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. BP563
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SAL B 3'61b5~l"26"5ao"'583'
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T71E959PAICAL^;HU^LS
/(UMBER 0/iE
T>\e-5e\???Pri/sciples''
ep-MAN
ANNIE BESAMT.F.T-S.i
7JS
^i.sfc
Theosophicai, Mandai^ No. i.
THE
SEVEN PRINCIPLES
OF MAN.
BY
ANNIE BESANT, F.T.S.
(Ninth Thousand.)
I.ONDON:
Theosophicai. Pubi^ishing Society,
7, DUKE STREET, ADELPHI, W.C.
NEW YORK:
The Path, 144, Madison Ave.
madras:
Theosophicai. Society, Adyar.
1892.
PRICE ONE SHILLING,
The H. p. B. Press,
42, Henry Street, Reg-cnt's Park,
London, N.W.
^Printers to the Theosophical Society.)
PREFACE.
Few words are needed i7i sending this little book out
into the world. It is the first of a series of Mammals
designed to meet the public demand for a simple expo-
sition of Theosophical teachi7igs. Some have complained
that our literature is at 07ice too abstruse^ too technical^
and too expensive, for the ordi^iary reader, and it is our
hope that the present series may succeed in supply ifig
what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for
the learned; it is for all. It may be that among those
who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its
teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them
to penetrate more deeply into its philosphy, its science,
and its religiofi, facing its abstruser problems with the
student's zeal and the neophytes ardour. But these
ma7iuals are not written for the eager student, whom
no initial difficulties can daunt ; they are written for
the busy meti a7id women of the work-a-day world,
and seek to make plain some of the great truths that
render life easier to bear and death easier to face.
Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder
Brothers of our race, they can have no other object
than to serve our fellow-men.
► THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES
OF MAN.
■pNQUIRERS attracted to Theosophy by its central
-^ doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man, and by the
hopes it holds out of wider knowledge and of spiritual
growth, are apt to be repelled when they make their
first attempt to come into closer acquaintance with it,
by the to them strange and puzzling names which
flow glibly from the lips of Theosopliists in conference
assembled. They hear a tangle of Atma-Buddhi.
KSma-Manas. Triad, Devachan, Linga Sharira, and
what not, and fee! at once that for tliem Theosophy
is far too abstruse a study. Yet they might have
become very good Theosophists. had not their initial
enthusiasm "been quenched with the douche of Sanskrit
terms. In the present manual the smoking flax shall
be mnrc tenderly treated, and one Sanskrit name at a
time shall be the most that shall be flung in the face
of the enquirer. As a matter of fact, the use of these
terms has become general among Theosophists because
the English language has no equivalents for them,
and a long and clumsy sentence has to be used in
^eir stead, if the idea is to be conveyed at all. The
initial trouble of learning the names has been pre-
ferred to the contiimed trouble of using roiiudabout
descriptive phrases — "Kama," for instance, being
shorter and more precise than the loose "the passional
and emotional part of our nature."
Man, accordnig to the Theosophical teaching, is a
sevenfold being, or, in tlis usual phrase, has a septen-
ary constitution. Putting it in yet another way, man's
nature has seven aspects, may be studied from seven
different points of view, is composed of Seven Princi-
ples. Whatever words may be u^ed, the fact remains
the same — that he is essentially sevenfold, an evolving
being, part of whose nature has already been mani-
fested, part remaining latent at present, so far as the
vast majority of humankind are concerned. Man's
consciousness is able to function through as many of
these aspects, on as many of these planes, as have
been already evolved in him into activity. A "plane"
is merely a condition, a stage, a state; so that we
might describe man as fitted by his nature, when
that nature is fully developed, to exist consciously in
seven different conditions, or seven different stages,
in seven different states; or, technically, on seven
different planes of being. To take an easily verified
illustration: a man may be conscious on the physical
plane, that is, in his physical body, feeling hunger and
thirst, the pain of a blow or cut. But let the man be
a soldier in the heat of battle, and his consciousness
will be centred in his passions, his emotions, and he
may suffer a wound without knowing it, his conscious-
ness being away from the physical plane and acting
on the plane of passions and emotions; when the ex-
citement is over, consciousness will pass back to the
physical, and he will "feel" the pain of his wound.
Let the man b^ a philosopher, and as he ponders
over some knotty problem he will lose all conscious-
ness of bodily wants, of emotions, of love and hatred;
his consciousness will have passed to the plane of
intellect, he will be "abstracted," i.e., drawn away
from considerations pertaining to his bodily life, and
fixed on the plane of thought. Thus may a man live
on these several planes, in these several conditions,
one part or another of his nature being thrown into
activity at any given time; and an understanding of
what man is, ofhis nature, his powers, his possibili-
ties, will be reached more easily and assimilated
more usefully if he is studied along tliese clearly
defined lines, than if he be left without analysis, a
mere confused bundle of qualities and states.
It has also been found convenient, having regard
to man's mortal an3 immortal life, to put these Seven
Principles into two groups — one containing the three
higher Principles and therefore called the Triad, the
other containing the four lower and therefore called
the Quaternary. The Triad is the deathless part of
man's nature, the "spirit" of Christian terminology;
the Quaternary is the mortal part, the "soul" and the
"body" of Christianity. This division into "body,
soul, and spirit" is used by Paul, and is recognised in
all careful Christian philosophy, although generally
ignored by the mass of Christian people. In ordinary
parlauce " soul" and "body," or "spirit" and "body,"
mate up the man, and the words "soiil" and "spirit"
\re used interchangeably, with much confusion of
thought as the result. This looseness is fatal to any
clear view of the constitution of man, and the Theo-
sophist may well appeal to the Christian philosopher
^~j against the casual Christian uou-th,in.k.e.s \C -^.^^
8
urged that he is making distinctions difficult to be
grasped. No philosophy worthy of the name can be
stated even in the most elementary fashion without
making some demand on the intelligence and the
attention of the would-be learner, and carefulness in
the use of terms is a condition of all knowledge.
PRINCIPI.K I, STHUI.A ShARIRA, THE PhYSICAI. BoDY.
The physical body of man is called the first of his
Seven Principles, as it is certainly the most obvious.
Built of material molecules, in the generally accepted
sense of the term, with its five organs of sensation —
the five senses — its organs of locomotion, its brain
and nervous system, its apparatus for carrying on the
various functions necessary for its continued exist-
ence, there is little to be said about the physical body
in so slight a sketch as this of the Constitution of
Man. Western Science is almost ready to accept the
Theosophical view that the human organism consists
of innumerable "Lives," which build up the cells.
H. P. Blavatsky says on this: "Science never yet
went so far as to assert with the occult doctrine that
our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and
stones, are themselves altogether built up of such
beings [bacteria, etc.]: which, except larger species,
no microscope can detect. . . . The physical and
chemical constituents of all being found to be identi-
cal, chemical science may well say that there is no
difference between the matter which composes the ox
and that which forms man. But the Occult doctrine
is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical
compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal
ijivisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the
mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the
elephant and of the tree which shelters him from the
sun. Each particle — whether you call it organic or
inorganic — is a life. Every atom and molecule in the
Universe is both life-giving and deaih-giving to that
form" {Secret Doctrine, vol. i. 9. 261), The microbes
thus " build up the material body and its cells," uuder
the constructive energy of vitality — a phrase that
will be explained when we come to deal with " life,"
as the Third Principle, and with these microbes as
part of it. When the "life" is no longer supplied the
microbes "are left to run riot as destructive agents,"
and they break up, disintegrate the cells they built,
and so the body goes to pieces.
The purely physical consciousness is the conscious-
ness of the cells and the molecules. The selective
action of the cells, taking from the blood what they
need, rejecting what they do not need, is an instance
of this self-consciousness. The process goes on with-
out the help of "our" consciousness or volition.
Again that which is called by physiologists "uncon-
scious memory" is tlie memory of this physical con-
sciousness, unconscious to us indeed, until we have
learned to transfer our braiu consciousness thither.
What "we" feel is not what the cells feel. The^aiw
of a wound is felt by the brain -consciousness, acting,
as before said, on the physical plane; but the con-
sciousness of the molecule, as of the aggregation of
niolcciiles we call cells, leads it to hurry to the repair
of the damaged tissues — action of which the brain is
?f« conscious— and its memory makes it repeat the
same act again and again, even when it has become
unnecessary. Hence, cicatrices on wounds, scars,
callosities, etc. The student may find many details
^rtn this subject in physiological treatises.
The death of the physical body occurs when the
withdrawal of the controlling life-energ>' leaves the
microbes to go their own way, and tlie many lives, no
longer co-ordinated, scatter from each other and
scatter the particles of the cells of " Ihe man of dust,"
and what we call "decay" sets in. The hody be-
comes a whirlpool of unrestrained, unregulated lives,
and its form, which resulted from their correlation,
is destroyed by their exuberant individual energy.
" Death" is but an aspect of Life, and the destruction
of one materia! form is but a prelude lo the building
up of another.
Principlb II,* LiNGA. Shariea, the Astrai, Body.
The Astral Body, the Ethereal Body, the Flnidic
Body, the Double, the Wraith, the Doppelganger, the
Astral man, such are a few of the many names whicli
have been given to the Second Principle in man's con-
stitution. The best of all the names is that of Linga
Sharira, because this term designates the Second
Principle only, whereas the other names have been
used somewhat generally to describe bodies formed
of more snbtle matter than the matter which affects
our physical senses, without regard to the question
whether other Principles were or were not involved
in their construction. I shall therefore use this name
throughout.
The Linga Sharira is formed of matter rarer or more
subtle than the matter which is perceptible to our
five senses. This matter is called astral matter, as
^
• Soine writ* rs speak of I
rladand Quatemafy, the
toi
resembling; that which fills space, and it is the state
of matter which is just beyond our "solid, liquid, and
gas," and is characteristic of the "astral plane" im-
mediately succeeding the "material plane." or the
generally accepted objective universe. To this astral
plane belong what are ordinarily called clairvoyance,
' airaudience, many hypnotic phenomena — material
lough, though manifesting in matter which is in a
ler state than that which we can feel and see.
This Linga Sharira is the exact double or counter-
_iart of the physical body to which it belongs, and is
separable from it although unable to go very far
away therefrom. When separated from tlie physical
body it is visible to the clairvoyant as an exact re-
plica thereof, united to it by a slender thread. So
close is the physical union between the two that an
injury inflicted on the Linga Sharira appears as a
lesion on the physical body, a fact known under the
name of "repercussion." A. D'Assier, in his well-
known work — translated by H. S. Olcott, the President-
Founder of the Theosophical Society, under the title
if "Posthumous Humanity" — givesa number of cases
•e pp. 51-57) in which this repercussion took place.
Separation of the Linga Sharira from the physical
)dy is generally accompanied with a considerable
[ecrease of vitahty in the latter, the Linga Sharira
becoming more vitalised as the energy in the body
diminishes. Col. Olcott says in a note in the book
just mentioned (p. 63):
"Wlien the Double is projected by a trained expert, eveu,
the body seenis torpid, and the mind in a 'brown study' or
dazed state; the ej'es are lifeless in expression, the heart and
lung actions feeble, and often the temperature much lowered.
-^" -a ■very dangerous to make any sudden noise
12
the room, under such circumstances; for the Double being by
instantaneous reaction drawn back into the body, the heart
convulsively palpitates, and death even may be caused."
In the case of Emilie Sagee (quoted on p. 62-65),
the girl was noticed to look pale and exhausted when
the Double was visible: **the more distinct the Double
and more material in appearance, the really material
person was proportionately wearied, suffering and lan-
guid; when, on the contrary; the appearance of the
Double weakened, the patient was seen to recover
strength." This phenomenon is perfectly intelligible
to the Theosopliical student, who knows that the
Linga Sharira is the vehicle of the Life- Principle, or
Vitality, in the body, and that its partial withdrawal
must therefore diminish the energy with which this
Principle pla3^s on the physical molecules.
Clairvoyants, such as the Seeress of Prevorst, state
that they can see the ethereal arm or leg attached to
a body from which the physical limb has been ampu-
tated, and D*Assier remarks on this:
"Whilst I was absorbed in physiological studies, I was often
arrested by a singular fact. It sometimes happens that a
person who has lost an arm or leg experiences certain sensa-
tions at the extremities of the fingers or toes. Physiologists
explain this anomaly by postulating in the patient an inver-
sion of sensitiveness or of recollection, which makes him lo-
cate in the hand or the foot the sensation with which the
nerve of the stump is alone affected. ... I confess that
these explanations seemed to me laboured and have never
satisfied me. When I studied the problem of the duplication
of man, the question of amputations recurred to my mind, and
I asked myself if it was not more simple and logical to attri-
bute the anomaly of which I have spoken to the doubling of
the human body, which by its fluidic nature can escape ampu-
tion" {loc. cit. pp. 103, 104).
The lyinga Sharira plays a great part in "spiritu-
del
K tht
K
ilistic" phenomena. Here again the clairvoyant,
leeing on the astral plane, can help ns. A clair-
"lyant can often see the Linga Sharira oozing out of
le left side of the medinra, and it is this ethereal
louble which often appears as the "materialized
lirit," easily moulded into various shapes by the
.ought -currents of the sitters, and gaining strength
and vitality as the medium sinks into a deep trance.
The Countess Wachtmeister, who is clairvoyant, says
that she has seen the same "spirit" recognized as
that of a near relative or friend by different sitters,
each of whom saw it according to his expectations,
while to her own eyes it was the mere double of the
medium. So again H. P. Blavatsky told me that
when she was at the Eddy homestead, watching the
remarkable series of phenomena there produced, she
deliberately moulded the "spirit" that appeared into
the likenesses of persons known to herself and to no
iOne else present, and the other sitters saw the types
'""'le produced by her own will-power, moulding the
[astic astral matter of the medium's Linga Sharira,
Mauy of the movements of objects that occur at
such seances, and at other times, without visible con-
tact, are due to the action of the Linga Sharira, and
the student can learn how to produce such pheno-
mena at will. They are trivial enough: the mere
putting out of the astral hand is no more important
than the putting out of the physical counterpart, and
neither more nor less "miraculous." Some persons
produce such phenomena unconsciously, mere aim-
less overturnings of objects, making of noises, and
so on : they have no control over their astral Double,
and it just blunders about in their near neighbour-
hood, like a baby trj-ing to walk. For the Linga
14
Sliarira is without consciousness, and is senseless on
the physical plane when temporarily divorced from
the physical organs of sensation.
This leads us to an interesting point. The mate-
rial centres of sensation are located in the Linga Slia-
rira, which may be said to form the bridge between
the physical organs and the mental perceptions ; im-
pressions from the physical universe impinge on the
material molecules of the physical body, setting in
vibration the constituent cells of the organs of sensa-
tions, or our ** senses." These vibrations, in their
turn, set in motion the finer material molecules of
the corresponding organs in the Linga Shanra, or the
centres of sensation, the inner senses. From these
vibrations are again propagated into the yet rarer
matter of the lower mental plane, whence they are
reflected back until, reaching the material molecules
of the cerebral hemispheres, they become our ** brain
consciousness." This correlated and unconscious
succession is necessary for the normal action of
** consciousness" as we know it. In sleep and in
trance, natural or induced, the first and last stages
are generally omitted, and the impressions start from
and return to the astral plane, and thus make no
trace on the brain memory ; but the natural psychic,
the clairvoyant who does not need trance for the
exercise of his powers, is able to transfer his con-
sciousness from the physical to the astral plane
without losing grip thereof, and can impress the
brain-memory with knowledge gained on the astral
plane, so retaining it for use.
**Seeing in the astral light" is a phrase often met
with, and one which may have puzzled the casual
enquirer. It means just this exercise of the inner
15
senses, or senses located in the Linga Sharira, an
exercise which — in the present stage of human evolu-
tion — is a natural gift with a few, and a late;it possi-
bility in everybody.
** Death" means for the Linga Sharira just what it
means for the physical body, the breaking up of its
constituent parts, the dissipation of its molecules.
The vehicle of the vitality that animates the bodily
organism as a whole, it oozes forth from the body
when the death-hour comes, and is seen by the
clairvoyant as a violet light, or violet form, hovering
over the dying person, still attached to the physical
body by the slender thread before spoken of. When
the thread snaps, the last breath has quivered out-
wards, and the bystanders whisper "He is dead."
The lyinga Sharira remains in the neighbourhood of
the corpse, and is the **wraith," or "apparition," or
"phantom," sometimes seen at the moment of death
and afterwards by persons near the place where the
death has occurred. It disintegrates slowly pari
passu with its physical counterpart, and its remnants
are seen by sensitives in cemeteries and churchyards
as violet lights hovering over graves. Here is one of
the reasons which render cremation preferable to
burial as a mode of disposing of the physical envelopes
of man ; the fire dissipates in a few hours the mole-
cules which would otherwise be set free only in the
slow course of gradual putrefaction, and thus quickly
restores to their own planes the physical and astral
materials, ready for use once more in the building up
of new forms.
Principle III., Prana, the IvIFK.
All universes, all worldvS, all men, all bnito.^^ -aJ^
vegetables, all minerals, all molecules and atoms, all
that is, are plunged in a great ocean of Life, Life
Eternal, Life Iniinite, Life incapable of increase or
of diminution. This great ocean of Life is called
JiVA; the universe is only Jiva in manifestation, Jtva
made objective, Jiva differentiated. -Now each org^an-
ism, whether minute as a molecule or vast as a uni-
verse, may be thought of as appropriating to itself
somewhat of Jiva, of embodying in itself as its own
life some of this universal Life. Figure a living
sponge, stretching itself out in the water which
bathes it, envelopes it, jiermeatea it; there is water,
still the ocean, circulating in every passage, filling
every pore; but we may think of the ocean outside
the sponge, or of the part of the ocean appropriated
by the spouge, distinguishing them in thought if we
want to make statements about each severally. So
each organism is a sponge bathed iu the ocean of
Life Universal, of Jiva, and containing within itself
some of that ocean as its own breath of life. In
Theosophy we distinguish this appropriated life under
the name Prana, and call it the Third Principle in
man's constitution.
To speak quite accurately, the "breath of life" —
that which the Hebrews termed Nephcsch, or the
breath of life breathed into the nostrils of Adam — is
not Prana only, but PrSna and the Fourth Principle
conjoined. It is these two together that make the
"Vital Spark" {Secret Dodriney Vol. I., p. 242, note),
and that are the "breath of life iu man, as in beast or
insect, of physical, material life" {ibid, note to p. 243).
It is "the nreath of animal life in man— the breath of
life instinctual in the animal" {ibid, diagram on p.
242). But just now we are concerned with Pr5na
17
only, with vitality, as the animating principle in all
animal and human bodies. Of this life the Linga
Sharira is the vehicle, acting, so to say, as means of
communication, as bridge, between Prana and the
Sthvtla Sharira, or physical body.
Pr3na is explained in the Secrel Doctrine as having
for its lowest subdivision the microbes of science;
these are the "invisible lives" that build up the
physical cells (see ante, pp. 8, 9);these are the "count-
less myriads of lives" that build the "tabernacle of
clay," the physical bodies {^Secret Doctrine, Vol. I., p.
225). "Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find
bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body,
and see in them but occasional and abnormal visitors
to which diseases are attributed. Occultism — which
discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether
in a mineral or human body, in air, fire, or water —
aifirms that our whole body is built of such lives, the
smallest bacteria under the microscope being to them
in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest
infusorium" {ibid, note to p. 225). The "fiery lives"
are the controllers and directors of these microbes,
these invisible lives, and "indirectly" build, i.e.. build
by controlling and directing the microbes, the im-
mediate builders, supplying the latter with what is
necessary, acting as the life of these lives: the "fiery
lives," the synthesis, the essence, of Prana, are the
"vital coustructive energy" that enables the microbes
to build the physical cells. One of the archaic Com-
mentaries sums up the matter in stately and luminous
phrases: "The worlds, to the profane, are built up of
the known Elements. To the conception of an Arhat,
these Elements are themselves collectively a divine
I Ijife; distributively, on the plane of manifestatlQ^'j.,
i8
the numberless and countless crores ♦ of lives. Fire
alone is one, on the plane of One Reality; on that of
manifested, hence illusive, being, its particles are fier>'
lives which live and have their being at the expense
of every other life that they consume. Therefore
they are named the Dkvourers. . . . Every
visible thing in this Universe was built by such 1.IVES,
from conscicus and divine primordial man, down to
the unconscious agents that construct matter. . . .
From the One Life, formless and uncreate, proceeds
the Universe of lives." {Secret Doctrine, Vol. I., pp.
249, 250.) As in the universe, so in man, and all
these countless lives, all this constructive vitality, all
this is summed up by the Theosophist, as Prana.
PrincipIvE IV, Kama, the Desires.
In building up our man we have now reached the
Principle sometimes described as the Animal Soul.
It includes the whole body of appetites, passions,
emotions, and desires, which come under the head of
instincts, sensations, feelings and emotions, in our
Western psychological classification, and are dealt
with as a subdivision of Mind. In Western psycho-
logy Mind is divided — by the modern school — into
three main groups. Feelings, Will, Intellect. Feelings
are again divided into Sensations and Emotions, and
these are divided and subdivided under numerous
heads. Kama includes the whole group of ** Feel-
ings," and might be described as our passional and
emotional nature. All animal needs, such as hunger,
thirst, sexual desire, come under it ; all passions, such
• A crore is ten millions.
sit
an
to
loi
"b
M
i wo
love (in its lower sense), hatred, envy, jealousy,
is the desire for sentient existence, for experience
material joys— "the lust of the flesli, the lust of the
es, the pride of life." This Principle is the most
laterial in our nature, it is the one that binds its fast
earthly life. " It is not raoleciilarly constituted mat-
r— least of all the human hody (Slkitla Sharira)—
that is the grossest of all our 'priuciples,' but verily
the middle principle, the real animal centre; whereas
our body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and
medium through which the beast in us acts all its
^fe" {Secret Doctrine. Vol. I., p. 260).
United to the lower part of Manas, as Kiima-Manas,
becomes the normal human brain -intelligence, and
lat aspect of it will he dealt with presently. Con-
sidered by itself, it remains the brute in us, the "ape
and tiger" of Tennyson, the force which most avails
to keep us bound to earth and to stifle in us all higher
longings by the illusions of sense.
Kama joined to Prana is, as we have seen, the
"breath of life." the vital sentient principle spread
over every particle of the body. It is, therefore, the
" :at of sensation, that which enables the centres of
:nsation to function. We have already noted that
„ le physical organs of sense, the bodily instruments
jhat come into immediate contact with the external
world, are related to the material centres of sensation
in the Linga Sharira, the inner senses {anle, p. 14).
But these organs and centres would be incapable of
functioning did not Prtlna make them vibrant with
activity, and their vibrations would remain vibrations
only, motion on the material planes of the body and
the Linga Sharira, did not Kama, the Principle of sen-
sation, translate the vibration into feeling. Feeling,
20
indeed, is consciousness on the Kamic plane, and
when a man is under the dominion of a sensation or
a passion, the Theosophist speaks of him as on the
Kamic plane, meaning thereby that his consciousness
is functioning on that plane. For instance, a tree
may reflect rays of light, that is ethereal vibrations,
and these vibrations striking on the outer eye will set
up vibrations in the physical nerve-cells ; these will
be propagated as vibrations to the physical and on to
the astral centres, but there is no sight of the tree
until the seat of sensation is reached, and Kama en-
ables us to perceive.
During life, Kama, as such, has no form or body.
But after death it takes form as an astral body, ix.y a
body composed of astral matter, and is then known
as Kama Rupa, Rupa being the Sanscrit name for a
body, for anything having form. (The force of the
objection to speaking of the Linga Sharira as the astral
body will now be seen; a7iy body formed of astral
matter is an astral body, but its properties will vary
with the Principles with which it is informed. Very
little knowledge is, therefore, given of the nature of
any entity, when it is spoken of merely as an astral
body.) The Kama Rupa possesses consciousness of
a very low order, has brute cunning, is without con-
science — an altogether objectionable entity, often
spoken of as a *' spook.'* It strays about, attracted
to all places in which animal desires are encouraged
and satisfied, and is drawn into the currents of those
whose animal passions are strong and unbridled.
Mediums of low type inevitably attract these emi-
nently undesirable visitors, whose fading vitality is
reinforced in their seance-rooms, who catch astral
reflections, and play the part of *' disembodied spirits"
of a low order. Nor is this all: if at such a seance
there be present some man or woman of correspond-
ingly low development, the "spook" will be attracted
to that person, and may attach itself to him or to her,
and thus may be set up currents between the KHma
of the living person and the KSnia Rijpa of the past
person, generating results of the most deplorable
kind.
The longer or shorter persistence of the Kama
Rupa depends on the greater or less development of
the animal and passional nature in the dying per-
sonality. If during earth-life tlie animal nature wa.^
indulged and allowed to run riot, if the intellectual
and spiritual parts of man were neglected or stifled,
then, as the life-currents were set strongly in the
Kaniic direction, the Kama Rupa will persist for a
long period after the body of the person is "dead."
Or again, if earth-life has been suddenly cut short by
accident or by suicide, the link between KSma and
PrSna will not be easily broken, and the Kama Riipa
will be strongly vivified. If, on the other hand, Kama
has been conquered and bridled during earth-life, if
it has been purified and trained into subservience to
man's higher nature, then there is but little to ener-
gize the Rupa, and it will quickly disintegrate and
dissolve awaj'.
There remains one other fate, terrible in its possi-
bilities, which may befall the KSmic Principle, but it
cannot be clearly understood until the Fifth Principle
has been dealt with.
The Quaternary, or Four Lower Principles.
We have thus studied Man, as to his lower nature,
^tid have reached the point in his path of evolution
22
to which he is accompanied by the brute. The Qua-
ternary, regarded alone, ere it is affected by contact
Diagram of the Quaternary; tra7isitory and mortal:
see ** Secret Doctrine^ Vol. /., p, 242,
with the Mind, is merely a lower animal; it awaits
the coming of the Mind to make it Man. Theosophy
teaches that through past ages man was thus slowly
builded up, stage by stage, Principle by Principle,
until he stood as a Quaternary, brooded over but not
in contact with the Spirit, waiting for that Mind
which could alone enable him to progress further,
and to come into conscious union with the Spirit, so
fulfilling the very object of his being. This aeonian
evolution, in its slow progression, is hurried through
in the personal evolution of each human being, each
Principle which was in the course of ages successively
43
incarnated in the races of Man on earth, appearing
as part of the constitution of each man at the point
of evolution reached at any given time, the remaining
Principles being latent, awaiting their gradual mani-
festation. The evolution of the Quaternary until it
reached the point at which further progress was im-
possible without Mind, is told in eloquent sentences
in the archaic stanzas on which the Secret Doctrine
of H. P. Blavatsky is based {breath is the Spirit, for
which the human tabernacle is to be builded; the
gross body is the Sthiila Sharira; the spirit of life is
PrSna; the mirror of Us body is the Linga Sharira;
the vehicle of desires is KSnia) :
"The Breath needed a fonn; the Fathers gave it.
The Breath needed a gross body; the Earth moulded
it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar
Lhas breathed it into its form. The Breath needed
a Mirror of its Body; 'We gave it our own,' said the
Dhyanis. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires;
'It has it,' said the Drainer of Waters. But Breath
needs a Mind to embrace the Universe; 'We cannot
give that,' said the Fathers. 'I never had it,' said
the Spirit of the Earth. 'The form would be con-
sumed were I to give it mine,' said the Great Fire
. . . Mau remained an empty senseless Bhuta"
(phantonij.
And so is the personal Man without Mind. The
Quaternary alone is not Mau. the Thinker, and it is
as Thinker that Man is really Man.
Yet at this point let the student pause, and reflect
over the human constitution, so far as he has gone.
For this Quaternary is the mortal part of man, and
is distinguished by Theosophy as the Personality.
It needs to be very clearly and defiiiilely realised, if
the constitution of man is to be understood, and if
the student is to read more advanced treatises with
intelligence. True, to make the Personality huma^i
it has yet to come under the rays of Mind, and to be
illuminated by it as the world by the rays of the sun.
But even without these rays it is a clearly defined
entity, with its body, its ethereal double, its life, and
its animal soul. It has passions, but no reason: it
has emotions, but no intellect: it has desires, but no
rationalised will; it awaits the coming of its monarch,
the Mind, the touch which shall transform it into
Man.
PRINCIPI.K V, Manas, thk Thinker, or Mind.
We have reached the most complicated part of our
study, and some thought and attention are necessary
from the reader to gain even an elementary idea of
the relation held by the Fifth Principle to the other
Principles in man.
The word Manas comes from the Sanskrit word
ma7i, the root of the verb to think ; it is the Thinker
in us, spoken of vaguely in the West as **Mind." I
will ask the reader to regard Manas as Thinker rather
than as Mind, because the word Thinker suggests
some one who thinks, i,e,, an individual, an entity.
And this is exactly the theosophical idea of Manas,
for Manas is the immortal individual, the real " I,"
that clothes itself over and over again in transient
personalities, and itself endures for ever. It is de-
scribed in the Voice of the Sile?ice in the exhortation
addressed to the candidate for initiation: **Have
perseverance as one who doth for evermore endure.
Thy shadows [personalities] live and vanish; that
which in thee shall live for ever, that which in thee
25
knows, for it is knowledge, is not of fleeting life;
it is the man tliat was, that is, and will be, for
whom the hour shall n^ver strike" (p. 31). H. P.
Blavatsky has described it very clearly in the I^ey to
Theosophy: "Try to imagine a 'Spirit,' a celestial
Being, whether we call it by one name or another,
divine in its essential nature, yet not pure enough to
be one with the ALL, and having, in order to achieve
this, to so purify its nature as finally to gain that goal.
It can do so only by passing individually and person-
ally, i.e., spiritually and physically, through every
experience and feeling that exists in the manifold or
differentiated Universe. It has, therefore, after hav-
ing gained such experience in the lower kingdoms,
and having ascended higher and still higher with
every rung on the ladder of being, to pass through
every experience on the human planes. In its very
essence it is Thought, and is, therefore, called in
its plurality Manasaputra, 'the Sons of (universal)
Mind.' This individtialised 'Thought' is what we
Theosophists call the real human Ego, the thinking
Entity imprisoned in a case of flesh and bones. This
is surely a spiritual Entity, not Afatler,* and such
Entities are the incarnating Egos that inform the
bundle of animal matter called mankind, and whose
names are Afanasa or 'Minds'" {Key to Theosophy,
pp. 183, 184).
This idea may be rendered yet clearer perhaps by
a hurried glance cast backward over man's evolution
in the past. When the Quaternary had been slowly
built up, it was a fair house without a tenant, and
stood empty awa'tiug the coming of the one who was
I "Tha
n the pliue of tbe objective ui
to dwell therein. The Manampuira (the sons of
Mind), spiritual entitie.s, lofty intelligences, at this
point came to this earth, and took up tlieir abode in
the human Quaternary, in the mindless men. This
was the incarnation of the Manasaputra, who became
the tenants of the human frames as then evolved on
earth, and these same Manasaputra, reincarnating
age after age, are the Reincarnating Egos, the Manas
in us, the persistent Individual, the Fifth Principle
ill man.
The multiplicity of names given to this Principle
has probably tended to increase the confusion sur-
rounding it in the minds of many commencing stu-
dents of Tlieosophy. Manasaputra is what we may
call the historical name, the name that suggests their
entrance into Humanity at a certain point of evolu-
tion ; Manas is the ordinary name, descriptive of the
nature of the Principle thus designated; the Indi-
vidual or the "/," or Ego, recalls the fact that this
Principle is permanent, does not die, is the individua-
lising Principle, separating itself in Thought from all
that is not itself, the Subject in Western terminology
as opposed to the Object; the Higher Ego puts it into
contrast with the Personal Ego of which something
is to be presently said; the Reincamatitig Ego lays
stress on the fact that it is the Principle that re-
incarnates continually, and so unites in its own ex-
perience all the lives passed through on earth. There
are various other names, but they will not be met
with in elementary treatises. The above are those
most often encountered, and there is no real difficulty
about them, but when they are used interchangeably,
without explanation, the unhappy student is apt to
tear his hair in anguish, wondering how many Prin-
27
ciples he lias got hold of, and what relation they bear
to each other.
We must now consider Manas during a single in-
carnation, which will serve as the type of all, and we
will start when the Ego has been drawn — by causes
set a-going in previous earth-lives — to the family in
which is to be bom the human being who is to serve
as its next tabernacle. (I do not deal herewith Re-
incarnation, since that great and most essential doc-
trine of Tlieosophy must be expounded separately.)
The Thinker, then, awaits the building of the "house
of life" he is to occupy, and now arises a difficulty;
himself a "spiritual" entity, living on a plane far
higher than that of the physical universe, he cannot
influence the molecules of gross matter of which his
dwelling is builded by the direct play upon them of
his own subtle and most ethereal particles. So he
projects part of his own substance, which clothes
itself with astral matter, and permeates the whole
nervous system of the yet unborn child, to fonn, as
the physical apparatus matiires, the thinking prin-
ciple in man. This projection from Manas, spoken
of as its reflexion, its shadow, its ray, and by many
another descriptive and allegorical name, is the
IfOWER Manas, in contradistinction to the HIGHER
Manas — Manas, during every period of incarnation,
being dual. On this, H. P. Biavatsky says; "Once
imprisoned, or incarnate, their (the Manasa) essence
becomes dual; that is to say the rays of the eternal
divine Mind, considered as individual entities, assume
a two-fold attribute which is (a) their essential, in-
herent, characteristic, heaven -aspiring mind (higher
Manas), and (i) the human quality of thinking, or
Buiimal cogitation, rationalised owing to the superior-
ity of the human brain, the Kama-tending or lower
Manas" {Key lo Tluosopky, p. 184).
We must now turn our attention to this Lower
Manas alone, and see the part it plays in the human
constitution.
It is engulfed in the Quaternar>', and we niay
regard it as clasping KSma with one hand, while with
the other it retains its hold on its father, the Higher
Manas. Whether it will be dragged down by KSma
altogether and be torn away from the Triad to which
by its nature it belongs, or whether it will triumph-
antly carry back to its .source the purified experiences
of its earth-life, that is the life-problem set and solved
in each successive incarnation. During earth-life,
KSma and the Lower Manas are joined together, and
are often spoken of conveniently as Kama-Manas.
Kama supplies, as we have seen, the animal and
passional elements; the Lower Manas rationalises
these, and adds the intellectual faculties; and so we
have the brain-mind, the brain -intelligence, i.e.,
Kama-Manas functioning in the brain and nervous
system, using the physical apparatus as its organ on
the material plane.
As with a flame we may light a wick, and the
colour of the flame of the burning wick will depend
on the nature of the wick and of the liquid in which
it is soaked, so in each human being the flame of
Manas sets alight the brain and Kamic wick, and the
colour of the light from that wick will depend on the
Kamic nature and the development of the brain-
apparatus. If the Kamic nature be strong and un-
disciplined it will soil the pure Manasic light, lending
it a lurid tinge and fouling it with noisome smoke.
If the brain-ap])aratus be imperfect or undeveloped.
I Uli
25
it will dull the light and prevent it from shining forth
to the outer world. As was clearlv stated by H. P.
Elavatskyin her article on "Genius": "What we call
'the manifestations of genius' in a person are only
the more or less successful efforts of that Ego to
assert itself on the outward plane of its objective fonn
— the man of clay — in the matter-of-fact, daily life of
the latter. The Egos of a Newton, an jEschylus, or
a Shakspere are of the same essence and subatance as
the Egos of a yokel, an ignoramus, a fool, or even an
idiot; and the self-assertion of their informing gmii
depends on the physiological and material construc-
tion of the physical man. No Ego differs from another
Ego in its primordial, or original, essence and nature.
That which makes one mortal a great man, and of
another a vulgar silly person is, as said, the quality
and make-up of the phy.sical shell or casing, and the
adequacy or inadequacy of brain and body to transmit
and give expression to the light of the real, inner, man;
and this aptness or iuaptness is, in its turn, the result
of Kanua. Or, to use another simile, physical man is
the musical instrument, and the Ego the perfonuinji
artist. The potentiality of perfect melody of sound is
in the former — the instrument — and no skill of the
latter can awaken a faultless haniiony out of a broken
or badly made instrument. This harmony depends
on the fidelity of transmission, by word and act, to
the objective plane, of the unspoken divine thought
in the very depths of man's subjective or inner nature.
Physical man niay^to follow our simile — be a price-
less Stradivarius, or a cheap and cracked fiddle, or
again a mediocrity between the two, in the hands of
the Paganini who ensouls him" {Lucifer for Novem-
ber. 1889, p. 228).
30
Bearing in mind these limitations and idiosyncra-
sies* imposed on the manifestations of the thinking
principle by the organ through which it has to func-
tion, we shall have little difficulty in following the
workings of the lyower Manas in man ; mental ability,
intellectual strength, acuteness, subtlety — all these
are its manifestations ; these may reach as far as
what is often called genius, what H. P. Blavatsky
speaks of as '^artificial genius, the outcome of culture
and of purely intellectual acuteness." Its nature is
often demonstrated by the presence of Kamic elements
in it, of passion, vanity and arrogance.
The Higher Manas can but rarely manifCvSt itself
at the present stage of human evolution. Occasionally
a flash from those loftier regions lightens the twilight
in which we dwell, and such flashes are what the
Theosophist alone calls true genius; *' Behold in every
manifestation of genius, whe7i combhied with rirliic,
the undeniable presence of the celestial exile, the
divine Ego whose jailor thou art, O man of matter."
For Theosophy teaches *'that the presence in man
of various creative powers — called genius in their
collectivity — is due to no blind chance, to no innate
qualities through hereditary tendencies — though that
which is known as atavism may often intensify these
faculties — but to an accumulation of individual ante-
cedent experiences of the Ego in its preceding life
and lives. For, omniscient in its essence and nature,
it still requires experience, through its pcrsoiialitics,
of the things of earth, earthly on the objective plane,
in order to apply the fruition of that abstract experi-
ence to them. And, adds our philosophy, the cultiva-
• Z,imitatioiis and idiosyncrasies due to the action of the Ego in previous
earth-lives, be it rexziembered.
I «
ion of certain aptitudes throughout a long series of
it incarnations must finally culminate, in some one
blooming forth as gaiius, in one or another
" {Ljtcifor for November, 1889, pp. 229-230).
the manifestation of true genius, punty of life is
essential condition.
Manas is the Ptrsonal Self of man ; we have
already seen that the Quaternary, as a whole, is the
personality, "the shadow," and the Lower Manas
gives the individualising touch that makes the per-
sonality recognize itself as "I." It becomes intellec-
tual, it recognizes itself as separate from all other
selves; deluded by the separateness it feels, it does
not realize a unity beyond all that it is able to sense.
And the IvOwcr Manas, attracted by the vividness of
the material life-impressions, swayed by the rush of
the KSmic emotions, passions and desires, attracted
to all material things, blinded and deafened by the
storm-voices among which it is plunged — the Lower
Manas is apt to forget the pure and serene glory of
its birthplace, mid to throw itself into the turbulence
which gives rapture in lieu of peace. And be it
remembered, it is this very Lower Manas that yields
the last touch of delight to the senses and to the
animal nature; for what is passion that can neither
anticipate nor remember, where is ecstacy without
the subtle force of imagination, the delicate colours
of fancy and of dream ?
But there may be chains yet more strong and con-
straining, binding the Lower Manas fast to earth.
They are forged of ambition, of desire for fame, be it
for that of the stateman's power, or of supreme in-
tellectual achievement. So long as any work is
wrought for sake of love, or praise, or even recogni-
32
tion that the work is "mine" and not another's; so
long as in the heart's remotest chambers one subtlest
yearning remains to be recognized as separate from
all; so long, however grand the ambition, however
far-reaching the charity, however lofty the achieve-
ment, Manas is tainted with Kama, and is not pure
as its source.
Manas in Activity.
We have already seen that the Fifth Principle is
dual in its aspect during each period of earth-life,
and that the lower Manas united to Kama, spoken of
conveniently as K^ma-Manas, functions in the brain
and nervous system of man. We need to carry our
investigation a little further in order to distinguish
clearly between the activity of the Higher and of the
Lower Manas, so that the working of the Mind in
man may become less obscure to us than it is at
present to many.
Now the cells of the brain and nervous system
(like all other cells) are composed of minute particles
of matter, called molecules (literally, little heaps).
These molecules do not touch each other, but are
held grouped together by the manifestation of the
Eternal Life that we call attraction. Not being in
contact with each other they are able to vibrate to
and fro if set in motion, and, as a matter of fact, they
are in a state of continual vibration. H. P. Blavatsky
points out {Lucifer, October, 1890, pp. 92, 93), that
molecular motion is the lowest and most material
form of the One Eternal Life, itself motion as the
"Great Breath," and the source of all motion on
every plane of the Universe. In the Sanskrit, the
roots of the terms for spirit, breath, being, and mg-
33
essentially the same, and Rama Prasad says
that "all these roots have for their origin the sound
produced by the breath of animals" — the sound of
expiration and inspiration.
Now the Lower Mind, or Kama-Manas, acts on the
molecules of the nervous cells by motion, and sets
them vibrating, so starting mind-consciousuess on
the physical plane. Manas itself could not affect
these molecules; but its Ray, the Lower Manas,
having clothed itself in astral matter and united it-
self to the K3mic elements, is able to set the physical
molecules in motion, and so give rise to "brain-con-
sciousness," including the brain-memory and all the
other functions of the humau mind, as we know it in
its ordinary activity. These manifestations, "like all
other phenomena on the material plane . . . 7nust
be related in their final analysis to the world ol vibra-
tion," says H. P. Blavatsky. But, she goes on to point
out, "in their origin they belong to a different and a
higher world of harmony." Their origin is in the
Manasic essence, in the Ray; but on the material
plane, acting on the molecules of the brain, they are
translated into vibrations.
This action of the KSma-Manas is spoken of by
Theosophists as psychic. All mental and passional
activities are due to this psychic energj', and its mani-
festations are necessarily conditioned by the physical
apparatus through which it acts. We have already
seen this broadly stated (aji/e, pp. ag, 30) and the
rationale of the statement will now be apparent. If
the molecular constitution of the brain be fine, and if
the working of the specifically Kamic organs (liver,
spleen, etc.) be healthy and pure — so as not to injure
^^h& molecular constitution of the nerves which put
them iuto commiinicatiou with the brain — then the
psychic breath, as it sweeps through the instrument,
awakens in this true EoUan harp harmonious and
ext^uisite melodies; whereas if the molecular consti-
tution be gross or poor, if it he disordered by the
emanations of alcohol, if the blood be poisoned by
gross living or sexual excesses, the strings of the
Eolian harp become too loose or too tense, clogged
with dirt or frayed with harssh usage, and when the
psychic breath passes over them they remain dumb
or give out harsh discordant notes, not because the
breath is absent, but because the strings are in evil
case.
It will now, I think, be clearly understood that
what we call Mind, or Intellect, is, in H. P. Blavat-
sky's words, "a pale and too often distorted reflection"
of Manas itself, or our Fifth Principle; Kama-Manas
is "the rational, but earthly or physical intellect of
man, incased in, and bound by, matter, therefore sub;
ject to the influence of the latter" ; it is the "lyower"
Self, or that which manifesting through our organic
system, acting on this plane of illusion, imagine'*.,
itself the E_qv sum, and thus falls into what Buddhist'
philosophy brands as the 'heresy of separateness.'"
It is the human PerSONAlitv, from which proceeds.
"the psychic, i.e., 'terrestrial wisdom' at best, as it
is influenced by all the chaotic stimuli of the human
or rather animal passions of the living body" {Lucifer,
October, 1890, p. 179).
A clear understanding of the fact that Kama- Manas
belongs to the human Personality, that it functions
in and through the physical brain, that it acts on the
molecules of the brain, setting them into vibration,
iriJl very much facilitate the comprehension by th^
student of the doctrine of Reincarnation. That
great subject will be dealt with in another volume
of this series, and 1 do not propose to dwell upon it
here, more than to remind the student to take care-
ful note of the fact that the Lower Manas is a Ray
from the immortal Thinker, i!luminali?ig a person-
ality, and that all the functions which are brought
into activity in the brain -consciousness are functions
correlated to the particular brain, to the particular
Personality, in which they occur. The brain-niole-
cules that are set vibrating are material organs in the
man of flesh; they did not exist as brain -molecules
before his conception, nor do they persist as brain-
molecules after his disintegration. Their functional
activity is limited by tlie limits of his personal life,
the life of the body, the life of the transient Person-
ality. Now the faculty we speak of as "memory"
on the physical plane depends on the response of
these ver>' brain molecides to the impulse of the
Lower Manas, and there is no link between the
brains of successive Personalities except through
the Higher Manas, that sends out its Ray to succes-
sively inform and enlighten them. It follows, then,
inevitably, that unless the consciousness of man can
rise from the physical and Kama-Mauasic planes to
the plane of the Higher Manas, no memory of one
Personality can reach over to another. The memory
of tlie Personality belongs to the transitory part of
man's complex nature, and tliose only can recover
the memory of their past lives who can raise their
consciousness to the plane of the immortal Thinker,
and can, so to speak, travel in consciousness up and
down the Ray that is the bridge between the personal
man that perishes and the immortal Man that en-
dures. If while we are cased in the man of flesh,
we can raise our consciousness along the Ray that
connects our lower with our true Self, and so reach
the Higher Manas, we find there stored in the memory
of that eternal Ego the whole records of our past
lives on earth, and we can bring back those records
to our brain-memory by way of that same Ray,
wherethrough we can climb upwards, to our "Father."
But this is an achievement that belongs to a late
stage of human evolution, and until this is reached
the successive Personalities informed by the Manasic
Rays are separated from each other, and no memory
bridges over the gulf between. The fact is obvious
enough to anyone who thinks the matter out, but as
the difference between the Personality and the im-
mortal Individuality is somewhat unfamiliar in the
West, it may be well to remove a possible stumbling-
block from the student's path.
Now the I^wer Manas may do one of three thinjgs:
it may rise towards its source, and by unremitting
and strenuous efforts become one with its "Father in
Heaven," or the Higher Manas — Manas uucontami-
nated with earthly elements, unsoiled and pure. Or,
it may partially aspire and partially tend downwards,
as indeed is mostly the case with the average man.
Or, saddest fate of all, it may become so clogged with
the Kamic elements as to become one with them, and
be finally wrenched away from its Parent and perish.
Before considering these three fates, there are a few
more words to be said touching the activity of the
l/jwer Manas.
As the Lower Manas frees itself from Kama, it
becomes the sovereign of the lovver part of man, and
manifests more and more of its true and essential
37
nature. In KSma is Desire, moved by bodily needs,
and Will, which is a faculty of Manas, is often led
captive by the turbulent physical impulses. But the
IvOwer Manas, "whenever it disconnects itself, for
the time being, from K3ma, becomes the guide of the
highest mental faculties, and is the organ of the free-
will in physical man" (J^ueifer, October, 1890, p. 94].
ISut the condition of this freedom is that KSma shall
be subdued, shall lie prostrate beneath the feet of the
conqueror: if the maiden Will is to be set free, the
Manasic St. George must slay the Kamic Dragon that
holds her captive; for while Kama is uncouquered,
Desire will be master of Will.
Again, as the I^wer Manas frees itself from Kima,
it becomes more and more capable of transmitting to
the human personality with which it is connected,
the impulses tliat reach it from its source. It is then,
as we have seen, that Genius flashes forth, the light
from the Higher Ego streaming through the Lower'
Manas to the brain, and manifesting itself to the
world. So also, a.s H. P. Blavatsky points out, such
action may raise a man above the normal level of
human power: "The Higher Ego," she says, "can-
not act directly on the body, as its consciousness
belongs to quite another plane and planes of idea-
tion; the 'I/3wer Self does; and its action and be-
haviour depenil on its free-will and choice as to
whether it will gravitate more towards its parent
(_'the Father in Heaven') or the 'animal' which it
informs, the man of flesh. The Higher Ego, as part
of the Essence of the Univeesai, Mind, is uncon-
ditionally omniscient on its own plane, and only
potentially so in onr terrestrial sphere, as it has to
I act solely through its alli^r Ego — the Personal Self.
J
38
Now . . . the former is the vehicle of all know-
ledge of the past, the present and the future, and
. . . it is from this fountain-head that its 'double'
catches occasional ghmpses of that which is beyond
the senses of man, and transmits them to certain
hrain-cells (unknown to Science in their functions),
thus making of man a Seer, a soothsayer and a
prophet" {Lucifer, November, 1890, p. 179). This is
the real Seership, and on it a few words must be said
presently. It is, naturaliy, extremely rare, and _pre-
cions as it is rare. A "faint and distorted reflection"
of it is found in what is called mediumship, and of
this H. P. Blavatsky says; "Now what is a medium?
The term medium, when not applied simply to things
and objects, is supposed to be a person through whom
the action of another person or oeing is either mani-
fested or transmitted. Spiritualists, believing in
communications with disembodied spirits, and that
these can manifest through, or impress sensitives to
transmit messages from them, regard mediumship as
a blessing and a great privilege. We Theosophists,
on the other hand, who do not believe in the 'com-
munion of spirits' as Spiritualists do, regard the gift
as one of the most dangerous of abnormal nervous
diseases. A medium is simply one in whose personal
Ego, or terrestrial mind, the percentage of astral light
so preponderates as to impregnate with it his whole
physical constitution. Every organ and cell thereby
IS attuned, so to speak, and subject to an enormous
and abnormal tension" {Lucifer, November, i8go,
p. 183). In such cases, the astral covering of iJie
Lower Manas, to which we have already alluded,
has really overpowered the Maiiasic Ray, and the
latter, instead of shining through it, is dulled and
39
t broken beams struggle through. These, illu-
minating tlie dim regions of astral and psychic
ihapes, fall now on one, uow on another, lending
them deceptive colour and reality, misleading alike
the medium and those who look to him for guidance.
To return to the three "fates" spoken of above,
any one of which may befall the I,ower Manas.
It may rise towards its source and become one with the
Father in Heaven. This triumph can only be gained
by many successive incarnations, all consciously di-
rected towards this end. As life succeeds life, the
phj'sical frame becomes more and more delicately
attuned to vibrations responsive to the Manasic im-
pulses, so that gradually the Manasic Ray needs less
and less of the coarser astral matter as its vehicle.
"It is part of the mission of the Manasic Ray to get
gradually rid of the blind deceptive element which,
though it makes of it an actual spiritual entity on
this plane, still brings it into so close contact with
matter as to entirely becloud its divine nature ano
stultify its intuitions" {^Lucifer, November, ifigo,
p. 182). I,ife after life it rids itself of this "blind
deceptive element," until at last, master of KSnia,
and with body responsive to Mind, the Ray becomes
one with its radiant source, the lower nature is
wholly attuned to the higher, and the Adept stand.s
forth complete, the "Father and the Son" having
become one on all planes, as they have been always
"one in heaven." For him the wheel of incarnation
is over, the cycle of necessity is trodden. Hence-
forth, he can incarnate at will, to do any special ser-
vice to mankind; or he can dwell in the planes round
earth without the physical body, helping in the fur-
^ther evolution of the globe and of the race.
i
40
// may partially aspire and partially te7id downwards.
This is the normal experience of the average man.
All life is a battlefield, and the battle rages in the
lyower Manasic region, where Manas wrestles with
Kama for empire over man. Anon aspiration con-
quers, the chains of sense are broken, and the lyOwer
Manas, with the radiance of its birth-place on it, soars
upward on strong wings, spurning the soil of earth.
But alas! too soon the pinions tire, they flag, they
flutter, they cease to beat the air; and downwards
falls the royal bird whose true realm is that of the
higher air, and he flutters heavily to the bog of earth
once more, and Kama chains him down.
When the period of incarnation is over, and the
gateway of Death closes the road of earthly life, what
becomes of the lyOwer Manas in the case we are con-
sidering?
Soon after the death of the physical body Kama-
Manas is set free, and dwells for awhile on the astral
plane clothed with a body of astral matter. From
this all of the Manasic Ray that is pure and unsoiled
gradually disentangles itself, and returns to its source,
carrying with it such of its life experiences as are of
a nature fit for assimilation with the Higher Ego.
Manas thus again becomes one, and it remains one
during the period which intervenes between two
incarnations. The Manasic Ego, united to Atma-
Buddhi — the two highest principles in the human
constitution, not yet considered by us — passes into
the Devachanic state of consciousness, resting, as we
rest in sleep, from the weariness of the life-struggle
through which it has passed, wrapped in blissful
dreams, coloured and peopled by the experiences of
the earth-life thus clothed. These are carried into
41
the Manasic consciousness by the Lower Ray with-
drawn into its source. They make the Devachanic
state a continuation of earth-life, shorn of its sorrows,
a completion of the wishes and desires of earth-life,
so far as those were pure and noble. The poetic
phrase that **the mind creates its own heaven** is
truer than many may have imagined, for ever>'A\^here
man is what he thiiiks, and in the Devachanic state
the mind is unfettered by the gross physical matter
through which it works on the objective plane. The
Devachanic period is the time for the assimilation of
life experiences, the regaining of equilibrium, ere a
new journey is commenced. It is the night that suc-
ceeds the da3' of earth-life, the alternative of the
objective manifestation. Periodicicy is here, as every-
where else in nature, ebb and flow, throb and rest,
the rhythm of the Universal Life. This Devachanic
state of consciousness lasts for a period of varying
length, proportioned to the stage reached in evolu-
tion, the Devachan of the average man being said to
extend over some fifteen hundred years.
Meanwhile, that portion of the impure garment of
the Lower Manas which remains entangled with Kama
gives to the, Kama- Rup:i {ricpa is form or body, there-
fore Kama-Rupa is merely the Kama Body) a some-
what confused consciousness, a broken memory of
the events of the just closed life. If the emotions
and passions were strong and the Manasic element
vv'eak during the period of incarnation, the Kama-
Rupa will be strongly energised, and will persist in
its activity for a considerable length of time after the
deatli of the body. It will also show a considerable
amount of consciousness, as much of the Manasic
Ray will have been overpowered by the vigorous
KSmic elements, and will have remained entangled
in them. If, on the other hand, the just closed earth-
life was characterised by mentality and purity rather
than by passion, the KSnia-Rupa, being but poorly
energised, will be a pale simnlacruni of the person to
whom it belonged, and will fade away, disintegrate
aud perish before any long period has elapsed.
The "spook" already mentioned (a«/f pp. 20, 21)
will now be fully understood. It may show very con-
siderable intelligence, if the Maiiasic element be atiit
largely present, and this will be the case with the
KSma-Riipa of persons of strong animal nature and
forcible though coarse intellect. For intelligence
working iu a very powerful Kamic personality will
be exceeding strong and energetic, though not subtle
or delicate, and the "spook" of such a person, still
further vitalised by the magnetic currents of persons
yet living in the body, may shew much intellectual
ability of a low type. But such a "spook" is con-
scienceless, devoid of good impulses, tending to-
wards disintegration, and communications with it
can work for evil only, whether we regard them as
prolonging its vitality by the currents it sucks up
from the bodies and Kamic elements of the living,
or as exhausting the vitality of these living persons
and polluting them with astral connexions of an al-
together undesirable kind.
Nor should it be forgotten that, without attending
seance-rooms at all, living persons may come into
objectionable contact with these KSmic "spooks."
As already mentioned, they are attracted to places in
which the animal part of man is chieily catered for;
drin king-houses, gambling saloons, brothels, all these
plnces are full of the vilest magnetism, are verj' whirl-
43
lis of magnetic currents of the foulest type. These
litract the "spooks" magnetically, and they drift to
Such psychic maelstroms of all that is earthly and
sensual. Vivified by currents so congenial to their
own, the Kama-Rupas become more active and po-
tent, impregnated with the emanations of passions
and desires they can no longer physically satisfy,
their magnetic currents reinforce the similar cur-
rents in the live persons, action and reaction con-
tinually going on, and the animal natures of the
living become more potent and less controlled by
the will as they are played on by these forces of the
Kaniic world. Kama-loka (from loka, a place, and so
_the place for Kfima) is a name often used to desig-
" late that plane of the astral world to which these
'spooks" belong, and from this ray magnetic cur-
ents of poisonous character, as from a pest-house
loat out germs of disease that may take root and
;row in the congenial soil of some poorly vitalised
ihysical body.
It is very possible that many will say, on reading
these statements, that Theosophy is a revival of
mediaeval superstitions and will lead to imaginary
terrors. Theosophy explains medieval superstitious,
and shows the natural facts ouwhich they were founded
and from which they drew their vitality. If there are
planes in nature other than the physical no amount
of reasoning will get rid of them and belief in their
existence will constantly reappear; but knowledge
will give them their intelligible place in the universal
order, and will prevent superstitution by an accurate
uuder.standing of their nature, and of the laws under
which they function. And let it be remembered that
irsons whose consciousness is normally on the.
44
physical plane can protect themselves from undesir-
able influences by keeping their minds clean and their
wills strong. We protect ourselves best against
disease by maintaining our bodies in vigorous health;
we cannot guard ourselves against invisible germs,
but we can prevent our bodies becoming suitable soil
for the growth and development of the germs. Nor
need we deliberately throw ourselves in the way of
infection. So also as regards these malign germs
from the astral plane. We can prevent the formation
of Kama-Manasic soil in which they can germinate
and develop, and we need not go into evil places, nor
deliberately encourage receptivity and mediumistic
tendencies. A strong active will and a pure heart
are our best protection.
There remains the third possibility for Kama-
Manas, to which we must now turn our attention, the
fate spoken of earlier as *' terrible in its consequences,
w^hicli may befall the Kamic Principle.''
// 7nay break away from its source, made 07ie with
Kama, instead of with the Higher Maiias. This is,
fortunately, a rare event, as rare at one pole of human
life as the complete re-union with the Higher Manas
is rare at the other. But still the possibility remains
and must be stated.
The personality may be so strongly controlled by
Kama that, in the struggle between the Kamic and
Manasic elements the victory may remain wholly with
the former. The lyower Manas may become so en-
slaved that its essence may become, as it were, frayed
thinner and thinner by the constant rub and strain,
until at last persistent yielding to the promptings of
desire bears its inevitable fruit, and the slender link
which unites the Higher to the I^ower Manas, the
d
I '
m
' !,•■
s
I "
h
45
silver thread that binds it to the Master." snaps in
o. Then, during earth-life, the Lower Quaternary
wrenched away from the Triad to which it was
linked, and the Higher Nature is severed wholly from
the lower. The human being is rent in twain, the
brute has broken itself free, and it goes forth un-
bridled. carr>*ing with it the reflections of that Manasic
light which should have been its guide through the
desert of life. A more dangerous brute it is than its
fellows of the unevolved animal world, just because
of these fragments in it of the higher mentality' of man.
rjSuch a being, human in form but brute in nature,
fiiumau in appearance but without human ruth, or
love, or justice — such a one may now and then be
met with in the haunts of men, putrescent while still
living, a thing to shudder at with deepest, if hopeless.
compassion. What is its fate after the funeral knell
has tolled ?
Ultimately, there is the perishing of the personality
that has thus broken away from the Principles that
can alone give it immortality. Uut a period of per-
sistence ties before it.
The Kama-Rupa of such a one is an entity of
terrible potency, and it has this unique peculiarity,
that it is able to reincarnate in the world of men. It
is not a mere "spook" on the way to disintegration |
jt has retained, entangled in its coils, too much of the
masic element to permit of such natural dissipation
space. It is sufficiently an independent entity,
lurid instead of radiant, with Manasic flame rendered
foul instead of purifying, as to be able to take to it-
self garment of flesh once more and dwell as man with
men. Such a man — if the word may be indeed
applied to the mere human shell with brute interior
46
—passes through a period of earth-life the natural foe
of all who are still normal in their humanity. With
no instincts save those of the animal, driven only by
passion never even by emotion, vfith a cunning that
no brute cau rival, a deliberate wickedness that plans
evil in fashion unknown to the mere frankly natural
impulses of the animal world, the reincarnated K3ma-
Riipic entity touches ideal vileness. Such soil the
page of human history as the monsters of iniquity
that startle us now and again into a wondering cry,
"Is this a human being?" Sinking lower with each
successive incarnation, the evil force gradually wears
itself out, and such a personality perishes, separated
from the source of life. It finally disintegrates, to be
worked up into other forms of living things, but as a
separate existence it is lost. It is a bead broken off
the thread of life, and the Immortal Ego that incar-
nated in that personality has lost the experience of
that incarnation, has reaped no harvest from that life-
sowing. Its Ray has brought nothing back, its life-
work for that birth has been a total and complete
failure, whereof nothing remains to weave into the
fabric of its own eternal Self,
AsTRAi. Forms op the Fourth and Fifth
Principles.
The student will already have fully realised that
"an astral body" is a term tliat may cover a variety
of different forms. It may be well at this stage to
sum up the astral tj-pes that belong to the Fourth
and Fifth Principles.
During life an astral body may be projected —
formed, as its name implies, of astral matter — but,
UHJike the Linga Sharira, dowertrd with intelligence.
i
47
and able to travel to a considerable distance from the
physical body to which it belongs. Unfortunately,
no distinctive name has as yet been given to this
entity; it is often spoken of as "the astral," to the
sad confusion of the student, who confounds it very
naturally with the Linga Sharira. This form, which
I label the Kama-Manasic Riipa, for lack of a better
name, is projected by mediums and sensitives uncon-
sciously, during sleep or trance. It can travel with
the speed of thought to a distant place, can there
father impressions from surrounding objects, can
ring back those impressions to the physical body,
and, by means of the physical body still entranced,
can convey them to others; but, as a rule, when the
sensitive comes out of trauce, the brain does not
retain the impressions thus made upon it, and no
trace is left "in the memory" of the experiences thus
acquired. Sometimes, but this is rare, the Kama-
Manasic Rupa is able to sufficiently affect the brain
by the vibrations it sets up, to leave a lasting impres-
sion thereon, and then the sensitive is able to recall
the knowledge acquired during trance.
This Kama-Manasic Rupa is the agent uncon-
sciously used by clairvoyants when their vision is
not merely the seeing in the astral light. This astral
fonn does then really travel to distant places, and
[iOiay appear there to persons who are sensitive or
fwho chance for the time to be in an abnonnal ner-
'Vous condition. Sometimes it appears to them —
when very faintly infonned by consciousness— as a
vaguely outlined form, not noticing its surroundings.
Such a Rupa has appeared near the time of death at
places distant from the dying person, to those who
were closely united to the dying by ties of blood, of
48
affection, or of hatred. More highly energized, it
will shew intelligence and emotion, as in some cases
on record, in which dying mothers have visited their
children residing at a distance, and have spoken in
their last moments of what they had seen and done.
This Kama-Manasic Rupa is set free in many cases
of disease — as is the Linga Sharira — as well as in
sleep and in trance. Inactivity of the physical body
is a condition of such astral voyagings.
The Kama-Manasic Rupa seems also to occasion-
ally appear in seance-rooms, giving rise to some of
the more intellectual phenomena that take place. It
must not be confounded with the Kama Rupa, or
** spook," already sufficiently familiar to the reader,
the latter being always the Kamic or Kama-Manasic
remains of a dead person, whereas the body we are
now dealing with is the projection of an astral double
from a living person.
A higher form of astral body, belonging to the
Higher Manas, is that known as the Mayavi Rupa, or
**body of illusion." The Mayavi Rupa is an astral
body formed by the consciously directed will of the
Adept; it may, or may not, resemble His physical
body. He giving to it whatever form may suit the
purpose for which He projects it. He transfers to
this Mayavi Rupa His full consciousness. His higher
Principles, lives in it, in fact, for the time, as though
it were His physical body, leaving the latter en-
tranced, its functions suspended at the lowest ebb of
vitality. The Adept can thus travel wherever He
will, without the burden of His physical body, in the
full exercise of every faculty, in perfect self-con-
sciousness. He makes the Mayavi Rupa visible or
invisible at will — on the physical plane — and the
i
49
phrase often used by Clielas and others as to seeing
an Adept "in His astral," means that He has visited
them in His Majavi Riipa. If He so choose, He can
make it indistinguishable from a physical body, wann
and firm to the touch as well as visible, able to carry
on a conversation, at all points like a physical human
^leing- But the power to thus fonn the true Maj'a\T
Ttfipa is confined to the Adepts and advanced Chelas;
I cannot be done by the untrained student, however
^ychic he may naturally be, for it is a Manasie not a
_ sychic creation, and it is only under the instruction
f of his Gum that the Chela learns to form and use the
"body of illusion."
The Higher Manas.
The Immortal Thinker itself, as will by this time
liave become clear to the reader, can manifest itself
but little on the physical plane at the present stage of
human evolution. Yet we are able to catch some
glimpses of the powers resident in it, the more as in
the Lower Manas we find those powers "cribbed,
cabined and confined" indeed, but yet existing.
Thus we have seen (p- 3?) that the Lower Manas "is
the organ of the freewill in physical man." Freewill
resides in Mauas itself, in Manas the ofispring of
Mahat, the Universal Mind. From Manas comes
the feeling of liberty, the knowledge that we can
rule- ourselves — really the knowledge that the higher
nature in us can rule the lower, let that lower nature
rebel and struggle as it may. Once let our con.scious-
ness identify itself with Manas instead of with Kama,
and the lower nature becomes the animal wc he-
stride, it is no longer the " I." All its phingings, its
straggles, its fights for masterj', are then outside us.
not within us, and we rein it in and hold it as we
rein in a plunging steed and subdue it to our will.
On this question of freewill I venture to quote from
an article of my own that appeared in the Path :
** Unconditioned will alone can be absolutely free:
the unconditioned and the absolute are one: all that
is conditioned must, by virtue of that conditioning,
be relative and therefore partially bound. As that
Will evolves the Universe, it becomes conditioned b}^
the laws of its own manifestation. The Manasic
entities are differentiations of that Will, each condi-
tioned by the nature of its manifesting potency, but,
while conditioned without, it is free within its own
sphere of activity, so being the image in its own
world of the Universal Will in the Universe. Now
as this Will, acting on each successive plane, crystal-
lizes itself more and more densely as matter, the
manifestation is conditioned by the material in which
it works, while, relatively to the material, it is itself
free. So, at each stage, the inner freedom appears in
consciousness, while yet investigation shows that that
freedom works within the limits of the plane of mani-
festation on which it is acting, free to work upon the
lower, yet hindered as to manifestation by the respon-
siveness of the lower to its impulse. Thus the Higher
Manas, in whom resides Freewill, so far as the I^ower
Quaternary is concerned — being the offspring of Ma-
hat, the third Logos, the Word, i.e., the Will in mani-
festation — is limited in its manifestation in our lower
nature by the vSluggishness of the response of the
personality to its impulses; in the Lower Manas it-
self — as immersed in that personality — resides the
will with which we are familiar, swayed by passions,
by appetites, by desires, by impressions coming from
ru
de
^^ sti
^^H tni
51
without, yet able to assert itself among them all, by
virtue of its essentia] nature, one with that Higher
Ego of which it is the Ray. It is free, as regards all
below it, able to act on Kama and on the physical
body, however much its full expression may be
thwarted and hindered by the cnideuess of the ma-
terial in which it is working. Were the will the mere
outcome of the physical body, of the desires and pas-
sions, whence could arise the sense of the "I' that can
judge, can desire, can overcome? It acts from a higher
plane, is royal as touching the lower whenever it claims
the royalty of birthright, and the very struggle of its
self-assertion is the best testimony to the fact that in
its nature it is free. And so, passing to lower planes,
we find in each grade this freedom of the higher as
ruling the lower, yet, on the plane of the lower, hin-
dered in manifestation. Reversing the process and
starting from the lower, the same truth becomes
manifest. Let a man's limbs be loaded witli fetters,
iSnd crude material iron will prevent the mauifesta-
ition of the mu,scular and iier\'ons force with which
instinct: none the less is that force present,
lOugh hindered for the moment in its activity. Its
l^reugth may be sho\vn in its very efforts to break
'the chains that bind it: there is uo power in the iron
to prevent the free giving out of the muscular energy,
though the phenomena of motion may be hindered.
But while this euergj' cannot be j-uled by the phjsicat
nature below it, its expeuditure is determined by the
KSmic principle; passions and desires can set it
going, can direct and control it. The muscular and
nervous energy cannot rule the passions and desires,
they are free as regards it, it is determined by their
interposition. Yet again Kama may be ruled, con-
1
52
trolled, determined by the will ; as touching the Ma-
nasic principle it is bound, not free, and hence the
sense of freedom in choosing which desire shall be
gratified, which act performed. As the Lower Manas
rules Kama, the Lower Quaternary takes its rightful
position of subserviency to the Higher Triad, and is
determined by a will it recognizes as above itself, and,
as regards itself, a will that is free. Here in many a
mind will spring the question, 'And what of the will
of the Higher Manas; is that in turn determined by
what is above it, while it is free to all below?* But
we have reached a point where the intellect fails us,
and where language may not easily utter that which
the spirit senses in those higher realms. Dimly only
can we feel that there, as everywhere else, the truest
freedom must be in harmony with law, and that volun-
tary acceptance of the function of acting as channel
of the Universal Will must unite into one perfect
liberty and perfect obedience."
This is truly an obscure and difficult problem, but
the student will find much light fall on it by following
the lines of thought thus traced.
Another power resident in the Higher Manas and
manifested on the lower planes by those in whom the
Higher Manas is consciously Master, is that of crea-
tion of forms by the will. The Secret Doctriiie says :
**Kriyasakti. The mysterious power of thought
which it enables it to produce external, perceptible,
phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The
ancients held that any idea will manifest itself exter-
nally if 07ids attention is deeply co7ice7itrated upon it.
Similarly an inte7ise volition will be followed by the
desired results'^ (Vol. I., p. 293). Here is the secret of
all true ** Magic,'* and as the subject is an important
53
one, and as Western Science is beginning to touch its
fringe, aseparate section is devoted to its consideration
fiirtner on, in order not lo break the connected outHne
here given of the Principles.
Again, we liave learned from H. P. Blavatsky that
Manas, or the Higher Ego, as "part of tlie Essence
of the Universal Mind, is nnconditionally omni-
scient on its own plane," and "is the vehicle of all
knowledge of the past and present, and the ftiture."
When this immortal entity is able through its Ray,
the Lower Manas, to impress the brain of a man, that
man is one who manifests abnonnal qualities, is a
genius or a seer. The conditions of seership are thus
laid down :
"The former [the visions of the true seer] can be
obtained by one of two means : (a) on the condition
of paralysing at will the memory and the instinctual
independent action of all the material organs and
even cells in the body of flesh, an act which, once
that the light of the Higher Ego has consumed and
subjected for ever the passional nature of the personal
lower Ego, is easy, but requires an adept; and {b) of
being a reincarnation of one, who, in a previous birth,
had attained through extreme purity of life and efforts
in the right direction almost to a Yogi-state of holiness
and saintship. There is also a third possibility of
reaching in mystic visions the plane of the Higher
Manas; but it is only occasional, and does not depend
on the will of the Seer, but on the extreme weakness
and exhaustion of the material body through illness
and suffering. The Seeress of Prevorst was an in-
stance of the latter case; and Jacob Boehnie of our
second category" {Lucifer, November. 1890, p. 1S3).
H The reader will now be in a position to grasp the
54
difference between the workings or the Higher Ego
and of its Ray. Genius, which sirs instead of arguing,
is of the Higher Ego; true Intuition is one of its
facnlties. Reason, the weighing and balancing quality
which arranges the facts gathered by observation,
balances them one against the other, argues from
them, draws conclusions from them — this is the exer-
cise of the Lower Manas through the brain-apparatus;
its instrument is ratiocination ; by induction it ascends
from the known to the unknown, building up a hypo-
thesis; by deduction it descends again to the known,
verifying its hypothesis by fresh expi;riuient.
Intuition, as we see by its derivation, is simply in-
sight — a process as direct and swift as bodily vision.
It is the exercise of the eyes of the intelligence, the
unerring recognition of a tnith presented on the
mental plane. It sess with certainty, its vision is
unclouded, its report unfaltering. No proof can add
to the certitude of its recognition, it is beyond and
above the reason. Often our instincts, blinded and
confused by passions and desires, are miscalled intui-
tions, and a mere Kaniic impulse is accepted as the
sublime voice of the Higher Manas. Careful and
prolonged self-training is necessary ere that voice can
be recognised with certainty, but of one thing we may
feel very sure: so long as we are in the vortex of the
Personality, so long as the storms of desires and
appetites howl around us, so long as the waves of
emotion toss us to and fro, so long the voice of the
Higher Manas cannot reach our ears. Not in the
fire or the whirlwind, not in the thunderclap or the
storm, comes the mandate of the Higher Ego; only
when there has fallen the stillness of a silence that
can be felt oily when the very air is motionless and
K
the calm is profound, only when the man wraps his
face in a mantle which closes his ears even to the
silence that is of earth, then onlj' sounds the voice
that is stiller tlian the silence, the voice of his true
^ If.
this H. P. Blavatskyhas written in Isis Unveiled:
Allied to the physical half of man's nature is reason,
which enables him to maintain his supremacy over
the lower animals, and to subjugate nature to his
uses. Allied to his spiritual part is his conscience,
which will serve as his unernug guide through the
besetnient of the senses; for conscience is that in-
stantaneous perception between right and wrong
which can only he exercised by the spirit, which,
being a portion of the Divine Wisdom and Purity, is
absolutely pure and wise. Its promptinfjs are in-
dependent of reason, and it can only manifest itself
clearly when uiihauipered by the baser attractions of
our dual nature. Reason being a faculty of our
physical brain, one which is justly defined as that of
deducing inferences from premisses, and being wholly
dependent on the evidence of other senses, cannot be
a quality pertaining directly to our divine spirit. The
latter Akck'x- — hence all reasoning, which implies dis-
cussion and argument, would be useless. So ati
entity which, if it must be considered as a direct
emanation from the eternal Spirit of Wisdom, has to
be viewed as possessed of the same attributes as the
essence or the whole of which it is part. Therefore
it is with a certain degree of logic that the ancient
Theurgists maintained that the rational part of man's
soul (spirit) never entered wholly into the man's body,
"aut only overshadowed him more or less through the
irrational or astral soul, which SLT\-es as an inter-
56
mediatory agent, or a meduim between spirit and
body. The man who has conquered matter vSuffi-
ciently to receive the direct li^ht from his shining
Atigoeides, feels truth intuitionally; he could not err
in his judgment, notwithstanding all the sophisms
suggested by cold reason, for he is ilIvUMInated.
Hence, prophecy, vaticination, and the so-called
Divine inspiration, are simply the effects of this
illumination from above by our own immortal spirit"
(Vol. I., pp. 305, 306).
This Augoeides, according to the belief of the Neo-
Platonists, as according to the Theosophical teach-
ings, ** sheds more or less its radiance on the inner
man, the astral soul" (^Ibid, p. 315), i.e. in the now
accepted terminology, on the Kama-Manasic person-
ality, or Lower Ego. (In reading his Unveiled, the
student has to bear in mind the fact that when the
book was written, the terminology was by no means
even as fixed as it is now; in his Uriveiled is the first
modern attempt to translate into Western language
the complicated Eastern ideas, and further experi-
ence has shown that many of the terms used to cover
two or three conceptions may with advantage be
restricted to one and thus rendered precise. Thus
the ** astral soul" must be understood in the sense
given above.) Only as this Lower Ego becomes pure
jfrom all breath of passion, as the Lower Manas frees
itself from Kama, can the ** Shining One" impress
it; H. P. Blavatsky tells us how Initiates meet this
Higher Ego fac^ to face. Having spoken of the
trinity in man, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, vshe goes on :
**It is when this trinity, in anticipation of the final
triumphant reunion beyond tlie gates of corporeal
death, became for a few seconds a unity, that the
57
gmdidate is alloweci, at the moment of the iiiitia-
, to behold Ins future self Thus we read in the
S*ersiaii Disalir of the 'Resplendent One'; in the
Greek philosopher -initiates of the Augoeides — the
self-shining 'blessed vision resident in the pure
light' ; in Porphyri', that Plotinus was united to his
'god' six times during his life-time, and so on" (/s/j
Unveiled, Vol. II,, pp. 114. 1155.
This trinity made into unity, again, is the "Christ"
of all mystics. When, in the final initiation, the can-
didate has been outstretched on the floor or altarstone
and has thus typified the crucifixion of the flesh, or
lower nature, and when from this "death" he has
" risen again " as the triumphant conqueror over sin
and death, he then, in the supreme moment, sees
before him the glorious presence aud becomes "one
with Christ," is himself the Christ, Thenceforth he
may live in the body, but it has become his obedient
instrument ; he is united with ,his true Self, the
Higher Ego made one with Atma-Buddhi, and
through the personality he inhabits he wields his
full powers as an immortal spiritual intelligence.
While he was still struggling in the toils of the lower
nature, Christ, the Spiritual Ego, was daily crucified
in him ; hut in the full Adept Christ has arisen
triumphant, lord of hnnself and of Nature. The long
^pilgrimage of the Higher Manas is over, the cycle of
■necessity is trodden, the wheel of rebirth ceases to
"turn, the Son of Man has been made perfect by
■ suffering.
So long as this point has not been reached, "the
Christ" is the object of aspiration. The Ray is ever
struggling to return to its source, the Lower Manas
^ever aspiring to rebecome one with the Higher.
While this duality persists the continual yearning
towards reunion felt by the noblest and purest natures
Is one of the most salient facts of the innur life and it
)s this which clothes itself as prayer, as inspiration,
as " seeking after God," as the longing for union with
the divine. "My son! is athirst for God, for (he
living God," cries the eager Christian, and to lei!
him that this intense longing is a fancy and is futile
is to make him turn aside from you as one who can-
not understand, but whose insensibility does not alter
the fact. The Occultist recognises in this cry the
inextinguishable impulse upwards of the Lower Self
to the Higher from which it is separated, but the
attraction of which it vividly feels. Whether the
person pray to Buddha, to Vishnu, to Christ, to the
Virgin, to the Father, it matters not at all; these are
questions of mere dialect, not of essential fact. In
all the Manas united to AtmS-Buridhi is the real
object, veiled under what name the changing time ot
race may give; at once the Ideal Humanity and the
"personal God," the "God-Man" found in all re-
ligions, "God incarnate," the "Word made flesh."
the Christ who must "be born in" each, with whom
the believer must be made one.
And this leads us on to the last planes of all, ilie
planes of Spirit, using that must abused word merely
as the opposite pole to matter; here only very general
ideas can be grasped by us, but it is necessary none
the less to try and grasp these ideas if we are to com'
plete, however poorly, our conception of man.
Principles VI and VII, AtmX-Buddhi, thb
"Spirit."
As the completion of the thought of the last sec-
iioii. we will look at Atma-Buddhi first in its cou-
Boexion with Manas, and will then proceed to a
iiiewhat more general view of it as "the Monad."
The cle direst and best description of the human
trinity, Atma-Biiddhi-Manas, will be found in the
Key to Theosophy, in which H. P. Blavatsky gives the
, following definitions :—
!.1liud, the inseparable Ray of the Universal
and One SrlK- It is the God a/nnv. more
than witliin us. Happy the man who suc-
ceeds in saturating his wncr Ego with iL
( the spiritual soul, or Baddhi, in close iniion
I The SpiBiTUAr. ) with Manas, the Mind-Principle, without
(^ Kgo is 1 wliich it is no Eoo at all, but only the
\ Atmic vehicle.
; Manas, the fifth Principle, so-called, in-
\ dependently of Buddhi. The Mind-Prin-
NNER or ) ciple is oiily the Spiritual Ego when
SR Ego is \ merged into one with Ituddtii. . . It is
J the "permanent Individuality or the Re-
( iucamatiiig Ego (pp. 175, 176).
Atm3 must then be regarded as the most abstract
iart of man's nature, the "Breath" which needs a
)dy for its manifestation. It is the one Reality, that
Which manifests on all planes, the Essence of which
fall our "Principles" are but aspects. The one Eter-
I'flal Existence, wherefrom are all things, which em-
bodies one of its aspects in the universe, that which
we speak of as the One Life — this Eternal Existence
rays forth as Atina, the very Self alike of the universe
and of man; their innermost core, their very heart,
that in which all things inhere. In itself incapable
l_Of direct nianifet^tation on lower planes, )'et That
6o
wi til out will ch no lower planes could come into exis-
tence, it clothes itself in Buddhi, as its vebicle, or
medium of further manifestation. "Buddhi i
faculty of cognizing the channel through which di-
vine knowledge reaches the Ego, the discernment of
good and evil, divine consciejice also, and spiritual
soul, which is the vehicle of AtmS." (^Secret Doctrine,
Vol. I., p. xix.). It is often spokgn of as the principle
of spiritual discernment. But Atiiia-Buddhi, a uni-
versal principle, needs individualizing ere experience
can be gathered and self-consc^ousyess attained. So
the Mind-Principle is united to AtmS-Biiddhi, and
the human trinity is complete. Manas becomes the
spiritual Kgo only when merged in Buddhi; Buddhi
becomes the spiritual Ego o\\\y v/h^n united to Manas;
in the union of the two lies the evolution of the spirit,
self-con aciqjis on all planes. Hence Manas strives
upward to Atma-Buddhi, as the IvOwer Manas strives
upward to the Higher, and henc^e, in relation to the
Higher Manas, AtniS-Buddhi, or Atm3, is often spoken
of as "the Father in Heaven," as the Higher Manas
is itself thus described in relation to the Lower (see
a?ife, p. 40). The Lower Manas gathers experience
to carry it back to its source; the Higher Manas ac-
cumulates the store throughout the cycle of reincar-
nation; Buddhi becomes assimilated with the Higher
Manas; and these, permeated with the Atmic light,
one with that True Self, the trinity becomes a unity,
the spirit is self-conscious on all planes, and tlie object
of the manifested universe is attained.
It will be gathered from this and from the preced-
ing section that the Augoeides, the Christ, is the
highest "fonii" of which Theosophy tells us. We
here reach the limit of form, and as a fonn the
Hop
6i
Augoeides is of the Fifth Plane. Beyond this, all
form is apparently impossible, since form implies
separation, and AtmH-Buddhi is one and indivisihle,
a universal principle in all, not an individual posses-
sion of any.
But no words of mine can avail to explain or to
describe that which is beyond explanation and beyond
description. Words can but blunder along on such a
theme, dwarfing and distorting it. Only by long and
patient meditation can the student hope to vaguely
sense something greater than himself, yet something
which stirs at the innernio.st core of his being. As
to the steady gaze directed at the pale evening sky
there appears after awhile, faintly and far away, the
soft glimmer of a star, so to the patient gaze of the
inner vision there may come the tender beam of the
spiritual star, if but as a mere suggestion of a far-off
world. Only to a patient and persevering purity will
that light arise, and blessed beyond all earthly blessed-
ness is he who sees but the palest shimmer of that
transcendent Radiance.
With such ideas as to "Spirit," the horror with
which Theosophisls shrink from ascribing the trivial
phenomena of the seance-room to " spirits " will be
readily under.stood. Playing on musical -boxes, talk-
ing through trumpets, tapping people on the head,
carrying accordions round the room — these things
may be all very well for astrals, spooks, and ele-
nientals, but who can assign them to "spirits," who
has any conception of spirit worthy or the name?
Such vulgarization and degradation of the most sub-
lime conceptions as yet evolved by man are surely
subjects for the keenest regret, and it may well be
" iped that ere long these phenomena will be put
62
in their tnie place, as evidence that the materialistic
views of the universe are inadequate, instead of being
exalted to a place they cannot fill as proofs of spirit.
No physical, no intellectual phenomena are proofs
of the existence of spirit. Only to the spirit can
spirit be demonstrated. You cannot prove a^ pro-
position in Euclid to a dog; you cannot prove Atma-
Buddhi to Kama and the I^ower Manas. As we climb,
our view will widen, and when we stand on the sum-
mit of the Holy Mount the planes of Spirit shall lie
before our opened vision.
Thk Monad in Evoi^ution.
^ Perhaps a slightly more definite conception of
Atma-Buddhi may be obtained by the student, if he
c^onsiders its work in Evolution as the Monad. Now
Atma-Buddhi is identical with the Universal Over-
soul, "itself an aspect of the Unknown Root," the
One Existence. When manifestation begins the
Monad is ** thrown downwards into matter," to propel
towards and force evolution (see Secret Doctrine, Vol.
II., p. 109); it is the mainspring, so to speak, of all
evolution, the impelling force at the root of all
things. All the principles we have been studying
are mere ** variously differentiated aspects" of Atma,
the One Reality manifesting in our universe; it is in
every atom, **the root of every atom individually and
of every form collectively," and all the principles
are fundamentally Atma on different planes. The
stages of its evolution are very clearly laid down in
Five Years of Theosophy, pp. 273 et seq. There we are
shown how it passes through the stages termed
elemental, ** nascent centres of forces," and reaches
the mineral stage; from this it passes up through
^Ms<
63
vegetable, animal, to man, vivifying every atom, the
atom being as it were its body of manifeHtation, its
outer shell, (lensified for work on the lower planes.
As we are taught in the Secret Doctrine: "The well-
known Kabbalistic aphorism runs: 'A stone becomes
a plant; a plant, abeast; the beast, a man; a man, a
spirit; and the spirit, a god.' The '.spark' animates
all the kingdoms in turu before it enters into and in-
forms divine man, between whom and his predeces-
sor, animal man, there is all the dififereuce in the
world. . . . The Monad . . . is, first of all,
shot down by the law of evolution into the lowest
form of matter — the mineral. After a sevenfold
gj'ration encased in the stone (or that which will
become mineral and stone in the Fourth Round) it
creeps out of it, say, as a lichen. Passing thence
through all the fonns of vegetable matter into what
is termed animal matter, it has now reached the
point in which it has become the germ, so to speak,
of the animal, that will become the physical man"
(Vol. I., pp. 246, 247).,
It IS the Monad, Atma-Biiddhi, that thus vivifies
every part and kingdom of Nature, making all in-
stinct with life and consciousness, one throbbing
whole. "Occultism does not accept anything in-
organic in the Kosnios. The expression employed
by Science, 'inorganic substance,' means simply that
the latent life shimbering in the molecules of so-
called ' inert matter,' is incognisable. All is Life and
every atom of even mineral dust is a Life, though
beyond our comprehension and perception, because
it is outside the range of the laws known to those
who reject Occultism" (^Secret Doctrine, Vol. I., p. 248).
id again: "Everything in the universe, throughout
64
all its kingdoms, is conscious, i.e,, endowed with a
consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane
of perception. We men must remember that because
we do not perceive any signs of consciousness, say in
stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness
exists there. There is no such thing as either *dead*
or * blind' matter, as there is no * blind' or * uncon-
scious' law" (p. 274).
How many of the great poets, with the sublime
intuition of genius, have sensed this great truth ! To
them all Nature pulses with life; they see life and
love everywhere, in suns and planets as in the grains
of dust, in rustling leaves and opening blossoms, in
dancing gnats and gliding snakes. Each form mani-
fests as much of the One Life as it is capable of
expressing, and what is man that he should despise
the more limited manifestations, when he compares
himself as Life- expression, not with the forms below
him, but with the possibilities of expression that
soar above him in infinite heights of being, that he
can estimate still less than the stone can estimate
him.
The student will readily see that we must regard
this Force at the centr^ of Evolution as essentially
one. There is but one Atma-Buddhi in the universe,
the universal Soul, everywhere present, immanent in
all, the One Supreme Energy whereof all varying
energies or forces are only diifering forms. As the
sunbeam is light or heat or electri^^ity according to
its conditioning environment, so is Atmt all-energy,
diiferentiating on different planes. **As an abstrac-
tion, we call it the Onk LifK; as an objective and
evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of
manifestation, which begins at the upper rung witli
65 n
the one unknowable Causality, and ends as Omni-
present Mind and Life in every atom of matter"
{Secret Doclrine, Vol. I., p. 139).
Its evolutionary course is very plainly outlined in
tlie Secret Doctrine, and as students are verj' often
puzzled over this unity of the Monad I subjoin the
statement. The subject is difficult, but it could not,
I think, be more clearly put than it is in these
sentences :
"Now the Monadic or Cosmic Essence (if such a
term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and
animal, though the same throughout the series of
cycles from the lowest elemental up to the Deva
kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It
would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a
separate Entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path
through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable
series of transformations flowering into a human
being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates
back to the Monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead
of saying a ' Mineral Monad,' the more correct phrase-
ology in physical science, which differentiates every
atom, would of course have been to call it 'the Monad
manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the
Mineral Kingdom.' The atom, as represented in the
ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of
something, animated by a psychic something, destined
after seons to blossom as a man. But it is a concrete
manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself
has not yet become individualised; a sequential
manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean
(of matter) does not divide into its potential and
constituent drops until the .sweep of the life-impulse
reaches the stage of man-birth. The tendency towards
66
Segregation into individual Monads is gradual, and in
the higher animals comes almost to the point. The
Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole
Kosmos in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists,
while accepting this thought for convenience sake,
distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of
the concrete from the abstract by terms of which the
* mineral, vegetable, animal, etc.. Monad* are examples.
The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual
evolution is passing through 'that arc of its circuit.
The * Monadic Essence' begins to imperfectly diifer-
entiate towards individual consciousness in the
vegetable kingdom. As the Monads are unconi-
pounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is
the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their
degrees of differentiation, which properly constitutes
the Monad — not the atomic aggregation, which is only
the vehicle and the substance through which thrill
the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence"
(Vol. I., pp. 178, 179).
The student who reads and weighs this passage
will, at the cost of a little present trouble, save him-
self from much confusion in days to come. Let him
first realise clearly that the Monad — **the spiritual
essence " to which alone in strict accuracy the term
Monad shqiild be applied — is one all the universe
over, that Atma-Budcihi is not his, nor mine, nor the
property of anybody in particular, brt the spiritual
essence energising in all. So is electricity one all the
world over; though it maybe active in his machine
or in mine, neither he nor I can call it distinctively
our ele^ctricity. But — and here arises the confusion —
when Atma-Buddhi energises in man, in whom Manas
h active as an individualising force, it is often spoken
I
y
I
•.of as though the
T Monad, and thei
fiassage. This loose way of using the word will not
ead to error if the student will remember that the
individualizing process is nol on the spiritual plane,
but that AtniEi-Buddhi as sefn through Afatias seems
to share in the individuality of the latter. So if you
hold pieces of variously coloured glass in your hand
you may see through them a red sun, a blue sun, a
yellow sun, and so on. None the less is there only
the one sun shining down upon you, altered by the
media through which you look at it. So we often
meet the phrase "human Monads;" it should be
"the Monad manifesting in the human kingdom;"
but this somewhat pedantic accuracy would be likely
only to puzsle a large number of people, and the
looser popular phrase will not mislead when the
principle of llie unity on the spiritual plane is
grasped, any more than we mislead by speaking of
the rising of the sun. "The Spiritual Monad is One,
Universal, Boundless, and Inipartite, whose rays,
nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance call the
"Individual Monads' of men" {Secrel Docirine. Vol. I.,
I. 177).
Very beautifully and poetically is this unity in
diversity put in one of the Occult Catechisms in which
the Guru questions the ChelH:
"Lift thy head, O Lauoo; dost thou see one or
countless lights above thee, burning in the dark mid-
night sky?"
■'I sense one Flame, O Gurudeva; I see countless
lindetached sparks burning in it."
"Thou sayest well. And now look around and
into thyself. That light which burns inside thee.
68
dost thou feel it different in anywise from the light
that shines in thy brother-men?"
"It is in no way different, though the prisoner is
held in bondage by Karma, and though its outer
garments delude the ignorant into saying, 'thy soul'
and 'my soul'."
There ought not to be any serious difficulty now in
grasping the stages of human evolution; the Monad,
which has been working its way as we have seen,
reaches the point at which the human form can be
built up on earth; an astral body and its physical
counterpart are then developed, Praua specialised
from the great ocean of Life, and Kama evolved, all
these principles, the Lower Quaternary, being brooded
over by the Monad, energised by it, impelled by it,
forced onward by it towards continually increasing
perfection of form and capacity for manifesting the
higher energies in Nature. This was animal, or
physical man, evolved through two-and-a-half Races.
But the Monad and the Lower Quatemar\' could not
come into sufficiently close relation with each other;
a link was yet a-wanting. "The Double Dragon [the
Monad] has no hold upon the mere form. It is like
the breeze where there is no tree or branch to receive
and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where
there is no agent of transmission, and the form knows
it not" {Secrel Doctrine, Vol. II.. p. 57}. . Then, at
the middle point just reached, in the middle, that
is, of the Third Race, the Manasa-putra stepped
in (see anle, p. 26), the Immortal Thinkers, to in-
habit the dwellings thus prepared for them, and
to fonn the bridge between animal man and the
spirit, beti\-een the evolved Quaternary and the
b/podiijg- AtmS-Buddhi, to begin the long cycle of
i
Reincarnation which is to issue in the Perfect Man.
The "Monadic inflow" or the evolution of the
Monad from the animal into the human kingdom,
continued through the Third Race on to the middle
of the Fourth, the human population thus continually
receiving fresh recruits, into each of which entered
one of the MSnasa-putra, this primary- incarnation
thus continuing through the second half of the Third
Race and the first half of the Fourth. After this, the
"central turuiug point" of this cycle of evolution,
"no more Monads can enter the human kingdom.
The door is closed for this cycle" {Secrel Doctrine,
Vol. I., p. 182). Since then reincarnation has been
the method of evolution, this individual reiucarna-
yon of the Immortal Thinker in conjunction with
j^tma-Buddhi replacing the collective indwelling of
AtmS-Buddhi in lower forms of matter.
According to Theosophical teachings, Humanity
has now reached the Fifth Race, and we are in the
fifth sub-race thereof, mankind on this globe in the
present stage having before it the completion of the
Fifth Race, and the rise, maturity and decay of the
Sixth and Seventh Races. But during all the ages
necessary for this evolution there is no increase in
the total number of reincaniating Egos; only a
small proportion of these are reincarnated at any
Special time on our globe, so that the population may
ebb and flow within very wide limits, and it will have
been noticed that there »s a rush of births after a
local depopulation has been caused by exceptional
mortality. There is room and to spare for all such
fluctuations, having in view the difference between
the total number of reincarnating Egos and the
number actually incarnated at a given period.
70
Links of Proof for an Untrainkd Enquirer.
It is natural and right that any thoughtful person,
brought face to face with assertions such as those put
forth in the preceding pages, should demand what
proof is forthcoming to substantiate the propositions
laid down. A reasonable person will not demand
full and complete proof available to all comers, with-
out study and without painstaking. He will admit
that the advanced theories of a science cannot be
demonstrated to one ignorant of its first principles,
and he will be prepared to find that very much will
have been alleged which can only be proved to those
who have made some progress in their study. An
essay on the higher mathematics, on the correlation
of forces, on the atomic theory, on the molecular
constitution of chemical compounds, would contain
many statements the proofs of which would only be
available for those who had devoted time and thought
to the study of the elements of the science concerned ;
and so, an unprejudiced person, confronted with the
Theosophical view of the constitution of man, would
readily admit that he could not expect complete
demonstration until he had mastered the elements of
Theosophical science.
None the less are there general proofs available in
every science which suffice to justify its existence and
to encourage study of its more recondite truths; and
in Theosophy it is possible to indicate lines of proof
which can be followed by the untrained enquirer, and
which justify him in devoting time and pains to a
study which gives promise of a wider and deeper
knowledge of himself and of external nature than is
otherwise attainable.
w
i
It is well to say at the outset that there is no proof
[available to the average enquirer of the existence of
;he three higher planes of which we have spoken.
""he realms of the Spirit and of the Higher Mind are
losed to all save those who have evolved the faculties
_ .ecessary for their investigation. Those who have
evolved these faculties need no proof of the existence
of those realms; to those who have not, no proof of
their existence can be given. That there is something
above the Kama-Manasic plane may indeed be proven
by the flashes of genius, the lofty intuitions, that
from time to time lighten the darkness of our lower
world; but what that something is, only those can
say whose inner eyes have been opened, who see
where the race as a whole is still blind. But the
lower planes are susceptible of proof, and fresh proofs
are accumulating day by day. The Masters of
Wisdom are using the investigators and thinkers of
the Western world to make "discoveries" which tend
to substantiate the outposts of the Theosophical posi-
tion, and the lines which they are following are
exactly those which are needed for the finding of
natural laws which will justify the assertions of Theo-
sophists with regard to the eleinentar>' "powers"
and "phenomena" to which such exaggerated im-
portance has been given. If it is found that we have
undeniable facts which establish the existence of
planes other than the physical on which conscious-
ness can work; which establish the existence of
senses and powers of perception other than those
with which we are familiar in daily life; which estab-
lish the existence of powers of communication be-
tween intelligences without the use of mechanical
apparatus, surely, under these circumstances, the
I
Theosophist may claim that Tie has made out a prima
facie case for further investigation of his doctrines.
Let us, then, confine ourselves to the four lower
planes of which we have spoken in the preceding
pages, the four lower Principles in man which are
correlated with these planes. Of these four we may
dismiss one, that of Prana, as none will challenge the
fact of the existence of the energy we call "life"; the
need of isolating it for purposes of study may be
challenged, and m very truth the plane of PrSna, or
the Principle of Prana, runs through all other planes,
all other Principles, interpenetrating all and hinding
all in one. There remain for our study the physical
plane, in man that of the Sthula Sharira, the astral
plane, the KSma-M^nasic plane. Can we substan-
tiate these by proofs which will be accepted by those
who are not yet Theosophists? I think we can.
First, as regards the physical plane. We need
here to notice how the senses of man are correlated
with the physical universe outside him, and how his
knowledge of that universe is bounded by the power
of his organs of sense to vibrate in response to vibra-
tions set up outside him. He can hear when the air
is thrown into vibrations into which the drum of his
ear can also be thrown ; if the vibration be so slow
that the drum cannot vibrate in answer, the person
does not hear any sound; if the vibration be so rapid
that the drum cannot vibrate in answer, the person
does not hear any sound. So true is this, that the
limit of hearing in different persons varies with this
power of vibration of the drums of their respective
ears; one person is plunged in silence, while another
is deafened with the keen shrilling that is throwing
into tumult the air around both. The same principle;
73
' holds good of sight; we see so long as the light
I waves are of a length to which our organs of sight
[ can respond; below and beyond this length we are in
1 darkness, let the ether vibrate as it may. The ant
I can see where we are blind, because its eye can re-
[ ceive and respond to elheric vibrations more rapid
I than we can sense.
All this suggests to any thoughtful person the idea
J that if our senses could be evolved to more respon-
I siveness, new avenues of knowledge would be opened
up even on the physical plane, this realised, it is not
difficult to go a step further, and to conceive that
keener and subtler senses might exist which would
open up, as it were, a new universe on a plane other
than the physical.
Now this conception is true, and with the evolution
of the astral senses the astral plane unfolds itself, and
may be studied as really, as scientifically, as the
physical universe can be. These astral senses exist
m all men, but are latent in most, and generally need
to be artificially forced, if they are to be used in the
present stage of evolution. In a few persons they
are normally present and become active without any
artificial impnlse. In very many persons they can be
artificially awakened and developed. The condition,
, in all cases, of the activity of the astral senses is the
■ passivity of the physical, and the more complete the
I passivity on the physical plane the greater the possi-
I oility of activity on the astral,
1 It is noteworthy that Western psychologists have
I found it necessary to investigate what is termed the
"dream -consciousness," in order to understand the
workings of consciousness as a whole. It is im-
possible to ignore the strange phenomena which
characterise the workings of consciousness when
it is removed from the limitations of the physical
plane, and some of the most able and advanced of
our psychologists do not think these workings to be
in any way unworthy of the most careful and scien-
tific investigation. All such workings are, in Theo-
sophical language, on the astral plane, and the student
who seeks for proof that there is an astral plane, may
here find enough and to spare. He will speedily dis-
cover that the laws under which consciousness works
on the physical plane have no existence on the astral.
E.g., the laws of Space and Time which are here the
very conditions of thought, do not exist for conscious-
ness when its activity is transferred to the astral
world. Mozart hears a whole symphony as a single
impression, "as in a fine and strong dream" (Philo-
sophy of Mysticism, Du Pre!, Vol. I., p. io6), but has
to work it out in succes.sive details when he brings it
back with him to the physical plane. The "dream"
of a moment contains a mass of events that would
take years to pass in succession in our world of space
and time. The drowning man sees his life-history in a
few seconds. But it is needless to multiply instances.
The astral plane may be reached in sleep or in
trance, natural or induced, i.e., in any case in which
the body is reduced to a condition of lethargy. It is
in trance that it can best be studied, and here our
enquirer will soon find proof that consciousness can
work apart from the physical organism, unfettered by
the laws that bind it while it works on the physical
plane. Clairvoyance and clairaudience are among
the most interesting of the phenomena that here lie
open for investigation.
It is not necessary here to give a large number of
i
cases of clairvoyance, for I am supposing that the
enquirer intends to study for himself But I may
mention the case of Jane Rider, observed by Dr.
Belden, her medical attendant, a girl who could read
and write with her eyes carefully covered with wads
of cotton wool, coming down to the middle of the
cheek (/sis Revelala, Vol, I., p. 37); of a clairvoyant
observed by Schelling, who announced the death of
a relative at a distance of 150 leagues, and stated that
the letter containing the news of the death was on its
way {Ibid., Vol. II., pp. 89-92); of Madame Ivagandre,
who diagnosed the internal state of her mother, giving
a description that was proved to be correct by the
post-mortem examination {Somnolism atid Psychism,
Dr. Haddock, pp. 54-56); of Emma, Dr. Haddock's
Bomnambule, who constantly diagnosed diseases for
him i^Ibid., chap. 7). Speaking generally, the clair-
voyant can see and describe events which are taking
place at a distance, or under circumstances that render
physical sight impossible. How is this done? The
facts are beyond dispute. They require explanation.
We say that consciousness can work through senses
other than the physical, senses unfettered by the limi-
tations of space which exist for our bodily senses, and
cannot by them be transcended. Those who deny the
possibility of such working on what we call the astral
plane should at least endeavour to present a hypothe-
sis more reasonable than ours. "Facts are stubborn
things," and we have here a mass of facts, proving
the existence of conscious activity on a superphysical
plane, of sight without eyes, hearing without ears,
obtaining knowledge without physical apparatus. In
default of any other explanation, the Theosophical
hypothesis holds the field.
76
There is another class of facts: that of astral ap-
pearances, whether of living or dead persons, wraiths,
apparitions, doubles, ghosts, etc., etc. Of course the
know-everything person of the end of the nineteenth
century will sniff with lofty disdain at the mention of
such silly superstitions. But sniffs do not abolij-h
facts, and it is a question of evidence. The weight
of evidence is enormously on the side of such appear-
ances, and in all ages of the world human testimony
has borne witness to their reality. The enquirer
whose demand for proof I have in view may well set
to work to gather first-hand evidence on this head.
Of course, if he is afraid of being laughed at, he had
better leave the matter alone, but if he is robust
enough to face the ridicule of the superior person, he
will be amazed at the evidence he will collect from
persons who have themselves come into contact with
astral forms. "Illusions! hallucinations!" the su-
perior person will say. But calling names settles
nothing. Illusions to which the vast majority of the
human race bear witness are at least worthy of study,
if human testimony is to be taken as of any worth.
There must be something which gives rise to this
unanimity of testimony in all ages of the world, testi-
mony which is found to-day among civilized people,
amid railways and electric lights, as among "bar-
barous races."
The testimony of millions of Spiritualists to the
reality of astral forms cannot be left out of considera-
tion. When all cases of fraud and imposture are
discounted there remain phenomena that cannot be
dismissed as fraudulent, and that can be examined
by any persons who care to give time and trouble to
the investigation. There is no necessity to employ a
77
professional medium; a few friends, well-known to
each other, can carry on their search together; and it
is not too much to say that any half-dozen persons,
with a little patience and perseverance, may convince
themselves of the existence of forces and of intelli-
gences other than those of the physical plane. There
is danger in this research to any emotional, nervous,
and easily influenced natures, and it is well not to
carry the investigations too far, for the reasons given
on previous pages. But there is no readier way of
breaking down the unbelief in the existence of any-
thing outside the physical plane than trying a few
experiments, and it is worth while to run some risk in
order to effect this breaking down.
These are but hints as to lines that the enquirer
may follow, so as to convince himself that there is a
state of consciousness such as we label "astral."
When he has collected evidence enough to make
such a state probable to him, it will be lime for him
to be put in the way of serious study. For real in-
vestigation of the astral plane the student must de-
velop in himself the necessary senses, and to make
his knowledge available while he is in the body he
must learn to transfer his consciousness to the astral
plane without losing grip of the physical organism,
so that he may impress on 'the physical brain the
knowledge acquired during his astral voyagings. But
for this he will need to be not a mere enquirer but a
student, and lie will require the aid and guidance of a
teacher. As to the finding of that teacher, "when
the pupil is ready the teacher is always there."
The proofs of the existence of the Kama-Manasic
plane are, at the present time, most easily found in
the study of mesmeric and hypnotic phei
ifti
78
And here, ere passing to these, I am bound to put in
a word of warning. The use of mesmerism and
hypnotism is surrounded with danger. The pub-
licity which attends on all scientific discoveries in
the West has scattered broadcast knowledge which
places within the reach of the criminally -disposed
Eowers of the most terrible character, and which may
e used for the most damnable purposes. No good
man or woman will use these powers, if he finds that
he possesses them, save when he utilizes them purely
for human service, without personal end in view, and
when he is very sure that he is not by their means
usurping control over the will and the actions of
another human being. Unhappily the use of these
forces is as open to the bad as to the good, and they
may be, and are being, used to most nefarious ends.
In view of these new dangers menacing individuals
and society, each will do well to strengthen the habits
of self-control and of concentration of thought and
will, so as to encourage the positive mental attitude
as opposed to the negative, and thus to oppose a sus-
tained resistance to all influences coming from with-
out. Our loose habits of thought, our lack of distinct
and conscious purpose, lay us open to the attacks of
the evil-minded hypnotiser, and that this is a real, not
a fancied, danger has been already proved by cases
that have brought the victims within the grasp of the
criminal law. It may be hoped that ere long such
hypnotic malpractices may be brought within the
criminal code.
While thus in the attitude of caution and of self-
defence, we may yet wisely study the experiments
made public to the world, in our search for prelimi-
nary proofs of the existence of the Kama-Minasic
79
plane. For here Western science is on the very
verge of discovering some of those "powers" of
which Theosophists have said so much, and we have
the right to use in justification of our teachings all
the facts mth which that science may supply us.
Now. one of the most important classes of these
facts is that of thoughts rendered visible as forms.
A hypnotised person, after being awakened from
trance and being apparently in normal possession of
his senses, can be made to see any form conceived by
the hypnotiser. No word need be spoken, no touch
given; it suffices that the h>-pnotiser should clearly
image to himself some idea, and that idea becomes a
visible and tangible object to the person under his
control. This experiment may be tried in various
ways; while the patient is in trance, "suggestion"
may be used; that is, the operator may tell him
that a bird is on his knee, and on awaking from
the trance he will see the bird and will stroke it
(A/iidcs Cliniqiies sur la Grande Hysteric, Richer,
E. 645); or that he has a lampshade between his
ands, and on awaking he will press his hands
against it, feeling resistance in the empty air (Animal
A/agneiism, translated from Binet and Fere, p, 213);
scores of these experiments may be read in Richer or
in Binet and Fere. Similar results may be effected
without "suggestion," by pure concentration of the
thought; I have seen a patient thus made to remove
a ring from a person's finger, without word spoken or
touch passing between hypnotiser and hypnotised.
The literature of mesmerism and hypnotism in
English, French, and German is now very extensive,
and it is open to every one. There may be sought
the evidence of this creation of forms by thought and
will, forms which, on Ihe Kama-Manasic plane, are
real and objective. Mesmerism and hypnotism set
the intelligence free on this plane, and it works
thereon without the hindrances normally imposed by
the physical apparatus; it can see and hear on that
plane, and sees thoughts as things. Here, again, for
real study, it is necessarj' to learn how thus to trans-
fer the consciousness while retaining hold of the
physical organism; but for preliminary enquiry it
suffices to study others whose consciousness is arti-
hcially liberated without their own volition. This
reality of thought -images on a super- physical plane
is a fact of the very highest importance, especi^Iy in
its bearing on Reincarnation ; but it is enough here
to point to it as one of the facts which go to show
the/Wmdy&c/V probability of the existence of such a
plane.
Another class of facts deserving study is that which
includes the phenomena of thought-transference.
The "Transactions of the Psychical Research So-
ciety" contain a large number of interesting escperi-
ments on this subject, and the possibility of^ the
transference of thought from brain to brain without
the use of words, or of any means of ordinary physi-
cal communication, is on the verge of general accept-
ance. Any two persons, gifted with patience, may
convince themselves of this possibility, if they care
to devote to the effort sufficient time and persever-
ance. Let tliem agree to give, say, ten minutes daily
to their experiment, and, fixing on the time, let each
shut himself up alone, secure from interruption of
any kind. Let one be the thought- projector, the
other the thought- receiver, and if one happens to be
naturally positive and the other naturally receptive.
8i
so much the better. Let the thought-projector con-
centrate himself on a definite thought and will to
impress it on his friend; no other idea than the one
must enter his mind; his thought must be concen-
trated on the one thing, "one-pointed" in the graphic
language of Patanjali. The thought-receiver, on the
other hand, must render his mind a blank, and must
merely note the thoughts that drift into it. These he'
should put down as they appear, his only care being
to remain passive, to reject nothing, to encourage
nothing. The thought-projector, on his side, should
keep a record of the ideas he tries to send, and at the
end of six months the two records should be com-
pared. Unless the persons are abnormally deficient
in thought and will, some power of communication
will by that time have been established between them ;
and if they are at all psychic they will probably also
have developed the power of seeing each other in the
astral light.
It may be objected that such an experiment would
be wearisome and nionotonus. Granted. All first-
hand investigations into natural laws and forces are
wearisome and monotonous. That is why nearly
everyone prefers secondhand to firsthand knowledge;
the "sublime patience of the investigator" is one of
the rarest of gifts. Darwin would perform an appa-
rently trivial experiment hundreds of times to sub-
stantiate one small fact ; the supersensuous domains
certainly do not need for their conquest less patience
and less effort than the sensuous. Impatience never
yet accomplished anything in the questioning of
nature, and the would-be student must, at the very
_ outset, show the tireless perseverance which can
Krish but cannot relinquish its hold.
82
Finally, let me advise the enquirer to keep his eyes
open for new discoveries, especially in the sciences of
electricity, physics, and chemistry. Let him read
Professor Lodge's address to the British Association
at Cardiff last autumn, and Professor Crookes' ad-
dress to the Society of Electrical Engineers in London
last November. He will Ihere find pregnant hints of
the lines along which Western Science is preparing
to advance, and he will perchance begin to feel that
there may be something in H. P. Blavatsky's state-
ment, that the Masters of Wisdom are preparing to
give proofs that will substantiate the Secret Doctrine.
I
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84
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Letters that have helped me, JaspGR Niemand
Kchoes from tho Orient. Wii.i,iam Q. Judge
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- Xhe Bhag.ivad Glta. (.\inerican Edition)
■nH._ '--'t of Asia. Sm Edwin Arnold
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LI Memory of Helena Pctroviia Blavatsky, Iv.
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f Theosophical Teacliin'Ks. V/M. Q. J
^..irScience. W. Kingsi^nd
Theosophy and its Evidences. Annie ilESANT
Why I Became st Theosophist. Annie Besant
In Defence of Theosophy. Annie Besant
The Sphinx of Theosophy. Annie Besant
From 187s to iSgl. {A Fragment of Autobiography)
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A H. T. Patterson
Short Glossary of Theosophical Terms. Annie Besant
« Herbert Burrows-
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Lucifer^ monthly, founded by H. P. Blavatsky and edited by
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