Theosophical University Press Online Edition
Carrying on the thought of several previous chapters over into the present one, it would seem useful to enter into a somewhat more elaborate exposition of the elements of the human constitution as they exist as elements or principles and as they are interconnected in their interblending activities. The human being is as yet a very imperfectly evolved or 'unfolded' entity, and, as a matter of fact, the seat of his present self-consciousness is in what may be called the intermediate portion of his septenary or denary, and therefore highly complex and composite, constitution. This intermediate portion in the Occident is commonly called the 'soul' -- as if there were only one 'soul' in man instead of there being a number of 'souls,' as indeed there are. But although the major part of man's self-consciousness has been for ages and will be for future ages functioning in this intermediate portion of his constitution, it must never be forgotten that every single one of the principles or elements, or to speak more accurately, every one of the monadic centers or 'knots' or foci of consciousness in his constitution has to be evolved or unfolded -- i. e., to become self-expressive -- before 'Man' shall have attained the full plenitude or complete efflorescence which the distant ages of future time will bring about. When he shall have reached this plenitude or full self-expression, or self-conscious activity in all the parts of his constitution, then he will be in very truth a god-man, and will, to use another descriptive phrase, be an imbodied Dhyani-Chohan, and but one degree beneath the root-base of his own Spiritual Hierarchy. But for ages upon ages into the future, it will be the destiny of the human being to bring into full and relatively complete evolved unfolding the intermediate or 'soul' part of his -- let us say -- septenary nature.
The mysteries concerning the different monads in man's constitution, or what are elsewhere in the present work called the 'knots' or foci of his nature, are extremely recondite, and in virtually all ancient literatures, whether of a religious or philosophic character, far more attention has been paid, and properly so, to the intermediate portion of man than to the other parts of him -- or, what comes to the same thing, to the other monadic centers or 'knots' or foci of consciousness inhering in his being and which make him the complete septenary (or denary) composite entity that he is.
In Christianity perhaps especially, at any rate since the end of the life of its great Founder, little attention or none whatsoever has been paid in its theology to the major complexities of man's being, and all Christian theologians, early, later, and latest, seem to have been satisfied to look upon the human being as builded or composed of three principles or basic elements, to wit: "spirit, soul, and body." Yet even here there has reigned from earliest Christian times an almost perfect confusion as regards the distinction, if indeed any was ever clearly laid down, between man's 'spirit' and man's 'soul'; and most Christian theologians, with a few possible and doubtful exceptions, seem to have considered these terms to be near-synonyms descriptive of the same thing, thus reducing the principles or elements of man's nature virtually to two: spirit or soul, and body.
Yet there would seem to be little doubt that immediately after the passing of Jesus the Avatara, and for some uncertain term of years, there actually was kept clear in the minds of Christian writers and exegetes a distinction between 'spirit' and 'soul,' although, as above stated, this distinction was very early lost sight of. The 'spirit,' in these early years of the Christian Era, was looked upon almost as a divine thing: a 'child of god,' a spark of divinity, which is exactly what it is. The 'soul' in primitive Christianity was very frequently called psyche, which is in fact the word used for 'soul' in the New Testament, from which Greek word the modern term 'psychology' of course is derivative.
Furthermore, in the very earliest time after the passing of the Avatara Jesus, there seems to have been a fairly clear and accurate understanding among Christians of the archaic Theosophical teaching concerning the vehicular aspect of man's nature: i. e., that man is a composite of vehicles, sheaths, garments, veils, both inclosing and imbodying his various faculties and attributes and powers; these vehicles, etc., being his inner, ethereal bodies and his outer body. Even in the Christian New Testament one may read of a "natural body," of a "psychical body," and of a "spiritual body."
It is a matter of worth to note that the Christian New Testament also speaks of the psyche as being 'demoniac' or 'devilish'; not that the psyche was the characteristic type or form of devils or demons, in the modern popular use of these words, but that by contrast with the divinity, the spirit, the spark of divinity in the inmost or in the core of the core, in the heart of the heart, of every human being, the psyche or the 'soul' was so imperfect that it was spoken of as 'devilish'; but as just stated, only so because contrasting so greatly with the supernal beauty and splendor and power of the spiritual nature or 'spirit,' the former being still an unfolding or growing entity.
Now, while the average Christian layman of today will probably say that there is no difference between 'spirit' and 'soul,' as will probably the average modern Christian theologian likewise, yet the philosophies and religions of all times and all over the globe have made a sharp distinction between these two, and have invariably done so on the obvious ground that man is a compound entity who has by no means as yet come into the full efflorescence of the attributes and faculties of his higher or spiritual nature, but lives very largely if not wholly in his intermediate or 'soul' nature.
This distinction between spirit and soul has always been prevalent and universally so in the philosophical and religious thought of mankind, and the Great Seers and Sages have in this connexion always taught that just because the individual man or human being is an inseparable and integral portion of the surrounding Universe, therefore he copies or repeats in himself, i. e., in his constitution, precisely and exactly what Mother Nature, his great Parent, herself contains and is. They taught that both the Universe, the Macrocosm, and man, the microcosm, are composite beings consisting of an exterior physical vehicle called the body, and of inner powers, faculties, forces, attributes, working through inner and invisible and more subtil vehicles or bodies by means of which and through which the inmost part of the constitution of either, which is the Spirit, transmits into the outer physical world such streams of inner spiritual radiance as the evolution of the Individual permits at any time. This statement is applicable to the Universe on the one hand, and to any one of its component or integral parts such as Man, on the other hand. These inner powers, faculties, forces, attributes, with the respective spiritual or ethereal inner vehicles through which they work or express themselves, taking the case of man in illustration, are the composite constitution of a human being, and they form the 'Golden Chain' from the divine in Man down through the soul-part to the astral and physical vehicles. It is the 'soul'-part which is the so-called intermediate part of man's composition. This portion of man's nature, often called the 'human soul,' corresponds to what in the Universe is the 'Oversoul' -- adopting a word from Emerson. Above and actually superior to this intermediate soul-nature, whether in the Universe or in Man, is the Spirit, Cosmic or human.
The Esoteric Philosophy, as the reader has already learned, usually speaks of man as a septenary, or indeed a denary, being, and insists upon this as a fact; but this is in no sense a teaching contrary to its briefer and more popular form which states that man is a threefold being, spirit, soul, and body; and it may be just as well for a clearer understanding of what is set forth in this chapter, to show, in at least a succinct manner, that these two different divisions of man's constitution, the sevenfold and the threefold, are not contradictory but are in reality two manners of stating one and the same truth.
Precisely as the Universe or Cosmos has its serial range of principles or elemental substances, from the very spiritual or super-spiritual, usually called the divine, down to the physical, thus including all stages between the physical and divine, so has Man, for he is builded or formed in exact repetitive copy of the Universe, his Cosmic Parent. Now these principles and elemental substances composing man, which together make the aggregated or composite unity of the forces and ethereal substances which man is, we may divide for the sake of convenience into seven distinct parts, in this division strictly following the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy, although in saying that any one of them is 'distinct,' it is not meant that it is radically separate or radically different from the other six; it is meant only that these principles or elemental substances are thus distinguished for purposes of enumeration, and also because not one of them is identic in characteristic with the other six. Much after the same manner modern scientific physicists will speak of gravitation and of the phenomena of electro-magnetism as distinct -- as indeed they are; although these ultra-modern scientists, having in mind the mathematical work of Einstein and others, seem to be tending towards the opinion that electro-magnetism and gravity may be and probably are fundamentally or essentially one.
The seven substance-principles of which man is composed are usually enumerated in modern Theosophical literature somewhat as follows, the subjoined list beginning with the highest principle and ending with the lowest or most material element. (415)
THE DIVINE MONAD
1. Atman, the essential Self:
Pure Consciousness per se. The essential or radical principle or element or faculty in us which gives to us, and indeed to every other being or entity, our knowledge or sentient consciousness of pure Selfhood. This, it is to be carefully noted, is not the Ego. (416)
2. Buddhi:
The faculty or spiritual organ in Man which manifests or self-expresses itself as intuition, understanding, judgment, discrimination, etc. It is the inseparable veil or garment of the Atman.
3. Manas:
This is the center or organ of the ego-consciousness in man and in any other quasi-self-conscious entity; and is therefore the seat or producing cause of the 'I am I.'
4. Kama:
The organ or seat of the vital psycho-electric impulses, desires, aspirations, considered in their energic aspects, etc., and therefore the elemental or driving force in the human constitution. As every one of the seven principles or substances in man's constitution is itself septenary on analogical lines of structure, therefore there is a divine and spiritual kama as well as a merely grossly emotional kama, with all intermediate stages or steps.
5. Prana:
This is usually translated in modern Theosophical works as 'Life'; but it is more accurately said to be the electro-magnetic veil or 'electrical field' manifesting in the human individual as vitality.
6. Linga-sarira:
The astral model-body; popularly called 'astral body' because it is but slightly more ethereal than the physical body, and is, in fact, the astral model or astral framework around which the physical body is builded, atom for atom, molecule for molecule, cell for cell, and from which, in a sense, the physical body flows forth, or from and out of which the physical body develops as growth proceeds.
7. Sthula-sarira:
The physical body, 'gross body' or material body; the body of material or physical substance. This, strictly speaking, is no real 'principle' or elemental substance at all, but functions as the common 'carrier' of all the inner constitution of the human being during any lifetime on Earth.
The words in the left-hand column of the above list are all Sanskrit words, and would seem to require no especial elaboration as regards their various or individual meanings, except what has just been stated in the right-hand column opposite to each term.
Since Man, inclusive of all the various parts of his constitution, is a microcosm of the Macrocosm, and therefore a copy or mirroring in the small of what the Macrocosm or Universe is in the great, one could apply the seven principles or elements in the above list to the Universe itself. This would be absolutely correct both in the general and in the particular. The only objection to such macrocosmic application is the fact that the seven principles or elements as above named and outlined have from immemorial time been restricted by convention or use to the constitution of microcosmic entities alone, of which entities Man himself is an evolved type. The Sanskrit names given to the various principles or elements in the above list have been chosen in modern Theosophy because more easily understandable than are the technical terms used in the Esoteric Philosophy which would be meaningless to Westerners today; and it should be added, too, that the above septenary constitution of the human being is that which is the archaic division of the occultism of the Esoteric Philosophy, and hence differs in some important respects as regards outlook, but not at all as regards substance, from septenary divisions of the human being that may be found in other and indeed later philosophies or religions, such as in some of those of ancient India, for example. Furthermore, the septenary list as given above from the archaic occultism of the Esoteric Philosophy, is to be strictly construed as meaning and defining the constitution of man as being composed of Elements or Principles, rather than as 'knots' or foci of different monadic component consciousnesses. A later list given in this chapter will elucidate this latter form of viewing the human constitution.
Precisely because the above septenary list is to be construed as giving the constitution of man as a compound of seven Elements or Principles rather than as seven foci of consciousness, it may be likened if somewhat distantly, to the manner in which the modern chemist will describe some compounded body as being formed of such and other chemical 'elements,' so called. This point is of some radical importance because among other things it is based upon a most important teaching of the Archaic Wisdom to the effect that all beings and entities and things that are, Man himself therefore included, are integral parts or portions of the environing Universe and therefore inseparable from it. Again, and following the same key-note of thought, man's Principles and Elements as above given are what they are because he receives them from, or builds himself out of, the materials, i. e., the forces and substances, of which the Universe itself is builded. Hence when it is stated, as in the preceding paragraph, that the above list is absolutely as applicable to the Universe as it is to man himself, or indeed to any being, this way of phrasing the matter is somewhat of a hysteron proteron, because the truer and more accurate manner of speaking would be to say that man's constitution is so divided because the constitution of the Universe is divisible thus.
The subjoined list gives the principles of the Cosmos or Universe with the terms in the left-hand column drawn from various ancient schools of thought, and these terms, collected together as they are to signify any single Principle or Element, are so collected because they are virtually synonymous, making due allowances of course for minor differences or shades of meaning. The explanations that are given opposite each item, and on the right-hand side of the list, are descriptive. Thus then:
Parabrahman-Mulaprakriti or
Amulamula (Rootless Root) or
The Boundless or
Eyn Suph ('without bounds') or
The Infinitude of Space and Time
1. Paramatman, Brahman-Pradhana, Cosmic Monad:
The Monas Monadum of Pythagoras and the ancient philosophers. The Supreme Monadic Self of any Cosmic Hierarchy -- ours in this instance. The Root from which flows forth in descending serial order and progression all the other six Principles or Elements of the Universe, each evolving or unfolding or unwrapping from the one preceding. The First or Unmanifest Logos.
2. Alaya. Adi-Buddhi, or Maha-Buddhi, or Cosmic Buddhi. Akasa or Pradhana. The Root or Essence of Mahat. Anima Mundi, Cosmic Aether:
The seat or origin of the Cosmic Soul; the source of all intelligent order, regularity, and 'laws' in the Universe or Hierarchy. The Second or quasi-manifest Logos.
3. Mahat or Cosmic Mind, Intelligence, Consciousness:
The source or center of all Monadic Individualities in the Hierarchy; Individualized Intelligence, Mind, Consciousness, as contrasted with the Universal as in No. 2 above. The Third or so-called 'Creative' Logos. The Manifest Purusha-Prakriti.
4. Cosmic Kama:
The 'Desire' of the Rig-Veda, which Desire is pure impersonal universal compassion and sympathy; the source of the cosmic driving or impelling energies of the Universe involving the living intelligently electric impulses thereof. The womb of Fohat, considered as the motive yet intelligently guided Force or Forces of the Hierarchical Universe.
5. Cosmic Jiva or Cosmic Vitality:
The cosmical psycho-electro-magnetic field; the fountain and source of the Cosmic vitality permeating all beings and things in the Hierarchy and from which all these individuals derive their respective Pranas.
6. 'Astral Light': Cosmic Ether:
This is, in the Cosmical Hierarchy, the lowest actively or positively functioning aspect of the Anima Mundi of No. 2 above. It is to the Cosmical Hierarchy what the Model-Body, or Linga-sarira, is to the human body. There are great mysteries connected with the Astral Light which it would be truly impossible to elaborate in this list. It may, however, briefly be stated that it is, as H. P. Blavatsky graphically phrases it in her Theosophical Glossary, p. 38: "The invisible region that surrounds our globe, as it does every other, and corresponding as the second Principle of the Kosmos (the third being Life, of which it is the vehicle) to the Linga-sharira or the Astral Double in man. A subtle Essence visible only to a clairvoyant eye, and lowest but one (viz., the earth), of the Seven Akasic or Kosmic Principles."
The Astral Light is the great reservoir, receptacle, as well as crucible, in which all the effluxes and emanations of the Earth, whether psychical, moral, or physical, are received, and after undergoing therein a myriad of ethereal alchemical changes are reflected or radiated back to the Earth, or to any other globe in the Hierarchy, thus producing epidemic troubles or diseases, whether these latter be physical, psychic, or moral. It is likewise the seat or 'place,' as is seen from the words immediately preceding, of all the horrible and vile emanations which the Earth radiates. It is likewise and in consequence in the Astral Light that are found the various degrees or stages of the Kama-loka -- or more accurately speaking the lower degrees or stages of the Kama-loka.
7. Sthura-sarira (Sthula-sarira):
The physical universe -- the outward shell or body or integument or garment or veil of the six more ethereal Element-Principles preceding it in the above list.
It is extremely important to remember in studying and reflecting over the two lists hereinbefore given, respectively that of the element-principles of the human constitution and that of the Cosmic Constitution, that these two lists are diagrammatic and are therefore suggestive of the structure of the Universe, and are not to be misconstrued to mean that the separate element-principles, whether in the Universe or in man, are to be taken lying one on top of another, after the manner of a stair, or the flats in an apartment-house. Such a misconception would be wholly erroneous and would greatly mislead the mind. All these Elements or Principles are to be strictly understood as interpenetrating, interblending, interlocking, and as absolutely interwoven with each other. It is only by a convention, or a common usage, that the different items in the list are for the sake of convenience placed one above another, and this is done solely in order to suggest to the mind the increasing degree of ethereality from the lowest one through them all to the top, and during this rising scale of etherealization, the ethereal finally becomes the spiritual, itself flowing forth from its own superior Source, which is the Divine.
Furthermore, taking either one of these two lists, and one will do as well as the other, and beginning with the highest or most spiritual, each principle or element flows forth from or is unrolled from its immediate superior. Thus No. 1 unfolds or evolves forth or more strictly speaking emanates forth No. 2, which thus possesses not only its own individual characteristic or swabhava or individuality, but contains likewise somewhat of the swabhava or characteristics of its parent; similarly No. 3 is unfolded or evolved or emanated forth from No. 2, and thus contains in its growing complexity and differentiation not only its own intrinsic or characteristic individuality or swabhava, but likewise the respective swabhavas of No. 2 and No. 1; and thus down throughout the list to No. 7, which is the elaborated and differentiated 'carrier' or 'bearer' or 'manifestor' of all the other six. It is likewise carefully to be noted that the higher become progressively weakened, so to speak, or less strongly luminous, the farther the process of unfolding or evolution proceeds downwards into the material spheres.(417)
As is evident from the above, man -- or indeed any other being or entity in the Universe -- is builded of elements drawn from the cosmic reservoir. Yet man, from another point of view, may be considered to be something other than a mere 'bundle of cosmic energies' -- although of course whatever he is is derivative from the Universe of which he is an offspring, and an inseparable and integral part. He is, in fact, in his constitution, a series of consciousness-centers or Monads. There is, for instance, in the human constitution, a divine monad, also a spiritual monad, also an intellectual monad or Agnishwatta; there is likewise a psychical monad, which is Man as man at present is; similarly a beast-monad; and even the lowest triad or three elements of the human constitution -- that is to say, Prana, Linga-sarira, and Sthula-sarira, imbody what one might very truly and justly call an astral-physical monad.
As just stated, Monad means a center of consciousness -- let that center of consciousness be evolving on whatever plane. In other words, the Monad is an Individual. The heart of this center of consciousness or Monad we may call an Inner God, the center of consciousness of the Monadic consciousness, which inner god is the essential or intrinsic Higher Self.
A simple illustration drawn from Nature's material sphere may perhaps aid in making this thought clearer. As the student of Esotericism knows, the mystic or inmost 'heart' of our Sun is a Divinity manifesting through various inner ethereal vehicles all working together through their common 'carrier' the solar physical vehicle -- which is an immense body or aggregate of many kinds of forces -- which we commonly call the Sun. The sun emits rays, rays of many kinds including vital rays. Let us single out one of these rays for our illustration. A ray of light enters a darkened room which we may call the material world. It has its source in its Inner God, which is Father Sun. In a darkened room it appears as a beam of light. Pass this light through a prism and you get the seven prismatic rays. Each one of these rays actually is a light of its own color; yet the seven unite to form the constitution of the solar beam. Each one of these prismatic colored rays has its origin in its own solar monad, just as in man's constitution, as above said, there are the various monads -- the divine, the spiritual, the intellectual, etc. -- all working together to make the constitution of man, just as the seven prismatic rays work together or combine to make the solar beam. The origin or heart of the beam is the Inner God or Solar Divinity sending forth from itself the seven children-monads or seven party-rays or prismatic rays combining to form the constitution of the radiation, which thus becomes the manifested radiated individual beam. Let us say that one of these seven rays of the beam is the highest. We will call that the efflux of its Divine Monad. Another of these seven rays of the beam let us call the ray flowing forth from its Spiritual Monad. Another of the seven prismatic rays we will say is a ray flowing forth from its Intellectual Monad; and so forth down the scale.(418)
Here then we see that we have seven monads combining to form on this plane a manifested being and all seven nevertheless issuing forth from the heart of their common Father-Monad, the 'god in heaven,' or the beam's Inner God. Yet, wonderful mystery! the 'heart' of each one of these children-monads, although united to form the constitution of the beam and although flowing forth from the bosom of the Father-Monad, is nevertheless itself on its own plane a divinity and therefore itself a Father-Monad. No wonder is it that the ancients spoke of man as a composite being, a microcosm containing in himself a duplication or replica of the vast Universe!
As Jakob Boehme, whom H. P. Blavatsky has called "a nursling of the Nirmanakayas," says:
For the Book in which all mysteries lie, is man himself: he himself is the book of Being of all beings, seeing he is the likeness of Divinity. The Great Arcanum lies in him; the revealing of it belongs only to the Divine Spirit.(419)
Thus even the humble shoemaker of Gorlitz, who lived at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, from his own intuitions quickened by nirmanakayic aid, and although he spoke in the quasi-Christian phraseology with which his brain-mind was so familiar, taught the same fundamental verity, that man is but the replica in the small or a mirroring in the small of whatever the Macrocosm itself contains. How could it be otherwise? If every being or entity that exists is an integral and inseparable portion of the Cosmic Whole, it is of course evident enough that every such being or entity is permeated throughout with whatever is in the ocean of Cosmic Life in which such being or entity lives and moves and has its existence.
Now let us see how the classification of man's constitution (which means the aggregate of all his organic parts, both inner and outer, into one) into seven parts, these parts considered either as substance-principles or as the seven monadic centers,(420) corresponds to the equally aggregated but less elaborated division of man's nature into three parts, or the common trichotomy more familiar in the West:
UPPER DUAD = Atma-Buddhi = 'Spirit'
The essential or Spiritual Self. This, which is the perpetual Root of man's constitution, lasts in uninterrupted activity on its own plane throughout the entire and vast length of the Kosmic Period or Galactic Mahamanvantara. This, then, is the real divine-spiritual Monad, unconditionally immortal for the Galactic period, and is the source whence flows forth in serial degrees or stages, all the lower portions of man's constitution, each portion unrolling or unwrapping, i. e., evolving, from its immediate predecessor, such unfolding or emanating of the constitution continuing throughout the Galactic Period in the form of recurring 'events' at and preceding each new reimbodiment.
INTERMEDIATE DUAD = Manas-Kama = 'Soul'
This Duad is the seat of the Human Ego, which is dual. The duality is composed of, first, the higher portion which aspires constantly upwards and which in its essence is the Reimbodying Ego; and, second, a lower portion, attracted downwards to the realms of material existence, which is the lower or ordinary human ego. This Duad falls apart invariably at the death or shortly after the death following each reincarnation. The Reincarnating Ego is then attracted upwards to the Upper Duad, and thus partakes of the latter's immortality; and the lower portion, after giving up to the Reincarnating Ego whatever of spirituality it may contain, after death, falls apart or is decomposed into its constituent life-atoms, which life-atoms immediately seek their proper and appropriate natural reservoir or plane. Thus the lower part of the Intermediate Duad is mortal.
LOWER TRIAD = Prana Linga-sarira Sthula-sarira = 'Body'
This Lower Triad is mortal throughout; not however in the constituent life-atoms thereof, but as a triadic vehicle or sheath or veil. It is, in other words, the physical human frame with its invisible forces and substances of both vital-astral and physical type.
From the above diagram it is seen how the seven principles or elements of the human constitution are divisible into a trichotomy of parts, which, as before stated, are commonly known in the West under the names 'spirit,' 'soul,' and 'body.' We further see that the seven principles or elements of man are otherwise properly divisible into two Duads and one Triad. It will be seen from the description in the right-hand side of the above diagram that the Upper Duad is the immortal and ever-enduring Essential Self, the seat of the fundamental selfhood in man, and equivalently so in other beings or entities whose constitution is similarly septenary, as indeed every being or entity is. In other words, the Upper Duad is the seat of the characteristic spiritual individuality of the being or entity, which characteristic individuality is what in Sanskrit is called the Swabhava of such a being.
It might be added also that whereas its life-term -- if this rather misleading word is permissible here -- lasts as long as the Mahamanvantara of the Galactic Universe, nevertheless this does not imply its final or ultimate extinction. When the Galaxy itself shall have reached its final term of manvantaric activity, it will then sink into its Galactic Pralaya, carrying along with itself everything within it, Gods, Monads, and Atoms, which are then swept out of merely manifested or differentiated existence like dried leaves in the autumn winds -- all of which, including of course the Galaxy itself, will reappear when the Galactic Pralaya has reached the end of its immensely long term, and will then bring a new and vast cycle of galactic manifestation, but on a somewhat higher plane than that on which it now is. The reader of course will remember that our sun and its attendant planets, in other words our solar system, is an integral part of the Galaxy.
In the above diagram, we notice that the second or Intermediate Duad, or the intermediate nature of man, is the seat of ordinary human consciousness, which is, as everyone knows, a dual being composed of, first an upper or spiritually aspiring part, which in modern Theosophical philosophy is commonly called the Reincarnating Ego, or the Higher Manas; and a lower part which is heavily weighted with emotional and psychical and astral psycho-magnetic characteristics and which in consequence is strongly attracted to material things. Hence this lower part is the 'knot' or focus of consciousness which expresses itself in the average man as the ordinary Human Ego -- in other words, it is his everyday ordinary seat of human self-consciousness. This lower part, again, is unconditionally mortal, because there is really nothing in it of a truly spiritual character which is capable of raising itself by aspiration towards union with the higher part. For it is the conglomerate of all the lower mental, passional, psychical, and often ignoble, attributes or characteristics of human life. Just here we see the reason for the constant and emphatic admonitions of all the great Teachers of mankind to raise the seat of man's self-consciousness out of this lower averagely common or ordinary human plane into the upper and more spiritual part of the 'soul' or Intermediate Duad, so that what is thus raised during the life on Earth may become part and portion of the texture and fabric of the Reimbodying Ego, and thus attain the relative 'immortality' of the latter. It is in just this portion of the human constitution that the first steps towards mahatmaship or masterhood are made, by self-control, self-conquest, and similar moral exercise. The Mahatman is precisely he who through a number of lives, and without interruption of effort, has succeeded in constantly enlarging degree in raising at first a portion of this lower part and finally the entirety of the lower 'soul' to become 'at-one' with the spiritual nature within himself. When this is achieved, he becomes a Spiritual Man on Earth; in his larger completion of it, a man-god. He can then at will, governed of course by his individual karman, pass from life to life, or rather from chosen body to chosen body, and continue uninterruptedly his great work as a member of the Brotherhood of which he has now become an integral constituent.
As to the three elements which form the lower Triad of the human being, these are obviously unconditionally mortal considered as a triadic aggregate; although it should be of course evident enough that the respective seed-elements of each, being drawn from Nature's cosmic reservoirs, are in themselves and considered as cosmic principles, immortal per se -- at least in their spiritual essence. This last thought will be clearly perceptible when it is remembered that even the Sthula-sarira, or physical atomic hierarchy of the human body, is builded or composed of cosmic elements, in their turn formed of atomic entities, which, although subject individually to bewilderingly rapid changes and reimbodiments, nevertheless are more enduring in themselves as entities than is the aggregated physical body which they temporarily combine to compose and form.(421)
Considering the above diagram as a whole it is seen that placed above it as a luminous star in radiation is the divine-spiritual link of the man's constitution with the cosmos, and that this link may otherwise be considered to be the 'root' formed of three Principles or Spiritual Elements, which in one sense can perhaps hardly be said to be above the Atman, but which are, so to say, that same Atman's highest and most glorious origin, and which are therefore represented above the diagram as here given by the emblematic symbol of a 'star' or a 'sun' or 'globe' of radiating light, containing at its core a dotted triangle suggesting the triadic divine-spiritual Root above mentioned.
Thus in whatever way one may describe the constitution of Man, there is one fundamental thought that should constantly be borne in mind: That man's real nature or composite constitution is 'legion.' He is really a composite of an actual host or army of entities, of an incomprehensibly vast multitude of less or inferior beings and things, extending all along and throughout his constitution from the heart of the Universe itself, 'downwards' or 'outwards' to his physical body and its various organs. And it is to be remembered that the various divisions of man's constitution, whether enumerated as tenfold or sevenfold or fivefold or threefold, and the various names given to these various divisions, are employed descriptively for the purpose of the analytic studying of characteristically different portions or aspects of his manifold being.
The trichotomy, or division into three, of man's constitution as given above, is a convenient one for the purposes of the present study, because it is the 'soul,' the intermediate portion of man's nature, and its relations and connexions with the higher part of the human constitution, which will have main place in this chapter and in the one following. From the various statements and hints which have been given it will doubtless have been seen that all human evolutionary development is the unfolding or 'raising' of the intermediate or merely human ego-self out of the bonds of selfishness, i. e., out of the worlds of matter 'upwards' into spirit; out of the limited viewpoint of the human ego into the vastly expanded and more greatly comprehensive life of the spiritual being of man.
In the West, true or genuine psychology is practically an unknown territory of knowledge, although, as everyone knows, 'psychology' has become in the West virtually a word to swear by, and this almost solely because some trifling accumulation of knowledge of man's psychological characteristics has become known through study by specialists during the last fifty to one hundred years. The pity of it all is, however, that Western psychology is little better than a very imperfect investigation of the lower or lowest portions of the human mind and emotions, and verges commonly on what one may perhaps call the higher aspects of physiology.
The Theosophist has little patience and even less sympathy with what is commonly known under the name of 'psychoanalysis' because this term seems to comprise merely the ideas of one or two or possibly three or four individuals who have devoted a certain portion of their life to studying human psychical and mental reactions to external stimuli, and have from their investigations built shaky structures of theory which all too often are degrading to the human being, because the ideas of the investigators have been almost wholly based upon the materialism or materialistic theories of what is now a by-gone generation of specialists in medicine and physiology. All the higher and highest parts of man's constitution seem to be either tacitly ignored or looked upon as by-products of the human psyche and therefore having little reality if any at all in the principles and elements of man's invisible constitution. But the exact contrary of this last supposition is the fact; for it is precisely these spiritual and higher intellectual attributes, faculties, qualities, and their respective functions, which are the substantial basis or root of man's being, and it is their feeble reflexions in the human brain and nervous system after their passage through the psyche of the human constitution, which produce the strangely varied and variegated phenomena that man evidences -- especially and particularly so when the body is more or less either diseased or, because of some possible lesion, functioning imperfectly.
It is, really, rather absurd to suppose that debilitated constitutions, or the constitutions of human individuals weakened in one way or another, perhaps by some prevailing vice, or perhaps because of imperfect organic functioning, should be taken as standards upon which to base studies concerning even the human psyche. This psyche is in fact the lower part of the Intermediate Duad, herein before described as being unconditionally mortal and as being the seat of all the lower, baser, ignoble, or, at the best, unattractive attributes and qualities of the normal human being. Hence, it should be clear enough that the proper study of the psyche of the normal human individual cannot properly be followed or made in clinics and hospitals, nor in consulting rooms of psychoanalysts; but the truth concerning the human psyche should be sought for in the normal individual as far as such a norm can be found in a civilization whose individuals present such wide differences of even psychical personality.(422)
If we then should group all the various attributes and qualities of the lower intermediate nature of man under the general term psyche, we should likewise group all man's noblest attributes, qualities, and functions under some other equally significant term, and perhaps no better one could be found than to turn to the Greek from which the word psychology is drawn and describe the seat of these higher functions of the human constitution under the term pneumatology. However, we are not here discussing or laboring mere descriptive words or terms, but rather are studying facts as they exist in the human being. One of these days our scientists of whatever school or group will realize that the modern West is but opening up for itself or rather re-opening fields of investigation concerning the human individual and his nature and characteristics which are in fact a very old story in other parts of the world, as in India for instance, where the entire constitution of man has been studied from time immemorial, and more especially perhaps those best and finest and most powerful parts or portions of the human constitution which we have above grouped under the term pneumatology. There too, as well as elsewhere, what is now grouped under the term psychology has likewise been studied for ages upon ages; but so immensely more important have been found the studies relating to the pneumatological aspect of the human being, that these latter for unknown millennia past have almost ousted the psychological aspects from other than a relatively unimportant position in the studies of the human being which the Sages of the globe have made their speciality.
As a matter of fact the better class of Orientals are more or less accustomed to the study of psychologic mysteries by the almost unconsciously directed training that they receive in the study of their magnificent religious and philosophical systems, which guide them even from childhood to realize that there are in the world extremely subtil and mysterious forces which play through the human psychological mask, in other words, through man's inner constitution, and which forces form of one man a sage and saint and of another man a human brute and rogue.
Every self-conscious human being, yes, even every quasi-conscious entity, has the instinctive perception of a fundamental fact of his being, which is the sheer understanding of pure consciousness: 'I am.' This abstraction of all relative qualities and attributes, and the freeing of the percipients from their functional domination, frees the Ego in man both to cognise and to recognise this fundamental essential stream of consciousness expressing itself as 'I am,' without color, without recognisable limitation. It is in all of us, and in all of us it is the same, the identic, thing. It differs not in one from what it is in another; being the essence in us of the Universal Self, it is obviously the same in all of us -- the sheer, unadulterate, attributeless, consciousness of 'I am.'
But flowing from it, and so to say beneath it in spiritual dignity, yet its child, as it were, by reflexion -- a reflexion of the Self in the fields of man's constitution -- there is the consciousness, a consciousness of limitation involving cognition of particular and special attributes, qualities, faculties, and their respective functionings, which each feels in himself as 'I am I, not you.' This latter is obviously the Ego, the ever-active, limited, quality-ridden, loving, hating, aspiring, and often appetitive, 'you' and 'I' -- in other words, the average human being. This is the reason why the Theosophist, when he speaks of the 'lower nature,' usually does not mean the physical body alone, which after all is little else than a more or less automatic instrument responding mechanically and in varying degree to the impulses from the psychological or intermediate nature: but he usually means this very psychological nature, for it is truly our personal self, with all its limitations and distorted visions, and therefore is the maker of the illusions which blind, and the source of the passions which mislead.
Through its imprisonment in matter as a Ray of the over-ruling spiritual-intellectual Self, it learns to know what modern European philosophers rather quaintly call 'subject and object' -- in other words, it learns to reflect its consciousness back upon itself, thus obtaining cognition of its self as self-conscious and hetero-conscious: knowing itself, and knowing what it falsely calls 'non-self,' or other selves. It is the Spiritual Self, however, which recognises that these 'other selves' are derivative in other individuals from the same Cosmic Self of which the Spiritual Self in our hypothetical observer itself is a derivative, and hence the man who rises into self-conscious union with his over-ruling Spiritual Self learns to look upon these 'other selves' not merely as 'sisters' or as closely akin to itself, but, as it were, other expressions or manifestations of the essential selfhood within his own being. This grand and really sublime verity is a truth which is almost wholly lost to the consciousness of the West, enormously to the latter's detriment.
If the Theosophical Society did nothing else than to restore to the West this common consciousness of a common origin for all men, it would well merit the highest commendation and gratitude of the human race.(423)
In the intermediate or psychological portion, as above stated, lie all the elements of ordinary human consciousness, a consciousness which is pulled this way and that because of its own inherent attractions to things whether of spirit whether of matter, as the case may be; and the destiny of this intermediate portion depends upon its receiving the inspiring and refining influences of its parent-spirit on the one hand, or, on the other hand, falling victim to the strong pull of the material forces and substances which link it to the lowest part of the human constitution, the Lower Triad of the diagram given above.
We have thus before us the picture of the human constitution as a threefold entity: first, a highest principle or element of perpetual and unimaginable splendor, the product or rather the flowering of long past ages of aeonic evolution; second, the intermediate part, likewise the product of past ages of evolution, but still imperfect, and therefore still more or less subject and servile to the interacting play of the various forces resident in ethereal substance surrounding it; thirdly, the vital-astral-physical element, a more or less fugitive compound.(424)
It is a very ancient teaching, which has been to a certain extent corroborated even by the work of modern psychologists, that whereas the principles or elements of man's highly complex constitution work instinctively together in a perfectly coherent manner, and are naturally so correlated that the complete entitative human being is the harmonious interconnexion and interblending of them all, nevertheless, it is not only possible, but indeed occasionally happens, that either one of the two Upper Duads becomes as it were dislocated or relatively non-functional with the other two principles of the threefold division, and either of these cases may happen without causing the death of the human entity. The next few pages may usefully be devoted to at least a brief study of these extremely interesting cases of what is here called 'dislocations.'
It is of course obvious that when an absolute separation of the Lower Triad from the two superior Duads takes place, there ensues what is called physical death, and this is of course the ultimate destiny of all human beings. Physical death may seem like a process of deprivation of faculty and power to those who are not accustomed to philosophical thinking, or who imagine that Man as a complete heptad or septenary entity, as he is during earth-life, is the standard or representative type of a being possessing a unitary consciousness. The exact contrary of this supposition, however, is the real truth. Every increase in number of the substance-principles composing an entity means a corresponding decrease in freedom of spiritual faculty and power, and therefore even of life, because each such substance-principle added as a veil or sheath enclosing the spiritual-intellectual Ray from the Upper Duad, by so much the more beclouds and dims the transcendent Light always streaming forth through the Upper Duad from the heart of the Monad. Thus it happens that physical death means a greater freedom, it means a release, for the higher portions of man, because it means the rupturing, at least to a certain extent, of the veils or sheaths or garments which becloud or enshroud the inner Transcendent Spiritual Sun.
However, setting the matter of physical death aside, in which case both the Upper and Intermediate Duads still remain for a certain portion of time conjoined or united in the Kama-loka of the Astral Light, let us turn to a consideration of those particular cases in which either one or the other of the two superior Duads becomes 'dislocated' or non-functional in greater or less degree. Let us take, first, the case of the abandonment, by and on the part of the Upper Duad, of the united Intermediate Duad conjoined or bound with the Lower Triad -- a case which happens, or can happen -- during life on earth. Such instances are extraordinarily numerous when the 'dislocation' or 'abandonment' of the Upper Duad is partial and incomplete, so that all the lower portions of the human constitution, to wit the Intermediate Duad united with the Lower Triad, receive in less full flow or measure the spiritual and spiritual-intellectual influences from above. Such cases of partial or incomplete union of the lower man with the Upper Duad are, as stated, extraordinarily numerous, and are the cases of 'soulless' beings,(425) whose condition is to be sharply distinguished from that of 'lost souls.' Both these conditions have been described more or less at length in a previous chapter. When an absolute separation of the Upper Duad or the spiritual nature from the Intermediate Duad and the Lower Triad comprising the vital-astral-physical, which two still then remain in vital union, takes place, we have the occurrence of a truly dreadful fate for the unified two portions left behind; for this is what is known as the case of a 'lost soul' -- the reference being of course to the 'human soul.' This term 'lost soul' may not be perfectly accurately descriptive, nor perfectly correct as a phrase, but it is sufficiently accurate as a term to describe and to set forth the destiny of the lower bipartite portion of the human entity thus abandoned by its inner spiritual Essence. This condition comes about as a climax to a long term of persistent non-spirituality in a series of lives, and may perhaps be more fully described somewhat in the following way: If a man -- any man -- has lived a thoroughly, constantly, irretrievably wicked life, full of hate, servile to ignoble passions and vices, etc., there is from such a life nothing that the Spiritual Soul, at death, can carry away with it into Devachan, and such a human soul thereupon incarnates almost immediately again as a man, but in a lower state and in a more imperfect human body than that possessed in the life just recently closed.
Imagine a number of such lives, fruitless from the standpoint of the spiritual nature or the Upper Duad, and suppose that the spiritual, intellectual and moral degeneration continue, as it certainly will, as long as this unhappy human being follows its appetites and bestial instincts. The time is finally reached when the septenary or sevenfold constitution is broken up by the withdrawal from it of the Upper Duad, in which case we have the condition of a 'lost soul' which continues to reincarnate without intermediate post-mortem period until the remaining store or treasury of energy inhering in such a 'lost' being is exhausted, bringing on the dissipation of the life-atoms thereof, in which case what remains of the entity simply goes to pieces and of course thereafter incarnates no more. The human soul has simply been starved to death, and is, indeed, practically shriveled into non-being.(426)
But during the process of degenerative decay just described, there is always the possibility that the unfortunate being sliding downwards may be redeemed by the 'Christos,' the Spiritual Soul, the Upper Duad; because, if even one single spiritual aspiration should be or can be aroused in the disintegrating human soul, it has then instantly the chance to cling to the spiritual ray from above, and to begin climbing again upwards. It is to be remembered, therefore, that such 'death of the soul' does not fully occur as long as there remains the slightest chance of such a spiritual aspiration or longing. We constantly meet with people who are sunken in vicious passion, ignoble vice, heartless selfishness, etc., all which makes the condition which prevents the Ray from the spiritual Monad or Upper Duad from penetrating into the texture or psychological fabric of such people; in them the human soul is therefore really dying, but is only actually and completely dead -- or 'lost' -- when the degeneration has gone so far that the human soul in these cases is become fully and completely animalized and corrupted; and this is VERY RARE indeed -- fortunately for the human race! Even the apparently lowest types of men still have some faint refulgence of the spiritual Ray in them -- except the cases of the 'lost souls' just described; but these low types of men must aspire upwards towards the Spiritual Ray in order to be really human, and safe -- 'saved': in order that they "may save their soul alive."
Let us now approach the third, and, for the purposes of our present study, the really important matter, and it will serve to show how immense is the ignorance that exists in the modern West not only regarding the characteristics and functioning of normal human psychology, but likewise of that still vaster and far more sublime field of human consciousness which, with its manifold wonders and mysteries, qualities, attributes and powers, we may class under the term pneumatology.
Archaic as well as ancient legend and story, and the philosophy and mysticism of former ages, combine in making the declaration that it is not only a possibility but actually a frequent occurrence for the intermediate or psychological portion of man's constitution, which is usually called the human soul, temporarily to undergo a disjunction or dislocation of incomplete nature or character from the vital-astral-physical vehicle in which it is inshrined, and which in normal human life it regularly expresses itself through. The inner Spiritual Essence, or Upper Duad, in these cases, of course remains in relative control of the intermediate portion, which intermediate portion temporarily stands apart from the Lower Triad, so to speak; and this leaves the body still vitalized, still, to all appearances, a normal, living human entity, still receiving, but in a minor degree, the stream of spiritual-intellectual individuality pouring forth from the two superior Duads.
The reader is not to suppose that this disjunction or dislocation is absolute, for were it absolute, were it complete in other words, it would bring about the simple death and dissolution of the Lower Triad thus completely abandoned by the vitalizing and inspiriting 'higher man.' The physical man lives; and, as far as physical eyes see him, he is, to all appearances, exactly what he was before; the man still thinks, still goes about his work, still persists in all the customary paths of personal activity; but in actual fact he is both spiritually and intellectually, at least for the time being, virtually a spiritual and psychological cripple.
. . . . .
The quasi-'absence' or perhaps rather the temporary 'dislocation' of the psychological apparatus of even an ordinary man, from the remainder of his inner constitution, is exceedingly common in ordinary life, although temporary: so common is it, indeed, that it is the basis of a body of psychological phenomena which belong or occur to practically everybody: to every human being, normal or abnormal, as the cases may be.
The most common case in which this condition occurs is that of sleep. In sleep the intermediate or psychological or, as it is commonly called, the 'personal' part of man's constitution, is 'absent': it is, in other words, temporarily non-manifesting through the physical brain; and, in point of fact, it is this absence itself, this temporary disjunction or dislocation of the intermediate or ordinary human nature, which is the ultimate or rather efficient cause of sleep itself. The body sleeps because the personal man, i. e., the ordinary human being, is no longer 'there.'
Another case belonging to the same condition is that of trance, a word which is often grossly misunderstood and not infrequently absurdly misused by popular writers on so-called abnormal 'psychical phenomena.' The annals of medicine, as well as the knowledge derived from the practice of every experienced and thoughtful physician, show that trances are as common to human beings as blackberries in season. A man is in a species of trance when he is what is called 'absent-minded,' which exactly describes the situation; for his mind is no longer 'there,' so to say. A man is in a minor trance, again, when he is oblivious of surrounding circumstances, or of what is happening around him, or is deeply inwrapped in what is popularly called 'a brown study.'
A man is likewise in a trance when he has foolishly allowed himself to become the victim of the practices of some hypnotist or 'psychologist'; and anyone who has seen men and women in the state of hypnosis or of psychologization, will realize, if he has any capacity of judgment and discrimination, not only how dangerous, how baleful, and how wrong either practice is, but will likewise see that it exemplifies the trance-state perfectly.
The reason of the condition in all these cases, is that the intermediate nature, or the psycho-mental apparatus of the human being, has been automatically or forcibly, as the case may be, displaced from its normal seat: in other words, it is disjoined or dislocated or 'absent,' and there remains manifesting on our plane only the vitalized human body, with its more or less imperfect functioning of the brain-cells and nervous apparatus, stamped as they have been during the life by the characteristic attributes of the individual.
Another case of dislocation or 'absence' of the intermediate nature is that which comprises the various degrees of insanity and markedly strong mental aberration. A man is insane simply because his intermediate or psychological nature is 'absent,' either partially or with relative completeness; or in cases of violent insanity, has been dislocated or disjoined in permanent or relatively absolute measure. Minor cases of insanity, or periodic mania, are other instances where the disjunction or dislocation of the intermediate or psychological nature of man has taken place in degree less marked.
It is to be noted that such cases of 'dislocation' are not by any means identic with the cases hereinbefore described as those of 'lost souls.' With the case of 'lost souls' the situation is no longer that of the dislocation of the Intermediate Duad, but of the withdrawal of the Upper Duad, a withdrawal which is complete and irrevocable, except for the possibility of redemption or reunion, as before described.(427)
We have been discussing above what may properly be called abnormal, or possibly subnormal, states or conditions of the intermediate nature; and it may therefore be just as well to embark upon a brief discussion of what it will be quite accurate and correct to call, equally with the preceding cases, abnormal states of the intermediate nature, but which are not abnormal in the sense of being inferior to the norm but superior thereto, and which for this reason are properly to be qualified as supernormal. Just as the subnormal cases are all of them caused by the greater or less inactivity of the Upper Duad or spiritual nature of the constitution, and which have been described as dislocations or disjunctions or even complete withdrawal or separation of the intermediate nature from the lower triad of the human being, so these supernormal cases, or cases of spiritual and intellectual superiority in the human race, are caused by the intensification in the human being of the activities of the Upper Duad or what comes to the same thing, the supernormal cases are those in which the Upper Duad or spiritual nature is in greater or less degree predominant in the human being.
In these last cases of supernormal activity of the Upper Duad, the intermediate or mental-psychological portion of the human being is, on its plane, correspondingly highly developed, powerful in action and very positive because it has become translucent to, pellucid, and an immensely willing vehicle of, the stream of spiritual-divine consciousness flowing through it from the Upper Duad, or, speaking more graphically, from the Spiritual Soul, the actively individual part of the Monadic Essence. Thus it is that in such cases, the Monad in Man is dominant in the individual, and is hindered in its work and functions neither by the positivity and strength of character of the intermediate portion or soul-entity of the human being, nor is it again overcolored nor absorbed by the individuality of the soul-entity as the spiritual-divine stream of monadic consciousness flows through it and downward into the more or less personal consciousness of the human being.
Indeed, the exact contrary of this takes place; for instead of there being struggle or opposition against the inflowing spiritual stream, the intermediate nature has become greatly at-one with the flow of the Monadic Essence, and blends with the latter its own qualitative characteristics and attributes and powers, thus producing that most wonderful phenomenon of the human race, a Man more or less in intimate union with the God within himself. In such case, the intermediate portion of the human constitution is by the willing co-operation of the human soul-entity itself rendered wholly receptive in a sort of ecstasy of these inflowing streams from the Monad, and by that fact the soul or Intermediate Duad becomes a self-conscious canal or psycho-mental channel through which the monadic stream of divine-spiritual power and consciousness passes into the normal brain-mind consciousness of the human or personal being.
The foregoing paragraph may present to some minds certain difficulties in understanding it, though one wonders why this should be so, as the fact is extremely simple. However, in order to remove any such possible difficulty, the following illustration may perhaps help to elucidate the point. One of the commonest facts of ordinary human life is the power or influence which one mind exerts over another mind, or, indeed, that any mind exerts over any other mind; so that, as the saying might run, in extreme cases of this character, we no longer see the latter man as he is in his own soul-power or soul-expression, but sense instead working through him the will-energy and mental individuality of the dominating or controlling mind. Such extreme cases in popular language are accurately described when men say: "Why, he is no longer himself; he is the mere shadow or mirror of so-and-so! "Such are the cases where one human being exercises a powerful mental-psychological influence over another human being, thus proving the condition of receptivity and of relative servile obedience into which a human psychological apparatus can be thrown, becoming thereafter governed or controlled by the extraneous influence emanating from some other mind. This state of affairs is wholly wrong, ethically speaking; it is inexcusable on all grounds because it is profoundly immoral as depriving the victim -- for such he truly is -- more or less of his own self-control and self-directed existence. In no circumstances whatsoever should such servility be suffered to come to pass. The illustration is given solely by way of demonstrating the fact that the human psychological apparatus is extremely suggestible, open to suggestion, and even, in extreme cases, to outside control.
Now, instead of such an extraneous or outside influence: instead of the will-power and mind-energy of one man passing over to and controlling the psychological apparatus of another man; let us replace such an extraneous dominating influence with the transcendent and spiritually lofty stream of consciousness flowing into a human psychological apparatus and thereafter into the brain-mind and coming from the individual's own Spiritual Self, or Inner Divinity. Here we have something which is what the whole evolutionary process in the human individual's development is working to bring about -- the union of the merely human individual with his own spiritual-divine inner nature or inner god. As yet such instances in the human race are rare -- rare indeed, but only because the evolution of the human race is still very imperfect, since in most men the intermediate nature is dominant and the spiritual nature has not yet come into its own. At present it is only in the loftiest and noblest beings of the human race, the Fine Flowers, that such instances of men-gods on Earth are found. These demi-gods or men-gods are what may be called the spiritual and intellectual Forerunners of what all the individuals of mankind are destined ultimately to become in the far distant ages of the future.
When such self-conscious and wholly joyful receptivity of the soul-nature becomes virtually perfect, then men may say: "Behold, an incarnate Buddha!" "Lo! an incarnate Christ!" The entire structure of practical human morals, and the entire rationale of ethics, repose upon this wonderful fact as its basis, because this fact means the complete union of the human soul with the inspiriting god within it, the said inner god itself being a direct Ray or Emanation from the Cosmic Logos, and therefore a channel of the Cosmic Harmony. Thus it is that such a demi-god or man-god has been truly described in all ages as being an incarnate divinity, because of the Ray of the Cosmic Logos working in relative purity and strength through him, and therefore expressing in a very true sense the Divine Will and Divine Consciousness. Such an individual, his entire human constitution having become unitary, at-one with the indwelling and inspiring Higher Self or Inner Divinity, so far as our own solar Universe is concerned, which includes of course as its most important portions the invisible realms thereof: such a Great One may be truly said to have become possessed of, or rather an example of, omniscience, for the reason that because of the unitary or single consciousness now flowing through him, his consciousness at will ranges over Universal fields and understands them.
Such individuals, again, are what they are -- and this is stating the same matter from a slightly different standpoint of vision -- because they are imbodied Dhyanis, incarnate Dhyani-Chohans considered as spiritual-intellectual monadic Rays. Of course, as explained elsewhere, even these Great Ones differ among themselves as regards status or standing in evolutionary growth or unfolding, some being far more progressed than others, and in consequence are to the latter, great as these latter are, as Teachers or Masters of Wisdom.
For reasons hereinbefore given, such Great Ones are necessarily very few and far between in human history; and the mysteries that pertain not only to their nature, constitutionally speaking, but also to their lives, are both strange and wonderful. Those Westerners who are still fond of reading their Christian New Testament, at least at times, doubtless have paused often and long over certain passages therein which describe what is to many the touching and appealing episode in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is pictured as saying to his disciples:
My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. Tarry ye here and watch with me. And he went a little farther and fell on his face and prayed, saying: Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt.(428)
The strong and mystic appeal which the pathos in these words makes to most people who pause over these lines is based upon the intuitive recognition of the fact that a human being can become, through long ages of progress and evolutionary development, a vehicle or Mediator for the manifestation on Earth of the power and wisdom, and likewise work to be done, of some spiritual consciousness-energy working in and through him. There is to be seen here, in this instance, in the case of Jesus, as given in the New Testament, the true and willing resignation of the personal human will to the Will of the inner dominant Spiritual Divinity; and one has only to turn to the history of many of the great World-Sages or World-Teachers, in order to realize that whatever their individual histories as received by us may be, the same condition of utterly willing acquiescence of the human individual to the mandates of the inner god is found in their lives also.(429)
The human nature even of the Great Ones, so it is said, at times feels the immense burthen of their portion of the Kosmic Work which such Great Ones carry. This human nature, however evolved it may be and however lofty it is spiritually speaking, is nevertheless inferior in evolutionary development to the Higher or Spiritual Monadic Self, and therefore even it at times needs rest and occasional surcease from the burthen of even this part of such lofty Kosmic Labor.
The case of Jesus, called the Christ, and the work that he wrought as the willing human instrument of the sublime Spiritual Essence working through him, is exactly similar, as regards the psychological mystery of it, to that which takes place or has taken place or will in the future take place in the cases of other Great Ones undergoing the fearful trials of some high initiation. The cry from the cross as previously described and explained in the present work is but another phase of the same study which we are now making. Probably there has never yet in the history of the world taken place the inauguration of any great spiritual and intellectual Movement, which has not at the same time involved the utter self-surrender of the Inaugurator or Messenger -- a self-surrender, however, which in all cases has been a definitely joyful one; for the Messengers have always known what their work is, at least in general outline, and have always known likewise how greatly sublime and how divinely beautiful is participation in this work.
. . . . .
It should now be clear from the foregoing what was meant when it was said that a temporary disjunction or 'absence' of the psychological portion of man's constitution takes place, but always with the individual consent and willing participation in the action on the part of the human being in whom this occurs: an action which happens always in order that the dominant spiritual-divine and noetic energies of the Higher Self may flow temporarily outwards into the consciousness of the normal human being uncolored by the intermediate part of the man, by his own egoic center of consciousness. When this wonderful mystery takes place, then the man is for the time being wholly allied with his Higher or Spiritual Self, and becomes the physical vehicle for the transmission of teachings and precepts regarding the greatest mysteries of Nature, and of the sublimest spiritual truths. In this case, the intermediate nature of the individual, in other words his human soul-entity, is completely stilled, so that it may become an organ acting easily and freely and obeying automatically the divine-spiritual energies then flowing through it.
FOOTNOTES:
415. The author of the present work published in collaboration with Katherine Tingley some years ago in the pages of The Theosophical Path a serial study of certain Theosophical teachings under the title H. P. Blavatsky: The Mystery, in which the present author used a good deal of literary material which he had set aside as notes for a future work of his own. This literary material, or at least certain portions of it, is imbodied, with many changes and elaborations, in certain parts of the present contribution to Theosophical literature. (return to text)
416. The Atman is the 'I am' or essence of Self in each individual; whereas the Ego is an inferior or subordinate faculty thereof, being the reflexion or turning of the consciousness of the essential Self upon itself. To Western minds, therefore, the Ego would seem to be at first scrutiny the superior of the twain, but this is a superficial understanding of the fact. Indeed the statement that the Atman is the essential Self whereas the Ego is the reflexion of itself upon itself, should show clearly enough that the Ego is a mere product or by-play of the radical selfhood. Without the 'I am,' the 'I am I' is non-existent; but the 'I am' is eternal and is whether there be an 'I am I' to reflect it or not. To use a figure of speech, the 'I am' is the solar light or ray; when this is reflected from the moon it becomes the lunar or inferior light or luminescence. (return to text)
417. In connexion with the unfolding of hierarchical substance, either of universe or of man, briefly outlined in the text above, the reader may likewise note, if he be interested, that each one of these various grades or steps or stages, from the highest and inmost downwards through all intermediate to the last or physical, is itself septenary (or denary) and consequently repeats by analogy, and in the small, what the greater is or has. In other words, each one of man's centers of consciousness, now speaking of the monadic 'knots' or foci alluded to elsewhere, which in their aggregate or collectivity form man's constitution, has its predominant or swabhavic characteristic, which distinguishes it from the swabhavic respective characteristics of all others.
To represent the matter by the analogy of colors, we may say that each such monad or hierarchical unfolding of a human being's constitution has its predominant color, although at the same time containing all the other colors of what we may perhaps speak of as the pneumatological-psychological spectrum -- using the seven colors of the solar spectrum as an illustrative picture.
Take the principle of Manas, for instance. It has or comprises all the seven colors of the entire human constitution, but its characteristic color -- and equally so its characteristic force or substance or quality -- is Manas-manas, or Manas per se. Similarly again, Kama contains all the seven colors, or forces, or qualities, or attributes, of the entire human constitution. Thus it has its Atman, its Buddhi, its Manas, and all the rest of them; but its swabhavic or essential characteristic is Kama-kama. Thus is it with all the seven element-principles of man's constitution, and it is exactly for this reason that the originating Atman, the ultimate source of man's being, is enabled to unfold forth from itself, or roll forth from itself, or emanate forth from itself, all the other differently 'colored' element-principles of the man's being. Every element-principle is sevenfold. (return to text)
418. For a diagram representing in a more technical way the seven consciousness-centers in man's constitution, see the author's Fundamentals, etc., p. 225 (return to text)
419. Ninth Letter. (return to text)
420. It must not be imagined that the seven principles of man are one thing, and that the monads in man are something else which work through the seven principles as disjunct from them. From one point of view we are studying the 'stuff' of which the Universe is builded, and therefore the 'stuff' of which man is builded; from the other point of view we fasten the attention on the individualities of the Universe (and therefore of man), looking upon the Universe as a vast aggregate of individuals. The point is that not only are the seven principles the sevenfold 'stuff' of the Universe, but the higher part of each stuff is its consciousness-side, while the lower part of each 'stuff' is the body-side, that through which its own consciousness expresses itself. Thus it is that every monad, every consciousness-center, is septempartite: each has its Atman, Buddhi, Manas -- right down the scale. Sthula-sarira, for instance, does not necessarily mean physical body; it means substantial body, gross body, of whatever plane, whether it be physical, spiritual, or divine.
Every point of infinity is a consciousness-center, therefore every point of infinity is a Monad, and being a Monad it is builded of the seven stuffs, the seven Element-Principles of the Universe. Every thing has all in it! (return to text)
421. It may be of some interest and perhaps of some use to the thoughtful reader or investigating student to say that every one of the organs of the human physical body, both collectively and distributively, is the organic representative in man's physical sheath or body of one part or portion of his complex inner and invisible constitution. In other words, every one of the monadic centers in man's being, or, otherwise expressed, of the 'knots' or foci of consciousness which work within him, has its own corresponding organ in the physical body, each such organ functioning in the body as much as it can according to the characteristic or type-activity of its inner and invisible cause. Thus the heart, the brain, the liver, the spleen, etc., is, each one, the expression on the physical plane and in the human physical body of a corresponding consciousness-center in the invisible constitution of the sevenfold man.
The author is here trenching upon matters too esoteric and too difficult to attempt to describe otherwise than by hint in a published work intended for all and sundry, and hence feels that he cannot go farther in the exposition of this otherwise interesting topic than what has been said in the present footnote. (return to text)
422. What is the human psyche after all? The ancient Greek and Latin Stoics have explained it, and explained it aright, by referring, at least tacitly, to one of the early doctrines taught in the Greek Mysteries to the effect that the human soul -- in the Greek tongue called psyche, from the Greek root psycho to grow chilled or cold -- was so called because through wrong-doing, through following and becoming servile to base attractions, the lower part of the human 'soul' sank into the deeps of cold matter and thus lost its intrinsic and inherent spiritual fire or fervor. It became 'chilled,' if we follow this Greek metaphor, so suggestive and so true in a way; and its wanderings in the lower realms of matter took it ever farther, at least for ages, away from the Central Fire, from the Inmost Spiritual Flame which thrills through the Cosmos as its life, and which is likewise the origin of the god-spark manifested in the human constitution as the higher part of the Intermediate Duad.
It is thus this intermediate psychological veil of consciousness that beclouds and dims our human vision, so that we see awry so commonly. In proportion, however, as we succeed in going within and behind this intermediate psychological veil which beclouds and darkens the spiritual stream of consciousness from the inner Light, the greater we become, and the higher and more penetrating grows our intellectual power, the keener becomes our spiritual vision, the more instant our intuition, and the nobler are the impulses of the heart springing forth in sympathy and love for our fellow-men and for all that is everywhere. (return to text)
423. A well-known Theosophical writer, William Kingsland, M.I.E.E., expresses this great fact admirably well in the following sentences taken from his recent work (1935) The Great Pyramid in Fact and in Theory, pt. II, pp. 123-4:
"The essential nature of man, it has been taught in all ages, is, that he is one with that ONE Absolute Root PRINCIPLE which IS the Universe. In other words, he is at root a spiritual being, though for the time, for many ages past, the great bulk of humanity has lost not merely the consciousness of the actuality of this spiritual unity, but even the knowledge that it ever existed."
The present writer himself has never lost any occasion either in his published books or in his public lectures to weigh heavily upon this great spiritual fact with all the emphasis and power at his command. It is not merely a great spiritual verity, which it most certainly is, but it may be called the foundation or substratum of every system of philosophical and religious thinking which the world has ever known, and which every great titanic spiritual intellect of the past has laid down as the substructure of all proper understanding of man's relations with the Universe. It is the basis of every system, whether religious or philosophic, worthy of the name, of the archaic and of the ancient world; and the philosophical and religious systems of all European civilizations, ancient and modern, are of worth or of greater worth, in exact proportion as they emphasize the less or more, this greatest of spiritual truths. (return to text)
424. Yet even this triad, although purely mortal as a compounded structure, is itself derivative from, or, otherwise expressed, is itself the outflow or emanation from, its own monadic center, this monadic center being the lowest in the human constitution -- the 'lowest' because the least unfolded or unwrapped as regards its latent potentiality of future 'becoming.' It is really a marvelous mystery; and if the reader is wise enough to perceive it, he can see here in this fact of the complex constitution of the human being, containing as it does a number of different monadic centers, the reason for the declaration of the archaic Sages that man is a microcosm or 'Little World,' himself patterned or modeled after the Macrocosm or 'Great World' of which he is an integral and inseparable part. Just as the Macrocosm is compounded of innumerable armies or hosts of monads, each one an individual, evolving through space and time, just so is man's constitution a similar but 'little' world, compounded of hosts of beings, each one a minor individual, and all, collectively and distributively, evolving, unfolding, or unwrapping inner potentialities and powers and faculties through space and time to some unspeakably sublime consummation. (return to text)
425. There is still another class of beings who are technically called 'soulless,' merely because of the fact that they have chosen a body and compound human constitution in order to work through it upon Earth when the need comes to do so, but whose evolutionary standing is far more advanced than that of the average of the human race. H. P. Blavatsky alludes to this matter in a footnote in The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, pp. 234-5, but very naturally and properly little more than alludes to it because it is so distinctly a matter of esotericism which cannot be explained in a published work. She says:
"The possibility of the 'Soul' (i. e., the eternal Spiritual Ego) dwelling in the unseen worlds, while its body goes on living on Earth, is a pre-eminently occult doctrine, especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. See 'Isis Unveiled,' vol. i., p. 602, for an illustration. Many are the Soulless men among us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists as well as in persons 'who advance in holiness and never turn back.' (See ibid. and also 'Isis,' vol. ii., p. 369.)"
The present writer likewise has alluded to this matter, or rather to this second class of so-called 'soulless' beings, in an answer he wrote to a certain question, and the interested reader will find both the question and the answer on pages 16-17 of the magazine, Lucifer, July, 1933. The following portion is reproduced here as it may be of interest:
"Now the other class of soulless people are those whose nature and characteristics it is practically impossible to describe in any exoteric communication, but the key-thought may be gained by thinking of certain human beings who have almost worked out their past karman and who go steadily on, progressing spiritually in the spiritual realms, and on spiritual planes, but meanwhile having an unensouled body as it were, on earth. And this unensouled body is used only by willing to do so, and at occasional times, for certain very special extraordinary work. The progressing entity, so to speak, when it chooses to act through such body, flies back in consciousness to it, to the physical realms, manifests there for a short time, and then returns to its own spheres. Hence the physical body is kept going merely for special purposes, and actually and technically it is a soulless person, although doing whatever is necessary for itself, in order that it may retain life and health; and it is purely harmless, and innocent of all wrong doing. The idea is that the monad sends a ray from itself into incarnation in order to have a body on earth for purposes or ends of its own, for its own karmic purposes. The monad itself is evolving, progressing in the spiritual and intellectual realms; but there is a certain karmic need for it to have a link with earth; hence, it gets a body and keeps it alive, which body is therefore 'soulless' in the technical sense of the word; and then, on occasions when the need comes, it illuminates the physical body, ensouls it, does the work required, and leaves the body again; but the body remains alive."
426. With extreme reluctance, and solely in order to complete the teaching, even if only by allusion and hint, the author would say that for a certain period of time after the 'loss' of the 'soul,' and before the degenerated entity has been completely dissolved into its component life-atoms, the still remaining portion of the man who once was, and which portion is of wholly bestial and animal characteristics, follows the gati or 'way' of the beasts, because of its prevailing bestial instincts and appetites which draw it to bestial wombs. In other words, such dregs of the entity that remain seek imbodiment in those wombs to which its affinities most strongly draw it, and these are beast-bodies.
The above is one phase, but one phase only, of the greatly misunderstood teaching of transmigration; for it should be said with positive emphasis that no human soul ever enters the womb of a beast. Indeed, just before the dissolution of the dregs of the dissolving entity now in study, and precisely because it is rapidly dissolving, it finally abandons even the beast-kingdom and takes its last rapid reimbodiments in the vegetable world. As the present writer phrased the matter in his Occult Glossary, pp. 166-7:
"He will continue 'the easy descent,' passing from human birth to an inferior human birth, and then to one still more inferior, until finally the degenerate astral monad -- all that remains of the human being that once was -- may even enter the body of some beast to which it feels attracted (and this is one side of the teaching of 'transmigration,' which has been so badly misunderstood in the Occident); some finally go even to plants perhaps, at the last, and will ultimately vanish. The astral monad will then have faded out."
427. The inquisitive reader may wonder what are the causes which produce congenital idiocy, i. e., idiocy from birth. The matter is distinctly an unpleasant one but probably should not be passed without at least mention made of it. Most, if not all, cases of congenital idiocy are the reincarnations of unfortunate 'human souls' who have lost self-conscious linkage or communion with the Upper Duad or spiritual-intellectual part of their constitution, and who are, therefore, kept still 'running' for a time as human beings only because the intermediate machinery has not yet 'run down.' Congenital idiots -- or at least the greater part of these cases -- are souls which are not yet 'lost' but have been treading in previous lives the "facilis descensus Averno" of Vergil, the 'easy descent.'
Yet there are exceptions to this statement: there are certain cases of congenital idiocy which are conditions of only temporary obscuration of the spiritual-intellectual part of the constitution, and once the condition or karmic 'punishment' has been passed through, the entity is again a more or less normal human being. It would seem necessary to state this last fact as a warning against any cruel or hard-hearted treatment of those unfortunate beings which are born 'blinded' into human existence. No man or woman today is yet wise enough to discriminate between the differences of the soul on the downward path entering human life as a congenital idiot, and those other cases in which, as illustration, a lesion or injury, whether of a psychological or physical character, may have brought about the condition of idiocy. Such a lesion can happen both before birth as well as after. Charity and pity in all cases should be the rule; and it would be sheer murder, from the moral standpoint, to approve the painless euthanasia of such misfortune human cripples -- for they are all human still. (return to text)
428. Mark, xiv, 34-6. (return to text)
429. The citation in the text above of the Christian New Testament story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is not made with any intention of stating that the incident, so full of pathos as therein related, is to be taken as an historical fact. The citation is made, or the illustration is given, for the other purpose of showing the wondrous psychological condition of spiritual development which the Great Ones have attained, rendering them utterly faithful and obedient Servitors and Mediators of the Inner Divinity which each one such looks up to and calls 'Father.' For in very truth, the Spiritual Monad in any man's constitution is the 'Father' or parent of all his being, for his entire constitution flows forth therefrom or is emanated therefrom.
Thus it is that the Great Ones are not only the human vehicles, each one of his own inner god, but are at the same time, the human expression, each one of his own inner divinity. It is very true that every human being, evolved greatly or only slightly evolved, is an imbodied divinity, although only in the finest Flowers of the human race is this individual inner god enabled to self-express itself in relative fulness through this human mask which we call the human individual.
It should furthermore be stated that the entire story of Jesus as given in the form of the so-called canonical Gospels is a true mythos in the Greek sense of this word; that is, it is a mystery-tale, descriptive not so much of an historical individual whose name was Jesus, although there did in fact live such as Avatara, but is a setting forth, under the cloaking and disguises of esoteric allegory and symbol, of various episodes of the Initiation-Cycle as these episodes were understood and followed in Asia Minor. Thus various incidents and mythic mystery-rites have been collected around the figure of the great Palestine Initiate; but such a mystery-tale, making due and proper allowances for the differences of symbolologic allegory and changings of names and shiftings of scenery, is as applicable to any great World-Teacher as it was to Jesus, around whom this particular mystery-tale of Palestine or Asia Minor was builded as a type-figure. The beautiful New Testament story is not a unique instance of a human figure clothed with quasi-human divinity in the spiritual history of the world, and consequently Jesus, called the Christos, is not a unique and unparalleled World-Teacher. This matter is elaborated at some length in a succeeding chapter. (return to text)