Theosophical University Press Online Edition
One wishes indeed that things after death were as easily described as the Christians have chosen to have them, or as the thorough-going materialist wrongly supposes them to be, but alas for the unhappy writer who attempts to give in an exoteric or public book all that happens to the human constitution after death! Only those who really have some knowledge of the postmortem conditions and states in all their variety, and of the passage of the Monad through them, can realize how difficult it is to give even any approximation to the actual facts with brevity and simplicity in statement. This very difficulty of accurately describing what takes place after death, is one cause why the writings of even initiated ancients are ofttimes obscure, occasionally complicated, and usually wrapped in metaphor.
What is it then that causes 'death' which is dissolution, which is the breaking up of a compounded entity? This question may be answered for certain minds perhaps by employing a very apt illustration drawn from the modern scientific doctrine of the electronic construction of the chemical atom. Our scientists now tell us that when an atom is neutral, that is to say, stable, it is so because it has reached what we may perhaps call its maturity or completion: i. e., it is not in a state of electric unbalance. The positive charge at the center, the proton or aggregate of protons with their embraced electronic charges, but still only partly neutralized, is equalized by an equivalent negative electric charge formed of 'loose' electrons conceived of as circling around the protonic nucleus, so that the balance of forces between nucleus and whirling electrons forms a temporary equilibrium, or atomic stability.
Yet, following our illustration, before the atom reached the stage of 'satisfaction' or equilibrium, it was in a state of growth, i. e., of electric dissatisfaction, which was caused by a lack of an electron or of electrons capable of neutralizing the unsatisfied positive charge in the nucleus. When such atom had captured from surrounding atomic spaces the electron or the electrons in number sufficient to neutralize the unsatisfied positive nuclear charge, it then became neutral or stable.
Now let us apply this picture of the completed chemical atom, which thus has become stable, to the case of the adult human body, which we may with probable enough truth look upon as a human being in relatively 'stable' equilibrium, i. e., one which has attained its full growth and for a certain time at least shows neither increase in size nor signs of senescence.
Old age, and the death which finally follows it, of the human being or of any other entity wherever it may be, come from a cessation or breaking up of the atomic and molecular balance or equilibrium previously attained in adulthood; and what we call babyhood, infancy, childhood, boyhood, youth, are regular stages or phases coming from an unsettled state of man's interior principles primarily, and of the atoms and molecules of his physical body secondarily; neither his inner principles nor his physical body are yet 'satisfied,' 'equilibrated,' 'neutralized.' Stability or balance is finally reached, if the child live to attain mature manhood; but this balance obviously can continue for a certain time only (356) and then of necessity the equilibrium changes to dissatisfaction, and decay sets in.
Everything has its life-term. This fact of incessant change so that nothing remains the same for two consecutive seconds of time, not even the equilibrium just spoken of, is one of the fundamental characteristics of Nature. Nothing lasts for ever that is compounded; every being or entity or thing that exists in Nature is compounded; hence not one of them can possibly continue unchanged -- nay, not even for an instant; for, outside of any other reason, how could such a being or entity or thing so last unchanging when its very existence depends upon an aggregation of other inferior entities, each with its own life-term and course, and following its own, albeit collaborating, pathways of destiny?
Withal there is more life in adult age than in childhood. Things die from an excess of life, not from a defect of it, and the reason is the enormous activity of the vital essence which is unceasingly at work either building or destroying; for its very nature is force and constant motion. A child imbibes life from the surrounding world-milieu and lives upon it and builds itself up from it through incorporating into its body the hosts of peregrinating life-atoms, which as before explained, are incessantly flowing into and out of the body; and the child's body does this because it is in a state of instability, in other words because it is incessantly hungry, or dissatisfied, and hence continuously adds these life-atoms by imbibing them or sucking them into itself -- although it is likewise and with equally unceasing activity rejecting or throwing out what we may call exhausted life-atoms. Growth is change, and change is the opposite of equilibrium or stability. The child, in fact, has life-hunger, is life-negative so to say, and therefore imbibes life as a sponge imbibes water. As said above, there is more life in age than in youth. It is 'life' to use the popular term, which actually in time kills the physical body, which wears the body out; for every smallest particle of man is in motion, in ceaseless action, in continuous movement. Just here is the secret why man dies: wear on the particles composing his body is continuous, and finally the time comes when activity reaches such magnitude that the component elements of the hosts of molecules and atoms no longer themselves can retain balance or equilibrium. This results in progressive decay, involving senescence and finally death.
Now the body is composed of trillions of physical cells, each of which is composed of molecules, which in their turn are individually composed of atoms, and even the atoms, as the Esoteric Philosophy has always said, and modern science now declares, are likewise composite entities -- are composed, that is, of electronic particles to which, because of their varieties, scientists have given various names. Can we form any idea of how immense, how unthinkably great, is the number of these infinitesimal entities?
G. B. Bazzoni, Professor of Experimental Physics in the University of Pennsylvania, in a book written by him some few years ago, expressed himself as follows:
It may help us to get a more definite idea of the immense number of molecules in a cubic inch of gas [he is speaking of ordinary air] if we suppose that we have them all enlarged to the size of baseballs and that we start 6000 people counting them, lifting them out one by one, each person taking one each second; and let us suppose that these people do not belong to any union and that they do not have to eat or sleep, so that they can keep counting 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, then we shall find that very nearly three hundred million years will pass before the job of counting the molecules from a single cubic inch of air can be completed. (357)
The number of molecules, according to the above estimate, in one cubic inch of gas equals approximately 6 X 19, that is, 60,000,000,000,000,000,000 -- sixty quintillions (American enumeration) -- of molecules! So much for the number of molecules in a cubic inch of air; and molecules are relatively immense bodies as compared with the atoms which form all bodies of physical matter! Fancy, then, the countless hosts of infinitesimal electronic particles of various kinds that one human body contains! The speculative mind carries the thought farther, and reflects that the human body is very small indeed, when compared with the mass of the Earth, and that the Earth is very small indeed compared with our Solar System, and the last in its turn is minute as compared with still larger spacial units, such as the Galaxy to which it belongs. The mind reels and falls headlong in its flights of imagination in any attempt even mathematically to figure such incomputably immense numbers of electronic lives of which these larger organisms are composed! And each one of these infinitesimals or electronic units enshrines, yet expresses very feebly, the powers and attributes of a deathless consciousness-center, a Monad!
When at death the physical body decays, when it reaches the conclusion of its life-period, so called, and breaks up into the constituent elements of which it is composed, thereby releasing these hosts of 'life-atoms,' what becomes of these life-atoms? They cannot stand absolutely still, frozen or crystallized, as it were, in absolute inertia, for such states are unknown except in relative degrees. Crystals, by the way, are as full of life as is electricity itself, because they also are but equilibrated electrical charges, in the last analysis. No, these life-atoms are growing entities, learning entities, each class of its own kind and evolutionary degree, and each individual of each class of its own evolutionary degree. Nature permits no absolute standing still for anything anywhere. All beings and entities and things are full of life, full of force or energy, full of movement, which is but another way of describing themselves, because all are composite of both force and matter, of both spirit and substance -- and spirit and substance, or force and matter, are fundamentally one: two phases of the underlying REALITY, of which we thus see but the higher and lower maya or illusory forms. These illusory appearances, the philosophers of the Hindu Vedanta have expressed in name by the Sanskrit compound nama-rupa, 'name-form,' a technical compound which signifies phenomenal appearances implying hid noumena -- rupa signifying 'form,' and nama signifying 'name': meaning that the human mentality reacts to and thus names the illusory appearance or rupa.
These life-atoms, therefore, at death -- or more accurately, as the body decays and releases them both during life and at death -- are impelled or urged or drawn by affinity in those directions towards which the man, as an incarnate entity, during life by his overlordship of thought, of impulse, of feeling, has imparted to them a tendency to go. In other words, the tendencies, desires, and impulses of the man who used that body give to these life-atoms the characteristics of psycho-magnetic attraction or repulsion that they imbody. More than this: the great majority of these life-atoms originally came from him, are born as his offspring from his substance and his force or energy, i. e., from his vitality, and hence are actually the offspring of his own self -- his very children. Therefore, being as said before, learning and evolving or growing entities, they are destined in the future to unfold in evolution and to become even as he is who was in past aeons himself in what is their present stage or state: minuscule learning things, embryo-gods. But that overlordship of thought and consciousness flowing from the dominating entity which we call Man -- what has become of it? In other words, at death what has become of him? He obviously is not his body, because at all times he directs it and uses it and in large part controls it, and no dead body ever yet has been known to write or speak or think or direct matters, to have noble impulses, or contrariwise to exercise its will in the committing of evil.
Now when the instant of death arrives, at this instant of critical change, the ethereal cord of life connecting the inner constitution with the physical body is snapped: the golden cord of thought and feeling, of what is commonly called 'life'; and instantly, like a flash of lightning, all the spiritual best of the man that an instant before was, is indrawn into the man's Monad or Essential Self, where it originated and whither it necessarily returns. This lightning-like and flashing return of the spiritual best of the man that an instant before was, as just stated, takes place at the instant of real death, which is in fact not even the instant when the last breath is expired or when the heart gives its last pulsation, because for a certain time after this, varying in individual cases, the physical brain is still truly alive, and is filled with the marvelous and rapidly changing panorama of mental visions passing before the mind's eye, which include everything that the man had been through during his life now ending -- aye, even to the last and most imperfect detail. All passes through the physical brain as a wondrous concatenation of pictures, mental visions, beginning with the first feeble perceptions of childhood and continuing in uninterrupted and regular series through all the years lived through up to the very moment when the last breath was rendered and the last beat of the heart took place. When the end of this panorama is reached, then it is that like a flash of lightning, the 'best' returns unto the bosom of the Monad, and there remains until it is rejoined by the more human, i. e., inferior attributes and qualities, which in the Kama-loka must during the next months or the next few years separate themselves from or free themselves from the kama-rupa, which, when thus deprived of its higher part becomes the 'spook' or 'shell' previously spoken of.
One may well ask oneself whether what is thus indrawn is matter or force? It is really both but of a more ethereal substance and of more ethereal energy than those of the physical sphere, or even astral spheres, surrounding us. An electric flash, as it were, and the best of the man is gone 'to its Father in Heaven.' (358) As Jesus said: "I and my Father are one." (359)
In all this process there is no pain; there is no suffering whatsoever; this indrawn 'best' of the man that was, his Spiritual Self or Higher Ego, will before long experience nothing but unspeakable bliss and rest, because it has 'gone' into conditions or states which are throughout akin to its own nature -- the sole distinction or difference being that the Ego by degrees passes into its devachanic period, to which the nearest human analogy is sleep.
The higher parts of the constitution thus at death withdraw from the body, leave that body to decay; they have cast it off as a garment outworn. As concerns the life-atoms, they follow their own respective paths; for they are of many and various kinds, corresponding to the many and various kinds of human thoughts, impulses, and feelings, and are derivatives of the various parts of man's constitution. What then becomes of them?
The life-atoms of the physical body go into the soil or into the plants; others leaving the body pass into various beasts with which they have at the man's death magnetic affinity -- psycho-magnetic affinity more accurately. Of those which take this path, some pass only into the bodies of beasts, but others go to form the interior or intermediate psychic apparatus of the beasts into which they pass. Other life-atoms, following exactly the same principle of attraction, enter bodies of men; and this is done in various ways: through food and drink, for instance, or by osmosis, or again through and from the air we mutually breathe.
The life-atoms of the astral or etheric parts of the constitution of the man that was, follow precisely the same rule, but do it on their own astral or etheric planes, thus helping to build up or feed the astral or etheric bodies of the three lower Kingdoms as well as the bodies of other members of the Human Kingdom. Again, the life-atoms of the Human Soul or Ego follow the same rule exactly, and are psycho-magnetically drawn into the psycho-mental apparatus of other human beings, thus helping to build and to feed those respective psycho-mental apparatuses.
For, as we have already seen, Man is a compound entity; his constitution is composed of several Principles or Elements, variously enumerated as seven or ten, which may be, for simpler understanding enumerated as follows: First, a divine Monadic Element or Principle, unconditionally immortal, of vast powers and of Kosmic (or Universal) range or field of action and consciousness; second, a Spiritual Monad, its Ray, or Child, or Offspring, of purely spiritual nature and function, but lower than its divine Monadic parent; third, a spiritual-intellectual Monad or Higher Ego, which is, strictly speaking, the perduring Reincarnating Ego, which is likewise a ray of the preceding Monadic Principle or Element; fourth, a human nature or personal ego, which in its turn is a ray of the former; fifth, an astral or model-body, an etheric body, the Linga-sarira; sixth, a physical body built around and partly from this ethereal or astral or model-body; and, seventh and last, the vital essence or 'life,' that is to say Force or Energy, because that is fundamentally what essential Life is; which life runs through and unites all these Principles or Elements; and which life itself, progressively less ethereal as it 'descends' or runs through the lower parts of the constitution, is composed in its turn, as are the others of these Principles or Elements, of atomic or more accurately of Monadic units, vital corpuscles so to say, entities of infinitesimal magnitude, which the Theosophist, generalizing, calls 'life-atoms.' Just as a stream of running water is formed of molecules, which in their turn are formed of atoms, which in their turn are modernly said to be formed of protons and electrons of various kinds, so this current of Vital Essence, the Stream of Life running through the entire constitution of the human being, is itself molecular and corpuscular and atomic and electronic in nature.
Actually, then, as is clearly deducible from the above series, there are many kinds of substance or matter, and many kinds of force or energy -- spiritual, intellectual, psychic or mental, emotional, passional, what we call 'astral,' and physical. Man, in the ultimate analysis of his constitution, is a sheaf or bundle of them -- each force or energy working in its own appropriate part of the constitution and in its own appropriate sphere, and on its own appropriate plane, taking part in the Cosmic Work to the extent of its ability, and each one therefore being a part of that unbreakable Chain of consciousness and resultant causation which had its beginning at the opening of the Cosmic Manvantara, and will end at the close thereof, to reissue forth again anew into the next opening renascence of the ever-enduring Drama of Cosmic Existence.
During earth-life every part of man's constitution throws forth from itself, pours out from itself, as a fountain pours forth water, hosts of life-atoms on its own sphere or plane: from the spiritual through all intermediate grades down to the physical body. But this is not all. There is a constant interchange or peregrination of these various life-atoms of man's constitution throughout the entire sphere or range of his constitutional being. How marvelous this is! For instance, a life-atom flowing forth from the buddhic principle of a man, the Buddhi within him, belongs to the Buddhi-plane, the buddhic plane; but that life-atom because it is an evolving and unfolding entity has a destiny of its own. It is as much a part of Nature as we are, or as a god is, and once it flows forth from us, once our constitution gives birth to it on any plane, on the buddhic plane in this instance, it begins a series of peregrinations from plane to plane in our constitution and out of it, doing exactly what we as individuals do when we incarnate or excarnate. In the case in point, the life-atom comes from the buddhic plane, into the manasic plane, into the kamic plane, downwards into the astral plane, finally into the physical body, and then, after its 'whirlings' or revolvings, as explained in a former chapter, it returns to its parent constitution and ascends through that constitution again in order to rejoin its buddhic parent, there to pass its own atomic 'aeonic' period of nirvanic bliss before beginning a new pilgrimage similar to but not identic with the one just ended.
The life-atoms of all parts of man's constitution are for ever peregrinating. What for instance is a thought? A thought is a manasic elemental sent forth on a pilgrimage; and this elemental in its own essence is as much a living thing as we humans are living things. Thoughts are things because thoughts are substance or matter; they are substantial. They originate on the manasic plane, and they begin their peregrinations therefrom. They come to us as Monads from other planes, from other beings, pass on the physical plane through our brains; we thus give to them birth again. How can we be so egoistic as to imagine for an instant that the thoughts which flow through our brains are all our own -- i. e., the energic progeny of the physical substance of the brain-cells!
Every one of us human beings, every god in space, every spiritual being anywhere, every deva, every 'life-atom,' was once the thought of some thinking entity; and just as every god was a man in former manvantaras, and just as every man has himself been a life-atom in former aeons, in other words an imbodied elemental -- for that is what a life-atom is -- just so our thoughts are now elementals passing through that one particular phase of their evolutionary development as 'thoughts,' running through the mind of some thinking being; and thereafter in due course of time they will become imbodied on this plane in some appropriate sheath or vehicle of their consciousness. Sooner or later this sheath becomes what is technically called a life-atom.
These different classes of life-atoms belonging to all our various inner sheaths of consciousness, and each class existing on its own respective Plane, or in its own World, are all integral parts of our stream of karmic existence, pranic children of the Brahman within each one of us, which last is for each one of us respectively the individual's inner god. After death they follow an identic course of action on their own planes, and from precisely the same general natural causes that govern the post-mortem peregrinations brought about by attractions and repulsions, of the life-atoms of the physical body.
It is important to remember here these different classes of life-atoms existent on the different planes of the human constitution. The etheric life-atoms, or the astral life-atoms, during life have been inbuilt into the astral or model-body, i. e., the astral garment or vehicle, that during life 'stepped down,' as it were, the spiritual forces of the Monad, so that these forces might act upon the brain of physical matter; for those spiritual energies or forces without such intermediaries are too subtil, too ethereal, too fine, directly to touch our world of matter. This astral vehicle, or Linga-sarira, does not disintegrate immediately at the moment of the death of the physical body. It hovers about the physical cadaver, in the astral world for a time, this astral world being just over the threshold of physical existence, and hence is the world just beyond the physical -- the etheric world, if one like the term. (360)
The Linga-sarira itself remains but a short time in its wan and pallid existence in the astral world, after the disintegration of the physical cadaver, for it is subject to the same process of molecular and atomic disintegration that the physical body undergoes. Its term of existence therefore is, relatively speaking, very short, lasting little longer than the physical body does when the latter is left to 'rot away' -- let us say, then, that the Linga-sarira may last some eight or ten years before it too has dissolved into its component astral life-atoms.
It is very common among careless readers or indifferent students of the Esoteric Philosophy to confuse the mere astral model-body or Linga-sarira with the Kama-rupa; but this confusion is entirely unnecessary and need never arise if the student pay only moderate attention to the import of the Theosophical teachings. The kama-rupa is the seat during life of the human soul, or ordinary human being, and is itself compact or composed of life-atoms, but more ethereal by a good deal than are the life-atoms of the much more gross Linga-sarira or model-body. Whereas the Linga-sarira outlasts the physical cadaver but a relatively short time, the kama-rupa on its own planes or grades of the astral world may and usually does outlast both the physical body and Linga-sarira by a long time -- it may be in extreme cases many years. It all depends upon who and what the man was during his earth-life. If the man was of a gross and heavily materialistic type, subject at frequent intervals to the impulses of his lower passions and more or less under their sway, with relatively few spiritual or noetic inspirations of consciousness, then the kama-rupa is of course a heavily compacted and astrally coarse entity and its term of existence in the astral world before it also undergoes disintegration or dissolution is correspondingly long.
If, on the other hand, the man during his earth-life was of a highly spiritual and intellectual type, the master of his lower impulses and passional urgings, rarely if ever falling under their sway, then in such case his kama-rupa is correspondingly ethereal, relatively brilliant or luminous and only slightly dense or compacted, and consequently its term of existence as a kama-rupic entity in the astral world is correspondingly very short, because disintegration ensues fairly rapidly.
These are two human extremes; and between these two extremes fall all the other grades or classes of human beings.
Cases have been known where the kama-rupa of an exceedingly evil man has lasted for centuries -- so long a time, in fact, that it still coheres as a kama-rupic entity after the Monad of the said man has returned to incarnation on Earth, and thereafter haunts the said unfortunate 'new' man, attaching itself to the new man's newly evolved kama-rupa and in most cases coalescing with it and thus acting as an unceasing fountain of evil suggestions, impulses, urgings, etc. This is a case of what is technically called a 'Dweller on the Threshold,' so vaguely alluded to by Bulwer Lytton in his famous novel Zanoni.
It is not only in the cases of human beings that such 'Dweller on the Threshold' can exist, but the case actually happens in celestial space -- i. e., in the case of certain planets: our Earth is one of such unfortunate planets and the present moon is the kama-rupic Dweller on the Threshold. Indeed, there are actually cases in the stellar deeps where even suns have their kama-rupic haunting Dwellers -- but this is another story!
The kama-rupa of man, therefore, is but the astral 'shade' or 'shadow' of the man that was. The ancients called these human astral shadows or earth-bound entities, 'shades'; modern children and nursemaids call them 'spooks' and 'ghosts' -- as also do many other people who are neither children nor nursemaids; and each such 'shade' is but an eidolon -- a Greek word meaning an 'image,' the astral image of the man who was.
It has been sometimes stated in Theosophical writings that the kama-rupa, hereinbefore briefly described, forms itself only after the death of the physical body; but this statement, while perfectly true in a sense, is, without further qualification, both misleading and incorrect. The kama-rupa actually is built up, step by step, atom or molecule by atom or molecule, during the earth-life of the being of whose constitution it is a component part: being composed, as it obviously is, of the man's astral, emotional, psychic, and lower mental life-atoms; but it takes final shape or form -- i. e., becomes a distinct astral entity, only after the death of the man, and this is the meaning of the statement found in some Theosophical books as just stated.
There are certain cases, which alas! are not very few, in which the kama-rupas of extremely bad men not only last for many years after the death of the physical body but retain or imprison as it were some of the lowest mental vitality of the man, just as that low mental vitality was marked in the life of the man deceased. These are the kama-rupas who become what are technically called 'Elementaries': i. e., they are not mere 'shells,' which is the normal case after the Monad has cast off the kama-rupa, which thus should normally disintegrate or dissolve, but still imprison, as it were, certain portions of the gross and active mental life-atoms, or energies or powers, that the man used while he was alive. These elementaries are exceedingly dangerous astral denizens, for, acting under the automatic impulses of their imprisoned low thoughts and desires, they continuously seek satisfaction of these thoughts and desires, and are thus attracted to or drift to human beings with whom they feel affinity.
They likewise flit to or are attracted to in exactly similar manner places and things to which their low desires and thoughts draw them or impel them to proceed. As concrete instances of the last case, one may mention dens of vice, slaughter-houses, blood which is shed of any kind, human or beast, and in fact all animal or human excreta or effluvia, even including one of man's most innocent foods, warm milk just drawn from the udder. The reason of all this is the animal effluvium that emanates from these places and things.
Since there are life-atoms belonging to each and every one of the composite Principles or Elements of man's constitution, therefore man even in his intermediate nature or vehicle is a composite or compounded entity; and after death this intermediate nature, commonly called the 'human soul,' likewise in its turn decomposes into its component life-atoms after a certain lapse of time -- thus freeing the central core thereof, which is the human ego, otherwise the human Monad. When these intermediate life-atoms in their turn are left behind, as the Monadic Ray, formerly spoken of and which is the true Man, is indrawn higher and still more closely into its parent Monad -- or, in other words, is drawn back again into the ultimate Self of his being -- these life-atoms of man's intermediate nature, in other words of his vehicular 'soul,' are freed from the overlordship of the Monadic Ray and form a host or group or multitude on interior planes; and all these multitudes of various kinds or classes of life-atoms are attracted to or seek refuge as it were in other human beings, either just beginning earth-life or already having strongly personalized life on Earth; exactly as the life-atoms of the physical body are drawn by psycho-magnetic affinity into the respective refuges or spheres to which they by nature thus belong.
What we call desires and passions arise really in sheaths of the human ego, and consequently are in due course of time after death cast off with their home-sheaths by the Monad which thus becomes freed from their anchoring attachment in the astral world. Milton, writing of the post-mortem reliquiae of the human being after the process which we call death has done its work on the lower part of man's psychological nature, shows his understanding of the fact that the adult human being is builded inwardly of several degrees or kinds of ethereal matter and of varying stages of materiality. Of course the great English poet drew his ideas, at least his root-ideas, from ancient Greek and Roman writers, who in their turn but repeated in their own ages the Esoteric Tradition in these respects. In his Comus, Milton wrote:
But when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchers
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loath to leave the body that it loved,
And link'd itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.
The English of Milton's day was rather more bold and less delicate than suits the more fastidious taste and judgment of today; yet all that Milton wrote in the above lines is accurate and true enough, although he has not made the distinction sufficiently clear between the Linga-sarira and the Kama-rupa. The Linga-sarira certainly haunts the "charnel vaults and sepulchers," and the kama-rupa does exactly the same, and not infrequently; yet the difference between them is quite distinct, and is such as it has been attempted to describe in previous paragraphs.
In any case, as will be sufficiently plain to anyone who has studied the ancient literatures found in any part of the world -- for they all teach identically the same facts in these respects -- the great English poet here alludes to the astral remnants of the human psychological entity which man leaves behind him when Beautiful Death frees him from the prison of this our earthly life, and when the soul returns to the Mansions of its Father for a while -- for rest and bliss without compare here on Earth -- before returning to take up another tenement of flesh in our globe, for renewing the earthly school-term interrupted by the Grand Vacation that men call death.
The parts or portions of the human psychological entity which the English poet here alludes to are they which work upon our intermediate nature from below; even as the aggregate of attributes and qualities and powers collectively called the 'voice of the soul' works upon that psychological entity from above. It is the latter and the former which are the strivers or opponents in the battles for self-mastery and self-conquest that we all experience during earth-life. While Milton in the lines quoted above refers mainly to the one phase of earthly life which is the materially passional tendency of the lower nature, it seems necessary to point out in this connexion that there are worse things by far than merely human passion; and these are the more subtil, and therefore more dangerous because somewhat more aggressive, of the movements of the lower soul such as fierce anger, enduring hatred, bitter jealousy, blinding envy, unsocial personal ambition, arrant fear, and others like these last. All these sway powerfully the intermediate or psychological nature of the human constitution and exercise upon it a strong attractive influence downwards; whereas the lofty virtues, which are all impersonal and therefore equivalently beautiful, such as hope, charity -- charity that becomes not only a pleasing devoir, but an honor and a beautiful thing -- kindliness, impersonal love, unselfishness, the instinct for the good, the beautiful, and the true: all these are the whisperings and intuitions flowing from the higher part of our constitution, and are in all respects and on all occasions without exception, stimulating, purifying, refreshing, and elevating in all their reaches over those portions of the human soul which open to receive their refining flow.
It is commonly supposed among thoughtless people that choice between these latter and the former is difficult; but this notion is stupidly untrue. The choice is, on the contrary, very easy indeed, and becomes easier the more are understood the nature and influence of those refining powers on the fabric and operations of the psychological portion of the human constitution: and just here it is that the teachings concerning post-mortem conditions, and the character and destiny of the intermediate or psychological nature, are so wonderfully suggestive and helpful, because throwing so brilliant a light on the facts.
As before stated, the cast-off sheaths of the intermediate part of the human constitution are composed of life-atoms, and to these life-atoms during our whole term of earth-life we have given a certain major direction or predominant impulse or series of impulses. It is due to this impact of human will and intelligence upon and into these life-atoms, considered both collectively and distributively, that we become karmically responsible for these life-atoms in their different classes, our responsibility being strictly graded according to the impression made upon them; and to a certain degree we are also responsible for the psychical, astral, and physical effects they may produce or have on other human beings to whom these life-atoms migrate. For there is all the time and without an instant of cessation a constant and uninterrupted interchange of life-atoms among all human beings. Thus it is that these life-atoms are stamped with uncountable impressions due to the incomputable number of impulses or impacts that they have experienced; and therefore in so far as we have put our individual or personal seals upon them -- stamped them with our particular impulses -- we are strictly responsible. Some day these life-atoms will come back to us. They can do no otherwise. The psycho-magnetic attraction which we by our own thoughts and feelings have brought to birth in them will draw them infallibly back to us. As much as they individually can contain it, they bear our own vitality; and it is this vital affinity with ourselves which is causative of their return to us, and we shall then feel anew the many-sided consequences or effects of the reacting impulses that formerly we stamped upon them. Thus it is that through the life-atoms on all the planes of our being, due to the unerring justice of Karman, which is action and reaction, we suffer just and due retribution by meeting as it were infinitesimal portions of our former self or selves -- and not once in a thousand million times do we like our former selves or welcome their return to meet us again.
Of course these individual impacts or impulses on any one life-atom are infinitesimally small, but as these life-atoms are uncountably numerous, their aggregate influence may be not only impelling but at times compelling. It requires but the feeblest effort of the imagination, and an equally minute effort of the understanding, to see just here in this fact that our past returns to us even through the life-atoms and that in this fact alone rests or reposes a substantial foundation of morals, of clean living, of high thinking, and the duty of impressing the atoms of our entire constitution with impulses arising in and flowing forth from our higher and highest parts. Then these life-atoms return to us like angels, each one imbodying an impulse for good -- and even for physical health likewise.
A highly important aspect of the general teaching concerning the nature and peregrination of the different classes of the life-atoms is that in all cases, as the Monad, to use popular language, 'ascends' or 'rises' through the spheres as it goes step by step higher on its wonderful post-mortem journey, on each such step, or at each such stage, it discards or casts off the life-atoms belonging to the respective part of the constitution which is 'native' in each such stage. With each step or stage upwards, the Monad leaves behind it those groups of life-atoms which are too material to accompany it into more ethereal realms until, when the Monad has reached the end of its wonderful post-mortem journey, it is, as Paul of the Christians said, enshrined in 'a spiritual body' (361) -- the body appropriate to and fit for its own spiritual attributes, qualities, forces.
Such indeed is the ultimate destiny of the freed Monad, which thus becomes a Jivanmukta -- or, what comes to the same thing, a fully self-conscious divinity, perfected for the remainder of the present period of world-life or Cosmic Manvantara. But as concerns the more limited between-lives period of the Reimbodying Ego, it is to be remembered that on this upward journey of the Monad after death this Reimbodying Ego slips or glides gradually into its devachanic condition. In the Devachan, in the cases of the average human being, the Reimbodying Ego rests in the bosom of the Monad and thus in devachanic bliss it passes long centuries mayhap before it begins its return journey to new earthly imbodiment -- such period of devachanic rest and recuperation depending in every case upon the energies engendered in the past life, which then and there seek out any opportunity for self-expression or manifestation, and which now find their proper sphere of activity in the spiritual-intellectual 'dreamland' of the Devachan.
When the centuries of revolving time bring about the ending of the devachanic dream the attractions begin to spring into activity drawing it back to earthly incarnation; little by little and degree by degree the steps or stages of the return journey are entered upon in exact and precise converse order to the steps or degrees by which the Monad had 'ascended.' The Reimbodying Ego passes down through the spheres in reverse order, omitting not one of the 'rungs' of this mystical Ladder of Life; and at each one of these steps or stages of the 'descent' it takes up again, through the working of psycho-magnetic attraction, and reincorporates into itself as many of the life-atoms as it is possible then to attract of the hosts of them which had been dropped or left on the respective stages or planes of the upward journey. Thus it builds them again into its new bodies or vehicles, invisible and visible, inner and outer.
Many men of many minds throughout the Christian Era have pondered upon and have been puzzled by the Christian dogma of the 'resurrection of the body' -- sometimes very grossly and inaccurately expressed as the 'resurrection of the dead': "When rattling bones together fly from all the quarters of the sky." This seems to have been a pious belief, a belief which at one time in the epochs of European intellectual obscuration evidently made much appeal to the hearts of devout Christians. Many views as to the real meaning of this theological and churchly teaching have at various times been expressed, especially since the renascence of the powers of the human intellect, when men began to question, and in questioning began really to think. Yet no one, it would appear, has properly understood this Christian teaching which, erroneous as it is in its usual form, like most if not all other Christian dogmas, has some basis or substratum in fact.
Although it may be an unwelcome thought to many, it would nevertheless seem to be the fact that the nemesis or bane of Christian theological thinking has been its egoistic assumption that Christianity alone in the world contained spotless truth, and that it was new and not founded in any wise or in any points of importance on the old philosophical and religious teaching of the Mediterranean peoples which preceded its own emergence into popularity and power. Had this egoistic assumption not existed, it would seem not too much to say that Christianity today might be a true Light-bearer in the world, a living vehicle of Truth, and would never have needed to pass through the various phases of abandonment of cherished beliefs, consequent loss of instinctive faith, defection or falling from its once high position as a spiritual Guide to mankind. There is a true pathos to the theosophical student in all this, because the Theosophist realizes from his own studies of the Esoteric Philosophy that Christianity as much as any other great system of religious thinking has its elements of profound truth; and in its origins at least, when the voice of its great Master had not been forgotten, nor forgotten the spiritual impulses of his noble heart, it was but a new unveiling of the perennial and perduring Wisdom of the Archaic Wisdom-Religion of mankind -- the Esoteric Tradition. Christianity, therefore, like all these others, was and even yet is not unique in any wise, but one of the members of the sisterhood of religious systems. There is indeed pathos that this fact was lost sight of in the Christian System apparently within fifty years of the passing of its great Teacher and Master.
Why then should we not turn to other world-thoughts of philosophical and religious character, which are the common heritage of mankind, for light and instruction on this subject: because mayhap one or other of these other systems of world-thought may have kept this particular key or explanation of this particular belief, and not have lost it as the Christian system has. In any case, however, search would have to be made, not in the exoteric symbolisms or rituals or ecclesiastical organizations, but for the Mystery-teachings of which each and every one of these great systems contained something -- in certain cases containing a more largely unfolded exposition thereof than others do.
As it is, however, and assuredly with no desire to assert a self-sufficiency in his own beliefs or doctrines which no true Theosophist ever should entertain, it would nevertheless seem quite proper frankly to state that Theosophy explains this apparently weird and almost ludicrous doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Theosophy, the Esoteric Tradition, being itself, as already frequently stated, the Mother of Religions and Philosophies, although this fact is entirely unrecognised today, therefore is logically able to elucidate the mental philosophic and religious progeny which came forth from it.
No sane man, it is to be supposed, today can or does believe that the physical body, as regards its physical elements -- or rather when once its elements have been returned to earth -- shall be gathered together again into one component and perfect whole at some future period which Christians call the judgment Day; when the 'last trump' shall be sounded, according to the quaint imagery of older times: when fat men, thin men, long men, short men, young men, old men, women, and children, of all kinds and classes, shall rise from their graves at the sound of the heavenly trump, and all who shall be chosen so to do shall then take their places at the right hand of God on High and thereafter sing paeans of praise unto the Eternal for ever! What a grotesque collocation of ideas! Yet back of this idea of the 'resurrection of the body' there actually is a most beautiful truth or fact of Nature. This truth may be expressed in two forms; or, as the mathematicians say, it is expressible in both a general and in a special case.
This special case involves a mystery -- a teaching of the ancient Mysteries; but hinted at, it might be phrased thus: When a man has received his final degree of initiation he is said to be 'raised' to Masterhood in the same physical body. This point need not be elaborated further here.
The general case, however, is to be explained by the reassembling of the life-atoms in the manner described in preceding paragraphs. These life-atoms are man's own offspring, at least most of those which build man's constitution are; inbuilt into his body during the physical life which he leads on Earth, although they are not derivative from outside but spring forth from within himself. (362) Therefore they are psycho-magnetically attracted back to the Reimbodying Ego on its return journey to the new earth-life, and the Reimbodying Ego can no more avoid or escape receiving these life-atoms again into itself than it can avoid or escape being itself. To it they are again drawn because out from it they formerly went. They too, these life-atoms, during the Reimbodying Ego's term of devachanic rest and peace, have had their own wonderful adventures -- adventures in the different spheres and on the different planes of the seven globes of the planetary chain; and thus when the 'descending' individual or Reimbodying Ego reaches the grades of our physical plane, and the baby-body is finally born, its growth thereafter is assured by and through and because of the aforesaid magnetic attractions and repulsions, and by the body's receiving into it and expulsion from it of these its former life-atoms. These are continuously attracted to and built into the physical body, as it passes from babyhood into childhood into youth, and from youth into manhood -- the very life-atoms which had made the Reimbodying Ego's physical body on Earth in the last earth-life. Thus it is that the body of the former earth-life is resurrected -- is arisen.
When the time for man's rebirth into physical life comes again, the Reimbodying Ego descends from the monadic seclusion in which it has had a period of ineffable peace and rest; it 'descends' through the same intermediate planes or worlds by which it had previously ascended at the end of the preceding earth-life, and it takes up again as many as possible of those very life-atoms which had been left there during the previous ascent and which are now drawn back again to the descending Reimbodying Ego because of affinity, as already explained. It is this gradual condensation or materialization of interior vehicles or elements which, from the monadic or spiritual world down to the physical world, forms the seven portions of the constitution of the new man as he grows to be on Earth. Here, on this our physical earthly plane, therefore, man's new physical body will be composed of the very or identic life-atoms that the Ego lived in and worked through in its last incarnation.
What strikes one first of all perhaps in considering this wonderful fact of Nature, is the perfect and unerring justice in it; there is no chance-work or fortuitous collocation of atoms in the process of incarnation, because at every step of this wonderful procedure of Nature, man meets what he formerly made, and perforce, will he, nill he, must take them into himself again.
Nevertheless, it must never be forgotten that although in his new earth-body he is substantially the same man physically that he was at the end of his last life, being composed of the same life-atoms which he gathers into himself more and more fully as he grows from infancy into youth and from youth into manhood, yet to say that the man is 'identic' with the 'old man' of the last earth-life is neither strictly accurate nor philosophically true; for while the 'new man' is a reproduction of the 'old,' he is nevertheless as a personal entity a distinctly 'new man,' because of the 'new' increments of inner faculty and power, quality, and attribute, which he has gained as the fruitage of all the experiences of the last earth-life and their assimilation and building into character during the devachanic interval. Thus the man may be called the 'same' man because of being formed of the same identic elements in his vehicles or bodies, but he is a 'new man' because of the growth or unfolding through evolutional development that has taken place since the last earth-life.
The fact that the physical body is sometimes after death destroyed by fire, by cremation, has no effect on the life-atoms. Fire has no hold on the life-atoms, not even on the chemical atoms, as we know. Fire sets the chemical atoms free. Fire destroys the molecules composed of atoms, but the atoms themselves are untouched by fire. Fire is an electrical phenomenon. Its influence is usually disruptive, but it is also the great constructive builder of the Universe. This is why some of the ancients worshiped fire. It is in fact a manifestation on the lower planes of pranic electricity, or what we may more commonly call vital electricity.
It must be remembered that it is not primarily the chemical atoms which are spoken of in the preceding paragraphs, but the life-atoms. It is the life-atoms which are the souls of the chemical atoms, as it were. The Theosophist today frequently uses, as the great Theosophical thinkers of ancient times always used, the word atom in its Greek etymological sense, as signifying 'indivisible,' which is what the Greek word exactly means. The original significance of 'atom' as an indivisible is 'Monad,' or Individual -- that which is strictly a unit and cannot be divided. It was in this manner that the word was used by the original founders of the Greek Atomistic School. Their meaning was exactly what the Pythagorean School meant when the latter school spoke of the Monad -- a center of consciousness: what we may call the real Spiritual Atom, an indivisible ultimate only in the sense that when any one of the psychological wrappings enshrouding any such center of consciousness or Monad is taken away there is exposed thereby a more perfect and more beautiful wrapping of the center of consciousness; because the closer to this last and therefore more nearly akin to its consciousness; and yet we may also probably say in perfect truth that this process of unwrapping might proceed ad infinitum, and yet never reach the ultimate or 'absolute' beginning -- for where could one find a conceivable ending or beginning of a consciousness-center?
The point is -- and it is one of extreme importance -- that these wrappings are really phases or 'modes' of consciousness, and hence, no matter how numerous may be the 'unwrappings' of these modes, consciousness per se is always there.
The ancient Hindus called the life-atom by the name paramanu, a compound signifying ultimate or primal anu, an anu implying an infinitesimal; so that its use when applied to substance meant what we call the life-atom, and its use when applied to spirit could easily signify or stand for what modern Theosophy calls a Monad; nevertheless the best term for Monad is jiva; and for the center of consciousness itself, seated in the heart of the Monad, the properly descriptive and subtil term would be jivatman or Monadic Self. In certain ones of the Upanishads of Hindusthan mention is made of the Brahman seated in the heart of the 'atom' -- that Brahman which is smaller than the smallest, yet greater than the greatest, indeed in its vast reach encompassing the Universe. (363) This last is neatly described by the foregoing term jivatman, for at the heart or rather in the core of every being or entity and of every essential thing is a Divine Spark, the inner god thereof which is surrounded by or enshrouded with or veiled by garments or integuments of descending degrees of tenuity or increasing stages of opacity, these being the various 'sheaths' of consciousness referred to. Some of these garments or veils, the highest, are translucent or transparent to the passage of the spiritual Light flowing forth from this inner spiritual Monad or Sun; and the outer or more opaque ones are much grosser, much more material and less ethereal, and progressively more so until the physical body is reached, which is the grossest of them all, and through these the inner radiant light finds it progressively more difficult to pass.
Thus this 'inner god' may otherwise be called a 'Spiritual Atom,' a paramanu, a Monad, a Pythagorean Monad if you like, i. e., a true indivisible, something which lasts for ever -- i. e., throughout the Cosmic Manvantara or present World-Period; not lasting for ever, indeed, in its enshrouding veils, but in and because of that mysterious and ineffable mystery of its Essential Self, which fact is almost inexpressible in the halting words of common usage, but which, nevertheless, the higher human soul easily may obtain some clear realization of. This, then, is the indivisible Center of consciousness, through and from which stream life and light and inspiration and intuition, and the impulses and compelling forces of impersonal love, and all the moral instincts and moral sense -- in short, all the faculties and attributes and powers which it sends forth or emanates from itself, building them into its enshrouding garments or veils, these garments or veils being its own spiritual-intellectual efflux or atmosphere of progressively diminishing and reduced consciousness. One of such veils is the Human Soul, itself the enclosing garment of the Human Ego -- the Reimbodying Ego so often spoken of in previous chapters of the present work.
The highest part of us, then, is the inner god, this Spiritual Atom, an Atom or Monad belonging in its own splendorous origin and subsequent evolutional development to realms of the spirit -- to the Spiritual Spheres or Worlds. When the human soul, by the process of unfolding from itself its monadic possibilities, gains its present human type of ability and power of manifesting the inner illumination in greater or less degree, depending upon the individual, we may then call this human soul 'the Human Atom' otherwise the Human Monad or Ego, which is the self-conscious center of the average human being, and which in its ordinary self-expressions or manifestations during earth-life we call the human soul, to use a popular phrase.
Man, essential Man, may thus in the last analysis be looked upon as a self-conscious Force or stream of Consciousness-Energy, and in its highest or monadic form that consciousness-energy is homogeneous, therefore being a unit, an Individual. In the last analysis it is this Monad which passes from individualized life to individualized life, from sphere to sphere, from world to world, constantly evolving and revolving, and constantly unfolding its inherent attributes and faculties; and in this way following the path of uninterrupted cosmical evolution. How could any thinking, conscious entity obtain all the experience that the vast planes of the Cosmos open before it by living one short physical life on this earth, on this one little spot in the wide ranges of the Solar Hierarchy? Its gathering of experiences in a single life is an insignificant fraction of what the Cosmos contains for it in the way of lessons to learn, of mysteries for it to solve, and of growth for it to achieve!
Even our ultra-modern physical scientists see carried on in the physical world a constant and indeed never-ending drama of flux and efflux, of change and interchange, of a constant peregrination of physical particles over a wide range in the Universe. They tell us of the peregrinations of the atoms and their electronic constituents that come to us from the sun and without doubt from the other planets. They tell us that this our own Earth likewise itself is continuously and incessantly emanating such forth from itself into surrounding space -- a modern scientific discovery or deduction which very luminously illustrates the doctrine of the Circulations of the Cosmos as taught in the Esoteric Philosophy.
Yet this is only an infinitesimal part of the wonderful mysteries about the Circulations of the Cosmos that are contained in the archaic teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy. There is indeed a constant circulation along the pathways of the Universe of the life-atoms, or atoms of individualized life, which imbody themselves or build around themselves what are called the chemical atoms -- temporary vehicles or integuments which are assumed and dropped, assumed and dropped, in unceasingly repetitive and regular series of imbodiments as these life-atoms circulate hither and yon: thus taking part in a constant movement to and fro from the bosom of Father-Sun and out again throughout his kingdom of the atoms, making the highways or paths which are followed and used by all beings and entities of higher evolutionary degree. Yes, all this, and a vast deal more. There is absolutely no accident about it, nor in any wise fortuitous or indefinite or unregulated procedure in action. It is the "Cycle of Necessity" of the ancient Greek philosophers. For no man, no being, no entity, no god, can live unto himself or itself alone: everything lives for everything else; everything works through and for everything else. We are all members of one Body Corporate whose dimensions are in very truth boundless Space, and whose Individuals are everlastingly peregrinating Monads. Along the wonderful circulations of the Universe, the pathways of Mystic Space, proceeds and returns every individualized being or entity that the Universe contains, on the most wonderful Adventure or series of adventures that the most powerful superhuman imagination could conceive.
FOOTNOTES:
356. The intention is not here to say that the period of human life characterized by the adjective 'adult' is in any sense whatsoever a period marked by no changes, whether of growth or of decay, for of course this would be obviously untrue. It is probable that not for a single instant after the attaining of the highest point in growth is there a period of uninterrupted stability, for we seem driven to conclude that from the instant when the peak has been reached, the descent towards old age thereupon at once ensues, however slight may be the appearances of the oncoming of old age in its first stages. The attempt in the text above is merely rapidly and briefly to delineate or sketch a picture. (return to text)
357. Kernels of the Universe, pp. 29-30. (return to text)
358. The author feels it only proper and frank to state here that this reference to what he has vaguely called the 'best' of the man, deals with a portion of the teaching which he has no authority nor privilege nor indeed wish to elaborate further. What is stated above in the text is correctly stated, although confessedly in an imperfect manner, because not all is stated. This brief remark seems called for in order to avoid even the possibility of misleading others through the making of statements which, however correct in form and substance, are imperfect and therefore apt to mislead if taken as being substantially the whole truth. Any Theosophical writer, who feels the enormous responsibility which falls upon anyone whose writings may sway the minds and therefore alter the lives of others, will be the first to realize the author's desire to make no statement that could be construed as final, if it is possible to avoid it. (return to text)
359. John, x, 30. (return to text)
360. It is customary among many people, either from thoughtlessness or from ignorance, to speak of the Astral World or Realm as being separated off from the physical world by a 'partition,' or by some similar dividing element, which, supposedly, according to this totally erroneous idea, thus prevents, or is a bar to, free and easy intercourse or interchange between the astral and physical worlds respectively. Nothing could be farther from the truth than this totally wrong conception. One might almost exclaim, "Would that it were so!"
There is absolutely no such partition or barrier or wall between the physical and the astral, for they in very truth melt into or blend with each other by indistinguishable gradations of matter verging from the most ethereal-physical into the most astral-material. There is, therefore, constant, uninterrupted, and incessant interchange between the physical and the astral world; and the only 'partition' or barrier that actually exists is those few grades of blending substances, which, far from being obstacles or obstructions to intercourse, actually and in very truth are the means of communication -- somewhat as the electric wire is the medium for communicating the electric current from point to point.
There are times in human history, which recur with cyclic or periodic regularity, when these few intervening 'grades' between the physical and the astral seem to wear thin; and at such times there occurs an inevitable and inescapable outbreak of psycho-astral happenings in the physical world and in human society, due to the 'thinness' of the 'grades' just spoken of. We are at the present time in just such a stage of astral-psychical outcroppings. These periods are invariably attended with very real dangers or perils both to human mentality and emotional stability, although they have the one redeeming feature -- if indeed it may be called such -- of arousing men's interest in things other than physical, and of suggesting to their minds the actual existence of spheres or worlds of being more ethereal than the physical.
The lesson to learn, however, is that these more ethereal worlds, are by no means or necessarily more spiritual than the physical; for the physical sphere is a highly safe and sane place, when compared with the lower regions of the Astral Light, and it is just these lower regions of the astral world, as above stated, with which intercourse from the physical plane is most easily established. (return to text)
361. 1 Cor., xv, 44. (return to text)
362. In order to avoid a misunderstanding it seems as well to enter a caveat here. Not all the life-atoms which compose or build a man's physical body are his own offspring or children -- emanations from his own life-essence; nevertheless the majority of them are. Because of the unceasing peregrinations or wanderings of the life-atoms as between man and man and backwards and forwards among men, there is at any one instant of time in any human physical body a certain number of these life-atoms -- aggregatively really of immense number -- which are 'guests' so to speak in this physical vehicle or body and which are attracted to it because of affinity and which likewise leave it because of another prevailing stronger affinity which draws them to a psycho-magnetically attracting body. An entire volume could be written around the one theme of the peregrinations and adventures of the life-atoms.
The reader is likewise requested constantly to keep in mind in perusing the paragraphs devoted to this topic that the life-atoms are of many classes or kinds and existing on every plane or grade of the human constitution, from the spiritual down to the physical body in and through all intermediate grades; so that there are spiritual, intellectual, psychical, astral, as well as physical life-atoms. Yet the principles of action which are manifest in the peregrinations of the life-atoms appertaining to the physical body are likewise the principles which are operative in and on all the other planes of man's composite constitution. (return to text)
363. With reference to the word paramanu and its significance, it may be as well to point out here that this compound is formed of two elements, to wit, parama, signifying 'chief' or 'primary' or 'highest'; and anu, signifying 'infinitesimal,' or as an adjective, 'atomic.' Hence the compound word means 'primal' or 'highest' or 'principal (infinitesimal) atom,' and in Hindu philosophy the paramanus are considered to form collectively the invisible and intangible elemental or infinitesimal particles of all aggregated or compound bodies -- and hence it is that paramanu in its higher philosophical and original signification corresponds precisely to what modern Theosophy calls a Monad.
It is to be carefully noted, however, that such primary infinitesimals are not mere points of 'dead matter,' which erroneous conception utterly misses the main idea; but that these infinitesimals are centers or points of pure unadulterate consciousness -- 'atoms of consciousness,' to speak in popular phrasing.
For the above reasons, the Cosmic Brahman in Hindu philosophy is frequently referred to as aniyas aniyasam -- 'minutest of the minute,' 'atomic of the atomic,' otherwise the essential substance or point of consciousness, which, precisely because it is essential consciousness, is all-permeant, being not only the heart of each and every atom in the Universe, but filling that Universe itself.
So greatly has the work of the Theosophical Movement in its dissemination of Theosophical ideas in the world brought about a change in human consciousness, even though unrecognised by most, that many ideas pertaining to the more esoteric side of Theosophy are actually in the air, and seem to be caught by ready and sensitively percipient minds, and sometimes in what would seem to be unexpected places. Some at least of our most noted and justly renowned ultra-modern scientists are as sensitive as others to these 'ideas in the air,' as witness the famous English astronomer and mathematician, Sir James Jeans, who writes in his The Mysterious Universe (1934), p. 58 (quoted here by permission of the Macmillan Co., publishers), as follows:
"For no matter how far we retreat from an electrified particle, we cannot get outside the range of its attractions and repulsions. This shews that an electron must, in a certain sense at least, occupy the whole of space."
This statement from the great English scientist is a downright remarkable one, for in it he ascribes to the very perplexing fugitive and apparently quasi-irresponsible electron, some at least of the attributes and qualities that belong to the Monad of the Esoteric Philosophy, in the said Monad's physical manifestation as a life-atom. It is evident enough from the foregoing citation that Jeans, doubtless wholly unconsciously, endows a modern scientific electron with a few of the characteristic attributes of the typical anu of the Esoteric Wisdom. What the Monad is to the life-atom, that the paramanu is to the anu. (return to text)