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THE SEPTENARY PRINCIPLE IN ESOTERICISM
Since the present exposition of the Arhat esoteric doctrine was begun, many who had not acquainted themselves with the occult basis of Hindu philosophy have imagined that the two were in conflict. Some of the more bigoted have openly charged the Occultists of the Theosophical Society of propagating rank Buddhistic heresy; and have even gone to the length of affirming that the whole Theosophic movement was but a masked Buddhistic propaganda. We were taunted by ignorant Brahmins and learned Europeans that our septenary divisions of nature and everything in it, including man, is arbitrary and not endorsed by the oldest religious systems of the East.
Fortunately, we have not been obliged to wait long for our perfect vindication. In the following number our 575 Brother Mr. T. Subba Row, B.A., B.L., confessedly a learned occultist and ripe scholar, will lay before the public through these columns extracts from original texts which unanswerably prove that all the root-ideas embodied in the Fragments series were entertained by Vyasa, the great initiated adept and Rishi. The truths of the Arhat secret doctrine are thus substantiated by an authority whose orthodoxy no Hindu of whatsoever sect will dare deny. The passages were but recently stumbled upon by Mr. Subba Row in the course of reading upon another subject; thus affording us one more of those striking coincidences which by some happy chance have of late been so frequent. Meanwhile, it is proposed to throw a cursory glance at the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Laws of Manu, and especially the Vedanta, and thus show that they too prove the claim. Even in their crude exotericism their affirmation of the sevenfold division is glaring. Passage after passage hints at it. And not only can the mysterious number be found and traced on every page of the oldest Aryan Sacred Scriptures, but in the oldest books of Zoroastrianism as well; in the rescued cylindrical tile records of old Babylonia and Chaldea, in the Book of the Dead and the Ritualism of ancient Egypt and even in the Mosaic books—without mentioning the Secret Jewish works, such as the Kabala.
Within the narrow limits of a magazine article there can scarcely be found room enough for bare quotations, which we must leave to stand as landmarks and not even attempt long explanations. To really take up the subject requires more than mere Fragments. It is no exaggeration to say that upon each of the few hints now given in the cited Slokas a thick volume might be written.
From the well-known hymn To Time, in the Atharva-Veda (Bk. XIX, Hymn liii, 1-2):
“Time, like a brilliant steed with seven reins, Time, like a seven-wheeled, seven-naved car moves on, |
576—down to Manu “the first and the seventh man,” the Vedas, the Upanishads, and all the later systems of philosophy teem with allusions to this number. Who was Manu, the son of Svâyambhuva? The secret doctrine tells us that this Manu was no man, but the representation of the first human races evolved with the help of the Dhyan-Chohans (Devas) at the beginning of the first Round. But we are told in his Laws (Book I, 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa or “interval from creation to creation” (read interval from one minor “Pralaya” to another); and that “in the present divine age, there have been as yet seven Manus.” Those who know that there are seven Rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now in the fourth; and who are taught that there are seven dawns and seven twilights or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the beginning of every Round and at the end and on, and between the planets there is “an awakening to illusive life,” and “an awakening to real life,” and that, moreover, there are “root-Manus” and what we have to clumsily translate as “the seed-Manus”—the seeds for the human races of the forthcoming Round (a mystery divulged, but to those who have passed their third degree in initiation); those who have learned all that, will be better prepared to understand the meaning of the following. We are told in the Sacred Hindu Scriptures that “The first Manu produced six other Manus (seven primary Manus in all) and these produced in their turn each seven other Manus”— (Bk. I, 61-63)[1] the production of the latter standing in the occult treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it becomes clear that Manu—the last one, the progenitor of our Fourth Round Humanity, must be the seventh, since we are on our fourth Round, and that there is a root-Manu at globe A and a seed-Manu at globe G. Just as each planetary Round commences with the appearance of a “Root-Manu” (Dhyan Chohan) and closes with a “Seed-Manu,” so a Root- and a 577 Seed-Manu appear respectively at the beginning and the termination of the human period on any particular planet. It will be easily seen from the foregoing statement that a Manu-antaric period means, as the term implies, the time between the appearance of two Manus or Dhyan Chohans; and hence a minor Manvantara is the duration of the seven races on any particular planet, and a major manvantara is the period of one human round along the Planetary Chain. Moreover, that, as it is said that each of the seven Manus creates 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are forty-nine root-races on the seven planets during each Round, then every root-race has its Manu. The present seventh Manu is called “Vaivasvata” and stands in the exoteric texts for the Manu who represents in India the Babylonian Xisuthros and the Jewish Noah. But in the esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor of our fifth race who saved it from the flood that nearly exterminated the fourth (Atlantis)—is not the seventh Manu, mentioned in the nomenclature of the Root-, or primitive Manus, but one of the forty-nine “emanated from this Root-Manu.”
For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the fourteen Manus in their respective order and relation to each Round.
| 1st (Root) Manu on Planet A.—Svayambhuva
1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G.—Svarochi (or) Svarochisha | ||
| 2nd (Root) Manu on Planet A.—Uttama
2nd (Seed) Manu on Planet G.—Tamasa | ||
| 3rd (Root) Manu on Planet A.—Raivata
3rd (Seed) Manu on Planet G.—Chakshuska | ||
| 4th (Root) Manu on Planet A.—Vaivasvata (our progenitor)
4th (Seed) Manu on Planet G.—Savarna | ||
| 5th (Root) Manu on Planet A.—Daksha Savarna
5th (Seed) Manu on Planet G.—Brahma Savarna | ||
| 6th (Root) Manu on Planet A.—Dharma Savarna
6th (Seed) Manu on Planet G.—Rudra Savarna | ||
| 7th (Root) Manu on Planet A.—Rauchya
7th (Seed) Manu on Planet G.—Bhautya |
578Vaivasvata thus, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive Root-Manu of our fourth Human Wave: (the reader must always remember that Manu is not a man but collective humanity), while our Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus who are made to preside over the seven races of this our planet. Each of these has to become the witness of one of the periodical and ever-recurring cataclysms (by fire and water in turn) that close the cycle of every Root-race. And it is this Vaivasvata—the Hindu ideal embodiment called respectively Xisuthros, Deukalion, Noah and by other names—who is the allegorical man who rescued our race when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere perished by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its temporary obscuration.
The number seven stands prominently conspicuous in even a cursory comparison of the eleventh Tablet of the Izdubar legends of the Chaldean account of the Deluge and the so-called Mosaic books. In both the number seven plays a most prominent part. The clean beasts are taken by sevens, the fowls by sevens also; in seven days, it is promised Noah, to rain upon the earth; thus he stays “yet other seven days,” and again seven days; while in the Chaldean account of the Deluge, on the seventh day the rain quieted. On the seventh day the dove is sent out; by sevens, Xisuthros takes “jugs of wine” for the altar, etc. Why such coincidence? And yet we are told by, and bound to believe in, the European Orientalists, when passing judgment alike upon the Babylonian and Aryan chronology they call them “extravagant and fanciful”! Nevertheless, while they give us no explanation of, nor have they ever noticed, as far as we know, the strange oneness in the totals of the Semitic, Chaldean, and Aryan Hindu chronology, the students of Occult Philosophy find the following fact extremely suggestive. While the period of the reign of the ten Babylonian ante-diluvian kings is given as 432,000 years,[2] the duration of 579 the post-diluvian Kali-yuga, is also given as 432,000, while the four ages or the divine Maha-yuga yield in their totality 4,320,000 years. Why should they, if fanciful and “extravagant,” give the identical figures, when neither the Aryans nor the Babylonians have surely borrowed anything from each other! We invite the attention of our occultists to the three figures given: 4 standing for the perfect square, 3 for the triad (the seven universal and the seven Individual principles), and 2 the symbol of our illusionary world, a figure ignored and rejected by Pythagoras.
It is in the Upanishads and the Vedanta though, that we have to look for the best corroborations of the occult teachings. In the mystical doctrine, the Rahasya, or the Upanishads, “the only Veda of all thoughtful Hindus in the present day,” as Monier Williams is made to confess, every word, as its very name implies,[3] has a secret meaning underlying it. This meaning can be fully realized only by him who has a full knowledge of Prana, the ONE LIFE, “the nave to which are attached the seven spokes of the Universal Wheel.” (Hymn to Prana, Atharva-Veda, XI, 4.)
Even European Orientalists agree that all the systems in India assign to the human body: (a) an exterior or gross body (sthulaśarira); (b) an inner or shadowy body (sukshma), or linga-śarira (the vehicle), the two cemented with—(c) life (jiv or karana-śarira, “causal body.”)[4] These the occult system or esotericism divides into seven, further adding to these— kama, manas, buddhi and atman. The Nyaya philosophy when treating of Prameyas (by which the objects and subjects of Prama are to be correctly understood) includes among the 12 the seven “root principles” (See 580 IXth Sutra), which are (1) soul (atman), and (2) its superior spirit Jivatman; (3) body (śarira), (4) senses (indriya); (5) activity or will (pravritti); (6) mind (manas); (7) Intellection (Buddhi). The seven Padarthas (enquiries or predicates of existing things) of Kanada in the Vaiśeshikas, refer in the occult doctrine to the seven qualities or attributes of the seven principles. Thus: (1) Substance (dravya) —refers to body or sthulaśarira; (2) Quality or property (guna) to the life principle jiv; (3) Action or act (karman) to the Linga śarira; (4) Community or commingling of properties (Samanya) to Kamarupa; (5) Personality or conscious individuality (Viśesha) to Manas; (6) Co-inherence or perpetual intimate relation (Samavaya) to Buddhi, the inseparable vehicle of Atman; (7) Nonexistence or non-being (abhava) in the sense of, and as separate from, objectivity or substance—to the highest monad or Atman.
Thus whether we view the ONE as the Vedic Purusha or Brahman (neutral) the “all-expanding essence”; or as the universal spirit, the “light of lights” (jyotisham jyotih), the TOTAL independent of all relation—of the Upanishads; or as the Paramatman of the Vedanta; or again as Kanada’s Adrishta “the unseen Force,” or divine atom; or as Prakriti, the “eternally existing essence,” of Kapila, we find in all these impersonal universal Principles the latent capability of evolving out of themselves “six rays” (the evolver being the seventh). The third aphorism of the Sankhya-Karika, which says of Prakriti that it is the “root and substance of all things,” and no production, but itself a producer of “seven things which, produced by it, become also producers”—has a purely occult meaning.
What are the “producers” evoluted from this universal root-principle, Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated primeval cosmic matter, which evolves out of itself consciousness, and mind, and is generally called “Prakriti” and amulam mulam, “the rootless root,” and avyakta, the “unevolved evolver,” etc.? This primordial tattwa or “eternally existing ‘that’,” the unknown essence, is said to produce as a first producer (1) Buddhi—“intellect”—whether we apply the latter to the sixth macrocosmic or microcosmic principle. This first
581produced produces in its turn (or is the source of) (2) Ahankara, “self-consciousness” and Manas, “mind.” The reader will please always remember, that Mahat [is the] great source of these two internal faculties. “Buddhi” per se can have neither self-consciousness nor mind; viz., the sixth principle in man can preserve an essence of personal self-consciousness or “personal individuality” only by absorbing within itself its own waters, which have run through that finite faculty; for Ahankara—that is the perception of “I,” or the sense of one’s personal individuality, justly represented by the term “Egoism”—belongs to the second or rather the third production out of the seven, viz., to the fifth principle, or Manas. It is the latter which draws “as the web issues from the spider” along the thread of Prakriti, the “root principle,” the four following subtle elementary principles or particles, Tanmatras, out of which third class the Maha-bhutas or the gross elementary principles, or rather śariras and rupas, are evolved—the kama, linga, jiva and sthula-śarira. The three gunas of “Prakriti”—the Sattva, Rajas and Tamas (purity, passionate activity, and ignorance or darkness) —spun into a triple-stranded cord or “rope,” pass through the seven, or rather six, human principles. It depends on the fifth—Manas or Ahankara the “I”—to thin the guna “rope,” into one thread—the sattva; and thus by becoming one with the “unevolved evolver,” win immortality or eternal conscious existence. Otherwise it will be again resolved into its Mahabhutic essence; so long as the triple-stranded rope is left unstranded, the spirit (the divine monad) is bound by the presence of the gunas in the principles “like an animal” (purusha-pasu). The spirit, âtman or jivatman (the seventh and sixth principles) whether of the macro or microcosm, though bound by these gunas during the objective manifestation of universe or man, is yet nirguna, i.e., entirely free from them. Out of the three producers or evolvers, Prakriti, Buddhi and Ahankara, it is but the latter that can be caught (when man is concerned) and destroyed when personal. The “divine monad” is aguna (devoid of qualities), while Prakriti, once that from passive Mula-prakriti it has become avyakta (an active evolver), 582 is gunavat—endowed with qualities. With the latter—Purusha or Atman can have naught to do (of course being unable to perceive it in its gunavatic state); with the former—or Mula-prakriti, or undifferentiated cosmic essence, it has [to do]—since it is one with it and identical.
The Atma Bodha or “knowledge of soul,” a tract written by the great Sankaracharya, speaks distinctly of the seven principles in man (see fourteenth verse). They are called therein the five sheaths (pañcha-kośa) in which is enclosed the divine monad—the Atman and Buddhi, the seventh and sixth principles, or the individual soul when made distinct (through avidya, maya and the gunas) from the supreme soul—Parabrahm. The first sheath called Anandamaya, the “illusion of supreme bliss”—is the manas or fifth principle of the occultists, when united to Buddhi; the second sheath is Vijñana-maya-kośa, the case or “envelope of self-delusion,” the manas when self-deluded into the belief of the personal I, or ego, with its vehicle. The third—the Mano-maya sheath composed of “illusionary mind” associated with the organs of action and will, is the Kamarupa and Linga-śarira combined, producing an illusive “I” or Mayavi-rupa. The fourth sheath is called Prana-maya, “illusionary life,” our second life principle or jiv, wherein resides life, the “breathing” sheath. The fifth kośa is called Annamaya or the sheath supported by food—our gross material body. All these sheaths produce other smaller sheaths—or six attributes or qualities each, the seventh being always the root sheath, and the Atman or spirit passing through all these subtle ethereal bodies like a thread, is called the “thread-soul” or sutratman.
We may conclude with the above demonstration. Verily the Esoteric doctrine may well be called in its turn the “thread doctrine,” since, like Sutratman or Pranatman, it passes through, and strings together all the ancient philosophical religious systems, and what is more—reconciles and explains them. For though seeming so unlike externally, they have but one foundation, and of that the extent, depth, breadth and nature are known to those who have become, like the “Wise Men of the East,” adepts in Occult Science.
Footnotes
- ↑ The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by Viraj and then produced the ten Prajapatis, who again produced seven Manus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other Manus, (Manu, I, 33-36) relates to other still earlier mysteries, and is at the same time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain.
- ↑ See Ancient History from the Monuments. The History of Babylonia, by George Smith, Edited by A. H. Sayce, London, 1877, p. 36. Here again, as with the Manus and ten Prajapatis and the ten Sephiroth in the Book of Numbers—they dwindle down to seven!
- ↑ Upa-ni-shad means, according to Brahmanical authority, “to conquer ignorance by revealing the secret spiritual knowledge.” According to Monier Williams—the title is derived from the root sad with the prepositions upa and ni, and implies “something mystical that underlies or is beneath the surface.”
- ↑ This Karana-śarira is often mistaken by the uninitiated for Linga-śarira, and since it is described as the inner rudimentary or latent embryo of the body—confounded with it. But the Occultists regard it as the life (body) or Jiv, which disappears at death—is withdrawn—leaving the 1st, and 3rd principles to disintegrate and return to their elements.