THE ANCIENT WISDOM

by Annie Besant

1911 Reprint


(continues on Section 2)

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
THE PHYSICAL PLANE
THE ASTRAL PLANE
KÂMALOKA
THE MENTAL PLANE
DEVACHAN
THE BUDDHIC AND NIRVANIC PLANES
REINCARNATION

Section 2 of this document [not yet connected]

REINCARNATION (CONTINUED)
KARMA
THE LAW OF SACRIFICE
MAN'S ASCENT
BUILDING A KOSMOS

PREFACE

This book is intended to place in the hands of the general reader an epitome of theosophical teachings, sufficiently plain to serve the elementary student, and sufficiently full to lay a sound foundation for further knowledge. It is hoped that it may serve as an introduction to the profounder works of H.P.Blavatsky, and be a convenient steppingstone to their study.

Those who have learned a little of the Ancient Wisdom know the illumination, the peace, the joy, the strength, its lessons have brought into their lives. That this book may win some to con its teachings,and to prove for themselves their value, is the prayer with which it is sent forth into the world.

Annie Besant,

August 1897

INTRODUCTION

THE UNITY UNDERLYING ALL RELIGIONS

Right thought is necessary to right conduct, right understanding to right living, and the Divine Wisdom – whether called by its ancient Sanskrit name of Brahma Vidyā, or its modern Greek name of Theosophia, Theosophy – comes to the world as at once an adequate philosophy and an all-embracing religion and ethic. It was once said of the Christian Scriptures by a devotee that they contained shallows in which a child could wade and depths in which a giant must swim. A similar statement might be made of Theosophy, for some of its teachings are so simple and so practical that any person of average intelligence can understand and follow them, while others are so lofty, so profound, that the ablest strains his intellect to contain them and sinks exhausted in the effort.

In the present volume an attempt will be made to place Theosophy before the reader simply and clearly, in a way which shall convey (Page 2) its general principles and truths as forming a coherent conception of the universe, and shall give such detail as is necessary for the understanding of their relations to each other. An elementary textbook cannot pretend to give the fullness of knowledge that may be obtained from abstruser works, but it should leave the student with clear fundamental ideas on his subject, with much indeed to add by future study but with little to unlearn. Into the outline given by such a book the student should be able to paint the details of further research.

It is admitted on all hands that a survey of the great religions of the world shows that they hold in common many religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas. But while the fact is universally granted, the explanation of the fact is a matter of dispute.

Some allege that religions have grown up on the soil of human ignorance tilled by the imagination, and have been gradually elaborated from crude forms of animism and fetishism; their likenesses are referred to universal natural phenomena imperfectly observed and fancifully explained, solar and star worship being the universal key for one school, phallic worship the equally universal key for another ; fear, desire, ignorance, and wonder led the savage to personify the powers of nature, and priests played upon his terrors and his hopes, his misty fancies, and his bewildered questionings ; myths became scriptures and symbols facts, and their basis was universal the likeness of the products was inevitable. (Page 3) Thus speak the doctors of “Comparative Mythology,” and plain people are silenced but not convinced under the rain of proofs ; they cannot deny the likenesses, but they dimly feel :  Are all man’s dearest hopes and lofty imaginings nothing more than the outcome of savage fancies and of groping ignorance? Have the great leaders of the race, the martyrs and heroes of humanity, lived, wrought, suffered and died deluded, for the mere personifications of astronomical facts and for the draped obscenities of barbarians?

The second explanation of the common property in the religions of the world asserts the existence of an original teaching in the custody of a Brotherhood of great spiritual Teachers, who – Themselves the outcome of past cycles of evolution – acted as the instructors and guides of the child-humanity of our planet, imparting to its races and nations in turn the fundamental truths of religion in the form most adapted to the idiosyncrasies of the recipients. According to this view, the Founders of the great religions are members of the one Brotherhood, and were aided in Their mission by many other members, lower in degree than Themselves, Initiates and disciples of various grades, eminent in spiritual insight, in philosophical knowledge, or in purity of ethical wisdom. These guided the infant nations, gave them their polity, enacted their laws, ruled them as kings, taught them as philosophers, guided them as priests ; all the nations of antiquity looked back to such mighty men, demigods, and heroes, (Page 4) and they left their traces in literature, in architecture, in legislation.

That such men lived it seems difficult to deny in the face of universal tradition, of still existing Scriptures, and of prehistoric remains for the most part now in ruins, to say nothing of other testimony which the ignorant would reject. The sacred books of the East are the best evidence for the greatness of their authors, for who in later days or in modern times can even approach the spiritual sublimity of their religious thought, the intellectual splendour of their philosophy, the breadth and purity of their ethic? And when we find that these books contain teachings about God, man, and the universe identical in substance under much variety of outer appearance, it does not seem unreasonable to refer to them to a central primary body of doctrine. To that body we give the name Divine Wisdom, in its Greek form : THEOSOPHY.

As the origin and basis of all religions, it cannot be the antagonist of any : it is indeed their purifier, revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that has become mischievous in its external presentation by the perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstition ; but it recognises and defends itself in each, and seeks in each to unveil its hidden wisdom. No man in becoming a Theosophist need cease to be a Christian, a Buddhist, a Hindu ; he will but acquire a deeper insight into his own faith, a firmer hold on its spiritual truths, a broader understanding of its sacred teachings. As Theosophy (Page 5) of old gave birth to religions, so in modern times does it justify and defend them. It is the rock whence all of them were hewn, the hole of the pit whence all were dug. It justifies at the bar of intellectual criticism the deepest longings and emotions of the human heart : it verifies our hopes for man ; it gives us back ennobled our faith in God.

The truth of this statement becomes more and more apparent as we study the various world-Scriptures, and but a few selections from the wealth of material available will be sufficient to establish the fact, and to guide the student in his search for further verification. The main spiritual verities of religion may be summarised thus:

1) One eternal, infinite, incognisable real Existence.
2) From THAT the manifested God, unfolding from unity to duality to trinity.
3) From the manifested Trinity many spiritual Intelligences, guiding cosmic order.
4) Man a  reflection of the manifested God and therefore a trinity fundamentally, his inner and real Self being eternal, one with the Self of the universe.
5) His evolution by repeated incarnations, into which he is drawn by desire, and from which he is set free by knowledge and sacrifice, becoming divine in potency as he had ever been divine in latency.

China which is now a fossilised civilisation, was peopled in old days by the Turanians, the fourth subdivision of the great Fourth Race, the race which inhabited the lost continent of Atlantis, and spread its (Page 6) offshoots over the world. The Mongolians, the last subdivision of that same race, later reinforced its population, so that in China we have traditions from ancient days, preceding the settlement of the Fifth, or Āryan race in India. In the Ching Chang Ching, or Classic of Purity, we have a fragment of an ancient scripture of singular beauty, breathing out the spirit of restfulness and peace so characteristic of the “original teaching.” Mr. Legge says in the introductory note to his translation [ The Sacred Books of the East] that the treatise –

“Is attributed to Ko  Yüan (or Hsüan), a Tāoist of the Wü dynasty (A.D. 222-227), who is fabled to have attained to the state of an Immortal, and is generally so denominated. He is represented as a worker of miracles ; as addicted to intemperance, and very eccentric in his ways. When shipwrecked on one occasion, he emerged from beneath the water with his clothes unwet, and walked freely on the surface. Finally he ascended to the sky in bright day. All these accounts may safely be put down as the figments of later time.”

Such stories are repeatedly told of Initiates of various degrees, and are by no means necessarily “figments,” but we are more interested in  Ko  Yüan’s own account of the book.

“When I obtained the true Tāo, I recited this Ching [book] ten thousand times. It is what the Spirits of heaven practise and had not been communicated to scholars of this lower world. I got if from the Divine Ruler of the Eastern Hwa ; he received it from the Divine Ruler of the Golden Gate ; he received it from the Royal-mother of the West.

Now the “Divine Ruler of the Golden Gate,” (Page 7) was the title held by the Initiate who ruled the Toltec empire in Atlantis, and its use suggests that the Classic of Purity was brought thence to China when the Turanians separated off from the Toltecs. The idea is strengthened by the contents of the brief treatise, which deals with Tāo – literally “the Way’ – the name by which the One Reality is indicated in the ancient Turanian and Mongolian religion. We read:

“The Great Tāo has no bodily form, but It produced and nourishes heaven and earth. The Great Tāo has no passions, but It causes the sun and the moon to revolve as they do. The Great Tāo has no name, but It effects the growth and maintenance of all things. (i,1)

This is the manifested God as unity, but duality supervenes:

Now the Tāo (shows itself in two forms), the Pure and the Turbid, and has (two conditions of) Motion and Rest, Heaven is pure and earth is turbid ; heaven moves and the earth is at rest . The masculine is pure and the feminine is turbid ; the masculine moves and the feminine is still. The radical (Purity) descended, and the (turbid) issue flowed abroad, and thus all things were produced (I, 2).

This passage is particularly interesting from the allusion to the active and receptive sides of Nature, the distinction between Spirit, the generator, and Matter, the nourisher, so familiar in later writings.

In the Tāo Te Ching the teaching as to the Unmanifested and the Manifested comes out very plainly.

“The Tāo that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tāo.(Page 8) The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. Having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth, having a name, it is the Mother of all things…Under these two aspects it is really the same ; but as development takes place it receives the different names. Together we call them the Mystery (i, 1,2,4). “

Students of the Kabalah will be reminded of one of the Divine Names, “the Concealed Mystery.”  Again: 

“There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before heaven and earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted). It may be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tāo. Making an effort to give it a name, I call it the Great. Great, it passes on ( in constant flow). Passing on, it becomes remote. Having become remote, it returns (xxv, 1-3). “

Very interesting it is to see here the idea of the forthgoing and the returning of the One Life, so familiar to us in the Hindu Literature. Familiar seems the verse :

“All things under heaven sprang from It as existent (and named) ; that existence sprang from It as non-existent (and not named) (xl,2)”.

That a Universe might become, the Unmanifest must give  forth the One from whom duality and trinity proceed :

“The Tāo produced One ; One produced Two ; Two produced  Three ; Three produced all things. All things leave behind them the Obscurity  (out of which they have come),  and go forward to embrace the Brightness  (into which they have emerged),  while they are harmonised by the Breath of vacancy (xlii, 1).” (Page 9)

“Breath of Space” would be a happier translation. Since all is produced from It, It exists in all :

“All pervading is the Great Tāo. It may be found on the left hand and on the right …It clothes all things as with a garment, and makes no assumption of being their lord ; - It may be named in the smallest things. All things return (to their root and disappear), and do not know that it is It which presides over their doing so – It may be named in the greatest things (xxxiv, 1, 2 ).”

Chwang-ze (fourth century BC) in his presentation of the ancient teachings, refers to the spiritual Intelligences coming from the Tāo:

“It has Its root and ground (of existence) in Itself. Before there were heaven and earth, from of old, there It was securely existing. From It came the mysterious existence of spirits, from It the mysterious existence of God (Bk. vi, Pt. I, Sec. vi, 7).”

A number of the names of these Intelligences follow, but such beings are so well known to play a great part in the Chinese religion that we need not multiply quotations about them.

Man is regarded as a trinity, Tāoism, says Mr. Legge, recognising in him the spirit, the mind, and the body. This division comes out clearly in the /Classic of Purity, in the teaching that man must get rid of desire to reach union with the One :

Now the spirit of man loves purity, but his mind disturbs it. The mind of man loves stillness, but his desires draw it away. If he could always send his desires away, his mind of itself would be still. Let his mind be made clean, and his spirit of itself becomes pure ….The reason why men are not able (Page 10) to attain to this is because their minds have not been cleansed, and their desires have not been sent away. If one is able to send the desires away, when he then looks at his mind it is no longer his: when he looks out at his body it is no longer his ; and when he looks farther off at external things, they are things which he has nothing to do with ..(i, 3, 4).

Then, after giving the stages of indrawing to “the condition of perfect stillness,” it is asked :

“In that condition of rest independently of place, how can any desire arise? And when no desire any longer arises there is the true stillness and rest. That true (stillness) becomes (a) constant quality, and responds to external things (without error) ; yea, that true and constant quality holds possession of the nature. In such constant response and constant stillness there is constant purity and rest. He who has this absolute purity enters gradually into the (inspiration of the ) True Tāo (i, 5).”

The supplied words “inspiration of” rather cloud than elucidate the meaning, for entering into the Tāo is congruous with the whole idea and with other Scriptures.

On putting away of desire is laid much stress in Tāoism ; a commentator on the Classic of Purity remarks that understanding the Tāo depends on absolute purity, and

The acquiring the Absolute Purity depends entirely on the putting away of Desire, which is the urgent practical lesson of the Treatise.

The Tāo Teh Ching says :

Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.( i, 3) (Page 11)

Reincarnation does not seem to be so distinctly taught as might have been expected, although passages are found which imply that the main idea was taken for granted and that the entity was considered as ranging through animal as well as human births. Thus we have from Chwang-ze the quaint and wise story of a dying man, to whom his friend said :

“Great indeed is the Creator! What will He now make you to become? Where will He take you to? Will he make you the liver of a rat or the arm of an insect? Szelai replied, “Wherever a parent tells a son to go, east, west, south or north, he simply follows the command …Here now is a great founder, casting his metal. If the metal were to leap up (in the pot) and say, ‘I must be made into a (sword like the ) Moysh,’ the great founder would be sure to regard it as uncanny.  So again, when a form is being fashioned in the mould of the womb, if it were to say, ‘I must become a man, I must become a man,’ the Creator would be sure to regard it as uncanny. When we once understand that heaven and earth are a great melting pot and the Creator a great founder, where can we to go to that shall not be right for us? We are born as from a quiet sleep and we die to a calm awaking” (Bk. vi, Pt. I, Sec. vi).

Turning to the Fifth, the Āryan Race, we have the same teachings embodied in the oldest and greatest Āryan religion – the Brāhmanical.  The eternal Existence is proclaimed in the Chhāndogyopanishad as “One only, without a second,” and it is written :

It willed, I shall multiply for the sake of the universe (vi, ii, 1, 3).

The Supreme Logos, Brahman, is threefold – Being, Consciousness, Bliss, and it is said : (Page 12)

From This arise life, mind and all the senses, ether, air, fire , water, earth the support of all ( Mundakopanishad, ii,3).

No grander descriptions of Deity can be found anywhere than in the Hindu Scriptures, but they are becoming so familiar that brief quotation will suffice. Let the following serve as specimens of their wealth of gems :

“Manifest, near, moving in the secret place, the great abode, herein rests all that moves, breathes, and shuts the eyes. Know That as to be worshipped, being and non-being, the best, beyond the knowledge of all creatures. Luminous, subtler than the subtle, in which the worlds and their denizens are infixed. That, this imperishable Brahman ; That, also life and voice and mind…In the golden highest sheath is spotless, partless Brahman ; That the pure Light of lights, known by the knowers of the Self…That deathless Brahman is before, Brahman behind, Brahman to the right and to the left, below, above, pervading ; this Brahman truly is the all. This is the best ( Mundakopanishad ,  II,ii, 1,2,9,11).

Beyond the universe, Brahman, the supreme, the great, hidden in all beings according to their bodies, the one Breath of the whole universe, the Lord, whom knowing (men) become immortal. I know that mighty Spirit, the shining sun beyond darkness… I know Him the unfading, the ancient, the Soul of all, omnipresent by His nature, whom the Brahman-knowers call unborn, whom they call eternal (Shvetāshvataropanishad, iii. 7,8,21).

When there is no darkness, no day nor night, no being nor non-being (there is) Shiva even alone ; That the indestructible, That is to be worshipped by Savriti, from That came forth the ancient wisdom. Not above nor below, nor in the midst, can He be comprehended. Nor is there any similitude for Him whose name is infinite glory. Not with the sight is established His form, none may by the eye behold Him ; they who (Page 13) know Him by the heart and by the mind, dwelling in the heart, become immortal (Ibid., iv, 18-20).

That man in his inner Self is one with the Self of the universe – “I am That” – is an idea that so thoroughly pervades all Hindu thought that man is often referred to as the “divine town of Brahman,” [ Mundakopanishad ] the “town of nine gates,” [ Shvetâshvataropanishad, iii,14. ] God dwelling in the cavity of the heart.[ Ibid., Ii]

“In one manner is to be seen (the Being) which cannot be proved, which is eternal, without spot, higher than the ether, unborn, the great eternal Soul…This great unborn Soul is the same which abides as the intelligent (soul) in all living creatures, the same which abides as ether in the heart ; [ The “ether in the heart” is a mystical phrase used to indicate the One, who is said to dwell therein.] - in him it sleeps; it is the Subduer of all, the Ruler of all, the sovereign Lord of all ; it does not become greater by good works nor less by evil work. It is the Ruler of all, the sovereign Lord of all beings, the Preserver of all beings, the Bridge, the Upholder of the worlds, so that they fall not to ruin ( Brihadāranyakopanishad, IV, iv, 20,22, Trs. Dr. E. Röer.)

When God is regarded as the evolver of the universe, the threefold character comes out very clearly as Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahmā or again as Vishnu sleeping under the waters, the Lotus springing from Him, and in the Lotus Brahmā. Man is likewise threefold, and in the Mândûkyopanishad the self is described as conditioned by the physical body, the subtle body, and the mental body, and then rising out of all into (Page 14) the One “without duality.”  From the Trimurti (Trinity) come many Gods, connected with the administration of the universe, as to whom it is said in the Brihadāranyakopanishad.

“Adore Him, ye Gods, after whom the year by rolling days is completed, the Light of lights, as the Immortal Life (IV, iv, 16).”

It is hardly necessary to mention the presence in Brâhmanism of the teaching of reincarnation, since its whole philosophy of life turns on this pilgrimage of the Soul through many births and deaths, and not a book could be taken up in which this truth is not taken for granted. By desires man is bound to this wheel of change, and therefore by knowledge, devotion, and the destruction of desires, man must set himself free.  When the Soul knows God it is liberated.   ( Shvetāsh, I, 8.) The intellect purified by knowledge beholds Him.  ( Mund., III, I,8 .) Knowledge joined to devotion finds the abode of Brahman. ( Mund., III,  ii,4).  Whoever knows Brahman, becomes Brahman.  ( Mund., III, ii,9 ) When desires cease the mortal becomes immortal and obtains Brahman. ( Kathop., vi, 14).

Buddhism, as it exists in its northern form, is quite at one with the most ancient faiths, but in the southern form it seems to have let slip the idea of the Logoic Trinity as of the One Existence from which They came forth. The LOGOS in His triple manifestation is : the First LOGOS, Amitâbha, (Page 15) the Boundless Light ; the Second, Avalokiteshvara, or Padmapāni (Chenresi) ; the Third, Manjusri – “the representative of creative wisdom, corresponding to Brahmâ.” ( Eitel’s Sanskrit Chinese Dictionary, sub voce. )  Chinese Buddhism apparently does not contain the idea of a primordial Existence, beyond the LOGOS, but Nepalese Buddhism postulates Âdi-Buddha, from Whom Amitâbha arises. Padmapâni is said by Eitel to be the representative of compassionate Providence and to correspond partly with Shiva, but as the aspect of the Buddhist Trinity that sends forth incarnations He appears rather to represent the same idea as Vishnu, to whom He is allied by bearing the Lotus (fire and water, or Spirit and Matter as the primary constituents of the universe).

Reincarnation and Karma are so much the fundamentals of Buddhism that it is hardly worth while to insist on them save to  note the way of liberation, and to remark that as the Lord Buddha was a Hindu preaching to Hindus, Brâhmanical doctrines are taken for granted constantly in His teaching, as matters of course. He was a purifier and a reformer, not an iconoclast, and struck at the accretions due to ignorance, not at fundamental truths belonging to the Ancient Wisdom.

“Those beings who walk in the way of the law that has been well taught, reach the other shore of the great sea of birth and death, that is difficult to cross.” (Udānavarga, xxix. 37). 

Desire binds man, and must be gotten rid of :

“It is hard for one who is held by the fetters of desire to (Page 16) free himself of them, says the Blessed One. The steadfast, who care not for the happiness of desires, cast them off and do soon depart (to Nirvāna)….Mankind has no lasting desires : they are impermanent in them who experience them ; free yourselves then from what cannot last, and abide not in the sojourn of death ( Ibid., Ii, 6, 8).

He who has destroyed desires for (worldly )goods, sinfulness, the bonds of the eye of the flesh, who has torn up desire by the very root, he, I declare, is a Brāhmana (Ibid., xxxiii, 68).”

And a Brâhmana is a man “having his last body,” (Udânavarga, xxxiii, 41) and is defined as one.

“Who,  knowing his former abodes (existences) perceives heaven and hell, the Muni, who has found the way to put an end to birth”. (ibid., xxxiii,55).

In the exoteric Hebrew Scriptures, the idea of a Trinity does not come out strongly, though duality is apparent, and the God spoken of is obviously the LOGOS, not the One Unmanifest :

“I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil ; I am the Lord that doeth all these things.” (Is., xlvii, 7)

Philo, however, has the doctrine of the LOGOS very clearly, and it is found in the Fourth Gospel :

“In the beginning was the Word [Logos] and the Word was with God and the Word was God….All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. (St. John i, 1, 3).

In the Kabalah the doctrine of the One, the Three, the Seven, and then the many, is plainly taught : (Page 17)

The Ancient of the Ancients, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, yet also has not any form. It has a form through which the universe is maintained. It also has not any form, as It cannot be comprehended. When It first took this form [Kether, the Crown, the First Logos] It permitted to proceed from It nine brilliant Lights [Wisdom and the Voice, forming with Kether the Triad, and then the seven lower Sephiroth] …It is the Ancient of the Ancients, the Mystery of the Mysteries, the Unknown of the Unknown.

It has a form which appertains to It, since It appears (through it) to us, as the Ancient Man above all as the Ancient of the Ancients, and as that which there is the Most Unknown among the Unknown. But under that form by which It makes Itself known, It however still remains the Unknown (Issac Myer’s Qabbalah, from the Zohar, pp. 274-275).

Myer points out that the “form” is “not ‘the Ancient of the Ancients,’ who is the Ain Soph.

Again :

“Three Lights are in the Holy Upper which Unite as One ; and they are the basis of the Thorah, and this opens the door to all….Come, see! the mystery of the word. These are three degrees and each exists by itself, and yet all are One and are knotted in One, nor are they separated one from another….Three come out from One, One exists in Three, it is the force between Two, Two nourishes One. One nourishes many sides, thus All is One. (ibid., 373, 375,376).

Needless to say that the Hebrews held the doctrine of many Gods – “Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the Gods?” –and of multitudes of subordinate ministrants, the ”Sons of God,” the “Angels of the Lord,” the “Ten Angelic Hosts.”(Exodus, xv,ii.)

Of the commencement of the universe the Zohar teaches : (Page 18)

In the beginning was the Will of the King, prior to any existence which came into being through emanation from this Will. It sketched and engraved the forms of all things that were to be manifested from concealment into view, in the supreme and dazzling light of the Quadrant [the Sacred Tetractys] (Myer’s Quabbalah, pp. 194-95).

Nothing can exist in which the Deity is not immanent, and with regard to Reincarnation it is taught that the Soul is present in the divine Idea ere coming to earth ; if the Soul remained quite pure during its trial it escaped rebirth, but this seems to have been only a theoretical possibility, and it is said:

All souls are subject to revolution (metempsychosis, a’leen o’gilgoolah), but men do not know the ways of the Holy One : blessed be It! they are ignorant of the way they have been judged in all time, and before they came into this world and when they have quitted it (ibid., p. 198).

Traces of this belief occur both in the Hebrew and Christian exoteric Scriptures, as in the belief that Elijah would return, and later that he had returned in John the Baptist.

Turning to glance at Egypt, we find there from hoariest antiquity its famous Trinity, Ra, Osiris-Isis as the dual Second LOGOS, and Horus. The great hymn to Amun-Ra will be remembered :

The Gods bow before Thy Majesty by exalting the Souls of That which produceth them….and say to Thee : Peace to all emanations from the unconscious father of the conscious Fathers of the Gods…..Thou Producer of beings, we adore the Souls which emanate from Thee. Thou begettest us, O Thou Unknown, and we greet Thee in worshipping each God-Soul which descendeth (Page 19) from Thee and liveth in us (quoted in Secret Doctrine iii, 485, 1893 ed.; v, 463, Adyar Ed.).

The “conscious Fathers of the Gods” are the LOGOI, the “unconscious Father” is the One Existence, unconscious not as being less but as being infinitely more than what we call consciousness, a limited thing.

In the fragments of the Book of the Dead we can study the conceptions of the reincarnating of the human Soul, of its pilgrimage towards and its ultimate union with the LOGOS. The famous papyrus of “the scribe Ani, triumphant in peace,” is full of touches that remind the reader of the Scriptures of other faiths ; his journey through the underworld, his expectation of re-entering his body (the form taken by reincarnation among the Egyptians), his identification with the LOGOS :

Saith Osiris Ani : I am the great One, son of the great One ; I am Fire, the son of Fire …I have knit together my bones, I have made myself whole and sound ; I have become young once more ; I am Osiris the Lord of eternity (xliii, 1, 4 ).

In Pierret’s recension of The Book of the Dead we find the striking passage:

I am the being of mysterious names who prepares for himself dwellings for millions of years (p. 22). Heart, that comest to me from my mother, my heart necessary to my existence on earth …Heart, that comest to me from my mother,  heart that is necessary for me for my transformation (pp. 113-114).

In Zoroastrianism we find the conception of the One Existence, imaged as Boundless Space, whence arises the LOGOS, the creator  Aûharmazd: (Page 20)

Supreme in omniscience and goodness, and unrivalled in splendor : the region of light is the place of Aûharmazd (The Bundahis, Sacred Books of the East, v, 3, 4; v, 2).

To him in the Yasna, the chief liturgy of the Zarathustrians, homage is first paid :

I announce and I (will) complete (my Yasna [worship] to Ahura Mazda, the creator, the radiant and glorious, the greatest and the best, the most beautiful (?) (to our conceptions), the most firm, the wisest, and the one of all whose body is most perfect, who attains his ends the most infallibly, because of His righteous order, to Him who disposes our minds aright, who sends His joy-creating grace afar ; who made us and has fashioned us, and who has nourished and protected us, who is the most bounteous Spirit (Sacred Books of the East, xxxi, pp. 195,196).

The worshipper then pays homage to the Ameshaspends and other Gods, but the supreme manifested God, the LOGOS, is not here presented as triune.  As with the Hebrews, there was a tendency in the exoteric faith to lose sight of this fundamental truth. Fortunately we can trace the primitive teaching, though it disappeared in later times from the popular belief. Dr. Haug, in his Essays on the Parsis (translated by Dr. West and forming vol. v of Trubner’s Oriental Series) states that Ahuramazda – Aûharmazd or Hârmazd – is the Supreme Being, and that from him were produced –

Two primeval causes, which, though different were united and produced the world of material things as well as that of the spirit (p. 303).

These were called twins and are everywhere present, in Ahuramazda as well as in man. (Page 21) One produces reality, the other non-reality, and it is these who in later Zoroastrianism became the opposing Spirits  of good and evil. In the earlier teachings they evidently formed the Second Logos, duality being his characteristic mark.

The “good” and “bad” are merely Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, the fundamental “twins” of the Universe, the Two from the One.

Criticising the later idea, Dr. Haug says :

Such is the original Zoroastrian notion of the two creative Spirits, who form only two parts of the Divine being. But in the course of time this doctrine of the great founder was changed and corrupted, in consequence of misunderstandings and false interpretations. Spentômainyush [ the “good spirit”] was taken as a name of Ahuramazda Himself, and then of course Angrômainyush [ the “evil spirit”] by becoming entirely separated from Ahuramazda ; was regarded as the constant adversary of Ahuramazda : thus the Dualism of God and Devil arose (p. 205).

Dr. Haug’s view seems to be supported by the Gâtha Ahunavaiti, given with other Gâthas by “the archangels” to Zoroaster or Zarathustra :

In the beginning there was a pair of twins, two spirits, each of a peculiar activity ; these are the good and the base …And these two spirits united created the first (the material things) ; one the reality, the other the non-reality …And to succor this life  (to increase it) Armaiti came with wealth, the good and true mind ; she, the everlasting one, created the material world….All perfect things are garnered up in the splendid residence of the Good Mind, the Wise and the Righteous, who are known as the best beings (Yas., xxx, 3,4,7,10; Dr. Haug’s translation, pp.149-151).(Page 22)

Here the three LOGOI are seen, Ahuramazda the first, the supreme Life ; in and from him the “twins,” the Second LOGOS ; then Armaiti the Mind, the Creator of the Universe, the Third LOGOS. (  Armaiti was a first Wisdom and the Goddess of Wisdom, Later as the creator, She became identified with the earth, and was worshipped as the Goddess of Earth).  Later Mithra appears, and in the exoteric faith clouds the primitive truth to some extent ; of him it is said :

Whom Ahura Mazda has established to maintain and look over all this moving world ; who, never sleeping, wakefully guards the creation of Mazda (Mihir Yast, xxvii, 103: Sacred Books of the East, xviii).

He was a subordinate God, the Light of Heaven, as Varuna was the Heaven itself, one of the great ruling Intelligences. The highest of these ruling Intelligences were the six Ameshaspends, headed by the Good Thought of Ahuramazda, Vohûman –

Who have charge of the whole material creation (Sacred Books of the East,v. p. 10 note).

Reincarnation does not seem to be taught in the books which, so far, have been translated, and the belief is not current among modern Parsīs. But we do find the idea of the Spirit in man as a spark that is to become a flame and to be reunited to the Supreme Fire, and this must imply a development for which rebirth is a necessity. Nor will Zoroastrianism ever be understood until we recover the Chaldean Oracles and allied writings, for there is its real root.(Page 23)

Travelling westward to Greece, we meet with the Orphic system, described with such abundant learning by G.R.S.Mead in his work Orpheus. The Ineffable Thrice-unknown Darkness was the name given to the One Existence.

According to the theology of Orpheus, all things originate from an immense principle, to which through the imbecility and poverty of human conception we give a name, though it is perfectly ineffable, and in the reverential language of the Egyptians in a thrice unknown darkness in contemplation of which all knowledge is refunded into ignorance (Thomas Taylor, quoted in Orpheus, page 93).

From this the “Primordial Triad,” Universal Good, Universal Soul, Universal Mind, again the Logoic Trinity. Of this Mr. Mead writes :

The first Triad, which is manifestable to intellect, is but a reflection of, or substitute for the Unmanifestable, and its hypostases are: (a) the Good, which is super-essential; (b) Soul (the World Soul), which is a self-motive essence; and (c) Intellect (or the Mind), which is an impartible, immovable essence (ibid., p. 94).

After this, a series of ever-descending Triads, showing the characteristics of the first in diminishing splendor until man is reached, who –

Has in him potentially the sum and substance of the universe…"The race of men and gods is one (Pindar, who was a Pythagorean, quoted by Clemens, Strom., v.709)…Thus man was called the microcosm or little world, to distinguish him from the universe or great world (ibid., p. 271).

He has the Nous, or real mind, the Logos or rational part, the Alogos or irrational part, the two latter again forming a Triad, and thus presenting the more elaborate septenary division. (Page 24) The man was also regarded  as having three vehicles, the physical and subtle bodies and the luciform body or augoeides, that :

Is the “causal body,” or karmic vesture of the soul, in which its destiny, or rather all the seeds of past causation are stored. This is the “thread-soul,” as it is sometimes called, the “body” that passes over from one incarnation to another (ibid., p. 284).

As to reincarnation:

Together with all the adherents of the Mysteries in every land the Orphics believed in reincarnation (ibid., p. 292).

To this Mr. Mead brings abundant testimony, and he shows that it was taught by Plato, Empedocles, Pythagoras, and others. Only by virtue could men escape from the life-wheel.

Taylor in his notes to the Select Works of Plotinus, quotes from Damascius as to the teachings of Plato on the One beyond the One, the Unmanifest Existence :

Perhaps indeed, Plato leads us ineffably through the one  as a medium to the ineffable beyond the one which is now the subject of discussion ; and this by an ablation of the one in the same manner as he leads to the one by an ablation of other things…That which is beyond the one is to be honoured in the most perfect silence…The one indeed wills to be by itself, but with no other ; but the unknown beyond the one is perfectly ineffable, which we acknowledge we neither know, nor are ignorant of, but which has about itself super-ignorance. Hence by proximity to this the one itself is darkened ; for being near to the immense principle, if it be lawful so to speak, it remains as it were in the adytum of the truly mystic silence…The first is above the one and  all things, being more simple than either of these (pp.341-343).(Page 25)

The Pythagorean, Platonic, and Neo-Platonic schools have so many points of contact with Hindu and Buddhist thought that their issue from the one fountain is obvious. R. Garbe, in his work, Die Sāmkhya Philosophie (iii,pp.85-105) presents many of these points, and his statement may be summarised as follows :

The most striking is the resemblance – or more correctly the identity – of the doctrine of the One and Only in the Upanishads and the Eleatic school.  Xenophanes’ teaching of the unity of God and the Kosmos and of the changelessness of the One, and even more that of Parmenides, who held that reality is ascribable only to the One unborn, indestructible and omnipresent, while all that is manifold and subject to change is but an appearance, and further that Being and Thinking are the same – these doctrines are completely identical with the essential contents of the Upanishads and of the Vedântic philosophy which springs from them. But even earlier still the view of Thales, that all that exists has sprung from Water, is curiously like the VaidiK doctrine that the Universe arose from the waters. Later on Anaximander assumed as the basis (άρχή) of all things an eternal, infinite, and indefinite Substance, from which all definite substances proceed and into which they return – an assumption identical with that which lies at the root of the Sānkhya, viz., the Prakŗti from which the whole material side of the universe evolved.

And his famous saying  πάντα  ́ρεî (panta rhei) (Page 26) expresses the characteristic view of the Sânkhya that all things are ever changing under the ceaseless activity of the three gunas. Empedocles again taught theories of transmigration and evolution practically the same as those of the Sânkhyas, while his theory that nothing can come into being which does not already exist is even more closely identical with a characteristically Sânkhyan doctrine.

Both Anaxagoras and Democritus also present several points of close agreement, especially the latter’s view as to the nature and position of the Gods, and the same applies, notably in some curious matters of detail, to Epicurus. But it is, however, in the teachings of Pythagoras that we find the closest and most frequent identities of teachings and argumentation, explained as due to Pythagoras himself having visited India and learned his philosophy there, as tradition asserts. In later centuries we find some peculiarly Sânkhyan and Buddhist ideas playing a prominent part in Gnostic thought. The following quotation from Lassen, cited by Garbe on p. 97, shows this very clearly :

Buddhism in general distinguishes clearly between Spirit and Light, and does not regard the latter as immaterial ; but a view of Light is found among them which is closely related to that of the Gnostics. According to this, Light is the manifestation of Spirit in matter ; the intelligence thus clothed in Light comes into relation with matter, in which the Light can be lessened and at last quite obscured, in which case the  Intelligence falls finally into complete unconsciousness.

Of the highest Intelligence it is maintained that it is neither Light nor Not-Light, neither Darkness nor Not-Darkness, since all (Page 27) those expressions denote relations of the Intelligence to the Light, which indeed in the beginning was free from these connections, but later on encloses the Intelligence and mediates its connection with matter. It follows from this that the Buddhist view ascribes to the highest Intelligence the power to produce light from itself, and that in this respect also there is an agreement between Buddhism and Gnosticism.

Garbe here points out that, as regards the features alluded to, the agreement between Gnosticism and Sânkhya is very much closer than that with Buddhism ; for while these views as to the relations between Light and Spirit pertain to the later phases of Buddhism, and are not at all fundamental to, or characteristic of it as such, the Sânkhya teaches clearly and precisely that Spirit is Light. Later still the influence of the Sânkhya thought is very plainly evident in the Neo-Platonic writers ; while the doctrine of the LOGOS or Word, though not of Sânkhyan origin, shows even in its details that it has been derived from India, where the conception of Vāch, the Divine Word, plays so prominent a part in the Brâhmanical system.

Coming to the Christian religion, contemporaneous with the Gnostic and Neo-Platonic systems, we shall find no difficulty in tracing most of the same fundamental teachings with which we have now become so familiar. The threefold LOGOS appears as the Trinity ; the First LOGOS, the fount of all life being the Father ; the dual-natured Second LOGOS the Son, God-man ; the Third, the creative Mind, the Holy Ghost, whose brooding over the waters of chaos brought forth the worlds. (Page 28) Then comes “the seven Spirits of God” [Rev. iv. 5.] and the hosts archangels and angels. Of the One Existence from which all comes and into which all returns, but little is hinted, the Nature that by searching cannot be found out ; but the great doctors of the Church Catholic always posit the unfathomable Deity, incomprehensible, infinite, and therefore necessarily but One and partless.

Man is made in the “image of God,” [Gen. I, 26-27] and is consequently triple in his nature – Spirit and Soul and body, [1-Thess. V, 23] he is a “habitation of God,” [Eph. Ii, 22] the “temple of God,” [ I Cor.,iii,16] the “temple of the Holy Ghost,” [ I Cor., vi, 19] – phrases that exactly echo the Hindu teaching. The doctrine of reincarnation is rather taken for granted in the New Testament than distinctly taught ; thus Jesus speaking of John the Baptist, declares that he is Elias “which was for to come.” [ Matt. xi., 14] referring to the words of Malachi, “ I will send you Elijah the prophet”, [ Mal., Iv, 5]  and again, when asked as to Elijah coming before the Messiah, He answered that “Elias is come already and they knew him not.” [ Matt. xvii, 12 ].So again we find the disciples taking reincarnation for granted in asking whether blindness from birth was a punishment for a man’s sin and Jesus in answer not rejecting the possibility of ante-natal sin, but only excluding it as causing the blindness in the special instance. [John, ix, 1-13 ]  The remarkable phrase applied to “him that overcometh” in Rev. iii, 12, - (Page 29) that  he shall be “a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out”, has been taken as signifying escape from rebirth. From the writings of some of the Christian Fathers a good case may be made our for a current belief in reincarnation ; some argue that only the pre-existence of the Soul is taught, but this view does not seem to me supported by the evidence.

The unity of moral teaching is not less striking, than the unity of the conceptions of the universe and of the experiences of those who rose out of the prison of the body into the freedom of the higher spheres. It is clear that this body of primeval teaching was in the hands of definite custodians, who had schools in which they taught, disciples who studied their doctrines. The identity of these schools and of their discipline stands out plainly when we study the moral teaching, the demands made on the pupils, and the mental and spiritual states to which they were raised.  A caustic division is made in the Tāo Teh  Ching of the types of scholars :

Scholars of the highest class when they hear about the Tāo, earnestly carry it into practice. Scholars of the middle class, when they have hears about it, seem now to keep it and now to lose it. Scholars of the lowest class, when they have heard about it, laugh greatly at it (Sacred Books of the East, xxxix, op. Cit., xli, 1).

In the same book we read :

The sage puts his own person last, and yet it is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved. It is not because (Page 30) he has no personal and private ends  that therefore such ends are realised? (vii,2) – He is free from self-display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished ; from self-boasting, and therefore his merit is acknowledged, from self-complacency, and therefore he acquires superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving that therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him (xxii, 2).  There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition ; no calamity greater than to be discontented with one’s lot ; no fault greater than the wish to be getting (xlvi,2). To those who are good (to me) I am good ; and to those who are not good (to me) I am also good ; and thus all get to be good. To those who are sincere (with me) I am sincere; and to those who are not sincere (with me) I am also sincere ; and thus (all) get to be sincere (xlix, 1). He who has in himself abundantly the attributes (of the Tâo ) is like an infant. Poisonous insects will not sting him ; fierce beasts will not seize him ; birds of prey will not strike him – ( lv, 1), I have three precious things which I prize and hold fast. The first is gentleness ; the second is economy ; the third is shrinking from taking precedence of others …Gentleness is sure to be victorious, even in battle, and firmly to maintain its ground. Heaven will save its possessor, by his (very) gentleness protecting him (lxvii,2,4).

Among the Hindus there were selected scholars deemed worthy of special instruction to whom the Guru imparted the secret teachings, while the general rules of right living may be gathered from Manu’s Ordinances, the Upanishads,  the  Mahâbhârata and many other treatises :

Let him say what is true, let him say what is pleasing, let him utter no disagreeable truth, and let him utter  no agreeable falsehood ; that is the eternal law (Manu, iv, 138). Giving no pain to any creature, let him slowly accumulate spiritual merit (iv, 238). For that twice-born man, by whom not (Page 31) the smallest danger even is caused to created beings, there will be no danger from any (quarter) after he is freed from his body (vi, 40). Let him patiently bear hard words, let him not insult anybody,  and let him not become anybody’s enemy for the sake of this (perishable) body. Against an angry man let him not in return show anger, let him bless when he is cursed (vi, 47-48). Freed from passion, fear and anger, thinking on Me, taking refuge in Me, purified in the fire of Wisdom, many have entered My Being (Bhagavad Gitâ , iv, 10). Supreme joy is for the Yogi whose Manas is peaceful, whose passion-nature is calmed, who is sinless and of the nature of Brahman (iv, 27). He who beareth no ill-will to any being, friendly and compassionate, without attachment and egoism, balanced in pleasure and pain, and forgiving, ever content, harmonious, with the self controlled, resolute, with Manas and Buddhi dedicated to Me – he, My devotee, is dear to Me (xii,13,14)

If we turn to the Buddha, we find Him with His Arhats, to whom His secret teachings were given ; while published we have :

The wise man through earnestness, virtue, and purity makes himself an island which no flood can submerge (Udâ
navarga, iv, 5 ). The wise man in this world holds fast to faith and wisdom, these are his greatest treasures ; he cast aside all other riches, (x 9). He who bears ill-will to those who bear ill-will can never become pure ; but he who feels no ill-will pacifies those who hate ; as hatred brings misery to mankind, the sage knows no hatred (xiii, 12). Overcome anger by not being angered ; overcome evil by good ; overcome avarice by liberality ; overcome falsehoods by truth (xx,18).

The Zoroastrian is taught to praise Ahuramazda, and then:

What is fairest, what is pure, what immortal, what brilliant, all that is good. The good spirit we honor, the good kingdom we honor, and the good law, and the good wisdom (Page 32) (Yasna, xxxvii). May there come to this dwelling contentment, blessing, guilelessness, and wisdom of the pure (Yasna, lix). Purity is the best good. Happiness, happiness is to him ; namely, to the best pure in purity (Ashem-vohu). All good thoughts, words, and works are done with knowledge. All evil thoughts, words, and works are not done with knowledge (Mispa Kumata). ( Selected from the Avesta in Ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian Morals, by Dhunjibhoy Jamsetji Medhora).

The Hebrew had his “schools of the prophets” and his Kabbalah, and in the exoteric books we find the accepted moral teachings :

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart ; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, not sworn deceitfully (Ps. xxiv,3,4). What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah,vi,8). The lip of truth shall be established for ever ; but a lying tongue is but for a moment (Prov. xii, 19). Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy home? when thou seest the naked that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? (Isa. lviii,6,7).

The Christian teacher had His secret instructions for His disciples, (Matt. xiii, 10-17) – and He bade them:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine (Matt. vii, 6).

For public teaching we may refer to the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and to such (Page 33) doctrines as :

I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you….Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. v, 44-48). He that findeth his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it (x,39). Whoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven (xviii, 4). The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance ; against such there is no law (Gal., v, 22-23). Let us love one another ; for love is of God ; and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God ( I John iv, 7 ).

The school of the Pythagoras and those of the Neo-Platonists kept up the tradition for Greece, and we know that Pythagoras gained some of his learning in India, while Plato studied, and was initiated in the schools of Egypt. More precise information has been published of the Grecian schools than of others ; the Pythagorean had pledged disciples as well as an outer discipline, the inner circle passing through three degrees during five years of probation. (For details see G.R.S. Mead’s Orpheus, p. 263 et. Seq.). The outer discipline he describes as follows :

We must first give ourselves up entirely to God. When a man prays he should never ask for any particular benefit, fully convinced that that will be given which is right and proper, and according to the wisdom of God and not the subject of our own selfish desires (Diod. Sic. ix, 41). By virtue alone does man arrive at blessedness, and this is the exclusive privilege of a rational being (Hippodamus, De Felicitate, ii, Orelli, Opusc. Græcor. Sent. et Moral., Ii, 284). In himself, of his own nature, man is neither good nor happy, but he may become so by the teaching of the true doctrine (Page 34) (μαθήσιος και΄ προνι΄ας ποτιδέεται) – (Hippo, ibid.).

The most sacred duty is filial piety. “God showers his blessings on him who honors and reveres the author of his days,” says Pampelus (De Parentibus, Orelli, op. Cit., ii, 345).  Ingratitude towards one’s parents is the blackest of all crimes, writes Perictione ( ibid.,p. 350), who is supposed to have been the mother of Plato. The cleanliness and delicacy of all Pythagorean writings were remarkable (Œlian, Hist. Var., xiv,19).  In all that concerns chastity and marriage their principles are of the utmost purity. Everywhere the great teacher recommends chastity and temperance ; but at the same time  he directs that the married should first become parents before living a life of absolute celibacy, in order that children might be born under favourable conditions for continuing the holy life and succession of the Sacred Science (Iamblichus, Vit. Pythag., and Hierocl., ap. Stob. Serm. xlv, 14). This is exceedingly interesting, for it is precisely the same regulation that is laid down in the Mânava Dharma Shâstra, the great Indian Code. …Adultery was most sternly condemned (Iamb., ibid.). Moreover, the most gentle treatment of the wife by the husband was enjoined, for had he not taken her as his companion “before the Gods”? (See Lascaulx. Zur Geschichte der Ehe bei den Griechen, in the Mém. De l’Acad. De Bavière, vii, 107,sq.).

Marriage was not an animal union, but a spiritual tie. Therefore, in her turn, the wife should love her husband even more than herself, and in all things be devoted and obedient. It is further interesting to remark that the finest characters among women with which ancient Greece presents us were formed in the school of Pythagoras, and the same is true of the men.

The authors of antiquity are agreed that this discipline had succeeded in producing the highest examples not only  of the purest chastity and sentiment, but also a simplicity of manners, a delicacy, and a taste for serious pursuits which was unparalleled. This is admitted even by Christian writers (See Justin, xx, 4)…Among the members of the school the idea of justice directed all their acts, while they observed (Page 35) the strictest tolerance and compassion in their mutual relationships. For justice is the principle of all virtue, as Polus, (ap. Stob., Serm., viii, ed. Schow, p. 232) teaches ; “’tis justice which maintains peace and balance in the soul ; she is the mother of good order in all communities, makes concord between husband and wife, love between master and servant.’ The word of a Pythagorean: was also his bond. And finally a man should live so as to be ever ready for death ( Hippolytus, Philos., vi). (ibid., p. 263-267).

The treatment of the virtues in the Neo-Platonic schools is interesting, and the distinction is clearly made between  morality and spiritual development, or as Plotinus put it,  “The endeavour is not to be without sin, but to be of God.” (Select Works of Plotinus, trans. Thomas Taylor, ed., 1895, p. 11).The lowest stage was becoming without sin by acquiring the “political virtues” which made a man perfect in conduct (the physical and ethical being below these), the reason controlling and adorning the irrational nature. Above these were the cathartic, pertaining to reason alone, and which liberated the Soul from the bonds of generation ; the theoretic , lifting the Soul into touch with natures superior to itself;and the paradigmatic, giving it a knowledge of true being :

Hence he who energises according to the practical virtues is a worthy man; but he who energises according to the cathartic virtues is a demoniacal man, or is also  a good demon. (A good spiritual intelligence, as the daimon of Socrates). He who energises according to the intellectual virtues alone is a God. But he who energises according to the paradigmatic virtues (Page 36) is the Father of the Gods. (Note on Intellectual Prudence, pp. 325-332).

By various practices the disciples were taught to escape from the body, and to rise into higher regions. As grass is drawn from a sheath, the inner man was to draw himself from his bodily casing ( Kathopanishad, vi,17). The “body of light” or “radiant body” of the Hindus is the “luciform body” of the Neo-Plationists, and in this man rises to find the Self :

Not grasped by the eye, nor by speech, nor by the others senses (lit., Gods), nor by austerity, nor by religious rites ; by serene wisdom, by the pure essence only, doth one see the partless One in meditation. This subtle Self is to be known by the mind in which the fivefold life is sleeping. The mind of all creatures is instinct with [these] lives ; in this, purified, manifests the Self  ( Mundakopanishad, III, ii, 8,9).

Then alone can man enter the region where separation is not, where “the spheres have ceased.”  In G.R.S.Mead’s Introduction to Taylor’s Plotinus, he quotes from Plotinus a description of a sphere which is evidently the Turîya of the Hindus :

They likewise see all things, not those with which generation, but those with which essence is present. And they perceive themselves in others. For all things there, are diaphanous; and nothing is dark and resisting, but everything is apparent to every one internally and throughout. For light everywhere meets with light ; since everything contains all things in itself and again see all things in another. So that all things are everywhere and all is all. Each thing likewise is everything. And the splendor there is infinite. For everything there is great, since even that which is small is great. (Page 37) The sun too which is there is all the stars; and again each star is the sun and all the stars. In each however, a different property predominates, but at the same time all things are visible in each. Motion likewise there is pure; for the motion is not confounded by a mover different from it (p. lxxiii).

A description which is a failure, because the region is one above describing by mortal language, but a description that could only have been written by one whose eyes had been opened.

A whole volume might easily be filled with the similarities between the religions of the world, but the above imperfect statement must suffice as a preface to the study of Theosophy, to that which is a fresh and fuller presentment to the world of the ancient truths on which it has ever been fed. all these similarities point to a single source, and that is the Brotherhood of the White Lodge, the Hierarchy of Adepts who watch over and guide the evolution of humanity, and who have preserved these truths unimpaired ; from time to time, as necessity arose, reasserting them in the ears of men. From other worlds, from earlier humanities, They came to help our globe, evolved by a process comparable to that now going on with ourselves, and that will be more intelligible when we have completed our present study than it may now appear ; and They have afforded this help, reinforced by the flower of our own humanity, from the earliest times until today.

Still They teach eager pupils, showing the path and guiding the disciple’s steps ; still They may be reached by all who seek Them, (Page 38) bearing in their hands the sacrificial fuel of love, of devotion, of unselfish longing to know in order to serve ; still They carry out the ancient discipline, still unveil the ancient Mysteries. The two pillars of Their Lodge gateway are Love and Wisdom, and through its straight portal can only pass those from whose shoulders has fallen the burden of desire and selfishness.

A heavy task lies before us, and beginning on the physical plane we shall climb slowly upwards, but a bird’s eye view of the great sweep of evolution and of its purpose may help us, ere we begin our detailed study in the world that surrounds us. A LOGOS, ere a system has begun to be, has in His mind the whole, existing as idea – all forces, all forms, all that in due process shall emerge into objective life. He draws the circle of manifestation within which He wills to energise, and circumscribes Himself to be the life of His universe. As we watch we see strata appearing of successive densities, till seven vast regions are apparent, and in these centres of energy appear whirlpools of matter that separate from each other, until when the processes of separation and of condensation are over – so far as we are here concerned – we see a central sun, the physical symbol of the LOGOS, and seven planetary chains, each chain consisting of seven globes.

Narrowing down our view to the chain of which our globe is one, we see life-waves sweep round i, forming the kingdoms of nature, the three elemental, the mineral, vegetable, animal, human. Narrowing down our view still further to our own globe and its surroundings, we (Page 39) watch human evolution, and see man developing self-consciousness by a series of many life-periods ;  then centering on a single man we trace his growth and see that each life-period has a threefold division that each is linked to all life-periods behind it reaping their results, and to all life-periods before it sowing their harvests, by a law that cannot be broken ; that thus man may climb upwards with each life-period adding to his experience, each life-period lifting him higher in purity, in devotion, in intellect, in power of usefulness, until at last he stands where They stand who are now the Teachers, fit, to pay to his younger brothers the debt he owes to Them.

CHAPTER I

THE PHYSICAL PLANE

(Page 40) We have just seen that the source from which a universe proceeds is a manifested Divine Being, to whom in the modern form of the Ancient Wisdom the name LOGOS, or Word has been given. The name is drawn from Greek Philosophy, but perfectly expresses the ancient idea, the Word which emerges from the Silence, the Voice, the Sound, by which the worlds come into being. We must now trace the evolution of spirit-matter, in order that we may understand something of the nature of the materials with which we have to deal on the physical plane, or physical world. For it is in the potentialities wrapped up, involved, in the spirit-matter of the physical world that lies the possibility of evolution. The whole process is an unfolding, self-moved from within and aided by intelligent beings without, who can retard or quicken evolution, but cannot transcend the capacities inherent in the materials. Some idea of these earliest stages of the world’s “becoming” is therefore necessary, although any attempt to go into minute details would carry us far beyond the limits of such an elementary treatise as the present. A very cursory sketch must suffice. (Page 41)

Coming forth from the depths of the One Existence, from the ONE beyond all thought and all speech, a LOGOS, by imposing on Himself a limit, circumscribing voluntarily the range of His own Being, becomes  the manifested God, and tracing the limiting sphere of His activity thus outlines the area of His universe. Within that sphere the universe is born, is evolved, and dies ; it lives, it moves, it has its being in Him ; its matter is His emanation ; its forces and energies are currents of His Life ; He is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, all-evolving ; He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, its centre and circumference ; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it breathes in Him as its encircling space ; He is in everything and everything in Him. Thus have the sages of the Ancient Wisdom taught us of the beginning of  the manifested worlds.

From the same source we learn of the Self-unfolding of the LOGOS into a threefold form ; the First LOGOS, the Root of all being ; from Him the Second, manifesting the two aspects of Life and Form, the primal duality, making the two poles of nature between which the web of the universe is to be woven – Life-Form, Spirit-Matter, Positive-Negative, Active-Receptive, Father-Mother of the worlds. Then the Third LOGOS, the Universal Mind, that in which all archetypically exists, the source of beings, the fount of fashioning energies, the treasure house in which are stored up all the archetypal forms which are to be brought forth and elaborated in lower kinds (Page 42) of matter during the evolution of the universe. These are the fruits of past universes, brought over as seeds for the present.

The phenomenal spirit and matter of any universe are finite in their extent and transitory in their duration, but the roots of spirit and matter are eternal. The root of matter (Mulâprakriti ) has been said by a profound writer to be visible to the LOGOS as a veil thrown over the One existence, the supreme Brahman (Parabrahman) –to use the ancient name.

It is this “veil” which the LOGOS assumes for the purpose of manifestation, using it for the self-imposed limit which makes activity possible. From this He elaborates the matter of His universe, being Himself its informing, guiding, and controlling life. ( Hence He is called “The Lord of Mâyâ” in some Eastern Scriptures, Mâyâ, or illusion, being the principle of form; form is regarded as illusory, from its transitory nature and perpetual transformations, the life which expresses itself under the veil of form being the reality).

Of what occurs on the two higher planes of the universe, the seventh and sixth, we can form but the haziest conception. The energy of the LOGOS as whirling motion of inconceivable rapidity “digs holes in space” in this root matter, and this vortex of life encased in a film of the root of matter is the primary atom; these and their aggregations, spread throughout the universe, form all the subdivisions of spirit-matter of the highest or seventh plane. The sixth plane is formed by some of the (Page 43) countless myriads of these primary atoms, setting up a vortex in the coarsest aggregations of their own plane, and this primary atom en-walled with spiral strands of the coarsest combinations of the seventh plane becomes the finest unit of spirit-matter, or atom of the sixth plane. These sixth plane atoms and their endless combinations form the subdivisions of the spirit-matter of the sixth plane.

The sixth-plane-atom, in its turn, sets up a vortex in the coarsest aggregations of its own plane, and, with these coarsest aggregations as a limiting wall, becomes the finest  unit of spirit-matter, or atom, of the fifth plane. Again, these fifth-plane atoms, and their combinations form the subdivisions of the spirit-matter of the fifth plane. The process is repeated to form successively the spirit-matter of the fourth, the third, the second, and the first planes. These are the seven great regions of the universe, so far as their material constituents are concerned. A clearer idea of them will be gained by analogy when we come to master the modifications of the spirit-matter of our own physical world.  

(The student may find the conception clearer if he thinks of the fifth plane atoms as Ātmā ; those of the fourth plane as Ātmā enveloped in Buddhi-matter ; those of the third plane as Ātmā enveloped in Buddhi and Manas-matter ; those of the second plane as Ātmā enveloped in Buddhi-Manas- and Kāma-matter ; those of the lowest as Ātmā enveloped in Buddhi-Manas-Kāma and Sthûla-matter. Only the outermost is active in each, but the inner are there, though latent, ready to come into activity on the upward arc of evolution).

The world “spirit-matter” is used designedly. (Page 44) At implies the fact that there is no such thing as “dead” matter ; all matter is living, the tiniest particles are lives. Science speaks truly in affirming : “No force without matter, no matter without force.” They are wedded together in an indissoluble marriage throughout the ages of the life of a universe, and none can wrench them apart. Matter is form, and there is no form which does not express a life ; spirit is life, and there is no life that is not limited by form. Even the LOGOS, the Supreme Lord, has during manifestation the universe as His form, and so down to the atom.

This involution of the life of the LOGOS as the ensouling force in every particle, and its successive enwrapping in the spirit-matter of every plane, so that the materials of each plane have within them in a hidden, or latent condition, all the form and force possibilities of all the planes above them as well as those of their own – these two facts make evolution certain and give to the very lowest particle the hidden potentialities which will render it fit – as they become active powers – to enter into the forms of the highest beings. In fact, evolution may be summed up in a phrase : it is latent potentialities becoming active powers. 

The second great wave  of evolution, the evolution of form, and the third great wave, the evolution of self-consciousness, will be dealt with later on. These three currents of evolution are distinguishable on our earth in connection with humanity ; the making of the materials, the building of the house, and the growing (Page 45) of the tenant of the house, or, as said above, the evolution of spirit-matter, the evolution of form, the evolution of self-consciousness.If the reader can grasp and retain this idea, he will find a helpful clue to guide him through the labyrinth of facts. 

We can now turn to the detailed examination of the physical plane, that on which our world exists and to which our bodies belong.

Examining the materials belonging to this plane, we are struck by their immense variety, the innumerable differences of constitution in the objects around us, minerals, vegetables, animals, all differing in their constituents : matter hard and soft, transparent and opaque, brittle and ductile, bitter and sweet, pleasant and nauseous, coloured and colourless. Out of this confusion three subdivisions of matter emerge as a fundamental classification : matter is solid, liquid, gaseous. Further examination shows that these solids, liquids and gases are made up by combinations of much simpler bodies, called by chemists “elements,” and that these elements may exist in a solid, liquid, or gaseous condition without changing their respective natures.

Thus the chemical element oxygen is a constituent of wood, and in combination with other elements forms the solid wood fibres ; it exists in the sap with another element, yielding a liquid combination as water ; and it exists also in it by itself as gas. Under these three conditions it is oxygen. Further , pure oxygen can be reduced from a gas to a liquid, (Page 46) and from a liquid to a solid, remaining pure oxygen all the time, and so with other elements. We thus obtain as three subdivisions, or conditions of matter on the physical plane, solid, liquid, gas. Searching further, we find a fourth condition, ether, and a minute search reveals that this ether exists in four conditions as well defined as those of solid, liquid and gas ; to take oxygen again as an example : as it may be reduced from the gaseous condition to the liquid and the solid, so it may be raised from the gaseous through four etheric stages the last of which consists of the ultimate physical atom, the disintegration of the atom taking matter out of the physical plane altogether, and into the next plane above.

In the annexed plate three gases are shown in the gaseous and four etheric states ; it will be observed that the structure of the ultimate physical atom is the same for all, and that the variety of the “elements” is due to the variety of ways in which these ultimate physical atoms combine. Thus the seventh subdivision of physical spirit-matter is composed of homogeneous atoms ; the sixth is composed of fairly simple heterogeneous combinations of these, each combination behaving as a unit ; the fifth is composed of more complex combinations, and the fourth of still more complex ones, but in all cases these combinations act as units .

The third subdivision consists of yet more complicated combinations, regarded by the chemist as gaseous atoms or “elements,” and on this subdivision many of the combinations have received special names, oxygen, hydrogen, (Page 47) nitrogen, chlorine, etc., and each newly discovered combination now receives its name ; the second subdivision consists of combinations in the liquid condition, whether regarded as elements such as bromine, or as combinations such as water or alcohol ; the first subdivision is composed of all solids, again whether regarded as elements, such as iodine, gold, lead, etc., or as compounds, such as wood, stone, chalk, and so on.

The physical plane may serve the student as a model from which by analogy he may gain an idea of the subdivisions of spirit-matter of other planes. When a Theosophist speaks of a plane, he means a region throughout which spirit-matter exists, all whose combinations are derived from a particular set of atoms; these atoms, in turn, are units possessing similar organisations, whose life is the life of the LOGOS veiled in fewer or more coverings according to the plane, and whose form consists of the solid, or lowest subdivision of matter, of the plane immediately above. A plane is thus a division in nature, as well as a metaphysical idea.

Thus far we have been studying the results in our own physical world of the evolution of spirit-matter in our division of the first or lowest plane of our system. For countless ages the fashioning of materials has been going on, the current of the evolution of spirit-matter, and in the materials of our globe we see the outcome at the present time. But when we begin to study the inhabitants of the physical plane, we come to the evolution of form, ( Page 48) the building of organisms out of these materials. 

When the evolution of materials had reached a sufficiently advanced state, the second great life-wave from the LOGOS gave the impulse to the evolution of form, and He became the organising force (As Âtmâ-Buddhi, indivisible in action, and therefore spoken of as the Monad. All forms have Âtmâ-Buddhi as controlling life.) - of His Universe, countless hosts of entities, entitled Builders --  ( Some are lofty spiritual Intelligences, but the name covers even the building Nature-spirits The subject is dealt with in Chapter XII ) - taking part in the building up of forms out of combinations of spirit-matter. The life of the LOGOS abiding in each form is its central, controlling, and directing energy.

This building of forms on the higher planes cannot here be conveniently studied in detail; it may suffice to say that all forms exist as Ideas in the mind of the LOGOS, and that in this second life-wave these were thrown outwards as models to guide the Builders.  On the third and second planes the early spirit-matter combinations are designed to give it facility in assuming shapes organised to act as units, and gradually to increase its stability when shaped into an organism.

This process went on upon the third and second planes, in what are termed the three elemental kingdoms, the combinations of matter formed therein being called generally “elemental essence,” and this essence being moulded into forms by aggregations, the forms (Page 49) enduring for a time and then disintegrating. The outpoured life, or Monad, evolved through these kingdoms and reached in due course the physical plane, where it began to draw together the ethers and hold them in filmy shapes, in which life-currents played and into which the denser materials were built, forming the first minerals. In these are beautifully shown – as may be seen by reference to any book on crystallurgy – the numerical and geometrical lines on which forms are constructed, and from them may be gathered plentiful evidence that life is working in all minerals, although much “cribbed, cabined, and confined.” The fatigue to which metals are subject is another sign that they are living things, but it is here enough to say that the occult doctrine so regards them, knowing the already-mentioned processes by which life has been involved in them.

Great stability of form having been gained in many of the minerals, the evolving Monad elaborated greater plasticity of form in the vegetable kingdom, combining this with stability of organisation. These characteristics found a yet more balanced expression in the animal world, and reached their culmination of equilibrium in man, whose physical body is made up of constituents of most unstable equilibrium, thus giving great adaptability, and yet which is held together by a combining central force which resists general disintegration even under the most varied conditions.

Man’s physical body has two main divisions : the dense body, made of constituents from the three (Page 50) lower levels of the physical plane, solids, liquids, and gases: and the etheric double, violet-gray or blue-gray in colour, interpenetrating the dense body and composed of materials drawn from the four higher levels. The general function of the physical body is to receive contacts from the physical world, and send the report of them inwards, to serve as materials from which the conscious entity inhabiting the body is to elaborate knowledge. Its etheric portion has also the duty of acting as a medium through which the life-currents poured out from the sun can be adapted to the uses of the denser particles.

The sun is the great reservoir of the electrical, magnetic, and vital forces for our system, and it pours out abundantly these streams of life-giving energy. They are taken in by the etheric doubles of all minerals, vegetables, animals, and men, and are by them transmuted into the various life-energies needed by each entity. ( When thus appropriated the life is called Prāna, and it becomes the life-breath of every creature. Prāna is but a name for the universal life while it is taken in by an entity and is supporting its separated life.)

The etheric doubles draw in, specialise, and distribute them over their physical counterparts. It has been observed that in vigorous health much more of the life-energies are transmuted than the physical body requires for its own support, and that the surplus is rayed out and is taken up and utilised by the weaker. What is technically called the health aura is the part of the etheric double that extends a few inches from the (Page 51) whole surface of the body and shows radiating lines, like the radii of a sphere, going outwards in all directions. These lines droop when vitality is diminished below the point of health, and resume their radiating character with renewed vigour. It is this vital energy, specialised by the etheric double, which is poured out by the mesmeriser for the restoration of the weak and for the cure of disease, although he often mingles with it currents of a more rarefied kind. Hence the depletion of vital energy shown by the exhaustion of the mesmeriser who prolongs his work to excess.

Man’s body is fine or coarse in its texture according to the materials drawn from the physical plane for its composition. Each subdivision of matter yields finer or coarser materials ; compare the bodies of a butcher and of a refined student ; both have solids in them, but solids of such different qualities. Further , we know that a coarse body can be refined, a refined body coarsened. The body is constantly changing ; each particle is a life, and the lives come and go. They are drawn to a body consonant with themselves, they are repelled from one discordant with themselves. All things live in rhythmical vibrations, all seek the harmonious and are repelled by dissonance.

A pure body repels coarse particles because they vibrate at rates discordant with its own ; a coarse body attracts them because their vibrations accord with its own. Hence if the body changes its rates of vibration, it gradually drives out of it the constituents that cannot fall into the new rhythm, and fills up their places by drawing in from external nature fresh constituents that are harmonious. (Page 52) Nature provides materials vibrating in all possible ways, and each body exercises its own selective action.

In the earlier building of human bodies this selective action was due to the Monad of form, but now that man is a self-conscious entity he presides over his own building. By his thoughts he strikes the keynote of his music, and sets up the rhythms that are the most powerful factors in the continual changes in his physical and other bodies. As his knowledge increases he learns how to build up his physical body with pure food, and so facilitates the tuning of it. He learns to live by the axiom of purification : “Pure food, pure mind, and constant memory of God.” As the highest creature living on the physical plane, he is the vice-regent of the LOGOS thereon, responsible, so far as his powers extend, for its order, peace, and good government ; and this duty he cannot discharge without these three requisites.

The physical body, thus composed of elements drawn from all the subdivisions of the physical plane, is fitted to receive and to answer impression from it of every kind. Its first contacts will be of the simplest and crudest sorts, and as the life within it thrills out in answer to the stimulus from without, throwing its molecules into responsive vibrations, there is developed all over the body the sense of touch, the recognition of something coming into contact with it. As specialised sense-organs (Page 53) are developed to receive special kinds of vibrations, the value of the body increases as a future vehicle for a conscious entity on the physical plane. The more impressions it can answer to, the more useful does it become ; for only those to which it can answer can reach the consciousness.

Even now there are myriads of vibrations pulsing around us in physical nature from the knowledge of which we are shut out because of the inability of our physical vehicle to receive and vibrate in accord with them. Unimagined beauties, exquisite sounds, delicate subtleties, touch the walls of our prison house and pass on unheeded. Not yet is developed the perfect body that shall thrill to every pulse in nature as the aeolian harp to the zephyr.

The vibrations that the body is able to receive, it transmits to physical centres, belonging to its highly complicated nervous system. The etheric vibrations which accompany all the vibrations of the denser  physical constituents are similarly received by the etheric double, and transmuted to its corresponding centres. Most of the vibrations in the dense matter are changed into chemical heat, and other forms of physical energy; the etheric give rise to magnetic and electric action, and also pass on the vibrations to the astral body, whence, as we shall see later, they reach the mind.

Thus information about the external world reaches the conscious entity enthroned in the body, the Lord of the body, as he is sometimes called. As the channels of information develop and are exercised, the conscious entity (Page 54) grows by the materials supplied to his thought by them, but so little is man yet developed that even the etheric double is not yet sufficiently harmonised to regularly convey to the man impressions received by it independently of its denser comrade, or to impress them on his brain. Occasionally it succeeds in doing so, and then we have the lowest form of clairvoyance, the seeing of the etheric doubles of physical objects, and of things that have etheric bodies as their lowest vesture.

Man dwells, as we shall see, in various vehicles, physical, astral, and mental and it is important to know and remember that as we are evolving upwards, the lowest of the vehicles, the dense physical, is that which consciousness first controls and rationalises. The physical brain is the instrument of consciousness in waking life on the physical plane, and consciousness works in it – in the undeveloped man – more effectively than in any other vehicle. Its potentialities are less than those of the subtler vehicles, but its actualities are greater, and the man knows himself  as “ I “ in the physical body ere he finds himself elsewhere. Even if he be more highly developed than the average man, he can only show as much of himself down here as the physical organism permits, for consciousness can manifest on the physical plane only so much as the physical vehicle can carry.

The dense and etheric bodies are not normally separated during earth life; they normally function together, as the lower and higher strings of a single (Page 55) instrument when a chord is struck, but they also carry on separate though coordinated activities. Under conditions of weak health or nervous excitement the etheric double may in great part be abnormally extruded from its dense counterpart ; the latter then becomes very dully conscious , or entranced, according to the less or greater amount of the etheric matter extruded. Anesthetics drive out the greater part of the etheric double, so that consciousness cannot affect or be affected by the dense body, its bridge of communication being broken. In the abnormally organised person called mediums, dislocation of the etheric and dense bodies easily occurs, and the etheric double, when extruded, largely supplies the physical basis for “materialisations.”

In sleep, when the consciousness leaves the physical vehicle which it uses during waking life, the dense  and etheric bodies remain together, but in the physical dream life they function to some extent independently. Impressions experienced during waking life are reproduced by the automatic action of the body, and both the physical and etheric brains are filled with disjointed fragmentary pictures, the vibrations as it were, jostling each other, and causing the most grotesque combinations. Vibrations from outside also affect both, and combinations often set up during waking life are easily called into activity by currents from the astral world of like nature with themselves. The purity or impurity of waking thoughts will largely govern the pictures arising in dreams, (Page 56) whether spontaneously set up or induced from without.

At what is called death, the etheric double is drawn away from its dense counterpart by the escaping consciousness ; the magnetic tie existing between them during life earth life is snapped asunder, and for some hours the consciousness remains enveloped in this etheric garb. In this it sometimes appears to those with whom it is closely bound up, as a cloudy figure, very dully conscious and speechless – the wraith. It may also be seen, after the conscious entity has deserted it, floating over the grave where its dense counterpart is buried, slowly disintegrating as time goes on.

When the time comes for rebirth, the etheric double is built in advance of the dense body, the latter exactly following it in its ante-natal development. These bodies may be said to trace the limitations within which the conscious entity will have to live and work during his life, a subject that will be more fully explained in Chapter IX on Karma.

CHAPTER -2-

THE ASTRAL PLANE

(Page 57) The astral plane is the region of the universe next to the physical, if the word “next” may be permitted in such a connection. Life there is more active than on the physical plane, and form is more plastic. The spirit-matter of that plane is more highly vitalised and finer than any grade of spirit-matter in the physical world. For , as we have seen, the ultimate physical atom, the constituent of the rarest physical ether, has for its sphere-wall innumerable aggregations of the coarsest astral matter. The word “next” is, however, inappropriate, as suggesting the idea that the planes of the universe are arranged as concentric circles, one ending where the next begins. Rather they are concentric interpenetrating spheres, not separated from each other by distance but by difference of constitution.

As air permeates water, as ether permeates the densest solid, so does astral matter permeate all physical. The astral world is above us, below us, on every side of us, through us; we live and move in it, but it is intangible, invisible, inaudible, imperceptible, because the prison of the physical body shuts us (Page 58) away from it, the physical particles being too gross to be set in vibration by astral matter.

In this chapter we shall study the plane in its general aspects, leaving on one side for separate consideration those special conditions of life on the astral plane surrounding the human entities who are passing through it on their way from earth to heaven. ( Devachan, the happy or bright state, is the Theosophical name for heaven. Kâmaloka, the place of desire, is the name given to the conditions of intermediate life on the astral plane).

The spirit-matter of the astral plane exists in seven subdivisions, as we have seen in the spirit-matter of the physical. There, as here, there are numberless combinations, forming the astral solids, liquids, gases, and ethers. But most material forms there have a brightness, a translucency, as compared to forms here, which have caused the epithet astral, or starry, to be applied to them – an epithet which is, on the whole, misleading, but is too firmly established by use to be changed. As there are no specific names for the subdivisions of astral spirit-matter, we may use the terrestrial designations. The main idea to be grasped is that astral objects are combinations of astral matter, as physical objects are combinations of physical matter, and that the astral world scenery much resembles that of earth in consequence of its being largely made up of the astral duplicates of physical objects.

One peculiarity, however, arrests and confuses the untrained observer; partly because of the translucency  of astral objects, (Page 59) and partly because of the nature of astral vision – consciousness being less hampered by the finer astral matter than when encased  in the terrestrial – everything is transparent, its back is visible as its front, its inside as its outside. Some experience is needed, therefore, ere objects are correctly seen, and a person who has developed astral vision, but has not yet had much experience in its use, is apt to receive the most topsy-turvy impressions and to fall into the most astounding blunders.

Another striking and at first bewildering characteristic of the astral world is the swiftness with which forms – especially when unconnected with any terrestrial matrix – change their outlines.

An astral entity will change his whole appearance with the most startling rapidity, for astral matter takes the form under every impulse of thought, the life swiftly remoulding the form to give itself new expression. As the great life-wave of the evolution of form passed downwards through the astral plane, and constituted on that plane the third elemental kingdom, the Monad drew round itself combinations of astral matter, giving to these combinations – entitled elemental essence – a peculiar vitality and the characteristic of responding to, and instantly taking shape under, the impulse of thought vibrations.

This elemental essence exists in hundreds of varieties on every subdivision of the astral plane, as though the air became visible here – as indeed it may seen in quivering waves under great heat – and were in constant undulatory motion with changing (Page 60) colours like mother-of-pearl.

This vast atmosphere of elemental essence is ever answering to vibrations caused by thoughts, feelings, and desires, and is thrown into commotion by a rush of any of these like bubbles in boiling water. ( C.W. Leadbeater, Astral Plane, p. 52). The duration of the form depends on the strength of the impulse to which it owes its birth ; the clearness of its outline depends on the precision of the thinking, and the colour depends on the quality – intellectual, devotional, passional – of the thought.

The vague loose thoughts which are so largely produced by undeveloped minds gather round themselves loose clouds of elemental essence when they arrive in the astral world, and drift about, attracted hither and thither to other clouds of similar nature, clinging round the astral bodies of persons whose magnetism attracts them – either good or evil – and after a while disintegrating, to again form a part of the general atmosphere of elemental essence. While they maintain a separate existence they are living entities, with bodies of elemental essence and thoughts as the ensouling lives, and they are then called artificial elementals, or thought-forms.

Clear, precise thoughts have each their own definite shapes, with sharp clean outlines, and show an endless variety of designs. They are shaped by vibrations set up by thought, just as on the physical plane we find figures which are shaped by vibrations set up by sound. “Voice-figures” offer a very fair analogy for “thought-figures,” for nature, with all (Page 61) her infinite variety, is very conservative of principles, and reproduces the same methods of working on plane after  plane in her realms.

These clearly defined artificial elementals have a longer and much more active life than their cloudy brethren, exercising a far stronger influence on the astral bodies (and through them on the minds)  of those to whom they are attracted. They set up in them vibrations similar to their own, and thus thoughts spread from mind to mind without terrestrial expression. More than this: they can be directed by the thinker towards any person he desires to reach, their potency depending on the strength of his will and the intensity of his mental power.

Among average people the artificial elementals created by feeling or desire are more vigorous and more definite than those created by thought. Thus an outburst of anger will cause a very definitely outlined and powerful flash of red, and sustained anger will make a dangerous elemental, red in colour, and pointed, barbed, or otherwise qualified to injure. Love, according to its quality, will set up forms more or less beautiful in colour and design, all shades of crimson to the most exquisite and soft hues of rose, like the palest blushes of sunset or the dawn, clouds of tenderly strong protective shapes. Many a Mother’s loving prayers go to hover round her son as angel-forms, turning aside from him evil influences that perchance his own thoughts are attracting.

It is characteristic of these artificial elementals, (Page 62) when they are directed by the will towards any particular person, that they are animated by the one impulse of carrying out the will of their creator. A protective elemental will hover round its object, seeking any opportunity of warding off evil or attracting good – not consciously, but by a blind impulse, as finding there the line of least resistance.

So, also, an elemental ensouled by a malignant thought will hover round its victim seeking opportunity to injure. But neither the one nor the other can make any impression unless there be in the astral body of the object something skin to themselves, something that can answer accordingly to their vibrations, and thus enable them to attach themselves. If there be nothing in him of matter cognate to their own, then by a law of their nature they rebound from him along the path they pursued in going to him – the magnetic trace they have left – and rush to their creator with a force proportionate to that of their projection.  Thus a thought of deadly hatred, failing to strike the object at which it was darted, has been known to slay its sender, while good thoughts sent to the unworthy return as blessings to him that poured them forth.

A very slight understanding of the astral world will thus act as a most powerful stimulus to right thinking, and will render heavy the sense of responsibility in regard to the thoughts and feelings, and desires that we let loose into this astral realm. Ravening beasts of prey, rending and devouring, are too many of the thoughts with which men people the (Page 63) astral plane. But they err from ignorance, they know not what they do. One of the objects of theosophical teaching, partly lifting up the veil of the unseen world, is to give men a sounder basis for conduct, a more rational appreciation of the causes of which the effects only are seen in the terrestrial world.

A few of its doctrines are more important in their ethical bearing than this of the creation and direction of thought-forms, or artificial elementals, for through it man learns that his mind does not concern himself alone, that his thoughts do not affect himself alone, but that he is ever sending out angels and devils into the world of men, for whose creation he is responsible, and for whose influences he is held accountable. Let men, then, know the law, and guide their thoughts thereby.

If, instead of taking artificial elementals separately, we take them in the mass, it is easy to realise the tremendous effect they have in producing national and race feelings, and thus in biasing and prejudicing the mind. We all grow up surrounded by an atmosphere crowded with elementals embodying certain ideas ; national prejudices, national ways of looking at all questions, national types of feelings and thoughts, all these play on us from our birth, aye, and before. We see everything through this atmosphere, every thought is more or less refracted by it, and our own astral bodies are vibrating in accord with it.

Hence the same idea will look quite different to the Hindu, an Englishman, a Spaniard, and a Russian ; some conceptions easy to (Page 64) the one will be almost impossible to the other, customs instinctively attractive to the one are instinctively odious to the other. We are all dominated by our national atmosphere, i.e., by that portion of the astral world immediately surrounding us.

The thoughts of others, cast much in the same mould, play upon us and call out from us synchronous vibrations ; they intensify the points in which we accord with our surroundings and flatten away the differences, and this ceaseless action upon us through the astral body impresses on us the national half-mark and traces channels for mental energies into which they readily flow. Sleeping and waking , these currents play upon us, and our very unconsciousness of their action makes it the more effective. As most people are receptive rather than initiative in their nature, they act almost as automatic reproducers of the thoughts which reach them, and thus the national atmosphere is continually intensified.

When a person is beginning to be sensitive to astral influences, he will occasionally find himself suddenly overpowered or assailed by a quite inexplicable and seemingly irrational dread, which swoops upon him with even paralysing force. Fight against it as he may, he yet feels it, and perhaps resents it. Probably there are few who have not experienced this fear to some extent, the uneasy dread of an invisible something, the feeling of a presence, of “not being alone.” This arises partly from a certain hostility which animates the natural elemental world against the human, on account of the various (Page 65) destructive agencies devised by mankind on the physical plane and reacting on the astral, but is also largely due to the presence of so many artificial elementals of an unfriendly kind, bred by human minds.

Thoughts of hatred, jealousy, revenge, bitterness, suspicion, discontent, go out by millions crowding the astral plane with artificial elementals whose whole life is made of these feelings. How much also is there of vague distrust and suspicion poured out by the ignorant against all whose ways and appearance are alien and unfamiliar. The blind distrust of all foreigners, the surly contempt, extending in many districts even towards inhabitants of another country – these things also contribute evil influences to the astral world. There being so much of these things among us, we create a blindly hostile army on the astral plane, and this is answered in our own astral bodies by a feeling of dread, set up by the antagonistic vibrations that are sensed, but not understood.

Outside the class of artificial elementals, the astral world is thickly populated, even excluding, as we do for the present, all the human entities who have lost their physical bodies by death. There are great hosts of natural elementals, or nature-spirits, divided into five main classes –the elementals of the ether, the fire, the air, the water, and the earth ; the last four groups have been termed, in mediaeval occultism, the Salamanders, Sylphs, Undines, and Gnomes (needless to say there are two other classes, completing the seven, not concerning us here, as they are (Page 66) still unmanifested).

These are the true elementals, or creatures of the elements, earth, water, air, fire and ether, and they are severally concerned in the carrying on of the activities connected with their own element ; they are the channels through which work the divine energies in these several fields, the living expressions of the law in each. At the head of each division is a great Being, the captain of the mighty host, (Called a Deva, or God, by the Hindus. The student may like to have the Sanskrit names of the five Gods of the manifested elements ; Indra, lord of the Akâsha, or ether of space ; Agni, lord of fire ; Pavana, lord of air, Varuna, lord of water ; Kshiti, lord of the earth). the directing and guiding intelligence of the whole department of nature which is administered and energised by the class of elementals under his control.

Thus Agni the fire-God, is a great spiritual entity concerned with the manifestation of fire on all planes of the universe, and carries on his administration through the host of the fire-elementals. By understanding the nature of these, or knowing the methods of their control, the so-called miracles of magical feats are worked, which from time to time are recorded in the public press, whether they are avowedly the results of magical arts, or are done by the aid of “spirits” – as in the case of the late Mr. Home, who could unconcernedly pick a red-hot coal out of a blazing fire with his fingers and hold it in his hand unhurt. Levitation (the suspension of a heavy body in the air without visible support) and walking on the water have been done by the aid (Page 67) respectively of the elementals of the air and the water, although another method is more often employed.

As the elements enter into the human body, one or another predominating according to the nature of the person, each human being has relations with these elementals, the most friendly to him being those whose element is preponderant in him. The effects of this fact are often noted, and are popularly ascribed to “luck”. A person has “ a lucky hand” in making plants grow, in lighting fires, in finding underground water, etc. Nature is ever jostling us with her occult forces, but we are slow to take her hints. Tradition sometimes hides a truth in a proverb or a fable, but we have grown beyond all such “superstitions.”

We find also on the astral plane, nature-spirits – less accurately termed elementals – who are concerned with the building of forms in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms. There are nature-spirits who build up minerals, who guide the vital energies in plants, and who molecule by molecule form the bodies of the animal kingdom ; they are concerned with the making  of the astral bodies of minerals, plants, and animals, as well as with that of the physical.

These are the fairies and elves of legends, the “little people” who play so large a part in the folk lore of every nation, the charming irresponsible children of nature, whom science had coldly relegated to the nursery, but who will be replaced in their own grade of natural order by the wiser scientists of a later day. Only poets and occultists believe in them just now, poets by the intuition of their genius, occultists by the vision of their trained inner senses. The multitude laugh at both, most of all at the occultists ; but it matter not – wisdom shall be justified (Page 68) of her children.

The play of the life-currents in the etheric doubles of the forms in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, awoke out of latency the astral matter involved in the structure of their atomic and molecular constituents. It began to thrill in a very limited way in the minerals, and the Monad  of form, exercising his organising power, drew in materials from the astral world, and these were built by the nature-spirits into a loosely constituted mass, the mineral astral body.

In the vegetable world the astral bodies are a little more organised, and their special characteristic of “feeling” begins  to appear. Dull and diffused sensations of well-being and discomfort are observable in most plants as the results of the increasing activity of the astral body. They dimly enjoy the air, the rain, and the sunshine, and gropingly seek them, while they shrink from noxious conditions. Some seek the light and some seek the darkness ; they answer to stimuli, and adapt themselves to external conditions, some showing plainly a sense of touch. In the animal kingdom the astral body is more developed, reaching in the higher members of that kingdom a sufficiently definite organisation to cohere for some time after the death of the physical body, and to lead an independent existence on the astral plane. (Page 69)

The nature-spirits concerned with the building of the animal and human astral bodies have been given the special name of desire-elementals, (Kâmadevas, they are called "desire-gods") because they are strongly animated by desires of all kinds, and constantly build themselves into the astral bodies of animals and men.  

They also use the varieties of elemental essence similar to that of which their own bodies are composed to construct the astral bodies of animals, those bodies thus acquiring, as interwoven parts, the centres of sensation and of the various passional activities. These centres are stimulated into functioning by impulses received by the dense physical organs, and transmitted by the etheric physical organs to the astral body.

Not until the astral centre is reached does the animal feel pleasure or pain. A stone may be struck, but it will feel no pain ; it has dense and etheric physical molecules, but its astral body is unorganised ; the animal feels pain from a blow because he possesses the astral centres of sensation, and the desire-elementals have woven into him their own nature.

As a new consideration enters into the work of these elementals with the human astral body, we will finish our survey of the inhabitants of the astral plane ere studying this more complicated astral form. 

The desire-bodies, (Kâmarûpa is the technical name for the astral body, from Kâma, desire, and rûpa, form) or astral bodies, of animals are found, as has just been stated, to lead (Page 70) an independent though fleeting existence on the astral plane after death has destroyed their physical counterparts. In “civilised” countries these animal astral bodies add much to the general feeling of hostility which was spoken of above, for the organised butchery of animals in slaughterhouses and by sport sends millions of these annually into the astral world, full of horror, terror, and shrinking from men.

The comparatively few creatures that are allowed to die in peace and quietness are lost in the vast hordes of the murdered, and from the currents set up by these there rain down influences from the astral world on the human and animal races which drive them yet further apart and engender “instinctive” distrust and fear on the one side and lust of inflicting cruelty on the other.

These feelings have been much intensified of late years by the coldly devised methods of the scientific torture called vivisection, the unmentionable barbarities of which have introduced new horrors into the astral world by their reaction on the culprits, (See  Chapter III, on “Kâmaloka .”) as well as having increased the gulf between man and his “poor relations”.

Apart from what we may call the normal population of the astral world, there are passing travellers in it,  led there by their work, whom we cannot leave entirely without mention. Some of these come from our own terrestrial world, while others are visitors from loftier regions.

Of the former, many are Initiates of various grades, (Page 71) some belonging to the Great White Lodge – the Himâlayan or Tibetan Brotherhood, as it is often called   (It is to some members of this Lodge that the Theosophical Society owes its inception) – while others are members of different occult lodges throughout the world, ranging from white through shades of grey to black. ( Occultists who are unselfish and wholly devoted to the carrying out of the Divine Will, or who are aiming to attain these virtues, are called “white”. Those who are selfish and are working against the Divine purpose in the universe are called “black.” Expanding selflessness, love and devotion are the marks of the one class : contracting selfishness, hatred, and harsh arrogance are the sign of the other. Between these are the classes whose motives are mixed, and who have not yet realised that they must evolve towards the One Self or towards separated selves ; these I have called grey. Their members gradually drift  into, or deliberately join, one of the two great groups with clearly marked aims).

All these are men living in physical bodies, who have learned to leave the physical encasement at will, and to function in full consciousness in the astral body. They are of all grades of knowledge and virtue, beneficent and maleficent, strong and weak, gentle and ferocieous. There are also many younger aspirants, still uninitiated, who are learning to use the astral vehicle, and who are employed in works of benevolence or malevolence according to the path they are seeking to tread.

After these, we have psychics of varying degrees of development, some fairly alert, others dreamy and confused, wandering about while their physical (Page 72) bodies are asleep or entranced. Unconscious of their external surroundings, wrapped in their own thoughts, drawn as it were within their astral shell, are millions of drifting astral bodies inhabited by conscious entities, whose physical frames are sunk in sleep.

As we shall see presently, the consciousness in its astral vehicle escapes when the body sinks into sleep, and passes on to the astral plane ; but it is not conscious of its surroundings until the astral body is sufficiently developed to function independently of the physical.

Occasionally is seen on this plane a disciple (A Chelâ, the accepted pupil of an Adept), who has  passed through death and is awaiting an almost immediate reincarnation under the direction of his Master. He is, of course, in the enjoyment of full consciousness, and is working like other disciples who have merely slipped off their bodies in sleep.  A certain stage (See chapter XI, on “Man’s Ascent”) – a disciple is allowed to reincarnate very quickly after death, and under these circumstances he has to await on the astral plane a suitable opportunity for rebirth.

Passing through the astral plane also are the human beings who are on their way to reincarnation ; they will again be mentioned later on (See chapter VII, on “Reincarnation”.) and they concern themselves  in no way with the general life of the astral world. The desire-elementals, however, who have affinity with them from their past passional and sensational activities, gather round them, (Page 73) assisting in the building of the new astral body for the coming earth-life.

We must now turn to the consideration of the human astral body during the period of existence in this world, and study its nature and constitution as well as its relations with the astral realm. We will take the astral body of (a) an undeveloped man, (b) an average man, and (c) a spiritually developed man.

(a) An undeveloped man’s astral body is a cloudy, loosely organised, vaguely outlined mass of astral spirit-matter, containing materials – both astral matter and elemental essence – drawn from all the subdivisions of the astral plane, but with a predominance of substances from the lower, so that it is dense and coarse in texture, fit to respond to all the stimuli connected with the passions and appetites. The colours caused by the rates of vibration are dull, muddy, and dusky – brown, dull reds, dirty greens, are predominant hues. There is no play of light or quickly changing flashing of colours through this astral body, but the various passions show themselves as heavy surges, or, when violent, as flashes ; thus sexual passion will send a wave of muddy crimson, rage a flash of lurid red.

The astral body is larger than the physical, extending round it in all directions ten to twelve inches in such a case as we are considering. The centres of the organs of sense are definitely marked, and are active when worked on from without ; but in quiescence the life-streams are sluggish, and the astral body, stimulated neither from the physical  nor mental worlds, is drowsy and indifferent. ( the student will recognise here the predominance of the (Page 74) tâmasic guna, the quality of darkness or inertness in nature.)

It is a constant characteristic of the undeveloped state that activity is prompted from without rather from the inner consciousness . A stone to be moved must be pushed ; a plant moves under the attractions of light and moisture ; an animal becomes active when stirred by hunger : a poorly developed man needs to be prompted in similar ways. Not till the mind is partly grown does it begin to initiate action. The centres of higher activities, ( The seven Chakras, or wheels, so named from the whirling appearance they present, like wheels of living fire when in activity.) related to the independent functioning of the astral senses, are scarcely visible. A man at this stage requires for his evolution violent sensations of every kind, to arouse the nature and stimulate it into activity. Heavy blows from the outer world, both of pleasure and pain, are wanted  to awaken and spur to action.

The more numerous and violent the sensations, the more he can be made to feel, the better for his growth. At this stage quality matters little, quantity and vigour are the main requisites. The beginnings of this man’s morality will be in his passions ; a slight impulse of unselfishness in his relations to wife and child or friend, will be the first step upwards, by causing vibrations in the finer matter of his astral body and attracting into it more elemental essence of an appropriate kind. The astral body is constantly (Page 75) changing its materials under this play of the passions, appetites, desires, and emotions.

All good ones strengthen the finer parts of the body, shake out some of the coarser constituents, draw into it the subtler materials, and attract round it elementals of a beneficent kind who aid in the renovating process. All evil ones have diametrically opposite effects, strengthening the coarser, expelling the finer, drawing in more of the former, and attracting elementals who help in the deteriorating process.

The man’s moral and intellectual powers are so embryonic in the case we are considering that most of the building and changing of his astral body may be said to be done for him rather than by him.  It depends more on his external circumstances than on his own will, for, as just said, it is characteristic of a low stage of development that a man is moved from without and through the body much more than from within and by the mind. It is a sign of considerable advance when a man begins to be moved by the will, by his own energy, self-determined, instead of being moved by desire, i.e., by a response to an external attraction or repulsion.

In sleep the astral body, enveloping the consciousness, slips out of the physical vehicle, leaving the dense and etheric bodies to slumber. At this stage, however,  the consciousness is not awake in the astral body, lacking the strong contacts that spur it while in the physical frame, and the only things that affect the astral body may be elementals of the coarser kinds, that may set up therein vibrations which are reflected to the etheric and dense brains, and induce dreams of animal pleasures. The astral body floats just over the physical, held by its strong attraction, and cannot go far away from it. (Page 76)

(b) In the average moral and intellectual man the astral body shows an immense advance on that just described. It is larger in size, its materials are more balanced in quality, the presence of the rarer kinds giving a certain luminous quality to the whole, while the expression of the higher  emotions sends playing through it beautiful ripples of colour. Its outline is clear and definite, instead of vague and shifting, as in the former case, and it assumes the likeness of its owner. It is obviously becoming a vehicle for the inner man, with good definite organisation and stability, a body fit and ready to function, and able to maintain itself, apart from the physical. While retaining great plasticity, it yet has a normal form, to which it continuously recurs when any pressure is removed that may have caused it to change its outline.

Its activity is constant, and hence it is in perpetual vibration,  showing endless varieties of changing hues ; also the “wheels” are clearly visible though not yet functioning ( Here the student will note the predominance of the râjasic guna, the quality of activity in nature.)  It responds quickly to all the contacts coming to it through the physical body, and is stirred by the influences rained on it from the conscious entity within, memory and imagination stimulating it to action, and causing it to (Page 77) become the prompter of the body to activity instead of only being moved by it.

Its purification proceeds along the same lines as in the former case – the expulsion of lower constituents by setting up vibrations antagonistic to them and the drawing in of finer materials in their place. But now the increased moral intellectual development of the man puts the building almost entirely under his own control, for he is no longer driven here and there by stimuli from external nature, but reasons, judges, and resists or yields as he thinks well. By the exercise  of well-directed thought he can rapidly affect the astral body, and hence its improvement can proceed apace. Nor is it necessary that he should understand the modus operandi in order to bring about the effect, any more than that a man should understand the laws of light in order to see.

In sleep, this well-developed astral body slips, as usual, from its physical encasement, but is by no means held captive by it, as in the former case. It roams about in the astral world, drifted hither and thither by the astral currents, while the consciousness within it, not yet able to direct its  movements, is awake, engaged in the enjoyment of its own mental images and mental activities, and able also to receive impressions through its astral covering, and to change them into mental pictures. In this way a man may gain knowledge when out of the body, and may subsequently impress it on the brain as a vivid dream or vision, or without this link of (Page 78) memory it may filter through into the brain-consciousness.

(c) The astral body of a spiritually developed man is composed of the finest particles of each subdivision of astral matter, the higher kinds largely predominating in amount. It is therefore a beautiful object in luminosity and colour, hues not known on earth showing themselves under the impulses thrown into it by the purified mind. The wheels of fire are now seen to deserve their names, and their whirling motion denotes the activity of the higher senses. Such a body is, in the full sense of the words, a vehicle of consciousness, for in the course of evolution it has been vivified in every organ and brought under the complete control of its owner.

When in it he leaves the physical body there is no break in consciousness ; he merely shakes off his heavier vesture, and finds himself unencumbered by its weight. He can move anywhere within the astral sphere with immense rapidity, and is no longer bound by the narrow terrestrial conditions. His body answers to his will, reflects and obeys his thought. His opportunities for serving humanity are thus enormously increased, and his powers are directed by his virtue and his beneficence. The absence of gross particles in his astral body renders it incapable of responding to the promptings of lower objects of desire, and they turn away from him as beyond their attraction. The whole body vibrates only in answer to the higher emotions, his love has grown into devotion, his energy is curbed by patience.

Gentle, (Page 79) calm, serene, full of power, but with no trace of restlessness, such a man “all the Siddhis stand ready to serve.” (Here the sâttvic guna, the quality of bliss and purity in nature, is predominant. Siddhis are superphysical powers.)  

The astral body forms the bridge over the gulf which separates consciousness from the physical brain. Impacts received by the sense organs and transmitted, as we have seen, to the dense and etheric centres, pass thence to the corresponding astral centres ; here they are worked on by the elemental essence and are transmuted into feelings , and are then presented to the inner man as objects of consciousness, the astral vibrations awakening corresponding vibrations in the materials of the mental body. (See chapter IV, on “The Mental Plane.”)

By these successive gradations in fineness of spirit-matter the heavy impacts of terrestrial objects can be transmitted to the conscious entity ; and, in turn, the vibrations set up by his thoughts can pass along the same bridge to the physical brain and there induce physical vibrations corresponding to the mental. This is the regular normal way in which consciousness receives impressions from without, and in turn sends impressions outwards. By this constant passage of vibrations to and fro the astral body is chiefly developed ; the current plays upon it from within and from without, it evolves its organisation, and subserves its general growth.

By this it becomes larger, finer in texture, more definitely outlined, and more organised interiorly. (Page 80) Trained thus to respond to consciousness, it gradually becomes fit to function as its separate vehicle, and to transmit to it clearly the vibrations received directly from the astral world. Most readers will have had some little experience of impressions coming into consciousness from without, that do not arise from any physical impact, and that are very quickly verified by some external occurrence.

These are frequently impressions that reach the astral body directly, and are transmitted by it to the consciousness, and such impressions are often of the nature of previsions which very quickly prove themselves to be true. When the man is far progressed, though the stage varies much according to other circumstances, links are set up between the physical and the astral, the astral and mental, so that consciousness works unbrokenly from one state to the other, memory having in it none of the lapses which in the ordinary man interpose a period of unconsciousness in passing from one plane to another. The man can then also freely exercise the astral senses while the consciousness is working in the physical body, so that these enlarged avenues of knowledge become an appanage of his waking consciousness. Objects which were before matters of faith becomes matters of knowledge, and he can personally verify the accuracy of much of the Theosophical teaching as to the lower regions of the invisible world.

When man is analysed into “principles,” i.e., into (Page 81) modes of manifesting life, his four lower principles, termed the "lower Quaternary," are said to function on the astral and physical planes. The fourth principle is Kâma, desire, and it is the life manifesting in the astral body and conditioned by it ; it is characterised by the attribute of feeling, whether in the rudimentary form of sensation, or in the complex form of emotion, or in any of the grades that lie between. This is summed up as desire, that which is attracted or repelled by objects, according as they give pleasure or pain to the personal self.

The third principle is Prâna, the life specialised for the support of the physical organism. The second principle is the etheric double, and the first is the dense body. These three function on the physical plane. In H.P.Blavatsky’s later classifications she removed both Prâna and the dense physical body from the rank of principles, Prâna as being universal life, and the dense physical body as being the mere counterpart of the etheric, and made of constantly changing materials built into the etheric matrix. Taking this view, we have the grand philosophic conception of the One Life, the One Self, manifesting as man, and presenting varying and transitory differences according to the conditions imposed on it by the bodies which it vivifies; itself remaining the same in the centre, but showing different aspects when looked at from outside, according to the kinds of matter in one body or another.

In the physical body it is Prâna, energising, controlling, co-ordinating. In the astral body it is (Page 82) Kâma, feeling, enjoying, suffering. We shall find it in yet other aspects, as we pass to higher planes, but the fundamental idea is the same throughout, and it is another of those root-ideas of Theosophy, which firmly grasped, serve as guiding clues in this most tangled world. (Page 83)

CHAPTER III

KÂMALOKA

KÂMALOKA,  literally the place or habitat of desire, is, as has already been intimated, a part of the astral plane, not divided from it as a distinct locality, but separated off by the conditions of consciousness of the entities belonging to it. (The Hindus call this state Pretaloka, the habitat of Pretas. A Preta is a human being who has lost his physical body, but is still encumbered with the vesture of his animal nature. He cannot carry this on with him, and until it is disintegrated he is kept imprisoned by it.)

These are human beings who have lost their physical bodies by the stroke of death, and have to undergo certain purifying changes before they can pass on to the happy and peaceful life which belongs to the man proper,  to the human soul. (The soul is the human intellect, the link between the Divine Spirit in man and his lower personality. It is the Ego, the individual, the “ I “, which develops by evolution. In Theosophical parlance, it is Manas, the Thinker. The mind is the energy of this, working within the limitations of the physical brain, or the astral and mental bodies).

This region represents and includes the conditions described as existing in the various hells, purgatories, and intermediate states, one or other of which is alleged by all the great religions to be the temporary (Page 84) dwelling-place of man after he leaves the body and before he reaches “heaven.” It does not include any place of eternal torture, the endless hell still believed in by some narrow religionists being only a nightmare dream of ignorance, hate and fear. But it does include conditions of suffering, temporary and purificatory in their nature, the working out of causes set going in his earth-life by the man who experiences them. These are as natural and inevitable as any effects caused in this world by wrongdoing, for we live in a world of law and every seed must grow up after its own kind. Death makes no sort of difference in a man’s moral and mental nature, and the change of state caused by passing from one world to another takes away his physical body, but leaves the man as he was. 

The Kâmalokic condition is found on each subdivision of the astral plane, so that we may speak of it as having seven regions, calling them the first, second, third, up to the seventh, beginning from the lowest and counting upwards.  (Often these regions are reckoned the other way, taking the first as the highest and the seventh as the lowest. It does not matter from which end we count ; and I am reckoning upwards to keep them in accord with the planes and principles.).

We have already seen that materials from each subdivision of the astral plane enter into the composition of the astral body, and it is a peculiar rearrangement of these materials, to be explained in a moment, which separates the people dwelling in one region from those dwelling in another, although those in the same region are able to intercommunicate.(Page 85) The regions, being each a subdivision of the astral plane, differ in density, and the density of the external form of the Kâmalokic entity determines the region to which he is limited ; these differences of matter are the barriers that prevent passage from one region to another ; the people dwelling in one can no more come into touch with people dwelling in another than a deep-sea fish can hold a conversation with an eagle – the medium necessary to the life of the one would be destructive to the life of the other.

When the physical body is struck down by death, the etheric body, carrying Prâna with it and accompanied by the remaining principles – that is, the whole man, except the dense body – withdraws from the “tabernacle of flesh,” as the outer body is appropriately called. All the outgoing life-energies draw themselves inwards, and are “gathered up by Prâna,” their departure being manifested by the dullness that creeps over the physical organs of the senses.

They are there, uninjured, physically complete, ready to act as they have always been ; but the “inner Ruler,” is going, he who through them saw, heard, felt, smelt, tasted, and by themselves they are mere aggregations of matter, living indeed but without power of perceptive action. Slowly the lord of the body draws himself away, enwrapped  in the violet-grey etheric body, and absorbed in the contemplation of the panorama of his past life, which in the death hour rolls before him, complete in every detail.

In that life-picture are (Page 86) all the events of his life, small and great ; he sees his ambitions with their success or frustration, his efforts, his triumphs, his failures, his loves, his hatreds ; the predominant tendency of the whole comes clearly out, the ruling thought of the life asserts itself, and stamps itself deeply into the soul, marking the region in which the chief part of his post-mortem existence will be spent.

Solemn the moment when the man stands face to face with his life, and from the lips of his past hears the presage of his future. For a brief space he sees himself as he is, recognises the purpose of life, knows that the Law is strong and just and good. Then the magnetic tie breaks between the dense and etheric bodies, the comrades of a lifetime are disjoined, and – save in exceptional cases – the man sinks into peaceful unconsciousness.

Quietness and devotion should mark the conduct of all who are gathered round a dying body, in order that a solemn silence may leave uninterrupted this review of the past by the departing man. Clamorous weeping, loud lamentations, can but jar and disturb the concentrated attention of the soul, and to break with the grief of a personal loss into the stillness which aids and soothes him, is at once selfish and impertinent. Religion has wisely commanded prayers for the dying, for these preserve calm and stimulate unselfish aspirations directed to his helping, and these, like all loving thoughts, protect and shield.

Some hours after death – generally not more than thirty-six, it is said – the man draws himself  out of the (Page 87) etheric body, leaving it in turn as a senseless corpse, and the latter, remaining near its dense counterpart, shares its fate. If the dense body be buried, the etheric double floats over the  grave, slowly disintegrating, and the unpleasant feelings many experience in a churchyard are largely due to the presence of these decaying etheric corpses. If the body is burned, the etheric double breaks up quickly, having lost its nidus, its physical centre of attraction, and this is one among many reasons why cremation is preferable to burial, as a way of disposing of corpses.

The withdrawal of the man from the etheric double is accompanied by the withdrawal from it of Prâna, which thereupon returns to the great reservoir of life universal, while the man, ready now to pass into Kâmaloka, undergoes a rearrangement of his astral body, fitting it for submission to the purificatory changes which are necessary for the freeing of the man himself.  (These changes result in the formation of what is called by Hindus the Yâtanâ, or the suffering body, or in the case of very wicked men, in whose astral bodies there is a preponderance of the coarser matter, the Dhruvam, or strong body).

During earth life the various kinds of astral matter intermingle in the formation of the body, as do the solids, liquids, gases, and ethers in the physical. The change in the arrangement of the astral body after death consists in the separation of these materials, according to their respective densities, into a series of concentric shells – the finest within, the densest without – each shell (Page 88) being made of the materials drawn from one subdivision only of the astral plane. The astral body thus becomes a set of seven superimposed layers, or a seven-shelled encasement of astral matter, in which the man may not inaptly be said to be imprisoned, as only the breaking of these can set him free. Now will be seen the immense importance of the purification of the astral body during earth-life; the man is retained in each subdivision of Kâmaloka so long as the shell of matter pertaining to that subdivision is not sufficiently disintegrated to allow of his escape into the next.

Moreover, the extent to which his consciousness has worked in each kind of matter determines whether he will be awake and conscious in any given region, or will pass though it in unconsciousness, “wrapped” in rosy dreams,” and merely  detained during the time necessary for the process of mechanical disintegration.

A spiritually advanced man, who has so purified his astral body that its constituents are drawn only from the finest grade of each division of astral matter, merely passes through Kâmaloka without delay, the astral body disintegrating with extreme swiftness, and he goes on to whatever may be his bourne, according to the point he has reached in evolution. A less developed man, but one whose life has been pure and temperate and who has sat loosely on the things of the earth, will wing  a less rapid flight through Kâmaloka, but will dream peacefully, unconscious of his surroundings, as his mental body disentangles itself from the astral shells, one after the other, to (Page 89) awaken only when he reaches  the heavenly places.

Others, less developed still, will awaken after passing out of the lower regions, becoming conscious in the division which is connected with the active working of the consciousness during the earth-life, for this will be aroused on receiving familiar impacts, although these be received now directly through the astral body, without the help of the physical. Those who have lived in the animal passions will awake in their appropriate region, each man literally going “to his own place.”

The case of men struck suddenly out of physical life by accident, suicide, murder, or sudden death in any form, differs from those of persons who pass away by failure of the life-energies through disease or old age. If they are pure and spiritually minded they are specially guarded, and sleep out happily the term of their natural life. But in other cases they remain conscious – often entangled in the final scene of earth-life for a time, and unaware that they have lost the physical body – held in whatever region they are related to by the outermost layer of the astral body : their normal Kâmalokic life does not begin until the natural web of earth-life is out-spun, and they are vividly conscious of both their astral and physical surroundings.

One man who had committed an assassination and had been executed for his crime was said, by one of H.P.Blavatsky’s Teachers, to be living through the scenes of the murder and the subsequent events over and over again in Kâmaloka, ever repeating his diabolical (Page 90) act and going through the terrors of his arrest and execution.

A suicide will repeat automatically the feelings of despair and fear which preceded his self-murder, and go through the act and the death-struggle time after time with ghastly persistence. A woman who perished in the flames in a wild condition of terror and with frantic efforts to escape, created such a whirls of passions that, five days afterwards, she was still struggling desperately, fancying herself still in the fire and wildly repulsing all efforts to soothe her: while another woman who, with her baby on her breast, went down beneath the whirl of waters in a raging storm, with her heart calm and full of love, slept peacefully on the other side of death, dreaming of husband and children in happy lifelike visions.

In more ordinary cases, death by accident is still a disadvantage, brought on a person by some serious fault, (Not necessarily a fault committed in the present life. The law of cause and effect will be explained in Chapter IX, “Karma”), for the possession of full consciousness in the lower Kâmalokic regions, which are closely related to the earth, is attended by many inconveniences and perils. The man is full of all the plans and interests that made up his life, and is conscious of the presence of people and things connected with them.

He is almost irresistibly  impelled by his longings to try and influence the affairs to which his passions  and feelings still cling, and is bound to the earth while he has lost all his accustomed organs of activity ; his only hope of (Page 91) peace lies in resolutely turning away from earth and fixing his mind on higher things, but comparatively few are strong enough to make this effort, even with the help always offered them by workers on the astral plane, whose sphere of duty lies in helping and guiding those who have left his world. (These workers are disciples of some of the great Teachers who guide and help humanity, and they are employed in this special duty of succouring souls in need of such assistance.)

Too often such sufferers impatient in their helpless inactivity, seek the assistance of sensitives, with whom they can communicate and so mix themselves up once more in terrestrial affairs ; they sometimes seek even to obsess convenient mediums and thus to utilise the bodies of others for their own purposes, so incurring many responsibilities in the future. Not without occult reason have English churchmen been taught to pray : “From battle, murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.”

We may now consider the divisions of Kâmaloka one by one, and so gain some idea of the conditions which the man has made for himself in the intermediate state by the desires which he has cultivated during physical life ; it being kept in mind that the amount of vitality in any given “shell” – and therefore his imprisonment in that shell – depends on the amount of energy thrown during earth-life into the kind of matter of which that shell consists.

If the lowest passions have been active, the coarsest matter will be strongly vitalised and its amount will also be relatively large. This principle rules through all Kâmalokic regions, so that a man during earth-life can judge very fairly as to the future for himself (Page 92) that he is preparing immediately on the other side of death.

The first or lowest, division is the one that contains the conditions described in so many Hindu and Buddhist Scriptures under the name of “hells” of various kinds. It must be understood that a man, in passing into one of these states, is not getting rid of the passions and vile desires that have led him thither ; these remain, as part of his character, lying latent in the mind in a germinal state, to be thrown outwards again to form his passional nature when he is returning to birth in the physical world. (See chapter VII, on “Reincarnation”). His presence in the lowest region of Kâmaloka is due to the existence in his kâmic body of matter belonging to that region, and he is held prisoner there until the greater part of that matter has dropped away, until the shell composed of it is sufficiently disintegrated to allow the man to come into contact with the region next above.

The atmosphere of this place is gloomy, heavy, dreary, depressing to an inconceivable extent. It seems to reek with all the influences most inimical to good, as in truth it does, being caused by the persons whose evil passions have led them to this dreary place. All the desires and feelings at which we shudder, find here  the materials for their expression ; it is, in fact, the lowest slum, with all the horrors veiled from physical sight parading their naked hideousness. (Page 93) Its repulsiveness is much increased by the fact that in the astral world character expresses itself in form, and the man who is full of evil passions looks the whole of them ; bestial appetites shape the astral body into bestial forms, and repulsively human animal shapes are the appropriate clothing of brutalised human souls.

No man can be a hypocrite in the astral world, and cloak foul thoughts with a veil of virtuous seeming ; whatever a man is  that he appears to be in outward form and semblance, radiant in beauty if his mind be noble, repulsive in hideousness if his nature be foul. It will readily be understood, then, how such Teachers as the Buddha – to whose unerring vision all worlds lay open – should describe what was seen in these hells in vivid language of terrible imagery, that seems incredible to modern readers only because people forget that, once escaped from the heavy and unplastic matter of the physical world, all souls appear in their proper likenesses and look just what they are . Even in this world a degraded and besotted ruffian moulds his face into most repellent aspect ; what then can be expected when the plastic astral matter takes shape with every impulse of his criminal desires, but that such a man should wear a horrifying form, taking on changing elements of hideousness?

For it must be remembered that the population – if that word may be allowed – of this lowest region consists of the very scum of humanity, murderers, ruffians, violent criminals of all types, drunkards, (Page 94) profligates, the vilest of mankind. None is here, with consciousness awake to its surroundings, save those guilty of brutal crimes, or of deliberate persistent cruelty, or possessed by some vile appetite. The only persons who may be of a better general type, and yet for a while be held here, are suicides, men who have sought by self-murder to escape from the earthly penalties of crimes they had committed, and who have but worsened their position by the exchange. Not all suicides, be it understood , for self-murder is committed from many motives, but only such as are led up to by crime and are then committed in order to avoid the consequences.

Save for the gloomy surroundings and the loathsomeness of a man’s associates, every man here is the immediate creator of his own miseries. Unchanged, except for the loss of the bodily veil, men here show out their passions in all their native hideousness, their naked brutality ; full of fierce unsatiated appetites, seething with revenge, hatred, longings after physical indulgences which the loss of physical organs incapacitates them for enjoying, they roam, raging and ravening, through this gloomy region, crowding round all foul resorts on earth, round brothels and gin-palaces, stimulating their occupants to deeds of shame and violence, seeking opportunities to obsess them, and so to drive them into worse excesses.

The sickening atmosphere felt round such places comes largely from these earthbound astral entities, reeking with foul passions and (Page 95) unclean desires. Mediums – unless of very pure and noble character – are special objects of attack, and too often the weaker ones, weakened still further by the passive yielding of their bodies for the temporary habitation of other excarnate souls are obsessed by these creatures, and are driven into intemperance or madness.

Executed murderers, furious with terror and passionate revengeful hatred, acting over again, as we have said, their crime and recreating mentally its terrible results, surround themselves with an atmosphere of savage thought-forms, and, attracted to any one harbouring revengeful and violent designs, they egg him on into the actual commission of the deed over which he broods. Sometimes a man may be seen constantly followed by his murdered victim, never able to escape from his haunting presence, which hunts him with a dull persistency , try he ever so eagerly to escape. The murdered person, unless himself of a very base type, is wrapped in unconsciousness, and this very unconsciousness seems to add a new horror to its mechanical pursuit.

Here also is the hell of the vivisector, for cruelty draws into the astral body the coarsest materials and the most  repulsive combinations of the astral matter, and he lives amid the crowding forms of his mutilated victims – moaning, quivering, howling (they are vivified, not by the animal souls but by elemental life) pulsing with hatred to the tormentor – rehearsing his worst experiments with automatic regularity, conscious of all the horror, and yet (Page 96) imperiously impelled to the self-torment by the habit set up during earth-life.

It is well once again, to remember, ere quitting this dreary region, that we have no arbitrary punishments inflicted from outside, but only the inevitable working out of the causes set going by each person. During physical life they yielded to the vilest impulses and drew into, built into, their astral bodies the materials which alone could vibrate in answer to those impulses ; this self-built body becomes the prison house of the soul, and must fall into ruins ere the soul can escape from it.

As inevitably as a drunkard must live in his repulsive soddened physical body here, so must he live in his equally repulsive astral body there. The harvest sown is reaped after its kind. Such is the law in all the worlds, and it may not be escaped. Nor indeed is the astral body there more revolting and horrible than it was when the man was living upon earth and made the atmosphere around him fetid with his astral emanations. But people on earth do not generally recognise its ugliness, being astrally blind.

Further, we may cheer ourselves in contemplating these unhappy brothers of ours by remembering that their sufferings are but temporary, and are giving a much-needed lesson  in the life of the soul. By the tremendous pressure of nature’s disregarded laws they are learning the existence of those laws, and the misery that accrues from ignoring them in life and conduct. The lesson they would not learn (Page 97) during earth-life, whirled away on the torrent of lusts and desires, is pressed on them here, and will be pressed on them in their succeeding lives, until the evils are eradicated and the man has risen into a better life. Nature’s lessons are sharp, but in the long run they are merciful, for they lead to the evolution of the soul and guide it to the winning of its immortality.

Let us pass to a more cheerful region. The second division of the astral world may be said to be the astral double of the physical, for the astral bodies of all things and of many people are largely composed of the matter belonging to this division of the astral plane, and it is therefore more closely in touch with the physical world than any other part of the astral. The great majority of people make some stay here, and a very large proportion of these are consciously awake in it. These latter are folk whose interests were bound up in the trivial and petty objects of life, who set their hearts on trifles, as well as those who allowed their lower natures to rule them, and who died with the appetites still active and desirous of physical enjoyment.

Having largely sent their life outwards in these directions, thus building their astral bodies largely of the materials that responded very readily to material impacts, they are held by these bodies in the neighbourhood of their physical attractions. They are mostly dissatisfied, uneasy, restless, with more or less suffering according to the vigour of the wishes they cannot gratify ; some even undergo positive pain (Page 98) from this cause, and are long delayed ere these earthly longings are exhausted.

Many unnecessarily lengthen their stay by seeking to communicate with the earth, in whose interests they are entangled, by means of mediums, who allow them to use their physical bodies for this purpose, thus supplying the loss of their own. From them comes most of the mere twaddle with which every one is familiar who has had experience of public spiritualistic séances, the gossip and trite morality of the petty lodging-house and small shop – feminine, for the most part. As these earth bound souls are generally of small intelligence, their communications are of no more interest- (to those already convinced of the existence of the soul after death) –than was their conversation when they were in the body, and – just as on earth – they are positive in proportion to their ignorance, representing the whole astral world as identical with their own very limited area. There as here :

They think the rustic cackle of their burgh
The murmur of the world.

It is from this region that people who have died with some anxiety on their minds will sometimes seek to communicate with their friends in order to arrange the earthly matter that troubles them ; if they cannot succeed in showing themselves, or in impressing their wishes by a dream on some friend, they will often cause much annoyance by knockings and other noises directly intended to draw attention (Page 99) or caused unconsciously by their restless efforts. It is a charity in such cases for some competent person to communicate with the distressed entity and learn his wishes, as he may thus be freed from the anxiety which prevents him from passing onwards. Souls, while in this region, may also very easily have their attention drawn to the earth, even  although they would not spontaneously have turned back to it, and this disservice is too often done to them by the passionate grief and craving for their beloved presence by friends left behind on earth.

The thought-forms set up by these longings throng round them, and oftentimes arouse them if they are peacefully sleeping, or violently draw their thoughts to earth if they are already conscious. It is especially in the former case that this unwitting selfishness on the part of friends on earth does mischief to their dear ones that they would themselves be the first to regret ; and it may that the knowledge of the unnecessary suffering thus caused to those who have passed through death may, with some, strengthen the binding force of the religious precepts which enjoin submission to the divine law and the checking of excessive and rebellious grief.

The third and fourth regions of the Kâmalokic world differ but little from the second, and might also be described as etherialised copies of it, the fourth being more refined than the third, but the general characteristics of the three subdivisions being very similar. Souls of somewhat more progressed (Page 100) types are found there, and although they are held there by the encasement built by the activity of their earthly interests, their attention is for the most part directed onwards rather than backwards, and, if they are not forcibly recalled to the concerns of earth-life, they will pass on without very much delay.

Still, they are susceptible to earthly stimuli, and the weakening interest in terrestrial affairs may be reawakened by cries from below. Large numbers of educated and thoughtful people, who were chiefly occupied with worldly affairs during their physical lives, are conscious in these regions, and may be induced to communicate through mediums, and, more rarely, seek such communication themselves. Their statements are naturally of a higher type than those spoken of as coming from the second division, but are not marked by any characteristics that render them more valuable than similar statements made by persons still in the body. Spiritual illumination does not come from Kâmaloka.

The fifth subdivision of Kâmaloka offers many new characteristics. It presents a distinctly luminous and radiant appearance, eminently attractive to those accustomed only to the dull hues of the earth, and justifying the epithet astral, starry, given to the whole plane. Here are situated all the materialised heavens which play so large a part in popular religions  all the world over.

The happy hunting grounds of the Red Indian, the Valhalla of the Norsemen, the houri-filled paradise of the Muslim, the golden (Page 101) jewelled-gated New Jerusalem of the Christian, the lyceum-filled heaven of the materialistic reformer, all have their places here. Men and women who clung desperately to every “letter that killeth” have here the literal satisfaction of their cravings, unconsciously creating in astral matter by their powers of imagination, fed on the mere husks of the world’s Scriptures, the cloud-built palaces whereof they dreamed.

The crudest religious beliefs find here their  temporary cloud-land realisation, and literalists of every faith, who were filled with selfish longings for their own salvation  in the most materialistic of heavens, here find an appropriate, and to them enjoyable, home, surrounded by the very conditions in which they believed. The religious and philanthropic busybodies, who cared more to carry out their own fads and impose their own ways on their neighbours than to work unselfishly for the increase of human virtue and happiness, are here much to the fore, carrying on reformatories, refuges, schools, to their own great satisfaction, and much delighted are they still to push an astral finger into an earthly pie with the help of a subservient medium whom they patronise with lofty condescension.

They build astral churches and schools and houses, reproducing the materialistic heavens they coveted ; and though to keener  vision their erections are imperfect, even pathetically grotesque, they find them all-sufficing. People of the same religions flock together and co-operate with each other in various ways, so that communities are formed, differing as widely from each other (Page 102) as do similar communities on earth.

When they are attracted to the earth they seek, for the most part, people of their own faith and country, chiefly by natural affinity, doubtless, but also because barriers of language still exist  in Kâmaloka ; as may be noticed occasionally in messages received in spiritualistic  circles. Souls from this region often take the most vivid interest in attempts to establish communication between this and the next world, and the “spirit guides” of average mediums come, for the most part, from this and from the region next above. They are generally aware that there are many possibilities of higher life before them, and that they will, sooner or later, pass away into worlds whence communication with this earth will not be possible.

The sixth Kâmalokic region resembles the fifth, but is far more refined, and is largely inhabited by souls of a more advanced type, wearing out the astral vesture in which much of their mental energies had worked while they were in the physical body. Their delay is here due to the large part played by selfishness in their artistic  and intellectual life, and to the prostitution of their talents to the gratification  of the desire-nature in a refined and delicate way.

Their surroundings are the best that are found in Kâmaloka, as their creative thoughts fashion the luminous materials of their temporary home into fair landscapes and rippling oceans, snow-clad mountains and fertile plains, scenes that are of fairy-like beauty compared with even the most exquisite (Page 103) that earth can show. Religionists also are found here, of a slightly more progressed kind than those in the division immediately below, and with more definite views of their own limitations. They look forward more clearly to passing out of their present sphere, and reaching a higher state.

The seventh, the highest, subdivision of Kâmaloka, is occupied almost entirely by intellectual men and women who were either pronouncedly materialistic while on earth, or who are so wedded to the ways in which knowledge is gained by the lower mind in the physical body that they continue its pursuit in the old ways, though with enlarged faculties. One recalls Charles Lamb’s dislike of the idea that in heaven knowledge would have to be gained “by some awkward process of intuition” instead of through his beloved books.  Many a student  lives for long years, sometimes for centuries – according to H.P.Blavatsky – literally in the astral library, conning eagerly all books that deal with his favourite subject, and perfectly contented with his lot.

Men who have been keenly set on some line of intellectual investigation, and have thrown off the physical body, with their thirst for knowledge unslaked, pursue their object still with unwearied  persistence, fettered by their clinging to the physical modes of study. Often such men are still sceptical as to the higher possibilities that lie before them, and shrink from the prospect of what is practically a second death – the sinking into unconsciousness ere the soul is born into the higher life of heaven. (Page 104) Politicians, statesmen, men of science, dwell for a while in this region, slowly disentangling themselves from the astral body, still held to the lower life by their keen and vivid interest in the movements in which they have played so large a part, and in the effort to work out astrally some of the schemes from which Death snatched them ere yet they had reached fruition.

To all, however, sooner or later – save to that small minority who during earth-life never felt one touch of unselfish love, of intellectual aspiration, of recognition of something or some one higher than themselves – there comes a time when the bonds of the astral body are finally shaken off, while the soul sinks into brief unconsciousness of its surroundings, like the unconsciousness that follows the dropping off of the physical body, to be awakened by a sense of bliss, intense, immense, fathomless, undreamed of, the bliss of the heaven-world, of the world to which by its own nature it belongs.

Low and vile may have been many of its passions, trivial and sordid many of its longings, but it had gleams of a higher nature, broken lights now and then from a purer region, and these must ripen as seeds to the time of their harvest, and however poor and few must yield their fair return. The man passes on to reap this harvest, and to eat and assimilate its fruit. (See Chapter V, on Devachan).

The astral corpse, as it is sometimes called, or the “shell” of the departed entity, consists of the (Page 105) fragments of the seven concentric shells before described, held together by the remaining magnetism of the soul. Each shell in turn has disintegrated, until the point is reached when mere scattered fragments of it remain ; these cling by magnetic attraction to the remaining shells, and when one after another has been reduced to this condition, until the seventh or innermost is reached and itself disintegrates, the man himself escapes, leaving behind him these remains.

The shell drifts about vaguely in the kâmalokic world, automatically and feebly repeating its accustomed vibrations, and as the remaining magnetism gradually disperses, it falls into a more and more decayed condition, and finally disintegrates completely, restoring its materials to the general mass of astral matter, exactly as does the physical body to the physical world.

This shell drifts wherever the astral currents may carry it, and may be vitalised, if not too far gone, by the magnetism of embodied souls on earth, and so restored to some amount of activity. It will suck up magnetism as a sponge sucks up water, and will then take on an illusory appearance of vitality, repeating more vigorously and vibration to which it was accustomed ; these are often set up by the stimulus of thoughts common to the departed soul and friends and relations on earth, and such a vitalised shell may play quite respectably the part of a communicating intelligence; it is however, distinguishable – apart from the use of astral vision – by its automatic repetitions of familiar thoughts, and by the (Page 106) total absence of all originality and of any traces of knowledge not possessed during physical life.

Just as souls may be delayed in their progress by foolish and inconsiderate friends, so may they be aided in it by wise and well-directed efforts. Hence all religions, which retain any traces of the occult wisdom of their Founders, enjoin the use of “prayers for the dead.” These prayers with their  accompanying ceremonies are more or less useful according to the knowledge, the love, and the willpower by which they were ensouled.

They rest on that universal truth of vibration by which the universe is built, modified, and maintained. Vibrations are set up by the uttered sounds, arranging astral matter into definite forms, ensouled by the thought enshrined in the words. These are directed towards the Kâmalokic entity, and, striking against the astral body, hasten its disintegration. With the decay of occult knowledge these ceremonies have become less and less potent, until their usefulness has almost reached a vanishing point.

Nevertheless they are still sometimes performed by a man of knowledge, and then exert their rightful influence. Moreover, every one can help his beloved departed by sending to them thoughts of love and peace and longing for their swift progress through the Kâmalokic world and their liberation from astral fetters. No one should leave his “dead” to go on a lonely way, unattended by loving hosts of these guardian angel thought-forms, helping them forward with joy. (Page 107)

CHAPTER IV

THE MENTAL PLANE

The mental plane, as its name implies, is that which belongs to consciousness working as thought ; not of the mind as it works through the brain, but as it works in its own world, unencumbered with physical spirit-matter.  This world is the world of the real man. The word “man” comes from the Sanskrit root “man” and this is the root of the Sanskrit verb “to think,” so that man means thinker; he is named by his most characteristic attribute, intelligence.

In English the word “mind” has to stand for the intellectual consciousness itself, and also for the effects produced on the physical brain by the vibration of that consciousness ; but we have now to conceive of the intellectual consciousness as an entity, an individual – a being, the vibrations of whose life are thoughts, thoughts which are images, not words.

This individual is Manas, or the Thinker ; (Derived from Manas is the technical name, the mânasic plane. Englished as “mental.” We might call it the plane of the mind proper, to distinguish its activities from those of the mind working in the flesh.) –he is the Self, clothed in the matter, and working within the conditions, of the higher subdivisions (Page 108) of the mental plane. He reveals his presence on the physical plane by the vibrations he sets up in the brain and nervous system ; these respond to the thrills of his life by sympathetic vibrations, but in consequence of the coarseness of their material they can reproduce only a small section of his vibrations and even that very imperfectly.

Just as science asserts the existence  of a vast series of etheric vibrations, of which the eye can only see a small fragment, the solar light spectrum, because it can vibrate only within certain limits, so can the physical thought-apparatus, the brain and nervous system, think only a small fragment of the vast series of mental vibrations set up by the Thinker in his own world.

The most receptive brains respond up to the point of what we call the great intellectual power ; the exceptionally receptive brains respond up to the point of what we call genius ; the exceptionally unreceptive  brains respond only up to the point we call idiocy ;  but every one sends beating against his brain millions of thought-waves to which it cannot respond, owing to the density of its materials, and just in proportion to its sensitiveness are the so-called mental powers of each. But before studying the Thinker, it will be well to consider his world, the mental plane itself.

The mental plane is that which is next to the astral, and is separated from it only by differences of materials, just as the astral is separated from the physical. In fact, we may repeat what was said as to the astral and the physical with regard to the (Page 109) mental and the astral. Life on the mental plane is more active than on the astral, and form is more plastic. The spirit-matter of that plane is more highly vitalised and finer than any grade of matter in the astral world. The ultimate atom of astral matter has innumerable aggregations of the coarsest mental matter for its encircling sphere-world, so that the disintegration of the astral atom yields a mass of mental matter of the coarsest kinds. Under these circumstances it will be understood that the play of the life-forces on this plane will be enormously increased in activity, there being so much less mass to be moved by them.

The matter is in constant ceaseless motion, taking form under every thrill of life, and adapting itself without hesitation to every changing motion. “Mind-stuff,” as it has been called, makes astral spirit-matter seem clumsy, heavy, and lustreless, although compared with the physical spirit-matter it is so fairy-light and luminous. But the law of analogy holds good, and gives us a clue to guide us through this super astral region, the region that is our birthplace and our home, although, imprisoned in a foreign land, we know it not, and gaze at descriptions of it with the eyes of aliens.

Once again here, as on the two lower planes, the subdivisions of the spirit-matter of the plane are seven in number. Once again, these varieties enter into countless combinations, of every variety of complexity, yielding the solids, liquids, gases, and ethers of the mental plane. The word “solid” seems indeed absurd, when speaking of even the most (Page 110) substantial forms of mind-stuff ; yet as they are dense in comparison with other kinds of mental materials, and as we have no descriptive words save such as are based on physical conditions, we must even use it for lack of a better.

Enough if we understand that this plane follows the general law and order of Nature, which is, for our globe, the septenary basis, and that the seven subdivisions of matter are of lessening densities, relatively to each other, as the physical solids, liquids, gases, and ethers ; the seventh, or highest, subdivision being composed exclusively of the mental atoms.

These subdivisions are grouped under two headings, to which the somewhat inefficient and unintelligible epithets “formless” and “form” have been assigned. (Arûpa, without form: rûpa, form. Rûpa is form, shape, body. ) The lower four – the first, second, third, and fourth subdivisions – are grouped together as   “with form”  ;  the higher three – the fifth, sixth and seventh subdivisions – are grouped as  “formless.”  The grouping is necessary, for the distinction is a real one, although one difficult to describe, and the regions are related in consciousness to the divisions in the mind itself – as will appear more plainly a little farther on.

The distinction may perhaps be best expressed by saying that in the lower four subdivisions the vibrations of consciousness give rise to forms, to images or pictures, and every thought appears as a living shape ; whereas in the higher three, consciousness, though still, of course, setting up (Page 111) vibrations, seems rather to send them out as a mighty stream of living energy, which does not body itself into distinct images while it remains in this higher region, but which steps up a variety of forms all linked by some common condition when it rushes into the lower worlds.

The nearest analogy that I can find for the conception I am trying to express is that of abstract and concrete thoughts ; an abstract idea of a triangle has no form, but connotes any plane figure contained within three right lines, the angles of which make two right angles ; such an idea, with conditions but without shape, thrown into the lower world, may give birth to a vast variety of figures, right-angled, isosceles, scalene, of any colour and size, but all filling the conditions – concrete triangles each one with a definite shape of its own. The impossibility of giving in words a lucid exposition of the difference in the action of consciousness in the two regions is due to the fact that words are the symbols of images and belong to the workings of the lower mind in the brain, and are based wholly upon  those workings ; while the “formless”  region belongs to the Pure reason, which never works within the narrow limits of language.

The mental plane is that which reflects the Universal Mind in Nature, the plane which in our little system corresponds with that of the Great Mind in the Kosmos.  (Mahat, the Third LOGOS, or Divine Creative Intelligence, the Brahmâ of the Hindus, the Mandjusri of the Northern Buddhists, the Holy Spirit of the Christians.)  In its higher regions exist all the archetypal ideas which are now in course of concrete evolution, and in its lower the working out of these (Page 112) into successive forms, to be duly reproduced in the astral and physical worlds.

Its materials are capable of combining under the impulse of thought vibrations, and can give rise to any combination which thought can construct ; as iron can be made into a spade for digging or into a sword for slaying, so can mind-stuff be shaped into thought-forms that help or injure ; the vibrating life of the Thinker shapes the materials around him, and according to his volitions so is his work. In that region thought and action, will and deed, are one and the same thing – spirit-matter here becomes the obedient servant of the life, adapting itself to every creative motion.

These vibrations, which shape the matter of the plane into thought-forms, give rise also from their swiftness and subtlety to the most exquisite and constantly changing colours, waves of varying shades like the rainbow hues of mother-of-pearl, etherialised and brightened to an indescribable extent, sweeping over and through every form, so that each presents  a harmony of rippling, living, luminous, delicate colours, including many not ever known to earth.

Words can give no idea of the exquisite beauty and radiance shown in combinations of this subtle matter, instinct with life and motion. Every seer who has witnessed it, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, speaks in rapturous terms of its glorious beauty, and ever confesses his utter inability to describe it; (Page 113) words seem but to coarsen and deprave it, however deftly woven in its praise.

Thought-forms naturally play a large part among the living creatures that function on the mental plane. They resemble those with which we are already familiar in the astral  world, save that they are far more radiant and more brilliantly coloured, are stronger, more lasting, and more fully vitalised. As the higher intellectual qualities become more clearly marked, these forms show very sharply defined outlines, and there is a tendency to a singular perfection of geometrical figures accompanied by an equally singular purity of  luminous colour. But, needless to say at the present stage of humanity, there is a vast preponderance of cloudy and irregularly shaped thoughts, the production of the ill-trained minds of the majority.

Rarely beautiful artistic thoughts are also here encountered, and it is little wonder that painters who have caught, in dreamy vision, some glimpse of their ideal, often fret against their incapacity to reproduce its glowing beauty in earth’s dull pigments. These thought-forms are built out of the elemental essence of the plane, the vibrations of the thought throwing the elemental essence into a corresponding shape, and this shape having the thought as its informing life. Thus again we have “artificial elementals” created in a way identical with that by which they come into being in the astral regions. All that is said in Chapter II of their generation and of their importance may be repeated of those of the mental plane, with here the additional responsibility on their creators of the greater force and permanence belonging (Page 114) to those of this higher world.

The elemental essence of the mental plane is formed by the Monad in the stage of its descent immediately preceding its entrance into the astral world, and it constitutes the second elemental kingdom, existing on the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane. The three higher subdivisions, the “formless,” are occupied by the first elemental kingdom, the elemental essence there being thrown by thought into brilliant coruscations, coloured streams, and flashes of living fire, instead of into definite shapes, taking as it were its first lessons in combined action, but not yet assuming definite limitations of forms.

On the mental plane, in both its great divisions, exist numberless Intelligences, whose lowest bodies are formed of the luminous matter and elemental essence of that plane – Shining ones who guide the processes of natural order, overlooking the hosts of lower entities before spoken of, and yielding submission in their several hierarchies to their great overlords of the seven Elements. (These are the Arûpa and Rûpa Devas of the Hindus and the Buddhists, the “Lords of the heavenly and the earthly” of the Zoroastrians, the Archangels and Angels of the Christians and Mahomedans).

They are, as may readily be imagined, beings of vast knowledge, of great power, and most splendid in appearance, radiant, flashing creatures, myriad-hued, like rainbows of changing supernal colours, of stateliest mien, (Page 115) calm energy incarnate, embodiments of resistless strength. The description of the great Christian Seer leaps to mind, when he wrote of a mighty angel: “A rainbow was upon his head, and his face was imperial as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.( Revelation, x, 1). “As the sound of many waters” are their voices, as echoes from the music of the spheres. They guide natural order, and rule the vast companies of the elementals of the astral world, so that their cohorts carry on ceaselessly the processes of nature with undeviating regularity and accuracy.

On the lower mental plane are seen many Chelâs at work in their mental bodies, (Usually called Mâyâvi Rûpa, or illusory body, when arranged for independent functioning in the mental world.) --- freed for a time from their physical vestures. When the body is wrapped in deep sleep the true man, the Thinker, may escape from it, and work untrammelled by its weight in these higher regions. From here he can aid and comfort his fellowmen by acting directly on their minds, suggesting helpful thoughts, putting before them noble ideas, more effectively and speedily than he can do when encased in the body. He can see their needs more clearly and therefore can supply them more perfectly, and it is his highest privilege and joy thus to minister to his struggling brothers, without their knowledge of his service or any ideas of theirs as to the strong arm that lifts their burden, or the soft voice that whispers solace in their pain.

Unseen, unrecognised, he works, (Page 116) serving his enemies as gladly and as freely as his friends, dispensing to individuals the stream of beneficent forces that are poured down from the great Helpers in higher spheres. Here also are sometimes seen the glorious figures of the Masters, though for the most part They reside on the highest level of the “formless” division of the mental  plane ; and other Great Ones may also sometimes come hither on some mission of compassion requiring such lower manifestation.

Communication between intelligences functioning consciously on this plane, whether human or non-human, whether in or out of the body, is practically instantaneous, for it is with :the “speed of thought.” Barriers of space have here no power to divide, and any soul can come into touch with any one by merely directing his attention to him.

Not only is communication thus swift, but it is also complete, if the souls are at about the same stage of evolution ; no words fetter and obstruct the communion, but the whole thought flashes from the one to the other, or, perhaps more  exactly, each sees the thought as conceived  by the other. The real barriers between souls are the differences of evolution ; the less evolved can know only as much of the  more highly evolved as his is able to respond to ; the limitation can obviously be felt only by the higher one, as the lesser has all that he can contain.

The more evolved a soul, the more does he know of all around him, the nearer does he approach to realities ; but the mental plane has also its veils of illusion, it must be remembered, though they be far fewer and thinner than those of the astral and the physical worlds. Each soul (Page 117) has its own mental atmosphere, and, as all impressions must come through this atmosphere, they are all distorted and coloured. The clearer and purer, the atmosphere, and the less it is coloured by the personality, the fewer are the illusions that can befall it.

The three highest subdivisions of the mental plane are the habitat of the Thinker himself, and he dwells on one or other of these, according to the stage of his evolution. The vast majority live on the lowest level, in various stages of evolution ; a comparatively few of the highly intellectual dwell on the second level, the Thinker  ascending thither – to use a phrase more suitable to the physical than to the mental plane – when the subtler matter of that region preponderates in him, and thus necessitates the change ; there is of course, no “ascending,” no change of place, but he receives the vibrations of that  subtler matter, being able to respond to them, and he himself is able to send out forces that throw its rare particles into vibration.

The student should familiarise himself with the fact that rising in the scale of evolution does not move him from place to place, but renders him more and more able to receive impressions. Every sphere is around us, the astral, the mental, the buddhic, the nirvânic, and worlds higher yet, the life of the supreme God ; we need not stir to find them, for they are here; but our dull unreceptivity shuts them out more effectively than millions of miles of mere space.

We are (Page 118) conscious only of that which affects us, which stirs us to responsive vibration, and as we become more and more receptive, as we draw into ourself finer and finer matter, we come into contact with subtler and subtler worlds.  Hence, rising from one level to another means that we are weaving our vestures of finer materials and can receive through them the contacts of finer worlds ; and it means further that in the Self within these vestures diviner powers are waking from latency into activity, and are sending out their subtler thrills of life.

At the stage now reached by the Thinker, he is fully conscious of his surroundings and is in possession of the memory of his past. He knows the bodies he is wearing, through which he is contacting the lower planes, and he is able to influence and guide them to a great extent. He sees the difficulties, the obstacles, they are approaching – the results of past careless living – and he sets himself to pour into them energies by which they may be better equipped for their task.

His direction is sometimes felt in the lower consciousness as an imperiously compelling force that will have its way, and that impels to a course of action for which all the reasons may not be clear to the dimmer vision caused by the mental and astral garments. Men who have done great deeds have occasionally left on record their consciousness of an inner and compelling power, which seemed to leave them no choice save to do as they had done. They were then acting as the real man ; the Thinkers, that are the inner men, (Page 119) were doing the work consciously through the bodies that then were fulfilling their proper functions as vehicles of the individual. To these higher powers all will come as evolution proceeds.

On the third level of  the upper region of the mental plane dwell the Egos of the Masters, and of the Initiates who are Their Chelâs, the Thinkers having here a preponderance of the matter of this region in their bodies. From this world of subtlest mental forces the Masters carry on Their beneficent work for humanity, raining down noble ideals, inspiring thoughts, devotional aspirations, streams of spiritual and intellectual help for men.

Every force there generated, rays out in myriad directions, and the noblest, purest souls catch most readily these helpful influences. A discovery flashes into the mind of the patient searcher into Nature’s secrets ; a new melody entrances the ear of the great musician ; the answer to a long studied problem illumines the intellect of a lofty philosopher ; a new energy of hope and love suffuses the heart of an unwearied philanthropist. Yet men think that they are left uncared for, although the very phrases they use ; “the thought occurred to me; the idea came to me; the discovery flashed on me " unconsciously testify to the truth known to their inner selves though the outer eyes be blind.

Let us now turn to the study of the Thinker and his vestures as they are found in men on earth. The body of the consciousness, conditioning it in the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane – the mental body, (Page 120) as we term it – is formed of combinations of the matter of these subdivisions.  The Thinker, the individual, Human Soul – formed in the way described in the latter part of this chapter – when he is coming into incarnation, first radiates forth some of his energy in vibrations that attract round him, and clothe him in, matter drawn from the four lower subdivisions of his own plane.

According to the nature of the vibrations are the kinds of matter they attract ; the finer kinds answer the swifter vibrations and take form under their impulse ; the coarser kinds similarly answer the slower ones ; just as a wire will sympathetically sound out a note – i.e., a given number of vibrations – coming from a wire  similar in weight and tension to itself, but will remain dumb amid a chorus of notes from wires dissimilar to itself in these respects, so do the different kinds of matter  assort themselves in answer to different kinds of vibrations. Exactly according to the vibrations sent out by the Thinker will be the nature of the mental body that he thus draws around him, and this mental body is what  is called the lower mind, the lower Manas, because it is the Thinker clothed in the matter of the lower subdivisions of the mental plane and conditioned by it in his further working.

None of his energies which are too subtle to move this matter, too swift for its response, can express themselves through it ; he is therefore limited by it, conditioned by it, restricted by it in his expression of himself. It is the first of his prison-houses during his incarnate life, and while his energies are acting  (Page 121) within it  he is largely shut off from his own higher world, for his attention is with the outgoing energies and his life is thrown with them into the mental body, often spoken as a vesture, or sheath, or vehicle – any expression will serve which connotes the idea that  the Thinker is not the mental body, but formed it and uses it in order to express as much of himself as he can in the lower mental region.

It must not be forgotten that his energies, still pulsing outwards, draw round him also the coarser matter of the astral plane as his astral body ; and during his incarnate life the energies that express themselves through the lower kinds of mental matter are so readily changed by it into the slower vibrations that are responded to by astral matter that the two bodies are continually vibrating together, and become very closely interwoven ; the coarser the kinds of matter built into the mental body, the more intimate becomes this union, so that the two bodies are sometimes classed together and even taken as one.( Thus the Theosophist will speak of Kâma Manas, meaning the mind as working in and with the desire nature, affecting and affected by the animal nature. The Vedântin classes the two together, and speaks of the Self as working in the Manomayakosha, the sheath composed of the lower mind, emotions, and passions. The European psychologist makes “feelings” one section of his tripartite division of “mind”, and includes under feelings both emotions and sensations.) When we come to study Reincarnation we shall find this fact assuming vital importance.

According to the stage of evolution reached by (Page 122) the man will be the type of mental body he forms on his way to become again incarnate, and we may study, as we did with the astral body, the respective mental bodies of three types of men –

a) an undeveloped man ; b)  an average man ; c) a spiritually advanced man.

a) In the undeveloped man the mental body is  but little perceptible, a small amount of unorganised mental matter, chiefly from the lowest subdivisions of the plane, being all that represents it. This is played on almost entirely from the lower bodies, being set vibrating feebly by the astral storms raised by the contacts with material objects through the sense organs. Except when stimulated by these astral vibrations it remains almost quiescent, and even under their impulses its responses are sluggish. No definite activity is generated from within, these blows from the outer world being necessary to arouse any distinct response.

The more violent the blows, the better for the progress of the man, for each responsive vibration aids in the embryonic development of the mental body. Riotous pleasure, anger, rage, pain, terror, all these passions, causing whirlwinds in the astral body, awaken faint vibrations in the mental, and gradually these vibrations, stirring into commencing activity the mental consciousness, cause it to add something of its own to the impressions made on it from without.

We have seen that the mental body is so closely mingled with the astral that they act as a single body, but the dawning mental faculties add to the astral passions a certain (Page 123) strength and quality not apparent in them when they work as purely animal qualities. The impressions made on the mental body are more permanent than those made on the astral, and they are consciously reproduced by it. Here memory and the organ of imagination begin, and the latter gradually moulds itself, the images from the outer world working on the matter of the mental body and forming its materials into their own likeness.

These images, born of the contacts of the senses, draw round themselves the coarsest mental matter; the dawning powers of consciousness reproduce these images, and thus accumulate a store of pictures that begin to stimulate action initiated from within, from the wish to experience again through the outer organs the vibrations that were found pleasant, and to avoid those productive of pain.

The mental body then begins  to stimulate the astral, and to arouse in it the desires that, in the animal, slumber until awakened by a physical stimulus ; hence we see in the undeveloped man a persistent pursuit of sense-gratification never found in the lower animals, a lust, a cruelty, a calculation, to which they are strangers. The dawning powers of the mind, yoked to the service of the senses, make of man a far more dangerous and savage brute than any animal, and the stronger and more subtle forces inherent in the mental-spiritual matter lend to the passion-nature an energy and a keenness that we do not find in the animal world.

But these very excesses lead to their own correction by the sufferings which they cause, (Page 124) and these resultant experiences play upon the consciousness and set up new images on which the imagination works. These stimulate the consciousness to resist many of the vibrations that reach it by way of the astral body from the external world, and to exercise its volition in holding the passions back instead of giving them free rein.

Such resistant vibrations are set up in, and attract towards, the mental body, finer combinations of mind-stuff and tend also to expel from it the coarser combinations that vibrate responsively to the passional notes set up in the astral body ; by this struggle between the vibrations set up by passion-images and the vibrations set up by the imaginative reproduction of past experiences, the mental body grows, begins to develop a definite organisation, and to exercise more and more initiative as regards external activities.

While the earth life is spent gathering experiences, the intermediate life is spent assimilating them, as we shall see in detail in the following chapter, so that in each return to earth the Thinker has an increased stock of faculties to take shape as his mental body.  Thus the undeveloped man, whose mind is the slave of his passions, grows into the average man, whose mind is a battleground in which passions and mental powers wage war with varying success, about balanced in their forces, but who is gradually gaining the mastery over his lower nature.

(b) In the average man, the mental body is much increased in size, shows a certain amount of organisation, and contains a fair proportion of matter (Page 125) drawn from the second, third, and fourth subdivisions of the mental plane. The general law which regulates all the building up and modifying of the mental body may here be fitly studied, though it is the same principle already seen working in the lower realms of the astral and physical worlds.

Exercise increases, disuse atrophies and finally destroys. Every vibration set up in the mental body causes changes in its constituents, throwing out of it, in the part affected, the matter that cannot vibrate sympathetically, and replacing it by suitable materials drawn from the practically illimitable  store around. The more a series of vibrations is repeated, the more does the part affected by them increase in development ; hence, it may be noted in passing, the injury done to the mental body by over-specialisation of mental energies.

Such mistaken direction of these powers causes a lopsided development of the mental body ; it becomes proportionately over developed in the region in which these forces are continually playing and proportionately undeveloped in other parts, perhaps equally important. A harmonious and proportionate all-round development is the object to be sought, and for this we need a calm self-analysis and a definite direction of means to ends. A knowledge of this law, further explains certain familiar experiences, and affords a sure hope of progress. When a new study is commenced, or a change in favour of high morality is initiated, the early stages are found to be fraught with difficulties ; sometimes the effort is even abandoned because the (Page 126) obstacles in the way of its success appear to be insurmountable.

At the beginning of any new mental undertaking, the whole automatism of the mental body opposes it ; the materials habituated to vibrate in a particular way, cannot accommodate themselves to the new impulses, and the early stage consists chiefly of sending out thrills of force which are frustrated, so far as setting up vibrations in the mental body are concerned, but which are the necessary preliminary to any such sympathetic vibrations, as they shake out of the body the old refractory materials and draw into it the sympathetic kinds.

During this process, the man is not conscious of any progress; he is conscious only of the frustration of his efforts and of the dull resistance he encounters. Presently, if he persists, as the newly attracted materials begin to function, he succeeds better in his attempts, and at last, when all the old materials are expelled and the new are working, he finds himself succeeding without an effort, and his object is accomplished.

The critical time is during the first stage ; but if he trust in the law, as sure in its working as every other law in Nature, and persistently repeat his efforts, he must succeed ; and a knowledge of this fact may cheer him when otherwise he would be sinking in despair. In this way, then, the average man may work on, finding with joy that as he steadily resists the promptings of the lower nature he is conscious they are losing their power over him, for he is expelling from his mental body all the materials that are capable of being thrown (Page 127) into sympathetic vibrations. Thus the mental body gradually comes to be composed of the finer constituents of the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane, until it has become radiant and exquisitely beautiful form which is the mental body of the –

( c ) Spiritually developed man. From this body all the coarser combinations have been eliminated, so that the objects of the senses no longer find in it, or in the astral body connected with it, materials that respond sympathetically to their vibrations. It contains only the finer combinations belonging to each of the four subdivisions of the lower mental world, and of these again the materials of the third and fourth sub-planes very much predominate in its composition over the materials of the second and first, making it responsive to all the higher workings of the intellect, to the delicate contacts of the higher arts, to all the pure thrills of loftier emotions.

Such a body enables the Thinker who is clothed in it to express himself much more fully in the lower mental region and in the astral and physical worlds ; its materials are capable of a far wider range of responsive vibrations, and the impulses from a loftier realm mould it into nobler and subtler organisation. Such a body is rapidly becoming ready to reproduce every impulse from the  Thinker which is capable of expression on the lower subdivisions of the mental plane ; it is growing into a perfect instrument for activities in this lower mental world. (Page 128)

A clear understanding of the nature of the mental body would much modify modern education, and would make it far more serviceable to the Thinker than it is at present. The general characteristics of this body depend on the past lives of the Thinker on earth, as will be thoroughly understood when we have studied Reincarnation and Karma. The body is constituted on the mental plane, and its materials depend on the qualities that the Thinker has garnered within himself as the results of his past experiences.

All that education can do is to provide such external stimuli as shall arouse and encourage the growth of the useful faculties he already possesses, and stunt and help in the eradication of those that are undesirable. The drawing out of these inborn faculties, and not the cramming of the mind with facts, is the object of true education.

Nor need memory be cultivated as a separate faculty, for memory depends on attention – that is on the steady concentration of the mind on the subject studied – and on the natural affinity between the subject and the mind. If the subject be liked – that is, if the mind has a capacity for it – memory will not fail, provided due attention be paid. Therefore education should cultivate the habit of steady concentration, of sustained attention, and should be directed according to the inborn faculties of the pupil.

Let us now pass into the “formless” divisions of the mental plane, the region which is man’s true home during the cycle of his reincarnations, into which (Page 129) he is born, a baby soul, an infant Ego, an embryonic individuality, when he begins his purely human evolution.( See Chapters VII and VIII, on “Reincarnation”).

The outline of this Ego, the Thinker, is oval in shape, and hence H.P. Blavatsky speaks of this body of Manas which endures throughout all his incarnations as the Auric Egg. Formed of the matter of the three highest subdivisions of the mental plane, it is exquisitely fine, a film of rarest subtlety, even at its first inception ; and, as it develops, it becomes a radiant object of supernal glory and beauty, the shining One, as it has been aptly named. ( This is the Augœides of the Neo-Platonists, the “spiritual body” of St. Paul).

What is this Thinker? He is the divine Self, as already said, limited, or individualised, by this subtle body drawn from the materials of the “formless” region of the mental plane. (The Self, working in the Vignyânamayakosha, the sheath of discriminative knowledge, according to the Vedântic classification). This matter – drawn around a ray of the Self, a living beam of the one Light and Life of the universe – shuts off this ray from its Source, so far as the external world is concerned, encloses it within a filmy shell of itself, and so makes it “an individual.” The life is the Life of the LOGOS, but all the powers of that Life are lying latent, concealed ; everything is there potentially, germinally, as the tree is hidden within the tiny germ in the seed.

This seed is dropped into the (Page 130) soil of human life that its latent forces may be quickened into activity by the sun of joy and the rain of tears, and he fed by the juices of the life-soil that we call experience, until the germ grows into a mighty tree, the image of its generating Sire. Human evolution is the evolution of the Thinker; he takes on bodies on the lower mental and astral, and the physical planes, wears then through earthly, astral, lower mental life, dropping them successively at the regular stages of this life-cycle as he passes from world to world, but ever storing up within  himself the fruits he has gathered by their use on each plane.

At first, as little conscious as a baby’s earthly body, he almost slept through life after life, till the experiences playing on him from without awakened some of his latent forces into activity; but gradually he assumed more and more part in the direction of his life, until, with manhood reached, he took his life into his own hands, and an ever-increasing control over his future destiny.

The growth of the permanent body which, with the divine consciousness, forms the Thinker is extremely slow. Its technical name is the causal body, because he gathers up within it the results of all experiences, and these act as causes, moulding future lives. It is the only permanent one among the bodies during incarnation, the mental, the astral, and physical bodies being reconstituted for each fresh life ; as each perishes in turn, it hands on its harvest to the one above it, and thus all the harvests are finally stored in the permanent body ; when the (Page 131) Thinker returns to incarnation he sends out his energies, constituted of these harvests, on each successive plane, and thus draws round him a anew body after body suitable to his past.

The growth of the causal body itself, as said, is very slow, for it can vibrate only in answer to impulses that can  be expressed in the very subtle matter of which it is composed, thus weaving them into the texture of its being. Hence the passions, which play so large a part in the early stages of human evolution, cannot directly affect its growth. The Thinker can work into himself only the experiences that can be reproduced in the vibrations of the causal body, and these must belong to the mental region, and be highly intellectual or loftily moral in their character ; other wise its subtle matter can give no sympathetic vibration in answer.

A very little reflection will convince any one how little material, suitable for the growth of this lofty body, he affords by his daily life ; hence the slowness of evolution, the little progress made. The Thinker should have more of himself to put out in each successive life, and, when this is the case, evolution goes swiftly forward. Persistence in evil courses reacts in a kind  of indirect way on the causal body, and does more harm than the mere retardation of growth ; it seems after a long time to cause a certain incapacity to respond to the vibrations set up by the opposite good, and thus to delay growth for a considerable period after the evil has been renounced.

Directly to injure the causal body, evil of a highly intellectual and (Page 132) refined kind is necessary, the “spiritual evil” mentioned in the various Scriptures of the world. This is fortunately rare, rare as spiritual good, and found only among the highly progressed, whether they be following the Right-hand or the Left-hand Path. (The Right-hand Path is that which leads to divine manhood, to Adeptship used in the service of the worlds. The Left-hand Path is that which also leads to Adeptship, but to Adeptship that is used to frustrate  the progress of evolution and is turned to selfish individual ends. They are sometimes called the White and Black Paths respectively.)

The habitat of the Thinker, of the Eternal Man, is on the fifth subplane, the lowest level of the “formless” region of the mental plane. The great masses of mankind are here, scarce yet awake, still in the infancy of their life.  The Thinker develops consciousness slowly, as his energies, playing on the lower planes, there gather experience, which is  indrawn with these energies as they return to him treasure-laden with the harvest of life. This eternal Man, the individualised Self, is the actor in every body that he wears ; it is his presence that gives the feeling of “ I “ alike to body and mind, the “ I “ being that which is self-conscious and which, by illusion, identifies itself with that vehicle in which it is most actively energising.

To the man of the senses the “ I “ is the physical body and the desire nature ; he draws from these his enjoyment, and he thinks of these as himself, for his life is in them. To the scholar the “ I “ is the mind, for in its exercise lies his joy and therein his life is concentrated. (Page 133) Few can rise to the abstract heights of spiritual philosophy, and feel this Eternal Man as “ I “, with memory ranging back over past lives and hopes ranging forward over future births.

The physiologists tell us that if we cut the finger we do not really feel the pain there where the blood is flowing, but that pain is felt in the brain, and is by imagination thrown outwards to the place of the injury ; the feeling of pain in the finger is, they say an illusion ; it is put by imagination at the point of contact with the object causing the injury ; so also will a man feel pain in an amputated limb, or rather in the space the limb used to occupy. Similarly does the one “ I “, the Inner Man, feel suffering and joy in the sheaths which enwrap him, at the points of contact with the external world, and feels the sheath to be himself, knowing not that  this feeling is an illusion, and that he is the sole actor and experiencer in each sheath.

Let us now consider, in this light, the relations between the higher and lower mind and their action on the brain. The mind, Manas, the Thinker, is one, and is the Self in the causal body; it is the source of innumerable energies, of vibrations of innumerable kinds. These it sends out, raying outwards from itself. The subtlest and finest of these are expressed in the matter of the causal body, which alone is fine enough to respond to them ; they form what we call the Pure Reason, whose thoughts are abstract, whose method of gaining knowledge is intuition ; its very “nature is knowledge,” and it recognises truth at sight as congruous with itself. (Page 134)

Less subtle vibrations pass outwards, attracting the matter of the lower mental region, and these are the Lower Manas, or lower mind – the coarser energies of the higher expressed in denser matter ; these we call the intellect, comprising reason, judgement, imagination, comparison, and the other mental faculties ; its thoughts are concrete, and its method is logic ; it argues, it reasons, it infers. These vibrations, acting through astral matter on the etheric brain, and by that on the dense physical brain, set up vibrations therein, which are the heavy and slow reproductions of themselves – heavy and slow, because the energies lose much of their swiftness in moving the heavier matter.

This feebleness of response when a vibration is initiated in a rare medium and then passes into a dense one is familiar to every student of physics. Strike a bell in air and it sounds clearly ; strike it in hydrogen, and let the hydrogen vibrations have to set up the atmospheric waves, and how faint the result. Equally feeble are the workings of the brain in response to the swift and subtle impacts of the mind ; yet that is all that the vast majority know as their “consciousness.”

The immense importance of the mental workings of this “consciousness” is due to the fact that it is the only medium whereby the Thinker can gather the harvest of experience by which he grows. While it is dominated by the passions it runs riot, and he is left unnourished and therefore  unable to develop ; while it is occupied wholly in mental activities concerned with the outer world, it can arouse only his lower energies; (Page 135) only as he is able to impress on it the true object of its life, does it commence to fulfil its most valuable functions of gathering what will arouse and nourish his higher energies.

As the Thinker develops he becomes more and more conscious of his own inherent powers, and also of the workings of his energies on the lower planes, of the bodies which those energies have drawn around him.  He at last begins to try to influence them, using his memory of the past to guide his will, and these impressions we call “conscience” when they deal with morals and “flashes of intuition “ when they enlighten the intellect.

When these impressions are continuous enough to be normal, we speak of their aggregate as “genius.” The higher evolution of the Thinker is marked by his increasing control over his lower vehicles, by their increasing susceptibility to his influence, and their increasing contributions to growth. Those who would deliberately aid in this evolution may do so by a careful training of the lower mind and of the moral character, by steady and well directed effort.

The habit of quiet, sustained, and sequential thought, directed to non-worldly subjects, of meditation, of study, develops the mind-body and renders it a better instrument ; the effort to cultivate abstract thinking is also useful, as this raises the lower mind towards the higher, and draws into it the subtlest materials of the lower mental plane.

In these and cognate ways all may actively co-operate in their own higher evolution, each step forward making the (Page 136) succeeding steps more rapid. No effort, not even the smallest, is lost, but is followed by its full effect, and every contribution gathered and handed inwards is stored in the treasure-house of the causal body for future use. Thus evolution, however slow and halting, is yet ever onwards, and the divine Life, ever unfolding in every soul, slowly subdues all things to itself. (Page 137)

CHAPTER V

DEVACHAN

The word Devachan is the theosophical name for heaven, and, literally translated, means the shining land, or the Land of the Gods. ( Devasthan, the place of the Gods, is the Sanskrit equivalent. It is the Svarga of the Hindus ; the Sukhâvati of the Buddhists ; the Heaven of the Zoroastrians and Christians, and of the less materialised among the Mohammedans). It is a specially guarded part of the mental plane, whence all sorrow and all evil are excluded by the action of the great spiritual Intelligences who superintend human evolution ; and it is inhabited by human beings who have cast off their physical and astral bodies, and who pass into it when their stay in Kâmaloka is completed.

The devachanic life consists of two stages, of which the first is passed in the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane, in which the Thinker still wears the mental body and is conditioned by it, being employed in assimilating the materials gathered by it during the earth-life from which he has just emerged. The second stage is spent in the “formless world,” the Thinker escaping from the mental body, and living in his own unencumbered (Page 138) life in the full measure of the self-consciousness and knowledge to which he has attained.

The total length of time spent in Devachan depends upon the amount of material for the devachanic life which the soul has brought with it from its life on earth. The harvest of the fruit for consumption and assimilation in Devachan consists of all the pure thoughts and emotions generated during earth-life, all the intellectual and moral efforts and aspirations, all the memories of useful work and plans for human service – everything which is capable of being worked into mental and moral faculty, thus assisting in the evolution of the soul.

Not one is lost, however feeble, however fleeting ; but selfish animal passions cannot enter, there being no material in which they can be expressed. Nor does all the evil in the past life, though it may largely preponderate over the good, prevent the full reaping of whatever scant harvest of good there may have been ; the scantiness of the harvest may render the devachanic life very brief, but the most depraved, if he has had any faint longings after the right, any stirrings of tenderness, must have a period of devachanic life in which the seed of good may put forth its tender shoots, in which the spark of good may be gently fanned into a tiny flame.

In the past, when men lived with their hearts largely fixed on heaven and directed their lives with a view to enjoying its bliss, the period spent in Devachan was very long, lasting sometimes for many thousands of years ; at the present time, men’s minds (Page 139) being so much more centred on earth, and so few of their thoughts comparatively being directed towards the higher life, their devachanic periods are correspondingly shortened.

Similarly, the time spent in the higher and lower regions of the mental plane ( Called technically the Arûpa and Rûpa Devachan – existing on the arûpa and rûpa levels of the mental plane )  respectively is proportionate to the amount of thought generated severally in the mental and causal bodies ; All the thoughts belonging to the personal self, to the life just closed – with all its ambitions, interests, loves, hopes, and fears – all these have their fruition in the Devachan where forms are found ; while those belonging to the higher mind, to the regions of abstract, impersonal thinking, have to be worked out in the “formless” devachanic region. The majority of people only just enter that lofty region to pass swiftly out again ; some spend there a large portion of their devachanic existence ; a few spend there almost the whole.

Ere entering into any details let us try to grasp some of the leading ideas which govern the devachanic life, for it is so different from physical life that any description of it is apt to mislead by its very strangeness. People realise so little of their mental life, even as led in the body, that when they are presented with a picture of mental life out of the body they lose all sense of reality, and feel as though they had passed into a world of dream.

The first thing to grasp is that mental life is far more intense, vivid, and nearer to reality than (Page 140) the life of the senses. Everything we see and touch and hear and taste and handle down here is two removes farther from the reality than everything we contact in Devachan. We do not even see things as they are, but the things that we see down here have two more veils of illusion enveloping them. Our sense of reality here is an entire delusion ; we know nothing of things, of people, as they are ; all that we know of them are the impressions they make on our senses, and the conclusions, often erroneous, which our reason deduces from the aggregate of these impressions. Get and put side by side the ideas of a man held by his father, his closest friend, the girl who adores him, his rival in business, his deadliest enemy, and a casual acquaintance, and see how incongruous the pictures.

Each can only give the impressions made on his own mind, and how far are they from the reality of what the man is, seen by the eyes that pierces all veils and behold the whole man. We know of each of our friends the impressions they make on us, and these are strictly limited by our capacity to receive ; a child may have as his father a great statesman of lofty purpose and imperial aims, but that guide of nation’s destinies is to him only his merriest play fellow, his most enticing storyteller.

We live in the midst of illusions, but we have the feeling of reality, and this yields us content. In Devachan we shall also be surrounded by illusions – though, as said, two removes nearer to reality – and there also we shall have a similar feeling of reality  which will yield us content. (Page 141)

The illusions of earth, though lessened, are not escaped from in the lower heavens, though contact is more real and more immediate. For it must never be forgotten that these heavens are part of a great evolutionary scheme, and, until man has found the real Self, his own unreality makes him subject to illusions. One thing however, which produces the feeling of reality in earth-life and of unreality when we study Devachan, is that we look at earth-life from within, under the full sway of its illusions, while we contemplate Devachan from outside, free for the time from its veil of Mâyâ.

In Devachan the process is reversed, and its inhabitants feel their own life to be the real one and look on the earth-life as full of the most patent illusions and misconceptions. On the whole, they are nearer to the truth than the physical critics of their heaven-world. 

Next, the Thinker – being clad only in the mental body and being in the untrammelled exercise of its powers – manifests the creative nature of these powers in a way and to an extent that down here we can hardly realise. On earth a painter, a sculptor, a musician, dreams, dreams of exquisite beauty, creating their visions by the powers of the mind ; but when they seek to embody them in the coarse materials of earth they fall far short of the mental creation. The marble is too resistant for perfect form, the pigments to muddy for perfect colour.

In heaven, all they think, is at once reproduced in form, for the rare and subtle matter of the heaven-world is (Page 142) mind stuff, the medium in which the mind normally works when free from passion, and it takes shape with every mental impulse. Each man, therefore, in a very real sense, makes his own heaven, and the beauty  of his surroundings is definitely increased, according to the wealth and energy of his mind. As the soul develops his powers, his heaven grows more and more subtle and exquisite; all the limitations in heaven are self-created, and heaven expands and deepens with the expansion and deepening of the soul.

While the soul is weak and selfish, narrow and ill-developed, his heaven shares these pettinesses; but it is always the best that is in the soul, however poor that best may be. As the man evolves, his devachanic lives become fuller, richer, more and more real, and advanced souls come into ever closer and closer contact with each other, enjoying wider and deeper intercourse.

A life on earth, thin, feeble, vapid, and narrow, mentally and morally, produces a comparatively thin, feeble, vapid and narrow life in Devachan, where only the mental and the moral survive. We cannot have more than we are, and our harvest is according to our sowing. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked ; for whatsoever a man soweth, that,”-  and neither more nor less, - “shall he also reap.” Our indolence and greediness would fain reap where we have not sown, but in this universe of law, the Good Law, mercifully just, brings to each the exact wages of his work.

The mental impressions, or mental pictures, we make (Page 143) of our friends will dominate us in Devachan. Round each soul throng those he loved in life, and every image of the loved ones that live in the heart becomes a living companion of the soul in heaven. And they are unchanged. They will be to us there as they were here, and no otherwise. The outer semblance of our friend as it affected our senses, we form out of mind-stuff in Devachan by the creative powers of the mind; what was here a mental picture is there – as in truth it was here, although we knew it not – an objective shape in living mind-stuff, abiding in our own mental atmosphere ; only what is dull and dreamy here is forcibly living and vivid there.

And with regard to the true communion, that of the soul with soul? That is closer, nearer, dearer than anything we know here, for, as we have seen, there is no barrier on the mental plane between soul and soul;  exactly in proportion to the reality of the soul-life in us is the reality of soul-communion there ; the mental image of our friend is our own creation ; his form is as we knew and loved it ; and his soul breathes through that form to ours just to the extent that his soul and ours can throb in sympathetic vibration.

But we can have no touch with those we knew on earth if the ties were only of the physical or astral body, or if they and we were discordant in the inner life ; therefore into our Devachan no enemy can enter, for sympathetic accord of minds and hearts can alone draw men together there. Separateness of heart and mind means separation in the heavenly life, for all that is (Page 144) lower than the heart and mind can find no means of expression there. With those who are far beyond us in evolution we come into contact just as far as we can respond to them ; great ranges of their being will stretch beyond our ken, but all that we can touch is ours. Further, these greater ones can and do aid us in the heavenly life, under conditions we shall study presently, helping us to grow towards them, and thus be able to receive more and more. There is then no separation by space or time, but there is separation by absence of sympathy, by lack of accord between hearts and minds.

In heaven we are with all whom we love and with all whom we admire, and we commune with them to the limit of our capacity, or, if we are more advanced, of theirs. We meet them in the forms we loved on earth, with perfect memory of our earthly relationships, for heaven is the flowering of all earth’s buds, and the marred and feeble loves of earth expand into beauty and power there. The communion being direct, no misunderstandings of words or thoughts can arise ; each sees the thought his friend creates, or as much of it as he can respond to.

Devachan, the heaven-world, is a world of bliss, of joy unspeakable. But it is much more than this, much more than a rest for the weary. In Devachan all that was valuable in the mental and moral experiences of the Thinker during the life just ended is worked out, meditated over, and is gradually transmuted into definite mental and moral faculty, (Page 145) into powers which he will take with him to his next rebirth. He does not work into the mental body the actual memory of the past, for the mental body will, in due course, disintegrate ; the memory of the past abides only in the Thinker himself, who has lived through it and who endures. But these facts of past experiences are worked into mental capacity, so that if a man has studied a subject deeply the effects of that study will be the creation of a special faculty to acquire and master that subject when it is first presented to him in another incarnation.

He will be born with a special aptitude for that line of study, and will pick it up with great facility. Everything thought upon earth is thus utilised in Devachan ; every aspiration is worked up into power ; all frustrated efforts become faculties and abilities ; struggles and defeats reappear as materials to be wrought into instruments of victory ; sorrows and errors shine luminous as precious metals to be worked up into wise and well-directed volitions.

Schemes of beneficence, for which power and skill to accomplish were lacking in the past, are in Devachan worked out in thought, acted out, as it were, stage by stage, and the necessary power and skill are developed as faculties of the mind to be put into use in a future life on earth, when the clever and earnest student shall be reborn as a genius, when the devotee shall be reborn as a saint. Life then, in Devachan, is no mere dream, no lotus-land of purposeless idling ; it is the land in which the mind and heart develop, unhindered by gross matter and by the trivial cares, where weapons are forged for earth’s fierce battlefields, and where the progress (Page 146) of the future is secured.

When the Thinker has consumed in the mental body all the fruits belonging to it of his earthly life, he shakes it off and dwells unencumbered in his own place. All the mental faculties which express themselves on the lower levels are drawn within the causal body – with the germs of the passional life that were drawn into the mental body when it left the astral shell to disintegrate in Kâmaloka – and these become latent for a time, lying within the causal body, forces which remain concealed for lack of material in which to manifest. (The thoughtful student may here find a fruitful suggestion on the problem of continuing consciousness after the cycle of the universe is trodden. Let him place Îshvara in the place of the Thinker, and let the faculties that are the fruits of a life represent the human lives that are the fruits of a Universe. He may then catch some glimpse of what is necessary for consciousness, during the interval between universes).

The mental body, the last of the temporary vestures of the true man, disintegrates, and its materials return to the general matter of the mental plane, whence they were drawn when the Thinker last descended into incarnation. Thus the causal body alone remains, the receptacle and treasure-house of all that has been assimilated from the life that is over. The Thinker has finished a round of his long pilgrimage and dwells for a while in his own native land.

His condition as to consciousness depends entirely (Page 147) on the point he has reached in evolution. In his early stages of life he will merely sleep, wrapped in unconsciousness, when he has lost his vehicles on the lower planes. His life will pulse gently within him, assimilating any little results from his closed earth-existence that may be capable of entering into his substance ; but he will have no consciousness of his surroundings. But as he develops, this period of his life becomes more and more important, and occupies a greater proportion of his Devachanic existence.

He becomes self-conscious, and thereby conscious of his surroundings – of the not-self – and his memory spreads before him the panorama of his life, stretching backwards into the ages of the past. He sees the causes that worked out their effects in the last of his life-experiences, and studies the causes he has set going in this latest incarnation. He assimilates and works into the texture of the causal body all that was noblest and loftiest in the closed chapter of his life, and by his inner activity he develops and co-ordinates the materials in his causal body. He comes into direct contact with great souls, whether in or out of the body at the time, enjoys communion with them, learns from their riper wisdom and longer experience.

Each succeeding devachanic life is richer and deeper ; with his expanding capacity to receive, knowledge flows into him in fuller tides ; more and more he learns to understand the workings of the law, the conditions of evolutionary progress, and thus returns to earth-life each time with greater knowledge, more effective power, his vision of the goal of life becoming ever clearer and the way to it more plain before his feet. (Page 148)

To every Thinker, however unprogressed, there comes a moment of clear vision when the time arrives for his return to the life of the lower worlds. For a moment he sees his past and the causes working from it into the future, and the general map of his next incarnation is also unrolled before him. Then the clouds of lower matter surge round him and obscure his vision, and the cycle of another incarnation begins with the awakening of the powers of the lower mind, and their drawing round him, by their vibrations, materials from the lower mental plane to form the new mental body for the opening chapter of his life-history. This part of our subject, however, belongs in its detail to the chapters on reincarnation.

We left the soul asleep, (See Chapter III., On Kâmaloka, Page 83) having shaken off the last remains of his astral body, ready to pass out of Kâmaloka into Devachan, out of purgatory into heaven. The sleeper awakens to a sense of joy unspeakable, of bliss immeasurable, of peace that passeth understanding. Softest melodies are breathing round him, tenderest hues greet his opening eyes, the very air seems music and colour, the whole being is suffused with light and harmony.

Then through the golden haze dawn sweetly the faces loved on earth, etherialised into the beauty which expresses their noblest, loveliest emotions, unmarred by (Page 149) the troubles and the passions of the lower worlds. Who may tell the bliss of that awakening, the glory of that first dawning of the heaven-world?

We will now study the conditions in detail of the seven subdivisions of Devachan, remembering that in the four lower we are in the world of form, and a world, moreover, in which every thought presents itself at once as a form. This world of form belongs to the personality, and every soul is therefore surrounded by as much of his past life as has entered into his mind and can be expressed in pure mind-stuff.

The first, or lowest, region is the heaven of the least progressed souls, whose highest emotion on earth was a narrow, sincere, and sometimes selfish love for family and friends. Or it may be that they felt some loving admiration for some one they met on earth who was purer and better than themselves, or felt some wish to lead a higher life, or some passing aspiration towards mental and moral expansion.

There is not much material here out of which faculty can be moulded, and their life is but very slightly progressive ; their family affections will be nourished and a little widened, and they will be reborn after a while with a somewhat improved emotional nature, with more tendency to recognise and respond to a higher ideal.  Meanwhile they are enjoying all the happiness they can receive; their cup is but a small one, but it is filled to the brim with bliss, and they enjoy all that they are able to conceive of heaven. Its purity, its harmony, (Page 150) play on their undeveloped faculties and woo them to awaken into activity,  and the inner stirrings begin which must precede any manifested budding.

The next division of devachanic life comprises men and women of every religious faith whose hearts during their earthly lives had turned with loving devotion to God, under any name, under any form. The form may have been narrow, but the heart rose up in aspiration, and here finds the object of its loving worship. The concept of the Divine which was formed by their mind when on earth here meets them in the radiant glory of devachanic matter, fairer, diviner, than their wildest dreams.

The Divine One limits Himself to meet the intellectual limits of His worshipper, and in whatever form the worshipper has loved and worshipped Him, in that form He reveals Himself to his longing eyes, and pours out on him the sweetness of His answering love. The souls are steeped in religious ecstasy, worshipping the One under the forms their piety sought on earth, losing themselves in the raptures of devotion, in communion with the Object they adore. No one finds himself a stranger in the heavenly places, the Divine veiling Himself in the familiar form. Such souls grow in purity and in devotion under the sun of this communion, and return to earth with these qualities much intensified. Nor is all their devachanic life spent in this devotional ecstasy, for they have full opportunities of maturing every other quality they may possess of heart and mind. (Page 151)

Passing onwards to the third region, we come to those noble and earnest beings who were devoted servants of humanity while on earth, and largely poured out their love to God in the form of works for man. They are reaping the reward of their good deeds by developing larger powers of usefulness and increased wisdom in their direction. Plans of wider beneficence unroll themselves before the mind of the philanthropist, and like an architect, he designs the future edifice which he will build in a coming life on earth ; he matures the schemes which he will then work out into actions, and like a creative God plans his universe of benevolence, which shall be manifested in gross matter when the time is ripe. These souls will appear as the great philanthropists of yet unborn centuries, who will incarnate on earth with innate dower of unselfish love and of power to achieve.

Most varied in character, perhaps, of all the heavens is the fourth, for here the powers of the most advanced souls find their exercise, so far as they can be expressed in the world of form. Here the kings of art and of literature are found, exercising all their powers of form, of colour, of harmony, and building greater faculties with which to be reborn when they return to earth. Noblest music, ravishing beyond description, peals forth from the mightiest monarchs of harmony that the earth has known, as Beethoven, no longer deaf, pours out his imperial soul in strains of unexampled beauty, making even the heaven world more melodious as (Page 152) he draws down harmonies from higher spheres, and sends them thrilling through the heavenly places. Here also we find the masters of painting and of sculpture, learning new hues of colour, new curves of undreamed beauty.

And here also are others who failed, though greatly aspiring, and who are here transmuting longings into powers, and dreams into faculties, that shall be theirs in another life. Searchers into Nature are here, and they are learning her hidden secrets ; before their eyes are unrolling systems of worlds with all their hidden mechanism, woven series of workings of unimaginable delicacy and complexity ;  they shall return to earth as great “discoverers,” with unerring intuitions of the mysterious ways of Nature.

In this heaven also are found students of the deeper knowledge, the eager, reverent pupils who sought the Teachers of the race, who longed to find a Teacher, and patiently worked at all that had been given out by some one of the great spiritual Masters who have taught humanity. Here their longings find their fruition, and Those they sought, apparently in vain, are now their instructors ; the eager souls drink in the heavenly wisdom, and swift their growth and progress as they sit at their Master’s feet. As teachers and as light-bringers shall they be born again on earth, born with the birthmark of the teacher’s high office upon them.

Many a student on earth, all unknowing of these subtler workings, is preparing himself a place in this fourth heaven, as he bends with a real devotion (Page 153) over the pages of some teacher of genius, over the teachings of some advanced soul. He is forming a link between himself and the teacher he loves and reverences, and in the heaven-world that soul-tie will assert itself, and draw together into communion the souls it links. As the sun pours down its rays into many rooms, and each room has all it can contain of the solar beams, so in the heaven-world do these great souls shine into hundreds of mental images of themselves created by their pupils, fill them with life, with their own essence, so that each student has his master to teach him and yet shuts out none other from his aid.

Thus, for periods long in proportion to the materials gathered for consumption upon earth, dwell men in these heaven-worlds of form, where all good that the last personal life had garnered finds its full fruition, its full working out into minutest detail. Then as we have seen, when everything is exhausted, when the last drop has been drained from the cup of joy, the last crumb eaten of the heavenly feast, all that has been worked up into faculty, that is of permanent value, is drawn within the causal body, and the Thinker  shakes  off him and the then disintegrating body through which he has found expression on the lower levels of the devachanic world. Rid of this mental body, he is in his own world, to work up whatever of his harvest can find material suitable for it in that high realm.

A vast number of souls touch the lowest level of the formless world as it were but for a moment, (Page 154) taking brief refuge there, since all lower vehicles have fallen away. But so embryonic are they that they have as yet no active powers that there can function independently, and they become unconscious as the mental body slips away into disintegration. Then, for a moment, they are aroused to consciousness, and a flash of memory illumines their past and they see its pregnant causes ; and a flash of foreknowledge illumines their future, and they see such effects as will work out in the coming life. This is all that very many are as yet able to experience of the formless world. For, here again, as ever, the harvest is according to the sowing, and how should they who have sowed nothing for that lofty region expect to reap any harvest therein?

But many souls have during their earth-life, by deep thinking and noble living, sown much seed, the harvest of which belongs to this fifth devachanic region, the lowest of the three heavens of the formless world. Great is now  their reward for having  so risen above the bondage of the flesh and of passion, and they begin to experience the real life of man, the lofty existence of the soul itself, unfettered by vestures belonging to the lower worlds. They learn truths by direct vision, and see the fundamental causes of which all concrete objects are the results; they study the underlying unities, whose presence is marked in the lower worlds by the variety of irrelevant details.

Thus they gain a deep knowledge of law, and learn to recognise its changeless workings below results apparently the most incongruous, (Page 155) thus building into the body that endures firm unshakable convictions, that will reveal themselves in earth-life as deep intuitive certainties of the soul, above and beyond all reasoning. Here also the man studies his own past, and carefully disentangles the causes he has set going ; he marks their interaction, the resultants accruing from them, and sees something of their working out in the lives yet in the future.

In the sixth heaven are more advanced souls, who during earth-life had felt but little attraction for its passing shows, and who had devoted all their energies to the higher intellectual and moral life. For them there is no veil upon the past, their memory is perfect and unbroken, and they plan the infusion into their next life of energies that will neutralise many of the forces that are working for hindrance, and strengthen many of those that are working for good.

This clear memory enables them to form definite and strong determinations as to actions which are to be done and actions which are to be avoided, and these volitions they will be able to impress on their lower vehicles in their next birth, making certain classes of evils impossible, contrary to what is felt to be the deepest nature, and certain kinds of good inevitable, the irresistible demands of a voice that will not be denied.

These souls are born into the world with high and noble qualities which render a base life impossible, and stamp the babe from its cradle as one of the pioneers of humanity. The man who has attained to this sixth (Page 156) heaven sees unrolled before him the vast treasures of the Divine Mind in creative activity and can study the archetypes of all forms that are being gradually evolved in the lower worlds. There he may bathe himself in the fathomless ocean of the Divine Wisdom, and unravel the problems connected with the working out of those archetypes, the partial good that seems as evil to the limited vision of men encased in flesh. In this wider outlook, phenomena assume their due relative proportions, and he sees the justification of the divine ways, no longer to him “past finding out” so far as they are concerned with the evolution of the lower worlds.

The questions over which on earth he pondered, and whose answers ever eluded his eager intellect, are here solved by an insight that pierces through phenomenal veils and sees the connecting links which make the chain complete. Here also the soul is in the immediate presence of, and in full communion with, the greater souls that have evolved in our humanity, and, escaped from the bonds which make “the past” of earth, he enjoys “the ever-present” of an endless and unbroken  life.

Those we speak of here as “the mighty dead” are there the glorious living, and the soul enjoys the high rapture of their presence, and grows more like them as their strong harmony attunes his vibrant nature to their key.

Yet higher, lovelier, gleams the seventh heaven, where Masters and Initiates have their intellectual home. No soul can dwell there ere yet is has passed while on earth through the narrow gateway of Initiation, (Page 157) the strait gate that “leadeth unto life” unending. ( See Chapter XI, on “Man’s Ascent.” The Initiate has stepped out of the ordinary line of evolution, and is treading a shorter and steeper road to human perfection).

That world is the source of the strongest intellectual and moral impulses that flow down to earth ; thence are poured forth the invigorating streams of the loftiest energy. The intellectual life of the world has there its root;  thence genius receives its purest inspirations. To the souls that dwell there it matters little whether, at the time, they be or be not connected with the lower vehicles ; they ever enjoy their lofty self-consciousness and their communion with those around them ; whether, when “embodied” they suffuse their lower vehicles with as much of this consciousness as they can contain is a matter for their own choice – they can give or withhold as they will.

And more and more their volitions are guided by the will of the Great Ones, whose will is one with the will of the LOGOS, the will which seeks ever the good of the worlds. For here are being eliminated the last vestiges of separateness – ( Ahamkâra, the “ I “ making principle, necessary in order that self consciousness may be evolved, but transcended when its work is over) – in all who have not yet reached final emancipation – all, that is, who are not yet Masters – and, as these perish, the will becomes more and more harmonised with the will that guides the worlds.

Such is an outline of the “seven heavens” into one or other of which men pass in due time after the (Page 158) “change that men call death.” For death is only a change that gives the soul a partial liberation, releasing him from the heaviest of his chains. It is but a birth into a wider life, a return after a brief exile on earth to the soul’s true home, a passing from a prison into the freedom of the upper air. Death is the greatest of earth’s illusions ; there is no death, but only changes in life’s conditions. Life is continuous, unbroken, unbreakable ; “unborn, eternal, constant,” it perishes not with the perishing of the bodies that clothe it. We might as well think that the sky is falling when a pot is broken, as imagine that the soul perishes when the body falls to pieces. ( A simile used in the Bhagavad Purâna).

The physical, astral and mental planes are “the three worlds” though which lies the pilgrimage of the soul, again and again repeated. In these three worlds revolves the wheel of human life, and souls are bound to that wheel throughout their evolution, and are carried by it to each of these worlds in turn. We are now in a position to trace a complete life-period of the soul, the aggregate of these periods making up its life, and we can also distinguish clearly the difference between personality and individuality.

A soul when its stay in the formless world of Devachan is over, begins a new life-period by putting forth the energies which function in the form-world of the mental plane, these energies being (Page 159) the resultant of the preceding life-periods. These passing outwards, gather round themselves, from the matter of the four lower mental levels, such materials as are suitable for their expression, and thus the new mental body for the coming birth is formed. The vibration of these mental energies arouses the energies which belong to the desire-nature, and these begin to vibrate ; as they awake and throb, they attract to themselves suitable materials for their expression from the matter of the astral world, and these form the new astral body for the approaching incarnation.

Thus the Thinker becomes clothed with his mental and astral vestures, exactly expressing the faculties evolved during the past stage of his life. He is drawn, by forces which will be explained later, (See Chapter VII , on "Reincarnation") to the family which is to provide him with a suitable physical encasement, and becomes connected with this encasement through his astral body.

During prenatal life the mental body becomes involved with the lower  vehicles, and this connection becomes closer and closer through the early years of childhood, until at the seventh year they are as completely in touch with the Thinker himself as the stage of evolution permits. He then begins to slightly control his vehicles, if sufficiently advanced, and what we call conscience is his monitory voice. In any case, he gathers experience through these vehicles, and during the continuance of earth-life, stores the gathered experience in its own proper vehicle, in the body connected with the (Page 160) plane to which the experience belongs.

When the earth-life is over the physical body drops away, and with it his power of contacting the physical world, and his energies are therefore confined to the astral and mental planes. In due course, the astral body decays, and the outgoings of his life are confined to the mental plane, the astral faculties being gathered up and laid by within himself as latent energies.

Once again, in due course, its assimilative work completed, the mental body disintegrates, its energies in turn becoming latent in the Thinker, and he withdraws his life entirely into the formless devachanic world, his own native habitat. Thence, all experiences of his life period in the three worlds being transmuted into faculties and powers for future use, are contained within himself, he anew commences his pilgrimage and treads the cycle of another life-period with increased power and knowledge.

The personality consists of the transitory vehicles through which the Thinker energises in the physical, astral, and lower mental worlds, and of all the activities connected with these. These are bound together by the links of memory caused by impressions made on the three lower bodies ; and, by the self-identification of the Thinker with his three vehicles, the personal “ I “ is set up. In the lower stages of evolution this “ I “ is in the physical and passional vehicles, in which the greatest activity is shown, later it is in the mental vehicle, which then assumes predominance.

The personality with its transient (Page 161) feeling, desires, passions, thus forms a quasi-independent entity, though drawing all its energies from the Thinker it enwraps, and as its qualifications, belonging to the lower worlds, are often in direct antagonism to the permanent interests of the “Dweller in the body,” conflict is set up in which victory inclines sometimes to the temporary pleasure, sometimes to the permanent gain. The life of the personality begins when the Thinker forms his new mental body, and it endures until that mental body disintegrates at the close of its life in the form-world of Devachan.

The individuality consists of the Thinker himself, the immortal tree that puts out all these personalities as leaves, to last through the spring, summer and autumn of human life. All that the leaves take in and assimilate enriches the sap that courses through their veins, and in the autumn this is withdrawn into the parent trunk, and the dry leaf falls and perishes. The Thinker alone lives forever ; he is the man for whom “the hour never strikes,” the eternal youth who as the Bhagavad Gitâ has it, puts on and casts off bodies as a man puts on new garments and throws off the old.

Each personality is a new part for the immortal Actor, and he treads the stage of life over and over again, only in the life-drama each character he assumes is the child of the preceding ones and the father of those to come, so that the life-drama is a continuous history, the history of the Actor who plays the successive parts.

To the three worlds that we have studied is (Page 162) confined the life of the Thinker, while he is treading the earlier stages of human evolution. A time will come in the evolution of humanity when its feet will enter loftier realms, and reincarnation  will be of the past. But while the wheel of rebirth and death is turning, a man is bound thereon by desires that pertain to the three worlds, his life is led in these three regions.

To the realms that lie beyond we now may turn, albeit but little can be said of them that can be either useful or intelligible. Such little as may be said, however, is necessary for the outlining of the Ancient Wisdom. (Page 163)

CHAPTER VI

THE BUDDHIC AND NIRVÂNIC PLANES

We have seen that man is an intelligent self-conscious entity, the Thinker, clad in bodies belonging to the lower mental, astral and physical planes ; we have now to study the Spirit which is his innermost Self, the source whence he proceeds.

This Divine spirit, a ray from the LOGOS, partaking of His own essential Being, has the triple nature of the LOGOS Himself, and the evolution of man as man consists in the gradual manifestation of these three aspects, their development from latency into activity, man thus repeating in miniature the evolution of the universe.

Hence he is spoken of as the microcosm, the universe being the macrocosm; he is called the mirror of the universe, the image, or reflection, of God ; ( “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” – Gen. I, 26. ) – and hence also the ancient axiom, “As above, so below.” It is this in-folded deity that is the guarantee of man’s final triumph ; this is the hidden motive power that makes evolution at once possible and inevitable, the upward-lifting force that slowly overcomes every obstacle and every difficulty. It was this Presence that Matthew Arnold dimly ( Page 164) sensed when he wrote of the “Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness,” but he erred in thinking “not ourselves,” for it is the very innermost Self of all – truly not our separated selves, but our Self. (Âtma, the reflection of Paramâtmâ.)

This Self is the One, and hence is spoken of as the Monad – ( It is called the Monad, whether it be the Monad of spirit-matter, Âtma ; or the Monad of form or the human Monad, Âtma-Buddhi-Manas. In each it is a unit  and acts as a unit, whether the unit be one-faced, two-faced, or three-faced) – and we shall need to remember that this Monad is the outbreathed life of the LOGOS, containing within itself germinally, or in a state of latency, all the divine powers and attributes.

These powers are brought into manifestation by the impacts arising from contact with the objects of the universe into which the Monad is thrown ; the friction caused by these gives rise to responsive thrills from the life subjected to their stimuli, and one by one the energies of the life pass from latency into activity. The human Monad – as it is called for the sake of distinction – shows as we have already said, the three aspects of Deity, being the perfect image of God, and in the human cycle these three aspects are developed one after the other.

These aspects are the three great attributes of the Divine Life as manifested in the universe, existence, bliss, and intelligence – ( Satchitânanda is often used in the Hindu Scriptures as the abstract name of Brahman, the Trimûrti being the concrete manifestation of these) –the three LOGOI severally showing these forth with all the (Page 165) perfection possible within the limits of manifestation.

In man, these aspects are developed in the reversed order – intelligence, bliss, existence – “existence” implying the manifestation of the divine powers. In the evolution of man that we have so far studied we have been watching the development of the third aspect of the hidden deity – the development of consciousness as intelligence. Manas, the Thinker, the human Soul, is the image of the Universal Mind, of the Third LOGOS, and all his long pilgrimage on the three lower planes is devoted to the evolution of this third aspect, the intellectual side of the divine nature in man.

While this is proceeding, we may consider the other divine energies as rather brooding over the man, the hidden source of his life, than as actively developing their forces within him. They play within themselves, unmanifest. Still, the preparation of these forces for manifestation is slowly proceeding; they are being roused from that unmanifested life that we speak of as latency by the ever-increasing energy of the vibrations of the intelligence, and the bliss-aspect begins to send outwards its first vibrations – faint pulsings of its manifested life thrill forth.

This bliss-aspect is named in theosophical terminology Buddhi, a name derived from the Sanskrit word for wisdom, and it belongs to the fourth, or buddhic plane of our universe, the plane, in which there is still duality, but were there is no separation. Words fail me to convey the idea, for words belong to the lower planes where duality and separation are ever (Page 166) connected, yet some approach to the idea may be gained.

It is a state in which each is himself, with a clearness and vivid intensity which cannot be approached on lower planes, and yet in which each feels himself to include all others, to be one with them, inseparate and inseparable.  (The reader should refer back to the Introduction, p. 36, and reread the description given by Plotinus of this state, commencing: “They likewise see all things.” And he should note the phrases, “Each likewise is everything,” and “In each, however a different quality predominates.)

Its nearest analogy on earth is the condition between two persons who are united by a pure, intense love, which makes them feel as one person, causing them to think, feel, act, live as one, recognising no barrier, no difference, no mine and thine, no separation. (It is for this reason that the bliss of divine love has in many Scriptures been imaged by the profound love of husband and wife, as in the Bhagavad Purâna of the Hindus, the Song of Solomon of the Hebrews and Christians. This is also the love of the Sufi mystics, and indeed of all mystics.)

It is a faint echo from this plane which makes men seek happiness by union between themselves and the object of their desire, no matter what that object may be. Perfect isolation is perfect misery ; to be stripped naked of everything, to be hanging in the void of space, in utter solitude, nothing anywhere save the lone individual, shut out from all, shut into the separated self – imagination can conceive no horror more intense. The antithesis to this is union, and perfect union is perfect bliss.

As this bliss-aspect of the Self begins to send (Page 167) outwards its vibrations, these vibrations, as on the planes below, draw round themselves the matter of the plane on which they are functioning, and thus is formed gradually the buddhic body, or bliss-body, as it is appropriately termed. (Ânandamayakosha, or bliss-sheath, of the Vedântins. It is also the body of the sun, the solar body, of which a little is said in the Upanishads and elsewhere.)

The only way in which the man can contribute to the building of this glorious form is by cultivating pure, unselfish, all-embracing, beneficent love, love “that seeketh not its own” – that is, love that is neither partial, nor seeks any return for its outflowing. This spontaneous outpouring of love is the most marked of the divine attributes, the love that gives everything, that asks nothing. Pure love brought the universe into being, pure love maintains it, pure love draws it upwards towards perfection, towards bliss.

And wherever man pours out love on all who need it, making no difference, seeking no return, from pure spontaneous joy in the outpouring, there that man is developing the bliss-aspect of the Deity within him, and is preparing that body of beauty and joy ineffable into which the Thinker will rise, casting away the limits of separateness, to find himself, and yet one with all that lives.

This “the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” whereof wrote St. Paul, the great Christian Initiate ; and he raised charity, pure love, above all other virtues, because by that alone can man on earth contribute to that glorious dwelling. For a similar reason is (Page 168) separateness called “the great heresy” by the Buddhist, and “union” is the goal of the Hindu ; liberation is the escape from the limitations that keep us apart, and selfishness is the root-evil, the destruction whereof is the destruction of all pain.

The fifth plane, the Nirvânic, is the plane of the highest human aspect of the God within us, and this aspect is named by theosophists Âtmâ, or the Self. It is the plane of pure existence, of divine powers in their fullest manifestation in our fivefold universe – what lies beyond on the sixth and seventh planes is hidden in the unimaginable light of God.

This âtmic, or nirvânic, consciousness, the consciousness belonging to life on the fifth plane, is the consciousness attained by those lofty Ones, the first fruits of humanity, who have already completed the cycle of human evolution, and who are called Masters. (Known as Mahâtmâs, great Spirits, and Jivanmuktas, liberated souls, who remain connected with physical bodies for the helping of humanity. Many other great Beings also live on the nirvânic plane.) They have solved in Themselves the problem of uniting the essence of individuality with non-separateness, and live, immortal Intelligences, perfect in wisdom, in bliss, in power.

When the human Monad comes forth from the LOGOS, it is as though from the luminous ocean of Âtmâ a tiny thread of light was separated off from the rest by a film of buddhic matter, and from this hung a spark which becomes enclosed in an egg-like casing of matter belonging to the formless levels of (Page 169) the mental plane.

“The spark hangs from the flame by the finest thread of Fohat.” ( Book of Dzyan, Stanza vii, 5, ; Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 66, 1893 ed. ; p. 98 Adyar Edition)  As evolution proceeds, this luminous egg grows larger and more opalescent, and the tiny thread becomes a wider and wider channel through which more and more of the âtmic life pours down. Finally, they merge – the third with the second, and the twain with the first, as flame merges with flame and no separation can be seen.

The evolution of the fourth and fifth planes belongs to a future period of our race, but those who choose the harder path of swifter progress may tread it even now, as will be explained later. (see Chapter XI, on “Man’s Ascent.”) On that path the bliss body is quickly evolved, and a man begins to enjoy the consciousness of that loftier region, and knows the bliss which comes from the absence of separative barriers, the wisdom which flows in when the limits of the intellect are transcended. Then is the wheel escaped from which binds the soul in the lower worlds, and then is the first foretaste of the liberty which is found perfected on the nirvânic plane.

The nirvânic consciousness is the antithesis of annihilation; it is existence raised to a vividness and intensity inconceivable to those who know only the life of the senses and the mind. As the farthing rush-light to the splendour of the sun at noon, so is the nirvânic to the earth-bound consciousness, and to regard it as an annihilation because the limits of the earthly consciousness have vanished, is as though a man, knowing only the rush-light, should say that (Page 170) light could not exist without a wick immersed in tallow. That Nirvâna is, has been born witness to in the past in the Scriptures of the world by Those who enjoy it and live its glorious life, and is still borne witness to by others of our race who have climbed that lofty ladder of perfected humanity, and who remain in touch with earth that the feet of our ascending race may mount its rungs unfalteringly.

In Nirvâna dwell the mighty Beings who accomplished Their own human evolution in past universes, and who came forth with the LOGOS when He manifested Himself to bring this universe into existence. They are His ministers in the administration of the worlds, the perfect agents of His will. The Lords of all the hierarchies of the Gods and lower ministrants that we have seen working on the lower planes have here Their abiding-place, for Nirvâna is the heart of the universe, whence all its life-currents proceed. Hence the Great Breath comes forth, the life of all, and thither it is indrawn when the universe has reached its term. There is the Beatific Vision for which mystics long, there the unveiled Glory, the Supreme Goal.

The Brotherhood of Humanity – nay, the Brotherhood of all things – has its sure foundation on the spiritual planes, the âtmic and buddhic, for here alone is unity, and here alone perfect sympathy is found. The intellect is the separative principle in man, that marks off the “ I “ from the “ not I  ,” that is conscious (Page 171) of itself, and sees all else as outside itself and alien. It is the combative, struggling, self-assertive principle, and from the plane of the intellect downwards the world presents a scene of conflict, bitter in proportion as the intellect mingles in it. Even the passion-nature is only spontaneously combative when it is stirred by the feeling of desire and finds anything standing between itself and the object of its desires; it becomes more and more aggressive as the mind inspires its activity, for then it seeks to provide for the gratification of future desires, and tries to appropriate more and more from the stores of Nature.

But the intellect is spontaneously combative, its very nature being to assert itself as different from others, and here we find the root of separateness, the ever-springing source of divisions among men.

But unity is at once felt when the buddhic plane is reached, as though we stepped from a separate ray, diverging from all other rays, into the sun itself, from which radiate all the rays alike.

A being standing in the sun, suffused with its light, and pouring it forth, would feel no difference between ray and ray, but would pour forth along one as readily and easily as along another. And so with the man who has once consciously attained the buddhic plane ; he feels the brotherhood that others speak of as an ideal, and pours himself out into any one who wants assistance, giving mental, moral, (Page 172) astral, physical help exactly as it is needed.

He sees all beings as himself, and feels that all he has is theirs as much as his; nay, in many cases, as more theirs than his, because their need is greater, their strength being less. So do the elder brothers in a family bear the family burdens, and shield the little ones from suffering and privation ; to the spirit of brotherhood weakness is a claim for help and loving protection, not an opportunity for oppression.

Because They had reached this level and mounted even higher, the great Founders of religions have ever been marked by Their overwelling compassion and tenderness, ministering to the physical as well as to the inner wants of men, to every man according to his need. The consciousness of this inner unity, the recognition of the One Self dwelling equally in all, is the one sure foundation of Brotherhood ; all else save this is frangible.

This recognition, moreover, is accompanied by the knowledge that the stage in evolution reached by different human and non-human beings depends chiefly on what we may call their age. Some began their journey in time very much later than others, and, though the powers in each be the same, some have unfolded far more of those powers than others, simply because they have had a longer time for the process than their younger brethren. As well blame and despise the seed because it is not yet a flower, the bud because it is not yet the fruit, the babe because it is not yet the man, and blame and despise the germinal and baby souls around us because they have not (Page 173) yet developed to the stage we ourselves occupy. We do not blame ourselves because we are not yet as Gods ; in time we shall stand where our elder Brothers are standing.

Why should we blame the still younger souls who are not yet as we? The very word brotherhood connotes identity of blood and inequality of development ; and it therefore represents exactly the link between all creatures in the universe – identity of the essential life, and difference in the stages reached in the manifestation of that life.

We are one in our origin, one in the method of our evolution, one in our goal, and the differences of age and stature but give opportunity for the growth of the tenderest and closest ties. All that a man would do for his brother of the flesh, dearer to him than himself, is the measure of what he owes to each who shares with him the one Life. Men are shut out from their brothers’ hearts by differences of race, of class, of country ; the man who is wise by love rises above all these petty differences, and sees all drawing their life from the one source, all as part of his family.

The recognition of this Brotherhood intellectually, and the endeavour to live it practically, are so stimulative of the higher nature of man, that it was made the one obligatory object of the Theosophical Society, the single “article of belief” that all who would enter its fellowship must accept.  To live it, even to a small extent, cleanses the heart and purifies the vision ; to live it perfectly would be to eradicate  all stain of separateness, and to let the pure (Page 174) shining of the Self irradiate us, as a light through flawless glass.

Never let it be forgotten that this Brotherhood is, whether men ignore it or deny it. Man’s ignorance does not change the laws of nature, nor vary by one hair’s breadth her changeless, irresistible march. Her laws crush those who oppose them, and break into pieces everything which is not in harmony with them. Therefore can no nation endure that outrages Brotherhood, no civilisation can last that is built on its antithesis. We have  not to make brotherhood ; it exists. We have to attune our lives into harmony with it, if we desire that we and our works shall not perish.

It may seem strange to some that the buddhic plane – a thing to them misty and unreal – should thus influence all planes below it, and that its forces should ever break into pieces all that cannot harmonise itself with them in the lower worlds. Yet so it is, for this universe is an expression of spiritual forces, and they are the guiding, moulding energies pervading all things, and slowly, surely, subduing all things to themselves.

Hence this Brotherhood, which is a spiritual unity, is a far more real thing than any outward organisation ; it is a life and not a form, “wisely and sweetly ordering all things.” It may take innumerable forms, suitable to the times, but the life is one ;  happy they who see its presence, and make themselves the channels of its living force.

The student has now before him the constituents (Page 175) of the human constitution, and the regions to which these constituents respectively belong; so a brief summary should enable him to have a clear idea of this complicated whole.

The human Monad is Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, or, as sometimes translated, the Spirit, the Spiritual Soul, and Soul, of man. The fact that these three are but aspects of the Self makes possible man’s immortal existence, and though these three aspects are manifested separately and successively, their substantial unity renders it possible for the Soul to merge itself in the spiritual Soul, giving to the latter the precious essence of individuality, and for this individualised Spiritual Soul to merge itself in the Spirit, colouring it – if the phrase may be permitted with the hues due to individuality, while leaving uninjured its essential unity with all other rays of the LOGOS and with the LOGOS Himself.

These three form the seventh, sixth and fifth principles of man, and the materials which limit and encase them, i.e., which make their manifestation and activity possible, are drawn respectively from the fifth (nirvânic), the fourth (buddhic), and the third (mental), planes of our universe. The fifth principle further takes to itself a lower body on the mental plane, in order to come into contact with the phenomenal worlds, and thus intertwines itself with the fourth principle, the desire-nature, or Kâma, belonging to the second or astral plane.

Descending to the first, the physical plane, we have the third, second and first principles – the specialised life, or Prâna ; the (Page 176) etheric double, its vehicle ; the dense body, which contacts the coarser materials of the physical world. We have already seen that sometimes Prâna is not regarded as a “principle,” and then the interwoven desire and mental bodies take rank together as Kâma Manas ; the pure intellect is called the Higher Manas, and the mind apart from desire Lower Manas.

The most convenient conception of man is perhaps that which most closely represents the facts as to the one permanent life and the various forms in which it works and which condition its energies, causing the variety in manifestation. Then we see the Self as the one Life, the source of all energies, and the forms as the buddhic, causal, mental, astral, and physical (etheric and dense) bodies. ( Linga Sharira was the name originally given to the etheric body, and must not be confused with the Linga Sharira of Hindu philosophy. Sthūla Sharira is the Sanskrit name for the dense body.)

Putting together the two ways of looking at the same thing, we may construct a table: (Page 177)

It will be seen that the difference is merely a question of names, and that the sixth, fifth, fourth, and third “principles” are merely Âtmâ working in the Buddhic, causal, mental and astral bodies, while the second and first “principles “ are the two lowest bodies themselves. This sudden change in the method of naming is apt to cause confusion in the mind of the student, and as H.P. Blavatsky, our revered teacher, expressed much dissatisfaction with the then current nomenclature as confused and misleading, and desired others and myself to try and improve it, the above names, as descriptive, simple, and representing the facts, are here adopted.

The various subtle bodies of man that we have now studied form in their aggregate what is usually called the “aura” of the human being. This aura has the appearance of an egg-shaped luminous cloud, in the midst of which is the dense physical body, and from its appearance it has often been spoken of as though it were nothing more than such a cloud. What is usually called the aura is merely such parts of the subtle bodies as extend beyond the periphery of the dense physical body ; each body is complete (Page 178) in itself, and interpenetrates those that are coarser than itself ; it is larger or smaller according to its development, and all that part of it that overlaps the surface of the dense body is termed the aura. The aura is thus composed of the overlapping portions of the etheric double, the desire body, the mental body, the causal body, and in rare cases the buddhic body, illuminated by the Âtmic radiance.

It is sometimes dull, coarse and dingy ; sometimes magnificently radiant in size, light, and colour ; it depends entirely on the stage of evolution reached by the man, on the development of his different bodies, on the moral and mental character he has evolved. All his varying passions, desires, and thoughts are herein written in form, in colour, in light, so that “he that runs may read “ if he has eyes for such script. Character is stamped thereon as well as fleeting changes, and no deception is there possible as in the mask we call the physical body. The increase in size and beauty of the aura is the unmistakable mark of the man’s progress, and tells of the growth and purification of the Thinker and his vehicles. (Page 179)

CHAPTER VII

REINCARNATION

We are now in a position to study one of the pivotal doctrines of the Ancient Wisdom, the doctrine of reincarnation. Our view of it will be clearer and more in congruity with natural order, if we look at it as universal in principle, and then consider the special case of the reincarnation of the human soul.

In studying it, this special case is generally wrenched from its place in natural order, and is considered as a dislocated fragment, greatly to its detriment. For all evolution consists of an evolving life, passing from form to form as it evolves, and storing up in itself the experiences gained through the forms ; the reincarnation of the human soul is not the introduction of a new principle into evolution, but the adaptation of the universal principle to meet the conditions rendered necessary by the individualisation of the continuously evolving life.

Mr. Lafcadio Hearn   ( “Mr. Hearn has lost his way in expressing – but not, I think, in his inner view – in part of his exposition of the Buddhist statement of this doctrine, and his use of the word “Ego” will mislead the reader of his very interesting chapter on this subject, if the distinction between real and illusory ego is not readily kept in mind.”) has put this point well in considering the bearing of the idea of the pre-existence on the scientific thought of the West. He says : - (Page 180)

“With the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, old forms of thought crumbled ; new ideas everywhere arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas ; and we now have the spectacle of a general intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy. The unprecedented rapidity and multiformity  of scientific progress during the last fifty years could not have failed to provoke an equally unprecedented intellectual quickening among the non-scientific. “

“That the highest and most complex organisms have been developed from the lowest and simplest ; that a single physical basis of life is the substance of the whole living world ; that no line of separation can be drawn between the animal and vegetable ; that the difference between life and non-life is only a difference of degree, not of kind ; that matter is not less incomprehensible than mind, while both are but varying manifestations of one and the same unknown reality – these have already become the commonplaces of the new philosophy.”

“After the first recognition even by theology of physical evolution, it was easy to predict that the recognition of psychical evolution could not be indefinitely delayed ; for the barrier erected by old dogma to keep men from looking backward had been broken down. And today for the student of scientific psychology the idea of pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact, proving the Buddhist explanation of the universal mystery quite as plausible as any other.”

“None but very hasty thinkers,’ wrote the late Professor Huxley, ‘will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality ; and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.” (Evolution and Ethics, p. 61, ed. 1894 – Kokoro, Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, by Lafcadio Hearn, pp. 237-39 london, 1896).” (Page 181)

Let us consider the Monad of form, Âtma-Buddhi. In this Monad, the outbreathed life of the LOGOS, lie hidden all the divine powers, but, as we have seen, they are latent, not manifest and functioning. They are to be gradually aroused by external impacts, it being of the very nature of life to vibrate in answer to vibrations that play upon it.

As all possibilities of vibrations exist in the Monad, any vibration touching it will arouse its corresponding vibratory powers, and in this way one force after another will pass from the latent to the active state. (From the static to the kinetic condition, the physicist would say.) Herein lies the secret of evolution ; the environment acts on the form of the living creature – and all things, be it remembered, live – and this action, transmitted through the enveloping form to the life, the Monad, within it, arouses responsive vibrations which thrill outwards from the Monad through the form, throwing its particles, in turn, into vibrations, and rearranging them into a shape corresponding, or adapted, to the initial impact.

This is the action and reaction between the environment and the organism, which have been recognised by all biologists, and which are considered by some as giving a sufficient mechanical explanation of evolution. Their patient and careful observation of these actions and reactions yields, however, no explanation why the organism should thus react to stimuli, and the Ancient Wisdom is needed to unveil the secret of evolution, by pointing to the Self in the heart of all (Page 182) forms, the hidden mainspring of all the movements of nature.

Having grasped this fundamental idea of a life containing the possibility of responding to every vibration that can reach it from the external universe, the actual response being gradually drawn forth by the play upon it of external forces, the next fundamental idea to be grasped is that of the continuity of life and forms.

Forms transmit their peculiarities to other forms that proceed from them, these other forms being part of their own substance, separated off to lead an independent existence. By fission, by budding, by extrusion of germs, by development of the offspring within the maternal womb, a physical continuity is preserved, every new form being derived from a preceding form and reproducing its characteristics. ( The student might wisely familiarise himself with the researches of Weissman on the continuity of germ-plasm.)

Science groups these facts under the name of the law of heredity, and its observations on the transmission of form are worthy of attention, and are illuminative of the workings of Nature in the phenomenal world. But it must be remembered that it applies only to the building of the physical body, into which enter the materials provided by the parents.

Her more hidden workings, those workings of life without which form could not be, have received no attention, not being susceptible of physical observation, and this gap can only be filled by the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, given by Those who of old (Page 183) used superphysical powers of observation, and verifiable gradually by every pupil who studies patiently in Their schools.

There is continuity of life as well as continuity of form, and it is the continuing life – with ever more and more of its latent energies rendered active by the stimuli received through successive forms – which resumes into itself the experiences obtained by its incasings in form ; for when the form perishes, the life has the record of those experiences in the increased energies aroused by them, and is ready to pour itself into the new forms derived from the old, carrying with it this accumulated store.

While it was in the previous form, it played through it, adapting it to express each newly awakened energy; the form hands on these adaptations, inwrought into its substance, to the separated part of itself that we speak of as its offspring, which, beings of its substance, must needs have the peculiarities of that substance; the life pours itself into that offspring with all its awakened powers, and moulds it yet further ; and so on and on.

Modern science is proving more and more clearly that heredity plays an ever-decreasing part in the evolution of the higher creatures, that mental and moral qualities are not transmitted from parents to offspring, and that the higher qualities the more patent is this fact ‘ the child of the genius is oft-times a dolt; commonplace parents give birth to a genius.

A continuing substratum there must be, in which mental and moral qualities inhere, in order that they may increase, else would Nature, in (Page 184) this most important department of her work, show erratic uncaused production instead of orderly continuity. On this science is dumb, but the Ancient Wisdom teaches that this continuing substratum is the Monad, which is the receptacle of all results, the storehouse in which all experiences are garnered as increasingly active powers.

These two principles firmly grasped – of the Monad with potentialities becoming powers, and of the continuity of the life form – we can proceed to the continuity of life and form – we can proceed to study their working out in detail, and we shall find that they solve many of the perplexing problems of modern science, as well as the yet more heart-searching problems confronted by the philanthropist and the sage.

Let us start by considering the monad as it is first subjected to the impacts from the formless levels of the mental plane, the very beginning of the evolution of form. Its first faint responsive thrillings draw round it some of the matter of that plane, and we have the gradual evolution of the first elemental kingdom, already mentioned. (See chapter IV, on “The Mental Plane”).

The great fundamental types of the Monad are seven in number, sometimes imaged as like the seven colours of the solar spectrum, derived from the three primary. (“As above, so below.” We instinctively remember the three LOGOI and the seven primeval Sons of the Fire ; in Christian Symbolism, the Trinity and the “Seven Spirits that are before the throne” ; or in Zoroastrian, Ahuramazda and the seven Ameshaspentas.) (Page 185)

Each of these types has its own colouring of characteristics, and this colouring persists throughout the aeonian cycle of its evolution, affecting all the series of living things that are animated by it. Now begins the process of subdivision in each of these types, that will be carried on, subdividing and ever subdividing, until the individual is reached.

The currents set up by the commencing outward-going energies of the Monad – to follow one line of evolution will suffice ; the other six are like unto it in principle – have but brief form-life, yet whatever experience can be gained through them is represented by an increasedly responsive life in the Monad who is their source and cause ; as this responsive life consists of vibrations that are often incongruous with each other, a tendency towards separation is set up within the Monad, the harmoniously vibrating forces grouping themselves together for, as it were, concerted action, until various sub-Monads, if the epithet may for a moment be allowed, are formed, alike in their main characteristics, but differing in details, like shades of the same colour.

These become, by impacts from the lower levels of the mental plane, the Monads of the second elemental kingdom, belonging to the form region of that plane, and the process continues, the Monad ever adding to its power to respond, each Monad being the inspiring life of countless forms, through which it receives vibrations, and, as the forms disintegrate, constantly vivifying new forms ; the process of subdivision also continues from the cause already described. (Page 186)

Each Monad thus continually incarnates itself in forms, and garners within itself as awakened powers all the results obtained through the forms it animates. We may well regard these Monads as the souls of groups of forms;  and as evolution proceeds, these forms show more and more attributes, the attributes being the powers of the monadic group-soul manifested through the forms in which it is incarnated.

The innumerable sub-Monads of this second elemental kingdom presently reach a stage of evolution at which they begin to respond to the vibrations of astral matter, and they begin to act on the astral plane, becoming the Monads of the third elemental kingdom, and repeating in this grosser world all the processes already accomplished on the mental plane.

They become more and more numerous as monadic group-souls, showing more and more diversity in detail, the number of forms animated by each becoming less as the specialised characteristics become more and more marked. Meanwhile, it may be said in passing, the ever-flowing stream of life from the LOGOS supplies new Monads of form on the higher levels, so that the evolution proceeds continuously, and as the more-evolved Monads incarnate in the lower worlds their place is taken by the newly emerged Monads in the higher.

By this ever-repeated process of the reincarnation of the Monads, or Monadic group-soul, in the astral world, their evolution proceeds, until they are ready to respond to the impacts upon them from physical matter. When we remember that the ultimate atoms of each plane have their sphere-walls composed of the coarsest matter of the plane immediately above it, it is easy to see how the Monads become responsive to impacts from one plane after another. (Page 187)

When, in the first elemental kingdom, the Monad had become accustomed to thrill responsively to the impacts of matter of that plane, it would soon begin to answer to vibrations received through the coarsest forms of that matter from the matter of the plane next below. So, in its coatings of matter that were the forms composed of the coarsest materials of the material plane, it would become susceptible to vibrations of astral atomic matter ; and, when incarnated in forms of the coarsest astral matter, it would similarly become responsive to atomic physical ether, the sphere-walls of which are constituted of the grossest astral materials.

Thus the Monad may be regarded as reaching the physical plane ; and there it begins, or, more accurately, all these monadic group-souls begin, to incarnate themselves in filmy physical forms, the etheric doubles of the future dense minerals of the physical world. Into these filmy forms the nature-spirits build the denser physical materials, and thus minerals of all kinds are formed, the most rigid vehicles in which the evolving life in-closes itself, and through which the least of its powers can express themselves. Each monadic group-soul has its own mineral expressions, the mineral forms in which it is incarnated, and the specialisation has now reached a high degree. These Monadic group-souls are sometimes called in their (Page 188) totality the mineral Monad or the Monad incarnating in the mineral kingdom.

From this time forward the awakened energies of the Monad play a less passive part in evolution. They begin to seek expression actively to some extent when once aroused into functioning, and to exercise a distinctly moulding influence over the forms in which they are imprisoned. As they become too active for their mineral embodiment, the beginnings of the more plastic forms of the vegetable kingdom manifest themselves, the nature-spirits aiding this evolution throughout the physical kingdoms. In the mineral kingdom there had already been shown a tendency towards the definite organisation of form, the laying down of certain lines ( The axes of growth which determine form. They appear definitely in crystals ) along which the growth proceeded. This tendency governs henceforth all the building of forms, and is the cause of the exquisite symmetry of natural objects, with which every observer is familiar.

The monadic group-souls in the vegetable kingdom undergo division and subdivision with increasing rapidity, in consequence of the still greater variety of impacts to which they are subjected, the evolution of families, genera, and species being due to this invisible subdivision.

When any genus, with its generic monadic group-soul, is subjected to very varying conditions, i.e., when the forms connected with it receive very different impacts, a fresh tendency to subdivide is set up in the Monad, and various species are evolved, (Page 189) each having its own specific group-soul.

When Nature is left to her own working the process is slow, although the nature-spirits do much towards the differentiation of species ; but when man has been evolved, and when he begins his artificial systems of cultivation, encouraging the play of one set of forces, warding off another, then this differentiation can be brought about with considerable rapidity, and specific differences are readily evolved. So long as actual division has not taken place in the monadic group-soul, the subjection of the forms to similar influences may again eradicate the separative tendency, but when that division is completed the new species are definitely and firmly established , and are ready to send out offshoots of their own.

In some of the longer-lived members of the vegetable kingdom the element of personality begins to manifest itself, the stability of the organism rendering possible this foreshadowing of individuality. With a tree, living for scores of years, the recurrence of similar conditions causing similar impacts, the seasons ever returning year after year, the consecutive motions caused by them, the rising of the sap, the putting forth of leaves, the touches of the wind, of the sunbeams, of the rain – all these outer influences with their rhythmical progression – set up responsive thrillings in the monadic group-soul, and, as the sequence impresses itself by continual repetition, the recurrence of one leads to the dim expectation of its oft-repeated successor. Nature evolves no quality suddenly, and these are the first faint (Page 190) adumbrations of what will later be memory and anticipation.

In the vegetable kingdom also appear the foreshadowings of sensation, evolving in its higher members to what the Western psychologist would term “massive” sensations of pleasure and discomfort.  (The “massive” sensation is one that pervades the organism and is not felt especially in any one part more than in others. It is the antithesis of the “acute.”)   It must be remembered that the Monad has drawn round itself materials of the planes through which it has descended, and hence is able to contact impacts, from those planes, the strongest and those most nearly allied to the grossest forms of matter  being the first to make themselves felt.

Sunshine and the chill of its absence at last impress themselves on the monadic consciousness ; and its astral coating, thrown into faint vibrations, gives rise to the slight massive kind of sensation spoken of. Rain and drought affecting the mechanical constitution of the form, and its power to convey vibrations to the ensouling Monad – are another of the “pairs of opposites,” the play of which arouses the recognition of difference, which is the root alike of all sensation, and later of all thought. Thus by their repeated plant-reincarnations the monadic group-souls in the vegetable kingdom evolve, until those that ensoul the highest members of the kingdom are ready for the next step. 

This step carries them into the animal kingdom, and here they slowly evolve in their physical and astral vehicles a very distinct personality. The animal, (Page 191) being free to move about, subjects itself to a greater variety of conditions than can be experienced by the plant, rooted to a single spot, and this variety, as ever, promotes differentiation.

The monadic group-soul, however, which animates a number of wild animals of the same species or subspecies, while it receives a great variety of impacts, since they are for the most part repeated continually and are shared by all the members of the group, differentiates but slowly.

These impacts aid in the development of the physical and astral bodies, and through them the monadic group-soul gathers much experience. When the form of a member of the group perishes, the experience gathered through that form is accumulated in the monadic group-soul, and may be said to colour it ; the slightly increased life of the monadic group-soul, poured into all the forms which compose its group, shares among all the experiences of the perished form, and in this way continually repeated experiences, stored up in the monadic group-soul, appear as instincts, “accumulated hereditary experiences” in the new forms.

Countless birds having fallen a prey to hawks, chicks just out of the egg will cower at the approach of one of the hereditary enemies, for the life that is incarnated in them knows the danger, and the innate instinct is the expression of its knowledge. In this way are formed the wonderful instincts that guard animals from innumerable habitual perils, while a new danger finds them unprepared and only bewilders them. (Page 192)

As animals come under the influence of man, the monadic group-souls evolves with greatly increased rapidity, and, from causes similar to those which affect plants under domestication, subdivision of the incarnating life is more readily brought about. Personality evolves and becomes more and more strongly marked ; in the earlier stages it may almost be said to be compound – a whole flock of wild creatures will act as though moved by a single personality, so completely are the forms dominated by the common soul, it, in turn, being affected by the impulse from the external world.

Domesticated animals of the higher types, the elephants, the horse, the cat, the dog, show a more individualised personality – two dogs, for instance, may act very differently under the impact of the same circumstances. The monadic group-soul incarnates in a decreasing number of forms as it gradually approaches the point at which complete individualisation will be reached. The desire-body, or Kâmic vehicle, becomes considerably developed, and persists for some time after the death of the physical body, leading an independent existence in Kâmaloka. At last the decreasing number of forms animated by a monadic group-soul comes down to unity, and it animates a succession of single forms – a condition differing from human reincarnation only by the absence of Manas, with its causal and mental bodies.

The mental matter brought down by the monadic group-souls begins to be susceptible to impacts from the mental plane, and the animal is then ready to receive the third great (Page 193) outpouring of the life of the LOGOS – the tabernacle is ready for the reception of the human Monad.

The human Monad is, as we have seen, triple in its nature, its three aspects being denominated, respectively, the Spirit, the spiritual Soul, and the human Soul, Âtma-Buddhi-Manas. Doubtless, in the course of eons of evolution, the upwardly evolving Monad of form might have unfolded Manas by progressive growth, but both in the human race in the past, and in the animals of the present, such has not been the course of Nature.

When the house was ready the tenant was sent down ; from the higher planes of being the âtmic life descended, veiling itself in Buddhi, as a golden thread ; and its third aspect, Manas, showing itself in the higher levels of the formless world of the mental plane, germinal Manas within the form was fructified, and the embryonic causal body was formed by the union. This is the individualisation of the spirit, the incasing of it in form, and this spirit incased in the causal body is the soul, the individual, the real man. This is his birth hour; for though his essence be eternal, unborn and undying, his birth in time as an individual is definite.

Further, this outpoured life reaches the evolving forms not directly, but by intermediaries. The human race having attained the point of receptivity, certain great Ones, called Sons of Mind – (Manasaputra is the technical name, being merely the Sanskrit for Sons of Mind.) – cast into men the monadic spark of Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, needed (Page 194) for the formation of the embryonic soul.

And some of these great Ones actually incarnated in human forms, in order to become the guides and teachers of infant humanity. These Sons of Mind had completed Their own intellectual evolution in other worlds, and came to this younger world, our earth, for the purpose of thus aiding in the evolution of the human race. They are in truth, the spiritual fathers of the bulk of our humanity. Other intelligences of much lower grade, men who had evolved in preceding cycles in another world, incarnated among the descendants of the race that received its infant souls in the way just described. As this race evolved, the human tabernacles improved, and myriads of souls that were awaiting the opportunity of incarnation, that they might continue their evolution, took birth among its children.

These partially evolved souls are also spoken of in the ancient records as Sons of Mind, for they were possessed of mind, although comparatively it was but little developed – childish souls we may call them, in distinguishment from the embryonic souls of the bulk of humanity, and the mature souls of the great Teachers.

These child-souls, by reason of their more evolved intelligence, formed the leading types of the ancient world, the classes higher in mentality, and therefore in the power of acquiring knowledge, that dominated the masses of less developed men in antiquity. And thus arose, in our world, the enormous differences in mental and moral capacity which separate the most highly evolved from the least (Page 195) evolved races, and which, even within the limits of single race, separate the lofty philosophic thinker from the well-nigh animal type of the most depraved of his own nation. These differences are but differences of the stage of evolution, of the age of the soul, and they have been found to exist throughout the whole of history of humanity on this globe.  Go back as far as we may in historic records, and we may find lofty intelligence and debased ignorance side by side, and the occult records, carrying us backwards, tell a similar story of the early millennia of humanity.

Nor should this distress us, as though some had been unduly favoured and others unduly burdened for the struggle of life. The loftiest soul had its childhood and its infancy, albeit in previous worlds, where other souls were as high above it as others are below it now ; the lowest soul shall climb to where our highest are standing, and souls yet unborn shall occupy its present place in evolution. Things seem unjust because we wrench our world out of its place in evolution, and set it apart  in isolation, with no forerunners and no successors. It is our ignorance that sees the injustice ; the ways of Nature are equal, and she brings to all her children infancy, childhood, and manhood. Nor hers the fault if our folly demands that all souls shall occupy the same stage of evolution at the same time, and cries “Unjust!” if the demand be not fulfilled.

We shall best understand the evolution of the soul, if we take it up at the point where we left it, when animal-man was ready to receive, and did (Page 196) receive, the embryonic soul. To avoid a possible misapprehension, it may be well to say that there were not henceforth two Monads in man – the one that had built the human tabernacle, and the one that descended into that tabernacle, and whose lowest aspect was the human soul.

To borrow a simile again from H. P. Blavatsky, as two rays of the sun may pass through a hole in a shutter, and mingling together form but one ray though they had been twain, so is it with these rays from the Supreme Sun, the divine Lord of our universe. The second ray, as it entered into the human tabernacle, blended with the first, merely adding to it fresh energy and brilliance, and the human Monad, as a unit, began its mighty task of unfolding the higher powers in man of that divine Life whence it came.

The embryonic soul, the Thinker, had at the beginning for its embryonic mental body the mind-stuff envelope that the Monad of form had brought with it, but had not yet organised into any possibility of functioning. It was the mere germ of a mental body, attached to a mere germ of a causal body, and for many a life the strong desire-nature had its will with the soul, whirling it along the road of its own passions and appetites, and dashing up against it all the furious waves of its own uncontrolled animality.

Repulsive as this early life of the soul may at first seem to some when looked at from the higher stage that we have now attained, it was a necessary one for the germination of the seeds of mind. Recognition of difference, the perception that one thing is different (Page 197) from another, is a preliminary essential to thinking at all. And, in order to awaken this perception in the as yet unthinking soul, strong and violent contrasts had to strike upon it, so as to force differences upon it – blow after blow of riotous pleasure, blow after blow of crushing pain.

The external world hammered on the soul through the desire nature, till perceptions began to be slowly made, and, after countless repetitions, to be registered. The little gains made in each life were stored up by the Thinker, as we have already seen, and thus slow progress was made.

Slow progress, indeed, for scarcely anything was thought, and hence scarcely anything was done in the way of organising the mental body.  Not until many perceptions had been registered in it as mental images was there any material on which mental action, initiated from within, could be based ; this would begin when two or more of these mental images were drawn together, and some inference, however elementary, was made from them. That inference was the beginning of reasoning, the germ of all the systems of logic which the intellect of man has since evolved or assimilated. These inferences would at first all be made in the service of the desire-nature, for the increasing of pleasure, the lessening of pain ; but each one would increase the activity of the mental body, and would stimulate it into more ready functioning.

It will readily be seen that at this period of his infancy man had no knowledge of good or of evil; (Page 198) right and wrong for him had no existence. The right is that which is in accordance with the divine will, which helps forward the progress of the soul, which tends to the strengthening of the higher nature of man and to the training and subjugation of the lower, the wrong is that which retards evolution, which retains the soul in the lower stages after he has learned the lessons they have to teach, which tends to the mastery of the lower nature over the higher, and assimilates man to the brute he should be outgrowing instead of to the God he should be evolving.

Ere man could know what was right, he had to learn the existence of the law, and this he could only learn by following all that attracted him in the outer world, by grasping every desirable object, and then by learning from experience, sweet or bitter, whether his delight was in harmony or in conflict with the law. Let us take an obvious example, the taking of pleasant food, and see how infant man might learn therefrom the presence of a natural law. At the first taking, his hunger was appeased, his taste was gratified, and only pleasure resulted from the experience, for his action was in harmony with law. On another occasion, desiring to increase pleasure, he ate overmuch and suffered in consequence, for he transgressed against the law.  A confusing experience to the dawning intelligence, how the pleasurable became painful by excess.

Over and over again he would be led by desire into excess, and each time he would experience the painful  consequences, until at last he learned moderation, (Page 199) i.e., he learned to conform his bodily acts in this respect to physical law; for he found that there were conditions which affected him and which he could not control, and that only by observing them could physical happiness be insured. Similar experiences flowed in upon him through all the bodily organs, with undeviating regularity ; his outrushing desires brought him pleasure or pain just as they worked with the laws of Nature or against them, and, as experience increased, it began to guide his steps, to influence his choice, It was not as though he had to begin his experience anew with every life, for on each new birth he brought with him mental faculties a little increased, and ever-accumulating store.

I have said that the growth in these early days was very slow, for there was but the dawning of mental action, and when the man left his physical body at death he passed most of his time in Kâmaloka, sleeping through a brief devachanic period of unconscious assimilation of any minute mental experience not yet sufficiently developed for the active heavenly life that lay before him after many days.

Still, the enduring causal body was there, to be the receptacle of his qualities, and to carry them on for further development into his next life on earth. The part played by the monadic group-soul in the earlier stages of evolution is played in man by the causal body, and it is this continuing entity who, in all cases, makes evolution possible. Without him, the accumulation of mental and moral experiences, shown as (Page 200) faculties, would be as impossible as would be the accumulation of physical experiences, shown as racial and family characteristics without the continuity of physical plasm.

Souls without a past behind them, springing suddenly into existence, out of nothing, with marked mental and moral peculiarities, are a conception as monstrous as would be the corresponding conception of babies suddenly appearing from nowhere, unrelated to anybody, but showing marked racial and family types.

Neither man nor his physical vehicle is uncaused, or caused by the direct power of the LOGOS ; here, as in so many other cases, the invisible things are clearly seen by their analogy with the visible, the visible being, in very truth, nothing more than the images, the reflections, of things unseen. Without a continuity in the physical plasm, there would be no means for the evolution of physical peculiarities ; without the continuity of the intelligence, there would be no means for the evolution of mental and moral qualities. In both cases, without continuity, evolution would be stopped at its first stage, and the world would be a chaos of infinite and isolated beginnings instead of a cosmos continually becoming.

We must not omit to notice that in these early days much variety is caused in the type and in the nature of individual progress by the environment which surrounds the individual. Ultimately all the souls have to develop all their powers, but the order in which these powers are developed depends (Page 201) on the circumstances amid which the soul is placed. Climate, the fertility or sterility of nature, the life of the mountain or of the plain, of the inland forest or the ocean shore – these things and countless others will call into activity one set or another of the awakening mental energies.

A life of extreme hardship, of ceaseless struggle with nature, will develop very different powers from those evolved amid the luxuriant plenty of a tropical island ; both sets of powers are needed, for the soul is to conquer every region of nature, but striking differences may thus be evolved even in souls of the same age, and one may appear to be more advanced than the other, according as the observer estimates most highly the  more “practical” or the more “contemplative” powers of the soul, the active outward-going energies, or the quiet inward-turned musing faculties. The perfected soul possesses all, but the soul in the making must develop them successively, and thus arises another cause of the immense variety found among human beings. 

For again, it must be remembered that human evolution is individual. In a group informed by a single monadic group-soul the same instincts will be found in all, for the receptacle of the experiences is that monadic group-soul, and it pours its life into all forms dependent upon it.

But each man has his own physical vehicle and one only at a time, and the receptacle of all experiences is the causal body, which pours its life into its one physical vehicle, and can affect no other physical vehicle, being connected (Page 202) with none other. Hence we find differences separating individual men greater, than the ever separated, closely allied animals, and hence also the evolution of qualities cannot be studied in men in the mass, but only in the continuing individual. The lack of power to make such a study leaves science unable to explain why some men tower above their fellows, intellectual and moral giants, unable to trace the intellectual evolution of a Shankarâchârya or a Pythagoras, the moral evolution of a Buddha or of a Christ.

Let us now consider the factors in reincarnation, as a clear understanding of these is necessary for the explanation of some of the difficulties – such as the alleged loss of memory – which are felt by those unfamiliar with the idea.  We have seen that man, during his passage through physical death, Kâmaloka and Devachan, loses one after the other, his various bodies, the physical, the astral, and the mental. These are all disintegrated, and their particles remix with the materials of their several planes. The connection of the man with the physical vehicle is entirely broken off and done with ; but the astral and mental bodies hand on to the man himself, to the Thinker, the germs of the faculties and qualities resulting from the activities of the earth-life, and these are stored within the causal body, the seeds of his next astral and mental bodies.

At this stage, then, only the man himself is left, the labourer who has brought his harvest home, and has lived upon it till it is all worked up into himself. The dawn of a (Page 203) new life begins, and he must go forth again to his labour until the even.

The new life begins by the vivifying of the mental germs, and they draw upon the materials of the lower mental levels, till a mental body has grown up from them that represents exactly the mental stage of the man, expressing all his mental faculties as organs ; the experiences of the past do not exist as mental images in this new body; as mental images they perished when the old mind-body perished, and only their essence, their effects on faculty, remain ; they were the food of the mind, the materials which it wove into powers, and in the new body they reappear as powers, they determine its materials, and they form its organs. When the man, the Thinker, has thus clothed himself with a new body for his coming life on the lower mental levels, he proceeds, by vivifying the astral germs, to provide himself with an astral body for his life on the astral plane.

This, again, exactly represents his desire-nature, faithfully reproducing the qualities he evolved in the past, as the seed reproduces its parent tree. Thus the man stands, fully equipped for his next incarnation, the only memory of these events of his past being in the causal body, in his own enduring form, the one body that passes on from life to life.

Meanwhile, action external to himself is being taken to provide him with a physical body suitable for the expression of his qualities. In past lives he has made ties with, contracted liabilities towards, other human beings, and some of these will partly (Page 204) determine his place of birth and his family. – ( This and the following causes determining the outward circumstances of the new life will be fully explained in Chapter IX, on “Karma”.) He has been a source of happiness or of unhappiness to others ; this is a factor in determining the conditions of his coming life. His desire-nature is well disciplined, or unregulated and riotous ; this will be taken into account in the physical heredity of the new body. He has cultivated certain mental powers, such as the artistic ; this must be considered, as here again physical heredity is an important factor where delicacy of nervous organisation and tactile sensibility are required.

And so on, in endless variety. The man may, certainly will, have in him many incongruous characteristics, so that only some can find expression in any one body that could be provided, and a group of his powers suitable for simultaneous expression must be selected. All this is done by certain mighty spiritual Intelligences,( Spoken of by H.P.Blavatsky in the Secret Doctrine. They are the Lipika, the Keepers of the kârmic records, and the Mahârâjas, who direct the practical working out of the decrees of the Lipika.) - often spoken of as the Lords of Karma, because it is their function to superintend the working out of causes continually set going by thoughts, desires, and actions. They hold the threads of destiny which each man has woven, and guide the reincarnating man to the environment determined by his past, unconsciously self-chosen through his past life.(Page 205)

The race, the nation, the family, being thus determined, what may be called the mould of the physical body – suitable for the expression of the man’s qualities, and for the working out of the causes he has set going – is given by these great Ones, and the new etheric double, a copy of this, is built within the mother’s womb by the agency of an elemental, the thought of the Kārmic Lords being its motive power.

The dense body is built into the etheric double molecule by molecule, following it exactly, and here physical heredity has full sway in the materials provided. Further, the thoughts and passions of surrounding people, especially of the continually present father and mother, influence the building elemental in its work, the individuals with whom the incarnating man had formed ties in the past thus affecting the physical conditions growing up for his new life on earth.

At a very early stage the new astral body comes into connection with the new etheric double, and exercises considerable influence over its formation, and through it the mental body works upon the nervous organisation, preparing it to become a suitable instrument for its own expression in the future. This influence commenced in ante natal life – so that when a child is born its brain-formation reveals the extent and balance of its mental and moral qualities – is continued after birth, and this building of brain and nerves, and their correlation to the astral and mental bodies, go on till the seventh year of childhood, at which age the connection between the man and his physical (Page 206) vehicle is complete, and he may be said to work through it henceforth more than upon it.

Up to this age, the consciousness of the Thinker is more upon the astral plane than upon the physical, and this is often evidenced by the play of psychic faculties in young children. They see invisible comrades and fairy landscapes, hear voices inaudible to their elders, catch  charming and delicate fancies from the astral world. These phenomena generally vanish as the Thinker begins to work effectively through the physical vehicle, and the dreamy child becomes the commonplace boy or girl, oftentimes much to the relief of the bewildered parents, ignorant of the cause of their child’s “queerness.”

Most children have at least a touch of this “queerness,” but they quickly learn to hide away their fancies and visions from their unsympathetic elders, fearful of blame for “telling stories,” or of what the child dreads far more – ridicule. If parents could see their children’s brains, vibrating under an inextricable mingling of physical and astral impacts, which the children themselves are quite incapable of separating, and receiving sometimes a thrill – so plastic are they – even from the higher regions, giving a vision of ethereal beauty, of heroic achievement, they would be more patient with, more responsive to, the confused prattlings of the little ones, trying to translate into the difficult medium of unaccustomed words the elusive touches of which they are conscious, and which they try to catch and retain. Reincarnation, believed in and understood, would relieve child life (Page 207) of its most pathetic aspect, the unaided struggle of the soul to gain control over its new vehicles, and to connect itself fully with its densest body without losing power to impress the rarer ones in a way that would enable them to convey to the denser their own more subtle vibrations.

(Continued on Section 2)

Go to Top of this page
Back to our On Line Documents
Back to our Main Page