Except for a "Mystery"
On page 96 of The Mahatma Letters one reads that the Lord Buddha would not have appeared in our epoch but for a mystery. What is the mystery referred to? — H. T.
Helen Harris — In answering the above it is taken for granted that the questioner has read what the Master K. H. says in regard to this subject on page 117 of The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, as well as on page 96. Therefore it will not be necessary to repeat any of the facts given in those passages.
When the Master K. H. made the statement that the Lord Buddha, a Sixth Round man, would not have appeared on earth when he did except for a "mystery," it was the Master's way of stating that there are times in human history and in the evolution of individuals when in order to bring about or to accomplish a certain work, the Gods "bend down" so to speak, and with the help of Nature open the way for an event that might be said from our standpoint to be "outside" the regular order of Nature's operations, but would nevertheless be in accordance with cyclic law. As an instance of this, we are taught that the appearance of an Avatara is brought about by an act of "white magic." The Master K. H. might have used the term "white magic" instead of the word "mystery," meaning that certain things had been brought about in accordance with laws unfamiliar to man at present, and therefore a "mystery" to us.
We may imagine that such a one as the Lord Buddha, who by his own great knowledge and spirituality ran far ahead into the higher spheres of our chain — so high as to have broken through into the realm or kingdom of the Dhyani-Chohans — had in so doing become subject to the laws that govern the beings existing in those higher realms, which laws would so transcend our understanding as to be a "mystery" to us. However, even though the Lord Buddha had attained by his own efforts this high state, he was nevertheless, karmically and compassionately linked with the Humanity of this earth, for he had become one of the highest channels for our Great Race for the forces coming to us from the spiritual heart of our planet. The ways of the gods (Dhyani-Chohans) are as "mysterious" to us as are our mental processes to the kingdom below man. For one who lives self-consciously in the sacred presence of his own inner god, Nature's doors are opened wide to that which would be denied to others until the right time arrive in the distant future.
Summarizing the above, and condensing it into a single sentence, the "mystery" mentioned was, in simple language, that Gautama the Buddha attained his high grade or degree in order to work amongst us because of successfully passing one of the three highest initiations possible to men on this globe; and he was helped to do it. This is the "mystery" referred to in The Mahatma Letters.
What Is Memory?
What is Memory? It is evidently something that can be purified. (See The Mahatma Letters to A P Sinnett, p.105) — W F C
I. R P — Memory may be defined as our individual mental awareness of the indelible record filed in our inner constitution, a record which continuously impresses itself like a watermark on every one of our own life-atoms; hence our dominant characteristics.
H. P. Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy and W. Q Judge in The Ocean of Theosophy and The Theosophical Forum give us much valuable information. Thus we learn that memory "is one of the rational faculties" and because the physical brain is its instrument it depends "entirely on the more or less healthy and normal functioning" of that organ and is therefore limited to a single lifetime at best. In addition there is a complete record "preserved in the inner man" which should properly be called "reminiscence, "the memory of the soul."
The "purified memory" of The Mahatma Letters to A P Sinnett refers to the consciousness of Devachan, because as stated: "no sensual, material or unholy recollection" can adhere to the Ego entering that state. It retains only the reflexion of the ethereal and abstract attributes or skandhas after the Second Death in Kama-loka W. Q. Judge uses the analogy of a photograph to show us how the Devachanic consciousness is but a rose-tinted print while Manas, the negative, holds the original and complete impression, and the lower aspects adhere to the Kama-rupa.
Since Manas is not yet fully evolved in humanity, or, in other words, man has not become ensouled by Manas, we can understand how true education, because it releases the latent potentialities within, trains memory, and evolution in the sense of an ever deepening universality leads man first to a state of conscious reminiscence, and later, at the close of this Manvantara, to Omniscience.
The Augoeides and the Causal Body
Is the Augoeides the causal body? May we know something more about this. Said one of the Masters of H.P.B.: "Eternal and immortal is her Augoeides" — E. S. W.
G. A. Barborka — As this question deals with two terms, let us first examine their definitions.
Causal Body: This term is somewhat of a misnomer, as "body" implies a vehicle, and whereas spiritual states at times make use of a vehicle in order to produce an appearance — as in the case of an Adept when he appears in his Mayavi-rupa — it is an illusory vehicle (as the literal meaning of the Sanskrit term indicates). In her definition of "Causal Body" in The Theosophical Glossary, H. P Blavatsky states:
This "body," which is no body either objective or subjective, but Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul, is so called because it is the direct cause of the Sushupti condition, leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi. It is called Karanopadhi, "the basis of the Cause," by the Taraka Raja Yogis, and in the Vedanta system it corresponds to both the Vignanamaya and Anandamaya Kosha, the latter coming next to Atma, and therefore being the vehicle of the universal Spirit. Buddhi alone could not be called a "Causal Body," but becomes so in conjunction with Manas, the incarnating Entity or Ego. (p. 74)
Thus we may say that the Causal Body would be equivalent to Buddhi-Manas.
The term Augoeides was made familiar by Bulwer Lytton in Zanoni. In a footnote he writes that it is "a word favoured by the mystical Platonists," and quotes an extract from Marcus Antoninus in Greek, which is translated as "the sphere of the soul is luminous, when nothing external has contact with the soul itself; but when lit by its own light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth centred in itself." Augoeides is a compound of two Greek words: auge, bright, light, with a subsidiary meaning of sheen, gleam; eidos, form.
Paracelsus also uses the term: he is describing man's constitution and says that "three spirits live and actuate" him, the third "is the Divine spirit (Augoeides)" (quoted in Isis Unveiled, I, 212). H. P. Blavatsky uses the term in her first work also in the above sense, and in referring to an Adept and his initiation she says that
He recognized his God and felt the great Being within himself. The "Atman," the Self, — This "Self," which the Greek philosophers called Augoeides, the "Shining One," . . . showed his full power to him who could recognize the "still small voice." (Isis Unveiled, II, 317-8)
Thus it would seem that the term is equivalent to the Inner God — or Atma-Buddhi — while the Causal Body (as above stated) is Buddhi-Manas.
The phrase quoted in the question, "Eternal and immortal is her Augoeides," is from a letter to Col. Olcott from the Master Serapis, and the context refers to an initiation which H. P. B. was undergoing at the time. The term would be applicable to any initiant.
Are There "Astral Helpers"?
When an entity has passed on to the astral plane, can it be helped by one on earth? — F. L.
C. Q. W. — It is assumed that the questioner means "Can we who are still on earth help those who have passed through what we call death?" Let us remember that "sleep and death are brothers." How can we help our loved ones when they are sleeping, resting, in their bed-chamber?
Simply by quietly leaving them alone.
Under Nature's compassionate law our loved ones who have passed away are preparing to enter higher spheres of life. The psycho-magnetic ties with this world must be loosed, and any attempt by a living person to "help" or communicate with the dead only strengthens the psychic and astral bonds which hold the departed "earthbound."
Thoughts of impersonal, unselfish love are always a help and a blessing to any soul, wherever it may be sojourning in Nature's realms. The love that brought two souls together in this life will do so in future lives; let us not do anything to interrupt this beautiful relationship.
A Line of Zoroasters
There are several references to a series of Zoroasters, some of the statements giving thirteen as the correct number, others twelve or fourteen. Could you tell us how many Zoroasters there really were?
G. de P. — The number of Zoroasters who have appeared from time to time is confusing, so long as we consider, and wrongly consider, these Zoroasters to be reimbodiments of one single ego, instead of different egos imbodying what we may interpret from the occult records as the "Zoroaster-spirit." The truth of the matter is that in the scheme and terminology of Zoroastrianism, every Root-Race and sub-race, and minor race of the latter, has its own Zoroaster or Zoroasters. The term Zoroaster means in Zoroastrianism, very much what the term Buddha does in Buddhism, or Avatara does in Brahmanism. Thus there were great Zoroasters, and less Zoroasters — the qualificatory adjective depending upon the work done by each Zoroaster, and the sphere of things. Hence we can speak of the Zoroasters as being thirteen in number from one standpoint, or fourteen from another, or like the Manus in Brahmanism, or like the Buddhas in Buddhism, we can multiply each of these by seven again, or even fourteen if we take in every little branchlet race with its guiding Zoroaster-spirit.