The following transactions are compiled from shorthand notes taken at the meetings of the Blavatsky Lodge of the Theosophical Society, from January 10th to June 20th, 1889, being somewhat condensed from the original discussions.
The Secret Doctrine being based upon the archaic stanzas of the Book of Dzyan, and these being too abstruse for most of the new students of Exoteric philosophy, the members of the “B.L. of the T. S.” agreed to devote the debates of the weekly meetings to each stanza and sundry other metaphysical subjects.
The questions were put by members who, for the most part, supported their objections and exceptions on modern scientific grounds, and assumed logical deductions based thereon. As such objections are generally the common property of students of The Secret Doctrine, it has been judged unnecessary to incorporate them in full, so that their substance alone has been retained. The answers in all cases are based on the shorthand Reports, and are those of Esoteric Philosophy as given by H. P. B. herself.
PART I.
STANZAS I AND II
1
Meeting I.
Meeting held at 17, Lansdowne Road, London, W., on January 10th, 1889, at 8.30 p.m., Mr. T. B. Harbottle in the chair.
Subject:—
THE STANZAS OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE—VOL. I.
STANZA I.
Sloka 1. THE ETERNAL PARENT (Space), WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.
Q. Space in the abstract is explained in the Proem (pp. 8 and 9) as follows:—
“. . . . Absolute Unity cannot pass to infinity; for infinity presupposes the limitless extension of something, and the duration of that ‘something’; and the One All is like Space—which is its only mental and physical representation on this Earth, or our plane of existence—neither an object of, nor a subject to, perception. If one could suppose the Eternal Infinite All, the Omnipresent Unity, instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical manifestation a manifold Universe or a multiple personality, that Unity would cease to be one. Locke’s idea that ‘pure Space is capable of neither resistance nor Motion’—is incorrect. Space is neither a ‘limitless void,’ nor a ‘conditioned fulness,’ but both: being, on the plane of absolute abstraction, the ever-incognisable Deity, which is void only to finite minds, and on that of mayavic perception, the Plenum, the absolute Container of all that is, whether manifested or unmanifested: it is, therefore, that Absolute All. There is no difference between the Christian Apostle’s ‘In Him we live and move and have our being,’ and the Hindu Rishi’s ‘The Universe lives in, proceeds from, and will return to, Brahma (Brahmâ)’: for Brahma (neuter), the unmanifested, is that Universe in abscondito, and Brahmâ, the manifested, is the Logos, made male-female in the symbolical orthodox dogmas. The God of the Apostle-Initiate and of the Rishi being both the Unseen and the Visible Space. Space is called in the esoteric symbolism ‘the Seven-Skinned Eternal Mother-Father.’ It is composed from its undifferentiated to its differentiated surface of seven layers.
“‘What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or not; whether there be gods or none?’ asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the answer made is—Space.”1
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But why is the Eternal Parent, Space, spoken of as feminine?
A. Not in all cases, for in the above extract Space is called the “Eternal Mother-Father”; but when it is so spoken of the reason is that though it is impossible to define Parabrahm, yet once that we speak of that first something which can be conceived, it has to be treated of as a feminine principle. In all cosmogonies the first differentiation was considered feminine. It is Mulaprakriti which conceals or veils Parabrahm; Sephira the light that emanates first from Ain-Soph; and in Hesiod it is Gaea who springs from Chaos, preceding Eros (Theog. IV.; 201-246). This is repeated in all subsequent and less abstract material creations, as witnessed by Eve, created from the rib of Adam, etc. It is the goddess and goddesses who come first. The first emanation becomes the immaculate Mother from whom proceed all the gods, or the anthropomorphized creative forces. We have to adopt the masculine or the feminine gender, for we cannot use the neuter it. From it, strictly speaking, nothing can proceed, neither a radiation nor an emanation.
Q. Is this first emanation identical with the Egyptian Neïth?
A. In reality it is beyond Neïth, but in one sense or in a lower aspect it is Neith.
Q. Then the it itself is not the “Seven-Skinned Eternal Mother-Father”?
A. Assuredly not. The it is in the Hindu philosophy, Parabrahm, that which is beyond Brahmâ, or, as it is now called in Europe, the “unknowable.” The space of which we speak is the female aspect of Brahmâ, the male. At the first flutter of differentiation, the Subjective proceeds to emanate, or fall, like a shadow into the Objective, and becomes what was called the Mother Goddess, from whom proceeds the Logos, the Son and Father God at the same time, both unmanifested, one the Potentiality, the other the
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Potency. But the former must not be confounded with the manifested Logos, also called the “Son” in all cosmogonies.
Q. Is the first differentiation from the absolute it always feminine?
A. Only as a figure of speech; in strict philosophy it is sexless; but the female aspect is the first it assumes in human conceptions, its subsequent materialization in any philosophy depending on the degree of the spirituality of the race or nation that produced the system. For instance: in the Kabbala of the Talmudists it is called Ain-Soph, the endless, the boundless, the infinite (the attribute being always negative), which absolute Principle is yet referred to as He!! From it, this negative Boundless Circle of Infinite Light, emanates the first Sephira, the Crown, which the Talmudists call “Torah,” the law, explaining that she is the wife of Ain-Soph. This is anthropomorphizing the Spiritual with a vengeance.
Q. Is it the same in the Hindu Philosophies?
A. Exactly the opposite. For if we turn to the Hindu cosmogonies, we find that Parabrahm is not even mentioned therein, but only Mulaprakriti. The latter is, so to speak, the lining or aspect of Parabrahm in the invisible universe. Mulaprakriti means the Root of Nature or Matter. But Parabrahm cannot be called the “Root,” for it is the absolute Rootless Root of all. Therefore, we must begin with Mulaprakriti, or the Veil of this unknowable. Here again we see that the first is the Mother Goddess, the reflection or the subjective root, on the first plane of Substance. Then follows, issuing from, or rather residing in, this Mother Goddess, the unmanifested Logos, he who is both her Son and Husband at once, called the “concealed Father.” From these proceeds the first-manifested Logos, or Spirit, and the Son from whose substance emanate the Seven Logoi, whose synthesis, viewed as one collective Force, becomes the Archi-
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tect of the Visible Universe. They are the Elohim of the Jews.
Q. What aspect of Space, or the unknown deity, called in the Vedas “That” which is mentioned further on, is here called the “Eternal Parent”?
A. It is the Vedantic Mulaprakriti, and the Svâbhâvat of the Buddhists, or that androgynous something of which we have been speaking, which is both differentiated and undifferentiated. In its first principle it is a pure abstraction, which becomes differentiated only when it is transformed, in the process of time, into Prakriti. If compared with the human principles it corresponds to Buddhi, while Atma would correspond to Parabrahm, Manas to Mahat, and so on.
Q. What, then, are the seven layers of Space, for in the “Proem” we read about the “Seven-Skinned Mother-Father”?
A. Plato and Hermes Trismegistus would have regarded this as the Divine Thought, and Aristotle would have viewed this “Mother-Father” as the “privation” of matter. It is that which will become the seven planes of being, commencing with the spiritual and passing through the psychic to the material plane. The seven planes of thought or the seven states of consciousness correspond to these planes. All these septenaries are symbolized by the seven “Skins.”
Q. The divine ideas in the Divine Mind? But the Divine Mind is not yet.
A. The Divine Mind is, and must be, before differentiation takes place. It is called the divine Ideation, which is eternal in its Potentiality and periodical in its Potency, when it becomes Mahat, Anima Mundi or Universal Soul. But remember that, however you name it, each of these conceptions has its most metaphysical, most material, and also intermediate aspects.
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Q. What is the meaning of the term “Ever invisible robes”?
A. It is of course, as every allegory in the Eastern philosophies, a figurative expression. Perhaps it may be the hypothetical Protyle that Professor Crookes is in search of, but which can certainly never be found on this our earth or plane. It is the non-differentiated substance or spiritual matter.
Q. Is it what is called “Laya”?
A. “Robes” and all are in the Laya condition, the point from which, or at which, the primordial substance begins to differentiate and thus gives birth to the universe and all in it.
Q. Are the “invisible robes” so called because they are not objective to any differentiation of consciousness?
A. Say rather, invisible to finite consciousness, if such consciousness were possible at that stage of evolution. Even for the Logos, Mulaprakriti is a veil, the Robes in which the Absolute is enveloped. Even the Logos cannot perceive the Absolute, say the Vedantins.2
Q. Is Mulaprakriti the correct term to use?
A. The Mulaprakriti of the Vedantins is the Aditi of the Vedas. The Vedanta philosophy means literally “the end or Synthesis of all knowledge.” Now there are six schools of Hindu philosophy, which, however, will be found, on strict analysis, to agree perfectly in substance. Fundamentally they are identical, but there is such a wealth of names, such a quantity of side issues, details, and ornamentations—some emanations being their own fathers, and fathers born from their own daughters—that one becomes lost as in a jungle. State anything you please from the esoteric standpoint to a Hindu, and, if he so wishes, he can, from his own particular system, contradict or refute you. Each of the
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six schools has its own peculiar views and terms. So that unless the terminology of one school is adopted and used throughout the discussion, there is great danger of misunderstanding.
Q. Then the same identical term is used in quite a different sense by different philosophies? For instance, Buddhi has one meaning in the Esoteric and quite a different sense in the Sankhya philosophy. Is not this so?
A. Precisely, and quite a different sense in the Vishnu Purâna, which speaks of seven Prakritis emanating from Mahat, and calls the latter Maha-Buddhi. Fundamentally, however, the ideas are the same, though the terms differ with each school, and the correct sense is lost in this maze of personifications. It would, perhaps, if possible, be best to invent for ourselves a new nomenclature. Owing, however, to the poverty of European languages, especially English, in philosophical terms, the undertaking would be somewhat difficult.
Q. Could not the term “Protyle” be employed to represent the Laya condition?
A. Scarcely; the Protyle of Professor Crookes is probably used to denote homogeneous matter on the most material plane of all, whereas the substance symbolized by the “Robes” of the “Eternal Parent” is on the seventh plane of matter counting upwards, or rather from without within. This can never be discovered on the lowest, or rather most outward and material plane.
Q. Is there, then, on each of the seven planes, matter relatively homogeneous for every plane?
A. That is so; but such matter is homogeneous only for those who are on the same plane of perception; so that if the Protyle of modern science is ever discovered, it will be homogeneous only to us. The illusion may last for some
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time, perhaps until the sixth race, for humanity is ever changing, physically and mentally, and let us hope spiritually too, perfecting itself more and more with every race and sub-race.
Q. Would it not be a great mistake to use any term which has been used by scientists with another meaning? Protoplasm had once almost the same sense as Protyle, but its meaning has now become narrowed.
A. It would most decidedly; the Hyle (ὕλη) of the Greeks, however, most certainly did not apply to the matter of this plane, for they adopted it from the Chaldean cosmogony, where it was used in a highly metaphysical sense.
Q. But the word Hyle is now used by the materialists to express very nearly the same idea as that to which we apply the term Mulaprakriti.
A. It may be so; but Dr. Lewins and his brave half-dozen of Hylo-Idealists are hardly of this opinion, for in their system the metaphysical meaning is entirely disregarded and lost sight of.
Q. Then perhaps after all Laya is the best term to use?
A. Not so, for Laya does not mean any particular something or some plane or other, but denotes a state or condition. It is a Sanskrit term, conveying the idea of something in an undifferentiated and changeless state, a zero point wherein all differentiation ceases.
Q. The first differentiation would represent matter on its seventh plane: must we not, therefore, suppose that Professor Crookes’ Protyle is also matter on its seventh plane?
A. The ideal Protyle of Professor Crookes is matter in that state which he calls the “zero-point.”
Q. That is to say, the Laya point of this plane?
A. It is not at all clear whether Professor Crookes is occupied with other planes or admits their existence. The
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object of his search is the protylic atom, which, as no one has ever seen it, is simply a new working hypothesis of Science. For what in reality is an atom?
Q. It is a convenient definition of what is supposed to be, or rather a convenient term to divide up, a molecule.
A. But surely they must have come by this time to the conclusion that the atom is no more a convenient term than the supposed seventy odd elements. It has been the custom to laugh at the four and five elements of the ancients; but now Professor Crookes has come to the conclusion that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a chemical element at all. In fact, so far from discovering the atom, a single simple molecule has not yet been arrived at.
Q. It should be remembered that Dalton, who first spoke on the subject, called it the “Atomic Theory.”
A. Quite so; but, as shown by Sir W. Hamilton, the term is used in an erroneous sense by the modern schools of science, which, while laughing at metaphysics, apply a purely metaphysical term to physics, so that nowadays “theory” begins to usurp the prerogatives of “axiom.”
Q. What are the “Seven Eternities,” and how can there be such a division in Pralaya, when there is no one to be conscious of time?
A. The modern astronomer knows the “ordinances of Heaven” by no means better than his ancient brother did. If asked whether he could “bring forth Mazzaroth in his season,” or if he was with “him” who “spread out the sky,” he would have to answer sadly, just as Job did, in the negative. Yet this in no wise prevents him from speculating about the age of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, and “calculating” geological periods from that time when there was not a living man, with or without consciousness, on earth. Why, therefore, should not the same privilege be granted to the ancients?
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Q. But why should the term “Seven Eternities” be employed?
A. The term “Seven Eternities” is employed owing to the invariable law of analogy. As Manvantara is divided into seven periods, so is Pralaya; as day is composed of twelve hours so is night. Can we say that because we are asleep during the night and lose consciousness of time, that therefore the hours do not strike? Pralaya is the “Night” after the Manvantaric “Day.” There is no one by, and consciousness is asleep with the rest. But since it exists, and is in full activity during Manvantara; and since we are fully alive to the fact that the law of analogy and periodicity is immutable, and, being so, that it must act equally at both ends, why cannot the phrase be used?
Q. But how can an eternity be counted?
A. Perhaps the query arises owing to the general misunderstanding of the term “Eternity.” We Westerns are foolish enough to speculate about that which has neither beginning nor end, and we imagine that the ancients must have done the same. They did not, however: no philosopher in days of old ever took “Eternity” to mean beginningless and endless duration. Neither the Æons of the Greeks nor the Naroses convey this meaning. In fact, they had no word to convey this precise sense. Parabrahm, Ain-Soph, and the Zeruana-Akerne of the Avesta alone represent such an Eternity; all the other periods are finite and astronomical, based on tropical years and other enormous cycles. The word Æon, which in the Bible is translated by Eternity, means not only a finite period, but also an angel and being.
Q. But is it not correct to say that in Pralaya too there is the “Great Breath”?
A. Assuredly: for the “Great Breath” is ceaseless, and is, so to speak, the universal and eternal perpetuum mobile?
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Q. If so, it is impossible to divide it into periods, for this does away with the idea of absolute and complete nothingness. It seems somewhat incompatible that any “number” of periods should be spoken of, although one might speak of so many outbreathings and indrawings of the “Great Breath.”
A. This would make away with the idea of absolute Rest, were not this absoluteness of Rest counteracted by the Absoluteness of Motion. Therefore one expression is as good as the other. There is a magnificent poem on Pralaya, written by a very ancient Rishi, who compares the motion of the Great Breath during Pralaya to the rhythmical motions of the Unconscious Ocean.
Q. The difficulty is when the word “eternity” is used instead of “Æon.”
A. Why should a Greek word be used when there is a more familiar expression, especially as it is fully explained in the Secret Doctrine? You may call it a relative, or a Manvantaric and Pralayic eternity, if you like.
Q. Is the relation of Pralaya and Manvantara strictly analogous to the relations between sleeping and waking?
A. In a certain sense only; during night we all exist personally, and are individually, though we sleep and may be unconscious of so living. But during Pralaya every thing differentiated, as every unit, disappears from the phenomenal universe and is merged in, or rather transferred into, the One noumenal. Therefore, de facto, there is a great difference.
Q. Sleep has been called the “Shady side of life”; may Pralaya be called the shady side of Cosmic life?
A. It may in a certain way be called so. Pralaya is dissolution of the visible into the invisible, the heterogeneous into the homogeneous—a time of rest, therefore. Even cosmic matter, indestructible though it be in its essence,
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must have a time of rest, and return to its Layam state. The absoluteness of the all-containing One essence has to manifest itself equally in rest and activity.
Sloka 2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.
Q. What is the difference between Time and Duration?
A. Duration is; it has neither beginning nor end. How can you call that which has neither beginning nor end, Time? Duration is beginningless and endless; Time is finite.
Q. Is, then, Duration the infinite, and Time the finite conception?
A. Time can be divided; Duration—in our philosophy, at least—cannot. Time is divisible in Duration—or, as you put it, the one is something within Time and Space, whereas the other is outside of both.
Q. The only way one can define Time is by the motion of the earth.
A. But we can also define Time in our conceptions.
Q. Duration, rather?
A. No, Time; for as to Duration, it is impossible to divide it or set up landmarks therein. Duration with us is the one eternity, not relative, but absolute.
Q. Can it be said that the essential idea of Duration is existence?
A. No; existence has limited and definite periods, whereas Duration, having neither beginning nor end, is a perfect abstraction which contains Time. Duration is like Space, which is an abstraction too, and is equally without beginning or end. It is in its concreteness and limitation only that it becomes a representation and something. Of course the distance between two points is called space; it may be enormous or it may be infinitesimal, yet it will always be
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space. But all such specifications are divisions in human conception. In reality Space is what the ancients called the One invisible and unknown (now unknowable) Deity.
Q. Then Time is the same as Space, being one in the abstract?
A. As two abstractions they may be one; but this would apply to Duration and Abstract Space rather than to Time and Space.
Q. Space is the objective and Time the subjective side of all manifestation. In reality they are the only attributes of the infinite; but attribute is perhaps a bad term to use, inasmuch as they are, so to speak, co-extensive with the infinite. It may, however, be objected that they are nothing but the creations of our own intellect; simply the forms in which we cannot help conceiving things.
A. That sounds like an argument of our friends the Hylo-idealists; but here we speak of the noumenal and not of the phenomenal universe. In the occult catechism (Vide Secret Doctrine) it is asked: “What is that which always is, which you cannot imagine as not being, do what you may?” The answer is—Space. For there may not be a single man in the universe to think of it, not a single eye to perceive it, nor a single brain to sense it, but still Space is, ever was, and ever will be, and you cannot make away with it.
Q. Because we cannot help thinking of it, perhaps?
A. Our thinking of it has nothing to do with the question. Try, rather, if you can think of anything with Space excluded and you will soon find out the impossibility of such a conception. Space exists where there is nothing else, and must so exist whether the Universe is one absolute vacuum or a full Pleroma.
Q. Modern Philosophers have reduced it to this, that space and time are nothing but attributes, nothing but accidents.
A. And they would be right, were their reduction the fruit of true science instead of being the result of Avidya and
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Maya. We find also Buddha saying that even Nirvana, after all, is but Maya, or an illusion; but the Lord Buddha based what he said on knowledge, not speculation.
Q. But are eternal Space and Duration the only attributes of the Infinite?
A. Space and Duration, being eternal, cannot be called attributes, as they are only the aspects of that Infinite. Nor can that Infinite, if you mean by it The Absolute Principle, have any attributes whatever, as only that which is itself finite and conditioned can have any relation to something else. All this is philosophically wrong.
Q. We can conceive of no matter which is not extended, no extension which is not extension of something. Is it the same on higher planes? And if so, what is the substance which fills absolute space, and is it identical with that space?
A. If your “trained intellect” cannot conceive of any other kind of matter, perhaps one less trained but more open to spiritual perceptions can. It does not follow, because you say so, that such a conception of Space is the only one possible, even on our Earth. For even on this plane of ours there are other and various intellects, besides those of man, in creatures visible and invisible, from minds of subjective high and low Beings to objective animals and the lowest organisms, in short, “from the Deva to the elephant, from the elemental to the ant.” Now, in relation to its own plane of conception and perception, the ant has as good an intellect as we have ourselves, and a better one; for though it cannot express it in words, yet, over and above instinct, the ant shows very high reasoning powers, as all of us know. Thus, finding on our own plane—if we credit the teachings of Occultism—so many and such varied states of consciousness and intelligence, we have no right to take into consideration and account only our own human consciousness, as though
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no other existed outside of it. And if we cannot presume to decide how far insect consciousness goes, how can we limit consciousness, of which Science knows nothing, to this plane.
Q. But why not? Surely natural science can discover all that has to be discovered, even in the ant?
A. Such is your view; to the occultist, however, such confidence is misplaced, in spite of Sir John Lubbock’s labours. Science may speculate, but, with its present methods, will never be able to prove the certitude of such speculations. If a scientist could become an ant for a while, and think as an ant, and remember his experience on returning to his own sphere of consciousness, then only would he know something for certain of this interesting insect. As it is, he can only speculate, making inferences from the ant’s behaviour.
Q. The ant’s conception of time and space are not our own, then. Is it this that you mean?
A. Precisely; the ant has conceptions of time and space which are its own, not ours; conceptions which are entirely on another plane; we have, therefore, no right to deny a priori the existence of other planes only because we can form no idea of them, but which exist nevertheless—planes higher and lower than our own by many degrees, as witness the ant.
Q. The difference between the animal and man from this point of view seems to be that the former is born more or less with all its faculties, and, generally speaking, does not appreciably gain on this, while the latter is gradually learning and improving. Is not that really the point?
A. Just so; but you have to remember why: not because man has one “principle” more than the tiniest insect, but because man is a perfected animal, the vehicle of a fully de-
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veloped monad, self-conscious and deliberately following its own line of progress, whereas in the insect, and even the higher animal, the higher triad of principles is absolutely dormant.
Q. Is there any consciousness, or conscious being, to cognize and make a division of time at the first flutter of manifestation? In his Lecture on the Bhagavat Gita, Mr. Subba Row, in speaking of the First Logos, seems to imply both consciousness and intelligence.
A. But he did not explain which Logos was referred to, and I believe he spoke in general. In the Esoteric Philosophy the First is the unmanifested, and the Second the manifested Logos. Iswara stands for that Second, and Nârâyana for the unmanifested Logos. Subba Row is an Adwaitee and a learned Vedantin, and explained from his standpoint. We do so from ours. In the Secret Doctrine, that from which the manifested Logos is born is translated by the “Eternal Mother-Father”; while in the Vishnu Purâna it is described as the Egg of the World, surrounded by seven skins, layers or zones. It is in this Golden Egg that Brahmâ, the male, is born and that Brahmâ is in reality the Second Logos or even the Third, according to the enumeration adopted; for a certainty he is not the First or highest, the point which is everywhere and nowhere. Mahat, in the Esoteric interpretations, is in reality the Third Logos or the Synthesis of the Seven creative rays, the Seven Logoi. Out of the seven so-called Creations, Mahat is the third, for it is the Universal and Intelligent Soul, Divine Ideation, combining the ideal plans and prototypes of all things in the manifested objective as well as subjective world. In the Sankhya and Purânic doctrines Mahat is the first product of Pradhâna, informed by Kshetrajna “Spirit-Substance.” In Esoteric philosophy Kshetrajna is the name given to our informing Egos.
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Q. Is it then the first manifestation in our objective universe?
A. It is the first Principle in it, made sensible or perceptible to divine though not human senses. But if we proceed from the Unknowable, we will find it to be the third, and corresponding to Manas, or rather Buddhi-Manas.
Q. Then the First Logos is the first point within the circle?
A. The point within the circle which has neither limit nor boundaries, nor can it have any name or attribute. This first unmanifested Logos is simultaneous with the line drawn across the diameter of the Circle. The first line or diameter is the Mother-Father; from it proceeds the Second Logos, which contains in itself the Third Manifested Word. In the Purânas, for instance, it is again said that the first production of Akasa is Sound, and Sound means in this case the “Word,” the expression of the unuttered thought, the manifested Logos, that of the Greeks and Platonists and St. John. Dr. Wilson and other Orientalists speak of this conception of the Hindus as an absurdity, for according to them Akasa and Chaos are identical. But if they knew that Akasa and Pradhana are but two aspects of the same thing, and remember that Mahat, the divine ideation on our plane—is that manifested Sound or Logos, they would laugh at themselves and their own ignorance.
Q. With reference to the following passage, what is the consciousness which takes cognizance of time? Is the consciousness of time limited to the plane of waking physical consciousness, or does it exist on higher planes? In the Secret Doctrine, I., 37, it is said that:—“Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists.”
A. Here consciousness only on our plane is meant, not the eternal divine Consciousness which we call the Absolute. The consciousness of time, in the present sense of the word, does
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not exist even in sleep; much less, therefore, can it exist in the essentially absolute. Can the sea be said to have a conception of time in its rhythmical striking on the shore, or in the movement of its waves? The Absolute cannot be said to have a consciousness, or, at any rate, a consciousness such as we have here. It has neither consciousness, nor desire, nor wish, nor thought, because it is absolute thought, absolute desire, absolute consciousness, absolute “all.”
Q. Is it what we refer to as Be-ness, or Sat?
A. Our kind critics have found the word “Be-ness” very amusing, but there is no other way of translating the Sanskrit term, Sat. It is not existence, for existence can only apply to phenomena, never to noumena, the very etymology of the Latin term contradicting such assertion, as ex means “from” or “out of,” and sistere “to stand”; therefore, something appearing being then where it was not before. Existence, moreover, implies something having a beginning and an end. How can the term, therefore, be applied to that which ever was, and of which it cannot be predicated that it ever issued from something else?
Q. The Hebrew Jehovah was “I am.”
A. And so was Ormuzd, the Ahura-Mazda of the old Mazdeans. In this sense every man as much as every God can boast of his existence, saying “I am that I am.”
Q. But surely “Be-ness” has some connection with the word “to be”?
A. Yes; but “Be-ness” is not being, for it is equally non-being. We cannot conceive it, for our intellects are finite and our language far more limited and conditioned even than our minds. How, therefore, can we express that which we can only conceive of by a series of negatives?
Q. A German could more easily express it by the word “sein”; “das sein” would be a very good equivalent of “Be-ness”; the latter term
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may sound absurd to unaccustomed English ears, but “das sein” is a perfectly familiar term and idea to a German. But we were speaking of consciousness in Space and Time.
A. This Consciousness is finite, having beginning and end. But where is the word for such finite Consciousness which still, owing to Maya, believes itself infinite? Not even the Devachanee is conscious of time. All is present in Devachan; there is no past, otherwise the Ego would recall and regret it; no future, or it would desire to have it. Seeing, therefore, that Devachan is a state of bliss in which everything is present, the Devachanee is said to have no conception or idea of time; everything is to him as in a vivid dream, a reality.
Q. But we may dream a lifetime in half a second, being conscious of a succession of states of consciousness, events taking place one after the other.
A. After the dream only; no such consciousness exists while dreaming.
Q. May we not compare the recollection of a dream to a person giving the description of a picture, and having to mention all the parts and details because he cannot present the whole before the mind’s eye of the listener?
A. That is a very good analogy.
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Meeting II.
Meeting held at 17, Lansdowne Road, London, W., on January 17th, 1889,
Mr. T. B. Harbottle in the chair.
Subject:—
THE STANZAS OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE—VOL. I.
STANZA I. (continued.)
Sloka 3. . . . . UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI (celestial beings) TO CONTAIN (hence manifest) IT.
Q. This sloka seems to imply that the Universal Mind has no existence apart from the Ah-hi; but in the Commentary it is stated that:
“During Pralaya the Universal Mind remains as a permanent possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute thought of which mind is the concrete relative manifestation, and that the Ah-hi are the vehicle for divine universal thought and will. They are the intelligent forces which give to nature her laws, while they themselves act according to laws imposed upon them by still higher powers, and are the hierarchy of spiritual beings through which the universal mind comes into action.”3
The Commentary suggests that the Ah-hi are not themselves the Universal Mind, but only the vehicle for its manifestation.
A. The meaning of this sloka is, I think, very clear; it means that, as there are no finite differentiated minds during Pralaya, it is just as though there were no mind at all, because there is nothing to contain or perceive it. There is nothing to receive and reflect the ideation of the Absolute Mind; therefore, it is not. Everything outside of the Absolute and immutable Sat (Be-ness), is necessarily finite and conditioned, since it has beginning and end. Therefore, since the “Ah-hi were not,” there was no Universal Mind as a manifestation. A distinction had to be made between the Absolute Mind, which is ever present, and its reflection and manifestation in the Ah-hi, who, being on the highest plane, reflect the universal mind collectively at the first flutter of Manvantara. After which they begin the work
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of evolution of all the lower forces throughout the seven planes, down to the lowest—our own. The Ah-hi are the primordial seven rays, or Logoi, emanated from the first Logos, triple, yet one in its essence.
Q. Then the Ah-hi and Universal Mind are necessary complements of one another?
A. Not at all: Universal or Absolute Mind always is during Pralaya as well as Manvantara; it is immutable. The Ah-hi are the highest Dhyanis, the Logoi as just said, those who begin the downward evolution, or emanation. During Pralaya there are no Ah-hi, because they come into being only with the first radiation of the Universal Mind, which, per se, cannot be differentiated, and the radiation from which is the first dawn of Manvantara. The Absolute is dormant, latent mind, and cannot be otherwise in true metaphysical perception; it is only Its shadow which becomes differentiated in the collectivity of these Dhyanis.
Q. Does this mean that it was absolute consciousness, but is so no longer?
A. It is absolute consciousness eternally, which consciousness becomes relative consciousness periodically, at every “Manvantaric dawn.” Let us picture to ourselves this latent or potential consciousness as a kind of vacuum in a vessel. Break the vessel, and what becomes of the vacuum; where shall we look for it? It has disappeared; it is everywhere and nowhere. It is something, yet nothing: a vacuum, yet a plenum. But what in reality is a vacuum as understood by Modern Science—a homogeneous something, or what? Is not absolute Vacuum a figment of our fancy? A pure negation, a supposed Space where nothing exists? This being so, destroy the vessel, and—to our perceptions at any rate—nothing exists. Therefore, the Stanza puts it very correctly; “Universal Mind was not,” because there was no vehicle to contain it.
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Q. What are the higher powers which condition the Ah-hi?
A. They cannot be called powers; power or perhaps Potentiality would be better. The Ah-hi are conditioned by the awakening into manifestation of the periodical, universal Law, which becomes successively active and inactive. It is by this law that they are conditioned or formed, not created. “Created” is an impossible term to use in Philosophy.
Q. Then the power or Potentiality which precedes and is higher than the Ah-hi, is the law which necessitates manifestation.
A. Just so; periodical manifestation. When the hour strikes, the law comes into action, and the Ah-hi appear on the first rung of the ladder of manifestation.
Q. But surely this is the law and not a law?
A. Precisely, since it is absolute and “Secondless”—therefore it is not an attribute, but that Absoluteness itself.
Q. The great difficulty is to account for this law?
A. That would be trying to go beyond the first manifestation and supreme causality. It will take all our limited intellect to vaguely understand even the latter; try as we may, we can never, limited as we are, approach the Absolute, which is to us, at our present stage of mental development, merely a logical speculation, though dating back to thousands and thousands of years.
Q. With reference to the sloka under discussion, would not “cosmic mind” be a better term than “universal mind”?
A. No; cosmic mind appears at the third stage, or degree, and is confined or limited to the manifested universe. In the Purânas Mahat (the “great” Principle of mind, or Intellect) appears only at the third of the Seven “Creations” or stages of evolution. Cosmic Mind is Mahat, or divine ideation in
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active (creative) operation, and thus only the periodical manifestation in time and in actu of the Eternal Universal Mind—in potentia. In strict truth, Universal Mind, being only another name for the Absolute, out of time and Space, this Cosmic Ideation, or Mind, is not an evolution at all (least of all a “creation”), but simply one of the aspects of the former, which knows no change, which ever was, which is, and will be. Thus, I say again, the sloka implies that universal ideation was not, i.e., did not exist for perception, because there were no minds to perceive it, since Cosmic Mind was still latent, or a mere potentiality. As the stanzas speak of manifestation, we are compelled so to translate them, and not from any other standpoint.
Q. We use the word “cosmic” as applied to the manifested universe in all its forms. The sloka apparently does not refer to this, but to the first absolute Consciousness, or Non-consciousness, and seems to imply that the absolute consciousness could not be that universal mind because it was not, or could not be, expressed: there was, therefore, no expression for it. But it may be objected that though there was no expression for it, still it was there. Can we say that, like Sat, it was and was not?
A. That will not help the interpretation.
Q. When it is said that it was not, the idea conveyed then is that it was not in the Absolute?
A. By no means; simply “it was not.”
Q. There seems to be a distinction, certainly; for if we could say “it was,” it would be taking a very one-sided view of the idea of Sat, and equivalent to saying that Sat was being. Still, someone may say that the phrase “Universal Mind was not,” as it stands, suggests that it is a manifestation, but mind is not a manifestation.
A. Mind, in the act of ideation, is a manifestation; but Universal Mind is not the same thing, as no conditioned and relative act can be predicted of that which is Absolute. Universal ideation was as soon as the Ah-hi appeared, and continues throughout the Manvantara.
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Q. To what cosmic plane do the Ah-hi, here spoken of, belong?
A. They belong to the first, second, and third planes—the last plane being really the starting point of the primordial manifestation—the objective reflection of the unmanifested. Like the Pythagorean Monas, the first Logos, having emanated the first triad, disappears into silence and darkness.
Q. Does this mean that the three Logoi emanated from the primordial Radiation in Macrocosm correspond to Atma, Buddhi, and Manas, in the Microcosm?
A. Just so; they correspond, but must not be confounded with them. We are now speaking of the Macrocosm at the first flutter of Manvantaric dawn, when evolution begins, and not of Microcosm or Man.
Q. Are the three planes to which the three Logoi belong simultaneous emanations, or do they evolve one from another?
A. It is most misleading to apply mechanical laws to the higher metaphysics of cosmogony, or to space and time, as we know them for neither existed then. The reflection of the triad in space and time or the objective universe comes later.
Q. Have the Ah-hi been men in previous Manvantaras, or will they become so?
A. Every living creature, of whatever description, was, is, or will become a human being in one or another Manvantara.
Q. But do they in this Manvantara remain permanently on the same very exalted plane during the whole period of the life-cycle?
A. If you mean by “life cycle” a duration of time which extends over fifteen figures, then my answer is most decidedly—no. The “Ah-hi” pass through all the planes, beginning to manifest on the third. Like all other Hierarchies,
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on the highest plane they are arupa, i.e., formless, bodiless, without any substance, mere breaths. On the second plane, they first approach to Rupa, or form. On the third, they became Manasa-putras, those who became incarnated in men. With every plane they reach they are called by different names—there is a continual differentiation of their original homogeneous substance; we call it substance, although in reality it is no substance of which we can conceive. Later, they become Rupa—ethereal forms.
Q. Then the Ah-hi of this Manvantara . . . ?
A. Exist no longer; they have long ago become Planetary, Solar, Lunar, and lastly, incarnating Egos, for, as said, “they are the collective hosts of spiritual beings.”
Q. But it was stated above that the Ah-hi did not become men in this Manvantara.
A. Nor do they as the formless “Ah-hi.” But they do as their own transformations. The Manvantaras should not be confounded. The fifteen-figure Manvantaric cycle applies to the solar system; but there is a Manvantara which relates to the whole of the objective universe, the Mother-Father, and many minor Manvantaras. The slokas relating to the former have been generally selected, and only two or three relating to the latter given. Many slokas, therefore, have been omitted because of their difficult nature.
Q. Then, on reawakening, will the men of one Manvantara have to pass through a stage corresponding to the Ah-hi stage in the next Manvantara?
A. In some of the Manvantaras, the tail is in the mouth of the serpent. Think over this Symbolism.
Q. A man can choose what he will think about; can the analogy be applied to the Ah-hi?
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A. No; because a man has free will and the Ah-hi have none. They are obliged to act simultaneously, for the law under which they must act gives them the impulse. Free will can only exist in a Man who has both mind and consciousness, which act and make him perceive things both within and without himself. The “Ah-hi” are Forces, not human Beings.
Q. But are they not conscious agents in the work?
A. Conscious in as far as they act within the universal consciousness. But the consciousness of the Manasa-putra on the third plane is quite different. It is only then that they become Thinkers. Besides, Occultism, unlike modern Science, maintains that every atom of matter, when once differentiated, becomes endowed with its own kind of Consciousness. Every cell in the human body (as in every animal) is endowed with its own peculiar discrimination, instinct, and, speaking relatively, with intelligence.
Q. Can the Ah-hi be said to be enjoying bliss?
A. How can they be subject to bliss or non-bliss? Bliss can only be appreciated, and becomes such when suffering is known.
Q. But there is a distinction between happiness and bliss.
A. Granting that there may be, still there can be neither happiness nor bliss without a contrasting experience of suffering and pain.
Q. But we understand that bliss, as the state of the Absolute, was intended to be referred to.
A. This is still more illogical. How can the Absolute be said to feel? The Absolute can have no condition nor attribute. It is only that which is finite and differentiated which can have any feeling or attitude predicated of it.
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Q. Then the Ah-hi cannot be said to be conscious intelligences, when intelligence is so complex?
A. Perhaps the term is erroneous, but owing to the poverty of European languages there seems to be no other choice.
Q. But perhaps a phrase would represent the idea more correctly? The term seems to mean a force which is a unity, not a complex action and reaction of several forces, which would be implied by the word “intelligence.” The noumenal aspect of phenomenal force would perhaps better express the idea.
A. Or perhaps we may represent to ourselves the idea as a flame, a unity; the rays from this flame will be complex, each acting in its own straight line.
Q. But they only become complex when they find receptacles in lower forms.
A. Just so; still the Ah-hi are the flame from which the rays stream forth, becoming more and more differentiated as they fall deeper into matter, until they finally reach this world of ours, with its teeming millions of inhabitants and sensuous beings, and then they become truly complex.
Q. The Ah-hi, then, considered as a primary essence, would be unity? Can we regard them as such?
A. You may; but the strict truth is that they only proceed from unity, and are the first of its seven rays.
Q. Then can we call them the reflection of unity?
A. Are not the prismatic rays fundamentally one single white ray? From the one they become three; from the three, seven; from which seven primaries they fall into infinitude. Referring back to the so-called “consciousness” of the Ah-hi, that consciousness cannot be judged by the standard of human perceptions. It is on quite another plane.
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Q. “During deep sleep, mind is not on the material plane”; is it therefore to be inferred that during this period mind is active on another plane? Is there any definition of the characteristics which distinguish mind in the waking state from mind during the sleep of the body?
A. There is, of course; but I do not think that a discussion upon it would be pertinent or useful now; suffice to say that often the reasoning faculty of the higher mind may be asleep, and the instinctual mind be fully awake. It is the physiological distinction between the cerebrum and the cerebellum; the one sleeps and the other is awake.
Q. What is meant by the term instinctual mind?
A. The instinctual mind finds expression through the cerebellum, and is also that of the animals. With man during sleep the functions of the cerebrum cease, and the cerebellum carries him on to the Astral plane, a still more unreal state than even the waking plane of illusion; for so we call this state which the majority of you think so real. And the Astral plane is still more deceptive, because it reflects indiscriminately the good and the bad, and is so chaotic.
Q. The fundamental conditions of the mind in the waking state are space and time: do these exist for the mind (Manas) during the sleep of the physical body?
A. Not as we know them. Moreover, the answer depends on which Manas you mean—the higher or the lower. It is only the latter which is susceptible of hallucinations about space and time; for instance, a man in the dreaming state may live in a few seconds the events of a life-time.4 For the perceptions and apprehensions of the Higher Ego there is neither space nor time.
Q. Manas is said to be the vehicle of Buddhi, but the universal mind has been spoken of as a Maha-Buddhi. What then is the distinction between the terms Manas and Buddhi, employed in a universal sense, and Manas and Buddhi as manifested in man?
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A. Cosmic Buddhi, the emanation of the Spiritual Soul Alaya, is the vehicle of Mahat only when that Buddhi corresponds to Prakriti. Then it is called Maha-Buddhi. This Buddhi differentiates through seven planes, whereas the Buddhi in man is the vehicle of Atman which vehicle is of the essence of the highest plane of Akasa and therefore does not differentiate. The difference between Manas and Buddhi in man is the same as the difference between the Manasa-putra and the Ah-hi in Kosmos.
Q. Manas is mind, and the Ah-hi, it is said, can no more have any individual Mind, or that which we call mind, on this plane than Buddhi can. Can there be Consciousness without Mind?
A. Not on this plane of matter. But why not on some other and higher plane? Once we postulate a Universal Mind, both the brain, the mind’s vehicle, and Consciousness, its faculty, must be quite different on a higher plane from what they are here. They are nearer to the Absolute all, and must therefore be represented by a substance infinitely more homogeneous; something sui generis, and entirely beyond the reach of our intellectual perceptions. Let us call or imagine it an incipient and incognizable state of primeval differentiation. On that higher plane, as it seems to me, Mahat—the great Manvantaric Principle of Intelligence—acts as a Brain, through which the Universal and Eternal Mind radiates the Ah-hi, representing the resultant Consciousness or ideation. As the shadow of this primordial triangle falls lower and lower through the descending planes, it becomes with every stage more material.
Q. It becomes the plane on which Consciousness perceives objective manifestations. Is it so?
A. Yes. But here we come face to face with the great problem of Consciousness, and shall have to fight Materialism. For what is Consciousness? According to modern
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Science it is a faculty of the Mind like volition. We say so too; but add that while Consciousness is not a thing per se, Mind is distinctly—in its Manvantaric functions at least—an Entity. Such is the opinion of all the Eastern Idealists.
Q. It is, however, the fashion nowadays to speak slightingly of the idea that the mind is an entity.
A. Nevertheless, mind is a term perfectly synonymous with Soul. Those who deny the existence of the latter will of course contend that there is no such thing as consciousness apart from brain, and at death consciousness ceases. Occultists, on the contrary, affirm that consciousness exists after death, and that then only the real consciousness and freedom of the Ego commences, when it is no longer impeded by terrestrial matter.
Q. Perhaps the former view arises from limiting the meaning of the term “consciousness” to the faculty of perception?
A. If so, occultism is entirely opposed to such a view.
Sloka 4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS (Moksha or Nirvana) WERE NOT.5 THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY (Nidâna and Maya) WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM.
Q. What are the seven ways to bliss?
A. They are certain faculties of which the student will know more when he goes deeper into occultism.
Q. Are the Four Truths of the Hinayana School the same as those mentioned by Sir Edwin Arnold in “The Light of Asia”; the first of which is the Path of Sorrow; the second of Sorrow’s cause; the third of Sorrow’s ceasing; and the fourth is the Way?
A. All this is theological and exoteric, and to be found in all the Buddhist scriptures; and the above seems to be taken from Singhalese or Southern Buddhism. The subject, how-
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ever, is far more fully treated of in the Aryasanga School. Still even there the four truths have one meaning for the regular priest of the Yellow Robe, and quite another for the real Mystics.
Q. Are Nidâna and Maya (the great causes of misery) aspects of the Absolute?
A. Nidana means the concatenation of cause and effect; the twelve Nidânas are the enumeration of the chief causes which produce the severest reaction or effects under the Karmic law. Although there is no connection between the terms Nidana and Maya in themselves, Maya being simply illusion, yet if we consider the universe as Maya or illusion, then certainly the Nidânas, as being moral agents in the universe, are included in Maya. It is Maya, illusion or ignorance, which awakens Nidânas; and the cause or causes having been produced, the effects follow according to Karmic law. To take an instance: we all regard ourselves as Units, although essentially we are one indivisible Unit, drops in the ocean of Being, not to be distinguished from other drops. Having then produced this cause, the whole discord of life follows immediately as an effect; in reality it is the endeavour of nature to restore harmony and maintain equilibrium. It is this sense of separateness which is the root of all evil.
Q. Perhaps it would therefore be better to separate the two terms, and state whether Maya is an aspect of the Absolute?
A. This can hardly be so, since Maya is the Cause, and at the same time an aspect, of differentiation, if of anything. Moreover, the Absolute can never be differentiated. Maya is a manifestation; the Absolute can have no manifestation, but only a reflection, a shadow which is radiated periodically from it—not by it.
Q. Yet Maya is said to be the Cause of manifestation or differentiation?
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A. What of that? Certainly if there were no Maya there would be no differentiation, or, rather, no objective universe would be perceived. But this does not make of it an aspect of the Absolute, but simply something coeval and coexistent with the manifested Universe or the heterogeneous differentiation of pure Homogeneity.
Q. By a parity of reason, then, if no differentiation, no Maya? But we are speaking of Maya now as the cause of the Universe, so that the moment we get behind differentiation, we may ask ourselves—Where is Maya?
A. Maya is everywhere, and in every thing that has a beginning and an end; therefore, every thing is an aspect of that which is eternal, and in that sense, of course Maya itself is an aspect of Sat, or that which is eternally present in the universe, whether during Manvantara or Mahapralaya. Only remember that it has been said of even Nirvâna that it is only Maya when compared with the Absolute.
Q. Is then Maya a collective term for all manifestations?
A. I do not think this would explain the term. Maya is the perceptive faculty of every Ego which considers itself a Unit separate from, and independent of, the One infinite and eternal Sat, or “be-ness.” Maya is explained in exoteric philosophy and the Purânas, as the personified active Will of the Creative God—the latter being but a personified Maya himself—a passing deception of the senses of man, who began anthropomorphizing pure abstraction from the beginning of his speculations. Maya, in the conception of an orthodox Hindu, is quite different from the Maya of a Vedantin Idealist or an Occultist. The Vedanta states that Maya, or the deceptive influence of illusion alone, constitutes belief in the real existence of matter or anything differentiated. The Bhagavata Purâna identifies Maya with Prakriti (manifested nature and matter). Do not some ad-
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vanced European metaphysicians, such as Kant, Schopenhauer, and others, assert the same? Of course they got their ideas about it from the East—especially from Buddhism; yet the doctrine of the unreality of this universe has been pretty correctly worked out by our philosophers—on general lines, at any rate. Now, although no two people can see things and objects in exactly the same way, and that each of us sees them in his own way, yet all labour more or less under illusions, and chiefly under the great illusion (Maya) that they are, as personalities, distinct beings from other beings, and that even their Selves or Egos will prevail in the eternity (or sempiternity, at any rate) as such; whereas not only we ourselves, but the whole visible and invisible universe, are only a temporary part of the one beginningless and endless whole, or that which ever was, is, and will be.
Q. The term seems to apply to the complex points of differentiation: differentiation applying to the unit and Maya to the collection of units. But we may now put a side question.
With regard to the preceding part of the discussion, reference has been made to the cerebrum and cerebellum, and the latter described as the instinctual organ. An animal is supposed to have an instinctive mind; but the cerebellum is said to be simply the organ of vegetative life, and to control the functions of the body alone; whereas the sensual mind is the mind into which the senses open, and there can be no thought or ideation, nothing of which we predicate intellect or instinct anywhere, except in that part of the brain assigned to such functions, namely, the cerebrum.
A. However that may be, this cerebellum is the organ of instinctual animal functions, which reflect themselves in, or produce, dreams which for the most part are chaotic and inconsequent. Dreams, however, which are remembered, and present a sequence of events, are due to the vision of the higher Ego.
Q. Is not the cerebellum what we may call the organ of habit?
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A. Being instinctual, it may very well be called so, I believe.
Q. Except that habit may be referred to what we may call the present stage of existence, and instinct to a past stage.
A. Whatever the name may be, the cerebellum alone—as you were already told (vide “On Dreams,” in Appendix)—functions during sleep, not the cerebrum; and the dreams, or emanations, or instinctive feelings, which we experience on waking, are the result of such activity.
Q. The consecutiveness is brought about entirely by the co-ordinating faculty. But surely the cerebrum also acts, a proof of which is that the nearer we approach the sleep-waking state the more vivid our dreams become.
A. Quite so, when you are waking; but not before. We may compare this state of the cerebellum to a bar of metal, or something of the same nature, which has been heated during the day and emanates or radiates heat during the night; so the energy of the brain radiates unconsciously during the night.
Q. Still we cannot say that the brain is incapable of registering impressions during sleep. A sleeping man can be awakened by a noise, and when awake will be frequently able to trace his dream to the impression caused by the noise. This fact seems to prove conclusively the brain’s activity during sleep.
A. A mechanical activity certainly; if under such circumstances there is the slightest perception, or the least glimpse of the dream state, memory comes into play, and the dream can be reconstructed. In the discussion on dreams, the dream state passing into the waking state was compared to the embers of a dying fire; we may very well continue the simile, and compare the play of the memory to a current of air re-kindling them. That is to say that the waking consciousness recalls to activity the cerebellum, which was fading below the threshold of consciousness.
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Q. But does the cerebellum ever cease functioning?
A. No; but it is lost in the functions of the cerebrum.
Q. That is to say that the stimuli which proceed from the cerebellum during waking life fall below the threshold of waking consciousness, the field of consciousness being entirely occupied by the cerebrum, and this continues till sleep supervenes, when the stimuli from the cerebellum begin in their turn to form the field of consciousness. It is not, therefore, correct to say that the cerebrum is the only seat of consciousness.
A. Quite so; the function of the cerebrum is to polish, perfect, or co-ordinate ideas, whereas that of the cerebellum produces conscious desires, and so on.
Q. Evidently we have to extend our idea of consciousness. For instance, there is no reason why a sensitive plant should not have consciousness. Du Prel, in his “Philosophie der Mystik,” cites some very curious experiments showing a kind of local consciousness, perhaps a kind of reflex connection. He even goes further than this, demonstrating, from a large number of well authenticated cases, such as those of clairvoyants, who can perceive by the pit of the stomach, that the threshold of consciousness is capable of a very wide extension, far wider than we are accustomed to give to it, both upwards and downwards.
A. We may congratulate ourselves on the experiments of Du Prel as an antidote to the theories of Professor Huxley, which are absolutely irreconcileable with the teachings of occultism.
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Meeting III.
Meeting held at 17, Lansdowne Road, London, W., on January 24th, 1889,
Mr. T. B. Harbottle in the chair.
Subject:—
THE STANZAS OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE—VOL. I.
STANZA I. (continued.)
Sloka 5.—DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER, AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.
Q. Is “Darkness” the same as the “Eternal Parent Space” spoken of in Sloka 1?
A. Not at all. Here “the boundless all” is the “Parent Space”; and Cosmic Space is something already with attributes, at least potentially. “Darkness,” on the other hand, and in this instance, is that of which no attributes can be postulated: it is the Unknown Principle filling Cosmic Space.
Q. Is Darkness, then, used in the sense of the opposite pole to Light?
A. Yes, in the sense of the Unmanifested and the Unknown as the opposite pole to manifestation, and that which falls under the possibility of speculation.
Q. Darkness is not opposed to Light, then, but to differentiation; or rather, may it not be taken as the symbol of Negativeness?
A. The “Darkness” here meant can be opposed to neither Light nor Differentiation, as both are the legitimate effects of the Manvantaric evolution—the cycle of Activity. It is the “Darkness upon the face of the Deep,” in Genesis: Deep being here “the bright son of the Dark Father”—Space.
Q. Is it that there is no Light or simply nothing to manifest, and no one to perceive it?
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A. Both. In the sense of objectivity, both light and darkness are illusions—maya; in this case, it is not Darkness as absence of Light, but as one incomprehensible primordial Principle, which, being Absoluteness itself, has for our intellectual perceptions neither form, colour, substantiality, nor anything that could be expressed by words.
Q. When does Light proceed from that Darkness?
A. Subsequently, when the first hour for manifestation strikes.
Q. Light, then, is the first manifestation?
A. It is, after differentiation has begun and at the third stage of evolution only. Bear in mind that in philosophy we use the word “light” in a dual sense: one to signify eternal, absolute light, in potentia, ever present in the bosom of the unknown Darkness, coexistent and coeval with the latter in Eternity, or in other words, identical with it; and the other as a Manifestation of heterogeneity and a contrast to it. For one who reads the Vishnu Purâna, for instance, understandingly, will find the difference between the two terms well expressed in Vishnu; one with Brahmâ, and yet distinct from him. There, Vishnu is the eternal x, and at the same time every term of the equation. He is Brahma (neuter) essentially matter and Spirit, which are Brahma’s two primordial aspects—Spirit being the abstract light.6 In the Vedas, however, we find Vishnu held in small esteem, and no mention made whatever of Brahmâ (the male).
Q. What is the meaning of the sentence, “Father, Mother and Son were once more one”?
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A. It means that the three Logoi—the unmanifested “Father,” the semi-manifested “Mother” and the Universe, which is the third Logos of our philosophy or Brahmâ, were during the (periodical) pralaya once more one; differentiated essence had rebecome undifferentiated. The sentence, “Father, Mother, and Son,” is the antitype of the Christian type—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—the last of which was, in early Christianity and Gnosticism, the female “Sophia.” It means that all creative and sensitive forces and the effects of such forces which constitute the universe had returned to their primordial state: all was merged into one. During the Mahapralayas naught but the Absolute is.
Q. What are the different meanings of Father, Mother and Son? In the Commentary, they are explained as (a) Spirit, Substance and Universe, (b) Spirit, Soul and Body, (c) Universe, Planetary Chain and Man.
A. I have just completed it with my extra definition, which is clear, I think. There is nothing to be added to this explanation, unless we begin to anthropomorphize abstract conceptions.
Q. Taking the last terms of the three series, do the ideas Son, Universe, Man, Body correspond with one another?
A. Of course they do.
Q. And are these terms produced from the remaining pair of terms of each trinity; for instance, the Son from the Father and Mother, the men from the Chain and the Universe, etc., etc., and finally in Pralaya is the Son merged back again into its parents?
A. Before the question is answered, you must be reminded that the period preceding so-called Creation is not spoken about; but only that when matter had begun to differentiate, but had not yet assumed form. Father-Mother is a compound term which means primordial Substance or Spirit-matter. When from Homogeneity it begins through
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differentiation to fall into Heterogeneity, it becomes positive and negative; thus from the “Zero-state” (or layam) it becomes active and passive, instead of the latter alone; and, in consequence of this differentiation (the resultant of which is evolution and the subsequent Universe),—the “Son” is produced, the Son being that same Universe, or manifested Kosmos, till a new Mahapralaya.
Q. Or—the ultimate state in layam, or in the zero point, as in the beginning before the stage of the Father, Mother and Son?
A. There is but slight reference to that which was before the Father-Mother period in the Secret Doctrine. If there is Father-Mother, there can, of course, be no such condition as Laya.
Q. Father, Mother are therefore later than the Laya condition?
A. Quite so; individual objects may be in Laya, but the Universe cannot be so when Father-Mother appears.
Q. Is Fohat one of the three, Father, Mother and Son?
A. Fohat is a generic term and used in many senses. He is the light (Daiviprakriti) of all the three logoi—the personified symbols of the three spiritual stages of Evolution. Fohat is the aggregate of all the spiritual creative ideations above, and of all the electro-dynamic and creative forces below, in Heaven and on Earth. There seems to be great confusion and misunderstanding concerning the First and Second Logos. The first is the already present yet still unmanifested potentiality in the bosom of Father-Mother; the Second is the abstract collectivity of creators called “Demiurgi” by the Greeks or the Builders of the Universe. The third logos is the ultimate differentiation of the Second and the individualization of Cosmic Forces, of which Fohat is the chief; for Fohat is the synthesis of the Seven Creative Rays or Dhyan Chohans which proceed from the third Logos.
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Q. During Manvantara when the Son is in existence or awake, does the Father-Mother exist independently or only as manifested in the Son?
A. In using the terms Father, Mother, and Son, we should be on our guard against anthropomorphizing the conception; the two former are simply centrifugal and centripetal forces and their product is the “Son”; moreover, it is impossible to exclude either of these factors from the conception in the Esoteric Philosophy.
Q. If so then comes this other point: it is possible to conceive of centripetal and centrifugal forces existing independently of the effects they produce. The effects are always regarded as secondary to the cause or causes.
A. But it is very doubtful whether such a conception can be maintained in, and applied to, our Symbology; if these forces exist they must be producing effects, and if the effects cease, the forces cease with them, for who can know of them?
Q. But they exist as separate entities for mathematical purposes, do they not?
A. That is a different thing; there is a great difference between nature and science, reality and philosophical symbolism. For the same reason we divide man into seven principles, but this does not mean that he has, as it were, seven skins, or entities, or souls. These principles are all aspects of one principle, and even this principle is but a temporary and periodical ray of the One eternal and infinite Flame or Fire.
Sloka 6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE, AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA (absolute perfection, Paranirvana, which is Yong-Grüb), TO BE OUTBREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS.
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Sloka 7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH; THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING, THE ONE BEING.
Q. If the “Causes of existence” had been done away with, how did they come again into existence? It is stated in the Commentary that the chief cause of existence is “the desire to exist,” but in the sloka, the universe is called the “son of necessity.”
A. “The causes of existence had been done away with” refers to the last Manvantara, or age of Brahmâ, but the cause which makes the Wheel of Time and Space run into Eternity, which is out of Space and Time, has nothing to do with finite causes or what we call Nidânas. There seems to me no contradiction in the statements.
Q. There certainly is a contrast. If the causes of existence had been done away with, how did they come into existence again? But the answer removes the difficulty, for it is stated that one Manvantara had disappeared into Pralaya, and that the cause which led the previous Manvantara to exist is now behind the limits of Space and Time, and therefore causes another Manvantara to come into being.
A. Quite so. This one eternal and therefore, “causeless cause” is immutable and has nothing to do with the causes on any of the planes which are concerned with finite and conditioned being. The cause can therefore by no means be a finite consciousness or desire. It is an absurdity to postulate desire or necessity of the Absolute; the striking of a clock does not suggest the desire of the clock to strike.
Q. But the clock is wound up, and needs a Winder?
A. The same may be said of the universe and this cause, the Absolute containing both clock and Winder, once it is the Absolute; the only difference is that the former is wound up in Space and Time and the latter out of Space and Time, that is to say in Eternity.
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Q. The question really requests an explanation of the cause, in the Absolute, of differentiation?
A. That is outside the province of legitimate speculation. Parabrahm is not a cause, neither is there any cause that can compel it to emanate or create. Strictly speaking, Parabrahm is not even the Absolute but Absoluteness. Parabrahm is not the cause, but the causality, or the propelling but not volitional power, in every manifesting Cause. We may have some hazy idea that there is such a thing as this eternal Causeless Cause or Causality. But to define it is impossible. In the “Lectures on the Bhagavat Gîta,” by Mr. Subba Row, it is stated that logically even the First Logos cannot cognize Parabrahm, but only Mulaprakriti, its veil. When, therefore, we have yet no clear idea of Mulaprakriti, the first basic aspect of Parabrahm, what can we know of that Supreme Total which is veiled by Mulaprakriti (the root of nature or Prakriti) even to the Logos?
Q. What is the meaning of the expression in sloka 7, “the visible that was, and the invisible that is”?
A. “The visible that was” means the universe of the past Manvantara which had passed into Eternity and was no more. “The invisible that is” signifies the eternal, ever-present and ever-invisible deity, which we call by many names, such as abstract Space, Absolute Sat, etc., and know, in reality, nothing about it.
Sloka 8. ALONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED, BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE “OPENED EYE” OF THE DANGMA.
Q. Does the “Eye” open upon the Absolute: or are the “one form of existence” and the “All-Presence” other than the Absolute, or various names for the same Principle?
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A. It is all one, of course; simply metaphorical expressions. Please notice that the “Eye” is not said to “see”; it only “sensed” the “All-Presence.”
Q. It is through this “Eye” then, that we receive such sense, or feeling, or consciousness?
A. Through that “Eye,” most decidedly; but then one must have such an “Eye” before he can see, or become a Dangma, or a Seer.
Q. The highest spiritual faculty, presumably?
A. Very well; but where, at that stage, was the happy possessor of it? There was no Dangma to sense the “All-Presence,” because there were as yet no men.
Q. With reference to sloka 6, it was stated that the cause of Light was Darkness?
A. Darkness has, here again, to be read in a metaphorical sense. It is Darkness most unquestionably to our intellect, inasmuch as we can know nothing of it. I told you already that neither Darkness nor Light are to be used in the sense of opposites, as in the differentiated world. Darkness is the term which will give rise to least misconceptions. For instance, if the term “Chaos” were used, it would be liable to be confounded with chaotic matter.
Q. The term light was, of course, never used for physical light?
A. Of course not. Here light is the first potentiality awakening from its laya condition to become a potency; it is the first flutter in undifferentiated matter which throws it into objectivity and into a plane from which will start manifestation.
Q. Later on in the “Secret Doctrine,” it is stated that light is made visible by darkness, or rather that darkness exists originally, and that light is the result of the presence of objects to reflect it, that is of the objective world. Now if we take a globe of water and pass an
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electric beam through it, we shall find that this beam is invisible, unless there are opaque particles in the water, in which case, specks of light will be seen. Is this a good analogy?
A. It is a very fair illustration, I believe.
Q. Is not Light a differentiation of vibration?
A. So we are told in Science; and Sound is also. And so we see that the senses are to a certain extent interchangeable. How would you account, for instance, for the fact that in trance a clairvoyant can read a letter, sometimes placed on the forehead, at the soles of the feet, or on the stomach-pit?
Q. That is an extra sense.
A. Not at all; it is simply that the sense of seeing can be interchanged with the sense of touch.
Q. But is not the sense of perception the beginning of the sixth sense?
A. That is going beyond the present case, which is simply the interchanging of the senses of touch and sight. Such clairvoyants, however, will not be able to tell the contents of a letter which they have not seen or been brought into contact with; this requires the exercise of the sixth sense, the former is an exercise of senses on the physical plane, the latter of a sense on a higher plane.
Q. It seems very probable from physiology that every sense may be resolved into the sense of touch, which may be called the co-ordinating sense. This deduction is made from embryological research, which shows that the sense of touch is the first and primary sense, and that all the rest are evolved from it. All the senses, therefore, are more highly specialized or differentiated forms of touch.
A. This is not the view of Eastern philosophy; in the Anugita, we read of a conversation between “Brahman” and his wife concerning the senses, seven are spoken of, “mind and understanding” being the other two, according to Mr.
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Trimbak Telang and Professor Max Müller’s translation; these terms, however, do not convey the correct meaning of the Sanskrit terms. Now, the first sense, according to the Hindus, is connected with sound. This can hardly be the sense of touch.
Q. By touch most probably sensibility, or some sense medium, is meant?
A. In the Eastern philosophy, however, the sense of sound is first manifested, and next the sense of sight, sounds passing into colours. Clairvoyants can see sounds and detect every note and modulation far more distinctly than they would by the ordinary sense of sound—vibration, or hearing.
Q. Is it, then, that sound is perceived as a sort of rhythmic movement?
A. Yes; and such vibrations can be seen at a greater distance than they can be heard.
Q. But supposing the physical hearing were stopped, and a person perceived sounds clairvoyantly, could not this sensation be translated into clairaudience as well?
A. One sense must certainly merge at some point into the other. So also sound can be translated into taste. There are sounds which taste exceedingly acid in the mouths of some sensitives, while others generate the taste of sweetness, in fact, the whole scale of senses is susceptible of correlations.
Q. Then there must be the same extension of the sense of smell?
A. Very naturally, as has been already shown before. The senses are interchangeable once we admit correlation. Moreover they can all be intensified or modified very considerably. You will now understand the reference in the Vedas and Upanishads, where sounds are said to be perceived.
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Q. There was a curious story in the last number of Harper’s Magazine of a tribe on an island in the South Seas which have virtually lost the art and habit of speaking and conversing. Yet, they appeared to understand one another and see plainly what each other thought.
A. Such a “Palace of Truth” would hardly suit modern society. However, it was by just such means that the early races are said to have communicated with one another, thought taking an objective form, before speech developed into a distinct spoken language. If so, then there must have been a period in the evolution of the human races when the whole Humanity was composed of sensitives and clairvoyants.
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Meeting IV.
Meeting held at 17, Lansdowne Road, London, W., on January 31st, 1889,
Mr. T. B. Harbottle in the chair.
Subject:—
THE STANZAS OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE—VOL. I.
STANZA I. (continued.)
Q. With reference to sloka 6, where it speaks of the “Seven Lords,” since confusion is apt to arise as to the correct application of the terms, what is the distinction between Dhyan-Chohans, Planetary Spirits, Builders and Dhyani-Buddhas?
A. As an additional two volumes of the Secret Doctrine would be required to explain all the Hierarchies; therefore, much relating to them has been omitted from the Stanzas and Commentaries. A short definition may, however, be tried. Dhyan-Chohan is a generic term for all Devas, or celestial beings. A Planetary Spirit is a Ruler of a planet, a kind of finite or personal god. There is a marked difference, however, between the Rulers of the Sacred Planets and the Rulers of a small “chain” of worlds like our own. It is no serious objection to say that the earth has, nevertheless, six invisible companions and four different planes, as every other planet, for the difference between them is vital in many a point. Say what one may, our Earth was never numbered among the seven sacred planets of the ancients, though in exoteric, popular astrology it stood as a substitute for a secret planet now lost to astronomy, yet well known to initiated specialists. Nor were the Sun or the Moon in that number, though accepted in our day by modern astrology; for the Sun is a Central Star, and the Moon a dead planet.
Q. Were none of the six globes of the “terrene” chain numbered among the sacred planets?
A. None. The latter were all planets on our plane, and some of them have been discovered later.
Q. Can you tell us something of the planets for which the Sun and the Moon were substitutes?
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A. There is no secret in it, though our modern astrologers are ignorant of these planets. One is an intra-mercurial planet, which is supposed to have been discovered, and named by anticipation Vulcan, and the other a planet with a retrograde motion, sometimes visible at a certain hour of night and apparently near the moon. The occult influence of this planet is transmitted by the moon.
Q. What is it that made these planets sacred or secret?
A. Their occult influences, as far as I know.
Q. Then do the Planetary Spirits of the Seven Sacred Planets belong to another hierarchy than to that of the earth?
A. Evidently; since the terrestrial spirit of the earth is not of a very high grade. It must be remembered that the planetary spirit has nothing to do with the spiritual man, but with things of matter and cosmic beings. The gods and rulers of our Earth are cosmic Rulers; that is to say, they form into shape and fashion cosmic matter, for which they were called Cosmocratores. They never had any concern with spirit; the Dhyani-Bud-
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dhas, belonging to quite a different hierarchy, are especially concerned with the latter.
Q. These seven Planetary Spirits have therefore nothing really to do with the earth except incidentally?
A. On the contrary, the “Planetary”—who are not the Dhyani-Buddhas—have everything to do with the earth, physically and morally. It is they who rule its destinies and the fate of men. They are Karmic agencies.
Q. Have they anything to do with the fifth principle—the higher Manas?
A. No: they have no concern with the three higher principles; they have, however, something to do with the fourth. To recapitulate, therefore; the term “Dhyan-Chohan” is a generic name for all celestial beings. The “Dhyani-Buddhas” are concerned with the human higher triad in a mysterious way that need not be explained here. The “Builders” are a class called, as I already explained, Cosmocratores, or the invisible but intelligent Masons, who fashion matter according to the ideal plan ready for them in that which we call Divine and Cosmic Ideation. They were called by the early Masons the “Grand Architect of the Universe” collectively: but now the modern Masons make of their G.A.O.T.U. a personal and singular Deity.
Q. Are they not also Planetary Spirits?
A. In a sense they are—as the Earth is also a Planet—but of a lower order.
Q. Do they act under the guidance of the Terrestrial Planetary Spirit?
A. I have just said that they were collectively that Spirit themselves. I wish you to understand that they are not an Entity, a kind of a personal God, but Forces of nature acting under one immutable Law, on the nature of which it is certainly useless for us to speculate.
Q. But are there not Builders of Universes, and Builders of Systems, as there are Builders of our earth?
A. Assuredly there are.
Q. Then the terrestrial Builders are a Planetary “Spirit” like the rest of them, only inferior in kind?
A. I would certainly say so.
Q. Are they inferior according to the size of the planet or inferior in quality?
A. The latter, as we are taught. You see the ancients lacked our modern, and especially theological, conceit, which makes of this little speck of mud of ours something ineffably grander than any of the stars and planets known to
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us. If, for instance, Esoteric Philosophy teaches that the “Spirit” (collectively again) of Jupiter is far superior to the Terrestrial Spirit, it is not because Jupiter is so many times larger than our earth, but because its substance and texture are so much finer than, and superior to, that of the earth. And it is in proportion to this quality that the Hierarchies of respective “Planetary Builders” reflect and act upon the ideations they find planned for them in the Universal Consciousness, the real great Architect of the Universe.
Q. The Soul of the World, or “Anima Mundi”?
A. Call it so, if you like. It is the Antitype of these Hierarchies, which are its differentiated types. The one impersonal Great Architect of the Universe is Mahat, the Universal Mind. And Mahat is a symbol, an abstraction, an aspect which assumed a hazy, entitative form in the all-materializing conceptions of man.
Q. What is the real difference between the Dhyani-Buddhas in the orthodox and the esoteric conceptions?
A. A very great one philosophically. They are—as higher Devas—called by the Buddhists, Bôdhisattvas. Exoterically they are five in number, whereas in the esoteric schools they are seven, and not single Entities but Hierarchies. It is stated in the Secret Doctrine that five Buddhas have come and that two are to come in the sixth and seventh races. Exoterically their president is Vajrasattva, the “Supreme Intelligence” or “Supreme Buddha,” but more transcendent still is Vajradhara, even as Parabrahm transcends Brahmâ or Mahat. Thus the exoteric and occult significations of the Dhyani-Buddhas are entirely different. Exoterically each is a trinity, three in one, all three manifesting simultaneously in three worlds—as a human Buddha on earth, a Dhyani-Buddha in the world of astral forms, and an arupa, or formless, Buddha in the high-
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est Nirvanic realm. Thus for a human Buddha, an incarnation of one of these Dhyanis, the stay on earth is limited from seven to seven thousand years in various bodies, since as men they are subjected to normal conditions, accidents and death. In Esoteric philosophy, on the other hand, this means that only five out of the “Seven Dhyani-Buddhas”—or, rather, the Seven Hierarchies of these Dhyanis, who, in Buddhist mysticism, are identical with the higher incarnating Intelligences, or the Kumâras of the Hindus—five only have hitherto appeared on earth in regular succession of incarnations, the last two having to come during the sixth and seventh Root-Races. This is, again, semi-allegorical, if not entirely so. For the sixth and seven Hierarchies have been already incarnated on this earth together with the rest. But as they have reached “Buddhaship,” so called, almost from the beginning of the fourth Root-Race, they are said to rest since then in conscious bliss and freedom till the beginning of the Seventh Round, when they will lead Humanity as a new race of Buddhas. These Dhyanis are connected only with Humanity, and, strictly speaking, only with the highest “principles” of men.
Q. Do the Dhyani-Buddhas and the Planetary Spirits in charge of the globes go into pralaya when their planets enter that state?
A. Only at the end of the seventh Round, and not between each round, for they have to watch over the working of the laws during these minor pralayas. Fuller details on this subject have already been written in the third volume of the Secret Doctrine. But all these differences in fact are merely functional, for they are all aspects of one and the same Essence.
Q. Does the hierarchy of Dhyanis, whose province it is to watch over a Round, watch during its period of activity, over the whole series of globes, or only over a particular globe?
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A. There are incarnating and there are watching Dhyanis. Of the functions of the former you have just been told; the latter appear to do their work in this wise. Every class or hierarchy corresponds to one of the Rounds, the first and lowest hierarchy to the first and less developed Round, the second to the second, and so on till the seventh Round is reached, which is under the supervision of the highest Hierarchy of the Seven Dhyanis. At the last, they will appear on earth, as also will some of the Planetary, for the whole humanity will have become Bodhisattvas, their own “sons,” i.e., the “Sons” of their own Spirit and Essence or—themselves. Thus there is only a functional difference between the Dhyanis and the Planetary. The one are entirely divine, the other sidereal. The former only are called Anupadaka, parentless, because they radiated directly from that which is neither Father nor Mother but the unmanifested Logos. They are, in fact, the spiritual aspect of the seven Logoi; and the Planetary Spirits are in their totality, as the seven Sephiroth (the three higher being supercosmic abstractions and blinds in the Kabala), and constitute the Heavenly man, or Adam Kadmon; Dhyani is a generic name in Buddhism, an abbreviation for all the gods. Yet it must be ever remembered that though they are “gods,” still they are not to be worshipped.
Q. Why not, if they are gods?
A. Because Eastern philosophy rejects the idea of a personal and extra-cosmic deity. And to those who call this atheism, I would say the following. It is illogical to worship one such god, for, as said in the Bible, “There be Lords many and Gods many.” Therefore, if worship is desirable, we have to choose either the worship of many gods, each being no better or less limited than the other, viz., polytheism and idolatry, or choose, as the Israelites have done, one tribal or
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racial god from among them, and while believing in the existence of many gods, ignore and show contempt for the others, regarding our own as the highest and the “God of Gods.” But this is logically unwarrantable, for such a god can be neither infinite nor absolute, but must be finite, that is to say, limited and conditioned by space and time. With the Pralaya the tribal god disappears, and Brahmâ and all the other Devas, and the gods are merged into the Absolute. Therefore, occultists do not worship or offer prayers to them, because if we did, we should have either to worship many gods, or pray to the Absolute, which, having no attributes, can have no ears to hear us. The worshipper even of many gods must of necessity be unjust to all the other gods; however far he extends his worship it is simply impossible for him to worship each severally; and in his ignorance, if he choose out any one in particular, he may by no means select the most perfect. Therefore, he would do better far to remember that every man has a god within, a direct ray from the Absolute, the celestial ray from the One; that he has his “god” within, not outside, of himself.
Q. Is there any name that can be applied to the planetary Hierarchy or spirit, which watches over the entire evolution of our own globe, such as Brahmâ for instance?
A. None, except the generic name, since it is a septenary and a Hierarchy; unless, indeed, we call it as some Kabalists do—“the Spirit of the Earth.”
Q. It is very difficult to remember all these infinite Hierarchies of gods.
A. Not more so than to a chemist to remember the endless symbols of chemistry, if he is a Specialist. In India, alone, however, there are over 300 millions of gods and goddesses. The Manus and Rishis are also planetary gods, for they are said to have appeared at the beginning of the hu-
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man races to watch over their evolution, and to have incarnated and descended on earth subsequently in order to teach mankind. Then, there are the Sapta Rishis, the “Seven Rishis,” said exoterically to reside in the constellation of the Great Bear. There are also planetary gods.
Q. Are they higher than Brahmâ?
A. It depends in what aspect one views Brahmâ. In esoteric philosophy he is the synthesis of the seven logoi. In exoteric theology he is an aspect of Vishnu with the Vaishnevas, with others something else, as in the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity, he is the chief creator, whereas Vishnu is the Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer. In the Kabala he is certainly Adam Kadmon—the “male-female” man of the first chapter of Genesis. For the Manus proceed from Brahmâ as the Sephiroth proceed from Adam Kadmon, and they are also seven and ten, as circumstances require.
But we may just as well pass on to another Sloka of the Stanzas you want explained.
Sloka 9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE (Soul as the basis of all, Anima Mundi) WAS IN PARAMARTHA (Absolute Being and Consciousness which are Absolute Non-Being and Unconsciousness) AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA?
Q. Does “Alaya” mean that which is never manifested and dissolved, and is it derived from “a,” the negative particle, and “laya”?
A. If it is so etymologically—and I am certainly not prepared to answer you one way or the other—it would mean the reverse, since laya itself is just that which is not manifested; therefore it would signify that which is not unmanifested if anything. Whatever may be the etymological vivisection of the word, it is simply the “Soul of the World,” Anima Mundi. This is shown by the very wording of the
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Sloka, which speaks of Alaya being in Paramartha—i.e., in Absolute Non-Being and Unconsciousness, being at the same time absolute perfection or Absoluteness itself. This word, however, is the bone of contention between the Yogachârya and the Madhyamîka schools of Northern Buddhism. The scholasticism of the latter makes of Paramartha (Satya) something dependent on, and, therefore, relative to other things, thereby vitiating the whole metaphysical philosophy of the word Absoluteness. The other school very rightly denies this interpretation.
Q. Does not the Esoteric Philosophy teach the same doctrines as the Yogachârya School?
A. Not quite. But let us go on.
STANZA II.
Sloka 1. . . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN? . . . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS, IN THEIR AH-HI (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic) PARANISHPANNA, THE PRODUCERS OF FORM (rupa) FROM NO-FORM (arupa), THE ROOT OF THE WORLD—THE DEVAMATRI AND SVÂBHÂVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING.
Q. Are the “luminous sons of manvantaric dawn” perfected human spirits of the last Manvantara, or are they on their way to humanity in this or a subsequent Manvantara?
A. In this case, which is that of a Maha-manvantara after a Maha-pralaya, they are the latter. They are the primordial seven rays from which will emanate in their turn all the other luminous and non-luminous lives, whether Archangels, Devils, men or apes. Some have been and some will only now become human beings. It is only after the differentiation of the seven rays and after the seven forces of nature have taken them in hand and worked upon them, that they become cornerstones, or rejected pieces of clay.
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Everything, therefore, is in these seven rays, but it is impossible to say at this stage in which, because they are not yet differentiated and individualized.
Q. In the following passage:—
“The ‘Builders,’ the ‘Sons of Manvantaric Dawn,’ are the real creators of the Universe; and in this doctrine, which deals only with our Planetary System, they, as the architects of the latter, are also called the ‘Watchers’ of the Seven Spheres, which exoterically are the seven planets, and esoterically the seven earths or spheres (planets) of our chain also.
By planetary system is the solar system meant or the chain to which our earth belongs?
A. The Builders are those who build and fashion things into a form. The term is equally applied to the Builders of the Universe and to the small globes like those of our chain. By planetary system our solar system alone is meant.
Sloka 2. WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE WERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO! THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR SOUND.
Q. With reference to the following passage:—
“The idea that things can cease to exist and still be, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology. Under the apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a fact in Nature to realize which in the mind, rather than to argue about words is the important thing. A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination. The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form water, is still a moot one.”7
Would it be correct to say that what we perceive is a different “element” of the same substance? For example, when a substance is in the gaseous state, could we say that it is the element Air which is perceived, and that when combined to form water, oxygen and hydrogen appear under the guise of the Element Water, and when in the solid state, ice, we then perceive the element Earth?
A. The ignorant judge of all things by their appearance and not by what they are in reality. On this earth, of
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course, water is an element quite distinct from any other element, using the latter term in the sense of different manifestations of the one element. The root elements, Earth, Water, Air, Fire, are far more comprehensive states of differentiation. Such being the case, in Occultism Transubstantiation becomes a possibility, seeing that nothing which exists is in reality that which it is supposed to be.
Q. But oxygen which is usually found in its gaseous state, may be liquefied and even solidified. When oxygen, then, is found in the gaseous condition, is it the occult element Air which is perceived, and when in the liquid condition the element Water, and in the solid state the element Earth?
A. Most assuredly: we have first of all the Element Fire, not the common fire, but the Fire of the Mediæval Rosicrucians, the one flame, the fire of Life. In differentiation this becomes fire in different aspects. Occultism easily disposes of the puzzle as to whether oxygen and hydrogen cease to exist when combined to form water. Nothing that is in the Universe can disappear from it. For the time being, then, these two gases when combined to form water, are in abscondito, but have not ceased to be. For, had they been annihilated, Science, by decomposing the water again into oxygen and hydrogen, would have created something out of nothing, and would, therefore, have no quarrel with Theology. Therefore, water is an element, if we choose to call it so, on this plane only. In the same way, oxygen and hydrogen in their turn can be split up into other more subtle elements, all being differentiation of one element or universal essence.
Q. Then all substances on the physical plane are really so many correlations or combinations of these root elements, and ultimately of the one element?
A. Most assuredly. In occultism it is always best to proceed from universals to particulars.
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Q. Apparently, then, the whole basis of occultism lies in this, that there is latent within every man a power which can give him true knowledge, a power of perception of truth, which enables him to deal first hand with universals if he will be strictly logical and face the facts. Thus we can proceed from universals to particulars by this innate spiritual force which is in every man.
A. Quite so: this power is inherent in all, but paralyzed by our methods of education, and especially by the Aristotelian and Baconian methods. Hypothesis now reigns triumphant.
Q. It is curious to read Schopenhauer and Hartmann and mark how, step by step, by strict logic and pure reason, they have arrived at the same bases of thought that had been centuries ago adopted in India, especially by the Vedantin System. It may, however, be objected that they have arrived at this by the inductive method. But in Schopenhauer’s case at any rate it was not so. He acknowledges himself that the idea came to him like a flash; having thus got his fundamental idea he set to work to arrange his facts, so that the reader imagines that what was in reality an intuitive idea, is a logical deduction drawn from the facts.
A. This is not only true of the Schopenhauerian philosophy, but also of all the great discoveries of modern times. How, for instance, did Newton discover the law of gravity? Was it not by the simple fall of an apple, and not by an elaborate series of experiments. The time will come when the Platonic method will not be so entirely ignored and men will look with favour on methods of education which will enable them to develop this most spiritual faculty.
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Appendix.
The following is the Summary of the teachings during several meetings which preceded the Transactions of the “Blavatsky Lodge of the T. S.,” when the explanations of the stanzas from the “Secret Doctrine” became incorporated in a regular series of the instructions.
Dreams.
Q. What are the “principles” which are active during dreams?
A. The “principles” active during ordinary dreams—which ought to be distinguished from real dreams, and called idle visions—are Kama, the seat of the personal Ego and of desire awakened into chaotic activity by the slumbering reminiscences of the lower Manas.
Q. What is the “lower Manas”?
A. It is usually called the animal soul (the Nephesh of the Hebrew Kabalists). It is the ray which emanates from the Higher Manas or permanent Ego, and is that “principle” which forms the human mind—in animals instinct, for animals also dream.8 The combined action of Kama and the “animal soul,” however, are purely mechanical. It is instinct, not reason, which is active in them. During the sleep of the body they receive and send out mechanically electric shocks to and from various nerve-centers. The brain is hardly impressed by them, and memory stores them, of course, without order or sequence. On waking these impressions gradually fade out, as does every fleeting shadow that has no basic or substantial reality underlying it. The retentive faculty of the brain, however, may register and preserve them if they are only impressed strongly enough. But, as a rule, our memory registers only the fugitive and
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distorted impressions which the brain receives at the moment of awakening. This aspect of “dreams” however, has been sufficiently observed and is described correctly enough in modern physiological and biological works, as such human dreams do not differ much from those of the animals. That which is entirely terra incognita for Science is the real dreams and experiences of the higher Ego, which are also called dreams, but ought not to be so termed, or else the term for the other sleeping “visions” changed.
Q. How do these differ?
A. The nature and functions of real dreams cannot be understood unless we admit the existence of an immortal Ego in mortal man, independent of the physical body, for the subject becomes quite unintelligible unless we believe—that which is a fact—that during sleep there remains only an animated form of clay, whose powers of independent thinking are utterly paralyzed.
But if we admit the existence of a higher or permanent Ego in us—which Ego must not be confused with what we call the “Higher Self,” we can comprehend that what we often regard as dreams, generally accepted as idle fancies, are, in truth, stray pages torn out from the life and experiences of the inner man, and the dim recollection of which at the moment of awakening becomes more or less distorted by our physical memory. The latter catches mechanically a few impressions of the thoughts, facts witnessed, and deeds performed by the inner man during its hours of complete freedom. For our Ego lives its own separate life within its prison of clay whenever it becomes free from the trammels of matter, i.e., during the sleep of the physical man. This Ego it is which is the actor, the real man, the true human self. But the physical man cannot feel or be conscious during dreams; for the personality, the outer man, with its brain
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and thinking apparatus, are paralyzed more or less completely.
We might well compare the real Ego to a prisoner, and the physical personality to the gaoler of his prison. If the gaoler falls asleep, the prisoner escapes, or, at least, passes outside the walls of his prison. The gaoler is half asleep, and looks nodding all the time out of a window, through which he can catch only occasional glimpses of his prisoner, as he would a kind of shadow moving in front of it. But what can he perceive, and what can he know of the real actions, and especially the thoughts, of his charge?
Q. Do not the thoughts of the one impress themselves upon the other?
A. Not during sleep, at all events; for the real Ego does not think as his evanescent and temporary personality does. During the waking hours the thoughts and Voice of the Higher Ego do or do not reach his gaoler—the physical man, for they are the Voice of his Conscience, but during his sleep they are absolutely the “Voice in the desert.” In the thoughts of the real man, or the immortal “Individuality,” the pictures and visions of the Past and Future are as the Present; nor are his thoughts like ours, subjective pictures in our cerebration, but living acts and deeds, present actualities. They are realities, even as they were when speech expressed in sounds did not exist; when thoughts were things, and men did not need to express them in speeches; for they instantly realized themselves in action by the power of Kriya-Sakti, that mysterious power which transforms instantaneously ideas into visible forms, and these were as objective to the “man” of the early third Race as objects of sight are now to us.
Q. How, then, does Esoteric Philosophy account for the transmission of even a few fragments of those thoughts of the Ego to our physical memory which it sometimes retains?
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A. All such are reflected on the brain of the sleeper, like outside shadows on the canvas walls of a tent, which the occupier sees as he wakes. Then the man thinks that he has dreamed all that, and feels as though he had lived through something, while in reality it is the thought-actions of the true Ego which he has dimly perceived. As he becomes fully awake, his recollections become with every minute more distorted, and mingle with the images projected from the physical brain, under the action of the stimulus which causes the sleeper to awaken. These recollections, by the power of association, set in motion various trains of ideas.
Q. It is difficult to see how the Ego can be acting during the night things which have taken place long ago. Was it not stated that dreams are not subjective?
A. How can they be subjective when the dream state is itself for us, and on our plane, at any rate, a subjective one? To the dreamer (the Ego), on his own plane, the things on that plane are as objective to him as our acts are to us.
Q. What are the senses which act in dreams?
A. The senses of the sleeper receive occasional shocks, and are awakened into mechanical action; what he hears and sees are, as has been said, a distorted reflection of the thoughts of the Ego. The latter is highly spiritual, and is linked very closely with the higher principles, Buddhi and Atma. These higher principles are entirely inactive on our plane, and the higher Ego (Manas) itself is more or less dormant during the waking of the physical man. This is especially the case with persons of very materialistic mind. So dormant are the Spiritual faculties, because the Ego is so trammelled by matter, that It can hardly give all its attention to the man’s actions, even should the latter commit sins for which that Ego—when reunited with its lower Manas—will have to suffer conjointly in the future. It is, as I said,
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the impressions projected into the physical man by this Ego which constitute what we call “conscience”; and in proportion as the Personality, the lower Soul (or Manas), unites itself to its higher consciousness, or Ego, does the action of the latter upon the life of mortal man become more marked.
Q. This Ego, then, is the “Higher Ego”?
A. Yes; it is the higher Manas illuminated by Buddhi; the principle of self-consciousness, the “I-am-I,” in short. It is the Karana-Sarira, the immortal man, which passes from one incarnation to another.
Q. Is the “register” or “tablet of memory” for the true dream-state different from that of waking life?
A. Since dreams are in reality the actions of the Ego during physical sleep, they are, of course, recorded on their own plane and produce their appropriate effects on this one. But it must be always remembered that dreams in general, and as we know them, are simply our waking and hazy recollections of these facts.
It often happens, indeed, that we have no recollection of having dreamt at all, but later in the day the remembrance of the dream will suddenly flash upon us. Of this there are many causes. It is analogous to what sometimes happens to every one of us. Often a sensation, a smell, even a casual noise, or a sound, brings instantaneously to our mind long-forgotten events, scenes and persons. Something of what was seen, done, or thought by the “night-performer,” the Ego, impressed itself at that time on the physical brain, but was not brought into the conscious, waking memory, owing to some physical condition or obstacle. This impression is registered on the brain in its appropriate cell or nerve-centre, but owing to some accidental circumstance it “hangs fire,” so to say, till something gives it the needed impulse. Then the brain slips it off immediately into the conscious memory
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of the waking man; for as soon as the conditions required are supplied, that particular centre starts forthwith into activity, and does the work which it had to do, but was hindered at the time from completing.
Q. How does this process take place?
A. There is a sort of conscious telegraphic communication going on incessantly, day and night, between the physical brain and the inner man. The brain is such a complex thing, both physically and metaphysically, that it is like a tree whose bark you can remove layer by layer, each layer being different from all the others, and each having its own special work, function, and properties.
Q. What distinguishes the “dreaming” memory and imagination from those of waking consciousness?
A. During sleep the physical memory and imagination are of course passive, because the dreamer is asleep: his brain is asleep, his memory is asleep, all his functions are dormant and at rest. It is only when they are stimulated, as I told you, that they are aroused. Thus the consciousness of the sleeper is not active, but passive. The inner man, however, the real Ego, acts independently during the sleep of the body; but it is doubtful if any of us—unless thoroughly acquainted with the physiology of occultism—could understand the nature of its action.
Q. What relation have the Astral Light and Akâsa to memory?
A. The former is the “tablet of the memory” of the animal man, the latter of the spiritual Ego. The “dreams” of the Ego, as much as the acts of the physical man, are all recorded, since both are actions based on causes and producing results. Our “dreams,” being simply the waking state and actions of the true Self, must be, of course, recorded somewhere. Read “Karmic Visions” in Lucifer, and note
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the description of the real Ego, sitting as a spectator of the life of the hero, and perhaps something will strike you.
Q. What, in reality, is the Astral Light?
A. As the Esoteric Philosophy teaches us, the Astral Light is simply the dregs of Akâsa or the Universal Ideation in its metaphysical sense. Though invisible, it is yet, so to speak, the phosphorescent radiation of the latter, and is the medium between it and man’s thought-faculties. It is these which pollute the Astral Light, and make it what it is—the storehouse of all human and especially psychic iniquities. In its primordial genesis, the astral light as a radiation is quite pure, though the lower it descends approaching our terrestrial sphere, the more it differentiates, and becomes as a result impure in its very constitution. But man helps considerably to this pollution, and gives it back its essence far worse than when he received it.
Q. Can you explain to us how it is related to man, and its action in dream-life?
A. Differentiation in the physical world is infinite. Universal ideation—or Mahat, if you like it—sends its homogeneous radiation into the heterogeneous world, and this reaches the human or personal minds through the Astral Light.
Q. But do not our minds receive their illuminations direct from the Higher Manas through the Lower? And is not the former the pure emanation of divine Ideation—the “Manasa-Putras,” which incarnated in men?
A. They are. Individual Manasa-Putras or the Kumaras are the direct radiations of the divine Ideation—“individual” in the sense of later differentiation, owing to numberless incarnations. In sum they are the collective aggregation of that Ideation, become on our plane, or from our
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point of view, Mahat, as the Dhyan-Chohans are in their aggregate the Word or “Logos” in the formation of the World. Were the Personalities (Lower Manas or the physical minds) to be inspired and illumined solely by their higher alter Egos there would be little sin in this world. But they are not; and getting entangled in the meshes of the Astral Light, they separate themselves more and more from their parent Egos. Read and study what Eliphas Lévi says of the Astral Light, which he calls Satan and the Great Serpent. The Astral Light has been taken too literally to mean some sort of a second blue sky. This imaginary space, however, on which are impressed the countless images of all that ever was, is, and will be, is but a too sad reality. It becomes in, and for, man—if at all psychic—and who is not?—a tempting Demon, his “evil angel,” and the inspirer of all our worst deeds. It acts on the will of even the sleeping man, through visions impressed upon his slumbering brain (which visions must not be confused with the “dreams”), and these germs bear their fruit when he awakes.
Q. What is the part played by Will in dreams?
A. The will of the outer man, our volition, is of course dormant and inactive during dreams; but a certain bent can be given to the slumbering will during its inactivity, and certain after-results developed by the mutual inter-action—produced almost mechanically—through union between two or more “principles” into one, so that they will act in perfect harmony, without any friction or a single false note, when awake. But this is one of the dodges of “black magic,” and when used for good purposes belongs to the training of an Occultist. One must be far advanced on the “path” to have a will which can act consciously during his physical sleep, or act on the will of another person during the sleep of the latter, e.g., to control his dreams, and thus control his actions when awake.
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Q. We are taught that a man can unite all his “principles” into one—what does this mean?
A. When an adept succeeds in doing this he is a Jivanmukta: he is no more of this earth virtually, and becomes a Nirvanee, who can go into Samadhi at will. Adepts are generally classed by the number of “principles” they have under their perfect control, for that which we call will has its seat in the higher Ego, and the latter, when it is rid of its sin-laden personality, is divine and pure.
Q. What part does Karma play in dreams? In India they say that every man receives the reward or punishment of all his acts, both in the waking and the dream state.
A. If they say so, it is because they have preserved in all their purity and remembered the traditions of their forefathers. They know that the Self is the real Ego, and that it lives and acts, though on a different plane. The external life is a “dream” to this Ego, while the inner life, or the life on what we call the dream plane, is the real life for it. And so the Hindus (the profane, of course) say that Karma is generous, and rewards the real man in dreams as well as it does the false personality in physical life.
Q. What is the difference, “karmically,” between the two?
A. The physical animal man is as little responsible as a dog or a mouse. For the bodily form all is over with the death of the body. But the real Self, that which emanated its own shadow, or the lower thinking personality, that enacted and pulled the wires during the life of the physical automaton, will have to suffer conjointly with its factotum and alter ego in its next incarnation.
Q. But the two, the higher and the lower, Manas are one, are they not?
A. They are, and yet they are not—and that is the great mystery. The Higher Manas or Ego is essentially divine,
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and therefore pure; no stain can pollute it, as no punishment can reach it, per se, the more so since it is innocent of, and takes no part in, the deliberate transactions of its Lower Ego. Yet by the very fact that, though dual and during life the Higher is distinct from the Lower, “the Father and Son” are one, and because that in reuniting with the parent Ego, the Lower Soul fastens upon and impresses upon it all its bad as well as good actions—both have to suffer, the Higher Ego, though innocent and without blemish, has to bear the punishment of the misdeeds committed by the lower Self together with it in their future incarnation. The whole doctrine of atonement is built upon this old esoteric tenet; for the Higher Ego is the antitype of that which is on this earth the type, namely, the personality. It is, for those who understand it, the old Vedic story of Visvakarman over again, practically demonstrated. Visvakarman, the all-seeing Father-God, who is beyond the comprehension of mortals, ends, as son of Bhuvana, the holy Spirit, by sacrificing himself to himself, to save the worlds. The mystic name of the “Higher Ego” is, in the Indian philosophy, Kshetrajna, or “embodied Spirit,” that which knows or informs kshetra, “the body.” Etymologize the name, and you will find in it the term aja, “first-born,” and also the “lamb.” All this is very suggestive, and volumes might be written upon the pregenetic and postgenetic development of type and antitype—of Christ-Kshetrajna, the “God-Man,” the First-born, symbolized as the “lamb.” The Secret Doctrine shows that the Manasa-Putras or incarnating Egos have taken upon themselves, voluntarily and knowingly, the burden of all the future sins of their future personalities. Thence it is easy to see that it is neither Mr. A. nor Mr. B., nor any of the personalities that periodically clothe the Self-Sacrificing Ego, which are the real Sufferers, but verily the innocent Christos within us. Hence the mystic Hindus say that
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the Eternal Self, or the Ego (the one in three and three in one), is the “Charioteer” or driver; the personalities are the temporary and evanescent passengers; while the horses are the animal passions of man. It is, then, true to say that when we remain deaf to the Voice of our Conscience, we crucify the Christos within us. But let us return to dreams.
Q. Are so-called prophetic dreams a sign that the dreamer has strong clairvoyant faculties?
A. It may be said, in the case of persons who have truly prophetic dreams, that it is because their physical brains and memory are in closer relation and sympathy with their “Higher Ego” than in the generality of men. The Ego-Self has more facilities for impressing upon the physical shell and memory that which is of importance to such persons than it has in the case of other less gifted persons. Remember that the only God man comes in contact with is his own God, called Spirit, Soul and Mind, or Consciousness, and these three are one.
But there are weeds that must be destroyed in order that a plant may grow. We must die, said St. Paul, that we may live again. It is through destruction that we may improve, and the three powers, the preserving, the creating and the destroying, are only so many aspects of the divine spark within man.
Q. Do Adepts dream?
A. No advanced Adept dreams. An adept is one who has obtained mastery over his four lower principles, including his body, and does not, therefore, let flesh have its own way. He simply paralyzes his lower Self during Sleep, and becomes perfectly free. A dream, as we understand it, is an illusion. Shall an adept, then, dream when he has rid himself of every other illusion? In his sleep he simply lives on another and more real plane.
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Q. Are there people who have never dreamed?
A. There is no such man in the world so far as I am aware. All dream more or less; only with most, dreams vanish suddenly upon waking. This depends on the more or less receptive condition of the brain ganglia. Unspiritual men, and those who do not exercise their imaginative faculties, or those whom manual labour has exhausted, so that the ganglia do not act even mechanically during rest, dream rarely, if ever, with any coherence.
Q. What is the difference between the dreams of men and those of beasts?
A. The dream state is common not only to all men, but also to all animals, of course, from the highest mammalia to the smallest birds, and even insects. Every being endowed with a physical brain, or organs approximating thereto, must dream. Every animal, large or small, has, more or less, physical senses; and though these senses are dulled during sleep, memory will still, so to say, act mechanically, reproducing past sensations. That dogs and horses and cattle dream we all know, and so also do canaries, but such dreams are, I think, merely physiological. Like the last embers of a dying fire, with its spasmodic flare and occasional flames, so acts the brain in falling asleep. Dreams are not, as Dryden says, “interludes which fancy makes,” for such can only refer to physiological dreams provoked by indigestion, or some idea or event which has impressed itself upon the active brain during waking hours.
Q. What, then, is the process of going to sleep?
A. This is partially explained by Physiology. It is said by Occultism to be the periodical and regulated exhaustion of the nervous centres, and especially of the sensory ganglia of the brain, which refuse to act any longer on this plane, and, if they would not become unfit for work, are compelled
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to recuperate their strength on another plane or Upadhi. First comes the Svapna, or dreaming state, and this leads to that of Shushupti. Now it must be remembered that our senses are all dual, and act according to the plane of consciousness on which the thinking entity energizes. Physical sleep affords the greatest facility for its action on the various planes; at the same time it is a necessity, in order that the senses may recuperate and obtain a new lease of life for the Jagrata, or waking state, from the Svapna and Shushupti. According to Raj Yoga, Turya is the highest state. As a man exhausted by one state of the life fluid seeks another; as, for example, when exhausted by the hot air he refreshes himself with cool water; so sleep is the shady nook in the sunlit valley of life. Sleep is a sign that waking life has become too strong for the physical organism, and that the force of the life current must be broken by changing the waking for the sleeping state. Ask a good clairvoyant to describe the aura of a person just refreshed by sleep, and that of another just before going to sleep. The former will be seen bathed in rhythmical vibrations of life currents—golden, blue, and rosy; these are the electrical waves of Life. The latter is, as it were, in a mist of intense golden-orange hue, composed of atoms whirling with an almost incredible spasmodic rapidity, showing that the person begins to be too strongly saturated with Life; the life essence is too strong for his physical organs, and he must seek relief in the shadowy side of that essence, which side is the dream element, or physical sleep, one of the states of consciousness.
Q. But what is a dream?
A. That depends on the meaning of the term. You may “dream,” or, as we say, sleep visions, awake or asleep. If the Astral Light is collected in a cup or metal vessel by will-power, and the eyes fixed on some point in it with a strong
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will to see, a waking vision or “dream” is the result, if the person is at all sensitive. The reflections in the Astral Light are seen better with closed eyes, and, in sleep, still more distinctly. From a lucid state, vision becomes trans-lucid; from normal organic consciousness it rises to a transcendental state of consciousness.
Q. To what causes are dreams chiefly due?
A. There are many kinds of dreams, as we all know. Leaving the “digestion dream” aside, there are brain dreams and memory dreams, mechanical and conscious visions. Dreams of warning and premonition require the active co-operation of the inner Ego. They are also often due to the conscious or unconscious co-operation of the brains of two living persons, or of their two Egos.
Q. What is it that dreams, then?
A. Generally the physical brain of the personal Ego, the seat of memory, radiating and throwing off sparks like the dying embers of a fire. The memory of the Sleeper is like an Æolian seven-stringed harp; and his state of mind may be compared to the wind that sweeps over the chords. The corresponding string of the harp will respond to that one of the seven states of mental activity in which the sleeper was before falling asleep. If it is a gentle breeze the harp will be affected but little; if a hurricane, the vibrations will be proportionately powerful. If the personal Ego is in touch with its higher principles and the veils of the higher planes are drawn aside, all is well; if on the contrary it is of a materialistic animal nature, there will be probably no dreams; or if the memory by chance catch the breath of a “wind” from a higher plane, seeing that it will be impressed through the sensory ganglia of the cerebellum, and not by the direct agency of the spiritual Ego, it will receive pictures and sounds so distorted and inharmonious that even a Deva-
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chanic vision would appear a nightmare or grotesque caricature. Therefore there is no simple answer to the question “What is it that dreams,” for it depends entirely on each individual what principle will be the chief motor in dreams, and whether they will be remembered or forgotten.
Q. Is the apparent objectivity in a dream really objective or subjective?
A. If it is admitted to be apparent, then of course it is subjective. The question should rather be, to whom or what are the pictures or representations in dreams either objective or subjective? To the physical man, the dreamer, all he sees with his eyes shut, and in or through his mind, is of course subjective. But to the Seer within the physical dreamer, that Seer himself being subjective to our material senses, all he sees is as objective as he is himself to himself and to others like himself. Materialists will probably laugh, and say that we make of a man a whole family of entities, but this is not so. Occultism teaches that physical man is one, but the thinking man septenary, thinking, acting, feeling, and living on seven different states of being or planes of consciousness, and that for all these states and planes the permanent Ego (not the false personality) has a distinct set of senses.
Q. Can these different senses be distinguished?
A. Not unless you are an Adept or highly-trained Chela, thoroughly acquainted with these different states. Sciences, such as biology, physiology, and even psychology (of the Maudsley, Bain, and Herbert Spencer schools), do not touch on this subject. Science teaches us about the phenomena of volition, sensation, intellect, and instinct, and says that these are all manifested through the nervous centers, the most important of which is our brain. She will speak of the peculiar agent or substance through which these
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phenomena take place as the vascular and fibrous tissues, and explain their relation to one another, dividing the ganglionic centres into motor, sensory and sympathetic, but will never breathe one word of the mysterious agency of intellect itself, or of the mind and its functions.
Now, it frequently happens that we are conscious and know that we are dreaming; this is a very good proof that man is a multiple being on the thought plane; so that not only is the Ego, or thinking man, Proteus, a multiform, ever-changing entity, but he is also, so to speak, capable of separating himself on the mind or dream plane into two or more entities; and on the plane of illusion which follows us to the threshold of Nirvana, he is like Ain-Soph talking to Ain-Soph, holding a dialogue with himself and speaking through, about, and to himself. And this is the mystery of the inscrutable Deity in the Zohar, as in the Hindu philosophies; it is the same in the Kabbala, Puranas, Vedantic metaphysics, or even in the so-called Christian mystery of the Godhead and Trinity. Man is the microcosm of the macrocosm; the god on earth is built on the pattern of the god in nature. But the universal consciousness of the real Ego transcends a millionfold the self-consciousness of the personal or false Ego.
Q. Is that which is termed “unconscious cerebration” during sleep a mechanical process of the physical brain, or is it a conscious operation of the Ego, the result of which only is impressed on the ordinary consciousness?
A. It is the latter; for is it possible to remember in our conscious state what took place while our brain worked unconsciously? This is apparently a contradiction in terms.
Q. How does it happen that persons who have never seen mountains in nature often see them distinctly in sleep, and are able to note their features?
A. Most probably because they have seen pictures of
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mountains; otherwise it is somebody or something in us which has previously seen them.
Q. What is the cause of that experience in dreams in which the dreamer seems to be ever striving after something, but never attaining it?
A. It is because the physical self and its memory are shut out of the possibility of knowing what the real Ego does. The dreamer only catches faint glimpses of the doings of the Ego, whose actions produce the so-called dream on the physical man, but is unable to follow it consecutively. A delirious patient, on recovery, bears the same relation to the nurse who watched and tended him in his illness as the physical man to his real Ego. The Ego acts as consciously within and without him as the nurse acts in tending and watching over the sick man. But neither the patient after leaving his sick bed, nor the dreamer on awaking, will be able to remember anything except in snatches and glimpses.
Q. How does sleep differ from death?
A. There is an analogy certainly, but a very great difference between the two. In sleep there is a connection, weak though it may be, between the lower and higher mind of man, and the latter is more or less reflected into the former, however much its rays may be distorted. But once the body is dead, the body of illusion, Mayavi Rupa, becomes Kama Rupa, or the animal soul, and is left to its own devices. Therefore, there is as much difference between the spook and man as there is between a gross material, animal but sober mortal, and a man incapably drunk and unable to distinguish the most prominent surroundings; between a person shut up in a perfectly dark room and one in a room lighted, however imperfectly, by some light or other.
The lower principles are like wild beasts, and the higher Manas is the rational man who tames or subdues them more
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or less successfully. But once the animal gets free from the master who held it in subjection; no sooner has it ceased to hear his voice and see him than it starts off again to the jungle and its ancient den. It takes, however, some time for an animal to return to its original and natural state, but these lower principles or “spook” return instantly, and no sooner has the higher Triad entered the Devachanic state than the lower Duad rebecomes that which it was from the beginning, a principle endued with purely animal instinct, made happier still by the great change.
Q. What is the condition of the Linga Sarira, or plastic body, during dreams?
A. The condition of the Plastic form is to sleep with its body, unless projected by some powerful desire generated in the higher Manas. In dreams it plays no active part, but on the contrary is entirely passive, being the involuntarily half-sleepy witness of the experiences through which the higher principles are passing.
Q. Under what circumstances is this wraith seen?
A. Sometimes, in cases of illness or very strong passion on the part of the person seen or the person who sees; the possibility is mutual. A sick person especially just before death, is very likely to see in dream, or vision, those whom he loves and is continually thinking of, and so also is a person awake, but intensely thinking of a person who is asleep at the time.
Q. Can a Magician summon such a dreaming entity and have intercourse with it?
A. In black Magic it is no rare thing to evoke the “spirit” of a sleeping person; the sorcerer may then learn from the apparition any secret he chooses, and the sleeper be quite ignorant of what is occurring. Under such circumstances
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that which appears is the Mayavi rupa; but there is always a danger that the memory of the living man will preserve the recollections of the evocation and remember it as a vivid dream. If it is not, however, at a great distance, the Double or Linga Sarira may be evoked, but this can neither speak nor give information, and there is always the possibility of the sleeper being killed through this forced separation. Many sudden deaths in sleep have thus occurred, and the world been no wiser.
Q. Can there be any connection between a dreamer and an entity in “Kama Loka”?
A. The dreamer of an entity in Kama Loka would probably bring upon himself a nightmare, or would run the risk of becoming “possessed” by the “spook” so attracted, if he happened to be a medium, or one who had made himself so passive during his waking hours that even his higher Self is now unable to protect him. This is why the mediumistic state of passivity is so dangerous, and in time renders the Higher Self entirely helpless to aid or even warn the sleeping or entranced person. Passivity paralyzes the connection between the lower and higher principles. It is very rare to find instances of mediums who, while remaining passive at will, for the purpose of communicating with some higher Intelligence, some exterraneous spirit (not disembodied), will yet preserve sufficiently their personal will so as not to break off all connection with the higher Self.
Q. Can a dreamer be “en rapport” with an entity in Devachan?
A. The only possible means of communicating with Devachanees is during sleep by a dream or vision, or in trance state. No Devachanee can descend into our plane; it is for us—or rather our inner Self—to ascend to his.
Q. What is the state of mind of a drunkard during sleep?
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A. It is no real sleep, but a heavy stupor; no physical rest, but worse than sleeplessness, and kills the drunkard as quickly. During such stupor, as also during the waking drunken state, everything turns and whirls round in the brain, producing in the imagination and fancy horrid and grotesque shapes in continual motion and convolutions.
Q. What is the cause of nightmare, and how is it that the dreams of persons suffering from advanced consumption are often pleasant?
A. The cause of the former is simply physiological. A nightmare arises from oppression and difficulty in breathing; and difficulty in breathing will always create such a feeling of oppression and produce a sensation of impending calamity. In the second case, dreams become pleasant because the consumptive grows daily severed from his material body, and more clairvoyant in proportion. As death approaches, the body wastes away and ceases to be an impediment or barrier between the brain of the physical man and his Higher Self.
Q. Is it a good thing to cultivate dreaming?
A. It is by cultivating the power of what is called “dreaming” that clairvoyance is developed.
Q. Are there any means of interpreting dreams—for instance, the interpretations given in dream-books?
A. None but the clairvoyant faculty and the spiritual intuition of the “interpreter.” Every dreaming Ego differs from every other, as our physical bodies do. If everything in the universe has seven keys to its symbolism on the physical plane, how many keys may it not have on higher planes?
Q. Is there any way in which dreams may be classified?
A. We may roughly divide also dreams into seven classes,
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and subdivide these in turn. Thus, we would divide them into:—
1. Prophetic dreams. These are impressed on our memory by the Higher Self, and are generally plain and clear: either a voice heard or the coming event foreseen.
2. Allegorical dreams, or hazy glimpses of realities caught by the brain and distorted by our fancy. These are generally only half true.
3. Dreams sent by adepts, good or bad, by mesmerizers, or by the thoughts of very powerful minds bent on making us do their will.
4. Retrospective; dreams of events belonging to past incarnations.
5. Warning dreams for others who are unable to be impressed themselves.
6. Confused dreams, the causes of which have been discussed above.
7. Dreams which are mere fancies and chaotic pictures, owing to digestion, some mental trouble, or such-like external cause.
[FOOTNOTES]
1. S.D., I., 8.
2. Vide Mr. Subba Row’s four Lectures, Notes on the Bhagavat Gita.
3. S.D.,I., 38.
5. Vide The Voice of the Silence; Fragment III., The Seven Portals.
6. In the second chapter of the Vishnu Purâna (Wilson’s translation) we read“Parasara said: Glory to the unchangeable, holy, eternal, supreme Vishnu, of one universal nature, the mighty over all: to him who is Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Sankara, the creator, the preserver, and destroyer of the world: to Vâsudeva, the liberator of his worshippers: to him whose essence is both single and manifold; who is both subtile and corporeal, indiscrete and discrete: to Vishnu, the cause of final emancipation. Glory to the supreme Vishnu, the cause of the creation, existence, and end of this world; who is the root of the world, and who consists of the world.”
And again: “Who can describe him who is not to be apprehended by the senses: who is the best of all things; the supreme soul, self-existent: who is devoid of all the distinguishing characteristics of complexion, caste, or the like; and is exempt from birth, vicissitude, death, or decay: who is always, and alone: who exists everywhere, and in whom all things here exist; and who is, thence, named Vasudeva? He is Brahma (neuter), supreme, lord, eternal, unborn, imperishable, undecaying; of one essence; ever pure, as free from defects. He, that Brahma, was (is) all things; comprehending in his own nature the indiscrete and discrete.”
7. S.D., I., 54.
8. The word dream means really “to slumber”the latter function being called in Russian “dreamatj.”Ed.