Theosophical University Press Online Edition
The student of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Esoteric Tradition, very soon learns not to take at their literal or face value the statements about 'heavens' and 'hells' which he will find in the various great literatures of the world, as well as in the folk-lore or mythological stories of ancient peoples -- civilized, barbarian, or savage. It may perhaps be alleged in a general way that all such statements or allusions, wherever found, have some basis in natural fact, but in virtually all cases time and human imagination have wrought their work of degeneration and consequent misunderstanding upon the original verities or truths, such as they were, which were first delivered to the various peoples of earth by the great Sages of the Past.
Some of the ideas connected with the 'heavens' and the 'hells' of the different peoples of the earth, are often rather quaint. The Guaycurus, who are Indians of northern South America, placed their heaven in the moon; and it was to the moon that their great heroes and sages went for a time after physical death, until they again returned to earth. The Saliva Indians, also of northern South America, thought that heaven was a place where there would be no mosquitos at all!
Other more civilized peoples likewise have had curious ideas of their own. One or more have placed hell in the sun, for instance, which was a rather favorite locality for 'hell' as outlined in the imagination of some English writers of not so long ago -- doubtless due to the then new astronomical ideas about the sun's being a sphere in fierce combustion. Others placed their 'hell' in the moon, like the untutored South American savage. It happened also that 'heaven' in the mind of certain people was located in the sun; commonly, however, it was located in some unknown portion of the blue empyrean.
Moreover, all the 'hells' of legend and story are not places or localities of suffering or pain or torment; some of them are even described as places of pleasure or relative beauty, such as our earth is to us. 'Hell' -- or the 'hells' -- has sometimes been placed at the center of our earth. This was a common teaching in mediaeval European times; and it was also the literary theme of Dante, as outlined in his La Divina Commedia. Dante took this conception over from a very much misunderstood old Greek and also Latin teaching; for the Romans in former ages had borrowed very much from the Greeks in religious and philosophic matters, as well as in jurisprudence and laws. Dante, writing of the geographical character, so to say, of his Inferno, divides it into nine stages, or rather nine degrees, of increasingly terrible torment. These 'Circles' of 'hell' he locates towards the center of the earth or about it. Above his Inferno he describes seven stages of his Purgatory which, with the Ascent out of Purgatory and the Terrestrial Paradise which follows the highest of the purgatorial regions so called, make nine more stages or intermediate spheres, or superior hells if you like. Then still more ethereal and still farther removed from his infernal regions, come the nine spheres or worlds of 'heaven'. These are capped, or topped, by the Empyrean, where dwell God and his ministrant angels with the numerous company of the Blest. This hierarchical system comprising the hells, the regions of Purgatory, and the regions of Heaven, is again based upon old but much misunderstood Greek teachings coming from the Neo-Platonic School into Christian theological speculation, mainly through the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.
According to the Iliad of Homer, which represented in a mystical sense what we may call the Bible of the Greeks, and to which they referred for the true meaning of their mythological teachings -- much as Christians used to refer to the New Testament and to the Old Testament for the real significance of Christian theological doctrines -- we find four basic stages of the kosmic hierarchy: Olympus or Heaven; Earth; Hades, or the Underworld, often supposed to be at the center of the Earth; and gloomy Tartarus, the lowest of all. (254)
Tartarus is supposed to have been the region, according to this mythology, whither the Titans who had rebelled against Zeus, Father of Gods and Men, were cast and who were there imprisoned, bound in chains, until a future time came for their loosening and freedom. Tartarus evidently in this mythology represents the Elemental Worlds, where the titanic forces of unfolded Nature are held in the rigid bonds of what it is popular in the West to call 'law.' Loosened, these terrible natural forces wreak devastation on earth; and thus indeed did the Greek mythographers understand the secret meaning of this part of their mythology, and therefore they referred to the imprisoned Titans as producing by their movements in Tartarus the earthquakes and the tidal waves and other phenomena that Nature shows, when the terrible forces of Nature seem temporarily to be unloosened and unchained.
It is to the 'heaven-worlds' or to the 'hell-worlds' respectively that refer so many passages in the ancient literatures regarding the 'paths' to the 'gods' or to the 'demons,' for naturally the literatures imbodying the teachings or tenets of these old religions or philosophies use the terms or phrases which were popular when such literatures were composed; for even their great authors had to take account of the lack of spiritual capacity and the intellectual prejudices of the peoples among whom they came: in other words, they had to speak a familiar tongue in order to be understood.
Thus in the Maabharata, there is the following expression:
Two paths are known: one leads to the gods, and one leads to the fathers. (255)
And also in the same work, there occurs the following:
The sun is said to be the gate of the paths which lead to the gods; and the moon is said to be the gate of the paths which lead to the fathers. (256)
In these two citations, the expressions 'gods' and 'fathers' are technical terms, and belong to the religion of ancient Hindusthan. 'Fathers' signifies what the Christian has much less clearly called 'departed spirits,' while 'gods' refers to the same thing that the ancient Greeks and Romans meant when they spoke of the divinities, many of whom were 'men made perfect' -- in other words, divine beings who have long since passed through the human stage and now have gained divinity, that is to say, become at one with their own inner god.
The higher worlds or the 'heaven-worlds' are thus the regions of the gods; while the lower or material worlds are the domains or regions of the 'demons' so called -- in other words, of entities whose karman or destiny has led them into spheres and planes more grossly material than even our Earth is, and in the manner which has been set forth in preceding pages of the present work.
The Ancient Mysteries, such as those of Greece, of course contained teachings identical with what has been outlined above. The whole attempt in the ancient initiatory rites and ceremonies of archaic Greece was the bringing of the human consciousness into a recognition of its inseparable oneness with Universal Nature, and of man's essential kinship with the gods.
"The purpose and objective of all initiation," said Sallust, the Neo-Platonic philosopher, "is to bring man into conscious realization of his inseparable unity with the order of the Universe and with the gods" (257) and Proclus, another famous Neo-Platonic philosopher of somewhat late date, says practically the same thing. He writes in substance:
Who does not know that the Mysteries, and all initiations, have for their sole object the withdrawing of our souls from material and mortal life, in order to unite us with the gods, and to dissipate the darkness in the soul by spreading the divine light of Truth therein? (258)
These ancient Greek teachings and initiatory methods were identical in substance with the doctrines taught and the systems practised in the Far East -- necessarily so because all were originally derived from the Wisdom-Religion of far-past antiquity. The phraseology of course differed in different countries, but the root-thoughts were universally the same. The pathway to the 'gods' on the one hand, or the pathway to the 'fathers' on the other hand, of which the Hindu speaks, are but a manner of phrasing the activities of the evolving and revolving human souls, throwing them on the one hand into the pathway leading to the gods or the superior spheres, and, on the other hand, into the pathway leading to the inferior realms. These pathways are the same as the 'Circulations of the Universe,' which are dealt with in other parts of the present work.
One is strongly reminded at the present point of thought of a beautiful passage left to us by the famous Neo-Platonist philosopher, Plotinus, whom his contemporaries called Theiotatos, meaning 'divinest.' The substance and the ideas, if not the words themselves, given in the subjoined extract, are the great Neo-Platonist's own:
There are vast and greatly diversified regions open to the departing soul. The law of the Divinity is inescapable, and no one can possibly ever evade the pain and anguish brought about by the doing of evil deeds. . . . The stained soul is swept forwards towards its doom, as it were unconsciously to itself, driven always by the inherent impulses of past ill doing, and so it continues until the soul which thus is worn and harried, finds its fit place and reaches the destiny which it never knowingly sought, but which it receives through the impetuosity of its own self-will. Nature thus prepares the length and the intensity of the pain, and likewise regulates the ending of the punishments and gives to the soul the ability to rise again from the places of suffering which it may reach; and this is through the divine harmony that permeates the Universal Plan. Souls which are attracted to body are drawn to body for punishment, while nobler souls which are cleaner and having little if any attraction towards body are by this fact outside of the attractions of the material spheres; and there where the divine essence is, the divine of the divine and truth itself, there such a liberated soul finds itself. (259)
These words are remarkably faithful, at least in the substance of their thought, to the essential and indeed esoteric meaning of the doctrines of the Esoteric Tradition dealing with the same teachings regarding the different Worlds, and Spheres, etc., which are in discussion in the present chapter; and the reader's attention is invited to the many points of thought in this extract from Plotinus on which he should fasten his attention. (260)
It is not necessary to spend more time in mere descriptions of the various 'hells' and 'heavens' as they have been given in the different religious and philosophical systems of the past. Such descriptions may be found under their proper heads in the more comprehensive of the various encyclopaedias. The aim of the present chapter is no mere disquisition, descriptive or otherwise, on the particularities of teaching of the exoteric theories concerning the 'heavens' and 'hells.' The Theosophist does not use these words 'heavens' and 'hells' except perhaps in a purely figurative way, or in the historic literary sense.
The fundamental idea behind or within the subject of the 'heavens' and the 'hells' may be expressed somewhat as follows: The Universe, filled full with entities in all the evolutionary grades of its hierarchical structure, exists on many Cosmic planes: in other words contains vast numbers of Worlds and Spheres, each one filled, de facto, full of life, or, equally accurately, filled full with lives, which the modern scientist, untaught and unguided by the Ancient Wisdom, calls 'energy' or nowadays less often force, or energies or forces.
As it has been so often said before in the present work, there are no absolute frontiers or division-lines between World and World, or Sphere and Sphere; indeed, no 'absolutes' of any kind in Universal Nature; hence no jumping-off places, so to say, or no utter beginnings and utter endings of the interpenetrating and interwoven divisions of the cosmos. Relative and indeed important beginnings and endings of course exist; but they relate to the cosmic divisions mentioned, and hence are relative to the evolving and revolving entities who conceive these points or stages of juncture as 'beginnings' and 'endings'; and hence it is that we are naturally barred, and with all the justification of the Universe behind us, from separating off from the All any such entity as a Globe, a Sphere, a World, a Hierarchy, or what not. (261)
The Universe being thus a composite Organism, formed at the one pole, so to say, of Cosmic Spirit, and at the other pole, so to say, of concreted or crystallized spirit, which we men call matter, and of all the intermediate grades or stages between these twain: the highest of the Planes or Worlds or hierarchies provides the substance of the original archaic thought behind the teachings regarding the 'heavens,' which in the old world-religions and world-philosophies were usually enumerated as seven or nine or ten or even twelve sometimes; and, equivalently, the 'hells,' so called, were those Spheres or Worlds of denser or grosser matter, but which were likewise full of life, and therefore of lives; and therefore equally with the Worlds of spirit were the theaters or scenes for the play and interplay of the forces and substances which compose them. It is these inner and invisible Worlds which Nature in her many-chambered constitution contains, and which in very fact compose the structure of Nature herself, and that are the 'spheres' through which the human entity, and equivalently entities on other planets -- self-conscious beings equivalent to men -- pass postmortem, after death, taking the direction 'up' or 'down,' as we human beings usually say, because following the course of the causal effects set in motion during the last life or imbodiment. We men live here on this our physical globe. Here we pass our physical existence. Then our physical body dies in its proper time. Immediately the best part of man vanishes from this sphere -- yet it is not annihilated; that is not the meaning; but it vanishes from this physical plane, because the instrument or vehicle or body which held it here and enabled it to function on this plane of matter is broken off from the constitution and is finally dissipated into its component chemical elements. It is somewhat as if one broke a telegraphic instrument: no longer can the messages come through from the other end: the receiver is destroyed.
The body then dies, of course; because the body is a highly composite and semi-sentient entity, and is indeed but a vitalized and in one sense mechanically constructed instrument; but the bundle of invisible forces which ensouls it, commonly the 'life' which ensouls a body, has its own marvelous course of destiny, and of necessity therefore follows its own path, and begins its amazing peregrinations through the spheres; and being in its essence pure spirit, this essence is not a composite in the sense that a body is.
At death the physical body is laid aside like an old and worn-out garment -- and reference is not here made to cases of accidental death in adult life, nor to suicide, because, here, although the same general rule prevails in time, the rupturing of the golden cord of vitality brings about an intermediate series of conditions which necessitate treatment by themselves. The vital-astral body likewise, which is a little more ethereal than the physical body, is dropped at death. It decays away or dissolves and thus vanishes in due time, lasting but a trifle longer than does the physical cadaver. But the finest part of the man that was, after the death of the body supervenes, i. e., the splendor of the spiritual part of him, and the grandeur of the intellectual essence which he is: all this bundle of finer forces and substances leaves the physical vehicle at the instant when the 'golden cord of life,' so called, is snapped; it is released; it now re-enters by degrees the spiritual Monad, which is the spiritual core or heart, the spiritual-intellectual essence, of the man-being that was on earth; and in the bosom of the Monad, all this noblest portion of the essential man abides on and in the higher planes of the inner and invisible Cosmos in the peace and unspeakable bliss of the devachanic condition until the time comes anew when Nature shall re-call it forth to a new reappearance on Earth through reincarnation.
But what about that other part of the human constitution, man being, as so often said, a composite entity, compounded of heaven and earth, of spirit and matter: what becomes of that intermediate part which men call the human soul, the part which manifests merely human love, merely human affections, also human hates, human attractions and repulsions, and the ordinary psychical and mental and emotional phenomena of the average human being? What becomes of this?
When death supervenes after the withdrawal of man's finest part, as above outlined, this human intermediate nature falls instantly asleep, so to say, and sleeps a dreamless sleep for a period of shorter or longer duration. Then because the higher part of this intermediate nature or human soul is the radiance reflected upon it from the Monadic Spirit, which has now gone to its own and which is the noblest and best part of the man that was, this radiance in consequence is attracted ever more strongly, as time passes, back to its own source, the spirit which sent it forth; and finally rejoins it.
This radiance of the spirit is what the Theosophist calls the reincarnating ego; and following upon its post-mortem junction with its spirit, it enters upon its devachanic period. Devachan is a word adopted from the Tibetan, and it is the state or condition of indescriptible bliss and recuperative rest and felicitous imagination which this intermediate nature enjoys until the time comes for the next earth-incarnation.
But before this junction with the spirit takes place, which happens because this higher part of the intermediate nature is a radiance of the spirit and not the spirit itself: and because this radiance has elements of mere humanity in it instead of being purely divine or godlike as is its parent the Monadic Spirit, it needs purgation or cleansing of these lower or merely human attributes before it can enter into the unqualified and unadulterate devachanic bliss, wherein no merely human element, involving imperfection, can obviously find entrance.
How is it purged or cleansed? It ascends through the spheres, that is to say through other worlds of the inner and invisible parts of Nature. If the past life on Earth has been a noble and a good one, the spheres to which the excarnate ego is attracted are the highly ethereal ones, and hence are places in which it experiences relative happiness and peace and bliss, and it is in these ethereal realms that it enters into the devachanic condition. But before it can enter the devachanic condition, it necessarily has to pass through the various stages of the Kama-loka, where in each one of the ascending stages or steps, as it rises towards the devachanic condition, it casts aside or is purged of those particular and imperfect human attributes which are appropriate to and correspond to these respective kama-lokic serial degrees in the 'ascent.' Finally, after passing through the various and rising stages of the Kama-loka, which in the case of a good man the excarnate ego quickly does, it merges into the state of consciousness which is the lowest of the series of the devachanic degrees, and finds its proper resting-point, or stage of longest devachanic duration, in the particular devachanic condition or stage to which it is karmically entitled.
Here then is the real meaning of the original thought which gave rise to the later doctrine of the 'heavens' as above described. In each one of these spheres or worlds this better portion of the human soul, the excarnate ego, remains for a time, and then leaves that stage or degree or sphere or world for a still higher one, attraction of greater or less strength being the cause of the greater or less time spent in each such invisible degree or degrees of the different worlds.
Finally, it achieves reunion -- albeit quite unconscious -- with its monadic essence, the Monad or spiritual soul, as has already been stated, and there it abides for centuries until its innate natural proclivities and attractions impel it or draw it towards a descent through the same spheres to a new incarnation on earth.
But if, on the contrary, its life on earth had been lived evilly, if the man's thoughts and emotions, and consequent actions, were so full of selfishness and evil desire that he gave way to them wilfully, and thus lived a gross and densely material life, then, whither do his attractions lead him? The question answers itself. Is the excarnate ego in such circumstances fit for the spheres of spiritual bliss and felicitous consciousness just last depicted? Obviously not.
What then happens? Its attractions of more or less material character begin immediately to pull it or direct it towards spheres less ethereal and of grosser and more material type than those which would have attracted it had its proclivities and instincts and the forces motivating its past life been of a more spiritual type. It enters these lower and more material spheres, one after another, and in them passes a greater or less time, depending upon the force of the attractions which brought it there, until the energies originally set in motion work themselves out. Then, whatever remains after this process of purgation or cleansing becomes fit, like gold cleansed in the fire, to resume its journey towards rejoining its golden sun, its spiritual Self. Here, then, is the original meaning very condensed behind the later-developed doctrines of the so-called 'hells'; for these 'hells,' as the ancient teachings explained them, are simply spheres more or less grossly material, into which the reimbodying ego is drawn by its own innate and as yet unappeased hunger or thirst for them and for the experiences to which they give rise. Equivalently, the 'heavens' are the ethereal and spiritual spheres or worlds, certain ranges of cosmic space invisible to us, towards which the reimbodying entity feels itself attracted by its own innate aspiration towards them.
It is, however, well to insist once again here that these particular spheres or worlds to which the reimbodying ego is drawn in the one and in the other case are most emphatically not 'heavens' or 'hells' in themselves and as these words have been commonly misunderstood, but they are, as said before, integral portions of the hierarchical structure of the Universe, which, because of their spiritual and ethereal character on the one hand, and of their material or grossly material character on the other hand, by Nature's own structure, provide the place and the scenery and environment towards which the reimbodying although excarnate ego (262) is drawn because of its preponderance or bias to the one or to the other type of existence.
Our Earth, technically speaking, was always considered in ancient times to be one of the 'hells' because it is a globe of more or less dense and coarse matter. Indeed, when a human being is awakened to see things as they are, and the compassionate heart perceives and feels all the various workings of human selfishness and passion, and notices the misery, degradation, and suffering, mental as well as physical, that are so observable on every side, as well as the dreadful diseases, both physical and mental, and the sanguinary wars in which many millions are maimed, tortured, and die, and the earthquakes, tidal waves, cyclones and hurricanes, which devastate and lay waste man's noblest works and the untiring labor of his ever-busy hands -- then indeed do his heart and mind stand aghast at individual as well as general destruction and suffering and loss, and he exclaims: Despite all its natural beauty and consistency in law and evolution, our Earth is in truth all too often an example of a veritable hell!
Yet at the same time our planet Earth is by no means the most material habitat of human conscious beings that the solar system contains; for there are many planets or planetary worlds within our solar system, most of them invisible to us, which are far more dense and coarse and gross than our Earth is.
The foregoing two paragraphs must not be misunderstood to imply that there is no beauty to be seen in our common Mother, the Earth, and that it is to be considered the 'worst of all possible worlds'; this idea would be entirely erroneous. It is neither the worst of all possible worlds nor the best of all possible worlds, but a goodly fair instance of a world of an intermediate character, for in its evolution both good and evil have been pretty fairly mingled in the Craters of Destiny. In fact, it is man himself, with his wilful and imperfect intelligence who makes most of the hellish misery that surrounds him; and it is indeed the teaching of Esotericism that even the physical Earth and its products and fruits would be far finer than they are, and its devastating forces of occasional destruction less terrible than they are, were man so to live in sympathy with the divinity within his own heart that even surrounding Earth-life would feel its influence, and would itself be correspondingly raised and partially harmonized.
With reference to what has been said in foregoing parts of the present pages concerning the structural framework of the Universe, and by analogy any subordinate part thereof, as being builded and composed of different lokas and talas, these two lines constantly interacting because for ever interwoven, each loka having its corresponding tala with which it is inseparably and throughout eternity blended: it may be of interest to the inquisitive reader and thoughtful student to show hereunder a series of 'correspondences,' as they are called by mystics, both Esotericists and not, between these inseparably interwoven lokas and talas, and what is called in the quasi-esoteric philosophy of Hindusthan, the hierarchical range of the Tattwas.
Now tattwa is a Sanskrit word, of which various etymologies have at different times been given, all of them more or less accurate, at least mystically speaking; and one of these etymologies is here offered because perhaps the most easily comprehensible. Tattwa is really a compound, then, formed of tat, a pronominal particle signifying 'that,' with the suffix twa, which gives it the value of a substantive or a noun -- thus corresponding to the suffix tas in Latin, as in unitas, 'unity,' veritas, 'verity.' Thus the word can be closely translated as 'thatness,' or it corresponds exactly to the late Latin or mediaeval scholastic quidditas. Hence the actual significance of this term tattwa is the energic-substantial basis of all derivatives from it, in the course of Nature's evolutionary unfoldment, and thus it corresponds with relatively accurate precision to the term Principle or Element.
In the relation which the tattwas bear to the Cosmos or Universe, they are therefore the Cosmical or Universal Principles or Elements out of which the Universe is builded or formed, or which compose it, and therefore are the Cosmic Elements composing the universal Scale of existence -- or rather of existences.
It is thus seen that the tattwas and the corresponding lokas and talas are radically or in essence virtual identities, the three different series being the same substantial cosmical and elemental realities viewed from different aspects; and also it may be said with perfect truth that the lokas and the talas are the respective manifestations of their corresponding tattwas, when the tattwas are considered in an evolved or hierarchical development. The tattwas originate the others.
There are seven cosmical tattwas which repetitively reproduce themselves in all subordinate ranges of the cosmic hierarchies as these latter unfold or evolve during the process of world-building; and these hierarchies considered as structurally arranged worlds or spheres or planes are in fact the inseparably conjoined and interwoven lokas and talas. Hence because there are seven cosmical tattwas or cosmical Principle-Elements, there are likewise the seven corresponding and forever interacting and interwoven hierarchical lokas and talas, each such pair of lokas and talas corresponding to the cosmical tattwa from which they originally sprang and which is the dominant cosmical Principle or Element in them. The three series are now given below numbered to correspond with each other and in the order of their cosmical unfolding or evolution:
1. Adi-tattwa -- proceeding from First Logos
2. Anupapadaka-tattwa " " Second Logos
3. Akasa-tattwa " " Third Logos
4. Vayu-tattwa
5. Taijasa-tattwa
6. Apas-tattwa
7. Prithivi-tattwa
1. Satya-loka --- 1. Atala
2. Tapar-loka -- 2. Vitala
3. Janar-loka --- 3. Sutala
4. Mahar-loka -- 4. Talatala
5. Swar-loka ---- 5. Mahatala
6. Bhuvar-loka -- 6. Rasatala
7. Bhur-loka ----- 7. Patala
One exceedingly important point for the proper understanding of the manner in which these cosmical tattwas unfold, i. e., evolve, and thus produce the hierarchies formed by the corresponding lokas and talas, is that, beginning with the first or Adi-tattwa, the second or Anupapadaka-tattwa emanates or flows forth from it the while retaining, although the second in order, a certain portion of the first tattwa in its own substance and aggregate of forces; from the second tattwa emanates or unfolds or evolves the third tattwa in serial order which contains not only its own swabhava or characteristic forces and substances, but likewise contains its portion of its parent, the second cosmic tattwa and its grandparent cosmic tattwa; then the fourth cosmic tattwa similarly is emanated or unfolded from the third cosmic tattwa, and although it contains as dominants its own swabhavic forces and substances, nevertheless likewise it manifests forth, because it contains, a portion of its parent, of its grandparent, and its great-grandparent; and thus down to the seventh and last. It might likewise be added that once this course of hierarchical emanation or evolution is completed, the Universe thus emanated and evolved or unfolded exists for ages in the plenitude of its incomprehensibly great activities; and when the time of the Cosmic Pralaya, or period of Cosmic Rest, approaches, the whole process which took place in unfolding the Universe, now enters upon the reverse procedure of infolding or involving itself, beginning with the lowest, so that the seventh or lowest is first 'radiated' away into the next higher tattwa which thus gathers the lowest up into itself. The process is then repeated, with the next succeeding higher cosmic tattwa, into which enter the 'seeds' or sleeping 'germs' of the cosmic tattwa already infolded, and thus the entire process of infolding continues until all the lower tattwas, each infolded or involved into the next higher, are drawn up into or withdrawn into the highest or originating cosmic tattwa; and then the Manvantara of the Universe is ended, and the long period of Cosmic Rest ensues until the time of the succeeding Cosmic Manvantara arrives, when everything is emanated or evolved or unfolded anew just as before it took place, but now on a somewhat higher series of Planes of the greater and encompassing Universe.
The above was likewise the teaching of the Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome, and was a faithful re-echo as far as it went -- which was not very far -- of the secret teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Esoteric Tradition. The same teaching is found likewise in certain passages of the Jewish Christian Bible where this cosmic drama of the dissolution of the Universe is referred to. For instance:
And all the hosts of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll. (263)
Or again,
And the heaven departed as a scrowl when it is rolled, together. (264)
There is another teaching of the Ancient Wisdom, very wonderful, very mysterious, which reaches into the most recondite and secret parts of our esoteric philosophy, and which is difficult to understand unless one has first examined the elements or the foundations of the Mystery-Teachings. The doctrine to which reference is here made is that of Nirvana, and possibly there has been no one teaching of the great religious philosophies of the Orient imbodying this doctrine in their systems which has been so wholly misunderstood and therefore so wholly misinterpreted. The Nirvana is not a 'heaven'; it is not a Cosmic Sphere; it is not a Cosmic World; it is not a Cosmic Plane; it is wholly and absolutely a condition, a state, of the consciousness experiencing it; it is the state of consciousness of the Spiritual Soul when all sense of limiting personality, or even of imperfect egoic individuality, has wholly vanished: when it has clean gone, so that naught remains but the unfettered consciousness of the Spiritual Essential Self, which is the indivisible and ineffable essence of the human being -- the divine-spiritual Individuality; it is pure monadic consciousness.
It is, in a manner of expression, an alliance of the godlike nature within man with the evolving Spiritual Soul, so that this Spiritual Soul becomes identified and at-one with its Inner God; its consciousness then becomes cosmic in the, hierarchically speaking, unlimited reaches of that particular Cosmic Hierarchy.
As concerns the problem, so difficult for Western minds, of the identity or non-identity of the individual spirit, say of a man, with the Cosmic Spirit, and of the relation it bears to the Cosmic Spirit when the individual spirit is considered a Monad, it should be carefully noted by the reader that the Esoteric Tradition does teach indeed the identity of all 'souls' with the Oversoul, or of all Monads with the Cosmic Monad; but this identity at the same time does not signify a loss of the individuality of any such subordinate 'soul' or monad. The very name, 'Monad,' signifies a unit, i. e., a unitary individuality, which endures throughout the entire Cosmic Manvantara, or Cosmic World-Period. The beautiful words in which Sir Edwin Arnold in his Light of Asia imbodies the ancient Buddhist teaching, "The Dewdrop slips into the shining Sea," when properly understood, give exactly the correct idea. To the Western mind, it would seem that the dewdrop slipping into the sea suffers an entire extinction of its individuality or individual being, and this is because the Western mind is accustomed to think in terms of mechanics and of material substance. Actually, the 'slipping into the shining sea' of the 'dewdrop,' or Monad, means that it sinks into the Cosmic Vast in order to regain in this fashion its own inmost cosmic reach or sphere of virtually unlimited consciousness, the meanwhile retaining, as it were in the form of a seed for the future, its own monadic individuality. In due and proper time, when it reissues forth again into manifestation, it will do so as a reappearance or renascence of the monadic individuality that it formerly was, plus all the accumulated awakenings of consciousness, called 'experience,' which it had ingathered during its former evolving, i. e., unfolding, peregrinations. (264a)
Plotinus has the following interesting exposition of the same thought, which proves the spiritual power of the great Greek Neo-Platonist's mind and intuition -- faithful echoer as he was, albeit somewhat feebly, of the archaic East. Plotinus is referring to the reunion of the Individual with the Cosmic Divine:
Of matters of earth it will then recollect nothing, for the reason that memory, which signifies a passage of thought from thing to thing, has there sunken into abeyance, and consequently there can be no such limited memory in the Spiritual World. Indeed, there will not even remain a recollection of the individual as individual, i. e., no thought where the individual self is contemplator, for this implies limitation. . . . When the spirit is in the Spiritual World, of necessity it enters into complete oneness for the time being with the Mind of the Divinity, and this by the fact itself of its union therewith, for this union brings about the abolition of all intervals of consciousness which men call the functions and working of memory. The individual spirit is taken into complete harmonic unison with the Divine, and in this union becomes temporarily one with the Divine -- yet not at all to its own annihilation, because the two are essentially one; and yet, because they are two, they remain two. (265)
Lest the words of Plotinus be construed too strictly in their present collocation with other teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, it should be pointed out that while all that Plotinus remarks in the above extract is perfectly true and quite in accordance with the teachings of the Esoteric Tradition, nevertheless Plotinus, with all his remarkable spiritual and intellectual capacity of understanding and grasp of subject, was an Echoer of the Ancient Wisdom, and of necessity spoke to the men of his time in a philosophical language which they could understand. The point is this: when the individual human being attains, in the above words, "complete harmonic unison with the Divine," this does not signify that he transcends entirely outside of the sphere of his own constitution and enters into an exterior consciousness in no wise different from his own highest, except perhaps in the sense of larger and deeper intensity, but the true meaning is that his own 'highest' is already, and has been from eternity, and will be unto eternity, identic in essence with the Divine; the significant reach of which thought is simply that the highest part of man is already nirvanic in state. It is the Dhyani-Buddha in him.
The point is of the utmost importance for it so clearly emphasizes the inseparable unity of man's fundamental or highest consciousness with the Consciousness of the Universe -- or the Divine. On the other hand, the lower portions of man's composite or complex constitution are, obviously enough, 'sunken' into materiality, which is precisely the reason why man can have contact with material worlds and can live in them and experience in and of them and thus learn from them. He is a component and integral part of these material worlds in his lowest parts, as he is of the Divine in his highest parts. His highest parts are grouped under the term 'the inner god,' or the Divine-Spiritual Monad; whereas his lower or most material parts are grouped under the generalizing term 'the personality,' a word taken from the Latin persona signifying a mask through which the Actor -- the real Man -- works and expresses himself. The intermediate portions of man's constitution compose the 'higher human' or Human Monad. Thus the personality means the human mask in which we express ourselves and which is a web of thought and feeling woven by our desires and our appetites and our emotions and our commonplace thoughts. This personality thus builds up around itself a Web of Destiny, as has been described in previous chapters. Hence, when personality is completely surmounted, or in other words, when the fundamental consciousness of the human being rises above this concreted web of illusion, and passes through and transcends the intermediate portion of the human constitution, it reaches the state of pure Spiritual Monadic Consciousness, and this state or condition is the Nirvana. In it all personality has vanished into pure spiritual individuality, in which consciousness becomes relatively universal -- i. e., universal throughout the Cosmic Hierarchy in which the Monad moves and lives and has its being -- and therefore perceives and learns and deals with fundamental causes. This state or condition therefore implies sheer, unadulterate knowledge, ineffable wisdom, undiluted bliss, and hence, unspeakable peace -- states of consciousness of which the ordinary man has no conception, and which therefore, because of the ratiocinative characteristics of his ordinary consciousness, he looks upon as being different kinds of consciousness, instead of being, as they truly are, aspects or facets of his spiritual consciousness which is the 'Gem' or 'Jewel' alluded to in the well-known Tibetan invocation: "Om mani padme hum," signifying in verbal translation, "Verily, the Jewel in the Lotus!", lotus here meaning the human constitution in which the spiritual 'Gem' reposes or lives or is.
In the Nirvana, the Monadic Essence of the human being then virtually becomes allied in unity with the Cosmic or Universal Oversoul of our Cosmos. (266)
Another point of importance: the difference between the bliss and wisdom and peace which the nirvani has, and the bliss and peace and comparative rest which the devachani has, is this: the nirvani is completely and wholly Self-conscious, while the devachani is in a state which it is difficult to describe in ordinary words, but which actually is by comparison with the spiritual reality of the Nirvana, a condition of highly felicitous dreaming. The term 'dreaming' is somewhat inaccurate, nor does it convey actually the idea that the devachani's condition is more or less lacking in self-conscious realization of its own felicity, but merely that, however 'spiritual' the devachanic condition is, by comparison with the nirvanic, it is illusory enough.
Nirvana, as should be clear enough from what has just been said, is a state which may be attained by human beings of rare and exceptional spiritual power and development even when in the flesh. Buddha is an example of this, as all human or Manushya-Buddhas also are. Sankaracharya, a great avataric sage of India, was another instance of one who had attained Nirvana while alive on Earth; and men of even smaller spiritual capacity than the two just named can experience Nirvana in relatively minor degree. Obviously, therefore, such a state of supreme spiritual grandeur is in every respect far superior, both in intensity of evolved consciousness and in lofty quality of illuminated spirituality, to the highest and noblest spiritual state that is experienced by any being in even the highest of the 'heavens.'
In the opposite direction, so to say, of the Nirvana, and forming its nether pole, if one may so phrase it, there is the Avichi, popularly but improperly called a 'hell.' It is, however, exactly enough described, at least figuratively, when we call it the nether pole of the Nirvana. Certain states or conditions of beings in the Avichi, because of an accompanying 'spirituality of wickedness' have been properly and truly named Nirvana-Avichi. There is, nevertheless, one point to carry in mind in this connexion, and it is that Avichi is both a state and a world or sphere, which the Nirvana is not; for Nirvana is a state or condition only; although it is equally true that since the Nirvana is the state of consciousness of certain beings, and as these beings must have position in abstract space, or locality, therefore, as explained before, such nirvanis are or exist in the spiritual realms.
If a human being has passed through a long series of lives very evilly, and consciously so, with a continuously increasing 'absorption' of the soul in material things, this leads to a coarsening and materializing of that human being's consciousness; and the final result of the tremendous material attractions or impulses thus inbuilded into the fabric of his consciousness is that such a being is drawn or sinks into the Avichi; and it is quite possible for a human being of the character just described to experience such an Avichi-state even while living in the body on Earth.
When the consciousness of material personality in the man on Earth becomes thus accentuated, grossly material and strong in the human being: when nearly all sense or intuition of the divine has withdrawn from both heart and mind, and in consequence thereof the man becomes an incarnate expression of sheer selfishness: when there remains not even a spark of the Divine Fire consciously vibrant in the intellectual fabric of his being: then already, though perhaps living on Earth, the unfortunate man is in the Avichi-state.
Furthermore, if the downward impulses of the human being already in an Avichi-state of consciousness, as just described, so continue to grow stronger that even the last feeble link with his Monadic Sun is ruptured, he then in due course of time passes over the frontier of even the Avichi, and enters into the fatal karmic current which carries him swiftly to a final and irretrievable disintegration of his psychical composition. In such case the wretched entity fades out and is 'lost.' The particles of his thus disintegrated psychical nature are then drawn down with the rapidity of lightning and join the element-atoms in that particular mother-fount of elemental matter to which his swabhava has attracted him. Here then is the case which the Esoteric Philosophy speaks of as a 'lost soul.' Such instances of 'lost souls' are, fortunately, as rare at the one pole as the cases of nirvanic attainment are rare at the other or divine-spiritual pole of human consciousness. In the latter case the man becomes an incarnate god on Earth, a nirvani; and in the former case the being passes even out of the Avichi-state into elemental matter, where what remains of his psychical constitution is dissipated into its component life-atoms, which are there ground over and over in Nature's elemental alchemical laboratories.
The Avichi itself is, in fact, on the lower frontiers of 'absolute matter,' i. e., elemental matter. It is perhaps the nearest to the mediaeval idea of a 'hell' that Nature provides. But for all that, it is not a judicial punishment meted out upon some unfortunate and hapless and helpless soul by an overlording Deity; because the unfortunate entity which takes this 'left-hand path,' often called the 'lunar path,' does so originally of its own volition entirely, acting from the impulses of its relatively free will. It attains its fearful fate as the unerringly just consequence of karmic causes, induced and set in motion by evil thoughts, by low and selfish desires, and unchastened and unbridled passions and appetites of a materially evil character.
Yet even such an unfortunate being has still a chance to escape its dreadful fate, indeed many chances, before it reaches final dissolution. It is said, and truly said, that even one single pure and soul-impressing thought, if experienced in time, will save the descending being from the karmic consequences of many lifetimes of evil living; for actually the existence of such a thought would imply that the link with his own inner god has not yet been finally broken. Further, while we may truly say that the entity descending the path into the Avichi, and perhaps beyond, experiences no pain in the ordinary sense, and no grotesque or terrible torments inflicted upon him by outside forces such as the 'hell' of the Occidental religion is supposed to imply, nevertheless, a sense of a constantly, continuously, and increasingly progressive diminution of spiritual and intellectual consciousness is always present, combined with a fiery intensity of concentrated evil impulses bereft of all aspiration and love and hope. These last at least are said to surround the fading consciousness of such an unfortunate being with a suffering which can hardly be described in ordinary words. One may truly say that it is one of the most horrifying experiences that human imagination can conceive, for there is a more or less conscious realization, however 'fading' it may be, of the withdrawal of the spiritual light and life, and a growing realization of the impending dissolution of all self-conscious life. One may well suppose that the grotesque pains of the supposed Earth-hells can nothing equal the psychical and mental and emotional torture that the realization of this fact must bring to the weakening and fading consciousness. Nor could any theatrical torments of a mediaeval 'hell' equal the torture of heart and mind which such an entity must experience in realizing that his condition has been brought about by his own perverse will and his consequent acts. Hence, as said, if such an entity goes from worse to the worst, then it returns to the mother-fountain of material Nature from which its life-atoms were originally drawn, much as a rain-drop vanishes in a flame.
In such a case, the Monad, which long before this event takes place has already ruptured its links of union with the unfortunate and dissolving entity, immediately begins to evolve a new psycho-spiritual emanation from itself, a new human Ego-to-be, which thus appears as a 'god-spark' beginning its long evolutionary journey through time and space from its Parent-Monad, and destined in time to turn in its peregrinations back towards the Parent-Monad again. It is true that this new emanational ray contains all the best -- such as that best may be -- that was in the entity which now is gone or 'lost'; yet the intermediate vehicle for expressing such garnered spiritual experience is gone or 'lost,' and hence no human experiences can as yet be gained or 'accumulated' until another intermediate nature or human ego has been evolved or builded to form the new link between the Monadic ray and the worlds of materiality. Nearly a whole manvantara may thus be lost so far as time is concerned.
It is indeed a dreadful fate, this which overtakes a human ego too weak to resist the temptations and strong attractions downwards into matter; but fortunately the cases of 'lost souls' are exceedingly rare, so that their number is insignificant when compared with the thousands of millions of average human entities. The matter is one which, as is clear enough, imbodies a deal of mysterious and very difficult teaching, so that in a published work such as the present it is not only wise but useful to draw the veil over it all except in so far as to point out the possibility of a soul's becoming 'lost' through its own evil choice and lives, and briefly to describe its ultimate destiny in the succinct manner which has just been done.
One might add, however, that the Monad itself, thus freed from its perverse and wayward vehicle, is relatively unaffected thereby except in the sense of what is after all a really frightful waste of time which in some instances may, as said above, mean a whole manvantara more or less. By the time that the Monad shall have again and anew evolved forth from itself a properly fit and appropriate human vehicle through which it may work and express itself in the material worlds, the host of evolving entities with which it had previously been a unit is now far in advance on the aeons' long evolutionary journey. Nevertheless, it is all karmic, even so far as the Monad itself is concerned; but this again is 'another story' as the saying goes.
Much more indeed could be said about this mysterious teaching, one of the most secret and carefully guarded of the Ancient Wisdom. Teachings dealing with such matters, and even those which explain in their fulness the different kinds of post-mortem destiny of the reimbodying egos, are indeed both wonderful and true mysteries; but 'mysteries' only because men, as a rule, have not proved themselves worthy to be taught their meaning, and where to look for the proper solutions of them -- nor indeed do most men even know that these fascinating mysteries exist, all of which is perhaps just as well! Nevertheless, all are hinted at with more or less clearness in the great philosophies and religions of far bygone ages, and in certain cases even openly, although briefly and usually allegorically, mentioned in the ancient religious and philosophical literatures, if one know where to look for them. But even when one has found them and may be puzzling over their significance one must have a key by which to open them, and the Esoteric Tradition alone gives us that key.
Everywhere in Nature we find causal and effectual or consequential relations inseparably bound together in an unbroken chain of causation. Every force or energy is an originating cause; being a causal activity it produces consequential fruits which are its effects; and these fruits or effects are likewise in their turn energic, and therefore instantly become new causes, in their turn producing other consequential effects or fruits, and so forth for ever -- which means throughout the long, long, course of the Cosmic Manvantara. Thus every evil life, or series of evil lives, is followed by a corresponding retribution; and every good and aspiring life likewise receives its exactly corresponding compensatory retribution. This retributive justice in either direction works out partly by effects corresponding to preceding causes perhaps generated aeons ago, and manifesting themselves in some succeeding reincarnation on earth, and also partly by the peregrinating Monad's going higher or going lower: that is, either into a more spiritual World or Plane or into a more material World or Plane, in the post-mortem adventures of the Monad. In either case, the Monad produces or evolves forth all the necessary faculties and powers of perception from within itself by which the reimbodying Ego, its child, contacts, and lives for the time in, such a higher or lower World or Sphere or Plane; then when the effects in either case have worked themselves out, the Ego returns in due course of time to incarnation on this earth for a new earth-life.
A most important and suggestive teaching in this connexion states that man receives in life, and in the states of being post mortem, precisely what he had previously longed for; for his longings and yearnings not only indicate the directions which his consciousness takes post mortem, but likewise are the energic impulses building for him the new vehicles enabling him to experience in and through them the destiny which he has builded for himself. If during his earth-life his mind be full of aspirations and his heart with yearnings for an unfettered spiritual consciousness, i. e., for the things of the spirit, for the divine splendor of the spirit, and for the grandeur of spiritual intellections, these aspirations and yearnings function as extremely powerful attractions guiding him to Spheres of type similar to what he has aspired towards or yearned for -- to the so-called 'heavens' if one like to use the word. But if he yearn or long for the things of dense and gross matter, by precisely the same rule and from the same causes, he is attracted or drawn strongly to them, and thus goes to them after his death on earth. But in neither case is the dwelling or residing in the one class of worlds or in the other class of worlds eternal.
It is the sublime and luminous doctrine of Karman as taught in all its mysterious reaches by the Esoteric Philosophy which gives to us the true facts and the true explanations based on Nature herself concerning all these matters. According to this wonderful teaching, which is at once so consoling to the human heart and so illuminating to the human mind, man gets or receives in compensatory reward or in retributive purgation the precise consequences or effects flowing forth from the causes that previously he himself had called into action; which simply means that he receives retributive justice by means of the fruit or effects of what he had previously sown. If he have sown evil, it is suffering and pain that he will reap in the next life or in succeeding lives partly, and partly during the course of the post-mortem journey or Adventure of the Monadic soul or Reimbodying Ego; unless, indeed, the karmic consequences, or the fruits of the working of the so-called law of cause and effect, appear during the same earth-life in which the causal thoughts and acts were had or done.
In very truth man reaps exactly what he himself has sown. He is therefore the maker of his own destiny; he carves his own future career; he is the pioneer of his own wonderful pilgrimage; he is "the captain of his soul." He himself is the mysterious pathway which, when the ego is following the upward direction, leads ever more inwards and inwards into the glories of the invisible realms and spaces of spiritual consciousness; or, conversely, he himself makes himself to be the pathway in his journey downward towards the dread regions or realms of the Underworld.
The splendor of our spiritual intuitions, the grandeur of our intellectual conceptions, the widespread sympathetic understanding of the better part of our intermediate or psychic or human nature -- all come from or flow forth from the inmost part of us, our own inner god. When death overtakes the physical body at any time, all this higher and grander part then returns to the fountain-head of us, our inmost Spiritual Self, whence we originally issued forth in the beginning of this Manvantara as an emanation or ray, only to reissue again after a long period of rest and spiritual bliss, to pick up the threads of earth-life again.
What thoughtful man of compassionate heart, with mind lightened from the Divine Ray within, would not accept the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Esoteric Tradition, as briefly outlined in the preceding pages, in preference to the one-sided and obviously unjust exoteric 'heavens' and 'hells' of the different popular religious systems, signifying places or localities of indefinite character: of peace and bliss on the one hand, where the righteous shall dwell through eternity with a recognition of the glory of God Almighty upon their souls, and bathing in the spiritual feeling that they are one with Him and in His holy favor; or, on the other hand, signifying places or localities where weak and imperfect souls are condemned or damned for a greater or less length of time, to endure unspeakable and theatrical torments. How narrow and unsatisfactory both these notions are, and how our souls turn in instinctive revolt from the manifest injustices in either case! As regards the heavens, would not the very angels themselves, according to the Christian system, turn in horror from such spiritual selfishness? Think of the millions and millions who have not attained such or any other heaven, and who, according to the Christian theory, the orthodox Western theory, are even now either in the vague and dimly illuminated regions of Purgatory or are undergoing the pangs and torments of inextinguishable fire, burning in unspeakable torture unto time without ending! How can there be in Eternal Justice an eternal heaven of the blissful, when such hellish conditions prevail, according to the abominable theory, elsewhere in the Universe? One can only feel that the self-isolated saint in his holy heaven lives in a very paradise of fools -- and one is in truth bound to say, of very selfish fools!
There are indeed 'hells' innumerable and 'heavens' innumerable, but they are mere conditions or states of temporary spiritual compensation on the one hand, and of temporary purgation on the other hand; and, when compared with eternity, they are all but like fugitive and evanescent wisps of cloud upon the mountain-side. They come, they endure but a moment when compared with eternity, and they pass. Far greater than any such 'heaven' than any such sphere or loka of bliss and felicity, is the grandiose vision of endless growth in faculty and power, and endless opportunity to work for the world; and every Buddhalike or Christlike man knows it.
FOOTNOTES:
254. For further information see Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, p. 148. (return to text)
255. XIII, sl. 525. (return to text)
256. III, sl. 1082. (return to text)
257. On the Gods and the World, ch. iv. (return to text)
258. Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato. (return to text)
259. Enneads, 'On the Soul,' IV, iii, 24. (return to text)
260. It is an exceedingly pleasing thing to notice the manner in which Neo-Platonic thought, which in many ways is really the cream of the teachings of Plato, is returning to its own in the minds of modern mystical as well as metaphysical thinkers. The 'return' is meeting with no small number of difficulties, due to the unfortunate and indeed foolish prejudices against ancient mystical thought, a prejudice arising from religious and scientific miseducation and mis-instruction. Nevertheless there are courageous and thoughtful men today who have no hesitation in acknowledging their spiritual and intellectual debt to it, and in particular, it would seem, to Plotinus, one of its latest representatives during the time of the Roman Empire. Thus the famous English cleric and philosopher, Dean Inge, writes of Plotinus as follows:
"No other guide even approaches Plotinus in power and insight and profound spiritual penetration. I have steeped myself in his writings and I have tried not only to understand them as one might understand any other intellectual system, but to take them as a guide to right living and right thinking. . . . he insists that spiritual goods alone are real; he demonetises the world's currency as completely as the Gospels themselves. . . . I have lived with him for nearly thirty years and I have not sought him in vain in prosperity or adversity."
261. Leibniz (1646 -- 1716), the great and widely influential German-Slavic philosopher and mathematician -- who contemporaneously with the great Isaac Newton perfected the philosophy and mechanism of the Differential Calculus -- states fairly closely the same conception of an organic Nature as a living Organism, and as manifest in interrelated and interwoven Hierarchies, thus forming an endless continuum of Being, in the following words, chosen as an example of his teaching on this point:
"All the natural divisions [or classes] of the World show one sole concatenation of beings, in which all the various classes [orders] of living creatures, like so many links, are entwined so perfectly that it is impossible to state, either by imagination or by observation, where any one either begins or ends."
And again and similarly:
"Everything in Nature progresses by stages [degrees], and this law of advancement, which applies to each individual, forms part of my theory of unbroken succession [continuity]."
262. 'Reimbodying ego' is here used as a generalizing term, signifying what elsewhere has been called the 'peregrinating ego,' or 'peregrinating monad.' Immediately after death of the physical body, we may speak of it as the 'excarnate ego,' but it is likewise the 'reimbodying ego' because of its peregrinating character. (return to text)
263. Isaiah, xxxiv, iv. (return to text)
264. Revelation, vi, 14. (return to text)
264a. The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 80. (return to text)
265. Enneads, 'On the Problem of the Soul,' IV, iv, 1, 2. (return to text)
266. Plotinus again says very truly, regarding the portion of the man which modern Theosophy calls the personality as being sunken in materiality:
"Nor has the soul of man sunken entirely into the realm of matter, because something of it is unceasingly and for ever in the Spiritual World, although that portion of our soul which is sunken into the realms of sense is partially controlled here, and finds itself intoxicated therewith, thus becoming blind to what its own higher part holds in contemplation of the Divine." -- Enneads, 'The Descent of the Soul into Imbodiment,' IV, viii, 8.
The great Greek Neo-Platonist in these few lines makes the exactly proper distinction between the 'highest' part of man, which he says "is unceasingly and for ever in the Spiritual World," and that portion of our soul "which is sunken into the realms of sense," and thus here again faithfully re-echoes the teaching of the archaic Wisdom-Religion in the latter's illuminating explication of the nature of the Nirvana on the one hand, and the ordinary human characteristics as we know them on the other hand.
Thus man's divine consciousness, as said in the text above, is for ever nirvanic in character; and in this wondrous fact lies the key to the esoteric mystery involved in the attaining of Buddhahood by the Bodhisattvas and the continuance none the less of the Buddha in human life as a complete and perfect man. (return to text)