POINT OUT THE WAY
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Arranged by Chapters.
The Three FUNDAMENTALS AT AN INFORMAL
“OCEAN” CLASS
QUESTIONS ANSWERED AT AN INFORMAL
“OCEAN” CLASS The following series of articles are reprinted from THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT magazine, published by Theosophy Company (India), Ltd., Theosophy Hall, 40 New Marine Lines, Bombay 400 020 (India). The series ran from January, l951 through July, 1954. The answers are based on the Teachings as brought by H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge. The writings of these two Teachers and those consistent with them, form the basis of study for those associated with The United Lodge of Theosophists.
THE UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS: DECLARATION The policy of this Lodge is independent devotion to the cause of Theosophy, without professing attachment to any Theosophical organization, It is loyal to the great Founders of the Theosophical Movement, but does not concern itself with dissensions or differences of individual opinion. The work it has on hand and the end it keeps in view are too absorbing and too lofty to leave it the time or inclination to take part in side issues. That work and that end is the dissemination of the Fundamental Principles of the Philosophy of Theosophy, and the exemplification in practice of those principles, through a truer realization of the SELF; a profounder conviction of Universal Brotherhood. It holds that the unassailable basis for union among Theosophists, wherever and however situated, is “similarity of aim, purpose and teaching,” and therefore has neither Constitution, By-Laws nor Officers, the sole bond between its Associates being that basis. And it aims to disseminate this idea among Theosophists in the furtherance of Unity. It regards as Theosophists all who are engaged in the true service of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, condition or organization, and It welcomes to its association all those who are in accord with its declared purposes and who desire to fit themselves, by study and other wise, to be the better ‘able to help and teach others. “The true Theosophist belongs to no cult or sect, yet belongs to each and all.” 1 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— The following is the form signed by Associates of the United Lodge of Theosophists: -----====ooo000ooo====-----
Being in sympathy with the purposes of this Lodge, as set forth in its “Declaration, I hereby record my desire to be enrolled as an Associate, it being understood that such association calls for no obligation on my part, other than that which I, myself, determine. 2 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— CONTENTS
The First Fundamental
————————————————————5 Chapter I ——————————————————————————23 Chapter II —————————————————————————28 Chapter III I. The Sevening of Cosmos —————————33 II The Sevening of Man ————————————————37 III. The Monads ————————————————————41 IV Rounds of Evolution —————————————————45 V. The “S. D” Basis ———————————————————50 Chapter IV ——————————————————————————54 Chapter V I. The Lives, Healing and Astral Matter ——57 II. The Astral Body, Astral Substance, and Human Birth ——61 III The Astral Body, Cells and Skandhas —————————68 IV. The Astral Body, Imagination and Prodigies ——————73 V. Astral Matter, Atoms and Incarnation —————————76 Chapter VI Hypnotism, Suggestion and the Astral Light —————79 Chapter VII I. Manas, Self—Consciousness and the Brain 84 II. The Inner Ego, Incarnation and the “Mindless Man” ———88 III. Intuition, Intellect and “Lighting Up” the Child —————93 IV. Genius, Initiation and the Motion of Manas ——————100 Chapter VIII I. Reincarnation and “New Thinkers” ———106 II. Food, Incarnation, and the Thinker in Evolution —————111 III. “Once a Man, Always a Man,” and “Lost Souls”——————116 Chapter IX I. Vegetarianism, Religious Taboos, Memory —121 II. Buddhi, “Progress” in Devachan, Conscious Death ————127 Chapter X Environment, Intelligence and Blind Tom ——————131 Chapter XI I. Karma, Nirvana and the “Karmaless” ——137 II. Equilibrium and Liberation ——————————————142 Chapter XII I. Death and the Death Vision ——————148 II. The Motion of “Shells” and “Waking” Kama Loka —————154
3 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Chapter XIII I. “Waking” from Devachan and the 15OO-Year Cycle —————158 II. Assimilation in Devachan and Continuing Consciousness ——163
Chapter XIV I. The Four Ages, The Four Castes and “The Lives” ——————168 II. Earthquakes, The Yugas and Evolution ——————————173 III. Kali Yuga, Cycles and the Calendar ————————————177 IV. Early Rounds, Spiritual Cycles and Nirvana ————————181
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI I. Imagination, Cohesion and Faith —————————————190 II. Modes of Seeing, Vibrations, Contact with Masters —————195
Chapter XVII
Conclusion ———————————————————————————204
4 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— The Three Fundamentals at an Informal “Ocean” Class; Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number, and on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself familiar with them first, before entering on the perusal of the work itself .— H.P.B., The Secret Doctrine Vol. I, p. 13. It was the conviction of Robert Crosbie that a proper comprehension of the three fundamental propositions was necessary for the aspirant to Theosophical service. It has also become the conviction of almost all who have been assuming responsibility for the propaganda through the U.L.T. At its study classes these fundamentals are regularly considered, repeated and explained. At one such study-class, with The Ocean of Theosophy as its text book, these fundamentals were Question and Answer form. It should be said that the answers here presented were originally given extemporaneously, and this quality will serve to remind the reader that the statements made are suggestive rather than authoritative. The obvious intent of the speaker was to turn inquirers to the recorded teaching it whence they might derive “an inspiration of their own to answer their deeper questions, and to guide them across the ocean of Theosophy.
The First Fundamental
Q.—Is it possible for a great intellect to understand The Secret Doctrine without an understanding of the Three Fundamental Propositions?
A.—The Three Fundamental Propositions
are a part of The Secret Doctrine so, if we understood The Secret Doctrine
we would understand the Three Fundamental Propositions. But, in any event,
let us examine the term “intellect.” We habitually use it to mean that our
intellect exists apart from other intellects, and apart from the other
elements in our nature. Certainly, any ordinary man of average
intelligence, of good intellectual comprehension, could follow clearly
everything that H.P.B. has written. But it would do good only so far. He
would derive merely an intellectual benefit from it, because intellect was
the only one of the elements in him that he had exercised. He might see
that all The Secret Doctrine statements are correct. There are very able
men in the Theosophical. field, and always have been—able men in our sense
of the word—who know The Secret Doctrine intellectually. What is the
matter with them? They have forgotten a more important element than the
intellect—the Will. What is the good of all the knowledge in the world,
without the Will to apply what we see, what we know? Theosophy is devoted
primarily not only to the education of our minds but to the arousal of our
WILL. The Will cannot be aroused from outside: The
intellect can. 5 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
A.—This question ought to bring us back
to what we understand. What picture is raised in our minds by the word
"knowledge"? We can’ t know anything as object or as subject, save and
except to the extent that it manifests itself. What do I know of any of
you? Nothing whatever, except what I perceive. Your body, your expression,
your words, your acts, all that I ever can see is what I can know; all
that I can see and know is your manifestation not you. So the word
“knowledge” always means duality: the knower—yourself, myself, any other
self—and what is known. What is known is always what is manifest.
Q.—How far does the “substance” of Spinoza’s conception agree with the First Fundamental? A.—Turn
to Volume I of The Secret Doctrine to the section on “Gods, Monads and
Atoms,” beginning about page 610. H.P.B. gives the fundamental idea of
Spinoza and goes quite at length into the fundamental ideas of Leibnitz,
showing that between the two is the esoteric doctrine. Leibnitz conceived
of the universe as an infinitude of living centres of action, each one of
them a kind of spiritual being; but he had to account for their origin.
This he did by postulating some kind of a supernal extra-cosmic deity of
which all living things are the children. We can see the anthropomorphism
that governed his perception of the infinitude of purely monadic beings.
Spinoza conceived of an infinite and
changeless divine substance that never had a beginning, can never die; but
he could not account for the fact that there are beings in the world.
There was a gap between the simplicity of substance and the multiplicity
of beings. 6 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Q.—It is said that everything which we see is seen inwardly. But how is it possible that objects visible to the naked eye can be seen within? A.—Well, isn’t there more than one kind of seeing? One may be on the outside of a thing and see it as within oneself. This is the process that we partly know and use and call “feeling,” “memory,” “thought,” and refer to as “faith” and “hope” and “aspiration,” and by many other terms. In other words, there is a mental or metaphysical universe: it is life regarded as internal to ourselves. Then there is identically the same life regarded as external to the form we occupy, and that life regarded as external is what we call space and matter and the stars and planets.
Very, very difficult
it is for us to grasp the reality. Once H.P.B. used an expression
something after this fashion. It must be about page 75, in the first
volume of The Secret Doctrine and it is repeated in other places. It is to
the effect that the same initial difficulty confronts us all—the apparent
multitude of objects and their diversity. But that exists in our
consciousness and nowhere else. Change our state of consciousness, and the
conceptions that we now take to be realities cease to be. We are there,
Life is there, and behold, we begin to perceive another state of
impressions. What was there in the beginning? Why, in the beginning there
was Life, and Life was full of impressions, and Life was busy with those
impressions. What is there after death? The same Life, and we, busy with
our impressions. But these impressions change with the nature of the
being, and that is again our Third Fundamental. All this universe was once subjective; that is, internal to our consciousness. It now is internal to the consciousness of the Mahatmas—it is not an external universe to Them. In Their consciousness this universe is subjective; it is Their mind; it is Their intelligence; it is Their knowledge; it is Their wisdom. When the Three Fundamentals are seen, the universe entire is internal to ourselves; the universe entire is external to ourselves; the universe is part internal and part external; the universe ceases to be altogether internal and external, as we think it. What else could it be to be a Mahatma? It is hard to realize that duality and multiplicity exist in the perceiving consciousness and nowhere else, but The Secret Doctrine and its three basic propositions exist to help us toward this realization. Q.—Should we not make a distinction between limited space and the Space of the First Fundamental? A.—Yes; Space is given to us as the perfect symbol of the One
7 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Self, the One Reality. Why? Because it is that in which all things live and move and have their being; it is that which is the background of consciousness, the field of perception and the arena of action for any and every being of every description. So when we get the spiritual conception of Space, we can appreciate what H.P.B. said in another place. She said, “I have tried my best to convey to Theosophists, to arouse in them, the perception that there is but one Reality; that It is omnipresent; that It neither was nor will be; It eternally is.” She said she had tried in vain to arouse them to see that. “Now,” she said, “once that is seen, that we came from That, that we exist in That, and that sooner or later we must return to That—all the rest becomes easy.” Q.—The First Proposition of Theosophy states that All is Life, whether in form or out of form. Why, then, should we worry as to man’ s using an animal form? Since the consciousness that is using the animal form will some day extend to the human form, in previous periods of evolution this humanity of today must have used animal forms. A.—Let us get H.P.B.’s definition of “animal.” She is speaking in terms of consciousness when she says “animal”; she is speaking in terms of consciousness when she says “Buddhi”; she is speaking in terms of consciousness when she says “Manas,” or “Atma”, but in our reading of these terms, we translate them into terms of form and action as experienced by us here and now through our physical senses. What is an animal, according to Theosophy? It is the germ of awakening consciousness, the germ, exactly as the embryo is the germ of a human being. And what is human consciousness? It is the next stage beyond the germ stage; that is, human consciousness stands in the same relation to the consciousness of Manas—Egoic self-consciousness—as the foetus stands in relation to the body after it is born. First, the embryo; then the foetus; then the body that is born. First, the germ of consciousness; then the unification, through experience, of those germs until a stage is reached where a contact point is set up with a higher form, and that is the so-called “mindless” man; then we. have the human stage, and there the same struggle begins over again in order for the individual to reach Egoic self-consciousness or regain it—just as the mass in the kingdoms below struggled to reach human self-consciousness. Human self-consciousness never was germinal self-consciousness; the baby body never was the foetus; the foetus never was an embryo. What do the three words represent? Three stages in the evolution of a human form. Apply that, then, to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. To make the category complete, three elemental stages; then the mineral stage, the vegetable stage and the animal stage of consciousness. That is all part of developing the germs of experience which constitute an individual entity; then occurs the lighting up of Manas, or the reflection of Self, in that combination of germs, and we call that “human” consciousness. Now, looking at it from the stand-point of stages in the journey of consciousness, we can see that while it is one and the same Monad or Spark, or Soul, these words—elemental, mineral, vegetable, animal, and human—are by us interpreted in terms of form while their meaning is stages in the awakening of consciousness The man was never an animal any more than Devachan was ever Kama-Loka. The various kingdoms represent stages or states through which one and the same Perceiver passes. 8
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— Q.—If the First Fundamental transcends human conception and expression, how can that be regarded as a practical basis for thought and action? A.—The statement of the First Fundamental Proposition is that there is a centre in each one of us on which everything else turns; that centre is no “place”—it is a centre of consciousness. Now, we know that nothing exists for us unless we are conscious of it, or unless we are aware of it. So, can’t we see at once that consciousness is the reality to us, and that existence has no place whatever except for that reality? Let us extend the idea; bring it home to ourselves. We are limited, but the only limitation is our own conception and perception. Extend that idea—it is true of all others; it is true of all life. No existence is apart from That. There is the principle and basis for all experience of every kind . Imagine a railroad station, a few minutes before train time. Looking at the whirling mass of humanity, all the people moving, full of excitement, did you ever think that there must be something permanent somewhere? We can watch our own reactions; every time someone passes in front of us, we think about it ; we have some feeling about it ; and people are passing all the time. Our own reactions are like that—changing—first one thing, and then another, first one colour, and then another. All of a sudden it may come home to us: we don’t change at all. We have these thoughts, and they change; we have feelings, and they change; but we are the beings who have them. We have not changed with any of the feelings and thoughts, and we can relate, say, one change to another. We could not if we were any of the passing impressions. Thus, there must be something permanent in us. All down the ages, people have been trying to find God, and they have erected all sorts of mental images, usually reflections of them selves and carrying human virtues to the nth degree, and also displaying a great many human defects. They have placed this God in some impossible heaven somewhere—no two heavens alike, no two Gods alike, either. The real Spiritual Teacher on whose teachings the religions afterwards were founded never taught any outside God like that ; They all taught the God within, this changeless something which everyone is. Theosophists call it a Principle; they don’t call it a God because people make a being of a god. Theosophists say that there is one changeless essence—a Principle, not a person, which is the sustainer of all, the source of all. Interesting? Yes, isn’t it? It is ennobling, too, because it makes of every man a god, and why not? All that any man can know of God is what he knows in himself, through himself and by himself.
Q.—What is the distinction between reincarnation and metempsychosis? Ans.—The distinction lies in the definitions and misconceptions given to those terms by man. H.P.B. says that “metempsychosis” means, in the first instance, the changes which go on metaphysically in any and every being; that is, the very word “metempsychosis”—the transformation of soul—leaves matter out of consideration altogether. Every time, for example, we change a bad feeling to good feeling, there is a metempsychosis. Every time we change from courage to fear, there is a metempsychosis: it is temporary, but it is a transformation, no matter how 9 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— short a time it lasts. It goes on in our own souls. So metempsychosis refers to man as a spiritual and psychological being, without regard to the world he may occupy, or the form that he might inhabit, or the state of consciousness in which he may at any given moment be. Metempsychosis deals with the changes through which the soul goes. Now what is reincarnation? The word literally means “going into flesh again.” This psychological and spiritual being may enter a body of matter such as is known to us, that we call flesh; that would be it incarnation . If it came a second time into a body of flesh, that would be its reincarnation. H.P.B. originally used, in Isis Unveiled the word “metempsychosis”; she refused to employ the word “reincarnation,” because that word had already been preempted by the followers of Allan Kardec, who was an exceedingly well-known French Spiritualist, author of great numbers of text-books used in the French public schools. Kardec got interested in Spiritualism through two of his little nieces ; he performed many experiments with them, and with others, and evolved a kind of philosophy. In this philosophy of his, he took that which we call the personality—that is, the human consciousness—to be the real being, and he thought that that human consciousness returned to earth again—that a man could be reincarnated in his own son or his own grandson. This return of the personality to a body on earth again he called “reincarnation.” The confusion of Kardec’s teaching with H.P.B.’s gave rise to one of the great misconceptions that finally split the Theosophical Society. Some of H.P.B.’s students—among them Col. Olcott himself—thought that because she discarded Kardec’s doctrine, she knew nothing about reincarnation, or else that she changed her mind after she went to India. Yet in Isis the distinction is made perfectly clear. “Reincarnation” means the return of Atma-Buddhi-Manas to an animal body on this earth. “Metempsychosis” means the changes that go on in Buddhi-Manas as the result of the experiences gained through repeated reincarnations. Q.—Isn’t it also metempsychosis that takes place in the units of life going from one kingdom to another?
Ans.—When units of life go from one kingdom to another—that is, dying in one kingdom, losing their bodies and getting new bodies in another kingdom—that is re-embodiment. If it should be rebirth in bodies of flesh, it would be reincarnation; but if we refer to the changes that go on in the soul, then another term is used. If the soul, the reincarnating ego, has not reached the human stage, the process of re-embodiment is called transmigration. “Transmigration,” properly speaking, as the word is ordinarily used, does not apply to the reincarnating ego. When H.P.B. came to write the S.D., Kardec’s word “reincarnation,” because it was a materialistic term, become popular and the Theosophists and Spiritualists were all using it. So H.P.B., in The Secret Doctrine had to employ the word in common usage. She adopted term “reincarnation,” but gave it an altogether different sense from the Kardec meaning or the Hindu meaning. We would do well to remember that Karma as H.P.B. taught it, is not known in the world at all ; that reincarnation as H.P.B. taught it is not known in any religion. 10 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
through a physical body would not be
subject to reincarnation. . . . ” The question goes on to say, “He might, however, choose to reincarnate.” He does not choose to reincarnate, but he chooses the time, place and circumstances of his reincarnation. Then the question is asked, “Does pre-existence, then, necessarily involve reincarnation?” It doesn’t necessarily involve reincarnation here, but so long as any being has any thing to do with manifested life, if he doesn’t reincarnate here, he must incarnate in some other place. Q.—Is there no way of getting free from Reincarnation? Ans.—Well, consider what the opposite of freedom is. The opposite of freedom means that we are the victims of forces over which we have no control. Freedom means we are in the same world, with the same forces, but we have control over them. Q.—One of the Aphorisms on Karma states that effects may be counter acted or mitigated by the thoughts and acts of oneself or of another. The question is, how can an individual be affected except by his own thoughts and actions? Ans.—We have to remember that nature’s method of accounting is double-entry. We do not have a thought except in connection with someone else; we do not perform an act except in connection with someone else. Our thoughts and our acts produce an immediate change in us, but that is in the beginning of things. Since they are visited upon another, they produce a modification in him, willingly or unwillingly; and then, in the course of time, that which we sowed with other beings we reap from other beings. If a man visited evil on us, and we knew it was evil but did not resent it; if we did not have any condemnation or blame for him, knowing how it came that we suffered at the hands of this person—then that Karma is done so far as we are concerned. Since one half of the problem has already been solved, it is immediately an amelioration of circumstances for the other half, although not always to his consciousness. Other wise, why should Buddha have said, for example, “Let the sins of the whole world fall on me”? We come down to this statement, that there is no such thing as the Karma of any one, exclusive of the Karma of all. I might hurt my foot, which is one member of my body, and then I could counteract or mitigate the injury to my foot by using my hand. There is nothing hard to understand about that when we realize that self-consciousness is Buddhi-Manas—and there is only one Buddhi-Manas in manifestation. That Buddhi-Manas is the whole of humanity, not this individual or that individual. From the standpoint of enduring consciousness, there is only one man-consciousness here on earth; that is the consciousness of all humanity. So each physical personal being stands in relation to the collective consciousness of mankind—Buddhi-Manas—as, say, one of the members of the body stands to the whole body. 11 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Each one of us is a portion of the body corporate of humanity, and any part of the body corporate—physically or metaphysically—can be used to injure other portions, or it can be used to ameliorate, mitigate or counteract any injury inflicted on, or about to be inflicted on, the rest. We know that is so. Here is an unconscious man who would die if someone didn’t staunch the flow of blood. Isn’t the effect of the collision by which this man was knocked unconscious and so wounded that his life-blood was ebbing away—isn’t this Karma mitigated by the action of the one who stays the flow of blood? Here one of us has his rent coming due tomorrow, and is about to be thrown out on the street. A neighbour lends us the money, or the landlord gets a change of heart: isn’t this Karma ameliorated? Take our meeting here. Some of us get a strength from the collective mind, from the collective motive, which of ourselves we could not muster. That is a mitigation, a mitigation through others of the individual Karma. Otherwise, what is the sense of any association? All associations are either for good or for evil, and that means they can make good bad; or bad worse—or they can make good better; and evil less bad. Ans.—Don’t we know that he has a choice? If you want to read a psychological study of the subject from the stand-point of Theosophy, it would be worth while to read a very short story by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Pit and the Pendulum.” There was a man in a situation so awful that it’s almost unbelievable and unimaginable. He reconciled himself to it. The story doesn’t show him the victim—that is, the loser—in the struggle. Everything that happens to us is Karma, and that’s our usual view of Karma; we don’t think of Karma except in terms of effects experienced. Yet there is the other side to it—the causes of those effects. Now, when anything happens to us, it is the ego who feels, whether in the body or out of the body. Out of the body, the ego knows the causes of those effects, and so he struggles, even unwittingly, when he is back in the body and no longer can perceive the causes. He struggles, although he does not understand why he struggles, against these bad effects. An old school of Philosophy all down the ages has taught that. man is the creature of the environment; that is, in fact, the philosophy of materialism. Now, notice the philosophy of religion. A man is just as much a creature in religion as he is in materialism. In one case, he is the creature of matter, of his environment, of his birth. In the other, he is the creature of “God.” The materialist—the genuine one—knows that it is no use to struggle. He believes in Kismet, fate, destiny, no free-will. Yet he goes right on struggling, and does not perceive the contradiction in himself . So, the religious man believes that everything that happens to him happens to him by the will of his God, but he is as busy as a bee all the time : he does not perceive the logical absurdity of his own position. Higher Manas is perception on the plane of causes; lower Manas is experience on the plane of effects. In other words, the teaching of The Secret Doctrine is very simple. H.P.B. puts it in these identical words: Whenever the immortal ego incarnates, it becomes a compound unity of 12 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— spirit and matter, which together act on seven distinct planes of Life and Consciousness. If we regard matters from that point of view, the problem begins to clear up. We enter into union with our brother lives of lower grades of intelligence than ourselves. Now, while in union with them, we see through their eyes, on their plane. How else could we see? In other words, we become for the time being the other fellow—the animal self, the astral self, the Kamic self, the physical self. Not until the combination is loosed, whether by sleep, or by death, or by the regaining while in the body of Manasic knowledge, are we able to live free from the contingencies of the environment. We could put it, according to the Seventh Chapter of the Ocean in some such fashion as this: call what H.P.B. otherwise calls the immortal ego, or the reincarnating ego, by the name of Manas without qualification. The moment that Manas enters into union with the forms of life on a lower plane than its own, Manas is modified by the union. Lower Manas is the modification of higher Manas; higher Manas is that part of Manas which is not modified by contact with matter. What part is that? What else than the part of Manas which is in contact with Buddhi? If we regard lower Manas and higher Manas not as two separate things or as two separate beings, but think of lower Manas as a modification induced in Manas by its union with matter—that’s what the word “incarnation” means—then we can understand the distinction. Mr. Judge goes on to show that the modification of this Lower Manas—the original modification—is subject to four further modifications: That modification in lower Manas induced by the body alone; that modification induced by the astral body; and the modification induced by the principle of Kâma, or the intelligence which belongs in the astral and physical natures. Those are three of the modifications, and Mr. Judge says they are all due to memory. When we study our body, our body is seen to be a product of memory; our astral body is a product of memory; passions and desires are the product of memory—these are nothing but the reanimation of the three forms of memory in matter. What reanimates them? Our incarnation. And what is the fourth modification of Manas? Lower Manas is still integral with Manas, and so there is some Manasic action, even in that part of Manas which is present in the body and intoxicated, as we might say, by incarnation. But we want to know why. That’s Manas. Whenever we are trying to find out the cause of a condition that afflicts us or others—not trying to dodge it, but trying to find out what caused it; whenever we are trying to cure the bad effects we are experiencing by admitting our share in bringing them about, and are determined to set up better causes; there is the action of Manas in the body—pure Manas.
Ans.—It isn’t strange at all; it’s the most natural thing in the world. All the events of Nature move in just those cyclic orders. It is the Law of the whole universe. It pertains just as much to the atom as to ourselves and to the sun, This very universe we live in—in a state of intense activity now—will have a rest, retire into silence and secrecy, and then after that emerge again into another new mode of activity. It is the same way with ourselves. We are living here on this earth now, intensely active, and we are going to die; we will have our rest, and we will come back again to earth. We will reincarnate, as Theosophists say, 13 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— because we have left unfinished business here. There are beings acting here that we were acting with before; we do not act at all alone; we all act together, and every time we act mentally, or morally, or physically, we involve the whole universe in our actions, some, of course, more remotely and some more immediately. Just as a seed in the vegetable kingdom grows to a certain kind of fruitage and no other, so it is with us. “Causes sown each hour bear each its harvest of effects, for rigid Justice rules the World.” There isn’t any accident; there isn’t any miracle, and there isn’t any God that brings these things to pass in our lives. We have set up the causes for them; we have brought about these events. So we can actually be the makers of our own destiny for good and bad, and we are making that destiny every minute. So long as we work for the good of all beings in the universe, we are acting for our divine destiny; but if we act for self, then for an infernal destiny. If we really come to know this Law, we shall be more intelligent beings, and we shall bring to bear upon this earth that Law of Harmony and translate it into what we all would love to see—Universal Brotherhood. That’s not only a name to Theosophists—that is what they are making all the time.
Q.—What is the meaning of Over-Soul, and what is the relation of Over-Soul to the Universal Sixth Principle? also, what is it that does the passing—what or who passes through the various forms? Ans.—The Over-Soul is universal intelligence or knowledge, the knowledge of all considered as one. What is the Universal Sixth Principle? The Over-Soul, Buddhi. Now, we have an idea of “my” knowledge, and “your” knowledge, as if it were our own. It is, in a way, but knowledge is one. An idea of unity must prevail in a consideration of all these subjects and ideas. There is one knowledge; it is the knowledge of all considered as one; our knowledge is our own knowledge. Over-Soul is another word for that one body of perfected knowledge. The soul of each one is his hold on that. Now, what is it that goes through all this process of evolution? It is the Monad. Mr. Judge in the Ocean calls it the germ of self-consciousness. He does not say that is the Monad, but that is what the Monad is. The Monad is Life in manifestation, manifested Life. The term “Monad” has been used as if it were a differentiated something, but H. P. Blavatsky says it is used for convenience only, that it would be better to say, the Monad, or Life manifesting in the mineral kingdom, in the vegetable kingdom, in the animal kingdom, and so on. In the lower kingdoms, the “monad” is like a wave in the ocean of life. When the man stage is reached, there is a self-conscious Monad; the germ of self-consciousness has ripened. But it is not fully aware, yet it is aware of itself, and awake; that is so with each one of us. The Monad in the human kingdom is that ripened germ or sprouting germ of self-consciousness, that which wells up in each one and says, “I am my self.” This does not mean that any of the lower kingdoms become man—they are like grades in school through which life passes, to finally differentiate and act as a self-conscious Ego in the man form. 14 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Q.—Does the “spark,” as used in the Third Fundamental, change? If it does not change, what is the use of the Pilgrimage? Ans.—We fail to see that it is the finite which constitutes our experience; it is the Infinite which has the experience. Each one of us is both the finite and the Infinite. As the perceiver, we are the Infinite; we are forever unchanging. Each one of us can perfectly well answer that our experience constantly augments; there is no end to the growth of Soul, if we use the word “Soul” in the meaning of experience. What is the highest form of experience? Self-realization. The time must come, then, when a man realizes that in him and in everything else are both the finite and the Infinite, and that all finite or manifested existence has but one object—an ever—increasing realization of the nature of the Infinite, which is All. Ans.—That is not the statement of the Third Fundamental. The Third Fundamental says that no purely spiritual Buddhi—that is, no primary form of life—can have a completely self-conscious or a perfected existence until It has passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara. There could be no babies unless there were adults; there could be no eggs unless there were the chickens that laid them. The eggs do not lay the chickens; the chicken lays the egg. The analogy, then, is that action or evolution or manifestation begins in Spirit, not in matter. What is meant by “Spirit”? A collective or universal term for consciousness and that which issues from the pure essence of the universal Over-Soul has no consciousness of its own. The Secret Doctrine makes a graphic statement of the very beginning of Evolution. It calls the beginning “the descent of souls”—conscious and unconscious atoms. The greatest beings, says the Secret Doctrine cannot avoid reincarnation. But that’s quite different from descent through the elemental forms of the phenomenal world. Ans.—It is quite a wonderful thing to think of a man form, to recognize in one form all that there is in Nature. The human form represents a sample lot of the whole of Nature. Only through and in such a form could self-consciousness well up; it is a fitting instrument for a self-conscious life. In such a form, through such a combination of instruments, man can stand aside and look at himself; that is what self-consciousness means. The beings below man represent varying degrees of consciousness and intelligence, but they are like beings in a “state.” Their range is that state of intelligence, that state of consciousness—there is no individuality there. There is an incipient individuality as far below as the vegetable kingdom, so it is said; but not until the man stage is reached through natural impulse—the great give-and-take of Nature, with the higher forms of intelligence clothing themselves in the low ones and thus impressing them—only when the man stage is reached, is a universal instrument available, one that could be made universal because the whole of Nature is represented therein. Then there is a fitting instrument for the use of the self-conscious man. Think how it is with ourselves in a dream. In a dream we are the 15 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— state, ordinarily speaking; we are involved in the state; usually, we can step aside and look at ourselves. We can think of that, then, as representing a state of consciousness. But in normal wakefulness, we can examine our works, we can examine our thoughts, our feelings, our attitudes—step away from ourselves and look it all over. That is self-consciousness. Now, evolution means the expansion of that. Finally, not only is the universe our instrument, but we know it is. The consciousness of any being in it is, if we like, our consciousness, without our losing ourselves or our sense of Self. Ans.—Well, we really ought to answer that in this way. If the First Fundamental is true, this is a Universe of Life, no matter what kingdom it is. Now, lives exist in a state of unity; lives exist in an unorganized state; lives exist in an organized state; there are the three classes of lives or souls or monads. So, then, if we use the words of the Third Fundamental, and call it a Buddhi—a purely spiritual soul— then there is a purely spiritual soul in every atom of dust, just as much as there is in the greatest Mahatma, because it is a life beginningless and endless. Notice that no principles of manifestation are active in the purely spiritual Buddhi. After endless transmigration through induced activities, one principle of action wakes up; it was there latent all the time—it could not have been aroused if it had not been there. But, from the manifested stand-point, it had no existence. After a while, two principles of action are aroused; after another while, three elements of action, and then we have the mindless man. It is Life which travels through the kingdoms in a given state, with no activity whatever, any more than there is mobility in this paper. This paper is not active—but we can move it around. The air is not active in any conscious sense, but we are using it constantly, and in time that which we call air will have one element or principle of action of its own. Now, when three principles of action have been developed, we have the highest form of matter; then it is possible for another kind of induction to be set up. What is it? A life or soul in which all seven principles of action are active, can coalesce with it or incarnate in it, and then we have a human being. So it is Life, Life unorganized which moves from below up, and when finally three principles are active, it means an organized life, but with no consciousness of Self. The fully organized form of matter, makes it possible for a spiritual soul—that is, a self-conscious being, call it a reincarnating Ego—to enter incarnation. Then you have once more a seven-principled being here on earth. But remember that so far as the lower principles are concerned, it is induced action; so far as the higher principles are concerned—the Ego—it is a will action. In time this Life which constitutes what we call our body, the cells of our body, the molecules of our body, the atoms of our body—whatever we choose to call them—will have all the principles of action waked up, and when this obtains, you have the human being. After that, the progress is of necessity self-induced and self-devised. 16 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— into matter, is the same amount of self-induced and self-devised effort required as on the upward sweep? Ans.—Isn't it far easier to fall than it is to climb? Evolution, in the sense of the initiation of a period of universal manifestation, must necessarily proceed from the collective action of all the spiritual beings; but evolution, as applied to the individual being, at once calls for self-induced and self-devised exertion. It takes no effort for any being to move with the mass, no matter in what direction the mass may be moving—up, down, or otherwise. The effort comes in when the individual desires to pursue a course which is at variance with that pursued by the mass, and that is in the fourth stage of evolution.
Ans.—In the march of an army, there is universal motion. Does that imply any lack of individuality in the constituent soldiers who in their collectivity of orderly motion compose the army? H.P.B. tells us over and over again that, in attempting to consider these things, we have to depart from the methods of study and education which we are all familiar with in everyday life, and which we learn in our schools. She says that, since Theosophy in its origin deals with states of consciousness higher than the human, and with forms of matter more refined than any that we now know anything about, it follows that the only way for us to gain the clear perceptions and conceptions which are necessary is through analogy and correspondence. If man is, as she declares over and over again, the microcosm of the great macrocosm, then when any statement is made, our business is to search within ourselves to see some activity, some motion, some experience, some relativity in our consciousness which will fit the description given in regard to other states and forms of life and being. She declares that that is the only Ariadne thread which will lead us out of the labyrinth of misconception in which man is involved. It is astonishing to try this principle on ourselves, and, after reading a particular statement of the philosophy, say, “NOW, if that statement is true, there is that in me which I know, which I can identify, which corresponds to it. Let me find it. There is that in the working of everyday human consciousness which is analogous to, and corresponds with, anything and everything taught in the Secret Doctrine
Ans.—If there were not a limitation to free-will or any other kind of will, how could there be will at all? If there were not a limit to manifestation, there would be nothing but that which is Absolute. We have but to think to see that this is so. Our conception of free-will is actually a conception of will, but under a misleading guise. Our conception of will is causation without resistance. That is, we think we can set up any causes we please, and can pick the results that please us—kicking overboard the results that do not gratify our taste. But we all know that we get both kinds of results. Everyone has will, for will, primarily, is the power of selection, nothing else. Of two things, we choose that which to us appears better or dearer. So does an atom; so does everything and anything. Will, 17 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— then, in the sense of the exercise of the power to perceive, is absolutely universal—everywhere and in everything. Will in the spiritual sense could only mean the will as applied to one’s self. If we perceive a course of action which is better than our present one, let us pursue it. But generally we perceive that which is better for the other fellow to do, and try to make him do it. That is our conception Will; it is the scientific conception and the religious conception—it is called the will of "God". If we take all these English words which carry an occult value because they have a fundamental meaning, and then rigidly make our own definition of those terms in the light of Theosophical teachings, we shall be doing for ourselves precisely what H.P.B. does in all her writings. It is perfectly amazing in going through the Secret Doctrine to see with what scrupulous, constant and universal assiduity H.P.B. herself defines every term she uses. Now, if we read her definitions of will, and her statement in regard to the First Principle—that is, her statement in regard to the four presently manifested aspects of the First Principle—we can see how carefully she has expressed what she means in so far as the limitations of language permit. If we would compare her definitions of terms with those in the dictionary or with popular usage and understanding, we should often see that the two definitions are antithetical. Almost invariably, her use of the most common words is exactly the opposite of ours. Take, for example, the word “matter.” We habitually think and speak of matter as three-dimensional; it is not, and never was. It is two-dimensional; it is a reflecting surface. We are the third “dimension” of matter, and we never see it. Matter has no consciousness of its existence; it is we who have the consciousness of its existence, and we name that consciousness, to ourselves, “matter.” Go out and speak to a lump of rock and say, “Stone, move.” The stone does not answer. But if an Adept who actually understood the real nature of the stone said, “Move,” it would move, and He would not have to set up a highly involved industrial system to do it, either ! Ans.—H.P.B. defines what an. “independent conscious existence” is a few lines further on: It is self-consciousness or individuality; once acquired, it can be maintained by the individual himself, regardless of whether bodies come or go; regardless of whether universes come or go; it is a combination of intellect and will. We are self-conscious, but only in a limited way. We lose our self-consciousness every night when we go to sleep and we pick it up again in the morning. So it is as if we died at night and were re-manufactured every morning, just as at the time of our birth. Why? Because our self-consciousness is objective; it cannot be complete, so long as anything can even temporarily interrupt its continuity. If our consciousness were like the Mahatma’ s, it could not be interfered with by sleep; if it were like the Mahatma’s, it could not be interfered with by death. The continuity of consciousness means Life plus Will, plus knowledge or understanding, and that means the control of memory, so that memory becomes a faculty like our physical sense of sight—we can exercise it or refuse to exercise it, at will. No matter what we wished to look at, we could look at it, and if we wished to stop looking at it, we could stop looking at it. Memory is only a form of percep- 18 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— tion that is, the power of seeing. There has not yet been acquired in matter the full self-consciousness that sooner or later we all must acquire in matter. We have it on the plane of Spirit; we lose it every time we leave the plane of Spirit; we need not, but we do.
The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge, has long been a basic text-book in the study programme of the United Lodges of Theosophists. Published in 1893, two years after the passing of H. P. Blavatsky and five years after the issuance of The Secret Doctrine the Ocean first appeared in the modest form of a paper series. Mr. Judge is said to have written the whole of the Ocean in a week’s time, and, even making allowances for his prodigious capacity for work, this is a remarkable achievement. Yet, in another sense, The Ocean of Theosophy was started in 1887, when Mr. Judge printed An Epitome of Theosophy a brief pamphlet which nevertheless does full justice to the central Theosophical doctrine. The Epitome shows what was indeed the fact, that Mr. Judge was familiar with The Secret Doctrine’s synthesis of the Theosophic philosophy before H.P.B.’s work was printed, even as he had had “prior acquaintance” with Isis Unveiled in both cases Mr. Judge was one of those helping H.P.B. to prepare and organize the wealth of material provided her by her Adept teachers. In 1890 came the second forerunner of the Ocean—Echoes from the Orient—contributed anonymously by Mr. Judge to a Washington newspaper, in 21 installments. When, later in the year, the articles were collected in a pamphlet, Mr. Judge’s preface disclaimed any idea, on his part, of having “exhaustively treated’ the subject of Theosophy. As with the Ocean the evident aim of the Echoes is to invite not merely inquiry, but strong search for the truth toward which Theosophy points the way. The week in 1893 devoted by Mr. Judge to putting The Ocean of Theosophy on paper was thus itself an epitome, since the book manifestly echoes knowledge which was his in former births—as well as steady self- education in the then newly—recorded Theosophical teachings. To study the Ocean by continuous reference to the writings of H. P. Blavatsky is, then, a most natural procedure, for it follows the example set by Mr. Judge himself.
The present series, collected from stenographic notes of Ocean class
questions and answers, is a case in point, for attention is clearly and
constantly directed to the source material in H.P.B.’s Secret Doctrine As
Robert Crosbie has observed, the student will find that every statement in
the Ocean can be expanded by consulting H.P.B. ‘s book—and the Ocean class
which succeeds in stimulating this process of “testing and verifying” has
done the best it can, and all that it can, toward making Mr. Judge’s
text-book a living Theosophical manual. 19 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— up in an informal Ocean class, have appeared in our last three issues. As an introduction to this series of answers to questions in the same class, we give part of a talk on the book itself. Next, following the general programme of the study classes, we will present the questions and answers devoted to the Ocean proper. It should be said that the answers to be presented in this series were originally given extemporaneously, and this quality will serve to remind the reader that the statements made are suggestive rather than authoritative. The obvious intent of the speaker was to turn inquirers to the recorded teaching itself, whence they might derive “an inspiration of their own” to answer their own deeper questions, and to guide them across the ocean of Theosophy. —————————— Perhaps there are those here who have found life a puzzle, a mystery rather than a problem. They have tried out their own experience, and found not enough in it to solve the mystery; they have been to academic philosophy, to organized religion, or to orthodox science, whatever it may be, and found no answer. Coming to this Ocean class, they may for the first time in their lives be in a student frame of mind, open-minded enough to look in a new direction. Now we introduce them to Mr. Judge. First, will they not see here an honest man, writing not for his sake, but for theirs and ours, and writing of what he understands, in order that we all may gain some little understanding? What moved Mr. Judge to write The Ocean of Theosophy Take the first sentence of the preface: “An attempt is made in the pages of this book to write of Theosophy in such a manner as to be understood by the ordinary reader.” Second, let us apply a simple test to Mr. Judge, as we can to Mme. Blavatsky—a test by which we shall soon learn the difference between what these two wrote and what lesser students have written in regard to Theosophy. To Illustrate: when the colonists settled in New England, they gave the Indians some gunpowder and showed them what to do with it. The Indians reasoned according to their experience, and what did they do with the gunpowder? They went out and planted it so as to raise a crop. Again: a man takes a slab of oak lumber and plants it. He doesn’t raise any oak trees; but he does if he takes an acorn and plants it. So, in everything H.P.B. writes, in everything Mr. Judge writes, is a seed value, and that is a value we nearly always miss. No preacher can write about religion if he does not himself know. The hundreds of students who have written books about Theosophy, in just as fine language, just as interesting, just as detailed, just as explicit—often more so, in fact—were handing us shavings Not a thing they have written will grow when planted in the mind. If we were to take The Ocean of Theosophy as material stuff for our intellectual clothing, that would be all we should get out of it. If we were to read it out of mere curiosity, we should have only an interest in something that is novel. The curious man, as distinguished from the interested man, will never look at the same thing more than twice; he will never read the same book more than once. or twice; after that his interest wanes, because his “interest” was curiosity. Those who read the Ocean merely for comparative purposes—that is, to see how It differs from what some other writer says—will derive from it only the comparison; they won’t get seed values 20 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— How can we determine that the Ocean has seed values? Take any given sentence in the Ocean that conveys an idea complete and intact in itself. One who thinks about that idea, will find it germinates; it grows at once; and it will wake up things in his own nature that he did not know were there. The writing of a true teacher, at any time, in any place and in any nation, can be told by its “seed value.” William Q. Judge wrote the Ocean in peculiar circumstances. A. P. Sinnett had written, in 1881, The Occult World exciting the curiosity of tens upon tens of thousands people. But the philosophy in The Occult World the noble ethics in the book, were seen by scarcely any one who read it. Instead, the impression was, “What a wonderful man Sinnett was What wonderful phenomena H.P.B. performed” Then Mr. Sinnett wrote Esoteric Buddhism which was an attempt to present in terms understandable by the ordinary reader the teachings of Theosophy. Yet, few men can read Esoteric Buddhism and derive moral elevation out of it. It treats of Theosophy from a one-life stand-point, from the stand-point of our thinking brain; in other words, from the materialistic stand point. At the time the Ocean was written, Esoteric Buddhism more widely circulated than any other single Theosophical book, had almost entirely displaced Isis Unveiled The Secret Doctrine and all the other literature of Theosophy. Sinnett’s book is very simple; nobody can misunderstand it. A christian can read it clear through and never get a jolt; a Spiritualist can read it clear through and think Sinnett was talking about Spiritualism. Everybody read Esoteric Buddhism because it was so simple to understand, and it was so, so nice that not a thing in it would offend anybody-’s feelings. People read it and were none the wiser; people read it and were none the better. They grafted whatever they could catch on to their christianity, their Spiritualism, their materialism, and called themselves Theosophists To compare the method of treatment of The Ocean of Theosophy with that of Esoteric Buddhism is amazing. A man can read a thousand Esoteric Buddhism’s and never dream that Theosophy relates to himself. No man with ordinary intelligence can sit down and read the Ocean without having the realization strike him at one point or another that Theosophy pertains and belongs not to somebody else, to some other world, some other chain of globes, some other incarnation, but to himself, here and now. That is the seed of Mr. Judge’s book. Another reason Mr. Judge had for writing the Ocean is shown in the closing paragraph of the preface: “No originality is claimed for this book. The writer invented none of it, discovered none of it, but has simply written that which he has been taught and which has been proved to him. It therefore is only a handing on of what has been known before.” This is almost a paraphrase of H.P.B.’s statement in the Introduction to The Secret Doctrine where she repeats what Confucius said: “I only hand on; I cannot create new things.” Why did Mr. Judge speak as “the writer,” instead of using the word “I”? He saw that the personal pronoun, I, was totally misread in the world. The Hindus have made out of Brahmâ, out of Krishna, out of Vishnu, out of Siva, gods outside of man, because of the use of the pronoun I. Christians have made out of Jesus an outside God, and turned his teachings around to mean that mortal man is only to be saved by an immortal god independent of mankind—all because they misunderstood the use of the first personal pronoun 21 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— This brings us to one of the great teachings of the Ocean : the true nature of the ego. “I” is the sound uttered at every breath. The Sanskrit word is Aham and it means the Om. Literally, I, the English form of Aham means “I am that I am,” the phrase attribute to Jehovah in the Bible. When such an one as Jesus says “I,” he is using the pronoun for the Ego in a totally different sense than we do. When we say we are speaking from the stand-point of the personal ego, but a man like Jesus manifestly speaks from another stand-point—that of the true, the reincarnating ego. The comparative value of the teachings of Jesus, and those of Lao Tse, or of Buddha, or Krishna, is indicated by Krishna’s use of the word I. Krishna’s is not a use made by a reincarnating ego, but a conception of “I” that almost transcends our imagination, for Krishna uses “I” in the sense of universal self-consciousness. Universal self-consciousness, egoic self-consciousness, and personal self-consciousness are all one self-consciousness—three modes of the same vision. The first chapter of the Ocean—the first paragraph, after Theosophy is defined—says, “All is soul and spirit ever evolving under the rule of law which is inherent in the whole.” Mr. Judge has already spoken of law on the first page. Now he says that all, all, from atom to Brahmâ, from Satan to Jehovah, all, all, is soul and spirit. Turning to Patanjali— whose Yoga Aphorisms no one has better rendered into English than Mr. Judge—we find what the soul is: “The soul is the perceiver; is assuredly vision itself pure and simple; unmodified; and it looks directly upon ideas.” If that statement is true, what are we? We are soul and spirit. What, then, was Judge’s purpose? To so rouse us, to so touch us—not as bodies, not as persons, not as educated men and women, not as illiterate people, not as saints, or sinners—but to so touch our souls that we would for a moment make the primary assumption, “I am a soul and as so I will look forth upon these ideas.” Mr. Judge desired that we might look upon what he had written through his eyes, that we might see what he saw when he wrote. He wished to endow us, if you please, with his vision for a time. If the highest see through the eyes of the lowest, as in fact they do, and as we do almost habitually, then by turning the vision inward, the lowest may see through the eyes of the highest. How is it that here and there in some rare rejuvenating instant we meet some person, we hear some tone, we see some sight, we read some book, we have some form of contact with the soul and spirit around us, so that we see as we never saw before? Just for an instant we are looking forth on this same universe through the eyes of the highest. What is the highest in us? Soul and spirit in the egoic sense. We look through the eyes of the body, habitually, and so we see all things as matter reflects them. Once in a while, we look with the eyes of desire, and we see all things as desires reflect them. Very rarely, we look out in an abstract measuring equipoise of reason, and then we see all this universe with what kind of eyes? With the eyes of Manas per se. When we look with the eyes of the body, we are bound to be affected by what we see; we are bound to go by what we see; and in no long time the man thinks, “I am this body; I began with this body; when this body terminates, I cease.” And if a man looks with the eyes of desire, he never looks back, he never looks at the present; he is forever just ahead. His word is Tomorrow, Mañana. Desire always relates to the future, when we shall possess something we do not now possess, acquire something we do not now have, and so on. And the reasoning, what is that? That is 22 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— weighing the future against the past, or weighing the past against the future; both dead, because the unborn are, as far as this world is concerned, just as dead as those who have passed away. Now, Judge says, Atma-Buddhi-Manas—soul and spirit plus universal consciousness—they and no other are we. Can we see that through the eyes of matter? Can we see through the eyes of any Christian sect that there is no difference whatever between us and Christ, save the difference in attitude? Never does a Christian church stress the identity existing between man and the Supreme Spirit. Never in all the four quarters of the globe, in any popular religion whatever, is the inquirer helped to grasp the fact that great beings, supernal beings, have come amongst us over and over again. They come, not to overwhelm us with their knowledge and power, not to show us an impassable gulf separating themselves from us, as between Dives and Lazarus; but to tell us that the difference is all in the use made of the vision by the soul itself. The Soul is the perceiver. How is he using his power of vision? That is one of the great lessons of The Ocean of Theosophy It can be read with the eye of mind, with the eye the senses, with the eye of aspiration—that is, with the desire to become great, to gain powers, to shine before men—or it can be read with the eye of soul and spirit, and the reader becomes intimately acquainted with the rest of himself, and with the whole of nature, embodied and disembodied. In order to make this ideal possible for us to grasp, Mr. Judge opens The Ocean of Theosophy by teaching of Masters. What is a Master? He is a being, a perceiver, in whom is embodied the whole universe, past, present and to come—a conscious embodiment of the whole of nature. Think what it means that there are such Beings, that they were once as we are, that They are our Elder Brothers, that what They are, we are on the road to becoming. This conception of Masters follows upon the concept of law, and upon the concept that all is soul and spirit—that the only difference between us and the greatest Master is that we have not yet completed the assimilation, understanding and control which shall make us a perfected embodiment of the whole of nature, of its kingdoms, of its operations. The great thing about the Ocean is that by studying it Theosophically, we can gain enough understanding of Theosophy to come in contact with the mind of William Q. Judge. Having come in contact with the mind of William Q. Judge, we can come in contact with William Q. Judge; and having come in contact with William Q. Judge, we can come in contact with all the beings of the class to which he belongs. If all is soul, if all is spirit, then to whatever extent we are interested in the same things that the Adepts are, we are an embodiment of all the Adepts and devoted to Their Cause—humanity.
Q.—What is meant in Theosophy by “Soul”? Is man, as a Soul, the same as the Ego; that is, are Soul and the reincarnating Ego the same? Ans.—Suppose we take the statement made on the second page of the Ocean that, even down to the minutest atom, no matter how we regard it or what we may name it, what visible or what changing appearance may present—actually, “All is Soul and Spirit.” If the question is, “What is Soul?” Soul is everything;—there is nothing that is not Soul and 23 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Spirit in its basic nature. Then the question naturally arises, What is the distinction between the Soul and Spirit? It would be worth while to look in The Theosophical Glossary for a brief memorandum by H.P.B. under the word Spirit She says that the word “Spirit” ought in fact never to be used except in direct relation to the Universal Consciousness, but that a great confusion is due to warring conceptions, so that the words “Soul” and “Spirit’ are used indiscriminately. Now, if we take “Spirit” to refer first, last, and all the time to Consciousness from the Universal point of view, just as we use the word “Matter” for the universal basis of all form then, with Spirit as the universal basis of all consciousness, Soul would be the individual form of Spirit—just as we say “matter” and “body,” not meaning two different things, but one, matter being the universal stuff from which all bodies are formed. Then we would have in “matter” and “body” a perfectly good analogy to what is metaphysically meant by the words “Spirit” and “Soul.” If, then, we take man as a Soul-Life or Consciousness, which, as Mr. Judge says, is “ever evolving under the rule of law which is inherent in the whole”—man represents a Soul which has reached a given stage in the evolution of individual consciousness. The animal below us is no less Soul than we are; the Life in the vegetable and the mineral kingdom is no less Soul than we are; but their stage of evolution, their stage in the gradual progress towards individualized permanent consciousness, is behind ours. Using “Soul” in that sense, man as a Soul and as the reincarnating Ego mean one and the same thing.
Ans.—The life of a civilization is much longer than the life of a single generation of men—call the life of a civilization about 2,000 years. The Great Teachers come at the birth of a new civilization, and the birth, the genesis of the new, is always while the old is still on the stage. The men and women who will be running this country 10, 15, 20 years from now are on earth right now, and many of the boys and girls who will be running this earth 30 or 50 years hence are here now. So there are cycles when Great Teachers come and there are cycles when lesser Teachers come. So far as Theosophy is concerned, the statement is made that Teachers have never been absent from the race. With regard to the present effort, it began in the l4th century with Tsong-kha-pa, in Tibet, and with Western Teachers bringing the same truths in Europe.
Ans.—Is there one of us but knows, if he asks himself, that we gain knowledge both by experience and from observation? It is only when we look wholly outside that we ask such a question as that. In fact, in reading the Ocean or any of the other Theosophical books, we might try to bear in mind that there is that in us, a department of our nature, where the knowledge actually exists of anything and everything that the Teachers write about; then, we would begin to look within ourselves to corroborate, from the harvest of our own past experience, our observation of what the Teachers say. There is, however a vast difference between a man asleep or a man 24 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— dreaming, and a man awake. The thing to observe is that it’s the same man, regardless of what state he is in. Let us apply that to knowledge: if this teaching is true, we have been active and a part of this solar system ever since it had a beginning—not to go farther back. There isn’t a single state, a single condition, a single form of life and being in this solar system that every one of us has not been through tens of thousands of times in all the kingdoms below as well as in the present human kingdom; in all of the seven states of consciousness, not merely the one we are aware of now. Where is this experience? It is asleep in us, and, in the religious man and the scientific man, it’s dreaming. Our business, then, is to awaken to the same kind of consciousness that we have here and now in other states of matter and on other planes of life and being. Only a part of our nature is awake. At other times, in the past, other parts of our nature have been awake. We identify ourselves with the part of our nature that is awake; we do not recognize our whole nature, and so make no effort to rouse that part of us which is present but not active.
Ans.—Learning from observation distinguishes man—even the savage, the lowest of men—from the brute kingdom. Animals cannot learn from observation; they can learn only by experience. Why can’t they learn by observation? Well, the meanest of men always “sees double.” If the impulse rises in him, say, to run from something that he sees, he can say, “Well, shall I run or shall I stand fast and fight?” And no matter how much his legs want to run, he can choose to stand and fight, and do it. But when the same situation presents itself to the animal, it has only one perception, fight It never reasons. Why doesn’t it reason? It sees no contrast. It can see only one thing at a time. Now if we observe ourselves, we will find that 99% of what we know comes from observation. What does the other 1% come from? Experience. We conduct ourselves by bringing what we see (observation) and what we experience into coadunition and consubstantiality: that is knowledge. Ans.—Well, if we use the word “observation” in a subordinate, and the word “experience” in a general, sense, then all observation is a part of our experience; but if we take the two words as they stand, “observation” and “experience,” then experience is direct perception and observation is indirect perception. Old Patanjali says that the means of knowledge are three not two—as we think of them when we say “observation and experience.” The first means of knowledge, says Patanjali, is direct perception—that is what we call experience. One who has tasted tabasco sauce knows that it is liquid fire: that is direct perception. The second form of knowing is by the direct perception of others which they tell us about. They may tell us, “Don’t drink that bottle of tabasco as you would drink a glass of water,” and, attaching sincerity, good faith and common-sense to them, we only smell of the sauce or touch it with our tongue; we go slowly. So we have direct perception of our own, which is experience; we have the testimony of others in regard to their experience; and then we have, says Patanjali, a third method, inference the 25 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— deductions which we make whether from our own experience or from the testimony of others. Now, there is a fourth method of knowledge that we seldom think about. It is peculiar to the Adepts. Have you ever thought of the expression, “Universal. Brotherhood,” or union, as the means par excellence of gaining knowledge? And yet the 13th page [p. 12 Am. Ed.] of the first chapter of the Ocean shows us clearly that that’s the way the Masters get their knowledge. At the bottom of the 12th page (pg. 11 American Edition), it says that the Mahatmas have power over space, time, mind, and matter, precisely because they are perfected men; that is, they have had a sufficiency of experience, of testimony, of inference, to satisfy them that there is fundamentally no separateness at all between one being and another, one state and another. The separateness is in one’s own eye. If we think so, there is separateness; if we don’t think so, there isn’t. Then They said to Themselves, why couldn’t I put myself in that man’ s place? If I could just do that, I would feel as he feels; I would think as he thinks; I would get all of his experience instantly. Suppose they want to know about ants. Do they read books on ants? No. Do they hire people to go out and observe ants, experiment with them, and get testimony about them? No. The Mahatma puts himself in the ant’s place, and instantly he knows the universe as an ant knows it, feels it and lives it. This, then, is the method which Patanjali describes as peculiar to the ascetics.
Ans.—To us who have no direct knowledge of our own that there are Masters of Wisdom, our conviction—or lack of it—our belief or disbelief, must rest upon evidence and testimony, and no matter how good the evidence may be in regard to anything, it does not make it a certainty. Thus, in our minds must always exist the possibility that there are no such Beings as Masters of Wisdom—until when? Until we know for ourselves that there are such Beings, until we come into direct contact with them. From our stand-point, it is a matter of the consideration of evidence, not of first-hand knowledge. Bearing this in mind, Mr. Judge talks to us in our own language. There is no “probably” about it in his case, because he knew for himself that such Beings exist. Have you not noticed that, whenever a man asserts positively and without qualification something that he may know but that we do not know, the very flat-footedness of the assertion arouses in us an element of opposition? We do not know, and something in us tells us that the man is trying to take advantage of us, when he affirms without qualification something to be so that he knows but we do not know. There is a freedom from dogmatism, a freedom from pressure or coercion on the soul of the listener or of the inquirer or of the believer, for that matter, by the simple putting in of that word “probably.” The evidence that we have studied satisfies us that such Beings must exist today; so we are 26 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— studying and trying to apply Theosophy. If we do that and if such Beings do exist, the time must come when we will contact Them, and then there will be no “probably” about it for us.
Ans.—Very evidently, the one who asked that question sees, just as clearly as any Mahatma could see, what a free and independent Theosophist is, and knows perfectly well for himself that if a man obeys the laws of all Life, he is the only one who could be a friend of the human race. What, then, is the matter? Why the question? There is such a thing as not having enough confidence in ourselves. If a man sees, and knows that he sees, then to the extent that he sees and that he knows that he sees, he is an Adept. Why shouldn’t he rely on his own perception, his own inference, and merely check it, corroborate it by the testimony of others? If we had more faith in ourselves, we would have far more faith in the Masters, and the converse is just as true; in fact, even more true. It’s a strange thing and perhaps it is one of the reasons why Mr. Judge and H.P.B began their teachings with a discussion of the Masters of Wisdom. Unless we see that there are beings as much higher than we are, as, in Mr. Huxley’s phrase, we are higher than a black beetle, and that these beings were not born that way; that they became what they are through observation, experience and inference—and by living according to the laws of Life—we shall not have confidence that there are Masters. But once we have that confidence, results flow: each of us begins to have confidence in himself, no matter how big a fool he may be, or how bad a sinner, or how many mistakes he makes; then he begins to have confidence in his brother man, no matter how big a fool he is, or how big a sinner he is, or how many mistakes he has made. That is the first real step in Universal Brotherhood.
Ans.—Using our own powers of observation, and then checking by our own experience, can’t we all see, both in regard to ourselves and in regard to other men in every walk of life, that things our fathers were so sure were the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth things they never doubted and never questioned—we totally disbelieve or wholly doubt? Take, say, religion. Only a little while ago, practically speaking, nobody doubted that there was a personal god; that there were miracles; that if a man did not become a member of some Christian church, he would be out of luck when he died. Who believes that today? There has been a tremendous transition in our minds. Turn to modern science. Only a little while ago, men believed that science would solve every problem in the universe. Any number of men had 27 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— the same faith in the theories of science that other people had in the revelations of religion. Who takes any stock in scientific theories today? No scientist. You can’t find a single scientist who will bank on any scientific theory. They are far more honest in that respect than the preachers are, for they say, “This is just a working hypothesis.” Wasn’t it Sir David Brewster who, discussing the theories of light, said that the only thing a scientist can do at present is to believe in the corpuscular theory of light on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the rest of the week act on the theory that light is just a rate of vibration? The two theories are absolutely antithetical. And so with many theories of science. Look around the world political, social, mechanical. In the years since the first world war, what a colossal change has taken place in the attitude of the populace as a whole towards freedom for women; that is, that they have just the same right to think for themselves, to choose for themselves, to act on their own responsibility, as a man has. Why, that is the most unimaginable, incredible change in the state of mind of the race for the last twenty centuries; and so on, all up and down the line. The Ocean statement means, then, that the mind of the race, instead of being rigid and following age-old ruts or grooves, is becoming fluidic. Men will listen to anything. The phrase goes, “Try anything once.” Doesn’t this mean that we are rapidly coming to the point where one can describe the human mind as an open mind? When the mind of the race actually is an open mind, there is a chance to do what, up to date, Theosophy has been able to do for a handful only; there is a chance to sow the seed of Theosophical teachings broadcast to all men everywhere. When the thirst of the race for power, for money, for glory, for self-indulgence is dried away—when the mind of the race says: Life is not worth living if that’s all Life is for—then, men will be led to study the great idea of Brotherhood, to see that Karma and Reincarnation are laws of evolution, and to believe in the existence of Masters not, as miracles but as teachers as our Elder Brothers; the race mind will have so changed that it will welcome these Elder Brothers presence amongst us as teachers, as guides, as philosophers, as workers, as friends. And then They will come.
Q.—The Ocean says, “In place of ‘the Absolute’ we can use the word Space.” Since the One Reality or the Absolute is beyond the range and reach of thought, unthinkable and unspeakable, it would seem that Mr. Judge must have referred to Absolute Abstract Space, which is just as in conceivable to our mind as Absolute Abstract Motion. Could we infer, then, that Space of which we can have any thought or conception whatever is the first aspect of the One Reality, Law the second aspect, and Evolution the third? Ans.—Why,
yes, we can have any conception we want to or that we are capable of, but
why not go back to first principles? In her discussion of the First
Fundamental in The Secret Doctrine H.P.B. gives us Space as a symbol, but
she tells us why she gives that symbol. She says Space is the one thing
that no being can exclude from his mind or include in his mind. Don’t we
see that that is a perfect symbol of the 28 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— sent, eternal, boundless, immutable principle? We can exclude from our minds the Source, and we can include It in our minds. It is the Source not only of our mind but of all the other minds in Nature. The Christian takes one born of the dilemma—he puts the Source out side himself in outer space, and the personal god is the legitimate off spring of this idea. The philosopher or the Stoic tries to find his idea of the Source within the limits, the horizon, of his own thinking; he includes by excluding. Space is within and without; it can neither be included nor excluded; and that is why it is given as a symbol of the One Reality. Read the Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge H.P.B. says that people are forever talking about Space as if it were either an absolute void or a plenum. It is neither, because it is both. We can see that there are things that our minds cannot grasp. No matter who we are, a great sage or an angel, there are things that our minds cannot grasp; and yet we reach out for them. Does this not tell us that there is something higher than the human mind? Then, why not rise to that plane of life and thus see things that are mysteries to us? To try to grasp with our mind that which is beyond mind is just as if an animal were to try to reduce human consciousness within the terms of its rudimentary and lower plane of life. The purpose of Theosophy, then, is to arouse man, that is, to waken him out of the psychic somnambulism which we call human nature, to shake him up from this waking dream, to the reality of his own being, and then he is on the plane of Higher Manas. What then? Why, with respect to that, H.P.B. says that it is only by means of the Higher Mind that we can ever hope to reach into the depths of the all-pervading Absoluteness; that is to say, once in the true awakened state of mind, we can reach into the all-pervading depths of Absoluteness. The whole of Theosophy is merely an attempt to wake men up by turning their attention to the fact that there is something higher in them than they can ever dream of. No wonder people say, “Wake up”. Ans.—Do we not recall the statement of the seven great divisions of the Kosmos given by Mr. Judge in this chapter? Does he not say that the universe evolves in seven ways and seven planes in all worlds, and that the divisions may be thus roughly stated: The Absolute, Spirit, Mind, Matter, Will, Akasa and Life? These are represented in everything that is, with this distinction, that in the Kosmos as a whole, all seven of these great Principles are inherently universal and therefore impersonally active; in the case of the beings below Man, they are not individually active but sporadically active, as in the four lower human principles; while in any man, whether considered as a human being or as a Mahatma, all these seven principles are actually active individually; that is, he can operate them, divert them, direct them himself.
Ans.—Let us seek an analogy in our own experience: We say, “He gave up the ghost.” That is, he gave up the breath; he breathed his last breath. What does that mean? Dissolution, the death of that which 29 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— was an active form. We say, “He drew his first breath”; he took breath. If the newborn babe does not do that, he does not become viable; he is dead at the beginning of the journey instead of at the end. Apply that to the whole universe: There is the birth of a universe: that is the beginning of the Great Breath; there is the life of the universe, or the continuance of the breathing; and then there is the death of the universe, or the dissolution of the Breath, the return of life to its original condition.
Ans.—The incoming and the outgoing Breath. All breath consists first of an inception, next of a retention, and finally of an exhalation; then of a new inception, a new retention and a new exhalation, and so on, over and over again. There is reincarnation, or re-embodiment, or change, applied to everything that is, from a solar system down to the minutest conceivable atom. What causes this? Polarity, attractive and repulsive forces, the affinities of Nature, positive and negative attractions; and those are personified as “Father” and “Mother.” In everyone of us there are positive forces; in everyone of us there are negative forces; we are anon active and anon passive—receptive in this, that or the other direction. Personify that and you have the “Father” and the “Mother.” They are both in us and may alternate; that which is at this moment positive may the next become passive. Ans.—Actually the expression is one coined by the translators of the Bible, the King James version, the common Bible of the Protestant sects: “He gave up the ghost,” it says in one place; “He yielded up the ghost,” in another. You know, all over the world amongst every kind of people there has always existed, and there persists now, the idea that at death something which is the counterpart of the living, visible, physical body, and which ordinarily is invisible, leaves the body. This “invisible” form is often spoken of as the wraith. And so at the departure of the astral body, its separation from the physical, we say “He gave up the ghost.”
Ans.—Well, one answer is that it is Karma, of course. It is evident that the egos who are not Jews in religion or nationality or tradition have been tremendously or powerfully affected by the egos who have constituted in the past the Semitic or Hebraic race. We see that everywhere. In another sense, the answer is that they fastened the personal god on us. Then the next question is, What is the connection between the Jews and the Egyptians It is probable that Mr. Judge is referring there to the story in the Old Testament about how the Jews went down into Egypt; his older brothers sold old Jacob’s second youngest son—Joseph—into slavery because they were jealous of him. Afterwards, in time of famine, the whole Jacobite clan moved to Egypt where Joseph had become a popular politician, you might say. They multiplied exceedingly, and finally, according to the Old Testament and according to such traditions in 30 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— history, the Egyptians enslaved and frightfully abused the Jews during many centuries. The Theosophical teaching is that those Egyptian egos are the very ones who form the advance guard of civilization in Europe, and particularly in America; and so the Jews came back. The pendulum reverses and we have been enslaved; we, who enslaved them physically, have been enslaved by them financially and religiously—the two meaning the same thing. Ans.—If we were familiar with our Bible, could we not answer that ourselves? The Jews had the ideas of a creation, that is, an evolution; then they had the idea of a destruction by flood, fire or whatnot; and then, the renovation. But the doctrine itself is that this process is periodic, without beginning and without end; in the procession of cycles that is, of creation, of preservation, of destruction or regeneration, over and over again. So the Jews had only the idea of one particular creation, one particular flood; they had no idea of cyclic law. Ans.—What is meant by the term “Universal Matter”? It is that substance of which all bodies are composed, but the bodies are not one thing and the matter something else. So Universal Mind is that which consists of and includes all intelligence of every degree in the manifested universe, high or low visible or invisible.
Ans.—The same distinction that there is between man the perceiver and man the creator.
Next, we would have to combine and recombine those lives or forces 31 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— of nature in the state we now know as the mineral kingdom—combine and recombine them until we could form out of the most advanced of them a vegetable kingdom; then erect an animal kingdom; and then take the organic structure, the cellular and crystalline basis of all three kingdoms, and erect out of that a form that we could use as a sending and receiving instrument—an acting instrument—in every one of the seven kingdoms. That is what is meant by the “priests” and the “counselors” and the “servants’ training of the non-self-conscious lives, their combinations in the kingdoms of the forces or elementals, and in the kingdoms of nature known to us, until it would be possible to build out of them one single form in which all the activities of the whole solar system could be independently reproduced; and that is the body and nature of man.
Ans.—Matter never becomes man; man never becomes spirit; and spirit never becomes matter. These are just terms for the three great states of Life. What is it that becomes matter? Life. What is it that, when it knows enough, becomes mind? Life. What is it that, when it knows still more, becomes spirit? Life. It is Life that passes from spirit to matter to mind and returns again to spirit, just as it is man who passes from waking to dreaming to deep sleeping and back to waking again; but the waking state never becomes the dream state; the dreaming state never becomes the deep sleep state, or vice versa.
H.P.B. says that Spirit is always descending into matter and matter is always evolving into Spirit. Is not original or primordial matter in reality Spirit? Could you amplify that quotation as to how Universal Mind evolves these worlds? Ans.—Analogy is always, says H.P.B., our best guide. What do we consider as the final form that all experience takes with us? It is one of two things—knowledge or memory, and either the knowledge or the memory, or both of them, may be latent or active. Suppose we substitute for the words “Spirit and Matter, knowledge and memory and there is the final form into which everything is resolved. Now, at the beginning of manifestation, Spirit, which is knowledge, stirs up Matter or memory, and thus the plan is brought over, since nothing perishes either in the form of Spirit, Consciousness, or knowledge, or in the form of latent memory or Matter. Memory as the basis of action is merely the tendency to repeat. All mechanical action, all chemical action, all electrical action, is the clearest picture in the world of the action of memory. If we study the question from this stand-point, into what is everything finally resolved with us? Into memory or knowledge. Memory takes many forms when stirred up—tendency, habit, instinct, impulse, the imitative faculty. What stirs up memory? Consciousness or knowledge. 32 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Chapter III Q.—On p. 24 (p. 23 Am. Ed.), at the bottom, Mr. Judge writes:— The earth is one of seven globes in respect to man’s consciousness only, because when he functions on one of the seven he perceives it as a distinct globe and does not see the other six. What is meant by “in respect to man’s consciousness only”? When we are in another state of consciousness, are we on another globe? Ans.— What we can see is one thing at a time, and what we are now seeing is the universe, isn’t it? But we are in fact seeing the universe, so to say, through the eyes of only one of our seven principles; that is, the fourth one. Whenever the opposite principle becomes active, the fourth principle goes to sleep, and then we see the universe with the eye of Spirit instead of with the eye of desire. We can’t see the universe, except from one point of view at a time. At present we are seeing the universe from the human point of view—waking human consciousness. Now, tonight we go to sleep; it is the same “we,” and we see the universe, but we do not see nearly as much of it; we do not even know that we are looking at something else. In fact, we aren’t looking at something else—we are looking at the same universe from the point of view of the astral consciousness instead of the waking consciousness. After we die, it is the same “we", the same universe, but we are looking at it from a different point of view and we see another world. As a matter of fact, the universe can be looked at in seven different ways, and those seven different ways are called the seven globes of our planetary chain. The universe is always a study in consciousness, and nothing else. An ant is as much Life as we are and in a sense is much more intelligent, because it has no politics, no government and no religion, and—it knows its business How different this same universe of ours must seem to an ant How different this universe must seem to the Life locked up in the stone—the same universe, the same consciousness, in a stone. How different this universe looks to us when we are happy, from the way it looks when we are unhappy; how different it looks when we are in love, from how it looks when we think nobody cares for us, nobody loves us. It is the same universe all the time, the same Self all the time, but the universe looks utterly different according to the point of view, or the state of consciousness. Ans.—But the statement is not that everything in the universe has all its seven principles active at the same time. It is in man alone that all the seven principles may become active, but in order for all seven to become active at once, they must be unified. How many principles has a Mahatma? One. He has Atman, and since Atman is the source of all the principles, he emits the principles as the occasion requires. How many kinds of lever is our body? All kinds of levers. Is our body a lever? No, but it can at once be used as a lever of the first, the second, or the third class. Take, say, what we call. the mineral kingdom: only one principle is active, and that principle is active only as our body is active when we are asleep—it is only breathing. Take the vegetable kingdom; it is clear to one who studies it from the stand-point of consciousness that 33 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— the same consciousness which, in the mineral kingdom, is sound asleep—externally—is, in the vegetable kingdom, beginning to dream. Then take the animal creation as a whole; it has identically the same consciousness as manifests in the other kingdoms. At times it is asleep and at times it is dreaming. Animal consciousness is mostly dreaming; but fitfully, under shock, it will wake for a second, like a flash of lightning. We know electricity can make a flash of lightning, or the steady glow of lights in a room. Come to man: he has his period of waking consciousness, that is, self-consciousness, and his period of animal consciousness; but, when his human consciousness is active, his animal consciousness is dreaming or asleep. When his animal consciousness is active, his vegetative and human aspects of consciousness are asleep or dozing. We pass up and down the four states, mineral, vegetable, animal and human, and don’t notice that we are doing it.
Between the end of any great race and the beginning of another there is a period of rest. What is the nature of that rest, and are there any records of it? Ans.—Between the great races, of which there are seven in each Round, there is a period of rest, when all the active principles of this plane cease to be active, and this plane goes to sleep. The analogy between Pralaya and this period about which the question is asked—which H.P.B. calls “obscuration”—is the same analogy as that between death and sleep. Our Earth Chain dies every so often; when it dies, it dissolves, just as our body does, to be re-formed just as a reincarnating body is formed. But the earth, so far as we know, sleeps between the great races. What becomes of US? We go to another globe, just as we go to another globe or state of consciousness in dream, in sleep and after death. We may go to the globe below this or we may go to the globe above this, as the case may be; but the self-conscious egos leave the globe between races. If we regard the universe and man as consisting in their perfection during manifestation of seven elements, and all the beings in that universe as seven-principled beings, then it can be seen that these seven globes relate to the seven fundamental elements into which everything can be reduced and to the seven fundamental principles—our basis of collective action or manifestation. The principle that is now active—Kama-Manas—did not exist on Globe A; Kama-Manas did not exist on Globe B, or on Globe C, or D, or E, or F, or G during the first three Rounds, and it 34 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— did not exist in this Round until we reached Globe D; Kama was then utterly different, just as, say, the flesh of our bodies, although matter, is just as different as can be from the chemical elements from which it has been derived. So Kama, the principle of action, in the kingdoms below man, is just as different from that same Kama in man as our flesh is different from the chemical elements. Until the two lines of evolution, the physical and the spiritual, were conjoined in the same form, we had no Kama-Manas; we had the active principle, memory, in the form of impulse, desire and habit in the three lower kingdoms; the Monad, Atma-Buddhi, represents the spiritual line of evolution; the two lines conjoined by the descent of the reincarnating Ego—Manas—into a form of matter, and we have the universe as it is now.
Ans.—Literally, it means the root of matter. Oftentimes, you know, you can get at the truth by a process of elimination as well as by a process of addition. Now consider the universe; it is enormously compound, whether regarded physically or metaphysically; it is highly complex. Suppose we begin dissolving it just as we dissolve things chemically. Into how many elements can we dissolve it? According to the teachings of Theosophy, the whole universe and everything in it can be finally dissolved into seven elements. How about those seven elements? Can they be dissolved? Yes, they also can all be dissolved or resolved; into what? Into one element only. If this is the case at dissolution, reverse the process, and we have manifestation. From the One Element proceed successively seven modifications of that Element, and we, looking at it from this side and not seeing what is on the other side of the seven elements, call the modifications “seven elements.” It is seven different modifications within, or aspects of, one and the same Element. Then what? Then we begin making combinations of those same elements, and finally we have what we have—a great series of “elements.” We can get at the problem decimally very easily, and in truth that is the right way. But view it, if we want to view it, both physically and metaphysically or spiritually. Suppose we use mathematics on the universe, and not any other system of mathematics than the decimal system. (You know some ancient peoples used to have 7 as the basis for their arithmetic, and others have had 9 as the basis. A great many people have had 11, and a few have had 13—of which one of the survivals is our idea of unlucky numbers.) Let’s take the universe as a decimal system. Would anybody object to this statement? “It makes no difference to me whatever what number you give me; it can consist of ten digits variously combined and variously repeated.” No matter how big the number is—it is made up of ten simple elements or digits. And what did all those digits proceed from? From zero, which is no number they all return into zero. The ten elements of arithmetic, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. When we come to 35 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— examine the digits, we find that the digits are not actually simple integers; 9 is a combination of 8 and 1; also of 7 and 2; also of 6 and 3; also of 5 and 4; 8 is not a simple indissoluble number; 8 is a compound of 7 and 1, 6 and 2, and 3, 4 and 4. So we can treat every one of our so-called digits. There is only one number and that which is no number; but the combination of no number and one number gives us the digits and the combinations of digits, gives us, in fact, all the field of mathematics. Apply the same thing precisely to our universe: the One Element never was, never will be anything but the One Element. But seven forms of perception are possible in every part of that One Element; seven forms of action are possible; therefore, seven forms of results are possible. While we cannot define the Absolute, yet, if we apply this same process and reverse the Three Fundamentals, we shall not find it difficult to realize that, no matter what we do, behind our doing is That. No matter what we think, behind our thinking are three things—our selves, what we know, and what we assume. There is the eternal trinity in us. Many people assume that the source of Nature is different from the source of themselves, and they act on that basis; they do not know it; they believe it. Many people think there is no source to Nature, and they act on that basis. So there is themselves, what they know, and what they believe or assume or not know. Very well. How are we to know the First Fundamental? How are we to realize it? Through the Second; how else? What is the Second Fundamental? It is Nature’s law of equilibrium. If I act in equilibrium with Nature, if, in the words of The Voice of the Silence I “help Nature and work on with her,” I will understand the First Fundamental; I will know the First Fundamental; I will realize the First Fundamental, because I will consciously be the First Fundamental. In the first letter of the second volume of Letters That Have Helped Me, Judge makes a truly wonderful statement. He speaks about the Masters, out the natural desire of everyone to have some consciousness of contact with the Masters, and of our way of going about it. He discusses that; then he turns around and says, The fact is that the Masters are active all the time; they are “in every phase of our changing days and years.” He says they are the very law of Karma, because they are Atman itself; they are Atman and realize it. We are Atman and talk about it, believe about it, hope about it, fear about it, discuss about it, and—to use H.P.B.’s own word—”wrestle" about it, but all the time the only way that we can ever realize the First Fundamental is through the Second. Manifestly, our actions, which is what the Second Fundamental is concerned with, have led us further and further from the realization of the Self, until finally we are at the point where our realization of Self is that we are separate from all other selves Masters have reversed that. On the basis of the unity of all in Nature, they work for Nature; they live for Nature, and so they realize in themselves all there is in Nature. 36 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Chapter
III Q.—In the middle paragraph on p. 28 (first paragraph on p. 27 Am. Ed.) is the statement that there comes a time of perfection; that is, when progress stops in that particular cycle spoken of, and then the earth disappears as a tangible thing. It isn’t annihilated, we know that, but the statement is made that it disappears as a tangible thing. What is meant by that? Ans.—Let’s go on in the greater cycle until the same stage is reached again. What will happen to this earth that will have disappeared as a tangible thing? What will become of it? Will it not once more reappear as a tangible thing, going through its again on this plane, and then once more—having achieved as much perfection as possible what will it do? Disappear as a tangible thing, and once more reappear. It is nothing but the Law of Reincarnation. “Cycle” means reincarnation, only this word is used to show that it means the reincarnation of a mass of Monads or egos, whereas we use the word “reincarnation” as applied to one single individual. Yet we say that there is a cycle of reincarnation. For the man of today we know that the average duration of that cycle is 1500 years. Now, after we have seen that the Ocean says the world, or our earth, disappears as a tangible thing, the question is, “How do you account for the moon still being visible?” Suppose we change that word “still” to the word “now.” How do you account for the moon now being visible? Well, one way we can understand it is this: When the old moon chain disappeared as a tangible thing it disappeared, but when the same stage was reached in the new evolution, its ghost or Kama-Rupa materialized. Any Kama-Rupa is on the fourth plane of evolution, is in the fourth stage of existence. Remember that the fourth stage is the stage of formation, or re-formation, and it is also, of necessity, the opposite—the stage of disintegration. When this earth had once more reached the fourth stage, its effect on the moon may well have been such as to precipitate the kamic moon onto our plane. H.P.B. says in The Secret Doctrine—and Mr. Judge says the same thing on p. 26 (p. 25 Am. Ed.) that the reason we can see the moon is that it is on the same plane of perception as ourselves. Venus is said to be in the Seventh Round, but we can see Venus. How can we do that when we are in the Fourth Round? Because Venus is in the fourth stage of her Seventh Round. We are in the Fourth Round and Venus in the fourth stage, so both are on the same plane of perception. The statement is made that both Mercury and Mars have been in obscuration—that is in Pralaya—and that Mercury is only beginning to come out of obscuration, yet both are visible. How explain that? Why, they are fourth-plane globes, which, during a minor Pralaya remain intact, though dead. Being on the fourth plane of perception, they are visible to us. We do not see the moon, say, of the Third Round; why not? Because that moon is on the third plane of perception. If we could transfer our consciousness to the centre of the Third Race or the centre of the Third Round, then, says Mr. Judge, we would see the corresponding moon, that is, the moon in her third stage, and so on endlessly. Ans.—How many remember the eighth Chapter of the Gita It says 37 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— that those dying in the fortnight of the waning moon and while the sun is in the path of his southern journey, return again to mortal birth. Now, when we go to sleep, we go through the same process that a man goes through when he dies—up to a certain point, at least. We pass through the same steps. If we had an atavistic dream, and descended in our dream, let us say, to the Fourth Race of this Round or to the Third Race of this Round (instead of remaining in the Fifth to which we belong), we should be, in our dream, on the plane of nature that was tangible in the Third Race or in the Fourth Race. The corresponding moon would be there, and we would see the astral moon in one of its stages; we would see its astral photograph, certainly. Why, the air around us is full of elementals and of Kama-Rupas, all forming and disintegrating stages of anything and every-thing that has been in existence on this plane, both that which has died and is therefore on its way out, and also that which is on its way back here. If we, then, awake or asleep, get on to the astral or kamic plane, we shall see the corresponding moon, or—what is the same thing—the reflection of the moon, in her astral envelope instead of in her physical envelope. Ans.—That raises a most interesting question, one that each student is at liberty to think about for himself. First, the statement is made in the Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge that the sun is older than any of the planets in this solar system, and yet H.P.B. turns around in the same sentence and says that the moon is older than the sun. That can mean only one thing, that this moon which we see is a relic of a former solar system, of a planetary chain in a former solar system, because any and every planetary chain is but a portion of the mass of matter and of the monads engaged in any solar system. H.P.B. makes a number of curious statements in various foot-notes of the S.D. For example, she says that, when the end of a solar system comes, there is what is called a universal Pralaya; that is, absolutely every thing is disintegrated and returns to the primordial condition. Naturally, no lives or Monads are lost. Once there is a new evolution of the solar system, it must be that those Monads which were in the former solar system or planetary chain once more reassume their ancient place. She says that nought remains during a. solar pralaya but the Akasic photographs of all that have been. Now, if we were on the seventh globe or the sixth globe of this chain, according to Mr. Judge, we should see the corresponding moon. What moon would we see? We should see its Akasic photograph, shouldn’t we? Successively, as evolution goes on in this Solar System or in this planetary chain, condensation and expansion and recondensation, without a complete dissolution, goes on, because there are minor Pralaya and minor Manvantaras within the greater cycles. Finally, in a foot-note on another subject, (p. 68 of the Second Volume) and again on page 730 of the same volume, H.P.B. solves the puzzle of the scientists, explaining how it was that man came first in this 38 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Round, and yet there are relics of flora and fauna reaching back for hundreds of millions of years and no relics of man beyond a certain period. What is the explanation? This is H.P.B. answer: That innumerable forms which were alive in the Third Round left their etheric photographs when they died and, when the stage of condensation was reached in this Round, those photographs were precipitated into our matter, and that is why we find the fossil remnants in our matter of beings that never lived in our matter. If we applied that same reasoning to planets and planetary chains, bearing in mind the statements that after a solar system there is an absolute dissociation and return to the primeval condition, and the other statement that the moon is older than the sun and that the sun is older than any of the planets—the only logical explanation is that those degraded lives, those forms which took the back road that made the degraded part of the former moon chain, when the precipitating stage is reached, condense, coalesce, or precipitate on this plane. There is still another way to look at this question. Every one of us has heard of spiritualistic seances where they materialize spirits. We are familiar with the Theosophical teaching that the materialized form is not the dead man at all, but is his discarded astral body, his Kama-Rupa, in short; and that, because of the nature of the thoughts and feelings of the sitters and of the medium, the Kama-Rupa, or dead astral body, is coated with matter of this plane so that it reflects the light of this plane and appears to be just as much physical matter as the bodies of the medium and of the men and women at the seance But in a few minutes this materialized ghost will disappear, dissolve and go back to its own place, whereas the sitters don't dissolve. Yet the statement is made that it is possible, through a process of precipitation, to fix those images. Now, if that occurs in the case of Third Round flora and fauna which never existed in this Round on this earth, although we have their physical “remnants if that kind of precipitation is possible, isn’t it possible that the moon we see is, in fact, not a physical thing, as, say, the sun or this earth is? That it is some kind of Kama-Rupa brought to life again, so to speak, by the thoughts and feelings of men? The statements are, first, that the moon is older than the sun, which means that it is a relic of a former solar system; secondly, that it is on the same plane of perception as our earth; thirdly, that the Moon Chain is the parent of the Earth Chain. H.P.B. states over and over again that there are great mysteries connected with the subject of the moon. Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume were literally wild to find out all about the moon—why? They never asked themselves why they should be so interested in the moon. But H.P.B. says that the Adepts would not give out any other information than that which is contained in the S.D. on the subject.
Ans.—Science is just as much in touch with Mars as it is with the earth; that is to say, with the physical appearance of it. And all that science is in touch with, anywhere, at any time, is the physical appearance of things. This recalls a peculiar thing in regard to the moon. We can’t get a spectrum of the moon as we can get a spectrum of the sun, or of any other self-luminous body. We never see the moon except by 39 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— reflected light; it doesn’t shine of itself. Without the light of the sun and of the earth and the sidereal light falling on it, we should never know there was a moon—and that itself might tell us something.
Ans.—Let us first make a correction. The first alternative given is: Will we be in an illusionary state “in the same way as deep sleep”? Man is in an illusionary state when he is in Devachan, if he does not know it is Devachan, and when he is in Nirvana and doesn’t know it for what it is, is he not still in an illusionary state? But remember, what we call “deep sleep” merely means that the Ego drops the four lower vestures; it is once more Atma-Buddhi-Manas outside of incarnation. That state is the only chance it has of being free from illusion. But that doesn’t do the Ego any more good than the intervals of sobriety do good to a drunkard if he gets drunk again. Every time Atma-Buddhi comes down into matter once more—whether at waking up in the morning, or at birth—we know that we are all overcome by the illusion of matter. This is an illusionary world, because how many people in the world today regard matter for what it is, or human life for what it is? Scarcely one. To answer the question, we may say that on the fifth globe we shall be in the three states, an illusionary state, a subjective state and a Manasic state, just as we are now—unless what? Unless we overcome the illusions of matter, and none of us have succeeded in doing that. The teaching is that the fifth globe of any Round, the Fifth Race on any globe, and the Fifth Round of the whole period of evolution, is the final precipitant. Then the ego either is completely overcome by the illusions of matter, no matter on what plane or in what state he may be, or he is on the way to complete emancipation from illusion. We might put it this way: here we are, spiritual beings of the same nature as the Masters of Wisdom. The Master of Wisdom is Atma-Buddhi-Manas, but he is nothing but Atma-Buddhi-Manas, asleep or awake. On this globe or any other globe, this plane or on any other plane, he is Atma-Buddhi-Manas. We are Atma-Buddhi-Manas, but when we are on this plane or any other plane, on this globe or any other globe except the highest, we think we are something else than Atma-Buddhi-Manas. Our sense of reality does not reside in Atma-Buddhi-Manas—it is outside of us, in the world, in the state, in the condition. We find the term “centre of consciousness” in this chapter. That centre is shifted up and down. Have we given thought to what that means? Where is our sense of reality located? If it is located in this body, we know where we are; if it is located in our desires, we know where we are; if it is located in our feelings, we know where we are; if it is located purely on the plane of thought, that is, in pure ratiocination, we know where our sense of reality is. There are seven conceptions of reality—that’s what the seven planes are—and not one of those conceptions is true. There never was anything real but Self; there is not now any-thing real but Self. There could not be two Absolutes. Anybody can see that. So, how could there be two realities? Yet the S.D. tells us whatever plane our consciousness is functioning on, both we and the things of that plane appear to us to be for the time being the only realities. 40 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Always we are afflicted with a double or triple sense of reality, whereas reality never could be but one thing. According to the teachings, Self is the reality, no matter what the globe ,what the solar system, what the world, what the round, what the race, what the condition. The Self is the real; all else is Maya and illusion; yet self thinks that something else than the Self is the real. The Fifth Round closes the gates, so to speak. After the middle of the Fourth Round, no more Monads come from below into the human kingdom. So, after the middle of the Fifth Race of the Fifth Round, no more human beings can return to the divine kingdom as self-conscious entities. Sometimes we fail to realize the force of accumulation—momentum it is called in physics, mass multiplied by motion. There is momentum or accumulated force, moral or spiritual, also. How difficult it is for us to energize ourselves, and keep ourselves continuously energized, on the plane of the higher mind Yet Masters live in spirit and work in matter. That is what we ought to do, but we both live and work in matter, and all our past, the momentum of the race, tends more and more, as the increasing acceleration of the vast cycles goes on, to make us choose between spirit and matter. When the great time of choice comes in the Fifth Round, many people will have lost all belief in the reality of Spirit, they will be so absolutely convinced that life in matter is the only life—the only life they know, or care for, or are interested in. When the time of choice comes, what will they choose? They will choose the old familiar road, and, instead of their becoming one of the new crop of Mahatmas, all their work and suffering for that Manvantara will go for nought. They have to begin all over again, from the beginning, in a new Manvantara, after a Pralaya of complete individual unconsciousness.
Q.—It is taught that after the middle
of the Fourth Round—that is, this present Round—when the mid-point is
passed, no more Monads come over from the old Moon Chain to this Earth
Chain, and likewise that, after the middle of the Fourth Root-Race, no
more Monads (with the exception of the anthropoid apes) enter the human
kingdom. Now, as time went on, would this not result in the thinning of
the ranks in the lower kingdoms, and also a crowding of Monads at the door
of the human kingdom? Now, although the statement in the Theosophical teachings is that no more Monads will enter this earth chain—the human kingdom of this earth—after the middle of the Fourth Round and the fourth globe of that Round, it does not say that this is so with respect to Mars, Mercury or Venus, to the 10 million or so other stars, planets and Suns in Space. 41 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— All those represent the descent of conditioned Life from the highest state to the lowest. On the other hand, the statement is made that there were once on this earth many forms of animal life that no longer exist. They haven’t become human beings, so where are they? It is very strongly hinted that there are other fields for their evolution, just as there are other fields for our evolution. At the present, the teaching, for our better comprehension, is confined not merely to the Fourth Round but to the fourth of the seven globes in the Chain of Planets that are the scene of our evolution. Now, if we go from planet A to B and C and D, and then from D, this earth, we go to E and F and G, how about the other classes of Monads? They must do the same thing. We don’t cease evolving after we leave this globe; we go to another globe. And after we have completed our evolution on all the seven globes of this Chain, do we cease evolving? No. We didn’t cease evolving when we left the Moon Chain. How about the Monads following us? They didn’t cease evolving.
It is a mistake to think that the
universe is either overcrowded or thinly populated. We want to get away
from the idea that there is at any time, anywhere, any over crowding.
Space is full all the time and the Monads, high or low, are always on the
move. Ans.—We provide for their circulation in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the food we eat, in the thoughts we think, in the acts we perform. Isn’t that self-evident? Ans.—No, it isn’t; to the contrary, in fact, if we make rational inferences from page l8 of the first volume of The Secret Doctrine After having discussed this very question, H.P.B. says that the cycle of metempsychosis is closed for the human Monad. If we regard her as knowing how to use exact language, she limits the statement to the human Monad. Read the other way about, what does it mean? That the cycle is not closed to other classes of Monads. The cycle of metempsychosis must be going on in other kingdoms. It is limited as far as the human Monads are concerned to the “half-way house,” the middle of the fourth way around.
Ans.—Does anyone see a contradiction in the two statements? It is similar to the one that is often asked. If we have eternity behind us as well as eternity ahead of us, why haven’t we learned something? Why aren’t we all Mahatmas now? Examining that sort of question, we can see that the questioner is considering the time factor in the equation as the only element. The fallacy of that can easily be shown. Suppose I take a man and say, This man has lived for millions of years and does not know the multiplication table. Is it any evidence that the man has not lived for millions of years, that he does not know the multiplication table? On the other hand, is there any evidence that, if he had lived for billions of 42 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— years, and went on living for other billions of years, he would never know the multiplication table, until he set to work and learned it? The confusion comes from reducing the success to one single factor, whereas evolution means movement, action. All action of every kind is contingent upon three fundamental factors, not one. When that is seen, the question explains itself. How long will it take a man to learn the multiplication table? It is not a time question at all. It is a question of the fact of (1) the existence of a multiplication table, (2) of a desire in the man’ s own mind to acquire that for himself, and (3) of the assiduity with which he tackles the problem. There are the three factors. Applying this to knowledge, perfect knowledge—which is all that is meant by the state of a Master of Wisdom, the perfection of knowledge and being—applying that, can we not see that knowledge from our point of view exists as an abstraction? That is, the multiplication table has eternally existed, whether we know it or not, but from the practical point of view there is for us no multiplication table, except as a matter of disbelief or belief in our minds, until we have learned it. So, with knowledge; knowledge in itself has neither beginning nor ending. Knowledge means just exactly the same as Consciousness, Spirit, Life. There is no knowledge apart from Life; there is not anything apart from Life. But Life in the whole, Life in a higher state, these are two different things from Life as I am living it. There is the same Life in me that is in Buddha. Am I living Life as Buddha lives it? Life to me actually is as I see it and live it. What is Life to Buddha? As He sees it and lives it. A being may be content at any point of evolution and remain there forever. Were it not for the fact that other beings induce him, by push or pull, that is, by natural impulse, to get busy. How long would a dog remain a dog? Forever, if left to himself. How long would an atom remain an atom? Forever, if left to itself. But Life in the higher states and the higher forms continually impels or pushes forward Life in the lower states and in the lower forms, so that they come in contact with Life in other forms than their own and, little by little, imbibe some thing from it until the imitative faculty, the impulsive faculty, is awakened in the mind. The coming of a Great Being into the world has just that effect. He stirs up our whole nature, as a race and as individuals, as we our selves are incapable of stirring it up, so that, when we get a glimpse of Life as seen by Christ, of Life as seen by Buddha—even if it is only a single lightning flash, gone in an instant—something of it remains in us as an inspiration and an aspiration to become as They are. The phrase is used that “the highest sees through the eyes of the lowest.” How could They understand our nature if They weren’t able to do that? Suppose a flawless, perfect being came into our world, one who was constitutionally incapable of making a mistake of any kind, or suffering from any of the things that we suffer from. How in the world could He contact us or we Him? He would not have a particle of contact. By an act of His will, He sets aside His own nature and takes on ours. Why? In order experimentally and empirically, by actual assimilation, to see and know for Himself how Life looks to us. Then, reasserting His own nature, He is able to talk to us in our language, in the terms of our experience, about His World, His knowledge, His life, which at present 43 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— are beyond our horizon.
Ans.—Well, what is? These are not academic questions. What is pushing a man when he gets scared? Something he is afraid of. What is pushing a man when he seeks reputation even in the cannon’ s mouth, a la Shakespeare? Something is pushing—vanity, glory, ambition. Yes, men risk their lives for vanity, glory and ambition; they will not only risk their lives, but they will risk other people’s. And what is it that causes a man to share his last crust with one who is hungry and has no crust at all and is able only to furnish the appetite? What is it that pushes him? It is that dual nature. When we do evil, what is the lure, the push, the pull? The infernal side of nature. And when we do good, what is the lure, the push, the pull? The divine side of nature. We are open to both influences. You can’t have a door that swings both ways that will not equally afford ingress and egress. So it is with our nature. It is wide open to both good and evil influences and impulses, and so we have to study that nature with care, and reduce the lower to subjection to the higher.
Ans.—Here again we need to stop, look and listen to the words. She says it is in the First Round that heavenly man becomes a human being on Globe A. What is heavenly man? The monadic man. It does not make a particle of difference to the heavenly man what kingdom or world or form he is in. Read the foot-note on pages l74) and l75 in the First Volume of the S.D. It does not make a bit of difference to the monadic man where he is in form or space or state; how could it, when we come to think about it? It makes a difference to the physical being, the psychic being, the astral being, the intellectual being, the cognitional being; it makes a terrific difference to the passional being where he is; it makes no difference whatever to the monadic being. So “heavenly man” is merely a phrase for Atma-Buddhi; it does not mean the man that is discussed in Chapters Five and Six of the Ocean That is Atma-Buddhi-Manas. “Heavenly man” means the monad in that form built by himself and for himself. It is the kingdom of man—not the elemental kingdom, or the animal kingdom, or the mineral kingdom, or the human kingdom, or the spiritual kingdom, or the kingdom of Mahatmas; that is quite another story. So heavenly man is only a paraphrase for the expression, the Eternal Pilgrim, the two in one, the Monad—Atma-Buddhi. The intellectual man, the self-conscious spiritual being, could not enter the lower kingdoms if he tried to.
Ans.—If we will look at the symbolical representations in the first 44 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— book, or any book, on plane geometry, we shall find out; but from a dimensionless image to a three-dimensional form is quite a long journey. Put it this way: What was the first shape? It was a rolling mass of radiant substance. If you want to know what it is like, look at the nebulae. What was the next condensation? A fiery elongation. If you want to look at the shape, look at a comet or at spermatozoa. What is the next fundamental shape? Sticking strictly to our modern terms, the next fundamental shape is molecular, that is, protoplasm, genuine protoplasm—not the protoplasm of science. And what is the next? The crystal. and the cell. And next? The forms of the four kingdoms. There are the various human “shapes.” We have come through every one of them between Devachan and rebirth; we go backwards through every one of them between death and Devachan. We have only to think, and think in the terms of analogy, not materialistic reasoning, and we can get plenty of information; only, we have to look inside. To look inside means that our Manas comes into correlation with Buddhi, instead of, as ordinarily happens, into correlation with Kama; we get in correlation with divine consciousness, instead of with elemental and elementary consciousness; that is what looking inwards means. Every time we try to find out in thought and reflection who and what we are fundamentally, through what processes and states we have passed in becoming mentally what we are, morally what we are, psychically what we are, as well as physically what we are, then a conjunction takes place between Manas and Buddhi, replacing the ordinary conjunction of Manas with Kama, and thence comes knowledge of our own—inside information.
Chapter III Q.—When the Moon Chain died, was there no period of rest before its energies began the Earth Evolution? Ans.—Let us notice the care with which Mr. Judge shows that when the old Moon Chain died it threw its energies into space, and those energies set fire, as it were, to matter that had hitherto been in Pralaya, disseminated cosmic dust, fired it up, and there was the beginning of the physical evolution of the succeeding Manvantara. But he doesn’t say anything about the Egos. Yet not only the chapter on Cycles, but also statements elsewhere in the Ocean as well as in The Secret Doctrine including the Second and Third Fundamentals, go to show that after every period of action there is a period of rest. So, after the Moon Chain completely died, there was a Pralaya of the same period for the Monads involved, and then they began again.
When that former vast entity composed
of the Moon and six others, all united in one mass, reached its limits of
life, it died just as any being dies. Ans.—Let us regard what happens when a man dies, because that is an analogical answer to this question. When we die, those energies of ours which were incorporated in the four lower principles are at once thrown 45 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— off into space, aren’t they? And they immediately enter into combination, or fire up other forms of matter. When a man dies, Kama, to use one of the terms, at once flies to other forms. That is what happened to the Moon Chain; those vital energies flew to cosmic dust and animated that. When a man dies, what becomes of his higher principles? They go for a period of rest. When a man dies, his body goes to pieces; isn’t that what will happen to the Moon? Yes, that is so, only observe: A man’s body goes to pieces; the mineral portions of his body may last for ages, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of years. Nobody knows how old the oldest bones found are; yet they were once a component element of a living body. So the teaching is that the bodily elements disintegrate very rapidly, except for the bones, which are related, as we know, chiefly to the mineral kingdom. This brings us back to a previous proposition: The old Moon Chain died and her elements, except her bony structure, disintegrated, just as our body disintegrates; but the bones are there yet after billions of years, not merely millions. Now that might be a good way to vision it: there are the moon’s bones; it was once “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,” and all that is left are the bones. Ans.—Yes. Furthermore, Mr. Judge says at the conclusion of the Epitome—and he makes some wonderful statements in that pamphlet, statements found nowhere else except in obscure remarks in the footnotes of the S.D.—that Nature has her “slag pit,” as was just now suggested. The resistance to disintegration will cause that “slag pit” to cling, perhaps, through many solar systems. Consider the meteoric swarm called Loonies, whose parabolic orbit intersects ours around the middle of November, and which assumes special intensity every 33 years. Nobody knows what it is, except that it is an immensity of small particles of matter ranging from sizes that are invisible to us unless lighted by friction, to masses as high as a couple of hundred miles in diameter, with millions upon millions of particles. May they not be the broken slag, the bone dust of who knows what globe, of how many MahaManvantaras? It is a curious statement that H.P.B. makes in regard to our sun, that when the end of this solar system comes, our sun will burst into millions of fragments, which will wander for aeons through the infinitudes of space. A mass of Egos for each chain. The number, though incalculable, is definite. Their course of evolution through the seven globes. In each a certain part of our nature is developed. The question is, what parts of our nature are to be developed in the remaining three globes? Ans.—All parts of our nature, not just Atma-Buddhi-Manas, but all those lives which make up all our seven principles. They progress, also. Matter evolves from the crudest stage to the finest, both from globe to globe through every Round, and from Round to Round throughout the MahaManvantara—until, finally, the highest possible development has been attained. There is a perfected crop of matter: a perfected astral crop, a perfected chemical or mineral crop, a perfected vegetable crop, a per- 46 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— fected animal crop, in every Manvantara. They correspond to what, for the human kingdom, are called the Sishta the seeds, the pioneers, which start the new evolution in every kingdom.
Ans.—No; that is a misconception. There is evolution of the whole solar system, then of our planetary chain, then of our earth, then of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. When earth had reached the point where it was possible to combine them all in a single astral form, at the middle of the Fourth Round, and not till then—precipitation took place, and we have the matter we know now. Eighteen million years ago was the time when man and nature became as they now are. The Night of Brahma is a long, long way off. How far off? Well, if a Day of Brahma, including the evolution of the whole solar system, is 4,320,000,000 years, how much of that time has already elapsed? Just a trifle less than half as regards the solar system as a whole. So we still have over two billion years to go, as regards the solar system. But how about our particular race of humanity, meaning by that, the Aryan white race? We have hundreds of millenniums to go before our Night of Brahma comes, and that will be a shorter night than the Great Night.
Ans.—In this chapter it shows not only that there are seven Great Races, but that each race has seven gradations. So there are seven Great Races and seven sub-races in each, really, 49. Apply the same thing, then, to the seven states of matter called the seven “globes.” Each state of matter has seven sub-states. So there are 49 globes and sub-globes; that is, states and sub-states of matter. Now, according to the teachings, Venus—both as regards her humanity and as regards the globe itself, that is, the Venus "earth" is in its seventh round. What does that mean? Perhaps it means that the Venus humanity are all Masters of Wisdom. And what does it mean as regards the planet Venus? That it is seventh-state matter, but it is the fourth subdivision of seventh-state matter; and so we see it, just as we see light. The sub-states of matter are what fool our scientists as to whether light is substantial or whether it is simply a rate of motion. Visible light is the fourth sub-state of astral matter, and they have one lovely time trying to decipher it either in terms of physical substance or physical energy.
Ans.—Let us consider what is meant by conscious existence. It means the state of knowingness, or awareness; it does not make any difference whether it is awareness in physical existence, awareness in astral exis- 47 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— tence, awareness in planetary existence, awareness in cosmic existence: consciousness is awareness. When we are aware, we are conscious; when we not only exercise power, as does everything in nature, but are aware that we have powers, that we do exercise them, that we are experiencing the consequences of our exercising, then we are in self-conscious existence, whether in matter, that is, darkness; in astral life, that is, twilight; or in spiritual life, that is, sunlight or full self-consciousness.
While it is stated that no more animal monads can enter on the man—stage, it is not said nor inferred that the incoming supply of monads for the animal kingdom has stopped. They may still be coming in from other worlds for evolution among the animals of this globe. Ans.—”After the middle of the Fourth Round” means only after the period of evolution has passed half-way through the Fourth Round, or that three and a-half Rounds are gone. I recall no statement in the teachings which declares that any monads have passed permanently after the middle of the Fourth Round from the mineral to the vegetable, or passed permanently from the vegetable to the animal. We know as a matter of fact that they are incessantly rising from the mineral to the human and going back; that is their cycle. So every monad in the kingdoms below keeps right on going through Its own monadic cycle, which is from mineral to human and back again. This is not human consciousness, but human matter.
Ans.—Yes, it’s the same thing, except that Spinoza does not understand how in the world it can differentiate. There is a very close correspondence, says H.P.B., between Vedantin doctrines, the doctrine of Leibnitz, the doctrine of Spinoza, and the actual teachings of Theosophy. Go to the S.D. section entitled, “Gods, Monads, and Atoms,”—it’s about 22 pages, beginning about 610 in the first volume, and it is worth ten years’ study. Our trouble is this—what is the phrase in the Voice? Samvritti relative truth, is the “origin of all the world’s delusions.” What can that mean other than this, that whatever I see and know to be true for myself, is true. My mistake is that I take that to be truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, whereas I need to ask myself: Do I know it all? Can any being know it all? Very well; my knowledge, how ever vast, is but relative truth. If a Mahatma were to take His knowledge as all the knowledge there is, he would fall into error. Most of us profess to be very humble, admit that we know very little, but when any disagreement comes along with a neighbour, we know it all! That is the kind of relative truth that besets us. Spinoza certainly had a wonderfully clear perception, but he was no Occultist; of him can be said what H.P.B. said about Leibnitz: he was 48 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— an extraordinarily intuitional philosopher; he got a clear flash of the truth; he saw that the source of this universe is one and never could be anything but one and, since it is real, it is therefore substantial; and he spoke of it in terms that anybody could understand. On the other hand, Leibnitz, H.P.B. says, saw that everything in the universe is eternal as well as mortal, so he called every form in the universe a Monad. He saw the eternity of every Monad, but he couldn’t tell where those Monads came from, nor where they were going. He could not see that they were but so many differentiated aspects of the One of Spinoza. So H.P.B. says, if you take the teachings of Spinoza and the teachings of Leibnitz and blend them together, that is, find out what is common to both of them, you have the esoteric doctrine. She says the same thing of Maha Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta in India. Take the two teachings, fit them together, and throw away what isn’t common to both of them, and you have the Truth. In the very beginning of Isis H.P.B. writes:— The work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Eastern Adepts, and study of their science. Its aim, she says, is to assist students to find the fundamental truths which are common to the philosophical systems of old. Then, read how she concludes the discussion of the Three Fundamentals in The Secret Doctrine She says that once the student has gained a clear comprehension of his own, sees for himself that these propositions are eternally true, they will need no justification in his eyes, because their truth will be as evident to him as the sun in heaven. Think of that She says too that they are in fact contained in every religion and system of thought worthy of the name but, alas, all too often under a misleading guise. Find what is common to all religions and you have the Truth; find what is common to all philosophies and you have the Truth; find what is common to all sciences and you have the Truth. Now, find what is common to this purified religion, this purified science, this purified philosophy, and you have the Wisdom Religion of the Masters. How is a man to find that for himself. Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine are the evidence of it. The second object of the parent Theosophical Society was just exactly that, to study these old religions, because their skandhas fill our brains, our minds, our hearts and our memories; they fill our hopes and our aspirations, in spite of ourselves. We need to filter them. Can we get some kind of a screen that the Truth will filter through with no mental “bugs”? The Three Fundamental Propositions make a screen which strains truth from error. The truth never hurt anybody. The truth is in these old religions, and people go around and say, “There is good in them.” Why, of course there is; what they forget is that there is also bad in them. Give a thirsty man an eight-ounce glass of water with only a thimbleful of chloral drops in it and he says, “I am thirsty; that is good water; that has allayed my thirst.” It has quenched his thirst, but it also knocks him out, and it is the chloral that gets the noticeable work in, not the water. It is not the truth in anything that hurts anybody; the things that “ain’t so,” as Josh Billings says, are those that hurt. This very work we are doing—the weekly study and discussion of Theosophy—washes some more stains out of our mind, more rubbish out of our intelligence, and above all, begins to 49 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— purify our hearts, every time we go over it, every life in which we come back to it. Think of the myriads of people, who, in ten incarnations, with all their multitudinous experience, won’t get what the humblest man can get in going through this Ocean one single time thoughtfully.
Chapter III Q.—Could the Masters or a Buddha reincarnate in some other solar system? Ans.—No Master or Buddha would want to reincarnate in another solar system. He is called Master, Buddha, Mahatma, Brother, because, although he could leave this solar system, he chooses not to. But the question probably means, is it possible for a man to finish evolution here, say, in our earth chain, or in this solar system, and leave the solar system if he chooses to? It is clear that this is possible, and that many egos do it. For example, in the S.D., p. 213 of the first volume, there is a statement that this solar system contains twelve hierarchies of beings—not seven, as we think of it—twelve great hierarchies of being, but only seven of them have anything to do with our system directly. Then on p.77 in the second volume is the statement that of these twelve orders which relate to the whole solar system, four have already reached liberation to the end of the Great Age; that is, they are no longer in manifestation in this solar system; that the fifth of the Great Orders of the solar system is ready for liberation, but remains active on the highest planes in order to help mankind; and that the other seven great orders are still under the sway of Karmic Law—and we know mighty well who those Egos are! If we study a subject which is mentioned in The Voice of the Silence and in the Glossary we find that there are three classes of beings who achieve perfection, each of its own kind. One of those classes is called the “Nirmanakayas”; that is, the class of Great Souls to which our Masters and Buddhas and all such beings belong. Another class is called “Dharmakayas”, and still a third class is called “Sambhogakayas.” While H.P.B. is extremely reticent, both in regard to Sambhogakayas and Dharmakayas, she does show that they have nothing more to do with this earth. Now they may go into Nirvana, or into some other stream of evolution aside from the one that is in our solar system—who can say?
Ans.—It seems to me that if we look for analogies right around us we could see it easily. This afternoon I saw a dog riding in an automobile making 75 miles an hour; there isn’t a dog living that could do it under his own four-legged power. The dog availed himself of the progress of the human race. All of us travel faster than the very great men of a thousand years ago. A school-boy gets more experience in 10 years than Plato had in 80. Why? Because he takes advantage of all the past. So if you proceed from the physical to the metaphysical, you can see how, not so very long ago, it was, do the best he could, a six-month hard journey for a man on foot from New York to San Francisco. Now, a man 50 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— travels the entire distance in twelve hours. How is he able to do it? He takes advantage of the progress, not of himself alone, but of all those who have preceded him, so that the humblest man today gains far more experience, that is, has far more opportunity to learn, than our ancestors did a thousand years ago, ten thousand years ago. It is simply under the law of unity, the principle of Brotherhood. Any man, if he chooses, may avail himself of the accumulated experience of the whole mass of egos who have preceded him in this Manvantara. So he is able to travel far faster than if left to himself.
Ans.—If by a Round is meant the life of a solar system, a full period of 14 Manvantaras, then, according to the S.D., the years of manifestation measured in mortal years are 4,320,000,000; the Pralaya will be of the same length. Add them together, and you have the full cycle. Now the questioner asks, will Rounds , 6 and 7 increase progressively in length? We might infer as much from the direct statement in the that the earlier Rounds were longer than this Round; but, as a matter of fact, the same S.D. makes another statement showing that such an inference would be erroneous. It says that the later Rounds are much shorter, and that stands to reason.
Ans.—We are in the Fifth Sub-race of the fourth state; therefore we have four of the senses complete and one of the senses very, very little developed. We have its initial development, but in the next Round—in the next race as far as that is concerned—we shall not only have five senses; we shall have six, and all of them will be incomparably greater in their range than they now are.
Ans.—It varies in different people, but in most people it is their sense of smell or their sense of taste or their sense of touch. Just think; we can distinguish clearly only three tastes; we can only distinguish clearly four touches; and in smell, some persons can only make two distinctions—I like it and I don’t like; it’s sweet or it isn't it’s good or it isn’t. Then think of the range of perception we have through the sense of hearing, and that is incomparably less than our range of perception through the sense of sight. Yet all of these senses are interchangeable. 51 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Perhaps all of us think of Chapters II and III as “a mighty tough proposition,” especially when we pass from the Ocean to the Secret Doctrine discussion of the same subjects that are represented by Mr. Judge In these chapters we shall find the equivalent of many pages and thousands of statements in H.P.B.'s work, and, after we have been studying her statements for a few lifetimes, we shall begin to appreciate what Mr. Judge has done for us. Our first difficulty is, of course, in not realizing the nature of the subject involved. Remember that we are In that state of consciousness called Lower Manas, or human mind, which means that we are on the fourth plane or sub-division of Manasic perception. Mr. Judge, or H.P.B., or a Mahatma, talking to us, then, knows that, no matter what he says or how he says it, we can regard it only from our plane of perception, not from his. In the S.D., H.P.B. tells us over and over again not to reason from our plane of perception, but to study analogies. Nothing takes place on earth that has not already taken place in the astral world, and before that in the semi-ethereal, and before that in the ethereal, and before that in the Akasic. It is just a succession of descents, or prototypes, from rung to rung of the ladder of being, and then an ascent from the lowest to the highest. Two or three references in the S.D., if studied over and over and over, will disclose to us, first, which principles are involved; secondly, what the process is; and thirdly, the analogies between the various statements made in the S.D., as to other Rounds, other worlds, other globes, other races-past or to come and this globe, this race, this Round. First, take an exceedingly clear statement, both of the difficulty the student has to recognize, and of the successive seven stages in the evolution of anything, whether it is a solar system, an ant, or an atom. That will be found from the bottom of p. 20, to the bottom of p. 22, in the first volume of the S.D. The more that is studied, the more every word and phrase are weight the more will begin to clear up for our minds. When that portion is well digested, we may turn and read from the bottom of p. l to the bottom of p. 160, in the first volume; the same matter is gone over again from the stand—point of the evolution of our chain and our minds. Then, if we turn and read from p. 170 to p. 173, again in the first volume, we shall see illustrated and carefully explained how, at the death of an old chain, its successive energies are passed to cosmic dust and form the beginning of a new solar system, or chain of globes, or whatnot. Next, p. 176, Volume I, should be very carefully read, for it gives much more on the evolution of the planetary chain than we have dreamed of, although all that is sketched is called merely the seven preliminary or preparatory steps. It is a descent from the plane of undifferentiated cosmic matter, or spirit—whichever word you choose to use—to the bottom of the valley of matter, and then it is a reascent to the original condition of Spirit-Matter. Now, H.P.B. says that the successive states of that descent are first, three elemental or elementary stages—whether regarded cosmically or with reference to the birth of a human child, a solar system, or a world, or anything else; second, a stage of concretion or crystallization, a freezing together—the mineral kingdom as applied to our earth; and then, the three further stages of vegetable, animal and human. Here are the seven stages from the highest to the lowest, seven preliminary stages from the undifferentiated Laya point through three elemental 52 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— stages, or worlds or steps, to the mineral kingdom; those three and the mineral make four; three more stages which we see only as vegetable, animal and human. Remember, moreover, that every one of those seven represent physical evolution. The human being is a physical product. The human being prior to 18 million years ago, the mindless man or the Lunar Pitri, or the human stage spoken of, means a perfected being in matter In the sense of a self-conscious spiritual being, there never was any man on this planetary chain, or in this round, or on this globe, until 18 million years ago. Hundreds upon hundreds of billions of years have elapsed, but, so far as the seven classes of Monads under the sway of Karmic Law are concerned, intellectual evolution—which is what we are involved in—never began till 18 million years ago. Why then?, is another story. We should need another evening to take that up. At the bottom of p. 176, Volume I, and the top of p. 177, H.P.B. states what the process is in one sentence: It is a descent from spirit to matter equivalent to a corresponding ascent in “physical evolution”; that is the end of the preliminary or physical stage. Then a reascent from the human stage to the status quo ante—that is, to the highest state, plus all that has been gained She recurs to that again, and gives a wonderful picture of the Rounds, and of the everlasting repetition of the process, on pp. 231 and 232, in the first volume. Another reference belongs with these. It comes on p.514 first volume, where H.P.B. tells us what matter is, from the stand-point of Occultism, not from our stand-point. She says that matter, to the Occultist, is that collectivity of existence which is manifest under the sway of Karmic Law. Matter, to the Occultist, is that collectivity of manifested existences capable of transition on any of the planes of cosmos—that is, on any plane whatever, the highest as the lowest. We see objects and beings; that which we see is manifest; they are objective; therefore, they are matter on that plane.
Ans.—It is invisible to us. Matter is always invisible to matter, but he does not say matter is invisible to a Mahatma on the highest plane. Study pgs. 1 and 67, and p. 116, foot-note, in the S.D., first volume; and then look at the very first sentence on p. 289, in the same volume. “The initial existence in the twilight of a Maha-Manvantara is a conscious spiritual quality.” It is substance to our spiritual sight, but it cannot be called so by men in their waking state, who look through it; in other words, it is absolutely invisible to them; they name it God-Spirit. Now the other reference is on the subject of Spirit and matter. We all remember, yet we forget, the statement of the First Fundamental. The very first statement is that Spirit and matter are not to be regarded as independent realities; they are but the opposite poles, the two phases, or aspects, of One Reality. Turn in the Secret Doctrine to p. 633, first volume, at the end of the first paragraph. H.P.B. says that Spirit is matter on the seventh plane; that is, if you take what we call matter—it is Spirit. Spirit means the highest. Then she goes on to say that Spirit at the lowest point of its cyclic activity is matter. All of what we call matter was once Spirit. This only means that what is now in the lowest state or stage was once in the highest stage, and what is in the highest stage will sooner or later go to the lowest stage. It will go 53 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— there awake, asleep, or dreaming. Remember that a Mahatma cannot escape reincarnation any more than we can. Look at p. 639, first volume. She says that not even a Buddha or a Christ can escape reincarnation. What is the difference? Why, He knows what He is doing; His motives are different from ours; His knowledge is different from ours. He is awake. He is here for the good of those who think this plane is real. H.P.B., after stating that matter on the seventh plane is Spirit, and that Spirit at the lowest point of its cyclic activity is matter, declares that both are Maya. They are the illusions created before their own eyes by the seven classes of Monads.
Q.—On p. 35 (p. 33 Am. Ed.), it says that the quaternary or lower man is a product of cosmic and physical laws and substance; it has been evolving during the lapse of ages, like any other physical thing, from cosmic substance, and is therefore subject to physical, physiological and psychical laws which govern the race of man as a whole. Will you please explain what is meant by this? Ans.—Not knowing what is in the questioner’s mind, it would be difficult to explain what is meant, except by saying: Study more thoughtfully the sentence used. It carries its own explanation. The spiritual man is an individual being progressing through self-induced and self-devised efforts, whether in a body or out of a body; but the physical man, the mortal temporary man, the combination of the four lower principles, is not an individual entity progressing through self-induced and self-devised efforts. There is the great problem of the psychologists. In this, they are just like the religionists. No matter how materialistic our biologists or psychologists may be, they none the less take the same view of the matter that the religionists do; they consider the mortal, physical man with his senses, his human mind, his memory and imagination, to be the whole man. Now, if that is the only man they know, they are quite logical in their view. The physical man, the mortal man, the lower man, the human being is a result or effect of causes produced. The mortal man is therefore a creature; there was a time when he was not; there will come a time when he will cease to be. But the real man—Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the spiritual man—is a creator, and never was the time when he was not, nor shall he ever hereafter cease to be. There the problem lies for us all—a conflict with the race mind and the race views. We are all too apt to regard man as a creature and to apply Theosophical teachings to the man whom we see and know and mix with. That man is just as mortal as an animal; only, he lasts longer. But the Fourth Chapter calls very clearly to our attention that not only is the mortal man a creation; and not only is the combination of which he is made up a compound to be dissolved at death or soon after; but the very principles themselves which compose the human being—the personal or mortal man—those very principles themselves are subject to dissolution. Not merely the combination of principles in the thinking man but also the very elements that compose him, are subject to dissolution. The reverse is the case with spiritual man, the creator—Manas.
54 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— sometime be men; they are going through evolution and will at some time in a future Round, a future Manvantara, be men. How about this? Ans.—The statement is made that the animals will some day be men. The statement is made that man never was an animal. The statement is also made that man was an animal. How are we to reconcile these statements? Turn to this Fourth Chapter. What is this body? A flock of lives of a certain grade of intelligence, a flock of embryonic centres of intelligence. Now, what is the astral body? A collectivity of lives of a higher grade of intelligence. And what is the kamic principle? A collectivity of lives of a still higher grade of intelligence. And what is Lower Manas? The same thing. What is Manas? A self-conscious life. And what is Buddhi? The collectivity of self-conscious lives. Now, these lives aggregate and disperse both in their own class and in combinations of classes. Our perfect analogy is to look out in space. We can see a blank; that is unconditioned, unmanifested, imperceptible space, and, since we can’t speculate on the unmanifested and imperceptible, we just say, It is. But we see the very beginnings of physical manifestation in space the starry nebulae, and then slowly the successive stages from the nebulae, the comet, the sun, the planet and the moon, down to meteors and down to dust, disseminated throughout space—the dissociated remains of what once were moons, planets, solar systems, nebulae. Apply the same thing metaphysically, and the problem ceases to be a problem. The animal, however regarded, is a combination of lives. When we say “Man” we mean that all the seven principles in the life or soul or spiritual being have been aroused to some degree of activity. When we say “animal” we mean that only three of them have been awakened to partial activity. When we say “vegetable,” we mean that there is less activity and, in the “mineral,” still less. We see that, whether we use the expression elemental, vegetable, mineral, animal or human we are in fact giving names to stages through which passes this spiritual life it self, whether asleep or awake or dreaming. Remember, the analogy in the stages through which the new-born child passes. We say babyhood, child hood, youth, middle age, old age. Now, does babyhood become childhood? No. The life that dwells in the baby form, by slow degrees, as that form changes, is seen to be dwelling in a child form—the second stage in the development of a body. Now go on. Does the child body become the youth body? We know that it does not; but the same ego or soul or Manas that is in that body—which was in the baby body and in the child body—will be in the youth body. We have, then, to distinguish between mind, which, as a general, unvarying term, and unless coupled with an adjective, means a self-conscious life and form, which is conscious life. A self-conscious life was never a non-self-conscious life. But there again “it stands to reason”; that is, we have to think it out ourselves. Put it this way: All of us are familiar—although it would perhaps be difficult for us to formulate a definition—with what is meant by the word Instinct and all of us are familiar to some extent with what is meant by the word Intuition Suppose we call Kama the energizing principle in matter, and by matter we mean all lives which are non-self-conscious. Kama, then, is the intelligence active in the kingdoms below man, the ruling intelligence in the kingdoms below man. Kama always acts by direct perception, but it is not, conscious of the fact that it is so acting. Direct perception without self-consciousness is what is meant by 55 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— the word Instinct. Now, take the self-conscious being—the spiritual man in his own world. Manas is the energizing principle of that world spiritual, just as Kama is the energizing principle of the world physical. On the plane of the three spiritual worlds, Manas also acts by direct perception, but it is conscious that it is so acting. So the only difference in the world between intuition and instinct—both being direct perception—is that the being acting by instinct is not self-conscious, is not able to modify or direct his own instincts. They rule him; he does not rule them. But in the world spiritual, Manas is the energizing principle, in conjunction with Buddhi—direct perception—and the Ego is fully conscious of when, where and how to use it. When Manas incarnates, when Manas is “lighted up,” to use the familiar phrase, the energizing principle of the world spiritual at its lowest are of activity comes into union with the energizing principle of matter at the highest arc of its activity; that union, which lasts for the cycle of a personal life, is the Manas we know; that is the man we know. We are under two influences, the influences from the world spiritual—our good motives, our good intentions, our aspirations, our intuitions, our good resolutions—and, at the opposite pole, we are equally subject to the influences of the world physical, because those opposite or contrasted forces or influences or energizing principles are both active in us. We have reason because we have the comparison of the two.
Ans.—Well, all that we can study, that we can experience, that we can speculate about in any way, and therefore all that we can give names to, refer to manifestation and something manifested. Man, in the sense of Atman, is the forever non-manifested Self. Buddhi-Manas is so much of the Self as can be perceived in the manifested universe. There is on that subject a great statement in the Secret Doctrine that the One Principle does not manifest or cause evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, but only periodically exhibits aspects of Itself, to the perception of finite minds. Now, when we contrast the world infinite with the world finite, we can see that “finite” represents not only the seer but also that which is seen; but “infinite” represents the unmanifested and the manifested. Thus, it is perfectly correct, from the stand point of manifested existence, to speak of the seven principles. Principles of what? Principles of manifestation. That’s what the seven principles mean—not the principles of non-manifestation but the principles of manifestation, all these principles being in the Self, the Unmanifested, the Nameless, the One.
Ans.—What causes such differences in the length of life, not so much amongst races as amongst individuals? Here is a baby born who dies in five minutes. Here is another, who dies in a few months. In fact, it may be a good average to say that of all the babies born, two-fifths of them die before they are five years old. They represent failures of nature—that is, failures to gain incarnation. The average of life 56 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— amongst civilized peoples is said to be now somewhere in the neighbour-hood of forty years, but if an average were to be had of all the peoples of the earth, it would be lower than that. Yet, there are people who live to be a hundred or more. What is the cause? It depends on the use made of the elemental lives. Some come back with a perfect astral body that remains the same to the end of the Manvantara: they have so. dealt with the lives that composed their astral body that an indissoluble union takes place among the astral lives and the form persists. The majority of the race have to have a new astral body every time they are born. The explanation is the different affinities set up, different uses made of the elemental lives. Once there was no death, no sickness. That was before we had had time to corrupt the lives.
Q.—What is the basis of the statement
on pp. 38—9 (pp. 35-6 Am. Ed.) regarding the preservers and destroyers?
57 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
which the physical would not be at all.
Ans.—We are there. Don’t you see that,
as a matter of fact, a stronger force has been used to hypnotize him, or
to produce anaesthesia, than the ordinary man is capable of generating? It
simply makes the engraving that much deeper.
The man hypnotized, the man under an
anaesthetic, is not dead; he is merely inhibited from controlling the
operations of his body, but, for all that he may see what is going on, and
his mind may be more intensely concentrated on it than otherwise. But
there is another side to this question which is just as interesting: you
can remove a scar by an act of the will, if your will is strong enough.
Ans.—Yes, but the tree has an
altogether different kind of astral body. Such marks on a tree are normal
and natural, in most cases; but, in any event, the astral body of the tree
is a totally different thing from the astral body of a man. Every mineral,
every atom, has an astral body, or it could not be; but the astral body
varies enormously. We have to remember another thing: the very slightest
touch, say, upon our nerves, produces a sensation out of all proportion to
the force exerted, more acute, in fact, than a smart blow on other parts
of the body. Suppose a man has an exposed nerve in his tooth; merely to
draw his breath is exquisite agony, while you can slap the same man on the
shoulder with a fifty-pound blow and it wouldn’t injure him at all.
Now, perhaps there is a sensitiveness
in plant life of an unbelievable acuteness in certain directions. We all
know that plants can be injured; a plant can be injured more easily than
flesh; but, in any event, wherever there is relative changelessness in any
particular part of the body, it only goes to show that, by some process or
other, the astral body has been more or less crystallized there; it has
been changed from a fluidic to a more or less rigid state; it ceases to be
resilient, flexible, tensile, elastic and strong. Ans.—The more we think about these things, the more we see that there are various explanations. For example, with respect to extraneous matter, we know that if we cut our finger and get vegetable matter in the 58 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— wound, it will not only cause infection, but will leave a scar. If we get extraneous mineral matter into a wound, it will leave a scar. But don’t let us mix our planes. If we get other physical matter than plasma from the blood cell in a wound, it will leave a scar; but if it is simple plasma from the blood cells with no outside or foreign matter permitted to enter, it will leave no scar. Yet, no matter what infects it, that is, no matter what other lives than those pertaining to the physical body of that man enter the cut, which is an artificial opening, they make their home there, and that leaves a scar.
Ans.—It all depends upon whether extraneous matter gets into the artificial opening or not, looked at from this side. On the other side, it all depends upon the impression made upon the lives of the body. There have been men who have disemboweled themselves in religious ecstasy, and then put the intestines back in the open wound, pressing the opening together with their two hands, and the wound healed without a scar, all inside of five minutes. There have been such cases.
Ans.—We know that it does; we can see that in the breaking of an arm, for example, it knits very quickly in a child. It takes a much longer time to knit in an older person, because there is more lime in the bones of an older person than in those of a child—the same analogy. Remember these lives are of 49 different forms; some are more intelligent, some more obstinate than others; some of one class and some of another. If there is a mixture, we get results accordingly. As a rule, what was said in the earlier part of the chapter is true of all children. When we are young, the creators predominate, whatever happens to the body. As we get older, the slightest thing is a shock and makes an opening for the destroyers, and that means a breaking down of the normal tissues and their replacement by lives of another class. The whole story of scars is there.
Ans.—Well, on the one hand, there are cases of intermarriage between brothers and sisters for generations. Trace the greatest ruling family of which there is any modern historical record this side of tradition—the Ptolemies of Egypt. In conformity with Egyptian law, brothers and sisters should marry. To us that would be the last word in abomination, morally, and deterioration mentally, but again, it is perfectly well known that the greatest people there is any record of in South America were the Incas. They had the same law. Something else to speculate about: Their blood was so pure or was assumed to be so—that it was considered a crime to mix their blood with any except that of their own royal kin; and there is no record of deterioration; in fact, the last of the Ptolemies was Cleopatra; no particular record of deterioration there. But it is a fact that amongst other peoples, as amongst the North American Indians it was forbidden to marry inside the clan. Now, we can see that between people who are alike throughout, there is nothing to arouse creative fire; they are all the same. If the lives are all the 59 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
same, they tend more and more to
passivity, to inertia. The very characteristics of astral
matter—resiliency, elasticity, and tenuity—that are here spoken of, are
lacking. Therefore, the astral body is more open to foreign influences,
and the person becomes more psychic, or mediumistic. We call that
deterioration. But any doctor will tell you that it is an exploded theory.
There is, perhaps, no more remarkable record than that of the royal
families of Europe, since for 500 years, there has been continual
inbreeding among less than 500 people, the royal families of Germany,
Russia, Italy, Austria, Belgium, England, France and Scotland.
Intermarriage between themselves of those who were as close as
cousins.
Ans.—Astral. matter presents
subdivisions or sub-states just the same as does this matter that we know.
We speak of solid, liquid and gaseous matter; those are three states of
our matter. We know that the gaseous is ordinarily invisible; that the
liquids are extremely impressible as to shape; that solid matter retains a
fixed tenuity of form. Now apply the same thing to the astral matter;
there is solid astral; there is liquid and there is gaseous astral. We can
understand, then, from the physical analogy of this earth, what Mr. Judge
means in that statement, “Our body is our earth.” Isn’t our earth
surrounded with an immense ocean of gaseous and vaporous matter of the
same kind as the earth itself? So our body is surrounded by vaporous and
gaseous lives on the astral plane. That is why it is that we can
oftentimes sense another whom we cannot see.
Ans.—If the paragraph had been read
with attention, no contradiction would appear. In sleep we are absorbing
and not resisting the life energy. When we awake we are resisting it. When
we fall asleep we are more full of life than in the morning because our
power to resist becomes less and less; during the waking hours we become
charged with the life energy until we are no longer able to resist it, and
sleep supervenes. Take a flowing stream and a swimmer: he swims against
the stream, resisting the current, then he floats down stream with the
current of the water. We might say that he is absorbing Life while
floating, resisting it while swimming; as long as he is holding his place,
he is awake; when he is drifting, he is asleep.
We can use the illustration of the
current in an electric lamp; the filament resisting the current gives
light, but If the current flowed through with no filament, there would be
no resistance. Also, this analogy shows how Life outwardly kills, because
the filament in the globe stands the Impact just so long and then we have
a broken filament. Ans.—We are familiar with the word “deprivation.” We are familiar with the fact that a man may be in a state of privation. What does that mean? Reduced to the extreme limits of endurance. Well, suppose we take 60 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— its metaphysical counterpart. There is that form in space occupied by everybody, the mould in space made by anybody. You put your foot on sand and you have made the mould; there is the privative limit of a foot. According to H.P.B., privative refers to the astral form as apart from the physical; that is, the privative limit of the cell. To us the cell appears a physical thing. Mr. Judge says it has no existence physically; it is simply poured into a container; that container is the astral cell, which is the real cell. And this is true with everything there is. A magnet is a good example: when the iron filings come within the influence of the magnet, the true form is made; yet when the filings are pushed away, the astral body does not cease to exist, because as soon as the iron filings are brought close to the magnet again, the true form is seen.
Ans.—Don't you think the whole subject can be reduced to simple terms? All of us, out of a body or in the body, in heaven or in hell, place ourselves in relation with other forms of life. The relation in which we put ourselves is the result of our own act; whatever we get from that relationship is the consequence or effect of our own acts. I put myself in the power of an evil entity; that is my doing. The evil entity acts according to its world, not according to mine; I get the results. And, if we apply that in every direction, we can see that the Ego, as the result of his own actions, comes under the influence of the mother. Then, whatever she thinks or feels, he must get the result of it as the consequence of his own actions. Her imagination, her aspirations, may build him a wonderfully sensitive and susceptible instrument, or a defective one. In either case, he had put himself in that relation and so the Karma of it, in so far as it affects him, is his Karma; in so far as the mothers conduct is concerned, the same thing is true—it is her Karma. We might say that the thoughts and feelings of the mother form one of the constituent elements of the astral body of the incoming ego.
Chapter V
II.——The Astral Body,
Astral Substance and Human Birth Q.—Why is the term “astral body” used? Why not use another one of the terms suggested by Mr. Judge on p. 41 (p. 38 Am. Ed.)? Ans.—Astral bodies are composed of astral matter, whether it is the astral body of this, that or the other form. There is mineral matter, coming from below up—the first state of matter. There is vegetable matter—the second state; animal matter—the third state; and astral matter—the fourth state. There are bodies composed of all three and all four. We think of matter as solid, liquid and gaseous, but that is not the meaning that Theosophy gives to it. Solid, liquid and gaseous are all merely sub-states of mineral matter. The confusion comes, perhaps, because there are seven planes of perception. We are seeing physically on the fourth plane of perception, counting from above down, or from below up. 61 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Q.—How can we call astral substance the
fourth stage of matter?
Ans.—The Theosophical answer is, Yes.
Ans.—Conception is the union of fourth-state matter on this plane, with the fourth-state matter on the higher plane on which the Ego is living. The process is exactly analogous to that by which water is formed when Hydrogen and Oxygen are fused by a spark.
What is here spoken of as ethereal form—although Mr. Judge says it is that ethereal form which exists after death—must, if it exists after death, have also existed before birth. So we have the form as it exists in memory, the form as it exists in idea, and the form as it exists in egoic “imagination”; then we have a combination of these three. The Ego’s own astral body—that is of electrical and magnetic substance— 62 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— combines with the corresponding substance on the plane of matter that we know.
Ans.—Let us take an analogy, and compare a block of marble with the sculptor’s mental picture. Ideas are the mere material for the imagination to work on. Perhaps another way to help us to get at this is this: take our bodies, or any other body; it can be affected by two kinds of forces we know. It can be affected, first of all, by what we call mechanical forces, and we know also that all these forms can be affected by what we call chemical forces. Now, think of imagination as a force, of memory as a force, of will as a force, of feeling as a force, and we understand that our bodies can be affected by our feelings. Don’t we all know that? Don’t we see the distortion of the face, the change in the movement of the heart of a man who is angry, or who is envious, or who is full of love? You can tell a man’s thoughts by looking at his face, providing you know how to read that kind of script; but no man can think in the body and not affect his body. So, thinking of these things as forces, we can understand that there is a state of substance that is affected directly by the will; there is a state of matter that is affected directly by thought; there is a state of matter that is affected directly by feeling, in just the same way that the matter we know is affected chemically, mechanically, or electrically—and all the rest becomes easy. But if we try to think of these things in the terms of matter as we know it, and we are in danger of doing that, we are just as foolish as if we were to try to deal with things as we see them in dreams. We see in dreams; we touch, we taste, we smell; but dreams have no sense in physical terms.
Ans.—That ought to be easy to see. Whenever a man gets a wound, he gets a shock from it. So does his flesh; so does the astral body. It is just as when we get a hard jolt amongst our friends, and change our relation towards them; so, the shock to the psychic nature of a tree is such that the new physical lives which enter are not of the same texture, not of the same grade, as the lives which were there, and we have a scar. The greater the shock physically, astrally, psychically, mentally—the longer enduring is the scar.
Ans.—We ought to be able to see why, easily enough. The lobster has no imagination. His is a borrowed body, and if he loses a claw, he has no memory of the loss, but he has plenty of claws left; so, other forces operate than those which work in us. The model is still there, only it is another kind of astral model because it is on the lower plane of psychic or vital nature and undisturbed lives fill up the model. But notice the immense change in us: when we lose a limb the change is mental; we can’t even imagine it growing on again. The law of growth begins in imagination.
Ans.—The lobster is part of an order of life which belongs to a 63 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— former Manvantara and which is accidentally present in this one. It is under the laws of a period of evolution that for us is long, long past.
Ans.—Of course it does, unless there are miracles. We know our friends from our foes—and we know our foes, too, so far as that is concerned. How comes it that we know them? We have natural affinities for people the moment we see them, or natural repulsions, or we are utterly indifferent—and all this, the first time we ever saw them. Suppose a man were let down from a balloon into a village of savages in darkest Africa. He would immediately form likes and dislikes amongst the natives. Either there are miracles, or that repulsion and affinity is a form of memory. You can’t have an affinity for a thing you know nothing about; you can’t have a repulsion towards a thing you never had anything to do with. How could you? These are forms of memory. There are many more forms of memory than personal memory.
Ans.—Remember that the matter—matter of every kind—is but the projection of an image into the visible “here.” Suppose there were a book on the table, as there is, and a good medium were here, or an adept; we could see the book, without physical contact, picked up and moved, say, and deposited on the chair. How is it done? Behind the physical book, the visible book, is an astral book; the adept or the medium would simply be dealing with the astral book. He lifts the astral book, and that’s all there is to it. The moment that there is direct contact of astral with astral, our laws of gravity no longer apply. We can see how that is with, say, a gas. We know that the characteristic property of what we call solid matter is centripetal; it tends to cohere around a centre; and yet we know also that this same solid matter—the very same particles in it—when some change goes on to which we give the name of heat is at once converted into another state altogether, that of a gas. The characteristic property of a gas is the exact opposite of the characteristic of a solid, yet the lives in the gas and the lives in the solid are the same lives. Take ice; there is substance—visible, touchable. Apply heat (which is but astral fire) to it, and at once those same lives are freed from the centripetal force and are in a neutral state; the particles move freely amongst themselves. Apply still more heat and those same lives become centrifugal.
Ans.—Yes, and no. No, not as the astral plane is treated in Chapter Five; and yes, as we are accustomed to think of them. The Secret Doctrine tells us that the elements were developed one by one—that refers to the cosmic elements, symbolized for us under the names of fire or ether, air, water and earth—and that a new sense, which means only an agency of action, was developed step by step with the development of each new element. There is the explanation of the changes in the constituent particles of matter or monads or atomic lives—fiery lives in the solar system, as specified in the footnote of the S.D. on pp. 2O5-6 Vol. I. 64 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— In the beginning, matter, as we know, was in a wholly different state. From what we can see of a nebula, there is light there. Now, regarding a nebula as the second stage in the development of a solar system to come, there is a sense already developed there. What is that sense? Well, we can call it the sense of sound but, applied intellectually, it means the sense of touch, of contact, the sense of unity. If you use the word “astral.” in the sense of the pure development of the elements, not what we have been doing with those elements for the last 18 million years—then the development of the elements was astral, probably psychic.
Ans.—The statement has several times been made in Theosophical teachings, that the route to birth for the descending ego is through the mother. We know that is true physically. It is also true, necessarily, astrally, and is usually true all up and down the line. Yet, at our stage of evolution, it is not possible for there to be virgin birth, immaculate birth, although every religion and every people have traditions of immaculate birth in the past and prophecies of immaculate birth to come some time in the future. Now, taking these statements which relate the incoming ego specifically to the mother—that is, directly to the mother—it is a natural and would seem to be a correct inference that the ego is not connected with the father in the same way. The father’s attraction is towards the mother; the mother’s attraction is what draws the ego. If this line of thinking is correct, the father’s connection with the incoming ego is indirectly through the mother; the mother’s connection with the descending ego is direct; and that is illustrated in all religions. The question is also asked: Is the mother affected by the incoming ego? Well, ask your own mother, if she is living. Talk to a woman who has had three, four, five or six children, and she knows that, while the process of ante-natal life—its stages—are the same, no matter how many children or who has them, her own physical, psychical and emotional states varied enormously with each of the different births. Isis Unveiled is full of statements as to the effect of the incoming ego on the mother, astrally, psychically and physically, and of the possible effects of the mother on the incoming egos, astrally, psychically and physically. It would be possible for the mother and the father (the Father sheltering the mother) to provide a fit tabernacle for the incoming ego, although that ego itself might be relatively of low grade. Or, it is within the mother’s power to provide a poor tabernacle for the incoming ego, although that ego might be one of very high grade. It is a matter, first, of thought, will and feeling on the part of the mother, and a matter, secondly, of her knowledge and understanding of the mysteries of trinitarian birth—because not just father and mother, but father, mother and the ego are an concerned in the birth. Finally, it is a question of relation of the father and of the community at large, its attitude toward motherhood, its understanding and care and provision for the mother to be. 65 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Q.—Why do we so often find the father and child in perfect harmony with each other—mentally and spiritually—the mother being out of accord entirely? Ans.—As a matter of fact, observe the relation of father, mother and children; you will find that, as a rule, no such accord exists between the father and the children, as exists between the mother and the children. The mother, according to the teachings of Theosophy, has a far more direct and continuous relation with the incarnating ego than the father. The father’s initial relation to the incoming ego may be but momentary; that of the mother lasts not only through the many months before the child is born, but also during the period of nursing and helpless infancy. Not until the ego is seated in the body does the father begin to have such direct relations with the incarnated ego. Now, it is quite true that the ego, although drawn to the mother, is drawn by a conjunction of factors and circumstances, and the father has his part in those factors and circumstances—not the same part that the mother has, although sometimes it may be even a greater part. After the ego is here, gets in command of the body—and this, I think, is what lies behind this question—there may be far more intellectual affinity, let us say, far more affinity of tendency and of interest, between the incarnated ego and the father than there is between the incarnating ego and the mother. This might be, and often is, the case—but it is not so as a rule. In coming into incarnation, the ego comes via the mother, thus making the relation of the mother more immediate and direct than the relation of the father. Now, carry this question a little further. All through life the mother generally will—even for the grown son, maybe a man with children of his own—will, to the day of her death, sacrifice for her own children. If any of us get in trouble, and our mother and father are both living, whom do we go to? Do we go to Father and say, “I ran into another car,” “I got into a fight and hurt somebody,” or “I took money from the till to gamble on a horse. No—we go to Mother. Why? Sometimes because the mother’s identity with us, her connection with us, is far more profound than the father’s, and for that reason her compassion for us is greater than that of the father. This was put long ago by Lord Byron:—Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; ‘Tis woman’s whole existence. On the other hand, many mothers are over-indulgent, and will sacrifice, for their children’s sake, all manner of principles and every consideration of justice and equity; in such cases, the child seeks “protection” and “forgiveness” from the mother, instead of facing Karmic consequences on his own. Now, the basis of all relationship is the love that is born between the two who are related, and on that basis it is perfectly clear that mother-love is often a far deeper, far more inclusive, far more enduring and direct bond than father’s love—not that it should necessarily be so, but it generally is so.
Ans.—It is not a difference in essence; one is just as spiritual in his origin, in his destiny, in his essence, as the other, and yet we know that tremendous differences exist between members of the human kingdom—let alone between the human kingdom and the other kingdoms. There 66 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— is an intimate relationship between intelligence—that is, acquired experience—and the instrument, a given ego being inhibited by one or another of his principles or sheaths or bodies from the fullest expression. Now, we have but to look at the woman body as compared with the man body and know for ourselves that physiologically, nervously and psychically the female instrument, the female body, is far more sensitive and responsive to impressions than the male body; ergo in those things which constitute our feeling responses—the psychic nature—it stands to reason that the same ego in the female body is able to express the inner and higher nature more easily, more freely, more fully, in our period, than the same ego in a male body.
Ans.—There is no statement whatever in the Teachings that the Masters usually take male bodies. How do we know what kind of bodies the Masters take? We do not even know what kind of a body H.P.B. had. As a matter of fact, H.P.B. was neither male nor female; she was androgyne. Theosophy says that sex has nothing whatever to do with adeptship. Now, if the Adepts did take male bodies, it might be because men needed their example more than women do in the present day.
Ans —We all realize that some things are objective to our sense perceptions; in other words, Life can be looked at in its various forms and manifestations either with spiritual sight, or with intellectual sight, or with the eye of sense. Now, as a matter of fact, what we call “physical” matter is Life as seen from the sense point of view, the point of view of the five senses. It might help us in this discussion of the cell, to consider that the Ocean was written in 1893, five years after the Secret Doctrine was published (in 1888), and that both in the Secret Doctrine and in the Ocean—which is but a key to the Secret Doctrine there is clear enunciation of the occult doctrine of the basis of all manifestations, the theory, you may call it, about objectivity or manifested existence on every plane. What is that theory? That actually all is Life that, although what we see around us is named “matter,” it has no existence in and of itself, being a condensation and an effect of something which preceded it; that the real basis of matter consists simply of what we may call Monads in the cosmic sense, but not in the human sense. What is a Monad? It is a conscious centre of energic force in the One Life. Today, 60 years afterwards, we have the present scientific theory of the constitution of matter which bears exactly the same relation to the theory laid down by Mr. Judge that a dead body bears to a living one. Every statement made by Mr. Judge can be found in a modern text—book on physical science. The difference in the two theories is that Western occultism—that is, modern science—regards these centres of energy as dead, as inanimate, moved by some unknown extraneous force, whereas Theosophy regards them as inherently self-energizing. 67 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Chapter V Q.—What is meant by the astral body? Ans.—It is a self-germinating body. We know that our bodies, as they stand, are composed of two classes of cells—first, those which are self-germinating, that is, able to reproduce a complete compound structure of which they are but one single cell; and second, body cells which are able to reproduce themselves, but can do nothing else. Astral matter is self-germinating matter. It is worth while to watch every word Mr. Judge uses. If we read carefully what he says about the cell being an illusion, we will find that he does not say anything different from what our greatest scientists have come to declare: “The cell is an illusion. It is merely a word. It has no existence as a material thing.” Our science says the same thing. When regarded as a physical thing in itself, the cell is a pure illusion; it has no existence. In 1893, then, Mr. Judge propounded the present atomic theory of matter. All matter is an illusion if regarded as material; that is, as substance. The matter we see is composed of finer forms, those finer forms are composed of still more recondite forms, and those recondite forms are composed of still more infinitely recondite forms—until we get to a central point, a centre of energy, an electric charge. So, 60 years ago, Mr. Judge put on record, in simple and innocent words that a child can understand, that which our greatest scientists have finally come to. The only difference is that Mr. Judge says those sensitive points are life; therefore he calls them lives while our science is still wondering what it is that makes them move. They will get to that in 40 or 50 years more.
Ans.—It is us, for the most part. The fourth principle, according to the table give counting up or down, is that called by Mr. Sinnett in his book, Kama-Rupa. Kama means love, passion or desire. Rupa means form or body. So the word Kama-Rupa means the mass or body of passions and desires in any individual or in any collection of individuals. This is called in man the fourth principle, counting either way—from above down or from below up.
Ans.—Well, we are all absorbing energy, aren’t we, all the time? And expending it? Instead of saying “absorbing,” say “secreting.”
Ans.—Well, we shall first seek an explanation for ourselves and find that we have none; so we shall advise the inquirer to do just what we are doing—study the books and do the best that he can. There is mighty little information (in the sense that we understand “information”) given on elementals. Why? Because we are too much under the sway of a dark class of elementals now. But the statement is made that not a motion (in our nature as human beings) of our mind, of our feelings, of our passions and desires, of our hopes and fears, of our memory, of our everyday physical actions—not a single motion of our human consciousness—is possible except by and through elementals. They are psychic embryos. 68 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Notice that there is a constant transition of matter from the inorganic condition up to the organic condition, and a constant transition of matter from the organic condition to the inorganic state. So there is very clearly a cycle of evolution—it is in fact the cycle of physical evolution, from the inorganic to the organic and back again. But The Secret Doctrine tells us that there are three lines of evolution. There is the merely physical cycle of evolution which we have just spoken of; but there is also a psychic or intellectual cycle of evolution, and elementals represent the subjective side of psychic evolution. Psychic evolution begins in feeling and ends in intellection: intellection begins in ratiocination—that is, seeing that things have a cause—and ends in intuition.
Ans.—Yes, that’s true, but it is the Karma of the whole human race. We have misused the sensitive points, the lives, of the three kingdoms of nature below us—have done that for ages and ages—and now we are reaping what we sowed. This is a vast subject, and if any wanted to know about elementals and about this dark side, the best possible advice that could be given them is to come right here to the U.L.T. meetings; get an Ocean of Theosophy study carefully and participate in the meetings; and pay great attention to all that goes on; so doing, one will begin to learn something about the elemental kingdoms for oneself. Notice carefully, again, the various names Mr. Judge gives to the astral body. As we were saying a moment ago, his language is worthwhile watching. Remember the signs at the railroad crossings, “Stop—Look— Listen”? That is, concentrate Now, if we take every statement made by Mr. Judge, and “stop, look and listen” inside, we will get something. Take, then, the various names that he gives to the astral body: “ Linga Sarira, Sanscrit, meaning design body.” “Personal man.” Notice that? The personal man; that is what the astral body, astral matter, the astral man is—it is the personal man. We are dealing with astral men all the time. We talk about a man’s feelings. What are we dealing with? An ego; but he does not know himself for what he is, or whom he is dealing with. He thinks he is his feelings. And so every word we utter not only strikes the tympanum, but also strikes the astral man and produces an immediate polarization of this perisprit—that is, a human being, an astral man. That is a very graphic expression. People often ask what is meant by the astral man, astral body, astral form, astral matter. It is the stuff that the human being is made of. The divine being is made of another kind of stuff; the physical being is made of another kind of stuff. What is the physical being made of? The chapter tells us—cosmic dust. That is not astral matter.
Ans.—He is annihilated at every incarnation; that is why we die and have no recollection of former lives.
Ans.—No; when we say “atomic lives” we have used a contradictory expression, haven’t we, because the word atomic, as understood by us, means We never think of atomic matter as being alive and 69 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— yet, when we say “atomic” life, we are trying to wed two ideas, the idea of Theosophy, and the idea of Science that atoms are “lifeless.” By using the word “atomic”—which means, so far as we know, nuclear matter—with the word “lives,” we may help the man who has formed a mental picture of infinitesimal indestructible particles of matter to see that those indestructible particles are Life “atomic lives.” Now take the word Skandhas the word itself means, in English, collections, or aggregates, or bundles. This audience is a Skandha that is, it is a collection or bundle of beings, but Skandhas are bundles of desires—that is, feelings, memories, hopes, fears and passions formed by the man. We form them every moment and they constitute the Kamic principle in us; after we leave the body the astral body that we use ceases to be, because it is no longer inhabited by us. It is inhabited only by these aggregates, by these bundles of thoughts and passions—reflected lights. Remember, Mr. Judge says that the term Kama-Rupa should properly apply only after death, because Kama and the astral body do not coalesce while we are alive; our presence keeps either one or the other paralyzed. If our passions are active our astral body is passive; if our passions are passive, our astral body is active; but you can’t energize them both. Our presence in the body paralyzes one or the other. Now, we die; a complete change takes place in that which was our astral body. What is that change? Both positive and negative. Negatively, we have left it; positively, the passions and desires have left it. The moment we have left it the two poles of the astral man—the passions and the desires on the one side and the lives that form the substance of the astral body—coalesce and then we have a shell, a Kama-Rupa an elementary. It represents the dark side of the ex-human being. It is the personality minus the Ego. After a while, it dies and when it dissolves, it does not dissolve into its constituent lives as it should. We have had such fierce passions, such fierce loves and hates and hopes and fears, that we have made fusible compounds out of some of these lives, so that each separate compound lasts for ages and ages and ages, and those are the Skandhas they are the bases of our molecular body on the return to a new incarnation.
Ans.—Yes, there is all the difference in the world: our Siddhis have produced the Skandhas In other words, the elementals of themselves have no power to combine and remain in cohesion, just as a dozen and one chemical elements have no power to hunt each other up and combine. But any man who has intelligence and knowledge of the elements can put these chemical elements together, develop a great heat, and fuse them. Then we have a new substance and it manifests entirely different qualities from the original elements themselves. The word Siddhis means powers. Every time we use our power of thought or will or feeling or memory or imagination, we are exercising our Siddhis we either exercise them in a high way or in a low way, up or down. If we exercise them “downward,” we form elementals which persist because of the cohering power of our thought and feeling and those afterwards become the Skandhas. Skandhas are human elementals; that is, they are collections of elemental beings given a form by our thought. They couldn’t have taken that form of themselves; of themselves elementals have no forms; we give them forms forms of hate, forms of fear, forms of doubt, forms of suspicion, and good forms, cheerful forms, optimistic forms and beautiful forms. These 70 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— constitute the Skandhas.
Ans.—Well, that involves a lot of truth an quite a lot of misconceptions. Remember, in the first place, that we very seldom see straight. There is truth in all of us, just as there is truth in everything, but there is also a terrific admixture of what is absolutely untrue, as well as what is erroneous, and we can’t always tell which is the truth and what is the erroneous and false. Now, let us see; what is Karma? Karma, in the spiritual sense, in the Egoic sense, is neither past nor future; it is always present—there is no “past Karma” in the spiritual sense; there is no “past Karma” as there is no “future Karma” in the spiritual sense. Our Karma at every given moment does not lie in our circumstances; it lies in the way we feel about them. What is real to us at any moment—whether we are in the seventh heaven or the lowest hell—is the way we fee]. about it. Our “hell” is the way we feel; our heaven is the way we feel; but our feelings depend on circumstances instead of on us. So the real question of good and bad feelings, good and bad Karma, and good and evil themselves, is a matter of our control over our fourth principle When a man can control his feelings, there is no longer for him any good Karma or any bad Karma; there is just action Can’t we see that? Suppose you were drowning and you actually could say to yourself, “Well, what of It? In five minutes it will all be over and I shall be able to recall the circumstance.” What would drowning mean? Suppose we could 71 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— look at death as we look at going to sleep! Suppose last night we dreamed we lost our home; we couldn’t pay interest; the mortgage was being fore-closed; we had no job and no bread and butter; we were starving; but supposing we woke up and said, “Thank God, that was only a dream” Yet it was no “dream” while we were dreaming. All these feelings that we have are only illusions. We think they are due to our circumstances but in every case they are our attitude toward circumstances. The more you look at it the more you will come to see the utter truth of a statement made by Mr. Judge, that “the power of any and all circumstances is a fixed, unvarying quality”; it is we who are the variants. Where is the variation? It is in our feelings. Would it be possible for a man to burn alive and smile? Why, you have but to read American history to find numbers of Indians and of white men who were burned at the stake and who jested and laughed at their tormentors for their inability to make them suffer. History is full of the Christian martyrs who were crucified, nailed up on a cross; it took them hours and hours to die, and yet they were literally “in Heaven” while nailed to the cross. Now, isn’t it possible for us to get into such a state of consciousness that it is our body which suffers, not we ourselves; or that it is our astral body that suffers, not we? The old teaching of Theosophy is that that is the fact. You know that what you can do to a man is very little. Think how narrow is the range within which you can torture a man. Physically, you can torture him until his temperature goes up 8 or 10 degrees, and then you can’t torture him any more; or, his temperature will go down 8 or 10 degrees, and then you can’t torture him any more, because the body cannot normally stand any more. That is, the body’s normal tensile strain in terms of suffering is within a range of 15 or 16 degrees from normal. Don’t we realize that the astral body (which is the source of our personal sufferings as well as personal feelings) has its tensile limit, also, and that it does not make any difference how badly our feelings are lacerated—it’s still easy not to have them lacerated? Suppose you were in the presence of a delirious man; you knew he was delirious, therefore irresponsible. Suppose, then, he called you every name under heaven—liar, thief and all the rest—he would only incite your compassion. A man in anger is a delirious man—he is in a far worse delirium than one who is merely physiologically delirious, because that derangement is of his brain and nervous system; but with the angry man the derangement is in his astral and Kamic nature. Now, would we be disturbed if a delirious man used abusive language to us? Not at all. So, it is all a question of our identification with the experiences which come to us. Speaking of the Higher Self, we are our Higher Self, if we think so; we are the devil himself if we feel that way. It is not what we go through, physically or astrally or psychically; it is our identification of Self with circumstances—whatever we name the circumstances. The ceasing of identification is the ceasing of soul pain. Then a man suffers just as an animal suffers, and an animal’s sufferings are a joke compared with the sufferings of a human being, because an animal has neither memory nor anticipation.
Ans.—The feeling of Unity, the feeling of Brotherhood, the feeling of Service—three words for the same thing. 72
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Chapter V Q.—On p. 44). (p. 41 Am. Ed.), Mr. Judge speaks of the imagination of the mother affecting the astral body of the child. If that is so, don’t our thoughts affect our astral body and form a link between cause and effect, or precipitate our Karma? Ans. When you come to think about it, our imagination is simply another form of expression for our feelings. we notice, when our feelings are disturbed, how our imagination races? Now, our imagination is the one thing that does affect us. It is not what happens to us—it is the way we feel about it, it is our imagination in regard to it. You know, you could tell an American Indian that in five minutes you were going to burn him at the stake and, if he happened to be tired, he would lie down and go to sleep for those five minutes. Ans.—I was going to say, “All the difference in the world.” If you take an anaesthetic, which means an artificial way of getting out of your body—something that paralyzes the nervous system—then you can treat the body as if it were a log of wood. That is what the Christian Scientist does, and justly so—because his ideas are wooden. He lets the practitioner treat them, and he uses an anaesthetic—self-hypnotism. What does the Yogi do? He goes through whatever experiences are necessary to enable him to serve others. All of the Christian Scientist’s self-denial and all of his affirmations are, as a rule, for his own sake. That is what constitutes, according to the teachings of Theosophy, black magic whether it is conscious or unconscious. Take the average man of today and give him the power of the Mahatmas; if he could save the world by being burned to death as millions of men have been burned, would this man consent to be burned to death as a human being? Would he consent to be crucified? Would he put aside his power in order to step aside from the carcass and let them burn it, or would he stay in it? You know what the answer would be; most of us would use our powers for ourselves. Nevertheless, you can see that there is truth in what the Christian Scientist believes and does; but there is truth in a crooked balance sheet: the figures are all right. There is truth in a forged check: the paper is genuine and the ink is genuine. It may be good writing, too, but nobody forges checks for someone else’s sake—least of all for the sake of the fellow whose signature he forges The Christian Scientists, we might say, are forging the signature of Spirit for personal, selfish, material gain. What will the price be when Nature’s “bank” checks up? Look around you; the world is full of people who are psychologically and psychopathically deranged. There are tens of millions in India, and do you know that more than half of the hospital space in this country is devoted to psychopathic cases? If a man has smallpox or some serious physical disease, he is sent to the hospital; but if a man is insane, psychologically unbalanced, that is, in many cases, the last thing on earth his friends will do. They all think they can take care of him at home. Now, if you will consider that of the known cases in the hospitals more than half are psychically deranged, and add to that the enormous percentage of cases which are kept quiet, you will get some idea of this problem. Some people— 73 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— many people—are born nervously deranged, psychically shot to pieces, and they finally become “perverts,” “extraverts,” or “introverts,” if you like those pet words. The world is full of them; they have lost their discrimination. Once a man has lost his discrimination, how can he know that he has lost it? Think of it: imagine a man denying that there is evil in the world.
Ans.—What would be the effect on the physical body if you took your clothes off and burned them? It would set the body free, instead of letting it wait for the clothes to fall off. So it is when you burn the physical body. Remember that what we call rotting or decomposition is a slow, slow process. Nature is not as intelligent as man—let us not forget that. It takes Nature years and years to accomplish what man can bring about in a few minutes. Here is a man who dies: leave the body to Nature and it will be months, perhaps years, before the slow decomposition of Nature sets the astral body free; but put the body in a retort and it can be set free in half an hour, an hour, or two hours. So, the effect upon the astral body of cremating the physical form is to set the astral free from the physical. You can’t burn the astral body—our fire does not work on that plane.
Q.—Doesn't the astral body require a physical body after death for about two days? Ans.—No; the physical body is precipitated on the astral body in exactly the same way that electric plating is put on. The father is one “pole” of the battery—the copper pole; the mother is the other “pole” of the battery—the zinc pole; and so, matter on this plane is precipitated on astral matter. The astral body is “soaked” with the physical. Read carefully what Mr. Judge says about materialized spirits. Now, stretch that out over a period of nine months, and make it a natural process, and you have the method by which the astral body is coated with matter during the nine months of antenatal life. The process is the same: one is atavistic, unnatural, and unintelligent; the other one is natural but unintelligent. It is quite possible for us to speculate a little (and find plenty of confirmation in The Secret Doctrine about those in whom Manas has by training found out how to use the astral body independently of the physical: what might happen to such a being after death? He wouldn’t take another physical body—why should he? If he wanted to come and live amongst men for five minutes at a time, half an hour at a time, or for days at a time, he would use his intelligence to coat his astral body from matter held in suspension on this plane, so that it would present to us all the appearance of a solid, natural-born physical body. He would hold it that way, and when he was through with his interviews and his interviewers, let loose the temporary form. That would be simply an acceleration of the process of Nature.
Q.—I think the question was: Does not the astral body require the physical body for two days after death? Ans.—Well, the answer was No, the astral body does not require it at all. But something else is required after death. When we say that death has supervened, the ego—according to the teachings of Theosophy— has in fact not yet left the body and astral body, and the body should 74 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
be left undisturbed for at least twelve
hours. In some cases it ought to be left longer—it would depend upon what
kind of a life had been lived by the man. But it takes a certain period
before we can be sure that the Ego has extricated himself from the mortal
instrument. If he hasn’t and we incinerate the body, we are in fact
burning the man alive. That has happened—but that is Karma, too. 75 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— rest than any other organ in the body; it rests 50 per cent of the time, but it rests on a mathematical basis—stroke, return, stroke, return. Now if our life were regulated on that basis we would be awake 24. hours in the day. It would be this rhythm—act; retreating to the plane of Manas; act; retreating to the plane of Manas; and so on, just like a heart-beat.
Chapter V V.—Astral Matter, Atoms and Incarnation Q.—The statement is made (The Ocean of Theosophy 2nd Indian ed., p.45 (p. 41 Am. Ed.) that the astral body can go a short distance from the physical. What is it, then—if such a thing occurs—that holds the physical together? Ans.—Well, if the astral body were actually detached from the physical, the physical would instantly collapse, instantly disappear. We ought to bear in mind something that H.P.B. said more than once and that Mr. Judge has also called our attention to more than once. To us the astral body exists only theoretically. Isn't that so? Similarly, the Ego’ s independent existence in Kama-Loka or in Devachan, or as Higher Manas, is theoretical, yet it is to us something that looks reasonable, that looks credible, that appeals to our conscience, our judgment, our common-sense. We do not find it out of accord with life as we know and experience it here. But we haven’t the same experimental knowledge of these conditions that we have of life here in the physical body. Why do we know so little of the astral body? Because the astral and physical represent a pair of opposites, in the first place. We know no thing about the astral, and whatever Mr. Judge says here in the Ocean can only be said to us in terms of analogy. Suppose you were trying to describe our electric lights to a South Sea Islander. He never saw an electric light—he doesn’t know a thing about electricity. You could tell him about it only by saying that electricity is chain lightning, canned lightning, harnessed lightning, “lightning” that we carry around in a box. Now, from our point of view, that would be absolutely true, wouldn’t it—even though that is not the way we describe lightning scientifically? We ought to reason by analogy. What is Spirit? It is the exact polar opposite of Matter. What is Matter? It is the exact polar opposite of Spirit. What is Astral Matter? Sub-state by sub-state, it is the polar opposite of physical matter. If we begin to think about it from that point of view, we may get some light. How is astral matter manipulated physically? By magnetic attraction and repulsion. No mechanical force, no chemical force, has anything to do with it. How can it be affected metaphysically In three ways: by thought, by will and by feeling. How is it affected by us? Mostly by feeling, isn’t it? And so are we affected by it, in the same way. True, whether astral or physical, it is one and the same stuff looked at from opposite directions. But don’t you see that, in physical matter, the characteristics that in themselves are called “astral matter” are latent? They have to be latent for physical matter to be active. But if astral matter is to be active, then physical matter has to be latent. Suppose any man could suddenly, by an act of the will, paralyze his five senses. He would be instantly seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and so forth on the astral plane. Now we have him on the astral plane; let us paralyze his five astral 76 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— senses. Where is he? Right here in our physical world.
Ans.—Well, there is some misconception here. It is nowhere said that all the lives go back to the mineral state. Every class of lives has an appropriate “place” in consciousness in one of the elemental kingdoms, and it goes back to its own appropriate place. Some, say, become mineral elementals; some go back to the vegetable kingdom, and become vegetable elementals; some go back to the animal kingdom and become animal elementals. Some of the lives we use do not descend to the lower kingdoms at all. They accompany the Ego into Devachan; they stay with the Ego from the beginning of the Manvantara to the close. If you want to read something very interesting on that subject, start with the last paragraph on p. 671, Volume II of The Secret Doctrine and read over onto the next page.
Ans.—The statement is that the astral
body and the Kamic elements coalesce almost immediately after death and
commence disintegrating right away. For the average man—in fact, with the
ordinary man in the case of normal death—the astral body begins
disintegrating a considerable time before the body is dead. Normal death
is brought about by the partial disintegration of the astral body, that
is, partial separation Or, reversing the process, we have, in prenatal
life, the drawing together of the elements of the astral form.
So, looking at the question the other
way about, the astral begins to disintegrate before actual physical death,
save in cases of violent death. The period varies from a few months to a
few years. But the Kama-Rupa, after death, begins to disintegrate at once.
The period during which that disintegration goes on depends upon many,
many circumstances, and, just like the period in Devachan, no actual
definite figures could be stated for any individual person. Ans.—It necessarily depends on what we understand by the term “atom.” Much of our confusion undoubtedly arises from the compulsion under which H.P.B. laboured to use our Western scientific terms. Now, to the Theosophist, to the Occultist, she says, “atom” means something altogether different from what it means in science. To us an “atom” has meant, until the past few decades, something physical, of an exceeding smallness. It no longer means that to any present—day physicist. In their conception of what an atom is, physicists have made as big a jump in recent years as there is still remaining between their conception and that of the Occultist. Suppose we take H.P.B. ‘s own statement: At the beginning of any period of evolution, the Monads emerge from their state of absorption within the One, whether we call that Nirvana, Paranirvana, or what-not. Now, those Monads represent one of two classes; they are either fully awakened or they aren’t. If they are not awakened, they are called, in their collectivity, Matter and for the lives ( or Monads constituting Matter, the word atom is just as good as any other. Slowly, by 77 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— natural impulse, they become partially awakened, and then they are called Elementals. So, actually, there is all the difference in the world between what we could call an “atom” of the animal kingdom, or the vegetable kingdom, and an “atom” of the mineral kingdom. We ought to know that there is an immense difference between metallic iron and organic iron. We must see that there is a tremendous difference between the chemical elements in our body and the same chemical elements in the soil. The difference isn’t made by us; it’s made by the different natures of those lives when they have a chance to act. But again, if you will read that same reference that was given, from S.D., II, 671, bottom, to the top of p. 672, you will understand this question better. Ans.—The spiritual man, pure and simple, is the individualization of the three highest principles, Atma-Buddhi-Manas. That is why man is immortal. What would the purely physical animal being be? Would it not be the exact opposite of the purely spiritual being? Spirit and matter are a pair of opposites. Then, what is the purely animal being? The Secret Doctrine says that the pure animal consists of the three lower principles in temporary union. We may say, therefore, that the spiritual man is the three higher spiritual principles of life permanently individualized, while the “animal being” is the three lowest principles of life temporarily organized. Let us ask another question: What is the purely human being? If we have studied our Secret Doctrine with any care, we have found that over and over again H.P.B. speaks of the human stage She speaks of the human being, but says it would be an utter absurdity to think of the human being of the Third Round or of the Third Race as in any way like the man of today, the human being of today. Now, we have a purely spiritual man, or spiritual being; we have a purely animal being. We are trying now to get at: What is a purely human being? Can’t we see the answer? When did the incarnation take place? The middle of the Third Race, the middle of the Third Round; so the purely human being is a 3-½ or 4-principled being. What was the Lunar Pitri? Was he a spiritual being? No. Was he an animal being? No. What kind of being was he? A human being, pure and simple. The 3-½ principles were in him. In the most progressed of the Lunar Pitris, the 4 lower principles were united, but in the great bulk of them only 3-½ principles were awakened. Those were the ones who could receive only a spark; it was only those in whom the four lower principles were temporarily united, who could receive more. If we can grasp that, we are on the road to understanding this mystery of “Was man ever an animal?” Spiritual man means the individualization of the three highest principles of Life; animal means the temporary organization, in a form, of the three lowest principles. The purely human being no longer exists, so far as we know; if he does exist, he doesn’t mix with humanity. The purely human being is one in whom the four lower principles are developed and in union in the being—that’s the Lunar Pitri. H.P.B. says they were of seven classes, which means that they ranged all the way from 3-principled consciousness with just the faintest touch of the fourth principle up to full 4 principled being. Now we can understand what incarnation means. We have the purely spiritual being, the purely animal being, the purely human being, and 78 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— then we have the incarnation of the 3-principled permanent spiritual being—the reincarnating ego in the 4 or 3-½—principled being, the Lunar Pitri in one degree of evolution or another. Not until then do we have humanity as we understand it. Then comes the great mystery, the mystery of good and evil, the mystery of loss of “Soul.” and the rest—the mystery of intellectual evolution. The purely spiritual man is not an Intellectual being in our sense of the word; his consciousness is universal. He thinks in terms of the consciousness of all other beings. That is the meaning of the statement of one of the Masters, that not until the 3-principled being—the reincarnating ego—united his mind with this perfected 4-principled being, not till then did we have man? That is called the “incarnation.” There were the pairs of opposites united in a single form; the spiritual being and the human animal, in one consciousness. Then comes the intellectual man or intellectual evolution. Why? Why was it not possible before? No contrast. The moment that we incarnate, there is the contrast between the spirit and the matter in us. We are neither spirit nor matter—we are the blending of both spirit and matter, and that is the man of today. If we think of an animal as a 3-principled Monad, of a Lunar Pitri as a 4-principled Monad, and of the reincarnating egos as individual Monads, then we can think of the human being as a 7-principled Monad and of the Mahatmas as perfected 7-principled Monads. Is everything sevenfold? No, it isn’t although the expression is used. Let us take an example. Is it not perfectly clear that there is a great difference between the money I have and the money I have not? I am a millionaire in potency; actually, I don’t know how I am going to pay next month’s rent. So, nobody can call me a millionaire in fact. The animal is Life, just as much as the highest Mahatma, but actually only three out of the seven principles are awake in that Life. The potency, the potentiality, of all the other principles is there, but they are non-existent—they exist in possibility but not in actuality. So it is perfectly true, as “The Synthesis of Occult Science” (U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 3, p. 13) says, that “man has not one principle more than the tiniest insect,” but in the tiniest insect 4-½ principles are dormant; in man all seven are awake. They are awake in us, but not yet in union; when they are in union, then we shall be Mahatmas. As an analogy for the seven principles in man, consider this book, which we can see with our physical eyes; that represents the physical body. Shut your eyes, and still you see the book; that is the astral. Then, looking at the book, you want to know what is in it; that is the Desire Principle. You begin to read it, think about what is written; That is Mind or Manas working. After you have read it for a while, all of a sudden you begin to see something of the deeper meaning—you get a flash of understanding; that is Buddhi. And when you finally realize it, really know it, that is Self-Knowledge, which may represent Atma.
Chapter VI Hypnotism, Suggestion and the Astral Light Q.—At the time the Ocean was written in 1893, much attention was devoted to hypnotic experimentation as demonstrated by Charcot in Paris. This interest declined, and seems not to have been revived until the last decade or so. What is the explanation? 79 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Ans.—This question relates to the cycles of psychism. Now, in the last century, Charcot demonstrated that hypnotism was not a safe method to use. Yet much of what is called Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis is nothing but a modified form of hypnotism. Another thing found out very quickly was that Charcot ruined his subjects—in body, mind and soul— and so his school fell into disrepute. Have we ever thought, however, with respect to this modern form of psychoanalysis, that its power, psychologically, is in its confessional element? In some degree, at least, the power of the psychoanalyst is a renewal of the power of the priest.
Ans.—Always the suggestion is that the man unburden himself—and most of us are very willing to do so. The psychoanalyst listens and then he suggests forms of gratification, so that these suppressed tendencies may be given their normal field of exercise—physically, if it is safe; otherwise, in the man’s thoughts. The truth is that most of us are hypnotized, not by some person but by the influence upon our astral natures of the thoughts, desires and feelings of all mankind for millions of years. We have been incarnated, let’s say, a thousand times since the beginning as an entirely distinct race of our Aryan Race, and before that we had tens of thousands of incarnations in Atlantean days. That experience hasn’t perished; it is the substance of the astral light, and everyone of us is hypnotized by it. To whatever extent our wills are not instantly operative, just to that extent we are hypnotized by the astral light. For example, there isn’t one of us who is not constantly seeing his own mistakes of every kind and constantly desiring or resolving not to repeat those mistakes; we continually wish to do better and yet find our will ineffectual. This is due to the paralyzing effects of the astral light, which light is the crop of thoughts and desires raised by us all throughout this whole period of evolution, and that paralyzing influence has to be recognized, has to be faced, has to be torn out by each individual for himself.
Q.—Don’t the Mahatmas themselves use suggestion? Ans.—Well, the very words, Spirit and Matter, black and white, light and dark, or, as with us, good and evil, show that there isn’t a relation, a function, a faculty, a power that can’t be used for benefit as well as for injury. Suggestion as we use the word, is employed for selfish purposes. We suggest to a man that he do this or that, for our benefit. On the other hand, you can suggest to a man that such-and-such a course of conduct is dangerous. That isn’t suggestion in the sense in which it is used by the advertising fraternity, by the politician, by the psychoanalyst, by the priest. There is just as much difference between that form of suggestion and the suggestion that the U.L.T. is a good place to come and study, as there is between black and white. So, we can truly say that Masters use suggestion all the time, if we understand the meaning of the term as applied to Them. Take another instance. You know we are accustomed to argue Now, the difficulty of arguments is that they are always over differences. Arguments never produce anything but a breach in the discussion. Yet the word argue originally means “to make clear.” and dispute was once a synonym for the word discuss Today, we have three different words: to dispute, to argue, to discuss. What is the difference between them? 80 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Attitude. So with suggestion.
Ans.—Yes, and no. Originally, when we incarnated, there was no life at all as we now know life. There was no violence, there were no storms, there was no hatred between man and the rest of creation; there was no hatred between man and man. It was a Golden Age, which means only that the state of matter in which we incarnated and of which our bodies were composed was homogeneous matter as compared with the matter that now exists. Since that time, little by little, the buried past—not merely of Atlantean days but also of former manvantaras— came to the surface, and the astral light today reflects the dregs of the thinking of mankind. Suppose we use the word Akasa or Ether. When we first incarnated, our bodies were bodies of ether—matter in a state now altogether unknown to us—and the bodies of the animals were ethereal bodies, only not in the same sub-state as our own. We are familiar with the words, solid, liquid, gaseous and so on. Now, imagine that etheric matter has four states, that astral matter has four states. Actually each one of them has seven. Thus, we were then in one state of ethereal matter; the animal kingdom was in another state of ethereal matter; and so on with the other states and kingdoms. There was no more friction between the kingdoms than the friction in media. Now, little by little, the “water” began to get muddy, and you know how dirt settles to the bottom of water, making the lower part of it dirty. The astral light represents the muddy part of the ether. If we rise to the higher strata of the astral light, we shall not be in the astral light—we shall be in the astral ether. For years and years in that early period, there was no birth, no death, no Kama Loka no sickness or disease. It was continuous existence in a pure state. Of course, we still go through the three states of ether. We go through this state, which is a mixture of the good and the bad—all of us being affected, but very few “hypnotized” by the good with which the light is stored. Most of us are hypnotized by the other side. Now, we die. What is Kama Loka it is that existence in which the man’s consciousness is completely hypnotized by the pictures in the astral light. And what is Devachan? It is the state in which the Ego gets out of that light into the upper ether. The Ego in Devachan is not in the astral light, although we speak of the “higher” and “divine” and the “lower” and “infernal” astral light. When we go to Devachan we go to the same state of consciousness subjectively in which—during the latter part of the Third and the early part of the Fourth Race—we lived objectively.
Ans.—Let us consider the physical body. We have first the bony system. We know that that is related more directly to the mineral kingdom than to any other kingdom. Then we have the circulatory system, the blood, What is that related to? Manifestly, to a mixture, you may say, of air and water—two of the kingdoms of nature which we regard as 81 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— inorganic. Next, take that vast unknown field we call the nervous system. What is that directly related to? It is clear that its more immediate relation is with that unknown field we name magnetism and electricity. So the nervous system is the chief connecting link between the astral world and the body. There is another system in the body, some times spoken of as the glandular system, which has some kind of a mysterious circulation of its own. Perhaps it is the human salvage from the same kind of circulation that we see going on in the vegetable kingdom, and in the fish, or a relic of the time when we were cold-blooded creatures—that is, when our bodies were of another kind altogether, or even were the opposite of what they are now. Certain diseases are related directly to the blood circulation, and blood impurities are manifested directly in certain forms of disease. Other forms of disease are directly connected with the nervous system; still others, with the glandular system. The nerves and the glands are closely related—although our physiologists, apparently, are as yet not too sure of this fact. The truth is that these two systems represent the positive and the negative poles of the same kind of magnetic circulation throughout the body. So, then, hysteria, epilepsy, scrofula, and other such diseases represent in fact a short-circuiting—an improper induction between some of the elements in our physical body, so that matter is displaced. These diseases, then, may be said to be related directly to the astral body through the glandular system.
Ans.—Let us begin by saying that whatever position a man is in, or whatever happens to him, the thing to do in trying to understand it, is to come back to first principles, that is, to bases. Now, whether a man is hung or sent to the penitentiary for life, or sterilized, or robbed, or any other calamity befalls him, either that happening had a cause or it didn’t—a cause in the sense that it is the inevitable consequence, so far as that man himself is concerned, of his own past conduct. Either that is true or it isn’t. If the Law of Karma is the secret of the Universe, then it does not make any difference what happens to a man, whether of good or evil fortune—it is the reaping by him of what he sowed; to the extent that he sowed, he reaps. Often, we do not remember that we may not see all the successive links in the chain of events that have transpired since the sowing and the reaping. To take the opposite view, if the law of cause and effect is not true, then this whole Universe is a moral iniquity; there is no justice, there is no squareness and no fairness anywhere. Now, he is a bold man indeed, and a terribly ignorant one, who would make such an assertion. We do not see all, but all that we see tells us that it’s just as true today as it was when Jesus spoke it, that we do not harvest grapes from thorns or figs from thistles; or, as Buddha said, from sesame you harvest sesame; from corn, you harvest corn. When a man gets back to that basis, he can understand—no matter if a person is sterilized with his consent or against his consent, or hung in the name of the law, or commits suicide—in each case he is reaping what he sowed. There is no 82 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— getting away from it, either on the basis of our intuition, on the basis of such knowledge as we have, or on the moral basis. Actually, one has to study the history of the so—called “third sex” to understand why it is that sterilization is becoming a great thing of propaganda and of argument today. It has not been so very many years since large numbers of the male population were eunuchs. An eunuch was not in most cases made such by his own will; he was enslaved by those who were stronger and who for their own purposes emasculated him. Now, under Karma, what would happen to the ones who did that emasculating? They would reap what they sowed. When the wheel turns, that would happen to them which they had inflicted on others, if in the meantime they hadn’t atoned, hadn’t learned better, hadn’t done better.
Ans.—Walking on the water—that is, treading our path between the pairs of opposites. Let us illustrate. Suppose a man wants to go due north; if he verges the least bit to the left, he is going west by north; if he verges the least bit to the right, he is going east by north; in either case, he isn’t going north. East and west, then, represent simply the two sides of perfection, but perfection is neither one of the sides. Equilibrium is self-control in the individual; it is balance; it is poise. True equilibrium is that poise which nothing can upset. The strangest joke in the world, when you come to think of it, is the dictionary definition of equilibrium It speaks of “stable” equilibrium and illustrates it by a pyramid; “unstable” equilibrium is represented by a sphere, and “equal” equilibrium by a perpendicular line which would be upset by the least oscillation. Now, as a matter of fact, you can’t upset a sphere; a sphere is the only thing that is always in stable equilibrium, although the dictionary calls it “unstable.” A man who is unaffected, who is calm, who is able to see, to choose, to act or refrain from acting without the possibility of error, would be in equilibrium, wouldn’t he? And if he acted that way all the time, it would be true equilibrium.
Q.—What would true equilibrium be in the universe as a whole? Ans.—A perpetual balance of forces. Take the statement in the Gita (VII. 4):— Earth, water, fire, air, and akasa, Manas, Buddhi, and Ahankara is the eightfold division of my nature. It is inferior; know that my superior nature is different and is the knower; by it the universe is sustained. Whenever the sustaining power of Spirit is withdrawn, what becomes of manifested nature? It dissolves instantly, just in the same way as darkness disappears upon our striking a light. What maintains darkness? The absence of light. It is the unmanifested Spirit which is the counter poise of manifested nature. That is what keeps the universe in equilibrium. 83 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Chapter VII I.—Manas, Self—Consciousness and the Brain Q.—What would be the natural consequences of removing the fetters placed by religion upon science? Ans.—If we bent a tree in this direction and finally released the tension, would the tree fall that way, this way, or in the opposite direction? The moment men dared to think, dared to use their own eyes and ears and power of reason, they swung by reaction from extreme credulity or superstition—which is what sectarian religion is—to exactly the opposite extreme; from credulity to extreme or total incredulity—which is what the word materialism means. Religion as we see it in sects and creeds today is the Karma of the black magic we practiced in Atlantis. It is the most accursed of the Skandhas We worshipped Self in another sense altogether during the days of Atlantis. We practiced black magic then on the psychic and astral planes, whereas now we consciously practice black magic only on the physical, personal, human plane. Notice how everybody looks out for “number one,” first, last and all the time—that is the practice of black magic. Selfishness, whether conscious or unconscious, is the practice of black magic. The man who thinks of self first and the other fellow second, is practicing black magic. That is what we did on Atlantis, but we did it on the astral and psychic planes, instead of on the physical. We had the knowledge, and we had the power, and we used it—selfishly. Why did we do it? Did we know better? Of course we did. Listen to all this talk about the woes of today. We want laws for this and laws for that. And the very ones who talk about them know what is the matter with us all—our wicked selfishness. That is our religion. Organized religion is supremely selfish—it never was anything else and never will be anything else. We all know what circular motion is, don’t we? It means motion of the whole around a centre when all of the parts are equally balanced with regard to the centre. Do we realize what is meant by eccentric motion? It is the same motion round and round, but the axis of the motion is not the centre, and so it presents a very peculiar gyration. The cam shaft of an automobile is a sample of eccentric motion, while the wheel as it revolves is an example of circular motion. We can make any idea whatsoever—no matter what it is or what it is about—we can make that the axis of our thought, will, feeling and action for five minutes or five eternities. And that is how we make a “religion.” Q.—Mr. Judge speaks of the human brain being superior because of the depth and variety of the brain convolutions. I read of a man 72 years old who attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. When he came to, 50 years of his life had been wiped out. That happened in that case? Ans.—Consider that, as spiritual beings, we are now away from our own habitat, and we have a mirror of ourselves. Call that mirror the brain. Suppose I stand in front of a mirror and look at myself. Say that my eye is 25 years old and all the rest of me is 72. I take a pistol and take a shot at the mirror, cracking it so that the only part left is the part that reflects my eyes. Then, how old am I in the mirror? Twenty-five. Since the brain is a recording mechanism of thought on this plane, 84 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— we can understand that if one part of the cortex is injured and in that particular part are stored certain memories, the Ego loses those memories. That’s all. If the man’s real intention was to take years out of his memory, he was very foolish to choose that extreme way of doing it. Of course, that probably wasn’t his intention, but if it had been, he could have gone to certain quacks and had himself permanently hypnotized. Then he would have been 25 till he died——to himself, not to others. You know, we all labour under the illusion that we do not look as old as we are. Well, we don’t as a matter of fact. How could anyone look 18,000,000 years old? So far as memory is concerned, we are told that every atom reflects the universe. When we use a certain class of lives, they all furnish the same reflection. Remember that the “lives” have no individuality of their own; that is why they all furnish the same reflection, or reaction, if we want to use that word. As a matter of fact, take two coyotes: they are entirely distinct creatures, one from the other, but they will give the same reaction. You don’t have to keep the same coyote if you want to study coyotes. If you want to use life of a particular class, you don’t have to pick up the same elemental you used yesterday—any “life” will do. With human beings the case is quite different, and there is some thing to think about in the fact that, although the brain is changing constantly, yet we do not lose certain memories; others, we do.
Ans.—It is the real brain to us here. If you have an astral brain and no physical brain, you are out of luck. If you have a physical brain and no astral, you might be “in luck” because you could not think—you’d be here but you could only cerebrate, and, of course, if you want to be happy here, you don’t want to think—you prefer to cerebrate. But, as a matter of fact, the astral brain and the physical brain are one and the same to us, except during the deep sleep state, during delirium, under hypnosis, during intoxication, during insanity, or after death. It is no use to talk about them apart from each other, even as it is no use to talk about force and matter apart from each other. Remember the three lines of evolution; we do not have merely the astral brain and the physical; our consciousness principle, together with the astral brain and the physical, are inseparable in normal waking consciousness. Remember what H.P.B. says in regard to the three lines of evolution, that in our state—that is, in our minds, in our natures as human beings—they are inextricably interbended and interwoven at every turn. So it is not by the attempt to consider them, one apart from the other, that we can get any value, except theoretically.
Ans.—What is the basis or essence or intelligence in matter? What is it that governs matter? What is natural impulse? If we regard matter as life, then the life in matter has been through innumerable experiences of every kind, and the memory, in the sense of the record—the impressions of all those experiences of the past—is just as indelibly imprinted in an atom as in us. We know that the atom can’t arouse its own memories, and that, once they are aroused, it can’t disencumber itself of those memories. We, however, can arouse our own memories and we can dismiss 85 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— our own memories. We are not yet able to do it perfectly, but we can do it often enough, and do it in enough directions, to show that we have the power. Very good, then. Remember that there is memory which, when aroused, becomes the intelligence of the past experiences; when that intelligence is fully wakened, we may call it the animal consciousness, or apperception in flower. Now, Manas unites itself with the animal intelligence. That is what incarnation means. The spiritual intelligence unites itself with the intelligence in matter, and that active union is incarnation In the metaphysical sense, then, Lower Manas means spiritual self-consciousness wedded to the consciousness in matter; and Higher Manas means spiritual self-consciousness wedded to universal self-consciousness. Here is an act of union, originally the exercise of our own will. The act of union means “the identification of Self with”—we couldn’t experience matter at arm’s length. If we want to know what fire is like, we have to get within range of it; if we want to experience, feel, the whole nature of fire, we have to step into it. So then we, a more experienced form of life, entered into union with a lower form of life—not a union of matter, but a union of consciousness—and thenceforth, as long as that union lasts, the consciousness of the higher is partly absorbed in or identified with the consciousness of the lower, and the consciousness of the lower is fully identified with the consciousness of the higher. If we look for an analogy, we can see one in ourselves. Take the graphic phrase in The Secret Doctrine that when Manas incarnates, it becomes wedded to kama. Observe us: Are we not literally wedded to our likes and dislikes. We are so wedded to our likes and dislikes that it is almost impossible for us to think of any-thing except in terms of “I like that” or “I don’t like that.” That is Lower Manas. When we think of things in terms of Self, not in terms of liking and disliking, that is Higher Manas.
Ans.—Well, you know some people use an alarm clock. Why don’t they wake themselves up? They don’t know how. And some people, even when they wake up, are so sleepy-headed that they don’t want to get up, and then somebody has to wake them up. The same thing applies to waking up the mind.
Ans.—Why, of course it existed before. You could not wake it up if it hadn’t been there before. Notice how all the time we are reminding ourselves of this, that and the other, aren’t we? That is Higher Manas lighting up the lower. Very often, other people remind us of this, that, or the other thing, even more than we remind ourselves. Every-thing we look at “reminds” us of something. Isn’t this the lighting up of Manas in one or another direction, the reawakening of that which was awake before but now is either asleep or dreaming? If we can get that clear in our minds, we shall never again fall into the delusion of thinking that Manas is the product of any-thing. Manas is the producer; Manas is the embodiment of Atman in an individual form. Buddhi is Atman embodied in the Cosmos.
Ans.—I suppose it would depend upon the point of view taken. As a 86 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— matter of fact, the answer is no, if it means that somebody hands us something that we do not and never did have. The power to become is inherent in everything. Human self-consciousness represents one of the (49). stages in the power of becoming. Consider that the man who is asleep can’t wake himself up, and the man who is dreaming can’t wake himself up: they have to be aroused, because, from one point of view, to be asleep means to have fallen under the dominance of another state; to dream means to have fallen under the dominance of another state. Being angry means falling under the dominance of another state and so on. If human consciousness means—as probably it was intended to mean a state or condition of consciousness, then beings in a lower state than that of human consciousness may temporarily be raised to that state, and beings in a higher state may temporarily descend to that state. There are seven great states, each with seven subdivisions, and human consciousness is one of them. A frog, for example, can get in the air by taking a good big jump, but it can’t get in the air in the sense a bird can. Yet a bird could pick up a frog, or a turtle, and give it a ride through the air. In that sense, the bird would be giving the frog a lift, and, from the standpoint of the “hitch-hiker,” a ride is being conferred on him. Human self-consciousness is not “conferred” except by induction, that is, temporarily.
Ans.—We could have a million thoughts about ourselves: would any or all of those thoughts be ourselves? We could write a million volumes of words, the expression of our ideas, our thoughts, our feelings, in regard to ourselves. Would any or all of those million volumes be ourselves? We all can see that this isn’t possible. Let us apply that to what Mr. Judge is writing here about Manas, remembering that in the human race of which we are a part, Manas is not yet fully awake. Remember also that no one man can go very far ahead of the race to which he belongs. It follows, then, that Manas is not fully awake in us as human beings. Manas, in the sense of self-consciousness, is not at all awake in the animal kingdom, or in the vegetable, or in the mineral. The principle of consciousness is there, but it has not been individualized; in us, it has been aroused. The question is, Does Manas or mind depend upon continual change? No; but its activity does. Take a candle; what is a candle? Latent fire. If it weren’t so, it wouldn’t burn when you put a match to it. What is fire? An active candle. Once H.P.B. was trying to illustrate this very point. She said, “Take granite; why won’t it burn? It is full of fire. It is too near to fire; granite is fire in another state, just as is light.” Light is called cold fire, and that may seem to us a ridiculous expression. Yet tread on burning coals, and see if it’s ridiculous. The activity of Manas depends on contrast, but Manas is the producer of the contrast, not the contrasts themselves. Manas becomes inactive when there is no material to work on.
Ans.—I would suggest that you read the dissertation on fire, 87 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Volume I, pp. 289—290 of The Secret Doctrine and you will realize that fire has more than a scientific meaning.
Ans.—Non-existent. Manas is absorbed in Buddhi at the close of each life; Buddhi-Manas are absorbed in Atman at the close of each Manvantara. They don’t cease to be because they have ceased to exist. H.P.B. says that instead of quibbling and disputing over words, the important thing is to get ideas, and she applies that to these words, being and existence. She says that a thing can cease to exist and still be. A very simple illustration of that is the power of speech. Suppose there were a deaf-and-dumb man here, and he and the chairman both sat quiet. Could you tell which was the dumb man, just by looking at them? No. The chairman would be speechless because he chose not to speak. The dumb man would be speechless because he could not speak. Yet they would present identically the same appearance. So long as the chairman does not speak, the power of speech is, but it is not existent; the moment he chooses to speak, the power of speech both is, as being—actively speaking—and exists In other words, the First Fundamental is, regardless of the Second or Third, but the Second and Third do not exist apart from the First.
Q.—Does Manas evolve? Ans.—If we mean by Manas, pure self-consciousness, how could it be an evolution? It is a descent of divine fire from above, not an evolution from below upward. We should remember that, according to The Secret Doctrine there are engaged in what we call evolution, seven classes of purely spiritual beings, and the collectivity of each one of these classes constitutes what we know as the seven principles. Considering a principle as a basis of action we can see that each principle serves as the vehicle of action for the beings of the principle next above it. Taking these statements in combination, it ought to be easy for us to see what is meant by the “evolution” of Manas. We may also recall that in the Second Volume of the S.D., H.P.B. makes these statements: Buddhi—the principle Buddhi—has two aspects, while the principle Manas has three aspects: (a) Manas in connection with Buddhi; (b) Manas in connection with Kama; (c) Manas as a principle per se. Now, H.P.B. defines Manas per se in The Key to Theosophy and says that in itself, Manas pure and simple is Spiritual Self-Consciousness. Then, in the First Volume of the S.D., she says that when this pure Self-Consciousness descends into matter, it loses all consciousness of its own individuality and has to regain it in matter. We get a perfect analogy from the very phrase, “lighting up.” When a man with seeing power goes into the dark, he becomes blind until he strikes a light. So far as the Manasic principle goes, that “light” is struck by our duty to our younger brothers, and in no other way.
Chapter VII II.——The Inner Ego, Incarnation and the “Mindless Man”
Ans.—The expression “inner man” is sometimes used to represent 88 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— merely the astral man. “Inner Ego” is used to represent the psychic man, or Lower Manas, as well as Manas per se; that is, Manas as self-consciousness, irrespective of form or relation. Again, “Inner Man” sometimes means Buddhi-Manas, and sometimes it means the divine Ego. Suppose for a moment that we regard ourselves as seven-principled beings. This means that we are, so to say, but one Self or Spirit surrounded by seven elements. We live in the midst of seven elements or seven principles, only one of which is visible to the senses—the physical body. Now, what is the Inner Man? Self plus the other six principles. But suppose we peel off not only the body but another of the principles, as takes place at death; what is still left? The Inner Man: Self plus four principles. Now suppose we peel off—that is, separate Man from—another element; it is still the Inner Man. So the term means Man plus his principles, apart from the physical body. Oftentimes “inner man” is used simply to indicate the reincarnating Ego, but you will find the very expression, the inner man, used by H.P.B. to designate our tempter: she speaks of the more intimate astral man, the astral, which is more often our devil than otherwise. It is like the word Man itself. Say the word Man to a materialist; what does it mean? A form that was born so many years ago, that will be dissipated in so many years, and so forth. Then say Man to a psychologist, and at once he thinks of man in terms of mind. Say Man to a Christian and he will begin to reflect that man is a soul created by God. But say Man to a Theosophist, and he will say, “Which man are you talking about? That is, which aspect of the embodied Self or Spirit?”
Ans.—It means that all the personal or material experiences, the harvest amassed throughout this entire period of evolution, will be lost by that act—absolutely gone—and to acquire that experience again, the Ego will have to begin at the bottom and come up all over the weary road that he has traveled so far. There is no annihilation in the sense that anything that is can ever cease to be; there is no creation in the sense that something that was not can be made to be. In other words, neither the scientific idea of evolution, which has materialism as its basis, nor the religious idea of creation, which has superstition as its basis, neither one of them could by any possibility be true as understood by the scientific man or as understood by the religious man. But the Theosophist knows what lies behind those concepts of theirs: they have spelled nature upside down; the fact is there, but they have misconceived it. Ans.—That is the teaching. There must be a new “first” contact with matter. Remember that, in the spiritual sense, “matter” only means separative existence, instead of unitary existence. But annihilation, in the sense that we use that word—like the creation of something out of nothing, the going into nothingness of something that is—is not meant in the teaching at all. The annihilation spoken of means the loss 89 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— of that which has been partially gained, and the chance, of course, in the next Manvantara to regain it.
Illustrate that in this way: Here is a
man who has the capacity to go on living for 30 or 40 years. "Luck" goes
against him; he thinks that he can get rid of all his misfortunes by
committing suicide; that is, he thinks that if he blows his head off, he
will be annihilated. Now, he is “annihilated,” so far as this life is
concerned. He takes a shot, puts a bullet through his heart or brain, and
we say, “He is dead; that is the end of him.” It is, for this incarnation.
But is the man annihilated? No. He merely lost what he had so far gained
in this incarnation and what he might have gained, and in the next
incarnation he has to begin all over again—plus the tendency to come to
the same conclusion.
Ans.—I think we can get at that best by analogy. Where is the sense of smell when there is nothing to smell? Where is the sense of sight when there is nothing to see? Where is the power to think when there are no differentiated objects to think about? Manas is the principle of self-consciousness acting in a differentiated universe. Atma-Buddhi is the principle of self-consciousness acting in a homogeneous universe. The moment there is separation, there is Manas. But before there is separation, how could there be anything but Atma-Buddhi? All our senses exist in potency, in potentiality; they are non-existent; they are in a state of absolute being; they are non-active—until what? Until there is something to stimulate them, something to arouse them. We have the sense of smell right now in potency, but until there is some object to excite that sense, it does not exist—it only remains as a mental abstraction; that is, as a permanent potentiality. So, until there was differentiated life, how could there be Manas? Until the drops of water separated themselves from the lake, how could there be drops of water? That is the whole story. H. P. Blavatsky says in The Key to Theosophy that there is no more difference between Buddhi and Manas than there is between a lake and its waters. Now, so long as 90 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
the waters of the lake remain as one
unitary mass, we can’t speak of the drops of water except as mental
concepts; but the moment the lake is troubled, there is still water, and
there are also many drops of water.
We are one single man, yet we can set a
thousand activities afloat, and in whatever direction we are active, we
present, even from that single point of view, two aspects: the active
aspect of ourselves, and our infinite capacity for further and other
activities. Now, make an analogy of that—we can see that Manas is the
active aspect of Buddhi in any individual form.
Manas is the same principle that we
speak of as Buddhi and as Atma. What is Atma? Well, we can use a thousand
words, but it is self-consciousness without any qualification or relation
whatever. What is Atma-Buddhi? It is the same self-consciousness we are
all dwelling in—it is accumulated experience. and what is Manas? It is the
identical Atma-Buddhi, but limited still more to individual
experience—yours, mine, any other man’s. We think of Manas as different
from Atma, and of Buddhi as different from Atma. Yet it is all one and the
same thing in three different relations. Atman is the man, or
self-consciousness asleep to manifestation; what else could it be?
Atma-Buddhi is the same self- consciousness awake to the spiritual harvest
of all universal experiences. Manas is that same Self in action. It can
all be put into one phrase:
Manas is the perception of differentiated existence; Buddhi is the
perception of homogeneous existence; Atma is the perceiver of both
differentiated and homogeneous existence. Ans.—They are both active Buddhi. Instinct, says H.P.B., is direct perception. Intuition, says Mr. Judge, we don’t have to reason on, we know; that is direct perception. But man is conscious that he has direct perception; the animal isn’t. In both cases it is race consciousness manifesting in the individual, but the man is conscious of his intuitions, while the animal is in no case conscious of its instincts. Yet both faculties are Buddhic.
Ans.—Both were said to be of Buddhi, but instinct appears to be the knowledge of matter, and intuition appears to be the knowledge of Spirit. Buddhi has nothing to do with this plane directly, and therefore when we have an intuition, we try to bring it from the Spiritual plane to this plane, and because we are rather muddled up through our various sheaths, we do not always get it through clearly, just as happens with a vision in a dream. We almost never bring the vision through pure because we are impure ourselves. Our intuition is stained, as was suggested, by our desires here, but pure intuition is Spiritual knowledge.
Ans.—There is one Ego in man, but it has three aspects. Manas pure and simple is spiritual self-consciousness. Then there is its reflection in the most highly evolved matter; that is, personal self-consciousness. Finally, there is Manas in union with all Monads; that is, Spirit or divine self-consciousness, if we want to use a third term for it. It is all the same Manas. Only when we regard Manas as the power of thought is it proper to speak of it as a “principle”; only when we regard Manas as reflected in the highest organized form of matter is it proper to speak of Manas as “personality”; and only when we 91 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— consider that the spiritual being is capable of changing forms without changing identity is it proper to speak of Manas as the reincarnating Ego. Atma, Buddhi, Manas are three different points of view of one and the same thing. It is worth while, after a study of the Sixth Chapter and after going thoughtfully over this Seventh one, to turn back to pp. 2-3 of the Fourth Chapter, and consider the quotation from The Secret Doctrine that is found there.
Ans.—Suppose we consider that there is a state, the highest of all, which we name Unity or Homogeneity or Spirit—or, in Theosophical nomenclature, Buddhi—where the consciousness of all is the experience of each. That is the theory of repose called Nirvana, or Pralaya, and it is duplicated everywhere all the time in each of us. After we work, we have repose and the enjoyment of the fruits of our labour; after a period of rest, every being goes like the bee from the hive to gather what he may from the flowers of existence. Thus Manas, the intellectual principle, is dissociated from the state of homogeneity, called Buddhi. We have to remember that Manas is to be regarded under three distinct aspects, of which human life is only one, and that the least.
Q.—What is pushing us, what is guiding us now? Ans.—Well, what is? These are not academic questions. What is pushing a man when he gets scared? Something he is afraid of. What is pushing a man when he seeks reputation even in the cannon’s mouth, in Shakespeare’s phrase? Something is pushing—vanity, glory, ambition. Yes, men risk their lives for vanity, glory and ambition; they will risk not only their lives; they will also risk other people’s. And what is it that causes a man to share his last crust with one who is hungry and has no crust at all, who is able only to furnish the appetite? What is it that pushes him? It is one part of that dual nature. When we do evil, what is the lure, the push, the pull? The infernal side of nature. And when we do good, what is the lure, the push, the pull? The divine side of nature. We are open to both influences. You can’t have a door that swings both ways and not have it equally afford ingress and egress. So it is with our nature. It is wide open to both good and evil influences and impulses, and so we have to study that nature with care, and reduce the lower to subjection to the higher.
Ans.—Have we ever thought of this process from that point of view? It really is just as the questioner indicates. Here are human forms on earth today in which veritable gods dwell, with no illusion or delusion whatever in regard to Nature, and to them the whole of the four lower principles is but a garment or an instrument of action. And then there are others, their brothers, who incarnated in the same way as they did 92 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— but who succumbed to the temptations of matter—that is, separative existence and enjoyment—and who lost their way. H.P.B. says that those are the ones who constitute the Fifth Root-Race, by and large. And then there are those who received but a spark; that is, they are either those very beings who lost their human consciousness in former Manvantaras and have not yet regained it, or they are those human elementals called in The Secret Doctrine Lunar Pitris, who are lighted up by mere presence and association with higher beings. Of this latter class, those who received but a spark, the statement is made in the S.D. that they constitute the bulk of the population of the earth today.
Ans.—It would seem so. But, in any event, the term “mindless men” merely means that self-consciousness is lacking to that form of life. Remember, we speak of the mineral kingdom—regarding it Theosophically as a state of life; the vegetable kingdom as another state of evolving life and the animal kingdom as a third state of evolving life. Without understanding why this is so or what it means, our scientists are well aware that just as between two fingers there is, from the stand point of flesh, an “empty” space, so between the mineral kingdom and the vegetable kingdom there is a hiatus—a missing link. Between the animal and the human kingdom there is also a missing link, which is represented by the so-called Pitris or ancestors of whom The Secret Doctrine treats and those are the ones who received the spark who constitute the bulk of humanity of the present time. We can understand, therefore, why they fall for religion, why they fall for Spiritualism, why they fall for the radio, why they fall for kings and queens, why they fall for everything that comes along. The inner perceptions of Karma, justice, and brotherhood have not yet penetrated the brain-mind.
Ans.—Well, a right attitude of mind towards world conditions and every other kind of conditions is the greatest amelioration that any being can give. But we can apply an analogy used by Jesus. He said, in effect, “If you give a drink to one of these, my little ones, you have fed and nourished me.” And do you remember that chapter in the Gita which says, “If you give a leaf, a flower, or water unto me, you have performed sacrifice”? Suppose we do our daily duties in the right attitude. Is that an amelioration of world conditions? Why, yes Good conduct is contagious; courage is contagious; unselfishness is contagious; it isn’t just disease and “cussedness” that are contagious. Try it and see—that’s the only way the world will ever grow better.
Chapter VII III.—Intuition, Intellect and “Lighting Up” the Child
Q.—Mr. Judge states on p. 8 (Indian Ed.) (p.54 Am. Ed.) that intuition does not depend on reason. Why is it that those flashes of intuition seem to come from very deep thought on any subject? It would seem that intuition is the result of deep thought. 93 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Ans.—As a matter of fact, if we observed a little more carefully, we should find that we do not get intuitions in deep thought—we get them after having indulged in deep thought. Deep thought is like a camera; the intuition is like the taking of a picture. The intuition does not come from the camera, but from the direction toward which the camera is pointed.. So, taking ourselves as Manas—the being, not the principle, the being in this form—isn’t it clear that we stand between two worlds, the world of human self-consciousness and the world of beings which are not self-conscious but whose guiding light is the four lower principles more or less completely aroused? It follows, then, that if we direct the eye of the mind—that is, our attention—towards the physical body or the astral body or the life energy or Kama or any combination of them, the picture that we shall get in our mind will be from below and we shall identify ourselves with the picture. But if, as the question suggested, we turn in deep thought, not to those pictures perceived by means of our senses or our astral body, and so on, but to the causal source from which these effects flow, then this same eye of the mind is turned towards the divine world, and the result is that we shall get some kind of pictures, impressions, ideas, flashes from that world. This constitutes our higher mind—those impressions, or intuitions, or the perception of principles, or reason regarded as the pure mathematics of the Soul What is that power? The ability to see the relation existing or subsisting between one thing and another.
Ans.—Do we not see that intellect is used for the perception of the relation between cause and effect, the principle of relativity? Now, we can mathematically apply that power, our perception of cause and effect (the factors which produce any given result), just as well in figuring out how to destroy somebody’s life as we can use it in figuring out how to save somebody’s life. Here is a man drowning. By the use of this principle in us, in its mundane aspect, we can say, “If such-and-such steps are taken, we can save that drowning man. We may perhaps even be able to resuscitate him after all signs of life have disappeared.” Or we can take that same reason, here called “intellect,” and say, “If we just put out a pole and hold it on top of that man’s head and keep him under water for 10 minutes, he will drown.” The same power—by one exercised wisely, creatively and preservatively; by the other, used destructively. Mr. Judge knew, and we all know, that this power, unless used from a moral basis—that is, a humanitarian basis, an unselfish basis—is bound to be used from a selfish basis, a personal basis. Everything in nature comes down to one of two directions. So, then, whatever principle it is that we employ, if we do not employ it unselfishly we are bound to employ it selfishly. Does it not stand to reason, therefore, that the man who regards intellect, or the reasoning from cause to effect, as the very highest power of mind, knowing nothing of Self, knowing nothing of the principle of unity, knowing nothing of the real source and real purpose of all existence—is bound to use it for his own sake, for his own benefit? That is 94 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— what is the matter with humanity all the time.
Ans.—Well, we say it, but when we were in the cradle we did not know that never was there a time when we were not. The knowledge was in us, but we weren’t aware that it was in us. Perhaps many of these questions, including the famous one, “Were we ever animals?” can never be cleared up for any one of us. Actually, that stands to reason. If any other being whatsoever could do our work for us in the mental and moral and spiritual sense, it stands to reason that the Masters of Wisdom would have done it for all of us long ago. Do you remember that passage in the first chapter (p. 6) (p. 5 Am. Ed.) that Mr. Judge quotes from the Master’s letter,[ l ] where the Masters say that if they had the powers imagined in a personal god, they could do all sorts of things? As a matter of fact, they can’t The Third Fundamental says that progress for man is absolutely by self-induced and self-devised efforts. But to “return to our muttons,” as the French say. What do we mean by “inorganic matter,” with all its ramifications and subdivisions? If we think that isn’t Life then we haven’t grasped what Theosophy has to say, namely, that all is Life. But it’s perfectly clear to us that in organic matter, although it is Life, is in a state of profound lethargy externally. When examined, it will be found that internally it is Violently alive, that its particles are in a state of tremendous tension and oscillation within themselves. The analogy for this is in the mind of a man who may be sitting perfectly still; outwardly, he is in a state of profound lethargy but, internally, his mind is whirling at a tremendous speed, is in a state of high tension. Then we have the beginnings of organic life. What is the essential difference, let us not say between a vegetable and a mineral, but between what we know as the vegetable kingdom and the mineral kingdom? In order to see what is the difference, we have first to see what there is in common. One is just as much Life as the other. To distinguish the primary form of life which has passed through the three elemental kingdoms and through the mineral kingdom, and is now in the vegetable kingdom, we have to invent a term. That term in Sanskrit is Jiva meaning a life. To put it in English, we can borrow the religious term and say, a soul or we can borrow a Theosophical term and call it a Monad It simply means a primary, and therefore a simple and enduring, form of life. Now this life is in the vegetable form. What does that mean? It means that two of its principles, which were there all the time potentially (all seven principles are there, but asleep), are now partially awake. Follow that same soul or Monad or primary form of life through into the animal kingdom, and what does that mean? That this same Monad now has three of its principles active and awake, and is only beginning dimly to be sensitive.
Next, we come into a kingdom no longer
known to us, a kingdom here l For sentence referred to, see the fuller quotation from this letter from the Master in U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 29, p. 7. 95 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— called that of the “mindless men,” who in The Secret Doctrine are called the “Lunar Pitris.” Here we have a form of life which is today no longer existing; it is human in form, but has no self-consciousness. If we called it simply an animal—that to-us-unknown being—we should think of it as a four-legged creature, perhaps with horns and a tail. But when the phrase “mindless man” or “human animal..” is used, it ought to arouse in us the conception that this form of life does not exist on this plane. What is the “mindless man”? There is the same primary consciousness with all four of the lower principles not only fully aroused and active, but combined into one principle. If we were using present-day Theosophical terms for it, we could call it the personality, the human being with out self-consciousness. We can see a very close counterpart of it in a little child—except that the race of the mindless had grown-up forms. In the case of the child, there is a human form, but actually the being is a “human animal”: it is a mindless human being, because there is no self-consciousness in the baby body. What is that consciousness that has passed “through every elemental form. • •of that Manvantara • •.first by natural impulse”? We need to think what that means. The Monad has risen to that point where its fifth principle can be waked up by those beings in whom the fifth, sixth and seventh principles are all awake. How is that accomplished? Well, H.P.B. once used the word metempsychosis which is the true word, but we are mostly materialists and we were still more so 75 years ago. So the people took the word reincarnation and she took it because they took it. But if you turn to p. 136 (p. 128 Am. Ed.) in the Ocean Mr. Judge gives us the answer right there as to how this mindless man had his Fifth Principle waked up by his brother beings, the incarnating egos, so-called, in whom the fifth and sixth and seventh principles were awake in unison. The initial awakening is continued by the sure method, as Mr. Judge says, of mixture, amalgamation and precipitation—just exactly what goes on in a chemical laboratory every day with the chemical elements. The ingredients are put together, they are mixed, they are amalgamated, they are fused, until a new temporary element exists. Then, when that is precipitated, we—humanity, that is—have something we can use. The mineral, then, is Life in which only two of the principles are in combination, and its activity is entirely internal among the lives that compose it. The vegetable, looked at from the outside, is a combination of lives in a certain form, and in those lives three of the principles are more or less aroused. Then, if we regard what we call an animal, it is still “life,” and all of its forms or principles are collections of lives, with four of the principles more or less active and in combination or union. Now, take a being who unites his fifth principle with those four principles, with the lives of this four-principled being, and you have the waking up of Manas. All the time we are doing the same thing with each other. Any time we look at any one, lives pass from us to him and from him to us. Any time we think of any one, lives pass from us to him and from him to us. Otherwise, how are clairvoyance, telepathy, communication at a distance, realization of the Self, spiritual communion, mental communion—how are these to be achieved? The fifth chapter tells us that lives, even physically, are everlastingly entering the body, everlastingly flying out of the body. That is far more true, on the inner planes, of the higher principles. 96 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Q.—Why is it that we have such a profound admiration for the intellect in the sense that Mr. Judge speaks of it in this chapter? Take a man like Mr. Einstein. Everybody knows that he is a humanitarian, one of the loveliest and most lovable characters, but nobody cares so much about that. What everybody raves about, talks about, is his capacity of intellect. Now, why is it that we relish intellect? Ans.—Don’t you think the reason is clear? We have thought in terms of results achieved or to be achieved; we haven’t been thinking of Self as the prime factor, the prime Mover of all; and so at last we have come to “relish” this fifth principle. In contact with the four lower principles, the fifth principle is the “sparking power.” In fact, as Mr. Judge says, intellect is by some men thought to be the highest power.
Ans.—In the first place, our previous statement was general. There are exceptions to all rules. The statement was made that there are no mindless men on this plane now, just as it would be perfectly correct to say, “There are no Mahatmas known amongst men,” or “There are no Lunar or mindless Pitris known amongst men.” Yet we know that Mahatmas actually do exist here on earth in human bodies. And so we might infer that very possibly mindless entities, mindless men, exist here on earth—pure Lunar Pitris—and we might go looking for the signs of these. But will they come on earth again? Well, remember, the infallible law of evolution is a descent, consciously or unconsciously, from the highest to the lowest; and then a reascent from the lowest to the highest. It follows then that, although we have sunk lower in matter than the plane of the mindless men, the time must come when in our reascent we shall once more be in contact with the mindless men on their own plane.
Ans.—Would it be exactly correct to say, “Never was time when I was not”? Why, if you can say it, it must be exactly correct to say it—but a dog can’t say it. The dog, if he knew, if he believed, if he suspected, if somebody had ever told him, “Say, friend doggie, never was time when you were not”—and the dog’s intelligence had reached (which it hasn’t) that point where it could entertain an idea of Self—the doggie would say, “Well, I wonder! I wonder! And after a while, it would say, “I believe that’s the explanation of things in this kingdom of mine—I must always have existed! So, you see, the fact is the same for the mindless man as for the Mahatma. The fact is the same for the soul that we call an atom as it is for the greatest being. But the atom, the vegetable, the mineral, the animal. forms of consciousness are not yet capable of reflecting the image of Self—call it the idea of Self. Once that image has found lodgment, then the very first question the man asks himself is the question the child asks after he gets the conception of “I”: “Well, who am I? What am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?” That’s the child stage of self-consciousness. If you look around the world, you will see that most human beings have received but a spark; in other words, they are in the child state of self-consciousness. They go to their father and say, “Dad, who am I? 97 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Where did I come from? Where am I bound for?” And Dad says, “Well, you’d better go to the preacher about that.” So they go to the preacher and they say, “Who am I?” And the preacher says, “Why, God made you; your father and mother furnished your body, but God furnished your Soul.” Then they ask, “Where am I going?” And the preacher replies, “Well, you are going to Hell if you don’ t believe that !”—And the people swallow that, most of them. Doesn’t it show, then, that their self-consciousness here in the body—confused by impressions from the four lower principles—is vague, uncertain and erroneous? The fact of self-consciousness is there, but not until we have learned to disassociate our consciousness from the body and say, “Whatever I am, I can’t be this body,” will we have the real thing.
Ans.—If there were no one, whether parent or guardian or other living man or woman, to light up the Manas in the new—born body, what would be the result? Can’t our imagination or our intuition tell us the answer? Idiots Teach a child nothing, and it will know nothing. H.P.B. makes the very definite statement that if you were to graft the Spiritual Monad of a Newton on that of the greatest saint on earth in a body with only the animal principles, without the presence of Manas, you would have an idiot. Now the question is, what can the parents do towards facilitating—in much greater degree than is ordinarily the observable case—this lighting up of Mamas? They give the child what we are all learning here, trying to light up Manas in ourselves. Remember that the chapter tells us that Manas is very far indeed from being fully operative and in control in the adult body and mind. To the extent then, that we try to make our own lives respond to Manasic impact rather than to Kamic impact, we are fitting ourselves for parenthood and for the training of children. There could be no question that, as there come to be more and more parents of that kind, they will draw into incarnation a very different class of egos indeed from those which constitute the bulk of the race. H.P.B. goes so far as to say that men and women have it in their power “to procreate Buddha-like children—or demons.
Ans.—Surely, in the true sense, all depends on that. But just as if there were nobody to look after the baby body, the most powerful ego in the world would lose out on incarnation, so, applying it in corresponding terms to the development of the intelligence here, if it were not for the help of parents and other human beings, then the most powerful ego would lose both body and human mind—because he is not in a position to form them for himself. But I take the question also to mean that we might do our utmost for a low-grade ego and we couldn’t make a Buddha out of that low-grade ego. Still, when a high-grade ego is drawn to a body, its powers here could 98 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
be prepared for in a way almost
undreamed of by us. That subject, by the way, is quite fully discussed
under the heading of “Theosophy and Education” in The Key to Theosophy
There is no more remarkable treatise, Theosophically speaking, in
existence, than that one upon the right method of education of the child,
which only means the lighting up of Manas here. Ans.—The majority of mankind today consists of low-grade egos; that is, of those who, in the words of The Secret Doctrine “received but a spark.” That is true, but who knows the possible range of growth for even those egos, if they were given the right help by those already here? Certainly there are innumerable cases of low-grade egos, those who had but a spark, who have become beneficent forces right here in human life, while, alas there are innumerable cases also of those who had great intelligence—very different from those who received but a spark—and who have in fact been a curse to the human race.
Ans.—Mr. Judge gives four characteristics. He says the first one is due to two things—the natural motion of Manas plus memory—and that the next two are due to memory alone, while the final one is due to the absence of manasic motion. What is the natural motion of Manas? The natural motion of Manas is due to of three things, or rather to three things in combination—self-consciousness, knowledge and imagination. No being in the universe, except a Manasic being, has imagination. Now, the moment that Manas is caught in the mould of memory, the motion of imagination is done for. How can Manas identify itself with anything? That is the very meaning of the word imagination. Imagination is putting ourselves in the other fellow’s place, and if memory catches us, good-bye, imagination. But it is a good thing to think about. Over and over, Mr. Judge will make a sentence where the English is so clear that we do not stop to ask ourselves whether we get the meaning or not.
Ans.—Refer to Letters That Have Helped Me, ( Semicentennial Ed., p. 72 (Indian Ed., p. 77)) and to a memorial article by Mr. Judge, “H.P. B. ‘s —A Lion—Hearted Colleague Passes.” 2
Buddhi-Manas is our cognition of Self,
our realization of Self, our sense of Self. When we regard the human race
as it is and see the degraded idea of Self that we have, is it not
perfectly clear that the whole story of the Theosophical Movement, its
success or its failure, rests upon giving mankind a new idea of Self? That
Self is divine; that Self is immortal; that Self is responsible; that Self
is what 2 Reprinted in THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT, Vol. III, p. 41 for April 1933, and in Vernal Blooms p.. 233. 99 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— it is—whatever its condition—as the result of its own actions. When we get the idea that our Self is a God, that our Self is immortal, that there is absolutely no limit to our rise or fall, is not that a change in our Buddhi-Manas? And a change in the Buddhi-Manas of a single individual seeking understanding is like a fire. A single match could set the whole world on fire. Wherever a person gets a change in the Buddhi-Manas, it becomes a living, quenchless fire. There is another side to this Theosophical Movement, an inner side. Every one of us knows how many people come to us telling their troubles, seeking light, seeking understanding. That is where the real work of the Theosophical Movement is done—from mouth to ear. That is the contact of one individual with another. That is why it is so necessary for us to have true understanding.
Chapter VII IV.—Genius, Initiation and the Motion of Manas Q.—The Greeks and Romans had the idea that every man was, throughout his entire pilgrimage, under the parental eyes of a god or a tutelary deity, just as the Gita speaks of the “presiding deity” and this tutelary or parent deity or Spirit was called the genius of that man. What principle of man would this correspond to? Ans.—In this chapter the statement is made that Higher Manas is not fully incarnated in the race—the human race—let alone in the individual; that only here and there is Manas fully incarnated, and then we have such a character as Buddha or Krishna or Jesus. Yet Mr. Judge goes on to say that now and then there come men of extraordinary natures, whose whole life is lighted up by a ray direct from Higher Manas. He mentions some as great characters and Napoleon is spoken of by name. On the other hand, genius, as popularly understood, is mentioned in a foot-note in The Voice of the Silence H.P.B. there says that genius is without exception an aptitude or capacity brought forward from another life. Here is a man, let us say, interested in art, literature or science, and more and more of his thought, will and feeling are poured into one particular line. We can see that if he continues the same way for many lives, there will be an enormous development of capacity in a certain direction. For purposes of illustration more than of exactitude, and to put it in terms of the principles, we may say that that portion of his astral brain or nature which is connected with his specialty remains intact from one incarnation to another. So he doesn't start at the bottom as we do; he starts with an organization much more developed. Genius, as we understand genius, is rather an abnormality than something preternatural.
Ans.—The statements in the Ocean raise questions in our mind. For example, it is one of the teachings of the occult side of Theosophy that all real knowledge is given in silence and not through speech. The statement is made that a acquired through words is merely a notion devoid of any real basis of understanding. What, then, is the value of words? They make impressions on us, and then, in the silence 100 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— of our own minds, we ponder the sounds heard, the words spoken, the ideas mentioned—if we ponder them, questions will inevitably rise in our minds. Who knows the origin of the word ponder It has two meanings: one is to weigh, to measure, to consider, to deliberate; but the other means to lay, as a hen lays an egg, or as chickens are hatched; to ponder a thing is to meditate on it—not to do anything with it, merely to keep it in mind. The analogy is in nature. When the farmer wants to raise a wheat crop he stirs the ground; then he puts the grains of wheat into the ground and covers them up; and thereafter he does not do a thing. The sun shines and the winds blow and the rains come, and behold in the silence, internally, in the earth, something takes place—the crop “hatches” it germinates. Now, if we could grasp that this is just as true in the field of ideas as it is in a wheat field! How do great inventors make their marvelous discoveries? Never through processes of deduction; never by the process of reasoning. How do great writers, sculptors, statesmen, achieve their results? Never by reason; never by deductions; often without themselves knowing the process by which it is done, any more than a hen who sits on the nest of eggs understands the mystery of the hatching of those eggs. True inspiration or understanding comes by pondering the questions arising in our own mind. If we carry them in the mind, they pass from the physical brain into the astral brain; if held, they pass from the astral brain to what we may call the Manasic brain, the Buddhi-Manasic part of our nature; then the thought germinates and, since it was rooted in an impression here, the harvest Thus here.
Ans.—Yes, that is concentration, meditation—we can use a thousand words for it. Let us now take the question “How is the light of mind given to the mindless man?” and apply it to ourselves. According to the teachings, neither Atman nor Buddhi is individualized, either in the human being or in the whole human race, and even Manas is only partly active in the whole human family—very, very rarely fully active in this or that given individual, as we have just been saying. It follows, then, that the process of lighting up Manas is still going on in us, doesn’t it? If Manas is not fully lighted up here and now in us, then the process of the lighting up of Manas is going on in us all the time. And when Manas is fully lighted up, then the process of the lighting up of Buddhi will have to go on in the individual, and then the lighting up of Atma. The conscious union of Atma-Buddhi-Manas in each individual human being has to be achieved. How does that process go on? Isn’t it in everyday life by every thing we hear, see, touch, taste and smell, and by the ideas and feelings those external actions and impressions give rise to? Finally, the lighting up of Manas proceeds to the point where the man perceives that there is no answer in popular religion to his questions; no answer in science to his questions, nor any answer in psychology or philosophy. That is, there is no answer to his questions in the harvest that men reap from their actions and experiences in life. In other words, he comes at last to see that nothing which smacks of the personal can ever answer his 101 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
questions. When the questions begin to pass from the personal to the impersonal, then, in fact, those who watch the progress of the world—our tutelary genius, if you like, or Higher Manas in us—brings us in contact with Theosophy. That is the light of Atma-Buddhi shining in the world of Manas, and it shines by reflected light in the world of human consciousness. Then we start a class in the Ocean and then we begin to study these subjects. We begin to talk them over with each other, to think about them.
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