THEOSOPHY
Theosophical Society,
Annie Besant
Study in Consciousness
By
Annie Besant
A Contribution to the Science of Psychology
First Published 1915
Return to Annie Besant
Selection
FOREWORD.
THIS book is intended as an aid to student in their study of the
growth and development of consciousness, offering hints and suggestions which
may prove serviceable to them. It does not pretend to be a complete exposition,
but rather, as its sub-title states, a contribution to the science of
Psychology. Far ampler materials than are within my reach are necessary for
any complete exposition of the far-reaching science which deals with the
unfolding of consciousness. These materials are slowly accumulating in the
hands of earnest and painstaking students, but no effort has yet been made to
arrange and systematise them into a co-ordinated whole. In this little volume I
have only arranged a small part of this material, in the hope that it may be
useful now to some of the toilers in the great field of the Evolution of
Consciousness, and may serve, in the future, as a stone in the complete
building. It will need a great architect to plan that temple of knowledge, and
skilful master masons to direct the building; enough, for the moment, to do the
apprentice task, and prepare the rough stones for the use of the more expert
workmen.
ANNIE BESANT
PART I
CONSCIOUSNESS
Introduction
Origins
Origination of Monads
CHAPTER I.
THE PREPARATION OF THE
FIELD.
1. The Formation of the
Atom
2. Spirit-Matter
3. The Sub-Planes
4. The Five Planes
CHAPTER II.
CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. The Meaning of the
Word
2. The Monads
CHAPTER III.
THE PEOPLING OF THE
FIELD.
1. The Coming
2. The Weaving
3. The Seven Streams
4. The Shining Ones
CHAPTER IV.
THE PERMANENT ATOM.
1. The Attaching of the
Atoms
2. The Web of Life
3. The Choosing of the
Permanent Atoms
4. The Use of the
Permanent Atom
5. Monadic Action on the
Permanent Atoms
CHAPTER V.
GROUP-SOULS.
1. The Meaning of the
Term
2. The Division of the
Group-Soul
CHAPTER VI.
UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. Consciousness a Unit
2. The Unity of Physical
Consciousness
3. The Meaning of
Physical Consciousness
CHAPTER VII.
THE MECHANISM OF
CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. The Development of
the Mechanism
2. The Astral or Desire
Body
3. Correspondence in
Root-Races
CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST HUMAN STEPS.
1. The Third Life-Wave
2. Human Development
3. Incongruous Souls and
Bodies
4. Dawn of Consciousness
on the Astral Plane
CHAPTER IX.
CONSCIOUSNESS AND
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. Consciousness
2. Self-Consciousness
3. Real and Unreal
CHAPTER X.
HUMAN STATES OF
CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. The Sub-Consciousness
2. The Waking
Consciousness
3. The Super-Physical
Consciousness
CHAPTER XI.
THE MONAD AT WORK.
1. Building his Vehicles
2. An Evolving Man
3. The Pituitary Body
and Pineal Gland
4. The Paths of
Consciousness
CHAPTER XII.
THE NATURE OF MEMORY.
1. The Great Self and
the Little Selves
2. Changes in the
Vehicles and in Consciousness
3. Memories
4. What is Memory
5. Remembering and
Forgetting
6. Attention
7. The One Consciousness
PART II
WILL, DESIRE AND
EMOTION
CHAPTER I.
THE WILL TO LIVE
CHAPTER II.
DESIRE
1. The Nature of Desire
2. The Awakening of
Desire
3. The Relation of
Desire to Thought
4. Desire, Thought,
Action
5. The Binding Nature of
Desire
6. The Breaking of the
Bonds
CHAPTER III.
DESIRE (Continued)
1. The Vehicle of Desire
2. The Conflict of
Desire and Thought
3. The Value of an Ideal
4. The Purification of
Desire
CHAPTER IV.
EMOTION
1. The Birth of Emotion
2. The Play of Emotion
in the Family
3. The Birth of Virtues
4. Right and Wrong
5. Virtue and Bliss
6. The Transmutation of
the Emotions into Virtues and Vices
7. Application of the
Theory to Conduct
8. The Uses of Emotion
CHAPTER V.
EMOTION (Continued)
1. The Training of
Emotion
2. The Distorting Force
of Emotion
3. Methods of Ruling the
Emotions
4. The Using of Emotion
5. The Value of Emotion
in Evolution
CHAPTER VI.
THE WILL
1. The Will winning its
Freedom
2. Why so much Struggle
3. The Power of the Will
4. White and Black Magic
5. Entering into Peace
INTRODUCTION.
THE subject of the unfolding of consciousness in the beings whose
field of evolution is a solar system is one of considerable difficulty; none of
us may at present hope to do more than master a small portion of its
complexity, but it may be possible to study it in such fashion as may fill up
some of the gaps in our thinking, and as may yield us a fairly clear outline to
guide our future work.
We cannot, however, trace this outline in any way satisfactory to
the intelligence, without considering first our solar system as a whole, and
endeavouring to grasp some idea, however vague that idea may be, of "the
beginnings" in such a system.
1. ORIGINS.
We have learned that the matter in a solar system exists in seven
great modifications, [1] or planes; on three of these, the physical, emotional
(astral), and mental - often spoken of as "the three worlds", the
well-known Triloki, or Tribhuvanam, of
the Hindu cosmogony - is proceeding the normal evolution of humanity. On
the next two planes, the spiritual - those of wisdom and power, the buddhic and
the atmic - goes on the specific evolution of the Initiate, after the first of
the Great Initiations. These five planes form the field of the evolution of
consciousness, until the human merges in the divine. The two planes beyond the
five represent the sphere of divine activity, encircling and enveloping all,
out of which pour forth all the divine energies which vivify and sustain the
whole system. They are at present entirely beyond our knowledge, and the few
hints that have been given regarding them probably convey as much information
as our limited capacity is able to grasp. We are taught that they are the
planes of divine Consciousness, wherein the LOGOS, or the divine Trinity of
Logoi, is manifested, and wherefrom He shines forth as the Creator, the
Preserver, the [2] Dissolver, evolving a universe, maintaining it during its
life-period, withdrawing it into Himself at its ending. We have been given the
names of these two planes: the lower is the Anupadaka, that wherein "no
vehicle has yet been formed";[1] the higher is the Adi, "the
first", the foundation of a universe, its support and the fount of its life.
We have thus the seven planes of a universe, a solar system, which, as we see
by this brief description, may be regarded as making up three groups:
[3]
The two highest planes may be conceived of as existing before the
solar system is formed, and we may imagine the highest, the Adi, as consisting of
so much of the matter of space - symbolised by points - as the LOGOS has marked
out to form the material basis of the system. He is about to produce. As a
workman chooses out the material he is going to shape into his product, so does
the LOGOS choose the material and the place for His universe. Similarly we may
imagine the Anupadaka - symbolised by lines - as consisting of this same
matter, modified by His individual life, coloured, to use a significant
metaphor, by His all-ensouling Consciousness, and thus differing in some way
from the corresponding plane in another solar system. We are told that the
supreme facts of this preparatory work may be further imaged forth in symbols;
of these we are given two [4] sets, one of which images the triple manifestation
of the Logic Consciousness, the other the triple change in matter
corresponding to the triple Life - the life and form aspects of the three
Logoi. We may place them side by side, as simultaneous happenings:
We have here, under Life, the primeval Point in the centre of the
Circle, the LOGOS as One within the self-imposed encircling sphere of subtlest
matter, in which He has enclosed Himself for the purpose of manifestation, of
shining forth from the Darkness. At once the question arises: Why three Logoi?
Though we touch here on the deepest question of metaphysics, to expound which
even inadequately requires a volume, we must indicate the answer, to be wrought
out by close thinking. In the analysis of all that exists, we come to the great
generalisation:
"All is separable into 'I' and 'Not I', the 'SELF' and the
'Not-Self'. Every separate thing is summed up under one or other of the
headings, SELF or Not-Self. There is nothing which cannot be placed under one
of them. SELF is Life, Consciousness; Not-Self is Matter, Form." Here,
then, we have a duality. But the Twain are not two separate things isolated and
unrelated; there is a continual Relation between them, a continual approach
and withdrawal; an identification and a repudiation; this inter-play shows
itself as the ever-changing universe. Thus we have a Trinity, not a Duality -
the SELF, the Not-Self, and the Relation between them. All is here summed up,
all things and all relations, actual and possible, and hence Three, neither
more nor less, is the foundation of all universes in their totality, and of
each universe in particular.[2] This fundamental fact imposes on a Locos a
triplicity of manifestation in [6] a solar system, and hence the One, the
Point, going forth in three directions to the circumference of the Circle of
Matter and returning on Itself, manifests a different aspect at each place of
contact with the Circle-the three fundamental expressions of Consciousness: or
Will, Wisdom, and Activity - the divine Triad or Trinity.[3] For the Universal
SELF, the Pratyag-atma, the "Inner-Self", thinking of the Not-Self, identifies Himself with it,
thereby sharing with it His Being; this is the divine Activity, Sat, Existence
lent to the Non-existent, the Universal Mind. The SELF, realising Himself, is
Wisdom, Chit, the principle of preservation. The SELF, withdrawing Himself from
the Not-Self, in His own pure nature, is Bliss, Ananda, free from form. Every
LOGOS of a universe repeats this universal SELF-Consciousness: in His
Activity, He is the creative Mind, Kriya - corresponding to the universal Sat -
the Brahma of the Hindu, the Holy Spirit of the Christian, the Chochmah of the
Kabbalist. In His Wisdom, He is the preserving ordering Reason, Jnana -
corresponding to the universal Chit - the Vishnu of the Hindu, the Son of the
Christian, the Binah of the Kabbalist. In His Bliss, He is the Dissolver of
forms, the Will, Ichchha - corresponding to the universal Ananda - the Shiva
of the Hindu, the Father of the Christian, the Kepher of the Kabbalist. Thus
appear in every universe the three Logoi, the three Beings who create, preserve,
and destroy Their universe, each showing forth predominantly in His function in the universe one ruling Aspect,
to which the other two are subordinate, though of course ever-present. Hence
every manifested GOD is spoken of as a Trinity. The joining of these three
Aspects, or phases of manifestation, at their outer points of contact with the
[8] circle, gives the basic Triangle of contact with Matter, which, with the
three Triangles made with the lines traced by the Point, thus yields the divine
Tetractys, sometimes called the Kosmic Quaternary, the three divine Aspects in
contact with Matter, ready to create. These, in their totality, are the
Oversoul[4] of the kosmos that is to be.
Under Form we may first glance at the effects of these Aspects as
responded to from the side of Matter. These are not, of course, due to the
LOGOS of a system, but are the correspondences in universal Matter with the
Aspects of the universal SELF. The Aspect of Bliss, or Will, imposes on Matter
the quality of Inertia - Tamas, the power of resistance, stability, quietude.
The Aspect of Activity gives to Matter its responsiveness to action - Rajas,
mobility. The Aspect of Wisdom gives it Rhythm - Satva, vibration, harmony. It
is by the aid of Matter thus prepared that the Aspects of Logic Consciousness
manifest themselves as Beings. [9]
The LOGOS - not yet a first, since there is yet no second - is seen
as a Point irradiating a sphere of
Matter, drawn round Him as the field of the future universe, flashing with
unimaginable splendour, a true Mountain of Light, as Manu has it, but Light
invisible save on the spiritual planes. This great sphere has been spoken of as
primary Substance: it is the SELF-conditioned LOGOS, inseparate at every point
with the Matter He has appropriated for His universe, ere He draws Himself a
little apart from it in the second manifestation; it is the sphere of
SELF-conditioning Will, which is to lead to the creative Activity: "I am
This," when the "This," the Not-Self, is cognised. The Point,
speaking symbolically - in order to make the suggestion of Form as seen from
the side of appearances vibrates between centre and circumference, thus making
the Line which marks the drawing apart of Spirit and Matter[5], [10] rendering
cognition possible, and thus generating the Form for the second Aspect, the
Being we call the Second Logos, symbolically the Line, or Diameter of the
Circle. It is said of this in mystic phrase: "Thou art My Son; this day
have I begotten Thee"[6]; this relation of Father and Son within the unity
of the Divine Existence, of the first and Second Logoi, belongs, of course, to
the Day of Manifestation, the life-period of a universe. It is this begetting
of the Son, this appearance of the Second Logos, the Wisdom, which is marked in
the world of Form by the differentiation, the drawing apart, of Spirit and
Matter, the two poles between which is spun the web of a universe; the
separation, as it were, of the neutral inactive Electricity - which may
symbolise the First Logos - into the dual form of positive and negative - symbolising
the Second - thus making the unmanifest manifest. This separation [11] within
the First Logos is vividly imaged for us in the preparation for cell-multiplication
that we may study on the physical plane, wherein we see the processes that
lead up to the appearance of a dividing wall, whereby the one cell becomes two.
For all that happens down here is but the reflexion in gross matter of the
happenings on higher planes, and we may often find a crutch for our halting
imagination in our studies of physical development. "As above, so
below." The physical is the reflexion of the spiritual.
Then the Point, with Line revolving with it, vibrates at right
angles to the former vibration, and thus is formed the Cross, still within the
Circle, the Cross which thus "proceedeth from the Father and the
Son," the symbol of the Third Logos, the Creative Mind, the divine
Activity now ready to manifest as Creator. Then He manifests Himself as the
Active Cross, or Svastika, the first of the Logoi to manifest outside the two
highest planes, though the third stage of the divine Unfolding. [12]
But before considering the creative Activity of the Third Logos, we
must note the origination of the Monads, or Units of Consciousness, for whose
evolution in matter the field of a universe is to be prepared. We shall return
to their fuller consideration in Chapter II. The myriads of such Units who are to
be developed in that coming universe are generated within the divine Life, as
germ-cells in organisms, before the field for their evolution is formed. Of
this forthgiving it is written: "THAT willed: I shall multiply and be
born"[7]; and the Many arise in the One by that act of Will. [13] Will has
its two aspects of attraction and repulsion, of in-breathing and out-breathing,
and when the repulsion-aspect energises there is separation, driving apart.
This multiplication within the One by the action of Will marks the
place of origin - the first Logos, the undivided Lord, the Eternal Father.
These are the sparks of the Supreme Fire, the "divine Fragments"[8],
named generally "Monads". A Monad is a fragment of the divine Life,
separated off as an individual entity by rarest film of matter, matter so rare
that, while it gives a separate form to each, it offers no obstacle to the free
inter-communication of a life thus incased with the surrounding similar lives.
The life of the Monads is thus of the First Logos, and is therefore of triple
aspect, Consciousness existing as Will, Wisdom, and Activity; this life takes
form on the plane of divine Manifestation, the second, or Anupadaka, Sons of the Father even as is the Second
Logos, but younger Sons, with [14] none of their divine powers capable of
acting in matter denser than that of their own planes; while He, with ages of evolution behind Him, stands ready to
exercise His divine powers, "the First-born among many brethren"[9].
Fitly they dwell on the Anupadaka plane, the roots of their life in the Adi, as
yet without vehicles in which they can express themselves, awaiting the day of
"manifestation of the Sons of God"[10]. There they remain while the
Third Logos begins the external work of manifestation, the shaping of the
objective universe. He is going to put forth His life into matter, to fashion
it into the materials fitted for the building of the vehicles which the Monads
need for their evolution. But he will not be merged in His work; for, vast as that
work seems to us, to Him it is but a little thing: "Having pervaded this
whole universe with a portion of Myself, I remain"[11]." That
marvellous Individuality is not lost, and only a portion [15] thereof suffices
for the life of a kosmos. The LOGOS, the Oversoul, remains, the God of His
universe. [16]
STUDY IN CONSCIOUSNESS.
CHAPTER I.
THE PREPARATION OF THE FIELD.
1. THE FORMATION OF THE ATOM.
THE Third Logos, the Universal Mind, begins His creative Activity by
working on the matter drawn in from the infinite space on every side for the
building of our solar system. This matter exists in space in forms incognisable
by us, but is apparently already shaped to the needs of vaster systems. For we
have been told by H. P. Blavatsky that
the atomic sub-planes of our planes make up the first, or lowest, kosmic plane.
If we think of the atoms of that kosmic plane as symbolised by [17] a musical
note. Our atoms, as formed by the Third Logos, may perhaps be symbolised by
the overtones in such a note. What seems clear is that they are in close
relation to the "atoms of space", correspond with them, but are not,
in their present form, identical with them. But the seven types of matter, that
become our "atoms", are indicated in the matter drawn from space to
form the solar system, and are ultimately reducible again to them. H. P.
Blavatsky hints at the repeated seven-fold division into atoms of lower and
lower grade, when she writes: "The One Kosmic Atom becomes seven atoms on
the plane of matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy. That same
atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit ... separate till the end of the
kalpa and yet in close embrace".[12]
Outside the limits of a universe this matter is in a very peculiar
state; the three qualities of matter, inertia, mobility, and rhythm[13], are
balanced against each [18] other, and are in a state of equilibrium. They might
be thought of as existing as a closed circle, quiescent. In fact, in some
ancient books, matter in its totality is described in this state as inertia. It
is also spoken of as virgin; it is the celestial Virgin Mary, the ocean of
virgin matter, that is to become the Mother by the action of the Third Logos.
The beginning of creative Activity is the breaking of that closed circle,
throwing the qualities out of stable into unstable equilibrium. Life is motion,
and the life of the Solar LOGOS - His Breath, as it is poetically called -
touching this quiescent matter, threw the qualities into a condition of
unstable equilibrium, and therefore of continual motion in relation to each
other. During the life-period of a universe matter is ever in a condition of
incessant internal motion. H. P. Blavatsky says: "Fohat hardens and
scatters the seven Brothers . electrifies into life and separates primordial
stuff, or pregenetic matter, into atoms"[14].
The formation of the atom has three [19] stages. First, the fixing
of the limit within which the ensouling life - the Life of the Logos in the
atom - shall vibrate; this limiting and fixing of the wave-length of the
vibration is technically called "the divine measure"[15]; this gives
to the atoms of a plane their distinctive peculiarity. Secondly, the Logos
marks out, according to this divine measure, the lines which determine the
shape of the atom, the fundamental axes of growth, the angular relation of
these, which determines the form, being that of the corresponding kosmic
atom[16]; the nearest analogy to these are the axes of crystals. Thirdly, by
the measure of the vibration and the angular relation of the axes of growth
with each other, the size and form of the surface, which we may call the
surface or wall of the atom, is determined. Thus in every atom we have the
measure of its ensouling life, its axes of growth, and its enclosing surface or
wall. [20]
Of such atoms the Third Logos creates five different kinds, the
five different "measures" implying five different vibrations, and each
kind forms the basic material of a plane; each plane, however various the
objects in it, has its own fundamental type of atom, into which any of its
objects may ultimately be reduced.
2. SPIRIT-MATTER.
The epithet, spirit-matter, will perhaps be better appreciated if
we pause for a moment on the method of the formation of the atoms of the successive
planes. For each system the matter of space around it is its Root of Matter,
Mulaprakriti, as the Hindus graphically call it. The matter of each system has
that surrounding matter for its root, or base, and its own special matter grows
out of, is developed from, that. The LOGOS, the Oversoul, of the system,
drawing round Himself the necessary matter from space, ensouls it with His own
life, and this life within this [21] subtle matter, this Mulaprakriti, is the
Atma, the SELF, the Spirit, in every particle. Fohat, the energy of the Locos,
says H. P. B., "digs holes in space", and no description could be
finer and truer. That whirling energy forms innumerable vortices, each shaped
by the divine energy and the axes of growth, and each shelled with the matter
of space, Atma in a shell of Mulaprakriti, spirit in a shell of matter, the
"atoms" of the Adi, or highest plane, the first. Some of these remain
as "atoms"; others join together and form "molecules";
"molecules" join together and make more complex molecular combinations;
and so on till six sub-planes below the atomic are formed. [This by analogy
with what may be observed below, since these highest planes are incognisable.]
Now comes the forming of the atoms of the second plane. Their measure and axes
of growth being fixed as above described by the Third Logos, some of the atoms
of the adi, or first, pane draw round themselves a shell of the combinations of
their own lowest sub-plane; the Spirit plus its original shell of [22] kosmic
matter (Mulaprakriti), or the atom of the first plane, is the spirit of the
second plane, and permeates the new shell, formed out of the lowest-grade
combinations of itself. These shells, thus ensouled, are the atoms of the
anupadaka, or second, plane. By the ever more complicated aggregations of these
the remaining six sub-planes are brought into being. Some of the atoms of the
anupadaka plane, in like manner, become clothed with the aggregations of their
own lowest sub-plane, and thus become the atmic atoms, the Spirit now being
clothed with two shells, inside its atomic wall of aggregations of the lowest
sub-plane of the anupadaka, and the original Spirit, or Life, plus its two
shells, being called the spirit of the atmic plane, while the wall of its atom
is regarded as the matter. This atom, ensheathed once more in the aggregations
of the lowest atmic sub-plane, becomes the atom of the buddhic plane, Spirit on
the buddhic plane having thus three enclosing films within its atomic shell of
lowest atmic aggregations. On the mental plane the Spirit has a fourfold sheath
within the [23] atomic wall, on the astral plane a fivefold, and on the
physical a sixfold, with the atomic wall in each case in addition. But the
Spirit plus all its sheaths save the outermost is ever regarded as Spirit, and
the outermost sheath only as form or body. It is this involution of Spirit
which makes evolution possible, and complicated as the description may sound,
the principle is simple and can be easily grasped. Truly, then, may we speak of
"spirit-matter" everywhere.
3. THE SUB-PLANES.
Now the ultimate atoms of the physical plane are not the
"atoms" of the modern chemist;
the ultimate atoms are aggregated into successive typical groups, forming
"states of matter", and the chemical atom may be in the fifth, sixth,
or seventh of these states, a gas, a liquid, or a solid. Familiar are the gaseous, the liquid, and the
solid states of matter, or, as they are often called, the gaseous, liquid, and
solid sub-planes; [24] and above the gaseous are four less familiar conditions,
the three etheric states of matter, or sub-planes, and the true atomic. These
true atoms are aggregated into groups, which then act as units, and these
groups are called molecules; the atoms in a molecule are held together by
magnetic attraction, and the molecules on each sub-plane are arranged
geometrically in relation to each other on axes identical with the axes of growth
of the atom of the corresponding plane. By these successive aggregations of
atoms into molecules, and of simpler into more complex molecules, the sub-planes of each plane are
formed under the directive Activity of the Third Logos, until the field of evolution,
consisting of five planes, each showing seven sub-planes - the first and second
planes being beyond this field - is completed. But it must not be supposed that
these seven sub-planes, as formed by the Third Logos, are at all identical with
those which are now existing. Taking the physical plane as an illustration,
they bear something of the same [25] relation to the present sub-planes as that
which the chemist calls proto-hydrogen bears to the chemical element said to be
built up out of it. The present conditions were not brought about by the work
of the Third Logos only, in whom Activity predominates; the more strongly
attractive or cohesive energies of the Second Logos, who is Wisdom and
therefore Love, were needed for the further integrations.
It is important to remember that the planes are interpenetrating,
and that corresponding sub-planes are
directly related to each other, and are not really separated from each other by
intervening layers of denser matter. Thus we must not think of the atomic
sub-planes as being separated from each other by six sub-planes of generally
increasing density, but as being in immediate connexion with each other. We may
figure this in a diagram as follows: [26]
It must be understood that this is a diagram, not a picture i.e., it represents relations, not material
facts-the relations existing between the planes by virtue of their
intermingling, and not forty-nine separate bricks placed in seven rows, one an
the top of another.
Now this relation is a most important one, for it implies that life
can pass from [27] plane to plane by the short road of the communicating atomic
sub-planes, and need not necessarily circle round through the six molecular
sub-planes before it can reach the next atomic sub-plane to continue its
descent. As a matter of fact we shall find presently that life-streams from the
Monad do follow this atomic road in their descent to the physical plane. If we
now consider a physical atom, looking at it as a whole, we see a vortex of
life, the life of the Third Logos, whirling with inconceivable rapidity. By
the attraction between these whirling vortices, molecules are built up, and the
plane with its sub-planes formed. But at the limiting surface of this whirling
vortex are the spirillae, whirling currents, each at right angles to the one
within it and the one without it. These whirling currents are made by the life
of the Monad, not by the life of the Third Logos, and are not present at the
early stage we are considering; they develop one after another into full
activity in the course of evolution, normally one in each Round; their rudiments
are indeed completed by the Fourth [28] Round by the action of the Second
Logos, but the life-stream of the Monad circulates in only four of them, the
other three being but faintly indicated. The atoms of the higher planes are
formed on the same general plan, as regards the Logic central vortex and its
enclosing currents, but all details are at present lacking to us. Many of the
practices of yoga are directed to bring about the more rapid evolution of the
atoms by quickening this spirillae vivifying work of the Monad upon it. As
these currents of the monadic life are added to the Logic vortex, the note of
life grows richer and richer in its quality. We may compare the central vortex
to the fundamental note, the whirling encircling currents to the overtones; the
addition of each overtone means an added richness to the note. New forces, new
beauties, are thus ever added to the seven-fold chord of life.
4. THE FIVE PLANES.
The different responses which the matter of the planes will later
give under [29] the impulse of consciousness depend on the work of the Third
Logos, on the "measure" by which He limits the atom. The atom of each
plane has its own measure, as we have seen, and this limits its power of
response, its vibratory action, and gives it its specific character. As the eye
is so constituted that it is able to respond to vibrations of ether within a
certain range, so is each type of atom, by its constitution, able to respond to
vibrations within a certain range. One plane is called the plane made of
"mind-stuff", because the "measure" of its atoms makes
their dominant response that which answers to a certain range of the vibrations
of the Knowledge Aspect of the LOGOS, as modified by the Creative Activity.[17]
Another is called the plane of "desire-stuff", because the
"measure" of its atoms makes their dominant response that which
answers to a certain range of the vibrations of the Will[18] Aspect of the
LOGOS. Each type of atom has thus its own peculiar [30] power of response,
determined by its own measure of vibration. In each atom lie involved
numberless possibilities of response to the three aspects of consciousness,
and these possibilities within the atom will be brought out of the atom as
powers in the course of evolution. But the capacity of the matter to respond,
and the nature of the response, these are determined by the original action of
the triple Self on it, and by the measure imposed on the atoms by the Third
Logos; He, out of the infinite capacity of His own multitude of vibratory
powers, gives a certain portion to the matter of a particular system in a
particular cycle of evolution. This capacity is stamped on matter by the Third
Logos, and is ever maintained in matter by His life infolded in the atom. Thus
is formed the fivefold field of evolution in which consciousness is to develop.
This work of the Third Logos is usually spoken of as the First Life
Wave. [31]
CHAPTER II.
CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. THE MEANING OF THE WORD.
LET us now consider what we mean by consciousness, and see if this
consideration will build for us the much longed -for "bridge", which
is the despair of modern thought, between consciousness and matter, will span
for us the "gulf" alleged to exist for ever between them.
To begin with a definition of terms consciousness and life are
identical, two names for one thing as regarded from within and from without. There
is no life without consciousness; there is no consciousness without life. When
we vaguely separate them in thought and analyse what we have done, we find that
we have called consciousness turned inward by the name of life, and life [32]
turned outwards by the name of consciousness. When our attention is fixed on
unity we say life; when it is fixed upon multiplicity we say consciousness; and
we forget that the multiplicity is due to, is the essence of, matter, the
reflecting surface in which the One becomes the Many. When it is said that life
is "more or less conscious", it is not the abstraction life that is
thought of, but "a living thing" more or less aware of its
surroundings. The more or less awareness depends on the thickness, the density,
of the enwrapping veil which makes it a living thing, separate from its
fellows. Annihilate in thought that veil and you annihilate in thought also
life, and are in THAT into which all opposites are resolved, the ALL.
This leads us to our next point: the existence of consciousness
implies a separation into two aspects of the fundamental all-underlying UNITY.
The modern name of consciousness, "awareness", equally implies this.
For you cannot hang up awareness in the void; awareness [33] implies something
of which it is aware, a duality at the least. Otherwise it exists not. In the
highest abstraction of consciousness, of awareness, this duality is implied;
consciousness ceases if the sense of limitation be withdrawn, is dependent on
limitation for existence. Awareness is essentially awareness of limitation, and
only secondarily awareness of others. Awareness of others comes into being with
what we call Self-consciousness, Self-awareness. This abstract Twain-in-One,
consciousness - limitation, spirit - matter, life - form, are ever
inseparable, they appear and disappear together; they exist only in relation
to each other; they resolve into a necessarily unmanifest Unity, the supreme
synthesis.
"As above, so below." Again let the "below"
help us; let us look at consciousness as it appears when considered from the
side of form, as we see it in a universe of conscious things. Electricity
manifests only as positive and negative; when these neutralise each other,
electricity vanishes. In all things electricity [34] exists, neutral,
unmanifest; from all things it can appear, but not as positive only, or as
negative only; always as balancing amounts of both, over against each other,
and these ever tending to re-enter together into apparent nothingness, which is
not nothingness but the source equally of
both.
But if this be so, what becomes of the "gulf "? what need
of the "bridge"? Consciousness and matter affect each other because
they are the two constituents of one whole, both appearing as they draw apart,
both disappearing as they unite, and as they draw apart a relation exists ever
between them.[19] There is no such thing as a conscious unit which does not
consist of this inseparate duality, a magnet with two poles ever in relation to
each other. We think of a separate something we call consciousness, and ask
how it works on another [35] separate something we call matter. There are no
such two separate somethings, but only two drawn-apart but inseparate aspects
of THAT which, without both, is unmanifest, which cannot manifest in the one or
the other alone, and is equally in both. There are no fronts without backs, no
aboves without belows, no outsides without insides, no spirit without matter.
They affect each other because inseparable parts of a unity, manifesting as a
duality in space and time. The "gulf" appears when we think of a
"spirit" wholly immaterial, and a "body" wholly material -
i.e., of two things neither of which exists. There is no spirit which is not
matter-enveloped: there is no matter which is not spirit-ensouled. The highest
separated Self has its film of matter, and though such a Self is called "a
spirit" because the consciousness aspect is so predominant, none the less
is it true that it has its vibrating sheath
of matter, and that from this sheath all impulses come forth, which
affect all other denser material sheaths in succession. To say this is not to
materialise consciousness, [36] but only to recognise the fact that the two
primary opposites, consciousness and matter, are straitly bound together, are
never apart, not even in the highest Being. Matter is limitation, and without
limitation consciousness is not. So far from materialising consciousness, it
puts it as a concept in sharp antithesis to matter, but it recognises the fact
that in an entity the one is not found without the other. The densest matter,
the physical, has its core of consciousness; the gas, the stone, the metal, is
living, conscious, aware. Thus oxygen becomes aware of hydrogen at a certain
temperature, and rushes into combination with it.
Let us now look out of consciousness from within, and see the
meaning of the phrase: "Matter is limitation". Consciousness is the
one Reality, in the fullest sense of that much-used phrase; it follows from
this that any reality found anywhere is drawn from consciousness. Hence,
everything which is thought, is. That consciousness in which everything is,
everything literally, "possible" as well as "actual" -
actual being that which is [37] thought of as existent by a separated consciousness
in time and space, and possible all that which is not so being thought of at
any period in time and any point in space - we call Absolute Consciousness. It
is the ALL, the ETERNAL, the INFINITE, the CHANGELESS. Consciousness, thinking
time and space, and of all forms as existing in them in succession and in
places, is the Universal Consciousness, the ONE, called by the Hindu the
Saguna BRAHMAN - the ETERNAL with
attributes - the PRATYAG-ATMA - the INNER SELF; - by the Christian, God; by the Parsi, HORMUZD; by the Mussulman, ALLAH.
Consciousness dealing with a definite time, however long or short, with a
definite space, however vast or restricted, is individual, that of a concrete
Being, a Lord of many universes, or some universes, or a universe, or of any
so-called portion of a universe, his portion and to him therefore a universe -
these terms varying as to extent with
the power of the consciousness; so much of the universal thought as a separate
consciousness can completely think, i.e., on which he can [38] impose his own
reality, can think of as existing like himself, is his universe. To each
universe, the Being who is its Lord gives a share of his own indefeasible
Reality; but is ever himself limited and controlled by the thought of his superior,
the Lord of the universe in which he exists as a form. Thus we, who are human
beings, existing in a solar system, are surrounded by innumerable forms which
are the thought-forms of the LORD of our system, our ISHVARA, or RULER; the
"divine measure" and the "axes of growth", thought by the
Third Logos, govern the forms of our atoms, and the surface thought of by Him
as the limit of the atom and resistant, offers resistance to all similar atoms.
Thus we receive our matter, and cannot alter it, save by the employment of methods also made by His
thought; only so long as His thought continues can the atoms, with all composed
of them, continue to exist, since they have no Reality save that given by His
thought. So long as He retains them as His body by declaring: "I am this;
these atoms are My body; they share My life"; so [39] long they will
impose themselves as real on all the beings in this solar system, whose
consciousnesses are clothed in similar garments. When at the end of the Day of
Manifestation He declares: "I am not this; these atoms are no longer My
body; they no longer share My life"; then shall they vanish as the dream
they are, and only that shall remain which is the thought-form of the Monarch
of a vaster system.
Thus, as Spirits, we are inherently, indefensibly divine, with all
the splendour and freedom implied in that word. But we are clothed in matter
which is not ours, which is the thought-forms of the RULER of our system -
controlled again by the RULERS of vaster systems in which ours is included -
and we are only slowly learning to master and use it. When we realise our
oneness with our RULER, then the matter shall have no longer power over us, and
we shall see it as the unreality it is, dependent on His will, which then we
shall know as also ours. Then we can "play" with it, as we cannot
while it blinds us with its borrowed Reality. [40]
Looking thus out of consciousness from within, we see even more
plainly than we saw looking at it from
the world of forms, that there is no "gulf", and no need for a
"bridge". Consciousness changes, and each change appears in the
matter surrounding it as a vibration, because the LOGOS has thought vibrations
of matter as the invariable concomitant of changes in consciousness; and as the
matter is but the resultant of consciousness and its attributes are imposed upon it by active thought, any change in the Logic Consciousness
would change the attributes of the
matter of the system, and any change in a consciousness derived from Him shows
itself in that matter as a change; this change in matter is a vibration, a rhythmical movement within the limits set by
Him for the mobility of masses of matter in that relation. "Change in consciousness
and vibration of the matter limiting it" is a "pair", imposed by
the thought of the Locos on all embodied consciousnesses in His universe.
That such a constant relation exists is
shown by the fact that a vibration in a material [41] sheath accompanying a
change in the ensouling consciousness, and causing a similar vibration in the
sheath ensouled by another consciousness, is found to be accompanied by a
change in that second consciousness similar to the change in the first.
In matter far subtler than the physical - as mind-stuff - the
creative power of consciousness is more readily seen than in the dense material
of the physical plane. Matter becomes dense or rare, and changes its
combinations and forms, according to the thoughts of a consciousness active
therein. While the fundamental atoms - due to the Logic thought - remain unchanged,
they can be combined or dissociated at will. Such experiences open the mind to
the metaphysical conception of matter, and enable it to realise at once the
borrowed reality and the nonentity of matter.
A word of warning may be useful with regard to the often repeated
phrases of "Consciousness in a body", "Consciousness ensouling
a body", and the like. The student is a little apt to figure consciousness
[42] as a kind of rarefied gas enclosed in a material receptacle, a kind of
bottle. If he will think carefully he will realise that the resistant surface
of the body is but a Logic thought-form, and it is there because thought there.
Consciousness appears as conscious entities, because the LOGOS thinks such
separations, thinks the enclosing walls, makes such thought limitations. And
these thoughts of the LOGOS are due to His unity with the Universal SELF, and
are but a repetition within the area of a particular universe of the Will to
multiply.
A careful dwelling in mind on the distinctions above traced between
Absolute Consciousness, Universal Consciousness, and Individual Consciousness,
will prevent the student from asking the question so often heard: Why is there
any universe? Why does All-Consciousness limit itself? Why should the Perfect
become the imperfect, All-Power become the powerless, God become the mineral,
the brute, the man? In this form the question is unanswerable, for it is
founded on false premises. The Perfect is the All, the Totality, the Sum of
Being. Within [43] its infinity, as above said, is everything contained, every
potentiality, as well as actuality, of existence. All that has been, is, will
be, can be, ever is in that Fulness, that ETERNAL. Only Itself knows Itself in
its infinite unimaginable wealth of Being. Because it contains all pairs of
opposites, and each pair, in affirming itself, to the eye of reason annihilates
itself and vanishes, It seems a Void. But endless universes arising in It
proclaim It a Plenum. This Perfect never becomes the imperfect; it becomes
nothing; It as all Spirit and Matter, Strength and Weakness, Knowledge and
Ignorance, Peace and Strife, Bliss and Pain, Power and Impotence; the
innumerable opposites of manifestation merge into each other and vanish in
non-manifestation. The All includes manifestation and non-manifestation, the
diastole and systole of the Heart which is Being. The one no more requires
explanation than the other; the one cannot be without the other. The puzzle
arises because men assert separately one of the inseparate pair of opposites -
Spirit, Strength, Knowledge, [44] Peace, Bliss, Power - and then ask: "Why
should these become their opposites?" They do not. No attribute exists
without its opposite; a pair only can manifest; every front has a back, spirit
and matter arise together; it is not that spirit exists, and then miraculously
produces matter to limit and blind itself, but that spirit and matter arise in
the ETERNAL simultaneously as a mode of Its Being, a form of Self-expression of
the All, Pratyagatma and Mulaprakriti, expressing in time and space the
Timeless and Spaceless.
2. THE MONADS.
We have seen that by the action of the Third Logos a five-fold
field has been provided for the development of Units of Consciousness, and that
a Unit of Consciousness is a fragment, a portion of the Universal
Consciousness, thought into separation as an individual entity veiled in
matter, a Unit of the substance of the First Logos, to be sent forth on the
second plane as a separate Being. [45] Such Units are called technically
Monads. These are the Sons, abiding from everlasting, from the beginning of a
creative age, in the Bosom of the Father, who have not yet been "made
perfect through sufferings";[20]
each of them is truly "equal to the Father as touching his Godhead, but
inferior to the Father as touching his manhood"[21], and each of them is
to go forth into matter in order to render all things subject to himself[22];
he is to be "sown in weakness" that he may be "raised in
power"[23]; from a static Logos enfolding all divine potentialities, he is
to become a dynamic Logos unfolding all divine powers; omniscient, omnipresent,
on his own second plane, but unconscious, "senseless", on all the
others,[24] he is to veil his glory in matter that blinds him, in order that he
may become omniscient, omnipresent, on all planes, able to answer to all
divine vibrations in the universe instead of to those on the highest only. [46]
The meaning of this feeble description of a great truth may be glimpsed
by the student by a consideration of the facts of embryonic life and birth.
When an Ego is re-incarnating, he broods over the human mother in whom his
future body is a building, the vehicle he will one day inhabit. That body is
slowly built up of the substance of the mother, and the Ego can do little as to
its shaping: it is an embryo, unconscious of its future, dimly conscious only of the flow of the maternal
life, impressed by maternal hopes and fears, thoughts and desires; nothing from
the Ego affects it, save a feeble influence coming through the permanent
physical atom, and it does not share, because it cannot answer to, the
wide-reaching thoughts, the aspiring emotions of the Ego, as expressed by him
in his causal body. That embryo must develop, must gradually assume a human
form, must enter on an independent life, separate from that of his mother, must
pass through seven years - as men count time - of such independent life, ere
the Ego can fully ensoul it. But during that slow evolution, with [47] its
infantile helplessness, its childish follies, pleasures and pains, the Ego to
whom it belongs is carrying on his own wider, richer, life, and is gradually
coming into nearer and nearer touch with this body, in which alone he can work
in the physical world, his touch being manifested as the growth of the
brain-consciousness.
The condition of the Monad in relation to the evolution of his
consciousness in a universe resembles that of the Ego in relation to his new
physical body. His own world is that of the second, the anupadaka, plane, and
there he is fully conscious with the all-embracing SELF-consciousness of his
world, but not at first of selves, among whom he is separate, of
"others". Let us try to see the stages through which he passes. He is
first a spark in a flame: "I sense one Flame, O Gurudeva; I see countless
undetached sparks shining in it"[25]. The Flame is the First Logos, the
undetached sparks the Monads. His Will to manifest is also theirs, for they are
the germ-cells in His [48] body, that will presently have a separate life in
His coming universe. Moved by this Will, the sparks share the change called
"the begetting of the Son", and pass into the Second Logos and dwell
in Him. Then, with the "proceeding" of the Third, there comes to them
from Him the "spiritual individuality", that H. P. Blavatsky speaks
of, the dawning separateness. But still there is no sense of
"others", needed to re-act as the sense of "I". The three
aspects of consciousness, theirs as sharing the Logic life, are still, to use a
figure of speech, "turned inwards", playing on each other, asleep,
unaware of a "without", sharing the all-SELF-consciousness. The great
Beings, called the Creative Orders,[26] arouse them to "outer" life; Will,
Wisdom, Activity awake to awareness of the "without"; a dim sense of
"others" arises, so far as "others" may be in a world where
all "'forms' intermingle and interpenetrate," and each becomes
"an individual Dhyan Chohan, distinct from others".[27] [49] At the
first stage, spoken of above, when the Monads are, in the fullest sense[28] of
the term, undetached, as "germ-cells in His body", the Will, Wisdom,
and Activity in them are latent, not potent. His Will to manifest is also their
will, but theirs unconsciously; He, Self-conscious, knows His object and His
path; they, not yet Self-conscious, have in them, as parts of His body, the
moving energy of His Will, which will presently be their own individual Will
to Live, and which impels them into the conditions wherein a separate-Self-conscious,
instead of an all-Self-conscious, life is possible. This leads them to the
second stage in the life of the Second Logos, and to the Third. Then,
comparatively separate, the awakening by the Creative Orders brings with it the
"dim sense of 'others'" and of "I", and with this a thrill
of longing for a more clearly-defined sense of "I" and of
"others"; and this is the "individual Will to Live", and
this leads them forth [50] into the denser worlds, wherein such sharper
definition alone becomes possible.
It is important to understand that the evolution of the individual
"I" is a Self-chosen activity. We are here because we Will to Live;
"none else compels". This aspect of consciousness, the Will, is dealt
with in later chapters of this book, and here we need only emphasise the fact
that the Monads are Self-moved, Self-determined, in their entry into the lower
planes of matter, the field of manifestation, the five-fold universe. To their
vehicles in it, they remain as the Ego to his physical body, with their radiant
divine life in loftier spheres, but brooding over their lower vehicles and
manifesting more and more in them as they become more plastic. H. P. Blavatsky
speaks of this, as the "Monad is cycling on downwards into matter".[29]
Everywhere in nature we see this same striving after fuller
manifestation of life, this constant Will to Live. The seed, buried in the
ground, pushes its growing [51] point upwards to the light. The bud fettered in
its sheathing calyx bursts its prison and expands in the sunshine. The chick
within the egg splits its confining shell in twain. Everywhere life seeks
expression, powers press to exercise themselves. See the painter, the
sculptor, the poet, with creative genius struggling within him; to create
yields the subtlest pleasure, the keenest savour of exquisite delight. Therein
is but another instance of the omnipresent nature of life, whether in the
LOGOS, the genius, or in the ephemeral creature of a day; all joy in the bliss
of living, and feel most alive when they multiply themselves by creation. To
feel life expressing itself, flowing forth, expanding, increasing, this is at
once the result of the Will to Live, and its fruition in the Bliss of living.
Some of the Monads, willing to live through the toils of the
five-fold universe, in order to master matter and in turn to create a universe
therein, enter into it to become a developed God therein, a Tree of Life,
another Fount of Being. The shaping of a universe is the Day of [52]
Forth-going; living is becoming; life knows itself by change. Those who will
not to become masters of matter, creators, remain in their static bliss,
excluded from the five-fold universe, unconscious of its activities. For it
must be remembered that all the seven planes are interpenetrating, and that
Consciousness on any plane means the power of answering to the vibrations of
that particular plane. Just as a man may be conscious on the physical plane
because his physical body is organised to receive and transmit to him its
vibrations, but be totally unconscious of the higher planes though their vibrations
are playing on him, because he has not yet organised sufficiently his higher
bodies to receive and transmit to him their vibrations; so is the Monad, the
Unit of Consciousness, able to be conscious on the second plane, but totally
unconscious on the lower five.
He will evolve his consciousness on these by taking from each plane
some of its matter, veiling himself in this matter and forming it into a sheath
by which he can come into contact with [53] that plane, gradually organising
this sheath of matter into a body capable of functioning on its own plane as an
expression of himself, receiving vibrations from the plane and transmitting
them to him, receiving vibrations from him and transmitting them to the plane.
As he veils himself in the matter of each successive plane he shuts away some
of his consciousness, that of it which is too subtle for receiving or setting
up vibrations in the matter of that plane. He has within him seven typical
vibratory powers - each capable of producing an indefinite number of
sub-vibrations of its own type - and these are shut off one by one as he endues
veil after veil of grosser matter. The powers in consciousness of expressing
itself in certain typical ways - using the word power in the mathematical
sense, consciousness "to the third", consciousness "to the
fourth", etc.- are seen in matter as what we call dimensions. The physical
power of consciousness has its expression in "three-dimensional matter",
while the astral, mental, and other powers of [54] consciousness need for
their expression other dimensions of matter.
Speaking thus of Monads, we may feel as if we were dealing with
something far away. Yet is the Monad very near to us, our SELF, the very root
of our being, the innermost source of our life, the one Reality. Hidden,
unmanifest, wrapt in silence and darkness is our Self, but our consciousness is
the limited manifestation of that Self, the manifested God in the kosmos of our
bodies, which are His garments. As the Unmanifest is partially manifest in the
LOGOS, as Divine Consciousness, and in the universe as the Body of the
LOGOS[30], so is our unmanifest Self partially manifest in our consciousness,
as the Logos of our individual system, and
in our body as the kosmos which clothes the consciousness. As above, so below.
This hidden SELF it is which is called the Monad, being verily the
One. It is this which gives the subtle sense of unity [55] that ever persists
in us amid all changes; the sense of identity has here its source, for this is
the ETERNAL in us. The three out-streaming rays which come from the Monad - to
be dealt with presently - are his three aspects, or modes of being, or
hypostases, reproducing the Logoi of a universe, the Will, Wisdom, and Activity
which are the three essential expressions of embodied consciousness, the
familiar Atma-Buddhi-Manas of the Theosophist.
This consciousness ever works as a unit on the various planes, but
shows out its triplicity on each. When we study consciousness working on the
mental plane, we see Will appearing as choice, Wisdom as discrimination,
Activity as cognition. On the astral plane we see Will appearing as desire,
Wisdom as love, Activity as sensation. On the physical plane, Will has for its
instruments the motor organs (karmendriyas), Wisdom the cerebral hemispheres,
Activity the organs of sense (jnanendriyas).[31] [56]
The full manifestation of these three aspects of consciousness in
their highest forms takes place in man in the same order as the manifestation
of the triple LOGOS in the universe. The third aspect, Activity, revealed as
the creative mind, as the gatherer of knowledge, is the first to perfect its
vehicles, and show forth its full energies. The second aspect, Wisdom, revealed
as the Pure and Compassionate Reason, is the second to shine forth, the
CHAPTER III.
THE PEOPLING OF THE FIELD.
1. THE COMING
WHEN the five-fold field is ready, when the five planes, each with
its seven sub-planes, are completed, so far as their primary constitution is concerned,
then begins the activity of the Second Logos, the Builder and Preserver of
forms. His activity is spoken of as the Second Life Wave, the pouring out of
Wisdom and Love - the Wisdom, the directing force, needed for the organisation
and evolution of forms, the Love, the attractive force, needed for holding them together as stable
though complex wholes. When this great stream of Logic life pours forth into
the five-fold field of manifestation, it brings with it into activity the
Monads, the Units of Consciousness, ready to begin their [58] work of
evolution, to clothe themselves in matter.
Yet the phrase that the Monads go forth is somewhat inaccurate;
that they shine forth, send out their rays of life, would be truer. For they
remain ever "in the bosom of the Father", while their life-rays
stream out into the ocean of matter, and therein appropriate the materials
needed for their energising in the universe. The matter must be appropriated,
rendered plastic, shaped into fitting vehicles.
H. P. Blavatsky has described their forth-shining in graphic
allegorical terms, using a symbolism more expressive than literal-meaning
words: "The primordial triangle, which - as soon as it has reflected
itself in the 'Heavenly Man', the highest of the lower seven - disappears,
returning into 'Silence and Darkness'; and the astral paradigmatic man, whose
Monad (Atma) is also represented by a triangle, as it has to become a ternary
in conscious devachanic interludes"[32]. The primordial triangle, or the
three-faced Monad of Will, [59] Wisdom, and Activity, "reflects
itself" in the "Heavenly Man", as Atma-Buddhi Manas, and then
"returns into Silence and Darkness". Atma - often spoken of as the
Monad of the lower, or astral man - has to become a ternary, a triple-faced
unit, by assimilating Buddhi and Manas. The word "reflexion" demands
explanation here. Speaking generally, the term reflexion is used when a force
manifested on a higher plane shows itself again on a lower plane, and is
conditioned by a grosser kind of matter in that lower manifestation, so that
some of the effective energy of the force is lost, and it shows itself in a
feebler form. As now used in a special instance, it means that a stream of the
life of the Monad pours forth, taking as the vessel to contain it an atom from
each of the three higher planes of the five-fold field -the third, the fourth,
and the fifth - thus producing the "Heavenly Man", the "Living
Ruler, Immortal", the Pilgrim who is to evolve, for whose evolution the
system was brought into being.
"As the mighty vibrations of the Sun throw matter into the
vibrations we call [60] his rays (which express his heat, electricity, and
other energies), so does the Monad cause the atomic matter of the atmic,
buddhic, and manasic planes - surrounding him as the ether of space surrounds
the Sun - to vibrate, and thus makes to himself a Ray, triple like his own
three-fold nature. In this he is aided by Devas from a previous universe who
have passed through a similar experience before; these guide the vibratory wave
from the Will aspect to the atmic atom, and the atmic atom, vibrating to the
Will-aspect, is called Atma; they guide the vibratory wave from the Wisdom-aspect to the buddhic atom,
and the buddhic atom, vibrating to the Wisdom-aspect, is called Buddhi; also
they guide the vibratory wave from the Activity-aspect to the manasic atom, and
the manasic atom, vibrating to the Activity-aspect, is called Manas. Thus
Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the Monad in the world of manifestation, is formed, the Ray
of the Monad, beyond the five-fold universe. Here is the mystery of the
Watcher, the Spectator, the action-less Atma, who abides ever in his triple
[61] nature on his own plane, and lives in the world of men by his Ray, which
animates his shadows, the fleeting lives on earth. . The shadows do the work on
the lower planes, and are moved by the Monad through his Image or Ray; at first
so feebly that his influence is well-nigh imperceptible, later with
ever-increasing power."[33]
Atma-Buddhi-Manas is the Heavenly Man, the Spiritual Man, and he is
the expression of the Monad, whose reflected aspect of Will is Atma, whose
reflected aspect of Wisdom is Buddhi, whose reflected aspect of Activity is
Manas. Hence we may regard the human Atma as the Will-aspect of the Monad,
ensouling an akashic atom; the human Buddhi as the Wisdom-aspect of the Monad,
ensouling an air (divine flame) atom; the human Manas as the Activity-aspect of
the Monad, ensouling a fiery atom. Thus in Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the spiritual Triad, or the Heavenly [62]
Man, we have the three aspects, or energies, of the Monad, embodied in atomic
matter, and this is the "Spirit" in man, the Jivatma or Life-Self,
the separated Self.[34] It is the
germinal Spirit, and in its third aspect the "baby Ego". It is
identical in nature with the Monad, is the Monad, but is lessened in force and
activity by the veils of matter round it. This lessening of power must not
blind us to the identity of nature. We must ever remember that the human
consciousness is a unit, and that though its manifestations vary, these
variations are only due to the predominance of one or other of its aspects and
to the relative density of the materials in which an aspect is working. Its
manifestations, thus conditioned, vary, but it is itself ever one.
Such part, then, of the consciousness of the Monad as can express
itself in a fivefold universe enters at first thus into the higher matter of
this universe, embodying itself in an atom of each of the three [63] higher
planes; having thus shone forth and appropriated these atoms for his own use,
the Monad has begun his work; in his own subtle
nature he cannot as yet descend below the anupadaka plane, and he is
therefore said to be in "Silence and
Darkness", unmanifest; but he lives and works in and by means of
these appropriated atoms, which form the garment of his life on the planes
nearest to his own. We may figure this action thus:
[64]
This spiritual Triad, as it is often called, Atma-Buddi-Manas, the
Jivatma, is described as a seed, a germ, of divine Life, containing the
potentialities of its own heavenly Father, its Monad, to be unfolded into
powers in the course of evolution. This is the "manhood" of the
divine Son of the First Logos, animated by the "Godhead", the Monad -
a mystery truly, but one which is repeated in many forms around us.
And now the nature, which was free in the subtle matter of his own
plane, becomes bound by the denser matter, and his powers of consciousness
cannot as yet function in this blinding veil. He is therein as a mere germ, an
embryo, powerless, senseless, helpless, while the Monad on his own plane is
strong, conscious, capable, so far as his internal life is concerned; the one
is the Monad in Eternity, the other is the Monad in time and space; the content
of the Monad eternal is to become the extent of the Monad temporal and spatial.
This at present embryonic life will evolve into a complex being, the expression
of the [65] Monad on each plane of the universe. All-powerful internally on his
own subtle plane, he is at first powerless, fettered, helpless, when enwrapped
externally in denser matter, unable to receive through it, or to give out
through it, vibrations. But he will gradually master the matter that at first
enslaves him; slowly, surely, he will mould it for Self-expression; he is aided
and watched over by the all-sustaining and preserving Second Logos, until he
can live in it fully as he lives above, and become in his turn a creative Logos
and bring forth out of himself a universe. The power of creating a universe is
only gained, according to THE WISDOM, by involving within the Self all that is
later to be put forth. A Logos does not create out of nothing, but evolves all
from Himself; and from the experiences we are now passing through, we are
gathering the materials out of which we may build a system in the future.
But this spiritual Triad, this Jivatma, which is the Monad in the
five-fold universe, cannot himself commence at [66] once any separate self-directed
activity. He cannot gather round himself any aggregations of matter as yet, but
can only abide in his atomic vesture. The life of the Second Logos is to him as
its mother's womb to the embryo, and within this the building begins. We may,
in very truth, regard this stage of evolution, in which the Logos shapes,
nourishes, and develops the germinating life, as being, for the Heavenly Man,
or truly the Heavenly Embryo, a period corresponding to the ante-natal life of
a human being, during which he is slowly obtaining a body, which is nourished
meanwhile by the life-currents of the mother and formed out of her substance.
Thus also with the Jivatma, enclosing the life of the Monad; he must await the
building of his body on the lower planes, and he cannot emerge from this
ante-natal life and be "born", until there is a body builded on the
lower planes. The "birth" takes place at the formation of the causal
body, when the Heavenly Man is manifested as an infant Ego, a true Individuality,
dwelling in a body on the physical plane. A little [67] careful thought will
show how close is the analogy between the evolution of the Pilgrim and that of
each successive rebirth; in the latter case the Jivatma awaits the formation of
the physical body which is building as his habitation; in the former the
spiritual Triads, as a Collectivity, await the, building of the systemic
Quaternary. Until the vehicle on the lowest plane is ready, all is a
preparation for evolution, rather than evolution itself - it is often termed
involution. The evolution of the consciousness must begin by contacts received
by its outermost vehicle; that is, it must begin on the physical plane. It can
only become aware of an outside by impacts on its own outside; until then it
dreams within itself, as the faint inner thrillings ever outwelling from the
Monad cause slight outward-tending
pressures in the Jivatma, like a spring of water beneath the earth, seeking are
outlet.
2. THE WEAVING.
Meanwhile the preparation for the awakening, the giving of
qualities to [68] matter, that which may be likened to the formation of the
tissues of the future body, is done by the life-power of the Second Logos - the
second life-wave, rolling through plane after plane, imparting its own
qualities to that seven-fold proto-matter. The life-wave, as said above,
carries the Jivatmas with it as far as the atomic sub-plane of the fifth plane,
the plane of Fire, of individualised creative power, of mind. Here they each
have already an atom, the manasic, or mental veil of the Monad, the Logos
flooding these and the remaining atoms of the plane with His life. All these
atoms, forming the whole atomic sub-plane, whether free or attached to
Jivatmas, may rightly be termed Monadic Essence; but as in the course of evolution,
presently to be explained, differences arise between the attached and the
non-attached atoms, the term Monadic Essence is usually employed for the
non-attached, while the attached are called, for reasons which will appear,
"permanent atoms". We may define Monadic Essence then as atomic
matter ensouled by the life of the [69] Second Logos. It is His clothing for
the vivifying and holding together of forms; He is clad in atomic matter. His
own life as Logos, separate from the life of Atma-Buddhi-Manas in the man,
separate from any lives on the plane - though He supports, permeates, and includes them all -
is clothed only in atomic matter, and it is this which is connoted by the term
of Monadic Essence. The matter of that
plane, already by the nature of its atoms[35] capable of responding by
vibrations to active thought-changes, is thrown by the second life-wave into
combinations fit to express thoughts - abstract thoughts in the subtler matter,
concrete thoughts in the coarser. The combinations of the second and third
higher sub-planes constitute the
The second life-wave then rolls on into the sixth plane, the plane
of Water, or individualised sensation, of desire. The before-mentioned Devas
link the Jivatma - attached, or permanent, units of the fifth plane to a
corresponding number of atoms on the sixth plane, and the Second Logos floods
these and the remaining atoms with His own life - these atoms thus becoming Monadic
Essence as explained above. The life-wave passes onwards, forming on each
sub-plane the combinations fit to express sensations. These combinations
constitute the
Elemental Essence is thus seen to consist of aggregations of matter
on each of the six non-atomic sub-planes of the mental and desire planes,
aggregations which do not themselves serve as forms for any entity to inhabit,
but as the [71] materials out of which such forms may be built.
The life-wave then rolls on into the seventh plane, the plane of
Earth, of individualised activities, of actions. As before the Jivatma-attached,
or permanent, atoms of the sixth plane are linked to a corresponding number on
the seventh plane, and the Second Logos floods these and the remaining atoms
with His own life - all these atoms thus becoming Monadic Essence. The
life-wave again passes onwards, forming on each sub-plane combinations fitted
to constitute physical bodies, the future chemical elements, as they are called
on the three lower sub-planes.
Looking at this work of the second life wave as a whole, we see
that its downward sweep is concerned with what may fairly be called the making
of primary tissues, out of which hereafter subtle and dense bodies are to be
formed. Well has it been called in some ancient scriptures a
"weaving", for such it literally is. The materials prepared by the
Third Logos are woven by the Second Logos into threads [72] and into cloths of
which future garments the subtle and dense bodies - will be made. As a man may
take separate threads of flax, cotton, silk-themselves combinations of a
simpler kind - and weave these into linens, into cotton or silk cloth, these
cloths in turn to be shaped into garments by cutting and stitching, so does the
second Logos weave the matter-threads, weave these again into tissues, and
then shape them into forms. He is the Eternal Weaver, while we might think of
the Third Logos as the Eternal Chemist. The latter works in nature as in a
laboratory, the former as in a manufactory. These similes, materialistic as
they are, are not to be despised, for they are crutches to aid our limping
attempts to understand.
This "weaving" gives to matter its characteristics, as
the characteristics of the thread differ from those of the raw material, as the
characteristics of the cloth differ from those of the threads. The Logos weaves
the two kinds of cloth of manasic matter, of mind-stuff, and out of these will
be made later the causal and the mental [73] bodies. He weaves the cloth of
astral matter, of desire-stuff, and out of this will be made later the desire
body. That is to say, that the combinations of matter formed and held together
by the second life-wave have the characteristics which will act on the Monad
when he comes into touch with others, and will enable him to act on them. So
will he be able to receive all kinds of vibrations, mental, sensory, etc. The
characteristics depend on the nature of the aggregations. There are seven great
types, fixed by the nature of the atom, and within these innumerable sub-types.
All this goes to the making of the materials of the mechanism of consciousness,
which will be conditioned by all these textures, colourings, densities.
In this downward sweep of the life-wave through the fifth, sixth,
and seventh planes, downward till the densest matter is reached, and the wave
turns at that point to begin its sweep upwards, we must think, then, of its
work as that of forming combinations which show qualities, and so we sometimes
speak of this work as the giving of qualities. In the upward sweep we shall
[74] find that bodies are built out of the matter thus prepared. But before we
study the shaping of these, we must consider the seven-fold division of this
life-wave in its descent, and the coming forth of the "Shining Ones",
the "Devas", the "Angels", the "Elementals", that
belong also to this downward sweep. These are the "Minor Gods" of
whom Plato speaks, from whom man derives his perishable bodies.
3. THE SEVEN STREAMS.
The question is constantly asked: Why this continual play by
Theosophists upon the number seven? We speak of it as the "root-number of
our system", and there is one obvious reason why this number should play
an active part in the grouping of things, since we are concerned with the
triplicities previously mentioned and explained. A triad naturally produces a
septenate by its own internal relations, since its three factors can group
themselves in seven ways and no more. We have spoken of [75] matter, outside
the limits of a universe, as having the three qualities of matter - inertia,
mobility, and rhythm - in a state of equilibrium. When the life of the Logos
causes motion, we have at once the possibility of seven groups, for in any
given atom, or group of atoms, one or other of these qualities may be more
strongly energised than the others, and thus a predominant quality will be shown
forth. We may thus have three groups, in one of which inertia will predominate,
in mobility, in a third rhythm. Each of these, again, subdivides, according to
the predominance in it of one or other of the remaining two qualities: thus in
one of the two inertia groups, mobility may predominate over rhythm, and in the
other rhythm over mobility, and so with the other two groups of mobility and
rhythm. Hence arise the well-known types, classified according to the
predominant quality, usually designated by their Samskrit terms, satvic,
rajasic, and tamasic, rhythmical, mobile, and inert, and we have satvic,
rajasic, and tamasic foods, [76] animals, men, etc.. And we obtain seven groups
in all: six subdivisions of the three, and a seventh in which the three qualities
are equally active. [The varieties of type are simply intended to mark in each
triad the relative energies of the qualities.]
The Life of the Logos, which is to flow into this matter, itself
manifests in seven streams, or rays.
These arise similarly out of the three Aspects of Consciousness
present in Him, as in all consciousnesses, since all are manifestations of the
Universal SELF. These are Bliss, or Ichchha, Will; Cognition, or Jnanam,
Wisdom; [77] Existence, or Kriya, Activity. So we have the seven streams or
rays, of Logic life:
All things may be regarded as grouped under these seven headings,
the seven streams of Logic life composing the second life-wave, and we may
think of it as flowing through the planes, descending through them; so that, if
we draw the planes horizontally, the life-wave would sweep vertically downwards
through them. Moreover in each stream there will be seven primary sub-divisions, according to the
type of matter concerned, and within these secondary sub-divisions, according
to the proportions of the qualities within each type, and so on and on in [78]
innumerable variations. Into these we need not enter. It is enough to notice
the seven types of matter and the seven types of consciousnesses. The seven
streams of Logic life show out as the seven types of consciousnesses, and
within each of these the seven types of matter-combinations are found. There
are to be seen seven distinct types in each of the three Elemental Kingdoms and
on the physical plane. Mme. Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine, dealing with
man, quotes from the stanzas of the Book of Dzyan, the fact that there were:
"Seven of Them [Creators] each on His lot", forming the seven types
of men, and these subdivided:
"Seven times seven shadows of future men were born"[36]. Here is the
root of the differing temperaments of men.
4. THE SHINING ONES.
We have now to consider another result of the downward-sweeping
Life-Wave. We have seen that it gives qualities to [79] aggregations of matter
on the fifth and sixth planes, and that we have in the First Elemental Kingdom
materials ready to clothe abstract thoughts; in the Second Elemental Kingdom
materials ready to clothe concrete thoughts; in the Third Elemental Kingdom materials ready to clothe
desires. But in addition to imparting qualities to aggregations of matter, the
Second Logos gives forth, during this stage of His descent, evolved beings, at
various stages of development, who form the normal and typical inhabitants of
these three kingdoms. These beings have been brought over by the Logos from a
preceding evolution, and are sent forth from the treasure-house of His life,
to inhabit the plane for which their development fits them; and to cooperate
with Him, and later with man, in the working-out of His scheme of evolution.
They have received various names in the various religions, but all religions
recognise the fact of their existence and of their work. The Samskrit name
Devas - the Shining Ones - is the most general, and aptly describes the most
marked characteristic of their [80] appearance, a brilliant luminous
radiance.[37] The Hebrew, Christian, and Muhammadan religions call them
Archangels and Angels. The Theosophist - to avoid sectarian connotations -
names them, after their habitat, Elementals; and this title has the further
advantage that it reminds the student of their connection with the five
"Elements" of the ancient world: Ether, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth.
For there are similar beings of a higher type on the atmic and buddhic planes,
as well as the Fire and Water Elementals of the mental and desire planes, and
the ethereal Elementals of the physical. These beings have bodies formed out of
the elemental essence of the kingdom to which they belong, flashing many-hued
bodies, changing form at the will of the indwelling entity. They form a vast
host, ever actively at work, labouring at the elemental essence to improve its
[81] quality, taking it to form their own bodies, throwing it off and taking
other portions of it, to render it more responsive; they are also constantly
busied in the shaping of forms, in aiding human Egos on the way to
re-incarnation in building their new bodies, bringing materials of the needed
kind and helping in its arrangements. The less advanced the Ego the greater the
directive work of the Deva; with animals they do almost all the work, and
practically all with vegetables and minerals. They are the active agents in the
work of the Logos, carrying out all the details of His world-plan, and aiding
the countless evolving lives to find the materials they need for their
clothing. All antiquity recognised the indispensable work they do in the
worlds, and
At the stage we are considering, however, all this work, except
that of the improvement of the elemental essence, lay in the far future, but
the Shining Ones laboured diligently at that improvement.
There was thus a vast work of preparation accomplished before
anything in the way of physical forms, such as we should recognise, could appear;
a vast labour at the Form side of things before embodied consciousnesses, save
that of the Logos and His Shining Ones, could do anything at all. That which
was to be human consciousness at this point was a seed, sown on the higher
planes, unconscious of all without it. Under the impelling warmth of the Logic
life, it sends out [83] a tiny rootlet downwards, which pushes its way into the
lower planes, blindly, unconsciously, and this rootlet must form cur next
object of study. [84]
CHAPTER I V.
THE PERMANENT ATOM.
1. THE ATTACHING OF THE ATOMS.
LET us consider the spiritual Triad, the tri-atomic
Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the Jivatma, the seed of consciousness, within which the
warmth of the stream of Logic life, which surrounds it, is causing faint
thrillings of responsive life. These are internal thrillings, preparatory to
external activities. After long preparation, a tiny thread, like a minute
rootlet, appears, proceeding from the tri-atomic molecule ensheathing
consciousness, a golden-coloured thread of life sheathed in buddhic matter;
countless such threads appear from the countless Jivatmas, waving vaguely at
first in the seven great streams of life, and then becoming anchored - if the
expression may be [85] permitted - by attachment to a single molecule or unit,
on the fourth mental sub-plane. This anchoring - like the previous one to the
three higher atoms, and like the later ones to the astral and physical atoms -
is brought about by the action of the Shining Ones. Round this attached unit
gather temporary aggregations of elemental essence of the
This whole process is repeated, when the
Once more is the process repeated, when the great wave has
travelled onwards into the physical plane. The tiny thread of [88]
buddhic-ensheathed life, with its attached mental and desire units, pushes
outwards once more, and annexes a physical atom, adding this to itself as its
stable centre on the physical plane. Round this gather ethereal molecules, but
the heavier physical matter is more coherent than the subtler matter of the
higher planes, and a much longer term of life may be observed. Then - as are
formed the ethereal types of the proto-metals, and later proto-metals, metals,
non-metallic elements, and minerals - the Shining Ones of the Ethereal Physical
Kingdom submerge these attached atoms in their sheaths of ether into the one of
the seven ethereal types to which they respectively belong, and they begin
their long physical evolution. Before we can follow this further we must
consider Group-Souls, which on the atomic sub-plane receive their third
enveloping layer. But it will be well to pause for a while on the nature and
the function of these permanent atoms, the tri-units, or triads, which are as a
reflexion on the lower planes of the spiritual Triads on the higher, and each
of which is attached to [89] a spiritual Triad, its Jivatma. Each triad
consists of a physical atom, an astral atom, and a mental unit, permanently
attached by a thread of buddhic matter to a spiritual Triad. That thread has
sometimes been called the Sutratma, the Thread-Self, because the permanent
particles are threaded on it as "beads on a string".[39]
We may again resort to a diagram, showing the relation.
[90]
2. THE WEB OF LIFE.
It has been said that the connexion with the spiritual Triad is
through buddhic matter, and this is indicated in the diagram by the dotted line
which connects the atoms coming down from the line in the buddhic plane, and
not from the manasic atom. It is of buddhic matter that is spun the marvellous
web of life which supports and vivifies all our bodies. If the bodies be looked
at with buddhic vision, they all disappear, and in their places is seen a
shimmering golden web of inconceivable fineness and delicate beauty, a tracery
of all their parts, in a network with minute meshes. This is formed of buddhic
matter, and within these meshes the coarser atoms are built together. Closer
inspection shows that the whole network is formed of a single thread, which is
a prolongation of the Sutratma. During the antenatal life of the babe, this
thread grows out from the permanent physical atom and branches out in every
direction, this growth continuing until the physical body is full grown; during
physical life the prana, the life-[91]breath, plays ever along it, following
all its branches and meshes; at death it is withdrawn, leaving the particles of
the body to scatter; it may be watched, slowly disentangling itself from the
dense physical matter, the life-breath accompanying it, and drawing itself
together in the heart round the permanent atom; as it withdraws, the deserted
limbs grow cold - its absence makes the "death-chill"; the
golden-violet flame of the life-breath is seen shining around it in the heart,
and the flame, and the golden life-web, and the
permanent atom rise along the secondary Sushumna-nadi[40] to the head,
into the third ventricle of the brain; the eyes glaze, as the life-web draws
itself away, and the whole of it is collected round the permanent atom in the
third ventricle; then the whole rises slowly to the point of junction of the parietal and occipital
sutures, and leaves the physical body - [92] dead. It thus surrounds the
permanent atom like a golden shell - recalling the closely woven cocoon of the
silk-worm - to remain enshrouding it till the building of a new physical body
again demands its unfolding. The same procedure is followed with the astral and
mental particles, so that, when these bodies have disintegrated, the lower
triad may be seen as a brilliantly scintillating nucleus within the causal
body, an appearance which had been noted, long ere closer observation revealed
its significance.
3. THE CHOOSING OF THE PERMANENT ATOMS.
Let us return to the original appropriation by the Monad of the
permanent atoms of the three higher planes, and seek to understand something of
their use, of the object of their appropriation; the same principles apply to
the permanent atoms of each plane.
In the first place, it will be remembered that the matter of each
plane shows out seven main types, varying according to the dominance of one or
other of the [93] three great attributes of matter: inertia, mobility, and
rhythm. Hence the permanent atoms may be chosen out of any one of these types,
but it appears that, by a single Monad, they are all chosen out of the same
type. It appears, further, that while the actual attachment of the permanent
atoms to the life-thread on the three higher planes is the work of the
Hierarchies before spoken of, the choice which directs the appropriation is
made by the Monad himself. He himself belongs to one or other of the seven
groups of Life already spoken of; at the head of each of these groups stands a
Planetary Logos, who "colours" the whole, and the Monads are grouped
by these colourings, each "being coloured by his 'Father-Star'".[41]
This is the first great determining characteristic of each of us, our
fundamental "colour", or "key-note", or
"temperament". The Monad may choose to use his new pilgrimage for the
strengthening and increasing of this special characteristic; if so, the
Hierarchies will attach to his life-thread atoms belonging [94] to the group in
matter corresponding to his life-group. This choice would result in the
secondary "colour", or "keynote", or
"temperament", emphasising and strengthening the first, and, in the
later evolution, the powers and the weaknesses of that doubled temperament
would show themselves with great force. Or, the Monad may choose to use his new
pilgrimage for the unfolding of another aspect of his nature; then the
Hierarchies will attach to his life-thread atoms belonging to the material
group corresponding to another life-group, that in which the aspect he wills to
develop is predominant. This choice would result in the secondary
"colour", or "key-note", or "temperament",
modifying the first, with corresponding results in the later evolution. This
latter choice is obviously by far the more frequent, and it tends to a greater
complexity of character, especially in the final stages of human evolution,
when the influence of the Monad makes itself felt more strongly.
As said above, it appears that all the permanent atoms are taken
from the same [95] material group, so that those of the lower triad correspond
with those of the higher; but on the lower planes the influence of these atoms
in determining the type of materials used in the bodies of which they are the
generating centres - the question to which we must now turn our attention - is
very much limited and interfered with by other causes. On the higher planes the
bodies are relatively permanent, when once found, and reproduce definitely the
keynote of their permanent atoms, however enriched that note may be by
overtones, ever increasing in subtlety of harmony. But on the lower planes,
while the keynote of the permanent atoms will be the same, various other causes
come in to determine the choice of materials for the bodies, as will be better
seen presently.
4. THE USE OF THE PERMANENT ATOMS.
To put this use into a phrase: The use of the permanent atoms is to
preserve within themselves, as vibratory powers, the results of all the experiences
through [96] which they have passed. It will perhaps be best to take the
physical atom as an illustration, since this is susceptible of easier
explanation than those on higher planes.
A physical impact of any kind will cause vibrations corresponding
to its own in the physical body it contacts; these may be local or general,
according to the nature and force of the impact. But whether local or general,
they will reach the permanent physical atom, transmitted by the web of life in
all cases, and in violent impacts by mere concussion also. This vibration,
forced on the atom from outside, becomes a vibratory power in the atom - a
tendency therein to repeat the vibration. Through the whole life of the body,
innumerable impacts strike it; not one but leaves its mark on the permanent
atom; rot one but leaves it with a new possibility of vibration. All the
results of physical experiences remain stored up in this permanent atom, as
powers of vibrating. At the end of a physical life, this permanent atom has
thus stored up innumerable vibratory powers; that is, has [97] learned to
respond in countless ways to the external world, to reproduce in itself the
vibrations imposed upon it by surrounding objects. The physical body
disintegrates at death; its particles scatter, all carrying with them the
result of the experiences through which they have passed - as indeed all
particles of our bodies are ever doing day by day, in their ceaseless dyings
out of one body and ceaseless birthings into another. But the physical
permanent atom remains; it is the only atom that has passed through all the
experiences of the ever-changing conglomerations we call our body, and it has
acquired all the results of all those experiences. Wrapped in its golden
cocoon, it sleeps through the long years during which the Jivatma that owns it
is living through other experiences in other worlds. By these it remains
unaffected, being incapable of responding to them, and it sleeps through its
long night in undisturbed repose.[42]
When the time for reincarnation comes, [98] and the presence of the
permanent atom renders possible the fertilisation of the ovum from which the
new body is to grow,[43] its keynote sounds out, and is one of the forces which
guide the ethereal builder, the elemental charged with the building of the
physical body, to choose the materials suitable for his work, for he can use
none that cannot be to some extent attuned to the permanent atom. But it is
only one of the forces; the karma of past lives, mental, emotional, and in
relation to others, demands materials capable of the most varied expressions;
out of that karma, the Lords of Karma have chosen such as is congruous, i.e.,
such as can be expressed through a body of a
particular material group; this congruous mass of karma determines the
material group, over-riding the permanent atom, and out of that group are
chosen by the elemental such materials as can vibrate in [99] harmony with the
permanent atom, or in discords not disruptive in their violence. Hence, as
said, the permanent atom is only one of the forces in determining the third
"colour", or "keynote", or "temperament", which
characterises each of us. According to this temperament will be the time of the
birth of the body; it must be born into the world at a time when the physical
planetary influences are suitable to its third temperament, and it thus is born
"under its" astrological "Star". Needless to say, it is not
the Star that imposes the temperament, but the temperament that fixes the
epoch of birth under that Star. But herein lies the explanation of the
correspondences between Stars - Star-Angels, that is to say - and characters,
and the usefulness for educational purposes of a skilfully and carefully drawn
horoscope, as a guide to the personal temperament of a child.
That such complicated results, capable of impressing their
peculiarities on surrounding matter, can exist in such minute space as an atom
may, indeed, appear inconceivable - yet so it is. And it is [100] worthy notice
that ordinary science countenances a similar idea, since the infinitesimal
biophors in the germinal cell of Weismann are supposed to thus carry on to the
offspring the characteristics of his line of progenitors. While the one brings
to the body its physical peculiarities from its ancestors, the other supplies
those which have been acquired by the evolving man during his own evolution. H.
P. Blavatsky has put this very clearly:
"The German embryologist-philosopher - stepping over the heads
of the Greek Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of the
old Aryans - shows one infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in
the formation of an organism, alone and unaided determining, by means of
constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man,
or animal, in its physical, mental, and psychic characteristics.
Complete the physical plasm, mentioned above, the 'germinal cell'
of man with all its material potentialities, with the 'spiritual plasm' so to
say, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of [101] the
six-principled Dhyani - and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to
understand it."[44]
A little study of physical heredity in the light of Weismann's
teachings will be sufficient to convince the student of the possibilities of
such a body as the permanent atom. A man reproduces the features of a
long-past ancestor, shows out a physical peculiarity that characterised a
forbear several centuries ago. We can trace the Stuart nose through a long
series of portraits, and innumerable cases of such resemblances can be found.
Why then should there be anything extraordinary in the idea that an atom should
gather within itself not biophors, as in the germinal cell, but tendencies to
repeat innumerable vibrations already practised. No spatial difficulty arises,
any more than in the case of a string, from which numerous notes can be drawn
by bowing it at different points, each note containing numerous overtones. We
must not think of the minute space of an atom as crowded with innumerable
vibrating bodies, but of a [102] limited number of bodies, each capable of
setting up innumerable vibrations.
Truly, however, even the spatial difficulty is illusory, for there
are no limits to the minute any more than to the great. Modern science now sees
in the atom a system of revolving worlds, each world in its own orbit, the
whole resembling a solar system. The master of illusion, Space, like his
brother master, Time, cannot here daunt us. There is no limit of the possibilities
of sub-division in thought, and hence none in the thought-expression we call
matter.
The normal number of spirillae at work in the permanent atoms in
this Round is four; as in the ordinary unattached atoms of matter in general at
this stage of evolution. But let us take the permanent atom in the body of a
very highly evolved man, a man far in advance of his fellows. In such a case we
may find the permanent atom showing five spirillae at work, and may seek to
learn the bearing of this fact on the general materials of his body. In
ante-natal life, the presence of this five-spirillae-permanent-atom would have
[103] caused the building elemental to select among his materials any similar
atoms that were available. For the most part, he would be reduced to the use of
any he could find, which had been in temporary connexion with any body the
centre of which was a five-spirillae-permanent-atom. Its presence would have
tended to arouse in them a corresponding activity, especially - perhaps only -
if they had formed part of the brain or nerves of the highly developed tenant
of the body. The fifth spirilla would have become more or less active in them,
and although it would have dropped back
into inactivity after leaving such a body, its temporary activity would have predisposed
it to respond more readily in the future to the current of monadic life. Such
atoms, then, would be secured by the elemental for his work, as far as
possible. He would also, should opportunity serve, appropriate from the
paternal or maternal bodies, if they were of a high order, any such atoms as he
could secure, and build them into his charge. After birth, and throughout life,
such a body would attract to itself any [104] similar atoms which came within
its magnetic field. Such a body, in the company of highly evolved persons,
would profit to an exceptional degree by the propinquity, appropriating any
five-spirillae-atoms which were present in the shower of particles flung off
from their bodies, and thus gaining physically, as well as mentally and
morally, from their company.
The permanent astral atom bears exactly the same relation to the
astral body as that borne by the physical permanent atom to the physical body.
At the end of the life in kamaloka - purgatory - the golden life-web withdraws
from the astral body, leaving it to disintegrate, as its physical comrade had
previously done, and enwraps the astral permanent atom for its long sleep. A
similar relation is borne to the mental body by the permanent mental particle
during physical, astral, and mental life; during the early stages of human
evolution little improvement is made in the mental permanent unit by the brief
devachanic lives, not only on account of their brevity, but because the feeble
thought-forms produced by the [105] undeveloped intelligence affect very
slightly the permanent unit. But when thought-power is more highly evolved,
the devachanic life is a time of great improvement, and innumerable vibratory
energies are stored up, and show their value when the time arrives for the
building of a new mental body for the next cycle of reincarnation. At the
close of the mental life in devachan, the golden web withdraws from the mental
body, leaving it also to disintegrate, while it enwraps the mental particle;
and the lower triad of permanent atoms alone remains as the representative of
the three lower bodies. These are stored up, as before said, as a radiant
nucleus-like particle within the causal body. They are thus all that remains to
the Ego of his bodies in the lower worlds, when that cycle of experience is
completed, as they were his means of communication with the lower planes during
the life of those bodies.
When comes the period for re-birth, a thrill of life from the Ego
arouses the mental unit; the life-web begins to unfold again, and, the
vibrating unit acts as a [106] magnet, drawing towards itself materials with
vibratory powers resembling, or accordant with, its own. The Shining Ones of
the Second Elemental Kingdom bring such materials within its reach; in the earlier
stages of evolution they shape the matter into a loose cloud around the
permanent unit, but as evolution goes on the Ego exercises over the shaping an
ever-increasing influence. When the mental body is partially formed, the life-thrill
awakens the astral atom, and the same procedure is followed. Finally the
life-touch reaches the physical atom, and it acts in the way already described
on pp. 98-100.
A questioner sometimes asks: How can these permanent atoms be
stored up within the causal body, without losing their physical, astral, and
mental natures, since the causal body exists on a higher plane, where the
physical, as physical, cannot be? Such a querent is forgetting, for a moment,
that all the planes are interpenetrating, and that it is no more difficult for
the causal body to encircle the triad of the lower planes, than for it to
encircle the [107] hundreds of millions of atoms that form the mental, astral,
and physical bodies belonging to it during a period of earth-life. The triad
forms a minute particle within the causal body; each constituent part of it
belongs to its own plane, but, as the planes have meeting points everywhere, no
difficulty arises in the necessary juxtaposition. We are all on all planes at
all times.
5. MONADIC ACTION ON THE PERMANENT
ATOMS.
We may here enquire: Is there anything that can be properly termed
monadic action - the action of the Monad on the anupadaka plane - on the
permanent atom. Of direct action there is none, nor can there be until the germinal
spiritual Triad has reached a high stage of evolution; indirect action, that
is action on the spiritual Triad, which in turn acts on the lower, there is
continually. But for all practical purposes we may consider it as the action of
the spiritual Triad, which, as we have seen, is the Monad veiled [108] in
matter denser than that of his native plane.
The spiritual Triad is drawing most of his energy, and all the
directive capacity of that energy, from the Second Logos, bathed as he is in
that stream of Life. What may be called his own special activity does not
concern itself with all the shaping and building activity of the Second
Life-Wave, but is directed to the evolution of the atom itself, in association
with the Third Logos. This energy from the spiritual Triad confines itself to
the atomic sub-planes, and, until the fourth Round, appears to spend itself
chiefly on the permanent atoms. It is directed first to the shaping and then to
the vivifying of the spirillae which form the wall of the atom. The vortex,
which is the atom, is the life of the Third Logos; but the wall of the
spirillae is gradually formed on the external surface of this vortex during the
descent of the Second Logos, not vivified by Him, but faintly traced out over
the surface of this revolving vortex of life. They remain - so far as the
Second Logos is concerned - merely as these [109] filmy unused channels, but
presently, as the life of the Monad flows down, it plays into the first of
these channels, vivifying that channel and turning it into a working part of
the atom. This goes on through the successive Rounds, and by the time we reach
the fourth Round we have four distinct streams of life from each Monad,
circulating through four sets of spirillae in his own permanent atoms. Now as
the Monad works in the permanent atom, and it is put forward as the nucleus of
a body, he begins to work similarly in the atoms that are drawn round that
permanent atom, and vivifies in turn their spirillae; but that is temporary
vivification, and not continuous as in the case of the permanent atom. He thus
brings into activity these faint shadowy films, formed by the Second Life-Wave,
and, when the life of the body is broken up, the atoms thus stimulated return
to the great mass of atomic matter, improved and worked upon by the life which,
during their connexion with the permanent atom, has been vivifying them. The
channels, being thus [110] developed, are more capable of easily receiving
another such life-stream, as they enter another body, and therein come into
relation with a permanent atom belonging to some other Monad. Thus this work
continually goes on, on the physical and astral planes, and in the particle of
mental matter on the mental plane, improving the materials with which the
Monads are permanently or temporarily connected, and this evolution of atoms is
constantly going on under the influence of the Monads. The permanent atoms
evolve more rapidly, because of their continuity of connexion with the Monad,
while the others profit by their repeated temporary association with the
permanent atoms.
During the first Round of the terrene Chain, the first set of
spirillae of the physical plane atoms becomes thus vivified by the life of the
Monad flowing through the spiritual Triad. This is the set of spirillae used by
the pranic, or life-breath, currents affecting the dense part of the physical
body. Similarly in the second Round the second set of spirillae becomes active,
and herein play [111] the pranic currents connected with the etheric double.
During these two Rounds nothing can be found, in connexion with any form, that
can be called sensations of pleasure and pain. During the third Round, the
third set of spirillae becomes vivified, and here first appears what is called
sensibility; for, through these spirillae, kamic or desire energy can affect
the physical body, the kamic prana can play in them, and thus bring the
physical into direct communication with the astral. During the fourth Round,
the fourth set of spirillae becomes vivified, and the kama-manasic prana plays
in them, and makes them fit to be used for the building of a brain which is to
act as the instrument for thought.
When a person passes out of the normal, and takes up the abnormal
human evolution involved in preparing for and entering the Path which lies
beyond normal evolution, he has then, in connexion with his permanent atoms, a
task of exceeding difficulty. He must vivify more sets of spirillae than are
vivified in the humanity of his time. [112] Four sets are already at his
service, as a fourth Round man. He begins to vivify a fifth, and thus to bring
into manifestation the fifth Round atom while still working in a fourth Round
body. It is to this that allusion is made in some early theosophical books, in
which "Fifth Rounders" and "Sixth Rounders" are spoken of
as appearing in our present humanity. Those thus designated have evolved the
fifth and sixth set of spirillae in their permanent atoms, thus obtaining a
better instrument for the use of their highly developed consciousness. The
change is brought about by certain yoga practices in the use of which great
caution is required, lest injury should be inflicted on the brain in which this
work is being carried on, and further progress along that particular line
stopped during the present incarnation. [113]
CHAPTER V.
GROUP-SOULS.
1. THE MEANING OF THE TERM.
SPEAKING generally, a Group-Soul is a collection of permanent
triads, in a triple envelope of monadic essence. This description is true of
all Group-Souls functioning on the physical plane, but gives no idea of the
extreme complexity of the subject of Group-Souls. For they divide and
sub-divide constantly, the contents of each division and sub-division
decreasing in number, as evolution goes on, until at last a
"Group-Soul" encloses but a single triad, to which it may continue
for many births to discharge the protective and nutrient functions of a
Group-Soul, while no longer technically describable as one, the
"Group" having separated off into its constituent parts. [114]
Seven Group-Souls are to be seen, functioning on the physical
plane, before any forms appear. They first show themselves as vague, filmy
forms, one in each stream of the Second Life-Wave, on the mental plane, becoming
more clearly outlined on the astral plane, and yet more so on the physical.
They float in the great ocean of matter as balloons might float in the sea.
Observing them more closely, we see three separate layers of matter, forming an
envelope, which contains innumerable triads. Before any inmineralisation has
taken place, no golden life-web is, of course, visible around these; only the
radiant golden threads which connect them with their parent Jivatmas are to be
seen, shining with that strange lustre which belongs to their birth-plane. The
innermost of these three layers consists of physical monadic essence; that is,
the layer is composed of atoms of the physical plane, ensouled with the life of
the Second Logos. At first sight, these innermost layers appear to be identical
in the seven Group-Souls; but closer observation reveals that each layer is
formed of atoms [115] from only one of the seven Matter-groups before
described. Each Group-Soul, therefore, differs in material constitution from all
the rest, and the contained triads in each belong to the same matter-group. The
second layer of the Group-Soul envelope is composed of astral monadic essence,
belonging to the same matter-group as the first; and the third of units of the
fourth sub-plane of mental matter of the same type. This triple envelope is the
protector and nourisher of the triads contained within it, veritable embryos,
incapable, as yet, of separate independent activity.
The seven Group-Souls soon multiply, division going on continually
with the multiplication of distinct sub-types, as the immediate forerunners of
the chemical elements appear, to be followed by the elements themselves, and
the minerals formed from them. The laws of space, for instance - apart from the
specialisation of the contents of the Group-Soul, the permanent triads - may
lead to a division of it.
Thus a vein of gold in Australia may [116] lead to the
inmineralisation of many such triads within a single envelope, while the laying
down of another vein in a distant place, say the Rocky Mountains, may lead to
the division of this envelope, and the transfer of part of its contents to
America in their own envelope. But the more important causes which bring about
sub-divisions will be explained in the course of our study. The Group-Soul and
its contents divide by fission, like an ordinary cell - one becomes two, two
four, and so on. All the triads have to pass through the mineral kingdom, the
place in which matter reaches its grossest form, and the place where the great
wave reaches the limit of its descent, and turns to begin its upward climbing.
Here it is that physical consciousness must awaken; life must now turn
definitely outwards, and recognise contacts with other lives in an external
world.
Now the evolution of each being in these early stages depends
chiefly on the cherishing life of the Logos, and partly on the co-operating
guidance of the Shining Ones, and partly on its own [117] blind pressure
against the limits of its enclosing form. I have compared the evolution through
the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms to an ante-natal period, and the
resemblance is exact. As the child is nourished by the life-streams of the
mother, so does the protective envelope of the Group-Soul nourish the lives
within it, receiving and distributing the experiences gathered in. The
circulating life is the life of the parent; the young plants, the young
animals, the young human beings, are not ready for independent life as yet, but
must draw nourishment from the parent. And so these germinating lives in the
mineral kingdom are nourished by the Group-Souls, by the envelopes of monadic
essence, thrilling with Logic life. A very fair picture of this stage may be
seen in the carpel of a plant, in which the ovules gradually appear, becoming
more and more independent.
For the sake of a clear conception, we may glance rapidly forward
over the changes through which the Group-Soul passes, as its contents evolve,
before going [118] into details. During the mineral evolution, the habitat of
the Group-Soul may be said to be that of its densest envelope, the physical;
its most active working is on the physical plane. As its contents pass onwards
into the vegetable kingdom, and ascend through it, the physical envelope slowly
disappears - as though absorbed by the contents for the strengthening of their
own etheric bodies - and its activity is transferred to the astral plane, to
the nourishing of the astral bodies of the contained triads. As these develop
yet further and pass into the animal kingdom, the astral envelope is similarly
absorbed, and the activity of the Group-Soul is transferred to the mental
plane, and it nourishes the inchoate mental bodies and shapes them gradually
into less vagueness of outline. When the Group-Soul contains but a single
triad, and has nourished this into readiness for the reception of the third
outpouring, what is left of it disintegrates into matter of the third
sub-plane, and becomes a constituent part of the causal body formed by the
downpouring from above meeting the upward-drawn column [119] from below - to
use the graphic waterspout simile. Then is the re-incarnating Ego born into
independent manifestation; the guarded ante-natal life is over.
2. THE DIVISION OF THE GROUP-SOUL.
It is on the physical plane that consciousness must first evolve
into Self-consciousness, must become aware of an external world that makes
impacts upon it, and must learn to refer those impacts to an external world,
and to realise as its own the changes which it undergoes in consequence of
those impacts. By prolonged experiences it will learn to identify with itself
the feeling of pleasure or pain that follows the impact, and to regard as not
itself that which touches its external surface. It will thus make its first
rough distinction of "Not-I" and "I". As experience
increases, the "I" will retreat ever inwards, and one veil of matter
after another will be relegated outwards as belonging to the "Not-I";
but while its connotations change, this fundamental distinction [120] between
subject and object will ever remain. "I" is the willing, thinking,
acting consciousness; while the "Not-I" is all as to which it wills,
about which it thinks, and on which it acts. We shall have to consider later
the way in which consciousness becomes Self-consciousness, but at present we
are concerned only with its expression in forms, and the part played by the
forms.
This consciousness awakens on the physical plane, and its
expression is the permanent atom. In this it lies sleeping: "It sleeps in the
mineral"; and therein some awakening into lighter slumber must take place,
so that it may be roused out of this deep dreamless sleep, and become
sufficiently active to pass on into the next stage: "It dreams in the
vegetable".
Now the Second Logos, acting in the envelope of the Group-Souls,
energises the permanent physical atoms and, by the mediation of the Shining
Ones, as we have seen, plunges them into the various conditions offered by the
mineral kingdom, where each attaches to itself many mineral particles. At once
here we see a large [121] variety of possible impacts, leading to a variety of
experiences, and so presently to lines of cleavage in a Group-Soul. Some will
be whirled high in air, to fall in torrents of burning lava; some will be exposed
to arctic cold, others to tropic heat; some will be crushed and sheathed in
molten metal in the bowels of the earth; some will be in the sand tossed
roughly by rushing billows. Infinite variety of external impacts will shake and
strike and burn and freeze, and in vague answers of sympathetic vibrations
will the deep-slumbering consciousness respond. When any permanent atom has
reached a certain responsiveness, or when a mineral form, i.e., the particles
to which a permanent atom has attached itself, is broken up, the Group-Soul
draws that atom from its encasement. All the experiences acquired by that atom
- and that means the vibrations it has been forced to execute - remain as
powers of vibrating in particular ways, or as "vibratory powers".
That is the outcome of its life in a form. The permanent atom, losing its
embodiment and remaining for a while naked, as it [122] were, in its
Group-Soul, and continuing to repeat these vibrations, to go over within itself
its life-experiences, sets up pulses which run through the envelope of the
Group-Soul and are thus conveyed to other permanent atoms; thus each affects
and helps all the others while remaining itself. The permanent atoms which have
had experiences similar in character will be more strongly affected by each
other than will be those whose experiences have been very different, and thus
there will be a certain segregation going on within the Group-Soul, and
presently a filmy separating wall will
grow inwards from the envelope, and divide these segregated groups from each
other; and so there will be an ever-increasing number of Group-Souls with
contents showing an ever-increasing distinction of consciousness, while
sharing fundamental characteristics.
Now the responses of consciousness to external stimuli in the
mineral kingdom are far greater than many quite realise, and some of them are
of a nature which shows that there is a dawning of consciousness also in the
astral permanent atom. [123] For chemical elements exhibit distinct mutual
attractions, and chemical marital relationships are continually disorganised by
the intrusion of couples, one or other of which has a stronger affinity for one
of the partners in the earlier marriage than the original mate. Thus a hitherto
mutually faithful couple, forming a silver salt, will suddenly prove faithless
to each other if another couple, hydro-chloric acid, enters their peaceful
household; and the silver will pounce upon the chlorine and take her to wife,
preferring her to his former mate, and set up a new household as silver
chloride, leaving the deserted hydrogen to mate with his own forsaken
partner. Wherever these active
interchanges go on there is a slight stir in the astral atom, in consequence of
the violent physical vibrations set up by the violent wrenching apart, and
formation, of intimate ties, and vague internal thrillings appear. The astral
must be roused from the physical, and consciousness on the physical plane will
long take the lead in evolution. Still, a little cloud of astral matter is drawn
round the permanent astral atom by these [124] slight thrillings, but it is
very loosely held, and seems to be quite unorganised. There does not seem to be
any vibration in the mental atom at this stage.
After ages of experience in the mineral kingdom, some of the
permanent atoms will be ready to pass into the vegetable kingdom, and will be
distributed by the agency of the Shining Ones over the vegetable world. It is
not to be supposed that every blade of grass, every plant, has a permanent
atom within it, evolving to humanity during the life of this system. Just as in
the mineral kingdom, so here; the vegetable kingdom forms the field of
evolution for these permanent atoms, and the Shining Ones guide them to habitat
after habitat, so that they may experience the vibrations that affect the
vegetable world, and again store up these as vibratory powers in the same
fashion as before. The principles of interchange and of consequent segregation
work out as before, and the Group-Souls in each stream of evolution become more
numerous, and more different in their leading characteristics. [125]
At our present stage of knowledge, the laws according to which
permanent atoms in a Group-Soul are plunged into the kingdoms of nature are by
no means clear. Many things seem to indicate that the evolution of the mineral,
vegetable, and the lowest part of the animal kingdom belong more to the
evolution of the earth itself than to that of the Jivatmas representing the
Monads who are evolving within the Solar System, and who come, in due course,
to this earth to pursue their own evolution by utilising the conditions it
affords. Grass and small plants of every kind seem to be related to the earth
as a man's hairs are related to his body, and not to be connected with the Monads,
represented by Jivatmas in our five-fold universe. The life in them, holding
them together as forms, appears to be that of the Second Logos, and the life in
the atoms and molecules composing them to be that of the Third Logos,
appropriated and modified by the Planetary Logos of our system of Chains, and
further appropriated and modified by the Spirit of the Earth - [126] an entity
wrapped in great obscurity. These kingdoms offer a field for the evolution of
the Jivatmas truly, but do not exist, apparently, wholly for this purpose. We
find permanent atoms scattered through the mineral and vegetable kingdoms, but
are unable to pierce to the reasons which govern their distribution. A
permanent atom may be found in a pearl, in a ruby, in a diamond; many may be
found scattered through veins or ore, and so on. On the other hand much mineral
does not seem to contain any. So with short-lived plants. But in plants of long
continuance, such as trees, permanent atoms are constantly found. But here
again, the life of the tree seems to be more closely related to the Deva
evolution than to the evolution of the consciousness to which the permanent
atom is attached. It is rather as though advantage were taken of the evolution
of life and consciousness in the tree for the benefit of the permanent atom; it
seems to live there more as a parasite, profiting by the more highly evolved
life in which it is bathed. The fact is that our [127] knowledge on these
points is extremely fragmentary so far.
There is more activity perceptible in the astral permanent atom
during the course of the accumulation of vegetable experiences by the physical,
and it attracts round itself astral matter which is arranged by the Shining
Ones in a rather more definite way. In the long life of a forest tree, the
growing aggregation of astral matter develops itself in all directions as the
astral form of the tree, and the consciousness attached to the permanent atoms
shares, to some extent, that of its surroundings, experiencing through that
astral form the vibrations causing massive pleasure and discomfort, these
vibrations being the result of those set up in the physical tree by sunshine
and storm, wind and rain, cold and heat. With the perishing of such a tree, the
permanent astral atom retreats to its Group-Soul, now established on the astral
plane, with a rich store of experiences, shared in the manner before described.
Further, as the consciousness becomes more responsive in the astral,
it sends little [128] thrills downwards to the physical plane, and these give
rise to feelings felt as though in the physical, but really derived from the
astral. Where there has been a long separate life, as in a tree, the permanent
mental unit will also begin to attract round itself a little cloud of mental
matter, and on this the recurrence of seasons will slowly impress itself as a
faint memory, which becomes inevitably a faint anticipation.[45]
At last some of the permanent physical atoms are ready to pass on
into the animal kingdom, and once more the agency of the Shining Ones guides
them into animal forms. During the later stages of their evolution in the
vegetable world, it appears to be the rule that each triad - physical and
astral atoms and mental unit - shall have a prolonged experience in a single
form, so that some thrills of mental life may be experienced, and the triad may
thus be prepared to profit by the wandering life of the animal. But it also
appears that in some cases the passage into the animal [129] kingdom is made at
an earlier stage, and that the first thrill in the mental unit occurs in some
of the stationary forms of animal life, and in very lowly animal organisms.
In the lowest types of animals conditions similar to those
described as existing in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms also appear to
prevail. Microbes, amaebae, hydrae, etc., etc., only show a permanent atom as a
visitor, now and again, and obviously in no way depend upon it for life and
growth, nor do they break up when the permanent atom is withdrawn. They are
hosts, not bodies formed around a permanent atom. And it is noteworthy that, at
this stage, the golden life-web in no way represents the organisation of the host's body, but merely acts as rootlets
act in the soil, attaching particles of soil to themselves and sucking therefrom
nourishment. The permanent atoms in the animal kingdom have received and stored
up many experiences, before they are used by the Shining Ones as centres round
which forms are to be built.
Needless to say that in the animal [130] kingdom, the permanent
atoms receive far more varied vibrations than in the lower kingdoms, and
consequently differentiate more quickly, the number of triads in the
Group-Souls diminishing rapidly as this differentiation proceeds, and the
multiplication of Group-Souls therefore going on with increasing rapidity. As
the period of individuality approaches, each separate triad becomes possessed
of its own envelope, obtained from the Group-Soul, and takes on successive
embodiments as a separate entity, though still within the enveloping case of
protecting and nourishing monadic essence.
Large numbers of the higher animals in a state of domestication
have reached this stage, and have really become separate re-incarnating
entities, although not as yet possessing a causal body - the mark of what is
usually called individualisation. The envelope derived from the Group-Soul serves the purpose of a
causal body, but consists only of the third layer, as previously indicated, and
is therefore composed of molecules derived from the fourth grade of mental
[131] matter, that which corresponds to the coarsest ether of the physical
plane. Following the analogy of human
ante-natal life, we see that this stage corresponds with its last two months.
A seven-months' babe may be born and may survive, but it will be stronger,
healthier, more vigorous, if it profits for yet another two months by its
mother's shielding and nourishing life. So is it better for the normal development
of the Ego that it should not too hastily burst the envelope of the Group-Soul,
but should still absorb life through it, and strengthen from its constituents
the finest part of its own mental body. When that body has reached its limit of
growth under these shielded conditions, the envelope disintegrates into the
finer molecules of the sub-plane above it, and becomes, as above said, part of
the causal body.
It is the knowledge of these facts that has sometimes caused
occultists to warn people who are very fond of animals not to be exaggerated in
their affection, nor to show it in unwise ways. [132] The growth of the animal
may be unhealthily forced, and its birth into individuality be hastened out of
due time. Man, in order to fill rightly his place in the world, should seek to
understand nature and work with her laws, quickening indeed their action by
the co-operation of his intelligence, but not quickening it to the point
whereat growth is made unhealthy and its product frail and "out of
season". It is true that the Lord of Life seeks human co-operation in the
working out of evolution, but the co-operation should follow the lines which
His Wisdom has laid down. [133]
CHAPTER VI.
UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. CONSCIOUSNESS A UNIT.
IN studying the very varied manifestations of consciousness, we
are apt to forget two important facts: first, that the consciousness of each man is a Unit,
however separate and different from each other its manifestations may appear to
be; secondly, that all these Units
themselves are parts of the consciousness of the Locos, and therefore
re-act similarly under similar conditions. We cannot too often remind ourselves
that consciousness is one; that all apparently separate consciousnesses are
truly one, as one sea might pour through many holes in an embankment. That
sea-water might issue from the holes differently coloured, if the embankment
were composed of [134] differently coloured earths; but it would all be the same sea-water; analysed, it would
all show the presence of the same characteristic salts. So are all
consciousnesses from the same ocean of consciousness, and have many essential
identities. Enveiled in the same kind of matter, they will act in the same kind
of way, and reveal their fundamental identity of nature.
The individual consciousness appears to be a complexity instead of
a unity, when its manifestations are concerned, and modern psychology speaks of
dual and treble and multiplex personality, losing sight of the fundamental
unity among the confusion of the manifold. Yet truly is our consciousness a
Unit, and the variety is due to the materials in which it is working.
The ordinary waking-consciousness of a man is the consciousness
working through the physical brain at a certain rate imposed by it, conditioned
by all the conditions of that brain, limited by all its limitations, baulked
by the varying obstructions it offers, checked by a clot [135] of blood,
silenced by the decay of tissue. At every moment the brain hinders its
manifestations, while at the same time it is, on the physical plane, its only
enabling instrument of manifestation.
When the consciousness, turning its attention away from the
external physical world, ignores the denser part of the physical brain, and
uses only the etheric portions thereof, its manifestations at once change in
character. The creative imagination disports itself in etheric matter, and
drawing on its accumulated contents, obtained from the external world by its
denser servant, it arranges them, dissociates, and recombines them after its
own fancies, and creates the lower worlds of dream.
When it casts aside for a while its ethereal garment, turning its
attention away completely from the physical world, and shedding its fetters of
physical matter, it roams through the astral world at will, or drifts through
it unconsciously, turning all its attention to its own contents, receiving many
impacts from that astral world, which it ignores or accepts according to its
stage [136] of evolution, or its humour of the moment. If it should manifest
itself to an outside observer - as may happen in trance-conditions - it shows
powers so superior to those it manifested when imprisoned in the physical
brain, that such an observer, judging only by physical experiences, may well
regard it as a different consciousness.
Still more is this the case when, the astral body being thrown into
trance, the Bird of Heaven shows itself soaring into loftier regions, and its
splendid flight so enchants the observer that he deems it a new being, and no
longer the same entity as crawled in the physical world. Yet truly is it ever
one and the same; the differences are in the materials with which it is
connected, and through which it works, and not in itself.
As to the second important fact stated above, man is not yet
sufficiently developed to appreciate any evidence as to the unity of
consciousness in its workings above the physical plane, but its unity on the
physical plane is being demonstrated. [137]
2. UNITY OF PHYSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS.
Amid the immense varieties of the mineral, vegetable, animal, and
human kingdoms, the underlying unity of physical consciousness has been lost
sight of, and broad lines of cleavage have been set up which do not, in reality, exist. Life has
been wholly denied to the mineral, grudged to the vegetable, and H. P.
Blavatsky was ridiculed when she declared that one Life, one Consciousness
vivified and informed all.
"With every day, the identity between the animal and the
physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the reptile and its
nest, the rock, and man, is more and more clearly shown, the physical and
chemical constituents of all being found to be identical. Chemical Science may
well say that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox,
and that which forms man. But the occult doctrine is far more explicit. It
says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal
invisible Lives compose the atoms of the [138] bodies of the mountain and the
daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree which shelters it
from the sun. Each particle - whether you call it organic or inorganic - is a
Life."[46]
If this be true, it should be possible to obtain from such living
minerals, vegetables, animals, and men, evidence of an identity of life, of
sentiency, of response to stimuli; and while we may freely admit that we should
expect to find gradations of sentiency, that as we ascend the ladder of life we
should expect the manifestations to become fuller and more complex, yet some
definite manifestations of sentiency should be found in all who share one life.
The evidence for this was lacking when H. P. Blavatsky wrote; it is available
now; and it is from an eastern scientist, whose rare ability has ensured his
welcome in the West, that the evidence appropriately comes.
Professor Jagadish Chandra Bose, M.A., D.Sc.,
of
He arranged apparatus to measure the stimulus applied, and to show
in curves, traced on a revolving cylinder, the response from the body receiving
the stimulus. He then compared the curves obtained in tin and in other metals
with those obtained from muscle, and found that the curves from tin were
identical with those from muscle, and that other metals gave curves of like
nature but varied in the period of recovery.
[140]
(a) SERIES OF ELECTRIC RESPONSES TO SUCCESSIVE MECHANICAL STIMULI
AT INTERVALS OF HALF A MINUTE, IN TIN. (b) MECHANICAL RESPONSES IN MUSCLE.
Tetanus, both complete and incomplete, due to repeated shocks, was
caused, and similar results accrued, in mineral as in muscle.
EFFECTS ANALOGOUS TO (a) INCOMPLETE AND (b) COMPLETE TETANUS IN
TIN. (a') INCOMPLETE AND (b') COMPLETE TETANUS IN MUSCLE.
Fatigue was shown by metals, least of all by tin. Chemical
re-agents, such as drugs, produced similar results on metals with those known
to result with animals - [141] exciting, depressing, and deadly. (By deadly is
meant resulting in the destruction of the power of response.)
A poison will kill a metal, inducing a condition of immobility, so
that no response is obtainable. If the poisoned metal be taken in time, an
antidote may save its life.
(a) NORMAL R&SPONSE; (b) EFFECT ON POISON; (c) REVIVAL BY
ANTIDOTE.
A stimulant will increase response, and as large and small doses of
a drug have been found to kill and stimulate respectively, so have they been
found to act on metals. "Among such phenomena," asks Professor Bose,
"how can we draw a line of demarcation and say: Here the physical process
ends, and there the physiological begins? No such barriers exist."[47]
[142]
Professor Bose has carried on a similar series of experiments on
plants, and has obtained similar results. A fresh piece of cabbage stalk, a
fresh leaf, or other vegetable body, can be stimulated and will show similar
curves; it can be fatigued, excited, depressed, poisoned. There is something
rather pathetic in seeing the way in which the tiny spot of light, which
records the pulses in the plant, travels, in ever weaker and weaker curves,
when the plant is under the influence of
poison, falls into a final despairing straight line, and - stops. The plant is
dead. One feels as though a murder had been committed - as indeed it has.[48]
These admirable series of experiment have established, on a
definite basis of physical facts, the teaching of occult science on the
universality of life.
Mr. Marcus Reed has made microscopical observations which show the
[143] presence of consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. He has observed
symptoms as of fright when tissue is injured, and further he has seen that male
and female cells, floating in the sap, become aware of each other's presence
without contact; the circulation quickens, and they put out processes towards
each other.[49]
More than three years after the publication of Professor Bose's
experiments, some interesting confirmation of his observations arose in the
course of M. Jean Becquerel's study of the N-rays, communicated by him to the
Paris Academy of Sciences. Animals under chloroform cease to emit these rays, and
they are never emitted by a corpse. Flowers normally emit them, but under
chloroform the emanation ceases. Metals also emit them, and under chloroform
the emanation again ceases. Thus animals, flowers, and metals alike give out
these rays, and alike cease to emanate them under the action of chloroform.[50]
[144]
3. THE MEANING OF PHYSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS.
The term "physical consciousness" is used in two distinct
senses, and it may be useful to pause a moment, in order to define these. It is
often used to indicate what is above termed "ordinary waking-consciousness",
i.e., the consciousness of the man, of the Jivatma -or, if the phrase be
preferred, of the Monad working through the Jivatma, and the lower triad of
permanent atoms. It is also used in the sense in which it is used here, as
consciousness working in physical matter, receiving and responding to physical
impacts, unconcerned with any transmission of impulses onward to the higher
planes, or with any impulses sent to the physical body from those planes.
In this more restricted and accurate sense, it would include (a)
any out-thrillings from the atoms and molecules ensouled by the life of the
Third Logos; (b) any [145] similar out-thrillings from organised forms ensouled
by the life of the Second Logos; and (c) any similar out-thrillings from the
life of the Monad, proceeding from the permanent atoms, in which the spirillae
are not directly concerned. When the spirillae are active, the "ordinary
wakingconsciousness" is affected. For instance ammonia sniffed up by the
nose shows two results; there is a rapid secretion; that is the response of the
cells in the olfactory tract; there is also a "smell"; that is the
result of a vibration running up to the sense-centres in the astral body, and
there recognised in consciousness; the change in consciousness affects the
first set of spirillae in the atoms of the olfactory tract, and thus reaches
the "waking-consciousness" - consciousness working in the physical
brain. It is only through the spirillae that changes in consciousness on the
higher planes bring about changes in the "waking-consciousness".
It must be remembered that as the Solar System is a field for the
evolution of all the developing consciousnesses [146] within it, so are there
smaller areas within it, serving as smaller fields. Man is the microcosm of the
universe, and his body serves as a field of evolution for myriads of
consciousnesses less evolved than his own. Thus the three activities mentioned
above under (a), (b), and (c) are all present in his body, and all enter into
the physical consciousness working therein; that in which the atomic spirillae
are concerned does not enter it; that belongs to the consciousness of the
Jivatma. The workings of physical consciousness do not now directly affect the
"waking-consciousness" in the higher animals or in man. They affected
it in the earlier part of the embryonic life in the Group-Soul, while the
consciousness of the Second Logos was "mothering" the dawning
consciousnesses derived from it. But physical consciousness has now sunk below
the "threshold of consciousness", while showing itself as "the
memory of the cell", as the selective action in glands and papillae, and
generally in the carrying on of functions necessary for the support [147] of
bodies. It is the lowest activity of consciousness, and as consciousness functions
more and more actively on the higher plane, its lowest workings no longer
attract its attention, and they become what we call automatic.
Now it is physical consciousness that is appealed to in Professor
Bose's experiments, and it is the response of this consciousness in the tin
and in the animal that is the same, and is shown in the pulse indicated by the
curves; the animal will feel the stimulus while the tin will not - that is the
result of the additional working of the consciousness in astral matter.
We may thus allege that consciousness, working in physical matter,
responds to various kinds of stimulation, and that the response is the same,
whether it be obtained from mineral, vegetable, or animal. The consciousness
shows the same characteristic workings, is the same. The differences which, as
already said, we observe as we ascend, lie in the improvement of the physical
apparatus, an apparatus which enables astral and mental - not physical -
activities of consciousness [148] to manifest themselves on the physical plane.
Men and animals feel and think better than minerals and vegetables, because
their more highly evolved consciousness has shaped for itself on the physical
plane this much improved apparatus; but even so, our bodies answer as the
lower bodies answer to the same stimuli, and this purely physical consciousness
is the same in all.
Now in the mineral, the astral matter connected with the permanent
astral atom is so little active, and consciousness is sleeping so deeply
therein, that there is no perceptible working from the astral to the physical.
In the higher plants there seems to be a sort of forth-shadowing of a nervous
system, but it is too little developed and organised to serve anything but the
simplest purposes. The added activity on the astral plane improves the astral
sheath in connexion with the plant, and the vibrations of the astral sheath
affect the etheric portion of the plant, and thus its denser matter. Hence the
forth-shadowing of a nervous system above alluded to. [149]
When we come to the animal stage, the much greater activity of the
consciousness on the astral plane causes more powerful vibrations, which pass
to the etheric double of the animal, and by the etheric vibrations thus caused,
the nervous system is builded. The shaping of it is due to the Logos through
the Group-Soul, and to the active assistance of the Shining Ones of the
Consciousness does not do much building on the astral plane at this
stage, and works there in an unorganised sheath; the organising is done on the
[150] physical plane by the efforts of consciousness to express itself - dim
and vaguely groping as these efforts are - aided and directed by the Group-Soul
and the Shining Ones. This work has to be completed to a great extent before
the Third Life-Wave pours down, for animal man has evolved, with his brain and
nervous systems, before that great outpouring comes which gives the Jivatma a
working body, and makes possible the higher evolution of man. [151]
CHAPTER VII.
THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MECHANISM.
IN a very real sense the whole of the bodies of man form the
mechanism of consciousness, as organs for willing, thinking, and acting; but
the nervous apparatus may be called its special mechanism, as that whereby, in
the physical body, it controls and directs all.
Every cell in the body is composed of myriads of tiny lives, each with
its own germinal consciousness;[51] each cell has its [152] own dawning
consciousness, controlling and organising these; but the central ruling
consciousness which uses the whole body controls and organises it, in turn, and
the mechanism in which it functions for this purpose is the nervous.
This nervous mechanism is the outcome of astral impulses, and
consciousness must be active on the astral plane before it can be constructed. Impulses
set up by the consciousness - willing to experience and vaguely endeavouring to
give effect to this Will -cause vibrations in etheric matter, and these
vibrations, by the very nature of the matter[52], become electric, magnetic,
heat, and other energies. These are the masons which work under the impulse of
the master-builder, Consciousness. The impulse is from him; the execution is by
them. The directive intelligence, which as yet he cannot furnish, is supplied
by the Logic life in the Group-Soul, and by the [153] Nature-Spirits working
under the guidance, as already said, of the Shining Ones of the Third Elemental
Kingdom.
We have then to understand that nervous matter is built up on the
physical plane under impulses from the astral, the directly constructive forces
being indeed physical, but the guidance and the setting in motion of them being
astral, i.e., proceeding from consciousness active on the astral plane. The
life-energy, the prana, which flows in rosy waves, pulsing along the etheric matter
in all nerves, not in their medullary sheaths but in their substance, comes
down immediately from the astral plane; it is drawn from the great reservoir of
life, the LOGOS, and is specialised on the astral plane and sent down thence
into the nervous system, blending there with the magnetic, electrical, and
other currents which form the purely
physical prana, drawn from the same reservoir, but through the Sun, His
physical body; close examination shows that the constituents of the prana of
the mineral kingdom are fewer and less complex in arrangement than those of the
[154] prana in the higher vegetable kingdom, and this again less so than that
in the animal and human, and this difference is due to the fact that the astral
prana mingles in the latter and not in the former - to any perceptible degree,
at least. After the formation of the causal body, this complexity of the prana
circulating in the nervous systems of the physical body much increases, and it
appears to become yet more enriched in the progress of human evolution. For as
the consciousness becomes active on the mental plane, the prana of that plane
mingles also with the lower, and so on as the activity of consciousness is
carried on in higher regions.
We may pause a moment on this word "prana", that I have
translated as "life-energy". Pran is a Samskrit root, meaning to
breathe, to live, to blow, made up of an, to breathe, move, live, and hence the
Spirit, joined with the prefix pra, forth. Thus pra-an, pran, means to breathe
forth, and life-breath, or life-energy, is the nearest English equivalent to
the Samskrit term. As [155] according to Hindu thought there is but one Life,
one Consciousness, everywhere, the word Prana has been used for the Supreme
Self, the all-sustaining Breath. It is the forth-giving energy of the One; for
us, the Life of the LOGOS. Hence that Life on every plane may be spoken of as
the Prana of the plane; it becomes the life-breath in every creature. On
the physical plane it is energy,
appearing in many forms, electricity, heat, light, magnetism, etc.,
transmutable into each other, because fundamentally one; on other planes we
have no names whereby to designate it, but the idea is definite enough.
Appropriated by a being, it is prana in the narrower sense in which it is
generally used in theosophical literature, the individual's life-breath. It is
the vital energy, the vital force, of which all other energies, chemical,
electrical, and the rest, are merely derivatives and fractional parts; and it
is a little quaint for the occultist when he hears scientific men talking
glibly of chemical or electrical energy, and denouncing their parent, vital
energy, as an "exploded [156] superstition". These partial
manifestations of vital energy are merely due to the arrangements of matter in
which it plays, cutting off one or another of its characteristics, or perhaps
all of them save one, as blue glass will shut off all the rays except the blue
ones, and red all except the red.
In The Secret Doctrine H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the relation of
prana to the nervous system. She quotes, and partly endorses, partly corrects,
the view of "nervous ether", put forward by Dr. B. W. Richardson; the
Sun-force is "the primal cause of all life on earth"[53], and the Sun
is "the store-house of vital force, which is the noumenon of
electricity"[54]. The "'nervous ether' is the lowest principle of
the Primordial Essence which is Life. It is animal vitality diffused in all
Nature, and acting according to the conditions it finds for its activity. It is
not an 'animal product'; but the living animal, the living flower and plant,
are its products"[55].
On the physical plane this prana, this [157] life-force, builds up
all minerals, and is the controlling agent in the chemico-physiological changes
in protoplasm, which lead to differentiation and the building of the various
tissues of the bodies of plants, animals, and men. They show its presence by
the power of responding to stimuli, but for a time this power is not
accompanied by distinct sentiency; consciousness has not unfolded enough to
feel pleasure and pain.
When the current of prana from the astral plane, with its attribute
of sentiency, blends with that of the prana of the physical plane, it begins
the building of a new arrangement of matter - the nervous. This, nervous
arrangement is fundamentally a cell, details as to which can be studied in any modern text-book
dealing with the subject[56], and the development consists of internal changes
and of outgrowths of the matter of the cell, these outgrowths becoming sheathed
[158] in medullary matter and then appearing a threads or fibres. Every nervous
system, however elaborate, consists of cells and their outgrowths, these
outgrowths becoming more numerous, and forming ever multiplying connexions between
the cells, as consciousness demands, for its expression, a more and more
elaborated nervous system. This fundamental simplicity at the root of such
complexity of details is found even in man, the possessor of the most highly
evolved nervous organisation. The many millions of neural ganglia[57] in the
brain and body are all produced by the end of the third month of ante-natal
life, and their development consists in expansion, and the outgrowth of their
substance into fibres. This development in later life results from the activity
of thought; as a man thinks strenuously and continuously, the
thought-vibrations cause chemical activity, and the dendrons[58] shoot out from
the [159] cells, making connexions and cross-connexions in every direction,
literal pathways along which prana pulsates - prana which is now composed of
factors from the physical, astral and mental planes - and thought-vibrations
travel.
Returning from this digression into the human kingdom, let us see
how the building of the nervous system, by vibratory impulses from the astral,
begins and is carried on. We find a minute group of nerve cells and tiny
processes connecting them. This is formed by the action of a centre which has
previously appeared in the astral body - of which something will presently be
said - an aggregation of astral matter arranged to form a centre for receiving
and responding to impulses from outside. From that astral centre vibrations
pass into the etheric body, causing little etheric whirlpools which draw into
themselves particles of denser physical matter, forming at last a nerve cell,
and groups of nerve cells. These physical centres, receiving vibrations from
the outer world, send impulses back to the astral centres, increasing their
vibrations; thus the [160] physical and the astral centres act and re-act on
each other, and each becomes more complicated and more effective. As we pass up
the animal kingdom, we find the physical nervous system constantly improving,
and becoming a more and more dominant factor in the body, and this first-formed
system becomes, in the vertebrates, the sympathetic system, controlling and
energising the vital organs - the heart, the lungs, the digestive tract; beside
it slowly develops the cerebro-spinal system, closely connected in its lower
workings with the sympathetic, and becoming gradually more and more dominant,
while it also becomes in its most important development the normal organ for
the expression of the "waking consciousness". This cerebro-spinal
system is built up by impulses originating in the mental, not in the astral
plane, and is only indirectly related to the astral through the sympathetic
system, built up from the astral. We shall see later the bearing of this on the
astral sensitiveness of animals, and lowly-developed human beings, the
disappearance, of this sensitiveness with the [161] development of intellect,
and its reappearance in the higher human evolution.
The permanent atoms form the imperfect but only direct channel
between the consciousness manifesting as the spiritual Triad and the forms he
is connected with. In the case of the higher animals these atoms are
exceedingly active, and in the brief time between the physical lives
considerable changes occur in these. As evolution goes on the increasing flow of
life from the Group-Soul and through the permanent atom, as well as the
increasing complexity of the physical apparatus, rapidly augment the
sensitiveness of the animal. There is comparatively little sensitiveness in the
lower animal lives, and little in fishes, despite their cerebrospinal system.
As evolution proceeds, the sense-centres continue to develop in the astral
sheath, and in the higher animal these are well organised and the senses are
acute. But with this acuteness there is brevity of sensations, and except with
the highest animals little of the mental element mingles to lend increased and
longer continued sensitiveness to sensation. [162]
2. THE ASTRAL OR DESIRE BODY.
The evolution of the astral body must be studied in relation to the
physical, for while it plays the part of a creator on the physical plane, as we
have seen, its own further development largely depends on the impulses received
through the very organism it has created. It does not, for a long time, enjoy
an independent life of its own on its own plane, and the organisation of the
astral body in relation to the physical is quite a different matter, and much
earlier in time, than its organisation in relation to the astral world. In the
East they speak of the astral and mental vehicles of consciousness, when acting
in relation to the physical, as koshas, or sheaths, and use the term sharira,
or body, for a form capable of independent action in the visible and invisible
worlds. This distinction may serve us here.
The astral sheath of the mineral is a mere cloud of appropriated
astral matter, and does not show any perceptible signs of organisation. The
same is the case with most vegetables, but in some there [163] seem to be
certain indications of aggregations and lines, which, in the light of later
evolution, appear to be the dawn of incipient organisation; and in some
old forest trees distinct aggregations
of astral matter are visible at certain points. In animals these aggregations
become clearly marked and definite, forming centres in the astral sheath of a
permanent and specialised kind.
These aggregations in the astral sheath are the beginnings of the
centres which will build up the necessary organs in the physical body, and are
not the often-named chakras, or wheels, which belong to the organisation of the
astral body itself, and fit it for functioning on its own plane in connexion
with the mental sheath, as the lower type of the eastern sukshma sharira, or
subtle body. The astral chakras are connected with the astral senses, so that a
person in whom they are developed can see, hear, etc., on the astral plane;
they lie far ahead of the point in evolution that we are considering, a point
at which the perceptive powers of consciousness have not yet any organ, even
on the physical plane. [164]
As these aggregations in the astral sheath appear, the impulses of
consciousness on the astral plane, guided as before explained, play on the
etheric double, forming the etheric whirlpools already mentioned, and
corresponding centres thus arise in the astral sheath and physical body, the
sympathetic system being thus built up. This system always remains thus
directly connected with the astral centres, even after the cerebro-spinal
system is evolved. But from the aggregations in the fore-part or the astral
sheath, ten important centres are formed, which become connected with the brain
through the sympathetic system, and gradually become the dominant organs for
the activities of the physical, or waking-consciousness - that is, for that part
of the consciousness which functions normally through the cerebro-spinal
system. Five out of the ten serve to receive special impressions from the
outside world, and are the centres through which consciousness uses its
perceptive powers; they are called in Samskrit, Jnanendriyas, literally
"knowledge-senses", [165] i.e., senses, or sense-centres, by which
knowledge is obtained. These set up, in the way before explained, five distinct
etheric whirlpools, and thus construct five centres in the physical brain;
these, in turn, severally shape and remain connected with their appropriate
sense-organs. Thus arise the five sense-organs: the eyes, ears, tongue, nose,
skin, specialised to receive impressions from the outer world, corresponding to
the five perceptive powers of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling.
These are specialised ways in the lower worlds by which part of the perceptive
ability of consciousness, its power of receiving external contacts, is
exercised. They belong to the lower worlds and to the grosser forms of matter
which shut consciousness in, and prevent it, thus enwrapped, from knowing other
lives; they are openings in this dense veil of matter, permitting vibrations to
enter in and reach the shrouded consciousness.
The remaining five of these ten astral centres serve to convey
vibrations from consciousness to the outer word; they [166] are the avenues
outwards, as the knowledge-senses are the avenues inwards; they are named
Karmendriyas, literally action-senses, senses or sense-centres which cause
action. These develop like the others, forming etheric whirlpools, which make
the motor-centres in the physical brain; these, again, severally shape and
remain connected with their appropriate motor-organs, hands, feet, larynx, and
organs of generation and excretion.
We have now an organised astral sheath, and the continual action
and re-action between this and the physical body improve both, and these
together act on the consciousness and it re-acts on them, both again gaining by
this mutual interaction. And as we have already seen, these blind impulses of
consciousness are guided in their play upon matter by the Logic life in the
Group-Soul and by the Nature-Spirits. Always it is life, consciousness,
seeking to realise itself in matter, and matter responding in virtue of its own
inherent qualities, vitalised by the action of the Third Logos. [167]
3. CORRESPONDENCE IN ROOT-RACES.
A similar succession in the present, the fourth, Round marks the
evolution of the kingdoms of Nature, the
main characteristics of the previous Rounds being, as it were, repeated in the
Root-Races, just as the history of evolution wrought out during long ages is
repeated during the embryonic life of each new body. During the existence of
the first two human Races there were conditions of temperature which would
render sensibility destructive of any life-manifestation, and those Races show
no sensibility to pleasure and pain on the physical plane. In the third Race
there is sensibility to violent impacts, causing coarse pleasures and pains,
but only some of the senses are evolved, those of hearing, touch, and sight,
and these but to a low stage, as we
shall presently see.
Now in the first two Races there are visible the beginnings of
aggregations in the astral matter of the sheaths, arid if these could connect
themselves with appropriate physical matter there would be in the physical
consciousness sensations [168] of pleasure and pain. But the appropriate
connexions are lacking. The first Race shows a feeble sense of hearing, the
second a vague response to impacts, the dawning sense of touch.
The spiritual Triad, at this stage or evolution, is so insensitive
to vibrations from external matter that it is only when he receives the
tremendous vibrations caused by impacts on the physical plane that he begins
slowly to respond. Everything begins for him on the physical plane. He does
not respond directly, but indirectly, through the mediation of the Logic life,
and only as the primary physical apparatus is built up do the subtler impulses
come through with sufficient force to cause pleasure and pain. The violent
vibrations from the physical plane cause corresponding vibration on the
astral, and he becomes dimly conscious of sensation. [169]
CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST HUMAN STEPS.
1. THE THIRD LIFE-WAVE.
THE middle of the Third Root-Race had been reached; the nervous
apparatus of animal man had been built
up to a point at which it needed for its further improvement the more direct flow
of thought from the spiritual Triad to which it was attached; the Group-Soul
had completed its work for these, the higher products of evolution, as the
medium by which the life of the Second Logos protected and nourished His infant
children; it was now to form the foundation of the causal body, the vessel into
which the down-pouring life was, to be received; the term of the ante-natal
life of the Monad was touched, and the time was ripe for his birth into the
[170] lower world. The mother-life of the Logos had built for him the bodies in
which he could now live as a separate entity in the world of forms, and he was
to come into direct possession of his bodies and take up his human evolution.
We have seen that the Monads derive their being from the First
Logos, and dwell on the anupadaka, the second, plane during the ages over which
we have glanced. We have also seen that they appropriated to themselves with
the help of different agents the three permanent atoms that represent them as
Jivatmas on the third, fourth, and fifth planes, and also those which form the
lower triad on the fifth, sixth, and seventh. All the communication of the
Monad with the planes below his own has been through the Sutratma, the
life-thread, on which the atoms are strung, that life-thread - of second plane
matter - passing from the atmic atom to the buddhic, from the buddhic to the
manasic, and from the manasic re-entering the atmic, thus making the
"Triangle of Light" on the higher planes. We have seen further [171]
that from the line of this Triangle on the buddhic plane comes forth a thread,
the Sutratma of the lower planes, on which the lower triad is strung.
The time has now come for a fuller communication than is
represented by this delicate thread in its original form, and it, as it were,
widens out. This is but a clumsy way of picturing the fact that the Ray from
the Monad glows and increases, assuming more the form of a funnel: "The
thread between the Silent Watcher and his shadow becomes stronger an
radiant"[59]. This downflow of monadic life is accompanied by much
increased flow between the buddhic and manasic permanent atoms, and the latter
seems to awaken, sending out thrills in every direction. Other manasic atoms
and molecules gather round it, and a whirling vortex is seen on the three upper
sub-planes of the mental plane. A similar whirling motion is seen in the cloudy
mass surrounding the attached mental unit below, enveloped in the remaining
layer of the Group-Soul, as already described. The layer is torn [172] asunder,
and caught up into the vortex above, where it is disintegrated, and the causal
body is formed, a delicate filmy envelope, as the whirlpool subsides. This
downflow of life, resulting in the formation of the causal body, is called the
Third Life-Wave, and is properly ascribed to the First Logos, since the Monads
came forth from Him and represent His triune life.
The causal body once formed, the spiritual Triad has a permanent
vehicle for further evolution, and when Consciousness becomes able to function
freely in this vehicle, the Triad will be able to control and direct, far more
effectively than ever before, the evolution of the lower vehicles.
The earlier efforts to control are not, however, of a very
intelligent description, any more than the first movements of the body of the
infant show they are directed by any intelligence, although we know that an
intelligence is connected with it. The Monad is now, in a very real sense, born
on the physical plane, but still he must be regarded as a babe there, and must
pass through an immense period of time before [173] his power over the physical
body will be anything but infantile.
2. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.
And this is clearly seen if we look at man as he was in his early
days. Those long-perished Lemurians - if we except those entities who had
already developed consciousness to a considerable extent, and who took birth in
the clumsy Lemurian bodies in order to lead human evolution - were very poorly
developed as to their sense organs; those of smell and taste were not developed, but were only in
process of building. Their sensitiveness to pleasure and pain was slight.
In the Atlanteans the senses were much more active; sight was very
keen and hearing was acute; taste was more developed than among the Lemurians,
but was still not highly evolved; coarse and rank foods were found perfectly
tolerable and even agreeable, and very highly-flavoured articles of diet, such
as decaying meat, were preferred to more delicate viands, which were considered
[174] tasteless. The body was not very sensitive to injuries, and severe wounds
did not cause much pain, nor were followed by prostration - even extensive
lacerations failing to incapacitate the sufferer - and healing very quickly.
The remnants of the Lemurian Race now existing, as well as the widely spread
Atlantean, still show a relative insensitiveness to pain, and undergo, with
very partial disablement, lacerations that would utterly prostrate a fifth Race
man. A North American Indian has been reported as fighting on after the side of the thigh had been slashed
away, and taking the field again after twelve or fifteen hours. This
characteristic of the fourth Race body enables a savage to bear with composure,
and to recover from, tortures that would prostrate a fifth Race man from
nervous shock.
These differences derive largely from the varying developments of
the permanent atom, the nucleus of the physical body. There is, in the fifth
Root-Race, a fuller stream of life pouring down, causing the greater internal
development of the permanent atom, and increasing as [175] that development
proceeds. As evolution goes on, there is an increasing complexity of vibratory
powers in the physical permanent atom, a similar increase in the astral atom,
and again in the mental unit. As birth follows birth, and these permanent
nuclei are put out on each plane to gather round them the new mental, astral
and physical encasements, the more highly developed permanent atoms draw round
them the more highly developed atoms on the planes to which they belong, and
thus build up a better nervous apparatus through which the ever-increasing
stream of consciousness can flow. In this way is built up the delicately
organised nervous apparatus of the fifth Race man.
In the fifth Race man the internal differentiation of the nervous
cells is much increased, and the intercommunications are much more numerous.
Speaking generally, the consciousness of the fifth Race man is working on the
astral plane, and is withdrawn from the physical body except so far as the
cerebro-spinal nervous system is concerned. The control of the vital organs of
the body is left to the [176] sympathetic system, trained through long ages to
perform this work, and now kept going by impulses from the astral centres other
than the ten, without deliberate attention from the otherwise occupied
consciousness, although of course sustained by it. It is, however, as we shall
presently see, quite possible to draw the attention of consciousness again to
this part of its mechanism, and to reassume intelligent control of it. In the
more highly evolved members of the fifth Race, the main impulses of
consciousness are sent down from the lower mental world; and work down through
the astral to the physical, and there stimulate the physical nervous activity.
This is the keen, subtle, intelligent consciousness, moved by ideas more than
by sensations, and showing itself more actively in the mental and emotional
brain-centres than in those concerned with sensory and motor phenomena.
The sense-organs of the fifth Race body are less active and acute
than those of the highest fourth Race in responding to purely physical impacts.
The eye, the [177] ear, the touch do not respond to vibrations which would
affect the fourth Race sense-organs. It is significant, also, that these organs
are at their keenest in early childhood, and diminish in sensitiveness from
about the sixth year onward. On the other hand, while less acute in receiving
pure sense-impacts, they become more sensitive to sensations intermingled with
emotions, and delicacies of colour and of sound, whether of nature or of art,
appeal to them more effectively. The higher and more intricate organisation of
the sense-centres in the brain and in the astral body seems to bring about
increased sensitiveness to beauty of colour, form, and sound, but diminished
response to the sensations in which the emotions play no part.
The fifth Race body is also far more sensitive to shock than are the
bodies of the fourth and third Races, being more dependent upon consciousness
for its upkeep. A nervous shock is far more keenly felt, and entails far
greater prostration. A severe mutilation is no longer a question merely of
lacerated muscle, of [178] torn tissues, but of dangerous nervous shock; the
highly organised nervous system carries the message of distress to the brain
centres, and it is sent on from them to the astral body, disturbing and
upsetting the astral consciousness. This is followed by disturbance on the
mental plane; imagination is aroused, memory stimulates anticipation, and the
rush of mental impulses intensifies and prolongs sensations. These again
stimulate and excite the nervous system, and its undue excitation acts on the
vital organs, causing organic disturbance; hence depression of vitality and
slow recovery.
So also in the highly evolved fifth Race body, mental conditions
largely rule the physical, and intense
anxiety, mental suffering, and worry, producing nervous tension, readily
disturb organic processes and bring about weakness or disease. Hence mental
strength and serenity directly promote physical health, and when the
consciousness is definitely established on the astral or the mental plane,
emotional and mental disturbance are far more productive of ill-health than
[179] any privations inflicted on the physical body. The evolved fifth Race man
lives physically literally in his nervous system.
2. INCONGRUOUS SOULS AND BODIES.
But we should here notice a significant fact, bearing on the
all-important question of the relation of the nervous organisation to
consciousness. When a human consciousness has not yet grown beyond the later
Lemurian or earlier Atlantean type, but is born into a fifth Race body, it
presents a curious and interesting study. (The reasons for such a birth cannot
here be enlarged upon; briefly, as the
more advanced nations annex the lands occupied by little evolved tribes, and kill them off either directly or
indirectly, the people thus summarily
evicted from their bodies have to find new habitats; the suitable savage
conditions are becoming rarer and rarer,
under the ever-expanding flood of higher races, and they have to take birth
under the lowest available conditions, such as the slums of large cities, in
families of criminal types. They [180] are drawn to the conquering nation by
karmic necessity.) Such persons incarnate in fifth Race bodies of the worst
available material. They then show out in these fifth Race bodies the qualities
that belong to the earlier fourth or the third; and though they have the
physical outer nervous organisation, they have not the internal differentiation
in the nervous matter that only comes with the play on physical matter of
energies coming from the astral and
mental worlds. We observe in them the non-responsiveness to impressions from
outside, unless the impressions are of a violent order, that marks the low
grade of development of the individual consciousness. We notice the falling
back into inertia when a violent physical stimulus is absent; the recurrent
craving for such violent stimulus when roused by physical necessities; the
stirring into faint mental activity under vehement impact on the sense-organs,
and the blankness when the sense-organs are at rest; the complete absence of
any response to a thought or a high emotion - not a rejection but an
un-consciousness of it. Excitement or violence [181] in such a person is caused
as a rule by something outside - by something coming before him physically
which his dawning mind connects with the possibility of gratifying some passion
which he remembers, and desires again to feel. Such a person may not be intent
on robbery or murder at all, but may be stimulated into either or both by the mere sight of a well-dressed
passer-by who seems likely to have money - money, that means gratification by
food, drink, or sex. The stimulus to attack the passer-by is at once given, and
will be followed at once by action, unless checked by a physical and obvious
danger, such as the sight of a policeman. It is the embodied physical
temptation which arouses the idea of committing the crime; a man who plans a
crime beforehand is more highly developed; the mere savage commits a crime on
the impulse of the moment, unless faced by another physical embodiment, that of
a force which he fears. And when the crime is committed, he is impervious to
all appeals to shame or remorse; he is susceptible only to terror.
These remarks do not, of course, apply [182] to the intelligent
criminal, but only to the congenital brutal and obtuse type, the third or
fourth Race savage in a fifth Race body.
As the truths of the Ancient Wisdom more and more colour modern
thought, they will inevitably, among other things, modify the treatment of the
criminal. Such criminals as are here spoken of will not be punished brutally,
but will be kept permanently under strict discipline; and will be, as far as is
practicable, aided to progress more quickly than would have been possible under
the conditions of savage life. But the further consideration of this would lead
us too far from our main study, and we must now return to the workings of
consciousness on the astral plane, as they show themselves in the higher
animals and in the lower human types.
4. DAWN OF CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE ASTRAL PLANE.
We have seen that astral organisation precedes and shapes the
physical nervous [183] system, and we have now to consider how this must affect
the workings of consciousness. We should expect to find that consciousness on
the astral plane will become aware of impacts on its astral sheath in a vague
and un-precise way, just as, in the minerals and the plants and the lowest
animals, it became aware of impacts on its physical body. This awareness of
astral impacts will long precede any definite organisation in the astral
sheath, the bridge between the mental and the physical, that will gradually
evolve it into an astral body, the independent vehicle of consciousness on the
astral plane. And, as we have seen, the first organisation in the astral sheath
is a response to impacts received through the physical body, and is related to
the physical body in its evolution. This organisation has nothing to do
directly with the reception, co-ordination, and understanding of astral
impacts, but is engaged in being acted upon by, and re-acting on, the physical
nervous system. Consciousness everywhere precedes Self-consciousness and the
evolution of [184] consciousness on the astral plane proceeds
contemporaneously with the evolution of Self-consciousnesss - to be dealt with
presently - on the physical.
The impacts on the astral sheath from the astral plane produce
vibratory waves over the whole astral sheath, and the ensheathed consciousness
gradually becomes dimly aware of these surgings, without relating them to any
external cause. It is groping after the much more violent physical impacts, and
such power of attention as it has evolved is turned on them. The aggregations
of astral matter, connected with the physical nervous systems, naturally share
in the general surgings of the astral sheath, and the vibrations caused by
these surgings mingle with those coming
from the physical body, and affect also the vibrations sent down to it by the
consciousness through these aggregations. Thus a connexion is established
between astral impacts and the sympathetic system, and they play a
considerable part in its evolution. As the consciousness working in the
physical body begins slowly to recognise an external world, [185] these impacts
from the astral - gradually classified under the five senses as are the impacts
from the physical - mingle with those from the physical plane and are not
distinguished as being different from them in origin. This recognition is the
lower clairvoyance, that which precedes the great evolution of mind. So long as
the sympathetic system is acting as the dominant apparatus of consciousness, so
long will the origin, astral or physical, of impacts remain as the same to consciousness.
Even the higher animals - in whom the cerebro-spinal system is well developed,
but in whom it is not yet, save in its sense-centres, the chief mechanism of
consciousness - fail to distinguish between physical and astral sights, sounds,
etc. A horse will leap over an astral body as though it were a physical one; a
cat will rub herself against the legs of an astral figure; a dog will growl at
a similar appearance. In the dog and the horse there is the dawning of an
uneasy sense of some difference, shown by the fear of such appearances often
manifested by the dog, and by the timidity of the horse. [186] The nervousness
of the horse - despite which he can be trained to face the dangers of a
battle-field, and even, as with Arab mares, learn to pick up and carry away his
fallen rider through all the alarming surroundings - seems chiefly due to his
confusion and bewilderment as to his environment, and his inability to
distinguish between what later he will learnedly call "objective
realities", against which he can injure his body, and "delusions",
or "hallucinations", through which his body can pass unscathed. To
him they are all "real", and the difference of their behaviour alarms
him; in the case of an exceptionally intelligent horse the nervousness is often greater, as he
evolves a dawning sense of difference in the phenomena themselves, and this at
first, not being understood, is yet more disquieting.
The savage, living more in the cerebro-spinal system,
distinguishes between the physical and the astral phenomena, though the latter
to him are as "real" as the physical: he relates them to another
world, to which he relegates [187] all things that do not behave in the way he
considers normal. He does not know that, with regard to these, he is conscious
through the sympathetic and not through the cerebro-spinal system; he is
conscious of them - that is all. The Lemurians and early Atlanteans were almost
more conscious astrally than they were physically. Astral impacts, throwing the
whole astral sheath into waves, came through the sense-centres of the astral to
the sympathetic centres in the physical body, and they were vividly aware of
them. Their lives were dominated by sensations and passions more than by
intellect, and the special apparatus of the astral sheath, the sympathetic
system, was then the dominant mechanism of consciousness.
As the cerebro-spinal system became elaborated, and more and more
assumed its peculiar position as the chief apparatus of consciousness on the
physical plane, the attention of consciousness was fixed more and more on the external
physical world, and its aspect of activity, as the concrete mind, was brought
into greater [188] and greater prominence. The sympathetic system became
subordinate, and its indications were less and less regarded, submerged under
the flood of the coarser and heavier physical impacts from without. Hence a
lessening of astral consciousness and an increase of intelligence, though there
still remains in almost every one a vague sense of non-understood impressions
received from time to time.
At the present stage of evolution this lower form of clairvoyance
is still found among human beings, but in persons of very limited intellect;
they have little idea as to its rationale, and little control over its
exercise. Attempts to increase it are apt to cause nervous disturbances of a
very refractory kind, and these attempts are against the law of evolution,
which works ever forward towards a higher end, and does not move backwards. As
the law cannot be changed, attempts to work against it only cause disturbance
and disease. We cannot revert to the condition in which the sympathetic system
was dominant, save at the cost of health, and of the higher intellectual
evolution. [189] Hence the serious danger of following many of the directions
now published broadcast, to meditate on the solar plexus, and other sympathetic
centres.
The practices, a few of which have come over to the West, are
systematised into Hatha Yoga in India. Control over the involuntary muscles is
regained, so that a man can reverse peristaltic action, inhibit the beating of
the heart, vomit at will, and so on. Much time and trouble must be wasted ere
the performance of such feats becomes possible, and at the end the man has
only brought back to the control of the will muscles which have long since been
handed over by it to the sympathetic system. As that handing-over was done by a
gradual turning away of attention, so is it by a concentration of attention on
the parts concerned that the earlier achievement is reversed. As such
performances impose upon the ignorant, who regard them as evidences of
spiritual greatness, they are often practised by men who desire power, and are
unable to obtain it in a more legitimate way. Moreover, [190] they are the
easiest form of Hatha Yoga; and are more easily cultivated, and cost far less
suffering, than holding an arm extended till it withers, or lying on a bed of
spikes.
When the cerebro-spinal system is thrown temporarily into abeyance,
the impulses from the astral sheath through the sympathetic system make themselves
felt in consciousness. Hence "lucidity" in trance, self-induced or
imposed, the power of reading in the astral by the use of crystals, and other
similar devices. The partial or complete suspension of the action of
consciousness in the higher vehicle causes it to direct attention on the lower.
It may be well to add here, to prevent misconception, that the
higher clairvoyance follows, instead of preceding, the growth of mind, and
cannot appear until the organisation of the astral body, in contradistinction
to the astral sheath, has been carried to a considerable height. When this is
effected by the play of intellect and the perfecting of the physical
intellectual apparatus, then the true astral senses [191] before mentioned,
called the chakras, or wheels, from their whirling appearance, are gradually
evolved. These develop on the astral plane, as astral senses and organs, and
are built and controlled from the mental plane, as were the brain-centres from
the astral. Consciousness is then working on the mental plane and building its
astral mechanism, as before it worked on the astral plane, building its
physical mechanism. But now it works with far greater power and greater
understanding, having unfolded so many of its powers. Further, it shapes centres
in the physical body from the sympathetic and cerebrospinal systems, to act as
physical plane apparatus for bringing into the brain-consciousness the
vibrations from the higher planes. As these centres are vivified, knowledge is
"brought through", i.e., is available for the use of consciousness
working in the physical nervous system. This, as said, is the higher clairvoyance,
the intelligent and self-directed exercise of the powers of consciousness in
the astral body.
In this upward-climbing, then, the [192] powers of consciousness
are awakened on the physical plane, and are then severally awakened on the
astral and the mental. The astral and mental sheaths must be highly evolved ere
they can be farther developed into the subtle body, acting independently on the
higher planes, and then building for itself the necessary apparatus for the
exercise of these higher powers in the physical world. And even here when the
apparatus is ready, built by pure thought and pure desire, it must be vivified
on the physical plane by the fire of Kundalini, aroused and directed by the
consciousness working in the physical brain. [193]
CHAPTER IX.
CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
1. CONSCIOUSNESS.
For an immense period of time - throughout the later vegetable and
the animal evolution, and throughout the evolution of normal humanity up to the
present time - the astral, or desire, sheath is, as we have seen, subordinate
to the physical, so far as the workings of consciousness are concerned. We
have now to trace the unfolding of the consciousness, of the life becoming
aware of its surroundings. While the nervous system is truly said to be created
from the astral plane, it is none the less created for the expression of
consciousness on the physical plane, and for its effective working thereon. It
is there that consciousness is first to become Self-consciousness. [194]
When the vibrations of the outer world play on the physical sheath
of the infolded infant Self, the Jivatma,
the Ray of the Monad, they at first cause responsive thrills within that Self,
a dawning consciousness within itself, a feeling, unrelated by that Self to
anything outside, though caused by impacts from outside. It is a change outside
the enveloping film of the Self, clothed in sheaths of denser matter, which
outside change causes a change within that envelope, and this change causes an
act of consciousness - consciousness of change, of a changed condition. It may
be an attraction, a drawing towards, exerted by an external object over the
sheaths, reaching to the envelope of the Self, causing a slight expansion in
the envelope, following an expansion in the sheaths, towards the attractive
object; and this expansion is a change of condition, and causes a feeling, an
act of consciousness. Or it may be a repulsion, a driving away, again exerted
by an external object against the sheaths, reaching to the envelope of the
Self, causing a slight shrinking in the envelope, following the shrinking [195]
away of the sheaths from the repellent object; and this shrinking is also a
change of condition, and causes a corresponding change in consciousness.
When we examine the conditions of the enveloping sheaths under an
attraction and a repulsion, we find they are entirely different. When the
impact of an external object causes a rhythmical vibration in these envelopes -
that is, when their materials are made to arrange themselves in undulating
regular lines of rarefaction and densification - this arrangement of the
enclosing matter permits an interchange of life between the two objects that
have come into contact, and in proportion to the correspondence of the
rarefactions and densifications in the two is the fulness of the interchange.
This interchange, this partial union of two separated Lives through the
separating sheaths of matter, is "pleasure", and the going out of the
Lives towards each other is "attraction"; however complicated
pleasure may become, herein lies its essence; it is a sense of
"moreness", of increased, expanded life. The more fully developed the
Life, the [196] greater the pleasure in the realisation of this moreness, in
the expansion into the other Life, and each of the Lives thus uniting gains the
moreness by union with the other. As rhythmical vibrations and corresponding
rarefactions and densifications make this interchange of life possible, it is
truly said that "harmonious vibrations are pleasurable". When, on the
contrary, the impact of an external object causes a jangle of vibrations in the
envelopes of the impacted object - that is, when the materials are made to
arrange themselves irregularly, moving in conflicting directions, striking
themselves against each other - the contained Life is shut in, isolated, its
normal out-flowing rays are checked, intercepted, even turned back on
themselves. This check to normal action is "pain", increasing with
the energy of the in-driving, and the result of the driving-in process is
"repulsion". Here, also, the more fully developed the Life, the greater
the pain in this violent reversal of its normal action, and in the sense of
frustration that accompanies the reversal. Hence, again, "inharmonious
vibrations are [197] painful". Be it observed that this is true of all
the sheaths, although the astral sheath becomes specialised as the recipient of
the class of sensations later called pleasurable and painful. Constantly, in
the course of evolution, a general life-function thus becomes specialised, and
a particular organ is normally used for its exercise. The astral body being the
vehicle of desires, the need for its special susceptibility to pleasure and
pain is obvious.
To return from this brief digression into the state of the
envelopes to the germ of consciousness
itself; we shall find it important to notice that there is herein no
"awareness" of an external object, no such awareness as is ordinarily
conveyed by the use of the word. Consciousness, as yet, knows nothing of an
outer and an inner, of an object and a subject; the divine germ is now becoming
conscious. It becomes consciousness with this change of conditions, with this
movement in the sheaths, this expanding and contracting, for consciousness
exists only in, and by, change. Here, then, for the separated divine germ is
the birth of consciousness; [198] it is born of change, of motion; where and
when this first change occurs, there, consciousness, for that separated germ,
is born.
The mere clothing of this germ with successive envelopes of matter
on successive planes gives rise to these first vague changes within the germ
that are the birthing of consciousness; and none of us may count the ages which
roll on as these changes become more defined, and as the envelopes become more
definitely shaped by the ceaseless impacts from without, and the no less
ceaseless responsive thrillings from within. The state of consciousness at this
stage can only be described as one of "feeling", feeling becoming
slowly more and more definite, and assuming two phases, pleasure and pain -
pleasure with expansion, pain with
contraction. And, be it noted, this primary state of consciousness does not
manifest the three well-known aspects of Will, Wisdom, and Activity, even in
the most germinal stage; "feeling" precedes these, and belongs to
consciousness as a whole, though in later stages of evolution it shows itself
so much in connexion with the Will-Desire aspect [199] as to become almost
identified with it; in the plural, as feelings, indeed, it belongs to that
aspect, which is the first to arise as a differentiation within consciousness.
As the states of pleasure and pain become more definitely
established in consciousness, they give rise to the three aspects: with the
fading away of pleasure there is a continuance of the attraction in
consciousness, a memory, and this becomes a dim groping after it, a vague
following of the vanishing feeling, a movement - too indefinite to be called
an effort - to hold it, to retain it; similarly with the fading away of pain
there is a continuance of the repulsion
in consciousness, again a memory, and this becomes an equally vague movement to push it away. These states give
birth to: Memory of past pleasure and pain, indicating the germination o the
Thought-aspect; longing to experience again pleasure, or avoid pain, the germination
of the Desire-aspect; this stimulating a movement, the germination of the
Activity-aspect. Thus Consciousness is differentiated into its three aspects
from its primary unity of Feeling, repeating [200] in miniature the kosmic
process in which the triple Divinity ever arises from the One Existence. The
Hermetic axiom is here, as always, exemplified: "As above, so below".
2. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
Desire, thus germinated, gropes after pleasure, not, as yet, after
the pleasure giving object; for consciousness is as yet limited within its own
kingdom, is conscious only in the within, is conscious only of changes in that
within. It has not yet turned its attention outwards, is not yet conscious even
that there is an outwards. Meanwhile that outwards of which it is not aware is
continually hammering at its vehicles, and most vehemently at its physical
vehicle, the vehicle most easily affected from outside, and with most
difficulty from within. Gradually the persistent and violent shocks from
outside draw its attention in their direction; their irregularity, their unexpectedness,
their constant assaults, their unrelatedness to its slow, groping [201]
movements, their unexplained appearances and disappearances, are in opposition
to its dim sense of regularity, continuity, of being always there, of slow
surges of change rising and falling within what is not yet to it
"himself"; there is a consciousness of difference, and this grows
into a sense of a something that remains within a changing hurly-burly, a sense
of a "within" and a "without", or, to speak more
accurately, of a "without" and
a "within", since it is the hammering outside that causes the
difference of "without" and "within" to arise in
consciousness. "Without" comes first, if only by a fraction of time,
because its recognition alone makes possible and inevitable the recognition of
"within". So long as there is nothing else, we cannot speak of
"within"; it is everything. But when "without" forces
itself on consciousness, "within" rises up as its inevitable
opposite. This sense of a "without" arises necessarily at the points
of contact between the continuing consciousness and the changing hurly-burly;
that is, in its physical vehicle, its physical [202] body. Herein is slowly
established the awareness of "others", and with the establishment of
this "others" comes the establishment also of "I", over
against them. He becomes conscious of things outside instead of being conscious
only of changes, and then he comes to know that the changes are in "himself",
and that the things are outside himself. Self-consciousness is born.
This process of perceiving objects is a complex one. It must be
remembered that objects contact the body in various ways, and the body receives
some of their vibrations by the parts differentiated to receive such
vibrations. The eye, the ear, the skin, the tongue, the nose, receive various
vibratory waves, and certain cells in the organs affected vibrate similarly in
response. The waves set up pass to the sense-centres in the brain, and thence
to the knowledge-senses in the astral sheath; there the changes in
consciousness take place which correspond with them, as explained in Chapter
II., and they are sent on as these changes, the sensations of colour, [203] outline,
sound, form, taste, smell, etc., still as separate sensations, to consciousness
working in the mental sheath, and are there combined by it into a single image,
unified into a single perception of an object. This blending of the various
streams into one, this synthesis of sensations, is a specialty of the mind.
Hence, in Indian psychology, the mind is often called "the sixth
sense", "the senses, of which mind is the sixth".[60] When we
consider the five organs of action in relation to the mind, we find a reverse process going on; the mind pictures a certain
act as a whole, and thereby brings about a corresponding set of vibrations in
the mental sheath; these vibrations are reproduced in the motor senses in the
astral sheath; they break it up, analyse it into its constituent parts, and
these are accompanied with vibrations in the matter of the motor centres;
these, in turn, are repeated in the
motor centres in the brain as separate waves; the motor centres distribute
these waves through the nervous system to the various muscles that [204] must
co-operate to produce the action. Regarded in this double relation the mind
becomes the eleventh sense, "the ten senses and the one"[61].
3. REAL AND UNREAL.
With the change of consciousness into Self-consciousness comes the
recognition of a difference which later, in the more evolved
Self-consciousness, becomes the difference between the objective or
"real" - in the ordinary western sense of the word - and the
subjective or "unreal", and "imaginary". To the jelly-fish,
the sea anemone, the hydra, waves and currents, sunshine and blast, food and
sand touching the periphery or the tentacles, are not "real", are
registered only as changes in consciousness, as in truth they are also to the
body of the human infant; I say registered, not recognised, since no mental
observation, analysis, and judgment are possible in the lower stages of
evolution. These creatures are not yet sufficiently conscious of
"others", to be conscious of [205] "themselves"; and they only
feel changes as occurring within the circle of their own ill-defined
consciousness. The external world grows into "reality" as the
consciousness, separating itself from it, realises its own separateness,
changes from a vague "am" into a definite "I am".
As this self-conscious "I" gradually gains in clearness
of self-identification, of separateness, and distinguishes between changes
within himself and the impact of external objects, he is ready to take the next
step of relating the changes within himself to the varying impacts from
outside. Then follows the development of Desire for pleasure into definite
desires for pleasure-giving objects,
followed by thoughts as to how to
obtain them ; these lead to efforts to move after them when in sight, to
search for them when absent, and the
consequent slow evolution of the outer vehicle into a body
well-organised for movement, for pursuit, for capture. The desire for the
absent, the search, the success or failure, all impress on the developing
consciousness the difference [206] between his desires and thoughts, of which
he is, or can be, always conscious, and the external objects which come and go
without any reference to himself; and with disconcerting irrelevance to his
feelings. He distinguishes these as "real", as having an existence
which he does not control, and which affects him without any regard to his
likings or objections. And this sense of "reality" is first
established in the physical world, as being the one in which these contacts between
the "others" and the "I" are first recognised by
consciousness. Self-consciousness begins its evolution in and through the
physical body, and has its earliest centre in the brain.
The normal man, at the present stage of evolution, still identifies
himself with this brain-centre of Self-consciousness, and is hence restricted
to the waking consciousness, or consciousness working in the cerebro-spinal
system, knowing himself as "I", distinctly and consecutively, only on
the physical plane, that is, in the waking state. On this plane he is
definitely self-conscious, distinguishing [207] between himself and the outer
world, between his own thoughts and outside appearances, without hesitation;
hence on this plane, and on this plane only, external things are to him "real",
"objective", "outside himself".
On other planes, the astral and the mental, he is, as yet,
conscious but not self-conscious; he recognises changes within himself, but
does not yet distinguish between the self-initiated changes and those caused
by impacts from without on his astral and mental vehicles. To him they are all
alike changes within himself. Hence all phenomena of consciousness occurring on
super-physical planes - planes on which Self-consciousness is not yet
definitely established - the normal, average man calls "unreal",
"subjective", "inside himself", just as the jellyfish, if
he were a philosopher, would designate the phenomena of the physical plane. He
regards astral or mental phenomena as the result of his
"imagination", i.e., as forms of his own creating, and not as the
results of impacts upon his astral or mental vehicle from external worlds,
subtler [208] indeed, but as "real" and "objective" as the
external physical world. That is, he is not yet sufficiently evolved to have
reached self-realisation on those planes, and thus to have become capable of
objectivising there the external worlds. He is only conscious there of the
changes in himself, the changes in consciousness, and the external world is
consequently to him merely the play of his own desires and thoughts. He is, in
fact, an infant on the astral and mental planes. [209]
CHAPTER X.
HUMAN STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS.[62]
1. THE SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS.
WE have already noticed the fact that many activities of
consciousness, once purposive, have become automatic, and have gradually sunk
below the "threshold of consciousness". The processes which maintain
the life of the body - such as the beating of the heart, the expansion and
contraction of the heart, the processes of digestion, etc. - have all fallen
into a region of consciousness on which the attention of consciousness is not
fixed. And there are innumerable
phenomena, not directly connected with the [210] maintenance of bodily life, which
also inhabit this dim region. The sympathetic system is a storehouse of traces
left by long-past events - events not belonging to our present life at all, but
events that passed hundreds of centuries
ago, that occurred in long-past lives, when the Jivatma which is our Self was abiding in savage human
bodies, and even in the bodies of animals. Many a causeless terror, many a
midnight panic, many a surge of furious anger, many an impulse of vindictive
cruelty, many a rush of passionate revenge, is flung up from the depths of that
dark sea of the sub-conscious which rolls within us, concealing many a wreck,
many a skeleton of our past. Handed down by the astral consciousness of the
time to its physical instrument for
putting into action, the ever-sensitive plate of the permanent atom has caught
and photographed them, and has registered them in the recesses of the nervous
system, life after life. The consciousness is off guard; or a strong vibration
from another strikes us; or some event reproduces circumstances that start
vibrations that arouse; in one way or [211] another, the slumbering
possibilities are awakened, and hurling itself upwards into the light of day
comes the long-buried passion. There too hide the instincts which oft overpower
reason, instincts that were once life-preserving efforts, or the results of
experiences in which our body of the time perished, and the soul registered
the result for future guidance. Instincts of love for the opposite sex, outcome
of innumerable unions. Instincts of paternal and maternal love, poured out in
many generations. Instincts of self-defence, developed in countless battles.
Instincts of taking undue advantage, offspring of numberless cheatings and
intrigues. And yet again there lurk there many vibrations that belong to
events, and feelings, and desires, and thoughts of our present life,
experienced and forgotten, but lying near the surface, ready for upcall. Time
would fail to enumerate the contents of this relic-chamber of an immemorial
past, containing old bones fit only for the dust-bin, side by side with
interesting fragments of earlier days, with tools still useful for our [212]
present needs. Over the door of the relic-chamber is written: "Fragments
of the Past". For the sub-consciousness belongs to the Past, as the
waking-consciousness to the Present, as the super-consciousness to the
Future.
Another part of the sub-conscious in us is composed of the contents
of all the consciousnesses that use our bodies as fields of evolution - atoms,
molecules, cells of many grades. Some of the queer spectres and dainty figures
that arise from the sub-conscious in us do not belong to us at all, but are the
dim gropings, and foolish fears, and pretty fancies, of the Units of
consciousness at a lower stage of evolution than our own, that are our guests,
inhabiting our body as a lodging-house.
In this part of the sub-conscious go on the wars, waged by one set
of creatures in our blood against another set, which do not enter our
consciousness, save when their results appear as diseases.
Human sub-consciousness, working on the physical plane, is thus
composed of very varied elements, and it is necessary [213] thus to analyse and
to understand it, in order to distinguish its workings from those of the true
human super-consciousness, which resembles the instincts in its sudden
irruptions into consciousness, but differs entirely from them in its nature and
place in evolution, belonging to the future while they belong to the past.
These two differ as atrophied vestigial organs, recording the history of the
past, differ from germinal rudimentary organs, indicating the progress of the
future.
We have also seen that consciousness, working on the astral plane,
built up and is still building the nervous system for its instrument on the physical
plane; but this also does not form part of what is called the normal waking
consciousness at this stage of evolution. In the average man, consciousness,
working on the mental plane, is now building up and organising the astral body
as its instrument in the future on the astral plane; but this again does not
form part of the waking-consciousness. What then is the human waking-consciousness?
[214]
2. THE WAKING CONSCIOUSNESS.
The waking-consciousness is consciousness working on the mental plane
and on the astral, using mental and astral matter as its vehicle, seated in the
physical brain as Self-consciousness[63], and using that brain with its
connected nervous system as its instrument for willing, knowing, and acting on
the physical plane. In waking-consciousness the brain is always active, always
vibrating; its activity may be stimulated as a transmitting organ from outside through the senses, or it may be
stimulated by the consciousness from the inner planes; but it is ceaselessly
active, responding to the without and the within. In the average man, the brain
is the only part in which consciousness has definitely become
Self-consciousness, the only part in which he feels himself as "I",
and asserts himself [215] as a separate individual unit. In all the rest of him
consciousness is still vaguely groping about, answering to external impacts but
not yet defining them, conscious as to changes in its own conditions, but not
yet conscious of "others" and "myself". In the more
advanced members of the human family, consciousness, working on the astral and
mental planes, is very rich and active, but its attention is not yet turned outwards
to the astral and mental worlds in which it is living, and its activities find
their outer expression in Self-consciousness on the physical plane, to which
all the outer attention in consciousness is turned, and into which is poured as
much of the higher workings as it is capable of receiving. From time to time,
powerful impacts on the astral or mental plane create so violent a vibration in
consciousness, that a wave of thought or emotion surges outwards into the
waking consciousness and throws it into such furious motion, that its normal
activities are swept away, submerged, and the man is hurried into action which
is not directed or [216] controlled by Self-consciousness. We shall consider
this further when we come to the super-physical consciousness.
Waking-consciousness may then be defined as that part of the total
consciousness which is functioning in the brain and nervous system, and which
is definitely Self-conscious. We may conceive of consciousness as symbolised by
a great light, which shines through a glass globe inserted in a ceiling,
illuminating the room below, while the light itself fills the room above, and
sheds its radiance freely in every direction. Consciousness is as a great egg
of light, of which only one end is inserted into the brain, and that end is the
waking-consciousness. As consciousness becomes Self-consciousness on the
astral plane, and the brain develops sufficiently to answer to its vibrations,
astral consciousness will become part of the waking-consciousness. Later still,
when consciousness becomes Self-consciousness on the mental plane, and the
brain develops sufficiently to answer to its vibrations, the
waking-consciousness will include mental consciousness. And [217] so on, until
all the consciousness on our five planes has evolved to waking-consciousness.
This enlarging of waking-consciousness is accompanied with development
in the atoms of the brain, as well as with the development of certain organs in
the brain, and of the connexions between cells. For the inclusion of the astral
Self-consciousness, it is necessary that the pituitary body should be evolved
beyond its present condition, and that the fourth set of spirillae in the atoms
should be perfected. For the inclusion of the mental, the pineal gland must be
rendered active, and the fifth set of spirillae brought into thorough working
order. So long as these physical development remain unaccomplished,
Self-consciousness may be evolved on the astral and mental planes, but it
remains super-consciousness and its workings do not express themselves through
the brain, and thus become part of the waking-consciousness.
Waking-consciousness is limited and conditioned by the brain so
long as a man [218] possesses a physical body, and any injury to the brain, any
lesion, any disturbance, at once interferes with its manifestation. However
highly developed may be a man's consciousness, he is limited by his brain so
far as its manifestations on the physical plane are concerned, and if that
brain be ill-formed or ill-developed, his waking-consciousness will be poor and
restricted.
With the loss of the physical body, the connotation of
waking-consciousness changes, and that which is here said of the physical
conditions is transferred to the astral. We may therefore enlarge our original
definition to the general statement: waking-consciousness is that part of the
total consciousness which is working through its outermost vehicle, that is,
which is manifesting on the lowest plane then touched by that consciousness.
In the earlier stages of human evolution, there is little activity
in consciousness on the inner planes except as stimulated from the outer; but
as Self-consciousness grows more vivid on the physical plane, it enriches with
ever-increasing rapidity the [219] content of consciousness on the inner;
consciousness, working upon its content, rapidly evolves, until its internal
powers far outstrip the possibilities of their manifestation through the
brain, and the latter becomes a
limitation and a hindrance instead of feeder and a stimulator. Then the
pressure of consciousness on its physical instrument becomes at times perilously
great, causing a nervous tension which endangers the equilibrium of the brain,
unable to adapt itself with sufficient rapidity to the powerful waves beating
upon it. Hence the truth of the saying "Great wits to madness near
allied". Only the highly and delicately organised brain can enable the
"great wits" to manifest themselves on the physical plane; but such a
brain is the one most easily thrown off its balance by the strong waves of
these same "great wits", and this is "madness". Madness -
the incapacity of the brain to respond regularly to vibrations - may indeed be
due to lack or arrest of development, lack or arrest of brain organisation, and
such madness is not allied to "great wits"; but it is a [220]
significant and pregnant fact that a brain in advance of normal evolution,
developing new and delicately balanced combinations for the enriched expression
of consciousness on the physical plane, is the brain of all others that may
most easily be disabled by the throwing out of gear of some part of its
mechanism not yet sufficiently established to resist a strain. To this again we
must return in considering the super-physical consciousness.
3. THE SUPER-PHYSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS.
Psychologists in the West have lately betaken themselves to the study
of states of consciousness other than the waking; these are variously
designated as "abnormal", "sub-conscious",
"inconscient", and often as "dream-consciousness" - because
the dream is the most generally recognised and universal form of other-consciousness.
At first there was a tendency to regard these states as the result of
disordered brain conditions, and this view is still largely held; but the more
advanced psychologists are out-growing this narrow [221] idea, and are
beginning to study such states as definite manifestations of consciousness
under conditions not yet understood, but not necessarily disorderly; some
definitely recognise a "larger consciousness", a part only of which
can find expression in the brain as at present evolved. In the East, this state
of other consciousness has for long ages been regarded as higher than the
waking state, as that of the consciousness set free from the narrow limits of
the physical brain, and acting in a subtler and more plastic and congenial
medium. Dream has been regarded as one phase of this superphysical activity,
and as a touch with higher worlds; and means have been taken to arouse
Self-consciousness in the dream-world, to set Self-consciousness, clothed in
its higher vestures, free from the physical body at will; so that, instead of
the vague and confused answers to impacts from higher worlds in undeveloped
dream states, Self-consciousness may be established therein with clear and
definite vision. To effect this, Self-consciousness in its higher vehicles must
be at first [222] removed from the physical body and made active on the astral
plane; for until it knows itself out of the dense body, it cannot separate out
in the "dream", the extra-physical experiences from the chaotic
fragments of physical experiences mixed up with them in the brain. As clear
water poured into a muddy bucket becomes mixed up with the mud, so does an
astral experience, poured down into a brain full of fragments of past physical
happenings, become blurred, confused, incongruous[64]. Eastern psychology hence
sought after methods of separating the Self-consciousness from its physical
vehicle, and it is interesting to observe that these methods, wholly different
as they are from those used in the West, and directed to the intensifying of
consciousness, reduce the body to the same state of quiescence as that induced
by physical methods in the West, when the western psychologist betakes himself
to the study of other-consciousness.
Super-consciousness includes the whole [223] of the consciousness
above the waking-consciousness; that is, all on the higher planes that does not
express itself on the physical plane as Self-consciousness working through the
brain. It is therefore a great complexity, and covers a large number of
phenomena. Dream, as said, is part of it; so are all the workings of the astral
consciousness asserting themselves as premonitions, warnings, visions of
happenings distant in space or time, vague touches from other worlds, sudden
intuitions as regards character or events; also all the workings of the mental
consciousness, lower or higher, that appear as intuitive grasp of truths,
sudden insight into causal connexions, inspirations - mental or moral -
flashes of genius, visions of high artistic beauty, etc., etc. These irruptions
of the super-consciousness into the physical plane have the character of
unexpectedness, of conviction, of imperious authority, of lack of apparent
cause. They are unrelated, or only indirectly related, to the contents of the
waking-consciousness, and do not justify themselves to it, but simply impose
themselves on it. [224]
To bring the super-consciousness into manifestation on the physical
plane, it is necessary - in the early stages - to reduce the brain to
inactivity, to render the sense-organs unresponsive to physical impacts, and,
by expelling the conscious entity from the body, reduce that body to the state
called trance. Trance is but the sleep-state, artificially or abnormally induced;
whether produced by mesmeric, hypnotic, medicinal, or other means, the result
is the same, so far as the physical body is concerned. But the result on the
other planes will depend entirely on the evolution of consciousness on those
planes, and a highly evolved consciousness would not permit the use of hypnotic
or medicinal means - unless, perhaps, of an anaesthetic for an operation -
though such a one might allow, under exceptional circumstances, the use of mesmerism
in producing the trance state. Trance may also be produced by action from the
higher planes, as by intense concentration of thought, or by rapt contemplation
of an object of devotion, inducing exstasy. These are the means [225] used from
time immemorial by the Raja Yogis of the East, and the exstasy of the Saint in
the West is produced by this rapt contemplation; the trance is
indistinguishable from that produced by the means above referred to in the Salpetriere
and elsewhere. The Hatha Yogis also reach this same trance condition, but by means
much resembling the last named, - by staring at a black spot on a white ground,
at the point of the nose, and other similar practices.
But when other than physical vision and physical tests are used,
how great is the difference between the super-physical conditions of
consciousness in the hypnotised subject and in the Yogi. H. P. Blavatsky has
well described this difference: "In the trance state the Aura changes
entirely, the seven prismatic colours being no longer discernible. In sleep
also they are not all 'at home'. For those which belong to the spiritual
elements in the man, viz., yellow, Buddhi; indigo, Higher Manas; and the blue
of the Auric Envelope, will be either hardly discernible or altogether missing.
The Spiritual Man is free during sleep, [226] and though his physical memory
may not become aware of it, lives, robed in his highest essence, in realms on
other planes, in realms which are the land of reality, called dreams on our
plane of illusion. A good clairvoyant, moreover, if he had an opportunity of
seeing a Yogi in the trance state and a mesmerised subject side by side, would
learn an important lesson in Occultism. He would learn to know the difference
between self-induced trance and a hypnotic state resulting from extraneous
influence In the Yogi, the 'principles' of the lower quaternary disappear
entirely. Neither red, green, red-violet, nor the auric blue of the body are to
be seen; nothing but hardly perceptible vibrations of the golden-hued Prana
principle, and a violet flame streaked with gold rushing upwards from the head,
in the region where the Third Eye rests, and culminating in a point. If the
student remembers that the true violet, or the extreme end of the spectrum, is
no compound colour of red and blue, but a homogeneous colour with vibrations
seven times more rapid than those of the red, and that the golden [227] hue is
the essence of the three yellow lines from orange-red to yellow-orange and
yellow, he will understand the reason why; he [the Yogi] lives in his own Auric
Body, now become the vehicle of Buddhi-Manas. On the other hand, in a subject
in an artificially produced hypnotic or mesmeric trance, an effect of
unconscious when not of conscious Black Magic, unless produced by a high Adept,
the whole set of the principles will be present, with the Higher Manas
paralysed, Buddhi severed from it through that paralysis, and the red-violet
Astral Body entirely subjected to the Lower Manas and Kama Rupa"[65].
This difference in the appearance of the entranced person, as seen
by the clear-seeing eye, is connected with a difference of immense importance
in the after outcome of the trance. The Yogi, who thus leaves the body, leaves
it in full Self-consciousness, visits the higher worlds in full possession of
his faculties, and, on returning to the dense body, imprints on the evolved
brain the memory of his experiences. The little evolved person, [228]
entranced, "loses consciousness"; when his Self-consciousness is not
developed on the higher planes, his awareness is not there turned outwards; he
is practically as much asleep there, in the astral and mental worlds, as he is
in the physical plane, and on awaking from the trance he knows nothing of what
has occurred during its continuance, either here or elsewhere.
If, however, the subject be sufficiently evolved, as most people
are at this stage of evolution, to be Self-conscious on the astral plane, then
others may be profited by questioning him while entranced. For in the
artificially induced trance state, wherein the brain is cut off from the normal
action and reaction between itself and its environment, it becomes an
instrument, however inadequate, of the super-physical consciousness. Isolated
from its physical environment, rendered incapable of responding to its
accustomed stimuli from outside, cut off from its lower attachments while
remaining united to its higher, it continues to answer to the impacts from
above, and can do this the [229] more effectively since none of its energies
are running out into the physical plane. This is the essence of the trance
state. In the forcible closure of the avenues of the senses, through which its
forces pour out into the external world, these forces remain available as
servants of the superphysical consciousness. In the silence thus imposed on
the physical plane, the voices of the other planes can make themselves heard.
In the hypnotic trance, a quickening of the mental faculties is
observed: memory is found to embrace a far larger area, for the faint pulsings
left by far-off events become audible when the stronger pulsings from the
recent are temporarily stilled; people forgotten in the waking state are remembered
in the trance; languages known in childhood, but since lost, reappear; trivial
events re-arise. Sometimes the perceptive powers range over a larger area;
distant occurrences are seen, vision pierces through physical barriers, far-off
speech becomes audible. Fragments of other planes are also occasionally
glimpsed, much mixed up with the thought-forms [230] of waking hours. A whole
literature exists on this subject, and can be studied by the investigator.
It has also been found that the results of deeper trance are not
identical with those of the more superficial. As the trance deepens, higher
strata of the super-physical consciousness manifest themselves in the brain.
The famous case of Leonie I., II. and III. is well-known; and it should be
observed that Leonie I. knew nothing of Leonie II. and III.; that Leonie II.
knew Leonie I. but did not know Leonie III.; that Leonie III. knew both Leonie
I. and II. That is, the higher knows the
lower, while the lower does not know the higher - a most pregnant fact.
In the mesmeric trance, the higher phenomena are more easily
obtained than in the hypnotic, and, in this, very clear statements may be had
of the phenomena of the astral and even of the mental plane - where the
"subject" is well-developed - and sometimes glimpses are gained of
past lives.
When we see that the exclusion of [231] the physical plane is the
condition for these manifestations of the super-physical consciousness, we
begin to understand the rationale of the methods of Yoga, practised in the
East. When the methods are physical, as in Hatha Yoga, the ordinary hypnotic
trance is most often obtained, and the subject, on re-awakening, remembers
nothing of his experiences. The method of the Raja Yoga, in which the
consciousness is withdrawn from the brain by intense concentration, leads the
student to continuity of consciousness on the successive planes, and he
remembers his super-physical experiences on his return to the waking state.
Both in the West and in the East, the same cessation of waking-consciousness is
aimed at, in order to obtain traces of the super-physical consciousness, or as
the western psychologist would say, from the unconscious in man. The eastern
method, however, with thousands of years of experience behind it, yields
results incomparably greater in the realms of the super-physical consciousness,
and establishes, on the sure basis of reiterated [232] experiences, the
independence of consciousness as regards its physical vehicle.
The exstasy and the visions of Saints, in all ages and in all
creeds, afford another example of the irruptions from the
"unconscious". In these, prolonged and absorbing prayer, or
contemplation, is the means for producing the necessary brain-condition. The
avenues of the senses become closed by the intensity of the inner
concentration, and the same state is reached spasmodically and involuntarily
which the practiser of Raja Yoga seeks deliberately to attain. Hence we find
that devotees of all faiths ascribe their visions to the favour of the Deity
worshipped, and not to the fact that they have produced in themselves a passive
brain-condition, which enables the super-physical consciousness to imprint on
that brain the sights and sounds of the higher worlds.
Prof. William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience,
points out that some of the most striking of these irruptions from the
"unconscious" are cases of "sudden conversions", in which
[233] a sudden thought, or vision, or voice, has changed at once and completely
the whole course of a man's waking life. He rightly argues that a force,
sufficiently powerful to produce such effects, cannot be lightly waved aside, or
contemptuously ignored, by any serious student of human consciousness. This
whole class of psychical phenomena demands careful and scientific study, and
promises a rich harvest of results, as to the super-physical consciousness, to
repay the serious investigator.
As against this view, however, it is urged that these facts are
observed in connexion with morbid nervous states, and that the subjects are
hysterical, over-excited persons, whose experiences are vitiated by their
condition. In the first place, this is not always true; the eastern Raja Yogis
are persons distinguished for their calmness and serenity, and some of the
cases of conversion have been those of worldly and capable men. Let it be
granted, however, that in the majority of cases the nervous condition is
morbid, and the brain [234] overstrained, what then? The normal brain is
admittedly evolved to the point of responding to the vibrations of the physical
world, and of transmitting these upwards, and of transmitting downwards mental
and astral vibrations connected with these, from the higher vehicles. It is not
yet evolved to the point of receiving without disturbance very violent
vibrations from the higher planes, nor of responding at all to the vibrations
set up in the subtler vehicles by the external phenomena of their own planes.
Very violent emotions of joy, pain, grief, terror, often prove too much for the
normal brain, causing severe headache, hysteria, and even nervous collapse. It
is, therefore, no wonder that the very violent emotion which causes what is
called a conversion should often be accompanied by similar nervous distress.
The important point is, that when the nervous upset has passed, the effect -
the changed attitude towards life - remains. The nervous disturbance is due to
the inadequacy of the physical brain to bear the violent and rapid vibrations
dashing down upon it; the [235] permanently changed attitude is due to the
steady pressure of the super-physical consciousness, continuously exerted.
Where the super-physical consciousness is not sufficiently developed to exert
this continuous pressure, the converted person "falls from grace" as
the surge of emotion ebbs away.
In cases of visions, and like phenomena, we have already seen that
they may occur when a form of trance has been produced. But without this, such
phenomena may occur, in cases where the brain is in a state of tension, either
from some temporary cause, or from the fact that its evolution has gone beyond
the normal. Strong emotion may increase the nervous tension to the point where
response to direct astral vibrations becomes possible, and thus an astral
happening becomes visible or audible. The reaction from the strain will
probably show itself as nervous disturbance. When the brain is more highly
evolved than the ordinary brain, has
become more complicated and more sensitive, astral happenings may be felt
constantly, and this strain may well be [236] somewhat greater than the nervous
system is quite fitted to bear, in addition to bearing the ordinary wear and tear
of modern civilisation. Hence, again, hysteria and other forms of nervous
distress are likely to accompany the visions.
But these facts do not take away from the importance of the
experiences, as facts in consciousness. Rather, perhaps, do they increase their
importance, as showing the way in which evolution works in the action of the
environment on an organism. The reiterated impacts of external forces stimulate
the growing organism, and very often temporarily overstrain it; but the very
strain forces forward its evolution. The crest of the evolutionary wave must
always consist of abnormal organisms; the steady, normal, safe, average
organisms follow on behind; they are most respectable, but perhaps not so
interesting as the pioneers, and most certainly not so instructive as regards
the future. As a matter of fact, the forces of the astral plane are constantly
playing vigorously on the human brain, in order that it may develop as a fuller
[237] vehicle of consciousness, and a sensitive brain, in the transitional
state, is apt to be thereby thrown a little out of gear with the world of its
past. It is probable that a good many
activities to which thought is at present directed will, in the future, be
carried on automatically, and will gradually sink below the threshold of the
waking consciousness, as have done various functions, once performed purposively.
As these changes go on, the subtler vibrations must inevitably show
themselves in an increasing number in the most delicately equilibrated brains,
those which are not normal, inasmuch as these - on the crest of evolution -
will be those most capable of responding. Dr. Maudsley writes: "What right
have we to believe Nature under any obligation to do her work by means of
complete minds only? She may find an incomplete mind a more suitable instrument
for a particular purpose"[66]. And Prof. James himself remarks: "If
there were such a thing as inspiration [238] from a higher realm, it might well
be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the
requisite receptivity"[67].
When we once recognise that forces subtler than the physical must
necessitate for their expression a more refined vehicle than the brain organised
for the reception of the physical, we shall cease to be troubled or distressed
when we find that the super-physical forces often find their readiest
expression through brains that are more or less out of gear with the physical
plane. And we shall understand that the abnormal physical symptoms accompanying
their manifestations in no way derogate from the value of these energies, nor
from the importance of the part they will play in the future of humanity. At
the same time the wish must naturally arise to find out some method whereby
these forces may be enabled to manifest themselves without risking the
destruction of their physical instrument.
This way has been found in the East in the practice of Raja Yoga,
whereby the [239] safe exercise of the higher consciousness is sought by
intense concentration. This concentration, in itself, develops the brain as an
instrument for the subtler forces, working in the brain-cells in the manner
already described in connexion with thought.[68] Moreover, it slowly opens up
the set of spirillae of the atom, next in order to those now in activity, and
thus adds a new organ for the higher functioning. This process is necessarily a
slow one, but it is the only safe way of development; and, if its slowness be
resented, it may be suggested as a reason for patience that the student is
endeavouring to ante-date the atomic development of the next Round, and he
can hardly expect to accomplish this with rapidity. It is, however, this
slowness of the Raja Yogic practices which renders them somewhat unacceptable
to the hurrying West; and yet there is no other way to secure a balanced
development. The choice lies between this and the morbid nervous disturbances
which accompany the irruptions of the super-[240]physical consciousness into
an unprepared vehicle. We cannot transcend the laws of Nature; we can only try
to understand, and then to utilise them. [241]
CHAPTER XI.
THE MONAD AT WORK.
1. BUILDING HIS VEHICLES.
LET us now consider the work of the Monad in the shaping of his
vehicles, when he has, as his representatives - as himself on the third,
fourth, and fifth planes - Atma-Buddhi-Manas, with the causal body as the
receptacle, the treasure-house, of the experiences of each incarnation.
At the close of each period of life, that is to say, at the end of
each devachanic existence, he must stimulate into renewed activity the three
successive nuclei of the bodies he is to wear during his next life-period.
First, he arouses the mental nucleus. This arousing consists in increasing the
flow of life through the spirillae. It will be remembered that when the
permanent units "went to [242] sleep", the normal flow of life in the
spirillae lessened, and, during the whole period of repose, this flow is small
and slow.[69] When the time for reincarnation arrives, this flow is increased,
the spirillae thrill with life, and the permanent units, one after another,
behave as magnets, attracting round themselves appropriate matter. Thus when
the mental unit is stimulated, it begins to vibrate strongly, according to the
vibratory powers - the results of past experiences - stored up therein, drawing
towards and arranging round itself appropriate matter from the mental plane.
Just as a bar of soft iron becomes a
magnet when a current is sent through a wire encircling it, and as matter
within its magnetic field will at once arrange itself round that magnet, so is
it with the permanent mental unit. When the life-current encircles it, it
becomes a magnet, and matter within the field of its forces arranges itself
round it and forms a new mental body. The matter attracted will be according to
the complexity of the permanent unit. Not only will finer or [244] coarser
matter be attracted, but the matter must also vary in the development of the
atoms which enter into the formation of its aggregations. The molecules
attracted will be composed of atoms the vibratory energies of which are
identical with, or approach nearly to, or are in tune with, those of the
attracting unit. Hence, according to the stage of evolution reached by the man,
will be the development of the matter of his new mental vehicle. In this way,
incarnation after incarnation, a suitable mental body is built up.
Exactly the same process is repeated on the astral plane in the
building of the new astral body. The astral nucleus - the astral permanent atom
- is similarly vivified, and acts in a similar way.
The man is thus clothed with new mental and astral bodies which
express his stage of evolution, and enable whatever powers and faculties he
possesses to express themselves duly in their own worlds.
But when we come to the shaping of the body on the physical plane a
new [245] element appears. So far as the Monad is concerned, the work is the same.
He vivifies the physical nucleus - the physical permanent atom - and it acts as
a magnet like its fellows. But now it is as though a man interfered with the
attraction and arrangement of matter within a magnetic field; the Elemental,
charged with the duty of shaping the etheric double after the model given by
the Lords of Karma, steps in and takes control of the work. The materials;
indeed, may be gathered together, as a workman might carry bricks for the
building of a house, but the builder takes the bricks, accepts or rejects, and
sets them according to the plan of the architect.
The question arises: Why this difference? Why, on reaching the
physical plane, where we might expect a repetition of the previous processes,
should an alien power take the control of the building out of the hands of the
owner of the house? The answer lies in the working of the law of karma. On the
higher planes, the sheaths express as much of the man as is developed, and he
is not there working [245] out the results of his past relations with others.
Each centre of Consciousness, on those planes, is working within its own
circle; its energies are directed towards its own vehicles, and only so much of
them as is finally expressed through the physical vehicle acts directly upon
others. These relations with others complicate his karma on the physical plane,
and the particular physical form that he wears during a particular life -
period must be suitable for the working out of this complicated karma. Hence
the need for the adjusting interference of the Lords of Karma. Were he at a
point of evolution at which he entered into similarly direct relations with
others on other planes, similar limitations of his power to shape his vehicles
on those planes would appear. In the sphere of his external activities,
whatever it may be, these limitations must present themselves.
Hence the shaping of the physical body is done by an authority
higher than his own; he must accept the conditions of race, nation, family,
circumstances, demanded by his past activities. This [246] limiting action of
karma necessitates the building of a vehicle which is but a partial expression of the working consciousness
- partial, not only because of the shutting off of power by the coarseness of
the material itself, but also because of the external limitations above
referred to. Much of his consciousness, even though ready for expression on the
physical plane, may thus be excluded, and only a small part of it may appear on
the physical plane as waking-consciousness.
The next point in connexion with this building that we must
consider is the special work of organising the vehicles as expressions of
consciousness, leaving apart the general building by desire and thought, with
which we are so familiar. We are concerned here with details, rather than with
broad outlines.
We know that while qualities are imparted to matter during the
descent of the Second Logos, the arrangement of these specialised materials
into relatively permanent forms belongs to His ascent. When the Monad, through
his reflexion [247] as the Spiritual Man, assumes some directive power over his
vehicles, he finds himself in possession of a form in which the sympathetic
nervous system is playing a very large part, and in which the cerebro-spinal has
not yet assumed predominance. He will have to work up a number of connecting
links between this sympathetic system which he inherits and the centres which
he must organise in his astral body, for his future independent functioning
therein. But before any independent functioning in any higher vehicle is
possible, it is necessary to carry it to a fairly high point as a transmitting vehicle, that is a vehicle through which he works down to his body on
the physical plane. We must distinguish between the primary work of the
organisation of the mental and astral vehicles that fits them to be
transmitters of part of the consciousness of the Spiritual Man, and the later
work of developing these same vehicles into independent bodies, in which the
Spiritual Man will be able to function on their respective planes. Hence there
are two [248] tasks to be performed: first the organisation of the mental and
astral vehicles as transmitters of consciousness to the physical body;
secondly, the organisation of these vehicles into independent bodies, in which
consciousness can function without the help of the physical body.
The astral and mental vehicles, then, must be organised in order
that the Spiritual Man may use the physical brain and nervous system as his
organ of consciousness on the physical plane. The impulse to such use comes
from the physical world by impacts upon the various nerve-ends, causing waves
of nervous energy to pass along the fibres to the brain: these waves pass from
the dense brain to the etheric, thence to the astral, thence to the mental
vehicle, arousing a response from the consciousness in the causal body on the
mental plane. That consciousness, thus roused by impacts from without, gives
rise to vibrations, which flow down in answer from the causal body to the
mental, from the mental to the astral, from the astral to the etheric and dense
physical; [249] the waves set up electric currents in the etheric brain, and
these act on the dense matter of the nervous cells.
All these vibratory actions gradually organise the first inchoate
clouds of astral and mental matter into vehicles which serve as effective
fields for these constant actions and reactions. This process goes on during
hundreds of births, started, as we have seen, from below, but gradually coming
more and more under the control of the Spiritual Man; he begins to direct his
activities by his memories of past sensations, and starts each activity under
the impulse of these memories stimulated by desire. As the process continues,
more and more forcible direction comes from within, and less and less directive
power is exercised by the attractions and repulsions of external objects, and
thus the control of the building up of the vehicles is largely withdrawn from
the without and is centred in the within.
As the vehicle becomes more organised, certain aggregations of
matter appear within it, at first cloudy and vague, then [250] more and more
definitely outlined. These are the future chakras, or wheels, the sense-centres
of the astral body, as distinguished from the astral sense-centres connected
with the sense-organs and centres of the physical body.[70] But nothing is done
to vivify these slowly growing centres for immense periods of time, and the
connexion of them with the physical body is often delayed, even after they are
functioning on the astral plane; for this connexion can only be made from the
physical vehicle, wherein the fiery force of Kundalini resides. Before
Kundalini can reach them, so that they can pass their observations on to the physical
body, they must be linked to the sympathetic nervous system, the large
ganglionic cells in that system being the points of contact. When these links
are made, the fiery current can flow through, and observations of astral events
can be transmitted fully to the physical brain. While they can only be thus
linked with the physical vehicle, the building of them as centres and the
gradual organisation [251] of them into wheels, can be begun from any vehicle,
and will be begun in any individual from that vehicle which represents the
special type of temperament to which he belongs. According as a man belongs to
one typical temperament or another, so will be the place of the greatest
activity in the building up of all the vehicles, in the gradual making of them
into effective instruments of consciousness to be expressed on the physical
plane. This centre of activity may be in the physical, astral, lower, or higher
mental body. In any of these, or even higher still, according to the
temperamental type, this centre will be found in the principle which marks out
the temperamental type, and from that it works "upwards" or
"downwards", shaping the vehicles so as to make them suitable for the expression of that temperament.
2. AN EVOLVING MAN.
A special case may be taken to facilitate the understanding of
this process - a [252] temperament in which the concrete mind predominates. We
will trace the Spiritual Man through the third, fourth, and fifth Root Races.
When we look at him at work in the third Race, we find him very infantile
mentally, even though the mind is the predominant note of his type. The surging
life around him, that he can neither understand nor master, works strongly upon
him from outside, and powerfully affects his astral vehicle. This astral
vehicle will be retentive of impressions, in consequence of the temperament,
and the desires will stimulate the infantile mind to efforts directed to their
satisfaction. His physical constitution differs from that of the fifth Race
man; the sympathetic system is still dominant, and the cerebro-spinal system
subordinate, but parts of the sympathetic system are beginning to lose much of
their effectiveness as instruments of consciousness, belonging, as such
instruments, to the stage below the human. There are two bodies in the brain
especially connected with the sympathetic system in their inception, although
now forming part of [253] the cerebro-spinal - the pineal gland and the
pituitary body. They illustrate the way in which a part of the body may function
in one manner at an early stage, may then lose its special use and function
little, if at all, and at a later stage of evolution may again be stimulated by
a higher kind of life, which will give it a new use and function at a higher
stage of evolution.
The development of these bodies belongs to the invertebrate rather
than to the vertebrate kingdom, and the "third eye" is spoken of by
biologists as the "invertebrate eye". It is, however, still found, as
an eye among vertebrates, for a snake was lately found in Australia which
showed on the top of the head a peculiar arrangement of semitransparent
scales; when these were cut away a complete eye was found underneath - an eye
complete in its parts although not functioning. That third eye was functioning among
the Lemurians in the vague and general way characteristic of the lower stages
of evolution, and specially characteristic of the sympathetic [254] system. As
our man advanced from the Lemurian into the Atlantean Race, the third eye
ceased to function, the brain developed round it, and it became the appendage
now called the pineal gland. As a Lemurian, he had been psychic, the
sympathetic system being largely affected by the surgings of the undeveloped
astral body. As an Atlantean, he gradually lost his psychic powers, as the
sympathetic system became subordinate and the cerebro-spinal grew stronger.
The growth of the cerebro-spinal system would be more rapid in this
Atlantean than in those of other temperaments, because the main activity would
be in the concrete mind, and would thus stimulate and fashion it; the astral
body would lose its predominance sooner, and would become more rapidly a
transmitter of mental impulses to the brain. Hence, when our man passed on into
the fifth Race, he would be peculiarly ready to take advantage of its
characteristics; he would build a large and well-proportioned brain; he would
utilise, his astral chiefly [255] as a transmitter, and would build his chakras
from the mental plane.
3. THE PITUITARY BODY AND PINEAL GLAND.
To return to the second of the two bodies mentioned above - the
pituitary body. This is regarded as developed from a primeval mouth, in direct
continuity with the alimentary canal of the invertebrates. It ceased to
function as a mouth in the vertebrates, and became a rudimentary organ; but it
has retained a peculiar function in connexion with the growth of the body. It
is active during the normal period of physical growth, and the more actively it
functions, the greater the growth of the body. In giants it has been found that
this organ is peculiarly active. Moreover, the pituitary body sometimes again
begins to function in later life, when the bony framework of the body is set,
and then causes abnormal and monstrous growth at the free points of the body,
hands, feet, nose, etc., giving rise to disfigurement of a most distressing
kind. [256]
As the cerebro-spinal system became dominant, the earlier function
of these two bodies disappeared; but these organs have a future as well as a
past. The past was connected with the sympathetic system; the future is
connected with the cerebrospinal system. As evolution goes on, and the chakras
in the astral body are vivified, the pituitary body becomes the physical organ
for astral, and later, for mental clairvoyance. Where too great a strain is
made upon the astral faculty of sight, while in the physical body, inflammation
of the pituitary body sometimes results. This organ is the one through which
the knowledge gained by astral vision is transmitted to the brain; and it is
also used in vivifying the points of contact between the sympathetic system and
the astral body, whereby a continuity of consciousness is established between the astral and
physical planes.
The pineal gland becomes connected with one of the chakras in the
astral body, and through that with the mental body, and serves as a physical
organ for the transmission of thought from one brain [257] to another. In
thought transmission the thought may be flashed from mind to mind, mental
matter being used as the medium for transmission; or it may be sent down to the
physical brain, and by means of the pineal gland may be sent, via the physical
ether, to the pineal gland in another brain, and thus to the receiving consciousness.
While the centre of activity lies in the dominant principle of the
man, the connexion of the chakras with the physical body must be made, as
said, from the physical plane. The object of this connexion is not to make the
astral vehicle a more efficient transmitter to the physical body of the
energies of the Spiritual Man, but to enable the astral vehicle to be in full
touch with the physical. There may be different centres of activity for the
building up of transmitting vehicles, but it is necessary to start from the
physical plane in order to bring the results of the activities of bodies
functioning on other planes within the waking-consciousness. Hence the high
importance of physical purity in diet and other matters. [258]
People often ask: How does knowledge gained on higher planes reach
the brain, and why is it not accompanied by a memory of the circumstances under
which it was acquired? Anyone who practises meditation regularly knows that
much knowledge that he has not gained by study on the physical plane appears in
the brain. Whence comes it? It comes from the astral or mental plane, where it
was acquired, and reaches the brain in the ordinary way above described; the
consciousness has assimilated it on the mental plane directly, or it has
reached it from the astral, and sends down thought-waves as usual. It may have
been communicated by some entity on the higher plane, who has acted directly on
the mental body. But the circumstances of the communication may not be
remembered, for one of two reasons, or for both. Most people are not what is
technically called "awake" on the astral and mental planes; that is
their faculties are turned inwards, are occupied with mental processes and
emotions, and are not engaged in the observation of the external phenomena of,
those planes. [259] They may be very receptive, and their astral and mental
bodies may easily be thrown into vibration, and the vibrations convey the
knowledge which is thus given, but their attention is not turned to the person
making the communication. As evolution goes on, people become more and more
receptive on the astral and mental planes, but do not therefore become aware of
their surroundings.
The other reason for the lack of memory is the absence of the
connecting links with the sympathetic system before mentioned. A person may be
"awake" on the astral plane and functioning actively thereon, and he
may be vividly conscious of his surroundings. But if the connecting links
between the astral and physical systems have not been made, or are not
vivified, there is a break in consciousness. However vivid may be the
consciousness on the astral plane, it cannot, until these links are
functioning, bring through and impress on the physical brain the memory of
astral experiences. In addition to these links, there must be the active
functioning of the pituitary body, [260] which focusses the astral vibrations
much as a burning glass focusses the rays of the sun. A number of the astral
vibrations are drawn together and made to fall on a particular point, and
vibrations being thus set up in dense physical matter, the further propagation
of these is easy. All this is necessary for "remembering".
4. THE PATHS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
The question arises: Does consciousness always travel along the same
path to reach its physical vehicle? Transits, we know, are sometimes made
directly through the atomic sub-planes from plane to plane, and sometimes by
passing through each sub-plane from the seventh to the first before reaching
the atomic sub-plane next below. Which of these paths does consciousness follow In its normal working, in the ordinary
process of thinking, the wave comes steadily down through each successive
sub-plane, from the mental through the seven astral sub-planes to the physical
etheric, and so to the dense nervous matter. This wave sets up electrical
[261] currents in the etheric matter, and these affect the protoplasm of the
grey cells. But when the peculiar flashes of consciousness occur, as in
flashes of genius, or as in sudden illuminative ideas which flash into the mind
- such a flash as comes to the scientific man when out of a great mass of facts
there suddenly springs forth the unifying underlying law - then the
consciousness pours downward through the atomic sub-planes only, and thus
reaches the brain. This is the illuminative idea which justifies itself by its
mere appearance, like the sunlight, and does not gain in compelling power by
any process of reasoning. Thus reasoning comes to the brain by the successive
sub-planes; authoritative illumination by the atomic sub-planes only. [262]
CHAPTER XII.
THE NATURE OF MEMORY.
1. THE GREAT SELF AND THE LITTLE SELVES.
WHAT is memory? and how does it work? by what means do we recover
the past, whether near or remote? For,
after all, whether the past be near or remote, belonging to this or to any
anterior life, the means which govern its recovery must be similar, and we
require a theory which will include all cases of memory, and at the same time
will enable us to understand each particular case.
The first step towards obtaining a definite and intelligible theory
is a comprehension of our own composition, of the Self with its sheaths, and
their interrelation; and we may here briefly restate the main facts in the
foregoing chapters [263] which directly bear on the problem of Memory. We must
bear constantly in mind the facts that our consciousness is a unit, and that
this unit of consciousness works through various sheaths, which impose upon it a
false appearance of multiplicity. The innermost, or most tenuous, of these
sheaths is inseparable from the unit of consciousness; in fact, it is this
sheath which makes it a unit. This unit is the Monad, dwelling on the anupadaka
plane; but for all practical purposes we may take it as the familiar Inner Man,
the Tri-Atom, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, thought of as apart from the atmic, buddhic,
and manasic sheaths. This unit of consciousness manifests through, abides in,
sheaths belonging to the five planes of its activity, and we call it the Self
working in its sheaths.
We must think, then, of a conscious Self dwelling in vehicles that
vibrate. The vibrations of these vehicles correspond, on the side of matter,
with the changes in consciousness on the side of the Self. We cannot accurately
speak of vibrations of consciousness, because [264] vibrations can only belong
to the material side of things, the form side, and only loosely can we speak of
a vibrating consciousness. We have changes in consciousness corresponding with
vibrations in sheaths.
The question of the vehicles, or bodies, in which consciousness,
the Self, is working, is all-important as regards Memory. The whole process of
recovering more or less remote events is a question of picturing them in the particular
sheath - of shaping part of the matter of the sheath into their likeness - in
which consciousness is working at the time. In the Self, as a fragment of the
Universal Self - which for our purpose we can take to be the LOGOS, although in
verity the LOGOS is but a portion of the Universal Self - is present
everything; for in the Universal Self is present all which has taken place, is
taking place, and will take place in the universe; all this, and an illimitable
more, is present in the Universal Consciousness. Let us think only of a
universe and its LOGOS. We speak of Him as omnipresent and omniscient. Now,
fundamentally, that [265] omnipresence and omniscience are in the
individualised Self, as being one with the LOGOS, but - we must put in here a but
- with a difference; the difference consisting in this, that while in the
separated Self as Self, apart from all vehicles, that omnipresence and
omniscience reside by virtue of his unity with the One Self, the vehicles in
which he dwells have not yet learned to vibrate in answer to his changes of consciousness,
as he turns his attention to one or another part of his contents. Hence we say
that all exists in him potentially, and not as in the LOGOS actually: all
the changes which go on in the consciousness
of the LOGOS are reproducible in this separated Self, which is an indivisible
part of His life, but the vehicles are not yet ready as media of manifestation.
Because of the separation of form, because of this closing in of the separate,
or individualised, Self, these
possibilities which are within it as part of the Universal Self are latent, not
manifest, are possibilities, not actualities. As in every atom which goes to
the making up of a vehicle, there are illimitable possibilities of vibration,
so in every [266] separated Self there are illimitable possibilities of
changes of consciousness.
We do not find in the atom, at the beginning of a solar system, an
illimitable variety of vibrations; but we learn that it possesses a capacity to
acquire an illimitable variety of vibrations; it acquires these in the course
of its evolution, as it responds continually to vibrations playing upon its surface; at the end of a solar
system, an immense number of the atoms in it have reached the stage of
evolution in which they can vibrate in answer to any vibration touching them that arises within
the system; then, for that system, these atoms are said to be perfected. The
same thing is true for the separated, or individualised, Selves. All the
changes taking place in the consciousness of the LOGOS which are represented in
that universe, and take shape as forms in that universe, all these are also
within the perfected consciousnesses in that universe, and any of these changes
can be reproduced in any one of them. Here is Memory: the reappearance, the
reincarnation in matter, of anything that has been within that [267] universe,
and therefore ever is, in the consciousness of its LOGOS, and in the
consciousnesses which are parts of His consciousness. Although we think of the
Self as separate as regards all other Selves, we must ever remember it is
inseparate as regards the ONE SELF the LOGOS. His life is not shut out from any
part of His universe, and in Him we live and move and have our being, open ever
to Him, filled with His life.
As the self puts on vehicle after vehicle of matter, its powers of
gaining knowledge become, with each
additional vehicle, more circumscribed but also more definite. Arrived on the
physical plane, consciousness is narrowed down to the experiences which can be
received through the physical body, and chiefly through those openings which we
call the sense-organs; these are avenues through which knowledge can reach the
imprisoned Self, though we often speak of them as shutting out knowledge when
we think of the capacities of the subtler vehicles. The physical body renders
perception definitive and clear much as a screen [268] with a minute hole in it
allows a picture of the outside world to appear on a wall that would otherwise
show a blank surface; rays of light are truly shut off from the wall, but, by
that very shutting off, those allowed to enter form a clearly defined picture.
2. CHANGES IN THE VEHICLES AND IN CONSCIOUSNESS.
Let us now see what happens as regards the physical vehicle in the
reception of an impression and in the subsequent recall of that impression,
i.e., in the memory of it.
A vibration from outside strikes on an organ of sense, and is
transmitted to the appropriate centre in the brain. A group of cells in the
brain vibrates, and that vibration leaves the cells in a state somewhat
different from the one in which they were previous to its reception, The trace
of that response is a possibility for the group of cells; it has once vibrated
in a particular way, and it retains for the rest of its existence as a group of
cells the [269] possibility of again vibrating in that same way without again
receiving a stimulus from the outside world. Each repetition of an identical
vibration strengthens this possibility, each leaving its own trace, but many
such repetitions will be required to establish a self-initiated repetition; the
cells come nearer to this possibility of a self-initiated vibration by each
repetition compelled from outside. But this vibration has not stopped with the
physical cells; it has been transmitted inwards to the corresponding cell, or
group of cells, in the subtler vehicles, and has ultimately produced a change
in consciousness. This change, in its turn, re-acts on the cells, and a
repetition of the vibrations is initiated from within by the change in
consciousness, and this repetition is a memory of the object which started the
series of vibrations. The response of the cells to the vibration from outside,
a response compelled by the laws of the physical universe, gives to the cells
the power of responding to a similar impulse, though feebler, coming from
within. A little power is exhausted in each moving [270] of matter in a new
vehicle, and hence a gradual diminution of the energy in the vibration. Less
and less is exhausted as the cells repeat similar vibrations in response to new
impacts from without, the cells answering more readily with each repetition.
Therein lies the value of the "without"; it wakes up in
the matter, more easily than by any other way, the possibility of response,
being more closely akin to the vehicles than the "within".
The change caused in consciousness, also, leaves the consciousness
more ready to repeat that change than it was first to yield it, and each such
change brings the consciousness nearer to the power to initiate a similar
change. Looking back into the dawnings of consciousness, we see that the
imprisoned Selves go through innumerable experiences before a Self-initiated
change in consciousness occurs; but bearing this in mind, as a fact, we can
leave these early stages, and study the workings of consciousness at a more
advanced point. We must also remember that every impact, reaching the innermost
[271] sheath, and giving rise to a change in consciousness, is followed by a
reaction, the change in consciousness causing a new series of vibrations from
within outwards; there is the going inwards to the Self, followed by the
rippling outwards from the Self, the first due to the object, and giving rise
to what we call a perception, and the second due to the reaction of the Self,
causing what we call a memory.
A number of sense-impressions, coming through sight, hearing,
touch, taste, and smell run up from the physical vehicle through the astral to
the mental. There they are coordinated into a complex unity, as a musical chord
is composed of many notes. This is the special work of the mental body: it
receives many streams and synthesises them into one; it builds many impressions
into a perception, a thought, a complex unity.
3. MEMORIES.
Let us try to catch this complex thing, after it has gone inwards
and has caused a change in consciousness, an idea; the [272] change it has
caused gives rise to new vibrations in the vehicles, reproducing those it had
caused on its inward way, and in each vehicle it reappears in a fainter form.
It is not strong, vigorous, and vivid, as when its component parts flashed from
the physical to the astral, and from the astral to the mental; it reappears in
the mental in a fainter form, the copy of that which the mental sent inwards,
but the vibrations feebler; as the Self
receives from it a reaction - for the impact of a vibration on touching each
vehicle must cause a reaction - that reaction is far feebler than the original
action, and will therefore seem less "real" than that action; it
makes a lesser change in consciousness, and that lessening represents
inevitably a less "reality".
So long as the consciousness is too little responsive to be aware
of any impacts that do not come through with the impulsive vigour of the
physical, it is literally more in touch with the physical than with any other
sheath, and there will be no memories of ideas, but only memories of
perceptions, i.e., of pictures of [273] outside objects, caused by vibrations
of the nervous matter of the brain, reproducing themselves in the related
astral and mental matter. These are literally pictures in the mental matter, as
are the pictures on the retina of the eye. And the consciousness perceives
these pictures, "sees" them, as we may truly say, since the seeing of
the eye is only a limited expression of its perceptive power. As the
consciousness draws a little away from the physical, turning attention more to
the modifications in its inner sheaths, it sees these pictures reproduced in
the brain from the astral sheath by its own reaction passing outwards, and
there is the memory of sensations, The picture arises in the brain by the
reaction of the change in consciousness, and is recognised there. This
recognition implies that the consciousness has withdrawn largely from the
physical to the astral vehicle, and is working therein. The human consciousness
is thus working at the present time, and is, therefore, full of memories, these
memories being reproductions in the physical brain of past pictures, caused
[274] by reactions from consciousness. In a lowly evolved human type, these
pictures are pictures of past events in which the physical body was concerned,
memories of hunger and thirst and of their gratification, of sexual pleasures,
and so on, things in which the physical body took an active part. In a higher
type, in which the consciousness is working more in the mental vehicle, the
pictures in the astral body will draw more of its attention; these pictures are
shaped in the astral body by the vibrations coming outwards from the mental,
and are perceived as pictures by the consciousness as it withdraws itself more
into the mental body as its immediate vehicle. As this process goes on, and the
more awakened consciousness responds to vibrations initiated from outside on
the astral plane by astral objects,
these objects grow "real", and become distinguishable from the
memories, the pictures in the astral body caused by the reactions from
consciousness.
Let us note, in passing, that with the memory of an object goes
hand in hand a picture of the renewal of the keener [275] experience of the
object by physical contact, and this we call anticipation; and the more complete
the memory of an event the more complete is this anticipation. So that the
memory will sometimes even cause in the physical body the reactions which
normally accompany the contact with the external object, and we may savour in
anticipation pleasures which are not within present reach of the body. Thus the
anticipation of savoury food will cause "the mouth to water". This
fact will again appear, when we reach the completion of our theory of Memory.
4. WHAT IS MEMORY?
Now, having noted the changes in the vehicles which arise from
impacts from the external world, the
response to these as changes of consciousness, the feebler vibrations produced
in the vehicles by the reaction of consciousness, and the recognition of these
again by consciousness as memories, let us come to the crux of, the question:
What is Memory? The breaking up of the bodies between death [276] and
reincarnation puts an end to their
automatism, to their power of responding to vibrations similar to those
already experienced; the responsive groups are disintegrated, and all that
remains as a seed for future responses is stored within the permanent atoms;
how feeble this is, as compared with the new automatisms imposed on the mass of
the bodies by new experiences of the external, may be judged by the absence of
any memory of past lives initiated in the vehicles themselves. In fact, all the
permanent atoms can do is to answer more readily to vibrations of a kind
similar to those previously experienced than to those that come to them for the
first time. The memory of the cells, or of groups of cells, perishes at death,
and cannot be said to be recoverable, as such. Where then is Memory preserved?
The brief answer is: Memory is not a faculty, and is not preserved
it does not inhere in consciousness as a capacity, nor is any memory of events
stored up in the individual consciousness Every event is a present fact in the
universe-consciousness, [278] in the consciousness of the LOGOS; everything
that occurs in His universe, past, present, and future, is ever there in His
all-embracing consciousness, in His "eternal NOW". From the beginning
of the universe to its ending, from its dawn to its sunset, all is there,
ever-present, existent. In that ocean of ideas, all is; we, wandering in the
ocean, touch fragments of its contents, and our response to the contact is our
knowledge; having known, we can more readily again contact, and this repetition
- when falling short of the contact of the outside sheath of the moment with
the fragments occupying its own plane - is Memory. All "memories" are
recoverable, because all possibilities of image-producing vibrations are within
the consciousness of the LOGOS, and we can share in that consciousness the more easily as we have previously shared more
often similar vibrations; hence, the vibrations which have formed parts of our
experience are more readily repeated by us than those we have never known, and
here comes in the value of the [278] permanent atoms; they thrill out again, on being stimulated, the vibrations
previously performed, and out of all the possibilities of vibrations of the
atoms and molecules of our bodies those sound out which answer to the note
struck by the permanent atoms. The fact that we have been affected
vibrationally and by changes of consciousness during the present life makes it
easier for us to take out of the universal consciousness that of which we have
already had experience in our own. Whether it be a memory in the present life,
or one in a life long past, the method of recovery is the same. There is no
memory save the ever-present consciousness of the LOGOS, in whom we literally
live and move and have our being; and our memory is merely putting ourselves
into touch with such parts of His
consciousness as we have previously shared.
Hence, according to Pythagoras, all learning is remembrance, for it
is the drawing from the consciousness of the LOGOS into that of the separated
Self that which in our essential unity with [279] Him is eternally ours. On the
plane where the unity overpowers the separateness, we share His consciousness
of our universe; on the lower planes, where the separateness veils the unity,
we are shut out therefrom by our unevolved vehicles. It is the lack of
responsiveness in these which hinders us, for we can only know the planes
through them. Therefore we cannot directly improve our memory; we can only
improve our general receptivity and power to reproduce, by rendering our bodies
more sensitive, while being careful not to go beyond their limit of elasticity.
Also we can "pay attention"; i.e., we can turn the awareness of
consciousness, we can concentrate consciousness, on that special part of the
consciousness of the LOGOS to which we desire to attune ourselves. We need not
thus distress ourselves with calculations as to "how many angels can stand
on the point of a needle", how we can preserve in a limited space the
illimitable number of vibrations experienced in many lives; for the whole of
the form-producing vibrations in the universe [280] are ever-present, and are
available to be drawn upon by any individual unit, and can be reached as, by
evolution, such a one experiences ever more and more.
5. REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING.
Let us apply this to an event in our past life: Some of the
circumstances "remain in our memory", others are
"forgotten". Really, the event exists with all its surrounding
circumstances, "remembered" and "forgotten" alike, in but
one state, the memory of the LOGOS, the Universal Memory. Anyone who is able to
place himself in touch with that memory can recover the whole circumstance as
much as we can; the events through which we have passed are not ours, but form
part of the contents of His consciousness; and our sense of property in them is
only due to the fact that we have previously vibrated to them, and therefore
vibrate again to them more readily than if we contacted them for the first
time.
We may, however, contact them with different sheaths at different
times, living [281] as we do under time and space conditions which vary with
each sheath. The part of the consciousness of the LOGOS that we move through in
our physical bodies is far more restricted than that we move through in our
astral and mental bodies, and the contacts through a well-organised body are
far more vivid than those through a less-organised one. Moreover, it must be remembered that the restriction of
area is due to our vehicles only; faced by the complete event, physical,
astral, mental, spiritual, our consciousness of it is limited within the range
of the vehicles able to respond to it. We feel ourselves to be among the
circumstances which surround the grossest vehicle we are acting in, and which
thus touch it from "outside"; whereas we "remember" the
circumstances which we contact with the finer vehicles, these transmitting the
vibrations to the grosser vehicle, which is thus touched from
"within".
The test of objectivity that we apply to circumstances
"present" or "remembered" is that of the "common
sense". If others around us see as we see, hear as we hear, [282] we
regard the circumstances as objective; if they do not, if they are unconscious
of that of which we are conscious, we regard the circumstances as subjective.
But this test of objectivity is only valid for those who are active in the same
sheaths; if one person is working in the physical body and another in the
physical and the astral, the things objective to the man in the astral body
cannot affect the man in the physical body, and he will declare them to be
subjective hallucinations. The "common sense" can only work in
similar bodies; it will give similar results when all are in physical bodies,
all in astral, or all in mental. For the "common sense" is merely the
thought-forms of the LOGOS on each plane, conditioning each embodied consciousness, and enabling it to respond by
certain changes to certain vibrations in its vehicles. It is by no means
confined to the physical plane, but the average humanity at the present stage
of evolution has not sufficiently unfolded the indwelling consciousness for
them to exercise any "common sense" on the astral and mental planes.
"Common sense" is an eloquent [283] testimony to the oneness of our
indwelling lives; we see all things around us on the physical plane in the same
way, because our apparently separate consciousnesses are all really part of the
One Consciousness ensouling all forms. We all respond in the same general way,
according to the stage of our evolution, because we share the same
consciousness; and we are affected similarly by the same things because the
action and reaction between them and ourselves is the interplay of the One Life
in varied forms.
Recovery of anything by memory, then, is due to the ever-existence
of everything in the consciousness of the LOGOS, and He has imposed upon us the
limitations of time and space in order that we may, by practice, be able to
respond swiftly by changes of consciousness to the vibrations caused in our
vehicles by vibrations coming from other vehicles similarly ensouled by consciousness;
thus only can we gradually learn to distinguish precisely and clearly;
contacting things successively - that is, being in time - and contacting them in relative directions in regard to
[284] ourselves and to each other - that is, being in space - we are gradually
unfolded to the state in which we can recognise all simultaneously and each
everywhere - that is, out of time and space.
As we pass through countless happenings in life, we find that we
do not keep in touch with all through which we have passed; there is a very
limited power of response in our physical vehicle, and hence numerous
experiences drop out of its purview. In trance, we can recover these, and they
are said to emerge from the sub-conscious. Truly they remain ever unchanging in
the Universal Consciousness, and as we pass by them we become aware of them,
because the very limited light of our consciousness, shrouded in the physical
vehicle, falls upon them, and they disappear as we pass on; but as the area
covered by that same light shining through the astral vehicle is larger, they
again appear when we are in trance - that is, in the astral vehicle, free from
the physical; they have not come and gone and come back again, but the light of
our consciousness in the physical [285] vehicle had passed on, and so we
saw them not, and the more extended
light in the astral vehicle enables us to see them again. As Bhagavan Das has
well said:
"If a spectator wandered unrestingly through the halls of a
vast museum, a great art-gallery, at the dead of night, with a single small
lamp in one hand, each of the natural objects, the pictured scenes, the
statues, the portraits, would be illumined by that lamp, in succession, for a
single moment, while all the rest were in darkness, and after that single
moment, would itself fall into darkness again. Let there now be not one but
countless such spectators, as many in endless number as the objects of sight
within the place, each spectator meandering in and out incessantly through the
great crowd of all the others, each lamp bringing momentarily into light one object and for only that
spectator who holds that lamp. This immense and unmoving building is the
rock-bound ideation of the changeless Absolute. Each lamp-carrying spectator
out of the countless crowd is one line of [286] consciousness out of the
pseudo-infinite lines of such, that make up the totality of the one universal
consciousness. Each coming into light of each object is its potency, is an
experience of the Jiva; each falling into darkness is its lapse into the
latent. From the standpoint of the objects themselves, or of the universal
consciousness, there is no latency, nor potency. From that of the lines of
consciousness, there is."[71]
As vehicle after vehicle comes into fuller working, the area of
light extends, and the consciousness can turn its attention to any one part of
the area and observe closely the objects therein included. Thus, when the
consciousness can function freely on the astral plane, and is aware of its
surroundings there, it can see much that on the physical plane is
"past" - or "future", if they be things to which in the
"past" it has learned to respond. Things outside the area of light
coming through the vehicle of the astral body will be within the area of that
which streams from the subtler mental vehicle. When the causal [287] body is
the vehicle, the "memory of past lives" is recoverable, the causal
body vibrating more readily to events to which it has before vibrated, and the
light shining through it embracing a far larger area and illuminating scenes
long "past" - those scenes being really no more past than the scenes
of the present, but occupying a different spot in time and space. The lower
vehicles, which have not previously vibrated to these events, cannot readily
directly contact them and answer to them; that belongs to the causal body, the
relatively permanent vehicle. But when this body answers to them, the
vibrations from it readily run downwards, and may be reproduced in the mental,
astral, and physical bodies.
6. ATTENTION.
The phrase is used above, as to consciousness, that "it can
turn its attention to any one part of the area, and observe closely the objects
therein included". This "turning of the attention" corresponds very
closely in consciousness to what we should call focussing the eye in the
physical [288] body. If we watch the action taking place in the muscles of the
eye when we look first at a near and
then at a distant object, or vice versa, we shall be conscious of a slight movement, and this constriction or
relaxation causes a slight compression or the reverse in the lenses of the eye.
It is an automatic action now, quite instinctive, but it has only become so by
practice; a baby does not focus his eye, nor judge distance. He grasps as
readily at a candle on the other side of the room as at one within his reach,
and only slowly learns to know what is beyond his reach. The effort to see
clearly leads to the focussing of the eye, and presently it becomes automatic.
The objects for which the eye is focussed are within the field of clear vision,
and the rest are vaguely seen. So, also, the consciousness is clearly aware of
that to which its attention is turned; other things remain vague, "out of
focus".
A man gradually learns to thus turn his attention to things long
past, as we measure time. The causal body is put into touch with them, and the
vibrations are then transmitted to the lower bodies. The [289] presence of a
more advanced student will help a less advanced, because when the astral body
of the former has been made to vibrate responsively to long past events, thus
creating an astral picture of them, the astral body of the younger student can
more readily reproduce these vibrations and thus also "see". But even
when a man has learned to put himself into touch with his past, and through his
own with that of others connected with it, he will find it more difficult to
turn his attention effectively to scenes with which he has had no connexion;
and when that is mastered, he will still find it difficult to put himself into
touch with scenes outside the experiences of his recent past; for instance, if
he wishes to visit the moon, and by his accustomed methods launches himself in
that direction, he will find himself bombarded by a hail of unaccustomed
vibrations to which he cannot instinctively respond, and will need to fall back
on his inherent divine power to answer to anything which can affect his vehicles. If he seeks to go yet
further, to another planetary system, he will find a barrier he cannot
overleap, [290] the Ring Pass-not of his own Planetary Logos.
6. THE ONE CONSCIOUSNESS.
We thus begin to understand what is meant by the statements that
people at a certain grade of evolution can reach this or that part of the
kosmos; they can put themselves into touch with the consciousness of the LOGOS
outside the limitations imposed by their material vehicles on the less evolved.
These vehicles, being composed of matter modified by the action of the
Planetary Logos of the Chain to which they belong, cannot respond to the
vibrations of matter differently modified; and the student must be able to use
his atmic body before he can contact the Universal Memory beyond the limits of
his own Chain.
Such is the theory of Memory which I present for the consideration
of theosophical students. It applies equally to the small memories and
forgettings of everyday life as to the vast reaches alluded to in the above
paragraph. For there is nothing small or great to the LOGOS, and [291] when we
are performing the smallest act of memory, we are as much putting ourselves
into touch with the omnipresence and omniscience of the LOGOS, as when we are
recalling a far-off past. There is no "far-off", and no "near".
All are equally present at all times and in all spaces; the difficulty is with
our vehicles, and not with that all-embracing changeless Life. All becomes more
and more intelligible and more peace-giving as we think of that Consciousness,
in which is no "before" and no "after", no "past"
and no "future". We begin to feel that these things are but the
illusions, the limitations, imposed upon us by our own sheaths, necessary until
our powers are evolved and at our service. We live unconsciously in this mighty
Consciousness in which everything is eternally present, and we dimly feel that
if we could live consciously in that Eternal there were peace. I know of
nothing that can more give to the events of a life their true proportion than
this idea of a Consciousness in which everything is present from the beginning,
in which indeed there is no beginning and no ending. We learn that [292] there
is nothing terrible and nothing which is more that relatively sorrowful; and in
that lesson is the beginning of a true peace, which in due course shall
brighten into joy. [293]
Part II.
WILL, DESIRE, AND EMOTION.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
THE WILL TO LIVE
299
CHAPTER II.
DESIRE
1. The Nature of Desire
305
2. The Awakening of
Desire
310
3. The Relation of
Desire to Thought
314
4. Desire, Thought,
Action
318
5. The Binding Nature of
Desire
319
6. The Breaking of the
Bonds
322
CHAPTER III.
DESIRE (Continued)
1. The Vehicle of Desire
327
2. The Conflict of
Desire and Thought
333
3. The Value of an Ideal
338
4. The Purification of
Desire
342
CHAPTER IV.
EMOTION
1. The Birth of Emotion
348
2. The Play of Emotion
in the Family
354
3. The Birth of Virtues
361
4. Right and Wrong
363
5. Virtue and Bliss
365
6. The Transmutation of
the Emotions into Virtues and Vices
367
7. Application of the
Theory to Conduct
371
8. The Uses of Emotion
273
CHAPTER V.
EMOTION (Continued)
1. The Training of
Emotion
381
2. The Distorting Force
of Emotion
387
3. Methods of Ruling the
Emotions
390
4. The Using of Emotion
399
5. The Value of Emotion
in Evolution
405
CHAPTER VI.
THE WILL
1. The Will winning its
Freedom
409
2. Why so much Struggle