The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of Annie Besant
Annie
Besant
(1847
-1933)
The Seven Principles Of Man
By
Annie Besant
Published in 1909
Português:- Os Sete
Principios Do Homem
Inquirers
attracted to Theosophy by its central doctrine of the brotherhood of
man,
and by the hopes which it holds out of wider knowledge and of spiritual
growth,
are apt to be repelled when they make their first attempt to come into
closer
acquaintance with it, by the to them strange and puzzling names which
flow
glibly from the lips of Theosophists in conference assembled.
They
hear a tangle of Âtma-Buddhi, Kâma-Manas, Triad, Devachan, and what not, and
feel at once that for them Theosophy is far too abstruse a study. Yet they
might have become very good Theosophists, had not their initial enthusiasm been
quenched with the douche of Sanskrit terms. In the present manual the smoking
flax shall be more tenderly treated, and but few Sanskrit names shall be flung
in the face of the enquirer.
As
a matter of fact, the use of these terms has become general among Theosophists
because the English language has no equivalents for them, and a
long
and clumsy sentence has to be used in their stead if the idea is to be
conveyed
at all. The initial trouble of learning the names has been preferred to
the
continued trouble of using roundabout descriptive phrases – "Kâma,"
for
instance,
being shorter and more precise than "the passional and emotional part
of
our nature."
Man
according to the Theosophical teaching is a sevenfold being, or, in the
usual
phrase, has a septenary constitution. Putting it in another way, man’s
nature
has seven aspects, may be studied from seven different points of view, is
composed
of seven principles. The clearest and best way of all in which to think
of
man is to regard him as one, the Spirit or True Self ; this belongs to the
highest
region of the universe, and is universal, the same for all ; it is a ray
of
God, a spark from the divine fire. This is to become an individual, reflecting
the divine perfection, a son that grows into the likeness of his father.
For
this purpose the Spirit, or true Self, is clothed in garment after garment,
each
garment belonging to a definite region of the universe, and enabling the
Self
to come into contact with that region, gain knowledge of it, and work in
it.
It thus gains experience, and all its latent potentialities are gradually drawn
out into active powers. These garments, or sheaths, are distinguishable from
each other both theoretically and practically.
If
a man be looked at clairvoyantly each is distinguishable by the eye, and they
are
separable each from each either during physical life or at death, according
to
the nature of any particular sheath. Whatever words may be used, the fact
remains
the same – that he is essentially sevenfold, an evolving being, part of
whose
nature has already been manifested, part remaining latent at present, so
far
as the vast majority of humankind is concerned. Man’s consciousness is able
to
function through as many of these aspects as have been already evolved in him
into activity.
This
evolution, during the present cycle of human development, takes place on
five
out of seven planes of nature. The two higher planes – the sixth and
seventh
– will not be reached, save in the most exceptional cases, by men of
this
humanity in the present cycle, and they may therefore be left out of sight
for
our present purpose.
As,
however, some confusion has arisen as to the seven planes through
differences
of nomenclature, two diagrams are given at the end of this treatise
showing
the seven planes as they exist in our division of the universe, in
correspondence
with the vaster planes of the universe as a whole, and also the
subdivision
of the five into seven, as they are represented in some of our
literature.
A
"plane" is merely a condition, a stage, a state ; so that we might
describe
man
as fitted by his nature, when that nature is fully developed, to exist
consciously
in seven different conditions, or seven different stages, in seven
different
states ; or technically, on seven different planes of being.
To
take an easily verified illustration: a man may be conscious on the physical
plane,
that is, in his physical body, feeling hunger and thirst, and pain of a
blow
or cut. But let the man be a soldier in the heat of battle, and his
consciousness
will be centred in his passions and emotions, and he may suffer a
wound
without knowing it, his consciousness being away from the physical plane and
acting on the plane of passions and emotions: when the excitement is over,
consciousness will pass back to the physical, and he will "feel" the
pain of his wound.
Let
the man be a philosopher, and as he ponders over some knotty problem he will
lose all consciousness of bodily wants, of emotions, of love and hatred ; his
consciousness
will have passed to the plane of intellect, he will be
"abstracted,"
i.e.., drawn away from considerations pertaining to his bodily
life,
and fixed on the plane of thought.
Thus
may a man live on these several planes, in these several conditions, one
part
or another of his nature being thrown into activity at any given time ; and
an
understanding of what man is, of his nature, his powers, his possibilities,
will
be reached more easily and assimilated more usefully if he is studied along
these
clearly defined lines, that if he be left without analysis, a mere
confused
bundle of qualities and states.
It
has also been found convenient, having regard to man’s mortal and immortal
life,
to put these seven principles into two groups – one containing the three
higher
principles and therefore called the Triad, the other containing the four
lower,
and therefore called the Quaternary. The Triad is the deathless part of
man’s
nature, the "spirit" and soul of Christian terminology ; the
Quaternary is
the
mortal part, the "body", of Christianity.
This
division into body, soul and spirit is used by St. Paul, and is recognised
in
all careful Christian philosophy, although generally ignored by the mass of
Christian
people. In ordinary parlance soul and body make up the man, and the
words
soul and spirit are used interchangeably, with much confusion of thought
as
the result.
This
looseness is fatal to any clear view of the constitution of man, and the
Theosophist
may well appeal to the Christian philosopher as against the causal
Christian
non-thinker if it be urged that he is making distinctions difficult to
be
grasped. No philosophy worthy of the name can be stated even in the most
elementary
fashion without making some demand on the intelligence and the
attention
of the would be learner, and carefulness in the use of terms is a
condition
of all knowledge.
PRINCIPLE
I. THE DENSE PHYSICAL BODY
The
dense physical body of man is called the first of his seven principles, as
it
is certainly the most obvious. Built of material molecules, in the generally
accepted
sense of the term –with its five organs of sensation - the five senses
-its
organs of locomotion, its brain and nervous system, its apparatus for
carrying
on the various functions necessary for its continued existence, there
is
little to be said about this physical body in so slight a sketch as this of
the
constitution of man.
Western
science is almost ready to accept the Theosophical view that the human
organism
consists of innumerable "lives," which build up the cells.
H.P.Blavatsky
says on this: "Science has never yet gone so far as to assert with
the
Occult doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and
stones,
are themselves altogether built up of such beings [bacteria, etc.]:
which,
with the exception of the larger species, no microscope can detect ….
The
physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical,
chemical
science may well say that there is no difference between the matter
which
composes the ox and that which forms the man. But the Occult doctrine is far
more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but
the
same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the
mountain
and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree
which
shelters him from the sun. Each particle – whether you call it organic or
inorganic
– is a life.
Every
atom and molecule in the universe is both life-giving and death-giving to
such
forms (Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 281, new edition). The microbes thus
"build
up the material body and its cells," under the constructive energy of
vitality
– a phrase that will be explained when we come to deal with "life,"
as
the
Third Principle, and with these microbes as part of it. When the
"life" is
no
longer supplied the microbes "are left to run riot as destructive
agents,"
and
they break up and disintegrate the cells which they built, and so the body
goes
to pieces.
The
purely physical consciousness is the consciousness of the cells and the
molecules.
The selective action of the cells, taking from the blood what they
need,
rejecting what they do not need, is an instance of this self
consciousness.
The process goes on without the help of our consciousness or
volition.
Again that which is called by physiologists unconscious memory is the
memory
of the physical consciousness, unconscious to us indeed, until we have
learned
to transfer our brain consciousness there.
What
we feel is not what the cells feel. The pain of a wound is felt by the
brain-consciousness,
acting, as before said, on the physical plane ; but the
consciousness
of the molecule, as of the aggregation of molecules we call cells,
leads
it to hurry to the repair of the damaged tissues – actions of which the
brain
is unconscious – and its memory makes it repeat the same act again and
again,
even when it has become unnecessary.
Hence
cicatrices on wounds, scars, callosities, etc. The student may find many
details
on this subject in physiological treatises. The death of the dense
physical
body occurs when the withdrawal of the controlling life-energy leaves
the
microbes to go their own way, and the many lives, no longer co-ordinated,
separate
from each other and scatter the particles of the cells of "the man of
dust,"
and what we call decay sets in.
The
body becomes a whirlpool of unrestrained, unregulated lives, and its form,
which
resulted from their correlation, is destroyed by their exuberant
individual
energy. Death is but an aspect of life, and the destruction of one
material
form is but a prelude to building up of another.
PRINCIPLE
II. THE ETHERIC DOUBLE
The
Linga Sharira , the astral body, the ethereal body, the fluidic body, the
double,
the wraith, the doppelganger, the astral man – such are a few of the
many
names which have been given to the second principle in man’s constitution.
The
best name is the Etheric Double, because this term designates the second
principle
only, suggesting its constitution and appearance: whereas the other
names
have been used somewhat generally to describe bodies formed of some more subtle
matter than that which affects our physical senses, without regard to the
question whether other principles were or were not involved in their
construction.
I shall therefore use this name throughout.
The
etheric double is formed of matter rarer or more subtle than that which is
perceptible
to our five senses, but still matter belonging to the physical
plane,
to which its functioning is confined. It is the state of physical matter
which
is just beyond our "solid , liquid and gas," which form the dense
portions
of
the physical plane.
This
etheric double is the exact double or counterpart of the dense physical
body
to which it belongs, and is separable from it, although unable to go very
far
away therefrom. In normal healthy human beings the separation is a matter of
difficulty,
but in persons known as physical or materialising mediums, the
ethereal
double slips out without any great effort. When separated from the
dense
body it is visible to the clairvoyant as an exact replica thereof, united
to
it by a slender thread.
So
close is the physical union between the two that an injury inflicted on the
etheric
double appears as a lesion on the dense body, a fact known under the
name
of repercussion. A. d’Assier, in his well known work – translated by
Colonel
Olcott, the President-Founder of the Theosophical Society, under the
title
of Posthumous Humanity – gives a number of cases (see p. 51-57) in which
this
repercussion took place.
Separation
of the etheric double from the dense body is generally accompanied by a
considerable decrease in vitality in the latter, the double becoming more
vitalised
as the energy in the dense body diminishes. Colonel Olcott says (page
63):-
" When the double is projected by a trained expert, even the body seems
torpid, and the mind in a ‘brown study’ or dazed state ; the eyes are lifeless
in
expression,
the heart and lung actions feeble, and often the temperature much
lowered.
It is very dangerous to make any sudden noise or burst into the room,
under
such circumstances ; for the double, being by instantaneous reaction drawn back
into the body, the heart convulsively contracts, and death may even be
caused."
In
the case of Emilie Sagée (quoted on page 62-65) the girl was noticed to look
pale
and exhausted when the double was visible: "the more distinct the double
and
more material in appearance,, the really material person was effectively
wearied,
suffering and languid ; when on the contrary, the appearance of the
double
weakened, the patient was seen to recover strength."
This
phenomenon is perfectly intelligible to the Theosophical student, who knows
that the etheric double is the vehicle of the life-principle, or vitality, in
the
physical body, and that its partial withdrawal must therefore diminish the
energy,
with which this principle plays on the denser molecules.
Clairvoyants,
such as the Seeress of Prevorst, state that they can see the
ethereal
arm or leg attached to a body from which the dense limb has been
amputated,
and D’Assier remarks on this:- "whilst I was absorbed in
physiological
studies, I was often arrested by a singular fact. It sometimes
happens
that a person who has lost an arm or leg experiences certain sensations
at
the extremities of the fingers and toes. Physiologists explain this anomaly
by
postulating in the patient an inversion of sensitiveness or of recollection,
which
makes him locate in the hand or the foot the sensation with which the
nerve
of the stump is alone affected …I confess that these explanations seemed
to
me laboured and have never satisfied me. When I studied the problem of the
duplication
of man, the question of amputations recurred to my mind, and I asked myself if
it was not more simple and logical to attribute the anomaly of which I have
spoken to the doubling of the human body, which by its fluid nature can escape
amputation" (loc. Cit., p. 103-104) .
The
etheric double plays a great part in spiritualistic phenomena. Here again
the
clairvoyant can help us. A clairvoyant can see the etheric double oozing out
of
the left side of the medium, and it is this which often appears as the
"materialised
spirit," easily moulded into various shapes by the thought-currents of the
sitters, and gaining strength and vitality as the medium sinks into a deep
trance. The Countess Wachtmeister, who is clairvoyant, says she has seen the
same "spirit" recognised as that of a near relative or friend by
different sitters, each of whom saw it according to his expectations, while to
her own eyes it was the mere double of the medium.
So
again, H.P.Blavatsky told me that when she was at the Eddy homestead,
watching
the remarkable series of phenomena there produced, she deliberately
moulded
the "spirit" that appeared into the likenesses of persons known to
herself
and to no one else present, and the other sitters saw the types which
she
produced by her own willpower, moulding the plastic matter of the medium’s
double.
Many
of the movements of objects that occur at such séances, and at other times,
without visible contact, are due to the action of the etheric double, and the
student
can learn how to produce such phenomena at will. They are trivial
enough:
the mere putting out of the etheric hand is no more important than the
putting
out of the dense counterpart, and neither more or less miraculous. Some
persons
produce such phenomena unconsciously, mere aimless overturnings of
objects,
making of noises, and so on: they have no control over their etheric
double,
and it just blunders about in their near neighbourhood, like a baby
trying
to walk.
For
the etheric double, like the dense body, has only a diffused consciousness
belonging
to its parts, and has no mentality. Nor does it readily serve as a
medium
of mentality, when disjoined from the dense counterpart.
This
leads to and interesting point. The centres of sensation are located in the
fourth
principle, which may be said to form a bridge between the physical organs and
the mental perceptions ; impressions from the physical universe impinge on the
material molecules of the dense physical body, setting in vibration the
constituent cells of the organs of sensations, or our "senses".
These
vibrations, in their turn, set in motion the finer material molecules of
the
etheric double, in the corresponding sense organs of its finer matter. From
these
vibrations pass to the astral body, or fourth principle, presently to be
considered,
wherein are the corresponding centres of sensation.
From
these vibrations are again propagated into the yet rarer matter of the
lower
mental plane, whence they are reflected back until, reaching the material
molecules
of the cerebral hemispheres, they become our "brain consciousness."
This
correlated and unconscious succession is necessary for the normal action of
consciousness as we know it.
In
sleep and in trance, natural or induced, the first two and the last stages
are
generally omitted, and the impressions start from and return to the astral
plane,
and thus make no trace on the brain memory ; but the natural or trained
psychic,
the clairvoyant who does not need trance for the exercise of his
powers,
is able to transfer his consciousness from the physical to the astral
plane
without losing grip thereof, and can impress the brain-memory with
knowledge
gained on the astral plane, so retaining it for use.
Death
means for the etheric double just what it means for the dense physical
body,
the breaking up of its constituent parts, the dissipation of its
molecules.
The vehicle of the vitality that animates the bodily organism as a
whole,
it oozes forth from the body when the death hour comes, and is seen by
the
clairvoyant as a violet light, or violet form, hovering over the dying
person,
still attached to the physical body by the slender thread before spoken
of.
When the thread snaps, the last breath has quivered outwards, and the
bystanders
whisper "He is dead."
The
etheric double, being of physical matter, remains in the neighbourhood of
the
corpse, and is the "wraith," or "apparition," or
"phantom," sometimes seen
at
the moment of death and afterwards by persons near the place where the death
has occurred. It disintegrates slowly pari passu with its dense counterpart,
and its remnants are seen by sensitives in cemeteries and churchyards as violet
lights
hovering over graves.
Here
is one of the reasons which render cremation preferable to burial as a mode
of
disposing of the physical enveloped of man ; the fire dissipates in a few
hours
the molecules which would otherwise be set free only in the slow course of
gradual putrefaction, and thus quickly restores to their own plane the dense
and etheric materials, ready for use once more in the building up of new forms.
PRINCIPLE
III. PRÂNA, THE LIFE
All
universes, all worlds, all men, all brutes, all vegetables, all minerals, all
molecules and atoms, all that is, are plunged in a great ocean of life, life
eternal, life infinite, life incapable of increase or diminution. The universe
is only life in manifestation, life made objective, life differentiated.
Now
each organism, whether minute as a molecule or vast as a universe, may be
thought
of as appropriating to itself somewhat of life, of embodying, in itself
as
its own life some of this universal life.
Figure
a living sponge, stretching itself out in the water which bathes it,
envelops
it, permeates it ; there is water, still the ocean, circulating in
every
passage, filling every pore ; but we may think of the ocean outside the
sponge,
or of part of the ocean, appropriated by the sponge, distinguishing them
in
thought if we want to make statements about each severally.
So
each organism is a sponge bathed in the ocean of life universal, and
containing
within itself some of that ocean as its own breath of life.
In
Theosophy we distinguish this appropriated life under the name Prâna, breath,
and
call it the third principle in man’s constitution. To speak quite
accurately,
the "breath of life" – that which the Hebrews termed Nephesh, or the
breath
of life breathed into the nostrils of Adam – is not Prâna only, but Prâna
and
the fourth principle conjoined. It is these two together that make the
"vital
spark" (Secret Doctrine, vol. i., p. 262), and that are the "breath
of life in man, as in beast or insect, or physical, material life" (ibid.,
note to p. 263).
It
is "the breath of animal life in man – the breath of life instinctual in
the
animal"
(ibid., diagram p. 262) . But just now we are concerned with Prâna only,
with
vitality as the animating principle in all animal and human bodies. Of this
life
the etheric double is the vehicle, acting, so to say, as means of
communication,
as bridge, between Prâna and the dense body.
Prâna
is explained in the Secret Doctrine as having for its lowest subdivision
the
microbes of science ; these are the "invisible lives" that build up
the
physical
cells (se ante, p. 8,9) ; these are the "countless myriads of lives"
that
build the "tabernacle of clay," the physical bodies (Secret Doctrine
vol.
I,
p. 245). "Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find bacteria and other
infinitesimals
in the human body, and see in them only, occasional and abnormal
visitors
to which diseases are attributed.
Occultism
– which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a
mineral
or human body, in air, fire, or water – affirms that our whole body is
built
of such lives; the smallest bacterium under the microscope being to them a
comparative
size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria" (ibid., p. 245). The
"fiery
lives" are the controllers and directors of these microbes, these
invisible
lives, and "indirectly" build, i.e.., build by controlling and
directing
the microbes, the immediate builders, supplying the latter with what
is
necessary, acting as the life of these lives; the "fiery lives" the
synthesis,
the essence, of Prâna, are the "vital constructive energy" that
enables
the microbes to build the physical cells.
One
of the archaic commentaries sums up the matter in stately and luminous
phrases:
"The worlds, the profane, are built up of the known elements. To the
conception
of an Arhat, these elements are themselves collectively a divine life
;
distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the numberless and countless
crores
– ( a crore is ten millions) – of lives.
Fire
alone is ONE, on the plane of the One Reality ; on that of manifested,
hence
illusive, being, its particles are fiery lives which live and have their
being
at the expense of every other life that they consume. Therefore they are
named
the Devourers….Every visible thing in this universe was built by such
lives,
from conscious and divine primordial man, down to the unconscious agents that
construct matter…..From the One Life, formless and uncreate, proceeds the
universe of lives (Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 269).
As
in the universe, so in man, and all these countless lives, all this
constructive
vitality, all this is summed up by the Theosophist as Prâna .
PRINCIPLE
IV. THE DESIRE BODY
In
building up our man we have now reached the principle sometimes described as
the animal soul, in Theosophical parlance Kâma Rûpa, or the desire-body. It
belongs
to in constitution, and functions on, the second or astral plane. It
includes
the whole body of appetites, passions, emotions, and desires which come under
the head of instincts, sensations, feelings and emotions, in our Western
psychological classification, and are dealt with as a subdivision of mind.
In
Western psychology mind is divided – by the modern school – into three main
groups, feelings, will, intellect. Feelings are again divided into sensations
and
emotions , and these are divided and subdivided under numerous heads. Kâma, or
desire, includes the whole group of "feelings," and might be
described as our passional and emotional nature.
All
animal needs, such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, come under it; all
passions, such as love (in its lower sense), hatred, envy, jealousy. It is the
desire
for sentient experience, for experience of material joys – "the lust of
the
flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life".
This
principle is the most material in our nature, it is the one that binds us
fast
to earthly life. "It is not molecularly constituted matter, least of all
the
human body, Sthula Sharira, that is the grossest of all our ‘principles’ but
verily
the middle principle, the real animal centre ; whereas our body is but
its
shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us
acts
all its life" ( Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 280-81).
United
to the lower part of Manas, the mind, as Kâma-Manas, it becomes the
normal
human brain-intelligence, and that aspect of it will be dealt with
presently.
Considered by itself, it remains the brute in us, the "ape and tiger"
of
Tennyson, the force which most avails to keep us bound to earth and to stifle
in
us all higher longings by the illusions of sense.
Kâma
joined to Prâna is, as we have seen, the "breath of life," the vital
sentient
principle spread over every particle of the body. It is, therefore, the
seat
of sensation, that which enables the organs of sensation to function. We
have
already noted that the physical organs of sense, the bodily instruments
that
come into immediate contact with the external world, are related to the
organs
of sensation in the etheric double (ante p. 14).
But
these organs would be incapable of functioning did not Prâna make them
vibrant
with activity, and their vibrations would remain vibrations only, motion
on
the material plane of the physical body, did not Kâma, the principle of
sensation
translate the vibration into feeling. Feeling indeed, is consciousness
on
the kâmic plane, and when a man is under the domination of a sensation or a
passion,
the Theosophist speaks of him as on the kâmic plane, meaning thereby
that
his consciousness is functioning on that plane.
For
instance, a tree may reflect rays of light, that is ethereal vibrations, and
these
vibrations striking on the outer eye will set up vibrations in the
physical
nerve-cells ; these will be propagated as vibrations to the physical
and
on to the astral centres, but there is no sight of the tree until the seat
of
the sensation is reached, and Kâma enables us to perceive.
Matter
of the astral plane – including that called elemental essence – is the
material
of which the desire-body is composed, and it is the peculiar properties
of
this matter which enable it to serve as the sheath in which the Self can gain
experience
of sensation. (The constitution of the elemental essence would lead
us
too far from an elementary treatise).
The
desire – body, or astral body, as it is often called, has the form of a mere
cloudy
mass during the earlier stages of evolution, and is incapable of serving
as
an independent vehicle of consciousness. During deep sleep it escapes from
the
physical body, but remains near it, and the mind within it is almost as much
asleep
as the body. It is, however, liable to be affected by forces of the
astral
plane akin to its own constitution, and gives rise to dreams of a
sensuous
kind.
In
a man of average intellectual development the desire-body has become more
highly
organised, and when separated from the physical body is seen to resemble it is
outline and features ; even then, however, it is not conscious of its
surroundings
on the astral plane, but encloses the mind as a shell, within which
the
mind may actively function, while not yet able to use it as an independent
vehicle
of consciousness.
Only
in the highly evolved man does the desire-body become thoroughly organised and
vitalised, as much the vehicle of consciousness on the astral plane as the
physical body is on the physical plane.
After
death, the higher part of man dwells for awhile in the desire-body, the
length
of its stay depending on the comparative grossness or delicacy of its
constituents.
When the man escapes from it, it persists for a time as a "shell"
and
when the departed entity is of a low type, and during earth life infused
such
mentality as it possessed into the passional nature, some of this remains
entangled
with the shell.
It
then possesses consciousness of a very low order, has brute cunning, is
without
conscience – an altogether objectionable entity, often spoken of as a
"spook."
It strays about, attracted to all places in which animal desires are
encouraged
and satisfied, and is drawn into the currents of those whose animal
passions
are strong and unbridled.
Mediums
of low type inevitably attract these eminently undesirable visitors,
whose
fading vitality is reinforced in their séance rooms, who catch astral
reflections,
and play the part of "disembodied spirits" of a low order. Nor is
this
all; if at such a séance there be present some man or woman of
correspondingly
low development, the spook will be attracted to that person, and may attach
itself to him or to her, and thus may be set up currents between the
desire-body of the living person and the dying desire-body of the dead person,
generating results of the most deplorable kind.
The
longer or shorter persistence of the desire-body as a shell or a spook
depends
on the greater or less development of the animal and passional nature in
the
dying personality. If during earth-life the animal nature was indulged and
allowed
to run riot, if the intellectual and spiritual parts of man were
neglected
or stifled, then, as the life-currents were set strongly in the
direction
of passion, the desire-body will persist for a long period after the
body
of the person is dead.
Or
again, if earth-life has been suddenly cut short by accident or by suicide,
the
link between Kâma and Prâna will not be easily broken, and the desire-body
will
be strongly vivified. If, on the other hand, desire has been conquered and
bridled
during earth-life, if it has been purified and trained into subservience
to
man’s higher nature, then there is but little to energise the desire-body and
it
will quickly disintegrate and dissolve away.
There
remains one other fate, terrible in its possibilities, which may befall
the
fourth principle, but it cannot be clearly understood until the fifth
principle
has been dealt with.
THE
QUATERNARY, OR FOUR LOWER PRINCIPLES
The
etheric double is here named the Linga Sharira, a name now discarded in
consequence
of the confusion caused by employing a well-known term in Hindu
Philosophy
in an entirely new sense. Before her departure H.P.B. urged her
pupils
to reform the terminology, which had been too carelessly put together,
and
we are trying to carry out her wish.]
We
have thus studied man, as to his lower nature, and have reached the point in
his
path of evolution to which he is accompanied by the brute. The quaternary,
regarded
alone, ere it is affected by contact with the mind, is merely a lower
animal
; it awaits the coming of the mind to make it man.
Theosophy
teaches that through past ages man was thus slowly built up, stage by stage,
principle by principle, until he stood as a quaternary, brooded over but
not
in contact with the Spirit, waiting for that mind which could alone enable
him
to progress farther, and to come into conscious union with the Spirit, so
fulfilling
the very object of his being.
This
æonian evolution, in its slow progression, is hurried through in the
personal
evolution of each human being, each principle which was in the course
of
ages successively evolved in man on earth, appearing as part of the
constitution
of each man at the point of evolution reached at any given time,
the
remaining principles being latent, awaiting their gradual manifestation.
The
evolution of the quaternary until it reached the point at which further
progress
was impossible without mind, is told in eloquent sentences in the
archaic
stanzas on which the Secret Doctrine of H.P. Blavatsky is based (breath
is,
theSpirit, for which the human tabernacle is to be built ; the gross body is
the
dense physical body ; the spirit of life is Prâna ; the mirror of its body
is
the etheric double ; the vehicle of desires is Kâma): -
"
The Breath needed a form ; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a gross body
; the Earth moulded it ; The Breath needed the Spirit of Life ; the Solar Lhas breathed
into it its form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body; ‘We gave it our own,’
said the Dhyânis. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires ; ‘It has it,’ said
the Drainer of Waters. But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the
Universe;
‘We cannot give that, ‘said the fathers, ‘I never had it, ‘ said the
Spirit
of the Earth. ‘The form would be consumed were I to give it mine,’ said
the
Great Fire ….Man remained an empty senseless Bhûta" (phantom).
And
so is the personal man without mind. The quaternary alone is not man, the
Thinker,
and it is as Thinker that man is really man. Yet at this point let the
student
pause, and reflect over the human constitution, so far as he has gone.
For
this quaternary is the mortal part of man, and is distinguished by Theosophy
as
the personality. It needs to be very clearly and definitely realised, if the
constitution
of man is to be understood, and if the student is to read more
advanced
treatises with intelligence.
True,
to make the personality human it has yet to come under the rays of mind,
and
to be illuminated by it as the world by the rays of the sun. But even
without
these rays it is a clearly defined entity, with its dense body, its
etheric
double, its life, and its desire body or animal soul. It has passions,
but
no reason ; it has emotions, but no intellect ; it has desires, but no
rationalised
will ; it awaits the coming of its monarch, the mind, the touch
which
shall transform it into man.
PRINCIPLE
V. MANAS, THE THINKER, OR MIND
We
have reached the most complicated part of our study, and some thought and
attention
are necessary from the reader to gain even an elementary idea of the
relation
held by the fifth principle to the other principles in man.
The
word Manas comes from the Sanskrit word – man, the root of the verb to think ;
it is the Thinker in us, spoken of vaguely in the West as mind. I will ask the
reader to regard Manas as Thinker rather than as mind, because the word Thinker
suggests some one who thinks, i.e., an individual, an entity. And this is
exactly
the Theosophical idea of Manas, for Manas is the immortal individual,
the
real " I ," that clothes itself over and over again in transient
personalities,
and itself endures for ever.
It
is described in the Voice of the Silence in the exhortation addressed to the
candidate
for initiation: "Have perseverance as one who doth for evermore
endure.
Thy shadows [personalities] live and vanish ; that which in thee shall
live
for ever, that which in thee knows, for it is knowledge, is not of fleeting
life;
it is the man that was, that is, and will be, for whom the hour shall
never
strike" (p. 31). H.P.Blavatsky has described it very clearly in the Key to
Theosophy:
"Try to imagine a ‘Spirit,’ a celestial being, whether we call it by
one
name or another, divine in its essential nature, yet not pure enough to be
one
with the ALL, and having, in order to achieve this, to so purify its nature
as
finally to gain that goal.
It
can do so only be passing individually and personally, i.e., spiritually and
physically,
through every experience and feeling that exists in the manifold or
differentiated
universe. It has, therefore, after having gained such experience
in
the lower kingdoms, and having ascended higher and still higher with every
rung
on the ladder of being, to pass through every experience on the human
planes.
In
its very essence it is Thought, and is, therefore, called in its plurality
Manasaputra,
‘the Sons of (universal) Mind.’ This individualised ‘Thought’ is
what
we Theosophists call the real human Ego, the thinking entity imprisoned in
a
case of flesh and bones. This is surely a spiritual entity, not matter (that
is,
not matter as we know it, on the plane of the objective universe) – and such
entities
are the incarnating Egos that inform the bundle of animal matter called
mankind,
and whose names are Manasa or minds" (Key to Theosophy, p. 183-184).
This
idea may be rendered yet clearer perhaps by a hurried glance cast backward over
man’s evolution in the past. When the quaternary had been slowly built up, it
was a fair house without a tenant, and stood empty awaiting the coming of the
one who was to dwell therein.
The
name Mânasaputra (the sons of mind) covers many grades of intelligence,
ranging
from the mighty "Sons of the Flame" whose human evolution lies far
behind
them, down to those entities who gained individualisation in the cycle
preceding
our own, and were ready to incarnate on this earth in order to
accomplish
their human stage of evolution.
Some
superhuman intelligences incarnated as guides and teachers of our infant
humanity,
and became founders and divine rulers of the ancient civilisations.
Large
numbers of the entities spoken of above, who had already evolved some
mental
faculties, took up their abode in the human quaternary, in the mindless
men.
These are the reincarnating Mânasaputra, who became the tenants of the
human
frames as then evolved on earth, and these same Mânasaputra, reincarnating age
after age, are the Reincarnating Egos, the Manas in us, the persistent
individual, the fifth principle in man.
The
remainder of mankind through successive ages received from the loftier
Mânasaputra
their first spark of mind, a ray which stimulated into growth the
germ
of mind latent within them, the human soul thus having its birth in time
there.
It is these differences of age, as we may call them, in the beginning of
the
individual life, of the specialisation of the eternal Divine Spirit into a
human
soul, which explain the enormous differences in mental capacity found in
our
present humanity.
The
multiplicity of names given to this fifth principle has probably tended to
increase
the confusion surrounding it in the minds of many who are beginning to
study
Theosophy.
Mânasaputra
is what we call the historical name, the name that suggests the
entrance
into humanity of a class of already individualised souls at a certain
point
of evolution ; Manas is the ordinary name, descriptive of the intellectual
nature
of the principle ; the Individual or the " I ," or Ego, recalls the
fact
that
this principle is permanent, does not die, is the individualising
principle,
separating itself in thought from all that is not itself, the Subject
in
Western terminology as opposed to the Object ; the Higher Ego puts it into
contrast
with the Personal Ego, of which something is to be presently said .
The
Reincarnating Ego lays stress on the fact that it is the principle that
reincarnates
continually, and so unites in its own experience all the lives
passed
through on earth. There are various other names, but they will not be met
with
in elementary treatises.
The
above are those most often encountered, and there is no real difficulty
about
them, but when they are used interchangeably, without explanation, the
unhappy
student is apt to tear his hair in anguish, wondering how many
principles
he has got hold of, and what relation they bear to each other.
We
must now consider Manas during a single incarnation, which will serve as the
type of all, and we will start when the Ego has been drawn – by causes set
a-going
in previous earth-lives – the family in which is to be born the human
being
who is to serve as its next tabernacle. (I do not deal here with
reincarnation,
since that great and most essential doctrine of Theosophy must be
expounded
separately).
The
Thinker, then, awaits the building of the "house of life" which he is
to
occupy
; and now arises a difficulty ; himself a spiritual entity living on the
mental
or third plane upwards, a plane far higher than that of the universe, he
cannot
influence the molecules of gross matter of which his dwelling is built by
the
direct play upon them of his own most subtle particles.
So,
he projects part of his own substance, which clothes itself with astral
matter,
and then with the help of etheric matter permeates the whole nervous
system
of the yet unborn child, to form, as the physical apparatus matures, the
thinking
principle in man. This projection from Manas, spoken of as its
reflection,
its shadow, its ray, and by many another descriptive and allegorical
name,
is the lower Manas, in contradistinction to the higher Manas – Manas,
during
every period of incarnation, being dual.
On
this, H.P.Blavatsky says: "Once imprisoned, or incarnate, their (the
Manas)
essence
becomes dual; that is to say the rays of the eternal divine Mind,
considered
as individual entities, assume a twofold attribute which is (a) their
essential,
inherent, characteristic, heaven-aspiring mind (higher Manas), and
(b)
the human quality of thinking, or animal cogitation, rationalised owing to
the
superiority of the human brain, the Kâma-tending or lower Manas" (Key to
Theosophy,
p. 184).
We
must now turn our attention to this lower Manas alone, and see the part which
it plays in the human constitution.
It
is engulfed in the quaternary, and we may regard it as clasping Kâma with one
hand,
while with the other it retains its hold on its father, the higher Manas.
Whether
it will be dragged down by Kâma altogether and be torn away from the
triad
to which by its nature it belongs, or whether it will triumphantly carry back
to its source the purified experiences of its earth-life – that is the
life-problem set and solved in each successive incarnation.
During
earth-life, Kâma and the lower Manas are joined together, and are often
spoken
of conveniently as Kâma-Manas. Kâma supplies, as we have seen, the animal and
passional elements ; the lower Manas rationalises these, and adds the
intellectual
faculties ; and so we have the brain-mind, the brain-intelligence, i.e..,
Kâma-Manas functioning in the brain and nervous system, using the physical
apparatus as its organ on the material plane.
In
man these two principles are interwoven during life, and rarely act separately,
but the student must realise that "Kâma-Manas " is not a new
principle, but the interweaving of the fourth with the lower part of the fifth.
As
with a flame we may light a wick, and the colour of the flame of the burning
wick
will depend on the nature of the wick and of the liquid in which it is
soaked,
so in each human being the flame of Manas set alight the brain and Kâmic wick,
and the colour of the light from that wick will depend on the Kâmic nature and
the development of the brain-apparatus.
If
the Kâmic nature be strong and undisciplined it will soil the pure manasic
light,
lending it a lurid tinge and fouling it with noisome smoke. If the
brain-apparatus
be imperfect or undeveloped, it will dull the light and prevent
it
from shining forth to the outer world.
As
was clearly stated by H.P.Blavatsky in her article on "Genius" ;
"What we
call
‘the manifestations of genius’ in a person are only the more or less
successful
efforts of that Ego to assert itself on the outward plane of its
objective
form – the man of clay – in the matter-of-fact daily life of the latter.
The
Egos of a Newton, an Æschylus, or a Shakespeare are of the same essence and
substance as the Egos of a yokel, an ignoramus, a fool, or even an idiot ; and
the self-assertion of their informing genii depends on the physiological and
material
construction of the physical man. No Ego differs from another Ego in
its
primordial or original essence and nature.
That
which makes one mortal a great man and of another a vulgar silly person is,
as
said, the quality and make-up of the physical shell or casing, and the
adequacy
or inadequacy of brain and body to transmit and give expression to the light of
the real inner man ; and this aptness or inaptness is, in its turn, the
result
of Karma.
Or,
to use another simile, physical man is the musical instrument, and the Ego
the
performing artist. The potentiality of perfect melody of sound is in the
former
– the instrument – and no skill of the latter can awaken a faultless
harmony
out of a broken or badly made instrument.
This
harmony depends on the fidelity of transmission, by word and act, to the
objective
plane, of the unspoken divine thought in the very depths of man’s
subjective
or inner nature. Physical man may – to follow our simile – be a
priceless
Stradivarius, or a cheap and cracked fiddle, or again a mediocrity
between
the two, in the hands of the Paganini who ensouls him" (Lucifer
November,
1889, p.228).
Bearing
in mind these limitations and idiosyncrasies ([Limitations and
idiosyncrasies
due to the action of the Ego in previous earth-lives, be it
remembered
] imposed on the manifestations of the thinking principle by the
organ
through which it has to function, we shall have little difficulty in
following
the workings of the lower Manas in man ; mental ability, intellectual