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PAPER III.
A Word Concerning the Earlier Papers.
As many have written and almost complained to me that they could find no practical clear application of certain diagrams appended to the first two Papers, and others have spoken of their abstruseness, a short explanation is necessary.
The reason of this difficulty in most cases has been that the point of view taken was erroneous; the purely abstract and metaphysical was mistaken for, and confused with, the concrete and the physical. Let us take for example the diagrams on page 477 (Paper II.,) and say that these are entirely macrocosmic and ideal. It must be remembered that the study of Occultism proceeds from Universals to Particulars and not the reverse way, as accepted by Science. As Plato was an Initiate, he very naturally used the former method, while Aristotle, never having been initiated, scoffed at his master, and, elaborating a system of his own, left it as an heirloom to be adopted and improved by Bacon. Of a truth the aphorism of Hermetic Wisdom, “As above, so below, “ applies to all Esoteric instruction; but we must begin with the above; we must learn the formula before we can sum the series.
The two figures, therefore, are not meant to represent any two particular planes, but are the abstraction of a pair of planes, explanatory of the law of reflection, just as the Lower Manas is a reflection of the Higher. They must therefore be taken in the highest metaphysical sense.
The diagrams are only intended to familiarize students with the leading ideas of Occult correspondences, the very genius of metaphysical, or macrocosmic and spiritual Occultism forbidding the use of figures or even symbols further than as temporary aids. Once define an idea in words, and it loses its reality; once figure a metaphysical idea, and
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you materialize its spirit. Figures must be used as ladders to scale the battlements, ladders to be disregarded when once the foot is set upon the rampart.
Let students, therefore, be very careful to spiritualize the Papers and avoid materializing them; let them always try to find the highest meaning possible, confident that in proportion as they approach the material and visible in their speculations on the Papers, so far as they from the right understanding of them. This is especially the case with these first Papers and Diagrams, for as in all true arts, so in Occultism, we must first learn the theory before we are taught the practice.
Concerning Secrecy.
Students ask: Why such secrecy about the details of a doctrine the body of which has been publicly revealed, as in Esoteric Buddhism and the Secret Doctrine?
To this Occultism would reply: for two reasons:—
- (a) The whole truth is too sacred to be given out promiscuously.
- (b) The knowledge of all the details and missing links in the exoteric teachings is too dangerous in profane hands.
The truths revealed to man by the “Planetary Spirits”—the highest Kumâras, those who incarnate no longer in the Universe during this Mahâmanvantara—who will appear on earth as Avatâras only at the beginning of every new human Race, and at the junctions or close of the two ends of the small and great cycles—in time, as man became more animalized, were made to fade away from his memory. Yet, though these Teachers remain with man no longer than the time required to impress upon the plastic minds of child-humanity the eternal verities they teach, Their Spirit remains vivid though latent in mankind. And the full knowledge of the primitive revelation has remained always with a few elect, and has been transmitted from that time up to the present, from one generation of Adepts to another. As the Teachers say in the Occult Primer:
This is done so as to ensure them [the eternal truths] from being utterly lost or forgotten in ages hereafter by the forthcoming generations.
The mission of the Planetary Spirit is but to strike the key-note of Truth. When once He has directed the vibration of the latter to run its course uninterruptedly along the concatenation of the race to the end of the cycle, He disappears from our earth until the following Planetary Manvantara. The mission of any teacher of Esoteric truths,
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whether he stands at the top or the foot of the ladder of knowledge, is precisely the same; as above, so below. I have only orders to strike the key-note of the various Esoteric truths among the learners as a body. Those units among you who will have raised themselves on the “Path” over their fellow-students, in their Esoteric sphere, will, as the “Elect” spoken of did and do in the Parent Brotherhoods, receive the last explanatory details and the ultimate key to what they learn. No one, however, can hope to gain this privilege before the Masters—not my humble self—find him or her worthy.
If you wish to know the real raison d’être for this policy, I now give it to you. No use my repeating and explaining what all of you know as well as myself; at the very beginning, events have shown that no caution can be dispensed with. Of our body of several hundred men and women, many did not seem to realize either the awful sacredness of the pledge (which some took at the end of their pen), or the fact that their personality has to be entirely disregarded, when brought face to face with their Higher Self; or that all their words and professions went for naught unless corroborated by actions. This was human nature, and no more; therefore it was passed leniently by, and a new lease accorded by the Master. But apart from this there is a danger lurking in the nature of the present cycle itself. Civilized humanity, however carefully guarded by its invisible Watchers, the Nirmânakâyas, who watch over our respective races and nations, is yet, owing to its collective Karma, terribly under the sway of the traditional opposers of the Nirmânakâyas—the “Brothers of the Shadow,” embodied and disembodied; and this, as has already been told you, will last to the end of the first Kali Yuga cycle (1897), and a few years beyond, as the smaller dark cycle happens to overlap the great one. Thus, notwithstanding all precautions, terrible secrets are often revealed to entirely unworthy persons by the efforts of the “Dark Brothers” and their working on human brains. This is entirely owning to the simple fact that in certain privileged organisms, vibrations of the primitive truth put in motion by the Planetary Beings are set up, in what Western philosophy would term innate ideas, and Occultism “flashes of genius,” * Some such idea based on eternal truth is awakened, and all that the watchful Powers can do is to prevent its entire revelation.
Everything in this Universe of differentiated matter has its two aspects, the light and the dark side, and these two attributes applied
* See “Genius,” Lucifer, Nov., 1889, p. 227.
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practically, lead the one to use, the other to abuse. Every man may become a Botanist without apparent danger to his fellow-creatures; and many a Chemist who has mastered the science of essences knows that every one of them can both heal and kill. Not an ingredient, not a poison, but can be used for both purposes—aye, from harmless wax to deadly prussic acid, from the saliva of an infant to that of the cobra di capella. This every tyro in medicine knows—theoretically, at any rate. But where is the learned chemist in our day who has been permitted to discover the “night side” of an attribute of any substance in the three kingdoms of Science, let alone in the seven of the Occultists? Who of them has penetrated into its Arcana, into the innermost Essence of things and its primary correlations? Yet it is this knowledge alone which makes of an Occultist a genuine practical Initiate, whether he turn out a Brother of Light or a Brother of Darkness. The essence of that subtle, traceless poison, the most potent in nature, which entered into the composition of the so-called Medici and Borgia poisons, if used with discrimination by one well versed in the septenary degrees of its potentiality on each of the planes accessible to man on earth—could heal or kill every man in the world; the result depending, of course, on whether the operator was a Brother of the Light or a Brother of the Shadow. The former is prevented from doing the good he might, by racial, national, and individual Karma; the second is impeded in his fiendish work by the joint efforts of the human “Stones” of the “Guardian Wall.” *
It is incorrect to think that there exists any special “powder of projection” or “philosopher’s stone,” or “elixir of life.” The latter lurks in every flower, in every stone and mineral throughout the globe. It is the ultimate essence of everything on its way to higher and higher evolution. As there is no good or evil per se, so there is neither “elixir of life” nor “elixir of death,” nor poison, per se, but all this is contained in one and the same universal Essence, this or the other effect, or result, depending on the degree of its differentiation and its various correlations. The light side of it produces life, health, bliss, divine peace, etc; the dark side brings death, disease, sorrow and strife. This is proven by the knowledge of the nature of the most violent poisons; of some of them even a large quantity will produce no evil effect on the organism, whereas a grain of the same poison kills with
* See Voice of the Silence, pp. 68 and 94, art. 28. Glossary.
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the rapidity of lightning; while the same grain, again, altered by a certain combination, though its quantity remains almost identical, will heal. The number of the degrees of its differentiation is septenary, as are the planes of its action, each degree being either beneficent or maleficent in its effects, according to the system into which it is introduced. He who is skilled in these degrees is on the high road to practical Adeptship; he who acts at haphazard—as do the enormous majority of the “Mind Curers,” whether “Mental” or “Christian Scientists”—is likely to rue the effects on himself as well as on others. Put on the track by the example of the Indian Yogis, and of their broadly but incorrectly outlined practices, which they have only read about, but have have no opportunity to study—these new sects have rushed headlong and guideless into the practice of denying and affirming. Thus they have done more harm than good. Those who are successful owe it to their innate magnetic and healing powers which very often counteract that which would otherwise be conductive to much evil. Beware, I say: Satan and the Archangel are more than twins; they are one body and one mind—Deus est Demon inversus.
Is the Practice of Concentration Beneficent?
Such is another question often asked. I answer: Genuine concentration and meditation, conscious and cautious, upon one’s lower self in the light of the inner divine man and the Pâramitâs, is an excellent thing. But to “sit for Yoga,” with only a superficial and often distorted knowledge of the real practice, is almost invariably fatal: for ten to one the student will either develop mediumistic powers in himself or lose time and get disgusted both with practice and theory. Before one rushes into such a dangerous experiment and seeks to go beyond a minute examination of one’s lower self and its walk in life, or that which is called in our phraseology, “The Chelâ’s Daily Life Ledger,” he would do well to learn at least the difference between the two aspects of “Magic,” the White or Divine, and the Black or Devilish, and assure himself that by “sitting for Yoga,” with no experience, as well as with no guide to show him the dangers, he does not daily and hourly cross the boundaries of the Divine to fall into the Satanic. Nevertheless, the way to learn the difference is very easy; one has only to remember that no Esoteric truths entirely unveiled will ever be given in public print, in book or magazine.
I ask students to turn to the Theosophist of November, 1887. On
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page 98 they will find the beginning of an excellent article by Mr. Râma Prasâd on “Nature’s Finer Forces.” * The value of this work is not so much in its literary merit, though it gained its author the gold medal of the Theosophist, as in its exposition of tenets hitherto concealed in a rare and ancient Sanskrit work on Occultism. But Mr. Râma Prasâd is not an Occultist, only an excellent Sanskrit scholar, a university graduate and a man of remarkable intelligence. His essays are almost entirely based on Tântra works, which, if read indiscriminately by a tyro in Occultism, will lead to the practice of most unmitigated Black Magic. Now, since the difference of primary importance between Black and White Magic is the object with which it is practised, and that of secondary importance the nature of the agents used for the production of phenomenal results, the line of demarcation between the two is very—very thin. The danger is lessened only by the fact that every Occult book, so-called, is Occult only in a certain sense: that is, the text is Occult merely by reason of its blinds. The symbolism has to be thoroughly understood before the reader can get at the correct sense of the teaching. Moreover, it is never complete, its several portions each being under a different title, and each containing a portion of some other work; so that without a key to these no such work divulges the whole truth. Even the famous Shivâgama, on which Nature’s Finer Forces is based, “is nowhere to be found in complete form,” as the author tells us. Thus, like all others, it treats of only five Tattvas instead of seven as in Esoteric teachings.
Now the Tattvas being simple, the substratum of the seven forces of Nature, how can this be? There are seven forms of Prakriti, as Kapila’s Sânkhya, the Vishnu Purâna, and other works teach. Prakriti is Nature, Matter (primordial and elemental); therefore logic demands that the Tattvas also should be seven. For whether Tattvas mean, as Occultism teaches, “forces of Nature,” or, as the learned Râma Prâsad explains, “the substance out of which the universe is formed” and “the power by which it is sustained,” it is all one; they
* The references to “Nature’s Finer Forces” which follow, have respect to the eight articles which appeared in the pages of the Theosophist and not to the fifteen essays and the translation of a chapter of the Shivâgama which are contained in the book called Nature’s Finer Forces. The Shivâgama in its details is purely Tântric, and nothing but harm can result from any practical following of its precepts. I would most strongly dissuade any student from attempting any of these Hatha Yoga practices, for he will either ruin himself entirely, or throw himself so far back that it will be almost impossible to regain the lost ground in this incarnation. The translation referred to has been considerably expurgated, and even now is hardly fit for publication. It recommends Black Magic of the worst kind, and is the very antipodes of spiritual Râja Yoga. Beware, I say.
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are Force, Purusha, and Matter, Prakriti. And if the forms, or rather planes, of the latter are seven, then its forces must be seven also. In other words, the degrees of the solidity of matter and the degrees of the power that ensouls it must go hand in hand.
The Universe is made out of the Tattva, it is sustained by the Tattva, and it disappears into the Tattva,
says Shiva, as quoted from the Shivâgama in Nature’s Finer Forces. This settles the question; if Prakriti is septenary, then the Tattvas must be seven, for, as said, they are both Substance and Force, or atomic Matter and the Spirit that ensouls it.
This is explained here to enable the student to read between the lines of the so-called Occult articles on Sanskrit Philosophy by which they must not be misled. The doctrine of the seven Tattvas (the principles of the Universe and also of man ) was held in great sacredness and therefore secrecy, in the days of old, by the Brâhmans, who have now almost forgotten the teaching. Yet it is taught to this day in the Schools beyond the Himâlayan Range, though now hardly remembered or heard of in India except through rare Initiates. The policy has, however, been changed gradually; Chelâs began to be taught the broad outlines of it, and at the advent of the T.S. in India, in 1879, I was ordered to teach it in is exoteric form to one or two. I now give it out Esoterically.
Knowing that some students try to follow a system of Yoga in their own fashion, guided only by the rare hints they find in Theosophical books and magazines, which must naturally be incomplete, I chose one of the best expositions upon ancient Occult works, Nature’s Finer Forces, in order to point out how very easily one can be misled by their blinds.
The author seems to have been himself deceived. The Tantras read Esoterically are as full of wisdom as the noblest Occult works. Studied without a guide and applied to practice, they may lead to the production of various phenomenal results, on the moral and physiological planes. But let anyone accept their dead-letter rules and practices, let him try with some selfish motive in view to carry out the rites prescribed therein, and—he is lost. Followed with pure heart and unselfish devotion merely for the sake of experiment, either no results will follow, or such as can only throw back the performer. But woe to the selfish man who seeks to develop Occult powers only to
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attain earthly benefits or revenge, or to satisfy his ambition; the separation of the Higher from the Lower Principles and the severing of Buddhi-Manas from the Tantrist’s personality will speedily follow, the terrible Karmic results to the dabbler in Magic.
In the East, in India and China, Soulless men and women are as frequently met with as in the West, though vice is, in truth, far less developed there than it is here.
It is Black Magic and oblivion of their ancestral wisdom that lead them thereunto. But of this I will speak later, now merely adding: you have to be warned and know the danger.
Meanwhile, in view of what follows, the real Occult division of the Principles in their correspondences with the Tattvas and other minor forces has to be well studied.
About "Principles" and "Aspects".
Speaking metaphysically and philosophically, on strict Esoteric lines, man as a complete unit is composed of Four basic Principles and their Three Aspects on this earth. In the semi-esoteric teachings, these Four and Three have been called Seven Principles, to facilitate the comprehension of the masses.
| 1. Atmâ, or Jiva, "the One Life", which permeates the Monadic Trio. (One in three and three in One) | 1. Prâna, the Breath of Life, the same as Nephesh. At the death of a livinb being, Prâna re-becomes Jiva. * |
| 2. Auric envelope; because the substratum of the Aura around man is the universally diffused primordial and pure Akâsha, the first film on the boundless and shoreless expanse of Jiva, the immutable Root of all. | 2. Linga Sharira, the Astral Form, the transitory emanation of the Auric Egg. This form precedes the formation of the living Body, and after death clings to it, dissipating only with the disappearance of its last atom (the skeleton excepted). |
* Remember that our reincanating Egos are called the Mânasaputras, "Sons of Manas" (or Mahat), Intelligence, Wisdom.
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| 3. Buddhi; for Buddhi is a ray of the Universal Spiritual Soul (Alaya) | 3. Lower Manas, the Animal Soul, the reflection or shadow of the Buddhi-Manas, having the potentialities of both, but conquered generally by its association with the Kâma elements. |
| 4. Manas (the Higher Ego); for it proceeds from Mahat, the first product or emanation of Pradhâna, which contains potentially all the Gunas (attributes). Mahat is Cosmic Intelligence, called the "Great Principle". |
As the lower man is the combined product of two aspects—physically, of his Astral Form, and psycho- physiologically of Kâma-Manas—he is not looked upon even as an aspect, but as an illusion.
The Auric Egg, on account of its nature and manifold functions, has to be well studied. As Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Womb or Egg, contains Brahmâ, the collective symbol of the Seven Universal Forces, so the Auric Egg contains, and is directly related to, both the divine and the physical man. In its essence, as said, it is eternal; in its constant correlations and transformations, during the reincarnating progress of the Ego on this earth, it is a kind of perpetual motion machine.
As given out in our second volume, the Egos or Kumâras, incarnating in man, at the end of the Third Root-Race, are not human Egos of this earth or plane, but become such only from the moment they ensoul the Animal Man, thus endowing him with his Higher Mind. Each is a “Breath” or Principle, called the Human Soul, or Manas, the Mind. As the teachings say:
“Each is a pillar of light. Having chosen its vehicle, it expanded, surrounding with an Âkâshic Aura the human animal, while the Divine (Mânasic) Principle settled within that human form.”
Ancient Wisdom teaches us, moreover, that from this first incarnation, the Lunar Pitris, who had made men out of their Chhâyâs or Shadows, are absorbed by this Auric Essence, and a distinct Astral Form is now produced for each forthcoming personality of the reincarnating series of each Ego.
* Prâna, on earth at any rate, is thus but a mode of life, a constant cyclic motion from within outwardly and back again, an out-breathing and in-breathing of the One Life, or Jiva, the synonym of the Absolute and Unknowable Deity. Prâna is not absolute life, or Jiva, but its aspect in a world of delusion. In the Theosophist, May 1888, p. 478, Prâna is said to be "one stage finer than the gross matter of the earth."
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Thus the Auric Egg, reflecting all the thoughts, words and deeds of man is:
- (a) The preserver of every Karmic record.
- (b) The storehouse of all the good and evil powers in man, receiving and giving out at his will—nay, at his very thought—every potentiality which becomes, then and there, an acting potency: this Aura is the mirror in which sensitives and clairvoyants sense and perceive the real man, and see him as he is, not as he appears.
- (c) As it furnished man with his Astral Form, around which the physical entity models itself, first as a fœtus, then as a child and man, the astral growing apace with the human being, so it furnishes him during life, if an Adept, with his Mâyâvic Rûpa, or Illusion Body, which is not his Vital-Astral Body; and after death, with his Devachanic Entity and Kâma Rûpa, or Body of Desire (the Spook). *
In the case of the Devachanic Entity, the Ego, in order to be able to go into a state of bliss, as the “I” of its immediately preceding incarnation, has to be clothed (metaphorically speaking) with the spiritual elements of the ideas, aspirations and thoughts of the now disembodied personality; otherwise what is it that enjoys bliss and reward? Surely not the impersonal Ego, the Divine Individuality. Therefore it must be the good Karmic records of the deceased, impressed upon the Auric Substance, which furnish the Human Soul with just enough of the spiritual elements of the ex-personality, to enable it to still believe itself that body from which it has just been severed, and to receive its fruition, during a more or less prolonged period of “spiritual gestation.” For Devachan is a “spiritual gestation” within an ideal matrix state, a birth of the Ego into the world of effects, which ideal, subjective birth precedes its next terrestrial birth, the latter being determined by its bad Karma, into the world of causes. †
In the case of the Spook, the Kâma Rûpa is furnished from the animal dregs of the Auric Envelope, with its daily Karmic record of animal life, so full of animal desires and selfish aspirations. ‡
* It is erroneous to call the fourth human principle “Kâma Rûpa.” It is no Rûpa” or form at all until after death, but stands for the Kâmic elements in man, his animal desires and passions, such as anger, lust, envy, revenge, etc., the progeny of selfishness and matter.
† Here the world of effects is the Devachanic state, and the world of causes, earth life.
‡ It is this Kâma Rûpa alone that can materialize in mediumistic séances, which occasionally happens when it is not the Astral Double or Linga Sharîra, of the medium himself which appears. How, then, can this vile bundle of passions and terrestrial lusts, resurrected by, and gaining consciousness only through the organism of the medium, be accepted as a “departed angel” or the Spirit of a once human body? As well say of the microbic pest which fastens on a person, that it is a sweet departed angel.
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Now the Linga Sharira remains with the Physical Body, and fades out along with it. An astral entity then has to be created, a new Linga Sharîra provided, to become the bearer of all the past Tanhas and future Karma. How is this accomplished? The mediumistic Spook, the “departed angel,” fades out and vanishes also in its turn * as an entity or full image of the personality that was, and leaves in the Kâmalokic world of effects only the record of its misdeeds and sinful thoughts and acts, known in the phraseology of Occultists as Tânhic or human Elementals. Entering into the composition of the Astral Form of the new body, into which the Ego, upon its quitting the Devachanic state, is to enter according to Karmic decree, the Elementals form that new astral entity which is born within the Auric Envelope, and of which it is often said:
Bad Karma waits at the threshold of Devachan, with its army of Skandhas. †
For no sooner is the Devachanic state of reward ended, than the Ego is indissolubly united with (or rather follows in the track of) the new Astral Form. Both are Karmically propelled towards the family or woman from whom is to be born the animal chila chosen by Karma to become the vehicle of the Ego which has just awakened from the Devachanic state. Then the new Astral Form, composed partly of the pure Akâshic Essence of the Auric Egg, and partly of the terrestrial elements of the punishable sins and misdeeds of the last personality, is drawn into the woman. Once there, Nature models the fœtus of flesh around the Astral, out of the growing materials of the male seed in the female soil. Thus grows out of the essence of a decayed seed the fruit or eidolon of the dead seed, the physical fruit producing in its turn within itself another, and other seeds for future plants.
And now we may return to the Tattvas, and see what they mean in nature and man, showing thereby the great danger of indulging in fancy, amateur Yoga, without knowing what we are about.
* This is accomplished in more or less time, according to the degree in which the personality (whose dregs it now is) was spiritual or material. If spirituality prevailed, then the Larva, or Spook, will fade out very soon; but if the personality was very materialistic, the Kâma Rûpa may last for centuries and—in some, though very exceptional cases—even survive with the help of some of its scattered Skandhas, which are all transformed in time into Elementals. See the Key to Theosophy, pp. 141 et seq., in which it was impossible to go into details, but where the Skandhas are spoken.
† Key to Theosophy, p. 141.
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The Tãttvic Correlations and Meaning.
In Nature, then, we find seven Forces, or seven Centres of Force, and everything seems to respond to that number, as for instance, the septenary scale in music, or Sounds, and the septenary spectrum in Colours. I have not exhausted its nomenclature and proofs in the earlier volumes, yet enough is given to show every thinker that the facts adduced are no coincidences, but very weighty testimony.
There are several reasons why only five Tattvas are given in the Hindu systems. One of these I have already mentioned; another is that owing to our having reached only the Fifth Race, and being (so far as Science is able to ascertain) endowed with only five senses, the two remaining senses that are still latent in man can have their existence proven only on phenomenal evidence, which to the Materialist is no evidence at all. The five physical senses are made to correspond with the five lower Tattvas, the two yet undeveloped senses in man; and the two forces, or Tattvas, forgotten by Brâhmans and still unrecognized by Science, being so subjective and the highest of them so sacred, that they can only be recognized by, and known through, the highest Occult Sciences. It is easy to see that these two Tattvas and the two senses (the sixth and the seventh) correspond to the two highest human principles, Buddhi and the Auric Envelope, impregnated with the light of Atmâ. Unless we open in ourselves, by Occult training, the sixth and seventh senses, we can never comprehend correctly their corresponding types.
Thus the statement in Nature’s Finer Forces that, in the Tâttvic scale, the highest Tattva of all is Âkâsha * (followed by [only] four, each of which becomes grosser than its predecessor), if made from the Esoteric standpoint, is erroneous. For once Âkâsha, an almost homogeneous and certainly universal Principle, is translated Ether, then Âkâsha is dwarfed and limited to our visible Universe, for assuredly it is not the Ether of Space. Ether, whatever Modern Science makes of it, is differentiated Substance; Âkâsha, having no attributes save one— SOUND, of which it is the substratum—is no substance even exoterically and in the minds of some Orientalists, † but rather Chaos, or the Great Spatial Void. ‡
* Following Shivâgama, the said author enumerates the correspondences in this wise: Âkâsha, Ether, is followed by Vâyu, Gas: Tejas, Heat: Âpas, Liquid: and Prithivî, Solid.
† See Fitz-Edward Hall’s notes on the Vishnu Purânas.
‡ The pair which we refer to as the One Life, the Root of All, and Âkâsha in its pre- differentiating period answers to the Brahma (neuter) and Aditi of some Hindus, and stands in the same relation as the Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântins.
Esoterically, Âkâsha alone is Divine Space, and becomes Ether only on the lowest and last plane, or our visible Universe and Earth. In this case the blind is in the word “attribute,” which is said to be Sound. But Sound is no attribute of Âkasha , but its primary correlation, its primordial manifestation, the LOGOS, or Divine Ideation made WORD, and that “WORD” made “Flesh.” Sound may be considered an “attribute” of Âkâsha only on the condition of anthropomorphizing the latter. It is not a characteristic of it, though it is certainly as innate in it as the idea “I am I” is innate in our thoughts.
Occultism teaches that Âkâsha contains and includes the seven Centres of Force, therefore the six Tattvas, of which it is the seventh, or rather their synthesis. But if Âkâsha be taken, as we believe it is in this case, to represent only the exoteric idea, then the author is right; because, seeing that Âkâsha is universally omnipresent, following the Paurânic limitation, for the better comprehension of our infinite intellects, he places its commencement only beyond the four planes of our Earth Chain, * the two higher Tattvas being as concealed to the average mortal as the sixth and seventh senses are to the materialistic mind.
Therefore, while Sanskrit and Hindu Philosophy generally speak of five Tattvas only, Occultists name seven, thus making them correspond with every septenary in Nature. The Tattvas stand in the same order as the seven macro- and micro-cosmic Forces: and as taught in Esotericism, are as follows:
(1) Âdi Tattva, the primordial universal Force, issuing at the beginning of manifestation, or of the “creative” period, from the eternal immutable SAT, the substratum of ALL. It corresponds with the Auric Envelope or Brahmâ’s Egg, which surrounds every globe, as well as every man, animal and thing. It is the vehicle containing potentially everything—Spirit and Substance, Force and Matter. Âdi Tattva, in Esoteric Cosmogony, is the Force which we refer to as proceeding from the First or Unmanifested LOGOS.
(2) Anupâdaka Tattva, † the first differentiation on the plane of being—the first being an ideal one—or that which is born by transformation from something higher than itself. With the Occultists, this Force proceeds from the Second Logos.
* See above, i. diagram, p. 221.
† Anupâdaka, Opapatika in Pâli, means the “parentless,” born without father or mother, from itself, as a transformation, e.g., the God Brahmâ sprung from the Lotus (the symbol of the Universe) that grows from Vishnu’s navel, Vishnu typifying eternal and limitless Space, and Brahmâ the Universe and LOGOS: the mythical Buddha is also born from a Lotus.
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(3) Âkâsha Tattva, this is the point from which all exoteric Philosophies and Religions start. Âkâsha Tattva is explained in them as Etheric Force, Ether. Hence Jupiter, the “highest” God, was named after Pater Æther; Indra, once the highest God in India, is the etheric or heavenly expanse, and so with Uranus, etc. The Christian biblical God, also, is spoken of as the Holy Ghost, Pneuma, rarefied wind or air. This the Occultists call the Force of the Third LOGOS, the Creative Force in the already Manifested Universe.
(4) Vâyu Tattva, the aërial plane where substance is gaseous.
(5) Taijas Tattva, the plane of our atmosphere, from tejas, luminous.
(6) Âpas Tattva, watery or liquid substance or force.
(7) Prithivî Tattva, solid earthly substance, the terrestrial spirit or force, the lowest of all.
All these correspond to our Principles, and to the seven senses and forces in man. According to the Tattva or Force generated or induced in us, so will our bodies act.
Now, what I have to say here is addressed especially to those members who are anxious to develop powers by “sitting for Yoga.” You have seen, from what has been already said, that in the development of Râja Yoga, no extant works made public are of the least good; they can at best give inklings of Hatha Yoga, something that may develop mediumship at best, and in the worst case—consumption. If those who practice “meditation,” and try to learn “the Science of Breath,” will read attentively Nature’s Finer Forces, they will find that it is by utilizing the five Tattvas only that this dangerous science is acquired. For in the exoteric Yoga Philosophy, and the Hatha Yoga practice, Âkâsha Tattva is placed in the head (or physical brain) of man; Tejas Tattva in the shoulders; Vâyu Tattva in the navel (the seat of all the phallic Gods, “creators” of the universe and man); Âpas Tattva in the knees’ and Prithivî Tattva in the feet. Hence the two higher Tattvas and their correspondences are ignored and excluded; and, as these are the chief factors in Râja Yoga, no spiritual or intellectual phenomena of a high nature can take place. The best results obtainable will be physical phenomena and no more. As the “Five Breaths,” or rather the five states of the human breath, in Hatha Yoga correspond to the above terrestrial planes and colours, what spiritual results can be obtained? On the contrary they are the very reverse of the plane of Spirit, or the higher macrocosmic plane, reflected
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as they are upside down, in the Astral Light. This is proven in the Tântra work, Shivâgama, itself. Let us compare.
First of all, remember that the Septenary of visible and also invisible Nature is said in Occultism to consist of the three (and four) Fires, which grow into the forty-nine Fires. This shows that as the Macrocosm is divided into seven great planes of various differentiations of Substance—from the spiritual or subjective, to the fully objective or material, from Akâsha down to the sin-laden atmosphere of our earth—so, in its turn, each of these great planes has three aspects, based on four Principles, as already shown above. This seems to be quite natural, as even modern Science has her three states of matter and what are generally called the “critical” or intermediate states between the solid, the fluidic, and the gaseous.
Now, the Astral Light is not a universally diffused stuff, but pertains only to our earth and all other bodies of the system on the same plane of matter with it. Our Astral Light is, so to speak, the Linga Sharîra of our earth; only instead of being its primordial prototype, as in the case of our Chhâyâ, or Double, it is the reverse. Human and animal bodies grow and develop on the model of their antetypal Doubles; whereas the Astral Light is born from the terrene emanations, grows and develops after its prototypal parent, and in its treacherous waves everything from the upper planes and from the lower solid plane, the earth, both ways, is reflected reversed. Hence the confusion of its colours and sounds in the clairvoyance and clairaudience of the sensitive who trusts to its records, be that sensitive a Hatha Yogî or a medium. The following parallel between the Esoteric and the Tântra Tables of the Tattvas in relation to Sounds and Colours shows this very clearly:
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| (a) Adi | Auric Egg | Primordial, Spiritual Substance; Âkâsha; Substratum of the Spirit of Ether | Envelopes the whole body and penetrates it. Reciprocal emanation, endosmotic and exosmotic | Synthesis of all Colours. Blue | (a) Ignored | Ignored | Ignored | Ignored |
| (b) Anupâdaka | Buddhi | Spiritual Essence, or Spirit; "Primordial Waters of the Deep" | Third Eye or Pineal Gland | Yellow | (b) Ignored | Ignored | Ignored | Ignored |
| (c) Alaya or Âkâsha | Manas Ego | Ether of Space or Âkâsha in its third differentiation. Critical state of Vapour | Head | Indigo | (c) Âkâsha | Ether | Head | Black or Colourless |
| (d) Vâyu | Kâma Manas | Critical State of Matter | Throat or Navel | Green | (d) Vâyu | Gas | Navel | Blue |
| (e) Tejas | Kâma (Rûpa) | Essence of gross Matter; corresponds to Ice | Shoulders and Arms to Thighs | Red | (e) Tejas | Heat (?) | Shoulders | Red |
| (f) Âpas | Linga Sharira | Gross Ether or Liquid Air | Thighs to Knees | Violet | (f) Apas | Liquid | Knees | White |
| (g) Prithivi | Living Body in Prâna or animal life | Solid and Critical State | Knees to feet | Orange-Red * | (g) Prithivi | Solid | Feet | Yellow † |
* One may see at a glance how reversed are the colours of the Tattvas, reflected in the Astral Light, when we find the Indigo called black; the green blue; the violet, white; and the orange yellow.
† The colours, I repeat, do not here follow the prismatic scale – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – because this scale is a false reflection, a true Mâyâ; whereas our esoteric scale is that of the spiritual spheres, the seven planes of the Macrocosm.
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Such, then, is the Occult Science on which the modern Ascetics and Yogîs of India base their Soul development and powers. They are known as the Hatha Yogîs. Now, the science of Hatha Yoga rests upon the “suppression of breath,” or Prânâyâma? Literally translated, it means the “death of (vital) breath.” Prâna, as said, is not Jîva, the eternal fount of life immortal; nor is it connected in any way with Pranava, as some think, for Pranava is a synonym of AUM in a mystic sense. As much as has ever been taught publicly and clearly about it is to be found in Nature’s Finer Forces. If such directions, however, are followed, they can only lead to Black Magic and mediumship. Several impatient Chelâs, whom we know personally in India, went in for the practice of Hatha Yoga, notwithstanding our warnings. Of these, two developed consumption, of which one died; others became almost idiotic; another committed suicide; and one developed into a regular Tântrika, a Black Magician, but his career, fortunately for himself, was cut short by death.
The science of the Five Breaths, the moist, the fiery, the airy, etc., has a twofold significance and two applications. The Tântrikas take it literally, as relating to the regulation of the vital, lung breath, whereas the ancient Râja Yogîs understood it as referring to the mental or “will” breath, which alone leads to the highest clairvoyant powers, to the function of the Third Eye, and the acquisition of the true Râja Yoga Occult powers. The difference between the two is enormous. The former, as shown, use the five lower Tattvas; the latter begin by using the three higher alone, for mental and will development, and the rest only when they have completely mastered the three; hence, they use only one (Âkâsha Tattva) out of the Tântric five. As well said in the above stated work, “Tattvas are the modifications of Svara.” Now, the Svara is the root of all sound, the substratum of the Pythagorean music of the spheres, Svara being that which is beyond Spirit, in the modern acceptation of the word, the Spirit within Spirit, or as very properly translated, the “current of the life-wave,” the emanation of the One Life. The Great Breath spoken of in our first volume in Âtmâ, the etymology of which is “eternal motion.” Now while the ascetic Chelâ of our school, for his mental development, follows carefully the process of the evolution of the Universe, that is, proceeds from universals to particulars, the Hatha Yogî reverses the conditions and begins by sitting for the suppression
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of his (vital) breath. And if, as Hindu philosophy teaches, at the beginning of kosmic evolution, “Svara threw itself into the form of Âkâsha,” and thence successively into the forms of Vâyu (air) Agni (fire), Apas (water), and Prithivî (solid matter), * then it stands to reason that we have to begin by the higher supersensuous Tattvas. The Râja Yogî does not descend on the planes of substance beyond Sûkshma (subtle matter), while the Hatha Yogî develops and uses his powers only on the material plane. Some Tântrikas locate the three Nadîs, Sushumnâ, Îdâ and Pingalâ, in the medulla oblongata, the central line of which they call Sushumnâ, and the right and left divisions, Pingalâ and Îdâ, and also in the heart, to the divisions of which they apply the same names. The Trans-Himâlayan school of the ancient Indian Râja Yogîs, with which the modern Yogîs of India have little to do, locates Sushumnâ, the chief seat of these three Nadîs, in the central tube of the spinal cord, and Îdâ and Pingalâ on its left and right sides. Sushumnâ is the Brahmadanda. It is that canal (of the spinal cord), of the use of which Physiology knows no more than it does of the spleen and the pineal gland. Îdâ and Pingalâ are simply the sharps and flats of that Fa of human nature, the keynote and the middle key in the scale of the septenary harmony of the Principles, which, when struck in a proper way, awakens the sentries on either side, the spiritual Manas and the physical Kâma, and subdues the lower through the higher. But this effect had to be produced by the exercise of will-power, not through the scientific or trained suppression of the breath. Take a transverse section of the spinal region, and you will find sections across three columns, one of which columns transmits the volitional orders, and a second a life current of Jîva—not of Prâna, which animates the body of man—during what is called Samâdhi and like states.
He who has studied both systems, the Hatha and Râja Yoga, finds an enormous difference between the two: one is purely psycho-physiological, the other purely psycho-spiritual. The Tântrists do not seem to go higher than the six visible and known plexuses, with each of which they connect the Tattvas; and the great stress they lay on the chief of these, the Mûladhâra Chakra (the sacral plexus), shows the material and selfish bent of their efforts towards the acquisition of powers. Their five Breaths and five Tattvas are chiefly concerned
* See Theosophist, February, 1888, p. 276.
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with the prostatic, epigastric, cardiac, and laryngeal plexuses. Almost ignoring the Âjñâ, they are positively ignorant of the synthesizing laryngeal plexus. But with the followers of the old school it is different. We begin with the mastery of that organ which is situated at the base of the brain, in the pharynx, and called by Western Anatomists the Pituitary Body. In the series of the objective cranial organs, corresponding to the subjective Tâttvic principles, it stands to the Third Eye (Pineal Gland) as Manas stands to Buddhi; the arousing and awakening of the Third Eye must be performed by that vascular organ, that insignificant little body, of which, once again, Physiology knows nothing at all. The one is the Energizer of Will, the other that of Clairvoyant Perception.
Those who are Physicians, Physiologists, Anatomists, etc., will understand me better than the rest in the following explanation.
Now, as to the functions of the Pineal Gland, or Conarium and of the Pituitary Body, we find no explanations vouchsafed by the standard authorities. Indeed, on looking through the works of the greatest specialists, it is curious to observe how much confused ignorance on the human vital economy, physiological as well as psychological, is openly confessed. The following is all that can be gleaned from the authorities upon these two important organs.
(1) The Pineal Gland, or Conarium, is a rounded, oblong body, from three to four lines long, of a deep reddish grey, connected with the posterior part of the third ventricle of the brain. It is attached at its base by two thin medullary cords, which diverge forward to the Optic Thalami. Remember that the latter are found by the best Physiologists to be the organs of reception and condensation of the most sensitive and sensorial incitations from the periphery of the body (according to Occultism, from the periphery of the Auric Egg, which is our point of communication with the higher universal planes). We are further told that the two bands of the Optic Thalami, which are inflected to meet each other, unite on the median line, where they become the two peduncles of the Pineal Gland.
(2) The Pituitary Body, or Hypophysis Cerebri, is a small and hard organ, about six lines broad, three long and three high. It is formed of an anterior bean-shaped, and of a posterior and more rounded lobe, which are uniformly united. Its component parts, we are told, are almost identical with those of the Pineal Gland; yet not the slightest connection can be traced between the two centres. To this, however,
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Occultists take exception; they know that there is a connection, and this even anatomically and physically. Dissectors, on the other hand, have to deal with corpses; and, as they themselves admit, brain matter, of all tissues and organs, collapses and changes form the soonest—in fact, a few minutes after death. When, then, the pulsating life which expanded the mass of the brain, filled all its cavities and energized all its organs, vanishes, the cerebral mass shrinks into a sort of pasty condition, and once open passages become closed. But the contraction and even interblending of parts in this process of shrinking, and the subsequent pasty state of the brain, do not imply that there is no connection between these two organs before death. In point of fact, as Professor Owen has shown, a connection as objective as a groove and tube exists in the crania of the human fœtus and of certain fishes. When a man is in his normal condition, an Adept can see the golden Aura pulsating in both the centres, like the pulsation of the heart, which never ceases throughout life. This motion, however, under the abnormal condition of effort to develop clairvoyant faculties, becomes intensified, and the Aura takes on a stronger vibratory or swinging action. The arc of the pulsation of the Pituitary Body mounts upward, more and more, until, just as when the electric current strikes some solid object the current finally strikes the Pineal Gland, and the dormant organ is awakened and set all glowing with the pure Âkâshic Fire. This is the psycho-physiological illustration of two organs on the physical plane, which are, respectively, the concrete symbols of the metaphysical concepts called Manas and Buddhi. The latter, in order to become conscious on this plane, needs the more differentiated fire of Manas: but once the sixth sense has awakened the seventh, the light which radiates from this seventh sense illumines the fields of infinitude. For a brief space of time man becomes omniscient; the Past and the Future, Space and Time, disappear and become for him the Present. If an Adept, he will store the knowledge he thus gains in his physical memory, and nothing, save the crime of indulging in Black Magic, can obliterate the remembrance of it. If only a Chelâ, portions alone of the whole truth will impress themselves on his memory, and he will have to repeat the process for years, never allowing one speck of impurity to stain him mentally or physically, before he becomes a fully initiated Adept.
It may seem strange, almost incomprehensible, that the chief success of Gupta Vidyâ, or Occult Knowledge, should depend upon flashes
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of clairvoyance, and that the latter should depend in man on two such insignificant excrescences in his cranial cavity, “two horny warts covered with grey sand (acervulus cerebri),” as expressed by Bichat in his Anatomic Descriptive; yet so it is. But this sand is not to be despised; nay, in truth, it is only this landmark of the internal, independent activity of the Conarium that prevents Physiologists from classifying it with absolutely useless atrophied organs, the relics of a previous and now utterly changed anatomy of man during some period of his unknown evolution. This “sand” is very mysterious and baffles the inquiry of every Materialist. In the cavity on the anterior surface of this gland, in young persons, and in its substance, in people of advanced years, is found
A yellowish substance, semi-transparent, brilliant and hard, the diameter of which does not exceed half a line. *
Such is the acervulus cerebri.
This brilliant “sand” is the concretion of the gland itself, so say the Physiologists. Perhaps not, we answer. The Pineal Gland is that which the Eastern Occultist calls Devâksha, the “Divine Eye.” To this day, it is the chief organ of spirituality in the human brain, the seat of genius, the magical Sesame uttered by the purified will of the Mystic, which opens all the avenues of truth for him who knows how to use it.
The Esoteric Science teaches that Manas, the Mind Ego, does not accomplish its full union with the child before he is six or seven years of age , before which period, even according to the canon of the Church and Law, no child is deemed responsible. † Manas becomes a prisoner, one with the body, only at that age. Now a strange thing was observed in several thousand cases by the famous German anatomist, Wengel. With a few extremely rare exceptions, this “sand,” or golden-coloured concretion, is found only in subjects after the completion of their seventh year. In the case of fools these calculi are very few indeed; in congenital idiots they are completely absent. Morgagni, ‡ Grading, § and Gum || were wise men in their generation, and are wise men today, since the are the only Physiologists, so far
* Sœmmerring, De Acervulo Cerebri, vol. ii. p. 322.
† In the Greek Eastern Church no child is allowed to go to confession before the age of seven after which he is considered to have reached the age of reason.
‡ De Caus. Ep., vol. xii.
§ Advers. Med., ii. 322.
|| De Lapillis Glandulæ Pinealis in Quinque. Ment. Alien, 1753.
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who connect the calculi with mind. For, sum up the facts, that they are absent in young children, in very old people, and in idiots, and the unavoidable conclusion will be that they are connected with mind.
Now since every mineral, vegetable and other atom is only a concretion of crystallized Spirit, or Âkâsha, the Universal Soul, why, asks Occultism, should the fact that these concretions of the Pineal Gland, are, upon analysis, found to be composed of animal matter, phosphate of lime and carbonate, serve as an objection to the statement that they are the result of the work of mental electricity upon surrounding matter?
Our seven Chakras are all situated in the head, and it is these Master Chakras which govern and rule the seven (for there are seven) principal plexuses in the body, besides the forty-two minor ones to which Physiology refuses that name. The fact that no microscope can detect such centres on the objective plane goes for nothing; no microscope has ever yet detected, nor ever will, the difference between the motor and sensory nerve-tubes, the conductors of all our bodily and psychic sensations; and yet logic alone would show that such difference exists. And if the term plexus, in this application, does not represent to the Western mind the idea conveyed by the term of the Anatomist, then call them Chakras or Padmas, or the Wheels, the Lotus Heart and Petals. Remember that Physiology, imperfect as it is, shows septenary groups all over the exterior and interior of the body; the seven head orifices, the seven “organs” at the base of the brain, the seven plexuses, the pharyngeal, laryngeal, cavernous, cardiac, epigastric, prostatic, and sacral, etc.
When the time comes, advanced students will be given the minute details about the Master Chakras and taught the use of them; till then, less difficult subjects have to be learned. If asked whether the seven plexuses, or Tâttvic centres of action, are the centres where the seven Rays of the Logos vibrate, I answer in the affirmative, simply remarking that the rays of the Logos vibrate in every atom, for the matter of that.
In these volumes it is almost revealed that the “Sons of Fohat” are the personified Forces known in a general way as Motion, Sound, Heat, Light, Cohesion, Electricity or Electric Fluid, and Nerve-Force or Magnetism. This truth, however, cannot teach the student to attune and moderate the Kundalini of the cosmic plane with the vital Kunda-
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linî, the Electric Fluid with the Nerve-Force, and unless he does so, he is sure to kill himself; for the one travels at the rate of about 90 feet, and the other at the rate of 115,000 leagues a second. The seven Shaktis respectively called Para Shakti, Jñâna Shakti, etc., are synonymous with the “Sons of Fohat,” for they are their female aspects. At the present stage, however, as their names would only be confusing to the Western student, it is better to remember the English equivalents as translated above. As each Force is septenary, their sum is, of course, forty-nine.
The question now mooted in Science, whether a sound is capable of calling forth impressions of light and colour in addition to its natural sound impressions, has been answered by Occult Science ages ago. Every impulse or vibration of a physical object producing a certain vibration of the air, that is, causing the collision of physical particles, the sound of which is capable of affecting the ear produces at the same time a corresponding flash of light, which will assume some particular colour. For, in the realm of hidden Forces, an audible sound is but a subjective colour; and a perceptible colour, but an inaudible sound; both proceed from the same potential substance, which Physicists used to call ether, and now refer to under various other names; but which we call plastic, through invisible Space. This may appear a paradoxical hypothesis, but facts are there to prove it. Complete deafness, for instance, does not preclude the possibility of discerning sounds; medical science has several cases on record which prove that these sounds are received by, and conveyed to, the patient’s organ of sight, through the mind, under the form of chromatic impressions. The very fact that the intermediate tones of the chromatic musical scale were formerly written in colours shows an unconscious reminiscence of the ancient Occult teaching that colour and sound are two out of the seven correlative aspects, on our plane, of one and the same thing, viz., Nature’s first differentiated Substance.
Here is an example of the relation of colour to vibration well worthy of the attention of Occultists. Not only adepts and advanced Chelâs, but also the lower order of Psychics, such as clairvoyants and psychometrists, can perceive a psychic Aura of various colours around every individual, corresponding to the temperament of the person, within it. In other words, the mysterious records within the Auric Egg are not the heirloom of trained Adepts alone, but sometimes also of natural Psychics. Every human passion, every thought and quality, is indi-
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cated in this Aura by corresponding colours and shades of colour, and certain of these are sensed and felt rather than perceived. The best of such Psychics, as shown by Galton, can also perceive colours produced by the vibrations of musical instruments, every note suggesting a different colour. As a string vibrates and gives forth an audible note, so the nerves of the human body vibrate and thrill in correspondence with various emotions under the general impulse of the circulating vitality of Pranâ, thus producing undulations in the psychic Aura of the person which result in chromatic effects.
The human nervous system as a whole, then, may be regarded as an Æolian Harp, responding to the impact of the vital force, which is no abstraction, but a dynamic reality, and manifests the subtlest shades of the individual character in colour phenomena. If these nerve vibrations are made intense enough and brought into vibratory relation with an astral element, the result is—sound. How, then, can anyone doubt the relation between the microcosmic and macrocosmic forces?
And now that I have shown that the Tântric works as explained by Râma Prâsad, and other Yoga treatises of the same character which have appeared from time to time in Theosophical journals—for note well that those of true Râja Yoga are never published—tend to Black Magic and are most dangerous to take for guides in self-training, I hope that students will be on their guard.
For, considering that no two authorities up to the present day agree as to the real location of the Chakras and Padmas in the body, and, seeing that the colours of the Tattvas as given are reversed, e.g.:
(a) Âkâsha is made black or colourless, whereas, corresponding, to Manas, it is indigo;
(b) Vâyu is made blue, whereas, corresponding to the lower Manas, it is green.
(c) Âpas is made white, whereas, corresponding to the Astral Body, it is violet, with a silver, moonlike white substratum;
Tejas, red, is the only colour given correctly—from such considerations, I say, it is easy to see that these disagreements are dangerous blinds.
Further, the practice of the Five Breaths results in deadly injury, both physiologically and psychically, as already shown. It is indeed that which it is called, Prânâyâma, or the death of the breath, for it results, for the practiser, in death—in moral death always, and in physical death very frequently.
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On Exoteric "Blinds" and "The Death of the Soul".
As a corollary to this, and before going into still more abstruse teachings, I must redeem the promise already given. I have to illustrate by tenets you already know, the awful doctrine of personal annihilation. Banish from your minds all that you have hitherto read in such works as Esoteric Buddhism, and thought you understood, of such hypotheses as the eighth sphere and the moon, and that man shares a common ancestor with the ape. Even the details occasionally given out by myself in the Theosophist and Lucifer were nothing like the whole truth, but only broad general ideas, hardly touched upon in their details. Certain passages, however, give out hints, especially my foot-notes on articles translated from liphas Lévi’s Letters on Magic. *
Nevertheless, personal immortality is conditional, for there are such things as “soulless men,” a teaching barely mentioned, although it is spoken of even in Isis Unveiled; † and there is an Avîchi, rightly called Hell, though it has no connection with, or similitude to, the good Christian’s Hell, either geographically or psychically. The truth known to Occultists and Adepts in every age could not be given out to a promiscuous public: hence, though almost every mystery of Occult Philosophy lies half concealed in Isis and the two earlier volumes of the present work, I had no right to amplify or correct the details of others. Readers may now compare those four volumes and such books as Esoteric Buddhism with the diagrams and explanations in these Papers, and see for themselves.
Paramâtmâ, the Spiritual Sun, may be thought of as outside the human Auric Egg, as it is also outside the Macrocosmic or Brahmâ’s Egg. Why? Because, though every particle and atom are, so to speak, cemented with and soaked through by this Paramâtmic essence, yet it is wrong to call it a “human” or even a “universal” Principle, for the term is very likely to give rise to naught but an erroneous idea of the philosophical and purely metaphysical concept; it is not a Principle, but the cause of every Principle, the latter term being applied by Occultists only to its shadow—the Universal Spirit that ensouls the boundless Kosmos whether within or beyond Space and Time. Buddhi serves as a vehicle for that Paramâtmic shadow. This Buddhi
* See “Stray Thoughts on Death and Satan” in the Theosophist, vol. iii, No. 1; also “Fragments of Occult Truth,” vols. iii. and iv.
† Op. cit. ii. 368, et seq.
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is universal, and so also is the human Âtmâ. Within the Auric Egg is the macrocosmic pentacle of LIFE, Prâna, containing within itself the pentagram which represents man. The universal pentacle must be pictured with its point soaring upwards, the sign of White Magic—in the human pentacle it is the lower limbs which are upward, forming the “Horns of Satan,” as the Christian Kabbalists call them. This is the symbol of Matter, that of the personal man, and the recognized pentacle of the Black Magician. For this reversed pentacle does not stand only for Kâma the fourth Principle exoterically, but it also represents physical man, the animal of flesh with its desires and passions.
Now, mark well, in order to understand that which follows, that Manas may be pictured as an upper triangle connected with the lower Manas by a thin line which binds the two together. This is the Antahkarana, that path or bridge of communication which serves as a link between the personal being whose physical brain is under the sway of the lower animal mind, and the reincarnating Individuality, the spiritual Ego, Manas, Manu, the “Divine Man.” This thinking Manu alone is that which reincarnates. In truth and in nature, the two Minds, the spiritual and the physical or animal, are one, but separates into two at reincarnation. For while that portion of the Divine which goes to animate the personality, consciously separating itself, like a dense but pure shadow, from the Divine Ego, * wedges itself into the brain and the senses † of the fœtus, at the completion of it seventh month, the Higher Manas does not unite itself with the child before the completion of the first seven years of its life. This detached essence, or rather the reflection or shadow of the Higher Manas, becomes, as the
* The essence of the Divine Ego is “pure flame,” an entity to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be taken: it cannot, therefore, be diminished, even by countless numbers of lower minds, detached from it like flames from a flame. This is in answer to an objection by an Esotericist who asked whence was that inexhaustible essence of one and the same Individuality which was called upon to furnish a human intellect for every new personality in which it is incarnated.
† The brain, or thinking machinery, is not only in the head, but, as every physiologist who is not quote a materialist will tell you, every organ in man, heart, liver, lungs, etc., down to every nerve and muscle, has, so to speak, its own distinct brain or thinking apparatus. As our brain has naught to do in the guidance of the collective and individual work of every organ in us, what is that which guides each so unerringly in its incessant functions: that makes these struggle, and that too with disease, throws it off and acts, each of them, even to the smallest, not in a clock-work manner as alleged by some materialists (for, at the slightest disturbance or breakage the clock stops), but as an entity endowed with instinct? To say it is Nature is to say nothing, if it is not the enunciation of a fallacy; for Nature after all is but a name for these very same functions, the sum of the qualities and attributes, physical, mental, etc., in the universe and man, the total of agencies and forces guided by intelligent laws.
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child grows, a distinct thinking Principle in man, its chief agent being the physical brain. No wonder the Materialists, who perceive only this “rational soul,” or mind, will not disconnect it with the brain and matter. But Occult Philosophy has ages ago solved the problem of mind, and discovered the duality of Manas. The Divine Ego tends with its point upwards towards Buddhi, and the human Ego gravitates downwards, immersed in Matter, connected with its higher, subjective half only by the Antahkarana. As its derivation suggests, this is the only connecting link during life between the two minds—the higher consciousness of the Ego and the human intelligence of the lower mind.
To understand this abstruse metaphysical doctrine fully and correctly, one has to be thoroughly impressed with an idea, which I have in vain endeavoured to impart to Theosophists at large, namely, the great axiomatic truth that the only eternal and living Reality is that which the Hindus call Paramâtmâ and Parabrahman. This is the one ever-existing Root Essence, immutable and unknowable to our physical senses, but manifest and clearly perceptible to our spiritual natures. Once imbued with that basic idea and the further conception that if It is omnipresent, universal and eternal, like abstract Space itself, we must have emanated from It and we must some day, return into It, and all the rest becomes easy.
If so, then it stands to reason that life and death, good and evil, past and future, are all empty words, or at best, figures of speech. If the objective Universe itself is but a passing illusion on account of its beginning and finitude, then both life and death must also be aspects and illusions. They are changes of state, in fact, and no more. Real life is in the spiritual consciousness of that life, in a conscious existence in Spirit, not Matter; and real death is the limited perception of life, the impossibility of sensing conscious or even individual existence outside of form, or at least, of some form of Matter. Those who sincerely reject the possibility of conscious life divorced from Matter and brain-substance are dead units. The words of Paul, an Initiate, become comprehensive. “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God;” which is to say: Ye are personally dead matter, unconscious of its own spiritual essence, and your real life is hid with your Divine Ego (Christos) in, or merged with, God (Âtmâ); now it has departed from you, ye soulless people. * Speaking on Esoteric lines, every irrevocably
* See Coloss.,
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materialistic person is a dead man, a living automaton, in spite of his being endowed with great brain power. Listen to what Aryasangha says, stating the same fact:
That which is neither Spirit nor Matter, neither Light nor Darkness, but is verily the container and root of these, that thou art. The Root projects at every Dawn its shadow on Itself, and that shadow thou callest Light and Life, O poor dead Form. (This) Life-Light streameth downward through the stairway of the seven worlds, the stairs of which each step become denser and darker. It is of this seven-times-seven scale that thou art the faithful climber and mirror, O little man! Thou art this, but thou knowest it not.
This is the first lesson to learn. The second is to study well the Principles of both the Kosmos and ourselves, dividing the group into the permanent and the impermanent, the higher and immortal and the lower and mortal, for thus only can we master and guide, first the lower cosmic and personal, then the higher cosmic and impersonal.
Once we can do that we have secured our immorality. But some may say: “How few are those who can do so. All such are great Adepts, and none can reach such Adeptship in one short life.” Agreed; but there is an alternative. “If the Sun thou canst not be, then be the humble Planet,” says the Book of the Golden Precepts. And if even that is beyond our reach, then let us at least endeavour to keep within the ray of some lesser star, so that is silvery light may penetrate the murky darkness, through which the stone path of life treads onwards: for without this divine radiance we risk losing more than we imagine.
With regard, then, to “soulless” men, and the “second death” of the “Soul,” mentioned in the second volume of Isis Unveiled, you will there find that I have spoken of such soulless people, and even of Avîtchi, though I leave the latter unnamed. Read from the last paragraph on page 367 to the end of the first paragraph on page 370, and then collate what is there said with what I have now to say.
The higher triad, Âtmâ-Buddhi-Manas, may be recognized from the first line of the quotation from the Egyptian papyrus. In the Ritual, now the Book of the Dead, the purified Soul, the dual Manas, appears as “the victim of the dark influence of the Dragon Apophis,” the physical personality of Kâmarûpic man, with his passions. “If it has attained the final knowledge of the heavenly and infernal Mysteries, the Gnosis”— the divine and the terrestrial Mysteries, of White and Black Magic—then the defunct personality “will triumph over its enemy”—death. This alludes to the case of a complete re-union, at the end of
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earth life, of the lower Manas, full of “the harvest of life,” with its Ego. But if Apophis conquers the Soul, then it “cannot escape a second death.”
These few lines from a papyrus, many thousands of years old, contain a whole revelation, known, in those days, only to the Hierophants and the Initiates. The “harvest of life” consists of the finest spiritual thoughts, of the memory or the noblest and most unselfish deeds of the personality, and the constant presence during its bliss after death of all those it loved with divine, spiritual devotion. * Remember the teaching: The Human Soul, lower Manas, is the only and direct mediator between the personality and the Divine Ego. That which goes to make up on this earth the personality miscalled individuality by the majority, is the sum of all its mental, physical, and spiritual characteristics, which, being impressed on the Human Soul, produces the man. Now, of all these characteristics it is the purified thoughts alone which can be impressed on the higher, immortal Ego. This is done by the Human Soul merging again, in its essence, into its parent source, commingling with its Divine Ego during life, and re-uniting itself entirely with it after the death of the physical man. Therefore, unless Kâma-Manas transmits to Buddhi-Manas such personal ideations, and such consciousness of its “I” as can be assimilated by the Divine Ego, nothing of that “I” or personality can survive in the Eternal. Only that which is worthy of the immortal God within us, and identical in its nature with the divine quintessence, can survive; for in this case it is its own the Divine Ego’s “shadows” or emanations which ascend to it and are indrawn by it into itself again, to become once more part of its own, Essence. No noble thought, no grand aspiration, desire, or divine immortal love, can come into the brain of the man of clay and settle there, except as a direct emanation from the Higher to, and through, the lower Ego: all the rest, intellectual as it may seem, proceeds from the “shadow,” the lower mind, in its association and commingling with Kâma, and passes away and disappears for ever. But the mental and spiritual ideations of the personal “I” return to it, as parts of the Ego’s Essence, and can never fade out. Thus of the personality that was, only its spiritual experiences, the memory of all that is good and noble, with the consciousness of its “I” blended with that of all the other personal “I’s” that preceded it, survive and become immortal.
* See Key to Theosophy, pp. 147, 148, et seq.
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There is no distinct or separate immortality for the men of earth outside of the Ego which informed them. That Higher Ego is the sole bearer of all its alter egos on earth and their sole representative in the mental state called Devachan. As the last embodied personality, however, has a right to its own special state of bliss, unalloyed and free from the memories of all others, it is the last life only which is fully and realistically vivid. Devachan is often compared to the happiest day in a series of many thousands of other “days” in the life of a person. The intensity of its happiness makes the man entirely forget all others, his past becomes obliterated.
This is what we call the Devachanic state, the reward of the personality, and it is on this old teaching that the hazy Christian notion of Paradise was built, borrowed with many other things from the Egyptian Mysteries, wherein the doctrine was enacted. And this is the meaning of the passage quoted in Isis. The Soul has triumphed over Apophis, the Dragon of Flesh. Henceforth, the personality will live in eternity, in its highest and noblest elements, the memory of its past deeds, while the “characteristics” of the “Dragon” will be fading out in Kâma Loka. If the question be asked, “How live in eternity, when Devachan lasts but from 1,000 to 2,000 years,” the answer is: “In the same way as the recollection of each day which is worth remembering lives in the memory of each one of us.” For the sake of an example, the days passed in one personal life may be taken as an illustration of each personal life, and this or that person may stand for the Divine Ego.
To obtain the key which will open the door of many a psychological mystery it is sufficient to understand and remember that which precedes and that which follows. Many a Spiritualist has felt terribly indignant on being told that personal immortality was conditional; and yet such is the philosophical and logical fact. Much has been said already on the subject, but no one to this day seems to have fully understood the doctrine. Moreover, it is not enough to know that such a fact is said to exist. An Occultist, or he who would become one, must know why it is so; for having learned and comprehended the raison d’être, it becomes easier to set others right in their erroneous speculations, and, most important of all, it affords one an opportunity, without saying too much, to teach other people to avoid a calamity which, sad to say, occurs in our age almost daily. This calamity will now be explained at length.
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One must know little indeed of the Eastern modes of expression to fail to see in this passage quoted from the Book of the Dead, and the pages of Isis, (a) an allegory for the uninitiated, containing our Esoteric teaching; and (b) that the two terms “second death” and “Soul” are, in one sense, blinds. “Soul” refers indifferently to Buddhi-Manas and Kâma-Manas. As to the term “second death,” the qualification “second” applies to several deaths which have to be undergone by the “Principles” during their incarnation, Occultists alone understanding fully the sense in which such a statement is made. For we have (1) the death of the Body; (2) the death of the Animal Soul in Kâma Loka; (3) the death of the Astral Linga Sharîra, following that of the Body; (4) the metaphysical death of the Higher Ego, the immortal, every time it “falls into matter,” or incarnates in a new personality. The Animal Soul, or lower Manas, that shadow of the Divine Ego which separates from it to inform the personality, cannot by any possible means escape death in Kâma Loka, at any rate that portion of this reflection which remains as a terrestrial residue and cannot be impressed on the Ego. Thus the chief and most important secret with regard to that “second death,” in the Esoteric teaching, was and is to this day the terrible possibility of the death of the Soul, that is, its severance from the Ego on earth during a person’s lifetime. This is a real death (though with chances of resurrection), which shows no traces in a person and yet leaves him morally a living corpse. It is difficult to see why this teaching should have been preserved until now with such secrecy, when, by spreading it among people, at any rate among those who believe in reincarnation, so much good might be done. But so it was, and I had no right to question the wisdom of the prohibition, but have given it hitherto, as it was given to myself, under pledge not to reveal it to the world at large. But now I have permission to give it to all, revealing its tenets first to the Esotericists, and then when they have assimilated them thoroughly it will be their duty to teach others this special tenet of the “second death,” and warn all the Theosophists of its dangers.
To make the teaching clearer, I shall seemingly have to go over old ground; in reality, however, it is given out with new light and new details. I have tried to hint at it in the Theosophist as I have done in Isis, but have failed to make myself understood. I will now explain it, point by point.
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The Philosophical Rationale of the Tenet.
(1) Imagine, for illustration’s sake, the one homogeneous, absolute and omnipresent Essence, above the upper step of the “stair of the seven planes of worlds,” ready to start on its evolutionary journey. As its correlating reflection gradually descends, it differentiates and transforms
into subjective, and finally into objective matter. Let us call it at its north pole Absolute Light; at its south pole, which to us would be the fourth or middle step, or plane, counting either way, we know it Esoterically as the One and Universal Life. Now mark the difference. Above, Light; below, Life. The former is ever immutable, the latter manifests under the aspects of countless differentiations. According to the Occult law, all potentialities included in the higher become differentiated reflections in the lower; and according to the same law, nothing which is differentiated can be blended with the homogeneous.
Again, nothing can endure of that which lives and breathes and has its being in the seething waves of the world, or plane of differentiation. Thus Buddhi and Manas being both primordial rays of the One Flame, the former the vehicle, the upâdhi or vâhana, of the one eternal Essence, the latter the vehicle of Mahat or Divine Ideation (Mahâ-Buddhi in the Purânas), the Universal Intelligent Soul—neither of them, as such, can become extinct or be annihilated, either in essence or consciousness. But the physical personality with its Linga Sharîra, and the animal soul, with its Kâma, * can and do become so. They are born in the realm of illusion, and must vanish like a fleecy cloud from the blue and eternal sky.
He who has read these volumes with any degree of attention, must know the origin of the human Egos, called Monads, generically, and what they were before they were forced to incarnate in the human animal. The divine beings whom Karma led to act in the drama of Manvantaric life, are entities from higher and earlier worlds and planets, whose Karma had not been exhausted when their world went into Pralaya. Such is the teaching; but whether it is so or not, the Higher Egos are—as compared to such forms of transitory, terrestrial mud as ourselves—Divine Beings, Gods, immortal throughout the Mahâmanvantara, or the 311,040,000,000,000 years during which the Age of Brahmâ lasts. And as the Divine Egos, in
* Kâma Rûpa, the vehicle of the Lower Manas, is said to dwell in the physical brain, in the five physical senses and in all the sense- organs of the physical body.
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order to re-become the One Essence, or be indrawn again into the AUM, have to purify themselves in the fire of suffering and individual experience, so also have the terrestrial Egos, the personalities, to do likewise, if they would partake of the immortality of the Higher Egos. This they can achieve by crushing in themselves all that benefits only the lower personal nature of their “selves” and by aspiring to transfuse their thinking Kâmic Principle into that of the Higher Ego. We (i.e., our personalities) become immortal by the mere fact of our thinking moral nature being grafted on our Divine Triune Monad, Âtmâ-Buddhi-Manas, the three in one and one in three (aspects). For the Monad manifested on earth by the incarnating Ego is that which is called the Tree of Life Eternal, that can only be approached by eating the fruit of knowledge, the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or of Gnosis, Divine Wisdom.
In the Esoteric teachings, this Ego is the fifth Principle in man. But the student who had read and understood the first two Papers, knows something more. He is aware that the seventh is not a human, but a universal Principle in which man participates; but so does equally every physical and subjective atom, and also every blade of grass and everything that lives or is in Space, whether it be sensible of it or not. He knows, moreover, that if man is more closely connected with it, and assimilates it with a hundredfold more power, it is simply because he is endowed with the highest consciousness on this earth; that man, in short, may become a Spirit, a Deva, or a God, in his next transformation, whereas neither a stone nor a vegetable, nor an animal, can do so before they become men in their proper turn.
(2) Now what are the functions of Buddhi? On this plane it has none, unless it is united with Manas, the conscious Ego. Buddhi stands to the divine Root Essence in the same relation as Mûlaprakriti to Parabrahman, in the Vedânta School; or as Alaya the Universal Soul to the One Eternal Spirit, or that which is beyond Spirit. It is its human vehicle, one remove from that Absolute, which can have no relation whatever to the finite and the conditioned.
(3) What, again, is Manas and its functions? In its purely metaphysical aspect, Manas, though one remove on the downward plane from Buddhi, is still so immeasurably higher than the physical man, that it cannot enter into direct relation with the personality, except through its reflection, the lower mind. Manas is Spiritual Self-Consciousness in itself, and Divine Consciousness when united with Buddhi,
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which is the true “producer” of that “production” (vikâra), or Self-Consciousness, through Mahat. Buddhi-Manas, therefore, is entirely unfit to manifest during its periodical incarnations, except through the human mind or lower Manas. Both are linked together and are inseparable, and can have as little to do with the lower Tanmâtras, * or rudimentary atoms as the homogeneous with the heterogeneous. It is, therefore, the task of the lower Manas, or thinking personality, if it would blend itself with its God, the Divine Ego, to dissipate and paralyse the Tanmâtras, or properties of the material form. Therefore, Manas is shown double, as the Ego and Mind of Man. It is Kâma-Manas, or the lower Ego, which, deluded into a notion of independent existence, as the “producer” in its turn and the sovereign of the five Tanmâtras, becomes Ego-ism, the selfish Self, in which case it has to be considered as Mahâbhûtic and finite, in the sense of its being connected with Ahankâra, the personal “I-creating” faculty. Hence
Manas has to be regarded as eternal and non-eternal in its atomic nature (paramanu rûpa), as eternal substance (dravya), finite (kârya-rûpa) when linked as a duad with Kâma (animal desire or human egoistic volition), a lower production, in short. †
While, therefore, the Individual Ego, owing to its essence and nature, is immortal throughout eternity, with a form (rûpa), which prevails during the whole life cycles of the Fourth Round, its Sosie, or resemblance, the personal Ego, has to win its immortality.
(4) Antahkarana is the name of that imaginary bridge, the path which lies between the Divine and the human Egos, for they are Egos, during human life, to rebecome one Ego in Devachan or Nirvâna. This may seem difficult to understand, but in reality, with the help of a familiar, though fanciful illustration, it becomes quite simple. Let us figure to ourselves a bright lamp in the middle of the room, casting its light upon the wall. Let the lamp represent the Divine Ego, and the light thrown on the wall the lower Manas, and let the wall stand for the body. That portion of the atmosphere which transmits the ray from the lamp to the wall, will then present the Antahkarana. We must further suppose that the light thus cast is endowed with reason and intelligence, and
* Tanmâtra means subtle and rudimentary form, the gross type of the finer elements. The five Tanmâtras are really the characteristic properties or qualities of matter and of all the elements; the real spirit of the word is “something” or “merely transcendental,” in the sense of properties or qualities.
† See Theosophist, August, 1883, “The Real and the Unreal.”
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possesses, moreover, the faculty of dissipating all the evil shadows which pass across the wall, and of attracting all brightness to itself, receiving their indelible impressions. Now, it is in the power of the human Ego to chase away the shadows, or sins, and multiply the brightnesses, or good deeds, which make these impressions, and thus through Antahkarana, ensure its own permanent connection, and its final re-union, with the Divine Ego. Remember that the latter cannot take place while there remains a single taint of the terrestrial, of matter, in the purity of that light. On the other hand, the connection cannot be entirely ruptured and final re-union prevented, so long as there remains one spiritual deed, or potentiality to serve as a thread of union; but the moment this last spark is extinguished, and the last potentiality exhausted, then comes the severance. In an Eastern parable, the Divine Ego is likened to the Master who sends out his labourers to till the ground and to gather in the harvest, and who is content to keep the field so long as it can yield even the smallest return. But when the ground becomes absolutely sterile, not only is it abandoned, but the labourer also (the lower Manas) perishes.
On the other hand, however, still using our simile, when the light thrown on the wall, or the rational human Ego, reaches the point of actual spiritual exhaustion, the Antahkarana disappears, no more light is transmitted, and the lamp becomes non-existent to the ray. The light which has been absorbed gradually disappears and “Soul eclipse” occurs; the being lives on earth and then passes into Kâma Loka as a mere surviving congeries of material qualities; it can never pass onwards towards Devachan, but is reborn immediately, a human animal and scourge.
This simile, however fantasic will help us to seize the correct idea. Save through the blending of the moral nature with the Divine Ego, there is no immortality for the personal Ego. It is only the most spiritual emanations of the personal Human Soul which survive. Having, during a lifetime, been imbued with the notion and feeling of the “I am I” of its personality, the Human Soul, the bearer of the very essence of the Karmic deeds of the physical man, becomes, after the death of the latter, part and parcel of the Divine Flame, the Ego. It becomes immortal through the mere fact that it is now strongly grafted on the Monad, which is the “Tree of Life Eternal.”
And now we must speak of the tenet of the “second death.” What happens to the Kâmic Human Soul, which is always that of a debased
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and wicked man or of a soulless person? This mystery will now be explained.
The personal Soul in this case, viz., in that of one who has never had a thought not concerned with the animal self, having nothing to transmit to the Higher, or to add to the sum of the experiences gleaned from past incarnations which its memory is to preserve throughout eternity— this personal Soul becomes separated from the Ego. It can graft nothing of self on that eternal trunk whose sap throws out millions of personalities, like leaves from its branches, leaves which wither, die and fall at the end of their season. These personalities bud, blossom forth and expire, some without leaving a trace behind, others after commingling their own life with that of the parent stem. It is the Souls of the former class that are doomed to annihilation, or Avîtchi, a state so badly understood, and still worse described by some Theosophical writers, but which is not only located on our earth, but is in fact this very earth itself.
Thus we see that Antahkarana has been destroyed before the lower man has had an opportunity of assimilating the Higher and becoming at one with it; and therefore the Kâmic “Soul” becomes a separate entity, to live henceforth, for a short or long period according to its Karma, as a “soulless” creature.
But before I elaborate this question, I must explain more clearly the meaning and functions of the Antahkarana. As already said, it may be represented as a narrow bridge connecting the Higher and the
lower Manas. If you look at the Glossary of the Voice of the Silence, pp.88 and 89, you will find it is a projection of the lower Manas, or, rather, the link between the latter and the Higher Ego, or, between the Human and the Divine or Spiritual Soul. *
At death it is destroyed as a path, or medium of communication, and its remains survive as Kâma Rûpa.
the “shell.” It is this which the Spiritualists see sometimes appearing in the séance rooms as materialized “forms,” which they foolishly mistake for the “Spirits of the Departed.” † So far is this from being
* As the author of Esoteric Buddhism and the Occult World called Manas the Human Soul, and Buddhi the Spiritual Soul, I have left these terms unchanged in the Voice, seeing that it was a book intended for the public.
† In the exoteric teachings of Râja Yoga, Antahkarana is called the inner organ of perception and is divided into four parts: the (lower) Manas, Buddhi (reason), Ahankâra (personality), and Chitta (thinking faculty). It also, together with several other organs, forms a part of Jîva, Sou called also Lingadeh. Esotericists, however, must not be misled by this popular version.
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the case that in dreams, though Antahkarana is there, the personality is only half awake; therefore, Antahkarana is said to be drunk or insane during our normal sleeping state. If such is the case during the periodical death, or sleep, of the living body, one may judge what the consciousness of Antahkarana is like when it has been transformed after the “eternal sleep” into Kâma Rûpa.
But to return. In order not to confuse the mind of the Western student with the abstruse difficulties of Indian metaphysics, let him view the lower Manas, or Mind, as the personal Ego during the waking state, and as Antahkarana only during those moments when it aspires towards its Higher Ego, and thus becomes the medium of communication between the two. It is for this reason that it is called the “Path.” Now, when a limb or organ belonging to the physical organism is left in disuse, it becomes weak and finally atrophies. So also it is with mental faculties; and hence the atrophy of the lower mind-function called Antahkarana, becomes comprehensible in both completely materialistic and depraved natures.
According to Esoteric Philosophy, however, the teaching is as follows: Seeing that the faculty and function of Antahkarana is as necessary as the medium of the ear for hearing, or that of the eye for seeing; then so long as the feeling of Ahankâra, that is, of the personal “I” or selfishness, is not entirely crushed out in a man, and the lower mind not entirely merged into and become one with the Higher Buddhi-Manas, it stands to reason that to destroy Antahkarana is like destroying a bridge over an impassable chasm; the traveller can never reach the goal on the other shore. And here lies the difference between the exoteric and Esoteric teaching. The former makes the Vedânta state that so long as Mind (the lower) clings through Antahkarana to Spirit (Buddhi-Manas) it is impossible for it to acquire true Spiritual Wisdom, Gnyâna, and that this can only be attained by seeking to come en rapport, with the Universal Soul (Âtmâ); that, in fact it is by ignoring the Higher Mind altogether that one reaches Râja Yoga. We say it is not so. No single rung of the ladder leading to knowledge can be skipped. No personality can ever reach or bring itself into communications with Âtmâ, except through Buddhi-Manas; to try and become a Jîvanmukta or a Mahâtma, before one has become an Adept or even a Narjol (a sinless man) is like trying to reach Ceylon from India without crossing the sea. Therefore we are told that if we destroy Antahkarana before the personal is absolutely under the con-
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trol of the impersonal Ego, we risk to lose the latter and be severed for ever from it, unless indeed we hasten to re-establish the communication by a supreme and final effort.
It is only when we are indissolubly linked with the essence of the Divine Mind, that we have to destroy Antahkarana.
Like as a solitary warrior pursued by an army, seeks refuge in a stronghold; to cut himself off from the enemy, he first destroys the drawbridge, and then only commences to destroy the pursuer; so must the Srotâpatti act before he slays Antahkarana.
Or as an Occult axiom has it:
The Unit becomes Three, and Three generate Four. It is for the latter [the Quarternary] to rebecome Three, and for the Divine Three to expand into the Absolute One.
Monads, which become Duads on the differentiated plane, to develop into Triads during the cycle of incarnations, even when incarnated know neither space nor time, but are diffused through the lower Principles of the Quarternary, being omnipresent and omniscient in their nature. But this omniscience is innate, and can manifest its reflected light only through that which is at least semi-terrestrial or material; even as the physical brain which, in its turn, is the vehicle of the lower Manas enthroned in Kâma Rûpa. And it is this which is gradually annihilated in cases of “second death.”
But such annihilation—which is in reality the absence of the slightest trace of the doomed Soul from the eternal MEMORY, and therefore signifies annihilation in eternity—does not mean simply discontinuation of human life on earth, for earth is Avîtchi, and the worst Avîtchi possible. Expelled forever from the consciousness of the Individuality, the reincarnating Ego, the physical atoms and psychic vibrations of the now separate personality are immediately reincarnated on the same earth, only in a lower and still more abject creature, a human being only in form, doomed to Karmic torments during the whole of its new life. Moreover, if it persists in its criminal or debauched course, it will suffer a long series of immediate reincarnations.
Here two questions present themselves: (1) What becomes of the Higher Ego in such cases? (2) What kind of an animal is a human creature born soulless?
Before answering these two very natural queries, I have to draw the attention of all of you who are born in Christian countries to the fact that the romance of the vicarious atonement and the mission of Jesus
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as it now stands, was drawn or borrowed by some too liberal Initiates from the mysterious and weird tenet of the earthly experience of the reincarnating Ego. The latter is indeed the sacrificial victim of, and through, its own Karma in previous Manvantaras, which takes upon itself voluntarily the duty of saving what would be otherwise soulless men or personalities. Eastern truth is thus more philosophical and logical than Western fiction. The Christos or Buddhi-Manas of each man, is not quite an innocent and sinless God, though in one sense it is the “Father,” being of the same essence with the Universal Spirit, and at the same time the “Son,” for Manas is the second remove from the “Father.” By incarnation the Divine Son makes itself responsible for the sins of all the personalities which it will inform. This it can do only through its proxy or reflection, the lower Manas. The only case in which the Divine Ego can escape individual penalty and responsibility as a guiding Principle, is when it has to break off from the personality, because matter, with its psychic and astral vibrations, is then, by the very intensity of its combinations, placed beyond the control of the Ego. Apophis, the Dragon, having become the conqueror, the reincarnating Manas, separating itself gradually from its tabernacle, breaks finally asunder from the psycho-animal Soul.
Thus, in answer to the first question, I say:
(1) The Divine Ego does one of two things: either (a) it recommences immediately under its own Karmic impulses a fresh series of incarnations; or (b) it seeks and finds refuge in the bosom of the Mother, Alaya, the Universal Soul, of which the Manvantaric aspect is Mahat. Freed from the life-impressions of the personality, it merges into a kind of Nirvânic interlude, wherein there can be nothing but the eternal Present, which absorbs the Past and Future. Bereft of the “labourer,” both field and harvest now being lost, the Master, in the infinitude of his thought, naturally preserves no recollection of the finite and evanescent illusion which had been his last personality. And then, indeed, is the latter annihilated.
(2) The future of the lower Manas is more terrible, and still more terrible to humanity than to the now animal man. It sometimes happens that after the separation the exhausted Soul, now become supremely animal, fades out in Kâma Loka, as do all other animal souls. But seeing that the more material is the human mind, the longer it lasts, even in the intermediate stage, it frequently happens that after the present life of the soulless man is ended, he is again and again
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reincarnated into new personalities, each one more abject than the other. The impulse of animal life is too strong; it cannot wear itself out in one or two lives only. In rarer cases, however, when the lower Manas is doomed to exhaust itself by starvation; when there is no longer hope that even a remnant of a lower light will, owing to favourable conditions—say, even a short period of spiritual aspiration and repentance—attract back to itself its Parent Ego, and Karma leads the Higher Ego back to new incarnations, then something far more dreadful may happen. The Kâma-Mânasic spook may become that which is called in Occultism the “Dweller on the Threshold.” This Dweller is not like that which is described so graphically in Zanoni, but an actual fact in Nature and not a fiction in romance, however beautiful the latter may be. Bulwer, however, must have got the idea from some Eastern Initiate. This Dweller, led by affinity and attraction, forces itself into the astral current, and through the Auric Envelope, of the new tabernacle inhabited by the Parent Ego, and declares war to the lower light which has replaced it. This, of course, can only happen in the case of the moral weakness of the personality so obsessed. No one strong in virtue, and righteous in his walk of life, can risk or dread any such thing; but only those depraved in heart. Robert Louis Stevenson had a glimpse of a true vision indeed when he wrote his Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His story is a true allegory. Every Chelâ will recognize in it a substratum of truth, and in Mr. Hyde a Dweller, an obsessor of the personality, the tabernacle of the Parent Spirit.
“This is a nightmare tale!” I was often told by one, now no more in our ranks, who had a most pronounced “Dweller,” a “Mr. Hyde,” as an almost constant companion. “How can such a process take place without one’s knowledge?” It can and does so happen, and I have almost described it once before in the Theosophist.
The Soul, the lower Mind, becomes as a half animal principle almost paralyzed with daily vice, and grows gradually unconscious of its subjective half, the Lord, and of the mighty Host; [and] in proportion to the rapid sensuous development of the brain and nerves, sooner or later, it (the personal Soul) finally loses sight of its divine mission on earth.
Truly,
Like the vampire, the brain feeds and lives and grows in strength at the expense of its spiritual parent . . . and the personal half-unconscious Soul becomes senseless, beyond hope of redemption. It is powerless to discern the voice of its
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God. It aims but at the development and fuller comprehension of natural, earthly life; and thus can discover but the mysteries of physical nature. . . . It begins by becoming virtually dead, during the life of the body; and ends by dying completely—that is, by being annihilated as a complete immortal Soul. Such a catastrophe may often happen long years before one’s physical death; “We elbow soulless men and women at every step in life.” And when death arrives . . . there is no more a Soul (the reincarnating Spiritual Ego) to liberate . . . for it has fled years before.
Result: Bereft of its guiding Principles, but strengthened by the material elements, Kâma-Manas, from being a “derived light” now becomes an independent Entity. After thus suffering itself to sink lower and lower on the animal plane, when the hour strikes for its earthly body to die, one of two things happen: either Kâma-Manas is immediately reborn in Myalba, the state of Avîtchi on earth, * or, if it become too strong in evil—“immortal in Satan” is the Occult expression—it is sometimes allowed, for Karmic purposes, to remain in an active state of Avîtchi in the terrestrial Aura. Then through despair and loss of all hope it becomes like the mythical “devil” in its endless wickedness; it continues in its elements, which are imbued through and through with the essence of Matter; for evil is coeval with Matter rent asunder from Spirit. And when its Higher Ego has once more reincarnated, evolving a new reflection, or Kâma-Manas, the doomed lower Ego, like a Frankenstein’s monster, will ever feel attracted to its Father, who repudiates his son, and will become a regular “Dweller on the Threshold” of terrestrial life. I gave the outlines of the Occult doctrine in the Theosophist of October, 1881, and November, 1882, but could not go into details, and therefore got very much embarrassed when called upon to explain. Yet I have written there plainly enough about “useless drones,” those who refuse to become co-workers with Nature and who perish by millions during the Manvantaric life-cycle; those, as in the case in hand, who prefer to be ever suffering in Avîtchi under Karmic law rather than give up their lives “in evil,” and finally those who are co-workers with Nature for destruction. These are thoroughly wicked and depraved men, but yet as highly intellectual and acutely spiritual for evil, as those who, are spiritual for good.
The (lower) Egos of these may escape the law of final destruction or annihilation for ages to come.
* The Earth, or earth-life rather, is the only Avîtchi (Hell) that exists for the men of our humanity on this globe. Avîtchi is a state, not a locality, a counterpart of Devachan. Such a state follows the Soul wherever it goes, whether into Kâma Loka as a semi-conscious Spook, or into a human body when reborn to suffer Avîtchi. Our Philosophy recognizes no other Hell.
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Thus we find two kinds of soulless beings on earth: those who have lost their Higher Ego in the present incarnation, and those who are born soulless, having been severed from their Spiritual Soul in the preceding birth. The former are candidates for Avîtchi; the latter are “Mr. Hydes,” whether in or out of human bodies, whether incarnated or hanging about as invisible though potent ghouls. In such men, cunning develops to an enormous degree, and no one except those who are familiar with the doctrine would suspect them of being soulless, for neither Religion nor Science has the least suspicion that such facts actually exist in Nature.
There is, however, still hope for a person who has lost his Higher Soul through his vices, while he is yet in the body. He may be still redeemed and made to turn on his material nature. For either an intense feeling of repentance, or one single earnest appeal to the Ego that has fled, or best of all, an active effort to amend one’s ways, may bring the Higher Ego back again. The thread of connection is not altogether broken, though the Ego is now beyond forcible reach, for “Antahkarana is destroyed,” and the personal Entity has one foot already in Myalba; * yet it is not entirely beyond hearing a strong spiritual appeal. There is another statement made in Isis Unveiled † on this subject. It is said that this terrible death may be sometimes avoided by the knowledge of the mysterious Name, the “Word.” ‡ What this “Word,” which is not a “Word” but a Sound, is, you all know. Its potency lies in the rhythm or the accent. This means simply that even a bad person may, by the study of the Sacred Science, be redeemed and stopped on the path of destruction. But unless he is in thorough union with his Higher Ego, he may repeat it parrot-like, ten thousand times a day, and the “Word” will not help him. On the contrary, if not entirely at one with his Higher Triad, it may produce quite the reverse of a beneficent effect, the Brothers of the Shadow using it very often for malicious objects; in which case it awakens and stirs up naught but the evil, material elements of Nature. But, if one’s nature is good, and sincerely strives towards the Higher Self, which is that Aum, through one’s Higher Ego, which is its third
* See Voice of the Silence, p. 97.
† Loc. cit.
‡ Read the last footnote on p. 368, vol. ii. of Isis Unveiled, and you will see that even profane Egyptologists and men who, like Bunsen were ignorant of Initiation, were struck by their own discoverers when they found the “Word,” mentioned in old papyri.
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letter, and Buddhi the second, there is no attack of the Dragon Apophis which it will not repel. From those to whom much is given much is expected. He who knocks at the door of the Sanctuary in full knowledge of its sacredness, and after obtaining admission, departs from the threshold, or turns round and says, “Oh there’s nothing in it!” and thus loses his chance of learning the whole truth—can but await his Karma.
Such are then the Esoteric explanations of that which has perplexed so many who have found what they thought contradictions in various Theosophical writings, including “Fragments of Occult Truth,” in vols. iii, and iv, of The Theosophist, etc. Before finally dismissing the subject, I must add a caution, which pray keep well in mind. It will be very natural for those of you who are Esotericists to hope that none of you belong so far to the soulless portion of mankind, and that you can feel quite easy about Avîtchi, even as the good citizen is about the penal laws. Though not, perhaps, exactly on the Path as yet, you are skirting its border, and many of you in the right direction. Between such venal faults as are inevitable under our social environment, and the blasting wickedness described in the Editor’s note on liphas Lêvi’s “Satan,” * there is an abyss. If not become “immortal in good by identification with (our) God,” or AUM, Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, we have surely not made ourselves “immortal in evil” by coalescing with Satan, the lower Self. You forget, however, that everything must have a beginning; that the first step on a slippery mountain slope is the necessary antecedent to one’s falling precipitately to the bottom and into the arms of death. Be it far from me the suspicion that any of the Esoteric students have reached to any considerable point down the plane of spiritual descent. All the same I warn you to avoid taking the first step. You may not reach the bottom in this life or the next, but you may now generate causes which will insure your spiritual destruction in your third, fourth, fifth, or even some subsequent birth. In the great Indian epic you may read how a mother whose whole family of warrior sons were slaughtered in battle, complained to Krishna that though she had the spiritual vision to enable her to look back fifty incarnations, yet she could see no sin of hers that could have begotten so dreadful a Karma; and Krishna answered her: “If thou could’st look back to thy fifty-first anterior birth, as I can, thou would’st see thyself killing in wanton cruelty the same number of
* See Theosophist, vol. iii., October, 1882, p. 13.
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ants as that of the sons thou hast now lost.” This, of course, is only a poetical exaggeration; yet it is a striking image to show how great results come from apparently trifling causes.
Good and evil are relative, and are intensified or lessened according to the conditions by which man is surrounded. One who belongs to that which we call the “useless portion of mankind,” that is to say, the lay majority, is in many cases irresponsible. Crimes committed in Avidyâ, or ignorance, involve physical but not moral responsibilities or Karma. Take, for example, the case of idiots, children, savages, and people who know no better. But the case of each who is pledged to the HIGHER SELF is quite another matter. You cannot invoke this Divine Witness with Impunity, and once that you have put yourselves under its tutelage, you have asked the Radiant Light to shine and search through all the dark corners of your being; consciously you have invoked the Divine Justice of Karma to take note of your motive, to scrutinize your actions, and to enter up all in your account. The step is irrevocable as that of the infant taking birth. Never again can you force yourselves back into the matrix of Avidyâ and irresponsibility. Though you flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, and hide yourselves from the sight of men, or seek oblivion in the tumult of the social whirl, that Light will find you out and lighten your every thought, word and deed. All H.P.B. can do is to send to each earnest one among you a most sincerely fraternal sympathy and hope for a good outcome to your endeavours. Nevertheless, be not discouraged, but try, ever keep trying; * twenty failures are not irremediable if followed by as many undaunted struggles upward. Is it not so that mountains are climbed? And know further, that if Karma relentlessly records in the Esotericist’s account, bad deeds that in the ignorant would be overlooked, yet, equally true is it that each of his good deeds is, by reason of his association with the Higher Self, a hundredfold intensified as a potentiality for good.
Finally, keep ever in mind the consciousness that though you see no Master at your bedside, nor hear one audible whisper in the silence of the still night, yet the Holy Power is about you, the Holy Light is shining into your hour of spiritual need and aspirations, and it will be no fault of the Masters, or of their humble mouthpiece and servant, if through perversity or moral feebleness some of you cut yourselves off from these higher potencies, and step upon the delivery that leads to Avîtchi.
* Read pp. 40 and 63 in the Voice of the Silence.