Zirkoff B. - EI : Instruction No. I

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EI : Instruction No. I

by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writtings, vol. 12, page(s) 513-541

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513

INSTRUCTION No. I

PRINTED PRIVATELY ON THE ARYAN PRESS

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NOTICE

It must be distinctly understood that this School is entirely apart from the exoteric organization of the Theosophical Society and has no official connection with it.

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STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

NOT THE PROPERTY OF ANY MEMBER, AND TO BE RETURNED ON DEMAND TO THE AGENT OF THE HEAD OF THE E.S.T.

INSTRUCTION NO. I

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A WARNING ADDRESSED TO ALL ESOTERICISTS.

There is a strange law in Occultism which has been ascertained and proven by thousands of years of experience; nor has it failed to demonstrate itself, almost in every case, during the fifteen years that the T. S. has been in existence. As soon as anyone pledges himself as a “Probationer,” certain occult effects ensue. Of these the first is the throwing outward of everything latent in the nature of the man: his faults, habits, qualities, or subdued desires, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

For instance, if a man is vain or a sensualist, or ambitious, whether by Atavism or by Karmic heirloom, all those vices are sure to break out, even if he has hitherto successfully concealed and repressed them. They will come to the front irrepressibly, and he will have to fight a hundred times harder than before, until he kills all such tendencies in himself.

On the other hand, if he is good, generous, chaste, and abstemious, or has any virtue hitherto latent and concealed in him, it will work its way out as irrepressibly as the rest. Thus a civilized man who hates to be considered a saint, and therefore assumes a mask, will not be able to conceal his true nature, whether base or noble.

THIS IS AN IMMUTABLE LAW IN THE DOMAIN OF THE OCCULT.

Its action is the more marked the more earnest and sincere the desire of the candidate, and the more deeply he has felt the reality and importance of his pledge.

Therefore let all members of this School be warned and on their guard; for even during the three months before the esoteric teaching began several of the most promising candidates failed ignominiously.

The ancient occult axiom, “Know Thyself,” must be familiar to every member of this School; but few if any have apprehended the 516real meaning of this wise exhortation of the Delphic Oracle. You all know your earthly pedigree, but who of you has ever traced all the links of heredity, astral, psychic, and spiritual, which go to make you what you are? Many have written and expressed their desire to unite themselves with their Higher Ego, yet none seem to know the indissoluble link connecting their “Higher Egos” with the One Universal SELF.

For all purposes of Occultism, whether practical or purely metaphysical, such knowledge is absolutely requisite. It is proposed, therefore, to begin the esoteric instruction by showing this connection in all directions with the worlds: Absolute, Archetypal, Spiritual, Mânasic, Psychic, Astral and Elemental. Before, however, we can touch upon the higher worlds––Archetypal, Spiritual, and Manasic––we must master the relations of the seventh, the terrestrial world, the lower Prakriti, or Malkhuth as in the Kabala, to the worlds or planes which immediately follow it.

It is clear that once the human body is admitted to have direct relation with such higher worlds, the specialization of the organs and parts of the body will necessitate the mention of all parts of the human organism without exception. In the eyes of truth and nature no one organ is more noble or ignoble than another. The ancients considered as the most holy precisely those organs which we associate with feelings of shame and secrecy; for they are the creative centers, corresponding to the Creative Forces of the Kosmos.

The Esotericists are therefore warned that unless they are prepared to take everything in the spirit of truth and nature, and forget the code of false propriety bred by hypocrisy and the shameful misuse of primeval functions, which were once considered divine––they had better not study Esotericism.

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OM

“ÔM,” says the Aryan Adept, the son of the Fifth Race, who with this syllable begins and ends his salutation to the human being, his conjuration of, or appeal to, non-human PRESENCES.

“ÔM-MANI,” murmurs the Turanian Adept, the descendant of the Fourth Race; and after pausing he adds, “PADME-HUM.”

This famous invocation is very erroneously translated by the Orientalists as meaning, “O the Jewel in the Lotus.” For although literally, ÔM is a syllable sacred to the Deity, PADME means “in the Lotus,” and MANI is any precious stone, still neither the words themselves, nor their symbolical meaning, are thus really correctly rendered.

517 In this, the most sacred of all Eastern formulas, not only has every syllable a secret potency producing a definite result, but the whole invocation has seven different meanings and can produce seven distinct results, each of which may differ from the others.

The seven meanings and the seven results depend upon the intonation that is given to the whole formula and to each of its syllables; and even the numerical value of the letters is added to or diminished according as such or another rhythm is made use of. Let the student remember that number underlies form, and number guides sound. Number lies at the root of the manifested Universe; numbers and harmonious proportions guide the first differentiations of homogeneous substance into heterogeneous elements; and number and numbers set limits to the formative hand of Nature.

Know the corresponding numbers of the fundamental principle of every element and its sub-elements, learn their interaction and behavior on the occult side of manifesting nature, and the law of correspondences will lead you to the discovery of the greatest mysteries of macrocosmical life.

But to arrive at the macrocosmical, you must begin by the microcosmical: i.e., you must study MAN, the microcosm––in this case as physical science does––inductively, proceeding from particulars to universals. At the same time, however, since a keynote is required to analyze and comprehend any combinations of differentiations of sound, we must never lose sight of the Platonic method, which starts with one general view of all, and descends from the universal to the individual. This is the method adopted in Mathematics––the only exact science that exists in our day.

Let us study Man, therefore; but if we separate him for one moment from the Universal Whole, or view him in isolation, from a single aspect, apart from the “Heavenly Man”––the Universe symbolized by Adam-Kadmon or his equivalents in every philosophy––we shall either land in black magic or fail most ingloriously in our attempt.

Thus the mystic sentence, “Ôm Mani Padme Hum,” when rightly understood, instead of being composed of the almost meaningless words, “O the Jewel in the Lotus,” contains a reference to this indissoluble union between Man and the Universe, rendered in seven different ways and having the capability of seven different applications to as many planes of thought and action.

From whatever aspect we examine it, it means: “I am that I am”; “I am in thee and thou art in me.” In this conjunction and close union the good and pure man becomes a god. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he will bring about or innocently cause to happen unavoidable results. In the first case, if an Initiate––of course an Adept 518of the Right-hand Path alone is meant––he can guide a beneficient or a protecting current, and thus benefit and protect individuals and even whole nations. In the second case, although quite unaware of what he was doing, the good man becomes a shield to whomsoever he is with.

Such is the fact; but its how and why have to be explained, and this can be done only when the actual presence and potency of numbers in sounds, and hence in words and letters, have been rendered clear. The formula, “Ôm Mani Padme Hum,” has been chosen as an illustration on account of its almost infinite potency in the mouth of an Adept, and of its potentiality when pronounced by any man. Be careful, all you who read this: do not use these words in vain or when in anger, lest you become yourself the first sacrificial victim or, what is worse, endanger those whom you love.

The profane Orientalist, who all his life skims mere externals, will tell you flippantly, and laughing at the superstition, that in Tibet this sentence is the most powerful six-syllabled incantation and is said to have been delivered to the nations of Central Asia by Padmapani, the Tibetan Chenrezi.

But who is Padmapani in reality? Each of us must recognize him for himself whenever he is ready. Each of us has within himself the “Jewel in the Lotus,” call it Padmapani, Krisha, Buddha, Christ, or by whatever name we may give to our Divine Self. The exoteric story runs thus:

The supreme Buddha, or Amitabha, they say, at the hour of the creation of man, caused a rosy ray of light to issue from his right eye. The ray emitted a sound and became Padmapani Bodhisattva. Then the Deity allowed to stream from his left eye a blue ray of light which, becoming incarnate in the two virgins Dolma, acquired the power to enlighten the minds of living beings. Amitabha then called the combination, which forthwith took up its abode in man, “Om Mani Padme Hum” (“I am the Jewel in the Lotus, and in it I will remain”). Then Padmapani, “the one in the Lotus,” vowed never to cease working until he had made Humanity feel his presence in itself and had thus saved it from the misery of rebirth. He vowed to perform the feat before the end of the Kalpa, adding that in case of failure he wished that his head would split into numberless fragments. The Kalpa closed; but Humanity felt him not within its cold, evil heart. Then Padmapani’s head split and was shattered into a thousand fragments. Moved with compassion, the Deity re-formed the pieces into ten heads, three white and seven of various colors. And since that day man has become a perfect number, or TEN.

519 In this allegory the potency of SOUND, COLOR and NUMBER is so ingeniously introduced as to veil the real esoteric meaning. To the outsider it reads like one of the many meaningless fairy tales of creation; but it is pregnant with spiritual and divine, physical and magical, meaning. From Amitabha––no color or the white glory––are born the seven

differentiated colors of the prism. These each emit a corresponding sound, forming the seven of the musical scale. As Geometry among the Mathematical Sciences is specially related to Architecture, and also––proceeding to Universals––to Cosmogony, so the ten Yôds of the Pythagorean Tetrad, or Tetraktys, being made to symbolize the Macrocosm, the Microcosm, or man, its image, had also to be divided into ten points. For this Nature herself has provided, as will be seen.

But, before this statement can be proved and the perfect correspondences between the Macrocosm and the Microcosm demonstrated, a few words of explanation are necessary.

To the learner who would study the Esoteric Sciences with their double object: (a) of proving Man to be identical in spiritual and physical essence with both the Absolute Principle and with God in Nature; and (b) of demonstrating the presence in him of the same potential powers as exist in the creative forces in Nature––to such an one a perfect knowledge of the correspondences between Colors, Sounds and Numbers is the first requisite. As already said, the sacred formula of the Far East, Ôm Mani Padme Hûm, is the one best calculated to make these correspondential qualities and functions clear to the learner.

Let those, I say again, who feel themselves too much the children of our age to approach the many mysteries which have to be revealed, in a truly reverential spirit, even though references be made to such subjects and objects as are deemed improper and, to use the correct term, indecent, in our modern day––let such abandon these teachings at once. For I shall have to use terms and refer, especially in the beginning, to the most secret organs and functions of the human body, the bare mention of which is certain to provoke either a feeling of disgust and shame or an irreverent laugh.

It is such feelings which have invariably led the generations of writers on symbology and religions, ever since the day of Kircher, to materialize every natural emblem and ideograph in their impure thought, and finally to sum up all religions, Christianity included, as phallic worship. It is quite true that ever since the days of Pythagoras and Plato the exoteric cults began to deteriorate, until they debased the symbolism into the most shameful practices of sexual worship. Hence the horror and contempt with which every true Occultist regards the so-called “personal God” and the exoteric ritualistic worship of the 520Churches––be they Heathen or Christian. But even in the days of Plato it was not so. It was the persecution of the True Hierophants and the final suppression of those Mysteries, which alone purified man’s thoughts, that led to Tantrika sexual worship and, through the forgetting of divine truth, to BLACK MAGIC, whether conscious or otherwise.

Numerous works have been written upon this subject, especially in the latter part of our century. Every student can read for himself such works as those of Payne Knight, Higgins, Inman, Forlong, and finally Hargrave Jennings’ Phallicism and Allen Campbell’s Phallic Worship. All are based on truth as far as the facts are concerned; all are erroneous and unjust in their ultimate conclusions and deductions.

The above words are addressed to students in order that––knowing how bitter some Occultists feel both towards carnalizing Churches and materialistic thinkers who see phallicism in every symbol––they should not at the outset jump to the conclusion that, after all, the Occult Sciences likewise are based on nothing else but a sexual foundation. Man and woman in their physical aspects and corporeal envelopes are but higher animals, and the various parts of their bodies, if named at all, must be referred to in terms comprehensible to the student. But the idea or the unclean acts with which some of these organs are connected, in the present conception of humanity, does not militate against the fact that each such organ has been evolved and developed to perform six functions on six distinct planes of action, besides its seventh, the lowest and purely terrestrial function on the physical plane. This will suffice as an introduction to what follows.

In the allegory of Padmapani, the Jewel (or Spiritual Ego) in the Lotus, or the symbol of androgynous man, the numbers 3, 4, 7, 10, as synthesizing the Unit, Man, are prominent, as I have already said. It is on the thorough knowledge and comprehension of the meaning and potency of these numbers, in their various and multiform combinations, and in their mutual correspondence with sounds (or words) and colors, or rates of motion (represented in physical science by vibrations), that the progress of a student in Occultism depends. Therefore we must begin by the first, initial word, ÔM or AUM. ÔM is a “blind.” The ‘sentence “Ôm Mani Padme Hum” is not a six- but a seven-syllabled phrase, as the first syllable is double in its right pronunciation, and triple in its essence, A-UM. It represents the forever-concealed primeval triune differentiation, not from but in the ONE Absolute, and is therefore symbolized by the 4, or the Tetraktys, in the metaphysical world. It is the Unit-ray, or Atman.

It is Atman, this highest spirit in man, which, in conjunction with Buddhi and Manas, is called the upper Triad, or Trinity. This triad 521with its four lower human principles is, moreover, enveloped with an auric atmosphere, like the yolk of an egg (the future embryo) by the albumen and shell. This, to the perceptions of higher beings from other planes, makes of each individuality an oval sphere of more or less radiancy.

To show the student the perfect correspondence between the birth of Kosmos, a World, a Planetary Being, or a Child of Sin and Earth, a more definite and clear description must be given. Those acquainted with Physiology will understand it better than others.

Who, having read say the Vishu- or other Puranas, is not familiar with the exoteric allegory of the birth of Brahma (male-female) in the Egg of the World, Hirayagarbha, surrounded by its seven zones, or rather planes, which in the world of form and matter become seven and fourteen Lokas; the numbers seven and fourteen reappearing as occasion requires.

Without giving out the secret analysis, the Hindus have from time immemorial compared the matrix of the Universe, and also the solar matrix, to the female uterus. It is written of the former: “Its womb is vast as the Meru,” and “the future mighty oceans lay asleep in the waters that filled its cavities, the continents, seas, and mountains, the stars, planets, the gods, demons, and mankind.” The whole resembled, in its inner and outer coverings, the cocoanut filled interiorly with pulp, and covered externally with husk and rind. “Vast as Meru,” say the texts. “Meru was its Amnion, and the other mountains were its Chorion,” adds a verse in Vishu-Purana.

In the same way is man born in his mother’s womb. As Brahma is surrounded, in exoteric traditions, by seven layers within and seven without the Mundane Egg, so is the Embryo––the first or the seventh layer, according to the end from which we begin to count. Thus, just as Esotericism in its Cosmogony enumerates seven inner and seven outer layers, so Physiology notes the contents of the uterus as seven also, although it is completely ignorant of this being a copy of what takes place in the Universal Matrix. These contents are:

1. Embryo. 2. Amniotic Fluid, immediately surrounding the Embryo. 3. Amnion, a membrane derived from the Foetus, which contains the fluid. 4. Umbilical Vesicle, which serves to convey nourishment originally to the Embryo and to nourish it. 5. Allantois, a protrusion from the Embryo in the form of a closed bag, which spreads itself between 3 and 7, in the midst of 6, and which, after being specialized into the Placenta, serves to conduct nourishment to the Embryo.

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1. Embryo.

2. Amniotic Fluid (Liquor Amnii) in which the Embryo floats.

3. Amnion, a foetal membrane surrounding the Embryo, and containing the Amniotic Fluid.

4. Umbilical Vesicle, or Yolk Sac, containing the Yolk, the source of nutrition to the early Embryo.

5. Allantois, a vesicle proceeding from the extremity of the Embryo, spreading itself throughout the interior of the Ovum.

6. Interspace between the outer layer of the Ovum and the Amnion, in which are contained the Umbilical Vesicle and Allantois.

7. Chorion, or False Amnion, formed by the outer layer of the Ovum.

Figure 1 is a representation of the Ovum before the Amnion and Chorion are fully discernable; the Allantois (5) also is in the first stages of its development.

Figure 2 shows the Allantois spreading itself throughout the Interspace (6): here the Yolk Sac has considerably shrunk. Nos. 3 are projections forming the Amnion.

Figure 3 shows the Yolk Sac still further shrunk; the Allantois has completely spread itself in the Interspace between the Amnion and the Chorion (false Amnion), against the walls of the latter, which has grown in the form of ramified villi into the substance of the uterine mucuous membrane. In later stages the latter forms the Placenta.

523 6. Interspace between 3 and 7 (the Amnion and Chorion), filled with an albuminous fluid. 7. Chorion, or outer layer.

Now, each of these seven continents severally corresponds with, and is formed after, an antetype, one on each of the seven planes of being, with which in their turn correspond the seven states of matter and all other forces, sensational or functional, in Nature.

The following is a bird’s eye view of the seven correspondential contents of the wombs of Nature and of Woman. We may contrast them thus:

COSMIC PROCESS (UPPER POLE)	HUMAN PROCESS (LOWER POLE)
(1) The mathematical Point, called the “Cosmic seed,” the Monad of Leibnitz, which contains the whole Universe as the acorn the oak. This is the first bubble on the surface of boundless homogeneous Substance, or Space, the bubble of differentiation in its incipient stage. It is the beginning of the Orphic or Brahma’s Egg. It corresponds in Astrology and Astronomy to the Sun.	(1) The terrestrial Embryo, which contains in it the future man with all his potentialities. In the series of principles of the human system it is the Atman, or the super-spiritual principle, just as in the physical solar system it is the Sun.
(2) The vis vitae of our solar system exudes from the Sun (a) It is called, when referred to the higher planes, Akaśa. (b) It proceeds from the ten “divinities” the ten numbers of the Sun, which is itself the “Perfect Number.” These are called Dis––in reality Space––the forces spread in Space, three of which are contained in the Sun’s Atman, or seventh principle, and seven are the rays shot out by the Sun.	(2) The Amniotic Fluid exudes from the Embryo. (a) It is called on the plane of matter Prana. (b) It proceeds, taking its source in the universal One Life, or J…vatman, from the heart of man, and Buddhi, over which the Seven Solar Rays (Gods) preside.
(3) The Ether of Space, which in its external aspect, is the plastic crust which is supposed to envelope the Sun. On the higher plane it is the whole Universe, as the third differentiation of evolving Substance,. Mulaprakriti becoming Prakriti. (a) It corresponds mystically to the manifested Mahat, or the Intellect or Soul of the World.	(3) The Amnion, the membrane containing the Amniotic Fluid and enveloping the Embryo. After the birth of man it becomes the third layer, so to say, of his magneto-vital aura. (a) Manas, the third principle (counting from above), or the Human Soul in Man.
(4) The Sidereal contents of Ether, the substantial parts of it, unknown to modern science, represented: (a) In Occult and Kabalistic Mysteries by Elementals. (b) In physical Astronomy by meteors, comets, and all kinds of casual and phenomenal cosmic bodies.	(4) Umbilical Vesicle, serving as science teaches to nourish the Embryo originally, but as Occult Science avers to carry to the Foetus by osmosis the cosmic influences extraneous to the mother. (a) In the grown man these become the feeders of Kama, over which they preside. (b) In the physical man, his passions and emotions, the moral meteors and comets of human nature.
(5) Life-currents in Ether, having their origin in the Sun: the canals through which the vital principle of that Ether (the blood of the Cosmic Body) passes to nourish everything on the Earth and on the other planets: from the minerals which are thus made to grow and become specialized, from the plants, which are thus fed, to animal and man, to whom life is thus imparted.	(5) The Allantois, a protrusion from the Embryo which spreads itself between the Amnion and Chorion; it is supposed to conduct the nourishment from the mother to the Embryo. It corresponds to the life-principle, Praa or Jiva.
(6) The double radiation, psychic and physical, which radiates from the Cosmic Seed and expands around the whole Kosmos, as well as around the solar system and every planet. In Occultism it is called the upper divine and the lower material Astral Light.	(6) The Allantois is divided into two layers. The interspace between the Amnion and the Chorion contains the Allantois and also an albuminous fluid.
(7) The outer crust of every sidereal body, the Shell of the Mundane Egg, or the sphere of our solar system, of our earth, and of every man and animal. In sidereal space, Ether proper; on the terrestrial plane, Air, which again is built in seven layers. (a) The primordial potential world-stuff becomes (for the Manvantaric period) the permanent globe or globes.	(7) The Chorion, or the Zona Pellucida, the globular object called Blastodermic Vesicle, the outer and the inner layers of the membrane of which go to form the physical man. The outer (or ectoderm) forms his epidermis, the inner (or endoderm) his muscles, bones, etc. Man’s skin, again, is composed of seven layers. (a) The “primitive” becomes the “permanent” Chorion.

524 Even in the evolution of the Races we see the same order as in nature and man. Placental animal man became such only after the separation of sexes in the Third Root-Race. In the physiological evolution, the placenta is fully formed and functional only after the third month of uterine life.

Let us put aside such human conceptions as a personal God, and hold to the purely divine, to that which underlies all and everything in boundless Nature. It is called by its Sanskrit esoteric name in the Vedas TAD (or THAT), a term for the unknowable Rootless Root. If

DIAGRAM I

1ST.—MACROCOSM AND ITS 3, 7, OR 10 CENTERS OF CREATIVE FORCES

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we do so, we may answer these seven questions of the Esoteric Catechism thus:

(1) Q.––What is the Eternal Absolute? A.––THAT.

(2) Q.––How came Kosmos into being? A.––Through THAT.

(3) Q.––How, or what will it be when it falls back into Pralaya? A.––In THAT.

(4) Q.––Whence all the animate, and suppositionally, the “inanimate” nature?––A. From THAT.

(5) Q.––What is the Substance and Essence of which the Universe is formed? A.–– THAT.

(6) Q.––Into what has it been and will be again and again resolved? A.––Into THAT.

(7) Q.––Is THAT then both the instrumental and material cause of the Universe? A.––What else is it or can it be than THAT?

As the Universe, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, are ten, why should we divide Man into seven “principles”? This is the reason why the perfect number ten is divided into two, a reason which cannot be given out publicly: In their completeness, i.e., super-spiritually and physically, the forces are TEN: to wit, three on the subjective and inconceivable, and seven on the objective plane. Bear in mind that I am now giving you the description of the two opposite poles: (a) the primordial triangle, which as soon as it has reflected itself in the “Heavenly Man,” the highest of the lower seven––disappears, returning into “Silence and Darkness”; and (b) the astral paradigmatic man, whose Monad (Atman) is also represented by a triangle, as it has to become a ternary in conscious Devachanic interludes. The purely terrestrial man being reflected in the universe of matter, so to say, upside-down, the upper triangle, wherein the creative ideation and the subjective potentiality of the formative faculty resides, is shifted in the man of clay below the seven. Thus three of the ten, containing in the archetypal world only ideative and paradigmatic potentiality, i.e., existing in possibility, not in action, are in fact one. The potency of formative creation resides in the Logos, the synthesis of the seven Forces or Rays, which becomes forthwith the Quaternary, the sacred Tetraktys. This process is repeated in man, in whom the lower physical Triangle becomes, in conjunction with the female One, the male female creator or generator. The same on a still lower plane in the animal world. A mystery above, a mystery below, truly.

This is how the upper and highest, and the lower and most animal, stand in mutual relation.

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DIAGRAM I.

In this diagram we see that physical man (or his body) does not share in the direct pure wave of the divine Essence which flows from the One in Three, the Unmanifested, through the Manifested Logos (the upper face in the diagram). Purusha, the primeval Spirit, touches the human head and stops there. But the Spiritual Man (the synthesis of the seven principles) is directly connected with it. And here a few words ought to be said about the usual exoteric enumeration of the principles. As those not pledged could hardly be entrusted with the whole truth, an approximate division only was made and given out. Esoteric Buddhism begins with Âtman, the seventh, and ends with the Physical Body, the first. Now, neither Âtman, which is no individual “principle” but a radiation from and one with the Unmanifested Logos; nor the body, which is the material rind or shell of the Spiritual Man, can be, in strict truth, referred to as “principles.” Moreover the chief “principle” of all, one not even mentioned heretofore, is the “Luminous Egg” (Hiranyagarbha) or the invisible magnetic sphere in which every man is enveloped. It is the direct emanation: (a) from the Âtmic Ray in its triple aspect of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer (Regenerator); and (b) from Buddhi-Manas. The seventh aspect of this individual aura is the faculty of assuming the form of its body and becoming the “Radiant,” the Luminous Augoeides. It is this, strictly speaking, which at times becomes the form called Mâyâvi-Rûpa. Therefore as explained in the second face of the diagram (the astral man), the Spiritual Man consists of only five principles, as taught by the Vedântins, who substitute tacitly for the physical this sixth, or Auric Body, and merge the dual Manas (the dual mind or consciousness) into one. Thus they speak of five koœas (sheaths or principles), and call Âtman the sixth yet no “principle.” This is the secret of the late Subba Row’s criticism of the division in Esoteric Buddhism. But let the student now learn the true esoteric enumeration.

PLATE I.

The reason why public mention of the Auric Body is not permitted is on account of its being so sacred. It is this Body which at death assimilates the essence of Buddhi and Manas and becomes 527the vehicle of these spiritual principles, which are not objective, and then, with the full radiation of Atman upon it, ascends as Manas-Taijasa into the Devachanic state. Therefore it is called by many names. It is the Sutratman, the silver “thread” which “incarnates” from the beginning of Manvantara to the end, stringing upon itself the pearls of human existence––in other words, the spiritual aroma of every personality it follows through the pilgrimage of life. It is also the material from which the Adept forms his Astral Bodies, from the Augoeides and the Mayavi-Rupa downwards. After the death of man, when its most ethereal particles have drawn into themselves the spiritual principles of Buddhi and the Upper Manas, and are illuminated with the radiance of Atman, the Auric Body remains either in the Devachanic state of consciousness or, in the case of a full Adept, prefers the state of a Nirmanakaya––that is, one who has so purified his whole system that he is above even the divine illusion of a Devachani. Such an Adept remains in the astral (invisible) plane connected with our earth, and henceforth moves and lives in the possession of all his principles except the Kama-Rupa and Physical Body. In the case of the Devachani the Linga-Śarira––the alter ego of the Body which during life is within the physical envelope while the radiant aura is without––strengthened by the material particles which this aura leaves behind, remains close to the dead body and outside it, and soon fades away. In the case of the full Adept the body alone becomes subject to dissolution, while the center of that force which was the seat of desires and passions, disappears with its cause––the animal body. But during the life of the latter all these centers are more or less active and in constant correspondence with their prototypes, the cosmic centers, and their microcosms, the principles. It is only through these cosmic and spiritual centers that the physical centers (the upper seven orifices and the lower triad) can benefit by their occult interaction, for these orifices, or openings, are channels conducting into the body the influences that the will of man attracts and uses, viz., the cosmic forces.

This will has, of course, to act primarily through the spiritual principles. To make this clearer, let us take an example. In order to stop pain, let us say in the right eye, you have to attract to it the potent magnetism from that cosmic principle which corresponds to this eye and also to Buddhi. Create, by a powerful will-effort, an imaginary line of communication between the right eye and Buddhi, locating the latter as a center in the same part of the head. This line, though you may call it “imaginary,” is, once you succeed in seeing it with your mental 528eye and give it a shape and color, in truth as good as real. A rope in a dream is not and yet is. Moreover, according to the prismatic color with which you endow your line, so will the influence act. Now, Buddhi and Mercury correspond with each other, and both are yellow, or radiant and golden colored. In the human system the right eye corresponds with Buddhi and Mercury, and the left with Manas and Venus or Lucifer. Thus, if your line is golden or silvery it will stop the pain; if red, it will increase it, for red is the color of Kama and corresponds with Mars. Mental or Christian Scientists have stumbled upon the effects without understanding the causes. Having found by chance the secret of producing such results owing to mental abstraction they attribute them to their union with God––whether a personal or impersonal God, they know best,––whereas it is simply the effect of one or another principle. However it may be, they are on the path of discovery, although they must remain wandering for a long time to come.

Let not the students of the Esoteric School commit the same mistake. It has often been explained that neither the cosmic planes of substance nor even the human principles––with the exception of the lowest material plane or world and the physical body, which, as has been said, are no “principles”––can be located or thought of as being in Space and Time. As the former are seven in One, so are we seven in One––that same Absolute Soul of the World, which is both matter and non-matter, spirit and non-spirit, being and non-being. Impress yourselves well with this idea, all those of you who would study the mysteries of SELF.

Remember that with our physical senses alone at our command, none of us can hope to reach beyond gross matter. We can do so only through one or another of our seven spiritual senses, either by training, or if one is a born seer. Yet even a clairvoyant possessed of such faculties, if not an Adept, no matter how honest and sincere he may be, will, through his ignorance of the truths of Occult Science, be led by the visions he sees in the Astral Light only to mistake for God or Angels the denizens of those spheres of which he may occasionally catch a glimpse––as witness Swedenborg and others.

[Continued on page 532.]

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Footnotes

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