Chapter XIV: Preface (4)

THEO. Because your translators, their great learning notwithstanding,
have made of the philosophers, the Greeks especially, _misty_
instead of mystic writers. Take as an instance Plutarch, and read
what he says of “the principles” of man. That which he describes
was accepted literally and attributed to metaphysical superstition
and ignorance. Let me give you an illustration in point: “Man,”
says Plutarch, “is compound; and they are _mistaken who think him
to be compounded of two parts only_. For they imagine that the
understanding (brain intellect) is a part of the soul (the upper
Triad), but they err in this no less than those who make the soul
to be a part of the body, _i.e._, those who make of the _Triad_
part of the corruptible mortal _quaternary_. For the understanding
(nous) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner
than the body. Now this composition of the soul (ψυχη) with the
understanding (νοῦς) makes reason; and with the body (or thumos,
the animal soul) passion; of which the one is the beginning or
principle of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and
vice. Of these three parts conjoined and compacted together, the
earth has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the
understanding to the generation of man.”

This last sentence is purely allegorical, and will be comprehended
only by those who are versed in the esoteric science of
correspondences and know which planet is _related to every
principle_. Plutarch divides the latter into three groups, and
makes of the body a compound of physical frame, astral shadow,
and breath, or the triple lower part, which “from earth was
taken and to earth returns”; of the middle principle and the
instinctual soul, the second part, derived _from_ and _through_
and ever influenced by the moon[22]; and only of the higher part
or the _Spiritual Soul_, with the Atmic and Manasic elements in
it does he make a direct emanation of the Sun, who stands here
for _Agathon_ the Supreme Deity. This is proven by what he says
further as follows:

“Now of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three and
the other one of (out of) two. The former is in the region
and jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the
Mysteries, τελειν, resembled that given to death, τελευταν.
The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to
Demeter. As for the other death, it is in the moon or region of
Persephone.”

Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a _septenary_ during
life; a _quintile_ just after death, in Kama-loka; and a threefold
_Ego_, Spirit-Soul, and consciousness in _Devachan_. This
separation, first in “the Meadows of Hades,” as Plutarch calls
the _Kama-loka_, then in Devachan, was part and parcel of the
performances during the sacred Mysteries, when the candidates for
initiation enacted the whole drama of death, and the resurrection
as a glorified spirit, by which name we mean _Consciousness_. This
is what Plutarch means when he says:—

“And as with the one, the terrestrial, so with the other
celestial Hermes doth dwell. This suddenly and with violence
plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpina mildly and in a
long time disjoins the understanding from the soul.[23] For
this reason she is called _Monogenes, only begotten_, or rather
_begetting one alone_; for _the better part of man becomes
alone when it is separated by her_. Now both the one and the
other happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Fate
(Fatum or Karma) that every soul, whether with or without
understanding (mind), when gone out of the body, should wander
for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying
between the earth and moon (_Kama-loka_).[24] For those that
have been unjust and dissolute suffer then the punishment due
to their offences; but the good and virtuous are there detained
till they are purified, and have, by expiation, purged out of
them all the infections they might have contracted from the
contagion of the body, as if from foul health, living in the
mildest part of the air, called the Meadows of Hades, where
they must remain for a certain prefixed and appointed time. And
then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage
or long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy,
such as they principally receive who are initiated into Sacred
Mysteries, mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one’s
proper and peculiar hope.”

This is Nirvanic bliss, and no Theosophist could describe in
plainer though esoteric language the mental joys of Devachan,
where every man has his paradise around him, erected by his
consciousness. But you must beware of the general error into
which too many even of our Theosophists fall. Do not imagine that
because man is called septenary, then _quintuple_ and a triad, he
is a compound of seven, five, or three _entities_; or, as well
expressed by a Theosophical writer, of skins to be peeled off like
the skins of an onion. The “principles,” as already said, save the
body, the life, and the astral _eidolon_, all of which disperse
at death, are simply _aspects_ and _states of consciousness_.
There is but one _real_ man, enduring through the cycle of life
and immortal in essence, if not in form, and this is _Manas_, the
Mind-man or embodied Consciousness. The objection made by the
materialists, who deny the possibility of mind and consciousness
acting without matter is worthless in our case. We do not deny
the soundness of their argument; but we simply ask our opponents,
“Are you acquainted _with all the states of matter_, you who knew
hitherto but of three? And how do you know whether that which we
refer to as ABSOLUTE CONSCIOUSNESS or Deity for ever invisible
and unknowable, be not that which, though it eludes for ever our
human _finite_ conception, is still universal Spirit-matter or
matter-Spirit _in its absolute infinitude_?” It is then one of the
lowest, and in its manvantaric manifestations _fractioned_-aspects
of this Spirit-matter, which is the conscious _Ego_ that creates
its own paradise, a fool’s paradise, it may be, still a state of
bliss.

ENQ. But what is _Devachan_?

THEO. The “land of gods” literally; a condition, a state of mental
bliss. Philosophically a mental condition analogous to, but far
more vivid and real than, the most vivid dream. It is the state
after death of most mortals.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] In Mr. Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism” _d_, _e_, and _f_, are respectively called the Animal, the Human, and the Spiritual Souls, which answers as well. Though the principles in _Esoteric Buddhism_ are numbered, this is, strictly speaking, useless. The dual _Monad_ alone (_Atma-Buddhi_) is susceptible of being thought of as the two highest numbers (the 6th and 7th). As to all others, since _that_ “principle” only which is predominant in man has to be considered as the first and foremost, no numeration is possible as a general rule. In some men it is the higher Intelligence (Manas or the 5th) which dominates the rest; in others the Animal Soul (Kama-rupa) that reigns supreme, exhibiting the most bestial instincts, etc.

[20] Paul calls Plato’s _Nous_ “Spirit”; but as this spirit is “substance,” then, of course, _Buddhi_ and not _Atma_ is meant, as the latter cannot philosophically be called “substance” under any circumstance. We include Atma among the human “principles” in order not to create additional confusion. In reality it is no “human” but the universal _absolute_ principle of which Buddhi, the Soul-Spirit, is the carrier.

[21] “Plato and Pythagoras,” says Plutarch, “distribute the soul into two parts, the rational (noetic) and irrational (agnoia); that that part of the soul of man which is rational is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity, but that part of the soul which is divested of reason (agnoia) dies.” The modern term _Agnostic_ comes from _Agnosis_, a cognate word. We wonder why Mr. Huxley, the author of the word, should have connected his great intellect with “the soul divested of reason” which dies? Is it the exaggerated humility of the modern materialist?

[22] The Kabalists who know the relation of Jehovah, the life and children-giver, to the Moon, and the influence of the latter on generation, will again see the point as much as some astrologers will.

[23] Proserpina, or Persephone, stands here for post mortem Karma, which is said to regulate the separation of the lower from the higher “principles”: the _Soul_, as _Nephesh_, the breath of animal life, which remains for a time in Kama-loka, from the higher compound _Ego_, which goes into the state of Devachan, or bliss.

[24] Until the separation of the higher, spiritual “principle” takes place from the lower ones, which remain in the Kama-loka until disintegrated.

VII. ON THE VARIOUS POST MORTEM STATES.

THE PHYSICAL AND THE SPIRITUAL MAN.

ENQ. I am glad to hear you believe in the immortality of the Soul.

THEO. Not of “the Soul,” but of the divine Spirit; or rather in the
immortality of the reincarnating Ego.

ENQ. What is the difference?

THEO. A very great one in our philosophy, but this is too abstruse and
difficult a question to touch lightly upon. We shall have to
analyse them separately, and then in conjunction. We may begin
with Spirit.

We say that the Spirit (the “Father in secret” of Jesus), or _Atman_,
is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine essence
which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible and
indivisible, that which does not _exist_ and yet _is_, as the
Buddhists say of Nirvana. It only overshadows the mortal; that
which enters into him and pervades the whole body being only
its omnipresent rays, or light, radiated through _Buddhi_, its
vehicle and direct emanation. This is the secret meaning of the
assertions of almost all the ancient philosophers, when they said
that “the _rational_ part of man’s soul”[25] never entered wholly
into the man, but only overshadowed him more or less through the
_irrational_ spiritual Soul or Buddhi.[26]

ENQ. I laboured under the impression that the “Animal Soul” alone was
irrational, not the Divine.

THEO. You have to learn the difference between that which is
negatively, or _passively_ “irrational,” because undifferentiated,
and that which is irrational because too _active_ and positive.
Man is a correlation of spiritual powers, as well as a correlation
of chemical and physical forces, brought into function by what we
call “principles.”

ENQ. I have read a good deal upon the subject, and it seems to me that
the notions of the older philosophers differed a great deal from
those of the mediæval Kabalists, though they do agree in some
particulars.

THEO. The most substantial difference between them and us is this.
While we believe with the Neo-Platonists and the Eastern teachings
that the spirit (Atma) never descends hypostatically into the
living man, but only showers more or less its radiance on the
_inner_ man (the psychic and spiritual compound of the _astral_
principles), the Kabalists maintain that the human Spirit,
detaching itself from the ocean of light and Universal Spirit,
enters man’s Soul, where it remains throughout life imprisoned
in the astral capsule. All Christian Kabalists still maintain
the same, as they are unable to break quite loose from their
anthropomorphic and Biblical doctrines.

ENQ. And what do you say?

THEO. We say that we only allow the presence of the radiation of Spirit
(or Atma) in the astral capsule, and so far only as that spiritual
radiancy is concerned. We say that man and Soul have to conquer
their immortality by ascending towards the unity with which, if
successful, they will be finally linked and into which they are
finally, so to speak, absorbed. The individualization of man after
death depends on the spirit, not on his soul and body. Although
the word “personality,” in the sense in which it is usually
understood, is an absurdity if applied literally to our immortal
essence, still the latter is, as our individual Ego, a distinct
entity, immortal and eternal, _per se_. _It is only in the case
of black magicians or of criminals beyond redemption, criminals
who have been such during a long series of lives_—that the shining
thread, which links the spirit to the _personal_ soul from the
moment of the birth of the child, is violently snapped, and the
disembodied entity becomes divorced from the personal soul, the
latter being annihilated without leaving the smallest impression
of itself on the former. If that union between the lower, or
personal Manas, and the individual reincarnating Ego, has not
been effected during life, then the former is left to share the
fate of the lower animals, to gradually dissolve into ether, and
have its personality annihilated. But even then the Ego remains a
distinct being. It (the spiritual Ego) only loses one Devachanic
state—after that special, and in that case indeed useless,
life—as that idealized _Personality_, and is reincarnated, after
enjoying for a short time its freedom as a planetary spirit,
almost immediately.

ENQ. It is stated in _Isis Unveiled_ that such planetary Spirits or
Angels, “the gods of the Pagans or the Archangels of the
Christians,” will never be men on our planet.

THEO. Quite right. Not “_such_,” but _some_ classes of higher Planetary
Spirits. They will never be men on this planet, because they are
liberated Spirits from a previous, earlier world, and as such they
cannot re-become men on this one. Yet all these will live again in
the next and far higher Mahamanvantara, after this “great Age,”
and “Brahma _pralaya_,” (a little period of 16 figures or so) is
over. For you must have heard, of course, that Eastern philosophy
teaches us that mankind consists of such “Spirits” imprisoned in
human bodies? The difference between animals and men is this: the
former are ensouled by the “principles” _potentially_, the latter
_actually_.[27] Do you understand now the difference?

ENQ. Yes; but this specialisation has been in all ages the
stumbling-block of metaphysicians.

THEO. It was. The whole esotericism of the Buddhistic philosophy is
based on this mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons,
and so totally misrepresented by many of the most learned modern
scholars. Even metaphysicians are too inclined to confound the
effect with the cause. An Ego who has won his immortal life as
spirit will remain the same inner self throughout all his rebirths
on earth; but this does not imply necessarily that he must either
remain the Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown he was on earth, or lose his
individuality. Therefore, the astral soul and the terrestrial
body of man may, in the dark hereafter, be absorbed into the
cosmical ocean of sublimated elements, and cease to feel his last
_personal_ Ego (if it did not deserve to soar higher), and the
_divine_ Ego still remain the same unchanged entity, though this
terrestrial experience of his emanation may be totally obliterated
at the instant of separation from the unworthy vehicle.

ENQ. If the “Spirit,” or the divine portion of the soul, is
pre-existent as a distinct being from all eternity, as Origen,
Synesius, and other semi-Christians and semi-Platonic philosophers
taught, and if it is the same, and nothing more than the
metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be otherwise than
eternal? And what matters it in such a case, whether man leads a
pure life or an animal, if, do what he may, he can never lose his
individuality?

THEO. This doctrine, as you have stated it, is just as pernicious in
its consequences as that of vicarious atonement. Had the latter
dogma, in company with the false idea that we are all immortal,
been demonstrated to the world in its true light, humanity would
have been bettered by its propagation.

Let me repeat to you again. Pythagoras, Plato, Timaeus of Locris, and
the old Alexandrian School, derived the _Soul_ of man (or
his higher “principles” and attributes) from the Universal
World Soul, the latter being, according to their teachings,
_Aether_ (Pater-Zeus). Therefore, neither of these “principles”
can be _unalloyed_ essence of the Pythagorean Monas, or our
_Atma-Buddhi_, because the _Anima Mundi_ is but the effect, the
subjective emanation or rather radiation of the former. Both the
_human_ Spirit (or the individuality), the reincarnating Spiritual
Ego, and Buddhi, the Spiritual soul, are pre-existent. But, while
the former exists as a distinct entity, an individualization,
the soul exists as pre-existing breath, an unscient portion
of an intelligent whole. Both were originally formed from the
Eternal Ocean of light; but as the Fire-Philosophers, the
mediæval Theosophists, expressed it, there is a visible as well
as invisible spirit in fire. They made a difference between the
_anima bruta_ and the _anima divina_. Empedocles firmly believed
all men and animals to possess two souls; and in Aristotle we find
that he calls one the reasoning soul, νους and the other, the
animal soul, ψυχη. According to these philosophers, the reasoning
soul comes from _within_ the universal soul, and the other from
_without_.

ENQ. Would you call the Soul, _i.e._, the human thinking Soul, or what
you call the Ego—matter?

THEO. Not matter, but substance assuredly; nor would the word “matter,”
if prefixed with the adjective, _primordial_, be a word to
avoid. That matter, we say, is co-eternal with Spirit, and is
not our visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme
sublimation. Pure Spirit is but one remove from the _no_-Spirit,
or the absolute _all_. Unless you admit that man was evolved
out of this primordial Spirit-matter, and represents a regular
progressive scale of “principles” from _meta_-Spirit down to the
grossest matter, how can we ever come to regard the _inner_ man as
immortal, and at the same time as a spiritual Entity and a mortal
man?

ENQ. Then why should you not believe in God as such an Entity?

THEO. Because that which is infinite and unconditioned can have no
form, and cannot be a being, not in any Eastern philosophy worthy
of the name, at any rate. An “entity” is immortal, but is so only
in its ultimate essence, not in its individual form. When at
the last point of its cycle, it is absorbed into its primordial
nature; and it becomes spirit, when it loses its name of Entity.

Its immortality as a form is limited only to its life-cycle or
the _Mahamanvantara_; after which it is one and identical with
the Universal Spirit, and no longer a separate Entity. As to the
_personal_ Soul—by which we mean the spark of consciousness that
preserves in the Spiritual Ego the idea of the personal “I” of the
last incarnation—this lasts, as a separate distinct recollection,
only throughout the Devachanic period; after which time it is
added to the series of other innumerable incarnations of the Ego,
like the remembrance in our memory of one of a series of days,
at the end of a year. Will you bind the infinitude you claim for
your God to finite conditions? That alone which is indissolubly
cemented by _Atma_ (_i.e._, Buddhi-Manas) is immortal. The Soul
of man (_i.e._, of the personality) _per se_ is neither immortal,
eternal nor divine. Says the _Zohar_ (vol. iii., p. 616), “the
soul, when sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment, to
preserve herself here, so she receives above a shining garment,
in order to be able to look without injury into the mirror, whose
light proceeds from the Lord of Light.” Moreover, the _Zohar_
teaches that the soul cannot reach the abode of bliss, unless she
has received the “holy kiss,” or the reunion of the soul _with the
substance from which she emanated_—spirit. All souls are dual,
and, while the latter is a feminine principle, the spirit is
masculine. While imprisoned in body, man is a trinity, unless his
pollution is such as to have caused his divorce from the spirit.
“Woe to the soul which prefers to her divine husband (spirit) the
earthly wedlock with her terrestrial body,” records a text of the
_Book of the Keys_, a Hermetic work. Woe indeed, for nothing will
remain of that personality to be recorded on the imperishable
tablets of the Ego’s memory.

ENQ. How can that which, if not breathed by God into man, yet is on
your own confession of an identical substance with the divine,
fail to be immortal?

THEO. Every atom and speck of matter, not of substance only, is
_imperishable_ in its essence, but not in its _individual
consciousness_. Immortality is but one’s unbroken consciousness;
and the _personal_ consciousness can hardly last longer than
the personality itself, can it? And such consciousness, as I
already told you, survives only throughout Devachan, after which
it is reabsorbed, first, in the _individual_, and then in the
_universal_ consciousness. Better enquire of your theologians how
it is that they have so sorely jumbled up the Jewish Scriptures.
Read the Bible, if you would have a good proof that the writers
of the _Pentateuch_, and _Genesis_ especially, never regarded
_nephesh_, that which God breathes into Adam (Gen. ch. ii.), as
the _immortal_ soul. Here are some instances:—“And God created ...
every _nephesh_ (life) that moveth” (Gen i. 21), meaning animals;
and (Gen. ii. 7) it is said: “And man became a _nephesh_” (living
soul), which shows that the word _nephesh_ was indifferently
applied to _immortal_ man and to _mortal_ beast. “And surely
your blood of your _nepheshim_ (lives) will I require; at the
hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man”
(Gen. ix. 5), “Escape for _nephesh_” (escape for thy _life_, it
is translated), (Gen. xix. 17). “Let us not kill him,” reads
the English version (Gen. xxxvii. 21). “Let us not kill his
_nephesh_” is the Hebrew text. “_Nephesh_ for _nephesh_,” says
Leviticus (xvii. 8). “He that killeth any man shall surely be put
to death,” literally “He that smiteth the _nephesh_ of a man”
(Lev. xxiv. 17); and from verse 18 and following it reads: “And he
that killeth a beast (_nephesh_) shall make it good ... Beast for
beast,” whereas the original text has it “nephesh for nephesh.”
How could man _kill_ that which is immortal? And this explains
also why the Sadducees denied the immortality of the soul, as it
also affords another proof that very probably the Mosaic Jews—the
uninitiated at any rate—never believed in the soul’s survival at
all.

ON ETERNAL REWARD AND PUNISHMENT; AND ON NIRVANA.

ENQ. It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to ask you whether you believe
in the Christian dogmas of Paradise and Hell, or in future rewards
and punishments as taught by the Orthodox churches?

THEO. As described in your catechisms, we reject them absolutely; least
of all would we accept their eternity. But we believe firmly in
what we call the _Law of Retribution_, and in the absolute justice
and wisdom guiding this Law, or Karma. Hence we positively refuse
to accept the cruel and unphilosophical belief in eternal reward
or eternal punishment. We say with Horace:—

“Let rules be fixed that may our rage contain,
And punish faults _with a proportion’d pain_;
But do not flay him who deserves alone
A whipping for the fault that he has done.”

This is a rule for all men, and a just one. Have we to believe
that God, of whom you make the embodiment of wisdom, love and
mercy, is less entitled to these attributes than mortal man?

ENQ. Have you any other reasons for rejecting this dogma?

THEO. Our chief reason for it lies in the fact of re-incarnation. As
already stated, we reject the idea of a new soul created for every
newly-born babe. We believe that every human being is the bearer,
or _Vehicle_, of an _Ego_ coeval with every other Ego; because
all _Egos_ are _of the same essence_ and belong to the primeval
emanation from one universal infinite _Ego_. Plato calls the
latter the _logos_ (or the second manifested God); and we, the
manifested divine principle, which is one with the universal mind
or soul, not the anthropomorphic, extra-cosmic and _personal_ God
in which so many Theists believe. Pray do not confuse.

ENQ. But where is the difficulty, once you accept a manifested
principle, in believing that the soul of every new mortal is
_created_ by that Principle, as all the Souls before it have been
so created?

THEO. Because that which is _impersonal_ can hardly create, plan and
think, at its own sweet will and pleasure. Being a universal
_Law_, immutable in its periodical manifestations, those of
radiating and manifesting its own essence at the beginning of
every new cycle of life, IT is not supposed to create men, only
to repent a few years later of having created them. If we have to
believe in a divine principle at all, it must be in one which is
as absolute harmony, logic, and justice, as it is absolute love,
wisdom, and impartiality; and a God who would _create_ every
soul for the space of _one brief span of life_, regardless of
the fact whether it has to animate the body of a wealthy, happy
man, or that of a poor suffering wretch, hapless from birth to
death though he has done nothing to deserve his cruel fate—would
be rather a senseless _fiend_ than a God. (_Vide infra_, “On
the Punishment of the Ego.”) Why, even the Jewish philosophers,
believers in the Mosaic Bible (esoterically, of course), have
never entertained such an idea; and, moreover, they believed in
re-incarnation, as we do.

ENQ. Can you give me some instances as a proof of this?

THEO. Most decidedly I can. Philo Judæus says (in “De Somniis,” p.
455): “The air is full of them (of souls); those which are nearest
the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, παλινδρομοῦσιν
αὖθις _return to other bodies, being desirous to live in them_.”
In the _Zohar_, the soul is made to plead her freedom before
God: “Lord of the Universe! I am happy in this world, and do
not wish to go into another world, where I shall be a handmaid,
and be exposed to all kinds of pollutions.”[28] The doctrine
of fatal necessity, the everlasting immutable law, is asserted
in the answer of the Deity: “Against thy will thou becomest an
embryo, and against thy will thou art born.”[29] Light would be
incomprehensible without darkness to make it manifest by contrast;
good would be no longer good without evil to show the priceless
nature of the boon; and so personal virtue could claim no merit,
unless it had passed through the furnace of temptation. Nothing
is eternal and unchangeable, save the concealed Deity. Nothing
that is finite—whether because it had a beginning, or must have an
end—can remain stationary. It must either progress or recede; and
a soul which thirsts after a reunion with its spirit, which alone
confers upon it immortality, must purify itself through cyclic
transmigrations onward toward the only land of bliss and eternal
rest, called in the _Zohar_, “The Palace of Love,” היבל אחכה; in
the Hindu religion, “Moksha”; among the Gnostics, “The Pleroma of
Eternal Light”; and by the Buddhists, “Nirvana.” And all these
states are temporary, not eternal.

ENQ. Yet there is no re-incarnation spoken of in all this.

THEO. A soul which pleads to be allowed to remain where she is, _must
be pre-existent_, and not have been created for the occasion. In
the _Zohar_ (vol. iii., p. 61), however, there is a still better
proof. Speaking of the reincarnating _Egos_ (the _rational_
souls), those whose last personality has to fade out _entirely_,
it is said: “All souls which have alienated themselves in heaven
from the Holy One—blessed be His name—have thrown themselves into
an abyss at their very existence, and have anticipated the time
when they are to descend once more on earth.” “The Holy One” means
here, esoterically, the Atman, or _Atma-Buddhi_.

ENQ. Moreover, it is very strange to find _Nirvana_ spoken of as
something synonymous with the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Paradise,
since according to every Orientalist of note Nirvana is a synonym
of annihilation!

THEO. Taken literally, with regard to the personality and
differentiated matter, not otherwise. These ideas on
re-incarnation and the trinity of man were held by many of the
early Christian Fathers. It is the jumble made by the translators
of the New Testament and ancient philosophical treatises between
soul and spirit, that has occasioned the many misunderstandings.
It is also one of the many reasons why Buddha, Plotinus, and so
many other Initiates are now accused of having longed for the
total extinction of their souls: “absorption unto the Deity,”
or “reunion with the universal soul,” meaning, according to
modern ideas, annihilation. The personal soul must, of course,
be disintegrated into its particles, before it is able to link
its purer essence for ever with the immortal spirit. But the
translators of both the _Acts_ and the _Epistles_, who laid the
foundation of the _Kingdom of Heaven_, and the modern commentators
on the Buddhist _Sutra of the Foundation of the Kingdom of
Righteousness_, have muddled the sense of the great apostle of
Christianity as of the great reformer of India. The former have
smothered the word ψυχικος so that no reader imagines it to have
any relation with _soul_; and with this confusion of _soul_ and
_spirit_ together, _Bible_ readers get only a perverted sense of
anything on the subject. On the other hand, the interpreters of
Buddha have failed to understand the meaning and object of the
Buddhist four degrees of Dhyâna. Ask the Pythagoreans, “Can that
spirit, which gives life and motion and partakes of the nature of
light, be reduced to nonentity?” “Can even that sensitive spirit
in brutes which exercises memory, one of the rational faculties,
die and become nothing?” observe the Occultists. In Buddhistic
philosophy _annihilation_ means only a dispersion of matter, in
whatever form or _semblance_ of form it may be, for everything
that has form is temporary, and is, therefore, really an illusion.
For in eternity the longest periods of time are as a wink of the
eye. So with form. Before we have time to realize that we have
seen it, it is gone like an instantaneous flash of lightning, and
passed for ever. When the Spiritual _entity_ breaks loose for ever
from every particle of matter, substance, or form, and re-becomes
a Spiritual breath: then only does it enter upon the eternal and
unchangeable _Nirvana_, lasting as long as the cycle of life has
lasted—an eternity, truly. And then that Breath, existing _in
Spirit_, is _nothing_ because it is _all_; as a form, a semblance,
a shape, it is completely annihilated; as absolute Spirit it
still is, for it has become _Be-ness_ itself. The very word used,
“absorbed in the universal essence,” when spoken of the “Soul” as
Spirit, means “_union with_.” It can never mean annihilation, as
that would mean eternal separation.

ENQ. Do you not lay yourself open to the accusation of preaching
annihilation by the language you yourself use? You have just
spoken of the Soul of man returning to its primordial elements.

THEO. But you forget that I have given you the differences between the
various meanings of the word “Soul,” and shown the loose way in
which the term “Spirit” has been hitherto translated. We speak of
an _animal_, a _human_, and a _spiritual_, Soul, and distinguish
between them. Plato, for instance, calls “rational SOUL” that
which we call _Buddhi_, adding to it the adjective of “spiritual,”
however; but that which we call the reincarnating Ego, _Manas_, he
calls Spirit, _Nous_, etc., whereas we apply the term _Spirit_,
when standing alone and without any qualification, to Atma alone.
Pythagoras repeats our archaic doctrine when stating that the
_Ego_ (_Nous_) is eternal with Deity; that the soul only passed
through various stages to arrive at divine excellence; while
_thumos_ returned to the earth, and even the _phren_, the lower
_Manas_, was eliminated. Again, Plato defines _Soul_ (Buddhi) as
“the motion that is able to move itself.” “Soul,” he adds (Laws
X.), “is the most ancient of all things, and the commencement of
motion,” thus calling Atma-Buddhi “Soul,” and _Manas_ “Spirit,”
which we do not.

“Soul was generated prior to body, and body is posterior and
secondary, as being according to nature, ruled over by the
ruling soul.” “The soul which administers all things that are
moved in every way, administers likewise the heavens.”

“Soul then leads everything in heaven, and on earth, and in
the sea, by its movements—the names of which are, to will,
to consider, to take care of, to consult, to form opinions
true and false, to be in a state of joy, sorrow, confidence,
fear, hate, love, together with all such primary movements
as are allied to these.... Being a goddess herself, she ever
takes as an ally _Nous_, a god, and disciplines all things
correctly and happily; but when with _Annoia_—not _nous_—it
works out everything the contrary.”

In this language, as in the Buddhist texts, the negative is
treated as essential existence. _Annihilation_ comes under a
similar exegesis. The positive state is essential being, but no
manifestation as such. When the spirit, in Buddhistic parlance,
enters _Nirvana_, it loses objective existence, but retains
subjective being. To objective minds this is becoming absolute
“nothing”; to subjective, NO-THING, nothing to be displayed to
sense. Thus, their Nirvana means the certitude of individual
immortality _in Spirit_, not in Soul, which, though “the most
ancient of all things,” is still—along with all the other _Gods_—a
finite emanation, in _forms_ and individuality, if not in
substance.

ENQ. I do not quite seize the idea yet, and would be thankful to have
you explain this to me by some illustrations.

THEO. No doubt it is very difficult to understand, especially to one
brought up in the regular orthodox ideas of the Christian Church.
Moreover, I must tell you one thing; and this is that unless you
have studied thoroughly well the separate functions assigned to
all the human “principles” and the state of all these _after
death_, you will hardly realize our Eastern philosophy.

ON THE VARIOUS “PRINCIPLES” IN MAN.

ENQ. I have heard a good deal about this constitution of the “inner
man” as you call it, but could never make “head or tail on’t” as
Gabalis expresses it.

THEO. Of course, it is most difficult, and, as you say, “puzzling” to
understand correctly and distinguish between the various
_aspects_, called by us, the “principles” of the real EGO. It is
the more so as there exists a notable difference in the numbering
of those principles by various Eastern schools, though at the
bottom there is the same identical substratum of teaching.

ENQ. Do you mean the Vedantins, as an instance? Don’t they divide your
seven “principles” into five only?

THEO. They do; but though I would not presume to dispute the point with
a learned Vedantin, I may yet state as my private opinion that
they have an obvious reason for it. With them it is only that
compound spiritual aggregate which consists of various mental
aspects that is called _Man_ at all, the physical body being in
their view something beneath contempt, and merely an _illusion_.
Nor is the Vedanta the only philosophy to reckon in this manner.
Lao-Tze, in his _Tao-te-King_, mentions only five principles,
because he, like the Vedantins, omits to include two principles,
namely, the spirit (Atma) and the physical body, the latter of
which, moreover, he calls “the cadaver.” Then there is the
_Taraka Rajà Yogà_ School. Its teaching recognises only three
“principles” in fact; but then, in reality, their _Sthulopadi_,
or the physical body, in its waking conscious state, their
_Sukshmopadhi_, the same body in _Svapna_, or the dreaming state,
and their _Karanopadhi_ or “causal body,” or that which passes
from one incarnation to another, are all dual in their aspects,
and thus make six. Add to this Atma, the impersonal divine
principle or the immortal element in Man, undistinguished from the
Universal Spirit, and you have the same seven again.[30] They are
welcome to hold to their division; we hold to ours.

ENQ. Then it seems almost the same as the division made by the mystic
Christians: body, soul and spirit?

THEO. Just the same. We could easily make of the body the vehicle of
the “vital Double”; of the latter the vehicle of Life or _Pranâ_;
of _Kama-rupa_, or (animal) soul, the vehicle of the _higher_
and the _lower_ mind, and make of this six principles, crowning
the whole with the one immortal spirit. In Occultism every
qualificative change in the state of our consciousness gives to
man a new aspect, and if it prevails and becomes part of the
living and acting Ego, it must be (and is) given a special name,
to distinguish the man in that particular state from the man he is
when he places himself in another state.

ENQ. It is just that which it is so difficult to understand.

THEO. It seems to me very easy, on the contrary, once that you have
seized the main idea, _i.e._, that man acts on this or another
plane of consciousness, in strict accordance with his mental and
spiritual condition. But such is the materialism of the age that
the more we explain the less people seem capable of understanding
what we say. Divide the terrestrial being called man into
three chief aspects, if you like, and unless you make of him a
pure animal you cannot do less. Take his objective _body_; the
thinking principle in him—which is only a little higher than the
_instinctual_ element in the animal—or the vital conscious soul;
and that which places him so immeasurably beyond and higher than
the animal—_i.e._, his _reasoning_ soul or “spirit.” Well, if we
take these three groups or representative entities, and subdivide
them, according to the occult teaching, what do we get?

First of all, Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute, and therefore,
indivisible ALL), or Atma. As this can neither be located nor
limited in philosophy, being simply that which IS in Eternity,
and which cannot be absent from even the tiniest geometrical or
mathematical point of the universe of matter or substance, it
ought not to be called, in truth, a “human” principle at all.
Rather, and at best, it is in Metaphysics, that point in space
which the human Monad and its vehicle man occupy for the period
of every life. Now that point is as imaginary as man himself,
and in reality is an illusion, a _maya_; but then for ourselves,
as for other personal Egos, we are a reality during that fit of
illusion called life, and we have to take ourselves into account,
in our own fancy at any rate, if no one else does. To make it
more conceivable to the human intellect, when first attempting
the study of Occultism, and to solve the A B C of the mystery
of man, Occultism calls this _seventh_ principle the synthesis
of the sixth, and gives it for vehicle the _Spiritual_ Soul,
_Buddhi_. Now the latter conceals a mystery, which is never given
to any one, with the exception of irrevocably pledged _chelas_,
or those, at any rate, who can be safely trusted. Of course,
there would be less confusion, could it only be told; but, as
this is directly concerned with the power of projecting one’s
double consciously and at will, and as this gift, like the “ring
of Gyges,” would prove very fatal to man at large and to the
possessor of that faculty in particular, it is carefully guarded.
But let us proceed with the “principles.” This divine soul, or
Buddhi, then, is the vehicle of the Spirit. In conjunction, these
two are one, impersonal and without any attributes (on this
plane, of course), and make two spiritual “principles.” If we
pass on to the _Human_ Soul, _Manas_ or _mens_, every one will
agree that the intelligence of man is _dual_ to say the least:
_e.g._, the high-minded man can hardly become low-minded; the very
intellectual and spiritual-minded man is separated by an abyss
from the obtuse, dull, and material, if not animal-minded man.

ENQ. But why should not man be represented by two “principles” or two
aspects, rather?

THEO. Every man has these two principles in him, one more active than
the other, and in rare cases, one of these is entirely stunted
in its growth, so to say, or paralysed by the strength and
predominance of the other _aspect_, in whatever direction.
These, then, are what we call the two principles or aspects of
_Manas_, the higher and the lower; the former, the higher Manas,
or the thinking, conscious EGO gravitating toward the spiritual
Soul (Buddhi); and the latter, or its instinctual principle,
attracted to _Kama_, the seat of animal desires and passions in
man. Thus, we have _four_ “principles” justified; the last three
being (1) the “Double,” which we have agreed to call Protean, or
Plastic Soul; the vehicle of (2) the life _principle_; and (3)
the physical body. Of course no physiologist or biologist will
accept these principles, nor can he make head or tail of them.
And this is why, perhaps, none of them understand to this day
either the functions of the spleen, the physical vehicle of the
Protean Double, or those of a certain organ on the right side of
man, the seat of the above-mentioned desires, nor yet does he know
anything of the pineal gland, which he describes as a horny gland
with a little sand in it, which gland is in truth the very seat
of the highest and divinest consciousness in man, his omniscient,
spiritual and all-embracing mind. And this shows to you still more
plainly that we have neither invented these seven principles, nor
are they new in the world of philosophy, as we can easily prove.

ENQ. But what is it that reincarnates, in your belief?

THEO. The Spiritual thinking Ego, the permanent principle in man, or
that which is the seat of _Manas_. It is not Atma, or even
Atma-Buddhi, regarded as the dual _Monad_, which is the
_individual_, or _divine_ man, but Manas; for Atman is the
Universal ALL, and becomes the HIGHER-SELF of man only in
conjunction with _Buddhi_, its vehicle, which links IT to the
individuality (or divine man). For it is the Buddhi-Manas which is
called the _Causal body_, (the United 5th and 6th Principles) and
which is _Consciousness_, that connects it with every personality
it inhabits on earth. Therefore, Soul being a generic term, there
are in men three _aspects_ of soul—the terrestrial, or animal; the
Human Soul; and the Spiritual Soul; these, strictly speaking, are
one Soul in its three aspects. Now of the first aspect, nothing
remains after death; of the second (_nous_ or Manas) only its
divine essence _if left unsoiled_ survives, while the third in
addition to being immortal becomes _consciously_ divine, by the
assimilation of the higher Manas. But to make it clear, we have to
say a few words first of all about Re-incarnation.

ENQ. You will do well, as it is against this doctrine that your enemies
fight the most ferociously.

THEO. You mean the Spiritualists? I know; and many are the absurd
objections laboriously spun by them over the pages of _Light_.
So obtuse and malicious are some of them, that they will stop at
nothing. One of them found recently a contradiction, which he
gravely discusses in a letter to that journal, in two statements
picked out of Mr. Sinnett’s lectures. He discovers that grave
contradiction in these two sentences: “Premature returns to
earth-life in the cases when they occur may be due to Karmic
complication ...”; and “there is no _accident_ in the supreme act
of divine justice guiding evolution.” So profound a thinker would
surely see a contradiction of the law of gravitation if a man
stretched out his hand to stop a falling stone from crushing the
head of a child!

FOOTNOTES:

[25] In its generic sense, the word “rational” meaning something emanating from the Eternal Wisdom.

[26] _Irrational_ in the sense that as a _pure_ emanation of the Universal mind it can have no individual reason of its own on this plane of matter, but like the Moon, who borrows her light from the Sun and her life from the Earth, so _Buddhi_, receiving its light of Wisdom from Atma, gets its rational qualities from _Manas_. _Per se_, as something homogeneous, it is devoid of attributes.

[27] _Vide_ “_Secret Doctrine_,” Vol. II., stanzas.

[28] “_Zohar_,” Vol. II., p. 96.

[29] “_Mishna_,” “Aboth,” Vol. IV., p. 29.

[30] See “Secret Doctrine” for a clearer explanation. Vol. I., p. 157.

VIII. ON RE-INCARNATION OR REBIRTH.

WHAT IS MEMORY ACCORDING TO THEOSOPHICAL TEACHING?

ENQ. The most difficult thing for you to do, will be to explain and
give reasonable grounds for such a belief. No Theosophist has
ever yet succeeded in bringing forward a single valid proof to
shake my scepticism. First of all, you have against this theory of
re-incarnation, the fact that no single man has yet been found to
remember that he has lived, least of all who he was, during his
previous life.

THEO. Your argument, I see, tends to the same old objection; the loss
of memory in each of us of our previous incarnation. You think it
invalidates our doctrine? My answer is that it does not, and that
at any rate such an objection cannot be final.

ENQ. I would like to hear your arguments.

THEO. They are short and few. Yet when you take into consideration
(_a_) the utter inability of the best modern psychologists to
explain to the world the nature of _mind_; and (_b_) their
complete ignorance of its potentialities, and higher states,
you have to admit that this objection is based on an _a priori_
conclusion drawn from _primâ facie_ and circumstantial evidence
more than anything else. Now what is “memory” in your conception,
pray?

ENQ. That which is generally accepted: the faculty in our mind of
remembering and of retaining the knowledge of previous thoughts,
deeds and events.

THEO. Please add to it that there is a great difference between the
three accepted forms of memory. Besides memory in general you have
_Remembrance_, _Recollection_ and _Reminiscence_, have you not?
Have you ever thought over the difference? Memory, remember, is a
generic name.

ENQ. Yet, all these are only synonyms.

THEO. Indeed, they are not—not in philosophy, at all events. Memory is
simply an innate power in thinking beings, and even in animals,
of reproducing past impressions by an association of ideas
principally suggested by objective things or by some action on our
external sensory organs. Memory is a faculty depending entirely on
the more or less healthy and normal functioning of our _physical_
brain; and _remembrance_ and _recollection_ are the attributes
and handmaidens of that memory. But _reminiscence_ is an entirely
different thing. “Reminiscence” is defined by the modern
psychologist as something intermediate between _remembrance_
and _recollection_, or “a conscious process of recalling past
occurrences, but _without that full and varied reference_ to
particular things which characterises _recollection_.” Locke,
speaking of recollection and remembrance, says: “When an _idea
again_ recurs without the operation of the like object on the
external sensory, it is _remembrance_; if it be sought after by
the mind, and with pain and endeavour found and brought again into
view, it is _recollection_.” But even Locke leaves _reminiscence_
without any clear definition, because it is no faculty or
attribute of our _physical_ memory, but an intuitional perception
apart from and outside our physical brain; a perception which,
covering as it does (being called into action by the ever-present
knowledge of our spiritual Ego) all those visions in man which
are regarded as _abnormal_—from the pictures suggested by genius
to the _ravings_ of fever and even madness—are classed by science
as having no _existence_ outside of our fancy. Occultism and
Theosophy, however, regard _reminiscence_ in an entirely different
light. For us, while _memory_ is physical and evanescent and
depends on the physiological conditions of the brain—a fundamental
proposition with all teachers of mnemonics, who have the
researches of modern scientific psychologists to back them—we call
_reminiscence_ the _memory of the soul_. And it is _this_ memory
which gives the assurance to almost every human being, whether he
understands it or not, of his having lived before and having to
live again. Indeed, as Wordsworth has it:

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath elsewhere had its setting,
And cometh from afar.”

ENQ. If it is on this kind of memory—poetry and abnormal fancies, on
your own confession—that you base your doctrine, then you will
convince very few, I am afraid.

THEO. I did not “confess” it was a fancy. I simply said that
physiologists and scientists in general regard such reminiscences
as hallucinations and fancy, to which _learned_ conclusion they
are welcome. We do not deny that such visions of the past and
glimpses far back into the corridors of time, are abnormal, as
contrasted with our normal daily life experience and physical
memory. But we do maintain with Professor W. Knight, that “the
absence of memory of any action done in a previous state cannot
be a conclusive argument against our having lived through it.”
And every fair-minded opponent must agree with what is said in
Butler’s _Lectures on Platonic Philosophy_—“that the feeling of
extravagance with which it (pre-existence) affects us has its
secret source in materialistic or semi-materialistic prejudices.”
Besides which we maintain that memory, as Olympiodorus called it,
is simply _phantasy_, and the most unreliable thing in us.[31]
Ammonius Saccas asserted that the only faculty in man directly
opposed to prognostication, or looking into futurity, is _memory_.
Furthermore, remember that memory is one thing and mind or
_thought_ is another; one is a recording machine, a register which
very easily gets out of order; the other (thoughts) are eternal
and imperishable. Would you refuse to believe in the existence of
certain things or men only because your physical eyes have not
seen them? Would not the collective testimony of past generations
who have seen him be a sufficient guarantee that Julius Cæsar once
lived? Why should not the same testimony of the psychic senses of
the masses be taken into consideration?

ENQ. But don’t you think that these are too fine distinctions to be
accepted by the majority of mortals?

THEO. Say rather by the majority of materialists. And to them we say,
behold: even in the short span of ordinary existence, memory is
too weak to register all the events of a lifetime. How frequently
do even most important events lie dormant in our memory until
awakened by some association of ideas, or aroused to function
and activity by some other link. This is especially the case
with people of advanced age, who are always found suffering from
feebleness of recollection. When, therefore, we remember that
which we know about the physical and the spiritual principles
in man, it is not the fact that our memory has failed to record
our precedent life and lives that ought to surprise us, but the
contrary, were it to happen.

WHY DO WE NOT REMEMBER OUR PAST LIVES?

ENQ. You have given me a bird’s eye view of the seven principles; now
how do they account for our complete loss of any recollection of
having lived before?

THEO. Very easily. Since those “principles” which we call physical, and
none of which is denied by science, though it calls them by other
names,[32] are disintegrated after death with their constituent
elements, _memory_ along with its brain, this vanished memory of
a vanished personality, can neither remember nor record anything
in the subsequent re-incarnation of the EGO. Re-incarnation means
that this Ego will be furnished with a _new_ body, a _new_ brain,
and a _new_ memory. Therefore it would be as absurd to expect this
_memory_ to remember that which it has never recorded as it would
be idle to examine under a microscope a shirt never worn by a
murderer, and seek on it for the stains of blood which are to be
found only on the clothes he wore. It is not the clean shirt that
we have to question, but the clothes worn during the perpetration
of the crime; and if these are burnt and destroyed, how can you
get at them?

ENQ. Aye! how can you get at the certainty that the crime was ever
committed at all, or that the “man in the clean shirt” ever lived
before?

THEO. Not by physical processes, most assuredly; nor by relying on the
testimony of that which exists no longer. But there is such a
thing as circumstantial evidence, since our wise laws accept it,
more, perhaps, even than they should. To get convinced of the
fact of re-incarnation and past lives, one must put oneself in
_rapport_ with one’s real permanent Ego, not one’s evanescent
memory.

ENQ. But how can people believe in that which they _do not know_, nor
have ever seen, far less put themselves in _rapport_ with it?

THEO. If people, and the most learned, will believe in the Gravity,
Ether, Force, and what not of Science, abstractions “and working
hypotheses,” which they have neither seen, touched, smelt,
heard, nor tasted—why should not other people believe, on the
same principle, in one’s permanent Ego, a far more logical and
important “working hypothesis” than any other?

ENQ. What is, finally, this mysterious eternal principle? Can you
explain its nature so as to make it comprehensible to all?