ruffians, violent
criminals of all types, drunkards, profligates, the vilest of mankind.
None is here, with
consciousness awake to its surroundings, save those guilty of brutal crimes, or
of deliberate persistent cruelty, or possessed by some vile appetite. The only
persons who may be of a better general type, and yet for a while be held here,
are suicides, men who have sought by self-murder to escape
from the earthly penalties of crimes they had committed, and who
have but worsened their position by the exchange. Not all suicides, be it
understood , for self-murder is committed from many motives, but only such as
are led up to by crime and are then committed in order to avoid the
consequences.
Save for the gloomy
surroundings and the loathsomeness of a man’s associates, every man here is the
immediate creator of his own miseries. Unchanged, except for the loss of the
bodily veil, men here show out their passions in all their native hideousness,
their naked brutality ; full of fierce unsatiated appetites,
seething with revenge,
hatred, longings after physical indulgences which the loss of physical organs
incapacitates them for enjoying, they roam, raging and ravening, through this
gloomy region, crowding round all foul resorts on earth,
round brothels and gin-palaces, stimulating their occupants to
deeds of shame and violence, seeking opportunities to obsess them, and so to
drive them into worse excesses.
The sickening atmosphere
felt round such places comes largely from these earthbound astral entities,
reeking with foul passions and unclean desires. Mediums – unless of very pure
and noble character – are special objects of attack, and too often the weaker
ones, weakened still further by the passive
yielding of their bodies for the temporary habitation of other
excarnate souls are obsessed by these creatures, and are driven into
intemperance or madness.
Executed murderers,
furious with terror and passionate revengeful hatred, acting over again, as we
have said, their crime and recreating mentally its terrible results, surround
themselves with an atmosphere of savage thought-forms, and, attracted to any
one harbouring revengeful and violent designs, they egg him on into the actual
commission of the deed over which he broods.
Sometimes a man may be
seen constantly followed by his murdered victim, never able to escape from his
haunting presence, which hunts him with a dull persistency , try he ever so
eagerly to escape. The murdered person, unless himself of a very base type, is
wrapped in unconsciousness, and this very unconsciousness seems to add a new
horror to its mechanical pursuit.
Here also is the hell of
the vivisector, for cruelty draws into the astral body the coarsest materials
and the most repulsive combinations of the astral matter, and he lives amid the
crowding forms of his mutilated victims – moaning,
quivering, howling (they
are vivified, not by the animal souls but by elemental life) pulsing with
hatred to the tormentor – rehearsing his worst experiments with automatic
regularity, conscious of all the horror, and yet imperiously impelled to the
self-torment by the habit set up during earth-life.
It is well once again,
to remember, ere quitting this dreary region, that we have no arbitrary
punishments inflicted from outside, but only the inevitable working out of the
causes set going by each person. During physical life they yielded to the
vilest impulses and drew into, built into, their astral bodies
the materials which alone could vibrate in answer to those
impulses ; this self-built body becomes the prison house of the soul, and must
fall into ruins ere the soul can escape from it.
As inevitably as a
drunkard must live in his repulsive soddened physical body here, so must he
live in his equally repulsive astral body there. The
harvest sown is reaped after its kind. Such is the law in all the worlds, and
it may not be escaped. Nor indeed is the astral body there more revolting and
horrible than it was when the man was living upon earth and made the atmosphere
around him fetid with his astral emanations. But people on earth do not
generally recognise its ugliness, being astrally
blind.
Further, we may cheer
ourselves in contemplating these unhappy brothers of ours by remembering that
their sufferings are but temporary, and are giving a much-needed lesson in the
life of the soul. By the tremendous pressure of nature’s disregarded laws they
are learning the existence of those laws, and the misery that accrues from
ignoring them in life and conduct. The lesson they
would not learn during earth-life, whirled away on the torrent of
lusts and desires, is pressed on them here, and will be pressed on them in
their succeeding lives, until the evils are eradicated and the man has risen into
a better life. Nature’s lessons are sharp, but in the long run they are
merciful, for they lead to the evolution of the soul and guide it to the
winning of its
immortality.
Let us pass to a more
cheerful region. The second division of the astral world may be said to be the
astral double of the physical, for the astral bodies of all things and of many
people are largely composed of the matter belonging to this division of the
astral plane, and it is therefore more closely in touch with the physical world
than any other part of the astral. The great majority of
people make some stay
here, and a very large proportion of these are consciously awake in it. These
latter are folk whose interests were bound up in the trivial and petty objects
of life, who set their hearts on trifles, as well as those who allowed their
lower natures to rule them, and who died with the appetites still active and
desirous of physical enjoyment.
Having largely sent
their life outwards in these directions, thus building their astral bodies
largely of the materials that responded very readily to material impacts, they
are held by these bodies in the neighbourhood of their physical attractions.
They are mostly dissatisfied, uneasy, restless, with more or less
suffering according to the vigour of the wishes they cannot gratify ;
some even undergo positive pain from this cause, and are long delayed ere these
earthly longings are exhausted.
Many unnecessarily
lengthen their stay by seeking to communicate with the earth, in whose
interests they are entangled, by means of mediums, who allow them to use their
physical bodies for this purpose, thus supplying the loss of their own. From
them comes most of the mere twaddle with which every one is familiar who has
had experience of public spiritualistic séances, the gossip and trite morality
of the petty lodging-house and small shop – feminine, for the most
part. As these earth
bound souls are generally of small intelligence, their communications are of no
more interest- (to those already convinced of the existence of the soul after
death) –than was their conversation when they were in the body, and – just as
on earth – they are positive in proportion to their
ignorance, representing the whole astral world as identical with
their own very limited area. There as here: They think the rustic cackle of
their burgh The murmur of the world.
It is from this region
that people who have died with some anxiety on their minds will sometimes seek
to communicate with their friends in order to arrange the earthly matter that
troubles them ; if they cannot succeed in showing themselves, or in impressing
their wishes by a dream on some friend, they will
often cause much annoyance by knockings and other noises directly
intended to draw attention or caused unconsciously by their restless efforts.
It is a charity in such
cases for some competent person to communicate with the distressed entity and
learn his wishes, as he may thus be freed from the anxiety which prevents him
from passing onwards. Souls, while in this region, may also
very easily have their attention drawn to the earth, even
although they would not spontaneously have turned back to it, and this
disservice is too often done to them by the passionate grief and craving for
their beloved presence by friends left behind on earth.
The thought-forms set up
by these longings throng round them, and oftentimes arouse them if they are
peacefully sleeping, or violently draw their thoughts to earth if they are
already conscious. It is especially in the former case that this unwitting
selfishness on the part of friends on earth does mischief to
their dear ones that
they would themselves be the first to regret ; and it may that the knowledge of
the unnecessary suffering thus caused to those who have passed through death
may, with some, strengthen the binding force of the religious precepts which
enjoin submission to the divine law and the checking of
excessive and rebellious
grief.
The third and fourth
regions of the Kâmalokic world differ but little from the second, and might
also be described as etherialised copies of it, the fourth being more refined
than the third, but the general characteristics of the three subdivisions being
very similar. Souls of somewhat more progressed types are
found there, and
although they are held there by the encasement built by the activity of their
earthly interests, their attention is for the most part directed onwards rather
than backwards, and, if they are not forcibly recalled to the concerns of
earth-life, they will pass on without very much delay.
Still, they are
susceptible to earthly stimuli, and the weakening interest in terrestrial
affairs may be reawakened by cries from below. Large numbers of educated and
thoughtful people, who were chiefly occupied with worldly affairs during their
physical lives, are conscious in these regions, and may be induced
to communicate through mediums, and, more rarely, seek such
communication themselves. Their statements are naturally of a higher type than
those spoken of as coming from the second division, but are not marked by any
characteristics
that render them more valuable than similar statements made by
persons still in the body. Spiritual illumination does not come from Kâmaloka.
The fifth subdivision of
Kâmaloka offers many new characteristics. It presents a distinctly luminous and
radiant appearance, eminently attractive to those accustomed only to the dull
hues of the earth, and justifying the epithet astral, starry, given to the
whole plane. Here are situated all the materialised
heavens which play so
large a part in popular religions all the world over.
The happy hunting grounds
of the Red Indian, the
their places here. Men
and women who clung desperately to every "letter that killeth" have
here the literal satisfaction of their cravings, unconsciously creating in
astral matter by their powers of imagination, fed on the mere husks of the
world’s Scriptures, the cloud-built palaces whereof they dreamed.
The crudest religious
beliefs find here their temporary cloud-land realisation, and literalists of
every faith, who were filled with selfish longings for their own salvation in
the most materialistic of heavens, here find an appropriate, and to them
enjoyable, home, surrounded by the very conditions in which they believed. The
religious and philanthropic busybodies, who cared more to carry out their own
fads and impose their own ways on their neighbours than to work unselfishly for
the increase of human virtue and happiness, are here much to the
fore, carrying on reformatories, refuges, schools, to their own
great satisfaction, and much delighted are they still to push an astral finger
into an earthly pie with the help of a subservient medium whom they patronise
with lofty condescension.
They build astral
churches and schools and houses, reproducing the materialistic heavens they coveted ; and though to keener vision their erections are imperfect,
even pathetically grotesque, they find them all-sufficing. People of the same
religions flock together and co-operate with each other in various ways, so
that communities are formed, differing as widely from each other as do similar
communities on earth.
When they are attracted
to the earth they seek, for the most part, people of their own faith and
country, chiefly by natural affinity, doubtless, but also because barriers of
language still exist in Kâmaloka ; as may be noticed occasionally
in messages received in spiritualistic circles. Souls from this region often
take the most vivid interest in attempts to establish communication
between this and the next world, and the "spirit guides"
of average mediums come, for the most part, from this and from the region next
above. They are generally aware that there are many possibilities of higher
life before them, and that they will, sooner or later, pass away into worlds
whence communication
with this earth will not
be possible.
The sixth Kâmalokic region
resembles the fifth, but is far more refined, and is largely inhabited by souls
of a more advanced type, wearing out the astral vesture in which much of their
mental energies had worked while they were in the physical body. Their delay is
here due to the large part played by selfishness in their artistic and
intellectual life, and to the prostitution of their talents to the
gratification of the desire-nature in a refined and delicate way.
Their surroundings are
the best that are found in Kâmaloka, as their creative thoughts fashion the
luminous materials of their temporary home into fair landscapes and rippling
oceans, snow-clad mountains and fertile plains, scenes that are of fairy-like
beauty compared with even the most exquisite that earth
can show. Religionists
also are found here, of a slightly more progressed kind than those in the
division immediately below, and with more definite views of their own
limitations. They look forward more clearly to passing out of their present
sphere, and reaching a higher state.
The seventh, the
highest, subdivision of Kâmaloka, is occupied almost entirely by intellectual
men and women who were either pronouncedly materialistic while on earth, or who
are so wedded to the ways in which knowledge is gained by the lower mind in the
physical body that they continue its pursuit in the old ways,
though with enlarged
faculties. One recalls Charles Lamb’s dislike of the idea that in heaven
knowledge would have to be gained "by some awkward process of
intuition" instead of through his beloved books. Many a student lives for
long
years, sometimes for centuries – according to H.P.Blavatsky –
literally in the astral library, conning eagerly all books that deal with his
favourite subject, and perfectly contented with his lot.
Men who have been keenly
set on some line of intellectual investigation, and have thrown off the
physical body, with their thirst for knowledge unslaked, pursue their object
still with unwearied persistence, fettered by their clinging to the physical
modes of study. Often such men are still sceptical as to the
higher possibilities that lie before them, and shrink from the
prospect of what is practically a second death – the sinking into
unconsciousness ere the soul is born into the higher life of heaven.
Politicians, statesmen, men of science, dwell for a while in this region,
slowly disentangling themselves from the
astral body, still held to the lower life by their keen and vivid
interest in the movements in which they have played so large a part, and in the
effort to work out astrally some of the schemes from which Death snatched them
ere yet they had reached fruition.
To all, however, sooner
or later – save to that small minority who during earth-life never felt one
touch of unselfish love, of intellectual aspiration, of recognition of
something or some one higher than themselves – there comes a time when the
bonds of the astral body are finally shaken off, while the soul sinks into
brief unconsciousness of its surroundings, like the unconsciousness that
follows the dropping off of the physical body, to be awakened by a sense of
bliss, intense, immense, fathomless, undreamed of, the bliss of the heaven-world,
of the world to which by its own nature it belongs.
Low and vile may have
been many of its passions, trivial and sordid many of its longings, but it had
gleams of a higher nature, broken lights now and then from a purer region, and
these must ripen as seeds to the time of their harvest, and however poor and
few must yield their fair return. The man passes on to reap
this harvest, and to eat
and assimilate its fruit. (See Chapter V, on Devachan).
The astral corpse, as it
is sometimes called, or the "shell" of the departed entity, consists
of the fragments of the seven concentric shells before described, held together
by the remaining magnetism of the soul. Each shell in turn has disintegrated,
until the point is reached when mere scattered fragments of it remain ; these
cling by magnetic attraction to the remaining shells, and
when one after another
has been reduced to this condition, until the seventh or innermost is reached
and itself disintegrates, the man himself escapes, leaving behind him these
remains.
The shell drifts about
vaguely in the kâmalokic world, automatically and feebly repeating its
accustomed vibrations, and as the remaining magnetism gradually disperses, it
falls into a more and more decayed condition, and finally disintegrates
completely, restoring its materials to the general mass of astral
matter, exactly as does
the physical body to the physical world.
This shell drifts
wherever the astral currents may carry it, and may be vitalised, if not too far
gone, by the magnetism of embodied souls on earth, and so restored to some
amount of activity. It will suck up magnetism as a sponge sucks up water, and
will then take on an illusory appearance of vitality, repeating more vigorously
and vibration to which it was accustomed ; these are often set up by the
stimulus of thoughts common to the departed soul and friends and relations on
earth, and such a vitalised shell may play quite respectably the part of a
communicating intelligence; it is however, distinguishable – apart from the use
of astral vision – by its automatic repetitions of familiar thoughts, and by
the total absence of all originality and of any traces of knowledge not
possessed during physical life.
Just as souls may be delayed
in their progress by foolish and inconsiderate friends, so may they be aided in
it by wise and well-directed efforts. Hence all religions, which retain any
traces of the occult wisdom of their Founders, enjoin the use of "prayers
for the dead." These prayers with their accompanying
ceremonies are more or
less useful according to the knowledge, the love, and the willpower by which
they were ensouled.
They rest on that
universal truth of vibration by which the universe is built, modified, and
maintained. Vibrations are set up by the uttered sounds, arranging astral
matter into definite forms, ensouled by the thought enshrined in the words.
These are directed towards the Kâmalokic entity, and, striking against
the astral body, hasten
its disintegration. With the decay of occult knowledge these ceremonies have
become less and less potent, until their usefulness has almost reached a
vanishing point.
Nevertheless they are
still sometimes performed by a man of knowledge, and then exert their rightful
influence. Moreover, every one can help his beloved departed by sending to them
thoughts of love and peace and longing for their swift progress through the
Kâmalokic world and their liberation from astral
fetters. No one should
leave his "dead" to go on a lonely way, unattended by loving hosts of
these guardian angel thought-forms, helping them forward with joy.
THE MENTAL
PLANE
The mental plane, as its
name implies, is that which belongs to consciousness working as thought ; not
of the mind as it works through the brain, but as it works in its own world,
unencumbered with physical spirit-matter. This world is
the world of the real
man. The word "man" comes from the Sanskrit root "man" and
this is the root of the Sanskrit verb "to think," so that man means
thinker; he is named by his most characteristic attribute, intelligence.
In English the word
"mind" has to stand for the intellectual consciousness itself, and
also for the effects produced on the physical brain by the vibration of that
consciousness ; but we have now to conceive of the intellectual consciousness
as an entity, an individual – a being, the vibrations of whose life are
thoughts, thoughts which are images, not words.
This individual is
Manas, or the Thinker ; (Derived from Manas is the technical name, the mânasic
plane. Englished as "mental." We might call it the plane of the mind
proper, to distinguish its activities from those of the mind working in the
flesh.) –he is the Self, clothed in the matter, and working within the
conditions, of the higher subdivisions of the mental plane. He reveals his
presence on the physical
plane by the vibrations he sets up in the brain and nervous system ; these
respond to the thrills of his life by sympathetic vibrations, but in consequence
of the coarseness of their material they can reproduce only a small section of
his vibrations and even that very imperfectly.
Just as science asserts
the existence of a vast series of etheric vibrations, of which the eye can only
see a small fragment, the solar light spectrum, because it can vibrate only
within certain limits, so can the physical thought-apparatus, the brain and
nervous system, think only a small fragment of the vast series of mental
vibrations set up by the Thinker in his own world.
The most receptive
brains respond up to the point of what we call the great intellectual power ;
the exceptionally receptive brains respond up to the point of what we call
genius ; the exceptionally unreceptive brains respond only up to the point we
call idiocy ; but every one sends beating against his brain
millions of
thought-waves to which it cannot respond, owing to the density of its
materials, and just in proportion to its sensitiveness are the so-called mental
powers of each. But before studying the Thinker, it will be well to consider
his world, the mental plane itself.
The mental plane is that
which is next to the astral, and is separated from it only by differences of
materials, just as the astral is separated from the physical. In fact, we may
repeat what was said as to the astral and the physical with regard to the
mental and the astral. Life on the mental plane is more
active than on the
astral, and form is more plastic. The spirit-matter of that plane is more
highly vitalised and finer than any grade of matter in the astral world. The
ultimate atom of astral matter has innumerable aggregations of the coarsest
mental matter for its encircling sphere-world, so that the disintegration of
the astral atom yields a mass of mental matter of the coarsest
kinds. Under these
circumstances it will be understood that the play of the life-forces on this
plane will be enormously increased in activity, there being so much less mass
to be moved by them.
The matter is in
constant ceaseless motion, taking form under every thrill of
life, and adapting
itself without hesitation to every changing motion.
"Mind-stuff,"
as it has been called, makes astral spirit-matter seem clumsy,
heavy, and lustreless,
although compared with the physical spirit-matter it is
so fairy-light and
luminous. But the law of analogy holds good, and gives us a
clue to guide us through
this super astral region, the region that is our
birthplace and our home,
although, imprisoned in a foreign land, we know it not,
and gaze at descriptions
of it with the eyes of aliens.
Once again here, as on
the two lower planes, the subdivisions of the
spirit-matter of the
plane are seven in number. Once again, these varieties
enter into countless
combinations, of every variety of complexity, yielding the
solids, liquids, gases,
and ethers of the mental plane. The word "solid" seems
indeed absurd, when
speaking of even the most substantial forms of mind-stuff ;
yet as they are dense in
comparison with other kinds of mental materials, and as
we have no descriptive
words save such as are based on physical conditions, we must even use it for
lack of a better.
Enough if we understand
that this plane follows the general law and order of
Nature, which is, for
our globe, the septenary basis, and that the seven
subdivisions of matter
are of lessening densities, relatively to each other, as
the physical solids,
liquids, gases, and ethers ; the seventh, or highest,
subdivision being
composed exclusively of the mental atoms.
These subdivisions are
grouped under two headings, to which the somewhat
inefficient and
unintelligible epithets "formless" and "form" have been
assigned. (Arûpa,
without form: rûpa, form. Rûpa is form, shape, body. ) The
lower four – the first,
second, third, and fourth subdivisions – are grouped
together as "with
form" ; the higher three – the fifth, sixth and seventh
subdivisions – are
grouped as "formless." The grouping is necessary, for the
distinction is a real
one, although one difficult to describe, and the regions
are related in
consciousness to the divisions in the mind itself – as will appear more plainly
a little farther on.
The distinction may
perhaps be best expressed by saying that in the lower four subdivisions the
vibrations of consciousness give rise to forms, to images or pictures, and
every thought appears as a living shape ; whereas in the higher three,
consciousness, though still, of course, setting up vibrations, seems rather to
send them out as a mighty stream of living energy, which does not body itself
into distinct images while it remains in this higher region, but which steps up
a variety of forms all linked by some common condition when it rushes into the
lower worlds.
The nearest analogy that
I can find for the conception I am trying to express is
that of abstract and
concrete thoughts ; an abstract idea of a triangle has no
form, but connotes any
plane figure contained within three right lines, the
angles of which make two
right angles ; such an idea, with conditions but
without shape, thrown
into the lower world, may give birth to a vast variety of
figures, right-angled,
isosceles, scalene, of any colour and size, but all
filling the conditions –
concrete triangles each one with a definite shape of
its own. The
impossibility of giving in words a lucid exposition of the
difference in the action
of consciousness in the two regions is due to the fact
that words are the
symbols of images and belong to the workings of the lower
mind in the brain, and
are based wholly upon those workings ; while the
"formless"
region belongs to the Pure reason, which never works within the
narrow limits of
language.
The mental plane is that
which reflects the Universal Mind in Nature, the plane
which in our little
system corresponds with that of the Great Mind in the
Kosmos. (Mahat, the
Third LOGOS, or Divine Creative Intelligence, the Brahmâ of the Hindus, the
Mandjusri of the Northern Buddhists, the Holy Spirit of the
Christians.) In its higher
regions exist all the archetypal ideas which are now
in course of concrete
evolution, and in its lower the working out of these into
successive forms, to be
duly reproduced in the astral and physical worlds.
Its materials are
capable of combining under the impulse of thought vibrations,
and can give rise to any
combination which thought can construct ; as iron can
be made into a spade for
digging or into a sword for slaying, so can mind-stuff
be shaped into
thought-forms that help or injure ; the vibrating life of the
Thinker shapes the
materials around him, and according to his volitions so is
his work. In that region
thought and action, will and deed, are one and the same
thing – spirit-matter
here becomes the obedient servant of the life, adapting
itself to every creative
motion.
These vibrations, which
shape the matter of the plane into thought-forms, give
rise also from their
swiftness and subtlety to the most exquisite and constantly
changing colours, waves
of varying shades like the rainbow hues of
mother-of-pearl,
etherialised and brightened to an indescribable extent,
sweeping over and
through every form, so that each presents a harmony of
rippling, living,
luminous, delicate colours, including many not ever known to
earth.
Words can give no idea
of the exquisite beauty and radiance shown in
combinations of this
subtle matter, instinct with life and motion. Every seer
who has witnessed it,
Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, speaks in rapturous terms of
its glorious beauty, and
ever confesses his utter inability to describe it;
words seem but to
coarsen and deprave it, however deftly woven in its praise.
Thought-forms naturally
play a large part among the living creatures that
function on the mental
plane. They resemble those with which we are already
familiar in the astral
world, save that they are far more radiant and more
brilliantly coloured,
are stronger, more lasting, and more fully vitalised. As
the higher intellectual
qualities become more clearly marked, these forms show
very sharply defined
outlines, and there is a tendency to a singular perfection
of geometrical figures
accompanied by an equally singular purity of luminous
colour. But, needless to
say at the present stage of humanity, there is a vast
preponderance of cloudy
and irregularly shaped thoughts, the production of the
ill-trained minds of the
majority.
Rarely beautiful
artistic thoughts are also here encountered, and it is little
wonder that painters who
have caught, in dreamy vision, some glimpse of their
ideal, often fret
against their incapacity to reproduce its glowing beauty in
earth’s dull pigments.
These thought-forms are built out of the elemental
essence of the plane,
the vibrations of the thought throwing the elemental
essence into a corresponding
shape, and this shape having the thought as its
informing life. Thus
again we have "artificial elementals" created in a way
identical with that by
which they come into being in the astral regions. All
that is said in Chapter
II of their generation and of their importance may be
repeated of those of the
mental plane, with here the additional responsibility
on their creators of the
greater force and permanence belonging to those of this
higher world.
The elemental essence of
the mental plane is formed by the Monad in the stage of its descent immediately
preceding its entrance into the astral world, and it
constitutes the second
elemental kingdom, existing on the four lower
subdivisions of the
mental plane. The three higher subdivisions, the "formless,"
are occupied by the
first elemental kingdom, the elemental essence there being
thrown by thought into
brilliant coruscations, coloured streams, and flashes of
living fire, instead of
into definite shapes, taking as it were its first
lessons in combined
action, but not yet assuming definite limitations of forms.
On the mental plane, in
both its great divisions, exist numberless
Intelligences, whose
lowest bodies are formed of the luminous matter and elemental essence of that
plane – Shining ones who guide the processes of natural order, overlooking the
hosts of lower entities before spoken of, and yielding submission in their
several hierarchies to their great overlords of the seven Elements. (These are
the Arûpa and Rûpa Devas of the Hindus and the Buddhists, the "Lords of
the heavenly and the earthly" of the Zoroastrians, the
Archangels and Angels of
the Christians and Mahomedans).
They are, as may readily
be imagined, beings of vast knowledge, of great power,
and most splendid in
appearance, radiant, flashing creatures, myriad-hued, like
rainbows of changing
supernal colours, of stateliest mien, calm energy
incarnate, embodiments
of resistless strength. The description of the great
Christian Seer leaps to
mind, when he wrote of a mighty angel: "A rainbow was
upon his head, and his
face was imperial as it were the sun, and his feet as
pillars of fire.(
Revelation, x, 1). "As the sound of many waters" are their
voices, as echoes from
the music of the spheres. They guide natural order, and
rule the vast companies
of the elementals of the astral world, so that their
cohorts carry on
ceaselessly the processes of nature with undeviating regularity
and accuracy.
On the lower mental
plane are seen many Chelâs at work in their mental bodies,
(Usually called Mâyâvi
Rûpa, or illusory body, when arranged for independent
functioning in the
mental world.) --- freed for a time from their physical
vestures. When the body
is wrapped in deep sleep the true man, the Thinker, may escape from it, and
work untrammelled by its weight in these higher regions.
From here he can aid and
comfort his fellowmen by acting directly on their
minds, suggesting
helpful thoughts, putting before them noble ideas, more
effectively and speedily
than he can do when encased in the body. He can see
their needs more clearly
and therefore can supply them more perfectly, and it is
his highest privilege
and joy thus to minister to his struggling brothers, without their knowledge of
his service or any ideas of theirs as to the strong arm that lifts their
burden, or the soft voice that whispers solace in their pain.
Unseen, unrecognised, he
works, serving his enemies as gladly and as freely as
his friends, dispensing
to individuals the stream of beneficent forces that are
poured down from the
great Helpers in higher spheres. Here also are sometimes
seen the glorious
figures of the Masters, though for the most part They reside
on the highest level of
the "formless" division of the mental plane ; and other
Great Ones may also
sometimes come hither on some mission of compassion
requiring such lower
manifestation.
Communication between
intelligences functioning consciously on this plane,
whether human or
non-human, whether in or out of the body, is practically
instantaneous, for it is
with:the "speed of thought." Barriers of space have
here no power to divide,
and any soul can come into touch with any one by merely directing his attention
to him.
Not only is
communication thus swift, but it is also complete, if the souls are
at about the same stage
of evolution ; no words fetter and obstruct the
communion, but the whole
thought flashes from the one to the other, or, perhaps
more exactly, each sees
the thought as conceived by the other. The real barriers
between souls are the
differences of evolution ; the less evolved can know only
as much of the more
highly evolved as his is able to respond to ; the limitation
can obviously be felt
only by the higher one, as the lesser has all that he can
contain.
The more evolved a soul,
the more does he know of all around him, the nearer
does he approach to
realities ; but the mental plane has also its veils of
illusion, it must be
remembered, though they be far fewer and thinner than those
of the astral and the
physical worlds. Each soul has its own mental atmosphere,
and, as all impressions
must come through this atmosphere, they are all
distorted and coloured.
The clearer and purer, the atmosphere, and the less it
is coloured by the personality,
the fewer are the illusions that can befall it.
The three highest
subdivisions of the mental plane are the habitat of the
Thinker himself, and he
dwells on one or other of these, according to the stage
of his evolution. The
vast majority live on the lowest level, in various stages
of evolution ; a
comparatively few of the highly intellectual dwell on the
second level, the
Thinker ascending thither – to use a phrase more suitable to
the physical than to the
mental plane – when the subtler matter of that region
preponderates in him,
and thus necessitates the change ; there is of course, no
"ascending,"
no change of place, but he receives the vibrations of that subtler
matter, being able to
respond to them, and he himself is able to send out forces
that throw its rare
particles into vibration.
The student should
familiarise himself with the fact that rising in the scale of
evolution does not move
him from place to place, but renders him more and more able to receive
impressions. Every sphere is around us, the astral, the mental, the buddhic,
the nirvânic, and worlds higher yet, the life of the supreme God ; we need not
stir to find them, for they are here; but our dull unreceptivity
shuts them out more
effectively than millions of miles of mere space.
We are conscious only of
that which affects us, which stirs us to responsive
vibration, and as we
become more and more receptive, as we draw into ourself
finer and finer matter,
we come into contact with subtler and subtler worlds.
Hence, rising from one
level to another means that we are weaving our vestures
of finer materials and
can receive through them the contacts of finer worlds ;
and it means further
that in the Self within these vestures diviner powers are
waking from latency into
activity, and are sending out their subtler thrills of
life.
At the stage now reached
by the Thinker, he is fully conscious of his
surroundings and is in
possession of the memory of his past. He knows the bodies he is wearing,
through which he is contacting the lower planes, and he is able to influence
and guide them to a great extent. He sees the difficulties, the
obstacles, they are
approaching – the results of past careless living – and he
sets himself to pour
into them energies by which they may be better equipped for their task.
His direction is
sometimes felt in the lower consciousness as an imperiously
compelling force that
will have its way, and that impels to a course of action
for which all the
reasons may not be clear to the dimmer vision caused by the
mental and astral
garments. Men who have done great deeds have occasionally left on record their
consciousness of an inner and compelling power, which seemed to leave them no
choice save to do as they had done. They were then acting as the real man ; the
Thinkers, that are the inner men, were doing the work consciously through the
bodies that then were fulfilling their proper functions as vehicles of the
individual. To these higher powers all will come as evolution proceeds.
On the third level of
the upper region of the mental plane dwell the Egos of the
Masters, and of the
Initiates who are Their Chelâs, the Thinkers having here a
preponderance of the
matter of this region in their bodies. From this world of
subtlest mental forces
the Masters carry on Their beneficent work for humanity,
raining down noble
ideals, inspiring thoughts, devotional aspirations, streams
of spiritual and
intellectual help for men.
Every force there
generated, rays out in myriad directions, and the noblest,
purest souls catch most
readily these helpful influences. A discovery flashes
into the mind of the
patient searcher into Nature’s secrets ; a new melody
entrances the ear of the
great musician ; the answer to a long studied problem
illumines the intellect
of a lofty philosopher ; a new energy of hope and love
suffuses the heart of an
unwearied philanthropist. Yet men think that they are
left uncared for,
although the very phrases they use ; "the thought occurred to
me; the idea came to me;
the discovery flashed on me " unconsciously testify to
the truth known to their
inner selves though the outer eyes be blind.
Let us now turn to the
study of the Thinker and his vestures as they are found
in men on earth. The
body of the consciousness, conditioning it in the four
lower subdivisions of
the mental plane – the mental body, as we term it – is
formed of combinations
of the matter of these subdivisions. The Thinker, the
individual, Human Soul –
formed in the way described in the latter part of this
chapter – when he is
coming into incarnation, first radiates forth some of his
energy in vibrations
that attract round him, and clothe him in, matter drawn
from the four lower
subdivisions of his own plane.
According to the nature
of the vibrations are the kinds of matter they attract ;
the finer kinds answer
the swifter vibrations and take form under their impulse
; the coarser kinds
similarly answer the slower ones ; just as a wire will
sympathetically sound
out a note – i.e., a given number of vibrations – coming
from a wire similar in
weight and tension to itself, but will remain dumb amid a
chorus of notes from
wires dissimilar to itself in these respects, so do the
different kinds of matter
assort themselves in answer to different kinds of
vibrations. Exactly
according to the vibrations sent out by the Thinker will be
the nature of the mental
body that he thus draws around him, and this mental
body is what is called
the lower mind, the lower Manas, because it is the
Thinker clothed in the
matter of the lower subdivisions of the mental plane and
conditioned by it in his
further working.
None of his energies
which are too subtle to move this matter, too swift for its
response, can express
themselves through it ; he is therefore limited by it,
conditioned by it,
restricted by it in his expression of himself. It is the first of his
prison-houses during his incarnate life, and while his energies are acting
within it he is largely shut off from his own higher world, for his attention
is with the outgoing energies and his life is thrown with them into the mental
body, often spoken as a vesture, or sheath, or vehicle – any expression will
serve which connotes the idea that the Thinker is not the mental body, but
formed it and uses it in order to express as much of himself as he can in the
lower mental region.
It must not be forgotten
that his energies, still pulsing outwards, draw round
him also the coarser
matter of the astral plane as his astral body ; and during
his incarnate life the
energies that express themselves through the lower kinds
of mental matter are so
readily changed by it into the slower vibrations that
are responded to by
astral matter that the two bodies are continually vibrating
together, and become
very closely interwoven ; the coarser the kinds of matter
built into the mental
body, the more intimate becomes this union, so that the
two bodies are sometimes
classed together and even taken as one.( Thus the
Theosophist will speak
of Kâma Manas, meaning the mind as working in and with the desire nature,
affecting and affected by the animal nature. The Vedântin
classes the two
together, and speaks of the Self as working in the
Manomayakosha, the
sheath composed of the lower mind, emotions, and passions.
The European
psychologist makes "feelings" one section of his tripartite
division of
"mind", and includes under feelings both emotions and sensations.)
When we come to study
Reincarnation we shall find this fact assuming vital
importance.
According to the stage
of evolution reached by the man will be the type of
mental body he forms on
his way to become again incarnate, and we may study, as we did with the astral
body, the respective mental bodies of three types of men
a) an undeveloped man
b) an average man
c) a spiritually
advanced man.
In the undeveloped man
the mental body is but little perceptible, a small
amount of unorganised
mental matter, chiefly from the lowest subdivisions of
the plane, being all
that represents it. This is played on almost entirely
from the lower bodies,
being set vibrating feebly by the astral storms raised
by the contacts with
material objects through the sense organs. Except when
stimulated by these
astral vibrations it remains almost quiescent, and even
under their impulses its
responses are sluggish. No definite activity is
generated from within,
these blows from the outer world being necessary to
arouse any distinct
response.
The more violent the
blows, the better for the progress of the man, for each
responsive vibration
aids in the embryonic development of the mental body.
Riotous pleasure, anger,
rage, pain, terror, all these passions, causing whirlwinds in the astral body,
awaken faint vibrations in the mental, and gradually these vibrations, stirring
into commencing activity the mental consciousness, cause it to add something of
its own to the impressions made on it from without.
We have seen that the
mental body is so closely mingled with the astral that
they act as a single
body, but the dawning mental faculties add to the astral
passions a certain
strength and quality not apparent in them when they work as
purely animal qualities.
The impressions made on the mental body are more
permanent than those
made on the astral, and they are consciously reproduced
by it. Here memory and
the organ of imagination begin, and the latter
gradually moulds itself,
the images from the outer world working on the matter
of the mental body and
forming its materials into their own likeness.
These images, born of
the contacts of the senses, draw round themselves the
coarsest mental matter;
the dawning powers of consciousness reproduce these
images, and thus
accumulate a store of pictures that begin to stimulate action
initiated from within,
from the wish to experience again through the outer
organs the vibrations
that were found pleasant, and to avoid those productive
of pain.
The mental body then
begins to stimulate the astral, and to arouse in it the
desires that, in the
animal, slumber until awakened by a physical stimulus ;
hence we see in the
undeveloped man a persistent pursuit of sense-gratification never found in the
lower animals, a lust, a cruelty, a calculation, to which they are strangers.
The dawning powers of the mind, yoked to the service of the senses, make of man
a far more dangerous and savage brute than any animal, and the stronger and
more subtle forces inherent in the mental-spiritual matter lend to the
passion-nature an energy and a keenness that we do not find in the animal
world.
But these very excesses
lead to their own correction by the sufferings which
they cause, and these
resultant experiences play upon the consciousness and
set up new images on
which the imagination works. These stimulate the
consciousness to resist
many of the vibrations that reach it by way of the
astral body from the
external world, and to exercise its volition in holding
the passions back
instead of giving them free rein.
Such resistant vibrations
are set up in, and attract towards, the mental body,
finer combinations of
mind-stuff and tend also to expel from it the coarser
combinations that
vibrate responsively to the passional notes set up in the
astral body ; by this
struggle between the vibrations set up by passion-images
and the vibrations set
up by the imaginative reproduction of past experiences,
the mental body grows,
begins to develop a definite organisation, and to
exercise more and more
initiative as regards external activities.
While the earth life is
spent gathering experiences, the intermediate life is spent assimilating them,
as we shall see in detail in the following chapter, so that in each return to
earth the Thinker has an increased stock of faculties to take shape as his
mental body. Thus the undeveloped man, whose mind is the slave of his passions,
grows into the average man, whose mind is a battleground in which passions and
mental powers wage war with varying success, about balanced in their forces,
but who is gradually gaining the mastery over his lower nature.
In the average man, the
mental body is much increased in size, shows a certain
amount of organisation,
and contains a fair proportion of matter drawn from
the second, third, and
fourth subdivisions of the mental plane. The general law which regulates all
the building up and modifying of the mental body may here be fitly studied,
though it is the same principle already seen working in the lower realms of the
astral and physical worlds.
Exercise increases,
disuse atrophies and finally destroys. Every vibration set up in the mental
body causes changes in its constituents, throwing out of it, in the part
affected, the matter that cannot vibrate sympathetically, and replacing it by
suitable materials drawn from the practically illimitable store around. The
more a series of vibrations is repeated, the more does the part affected by
them increase in development ; hence, it may be noted in passing, the injury
done to the mental body by over-specialisation of mental energies.
Such mistaken direction
of these powers causes a lopsided development of the
mental body ; it becomes
proportionately over developed in the region in which
these forces are
continually playing and proportionately undeveloped in other
parts, perhaps equally
important. A harmonious and proportionate all-round
development is the
object to be sought, and for this we need a calm self-analysis and a definite
direction of means to ends. A knowledge of this law, further explains certain
familiar experiences, and affords a sure hope of progress. When a new study is
commenced, or a change in favour of high morality is initiated, the early
stages are found to be fraught with difficulties ; sometimes the effort is even
abandoned because the obstacles in the way of its success appear to be
insurmountable.
At the beginning of any
new mental undertaking, the whole automatism of the
mental body opposes it ;
the materials habituated to vibrate in a particular
way, cannot accommodate
themselves to the new impulses, and the early stage
consists chiefly of
sending out thrills of force which are frustrated, so far
as setting up vibrations
in the mental body are concerned, but which are the
necessary preliminary to
any such sympathetic vibrations, as they shake out of
the body the old
refractory materials and draw into it the sympathetic kinds.
During this process, the
man is not conscious of any progress; he is conscious
only of the frustration
of his efforts and of the dull resistance he encounters. Presently, if he
persists, as the newly attracted materials begin to function, he succeeds
better in his attempts, and at last, when all the old materials are expelled
and the new are working, he finds himself succeeding without an effort, and his
object is accomplished.
The critical time is
during the first stage ; but if he trust in the law, as sure in its working as
every other law in Nature, and persistently repeat his efforts, he must succeed
; and a knowledge of this fact may cheer him when otherwise he would be sinking
in despair. In this way, then, the average man may work on, finding with joy
that as he steadily resists the promptings of the lower nature he is conscious
they are losing their power over him, for he is expelling from his mental body
all the materials that are capable of being thrown into sympathetic vibrations.
Thus the mental body gradually comes to be composed of the finer constituents
of the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane, until it has become radiant
and exquisitely beautiful form which is the mental body of the –
Spiritually developed
man. From this body all the coarser combinations have
been eliminated, so that
the objects of the senses no longer find in it, or in
the astral body
connected with it, materials that respond sympathetically to
their vibrations. It
contains only the finer combinations belonging to each of
the four subdivisions of
the lower mental world, and of these again the
materials of the third
and fourth sub-planes very much predominate in its
composition over the
materials of the second and first, making it responsive
to all the higher
workings of the intellect, to the delicate contacts of the
higher arts, to all the
pure thrills of loftier emotions.
Such a body enables the
Thinker who is clothed in it to express himself much
more fully in the lower
mental region and in the astral and physical worlds ;
its materials are
capable of a far wider range of responsive vibrations, and
the impulses from a
loftier realm mould it into nobler and subtler organisation.
Such a body is rapidly
becoming ready to reproduce every impulse from the Thinker which is capable of
expression on the lower subdivisions of the mental plane ; it is growing into a
perfect instrument for activities in this lower mental world.
A clear understanding of
the nature of the mental body would much modify
modern education, and
would make it far more serviceable to the Thinker than
it is at present. The
general characteristics of this body depend on the past
lives of the Thinker on
earth, as will be thoroughly understood when we have
studied Reincarnation
and Karma. The body is constituted on the mental plane,
and its materials depend
on the qualities that the Thinker has garnered within
himself as the results
of his past experiences.
All that education can
do is to provide such external stimuli as shall arouse and encourage the growth
of the useful faculties he already possesses, and stunt and help in the
eradication of those that are undesirable. The drawing out of these inborn
faculties, and not the cramming of the mind with facts, is the object of true
education.
Nor need memory be
cultivated as a separate faculty, for memory depends on attention – that is on
the steady concentration of the mind on the subject studied – and on the
natural affinity between the subject and the mind. If the subject be liked –
that is, if the mind has a capacity for it – memory will not fail, provided due
attention be paid. Therefore education should cultivate the habit of steady
concentration, of sustained attention, and should be directed according to the
inborn faculties of the pupil.
Let us now pass into the
"formless" divisions of the mental plane, the region
which is man’s true home
during the cycle of his reincarnations, into which he
is born, a baby soul, an
infant Ego, an embryonic individuality, when he begins his purely human
evolution.( See Chapters VII and VIII, on "Reincarnation").
The outline of this Ego,
the Thinker, is oval in shape, and hence H.P. Blavatsky speaks of this body of
Manas which endures throughout all his incarnations as the Auric Egg. Formed of
the matter of the three highest subdivisions of the mental plane, it is
exquisitely fine, a film of rarest subtlety, even at its first inception ; and,
as it develops, it becomes a radiant object of supernal glory and beauty, the
shining One, as it has been aptly named. ( This is the Augœides of the
Neo-Platonists, the "spiritual body" of St. Paul).
What is this Thinker? He
is the divine Self, as already said, limited, or
individualised, by this
subtle body drawn from the materials of the "formless"
region of the mental
plane. (The Self, working in the Vignyânamayakosha, the
sheath of discriminative
knowledge, according to the Vedântic classification).
This matter – drawn
around a ray of the Self, a living beam of the one Light
and Life of the universe
– shuts off this ray from its Source, so far as the
external world is
concerned, encloses it within a filmy shell of itself, and so makes it "an
individual." The life is the Life of the LOGOS, but all the powers of that
Life are lying latent, concealed ; everything is there potentially, germinally,
as the tree is hidden within the tiny germ in the seed.
This seed is dropped
into the soil of human life that its latent forces may be
quickened into activity
by the sun of joy and the rain of tears, and he fed by
the juices of the
life-soil that we call experience, until the germ grows into a mighty tree, the
image of its generating Sire. Human evolution is the evolution of the Thinker;
he takes on bodies on the lower mental and astral, and the physical planes,
wears then through earthly, astral, lower mental life, dropping them successively
at the regular stages of this life-cycle as he passes from world to world, but
ever storing up within himself the fruits he has gathered by their use on each
plane.
At first, as little
conscious as a baby’s earthly body, he almost slept through life after life,
till the experiences playing on him from without awakened some of his latent
forces into activity; but gradually he assumed more and more part in the
direction of his life, until, with manhood reached, he took his life into his
own hands, and an ever-increasing control over his future destiny.
The growth of the
permanent body which, with the divine consciousness, forms the Thinker is
extremely slow. Its technical name is the causal body, because he
gathers up within it the
results of all experiences, and these act as causes,
moulding future lives.
It is the only permanent one among the bodies during
incarnation, the mental,
the astral, and physical bodies being reconstituted for
each fresh life ; as
each perishes in turn, it hands on its harvest to the one
above it, and thus all
the harvests are finally stored in the permanent body ;
when the Thinker returns
to incarnation he sends out his energies, constituted
of these harvests, on each
successive plane, and thus draws round him a anew
body after body suitable
to his past.
The growth of the causal
body itself, as said, is very slow, for it can vibrate
only in answer to
impulses that can be expressed in the very subtle matter of
which it is composed,
thus weaving them into the texture of its being. Hence the
passions, which play so
large a part in the early stages of human evolution,
cannot directly affect
its growth. The Thinker can work into himself only the
experiences that can be
reproduced in the vibrations of the causal body, and
these must belong to the
mental region, and be highly intellectual or loftily
moral in their character
; other wise its subtle matter can give no sympathetic
vibration in answer.
A very little reflection
will convince any one how little material, suitable for
the growth of this lofty
body, he affords by his daily life ; hence the slowness
of evolution, the little
progress made. The Thinker should have more of himself
to put out in each successive
life, and, when this is the case, evolution goes
swiftly forward.
Persistence in evil courses reacts in a kind of indirect way on
the causal body, and
does more harm than the mere retardation of growth ; it
seems after a long time
to cause a certain incapacity to respond to the
vibrations set up by the
opposite good, and thus to delay growth for a
considerable period
after the evil has been renounced.
Directly to injure the
causal body, evil of a highly intellectual and refined
kind is necessary, the
"spiritual evil" mentioned in the various Scriptures of
the world. This is
fortunately rare, rare as spiritual good, and found only
among the highly
progressed, whether they be following the Right-hand or the
Left-hand Path. (The Right-hand
Path is that which leads to divine manhood, to
Adeptship used in the
service of the worlds. The Left-hand Path is that which
also leads to Adeptship,
but to Adeptship that is used to frustrate the progress
of evolution and is
turned to selfish individual ends. They are sometimes called
the White and Black
Paths respectively.)
The habitat of the
Thinker, of the Eternal Man, is on the fifth subplane, the
lowest level of the
"formless" region of the mental plane. The great masses of
mankind are here, scarce
yet awake, still in the infancy of their life. The
Thinker develops
consciousness slowly, as his energies, playing on the lower
planes, there gather
experience, which is indrawn with these energies as they
return to him
treasure-laden with the harvest of life. This eternal Man, the
individualised Self, is
the actor in every body that he wears ; it is his
presence that gives the
feeling of " I " alike to body and mind, the " I " being
that which is
self-conscious and which, by illusion, identifies itself with that
vehicle in which it is
most actively energising.
To the man of the senses
the " I " is the physical body and the desire nature ;
he draws from these his
enjoyment, and he thinks of these as himself, for his
life is in them. To the
scholar the " I " is the mind, for in its exercise lies
his joy and therein his
life is concentrated. Few can rise to the abstract
heights of spiritual
philosophy, and feel this Eternal Man as " I ", with memory
ranging back over past
lives and hopes ranging forward over future births.
The physiologists tell
us that if we cut the finger we do not really feel the
pain there where the
blood is flowing, but that pain is felt in the brain, and
is by imagination thrown
outwards to the place of the injury ; the feeling of
pain in the finger is,
they say an illusion ; it is put by imagination at the
point of contact with
the object causing the injury ; so also will a man feel
pain in an amputated
limb, or rather in the space the limb used to occupy.
Similarly does the one
" I ", the Inner Man, feel suffering and joy in the
sheaths which enwrap
him, at the points of contact with the external world, and
feels the sheath to be
himself, knowing not that this feeling is an illusion,
and that he is the sole
actor and experiencer in each sheath.
Let us now consider, in
this light, the relations between the higher and lower
mind and their action on
the brain. The mind, Manas, the Thinker, is one, and is
the Self in the causal
body; it is the source of innumerable energies, of
vibrations of
innumerable kinds. These it sends out, raying outwards from
itself. The subtlest and
finest of these are expressed in the matter of the
causal body, which alone
is fine enough to respond to them ; they form what we
call the Pure Reason,
whose thoughts are abstract, whose method of gaining
knowledge is intuition ;
its very "nature is knowledge," and it recognises truth
at sight as congruous
with itself.
Less subtle vibrations
pass outwards, attracting the matter of the lower mental
region, and these are
the Lower Manas, or lower mind – the coarser energies of
the higher expressed in
denser matter ; these we call the intellect, comprising
reason, judgement,
imagination, comparison, and the other mental faculties ; its
thoughts are concrete,
and its method is logic ; it argues, it reasons, it
infers. These
vibrations, acting through astral matter on the etheric brain, and
by that on the dense
physical brain, set up vibrations therein, which are the
heavy and slow
reproductions of themselves – heavy and slow, because the
energies lose much of
their swiftness in moving the heavier matter.
This feebleness of
response when a vibration is initiated in a rare medium and
then passes into a dense
one is familiar to every student of physics. Strike a
bell in air and it
sounds clearly ; strike it in hydrogen, and let the hydrogen
vibrations have to set
up the atmospheric waves, and how faint the result.
Equally feeble are the
workings of the brain in response to the swift and subtle
impacts of the mind ;
yet that is all that the vast majority know as their
"consciousness."
The immense importance
of the mental workings of this "consciousness" is due to the fact
that it is the only medium whereby the Thinker can gather the harvest
of experience by which
he grows. While it is dominated by the passions it runs
riot, and he is left
unnourished and therefore unable to develop ; while it is
occupied wholly in
mental activities concerned with the outer world, it can
arouse only his lower
energies; only as he is able to impress on it the true object of its life, does
it commence to fulfil its most valuable functions of gathering what will arouse
and nourish his higher energies.
As the Thinker develops
he becomes more and more conscious of his own inherent powers, and also of the
workings of his energies on the lower planes, of the bodies which those
energies have drawn around him. He at last begins to try to influence them,
using his memory of the past to guide his will, and these
impressions we call
"conscience" when they deal with morals and "flashes of
intuition " when
they enlighten the intellect.
When these impressions
are continuous enough to be normal, we speak of their
aggregate as
"genius." The higher evolution of the Thinker is marked by his
increasing control over
his lower vehicles, by their increasing susceptibility
to his influence, and
their increasing contributions to growth. Those who would
deliberately aid in this
evolution may do so by a careful training of the lower
mind and of the moral
character, by steady and well directed effort.
The habit of quiet,
sustained, and sequential thought, directed to non-worldly
subjects, of meditation,
of study, develops the mind-body and renders it a
better instrument ; the
effort to cultivate abstract thinking is also useful, as
this raises the lower
mind towards the higher, and draws into it the subtlest
materials of the lower
mental plane.
In these and cognate
ways all may actively co-operate in their own higher
evolution, each step
forward making the succeeding steps more rapid. No effort,
not even the smallest,
is lost, but is followed by its full effect, and every
contribution gathered
and handed inwards is stored in the treasure-house of the
causal body for future
use. Thus evolution, however slow and halting, is yet
ever onwards, and the
divine Life, ever unfolding in every soul, slowly subdues
all things to itself.
The word Devachan is the theosophical name for heaven, and, literally translated, means the shining land, or the Land of the Gods. ( Devasthan, the place of