Monadic Classes | Reimbodying Not Reincarnating Monad | The First Round | Children-Monads | After Death: A Dream Consciousness | White and Black Magicians | Adepts Enter Kama-loka and Underworld | Time Periods and Life-waves | Nirvana — Buddhas, Avichi-Nirvana — Lost Souls | The Nature of Buddha | Manasaputras | Three Classes of Manases | Avataras Function as Manasaputras | Manus, Prajapatis, Sishtas | The Three Panoramic Visions
G. de P. — There are twelve globes in our chain. Each globe is a sphere of life with its own conditions, states, even perhaps minor laws. The inhabitants, therefore, of each such sphere of life must correspond to it. We likewise know that there are ten and even twelve classes of monads circling around the chain, one after the other in serial order throughout time. Each such class of monads manifests itself on any one globe — which means on all — as a life-wave. Therefore, as each such life-wave or monadic class reaches any globe in its serial course through the planets, its inhabitants, the rays from these monads as individuals, have bodies, have psychological apparatuses, and manifest themselves in manners, akin to the globe on which each life-wave is at that time.
Now, the situation, if you will follow this thought out, shows us very clearly that as these life-waves or monadic classes are composed of individuals, just as an army or a group of men is so composed, these individuals on each globe manifest a phase of their entire corporate consciousness, each such phase being appropriate and fitted for the globe on which it then is imbodied.
Thus a human monad emits a phase of its consciousness called a ray, which is appropriate to each one of the globes of the chain that it imbodies itself in and upon. A human monad does not manifest as an animal on one of the higher globes, but it manifests from itself a ray or a phase of its body-corporate of consciousness, which ray is fitted for that higher globe. The beasts, the plants, the dhyan-chohans likewise; which means again that on globe E, the next one after this globe D, our phase of consciousness, or the ray imbodied from our reimbodying monad, will be of a higher consciousness phase than the one here on globe D. This one on globe D we call the globe D child. The ray or phase of consciousness imbodied on globe E we can call the globe E child, and so forth all around the chain.
In all our studies it is very needful to keep not one thought in mind — because then your judgment becomes one-sided and imperfect — but different phases of the teaching. Remember the twelve globes; remember the twelve classes of monads and that they are life-waves. Remember that these are composed of individuals; that each globe differs from every other globe in ethereality or materiality or spirituality; that each monad never forsakes its own high status, which means that any ray emanating from it belongs to that status. But as each monad is a body-corporate of consciousness, a stream of consciousness, the ray emanating from it for any globe is appropriate to that globe. If you succeed in keeping these different thoughts in your mind you will get a clear vision.
Had we all at the time [1932] understood the meanings of the technical terms now fixed and in usage amongst us, I would not have then employed terms that it had become customary to employ since HPB's day. I would not have said the reincarnating ego for all the globes of our chain. I would have said the reimbodying monad or ego.
Strictly speaking, the phrase reincarnating ego refers to imbodiments on this globe D only, where bodies of flesh are used.
You have heard it stated, and this in itself has been a cause of some confusion, that what happens during the first round is not that which happens in the succeeding rounds. After the first round the plan changes. It is during the first round only that all the ten or twelve classes of monads — all of them cooperate to build the filmy sketch of the first round globes, or of the globes as they are in the first round, each class following the preceding one in regular serial order. The Elemental and mineral kingdoms imbody themselves, but the plants, the plant monads, the beast monads, the human monads, and the dhyan-chohanic monads, do not imbody themselves even during the first round, but project as it were their astral fluid, their energy. They lend something to the process, thus guiding the building. Just as in the unborn child the initial germ is kept growing not because an ego has come down and is lying in the little germ-cell, which is utterly wrong; but because the egoic fluid is there, the astral fluid, the atmosphere of the mind is there, giving guidance to the growth of the embryo.
After the first round, when the tracks have been laid, the process changes, because now the tracks are laid, and all that the monads have to do is to enter in serial order into the different globes one after the other, and work upon the imperfect vehicles thus far evolved coming over from the first round. From that point each class of monads works only by its own rays and its own life-waves. Even in a little child, the monad, or rather the ego, is very imperfectly manifesting. Mind scarcely begins to function until the seventh year, and relatively speaking is not in full action until the man is of mature age and his brain is formed and his character begins to show. The spiritual faculties even then are more or less feeble in expression, because they have not yet succeeded in building up within us vehicles sufficiently subtle and delicate and pure and high to enable us to show forth the spiritual powers within us. Greater men can do it more than inferior men, and inferior men more than beasts.
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I would like to add a few words on the matter of the children-monads emanating from the divine monad, and the children-monads emanating from the spiritual monads. These matters become very simple if you do as I have so often requested: keep in mind all the facts you have been taught about any one thing. Thus, the range of the divine monad is over the galaxy; the range of the spiritual monad is over the solar system. Now then, the children of the divine monad, the spiritual monads, find their fields of action in different solar systems in the galaxy. The divine monad ranging over the galaxy reunites all these spiritual monads spiritually or divinely in itself; just precisely as the reimbodying monads or egos of the spiritual monads of our solar system find their reunion in that spiritual monad which has its range or field of action over the solar system. The same rule, the same law, on a smaller scale.
Thus there are or may be many spiritual monads finding in one divine monad their parent, their parent star, if you wish. And as these solar systems exist in our galaxy, and as the range of the divine monad is over our galaxy, these spiritual monads are collected together or reunited in their parent divine monad. In precisely the same way, I repeat, are the different reimbodying egos of the different planetary chains in our solar system reunited in, or find their spiritual reunion with the spiritual monad which has its range over the solar system.
Another point: do not confuse planes of action. The generation of spiritual monads from a divine monad are identical in number and in law, with the generation of reimbodying monads or egos from the spiritual monad. But while there is identity of law, there is no identity of fact. Thus, Mr. Smith may have a son, and Mr. Jones may have a son. The children are born according to the same laws of nature. But the two children are not identical, nor are the parents identical. Thus the rays from the sun which we see with our physical eyes actually are multitudes of life-atoms or monads on this plane. Therefore the rule of generation from the higher to the lower prevails here also. But the rays of the sun are actually the pranic life, the vitality, of the sun sowing itself in its emissions of multitudes of quasi-physical or sthula-sariric life-atoms — monads on this plane.
But do not confuse this with the generation of monads by the sun-spirit itself. The latter is very high, and is the generation, as a parent will reproduce his or her child, the bringing forth again of more or less advanced egos. Whereas the outflow of the pranic vitality from the sun is identically the same in fact as is the pouring forth of the vitality from the physical body of a man when he is exercising. He is generating life-atoms, monads, in that plane. But he is not generating children when he is playing baseball, or walking, or doing something else, yet the outflow of life-atoms is tremendous.
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Look upon all the after death states as flowings of consciousness. What the man was during earth-life, what his tempo plus his quality were, these will continue after he dies — the same flow of consciousness, be it high or low or intermediate. Consciousness does not flow according to clocks, or planets circling around a sun. In other words, consciousness is not governed by mechanical time as we may call it.
Kama-loka being a dream may be of any kind, precisely according to the dreamer; and the dreamer in the kama-loka is simply an extension of the dreamer as he was in his last life. Kama-loka, however, is a low quasi-spiritual or even psychic state of dreams, and for the spiritual man the spiritual dreams in the kama-loka so engross the man vaguely dreaming that he has no consciousness of anything nightmarish or horrible. He is simply in a kind of unconscious flow of dream consciousness.
Most of us do not realize that our conceptions of time are ideas connected with mechanical time: clocks, sunrise, noon, sunset, or the seasons. But these ideas do not exist in the flow of consciousness. They are our conscious reactions against the acts of physical nature surrounding us when we are imbodied. When a man is thinking a thought and is lost in what is called a brown study or a daydream, he is not thinking of time. It does not enter his consciousness. He is just thinking his thoughts, dreaming his dreams. You must not get the idea that when you die you are going to step out of your body just as you are, or wander around in the astral light not knowing where to go, and not knowing the scenery. It is not a question of scenery. You do not think of those things. It is just a dream, a dream, a dream. Get that thought in your heads.
One thing more: even the early Christians had this idea of the after death state being a dream, as is shown by so many of the painted and carven inscriptions of early Christian times. One of the commonest was Dormit in astris, he sleeps in the stars. There is more in that statement than appears on the surface, and it shows that Christianity began right, and had real occultism behind it in its beginning. Echoes of this earliest occultism so soon lost, alas, continued for hundreds of years after it had been lost. Expressions like that one continued: he sleeps in the stars.
In connection with the kama-loka there are certain rare individuals who, after they pass physical death, are as conscious in the kama-loka as they were in the body. These individuals are either Masters of different degree, or Masters of evil of different degree, black magicians, as we call them, brothers of the shadow. Now the brothers of the shadow and the Masters have no devachan. They have passed far beyond that dream stage, and beyond the need of it. It is a need for us human beings of normal type. We need the rest absolutely, just as the body needs its rest occasionally. A black magician is not one who indulges his own wishes for pleasure, as so many people seem to think. He never could be a magician if he did that. He would simply be a very bad, foolish, ordinary, weak, silly man. The black magician has to undergo a self-discipline as rigid in its way, and as self-denying in its way, as the white magician has. The black magician differs from the white magician in one main point. He is essentially selfish for the things he is after, as the white magician is essentially unselfish for the things that he aspires towards. The black magician's main evil consists in the injury he works upon others, and upon the world. For various reasons these terrible men love it. They love evil for its own sake. They are self-denying, always chaste in various ways, always extremely strict in self-discipline. They have to be to retain power as magicians. But their life is evil. They reck naught of the sufferings of others, of the harm they do to others or to the world. They do it for their own evil objectives, whatever they may be.
I do not care to discuss them because it would lead us too far afield.
It is one of the commonest things in human life. We see it around us all the time. Now sometimes cruelty is mere thoughtlessness, it is not black magic; it is thoughtlessness as when some nasty boy or girl will strip the wings from an unfortunate fly. That is thoughtlessness. As the child grows he begins to sense the disgusting character of his act, and the horror of it, and stops it. You cannot call that black magic. A black magician would not do a thing like that, it would strike him as silly, inept, inane. But any human being who plays upon the heartstrings of another in order to get even with that other, and recks not of the pain caused thereby, and of the moral injury wrought, is by so much a black magician.
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It is the teaching that a good man passes through the kama-loka without actually realizing he is traversing it — happily for him. Yet the adept can enter the kama-loka at will. The adept is a super-good man. Is there a contradiction? A good man is repelled by conditions antipathetic to his character. That is good, but it likewise shows that he lacks universality. How often do we not know, how often have we not heard of good men and women, who nevertheless have very little sympathy with those who disagree with them? The adept contrariwise has made his sympathies or is striving to make them universal. He is therefore at home everywhere, in the good and in the evil places of the world. He is master in them all. He sympathizes even with his brothers of evil — not the sympathy of collaboration or cooperation, but the deeper sympathy of understanding and pitiful compassion.
It is only rarely that an adept will enter the kama-loka, and then it will be done in order to help some misfortunate human who, because of entangled karmic acts while on earth, and yet having a substratum of great decency and good in him, has become caught as it were in the kama-loka, and needs the helping hand.
When we speak of adepts entering the underworld in order to help the spirits in chains there, as the old Christian phrase runs, it refers not so much, only rarely indeed, to the kama-loka which is a sphere of effects and not of causes. The entering into the underworld refers to a very deeply occult teaching. It refers to worlds, even globes, inferior to our own globe earth.
These descents into the underworld are extremely interesting, extremely occult, and you will understand this perhaps, although this is opening the door a little, when I tell you that what are called the avataras are actually descents into our world from a higher world by a divinity, which divinity in that higher world is at the time undergoing initiation. To us it is a visit of a god — and it is so; but that god's purpose, while wholly compassionate, is identical with that of the human neophyte, beginning with the fourth degree, who enters the underworld partly to help the so-called enchained spirits there; but also partly to gain individual experience of what nature provides in the various underworld spheres.
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The lower the globe is, the longer is the time period passed on it by the life-waves which are material or materialized; and the shorter are the time periods passed on it by those life-waves which are spiritual, or spiritualized. Conversely, the higher the globe is, the shorter is the time period passed by the material life-waves in and on it; and the longer the time period passed by the ethereal and spiritual life-waves in and on it.
Thus the mineral life-wave has a very short manvantaric time period on the higher and highest globes of our planetary chain, and a very long time period on the lowest globe of our planetary chain, globe D. Conversely, the dhyan-chohanic life-waves and the human have a relatively short life period on globe D, the lowest of the globes, and a correspondingly longer time period on the higher and highest globes.
Thus, to speak with some exaggeration, but merely in order to make the idea very clear to you, we can figurate those monads in the lower regions, or rather in the lower states or conditions of evolution — as for instance in the mineral kingdom — as working very, very slowly through the lower globes C and D. They are a long time here, because here is their present special sphere of unfolding. But when the mineral life-wave reaches the higher and highest globes of the earth-chain, the mineral monads almost seem to rush through — the attraction for them as a life-wave is so slight, so small.
Conversely, when the highest of the dhyan-chohanic life-waves is passing through these lower globes, globes C, D, and E, as examples, they pass through very quickly, relatively speaking, because their attractions here are slight. Karmic ties oblige them to take every step during the manvantaric run through the globes; therefore they have to pass through these lower globes. But their attractions are so slight they abide not here. But when this highest dhyan-chohanic life-wave begins to reach the higher and highest globes, then they feel in their own element, where they stay for aeons, evolving and evolving, and ringing through all the changes of experience. They are native there. They are at home.
Another comment with regard to the word annihilation and its connotations which evidently exist in your minds: you have all taken this word too strictly, too literally. It does not mean the absolute wiping out of all possibility of being, in the early Christian theological sense of God creating the universe out of nothing. It does not mean a reducing to nothing absolutely. It is a technical word.
Would you like to know how you should translate this word annihilation into Sanskrit? You would call it nirvana, by which hangs a tale, and a very fascinating one. You remember the long disputes that waged among Occidental Orientalists about the real meaning of nirvana when Oriental studies first began to grow popular in the Occident, and how the greatest ones among them insisted that nirvana meant annihilation, in its common meaning, a wiping out, in other words, a "blowing out." "It was, it now no longer is." Technically, their translation of nirvana was grammatically correct, for it does mean "blown out"; but they were totally wrong because they did not get the spirit of the sublime idea contained in the word nirvana. They took the word literally, and therefore got the verbal meaning, but lost the spirit and the teaching.
Now then, please hearken carefully. When a buddha, or any equivalent being, enters into nirvana absolutely, such entity does so leaving naught behind. It is wiped out, blown out, annihilated for these spheres. Therein lies the beauty and strength of the word, and its meaning, nirvana. It has left these spheres completely with the going, leaving naught behind. That is why the Buddhists insist — and philosophically they are correct — that it is an absurdity to speak of a nirvani returning. Technically they are right. But esoterically they are wrong, because they take the technical meaning, but do not know the esoteric meaning of the word and are wrong therefore. A nirvani, nevertheless, at some time in duration, because of karmic links attracting it back, must return. But for the time being, and it may be for what to us humans may seem almost an eternity or quasi-eternity, it is annihilated for this sphere. It no longer reimbodies itself, no longer reincarnates, no longer has an influence on this sphere except as a spiritual energy, a steady, serene, silent, almost passive, very helpful, very important, spiritual energy to us humans, passive to us yet surrounding us and permeating us like the ether in which we bathe.
Now then, when a soul is lost, it is wiped out in that sense. It is blown out of this sphere. It is a failure. Just as the other is a great success, so this is the converse, the other end, the polar antithesis. It becomes a nirvani of avichi. You have heard me use the expression nirvana-avichi, just as the other nirvana first spoken of and commonly called nirvana alone, really ought to be called mukti-nirvana, the nirvana of spiritual freedom, the state of the complete jivan-mukta, the freed monad.
Thus you see at one pole we have the mukti-nirvani, actually a divine energy, a divine being in the efflorescence, the fulness, of its highest divine consciousness or spirituality, depending upon the plane of mukti-nirvana that it reaches. At the other pole, we have the lost souls which have passed out of this sphere entirely for this manvantara, it may be for the whole solar manvantara, and therefore are technically spoken of as blown out, having reached nirvana below, absolute matter — as mukti-nirvana is absolute spirit — annihilated. There is nothing left of them here.
I here must draw the curtain. I can only say that we may look upon it as a process of being ground over and over in nature's laboratory, and obviously that means that it is something which is being reduced to its elements in order that it may begin again. Something is there, and it is evolving. It has so to speak lost its hold in these to it now superior worlds, ours. It is therefore a failure to us. It is in planes below us, and it must come up again through those lower planes, before it can again enter these our own where we now are. These fallen entities are failures, just as the former class of mukti-nirvanis are the great spiritual successes of humankind.
I remind you again of the poignant passage in a letter of one of the Masters in which the teacher speaks of the failures, those who fail in this sphere, and when their time comes, drop into inferior spheres, into the avichi-nirvana. And the Master refused even to give unto them a name, as he says it is not lawful for Sinnett and others to hear it. This was because Sinnett was no occultist, he was no initiate, he never even entered the ES. That is what the Master meant.
Thus you see there is a nirvana of the spirit and a nirvana of absolute matter. The former is mukti-nirvana, the nirvana of spiritual freedom, almost to us incomprehensible wisdom and love. The other is the nirvana of what we have agreed to call avichi. Both are annihilations in this technical sense. Both monads have quitted this sphere, the one to rise in glory, the other to descend into the pit.
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It strikes me, that you have not yet in your minds a clear picture of what a buddha is. It can be illustrated in the case of the Lord Gautama who was born a bodhisattva, which technically means one whose next imbodiment will be that of a buddha. Being a bodhisattva of high spiritual character, he had succeeded in that life in unifying his humanity with the divinity within himself, with his inner god. This made him buddha. This made him enter nirvana from which there is no return in any one manvantara. But the human being left behind, the still living vehicle out of which the Buddha had passed, was nevertheless far higher than any of us could ever expect to become, I believe, in a hundred imbodiments. The mahatma was left behind, the lower portion of the human ego of Gautama Sakyamuni.
Remember this: there is in each human being even now a buddha, one which has achieved buddhahood. This is our spiritual monad. Now when our human ego, as in the case of Gautama, attains self-conscious union with the spiritual monad, becomes that spiritual monad, then that man, a bodhisattva, becomes a buddha. The buddha enters into nirvana, rays from itself like a glory fill the soul remaining behind, enlightening the physical man's mind and brain, and that man will live on as one enlightened.
The Buddha of Gautama assumed the dharmakaya robe, the nirvanic robe, and the personal mahatmic soul-essence of the Bodhisattva Gautama entered the sambhogakaya, the vesture intermediate between buddha and bodhisattva; Sambhoga meaning participation with the buddha-glory and the mahatma-nirmanakaya-man below. And the occult records state that changing body from time to time the Bodhisattva Gautama, or if you like the Buddha Gautama, still lives in Sambhala and is our own supreme Chief.
Now, the laws of nature are not changed merely because one evolves higher. The animal man, therefore, died when the bodhisattva died. That is connected with the nirnmanakaya-state. But I would imagine, just offhand, speaking somewhat academically, that what we might call the animal monad of a bodhisattva would be very much higher than mine or yours, more evolved. I would say even that an animal monad in such a human being could practically be called a young human monad.
The exoteric tales about Gautama are very elaborate, heavily painted, but every stroke of the paint put on has some substratum of truth. As a young man, the son of the Raja, he married, had his son Rahula, and then the time came when he received the inner revelation, the inner call; and typically in accordance with the rules of conduct understood in India from time immemorial, understood by his beautiful wife as well as by himself, he left family and home to go out to undertake the great pilgrimage, to give of himself to save the world. He knew what was in him — the racial buddha coming at that time. He it was.
When he died attaining enlightenment under the bodhi tree, the human monad conjoined with the spiritual monad, and the twain thus united self-consciously entered nirvana as Buddha. That left behind Gautama, the bodhisattva, the mahatma, especially glorified because his inner buddha, his inner monad, still was showering him with its own transcendent glory.
Now then, the idea of the Buddha of Compassion is attaining nirvana only to reach that stage to be able to renounce it to come back into the world to save humanity. That is what the Buddha whose lower portions were Gautama will do because he belongs to the line of the Buddhas of Compassion. Sooner or later, before this manvantara is ended, the buddha part of Gautama will return as an imbodying buddha-man, and I personally have no doubt at all that he can return only into that same human vehicle which tabernacled it in its last life as Gautama.
Consider the amazing contrast of choice: the Pratyeka Buddha is a highly spiritual individual, and yet see what he does. He centers all his life and efforts upon his own spiritual bliss, salvation, peace and wisdom. A beautiful sublime objective, but dark shadow when compared with the perfectly divine objective of the Buddhas of Compassion. What is it in the characters of these twain which causes the one to choose aeons of what is to him sorrow for the sole purpose of helping the world, and the other to choose aeons of inexpressible, ineffable bliss, wisdom, love, peace for himself. These things have to be taken for granted, and doubtless there is an explanation, but it is one that is too subtle to be caught in words. It must be caught in one's consciousness. There is no other way.
Saints of the Christian Church may have been quite holy men, but they were typically pratyekas, typically. I have often thought that other men, not saints, whose hearts have been moved with that holiest flame the human heart can contain, pity for others, divine compassion, and a yearning to help, actually stand higher than do the typical saints. In the former it is not saintliness; it is quasi-divinity, it is godlike. Saintliness may be for holy men; but alike unto the gods belong the Buddhas of Compassion who renounce all that to human hearts is dearest to come back, to remain in the world's light and the world's atmosphere: the Great Sacrifice giving oneself wholly and all the time for almost endless ages to help the struggling pilgrims who are we ourselves, trailing along behind. That is our objective: to become like unto them, the Buddhas of Compassion.
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There is still one important spiritually historic fact to remember: there are manasaputras of seven or even ten or twelve classes, like everything else in the universe; for seven and ten and twelve are fundamental hierarchical numbers running throughout the webwork of all being. Now then, some of these manasaputras of the higher, and even highest, classes or grades are specifically workers in or attached to the cosmic hierarchy of compassion, or cosmic hierarchy of light; and these, during the course of the evolution of life-waves on a planetary chain, have the function of descending avatara-like as beings from a higher sphere and inaugurating illuminations or periods of illumination. It is to this latter class that HPB points perhaps most strongly of all in her Secret Doctrine when she writes of the work of the manasaputras illuminating the lower pitris.
I will summarize briefly. In addition to the manasaputras mentioned by me first, there are these higher manasaputras who avatara-like come from higher spheres to inaugurate or start or begin the work of intellectual illumination in life-waves needing just this intellectual impulse or urge; and having begun it, these higher manasaputras retire to their own spheres. But this illuminating work once begun, starts the process, and then the lower manasaputras, our own manasaputras so to speak, continue the process of illumination inaugurated by the higher manasaputras. This statement can serve as a warning against our brain-mind habit of thinking that one explanation covers all the ground, and likewise makes us alert against the brain-mind habit of keeping ideas in watertight or thought-tight compartments.
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We must not forget that there is in the beast the manasic element now latent, but in a future chain to manifest as an individual human, and the overshadowing manasaputra of every animal then will be the higher portion of the human being to become or to develop from within outwards, in the theosophical manner and not in the Darwinian. In other words, the animals in this our chain, will be the humans in the next reimbodiment of this chain. And those future humans will be over-enlightened by their spiritual parts. Remember also that there is a particular class of manases — I prefer that term for them in this case rather than manasaputras — manases who, driven by the urge of divine compassion, act as the inspirers of the then as yet non-fully developed peoples, races.
The manasaputras thus of the third root-race may be cast into several classes: the manasaputra of each individual human represents one class. Second, the manasaputras striving to bring up the beasts to some kind of mental cognition, who succeed very poorly because the vehicles are not ready. And the third class: the manases who, urged by divine compassion, appear on earth as inspirers, beings teaching by divine right, avataric instruments of karmic justice.
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As a matter of fact, avataras function as manasaputras to us. This is quite apart from the function they play, or the role that they follow or enact, so far as they themselves are concerned. It is a matter of occult historic record that at the beginning of every root-race, and at certain other specific times in human history, the great initiates appear among men and teach, inaugurate civilizations, start codes of morals, of law, of conduct, and sow in the minds of the then young humanity what European philosophers rather weakly call innate ideas, which take root and are carried on thereafter from age to age. These initiates are known in all ancient story, history, legend; and their disciples are called initiate-priests and initiate-kings.
What thus takes place in human relationships, takes place likewise with the classes of monads at the opening of manvantaric evolution on a chain. They actually perform the functions of and indeed they are imbodied manasaputras of varying grade.
Who and what are the prajapatis? And what are the manus? And what relation do the manus bear to the prajapatis?
The manus are the sishtas — not necessarily divine, however. The prajapatis are the different classes of monads. Prajapati means parents of progeny or offspring, and they are, considered as an individual power in the universe, innumerable entities gathered together under that title or name or power. We will take the prajapati of the human life-wave. That life-wave, itself considered as a stream of consciousness composed of units, individual human monads, is the prajapati. The manus are the offspring of the prajapati, following the phrasing of the Hindus as you will find in the Vishnu-Purana; and the manus are the sishtas.
There is a root-manu for every globe, and a seed-manu for every globe. The root-manu initiates the incoming life-wave on that globe, and the seed-manu sees its departure from that globe as a life-wave. And this tells you at once what the manus really are — the sishtas. The term manu of course applies only technically and very correctly speaking to thinking beings, from the Sanskrit root man, to think intelligently.
Now a seed-manu which sees the departure of the great body of the human life-wave when it leaves any globe of a chain, ours for instance, remains the seed-manu until the coming of the human life-wave on that same globe again during the next round. Then the seed-manu, partly due to the evolution of its component unit sishtas, and partly to the highest class of the monads of the incoming wave joining with the sishtas, becomes the root-manu. So really the root-manu and the seed-manu are almost the same, but not quite. We simply say the seed-manus are the highest egos of a life-wave when that life-wave leaves a globe. Those same egos remain the seed-manus during the interim until the life-wave returns to that globe. Then the seed-manus as it were change their name to root-manus, because of their new function of inaugurating the new human stock. They are the roots of that new human stock. That is all there is to this distinction. The manus are the sishtas.
Of course a great deal more could be stated about these things, but there is the whole thing in a thumbnail picture. I will also point out that just as there are root-manus and seed-manus on every globe of a chain, so on a larger scale are there root-manus and seed-manus for every round. And on a still larger scale root-manus and seed-manus for every beginning and ending of a planetary chain or a full planetary manvantara.
Nature has one law throughout all her structure, and one series of operations therefore, and it is upon this fundamental fact that is based what we call our master key analogy. It is not an arbitrary thing; it is because nature is one, has one life, therefore one law of operation or of being; and therefore every part in universal nature, from the highest to the lowest, is subject to that one law or svabhava of jiva, of vitality, and follows it.
I would not say that the buddhas are the manus, because we have just called the manus the sishtas; and yet in another sense the statement is not wrong, because the sishtas are always the most highly evolved on a globe when the life-wave to which those most highly evolved egos belong moves from that globe to the next globe in serial order, and naturally the buddhas would be among the sishtas. Why are they the most highly evolved? Why do they remain as sishtas? Because they have been forerunners of the life-wave during that round, and perhaps the preceding round, and have already run ahead of the other egos in that life-wave, and no longer need to go the round again for that particular quality of evolution, which is just what makes the buddhas. Therefore they automatically as well as by choice — it becomes their law and their duty and their choice — altogether become and are the sishtas, the seed-manus, for that globe when the life-wave leaves it; the life-wave being composed of the less highly evolved egos of that life-wave. In connection with the buddhas and the sishtas we may perhaps say that the buddhas are the most advanced of all the sishtas.
You could speak of manus of a solar system too, and prajapatis. I repeat, there is in universal nature one law and therefore one common operation throughout. It is something like the vital structure of a man: its pranas or life-forces originate in his jiva. His jiva is practically the same thing as is his fundamental monad, there being thus one fundamental monad, and one jiva, its efflux, and therefore pranas in accordance with that one jiva. In other words, one life, and all that goes to make the man must follow the mandates, the svabhava or characteristics, of that jiva or fundamental monad.
We can by this universal fundamental fact of nature reason analogically, and if we can do so correctly, our foundations of thought will be true to fact. But we have to be very watchful against false analogies, because that is where the brain-mind comes in which often sees things that are not so. It thinks they are, and we call these false analogies.
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I desire to allude, but very shortly, to the question of postmortem visioning of the life last past, and of the life to come. The first panoramic viewing is when physical death has intervened, and the only organ alive, or partially so, is the brain. That is the first of the panoramic visions. Such visioning is not perfectly elaborated and only rarely complete. It is general rather than particular. The second comes at the second death before the beginning of the devachan, and this is relatively completely elaborated. The third comes at the end of the devachan, and before the next imbodiment.
What is the difference, if any, amongst these three? Mainly this, that the first panoramic vision following physical death deals primarily with the life last past, concluding with a prophetic lightning flash of future sight in which the reincarnating ego sees its past life, sees what its destiny in the next life will be, as a flash on a screen, and knows the justice both of the past and of what it will have to face in the future. It recognizes itself as the worker and producer, the creator of its happiness and of its misery, both in the past life and in the next life to come.
The second panoramic vision differs from the first only in that the visioning of the past life is much less intense than in the first, is the short part; and the visioning of the future life to come is the longer part of the panoramic view and highly elaborate. The ego then foresees the future by reason of its own inner power of vision, the spiritual power; recognizes what it will have to meet in the next incarnation; recognizes the utter justice of it all, the mercy of it really; sees what is going to happen to it, not in full detail, but certainly in the large, and to a certain extent in detail also.
The third panoramic vision differs scarcely at all from the second, and is rather like a review of the second panoramic vision. Here the reincarnating ego having just ended its devachan receives this panoramic vision, sees what is coming to it, sees again the justice and pity of it all in a short brief viewing. Then the curtain falls, the ego drinks the merciful cup of Lethe, of oblivion, and some months afterwards is born as a child — the body, that is.
Those are the only three distinctions amongst the three panoramic views. The first one is mainly of the past life with a brief but accurate foreseeing, prophetically, of the future. After the second death, it is mainly the future that is seen after a brief reviewing of the past. And the third panoramic vision is practically the same as the second, but shorter; just as intense and keen, but shorter.
The reincarnating ego is the seer, and it derives its vision from its Father in Heaven, the spiritual ego. I have always found it one of the most interesting, and I will say frankly amazing, things in human consciousness that there is a faculty in us which can pierce into the future and, exactly in proportion to the degree in which this faculty is polished by training and the proper life, the vision is the clearer and the more detailed. I do not like to speak of this because to many who do not understand the subtleties of occult thinking, the idea will come that the ego sees the future, foresees it, because the future is fatally destined to come upon it. That is but a half-truth.
There is a subtlety of comprehension and apprehension here which can be known and experienced, but I gravely fear is scarcely subject to explanation. It is an amazing thing, but if you will remember that everything that has been in the past is recorded in the astral light, not only on one plane of the astral light, but from the akasa downwards to the lowest part of the astral light, and that human egos follow the pathways of destiny largely guided by the corridors of the astral light, in other words follow the tracks of former lives karmically speaking, you will readily see that foreseeing, foresight, visioning of the future, is not only natural, but to one who can do so, inevitable. It must be so. But even to one who has studied these things for lifetimes, there is a never-ending amazement that the thing can be, because from our brain-mind standpoint, even of those highly developed, the future is to come but not yet is, the past is finished but reflects itself in the present, and the present is intermediate between the as yet uncome future and the quasi-ended past.
The matter clears itself up, however, when we ascend out of the realms even of the most polished brain-mind thinking into the realms of buddhic illumination, and there we see the utter reality of the old, old saying that past and present and future are not three things but essentially one, which we can best express by calling it the Eternal Now. Obviously then it would be impossible not to see the future and the past also, for they exist in the Eternal Now as a composite picture of reality, and to the seer it is somewhat like looking upon those clever paintings of scientific artists who, although often erroneously as regards fact and detail, trace the beginning of a thing through its past history, through the present, and imagine its future. Thus the observer's eye sees at one glance the entire line — the past, the present, and the future — in the now. This is a poor analogy but perhaps suggestive.